#also unfortunately older fic can be hard to read for other reasons so i can't really just swap out for that

[void-dude]

Sup dude, just wanted to day that i really enjoy your art!! Your lines are so fluid and i really like the way you make shapes! Gives the art as a whole a really nice flow that makes it do pleasing. Also, you've made me read by the skin of your teeth and holy shit wasnt that the best GF fanfic ive ever read. Do you have other fic recommendations?

OK FIRST OF ALL THANK YOU OH MY I feel so flattered teehee THANK YOU!!! SECOND! I SURE DO! But they are all kinda ... Stan Twins related! A bunch of ANGST and plenty of brotherly companionship!!!

I reblogged a list before that made me sob happy tears with wonderful fics, check them out as well!! But here are some of my favourites anywas:

By Any Other Name

Stan's life hasn't always been great. He's done some not so nice things, got caught up with the wrong kind of people but just because you can't remember the past, doesn't mean it can't come back to haunt you. In the most terrifying of ways...

hide and seek

(THIS ONE IS FERAL FORD AND IS ONE OF MY FAVS)

Stan’s next shout feels more like a scream, desperate and frightened and tearing his throat on the way out: “Ford, please! Come on! Stanford, you can’t do this to me, not again—Stanford!” Something slams into him, and he hits the deck hard. His first instinct is, naturally, to punch—but he doesn’t get that far.

hero

Stan is a hero. He wonders if that's the only reason Ford suddenly wants to be his brother again.

none of those phds is an md, you dumb idiot

In which Ford's interdimensional universal translator breaks, and he realizes just how much he's lost. Turns out thirty years of dimension-hopping aren't great for language retention

Breaking Point

Accidents at sea happen, however careful you may be. Unfortunately for Stan, some can dredge up memories with them

How Old Are Babies Again?

When Mabel and Stanley went off into the forest for something or other, Stanford didn't think any of it. Stanley was a grown man, he's able to handle himself. Right? Except... Stanley was definitely older when he left, Ford is sure of it.

[firendgold]

Ok so bc anything i do in this fandon is specifically to piss that woman off, i gotta ask:

Do you have any ideas for fic scenarios for trans!albus and/or trans!Harry? (time travel harrydore or not, you pick)

so funny story anon, my instinctual answer for this question was "no, I've never thought about it, sorry"—but as I was writing that reply a while back, I actually started getting ideas. It was wild. (That's also why this took so long to get out, sorry!)

trans!Albus is easier for me to imagine for some reason. I had this idea where his entire early life could be rewritten just to do a deep dive into the Dumbledore family dynamics when the firstborn prodigy half-blood son is AFAB instead. How that might change Percival's actions on Ariana's behalf (or not), if he doesn't have any thoughts in the back of his mind about leaving his family in his "eldest son's" hands. How that could change the rivalry between Albus and Aberforth, who might not be super tolerant of an uppity older sister who's also queer. We still don't know much about Kendra somehow, after 1 billion years of Pottermore, but whether or not she's accepting of Albus' gender identity and sexuality could be their own spin-off fanfics, they're that fascinating. Her own Native history could then be touched on as well.

All these things together could be a point of personal conflict for Albus, who's already a living embodiment of a taboo Native/European union and might have to wrestle with what's accepted from him as a Good and Proper Woman of English society re: marriage and carrying on some (other) pureblood's line, along with protecting Ariana's secret and "making up" for his father's crimes.

I don't know if Albus' sexuality changes. If it doesn't, I can see him being briefly confused about What Elphias Is To Him when he gets older, and Elphias is getting his own messages from home about How Much Time He's Spending With That Dumbledore Girl. I imagine there would be a lot of conversations between Albus and Kendra, and Albus and other peers, about who he was going to marry and what his "prospects" were since his father's a known criminal. And Albus, beyond not identifying as a girl at all, would find all this discussion about such trivial sexist matters frustrating as hell.

Unfortunately, I see everyone at Hogwarts misgendering Albus while he's a student, or pretty much everyone. Like, he eventually tells Elphias who accepts right away (and is confused about What That Means for Him in private), and maybe a few other students, but none of his professors are Getting It. His stellar academic record probably keeps him from being bullied as much, but doesn't entirely protect him from rampant transmisogyny and slurs when he outperforms people.

