[thankeve]

She/her 🇦🇺

Horror girly

Over-user of parentheses (yep k hi).

Haven’t been actively writing in a while—it’s fairly normal for me to dip in and out of fic and fandom every few years.

Darklina role reversal AU • Dark!Alina! & Sailor!Aleks • In Progress - I swear I’m not dead (2026) •Twenty-three-year-old Aleksander Morozova is the world's first Shadow Summoner and Prince Nikolai Lantsov's best shot at winning back the throne from Ravka's mad Sun Queen. When the Prince's resistance is forced to make a play on Bo Yul-Bayur to keep parem out of enemy hands, Aleksander finds himself embedded in the schemes of Kaz Brekker. Little do they realise that the Sun Queen's priorities have already shifted… Read on AO3.

KoS/RoW canon divergence • Darklina / Nikolina / Zoyalai • I’ve had a revelation about if, but it’s on the back back burner. Read a sneak peak.

Other stuff:

Royai/Edwin fma fic • Maybe one day I’ll post the chapter gathering dust on my laptop.

[thenightisland]

people trying to insist a fandom is tiny when it /only/ has a few thousand works on ao3 meanwhile my current fandom is a sixteen book series and has several hundred fewer works than goncharov, a movie that, and i cannot stress this enough, doesn’t even exist

[feathersandblue]

#measuring the size of fandoms based on their goncharov index#this has been a useless text post you may now resume your normal programming#rote has a goncharov index of 0.63#for perspective ofmd has an index of 26.5#spn’s is 360.8#the cosmere is 2.26 for a fantasy book comparison#i am very normal

The Goncharov Index, everyone.

[shirtsthatgohard]

[ellipsus-writes]

If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

[torch-song]

[me talking about my favourite character] get him a little dirty. get him a little bloody. make him a little injured. and torture him a little bit. get him on his knees. oh so pretty

[wafflewarrior111]

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

[missroserose]

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

[heck-in-a-handbasket]

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

[ineedthesons]

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

[tarysande]

Editor here.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.

[platonbatonn]

go ahead be gone with it

[armengoldira]

The scale of baby hummingbirds vs a human hand

[revretch]

The inside of the nest is white because they're so tiny they line them with spiderwebs!

[i-say-ok]

ok. 🥺🥺🥺

[buteonine]

@todaysbird

[bunjywunjy]

you may also notice that the babies have tiny little nubbin beaks! they hatch like that so they fit in the eggs- the beak doesn't actually grow in for another week or so.

[lacetulle]

Zuhair Murad | Spring/Summer 2026 Couture

[willgrahamscock]

how are you gonna be 31 and posting fandom content bro leave it to the teenagers

People 10 and 20 years older than me are writing your favorite fanfics, and drawing your favorite characters. You'd have no fandom without the people you think are 'too old' to have hobbies.

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

Lydia Pettit

[nihildep]

Too Sweet

[thevampirecrow]

fellatio sounds like a supporting shakespeare character rather than oral sex on a penis to be honest

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

The popularity of ~~problematic~~ kinky erotica is similar to the prevalence of monarchies in speculative fiction.

Sure, it's fair to find it annoying but the people who read those novels generally don't want a monarchy in real life, enjoyment of it doesn't indicate that they're subconsciously anti-democratic and the popularity of that type of fiction isn't an indicator of some growing social ill.

But then occasionally you'll be reading an author with slowly dawning horror as you realise he genuinely believes in the divine right of kings

[nevvaraven]

i just don’t have enough room on the worry roster to worry about arm hair

[goth-queen]

[northshorewave]

"Not beating the ___ allegations" is such a 'now' turn of phrase, implying as it does a world where everyone's behavior is always on literal trial by a guilt-presuming judge and jury that consists of anyone who happens to be paying attention.

[ironmyrmidon]

Not beating the panopticon allegations