#this stuff is hard

[metro-mtp]

How about these if you haven’t answered already?

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

On the flip side!

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

Sorry this is a little delayed! I had to think on it for a bit. Ended up longer than I thought so everything under the cut:

When it comes to fics that have inspired me to try new things in writing* I feel like it's all of them right now because I'm only recently starting to engage more seriously with fanfic as a medium. I'm a slow reader and have historically been a bit of a hermit when it comes to anything fandom-related. However! In the spirit of being the kind of fan you'd like to have I'm trying to be more interactive even if I'm slow and shy. Everything I read lately is Legend of Zelda (a mix of canon, AU, and original legends) and as a deeply indecisive person it's hard to pick just one work and say "I want to make something like that". I've found aspects across stories that I'd like to try eventually! More than anything, I just appreciate all the ways people can play with existing lore and put their own spin on it.

Which brings me to the other question: I can't recommend any fics of my own because I've never written anything...

Until now? Working on my (still unnamed) OL is my first attempt at doing narrative in addition to drawing. It's a HUGE- but fun!- learning curve figuring out how I want it to go, so I've been taking my time. Reading other people's work has been really encouraging though, and so has lurking observing and asking questions on the @expanding-hyrule server :)

This probably wasn't the answer you were looking for, but thanks so much for asking all the same! Have a doodle as compensation for reading that wall of text:

*I wish I had more to share already, I'm working on it! If you want more silly pictures though, they're tagged as [#au stuff] here and on my side blog @pochamarex until I can come up with a proper title

[fight-surrender]

Whumptober Day 6: Dragged Away

Baz:

“Simon…” I whisper.

I wait for him to get it. To finally give in to it. Or maybe to say I’ve passed the test.

Instead he shakes his head. “Baz…” His voice is barely there.

Even though the sky is clear, a shadow slips over us, bringing with it a faint bite of cold. The air shifts, bringing in a salty scent of decay, of rotting fish. A keening shriek so shrill, I’m not sure it’s not the wind.

Simon springs to his feet and assumes his fighting stance. One hand poised over his hip, muscle memory seeking a sword that won’t come. Just when I think my heart couldn’t break into any smaller shreds, it splits again. My chest a sinking chasm. A black hole.

My arms feel heavy, I just don’t think I have any fight left in me.

A glistening purple-grey tentacle shoots from the water and wraps itself around Simon’s leg and pulls, immediately throwing him to the ground. His hands raking uselessly through the sand as the creature drags him to the waiting sea. There is the briefest flash of panic on Simon’s face, then his eyes meet mine. Snow nods his head, flips to his back and sets about attempting to assault his captor with hands, teeth, and sheer will.

For once, I’m at a loss for spells. What will kill the monster without harming Simon?

The ocean starts to churn as the creature rises to the surface, it’s holding Snow in the air, by his leg. He’s still fighting. Water pours off the monster as its form emerges, tentacles writhing and whipping the heaving sea into foam. There are huge black eels swirling around as if awaiting orders from their master. I think it’s some sort of Kraken, towering over us with glistening mottled purple and black flesh and a head like—well it looks vaguely like David Hasselhof.

It’s like some kind of manic Baywatch demon. The creature shrieks and waves Simon around as if he were a child’s toy. I point my wand and cast “Let it go.” The beast releases Simon, but then a different tentacle grabs him as he falls. The eels are circling below him snapping their jaws.

The creature shrieks again, a primal sound of rage that cuts to my core. I’m practically singing spells at it now, half of them are bouncing off. I’m too panicked at this point to focus on my vernacular. In a vortex of boiling sea, the monster dives deep, taking Simon with it.

The ocean goes calm and still, the gulls around me cackling. Completely oblivious.

I fall to my knees. My treasonous heart is beating so fast. Why is it beating? It’s gone. My heart. Into the sea.

What do I do? What do I do?

“Baz!” Someone shouts.

Penelope is on her knees with her arms wrapped around me. “He’s gone,” it’s all I can say. I feel hollow, I’m empty. Penny smoothes the hair from my face.

“Simon Snow is never lost,” she says. “Let’s find him.”

[not-poignant]

Hi, kinda old fic writer here (started posting 4 years ago). My fics barely get comments or subscriptions and after four years the average kudos counts is 37... That is the main reason I sometimes don't continue a fic because I feel like it is shit / nobody wants to read it anyway. I try to motivate myself to keep writing, but it is very discouraging. Especially when some of the comments I get are just "you made a mistake in this sentence". I feel like I am whining when I tell anyone this though

It’s tough for sure, and sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why some fics are more popular than others, it often comes down to the oddest things - too many tags or not enough tags, minor formatting or just being in a particular fandom or even just skating under the radar for some reason, it’s definitely not an easy thing to do.

