#thank u to all the fic writers who’ve helped me so far and to all of u will surely do so as we leave this series behind

[phoenixfeathersinfall]

I don’t mean to be overly negative, and I certainly don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the new Trek trailers/future content. But, I’m having some complicated feelings about Picard’s last season and I kind of need to get them out. (I hope I’m not the only one with apprehension?) To be clear, I will be engaging with Season 3 in some capacity, and there are several things about the show I’ve very much enjoyed. But, I really don’t see how they can stick this landing given the situation they’ve gotten themselves into.

Most of my concerns revolve around the Great Cast Reshuffle. The rest stem from the tone/themes of the trailer itself. (Analysis under a read more because this got way longer than I planned.)

The Great Cast Reshuffle

Soji, Elnor, Rios, and Agnes are gone, leaving behind only Picard, Seven, and Raffi. Raffi is the only new character introduced specifically for this series/not a “legacy character.” I’m all for seeing old favorites (God knows I primarily started following the series for Seven) but not at the cost of new characters and stories. I think, despite its tonal and plot issues, Picard had a very strong cast of characters who many people connected with/related to and wanted to see them carry this show through to the end, becoming part of a rising generation of Trek (the Trek renaissance if you will?) One of the most compelling aspects for me personally was that all of these characters were a little broken/had endured a lot of trauma, but they were all dealing with it in different ways and learning to find solace in each other. They weren’t the conventional Starfleet crew, but that something which made them interesting! And to toss out over half of them going into the last season? We’re at the finish line! Absolutely terrible timing. These characters and the actors which dedicated so much time and effort to bringing them to life for us deserved better than that.

Everyone was replaced with the old crew from The Next Generation. Again, it’s always nice to see old friends, but they need to be balanced with the new characters and shouldn’t completely take over the story. TNG has never been my favorite series (full disclosure: I prefer Deep Space Nine and Voyager,) so I don’t quite share the excitement of the avid fans at this development. Even laying that aside, this is not the cast that was promoted and promised for the series. We know Patrick Stewart was clear coming into the role that he didn’t want to re-hash or expand upon anything from TNG era because he felt those stories had already been told and concluded. (They have!) But now he’s helming what many have called “TNG 2.0.”

But! Legacy characters aren’t safe! This might be more important to me than it is to other people, but it strikes me as weird that all of the XBs aside from Seven (Hugh and Icheb) were killed off for shock value, both in especially brutal ways. These were the only people in the galaxy that were like Seven and could understand her. Hugh was trying to change all that, but the writing said “no.” Color me upset.

If we’re doing legacy characters, where is Seven’s family? Why has every single reference to them been colored by trauma or pain? Why has Seven been abandoned again? Rangers are secretive as part of the job, sure, but you can’t tell me she didn’t need support after she came back to a planet she’d never really known as a visibly “enemy other,” Starfleet rejected her, Bjayzl betrayed her, and Icheb died in her arms. You can’t tell me the crew just..doesn’t care how Seven is doing.

A lot of the TNG crew have already had their turns to play a part in the story. To date, with what’s aired so far, we’ve had appearances from Data, Will Riker, Deanna Troi, Hugh, Guinan, Q, and Wesley Crusher. Jean-Luc Picard is, of course, heading the whole thing, it’s his show. Heck, that means the only characters we haven’t seen are Beverly Crusher, Geordi Laforge, and Worf.

As many people smarter than me have pointed out, the new situation means that the optics of the third season in terms of diversity are…less than stellar. If we consider the group we saw at the conclusion of the first season to be the “main crew” (Jean-Luc Picard, Cristobal Rios, Agnes Jurati, Raffi Musiker, Soji Asha, Seven of Nine, and Elnor) Picard began the year with a cast of three white actors and four actors of color. Michelle Hurd (Raffi) is Black, Isa Briones (Soji) is mixed-race Filipina, Evan Evagora (Elnor) is Māori, and Santiago Cabrera (Rios) is Hispanic (Chilean.) Three of those actors have departed, leaving only Hurd. This was presumably to make room for six of the TNG cast, four of whom are white actors and two of whom are actors of color. Lavar Burton (Geordi Laforge) and Michael Dorn (Worf) are both Black. Voyager, which began airing over twenty-five years ago performs better here, with four characters of color, each of a different background. This is particularly troublesome given the Trek renaissance eagerness to reflect greater diversity (and market itself as such.)

