#how do i tag a meme for something that happened 18 years ago

[ghostedgrim]

Fandom Etiquette

It has come to my attention that today's fandoms just keep turning toxic, getting created and ruined within a week, and the etiquette we used to follow like law is vanishing. More and more people, especially minors, are joining fandoms, and they don't know the etiquette or unofficial rules that we once went by.

These "rules" are merely what I have observed through the years.

1) Understand what a fandom is- A fandom is a SAFE SPACE where people can talk about a show/movie/game/book + characters within it that they like. It is a space where people can be free to make headcannons, self-inserts, ocs, memes, shit posts, create and share theories, create fanart and fanfics.

2)Respect - If you don't want something happening to you, then don't do it to others. More directly: don't hate on other people for their preferences of reading, writing, and characters they like. So if someone likes character A because of __ but you like character B, that doesn't give you the right of hating on the other person fit liking character A. If a person sets a boundary: "I won't write _ _ and _," then don't push them to write it.

✨️Jingle Jingle ✨️sparkles✨️lemme keep your attention✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

3) Creators of a fandom (people who created the characters, movie, book etc that you like).- If they request something, respect it. "Please don't sexulize this character" so don't sexualize them. Do not force a creator into a fandom, don't be sending them fanart, graphic contents, threats to get a specific ship you want, etc. They are a person, treat them like one, if they want to be in the fandom and interact with it they will do it in their own time, don't force them.

4) 18+ spaces! 🔞- Now minors, I NEED you to understand this part. A person with 18+, 🔞 or MDNI (minors do not interact), don't interact ESSPECALLY if it's a group chat, discord, and/or rolepay. I emphasize this FOR YOUR SAFETY! As a minor, you can easily get groomed, no matter how safe it seems adult predators are there and will make you feel like they are the safest person to be around before they attack (I did an essay on this just a few months ago, trust me it's bad). Some people make an 18+ space because they fear a they cannot prevent a predator from going after minors who enter that space (predators will often be your friend before they attacked via grooming).

5) 18+ pt2- Many people create an 18+ space so they can talk about more adult related topics, or simply because they find it easier to talk to people their age when speaking about fandom related topics. Also it's weird being like 20 and agreeing with a 12 y/o that a character is hot, it's extremely uncomfortable for us adults when we realize we're having that conversation with a kid.

⚠️NEVER PRETEND TO BE 18+ IF YOU'RE UNDER 18 BECAUSE THEN THE ADULT YOU'RE TALKING TO WILL NOT REALIZE YOU'RE A MINOR, YALL TALK ABOUT ADULT CONTENT, MOM/DAD CATCHES YOU AND THEN THE INNOCENT ADULT GOES TO JAIL AND/OR BECOMES A REGISTERED CHILD PREDATOR!!⚠️

6) MDNI and 18+ tags!- These are warnings that a topic in a post is NOT CHILD FRIENDLY!! Also us adults can get in trouble if a child interacts with our 18+ content- a parent could see, report us, get us banned and possibly worse scenarios depending on the situation. Also adults don't want children reading 🌽, graphic violence etc.

✨️✨️💥✨️✨️stay with me now✨️✨️💥✨️✨️

7) Shit posts💕- I have not seen them in ages and I miss them. A shit post is just a funny, likely cringey thing you make at like 3am. They're funny, stupid, meant to make everyone laugh and cringe, they're not meant to be pretty. It can be headcannons like "Thrawn from star wars sucks at painting that's why he only admires art!!" Or self insert x character doing something stupid. Crack fics are some of the funniest things because you can read it and wonder if the person who made it was high in that moment. They're like memes.

8) Self Insert OCs- Idc if you hate them because guess what, a person has a right to create them, Hell a person has every right to make a fanfic with them. Yes, you're allowed to feel distaste when you see them, but don't give hate, it's stupid to hate on something so harmless. I got maladaptive daydreaming, and while it may be boring in a fanfic, I find may daydreams much more entertaining when I have powers and a backstory that's fictional.

9) Warnings- Put warnings on your post if it contains; violence, sa, abuse, sh, sickness, vomiting, and any other possibily triggering thing even I'd it seems stupid put the warning there please ✨️

10) Pro-shipping- If you do this you're not welcome, and leave the fandom. For those who don't know, these people support minor x adult ships, incest ships, dad/mother x their child ship, abuser x victim ships and likely sa ships too. There is no excuse, if you support them, make art, fanfics, headcannons, get out and leave the fandom. If you're so desperate for it then go make a bot for it on character ai. 👋 bye

10.5) If you make headcannons or stories romanticizing a character 🍇ing, and or sa and or abusing y/n, or another character you ship them with (especially if it's a minor x adult 🤢), get tf out. If you romanticize yourself sa, 🍇ing and/or abusing a character (especially if it's a minor) get tf out. LEAVE THE FANDOM

✨️Almost done, just a little further my friends✨️💕

11) Help support the people writing fanfics, writing isn't always easy, so leave the author a comment or preferably reblog it, it helps motivate them to write and keeps the fandom alive

12) Don't be toxic, it kills a fandom. Unless a person's opinions or creations are harmful just leave them alone if you don't like it.

13) Don't glorify Ai art, all the faces and smiles look identical babe, go for art created by a person. 100%

14) Don't whitewash

15) be inclusive

✨️ If you wanna read a story with multiple chapters you can find them on whattpad and Ao3. Ao3 is better at filtering out unwanted content and finding certain content you want. Tumblr fanfics are mostly oneshots, but multiple chapter stories do exist.✨️

16) Give support to authors writing multiple chapter stories bc those are hard af to make! Support via: Tumbler: reblog and comment. Ao3: kudos and comment. Whattpad: comment, and vote for it.

17) SUPPORT FANART ARTISTS! With Ai their motivation to create has weakened. Fancfictions and fanart are both vital in keeping fandoms alive, and artists are do much better at art than Ai. And we love the little comics the artists make, so give em some love

18) Cosplay- we all have to start somewhere and cosplay is expensive af. So support rather than critisize, and provide tips to help them (where to find affordable good materials, how to sew, good glues etc)

19) Writing is hard, some people like me are dyslexic and not everyone has English as their native language, ontop of that with grammarly (Ai based autocorrect) it's harder to notice mistakes and the autocorrect will also make incorrect corrections.

You made it!!!! I'm proud!!! Feel free to reblog, comment, and even copy then repost to spread the word, feel free to add, and summarize. People can't magically learn fandom etiquette, we have to teach them. Especially the minors

Now go be the weird nerds we all are 👋

[aethelredism]

Thank you @lord-aldhelm for the tag! 💜

How many works do you have on AO3?

132!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

Apparently it's 1,585,653.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently just TLK, but every now and then HotD or whatever period drama I'm currently watching will catch my fancy.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

gonna be honest, every time this question comes up on an ask meme it makes me cringe a bit, because 3 of them i don't feel are remotely worthy of the honor and I think I just posted at the right time. anyway they're all GoT/asoiaf fics.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to, unless the comment is like, idk, annoying or completely incomprehensible.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh man. I've written a lot of angsty endings...I think I'm just going to go with the most recent, which is The House That Godwin Built.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

also going with the most recent here since there are too many to choose from, too tempting not to touch

8. Do you get hate on fics?

yeah 🥲

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

All kinds babeyyyyyy

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have written exactly one crossover as a dumb joke and it was where Steve Harrington was Jean-Ralphio and Mona-Lisa Saperstein's biological father

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

It used to happen a lot but not so much anymore

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

A few times! It's a really nice feeling :)

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

@itslaurenmae and I co-wrote Stolen Sweets together!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

eadith x eardwulf aka flowers in mercia i am so deeply unwell about this ship i made up in my head but also it's real I'm so Pepe Silvia about it

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I started this Barkskins fic literal years ago that went into the loup-garou thing that is CONSTANTLY coming up in the narrative but tbh i had no idea where to take it after "yeah they're werewolves" so I feel like. I shall never finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, I say, perhaps overconfidently. I attribute it to my theatre background but I'm always reading and, for that matter, writing dialogue with a voice in mind. I also speak a lot of the dialogue out loud to myself to make sure it sounds right, which is why I now live alone. I also know my basic editing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, tenses, etc) is almost always in good shape.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I am SO BAD at writing descriptions, it's something I'm actively working on. Action scenes are also something I struggle with, my eyes glaze over those scenes in books and television, and if you've ever read my fics, you'll notice I like to pull a GRRM and knock out my characters whenever possible.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If it's not necessary to the plot, why confuse the reader when you can just as easily say, "He said to the woman in sunglasses, this time in Russian..." or, "He didn't understand the two men, who sounded as though they were speaking in French..." Unless that dialogue is relevant to the plot, I guess I just don't see the need.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'm pretty sure it was Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

The House That Godwin Built will always have a special place in my heart 💜

tagging @ivarthebadbitch, @stannisfactions, @wildwren, @wexpyke, @abnerkrill, @skatingthinandice, and anyone else who wants to play!

