#only liking or giving kudos (which is the equivalent of liking on ao3)

[deadtower]

fellow artists and writers what would we think about a discord centered primarily on engagement of your works? like … comment4comment, reblog4reblog, events where we all focus on/hype up a certain fic or art for the day, prompts every week to keep our creative juices flowing, etc?

there’s a real lack of actual engagement regarding our work and i really want to bring back that magic. people don’t understand how much that can do for your mental health as a creator and i want to facilitate a healthy and positive space we can all go to to get the attention we so rightly deserve

[aeor-is-for-reccing]

Happy Birthday, Aeor is For Reccing!

One year ago today (give or take a couple hours), we published our first rec list. To celebrate, I (Opera) have prepared some stats. A little bit like a reccing wrapped, only with a smaller budget and being less creepy about your data.

But thank you to everyone who has recced, every one who has read the reclist, everyone who has reblogged, everyone who has kudosed, to @professor-rye and @theusualjasper, and everyone who helped along the way.

I'm glad we've gotten this far!

To start: We've had 685 recs, 478 fics, 210 Authors, 53 reclists and 43 themes.

Most Recced Authors: (1) Mousecookie - 25 recs (1) royalgreen - 25 recs (3) SaltCore - 21 recs (4) hanap - 15 recs (5) kmackatie - 14 recs (5) Chrome - 14 recs (5) Firefright - 14 recs (8) Mlle Kurtz - 12 recs (9) road_rhythm - 11 recs (9) MinnesotaBruja - 11 recs (9) LuckyOwlsFoot - 11 recs (9) MarsBar2019 - 11recs

Authors with the most fics recced: (1) royalgreen - 18 fics (2) SaltCore - 13 fics (2) hanap - 13 fics (4) Mousecookie - 12 fics (5) kmackatie - 10 fics (5) LuckyOwlsFoot - 10 fics (7) Firefright - 9 fics (7) Jakia - 9 fics (9) Professor_Rye - 8 fics (9) Mlle Kurtz - 8 fics

Fics recced the highest number of times: Hard Mouth and The Hole in the Stone, both recced 8 times Fic recced the most number of times for a single theme: In the Closet of Our Discretion, by Firefright for Cultural Differences (recced 4 times) Longest fic recced: Dappled Shadow and Penumbral Light by Professor_Rye (463,977) Shortest fic recced: Of Constellations and Freckles, also by Professor_Rye (100 words) First fic Recced:  Stay for a Spell by Palebluedot Latest fic Recced: Uncharted Waters by EmpressofWizards

Word Cloud based on what people like about the fics:

Most common content note: Choose Not To Warn Number of Series recced: 16 Percentage of Hidden Gems that are No Longer eligible (have over 150 kudos):  48% (check them out!) Number of Images Rai has Used: 27

So what's next?

Well, the absolute next thing is that sometime this week I'm going to post the reccing spreadsheet for everyone to see - if people want to look through old recs, they should feel free to! Then there's the ideas I had from the survey a few months ago - chief among them was making it easier to import information from AO3 (you'd still be able to rec fics that can't be imported or on tumblr, I'm just trying to remove some of the hassle) I'm still doing research on the best way to make that happen, and kind of selfishly want to do it myself - but it's been a busy couple of months for me.

Speaking of which - I'm having surgery in a month! A double masectomy and reconstruction on February 19 (roughly equivalent to top surgery (masculinizing)) and February 20th (roughly equivalent to top surgery (femininzing- fat grafting)). Kind of like they're turning my chest on and off again - a ctrl-alt-deteat, if you will. Anyway, I don't want cancer, but everyone I've talked to about this has said the stomach incision is worse than the chest incision, and nobody's ever described top surgery as a walk in the park. I'm planning on doing absolutely nothing for six weeks, and @theusualjasper will be taking over during that time.

Anyway, here's to another year! Thanks to everyone who has participated or helped along the way, you're all great. Even you <3

[littlethingwithfeathers]

How to Use A03 if you're used to Algorithm Fed Content: A kind primer.

There's a post making the rounds where someone, I'm going to assume earnestly, asks the question, "How do people figure out what's good to read on AO3?" And predictably, while there have been some people trying to answer that question assuming that it's being asked in good faith, there have been some people ridiculing this person. Basically, spewing out the fandom equivalent of "git gud noob." Like I said... I'm assuming this person was asking out of actual ignorance and curiosity, mostly because I see a lot of people also lamenting the fact that algorithm-fed apps and fandom spaces are creating a generation of fans who don't know how to actively search for and curate the content they consume. So when they get on a place like AO3 or even Tumblr to an extent, they don't know how to find the things they want and how to curate their experience. And so I guess that's why I pulled up short when this person's question has been getting so much snark. Here's a teachable moment. Even if they are being a troll in this case (which I doubt) here's the chance to give the facts on how AO3 works so they can use this amazing archive themselves. And not just them but anyone who happens upon the post. So... I'm not an AO3 whiz by any means. I don't spend a lot of time digging around in the tags and tools and bells and whistles of the search engine. If someone else wants to reblog with some tips there, go for it. It's the best thing about AO3 in my opinion... other than the lack of censorship. But here's my tips on how to find something you'll like. This is pretty much what I do.

-Go to your fandom of choice's tag. Filter for the rating you want (Teen, Explicit, etc), and then just start scrolling. Take a peek at things that sound interesting from the tags or summaries. You might have to scroll for a bit, and you might hit some stuff that's not for you, but you'll find something eventually. Especially if it's a bigger fandom like SPN, MCU, Hannibal, or Critical Role. -If you discover/know that there's something that bothers you (unfinished work, ABO dynamics, whatever) you can filter for those tags! This is how you curate your experience. It's an active process and there are no shadow-bans or anything in place to keep sensitive content corralled into a certain area. There's a rating system, and there's tags, but nothing to actually make those mean anything unless the user blocks them. While it takes more thought than mindless scrolling, you get to play a role in actively searching out new things for yourself that an algorithm might gloss over. -Likewise, if there's something you really like or are in the mood for, search for that tag in particular. Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Coffee Shop AU... whatever your jam is. -Be careful using metrics like views, comments, and kudos as benchmarks. They fluctuate wildly by pairing, and from fandom to fandom, and are heavily influenced by date of publishing. And just because the majority of people like something, doesn't mean it's for you. If something sounds interesting... read a few paragraphs and see what's up! -Check out the Collections page under the "Browse" tabs. Often these are curated lists either from individual fans or from fanfic writing events like Big Bangs, Zines, and gift exchanges. Fanfic events like these often attract pretty experienced writers so not only is the quality likely to be very good, it's also likely to have some pretty prolific authors -When you find an author you like, and have read your fill of their offerings, see what they have bookmarked or what collections their works are in. You might find some similarly interesting stuff. It's also worth seeing if they have a blog or other social media listed on their about page. They might post some links there or be part of communities elsewhere on the internet that can open up new search avenues for you. -Don't be afraid to read old stuff. Fandoms change and evolve. There's a golden age of MCU fanfic in the 2010s that's just unlike anything else. And the Hannibal fandom has been and always will be a trip, but man it's been a wild ride through some interesting places and obsessions. -And lastly... for the love of god, comment on old stuff. It's not creepy or weird. In fact, if you like someone's writing who hasn't written in a bit, leave them a nice comment. There's this magical thing that happens when you do. Sometimes... THEY START WRITING AGAIN! (saying this from experience here.) Remember... the A in AO3 stands for Archive. It's not a social media platform. It's a library. There is -supposed- to be old stuff there. And you are absolutely allowed to read it and enjoy it and tell the author that. In fact... please do. As I said, feel free to add on if you want to give tips of your own. But be kind. I see a lot of talk about how algorithms are changing the face of fandom and how people interact with fan made content. Let's reach out and educate instead of ridicule.

[shubaka]

ahhh thanks for the tag @amidalleia <333

How many works do you have on AO3? 22!

What’s your total AO3 word count? 68,137 - i am not good at writing long fic hahaha

What fandoms do you write for? mainly Kinnporsche the Series... and I guess all the jeff multiverse jeffcest ridiculousness.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? The Wiked Lies We Live, It's Kim and Chay and Chay's Phi Jom, the height of romance, Nice Legs (omg old Teen Wolf fic haunting me lmao), these tulips were made for talking.

Do you respond to comments? usually, yes! i did fall behind on WLWL... was hoping to catch up on comments in the next few days haha

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? oooh that is probably the Big/Porsche ficlet three kisses (that did, shouldn't have, and didn't happen)

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? i have a few with cute/happy endings, but i'll go with It's Kim and Chay and Chay's Phi Jom.

Do you get hate on fics? no just requests to update faster (sorry my friends, but unless i come into a large amount of money, i don't think i can take the time to spend all of my time on writing)

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes. what does this mean what kind??? i'm still kind of "aksdjlfaw AHHH!" about it, but it feels more comfortable each time -- kind of like action scenes.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? if the mood strikes? hmm, i do have a Death Note Howl'sMovingCastle!AU fusion on my old LJ account but I don't think that really counts as a proper crossover. In Which Sunako is Sent to Ouran Academy to Become a Lady is the only crossover I've posted on ao3. It's a Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge (Wallflower) and Ouran High School Host Club crossover from.... 2006. ohmygod.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that I'm aware of!

Have you ever had a fic translated? yes. hand wash with care has been translated into Russian

Have you ever co-written a fic before? i guess so. @snickerdoodlles and i were "yes and-ing" on tumblr with a drunken kimchay thing that accidentally went down the path of knife/blood play lmao. it's up on ao3 as drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart. also did a ridiculous "yes and-ing" survivor-idol-show kimchay thing with @subtextsays and @mightyyoiko you can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? listen, if it takes me 10 years, it takes me 10 years. i'm not giving up on anything yet!!! hahahaha

What are your writing strengths? uuuhh. i don't know. maybe things on the sweet and silly side? i feel like i do my best writing when i'm having fun with it.

What are your writing weaknesses? writing consistently? i cannot for the life of me stick to a writing schedule. deadlines for fandom exchanges/events are fine. i'm great at meeting deadlines. but if it's me setting some arbitrary writing deadline for myself??? especially for multichapter fics?? HAHAHAHAHAH *disintegrates into nothing*

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? if it's necessary. sometimes there's cultural contexts to consider and sometimes the english equivalent just doesn't sound right.

First fandom you wrote for? gundam wing fic on some long gone yahoo group. good luck ever finding it.

Favorite fic you’ve written? ahhhhh how to choose?? i have a big soft spot for the height of romance because it got me back into writing fiction after over a decade hahaha. but also if you want an answer that will call me the fuck out, i'll say you are what you eat (they're twins) (the filmania!kim x boc!kim pwp) because i am way too invested in jeffcest. just tattoo that sickos image on my forehead *sobs*

okay snickerdoodlles, subtextsays, and mightyyoiko, i'm going to cheat and say you've all been tagged to do this (if you want) and of course if anyone else wants to do this, please do! i wanna read your answers :D

[verai-marcel]

Author Interview

Tagged by the illustrious @a-shakespearean-in-paris

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

125 (my god, so many)

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

507,692

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Used to write for Dragon Ball Z and Red Dead Redemption 2. Now I just write for Baldur's Gate 3.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

One and Only (RDR2)

Getting Into Character (RDR2)

Something New (RDR2)

Know Your Place (RDR2)

Your Hearth Is My Home (BG3)

5. do you respond to comments?

