dei2dei

[dei2dei]

I really really really don't know who to ask and I'm new to AO3😢😥😥 Is commenting too much awkward??? I'm socially inadept and interacting with people online gives me an overload of anxiety and recently I've found this fic and fell super deep in love with it and commented massive messages on each chapter. The author replied to me at the beginning but recently they just stopped (hi I understand it's not the author's job to reply and they're likely busy with their life too) but I can't help but be kind of worried that I somehow had put them off (because my comments sometimes involves analyzations and if I get into something too much I can be too excessive) I plead for advice is this normal???

while I can only speak for myself, I as a writer absolutely LOVE it when people give me long comments (the longer, the better lol) and, for me personally, there’s no such thing as too many comments.

love love love love these long comments, they help motivate me, especially when my readers give me deep analysis on the characters and/or their actions.

anyway, fellow writers, reblog if you love long positive comments

[dei2dei]

don’t know who needs to hear this but AO3 comments section is not Letterboxd. giving unsolicited criticism to a fanfic writer does not make you a “fanfic critic” because there’s no. such. thing.

giving unsolicited criticism to a fanfic writer just makes you a spoiled, rude, entitled asshole at best, makes the author stop posting their works altogether at worst.

a reminder that it’s always okay to just stop reading and quietly click away from a fic if at any point you feel like you don’t like it for whatever reasons. unless specifically asked, there’s no need to tell the author, whose work you read for free, how you dislike something they wrote for themself for fun.

[dei2dei]

Well, after I saw this picture, it inserted a story idea into my head. There's a dialogue line from MK11 that's flavored a lot of my work, subtly: Sonya: You graduate from the academy? Sonya: Nope. Got my degree in marine biology. Sonya: That was my dream. and Jessica McNamee being in The Meg and later the 2021 MK movie did not help the situation. So! Here we are. into the abyss will i run rating: T (🌶️some kissing, also blood/injury) wordcount: 7338 summary: When contact is lost with a deep-sea submersible, Johnny Cage—high-stakes deep-ocean rescue diver and survivor of a classified dive gone wrong—is dragged back into the depths for a rescue mission he never wanted. But what he finds is worse than the nightmares: the wrecked sub, one teammate dead, and Sonya Blade clinging to life. He hasn't seen her in almost a decade after a brief, tumultuous relationship, but she's the one that got away...and it turns out she's been keeping some important secrets. She's also not the only thing waiting for him in the deep.

[dei2dei]

How come semi trucks in Europe look like “toot toot :)” and in North America they look like “HONK HOOOOOOOONK >:|”

[dei2dei]

I assure you: somebody, somewhere, is on the exact same wavelength as you are.

[dei2dei]

Day 2 for CageBlade Week 2025! might as well jump is on AO3 now! rating: M (🌶️🌶️) wordcount: 5872 summary:

There are a lot of things struggling hockey hotshot Johnny Cage would prefer to do than show up to the team's Friends and Family freeskate night, but a desperate need for good PR gets him on the ice—where he watches his teammate Jackson Briggs drag a blonde out onto the ice. He—and his smart mouth—can't be blamed for what happens, can they?

Sonya Blade has any number of flaws, but one of them is that she can't say no to a challenge. Recovering from an injury, the one-time worlds champion figure skater would rather be anywhere than on the ice again, but she has to prove her friend wrong—and gets more than she bargained for, but strangely, just what she didn't know she needed.

-- otherwise known as "it's hockey/figure skater AU time"

[dei2dei]

a feel like the new generation of fanfic readers NEED to understand that clicking on a fic (interaction) does nothing. ao3 has no algorithm. your private discord discussions of fic do not reach the authors. if you do not actively engage with writers they will stop posting. this isn’t social media this is community.

[dei2dei]

CageBlade Week is upon us and my first fic is up and out! the moon was gold

Rating: T Wordcount: 1279 Summary:

After a 1920s themed charity gala, Sonya just wants to get *home*. Johnny's making sure they go home in style.

Hopefully.

[dei2dei]

“We’re in a fanfic drought” Tell the writers you like their work.

“All Tumblr ever does is write oneshots now” Tell the writers that you’d love to see them write longer things.

“Nobody updates their fics anymore” Tell the writers you love the fic and want to see more of it.

Tell the writers.

[dei2dei]

What was the first property/media you read fanfiction online for?  🌈

[dei2dei]

*whispers* hey. hey you guys. we're doing it again this year! @wandering-koyote did the art this year that we've tucked into the banner. This year, the 1995 movie is 30(!??!!) years old, so we've pulled some prompts from the classic. All the details + text version below the cut.

The Fourth(!?!?) Annual CageBlade Week!

