Rules: When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass it on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love!
Thanks for the tag, @keyrousse it’s been a while since I’ve been shoulder tapped for one of these so i thought I’d show my appreciation that someone out there remembers I exist by doing what it says on the tin and plugging a bunch of my own stuff, rather than doing my usual and forgetting to respond for months. To be fair this has probably been left long enough to be sort of awkward, so sorry about that.
To preface, I don’t actually really have faves because there are layers and layers to my ‘do I still like this’ cake, and sometimes the filling’s missing but the answer is still yes, so instead here’s five random fics i have weird soft spots for.
Postscript [ST Discovery, E, Michael/Book/Pike] only two chapters in but the first time I ever played around with a work skin and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out
Knock Yourself Out [SW Repomm, E, Fi/Sev/Parja] IDK I just like this one
Of Duty [SW TCW, E, Rex/Ahsoka/Cody, Bly/Aayla] longest fic I’ve ever written, on hiatus and only half done but it gets a spot just for the excessive plotting and foreshadowing and other probably pointless bullshittery I’ve put into it
Different Toned Flecks [SW TCW, E, Fox/Vos] consolation prize for best pun hidden in the title
Pick Your Moments [SW TCW, E, Ahsoka/Fives] gets on the list for the technobabble
I always feel like I’m bugging people when tagging them in this stuff and feel even weirder considering it’s self recs as in You Are Not Obliged To Engage With My Work (even though I don’t feel that way about being tagged please don’t ask me to explain myself sometimes brains are just dumb) so please if you want to do this consider it a genuine go nuts and share your stuff.
Ugh help I just want to write ten thousand words of post canon softness for Not Me where Black gets to rejoin the gang and they’re all friends
Bonus points if Black finds out that Dan and Yok are dating again and gets annoyed and White is just like “your boyfriend put you in a coma so you don’t have a right to judge other peoples’ taste in men”
excellent points made @jiangchengdidnothingwrong,and I can see at least one person in the room (possibly Dan himself) being like “I mean …. he was right, you can’t trust cops“ and Black adding “besides, he’s my ex boyfriend and I put him in a coma right back so it’s completely different”
Ugh help I just want to write ten thousand words of post canon softness for Not Me where Black gets to rejoin the gang and they’re all friends
Bonus points if Black finds out that Dan and Yok are dating again and gets annoyed and White is just like “your boyfriend put you in a coma so you don’t have a right to judge other peoples’ taste in men”
Black: yeah well at least I’m not dating Sean
Sean: *ready to throw hands* what’s wrong with dating me?
listen I just want more of Black and Gumpa because that’s a dynamic that I find really interesting so now I’m making stuff up about them
Gumpa smiled as he sat down at the head of the table. “Did Black tell you about how the two of us met?”
White shook his head, instantly invested, while Black rolled his eyes.
“I was at a red light on my bike,” Gumpa said. “Down the street from some business or other. And Black comes running out their front door like his tail is on fire, down the street, with three or four goons behind him. You know the type, dark suits, sunglasses - corporate thugs. And he sees me, jumps on the back of my bike, and shouts - ”
Sean, Gram, and Yok chime in, in perfect unison, having clearly heard the story a hundred times. “Drive, fuckin’ drive!”
White laughed as Black huffed and pretended to be annoyed. “Did you?”
“Oh, hell, yes. Screw those guys.” Gumpa laughed and poured himself a drink. “I drove him back here and gave him some tips about how corporate sabotage shouldn’t be done at two PM on a Thursday.”
“Get fucked, hia,” Black said, without any venom in his voice.
I’m very pleased with how both books came out, especially the spines. It was nerve wracking to print the titles on that cloth, hoping it would come out in line with the trees and not crooked. I found the cloth in fat quarters at a chain fabric store and just knew I had to use it for a Teen Wolf fic.
Volume 1 has a blue marbled cover and brown flower pattern endpapers, Volume 2 has a black marbled cover and grey flower pattern endpapers. All of the paper is Indian Cotton that I got through Dolphin Papers in Indiana. (The flower pattern is one of my all time favorites!)
Both books were sewn French link over 3/8 inch tapes. Volume 1 has seasons 1&2, and is 220 pages. Volume 2 covers seasons 3a&b, and is chonky, coming in at 400 pages.
