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darkkitty1208 · 8 months ago

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on fic writing and fandom: where am i going forward?

So. It's a bloody dull Friday and I'm writing this post--have been meaning to, for a while--because I can't stop thinking about it. It's just a few (a lot, actually) thoughts I've had in my mind the past few days that I've decided to spill into a single post, which turned out far longer than it needed to be, but nothing too important. Under the cut.

I've been a fanfic writer for a while now. Not a long time by any means, but a while nonetheless. My first fic--which is now orphaned like a few of its brothers for undisclosed reasons, though if you're an og you might be able to guess why--was dated back to the 18th of November 2021. 3 years later and I've got a humble 89 works and counting (the orphaned works and unposted wips unincluded). I can safely say I've improved quite a lot since then.

Where are you going with this, then, Kitty? Surely you aren't here just to brag about your writing progress?

Well. Not exactly. But I'll start with this: I guess what I'm trying to say is I've lost the spark.

You know. The old feeling. That boost of serotonin you get after you finish a piece you're proud of, or when you get lovely reviews on ao3, or when you get a kudos email, or a new mutual, or some wild tags under your silly post. The spark. I haven't felt it in a long time, now. The last time it's been so palpable was... I'm not sure. Probably last year's October. That was a lot of fun. I was most prolific in fic writing, that year. It shouldn't feel like a long time ago. Because it wasn't.

Don't get me wrong. I love all this. All that's going on right now. The comments I'm getting--even if fewer than I had before--and all the other interactions, I appreciate and enjoy and love them so, so much. And writing my newer fic projects are well exciting. But it just isn't the same anymore. I'm afraid it never will be.

(Maybe it has something to do with the lack of interactions lately. Maybe? I don't really know, either. I'm sure we're all well aware the fandom is past its peak, and with the current developments in the MCU I am frankly unsurprised, but I dunno.)

I guess that's part of the reason I've been less active lately. I've been inactive as a whole this year, admittedly, and disappearing far too often for far too long (and I notice some of my friends are, too). I just didn't get the same joy from being in a fandom like I had when I first started this blog, or my ao3 account.

In hindsight, I've probably been a little too dependent on fandom to provide me serotonin. The past few years have been hard, the years before that, too. Life just keeps kicking me in the arse time and time again. I guess I've been using fandom and fic writing as a coping mechanism, and once I've had my fill, the joy dies off to something a little more dull. Like a gum I've been chewing for too long that the sweetness has since worn off.

Honestly? I don't want it to be this way. I want to live without being so dependent on my presence online. I want to live without only knowing joy through internet interactions. I've got to learn to. It sounds silly, but it's true. (I think I may be slightly chronically online, oh no. x'D)

So naturally my first instinct is to distance myself a little. I contemplated quitting, but I can't do that. I don't see myself ever doing that, no matter how many times my brain convinces me that I might.

When this year started, I had set some goals for writing. One of them was to write for more whumptober prompts than I did last year or complete them all. I did like 21 prompts or something last year. Of 31. Within a little more than a month. While still balancing all the life stuff I had going on. This is, if not obvious, an extremely ambitious goal. I am not insane. I don't know what I was thinking. I can't possibly do that now, can I? Not with all the stuff that's been happening.

...

Can I?

...

Yeah, no. Definitely not.

See, that's another thing: writing. Probably the thing I'm trying to get at in this post but otherwise derailed completely from. Fuck my brain.

I'm sure many of you have noticed that I've been writing significantly less. I still post, obviously, but not as much as like, last year when the number of works I had went from a few to far too much. That had helped me improve quite a lot, actually, but those days I barely slept because I just insisted to replace my sleep time with Writing Shit For The Gays. It was pretty unhealthy now that I look back at it. My sleep schedule is still shit now but, yk. Some things just never change.

I was really, really caught up on wanting to be good at writing. Like, really good. I wanted to make awesome things. I wanted to write like a real fucking pro. Like all the more popular fandom authors I look up to. I want to be like the big dogs in fandom. It sounds so silly. I did everything; sprinting daily, setting a minimum of 500 words writing sessions every day, trying new writing styles, churning out works after works, writing for prompts and events and gifts and the like. I was enjoying it, yes, but was it really something I did for myself? Or was it because I wanted to please other people or impress other people for their validation, which is something I'm entirely too dependent of? Was it for the numbers?

Well. It was more for that than for me, I realised a little too late.

So yeah. Fuck wanting to be good. I want to write for the hell of it. I want to write something that's for me. Not what the majority of the fandom or other people want to read, but for me. Which is why I absolutely loved writing works like just a matter of time, how to kill a god, or how to become a god, because they're not meant for other people but myself. (Ironically that last work is a gift but, yk. I still liked it.) I know I joke about self-projecting a lot, but it's been seriously helping me rediscover the joy of writing that doesn't come from the incessant need to be good or perfect or focus on producing more and more and more. It makes me feel like a kid again. Also, I'm only realising this now but I'd rather get like 5 people who enjoy reading my works so much and express them to me rather than 100 people who silently thumbs up at me and then go away to consume another fic or demand more. (All this to say I still love interactions, it just shouldn't be my no. 1 priority to get them when writing fanfics.)

But yeah. None of those works are perfect. They're not meant to be. But they're mine. They're me. They represent me. And it's so, so great to feel that in writing. I've been so stuck up on being some sort of content machine. I'm doing this for myself, how could I forget? I've been saying this since the beginning, I don't know why I'm still struggling to do it. God. It's ridiculous.

Anyway. That's that. This has become a very long ramble. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. And for letting me waste your time, if you make it to the end of this post.

#ramblings #personal #writing #i doubt anyone would bother reading this from start to finish but i needed somewhere to just Say Things and Let It Out

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doevademe · 2 years ago

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something that's always confused me in pjo fanfics is nico's age- in my fuzzy memory (haven't touched the books in over 10 years) I swear nico is mentioned to be ~4 years younger than percy and annabeth back when he first appears, but in most of the percico fics (even ones set in canon) I've read they're ~2 years apart? do you know where that came from?

I think I vaguely remember some pjo fans talking about rick fucking up nico's age/birthday in hoo (which I'll have to admit I haven't read) but when I tried googling for it I couldn't find anything

ps I swear I am not an anti, this is just something that's been a bit of a headscratcher to me and from the sounds of it you've been involved in the fandom for a lot longer than I have so I'm just curious whether you have more info on this

Oh boy... well, as a certified fandom oldie™ I can actually answer this question... but it will be very unsatisfactory.

Short answer: Math is hard, timelines are too, and Rick Riordan is not the best keeping them consistent. The latest canonical information is that Nico and Percy are ~2.5 years apart, meaning that Percy is 3 years older from his birthday until Nico's birthday. Afterwards they are 2 years apart. (as of the newer books, Nico is canonically 15 and Percy just turned 18)

Long answer: There has been a soft retcon regarding Nico's age, where originally he was 3.5 years younger than Percy, but starting with the side material between PJO and HoO he was aged one extra year, making him 2.5 years younger than Percy.

Riordan is notoriously bad at keeping up Nico's timeline consistent, to the point where he actually has two birthdays and even the year of birth doesn't add up with the text.

Nico, at the start of The Last Olympian was stated to be 12 while Percy was 15 going on 16, but in Heroes of Olympus, which takes place a year after TLO, Nico is suddenly 14, when he should be 13. In a since deleted instagram post Riordan stated that Percy got it wrong. PJO is narrated in first person, and the narration (Percy) states that Nico "looked 10" when they first met, not that he was actually 10. Percy just assumed that was correct and never really asked Nico his age, when he was actually 11 during the Titan's Curse. That is the in-universe explanation for the age discrepancy.

It's not just Percico shippers though. Everyone kind of goes along with the retcon because it's fairly minor, and making Nico older only helps writers when characterizing him as a teenager earlier on in canon, so it kind of stuck.

Nico is explicitly stated to be 2.5 years younger than Percy in all material after PJO, (16 out of 22 books), most of the time by omniscient narrators, so it makes it easier to accept since the change happened relatively early in the series.

#analysis #meta talk #nico di angelo #percico #tagging mostly because this is a resource for the dreaded age discourse #ask #anonymous #long post

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sorbriquette · 2 months ago

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20 Questions for Fic Writers!