[invinciblerodent]

Honestly i want to start playing DAO and then go up by release from there till the new one cause it all looks so nice and enjoyable but i haven't even started and i keep hearing about the fandom being the worst of the worst and people actually got truamtized from it im genuinely scared... Im only so new to this gaming fandom thing it started with bg3 and sims 4 and stardew valley for me lol everytime i want to install DAO Tumblr shows me a post about the toxicity of the fandom like its fate herself trying to warn me not to go there lmao

Oh babe, don't worry, really!!!! I'm sorry if I made it sound bad earlier lol, it's... well, it's no worse than regular fandom drama I reckon, it's just the one I'm familiar with, and one that's been around a very, very, very long time. The kind of toxicity there is, I genuinely do not think it is any worse than any other fandom's, it's just kind of what happens to every petri dish if you leave it alone for ten years: turns into something of a meme. But if you follow nice people, and stay out of the tags (as is recommended for every fandom tbh), I don't think you have anything specific to worry about.

I'd be DELIGHTED to see more people feel inspired to pick up Origins, partly because I'm a huge believer of art preservation, and think that old games, old books, and old movies alike deserve to be seen/read/played and enjoyed- in part to be able to appreciate what we have now, in part to see where exactly we came from, and in part to see how things have changed. I think that kind of context is necessary for any meaningful commentary to exist.

DAO is an excellent game, despite what people may say- it's just like 15 years old. Naturally, over that time, it has started to show its age: jokes have aged poorly, mechanics feel dated, people and views have mutated and evolved (nobody is the same person in 2024 that they were in 2009, or at least I hope), and the surrounding social environment as well as the technology have changed drastically, to the point that what was once scandalous and a bold, daring move, now just feels dated, stuck in the past, or even offensive. Media that is already out there does not have the luxury of being able to change and adapt as time passes, and I think we need to keep that in mind.

(Edit: adding a paragraph here because the previous one sounded very apologetic and negative: the cinematics in particular still feel intimately real in DAO, its treatment of the ambient and the limited tools it had is still very immersive, and the writing is very strong. I also remember blushing my way through flirting with Leliana that the first time [as a closeted bi woman who hadn't even realized that she's bi at the time], I remember feeling lost, and vulnerable, and terrified at certain parts, and elated, excited, joyful at others. And I really want everyone to be able to feel like that, and also gain the kind of insight they need to be able to see how far gaming as a genre had come.)

I honestly hope you do end up picking it up, because despite its age, it's still one of my absolute favorite games, and one of the stories that made me fall in love with RPGs, and games in general. I still vividly remember the first time I played it, when I was like 18 (which was 12 years ago at this point), and how it broadened my horizons, because until then, I kinda thought that games were either like the Sims, or like.... idk, first person shooters, not these big, sweeping, immersive stories you can get lost in.

I LOVE these games- I feel like that much is clear, lol. I just don't love the people who insist that there is one right way to love them.

I don't want to turn off anon for exactly messages like yours, but honestly, I do recommend to everyone who is at all concerned to do just that, to block liberally, and control their experience of engaging with the games as harshly or as leniently as they like.

It'll be fine. There will likely be an influx of new people picking the series up for the first time (just like there was with BG3) (though lbr, there will probably be a lot of people FORGETTING that the series is 15 years old but I hope they'll keep an open mind), we'll get a much-needed blood transfusion with people like you, and I genuinely hope that you'll have a very nice experience overall. ❤️

........

Also maybe save my favorite reaction image from ten years ago, and use it liberally. I know I'm gonna:

[xcalibxr]

SHIPPING INFO //ANSWER THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR MUSES SO PEOPLE KNOW HOW SHIPPING WORKS ON YOUR BLOG.

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?  

Hello there! As far as I have seen, there's not a bunch of extremely popular ships out there for Drake which means there's so much potential for ships, but my OTPs for Drake are SmoDrake, LawDrake, ZoroDrake, and Drake with @akagamiko's Shanks (I LOVE DRANKS OK!!!!!! NEVER WOULDA THUNK BUT HERE WE ARE!!!) There's also a lot of ships I've never explored, so there may be a new OTP on the horizon!!

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?  

Okay, SO! If you're character is 18-19 and wants to ship with Drake who is 33, it's just not gonna happen. I'm sorry. That's a 15 year age gap, BUT that only bothers me if the character is 18 or 19 years old. 2 years ago they'd be 16-17 and Drake, 31. NO. Please. Just no. Once you hit 20, DO AS YOU PLEASE, but please don't throw your 18 or 19 year old over here and expect Drake to be wooed. I will block you without hesitation.

HOW FAR DO STEAMY MOMENTS HAVE TO GO BEFORE THEY ARE CONSIDERED NSFW?  

Once the clothes are off, I'm tagging it NOT SAFE FOR DINOS (nsfd as you may see in the future) !!! Touching, kissing, straight up making out feels pretty suggestive to me and I'll put like a suggestive tag on it, but that's pretty safe for dinos!!!

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?  

I enjoy the build up and everything that happens after. The slowburn is excellent. The yearning. Lingering glances--or touches--secretly when the person is distracted or SLEEPING OR faking it off as swatting a fly or getting something out of their hair---all of THAT.

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH? 

Other characters who I think would be interesting to pair with Drake would be Killer, Kid, Katakuri, King--damn, that's alotta K's--Hina, O-Kiku (VERY RECENTLY DISCOVERED THIS might work), ROBIN, Nami (ginger couple), IKKAKU (learning of Fossil Fuels through RP). I can also try OCs--I used to write several tbh, and Drake has had a lovely relationship with @bucketfullofocs Aya before I was lured away to Pokemon Fandom and gave Drake a break cause we didn't see him for a long time. I've even dabbed a pinky into Drake and Corazon (a Still Lived Corazon AU I think) and the possibility was surprisingly nice. I guess I'm just a sucker for people bigger than Drake and much smaller than Drake PFFFFF.

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU? 

I have no problems with people asking if they can ship with me, but once that happens, lets have a few interactions and see how they mesh! If I've chatted with you and I like you, I think it'd be a bit easier to do.

However if we've never interacted before and you wanna ship, we DEFINETELY have to see how our characters will mesh with each other.

ARE YOU SHIP-OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

I LOVE writing my OTPs because it makes me happy and I enjoy shipping AND considering Drake's backstory, he just honestly feels INCREDIBLY LUCKY that someone actually wants HIM like, this mans hit the jackpot!!!, but I wouldn't say I'm ship-obsessed.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM? 

LawDrake held the top spot then SmoDrake came for my neck, but now since I've seen this incredible artist draw ZoroDrake/DreZo/ZoDre on TWITTER, I have written at least 10 fanworks and it is KING. Seeing them interact on WANO WAS SO. GOOD. DAMNIT. They were just fighting / arguing tho HAHAHAA. Two himbos together is amazing, ok?

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?  

Memes or just send something into my inbox! Just get the ball rolling. Ask about it after some interacts! That's all ya need!

tagging: i dont remember who i grabbed this from BUT DO IT!! perhaps @videcoeur ?

[justashadetalkative]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN

NAME?: Gossy

(Picrew by Lunevani, found here. Thanks Swid!)

PRONOUNS?: Any non-neopronoun (he/she/they/it)

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION?: Discord for any sort of involved conversation! Replies & tumblr messenger are both fine for short-form stuff, though.

MOST ACTIVE MUSE(S)?: Diamond for the most part; he comes naturally.

EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS?: I started roleplaying on online forums ~15 years ago, but I started doing DnD with my parents and pass-a-word-document-back-and-forth style rp with some IRL friends ~18 years ago.

