#those few people on this blog who know me as a whump writer. at least pretend to be surprised that this is what id write

[aleki-lives-here]

If I do end up writing murderbot fanfic, it'll probably include some nasty taking over control virus that will not be conveniently stopped before it can actually start acting. The way murderbot was absolutely terrified when faced with that alien shit in Network Effect was absolutely delicious. I need that, but ten times worse and also painfully drawn out.

It would miss the moment it got into its system for "trying to save humans no time to waste" reasons, and by the time it had a chance to get a diagnostic it would have already hidden itself. By the time it noticed something was off, it would already have enough control to stop it from doing something about that. Maybe changing the memory files so that it struggles to keep track of it, and maybe directly stopping its body from cooperating.

A scene that came to me had Murderbot try and tell Mensah about the virus and have the output be cancelled (perhaps before it got to that point it would have noticed a slight delay in the reaction time, which would definitely be hella concerning), just completely being unable to notify others that there is a problem. Except that they have those code words with Mensah and so it does tell her that something is really really fucking wrong, but can't elaborate. Now everyone is worried, and it is struggling to fight off the virus that has had enough time to prepare to really not make it easy.

Anyway, ideally it all escalates despite everyone's attempts to figure out what the fuck -- Murderbot's diagnostic tools are fucked from the inside and humans have better luck at noticing the problem but can't really help much. The perfect culmination would be total control. Murderbot just being completely trapped into its own body, forced to do something it doesn't like or even just stand still (no access to media if you want to turn it into an especially excruciating torture). Tho turning its control completely is a waste of its talents. Maybe the virus could just get the governor module back online, but completely under its control, so Murderbot can enjoy being electrocuted some more.

Gods I just love to torture my favorite characters. If I end up writing a fanfic, it would be this kind of terrible no good scenario

[letstalkwhump]

Let's Talk Whump No.5

Welcome to Let’s Talk Whump, a series of interviews that spotlight the amazing people in our whump community! ! I’m Malice and I’ll be your host. 

Today I’m talking whump with the wonderful @painsandconfusion! 

So good to have you here today, @painsandconfusion! Tell us a fun fact about yourself!

I'm a lawyer but don't seem like a lawyer at all - everyon'es always confused when I say so. I'm a fan of jumping between fluffy pink dresses, standard hipster vibes, emo styles, and who knows what else. It's different every day. I just like variety!

What does whump mean to you?

Oh dear, tricky to answer...

Whump is when a character is at their highest stress point (or...at least higher than average). I suffer from severe and vivid nightmares, but I found out that when I write whump, I can process my fears and anxieties through those characters and their experiences. I can only go about two weeks without writing before the nightmares start again. It's kinda amazing to see just how effective and healthy it is for me. I live vicariously through my whumpees for a moment, and they help my brain keep its shit together. Then I get to meet all these lovely people online and it just makes my heart so happy!

Wow, that’s really great to hear! Whump can be really cathartic at times. How did you find the whump community? What made you want to join? 

I think this is a standard story, but I discovered the hero x villain community first, and it wasn't /quite/ my cup of tea, but it was close. After I saw a few people reblogging things with #whump, I checked it out. 

I have a vivid memory of skipping class for the first time in my life, just sitting in my apartment, all but crying as I scrolled through everything. I was so relieved to find that I wasn't alone. I spent so much of my life hating myself and hating whumperflies and hating that I was drawn to violence and not understanding why. After I found this community I felt so much more at home. 

I made a blog and started reblogging.

Then of course, I relapsed into hating myself and deleted it.

Then I made another. Started posting gifs I made from my favorite whumpy movies.

The kink community kinda took it over - which is fine and lovely and I'm happy to share content, but....they were the only ones who saw my blog. So everything I made was taken in a way I didn't mean and I felt very isolated and unheard.

So I deleted it again.

A couple years ago, I tried again. I started just reblogging, then I impulsively added to a prompt list in one of my reblogs and people really liked it? So I made more. And more and more and more- eventually I started posting scenes, and I've been having a lovely time here ever since! 

Do you think your view on whump has changed since you joined? Are there tropes you now love/hate that you didn't at first? 

Absolutely. Like. Wow so much. I used to dislike pain a lot and only enjoy the fear leading up to it. While I still prefer the suspense, nothing really squicks me out anymore. I used to hate pet whump but now I'm a fan. 

I have started making whump art as of late, which has been a fun new adventure! I picked it up almost solely because there's so many fantastic writers in this community who deserve some good fanart. I'm having fun working through a list of my favorite creators!

Tell us about your favourite whump trope!

Dear goodness, do I love a chin tilt.

No no...hmmm.....I get to run wild with this question and there's nothing you can do to stop me! Muahhahahhaaaaaaaa~

Okay so. Picture this.

Whumpee stumbling slowly backward, breath catching in their throat and burning at their lungs. Their feet drag against the ground as they stare up at Whumper, eyes shaking and sparkling with tears that cling to their lashes, refusing to fall. Not /quite/ yet. 

Whumper strokes a knuckle down their cheek, drawing a twitch - not quite a flinch, no no, Whumpee wouldn't dare to pull away. Whumper's hand flips softly as it reaches their jaw, pressing to their throat instead.

Whumpee finally lets a sound pass their lips, a soft whimper as their back hits the wall. The momentum topples the wetness from their lashes, and Whumper's eyes roam down to follow them as they soak hot into the fabric of Whumpee's shirt. 

Whumper's hand turns up just /once/ more, curling a finger under Whumpee's chin to tip their head up, drawing hiding eyes back into place.

Then they say something whumpy, I guess - you get the picture.

LOVE that shit. 

Intimate whumpers? Slow pacing? Vivid sensation? Yes!

Absolutely loving the detail in that! It’s all about the sensations! And speaking of favourites, do you want to share a piece you've written?

Hard Question!

First one that comes to mind is The Party. It's one of my favorites because my hands were shaking so hard while writing it. It was a great way to kick off that event (@thewhumperssoiree) which I'm inadvertently yet shamelessly plugging by answering with that piece I guess! It's very very fun, I loved what that piece created. Everyone who wrote for it did such a great job! (Event is still open, I don’t know why I'm talking about it in past tense)

Do you have a standard writing style/routine or does it vary?

I absolutely change up my paragraph style depending on the intensity of the scene or the place in the scene. I'm a big fan of elaborating and writing moment to moment so the oc's sensations and emotions bleed into the reader. I don't write much on visuals at all - almost entirely on sensation, which I think works well in this medium.

When I'm writing, I kinda forget everything else exists, so I don't have food or drink or if I do, it's neglected. If anyone tries to talk to me, tough luck to them, I'm in the Write Zone and I cannot hear them!

I write solely when inspiration strikes which.......is a lot!

Is there a noticeable difference in how easily you write things? Do the words always flow or do you have to beat them out sometimes?

There's characters who don't get in my head nearly as easily, and ones that are effortless. Getting fucking Alec in my head? Impossible. He's a bitch, then does bitch things once there. Ethan? Dream. Miracle boy. So easy to write that emo little shit. For clarification, the seven chapters of Alec's series vs the thirty of Ethan's. Alec is a bitch. End of story.

But, I also do much better describing little moments rather than full scenes. I'm good at scenes, but it takes so many spoons. Hence why I have three hundred or so random drabble posts or lists, but only like fifty total from my series. It just takes more effort to have to think about plot and pacing and all that good stuff. 

Fun? Yes. 

But hard.

Is there anything you're working on at the moment? Finalising the final chapter of your series? Starting a new au? Trying a different style of writing/pov? Revisiting fanfiction? Maybe you've really gotten into poetry....

Oh dear goodness, I'm working on everything all at once and I need to stop!

I also need to roleplay less and write more for you lovelies! I’m so sorry I’m just really distractible…

Give us some writing advice. Bless us with your wisdom!

I have posts for this but:

1. Keep your descriptions to the textured senses. Less visuals, more sensation. Caretaker has brown hair? So what? Tell me about how Caretaker's hair curled at the ends, just barely tickling at the corner of their eyes until they flicked it away with a twitchy shake of the head.

2. Personify the shit out of your nouns. Whumpee bled? No. The blood soaked through Whumpee's shirt. Make it an external factor that's affecting them. Much more engaging.

3. Pacing. Whumpee got dragged into the car, then into a house and chained in the basement? That's not one scene, that's at least three. OR. It's a two sentence summary that Whumpee is musing about while already in the basement. 

4. Speaking of, don't start with the boring, just get right into the action. You can weave the 'how we got here' bits in after a few sentences, but get your reader hooked right away. Don't start with "Whumpee got out of bed, glancing at their blaring alarm". Try instead "Their hands were shaking so hard they had to try three times to dial the number, fingers as clumsy as they were that morning, trying to slap their alarm off through the fog of blissful sleep." Or just don't mention it at all! Skip to the good stuff!

Lastly, let’s hype up some of your favourite blogs! Any friends, writers or just really cool people you want to shout out?

@whumblr was like my idol before I started! It's so cool just casually knowing her now? Still not over that, to be honest.

I always tag her but @distinctlywhumpthingmpthing is so good? Seriously, you want to see some god-tier writing, go over there. (minors read tws well please, its not all for you.)

@brutal-nemesisemesis is always a delight. Castys gives me life.

And of course,  I'm gonna give a shoutout to @wormwritinging, my beloved. We met here and as much as I adore this community, they're hands down the best part of it. 

Anything you'd like to add? 

I can't think of anything but thank you for doing this. This blog is so cool!

It’s been a honor to have you here, @painsandconfusion!

And to all you folks at home, have a whump-derful day!

[much-ado-about-whumping]

Commission opportunity for QTPOC nsfwhump writers

Are you a queer/trans writer of color who's open to taking commission? Are you over 18 and an erotica writer? Would you consider yourself trauma-informed? I'm trying to match-make a writer with a commission client, and I might have a lead for you! (Even if you've never written a commissioned work before, if this interests you, please read on.)

This is a slightly unusual post for my whump blog, but I sometimes write paid BDSM erotica commissions on the side, and I have an opportunity to share! A reader recently contacted me asking if I knew any queer, trans writers of color (QTPOC) who could write a trauma-informed commission for them. The client is QTPOC themself and wants a writer who shares those identities. I'm white, so I said I'd ask around my networks!

Here are the parameters they gave me:

I'm interested in a one-time commission involving a cis fem + nby pairing involving a dubcon dom/sub SM dynamic, cold/shivering kink, ~2k words

While this client didn't ask for nsfwhump by name, I can tell you that that's what I would call the things I write as commissions, with some variation based on clients' requests. What I think this client is responding to in my work that made them reach out to me is the way that I can see sexual trauma as simultaneously titillating in fantasy and also really grounded in emotional and physical ramifications for the survivor. I think most people who write nsfwhump can do that, which is why I framed this post this way.