Tagged by @hyperions-light via DMs because apparently my mentions are still broken (womp womp). Thank you muchly <3

Not sure who this has made the rounds to yet outside off who was tagged on the prior post sooooo - feel free to jump on or ignore? Or if you've already done it drop me a link so I can read it? @aeipathism @acethmatic @vicsplinters @alexandracabotswife

Also gonna gently nudge this over to the FE fandom too even though we may not be mutals I know y'all write fic so I wanna pass on the game (sorry if that's weird) @ferditheas @hubernies

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

26 — though 6 of those are unfinished WIPs (and only 2 that I plan on definitely finishing)

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

384,397 — honestly a little shocked by that I could have written like 4 books for all that word count. But oh well it’s all skill building and I enjoy reading my writing back.

3) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

They are ALL from Carry On and written in like 2018 so the kudos is a reflection of time and the dropping of 2 sequels since posting them, not necessarily quality or anything. In fact the top by kudos was my first one when returning to fic and in hindsight it is not super well written.

The Truth Will Set You Free, Night After Night (this one I tried to update every night for the vibes it was fun times), Catch Me If You Can (explicit - be warned), Follow Your Heart, Not Really

4) What fandoms do you write for?

Currently it’s mostly Fire Emblem because I got hooked again during my existential spiral over xmas. I wooooould like to write some more Dragon Age, but I am not an OC girly really. And I feel like DA fandom is big into OCs.

Most of my backlog is Carry On, but I analysed the text to shit and fell out of a love with it a bit.

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes - on newer fics. I should reply to comments on older fics but idk my social anxiety tells me that if I respond to someone and didn’t respond to someone who commented on that thing a year prior - that second person will hate me. Which now that I type it out is insane.

I also did stop responding some time in like 2020-2021 for some reason? I’m not sure why but I sure think I’m an asshole for it.

6) What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

None of my fics have angsty endings. Not my MO sorry.

7) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All of my fics get like, half their word count again in epilogue so… they all end pretty happy.

But given the Carry On sequels and that most of my FE stuff is before the end of the war it’s probably Overdue Commitments since that is post war, getting married, etc. And thus the only one that actually takes place after all of the other shit characters have to go through in their actual canon. (Also recency bias)

8) Do you get hate on fics?

I mean one of them got book marked with this “The first chapters are perfect. The rest, not so much. Beware” which is a bit rude. But that’s my no3 by kudos as above so like… not exactly gonna keep me up at night.

9) Do you write smut?

Not often. When I do most of it doesn’t get finished and lives in my drafts. That said I recently dropped a 10k word smut fic that is probably gonna get a sequel because I got some nice comments. And I have a 25k smut fic, and an unfinished one too.

… so that’s probably actually just a yes.

10) Do you write crossovers?

No. Not against it though. I would love to do a The Locked Tomb/Dragon Age but I don’t think I have the writing style necessary to write TLT characters.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Maybe? I’ve had people offer and have said I’d be fine with it, but never actually followed up.

13) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No, but I’m always down if someone’s into that stuff. Used to do a lot of RP, so I do like the collaborative stuff.

14) What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I honestly do not know. There are a lot I like but I don’t know if I could pin down an all-time fav. I’m sure I’ll wake up in a cold sweat to the obvious answer at like 3am though.

15) What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Putting In Effort because goooood I love Marihilda as a ship. But it really didn’t get much traction and Marianne is really hard to write like emotionally/mentally because she is so self-depreciating and depressed. It is not a fun headspace to spend your time in, particularly if no one is reading it.

16) What are your writing strengths?

I like the cadence I write with I think? The “know the rules and then break them” thing. Where my punctuation isn’t technically correct but it produces a certain rhythm in the text. Honestly I don’t even know if readers notice that.

Also I think maybe character voice? But that could be mere cowardice because I will not write a character I cannot hear clearly in my head.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Brevity.

I tend to write everything blow by blow. Which can be great for fic romance. But when you need to GET THROUGH A DAMN SCENE??? Impossible. Why do I write everyone individually walking out the door? Must we put up this tent in excruciating detail?? We do not even need this scene. Send help.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I think it’s cool when people do it but I wouldn’t put it in mine because I do not know any other languages. I would maybe make an exception for latin tho because it’s sick as hell and also dead.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

Artemis Fowl, on the fan website at like age 9.

Literally just went looking for it and got a massive blast from the past - but also the website doesn’t work because of a fatal MySQL error. Not that I’d expect to find my stuff there, that would have been like 15-20 years ago now.

20) Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

It’s still a WIP but probably Affection, just an all round comforting read for me. But again I suspect that’s recency bias. Also possibly the fact that it is a WIP and I don’t like endings.

I would like to go back and tidy it up a bit though. Ferdinand von Aegir does not use conjunctions.

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poetryandfluffycats · 1 year ago

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hello hello (＊ﾟ∀ﾟ)~ i've come around to thank you for the wonderful works you had posted! i've been away for a looong while from the es writing space so i was really happy to still see nice works being published as well as new faces like you! i really enjoyed the few works i had seen from you in the tags and so i went on and read the rest of them too~ not all but absolutely all you had written up for my favorites...which are quite a few of them! was going to initially thank you for writing up on tsukasa but then saw the notice regarding what you will and won't write and that you probably won't do it again( ；∀；) if it makes you feel better, the card that anon was referring to that you've included in post as well is from a newer jp event and tsukasa is 20 in the jp timeline now, if i'm not mistaken! (or at least 19 -eng server is two years behind and his birthday was recently in april) but i'd also understand if you wish to stay away from writing things like that with him. BESIDES! i will absolutely mostly just be asking or talking about sfw things... when i have just left this space, most people around only wrote nsfw and i had to shy away from talking about multiple other favorites of mine...oh what sadness (´_ゝ`) so i'm glad you do write sfw as well! they were very cute!! the yan izumi oneshot was thrilling as well! i love yan content so seeing that was a pleasant surprise too♡ plus it was lovely to see that your very first work was with leo- i always ask around for more leo content!! we are always in need of leo content!! and it was an interesting read too. i had not really seen use of first person in fics much before, so it was cool to read as a new perspective! though by how majority of them are written from second or third person, i am a bit glad you had also shifted to writing them up that way, purely just by accommodation☆

i sort of ran out of things to comment on now but i'll be back whenever i had read more works or when you do put out more fics!! please keep up your wonderful work ﾟ+.ﾟ(´▽`人)ﾟ+.ﾟ—darlingnon

ahhh thank you so much!<3 I appreciate any and all support or encouragement I can get on here so this means a lot. I'm rlly glad people are able to enjoy the silly little things I put out.

I'm pretty new to the enstars writing community as well as the enstars fandom in general so the fact that people enjoy my fics and are willing to praise me on them has been overwhelming but like in the best way possible yk?

keep encouraging writers! encouragement good! interactions good!

#ensemble stars #enstars #writers #writers on tumblr

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kiragecko · 1 year ago

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Hey I wanted to thank you for being so positive. A lot of people in the DC fandoms are really negative. There’s a lot of hate for any new comic and many writers and characters. I really appreciate your positivity and how you treat the new as an old fan. For me as a newer fan who’s who reading starts from the 80s and 2021 it means a lot and is so nice to see.

Thank you so much!

I’ve struggled with depression. Focusing on the negative doesn’t help anyone. Recognizing that there IS negative is important to me, but focusing on it just blinds me to everything else that’s there.

I stopped reading comics when they stopped giving me joy. But the fandom has never stopped giving me joy. And there’s always someone around who can show me the good bits of the things I’m no longer reading.

Comics fandom was thought to be really toxic when I first got started in the early 2000s. I chose the comic shop I went to based on which one didn’t look at me like I was a freak for coming in looking female. Which was shop number 3. Fans were still jaded by the 90s. (A lot of stuff happened in the 90s based around buying comics as investments, rather than to actually enjoy. And artists being in charge of stories despite having no plotting abilities.) Many had stopped reading and were really bitter about it.

It’s been important to me that I don’t follow the same path. Comics gave me a lot, and I don’t want to lose that, or get in the way of other people’s joy.