This is again a matter of personal taste, and something the show has had a problem with from the beginning, but of a cast of eight characters, only two are non-human*, and one of them is hybrid who looks completely human. It’s….just not Star Trek if it’s all humans, folks. Where’s the cross-cultural explorations? Where’s the commentary? Where’s the reminder that this is a sci-fi in outer space in a very big, very diverse galaxy?

Tones and Themes

Another problem since the beginning, Picard has problems figuring out what its tone wants to be, and to some extent what its themes are/if they’re congruent with the history of the franchise. Historically, Star Trek is often whacky to the point of silliness, philosophical to the point of over-dramatic, and optimistic to the point of being campy/cheesy. And that’s good! Bad things happen, but we have fun along the way, and we trust that things will turn out well in the end. Picard falls into the “good show= quote on quote realistic show=gritty grimdark high stakes show” trend when it isn’t careful. Newer Treks on the whole seem to have this habit, from elements of the reboot films to the plots in Discovery to the “Section 31 show” in pre-production right now. It’s not isolated to Trek either; it’s spread like a virus across so many forms or media over the past several years. Even so, it feels particularly odd in Trek, given the general trends in the franchise, and harsher critics say it “doesn’t feel like Star Trek.” I think what they mean is that Picard (and its brethren) seems to take itself too seriously: we’re lacking the whimsy we’ve come to expect, so little time is afforded from the overarching plot that we don’t see as much on-screen relationship development as before, and almost nothing funny happens aside from the occasional sarcastic quip. There’s no release of tension between major plot beats, leaving viewers stressed and drained by a constant push forward to the high-stakes climax with ever-more hardship poured onto the pile. There’s no room to breathe. Where’s the fun, where’s the wonder, where’s the hope? For God’s sake the event that kicks everything off is the destruction of a planet and the deaths of millions of people while the Federation stood by and let it happen.

The tone shifts —sometimes dramatically—between seasons, between episodes, and even within episodes. The plots and subplots also don’t gel together well (maybe it’s all those cutaways? It’s rare that we can finish one segment of a given plot before we cut away to three more.) Irs emotional whiplash, and I’m dizzy just on a visual level.

This may be a case of just playing up the intrigue to pull people in, but the trailer itself doesn’t give a lot of reasons to hope things might lighten up? Everyone looks sad or grim. People are talking about sacrifice, hardship, and injustice. Picard says we’re never without hope but uh…he sure doesn’t look it.

Even more people smarter than me have pointed out that Raffi’s “You have no idea how hard it is to be in this world” is particularly gut-wrenching, and she’s been through quite enough already between the loss of her career, her falling out with Picard, her addiction, her estrangement from her family and subsequent fears of being abandoned/alone and unloved. Then she spent almost the entirety of season 2 mourning the death of Elnor, a surrogate son by all appearances, and believing it was her fault because she convinced him not to go back to Romulus when he was having doubts about the future. There was also quite a bit of discord between her and Seven in the middle, which resolved happily in the end, but still. Seven got re-assimilated and almost died first. Given Trek’s track record of giving the harshest stories to minority characters, especially POC (and how wider media in general shows the same problem,) it’s no wonder there’s speculation about “trauma porn.” Its not like we got enough of that in season 2. Yes we did, writers please stop this ride .

