Write Fanfic That Three People In The World Will Read, Because Those Three People Are Going To Be Fucking

You know those anime meta posts along the lines of “I was born with pink hair. The doctors told my parents I was a Main Character and ever since my life has not known peace from demons/spirits/sports competitions/harems who find me”

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

He’s rising up, his every dream within his grasp. Until one day he gets a note under his door, taped to an old picture of his Normal Boring self from middle school, that says “You don’t belong”

Some Natsume Yuujinchou sketches I did. This show every now and then creeps into my brain and starts wrecking havoc but in a very quiet and warm way. Much like how the story is itself. I also started the manga so I'm excited to re-meet these people!

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

i looooove seeing artists & writers proud of their work!!!!! i looooove captions & authors notes that say things like “i’m quite happy with this” “i love how this turned out” “i had so much fun making this”!!!!!! i loooooove when the act of creation is joyful & we take pride in what we make!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Aizawa Shota 🐈‍⬛❤️‍🩹 - November 8th || My Hero Academia

"We low-hardness Gems have nothing if not our courage." — Antarcticite, Houseki no Kuni

MASTERLIST

GANGSTA.

Come Back to Bed with Me

Hours in the Kitchen are Spent Warmer with You

Mushishi

Pickled Plums

Let's Go Fishing!

Parts of a Whole

Year’s End Brings New Beginnings

Know It Like the Back of Your Hand

Natsume's Book of Friends

A Promise Made, A Person Met

One Piece

Sanctity of Sacred Spaces (one shot series, Heart Pirates & Reader)

And Tonight, We’ll Be Warm (Whitebeard pirates x reader, Ace-centric)

You Don't Need to Try to Belong (Marco x Reader, hurt/comfort)

Write fanfic for yourself.

Publish fanfic for the rotation of 3-6 people who are devoted readers and will either go feral or leave you very nice words and yell with you about it.

STOP DOING THIS IN INJURY FICS!!

Bleeding:

Blood is warm. if blood is cold, you’re really fucking feverish or the person is dead. it’s only sticky after it coagulates.

It smells! like iron, obv, but very metallic. heavy blood loss has a really potent smell, someone will notice.

Unless in a state of shock or fight-flight mode, a character will know they’re bleeding. stop with the ‘i didn’t even feel it’ yeah you did. drowsiness, confusion, pale complexion, nausea, clumsiness, and memory loss are symptoms to include.

blood flow ebbs. sometimes it’s really gushin’, other times it’s a trickle. could be the same wound at different points.

it’s slow. use this to your advantage! more sad writer times hehehe.

Stab wounds:

I have been mildly impaled with rebar on an occasion, so let me explain from experience. being stabbed is bizarre af. your body is soft. you can squish it, feel it jiggle when you move. whatever just stabbed you? not jiggly. it feels stiff and numb after the pain fades. often, stab wounds lead to nerve damage. hands, arms, feet, neck, all have more motor nerve clusters than the torso. fingers may go numb or useless if a tendon is nicked.

also, bleeding takes FOREVER to stop, as mentioned above.

if the wound has an exit wound, like a bullet clean through or a spear through the whole limb, DONT REMOVE THE OBJECT. character will die. leave it, bandage around it. could be a good opportunity for some touchy touchy :)

whump writers - good opportunity for caretaker angst and fluff w/ trying to manhandle whumpee into a good position to access both sites

Concussion:

despite the amnesia and confusion, people ain’t that articulate. even if they’re mumbling about how much they love (person) - if that’s ur trope - or a secret, it’s gonna make no sense. garbled nonsense, no full sentences, just a coupla words here and there.

if the concussion is mild, they’re gonna feel fine. until….bam! out like a light. kinda funny to witness, but also a good time for some caretaking fluff.

Fever:

you die at 110F. no 'oh no his fever is 120F!! ahhh!“ no his fever is 0F because he’s fucking dead. you lose consciousness around 103, sometimes less if it’s a child. brain damage occurs at over 104.

ACTUAL SYMPTOMS:

sluggishness

seizures (severe)

inability to speak clearly

feeling chilly/shivering

nausea

pain

delirium

symptoms increase as fever rises. slow build that secret sickness! feverish people can be irritable, maybe a bit of sass followed by some hurt/comfort. never hurt anybody.

ALSO about fevers - they absolutely can cause hallucinations. Sometimes these alter memory and future memory processing. they're scary shit guys.

fevers are a big deal! bad shit can happen! milk that till its dry (chill out) and get some good hurt/comfort whumpee shit.

keep writing u sadistic nerds xox love you

ALSO I FORGOT LEMME ADD ON:

YOU DIE AT 85F

sorry I forgot. at that point for a sustained period of time you're too cold to survive.

pt 2

Me and @bibicalico were talking about Kusuriuri and Ginko the other day and how they'd have so many interesting stories and trinkets to tell each other, so I made this crossover drawing :3

Big thank you for the concept inspiration, pal! ✨

Ah if i could find fitting pics for the header easier it’d make posting fics go a lot faster