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kinosternon · 2 years

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Walthrough: Reposting your old FFNet fics to Ao3

In light of recent rumors that FanFiction.Net might be receiving little/no ongoing support, and could suddenly disappear one day with very little warning, I wanted to offer a resource that might help preserve another fic or two. Just in case.

I'm already keeping a private collection of favorite fics from FFN that I can't bear to lose, but this tutorial isn't for saving other folks' fic. Instead, this tutorial is for people who might want to republish their own fic to Ao3 in a streamlined, relatively painless way.

Using these steps, I was able to upload an entire 16-chapter fic, with all the correct original formatting and without doing any fussy HTML editing, in about an hour. (And that was while making up the steps as I went along!)

What you'll need:

A link to your old FFNet account URL OR the those of the fics you want to save (no login necessary)

Access to a working Ao3 account

A web browser, permission to download zipped HTML files, and an unzipper (most computers have these by default)

How to save your fic for posterity:

Copy the link to the first chapter of the fic on FFN that you want to save. (Right-clicking the title of the fic on your profile and choosing "Copy Link" will do this.)

Go to https://fichub.net/ and paste in the URL. Press Export, then click "Download as zipped HTML." This saves your entire fic at once, no matter how many chapters, with formatting intact. Everyone thank the team who made this tool, because it's amazing.

Navigate to your downloads (or click on the pop-up that'll probably appear) and open the zipped HTML file. It will probably open in your default browser on its own, but you might need to tell it to open by right-clicking the unzipped file and choosing the desired browser. The resulting file should have all the chapters of the fic laid out one after another, with clear breaks between each chapter and the original HTML formatting (including section breaks).

Post a "New Work" in Ao3. (Can't import with FFNet, sadly, which is why this tutorial exists.) Add the title, relevant tags, and summary. (I used my FFNet summary with a note that the fic is crossposted.) Backdate the fic if desired by choosing a publishing date from around the time the fic was written.

Here's the magic part: Switch to Rich Text Mode in the "Work Text" field, then copy-paste the text from your first chapter into the Rich Text Mode window. (Note: You may see the stray space appear around italicized/bolded text, and an extra line break tends to appear between section breaks. Otherwise, though, the formatting is generally very well preserved.)

Optional detail: Hit "Preview," then "Save Draft," then "Add Chapter" to avoid posting any of your chapters till you have them all set up and ready to go.

Side note 1: Don't put an endnote on the end of your Chapter 1. Or if you do, go add a chapter 2 first, and then go back to add a chapter 1 endnote. Otherwise it'll end up at the end of your fic instead. It's a fixable outcome, but an annoying one.

Side note 2: If you use a pseud to post, you'll need to be careful to select the correct pseud for each chapter you upload, or you'll end up being listed as the author twice, once under each pseud you selected. If you notice this happening, it's because you've missed switching one in one or more chapters. This is fixable by checking the author listed under each chapter heading using the "Entire Work" button and keyword searching the username you're trying to get rid of.

While I didn't find a way to post all chapters at once, you can do it pretty quickly in the right order, without skipping, by doing the following steps in a loop:

Press "Entire work" at the top of the page.

Use your browser's "Find in page" function for the text "post chapter".

Hitting the "Post Chapter" button that appears.

Just continue the loop until there's no more "Post Chapter" buttons.

Once your chapters are all uploaded, you're done! Congratulations.

A final note

I know that this latest rumor might be blowing certain hints of FFNet's siterunners' inactivity out of proportion. I know that Ao3 isn't everyone's favorite (though I don't agree with most of those people). And I know, most of all, that some folks would rather some of their older fics not see the light of day anymore, for whatever reason.

But look. I'm a trans guy who used to be a teenage girl who (enthusiastically) wrote Twilight/Doctor Who crossover fanfic. I get it, and yet I'm still managing to stun the part of me that cringes long enough to preserve my stuff, because I think that fic should survive whenever possible.

There are options to help make the cringe factor more manageable. Use a pseud for your older stuff (like me), or to minimize any connection to your current account, you can use the Anonymous collection or the Orphan Work function as soon as you're done posting. Do whatever you need to feel comfortable.

But remember that every creative work is a victory just for existing. Please, if you can, find it in your heart (and your schedule) to preserve your work. Past!you worked hard on it, after all. And besides, you never know who might stumble across it someday exactly when they need it.

(PS: Please let me know about any other FFN preservation efforts, by the way! Hopefully this is all blown out of proportion, but you really can never be too careful.)

#ffnet #fanfiction.net #archive of our own #ao3 #tutorial #preserve your fic! it's precious!

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hecatesbroom · 2 months

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How I organise my (fic) writing in Notion

@this-geek wondered how I organised my works in Notion, and considering I'm nothing if not always happy to ramble about anything concerning lists and sorting my various things, here we are ;) thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about this haha

Under the cut because I have unfortunately rambled quite a bit (sorry!)

Okay so first off: I really only use Notion for my fic writing (I prefer to work on original projects in physical notebooks or Word, for reasons unknown to even me) and I only keep my first drafts in here. I move on to Google Docs for second drafts (again, who knows why I do this? I sure don't!) Anyway, onto the organisation:

This is what my main page looks like! I have some fancy sidebars I never really use, the to do list is horribly outdated, and I haven't updated that quote (from one of my favourite book series: The Locked Tomb) in ages, but I still think it looks nice!

The thing this is mainly about, though, is the part in the middle that says "all fics". This is what Notion calls a database. It's basically one gigantic collection of pages (in my case: fics) that you can add tags to and display in various different ways. I prefer gallery view because it allows me to add a picture to the overview if I want to. I used to do this for my Locked Tomb fics and it looked pretty fun:

The thing is that it's also a lot of work to find pictures to match your fics (and nowadays I'm more focused on writing than all the thing surrounding it) so my Golden Girls overview looks more like this! I still like the gallery view because it gives you a little preview of every wip :)

As you can see, there's lots of different tags under the titles. The stuff you see in this view is a quick overview (mostly to help with sorting, so all my posted wips line up, and the rest shows up according to which state of unfinishedness they're currently in)

When you click any fic in this view, you'll be taken to the actual fic, and its complete overview of tags & info! I like to keep track of a lot of things (when I remember to, anyway). Here's a little overview for the things I tracked for the finish line :)

Created: shows me the date I started the document (and therefore the fic). Very useful! I love this feature a lot

Fandom: is mainly there for organisation purposes! I set my gallery view to toggle per fandom, so it's all sorted into neat little sections thanks to this tag

Characters: pretty self explanatory

Type: I've got several categories here: "one-shot", "multi-chapter", "drabble", "ficlet", and (reserved for one AU in particular) "i honestly don't know anymore"

Status: again, there's quite a few options for this one: "plotting", "writing draft 1", "1st draft", "2nd draft", "finished", "posted", "hiatus" and "abandoned" (which I rarely use)

Quick summary: is where I play around with my ao3 summary whenever I'm bored and don't really feel like writing

Draft 1 wc: I usually just put the final word count for the first draft there, unless I remember to track individual writing sessions (in which case I add those word counts as well, like in the example above, because I love looking back on the process!)

Draft 2 wc: I tend to completely retype a fic into my google docs for the second draft. Once I've done that I put the end result into my Notion doc

Finished wc: after I've reread and edited my 2nd draft, and possibly managed to have it all get a little out of hand (like you can see in that doubled word count for the finish line, lol) I put the finished word count here!

WC goal: is just a fun way to see what my initial idea was for the fic (I try to set a goal when I've got a general idea of what I want the work to look like, and always end up exceeding it)

The rest of it is just my writing, basically! Scroll down from there and you get the body for the fic :)

I hope this was somewhat helpful! I'm not a pro at Notion by any means, but if you have any questions or need some help, feel free to ask! I'm happy to try to help out!

#notion #alys.txt #my writing #how does one tag this lmao #notion tour #is that a thing??#i think that's a thing

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sunflowersandink · 2 years

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Ashes in Hand

A round-robin fic from the batfam server! Written by me, @selkienight60 @dottie-wan-kenobi and @squintyfist for the initial prompt: Tim + Burns, Angst with a Happy Ending. Title by me, editing by Selkie.

Summary: A weapon, a mission, and a cryptic lead from your Alternate self. Black Mask is hiding something, and Tim's going to find out what.

Tags: POV Tim Drake, Burns, Hand Injury, Cliffhangers, Tim Drake is Robin, Pre-Under The Red Hood, Tim Drake-Centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Word Count: 1525

Read on Ao3

Despite the cool wind off the bay water, Tim's hands are shaky and they burn .

It's no surprise after the night he's had, but still he finds himself stuck in place, staring down at them, bare of gloves and startlingly pink.

Too close to the dock's edge, the polluted salt water that sprays up at him stings. But he can't care about that, not when the thing he sacrificed his hands for lay in his palms, crumbling and scorched but still usable. Ash coats the metal and melted plastic covering of the modified weapon. He’s almost grateful for the numb patches where his hands are too damaged to feel the lingering grit and heat it’s still radiating.

Anyone who wears a cape to catch rogues in the night is messed up in the head, but sacrificing his hands for this is a new level.

Bruce doesn't want it anyway, his mind supplies as he turns the charred weapon over.

That's only because he doesn't fully understand what it is, what it means for them—on the surface, it appears like any other knife, the blade cut to resemble the Bat symbol. Its handle is melted, but even still, it's obviously not part of the original work.

Rogues can get possessive about weird things. It's not unusual that they want to grab up any batarang they can find, so of course Bruce hasn't put much stock into this one. But below the surface level insignificance, it has a history that only Tim knows about.

It's a key.

To what, he doesn't know yet, but he's going to find out and he has to do it tonight. Or by Thursday's sunrise at the latest.

It's 11:23 now, almost Wednesday.

Other Tim’s instructions were clear.

He just doesn’t know yet if trusting them is the right decision.

Frankly, he doesn't trust Alternate Tim. The guy is a creep and he can't help but be thankful he disappeared back to whatever universe he crawled out of.

Unfortunately, he was annoyingly helpful and usually right about most things.

Which is how Tim ended up here, holding this Batarang-turned-knife between his shaking, burnt fingers and praying that whatever Black Mask is hiding is worth it.

Robin isn't a job for the faint of heart.

Batman's voice comes through the comms.

"Robin, status report."

Tim carefully shifts the weapon to one hand, raising the other to press down on his comm. His fingers sting, skin prickling with over-sensation as he does.

"Responding to a warehouse fire on the docks."

Sirens ring out from afar, so he adds, "Fire and Rescue are on their way."

"Any casualties? Injuries?"

"None." Except my own. Not that you need to know about that.

Bruce grunts in acknowledgment. "Once the situation is contained, keep patrolling."

Tim feels bad for lying when he says he will, but there are more important things to be done tonight. Hopefully Bruce will understand.

He allows himself 30 more seconds of peace by the dock, breathing the briny and polluted air, before forcing himself to his feet. Other Tim left him with an address, a place at the edges of the city where even most Gothamites would consider too grimy and dangerous to wander.

As he stashes the knife in one pocket of his belt, he reaches for burn gel in another. It's difficult to grip the bottle and uncap the lid, and his hands tremble fiercely. Grappling across the city might be out altogether.

He doesn't vocalize his pain as he spreads the gel around his hands—Robins have to be tough. They have to think outside the box, be quicker and more clever than the goons they face.

It’s been over a year since he last maneuvered the city without a grapple, but he hasn’t forgotten how.

Pushing through the aching in his palms, he slips away to the nearby buildings, hoping the supply stash he left a few streets over is still there.

Watch out ladies, this bird is hot on wheels.

Dick is going to make fun of him for this if someone manages to snap a picture of Robin skateboarding down the street with bandaged hands, looking like he just lost a fight with a charcoal grill.

He hopes he finds it funny. Just…just in case nothing else good comes out of tonight. He hopes he at least leaves him that.

The hole in the wall area behind Solomon's Mongolian Eatery is a great place to stash stuff he doesn't want anyone to find. Primarily because no garbage truck has ever come this way and the transient and street kids avoid this area due to the overwhelming abundance of rats.

Tim's found a lot of cool stuff back here, but right now all he needs is the skateboard.

All black except for a small, carved R on the bottom, he modified the wheels to be as silent as possible... which won't help much on the cracked pavement but whatever, he's on a time crunch here, he can worry about scrapes later.

He struggles to slip the knife into a pocket in his belt, the gel making everything slippery, but he doesn't leave until he's sure it's safe.

Other Tim very bluntly informed him that if he lost this key there would be consequences and unimaginable pain.

"Trust me, kid," he said, though Tim is sure he was only a few years older than him. "Our worlds split off right here—I know what happens next if you don't find what Black Mask is hiding."

He refused to say what it was, but the look on his face was clearly pained.

Tim stifles an anxious sigh and gets moving.

The address he finds himself standing in front of is… well, condemned is really the nicest word for it.

It’s not a warehouse, for once.

Once upon a time, it was probably some sort of larger chain store. A Walmart or Kmart—one of the big box chains that occasionally tried to set up in Gotham before crumbling under the citizens’ unwillingness to shop anywhere that large.

Now, it’s a derelict shell, but his detective’s eyes make it easy to pick out the clear signs of activity. Like the new security cameras around the perimeter, or the motion sensors and trip wires high up on the edges of the roof, easily missed by anyone coming in from the air.

Huh. Guess it’s a good thing he couldn’t grapple here after all.

Fortunately, there's no human security he can see. Whatever Black Mask has here, he doesn't deem it valuable enough to put personnel on it.

It's in direct contrast to the almost desperate gleam Other Tim's eyes had had when he spoke of this place.

With a couple of small EMP charges, he knocks out the security cams at the entrance and heads in.

The inside is gutted.

It was a store, he finds, stepping between the large, empty walls of shelves. Beyond cigarette butts, a few bits of aged packaging, moldy spots, and other questionable sludge that he avoids at all costs, there's nothing of note throughout the front of the building.

Other Tim had been clear that whatever was being hidden here won't be—leaving? Taken away?—until Thursday, so he doesn't rush through checking the area.

