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[inbabylontheywept]

there is a stripper pole in my attic. i saw it in a dumpster one day, and i went, shit, this is exactly the kind of thing my wife would want. and i didnt really want it in the house, what with it being a used stripper pole lightly seasoned with dumpster juice, but i mentally decided that if she were to see it and ask for it, i would say she could have it, and then sure enough, later that evening, she went soooo baaaaaaaabs there's this thing by the dumpster and i want it but i get it if you don't want it in the house but i have to show it to you- and i went, no you dont, you can have the pole, and that was the most surprised i have ever made her look. even compared to the day when i proposed to her, which she was prepared enough that we both knew she would say yes, and she could also get her hair done up and have a cute outfit, but not so prepared that she was not fucking flabbergasted by the 12 empty decoy ringboxes i sprung on her. i handed her so many decoy ring boxes that day. still one of the funniest things i've ever done to her.

anyway we like pacing around together and ranting in the attic but sometimes instead of pacing one of us will just hang on the pole and spin, and the other person will watch on the beanbag, which makes for these really goofy conversations where the person on the bag will say something that gets the other persons goat, such as, hypothetically, that xylophones do not belong in rock music, and then the other person will go on a tirade about this, but they'll actually only be facing the Hot Take Speaker half of the time, what because of the pole, so the response will sound something like

I can't believe

you would even suggest such

a stupid opinion. You've

been to a Danny Elfman

concert! How can you

have heard Oingo Boingo

live and say with a straight face

that they alone do not justify

rock and roll xylophones

and then that person will continue until they get too dizzy, then they'll get off the pole, and by unspoken agreement, the person on the bag will get up and trade places with them to deliver their rebuttal while also spinning and it just creates this sort of crazy strip-court lawyers debating absolute nonsense for no reason kind of vibe that frankly just really does it for us.

i don't really have any marriage advice for this i guess its just a look at what being married can look like. i thought that being married would involve a lot more stuff like carving the turkey, or barbecuing, or watching the sunset, and if id known how much time it would involve arguing for xylphones in rock music while spinning upside down i might have prepared for it a little differently.

[honeypiehotchner]

i want to read a very specific fanfic and i’m so mad that i can’t (it’s sitting in my drafts) (unfinished)

[honeypiehotchner]

so glad this post is resonating with people bc it’s still resonating with me as i am once again not working on said fanfics that i want to read

[dalniente]

wait. oh my god holy shit i need to check something brb

[dalniente]

i have been writing megamknd fanfiction for fifteen fuckigb years

[sandersstudies]

I think a fun way to have he/she pronouns would be by helping other avoid the ambiguous antecedent problem and taking on the pronouns that are less represented in the current group.

[chip-toss]

"If I don't do that, I don't have a skeleton to put meat on" - me talking about writing an outline

[station18908]

The small voice in your head that says: "I don't need to write down every small detail of this plot idea, I love it so much, I'll remember this."

That's the devil speaking.

[mjfass]

New ask game:

Reblog if you want your followers to tell you what your trademark ™️ is. Like, what’s that thing that really identifies you.

[hooksbooks]

@dalniente's trademark is the most emotionally gut-wrenching backstories

[penwiper]

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

[armoredsuperheavy]

In 2018 I developed a method to bind fanfiction into hardback books. Like penwiper, I was also literally working in my kitchen by myself and trying things out. This solo work was a meditative experience that allowed me to think deeply about the implications of what I was creating and what my ethics and philosophy should be. I got around to the idea that the knowledge I was building should be spread far and wide, so that together, many of us fans could bind all the wonderful fics that made our lives better in a million tiny ways, and wherever possible, create a copy to give to the authors themselves. In 2019 I wrote How to Make a Book From An AO3 Page, a free manual for how to format and bind fanfic, as a gift to fandom as a whole. It took off during the 2020 lockdown and has been going strong ever since.

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

ArmoredSuperHeavy, March 2026

[fanlore-wiki]

Terminology Thursday: Gratuitous Foreign Language

For this Terminology Thursday, we’re exploring Gratuitous Foreign Language, a term used for fanfics written in English that incorporate non-English words, phrases, or dialogue throughout the story. This term is usually used critically, and is often directed at fanfics where the inclusion of a foreign language is show-offy, excessive, or just embarrassingly wrong. This typically appears in dialogue for characters of color or ESL (English as a second language) characters, who may "slip" into their native tongue, especially during emotional or intimate moments like sex scenes.

The main critique is that it’s generally unrealistic. Most multilingual people speak different languages with people who understand them, and unknowingly switching languages in the heat of the moment rarely happens in real life. When overused or done poorly, it can come across as fetishistic. That said, the use of foreign language in fanfiction isn't inherently bad! It can be very effective for conveying setting, demonstrating language barriers between characters, or signifying shifts in tone or relationship dynamics (like with honorifics or Japanese dialects).

Have you encountered gratuitous foreign language in your fandom? Let us know in the comments, then check out the Fanlore page to learn more!

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[minimalsizeconspiracy]

This is one of those posts where I have such mixed feelings on whether I agree with it or not, and mostly I can only conclude that it lacks nuance.

