watch brave bang bravern!

felicity ☆ 20s ☆ little weirdo creature that haunts the woodlands

[todaysbird]

WELCOME BACK GALÁPAGOS RAIL!!!

[33bobsworld]

GALÁPAGOS RAIL: hey i took a nap whats poppin?

[swordfright]

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

[hacash]

You’ll all sleep a lot better when you realise that actually most people, rather than being purity in human form or evil incarnate, are in fact just some guy.

[philologicalbat]

i can't believe you're bringing nuance to a tumblr fight

[eleiwitch]

When ao3 goes down, life loses all meaning

[vivillainous]

genuinely appalled that ai usage has bled over into fan fiction + writing in general. as if using generative ai for art wasn’t already horrific enough.

the entire point of the arts & humanities is the creativity & passion imbued in human creation. the beauty of imperfection and the product of hours of dedication.

personally find it ridiculous if you think that using generative ai makes you a writer. like, at all. the entire point of creative writing as a pursuit is knowing that you get better over time. why kill not only the process (but also the environment hello??) by letting some ai spit out an entire fic for you?

shit is beyond me.

[maul-of-shame]

[Fandom/Fanfiction Etiquette???? Some sort of Rant????]

... Aka welcome back to Bucky screaming-

Bestie, this is a bit long. You don’t have to read it. I won’t know. I won’t judge. But if you do read it, just know that FOR ONCE, this is not about LOTR/TROP Fandom. I know. Shocking. A rare moment in history. Mark your calendars.

So I was scrolling through the AO3 tag on here, right? Minding my own business, expecting the usual posts—some fic recs, memes, some hilarious tags, some people losing their minds over an update—and then BAM.

People are out here making review cards for fics and ranking authors like it’s Goodreads for fanfiction???????!!!!!!!!

And listen, call me a boomer, call me an ancient relic of the old internet, but... WHAT?

Since when did fandom turn into Yelp? Since when did we decide that instead of just recommending fics we love like normal, enthusiastic, emotionally devastated readers, we needed to start assigning scores?

Are y’all publishing editorial reviews for fic now?

Are we getting an AO3 Michelin Guide?

Should I expect a dramatic Gordon Ramsay-esque takedown of someone’s slow burn fic because “the pacing lacked a certain je ne sais quoi”??

Now, let me be clear—if an author asks for constructive feedback, great! That’s called beta reading and has existed since the dawn of time. But this? This is like if I was doodling in my sketchbook into a café and suddenly people started holding up little cards rating my anatomy skills, linework, and color theory. Like who asked???

And don’t even get me started on how it affects writers. Imagine you’re just vibing, writing your little fic, minding your own business, and then suddenly you find out some stranger is out there ranking you like a Pokémon card?? What next? A tier list? Are we going to start assigning rarities? “Oh, this author is an Ultra Rare Legendary but their dialogue is only a 7/10, so actually, they’re just an Epic instead.” HELLO??

And I know someone’s going to be like, “But Bucky, this is just how people engage with media nowadays.” And okay, sure, media criticism exists, people love ranking things, fine.

But FANFICTION????????!!!!!!!!!!

Buddy, that’s free labor.

That’s unpaid, from-the-heart, stress-relief, hobby-turned-art. That’s “I wrote this in the dead of night, fueled by nothing but vibes and sheer willpower.”

That’s for fun.

Like if someone wants to be reviewed, sure! But to just start doing it unsolicited? In fandom spaces?? That ain’t it. That ain’t it.

Imagine you’re an author, scrolling through the AO3 tags, just looking for some fun discourse or fic recs, and then—boom—you see it. Some random person has spent a solid ten minutes on Canva (no shade to Canva, I love you, my beloved) designing cute little review cards, ranking you.

Your writing.

Your characterization.

Your spice levels.

Your grammar.

Like you’re some sort of contestant on The Great British Bake Off and not a person who wrote that fic at 3 AM in a sleep-deprived frenzy, fueled solely by the unhinged love for your blorbo.

MY DUDE. WHAT.

And listen, I get it. Some people think they’re being "helpful", or maybe they just like making lists. But let’s take a step back.

This could backfire faster than a droid’s blaster.

You think you’re just providing a fun little ranking system, but what you’re actually doing is potentially discouraging people from writing at all. Imagine a young (or not), insecure writer who just posted their first fic, all nervous and excited, only to find out some random stranger is out there critiquing their work like it’s a meal at a Michelin-star restaurant. Like, “Ah yes, the prose was adequate, though the character development left a bit of a bitter aftertaste. Would not recommend. 3.5/10.” HELLO???

And even if the reviews are positive, the whole idea of being rated like a product on Amazon is absolutely wild. “Oh, I love this author, their works are always a solid 9/10, though sometimes the sentence structure is a little predictable.”