The deeper he gets into the shelves, the creepier the air feels, an unnatural tingle on the back of his tongue. He follows the sensation to the back, coming face to face with a locked door. The knob is misshapen, but even from a distance he can tell it's the one he's looking for.

It takes him a few tries to get his aching hands to unclasp the pocket on his belt, and then a couple more to get the key into the oddly contorted lock.

For all that the knife doesn’t look like a key, it slides in easily. The lock must be custom, probably rigged with a nasty trap or two if anyone tried to pick it.

He wonders if that’s where Other Tim failed, or if he never made it this far in the first place.

There’s a faint clunk deep in the mechanism, and he lets go of the key.

Using his wrists to turn the lever, the door swings open on almost silent hinges.

There's a deep ache in his chest where he holds his breath tight.

Stairs descend into the basement, ominous red lighting providing some limited visibility.

There's only one room at the end of the hall. It was a cold room once. Now, it's been transformed into a make-shift holding cell.

There's a body laying there, facing away from the entrance.

The door is only able to be opened from the outside as someone has broken off the inside handle.

The noise of it sends the person on the floor surging upwards onto their feet, spinning to face Tim, a crazed look in their eyes.

The face, immediately recognisable, has blood draining from his cheeks.

Batman's voice comes through the comm in his ear unexpectedly.

"Robin," he says sharply. "You're not at rendezvous coordinates. What's going on?"

"Jason," he whispers.

#dc #dc fic #tim drake #round robin fics #fanfiction #my writing #my fics

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backofthebookshelf · 4 years

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How To Blacklist Something on AO3

Have you ever accidentally left kudos on a fic and then realized you didn't want to interact with that person at all? Have you ever read something that left such a bad taste in your mouth that you never want to read anything like it again? Do you have a terrible memory for names and only realize halfway through a fic that you're doing it to yourself again? Allow me to show you how to block individuals and tags on AO3 so that you never have to see them again.

(Note: You can exclude tags from your searches in AO3 pretty easily, using the include/exclude filter! But that doesn't work for usernames, and again, if you're forgetful, it can be easier to set it once and never think about it again.)

(Second, more important note: I do not endorse the circulation of block lists. A block list is to curate your own experience, and perhaps to share with friends who have similar needs, never to be posted publicly.)

(Third note, a disclaimer: I didn't create any of these tools, I just use userscripts a lot.)

This isn't the most straightforward system, it's just the only one I've found that works. Grab a Sprite or something, get your phone and your computer, and we'll get this going.

You're going to need to use Firefox for this - it's the only mobile browser that reliably lets you use extensions, and if you want this to work on mobile, you need an extension. I know, it's a pain. I use Firefox on my phone pretty much exclusively for AO3, for what it's worth.

Go to the Firefox Add-Ons page and install Tampermonkey. Tampermonkey is an extension that basically lets you write little userscripts to tweak the way Firefox behaves - think of the userscripts as mini-extensions. In our case, we won't be writing anything, just installing some scripts other people have already written, bless them.

We're going to configure Tampermonkey first, then install and configure our scripts. Click on the Tampermonkey icon in your browser (it's a little square with eyes, no I don't know what it means) and select Dashboard, then go to Settings.

Up at the very top, change the Config mode to Advanced. This should give you some more settings. Scroll down to Script Sync, and check the box by Enable Script Sync. Pick whichever system you want to use to get your scripts to communicate with one another - Google Drive and Dropbox are probably the easiest, if you aren't the kind of person who logs into browsers. Give it your info and log in to your preferred service.

And that's it! Now we're going to install our scripts. You're going to want both ao3 savior and ao3 savior config. On each page, click on the Install link, and then click Install on the new page that pops up. When you're done, go back to your Tampermonkey dashboard (refresh it if you kept it open in a background tab), and you should see something like this:

Now we've got everything installed, it's time to start configuring. ao3 savior you can leave as it is: by default, it'll update itself and do its thing, you don't have to do anything. ao3 savior config is where we make our changes. Go all the way over to the edit button on the far right of the screen.

First you want to make sure that this script doesn't update itself - because when it downloads an update, it'll erase your blocklist and you'll have to reenter the whole thing, and that's a pain. Click on Settings, and uncheck Check for updates in the Updates section, then click Save.

Now go back to the editor. This part is pretty simple, the comments are good. If you want to see a placeholder that tells you that ao3 savior hid something from you, leave the showReasons line set to true; if you want to be able to look at something ao3 savior hid from you anyway, change showPlaceholders to true. alertOnVisit gives you a notification if you clicked on a link to something ao3 savior would have hidden from you, if you set it to true. Then you've got five lines for whatever you want to block: authors, titles, tags, and summaries, plus a whitelist for tags. The whitelist overrides all of the blacklists: if you've blocked all works from an author but whitelisted a tag, and that author uses that tag on one of their works, you'll see it.

Go ahead and fill this in however you want. You can update it in the future, as well - it's not the easiest thing to update, but once you've done it a couple of times it's not too hard. I recommend copying the text you want to block directly from ao3 and pasting it into the config file, that seems to work best for me.

When you've entered everything you want, go ahead and save (ctrl+s or File->Save from within the script editor). Then you'll want to make sure you don't have to do this all over again on your phone. Close the editor tab, then click on Utilities. Under Cloud, select the same service you picked for syncing, then click Export; this will make a copy of the script you can pull straight onto your phone.

Now, same thing on your phone, but a little simpler: install Firefox, then install Tampermonkey. Now, rather than installing the scripts again, we'll download our backup. Go to Utilities, select your service in the Cloud section, and log in. Tap Show backups, and tap Import (there should only be one file, unless you've done this before). Now go back to Installed Userscripts - you should see the same scripts we installed and set up before! You will need to uncheck Check for updates in ao3 savior config, for some reason that setting doesn't travel.

Now go to Settings, turn on Advanced Settings, and turn on syncing here as well. Make sure the service is set to the same one as you set up before. Be sure to hit Save.

And you're done! Now you have a blacklist that's fairly easy to update on your computer and will sync automatically to your phone. To update, just click on Tampermonkey, select Dashboard, and Edit ao3 savior config to add whatever it is you don't want to see to your blacklist. Be sure to save, and the sync should happen automagically.

#ao3 #ao3 savior #how to block someone on ao3 #j writes instructions

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sqsupernova · 3 years

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How to Post your Works to the SQSupernova Collection!

That’s right - it’s almost time for Authors and Artists to put their beautiful works on display! We’ve made our beautiful, wonderful guide to help you post your work successfully - please read it THOROUGHLY before asking questions! We promise we’ve covered almost anything that could cause issues.

The posting deadline for all works is midnight EST on August 30th!

(What time is that for me? Or, check out our Countdown Timer!)

For those of you with experience posting to the Swan Queen Supernova collection from previous years, this year’s collection can be found HERE - just hit the ‘post to collection’ button and away you go!

Quick reminder - don’t forget to click POST when you are done formatting your work, NOT ‘save as draft’! We will not be able to see or reveal your work if you save it as a draft, and it will not count as being submitted!

For those of you who need more assistance as you prepare to post, read on for more specific instructions:

All right! For those of you who would like further clarification, your first step will still be to go to THIS LINK and click ‘Post to Collection,’ as seen below.

On this next page, you will enter all of the information about your fic/art - starting with rating, warnings, fandom, category, relationships, and characters. A sample page would look like this:

Please make sure your rating and warnings are accurate to your fic/art. If you think a warning might spoil something for the plot, you can select ‘Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings.’ Do NOT select ‘No Archive Warnings Apply’ unless your fic/art truly does not have any of the warning elements present in it.

The Additional Tags section is a place to put anything else you feel should be indicated about your story/art. Is it a historical au? Does it take place on a spaceship? Is it fluff? angst? crack? These tags are optional, but many people do use them to organize their fic/art or to find new fics to read and art to appreciate.

Next up is the preface section - this is how you introduce your fic or art!

Authors - you’ve already sent us a title and summary, so if those still work for you, go ahead and just copy them right in there! If you’ve changed some things up since that submission, go ahead and put your final version in here.

Artists - whatever title you use, it’s probably a good idea to add [Fanart] or [Art] to the end of your title, and to tag it as such in the additional tags as well - this will help people find art specifically!

Notes can be posted at the beginning of the fic - like if you are thanking a beta, or blaming someone for making you do this, or giving introductory notes to the readers about setting, etc - or at the end of the fic, if your notes might spoil part of the plot. You can also check both boxes and put notes in both places!

Now for the fiddly bits:

The first, and most important, thing to check is that under Post to Collections / Challenges, ‘SQSupernova6′ is selected. This should automatically show up, since you used the ‘Post to Collection’ button, but please check anyway!

You can also choose to gift your fic to someone - authors may choose to gift their fic to their artist, or vice versa. You should have their AO3 name from your match-up email!

‘This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work’ - this will be a handy section to connect your fic to your artist’s art, but you won’t be able to use it until after reveals. Skip it for now and come back to it later, once your partner’s work has been revealed!

‘This work is part of a series’ - if your SQSN was part of a series that you have already begun, you can link it to the previous parts here. Otherwise, skip it.

‘This work has multiple chapters’ - If you’d like to split your work up into chapters, select this option. Once you post the first chapter, you will be able to add additional chapters from the first chapter of your fic/art.

‘Set a different publication date’ - DON’T DO ANYTHING WITH THIS NOW. LEAVE IT ALONE. You will receive instructions in your reveal date email about how to change this date later, to help ensure that it shows up at the top of the Swan Queen tag, so you get the most eyes on it. You cannot change the date BEFORE the date of your reveal, so leave this field alone for now.

You’re almost there! First up are some privacy questions:

These are all options that can make it harder for people to leave mean or abusive comments - but they also make it harder for commenters without accounts to leave feedback, so consider the pros and cons before selecting!

And finally, it’s time to input your fic or art!

For fic - if you are comfortable with html coding, feel free to use the HTML editor button in the top right to switch editing boxes. Otherwise, the Rich Text editor will let you do most basic word editing functions, and will maintain bolding, italics, etc pasted in from Word or Google Docs.

For art, you will need some words in the post itself in order to post, so be sure to add a sentence or two about your work, then select the insert/edit image button:

It will bring up this menu:

Source - this is where you should paste in the url of the image you are hosting on another private site - so don’t publicly post it to your Tumblr! Use a PRIVATE post, at least until reveals are over. For a list of recommended sites, check out AO3′s helpful article on the subject!

Remember that your image URL needs to end in a filetype, like .jpg, .png, .gif, etc etc.!!! IT WILL NOT WORK IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A FILETYPE AT THE END OF YOUR URL. Your image will NOT appear if your link ends in .html, /, or any random numbers or letters.

Image description - this is very important for people who use screen readers because of vision impairments. Please describe your image as best you can, for example: this is a four-panel cartoon of Emma Swan, a barista, tripping over a chair and spilling hot chocolate down Regina Mills’ shirt. Regina is in a fancy blouse and skirt, and looks very, very pissed off.

Dimensions - if your source image is very, very big, it is recommended that you shrink it down a bit here. You can always come back and play around with the size once you post, so be sure to check that your image isn’t so big it’s hard to see all of it on a normal computer screen.

Aaaaaand, you’re done! If you’re confident everything is correct, you can click ‘Post Without Preview’ (you daredevil, you), but otherwise, click ‘Preview’ and give your story a quick glance over to make sure everything’s in the right place.

Then, once you’re satisfied, just make sure you click POST on the next screen - this is the only way to submit it to us for the collection!

If you don’t click ‘Post,’ your work will stay as a draft and will NOT be counted as submitted! Please make sure to hit POST once you have everything ready.

Once you post your work to the collection, it immediately becomes an unrevealed work. This means that its details are hidden from everyone but you and your beloved mods! Unfortunately, this also makes it a liiiiittle harder to find.

To locate your work once you post it to the collection, go to ‘My Dashboard’ by clicking on the menu that appears when you click on your username in the top right corner of the page, then click on ‘Works’ on the left-hand side.

From here, you can access your hidden work in one of two ways:

Click ‘Edit Works’ on the upper right side of the page. This will let you view all of your works, sorted by fandom, including the one you just submitted to the collection. Click on the title of that work to continue editing it!

Once your work is approved and added to the collection, you can also click ‘Works in Collections’ on the upper right side of the page. This will display all of your works that are currently in collections, sorted chronologically. Your SQSN work should be at the top, with “Unrevealed:” in front of the title. Click on the title of that work to continue editing it!

The URL of your work will also not change once you’ve clicked ‘post,’ so you can also bookmark or save it to come back to at any time.

If you need to add additional chapters to your work, you can do it by going to that URL or locating your fic again as described above, and clicking this link on the first chapter:

Just make sure to press POST on each additional chapter as well! ;D

--------------------

Congratulations! You’ve just Supernova’d! What a rush, eh? Now just lean back, relax, and wait for reveals. Thank you for participating!

Each creator will get an email letting them know the reveal date for each work they have submitted, at least a few days before the date, so that they can prepare and get their friends hyped up for the reveal! If you hear other people getting their emails and you haven’t yet, don’t panic. There are WEEKS of reveals, so some people get emails very early and some people get emails weeks later. We PROMISE everyone will get an email with their reveal date by the time all is said and done!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at @SQSupernova on Twitter, or at [email protected] !

#SQ #SQSupernova #How To Post

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the-glacian · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Interview

That sounds like fun!!! Thanks so much for tagging me @iamthe-wo-manwhocan, love! 💗

Name: Shiva aka The_Glacian

Fandoms: mostly Stucky (on this blog), MCU, former SPN (Destiel), FFXV (Ignoct)

Two shot: Since I've deleted my previous account from AO3 along with all of the fics I had in there, I only have one two-shot left to choose from: Cygnus (FFXV, Ignoct)

Most popular multi chaptered fic: The aforementioned one! Lol

Actual worst part of writing: If I say writing, it's going to be a dull answer, right? Haha. But honestly the worst part is editing. Because I just never know when to stop. Every time I revise the fic I re-write and add scenes and then delete and then re-write again, until I actually physically drag myself away from it, close the doc and just never read it again.

