Supernatural fiction

I was always frustrated how my P.E. teachers wanted all of us to go “all-or-none” and basically hurt ourselves without letting us build up from square-one like in the first gif.  Then they’d fuckin yell at us for not doing it right >:|

And remember, many exercises can be modified in this way! I did an image search for “modified pull up” and got exactly what I was looking for right away, which is this:

Doing pull ups on a lower bar, or from the straps with handles that gyms sometimes have (called the TRX - they can also be used to support yourself during squats and some balance exercises) is a lot easier than jumping straight into vertical pullups, and lets you build up that muscle with exercises that are still comfortable and safe for you, so you can do more sets of more reps.

At 14, I told my guidance counselor that I didn't want kids. He chuckled, patted me on the back, and informed me that when I got a little older, and I was with a guy, I would change my mind.

At 16, my grandmother nearly had a heart attack because of her three granddaughters, myself and the youngest agreed we didn't want to uave babies. Ever.

At 17, my father asked about my life plan. I told him: graduate high school, get my college degree, do some traveling and writing, go for this particular job I wanted, retired around X age, take month-long vacations to places I wanted to spend time in, etc. He asked, "What about a husband? Children? Normal things a girl is supposed to think about?" My response- a husband if a man came along that could share an adventure with me, kids were a No Go. He assured me I would 'grow up' qnd change my mind.

At 19, I shocked my former babysitter who had known me since I was a toddler, when I confirmed the rumour she'd heard that I didn't want kids. She patted my mom's arm and reassured her in a sweet voice that, "Don't worry, girls say a lot of silly things before they meet the right fella, and wise up. She'll give you grand babies"

At 22, I was talking to a college professor who chuckled at my making a comment about how, "thank goodness I'm never going to have to worry about juggling child rearing eith marriage, work, and life", then she realized I was serious. She asked if I was alright, thinking I could-not (not didn't-want) kids. I told her the truth, could have but didn't want to. She was aghast, then told me that I'd change my mind when my husband wanted some kids.

Well, I'm over 30, still have absolutely no desire to give birth, adopt, raise, or have much of anything to do with children. I don't hate children, I don't think people who have them are crazy (more power to you, to create and/or care for another person), and I don't think it's impossible to have a life AND have children. I recognized at an early age that I don't have that biological imperative to procreate, I don't have the patience to deal with children (something that has shown very little improvement as I've gotten older, in fact it might be getting worse), and I don't feel my life is incomplete without creating another life- I am good with living my own and doing my best to enrich the lives of those I care about (I try my best to be a good friend, to be a good sister, good daughter, good pet-owner, and a good person in general).

So please, please stop telling girls (or really kids at all, but especially girls) that they will change their minds. Please don't tell them that meeting 'the right guy' will make them suddenly feel broody, that their potential future husband's desire to have children will make her reconsider and see things his way. For one, a couple should have had that conversation and decided if it was a deal breaker, LONG before they got hitched. For another, it's her body that gets to grow and birth another human being- her husband's desire to be a father doesn't supercede her autonomy.

Please, let girls make their own choices? Girls are forced to mature too fast as it is and are bombarded from all sides with SHOULD (you SHOULD be a size 2, you SHOULD wear this dress, you SHOULD have a boyfriend to be a normal teen, you SHOULD always smile), they don't need another judgement from someone who hasn't walked a mile in their particular shoes. Respect teenage girls and their ability to look at the world, themselves, their situation, and their future, and make an important choice.

*gets off soap box, slides it back under the sofa, lets out a sigh*

I have a wonderful daughter, currently 9 years old, with autism and ADHD. Even if I WAS the kind of person that would say 'you'll change your mind' I obviously would be telling her 'you shouldn't have kids, you'll be having enough trouble as it is'.

Well, I don't tell her that either. When talking about her future, dreaming/planning her life, my daughter doesn't want to be pregnant and give birth but she DOES want to give love and care to children and plans to adopt.

