qcity-blackbird:

thuriweaver:

kashmir1:

sheafrotherdon:

inconclusionray:

fic-rec-a-day:

mostlygoesastray:

msilverstar:

sheldrakus:

bedlamsbard:

tobeleftoutinthedark:

whatstheproblembaby:

The one fandom question I’ve never seen answered well: what is the difference between a drabble and a one-shot? I feel like it’s a personal opinion – for me, a drabble is anything under 1k words, and a one-shot is anything 1k+.

Thoughts/comments/etc?

Yeah I feel the same. Maybe 1500 words would be my cutoff point though.

Yeah, 1500 is about right, too. I’m mostly going off the “once you hit a triple digit word count, it’s a one-shot,” theory.

So like 10 years ago when I started out fandom in Harry Potter, a drabble had a restricted word count. 100 word drabbles were really common. But it could be 300 or 500 words. But the challenge was the perfect drabble word count. And then a one shot was anything that wasn’t restricted by a word count.

This was common nomenclature in fandoms about 10-15 years ago. A drabble was, specifically, a 100-word story. A 200-word story was often called a double drabble. I’m not sure when the terminology changed; I still think of a drabble as being exactly 100 words.

Ah, yes. A drabble was EXACTLY 100 words. And then suddenly one day I looked up and drabbles were 1000 words. The times, they are a’changing 😉

Gonna die on this fucking hill, but a drabble isn’t even a fandom term, and it has a meaning and a history, and it’s a hundred fucking words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drabble#History Damn it. Double damn it for 200. Ahem. (I fucking hate Jeopardy, but my mother loves it.)

Other lengths have variable definitions, depending on who you ask. SFFWA for the Nebulas are as follows:

  • Short story < 7500
  • Novelette 7500 – 17,500
  • Novella 17500-40,000
  • Novel > 40,000

And, of course, NANO uses 50k for novels. 

But unlike those, which were categories put into place for the sake of classifying existing shit, a drabble is a category designed around a word count as a challenge. 

Like I said: I WILL DIE ON THIS FUCKING HILL, IT IS ONE HUNDRED FUCKING WORDS AND I FEEL VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THIS.

Obvs.

::cough::

Carry on.

I’m joining Min for the Hill To Die On:

A DRABBLE IS EXACTLY ONE-HUNDRED (100) WORDS.

A DRABBLE IS ONE HUNDRED WORDS. I remember the pain of having to delete one word here and one word there to dial something down from 103 words and then getting…98.  And having to scramble to fit it into EXACTLY 100 WORDS.

One. Hundred. Words.

A drabble has 100 words, by definition, from the beginning.  It’s like a haiku.  The strict word count is the whole point. 

Ficlet is a lovely word for very short stories, and I hope more people would use it.

This hill is getting crowded; I brought some folding chairs for us Fandom Olds.

I was about to say, drabble is a measure of length, where one-shot is a measure of…

But, no, I guess one-shot is a length, too. i always thought of it more as a content measurement–one-shot means it’s done, no sequels or anything after. One-shot makes me think “complete” more than any particular length. 

I do remember drabble being under 100 words, though it also makes me think “scene” more than story.

Drabble is one hundred words drabble is one hundred words drabble is one hundred words drabble is one hundred words drabble is one hundred words drabble is one hundred words HEY GUESS HOW MANY WORDS A DRABBLE HAS IF YOU GUESSED ONE HUNDRED THEN YOU! ARE! CORRECT!

Ficlet is a lovely word, and a lovely form, and does not have a strict word count unlike a drabble which is one hundred words.

A one-shot isn’t defined by word count (unlike drabble which is defined as 100 words) but by existing whole and complete in itself, outside of a series or arc, implying but I think not necessitating a relative speed in its creation. (Flash fiction is wholly defined by speed of creation, generally in response to a deadline or challenge.)

A drabble, though? That’s one hundred words.

Oh my god, we’re fighting over drabble lengths again?  Fandom, never change.

