I don't usually entertain these types of anon messages. I get a lot, across all platforms that allow it. This one is from New Years, as are all the most recent influx of sussy anons.
But this one genuinely made me laugh.
Initially, my response was just going to be: I'm not so insecure that I'm threatened by this idea. The ass is here to share. 💙
But then I got to thinking about it, and came to the conclusion that this is symptomatic of a much larger issue in fandom spaces.
So, let's talk about copying in fandom for a second.
By all means, yes, your OCs are yours and if you're inspired by another, you should definitely say something. But fanfic, especially plot concepts??
Unless someone is lifting something scene for scene, or directly from you without credit, this concept is ludicrous because there really are no original ideas.
South Park S06E07, The Simpsons Already Did It, tackled this better than I ever could, especially flying off the cuff. But I'll do my best.
Let me explain.
We are all influenced by what we know and what media we consume. This is a fact. Inevitably, we will be inspired by an idea that we encountered in our daily life. We might not even remember it.
I myself pulled a line from Futurama that is pervasive in my every day vernacular for Azure Down: 'fired, out of a canon, into the sun.'
This doesn't mean I deliberately ripped off Groening. But this phrase is so natural to me that I included it without thought until someone said, "Hey! Futurama!"
But I've seen some weirdness first hand about whole ass concepts.
For example, I've had one writer adamantly accuse another of stealing from them in my DMs. Author A had written a story about an artist FL, and a different story with a drug addict ML. Author B wrote a story where FL is an art student and ML smoked a cigarette.
Christopher Booker also brings us the concept of the "Seven Basic Plots" which all stories follow in some fashion. While the story around those plots will vary, the core of the story has already been told.
Claiming ownership of a career concept is ludicrous. No one owns the idea of 'artist', and there are thousands of art student insert stories in AO3. Then to compare a single cigarette to a harder substance addiction is just a major leap that minimizes the experience of addicts. To take it a step further, this wasn't an original concept - there are plenty of stories where that exact ML is an addict of some kind.
By the logic of idea ownership, this would make Hunger Games a rip off of 1984.
There's obviously limitations to this. Robert van Winkle and Under Pressure is an example. You can't take Halo, replace Master Chief with Master Chef, and sell it. You can't copy someone's fic, change one thing, and call it yours. That's not how creative commons works.
But fandom writing isn't the same as copy written media. The whole point of fandom is to share. To have fun in low stakes environments, inspire each other, and explore our writing and world building abilities and concepts without pressure, deadlines, or expectations that can be the death of creativity many published authors experience.
If you are directly inspired, yes, call that out. Credit your collaborators. All that good shit.
But stop trying to hurt each other and just have fun.
just saw one of your screenshot showing the ao3 tags, just wanted to ask and know how were you able to add emojis and change the colors of the tags (as well the relationship tag and etc.)? it looks fantastic and amazing!!! if you have a tutorial on it i am very grateful and you have saved my reading life!!!
I do provide custom CSS styling as a service (not AO3, rates in bio), so hopefully this isn’t counterintuitive to my freelance hustle, but I also believe in the gift culture built around AO3. So, I’ll try to give you the basic tools to understand this yourself and encourage you to explore further. However, I feel I have to toe the line here. I am 100% willing to build it for someone, help troubleshoot, or provide some 1:1 specific guidance (information at the bottom).
This is not straightforward or easy to answer, so I’ll do my best, but please feel free to ask for clarification if anything is unclear.
Or, maybe it is, and I’m just overthinking.
Let’s find out!
First, this is done at the Siteskin level. Second, there are actually two sets of tags you need to be aware of: li tags, which are most of the site - your works page, searching, etc, and dd tags, which only exist in the work itself.
Now, why is this relevant? - li tags can have the ‘has’ statement to apply a blanket style (eg, any relationship tag has a / and is therefore prefaced by a heart) - dd tags must be specific and cannot use has statements.
Within the li tags, there are the following sets to be aware of:
Fandom Tag - the one LI tag that must be specific IME
Relationship tag
Character tag
Freeform tag
To set a style for an li tag - specifically, let’s do the romantic relationship tag, you need to invoke this at the siteskin level. Tags run off the URL, and that slash can, naturally, interfere with URLs, so for tag URLs that contain a slash, you’ll use the following text: ‘*s*’. From there, just specify the colour. In this case, I am using a medium pink with a dark pink text colour.