The wonderful side effect is that newer fans are willing to share their joy with me! That’s amazing! It’s been a decade since I read a new bat-comic, but I’m still getting excited about things that other fans are telling me about! Rather than losing something I love, I’ve gotten to keep it alive and growing. It’s growing a lot slower than it was, these days. But it’s still growing.

So thank YOU, Bunny. Thank you for being part of the new fans who are bringing your passion and energy into this fandom. Thank you for sharing it with me; through questions, comments, and ideas. 5 years ago, I felt so alone, here. You’ve brought life back, and I appreciate it so much.

#batfandom #also thank for letting me ramble about 30 year old canon that neither of us were around for and is only partially still canon #I love info dumping

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rescue-ram · 2 years ago

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3, 26, 42 and 50 for the fic writer meme!

3) What are some tropes or details that you think are characteristic of your work?

My worst habit is getting a really big idea for a fic, writing part of it, then losing steam and not being able to finish. I will come back to you WIPs, I swear!! I also tend towards very introspective narrators, for better or for worse, and whenever I edit I have to constantly ask myself what is the character DOING to make sure I'm not relying too heavily on dialogue. I've also noticed I tend to be annoyingly meticulous and have difficulty eliding details. If a character picks something up they WILL put it back down, I do draw little diagrams to make sure everything's spatial positions stay the same, and I will find myself writing an extra thousand words to explain how a character got to where they are rather than skipping to the good part... which definitely contributes to my difficulties finishing WIPs 😅 As far as pairings and character relationships generally, I'm a sucker for complicated and ambiguous relationships, and pairs who have overcome some kind of inequality to be together. I'm frequently a fetid phone poster so I often notice annoying little typos after publishing, which makes me gnash my teeth. As far as tropes, I like "slow burn build up to big cathartic moment", and "character wrestling with humanity/sense of self", and a lil bit of outsider POV. I also have a tendency to focus on the characters hands in descriptions, and there are DEFINITELY a few phrases I catch myself reusing when I reread my fics, I should probably go through and make a call out post for myself at some point with those ram-isms 😅

26) Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that had only dialogue?

I know this would only further my bad habit, but definitely dialogue only.

42) Have you ever received a comment that stood out to you for any reason?

Love and light to all commenters everywhere 🥰 But I think the comment that most stood out to me when I received it, was I gave Rescue Bots (my beloved) a chance because of a specific Tumblr user who hyped it up, and then they left a very nice comment on Discretion. I was too depressed to respond at the time, but I was very bemused they found my fic and happy they liked it!

50) Using my free space here to muse on something I've noticed, in reading older fics recently and comparing them to newer fics... There is a lot less homophobia in fics nowadays. I mean this in a neutral way. I think it generally says good things about our culture and LGBT acceptance, and also is probably part of the trend of stronger taboos on controversy in many parts of fandom. But in reading older fics, it wasn't that the characters are haters or anything but homophobia is just an embedded assumption that has to be wrestled with. A lot of pagespace is given to characters working through their own internalized homophobia, wrestling with the closet or coming out, and facing varying levels of rejection from the rest of the cast. Nowadays, it seems like most fics are written as "Everything is canon except these characters have always been gay/bi", or in AUs where things like DADT never existed or gay marriage has always been legal, so there a lot less on page conflict over the characters' sexualities. Yay for people now being able to treat broad acceptance as unremarkable and a given nowadays, is the plusside!

I really started thinking about this the other day after reading two fics. One was a West Wing fic from the year of our Lord 2000, where Toby was both broadly supportive of a relationship between Josh and Sam... and also homophobic. Like, he loved them both and supported their relationship and was the best man at their commitment ceremony, AND was repeatedly vocally grossed out by PDA between them and actively got in between them in public out of fear they'd accidentally out themselves. This behavior was both accepted by the characters and totally uncommented on by the narrative. It was a pretty good fic, but that characterization struck me as being very of its time. In contrast, I was then reading a MASH fic from like last year, and it had Potter say something like "Love is love" and I was just immediately jarred out of the fic. Not in the sense that I think Potter would necessarily be hateful or something- I think he's both compassionate enough and pragmatic enough to decide what two consenting soldiers of similar ranks do in private is none of his business- but like, he's a Presbyterian Regular Army Colonel who was born in 1890-something, "Love is love" does not scan as natural or inevitable for the character to me. It felt like either a missed opportunity for a little character work- maybe Hawkeye is shocked by his easy reaction and they exchange a few lines on how he came to acceptance- or a missed opportunity for drama. And if the author just didn't want to get into it- completely valid- then writing Potter out of the scene would've preserved the suspension of belief better IMO. Reading those fics close together got me thinking about that broader pattern, which again I just find interesting... and also left me a little curious if the extremely frustrating and unfortunate resurgence in atmospheric/cultural homophobia in many places means that older pattern is going to reemerge in the psychosphere of fandom. I think my own fics tend more towards the "background homophobia" side of the force because of my own experiences. And I guess that's my "deep fandom thought" of the week.

#thank you for the ask friend ❤️#mash #west wing

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johanna-swann · 8 months ago

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Personal rant as a fic writer. I don't want to sound unthankful and I know I could do better on this front myself as well. I don't comment on enough stories either. Sometimes I forget or I don't know what to say, sometimes I'm on a binge at 3am and just not thinking about how the authors feel. But as a writer as well as a reader I think I'm allowed layered feelings about this.

I know a lot of fanfic readers filter out unfinished stories and only go for completed ones. I do that a lot too. So I kinda thought "Oh, I'll get more feedback once I finish this wip." But nah. 28.5k words and on that final chapter I got exactly 3 comments that consist of actual words.

(Quick side note: Comments that consist entirely of heart emojis are cute and it shows that you put a little more effort in than just hitting "kudos", but the message is the same. It doesn't tell me what about my story you liked or which parts you found most interesting etc. Like, I'll take what I can get at this point, but a heart emoji does nothing the kudos button doesn't already do.)

Idk, this lack of feedback just feels disappointing for this fic especially because I myself wasn't particularly interested in that last chapter. Most of the time I write for myself, because I have fun doing it and if the only feedback I get is a handful of kudos, then so be it. But finishing this multichapter fic? I mostly did that because I didn't want to leave all the amazing people hanging who engaged with the fic in its early stages.

And yes, it's only been 5 days since I posted it, but in a busy fandom that means it's already buried under 2 pages of newer stories. Realistically speaking, this is it. There is no new influx coming if I just give it a little more time, I'm probably not gonna get more than those 3 comments. Idk, I'm just a little sad because wrapping up a story of this length is a much harder challenge for me than pushing out another 3k oneshot, it took a lot out of me to do this even though my focus had already moved on to other ideas and I was super proud of myself for getting this done.

I am still proud of me, I always struggle with finishing longer projects and that pride isn't gonna go away. But barely getting any actual feedback does put a certain damper on it.

#ao3 #writing #fanfiction #fanfic #me stuff

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sssammich · 8 months ago

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yeah the early woso era was A Time but it gave us some great gems like all of the collaborations the woso authors used to write and the way you guys all built off of each other's work, that podcast you used to have with that other woso author (where you would start recording and not tell her you started the recording for each episode's intro), and specifically that krashlyn fic where ashlyn cheated on ali that ended up coming true (that fic was literally all i could think about for the entire month after the whole sophia bush fiasco)

i also dropped out of fandom at around the same time but ended up rejoining a literal decade later because of the 2023 world cup last year and some of the changes that shocked me were:

tobin heath and christen press are dating??? and went public with their relationship

kristie mewis is the gay sister?? AND is engaged to sam kerr (the first thing that popped into my mind after hearing her name again was that video she did with carli lloyd riding a scooter in a banana suit?)

euoprean woso players' popularity have been rising like crazy in the past ~5 years or so (esp the english national team and league)

so there's a lot more variety of who to be a fan of outside of the uswnt which is great

the sport has also grown so much more diverse (more woc, more publicly out lgbtq+ players)

more publicly out lgbtq+ players means more super cute (public) irl queer relationships to follow <3

but it also means so much queer dating drama between the players 💀

i feel like there's less rpf these days

which might be because there's less of a 4th wall between fans and players like the older generation were all normies but the newer generation are as chronically online as we are

but that doesn't explain why there's so much self-insert fanfiction (there's sooo much)

it's gone more mainstream which means more collective fandom brainrot so it's probably for the best that you're no longer in the fandom

