#this stuff is hard

[metro-mtp]

How about these if you haven’t answered already?

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

On the flip side!

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

Sorry this is a little delayed! I had to think on it for a bit. Ended up longer than I thought so everything under the cut:

When it comes to fics that have inspired me to try new things in writing* I feel like it's all of them right now because I'm only recently starting to engage more seriously with fanfic as a medium. I'm a slow reader and have historically been a bit of a hermit when it comes to anything fandom-related. However! In the spirit of being the kind of fan you'd like to have I'm trying to be more interactive even if I'm slow and shy. Everything I read lately is Legend of Zelda (a mix of canon, AU, and original legends) and as a deeply indecisive person it's hard to pick just one work and say "I want to make something like that". I've found aspects across stories that I'd like to try eventually! More than anything, I just appreciate all the ways people can play with existing lore and put their own spin on it.

Which brings me to the other question: I can't recommend any fics of my own because I've never written anything...

Until now? Working on my (still unnamed) OL is my first attempt at doing narrative in addition to drawing. It's a HUGE- but fun!- learning curve figuring out how I want it to go, so I've been taking my time. Reading other people's work has been really encouraging though, and so has lurking observing and asking questions on the @expanding-hyrule server :)

This probably wasn't the answer you were looking for, but thanks so much for asking all the same! Have a doodle as compensation for reading that wall of text:

*I wish I had more to share already, I'm working on it! If you want more silly pictures though, they're tagged as [#au stuff] here and on my side blog @pochamarex until I can come up with a proper title

[castudies]

2 am on christmas morning vent because why not.

i'm thinking about how it's been an interesting pre-law journey for me. i've gotten into two law schools, been moved from ED to RD for another law school, and am waiting on five more schools. may apply to two or three more, probably before the new year. to my surprise, i've found myself fluctuating emotionally way more since receiving my acceptances -- as opposed to just riding a happiness high. don't get me wrong. when i say fluctuating, that includes very high highs and a sense of pride i haven't felt in a while. but i guess part of me still wonders (and may always wonder) how this would all be playing out if it weren't for the parts of my journey where i felt i slipped up. where i have trouble trusting i did the best i could.

something i've found helpful in coping with those mental lows is being more excited about the near future. i've started envisioning what life could be like if i commit to either of the two schools i've gotten into so far. looking more into their course offerings, internships, study abroad programs. peaking at housing options. i also want to travel a ton before i start law school. right now, my plan is a three-part international trip -- first part solo, second part with family, third part with friends -- so i've started planning out what that could look like, too.

i guess all this to say: i think overall i trust that everything will be ok, including myself, but the application season remains a heavy weight to contend with personally.

[not-poignant]

HI Pia! Your characters development and trauma recovery are always very deep and tought out, that means a lot of reading and personal experience. I was hoping maybe you could give some advice to the people who can't find motivation to do fanwork for our own enjoiment, but need that kick of 'I will do it for the author/arter/singer/developer etc.' And even if a creation process gives all the fun, the initial power works only if it's not for myself (same with making food). How do people fix it?

Hi anon,

I don't know if I can give motivation on this because this isn't how I find my motivation, so I don't really know how to do it.

It sounds like you need external muses to be creative, instead of internal ones, or finding other motivators, so it might be worth researching more into muses and that experience!

(If anyone else works this way, please share what inspires you and motivates you in the replies!)

It could potentially help to look for more than once muse, or more than one inspiration, so that if one isn't working you can turn to another. Likewise, keeping a list of all the different things that do inspire you somewhere - like a list of songs, singers, artists, authors, developers and more - so that if you're feeling really flat, you can go back through the list and see if anything 'sparks' off for you.

You might also be tired though! If that initial starting motivation isn't coming, is it possible that you might be feeling tired or flatter than usual? It might be that you need to fill the well with energy instead of spending it? I'm biased because of my own burn out, but I do see burn out in a lot of other people around me at the moment, so I do think it's worth considering <3

All my regular things that usually get me working on my writing just vanished for me last month and I had to have a pretty big existential crisis to realise that actually I just really needed to rest. And while I'm slowly picking things back up again, it's not every day and it's for shorter periods of time.

Is it possible that you've sometimes been doing little bits of creation but for shorter amounts of time so you don't count them in the same way, too?

Take care anon!

[yansurnummu]

they should make games 8 gb again

[elleldoe]

absolutely love abusing the power that comes with 3rd person limited pov and just ignoring things and being vague sometimes. does the character know all the details? no? then I don't have to either.

[shinesurge]

Honestly I can tell you finding out art was made by AI really does immediately, legitimately sour it for me, like people will trot this out as a Gotcha for anti-AI people but it's just making it clear they don't consider art to be the conversation that it is lol. It's similar to the way Harry Potter immediately soured for me because engaging with it while knowing the kind of heart Rowling is writing from changes the way the work feels; there isn't any moralizing or whatever that I have to do, it's easy to drop it because it's rotted in my hands.

"Oh but you LIKED this song before, nothing changed!" The conversational partner did. A very large portion of what is interesting to me about art is thinking of why the creator chose that instrumentation, or what made them want to make the thing in the first place. Finding out I've been talking to a wall completely removes an entire third of the force that art is to me, and I can't argue that anything about art or its consumption is Objectively Correct but I can argue it's fucking boring lmao

[nondelphic]

“you’re a writer, can you explain your process?” yes. first, i panic. then i procrastinate. then, in a fit of productivity at 3 a.m., i create chaos.

[artemisdesari-blog]

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.

[thewordsarestuckinmyhead]

[emotionaleating]

my biggest s3xual fantasy is to have someone notice my absence and wonder about me lol

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"taken" style action movie where a man searches for his wife. as he fights baddies in gunfights and hand-to-hand combat, it's slowly revealed that:

his wife hasn't been kidnapped

their marriage is not healthy or functional

this guy isn't rescuing his wife, he's hunting her down

his wife is a crime boss, those are her henchpeople he's fighting in a john-wick bloodbath

the tension builds until, drenched in blood, our protagonist steps forward for the final showdown. he pulls a manila envelope from his bullet-torn jacket and throws it at his wife's feet. he's just spent an entire trilogy biting & killing & maiming....all so he can deliver his shit wife her divorce papers

[quinnjgraham]

I know this is the website where we talk about artists and writers doing anything other than making art or writing, but man, we REALLY undersell how good it feels to actually work on your stuff.

Like you hit your word count for the first time in a week and its like

[strigops]

sweet beast

welcome to the holocene little one, we’ve waited so long for you

[writingwithrxd]

"What are you reading right now?" My own wip because apparently I forgot my own writing style

[elleldoe]

a comment a day keeps the insanity at bay