Yeah, I try to respond to most of them, although sometimes when it's just one word, I'm not sure what to say, haha.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Midnight Rendezvous, and that one isn't even that angsty because I wrote a sequel to give Arthur x Reader a happy ending, haha.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

The majority of my fics have a happy ending (wink wink nudge nudge). But seriously, which would I say has the absolute happiest? Hmmm... Probably The Light That You Shine, which is my only John Marston x Reader fic, strangely enough. I think I put the characters through some shit and they come out very happy at the end.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Not that I'm aware of?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Do I write smut? HAH. I write nothing BUT smut, my dear. Well, with a few exceptions. As for what kind of smut? Not sure how to answer that. I write between canon characters and between canon character & reader, and I've got some OC x OC stuff too. Or is the question more like what genre of smut? I've probably written most kinds (soft & gentle, hard & rough, and everything in between).

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Well. I could lie and say I don't. But unfortunately in high school I wrote a DBZ-Sailor Moon-YYH crossover, and I regret its existence.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of...

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope! But if someone wanted to do it, they have my blessing!

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

Yes, with the wonderful @shootybangbang

14. what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Hmmmm.... All-time, you say. I'd have to say... probably Vegeta x Bulma. Even after all this time.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a OC x Arthur fic that I really liked making the story for, but it'll forever live as a few drabbles cobbled together. Oh Grace, you'll never get a full fic and I'm sorry.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I've been told that I know when to summarize plot points so that the story doesn't drag on for too long. Also I've been told that my smut writing is some of the best, for its clarity and hotness. I'll accept that compliment, haha!

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Not descriptive enough at times. The most comments I get on my Google docs from my friends are "elaborate more on this point". Totally fair! And personally, I think I have the writer's equivalent of 'same face syndrome' that some artists have. Like my "reader" character tends to be pretty same-y through a lot of my Arthur x Reader fics...

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

If a character is using another language, I try to make sure that there is a reason for it, that it isn't just for flair. For example, if I have a character blurt something out in another language suddenly, then it means they've been thrown off guard and are going back to their first language. Or if two characters are speaking another language together, then they're either hiding something from others, or they grew up that way and are falling back to old habits.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Oof, I had to go back to some archived files to figure this out. Probably Yu Yu Hakusho, back in 1999, although I suspect I had some older fics in the Gundam Wing fandom, but I don't have any digital evidence of them, I think they were on a GW Mailing List from Yahoo, of all places.

20. favourite fic you’ve written?

The one I'm writing right now :D (Your Heart is My Home)

Tagging @shootybangbang @twola @cheesewedge @sad-sweet-cowboah @riskpig

[that-gay-jedi]

Ok I'm gonna tell you all a story of my early fanfiction days.

Kiddie me was like, religious, and first discovered fanfiction at like age 10 or 11, and one result of this was that I would read fics in which characters swore but I wouldn't bookmark them.

And like, if I enjoyed the fic I would go back and reread it whenever, give kudos or whatever the site equivalent was, I would give it a review/comment and never once mention the inclusion of profanity, in all other ways treat it like any other piece of fanfiction but somehow I thought that if I bookmarked any fic, no matter how good, with a single f-bomb or even the word "damn" or "shit" then God would disapprove and I'd go to Hell.

Hilarious, right? No logic whatsoever. Just beliefs from my upbringing I was either not neurologically developed enough or not exposed to the world outside our hyperreligious bubble enough to question yet mixing with a world my parents, pastors, and peers didn't know existed with results that could only make sense to a child.

But. Here's a weird one.

Around 18/19/20 I'd long since shed so much of that, swore normally myself, and figured if any god worth worshipping existed it had much more important things to intervene in on earth than whether people said "fuck" but I did think a/b/o fiction was inherently anti-feminist and promoted homophobic stereotypes etc. And I knew the difference between fiction that portrayed a society that was unfair to omegas and one that actually vilified the associated traits but I thought being willing to engage with the concept of any biochemical basis for sexual or social roles at all was still patriarchal and therefore harmful.

So what did I do whenever I encountered a fic I liked that used a/b/o worldbuilding? Well, read and kudos as normal but never ever bookmark it, of course. And let me be clear that I'm not only referring to like ao3 bookmarks, I wouldn't even bookmark the page in my browser or download the fic or subscribe by email or anything. I'd even keep coming back for regular updates to see how plots I was engaged in ended as long as I didn't do anything to make it more convenient for myself!

I didn't think I'd go to hell if I broke this rule, because I no longer believed in the Christian cosmology, but I did think I'd somehow cause myself to relearn some level of the societal shit I'd had very good reason to unlearn and possibly even risk being brainwashed back to the religion I'd worked so hard to extricate myself from. Or at the very least that I was somehow encouraging other people to be misogynistic and homophobic by... requiring fewer clicks from myself to read their work?

And that is a story of how similar uncritical (or insufficiently critical) self-monitoring for the sake of not being problematic is to an overly religious preteen thinking God gives a shit about swearing.

Coincidentally (read: not at all coincidentally) that 18-20ish phase was right around where I'd definitely realized I was not content simply living as a tomboy or a butch woman, but wouldn't dare think of being trans because at the time I saw trans manhood as somehow betraying everyone else who was subjected to misogyny and furthering traditional gender roles and so on. You know, TERF logic. In case you ever thought it was primarily trans and nob-binary people or third wave feminists etc behind this progressive puritan shit, let me assure you there were (and still are) plenty of second wavers, LGB cis women and trans-exclusive feminists of all sorts involved.

[jennagrinsoverml]

ML Fic Recs - Love...Square? Hectagon? Octogon??

Happy Friday! I’m back with yet another rec list! As usual, I’m trying to rec fics you might not have read before, going off of AO3 kudos. You can find my other rec lists on my blog at #jennarecsml

If you enjoy these, please reblog so more readers can find these awesome fics!

The love square is already a crazy concept, but now with the addition of Aspik and Multimouse -- well, there are even more fun crazy dynamics for writers to play with. And I love every bit of it! So, here are some of my favourites that play with the expanded love square.

this love is a tangled web by @bugabisous

When Ladybug and Chat Noir decided that they should switch things around with their temporary miraculous holders in order to throw Hawkmoth off, they couldn't have predicted the tangled web they would weave.

Series. Snekmouse? Well, it’s the equivalent in that they know each other’s identities but of course don’t know that the other knows. It’s even more fun with them using different miraculouses, giving us Dragon!Adrien and Snake!Marinette. Plus there’s some multichat content early on, which is a nice precursor to the way Adrien falls for Marinette in this new dynamic. Absolutely great identity shenanigans in this one.

Bad Week by @ominousunflower

Adrien's long and horrible week ends with a stinging rejection--until he sneaks out as Aspik and runs into an unexpected face.

“Hey!” a voice yells from behind him. “What are you doing—I—I mean, who are you?”

Aspik whirls around and finds himself face-to-face with…Multimouse?

With a frown, Multimouse glances at the jump rope wrapped around her waist. Untying it, she grips one end and weakly whips it toward Aspik. It flops on the ground in front of him like a wet noodle.

“AH,” she says. It somehow sounds like a question. “Um. An akuma?”

One-shot. Snekmouse! And then we get actual Aspik/Multimouse! It starts with Marinette trying to ask Adrien out on a date, only for it to go horribly wrong when she sees that he’s upset and takes it back and Adrien takes it as a rejection and concludes she would only go out with him out of pity. I feel bad for him but also it’s HILARIOUS. 

Me, My Best Friend, and Her Cat by @ladyofthenoodle

Ladybugs aren't known for being particularly sneaky. Good thing this Ladybug has a fox in her corner, watching her back.

(And giving Ladybug's love life a nudge along the way. Maybe more than a nudge. In Alya's defense, Ladybug can use all the help she could get.)

Multi-chapter. Multichat (as well as Ladynoir and Adrienette). This is a beautiful Marinette & Alya friendship piece where Alya figures out her secret identity early on and helps her. And honestly it’s worth reading just for that alone. But it also plays with the love square in really fun ways (Alya’s a ladynoir shipper over adrienette), with some quality multichat content.

"I have a plan." by @emsylcatac

Marinette probably should have thought twice before joining the fight as Multimouse instead of Ladybug.

Alya, suited up as Rena Rouge, wished she knew where on earth Ladybug and Chat Noir were when they needed them.

And Adrien really, really wished the two heroines would just leave him alone so he could transform.

One-shot. Adrimouse! Okay, this one is already pretty tumblr famous thanks to the amazing comic that preceded it. But I’m still going to rec it! Because Adrien and Multimouse flirting is amazing, the dynamics are fantastic with Rena Rouge in the mix, and it’s freaking hilarious!

For You (I’d Break All The Rules) by snugglebuttkitten

MultiMouse finds herself visiting Adrien Agreste on a Nightly Basis

One-shot. Adrimouse! There’s some great hurt/comfort here, and also a sweet and slow developing relationship. This is just really cute and I love the dynamic and it’s worth a read!

Second Chance Number 12,496 by @11jj11

Adrien, now wielding the Snake Miraculous as Aspik, has been stuck in his time loop of Second Chances for weeks now trying to save Ladybug, and he just needs a moment to rest.

Set during Desperada.

One-shot. Laspik! I think we were all gutted by Desperada, and this absolutely has a bit of that gut punch, but also I love the hurt/comfort here (although the hurt is amplified by the fact that he’s only like halfway through all the cycles, like DUDE.) 

The One Where Marinette Knows Who Ladybug Is by bifieri

Chat Noir wants to bring back Multimouse. Ladybug doesn't. A little white lie told to keep him off her tail lands the two at odds- and Ladybug closer to finding out her Kitty's identity than she'd prefer

fair warning I wrote this at 3 am and didn't edit it at all so it's very much trash but I just had to make this idea reality

Two-shot. Multichat. This one plays with the ridiculousness of all the lies these two needs to tell in order to protect their identities, and it’s ridiculous and fun and, as always with these kinds of identity shenanigans, leads to a reveal.

But What About Multimouse? by @trainsinanime

Ladybug and Chat Noir discuss his favourite topic: Bringing back Multimouse.

One-shot. Multichat. It works out well that Chat’s favourite topic is bringing back Multimouse because Chat talking about bringing back Multimouse is my favourite trope! Ladybug is such a tease in this and I absolutely love it. It feels so in-character and they’re so playful and it’s just fun!

Enough by @apopcornkernel

Adrien feels inferior when he notices a difference between how Ladybug treats Adrien/Aspik compared to Chat Noir.

