girl help me im in a tumbnlr blog

ao3 writer known as flustered giving out tips and tricks of the writing age. plus im posting memes and u cant stop me ahahahahaha. pls dont ask about kty i beg of u im so sick of it. also my main tumgler blog is f1ustered

[paper-wounds]

[obsidianpegasus-deactivated2025]

All Fandoms Need These Reminders

It’s that simple.

[officialflustered]

hihi this isn't so much of an ask as it is a thank you, I have been struggling with like the want to write and create but unhappy with the result for a long long time, and I wanted to let you know that I still come back to your fics to reread them every so often and appreciate the work you have put out into the world. You have such amazing ideas and shit, I hope that one day you can achieve any goals you have, either to get published or whatever you want to spend your life pursuing. I just wanna wish you happiness in the capitalistic hellscape the world has become.

Thankfully I'm starting to feel happier with myself and my writing, through practice and exposure to critique, but I don't think I would've kept going if not for you and other awesome fic writers like you. Your fics have helped me through a lot of tough times, and I want to applaud you tenacity with writing and being able to stand up for yourself and not let others beat you down.

I've been a major lurker for ages but ive been thinking about posting my own shit and/or fandom ideas I've had in the back of my head(witcher stuff mainly, god your Lambert fic is such good fucking food)(sorry I couldn't help myself I went back to it recently and now I've been having all sorts of ideas for fics I want to write). If you have any advice I'd love to hear your thoughts, cause I feel kinda overwhelmed at the idea of sharing any part of myself with what are essentially strangers, but I don't want you to feel pressured or anything.

I've seen how horrible people can be on the internet. I just want to overshadow all the harmful shit I've seen with something happy, even if it's just for a little bit. I hope you see how valuable you are, inside and outside the internet, and that your days are free of strife.

Thank you for reading all my rambling,

Archer

PS I'm sending this all on a whim so I want to emphasize that you don't have to write a response or anything, I just thought that actually asking you something would give this like more of a purpose cause really I just want to give back a fraction of the happiness you've given me. So don't worry if that's not something that your able to do now as your reading this, or ever. I'm content no matter what you decide to do.

Aw shucks, you are just so sweet. 🥺 thank you so much for your kind words.

Im going to put a read here because this answer spiraled out of control, lol

Ive had almost the opposite problem, lol. I could never look myself in the mirror again if I shared any of my writing to people who know me in real life. Strangers on the internet reading my fics? Yeah I dont mind it at all. I can put whatever I want under an anon account, no problem.

But I feeeellll that, honestly. Putting your writing out there is sooo hard. You put your heart and ideas and love into something and hope somebody else loves it too- yeah. I have experienced that so many times.

Standing up for yourself, and your work, takes a shiittt lot of paitence. And I assume, hopefully, anybody who is rude or demands something is new to the fandom. I try to give the benefit of the doubt. My first fanfiction I ever wrote I posted to ff.net, before it was trash, and I got a hate comment that upset me so badly I cried and deleted the entire story. Bless my little 13 year old heart.

My secret to dealing with getting any hate these days, is I send a screenshot of the offending comment to my friends and we all go bitch about it before I quietly delete it and move on. Extremely cathartic. The hater doesnt get my attention, and I get to feel vindicated lol.

So! Some advice!

1) Always! Be! Confident! In your author notes!!!! Ive seen new authors go "first fic! I think its trash so im posting it lol." Doonntt do thaaatt. That colors readers perception into thinking its subpar. It makes me sad when I read those notes. You need to walk into your author notes like the BEAST that you are. You slaved hours of your time to write this. You hate it so much. You are gracing these readers with your greatest gift they'll ever put their eyes on. You drop that fic like you spent the last three nights on a bender and you havent showered in six days and you are on the end of your rope and they should be GRATEFUL.

2) if you can, find somebody just about as insane as you are. You slide into their dms and go "lambert dying and waking up back in the past au" and they go 👀 "im listeninnnggg" and then it spirals into an excited gibberish where the both of you just go "yes!! And-" to everything. And when you start slapping together a rough draft your friend is howling in your dms for every word you put down. It makes writing SO much fun.