I know for myself, in the end, I wrote stories for me. I still have stories on my computer that I’ve never posted because I wrote them for me. But it gave me a chance to practice writing and to see if I could do what other people were doing (i.e. not writing their stories, but following the formatting / tag systems etc. that other people were using). Even then, the first stories I posted when I sort of ‘returned’ didn’t do very well. It didn’t matter as much at that point though, because I really just…wrote them for my enjoyment.

But that doesn’t stop it hurting when something gets little or no notice.

That being said, something a friend said helped put things in perspective for me recently, which is something along the lines of this (paraphrased for your situation):

You wrote something that made on average, 37 people happy. If you imagine all of those individual people - more than can fit in most people’s houses, more than you’re probably comfortable seeing in a single day - with their individual lives and loves, all of those people got something meaningful out of your fic. That’s not nothing. There are people out there who get an average of 4 kudos per fic who would kill to have your average, for them, that’s nearly ten times as many kudos that they’re fighting for. Likewise, you probably see other averages, and feel the same way.

This is also why the comparison game is brutal. It’s really tempting to look at how great some people are doing and then look at your own fics and go ‘oh no.’ Tbh, I went through a phase of that when I made the mistake at looking how well a lot of Yuri!!! on Ice fics were doing. Lol. The idea of getting 12,000 kudos on one of my fics? As if! It’s never going to happen.

37 people is not nobody. That’s more people than most of us know what to do with. That’s larger than an average classroom in most places of the world, and it’s a party so big you’d probably have to book out small-to-mid-size restaurant just to fit them all comfortably in. And that’s an average per fic right? believe me or not, there was a time I would’ve killed for that kind of feedback/response, especially in the first decade or so. You say you’re an ‘old’ fic writer for having done it for 4 years, but I was doing it for about 8 years - on and off - before I started getting anything like regular feedback. It’s just…a tough gig that we do for the love of it.

As to getting negative feedback, or critiques-only, you can a) call a commenter out on it: ‘Yes, thank you, but was there anything you liked about the fic or are you actually here to just criticise?’, b) make it clear in your author’s notes that concrit (constructive criticism) is unwelcome unless it comes in the form of a comment (or you can just say it’s unwelcome), c) an end-note like: ‘did you like anything about this fic? Let me know! Even if it’s just a smiley face everything is welcome’ etc.

And maybe sit down and ask yourself why you’re in this gig in the first place. Is it to get Big Time popularity? And what is the definition of that? Is it to just make some people happy? (Because if it’s that, you’re doing that, and it’s possible to tweak things to get more feedback - but sadly, you tend to only get regularish feedback if you post regularly. The occasional oneshot and unfinished WIP here and there does, unfortunately, discourage commenters, which sucks). Is it that you had higher expectations and you need to revise them? Is it that you need to spend some time writing more stories for yourself so you can make yourself happy with them? Whatever it is, there’s always room to tweak / revise / look at the system.

It’s definitely easy to feel discouraged, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of deleting my fics off AO3, and it’s only after say…16 years - the last few years or so - that I’ve felt more comfortable with my stories. But even my beta has had to say the words: ‘don’t delete your stories Pia.’ Sometimes I just need to remember why I’m here in the first place. And hey, sometimes you might need to take a break too and work some things out for yourself. I don’t know many people who would say writing fanfic is easy, cuz it’s really not. I wish you luck in the word mines, and I hope you find some more joy in it for yourself, and realise that you’ve given around 37 people some happiness too. <3 Believe it or not, that can help.

*

And then, if you want to watch someone with a really sweet voice, and a really sweet laugh, talk about why artists don’t get good feedback, and remember that it’s hard for all of us - writers and artists alike - and yet still feel weirdly oddly hopeful afterwards? I highly recommend this Will Terrell video, which pulled me out of one of the shittiest writing slumps in my life, a couple of years ago. I still rewatch it on the regular.

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

Woke up to some ace discourse and I just want everyone to know that you are safe with me. 

No matter your gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, you name it. 

You deserve a community to be a part of and you’re safe with me. 

[mystarsareametaphor]

Hi I am just here for the go gO GO in getaway car and that is all!

[thereal-tsuki-llama-blog]

Today’s writing research: The difference between analog and digital electronics. Hooray for dummies.com.

[scale-ale]

I literally have no idea what to do. Like how to provide comfort, give support, and just be there for people. I have no damn idea how to do that. Like how do you verbally provide comfort? How do you be with someone in their darkest times when you have no idea how to do that???

I'm so confused. I want to help the people in my life but I can't.