i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:
"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.
an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.
You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.
If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.
Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.
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this is your 🫵 reminder that if you send us a tkc post/piece of fanart/fic, we'll reblog it – we try to archive as much of tkc fandom history and present as we can; you can find it under #tkc archive on our blog
i will not be playing favorites with my mutuals, ye vagrant 🫵🏻
but seriously, the most comprehensive answer i can give is the Titan Army feed blog i run, @othrysbulletin: i reblog as many fanworks centered around the TA characters as i can, and there are tags to help you navigate for it you want specific fanworks/characters/relationships!
have also the masterlist i’ve made of other relevant TA fandom material: askblogs, events, other feed blogs, community spaces.
there are way more fanworks and people creating for them than you might think lol but ik it can be hard to find if you dont know how to work this site or just rely on your algos. so this is just really my attempt at some sort of infrastructure that would help people find those! god knows the pjo fandom is lacking this shit
shakes pjo fandom. you know you can just make zines right. you can just get your friends together and slap it all in a pdf and upload it. you know that, right? that's all it has to be? you can even make one entirely on your own! or get together as many people as you want! you can make one that's as general or as specific as you like. zine for your pjo art/fics from one specific range of time. zine for one specific character. zine for a specific ship or group of characters. zine for a specific series. zine for a specific book! it doesn't need to be exclusively generalized pjo/hoo printed zine with merch selection and a struggle to make it feel different from other pjo zines! you can just do whatever!!!! you can even just do another general pjo/hoo zine with a further theme or not because man there's genuinely so few that yours will be different anyways!
you can just! do it!!! all you need to know is how to format a pdf and throw it on itch.io! you don't even need to charge anything for it! be free! make zines!!! please!!!!!
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I have made a DTIYS template! Cause I noticed Riordanverse fandom is severely lacking in fandom-specific art memes.
Heavily inspired by @/Xmaruu11's traffic series DTIYS template.
Feel free to use all you'd like, feel free to tag me if you do it. Go ham go wild. Yippee.
Bunch of alternative pre-filled ones and blank versions under the cut!
Blank templates:
More pre-filled templates:
(In order - PJATO, TOA, Greco-Roman protags [sans HoO], PJATO background characters, HoO background characters, Romans, Antagonists, Rogues, Obscure characters, Canon* ships [+ Blitzstone], Random selection of noncanon ships)
Notes:
Michael Kahale has been listed as "Kahale" for clarity vs Michael Varus
"Sam" refers to Sam Greenwood from Demigods of Olympus, not to be confused with Samirah al-Abbas. Samirah is only listed as "Samirah."
Zane and Sam are from Demigods of Olympus, as are Tabitha, Ely, and Ming.
Claudia, Janice, Blaise, and Mimi are from Camp Jupiter Classified.
Laurel TTC and Jason TTC are from The Titan's Curse, not to be confused with Laurel Victor and Jason Grace, who are different characters.
Alison Simms is a PJO TV character to be introduced in s2 as part of the Titan Army.
Blitzstone has been included with the canon ships cause it's so overwhelmingly fanon and also i needed another ship there
The non-canon ships selection is pretty random, I just picked some that are generally popular or used to be popular and utilize a good ratio of the main HoO crew.
Hi! I keep hearing abt zines but I don't really know what they look like tbh. If you want, could you share a couple of examples across different ranges of effort and commitment? Or just your favs (any fandom) idc :)
Otherwise, just thanks for teaching me a bunch abt fandom infrastructure! For pjo tkc and stuff but also just in general <3
Of course!
First and foremost, the most basic format of zine and also the "true" form of zine is is the non-fandom definition. There's a wikipedia page for it. These types of zines are usually in some form of hand-made booklet format. The most basic form of zine is fully intended to be as easy to produce/DIY as possible. That's basically the entire ethos of zines. They are DIY, simple printing processes, etc etc.
