You Lost Friend?

I love my friend group actually bc it’s always like “this person is definitely a vampire!”

“And this one is the spitting image of how I imagine my favourite podcast character!”

“This one is a feral animal (and I have a sneaking suspicion they’ll turn into a fox and root through my garbage if my turn my back on them for even a second). I am still working on house training them.”

“This one is absolutely some kind of eldritch Fae horror posing as human. Every time I see an apocalyptic mutated hell scape, I think of them.”

“This one likes making friendship bracelets with colourful beads but will absolutely stab a bitch with no hesitation. They found out I was enby years before I did and was subtly dropping hints to me in all that time. Somehow their whole body decided to pull some absolutely insane shit on them, and at this point even the doctors are impressed.”

“This one is a pixie and we all call them ‘Mother’. I’m pretty sure I’ve never met someone who made me feel like I still have time to make up for my childhood”

“This one is the living embodiment of everything anti-vaxers fear and turns everyone they meet Autistic. They’ve called me on my bullshit more than once,”

“This one is loving embodiment of what conservatives fear, and turns everyone trans, and is also dating the autism virus. Together they are terrifying. We actively warn new cis friends of their immense power. ”

“This person we picked up on a train to the middle of nowhere. They have a toadstool named Terry and treat every bug they meet like a new friend. I’m pretty sure they aren’t human either, or at the very least not entirely.”

“This person is my go to for chatting about and sharing fanfiction. We are both unapologetically seeing feeding each others fanfic addictions, and have no desire to get clean.”

“This person is 6ft and has the demeanour and fashion sense of a fluffy pastel unicorn. I met them at a youth group, I scare away the men at bars for them.”

“This person helped me figure out I was touched starved by giving me hugs and gave me all their favourite recipes they made us during final exams”

“This friend helped me understand what sharing in fandom with friends could be like, and we did our first cosplay together”

“This friend and I trauma bonded during high school and adopted a legion of younger teenagers”

“This friend pulled me out of quicksand that one time, and gets mad when I don’t update my fanfic”

“This friend is always there to chat when pulling all nighters”

“Me and this friend have a relationship exclusively built on bullying each other for the most mundane things”

“I feel like it is my god given duty to protect this person at all costs”

“This person is my go to if I ever have a group project bc we work so well together.”

“This friend said some of the wisest shit I’ve ever heard, and they have all the experience in things I was too scared to try”

“I have no idea who this person is but I must have met them at some point bc I invited them to the discord chat and they’re always there for us”

“This person is my go to if I need a scary as fuck monster design. They are definitely some flavour of undead.”

“This person is constantly bidng their time for the perfect moment to say the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever heard. No one ever sees it coming. It’s uncanny, and frankly impressive.”

“This person is secretly absolutely a kids tv show host. And not the human kind, they’re probably made of felt to be honest.”

And so on.

What a strange and wonderful group of people I’ve collected in my life. 🙃

50 tips for (fanfic) writing

have fun

write whatever is interesting to you, even if it won’t be interesting to anyone else

appreciate kudos when they come, but don’t expect them

appreciate comments when they come, but don’t expect them

if you wish you could just write that one scene you have in your head, do that. you don’t need to create a 30K backstory for it first.

embrace one shots

embrace drabbles

embrace writing your story out of order

rough drafts are meant to be rough. if you can’t think of a word, put in a placeholder for it and keep going. 

try not to get stuck on the little things

it’s okay if your readers can’t see the picture inside of your head

some people work well when they have a posting schedule. some people work well when they don’t. it’s okay if you don’t know which kind of person you are, and it’s okay if the type of person you are changes over time.

if a rule you created for yourself isn’t working for you, get rid of that rule.

make fandom friends. even if they don’t read your fic, they’ll cheer you on while you write it.

cheer on other writers you know. you’ll be cheering yourself at the same time.

no trope or genre is better or worse than another one. they all just appeal to different audiences.

quality and popularity are not the same thing, although they do sometimes overlap

numbers and statistics will never tell you whether or not you’re a good writer. they will never tell you how valuable you are as a person. 

you belong in fandom if you want to be there

you’re a writer as soon as you start writing things

writing and posting are two different things. your story is still worth writing, even if you never plan to share it

you don’t need to apologize for what you write or what you post. 

