#I will try to get this posted on both my ao3 and fanfic net for people who like to read there by tomorrow and reblog it with those links

[keylovesstuff]

Lost and Found

Mario fandom, may I humbly offer my first contribution lol. A Peach fanfic cause I can't get my mind off this gal. A little idea that's been crawling in my brain for a while, and I finally sat myself down in front of a word doc to just write it up. So, takes place in the movie-verse until the point in the flashback where baby peach encounters the toads and just a tad bit after that.

The small blonde walked through the now abandoned town in search of just anyone at this point. Stores that were once filled with shoppers looking to purchase a variety of different things while workers assisted were now empty. The playground where she'd play and laugh with girls and boys of all ages was now filled with silence. Home, where she had awoken from a nap alone for the first time ever, was missing her mom and dad. The door was left wide open as she scrambled off the couch making a grab for her purple blanket and tying around her neck. With pink shoes now on the best way her parents showed her how to and pacifier in hand she was out the house. What started out as a fun game of hide and seek in the young child's mind, began to grow into worry as the sky went from a beautiful light blue to a bright orange.

"Mommy? Daddy? Hello" The child once again called out, peering around yet another aisle inside yet another building. The three-year old made sure that no area was left unsearched even if that meant stacking items on top of each other to reach door handles. For the tenth time in her mind, she was met with no response.

Small blue eyes began to fill up with tears as she felt her heart break in two. Sniffling, she Reached up to her cheeks to wipe away the wetness and reached inside her skirt pocket for her pacifier. It wasn't much but it did bring her some comfort as it always would. Vaguely she could hear her father telling her mother how she was getting too old for it and should have been weaned off of it ages ago. A small smile would appear on her mother's face while she cooked up a meal in the kitchen laughing as she would always promise to start the process next week only to not follow through. With another failed search in locating anyone, the girl left the store feeling exhausted mentally and physically. Little legs aching for a break after walking for what seemed like forever she finally gave in, sitting on the ground and leaning against the brick wall of the store. 

Taking the blanket from around her neck she covered her body and closed her eyes. The child's mind finally embraced the negative thoughts that started to itch at her brain after the fifth place she looked. 

No, there will be no one at the next place you go.

No matter how loud you call out, no one will answer back.

Yes you are alone and will never see anyone again.

With the last of her hope dissolving, she succumbed to sleep and let the last of her tears fall.

The cold breeze awoke her from her slumber this time, having shifted from her original sitting to lying on her side sometime in her sleep causing the blanket to slide off. Shivering slightly she wrapped the blanket as tightly around her as she could to feel warm.  Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she realized that the sky was now a dark blue and the only light came from the moon and the many of the stars in the sky.  A memory of sitting in her dads lap with her mom on his side pointing out the stars on a grassy field to them flashed before her eyes.  They began to fill up with salty water after removing her sight from the sky to look across the street when something strange caught her eye. Floating and staring was a pink pudgy starry figure that she only ever saw in the picture books her parents read to her during bedtime.  Sitting up she stared right back into the creature's black eyes as she tried to recall the name the stories gave it.

"A Duma?" She took her pacifier out and voiced aloud as its name finally came to mind. It made a sound in a language that probably no one would understand. The Luma beckoned with its entire body to follow and started off down the street. Puzzled for a moment to process things she shook her head standing up and frantically cried out "Wait, please don't go" she grabbed her blanket once again placed it around her neck and pocketed her pacifier before taking off in the direction it went.

The Luma led her to the forest that every adult, be it their families or not in the town warned every child that could walk not to enter. As it went ahead, the little girl came to a complete stop where the town ended and the forest started hesitating to cross. Sensing that she was no longer following, the Luma also came to a stop and turned to face her, repeating the beckoning gesture from before.

"Duma, I'm not supposed to go in there." She explained with a soft voice pointing a finger at the forest  that is full of unknown secrets.  "I'll get in trouble if someone sees me-"  that last word barely escaped her mouth before she promptly closed it, bringing her previous hand to cover her mouth.

The thoughts from earlier crept back into her mind, repeating the phrases she tried hard to ignore throughout the day. This time though a new thought came to her mind. What if everyone went into the forest and was just waiting for her to join them?  A new hope filled up in her chest and she looked at the Luma with a newfound determination and courage.

"Ok I'll follow you, but you gotta promise that there's anyone there" She told the creature and it responded with the same unknown sound. 

"Alright let's go then" she let out a small giggle before looking at her feet one by one as they crossed into the beginning of the forest. The girl turned to take in one final look at the empty and stared for a moment before following the Luma further in.

The two figures ventured in silence for a little while longer. The blonde child only stopped every few feet to glance around and up ahead for any sign of a familiar figure. The Luma came to a stop first and the girl bumped into its body several seconds after being distracted. 

"Hey why did we-" she started to ask but could not continue the rest of her question as she took in her new surroundings. The luma had led them to an area with a stony ground surrounded by huge pillars. What had caught her eye the most was the green object built in between the two pillars as it glowed a white light in the middle. "Wow" was the only word she could bring herself to voice.

The girl suddenly had a feeling that whatever was inside the pipe was calling to her as she started to walk forward only to be stopped by the Luma placing its body against her to keep her in place. The Luma floated lower to the ground and it took the child a few moments to figure that it must have wanted her to sit down. Sitting on the ground she crossed her legs and placed her hands in between them facing the green object. With more than decent patience for a child her age, she started squirming in place the longer they sat there the more she wanted to just get up and go into the mysterious object. From fiddling with the blanket around her body to messing with the object in her pocket to tapping her fingers against her legs, all of that could only distract her but so much from not focusing on the light. What if everyone was waiting for her on the other side and she was holding them up by waiting here? As soon as that thought entered her mind she got up and tried to make a dash as quick as her little legs could go.

All she could process was the sound of the Luma making a noise behind her and bumping into something the next moment before landing on her bottom. Rubbing her head she looked up to what had caused her to fall and what she saw took her by complete surprise left her speechless.A light blonde haired women with a bang covering one eye wearing a crown in a beautiful blue dress was levitating slightly above the ground and holding a star wand appeared in front of her with a smile. While she never knew everyone in the town, she was certain she would remember a person that could float.  The question 'who are you' was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't bring herself to voice it aloud, It didn’t take much longer for the women above her to speak.

“Hello there little one, It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She kindly greeted the child who still stared at with a confused expression in her eyes and mouth agape in question.

 “You have gone through so much in such a short amount of time. Allow me to heal your mind.” With that said, she lowered the wand to the child's head. It began to glow as all the negative thoughts and memories left.

On one hand it felt as though nothing could hold the child back from embracing any and everything that would come her way. On the other hand it felt as though two important people disappeared and she couldn’t recall who they were or if they ever existed in the first place. The woman removed her wand when she was satisfied with her magic. The girl continued to look on with wide eyes.

“You are going to do so many amazing things and inspire so many in your future.” The woman started to say to the child who looked on with wonder filled eyes.

 “You will meet allies and foes alike. There will be many challenges you’ll have to face but you will get through them with your bravery. I have already seen it.” She assured and moved to the side to reveal the glowing green object once more.

“Go on in, They are waiting for you on the other side. Guide and Protect them. Show them what a respectable and kind leader you can be. Our paths will cross again one day” With that final promise the woman started to vanish before the girl's eyes.

When the figure faded away completely she was once again alone and had so many questions. What did all of it mean? Was everything the women said was true? Who will she meet on the other side? That last question would be answered sooner rather than later as she could finally enter the thing that was pulling her in. While she was mostly ready to take that step, there was a small part of her that was fearful of the unknown. Reaching in her pocket once more she grabbed her pacifier and put it in her mouth to feel that comfort, before taking in a small breath and stepping in. Finding herself flowing aimlessly through this portal, she took in the colors some of which she had never seen before. Despite floating in midair she felt calm and just let the current take her to its predetermined destination. Up ahead she saw another round green object similar to the one in the stoned area, The current around her started to slow down in preparation to enter the pipe again. 

The girl was finally able to stand up and walk on her own two feet the rest of the way. Clutching her hands she took in the environment around her as the exit came closer she placed her hand on the green object to hold her balance as she took a step down. Taking this time to look in front of her she noticed that these rainbowed people dressed in identical clothing and were slightly taller than herself but they had this warm and inviting presence about them that made approaching them much easier so she did. The creatures also approached her but with slightly more caution in their step following the green person who was leading the other two bent down in front of her with a smile. The woman's words of being ‘a kind person’  ringed in the back of her mind. So she did what she thought was the nicest thing and took out her cherished pacifier and stuck it in the creature's mouth who looked on in confusion. Giggling she jumped up wrapping her arms around its shoulders immediately feeling safe and secure as this person also embraced her holding her up.

“Told you that you had a way with kids” came a teasing voice from behind. “Ow what I say?” the yellow person rubbed its arm and stared offendedly at the other person that whacked him moments prior.

“Now’s not the time for jokes, you dummy this is serious.” the red one scolded the other. “Some strange person just came out of the pipe after it's been glowing all day. It could be here to kill us.” It tried to get the other to understand their point of view. “You better take that thing out of your mouth TG, it could be poisonous” he suggested to the green guy. The yellow one scoffed out a ‘really dude c’mon’ under its breath.

“Mmm” TG mouthed before shifting the child's body weight onto one side of its body removing the pacifier and sticking it back into her mouth. “Well it does just seem like an innocent baby, but better safe than sorry. Let’s head to Toadsworth. He could probably tell us what you are. Yes he can” he gave the blonde's belly a tickle drawing out that giggle from earlier. 

“No, don't make friends with it, we aren't sure of its motives yet” The red one tried again with no avail as it began to lead the way back to the others with the other two trailing behind. 

“I like the moon, it's pretty” was the first sentence the child said out loud as she pointed at the object in the sky as they all hiked back.

“Wow you do?” TG engaged with her as she nodded eagerly. “I do too, it's very pretty on nights like these” he agreed with her. Several minutes of this went on where she pointed out things she likes and he would talk with her. At one point even the yellow guy hopped into the conversation much to the annoyance of the red person.

“Hey, what are you?” she asked tapping TG’s shoulder to get his attention.

“What am I? Oh well I’m what's called a Toad. Can you say that? Toad” he mouthed it out loud to her slowly and they both repeated it several times.

“I like Toad, they're nice,” she said, nuzzling her face closer into TGs neck and wrapping her arms around him tighter. Before he could return the compliment the red toad spoke up.

“We’re here guys, let's go.” He knocked on the door three times before a brown spotted Toad with a brown mustache and red bowtie appeared in the doorway. “Something finally came out the pipe that we’ve been keeping an eye on all day. It appears to be a baby of some kind” he added as the three of them were ushered inside.

Toadsworth offered them tea as they all began to gather around the small table. The child continued clutching onto the green toad and only glanced every now and again at the mustached gentleman. The four of them conversed over tea gathering new information from the elder Toad. They first found out its gender which was revealed to them as a female and that she belonged to one of the species called humans, though with there being many galaxies and regions they could reside in, the probability in pinpointing the exact place of origin she was from would be a challenge even a guy as smart as him couldn’t figure out. They also came to the conclusion that based on how she interacted with the environment that she was on par with the toad children starting school. The red toad finally stopped giving the child a look of suspicion and after the third round of tea the host directed the conversation towards the blonde girl reaching for the kettle in the middle of the table.

“Oh how rude of me. Please accept my sincerest apologies my dear.” Toadsworth quickly got out of his seat heading over to the cabinet to grab another cup. “A gentleman must always offer a lady a drink.” He started to pour her a cup of tea before the green toad interrupted 

“I think she might be a little too young for tea or anything with caffeine for that matter, Toadsworth sir.” he said, motioning his head to the child who now had her own seat.

“You are quite right, The youth these days mustn't get used to relying on stuff like this.” Toadsworth chuckled and went over to the fridge to see what refreshments he had in there. “Oh yes I just received a carton of milk from the meadows this morning. Would you like that m’lady?” In response he got an excited round of applause from the child. 

Toadsworth offered to take care of the child for the remainder of the night and start some research in the morning for which planet she could be from and if needed within the next couple of days or weeks put together a group of toads to get this kid back home to her parents. He prepared her for bed first and then went through his nighttime routine which included grabbing a snack for bed, tonight being a fresh bowl of sliced peaches. The girl sat on the bed flipping through a picture book he gave her.

