It’s just what the name suggests. I’m Aly, the-sunshine-queen and this is where I shall place all of the fanfiction I write. Mainly willex with an appearance or two by juke and also some found family shenanigans
All i wish for 2024 is every creator to start that project they’ve been thinking about, write those fics they have been planning, make messy art, and to have as little burnout as possible.
I want to write fic but I don’t want to write fic. I want to read the fic I’ve already written but I don’t want to read the fics I’ve already written I want to read the fic I’ve not written yet but I want it to be written so I can read it.
Friendly reminder that fan-made content (fanart, fanfic, fanvids, etc) are:
extremely time consuming. Remember someone actually took time out of their life to create that, time they could’ve used to, idk, sleep, for example
entertainment you’re consuming for free. I can’t stress this enough: you’re enjoying someone else’s craft for free. You paid exactly zero money to look at/read/watch it.
S H A R E D with you, not made for you. This is the most important point: someone created that, put it online and you found it. No one forced you to consume that fanwork, you C H O S E to do it.
Whenever you feel like leaving a mean comment, anonymous hate or make a ~clever post about how ‘lol look at all of these overused tropes every fic writer crams into their fics’ remember you’re being a dick to someone who shared their work with you. You’re not being funny, you’re not being edgy, you’re not being brave for calling something out - you’re being a dick.
@latinposeidon said this, I said "bet" (to myself), here we go.
Willex. 800 words. Rated T (for language).
It's—kinda become a thing. Willie pulling Alex in to kiss him by whatever he can grab of him.
At first it had just been his hand, when they were walking and Willie was getting tired, they'd gently tug at his hand, Alex would turn, and Willie would pull a little more to get him to press his lips to theirs.
Then there were obviously times where Alex had been out of reach, for whatever reason, where Willie would reach out a hand until he had been able to grab Alex's sleeve and tug at it like a toddler to get his attention, and then some more for Alex go get what Willie wanted (to be smooched, if that wasn't clear).
One time, when they were getting more comfortable in their relationship and both ultimately bolder, Willie had slipped a finger through Alex's beltloop and twisted him into his arms before pressing their lips together. If Alex wasn't so distracted by Willie kissing him senseless, he'd have melted right into the floor by the action. In the back of his mind he remembers Reggie and Julie giggling somewhere in the background.
Alex's favourite way for Willie to pull him in (until now at least) was when Willie had grabbed a handful of the front of Alex's hoodie the second they reached each other after a great gig. The kiss had been crushing, urgent (incredibly hot, if Alex could say so himself) and he thought about it for weeks. Especially because a few minutes later, when they were talking, nerves calmed a little, Willie had hooked a finger through Alex's necklace and used that to get him closer again (neither worried about breaking the necklace because there wasn't much tugging needed to get Alex to kiss Willie again).
Now there's a new competitor for "favourite way Willie uses to pull Alex in."
It's at band practice. Willie is sitting on the couch, vibing, being their biggest fan, clapping loudly after every song. They're having a small break before focusing on their newest song, and Alex walks over to the couch because he knows Willie has to leave soon to get to something. Willie is already getting up, ready to tell him their goodbyes.
"You really can't stay until the end of practice?" Alex asks with a small pout.
"You'll literally see each other tomorrow," Luke chimes in from somewhere by the piano.
"Shut up!" Alex calls back and suppresses a roll of his eyes.
Willie in front of him giggles and it immediately pulls Alex's attention back to him.
"I'll literally see you again tomorrow," Willie repeats teasingly. Their hands find Alex's waist, slowly sliding down to his hips.
This time Alex does roll his eyes, although very fondly. "God forbid I wanna spend time with my boyfriend."
"Well, the boyfriend is very sorry he has to leave now, but they promise to be back for practice tomorrow." Willie's thumb dips underneath the waistband of Alex's sweats and it's only mildly distracting. (Very mildly.)
"That is acceptable," Alex manages to respond.
"Are you gonna play Long Weekend for me tomorrow?" Willie asks. He's blinking up at Alex like he sometimes does when they're trying to convince him to do something illegal with them. Their hands slide to Alex's front and begin fiddling with the strings of his sweats. Now it's getting really distracting.
"I—I'm sure that can be arranged." Alex swallows. "I'll suggest it."
Willie smiles. "Thanks, baby."
Alex doesn't get to respond anything, just feels the tug at the strings where Willie pulls at them to pull him in. They kiss him, slow and innocently sweet, and before Alex can consider reciprocating, Willie is already pulling back.
"See you tomorrow," he says, ties a bow into the strings, pecks Alex's cheek, and then turns and exits the garage.
Alex stares after them. He feels like he left his brain somewhere around "Long Weekend".
The entire garage is silent around him.
"What did I just witness?" Luke asks.
Alex responds by slowly lowering himself to the ground.
"Gimme—gimme a sec," he announces before he's fully lying down on his back, eyes towards the ceiling.