I must return to my dear Seven. So season 2 showed Seven was rejected by Starfleet for her Borgness and subsequently fell out with Janeway. It brought her to a timeline where she was the leader of a totalitarian regime, brought her face to face with a Borg Queen who remembered her, took away her Borg physiology and by extension some of her sense of self (she seemed happy but I was not), murdered one of the first people to show her kindness in years, put her at odds with her partner, gave her flashbacks to her lifelong trauma, cost her a crewmate/friend to the Borg, and put her in a showdown that she didn’t think she’d survive. And it ends with her almost bleeding to death, being reassimilated, and what sure looks like the destruction of her family for a third time given the casting changes. Thank goodness she got a girlfriend, a kiss, and a field promotion out of it. In addition to sporting a Starfleet uniform in the trailer AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, she speaks with a quivering, almost broken voice about how she “thought she could inspire people and bring justice to an unjust world.” Trek again has a problematic history of putting marginalized characters (women with ambition, aloof demeanors, nuanced relationships with femininity/its expectations, and oft-traumatic pasts) into devastating circumstances/suffering huge loss to remind us they can be “properly emotional women.” (See: Tasha Yar, Kira Nerys, B’elanna Torres, and T’pol.) In-universe and among audiences, Seven fulfills those hopes many times over (there’s a reason so many queer, neurodivergent/disabled, and otherwise-“othered” people love her.) Seven can be an inspiration and a fighter for justice. She has. I know because she’s done it for me.

To make an extremely long story short: I want MY cast back and I want them to be HAPPY!

*Whether or not Seven is human, alien, or something in between is a matter of interpretation. My preferred reading is “hybrid,” but I counted her as human for the purposes of this post.

[randomcanbian]

(re: Fandom Meme) B, D, N, P, R, Y ??? (also if you feel like answering T again about anything else pls do (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) (also let the record know that your first answer was *chef kiss* wonderful and should've been canon imo (╯▽╰ ))

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Felix x fem!Byleth from FE3H... I thought it’d be the same as f!Dimileth (the fandom version of it at least) where the man is like ~~ohhhh I’m a monster I’m so broken ahhh I push people away and go on berserker rages because of my tragic backstory~~ and the woman has to be gentle and kind, the epitome of femininity (despite being a mercenary who had been trained to kill since she was 11...), basically put himself above her on so many levels and the onus is on her to ~~fix him~~~...but apparently not??? The fancontent is so gorgeous and has them as equals, both lonely people who’ve had their childhood taken away from them, both who’ve closed themselves off from the world (or in Byleth’s case, has never known how to open herself up to it), both of them seeing themselves in each other, both taking it upon themselves to meet each other half-way and from thereon help each other process their past and walk forward into the future...damn man, the kinship and the partnership in this ship... (also it really helps that 1. Felix is awed at Byleth’s swordsmanship and tactical mind and pushes himself to surpass it, forming a foundation for a healthy rivalry 2. the fandom does not forget that Byleth is her own person and not just Felix’s partner *cough* Dimileth *cough* Edeleth *cough*)

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t

Hmmmm well sometimes I wished (in general) that I could actively ship mlm couples, just because there’s so much content for them :)) (don’t get me started on how fandom gravitates towards male characters and mlm ships...lmao someone way back then gave me the excuse that it’s because the actual creators put more effort into their male characters and that they end up becoming more complex and interesting and like *looks at my fandoms where there are just as many girls as guys, just as interesting (if not more so) backstories and dynamics and interactions for the female characters, looks at the sheer number of mlm shippers in those fandoms who squeeze the most out of every insignificant moment for their male characters while ignoring the depth and complexity of the female characters* sure)

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Glee

1. Fanfic with more “out-there” ideas :)) (Don’t get me wrong, there are fanfics that fall far from Glee’s high school/young adult/modern-coming-of-age setting, and even for fics that do fall under those spheres there are some that deal with complex, intricate themes in such an incredible manner or even if not that are just plain enjoyable but like,,, there aren’t enough for my ever-expanding hunger HAHA)(my last couple of fandoms were dark fantasy/sci-fi/whatever The Good Place is so I guess I just got spoiled lmao)