“Well my dear I’m terribly sorry for just now realizing this” He apologized, placing the bowl on the nightstand next to the bed she looked up from the book first to the food and then to him. “My fellow comrades or I failed to ask you your name. So what are you called?” he asked and she stared at him for a few moments before she opened her mouth.

“I want the Peach” she pointed to the bowl that was on the nightstand behind him causing him to reach for the bowl and present it in front of her, smiling when she reached out and grabbed a couple slices.

“Ok now back to important matters.” he cleared his throat into his fist. “What would you like us to call you for the time that you reside with us?” He tried again to get her to focus on what he was asking.

“I like Peach” She said with a smile after finishing the last bite flashing him a toothy smile and he stared at her thoughtfully for a moment.

“Alright I shall call you Lady Peach when you’re in my presence and make sure everyone calls you that as well” He told her and assumed she’d probably have a different answer to the question by tomorrow or the next couple of days.

#Super mario bros. movie #Super Mario #Princess Peach #First fic in forever I'm posting without having it beta read #Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments or tags #Also I'm so ok if you want to leave any form on constructive criticism if you'd so choose. I know there's still things I need to work on lo #I will try to get this posted on both my ao3 and fanfic net for people who like to read there by tomorrow and reblog it with those links #Oh gosh I'm just stalling in the tags now hyping myself up to hit post lmao #Thanks for taking time to read I hope you all enjoy it I had a very nice time writing this

[writebackatya]

Indiquack??

Yeah I think got some left, how many ounces do y-

Oh, right. The fanfic bingo thing. Sure.

Ahhh, my first DuckTales fanfic! I can’t say “No one else was writing this” because I found out after I first published it that there is a weed-related DuckTales fic on fanfiction dot net and one on AO3 written by Kimberlyeab who I think has written some great DuckTales/The Venture Bros. crossover fanfics. I haven’t read either weed stories cause I don’t want to subconsciously copy what they both have done

And honestly, this whole story came from a high conversation between me and one of my sibs who watches DuckTales. It was about the boys discovering Della smoking weed; we agreed they would be chill about it because Dewey would think she’s cool, Louie also wants to smoke weed and wouldn’t mind, and Huey would be like “Oh you must have heard about the legalization of marijuana” and then Della would be like “Weed is legal now? Cool.”But then something in my brain wanted to take that situation seriously and really think how Della would handle that being a mother now with kids. And voila, Ground Control to Della Duck! was born! Pretty soon I had a bunch of other weed related stories forming in my brain

I put a LOT of research into all of these stories. For one, I want everything to be as accurate as possible, both the characters and the weed. I remember reading a weed related story in another fandom which was funny in its own right, but I disliked that when the characters smoked weed they just became a generic stoner rather than themselves but high. Which isn’t exclusive to that story, but it was something I wanted to avoid. To me Indi-Quack! wouldn’t be as funny or as entertaining if the characters weren’t in character

And yeah, I’m stoner. I occasionally smoke weed when I write these stories. But I still do research on weed (mainly use Leafly) to make sure I’m getting the effects and names right. I think Under the Influence of Gandra Dee! was the most I researched weed for

I try to write in a way for the people who don’t smoke weed can understand what the characters are feeling while the people who do smoke weed will be like “Yeah, that’s accurate”

Besides weed stuff, I did do a lot of research for other things for Indi-Quack!. Stuck in the Middle with DEW! made me do a lot of research on the Woodstock concert; which was honestly pretty fun! I looked up the event schedule, Jimi Hendrix’s set that he played, watched a few live recordings of his performance and listened to any audio I could find (VEVO and other record a-holes make finding Woodstock videos of Jimi hard to get), as well as an interview with Jimi Hendrix on his personal experience at Woodstock. I also looked up any crazy stories that might have happened there (Matilda mentions an incident with The Who in that story. Research paid off!)

Also, there are quite a bit of reference to the 87 show throughout it if you wanna count that as research

Speaking of Stuck in the Middle with DEW!, I remember back when I was writing that I was like so afraid of how people would react to Dewey eating not one, but two edibles and then tripping hard. But it turns out, people loved it!

As for the spite, well there might be a little bit of spite in it. The Dewey story was kinda inspired by the fact that the only Timephoon! stories are angsty stuff about Louie. And the final line of that story is, “That’s cool, I got grounded!”

But I do love Louie but the poor kid might have to wait awhile till he finally smokes weed

And don’t tell anyone but slowly but surely pretty soon EVERYONE in this fandom will embrace the Della and Gandra friendship that I totally know would happen if this show had at least three more seasons! Also some shipping stuff would be nice. It’s like Fenro but both are girls and tops

As for fan art, maybe? I don’t know. Shortly after I posted Do the Write Thing! I found fanart of the Three Caballeros smoking and getting caught in Uncle Scrooge’s garage while Donald is holding a notebook marked song ideas. But honestly, it’s probably just a coincidence. That scene didn’t happen in the story and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has thought of those one-hit wonders smoking in the old man’s garage

Anyway I still can’t believe how much love and attention this fic has gotten. Honestly. I never would have guessed it would have brought me where I am in the fandom to this day. Especially since I found out a good chunk of my readers don’t smoke weed!

#thanks for the ask! #fanfiction bingo #chuckleyellow #writebackatya

[karama9]

Responding to Anonymous Reviews

A bit of context: I’m currently writing a Legend of Zelda fanfic where Link is a non Hylian black guy and Zelda is a transgender woman. I knew going in some people wouldn’t like either, but it’s gotten to the point I feel like Link in Tears of the Kingdom, where nobody recognizes him except the bunch that absolutely hates him.

I just posted chapter 4 and I have no comment on AO3, and 4 reviews on fanfiction dot net. Of the four: one (1) is nice, two (2) are hate and one is sort of neutral in a ‘don’t like it so far’ kind of way.

The two hate ones are anonymous, so I thought I’d answer here to get the answers out of my system.

First one: Guest chapter 1 . Nov 12

This is disgusting...

Response:

You posted this in response to the prologue, where all that happens is the characters being introduced and a bit of world building. If you find that disgusting, you're projecting.

Second one : X from Aumsville chapter 1 . 2h ago

And as long as Link refuses to accept he's a male instead of forcing himself to be something he isn't the master sword will forever be cursed knowing Link is messed up in his heart. He is no longer worthy of even breathing in the same space as that sword which knows better.

Response:

(sigh) The fact you didn’t read the story is not surprising, you’re obviously a transphobe. What really elevates this to another level is how you managed to read a very short summary that explicitly states that Link is a person of color and Zelda is transgender, and come out of it thinking this is a story where LINK is transgender. Congrats, not only are you hateful, not only do you devote time to expressing that hate to random strangers, you also can’t read.

More context, and a request:

This story came about because of two things.

One, I found out at some point that white supremacists were trying to use the Triforce as one of their symbols. It got me thinking, and I realized, like many other people, that Nintendo was not doing a great job of representing other races than white coded Hylians in Hyrule. I say this with a lot of love for the franchise, but although things have improved with the two most recent games, both the lack of color and how the other races are treated are notable flaws in the franchise. I wanted to make a story that addressed that with a Hero who was NOT a white Hylian. I made him non Hylian so it would be a significant thing for the in-story characters, I made him black so it would be a significant thing for the readers.

Two, JK Fucking Rowling. I have a loved one who is transgender, which maybe is making me more likely to notice things, but I think unless you’re really not paying attention, it’s pretty obvious that transphobia is on the rise. Several years back, the trend was improving. Things were getting better, people were becoming more accepting, at least in our neck of the woods. Now? Now that a ridiculously famous and rich author has been devoting time, money and energy to making people hate transgender people more and reject their identity? Everyone else who feels the same way feels more empowered to speak out and act out, the feeling is becoming normalized (more so) and things are getting worse again.

I was inspired by a trans female character in Supergirl, who inherits powers that ONLY go to female members of her family, because I loved the idea of the magic, the universe, unequivocally saying that YES, she is a woman. I wanted to do the same for Zelda, so I made her transgender, and she’s a Princess of Destiny.

So, basically, this story came about because I wanted a fix-it fic for Hyrule since I can't fix reality. I’m putting a lot of time and effort in it in the hope that it will eventually catch on and actually circulate enough for people who would get some joy from it to find it.

So far it’s not working.

SO, I have to ask a favor of my followers and mutuals. Please help me spread the word a bit about this story. Getting pretty much only negative feedback is disheartening when you’re trying to do a good thing. Don’t get me wrong. I am personally enjoying writing the story. I like the characters I created, I’m happy with the plot, etc. But unlike some other stories, the idea was never to write this one just for me.

Please reblog this, or when I post a chapter, and help the story get some visibility.

Links to the story:

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51450898/chapters/130021738

fanfiction dot net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14296946/1/All-That-Hurts-Us

#LGBTQIA+ #Transgender Rep #POC Rep #The Legend of Zelda #All That Hurts Us #Writing #transphobia trigger warning in the reviews #JK Rowling trigger warning I mention the hateful woman

[hjellacott]

Unable to participate in AO3 any more

Hi.

Some of you might know me from publishing fanfics in AO3, mostly Cormoran Strike ones. But for the past year or more, I've been mostly unable to put anything up in AO3. In fact, I've removed work from it and I'm seriously considering removing all of my work.

Don't get me wrong, I love AO3 as a platform and a community, there's nothing wrong with them.

Mostly, I think, English is not my native language but I live in London and I do life in English and am completely fluent. I love writing, it's been a passion for over a decade, I've been posting fanfics online for ages. But then you have to put up with people.

The first off putting experience came a few years back when some big fans of my work proudly told me they'd illegally gotten PDFs of my work. They said there were websites that illegally and without permission kept copies of fanfiction as if they wrote it and then you can download it from them, and said it as if I, who have never made a penny for my writing and who uses writing as a means not to kill myself, should be proud of having my work stolen. Back then I wrote in fanfiction net, so I deleted everything there and left the site.

I went to AO3 next and although I've got lovely readers in general who say very nice things, then I've got some readers that take my will to publish away. They take the love for publishing away. I've always said I write daily, just for myself, simply as a mechanism for survival. I don't care who reads or doesn't and my loved ones don't know I write. I have no ego need to have my work seen, complimented and applauded. Not fanfiction anyway. I don't do it for the comments and the kudos (although positive feedback of course feels wonderfully). Notice I say I haven't published in over a year - but I've written every day of my life for well over a decade. I've got hard drives full of completed stories many of which are not published or only a few chapters. If I don't publish is not for lack of material to share.

The thing is, first I began deleting some old material that I no longer wanted to share, because I considered that both my English and my writing skills had improved a lot and that old work no longer represented me. I didn't want the work given away, orphaned, I wanted to keep it mine as one of my children, simply not share it and not have it stolen. Then I got some truly hateful comments from people who considered I was some kind of fanfic thief taking their stories away without permission - I had to remind them the stories are mine and I only share them to help people, but I can take them away as I please.

Then my mental health got a bit fragile by life bullshit as it happens and I wrote what I considered some of my darkest (and best work) only for it to pretty much be ignored. And that made me feel so alone, like nobody could relate to my darkness. Of course it's an unreasonable thought rooted in my own mental health struggles, but I began to feel less keen to share dark things.

I began to notice that people's response to my darker themes sometimes was horrible. I got blamed for others' problems and bad mental health, accused of fucking with them, I got told I made them miserable... of course it all had a deep effect on me, even if I tried not to let it get to me. I said to them, look at the summary, the tags, the category, the fanfic being +18... you're reading under your own responsibility. I won't put in the summary detailed descriptions of every dark thing because it's just a summary and also I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but I use tags and categories like a proper Ravenclaw, so they should be enough guidance to protect yourself if you don't feel you can handle it. Don't blame me.