Event Info

Dates: 16-22 June 2025 (Mon-Sun)

All forms of fanworks will be accepted - fanfic, fanart, gifset, playlist whatever it may be! 

If we somehow missed your post after the end of the event, let us know so we can reblog it! We might be a little slow on the day-to-day but we don’t want to miss anything. The only things we won’t be reblogging are NSFW with minors and explicit noncon. We will reblog late posts.

Make sure to tag your posts with #cagebladeweek (within the first 5 tags, thanks algorithm) and/or @ this blog so we can find and reblog everything.

Participate one day or every day - it doesn’t matter! If you post on an external site (AO3, FFN, DeviantArt) please at least drop a link here so we can reblog it and promote it. There will be an AO3 Collection started closer to the date.

Prompts:

Day 1: vintage / lyrics

Day 2: island / AU of choice

Day 3: rescue / horror

Day 4: $500 sunglasses / space

Day 5: dressing up / wrong turn

Day 6: hope / ruin

Day 7: Free Day!

You may interpret these prompts as strictly or as loosely as your heart desires. You can stick as close or as wide from the prompts as you want. Want to combine two? Go for it! Want to have some other characters cameo or tell a more ensemble tale? Sure - as long as it has Sonya and Johnny at the heart of it.

If you have any questions about prompts and submissions, send us an ask here! We look forward to seeing all the wonderful contributions!

FAQs:

1) Do I have to write in English?: No, you do not! This is a multi-language-friendly event. Post in your language of choice and users can machine translate if needed. If you choose to write in one language and later post translations to English, those translations can also be added to the AO3 collection.

2) Can I write an OT3 fic?: The mods support polyamorous shipping, however this week is for CageBlade specifically. We'd like that contributions focus on Sonya & Johnny's relationship.

3) Well, what if I write a breakup fic and have them hook up with other people? It's still CageBlade, right?: Not for this event. This week is a celebration of CageBlade and how awesome they are together. Want to give us some hurt/comfort, breakup & reconciliation, sure! Whump? Go wild! But we want to see them coming together and realizing how great they are as a couple.

4) What if I don’t like any of the prompts and have ideas of my own?: Then go ahead and write them! Want to explore their friendship before they hooked up? Want to write all AUs? Do you have some art ideas you’re just itching for an excuse to post and draw? The world is your oyster!

[dei2dei]

I think this blog is helping me learn how to be less parasocial because before now I’ve only ever heard it used when referring to crazy insane fans who think their favorite blogger/youtuber/streamer/whatever is in love with them but this is making me realize that that isn’t the case. parasocialness can happen even with seemingly small things. all in all be mean to your anons it helps them and I’m sorry if this is parasocial in and of itself

idk what you’re blogging about rn but I hope you get that man pregnant or whatever 👍

the thing about parasociality is that it's undergone a rather bizarre transformation wherein the connotation is almost always a negative one, when the actual definition is merely describing a very human ability to feel connected to and concerned with people who we've never met and even "people" who might not really exist - the term was coined in the 50s to describe the attachment and investment that people felt in fictional television characters.

there's nothing innately negative OR positive about a parasocial relationship. to your example, a relationship doesn't become parasocial when you convince yourself that your favorite media personality is in love with you, but rather when you develop a sense of fondness for them in the first place.

I have no illusions about now attached my favorite youtube yoga instructor feels to me, personally (she doesn't, at all, because we've never directly interacted) but I feel warmly about her all the same, frequently feel cheered after following along with her yoga routines, and will be sad when the dog who appears in many of her videos inevitably dies. that's a parasocial relationship and it's fine! it's not bad to care about people you don't know personally, and that is arguably an important thing to be able to do.

you feeling warmly about my tumblr persona and appreciating what I do here is also parasocial, and that's okay! like I said, that's neither good nor bad! the parasociality can be harmful, but it's all nuance baybeeee!

[dei2dei]

this. so much this. fanfiction and fanworks are about *community*. about putting something into the world and about making friends, seeing how people react and respond, being *part* of that. bringing joy to others (or agony to them, whatever fics float your boat), giving them a breath of pleasure, a moment of delight, an escape. It's about *friendship* and connection and sharing ideas, characters, settings, that connect with you so much you say "this. I need to do something with this." it's not about an algorithm or subscriptions or hits (because, and especially with AO3, *there is no algorithm). it's about people. connection. community.

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[dei2dei]

hey uh new type of ao3 spam comment just dropped. (I know it's spam because the fic they left this comment on . doesn't have chapters. lmfao). Report this kinda comment as spam and don't take it personally it is literally recycled bullshit

[dei2dei]

"We're living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow" sure is the mood right now, huh.

[dei2dei]

I mean, we knew, but it's nice to hear so succinctly

[dei2dei]

if you’re 26 and older, reblog.