How you choose your titles: So I once decided to name my fics after constellations. But before long I started regretting this idea soo hard because there are only 88 constellations to choose from and sometimes none of them work. For the SW one shots I went with song titles but combined them all under the name 'Achernar' which is the brightest star in the constellation Eridanus, and means 'To the end of the river' - I thought it was clever lol.

Do you outline: Never. I usually get a rough idea in my head of how it starts, progresses and ends. Sometimes I make notes if a light bulb goes on in my head for a scene, but I've never done an outline. Maybe I should.

Ideas you probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice: Where do I fucking start? (amen, Bri)

I have so many ideas, some of them I started writing out, some of them are floating desultorily in my head. I couldn't decide on the spot, but I always lean towards mutual pining, angst, oblivious idiots in love and hurt/comfort. But it's not the question, isn't it?

Call outs @me: Bitch, stop obsessing with words while you write. You can obsess with them later when editing.

Best writing traits: That's a hard one because I second-guess everything I do and I always think I'm not good enough no matter what. But if I absolutely have to choose my best trait, I'll say my prose in general. I like beautiful sentences and I always strive for perfection in every single one of them.

Spicy tangential opinion: I agree whole-heartedly with the statement that a writer should aim for pleasing one person, and this person should be the writer themselves.

Tagging my fellow writers if you guys want to: @thedamageofherdays, @its-tortle, @oh-i-swear-writes, @mywingsareonwheels, @deletexforever, @misspluckyplum 💗

#Writing #tag game

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aiviloti · 3 years

Photo

my 2020 fic writer wrap-up!!

this is going to be incredibly long (a total of 1.1k lmao) so imma put a cut here, but basically thank you for being here all throughout my 2020! i appreciate you all very much <3

fav kind of fic to write:

i love writing about mutual pining slow burn process of getting together but i have NEVER WRITTEN ONE IN MY LIFE so i hope to change that in 2021

in 2020 i discovered??? humour??? so i enjoy writing about that and when people tell me i’ve succeeded in making them laugh it’s all 😳😳😳 for me

hardest fic to write but also most proud of:

to write you a song was a fic i struggled with from all of april to june which is very long?? to me??? considering i usually sit down and write things in one seating. fully fleshed ideas don’t usually take me thaaaaaat long to crunch out, but for some reason i struggled bad with this bc I really didn’t know where i was going w it lol

LA LA LAND gets an honorary mention of it’s own simply because it was 44k, and it took me all of july-september, but it’s something i still am proud of! to show how difficult it was to write/plot here’s the spreadsheet i had to use to keep track of the scenes and the chapters djkgfsjdfkjhgd

Shout out to kiroiimye , sweet , sirius and krypt for keeping my sanity intact

easiest fic to write:

this genshin impact fic: The Land Favoured by the Wind but its because ive been thinking about this idea for more than a month lol so the actual writing and editing took me less than 3 hours

there were several others too, bc ideas then to hook themselves to me then refuse to let go fjshlfgdfsg

fav fic to write:

Most definitely this sakuatsu monstrosity here by the name of Miya Atsumu's unwavering love for Sakusa Kiyoomi and an unholy amount of terrible food analogies that should not have the right to Exist lol, I only came up with the idea of Atsumu asking Osamu how to make friends bc I was friendship pining for someone at the time and then proceeded to write the entirety of it in a feverish daze! It’s as of rn my top hit / kudoed / bookmarked fic on ao3 and man, thanks for liking this as much as i did :’D

writing sequence:

i have to write from start to finish lmao i cant move on if the fic isnt chronological? the only exception was la la land bc it was too long and i had help from the spreadsheet so i alr knew where i was going i just had to write it down dfhdsfksfksdfhjg

deleting works:

the only fics i remember deleting are both first chapters of a multichap, bc i dont like having unfinished pieces on ao3, and far less if im not sure if ill finish them/if i dont know where im going w it!

if it’s dark history of shit 15 year old me wrote imma keep it there! it is an archive after all. go on, judge my fics from 5 years ago ahahahaha

best writing advice:

not a general thing and might just apply tome, but i tend to write in very convoluted ways and squish a lot in my sentences, or add to many unnecessary commas, so i received advice recently about being more mindful of the pacing and it’s helped me a lot!

worst writing advice:

none at the top of my head djgfkdsjfh if it’s bs to me i just forget it entirelyyyy

collab:

@actuallyasweetpotato (also aforementioned sweet) and i did a thing for bokuaka week!!!! you can find it here: under my breath and into your scarf

wips:

9 unfinished zine pieces, 3 commissions, 1 exchange piece, about 10 or so other things

fav story of another writer:

favourite things

manly man falls for manliest man krbk fic!!!

gently, like a winter wind iwaoi birthday fic

sunchaser krbk fic

JUNO atsuhina fic

best review:

dude i cried

and shoutout to tien , sirius for fan art, fan comics, fan animatics of fics ive written, and shoutout to akemiiiii for this song they wrote i am eternaally grateful

worst review:

no negativity today!

prequel/sequel to other people’s fics:

none at the top of my head hm, but if anything probably any of kiro skk stuff

do i reread my stuff:

yes, but only if they’re old enough for me to go “it’s okay even if i dont like it bc this is old”

published:

hopefully! even though i do take part in zines and i guess they already have been published in a broad sense

fav/least fav chara to write:

no one at the top of my head! it’s instinctive for me to go ahead and think about character motives whenever i come across them, so if i ever write about someone, i usually just put my spin/interpretation of a character in a way that i can comprehend. the pros of this is i can write about many people, and the downside is that these characterisations can come off as out of character to anyone who doesn’t agree w me hehe

deadlines or goals:

if it’s a oneshot that’s under 3k i usually aim to have it done within 24 hours of beginning the fic. even tho i rarely succeed, having that as a goal usually pushes me to get it done faster than i would have if i had no goal altogether! if it’s anything long i aim for 1k a day, tho rn all my deadlines are zine deadlines and on top of that there’s uni, so to say im not stressing about writing would be a lie LOL

fav writers: (am too shy to tag but i swear these people are literal gods)

chonideno (mag): tumblr | twitter | ao3

batman (teesta): twitter | ao3

maplefudge (raei): tumblr | twitter | ao3

trope never written, would like to try:

aforementioned SLOWBURN MUTUAL PINING ANGST W A HAPPY ENDING GETTING TOGETHER!!!

but also royalty au

trope you will never write:

haha loads

how long have you been a writer:

began writing around may of 2014!! it was a horrible piece but im glad i started somewhere

influences:

chonideno/mag is one! maggie stiefvater who wrote the raven boys is also one, among many others

hardest part of writing:

writing action? writing things that are happening right now, describing people talking, eating

easiest part of writing:

descriptions of people, places, feelings. internal monologues, the like

best part of writing:

sharing how i perceive the world w other people, and discovering other people agree

wip sneak peek:

cw: hanahaki, falling out of love

this was written in a friend’s dms lmao this is why i sound like this

something unique i bring to all my stories

i had a revelation the other day after talking to all my friends and realised i have really pretentious titles

IF YOU’RE HERE

did you know the wc of this thing is 1k words? idk why you stuck through all of that but thank you. i’ll keep writing in 2021, and all the years after that, and i hope i’ll find you doing things you love too :)

#liv rambles #sorry i am incapable of shutting the fuck up :relieved:#i will continue to not shut the fuck up in 2021 see yall there

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drshojo · 4 years

Text

The World, My Childhood And My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

Hello friends!

Its Dr. Shojo coming at you with a post that will be divided into three parts!

Part One: The world as we know it!

The world has changed a lot since we last connected. For starters, TOILET BOUND HANAKO KUN HAS NOT ONLY A PHYSICAL RELEASE BUT A GORGEOUS ANIME! And not only that, but MY NEXT LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: ALL ROUTES LEAD TO DOOM! IS GETTING AN ANIME AS WELL! The last time I wrote about Katerina there wasn’t even an official English translation of that long-ass light-novel-title. And now?

A WHOLE ANIME. A BISEXUAL HAREM AWAITS! I am JAZZED!

Do you think it’s my fault? No matter, I’ll take all the credit. All the manga I talk about are getting anime adaptations. I’LL DO MY DUTY AND TALK ABOUT SOME MORE!

But first. Let us address the Covid-19 shaped elephant in the room

I deeply regret that it took a whole-ass pandemic to get me back to writing. In my defense, I bought an iPad and started drawing like 900 kokichi oumas. I was really busy with that. And then I started reading fanfiction. Then that got me thinking about how fanfiction such an interesting look into how people interpret fandom, use it for wish fulfillment and escapism, and good god is everyone OK cause that bulimia fan fic was super detailed....and I am officially on a tangent. Off track. Ahem.

We are all staying inside a whole lot more which means y’all probably need some reading material and Dr. Shojo has your back! Go read “Horimiya”! It’s amazing! Ahhhh, my work here is done! I'm serious, if you’re here for a Shojo rec, that’s it! There's also like 8 million more Otome Isekais to check out now. It’s like they’re multiplying like rabbits..............

As a Doctor, I must advise you to stay inside and read some manga and practice social distancing. Embrace your inner hikikomori.

Allright? All good? Okay now one final disclaimer:

This post is going to be talking about something a little different than usual and I want to start by giving you some context about who Dr. Shojo is in real life.

Part Two: Dr. Shojo Exposed

You see, when I was little I was obsessed with Japanese media. This doesn't surprise you at all I can tell. Probably because I walk around calling myself Dr. Shojo and shout about manga that you should read.

Anyways, the reason why I was obsessed wasn’t because of the big eyes or the spikey hair or the interesting new culture. It was because it tended to have more character development and overarching plotlines than the media I was used to in Canada. Dexter’s Lab, Magic School Bus, pretty much everything I saw on TV was episodic in nature, so imagine how much my mind was blown when I saw Naruto and Card Captor Sakura, heck, even Pokémon had the Indigo Plateau! Here were kids that were learning more and more each day and got to see enemies become friends and vice versa. They lived and grew older just like me. Except they were cooler than me. And had more interesting lives than me. I gotta tell you, I was so sad when I was 12 and Kero didn’t tell me I had latent magical powers. But there was magic in my life and it was the magic of a complex narrative story. And not only that, it had a sense of movement and had cool costumes. I was hooked immediately.

Also, fun fact, at that age I happened to be a complete and utter tomboy! I loved pretending to fight my friends in the playground and was really worried that puberty would ruin my life because being a girl sounded so CUMBERSOME.

Which leads me up to my confession. Before I became Dr. Shojo, I was in fact......Dr. Shonen.

Bleach? Naruto? One Piece? I've read every single chapter there is.

Hundreds of hours of watching fight sequences. Another fun fact, I only got into shojo because my aunt bought me volume 7 and 8 of Fruits Basket thinking “all mangas like the same right? Kids love comics?” It’s a tribute to how episodic western media was back then that she thought buying volume SEVEN and EIGHT was a REASONABLE PLACE TO START READING.

Now you might also say, Hey! Dr Shojo! Cardcaptors was a shojo! And you are right! but back then the anime was marketed to boys over here in the west and they actualy like, edited out episodes that they thought wouldn't interest boys?! Second fun fact, Once when I was in Grade 3 I was told I was not allowed to join a club under the stairs cause I was a girl and it was BOYS ONLY. The point of the club? To talk about how great Cardcaptors was! I Kid you not!

So anyways, your pall Dr. Shojo loves Shonen manga to this day!

The only reason I made this Dr. Shojo blog specifically about shojo is because, being a tomboy with no female friends, reading shojo manga was the first time I really thought about what it meant to be a girl and fall in love. And y i k e s. Shojo manga, like most media, fails miserably most of the time in displaying real world relationships. Or at least, it doesn't prepare you for how disappointing everything can be. When I had my first kiss, I was thinking about how it didn’t feel at all like how I felt reading Zen and Shirayukis kiss in Akagame No Shirayuki Hime. Those were formative years, and shojo was one of the only places I saw romance being talked about for younger audiences. I liked reading romances where no one had any sexual experiences and were figuring out what love meant to them. But let’s shelve this topic for now.

The point is that gender roles are dumb and if you have an open mind there's a world of stories out there for you. Take this time inside to read something you wouldn’t normally. Critically think about the ways that the worlds you see in stories and how you experience the world differ. What are the messages a story is trying to tell you? And why do you like the stories you do? Reflect on how the stories you tell yourself color your view of the world. Even mindless entertainment leaves an impression on us. Anyways.

Whilst you're doing that, I'm going to absolutely lose my hecking mind over the Shonen Jump series MY HERO ACADEMIA: Vigilantes!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Part Three: I downloaded the one month free trial of the Shonen Jump app and made you read all that, so I can tell you that today Dr. Shojo is going to rant about a spin-off of a shonen manga

THAT’S RIGHT, OF COURSE I READ HERO ACA AND YES I DID PICK UP THE SPIN OFF SERIES. SHONEN JUMP LETS YOU READ ALL THE NEW CHAPTERS FOR FREE ON THEIR APP. KIDS, IF YOU LIKE SHONEN AND YOU’RE PIRATING ON A SCANLATION SITE STILL GET OUT BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO SEE THOSE WEIRD PLASTIC SURGERY AND DENTISTRY ADDS ANY MORE.

SHONEN IS HERE AND ITS LEGAL AND ITS FREE FOR YOU. GET OFF MANGA FOX OR MANGA ROCK OR WHATEVER THE KIDS ARE USING THESE DAYS.

OK, so by this point in the article you have learned two very important things about me: 1) I love Shonen manga and 2) I read a lot of fanfiction.

Specifically, I read an absolutely biblical amount of My Hero Academia fan fiction and let me tell you, A solid chunk of it is vigilante/ Deadpool / criminal with a heart of gold themed.

So when I saw Hero Aca had a spin off, and it was about vigilantes, I was NOT SURPRISED IN THE SLIGHTEST. Ao3 sure is powerful.