After that, I wanted to delete more work. Start over. Delete unappreciated work because it makes me feel lonely, heavily criticised work because people don't understand it anyway... each is like a child I'm trying to love and protect, each containing parts of me and my story and past that I want to keep safe and appreciated. Even the comments begging for new chapters felt unnecessary nagging. I felt like a filmmaker who can only sell its most commercial, empty films, while the deep, profound, heavily complex work gets ignored or hated. The fans of the popular, commercial things feel owners of my work, steal it or bs me for not giving more, and when I write truly meaningful things, they're misunderstood and disliked and with them, parts of my soul. It's not about not understanding or appreciating constructive criticism: it's that my work isn't for you, it's for me and about me, it's free, and you should feel privileged to get to see into my very soul like y loved ones don't.

And then one day I didn't want to publish anything any more. Is this happening to anyone else?

#cormoran strike #j. k. rowling #robin ellacott #robert galbraith #jk rowling #fanfic #fanfiction #writer #ao3 #archive of our own 3 #fanfiction net #plagiarism #depression

[daydreaming-of-doctor-who]

Missy x Time Lady!Reader - Girls Day Out

A/N: I originally wrote this back in 2017 when I was taking requests for Doctor Who Reader Inserts on Fanfic Net. However, I had to delete it and posted it on my Deviantart and Ao3. I’ve tried to update some of the grammar in this the best I could since I wrote this back when I was a beginning writer. I do apologize in advance.

Anyway, this is written with a female reader in mind, but it can work either way :) Please don’t repost anywhere else. Thank you.

You had known the Master during childhood back on Gallifrey. He was one of your close friends, along with the Doctor. You had always known he had a crush on you and it just grew more and more during the centuries everytime you would end up running into each other again.

This time when you ran into him again, he ended up regenerating into a Time Lady. It was a bit weird for you because you were so use to him being a male, but you knew it was bound to happen eventually.

You were now walking around the town with her as she was humming a tune happily. She had ended up calling you on your cell (how she got your number, you'll never know) and asked to spend the day with you; a girls day out. She also reminded you to not tell the Doctor as it was a 'Secret girl plan.’

"Oh." Missy called out happily as she walked up to a window with a dress in it. The dress was a gothic lolita styled black dress. "This would be absoultely lovely on you! You'd look like a little doll!"

You walked up to the window, looking at the cute dress. You were trying to imagine how it'd look on you, but couldn't see it. You glanced to your friend with an eyebrow raised in question and disbelief. "You really think so?"

Missy smiled to you, grabbing your hand. "How about I show you? Let's go try it on!" She began pulling you into the store as you had no choice but to follow. She ended up plopping you onto a couch as she went to get the dress.

The banana's Time Lady handed you the dress. You looked to her and the dress, debeating about trying it on. "Come on, now! Go put the pretty dress on." You got up off the couch and she gently pushed you into the changing room. "That's right, there you go now."

You began putting on the dress as it went on with ease. You looked at it, examining it’s style. You took in a deep breath and walked outside to show her.

Missy's eyes went wide, as a soft smile came to her face. She was in awe over how you looked and proud that she was right about the dress. She put her hand on your shoulder as she turned you toward the mirror to see how you looked. It was your turn to be in awe.

The Scottish Time Lady was right, she was absolutely right. You glanced at her with a bright smile as she returned it. "Missy, you're right!"

She put a hand to her hair, pushing it back "Aren't I always?"

You ended up taking her in a hug, which was an unconscious reaction of yours as you noticed what you did and pulled away. She looked surprised by the gesture as you saw passion in her eyes. Every time you looked in her eyes, it was always there, her passion for you.

You cleared your throat, trying to think of something else. "Well I better change out of this."

Missy suddenly grabbed your wrist, stoping you. "No, keep it on. I'll pay for it."

You asked her with surprise. "Are you sure?"

She nodded, giving you a genuine smile. "Yes, anything for my doll."

You gave a shy smile at her words. This day was going to be very interesting.

The both of you ended up stopping at a cafe to sit and talk. People would look at you every now and then because of the way you both were dressed. It made you feel a bit uncomfortable. Missy on the other hand, just sat there drinking tea and ignoring the other people. Her eyes were fixed on you. Another thing that made you feel uncomfortable. It made you feel like the prey.

You cleared your throat again, trying to make conversation. "So, why did you ask to have a girls day out with me?"

Missy put her cup down. "To spend some time with my favorite girl of course! The Doctor hogs you all to himself, it's not fair!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! We really should make a deal of who gets custody of you during what times of the year."

You shook your head at her, smiling in amusement. "You can't be serious?"

"Oh, but I am." Missy looked to you with the same passion in her eyes. This time, you couldn't help but stare back. She always had this way of catching hold of you, like something was pulling you towards her. And no, it was not her hypnotising you, she never seemed to do that with you.

You couldn't explain what it was, but you enjoyed being around her. Even if she did evil things that weren't right. You looked away from her gaze as you drank from your cup of tea.

Missy's eyes never broke from you as she stared at you with amusement. You had always fascinated her since you were time tots. Whether it was your personality or the way you dressed, you always had her attention. Now that she was a Time Lady, she was hoping she could get your attention even more.

You finally spoke up, breaking her from her thoughts. "We should do this more often though. It's nice to have another female around."

Missy nodded in agreement, giving you a bright smile. "Yes. Now, let's make a list of the times I get to have you to myself and the times the Doctor gets to have you. Then we can go get our nails done."

"Oh, really? I've always wanted to paint your's and the Doctor's nails, but you both wouldn't let me!" You pouted.

"Well now you can paint my nails all you want!" Missy held out her hand, grinning in victory.

#the master x reader #missy x reader #gomez!master #doctor who reader insert #doctor who imagines #Queue of Daydreams

[tswaney17]

Ice Skating

So, I was going to attempt to do the Elriel 25 Days of Solstice, but life is just chaotic right now. And seeing how this is already three days late... 🙈 I may try and pick some random prompts to do and sporadically post them throughout the month, but I can’t guarantee them, nor them being posted on the right date. It’s been hell these last few months and it’s not slowing down. Anyways, please enjoy these totally cheesy, fluffy ice skating fic that I wrote in like two days, barely edited, and I don’t really like but I’m posting anyways. 💙

My fanfic account: @tswaney17fics​​​

My ao3 account: tswaney17

Please let me know what you think about this update. I love getting your feedback. Constructive criticism is always welcome. 💕

Trigger warnings: brief language and mild NSFW thoughts. 

Word Count: 1,262

Azriel was sitting on one of the benches next to the ice rink, watching his best friend fly across the ice, brown hair a torrent behind her. Beside him sat a pair of unused skates, purchased by her in a feeble attempt to get him on that godforsaken frozen pond.

He was good at many things, playing the piano, tearing up the lacrosse field, or breaking down the most complicated trigonometry problem. But standing on two thin blades on slippery ice—nope. He just couldn’t do it.

Elain came sliding to a stop in front of him, stepping outside of the rink. Her face was positively glowing, smile radiant.

Gods, he had loved her for years. And he was such a chicken shit for being so damn afraid to tell her.

“Are you just going to sit here like a bum all night?” she asked, cheeks pink from both the cold and her exertion.

He raised an amused brow at her. “You’re well aware of my lack of coordination on those razor blades you call skates.”

She snorted in the most adorable way. “You have all coordination and talent in the world, but put you in a pair of skates and you’re just a dandelion in the wind.” Elain stepped forward, putting on her best attempt at a sad face.

Az tensed. “No, El. Don’t you dare,” he started, holding his hands up. He was a sucker to that face; it could get him to bend to her will as easily as breathing.

“Come on!” she whined. “Why did you even agree to come if you weren’t planning on skating.”

Azriel leaned back on his palms. “Because you’re my best friend and I enjoy watching you have fun.” And because he couldn’t say no to her—not really.

“It’d be much more fun out there if you’d just get up off your ass,” she teased. “I promise to hold your hand the whole time.”

He smirked. “That’s more of a danger to you than a safety net for me.”

Elain laughed, eyes sparkling.

Fuck, she was stunning. He really needed to get a grip on his emotions, lest he do something stupid. Like, kiss her.

Mischief danced in those gorgeous golden-brown eyes. “I think I can handle it. Please come skate with me?” Again, those damn puppy-dog eyes as she reached forward and took his scarred hand—such a contrast to her perfect ones, dusted with calluses from her hours spent gardening. She really was using everything in her arsenal tonight.

“I just ate a package of M&M’s. I need to wait an hour before getting in.”

“The water is frozen your sarcastic butt. And it’s an ice rink, not a swimming pool.”

He groaned knowing his will was slipping. “Fine! But if I break an ankle, you’re going to be my personal nurse until I can walk again,” he stated, taking a swig of his hot chocolate.

“Deal, but only if I can wear one of those sexy little nurse outfits.”

Azriel choked, staring at her wide-eyed. Did she just… Was she flirting with him? His cheeks turned a light shade of pink. Fuck, now he was picturing it. Elain in a slinky little nurse costume, her hourglass figure on full display. A short skirt stopping at the top of her perfect thighs—her fucking gorgeous, round ass. He tried to shift subtly in his seat, praying he didn’t pop a boner here and now.

Clearing her throat, she stepped back, leaning back to rest her elbows on the little wall around the rink.

He wiped the hot chocolate from his mouth, tossing the cup in the trash. Giving her a once over—because he was a glutton for punishment—he murmured, “You’d look good in it,” before he shucked off his boots and pulled on the pair of skates.

Glancing back up, he caught Elain staring at him, cheeks flushed with color. “What?”

She blinked, shaking her head. “Nothing.” Holding out her hand to him, Elain hauled him up onto unsteady feet. Azriel wobbled dangerously, but she situated herself under his shoulder, wrapping her arm around his waist.

Getting him onto the ice was a feat in itself.

Elain was desperately trying not to laugh, but her shaking form pressed into his side told him everything.

“Laughing at me isn’t helping,” he muttered as they glided on the ice.

She chortled, covering her mouth with a hand. “I’m sorry! You just remind me of newborn fawn right now.”

He glared down at her. “That’s it, I’m done. I am not going to stand here and take your teasing,” he said dramatically. Twisting to glide back towards the edge of the rink, his foot slipped and they went down onto the ice.

Elain yelped as he took her with him, but Azriel reacted, cradling her to his chest and taking the brunt of the fall flat on his back.

He grunted upon impact, head thumping frozen ground and leaving him dazed.

“Azriel!” she called, though it sounded fuzzy—like he was underwater. “Shit, Azriel, are you alright?”

A chilled hand pressed to his cheek forcing his eyes to blink open. Twinkling lights gilded Elain’s unbounded hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn. She reminded him of an angel coming down from the heavens above and for a split second, he wondered if he was dying. Snowflakes dusted her hair.

His eyes refocused on hers, golden hues glittering in her brown irises. Without so much as a second thought, he slid his fingers into tresses, feeling the soft, silky strands slip over his skin.

Elain’s breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t move, let him touch her how he wanted to.

And then he tilted her head up, and brought her lips down to his, kissing her so softly, so magically, Azriel was sure this was some dream he cooked up in his imagination. Her lips were soft and warm against his.

But Elain was responded eagerly, giving it back to him with just as much intent. She slid her knee down his hip into the ice to get more leverage to kiss him properly, sighing into his mouth. Her nails dug into his chest and shoulders, and when she pulled away, she was grinning. “Finally,” she breathed

Azriel stared up at her. “Finally?” he spluttered.

Elain laughed softly, shaking her head, her hair a curtain around them. “I’ve only been waiting for years for you to finally make a move. You are so oblivious, Azriel, I swear to the Mother. I’ve been sending you signals for years, hoping that one day you’d see it and actually do something about it. The constant touching, me baking for you, cuddling while watching movies.”

He stared at her dumbfounded. “I thought you were just comfortable around me…”

She rolled her eyes in utter exasperation. “I was more than comfortable around you, Az.” Then they were kissing again. Kissing like they were dependent on each other’s oxygen, ignoring the huffs of other skaters having to go around them on the ice.

He wasn’t sure how long they were on the ground for, but it was long enough for one of the rink employees to skate over to them and ask them if they were okay and to leave the arena if they weren’t going to keep it PG.

Scrambling off the ice like a pair of giggling teenagers, they returned their ice skates in favor of making out back at Azriel’s apartment, on the comforts of his couch and between his sheets.