2. More analytical thinking LMAO I guess it just frustrates me that there are so many people in the fandom who take things at face value??? Given how biased the writers are and how shit they are at continuity it really doesn’t make sense to me that so many people take things so literally haha

3. More fanart unu I totally understand though that the fandom isn’t as big as it once was but a girl can dream, you know?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Something that I had wanted to write for Brittana (since 2012!) but never had the brain cells to: a sailor!AU where the characters live on a flat world and they’re trying to sail towards its edge (encountering so many mythical beasts and legends on the way) (may or may not be inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader haha)

Special mention to this AU since I've used for at least three fandoms by now haha: Pygmalion&Galatea!AU wherein one character creates a statue and her love for it brings it to life :)))

R - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships

LMAO I went through Bae Doona’s body of work (what was available of it at least) in 2015 and ended up shipping her character Park Hyun-nam with her best friend (Yoon Jang-mi) in 플란다스의 개 (Barking Dogs Never Bite)...I wrote a very small ficlet of them (I literally had to create the section for them in ao3...and lmao I just checked and I am still the only fic in there HAHA)(please don’t look for my account btw all my fics are so self-indulgent and atrocious huhu) and I also made this gifset of them :))) As far as I know I am literally the only one in the entire world who ships them HAHA

Similar story for her character Ri Bun-hui in 코리아 (As One)...although honestly if it turns out that a decent number of people have seen this movie I’d be surprised that no one else shipped Bun-hui with Hyun Jung-hwa??? Because they??? Tennis table rivals from North Korea and South Korea who have to team up to win at the Olympics??? Jung-hwa trying to get Bun-hui and her team to loosen up??? Them becoming closer??? When the Olympics are over and the North Korea team have to go home, and Jung-hwa chases after the bus and tries to reach for Bun-hui’s hand, realizing that they might never see each other again??? I??? (Just...I had to make this gifset of their hands: when they first meet each other, when one takes the other’s for comfort, the last time their fingers will ever touch...)(Also let’s ignore that it’s a re-telling of real life event akjsndaskj haha)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all

(Thank you roseate ;u; I’m glad that you agree and are interested with my headcanons ;o;)

Santana’s a trivia nerd and is the type to deep-dive down Wikipedia pages which is why she makes all those obscure references :))) (Also a more specific version of this headcanon, not something that I’d die defending but like,,, something that I won’t let anyone take away from me lmao is that she’s a TV/movie buff, dabbles in comics (specifically, DC and follows character like Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey, Poison Ivy/Harleyquinn, Batwoman, and Renee Montoya), and started getting a little into theater/musicals after spending time with Kurt and Rachel :))) She also has a record player back in Lima and has a bunch of vinyl records back home (back in high school she’d play a couple of slow songs and just slow dance with Britt in the privacy of their bedrooms uwu)(imagine this scene and this song playing in the background ;u;)

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

BTS, because so many of my friends are KPOP fans

Genshin, also because so many of my friends are into it

魔道祖师 (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) because my close friend fangirls over them so much and we just exchange anecdotes with me and Glee/Fire Emblem and her and TGDC

Critical Role and My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast because my gf is a huge fan of them :))

Not quite there yet, but I am looking forward to having Dostoevsky’s extended universe as a secondhand fandom HAHA

[drev-the-procrastinator]

1, 8, 12 and 52 for the writing thingy!!!

Look at me finally answering these after like a whole month lol

Thanks for the ask!

1. Tell us about your WIP!

Which one lol, I’ve got many of them. Too many. Really. That, coupled with the fact that I am a slow writer because I keep getting distracted and procrastinating (like with answering these asks,,,,) means that pretty much everyone on this site will die of old age before I finish like any of them :’D

Anyway, I guess I’ll give brief summaries of all of the… main ones. This is gonna be a long one, fellas! I guess in the order I came up with them? Or the order I’m pretty sure I came up with them in.