don’t worry about taking up too much space. the internet doesn’t have a maximum size. 

keep your readers in mind when you’re tagging your content. how could they search for your fic? if you use a tag, will be a reader who loves that tag be satisfied with how much it appears in your story?

if you have a relationship in your fic that plays a minor role, tag it in the Additional Tags section instead of the Relationship section so that people who love that ship don’t get their hopes up

be cautious when looking at bookmarks on your fic. they aren’t “extra comments.” that’s a space where readers make notes for themselves and each other, not for authors. 

you don’t need to know everything about canon before you start writing fic

you don’t need to read fic in the same fandoms you write for

you don’t need to read fic at all in order to write it

love your work because sometimes you’re the only one who will - and that’s okay

if your hobby starts feeling like a job, you might need to take a break before you get burnt out

if you get stuck on a story, you can always start a new one

if you fall out of love with a story, you can always stop writing it. if you’re worried about your readers, you can always give them a bullet point summary of where you were planning to go with thing. for a lot of people, that’s satisfying and provides closure

if you get hate, report it

use the tools at your disposal to block hate before it can come in (limiting or turning off comments, limiting or turning off asks, blocking users, etc)

try replying to comments sometimes. it can be a lovely way to make fandom friends

don’t be afraid to reblog your own writing posts.

if you get stuck on your summary, just write 1) who the story is about 2) what they are doing and 3) what problem gets in their way

notice when your writing makes you smile. that moment is a gift. enjoy it.

notice when your writing makes you cry. that moment is a gift, too.

even if you’re disappointed in how your story turned out, there’s something in there that’s fantastic. find that thing and focus on it and feel proud.

some ideas are ones you want to write. some are ones you want to read. if you ever have too many ideas to deal with at once, give some of the latter ones away to someone else. 

sometimes the things you write will be really personal. be careful about putting them where other people can comment. they won’t know how personal it is for you, and you need to remember that comments aren’t about you, they’re about the story.

remember that you can write series as well as stories. if the story is done but you still have passion or ideas, start a new one in the same universe.

enjoy the satisfaction of finishing a story. savour it. bask in it a little while.

don’t feel guilty about abandoning a story. not every story gets finished, and that’s okay

you can have separate accounts for different fandoms. you can have one account with a million fandoms in it. do whatever works for you.

sometimes writing is more important than sleep - but only sometimes

it doesn’t matter if that story has been written before by someone else. it doesn’t matter if it was written by you. write it again.

only follow the advice that makes sense to you. the rest isn’t important.

Because sometimes you just wanna draw an Oni teen in modern clothes.png (~2020 when digital art was new for me)

Heh... wouldn't it be fun to draw some slightly more detailed fanart for Keiko and-- oH gOD! OH FUCK!

@whatweoughttosay

Currently poking my brain with a stick and hoping a plot idea for one of my fics falls put

Some Environment Concepts I did for my Concept Design Class :D

Honestly confused as fuck as to how the hell the goddamn terfs heard “gendering things ppl like is stupid let people define themselves and please just respect their pronouns ffs” and thought “ahh yes, finally someone who agrees that all trans ppl suck, I hope we can be friends”

girl help I'm getting they/them'd by well-meaning people who don't know what a tomboy is

Call me out like this, why don’t you?

And I can’t even be mad because this post reads like a gentle embrace as fingers ghost over lines we’ve drawn and sunken eyes and tells you it’s all going to be okay

This probably sounds weird but- I really like drawing scars, making them more exaggerated and sharp. It’s cathartic I think, it makes me feel better about my own scars. By realizing the character I’m drawing has also gone through some stuff, but they’ve healed. They made it through it. And so did I. It makes me happy seeing a character with imperfect skin, lumps and discoloration from scars and how the nerves don’t flare up the way they used to, all of that stuff.

PSA

You fought and you made it. I’m glad to see you here on the other side of that dark tunnel.

Whatever it might be that you’ve gone through, I’m proud to see how far you’ve come. It doesn’t matter if it’s just baby steps, anything at all, that’s what matters

Don’t worry to hard about falling back down. It happens. Shit gets tough. These paths aren’t always smooth. Just take your time.

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

I don’t know who you are but I’m gonna show y’all all the thanks I can

Reblog to send every single person who has read one of your stories a forehead kiss