Now, if you will permit me a tangent in a post full of tangents—HOLY CRAP, THERE ARE TOO MANY VIGILANTE AUS. I CAN'T KEEP TRACK OF EM. IT’S THE ISEKAI PROBLEM ALL OVER AGAIN. I GET AN EMAIL A FIC HAS UPDATED AND I’M LIKE IS THIS THE FIC WHERE DEKU HAS AN ABUSIVE MOM OR THE ONE WHERE HE HAS SPLIT PERSONALITY DISORDER OR THE ONE WHERE HE’S VIGILANTES WITH HITOSHI. OH WAIT, nvm, it’s the one where deku has a healing quirk.

OH WAIT WHICH OF THE 6 DEKU WITH HEALING QUIRK VIGILATE AU FICS IS THIS ONE?! ARGH WHY DIDN’T I WRITE A DESCRIPTION IN THE BOOKMARK FOR THIS!

My gripes aside, there's a reason why there's such an abundance of vigilante story telling—

Deadpool made like an absolute buttload of money and people love sass and memes.

People have a desire for a story in which they see themselves. Or, how they think of themselves.They like a story about someone who maybe came from nothing. Someone who has less money, maybe someone who is unlucky and had some bad breaks. Someone who never learned they had magic, never got their Hogwarts letter, never saw Kero, someone who never got that God-level quirk from All Might. And if your on Ao3 They want someone who also has seen a lot of memes and kind of wants taco bell and is also questioning their sexuality a bit?

Enter our new hero VIGILANTE DEKU.

But the cannon can't do this, cause hey, Deku is the chosen one. Albeit, chosen by All Might, He’s got his own thing to do. But how can we still cash in on a vigilante story?

And thus enter our New-New hero KOICHI HAIMAWARI—code name Nice Guy and then later The Crawler. True to his relatable roots. He’s just a dude in an hoodie who can go about as fast as a bike.

First off, I love Koichi. He wants to be a hero and fight crime, but most of the time he has to run away because at the end of the day he's just a dude.

He’s cute but not wildly good-looking, A bit of a nerd but not like an extreme okaku. He’s got a part time job and hates violence.

And this is where Koichi really shines—in every day stuff. He helps out wherever he can. Often, that just means listening to people complain and maybe helping his friends out with whatever they’re going through. He’s the kind of guy who smiles, not because he's especially brave, but because he just takes things one at a time and doesn't sweat the past. I think it’s really telling that he missed getting into hero high-school because he skipped the entrance exam to help someone. He’s the kind of person who lets us experience the superpower of human decency and empathy. And you know what? That’s something the world need desperately.

This theme of human decency is really the driving force of Vigilantes—it’s a manga about how the laws are there for a reason but sometimes they unfairly impact the poor and vulnerable. It's about how a lot of criminals are just people who fell into bad social circles or on bad times. People have the capacity for cruelty and violence but that’s never all they are.

Now, speaking of crime, the entirety of Hero Aca falls into some murky water when it comes to its evil doers. Much of the fandom has a huuuuuge problem with how much the franchise is willing to sweep under the rug in the name of redeeming their baddies. RE: people getting mad about forgiving Endeavor’s child abuse, or Bakugo’s suicide baiting. Or Mineta’s blatant sexual harassment.

But this theme is in Vigilantes even more than it ever was in the main series. To start off with, there’s this guy who tries to rape Pop Step early on, and the later he later winds up befriending everybody. It becomes a running gag that each new villain winds up befriending the other villain guys and then they all open a cat café together.

Using jobs as a way to lift people out of lives of crime is great and all but in the story there is no nuance or consequences for past wrong and well.....it feels very weird. It's like Vigilantes plays at having an opinion about moral ambiguity and the complexity of human existence and then just.......lets everyone get along because who has time to get into all that. Make of that what you will but it sits weird for me personally.

Anyway, let's move on and talk about POP STEP our main girl!

I love pop stars and I love vigilantes and a guerrilla performer is defiantly a character I could get behind. And I think they do a good job with Pop. She is actually kind of shy, but has this secret edgy persona she puts on when she performs. She is every girl on tumbler in the early 2000s. I also looooove that they make her not that great a singer. SHE’S GOT PASSION AND CHARISMA and maybe not born talent but like why should that stop you! Talent can be earned through practice and this is a great lesson to show people.

Unfortunately, Pop is also a great example of everything wrong with romance in Shonen.

It’s established early on that Pop loves Koichi because she is the girl he rescued all those years ago and yada yada yikes we’ve heard this one before. Many times before.

Sure, it's fine that they’ve met before, but gosh am I sick of damsels in distress. It's like she can't love him just because she respects what a great guy he is in her life and in the community at large, no no, she just needs to be rescued on top of that. And LOLOLOL isn't it funny he never noticed she was a girl because she was a child with short hair?! Once he realizes she has boobs now they will for sure fall in love! That’s how love works!

She's just with him all the time—nothing romantic ever happens she just gets a little tsundere.

I am never ever going to believe Koichi likes Pop because he spends like sooooo much time with her and they never have like, a moment. The first time he considers her is when Makoto is like, ‘hey I would love to get together with you, but have you thought about if you are crushing on Pop’. (Also this entire plot point is suspect—she's arbitrarily falling for Koichi cause he.......is the protagonist?)

Say what you will about shojo, they give you the emotional conversations, the moments where you think.....ahhh I can see why she is falling for him. They give you context! Shonen likes to just say HERE’S A GIRL YOUR AGE. YOU CAN DATE LATER WHEN THE ADVENTURE IS DONE.

Just when they might get together, Pop suddenly turns evilllllll. The evilllll beeeees made her eeeevilllll (and more sexy).

*Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*

Because why on earth would they get together if Koichi didn’t get to rescue Pop one more time?

I’m tired. These troupes are tired. I’m sure you are too. HOWEVER! If your still with me, Let’s move into why I'm really writing this post. Let’s get to the part that got me screaming to my friends, who by the way, don’t even care bout Hero Aca….but listened anyways. May you all find nakama like these my friends.

Anyways,

HOLY FUCK ERASERHEAD’S ENTIRE BACK STORY IS IN THIS AROUND CHAPTER 60 AND IT IS WONDERFUL AND ABSOLUTLY HEARTBREAKING AND IS ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTER BACKSTORIES I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IS THE REASON WHY THIS SERIES IS A MUST-READ FOR MAIN SERIES FANS.

AND BY ALMIGHT.

WHY. IS. IT HERE.

I present to you my late night text messages to my friends

ALSO, AIZAWAS TEACHER IS PRINCE?!?!?!

AHEM, so as you can see, I kinda lost my shit.

And now, I would like to formally defend my claim that DESPITE HOW AMAZING IT WAS, ERASERHEAD’S BACKSTORY HAD NO BUISSNESS BEING IN THE VIGILANTES SPIN-OFF MANGA.

Eraserhead, aka Aizawa Shouta, is a side character who is working with the police on some crime stuff. He is not a main cast member in this spin off. He’s a guest character that fans of the main series will be like OH COOL. GRUMPY CAT MAN LIKES CATS ON HIS OFF HOURS TOO. LOVE THAT FOR HIM.

So, my imagine my absolute surprise when Aizawa runs into Koichi and the following happens:

It starts to rain, so, like in any good manga, this means some great FORCED BONDING TIME

Except no. It doesn't because rather than start talking, Aizawa JUST STARTS REMEMBERING—ABSOLUTLY SILENTLY TO HIS OWN PRIVETE SELF—HIS ENTIRE TRAGIC BACKSTORY.

AND THIS GOES ON FOR CHAPTERS.

THIS GOES ON LONGER THEN ARC ONE IT FEELS LIKE.

I LOVE IT, BUT KOICHI IS ABOUT TO JOIN ATSUSHI NAKAJIMA IN THE DUBIOUS CATEGORY OF “PROTAGONISTS THE SERIES FORGOT ABOUT IN LIEU OF COOLER SIDE CHARACTERS”.

AND LO IT HAS NO BEARING ON THE REST OF THE PLOT, CHARACTERS, OR STORY

What the ever-loving-just WHY?

WHY?

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

SURE, IT’S A COOL TIE-IN.

YES, OF COURSE I LOVED IT. I SHIP ERASER MIC, I DREW THIS FOR HECK’S SAKE:

AND YET I AM ANGRY.

I AM ANGRY BECAUSE MY FRIDAY WAS RUINED BECAUSE VIGILATES SUCKER PUNCHED ME WITH AN AMAZING STORY THAT REALLY WASN’T PLOT RELEVANT AND PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THERE.

IS THIS WHY THEY TOOK LIKE NEXT-TO-NO CARE WITH POPS ARC?!?

I mean its ongoing, so it’s too early to say but—

In conclusion—

Excuse me one more,

AIZAWA WAS TAUGHT BY PRINCE!?!??!?!?!?!? PURPLE RAIN PRINCE!?!??!?!?!? WHAT!??!?!?!

It’s so ABSURD that I HAD TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I HAD TO WRITE PARAGRAPHS TO JUSTIFY YELLING ABOUT THIS ONE THING. WHAT THE ABSOLUTE—

Ahem,

Anyways, I hope you liked this weird rant/personal-story/random-diatribe in three parts.

If you’re reading this, thank you, stay safe, and I’ll be back with more shojo manga next time.

Ciao!

Dr. Shojo

(aka Dr. Shonen)

#my hero academia vigilantes #koichi haimawari #pop step #my hero academia #erasermic #Cardcaptors #Shojo manga #Shonen Manga #Dr Shojo #read Horimiya

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alloveroliver · 4 years

Text

Author Interview

I was tagged by @peacheat and @dear-mrs-otome THANK YOU GUYS!!! (I also added more Qs if you want to answer those as well *sweats*)

Name: Ash Knight

Fandoms: Now: MLQC, Ikemen Revolution, Ikemen Vampire, Ikemen Sengoku, Mystic Messenger, annnnnd one or two other otomes I like lol. Want to do in the future: Obey Me (Currently playing) Ikemen Genjiden (translating got to be too much but its GOOD!) Tokyo Debunkers (when it comes out in April!!!)

Where You Post: Mostly Tumblr but also Ao3!

Most Popular One-Shot: By far Victor x MC “In This Moment.” I’m glad cuz I spent a lot of time on this one and I love the concept of Victor stopping time because he know’s he’s going to miss MC <3

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Mmm, I don’t have any muli fics yet BUT I do have 10 chapters of my blood thirsty fics! they are all oneshots though.

Favorite Story You Wrote: Its actually my first Oliver fic I posted around Aug of 2018 (Omg have I been doing this for that long???) It needs to be rewritten BUT heres the link. Oliver x MC “Giving Up Control” I still think about this fic often lmfao. Femdoming Oliver is 🤤👌

Story You Were Nervous to Post: Ooof, a recent Oliver fic. Only because it had alcohol themes and smoliver asking her on a date. Just due to his curse and things I didn't want to change too much but it was all consensual with adult Oliver. I was just nervous some people would read into it and take it the wrong way :( Oliver x MC “In A Perfect World You’re Happy With Me” (Looking back at it, it actually got a good response! I am surprised cuz I posted it then tried to put it out of my mind lol. #thanksanxiety

How You Choose Your Titles: First thing that comes to mind. Song lyrics, one word that sticks out in the fic. Or if its a common word or a word/title I’ve used before I put it into One Look Reverse Dictionary and find a similar word that means the sameish thing. I don’t dwell on titles too much tbh.

Completed: Last I counted, I had over 500 short stories under my belt. You can read them all on my blog but not everything was put into my masterlist. This was just due to the tumblr purge we had and I had to make a new masterlist since a lot of my fics got shadowbanned due to the tagging system back then. I didnt wanna repost them all lol

Incomplete: I have an entire spreadsheet that I plop all my ideas on... and it is FULL. I organize it by fandom, suitor, and fluff vs. smut. Ummmmmm.... See below: Coming soon lol.

Do You Outline? I usually start writing when I have an idea and if I need to step away from my computer I will do a quick outline. AKA just some quick bullet points of what I was thinking would happen next lol. If I ever take the time to properly do a full outline, I 100% go off the rails and do my own thing away from the outline. I am what is called a ‘discovery writer’ lol. I discoverer my own story as i write it then go back and edit it and act like I knew what I was doing all along lmfao.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: I have 3 substantial WIPS (like 2-3k words) I bounce between that I’m working on. Victor x Mc, Vincent x MC and Faust x MC.

A plan to do part 2 of Gavin x MC’ s ”Distortion” .

I also have an long running AU fic with Gavin x MC (8k currently) but that is far away from being done lol.

There is also an 11 chapter fic I am planning. I have 2 chapters written but I cant seem to figure out one major plot detail and its keeping me from getting it done anytime soon :(

There is a chapter fic im writing for a cradle born MC, however its a mesh of our MC and my OC and its kinda complicated. Also its fluff and I’m less interested in writing that BUT I really want to share this story <3

Valentines day is actually prob going to be the next thing yall see from me tbh and that is TBD

Do You Accept Prompts? I used to every once in a while but I have so many WIPS and no personal computer at home rn. (SOON THOUGH!) So I don’t have the chance to write as much in my free time as I used to. I’ll take prompts but I let them sit in my ask box until I am able to write them <3. I am not the person to ask people to stop sending them, cuz I like to see what yall want me to write and take that into consideration for sure. I like taking asks for Thirsty Thursday (even if its not thurs, I will hold onto them until then) and answer them 😍 I love those because more people are involved other than me and I like being a part of something bigger than myself 🤗

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: My Victor x MC story. Its UMMMMM........ ITS SLOW BURN YALL. LIKE WHO AM I?! lmfao.

*(I am going to personally add a few questions to this tag that I am interested in knowing about others as well lol)*

What do you use to edit?: I pay for Grammarly (its AMAZING even the free version is super worth it)

For word meanings, synonyms, and better wording I use OneLook Reverse Dictionary ALL THE TIME for every single fic. (and like I said before, to help with titles)

When I feel like something is off and grammarly doesn’t quite know and I don’t know, I put the fic through Hemmingway Editor. It tells you HOW readable a sentence is. If its hard to read I rewrite it and make things a bit simpler for the eyes. Its free in the browser.