I’m multilingual and also in a relationship with someone whose native language isn’t my own. We do each speak the other’s language (at different levels of proficiency), but there is a clear and distinct bias toward the language that both of us speak more fluently, simply because it’s easier for everyday conversations. We also in addition speak other languages, some of which overlap, some of which don’t, and we work in environments where multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception.

Hence I’m always cautious when it comes to the question of whether the use of foreign language in a fic counts as “gratiuitous” or not. “Realistic code-switching”, from where I stand based on those experiences, most often occurs spontaneously, in everyday interactions and both consciously and unconsciously. And it’s always stupid little things. Like me asking my colleague to hand me a cup for my tea and forgetting the bloody word for “cup” in every single language I speak and I know she will understand (that’s three, by the way. I could have said it in three different languages and she would’ve understood it, and the only word I remembered was language #4, which she doesn’t speak).

Or it’s me starting to teach a lesson in the wrong language, because I’ve taught the exact same lesson in a different language just an hour before, and only noticing it when my students are giving me blank stares.

Or my partner and me discussing a specific topic that we’ve both studied, but in different languages, and using our native terms for particular concepts and ideas because we don’t know what they are in the respective other language. This isn’t me being pretentious, there are topics I can only talk about in my third language, because I don’t know the right terms in the first two. Because I never studied the subject in the first two languages and never read literature about it in those languages.

To people who aren’t familiar with these issues, I can see how that comes across as show-offy or excessive. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my actual, lived experience.

Multilingual people do speak different languages with people who understand them, and they also unconsciously switch languages in the heat of the moment, or if a word has suddenly dropped out of their brain, or because the only word they know for the concept is in a different language. It can be conscious and it can be unconscious, it all depends on the situation and how preoccupied you are with trying to convey your thoughts rather than how you’re conveying them. In my relationship, we also consciously use terms in a different language because they encapsulate the exact feeling/concept we’re trying to express better than the word in the predominant language.

Multilingualism is so much more complex and individual than “being able to speak different languages”. There’s all kinds of weird phenomena that happen. Carrying over words, intonation, even grammatical structures without noticing is a completely normal phenomenon and usually referred to as “interference”. Languages aren’t distinct silos in our brains, they mess with each other all the time.

Proficiency also plays a big role. I’m much more likely to fall back on my other languages when speaking a language I’m only capable of using at the A or B1 levels. And the kinds of interferences I get also differ between languages. Sometimes it’s more the words, sometimes it’s more the grammar that carries over. So just because I don’t struggle with or have experienced a specific kind of interference doesn’t mean that the kind of interference described in a fic doesn’t exist.

So, at the end of the day, as so many things, I believe this mostly boils down to the actual experiences people have had, because what is unrealistic for one person may be what happens to another person every single day. “Gratuitous Foreign Language” use in fic would be “during sex”. Because that, in my experience, doesn’t happen.

But I’m a sample size of 1.

[hooksbooks]

I'll add another person to your sample size. My spouse and I share two languages. He speaks mine better than I speak his so that's what we usually use, but I'm decently proficient in his. He also speaks a couple more that I don't, and I speak a bit of a couple more he doesn't. It's decently often we can't think of a specific word for something and so toss out the word in another language, even if it's one the other person doesn't speak. It's more likely we can guess that way instead of just saying, "you know, the *thing*".

And falling back into your native language is definitely more likely in times of stress or high emotion. When I was at the hospital giving birth, there was so much going on with my body that my brain decided speaking the local language was way down on the priority list and I told my husband to translate for me, even though I'd been living there for years and was perfectly able to speak for myself at any other time.

Some affectionate terms I only use in one language, and some in another. Some kinds of flirting I only do in one language, other kinds only in another. I'm so used to certain phrases in my husband's language that if I'm distracted I'll use them with my siblings or parents, who don't speak that language at all. One time I was spending the weekend at my mom's house with the whole family together, and we adults had been using a language we all spoke but the kids didn't as a "secret language" to discuss things we didn't want the kids to overhear that when I called my husband I used it without even thinking about it. He very politely waited until I was done rattling off whatever it was, and then said "You do know I have no idea what you just said, right?"

So some inclusion of foreign phrases is gratuitous, but multilingual people aren't all a monolith and just because some people are really good at code-switching and not using the wrong language with the wrong person (even when distracted or in times of stress!) it doesn't mean we all are.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I genuinely like salad I am just also fully convinced that the vast majority of people and restaurants are doing salad wrong. Listen to me. Hold my hand. You have been taken in by Big Lettuce. A salad can be primarily other things. Crunchy leaves are the foundation of the salad but you cannot build a whole building out of them. The other stuff in the salad is not just "toppings" it is the rest of the salad.

[rederiswrites]

The real thing with ADHD is not "I forgot", but that forgetting is this ongoing process. I remembered! And then I forgot.

At ten this (hypothetical) morning I remembered that I have a meeting at six. And then from 11 through 3 I worked on other stuff and had zero thoughts about that meeting. Maybe even thought about what I was gonna do with my evening at home. Got attached to the idea of taking the time to make a good dinner, maybe play some video games.