BEST EXPERIENCE?: I don't really tend to think in terms of Grand Moments! I think that overall I've had a pretty good experience just, In General with rp. Exceptions have happened, but they've been mild and manageable.

RP PET PEEVES?: Lack of (positive) ooc communication is the main one that comes to mind. I want this to feel like something we're doing collaboratively, with good will and for the sake of having fun. I do also get disheartened if the initiation of interactions (e.g. ask sending, thread notions) isn't at least sometimes mutual, but that’s like... I don’t expect balance or anything; folk have varying levels of energy and anxiety and idea flow, and that’s natural! I just feel more comfortable with at least the occasional indication of reciprocal interest.

FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT?: Angst and fluff are both good! I'd theoretically be open to smut on Discord with the right characters & situation, but I've never actually written it.

PLOTS OR MEMES?: Definitely plots; I am so, so bad at improv, so it's kind of hard for me to respond to ic-memes a lot of the time. ^_^; That said, even when they're a challenge for me I do still like memes! They're a nice way to get new ideas flowing, and I like sending them.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES?: Long and medium are best. Kind of like with plotting vs. memes, I do best when I have context to build from, and single-paragraph or shorter can start to be more difficult for me to work with.

TIME TO WRITE?: Fffff. Whenever I 1) have time, and 2) can convince my brain to cooperate. It's intermittent, sadly.

.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S)?

We're all very queer. :P

Otherwise, Diamond's been hanging out rent free in my head since I was literally 4, so. I think there's absolutely overlap there and that it's also just anchored too deep down for me to untangle or notice specifics. xD

My other muses do often take at least one or two ideas, feelings, or questions of mine and extrapolate those to extremes; see where they'd go if they were big enough and internalized enough to be personality-defining. Clemcy and the fear of death, the arrogant know-it-all tendencies. Ithadel and the deep fear of overstepping boundaries, the self-knowledge of being a wet blanket in social situations. Oscar and the genuine belief that the whole point of it all is for us to care for one another and the world itself.

Phosa and Linast are question-based; I think a lot of their character struggles have grown out of my musings on the sometimes-immense discrepancies between who one is in raw instinct vs. who one is when acting purposefully vs. who one wants to be, and the further difference between true internal desire 'want' vs. wistful thinking 'want'.

.

tagged by: @archerwhiterp; thanks! :)

Tagging: @theovergrowth @needleandstory @desertfragments @writedisaster @oflostinfound @hearthtales @discipulusmaleficus

[aelaer]

“Nobody asked about my writing” meme

Thanks for the tag, @tea-understands :) Thankfully I have a small handful of folks who ask me about such things but I do love these memes.

��1: what are you currently working on? 

The Big Boy Fic! The finale of Earth-197320, which I'm 99% certain I am calling Above the Shadows. And I'll have a fun update on Write Every Day June in a couple days.

2: summarize your current project 

It's the fifth and final fic in a series that I started 4 years ago from an anonymous prompt sent to @amethyst-noir. I really clicked with it and she gave me her blessing to pursue it as a full-fledged fic, and here we are today.

Here's my first stab at a proper summary that I wrote for this questionnaire (tell me what you think y'all??):

2019 starts off in crisis-mode as rifts within the borders of reality begin spiraling out of control, drawing the resources of the Masters of the Mystic Arts thin. Tony now juggles the problems of a suddenly-absent Stephen, keeping his work with the sorcerers a secret, and Pepper's uncertain future. Stephen does what he can to maintain the stability of reality while keeping the promises he made. And somewhere out there, the other Stephen Strange is still hiding, putting his own plans into play.

3: summarize your current project poorly 

An author split up what should have been a single work into five separate stories because she wanted to fulfill Bingo cards in 2019, leading to a series that the readers are probably going to need to reread because there's so much detail in Fic 5 that calls back to stuff that happened in Fics 1-4. Fics 1-3 match the length of Fic 4, and Fic 5 is well over the length of Fics 1-4 combined, making for even poorer fic splitting choices. Whoops.

4: describe your favorite character or characters

I mean. Do I really need to? If you're on my blog you know who my faves are.

I guess quick summary as they are in the series in particular:

Stephen Strange: Has an enormous guilt complex that he's been working through a lot. He got better with the help of new friends. His work has endeared them to him quite a bit.

Wong: Has taken a leadership role, but not the title of Sorcerer Supreme for reasons not yet established to the readers. Carries his own secrets. Excellent poker face, but not emotionless.

Tony Stark: Has been blatantly ignoring the Accords ever since he went against Ross's back to find Steve in Siberia and has been continuing that trend since. Seeing the feds turn their eyes on Peter changed his opinion quite strongly. The Steve Issue is still difficult.

Other Strange: He thinks the Avengers and Masters of the Mystic Arts have failed their duties and that he can protect all of reality by himself. He just needs more power.

5: post a line from your current project without any context 

Closed my eyes and scrolled and went to a random page. This is what came up.

Oh, Jesus Christ. This explained so much about the man.

6: how do you get through writers block?

If it's not something health-related which just makes it physically very hard to work on items, I'll switch projects with my shorter fics. For a long fic like this, I'll put on a sprint and just power through 15 minutes at a time to get the harder bits out.

For health-related stuff (including mental), you sometimes just need to work on that first before you can be in the right space to write.

7: would you want to live in the world of your current work? 

Hell no. Superhero worlds are terrible for normal people.

8: briefly discuss your outlining process, if you outline 

I write an outline with the main beats of what I want in that chapter. Then when I get to the actual chapter, I'll sometimes expand the outline with more detail in that chapter section itself. I often go back to the main outline and add new things as I come up with them, or switch around elements in the story to a new chapter. This is how the planned outline has grown from around 12 normal chapters and 1 interlude chapter to 18 normal chapters and 2 interlude chapters (with potential for more growth seeing as I'm getting into some areas that have original outlining that I no longer am certain I want to use as they were ideas from over 2 years ago and the story's evolved a lot since then).

9: what is the aesthetic of your current project?

So much plot. Rewriting a lot of the end of phase 3 to push my Found Family agenda. Fix it vibes, but I think it's a natural fix it arc from the canon drama that could have happened in canon if the Russos gave a damn. A lot of character exploration into their own separate journeys and growth arcs. Pretty accurate on Marvel tones with action, drama, a bit of snark and humor. An itty bitty dash of canon romance but we all know I'm including it only because it needs to be there due to the plot and character arc reasons and not because I'm all googly-eyed for the genre.

10: what song sums up your current work the best?

Each chapter in the series takes a song lyric from a specific song and I identify that song with the story pretty heavily. For instance, Illuminating the Shadows took "The Light" from Disturbed.

For Above the Shadows, it's "Phoenix" by Fall Out Boy (who I'm seeing live in concert in a couple days, yay).

Tagging those who I know are writing/trying to write: @mckiwi, @sobeautifullyobsessed, @burglarhobbit, @amethyst-noir. No obligation either way. Also if I didn't tag you please feel free to take this (and you can poke me here if you'd like as a reminder that you're still actively writing fic regardless of the fandom and I'll try to remember for these sorts of things).

[onlygenxhere]

 20 questions writer meme!

Tagged by @jmrothwell, Thanks!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 38

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 382,342

3. What fandoms do you write for? Julie and the Phantoms and one lone Teen Wolf

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Falling Toward the Future – The monster college au that I based a lot on my own college experiences.

The next four (actually 6) are all part of the Found Family Fluff Series. Basically my take on things that might have happened after the Orpheum and the most family friendly of everything I've written.

Burn Baby Burn – The sixth fic in the series. Julie and Luke making out in a hammock

A Bigger Table – The second in the FFF series. Ray buys a bigger dining room table so the guys can join them at meal times even though they can’t eat.  

Eat the Chips – My very first Julie and the Phantoms fic and the first in this series. Julie and Luke can touch now but for some reason Luke has been avoiding touching her.

