[garagepaperback]

"i love all my children equally" - lucille bluth my children: drarry: sown together in the earth | 13k javelin (to have and to hold) | 18k style/southpark: dumpweed | 34k hollanov: decadent stress chamber | 48k american motor over smoldered field | 8k hudcon: all hail west texas | 5k need grows teeth | 5k all my fic + answered asks

[hellagross]

[thunderstruck9]

Michelle Paterok (Canadian, 1994), Transformer, 2025. Oil on linen on board, 14 × 11 in.

[atoubaa]

Travaye pou Lanmour, Labour of Love, (Seychelles, 2021) - Natasha Moustache

[fuckrozanov]

there is something fundamentally strange about demanding that transformative fiction function as an exercise in perfect canon replication. fanfic is by definition interested in possibility. it takes characters out of the fixed circumstances of the source material and asks what they might become under different pressures, in different relationships, with different experiences, or simply through a different author’s understanding of them. sometimes the entire premise is “what would have to happen for this character to behave in a way they never did in canon?” and like that is not necessarily a failure of characterization. sometimes that is the characterization. and obviously there are interpretations that feel more or less supported by the text. it is perfectly reasonable to argue that a fic has failed to make a particular choice psychologically convincing. but that is a wholly different argument from treating canon as a list of immutable behaviors and using “they wouldn’t do that” as a supposedly objective veto against any trope you dislike.

[colonellickburger]

Gregory Crewdson. Untitled, Unreleased #4, 2003

[garagepaperback]

garage you have to tell the audience did 23 years old ilya in too little too late also time travel at the same time as shane and meet future shane and learn what's in store for them snd think FUCK NO?? please please please i took psychic damage like, genuinely felt sick to my stomach. thank you for writing

so 23 yr old ilya DID meet old shane but it was more like

he understood what was going on w the older ones right away

he was like oh no

there was a little bit of sex (older shane's not a monster....... he's gonna comfort ilya somehow)

he did in fact run up twenty flights of stairs

[garagepaperback]

HR fandom drives me nuts sometimes but you and @citrusses are just absolutely pumping out the bangers and doing it in a way that makes me want to ship your friendship. thank you both <3

(also, I was listening to https://youtu.be/3dZ5KjFLxgA when reading too little too late + lotophage. I think it fits!)

[indie-sounds]

Visit Original Link

Too Little Too Late - Department Of Eagles

[citrusses]

lotophage (rated m, 9k)

"That's Ilya Rozanov," Yuna supplies, when the camera zooms in on one of the players. He looks unremarkable to Shane, the way all of the helmeted players in identical gear flying across the rink do. Another faceless white uniform on white ice. "He plays the same position as you."  "Forward," Shane says cautiously, trying not to phrase it like a question.  "Center," his mom corrects gently. She's so gentle with him, no matter how many mistakes he makes. It's the curdling sort of gentle that makes Shane want to rip off his own skin, and all he can do is endure it. He has no right to insist on not being treated gently. This woman is his mother, even though Shane, as he is now, is not really her son. 

hollanov, memory loss, mcdonalds

During a game against the Boston Raiders in October of 2016, the Metros’ star center Shane Hollander sustains a concussion. Six months later, he still has no memory of any part of his life before the injury.

[garagepaperback]

fic: too little, too late pairing: hollanov tags: time travel (sort of), age difference

“No,” Rozanov said. “I only ever quit one thing. You have been furious at me over it for a long time.” Shane couldn’t help the noise that came out. “You quit playing? When?” “I was thirty.” Rozanov looked delighted. He shrugged, the expression shuttering, nose scrunching. “Maybe you should not ask things. I don’t know how it works. Maybe, I don’t know. The future could get broken.” He laughed. “Often I already think this is what happened.” “Maybe you shouldn’t have retired early," Shane said. Even brighter delight on his face, just then. He would be handsome his whole life.

[towel-deactivated20260115]

[maple-salad]

hi salad! what are some of the things youve learned in your first year writing? tips?

In no particular order:

If writing was easy, everyone would do it.

At the same time, you have to love the struggle. Otherwise why are you doing it?

Try for consistency—as in, a couple sentences a day—but don’t get too hung up on it. Sometimes I go through long periods of reading only or doing other kinds of art. Making yourself anxious about it doesn’t help.

Take a walk if you can’t think of what you want to say.

I’m an outliner. I need to have a rough idea of what I’m doing with a story.

I’m also prone to underwriting, so I’m always trying to add details and emotional beats. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be sparse with your prose, but I also really admire people with vivid and lush writing styles; I think I struggle to let scenes breathe. Speaking of which:

Get a beta reader, ideally one who isn’t afraid to whack you. There is no faster way to improve than to work through edits and constructive criticism. Not everyone cares about that, which is fine; everyone has a different process or goals or whatever.

Beta read for other people. If you can read someone else’s work and pick out moments that don’t land, sentence rhythms that fall flat, pacing that drags, that will help you notice the same in your own work.

Beta reading is critical reading, which I also recommend and do a lot of. I often read books with a highlighter and pencil in my hand. The same goes for fics I really like—if I love something, I often download it and re-read it while annotating. Unfortunately now I’m just describing putting yourself through a creative writing class.

I’m a big believer in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: “Vigorous writing is concise.” This is true in every field (believe it or not, I get paid to write op-eds and policy papers, which is where I learned most of the fundamentals of writing), and it also applies to fanfic. Many fics are too long. SORRY! They are. As S&W say, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Your words can tell something other than pure plot advancement, but they have to serve some sort of purpose. S&W have all sorts of tips that are incredibly useful in fiction. At any moment, the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. The worst thing a fic can be is boring. You are trying to tell a story to your reader. Get their attention and hold it!

Along these lines, I’ve found that if something is boring me to write, it’s probably because the scene is unnecessary or could be shorter. This advice comes from the inimitable susiecarter IIRC.

Also, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is incredible even for fanfic writing. And I’m slowly working through Steering the Craft (thanks Freya for the suggestion!). Orwell, critiquing political writing, says that “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” I really do think this is true of fic too. Avoid turns of phrase that are fanfic staples. Don’t be pretentious in writing unless your style calls for it. Be concrete.

Read the types of stories you want to write and write the types of stories you want to read.

Part of putting your work out there is that people are going to have opinions about it. Nothing is for everyone. It’s your art; stand behind it. In other words, stop caring what strangers online think unless you are specifically soliciting concrit.

If you are writing from close third, everything on the page should be filtered through the character’s POV. If your character wouldn’t notice the high ceilings, don’t write about them.

Especially in kink or darkfic, you have to commit to the bit (another Freya tip). What is the meat of it? What makes it sexy? What’s interesting? Get grosser and more perverted and more honest. If you as the writer are flinching away from what you actually find iddy, why should the reader be interested? Why are you writing it if it doesn’t turn you on/make you sick/excite you/make you laugh/make you cry? Don’t let shame keep you from writing something real.

Read, a lot.

Okay that’s all for now

[xanaxfarts]

ISSEY MIYAKE: Pleats Please Guest Artist Series No. 1 Yasumasa Morimura (1996)

[georgeplattlynes]

Acamas (1936), George Platt Lynes

[dame-de-pique]

Cecilia Glaisher - Alternate-leaved Spleenwort fern / Weiss' Spleenwort, 1850-1858

[gusvanscant]

'Pink Narcissus' (dir. by James Bidgood) [1971]