A n o t h e r W o r l d

@animatedamerican yes EXCELLENT.

This pattern. I never looked closely at I just went ‘Oh cool its a flower and skull pattern.‘

But im just now learning… theres no skulls at all!

I hear a lot of people bitching that they can’t leave kudos multiple times per story, or can’t leave kudos on every chapter, or whatever.

Well, take a page out of this marvelous book, because I swear I’ve never been so happy to receive kudos as waking up to multiple people having done this on multiple chapters on a story I just posted.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

(✿◠‿◠) – “I heart this so much!!” ⊂◉‿◉つ – “OMG, the surprise was so sweet! ☆(❁‿❁)☆ – “AHH! Love it!” ≧◠‿◠≦ – “All the feels!” ٩(˘◡˘)۶ – “Woot!!” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) – “I see what you did there and/or that smut was on point.” ┑(￣▽￣)┍ – “Sweet praises for you!” ლ(╹◡╹ლ) – “I love this story so hard, I get tingles when it updates!” ʘ‿ʘ – “WHat?!” (●⌒∇⌒●) – “Squee!!” (❁´◡`❁) – “Oh dear god, cavities!” (ﾉ´▽｀)ﾉ♪ – “This made me siiiinnnnnggggg!!” ┏(＾0＾)┛ – “Happy dance!” ヾ(＾∇＾) – “Wonderful fic! Thanks again!”

OMG sadface.

(┬＿┬) – “Literally crying, rn.” (^)o(^) – “Holy moly!”  (◕﹏◕✿) – “How … how could you do this to me?!” ಥ‿ಥ – “I’m not crying you are!”

FLAMES!

ᕕ(◉Д◉ )ᕗ – “WTAF?!” (⊙…⊙,) – “Did yoU JUST.” ᕕ(˵•̀෴•́˵)ᕗ – “HOW DARE YOU! With my OWN EYES!” (ノ°Д°）ノ︵ ┻━┻ – “TABLE FLIP, you son-OF-A-!”

I canNOT with you!

(@[]@!!) – “WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” ＼(◎o◎)／！– “WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT.” (´･_･`) – “I do not know how I feel about this.”

Assorted.

How bodies decompose

Wilderness survival skills

Mob mentality

Other cultures

What it takes for a human to die in a given situation

Common tropes in your genre

How bodies decompose

Wilderness survival skills

Mob mentality

Other cultures

What it takes for a human to die in a given situation

Common tropes for your genre

“i have strong feelings toward you but i know once i am able to touch and hold you i won’t know what i should do with these hands when you’re away”

the sun and the moon

the moon and the sea

the sun and the well-loved, dying sunflower

“i’d do anything for you” | “then live for me / live with me”

“i’d kill/die for you. say the word and i’ll do it in a heartbeat” | “no”

“i don’t know where else to go to” | (visibly angry) “who did this to you?”

[in life or death situation] “are you okay? are you hurt?” | “i should be the one asking you that! you’re the one who took the fall for me / who’s bleeding to protect me!”

Basically the all-powerful and capable, and their absolute weakness (still in denial sometimes)

the “what you did is very wrong but everyone deserves a second chance” and the “you’re lucky i took an oath to them (specifically) to not end you / make your life a living nightmare”

“please hesitate” | “i won’t hesitate ever”

the “i am not asking for your permission, don’t come with me” self-sacrificing and reckless dumbass, and their “someone has to watch your back while you’re being stupid. someone more clever and probably in the brink of having a heart attack the moment you take step out there: me”

“everyone looks up to them” | “hard not to when they’re that tall/big tbh”

“Just a series or drabbles/headcanons/prompts”: Someday I want to write an incredible 200k fic but for now have fun going through all the chapters trying to figure out which one is the one you actually want to read

“Will X be able to find love before Y happens?” And other questions: I read entirely too many YA novels

Quote from the actual fic: I watch entirely too many movie trailers

“Basically just an X fic with Y characters”: I can probably write a good summary if I cared a little more

Song lyrics: I have no idea how summaries work and I’m trying to be like the people with poem quotes

Poem quotes: either the best thing you’ve ever read or 13-year old English literature purple prose there is no in-between

Lol I can’t do summaries: I’m not entirely sure if I want you to read my fic

“Wtf is this” or other author questioning themselves: it’s either porn or crack

Explicit rated fics: listen my man I know you’re not gonna really read the summary just read the tags and decide if my sin is the sin for you