Not Today Satan – My first Willex piece and the third in the series. Alex and Willie hanging out in the studio catching up on music from the last 25 years when Julie comes in and they discover some new ghost powers.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes, always. Sometimes it’s just a .gif but I always reply with something.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I feel like this should just say what’s your angstiest fic cause like most, I like to end on a happy note, or at least with hope. Even though they both end either happy or hopeful I feel like As Long As We Have Each Other and What if I’m Someone I Don’t Want Around are the most angst filled. Both are pretty depressing.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? They all have a happy ending (technically the smut has the happiest endings) but maybe We’re Having a Baby part 4. Julie and Luke have a baby. (I know you’re shocked from that title)  

8. Do you get hate on fics? – Not really. Had a few 'I’m not sure I like what you did there'. But nothing mean. I’m pretty sure I would have a couple years ago based on what I’ve heard.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes, not sure what this means by what kind. I’m going to assume it means ships. It’s all been Juke until recently when I did my first peterpatterlina. There're four outtakes from Falling Toward the Future that are Explicit as well as Maybe I Could be Yours (Royalty AU) and a series of fics in the Naughty Files.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I have not done a crossover (only AUs) but I’ve had a couple floating around in my head but not enough to actually write down.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I think it’d be fun.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? Juke (shocking) But I will actively seek out Rarrie and Peterpatterlina. And I love Willex (Willex Wednesday!) and pretty much all of them to varying degrees.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? Never say never. If I’ve written words on something it’s always possible I’ll finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths? This is a hard question to answer because it’s all a matter of opinion and writers are our own worse critics. Maybe dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Sometimes I think I can get too focused on movement. Like making sure the reader knows how everyone is moving as they speak. It’s not always important and I can get bogged down in it sometimes.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? Just terms of endearment otherwise I try to avoid it.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Technically it would be Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure even though it never went up on the web in any way. I’ve written The Hardy Boyz (wwe) and Buffy, Willow and Oz. All of them many, MANY years ago.

20. Favorite fic you've written? This is like picking a favorite child. Looking through them all though I am very fond of Happy Birthday Ray which was the first sequel one-shot I wrote to Falling Toward the Future. I gave him my own birthday and published it ON my birthday.

Tagging @preoccupied-educator, @missjoolee, @60sec400, and @1mnobodywhoareyou  and anyone else that wants to share.

[loserdudes]

[buckybarnesdiaries]

a/n: none of my stories contain reader's body descriptions to be inclusive. join my tag list.

𓉶 incorrect bucky quotes.

dialogues, text messages and memes

𓉶 how bucky would react to...

you can send your requests via ask

𓉶 followers celebrations:

#500: part one — part two (soon)

#1k: list. (soon)

; one shot

𓉶 who the hell is mark hamill?

Wrong date finishing with a good night. (±750)

𓉶 touch.

You give Bucky something to deal with his nightmares that he isn't expecting. (±1k)

𓉶 knives. +18

You think Bucky is having a living nightmare but it's quite the opposite. (±700)

𓉶 wakanda.

Steve gives you Bucky's dog tags for a reason. (±2.4k)

𓉶 lazy mornings and nights. (±600)

𓉶 gravity.

Helping Bucky to feel better after a nightmare. (±950)

𓉶 sick headcanon. (±800)

𓉶 please. +18

Bucky needs to be spolied. (±1.2k)

𓉶 secrets.

Prompt: “Will be our secret”. Bucky wants to fit in. (±1.6k)

𓉶 i'm not the winter soldier anymore, i'm james buchanan barnes.

You help Bucky with a panic attack, after coming back from Madripoor. (±1.1k)

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Enemies to lovers. (±1k)

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Movie? Which movie? (650)

𓉶 cut my hair.

Bucky asks you to cut his hair because he thinks you prefer it short. (±900)

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Once a week, Bucky cleans and sharpens his knives, but this time, the easy task takes another path. (±2k)

𓉶 destructive.

Bucky confesses his feelings for you and why that scares him. (±1k)

𓉶 longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, benign, homecoming, one, freight car.

Bucky is kidnapped by Hydra to reactivate the Winter Soldier. (±3k)

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After a hard mission, you need to rest. (±450)

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𓉶 fallin' all in you.

Bucky takes care of you after a hella day. (±1.2k)

𓉶 rebecca barnes.

Headcanon about Bucky being dad. (±500)

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; series

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Bucky and you met six years ago in Romania, but he disappeared. Now, he's back. (±1.8k)

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part one (±700) — part two (soon)

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Bucky adopts an ex-agent of Hydra!reader.

part one (±1.2k) — part two (2k)

bonus (soon)

𓉶 white wolf.

Sam helps Bucky to ask you on a date and it's a disaster.

part one (±1.3k) — part two (±3.1k)

part three (±1.9k) — part four (soon)

𓉶 casablanca. finished

Avenger!reader gets badly hurt.

part one (±900) — part two (±900)

𓉶 a place called home.

Sam thinks he's Cupido and pushes Bucky onto you, and vice versa. (±1.2k)

part one (±1.2k) — part two (soon)

𓉶 all good boys go to heaven, but bad boys bring heaven to you. mob!au.

.

[stephspurs]

A Family Affair | Euro 2020 Football Fanfiction

here is the second last part besties wahhh I'm so sad its coming to an end!! I'm also so sorry about this part, it'll break a few hearts :'( Love always, Steph xx

Part 11 | parte undicesima

warnings; heartbreak, swearing & angst - i'm sorry in advance. word count; 2185 writing tools; third person until dashed line, first person thereafter. final update; Wednesday 18/08 5pm AEST. tags (as requested by users); @footballffbarbiex @obsesseds-world @abysshaven link to fic masterlist here

A few days had passed since the Villa match and Amelia had heard from Jack when he returned to Birmingham. He sent her a simple text to let her know he made it home. That’s it. The two went from previously not going more than 24 hours between FaceTimes or calls or memes to a simple made it home a few hours ago, thanks for a good time x.

No “speak soon”, no promise of a FaceTime , no double kiss at the end of the text that would have typically been there otherwise. If anything, she was more mad that he made her feel like a side piece; like one of his instagram girls that she knew he entertained throughout the week. Amelia knew that she, for lack of better terms, fucked up. She fucked up their friendship, and was praying to all of the Gods that would listen to help her not fuck things up with Ben, too. However, the fact that she didn’t go to church as often as she should have is probably the reason that Ben refused to make eye contact with the girl. It was either that or…he already knew.

“Benj, hey, wait up.” She called as he walked out to his car after a particularly long day at Cobham.

“Don’t call me Benj,” he coldly stated without turning around, continuing his stride.

“Okay fine, Chilly. Wait up will you!”

“Don’t call me Chilly either, that's reserved for friends.”

“Okay, if I can’t call you Benj, or Chilly, what can I call you?”

“The best mate of the guy you fucked multiple times on Saturday night” He spat out at her, as he finally turned around, ready to see the shocked look cast over Amelia’s face as she stood a couple feet away from him. He wasn’t expecting to see Mason at his car, just across the way or Jorgi at his, a few cars down. But they were there and it didn’t matter; they were going to find out sooner or later, anyway.

“He told you.”

“He told the group chat, Amelia. The fucking group chat! How does that make you feel? He’s already bragging about it. Your bed isn't even cold yet! It probably doesn’t bother you that much though - you’re just like him.”

“He fucked you when he knew exactly how I felt about you, having gone to him for advice as to how to apologise to you. I called him on Friday after I left your house and gushed to him like a bloody little girl because I was so happy you forgave me, and that we had kissed. And then, just like that, you let him weasel his way between your legs.”

“I know I should be taking this out on him, and I will don’t worry, but you knew what you were doing also. You knew exactly how I felt about you. I was ready to commit to you that night and you said you wanted to be friends, that you needed time to heal or whatever. So I hope you’re happy and are healing, because I take it all back.” With that, Ben turned around and got in his car, driving away from the girl who felt remorse worse than she ever has in her life.

Witnessing the whole exchange, Jorgi gave Mason a nod to say “go check on Ben, I’ll look after Amelia” and walked up to the girl from behind. Without scaring her, he firmly grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her to his chest where she let go of all of the emotions she had been keeping inside. With every stab of the knife that was Ben’s words, she felt herself becoming more vulnerable and exposed than ever before. She refused to let him see her cry. That wasn’t something she was willing to let anyone see; she didn’t realise all she had been holding together until she no longer had to, until she had the physical support of Jorgi holding her up in the middle of the training ground car park.