One-shot. Laspik. This one is kind of angsty, but it doesn’t stay that way. I don’t want to give away too much, but the ending kinda punched me in the face and I desperately wish there was more.

The following fic is amazing and absolutely worth reading, but does feature sexual content, so minors beware.

I Dream of Mousey by @lyramae-archer

Chat is tired. More tired than ever before. How is a cat supposed to get some sleep when there’s a beautiful mouse in all of his dreams? A story in which Adrien gets some revelation on the love of his life. For MultiMouse Appreciation Week 2020.

Rated M. Multi-chapter. Multichat! Chat goes a little crazy with thoughts of Multimouse, and it’s gorgeous and hot af. @lyramae-archer does an excellent job of characterizing how Adrien starts to fall for Marinette after her stint as Multimouse, and boy does he fall hard. Add in some steamy dreams and an identity reveal and WOW. 

[hepalien]

Ao3 Tips and Tricks

So I thought I would make a post about some cool stuff you can do with Ao3 and userscripts, and some tips I’ve learned from setting them up for myself! I promise it's not hard, though this is a lot of info. I'm happy to help if I can.

What You’ll Need:

First, you will need the Tampermonkey extension for your browser (depending on what browser you use, Greasemonkey is the equivalent). On Android, you can even run Chrome extensions on mobile with Kiwi Browser! It is easiest to configure the scripts on your desktop and then sync to mobile with Tampermonkey’s cloud sync feature or by exporting the configured scripts and importing in your mobile browser (I will explain how to do this later in the post). If you use any of the tweaks I outline below, be sure to backup your scripts in case your settings are lost.

Once you have Tampermonkey installed, you can get scripts from GreasyFork. The inimitable @flamebyrd also has some great scripts and bookmarklets and has been incredibly helpful while I figured all this out.

Find a script that looks interesting, click on it, and then click “install this script.” Pretty straightforward. Once you have it installed, you can go to Tampermonkey to configure it (only necessary for some scripts) by clicking on the Tampermonkey extension icon in your browser (under the three dot menu in Kiwi) and clicking “dashboard”, then clicking the edit icon next to the script you want to configure. When you’re done, click File->Save.

Scripts and instructions under the cut

Some of my favorites:

Flamebyrd’s Incomplete Works script - fades out WIPs on works listings, and displays the work stats (wordcount, chapters, etc) in red on single works to make it more obvious that they’re WIPs as you’re browsing:

Flamebyrd’s Ao3 to Pinboard bookmarklet/script - if you click the bookmarklet while on a work’s page, it opens the Pinboard save screen and prefills the title, tags, description, word count, etc, and adds ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the URL so Pinboard’s archiver will archive the complete work and not the adult content warning screen (note that Pinboard still cannot correctly archive works locked to Ao3 users, so you may want to download them as a backup. I’ve asked him about fixing that.), based on your selections when configuring the bookmarklet on the linked page. If you use the userscript, it adds a button to the works listings page so you don’t even have to open the work to save it:

I tweaked this script so that it only grabs the first pairing tag, since I don’t typically care about secondary pairings and they were clogging up my Pinboard tags. It’s a simple fix (though I know nothing about coding so I had to do some googling and inspect-sourcing; kinda proud of myself tbh):

Just change this part of the script

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag", $work).each(function () {

To this

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag:first", $work).each(function () {

I also found this cool mobile-optimized Pinboard bookmarklet called Pincushion and combined it with Flamebyrd’s script. Everything works except the auto-tagging, but I’ve reached out on GitHub to see if he can help (according to Flamebyrd, there’s no tag field ID attribute to map to). However, this bookmarklet has tagging autocomplete features that make it easy to tag manually. For example, if you type “steve 21st” it will suggest “steverogersvsthe21stcentury” rather than having to type out “steverogersvs…” in order for it to autocomplete like it does on the regular Pinboard bookmarklet. I actually have two buttons set up (which you can see in the next screenshot) - Flamebyrd's to quickly grab the tags and close without me having to do anything, and then the Pincushion one to quickly edit the tags. If anyone's interested, I can explain how to do that.

To combine Pincushion with Flamebyrd’s script (so it works from the Ao3 works listings page as mentioned above), simply change this part of Flamebyrd’s script:

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://pinboard.in/add?url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=no,width=700,height=350"));

To this

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://rossshannon.github.io/pincushion/?user=YOURUSERNAME&token=YOURAPITOKEN&url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=yes,width=600,height=700,left=50,top=50"));

You’ll need to get your API Token from your Pinboard account and plug it in where it says YOURUSERNAME and YOURAPITOKEN (number part only) above.

FanFictionNavigator - mark fics as Like/Dislike/Mark/InLibrary, highlight with colors based on which option you select, hide/show based on category, like/dislike author and highlight with color. Only you will see how you've marked things.

You can tweak the colors for the highlighting by configuring the script (I find the default colors make the text hard to read because I use the Reversi skin on Ao3 for white-ish text on a gray background). I also changed it so that when I click “hide likes” it only hides liked fics and not liked authors (i.e. hides fics I’ve read, but not unread fics by authors I like), changed the color of the like/dislike/etc links to match the highlighting color and to show up better, and changed the way it highlights authors (I think the default is bold/strikethrough which doesn't really catch my eye. I changed it to highlight the author name in red/green):

Here are my configured scripts if you’d like to use them instead of tweaking yourself (you need to install both):

FanFictionNavigator

FanFictionNavigator - Colors

Note: Your settings for this script will sync via Tampermonkey but not your data (i.e. fics you’ve liked/marked/etc). If you ever switch between browsers, you’ll need to go to your Ao3 Dashboard and click FFNOptions, export your data, then go through the same process to import it into the new browser.

AO3: Kudosed and seen history - highlight or hide works you kudosed/bookmarked/marked as seen. If you want to use this with FanFictionNavigator, you’ll need to turn off “highlight bookmarks” from the settings under the “Seen Works” dropdown that gets added to your Ao3 navbar or FFN’s colors won’t show. Again, data doesn’t sync between browsers but you can copy it from the dropdown settings. However, it pulls your kudosed and bookmarked fics from Ao3 itself, so that will always show. It's just seen/skipped that doesn't sync:

Ao3 download buttons - adds a download button to the works listings page so you don’t have to open the fic to download it. However, it also doesn’t play nicely with FFN’s colors, so I’m using AO3 Review + Last Chapter Shortcut + Kudos-sortable Bookmarks script which also has a download button that works with FFN (a small down arrow next to the author name). The download button doesn’t work as-is from that link, so here’s my tweaked version based off of this comment. You can configure what format you want it to download by default in the script. There’s also a tweak in the comments to fix kudos-sorting, but it overloads Ao3 and you get a “retry later” error for a few minutes when you try to open Ao3, so I don’t recommend it. I don’t know if any of the other functionalities of the script work because I don’t use them, but it looks like there are tweak suggestions in other comments you can try:

I was using Ao3 Replace Words to replace words in fics that bug me but I realized it wasn’t working on mobile, so I’m using zensurf instead which is not Ao3-specific but works basically the same way. If you want to limit it to just Ao3 (so it doesn’t change words on non-fic sites), just add this

// @include http://archiveofourown.org/*

// @include https://archiveofourown.org/*

Above this line

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

You can // @include other fic sites like ffnet that way too.

AO3: Links to Last Chapter and Entire Works does what it says on the tin, but the creator was kind enough to give me a code snippet to add that makes the “E” (for Entire Work) appear next to all works and add ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the work URL so that I can easily right-click and share to Instapaper and have it be saved correctly (not just the first chapter but the whole work + not the content warning screen for NR/M/E works). Here is the script with this tweak applied:

I think those are the only ones that I’ve done special tweaks for. Here are some others that I find useful that either don’t require any configuration, or should be pretty straightforward to configure and are explained on the script page.

AO3 author+tags quick-search - doesn’t require configuration

Generates quick links from AO3 fics to more by the same author in the same fandom (or character/pairing/any other tag):

Remove leading spaces in AO3 - doesn’t require config

Removes the leading indents for paragraphs in AO3 works.

Ao3 Only Show Primary Pairing - you have to enter the pairings you want in the script, and you can change how early in the sequence they must appear before the work is hidden. Also works with character tags.

Hides works where specified pairing isn't the first listed. Hidden works show a placeholder that you can click to unhide:

AO3: highlight tags - have to enter the tags you want highlighted, as well as the color you want. It matches case so you may have to enter both “Dog” and “dog”, for example.

Configure tags to be highlighted with different colors. This makes a tag more obvious to your eye when browsing. I use it to highlight things I’m wary of in red so I don’t miss them and start reading a fic I might not want.

AO3: Tag Hider - configure how many tags you want to see before it hides them

Hide tags automatically when there are too many tags. Add hide/show tags button to browsing page and reading page.

AO3 Remove Double-Spacing - no config

Removes awkward double spaces between paragraphs on AO3. Doesn’t smush together paragraphs that have a single line break - it leaves those alone.

ao3 series collapser - no config

Collapse works that are later than part 1 of a series. Leaves a placeholder so you can uncollapse if you want to see it.

AO3 Blocker - no config, but you enter what you want to block from the added navbar dropdown in Ao3

Fork of ao3 savior; blocks works based on certain conditions. I find this simpler to use than Ao3 savior.

FYI there are also style scripts for Pinboard on greasyfork and userstyles.org (this site is slow af for some reason, so be patient while it loads). I use show unread bookmarks more clearly and Modern Pinboard Style (basically a dark mode). Neither require config unless you just want to tweak the settings to your liking. To install to Tampermonkey from userstyles, scroll down to “Install style as userscript”.

I also use these extensions in Kiwi:

Ao3rdr - Adds a star rating system (pictured in some of the screenshots above) to Ao3 works that only you can see. This one will sync your data between devices if you use the cloud sync option, which I recommend so you don’t lose your data if something happens to your device or browser.

Dark Reader - not really necessary for Ao3 if you use Reversi skin, but does make all browser pages dark mode if you want it on sites other than Ao3.

Speaking of Ao3 skins, I have another one set up in conjunction with Reversi that shows all the fandoms on a user’s profile, rather than having to click “expand”:

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found this. To set it up yourself, go to your Ao3 -> Dashboard -> Skins -> Create Site Skin, fill in the Title (has to be unique), and paste the code below in the CSS box:

#user-fandoms ol.index {

padding-bottom: 0;

text-align: center;

}

#user-fandoms ol.index li {

display: inline;

margin-right: .5em;

line-height: 2.15em;

}

#user-fandoms ol#fandom_full_list {

padding-top: 0;

padding-bottom: 1.5em;

display: block !important;

}

#user-fandoms p.actions {

display: none;

}

Then hit Submit -> Use. There are ways to hide or highlight various elements (ships, characters, blurbs, work stats, etc) on a works listing page using skins on Ao3. This is getting long so I’m not going to go into that, but I’m happy to help if you want to try it. It’s very easy.

