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Every time an author reassures readers that the smut is skippable I sigh a disappointed sigh. This is not a reassurance. Why would anybody who likes smut want to read smut that was only included as an afterthought and has no impact on the narrative? Insulting. Just don't write it at all if you're not going to make it matter.

lierdumoa

#on the one hand I understand that some people don’t want to read smut

Like 85% of tumblr users hate and loathe embarrassment based comedy with every fiber of their beings, but never in my life have I ever seen an author reassure their audience that the embarrassing scenes are skippable.

Lots of people dislike tragedy but never in my life have I ever seen an author reassure the audience that the death and grieving scenes are skippable.

Stop trying to pass off self-censorship as “accommodation.” Stop trying to pass off pandering as “inclusivity.”

Your audience can smell your fear, and it smells rancid.

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Fic Rec Friday!

July 17th, 2026

Ended up skipping last week's rec list because I just hadn't read enough to justify it - but some very kind person on discord this week said they were looking forward to it, and it turns out sometimes that's all the motivation you need 💛

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Fandom: DC

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Completed works:

🌻 The Cherry on Top - RavenRavell ( @ravenravellx ) Gen, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings 3,812 words, 1/1 Published: July 5th, 2026

Summary:

The boy was maybe twenty cherries in when Bruce felt his blood suddenly run cold.

"Hey, chum, have you been eating the pits of the cherries?" he asked, trying his best to keep his voice level. He wasn't sure why he asked, because he already knew the answer, but maybe, just maybe—

The boy looked at him curiously, red juice dripping down his chin, his jaw still crunching through the new handful of cherries in his mouth.

Or, Bruce can hardly blame himself the first time the Talon dies in his care.

Rec: great little Bruce and baby talon!Dick fic — I love how much it makes you feel the stress and burden that Bruce feels trying to care for his new little creature of a son as best he can — it’s exhausting, and it makes the stress of the situation when things go wrong all the more stressful to read 💛

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Ongoing Works:

❀ - updated within the last 6 months

❀🌻 heavy is the head - Myrime ( @blancheludis ) Slade Wilson/Dick Grayson, No Archive Warnings Apply 14,559 words, 1/2 chapters Updated: July 15th, 2026

Summary:

“The punishment for treason is death,” Slade says, glaring at the trembling form of Dick on his knees. “You will be tried once your bastard is born.”

Slade locks up his husband in a tower for endless months – right until his daughter is born and the real traitors reveal themselves. Dick returns to Slade’s side, saying all the right words and smiling at all the right times. When Slade finally realises he is fading, it might already be too late.

Rec: A follow up to one of my recent recs from Slade’s perspective that I was not expecting and was SO excited to see pop up in my inbox!!! It takes a really careful hand to write a version of Slade who’s treated Dick the way he has in this and still has me wanting things to work out for the two of them. This one has all the delicious feelings of guilt, concern, and affection on Slade’s side that were clear subtext in Dick’s POV, now brought to text. And seeing Dick through his eyes, and the way his captivity has changed him, only makes the first fic ache even better. Just an absolute treat, especially with more still to come 💛💛💛

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❀🌻 Elsewhere, Everywhere - MoonBoo Gen, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings 44,320 words, 14/? chapters Updated: July 15th, 2026

Summary:

Tim, stuck on comms due to a broken leg, is attacked by a familiar cowled figure in the Batcave.

The problem? Bruce is still out on patrol.

An alternate Batman stranded far from home should be nothing more than a temporary complication. Instead, Tim finds himself growing close to a Bruce Wayne who has a Dick, a Jason, but no Tim.

And some doors, once opened, are hard to close.

Rec: when I tell you I am GLUED to my inbox watching for updates on this one —

It has taken a couple turns now that have had my jaw on the FLOOR - I keep running back to check the tags in the best way.

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❀🌻 Broken Wings, Open Sky - greenlimetea Gen, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings 9,264 words, 7/? chapters Updated: July 14th, 2026

Summary:

Fathers disciplined you. It was just what they did.

Damian has survived years by following the rules, keeping his head down, and shielding his brothers. Then another Batman arrives — one with a soft voice and gentle hands.

Damian is certain it's a trick. He just has to make sure he's the one who pays the price for it.

Rec: Damian-centric, reverse robins, through the looking glass is just such a great whumpy combo, especially once good!bruce shows up and we get to see the horror of it set in. I especially love this one’s take on Alfred — it’s so unsettling, seeing him as an actual villain in the story, rather than the more common approach to this trope where he’s dead before the story starts. And getting to see Bruce confront a version of his adoptive father who’d abuse his children? ough 💔

Unfortunately, as of the latest chapter, the author has said they’re taking a bit of a break due to rude comments — they’ve indicated they do intend to return, and I very much hope they do. But if they don’t, I still think that as it is currently, things end on a hopeful enough note to still be a satisfying story, and certainly one that deserves some love 💛