#elriel #ice skating #elriel 25 days of solstice #using that tag so they're at least all collected together #elain #elain archeron #azriel #azriel shadowsinger #pro elriel #elain x az #elain x azriel #azriel x elain #tswaney17 #tswaney17fics #Tay writes #elriel fluff #elriel fic #elriel fanfic #elriel fanfiction #prythians prettiest couple #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #elriel holiday collection #my writing

[wildflowertips]

Hi! I was curious if you had anymore Kuroko fic recommendations? Thank you! 🥺💗

hey! 🥺 i do have more kuroko fanfic recs. i didnt know what type of kuroko ship you wanted, so here are a few from some kuroko ships <3:

Kagakuro Recommendations

the flower that blooms in adversity by aotetsu

When Kagami falls for Kuroko Tetsuya, a famous prostitute from the red light district, he manages to find a whole lot of trouble and a person worth it all.

this fic deserves more love and attention. kagami love for kuroko absolutely made me sob

Brothers in Woo by buttwade

in which Himuro jokingly offers to help Kagami win Kuroko over and the joke's on him

kagami is drunk & himuro cracks jokes. this fic is funny. jealous!kuroko

Beastly call by TCon

"You mean," Kuroko started. "You'd be my Heat Partner?" He didn't expect Kagami to explode into a myriad of different shades of red more impressive than his own hair. "Y — yeah tha's what I'm sayin'!" for some reasons he lapsed into english with an odd accent. KagaKuro Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics & Sex Pistols AU - Fusion

Lots of smut in the beginning. there’s crime, suspense, and i read this fic like 5 times.

Stamina Training by tnsxbunny

As the weakest member in the team, Kuroko stays back after basketball practice to train on his stamina. Kagami watches from afar and decides to show Kuroko what real stamina training is.

SMUT. SUCH GOOD SMUT. thank u

The advantage of being Kuroko by heartfilledteddybear

mayuzumi hits on Kuroko & Kagami gets jealous 🥵

Akakuro Recommendations

Forget me not flowers in our hair by miniaturepsycho

When Kagami is captured by a beast Kuroko doesn't think twice and bargains to take the red head's position instead but it seems that there is more to this castle than meets the eye, and what has it have to do with forget me not's?? Basically a beauty and the beast AU that I decided to do after seeing the live action (which I totally did not cry at, not at all!!) COMPLETE

Contains Aokaga. Akashi as beast & kuroko as belle. So good 🥺

All I ask by TsuruKuni

"It's none of your business." "Tell me, Aomine. How can it be none of my business when you're throwing away the only person I've ever wanted?"

THIS FIC MADE ME SOB AT 3 AM. I highly recommend listening to ‘All I ask’ by Adele. I promise you will cry. Aokuro & Akakuro.

Bridezilla by DancingMarshmallows

Weddings are stressful... try helping people plan them. With two months to get everything together, a bridezilla and her bitch of a maid of honor, and finding love at the worst time, Kuroko would be lucky if he makes it out alive.

CEO!Akashi & WEDDING PLANNER!kuroko. you will not regret reading this one.

That Ridiculously Long Dance by Harmonia_Silverberg

Aomine, Kise, and Kagami never learn, do they? But apparently their "joke" works in Akashi and Kuroko's favor this time.

literally one of my all time favorite akakuro fanfic

What Would Chihiro Do by anewtinystory

Akashi is dating Kuroko, whose two brothers are very protective of him.[Based on a Tumblr anon's prompt: Nijimura and Mayuzumi are Kuroko's brothers; while Nijimura approves of Akashi, Mayuzumi feels the opposite]

slight smut. protective bros. i love it sm.

Aokuro Recommendations

Traded Mistakes by Acetate, Chrystie, exuberant_imperfection, kate882, luckypen

For the prompt: Aomine having an accident and losing his memory so all he remembers is being best friends with Tetsu and he doesn’t understand how that could stop.

Angst, oh the angst 😫😭.

Third time’s a charm (or maybe fourth) by LajtHane

Aomine really didn't mean to crash into him at Quidditch practice.

HOGWARTS AU. if that doesn’t temp you, idk what will. My fav Aokuro fic.

Maybe a touch of your hand by skinandbones

[Written for AoKuroWeek 2015]: Aomine moves into a new apartment and befriends a ghost boy.

no bc this fic made me cry too. pls read it 🎶ifwehad5moreminutes🎶

The Boyfriend Jersey by exuberant_imperfection, kate882

Kuroko, in a half-asleep mistake, ends up wearing Aomine's jersey to school.

THIS FIC IS CUTE SUCH DORKS

Hey, Come Here Often? by imabignerd

In which Momoi holds his magazines hostage, Aomine hates everything and everyone, and Kuroko is politely bewildered.

Aomine crushes on the lifeguard!Kuroko & Momoi is a little shit about it 😌🤍

Midokuro Recommendations

It’s Always your Fault! by warsandwich

Kuroko and Midorima are secretly dating, but Takao finds out their secret. De-anon from the anon meme.

Short, sweet, & funny 😌.

Partnership by Fayah

Their partnership starts in English class, but like everything else in their lives, turns into a matter of basketball.

Midorima really cares for Kuroko 🥺

Midokuro Ficlet by pandacchii

based off of imagineyourotp blog post: "Imagine your otp confessing while they were half asleep" Pairing: Midorima/Kuroko

short story but it’s really cute ☺️

An Unexpected Alignment by cinnaelle

Midorima Shintarou does not expect such a reoccurring encounter. But the wheels of fate are turning and Akashi moves his shogi piece.

well-written i love it sm. deserves more praise

The Way You Come Undone by oshare_banchou

"Midorima Shintarou is completely silent during sex. And Kuroko, who is both fascinated and frustrated by this discovery, wonders just how much it would take to make him come undone." - Kuroko/Midorima, in that order

do i need to say more? 😫

Kikuro Recommendations

Careless Whisper by DarkWoods

When Kuroko is dared to come up with some dirty talk, no one expects him to be good at it. Certainly not Kise.

my favorite kikuro fanfic. flustered!kise & tease!kuroko

如果的事 (If) by stormterror

People fall in love in many different manners. Love feels like many different things to many people, but Kise Ryouta thinks there's nothing that quite beats the feeling of being in love with Kuroko Tetsuya. [kise/kuroko]

SO GOOD I CRIED I SMILED SO HARD. pls kikuro deserves the world

Wires, Connecting by Bakagami

It's like being blind but not, like touching air, grasping at straws, voices dissipating and reverberating.

This story is locked so you need to login into ao3 to read it. PHONE SEX & DIRTY TALK 🥵

He Promised by imabignerd

Kise promised he'd smile for Kuroko the whole way through, all the way to the end.

Zombie apocalypse AU. Death. sobbing violently.

It’s a Small World by SilentSilhouette

Kise tries to find his soulmate through social media. Soulmate AU where a picture of your soulmate is tweeted to you on your sixteenth birthday.

This one made me crackle & laugh😂😂

Murakuro Recommendations

No Such Thing as Too Much Vanilla by plumtrees

Kuroko and Murasakibara have baking days. What do you mean it isn't canon?

baking!boyfriends & fluff 😌😉

Vanilla Cream by yoimrei

Murasakibara eats Kurokos ass after something Ahomine says which sparks his jealousy.

here me out first, the ass eating in this is *chef’s kiss* 🤌🏽🤌🏽

Philia by DarkWoods

That time Murasakibara and Kuroko started kinda-sorta fake dating, and kinda-sorta never bothered to break up.

Still going & i love this writer sm. i read all their stories 😙✌🏽

Lavender Secrets by SailorHikarinoMu

Kuroko was the one to bring out his true love for basketball, which had been hidden from prying eyes since the beginning. It was one of those things he was unsure whether he should feel grateful for, but all the same, it did mean something. What this 'something' was, exactly? Murasakibara did not know. Not yet.

FLUFF AAA FLUFF

Rainy by overdose

Kuroko listened to the rain pouring, and more importantly, Murasakibara's steady breathing.

smut. couch sex. size difference. 🥴

BONUS

Hanamiya Makoto/Kuroko Tetsuya

Scotomas by Darkenedcrystal

After the game against Jabberwock, Kagami goes overseas and Kuroko finds himself without a light. A slightly angsty, rather light-hearted story about what happens to Kuroko after Kagami leaves. Features teens finding their way around life, Seirin without a light, the Generation of Miracles being a family, the teens finding love and appreciating the heartbreaks. Kuroko tries to find his own style without a light, and stumbles into the darkness that is Hanamiya Makoto instead. Extra chapter added!

love this fic so much. downside: akashi is kinda a dick

Of Unlikely Friendships, Sneaky Bets, Shogi and Sake by itsthechocopuff

Imayoshi had introduced his two favourite kouhai to each other as an experiment. He did not predict they'd get along so well, both being shadows, but they did, and they worked, oddly enough. Hanamiya brought out the worst in Kuroko, while Kuroko brought out the the best in the other; and they both caused heartattacks to unsuspecting teammates who could not believe their darling shadow was not as innocent as he seemed.

you wont regret reading this one omg

Haizaki Shougo/Kuroko Tetsuya

A Taste That Lingers by therealmoyashi

I couldn't say anything, and that was alright because he didn't want an answer. I'll never forget the way that tasted. Yeah, I thought, he ruined me.

i cried reading this for the first time. out of character kuroko

By the Tomatoes by Wayfarer_Rye

It starts with a blue-grey t-shirt that says "Nothing but Net".

Haizaki wants to try again.

#i am sorry i went overboard #knb fanfic #fic recs #kuroko no basket #kuroko tetsuya #kuroko’s basketball #kuroko no basquet #kagakuro #kagami taiga #kagami x kuroko #kuroko x kagami #aokuro #aomine daiki #aomine x kuroko #kikuro #kise ryouta #kise x kuroko #akashi seijuro #akakuro #akashi x kuroko #midokuro #murakuro #midorima shintarou #murasakibara atsushi #haizaki shougo #hanamiya makoto

[sweeethinny]

Come and sit a while with me

It's been a year since I started all of this, that I wrote a fanfic to celebrate Ginny's birthday, and here I am, posting once again, keeping the tradition <3

This story will deal with grief, suicidal thoughts, but it has a happy ending, I swear

Happy birthday, Ginny.

AO3 | FF. NET | SIYE

----------

It was a normal afternoon at the Potters' house, Ginny wasn't working today and the kids were on vacation, James had gone out with friends, Lily was at the pool with her friends, and she and Albus were enjoying their free time before they had to get ready to go out to dinner and celebrate Ginny's birthday, so they lay on the sofa in the living room, both of them with moisturizing masks on their faces and hair, and the TV on.

The perfect day for her, if she was sincere.

"Mom," Albus muttered, looking at her curiously. "When did you know you loved dad?"

''I always loved your dad.''

''No… when did you know you really love him?'' Albus looked at her, his hair in a bun and his green eyes staring at her in the same way he had since he was born, as if he wanted to know the whole truth, and not half lies. "I mean, when did you look at him and realize he wasn't just another one?"

''Let me see…'' Ginny changed the channel when the movie ended, trying not to smile at the memory. ''I guess I never thought he was just another one, but there was a specific day when I was sure he was the one I wanted to marry…''

August 11, 1998

Ginny loved birthdays, it was simply her favorite date, along with Christmas.

How could anyone not be happy on the day that was entirely and unique to them? Everything revolved around her: the cake, the celebration, the attention, everything. It was her day, the day that Ginny didn't share with anyone, and even though she sometimes felt a bit of a bitch about it, she was glad none of her brothers were born on the same day as her..

She didn't want to have to share this too.

But today wasn't that happy day. Today wasn't sunny and as much as Molly had become more involved in her garden, Ginny's favorite flowers hadn't bloomed in time, as if they knew she was in mourning.

It was the first time that someone would be missing at the party.

Even Charlie called her over the Floo so everyone could sing together and celebrate, but today, it would be eight Weasleys for the first time, not nine. And Ginny didn't know how to deal with that, with that pain that seemed to consume her in every way, and that made her close the bedroom curtains and hide under the covers because she was exhausted.

Exhausted from fighting. Of having to be strong. Not being able to afford the privilege of just crying and admitting it hurt. It hurt a lot. At times it seemed almost impossible to bear. Ginny wanted for the first time in a long while, someone to take over things for her, letting her sleep and cry freely, without judgment, without trying to fix what was broken.