Writing setup: Ideally, the sun is coming in through the window, It’s cool inside, I’m wearing a fuzzy sweater, I have hot coffee or tea, and my head phones are in.

I listen to lofi music station on youtube but If its distracting I put on lofi without lyrics. I love THIS playlist. (this is live so it’ll prob break but here’s an alt link to their offline playlist) If I am in an upbeat mood I like “Electropose” music. Or I listen to the ‘setting’ a fic is in. Like if its raining in the story, I put on rain ambiance and things like that.

Do you use a beta reader? No 😬, not really. Anytime I have someone beta read and they comment on the content and not the editing I get way too nervous to post the fic and suddenly it get sick to my stomach laskjdlsdj. I trust a couple gals to beta read in an editing mind set but I don’t bother them all the time. I like to go balls to the walls and trust grammarly, post the damn thing, and bite my nails hoping for the best.

Where do you get your writing inspo?: Bruh, #1 READING! Reading books, reading fics, reading summaries for things. Also, reading the routes in otomes, watching anime, and letting my mind wonder lol. I also like to chat with people on discord and let the stories unfold. Inspo has also come from a lot of my dreams tbh. My dreams are hella vivid and I try to write them down when I wake up if they are interesting lol.

Can we get a quote from an upcoming WIP?:

[ Without cars and crowds, the evening wind picked up nothing but serene sounds. Crickets gently chirped and leafs quietly brushed one another. The branches rustled together, making an organic symphony that the wind carried up to the balcony you leaned on.

*****’s warm hands ran up and down your forearms, warming your chilled skin. From behind, he bent forward and nipped at the shell of your ear.

“Is that better?” His silky hands moved faster, creating heated friction.

“Mmm,” You relished in the sensation. “Much better.”

His gentle chuckle against your pulse made you wiggle into him. ***** pressed his solid chest against your back and sighed. “Maybe if you were wearing more than just my shirt, you wouldn’t be so chilly.”

“I just want to be out here for a moment. The fresh air is nice.” You pressed your lips together into a small smile and angled your face up to him. “Don’t you agree?” ]

tagging: @somethinglacking @pseudofaux @tarralin @steph-writing @kiarigirl @otonymous @jennacat84 @xathia-89 @toloveawarlord @moonlit--river @thequeenshuntress @thirstyforbishiesimagines <3 Honestly I want to tag more people but I don’t wanna be annoying SO if you do this feel free to tag me cuz I am soooooo curious about other writers! Lets be friendsssss <3

#ash speaks #ash ask meme #fanfic writing #this post is shadowbanned due to links

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eloarei · 4 years

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1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 13, 17, 23 (some of these are random and some aren't)

Thanks for the many questions, Socks! Sorry I didn’t answer them earlier; I decided answering asks on mobile sucks. ALSO, this is going to be super long haha sorry. 1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? Well, my most current project is one I just started brainstorming. It’s (hopefully gonna be) a Fallout 3 series, with my latest fic being the starting point. LW/Fawkes is a ship I liked immediately when I played the series some years ago, but I never got around to writing for it, probably in part because there’s already a super good longfic about them, and I just didn’t think there was much else I could say. But my LW is different from Choco’s LW, and lately I wanted to start something self-indulgent. Although I have enough ideas for this to maybe be a single 30k fic, I’m choosing to do a series of shortfics instead, so that I’m not burdening myself with another long project. Fic series are great in that way, because it’s basically complete with every new fic. On top of that, I have... probably 3 other things I want to make significant progress on this year. First is another Fallout fic: Same Heart. I’ve posted 8 chapters already and have almost 2 more done, but due to the slow-build nature of it (and my tagging) I don’t expect to have almost any readers until at least chapter 10 (when the ship characters finally meet). I’d like to at least get that far this year. A project I’d love to finish by fall is the unreleased “The Wilderness”, a Venom zombie AU that I started for NaNoWriMo 2 years ago. It’s about 55% written, and my goal is to have as much of it done as possible before the sequel movie comes out. If it’s not done by then, I still plan to post whatever I have. And lastly-ish, my novel... thing. Rogue. I’m in the process of editing it, although I’ve taken kind of a break lately. And as soon as I’m done with the edits and can get a couple of people to read it (just so they can tell me if certain parts are stupid and need changed) I plan to start the next book in the series... which will probably end up being book #1, actually, if I do them modern-era chronologically. It’s... gonna be a process. ^^; 2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project. In my upcoming FO3 fic series, I’m honestly just kind of weirdly looking forward to... how do I put this? Exploring my own vaguely-traumatic experiences through fic. I’ll always do a happy ending, if possible, but before we get there I really want to run these two through the ringer of... being given something they were led to believe was impossible, being judged for it, having it taken away, and then being told “well maybe it’s for the best”. When it comes to future projects, I guess I’m really excited about writing the new Rogue book. “Reaper”, I guess, is its unimaginative working title. I’m anxious about it, because I thought Rogue had some really deeply emotional scenes, and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to accomplish that as well with this new one, simply because the characters don’t have the same level of desperation about each other. I need to figure out what’s unique about their dynamic and push that. I guess I’m looking forward to the challenge. 3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway) Hmm gosh. Technically there’s a scene in the later chapters of Mobius that I already wrote, but it wouldn’t take place until probably chapter 3 or later, and I just lost all steam on that fic, sadly. But every time I poke through my notes I make myself cry reading it. It’s a scene where one character knows it’s going to be the last time he sees the person he loves most, and he can’t explain his pain to anyone. I really just want to get there so I can see if it makes other people cry like babies haha. But on a completely unrelated note, there’s also this ZADR fic I started writing in like 2009, and I absolutely didn’t want to do the work to get to the fun middle scenes, but basically it was an AU where young adult Dib went to live/work in the thriving multi-species space community, where he’s... I dunno, studying alien biology I think?, and he ends up with Zim as a roommate. The scenes I really wanted to write were about the two of them getting into like a bar fight with some tough types, and Zim gets his pak ripped off/damaged in the process, and Dib has to sort of take care of him through a horrible fever. But then it turns out that the pak was not a life-support system like they thought, but actually a growth inhibitor so they (the people in charge of the Irkens) could choose who became the Tallest (the leaders). (And also it hindered reproduction, etc.) So basically the two of them accidentally start to unravel a galactic conspiracy which also involves corruption in the Earth government, etc, and Zim gets taller but spoiler alert, he still doesn’t get tall enough to challenge the Tallest lol. Sadly, I doubt I’ll ever actually write that fic. Sounds like too much effort lol. 7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree? That’s such a hard question. Ummm. How do I put any of that into words? ...I think one of the things about my writing is that a lot of the time nothing really happens in a scene, and the story mostly focuses on a character thinking. Like, enough happens so there’s something for them to think about, but I think I tend to put a lot of emphasis on POV character’s thoughts, to the point of sometimes seeming stream-of-consciousness. I’ve been told that this makes my stories feel alive though? So I think it appeals to some people, though I’m sure others would find such stories boring. Oh also, somewhat along these lines, I like to add commentary that is only somewhat relevant, usually in parenthesis at the end of a sentence or paragraph. (Honestly, it’s not unusual to see one in every paragraph if I’m writing something slightly humorous.) 9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? I would LOVE to write primarily longfics! However, I just don’t have the time or energy for it, and I don’t write fast enough. So I end up with a lot of oneshots under 10k. I had to challenge myself to learn to write short things though, and then it’s really about writing something short, not about writing a specific story. Generally, I’m both pantster and plotter. I tend to write the first chapter/few scenes/maybe as much as 10k, just by the seat of my pants. After that, I look at what I’ve got and write out a plot to continue from there. Plotting everything out before I start just doesn’t work for me, but if I try “pantsing” anything longer than 15k I know I’m gonna have an absolute torturous hell of a time. 13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself? Lol I think anyone who’s reading this knows I share my stuff online. Primarily on my AO3, though there’s some other stuff floating around here on tumblr too. Most of the time if I keep something to myself it’s only because it’s not finish enough to share. So, sure, there’s plenty of that, but the goal is always to share it eventually. If I ever get around to finishing a novel, those will probably be the only things I don’t just post online. (Though I do post most of my OC stuff currently.) 17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations? I think that inevitably my readers will always perceive me and my writing a bit differently than I do. That’s just... interacting with people. Nobody knows you entirely. However, I am as open and honest in my writing as possible, and I actually think that reading my fic is the best way to get to know me. I like to hope that I am an open book to anyone who has read many of my words. =] While you may not know the details of my life, I think you would have a good insight into my personality. 23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest? Like... my oldest fic/story that I’ve never written or posted? Not counting stuff I’ve consciously abandoned (things from middle school, mostly), my original fic series, “Damsel and Company in Distress” aka DamselCo. is definitely my oldest story. I think I started fiddling with it in 2006-- which makes it pretty disappointing that it’s gotten next to nowhere. XD; But the story is my baby, and it’s been my baby for so long that anyone who’s followed me ever is probably at least vaguely familiar with a few of the characters. Now maybe one day I’ll actually give it the attention it deserves, though I’m sure it’ll need significant revamping. After all, a lot has changed in 14+ years. Ideas that were new and subversive then are probably already stale.

#elo talks #elo fics #ask meme #writing #long post #braincoins

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katastroficwriter · 5 years

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Fic title: Behind the mask

Behind the mask

Summary: Bedridden for as long as he could remember, other than stepping outside of the four corners of his room, Kiibo wished to experience something a little adventurous despite his sickly disposition. His wish came true in the form of a phantom clad in white.

Tags: human!Kiibo, sickly Kiibo, phantom thief!Ouma

You can read it on ao3

Edit: I added more stuff on ao3 and I’m too lazy to add the same on this tumblr post.

——————————————————————–

Kiibo often wondered if he had committed a terrible sin in his past life to deserve being born in such a frail body. He had lived in the hospital for a good number of years. What kept him stable was his father’s own medical inventions.

Fortunately, as he grew older, his body grew more formidable, albeit at a slow rate. Enough to have the doctors allow him to stay home, though still forbidden to engage in anything stressful. The idea of leaving the hospital first thrilled him, until he realized that it would mean less time to see his father. He often worked overtime in the hospital just to make sure the machines stayed in tip top shape after all.

“Maybe it’s better if I stayed in the hospital…” he murmured. Even that was better than staying alone for the rest of the night. The only time his father would rush home is if his health monitor would send his father a distress signal should anything go wrong.

He shook his head. “No. No, that’s not better at all. I need to get better. I want to get better…! I don’t want to go back.” As if on cue, he started coughing in a fit, much to his discomfort.

He buried himself under his sheets. He was lonely. So terribly lonely. He wasn’t even allowed to walk down the stairs due to the risk of him falling. And walking to his own bathroom is already challenging enough. He just wanted to roam free like everyone else.

“Why was I born this way, God?” he whispered the question to himself, knowing that much like his other prayers, it would remain unanswered. He closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would give him comfort.

*KLICK KLACK KLICK*

*KA-CHAK*

Kiibo’s eyes shot wide open, but he remained still. ‘W-what was that…? It sounded like it came from the window–is it a burglar?’

He stiffened when he heard his window slide open, followed by the notable rustle and shuffle of clothing.

‘What do I do…what do I do?! I might get killed if I get noticed!’ Kiibo’s grip on the sheets tightened. He could hear his heart beating through his ears. He could either die from a burglar, or die from his own body giving out from the stress. He’s a goner! ‘What do I do, father?’

“Tsk!”

Kiibo froze up once more, straining his ears so he can hear the trespasser better.

“Damn those trigger happy idiots…they totally ruined my outfit.” hissed the trespasser. “Ow–! Stings…! Since I’m already here I might as well look for the bathroom…”

Kiibo’s jaw clenched when the lights were flicked on. He’s dead. There’s no way they could miss a big useless lump in bed. He felt his soul leave his body when the sheets were suddenly ripped off him, exposing him to all sorts of danger.

“…You’re awake, aren’t you? Don’t play dumb.”

Kiibo gulped before slowly looking over his shoulder to see who the trespasser was. Instead of a menacing glare of a hardened criminal, he was greeted by the smiling mask worn by the stranger, clad in a fully white ensemble, save for the splotches of red that stained his suit.

Before he could even do so much as speak, the masked man pointed a gun on his forehead, silencing him in an instant.

“Maaa~n! That was a close one. I would have been in trouble if I didn’t notice you sooner,” the stranger moved a few paces closer. “You would have called the police as soon as I left. We can’t have that, no, no!”

Kiibo was tongue-tied. How was he going to get out of this one? All his life he had lived in fear of dying due to his frail constitution. The possibility of being killed by another man’s hand had totally escaped his mind. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead!

“…Hey. What’s up with you?”

The albino had instinctively grasped his chest, trying to stabilize his breathing but to no avail. He was having a damn attack in the middle of a robbery. Great! Just what he needed!

“Hey…”

Kiibo had completely hunched over as he hyperventilated. Cold sweat started dripping from his face as his breathing grew more labored with each passing second.

“Shit! Hey…!”

He felt hands on his shoulders to keep him from falling face first on the floor. Kiibo then raised a shaky hand and pointed at the general direction of his bedside drawer. “…Pills…there…” Maybe it was foolish of him to hope that the robber would help him with his attack, but he was desperate. He didn’t want to die. Not like this.

He faintly heard the familiar sound of his pills getting shook out of its container before his head was pulled back firmly but painlessly.

“Open up.”

Kiibo obeyed and felt the pill drop on his tongue; relief washed over him when the stranger helped him drink water afterwards. He gave it a few minutes, trying to breathe a little more calmly before the pill’s effects would kick in. “…Thank you.”

“…You’re welcome, I guess.” The stranger rubbed the back of his head. “I wouldn’t have pointed my airsoft gun at you if I’d known you were the fragile kind.”

“…Airsoft?” Kiibo tilted his head, a little calmer now that his attack had subsided.