TT: My original story I’ve been low-key working on and reworking since… 2012…? It’s a fantasy story, and it is… way too long probably. Also needs a lot of work. Worldbuilding and character building and plot building… At the moment, I guess I could summarise it as, our world gets wrecked for some reason, and the main characters, these two girls, who got saved into another, fantasy world with like… a bunch of other survivors, leave the Earth-refugee camp and get tangled with like, politics? Of that world? Well, politics and then eventually like, a war type thing… I didn’t say it was good, and I did also say it needs a whole lotta work. I’m pretty happy with some names younger me came up with though! Also it has dragons, so. Yup.

Fantasy fanfic: I am very good with names, as you’ll come to notice. Anyway this is a.. Hetalia fantasy fic..? I came up with in, like, 2014. I’m not actively working on this one at the moment, but I would like to maybe write it one day, and my most beloved OC originated in this story, you may have seen me mention her in my tags? I haven’t managed to come up with a name for her, but I call her the Asshole Goddess, because she’s a goddess, and also an ass. So.

Anyway this one’s pretty cliche, and it’s like, an absurdly large cast of Hetalia characters ending up in a fantasy world, where a bunch of other characters, who’d gone missing earlier, have apparently been taken to? Then it’s a journey to find and get them back, friendships are formed and magical things are encountered, but uh oh! They’re mortal here and can die! And many do. You may note I was 14 when I came up with it, so. Well. It is quite edgy. Had some good concepts though!

Kingdom AU: Great with names, as I said. This one is also a Hetalia fic, because that is the fandom I’ve been stuck in forever, though mostly just because I’ve so many fics for it. This is the odd one out in my fics though! This is like, a royalty AU of an rp AU me and my friend made by accident one time? The RP, not this AU, this is all my invention. It’s really just for me and my friend, since it’s based on that strange RP and the main thing in it is like and OC x canon character ship? That’s also why it’s the weird one, I don’t usually have much romance in my fics because I’m not big on ships and just prefer gen stuff, but this one is like primarily romance? Lots of pining. And it’s very soft. And I love this AU with all my heart. It’s also got a whole lotta angst!

Basic plot is the more or less classic, kinda cliche, peasant girl goes to get a job in the royal palace to help her poor family and meets the crown prince, and they become friends, and slowly fall in love.. Except, well, this is weird also in that the end point isn’t them getting married or confessing their love or anything, that’s like...Maybe the midpoint? There’s also politics, kinda worldbuilding? It’s set in like a 1700s type setting, I think, And while it’s not really a fantasy world since no magic, it’s not like, a real world setting. Anyway, yeah, this is near and dear to my heart.

The Home Front Fic: This! This is the one I’ve been trying to work on lately! It’s about life on the Finnish home front during WWII, and yes this is uh, also a Hetalia fic. Sorry. Though to be fair with this one and the previous one everyone’s probably gonna be so OOC and the setting is so different they might as well just be original works lol. Anyway, it’s a human AU, and also had a lot of OCs for that reason because it’d be tough to make a story of this scope with like. Three characters.

Basically! Tino is a 8, soon to be 9-year-old boy living in the Finnish countryside in 1942. His dad’s gone off to war, as well as the farmhand they had at the farm, and his mom and grandma can’t take care of the whole farm by themselves. So when they hear a nearby factory and some other farms in the area are getting extra work force in the form of Soviet prisoners of war, they decide to ask for one, too. They get a worker, his name’s Ivan. It takes some time, since they’re technically enemies, right, but eventually Tino befriends him and slowly he kind of becomes a part of the family… But you know what happened when the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union ended in September 1944? :) Well, I’ll just say that Stalin did say “There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.”