Once you have everything configured on Tampermonkey on your desktop, you can migrate it to your mobile device in one of two ways:

Option 1: Go to Tampermonkey settings and change Config Mode to Advanced

Go down to Script Sync and select your preferred cloud service and save

It will ask you to log in to said cloud service

Install Tampermonkey in Kiwi and do the same thing

Wait for it to sync (this can be slow)

It should sync any changes you make moving forward, but again, it’s slow

Option 2: go to Utilities and check all 3 checkboxes under general (include script storage, include Tampermonkey settings, include external script resources)

Either export to your preferred cloud service or

Export as a zip file, move it to your mobile device, go to this same screen and import

I would recommend exporting as a zip for a backup even if you don’t use it to migrate your scripts

You can unzip and upload individual script files (.js) on this page if you ever need to reinstall a single script with your settings instead of all of them

Let me know if you run into any issues and I can try to help! The script writers are also super nice and helpful if you reach out to them. Yay fandom!

[phoenixtakaramono]

Character Design Thoughts for Shen Yuan & Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky in ‘The Untold Tale’

(This is a Follow Up to This Post)

Hello, @averydrearydiana! Loved reading through your tags! I’m excited that you’re excited! Since I’m also seeing comments on AO3 speculating about how our transmigrators are going to appear as in The Untold Tale, I might as well give my current thoughts and have this archived on tumblr for future reference.

A fun fact about TUT is that a lot of the imagery in the story is inspired by Chinese PVs and popular C-dramas and literature. Since TUT is conceived as a lovestory to SVSSS, one element that I’d wanted to incorporate is playful attempts at satirical genre deconstruction. With that comes with me playfully poking fun at some clichés or things I’ve noticed in Chinese works.

Shen Yuan’s Celestial Design

Before I talk about his mortal appearance, I have to give a lil context about his celestial design in the story. We already know what he looks like as the celestial fortuneteller in TUT’s cover art that I’ve already posted on tumblr. As everyone knows, I was heavily inspired by this Chinese PV:

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(TUT ch1 - Excerpt)

Among the things I’ve noticed are the fictional characters with white hair. We have a whole subculture of fans liking male character designs with white hair in anime and animation. Taking that a step further, they’ve even shown up in C-dramas, i.e. Teng She from Love and Redemption (technically more blond than platinum white, but shhhhh, just let me have this), Dong Hua Dijun from Eternal Love of Dream aka Three Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (rest assured, I’m aware of the source material’s controversy, but let’s not get into that here), etc. One of the tags for TUT is Opposites Attract. Luo Binghe’s color coordination is aligned with black and red mostly. Now, visually speaking, what’s the opposite of that?

The yin yang symbol.

Fun fact, besides black vs white, green (SY) is the complementary color of red (LBG) on the color wheel. Now taking everything I’ve said, to take it even one step further, my thought process at the time was, “why not go the extra mile then and just have SY be albino? Within context of the Heavenly Realm, that character design makes sense.” TUT is me subtly riffing off what I can (for the good ol’ meta humor), but making the content come across as a legitimate story experience. As Protagonist A and Protagonist B, LBG and SY have to look visually striking together. With all that said, let’s talk about....

(In reference to the original tumblr post)

Shen Yuan (Mortal)

I’ll keep some elements of his albinism from his celestial form (light sensitivity and pale skin mostly), but SY’s mortal form is essentially SY pre-transmigration but within context of the xianxia genre.

For his appearance, let’s just keep this Author’s Note^ and TUT’s summary in the back of our brains. This is the fanvid I was originally inspired by for SY’s mortal appearance:

undefined

(TUT Summary - Excerpt)

For what he wears, I’m currently feeling very heavily inspired by this PV:

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His mortal appearance wouldn’t be considered as “strange” or “otherworldly” compared to the “ethereal fairy-like beauty” SY retains in the Heavenly Realm, but as a side-effect of the 【PROTAGONIST’S HALO】 and his +20 CHARISMA stat, he would still be considered attractive to people even when he takes on a mortal appearance. (Mainly, I like the idea of Bing gē taking large shots of vinegar seeing SY turning heads no matter which appearance SY takes on, and Luo Binghe glaring at these “insects” for even “daring to lay their unworthy eyes on his fated person.” The thought of it just makes me laugh.)

What I mean by how SY’s mortal form being very much based on how SY appeared pre-transmigration but in the xianxia genre context, I mean he’ll have his dark hair (but longer), a “scholarly air” (as a nod to his novelist background), dark eyes, and even his glasses technically (the divine monocle mentioned in ch3, which is also a subtle nod to Sha Po Lang and a riff on men wearing monocles in other Chinese works andit’salsoforeshadowingbutshhhh).

(TUT ch3 - Excerpt)

Shen Yuan originally was an author in his forties pre-transmigration, so I like the idea him having a mature air about him in the Cultivation World as well. So for both our Protagonist B’s celestial and mortal appearances, the idea is that you can look at him and immediately recognize him as a protagonist of the danmei setting. My only two prerequisites are that his appearance screams “hello, I’m Protagonist B” and that he appears in “scholarly” attire.

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky (Mortal)

Keeping in mind the original tumblr post where I wrote my thoughts on who I’m transmigrating him as, currently I’m thinking it’s a combination of these two PVs for his mortal form:

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As a nod to him being a successful novelist, I wanted him to also appear scholarly. A scholarly crown prince, if you will. For his attire, imagine all the C-drama clothing you’ve seen actors wear in period dramas, and you already have a good idea already of the direction I’m heading down.

As the prince of the cannon fodder emperor, I very much like the idea of Airplane perhaps having a baby face and brown hair (as a small nod to fanon!SQH from SVSSS) but with a great body (a huge source of inspiration are clothing worn by Prince Yu and Prince Jing of the three princes from the C-drama Nirvana in Fire). Since Airplane will also be able to select his Character Creation stats like Shen Yuan had, one thing I’m fairly certain is that he will max out his CONSTITUTION—because “game logic” and not wanting to die. (For those who don’t know, the CON stat in tabletop RPs essentially indicates a person’s overall health, wellbeing, and vigor checks...so him maxing it out is equivalent to him being as invulnerable as a cockroach. A high CON means overall healthiness, which means your character probably is full of energy and vitality, can heal rapidly, and will rarely get sick—if ever. Low CON usually means a higher susceptibility to sickness and disease, wounds that fester and linger, and a general fatigue would haunt you, etc.) Like how SY zeroed in on his CHA, Airplane would have prioritized +20 CON (+5 modifier), especially knowing the fate that’d await him as a prince and the vicious environment that is expected for palace intrigue plots (the harem is a big factor, with concubines and consorts and even the empress sabotaging each other—just to win the favor of one man). Against poison or whatnot which is a cliché in palace intrigue plots, rather than relying on luck, you typically stand a better chance of passing the CON check if you have a high modifier aiding your checks. He’s basically become impervious to illnesses, most poisons (probably being able to spring back quickly), and is considered the healthiest prince in all the mortal imperial line. <- This could be taken both seriously and humorously simultaneously.

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky (Deity/ Celestial)

For Xiàng Tiān Dà Fēijī’s “actual divine body” that is currently asleep and won’t be awakened until Airplane completes his mortal trial to “regain his cultivation powers,” the face should obviously be similar but, as Xiàng Tiān Dà Fēijī, he would appear regal and dignified as a god of this world:

Imagine something along the lines of mortal Airplane as the man on the right, celestial Shen Yuan in the center, and deity/ celestial Airplane as the man on the left. I envision a respectable appearance that would knock the air out of Mobei jūn and make him recognize Airplane despite any visual dissimilarities, and in a way we have the Four Beauties of China: Luo Binghe, Shen Yuan, Mobei jūn, and Xiàng Tiān Dà Fēijī.

I will say I currently have an idea of making Airplane have “golden” eyes in both his celestial and mortal forms. (Spoiler alert: in my notes, I’d written down to give Airplane yellow eyes as an Easter egg to Yanxi Palace, I believe, where there was an episode where someone of the imperial harem schemed against the empress and almost had the newborn baby killed because that and the yellow skin was an inauspicious omen. We later find out through a timely intervention that the true reason was due to jaundice—because of the diet/ pregnancy cravings she ate for a period of time which resulted in her son’s symptoms. With Airplane’s high CON and another trope I’m bringing in which’ll have to do with the Medicine King’s Valley/ Valley of the Medicine King, his yellow eyes are the only side effect that lingered from that traumatic event which would have killed him had they gotten away with their scheme. A lot of palace dramas have to do with the vicious harem plots, so this would potentially be one such example.) The reason being that this is the identifying marker for MBJ to clue in that they’re the same man he will have loved. And I think that has romantic potential.

Misc.

Now addressing the other tags, yes, essentially speaking, Mobei jūn might just very well experience his very own Big Damn Reunion trope that Bing mèi had suffered from SVSSS. Poor MBJ. He’s in a tumultuous ride of his own with him considering Airplane as his own fated person, hahaha. But for the Moshang dynamic, I want him—a demon—to find himself taken with Airplane in his mortal guise—and subsequently his true celestial appearance once he finds out. I very much also want SY to jokingly snark to his fellow transmigrator-and-writing-colleague about him getting in a relationship with his own “creation” (MBJ). And Airplane would jokingly snark back about SY “ruining his ‘first son’ as well” (LBG). If you can read between the lines of that, then kudos. I’m glad to hear you’re looking forward to the palace intrigue.

I’m especially very happy to hear you’re looking forward to the descriptions! I personally love worldbuilding in the stories I consume I’m an interior designer and realtor irl, so I’m glad my love of house details and landscape, etc shows in TUT. For the pseudohistorical vibe, in the Mortal Realm, I will be referencing the Forbidden City of our Chinese history and a couple popular period C-dramas. Take the settings of period C-dramas like Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace, Yanxi Palace, and Nirvana in Fire as examples for what will be awaiting us when we finally meet Airplane in his mortal body. In the Heavenly Realm, the descriptions will be heavily referencing shows that contain aesthetics such as those of Ashes of Love, Love and Redemption, and Eternal Dream.

Take this with a grain of salt just in case I change my mind later on, but in the chapter when we meet Airplane for the first time, I probably won’t say which character he is in the first scene. I’ll give plenty of hints in the first scene so that you all can make your guesses before the big reveal, but I’m fairly confident you all or most of you will be able to pinpoint who he is among the cannon fodders. We’ll meet the emperor, who is discussing with his sons about the matter regarding the approaching calamity that is Luo Binghe. Then when we transition into the second scene, we’ll know exactly which “royal prince OC” it is that our beloved Airplane has transmigrated into, hahaha.

(*Keep in mind, for everything written above, some details are subject to change. Nothing is official until it appears in the story, or I’ve actually drawn my ideas out and posted online to both my tumblr and twitter. These are just my current thoughts.)