Paragraph of tags and one line summary: ok listen I can’t do summaries but I’ve got this ok IVE GOT THIS

dictionary definition: fluff or angst here you go

Either a meme or a tumblr imagine your otp: I was bored and I had emotions about my ship you can have emotions about them too

Paragraph from the source the fic is from: I’ve basically written my headcanon and made it prettier

“I’m so sorry” or “I cried while writing this” : I was in a sad mood and I needed a healthy way to release these emotions so now y'all get to suffer

No summary: it’s either porn or a small drabble and it all depends on the word count

this is super important because the mentality of excusing peoples shitty behaviour because of their mental health trapped me in a toxic friendship I should have ended years ago

if someone isn’t going to put the work in to change themselves so they stop hurting you, you shouldn’t have to put up with them, you do not deserve to be hurt

you shouldn’t have to put up with someone lying to you, stealing from you, emotionally blackmailing you, breaking your boundaries, being entirely unappreciative of the patience and effort you put in to keep this relationship going when they are barely even trying to do their part, just because they have trauma, just because they struggle with their mental health, because mentally ill people are not immune from being shitty people

there’s being understanding, and then there’s being used, there’s being helpful, and then there’s becoming an unintentional enabler

you aren’t a bad person for cutting someone off, you cannot help someone who refuses to help themselves, and you are not accountable for whatever happens to them afterwards

abusive behaviours are abusive behaviours, no matter how traumatised or mentally ill they are, if they hurt you, you have the right to leave

in turn, I sometimes explode around my family, I sometimes scream and shout, and I own that shit, I apologise, I try to make it up to them, and most importantly I also have a discussion about what happened, how it happened, and what I can do to avoid it in future

sure, maybe someone else antagonised me and I need to call them out on that, but if I overreact and say hurtful things I have to call myself out on that too, we are all responsible for our actions, and if someone can’t handle us they have the right to leave

maybe we can’t always control our actions in the heat of the moment or during an episode, but we can control how we deal with the aftermath, we can apologise, we can make things right, and if we hurt someone too badly to fix, we need to let them go

obviously every circumstance is different, there is an exception to every rule, this isn’t targeted at everyone with mental illness, likely it’s a remarkably small minority of mentally ill people that need to hear this, but they do need to hear this, and so do the people who are trying to support them

you do not deserve to be hurt

Summary:

Yennefer has claimed her Bard and no, she’s not giving him back, Geralt. He’s her friend now and you can go suck a lemon.

They were talking about how fanfic is becoming more and more mainstream while still remaining largely transgressive. It’s such an interesting dichotomy to think about!

On the one hand, you have sites like AO3 and realities like widespread high speed internet access being more and more accessible to larger and larger groups of people. This makes it incredibly easy for anyone at all to find and read fanfic.

On the other hand, you have the roots of fanfic. It was born out of marginalized groups such as women, people of colour, and members of the queer community deciding to take the stories that had been aimed at a largely male, white, heterosexual audience and inverting them into something they could enjoy and relate to. To this day, fanfic is a place where people write the kinds of stories that don’t get made into movies and TV shows. The kinds of stories that don’t get published or end up on the New York Times bestseller list.

Fanfic used to be written and shared in secret. People used to hide it. People still do hide the fact that they read or write it. But it’s becoming something that more and more people are becoming more and more aware of.

So now there’s a spotlight starting to shine on fanfic. People who aren’t looking for transgressive works are finding them where they always were. People who think the status quo is fine are getting upset when they enter a place where the status quo is constantly being upended.

The tags on that post that I can’t find made the point that popular media is curated and sanitized and stripped of most of its controversy in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. But that also makes that audience expect all media to be curated and sanitized in the same way. When they encounter the messy, controversial, ugly, radical, difficult things that people write in fanfic, they’re unprepared.

Fanfic isn’t big media. Fanfic authors aren’t being edited and filtered and polished - and nor are their works. The clash between the expectations of people new to fanfic and accustomed to popular media and the realities of what fanfic is and what it’s being written for - that’s part of this struggle that fandom is going through right now. It’s been going on since the beginning of course, but it’s getting louder every year.

I’m still thinking my way through this, but it really does make a lot of sense to me. If those were your tags, please let me know so I can credit you with the ideas at the core of this post.

Fandom has historically been dominated by the weird. Weird people, weird stories. That isn’t a bad thing. A lot of folks in fandom wear weird as a badge of honour, something we reclaimed from bullies and other abusers who slung the word and related ones at us. We are not normal and do not seek to be normal. If that idea bothers you, you are still welcome, but know that you are a guest. A lot of folks in fandom have been burned by aggressive normalcy, and start baring teeth when it intrudes into our spaces.