We connected via r/eroticasells on reddit, where the price floor is $0.05/word, so I would say there's a baseline expectation that this commission would net you at least $100*, but of course you and the client could negotiate that yourselves.

(*Note: I currently have COVID and am a little brain-fogged and trying to do the math mentally without navigating away from the tumblr app, so if I got that wrong, please forgive me. 😅)

I haven't thoroughly vetted this client, but they've been kind and respectful in their conversations with me, and I get a good vibe. Likewise, they know I'm circulating this to people I don't necessarily know well personally - I'm just trying to help connect folks to the opportunity. <3 I know we have lots of talented QTPOC writers in this community, but I'm such a lurker lately that I'm having trouble thinking of specific individuals who I know write nsfwhump off-hand. If that's you, please please reply or DM me so I can connect you!

A final note - if you've never taken a commission before, but this idea sounds up your alley, I'd be super happy to share what I know with you about how to do it and stay safe. I'm far from an expert, but I've been doing this as a side-hustle for about four months and gave learned a few helpful tips, both from other writers and through trial and error. Let me know if you're into the idea but need help getting started!

Happy writing, my dears. Hope to hear from some of you soon!

P.S. - Please consider signal-boosting this even if it doesn't apply to you, provided you're a blog that's comfortable talking about nsfwhump. I know there's a select group of us, and I appreciate help getting eyes on this post! <3

[authorofemotion]

Claire!

Because I know you are huge(at least in my eyes) especially with your whump blog and I know you post original content...

What advice would you give for new blogs/authors for writing original content? I'm thinking about writing some but I think I want to grow my blog before I do. You don't have to answer but I'm always looking for advice to better myself and my writing.

Love you!

hi athena!! I don’t know if i’m going to be the best person to give advice (this blog has ~150 followers and my fandom sideblog has about 30. but my whump blog is doing pretty well!) but I can absolutely try!! Since it got pretty long, I’m putting it under the cut :)

(also this is entirely unrelated but for some reason I’m able to type stuff inside your ask which is whacky. i didn’t do it though lol)

Growth takes time!! I started my blog almost three years ago and I’ve built most of my following in the last year and a half. Hitting your stride takes time and trial and error no matter what, so be aware that even when it doesn’t seem like it, you ARE making progress!!

MAKE FRIENDS!! Seriously, finding your people can help you so much (and you’ve already been doing a great job with that! again, I only made my friends within the last year and a half).

Another great thing to do would be to make an introduction post and tag your favorite content creators! Intro posts go around a lot and that will get people familiar with you and give you a face in the community.

Also, to become familiar to various people, reblog writing you like and RANT IN THE TAGS I SWEAR IT HELPS SO MUCH!! Artists (writers included) don’t get nearly as much interaction as they should simply bc people have stopped reblogging stuff. So a reblog is amazing—but if you put a sentence or two (or a whole paragraph if inclined) in the tags about what you loved, I promise the author will LOVE YOU and almost definitely check out your blog. Sending asks is also really good!

Try to post (at least semi-) regularly. I’m a bad example because my online presence ranges from posting multiple things a day to not writing for three months. BUT! I always see a boost in followers every time I post something new, and, again, if people see your url often enough, they’ll check out your blog and may drop a follow!

TAG TAG TAG TAG TAG!!!! Use AS MANY relevant tags as possible when you post, because people follow tags of things they like to see, and posts that use those tags then show up on their dash, and your content is exposed to new people!

Participate in community events! Yet again, I’m a terrible example of this because I. haven’t yet. However! Events like Whumptober, Whumpmas in July, Summer of Whump (There are non-whump ones Im just painfully oblivious to them) will get you exposed to more people too! You don’t have to do every prompt, lots of people will see your work because they follow the event tags, and the hosting blog will reblog it for their followers too!

Write what you want to! My self-indulgent posts that I think most people won’t like because it appeals to me specifically do really really well a lot of the time! You aren’t alone in really liking the tropes you like, so there 100% will be an audience for what you want to write, you just have to find it.

If you want to write with OCs, write a few things with well-known characters (fanfic) or generic characters (hero/villain, etc) first or alongside it. Being introduced to someone’s blog solely with OCs can be intimidating bc instead of focusing on the writing you’re like “who are you people???” but if you write other things alongside it, people will be introduced to your writing, then may decide to check out your OCs (also if you have them make an intro post for your ocs. it’s really fun)

If a prompt inspires you, fill it in with a reblog!

Also remember (I know from experience) more people will like your posts than reblog. more people will read your posts than will like. not everyone who goes through your blog and reads everything you have will like the posts, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have that audience!

uhhh that’s about all I have. it’s all pretty generic advice but I hope it helps!! LOVE YOU <333

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - Imagineteamfreewill

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

“Don’t Be Koi About It” - All About You

Name: Meg

Age: 20s

Location: United States

URL: @imagineteamfreewill

Why did you choose your URL: I first started out structuring my stories as imagines, and the “Team Free Will” part was pretty obvious.

What inspired you to become a writer: Reading Supernatural fanfiction inspired me to get back into writing, but I’ve always enjoyed it. My mom likes to talk about how when I was in Kindergarten, I drew a picture about how I wanted to be an author and now I write in my free time.

How long have you been writing: According to tumblr, I’ve been writing fanfiction since 2014, but I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? I’m a music teacher, so I sing and play piano, and I’ve played a bit of cello and tenor saxophone as well. I love movies, baking, sleeping, and a few video games.

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? I joined sometime around Season 8 or 9, I think. I don’t really remember!

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? I really enjoy Marvel and I’ve read a lot of Marvel fics, but I don’t write for them. I like a lot of TV shows (New Girl, Parks and Rec, The Good Place, Outlander, etc), but I wouldn’t consider myself part of the fandom.

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? I love to write poetry. I had a poetry blog at truenorth-ink a while ago, but I haven’t updated it recently at all. Most of my poems aren’t published or posted anywhere.

Favorite published author: I love some of the early series by Rick Riordan and I also really enjoy poetry by Nikita Gill and Atticus. Lately, I've really been getting into Leigh Bardugo's books.

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: I think "East" by Edith Pattou really affected me! I read it when I was in 6th-8th grade and I think about it often. I think it's something that really stuck with me and got me interested in fantasy books so much. I read it at least once a year.

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc): I love angsty stuff, and most of the time I prefer it when it has some fluff mixed in. Straight fluff is often hard for me to read because I need something that’s more realistic for my own life and point of view. I also really like whump, but that can be a lot sometimes so it depends on my mood.

Favorite piece of your own writing: I don’t know if I have a favorite, but I loved writing Back to the Start (my mermaid series) and The Switch (a canon-divergent apocalyptic Reader x Sam series). Right now, I'm really enjoying my Consort series (a Goddess!Reader x Dean series). Creating my own rules in my own little universes is one of my favorite things to do, especially since I can’t always do whatever I want in real life.

Most underrated fic you have written: Empire. I loved getting to write Boyking!Sam because it was so different from my normal Sam stories and I did a lot of research for it. I’m pretty proud that the story never got too bloody or gory, too, so if you want some Boyking!Sam that’s not drenched in blood (for lack of a better term), I’m your girl!

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Probably Back to the Start or The Switch. I think those two series would be amazing to see with J2, the rest of the cast/characters I included, and special effects! There’s so much I’d want to explore with both of them that I didn’t put into the series.

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s): @luci-in-trenchcoats, @sunlightdances, @supernaturalfreewill, @lipstickandwhiskey, @smol-and-grumpy, @percywinchester27, and @kaz2y5-imagines

Favorite fic from another writer:  I don’t think I could pick just one, but I’ve read all of @sunlightdances Dean fics multiple times. Her works got me through some pretty sucky times in my life and I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of her writing! I’ve also been reading her Bucky fics recently and it’s made me love Marvel fics even more than before!​

Favorite character to write: Sam Winchester

Favorite Pairing to write: Reader x Sam (Reader x Dean is a close second)

Least favorite character to write (and why): I don’t like to write for Crowley or Gabriel. Gadreel is hard for me even though I can do it, but I don’t understand Crowley or Gabriel’s personalities at all because they’re literally so far away from mine.

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? No, although @lipstickandwhiskey and @kaz2y5-imagines really encouraged me in my writing!​

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? I would love to write a non-Supernatural work of fiction to publish, but that’s a long way off.

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: Oh Lord, I have so many! I have at least four series and two one shots in the works right now. I've also got over 100 one shots/series plotlines written out in the notes on my phone and various Google Docs.

What are you currently working on? I’m currently working on a Cinderella series, my Underworld series, my Puer Rex series, my Consort series, an Author!Sam fic, and an Author!Dean fic. I also write stories for my Words series now and again.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? Reading other people’s work. The intense storylines of @luci-in-trenchcoats ’s fics have gotten me to be more bold with my writing and the emotions and description in @supernaturalfreewill’s works have inspired me to let my work have more feeling.

Best writing advice you've been given: Not necessarily writing advice, but I was once told that anything worth doing is worth doing at least a little bit every day. Think about it—if you wrote even just five minutes a day, how much better will you get over the course of a month? A year?

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: Repetition of words and commas. So many commas and so many uses of the same word over and over again. It’s a hard balance between using the word and using synonyms without sounding like I’m sitting there googling synonyms for “said”. I also tend to spend a lot of time on things that I think are super important but aren’t really important in the long run. I’m wordy as hell and my writing would be dull if I didn’t edit it as thoroughly as I do.

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction? A lot of times I have these ideas that I think would make a great series but I don’t think through them, so planning out the plot of a series (or even a standalone fic) beforehand is something I struggle with.

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): I would love to write more fics that have the characters dealing with severe mental disorders or that take place in a mental hospital, but I’m afraid that I’ll portray something wrong and solidify harmful stereotypes about what it’s like to deal with those things.

What inspires/motivates you to write: Honestly, just wanting to write things that I enjoy. Sometimes I get sick of reading other peoples’ stuff since it’s not exactly what I want, so I just write my own!

How do you deal with self doubt: Understand that sometimes it happens. You’ll doubt yourself—everybody does. If I’m doubting myself or my writing, I’ll take a break until I remember why I write. Then I’ll remember that yeah, writing for an audience is fun, but I write because I have cool ideas I want to explore, not because I need the attention or love of strangers. Lastly, I’ll reread my old fics, especially the ones I love, and then I’ll go back and edit old fics that I haven’t looked at in a while. That way I can see how I’ve improved and I don’t feel so terrible anymore! Reading my own fics is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, and I’ll read through my masterlists every once a while just to remind myself of the things I’ve loved, where I’ve been, and where I’m going.

