dark-muse-iris

[dark-muse-iris]

You should get an AO3 account

With the rise of AI and the well known epidemic of AI companies scraping Ao3 for training data most authors on Ao3 have locked down their fics to logged in users only. This is unfortunate for authors and readers. As an author I've noticed a steep drop in readership on fics restricted to logged in users and when recommending fics to my friends I've noticed that the folks without an account can't find the fics. The logged in users only toggle, not only keeps people without an account from reading a fic, but also from seeing its listing at all. More than 50% of fics I come across have this setting turned on. So, you should get an AO3 account. I know this seems daunting and unfair because it's an invite only system but, you can invite yourself through the homepage if you don't already have one, and in the past few years I've never heard of someone who requested an invitation through this method, not getting one. And for those of you who are hesitant because you don't write, that's okay. It's not weird at all to click on a commenter username and find that they have 0 works and 10,000 bookmarks. It might take a week for the invitation to actually show up, but I can almost guarantee you will get one, just keep an eye on your email. It's free to join and donations are optional. You'll have more to read if you have an account and maybe give your favorite author the chance to protect their work from AI without a loss of readership and feedback.

[dark-muse-iris]

So, the other day, when I was discussing AO3's policy on solicitation, a tumblr user came at me saying that AO3's "no monetization/solicitation" rules were "bullshit" because nexus mods allows fan created mods to get paid.

Look at me.

Look at me right now.

AO3 protects you.

AO3 protects you and your works. 

It protects your works from copyright strikes and DCMA takedowns.

It protects your work from advertisers.

It protects your work from overzealous legal challenges.

It protects your right to post adult content.

AO3 is non-profit and AO3 will never try to use you or your work to make a profit for themselves and AO3 will go to bat for you if someone tries to legally challenge you or your works.

Please respect AO3 and its mission.

[dark-muse-iris]

Stained glass ao3 logo :P

[dark-muse-iris]

saw an elderly woman walking around with a tote bag whose design were the four AO3 fic category squares and she very excitedly asked if i was a reader or a writer bcs nobody else at the con had recognized it, and after telling her that i've been writing fic since fanfic.net, she solemnly nodded and explained that she'd been reading fic since "the days of personal websites" but that she only started writing fanfic when she was 47 and oh my god when i tell you that i genuinely teared up on the spot!!!!! like!!! HELL YEAH???? LITERALLY NEVER TOO OLD TO START WRITING. NEVER TOO OLD TO WRITE AND SHARE YOUR FIC.

her enthusiastic "i'm a very nice and bubbly person, i swear! but i love writing angst and major character death :)" nearly took me the fuck out.

icon. legend. diva. i wish her nothing but a kajillion million comments and kudos. i hope her fic updates crash AO3. i hope she knows i'm promoting her to my personal patron saint of AO3.

[dark-muse-iris]

I will be like "I'm fine" and then another fucking event will occur

[dark-muse-iris]

I'm sorry to hear it's been such a tough year. Completely understanding of wanting to keep your privacy with publishing. As much as I wish it was safer to do so unless the world (particularly the US) makes some changes then it just is getting much more unsafe to be different and out there with it. Le sigh. One day hopefully the world is better, the somehow still positive sliver of myself believes we'll get there someday with some serious work and changes.

I wish you had been able to make more queer focused stories before your health took the dive, how much fun I would have to be reading Cat having her fun with some female clients 🥰 and oh I can imagine some of the characters you'd be writing as well, so many fun versions of Yoongi dance around in my head 😂 I work retail 10 hours a day so by the time I get home I usually just smoke my pot and veg. Idk anyone who feels like they're just surviving rn that's also managing creative work. I miss writing my stories as well, I hope I get to write and have the proper energy for it again someday.