A goal of mine for TUT is to make the story widely accessible, meaning it doesn’t matter if the reader is new to the SVSSS fandom or aren’t familiar with the Easter egg references or meta jokes or subtext or even the Chinese culture, or even if English is not their first language. Having knowledge beforehand might help someone notice more hidden details in TUT, yes, but it is a humble wish of this writer for her esteemed readers to be able to dive into the story and get the enjoyable feeling like they’re reading a genuine danmei novel. It really makes me smile whenever I hear feedback that I am able to emulate that experience.

Very exciting developments indeed are in store!

[katnissmellarkkk]

Chapter Two

Hiiii! Okay, soooo I wanted to get the new chapter out ASAP! I really, really love any of you guys who read/kudoed/commented or anything on AO3 🥰🥰🥰🥰. Means the world to me.

As I mentioned on here yesterday, my one eye is basically sore and I went to the eye doctor and basically can’t wear my contacts for a few days. So because of my how nearsighted I am and the fact that I haven’t updated my glasses prescription in over a decade .... I edited this chapter on my phone? So yeah. I think it turned out just as well as any of my other writing but ya know. For verification, if there’s some mistakes here or there. Ya girl was tryin, ok. 😂😂😂😂😅😅😅😅😬😬😬😬😬😬.

Okay anyways I’ll stop talking, here’s the next chapter :

“You just have to get to know her,” Peeta claimed. “Bailey’s a good person. Don’t let her outer shell fool you.”

What I really wanted to ask him was how he ever got beyond her—as he so delicately phrased it—outer shell.

Never big on social interactions, on top of being generally awful at making friends, I did my best to get all the information Peeta would willingly offer about his new, mysterious girlfriend, before having to deal with her directly.

Which wasn’t much. Peeta, the boy who gossiped about his father wanting to marry my mother while we were in a televised death match, who seemed to always have some insight on other people, who never hesitated to share his gossip with me before now, suddenly had tight lips when it came to Bailey Robyn.

The biggest emission I got from him was, “she had a childhood a lot like mine.”

I don’t know what that means? Bailey was the child of District Nine’s baker? District Nine had a class divide as well and she was of a merchant equivalent? She was a popular wrestler?

And then it hit me all at once. Like a train storming for the Capitol, it hit me with crushing force. Peeta never confirmed the fact, but the look in his eyes when I made the guess was enough to suggest I was right.

Bailey also grew up with an abusive mother. Just like Peeta.

The idea was a lot for me to process suddenly. I knew people who looked perfect could hide dark secrets. Peeta and Finnick Odair were both evidence of this. But for some reason I was taken aback by the notion that Bailey, who seemed so lively and pristine and collected, could have come from a violent and vicious household like the Mellark’s.

I mentally berated myself for the shock. How many times had strangers misjudged me in the last couple of years? How much had that infuriated me to find out?

When I go over to Haymitch’s house the following week for dinner, I make considerable effort in preparing myself to see Bailey sitting at the table.

And I’m not disappointed.

Bailey Robyn is sitting in the dining room when I walk in, half her hair gracefully combed into a cascading updo, looking as porcelain and perfect as ever. In her hand is a cookie covered in pink frosting, her mouth pulled up in a sparkling white smile as she laughs at something Haymitch has said.

Evidently Bailey puts my old mentor in a good enough mood, because he gives her a real genuine grin in reply.

Before turning to me with a scowl, of course. “Well, sweetheart, look who decided to join us?”

“I’m on time, Haymitch,” I immediately grumble, eyeing him with aggravation.

“If we give or take twenty minutes.”

But Bailey apparently wants to be my buffer. “Like you’ve ever been on time for anything, Haymitch Abernathy,” she retorts, looking at me knowingly. Like she’s trying to let me in on her joke. Like we’re old friends, who gang up on Haymitch together all the time.

A part of me feels displaced, as this interaction, if I didn’t know better, gives me the idea that I’m the odd one out and Bailey is the aquatinted one in this dynamic. But still, I take a deep breath and smile back in her direction.

I promised Peeta I would try. I promised to give Bailey a chance. And I’m not going to break another promise to him.

Not after everything that’s happened to him because of me.

Before I can find a semi-conversational thing to say back though, more voices join us.

“Katniss!” Delly chirps, rounding the corner from Haymitch’s pigsty living room with Peeta by her side.

“Oh, look who finally showed up,” Peeta says, teasing me.

I have an entirely different reaction to him nudging me versus Haymitch. Instead of getting defensive, I feel myself immediately blush, suddenly a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I got held up in the woods.” My words somehow get choked in with a giggle and Peeta smirks in response.

Luckily for me, Bailey seems to not mind our interaction. Instead she laughs once again. “Held up in the woods by what?” She murmurs curiously.

“Knowing her?” Haymitch mutters, eyeing at me wryly. “Squirrels.”

/

I give the night my best effort. I talk to Bailey, ask her questions—pretend not to notice how elusive her answers are—and plaster a completely fake smile across my face, trying my best to appear as sweet and as pleasant as I am capable of.

However, by the end, I’m so glad Delly is there by my side that, without hesitating to think about it, I invite her to be a permanent member of our weekly dinners. If Peeta can bring Bailey every time—as I suspect he will—I can surely have someone here too. Someone else who is a bit apprehensive about the new addition, someone who doesn’t think I’m just blatantly rude for remaining on my guard.

I expected Haymitch, at least, would be a little unsure about Bailey. I expected he’d be at least slightly cautious of her presence. But instead the opposite seems to be true.

Instead Haymitch almost seems more apprehensive about me being at dinner.

Every time I glance at Peeta too long, every time I cringe—in my mind, internally, but evidently the old, paunchy man notices—when Bailey plants her lips all over Peeta, I feel him kick me in the leg, step on my foot, nudge me roughly as he passes by.

Delly finds the whole thing really funny. She finds Haymitch and my subsequent glares and glances more entertaining than any of the stories Bailey shares about District Nine.

And Delly Cartwright has never been one for subtly. She’s never been one for holding back her emotion either.

What should be her quiet chuckles are loud, snorting giggles and her standard laughs are practically hysterics.

And I find unexpectedly, when mixed with such a tense air, the sound of her boisterous laughter cracks even me up. Even Haymitch smiles a little.

Of course, the fact that this conjures up an image of me and Delly sharing some kind of inside joke is sort of an unexpected gift. I only realize it after the fact, but the idea that it looks like me and Delly are laughing together makes me feel suddenly less alone. Makes me feel suddenly like I belong here again.

Bailey is pleasant enough, I note to myself. She smiles in all the right places when someone else speaks, she manages to softly laugh in all the appropriate spots, she tell us vague details about her home in Nine easily enough.

Apparently she was born and raised on a farm, learned to produce grain from a young age and left her parents’ home at fourteen.

She makes no mention of the abuse Peeta implied but I never expected she would. It takes practically a microscope to uncover it in Peeta’s own tales. And even that’s from my point of view. An outsider who didn’t survive two games and a war with him would be hard-pressed to decipher it at all out of the stories he tells. I anticipated Bailey would be just as allusive.

I did not anticipate however, that Bailey would grow so uncomfortable when asked where she lived after she left her parents’ home. I didn’t expect her to look around the room in an abrupt, stiff silence, that she would stare past the walls of Haymitch’s home with a glassy look in her stone blue eyes, or that she would stand from the table without warning and flee down the hall.

And I’m thankful now that it was Delly who asked the question and not me, as surely my old mentor, who’s nearly smashed by this point, would find a way to cast the blame onto me.

“Did I say something wrong?” Delly asks, genuinely disturbed that she apparently must have hurt Bailey. She may not be her biggest fan, but Delly Cartwright isn’t one to intentionally upset people.

Peeta hesitates for a moment before shaking his head. “No, she’s just... it’s nothing you did, Delly,” he promises but his voice is far away now too, and his gaze flickers towards the hall the blonde disappeared down.

Still, Delly bites her lip in fear she caused an issue and excuses herself from the table in a haste, offering to clean everyone’s dishes.

Neither me nor Peeta—or even Haymitch himself—say not to bother. The house itself is in atrocious condition after the decades of neglect and washing the dishes will only cover the plates in grim and mold instead of food. But it’s not about the actual cleansing of the dishes and we all know it. It’s about avoidance.

Something the three of us know more about than anyone ever should.

I use the given opportunity to catch Peeta’s eye. “What’s going on?” I murmur under my breath, hoping Haymitch wouldn’t insert himself into the conversation for once, that he won’t shut my question down and bark at me for being nosy.

“Bailey just needs a minute,” Peeta states, and I can tell from his tone it’s better not to ask again. Whatever’s going on with his girlfriend has him on edge as well. It seems to me, at least.

The next thirty minutes feel like hours as they pass. No one speaks. Haymitch is almost out cold from his liquor. Peeta refuses to meet my eyes or even so much as tear his gaze from the direction Bailey walked off in. I’m about to tell him to just go after her, when she decides to reappear.

Like magic, she reappears, her face seemingly flawless, her smile as bright and as stunning as before, her poise back again like it never slipped.

“Are you okay?” I ask anyway though, because there’s no use in pretending she didn’t just run off after a harmless comment. Delly obviously wants the answer to the same inquiry or she wouldn’t be currently lingering in the doorframe, afraid to even enter the room.

Still, I receive a pointed glance from Peeta and an outright disgusted look from a barely coherent Haymitch.

I fight my natural instincts that says to justify myself. My natural instincts that tell me they’re being far too defensive over a simple question.

And for what reason? Peeta just met her a few months ago and Haymitch probably wouldn’t be able to tell her apart from half the merchant girls in the district. What is it about Bailey that makes both of them take up their metal armor to protect?

“I’m fine,” she says lightly, and offers a tight, closed-mouth smile that doesn’t come across as real for a second. “Delly, do you need any help in the kitchen?”

“No,” the typically bubbly blonde says almost instantly. There’s a waiver in her voice and I feel a pang of sadness spread across my chest, because Delly is obviously afraid of even being in the same room as Bailey now.

“Okay well, we should be going anyways, Peeta,” she says definitively and tugs on his hand with a bit too much force. If you ask me.

“Me too,” I murmur before mentally kicking myself, realizing that I just boxed myself into a corner, looking like I was playing a game and trying to tag along with them for the walk home.

Well, the entire two minutes it takes to get to each of our respective homes, that is.

Even without the added awkwardness of tagging alongside Peeta and his girlfriend, a part of me—a naive, juvenile part—doesn’t want to watch Bailey enter through Peeta’s front door, doesn’t want to accept the fact that she isn’t just spending the night, that his home is now hers too, as a definitive fact.

Within a matter of days, his home is officially her’s. I already know it must be true. But that doesn’t mean I’m anxious by any stretch of the imagination to have the suspicion confirmed.

Haymitch chuckles darkly though, seemingly at my expense, as he lifts his head from the grimy table. “I see someone’s trying to escape before we can light the candles and start singing.”

I blanch the same moment I feel Peeta’s eyes turn and land on me in shock.