Ushering her to his car - she could collect her own another day - Jorgi  put her inside before any other first team members - or worse, staff members - could see the distraught girl and drove them both back to her place where he spent the rest of the evening comforting the girl and letting her know she wasn’t alone. He had even made a desperate call to Fede, asking for advice on how to cheer the girl up. Of course, her Italian ex-lover had been worried the moment his national teammate had told him that the girl was inconsolable and was just about ready to board a flight to her, but Jorgi had calmed him down too. Fede’s advice of coffee, warm pyjamas and clean sheets had done the trick of putting the girl to sleep for the night.

The next few days had come and gone, and the two heartbroken almost-lovers were back to the beginning - Ben ignoring Amelia and Amelia trying to get Ben in a room. But it wasn’t to be. Towards the end of the week, Amelia had received a phone call from Mr Mancini, formally inviting her back to the Italian National Team staff for the upcoming friendly matches and preparation for the 2022 World Cup. Without any hesitation, she accepted her role and began to prepare the necessary procedures that would need to be implemented or maintained during her time away with the Italian side.

Sharing the news with her fellow Italians, Jorgi and Emerson, she decided that she wanted to be the one to tell Ben. She wanted him to know, whether he cared or not, that she wasn’t running away from him and that she would see him soon.

“Chilwell, please stay behind after the session.” She decided it was best if she requested it in the company of the rest of the first team and also the staff members. She was being selfish but she didn’t want him to run away from her again.

He remained sat in his seat as the rest of the team and professional staff left for the evening. Arms crossed, slouched down, looking at everything else in the room but the girl who was nervously wringing her hands together.

“I’m leaving for international duties tomorrow morning.” With that sentence, he stopped tapping his left leg and looking at the cornice details. Instead, his attention was focused on her.

“But we don’t break up for internationals for another week.”

“I know, but Mancini has requested I come earlier to settle back into things over there.”

“It’s only an hour flight away, how difficult could it be?”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me go.”

Silence. Ben didn’t have an answer for her. Of course he didn’t want to see her around Cobham on the day-to-day basis they currently had to endure, but that doesn’t mean he wants her to go back to Italy. Even if it was only for a couple of weeks. Especially if it meant she was around Fede again.

“Well, much to your dismay I'll be back here in 3 weeks. And, Italy are playing England in the last friendly match of the break.”

With a slight nod of his head, Amelia presumed that their conversation was done with. She turned to gather her paperwork and heard the chairs behind her move, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing. She sighed into her hands. How did she let this happen? She preached to Ben how much she didn’t want to be selfish with his heart, and that's exactly what she did. But hey, it takes two to tango. Deciding there was no time like the present, she dialed the contact that once made her smirk but instead only made her furious to look at.

“Amelia, hey, how are you? Sorry it’s been a hectic couple of weeks.”

“Cut the crap Jack, you never intended to keep this friendship after you got what you were after.”

“Excuse me? You wanted it just as bad as I did.”

“You’re right about that, I thought I wanted it. Now, though, all I feel is regret. You know Jack, I knew from the moment we met that you were just my type, the kind that only calls me late at night. I knew a guy like you, and he treated me more or less the same. I gave myself to him, over and over for the better part of 3 years, and it was only when I left that he decided I might have been worth it... worth him.”

“But not you, you couldn’t help but run to your group chat and brag about your latest conquest, about how you made me feel wanted, only to rip it all out from under me the next morning and every day since. Honestly Jack, I think it's time you grew up a little. For Ben to confide in you how he was feeling and for you to just have blatant disregard for your so-called best mate. I can’t believe you would stoop so low. I know I'm in the wrong here too, but you are his best mate for crying out loud! How could you do this to him?”

“I don’t even want to hear what you have to say, I just needed to get that off my chest. Lose my number Jack, find some other hopeless girl that you can lure in with your foolish words and sweet nothings because I’m done. I’m done with whatever this was to you.”

______________________________________________________________

“You’re probably not going to believe me, but you have no idea how happy I am to see you here,” I heard from behind me, spinning around on my heels to see the ever-charming, boyish grin I used to love with my whole heart. This time, it's a different kind of love - it's an unconditional love shared between two people that are glad to exist together in the same crazy world.

“Federico, amore mio.” (Federico, my love) I stood up from my place on the bench at the Technical Headquarters and Training Ground of the Italian Football Federation, bringing the taller, heavily tattooed man into my arms. A gentle rock from him, side to side, to let me know that he can feel the weight of my moral compass.

“Vieni, cammina con me” (come, walk with me) He looped our arms together, and we strolled around the perimeter of the pitch that I was using to visualise my plays for the upcoming games. By the time we made it to the first set of goals, Fede had had enough of letting me mull over my own thoughts.

“Tesoro, Jorgi called one night a couple weeks ago. As smart as he is, it turns out he is hopeless at calming down an emotional female. While I'm not proud of knowing exactly how to calm you down, being that it was more often than not my fault you were inconsolable in the first place, I had to get some information out of him as to who upset my favourite girl in all of England.”

So I launched into the story, telling him everything from Mykonos to that fateful night a few weeks ago. Fede being Fede, he wanted to know everything, but I stopped just short of letting him know how many times Jack took me to paradise (much to his dismay). By the time I had wrapped up, we must have walked the pitch at least 3 times in its entirety, before retiring to the centre circle where we sat on opposite sides of the half way line staring at each other.

“I’m sorry that I ruined you for any other man,” Fede spoke solemnly.

“Fede, no - it was my stupid mistake to sleep with Jack.”

“No, let me finish amore. I’m sorry that I made you love me so deeply, and convinced you that the way I treated you was the right way, that the way I was with you was what you expect in every man to come after me. This Jack, he sounds just like me about 5 years ago - before I met you. But Ben, he sounds like the man I am trying to better myself to be, to be the man that deserves the kind of love you have to give.”

“I want you to listen to me. You need to fight for Ben. From what I have heard from both yourself and Jorgi-”

“That boy cannot keep his mouth shut to save himself,” I muttered under my breath.

“Amelia, you have a heart that deserves to be loved. Open yourself up to Ben. Tell him how you feel. From experience, you are very hard to ignore when you’re so vulnerable. Be honest with him, apologise, make him feel wanted, not like a second choice. Let him know how much you care for him, and equally how much you want him to care for you. He will see your sincerity and realise just how truly irresistible you are.”

Part 12. | la parte finale

[lululawrence]

Wordplay 5.0 Reflections

I dunno what else to call it lmao it doesn't sound right to call this a meme, but whatever it is, here we are! lol @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed came up with these questions after @wordplayfics wrapped up last year and I love them so i'm gonna use them for this year as well.

I'm going to start out with listing the prompts and linking the fics i wrote for each one for everyone's reference, though I'll be linking them again through the answers as well. I'm also putting all the questions and answers beneath a read more because, as usual, I rambled lmao Alright! Here we go!

Struggle: I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right Reduce: I Love This Feeling (But I Hate This Part) Divide: He Carries The Key Rise: Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy Sketch: I Heard You Talking

How did you come up with your ideas for the fics? Can you take us through your process after first receiving the prompt?

I don't know that I have a set way I come up with my fic ideas for Wordplay. It all depends on the prompt and what fic ideas I've got on my "to write list" that might fit that prompt. If nothing on my to write list fits or can be tweaked for a prompt, then I just go through my prompts tag until something strikes me for it, or I just ruminate on the different ways the word can be used and see if something comes up.

So, when I did the random word generator for the first prompt and "struggle" was the word that came up, I immediately thought of "struggle bus". lolllll and when I went looking through my to write list, I saw the girl Payneshaw fic I wanted to write and I was like omgggggg Nick ABSOLUTELY is riding the struggle bus the ENTIRE FUCKING TIME and I knew that was my fic for the week. lmaoooo and there you have it.

What is your favorite fic you wrote for Wordplay this year?

oooohhhh this one is HARD AND MEAN lmaoooo i forgot this was a question asked. okay legitimately i cannot choose a favorite because i'm actually stupidly proud and happy with all of the fics i wrote this year.

If you’ve participated in previous years of Wordplay, what has been your favorite prompt from all years you participated in?

WELP. as the creator of this challenge, i've participated in all 5 years which means there've been 25 prompts i've written. lolllll and honestly i think my favorite prompt is STILL from the first year. it was "bloodsucker". like, how great of a prompt is that???