And then at three I said, "Oh! Fuck!" and remembered again, hopefully long enough to set an alarm. And then I went to the bathroom and remembered that I need to clean the counter and spent twenty minutes cleaning the bathroom and went to get a snack and then at five I said, "OH! FUCK!" and had to scramble to dress like a real adult and get out the door.

It isn't one clean forgetting. It's a constant process of forgetting and then, with an exhausting adrenaline spike, remembering. And then forgetting. Baby, I can forget the same thing more times in a day than you ever forgot your parents' anniversary.

[cparti-mkiki]

amen

[africanmorning]

[docholligay]

BITCH THIS IS THE MOOD WE'RE GOING INTO THIS YEAR WITH

I'M GOING TO WRITE BADLY BECAUSE I HAVE FRIENDS WHO WRITE WELL AND I'M GOING TO PAINT BADLY BECAUSE I HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE AMAZING ARTISTS AND I'M GOING TO EMBROIDER BADLY BECAUSE I HAVE FRIENDS THAT ARE AMAZING AT FIBER ART.

[kitsuneheart]

I sent this to my husband, and learned he doesn't know what knotting is.

[thestuffedalligator]

There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.

When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.

Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?

With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.

They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.

Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.

I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.

The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.

Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?

Were they wrong to trust?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.

A claw split the great glass cocoon.

The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.

In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.

It took its first breath.

The flames were the colour of cornflowers.

The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–

It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…

And it could finally open its wings.

Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.

The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.

It probably wouldn't mind.

[hooksbooks]

Renegade Bound Book Exchange 2025

I participated in the Renegade Bound Book exchange again this year! For this exchange, each of us pick a list of up to 5 works (can be fanfiction, original fiction, public domain works), and then our exchange partner binds at least one of them.

[ID: Two stacks of three hand-bound books each. The books are plainly bound, with cloth spines and paper covers. The titles on the spines are in gold: Asymptote, To Lose Sight of the Shore, and Brittle Bodies. End ID]

I bound To Lose Sight of the Shore by Ealcynn from my exchange partner's request list. It's a fun story where Bucky Barnes has a bad mission where he loses sight and hearing and he and Clint have to get out of enemy territory. At the same time, I was beta-ing Brittle Bodies with Eternal Souls by CaptainSpring. It fit the vibe of my request partner's other requests (mostly Steve/Bucky), so I typeset and bound that one as well for the exchange. Lastly, my exchange partner mentioned they also like Kirk/Spock, and I've been meaning to bind my very favorite Spirk short Asymptote by Tahariel for myself for ages, and this was a good excuse.

More construction details under the cut!

I wanted to learn a new way of typesetting, so I typeset all three in Scribus. Both Brittle Bodies and To Lose Sight of the Shore were bound letter-quarto in my usual in-boards style, with cloth spines and paper covers. Their titles are gold HTV, which I discovered needs a shorter time and lower temperature than is listed in its own instructions (thus the wonky letters on my copy). For Asymptote, I used a stencil to paint the title on with gold paint.

Color Schemes:

[ID: A book laying flat on a large cutting mat. The book is covered with blue papers with a faint polka-dot pattern and red bookcloth on the spine. The gold titling on the spine reads "To Lose Sight of the Shore". The book also has a red bookmark with a tiny American flag charm on the end. End ID]

For this book, there wasn't a specific image that stood out to me (Bucky spends nearly the entire book without his sight, for one thing), so I went with Avengers/patriotic red-and-blue. They're not pictured, but I also hand-sewed endbands in a darker and lighter red.

For Brittle Bodies, one of the chapters takes place entirely in an alley, and I wanted to evoke that with my brick-patterned cover papers.

[ID Left image: A book standing on end, partially open so it supports itself. The covers are brick-patterned paper while the spine is dark-ish blue bookcloth with the gold title Brittle Bodies. Right image: the title page of the book, showing various images of both Steve and Bucky as if seen through fractured glass. The page reads Brittle Bodies with Eternal Souls by CaptainSpring. End ID]

I also wanted something to set off Flower's awesome art, so I picked a darker blue bookcloth (nearly the color of Tony's suit) and paler blue endpapers (nearly the color of Bucky's eyes). The hand-sewn endbands are similarly both medium and dark blue.

Asymptote is a sewn-boards binding, but I unfortunately don't have any pictures of its construction process. I picked gold papers for the covers to evoke command-gold, and I thought the maroon bookcloth coordinated well with them. It's also a bit of a weird size—six pages per side of a letter-sized sheet. A letter-sexto, I think it's called? It was fun typesetting something wider than it was tall.

Conclusion:

Overall, I like how each of them turned out. They're maybe not my artsiest work, but they're good solid binds and I'm proud of them.

[prophetic-writer]

When you've been a writer for long enough, commas become more of a spiritual practice than a grammatical one.

Could I explain the actual rules of how they’re used? Absolutely not.

Do I rely on sensing a tremor in the force to tell me where to use them? Yes and this has never failed me even once.