She didn't want a solution.

But she couldn't do that, Molly was doing her best to make this date happy, so that Ginny would realize that there was reason to celebrate, that Fred wouldn't want her to spend all day in her room. She also thought this was unfair, because Fred didn't have to bury one of them, Fred didn't have to go through grief, he never faced that pain, so what would he know?

Ginny knew. She knew what it was like to want to die every day since he died, she was the one who felt this agonizing loneliness that seemed to get bigger every day, she was the one who lay in bed at night and thought she could go crazy at any time because it hurt so much and it was so exhausting.

"May I come in?" A knock on her door made her jump as she tried to hide her dark circles with some of the makeup she had on, and his voice made her curse herself for still being in her pajamas.

''Yes.'' She tried to hide her nervousness because things were still a little awkward between her and Harry, even though she had kissed him a few days after the war ended, on the sofa in the living room in the middle of the night, when her room looked very cold and lonely, and Harry looked so cute wearing plaid pajamas and with his hair cut.

He clearly blamed himself for Fred's death, and Ginny still hadn't gotten over all the latest events: the Carrows' tortures, the war, the deaths, Fred…

Ginny had certain doubts, even though she didn't like to think about it, that they would last.

Maybe they were that couple that everyone looks at and says 'what if life had been different with these two?', figuring they could be something more if there hadn't been so much destruction in their midst.

"Happy birthday." Harry still looked tired, he hadn't regained his weight, but he was already showing signs of improvement, which was good. Ginny was happy to see him look good.

He was wearing the outfit she helped him buy for his birthday when they, Ron and Mione went for a walk in Muggle London. A light blue T-shirt, dark jeans, and black sneakers. A simple outfit, no big deal, but one that seemed to make him look even more handsome, if that was even possible.

The woman who would marry him would be very lucky, Ginny thought.

''Brought it for you.'' She hadn't even noticed that he had his hands behind his back, looking nervous as he showed her a bouquet of honeysuckle, tied with a red satin bow, and a cream-colored card pinned there with his name signed. "I know they're your favorites, and I thought you'd like it." He smiled awkwardly. "I noticed yours didn't bloom this year, and I thought you might want to continue the tradition."

"You didn't have to worry about that." Ginny had to swallow hard to keep from crying in front of him, even though there wasn't a reason to.

"Of course I did, it's your birthday, I want to see you happy." Harry shrugged, his cheeks flushing as if he'd been out in the sun for hours on end. He was so cute, Ginny wished she didn't like him so much, because that way, when their imminent separation came, it wouldn't hurt so much. ''How is your day? I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I think your mom made your favorite cake.''

"It's okay, as far as possible," she shrugged. "Mom is trying to keep me away from the kitchen and all the preparation, so I decided to stay in the bedroom."

''Are you going to be here until party time?'' She thought Harry would start the same speech Hermione gave her when she said she was going to do it, which was the same as Bill and his father: Fred wouldn't like it. Besides, you need to celebrate that you're alive, enjoy life…

Ginny was ready to fight with him, just as she had with the three of them.

"Is there a problem?" Ginny crossed her arms, careful not to crush the flowers.

Harry was bigger than her, but that wouldn't stop her from kicking him out if necessary.

''No. Want company?" Harry looked sincere though. "We can assemble that puzzle you bought, remember?"

''Do you want to stay here? Assembling a puzzle?' Ginny followed Harry as he walked around her room as if the surroundings had been familiar to him for years already, looking for the box on her shelves, which was a total mess of old books, photos and other stuff.

"Of course, it's your day, we'll do whatever you want, ma'am."

August 11, 2021

''How did you know you loved him? Because he wants to assemble a puzzle with you?" Albus asked, no longer paying attention to the TV.

''No and yes. See, unlike everyone else that day, your dad respected my grief. He didn't try to make me go outside, see the bright side of things, nothing. He just stayed there with me, accepting that on that day, I wanted to stay inside my room, putting together a puzzle… He paid attention to the flowers I liked, in the cake." Ginny smiled. "That dawn, after everyone else went to sleep, I finally managed to cry, and son, it's a pain I can't put into words." She swallowed, not wanting to get emotional. ''Over time it gets a little easier, but that year, it was a pain that seemed to tear my chest apart. And do you know what your dad did? He sat with me, hugged me, and listened to me cry for an hour, not saying anything, just standing there by my side.''

The memory was no longer as painful as it had been, and Ginny allowed herself to smile as the image of Harry lying beside her on the bed, his arms around her waist, came back to her mind.

"He never tried to save me, he just stayed there with me, helping me when I needed it, and that was the most important thing."

"He saved you in the chamber," Albus remembered, a mischievous smile on his lips that reminded her of Fred when he was younger. Ginny didn't even know it was possible, but it was always the image that came to her mind when she saw Albus smile like that.

"It was a different situation." She shrugged.

"Did you doubt you would marry him after that day?"

"Never again." And it was true. ''Since that morning, when I woke up and he was still sleeping with me after I cried and sobbed things I don't even remember anymore, I knew he was the one I would marry.'' Ginny touched the ring that was already on her finger for over twenty years now, still smiling like a fool as she remembers the marriage proposal and the marriage itself.

"And why weren't you sure you'd be with him before that?"

''It's not that I wasn't sure, it's just that when you go through something really bad, everything around you seems to fall apart together, it's like nothing else has a solution and you are bound to fail whatever you try. It's a horrible feeling, I hope you never feel that.'' Ginny shifted on the couch to give him a closer look. ''Why this now?''

"Just curiosity." Albus smiled, his cheeks a little flushed. "Happy birthday again, Mom, I love you so much." He kissed her forehead, as she usually did.

''I love you too, my love.''

#hinny #harry x ginny #ginny weasley #harry potter next generation #next gen harry potter #albus severus potter #albus is a cute boy <3 #my fic #happy birthday ginny #harry and ginny

[autumnslance]

About Plagiarism

I left a long, planned essay on Twitter tonight. I will copy the meat of it here for y’all, as recently a friend was copied (a rarer ship in the fandom, so very noticeable by the writer and their regular beta reader) and it seems we need a Talk, kids. Links and screenshots and my rambling underway.

------

Apparently we need to discuss what is and isn’t plagiarism. Especially in FanFic where we're interacting with the same characters, settings, ideas. Let’s start with the dictionary and continue the thread from there (I like the word origin/history personally):

Definition of plagiarize

transitive verb  : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source

intransitive verb : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

The Kidnapping Roots of Plagiarize

If schools wish to impress upon their students how serious an offense plagiarism is, they might start with an explanation of the word’s history. Plagiarize (and plagiarism) comes from the Latin plagiarius “kidnapper.” This word, derived from the Latin plaga (“a net used by hunters to catch game”), extended its meaning in Latin to include a person who stole the words, rather than the children, of another. When plagiarius first entered English in the form plagiary, it kept its original reference to kidnapping, a sense that is now quite obsolete.

“Ideas” is fuzzy in the Merriam-Webster definition. There are story archetypes that exist in many forms. Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth/Hero's Journey outlines many famous stories. And it's popular to say that “Avatar” is “Dances with Wolves” is “Pocahontas” is “The Last Samurai” etc.

But note how while those films have similar plotlines--”Military Guy falls for Native woman, learns to appreciate her Culture, stands up to Evil Bosses”--none of them execute those ideas in the same way. Sully’s story is different from Dunbar’s not just cuz one’s a Science Fiction epic and the other a Western. Disney's “Pocahontas” Very Loosely takes history and uses the same story beats. The Last Samurai uses the Meiji era Westernization. Same ideas, different executions, even beyond settings.

None of these are plagiarizing each other though the ideas are similar. They’re told in their own ways, own language; both in the genres they belong to (Western, Pseudo-History, SciFi, Animated) and how characters interact with each other and settings. Original dialogues (variable quality).

We also see this in books as similar novel plots get published in waves so we end up with bunches of post-apocalypse teen revolutionaries or various vampires or lots of young wizard stories all at once. Sometimes ideas just happen like this; multiple discovery, simultaneous invention, concurrent inspiration, cognitive emergence are all phrases I’ve seen for it. So it happens in original content as well, and legality gets fuzzy (Also why you don't send authors your fanfic ideas).

In existing properties, this gets trickier but even “Elementary”’s Holmes and Watson are nothing like the BBC’s “Sherlock” characters. Who are nothing like other versions of the Detective and his Doctor pal over the decades in various media properties.

FanFic's in a similar position where like Sherlock Holmes we play with the same characters, setting, and storyarcs but give our own spin to them. People can and will have similar ideas about plots. Trick is to use your own words. Take the characters and make the story your own.

I have a good example courtesy of @raelly-writing​. We both ship Wolcred. We both wrote soft post-Paglth’an scenes with Thancred and our WoLs. Both features the couples helping each other undress, examining injuries, bathing, bantering. My fic was written soon after 5.5 part 1 came out. Dara’s is much more recent. Yet at no point reading hers did I feel she was copying my words. The PoVs differ. Our characters focus on different things. Mine has a mini-arc concerning the Nutkin.

The links for comparison’s sake (and maybe leave kudos/comments if so inclined please and thanks). Note while the scenes are very similar no phrases are written in the same way. Mine: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25417882/chapters/76059467 Dara’s: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26067565/chapters/81832915

Dara and I both hang out in certain Discords and I know conversations about Thancred and WoL caring for each other post-battle has come up in those channels and we've both participated. It’s a stock FanFic scene to boot. Cuz it's soft and feels warm and snuggly.

I HAVE been copied before, back in WoW. My case is pretty clear cut so here are the images of my old RP Haven profile (1st, old RP website) and the plagiarist’s RSP (2nd, an in game mod to share descriptions and basic info). 

This was a decade ago on Shadow Council and I think the character deleted so any Availa’s in WoW now aren’t the same person. I left the names to point out what changed. Just the names and a word or 2 to make sense for the class changes as well. Otherwise lifted directly from my RP profile.

The funny part is how the person got caught. Literally walked into our weekly RP Guild meeting that I was running and asked to join. Folks noticed right away the similar backstory; after all there may have been more Outland-born Azerothians. My initial excitement at a character I could weave into our story turned to gut-twisting rage and grief as I recognized my own exact words though. Words I’d carefully crafted and constantly iterated on to improve over time (before and after this incident, until the site died).

When caught they tried to claim their significant other had leveled the character for them and made up the backstory based on Skyrim. If you know WoW’s Outland story and Skyrim’s plot you know how ridiculous that is. Also tried to lie about other drama I knew about thanks to roommate's characters but hey. I had to be blunt that I’d shared the info with Haven mods and other guild officers Alliance and Horde. That we would not “laugh about this” one day though lucky this was “just” RP not original or academic work. Cuz if it'd been monetized or academic I would've raked them through the coals.

I felt violated. Hurt. Had anxiety attacks. They took MY WORDS and tried to claim them as theirs. Have another character born in Outland trained by Draenei; Awesome! Our characters have an instant connect in similarities and differences of that experience. Don’t steal my characters wholesale!

Then the audacity of trying to come into my guild as if no one would notice. ShC wasn’t a large server by then, still active but not nearly Wyrmrest Accord or Moon Guard big. My character was well known due to my writing and RP. Speaking of how easy it is to get caught in specific spaces...A case of a self-published novelist getting noticed for plagiarizing fanfic was discovered recently (explicit erotica examples through the thread).

One way they got noticed was how much content they put out in only a year, lifted from fandom. The examples in Kokom’s threads show how the material was altered but still recognizable. In some cases, just the names are changed as in my experience. In other passages more has changed but you can still see the bones of the original fic poking through in the descriptions and character interactions, even with adjustments made.

Similar ideas happen. Similar plots exist. Same 'ships with friends are fun! In FanFic we’re working with the same material. It’s possible to write a similar scene differently. To make that scene and characters your own. All we’re asking is not to copy others' words. Others' characters. Others' specific phrases and descriptions used to bring those words, those characters, to life. Use your own. In the end you’ll be happier.