I was hoping everyone had forgotten my birthday somehow.

/

Read The Rest On AO3

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 1600~

Summary: Lapis genuinely doesn’t know how many hours (Days? Months? Years?) have passed when light finally graces her eyes once again.

Ah, my first Lapis POV fic! This one has been in my drafts for ages- at least a year and a half. Feels nice to finally have it done.

If you read this and enjoy, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos/comments on AO3. Thank you! <3

________

Finally Free

It’s funny, in a way.

She spent thousands of years trapped inside herself, unable to form... hating the Crystal Gems... fearing the endless destructive conquest of the Diamonds... and yet in the end, the first time she falls in a battle she fought willingly she does so fighting alongside those star-bearing rebels, face-to-face with the very Diamond who abandoned her to Earth to be forgotten to begin with.

And now, she’s gone. Trapped inside herself again. It’s equal parts disorienting as it is concerning. After all, Lapis Lazuli cannot see the world beyond. She has no way of knowing if the Crystal Gems lost or won. No way of knowing if she’ll be shattered at any moment. It’s nerve-racking— suffocating! She wants out. She wants to know.

But no matter what she tries, she can’t manage to pull herself out of this formless limbo on demand. She always imagined that the next time she got struck down she’d reform in an instant... pop right back up like the next day’s dawn, ready to slice the waves and swing her fists like she’s never been shaken to her knees in the first place. Apparently not.

Despite her dearest wishes, it would seem the universe has a higher agenda.

_

Lapis genuinely doesn’t know how many hours (Days? Months? Years?) have passed when light finally graces her eyes once again.

Fittingly, it’s the ocean who greets her first as she hovers midair in the midst of reformation, arms outstretched and coursing with newfound strength as her form fully solidifies. She gently falls to her knees on the sand. With the sun’s energizing warmth kissing the gemstone on her back, she spreads her fingers through the fine granules, her relief at being free from unconsciousness’ cruel prison so palpable and overwhelming that for a moment she’s irrationally terrified she’ll poof again from the intensity of this fierce emotion alone. Her hard-light body remains solid, however. After all, she’s a stubborn Gem. There’s no way she’ll let herself poof as easily as she did this time around ever again.

Coaxing herself to her feet, she makes a clear point of judiciously surveying her surroundings. Her first big clue as to the outcome of the battle is the fact that the Diamond ships still lay broken and motionless in the shallows at the edge of the peninsula. (Not to mention the fact that the Earth is still... well, here.) Directly behind her, she finds a makeshift worktable formed out of a thick board placed over twin stacks of wood, with plenty of human tools scattered across its surface. No one appears to be hanging around Steven’s house right now, but there’s a sizable tarp thrown over the half that Blue’s ship smashed during the battle. That’s good, that insinuates that someone’s alive to begin repairs. Although, wait a minute... Her brow sharply creases as she filters back through recent memory. Wasn’t that ship still leaning against the side of the cliff when she poofed? How’d it get into the water? And how did the arm ship’s thumb get reattached?

Before she can fret about these mysteries further and and risk losing herself to a burst of paranoid panic, she hears her name called from the distance. Attentively, she whirls around, seeking its source.

It’s Peridot, sprinting right towards her across the fine sand as if the rest of this growing, changing world has somehow hurtled to an abrupt stop. But not her. Goodness, never her. She’s always in motion, always manages to be so alive.

And she... she’s changed her outfit. There’s stars everywhere, on her leggings at her knees, in the silhouette formed by the shape of her visor and hair, and plastered proudly right across her chest. Lapis can’t help but give a fond smirk at the sight. It suits her. Now she can finally represent like a true Crystal Gem.

“Lapis!” she exclaims as she crosses the final distance, lands herself face-to-face once more. “You’re finally back!”

For a minuscule moment the green eyes behind that tinted visor glitter with deep affection and relief, and her arms stretch outward as if she intends to envelop her in a tight embrace and never let go, but as oft is the case, the turbulent waves of emotion coursing through this Gem are riddled with more complexity than initial appearances let on. And if there’s one thing Lapis fails to excel at, it’s understanding how to best respond to the nuances of complex emotions. She’s never been much of a people person, even before her capture.

Eventually, the joyful familiarity within Peridot’s expression dims, and— inhaling deep— she steeples her fingers together as if she were an agate merely addressing a subordinate. The tone of her voice becomes bitingly procedural, detached.

(Try as she may, Lapis can’t block the ephemeral ache this new reality elicits at her core as the conversation continues. She clutches at her wrist, shamefully dropping her gaze to the sand.)

“Anyways,” the former Kindergarten technician says evenly, gesturing at the mess littering the beach behind them, “we have a lot of work to do. No time to waste!”

Her brow creases. “But... didn’t we win?”

“We did, yes,” she nods in confirmation. “Bismuth can explain in more depth, but she’s currently on one of the diamond ships. We’re fixing them so we can fly out as backup.”

“Backup? Backup for what?”

Peridot’s cool and collected guise crumples at this query, her hands curling into small fists as she blinks away any lingering evidence of her distress.

“Steven’s in trouble,” she reveals. “We just received a distress message from him yesterday. I’m told he returned to Homeworld with the Diamonds to discuss healing all the corrupted Gems, but...”

“Something went wrong,” she guesses, the shadow of her bangs darkening over her eyes. “They turned on him.”

“Well... we don’t really know what happened. Which is why time is of the essence!” she says with a sudden surge of positive energy, swiftly jabbing her pointer finger in the air. “Follow me, and I’ll show you where we’re working.”

Her old roommate prepares to jog away, towards the other side of the beach where the ships lay in temporary rot and ruin. Time stills in Lapis’ mind, if but for a brief moment, as she watches the sunlight glint at the upper edge of her visor, the refraction producing almost kaleidoscopic patterns in the sand. The choppy rhythm of the ocean, its undulating melody as it washes in and away from shore, uninterrupted... it almost sounds sad. She hums a few bars of a song she wrote back in her solitude, on the moon. And then she realizes, eyes widening... that she never really left that place, did she? In a way, even though she returned to Earth, it’s like she’s still stuck watching everyone from that observation sphere, still barring herself from nurturing her relationships with others out of fear.

Lapis throws her glance out towards the endless horizon, standing tall and erect as the loose pants of her new form billow against her legs in the light breeze. The long-held tension at her core releases. She’s done closing herself off from people. She’s done with feeling trapped and alone. She wants to mend her relationships, not let them erode away.

Which means... she has to at least try to make things right with Peridot. Somehow.

The tide’s pace resumes to its full intensity. At that precise moment, her friend turns on her heels, swiftly preparing to return to their work site.

“Peridot,” she says, quickly stepping forward to catch her shoulder before she can walk off, before she journeys to some distant shore where she can’t follow.

The shorter Gem freezes in place upon the utterance of her name. She doesn’t respond in words initially, lips tightly pursed. Waiting. Hoping.

(Stars, just say it!)

“I... I shouldn’t have run away,” Lapis blurts out, her form growing lighter the second that vocalization crosses the threshold from her guilt-filled subconscious to shining reality. “That was... a huge mistake. And I really wish I could make it up to you, but...” Her scattered focus shifts as she searches for something— anything— to say in further acknowledgement of her regret, eventually landing upon the shattered remnants of wood still strewn across the beach. She sighs sadly, giving her respects. “I’m pretty sure we can both agree that the barn’s a goner.”

Under her hold, Peridot’s once-tense shoulder relaxes. She makes no move to face her, however, still drinking in the no-doubt humbling sight of this planet’s boundless sea

“Well,” she begins slowly. “As long as you work to communicate with your friends whenever you feel overwhelmed in the future, and promise not to kidnap all of my morps into space again, I think we can call it even.”

She places one of her hands atop hers, the action but a small sign of their renewed goodwill.

“In any case, I’m- really glad you’re back,” she says, fondness evident in her tone.

Lapis smiles.

The ocean’s melody is no longer tinged with a companionless melancholy.

_

It’s funny how things can change.

She spent thousands of years terrified of the consequences of being caught as traitor to the Great Diamond Authority, and now she’s planning to illegally commandeer a diamond ship to fly a rescue mission into the stagnant heart of Homeworld. She’s only been a Crystal Gem for the equivalent of a few minutes, and yet she’s already reformed bolder and braver than ever before.

She feels strong. Despite the inherent danger of their task, she feels an ever-building reassurance, fighting amongst her friends. For the first time ever, she finally feels like someone has her back.

Lapis closes her eyes as she reflects on the culmination of her journey, standing confident alongside her dear friend on the bridge of Blue’s ship.

No more searching. No more running. She’s finally free.

[findswoman]

Fic Writer Review

Tagged by @fontainebleau22 ! Thank you so much—this is a really thought-provoking list of fic questions, and I really enjoyed reading your responses to them!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

69 at present.

2. What’s your total AO3 wordcount?

252,460 as of the current writing. Not too shabby, I guess!

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

With the exception of very juvenile Star Trek: TOS juvenilia that never were posted publicly and are probably no longer accessible in any form (and that’s probably fine), it’s just been Star Wars—but various forms thereof, including the PT era, the OT era, Rebels, Rogue One, KOTOR, and small amounts of Legends EU and ST era.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Sixth Time’s the Charm (Rebels)—33 (probably no accident that this one is also currently my only fic centering on Kanera)

“I saw the wolf…” (Rebels)—19

Beautiful, Inexactly (PT era)—18

The Rains of Scarif (Rogue One)—14

Just Ask Dad; or, Talking Things Through on Taris (KOTOR)—12

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

Oh yes, most certainly. I am sincerely grateful for each and every one that I get, and interaction is one of the best parts of fandom, as far as I’ve concerned.

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

Gosh, well… probably a toss-up between “There is no death!,” which ends with the Jedi OC committing suicide in full view of Darth Vader, in order to keep Vader from ripping a special Force talent of his from him (yes, that’s a factor in the story); and Opus Sixty-Six, where two OC musicians who are forced to perform before Emperor Palpatine perform the “wrong” piece in protest and are promptly killed for it. (Graceful as Water, in which a Tusken OC commits a violent murder, is pretty angsty and grim over all, but it ends with the murderer getting his just deserts, so the ending is not necessarily angsty per se.)

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t, mainly because I have been working in only one fandom.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, thank goodness.

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

Not currently. I’m still working out my feelings about smut, as it (or at least most instances of it) are just kind of a closed door to me. Even if it’s something I eventually end up experimenting with here and there (maybe? I don’t know), I don’t think it would ever be my main emphasis.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Gosh, no! I didn’t know that was a thing—I guess kind of the fic equivalent of an art repost? Never had anything like that happen, thank goodness.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Between the Porch and the Altar (a Gand OC one-shot) was translated into French by yahiko as Entre le portique et l’autel on Fanfictions.fr. The translation was a prize he offered for the Jedi Council Fanfic Forums awards in 2016.