How do you deal with writer's block: Like I said, I reread old fics and edit old fics that I haven’t looked at in a while. Seeing the things I’ve done before always helps to focus me. I’ll also read other people’s stuff or talk about headcanons with some friends to try and find some inspiration.

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: Lately I have been, but only because my periods of intense inspiration and productivity are getting farther and farther apart because of my job. I’ve found planning it out to be more and more helpful, especially for my series. A lot of times if I get a great idea, I’ll outline the whole plot or any significant details I want to put in that one shot/series so that I can come back to it whenever I have the time or I’m inspired for it again.

Do you have any weird writing habits: I write best in places that are unfamiliar to me or in places/times where I shouldn’t be writing. Class? Writing. Airport terminal? Writing. 4am when I have to be up at 6? Writing.

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? Not that I remember! I feel like there’s probably been one or two over the years, but I probably just got upset about it with my friends for a while and then got over it.

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic? A long time ago, when I was writing Back to the Start, I had one person who sent me asks for every single series update. I screenshotted them and saved them on my laptop. There’s one particular one where they say that they’re happier because of my writing and honestly, isn’t that what we all strive for? That people’s lives are better because of our stories? I’ve also had some pretty great friends recently who’ve made it a point to reblog and send asks/messages on all my works, which has been so meaningful that I never replied to the asks. They’re sitting in my inbox and I go through and reread them sometimes when I’m feeling down.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be?  ​Write down everything. If you come up with an amazing piece of dialogue, even if it’s just one sentence or one person talking, or if you come up with something you’d think would be a great title… WRITE IT DOWN. It doesn’t matter if it fits into whatever you’re currently writing or not, it’ll come in handy! I don’t know how many times I’ve gone through my idea list and found really obscure lines/titles/inspiration that didn’t make sense when I wrote them down, but are now exactly what I need to finish a fic. Even if you don’t end up using it, jotting down your ideas is still writing, and that’s good practice!

[justheretobreakthings]

Whumpmas in July: Day 2

@whumpmasinjuly

How did you find the whump community here on tumblr?

Man, it feels weird to remember that there was a time that I didn’t know the term for it. It was definitely here on tumblr that I first learned the term “whump”, although it wasn’t until a while after learning the word that I discovered there was a whole online community dedicated to it.

It’s been years, so my memory’s not all that clear, but I wanna say the first time I came across it was in the Supernatural fandom? I know in my early tumblr days, I had followed a couple of blogs dedicated to reblogging Supernatural gifs, and I know at least one of them had tags specifically for various whumpy themes like “blood” and “tied up” and “sick” and such. I think I had first encountered the term in the captions for some of the posts that were reblogged. Sadly I don’t remember when it was that I realized what the word meant - maybe I had googled it after seeing it in one of those captions?

I do remember that the first whump-specific blog I ever followed was focused on vintage whump - TV shows primarily from the 50s and 60s. Which tracks, because the online Bonanza fandom had been my first foray into fan fiction, as well as my introduction to whump but under a different name. See, before I even knew about sites like Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own, I was getting my fic content from old sites and forums specifically for Bonanza stories and populated primarily by fans upwards of fifty years old.

I’d actually stumbled upon the world of fanfiction as a whole purely by accident. I had been trying to remember the title to an episode of Bonanza and searched for it by googling some key terms from the episode. Something along the lines of ‘bonanza episode joe kidnapped tied up dehydrated’ - you know, the parts I deemed most significant (for anyone curious, I did figure out that the episode in question was titled “The Gift”), and the results that Google gave me were not about this episode, but instead were about brand-new fan content that I didn’t know I had needed.

Anyway, it was within this world of Bonanza fan fiction that I first learned that there were other people who were interested in focusing on the same sort of content I was. And the community of Bonanza writers had their own terminology that I’ve never seen used anywhere else, including a lot of unique acronyms. Some of them were ones that I could see fanfic communities as a whole adapting - for example, WHN, WHB, and WHIB fics were fics focused on specific episodes of the show and exploring ‘what happens next’, ‘what happened before’, and ‘what happened in between’, respectively.

Others, though, were very Bonanza-specific. The four main characters, Joe, Hoss, Adam, and Pa (Ben) were represented in acronyms by their first initial, and two of the most common acronym formats were ??M and H?S, which stood for ‘[Character]-[Character] Moment’ and ‘Hurt [Character] Story’. So, for example, a character tagged as ‘JPM’, or ‘Joe-Pa Moment’, would feature a scene of Joe and Pa being emotionally close, usually one acting as the caretaker/comforter for the other. And a fic tagged as, say ‘HAS’, or ‘Hurt Adam Story’, would be about Adam being hurt - and this tag would qualify whether he was dealing with being shot or sick or kidnapped or anything else that would be classified as whump.

Joe was my designated whumpee of the show (he was very alloromantic, which was a point against him, but his position as the baby brother of the family, his delightfully short temper and knack for getting into fights with people he shouldn’t, his stubbornness, and the fact that the show’s writers gave him so many angsty moments in canon because they felt his actor did such a good job crying on-screen, all more than make up for that when it comes to his appeal as a whumpee) so I devoured mountains of content in the sites’ HJS tags. So it was only natural that I start looking into such content here on tumblr as well. It’s not exactly a show that gets a lot of tumblr content, considering its age, but the few tumblrs that did make gifs and such for it knew exactly what the show’s appeal was and how to tag it: “whump”.

TL;DR: Supernatural taught me the term and its usage on tumblr, but Bonanza was my introduction to the online whump community as a whole.

[scandalsavagefanfic]

did you see the tagging discourse yesterday? they really went after whumpbby

Hey there. I did see it. I wrote up a response to it but I wanted to sleep on it before I responded. I wanted to make sure I come across as informative and dispassionate as possible because emotions are already high and tempers are flaring and the last thing I want to do is fan the flames.

As far as I can tell there were three issues mentioned.

1) Explicit Content in Summaries

I think not putting explicit content in a summary is a valid suggestion. Frankly, it’s not an angle I’ve ever considered (even though I’m pretty sure none of my summaries are explicit. I’m not giving away the milk for for free. You have to click on the cow to get it 🤣). 

But I do think it’s important to remember that asking the fanfiction community as a whole to embrace this as a community standard isn’t a miraculous fix it. For starters this is an additional courtesy and I’m not sure how much fic it will actually affect, particularly in this fandom (I pretty much only read explicit fic and while there’s definitely summaries that are explicit, it’s not a particularly common issue and the OP’s example is actually not explicit and is exactly the kind of thing that should be in the summary so that you know whether the fic beyond that will trigger you or not). I’m happy to pay a little extra attention and make an effort but that by no means ensures that you won’t see explicit content in the summary. I mean, tv shows give you the rating and tags in the beginning of the episode but you still might see something explicit if you’re flipping through the stations. It’s not possible for content providers to account for every person’s individual needs. The individual has to do some of the work.  There’s not really any reason for someone to be reading an explicit summary if they’ve seen the fic is rated explicit and seen the ship is one they’re uninterested in and seen that the tags contain content they’d be uninterested in for that ship (if there are any, because people forget that further tagging is another courtesy that creators go out of their way to do to make life easier for readers - I don’t know a single writer who enjoys tagging) before they ever get to the summary at all. But still. Fine. I think that’s a good point and I’ll be going through my 80+ fics over the weekend to make sure. It’s just that readers should never expect things that are courtesies to be strictly adhered to by the entirety of the community. 

2) Tagging All Batfamily Ships as “Incest”, Regardless of Actual Content

This seems to be predicated on the misconceptions that 1) the fan-dubbed Bat “Family” is an actual family by any metric that could be considered incestuous, and 2) that this is obvious and not up for discussion.

Both of those are untrue. The Batfamily are not canonically a family whose interpersonal relationships can be considered incestuous, by blood, law, or anything else. 

If you want to interpret the text that way, there is certainly room to do so. But it is neither a fact, nor an obvious one.

The Pre-Flashpoint canon, especially for Batfam, exists in a nebulous state of “maybe applicable”. One of the few things we can be sure of, is that Dick and Tim at least, were never adopted. Tim’s parents are alive and well. Pre-Flashpoint, Dick was adopted as a gesture in his late 20′s. He’s early to mid 20′s in N52/Rebirth (for some reason people seem to think that N52 and Rebirth are different continuities. They’re not. Rebirth is a continuation of N52.)

Jason’s adoption is never explicitly addressed in current canon. So you can pick your poison.

None of them grew up together in either continuity so that argument is out.

You are welcome to read the Bats as this kind of family if you want.

But no one else has to, and there is very little evidence in current (or past) canon to suggest they are. What evidence there is, is vague and ambiguous. NOT obvious and damning. There are a million different ways to consider someone family, including both platonic and romantic.  

Finally, since it was specifically pointed out, with the lack of blood ties, if I write an AU where they one or more of them has no ties to Bruce, that’s not incest and no one should be tagging it as such.

It’s pretty weird to ask someone to tag their fic as something it’s not. It’d be like asking me to tag my angst “fluff”. I might as well tag DickKory or SuperBat “incest” while I’m at it.

Hopefully this helps clear things up. Hopefully this will help people who are triggered by incest to be able to see batfam ship tags without being triggered. If the clarification that they are not a legal or blood family in canon does not help, I am truly very very sorry and I genuinely hope you can discover what it is about those ships that actually affects you so that you can better protect yourself. But I have to tag my ships. I can’t not tag a ship so that you don’t see it, because then you might accidentally stumble across it and get much further than the tag before you know what’s happening. And I can’t tag incest because it literally is not then readers will think that I’ve written a verse where the characters are blood/legal family in some way, where the fic treats them like they have familial bonds and sexual relationship, and some of them will likely avoid it.

Appropriate tagging is important so that people who don’t want to see things don’t AND so that people can find the content they’re looking for. It’s pretty unfair to expect people to use inappropriate tags and potentially harm more people by making tags meaningless and expecting readers to guess.

(small aside, “batcest” is not an ideal tag. From personal experience, coming here from comics and having no history with this kind of fandom, I avoided things tagged Batcest because I thought, with the combination of Bat + incest, it was the ship name for Bruce/Damian and I wasn’t interested in that.)

3) Inconsiderate Reader Comments

Inappropriate comments left on fics by readers, is also a valid issue. It is also an entirely separate issue that has nothing to do with the very clearly stated primary concerns. Inconsiderate comments are an unfortunate reality of creating and sharing those creations. Unfortunately there’s no, non-fascist way of forcing people to be considerate. We all have to live with that.

We can absolutely complain about publicly on our blogs. And if you’re a gen author, with no history of certain ships, I will defend that it’s rude to pop on your fic and ask if it’s going to be that ship. Just like I will defend that it’s rude to pop on my perfectly tagged Bruce/Duke fic and try to tell me that it’s incest because Duke lived at the Manor for two weeks before moving in with his uncle. I’m sorry you have to deal with it. I’m sorry I have to deal with it. I’m sorry we all have to deal with it. But it’s not something we can stop or the people who came before us would have. So it is something that you have to be able to cope with.