0H MY GOD THE *PSYCHIC DAMAGE* ANON HOW COULD U DO THIS TO ME

i legitimately forgot i held a podcast about woso and woso rpf LMAOO that was insane unhinged it's all gone now unforch and probably for the best (god what a wild time. for the record, i loved it and it was great, but jesus i forgot. i remember going into my partner's closet LMAO because she actually had one so i could record. fucking wild)

anyway yeah lmao listen despite being a consistent talex shipper, there was ZERO questions that alex morgan was like the straighest straight who ever straighted. but tobin. well, that was no surprise. christen press tho! that was a surprise to me lol some of my best fics in that fandom are, like, not about talex tho LMAO

OMGGG KRASHLYN FIC LOVE TRIANGLE; what fic you're thinking of and what i wrote is probably not the same. but this just makes me think of the ashlyn/ali/niki fic that came about when seeley wrote one thing and then jessie wrote a response fic and then i wrote a response fic to that. holy fuckkkk this feels like my roots of writing just popping up announced. how do you solve your writer's block about two sad women? you add a third sad woman in the mix. holds up. (i mean, these are real people so cheating is literally the worst and love triangles in general can be super complicated but from a storytelling standpoint: *chefs kiss* delicious)

everything you've bulleted out is like equal parts surprising and not surprising but i will agree that it was probably for the best that im no longer in the fandom.

(also self-insert fics are, like, so bold. i don't hate it or anything because, like, it's fanfiction do whatever you want but it's so...revealing. me writing the way i write is already making me so exposed but to just blatantly blitz through that and go for a self-insert. damn.)

#replies #anonymous #WOSO ANON U REALLY WERE IN TEH TRENCHES #it's like finding a comrade #godddd #ALSO RESPONSE FICS ARE SO FUN #did you ever read the response fic series that me and evershadow did??#clearly it's fine if you didn't but #anyway that was really fun

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laurasauras · 5 months ago

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as a moderately popular fic writer who every now and then experiences a sudden influx of kudos on a fic out of nowhere, clearly signalling someone has shared it with their friends/community, that's always a bittersweet feeling

on the one hand, someone has said something nice about my fic! that's lovely! not only that, but the people they said the something nice to have been compelled enough to click on the link (not a small feat) and to leave kudos themselves! i must have written something special :)

but on the other hand ........ i feel left out :(

i write fic because i love the media i'm writing for--i love it enough to spend hours of Prime Energy Time (time during which i have the energy to be doing anything and therefore have the capacity to write) poring over this concept and trying to make it as good as i can. and i LOVE writing, so this isn't some noble sacrifice or anything. but it's a testament to how much i love the thing as well, because i have a LOT of hobbies

and when i get that uptick in kudos that says my fic has been shared, i think huh. i would have loved to have been invited into that conversation

and this isn't me asking to be invited to more discord servers or anything, i don't want to invade the group chat lmao, but a comment that says "i had to share this with my friends after reading this! this was my pitch: 'xyz'" would also be inviting me in

i joined a server a while ago and a few of the members were like omg it's laurasauras--genuinely very flattering and i'm NOT complaining haha--and i was kind of like aw, thank you, but also you get that i'm a massive nerd too, right? like you have proof that i've spent hundreds and THOUSANDS of hours of precious focus time obsessing over this fandom! i'm not cool! of course i want to talk about the thing i'm obsessed with!

i've genuinely never tracked my stats. i have adhd and i mostly forget my fics exist once i've posted them. (the only thing i've come close to is when i noticed that one of my dirkjohn fics was on the second page sorted by kudos and every now and then i'd remember and i watched it climb the ranks until it was on the first page and that was super exciting, it's very possibly been pushed back again by newer and shinier dirkjohns but that was still very thrilling for my B- inner child.) the daily kudos email and occasional comment emails are happy little bonuses, but i don't write for them. if i got absolutely no comments on a fic i'd worked really hard on, i might be a bit bummed, but i would probably forget about it pretty quickly. if i got no comments on a fic in my early days, i might not have noticed because i hadn't grown to expect them and i wasn't as good as i thought i was haha

i mean, don't get me wrong, i love those emails. even the comments with <3 in them make me smile and that's lovely to wake up to or get randomly during the day. and i think ao3 comments are actually a great place to get a sense of people and i have genuinely made friends through them (including cal who i reblogged this from and who i have had the ENORMOUS pleasure of meeting irl!!!) and i want to be best friends with every single one of the people who comments reliably on almost every fic i write. honestly, being in a small fandom helps so much, my hits:kudos:comments ratio is much more comment heavy in homestuck than it is in bigger fandoms

but yeah i think of it not being so much a comment tax as just a way of acknowledging that the person who wrote the fic is a real person who might feel happy if you said some nice words

if fanfic was a music performance, kudos would be the applause that polite people give at the end of the show, and comments are the people who talk to the musician afterwards. could be a simple "that was great!" or it could be a full conversation. and in the small pub that is my gig (where most of my fics are in the 10s or maybe 100s of kudos) every comment is so precious and has kept me coming to the pub

i'm hanging out at the bar (leaving comments open) not hiding in the green room! if you liked my fic then we have some overlap in our taste and i'd love to talk about it with you! i wouldn't be on the stage and i definitely wouldn't be at the bar if i didn't want to connect with people!

anyway, i love you, fandom person who kept reading all the way to the end. i hope you have a wonderful day and that maybe this gives you the reassurance that it's okay to reach out to other people in fandom. that's the whole point of fandom 💛

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

#long post #fandom stuff

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voiceofsword · 2 years ago

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sry to bitch in your inbox abt this but im so glad you pointed out how so many modern enstarries Dont read the stories and base everything off fandom perception.. i saw these users joking about which character would say slurs and someone was ADAMANT rinne would and tho i knew it before it Really struck me then

a) none of them have ever engaged with this text in any meaningful way, ESPECIALLY not the first games' stories, because surprise! characters in es! did Canonically use slurs! and back then Nobody Liked It. we didnt joke about it. most people i know completely stopped paying attention to the characters who did until they apologized. (tho ofc its more a problem w the writing than the characters, but still. we were young. we had the spirit.)

b) people really like using rinne as a punching bag because they dont read the stories and know literally nothing about him except funny drunk drugs gamble man "fuckboy" who harasses niki and the other bees and its. infuriating.

i dont understand how anyone can claim to like a media without ever properly engaging with it, i dont understand how people have fun misunderstanding characters so drastically, and i also think joking about slurs has gotten wayyy too normalized where people feel comfortable saying these things about these characters they allegedly like. and characters like rinne (with a constructed mask of obnoxiousness and such) are the perfect target for these people. which SUCKS. all of it sucks.

NEVER BE SORRY!!!! i hope this is alright to post i thought your ask was good and insightful and i'll add onto it a little bit with my own thoughts (heart emoji)

yeah um ! was definitely a ride. i wouldnt recommend it to everyone but at least we have hindsight and things like slurs and general offensive terms/behaviors can be warned for, so that much is nice. i remember being really upset about a few of these, and then getting back into enstars earlier this year and reading a few of the more current stories + !! stories i was happy to see that the writing has developed CONSIDERABLY in terms of this especially after beasts. something ive noticed a lot of newer fans do (referencing my previous post irt the feeling morally superior) is that if you like a specific character for whatever reason youre actually a horrible person because that character said something awful once. of course youre allowed to dislike characters for whatever reason but dont tell other people they should perish because they like them (as if liking them means you implicitly agree with said views, more often than not One line in a miriad of stories that you might not even have read). but like you said, characters making ignorant comments (an unfortunate occurrence, although rare, it still happens) is not a reflection of 2d pixels on a screen but rather a team of writers..... idk. its a complicated situation. i see both sides and i think people are justified in liking or disliking but this is a game about idol boys (and girl) got dam

yeah i hate how people treat rinne a lot. like because characters like him and eichi are villains that means everything that they do or say is, at worst, a straight, physical threat to everyone around them, or at best, an annoyance that can make the fandom feel justified in making them the butt of reoccurring jokes. idk what else to say about him that i havent said already but its also 3 am now and i SAID i was gonna go to sleep an hour ago but i think i might just be a filthy liar

