#“to be loved is to change” is very literal in this fic

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I'm just curious since I absolutely adore all your trans Ed fics, what made you read Ed as being trans? Is it more of a personal headcanon since we tend to see ourselves in fictional characters, or did you notice some tiny detail on the show that made you think so?

Oh my friend, I'm so glad you ask.

The cool thing about reading Ed as trans, I think, is that you do not even have to squint to do it. Literally you need to change exactly nothing, and this read suddenly adds a lot of nuance and additional juicy layers to his story and his journey with masculinity.

Ed's whole deal with masculinity, precisely exactly all of it, makes him feel so much like a trans guy who never outgrew the "I need to be hypermasculine so I pass" phase, fitting that read so precisely that given there are trans writers on the OFMD team I would be absolutely SHOCKED if at least some of it wasn't intentional. Every single trans guy I know has been through a version of this, where you come out and you know you're a man but you need everyone else to know, too, and so you lean very hard into masculinity to make damn sure you pass. And not just pass, but pass perfectly. Ed is forcing himself into such a heavy ideal of masculinity that it feels artificial; he needs to make sure everyone sees him as this perfect ideal of a masculine man that he cannot possibly live up to because no one could.

Certainly, parts of Ed's hyper-masculine presentation seem to be things that genuinely make him happy and bring him joy. That's important. Ed's happy to be a man, the problem is that he's trying to force himself into such a narrow idea of masculinity that it's stifling him. It's preventing him from enjoying more ""feminine"" things that he genuinely loves, because he's terrified of being seen as less of a man for it, and people like Izzy reinforce the idea that if Ed fucks up in his performance of masculinity, he's going to be in danger because of that. It's very real, and the added juiciness from reading Ed as trans adds so much to the great story that's already there, I think. There's this additional element of Ed knowing he's a man but needing to make sure everyone else could never doubt it, there's an additional perceived danger to slipping up, there's a sort of jealous admiration for guys like Stede who seem, at least on the surface, so much more comfortable with a different type of masculinity that Ed wishes he could have more of.

And on top of that, there's just a lot of other little additional things, like:

Ed making his beard his whole brand, it just screams beard dysphoria and "no one could ever claim I'm not a man because the beard is my whole THING."

Something about his relationship with his name, and how hard he has to try to get people like Izzy to call him by his name in front of others

The way Ed is dehumanized when he dares to step outside a very safe, masculine gender presentation - it's why Izzy saying "this thing you've become" when Ed is wearing a robe and painted nails hits so hard for me, I think

Okay. okay. listen. You know the scene where Ed makes CJ whip him in the balls. Listen. Ed baby. It just SCREAMS "people here don't know I'm trans and I don't know how much getting hit in the balls should ACTUALLY hurt so I'm gonna lay it on really really thick just to be safe"

There's a lot to be said about Ed and his clothing in a lot of directions, but I'm gonna leave it at how he's really figured out a safe set of clothing that works for him and consistently allows him to be read as this super masculine guy, and he's scared to step away from that. Also, I really like imagining the full-fingered gloves at the end of s1 as a way to cover up the nail polish on his fingernails until it wears off.

I think it's very sweet that Ed tends to be very private when talking about his personal and sex life with others, but a very, very easy explanation for how that got started is he just doesn't want to go around sharing personal details about his body with people!

Yeah. A trans read of Ed is so shockingly easy, fits so well, and adds so much to his journey, frankly I'm amazed it's not more common.

[wanderingblindly]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers! Spread the self-love 💞

oooooooh this is so cruel, how dare you make me consider my fics this way????? reflecting on this made me realize that a lot of my personal favs are actually my less popular ones. that makes sense, in a way; often my favorites are where i'm trying to express a really specific emotion or idea, which might not always resonate with people? anyways, ordered from oldest to newest:

Eighteenth Summer (Do You Wish We'd Fall in Love?)

ambient, pining, sort of sepia toned vignette filtered lestappen. i remember really wanting to capture the ambiguity that comes with being 18 and finishing high school -- a new future looms even when you feel like you haven't finished living what you have now. very much being on a precipice, but with a happy ending :)

You Bring Me Closer To God

i literally fucking love this universe so much. even if the fic wasn't special, writing all the dynamics between the bandmates, between the bar flies, between oscar and lando... it was such a joy. i still think about writing more within Dirty Blondes all the time.

I Know Your Name (But Not Who You Are)

lestappen in grief! the passage of time! the fear that life has somehow stopped moving on but also changed more than you can stomach! wanting things from your childhood but having to accept that you can never go back! but perhaps learning that moving forward is beautiful, too! yet another one where i entered it trying to capture a specific feeling, and i think i managed to like... use the setting in a way that achieved that.

