Duender Writes

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people ~ Thomas Mann

[duender-writes]

The difference between fanfic and a 'real' novel is that fanfictions are honest about their inspiration.

Mary Robinette Kawal

Welcome to Duender-Writes! I am Due, a fanfiction writer who dabbles in anything that catches my interest~ I’m never punctual, occasionally productive, and always making up new stories, most of which never make it on to screen or paper.

Catch me under the name Duender on AO3.  You can also find me in my discord server!

Feel free to leave asks and prompt requests - disclaimer: it might take me a couple of years to get to them, I apologize in advance.

Currently written fanworks on: Harry Potter, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Percy Jackson and Pokemon.

[duender-writes]

the muse has disappeared, so now im going to write cringey id fics that probably dont fit the ship but hey, you got to do what you got to do

[glowcowboy]

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

[its-your-mind]

the reblog map is all of us holding hands btw

[beautifulterriblequeen]

We are each other's night sky. No one is alone here.

[dear-ao3]

night sky continues to get brighter. theres always people here for you

[sourdough-seal]

one time a professor asked me if i’d ever wanted to write anything “more important” than romance. and i said no. i was put on this earth to write about sad people kissing. and if another writer ever came up to me and said they wanted to write 400 pages containing nothing but a character baking a single loaf of bread each day, then i would tell them to do that. people don't write something because it's important. they write about something and that is what makes it important

[just-two-blokes]

Hey, remember in Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix when Voldemort gained power again and Sirius told Harry that it feels like back then again when he first gained power?

Remember how nobody believed Harry?

Remember when the ministry started to interfere with Hogwarts, saying the school needs some drastic changes?

Remember when the ministry started to register muggleborn wizards and witches, claiming they 'stole their magic'?

Remember how they painted Harry as a villain just because he spoke the truth?

Remember 'You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide'?

This isn‘t about Harry Potter.

[duender-writes]

why did no one tell me how hard it is to write a prophecy ;-; my fic is now going to be abandoned until i can write a prophecy

[duender-writes]

Chapter 13 of Harry nO- is now up!

Tom and Harry have made it to Harry's parents' house. Dinner is going to be an interesting affair.

[duender-writes]

Chapter 14 of You've got my back (and I've got yours) is now up!

I wrote this in a bit of a hurry, so I apologize for any awkward writing and mistakes.

[duender-writes]

It's been a good day, two chapters uploaded!

[otatma]

[darnitjack]

A true successor of Thomas Edison

[toastbutteregg]

surprise surprise

[captain-snark]

finally some good fucking salt over thomas eddison on this site

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

it’s also not even HIS money, it’s his father’s money, made from apartheid emerald mining. that money was made from the blood and suffering of countless poor people of color so the rich could wear pretty rocks.

elon musk has never done or made anything valuable or worthwhile in his life.

[ruimtetijd]

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

I think it would be funny if this fun fact became common knowledge.

[el-shab-hussein]

As a rule of thumb, don't reblog donation posts or people asking for donations unless they've been vetted and reblogged by Palestinian bloggers. We usually go to lengths to verify this shit because we know scammers have been faking to get people to send them money, using the urgency of our genocide as bait.

It's disgusting this is what we're dealing with, but people are losing money because of some truly evil people out there.

Accounts don't just randomly spring up on tumblr without gofundmes while asking for someone to help them create a campaign. Fuck out of here with that shit.

[el-shab-hussein]

I'm also gonna stop listing the reasons why I recognize something is a scam. It's becoming more and more clear there is 1 person behind this STRING of scams and they're leaving less trails behind but it still reeks of them and their MO.

DO NOT TRUST ANY GOFUNDME OR REQUEST FOR CROWDFUNDING THAT PALESTINIAN BLOGGERS HAVEN'T VERIFIED.

At this point I'm fine receiving a bunch of inbox messages asking me to vet x y z so y'all can avoid this shit. But please have some critical thinking!

People are exploiting our situation.

[el-shab-hussein]

Reblog this post.

Whether you wanna read the whole thing or not idc.

REBLOG IT.

The person this was about deleted the 4th or 5th scam account they made and are definitely gonna make a new one soon. I don't want anybody falling for this anymore.

[pfaugh]

OP's masterlist of vetted requests

every little bit helps.

[duender-writes]

demons and angels hang with us

Harry Potter wants for a lot of things. He just doesn't know what. So he'll be a good little legacy and follow in his parents footsteps, except his plans are messed up the second he steps into Hogwarts.

Tom Riddle wants for a lot of things. He knows exactly what, and he'll do anything to get to it. Even if it means following lost little lions into the depths of an underworld he has never heard of.

My piece for the Tomarry Big Bang!