In our country she will not be allowed to adopt kids considering her diagnosis. Also, she will most likely need at least a service dog to be able to live on her own.

I don't tell her she can't adopt. Maybe she'll change her mind, maybe the rules will change, maybe friends of hers will have kids and be happy to let her babysit often. Maybe that'll require me to be around to take care of unforseen troubles and if so I will absolutely be there.

It's not my place to crush her plans for the future based on current facts.

Also, she doesn't want a boyfriend/girlfriend; maybe just someone to smooch with on occasion.😂 <3

I developed a slight allergy to bananas in my early 20s. That’s it. My brother as soon as he started eating was allergic to wheat, milk, every kind of nuts, bananas, avocados, peas, peanuts, and most kinds of beans.

After my mom died my dad kept up the sanitizing and my brother’s allergies seemed to keep getting worse. He ended up going to an allergist about it and she basically told him “Stop sanitizing everything and let him play in dirt.”

So we stopped sanitizing everything and my brother was let loose on the backyard were of course he did toddler stuff like eat dirt and chase butterflies.

I’m not a doctor. I’m just repeating things that my brother’s doctors have told us.

He’s also the only one of my kids that I managed to breastfeed an entire year as WHO recommends.

Still, he’s the one with the asthma and allergies.

So I know there’s statistics and stuff that basically confirms this original post. That means, it probably has some truth to it.

Only available on AO3. Do not repost to other sites. 

| Under the Hood; Into the Heart | a love story of motor oil and telepathy

Dean loves the Impala. And she- She loves him. When Baby unexpectedly turns human, that love will change into something neither ever planned for.

| The Hunters’ Rose | a love story of second chances and changes

Becky Rosen learned her lesson after almost selling her soul to a demon and has spent the last three years helping hunters do their job, even if she’s stuck to the sidelines. When Sam Winchester shows up on her front porch with his sick brother, they’ll both realize how much they’ve changed.

| Beyond the Steel | a love story of innocence and desire

Dean is losing himself to the Mark, and he needs Pala more than ever. A run-in with a genie and an unspoken wish leads to the unexpected.

| Into the Shallows | a love story of loose ends and fears to be faced

Becky lost a good friend and nearly lost her life because a man died on her watch. It’s time to tie up loose ends. Will Becky face her fears, or will she drown?

| Suffer the Brand | a love story of influence and devotion

Drabbles and ficlets ahoy for the lead up to 4K followers for me!  Thank you to everyone who happened to see the flag go up - I didn’t tag anyone coz I was scared of having too many to turn down.  I said 10-tops at the start and ended up doing 16 19!! 

The prompts were awesome!! I loved it!!  I loved them!!

Thank you everyone for following and enjoying my stuff.  It’s so appreciated!

It was too much fun so, if all you want is a drabble, send me an ask and I’ll let you know if it’s a goer, but otherwise no proper oneshots due to the Next Big Thing - a series using the plot of The Princess Bride with spn characters and verse, centered around Sam.  Chapter 1 is here.

A lot of effort can go into building your whole identity around looking thin enough to be 1) employable 2) dateable 3) medically treatable 4) some hipster’s muse. If tomorrow people stopped responding to social capital begging in the name of thin privilege then the value of that capital would drop and suddenly all that effort would be for nothing. 

People whose thinness is a major reason they were employed or had their pick of romantic/fucking partners or were able to get the surgery they needed know, at some level, the value of thinness in their lives. That’s why you’re not going to find the vast majority of thin people doing any true work to devalue thin privilege. If anything, they’ll do a bunch of things that strengthen or maintain the value of thin privilege, whether they are engaging in those behaviors knowingly or not. Including horribly rude things like begging for thin privilege social capital from people who don’t have access to that social capital.

I also want to throttle every thin person who has ever done the “ugh I’m so faaaaaaaat” bit in the presence of me, an actual fat person. When I was younger, this upset me. Now it just irritates me. How fucking clueless can you be? What the fuck do you want me to say to you?