What was the shortest fic you wrote this year? The longest?

the shortest one this year was... I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right at 4381 words.

the longest one was... I Heard You Talking at 10580 words.

What fic of yours surprised you?

i think all of them surprised me in some way. that's part of the joy of writing fics, isn't it? lollll but i think the one that surprised me the most was Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy. it was a last minute change (i'll elaborate in the answer to the next question haha) and it was a VERY different direction than i had planned. it was all based off of a photo i saw on tumblr, and there was no prompt with the photo. i got to just take in the basic idea of the sticker being placed on a bridge overlooking the city and what might make that spot a good kissing spot.

now, as an ace who doesn't actually ENJOY kissing, i... didn't think about the fact that i would be writing a lot of it. lollll i actually have a super hard time writing kisses and trying to make them varied while also relaying the emotional intimacy of the moment, and then add on top of that the fact that once i started writing the fic, both harry and louis let me know pretty much as soon as words started getting written that they were both genderqueer and that worked differently for each of them, so harry would use they/them pronouns and louis would use he/him still, it just made things more interesting. and the way the fic developed??? like, i had a very vague idea of what would happen in the fic. so the way it actually came about all surprised me.

long answer short, from the very start, this fic surprised me and i was just along for the ride. it was a BLAST and i sure do love it, even if it does have the second lowest hits of all the fics i wrote this year haha

Were there any prompts you struggled to find an idea for?

STRUGGLED HAHAHA sorry. just funny since struggle was a prompt this year. ANYWAY. the prompt i had the hardest time with was defo rise. i've had this fic idea ever since greg james tweeted with shawn mendes months ago about how shawn basically forgot his interview with greg on the breakfast show, so greg had to last minute wing a LOT OF AIR TIME AND SHOW CONTENT and he did a great job, but it brought about some funny content... anyway. that made me wanna write a triad a/b/o fic where greg is louis and harry's beta. rise was going to be used in a lot of different ways through the fic, as well. because breakfast show requires greg to rise from bed early, he gets a rise out of harry and louis with his behavior and overt flirtations with shawn, they have to rise above their jealousy, etc etc etc. i was VERY EXCITED.

except i only had three days i was able to write every week this summer, and those were really really difficult to get. if i wanted to write on tuesday or thursday, i was often curling up with my laptop in a dark room with some caffeine and candles burning to soothe me after the insanity that is my life atm, and write for as long as i could before my brain stopped functioning, which was often only around 30 min. but see, that particularly week was the worst part of my son's 18 month sleep regression, which meant instead of him sleeping and letting me write, i was driving him around or trying to rock him back to sleep or letting him play in an attempt to tire him out etc etc etc and by friday morning i had to admit to myself there was no way i could write that a/b/o fic in my one guaranteed evening to write every week (saturday, btw). so i was suddenly left with around 36 hours to find a new fic idea and develop it enough to be able to write it in one evening.

as i said in the answer to the first question, i usually go to my prompts tag to see what might inspire me with this prompt word in mind, but for this one that wasn't the first place i went. i tried looking at more definitions even though i'd done that earlier and nothing was inspiring me. so i then spoke to several friends and was still having a hard time finding any ideas that felt like something i would enjoy writing and could do so quickly.

by saturday morning, knowing i had less than 12 hours to figure out what i was writing so i could actually WRITE IT in only like 2-3 hours of writing time, i finally sat down and scrolled through my prompts tag. once i did, i saw the photo for the "good kissing spot", and i immediately thought of sunrise. so i ran with it. but i wanted to make it stylinshaw, so how would i work that in, etc etc etc. it was just very fast and very difficult trying to figure out how i would structure it so it could be a fun meet cute kind of fic, but also work into them actually building a meaningful connection etc and... well. it was a lot. haha so yeah, it was just a hard time overall that week, but i'm super proud of it in the end.

Were there any prompts you had an idea for but ended up writing something different? If so, what made you choose to change what you wrote? Do you think you’ll ever write your original idea at a later date?

HA okay well i already answered most of this above, but for the last part of this question, yes i will absolutely write my original idea at a later date. the whole reason i decided not to do it wasn't because i couldn't turn it into a fic that could be written in that one writing session, but because i had hopes for what that fic would be, and i didn't want to shorten and condense it enough to do that. i didn't want to have to lessen the dreams i have for that fic in my head, so i decided i would just put it back on my to write list and save it for later. who knows when, but that fic will absolutely get written.

What do you think was the most difficult as well as the easiest part about the Wordplay Challenge?

most difficult was 100% finding the time to write. that was insanely hard for me all summer, but by the time wordplay was going, things at home had ramped up to being very overwhelming regarding the demands on me and my time, and what i had been doing to carve out some time for myself and writing wasn't working anymore, so i had to adjust even more with the understanding that i was working on a really strict timeline too. so yeah. just finding the time was absolutely the hardest part for me.

easiest part was the actual writing. these fics really flowed from me, outside of the pack fic, that one was actually pretty difficult to make sure i was getting the dynamics exactly the way i wanted to have them turn out, but even with that aspect, it still was like it flowed from me most of the time. these fics really just took over and i was along for the ride. it was a blast.

If you participate again next year, is there anything you’ll do differently? If so, what?

lmao well assuming people still want wordplay to happen again, i'll run it again and very likely will take part. so... with the difficulty i had in finding any time to do anything this summer, i was actually ridiculously stressed when it came to the writing part, but also the modding aspect of it. so i am not sure that i'll run it during the summer again next year. i might have it go during the early fall once school is back in session so i at least have only one child at home instead of three to battle lol so that's one thing i'll hopefully be doing differently.

as for the writing aspect, i don't think so actually. i've done 5 years of this, and i'm having fun with it. haha if i ever find a fic idea i think could work for it, i would consider doing a series for it next year, but it all depends on if there's something i'd like to write that could work for that kind of set up with this challenge.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading!!! xxx

[cherry-toxic]

Fic writer questions!

I was tagged by @introvertia - thank you so much :) Your answers were really interesting!

How many works do you have on AO3?

Only 8

What's your total AO3 wordcount?

141754

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Four: Beyblade (gen fics mostly), Shizaya (Durarara), Grimmichi (Bleach), and Harringrove (Stranger Things).

I usually sit in a fandom for a quite a while before I actually start writing anything. I'm amazed by those people who can get stuck in right away (how do you do it!?!)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. end the fight; before the fight ends you

2. Bound to Happen

3. Year of You

4. Broken Boys and Butterflies

5. So come take a drink (And drown your sorrows)

All Harringrove aside from 'Bound to Happen' - which I'm rather surprised came in second because the Grimmichi fandom is waaaaay smaller than the Harringrove fandom.

'end the fight...' is also the only wip here. The rest are completed one-shots.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes and no. It depends. I want to respond because comments really do mean a lot to me and I love rambling with people, but I have issues with online communication. Like, sometimes I write out a response and when I read it back to myself my brain just goes 'no that's terrible you sound like an idiot delete it now' and then I go 'yessir you're completely right how silly of me.'

When it comes to wips, I tend to reply to every comment when I'm getting ready to post the next chapter, that way it's like a little heads-up - new stuff incoming soon!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Y'know as much as I love angst I actually prefer to have my fics end on a relatively positive note (angst with a happy ending is my shit).

But I suppose 'So come take a drink (And drown your sorrows)' is overall pretty angsty and I left the ending open so if I ever felt like continuing it I could do so easily.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've ever written?

Big nah. Kind of like AU fics, they just don't interest me that much.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes, but it came from someone who was just making the rounds on a bunch of Harringrove fics and they were highly suspected to be an anti so it didn't really bother me that much because I knew they were trolling.

I've had a few like, vague comments/back-handed compliments that got under my skin a bit though.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes, occasionally I do. Generally I'd say I'm pretty vanilla, but I am currently writing an a/b/o fic, though I think it might go under non-traditional a/b/o because, again, vanilla lol

My smut usually comes with a lot of introspection, like they'll be doing the deed and one of them will be internally streaming a 5000+ word monologue (I do this with Grimmjow sometimes because he's a big virgin who views sex as silly human nonsense).

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Parts of a fic, yes. I came across this fic that was clearly plagiarizing from several different authors (they forgot to change the characters names and everything) and I found entire paragraphs that were copy/pasted straight from one of my fics.

