melee stance who?

rosa || they/them || angel-bazethiel (main) || AO3

[sniper-childe]

when you use Childe as an archer as miHoYo intended:

w/ vape reax:

w/ Sucrose (that still only has <400 EM bc RNGesus hates me) buff:

w/ Sucrose + (lvl 70 ascended) Bennett with 4pc noblesse buff:

[stoff-wolke]

osmanthus wine tastes the same as i remember et cetera

[orangeorangeorangeorangepear]

Bouncy

[sniper-childe]

yo i check my tumblr out after two years and i come back to this blog with some random anon sending "chilumi is canon go cry about it" or some shit (my initial gut reaction was to just delete the anon asks because you don't engage with cowards who hide behind the anon mask so idk what exactly they were trying to say word-for-word lol).

this fandom is like more than 4 years old now, right? and there's still shipping wars? there's still toxic shippers? like for what? for why?

i haven't interacted with the genshin fandom (i haven't even made zhongchi content) for two years and some chilumi shipper is out here sending hate? to me?? LMAO???? i have never even engaged with chilumi before besides muting the tag??? why are y'alls here??? bro???

with all that being said, i'm officially closing asks and submission LOL for anyone who cares hahaha

i probably should have done that before going awol but oh well

[cacodaemonia]

I know you weren't the OP but just in regards to the 'share stuff you like' post, I want to share a personal anecdote that might highlight exactly how important this is to creators, but am afraid to share it on my own blog because of the 'you should make content for yourself' crowd. Because fuck that, I make it for myself but I post it on the internet for people to interact with. Recently I discovered that people have been reccing both my art and fic privately on various servers and chats (1/5)

Like A LOT. I notice random fics get a few more kudos than normal from time to time and figure it's just a blip, but no it turns out my work is getting recced left right and center, and I HAD NO IDEA. I get so little engagement on tumblr that I assume everything I create is mediocre at best, and definitely not something people feel strongly enough about to reblog because they aren't bothered about sharing it with their friends. On Ao3 I have a small number of regular commenters, (2/5)

and get the odd random one from someone new, but overall again, middling responses. Appreciated, but not anything to indicate that more than three or four people really like what I'm posting, and the rest are very much 'thanks for adding more to this ship tag' type kudos and comments. I feel really, really not good about the work I create. So imagine my shock when I discover there are people out there saying it's awesome, but not telling ME. People I've never interacted with beyond (3/5)

them perhaps liking my posts every now and then. I have seriously considered removing all my fics from Ao3 and keeping them just for myself. I've considered giving up fic and fanart all together to try investing my time in a different hobby as I have many others. But fandom is my first love, and brings me a lot of joy, but that doesn't mean I don't still want to know when people like my stuff! Tell people if someone's recced their work to you in private, please. It's a huge boost. (4/5)

so folks, put yourself in that person's shoes. Could you imagine being like me, thinking you're mediocre or bad only to find out that in private people are sharing your work around like it's a big secret? If anything that makes me feel almost worse because it's like folks are embarrassed to admit they enjoy what I create, which makes me think there's something about me as a person that puts them off. An insight into the mind of one creator, that might shed some insight into the convo (5/5)

Ahh that's crazy! I'm so sorry! D: And thank you so much for sharing this. I don't have anything to add so I'll let your words speak for themselves, but I hope people stop hiding and show you the appreciation you deserve! <3

[cacodaemonia]

So I was talking with a friend about the issue discussed in this ask I got months ago. They mentioned how a mutual friend who is in a server neither of us are in DMed them to say that the people in that server were all raving about an image my friend posted to Tumblr. None of this feedback would have made it to my friend without the second friend letting them know. I've had the same thing happen numerous times and when my friend told me this, I replied:

I always wonder about things on servers because most conversations there never make it into the wider fandom. So unless an artist or writer is posting their work directly into a server, they never hear anything nice about it from those people.

