#is writing original material and fanfiction

[carolinanadeau]

"this female character is underdeveloped" TO YOU. I can read subtext and I know all about her backstory and her rich inner life. also she told me personally

[whaliiwatching]

the flower (reprise)

[thatonecrookedsmile]

From the depths of the studio - where darkness prevails and the voices of the puddles grow louder - a message is echoed to the rest of the world. A promise filled with hatred and,at the same time,with conviction. Words coming from someone who was more than confident that their blasphemy would come true.

A message that is directed to one creature,and one creature only...

"I will become the very being You never could be"

----- "A Promise Sent from Below" - Return to the Studio AU.

Oh hey, I have an AU, I forgot about that (lie)

I've had a similar idea in my head for a month now. It wasn't possible to do it last month, but no problem. May would make more sense. I did something with this little guy for 414 last year, and I wanted to do something with him again. April 14th of this year would not be possible, but May 14th or 15th? Oh yes. These dates are better because it was between these two (actually it was the 14th I think, but I consider both dates) days that I created this guy above! Consider this drawing a celebration made for…well, me. Of course, he wasn't created with the design above in mind. His original, main design is quite different from this alternative (and less original) iteration. The drawing above shows his current situation in the "current" moments of the RTTS AU.

His creation, which dates back to 2020, was the result of some Bendy-related thoughts of mine intersecting on the day. These being about new things in canon lore that came out at the time (plus speculation about this new information), a theory that at the time I started to understand better (which maybe based on the drawing, you probably know which theory I'm talking about ) and a funny bug found in one of the games (do you remember Ghost Bendy by any chance?) And then,boom. I created Atlas. I remember at the time I was thinking of other names for him because Atlas was just a codename that I had in mind to refer to him while I thought of a definitive name for the guy. But the codename ended up sticking. Plus, Atlas is a cool name and I wanted to give an OC that name.

Even though some details changed over time, I think I eventually managed to solidify his place in the AU. Not that his story is 100% thought out and completed. Hell, my AUs that I have are still not 100% thought out either, so what to expect from their characters. But I think that, currently, I have at least decided on the general idea of his place and purpose in RTTS, and I am happy with what I have come up with.

I don't know when the next time will be that I will show him again. In general, showing things from my AUs is not and probably will never be my strong point lol. But I'd like to draw him again eventually. So uhhhhhhhhhhh, one day. When that "one day" will be, it's up to you to decide

Happy Birthday Atlas. You and your other 2 alternative versions are cool to think about. Here's to another 4 years of chaos for you. 🙌

I can't believe it's been 4 years now, damn.

[danzainosolitude]

Once again I read fanfiction that seems to have been precisely written to deal psychic damage to me.

[birlwrites]

like when i was in 6th grade i started an original novel that i then abandoned mostly-complete, came back to a few years later, and finished it, out of SPITE because i didn't like seeing it in my drafts and knowing it wasn't done.

and was it cool that i'd written a whole novel? sure! do i wish i'd, like... enjoyed it more? ABSOLUTELY YES. but at the time when i began the story, i had no idea how to write something that would feel like me. when i returned to it, proofreading was a massive pain because i was constantly cringing at what seemed like sixth-grade-me's embarrassingly clumsy attempts at writing something Cool™. i didn't see any way to salvage the story. and that was because all it had originated in was that desire to write something Cool™. that goal drove every creative decision. not a shred of it was genuine. there was nothing to salvage. so i just slapped together an ending, out of a sense of obligation, and that was that.

in 8th grade, i wrote a psychological horror short story about someone trapped in a room full of unsynchronized clocks. i think i'd just read the tell-tale heart. it creeped out everyone who read it. it wasn't at all Cool™. it was leagues, LEAGUES better - more sincere, more committed, more impactful - than that novel i'd started a couple of years earlier.

fanfiction isn't Cool™. fandom is still often cringed at in the Mainstream™. but Coolness and the Mainstream are the death of creativity. if all you're doing is imitating whatever's recently achieved commercial success, it will feel empty. a pastiche of booktok buzzwords is just that.

but if you allow yourself to create something ~cringe~, fully and wholeheartedly, then you can connect with your readers. you can figure out how you want to write. and you'll enjoy the writing process, instead of staring at a draft you started years ago, wondering how to finish it with the minimum possible effort so you can cross it off your list.