BFFR. This is FANFICTION.

We are out here spilling our guts into stories for free, not submitting manuscripts for the Nobel Prize in Literature. We write because we love it. Because it brings us joy. Because our brains will not shut up about that one AU where the villain gets redeemed and falls in love with the hero.

And now we have to worry about getting critiqued by strangers with Canva templates???

What’s next? A full-fledged Rotten Tomatoes for AO3?

Are we gonna start putting little critic blurbs at the top of fics? “This fic started strong, but lost me in the third act. 78% on the Tomato Meter.”

I don’t know, man. I feel like we’ve strayed from the light????? We left kudos. We wrote deranged, unhinged tags in the comments. We screamed in the notes about how a fic ruined our lives (affectionate). We didn’t… rank each other like Pokémon cards?????!!!!

I’m lost in the sauce, man. I thought we left this kind of thing back in the days of “fic snob” LiveJournal discourse and “Big Name Fan” elitism. But here we are, in the year of our lord 2025, and people are out here handing out fanfic report cards like this is AO3 Elementary School.

Maybe this is grinding my gears extra hard because I’m, myself, an author who posts a lot. Like, I have poured my soul, my free time, and my questionable sleep schedule into fanfiction. I have written thousands upon thousands of words for free. I have bled into Google Docs like Frodo bleeding out in Sam's arms at the end of LOTR. So when I see people ranking fics like they’re curating a Vault-Tec experiment to see how quickly writers will lose their minds??

MY SISTER IN MANDALORE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT??????!!!!!!!

Like, imagine you spend weeks writing, editing, perfecting a fic, only to wake up one day and see some random person has assigned it a 7/10 on "spice levels," a B+ for grammar, and a C- for emotional damage potential. Buddy, I wasn’t out here deliberately trying to pass your personal fandom SATs. I was just writing my little blorbos in peace. WHY AM I BEING SCORED LIKE A QUEST REWARD IN FALLOUT??

“Oh, but it’s just for fun! It’s not that deep!” REALLY?? Tell that to the Supernatural fandom, which has been stuck in a time loop of pure chaos and suffering since 2005. Tell that to the Star Wars prequel fans, who are still debating whether Anakin was in the right (he wasn’t, but we love him, I know I do).

Fandom is ALWAYS deep. You think something is just a silly little review system, but next thing you know, someone’s favorite fic is getting a 4/10 on "character accuracy," and the author is yeeting themselves into the Shadow Realm.

This isn’t a gaming leaderboard. This isn’t a tier list of Fallout companions. This isn’t the Jedi Trials. THIS IS FANFICTION. A lawless land where we write purely for the love of storytelling and for the unholy joy of making people feral over our headcanons.

IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. Why are we making it feel like a season finale cliffhanger directed by Eric Kripke??

“But Bucky, people rank books all the time—”

YEAH. And you know what else? Those books are paid for!!!

Those books go through multiple rounds of professional editing (usually). They have publishers, marketing teams, agents, and entire industries behind them. A commercially published book has been workshopped, rewritten, beta-read, proofed, and sometimes even gone through sensitivity readers, legal teams, and industry consultants before it ever reaches the shelves. The author has likely signed contracts, met deadlines, worked with an editor who may have asked them to cut entire characters or rewrite entire plotlines—all in the name of crafting a book that meets a specific market standard.

When you buy a book, you’re not just reading it—you’re investing money into a product. You’re engaging with something that was created with the intent to be sold, marketed, and reviewed. Authors expect criticism because their work is part of a competitive, commercial industry. Book reviews, rankings, and critiques are baked into the business model. When you pick up a book, you’re making a financial transaction—you are the consumer.

Now let’s compare that with fanfiction.

Fanfiction is, at its core, a hobby. A passion project. A creative outlet that people engage with for fun, love, and sheer unhinged brainrot. There are no contracts. No publishers. No agents. No deadlines. There are no professional marketing teams hyping up an upcoming fanfic release (imagine??).

Nobody is getting paid.

No one is making a living off this (if you do though, kudos to you bestie!!).

The vast majority of fic writers are just people who love a story so much that they want to play in its sandbox for a little while.

A fanfic might be the result of months of careful outlining and research, or it might be a spur-of-the-moment idea that someone wrote at 3 AM in a fugue state because their brain wouldn’t shut up about two characters making out in the rain. Either way, that fic was posted for free, out of love, with no expectation of return except maybe a comment, bookmarl or a kudos.

And that’s where the key difference lies. Fanfiction isn’t a product—it’s a gift.

You don’t walk into a friend’s house, eat a home-cooked meal they made for free, and then whip out a Yelp review like, “Mmm, the seasoning could be better. 7/10.”