3) people say this all the time and at first i kind of blew it off and went "yeah whatever" but!!!!! It is incredibly important. Write. For. Yourself. First. You know that post on tumblr of the circle drawing and it says "you just need to make it first, then you can refine it later"? I saw an alternative post of that meme. It just said. "Make it, because nobody else is going to." The stories in your head?? Nobody is knows it. Only you can write them down. Dont write just for the comments or the hits or the kudos. Theyre nice, dont get me wrong. (I am always refeshing my email after I update. I always ask for comments because it does give me more feedback. And its so nice.) But dont write just for those. You gotta write because you like it. I know its a little hypocritical of me to say that I love getting comments, but you gotta write for yourself. Otherwise youre miserable 90% of the time while writing.

4) its hard. Not gonna lie. Dont give up. I would personally love to see what you make. (Shoot me a dm when you post ur witcher fics 👀. Insanely curious.) Sometimes you write something and feel like god himself blessed you to say the perfect thing. And other times you feel like a fraud and failure. Dont listen to that. Its always a lie. Youre so close to your fic you cant see how good it is. (Me with half of lambert au, lol)

5) if youre nervous with strangers reading your work- maybe start with limiting your fic to only ao3 users. The pros of ao3 users: they are real people! Folks who are assholes like to hide under anon (guest) comments. Its harder for ai to steal your work (not impossible tho, all of mine has been stolen and theyve been locked for years.) If anybody says something rude or nasty you can report their account. The cons of only ao3 users: less attention. Less kudos. Less potential comments.

If you ever have any more questions about, my dms are open. I can't promise Ill be fast answering, but Ill do my best. Im a slow talker.

Warm regards,

Flustered

P.S. im answering this ask with about four hours of sleep and its nearly 1am so, I too, am very rambling. I doubt any of this makes sense, and I probably have quite a lot of typos.

Eh, I dont care.

[ao3scrapesearch]

This tool is optional. No one is required to use it, but it's here if you want to know which of your AO3 fics were scraped. Locked works were not 100% protected from this scrape. Currently, I don't know of any next steps you should be taking, so this is all informational.

Most people should use this link to check if they were included in the March 2025 AO3 scrape. This will show up to 2,000 scraped works for most usernames.

Or you can use this version, which is slower but does a better job if your username is a common word. This version also lets you look up works by work ID number, which is useful if you're looking for an orphaned or anonymous fic.

If you have more than 2,000 published works, first off, I am jealous of your motivation to write that much. But second, that won't display right on the public version of the tools. You can send me an ask (preferred) or DM (if you need to) to have me do a custom search for you if you have more than 2,000 total works under 1 username. If you send an ask off-anon asking me to search a name, I'll assume you want a private answer.

In case this post breaches containment: this is a tool that only has access to the work IDs, titles, author names, chapter counts, and hit counts of the scraped fics for this most recent scrape by nyuuzyou discovered in April 2025. There is no other work data in this tool. This never had the content of your works loaded to it, only info to help you check if your works were scraped. If you need additional metadata, I can search my offline copy for you if you share a work ID number and tell me what data you're looking for. I will never search the full work text for anyone, but I can check things like word counts and tags.

Please come yell if the tool stops working, and I'll fix as fast as I can. It's slow as hell, but it does load eventually. Give it up to 10 minutes, and if it seems down after that, please alert me via ask! Anons are on if you're shy. The link at the top is faster and handles most users well.

On mobile, enable screen rotation and turn your phone sideways. It's a litttttle easier to use like that. It works better if you can use desktop.

Some FAQs below the cut:

"What do I need to do now?": At this time, the main place where this dataset was shared is disabled. As far as I'm aware, you don't need to do anything, but I'll update if I hear otherwise. If you're worried about getting scraped again, locking your fics to users only is NOT a guarantee, but it's a little extra protection. There are methods that can protect you more, but those will come at a cost of hiding your works from more potential readers as well.

"I know AO3 will be scraped again, and I'm willing to put a silly amount of effort into making my fics unusable for AI!": Excellent, stick around here. I'm currently trying to keep up with anyone working on solutions to poison our AO3 fics, and I will be reblogging information about doing this as I come across it.

"I want my fics to be unusable for AI, but I wanna be lazy about it.": You're so real for that, bestie. It may take awhile, but I'm on the lookout for data poisoning methods that require less effort, and I will boost posts regarding that once I find anything reputable.

"I don't want to know!": This tool is 100% optional. If you don't want to know, simply don't click the link. You are totally welcome to block me if it makes you feel more comfortable.

"Can I see the exact content they scraped?": Nope, not through me. I don't have the time to vet every single person to make sure they are who they say they are, and I don't want to risk giving a scraped copy of your fic to anyone else. If you really want to see this, you can find the info out there still and look it up yourself, but I can't be the one to do it for you.