This one also has angst. But it also has found family! I like it a whole lot, I wish I’d written it already, but I have been having such a hard time starting it. :(

That BNHA Fic: I can call it that because I’ve only got one so far! So this is a My Hero Academia fic, and hmm. I haven’t talked about it too much, but I do like it, even though my focus has been pulled back to the Home Front Fic again. I do wanna write this one!

So this is like a future fic? It’s canon divergent because some stuff happening in the manga rn is not gonna work with the plot, I guess it’ll diverge at least from like… all the New Year’s chapters? I don’t remember what the number is.

Anyway, the main character is Eri, who’s been going to like this boarding school meant for kids with volatile quirks. She wanted to go there herself when some years ago her quirk had gone bonkers, she thinks? Something like that, she doesn’t remember that well anymore, but anyway, she’s going to apply to UA! Just the Gen-Ed, her quirk isn’t any good against robots. She’d love to be a hero, though, she knows so many heroes and she just wants to help people, but her quirk is no good. :( Anyway she’s back in Musutafu for the summer break in her last year of middle school, and she meets Mirio and Aizawa at the train station, and they go around the town meeting everyone! In the entrance exams she meets Kouta, who for some reason doesn’t want to be a hero though he’s got a really good quirk for it, and he’s proud of his parents who were famous heroes! They both get into UA, and she manages to convince him to try to get into the hero course through the Sports Festival, and he does! She doesn’t get that far in the festival though, because even though she’s practiced using her quirk, she’s scared to use it on people when in battle and stuff. Anyway, she’s very upset about it, and when she tells Mirio about how she wants to help people, but can’t, because her quirk sucks, he gets this look on his face and later tells her that he knows someone who could help. They go to meet this scarecrow lookin’ dude, and oh wait, is that All Might?? Why’s he refusing to help her out from Mirio’s request?? And later, what’s this One For All Mirio’s talking about?? And whose kind arms does she keep dreaming of in her sleep??? 

So yeah. That’s the BNHA fic. One more WIP to go!

Space Fic: Back to Hetalia, and this is technically an older fic but I decided to someday actually write it just recently. So it’s my Historical Human AU No. 3. It’s based on a space facts video fact, where it said that in 1963 Kennedy had proposed the USSR and US go to the Moon together, and Khrushchev had been meaning to agree, but then Kennedy died and the plan was abandoned. This story idea was like, but what if they’d gone through with it? And then, because why not, what if they’d included other countries as well? And this WIP was born. It’d be like, the main characters would be representatives of their home countries, sent to take part in the program and they’d all be candidates for going to the Moon, but there’d be only 3 spots on the rocket so like, they’d kind of have to compete for the spots? And the ones that wouldn’t pass would take part in the mission on Earth. So then there'd compete, there’d be personal drama, their personal relationships would be affected by the relationships between their home countries, but overtime friendships would be forged, and they’d all just become… one big ole found family. A space family. A big ole found space family. And the Overview Effect would also play a part. This is kind of on the back burner, this’ll need lots of research and the Home front fic also needs a lot of it, so I’ll try to.. write that first, I guess? We’ll see.

So that’s all my WIPs. There are other fic ideas that I haven’t put much thought into yet so they’re not on the list, but yeah!

8. Do you have any writing buddies or critique partners?

I don’t have any one person who I’ve talked to about all of my stories, but I have discussed my stories with a few people! Both online and irl. I’m also on a couple discord servers that are for writing or where people talk about writing, even though for the most part I’m too shy to talk much on any of them ;u; But the people who’ve been awesome enough to listen to me ramble about my stories have helped me a lot!