I, too, choose this hill to die on. A drabble is 100 words EXACTLY. NO MORE. NO LESS.

100 WORDS

Ah, Hill. We meet again. Drabble is 100 words. Full stop.

Wow, I’m sure I saw this exact argument in 2005. That said, 100 words.

*inspired by that Obi Wan’s false sense of superiority post* What we need is an animated series about the psychologist who has to deal with these sentient tire fires. I mean, I’m a human tire fire and even I get help, these guys have no excuse. It needs to be filmed like The Office and as tongue-in-cheek as possible

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

jhaernyl:

librationpoint:

forcearama:

lurkingcrow:

albaparthenicevelut:

gargoyle-zoo:

darthluminescent:

forcearama:

darthluminescent:

forcearama:

darthluminescent:

forcearama:

Look I would pay real currency to watch a series of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s couples counseling. The angst and the passive-aggressiveness and the “I’m fine it’s fine everything’s fine” “NO IT’S NOT OBI-WAN NOTHING IS FINE”. Or individual Jedi counseling.

Better: I want to watch the documentary/mockumentary made by a GFFA psychologist who embeds themselves with the Jedi Order to better understand how they can all be so chill and collected – What’s their secret? How can we all learn, from their example, to embrace serenity in our own lives? – who eventually, as the documentary wears on, comes to realize that THE JEDI ORDER IS COMPRISED ENTIRELY OF EMOTIONAL TRAINWRECKS.

I am living for this now.  As @

devilangel657 said, the idea of a psychologist embedding themselves in the Jedi Order and having to listen to the stories of the stupidity the Jedi have to deal with every goddamned day in their roles as peacekeepers and later freeing worlds, would be amazing.

They’re so serene and calm and put together when you first meet them!  Then, like, a month later, “YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SHIT I HAD TO DEAL WITH ON BRENTAL.  LET’S JUST SAY IF I HAVE TO SEE ANOTHER FUCKING PIRATE I AM GOING TO SHOVE A LIGHTSABER UP THEIR ASS BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO SAY A GODDAMNED WORD.” blares through the Force, even when all the Jedi says is, “It was a difficult mission, but I believe it has been resolved to the best of my abilities.”

Obi-Wan and Anakin’s couple’s therapy is a disaster.  Sure, Anakin wants to talk about things!  Until the psychologist turns to him and tries to make him talk about what’s eating him and then NOTHING IS WRONG, EVERYTHING’S FINE, he says angrily, crossing his arms and glaring.

Obi-Wan looks at the psychologist, not a single hint of self-awareness on his face, like, See what I have to deal with?

YES. Little by little, all these things come out and eventually it becomes clear that A) the Jedi have to put up with a TON of the universe’s bullshit, B) there are a LOT of secret affairs going on, both within and outside of the Order, and C) there is a WHOLE LOT of trauma being actively repressed. 

I feel like Mace Windu would be amazing in this documentary series. The interviewer would be like “It sounds like you have a very difficult role, being responsible for so much in the Order. Would you agree?” and he just keeps staring into space like this: 

…before finally taking a deep breath and being like, “It is a noble calling, and one I am honored to take on.” 

Yoda cancels on his interview like 45 times, or pretends to be napping or dead when the guy shows up, because He Really Doesn’t Wanna Talk About This Stuff Everyone Knows The Order Is Just Fine Look How Well-Adjusted We All Are. 

Quinlan Vos does his interview from a bar, during which he becomes increasingly inebriated. His interview turns into him just bragging about various conquests or awesome parties he’s been to on undercover missions. Viewers love him.

Obi-Wan explains to the horrified interviewer that he really totally wasn’t traumatized by being sent away to be a space farmer when he was 12, or the fact that he once got a rock for his birthday, or that his Space Dad was murdered in front of him. And that things between him and Anakin are FINE. 

The two of them don’t realize they’re still mic’d up when they try to “discuss” things in the hallway in between filming after a particularly pointed on-screen argument. The resulting audio includes lecturing (Obi-Wan), dramatic yelling (Anakin), retreading of very old arguments (both), and eventually some mild dirty talk, which they vehemently deny later even though they both have mussed up hair when they return. 