To add the emoji beforehand, you need to cite it. Not all emotes work within AO3, and some require knowing their HTML ID. Luckily, Heart works just fine. To set it before the tag text, you’ll need to specify ‘::before’, which means it will need to be its own separate entry
Now for the dd tags. These are the tags from within the fic itself, which include the following types:
Rating
Category
Warning
Fandom
Relationship
Character
Freeform
Aside from the slight name difference and the incredibly specific nature of the tah, meaning you need the URL of the specific tag, they behave the exact same way. But luckily, you can use commas to separate these, so you don’t have to make an entirely separate statement to be invoked before your first curly bracket.
Beyond this, I’d like you to use your browser’s Inspect Element feature to identify the elements you want to change and find colour schemes that work best for you and your visual interpretation of data.
Again, I’m happy to clarify anything unclear and provide guidance on a 1:1 basis (you can DM me or join one of my servers). I have my rates in my bio for custom Carrds and other CSS stylings. While I haven’t done it for AO3 to date, there is significant ground to cover with Tags. There’s no reason to pay for this kind of work when you can find and edit it 100% in AO3; however, if you’d rather not expend the effort, we can talk.
How are you so good at writing? :O Have you been at it for very long? Any tips?
Ah, you flatter me. While the quality of my writing isn’t a point of anxiety for me, I also don’t know that I’m worthy of that kind of praise. 😅 The compliment is heard and received, though, even if my brain won’t let me actually believe it.
I have been writing creatively since grade... 2? Yeah, that sounds about right. It wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to do at first. My spawn point also has a double major in English and Philosophy, and that pesky thing called a ‘Doctorate’. I also have family members who are educators and grew up within Academia.
It’s all trauma for another day, but it’s relevant to why I write the way I do (and why my communication styles can vary - or, at least, I feel like they do; file that away as another thing that’s very possibly all in my head).
The most important things to remember about my writing are these:
I am very open that I have ADHD and CPTSD with structural dissociation (significant fragmentation). This plays a massive role in my writing because, through my self-analysis, these fragments interact with one another through this medium.
My writing comes from maladaptive daydreaming. I am deeply immersed and can pick up on my characters' sensory information, emotions, and thoughts.
Because of how my brain works (genetic and acquired neurodivergence), I can bounce between so many WIPs at any given time. To me, this is just normal. I am told this is daunting to think about.
For those points above, I do not have guidance to provide. It’s just mental illness.
Otherwise, let’s see what I can scrape together off the top of my head for advice. I’ll also provide some free, generative AI-free resources at the bottom.
I think the most significant point I have to offer at the moment is that, where once upon a time it used to be considered super polished, you want to avoid stacked and overused superlative metaphors. In current year, this prose feels far more ‘purple’ than it did back when I was in high school.
Second, you’ll want to make sure you’re varying your sentence lengths and structures. Always following the same pattern, for the same rhythm, can bore your audience. Save it for poetry, real people do not talk in a consistant cadence.
Third, vary your words. Find synonyms. Don’t use the same word in the same paragraph if you can help it.
"He got into the car. The car engine hummed.
Reads less polished as:
“He got into the car. The vehicle’s engine hummed.”
This also applies to starting sentences with the same word back-to-back; there are times when doing so is appropriate, but I would caution against overusing it. It’s a fine spice; treat it as such.
Fourth, line breaks are your friend. This can really help with prose, rhythm, and emotional beats:
“He hated the perfume. Of course, he’d never tell her that.”
Reads differently than:
“He hated the perfume.
Of course, he’d never tell her that.”
Fifth, and this one I can’t stress enough: all dialogue begins on a separate line. Action occurs either attached to the dialogue tag or in a separate paragraph.
Incorrect:
“Words.” Character does things. And then this thing. “Words.” And then this other thing happens. “Words.”
Correct:
“Words,” character dialogue tag, facta nonverba. “Words."
Actions are happening in a different paragraph.
“Words.”
Lastly, when you find yourself guilty of overdoing something or feel you’re stuck in a box, it’s okay to challenge yourself. I noticed I lean really heavily into inner monologue feelings, so I challenged myself to break that habit with a 1k or fewer word fic in Farewell.
There are a couple of pitfalls I tend to fall for and have to actively try to work against:
I hate “said”. There’s just something about this dialogue tag that makes me uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell you why. But because I find myself refusing to use it, I tend to over-rely on dialogue tags like ‘murmur’ and layer in expression and gesture tags. Sometimes “Said” is enough. I just hate it. Viscerally.
Not every line of dialogue requires a dialogue tag or action. If it’s the same character or a noted exchange, you don’t need it. It’s useful if there’s a tone or behavior shift. I tend to overuse them, and it’s a habit I’m trying to break.