I get wanting to have what the perceived “popular people” have. I get seeing concepts others succeed with and wanting some of that too. We all get a bit jealous now and then for various reasons. Sometimes we don't even realize it, consciously. But do it in your own way. Maybe check to see if you’re getting a bit too close to the “inspiration” you admired, maybe reread often. Don’t hurt your fellow creatives. If you do and get caught don’t try to double down. Have the grace to be abashed at least and work to do better. Eventually you WILL get caught. All it takes is once to throw all else you've done into question. Ao3 doesn’t take kindly to plagiarists. Nor do a lot of fan communities focused on writing and RP. Getting back that trust is hard. The internet doesn’t forget easily, for good or ill.

#writing #blogging #about me #social media #plagiarism #fanfiction #Ao3

[sparxwrites]

@manoessay​ replied to your post:

This post activated my brain harder than most so even though you arent gonna make a fanfic i will add, Dream testing how many times you can bring a person back on quackity once he gets out.

(i absolutely fully got possessed by this idea, and then wrote this self-indulgent and weirdly experimental fic feverishly at like 1am last night. this is... probably not what you were imagining, but it’s what fell out of my brain, so! enjoy? written to “innocence” by madeon.)

cw moderately graphic torture / gore, mental breakdown, mind games, temporary character death

[ao3]

-

“How many times have you died now, Quackity?”

The words flash hot through his skull, but don’t translate into meaning. Don’t translate into anything other than noise. The floor is cold beneath his palms. Russet-brown flakes up beneath his nails when he claws at it, chest heaving, lungs trying to remember how breathing works.

His first inhale gurgles, wetly, makes him jerk on his belly like a worm on a hook. His throat is raw from disuse, from screaming, from the sword that had sliced through his trachea like a knife through so much butter. When he tries to speak, the only thing that comes out is blood.

It goes like this, every time Dream drags him back from Limbo: his ears full of a high ringing, his lungs not working, his body numb. The link between flesh and brain is faulty, sparking wrong – like the battered neurons take a few precious minutes of life to rewire back together fully. It fixes itself a little less each time, the link; he’s permanently numb down most of his left side, now. The fingers on his right hand are going insensate in terrifying inches.

“How many times?”

Crooked mask, ragged voice, cracked porcelain smile. Dream looks better than Quackity feels, but not much – crouched low on a stone floor that’s caked in layer after layer of old blood, watching Quackity like a bug under a magnifying glass. His hair’s a greasy mess, his mask dirty-white and chipped, his clothes spattered with weeks of gore. With Quackity’s gore.

There’s blood dripping out from beneath the mask, though, fresh and hot. His hands shake. The knuckles clenched around the hilt of his sword are white, the skin beneath his fingernails faintly purple-blue.

The eyes behind the mask are just a little too green.

“Can you even hear me?” There’s a giddy slur to the edge of Dream’s words, the manic lilt of a man high off the same shit that’s melting his brain out through his nose. That feeling was familiar to Quackity, in another life. “Quackity. Hey, Quackity. Anyone in there?” He laughs, short and cruel and batshit crazy. His eyes are the colour of battery acid. “Have I finally broken you?”

There’s no response – because Quackity’s still trying to remember how his lungs work, remember what ribs are, remember how to do things that aren’t screaming and curling in on himself and rocking – and the amusement in his voice turns angry, sour. “I said tell me how many times, Quackity.”

Dream stands, unsteady, swaying as he does and leaning heavily on the sword for balance. His hands are still shaking. The blood’s stopped dripping, but there’s a sickly tinge to it, and when he wipes at his chin with the back of one hand it leaves a smear that’s more brown than red.

There’s a flicker of something, as his knuckles touch the half-inch of exposed face – dirty white light, bridging the gap between skin in a static-shock flash. There and then gone, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.

The eyes behind the mask glow a little brighter. A little greener. A little less human.

The point of Dream’s sword sinks into Quackity’s shoulder, splits open an old scar. Quackity’s covered in them, now, more scar than skin. More ruined than not. He spasms, chokes, bleeds wet and red and fresh over the dried blood that carpets the floor. The noise he makes is animal, leg-in-a-bear-trap high and thin and dying. Barely alive five minutes, and he’s bleeding out again already. It’s almost funny.

Dream laughs, and leans on the pommel of the sword. It pushes in another inch.

“Month!” manages Quackity, forcing the word out through the wetness in his lungs, through the broken-bone grind of his throat. If he weren’t so many shattered parts, pasted back together by unholy power and Dream’s capricious whims, it might have been a howl. As it is, he barely has the energy to sob, the words raw and hoarse and threadbare. “A month, a month– thirty– haha, thirty-six days in, in, in Limbo, fuck, please, please–”

There’s wet on his cheeks. Tears? Blood? Worse? He can’t tell any more. He can’t even feel the left side of his face.

He grabs for Dream’s boots, presses his forehead against them, gasps for air that doesn’t seem to bring any relief from the cold ache in his lungs. One of his hands finds an ankle, a strip of bare skin between shoe and pant leg. Dream’s skin is fever-hot, sickly, bottled lightning gone past its sell-by date.

The shock of the contact knocks him silent for a second, though. They won’t touch him, in Limbo, the ghosts – or can’t, or both, can’t and won’t. Because they’re bastards, because they hate him, because he isn’t one of them. They can’t-won’t touch him, can’t see him, won’t see him, won’t speak to him– and he’s left, alone, in a room full of the faded impressions of people he once knew, once loved, once was loved by. A room full of people who do not see him, and do not touch him, and do not hear him when he talks.

(When he screams, when he swears at them, when he tries to claw their eyes out with unsteady hands that don’t make contact– when he begs, when he pleads, when he wheedles and bribes and bargains to deaf ears– when he wraps arms around himself, when he rocks himself back and forth until the blood rushes in his ears, when he whispers to himself until his voice fades to nothing, and tries to pretend it is the same thing as being loved and held and comforted–)

“Please, don’t– hahah, don’t kill me, fuck– please, look, look, hurt me, please, hurt me– anything, anything, I don’t–” He doesn’t have the breath for this. Doesn’t have the energy. Doesn’t even really have the words any more, after screaming for thirty-six fucking days straight, after talking to himself for so long his vocal cords wore out and left him mouthing silence in a desperate attempt to keep himself company. “Don’t, don’t send me– not, don’t send me back, please, fuck, anything, ha, haha, don’t, don’t–”

“I said I’d make you beg for death,” says Dream, amused, bored, manic. “Not torture. Not that I’m complaining. It’s just kind of funny. Don’t you think? I think it’s funny.”

He pushes the sword in, another inch. Quackity sobs, desperate and pathetic, and feels no shame for it. Presses his face to Dream’s boot, clings to his ankle like a lifeline, and feels no shame for it. Shame was beaten out of him, bled out of him, several lifetimes ago. “But that’s not what I asked, though. How many times have you died now, Quackity?”

The sword in his shoulder twists, and Quackity screams. Something severs with a pop, and then another, and then another, until the joint is little more than a hot ball of pain and wet meat, grated bone. Until he can no longer scream, gasping desperately through the pain, weeping like a child. Another twist, and something else severs, something vital, a second’s resistance before a give and a spray of warm blood.

He bleeds out between one sob and the next, tumbling into darkness, the golden net of the respawn reaching up to catch him as he falls.

He wakes up three feet away, sprawled out on the filthy bed that occupies one corner of his cell, still sobbing. The respawn clings to him like a second skin, like weights around his ankles, frightening and familiar all at once. It fades slowly, reluctantly; slower each time he dies, he thinks. Like it’s getting used to holding him. Like it doesn’t want to let him go.

It’s only barely gone by the time Dream crosses the space between them, two short steps, no time for him to flinch, no time for him to hide–

Dream grabs him by the wrist, wrenches his body up from the bed, and slots the sword neatly through the front of his throat. The broad, well-used scar carved across it parts for the blade like an old friend, swallows it whole – and Quackity dies for the second time in as many minutes, choking on his own blood.

The respawn catches him. Drags him down into darkness. Drags him back up to the surface of reality, deposits him back onto a bed now sodden with crimson. He’s shaking. He should be used to it, but he’s shaking so hard his teeth clack together, so hard he’s not sure it will ever stop.

Dream drags him off the bed, back onto the floor. Back onto the filth, the layers and layers of dried gore, a carpet constructed from every time he’s been slaughtered like an animal in this tiny, lightless cell.

“Dream,” he begs, quietly. “Dream, Dream–”

Even to his ears, it sounds more like a prayer than a plea.

“It’s a simple question, Quackity. How many times have you died now? Properly died. How many times have I brought you back? I just want a number. Just a number.” The mask obscures Dream’s mouth, but his grin is audible. His eyes are so bright, they hurt to look at. “How many times have I proven to you that I’m a god?”

Quackity tries to curl in on himself, but Dream is in the way, one boot by his shoulder and the other pinning his wrist to the floor beneath its toe. He’s not surprised. Dream is everywhere, always, omnipresent. His free hand seeks out Dream’s ankle onces more, curls around that curdled-lightning skin, desperate and needy. It grounds him, touching the only real person in his whole entire world, and he hates himself for it.

“…T- ten?” he tries, and knows as he says it that it’s wrong. The panic rises like the respawn, choking him. He can’t breathe. “Ten, ten times– maybe eleven– fuck, fuck, Dream, please–”

The sword-tip finds his back, finds the space between his fourth and fifth rib. Finds the ropy scar there, beneath the rags, soft from re-use – like a zipper, easy to pry open right down to his weak, wet heart.

“Good guess,” says Dream, quietly. “Closer than before. But still not right. You need a little longer to think about it, I guess. But– hey, you know what? I’ll be nice, and give you a hint.” He pauses, and Quackity’s world stands still. “You’re guessing too low.”

He pushes the sword down. It slips between Quackity’s ribs like an old lover, lodges in the crusted filth and stone below, pins him still against the floor. His heart beats once, twice, a butterfly-flutter around the diamond skewered through it. His body convulses. He falls still.

The blood from his mouth dyes the toes of Dream’s boots crimson, as the light leaves his eyes.

He wakes in Limbo, on his knees, in a room full of people – full of impressions of people, like the ghosts of a faded photograph. He sees them all there, their backs to him, as they move amongst one another, as they talk amongst one another. Tubbo, and Schlatt, and Fundy, and Wilbur, and–

Sapnap, who looks right through him. Karl, whose eyes skate over him. They hold each other’s hands. The rings on their fourth fingers gleam weakly in the strange, nebulous light of the afterlife. They do not hear him when he says their names, ragged and desperate, like a plea. Like a prayer.

And then they, too, turn their back on him. And Quackity – still raw, still bloody, still skewered open right through his butterfly heart – screams and screams and screams.

#manoessay #dream smp #quackity #dream #dsmp fic #dsmp tag #fic #to my ex-y*gs fans: say hello to dirty white source code light and weird respawn headcanons again! #something something stop fucking around with creative mode or the dirty white light will eat you from the inside out like a parasite #it wants to pour the entirety of the universe into your head until there's no space left for *you* in there any more #that's not something you dick around with just to ensure the guy who tortured you in prison is broken down into more animal than human #also i will not apologise for making quackity's limbo so fucking miserable #he's in a hell of his own creation lmao #hc that you get what you think you deserve in limbo lmao :3c #torture //

[titleknown]

A Digression On Trust

Or “I already basically wrote the fucking article anyway, so...”

Because, I got to thinking due to an article on the way a bunch of people reading in bad faith essentially pushed a sci-fi writer back into her closet, and I... had some things to say about the broader set of issues regarding trust in The Discourse in the comments of a Pillowfort post about it.

I don’t link that PF post because the OP politely told me that they disagreed with me but they didn’t wanna get in a fight, and I’d be an asshole if I dragged them into this.

But, again it’s basically an article’s worth of stuff, so I might as well convert those comments into a written thing about it, after the break...

...Specifically, this discourse is interesting, because of how it intersects with a subject I'm interested in.

If you’re not familiar with me I'm in that sort of "please can we get the pedoshit out of fandom before it takes over due to flawed conceptions of free speech like it did anime and curative fandom's branch of porn art" thing and, well, one of the reasons that people don't like the idea of that sort of scrutiny and enforcement in our spaces is because of the "let queer artists be messy" narrative.