The thing is, this was over 10 years ago, something I wrote when I was... seventeen, maybe? So... I don't get why they copied it because it was pretty bad to be honest...

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, an old one called '10 Miles in Your Shoes' (beyblade) although it was never completed because well, firstly, I never completed the original, and secondly, when the translator asked me how long I was planning on it being I said around 20-30k and uhhh... lets just say I overshot that by a mile!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. While I think it would be interesting to try I honestly don't know if I could give up control like that!

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hard to say because I tend to go for characters over ships. Like, I got into Grimmichi because of Grimmjow and Harringrove because of Billy.

But since Grimmjow is my all-time favourite character then, I guess Grimmichi, but Harringrove is definitely a close second because the fandom has spoiled me rotten with all their amazing fics (in terms of reading material, Harringrove is my fav).

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

'10 Miles in Your Shoes' - the bodyswap fic.

It's been a long time since I engaged with anything related to beyblade but I have a lot of fondness for this fic because it was the second I ever started writing and it was the fic that allowed me to truly grow as a writer. There's a huge improvement from the first to the most recent chapter (most recent being 5 years ago...) to the point where it looks like it could have been written by two different people, and I received so much positive feedback and encouragement throughout those years. I wish I had it in me to go back and finish it off but I struggle enough while writing for my current obsessions so it's looking more and more unlikely...

At the very least, I think I might transfer it to AO3 since ff.net seems to be slowly going under. Even if I never complete it, I don't want it lost forever.

What are your writing strengths?

This might sound ridiculous but I don't know? I always feel like I'm winging everything!!

I guess. One thing I've been complimented on a lot is my ability to portray messy (for lack of a better word) situations in a realistic way. I've been asked a few times if I've ever studied psychology and -

Nope

Just winging it!

What are your writing weakness?

EDITING!!!

I really should get a beta because I miss so many stupid little mistakes, like - okay - I always used to write in past tense, it was never something I even thought about, past tense was just the default. And then suddenly, around 2017/18, I began transitioning to present tense completely unconsciously and now every time I re-read 'Bound to Happen' I get angry because I bounced between tenses all the way through that fic and I didn't even notice until a year after I posted it.

Also. Incredibly slow. Lack of consistency. Perfectionist until I get stuck and then I feel like you can spot exactly where I lost momentum. Utterly hopeless when it comes to descriptions of setting/scenery. I don't think I'm very good at building atmosphere either. Dialogue, although I am improving at that.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I can't say I really have any thoughts on this? I don't do it much myself.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Beeeeyblaaade! I was fifteen when I wrote my very first fic (now deleted because it was awful!)

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh god, this is hard!

If we're talking completed fics only, then probably 'Year of You'. That was my I-Do-Not-Accept-Billy's-Death fic but I WILL take all of the angst material from S3 and ride it hard.

If we're including wips, then both 'end the fight...' and 'metamorphosis' are probably my favourites right now.

'End the fight...' is my BIG Billy redemption fic which I started plotting out not long after S2 and there's so many scenes I'm looking forward to writing (yeah I know its been a while since i last updated but the past year has been rough okay)

'Metamorphosis' is the a/b/o fic which I was kind of nervous about at first because its not a trope that i read a lot of but i'm enjoying how its turning out so far!

Whew! That was a lot!

I'm tagging: firstly, whoever wants to do it because I like reading about peoples writing experiences (make sure to tag me!) And then: @shadowthorne @bentnotbroken1fanfiction @callieb @backwardshirt @memes-saved-me @murderlight @magniloquent-raven @aeon-of-neon @louhetar

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[suzukiblu]

Fic Writer Meme

Tagged by my dear @dancinbutterfly, and like, obviously I will take any excuse to talk about writing.

.

1) how many works do you have on ao3?

168, although a few of those are podfics that the podficcer credited me as a co-author on. Actually less than I would’ve expected, tbh.

2) what is your total ao3 word count?

1,431,989. Honestly also kinda less than I would’ve expected at this point. I will blame all those old fics I never brought over from LJ and ff.net for this expectation.

3) how many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

I literally cannot tell you, the ancient ways have been lost to me. I can give you my Ao3 fandoms, though!

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Overwatch

The Witcher (Netflix)

Young Justice (Cartoon)

Animorphs

Star Wars

Good Omens

Venom

Fantastic Four

Leverage

League of Legends

Daredevil

Supernatural

Care Bears

World of Warcraft

Spider-Man

X-Men

Slender Man Mythos

Additionally, long ago: Naruto, Gundam Wing, Digimon, Ranma ½, Bleach, Inu-Yasha, and many scattered other fandoms of my youth. So, so many others. So I’ve written for 25+ fandoms, at least.

4) what are your top 5 fics by Kudos.

a mark, a mission, a brand, a scar (13004)

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn (8450)

it’s a long way forward (so trust in me) (6965)

oh don’t you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me (6818)

if the bad times are coming let ‘em come (5362)

5) do you respond to comments?

Not really these days, though I hoard and treasure them like a freaking DRAGON. I used to respond to all of them but sometimes I’m just not around and then it becomes awkwardly late to reply and also they kinda . . . pile up a bit. I do try to answer all the comments with questions in them, at least, as long as the questions aren’t literally spoilers or anything like that.

6) what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t usually write super-angsty endings, I think? I don’t FEEL like I usually write super-angsty endings, anyway, at least not these days. I think I did it more often when I was more into, like, drabbles and shortfic. Now I just spend way too long on stuff to give it a downer ending.

The most recent angsty ending I can think of is wanna hold him, maybe I’ll just sing about it, though eventually I did write a sequel to that to soften the blow a bit. And also torment people a bit. Both, technically. Technically both.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

blondes really do have more fun, definitely. It’s very . . . giddy, I guess? What with the gender euphoria and all. There’s angst and heavy emotions in the actual plot but the highs of the happy parts/ending are probably the highest/happiest ones I’ve written, and Supergirl gets everything she wants without having to compromise or give up anything else.

8) do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I write fusion fic more than crossovers, really, but I have written a LOT of fusion fic. Some of it has been weirder than others, tbh, but probably the Avatar: The Last Airbender/Animorphs fusion that I have been lovingly slaving over deserves to be this answer if only for how much extremely sincere effort I have put into it over the years.

9) have you ever received hate on a fic?

Mild hate, but occasionally. I don’t really tend to remember negative comments, tbh, though it does sometimes make me not want to reread the comment section I know they’re in. But a lot of the hate I’ve gotten in the end just seemed like socially-awkward people being unnecessarily blunt instead of just hitting the back button, so I try not to take it personally. Can’t please everyone. Don’t WANT to please everyone, frankly.

10) Do you write smut? What kind?

Yes, and the kind is “a lot”. Sometimes I don’t really feel like it but definitely I have done a lot of it. I try for Feelings and also to be safe, sane, and consensual as much as I can.

11) have you ever had a fic stolen?

I . . . am not sure? Though probably, after being at this for all this time. Someone once told me that someone picked up a fic I’d (at the time) abandoned and just started writing/posting more of it without asking or telling me about it, but I never actually found said fic and I don’t know if that technically counts as “stealing” anyway.

12) have you ever had a fic translated?

A few times, yup, it’s pretty gratifying! I also like to run them back through Google Translate and see what they say, haha.

13) have you ever co-written a fic before?

yoooo @dancinbutterfly, @rainnecassidy! Also done it with a few other people long, LONG ago, but that was back in the LJ era. Don’t think I’ve technically collabed with anyone else lately, although sometimes people will give me ideas for stuff I’m writing or offer suggestions when I’m stuck on a thing, which is very helpful.

14) what’s your favourite ship?

Like . . . per fandom? ‘Cuz we could be here a while. Most recently it’s Jaskier/Geralt, for a while it was Aziraphale/Crowley, DEFINITELY for a while it was Steve/Bucky . . .

You know, I guess technically my all-time favorite ship is actually Naruto/Sasuke, because I made a LOT of friends in Naruto fandom and it actually hugely influenced the end of my teenage years and beginning of my adult life and so, SO much of my writing. So like, if nothing else it wins on influentialness.