“…What? You don’t know what that is?”

Kiibo shook his head. “…No. I’ve lived most of my life in the hospital and only moved home two years ago.”

“Now you’re making me feel like a bigger asshole.” The other man clicked his tongue. “…It doesn’t have real bullets in them. It still hurts like a bitch though. I only meant to scare you into not calling the police.”

The albino blinked in mild surprise before smiling, “You’re actually a kind person.”

“Are you seriously saying that to someone who just broke into your home? You really are sick.” The stranger huffed.

“I’m sure there’s a reason why you’re doing what you’re doing,” Kiibo started. “…You could have left me to die and robbed my home with ease, but you didn’t. I don’t think you’re as bad as you or the police think.”

“Tsk. I just didn’t want a bigger mess in my hands, that’s all.”

Kiibo laughed gently. “You’re hurt, aren’t you? Let me help you.”

“What?”

“You saved my life. I’d like to return the favor. Don’t worry, I won’t call the police.” Kiibo slowly shuffled out of his bed. “My room has its own bathroom and I have plenty of medical kits in my room because of my condition.”

“You’re definitely not right in the head,” the stranger shook his head but sat himself on the bed anyway, nursing his bleeding side with a hand. He observed the albino wobble his way in and out of the bathroom, leaving a medical kit on the bed before returning to the bathroom. ‘What a weird guy…’ he thought.

It was probably because he was only starting out on this new phantom thief gig that no one fears him as of yet, especially not a person who’s barely able to leave the safe confines of his own room.

“I’m back,” Kiibo carefully brought a small basin of water towards his bed. “Mind unbuttoning your clothes?”

The raven-haired phantom wordlessly peeled his cape and coat off and undid his buttons, looking away as soon as he was finished.

Kiibo knelt before him to examine the wound and nodded to himself. “It’s not a deep wound, thankfully.”

The phantom winced as the albino began with his ministrations; thankfully the latter was careful not to press too hard as he wiped the wound clean with the wet towel. He didn’t expect the feeble looking male to be skilled with his fingers when it comes to first aid. But at the same time, it only made sense.

“All done,” Kiibo took a few steps back to admire his handiwork.

“…Thanks.” The phantom buttoned his clothes with ease. “Now that this is over with, I shall take my leave.”

“Ah, wait–” Kiibo grabbed the other man by the wrist. “Here, take these bandages. So you can change it later.“

The phantom wordlessly accepted the bandages, storing it inside his inner coat pocket. “You’re a total weirdo, you know that?”

“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” huffed the albino. “I guess this is good bye, umm…?”

Realizing that the sickly boy wanted his name, the phantom bowed with a flourish. “Phantom DICE, at your service–though I suppose I was in your service for tonight.”

“Phantom DICE…” Kiibo parroted gently. “My name is Iidabashi Kiibo. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

The phantom idly rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of how to respond. “…Nice to meet you too I suppose. In any case, it’s already getting late, I should get going.” He sauntered his way towards the window he entered from, checking if there were any patrol cars roaming about.

“Mr. DICE!”

The phantom looked over his shoulder. “What is it?”

The albino gave him a small bow out of gratitude. “Thank you for saving my life.”

The raven-haired phantom returned his attention to the window. “Don’t mention it. Anyway, I’m off now. Ciao.” He leapt out of the window with ease; one wouldn’t have been able to tell that he was actually wounded considering how elegant and graceful he moved.

Kiibo hurriedly padded towards the window and closed it shut with a relieved sigh.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“Kiibo? Kiibo are you okay?” his father’s familiar voice had snapped him out of his reverie.

Not wanting his father to realize that someone else had been inside his room, Kiibo carefully hid the first aid kit under his bed before answering the door.

“Father? Weren’t you at work–” Kiibo’s eyes widened as he felt strong and warm arms wrap around him in a protective hold as soon as he opened the door. “…Father?”

“Your health monitor sent me a distress signal while I was at the hospital. I rushed out of work as soon as I got it.” His father explained. “…Even if it said that your condition had stabilized, I wanted to see that you were safe with my own eyes.”

Kiibo returned the hug. “…I’m okay now. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t right to lie to his dear father, of all people. But if he found out that his own son had treated the wounds of a possible criminal, who was also the one who triggered the attack in the first place, things wouldn’t go well. That’s why he kept that fact to himself.

The next time he had heard the name Phantom DICE was a week later, while he was watching the evening news to fill the silence of his room. He had stolen a prized antique vase belonging to some business tycoon. The police were furious, not because of the injustice done, but rather because of the pranks they were subjected to while in pursuit of the mischievous phantom thief. The media had already taken to calling him a criminal, but…

‘No one has gotten hurt during the heists.’ Kiibo thought with awe. ‘…I wonder what kind of face he was making while doing all these things?’

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Kiibo straightened his back when he heard something tap against his window. He was on the second floor of his house, but it was still quite a height to climb up to. Could it be…?

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock!

The less than gentle knock jolted the albino out of his thoughts. He gulped as he slowly shuffled out of bed to check who it was. What greeted him beyond his windowpane was none other than the familiar smiling mask of Phantom DICE. The phantom’s posture slackened at the sight of the sickly boy.

Excitement bubbled in Kiibo’s chest as he unlocked his window to let his unexpected guest in.

“Why are you here?” whispered the albino, eyes wandering to his television screen for a split second.

“Just here to drop off some stuff,” the phantom revealed an armful of comic books with a flourish of his cape. “Something to keep you busy while you’re bedridden. Since you’ve lived most of your life indoors, I’m sure you’ve never read things like comics before.”

Kiibo approached the phantom, eyeing his haul with child-like interest. He was meant to be in his third year of high school, but due to his condition, he was resigned to his fate of being home schooled for the rest of his teenage life. “These all look amazing…!” he gasped.

“You may be a newbie, but you’ve got a good eye,” DICE puffed his chest with pride. “Just so you know, I didn’t steal these. These are all from my personal collection, so I’d appreciate it if you’d return them in mint condition.”

“You’d really lend all of these to me?” Kiibo looked at the other male.

“Duh! It’s pretty much why I’m here,” DICE shook his head a little before crossing his arms over his chest. “Remember. Mint condition. If I see a single spill or tear on them I’m stealing all of your stuff the next time I drop by.”

“Thank you…!” Kiibo impulsively hugged the thief.

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Now please, hands off the merchandise.” DICE patted the albino on the shoulder.

“O-oh, sorry I was just so happy that you’d do something like this for me,” Kiibo’s cheeks took on a rosy hue, embarrassed. “I promise to take care of your comic books.”

DICE adjusted his top hat with an amused huff. “You better. Anyway, my business here is over. I’ll see you when I see you. Later Kiiboy!”

Before Kiibo could say a word, the phantom had already disappeared out of the window.

“K-Kiiboy?” the albino hugged a comic book to his chest, his cheeks now a few shades darker. ‘It’s the first time someone gave me a nickname…’ He smiled to himself. Who would have thought that his first friend would turn out to be some kind of gentleman thief.

After this night, their meetings started becoming regular. Some days DICE would pop in his room despite there being no heist that night. And during unlucky days, Kiibo would tend to his wounds just like he did during their first meeting. If anyone else knew about their secret meetings, they would probably judge him badly for being friends with a criminal. But DICE…DICE wasn’t just a thief. Underneath that facade protected by a mask, is a genuinely kind person. Though Kiibo remained to be curious about what kind of face DICE kept behind his mask, he knew well enough that the latter’s true identity was off-limits.

Their meetings went on for two more years without a hitch.

“It’s your birthday today, isn’t it, Kiiboy?” DICE mused, idly swinging his legs as he sat on the albino’s bed. It was exactly midnight when he asked this question.

“Yes,” Kiibo nodded. “It’s always lively outside during this time of year because of Halloween.” He laughed.

“Want me to play a little trick on you?” DICE hopped off his place on the bed and took a couple of steps away from the bedridden albino. Kiibo grew more feeble within the two year period of their friendship, which was why the phantom thief had to break in through the window, since the albino was unable to open it for him.

“A trick? Is that my only option?” Kiibo coughed after speaking. It was a wonder how he could smile even in his weakened state.

“Yuppers! Besides, sweets are a no-no for you, isn’t it?” DICE tilted his head innocently, hands clasped behind his back.

“You may be right,” Kiibo chuckled weakly. “Give me a trick then.”

Thanks to the phantom thief’s mask, Kiibo remained blind to the anxious and worried emotions contained in the thief’s being.

DICE raised both of his arms, waving both of them in the air childishly. “I lied! Tonight, I won’t be giving you a trick. I shall be performing a heist! And tonight’s target–is Halloween itself! I shall steal Halloween from everyone!”

“H-huh? But Halloween is still–“

“Shush!” The phantom thief did a graceful about-face. “Just watch me.”

He clapped three times then spread his cape out with a flourish. “I wish you a happy birthday, Kiiboy!”

Kiibo instinctively closed his eyes when his room was suddenly filled with light. Multiple jack o’ lanterns and various bat-shaped decorations had adorned his usually simple room. Kiibo knew how skilled his friend was when it came to magic tricks and sleight of hand techniques, but this was a whole other level of magic. Frankly, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing!

“…Beautiful…” Kiibo gasped with awe.

“Turn on your television.”

Kiibo stared at the phantom thief with curiosity before reaching for his remote.

“Breaking news! After a sudden power outage, it has been discovered that ALL Halloween decorations of shops have disappeared! Authorities are currently looking into the situation and are searching for possible witnesses to the crime!”

“W-was that you?!“

“Mmhm!” DICE puffed his chest with pride. “My tricks have gotten better over the years, if I do say so myself.“

“Why would you do something like this for my sake? Everyone is so troubled–” Kiibo chewed on his bottom lip.

“Don’t worry, I’ll return all of it on the 31st,” DICE sauntered towards the albino. “…You’re going to leave for a surgery soon aren’t you? I wanted to at least give you something worth remembering before you go under the knife.“

“DICE…“ Tears started pouring down his cheeks. How could he not cry when this was the most happy he’s ever been? “Thank you…thank you for being my friend.”

“The pleasure is mine, Kiibo,” the phantom pulled the bedridden albino into a gentle hug. “Do your best for your operation. I know you’ll pull through.” He pulled back as soon as he finished.

“I will,“ Kiibo smiled through his tears.

“Good.” DICE clapped his hands twice, and the decorations have all vanished from the albino’s room. “I should get going. You need all the rest you can get.”

Kiibo sniffled and nodded. “Okay. Please take care.”

The raven-haired phantom gave the albino a two-finger salute before disappearing out of the window. Little did Kiibo know that this was going to be the last time he’ll ever see the phantom thief.

——————————- One Year Later ——————————

“This campus is bigger than I thought…“ Kiibo murmured to himself as he checked the school map. This was his first year of university. No, his first year of actually entering school! His surgery in the past year was highly risky, but it was a success. After months of rest, his body had grown more resilient and strong. It was now safe for him to be up and about without suffering from any form of exertion. And that was how he was able to convince his father to allow him to enter into university. He developed a passion for literature during his years spent bedridden, he chose a course with that in mind.

“The literature department should be around…”

“Over here.”

Kiibo stilled at the sound of a familiar voice. A hand not his own guided his attention to the location of his department. The albino slowly looked over his shoulder. “…DICE?”

He was met with a raven-haired man with purple eyes, who looked to be around his age.

“Shh…I’m known as Ouma Kokichi in these parts,” Ouma smiled as he placed a finger against his own lips in a shushing gesture. “Good to see you up and about, Kiiboy.”

Kiibo probably shouldn’t be crying and hugging his friend while standing in front of the campus bulletin.

“Hey, hey, hands off the merchandise,” Ouma chuckled.

“Sorry, I got too happy,” Kiibo backed away, wiping his tears. “I didn’t–I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. You disappeared so suddenly I–”

Ouma pressed a finger against the albino’s lips. “Spare me the rambling. We got plenty of time for it during lunch. My treat.” He winked. “Now come with me, you were looking for the Lit. Department right?”

“Umm…yes I was,” Kiibo nodded.

Ouma smiled. “Follow me.”

“Okay!”

For years, Kiibo had wondered what kind of face DICE’s perpetually smiling mask was hiding. Was it the face of a hardened criminal? An unfeeling sociopath? What kind of person was DICE underneath his phantom thief persona?

And now, as he walked the halls of the university along his old yet new friend, excitedly chattering about comic books, Kiibo was happy to discover that…

Behind the mask, was a friendly face.