Fanzines recently have taken a wider and more produced approach. They will come in basically every format you can imagine and a "zine" project may not even actually include an actual zine at all - it's become more shorthand for a specific type of collaborative community project. I have seen merch-only zines. I have seen tarot card zines where instead of the focus being the booklet part the focus is everybody designing a card that gets printed into an actual deck. I have seen zines where instead of a booklet it's postcards and such. One of my favorite zines I've gotten thus far was a cookbook!
It's not uncommon for artists to get their work from a specific period of time printed into a book or booklet and then sell that! Or artists may make a zine just all on their own or with a select few friends!
Zines that are purely in PDF form are also a thing! If you don't want to go through all the hassle of figuring out manufacturing and processing money, free PDF zines are a great option! All you need to figure out is how to format a PDF, and you can even include digital merch like icons, wallpapers, custom emotes, etc!
For examples of more produced zines, The Art Of Scarland has nice product photos of their final book (and you can still download the digital version for free!). I'd describe that as being on the higher end of production in terms of the book itself. It's hardcover, it's printed real nice, etc etc. But fanzines can still be paperbacks or booklets! And that doesn't mean they're any less good, it just means they're going a simpler route (and that usually means it costs less to produce, so it's more accessible).
Basically the world is your oyster!!!! And there is a zine out there for everyone!
since i was thinking about it the other day - If you're interested in running a fandom infrastructure blog, character/ship/group-designated compilation blogs are super easy, really popular/handy, and the more there are the more they can help each other out!
There's also a lot of different ways you can do them - some reblog only art. some will reblog everything relating to a character/pairing/etc (fics, headcanons, edits, etc). Some do the "[character] spotted!" or "Today, [character] is in [place]" gimmick blog formats. You can do just one character, or more than one character like a ship, or specific group of characters, etc etc.
And they're nice cause it makes it easy for fans of specific characters to find stuff about them, and those types of blogs can help each other out by sorting stuff by character (ex: If someone ran a Hazel-designated blog, they could sift through my Hazel tag on @deathsibs to find a bunch of Hazel posts, and I could look through their blog to find more Hazel posts for Deathsibs too).
Anyways below the cut I shall throw a list of blogs of this nature I know exist and then suggestions of blogs people could make if anyone is interested, alongside some misc tips.
Existing blogs:
Deathsibs (Nico and Hazel, sometimes Bianca & rest of Death Fam)
Seafamblr (“Sea Fam” / Poseidon & Jackson family)
Decentpipers (Piper McLean & Occasionally others)
Ethannakamura-spotted (Ethan Nakamura)
Alabastertorrington-spotted (Alabaster C. Torrington)
Dailykanechronicles (The Kane Chronicles) (Inactive)
The-toarchives (The Trials of Apollo)
Othrysbulletin (The Titan Army)
Smartwatermagic (Annabeth Chase x Alabaster Torrington x Percy Jackson)
Pjoracheldare (Perachel - Rachel Dare x Percy Jackson)
Percy-x-luke (Luke Castellan x Percy Jackson)
Percicoforlife (Nico di Angelo x Percy Jackson)
Percico (Nico di Angelo x Percy Jackson) (Inactive)
Solangelo (Nico di Angelo x Will Solace)
Solangelo-hub (Nico di Angelo x Will Solace)
Jasicocentral (Nico di Angelo x Jason Grace)
Thejasiconet (Nico di Angelo x Jason Grace) (Inactive)
Valdangelo (Leo Valdez x Nico di Angelo) (Inactive)
Thevaldangeloship (Leo Valdez x Nico di Angelo) (Inactive)
Pipazellove (Piper McLean x Hazel Levesque) (Inactive)
Percabeth-discord (Percy Jackson x Annabeth Chase) (Spotty activity)
Suggestions:
Rest of the Titan Army - Silena would be easiest, since she's one of the most well-known ones and has a lot of stuff outside of TA content, particularly with Ruegard. Luke would probably be second-easiest, especially with the uptick in stuff from the show. Chris might also get an uptick from the show, and depending how s2 goes Alison might be very popular soon. Kelli doesn't get a lot of fan content so you won't have a lot to reblog there but it'll be really nice for the starving Kelli fans. Also will be easier given Othrysbulletin sorts by character so you can find a lot of TA stuff there to begin with (and you'd be helping them out by sorting more).