ALSO its probably because enstars is long, there's a lot to read and although tl's arent necessarily hard to come by you actively have to seek them out. again i understand how this might be a nuisance but instead of sitting down and listening to summaries or analysis ive noticed that a lot of short form consumption content lends itself to people just. posting the most reactive interpretations, and people playing a game of telephone with said information until a lot of the fandom has come to accept this misinformation as true. LIKE SOMEONE ON TIKTOK SAYING HAJIME AND WATARU WERE RELATED? IDEK IF THAT WAS A JOKE OR NOT? and yeah the use of slurs is like ridiculously normalized now im not one to say whether people can or cannot reclaim slurs and people are free to do as they like if they can. i see this one thing specifically with tatsumi a lot where people jokingly bring up how said character is homophobic or make homophobic comments towards characters even if theyre being like. excited or happy. and idk. personally it makes me sad. like maybe its fandom culture now maybe im old (is 23)

WHY WOULD RINNE SAY SLURS HES LITERALLY GAY AND IN LOVE....COME AWN NOW

#i prommy i will stop putting walls of text on everyones dashboards soon and ill get to actually posting drawings and reblogs...maybe #im not posting this one under a readmore bc i dont think. its That long in comparison to my other posts?#but if it is i might add it retroactively? can i even do that #we'll see i guess LMAO #mimthinks

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helena-thessa · 4 years ago

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Hi Helena! Big fan of your writing here🥺♥️ Your rivamika fics are my safe space 😭 (if you have time to answer) i’d love to know when you first started shipping them, why, and what made you continue to love this ship (or anything else to do with your journey as an RM shipper)? i love your characterisation of both levi and mikasa individually, but even more so, your portrayal of their dynamic as a couple, which is why i wanted to ask so badly ☺️ x

Hey anon! Oh woah, first of all, thank you so much. Second of all, oh god, you probably shouldn't have handed me the mic. heh 😅

I’m afraid to look at the word count of this response, I’m sure it’s much more than you bargained for, but I appreciate the question and enjoyed thinking through my response (: Most importantly, I’m so glad you find my stories as a safe space. It’s really an honor. Thank you for sharing with me 🖤🖤

TL; DR As a longtime reader, writer and lover of stories and story-telling, by being someone who pays attention to how stories are crafted and deliberately developed from beginning to end, I sincerely thought Isayama was setting up rivamika as an endgame relationship. So, I read into and interpreted meaning out of ALL their interactions and became deeply invested.

I don’t necessarily ship them cause of the parallels, age gap, enemies to lover trope, height difference, or some of those common reasons and/or kinks. I’m more basic and boring than that. I love the concept of them coming together as though it’s inevitable.

They both are unbelievably strong, selfless, and have suffered so much loss— so, no one else could truly understand them as well as they can understand each other. They both probably would have always settled for a stable, simple life, and been alone and lonely even without realizing it— instead, they find each other, and realize what it means to actually no longer be alone, to do more than just survive. It’s this understated bond, as opposed to a dramatic and passionate romance, that I envision in them and that I love so much.

Then, the passion, heat, the romantic "spark"— I think that’s an added bonus, the cherry on top, the perfect final puzzle piece. They’re both so physically capable, can speak through their actions, and don’t show much need or capacity for emotional/ verbal communication, so the ability to connect with each other through physical intimacy and mind-blowing sex seems like another given.

Still, at the end of the day, for me it comes back to their ability to fully depend on each other, to the inevitability. Not like some soulmate trope where they 'have no choice' in it, but like the stars aligned to prove it's right. How each of them have only one other person on the whole planet who could see and understand them, to be on par with them, to make them realize there’s more to life than settling and surviving, and they happen to find it in each other.

You asked, I rambled 😅 Here’s a breakdown of my thought process in my rivamika journey. For those who make it to the end or want to skip to the end, I'll finish with the excerpt of the very first rivamika scene I felt compelled to to write.

I've tried before to re-watch and remember the exact scenes, exact moments, that initially captured my full attention, but I guess it was all of them, the gradual and cumulative compilation of their earliest interactions.

Mikasa always appearing cool and indifferent, and paying no attention whatsoever to others fawning over, like Jean initially falling for her, but then her strongly reacting over Levi in the courtroom showed how uniquely capable he was at getting under her skin.

Of course, the scene in the forest chasing the Female Titan was a critical one. I think of that as the first time both Levi and Mikasa were truly able to see the other's strength, mental and physical. And for them, orphans and trauma survivors who have suffered extensive loss, I think that seeing strength in another person made them feel less alone. Less alone in a deep, quiet but cataclysm, life-altering sort of way, even if not a romantic one. Like they didn't know it was something they didn't have, something they didn't expect to get from life, but then found it with each other.

(Even when we found out Levi was an Ackerman, I was disappointed if it meant they were immediate relatives, but willing to accept it wouldn't be a romantic end to loneliness, it would be a familial end to loneliness. But... the author never explored that. Not once.)

In that forest scene, manga and anime, the way that Levi pauses to really look and see Mikasa and think about who she is, what she’s gone through, and how strong and dedicated she is now— that was a defining moment. It was also a visual demonstration of Levi breaking character, from aloof and ruthless, to considering and curious. I thought Yams was showing both of them do that on purpose.

Then, Levi getting hurt because of Mikasa in that scene felt like another clue. Sure, it was while saving Eren, and sure, it could have been meant to humanize super-soldier Levi, or sure, it could have been another aspect of how Mikasa rushing into things over Eren ends up hurting other people that later changes in her character development, but it felt like a very pointed statement about Mikasa being a vulnerability for Levi. And that's swoon-worthy, right? Most of us have been exposed to and conditioned by stories about how special and romantic it is to be the one and only girl who can make an otherwise disinterested or unattainable guy actually pay attention to her, and so admittedly I fall right for it.

I’m sure I’m forgetting plenty, but the opening of season 3 felt like confirmation. When Levi figures out Kenny's behind things and entrusts Mikasa with instructions to share with the others, instructions about fighting people instead of titans that ultimately everyone else besides her struggles with, and when Mikasa lets Levi hold her back from chasing after Eren, her most important way of trusting and having faith in Levi, I honestly took that as cues from the author that rivamika was endgame. I let myself get truly invested from then on. That’s that understated bond I was referring to. To me, that unspoken but undeniable trust is the most important dynamic.

Seeing them fight together or fight similarly has always been fun and powerful and fulfilling.

I'm newer to the snk club. I was originally an anime-only fan and started watching in fall 2019, I think. I wasn't on tumblr, twitter, or anything else to see fandom discourse. So, I didn't know that the rooftop scene of Mikasa fighting Levi over the serum was such a staple for our ship until much later. I love the scene just like many do for all the reasons we do, but I don't think the actual scene was pivotal for me, so much as it's aftermath. I thought it represented two things.

One, it was an important marker in Levi's characterization. Hands-down one of the most striking scenes to me is the one where Levi is in the alley, somber and alone, listening in on Eren, Armin, and Mikasa talking together. It artfully shows his longing for hope and connection. So, when Levi chose Armin for the serum, that represented Levi choosing hope. And when Mikasa ultimately gave up fighting Levi and didn't choose Armin, which Armin finds out about later on, I see that as an important marker in Mikasa's development. It puts a wedge between her and Armin/Eren [Armin, because he knows she would have let him die, and Eren, because Armin is too special to him and he couldn't look at her the same way after realizing she would have let him die]. That distance between her and her childhood friends is one I don't think could ever be healed completely, one of those painful lessons in growing up. By doing that, it then also puts a distance in Mikasa's own childhood self to her current self. I thought that matured her and separated her out in a way that was another clue toward eventual rivamika developments.

That's a whole other conversation on Mikasa, but I’ll stay on track. Her love for Armin was absolutely authentic and fierce, but at the end of the day, at the core of her being, she chose survival over hope. Meanwhile, Levi chose hope over survival. To me, that was soft, fertile ground for the reasons why eventually, if/when Mikasa found hope and chose hope, that could directly tie together with her inevitably in coming together with Levi. Again, less butterflies and fireworks, but more natural and in a way that was just a given.