Which then, of course, got me riled up about people sharing uncredited work, not linking to the original work, etc. But it also made me wonder if the sharp decline in interaction/reblogs that most creators have seen over the past few years on Tumblr has to do with this kind of thing happening so much on discord.

Obviously, the biggest part of the issue is so many people refusing to give even the most minimal feedback to fandom creators by reblogging or commenting on things. But with how much chatter goes on in discord servers, I'm beginning to think that might also be a huge factor.

And yes, I make art and fic for myself, as do many people, but is it such a horrible thing to want some feedback or nice comments on something you've spent hours and hours on? The desire to share your work with others and get excited about it together is a pretty normal and healthy human thing, so acting like fan creators are whiny or entitled for wanting even the smallest scraps of interaction is honestly just idiotic.

What's entitled is enjoying all this free art and fic and never lifting a finger to thank the people who make and share it.

P.S. I had this sitting in my drafts for a few days and then a different friend told me about yet more people sharing my art in servers without saying a peep to me about it, which was the impetus for posting this today.

TL;DR if you like something, tell the person who made it.

[skierunner]

I've been thinking about this, too, lately.

I did pull all my works from AO3 and FFN. Everything since 2012. My accounts are empty now. While guilt was my primary motivator (I had a lot of wips and very few complete works outside of oneshots), I've been reflecting on how lack of community contributed. Not to say that I dipped out because of a lack of kudos or comments-- honestly, I probably got more than what was warranted-- but when I finally found a small circle of friends who would actively talk with me? Get as deep into the story as I was? Enable my unhinged narratives? Share songs or art that reminded them of the stories or characters? It was a whole new world.

The day I pulled everything, it was such a small, harmless comment that set it off. "Loved it! When's the next update?" The reader's first comment, 30k into the fic. It was almost out-of-body. What's the point? Why am I doing this? Why do I come into this space when I have friends somewhere else that actually talk to me? I get more out of reading bits of my fic out loud during Story Time on Discord with three others in chat than I do from any amount of three-word comments.

It ain't the numbers. I could have the fic with most views/kudos/comments ever and I'd still feel this way. It's interaction I want, and most existing fandom spaces really aren't designed for it. Views and kudos aren't interactions, but for some reason those are some of the most visible metrics. You interact with a specific fic, not the author. You reblog a piece of art and hope the artist doesn't read the tags too closely. Because many fandom spaces are oriented to the product, they're not oriented to the process or the people behind it.

Discord's not like that. Discord is oriented to the people in a given server, a vehicle for communication, not a destination in itself. Discord destroys the division between creator and audience because you are both and everyone else is both, even if the only thing anyone is creating is conversation. Discord's biggest limiting factor is fragmentation. Servers are generally purpose-specific, which inherently limits who you can talk with, but when given the choice of a large silent audience and a small interpersonal one, I think more people are choosing the second.

And it makes sense that people gravitate towards it, because AO3 and even tumblr don't really let the audience gush together about something they love. It's not common to see readers talking to each other in a comment section (I think I saw it maybe three times? in ten years?) and tumblr doesn't lend itself well to conversations (it happens but the interface is awkward af compared to just... live chatting in discord).

I agree with everything you say, 100%. It's lonely to be a creator. But it's lonely to be the audience, too. The best AO3 and Tumblr can offer right now is one-on-one interactions (which can be intimidating for both parties, let's be real), but once you do that... what's next? Is there a secret corner of tumblr I don't know about where people are having full-on conversations about fic or art? (completely plausible, I'm still fairly new to tumblr)

I don't have any solutions. I've found what works for me, for the most part. I'm working to be better about reblogs and comments, though I'm still kinda ass at both. I'm still getting coached on how to properly use tumblr (shout out to @bluedaddysgirl for having the patience to explain with small words). Like you say, we create for ourselves but we post for others. When others don't say anything, well... maybe someday I'll post on AO3 again. For now, I'm happy to share the gDoc links with those who ask.

