AliKer

(This ask made me check how long it's been since I uploaded chapter two and goddamn. three years. i feel sick)

It's really nice to get an ask about Destination, thank you. I am definitely still interested in finishing it, the only reason I haven't is because it was my depression fic and I am doing much better now lol. I do have 4k words already written of chapter three, but it's not even halfway done so. It might be a while before I can upload anything.

First is that I'm not dead. Shocker I know.

Second is that despite being alive, I haven't exactly been living recently. Nothing particularly bad has happened, but I've always had shit mental health and it's been kinda Bad for a little while now. I'm coping and I'm trying, but I am, ultimately, not at my best and haven't been for some time.

Third, the reason I've not been posting any fics is because I've actually been writing original fiction. I've not talked about it on here (or many other places, admittedly) but I'm primarily writing a fantasy series. It's been really hard to write fanfic, because I'm writing so much other stuff.

I'm at a point with it where the first book is maybe as good as I can make it. I've been working on getting an agent list together, learning about querying, trying to get myself to a point where I'm able to actually do the querying.

I don't know if it will lead anywhere, but I figure that I should try and that I should probably talk about what I'm doing so that it's not complete silence on here. I keep thinking that I shouldn't talk about it, and I think it's an arbitrary rule which is actually holding me back. I might talk about it some more at some point, but even this post feels like A Lot.

I need an angst version where Scout doesn't make it—

hey you posted this on anon so i don’t mind making this the effigy for me being pretty annoyed about something on main

just to be clear, you came into my inbox asking me to write… 60k or so words, based on a different fanfiction i already wrote almost a decade ago, as just sort of a casual ask, phrased as “i need this”. my curiosity is why you don’t, for example—i mean this constructively—go write it, then? chop chop.

i like writing. i do. getting asks in my inbox with requests and ideas and concepts has been fun for me over the years. warms my heart. im really not asking you to suck my dick, here. but i’ve noticed a growing trend that will of course infect older fandoms last, where people will hop into the inbox of someone and just sort of go “hey, can i have xyz?”

can you make a fic of xyz happening?” you just did that yourself. you just wrote a fic in your mind. have you thought about… making it? just. writing it? you can just write it. you have the ability to do that. “it won’t be good—“ arguable. try writing it.

most egregious to me is always for visual artists. “hey can you draw xyz?”, while that person’s commissions stay open, while that person reblogs their friends’ open commission sheets, while people everywhere are running discounted commissions to fundraise out of a bad situation. but, hey, for me, though? free? i don’t want to so why don’t you?

stop it. over the years people have written fics inspired by my stuff (i love you all very much), and some have been so direct as to rip the premise entirely, and i say more power to ‘em! go write an alternate ending and post it on ao3. that’s fun. that’s community. that’s what fandoms are built off of. we’re already doing fanwork, for god’s sake. go make stuff. get out of people’s inboxes asking “when will your comic be done”, “when will your next animatic be up”, “when will there be more content, i want to consume content, give me content”. go make shit. you’re bored. pick the pen up, open the notes app. write directly in your drafts. i don’t care.

kid, i’m not mad at you. i don’t care. seriously. from the bottom of my heart, i mean this, you seem pretty young and this is not a finger waggle, im taking a knee to get at eye level and putting hands on your shoulders. i am Not Mad At You. It’s Fine. this isn’t an indictment or a dressing down, this is a directive. this is an instruction. go make shit!

you have ideas! you have concepts! rip stuff whole cloth and shuffle in things you like and post them as fanwork saying “hey this other thing was cool and i wrote a thing just like it”. ao3 has that feature! it’s great, it’s fun, it’s flattering! it’s fanwork, go have fun, go play! get out there!

this is a deep cut—im digging deep for this—one of my earlier fics has a series of lines that is quoting word for word from a different fandom’s fanwork because my friends in fandom showed off the fanwork in question and went “hey, what about with these characters instead?”, and i adapted it thusly. the concept of most tropes is to do that exact thing—take the same episode of the sitcom and shuffle in characters of choice. go do that! people do that because it’s fun to do and fun to read!

i’m not mad at you, i’m telling you, go do that! get deep in the paint! write it! and don’t be self deprecating, it can be as boring or as off the wall or as linear and graphical or completely mad libs unhinged as you want, who cares? i’m currently writing as a fun side project an in-universe arts and food review magazine in a setting i’ve made because i thought it would be funny. it is OBJECTIVELY incredibly boring. the point is that it’s fun for me to DO and i’m building muscles as a writer by doing it.

the fic this ask was originally about? i started doing it in the first place to practice writing descriptions without relying on visual cues by having it be limited POV for a character who was newly blind. i didn’t even start posting any of it until some friends of mine read it and talked me into posting it so they could share it more easily than me emailing it or physically gathering around the school computer. this stuff is for fun and for practice and for making your friends laugh or whatever combination of those. rip the whole fic if that’s helpful to you, i posted it for free on the internet! different authors have different opinions, but i don’t think anyone would be rightfully offended if you like their fic so much you base one off of their premise. IT’S FANFICTION WE’RE ALREADY DOING THAT IT’S FINE

I wrote a Sniper/Pauling fic and someone wrote the exact same premise but with Spy/Pauling instead. And I was happy about it! I was not angry that they did this. It was really cool to see evidence that I inspired someone that much (particularly bc I was absolutely not going to write Spy/Pauling myself (no hate, just would never have occurred to me)).

so

[fics linked under the cut]

(ideally read from the first page, here) page 5 & 6 out of 6