As for whump, I thought she handled it well, especially in her clarification posts. The OP was obviously very emotionally invested in the subject and came off very antagonistic. I know OP doesn’t consider their suggestions unreasonable but that’s because they’re based on a fundamental misconception of canon. If DC writes a continuity where the Bats are a family in any way that would make sexual relationships between them incestuous, and if I write something for that continuity, then of course I will tag it accordingly. Asking me to tag a fic as something it isn’t, is unreasonable. It instantly makes tagging in general completely useless. Asking people to apply a catchall tag or keep explicit content out of the summaries is not intrinsically unreasonable, but expecting the entire community, regardless of how immersed in fandom the creator is, to abide by that standard in a way that provides meaningful protection for you (in that you can lower your guard in any meaningful way when you have content you need to avoid) is..... well, it’s just impractical. 

[greentrickster]

Fanfic Writer Game

Tagged by @gemstoneslesbian ! Sorry it took me forever to do this, as I have mentioned, at the moment I am Willing But Tired.

How would you describe your fanfic style?

...emotional whiplash, erring on emotional hurt/comfort and Very Soft. I don’t generally set out with a genre in mind when I start, so I tend to wander all over the place with them, and danged if I’m any good at identifying what genre my stories are once I’m done!

What tropes would you never use?

Whump, unrequited love, anything less than fully-consensual sex between participants who are legal to do so with each other, any trope that’s generally used for angst fuel, tragedy, sad endings in general.

What tropes do you ALWAYS use?

I’m not sure? Not gonna lie, one of the big things that gets me writing fanfiction is seeing the same thing done with the same characters a bunch of times, getting super bored with it, and then trying to find something new to do with them. I’m sure I use certain tropes quite frequently, I just don’t know what they are specifically. Is there a trope that covers “giving the character everyone says needs support/therapy/both just that”? Because I do that a lot. Even if I didn’t plan to. Cathartic tears are just a thing.

Where do you write?

I like best to write in my bedroom, the living room couch, on a table at one of my local libraries, or on a table in the indoor central court of our local mall. These last two haven’t really been available to me since last March; the mall is open again, but I miss writing in the library. :,(

How many names do you write under? Why?

Mostly just variations of ‘Tie-dyed Trickster/tiedyedtrickster,’ and of course greentrickster here on tumblr. I like people to be able to track me across sites if they’re looking for my work!

What’s your usual rating level?

Generally G-T. I’ve done some M stuff, but that was just happy established-couple sex for the most part, and I tend to write erotica more than smut. Haven’t gotten any complaints about it yet, though. ;)

First fandom you wrote for?

A Yugioh/Yugioh GX crossover crackfic, which has since been hidden from the internet, but which still exists in my files. And yes, it was for the Kids WB version of both shows - I don’t care how different that version is from the original one, I adored it and, frankly, adding a bunch of guns and death and crap would not have improved the quality of my viewing experience. 

How long did you read fics before you started writing them?

No idea, it was a pretty long time ago. Could have been anywhere between a few months and a year.

Do you usually write chapter fics or one shots?

One or two-shots make up the majority of the fics I’ve written, I’ve done two more anthology style stories (Geta!verse for DBZ and Masks for Voltron Legendary Defender), but I’m finally getting to the point where I can start, maintain, and finish multi-chapter fics. The average length for those at the moment is between 10,000 to about 45,000 words (Ningenkakushi is incomplete, Masks is an anthology, and Saturation is an outlier, so none of them are being included for this).

Your fandoms:

Currently I’m writing for Ace Attorney, other fandoms I’ve written for are A Hat in Time, Voltron Legendary Defender, DBZ, Pride and Prejudice, Bleach, Axis Powers: Hetalia, Cabin Pressure, Naruto, and Gravity Falls. As for fandoms I consider mine or tend to come and go from frequently... there’s at least forty of them, and more that I used to be wildly into and I’m not so much anymore, and still more that I don’t really consider myself part of as I only consume the canon content for them and am content with it. Basically, I’m massively multi-fandom, but I tend to focus on one at a time for the most part on this blog, for reasons known not even to myself.

As for tagged, hey, @fullbattleregalia , I CHOOSE YOU!!!

[heartlesslywhumping]

hi i just started my blog to at least try and post writing and i'm having trouble finding other blogs to follow, any suggestions please? sort of prompts (whump or not) and other good writers?

Welcome aboard! It’s always nice to meet new people in the whump community!!

There are so many amazing creators out here but for your specific request, I’m narrowing it down to those who mainly write OC works and do prompts.

If anyone else has people to add on, please do! I’m always on the lookout for new creators 👀

Prompt Creators:

@galaxy-whump does some amazing prompts! Quinn is an incredibly talented person who prompts in every genre but does a ton of monster specific prompts, which can be kind of rare in the prompt world.

@thependragonwritersguild is just? So?? Good??? They put out so many amazing prompts overall! To my knowledge, they are not a whump specific blog but you can interpret any prompt in any way!

@aliceinwhumperland mentions that they write fanfic mostly right up in their bio but this writer gets an exception to my “OC works mainly” specification because they put out “Whump word(s) of the day” which are always incredible. Plus, they share a lot of whump prompts that they’ve come across and generally add to the whump community.

@whumpsterdumpster is another person filled with amazing prompts! Their prompts are generally formatted similar to mine if you like the way I format things. (That’s not to say that they copy me or I copy them or anything like that. We have similar writing styles and ways of setting up our prompts). They’re great! Go check them out!

Writers:

@whump-sprite is fan-freaking-tastic! The most amazing Sproo always put so much love and attention into their writing that it leaves me stunned! Every single time. The universe they have created leaves pretty much everyone in awe. Her OC Anders is the first OC I fell in love with in the whump community

One can’t mention the brilliant Sproo without thinking of @friendlylocalwhumper! These two writers somewhat share a brilliant world for whump with many of their characters knowing each other and ended up hurting together.  Scott always writes the most amazing drabbles for his cast of characters and is super kind and interactive with his audience!

@clockworknightmares is an amazing artist/writer in the whump community! Wyatt’s  plotlines and character arcs are mind blowing. He puts so much time and effort into everything that he produces and it shows so incredibly well through every aspect in his work. (He passes the “mainly writers” specification for the post because he writes a ton! I did remember the rules I set, I’m not just going free for all 😅)

@wildfaewhump is one of the top (if not the top) providers of fantastical creature whump! Vic has so much content it can be kind of daunting but I promise you that you can just jump right in and start reading without being too lost. I would recommend reading everything they have ever put out if you have the time. Trust me, reading everything is worth it.

@sweetwhumpandhellacomf is another connoisseur of whump. Dex understands the words so well! She has a couple of main universes and a few minor universes that are all top notch. She won me over with her Willow and Grackle series but maaaaan, I adore every universe she’s ever made ever.

[macgyvermedical]

3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate is My New Favorite Chemical Weapon, A “Mason+Cable+Choices” Medical Review

This episode. This freaking episode.

First of all, Charlie Robinson, who I really thought was going to stick around in this version of the series after he survived his first episode, had to go and become the instrument to someone else’s revenge scheme. We also got to see a relatively hard side of Mac in the interrogation room, and I’m not sure whether to applaud it as character development or feel like they’re going too dark.

From a medical and whump standpoint, this episode sure has a lot of things covered- the gunshot wound, the neck needle, the 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate poisoning (Yay!), the heart needle/antidote, and the toxic smoke. I'm warning you now, most of this review is about the 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate poisoning.

The Gunshot Wound

Honestly, there’s not a lot to be said about the gunshot wound- it was to the outside of Charlie’s thigh, so while it would have been painful and probably would have bled some (the duct tape wouldn’t have helped stop the bleeding) it probably wouldn’t have been enough to really threaten his life. If he hadn’t later plummeted to his death, he might have needed some antibiotics, professional medical attention, and physical therapy.

Neck Needles

Neck needles aren’t a thing, but I’ve talked about those in previous posts.

3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate Poisoning

Oh hey look, we’re already at 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate poisoning! And fam? this is where I really did my research.

If you’ve been on this blog long enough you know I like my chemical weapons. Not in a “kill everyone” way but in more of a “strong academic interest I may one day write a thesis about” way. And man, do I love having access to an academic library again. Whoo buddy. This was fun.

In the episode, Mason uses a chemical weapon called 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (also noted in the episode as “BZ”), smuggled in a false tooth, to subdue Mac before making his escape from the interrogation room. The tooth contains QNB  in an aerosol form, which when released forms a visible cloud in the room. Mac breathes the aerosol, which appears to instantly paralyze or possibly sedate him, while Mason takes advantage of the small amount of uncontaminated air in Mac’s water bottle before making his escape up the air vent. A security team makes their way to Mac, Desi calls for a med team, and Mac is revived with an antidote delivered by a needle straight to his heart.

When someone mentions chemical weapons, most people think of mustard gas or nerve agents. But poisons designed to torture and kill people aren’t the only things that fall into the category of chemical weapons. In fact, there’s a whole class of them, called “incapacitants” that are specifically designed to take people out of commission without a high risk of death or permanent disability. 

Let me just say, Jim Adler is a writer after my own heart. He wrote both this episode and “Mac+Fallout+Jack” and considering both were absolutely gut-wrenching and contained reasonable choices of incapacitating agents, I really, really appreciate what he’s done for the canon. He didn’t get everything right here (*cough cough* neck and heart needles *cough cough*), but he clearly understands enough about drugging people to buy some literary license. Not all of it, but some.

Now, as I’ve talked about in other posts, drugging people into unconsciousness isn’t a particularly safe thing to do. Unconscious people can’t protect their airway, and most drugs that render people unconscious significantly impact their respiratory rate, blood pressure, or both. Unless the party doing the drugging is prepared to devote at least one trained person to monitoring and management of the drugged individual, there’s a chance that person could suffocate and die. Paralytic agents have a lot of the same issues.

This becomes even more problematic if you’re trying to incapacitate multiple people. Case in point- in 2002 a small group of Chechan rebels held over a 1,000 Russian civilians hostage in a theater in Moscow. After several days, in order to end the stand-off, Russian military personnel used what was probably an aerosalized opioid* to render everyone in the building unconscious. They then stormed the building and rescued the hostages. Unfortunately, even though antidotes were available and used, about 1 out of every 10 hostages ended up dying due to the mass drugging, which didn’t win any PR points for the use of incapacitating agents.