Someone in Seattle

i like this one because i managed to write a fic i'd love to read. i love fics that explore the soft, meandering development of relationships -- the ones where falling in love is a bit of a blurry line, and it happens just by the nature of truly Seeing each other. it's a love letter to my home, and i think of her very fondly.

Impasse of Biting

THIS IS THE ONLY FIC WHERE I FEEL LIKE I GOT EVEN CLOSER TO LIKE. SOMETHING YOU COULD ANALYZE. THERE ARE CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS! THERE'S SPECIFIC WORD CHOICE! THERE'S UNRELIABLE NARRATION AND COMPLICATED EMOTIONAL TIES! idk. it's one that i feel like each reader could come away with something wildly different, and (as someone who doesn't often deal in ambiguity), that makes me proud.

[sockfus]

dad bod hakoda. and the crowd cheers

[jackshiccup]

to celebrate my otnwasversary last week i watched httyd in orchestra concert and got a custom tiny toothless tattoo like woah.. we used to pray for times like these 12 year old me would be ecstatic to know this is what we’re upto now

[muirmarie]

Me: I joke about writing the same McCoy centric story over and over again in different ways

Me: and like. I love doing it and imma keep doing it because it makes me happy.

Me: but also. I do sometimes wonder if it's like. A little Much.

Me: like maybe I should branch out or something

Me: [reads another fundamental and extremely insulting misread of McCoy's character by someone who is clearly making a Choice to cast McCoy as the villain, because they have to get him out of the way of spirk, because they're too???? idk immature??? to realize that even when you're in a relationship with one person, other ppl can and SHOULD still be important to you]

Me: lmao I hope I AM too much actually!!!! I hope it is 100% obnoxious how much I love that doctor!!!!! Time to write more versions of the same story of McCoy being forced to realize that he is loved and cared for!!!!!!

Me: I KNOW MY NICHE AND IMMA DIE IN THAT NICHE, THANKS

[the-kipsabian]

people sure do love consuming content but ignoring art huh

is it really that hard to click a kudos button (not the tumblr like button, seriously fuck that noise) if you reach the end of a fic, or writing two words ("loved/liked this") to encourage a writer?

also is it *really* that difficult to hit reblog on this site? be real with me for a second. is it?

yall are just bunch of consumers who are destroying any fun in making and sharing art cause yall are so conditioned to the quick-and-fast-blink-and-you-miss-it consumerism of modern social media content

CLICKING BUTTONS TO ENCOURAGE AND SHARE STUFF IS FREE. TYPING OUT TWO WORDS TO TELL SOMEONE YOU LIKED THEIR WORK ENOUGH TO FINISH READING IT IS FREE AND TAKES FIVE SECONDS MAX

you literally have no excuse. thats all

[colorsofcthulhu]

I drew a scene from @thiswasinevitableid ‘s fic “Amnesty Records” ages ago and never posted it, so now here’s the redraw and the original at the same time! These are about a year and a half apart, and its cool to see how my style changed :)

[remythologise]

kira always dragging me back to a decade old fandom WHAT EVEN IS CHERIK a core memory that's what. *dusts off ao3 bookmarks* here we go again i guess

showing up at cherik 2011 ao3 era like

[courfee]

just went through all my ao3 fics and edited all the tags because i feel like i overtag a lot and it always bothered me. tbf the most overtagging happens in my relationship/character tags but i find it super difficult to judge who/which relationship is important. like friendships are So Important in my fics i dont feel like i cant tag less there? especially my longer fics. amtc james&sirius and black brothers are in my mind at least if not more important than literally amtc jegulus. i know its a jegulus fic but also jegulus is just the catalyst for other relationship dynamics. how do you tag that stuff

[quietwingsinthesky]

Drabble 52/366 - Doctor Who

“I thought she- she would regenerate.”

“She might have, if you’d stopped.”

“I didn’t know- I thought- Don’t touch me!”

“I see what the Doctor enjoys about this now. Fun new learning experiences around every corner.”

“I didn’t- I didn’t want to.”

“No one made you.”

“She had a-”

“And it was pointed at me.”

“…It was pointed at both of- of us.”

“Optimistic and delusional. So cute. You really are one of his.”

“He would never have- Never.”

“You believe that—”

“—I said don’t—”

“—when you’re standing on the planet he destroyed?”

…

…

…

“Get your hand off of my face.”

[allylikethecat]

as someone who knows absolutely nothing at all about horses / horse riding, i am. obsessed. with all the king's horses. i loved the new chapter 🥰

Ahhhh thank you so much for reading!! I know this AU is very niche (and that myself and maybe like three other people are the target audience lol) but I am just so thankful for all of the support it has received and that people are still willing to give it a chance! I have so much fun working on it (and was literally flatting my horse after work today day dreaming about the fic lol) and I love horses SO MUCH so getting to combine these two things makes me extra happy! Thank you SO MUCH for reading, and if you ever have any horse questions let me know! I've been trying to make things clear to not horse people as well, but if I ever get too "nerdy horse girl" about it let me know! Thank you for reading and your kind words about the new chapter and sending this ask!! I hope you had a wonderful Friday and that you have the best weekend!