But regardless, assuming the "major beats" of history play out the same way, I can see Albus being a lot more proactive re: marginalized rights than he already was in canon, and perhaps moving the overall British Society Needle way further to the left, because it's one thing to talk shit about the powerful, progressive, weird old man that no one really knows is gay but can kick your arse without breathing hard, but another thing entirely to talk shit about your trans, out and proud, progressive Supreme Mugwump who has already freed all the elves, speaks all the magical creature/Being languages, is raising your kids at school better than you are at home, AND is still gay and can still kick your arse without breathing hard.

This is all, of course, imagining that Albus is AFAB and identifies as male. If it's the other way around and Albus is AMAB and identifies as female... I can't even imagine. I'm not cool enough ig

As for Harry, it's weird but I don't have any trans headcanons for him during his Hogwarts years. It's kind of similar to how I don't read many genderbent!Harry fics unless I adore the author, because even though I'm a girl I can't imagine Harry IDing as one for some reason. (I'm very limited, I know.) BUT. For some reason this changes when you bring in time travel harrydore.

With the ship as the parameter, I can imagine an AFAB Harry who's spent his whole life chafing at the clothes Aunt Petunia gets him—because 'unfortunately' (for her), even pre-puberty, she can't just give Harry Dudley's cast-offs unless she wants The Neighbors to start lifting eyebrows and asking questions—because they're girl clothes and along with just not fitting in to the Pristine Pretentious Family with her messy hair and tight clothes and taped-up glasses, Harry has never felt like a girl. He insisted on having people call him 'Harry' as soon as he could talk and get away with it, and only has to hear his deadname from his teachers and with the Dursleys.

This all of course changes once McGonagall is reading names on the Sorting List in 1991 and just barely doesn't stumble over Harry's preferred name being on the list instead. (She is surprised only because Harry is famous. By the time Harry goes to school, there have been many other out trans students in this headcanon. But probably very few under her eye have been quite this famous.)

I've always personally headcanoned Harry as bisexual, but I don't know if that would be the case in this particular headcanon. I can still see him going after Cho, and perhaps even Ginny. I can see him having the same confusion about What Are Ron and I To Each Other that a trans!Albus had about Elphias a century ago, without ever living his Hogwarts life as a girl to anyone but his enemies (and having a lot of friction with canon!Hermione and/or Lavender as a result). I can see Draco hating Harry even more, because he always kept "her" in the back of his mind as a Dark Lady he could serve under in all ways, only to have this... boy being his rival and Quidditch better and wanting absolutely nothing to do with the Malfoys or purebloods or knowing her place.

A thought that sticks in the back of my mind is that JKR (otherwise known by me as That Woman (derogatory)) specifically wrote Harry as a boy for a lot of reasons, and the main one being that she always planned for him to live and pass on his line in the "traditional" way, and having her titular character be a girlboss would've derailed that status quo. In a universe where Harry is AFAB, I can imagine a lot of related conversations with and around Harry about this. How "she" is "the last Potter" that there will ever be, because naturally she'll marry into one of the families and the name will be lost forever. I can see this being a real bone of contention with Harry and radicalizing him, along with Voldemort and the discrimination against werewolves and house-elves and centaurs and veela (which I doubt even one dedicated Dumbledore would be able to get rid of), making him take his place as the next generation leftist magical powerhouse.

And so how does all that change his relationship with Dumbledore? I... don't really see it changing much. If both characters are trans, that's another point of connection for them that bonds them through all the mess the government and society puts them through. It makes Albus a figure for Harry to admire as a young boy ("look, the most powerful wizard in the world is just like me!") and to still anguish about as a young man ("all the choices he made that I don't agree with, all the secrets he kept from me, how do I know I won't make the same mistakes or make no better progress than he did?"). Their relationship could be all the more painful or distant if one of them is out and one is in the closet, like an Albus who never came out or transitioned and is seeing in Harry the upright boy he could have been, or if Harry is resentful of Albus living his truth because he, a knobbly-kneed adolescent girl, doesn't have the power, freedom, or influence to be who he truly wants to be.

But focus! I'm focusing! Time travel Harrydore. The specific scenario I was imagining was one where AFAB Harry never comes out to the general public. His loved ones who are his peers know, but all the adults in his life (yes, including Remus and Sirius) never get to meet him properly. They die thinking of him as "James' daughter". And after defeating Voldemort, Harry just can't take the idea of spending any more time not being the person he wants to be. He's done being the Girl-Who-Lived so he writes goodbye letters to Ron and Hermione and does some ancient ritual without anyone knowing, and instead of changing him at the molecular level it flings him back to the past.