But if you get just slightly more creative, sedation and paralysis are not the only two ways to drug enemy combatants into uselessness. Turns out, a variety of hallucinogens and deliriants can achieve the same goal without the same risk of death by suffocation. If you can get someone to a state where they can’t remember what they’re doing or perform basic skills like reading or decision making, they can’t easily attack and kill your own personnel.

This is where 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, (NATO code BZ, US Army code EA-2277, Soviet code Substance 78, and usually referred to as “QNB” in medical circles) starts to stand out. QNB is a deliriant and hallucinogen. Now, there are lots of drugs that fall into these categories- think LSD, ketamine, PCP, and atropine to name a few. QNB works very similarly to atropine, by selectively blocking the action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (think the opposite of a nerve agent), but with significantly more of its action concentrated around the mind-altering side-effects. It’s also safer, hardier, more versatile, and has a more ideal onset and duration of action.

The typical course of incapacitation with QNB involves:

An initial period of progressively worsening anxiety, restlessness, and confusion

A period of extreme drowsiness

Finally, more confusion, an inability to perform simple tasks, difficulty with movement, hallucinations, and bizarre behaviors including picking at things, which all gradually wane over the course of 2-4 days.

Here are some reasons QNB stands out as a particularly effective incapacitant (and all the ways the episode ignored them):

The first is therapeutic index. A drug’s therapeutic index is the difference between its effective dose and it’s toxic dose. If we say a drug has a “narrow” therapeutic index, that means there’s a very small difference between an effective dose and a toxic one, while a “wide” therapeutic index means that the two doses are very different. When drugging someone without their knowledge, no matter how you’re delivering the drug, it’s really hard to estimate the actual ingested dose. Because of this, you want the widest possible range of effective-but-not-deadly doses you can have- the best drugs for mass druggings are those with the widest possible therapeutic indices.

QNB happens to have a very wide therapeutic index compared to other possibilities for incapacitants. The lowest effective dose is about 150 micrograms, while a toxic dose is more than 650 times that at about 100 miligrams. In small doses, the drug doesn’t last as long and causes more sedating vs delirious effect, but is still very useful in lowering the effectiveness of an enemy force.

The second is its options for route and availability in an environment. How any drug is given is referred to the route of administration. These can include:

PO (oral- taken as a pill or liquid)

IV (intravenous- injected into a vein)

IM (intramuscular- injected into a muscle)

SC (subcutaneous- injected into fat)

IO (intrasseous- injected into a bone in an emergency)

Inhaled (breathed and absorbed through blood vessels in the lungs)

PR (rectal- given rectally)

Transdermal (absorbed through the skin)

Most drugs work best when administered a certain way, and some may only be produced for use by a certain route. Some, like ketamine or LSD, can’t be absorbed in the stomach, so giving them orally doesn’t work (LSD “tabs” are actually absorbed through the mucous membrane in the mouth). QNB’s advantage is that it can be given by any route. You want to drug food or drink? It works. Aerosolize it and pump it into the air? Also works. Inject it IM, SC, or IV? Yes but you might have to answer some questions. Coat something like a doorknob? It goes through skin too!

QNB is particularly suited as an aerosol, not because it readily evaporates, but because it’s odorless. No one would even know they were breathing it until it started working, and even then, they might not know what happened. It also stays in the environment for a long time- up to several weeks depending on conditions- and can survive extreme heat without degrading, so it could be disbursed via explosive (LSD would not survive). Bottom line, everyone that came into that room to rescue Mac was contaminated, probably enough to cause them problems. Also, so was Mason, so take that as you will.

The third is the drug’s onset and duration of action. In the episode Mac is almost instantly incapacitated when the spray hits his face. This is not how any drug works (even via the IV route, the quickest-onset drugs still take at least 15-30 seconds to be felt), but particularly not QNB. QNB has an onset time of about an hour, no matter the route. This is actually beneficial to the drug’s original purpose- if no one shows symptoms from drugging with an odorless aerosol until an hour after exposure, there’s no way to take protective measures. Suddenly everyone’s hallucinating and can’t do basic math. Sucks for that attack plan you were working on.

The fourth and final benefit that QNB provides is both it’s lack of (specific) antidote and the fact that there are no lasting effects. Some people point to physostigmine as a possible antidote, but it’s not perfect and has some incapacitating side effects of its own. As incapacitation with QNB is generally not life threatening, it’s probably better for most people to be cared for in a safe place and ride out the effects. Since it’s also not a carcinogen or mutagen, once the effects subside, there shouldn’t be any additional problems.

Phew. Okay.

Heart Needles

I swear I’ve talked about heart needles before, but I’ll do it again since it hasn’t been recently. In the episode, Mac is injected with an antidote directly into his heart. Now, like we said before, using an antidote wouldn’t really help him much, and its not really necessary. He’s just gonna have to ride it out (I don’t make the rules...).

But they chose to do it, so we should talk about it- in the pre-CPR era, intracardiac injections represented the only way of getting emergency medications like epi to the heart in the case of cardiac arrest. As late as 1992, there were still some groups advocating for it if the patient was in asystole (flatline) and IV or IO access couldn’t be obtained. Mac has excellent veins if I do say so myself, and he also wasn’t coding, so there’s no reason for this to have been a thing in the episode. It’s also never used today.

Also, I’m going to be particularly disappointed if that was just a callback to the similarly inaccurate Pulp Fiction scene. Because this show has already used epi to counter an acetylcholine-based problem, and you already only get to do that once. EPINEPHRINE IS NOT AN ALL-PURPOSE ANTIDOTE.

Jim Adler based on your other work I have to assume you know better.

Also it’s late and I’m not talking about the toxic smoke. See my many posts on cyanide and some time in the future come read my post on carbon monoxide.

*According to the book Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten by James Ketchum, who did a lot of the initial research on chemical incapacitants. Other sources reference the drug used as anything from traditional nerve agents to QNB itself, but the onset times and symptoms initially reported seem to match up better with an opioid than QNB.

R E F E R E N C E S

Awl - X-Ray + Penny - Duct Tape + Jack - CD + Hoagie Foil - Guts + Fuel + Hope - Wilderness + Training + Survival - Father + Bride + Betrayal - Lidar + Rogues + Duty - Nightmares - Seeds + Permafrost + Feather - Friends + Enemies + Border -

[maychorian]

Is Livejournal still an active platform? I think when I first got into fandom LJ was more of a place for kink memes (not necessarily based in erotic content or ships) than just a fanfic scene. FF. net was more popular at the time. As much as I feel Ao3 is superior to FF, I think it had its bonuses. I appreciated being able to PM other users and the forums, features Ao3 doesn't have. What were some bonuses to LJ, if you don't mind my asking?

I don’t think LJ is active much anymore, no. Everyone once in a while I’ll go check out my Friends page to see if anyone is still posting there, and there are a few, but not a lot. Policies killed the fandom community on that site, and it’s really sad. Free speech is important, y’all. On the other hand, those policies are probably why AO3 exists, and that’s a good thing.

LJ was a BIG upgrade from FF.net, that was for sure. It wasn’t specifically made for fanfic, so you had to have some rudimentary HTML knowledge to put links to your chapters, and also had to make your own table of contents (here’s mine), or at least tag your posts in a way so that people could find your fanfiction if they wanted to. It had a private message function, yes, as well as a Friends page, which was basically a dashboard (without a reblog function) where you could scroll through and view all of the posts made by the people you had added to your friendslist. You also had the option of making your posts private, so only friends could see them, and also make friends groups WITHIN your friendslist so only THOSE particular people could see. For instance, I had a lot of friends, because I tended to friend back anyone who friended me so they could see my private posts for the rare things that I wanted to hide from the world but was okay with fellow fans seeing. I made smaller friends groups to view fellow writers, so I could see their stuff when they posted it, and another smaller group for people who I knew would be willing to beta my work, so I could send out a request for a beta if I needed it without cluttering up the Friends page of everyone who had added me, and an even smaller group for friends that I trusted with deep personal secrets for when I really, really needed to vent. Those kinds of posts were called “friends locked” or “flocked” for short. When I was obsessed with SPN and deep in that fandom, I checked my Friends page multiple times a day. I keep my following list on tumblr quite small because I don’t have the time to read hundreds and hundreds of posts, and tumblr doesn’t have the function to narrow down who you see on your dashboard.

LJ also had the ability to make communities, where multiple users could post on the same blog, and we had fic communities for every permutation of fandom under the sun. Big ones for all SPN fic (those were incredibly active), ones just for gen, ones for hurt/comfort and whump, ones for crossovers, specific ones for each pairing… Whenever I made a post with a fic, I had a list of about five communities that I would cross-post to, basically with a header and a link to the full post. And the fic finder community, of course, which I think was the most valuable of all, where someone could make a post asking for a specific idea they wanted to read and everyone else could comment with fics they knew that fit or almost fit that desire. Or if you had read a fic a long time ago and couldn’t remember the name or title, you could describe it as best you could on the fic finder community, and chances were someone would know what you were talking about. A lot of my fics got mentioned on fic finder communities multiple times, whenever someone asked for deaged fics, haha.

The biggest advantage of LJ, though, and I think the reason it became THE place for fanfiction for a while, was the nested commenting. AO3 has the same kind of comment system now, where one person starts a thread, and then the author can respond, and they can go back and forth. If the thread gets too long it will get shortened so those going through the comments don’t have see every single comment written on the entire story, just the first ones. This was a huge upgrade from FF.net, which didn’t even allow replies to reviews for a long time. If you wanted to respond to someone’s review, you had to PM them directly and tell them. And your replies didn’t show on the review page, and the reviewer couldn’t write back. Nesting comments on LJ changed all that. Now people could have entire long, involved discussions in the comments of any post, any fic. And people did. It wasn’t always just the author and a single commenter having a conversation, either. Sometimes other people joined in, and we’d have long squeefests and share headcanons (though that word didn’t enter fandom vernacular until tumblr) and talk about the show or whatever we were writing about. It was a great place for making friends and sparking ideas.

AO3 did well in bringing that commenting system over to the archive, but it doesn’t usually get used the same way it did on LJ. I think it’s because AO3 is a place specifically meant for storing fic, not necessarily a social media service, so there’s not as much emphasis on making friends and forming personal relationships. Sure, you can subscribe to people and follow their work and make bookmarks, but there’s no Friends list or anything like that. It’s just a different thing. And since tumblr doesn’t have nesting comments, there’s not the option to have those sort of conversations here, either. I mean, you sort of can, by reblogging replies and having discussions in posts, but it’s awkward and it gets reposted to your dashboard every time, and it gets really annoying to have to scroll the bottom every time. 