[mirror-to-the-past]

I am but a measly 2:00:15 into the genre-defining "Riku is Gay" video, but like. Damn, Tennelle Flowers is a cinematic genius. I've remained so thoroughly enthralled by the tasteful spacing of audio commentary, clips from the games, and excerpts from the novels/writer interviews that I've hardly even noticed the time passing. What is this video laced with, man- I love video essays, but usually I have to rewind a gazillion times due to my attention slipping against my will.

That collage of comparison clips from KH2 Beast's arc and Riku's KH1-KH2 arc is killing me, man. Ever wish you could tattoo a part of a video to your forehead? Apparently, now I do.

[emi1y]

and one thing i always always wonder about people who write shitty fanfiction is how can you be so obsessed with something that you want to write about the characters making out and yet somehow not obsessed enough to realistically emulate any of the characters voices. what are you doing while you're watching the source material? how did you manage to not internalize ANY of it? how is it satisfying to write something that doesn't sound anything like the characters you're writing for? DIDN'T YOU PAY ATTENTION WHEN YOU WERE LEARNING CRITICAL ANALYSIS IN HIGH SCHOOL??? btw i hate letting people enjoy things

[i-was-bored-so-this-happened]

Rae Writes!

Indeed she does! She writes on Tumblr, she writes on AO3, she takes requests on occasion! And here she'll link you to all of the fics she's done, with accompanying hashtags and playlists where applicable!

This will be updated as time goes on, but for now I'll be starting with my bigger fics <3

Banner by @late2000shistoricalreenactment i love youuuu

Fandoms

Primeval

The Mandalorian [Star Wars]

His Dark Materials

Baldur's Gate 3

Key

👤Original Character Fic

📄One Shot

📑One Shot Compilation

📚 Multi-Chapter

🪐Alternate Universe

🔀Crossover

Primeval

Alexandra's Evolution 👤📚

Alex Hart just wants to pass her exams. That's all she wants. To pass her exams and [eventually] get her doctorate. And she should have some advantage in that, given that her uncle is her professor’s partner. But then Connor Temple turns up with a suspicious newspaper and convinces Nick Cutter and Stephen Hart to follow him to the Forest of Dean, where a government official called Oliver Leek is waiting for them. Him, a dinosaur, and a portal to the past.

- Tumblr Links (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-?) - AO3 Link - #alex hart - General Playlist - Linear Playlist

The Anomaly Detection Device 📑

Collection of short works written with the help of a random generator I made!

- AO3 Link - Random Generator Link

His Dark Materials

Sanchez & Scoresby 👤📚

A hot-air balloon is on its way North, to Trollesund. Far below them, on the sea, a Gyptian boat sails in the same direction. On the boat is a girl who will change the world and in the sky are two adults who will guide her to her destiny. Their paths haven’t crossed yet, but they soon will, and once they have they’ll never diverge.

- Tumblr Links (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-?) - AO3 Link - #kit sanchez - Playlist

Opus Number One 📄

Just. Soft, chill times with Will and Lyra. Also me being a music nerd and a big fan of Will knowing how to play the piano

- AO3 Link

The Mandalorian

Second Star 👤📚

The Mandalorian finds himself in need of help. Shortly after finding the Child, he realises he isn't exactly cut out for care-taking, but he needs to keep the Child alive until he can deliver him. Luckily for him, he's found an ally in Kuiil the Ugnaught, who knows someone that might be able to help.

- Tumblr Links (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-?) - AO3 Link - #okan the unknown - Playlist

Baldur's Gate 3

Greensleeves 👤📚

Xaph has come crashing to earth with a mind flayer tadpole embedded in her skull. She must find allies, forge friendships and brave the wilds to find a cure for the parasite, a journey which will prove even more perilous than initially expected

- Tumblr Links (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-?) - AO3 Link - #xaph [tav] - Playlist

The Yawning Grave 👤📄

On the sixth anniversary of the defeat of the Absolute, the party - minus one - gathers in Baldur's Gate to celebrate. Xaph [Tav] introduces her firstborn child to Karlach

- AO3 Link

Necromancin' Dancin' 👤📄

Dana can't sleep, and finds Wyll dancing by the campfire. He invites her to join him and inadvertently sparks memories of Dana's love-life pre-tadpole

- AO3 Link

It Will Come Back 👤📚

Gortash has a safehouse in the Outer City where he conducted most of his business before he began to slide up the scale of Baldurian aristocracy. A window on the second floor can no longer be locked because acid had melted the latch away to nothing years ago. He refuses to fix it. It's how Dana likes to let herself in

- Tumblr Links (1-2-3-4-5) - AO3 Link - #dana [durge] - Playlist

[ablackonyxz]

When certain plot points make more sense or get a huge expansion when the oc is added. That is when you have a good oc-insert fanfiction.