It takes him too long to fully comprehend what just happened.
Reggie doesn't hesitate to drop down on his stomach next to him, propped up on his elbows, chin in his palms, legs kicking.
"So, how are we feeling about that?" he asks cheekily.
"I need to process this," Alex responds weakly.
Behind his eyes runs the scene he just experienced, Willie's expression, the petname, them pulling at his fucking pants' strings of all things.
"Can we expect this to be done before the end of practice?" Luke pipes up.
"Let the boy suffer," Julie says, "he just got knocked out cold by his own boyfriend."
"Do you wanna plan a revenge attack?" Reggie asks Alex, entirely too invested.
"I don't—I can't—" Alex says uselessly, still not recovered.
What is ‘late in a fandom’? It’s after the first heady flush of media excitement. Six months after the standalone movie or book comes out, a year or more after the series ends.
We get inspired by late canon: the behind-the-scenes book, the deleted scenes, a revealing creator interview. We get inspired by fanon and meta. We get talking to that one - one! - person who likes our ideas.
Sometimes a fic even needs to be written late in the fandom. After thinking and creative ferment, worldbuilding and character development. ‘Late to the fandom’ is a good time to take risks. To do the dark AU, focus on the minor character from stage left. It’s also a good time to offer up tropetastic fun.
Whatever you do, you will get readers who appreciate that you are writing. Because for every writer considering writing ‘late’ there’s a hundred fandom members wanting some fresh content.
Writing fic for a show/movie/book that came out 20 years ago is good. You just saw it now? You saw it then but suddenly remember that you love it? Good. Writing fic for something that came out 40 years ago? Good.
Maybe there are still fans around, producing content, who will love to see new blood coming in.
Maybe there are still fans around, dormant, who will suddenly remember why they loved the thing.
Maybe there’s someone who never saw the thing and will now read your fic and go, “well that’s interesting, I’d better go watch that, see what it’s all about”. And maybe they’ll want to write fic too.
i feel like i say this all the time, but as your friendly neighborhood creative writing instructor i’d just like to remind you, especially if you’re feeling stuck, that writing is the process of thought, not the product of thought. although cognitively we *can* think a sentence and write it down, or think a sentence and say it out loud, more often we write and speak to conjure the thoughts themselves.
that’s why i believe in the shitty first draft. often, but not always, you have to put all your ideas on a page to even figure out what you’re trying to write, who your characters are, what their lives are about, all the nitty gritty stuff you can’t expect yourself to figure out right away. and then, once all your thoughts are out and they’re right in front of you for you to look at, you write the thing again knowing what’s what. in other words, you have to sketch before you can paint.
if you can accept this, fully internalize the knowledge that you will be writing the thing at least twice, writing that shitty first draft isn’t hard at all. you know you’re mostly going to get it wrong, and that’s okay, because later you’ll get it right.
I have a hc that Alex is the Best at playing hide and seek for no real reason. Luke and Reggie could search for ages and not find him. And it’s (almost) never due to Reggie or Luke having no brain cells and missing somewhere obvious. He somehow wedges into seemingly impossible places and even when they were alive would manage to disappear. They’d never met anyone close to as good at playing hide and seek until Alex… That is UNTIL they meet Willie who is just as good. When they learn this, Alex and Willie start working together and hiding in the same place. Which they definitely don’t use as an excuse for forced close proximity. And when they’re Officially Dating they can pass the time while Reggie and Luke are looking for them with lots of kissing
Incredible headcanon!! I imagine it would go something like this:
People argue that the fun of hide-and-seek is actually finding all the people who were hiding, so you could go again.
Not for Sunset Curve. When they played hide-and-seek it was war. And they all fought as best as they could.
There was no denying that Alex was the best out of all of them though. He was the shortest for almost their entire youth, so he had been able to squeeze himself into the smallest corners or hide under a blanket mountain, blending in seamlessly. But even when he grew taller when they got to their last year of middle school, he was still nearly invisible, still able to squeeze himself into the smallest corners for some reason, and he figured out how to hide his long legs under the blanket mountain too.
It took the others ages to find him, but never once did they lose motivation. It was a challenge. They wanted to beat Alex. But no one was up to Alex's level until Willie came along.
Willie wasn't a particularly good seeker, because they did lose interest at some point (less because he wasn't keen on finding his friends or annoyed at them that they were hiding so well, but they got distracted sometimes, which rather annoyed Willie himself). But they were the world's best hider, finding corners even Alex hadn't considered yet, and Alex finally found his match.
Now it started to frustrate the others a little bit. Because now that they didn't only have Alex they couldn't find, but Willie too, it was nearly impossible to win the game. So in order to make it fair, Luke insisted that Alex and Willie would have to team up when hiding and find a place to hide in together. Reggie agreed with a lot of winks.