Which stems from that fear of “What if they come for me next” in cases like that, even when that fear is... well, let’s just say of the sort where I’d think someone would in fact be an asshole for targeting them, like in the case of one thinker who talked about their dark/gory MtG fanfic where they were working through some shit, or a dark bit in some Don’t Starve fanfic that people used to abuse them, or being into knotting kink on anthro (AND SPECIFICALLY JUST ANTHRO) characters.

And, like, I get it. The article shows how mobbing can ruin lives for the marginalized, and the mandated disclosure of identity is... disquieting.

But also, I think the violations of trust we keep seeing when people try to give voice to that sort of fear make it really difficult to avoid the sort of mistrust that keeps us from reconciling.

Like, on my bugbear, remember goddamn 4lung’s post about her fears of artistic precarity at the hands of her audience? And remember how she then got revealed to be a big ol pedo; even with the stuff being retracted still leaving enough red flags for a wholeass color guard?

And I would be remiss to mention that I cannot read Hot Allostatic Load or THE MAXIMUM SOFTNESS CAPABLE OF BEING EXERTED BY ALL MACHINERY the same way after the author fucking defended 4lung for that shit.

It deeply frustrates me that people deny these violations of trust when talking about the issues of the vulnerability of marginalized artists are treated.

Like, I loathe how they explain the "puriteens" emerging by making shit up about the Bush years, when it is much more based on those breaches of trust that I think this tweet explains succinctly:

Like, even beyond the horrors of the format; of which I have no doubt makes things even worse, I think that the violations of trust are one of the great creators of paranoid readings, because lack of trust is what breeds that paranoia.

And, I am not gonna say we’re immune to that on our “side”! Like, again, that sort of mobbing represents a breach of trust on our side! And, like, so too does the way a distressing amount of people talking about artists turning out to be creepos use Kiwi Farms as a fucking source, please stop using Kiwi Farms as a fucking source, they are one of the closest things to pure evil on the net, please for the love of genius get better fucking sources.

And, that does hit home with online artists who were; let’s face it; basically screwed even harder than other professions in the wake of the ‘08 crash. So, it’s easy to see where that precarity breeds mistrust of criticism, even when that mistrust can be... unwarranted.

But, there are still problems we need to solve. The fetishization of transgression regardless of context can normalize the indefensible in ways we’ve seen in other fandoms; and we’re seeing it now that the NAMBLA brigade is basically winning over Ao3.

But also, there is a legit purge of SWs and erotic creators (Especially the LGBTQ ones) on mainline social sites, and our mechanisms for yeeting out predators/creeps relies way too much on artist precarity.

And, we need solutions that address both infrastructurally, but that’s not going to happen if there’s a mistrust where there shouldn’t be any.

So, I think... we need more nuance; not to those clearly covering their asses or not in good faith on either “side,” but rather to break up solidarity between the assholes and the people who are acting in good faith, so we can actually fix shit...

#media #critique #trust #the discourse #nuance

[askgundamwingfans]

Oh my goodness the responses!!

Thanks everyone for taking the time to add your perspective. For everyone reading, feel free to reblog with your own answers to any of these questions, or send in some questions of your own.

Without further ado, lets do an easy warm up post this week. The answers are in no particular order, let me know if I should be keeping answers from a single responder together 

Did you take a break from GW fandom? If so, what made you come back?

I took a ~10 year break for school and work. The pandemic got me looking back on my old hobbies and I went looking fanfic that I used to love. It was supposed to be just a quick tip toe into nostalgia but that was back in November and here we are.

There have been periods when I've been less active (especially if you look at my publishing history), and I haven't always hung out in the most popular fandom bases, but even during my quieter periods if I'd been asked "are you still part of this fandom" my answer would have been definitively yes. I think one of the great things about fandom is that it's for us to participate in on our own terms and what it means to be "in" a fandom is a huge net.

A friend of mine wanted to read my old fics but I wasn’t on AO3, so I made an account.

More like I just drifted away. I'd peek back every now and then. But now my new good friends are all in the gw Fandom so I'm much more involved than before

Yes - I organically lost interest in fandom after I first got into GW (2000s) due to RL, came back because I finally had time to sit down and (re)watch the series during COVID.

Which characters/ships are you most interested in? What do you appreciate most about them?

Oh, gosh. I love a well-written rare pair or a seemingly crack ship that, when you read it, suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore. And likewise, the characters that you don't see being written so often. GW has such a rich ensemble cast to draw from, I like seeing fresh faces get a turn in the spotlight and treated with the same depth as the usual favorites.

I am definitely a 1xR fan first and foremost, but I also love all the GW ladies. Relena was always a favorite because she was probably the first female character I had ever really seen that stood her own with the male characters. She was just super interesting - a feminine, peaceful character that becomes a world leader? And not through magic? Sign me up! Coming back into fandom I started going over the ladies' personalities. I find Dorothy to be absolutely fascinating as a character with her shit-disturbing ways. Hilde, Catherine, Noin, Une. I love that they're given individual strengths and flaws, and each have their own roles that aren't necessarily just supporting the male characters. Even today it can be rare to find a female character that has a personality, history and role all to her own.

Quatre and I don’t have enough space to even go into this, haha. I ship him mostly with Trowa and Duo.

I generally will try most non 3x4 Trowa ships. I lean most towards 1x3 and 3x5, though somehow I got into 3x6 at the end of my first run in fandom, probably because the one writer who got me into it was so funny. I think for whatever reason, I just ended up in Trowa-centric mailing lists for 1x3, 2x3, and 5x3, and Trowa-centric, and the 1x3 and 5x3 lists were the more active ones. I do remember feelings those stories were really unique. The one 5x3 that I remember from my first run was actually super edge-lordy and ended with murder/suicide (it was a very messed up story!!!!). What stuck in my mind was how that writer managed to treat the pilots somewhat opposite of how most others wrote them - arguably straight up OOC for the sake of exploring a darker story, but it also was the first time I think that Wufei was the nice guy/hero and not just a side character wingman. This is similar to why I got into 6x3 - a specific writer was just a fucking hoot about the way they wrote both Trowa and Zechs, and whether it's OOC or not, it was probably the first time I had read anything that funny in fanfiction (especially in stories with sex/smut). So I guess the TLDR is that the stories that happened to really change my mind on characters and/or fic as a medium strongly influenced why I like certain ships. They were also probably arguably very OOC which also influences how I approach fanworks.

Duo will always be my favorite, cause I relate to him the most

#askgwfans #gundamn wing #fandom #ask gundam wing fans #favs

[jbbuckybarnes]

We need to talk...

I knew that this topic of interactions will come up again, because it has never been talked all the way through, so I had this drafted for a while. So much of this old draft still resonated with this permanently unfinished discussion that I just had to edit it and post it, because I feel like it has to be said and put into one post. We can’t keep starting this conversation and then make it so dramatic that there is no conclusion or compromise. The only reason this time is more mellow is because people have better standards for this stuff due to a pandemic going on. This is written for the MCU fandom, but I’ve seen this go down in different fandoms, so here we go:

Things that are NOT at fault for readers not interacting:

The Readers. Should be clear after asking them again and again. And nothing changing. The readers at large are not at fault for a couple people being demanding or hateful. Neither are they at fault for this website and other social medias automatically putting writers at a disadvantage. They do their best with the time they have in their life (just like writers). And after asking them over months to try and reblog more and not much changing, it should be obvious that it isn’t where the problem lies. At least not 95% of it. NOW:

Things that ARE at fault for readers not interacting:

Pushing them, thinking they owe you stuff, while you tear other writers down saying that nobody owes them stuff. That happens time and time again. To me, to friends, to writers I check in with. Don't expect community to come to you when you don't come to them.

Not putting anon asks off when demands and hate get too much. It’s literally THAT easy when people get nasty. It’s sad for the nice anons, but they will understand. Save your mental health! Save the mental health of people reading that hate on their dash. I don’t know how many people constantly answering to hate I have unfollowed and I’m sure people have unfollowed me for doing the same.

Ego and hypocrisy. You can't say numbers aren't a problem and then say they are. In the same post. AND then also deny it later in some of the cases we’ve seen in recent months. Yes, that happened. In several fandoms where this topic comes up semi-regularly. And that might also be the reason people are tired of this stuff and speak out against it.

The fact Tumblr is only used approximately twice a year by most people. And has a shitty tag system. And a shitty algorithm. You are at an automatic disadvantage.

The fact some of you can't understand that 3-5% of your following interacting is a good and normal rate on pretty much all social media. The bigger you get in followers, the bigger the gap gets between followers and interaction (and demand and hate). There are literal statistics on that. 1% interaction at 10k is still good for a platform you have no power over!

The fact some of the people here call anons *haters* for pointing out that you interact w the same 10 people, making that speace seem excluding, when it's literally true what those people say!? Nothing wrong with only support the same 10 people on your blog, but then don't say that you practice what you preach (cause you don’t). You can’t demand more interaction when you don’t interact more yourself. That is how it works, for anyone, not just people of a certain follower count. If I reblog more fics, my blog gets more clout. Logical conclusion. Works for everyone. You have no time for that? Then don’t expect more back. It’s called SOCIAL media for a damn reason.

Telling people asking for Tumblr advice to interact more to make new friends but being the most defensive/indifferent person once they talk to you in DMs. Yes, that keeps happening and I know it from either my own experience or from others sharing their experiences with me. It’s kinda sad. It’s more of a minor factor in people not interacting, but I’ve seen it enough to mention it.

Making shitposts and personal posts all day and then saying you don't have the time in your life to interact w peoples' writings. Like, drabbles exist on almost anyone's masterlist. 5 minute read, easy support for a writer that might be losing motivation. Not every work has to be written like a novel to be great as hell or “quality proven.”

Oh, and there hasn't been a MCU movie in a while, making most of our readership probably currently not care about the fandom as much. Especially after Endgame ended up being a total opinion splitter.

Bonus: The misunderstanding that pushing shy readers to interact does the exact opposite. Not to start about the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic at the moment. That means they may not have time to read and you may not have time to write. Normal. Logical. The same reason lots of people currently don’t publish. Don’t expect anything predictable and controlable out of current times.

Bonus: Check how you connect interactions to self worth and worth/fun of your writing hobby. Define what success means for you in this space, otherwise you will never be satisfied. It won’t matter if a post has 1k reblogs, you’ll always want more, because you chase an infinite metric.

Bonus: Maybe take a month to concentrate on community, getting outside of your bubble that you deny but very likely have (I’m not excluding myself from this), and actually improve interactions. Some people seem to have forgotten that when you interact with other writers, they probably interact back. Surprise! Your followers already know your tried and true fanfic friends, they want some new stuff without searching for it. Basic Marketing knowledge, know what your audience wants. If you do this for the interactions you gotta look at it from a marketing standpoint and not a pure passion standpoint. Oh: And maybe they find you interacting in the notes of someone else’s post and become an active follower. Win-Win-Win situation.

Bonus: Community is a loop, a net of interactions. Some people here have clique behavior, sound defensive and/or simply don't practice what they preach. That is not me or anyone else hating on specific blogs (I’m also no complete exception), it’s people trying to tell you that you can’t ask for shit you don’t practice yourself. Nothing wrong with supporting your friends only, but then don’t go around expecting new people to find your stuff. It’s literally THAT simple. You can’t have both!

Bonus: Ignoring some of the ride or die readers that are already there. Some of the people on here wish they had that and it’s deadass taken it for granted by some. Meanwhile I'm sitting here with Serotonin levels like christmas when someone I know reblogs my stuff and my fic gets some clout. Imma repeat myself: If you do it for the numbers, you gotta look at it more like marketing and less like pure passion.

And again: You are on a social media platform that will always put you at a disatvantage. That is not the readers' fault. It's how social media works at this point. If you want as much interaction as you can without putting in more interaction work yourself, simply share your works on here, AO3 and Wattpad simultaneously. Problem solved.