You don’t go to an amateur art gallery and start loudly ranking paintings based on their brushstrokes.

And you definitely don’t accept a lovingly handmade sweater from your grandma and go, “Hmm, the stitching is a little uneven. C+ craftsmanship.”

So why is it suddenly acceptable to do this with fanfiction?

If someone freely shares something they made, out of passion, for the joy of storytelling, why do some people feel entitled to slap arbitrary numbers on it like they’re grading an English paper? Fic is not a product. Fic is not a commodity. Fic is something people share because they want to, not because they have to. The second you start treating it like a professional publication—especially when the author never asked for that kind of critique—you’re missing the entire point of fandom.

Fanfiction is not a commercial product and I stand by that.

And when you start ranking fanfic the way you rank commercially published books, you’re applying a standard that was never meant to be applied to a hobbyist’s work.

And let’s be real—when people review commercial books, they’re often comparing them to other commercial books. Nobody is reading a fantasy novel and saying, “Well, I don’t know, this wasn’t quite as good as that one self-published Wattpad vampire story I read in 2013.” Because that would be absurd. Yet, somehow, fandom has now decided that it’s normal to slap arbitrary review scores on fics written for free, by unpaid authors, who are often doing this in their spare time, for nothing more than the joy of storytelling?

And I already know someone’s gonna come in like, “But I rank fics just for fun, it’s not that deep!” OKAY, BUT THINK ABOUT THE IMPACT. Even if you see it as a harmless little rating system, the author didn’t ask for it.

And that author might be someone who’s just starting out, someone who’s already insecure, someone writing in a language that isn't their native language, someone who barely worked up the courage to post their fic at all. And now they get to see that some random person has assigned their work a number.

They get to be publicly compared to other authors like they’re competing in some kind of twisted fandom Olympics, with some sort of "ranking" as if it was some sort of REAL competition.

And that’s the whole thing—it’s not just about intent. It’s about impact. You might mean it as a fun little review system, but the second it starts discouraging people from posting, making them feel like their writing is being scrutinized instead of enjoyed, it stops being harmless. It stops being “just for fun” and starts being actively damaging.

So no. This is not the same as ranking published books. It never was. It never will be.

IF an author actually asked you to rate their fic, beta their work, or give them a full breakdown like you’re a judge on The Great British Bake Off—GOOD FOR YOU. I love that for you. That’s called consent, and we support that in this house. THIS POST IS NOT FOR YOU. You are excused. Go in peace.

This is for the people who see a fic, completely unprompted, and go, “Hmm, I think I’ll slap a rating on this like it’s a Yelp review for my local sushi place.”

SIR. MA’AM. BELOVED. WHY.

Did the author ask you for this? No? Then why are you out here crafting Canva infographics ranking their dialogue pacing like you’re a literary critic for The New York Times??

If the fic explicitly says, “Hey, I’d love feedback, let me know what you think,” then sure, that’s an open door. But if that door is closed and locked and the author is just out here vibing, posting their work for the love of the craft, then why are you crawling in through the window with a clipboard and a grading rubric??

Respect the vibes. Respect the boundaries. And most importantly—if no one asked for your unsolicited AO3 Rotten Tomatoes review, maybe… just don’t?

Also. ALSO. I know I’m advancing myself a wee bit too much here, but if you’re out there rating fanfic authors like you’re a Rotten Tomatoes critic for fandom, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say—you’re probably not a writer yourself. Because if you were, you wouldn’t be doing that. You just wouldn’t.

Like, my guy. My dude. My esteemed colleague in fandom chaos. Writers know what it feels like to pour their heart, soul, and sanity into a fic, to fight through plot holes and existential dread at 2 AM, to stare at a blank document like it's a morally questionable Bethesda NPC that won’t give you the right dialogue options.

We know how terrifying it can be to post something.

The little voice in your head already tells you, “What if this sucks? What if people hate it?” We don’t need external confirmation from some random Canva scorecard telling us our dialogue gets an 8/10 but our pacing is a little “mid.”

And IF you are a writer, and you’re still out here rating other authors like you’re on a MasterChef judging panel—my dude. My sweet summer child. There is something wrong.

Somewhere, deep in the wires of your fandom brain, a setting has been switched to “Villain Origin Story.”

Because you should know better. You should know that fanfiction is about sharing, not scoring. You should know that fic writers are out here crafting entire universes for free, are usually fueled by nothing but caffeine (or any other hot/cold drinks), spite, and the desperate need to fix what canon ruined.

You think Tolkien rolled up to C.S. Lewis like, “Hey bro, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was great but the pacing? Could be tighter. Giving it a 6.5/10.” ???????!!!!!

NO!!!!! Because that would be unhinged.