The art was created by FloatingDandelionSeeds

[floatingdandelionseeds]

Art submission for @tomarrybigbang (1/3)

MOD Priest Harry

[duender-writes]

I had so much fun writing for this! Thank you so much for the opportunity.

demons and angels hang with us

[greenconverses]

again i say to you

if this man would just let the percy series mature and dig deeper into the emotional arcs he presents in chalice and wrath instead of hopping from one kooky adventure to the next and undermining any story depth with fart and piss jokes and blatant flagging to the disney+ audience, we could have had a very good set of stories on our hands

but NO

percy's rage issues, grief, trauma, and just the general angst of being an older teenager on the cusp of a huge life change are all there and every time the story touches them, it's like RR gets electrocuted and told to get back to Conflict Free Therapy Speak zone before things get too messy

additionally, the third act upping the stakes to Oh Shit We're Gonna Die doesn't work if we already know 1) everyone lives and 2) PERCY GETS INTO COLLEGE at the end of this. the whole point of the series has already been decided!! there are no stakes with your main plot or any of the bullshit mini quests! the opportunity to go for a deep dive character book is there and waiting and ready

but NOOOOOOOOO

gotta make sure all of our main characters have been peed on instead, it's fine

[duender-writes]

I'm alive! (and looking for writing inspiration)

[nondelphic]

the writer’s dilemma: - want to write a novel - want to read 10 novels for inspiration - end up doing neither and scrolling through memes about writing instead

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.

Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.

[adiwriting]

Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.

[ohbeckoh]

how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.

[emma-regina4ever]

What happened with her lawyers.

[racethewind10]

History became legend. Legend became myth….  And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again. The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.

[demonicae]

One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)

I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)

The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.

But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.

The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)

And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)

Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…

Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.

[pagerunner-j]

all of this

[fanfichasruinedmylife-deactivat]

Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers. 

[hils79]

Yep I used to have disclaimers on all my Buffy fic back in the day. The Buffy creators were mostly pretty chill about fandom but it’s not like it is now. You did NOT talk about fandom with anyone except other fandom people and bringing it up at cons was a massive no no because of stuff like this.

I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.

I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!

Fandom history is important.

[cracktheglasses]

Oh, this brings back some not so-awesome ‘90s fandom memories! 

[griesly]

Oh man, let me tell you about the X-Files fandom. Lawyers for FOX sued, threatened, and generally terrified the owners of fan websites on a regular basis. God help you if you wrote or created original art set in their (expansive) universe or worse - dared to write about their characters. Even people who weren’t creating fanworks, just hosting Geocities pages about how much people liked the show would be sent C&D orders or actually fined. When I was first discovering the concept, the first rule of fandom was you do not talk about fandom because the consequences could be devastating.

It was such a strange and uncomfortable experience for me when fans in LOTR and Potter fandoms suddenly started shoving their work in people’s faces speaking publicly about fandom and wanting to engage in dialogue with the creators and actors of the Thing they were into. Fan stuff was supposed to stay online, in archives and list-serves and zines we passed around because it just wasn’t cool to talk about it and it could get you in a boatload of trouble. The freedom we have to create and gather together in a shared space, or actually be acknowledged in any way by people outside the fandom was inconceivable to my fannish, teenaged self. I want fans these days to understand how amazing modern fandom really is, cherish the community, and appreciate what it took to get us here. 

[oyveyzqueer]

“if you found this by googling yourself, hit back now. this means you, pete wentz”

[tbqtalks]

Oh hey, even more blasts from the past.

I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.

I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)

But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?

On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.

Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.

(Also would love to know who @tiger-in-the-flightdeck knew. Life paths crossing after so many years….)

[dubiousculturalartifact]

Lucasfilm also sent cease-and-desist letters to Star Wars fanzines publishing slash.

My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.

Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.

(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)

Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.

(On a related note, if I wasn’t quite so attached to my URL, I would 100% change it to ‘Nebulous Bounds’, because that’s just downright catchy)

[thepioden]

Anne McCaffrey had this huge long set of rules about how exactly you were allowed to play in her sandbox. Dragonriders of Pern was my first online fandom, and I was big into the Pern RP scene - and just about every fan-Weyr had a copy of these lists of rules McCaffrey wanted enforced. One of which was ‘no porn’ and another was basically ‘it can’t be gay’ (and for a while ‘no fanfiction posted online’? which??? anyway.)

She relaxed a little as time went on, but still. 

[mikkeneko]

Let’s not forget: the reason AO3 is called ‘Archive of our own’  is because it was created in response to some bullshit that assholes were trying to play with fan creators. Basically (if I remember the fiasco correctly) trying to mine fandom creators for content which they could then use to generate ad profit on their shitty websites. When the series creators objected, the fans tried to pull their content, only to find that the website hoster resisted, claiming their content was all his now.