At the end of the day, though, Fanfic is the lowest of stakes, friends. Just have fun and stop worrying. You don’t have to impress anyone; you just have to produce. You’re not getting graded, and you’re not going to amass a huge following that can earn you money. Focus less on the fake internet points and just vibe. Fandom is supposed to be fun.
I hope that this helps. At the end of the day, remember the wise words from the renowned philosophers Bill and Ted:
Here are some free resources for writing:
Hemingway App - this used to be entirely generative free, but now they do offer paid generative AI as a service. The free version is still just as good as it used to be, though, and free of the generative nonsense I hate. What I like about Hemingway Free is that it highlights the errors in your work - like too many adverbs - but doesn’t tell you how to fix them. You have to figure that out yourself.
Panlexicon - A handy visual thesaurus
WordHippo - Another thesaurus, but allows you to search by description
A Human Dictionary - This blog doesn’t get updated very often, but I do follow it. It provides some body language cues, biofeedback, possible dialogue tags, and some microprompts for artists and writers.
For someone like me who usually just reblogs art as an extra like, I guess the best course to ensure that people get credit for their piece is to not do that? Which sucks. But, if I'm not actually adding anything to a conversation, I'd just be stealing likes from others.
Another solution might be to just make a post instead of a RB linking to the original post? It's tedious, but gets people their shout outs and hopefully drives traffic without taking likes that aren't mine. Conversations should probably happen in the comments like the Facebook days - people @ing others in a nothing comment as a way if saying 'hey I thought you'd like this.'
Well have to see how community etiquette adapts in the coming days. Because this hurts more than it helps.
Was Nox your first MHA OC? What inspired her? <3 >u<
Ahah, sorry this took so long to answer.
I guess, in some ways, you could say that she was. She wasn't called that back in the day; her quirk was different, and she was paired with Toshinori. Or, formerly paired with, I should say, since she was a Hero gone villain after sufficient torture (my horror writing didn't start with Rot in Velvet, it just came back).
As for inspiration, well...
At the time, the adult characters were limited, and from the onset, I had questions about the entire system; from questionable legislature to corruption in Hero society at large. This early version of Nox, who didn't even really have a name, was my way of exploring it to help me get to sleep (re: clinical maladaptive daydreaming).
There was also the element of music that fed into inspirations. At the time, I was really into Dracula: The Swing of Death, and Hands of Your God scratched my brain just right for her. Dan Bull's "Home is Where the Hate Is" was also an inspiration for her further development over time. Both are still relevant to her and her overall story.
Aside from that, Nox just kind of... is, I guess.
She's what my CPTSD-riddled brain came up with just trying to feel safe enough to sleep, and then faced some actual character development later on.
I love your characters! How long have they been around? Have they changed much since they were first created?
I’m so glad you like my OCs! 😭
I started answering this when the message arrived with every OC I’ve ever written. I’m gonna be real - that’s insanity. Only a few of them have made it to places where people can find them. I mean, case and point, I have a fully functional gastropub character system.
So, I’m only going to talk about the characters you can find in my publicly available writing, and I’ll remove those that only live in Discord servers, DMs, and Scrivener.
Kaskel Thorne
To discuss this guy, we need to dig into his history so you can truly appreciate the ‘then vs now’.
Kaskel is my most recent character, coming into view mid-September of 2025. He comes off the back of exploring an alternative plotline for The Ciel Codex -> Cordon Rouge. In that story, during a “get to know you” chat, Hawks asks Ciel what her favorite bird is. After reviewing the birds found in her Louisiana region, I was surprised to learn that the Common Loon can migrate that far south. I’ve heard loons in the PNW before, so I just immediately latched onto that idea for her.
In doing a bit of an ornithological refresher on the bird, I learned that there is a version of the Tremolo that males make that serves no other biological purpose than to piss off other males. It’s not even a territorial call; they’ll use it while they’re flying just to piss off male birds that are on the ground.
Naturally, I thought this was golden. With that nugget of information, he became adversarial toward the Hawks. To justify the attitude, I needed to give him something to be self-conscious about. So he was short. Very short. And given Jason Montzoukas as a VC.
This has, of course, changed. He’s still on the shorter side - if Hawks is the global average, Kaskel is a little shorter than he is, but not tiny. Rather than relying on size and Napoleon Syndrome, he’s fleshed out to show that other social pressures inform his attitude, not just his appearance.