12. Which story of yours do you like best? Why?

Aaaa, don’t make me choose between my children! ;__; I love them all,,,

Well, I am very fond of TT, since it’s my own original story and I’ve worked on it the longest… Then again, the Kingdom AU has a lovely aesthetic and those two pining idiots in it… But also, that BNHA fic has some really nice plot and character moments? But also I’ve spent so long researching for the Home front fic and it’s got my boys in it! And the atmosphere in it is so nice, and it has found family,,, But then also… Space??? And even the fantasy fanfic has the Asshole Goddess in it?? And a nice storyline with Liech?? See I can’t choose ;_;

To be fair, the story my dumb brain takes interest in changes every now and then, for example lately I’ve been mostly thinking about TT, the Kingdom AU and the Home front fic, so I guess those would be my favorites at the moment? But a couple weeks ago I was really into the Space Fic, and at the start of the year it was the BNHA fic. So it depends! But I do love them all.

52. Who do you write for?

Well, primarily probably for myself. I do often find myself in a situation where I’m looking for fics or books to read but none of them really click, and then I realize I’m looking for my own story. Which I haven’t written. So that’s definitely a big one! Then, to some extent, I also write for the people I’ve rambled about my fics to, so they might maybe someday get to experience the whole thing through something other than just my ramblings :’D But mostly for myself, I think.

Thanks for the ask again and sorry for taking so long!

[lassieposting]

Hi, can I ask for an advice? I've been drawing some Harry Potter Au Skulduggery Pleasant fanarts (which house would they be in, which grade are they, are they pureblood/halfblood/muggleborn, which lesson are they good at etc.) and it was really fun. I kinda want to post them but it's not digital, this would be my first post and I'm really shy. Like awfully shy. It's not really good either. Do you think I should post it? Sorry if I'm bothering.

Hi there!

Okay first off, I’m delighted that you value my opinion enough to come to me about this? Thank you?! But also please bear in mind that I’m not an artist. My contribution to this fandom, my headcanon posts, consist mostly of me smashing my face into the keyboard while howling about valdug, and I’d imagine that is? Not really comparable to the amount of time and effort that goes into producing An Art.

That said, I definitely think you should post it.

“It’s not really good.”

Personally, Harry Potter AUs aren’t my jam. But I guarantee you that no matter what you post, multiple people in this fandom will love it, and love you for sharing it. It’s okay that you don’t think it’s very good. But remember that we’ve got so many artists in this fandom who’ve all got their own distinct styles. Some are more experienced than others. Some have styles I like, but others hate. Some have styles I hate, but others love. The thing they have in common? Someone appreciates every single one of them, and they’ll appreciate you too.

“It’s not digital.”

Okay. I kind of get why that might worry you. Out of the artists I personally enjoy in this fandom & see on my dash on a regular basis, the first three that come to mind are @umbraljxrk, @electropath and @franklystudios, and they all (as far as I’m aware, like I said, not an artist) do digital art. Most artists seem to do digital art these days. 

But you know who does traditional art? @mooncactus. and it’s gorgeous. it kills me. It’s totally okay if your art isn’t digital, too! U gotta do your own thing, my good bitch.

“I’m really shy.”

I used to be so shy, my dude, u wouldn’t believe. I basically never interacted with anyone until I started posting headcanons and? People seemed to actually like them? And people would respond to the posts or come into my inbox and tell me what their headcanons were and before I knew it I had a pretty big circle of people in this fandom who I talk to, who regularly respond to or reblog my posts, etc

My experience is that when you share content you create, people will like that content and want to interact with you. And for all that this fandom has its shipwars and its bitching, compared to other fandoms I’m in I’ve found that this one is actually a really friendly, sociable space. This is a good place to learn to stop being shy. 

“It’s my first post.”

Everybody gotta start somewhere, bby! Every artist in this fandom once posted their first post, and kept posting. Same goes for every fic writer, every aesthetic maker, every hoe like me that drops shitposts in the tag on a constant loop. 

Anyway. I’ve probably gone way too deeply into this but? The point is: yeet that shit into the tag, because you spent time on it and enjoyed doing it and someone is gonna fucking love it. Hope this helps!

