Fandom Addiction Overflow

to wit:

bottom's the raw capture, middle's just flat curve correction to make the footage visible, top is the final coloring with /counts seven adjustment layers to add back in Literally Anything But Yellow

taller, shorter, slimmer, more muscular, purple hair, tattoos everywhere, tattoos nowhere, 

every single shoe would fit you every single time you tried it on, every single article of clothing would fit your perfectly, all you have to do is transform slightly, you’d never run out of ‘your size’ again

~cosplay

~Halloween costumes

~acting

~cosplay

~stretching to reach stuff and shrinking to fit through spaces

~cosplay

~cosplay

“Don’t antagonize the fae.”

Like, it's not weird for wholly original romance novels to have otherwise disposable friend characters who act as author mouthpieces at crucial points in the story. (It's also not uncommon for romance novel characters to have NO close friends or family, in my experience, which is a different thing.) Former fanfics do not even slightly have a monopoly on, "Hey, what's up with this weird friend character? They seem a little out-of-place here? Also seems like you're maybe under-utilizing the weird, comedic relief friend, tbh; they could be doing more in this story."

Audience familiarity with (and affection for) the characters and their relationships to one another can be one of fanfiction's strengths re: storytelling. You can play with a lot of reader expectations this way.

Anyway, if I was reading a Coffee Shop AU Star Wars Reylo fanfiction (you could basically use this example fic to ward me personally off like garlic against a vampire, tbh, but let's pretend)... even if Finn had nothing to do as a character in this story besides be Rey's coworker at the coffee shop, I would be even more suspicious and dismayed if Finn was completely missing. We EXPECT to see at least briefly all of the major members of a cast in an AU fanfic of certain length, barring unusual circumstances.

Even if he is almost completely irrelevant to the meet-cute at hand, I WANT to know where Chewbacca is in this AU! I want to enjoy a little chuckle when, idk, C-3PO is turned into a high-strung, middle-aged office guy with either a short, non-English-speaking husband or a Border Collie-Corgi mix dog named Artoo that runs his entire life. It's delightful to see the characters I know and love in the background!

But when you file the serial numbers off of AU fanfiction, a character's role in a story can no longer be Being That Character. Now, you potentially have a bunch of story elements that conflict slightly or conflict very seriously. Now, you may have additional characters whose presence is no longer perfectly explained by the fact that you are expected to include all the Avengers in your MCU fanfic.

Now, Not-Chewbacca's quirks cannot be explained away by him Being Chewbacca. And suddenly, readers are like, "Hey, kind of weird throwaway detail for Not-Kylo's dad to be a former drug runner who lives in a van with an old, foreign war vet! Is that going to be relevant later???" Once you cut the fanfiction strings, your new story may feel riddled with inconsistencies and missed opportunities. Why are these characters here if they're 1) not contributing to the plot, 2) not contributing to character ans relationship development, and 3) not even really contributing tonally (humor, angst, fluff) to the story?

Living in Australia, I'm kinda always at the mercy of my posts lining up with crappy timezones, so when I came back to Tumblr and realised there was a fully in-built post scheduling system, I was very excited...only to happily realise that even with that in mind, Tumblr has a much more 'time-blind' and relaxing approach to posts. It lifts my spirits whenever I see that somebody's gone through my catalogue or liked a post that had been put out days or even weeks ago, and it appears that that's a far more prevalent phenomenon on this site compared to anywhere else. A guy could get used to this more easygoing posting experience, although of course that's all thanks to folks like you! Thank you all. BONUS:

The Open Book Fountain is a fountain of an open book with water used at regular intervals to give the illusion of a page being turned. Located at Egyetem Square (Egyetem tér), Budapest.

Disclaimer: I don’t know for sure if this technique was done historically, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the first person to have ever tried it and found that it works. Do with that what you will!

"How do I defeat the evil wizard?"

Young tree of wisdom: "You're sixteen and leading a pack of fourteen-year-olds. None of you should be fighting an evil wizard. Also whoever's telling you that this is a good idea doesn't have your best interests at heart."

The older trees of wisdom have made peace with the failings of animal minds and will meet you where you're at.

"How do I defeat the evil wizard?"

Just constant cuts to the future with Frodo chiming in as Bilbo tells the story to be like “that’s not how you told it when I was little!” and “wait, you never mentioned these orcs chasing you!”

And Bilbo hems and haws like “well, I didn’t want to scare the children” etc and we see the same scene get replayed multiple times with slight variations as Frodo and Bilbo bicker about the details of what actually happened