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#fic rec fridays #fic recs #batfam

transgenderfabianseacaster

💥💥💥‼️‼️‼️

ndnbutch

I get in theory why people complain about het ships or whatever, I get wanting to watch queer media I really do, but I guess where y’all lose me is like. I saw some asshole on a post about Sinners complaining it was “hetslop”—this person was specifically doing so while also claiming Remmick was a queer character and thus they were justified in caring more about him than the Black protagonists. which is a whole other disgusting can of worms that has been well addressed by others at this point. but even in the absence of that part of the argument, like, no, i actually don’t think that a hunger for queer stories is an especially good excuse to deride and dismiss a piece of landmark Black filmmaking, especially as a non-Black person. I have a post that’s been going around encouraging folks to engage with more Native stories and characters, and I had someone come onto that post saying in the tags that they’d need these stories to be queer in order to care. and I just think that, you know, sucks! like obviously as I queer Native also want to see more of those stories too. but idk how else to put it other than to say that Black people and people of color shouldn’t have to be like you in order for you to care about our narratives and experiences. and I think some of y’all are using this disdain for heterosexuality as a cover for your unexamined racial biases. it’s not okay to be racist to people just because those people happen to be straight, and you continue to be white before you are queer.

sexycraisinthanos

“AI art is okay if you’re just making shitposts”

Have you forgotten our roots

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sentientsky

repeating this to myself forever and ever

station18908

The small voice in your head that says: "I don't need to write down every small detail of this plot idea, I love it so much, I'll remember this."

That's the devil speaking.

silima

it's always funny to me when ppl act like it's somehow incestuous for characters who consider each other found family/chosen family/whatever u wanna call the trope to date each other, and it's funny for many reasons, but most specifically it's funny because irl when you meet a person and get really attached and decide that you want to be family with them, there's a very popular legally recognized way of doing that & it's called marriage

shaneposting

'he would not fucking say that' maybe he would if he knew he was starring in his very own porn fic for the sole purpose of delighting some freaks on archive of our own dot org. maybe he'd play it up for the cameras. ever consider that

rad-roche

writing is a fantastic hobby but the kicker is it's a lot harder to show your friends as it's progressing. with a sketch i can show someone and they'll be like oh that's an apple. you can't do that with words until you get a lot of them down. so i'll just be like damn fuckin. uhh. check this out

that's right. and that's just one of the several words i know

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frostedmagnolias

Dawn (1907)

by Edmund Hodgson Smart (1873-1942)

clementine-kesh

imo you get the most out of engaging with media when you strike a balance between treating characters as people (reading interiority into their actions, considering the effect of various aspects of their identity, etc etc) and as vehicles for storytelling (what narrative purpose do they serve, how do their actions and personality function to convey the themes of the work, etc etc). because of course characters are literary devices but also there’s a reason we use literary devices written to embody realistic people in order to tell stories

clementine-kesh

fandom has a tendency to lean more into the former than the latter which is a shame because that means people are missing out on so many opportunities for fandom’s favourite activity: shipping. like, shifting the way i engage with media to a more themes-oriented one has opened up so many fun and new shipping opportunities. yes these characters may have barely interacted but can you imagine how thematically interesting they could be?

preserving-tiktok

zisurru

something i think would make a lot of historical romance more accurate & interesting is the realization that people are less likely to totally disparage the ethical & social values of their time than they are to use those values to defend whatever it is they want to do

a woman is less likely to go "it's stupid that women are expected to be modest" than she is to go "there is nothing immodest about a woman going out without a chaperone" or even "i can go out without a chaperone because i am so modest"

people also seem less likely to see someone's shitty behavior as reflecting a shitty society than they are to view that behavior as being out of accordance with that society - e.g. a father who's excessively controlling of his daughters' marriage prospects isn't, in her mind, acting that way because he lives in a repressive patriarchal culture, but is actually outdated in his values - his cruelty is unmodern, ungentlemanly, stuck in the past, barbaric. we might think he's upholding the values of his culture perfectly, but the people around him who took issue with his behavior probably wouldn't see it that way

bethanydelleman

I think this goes hand-in-hand with people seeing past cultures as a monolith and forgetting that there are liberal and conservative people in every era.

In Jane Austen's novels, we see one very strict conservative family, the Bertrams in Mansfield Park, and one very permissive family in the Bennets in Pride & Prejudice. Not all families are treating their daughters the same. Every era would have this, fathers who spoil their daughters vs. fathers who are very strict with them. There have always been instances of fathers giving their daughters a full male education for example. If you want your historical fiction daughter to really struggle against her father, make her father worse than average. Have the other girls say that her father is the worst one, instead of imagining that every father is equally bad (which is dumb).

Or, a heroine should mourn that her father doesn't follow the ideals of their society properly. Usually every oppression comes with a protection, so a father controlling his wife and daughter is meant to be so he can protect them. Most of Austen's novels are about how the rich are supposed to have privilege and responsibility, but they don't live up to the responsibility. Jane Austen doesn't seem to support overthrowing her entire society, she just wants the rich to do their job properly. This would feel a lot more authentic to the time than "burn it all down for a future I can't even imagine as an ancient woman"

liliuhms

take this giant pencil for your big ideas

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dorksidefiker

Do people not know that A03 has a Share button that will automatically generate a Tumblr post with your title, rating, summary, link, and tags that you can just post?

I've been seeing what feels like an increasing amount of folks just slapping the link in a post -- and not even a hyperlink, just the raw link -- and calling it good.

yuhi-san

WHAT

dorksidefiker

Please, my friends, spread the word! Show our fellows there is an easier path to share their work!

thememedaddy

chucktaylorupset

(via hornedchick)

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

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