I have this idea where YSH didn’t get to the courthouse in time to stop KGO from stabbing the scam artist responsible for his parents’ death, so he ended up going to jail for a couple years (let’s say the guy didn’t die, and he was a minor, extenuating circumstances, et c) and couldn’t get a job when he got out and wound up working as an escort
where he meets KYH because KYH likes to hire an escort for big events, because otherwise women swarm him, all convinced that they’re the one who can turn him straight. and he could look for an actual date but they try to talk to him, whereas with an escort, he can set down certain expectations and they’ll follow them without complaining because they get a nice paycheck and free dinner.
except then perhaps KGO isn’t exactly great at following all the expectations because he keeps making snarky remarks when the foundation people are being asshole snobs
KGO is like “whatever, he won’t request me again. Maybe he won’t even pay me. I still got a free dinner and a chance to insult the president to his face without him realizing because I used words he didn’t know.” Meanwhile KYH is like “………..yes I will keep this one, thanks.”
One of my favorite things is fanfic Author’s Notes where it says something like “One more chapter left!” and then you scroll up and see exactly when they lost control of their life. It’s funny every time and I always appreciate the additional reading material.
oh my god it’s even funnier when that’s the Author’s Note multiple times in a row.
Death of the Author’s Self Control
all the people reading me write “I have no plans to write a sequel” at the end of each fic in a five-fic series
How To Embed Spotify Playlists (and other things) on Ao3!
Shoutout to @olderthannetfic, whose posts about it made me aware it was a thing.
It’s really very easy from desktop. I’m not sure if there’s a way to do it from the mobile app, but I haven’t figured it out yet, unfortunately.
START BY opening the playlist you want to embed via spotify’s web player. Click the meatball menu to the right of the play button.
navigate to “share”, then “embed playlist”:
You’ll get a window that should look like this:
I don’t know if it matters if you click to see the code, but I did. You can also toggle things like color and size here, and spotify’s API reminds you of its Terms of Service.
Copy the HTML, then scoot over to Ao3 and post a new work:
Then scroll down to “work text”. IMPORTANT: You want the input to be HTML, not rich text. Paste the html code you just grabbed from spotify. It should look like this:
After you’ve pasted in the code, switching over to rich text should show you your playlist like so!
ET VOILA.
This works for other kinds of embedded media also. It’s still hosted by spotify (or wherever), but it will display via ao3.
Please feel free to caption this! There’s no alt text, but I’ve been told tumblr’s alt text system is terrible and virtually useless anyway, and I simply do not have the spoons to do good captions.
Inspired by a yearning for the slower-paced fandom experiences of the Old Social Media era and a healthy dose of millennial ruining, this is a fic challenge for people who just want to do whatever. Who are trying to carve out a little niche to chat about Deep Headcanons or finally get around to crafting that 20K rarepair coffee shop AU from that show that everyone watched in February of 2021 and then promptly forgot about - except you. You remember, and those two characters aren’t going to make out in the back room of the imaginary coffee shop by themselves, are they?
Timing
June 1, 2022 until September 30, 2022. Ish. Whatever. You’re an adult now, you’re not going to get in trouble for being late.
The Challenge
Write a fic. The fic that you want to write. The fic that’s been nagging at the back of your mind that you haven’t written yet because you feel like everyone’s already over that fandom, or nobody will read it, or canon has moved too fast and a plot twist has made your story concept irrelevant. You know, that fic.
Maybe write two. Or twelve. Whatever! Any length, any fandom, whatever feels right to you.
If you write it, use the hashtag #selfishficsummer22 so everyone else can read it. I’ll try to reblog finished stories from here, but if it’s been a couple of days and it hasn’t been reblogged yet, send in an ask to remind me. AO3 links preferred and/or encouraged because - look if you post that 20k epic directly into a tumblr post without a read more cut I’m not reblogging it, that’s just mean.
Ok but how old do I have to be to join this challenge. You seem like. Old. Do you need to sit down?
I’m not real-person old, just fandom old, but thanks for asking. You can be any age, but this challenge is geared toward adults and may include explicit smutfics and other works intended for an audience 18+. Please make sure you’re old-at-heart and also a legal adult.