"Are locked fics safe?": Not safe, but so far, it appears that locked fics were scraped less often than public fics. The only fics I haven't seen scraped as of right now are fics in unrevealed collections, which even logged-in users can't view without permission from the owner.

"My work wasn't a fic. It was an image/video/podfic.": You're safe! All the scrape got was stuff like the tags you used and your title and author name. The work content itself is a blank gap based on the samples I've checked.

"It's slow.": Unfortunately, a 13 million row data dashboard is going to be on the slow side. I think I've done everything I can to speed it up, but it may still take up to 10 minutes to load if you use the second link. It's faster if you can use desktop or the first link, but it should work on your phone too.

"My fic isn't there.": The cut-off date is around February 15th, 2025 for oneshots, but chapters posted up to March 21st, 2025 have been found in the data so far. I had to remove a few works from the dataset because the data was all skrungly and breaking my tool. (The few fics I removed were NOT in English.) Otherwise, from what I can tell so far, the scraper's code just... wasn't very good, so most likely, your fic was missed by random chance.

Thanks to everyone who helped with the cost to host the tool! I appreciate you so so so much. As of this edit, I've received more donations than what I paid to make this tool so you do NOT need to keep sending money. (But I super appreciate everyone who did help fund this! I just wanna make sure we all know it's all paid for now, so if you send any more that's just going to my savings to fix the electrical problems with my house. I don't have any more costs to support for this project right now.)

(Made some edits to the post on 27-May-2025 to update information!)

[ao3scrapesearch]

Gonna pass this around once more with an addition!

Here is a tool that can be used to poison your current and future AO3 fics if you would like to reduce the chances that your work will be useful to scrapers in the future. You can thank the lovely @all-hail-trash-prince for writing the code and for making it more accessible to those who don't know how to run code.

Here is me doing a very brief runthrough on the current version of the tool (as of this reblog).

I'm not saying you have to use this tool. I'm just boosting it as one potential path forward for those who want to reduce the quality of their fics for future scrapers without reducing the quality for readers on AO3, including those using screen readers to narrate your fics. You can choose to use it for zero fics, one fic, some of your fics, or all of your fics. Entirely up to you if you want to do this.

Poisoning your fics now does not undo nyuuzyou's scrape. The data, while a little less accessible now, is still out there in a few locations. There's no undoing that, and there will always be a copy of the fics scraped by nyuuzyou. Poisoning your fics is a method to protect you from future scrapes. The protection doesn't reduce the risk that you will be scraped, but it highly increases the chance that the scraper will not be able to use your fic for anything useful, including AI training. There's no surefire way to protect your fics short of not sharing them at all, but this tool provides the best balance I've seen of protecting them from unwanted use and still allowing you to share with real readers.

And once more for anyone who hasn't caught it yet: I am not directly affiliated with AO3. This is a third party tool that you may choose to use or may choose to ignore.

Editing to add: This code should probably be considered in an alpha phase. This is code written by one person, vetted by another who knows coding in general but not this specific language. It may have bugs to iron out. It may have unexpected impacts, particularly to the accessibility of your fics. If you're not okay with that, please send your specific concerns here so I can look into them AND/OR wait for us to get through testing this code in actual use. Any concerns and bugs you report here are appreciated because they help everyone involved make this better over time.

[mal-co-holic]

For my fellow authors impacted by this bullshit.

[solrookera]

PSA

Just a heads up, there are bots going around on AO3 accusing people of using AI. Considering the timing, this is likely AI bros' retaliation for AO3 users calling them out for scraping their work. Examples of what you might be sent:

Screenshots from here.

If you get a comment like this, just report for spam and delete.

[lottiesnotebook]

This happened to me on Monday! Just to note, they seem to be using the usernames of real AO3/Tumblr users, which is creepy and upsetting, and also a weird way to sow discord in our communities.

[aeonchangeling]

As a fanfic writer, this makes me sick.

[waywardstraysau]

Letting me readers know about this nonsense. Don't bother with engaging if you get something like this, do as the OP says and continue to write.

[thefugitivesaint]

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poem 85 from “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated by the author from the original Bengali. New York: The Macmillan Company.

[grammarpedant]

It is an hundred years hence now. Go open your doors.