Messaging on tumblr is a little better, but it’s a chat with just one person. You can’t have multiple people in a direct message, and even with those it can be very hard to scroll back and find earlier conversations. This why I think Discord is such a great addition to the current fandom life. You can have conversations with multiple people about anything you want. It’s more freeform, since you’re not responding to a post in particular, but it still works well for building relationships and sharing headcanons and ideas.

Tumblr is not without its advantages. The reblog function means that something good, that grabs attention, can spread around the fandom very quickly. But it’s definitely much better for art than fic, and that’s mostly because of the way it’s designed. It’s an art-sharing service with a half-assed messaging service in the sidebar, not a social media site the way LJ was. It’s for artists to make art and other people to follow them and occasionally ask questions, so it really encourages a BNF mentality and jockeying for position rather than making a circle of friends and developing them. Fandom has found ways to socialize anyway, because life finds a way, but it’s not like LJ, not at all. Sometimes I really want LJ back, to be honest, but that ship has sailed. There was an attempt with Dreamwidth, but for some reason most people just moved their fandom activity to tumblr instead, possibly because the existence of LJ and tumblr overlapped and many people who used LJ already had a tumblr when LJ collapsed. That was how it worked with me, anyway. The novelty of tumblr probably encouraged the movement here, as well. People love the new.

I think most likely what will happen in the future is tumblr will screw the pooch in a major way and fandom will migrate off it, just like we did from the old webrings  to ff.net, then to LJ, then to here. Probably some savvy fans will make a social media site actually MEANT for fandom, like, perhaps, pillowfort.io, which looks absolutely fantastic, just needs some bugs worked out and more people using it. That’s what happened with fic archives: fans got sick of all the problems with FF.net and LJ and made AO3, and it’s great. I’m looking forward to getting off this site, honestly. Let the migration come. I just hope all of you come with me.

[killian-whump]

1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 20, 23, 27 13 - Emma, Killian, Henry, Regina and Charming (I know this is a lot but you are my favorite blog and I love your answers and sense of humor! XOXO)

Awww! Thank you for the kind words, Nonny! I love you, too

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?I’m a multi-shipper, so I pretty much support all ships and everybody’s right to ship whatever the heck they want. That said, however, there are some ships that do make me go “WUT”. Again, I’m not saying folks shouldn’t ship them, just that I don’t personally understand the appeal. Frozen Jewel - He’s dead. They never met. I don’t get it. Romantic Golden Hook - There is nothing more OOC in this world than having Hook and Gold loving each other tenderly. Golden Swan - Still not 100% sure this isn’t an elaborate joke. *sideeye*

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?Swan Queen would be the obvious one. I actually can see why people would OTP them, but I only enjoy their canon friendship. Captain Charming, as well - though I think most people BroTP them, so I’m not sure if that counts. I prefer my slash OTPs with a lot of angst and hate and violence, so Captain Charming doesn’t trigger my slash-ship desires. I can’t really think of any others, because I pretty much think everyone should be banging all the time. *sage nod*

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?I don’t really have any NoTPs. I’m open to pretty much anything and everything. I think I’ve only had one NoTP in my entire life - and that was Rin and Sesshoumaru in Inuyasha XD

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?Oooh… Hmm… I kinda don’t like Archie. I can’t even put my finger on why. There’s just something about his face I find really suspicious. I didn’t like the Evil Queen for most of S6, because she seemed too campy and not at all like the EQ in flashbacks. I don’t like Jekyll because his dumb ass went and got Hyde killed by being a fucking dweeb, and I will never forgive that. I’m not very fond of Snow White, but that’s more disinterest than outright dislike… I’m terrible at this salty thing, aren’t I? I like too much of everything.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?The “Let’s Not Whump Killian” arc of Season 6A. T_T No, seriously… Okay, there’s been a few arcs I didn’t like. Season 1′s whole “cursed town, one person needs to believe, refuses to believe” theme just did nothing for me. I know, I know, unpopular opinion there. Season 2A’s “people fell in a hole and wanna go home” plot was boring to me, until they ran into a pirate. Season 2B’s “mysterious shady people who never really have a good premise” arc wasn’t great. I liked S3 and 4A. 4B’s “Queens of Darkness” was great, but the whole “Is Emma evil or dark or ebil or whatever” arc was weird. S5 was wonderful. And I liked the individual arcs of S6 (aside from campy EQ), but didn’t like the lack of quality Hook content in 6A at all. That IS probably my least favorite arc, though it’s not really an arc at all. It’s like a non-arc.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?There’s crazy ass mofos in every ship/fandom in this fandom, and if you’re convinced there’s no crazy people in your shipdom, that’s probably because you’re one of them.

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?Season 1 is pants and you can’t make me watch it.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?Captain Floor. Captain Floor is endgame, not only in this show, but in ALL the shows. Once OUAT ends, Colin will begin making cameo appearances in other shows, just in the background or wherever, and you’ll think he’s just an extra, but no! It’s HOOK and he’ll reunite with his beloved FLOOR endlessly, until the end of time.

23. Unpopular character you love?As a Hooker, I’d have to say Regina. It’s amazing to me how many Hookers just sincerely hate that character. I love her. She’s a great character full of complexity and evil boobs. I mean, what’s not to like? I also really liked Hades, though I think a lot of the fandom was either unimpressed by him or disliked him. Boo. I love Greg Germann.

27. Least shippable character?Archie. Snow White (for me, personally, I just have no interest). Henry. All those damn babies. Too many babies on this show. What am I supposed to do with all these babies??

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?Oh, I’m gonna make some trouble now… >:)Emma - She seriously needed to stop bitching about being given up by her parents LONG before she did, since she gave her own kid up, herself. It all came off very, “How dare you do this thing! Your reasons weren’t good enough! …but, I mean, when I did it, that was okay, ‘cos reasons.”Killian - I hate that the writers created some kind of weird doormat version of Hook to be the “perfect boyfriend” in absolutely unnatural ways. “How could I ever be mad at you?” he asks her after she invades his privacy and ruins his proposal plans. Fangirls swoon. I worry about the immense letdown all these fangirls are going to have when they realize men remain human beings in relationships, and not automatons without emotions or self-interests.Henry - Booooooooooooooooooring. Adult Henry should hopefully be less boring, but his eyes are too close together, so that’s no good.Regina - I hope she remains single and is happy with it. For a show about hope and family, they veer too close to maintaining that one’s “happy ending” is all about romantic love. I’d love to see them use Regina, a strong woman who has loved and lost, find true happiness on her own.Charming - He’s too good for Snow. He’s an interesting character that I’d love to ship with someone, but Snow is just too damn boring and I can’t stay awake long enough to ship her with anyone.

[bozeia]

I had a very nice conversation with a good friend about fan stuffs and meta stuff. I wanted to share it, tentatively. Very long though so it’s all going under the cut.

