Fangirl posting

it’s not weird to love it and comment and leave kudos because the author will probably still see it someday and it will make them happy.

it’s not weird to like said author’s work so much that you want to go look for other fics from them.

it’s not weird to go through the authors profile and look for other fics from the ships you like (or maybe some that you’ll give a chance because you liked the author) and maybe bookmark them for later.

it’s not weird to read these other fics and like them too and comment on them because you actually like them and you want to let the author know.

it’s not weird to read fanfiction from 5, or 8, or 10 years ago and actually enjoy and engage with it because it’s perfectly normal to relate to something that’s less than a decade old!

let’s stop treating fanfiction like they’re instagram posts that stop being interesting in 24 hours! fanfiction is NOT social media, fanfiction is art!!! and art doesn’t get old in one day, one year, or even a decade!

>> CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL SURVEY

** The doc is NSFW and meant for 18+ readers **

Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey. The results are in and they are so fascinating, and I'm stoked to share them with you!

Those who asked to be tagged in the results are under the cut!

The tips are on ao3 now, and I’m Res but on tumblr.

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

Dream machine

There's some people in the comments saying "fandoms have always been like this" and others saying "No, it's worse than it was." And both are to some extent right. Fans (or at least a small percentage of fans, and the larger a fanbase gets the larger a group this will describe) have always been Like That; but they did not always have the level of access to creators and actors that they have now.

The notion that a performer needs to be constantly available to public scrutiny, that their personal information should by default be available to any rando with google, is pretty new. It used to be that actors would only be expected to engage with the public on limited, specific, and controlled occasions, usually with security provided. Now they're being asked to rawdog exposure to the mob 24/7 on their own.

(Also, production companies have always always always been exploitative cowards, just to get that straight; reading the biographies of literally any actress from golden Hollywood years makes that clear. It's just, again, more public now.)

To 2025:

Hell, they even cover the devastating heaviness of MASS SHOOTINGS without censoring or watering anything down.

They've been doing this for YEARS, and it's ALWAYS handled with dignity, respect, seriousness, understanding, and love.

This clip is from 1968 and discussed assassination after Bobby Kennedy died.

X Men Red if the writers weren’t cowards.

but they included a whole section on inclusivity in games (fine) and why you should be inclusive of women and queer/trans people and race and religion and etc.

and then went "context matters" and then said that, for example, if your game is about people in the military, rules for wheelchair-accessible combat would break the suspension of disbelief, especially if the setting has fancy sci-fi technology to "correct" disability.

and like, context does matter, but also. hey. c'mon.

why is "obviously, nobody in this setting is using a wheelchair" your special example of a bridge too far? wheelchairs are technology just like everything else you listed. they just don't delete the difference from a person's body. and they're not a badass prosthetic.

also, I'm trying to avoid quoting because, again, I do not want to put this person on blast, they put good game design advice on the internet for free, but the specific example of unreasonable inclusion was

obviously, nobody expects "wheelchair-accessible HALO jumps or SCUBA infiltrations"

(HALO jumps are basically extreme skydiving)

hey, my friend? look at those two activities again. what do you notice about them?

wheelchair users are skydiving and doing SCUBA diving today. no science fiction involved. your two examples of activities that make it impossible for someone in the distant sci-fi future to be a soldier in a wheelchair would be possible for many wheelchair users literally today.

Something something Erid is a high-pressure, no light planet with liquid water and bioluminescent, lure-based, energy efficient ocean creatures could develop; something something Eridians have close to no spatial memory and therefore worse scale? memory; something something Eridians are the apex land predator specifically.