Ahsoka’s interview is hilarious, since it is mostly just her telling stories about Anakin or Obi-Wan embarrassing themselves. She manages to come off as one of the most competent people in the entire show despite the fact that she’s like 15. She instantly becomes a favorite of viewer commentators on the Holonet. 

Some of the Clones get interviewed about what it’s like to work with the Jedi. This turns into all of them sharing “most insane thing my Jedi has done” stories, and it results in 157 hours of footage. They end up with their own series. 

Chancellor Palpatine also does an extended interview as one of the Jedi’s closest colleagues, in which he repeatedly has to take a break from filming because he keeps breaking out into inappropriate giggles as he discusses how insightful the Order is, and what great partners they’ve been for his administration in helping it to achieve its goals. 

I am crying at that screencap of Mace, that’s exactly the face he’d make.

“The Jedi aren’t perfect, we have our difficulties, just as anyone else in the galaxy does,” they all say.  “But we deal with them internally to the best of our abilities.  We’ve agreed to this documentary as a gesture of good will, we hope to reach out to our fellow Republic citizens and show that we are as human as any of you.”

What they don’t say is FUCK OFF WE DEAL WITH OUR PROBLEMS OURSELVES, but you kind of get that impression anyway.  And the first half of the documentary is this build-up towards the idea that the Jedi are totally fucked up, they’re all a bunch of lunatics who refuse to admit they actually have problems.

But then the second half of the documentary has, like, 300 hours of footage of the Jedi dealing with two warring clans on some Mid-Rim world, each willing to nuke themselves into orbit just to spite the other side, and the Jedi have to deal with literal tantrums from political leaders at least once a month and they have to see politicians living these ridiculous lives of luxury, they have space caviar flown in specially hand delivered while ¾ths of their world are literally starving in poverty, and still have to smile and make nice with said politician because otherwise they won’t be able to get this trade agreement signed that will help the rest of the world, and all the while they’re not allowed to scream obscenities or anything.  And you start to realize, oh, shit, I’d have gone off the deep end, too, if I had to deal with that every day of my life.

The documentary works in a roundabout way, endearing people to them–it shows the Jedi being human, that one time they caught Luminara Unduli making the most amazing bitch face, just for a moment, before she managed to smooth it back over.  They caught Obi-Wan Kenobi actually swearing one time!  They have at least an hour’s worth of outtakes of Anakin Skywalker flying around on his droid and crashing face-first into a wall or swanning off the top of the Temple and screaming when he misses the speeder Master Kenobi is driving to try to snag him the first time!

“It was a bit of a close call,” Anakin Skywalker says with a grin, “But I had it totally under control.”  (Smash cut to Anakin screaming and flailing as story after story of the Temple blurs by him as he falls while Obi-Wan zips the speeder around for a second try.)

There’s a collage of the Greatest Faces Ahsoka Tano Makes When Dealing With Republic Officials.  Almost unanimously, the face she makes when Wilhuff Tarkin turns away from her are voted as #1.

There’s also entire sites dedicated to gossiping about the love lives of the Jedi.  The HoloNet EXPLODES when Obi-Wan and Anakin are caught on mic making suggestive comments after their fight, because everyone thought FOR SURE Skywalker was involved with Senator Amidala, have you SEEN the way he makes cow eyes at her?  There are threads and threads of HA AH VINDICATION!!! from Obikin shippers and NO WAY THIS IS JUST PART OF A THREESOME shippers.

(Everyone, please forgive me this enormous reblog. I think you all understand I have no choice.) 

So, basically this is what’s going to foil Palpatine’s plans, isn’t it? He is kicking himself, because he actually urged the Jedi to do the documentary series in the first place, thinking that they’d come off as totally dogmatic, dispassionate weirdos and the Republic would be turned off, making it easier for him to push his “The Jedi Are Evil” spiel later. 