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

Yes! I’ve collaborated a few times on small-scale, just-for-fun projects with Ewok_Poet, and more recently I did a really fun collaboration with Chyntuck on a story featuring our two Hutt OCs on a romantic dinner out: Dinner at the Hungry Hutt (not on AO3 yet).

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Sorry, once again I’m going to have to give the same tiresome answer I always give for this and similar questions: the ones involving my OCs. 😛

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

Oh gee… I hate to say “never” about anything, but the closest thing to this right now is The Book of Gand. I think I will at least finish its part three, but beyond that, who knows just yet, and that is because even back in the past when I was actively working on it, I didn’t know how I was going to end it. (Moral of the story: know how it’s going to end before you start writing it! 😛 )

15. What are your writing strengths?

Fanon/worldbuilding, descriptions of settings and characters, dialogue, introspection. I feel I’m pretty good at characterization in general.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Using too many long sentences; generally not varying my sentence types enough; writing action and fight/battle scenes; writing anything involving a lot of tech, vehicles, etc.; writing sibling relationships (as I’m an only child).

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

This is something I would feel very unsure of doing unless I knew the other language (whether real-life or created/fictional) very, very well. Individual words and phrases I could probably manage, but entire dialogue passages, not so much.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Simultaneously Star Wars and Star Trek: TOS (se #3 above).

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh, I hate this question. 😛 Yes, I know it’s totally cliché by now, but it really is like choosing a favorite child. But I will say I am particularly proud of my story series that involve lots of alien world building: The Book of Gand (and the associated Gand Series) and the Lasan Series.

Tagging: @jadelotusflower​ @independence1776​ @rendar-writes​ @sassygirl579​ @runrundoyourstuff​ @spacemomcreations​ @tarisilmarwen​ @gondalsqueen​ @jedi-valjean​ just to name some fanfic writers I know, but anyone who sees this is welcome to give it a go!

[obsidian-aurora]

As I’m about to dive into the events of 227 in my fanfic, I thought now is a good moment to take some time to reflect on the past year.

Words:  1,086,764

Chapters:  131/?

Comments:  2206

Kudos:  4065

Bookmarks:  350

Hits:  161449

If you can believe it, I started writing this fic almost a year ago now.  I’ve written the equivalent of a novel a month this whole year! Nuts. I watched The Untamed for the first time over a year ago.  My soul was captured by the light that I saw in Xiao Zhan’s and Yibo’s eyes when they looked at each other. And I haven’t stopped believing in the power of love since then.

Sounds corny?  Yeah, kind of is.

It’s hard to imagine that when I started writing this fic, the Special Edition hadn’t come out yet.  There was only the official BTS on the Tencent channel to watch - as well as a pile of interviews and fanmeetings.  There were no secret Discord groups, I didn’t even have a Twitter account.  I had this old blog of mine on Tumblr and an old AO3 account that I dusted off to start writing some fanfiction again.

Did you know I’m a self-published author?  Oh yeah, for years I wrote nothing but my own novels.  You can check them out here at lillybirdsong.com

I thought to myself, I’ll just write a short fanfic over the course of December.  I’ll publish it in January and rid my system of this bug I’ve got and then move on.  Now, a year later and I still can’t stop writing about these boys.  What is it?  It’s all about love.  It’s about the belief that against all odds, whether it’s living in a society that doesn’t support LGBT individuals, whether it’s struggling with management companies that don’t support you in your own careers, against all odds Love Wins™.

Or does it?

I’m about to embark on writing the 227 part of the fanfiction and I thought it was really important for me to remind everyone that what I’m writing here is not a bible, it’s not a biography, it’s a piece of fiction that’s my own personal interpretation of what might have happened.  I’m saying this because it’s soul-crushing to imagine what might have taken place behind closed doors, the conversations that would have happened, the thoughts that would have spun out of control.

I mean, I just remember my own journey.  Some of which is documented right here on Tumblr.  I wrote one of my first artist blogs when I hit 50 chapters on Yizhan in early Feb.  I wrote a post when Xiao Zhan fans first started calling out AO3 for hosting inflammatory material. I wrote a post when I considered whether this fic should be abandoned. I wrote a post when Coronavirus brought me back home on a plane way earlier than expected.  I wrote a post in April when I completed 80 chapters, and at the end of May when I completed 100 chapters.

I’ve gone a bit dark on Tumblr since I moved to Twitter where there’s a lot more BJYX interaction going on, but Twitter is not a good place for a long post so I’m once again spilling my thoughts here on Tumblr.

Writing about 227

As I start to write about this, I’m going to pick and choose which rumours I will write into the story and which I’ll discard.  Because let’s get real - there are a lot of rumours out there, and no one except those people intimately involved will know the truth of the matter.  I do choose to believe some of the malicious rumours.  And so I will include some of them.

Don’t start a war in my comments section. I beg you.  I’ll just have to end up moderating my comments which I never wanted to do.

Disagreements within the fandom

I’ve noticed more and more “extreme” behaviour within the BJYX fandom.  I feel like ever since the “secret” BTS (which are mostly the same as what we saw in the official BTS just longer cuts) have whipped turtles up into a frenzy! And when someone has a different opinion or when someone likes to spout theories about what their small interactions might mean in the context of the bigger picture, that can cause harm.

So I’m saying right now - everyone’s entitled to their own points of view. No one knows the truth but the ones involved.

Don’t bring your disagreements to my fic.

Respect in public spaces

I have also stated this on Twitter but I want to put my 2 cents here as well.  I’ve also been uncomfortable lately with the amount of public discourse about body parts, about sex positions, really really intimate things. If you want to write fanfics or draw fanart to explore these interpretations, I say go for it! That’s appropriate because it’s within the realm of fantasy. But when it comes down to really speculating about what’s going on in the private lives of these two men we love so much, I personally would rather those conversations be relegated to private spaces - Discord, WhatsApp.  Not Twitter and Tumblr. So you’ll notice that I’ve unfollowed and even blocked some accounts recently that cross a line I’m not comfortable with.

When I do that, it’s not about you, it’s not a personal attack. That’s just me not being comfortable with the content that’s being created in the space it’s being distributed. If you want to chat with me about it, I’m very open to having that discussion in DM. I’ve been called a hypocrite for my views given that my story is an explicit one, but in my mind there’s a clear distinction between me publishing a story on AO3 and people discussing their real private lives in public spaces like Twitter.  That’s just my point of view and I mean no offence to those that feel the opposite.

As usual, I always have my finger on the trigger to take Yizhan down the moment it causes harm to the boys in question.

Other interesting things I’ve done lately:

I’ve been publishing some Fanart.  (See the pic at the end of this post as an example). Follow me on Twitter @ObsidianAurora to get the latest as I usually post things first there. I’ll try to remember to post things here as well.

I started a YouTube Channel. It’s called Queer Stories and it’s my space to talk about all things queer - video games, TV shows, and yeah sometimes even how harmful it can be to assume you know someone’s gender identity, whether they’re feminine or masculine, and that this has nothing to do with a person’s sexuality. This video I made in the context of BJYX/LSFY/ZSWW and Yizhan.

I opened a Patreon account since some people wanted to know how to support me. I have been jobless since our visual effects studio closed down in May and I’m starting up a new job again next week (finally!) but if you want to contribute for the work I’m doing this would be the way.

Be Kind.

I’ve rambled on for quite a bit now so let me end it here. Let me just say please be kind. Be kind to each other. Be kind to those who disagree with you. When you’re tempted to lash out, consider the other person’s point of view first.

Remember that what started this was love. Not hate. Don’t give in to the temptation to participate in fanwars. Remember the love.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

~Obsidian Aurora~

[unintentionalgenius]

ok @ongreenergrasses tagged me to do this and that's how I know we're made for each other bc tagging me in things is my love language

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 20, but 13 of those shouldn't count because they're Sherlock and I am not that person anymore

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? ok I had hopes that there was some way to do this besides doing, you know, math. but. it's 169,674

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?  shockingly, #1 is Death and John Watson; or, Five Times John Watson Met Death and the One Time He Died at 615 kudos. If you'd asked me what was going to top this list I never in a million years would have said this one. I might have to re-read this now.

What I would have said actually comes in at #2, the (almost complete, dear g-d I'm so close) Come then, and be broken at 376 kudos.

#3 my beloved, my eldest daughter of a fic, Put Away Childish Things at 223.

#4 is astoundingly another Sherlock fic, this one creatively titled Five Times John Woke Up to Sherlock and One Time He Didn't (it's not bullying if it's past me I'm making fun of, right?).

#5 is a tie, with 60 kudos each, but they're part of the same series: A Great Man and Something Like Beginning, from my Sherlock kidfic (and incidentally how i met Hayls in the first place!).

I'm really committed to preserving my ~journey~ as a writer, but the outsized prevalence of Sherlock fic on my profile is making me question that decision. I feel like it's false advertising for who I am as a person now. 😅

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I try to! It might not be in a timely fashion, and honestly sometimes I feel weird about it, but I do go through and answer a few at a time when I have a few minutes.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? I refuse to re-read the Sherlock fic just to confirm, but I think Childish Things wins by a landslide anyway. Fic where John or Sherlock died was a dime a dozen back in the day whereas "[a genderswapped] stiles helps peter kill her best friend" is still a very particular, unique twist of the knife.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? this is probably going to be that Sherlock kidfic verse!

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written? I absolutely do not write crossovers. No offense to anyone who does, but I simply do not understand the appeal.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? It was less about the fic and more about the fact that I pointed out 911 has some copaganda elements via a fic's tags, but yes.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind? I now, as of literally the most recent chapter of the most recent work I posted, have to admit that I do technically write smut. It's super cerebral, feely smut, but you do read two people having sex, so like. guilty.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don't think I have written any fics worth stealing but if it's happened I don't know about it

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? nope!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? nope! I have co-written things in Real Life and I honestly don't think I have anyone that I would want to write fic with like that. HOWEVER I do have a beloved sounding board in @ragequilt

13. What’s your all time favorite ship? i literally cannot answer this, there is no way I can say decisively

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? I had this fic from when the first of the new star wars movies came out where everyone thinks poe is dead, so finn has to become a person on his own, essentially, rather than being taught/hand-held by poe which I felt like I was seeing a lot in fic. The whole thing was epistolary, a diary that finn's therapist had him start keeping, which he then started writing to Poe. That's pretty firmly abandoned at this point, but it still haunts me and I wish I had finished it.