[jinxedshapeshifter]

nobody:

me: what if i dig through public domain stories and make a furry story based on one i like so it feels like im writing fanfiction but i can make the argument that its original fiction

[embarrassingjon]

As I’ve been editing and rewriting Un Portrait à Nos Couleurs Extrémes I got sidetracked and wrote the first time Maria and Victor slept together, so enjoy!

❤️Je Veux Vior❤️

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[describe-things]

Here's something Disney desperately does not want anyone to know:

When you create your own original design for Mickey Mouse now that he's Public Domain, you now own that version of Mickey Mouse.

This is the same reason that Disney owns their versions of Rapunzel, Cinderella, Briar Rose, and more, even though these characters came from the Public Domain.

If you make an original design for Mickey Mouse, it belongs to you. You own the copyright. Disney cannot use that design for profit unless they get your permission and/or pay you. The exact same way you can't use Disney's version of Cinderella for profit.

Copyright goes both ways, despite what the billionaires who run megacorporations want you to think. They rely on you thinking of them as all powerful and unstoppable. But the rules do in fact apply to them too. They are not all-powerful. They're not invincible. They're greedy, lying bastards who rely on your hopeless fear.

Have hope, be bold, go forth and create with joy.

Edit because I remembered another example:

This is also why you're not supposed to show writers your fanfiction for their series! Even though you are writing fanfiction, and the characters belong to their creator, what you have written belongs to you! Writers do not want to accidentally steal from you by incorporating your fanfiction into the official material, because that does genuinely open them up to lawsuits! They're taking your ideas and profiting off them!

[wambsgansroy]

I’m so curious as to why you omitted s***y from your ship list because tmhtb is so so good?!?!!!! ❤️

<3 ok it’s bc I have zero emotional attachment to marvel and I will always love and cherish that fic but I don’t necessarily think of it in relation to its original source material yk?

[alastors-antlers]

Being someone who sees a lot of talk about shipping Alastor (sexually, romantically) in fanworks, I just want to take some time to talk about both sides of the issue. It's long, I know - please, please bear with me until the end, and I hope you'll understand what I mean in a bit.

I hope this helps someone, but as an aroace person who understands the frustration and hurt, this is often how it feels to me:

Alastor, being one of the limited cases of aspec rep that I've seen and one of even fewer which I actually enjoyed, means a lot to me.

That being said, his canon rep establishes that he's aroace but not much about how this factors into his life or relationships at all -- and when there's a gap in canon, I turn to fanfiction, which tends to spotlight characters' queerness even when the source material doesn't or can't. Don't we all want to see ourselves in the media we engage with?

When I pull up AO3, there are already a good number of fics about him. Great! Some of them are definitely incredible; but as I read on, it starts to seem like a lot of fics I see acknowledge that he's asexual or aromantic in some way but don't really factor that into the story. It reads like you could have written the story without keeping his queer identity in mind, and it would've come out the same.

Even when representation that does resonate with me exists, it starts to be exhausting to pick through the slash tags to see which ones are written in an aspec-coded way, so I wonder if it would be easier to not read anything with slash at all. On the other hand, when you filter ships out completely, only a tiny fraction of the fanworks are left.

People often respond that aspec people can have relationships, and I think we tend to know that. They can have sex, some can experience sexual attraction in select situations, they can romance others beyond romantic attraction -- any combination of things. But some aroace people don't want either, and sometimes we're struggling to see ourselves in how Alastor is typically portrayed.

Out of all of the fics, sex-repulsed, totally aromantic Alastor isn't seen much. And when Alastor's limited canon seems to be pretty supportive of a reading where he is those things...

Sometimes, you start to feel lost. If fics were evenly distributed along the aroace spectrum of experiences, wouldn't you expect more fics of him being the "totally uninterested" brand of aroace? But there aren't. People seem to have a preference toward seeing him in relationships. Even if they mean well, it can make you think: what does that say about how we view asexuality/aromanticism as a whole?