#ndrv3 #kiibouma #kiibo #ouma kokichi #katastrofic writing #anon #sorry if this feels a little rushed

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bettsfic · 5 years

Note

Hey Betts, someone asked me to have my work be part of their collection in ao3? Since you have been in ao3 for a while, I thought it would be okay to ask you what that means?

sure! great question. collections are an under-utilized feature of ao3, which is why i think they’re kind of a mysterious beast.

ao3 is a unique archival platform, in that the archive work is done by users and a team of moderators, rather than administrators who either archive the work themselves (which would be a nightmare) or restricting the archiving options (like if we only had a few hundred tags to choose from), which is to say, when you post a fic to ao3, you tag it yourself.

this has a lot of upsides (obvs, since the archive is so successful and effective), but one of the downsides is that a content creator may suck at archiving their fic. most writers abide by fanfic etiquette, but some don’t, and the ToS is pretty hands-off in that regard (the ToS say you need an archive warning, basically, and that warning needs to be accurate if it’s not CNTW. you don’t have to rate it or tag the ship or anything else. you’re even allowed to tag the wrong ship and wrong fandom, and the abuse team won’t take it down or fix your tags).

so if the writer doesn’t properly tag the fic, and the abuse team/tag wranglers won’t properly archive fic based on the content (but they will wrangle your tags and uphold the ToS), that leaves readers.

ao3 built in features so that users could archive fic properly, so it can be found more easily, namely via collections and bookmarks, both of which are woefully undervalued as resources, and i wish, along with a few other features, they were more prevalent, because i think they’re brilliant.

collections have multiple functions. first, part of the work of the OTW is to import fics from other, older archives to the ao3. collections allow a central hub for those archives. one example is the Master Apprentice collection, which was an old archive for Obi-Wan Kenobi/Qui-Gon Jinn fics. this is also why you sometimes see fics dated earlier than 2008, when the archive was built.

another use of collections is to host prompt-fill memes (like kinkmemes), big bangs, or gift exchanges (like yuletide). this way, all the fics written for a certain event are located in a central space, and therefore easier to browse and find what you’re looking to read.

finally, getting to your question, a user can make their own collection and put fics into it so that other readers can find fics of a certain type more easily, especially if those fics are notoriously poorly tagged (codas) and/or for whatever reason the archive’s structure obscures the ability to find them. take, for example, Jaime/Cersei fics. in most fics, if J/C is tagged, it’s a secondary or background pairing, and there’s no way to separate “this fic’s primary pairing is J/C” from “this fic has J/C in it.” so a user can create a collection of primary-pairing J/C fics so that other shippers have easier access to them, instead of scrolling through hundreds or even thousands of fics in which J/C is used as a warning tag rather than a content tag.

other popular collection themes are good smut, fix-its and codas (which are poorly tagged because many writers don’t look up the episode tagging style conventions, which is “Episode: sXX eXX Episode Title”), and fic subgenres like recovery bucky fics.

the way the archive manages this feature is by allowing readers to automatically place fics in collections, and the author can remove their fic from the collection by going back in and editing the fic. so if, for whatever reason, you do NOT want your 30k fluff fest fic in a collection of “my favorite porn,” you can click Edit and remove the collection from the list. if you choose to keep your fic in the collection, the collection will be listed on the fic, so readers can find other, similar fics.

the only collection i’ve ever seen that i did not want my fic to be part of was one whose description used grossly pretentious rhetoric that seemed completely antithetical to the spirit of fic. also, someone “accidentally” added one of my fics to the Anonymous collection, which as you might know, anonymizes the fic entirely.

in the same vein as collections (i know you didn’t ask, but at this point i’m just begging people to use these features), users can “fix” poorly or under-tagged fics via bookmark. let’s say you’ve read a fic that’s 100k+ and has a billion kinks in it, and the author chose not to tag every single kink (which, fair). you, the reader, are maybe invested in archiving clothes sharing fics. you can bookmark the fic and tag it “clothes sharing” and a user can then search bookmark tags to find this specific subgenre of fic that isn’t often tagged because of how ubiquitous it is, or sometimes not even seen as a kink or trope.

you might be thinking, but why would i search bookmark tags? nobody uses bookmark tags. BUT LET ME TELL YOU, if people did bookmark more thoroughly, like back in ye olden days when we used del.icio.us, the archive would be that much more functional and efficient.

so please, fic readers, i know you are constantly begged for comments and reblogs and all that, but if you have time or energy, or find interacting with authors anxiety inducing and want to help out in some other way, you can do other things to help out and preserve our genre. make collections. bookmark thoroughly. use the amazing features so lovingly offered to us.

(one thing i didn’t mention is that i wish users would fill out their profiles more thoroughly, because author history preservation is just as important as fic preservation, but that’s maybe a rant for another time.)

tagging experts @naryrising and @ao3commentoftheday if they have anything to add/correct!

#ao3 #fanfiction #collections #writing advice #Anonymous

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theoriginalladya · 4 years

Text

Author Interview

**Revised, expanded and edited now that I’ve had some sleep and have been tagged by additional people**

I was tagged by @jedirangerpenguin - thank you so much, and hello! Nice to meet you!!! (and I absolutely ADORE your tumblr name!) and @painterofhorizons - thank you, dear!!!