I’ve also come to the point where I just plain don’t like or trust physical appearance based compliments. If you like what I’m wearing, fine. If you include the word “slimming” in your assessment of my attire, I may well tie you into a pretzel shape and feed you to sharks. Fuck “slimming” and fuck “flattering” as well.

https://www.facebook.com/sofiehagen.komiker/posts/1335976266510723

Favorite quotes: 

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre. 

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused. 

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me. 

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about. 

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.” 

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that. 

Thank you to everyone who sent in their favourites, I know how difficult it is to choose just one story. (I ended up picking just over 60 fics myself, excluding the fics that I love that have been chosen below)

Some people may have submitted more than one of your stories so keep an eye out for those.

Some that have submitted have left a little comment, which I think is lovely. It would also be appreciated if one of you could tag those who I couldn’t so they get the recognition they deserve.

There have been some amazing stories that have been brought my way, so without further ado, below are only a few of the amazing fics that are out there.

My endless thanks to @feelmyroarrrr for being so wonderfully lovely, and so thoughtful in picking the Choose Your Own Supernatural Adventure series too.  They’re the best choice because I’m sure everyone who’s been involved in these is as proud of them as I am. They’re by these amazingly generous writers, who’ve made these collaborations far better than I ever hoped.

So, because I was slack in contributing, and to pay it forward, I’m going to nominate @rainygalaxynerd’s Brave New World series.  It’s an amazing OFC story, with a hella background and holy cow, just tight, elegant writing.

For the rest of you, look at this list. Look at it! SO MUCH GOOD STUFF! Did you look at it? Okay. Go look at @littlegreenplasticsoldier ‘s masterlist, then. No need to get bored :)

Oh man Nonny, I’ve been thinking about this so hard.  I’m realising I don’t read much angst.  And by angst I mean Everyone Dies Sad angst.  Angst on the way to bliss doesn’t seem to count with me.

I have three that come to mind and I’m sorry I don’t have more. 

So.  @ilostmyshoe-79 did an endverse series - And the devil makes three.  (Masterlist in this ask reblog.) I believe I called it a “glorious Destiel / DeanXreader endverse heart-hollowing requiem”. This stuck with me because it was based on a playlist I dropped at her feet like a needy cat (and that was demon’s blood dark - Nick Cave, QotSA, and Waits, ugh, so mean), and she made it beautiful and cold.  I still have that flavour in my mouth when I see it all in the list.  The main plot is that Dean lets himself take but he doesn’t let himself have.  Yay.  Everyone’s broken.

The I Keep on Fallin’ series was written by @deandoesthingstome and @mrsjohnsmith.  I will always be envious of their commitment and skill at sharing this series.  They’re perfectly matched to write together and it’s a gorgeous, wrenching Dean x reader story - it even pretends to have hope.  You know how the villains tell you how they’re going to kill you?  That, but you don’t escape this time.

Also @rainygalaxynerd‘s  Brave New World. This series finished a while ago and I still haven’t gathered the scrote to sit down and bash out an articulate description of what this fic did to me.  I’m rubbish at reading a series, but I craved this.  I read it at stupid hours, I pushed through the trigger warnings.  I loved what she did with the characters within the canon, and how she parried with the plot challenges she created.  She writes efficiently, tightly, so creatively and with a cracking - ugh god I’m clenching my jaw - her Dean, her fucking Dean is everything you want.  Caitlin, her OFC, is amazing and although the journey does end well, it is relentless and rough (like, for everyone.  No one goes back to square one. It’s perfect.)  Heed the warnings.  Sit back impressed.

Ali... Shit, Ali... 

I’ve just managed to put into words what praise like this does to me. Apart from the warmth, the blushing, the happiness, I get this other weird feeling. Like a deer in head lights. Paralyzed. Oh shit, someone’s seen my writing. Oh shit, oh shit, they actually liked it. Should I play dead or run in a zigzag pattern???