fic blog

hello! fanworks sideblog of deepestbluesky on ao3 and dreamwidth. not super active here and who knows what fandoms might show up these days. still i where i post fanworks and happy to chat!

[sith-shenanigans]

*looks at polyamorous triad* so which of you is the soldier and which is the poet and which is the king

[sith-shenanigans]

this is the perfect reblog post cancelled

[silverirony]

unreliable narrator but it's just an aromantic writing romance

[silverirony]

the author's barely concealed aromanticism

[greelin]

“what’s up with you and vampires, man?” we don’t have the time to discuss this

[mikkeneko]

I think my favorite kind of miscommunication to do in fanfic is when a character has only limited understanding of a situation (especially if that's because the other character is concealing something from them) and they use their limited knowledge to come to a conclusion that is 100% reasonable based on what they know, but completely off base from the truth

[mikkeneko]

And, of course, this causes Problems

[guiltfactory-moved]

the "my favorite character did nothing wrong" mindset is completely unappealing to me because i love thinking about all the things my favorite characters did wrong

[falsity555-deactivated20251002]

EMBRACE PROFOUND PLATONIC DEVOTION

[deepestbluesky]

i fear i am becoming 'person is stuck in the past and hates language usage change' but. i just think!!! that if your first person or close third person POV character expresses opinions in their narration. that alone is not enough to make them an unreliable narrator!!!!! that's just being a person!!!!!

[deepestbluesky]

during Binderary in 2025, i started binding the main stories in the Superstition hockey series, and i got through the first two books (Superstition and Deke). and then i let it sit for a long time. this year during Binderary, i finished up the layouts... and then let them sit for a long time again lmao. I FINALLY FINISHED THEM! details under the cut.

these pictures are the whole series, and the interior pages are from all different books - the various stories have different kinds of divisions (chapters/named sections/etc) so i got to have fun playing with the ways i broke them up, but i stuck with the wedding rings icon for the scene divider all the way through (i picked it for the first story, which does feature them getting married, but i also think it kind of looks like two hockey pucks). Other People is a different POV from the rest of the main series, so i wanted to make it different on the cover and the title page - hence, the blue and also the outline white text on the title page instead of the black text on the others. the color combos are admittedly entirely picked because of 'what do i have already and what do i have five similar papers of'. i still like them! but if i was doing this as the ideal of my dreams, i'd have gone with more thematic color combos and patterns.

this series is the only time i've done sewn board bindings! i will admit that the first one was a bit rough because i had no idea what i was doing, but the second one was okay, and then doing four of them in a row this week definitely got it into my head a bit more. (i'm so used to casebound books, so i always get caught off-guard when i need to think about the cover and endpapers while i'm still sewing lol. usually i put it off a long time.)

i also really wanted to be able to get the titles on the spines (i used to have a printer that was kind of shitty but DID let me print on bookcloth, and then i got a better one but now i CAN'T print on bookcloth. rip.) so i tried transferring them from a printed version using graphite and then going over the transfer with paint marker. and... it did Work but i'm not thrilled with it. it was a good experience though! now i know!

[deepestbluesky]

it's actually fucking unimaginable that so many people will write fic in english for cnovel/cdrama fandoms and just blatantly misspell a character's name for the whole story. like it'd be wild in any fandom that you can't be bothered to check the spelling of a character's name, but the added layer of like. it is already romanized into your language as part of the translation, the LEAST you can do is have the fucking common courtesy to not completely get the name wrong. and yet.

[molabuddy]

really specific trope i like that i feel like can only be explained in a diagram

[candycoatedrox]

getting characters into world-endingly intense codependent queerplatonic relationships is literally what life is all about. it is literally what we were put here on this earth to do

[vertebrae]

BtP 20206 - reveals

The AO3 collection is now revealed, get ready for some meta! There were 7 works submitted for Behind the Pod 2026, which you can find on the AO3 collection.