15) what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Let ‘Em Come. @rainnecassidy and I wrote that AU a long-ass time ago now and I never did my half of the sequel fic because I got too distracted with another longfic I was working on at the time and then took a real long fandom break. I always felt kind of bad about it because people seemed to bother her for said sequel more than they bothered ME for it, since her fic was the last posted part. Unfortunately I just don’t have the spoons or the MCU-focus for the research and effort it’d take anymore. Also, like . . . it’d probably be pretty long, so unless I was REAL obsessive about it it’d take a good long while.

Basically I think its time has just passed at this point, alas.

16) what are your writing strengths?

Sex, action, snark, and weird fusion fics. Also making people love things they usually hate, that’s one I get told a lot.

17) what are your writing weaknesses?

Fitting physical descriptions of . . . literally ANYTHING into the story. Just, anything. Physical descriptions are hard.

18) what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in fic?

I try not to do it, personally, because I know soooooo very little about other languages. Sometimes I’ll sprinkle in a little bit of it, but usually I feel like it’s better to avoid it, personally.

19) what was the first fandom you wrote for?

I literally could not even tell you. The first fandom I REMEMBER writing proper “fic” for was . . . Ranma ½, I think. I thiiiiink. But that was a long-ass time ago and I never even posted it anywhere because those were the days when I despised typing things up beyond all measure, hah. And before that I remember writing Animorphs . . . comics? Storyboards? Something like that. Kind of a cross between the two.

20) what’s your favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I do not know! There’s really just too many, tbh. Some top options are you found me when no one else was looking, best friends means you get what you deserve, clay kids, Avamorphs, handmaiden!Anakin, oh don’t you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me, and . . . and I could go on for a dang MINUTE, honestly, haha, I’m just gonna stop myself here before I get too carried away.

.

I tag whoever happens to be reading this that wants to be tagged; have fun with it!

[seamayweed]

fic meme

Thanks for tagging me, @blueberry-cheese-pizza <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

6! I’m a very slow writer and frequently suffer from writer’s block!

2. What is your total AO3 word count?

59506 words.

3. Top five fics by kudos

Mánagarmr (Vikings)

The Earth Still Burns (Final Fantasy VII Remake)

Second Chances (Thor)

Peony Lantern (Naruto)

like gathering drops of rain (it’s useless) (Batman Movies (Nolan))

4. Do you respond to comments, and why?

I really do try to respond to comments, though it’s rarely in a timely fashion. I love it when people share their thoughts on something I poured all my heart and soul into. Sadly I don’t always have the spoons to respond :(

I also have a bad habit of starting WIPs and then abandoning them, and I end up feeling so guilty that I can’t reply to newer comments (though I always read and appreciate them). This is why I’ve decided not to post unfinished WIPs anymore.

5. What’s the fic you have written with the angstiest ending?

It’s def red dust (it’s not stardust)! Then again, it’s pretty much angst from start to finish. It might very well be the darkest thing I’ve ever written even if it’s not very explicit and more emotionally/psychologically driven haha.

My gremlin heart simply craves angst, darkfic and non-con stuff. All my most self-indulgent fics contain these things and I don’t regret it at all!

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Hmmm I think it’s Peony Lantern, since it ends on a hopeful note. 

7. Do you write crossovers, if so what’s the craziest one you have done?

I may have written a few crossovers veeeery long ago. Let’s not talk about them shhhh.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Luckily, no!

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I love reading and writing smut so much! I think the kind I write is a mix of entertaining/titillating (in a way that personally appeals to me first and foremost) and character-driven. Trying to put the sheer emotionality, raw vulnerability, intensity and sensuality of this experience into words is such a fun challenge each time!

I like my smut consensual, non-con, dub-con, the whole sliding scale, whether healthy or abusive/toxic... and I’ll give almost every kink a chance if it’s well-written. There are so many kinks that I wanna try my hand at writing too!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so?

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Hmmm no on this one too.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope and I don’t think I ever will!

13. All time favorite ship!

There are so many, I can’t decide! I love all the ships I write about and more... For My Country it’s Seon-ho/Bang-won & Seon-ho/Hwi (but let’s be honest, Seon-ho/Sung-rok too), for Vikings it’s Bishop Heahmund/Ivar the Boneless, for Thor it’s Thor/Loki/Balder, for FF7 it’s Sephiroth/Cloud... The list goes on and on. As you can see, my ships usually comprise of swordmates! ⚔

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you will?

*sigh* It’s my Mánagarmr fic. I tend to crash so badly after posting a fic and the writer’s high fades, and convince myself that my writing is horrible... which happened with this story, but what really killed my muse is how the show completely butchered the characters. I don’t have the heart to ever abandon a story of mine completely, and hope to pick it up again one day! 

I’m also working on my unposted Seon-ho-centric Bang-won/Seon-ho AU where they start a political alliance about one year before the First Strife. Seon-ho frees slaves, actually makes some political changes, and finds his own children small found family in the form of Bang-seok and his siblings. There is some Seon-ho/Hwi too (though it’s not the main pairing), with some hints of Seon-ho/Sung-rok. But who knows when I’m going to finish and post this, if I’m ever going to post this one day haha.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Apparently I’m a purple prose monster! The nicest comments I’ve gotten have told me that my writing reads like epic poetry and that it would be a crime against humanity if I ever stopped writing. Another commenter said that I have a talent for writing evocative grossness (as a compliment) lol. I treasure each and every one of them in my heart <3

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m wordy af and a perfectionist. I’m working on this!! Dialogue is hard. I can also get a bit too enthusiastic with my flowery language and purple prose haha. Should probably cut down on the sprawling introspection too.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

It’s a cool thing to do! Languages are cool! If you deem it necessary, you should def include it.

18. First fandom you wrote for?

The Batman movies by Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight (2008) left a very deep impression on me!

19. Fave fic you have written?

My absolute fave is Mánagarmr, with Second Chances being a close second. Though The Earth Still Burns was such pure, mindless fun too. I just love all of my fics haha.

Tagging @illwynd, @argents-huntress, @alwaysbethefirstonetodance and anyone else who wants to do it. No pressure tho! :D

[tomicaleto]

Thanks for tagging me, @obi-wkenobi

1. Why did you choose your url?

I came up with the name several years ago for another website and kept it since then 

2. Any side blogs?

There is an abandoned one that was part of a collective we had with some friends a couple of years ago

3. How long have you been on tumblr?

Since uhhh 2013 iirc

4. Do you have a queue tag?

No, I just queue things, no way of knowing if I’m the one reblogging them or if they are part of the queue

5. Why did you start your blog?

I wanted to reblog the stuff I was seeing in the tag while unlogged. Also, I loved ask blogs with characters answering them and I wanted to try one myself (it never happened lol)

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I try to use very silly pictures for tumblr, since as I’ve said, this is not exactly a serious blog. So I put a silly drawing, then a picture of a funny whale I took at highschool and then the tumblr ban happened and I was marked as an explicit blog and trying to change the stupid explicit icon I put a meme and then when I recovered my pfp I kept it before putting a “mood” picture of Anakin which keeps the theme and is pretty funny out of context 

7. Why did you choose your header?

I wanted to have something, it’s a picture I drew myself and the size matched lol

8. What post of yours has the most notes?

uhhhhh I think this one? 

9. How many mutuals do you have?

I wouldn’t know! Is there a way to count those? 

10. How many followers do you have?

Around 800 but who knows how many of those are bots lol

11. How many blogs do you follow?

179 and many are not active anymore 

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

That’s the only things I make, kidding, but yes, I’m not a serious person, so of course silly things will be posted occasionally xD

13. How often do you use Tumblr a day?

I had become much less active until 2020 hit and here I am. But I’ve been a bit down about social media so I’m trying to be less active lately.

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog?

Nope. To be honest, I’m not big enough of a blog for that either

15. How do you feel about ‘you need to reblog’ posts?

Artists and writers and content creators in general deserve it. It’s how tumblr works and we shouldn’t need to beg for them. That ‘need’ is not a ‘need’ as in “you HAVE to” but more like “this is how this website works and it’ll be nice if you do”

16. Do you like tag games?

Yes! Even if sometimes they take me a while to do!

17. Do you like ask games?

Yasssss

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

several of them! Plenty of the obikin ones at least

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Lol, I only know a couple of mutuals in real life and they are friends, how would I get a crush on my other mutuals?

No pressure tags! @tinynebula, @uwusul, @sonderwalker, @boonki