Instead, as the series wears on, everyone finds them oddly charming, and is overwhelmed by how hard they work and the good they do. There’s all kinds of forums set up for the inevitable Jedi Order Fandom as people nitpick every detail the show reveals. The gossip is out of control. Ahsoka can’t go anywhere without an interviewer asking her about the state of her “dads”’ relationship. Padme is hounded by the tabloids every time someone thinks they saw her out with Anakin somewhere (and OMG IS THAT A BABY BUMP??! WHAT IS OBI-WAN GONNA THINK?! Wait, is OBI-WAN the father???!). Hondo Ohnaka, of course, uses this as a chance to make some money, and is constantly trying to sell outlandish stories about his “friends” the Jedi to the tabloids.

 A couple of systems start petty disputes with each other just to get a Jedi and some clones to visit, and they start placing requests (”Can you guys send Luminara? We LOVE her, OMG. Also is Fives available?”) Even Yoda, who was hesitant to even participate, becomes somewhat beloved in his own right as the series’ grumpy, long-suffering grandpa, once viewers see how much insanity the poor guy’s been living with for hundreds of years. 

I am very sorry to everyone that this is making your dash probably a lot to handle today, but you have to understand that this is what I joined Star Wars tumblr for.

Palpatine is so gleeful at first, look how awful the Jedi look, even though he’s pushing that, oh, they work so hard and they’re so talented and amazing!  But then the memes start.  LET OBI-WAN KENOBI HAVE A NAP.  SOMEONE FEED THAT POOR CHILD AHSOKA TANO A REAL SANDWICH.  AND GET HER A JACKET SHE LOOKS COLD.  There are floating, spinning star crows attached to Anakin Skywalker’s head in holo pictures and vids.  There’s a picture of Master Yoda making a o_O face as he trips and it gets plastered all over the internet.  Mace Windu strikes a dramatic pose after a battle and it’s caught on holo, people splash motivational wolf-style quotes over the image. The most popular of which is, “WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU.  IS GOING TO DIE.” while Master Windu stands there with a >:| face and his lightsaber at the ready.

There starts to be knockoff Jedi merchandise.  Toy lightsabers are a huge hit! So many people are much nicer to the Jedi now and are like, “Are you comfortable? Can I get you a blanket?  You’ve probably had a hard day, here have a slice of pie, on the house.”

REQUESTING SPECIFIC JEDI.  Of course The Team gets the most requests (Anakin is initially pleased by this, but then there are people flirting with Obi-Wan. WHO IS FLIRTING BACK.  And knows exactly what he’s doing and keeps glancing at Anakin to see the effect of it because he’s a jerk who likes to rile people up.  NOT THAT IT’S WORKING, OBI-WAN.) but Shaak Ti and Luminara Unduli prove surprisingly popular, everyone just falls in love with them.  The clones, finally having the perfect audience for this, are MORE THAN HAPPY to tell everyone about the Most Insane Thing Their Jedi Has Done.  Rex and Cody are no longer allowed to participate, in order to give everyone else a fair shot.

There are fandom wars over whether the fact that Obi-wan flirts with EVERYONE makes the Obikinmidala three-way MORE or LESS likely. “Hello there” becomes code for “I am flirting with you now” overnight. Clone naming conventions start to become popular with new parents and teens get their hair/ hair equivalent styled like their favorite clone commanders.

On the political side, the average Republic citizen starts getting savvier. Seeing their favorite Jedi deal with these Senate officials and obstinate planetary governors, day in and day out, energizes populations to organize more effectively. The Jedi are unsure how to feel about this at first, but its nice to have the added leverage when dealing with particularly reticent political figures.

Elan Sleazebaggano (of Death Stick fame) is Obi’s biggest fan. After he gets his life rethought, he becomes a community organizer in the fandom, trying to do for others what his favorite Jedi did for him

Okay so there are so many things to love here. Mace Windu’s FACE, Yoda memes, Luminara Unduli’s Jedi composure slipping, Anakin and Obi Wan being actual human messes, Poor Ahsoka, the only sane person in a literal mad house, the clones… Can you imagine how smug Rex and Cody are?