I wrote Beyond the Walls before reading the manga from the Marley Arc and on, so that's why most of that story is her journey into embracing that hope. *manga spoilers* There's a lot of meta, criticism and talk about Mikasa's silent, off-screen and subtle style of character development in the Marley Arc and afterward. I won't go down that road, I'm still processing the end of the manga to be honest, but I think it's fair to say she does eventually end up choosing hope over survival when she lets go of Eren and saves humanity instead. I love the “Stay with Me” line and think it’s perfect; a simple but profound display of trust and their deep-rooted bond in a really understated way. *end manga spoilers*

Here's something I always wanted to talk about in full but haven't. It honestly reads to me like Yams was building toward rivamika, and didn’t do anything to stop that until too late. There are tools authors can use to ensure we stop shipping a pair or start shipping a new one; love triangles are commonly used in every artistic medium and we’ve all been persuaded by these tools. But Yams didn’t use these tools to make sure readers didn’t feel convinced by rivamika. For all the reasons I listed above, more I'm forgetting, and for the following:

If he wanted us to think they were family and it would be incest, he should have added in a conversation between them realizing they were (close) family and that they weren't the only ones left in their biological family like they thought. But he didn't.

If he wanted us to think it was completely inappropriate between a child-and-adult and student-and-teacher, then he could have done something to ensure Mikasa looked childish or Levi looked older, but no. They barely look ten years apart. I do think it's unacceptable and that there's a power imbalance between a child-and-adult relationship regardless of that, and that there can't be true consent when one is a superior and another a subordinate, so I personally age-up Mikasa in my head and try to handle his position of power responsibly in my writings... but the point being, by the end of canon, there's no inappropriate or non-consensual romance between them, yet there's a lot of history and chemistry that could naturally lead to an age-appropriate and consensual relationship. If Yams didn't want us to think so, he could have made it more clear that there were reasons it wouldn't happen.

The only thing that makes sense to me is the author planned on rivamika endgame but was shamed/pressured out of it (either internally or due to others) OR that the author somehow accidentally created such vibrant chemistry and an incredible dynamic between them. Like, he didn't put enough convincing substance of eremika in, didn't make Levi look old enough, didn’t have one of them do something unforgivable in the other’s eyes, etc. Those are some of those tools he could have used. Romance was never a key component in snk. And since we now know Yams planned or needed eremika endgame for sake of plot and the conclusion of the manga, I personally think he didn't know what to do with the riveting rivamika substance and chemistry being much more convincing to readers. Once he had them so well built-up, maybe the only option he felt he had was to just stop putting the characters together. We get little-to-no rivamika interaction, platonic or practical, after season 3 all the way up until the very end. But there was so much of it beforehand ?? So, it simply doesn't make sense. I think the author just straight-up cut any and all interactions out between them because it was too convincing and moving, more convincing and substantial than eremika. But, as the end of canon shows, we needed to have some eremika buy-in. It's messy writing and unskilled in the romance department, but considering for how long and how complicated snk has been in a creative process and how lackluster the eremika romance (the main and apparently pivotal romance) is developed, I think it’s plausible to say the author effed up.

As far as writing fanfiction goes, there's just so much room to explore them. In canon, we aren't given enough insight into their individual perspectives, let alone their dynamic together, so it feels like a blank canvas to work from. I think that's part of why I love to write them, and also why I don't necessarily read much of them. When I first started shipping them while watching the anime, I read a few of the classics that were canon-verse, but I haven’t really read much since. For me, exploring and discovering them as a writer is the most fun. (It's one of the reasons Naruto and Harry Potter have such large fanfiction collections. There's so much world-building and so many characters, but there's also so much left to the imagination.)

In general, I'm drawn to strong characters, especially women, who are multidimensional enough to be real, vulnerable and soft. Mikasa is the pinnacle of that. I don’t necessarily like to write about her love or infatuation with Eren, but I do respect and admire and consider it integral to her character and her amazing capacity to love. We can have strong, kickass women who falter when it comes to love but are still considered strong for it. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive and Mikasa is a beautiful example of that.

And Levi is strong, but real and vulnerable too; he’s honestly a fantastically developed character, from Petra explaining to Eren in the beginning how he’s not the amazing hero he’s painted to be to the public, to how Levi genuinely cares for Erwin and others and chooses hope despite all he’s suffered.

The end of the manga wrecked me a bit. Kind of like Games of Thrones. You have something that was so epic and well-done for so long, a rushed ending that isn't immediately sensical and isn't fulfilling is hard to stomach. Eventually, I'll move on from the denial of that and process what I think and feel about it. The whole reason we have fanfiction is to expand on canon, but it's made me put rivamika on the back burner until I figure it out. So I'm a little less hyper-fixated on the pairing right now even though interacting with you all and asks like this remind me what brought me here in the first place. 😊

To conclude, I’ll share that the very first rivamika content I wrote was a compilation of moments I thought could be inserted into season 3. These are still moments I plan to edit and publish one day. For anyone that actually read this far, I’ll put a rough and unedited excerpt of the first scene I ever wrote about them.

Thank you again anon 🖤😊

BEGIN EXCERPT [after the rooftop fight for the serum, immediately following the ceremony where Eren touched Historia by kissing her hand]:

Part of her was embarrassed at such a flagrant act of disobedience to a superior, especially to one who saved her and countless others' lives in the past. But mostly, she was anguished by the situation Captain Levi put her in once he revoked the serum meant to save Armin and planned to use it on Commander Erwin instead. Her current ostracization and self-loathing was not entirely her own fault. Anger she felt toward herself was just as easy to wield against him.

It must have shown in the grit of her teeth or defiant tone, because he turned to look at her, more aloof than curious.

Like a flint struck to steel, it ignited the fury she felt toward him.

“I shouldn’t have hesitated. I should have just killed you,” she answered him at last, piercing him with eyes darker than the night.

He wasn’t concerned. “You’re good, but not that good.”

Her hands fell to her side, fists clenched as she stood with a single, fluid movement. Before she could let loose a threat, he sighed.

“What’s the problem, Ackerman?” He was dismissive, his shoulders relaxed and posture loose.

The fire too furious to contain, she went sailing for him with the same speed from the battlefield. Her fingers already curled, she tightened her grasp as she swung her fist into his gods-damned apathetic face.

Levi wasn’t unprepared. He easily side-stepped her, then snatched her wrist to steal her momentum. Though he tried to toss her aside, she was no less fast; Mikasa dug her heel in and spun, her other arm shoving hard into his chest.

Too graceful to stumble, Levi used the chance to hook her second arm too. He caged both her wrists in a grip so strong, she was sure it bruised her bones. Still, he only looked at her warily, almost bored.

“Shouldn’t you be grateful? I chose Armin.” If his reminder was meant to ease her anger, it had the opposite effect.

Fury and desperation gifted her additional strength. She shoved into his chest hard. Levi shifted backward, nearly forced into loosening his grip; within that split second of an opening, Mikasa slammed her elbow into his chin, rocking his head backward.

“You did,” she seethed, but as fast as the fire inside her exploded, it was doused. Her next words came out broken and damp. “But I didn’t.”

Levi remained stern and otherwise unmoving as he attempted to flex his jaw through the spasm of pain. As the momentum of the fight died down, he loosened his hold on her wrists and evaluated her distraught frame.

Mikasa immediately released her own hands and turned away from him, eyes stinging from tears she refused to shed as she focused on the stars ahead. Admitting the harsh words aloud hurt her far more than any injury she could inflict onto him.

Not only was Armin one of the only friends she had, but he’d been a steadfast one throughout almost all she could remember of her life. After the trauma of her childhood, it was Eren and Armin who embraced her, whom she learned to love. Now, though, there was a wedge between her and Armin she was not sure could ever be removed. What was worse, as deplorable and selfish as she knew it proved her to be, was the painful wedge it now put between her and Eren too.

Once again, she found Levi standing at the peripheral of her sight, close enough to see but far enough to be a blur at the edge of her watery vision.

“You almost killed me.” Levi repeated his earlier words, but he said them with an odd bite, torn between frustration and patience. “You would have killed me to save him.”

