writinglizards

[writinglizards]

writing is 10% storytelling and 90% rearranging three sentences for an hour like you're trying to solve an ancient curse

[writinglizards]

[writinglizards]

stop earning advanced degrees i need you to finish your fanfiction

[writinglizards]

Hello Mr. Boot, you appear to have been reblogged in sticker form on a city bus in Reykjavík, Iceland

OH MY GOD?

[writinglizards]

Image description: An author’s note on ao3 reading, “Brevity is wit but every time I edit this I gain 200 words. Sorry, Shakespeare.”

[writinglizards]

[writinglizards]

I'm not sure fandom babies understand how much info they generally get on fics on AO3. Especially the ones who complain about certain kinds of content. TIME WAS YOU COULD NEVER KNOW IF THERE WOULD BE SHIT YOU DIDN'T LIKE IN FICS.

Like, okay, take this header from a fic I loved in LotR fandom back in 2002, on the LotR forum/website I preferred:

That provides... essentially no info on what's actually in the fic, y'know? It's 6 chapters and appears to mostly be about Frodo and Pippin, and it's rated G, but other than that, take a risk, right?

Or take this header on Livejournal for a fic I posted in 2008:

This was actually an extremely in-depth fic header at the time. There were a lot of people who didn't bother adding notes, word counts, or even characters of focus. "Warnings" was an optional entry, and I only bothered adding it bc the fic had significant spoilers for an episode that had aired recently. There are other things I'd tag on it now, but those weren't "tagged" at the time by most people.

I'd show off an FF.net header but I can't actually get the site to load tonight.

Like, it was controversial that a fic challenge community I was in on LJ in '07 or so took down a fic someone submitted because they didn't warn for sexual assault. Because we had no rule about being required to warn.

And some of y'all bitch that AO3 allows thoroughly-tagged content that you can easily avoid and not accidentally read, and if you accidentally read it bc it's not tagged, you can REPORT it????

Nah. Fuck that and fuck you. AO3 should not censor content posted to it, but I have not seen a fic in YEARS that doesn't have more info about the content of a 100 word drabble than I would've ever given for a 4k word fic back in the day. Not because I specifically had bad habits, but because WE DID NOT PROVIDE THAT INFO AT THAT TIME.

Sorry just. I saw something earlier today being critical of AO3 and just. Y'all don't understand how good you have it. You really really don't. And on the one hand I'm glad that you always had this quality of tagging, but on the other fuck you for acting like it's not fabulously thorough for asking if there's common triggers in it.

[writinglizards]

Me when a character starts experiencing an agonizingly, Horrifically, painful transformation :

[writinglizards]

By reading my works you are signing an agreement that if you put my works through AI or repost my works or anything like that, i get to hunt you for sport

[writinglizards]

Sometimes when doing writing research you find a little factoid that isn’t right for tormenting YOUR blorbos, but it is PERFECT for tormenting a friend’s blorbos so you just drop the fact on their doorstep like a demented little present.

[writinglizards]

why is it always the fancylad boy-king type whos the bottom. maybe his tough loyal knight who uses his body to protect and defend him and lives to serve him wants to get railed

[writinglizards]

Some idiot: "Why are you reading your own fic, that's shallow and stupid"

All fanfic writers and writers everywhere: "Who the fuck do you think I wrote it for?!"

[writinglizards]

I think my favorite translation-related detail in the Witcher saga that separates the original Polish version from English lies in Geralt’s horse(s), Roach

He names all of his horses “Roach,” which in English, is a very grim-sounding name. It immediately stirs the thought of a cockroach, and it sort of fits the grimy dark fantasy aesthetic that the series has going for it, as well as Geralt’s personality as someone who likes to keep things simple and uncomplicated. He gives the name to every horse he owns, further adding to that.

Meanwhile, in the original Polish version, his horse’s name is Płotka, which to my understanding is a diminutive form of płoć, which is a type of fish, known as a common roach in English, which is actually a pretty small and common fish. It being a diminutive form, it’s also basically saying “Roachie” instead of “Roach,” so all things considered, it’s meant to be a tiny, adorable, cutesy name, but that gets completely lost in the translation. It’s like naming your horse “Guppy” or something.

[writinglizards]

Hardest part of writing is accepting that some people will not fucking get it & you just have to like cope with that because over-explaining it just makes it worse

[writinglizards]

idiots in love core

[writinglizards]

guy who wouldn’t even notice they’ve been sex pollened with all the repressed lust they’ve got going on

[writinglizards]

would he fucking say that? let's investigate.