I’ll tag a few people - @swaps55 @urrone @guileandgall @punwolf @askebjorns - and anyone else who would like to participate, consider yourself tagged by me. (No obligation, no pressure! If you’ve already participated or don’t wish to, that’s fine by me!)

~~~

Name: theoriginalladya on tumblr (because my original name, ladyamesindy, was scooped up by some bot during my year-long absence)

Fandoms: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect Andromeda, Dragon Age (all games), Werewolf the Apocalypse (future)

Where You Post: AO3 as ladyamesindy

Most Popular One-Shot: Oh, good question. Well, I originally posted to both AO3 and ff.net but left the latter a while back so any of my DA oneshots that might have been popular are not up at the moment (hoping to relocate them over to AO3 at some point). According to AO3 it’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Interesting. It’s a little piece I wrote for a friend over here some years ago who loved the Shakarian romance. The phrase (from the game) is also one I’ve used many times in my life as well. A close second is One Last Dance. This is also Mass Effect, and was a fun little piece focusing on John and Jane Shepard from my ShepShep ‘verse that happened all because of a song I heard and couldn’t get out of my head. It quickly became ‘their’ song and whenever I hear it, I always think of them. My most popular Dragon Age oneshot appears to be A Nose By Any Other Name and is a oneshot about a portrait at the royal palace and its uncanny resemblance to Nathaniel Howe ....

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Not too surprisingly, it’s my Dragon Age fic, Ever Constant, which, coincidentally, is my longest fic at the moment (116 chapters). It’s a Dragon Age AU where Bryallyn Cousland and Nathaniel Howe were married before the Blight and followed them through its entirety. I had a lot of fun with that piece. My most popular Mass Effect fic appears to be Destiny’s Road which started the whole ShepShep thing.

Favorite Story You Wrote: Oh gosh, how to choose??? I have far too many favorites among all of them! I have 80 works over there, most of which are Mass Effect until I get some more of my Dragon Age titles moved over. For Mass Effect, it’s probably Destiny’s Road or Shepard in Sherwood. Oh, also Slow Fire Burn. For Dragon Age (and for what I have over there at the moment), it’s Smoke and Mirrors and To Get A King, which is still in progress.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: Most nervous? As of right now, Neverending Winter Nights probably. It’s about Nathaniel Howe and an original character I used to play on an online RPG site from the DA world meeting and spending the night together. I’m never very comfortable writing/posting those because I do it so rarely. That may soon change, however ...

How You Choose Your Titles: Usually they pop right into my head. Song titles or lyrics, quite often, or possibly some word or theme from the chapter/story resonates and a title is born. Occasionally they can be bad puns.

Complete: Most of them? I’ll list just a few of them here

From Dragon Age:

Ever Constant

Til You Return To Me Again

The Sands of Time

Smoke and Mirrors

We Do What Must Be Done (my take on Bryce and Eleanor prior to Bioware releasing canon info on them)

From Mass Effect Original Trilogy:

Destiny’s Road

Destiny’s Hand

Til Death Do Us Part

La Vie En Rose

Dream On

Command Decision

Mass Effect: Ascendance

Mass Effect: Liberation

Give Me Peace

Bury Me In Willow

Slow Fire Burn

Never Gonna Give You Up

No More Regrets

Through the Looking Glass

Incomplete: More than I’d like. I had severe writer’s block a couple of years back because of real life stuff and since returning to writing, I’ve tried to focus on one at a time, though that isn’t always the case. Right now my big focus is on finishing my ShepShep series and getting more comfortable writing Caleb Shepard with Kaidan.

Here is a list of most of my incomplete fics I someday will finish: (I believe all but one are ME)

After the Rain

Mass Effect: The Lazarus Project

Seeing Reds

Destiny’s Fate

Destiny’s Fate: Downtime

To Get A King (Dragon Age)

Exilium (Mass Effect Andromeda ‘verse)

Do You Outline? Unless it’s a oneshot, almost always. Mostly it’s a way to organize major ideas I want to cover, keep track of pieces of dialogue I don’t want to lose, that sort of thing. I’d never be able to write the longfics I do without them.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: More Caleb Shepard/Kaidan Alenko! Also hoping to start getting some of my Werewolf adventures down on the page. I’ve been RPG-ing that for over four years now and I have several characters I’d like to share. Also included here is my OC Serafina MacKinnon from the DA world whose stories will protray my canon view of my playthroughs of the games.

Do You Accept Prompts? ALWAYS!!! My list of characters and links to their stories is here if anyone ever wants to prompt something specific, or just drop a prompt in the ask and I’ll adapt it to whoever it fits.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: I’m always excited about ALL OF THEM!!!!!!! Goodness .... Most excited, probably Serafina and her group of stories which will likely take me the rest of my life to write! lol Also Caleb and Kaidan - I was pulled into that idea by a writing prompt from @swaps55 and I’ll admit, I’ve fallen so HARD for them. But seriously, I’ve so many ideas and new ones are always hitting me. Seriously, I have a spreadsheet for all my Shepards and I’m currently sitting at something like 85, I think??? The possiblities are endless!!! This also goes for any/all fandoms I listed above. Probably a few others, too.

***I’m going to add one note here: I tend to categorize most of my fics by Series on AO3 - one of the big reasons I decided to leave ff.net and transport over there. I have far too many works to list here, but if you’re interested in checking them out, you may want to start with the series tags. Most oneshots are included under a generic Mass Effect tag, unless specifically related to a separate one.

#Author Interview meme #ladya writes #ladya plots #when the muses attack #writing #my writing

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today-only-happens-once · 5 years

Text

With Great Power - Chapter 5

Title: With Great Power – Chapter 5

Catch up (or read on AO3) here!

Fic summary: Thomas Sanders is just a regular social media personality. But when he gets bit by a spider during filming one of his YouTube videos, his whole life is about to turn upside down—whether he (or the aspects of his personality) want it to or not. Platonic LAMP/CALM + Character!Thomas. Spider-Man AU.

Chapter word count: 3,515

Chapter warnings: cursing, nightmare mention, anxiety mention, minor spoilers for Danny Phantom.

A/N: Almost a month later, here’s chapter 5! So sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoy it! <3 Shoutout to @creativenostalgiastuff for her help as always. Edited by yours truly so all mistakes are mine.

Tags: @captain-loki-xavier, @human-dictionary, @the-peculiar-bi-tch, @mining-pup, @band-be-boss-blog, @asexual-trashbag, @samathekittycat, @why-should-i-tell-youu2, @theobsessor1, @always3charcoaltea, @changeling-ash, @logical-princey, @crimsonshadow323, @flickering-raven, @smokeyrutilequartz, @dontbugmeimantisocial, @liz-a-bell, @black-king-white-knight, @soijusthavetoask, @analogical-mess, @marvelfangeek09, @vigilantvirgil, @princelogical

Sorry for the delay, everyone! Thomas types out for Twitter, a couple days later. Wasn’t feeling great but we’re back at it! New CT coming to you soon!

He pauses, then looks up at Joan across from him, sitting on a chair in Picani’s office. “Hey, what if we did a livestream tomorrow?”

He still feels bad for having gone MIA for a week. Or, as MIA as Thomas ever really went. He’d texted Joan, Camden, and Talyn basically every day to tell them he still wasn’t feeling his best. It wasn’t… a total lie, he’d told himself despite the guilt that sat uncomfortably in his stomach. It definitely hadn’t helped that he’d consequentially been postponing finishing up the filming of Cartoon Therapy due to his absence. It had been a couple of weeks now without any video to post on either channel.

Joan looks up from laptop poised across their lap. “Uh, I can do that. As long as it ends before 6, ‘cause my piano lesson starts at 6:30.”

Thomas smiles. “Perfect. I just feel bad for making them wait, y’know?” To make up for it, he adds to the tweet, we’ll be having a Livestream tomorrow at 4! Open to everyone, not just members. Hope to see you all there!

“You can’t help that you got sick,” Joan replies as Thomas sends the tweet out. “They understand.”

“Yeah, but… y’know.” Thomas lifts a shoulder. “I just wanna do something for them.”

“It’s cool, man,” Joan replies. “I think it’s a good idea. And it’ll give us a nice break from the editing and shit.”

“Speaking of—” Thomas grabs the pen and journal prompts from the bookcase behind him—"how’s Camden handling his part of things? I haven’t talked to him about the vid in a while.”

“I think he’s almost done,” Joan replies. “We just gotta finish the last of Picani and we should have the rest of the footage he needs to finish his section.”

Thomas nods and adjusts the knot in the pastel green tie around his neck. It had seemed like every time they’d tried to film the rest of Picani, something got in the way. Thomas loved acting and he loved the filming stage of videos, but a small part of him just wanted to be done with it. The sooner he could be done filming, the sooner he could focus on… more pressing issues.

“Then let’s finish Picani,” Thomas says lightly. “We’ve just got the last scene with Valerie’s character, right?”

Joan nods. “Yep. Shouldn’t take long at all.”

“Awesome.” Thomas glances in the viewfinder and pushes the bangs that were falling into his eyes out of the way. “Ready when you are.”

Joan hits record on the camera, then looks down at their script. “I have to be the adult, y’know?”

Thomas taps his pen against his mouth, looking carefully at Valerie’s sightline. “You know, Elena… Danny’s older sister feels that way for much of the show, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Jazz is only a couple of years older than Danny. But she often feels like she has to be the adult in the family because she sees her parents as a bit… immature.” Thomas leans forward slightly. “So she acts way older than she really is. But that mentality ends up backfiring on her when she takes it a little too far.”

“Too far?”

Thomas places his pen on top of his journal in his lap. “In Season 2 Epsiode 7, Danny has to fight a ghost that can only be seen by kids while he’s on vacation with his family. Since Jazz acts and thinks of herself as an adult even though she’s only 16, she can’t see the ghost and starts to think—along with her parents—that Danny is going crazy.” Thomas pauses, remembering that they’d wanted to cut in with a video clip there. Then he continues. “Though her concern is well-intentioned, it leads her to trapping Danny and the ghost goes after their parents. It’s not until Danny is able to get Jazz to act like a kid again that she’s able to see the ghost, and ultimately help to save her family.”

Joan rolls their eyes to keep in character as they read Valerie’s lines. “Fine, but my family’s not under attack by ghosts.”

Thomas sighs. “You’re right. But the point is that Jazz thought acting like an adult was helping the people around her, when it really wasn’t. When she actually started acting her age was when she was able to be the most help—especially to her little brother, who was the whole reason she’d been acting so much older in the first place.”

“Huh…”

“From that point on,” Thomas continues, “Jazz tries to find a balance. She’s a mature person, and nobody was asking her to change that. But she also comes to understand the importance of still being a kid. She learns how to balance the two in a way that doesn’t ask her to sacrifice any part of who she is.”

Joan pauses. “I… guess I could try that. Maria isn’t a little kid anymore, even though I still think of her as my baby sister.”

Thomas gives a small, encouraging smile. “It’ll take some time. Learning balance is not as easy as flipping a switch. But it’s something we can continue to work on. It might even help your relationship with your sister in ways you don’t expect.”

Joan gives a single nod. “I’d like that.”

“Great!” Thomas grins. “So I’ll see you next week?”

“Definitely. And… thanks, Dr. Picani.”

“Any time, Elena.”

…

“We can tell them. Should we tell them? We can tell them. I think. Wait…”

Thomas laughs as Joan stumbles through their thoughts about half an hour in to the livestream. He laughs even harder when he sees the chat blowing up with people asking Joan to just say it already. They’d decided to go back to Thomas’s apartment for the livestream, if only for sake of tradition. Not every livestream had been from this location, but Thomas wanted some of the normalcy back. And Joan, though they’d seemed puzzled, didn’t appear to mind.

“I’m good to tell them who it is,” Thomas says.

“Wait, who as in the…” Joan arches an eyebrow. “Or…” They tilt their head. Perhaps strangely enough, Thomas knows exactly what they’re asking.

He laughs again. “Real name, not the character name.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s what I was thinking.” Thomas and Joan both look back at the camera.

“It’s Valerie,” Thomas says. “The new character we’re introducing is played by my friend, Valerie. Some of you probably know her, since she’s been in… a good number of our videos. We got really lucky that the schedules worked out, since she’s auditioning in Orlando at the moment.”

“Yeah, she’s actually been in a lot,” Joan says. They start counting on their fingers. “Reasons to Smile.”

“On the Spot in the Spotlight,” Thomas supplies. “Which we’re still planning on bringing back.”

“The first Tongue Twisted.” Joan snaps their fingers and points at him. “She’s been in a few of your shorts videos, too.”

“I feel like we’re missing something.” Thomas glances at the chat and smiles at the people shouting SANDERS SIDES in all caps. “That’s right! Goodness gracious, she was in two of the Sanders Sides videos.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, guys. Guess I’m still a little out of it.”

He manages a small, apologetic smile. But a moment later, there’s a flood of messages in the chat telling him not to worry, asking if he’s feeling better, reminding him to rest and drink water… he feels a sharp twist of guilt. He tries not to linger on it.

“Let’s see… other questions….” He watches the chat closely, the knot in his stomach loosening slightly as the messages filter from well wishes to questions again. One of them makes him frown. “Someone’s asking if I’ve seen the Ekko videos?” He glances over his shoulder towards Joan. “I haven’t. Is that a new thing? I don’t know if I’ve heard of them.”

Joan looks suddenly uncomfortable. They shrug, but its awkward and forced. “Yeah. It was all anyone was talking about a couple days ago.”

Thomas hadn’t been checking social media over the past week. A part of him felt relieved that they’d at least moved on from trying to identify who “Spider-Man” was. “What are they?”

Joan gives him a quick look. “I’ll… tell you after the livestream.” Thomas couldn’t quite read their expression, but there was a warning look in their eyes that made him nod his agreement. Whatever it was, Joan didn’t want to talk about it with an audience. They wanted to change the subject.

At Thomas’s nod, Joan leans forward to read the scrolling chat feed until they find a different question. Thomas glances at the screen as well, and sees a few questions with “Spider-Man” in them—they go too fast for him to identify what exactly they’re asking—and feels himself tense. Joan doesn’t seem to even notice the questions.

“Here’s one,” they say after a brief pause. “Thomas, if you could be any kitchen appliance, what would you be?”

As the livestream continues, Thomas finds himself falling into old, comforting habits. He’d always had fun doing livestreams, especially ones with Joan. He appreciated their ability to be thoughtful and intellectual one moment and crack a joke that would make Thomas’s stomach hurt from laughing the next. A part of him feels like he appreciates it now more than ever. Joan is his best friend, and he can tell them anything.

Well… almost.

The idea of telling them about the recent… abilities Thomas had come to acquire made his stomach squirm and his heartbeat quicken. He couldn’t quite explain why. Joan would probably be skeptical—even Thomas hadn’t believed it at first—but the powers were something he could prove, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Logan reminded him. He’d been proving his abilities to himself all week, after all. Maybe he knew there was a chance that Joan would freak out and never talk to him again. They wouldn’t do that. The thought sounds like Patton.

Even so, something whispers safer to not tell them in the back of his mind, and Thomas can’t help but believe it.

“I gotta go soon,” Joan says. They look at Thomas. “Should we end with Mind Meld or something?”

Thomas pushes his bangs out of his eyes. He smiles. “Yeah, let’s do it.” Thomas pauses, thinking of his first word. “Okay. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“3. 2. 1. Giant,” Thomas chimes at the same time that Joan says, “Apple.”

Thomas laughs. “Giant and apple?” He makes a face. “I don’t even know where to go with that.”

Joan grins in amusement, then thinks. “Okay. I think I have one. Super and apple.”

Thomas stares at them in uncertainty before he gets an idea. “Okay. I do too. It’s kinda weird, though.”

“3. 2. 1. Honeycrisp,” Joan says at the same time Thomas spits out, “New York.”

“I was thinking like, a giant apple. New York?” Joan laughs. It makes Thomas laugh too.

“I was thinking like, ‘giant as in ‘big’ and then—”

“And then you went to Big Apple,” Joan finishes. “Okay. I kind of get that. Honeycrisp and New York. Uh.”

Thomas’s eyes widen as he frantically tries to think of some sort of connection before one occurs to him. “Okay! I think I got one. It’s… broad-ish?”

“Broadish?” Joan starts laughing again. “That’s very helpful.”

“Okay, like,” Thomas waves a hand. “Kinda broad.”

Joan furrows their brow before shrugging. “What the heck. 3. 2. 1.”

Thomas says ‘vendor’ and Joan says ‘food’. It takes another round before they both eventually end up saying ‘restaurant’. Thomas grins when they finally get there. He looks back at the camera.

“Took us a minute but we got there! Thanks for sticking around, guys. This was a lot of fun. Super glad we had the chance to do this.” He glances at the chat, laughing at all the reactions of people playing along. In the midst of the messages—some of them now transitioning to sweet goodbyes—he sees one that catches his eye.

oof after that ekko vid I could use a new reasons to smile

Something uncomfortable sits in Thomas’s chest, but he flashes a quick smile at the camera. “Love you all! Bye!”

He stops the livestream and closes his laptop. Joan sits back in their chair, the spark of amusement from the game of mind meld fades out of their eyes. He’s reminded suddenly of the solemn, uncomfortable look Joan had given him when he’d asked during the livestream about whatever the ‘Ekko video’ was about.

“I saw that message. I know what you’re thinking,” Joan chimes in quietly after a moment. “It’s… not something you really wanna watch, dude. Trust me.”

“Why?”

Joan sighs and reaches for their water bottle. “It’s just… this thing that freaked everyone out. I don’t know how to explain it, but Talyn had nightmares after they watched it.” They take a drink. “I think it’s just someone trying to get some attention. The best thing to do is probably not to give it to them, y’know?”

Thomas nods absently as Joan pushes back from the table and heads towards the kitchen. Talyn didn’t really spook easily. They played horror games for fun in the dark alone. Thomas had never really been that kind of person. But he can’t deny that he’s curious. A part of him does want to know, if only out of a morbid kind of curiosity of what could have that kind of impact on his friends. Even though Joan had talked about Talyn’s reaction, it was clear to Thomas that it had bothered them too.

Dishes clatter in the sink as Joan sets the water bottle they’d borrowed from Thomas amongst the plates and bowls that Thomas hadn’t gotten around to cleaning yet. Neither of them said anything, letting the whir of the AC unit fill the uncomfortable silence between them. Something about it had gotten under Joan’s skin. Something they weren’t telling Thomas.

Thomas opens his mouth to ask them about it when Joan interrupts him suddenly. “I don’t know, man. It was weird and it felt like a warning of some sort. Maybe that’s why Talyn and I both felt a little paranoid after we watched it.” Their dark eyes flicker up to Thomas as they turn from the sink to look at him through the cut out opening above the counter into the living room. “I just don’t really want to dwell on it.”

Thomas caves and nods. “Okay.”

“But if you want to do another Reasons to Smile, that might be fun. A few people in the chat were suggesting it. Maybe that’d be a good idea.” They cross back into the living room and grabs their jacket from the back of the chair.

“Sure,” Thomas says, still a little lost in his thoughts. What could be so bad about that video? “Yeah, I’ll reach out to Camden and the team and whoever is in town to see if they might wanna join in. Maybe I can get Lee or Mary Lee to join this time.”

“Cool.” Joan stops after they’ve pulled their jacket on. Thomas can feel their gaze on him. “You okay?”

Thomas blinks and shakes his head to clear it. “Yeah. Just worried,” he says honestly. He offers a faint smile. “You and Talyn don’t usually get freaked out easily.”

Joan gives him a look. “We have anxiety,” they deadpan teasingly. Thomas huffs a laugh, even though it does little to expel the tightness in his chest. Joan sighs softly. “Really, Thomas. We’re okay.”

Thomas nods again. “Okay.”

“I gotta run,” Joan says, sounding faintly apologetic. “I’m gonna be late for my lesson.”

Thomas gives them a smile that he hopes is reassuring. “Go. Love you.”

“Love you too.” Joan closes the door behind them.

…

Thomas slips his phone into the back pocket of his jeans and cranes his neck up towards the night sky. It’s little late to be posting the Sunday Shout-Out video, but he liked the nighttime. The parking lot is empty except for his car, and even though he knows he ought to just go home given the hour, a part of him wants to stay out just a little longer.

Thomas sighs and jumps up on the trunk of his car and sits. He fold his hands behind his head and leans back against the windshield, looking up at the stars. Most of them are drowned out by the streetlights that illuminate the lot, but Thomas doesn’t mind. A cool breeze plays with the ends of his hair. It’s calming.

Thomas sighs and closes his eyes.

“I really ought to insist that you go home before too much longer, Thomas.”

The internet personality smiles faintly at the sound of his Logical Side’s voice. He cracks an eye open to find Logan standing beside the car, his arms crossed over his chest and an eyebrow cocked. Thomas’s lips curl up in a faint smile.

“I know, Logan.”

“If you know, then why do you appear to be falling asleep in the middle of an abandoned parking lot?”

Thomas sits up. “I wasn’t falling asleep.”

Logan hums, seemingly unconvinced. “All the same. Optimal rest is necessary for you to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”

“I know.” Thomas shakes his head a little, still smiling, and leans back again. “But this is nice.”

“This?” Thomas can hear the skepticism and confusion in Logan’s voice and tries not to laugh.

“Yes,” Thomas replies. He shifts over. “Take a seat. Try it out for yourself.”

There’s a brief pause, and Thomas isn’t sure whether or not Logan is going to take him up on the offer. Then Logan climbs up on the car, mirroring Thomas’s position beside him except for the folding his hands across his stomach rather than behind his head. Thomas smiles again. He’s a little surprised, although he supposes he shouldn’t be. Logan was the part of him that sought to learn, after all. And if Logan didn’t understand the appeal of something, he could usually be convinced to try it at least once.

“See?” Thomas says after a moment. “It’s nice.”

Logan doesn’t reply right away. “Perhaps.”

“The whole day was kind of nice, actually,” Thomas continues. He lets his eyes drift closed again. “It felt… normal.”

“Normal is a widely subjective term, Thomas.”

“Normal for me, I mean.” He takes in a deep breath of the night air. “Filming, livestreaming, hanging out with Joan. I think maybe I needed that. I needed a day to just be… normal again. Maybe not everything has to change, y’know?”

Logan doesn’t say anything. Thomas feels him shift beside him and he cracks an eye open. Logan is looking up at the sky. The streetlights reflect off the lens of his glasses. A short gust of wind tugs at the end of his stiped tie. There’s something in his expression that Thomas can’t quite read.

He doesn’t dwell on it. Thomas follows Logan’s gaze back up to the sky. “Do you remember,” Thomas asks, “when I was like, seven and wanted to be an astronaut?”

“Yes,” Logan replies. “I do remember that. It was an aspiration that lasted for nearly a full year.”

Thomas glances over at him. “Do you wish I still wanted that?”

Logan adjusts the frame of his glasses before folding his hands across his stomach again. “I don’t believe it’s that simple. I was more than content at your chosen field, Thomas, short-lived as your use of it may have been.”

“You’re talking about chemical engineering.”

“Indeed.” Logan is still looking up at the sky above them. “Although, such fields of study have many unexpected benefits. Perhaps it will prove useful yet.”

The corner of Thomas’s lips curls up in a faint smile. “Perhaps,” he says, echoing Logan from a moment ago. A comfortable silence settles between them. For all the times that Logan and Thomas had been at odds with each other, he’d never doubted that Logan was doing his best to look out for him, just like all of them always did. Most of the time, Thomas found Logan’s company a quiet kind of grounding. Calming. Tonight was no exception to that.

Thomas listens to the crickets and sound of distant car tires rolling on pavement for a long moment. His eyes drift shut again.

“You are getting tired,” Logan says softly, moments before Thomas was about to fall asleep. “I really must insist that you go home to ensure your safety.”

Thomas blinks his eyes open and sits up. He scrubs a hand across his eyes, bangs falling across his face in the process, and smiles tiredly at Logan as the Logical Side sits up beside him.

“You got it, Logan.” He pauses, the smile a little. “And… thanks.”

…

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #spider-man au #sanders sides spider-man au #platonic lamp/calm #character!thomas #with great power #wgp #wgp fic #tw cursing #tw nightmare mention #tw anxiety mention

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