Too late, Mikasa realized he hadn’t meant these words as an accusation, but an odd form of validation. She bit her bottom lip, teeth puncturing too hard; the tang of metal was sharp on her tongue when she swallowed blood.

“You thought about letting your closest friend die,” Levi said quietly, tiredly. “But I did let mine die. I left him for dead, when I could have saved him.”

Mikasa was startled from her selfish reverie, for the first time acknowledging the sacrifice he made on that fateful afternoon. She’d been too absorbed in her own relief, and then, her own regrets to consider what the decision had done to him.

For a brief moment, she considered turning to face him, but the stark reality of the matter made her refrain. How could she feel pity for his loss, when his loss enabled her gain? An uncomfortable knot tightened in her stomach.

“Tch,” Levi sighed. He was only one notch less taciturn, but for him, that was soft. “You’ll live with your guilt, and I’ll live with mine.”

His words granted Mikasa’s tears the permission to spill. She buried her face further into her scarf, both hands trembling at the worn threads. As quietly as he arrived onto the roof, Levi disappeared from it.

It was rare for him to indulge in alcohol or celebrations, but Erwin’s absence felt more tangible than his presence ever did. Levi distracted himself with the chaos of the few remaining Scouts that Erwin had died entrusting his legacy to, and attempted to drown the pain with whatever drink Connie Springer shoved into his hands.

He found Hanji with their ale long-forgotten about on the table as they half-stood from their seat, frantic while explaining some morbid experiment in great, vivid detail to an unsuspecting and slightly horrified MP officer.

Though Levi wordlessly took the seat beside them, Hanji paused their rant to slap him hard on the back, an enthusiastic greeting flying from their drunken lips. The MP took this chance to excuse himself, a pathetic attempt at politeness, but Hanji either didn’t care or didn’t notice.

“Ah, Levi,” they smiled at his drink, though it didn’t entirely reach their one eye. “Where you been?”

Levi didn’t answer. “You know, shitty-glasses, you’re even more unbearable about your experiments when you’re drunk.”

Hanji waved dismissively and reached for their ale. Years spent in battle and command together had gifted both of them with an eased familiarity, and sometimes, genuine friendship. In the same manner he ignored their question, Hanji ignored his lack of response and went on with their original inquiry.

“Careful, Captain,” Hanji warned lightly. “Now that there’s far fewer Scouts, you having a favorite might cause some division.”

Even though Hanji meant the words, there was a glint of mischief that twinkled in their remaining eye.

“It’s not favoritism,” Levi countered bluntly, turning his vision toward the young man on the far side of the room. “Eren is simply the best chance that we have in this war.”

Hanji laughed as if he’d made a joke and Levi looked back to stare at them, unable to be surprised at their quirks or oddities any longer, but still a touch curious about what spurned this current demonstration.

“I wasn’t talking about Eren,” Hanji said at last, a pointed nod toward his injured chin.

Levi blinked. He didn’t realize he was nursing his injury with the hand not on his drink. As though it were too hot to touch, Levi dropped his hand.

Hanji was not judgmental, nor inquisitive. In a war-torn life of losing too many cadets entrusted to him, the fact that Levi found a soldier with the strength and skill to remain safe was not only rare, but worth special attention. Still, it made him too lenient.

“Sometimes I think you’d let her get away with murder,” Hanji chided halfheartedly.

When he thought of Erwin dead in his grasp, sometimes he wasn’t sure if he already had.

#my asks #my thoughts #rivamika #rivamika fanfic #lena writes

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sineala · 4 years ago

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After reading some comics about Iron Man, it seems he has a hard time developing a real relationship with a partner. He sleeps around a-lot, I think he might be a male nympho, like it seems he's addicted to sex. I was surprised in the last issue of Invincible iron man (#527) during the panel where he has some escort in his tub, what's funnier was when Pepper walked in and somehow the escort was able to hold her breath and hide underwater, I feel writers are unable develop and write him correctly

I’m trying to think of a way to put this that’s not “that’s because you’re reading Matt Fraction’s run” but... that’s because you’re reading Matt Fraction’s run.

Okay. So the thing about most fandoms is that canon is canon, and it’s very clear what is and is not canon. And it’s possible to watch a movie, or watch a TV show, or read a trilogy of novels and come away with a coherent picture of what the characters are like. Any given canon is usually made by a particular person or relatively small group of people, and it’s usually made over a relatively short span of time -- even the longest-running TV shows and the most-delayed book series don’t usually take, oh, more than 10 or 20 years at the most. I mean, there are exceptions, but for the most part, most canons are a snapshot of the era that they were made in (in terms of the values and attitudes that are reflected) and they have few enough hands in them that characters can stay relatively consistent.

This is not at all what comics fandom is like.

Marvel Comics have been made over decades and decades -- starting in the early 60s for modern Marvel, or the 40s if you’d like to count Timely Comics and Captain America -- and by hundreds if not thousands of different people. The people who are making them now are not the people who started making them. They’re not the people who invented the characters or the universe. And the values and beliefs and general societal attitudes that they are reflecting right now are not the ones that they were made with, actual generations ago.

And the fun thing about Marvel Comics is that everything is canon. Unlike DC, there have been no line-wide reboots. If you’re reading a comic from 1963, whatever happened in that comic is still considered to be true unless a later comic has deliberately contradicted it. So it’s all true. But at the same time, it also isn’t all true -- the characters are not aging at the same rates at which the comics are published, Tony’s origin story has now been set in something like four different countries, I no longer have any idea who Wanda and Pietro’s parents are, and so on and so forth. So the current writers basically pick what they want to be true and work from there. And they sometimes end up making radically different choices in characterization because that’s what they feel is the best way to modernize the character. So what you end up with is a bunch of things that are theoretically all true but in practice cannot really all coexist.

And sometimes fandom looks at canon and says, “We don’t like that change. Many of us don’t think it’s consistent with the established characterization. So we’re either not going to think about that part or we’re going to figure out a way to explain it that fits better with what has come before, that makes us happier.”

So Fraction’s Iron Man run is one of those points of contention. There are some things about it that pretty much everyone in fandom is going to accept, because it’s hard not to, because of the radical changes that are made -- say, the brain deletion in World’s Most Wanted. As far as I know no one writes fanfiction and pretends that Tony still remembers Civil War. I’m not talking about fixits where he gets the memories back -- I mean saying, “Nope, that didn’t happen.” Fandom certainly could. But they pretty much don’t. And there are some things that much of fandom would prefer to gloss over -- like, the fact that Tony sleeps around. And I don’t think it’s the case that people are doing this because, say, they personally disapprove of this behavior -- they’re doing this because they don’t think it fits with the extant characterization of Tony.

Let’s say you’ve got, oh, fifty years of canon where Tony’s attitude toward relationships can basically be summed up as serial monogamy. Sure, he’s dated a lot of people, but he’s also been around a long time -- he’s had enough time to have a lot of committed relationships. And as far as I can tell, he was pretty serious about everyone he was with -- or at the very least, he wasn’t out there having one-night stands. He’s been engaged. He’s clearly out there looking for love. And then you’ve got maybe ten years of canon, starting with Matt Fraction’s run, where Tony really starts sleeping around.

So, both of these things are canon. But which do you believe? Do you believe in the older characterization, because that was the original conception of the character? Because it’s been the characterization for longer? Does that make it more true? Or do you support the newer characterization because that’s what Marvel wants the character to be now? Or do you find some way to reconcile them? I mean, you could. If you asked me how I’d make it make sense, I might say something like: “Tony’s behavior in this run is markedly unlike his previous behavior and I attribute that to his feelings about his declining public reputation after Civil War and Fear Itself, as well as his now-canonically-stated depression; perhaps he feels that he isn’t deserving of love or long-term relationships at this point, and he’s deliberately seeking out casual sex, possibly partly as a form of self-harm and partly as a way of attempting to alleviate his depression.”

Now, you might not buy that particular explanation, and you are totally free to come up with one you like better, but you get what I’m doing, right? I’m trying to come up with a way that makes what we have now make sense with everything we had before.

Or, you know, we can all just write fanfiction set in volume 3 and pretend everything after never happened. I’ve never done that before and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ha.