[hoodiedeer]

where is all the art that perfectly appeals specifically to my exact tastes and desires and nobody elses

[hoodiedeer]

[ckret2]

some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

[sourdough-seal]

hyperfixation please stay with me long enough to complete the project. hyperfixation do not fade. hyperfixation finish what you started for the love of god

[thememedaddy]

[skyrim-forever]

you really can write whatever you want

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’

[quietwingsinthesky]

there’s wip (active development) and wip (stuck in development hell) and wip (oh you’re not even getting funding for this one)

[possuminnit]

Getting into fandoms is so scary .if I characterize this guy wrong everyone is going to kill me I can sense it

[quasi-normalcy]

It’s Not a Plot Hole, It’s Foreshadowing

vs.

It’s Not a Plot Hole, It’s Just Something That They Opted Not to Spoon-feed You Because It Would Be Obvious If You Thought About It For 20 Seconds

vs.

It May Be a Plot Hole, But It Still Works In Terms of the Story’s Themes and Character Logic

vs.

Okay, It Is a Plot Hole, What Are You Going to Do, Cry about It?

[quasi-normalcy]

vs.

All Works of Fiction Represent Constructed Realities and by Demanding a Lack of Plot Holes, You Are Improperly Importing the Rules of Objective Reality into a Subjective Creation that Must Be Judged Primarily on Its Aesthetic Merits

vs.

Dude, Just Come-up With a Headcanon Like A Normal Human Being

[lostsometime]

vs.

Is It Really a Plot Hole, or Are the Characters Just Not Making the Choices You Want Them To?

[primarybufferpanel]

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the fanfic gets in

[dduane]

(Smiling at that last one)

Leave a little space

for the previously unthinkable

to save you.

[patientno7]

the suffering never ends

[sinksanksockie2]

This is the real process

[thewritingbeast-blog]

Resources for you!

Character Ideas:

Character creation masterpost

Character Alignment Chart

More character alignment descriptions

Muslim Character questions

Characters with magical powers

Building a new character advice

How to create a character for an online or tabletop RPG (also a good guide on creating characters in general)

Royalty/nobility TV Tropes page

Basic character profile

OC masterpost

Random character generators - (1), (2), (3), (4)

D&D Character Building Tool

Character Design Ideas:

How clothing affects a character’s personality

Character Design Inspiration blog

Concept art, fan art, cool art to be inspired by

Character design references and inspiration

Sources for POC character design ideas and models

Create your own character model using HeroForge

For horned characters

Body and hair types guide

Random outfit generator

Naming Help:

Amazing site with an endless amount of naming resources

General advice on avoiding naming appropriation

Hispanic Surnames

Gothic Victorian names

Huge master list for character things in general

Masterlist of names of all types - including but not limited to ancient/old world names, Celtic, African, Northern European, Southern and Central American Native names, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Polynesian, and more

Another name masterlist

How to pick a character name guide

Yet another names masterlist

Creating Background/backstory:

Character Sheet/Development Sheet

Another character development list

In-depth character personality, motivations and traits sheet

320 talents and passions for characters

On writing likes and dislikes that aren’t frivolous

Why you should write non-human characters non-conforming to the gender binary

Stereotypes, tropes, and archetypes

Random backstory generator

Assassin and thief character tropes to avoid

Character Interactions and putting your character into your world/story:

Comparing character height/height references

Characters who are scientists and writing about them doing science

Describing what different voices sound like

Describing skin tones

Writing friendship interactions that are platonic

Why having one character knock their friend unconscious to prevent them from doing something is a bad idea

Advice on shipping OCs with canon characters and what to avoid doing

Sweet Polly Oliver and Sweet on Polly Oliver situations (think of Disney’s Mulan for an example)

How to write multiple viewpoints/juggling a main cast of more than 4 to 6 characters

How to make readers care about your morally gray hero/anti-hero

On platonic OC and canon character relationships

How to avoid Godmodding in RPs

When it’s cheap to kill off a character

Writing dialogue

Things you shouldn’t do to canon characters

Avoiding purple prose in writing and RPs

Slang resources

Dialogue tips

Websites to chart your story/plot/character relationships

Bonus art masterlist!

[brucewayneright]

BLESS EVERYONE IN THIS POST.

[jasmehraj]

Oh my God!

It’s amazing, some links aren’t working for me but those who are, are spectacular.

[tamsinswriting]

Reblogging because NAMING IS HARD

[writing-prompt-s]

!!!!!!!

[gert-the-disaster]

does anyone understand my curse