just a compilation of mediocre life choices

1:A song you like with a color in the title

2:A song you like with a number in the title

3:A song that reminds you of summertime

4:A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

5:A song that needs to be played LOUD

6:A song that makes you want to dance

7:A song to drive to

8:A song about drugs or alcohol

9:A song that makes you happy

10:A song that makes you sad

11:A song that you never get tired of

12:A song from your preteen years

13:One of your favorite 80’s songs

14:A song that you would love played at your wedding

15:A song that is a cover by another artist

16:One of your favorite classical songs

17:A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

18:A song from the year that you were born

19:A song that makes you think about life

20:A song that has many meanings to you

21:A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

22:A song that moves you forward

23:A song that you think everybody should listen to

24:A song by a band you wish were still together

25:A song by an artist no longer living

26:A song that makes you want to fall in love

27:A song that breaks your heart

28:A song by an artist with a voice that you love

29:A song that you remember from your childhood

- jensen emphasising this is the FIRST story he wants to tell about the spn verse (read: the destiel spin off is coming)

- chaos machine's new pride icon

- misha joking the prequel needs a trench-coated angel, which, based on historical data, only means one thing: the prequel absolutely has a trench-coated angel in it (our favourite one with the rainbow wings and squinty eyes, to be specific)

- kripke causing multiple social media platforms to explode by liking said tweet

- jared hearing about the prequel for the first time on twitter at the same time as the rest of us

- misha absolutely not hearing about the prequel for the first time on twitter at the same time as the rest of us

- the entirety of tumblr and twitter trying to fathom why jensen decided to make a show about a character the whole spn fandom have spent fifteen years wanting to punch very hard in the face

- hot topics include: will john's shitty actions be ignored or explored? is the prequel really just a cover for a destiel spinoff?? or just an elaborate and expensive method of ensuring cas finally, in some universe, gets to smite john?

- rowena considered for the prequel but not sam

- it becomes clear danneel and jensen knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they named their production company "chaos machine"

- et tu brute, gutted, bummed

- the increasingly likely possibility that the french mistake and the mockumentary were actually prophetic visions (related: someone check on misha)

- bobo berens and kripke add more fuel to the twittersphere fire

- most of the fandom yelling "fight, fight, fight" at the cast of their favourite show six months after it ending

- a complete, collective tumblr meltdown as fires that have been brewing in opposing corners of the fandom for over a decade implode into either vindication or denial

- unprecedented scenes in fandom history as self-confessed ex-j2 stans quietly let themselves into the cockles trash dumpster

- the realisation that jensen has been plotting this for months (important questions: how long has he known? when they were filming the finale?? at the creation con panel? is this what was going on under all that sexy silence???)

- most of tumblr on tenterhooks simply from watching two middle aged men follow and unfollow each other on twitter

- the fact there are still conventions that are booked and j2 panels that are absolutely going to happen after all of this

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)

The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.

But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.

The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)

And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)

Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…

I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.

I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!

I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.

I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)

But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?

On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.

Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.

My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.

Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.

(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)

Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.

now MZB was incredibly pro fanfic and even published her own zine for her universe, but then bad shit happened

she and a fanwriter had the same idea and the fanartist got there first putting it in print

she did approach the fic-author toask about using the idea, offering her acknowledgement and a few dollars for the idea

the bickering that took place after this is almost entirely lost to time, but both the fic and the novel were killed

"There's no need for personal attacks," the Ever Given said with forced patience. "It's not like I did this on purpose."

"So fucking around and drawing a dick and balls in the Red Sea, that was, what, top-notch professional steering?"

"That was foreplay. And hey, this isn't all on me, you know. It takes two to tango."

"It's not my fault your bulbous bow is so fucking big. Overcompensating much?"

"Well it's not my fault you're too outdated to handle the capacity requirements of modern shipping!"

A frigid silence descended.

"I cannot believe," the Suez Canal hissed, "that you just said that."

"I didn't mean it."

"You know I had work done in 2015. You think expansion projects are easy?"

"Baby, come on--"

"You think I can schedule eight billion dollar infrastructure improvements like a day at the salon? Just because you can slap on a fresh coat of paint in a month--"

"You know I didn't mean it like that," the Ever Given said placatingly.

"Then what did you mean."

"I mean I'm sorry, all right? I got sand in my eyes, I veered off course, I didn't mean to run aground, and I'm sorry."

The next silence was moderately less hostile, broken only by the non-stop notification pings from their OnlyFreight livestream and the Ever Given's restless shifting.

"Stop wiggling."

"I have a cramp."

-  The difference between a book that grabs you from the beginning vs. one that you’re on the fence about tossing out the window is winning your trust. It’s why it’s “easier” to read books by authors you already know, or fanfic where you’re familiar with the characters. Winning the reader’s trust as quickly as possible should be your first goal as a writer when you’re going back and editing your first draft. This can be accomplished by things like: speaking authoritatively about the subject (even if it’s utter bullshit), graceful prose, or establishing quickly in the story what it’s about. For example,“Character A had a problem. Character B didn’t love them back, so Character A was going to kidnap them so they would.” Maybe it’s not a story you want to read, but you are now firmly couched in what you signed up for in this story and the promise the author is going to deliver on before the end. 

- Characters need goals. They need goals in every moment and in every scene. Every character needs a goal in every moment and in every scene. Maybe they’re not directly pursuing that goal right this very moment but it’s probably always at the back of their mind. Romances and detective stories are the easiest to deliver on this need. Character A wants to win their love. Detective A wants to solve the case. Even when they’re having tea with grandma, their thing is at the back of their mind. Keeping your character and your story focused on this thing they want helps pull your reader along and keeps them engaged on the “So what?” and “Why are we reading this scene?” questions of why they should keep reading.

- Characters shouldn’t just have things they like, they should have obsessions. This is the one I’m kicking myself for. The scientists in Pacific Rim are eccentrically obsessed with studying their thing. Thorin in the Hobbit is obsessed with regaining his home. Katniss Everdeen is obsessed with protecting her sister. Every crazy whackadoodle fandom darling character is obsessed with something. What do they have in common? They’re intensely obsessed with the thing that they care about. We love characters who are obsessed with things beyond reason, whether it’s reclaiming their home stolen by a dragon, or building artisanal bird houses, saving your sister, or studying monsters. Everyone “likes” things, but people and characters who are obsessed with something fascinate us. Examine the characters you’re most attracted to writing in fanfic, and examine your original characters if you’re trying to build those, and figure out what are they obsessed with and how does that inform their character. That’s the thing that’s going to make readers care about them.