Is there something less interesting about Alastor, when romance is taken out of the picture? Do others find him less appealing as a character if they can't see him dating, or in love, or having sex or wanting it? Why do we need romance, when romance is already everywhere else, when it doesn't even feel like he was originally really interested? It brings to mind a struggle to be societally accepted, even today.

Even when it's not technically wrong to write Alastor as you see him, being told that we should all be able to ship him however we want can feel like this:

It brings to mind people who try to swing in with misinformed good intentions, telling us "oh, you're aromantic? but you can still have romantic relationships, right? so you can still be normal." when all we want is to be okay outside of the normal.

Or trying to find a partner who can be with us, out of everyone who tells us "I know you don't enjoy sex, and that's okay, but I can't have a romantic relationship with you without it." and being so tired of hoping for someone who gets it.

Or talking with peers, and hearing them all commiserate and fawn over their experiences with love, then telling them about someone you like non-romantically and getting "aww, it sounds like somebody's got a crush!" but not being believed when you tell them it's not like that at all.

Alastor is not a big deal, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. But in an allonormative world, it can feel like a sudden splash of cold water when we were expecting a warm fire to sit around. Even within this ecosystem, we squint to see ourselves reflected.

Society isn't built for us. It can be exhausting to be reminded of that.

~~~

I hope to support people writing Alastor as any variation of aspec, or not even aspec at all. At the end of the day, I think that fanon is really whatever you want it to be, and everyone has their own reasons for writing what they find enjoyable. They should be allowed to do so, and I want to believe that people do what they do with good intentions.

They want to imagine scenarios with the templates of characters they love, and that's okay; even beyond sexuality/queer identities/etc., fan interpretations of characters can be incredibly, wildly different from who they really are in the story anyway, and that's what I try to remind myself. But still, I also can't help feeling disappointed about the aroace representation we could have seen.

(Is Alastor canonically sex-repulsed? Uhh, maybe. If I had to guess, that'd be my top guess, but this might be a hot take: I wouldn't really say there's enough to go off of considering that this view is supported by Angel propositioning him both times, and it's not like Alastor is a particularly big fan of Angel at those points anyway lol)

To my fellow aroaces struggling with Alastor's fandom rep: if you need a break from it all; if you need to block the tags that you hate; if you need to talk to someone about how you're feeling; that's okay. It makes sense that you'd want more representation in a way that helps you feel seen and validated and less alone. I can't speak for everyone, but I think I get it.

I don't have any solutions for how you're feeling, because sometimes I'm feeling the same way. I understand that you want others to get your position and you have the right to express your feelings, but even if you're correct, often being angry or frustrated won't help change others' minds, so let's try to save our energy and take care of ourselves.

Something that helps me to think about is that even now, asexuality is gaining more visibility. We're gaining support. Real change is happening in the world that's helping incredible amounts of aspec people feel freer to be themselves. And maybe one day, we won't be reaching to protect our scraps of representation.

Let's fight until that day together <3

[queenvhagar]

Dare I say casual fans of HOTD and GOT who think HOTD is actually good and profound know nothing of the ASOIAF books including Fire and Blood and are not aware of the immense step down in quality that is early seasons GOT to the versions of ASOIAF HBO has been putting on our screens since about 2016.

The only way you can be consistently intellectualizing and praising the oversimplified and frankly misogynist and racist writing of HOTD season 2 is if you know nothing of how characters behave in this universe and how their stories are presented to us in the source material.

Had this show attempted a faithful or at least nuanced and complex retelling of this dynastic civil war, with cognizance of the sociopolitical realities of this world and how they would realistically played out, this might have had the potential to be a good adaptation.

As it stands, the show turned a story with gray characters and complex motivations, a commentary about monarchy and war, into an oversimplified and oversanitized good vs evil morality tale where the women are removed of any original agency to instead act as passive, observant mouthpieces for 2017 feminism who aren't allowed to be angry for themselves and the men are the violent warmongers who drive the plot.

Adding in some fanfiction tropes and presenting this all through millions and millions of dollars of production quality is then all that is needed for the casual viewer to applaud what is so heavily presented to them on a platter, what the writers think is the ultimate takeaway of the whole story: misogyny is bad and war is justified if it's against misogynists (but also no "good" woman would ever do anything to make a war happen on purpose) 🙄

Either they're ignorant of the source material and that ignorance allows for bliss in watching the show, or they just don't care that the story has been so severely downgraded for TV and are happy to enjoy a lower quality show as long as it uses elements of the property that they recognize and like (blonde people ride dragons).