[unicorncryptid]

As someone whose formative fandom experiences were on LJ groups, forums, and geocities fan sites, the movement from public spaces to private discords makes me sad.

I don't doubt that it's a wonderful setting for that immediate sharing of enthusiasm and community, especially in smaller servers where everyone knows everyone else. But it's hard to know those communities exist if you're not already in them, and I don't know that it's possible to archive them.

The Matrix messageboard I was on in the early 2000s still has pages on the internet archive. Most of the fics are there, and at least a few pages of discussion. The LJ groups are still there, even if individual blogs have been abandoned. When M4 was released a few months I found my way into a discord server mostly full of new fans who wondered aloud about what early fandom was like - and that record is still there for them to find.

What will the fandom revivals of the future have left to find? AO3 is an archive of fan works, yes, but as noted above it's not as good at (or built for) community engagement.

I dunno, I suppose I feel like discord is as ephemeral as the living rooms of those early Star Trek fans. There are hard copies of their fic and zines that have survived, but the conversations are only memory. And that's closed to anyone who wasn't there.

[beatrice-otter]

Last year for Yuletide I wrote a Murderbot fic.

I am on a very active Murderbot server. During the anon period, someone posted a link to that fic in the server and created a discussion thread for it.

Because I am a member of that server, I saw that thread and the lovely comments people were making about that fic.

But those people who were squeeing about my fic on that Discord server were not commenting on the fic itself. Some of them did! but not all. And, crucially, even the ones who commented on the fic commented more in the thread than they did on the fic itself. It wasn’t a problem, because I was a member of that Discord board and could see it.

But they didn’t know that. This was during the anon period. If I hadn’t happened to already be a member of that discord, I would never have known how much they liked my fic.

I made a comment about this, and how discouraging that was to me. How I enjoyed reading the thread, but also would be so happy if they could just copy and paste what they said in that thread into comments on the fic itself. That would mean that long after the thread is archived, when I need a bit of comfort on a sad day, I could go to the fic and see the lovely comments. I mentioned it was only luck that I got to see their squee about my fic, and how there are a lot of Murderbot writers who aren’t on that Discord, and can’t see when such threads are made about their work. How much it would mean to those fic writers if people would just copy and paste their comments from threads like that into a comment box on AO3. It would be very easy, they already have it written! Just copy and paste it!

Oh, no, I was being quite unreasonable. Commenting on AO3 was far too formal and intimidating, they couldn’t possibly be expected to share their joy over the fic with the author. Some of them would try to be better about commenting on AO3, but there was so much pushback.

It really made me sad.

You love a fic, and you’re happy to share your joy about it with other people in your private community ... but if the author of the fic doesn’t happen to be a member of that community, they don’t get to know you like their fic. The person who created it doesn’t get to share the joy.

[avaantares]

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

[textsfromthefifthbasement]

I love it when anons/guests find my works and kudo/leave reviews, but given the new revelation that Elon Musk is using bots to mine AO3 fanfiction for a writing AI without writer's permission, my works are now archive-locked and only available for people with an AO3 account.

[vanyamired]

r/AO3 - Sudowrites scraping and mining AO3 for it's writing AI

241 votes and 35 comments so far on Reddit

[not-a-regular-mom]

what the fuck.

[toadpeee]

“Your art isn’t valued by the number of notes you get” okay but. If you spent 6 hours baking a cake for a party, but no one at the party eats your cake, it’s still disappointing.

[i-wear-the-cheese]

This articulates something about the different between value and validation that I didn’t previously register on a conscious level.

[nevercure]

This is why I tell people I feel more like an entertainer than an artist.

I want to hear them laugh, chat, comment, speak, roar, cry, get irrationally angry, I need people to respond to my art and get inspired and need more.

I don’t want a note, I want a response.