Are there any rules?
Not really. This is a loose, flexible challenge designed to be a springboard to encourage you to write fic that makes you happy without worrying about ~reach or ~algorithms or the pace of fandom content consumption. We’ll be periodically reblogging some writing memes and posting encouragement, and if that sounds nice to you then we’d love for you to join.
There are no rules about which fandoms or content can be included. However, please tag your work appropriately. You are responsible for including a ratingand any content tags either in the header of your Tumblr post or in the AO3 work for your story so that people can make an informed choice about reading your work. Any works in the tag without these components may not be reblogged.
the bed is big enough for two people without touching, but unfortunately there is only one blanket
we’re roommates and you drunkenly passed out in my bed; move over I’m coming in
we have to sleep on the forest ground, so everything can be the bed, but we still sleep close, because we feel too exposed
you woke me up screaming from a nightmare, and I’m tired, so let’s cuddle so the nightmares don’t come anymore
we rented a place together with our friend group for vacation, but there are only double beds in every room and everyone else already found a sleeping partner
our cover is that we’re a couple and it only makes sense to sleep in the same bed
we always used to have sleepovers as children, why would it be weird now?
without enough money, I can only pay for one person to sleep in the hotel, so you need to sneak in and we share
we sat on my bed and talked for hours and eventually we just fall asleep
there is only one good pillow and we both don’t the neck pain, so I guess we have to press our heads close together
we’re camping and my tent ripped, can I please share yours?
there was a big party at some people’s house and we wake up in the same bed together, what happened?
we fell asleep on the couch, watching a movie and wake up entangled with each other
we’re snowed in and there is not a lot of space and heat
sharing a bed used to be quite normal for us, when did that change?
My fic recs are ones that carved a little space in my heart, fics I keep on regular rotation. And ofc it’s a non-exhaustive list! Thank you to all the writers above, and to all the writers not mentioned!
It’s been bothering me that I don’t have a Dealer update to share.
Since the last update in September, I have been either: working, unwell, exhausted - or some combination thereof.
I wanted to post and say, “Ok, the next update will be by x date,” - but I’ve not felt great over the last 48 hours and it’s made me realise that at the moment, I really need to rest at weekends.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I haven’t forgotten the story or dropped it. I am still writing Dealer; it lives loudly in my mind and I think about it every day, and I can’t wait to share it all with you.
But I’ve realised there’s no point in me pushing through being ill to churn out a couple of chapters, and then being unwell again for weeks on end.
Equally, having written 700k and having put so much effort into it, there’s no point in me half-arsing a few chapters just to meet some arbitrary deadline. I’m sure you’d rather it was ‘good’ as opposed to 'quick’.
Deep down, I know the answer is for me to get this illness more under control (and I have been working hard on that) - and then the rest will fall into place. So, Dealer will be back, but not just yet. I wanted to tell you so I stopped worrying about not updating.
If you want to be notified, then subscribe to the story on AO3; the next chapter will drop right into your inbox when I’m a bit better.
I’m going to take a couple of weeks off writing Dealer - firstly, I’ve been writing the next chapter for 3 weekends straight. I took a day off work last week to get the chapter finished, wrote 9k last weekend…and I’m not happy with it at all.
I’ve since (finally!) worked out what the problem is, but it needs a bit of work to get it right.
But importantly, I have the opportunity to get a couple of things sorted offline (notably I am hoping to re-kit out my home gym with a new power rack) - but to do so, I need to do some sorting and rearranging, and I can’t realistically do that and write Dealer at the same time because writing literally consumes my entire weekend.
1) gay-panic.jpg Laurent came across his gay awakening visiting Prince Damianos in the courtyard
2) bi-panic.jpg Prince Damianos comes back 6 years later and mistakes all-grown-up Prince Laurent for a beautiful local horse girl. Auguste’s ready to throw hands.
Regards, Nia Associate Engineer
ICYMI:I wrote fic inspired by this amazing artwork!
I absolutely respect and appreciate fanfiction as a medium but I have found more and more often lately while reading fanfics, which are long and amazingly written but also such complete new universes, I wish they’d be remade into an original work which I could easily share with friends and family instead of being tied to a franchise. So often it would just take to change the names.