I see that asks allow pictures now, would it be okay to occasionally drop pet pictures or memes to you? I have a pet pug that's my personal reason for existing rn 😂 and of course with the boys returning and performing again soon there's bound to be a endless supply of fancams we can drool over together 😂

I used to work retail and 10 hour days is a special kind of torture, especially if you have frequently changing coupons/specials. I don't miss that, and yet there was something calming about running register and shutting my brain off. I don't get any brain-off time in my current line of work and that's been costly health-wise in a different way. So when I get off work, I'll relax and play sim games where I'm back in retail.

I'd be happy to see any pictures of pets or memes. I'm a big fan of dogs but don't have any of my own yet. I just went to the doctor and I'm medically cleared for fancams, thank the gods.

[dark-muse-iris]

It got worse in less than 3 days. *screams in pillow*

Is anyone else reading their journals from years ago and thinking, "Damn, a LOT of things got worse!" 💀

[dark-muse-iris]

Transference (M) – Chapter 01

cr. [X]

Summary: Prolonged periods of work-related stress bring you to a crossroads in your life that leaves you prone to make impulsive decisions. During a routine visit to the local bakery, you stumble upon an intriguing business card belonging to a “tantric therapist” and take a risk. When you discover your therapist is an attractive young man with a penchant for shibari, you throw caution to the wind as he helps guide you to self-recovery.

Pairing: Hoseok x Reader

Genre: Smut, angst

Word Count: 79,614 (for entire series)

Warnings: Therapist!Hoseok, Shibari!Hoseok, therapist/client relationship, BDSM, dom/sub relationship, sexual themes, bondage (shibari), slow burn, massage, therapy mentions, profanity

A/N: This work is a byproduct of about 6 months of insomnia and 60-hour work weeks, which resulted in a series of recurring dreams about Jung Hoseok which were…*fans self*

Chapters: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | Epilogue

Excerpt:

“Are you surprised?” he asked with a wide grin. “Am I what you expected?”

Frankly, you didn’t know what you expected. Maybe an older woman with wild hair and a long chevron skirt would have been closer to the tantric therapist you were imagining. This man was clearly under thirty, yet he was confident in how he carried himself. No early-20’s-something could pull off this level of surety in himself, you were certain. You could feel the apprehension building as you tried to calculate whether he was younger than you, and by how much. His skin shown like the sun, evident of years of meticulous self-care—or maybe he really was that young and this was just some scam to make a quick dollar. Nevertheless, the dark pools of his eyes knew experience…

Read now on AO3

Copyright © 2017-2019 by dark-muse-iris. All rights reserved.

[dark-muse-iris]

Hi Iris! Just checking in, I hope you're surviving 2025 in one piece. I started (and already finished lol) rereading Transference and I just wanted to gush a little bit. I first found it in late 2017/2018 (can't remember exactly when you published) and I was only 19/20 and now I'm 26 going on 27 and I understand the FMC so much deeper now lmao. I'm sure that will only deepen as I age and become even less enthused with the US brand of capitalism 😂 If you ever decide to publish anything officially I'm gonna be first in that line. I just love your style of writing and characters so much.

Aww, MY HEART! That's so nice of you to say and I'm happy to hear Transference has held up for you over the years. If you read it back in 2017 you're one of the first wave. I can't express how much I appreciate those messages of support from y'all back then. It fueled years of writings from me, and endless more stories that haven't been read yet. I have not abandoned a single one of those WIPs, in part because I don't want to give up while I still miss the Muse. Some of those ideas are original works, but will likely be ripe for ban in the States.

2025 is the worst year of my life for a lot of personal reasons. I've been writing, but much of that has been personal writings because I want to remember all that I've overcome, if I ever make it through this horrible place and time. There's a lot I don't share with readers online because of threats I had in the past, and that's one reason I have remained withdrawn as things have gotten worse. It's very hard to be online here when I haven't updated a chapter in years, but if you knew what I had to deal with irl, you'd get why I stepped back for a while.