And so unlike a lot of time travel fics (including mine lol) where Harry is grieving his true time and desperate to get back home, this Harry misses his friends terribly, but it doesn't take long for him to see being an unknown in a different time as a golden opportunity. Sure, it would have been better if he'd been flung into the future instead and maybe had more tolerant people instead of less, but no one knows who he's "supposed" to be here. So he can grow into the man he truly is!

And so while Harry is setting up his new life for himself (maybe as some personal tutor, or a backup Quidditch player, or something that keeps him out of the limelight for once?), he runs into trans!Albus who doesn't have many friends and not much else going on for him (depending on who or where Grindelwald is right then), and Harry's nervous but they hit it off and become close friends, and one thing leads to another, and...

*cackles*

Also also, and sorry for sticking this all the way at the end lol, but MUCH RESPECT for hanging around in HPF just to stick in the craw of That Woman. I think I'm adopting your philosophy for the future. ^^

[bitimdrake]

Why is it so damn hard these days to find fics without Tim’s parents being abusive and evil or Jason having “Lazarus Pit Madness”?? Dx I’m dying

I knowwww. I get annoyed by both, yet they’re so prevalent it’s impossible to really read fic without accepting them to some extent :( I wish my standards for accurate characterization in fic could be much higher, but instead I just have to keep high standards for writing quality, and the slimmest list of deal breakers for characterization/canonocity.

I haven't actually been into comics all that long, but I've looked back a bit at older fic a few times, and it's truly wild how different the vibe is. If you jump back like 10 years ago, almost everything is written with an awareness of canon, and a huge number of fics will outright say specifically when they occur or what specific events they're ignoring. You know when you read normal fic for, say, a TV show, and every author is like "this is au after episode 6" or "this occurs vaguely some time in season 2". Like...can you imagine if we still got to have that in dc fic. The fucking dream.

But as far as I can tell it's this combination of...the reboot mixed things up so much that even people who do read a lot of comics either have to declare their fics are set preboot, or operate on this unclear foundation of the contradictory backstories from the new 52 through now. And the less and less current preboot is, the less and less there is to keep popular interest in it alive.

You’d still think that people could be basing fic off current comics, even if the backstories/histories are under debate--but also a lot of people slid over from the fandoms of various adaptations (or just found the fandom by itself somehow??) and, for reasons that have never made sense to me personally, decided to create for this world that they’ve never actually interacted with. And one little piece of completely fabricated fanon--like “Jason was affected by ‘lazarus pit madness’ when he returned to gotham”--gets picked up by other people who use it in their work and claim it’s canon, which gets picked up by even more people, into a snowball effect. Until everyone who doesn’t know the source material thinks it’s true, and even people who do know comics can very very easily get swayed or muddled with popular fanon.

So now we have a million blogs run by people dedicated to a fandom for a fiction they’ve never even touched, and 90% of any given dc search on ao3 filled with fic that is based on other fic that was based on an incorrect quotes blog that was based on other fic that was based on an animated show that was loosely based on the comics.

And it becomes nearly impossible for comics readers to find fic that genuinely deals with the things from comics that they were excited to continue reading/see through an alternate perspective/read fix-its about/etc

(ps people who tag fics with some variation of “i’ve never read comics” have my genuine gratitude. I support you guys having fun, but I am so glad to get the warning so I can more easily customize my experience.)

[gemalawashomestuck]

Gem, I saw the fic ask and I can't read that much text but I wanna know 4: do you have any ocs?

This could be homestuck ocs or personal ocs for your original works, or even something for another fandom idrc I'm just curious

If you don't have any you can just talk about dirkjohn bc ik you like them (or choose your fav thing from the actual ask game lol)

BHey! Honestly that's funny because...I didn't read it all either, just saw a few interesting questions and reblogged, heh.

But regarding 4...yeah I do! I actually have some in Homestuck, some for other fandoms (Pokemon and Warriors) as well as some personal ones. Answers below the cut because I got into it!

In Homestuck, I've got quite a few adopts that I snagged because I...cannot draw. My ability to draw is actually godawful. I love weird unconventional things that aren't supported by canon and...it shows. Some of them include a little Doom-aligned Cherub who lives on Alternia and disguises himself as a bronzeblood, a mutant naga troll with scales and bright green blood, a winged goldblood with wings covered in eyes (she's so cool), a bronze librarian with a gun, and a rainbow blooded mutant who gets out of culling on a technicality because they have fuchsia blood. There are a bunch more too and I don't have them super fleshed out but I'm still happy to talk about them if y'all want to hear.