Obi Wan: goes to do something hilariously ExtraTM.

Cody: Arms crossed casually, face completely blank. “Ahem”

Obi Wan: Looks at him… “If I do this, you’re going to tell the entire Republic won’t you?”

Cody: Raises eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Obi Wan: “Ah, well,” looks almost sheepish. “What do you suggest, Commander?”

Cody: Deadpan “You’re learning.”

But we are missing some hilarious potential here… So you guys know how bad Padme and Anakin are at pretending they don’t know intimate details about each other/covering their asses/being remotely subtle? Well, once a film crew is following Anakin around on a semi-regular basis, they get even worse.

For example, Anakin, Padme, Obi Wan, and Ahsoka are sent on a diplomatic mission together, documentary crew accompanying. They all board Anakin’s ship and there’s a lovely lace outer robe lying in a crumpled heap on the copilot seat from when Anakin and Padme made their last Dramatic Escape from a senatorial function (”I thought you said you were in danger?” “I was- a few more minutes and I’d have DIED of boredom.”) Anakin snatches it up and shoves it into his robes. 

“SO THAT’S WHERE I LEFT MY FORMAL ROBES. OBI WAN WILL BE SO PLEASED.” and then he turns bright red because he just implied that Obi Wan will be really happy to see him in a undersized, lacy robe, which is true but not the impression he intended to give the viewing public. Padme breaks a rib suppressing her laughter. The psychiatrist and crew just roll their eyes and wonder why they’re even keeping up the pretense of deception. 

Or, the crew just keep on finding mugs of half-drunk tea with lipstick marks in Padme’s distinctive signature shade 

”They’re Ahsoka’s,” Anakin blurts out. 

Ahsoka, who is there and not wearing a single smidge of lipstick looks at the camera, looks at Padme’s lipstick covered lips, looks back at the camera. Everyone turns to Padme. She looks around the ship. Anakin hasn’t cleaned it in months. There is exposed wiring from the last time Anakin started “improving” it and then got distracted. It smells like sweaty man and teenager and curry. 

“I really enjoy the ambiance?” She offers. “It’s very… relaxed.” A muffled snort comes from the vicinity of Ahsoka. Anakin, who is standing next to her, steps on her foot. Ahsoka punches Anakin in the shoulder, hard. Obi Wan folds his arms and does his only sane man routine, which the psychiatrist and the documentary team now knows is Made of Lies and Deception. 

This lasts until the team catches him sitting with Padme and Anakin in the cockpit, giving Padme a foot massage while Anakin drives. 

“It’s a Jedi’s duty to do what is needed.” He explains repressively. “The Senator had a cramp. I did it for democracy.”  

Despite all this fun it is a small subgenre of the Jedi fandom who end up having the greatest impact – the conspiracy theorists.

See, in among the “Kenobi is secretly a Space Siren”, “Skywalker is the avatar of entropy” and “the Jedi don’t die but merely change their forms and continue to save the galaxy under a new name” theories there are a smaller subset who are driven by the desperate need to uncover the truth of the war so that the Jedi can go back to spending more time with fans planets in need of their expertise. Everyone thinks they’re nuts. Until they don’t.

It starts as a post on a forum with user k3n0b15w00shyh41r ranting about how the war so obviously benefits the military industrial complex, and why has no one ever investigated Kamino for separatist links? User winduismygod93 points out that’s an excellent question, and wait a moment, why exactly were the clones commissioned in the first place? I mean, it was convenient, but could you really see masters Yoda or Windu authorising the creation of sentient beings for war? User 5tone9arden agrees – could this be a smear campaign? User masspalooza posits that it was a false flag operation by the Sith, and after a bit of digging user 5ith7i9ht uncovers the Sifo Dyas link – a known associate of the traitor Dooku? They’re on to something. User blankdayzii  is concerned about sabotage when user xxx_t4N0_xxx points out a strange bit of footage from the latest episode of “Craziest things my Jedi has done!!! – Series 3, of a clone looking suddenly disoriented and shaking his head while muttering. User y0dAts4w3sm obsessively scans footage for more case into a compilation holovid. But it is user shaak_pronounsaresirandgeneral_ti  who comes to the final conclusion: mind control. This is urgent! What if the Sith are secretly implanting sleeper agents into republic forces to shift the tides of war!!! It probably wouldn’t have gone any further, except user 0biAn1da7a689 turns out to actually be the Senator for a minor system in the Mid-Rim and raises the issue in open debate…