Bozeia: Fandom drama. Bozeia: x_x ( + ) Lomithiel: Stupid fandom drama x_x Bozeia: Normally I am actually one of those people that has never felt like other people "ruin" a show for me. Bozeia: No one else I know relates to that! Bozeia: They always tell me, like. Bozeia: "The Homestuck fandom ruined Homestuck for me" or something like that. Bozeia: But like I just look at it as fans being dumb and having no bearing on what the material is trying to say. ( + ) Lomithiel: *nodnod* Agreed Bozeia: Right? ( + ) Lomithiel: But in this case...?  Is it the Voltron fandom, or a different fandom? Bozeia: =w=;; You pay attention yes it's the Voltron fandom. Actually, maybe I'll be able to explain this to you better than with my other friend. Bozeia: Uuummm, mmmmmmm okay so like. Bozeia: Ack, it's always been this way. I don't ever, really, have the privlege of geeking out over a fandom with other fans of the thing I'm a fan of. Bozeia: At the time the thing I'm a fan of is running/in progress/et cetera. Bozeia: At this point, my experiences have made me way too shy. ( + ) Lomithiel: *nodnod* Bozeia: I have a difficult time reaching out and trying to make new fandom friends. Bozeia: So I just lurk a lot. Bozeia: And am basically a stalker. Bozeia: So I just followed a lot of blogs that shared my interests. Bozeia: But, like. Bozeia: It's tumblr. Bozeia: So stuff that's related to what I like and who my favorite characters are just ends up on my dash even if it's from a blog I wouldn't have followed. Bozeia: And like. Bozeia: I don't know what it is but tumblr has this trend where freakin' everyone loves a specific character to death to the point of ruining it for everyone else. Bozeia: Like, Sans. Or Junkrat. Or, in this case, Lance. Bozeia: And it's like. Bozeia: I really, really like Lance. That one is my favorite character. Bozeia: And I want to write fic about him! Bozeia: I have a few ideas. Bozeia: But I wanted to try and get a better handle on his character. Bozeia: And finding, like. Bozeia: Character analysis posts that are ACCURATE is really difficult? Bozeia: Because a lot of people are biased and don't look at it for what it IS sometimes. ( + ) Lomithiel: Yeah, I have that problem with some of the Sans-analysises I've stumbled across on tumblr ( + ) Lomithiel: People get attached and want them to be what they want them to be, rather than considering the character exactly for who they are, flaws and all. Bozeia: Right! See, that was my thing. Bozeia: I haven't written in so long that I doubt my ability to portray flaws and how they cause conflict? Bozeia: Because, like. Bozeia: Like, sometimes, I only really relate to MY flaws. Bozeia: And my flaws are, specifically, "disengage super hard and hide when you upset people". Bozeia: Which is not, probably, what Lance would always do. Bozeia: Lance is loud and emotional (which I can relate to) but he's also not shy about confrontation and saying the occasional Obnoxious, Dumb Thing. Bozeia: So it's like. Bozeia: Pls help. Bozeia: But tumblr is the worst for help. Bozeia: And it's been on the back of my mind. Bozeia: And then I saw a post just now reblogged by someone else who called out everyone who puts Lance on a pedestal to the detriment of the other characters and it just sort of irked me. Bozeia: Not, like, in that way where they're wrong. Bozeia: But, like. Bozeia: In that way where it had to be said at all. -.- Bozeia: And now I'm wondering if it's even worth it to write my thingers because what if people are just tired of Lance content. Bozeia: Hnnn. Bozeia: But yeah, other than that and the car thing that's all that's up with me. Bozeia: I'm sorry, I just sort of word spewed. ( + ) Lomithiel: <3 ( + ) Lomithiel: Naw, s'good. ( + ) Lomithiel: I would say it is worth it to write your thingers if it would bring YOU enjoyment. Bozeia: I guess. It should bring me enjoyment. Bozeia: I guess the thing that's bothering me is this feeling that I am somehow...typical? Bozeia: Or like. ( + ) Lomithiel: And I would bet anything there would be people out there who would like it, too. Bozeia: A fandom sheep. Bozeia: And yeah, probably. Bozeia: At the very least I hope that if I DO write The Thing(s). Bozeia: That it would set a good example! Bozeia: Like, "Hey! This is Lance! All of Lance! Including when he does not so fun things! Remember that this is him!" ( + ) Lomithiel: *nodnod* I would not by any means call you typical. ( + ) Lomithiel: And exactly! :D Bozeia: *Nodnod.* ( + ) Lomithiel: Sometimes you gotta write a fanfic to Do It Right. Bozeia: To, uh, express this sentiment exactly. Bozeia: I do want to provide the context that, um. Bozeia: I have a Type. Bozeia: As far as favorite characters go. Bozeia: And it is always exactly the same, there are only two conditions. Bozeia: It must be an Underappreciated Character that is Underappreciated by EITHER or BOTH of the following parties: Bozeia: 1. They are Underappreciated by other characters within the universe of the show. Bozeia: Or. Bozeia: 2. They are Underappreciated by the FANDOM for some reason. ( + ) Lomithiel: *nodnod* Bozeia: I have a TON of characters that I fucking adore because they're unappreciated by fandom. Bozeia: Like, Star Fox? Bozeia: My favorite fucking character is Andrew Oikonny. Bozeia: Who is a throwaway boss that everyone makes fun of. Bozeia: But he had so much potential! Bozeia: Or Dragon Ball Z? Bozeia: My favorite is Raditz. Bozeia: Which is absolutely a character people would make fun of me for liking. Bozeia: But. Other times. Bozeia: Rarely. Bozeia: My #favorite will sometimes fall in line with whom the fandom at large most adores. Bozeia: With Avatar, my favorite from that show was Zuko. Bozeia: Because! Bozeia: Literally his entire story was "EVERY SINGLE OTHER CHARACTER SHITS ON HIM IF THEY DON'T LOVE YOU I WILL". Bozeia: And it so happened to win him the adoration of every fangirl ever, go figure. Bozeia: And now in THIS show. Bozeia: Everyone's #favorite is Lance. ( + ) Lomithiel: And Lance is the unappreciated one? Bozeia: It's, hmmm. Bozeia: I want to say. Bozeia: And I am trying to be objective. Bozeia: That he may be slighty underappreciated by his team? Or. Bozeia: At the VERY least he has some very, very faint feelings of being underappreciated whether it's true or not. Bozeia: Lance's actual problem is that he actually just has low self-esteem. Bozeia: Most of the time he covers it up SUPER WELL by acting like a hot shot. Bozeia: To the point where most of the time I think he fools himself. Bozeia: I think he intentionally fools himself like he probably appreciates "fake it til you make it" in a real way. Bozeia: But when he's alone and there's no one there he'll have some very real existential moments where he worries that he doesn't have a "thing" and that he's not really super GOOD at anything like the rest of his team. Bozeia: Like, he actually comes out and wonders if he's bringing his team down. Bozeia: And he's not sure because they wouldn't keep him around if he didn't contribute? Bozeia: Question marks. Bozeia: So. Bozeia: Within the spectrum of the show I don't at all get the impression that Lance really blames his team for not appreciating him enough. Bozeia: I think he's more worried about not being good enough for THEM. Bozeia: But that by itself has the overtone of "do they appreciate him because if he's having self-esteem issues then is his team there for him emotionally?" Bozeia: Et cetera. Bozeia: So. Bozeia: I think like, collectively, a lot of Voltron tumblr saw him have this moment in season 2 that a lot of them SUPER related to. Bozeia: Because it was the kind of emotional crisis that every depressed emo loser would have. Bozeia: Me included. Bozeia: Super me included, I am that loser. Bozeia: I have had that exact Lance moment. Bozeia: Multiple times. Bozeia: Hence why I fucking love him and why he is my son. Bozeia: <<<<< ( + ) Lomithiel: *nodnod* ( + ) Lomithiel: that is a very relatable feel, for... I imagine lots of the tumbler folks. *heh* ( + ) Lomithiel: And the fanbase in general. ( + ) Lomithiel: (I really gotta watch this show now) Bozeia: It's super good. Bozeia: But yeah, like. Bozeia: I'm trying to figure out how to write my way around Lance's EXACT emotional nuances. Bozeia: It is there and real but it is not. Bozeia: Always how a lot of writers like to portray it? Bozeia: Like, I think there is potential to writing him struggling with self-esteem, and even with depression. But. There is a key to portraying it accurately. Bozeia: And I think portraying it accurately should include the fact that he seems to almost overcompensate in trying to cover up, or keep ahead of, his own insecurities and melancholy. Bozeia: To the point where he naturally brags, and boasts, and hyper flirts, and sometimes even picks fights, to keep his head above water so to speak (yeah! water puns!). Bozeia: So, like. ( + ) Lomithiel: Reminds me of Raf (the ninja turtle) in a lot of his portrayals. ( + ) Lomithiel: A little. ( + ) Lomithiel: So, like? Bozeia: I'm trying to organize my thoughts. Uuuuh. I think. Bozeia: To the rest of his team. Bozeia: It's like this situation where Lance is really, really good at wearing this really happy jokerster mask. Bozeia: And he's really good at faking high self-esteem. Bozeia: So it's not his team's fault for not realizing Lance might be having issues. Bozeia: And, you know. Bozeia: I don't think Lance thinks it's their problem that he's having issues. Bozeia: Which is where, maybe, I'm having my issue with fandom sometimes. Bozeia: ...Not that it stops me from partaking in the occasional super angst whump fic someone wrote. Bozeia: It's a guilty pleasure even if it's not how I would've written it fml. Bozeia: But yeah. Bozeia: The short of it is I read that post and now I feel almost guilty for liking Lance. Bozeia: And also I'm a little disappointed in a number of writers who maybe exaggerate the wrong things in their portrayal of him. Bozeia: And it just makes me go "grr". Bozeia: Also wait. Bozeia: Raf as in Raphael from TMNT? Bozeia: Isn't he like. Bozeia: Temperamental and super confrontational? Bozeia: I think? ( + ) Lomithiel: He's got kind of the self esteem complex, tho, too, in some iterations. ( + ) Lomithiel: Where he's kind of the tough guy to cover it up. Bozeia: Ahhhh. Bozeia: The only iteration I'm SUPER familiar with is the newest Nick show. Bozeia: I honestly don't remember if that one has self-esteem issues. ( + ) Lomithiel: (and totally, the "it's not how I would have written it but mmmmm guilty pleasure" fics are the sauce sometimes) ( + ) Lomithiel: That's the one I'm thinking of. ( + ) Lomithiel: And, like... it's not like he SHOWS it really ( + ) Lomithiel: And maybe it's bits that I'm reading too much into, but I get the sense that sometimes he feels like all his brothers are 'better' than him in different ways, I dunno. ( + ) Lomithiel: ANYWAY ( + ) Lomithiel: Yeh, it's hard.  Like, one day I'd like to write my Undertale fic, and Sans is a similar "rabid fanbase" character, where it's like "well of course you're writing a Sans-centric story doesn't EVERYONE?" Bozeia: Right??? That's how I feel. -.-;; Bozeia: To be fair, I only really have the strong desire to write three fics. Bozeia: And once I write them, barring new content from the upcoming Season Three maybe inspiring me, I think I'd probably be done with fic for Voltron. Bozeia: Two of them are Lance-centric, the last one isn't even centered around the main characters at all. Bozeia: I want to write a fic about fan characters set in the same setting. Bozeia: Which, I'm not sure how that'd be defined, exactly. Bozeia: But it is a thing.

[librarified2004]

Here we go again...

This looked like fun. Hijacked from the amazing @the-random-fandom-one, so the actual title of this should be “@dammittmarie, you made me do another survey!”  Reblog with your answers! I want to get more communication going in the writing community here. Answer one, answer some! Answer whatever you want to! 1. What was the first character you ever created? I’ve been writing stories since I could pick up a writing utensil. I think the first character I ever really put a ton of thought into, though, was this character I played in an MMORPG during undergrad. Her name was Lindarian, and her past was tragic: the half-elven child of an illegal union between a mortal and an elf princess, she was basically raised in seclusion only to watch her three older half-brothers and her parents be brutally murdered on her eighteenth birthday. Man, even before I knew what fanfiction was, I knew how to whump a character. 

2. Is there a specific thing that made you want to start writing more? The MMORPG I played as an undergrad and grad student went down for good in about 2005, and after that, I stopped writing stories because there was no reason, really, to further develop that character. I got a job and started doing some professional writing--blogs and reviews and that kind of thing. Then I reconnected with an old friend who had written an entire book, and he started pushing me to do fiction again. I played around with some ideas, even published a short story, before I discovered fanfiction through a professional development class that I had to take. I can’t go back to school for my MFA in creative writing at this point, but I think writing fanfic is saving my sanity as well as giving me a sort of ad hoc, DIY MFA where I work at my own pace and set my own curriculum. Plus, some days it really saves my sanity. In the wise words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I can pick up a pen and write my own deliverance.

3. Favorite character you’ve ever created? In the short story I published, “Swan Song,” I had this side character who existed simply to be my villain. I didn’t pay him much attention until very late in the creative process, when the editor said the big reveal was too abrupt. (He was right.) So I took that character out to coffee--literally, I took my laptop and a notebook to my favorite coffee place so I could have a distraction-free conversation with him--lit him a smoke (funny thing, I don’t smoke, but literally everyone in that story does and my smoker friends say I got that exactly right), and really, for the first time, tried to get to know him. I knew only the basics, but it turned out he had this whole past (tragic) and motivations that I’d never even seen. Knowing all this didn’t just change the reveal, it pivoted the entire story, and when I sat down to rework that reveal, the words just poured out. It turned out that he was rather an anti-villain and he ended up in an awesome place--if I ever write a sequel to that story, it will be his to tell. Nik, the villain of “Swan Song,” is my favorite because he taught me to look deeper, love harder, and never have a character unless you’ve taken the time to know them all the way down to their shoe size. 

4. Do your stories tend to have only a few characters or a lot?

As few as possible. In fact, I kind of freak out a little bit when I realize I need another character to serve some purpose. 

5. Do you sit down and plan out your worlds or just let them build themselves as you write?

Some of both, really. I tend to write a lot of fanfiction exchanges (or at least, that’s what gets published), and I always do a thorough canon review before I start plotting so I can get voices and world-building details right. My one published original short story is set in Moscow during WWII, and I did a bunch of research on that setting and time period before I went in, but I never really tried to force anything to fit. Interestingly, during revisions, I was able to go back and add date stamps to certain plot points based on my historical research. But  that story also has a magic twist to it (it was for a fantasy anthology) and the magic part just came to me, no building required. 

6. Do you ever meet people and want to write about them? Fictional characters, all the time. I love writing missing scenes. I don’t put much of real-life people into my characters (but I totally could--I work in a public library. Public libraries are literally the last remaining free resource in this country and my job is madness.)