The author is dead. All this means is that the original canon author or authors can tell you their interpretation of the story, but they cannot control your own interpretations or imagination: their interpretation is no more or less important than anyone else’s. Something being noncompliant with canon does not make it badly-written.

Alternate universes exist. If someone wants to write characters from a serious crime drama in a sitcom, they are allowed to do that. If someone wants to explore what would happen if that horrific mass murderer was redeemed or never evil, they are allowed to do that. If someone just really likes dragons and wants to write about everyone being a dragon, they are allowed to do that.

If you write fanfic, you are also an author, so you are also dead. Once you release your ideas into the wild, other people can and will do weird things with them. The sooner you accept that, the better.

You will find porn of it if you go looking. If you don’t, some folks will take that as a challenge and go make some. As long as good-faith efforts are made to keep out people who shouldn’t or don’t want to see it, there is nothing wrong with this.

A canon being made for kids and teens does not mean that all sections of the fandom are for kids and teens. Adults can be into works for the younger set, and as long as there are clear boundaries between work that’s appropriate for kids and work that isn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and absolutely nothing wrong with adult or dark works based on those stories.

Some people will really hate your favourite characters. Some people will think your favourite pairing is gross, or boring, or that the characters would be better off with someone else. Some people will think that show or game or book that got you through the roughest moments of your life is absolute trash. And that’s okay. Not everyone has to like your favourite things.

Someone writing dark stories about terrible things happening to your favourite characters, even dark stories that may mirror some trauma you’ve been through, are not writing about you. They’re not. It is none of your business why they’re writing it. Their only duty to you is to make sure you can avoid their work if you want to. Again, the sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.

It’s okay if you want to write something dark and depraved. Lots of people do, and if it’s weird, well, fandom has historically been dominated by the weird.

It’s okay if you want to write nothing but fluff.

It’s okay, no matter what you want to write.

Just be courteous and tag your work. Even if all you want to tag it with is “this may contain dark topics.”

Most fanfic is straight.

These are the best hard numbers I have (with multi/other including all fics labeled as more than one of m/m, f/m, and f/f along with ones labeled as multi/other):

AO3 is the gay porn bookstore, so AO3 is the site that cares about:

Being free from corporate overlords

Not monetizing your data in creepy ways

Minute and detailed kink labeling

Protecting the freaky content

If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. Just know that you will never get the kind of labeling AO3 has from the people who pander to the mainstream. If you want to get rid of The Bad Stuff, the kind of websites you’ll end up with are a sea of nigh unsearchable het, like Wattpad. And the same kinks will be there. They just won’t be labeled clearly.

People imagine that fandom is mostly queer because their own bubble is, because queer stuff sticks in their mind more as anomalous, making it seem more frequent than it really is, and because the only places that label clearly are the queer ones.

No, literally no one missed that. For you, the big thing is underage. For someone else, it’s RPF existing at all. For someone else, it’s rape-as-kink.

I reiterate: If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. But AO3 looks how it does because it’s opposed to censorship. A site less opposed to censorship would also be less into this type of metadata and would have less clear labeling.

I hate Wattpad because the site is designed to only show the top 1k recent/popular works in a tag and encourage hustle culture and monetizing of fanfic. I hate them because their Terms of Service are a pile of vague bullshit designed to let them bully the freaks while ignoring equally explicit art by more mainstream users who make them more money.

Wattpad’s rules encourage writers to mislabel their content so that it can fly under the radar rather than labeling it clearly so that readers can make informed choices, as AO3′s policies encourage. Wattpad’s censorship makes their readers less safe. Their profit motive makes their less mainstream readers especially less safe.

That is what I am suggesting when I tell people to go back to Wattpad:

That they prioritize virtue signalling over reality.

That they do not care about how censorship affects minorities.

Summary:

Trekking down the mountain path was a familiar thing to Jaskier, but hey, at least he’s not alone this time. In fact, he now has four new companions! Including New Roach, a lost Princess, a scary Witch, and his ‘old friend’, the White Wolf!

See? This trek down the mountain is different already!

Notes:

Do I know where I’m going with this? Absolutely not. This is just another self-indulgent fic of mine with no clear plan on how future chapters would look. (Well, not really. I have things I absolutely wanted to include in here, including Jaskier in Trouble TM)

“In my friend, I find a second self.”