15. What are your writing strengths? Hayls once told me I'm really good at dialogue, and I actually think that's true. I'm also pretty good at atmosphere, I think, though no one has ever said exactly that. I do think I'm good at characterization, and that for me is really tied to how I do dialogue. I would honestly accept any commentary anyone wants to offer on the subject, though

16. What are your writing weaknesses? PLOT. not like, emotional arcs or a character's journey or whatever but. the ticky little nuts and bolts of how we get from a to z, especially when it requires a tight plot of external action. I always think about myself as (to quote @ragequilt here) someone who writes hurt/comfort, not casefic, and this is why. I'm rarely interested in writing the finer details of a mystery or an extravagant plot full of courtly intrigue. I'm probably bad at other things, too, but this is the one that stands out like a glaring neon sign to me.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I think in almost every case it's not necessary UNLESS it's being done for effect - that is, if I intentionally want the reader not to know what's said. Otherwise, I'm just going to put the switch to french/spanish/hebrew/arabic/mandarin in the narration. One exception to this for me, which is really just a sub-clause under the "only for effect" rule, is when I'm writing canonically bilingual characters who would employ words or phrases in both their languages in the same sentence. Some of this is characterization - Eddie Diaz speaks Spanish or Spanglish around his family; someone writing me wouldn't be writing me properly if they didn't write the Hebrew/Yiddish/English patois that I speak in Jewish spaces. I don't want my writing to read like the over-translated subtitles you sometimes see where loan words are translated, thereby rendering the subtitles actually less intelligible. It's a delicate balance and I wouldn't guarantee I get it write all the time, especially when it comes to not othering a character I'm writing. (also @ hayls I am one of those people who always/almost always says Hashem instead of g-d 😂 for me it's a way of making sure people don't think I'm talking about Christian God™️) You will notice, though, that I do have a tipping point implicitly delineated here - if someone is speaking another language for whole sentences, I'm just going to put that in the narration; single words or phrases will be written as spoken.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Sherlock (womp womp)

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? I've never written Destiel fic, and while at this point you might be wondering what on earth there is left to say via fic about that pairing, I have a lil thing bubbling around in my brain about bodily autonomy vs. trauma vs. helping someone not suffer from their trauma while violating whatever the brain equivalent is of bodily autonomy.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? whyyyy would you ask someone this, it's like asking someone to pick a favorite child. the answer will change tomorrow, but right now I think it's the still-WIP sequel to Childish Things, A Twisted Thing Cannot Be Made Straight. It's got fun witchy!Stiles, buckets of angst but also lots of fun pack shenanigans in flashbacks, lots of me working out my own feelings about childbirth and raising children, ambiguous relationships, belated grappling with trauma, and also a satisfyingly bloody climax. There are some scenes there that still give me chills to read, and I wrote them.

@ragequilt I want to see yours!

[shortcrust]

Fic Writer Questions!

Thank you for tagging me @theburialofstrawberries​, here’s the fic equivalent of me talking like a food blogger before the recipe.

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

21, presently!

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

105,246, but I am the first to own that this in inflated a bit by works using in-line HTML, and includes that which I’m only a co-creator on. 

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

I think it’s very sexy of me that I keep dropping 1-2 fics into a fandom tag then vanishing into the night never to be seen again. The Terror is an outlier though. It just keeps happening!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The four instalments of my goofy Witcher AU, which are beating out my Cobra Kai fic by what one might call a substantial margin. 

Bonus! Split by hits, the four instalments of my goofy Witcher AU, which are beating out my Dirk Gently fic by what one might call a substantial margin. ‘‘like’ it or not’, the first one in the series, has 42,000 hits and hovers roughly at the 40th most kudos’d work in the tag. I sometimes think about that number in comparison to the population of the town I grew up in and feel very unwell.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

With the caveat that I just could not keep up with it for the aforementioned Witcher series; yes, always. Sometimes I need to sit on a comment and digest it a bit, but someone has gone the effort of forming what they liked about my words into their own words, and I want to honour that. Particularly how fandom operates nowadays, where it feels like one has to go out of one’s way to obtain the community aspect of fandom, I really adore being able to back and forward with other people who just like to create, and share, and enthuse about creating and sharing. 

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

My Terror ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ fic, for obvious reasons.

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

That outlier aside, everything runs the gamut between ‘that’s nice :)’ and ‘tooth rotting’. A few contenders here, but I think the Brokeback Mountain fic has to win for the extent that the depicted happiness is contrasted against the source material.

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

Watch this space! Coming soon to a cinema near you!

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Only recently! And, turns out, it’s really fun! Who knew! I’m still not convinced that anything I’m doing is hot, but it’s pleasing to me, personally, and that is both enough reason to do it and, statistically speaking, an indicator that someone else out there likes it too, probably. 

In the spirit of more data viz, here’s a graph that roughly charts my consumption and production of erotic fanfiction over my lifetime:

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope!

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not quite, but I’ve had the absolutely bonkers privilege to have some of my works podfic’d! I’ve received the gift of a beautiful reading of my Ghosts story, as well as a number of treatments of the instalments from my Witcher series, including this podvid, which I think works particularly well given the visuals of the story! It really reflects the fun I had putting that series together. One day I’d love to do a reading for someone’s fic, because I’ve never felt more honoured and flattered in all my fandom days than hearing someone use their real time and real voice to read my works!

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

@theburialofstrawberries, tell me a time and place.

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

Too fickle to commit one to paper, but I will say that nothing has cooked my brain matter and rewritten my synapses quite so bad as the poly marriage I imagine the chief, his wife, and the marine biologist from Jaws having. Genuinely forget sometimes that didn’t actually happen.

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

Pour one out for the 15k gen Venom WIP that sits in my Notes app. Love you buddy. Sometimes open that note just to give it some fresh air

16) What are your writing strengths?

Vignettes, embedding character voices into the prose itself, the occasional turn of phrase that I will credit myself with being pretty snappy.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Long scenes! I became so used to vignette-style writing that I intentionally wrote a one-scene story as a challenge to myself and writing the glue between all the interesting bits was like sticking my hands in an oven.

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

I’m glad we’re moving away from the default ‘italicisation to show different language’, which can be othering; I think different ways of depicting language have a place depending on what you want to achieve. Does the POV character know what is being said? Is it important that we, the reader, in said character, presumably do not? I’ve learned a lot about portraying sign languages in my time learning BSL recently, which I’d be keen to put into practice one day.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I cannot recall which was first, but it was either the A:TLA fic where Katara helps Toph get made up all pretty for a party, the Teen Titans songfic where they were on an X Factor-style singing competition and people who commented got to vote people out each update, or, if it counts, Warriors roleplay. It all comes back to Warriors roleplay boards. Know your herstory

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I don’t love all my children equally, but I do love them all in different ways. I have a lot of affection for It’s An Institute You Can’t Disparage for being the thing that got me writing fic after a very long time just consuming it, but honestly, my recent self indulgent Terror affairs have just delighted me so much. I’m having so much just plain fun, again, and writing for a crackship is really putting one’s money where one’s mouth is about whole ‘I’m doing this for me’ thing. 

Tagging @ellisbarrow @anne-with-an-evangelion​ and @boilyerheid​, if you fancy it!

[letitrainathousandflames]

Hiya! I’ve seen you talking about ao3 a lot and up until recently I agreed with many of the posts you’ve been reblogging, but I think you have a little bit of a misinterpretation about why people r presently pissed off at ao3?

Sure, many people (perhaps even most) are angry for the usual puritanical reasons that you’ve been discussing, and I agree that for the most part fiction is fiction and idc what anyone does so long as I can filter it all out. You do you and all that.

But the most recent swell of criticism is bc ao3 has refused to take down rpf (real person fic) smut of minors—not fictional characters, real life children who happen to be particularly popular right now. The specific fic that spawned recent outrage is about a minecraft YouTuber/Twitch streamer who’s 16 years old, but obviously there’s many more which include his friends and other similar instances of rpf involving children.

I don’t think it’s a slippery slope to set the boundary at “don’t write about actual living children fucking” and to pretend as if this criticism of ao3 is equivalent those who want to wipe out all taboo topics or troubling fics involving fictional characters is just absurd. These are real people, real children, who are directly affected by people sexualizing them, especially if it’s left unchecked and allowed to happen more and more.

I hope you can understand where I’m coming from. Again, if this were just the same fandom bullshit over again, I’d fully agree with your opinion; I’m telling you this in the hopes of informing you more about the situation.

Ohh I didn’t know about this particular bit. First of all, let me just make it clear - that’s the most disgusting shit I’ve ever read - and I’m a die-hard “let people ship what they want” person. This sheds a new light on the whole thing.

Personally, i never liked the concept of real person fic. I see a lot of fics about bands like Rammstein where the members hook up and whatnot just as characters in fic do and not only it is not my cup of tea, it actually squicks me.

I wasn’t part of the Dan and Phil fandom generation but i do remember hearing about them being super uncomfortable with people shipping them, as I would be if I were a vlogging with my friend and people suddenly started writing stories about us falling in love/kissing/having sex ect etc.

The thing is, I don’t know if messing with the tags is even an effective form of protest - Ao3 already had a nearly finished, now released new skin that hides excessive tags. Anyway, that’s not the point.

It’s a complex situation. Older fandom people remember and dread events like the strikethrough - tons of stories lost forever because the “think of the children” crowd didn’t want anyone reading or writing smut fics about anne rice’s vampires or something, mainly driven by homophobia.

The Ao3 was built to be a space safe from censorship, and I, as an author of themes such as torture, abuse, gore, etc, am glad that my work won’t be suddenly pulled out thanks to their team of lawyers and their flexible terms of use. I believe that their issue with censoring these works is falling into a slippery slope of “ok so if you blocked rpf now you have to ban other ‘wrong’ content such as noncon/dubcon, abusive relationships, etc etc.” and then suddenly you can’t write anakin/padmé content anymore no matter how OOC bc he choked her to death in canon.

I have no answers for this particular conundrum. Like, me, personally, I would ban rpf. It’s in poor taste and there are actual living, breathing people whose lives could be affected by that. If I found a fic where someone had written my bff and I having raunchy, explicit sex, I would feel awkward being around them.

The whole ship-and-let-ship policy means - at least to me - “let people write what they want, these fictional characters are fictional and therefore they don’t care” and that argument just doesn’t hold up when it comes to rpf.

TL;DR (bullet points for easier reading):

Real Person Fiction is objectively harmful, character fanfic isn’t.

Yes, I get that being traumatized makes one want to write dark shit to process their pain. Been there, done - and still do - that. BUT if I write the billionth fic of Bucky Barnes getting tortured/maimed/raped there isn’t a real life Bucky who’s gonna read it and be grossed out of his mind or possibly traumatized. Thats the difference between fic and rpf

I don’t think fucking with the tags is an effective form of protest. No, I don’t know what is, but i have a few thoughts:

Maybe not giving reads, kudos or comments to this kind of fic is a start. Reporting these fics upon finding them outside of Ao3 (i.e: on twitter), too.

Report any and all attempts to send these fics to the kids themselves, they shouldn’t have to see/deal with this crap (seriously, have y’all learned nothing from the whole avengers mess, where ppl would send graphic porn art to the actors??), don’t do that shit! Aside from being abusive and gross, that’s a whole ass fucking CRIME. These are kids!!!

I guess it’s more or less this. I hope this gets sorted out soon. As I say, I would rather if Ao3 just removed the rpf option of their website. After all fanFICTION is supposed to be written about... well, fiction. Not real people, much less children. Yikes.