I don't know about publishing with such loose privacy laws here. I've looked into it, but the model by which many promote their books involve posting one's face and real name everywhere online, subjecting themselves to frequent threats, deep-fakes, and other dangers that don't involve storytelling, but are costly to the author themselves. Publishers look more ghoulish the more I look into them. I don't have confidence that authorities would protect U.S. citizens from a single threat, especially related to AI, and I've had that view for 20+ years. Are those themes in my future stories? Yes. haha

[dark-muse-iris]

Hi iris. How the hubby doing? Hope u guys are doing well. Thinking of u ❤️

Hi anon! He's doing as good as one can when living in the United States *shattering glass noises*. We spent the last few years anticipating that our country would do something INCREDIBLY stupid and bad for global trade and here we are. We carve out time for art and nice things, but much of his time is spent raising hell, backing me up, and being the prickliest millennial one could meet at the local hardware store.

[dark-muse-iris]

hi !how are you?

I missed you. I hope life is treating you well.

Sending warm sunshine to you.❤️❤️

Thank you, dear. Life is a mix of good and bad, like most years 😅 and probably for most people.

I've been keeping busy hustling to pay off all my debt, studying new things to keep my mind focused, building up a better baseline for my health so my disability won't take me out as many days when I have a flare. It's a full-time job and then some, so my social life and creative life is very limited. The creative life I value, but the social? Not so much haha 😆 People have fucked me up for a while, I'm good doing with less! LESS!

I hope you have good sunshine too. I'm not fully a bird lady, but I do greet them when I'm outside taking my post-meal walks.

[dark-muse-iris]

Is anyone else reading their journals from years ago and thinking, "Damn, a LOT of things got worse!" 💀

[dark-muse-iris]

Sometimes you see the moon during daylight because I miss you and I sent her to check in on you

[dark-muse-iris]

Can I share some small joys with you for a small joy in return? I'm eloping this summer with my partner of 11 years. Who can afford a big wedding in this economy? Still though, it's a small joy.

Also here's a picture of my cat enjoying the classics.

Congrats on your upcoming elopement! That sounds wonderful. I got married shortly after the Great Recession and we kept it small and did it cheap. No regrets!

Love your cat picture, they're living my dream. 🧡 I don't have any pets currently but I did help an old neighbor cross the road safely recently and I took a pic:

[dark-muse-iris]

Glad to hear the spite keeps you running over there. Sorry about the whole consequences of America further descending into fascism. I'm also living out of spite and have been diagnosed with not one not three but two auto inflammatory conditions while trying to finish grad school. We remain unclear on whether or not we'll actually be able to get internships required to graduate. So you know, I'm listening to nine inch nails and trying not to walk into the ocean and never stop. Maybe I'd meet your Jin there... Anyway, you know. Living la vida loca and such. Always good to hear from you 💖

Sorry to hear about your diagnoses. I've got an autoimmune disease too (thanks to Covid, that bitch), although we're still trying to figure out which one it is and that process takes years where I live.

The uncertainty of internships not being available sucks and I'm sorry to hear that's so widespread now. I had to take some to graduate in when I was in grad school and felt like it was bleak back then. I know it's likely worse now since so much with education and economy is in decline.

[dark-muse-iris]

As usual Cat is living my dream. I hope she's doing well. Also hope you're continuing to survive out of spite over there.

The spite keeps my hearth warm and toasty. I'm about to lose my job and my spouse is likely to lose his business thanks to the tariffs. It's been eventful. I even had a nightmare that troops invaded and pointed a barrel at my head, but as soon as I saw they were Canadian, I cried tears of joy. You know, usual dreams that an American might have these days.

Trying to figure out what the next job will be should I lose this one. It looks bleak, given that every field I've worked in was defunded or targeted by the fascists. I attend union meetings to keep fired up and make offerings to the old gods to support my revenge.

Hope you're doing well, dear!

[dark-muse-iris]

"I want to be a dragon."