So if you say to me “I think Tony’s addicted to sex” I’m probably going to say something like “I can see how you’d say that about Matt Fraction’s IM run but I don’t think that’s in character for Tony as a whole and here’s why.” And then I might talk about, say, how he does not display this behavior at other times in canon and maybe mention some of the many people he was very serious about. Rumiko Fujikawa. Bethany Cabe. Whitney Frost. You get the idea.

I hope that makes some kind of sense.

#Anonymous #replies

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takaraphoenix · 3 years ago

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Your fanfic output is crazy! (And omg, so appreciated!) Do you have any tips on how to get more stuff written/finished?

Do you think writing in multiple fandoms helps? And did you start slow and have to build momentum with certain characters/ships? Or jump into writing a bunch of stories about the same ship/character? Would love to know more about your writing process 💖

*laughs* Thank you, I love feeling appreciated <3

Well, mh. That's a good question and one without a clear, definite answer, I suppose. Let's start at the beginning and work our way through it. xD

Tips on how to get more stuff written? For me, that is my schedule, actually!

I'm a writer with too many ideas - I have so many ideas in my head and I have the attention-span of a goldfish. I used to discard a lot of my ideas and leave stories unfinished with half a page, or a bunch of pages written, because a newer, shinier idea caught my attention and I decided to write that instead and "get back to the other one", but after it, there was another and another and--you see the problem? So I would never get back to the first story that I had paused on, because by then I lost interest in the idea.

My schedule helps me with that, because for one, it organizes all of these endless ideas. As of right now, only oneshots and not the repetitive motion of my weekly multi-chapter updates, I have 50 oneshots on my personal updating schedule. All of them ideas I want to write - some of them ideas I have already written now. If I had only that, only all of these ideas, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

My schedule gives me an... order to follow. This year, it got revamped! Since I have more fandoms that I'm working with. I set it in tune with the four multi-chapter fics I currently have, since I have four fandoms that I am writing oneshots for. So there is this set scheme to my schedule - Shadowhunters, Percy Jackson, DCMK, DC Comics. And it rotates through in this order, plus my Magic Mondays for the shorter DCMK ideas flooding my brain. Now with the skeleton of my schedule set, I assign the masses of ideas I have a date based on that.

And then I work through it. Start at the earliest date that comes up and only move on to the next story when that is finished.

It's hard to keep focus on one story when you have too many that you want to write, so organizing my ideas like that allows me to put my focus onto only one story, knowing the others will only come after. And unlike how it used to be, where a story would be abandoned for the sake of another newer idea, said new idea becomes an incentive to finish the old first, because I do not get to write the shiny new thing until the other one is finished.

Which may make it sound like a task, but the idea that is currently being written too was the shiny new one at one point and it makes me no less enthused about it just because a newer one is grabbing my attention! I still want this story to exist too, after all!

I'm not sure how far this is helpful for you or other people, but I know it has helped me tremendously in prioritizing and in actually getting the stories written. I've also always been a person who works better with a deadline than with a "do whenever" though, so that's a part of it too.

I'm unsure how far multiple fandoms help. I'd say they help and hinder, both in equal parts? Yes, due to more fandoms, more things are happening, but it is currently leaving me all scatterbrained, in a way? I am currently in the most fandoms I've ever been active in - I have five fandoms that I'm right now actively writing for, if we do count BtVS since I have an ongoing multi-chapter fic for that too. It's very jumpy and all-over-the-place right now though, my mind I mean. On the one hand, there are all these DCMK short stories that my fingers are itching for, but then I'm so deep into DC Comics that I really want to explore my own Earth on it much more and just focus on that, and untimely so I have rediscovered my passion for PJO and keep coming up with more, new ideas for that - something that had been... less prominent in past year and allowed me to mainly focus on DC Comics and Shadowhunters, really. It's the different vibes of the different fandoms that are also not entirely helpful, in my experience at least, because it leaves me kind of dizzy? To jump from one fandom into the next and the next and the next, switch between very different worlds and different characters back and forth, instead of focusing mainly on one world and its specific characters.

But that too, I suppose, is a matter of preference. If you're a good juggler, you may find joy in it. If you need total focus, it might throw you into utter despair. Which is what I am currently verging at; I've been distractedly writing for the past two weeks now and am in a bit of a slump because my mind and thus my focus keep jumping from fandom to fandom and refuse to stay on just this one thing for the sake of me finishing it.

At which point the prompts I've taken two weeks ago come into play. Also as a part of the advise. Because regardless of just how many ideas I am already having - or sometimes even because I'm having too many ideas and feel like I'm drowning in my schedule and am being dragged under by it - I like breaking my routine. Take the prompts and just sit down and write something wholly new, wholly unplanned, just in the moment. Helps me easy my mind and get the antsy feeling out of my brain some. I usually use prompt lists to break writers' blocks of any kind and it usually works, for me at least.

Now the question about building momentum around a character/ship!

I'm absolutely writing my stories around characters. A character is why I'm here, usually. For Shadowhunters, that is Jace, for Percy Jackson, that is, well, Percy Jackson, for DCMK, that is Shinichi. I'm a notorious multishipper so you'll find a lot of ships on my profile, but you'll also find that nearly all of them are centered around one of these characters - I say "nearly", because if I am very, very invested in a fandom and have spent a lot of time in it, I will branch out to explore my side-pairings a little more in their own stories. But generally, all is about that one fave I latched onto.

I'm unsure what you mean about "building momentum", to be honest? You mean as a writer? I suppose I am doing that, though not necessarily... intentionally? As in, I never really intended to make up a tenth of all Nico/Percy fics on AO3, for example. It's just something that... kind of happened, over time, because I'm obsessed with the ship and think it deserves more love.

Though I'm a multishipper, I do always have my... flag-ships, as I like to call them. The one ship that I love just an edge more than the others. And I tend to write the most for it. Because I love the ship so much that I want to see more content for it, thus I create said content. And with my love also comes inspiration - the more I love something, the more inspiration I get for it.

If you are an author who thrives from feedback like me, then yes, I would recommend you build momentum around a certain thing that you love, because therein lays a fanbase - if someone reads your story about ship x and things you did splendidly on it and wants to read more and clicks your profile to find you have twenty more stories about ship x, chances are they'll be excited and give it a read and with each story, you'll gain more loyalty and love from them. If they however click your profile and find that sure you have a hundred fics but actually this was the only one in this fandom even and mh no they weren't really in the mood for any other fandom, or aren't even into any of your other fandoms, they'll move on. Yet on the other hand, if you gave that reader a lot of the thing they already like... they may even follow you into new fandoms. That's my experience, at least.

Dedicated and kind readers are what can really fuel you as a writer and that too can help you finish stuff. That multi-chapter fic you're writing will write itself so much easier if you get comment alerts from people expressing their excitement about the latest chapter and eagerness for the next. Knowing that people are actually excited for a oneshot idea I had makes me want to write it even more, because I know there is someone who shares my excitement.

So if you're a young writer, who's still finding their footing, I would advise you to not immediately dive head first into ten different pools in the deep-end. Go slow and into one. It's how I started out too, with one fandom, trying things out in it, making connections with other writers and with my readers, exploring my... identity, as a writer, exploring what I want to write. It's easier to focus on you and figuring yourself as a writer out if your focus isn't torn between all of the different characterizations and lore and stories that you'll have to try and get right and pay attention to too.

But generally? I really gotta say that you have to find what works for you, because everyone is so different and what's a magic trick to someone might be a cursed chore to another. Try one thing out and if it doesn't work for you, it's okay to abandon the concept and try something else - give the schedule a try, if it's too constricting for you, leave it behind, start with one fandom and if you find joy in focusing on that, keep focusing on that one fandom, but if you feel the itch for another, then don't let anything hold you back, always follow your passion because that really is what dictates a writer above all else. Write what has you the most passionate - if you're passionate about a certain character, make them your center-piece, if it's a ship, then that, heck it can also be a certain trope that you enjoy writing so much you want to play with it in all variations.

TL;DR - Try organizing your thoughts and ideas, in a manner that speaks to you, and try to prioritize, so you don't end up with 50 stories you are trying to write simultaneously because chances are that in that case you may abandon 48 of them, always follow your passion.

#Writing Advise #Phoe Giving Advise #damn this turned out long #I hope it was the insight you wanted #if not feel free to send another ask #<3

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