That wasn’t even all that long ago…

[bebopsisyphus]

fandom history class

[lazaefair]

To this day, *talking* about writing or reading fanfiction - just acknowledging that it exists - to anyone other than people I know are in fandom as well, feels like a dangerous act. The strict separation I maintained between my real life identity, my online identity, and my fandom identity (yes, they were separate, because some of the most vicious and mocking people were fellow nerds) has broken down a bit these days, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to integrate them as freely as some younger fans do.

[theglintoftherail]

Everybody should know that AO3 is just one project of the Organization for Transformative Works. Their mission is much broader than just hosting a (very good) fanfic site. They do all kinds of fandom history archiving and publish an academic journal, but most importantly, they perform legal advocacy to protect the fair use rights of people who make fanfic or fanart.

The OTW Legal Committee’s mission includes education, assistance, and advocacy.

We create and post educational materials about developments in fandom-related law on transformativeworks.org and on archiveofourown.org.

We assist individual fans when their fanworks are challenged, we answer fans’ questions about law relevant to fanworks, and we help fans find legal representation.

We partner with other advocacy organizations and coalitions in the U.S. and around the world.

We advocate for laws and policies that promote balance and protect fanworks and fandom.

And much more!

I haven’t been involved in fandom stuff all that long, but I find this stuff so fascinating!

[hoenursey]

whew, i feel old, but that’s mostly bc i was on forums way way waaaaay too young. but this? yes. all the way. people had password protected forums on the weirdest, most unconventional websites. before you could even be approved by the mods they would search your blog, your other accounts, question you, everything, all because we were broke teens and preteens trying to do something for fun and if someone got in who could doxx you or send your work over to a lawyer? that was it, you were OVER. that’s also part of where fandom wars and the defense of fandom came from: quote unquote “enemy” fandoms would infiltrate just to hurt you. @theglintoftherail makes a very good point: ao3 is a goddamn haven. and they’re a great team of lawyers and people dedicated to protecting fanworks! part of the reason it’s so great is because they know there’s no one like them out there. they also go to the ends of the damned earth to protect you and to be inclusive, which is why there’s shit like tentacle porn and underage and dubcon. because they’re dedicated to protecting readers and creators to the death. they don’t advocate for it and they have the extensive rating and tagging system because of that (legit the best tagging system i’ve ever seen) but they don’t know if you’re dealing with trauma or if you need to get something out. do not forget your fandom, kids. jesus

[readingrenditions]

Who else knew nothing about this? A show of hands

[yamaccino]

I’m just the right age to remember the disclaimers and to have HEARD about the Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and X-Files fiascos, but I was never in any of those fandoms and I was more or less on the tail end of that. I can’t imagine having to be scared to tell people I write fanfic. So glad we’ve come so far.

[thefriendlypigeon]

Every time I start reading fanfics, I thank all of you people whose neverending resilience and the drive to be creative made it possible for me to consume content freely and without worry 🖤

[threshie]

My older fics have the disclaimers. Heck, my older fanart has disclaimers in the descriptions. FFN and DeviantArt were those times, AO3 and Tumblr era I stopped finally.

[northstarfan]

In case folks still don’t get why losing AO3 would be so devastating…

[amuseoffyre]

Since it’s happening again now, let’s not forget the purity brigades of the late-90s and early-2000s who took it as their duty to roam fan fic sites in their fandoms and report anything they deemed unsuitable. And if they couldn’t get them removed, that’s when the flame comments would start, where they would screech abuse at you in the comments boxes.

Back then, this could include anything from the ship they didn’t like (look up the ship wars from Potter fandom. The feuds were horrendous and hateful) to something as simple as a g-rated slash fic because “this of the children”. Hell, when strikethrough happened on livejournal, it was everything/anything which - sadly - also included a lot of fantastic support communities for queer kids and SA survivors and the like. All because the site decided to crack down on ‘lewd’/‘deviant’ content and didn’t pause to think what else might be tagged under queer and SA content.

A lot of the writers in a lot of the fandoms I was in included content warnings for slash because if people felt spiteful or hostile when they stumbled on it, they could report it to fic hosting sites and have it taken down for any number of excuses. I lost fics on fanfiction.net because some big weirdo deemed them as inappropriate and had their friends all report it at the same time.

This is why Archive of Our Own is so special. If someone doesn’t like what you’ve written, they don’t have the power or right to remove it or erase it because it offends their specific sensibilities. Yes, they can still comment and be a dick, but now we can block and/or report them if they continue to do so.