#fanfic life

[chaoticquill]

Why Are We STILL Doing This?

I'm just going to straight up say the worst thing you can do as a reader is praise a writer in one breath, then backhandedly bash their ships in the next.

Let me explain.

I'm not talking about the "I don't normally ship x, but I gave this a chance since you wrote it" comments. Because that's fine. It's totally within your right to ship and not ship whatever.

I'm talking about, "Wow, this person's x ship work is so good! But ew, they ship y. Gross."

Y'all, I write fanfic because I want to. No one's paying me to do this. I love the community I've found in doing it, but then, I see people behaving badly, and I get a lot of feelings (hint: none of them are good ones. Mostly angry, a little sad).

I've been targeted and harassed for my ships on AO3. And because I am who I am, I have embraced the petty urge to write that ship I've been told not to EVEN HARDER.

Not everyone is like that. Talking shit about a person because of the ships they like can be really bad for that person's mental health. I know people who have stopped writing popular ships because of the hate they get for their less popular ones despite clear tagging, and it's even more infuriating when I see the same people talking shit get all sad because the writer quit writing the ship they (the reader) likes.

Sometimes, I ask myself, "Why can't we all just try to make this weird wonky fandom space we share in such a way that people's mental health doesn't crumble and they get all the joy out of their fan works they seek?" Then I remember people are people.

Hard ask, but if you don't like a ship, maybe instead of speaking in ways that damage other people, you can just say, "I don't personally like that ship" and not read the thing. Hell, there are ships I don't like, and I can just avoid them because tags. (Yes, I know it's not that easy, but hell, I'm trying anyway).

TL;DR: I saw people being assholes, I have feelings, and I want those people to stop being assholes.

[mrspeetamellark]

[magpiefngrl]

me: It's been months but I kinda feel like reading fanfic right now ao3: here's your super long Marked for Later list me: ao3: you've also bookmarked some fics To Read me: me: oh I know! I'll reread halsinator's fics for the tenth time

[rainingbicycles]

Listen, I just want a bit of reassurance that I’m not the only one who spends the majority of my day thinking about, if not reading, fanfiction.

Like, I don’t think you understand -

Watching a movie? = I want that as an AU.

Listening to music? = Daydreaming about fics.

Randomly thinking of a very obscure, specific storyline that I need to read? = Spending a good hour looking for it on ao3, before giving up and realising I’ll just have to write it myself.

HELP ME

[foxsoulcourt]

AO3 donators/Fic readers: please be patient + careful. Help more people know what’s up by REBLOGGING this post - thx!

[curiousityoctaves]

Had Penelope been delayed, merely by five or ten minutes, she would have missed the scuffle. She would have returned home unimpeded after delivering her column. But that was not to be.

Where was Colin truly coming from in his conversation with Fife? And what if he found out the very next day that Penelope heard him, and promptly went to apologize, only to find that she was much more fragile and precious to him than he realized?

Read here

[outlawarya]

I've been feeling a little... well, awful, and to fix what I can of my mood, I've been writing something very atypical--for me, at least. mostly because my typical is working on whatever I already have going on and I have some thing on my plate already. It's outlined and advanced on writing, but I wanted to take a time before actually publishing it. However, it doesn't hurt to share a little something, right? So here you can see, the opening scene of A LADY'S TRADE, a regency gendrya fic:

⊱―⊰

A LADY'S TRADE

Jon didn’t know quite well what to expect when he received a message from Arya calling him to talk business.

In all honesty, he simply could not predict much from his cousin—more like sister—of late. They had spent so long apart that now he could hardly recognize her. When they parted, she was a small girl and now she was a grown woman.

It was disturbing, to say the very least.

Admittedly, their whole lives had been disturbing thus far.

After all, they had all been split up from a young age, when it was too dangerous to be named Stark, after the Lannisters managed to usurp the Throne and persecuted all of them, and sent to each end of Westeros, disguised and, hopefully, safe.

It was only recently, when Daenerys Targaryen had taken her rightful crown, that the remaining Starks had been reunited again.

There were only five of them now. Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon, trying to get acquainted to each other once more after years apart with not one word of one another.

Bran and Rickon were off at school while Jon tried his best to manage everything that was left for them.

That’s why when Arya called him to talk business, he knew at least that she meant something related to inheritance.

What he did not expect was for her to say, “I want to get married”

Jon stares at her, waiting for the moment she’ll beam and say it’s all a jest with him, but she keeps solemn.

In a business expression.

Seven hells.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said I want to get married,” she repeats, unfazed. “I figured I’m already of marrying age and should take action on it”

“You’re younger than Sansa and she’s not wed yet,” Jon points without thinking. “And you might want to take one year or two to enjoy the comforts of our recent safety without feeling like you need to chase after a betrothal”

“There is no comfort I want and can enjoy as an eligible lady that I couldn’t take pleasure as a married one,” she says and Jon looks at her, really looks at her.

She’s still a small thing if compared to the rest of them, short and skinny, although now her presence fills the entire drawing room, commanding and determined. She’s all conviction, and he can see that she has really thought that through. It’s not an impulse, it’s not something she feels obliged to do.

Arya really and simply just wants to marry.

He never thought he’d live to see this day.

“Very well,” he concedes, sinking into an armchair, not knowing how to deal with the news standing. “So, you want to get married”

She sighs in exasperation, “Yes, Jon, for goodness’s sake, that is what I said”

“Forgive me if I wasn’t prepared!”