[aspex-t]

Responses are very nice. I like reading over them. They make me feel fuzzy. Of course, likes and reblogs are also very appreciated, but responses make me feel a special kinda fuzzy.

[astraltrickster]

That’s the thing about the “oh, create for yourself, don’t worry about other people!” attitude (that almost exclusively comes from non-artists and people who have tons of followers and routinely get tons of validation for SOME reason) that doesn’t quite work. I guarantee you, most of us already ARE creating for ourselves above all-

But we POST our creations for human connection, and that’s not a bad thing.

[sagechanoafterdark]

I’m not sure when we all got to the point where wanting validation for something you worked hard at is seen as a bad thing. That you’re pathetic for wanting.

If you think that way it’s not only toxic as hell it’s killing creators.

Creating isn’t easy. When there’s nobody to look at your work and say, “You did a good job. This was hard.” The drive and ambition disappears, then so does the work.

Give your content creators value.

Reblog content.

[sniper-childe]

hey guys! i know i haven't been active a lot lately... but lookie! a zine i'm a part of is having a sale from Nov 23-26!

if you like them Anemo Characters and you wanna buy merch featuring them, please do consider supporting this zine! everyone has worked so hard for their pieces and the mods as well in organizing this.

i know most of my audience are because of zhongchili but if you're also here for my poems (shoutout to those from HoYoLAB huehue) or some semblance of "literary" work (not that i think my shit is literary but i try okay? idek what makes literary literary but--), maybe this zine could be for you!

i'm sorry for rambling. it's just that. my piece for this zine was one of the funnest projects i've done this year and it would be really cool if i get to share it with you guys :>

lemme give you a hint, my main subject was Kazuha, set in his travels with the Crux post-banishment, and my theme was... well, you'll have to find out about it yourself, don't cha?

[sniper-childe]

hey guys! i know i haven't been active a lot lately... but lookie! a zine i'm a part of is having a sale from Nov 23-26!

if you like them Anemo Characters and you wanna buy merch featuring them, please do consider supporting this zine! everyone has worked so hard for their pieces and the mods as well in organizing this.

i know most of my audience are because of zhongchili but if you're also here for my poems (shoutout to those from HoYoLAB huehue) or some semblance of "literary" work (not that i think my shit is literary but i try okay? idek what makes literary literary but--), maybe this zine could be for you!

i'm sorry for rambling. it's just that. my piece for this zine was one of the funnest projects i've done this year and it would be really cool if i get to share it with you guys :>

lemme give you a hint, my main subject was Kazuha, set in his travels with the Crux post-banishment, and my theme was... well, you'll have to find out about it yourself, don't cha?

[ylceon]

lovely places

[sniper-childe]

PLAYABLE RHODEIA WHEN????

[oceanid-mother-dove]

MAKE HER GO BACK TO FONTAINE AND KICK THE SHIT OUT OF FOCALORS MIHOYO. GIVE HER A CLAYMORE AND SET HER LOOSE 

[honkaiincorrectquotes]

Otto textposts: Part 3

[meltesh28]

It was raining heavily in Mondstadt on the night that Kaeya Alberich received his Vision.

(familial/not ship)

tried to animate Kaeya’s vision story bc this scene would Not leave my mind…

[otaku553]

Thinking about them….

Them is ageswap au Albedo and Klee bc I’m back at it again with the ageswap aus

In which Klee the spark knight takes in a mysterious child that doesn’t seem quite human. Albedo is quiet and reserved and rare to see in Mondstadt, but you can always tell where he goes by the small snowy trail footprints he leaves behind. (Oddly enough, the footprints are little light imprints of chalk. But the mondstadtians don’t ask questions—their resident spark knight has always been a bit odd.)

[canonical-transformation]

Baby Albedo! Tall Klee! tall Klee with a little brown satchel, oh my gods I didn't realise how much I needed to see this ♥️♥️♥️

[burquillos]

holding on and surviving through doodles

[lazhyr]