7. What kind of environment do you do most of your writing in? Music or no music? Loud or quiet? In private or wherever? Depends on the day and the story. I have a novel in progress (which will never be finished, probably) and for that I have entire playlists of music for each character. But if there’s music, there can’t be words in a language I can understand, because I will end up singing along. No TV or movies, because I end up watching instead of writing. I like my backyard, and even better, my parents’ backyard. But when all else really fails, I’ll jot out whatever in the notes on my phone. I’m picky, but not picky at all. And if I’m on deadline, I will make that deadline come hell or high water or plague or fire or mass destruction.

8. Do the people in your life ever read what you write, or do you tend to not show them? Not fanfiction. I’m very, very protective of my writing in general. My mom was an English teacher (in fact, she was MY English teacher in tenth grade), and even when I was an undergrad getting my B.A. in English comp, she read all my essays with a red pen (after they’d been graded--and I graduated with a 4.0 in my major!). When I published my original short, she was so proud--and then she pointed out a glaring continuity mistake I had missed in about nine million rounds of editing. When I read my own stuff, I only see the mistakes, so I’m also shy about showing it to anyone else. That said, I have about a million partial fics rotting on my hard drive, phone notes, and Google docs, so someone might want to go after them if I ever shuffle off this mortal coil. 

9. What inspires you? Oh my, so much. Music, other people’s stories, history, walks in the woods, the way the lights in the children’s room at the library change color. Literally everything. Probably the better question is who pushes me, and the answer to that is @dammittmarie, who got me into the school’s Dead Poets Society in undergrad (we met at midnight in the basement of the library and damn, we were cool) and the beautiful @rain-and-roses-in-the-city, who puts up with my crazy ideas, my headcanons, lets me play in her sandbox, and sometimes has even seen the partial stories I talked about earlier. 

10. What’s the weirdest character you’ve ever created? Don’t really have one.

11. What’s the most boring character you’ve ever created? All of them, it feels like sometimes :)

12. Do you name your background characters? Do you even have them? I learned a hard lesson about knowing my characters, so now, if I can’t flesh them out, they don’t appear. 

13. Are you one of the writers who writes in symbolism and specifically thinks about things like the color of a hat or that kind of thing? Or do you just pick those things at random? Sometimes. Not always.

14. Are there any authors you feel have influenced your style? Published authors, fanfic authors, ect. I learn things from everywhere. My gold standard for plot twists is the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which made me screech out loud on an airplane years ago. I think the Hamilton fandom in particular is full of talent, and the WhamFam especially (you know who you are). And going back to @dammittmarie, she’s the one who made me unashamed of being a whump writer. 

15. Were you a story teller before you could write? Yes! I devoured books as a kid, and handwriting came super hard to me. You couldn’t read my penmanship until I was in junior high, so I learned storytelling in the oral tradition first. 

16. How many characters have you created? Not too many. I tend not to write OCs in fanfiction for fear of them coming out like total, obvious Mary Sues. There are maybe a dozen characters in “Swan Song.”

17. Do your stories tend to take place in the real world or in a fantasy world? Both? Neither?

That depends on the story

18. Do you tend to set your stories in the present or the past or the future? Do you think about when it’s set or does that not factor into the story?

Whatever works on a given day for a given story, I guess. I love, love, love the canon era of Hamilton, but I also like modern AUs if they’re done well. So yeah, whatever works. 

19. What kind of things do you like to write? Poetry? Short stories? Novels? Fanfiction? Children’s Books? Nonfiction? Something else entirely? Fan fiction for pleasure. My professional life includes writing book reviews, blog posts on various topics, and newsletters, so fan fiction is escapism for me.

20. Do you like to do events like NaNoWriMo or the Three Day Novel, or do you prefer to do things at your own pace? Yes and no. In my professional life, I’m a volunteer blogger and reviewer on top of the demands of my day job, so I’m almost always on deadline for something. (Right this second is actually an exception--I wrote two articles this weekend and I’m deadline-free until at least April 1.) I tend to write fan fiction at my own (snail on a strong sedative’s) pace, but I have signed up for NaNoWriMo a few times, and I might do Camp NaNo in April because I have a 5k exchange piece due at the end of the month. And the one piece that I’ve published that wasn’t fan fiction actually got finished because I went to a signing where there were like six people and ended up pouring my heart out to this poor author. I told her I had a story and no idea how to start, and she told me to write 100 words a day for 100 days and tweet her my word count every day. If I missed a day, I had to start over. I made it to 100 days, just over 11,000 words, and that piece is good--you can even buy it on Amazon.

[bambl-ing]

ALL OF THEM RIGHT BACK AT YOU. 8DDD

I WAS WAITING FOR THIS

When did you first start writing? Basically as soon as I could! All those horse stories………

What was your favorite book growing up? Ghost Horse – I don’t remember who it was by, I just remember that for years whenever someone asked my what my favorite book was, that was my answer.

Are you an avid reader? Yep! I don’t read as often as I used to (school libraries were handy like that), but I feast with no less vigor. ( •⌄• )

Have you ever thrown a book across the room? Lord no, don’t treat books like that.

Did you take writing courses in school/college? Like aside from the normal English classes? I took creative writing twice ‘cause we got a new teacher, ‘twas fun.

Have you read any writing-advice books? I looked at one my mom got once, but honestly I don’t really like writing-advice books? Like…I dunno, I just don’t.

Have you ever been part of a critique group? I mean there was a writing group in high school, but we really just hung out during lunch and were pals.  ┐( ᐛ )┌

What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten? All of them!

What’s the worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten? I mean really it was just my reaction that was the worst, but my tender 13-year-old heart was broken slightly by a review that said my writing was boring, and I ended up scrapping the entire story.

What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve? No paragraph breaks, no fresh line for speech, complete lack of punctuation.

What’s your favorite book cover? ┐( シ)┌

Who is your favorite author? Quite a few, although I usually go by book rather than author ‘cause like…I loved Ender’s Game, but then Pathfinder was like ?? not to my taste, I was so surprised it was the same author.

What’s your favorite writing quote? Quote about writing or just favorite quote in general, because either way I have no clue.

What’s your favorite writing blog? c; @azuregold​ (ὸᴗ-)b✧

What would you say has inspired you the most? Anything, really. I just get hit with the inspiration bus now and then.

How do you feel about movies based on books? Depends on the movie. :T For example…well, actually, most everything. orz For the most part I can enjoy the movie by itself, but it’s usually not much fun comparing it to the book. Arrival was based on a short story, though, and I think it was really well done!

Would you like your books to be turned into TV shows, movies, video games, or none? Well I mean, first I’d like my books turned into books. :’)) If I were ever published though, I’d definitely want a lot of say in the movie/show, and if it was a series of my books I think I’d like a TV show? Just so there could be more room for details.

How do you feel about love triangles? Get it away from me. ≖__≖No, alright, I admit that on the very, very, excruciatingly rare occasion, it can be done tolerably. But I can’t think of one published love triangle that hasn’t made me want to stab everyone involved in the triangle.

Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand? Both! Sometimes it’s nice to just curl up somewhere with my notebook, but sometimes I just have to spew a few pages of text, in which case typing is faster and much more legible.

What’s your favorite writing program? Um. Word? Are there more that I’m missing out on? XD

Do you outline? Sort of? Yeah, sort of. Sometimes.  ┐( ᐛ )┌

Do you start with characters or plot? Generally characters, but I have a couple stories that are really just the story ideas and don’t have any characters yet.

What’s your favorite & least favorite part of making characters? It’s all pretty great!

What’s your favorite & least favorite part of plotting? I love thinking about it, but then I try to write it… orz

What advice would you give to young writers? Just do it guys, go for it. Definitely use paragraphs and punctuation and all that, but it’s not like you’re required to know it all before you can start writing. And you know, I’m stupid and snobby, there are plenty of people who will read your walls of text and give you constructive feedback, and there are people who will beta read for you and love your stories like they deserve. Go forth!

Which do you enjoy reading the most: physical, ebook, or both? I mean…I don’t think I’ve ever read an ebook? And of course I love physical books, I’ve had them all my life.

Which is your favorite genre to write? Probably supernatural/fantasy stuff, I like being able to create things like new races and worlds and all that.

Which do you find hardest: the beginning, the middle, or the end? All of it, just, all of it.

Which do you find easiest: writing or editing? I kind of edit as I go? Or like…well, yeah, kind of. I dunno. I like both.

Have you ever written fan-fiction? I have! Starting just last year! A newbie! °˖✧◝(⁰∇⁰)◜✧˖°

Have you ever been published? Pffff, I haven’t got anything worth publishing. :’)

How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work? Umm…depends on the work. My mother will never lay eyes on any whump I write.

Are you interested in having your work published? Honestly, yeah. ;u;

Describe your writing space. Anywhere – this world is my writing space.

What’s your favorite time of day for writing? Any time!

Do you listen to music when you write? Sometimes, depending on the work.

What’s your oldest WIP? Like…that I hope to get published? I mean a lot of my stories tie into each other, so it would be really complicated, but the recently re-named RDM is my oldest story.

What’s your current WIP? Dawning, although I’ve got some fanfic WIPs that…I haven’t been working on… ;>_>

What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had? That crossover with Name of the Wind and One Piece. The one I just thought of like yesterday that I’m calling Lovers Anonymous and is bare scraps of an idea.

Which is your favorite original character, and why? My favorite of mine? As if I could choose one, they’re all my precious children (yeah, even Reagan, although his precious level is nonexistent).

What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline? Let ‘em run free. I had this whole character outline for Lark, and then she just threw it all away. But she’s wonderful the way she is, definitely better than I had planned!

Do you enjoy making your characters suffer? ლ(≖‿≖ლ) Oh yeah.

Have you ever killed a main character? Technically? In one of my stories I kill both. Well, everyone actually. In Hitverse I kill one of the main characters of RDM, and in Requiem I kill basically all of them, does that count?

What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with? Define weird, I mean…I’m making an entire solar system of aliens, so take your pick.

What’s your favorite character name? As if I could choose one.

Describe your perfect writing space. I’ve already got it!

If you could steal one character from another author and make then yours, who would it be and why? Ǵo̩͉̠̖̗̩͚͡ḫ͓͉̘͓̮͈a͟n͈̣̪͝… And honestly, why do you think?

If you could write the next book of any series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about? Oh god that would be terrifying. I’d never be able to manage, and I’d really prefer to leave the story to the original author. If I could request a book from an author of any series, though, I’d definitely like another Auri book!

If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about? Too intimidating, I would die. :’))

If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be?I like that I’m familiar with this one…but it could be pretty interesting to live in one with circumstances like The Rook/Stiletto.