I've also got a Pokemon fanfiction sitting in my drafts that would be a full ten anime seasons long. Yeah that's not an exaggeration. The main OC is named Phoenix, and she's kind of a modification of the canon protagonist Hilda (though, her adventure actually starts in Kalos). She's a weird girl who fucking loves Pokemon battling and has too much of a stubborn streak for anybody's good. By the end of the story, she's a multi-regional Champion with an Arceus and a match in ability in the form of N, who's the Hero of Ideals to her Hero of Truth and they've got a...complicated relationship. You...may be able to tell that I think the concept of Mary Sues is stupid. All her Pokemon are also kind of OCs, due to the detail in their personalities - a favorite of mine is a very old transfem and aroace Ho-Oh who played a major role in the creation of the world and who she accidentally calls 'mom' at least twice.

My other major Pokemon AU, with a working title of Many Legends, also has a good few! The main protagonist is a young professor who specializes in Legendary Pokemon, which in this AU exist in multiples and can be caught by regular people (with a permit that's pretty hard to get, and some Legendaries require additional permits beyond the basic one). Her name is Professor Wisteria, and she's very chill but treats literal death gods like adorable kittens. Part of her job, especially since she's new in the field, is to check in on people who have Legendaries or are working towards permits, and to check in on wild Legendaries who live alongside humans or otherwise are amenable to being checked on. One of her very notable clients is a middle-aged farmer (he raises several Pokemon for things like milk and eggs, but also breeds starters for the local professor) who had to emergency start working towards a permit after discovering an Yveltal egg abandoned in his coop and, shortly after, having a young Mewtwo created in an unethical experiment show up at his doorstep asking for shelter. Because everyone who has a Yveltal is required to have a contact who has or is close to a Xerneas (or do so themselves) for safety reasons, he comes into contact with an older widower who keeps a Xerneas that's a family heirloom - it was born under the care of her great-grandmother, and will pass to her kids and grandkids when she passes away. She definitely encourages him to think about the far future, as Mewtwo only live a bit longer than humans do but Xerneas and Yveltal, like some others, can live for hundreds of years.

My Warriors OCs aren't much to write home about, unfortunately - there's a couple, and they're all hilariously overpowered (and fun). For my personal OCs...I tried to write a novel or several when I was in sixth grade, a dream I hope to revisit someday. Of course, they had their own cast of original characters - notably including a pair of genetically engineered lesbian generals named Lightning and Angel. They're fun :)

Because I feel like it, I'll also answer your other stuff - Dirkjohn is fucking awesome. It's a closeish second favorite ship for me, behind Johndave. I write...kind of a lot of them haha. I'm clearing quite a few drafts at the moment, but I have 70+ dirkjohn drafts even ignoring anything involving polyamory or splinters. My first ever ship fic was Dirkjohn! It's "Searching" on my AO3, it's definitely not my best work (again, first romance fic) but it was a lot of fun to write. Other people have written incredible analyses on dirkjohn and why it would work, but for me I read some fucking awesome dirkjohn fics and got hooked on the dynamic. One dirkjohn fic that I'm working on right now is based on a dream I had, where they (along with others) are stuck in a time loop, in which the world ends when they're both 23 and they live their whole lives over and over again. It's a getting-together fic and very cute despite the setting.

Just because, I'll answer a few other questions!

Hilariously, my answer to No. 1 (Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?) is...Searching. Yep, the one I just mentioned. The basic premise is really good, but I think I made quite a few mistakes lol. The other one, that I didn't initially count because I'm literally already doing that, is We Live Again - I had a really ambitious set of ideas for it and accidentally wrote myself into a corner with the help of shoddy organization and a nearly nonexistent outline. So, I'm planning to come back to that one.

And 16, are oneshots underrated? HELL yes they are. I fucking love oneshots, they're the main thing I read rn and the main thing I'm writing! Not everything has to be a federal fucking issue lol, it's nice to just bang the keyboard for a while and make a cute little distilled plot, especially when it's for a punchline.

[gingersnapwolves]

Okay so I just got into the untamed (partly your fault thank you can't wait to read your fics about it) and I'm a lil confused about the names? Idk if you can help at all but. Why does Wei Wuxien for example also get called Wei Ying? And why does Lan Wangji also get called Lan Zhan? Is it about hierarchy or respect? I tried looking it but results were confusing. Anyway if you can answer I would greatly appreciate but if not then no worries! Thanks!