If you’re ranking fics like Pokémon stats and assigning authors a Metacritic score, I gotta assume you either (a) don’t write yourself and don’t get it, or (b) do write and have somehow become the fandom equivalent of a Sith Lord.

Either way, I am deeply concerned.

Honestly, at this rate, I’m waiting for someone to start a fandom Rotten Tomatoes where authors get a “critic score” and a “reader score.” And that’s when I will personally launch myself into the sun.

Final rating? 0/10. Would not recommend. /s

[rivkat]

AO3 in popular culture

Neither Wikipedia nor Fanlore have this subsection in their AO3 entries, which makes me sad. I'm aware of N.K. Jemisin's use of "Tales of Our Own" in Far Sector

And I just found this gem in Django Wexler's Everyone Wants to Rule the World But Me:

"Fun fact for readers from the future: Before AO3 was a benevolent government ushering in world peace and prosperity for all, it was a fan-fiction archive! [star] THE MORE YOU KNOW [star]"

Anyway, I'm interested in other sightings in the wild, especially in visual media/moving pictures. Please add any of which you are aware!

[sm-baby]

I LOVE MY FRIENDS SO MUCH I'M JUST STUPID AND FORGET THAT FEELINGS NEED TO BE EXPRESSED IN ORDER FOR THEM TO BE FELT

[shamebats]

[redstonedust]

having depression makes your friends seem like the coolest most put together people on earth like wow... you got out of bed, had breakfast, went to work, AND spent some time on a hobby when you got home....? that's so impressive you're like superman or something. can i borrow your power.

[dramatic-dolphin]

no sentence fills me with utter loathing so much as "i asked chatgpt"

[thestuffedalligator]

Do you think I meant to write "stoopid" google docs. Do you think I meant to describe a character as "stoopid." Do you think that is what I meant to do

[important-animal-images]

[askyea-poesy]

There's a little girl within me who still thinks that if she's quiet enough, that if she behaves enough, that if today, she's just enough to be good enough, that someone will come back for her. But the woman I've grown into knows now, no one is going back for her, except me.

Tanya Markul

[the-muppet-joker]

Greetings Transgenders... I am happy to anounce that today you are extra visible to me. I can see you so clearly. I am looking at you. I am nodding and smiling. I will continue to look at you with both of my eyes wide open for the rest of the day. I will not blink until midnight. Happy Trans Gender Day Of Visibility!!!!!!!!

[puniper]

ethics of making AI images aside, I do find a bit amusing the kinds of sob stories and mental gymnastics people make up to pretend like drawing is this super technical skill with an impossibly high barrier of entry when its like one of the first hobbies toddlers pick up

suddenly a lot of people think they got the next Lord of the Rings in their head but they were never able to turn their stories into anything tangible because the evil elitist artists are hogging all the talent and skill and they need a bajilion years of training or something as if one of the most popular manga and anime of the past decade wasn't made by a guy that draws like this

[omnybus]

“It’s too trope-y…” “Try not to be too trope-y…” “This one’s not as trope-y as the sequel…”

Cliché. The word you’re looking for is “cliché.” Literally every story in every genre and medium ever is made out of tropes. It’s impossible to tell a story without them. A cliché is when a trope is overused with little variance to the point it becomes a predictable, boring stereotype. Just because you can identify a trope being used in a book, movie, song, game, etc. doesn’t automatically make it a cliché, nor does playing a trope straight rather than subverting or deconstructing it; it just means you can recognize patterns. When executed in a creative or elegant fashion, even a very common trope can still entertain and inspire the audience.

Obviously what does or doesn’t count as a cliché is subjective, and even something widely regarded as cliché can be unironically enjoyed by someone; that’s usually why they persist in the first place. My point is that I keep seeing the words “trope” and “cliché” being used interchangeably, to the point where the word “trope” is spoken of with distain by artists who should know better. Complaining that a story has tropes is like complaining that your food has ingredients.

[ellipsus-writes]

Where does your story begin? What’s holding it together? And what is it really trying to say?

Ideas are easy... stories are a lot harder. That’s why we dropped four new templates to help you turn sparks into structure, tension, themes, and meaning—scene by scene.

Story Opener Template—Where are we?! Draw in readers and set the stage with a well-defined setting, intrigue, and emotional stakes.

Scene Builder Template—Plan story beats with details, dialogue, and character goals to create momentum that makes each scene matter.

Themes and Symbolism Template—Suss out recurring images and brainstorm the big questions that give your story depth.

Conflicts, Stakes and Tension Template—Untangle dramas large and small (personal or world-ending) that move your plot forward.

You can find all four templates (and others!) in Ellipsus—head over to the blog and read more!

- the Ellipsus Team xo