[ktheist]

Hi🥺id like to justify myself if I may and maybe other people who love ur blog and work as much as I do👉👈I only like posts / works by authors until I read it and then I unlike it but keep authors post notifs on so I can see if any other work or post has been made🥺 I do it cause sometimes my likes get flooded too much :(((( but I’m always reading and supporting ur work and u I swear!!!!!🥺🥺🥺🥺

thank you for sending this and for your support on my work!! don’t worry about justifying yourself (i do appreciate it tremendously though) i understand some may like one fic and deem the other not their cup of tea. you did, made me understand a reader’s pov a bit better though! what i meant when i say likes/notes is the equivalence of how far my fic’s reached people which i will expound on later.

i just have a personal beef with tumblr’s algorithm, not the users, readers, writers etc. bc being a blog w an okay amount of followers but not a sustainable reader base, my traction lies in the visibility of my fics in searches/tags. i’m sure most of my readers who are following me now, found me through searches/tags as well. personally, i myself am more inclined to search up a tag and pick one out of the many fics that shows up.

ofc the readers who follow me would be more familiar w my work and more supportive but not all would be online at the same time when i drop my fic and i’m too lazy to reblog at another time later so the ones who missed it could see it on their time line lol. but even if i did constantly reblog, i don’t think i’d get as much read on my fic as i would if my fic reached non-followers in searches (bc as i said before, some followers may read it, some may not read it immediately, some just won’t at all - and that’s their choice!) 

but the non-followers who read my fic wouldn’t know my work or style prior to that, so i (hope) when they do read my fic that they found in the search, they’d be reading it without bias - that’s what i mean by gaining a readership as well as likes/reblogs (in an event that i get new readers who choose to stay).

i know i’ve probably preached about writing for yourself first and foremost. and right now, it doesn’t seem like i’m taking my own advice. but i’d say there’s definitely a standard set - especially if i look back on my past ‘achievements’. and i can’t simply lower it as though i wasn’t doing pretty okay and then dwindled to mere less than 20 likes (who i’m certain of are from my followers - you included, thank you btw!!)

at the moment, i’m just posting snippets to see if it’ll help me get back into the searches and talk to the staff about this (if nothing can be done, then i’ll probably leave for good oh well)

but please! don’t think i’m leaving because of the lack of support - i’ve receive an abundance of them and so much more. it’s just that the personal ‘records’ i’ve achieved here is what makes me think i should leave if tumblr’s algorithm is the one making me unable to keep achieving more. but truly, your support means a lot to me - and many other writers who’ve received it. please keep supporting writers the way you are now - you do you. and i support you  💕💕

[fanfictionlive]

I just put my flagship work on hiatus.

This was what I put at the end of my last chapter. I think it says it all.

No next-episode preview this time I'm afraid. As for why, well…

The reason I started writing serials in advance was partly so I could update regularly, and partly so I could buy time to write new stuff while posting. However, things haven't worked out as they should. That was how "The Belabored Bootlegger" was supposed to work, and it didn't work as planned if my nearly year-long absence was any indication. And I barely have a start on the first draft of the next serial, so things have already gone off the rails with that too.

Basically, my self-confidence, motivation, and productivity have taken a huge hit over the past year, and recent world events haven't helped. In fact, there are points where I've felt like a failure and a hack for not living up to my expectations. With this in mind, I have decided that I shouldn't keep your hopes up if what happened between this serial and the last one was any indication.

So as of this update, I'm sorry to say, I am placing Zeeplabor on indefinite hiatus.

For those of you who've enjoyed the story thus far, I'm sorry to leave you like this, especially in a time when everything seems to be shutting down due to COVID-19. I'm as disappointed as you are. If you want more Zootopia fics, I recommend looking at the works of ubernoner, Pandora, J_Shute, MamaSally, and the countless other writers who have been soldiering on with their writing in these troubling times.

Thank you all for bearing with me thus far, and I hope we see each other again someday.

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