He’s gone from an in-your-face, devil-may-care type to someone refined, repressed, and deeply traumatized. You may have seen the one drabble on my Tumblr feed. To date, I’ve written 8 chapters of one series, 1 of 3 in another, and I’ve got another ficlet nearly done. While the raw text will still make it to Tumblr, once I get these tied up (I often write between 2.5k and 15k a day, so it will be soon), the fic proper for AO3 will begin. The rough outline presently stands at 10k and includes notes for a companion piece written simultaneously. Buckle up, buckaroos, because I fully anticipate this to become a whole-ass problem.
Ria Orimo
September of 2024. Because I got high~🎵
I’m not kidding. I do qualify for a medical card, and at the time, because of stress from a toxic social situation I ended up tangled up in, I wasn’t sleeping much. I was at the point where I needed 3x my usual dose just to sleep, but I was still up, feeling the creative juices at 2am. My friend iBBGun was a frequent decoder ring to help me translate the jibberish left in my phone notes app the next morning (and yeah, I was writing in Notes - not even Google KeepNotes; my phone manufacturer’s Notes app, because apparently I am a glutton for punishment).
Originally, she was a stand-in for a Reader-insert because I felt highly uncomfortable writing in second person at the time, and I had a friend who only wrote reader-inserts who was extremely sensitive about another friend beginning to write that narrative genre, and I didn’t want to step on toes or invite the plagiarism drama that was ruling my DMs. So, I started writing in third person with an intermediary OC.
Her whole purpose was just to lie there and be a starfish for a lite kinkfic. Then, because a few people asked her a few questions, she ended up with a whole backstory and an arching series. It didn’t take much for babygirl to go and get herself a whole ass personality, back stories, and hobbies.
Nox
Nox is an interesting case, and the prime argument against my horror-writing kick being new. As she is, she is from 2022. Her earliest form, however, dates to 2017 and was a pairing for Toshinori. She was tortured and left homicidal. At the time, her quirk was a transform quirk that allowed her to turn into a large feline-like creature.
Eventually, her story turned into a tortured child, who, in a state of panic, activated her quirk and gutted her abuser. That origin has changed many times since, but she’d consistently end up in the care of the HPSC as a ward of the state. At that point, she was meant as a pair for Touya - a purr that could calm him. But she was taken away that week he went to Sekoto.
She had so much chemistry with Hawks, though, that my explorations began to find them growing closer and closer together. What do I mean by exploring? Well, my plotlines are maladaptive daydreams, which I don’t know that I need or care to explain to Tumblr. The maladaptive plot has stabilized and is sordid. I intended to write the full story, but I’ve admittedly run out of steam because of bad actors. With any luck, I’ll reconnect to the story again and go back to it. I know Cherry Blossom deserves to be finished. I know how it ends, it’s just getting it from where I left it to that ending.
I never once stated she was a melanistic jaguar, but that is a headcanon that seems to have been universally adopted by my friends, and I am kind of here for it.
Ciel Rioux
I believe Ciel is from the 2022 era, possibly 2023. I didn't give her too much attention until I started writing Azure Down in 2024. Not much has changed about her in reality. The whole idea when writing her was that I wouldn't force myself into one maladaptive plot. Some versions, she's pluckier than others; sometimes she's broken, sometimes she's resilient; sometimes I watch too many Hell's Kitchen reruns because I'm sick, and she becomes Gordon Ramsay. I have 8 active plots with her right now, but Azure is the only one that's ever been written.
Ayea Dahl (Takami)
Ayea is also as old as Nox. She wasn't so much meant to be paired with Toshinori as she was meant to simply exist. Originally, she also had a Raven transform quirk. She was an observer, just meant to explore the world. Somehow, and it is even still unclear to me at this point, she did end up with Hawks. Thinking it over, she had notable chemistry with Shouta; I think it was through proximity that the two were introduced.
Since then, her story has evolved to having a chemical quick, the same frustrated distaste I had for Hawks the first time I encountered him in canon, but ultimately coming around, and even having a kid with him. She's gone from observer/intel to reporter to, finally, modelling as her career.
Kalas Takami
He’s from 2022. Son of Hawks and Ayea. His design remains the same, but his quirk has changed slightly. He originally just had wings. Then he just had his dad’s quirk, but in black. Ultimately, this has become an empathic, Raven-like mutation, marrying Ayea’s origins to sounder world logic. His design hasn’t changed much, but the circumstances surrounding his birth and his arc have.
Reader Insert: “Little Crane”
This deserves an honourable mention because the original story that became my reader-insert series, The Future We Find (currently published only in pt 1: The Future We Dream Of), was written for an OC named Valkyrja Einarsdotter. That character was a healer type that had long since been abandoned. She was a short-lived stop for me in 2023, along with a couple of other OCs. But rather than waste the original writing or the outline, I figured I’d adapt it for a reader-insert story.