The Kaminoans rebut the accusations – some clones have occasional reactions to their aggression control chips! Which are perfectly safe from tampering because they put them in prior to deployment are you some kind of CIS sympathiser trying to undermine our brave troops senator?

Some reporter bails up the nearest Jedi for comment and oh, wouldn’t you know it? It’s General Skywalker! Here to see Senator Amidala for midweek nookie on Jedi business! Whose first response is “Chips? WHAT CHIPS?” followed by a litany of curses so vile even the reporter from the  Nal Hutta Tribune is impressed. After Anakin’s brain reboots he does what he does best and angrily descends upon Obi-Wan demanding they free the clones immediately!

And that is how Palpatine had a very bad day and the Jedi fandom saved their heroes from a future full of loneliness and sand.😉

(yes there are references to some of you in the forum bit – @forcearama  should be obvious but there are at least 3 more 😏)

People, I’m sorry this is a gigantic post now but I just want you guys to see this.

Am I the only one who remembers that time a padawan was whining about how Yoda doesn’t have any feelings and Yoda was like, “Excuse you, I have been burying loved ones for sixty times longer than you have been alive, lecture me about grief do not.” 

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

IT GOT BETTER.

In Praise of Lurkers

ivyblossom:

Dear fanfiction readers,

Thank you for reading. Please don’t stop! Click on that fanfic that looks like it might suit you right now; read what you want to. Leave kudos if you want to. Or don’t; if you don’t like what you’re reading, or you’re not ready to add your name or your thumbs up to that fic today, or ever, that’s alright. You aren’t required to. There’s no payment required for reading fanfiction. You’ve honoured us already but being willing to be become our readers in the first place. That’s more than enough, as far as I’m concerned.

Almost all writers enjoy and appreciate comments, and they always will. Comment where you’re moved to, and never imagine that your contribution won’t be welcome. But please don’t let anyone shame you into commenting on a fic where you’re uncomfortable doing so. Interaction in fandom should always be by enthusiastic choice, never through pressure, or a sense of owing the writer anything, or guilt.

As a fanfiction writer, I welcome comments and reactions from readers who feel moved to comment and react. I have learned a great deal from these interactions, and I will be forever grateful for them. But I would never want a comment or kudos on a fic to come from a place of shame, duty, or sense of obligation. If writing fics causes that kind of negative experience and harm to readers, I for one would certainly stop writing. There is nothing for me to learn from that.

The vast majority of any fandom is lurkers. Those of us who do the talking may not understand the drive to lurk, but it would be foolish of us not to acknowledge and respect this form of being fannish. Being out front isn’t for everyone, or it’s not for someone just yet. And that’s okay.

I cannot speak for everyone who writes, and I know many disagree with me. But if you are a lurker and you want to read fics and not kudos them, like them on tumblr, reblog them, or leave comments on them, you’ve got my support. Read on, lurker friend. Read on.

centrumlumina:

As part of the AO3 Ship Stats project, this list shows the 100 most-posted pairing tags on
Archive Of Our Own

in the period August 2016 – August 2017.

This list was created by comparison of current number of fics with data gathered for the 2016 AO3 Ship Stats.

There are 65 M/M pairings on the list, 18 F/M, 7 F/F, 6 Gen and 4 Other.
(Please note that on AO3, ‘Name & Name’ indicates platonic
relationships (Gen), while ‘Name/Name’ is used for romantic pairings.)