❤️Ally

[prophecydungeon]

the more i chew over the mercs trilogy from rvb14 the more i think my initial reaction to it was kind of a complete misread actually lol

i had to dig through some old posts to find where i talked about it but initially i approached/read it as showing a pivotal, critical moment in felix and locus's history where they tipped over the line from being This to being That, and in that regard, the episodes are definitely still super fun and charming and Good but they also fall very flat. what exactly was pivotal about that? honestly, not much unless you want to do an insanely close read with some reaching. i guess maybe the whole "surprise, guess we're down to do a ransom and also kill a guy" part but... not really? they definitely murdered n+1 people at the club and are not new to murderizing (eg. the "mason wu, trained killer of men" comment). that was not a moral high ground situation in any way and nothing about it really points to it being The Moment that something changed fundamentally.

but what it was, actually - and i feel silly that i didn't read it like this at first - was honestly just a show that felix and locus did actually come from a place of doing net positives at some point in their lives. and that's not something to be dismissed! the fact that they weren't terrible horrible no-good dirty rotten mercenaries from the day the left active service is really interesting! and the trilogy showcased all of that in a super fun and charming and Good way and sometimes the point is just to show that things used to be different.

[mothmage]

me when a new (god-tier, galaxy-brained, divinely-inspired, etc) fic gets slapped into my merlin-rotted brain:

[daydadahlias]

How do you feel about MiM's success? did you expect it?🤓

oh boy i sure am gonna say some words!

this is an interesting ask bc I don't really perceive MiM as being very successful personally.

I mean, I'm so immensely happy with the reaction it's getting and the interaction it's getting (bc any interaction on writing is literally the best thing in the world) and I absolutely love having the opportunity to share it more than anything!!!

but it's hard to think of it as being successful because I am, of course, comparing to every other fic I've ever posted on the same platform. and, in comparison to the reaction Scene 14 and Take Notes were actively getting as I was posting them live in the same manner I'm currently posting MiM, this is a considerably smaller reaction.

for context, a chapter of MiM usually gets somewhere between 2-5 comments (and maybe around 5 asks let's say). In contrast, Scene 14 was probably getting a consistent 5-7 comments every update (and, if I'm remembering correctly, probably around 10 asks, which is insane to think about in retrospect). Take Notes, in addition, would be getting around 7-10 comments a chapter (and probably ~10 asks as well but I don't really know that number; i'm just making shit up).

Also, I do think it's worth briefly noting that Bite Marks (another chaptered fic I tried to post on a schedule; rip my baby) has about double the amount of subscriptions that MiM has and (what I consider to be) considerably more kudos while also being significantly shorter.

So, when you're looking at the actual "statistics" of fics I've posted, I don't see MiM as being all that successful.

this is of course not to give the impression that I think MiM should have more comments/interaction or anything because I'm not a little greedy monster yknow and I really would be happy and content if only one person read it.

but I just don't think it would be accurate of me to say I think the fic is successful within the scope of how fics of mine have done in the past.

however, this statistical drop off is simply because our fandom is significantly smaller now than it was when I was posting Scene 14 and Take Notes. I could post either of those fics right now and I simply do not think they would do nearly as well as they did in 2021.

But, since those are the posting experiences I have to compare to for all my work in the future, I am well aware that no fics I post following them will ever get the same level of interaction and - therefore - I will never be able to perceive them as being successful. which,, sounds depressing dfghjk but i swear it's not!! it's not something i let myself dwell on (especially bc it's something ALL the writers in our fandom are experiencing). I write fics for me and whoever wants to read them can. it's a blessing to get to be able to share stuff at all!! and all i need is just one reader to keep posting <3

in terms of expecting it, I would say maybe that I never really have any expectations of how people will respond to fics. i'm never right when i make predictions anyway. I just never really know, so I think I'm always a little surprised by how people respond. even after 3 years of posting in the same fandom, i dont think i'll ever get over the "omg people read my stuff and like it" feeling.

so, TL;DR, i feel really good about MiM bc anyone is reading it at all :)

hope that kind of answers this, sorry for the tangent

[dbphantom]

This is a very serious fanfic.

I'm taking it very seriously.

Quoth the Linda "Just Add Water."

[tytonnidaie]

the most dangerous part of having a pet au that u never seriously work on except think abt it to ur writing playlist as u drive is that. you develop it. and it gets better. and then you really really want to write it. and you're in danger