We have a whole range of making-of/dvd commentary (including the incredible Gusu Summer Camp Dating Sim!) as well as some cool interviews!

Missed this round? Time to get thinking about ideas for BtP 2027 next summer 👀

[deepestbluesky]

tonight i am feeling a lot of love for you how you can feel to attached to a specific version of a specific character - like sure i love this character a lot overall, but i also feel very fond of this specific iteration of them from a fic i have read many times, or from a specific fancomic, or the version of them from a specific season or episode or book or even just from a scene! it's one of the joys of fandom!!

[pleuvoire]

two people having sex while a third person (not present) is in one way or another a major focus of the sex they are having is like crack to me and is the reason why in my yaoi shipping adventures i always want the two spokes of the love triangle to hook up

[loontattoo]

so here are my takes

I think there is a broad cultural problem with the current state of fanfiction that likely stems from the proliferation of fics-turned-published-novels wherein fic authors now feel they have a duty to churn out a high volume of content at an inhuman rate. and in order to meet those demands, they resort to AI. and that sucks.

I think readers and consumers of fanfiction broadly speaking also have a bad habit of feeding into this culture by demanding and expecting a high volume of content churned out at an inhuman rate, and it often prevents them from accurately assessing the quality of what they're reading, leading to a general degeneration of fic quality, feeding an audience that is getting worse at recognizing good art vs. bad art. and that sucks.

going from 1,800 fics to over 38,000 fics for a single ship in less than six months is not normal and should have been a warning sign for people that there was likely a fuckton of slop being produced and posted. and that sucks.

I don't like the excuse that some authors are using that they only used AI to beta their work. there are plenty of humans who would happily beta your fic for you. and if your reasoning for not using a human is because you wanted your work beta'd faster, I would implore you to examine WHY you feel like you are on some kind of binding schedule in a hobby space. kill the profit-driven manager in your brain and take your time making shit.

generally speaking, I believe this is a problem that is driven by both readers and writers but at the end of the day, the real driver - as ever - is capital, and its influence on art and creativity. I don't blame authors or readers for falling victim to this because the world around us sucks, but my god we all need to at least try a little harder to resist.

if you're a reader, be critical of what you're seeing and consuming. and if you're a writer, stop giving away any piece of the creative process to AI. silence the part of you that insists you must post as much as possible all the time. you do not have to capitulate to hustle culture and also your fanfiction will probably not actually make you rich and famous, even if all those comments and kudos are making you feel important.

ultimately we have got to get back to writing and reading fanfic for the love of the game. also I don't think the callout posts about authors using AI are helpful either btw like I think the best choice if you're reading a fic that you suspect might be AI is to simply not read or engage with it. and then go read and engage with something made by a human.

[souls4polls]

How long have you been writing fanfiction??

Less than 1 year!

For 1 to 5 years!

For 5 to 10 years!

For 10 to 15 years!

For 15 to 20 years!

For 20 to 25 years!

For 25 to 30 years!

For 30 to 35 years!

For 35 to 40 years!

For 40 to 45 years!

For 45 to 50 years!

For 50+ years!

Voting ended onJul 11

Feel free to reblog for other people to vote. DO NOT SEND HATE TO ANYONE FOR WHAT THEY VOTED. This is merely for fun and to see what people genuinely think.

[sockablock]

Knowing a fic author through AO3 is like attending someone’s thesis presentation and politely clapping at the end, knowing a fic author through this hellsite is like going over to their house at 3AM to watch them eat mayonnaise out of a jar

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Sometimes I attend somebody’s thesis presentation and I’m so impressed that I follow them home to watch them eat mayonnaise out of a jar at 3am.

[itsmyturnonthegender]

Sometimes I watch someone eat mayonnaise out of a jar at 3am with such fervour I am compelled to attend their thesis presentation

[bucketofdeltav]

Sometimes I look at a thesis presentation and I go ‘I know exactly how much mayonnaise you had to eat out of the jar at 3 am to pull this shit off’