Of the 200 names on the list, 32 are women and 4 are characters of ambiguous gender, down from 34 and 7 in the 2016 list. 63 are POC, and 8 are racially ambiguous, compared with 49 and 15 last year.

For more information about the AO3 Ship Stats project, please check out the accompanying FAQs. You might also be interested in the All-Time Top 100 Pairings and the Femslash Top 100 list.

A text-only version of this data is beneath the cut.

Edit: Fixed race category for Otabek Altin.

Keep reading

ravenamore:

unpretty:

unpretty:

unpretty:

punsbulletsandpointythings:

unpretty:

today at goodwill i found a kirk/spock au where kirk is a lowly redshirt

Okay no but this book.

Do you know how fucking long I hunted for a copy of the first edition of this book? I can’t remember the specifics, it’s been ages since I read it, but in the first edition it had some line that was basically confirming Kirk/Spock that was removed after the first printing.

oh my god are you telling me i found a piece of fandom history and i had no idea

I AM BACK AT GOODWILL AND IT’S STILL HERE AND IT’S A FIRST EDITION WITH GAY STUFF???? IT’S A DOLLAR?????? I’M

it starts out with wholesome hand-holding and boyfriends worrying about each other

they’re in an au now and kirk is an angry ensign with a drug problem

“being the top felt weird and wrong”

SOMETHING STIRRED INSIDE HIM

no matter the universe kirk can’t keep his shirt intact

THIS IS WHERE SHIT GETS REAL Y’ALL I CAN’T

THE MIND MELD IS BARELY EVEN A METAPHOR

KIRK WAS ASKING FOR IT

aaaaaaaaaaah

this is the best dollar i have ever spent and yes that includes bearllionaire

I’d heard about this as some sort of fandom urban legend – everyone heard about it, no one seemed to have hard copy. Nobody was sure if it was some unpublished fanfic, a first draft, vanity press, whatever.

And it’s real.

Fanfic Author Gothic

bibliotecaria-d:

-You always have ideas. When you open a document, they disappear.

-You have a file full of ideas. It is lost. You open all your files and find hints of ideas mixed in between the lines. None of them connect. You follow them forever, deeper into the folders, until you can’t remember what you were looking for anymore. You end up reading fanfic until 4 AM.

-You’re not a torturer by profession. It’s merely a hobby. The sadism is a natural skill.

-Your fingers and wrists hurt from typing when you’re on a roll. You swear you’re not a masochist, but it hurts so good.

-Readers accuse you of causing them pain. You say you’re sorry, but you’re not. You comfort them while not-so-subtly digging for what caused them the most harm, eager to repeat the trick.

-Your friends enable you and laugh at your yelling. When you blame them, they claim they didn’t do anything. They never do anything. You no longer remember who started it, only that you’re halfway through the fic and still writing.

-You have a WIP. You swear you’re going to finish it next. It’s always next. There’s always another fic that has to be written first.

-Anonymous messages are sent to you, asking you not to acknowledge them publically. You know if you answer they’ll disappear from your inbox. Tumblr has eaten the Ask. Was it ever there in the first place?

-Someone comments on your fic. You have no idea who they are, but their username looks familiar. Every username looks familiar. You think you know them. They know you. It’s flattering, but you can’t shake the feeling that you should be alarmed by your poor memory.

-You reblog a writing prompt meme. It’s the same meme you reblogged yesterday. There are symbols instead of numbers, and you hope people will find them more interesting and send you more prompts this time.

-Promoting your own work is okay. You tell yourself this as you reblog yesterday’s fic post, tensely waiting for a rebuke that never comes.

-People laugh at something you wrote. You can’t figure out what. When you ask, nobody responds. They never laughed in the first place. You’re not sure you wrote anything.

-The fic is 50 hours long and 7000 words long; no one cares. A 10 minute speedwrite is reblogged into eternity.