Percy - One of the easiest, no question. You will never run out of Percy to reblog.
Nico - The other easiest option besides Percy. And people love Nico-centric stuff so you will not only have an endless supply to reblog, but people will also probably flock to you for a nice curated Nico feed.
TKC or MCGA-specific characters. Or HoO-specific characters or PJATO. It's been awhile since there was a lot of Argo II-centric stuff in the fandom, but there's a ton of old stuff. And it's difficult to find TKC-specific (rip the inactive existing TKC blog) or MCGA-specific stuff these days, so having a nice curated feed of it would be a great resource.
A lot of ships! Ship event blogs sometimes double as these types of blogs, but a lot of the old ship-centric blogs for major ships in the franchise became inactive a LONG time ago or were deactivated. Tbh the solangelo one probably only still exists cause it's such a latecomer to the major canon pairings. Closest one we have for percabeth that I know if is percabeth-discord, but they're more focused on their discord and their activity is spotty rather than a regular feed. The old percabeth ship-dedicated blog deactivated and the url is now unavailable. PERCABETH doesn't even have a proper dedicated ship blog in the pjo fandom. That is the state we are in. Frazel doesn't, Jaspiper doesn't, Shelper doesn't, Valzhang doesn't, Valgrace doesn't, Fierrochase doesn't, etc etc. We USED to have these blogs but now we don't.
Literally I mean it when I say you could take just about any character or pairing or group from the fandom and make a dedicated feed of only posts about them and be the only one doing that. Or the only other blogs doing that haven't been active in 5 years. Save for the list I made above, there's barely any anymore.
Anyways if you make one PLEASE tell me and send it to me; I will add it to my lists.
Bonus tips for running character-dedicated blogs:
Queue is your best friend! Seriously, I just draft posts every time I find them for the character in question and will set up a queue to post one thing daily. Especially if you have a preset list of tags you use, just fill up the queue every once in awhile and you're all set. The more popular the characters of the blog in question, the easier this will be.
Tag systems! Tag by character. If you're primarily reblogging then your tag system is almost entirely just for personal organization on your blog, but it's super useful. I still kind of wish I had been tagging by OP on deathsibs but even just tagging characters and post type is super handy, for both yourself and others. And if it's a character-centric blog, tag ships.
If your blog has multiple characters, i personally like to arrange posts so it's split relatively evenly and will cycle through characters. Like on Deathsibs, the queue order rotates between Nico days and Hazel days. If a post has both of them, or it's just Bianca or one of their parents, it doesn't count as either a Nico or a Hazel day and the next post of one of them individually will resume after. Ex: The queue will be like Hazel day (no Nico), Nico day (no Hazel), Both, Hazel day (no Nico), etc etc so on so forth.
For group blogs, every post doesn't have to include all of them. Deathsibs is mostly split between posts individually featuring Hazel or Nico but not the other, with a mix of posts featuring them both added in. This adds a nice variance.
As a feed blog, you shouldn't curate things to only your tastes. Reblog artists and writers from every skill level (ESPECIALLY if it's a character or ship that's not as popular), reblog both old posts and new posts, reblog fandom tropes you may not personally enjoy, and if it's a character-specific blog don't be afraid to reblog a variety ships of that character even if you don't like all of them (just make sure to tag the ships). If you are making an infrastructure blog then the intention is that it's not just for you, it's a public resource, and you need to keep that in mind. This will also help keep your queue from drying out. If this is something you don't think you can do then this type of fandom infrastructure blog may not be for you. If it's something extremely popular you can maybe pick-and-choose to a degree (like goodness knows I will never reach the bottom of Nico posts) but you should still include a wide variety, especially of common things.
I can also always answer more specific questions if people have them, based on my own experience running blogs of this nature, so feel free to ask!