H’okay, so. I might not be the best person to explain this as I am a white American gal but here’s my understanding.

Everyone (probably, more on this in a second) has two names: a birth name (Wei Ying, Lan Zhan) and a courtesy name (Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji). The courtesy name is something they get when they’re older, and it’s a more formal name. Most people will use the courtesy name with each other.

Some of the characters either don’t seem to have one (Wen Qing for example) or we never get one or the other (Nie Huaisang surely has a birth name but we never hear it, Wen Chao surely has a courtesy name but it’s never used, et c).

There are also titles which are bestowed upon people who are super impressive (Lan Wangji = Hanguang-Jun), and people will be called by their station (Sect Leader Jiang, Young Master Wei) and whether or not these are translated (or translated correctly!) can depend on which set of subtitles you’re using, unfortunately. Netflix tends to just substitute in the name instead of what was actually said, Viki translates them, and I’ve seen screenshots of subtitles that have simply put the Chinese term in the subtitle.

Here’s the heirarchy, from most formal to least, using Lan Wangji as an example since he has all these names.

Honorary title (Hanguang-Jun)

Station (Lan-er-gongzi or Second Young Master Lan)

Relationship (for example, if he had a nephew, they would call him Lan-shushu or Uncle Lan) (Lan Wangji calls his older brother ‘xiongzhang’ which is the formal term for an older brother.)

Lan-xiong (this is so hard to translate into English, honestly the best translation is just ‘bro’, in colloquial terms it’s about equivalent to high school guys calling each other by their last names)

Full courtesy name (Lan Wangji)

Courtesy name without the sect name (Wangji - this is what his older brother calls him)

Birth name (Lan Zhan)

Diminutive (A-Zhan, which nobody actually calls him in the show, but his parents definitely might have, and people older than him could, they just don’t, because of his personality haha)

There’s actually so many layers to the relationships that we can peel back just by looking at what people call each other and it’s fascinating.

Wei Wuxian initially starts calling Lan Wangji by the fairly respectful Lan-er-gege (gege = big brother, so it’s basically acknowledging Lan Wangji’s seniority over him) (but this is also somewhat flirtatious of him because it’s a step below the more formal Lan-er-gongzi which is what almost everyone else calls him), but when Lan Wangji is ignoring him, he drops straight down to Lan Zhan, which is enormously cheeky of him. It’s like if you had just met an older classmate and started calling them a baby name. He’s doing it solely to get a rise out of Lan Wangji (which, of course, works) but then keeps doing it because ~reasons~

(horniness is probs the reason)

To use some other examples in the opening arc (you said you just got into it so I don’t want to accidentally spoil you on anything):

Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang immediately call each other Wei-xiong and Nie-xiong so they’re besties within like an hour of meeting each other

Pretty much everyone calls Lan Xichen by his honorary title, Zewu-Jun, because he is known to be Extremely Awesome

It’s interesting to me that Lan Xichen does not call his brother Lan Zhan, but goes with the just slightly more formal Wangji. The entire Lan sect seems to be Like That.

Conversely, Jiang Yanli calls both her brothers by affectionate diminutives (A-Xian for Wei Wuxian and A-Cheng for Jiang Cheng). Wei Wuxian calls Jiang Cheng the informal birth name as well, and Jiang Cheng calls him by his courtesy name (this is because Wei Wuxian is the older of the two - siblings never use the birth name of their older sibling once they have a courtesy name, apparently that’s considered rude. He could call him Wei-shixiong or da-shixiong, which would be Sect Brother Wei or First Sect Brother, but doesn’t. But that’s not weird. Using the full courtesy name is generally pretty neutral.)

One of the reasons Meng Yao stares heart-eyes at Lan Xichen (and a good illustration of Lan Xichen’s character in general) is that Lan Xichen calls him Meng-gongzi (Young Master Meng) which is a level of respect he a) almost definitely does not get anywhere else due to his parentage, and b) is absolutely unnecessary on Lan Xichen’s part - he could call him Meng Yao without being insulting at all, since Meng Yao has no courtesy name. But he goes out of his way to be extremely respectful to Meng Yao because he’s just That Sort of Person.

Okay I have probably rambled long enough about names and naming conventions, haha, I studied this intensely when I started writing fanfic so hopefully I haven’t gotten anything wrong. Let me know if you have any other questions!