Arya sits in a three-placed sofa next to him and keeps silent for a moment, to which Jon is grateful, because his brain is trying to process what exactly this means.

It takes a while, but he revisits the whole process in his brain. When a young eligible lady wishes to be wed, she needs a dowry, which isn’t a problem, thanks to Arya’s parents, who organized the heritage of each of their children before passing.

She also needs permission from her family and from her legal tutor. For Arya, that meant him. Not that he was the heir of all the Stark estate, but he was the only member of the family alive, legal, and available to deal with such matters. He had spent the last months learning the letters and numbers required for such a job while Bran—the official heir to the House Stark, still too young to take his task in his hands— was still at university.

Having all of that already prepared, there was only one thing to be taken care of, and Jon realized that was probably the lead subject when the theme was planning to get married.

“I suppose we’ll have to discuss the best available suitors for you,” he suggests hesitantly, feeling the uncomfortableness of discussing such matters with someone he had thought a little child for so long. He never thought he would have such a conversation with Arya Stark of all ladies.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” the girl smiles wolfishly and sinks into the sofa, completely relaxed, her crossed arms in not a very ladylike posture. “I already know who I want as my husband”

There should be no room for doubt in the way she speaks, and yet Jon thinks he never doubted so much his own beliefs until this moment.

It wasn’t even just because Arya was his little cousin anymore—but it was still a factor that would most probably plague him for a very long time yet—because he could put that aside for a moment to try and evaluate the subject.

It was that Arya Stark was a young woman who barely ever engaged in social events ever since they had been reunited. As a wealthy and infamous family that was recently involved in such an altercation, House Stark was in no short demand of invitations for social gatherings, and yet Arya avoided most of them, allegedly to avoid the whispers that followed them wherever they went. She did join Sansa once or twice, but the occasions were rare.

Jon never knew her to fed the attention of any men who might have courted her. And yet, she had already a suitor in mind.

“And who might he be, dare I ask?”

“Do you, by any chance, know the Heddle family?”

“I do,” he answers, thinking of the Crossroads Inn, known throughout Westeros and kept by the Heddles.

“And do you know that their eldest daughter, Jeyne, is engaged?”

Jon frowns, unsure where this is going, “Yes, I’ve seen the lady with her fiancé. I even met Mr. Waters on occasion.”

Arya smiles.

“He’s the man I want as my husband”

Jon blinks.

Now this for sure was the jest he thought was coming before because there’s no way in the Seven Hells this is really happening to him…

“I beg your pardon?”

Her smile doesn’t faulters for a second, “I have the entire ordeal already planned, Jon, so listen carefully and assist me, because my mind is made and will not waver”

When she explains, all Jon can think is how there was no letters or numbers who could have prepared him to deal with Arya Stark.

[lightningstorm003]

We're moving up in the world peeps

[lena-hills]

Husband: Why do you have Ovid and a bunch of poetry anthologies out?

Me: Research for my Star Wars porn fanfic.

Husband:...yeah, that sounds like you.

Eighteen thousand words into this very rough draft and still only like 2/3rds done after almost a month of writing, I will be working on this for ages 😭 Please tell me people want to read a Kanera Regency novella!

[moonsugar-and-spice]

"I can fix him," only it's writers, and they're feverishly talking about that fic they've been working on for eight years.

[spell-cleaver]

I was writing and got curious, so here’s a poll!

Add why in the tags!!

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Me, smacking my friends with a pool noodle: did you read the thing I wrote, did you read it, did you read it

My friends: oh my god go away how’d you get back in my house

[hogwartsfirebolt]

A good fic can convince me of ANY pairing and I say this with my whole chest after laughing, crying, swooning, clutching my chest over Andy and Sid from TOY STORY

[magpiefngrl]

sometimes i browse my ao3 bookmarks and smile and say "look at all these gems. look how rich i am"

[sisterofficerlucychen]

i feel like i'm in a manic state of writing because i swear i went months without having any muse to write and now it's one idea after another that i physically don't want to stop typing but will likely never finish anything again because i keep jumping from one idea to the next because i don't want to forget it

[foxsoulcourt]

offering this pic in deep thanks to fic writers

In the past 24 hours I've read two DEVASTATINGLY BRILLIANT fics which rearranged my heart: a WIP in one fandom + completely new-to-me long 1 chapter in another. The act of reading + commenting was pulled from me; an act of devotion I felt I almost had no choice in. That's not true of course, but the power of their work hitting me where I was at the moment was cOmPeLLinG.

This is hardly the first time this has happened, but today I had time to pull together this post in gratitude, so I am. Trust me, Other Authors, soooo many of your fics have impacted me exactly the same way.

In fact, once again I realise how reading fanfic has fundamentally + beneficially changed who I am as a person. All because humans write their version of The Story, then offer them out to all of us on that aMaZiNg platform, AO3.

You Writers™ have mAgiCaL pOwErZ. THANK YOU for sharing your gifts with the world!

With love 💜

A fan

Before you ask, nah, I'm not going to link the stories here. They'll get their own glory post later on. The Point of this post is the power of writing to move us.

And truly, I could have created this post after reading ANY NUMBER of other people's fics, probably even YOURS!, but today I had time + capacity to make a post.