-The kudos stack up. They are a solid block of names. You can’t read who left them. When you blink and look again, only 10 Guests have left kudos.

-Your inbox is full. There’s a comment on your fic. It has been edited 17 times. Six more emails come in as you read the initial comment. The numbers in your inbox climb and climb. You can’t find what’s been changed in the comment, but you can’t stop obsessively comparing each message.

-This comment is a book report. Glee and fear fill you in equal amounts.

-Someone apologizes for leaving a comment on an old fic. You can’t find who started the absurd rumor that authors don’t like comments on old fics. You plan their murder anyway.

-You eye your old username and associated fics. You pray that no one ever finds them. You resist the urge to tell people where to look.

-The fic is finished. You are dead. You are sick of it. You’ve never been so tired in your life. You hate the world. You force yourself to post it, absolutely exhausted, and suddenly can’t sleep for refreshing your inbox.

-The words multiply. You can’t control them. They eat your brain and come out your eyes. When people try to talk to you, you speak in snatches of character dialogue and narrate unconnected events. They keep talking to you, encouraging you to say more. The words own you now.

-No one believes you when you say the story is writing itself. You stare in despair at the screen. Why won’t anyone help you?

-You’ve misspelled ‘the.’ Autocorrect is wonderful until it’s not.

-Sleep is for the weak. You dream you’re still writing.

prokopetz:

Degrees of secondhand fandom:

  • I don’t watch/read/listen to it, but I follow the summaries on the wiki
  • I rarely pursue information about it, but I have enough incidental contact with the core fandom that I’ve picked it up via osmosis
  • I strive to avoid it, but I’ve been indoctrinated against my will by the fucking memes
  • I can cite the canon chapter and verse, but I have no recollection of how or why I acquired this knowledge, and that concerns me

transformativeworks:

porcupine-girl:

starrysummer-nights:

I hate when people who are new to a fandom/ship ask for fic recs and are IMMEDIATELY shut down by someone snarkily saying “Just go to AO3 and search then filter by kudos duhhhhhh 🙄”

Because that’s a fucking stupid way to find good fic.

Because sometimes, the most kudo’d fics??? Aren’t the best fics. Or even the most in character or canon-compliant. They’re just the fics that have been around the longest, that were written while the fandom was still young and the show new and these are the “fandom favorites” but they may not be all that great.

I want the fic that has half those kudos but spot on characterization that I wouldn’t find by searching for the “most kudos”. I want the fic that hasn’t gotten that much love and you’re screaming by the time you get done because holy shit!!! What an amazing fic!!! I want to hear what someone else liked and why. I want to take the path less traveled when it comes to fic because that is new and exciting and a breath of fresh air and a new take that, unfortunately, no one reads because when people look for fic, they go by kudos.

So yeah. Rant over.

Also annoying when people make rec lists that might as well just be a list of the top 10 most-kudos’d fics, and every single rec list looks exactly the same.

If you’re going to bother with a rec list, either go with a specific theme (not just a pairing, especially if that pairing has more than like 1000 fics for it) or try to rec stuff that you think deserves way more kudos/hits than it already has.

And as for just browsing in AO3, I like to pick a kudos threshold (500, 1000, whatever – type “kudos>500” or whatever in the “search within results” box) and sort by date posted. That way you see the stuff that didn’t just spend three years slowly accumulating kudos by virtue of existing, it burst onto the scene and people loved it so much it shot to the top. Either that, or I look for stuff with not many hits but a good number of kudos per hit – so, say, (for zimbits, which has a higher kudos/hit ratio than Sherlock or SPN, so you’d have to adjust for those fandoms) “hits<2000 kudos>300” to find stuff that hasn’t gotten much attention, but the people who did read it liked it.

AO3 searching tips! ❤

jerseydevious:

ricobrzenskas:

hypocean:

deedeedeebee:

I usually have two or more sets of headcanons with characters
Headcanon A: what I think realistically
Headcanon B: what I think is fucking hilarious

you forgot
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

#option D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

new game: send me a character and i’ll give an example of each