Bottomline: If you want more love on your work you gotta go beyond what you currently do, since it’s clearly not working for you. Reblog stuff from people you don't know. I don't give a sh*t if it's a 5k or a 100 follower blog. Hell, there is the whole 366 reblog challenge and some of you deadass went on reblogging the same people when that’s not really what this was made for. I, personally, haven't run out of new people to reblog, so this shouldn't be hard. Actually take time to talk to people in DM's, it takes 10 minutes in the evening to write a few people a message asking how they are or sending a cute gif. If you want stuff, you have to give it. Not leave it. People have come to me before, telling me "the community doesn't owe you stuff", no, they don't, but they do owe if they wanna be owed something back or even demand to be owed something back. Community is about back and forth. You give, you get. It's work, cause it's a big hobby. If you don't have time, that's cool, but then don't be sad about lower interaction. It’s logical that low activity from you leads to low activity from others in the long run, unless you do something worldshakingly new. You don't wanna look beyond a circle of friends or your go-to writers much? That's fine, but don't be upset about barely new people interacting cause they feel excluded or simply don’t find your work because of the same people seeing the same people reblogging the same works. What's not fine is not seeing how readers are NOT THE PROBLEM.

I haven’t talked to a single person about this that DIDN’T find the posts surrounding it demanding and completely ignoring the arguments some others had...repeatedly. Every single time it came up. Not just once but time and time again, whenever this topic comes up. You want interaction? Interact. You don’t want hate? Don’t give it a platform. As harsh as that sounds, I’ve never felt better on this platform since I put anon asks off, even when I miss the nice anons. They probably understand. PS: Again, this was written a while ago and edited to fit into a more general context now. I hope people can discuss this in a civil, non-judgmental way, because that is how I tried to write this. This is not again a specific person or group, it’s pinpointing what I see repeating for two years on this platform now, in all corners. I’d also like to mention that we are still in a pandemic and lives have never looked so vastly different, so you can’t demand anything normal in this very not normal time. Even if you do it all right, your interactions dropped in the pandemic cause people likely stay away form this platform for mental health reasons. There is so many layers to look at, these clearly aren’t all, but I hope it makes some people think about what and when they complain. Numbers will never satisfy you, they will always leave you wanting more if you don’t know why you do what you do and for what. Anyway: Be nice to each other and me in the notes in case this gets shared! No drama please! Ignore any grammar and typo mistakes, lol. Love ya!

#mine #rant #reblog discourse #discourse #long post #I didn't put the read more higher up cause it didn't work #Here we go #I already regret posting this but it has to be said in one clear post instead of a bit everywhere #rebecca talks #pls don't blow this out of proportion #I just wanted to create a list with reasons to NOT push stuff onto readers #check your own doing and your own thoughts first #I'll go hide in my blanket fort now

[childotkw]

Sorry, it’s me again. Hope I’m not bugging you. I just saw that ask about your first fanfic and saw that you started out on fanfiction . net Did you start writing on there too as well as reading? And how did you handle the lawlessness of the fanfic equivalent of the Wild West?

I also started out there and it was the most crazy, chaotic, dumpster fire of a website. Pretty much Tumblr before the NSFW purge, and all without tags. I know you’ve said before you NEED tags and they def didn’t have them. The things I saw 👀... I found both some of my favorite tropes and characters as well as my biggest triggers and squicks. Always by accident, because trigger warnings were rare, tagging was pretty much nonexistent, and the little tagging that appeared in the summary or A/N varied wildly across fics and fandoms and had no consistency for the terms used. Those were Dark times.

When I discovered Ao3 for the first time it was like I saw the light at the end of a dark tunnel. I was so blown away by the tags and filtering and OMG it had built in warnings you could filter out!!! And people could tag tropes and ideas and you could find more fics with a similar idea!!! It was so exciting. One of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

You’re not bugging me at all, darling!

I did start writing on Fanfiction.Net! I posted my first story when I was eleven, it was a Naruto one, and it...didn’t go well. I think I was generally just too young to really be affected by or understand the brutality of that site for a long while. I mainly stayed in my own little bubble, and stopped writing when I was about fourteen/fifteen, so I didn’t see a lot of the bad shit. When I came back at seventeen, I went straight to AO3 to post CS, and only started cross-posting on FF.Net after quite a few chapters. So I don’t actually remember much of the toxicity - and thank god for that!

Generally, I much prefer AO3 over FF.Net because of the tagging system. It’s so much more comprehensive and really gets rid of a lot of the stress when trying to avoid stuff I don’t like. Now, if I click on a story that has stuff I don’t like, it’s usually my fault for not reading the tags correctly. It’s nice as an author as well, since if you tag appropriately, no one really has the right to complain to you about your story content :D

#zephyrshadoe #personal

[fizzydrink698]

fic writer tag! ❤️

@aliceu thank you so much for the tag, but also you’ve exposed me so bad, oh my god. i can’t believe i’m outing my old teenage self’s fanfic like this.

1. what fandoms have you written for (but do not currently)?

ha. ok.

published: harry potter, victorious, percy jackson, one direction, wrestling (wwe), descendants.

unpublished: stranger things, black sails, far cry 5, game of thrones, house of anubis, the riot club, the hunger games, labyrinth, the mortal instruments, mansfield park, twilight, pokémon, jem and the holograms. and that’s just the files i can access. pre-2016? no clue, those are lost to dead laptops.

2. what fandoms are you currently writing for?

stray kids and bts are the ones currently published. I also have ateez, nct/wayv, itzy and mamamoo fics in the process of writing 👀

3. how long have you been writing?

a long time. i have very vivid memories of being about 7-8 and using my families ancient desktop computer (like, think a huge BOX of a monitor) to write stories. i also used to scrawl story ideas on the cardboard backing of colouring books, on scrap bits of paper. i think the first fanfiction i wrote was secret of moonacre fanfiction when i was in year 4 - so i was about 9? but yeah, at least 13-14 years. two-thirds of my life 👀

4. on which platforms do you post your stories?

tumblr and ao3 currently. i do also still have my fanfiction(dot)net profile open and public with all my old stuff still online. we’re talking old 2011 harry potter oc fanfiction. it’s a cute little time capsule. i also had a onedirectionfanfiction(dot)com profile back in 2014 i posted on before the site died.

5. what is your favorite genre to write?

romance! fluffy, warm romance. i guess specifically alternate-universe romantic comedy?

6. are you a pantser or a planner?

i bullet-point plan = specifically i write out how the main couple get together, the twists in relationship, the general push and pull. and a general overview of the plot.

but i always end up changing things when i write - the characters always have a different feel when i write, so decisions i’ve planned for them to make now seem contrived, and i end up veering off script a little. that’s also the stage i add in sub-plots, foreshadowing, all that. so...both? 50/50?

7. one-shot or multi-chapter?

i used to be a big multi-chapter girl. everything was a big grand epic in my head. but by the time i got to tumblr, i started writing oneshots more and now it’s usually “i get an idea for a oneshot premise, i plan it out and either it grows and expands and becomes a multi-chapter or it just stays a really long oneshot”

8. what is the perfect chapter length in your opinion?

depends on how often it’s updated. for multi-chapter, about 5-7k for weekly/fortnightly updates. 750-1k for daily updates. as long as you want for non-regular updates 😊

9. what is your longest published story?

ahhh ok. ok. there is a 77k wwe fanfic on my ffn account that i updated between 2016-18. however, there’s an extra two and a half unedited chapters on my desktop that i never posted - which brings the grand total of words to 84k.

for tumblr/ao3, of course it’s instinct. 53.4k of pure self-indulgence 🥰

10. which story did you enjoy working on the most?

the obvious answer is instinct 😂 but i really liked working on solace, way back when. and hypothesis was really therapeutic, just bc it’s so warm and strangely comforting. oh, and consort was very fun to try out a different style of writing

11. favorite request you’ve written and why?

ooh, ok the only requests i’ve written for are way back in my descendants days. probably the request for the first part of “if your heart’s still open”. that series has a big place in my lil heart.

12. are there reoccurring themes in your stories?

bisexual main characters, friend groups that roast each other with affection, side character ship tease, romantic epiphanies.

13. current number of wips?

HA so many. only counting the wips with more than 250 words written? 18. wips over 1k? 9.

the longest wip is currently over 16k. it probably won’t ever see the light of day - it’s a bts fic i started over a year ago and it already feels kinda immature. but we’ll see 🤷‍♀️

i actually got curious and added the word-counts all together. i currently have 37,116 words of unfinished kpop fic.

14. three things you have noticed about your writing?

the emphasis is almost always on dialogue and expressions/body language of characters - very little on scenery

short, sharp, snappy sentences to draw attention in.

endings are almost always cliffhangers - but the nice ones, i guess. the couple always gets together first.

15. a quote you like from a published story?

i’m a total sap, so let’s go for the super soft ones:

His hand slips down from your wrist, taking your hand and squeezing it gently. He smiles up at you, calm, confident.

“Please can you kiss me again?” Changbin asks, softly. - hypothesis

When you open your eyes, Chan is staring at you with just…the softest look, and it takes your breath away. There’s not a single ounce of caution in his eyes, no reluctance, no fear.

And your heart just melts. - instinct 07

16. a quote from an unpublished story?

here’s two because why not:

“Yeah. All through high school, it was me, Mark and Donghyuck. We were, like, our own little trio.”

“Really? That’s…honestly, that’s kind of bizarre to think about.”

Bizarre.

You wonder how she’d react if she knew the whole truth – if she knew about that last year of high school, when Mark had graduated and left the two of you behind.

and for the second, well...some of you might be able to guess which this one is from 😈😈:

“We’re open to sharing.”

Changbin winces at his packmate’s choice of words, and the rest soon follow when they see the thunderous expression on your face.

“Sharing?!”

17. space for you to say something to your readers~~

i’ve got a shitload of words to write and i promise i’m working as hard as i can on them 😂 i’m so beyond happy to hear that you guys are enjoying my stuff, and i hope you’ll continue to enjoy my future writing. thank you!

#tag games #i really exposed my dark past here #enjoy my suffering #also there's a lil touch 2 electric boogaloo quote in here if you're curious

[xsugarysweetsx]

Here are some platforms where you can write and possibly create your masterlist :

1. Wattpad : you can post your works here, it is easy and formatting is really nice (with centre and other alignments) you can make many stories for each fandoms and post your works there. As for the masterlist, your works will appear beneath your username (for every separate book you can create an additional page to indicate where your chapters) The best thing is that anyone can comment in separate paragraphs also you can add multimedia (excluding audio). You can get readers quickly.

Cons : I think there is too much of plagiarism. There are too much of same elements in stories. There is censorship and many a times, money firm. Search feed is clunky.

2. AO3 : here are professional stories. (almost) every story contains ship and oc's stories are rare. There is a proper tag system (so a nice search engine), long works are accepted and there is a proper system for warnings (18+ violence, smut, triggers etc) multimedia is an option too. The best thing is that it is a open source, anyone can enter and like your work. You can find at least 200 works here for any underrated fandom. For masterlist you can link your works.

Cons : OC's centered works are too rare. There are too many writers, so it may be hard for you to get a lot of views. It might be intimidating for new writers (This can be solved btw, get used to it 😁)

3. Fanfiction net : this can be said a mix of both of these, most people prefer to write long stories are short chapters but for writing OC's it is a perfect platform. It also has basic messaging system. You can link your works in separate chapter as a masterlist.

Cons : there is some problems with Smuts (so fluff ?) And it is an old website.

4. Commaful : there are gorgeous visuals and layouts, stories really look incredible! There is a nice chat system and a strong fan community engagement. It is easier to grow early audiences. Great for short works. You can make a separate page for indicating where your works are (no links, it is strict)

Cons : it is still new, thus small library of works compared to the other sides. (Can use this as a advantage to grow audience)

5. Quotev : there are nice fanfictions, but very rare. It is quite popular for quizzes, roleplaying, etc (basically community is nice) it has a good chat system. I really don't know how to create a masterlist here. Sorry

Cons : search feed is clunky and doesn't get as much use for fanfiction.

Bonus : deviant art (99% used for fan arts but there are some fanfics)

Cons: there are bugs and some glitches.

All in all AO3 or wattpad (my opinion) (can also try commaful)

May be they are helpful.

Oooooo! This is so helpful thank you!!!

Also, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to wattpad for one plagiarism is HUGE there .__. The last time I was there, my books abs become a meme page.....and people were disagreeing with the choices I made for the book. On top of that there was one specific person who was going around basically harrasing fanfiction writers trying n ti act like a reading critic but just enough people down. So I became inactive on my old account

But! I think I’m going to check out Deviant art (of course it’s just a back up)

But thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️

#lovely mutuals #thank you❤️