Their hope was that because they were now two bodies they had to hide, they had fewer places, but in reality it was Alex and Willie's hiding genius combined, so they always found a place. But they were two bodies they had to hide, so it was usually pretty tight. Alex didn't know if he wanted to party or scream.
The first time it happened was a little awkward, but mostly on Alex's side. They were hiding in a kitchen cabinet, Alex folded together like a lawn chair, Willie sitting opposite him with their legs involuntarily tangled together between them. It was summer and they were both wearing shorts, so there was a lot of leg-to-leg, skin-to-skin contact. Alex felt like his whole body was burning and he was very glad that it was pretty dark in the cabinet so that Willie wasn't able to see the bright blush on his cheeks.
"Comfy," Willie commented in a whisper.
Alex snorted. "You think so?"
"Hm," Willie hummed in response. "You come here often?"
"Are you really flirting with me in a kitchen cabinet?"
(Alex didn't know why he asked that. But he'd known Willie for a couple months now and he was comfortable around them, and knew that they wouldn't take the question too seriously, so he just kinda did.)
"I mean, we gotta spend the time somehow, it's gonna take a while until they find us," Willie explained, then winked.
Alex didn't respond, but he bumped his knee into Willie's. And in a spurt of the moment, he placed his hand on Willie's ankle, over their strawberry socks. He could see Willie smiling in the dark.
The first time they kissed was also in one of their hiding places. This time they were pressed chest to chest behind the bathroom door, trying to stifle their giggles and stay quiet. Alex desperately hoped Willie wasn't able to feel how fast his heart was beating with how close they were. Willie had his hands on Alex's hips (to save space and press closer, Alex told himself) and he had one of his a little awkwardly placed on Willie's arm.
And then Willie kind of just pushed up onto their tiptoes and kissed Alex. A surprise attack. Alex wasn't prepared. So it took him a moment to regain his bearings after Willie leaned back, nervous smile on their face, eyes searching his. Naturally Alex leaned forward and kissed the expression right off their lips.
That was the first time Reggie was able to find them before the rest, because in their excitement Willie's head had bumped against the door and made a sound. But Reggie was more delighted to have found them in the first place than to have found them kissing.
Alex and Willie didn't care about having lost so quickly for once, because oh wow, kissing, that was exciting!
Kissing was fun. Kissing each other was fun. So they kissed a lot. In their rooms, in the garage before band practice, at their lockers or outside the music room when no one was watching, and of course in their hiding spots.
Some spots didn't really allow it. Alex strained his neck so much to reach Willie in the kitchen cabinet again that he couldn't properly turn his head to the left for two days. Or when they were hiding behind a plant pot and they were so cramped that Alex's leg had somehow ended up on Willie's shoulder. Willie had laughed and just cheesily pressed a kiss to his shin.
But then there were places like between the spare couch on the loft and the wall, where they found themselves in an excellent kissing position. Yes, Alex was pretty uncomfortable lying on his back on the hard, dusty wooden floor, but Willie was perched in his lap, propped up with a hand on either side of Alex's head, kissing him stupid.
Now that they were dating and spending their time hiding with making out, Alex was no longer worrying about being in close proximity with Willie. Now he was hoping his lips were soft enough or that his fingertips weren't ice cold when he let them dip beneath Willie's crop top (they often were), or that he didn't accidentally bite Willie's lip (he did once, but Willie just kissed him harder after). They were much better worries, and Willie was always adamant on kissing them right away.
"I know you're making out, I can hear you!" Luke shouted from the ground, still looking for all of them. He huffed. "I just don't know where."
Alex and Willie grinned into their kiss. They weren't going to give Luke a hint. But as long as their kissing didn't tell Luke where they were hiding, they weren't going to stop either. They had this time to themselves and no one could say anything about it.
Hhhhh this was fun to write! And auch a great headcanon, thank you so much!!! A lot of forehead kisses for you 😘😘😘😘
(send me headcanons and I'll give you forehead kisses in return, or maybe a even a drabble)
I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but more people should read incomplete/unfinished/in-progress fanfics.
I've noticed this huge trend where creators on tiktok and tumblr who will be explaining how to use Archive Of Our Own to new users and they always say "and make sure to scroll down and click completed only" or how people will go out of their way to mention they only read completed fics 'because they were traumatized when they forgot to check the dates and didn't realize this fic hadn't been updated since 2012'.
The thing is - I think by not engaging with and/or actively avoiding writer's WIPs readers are potentially adding to the aggregate of abandoned works. Now this obviously isn't the case for all abandoned fics, anything from major life events, to loss of interest, to getting busy can be a reason for a fic getting abandoned - but at least on some level I just know that writers are quitting while they're ahead when they aren't garnering any response or feedback because reading WIPs has become unpopular. If you're worried about reading something that hasn't been updated since 2012 then you can use the date updated function to sort out old fics.
Anyways, support your favorite fanfic writers by engaging with their WIPs.
Once upon a time there was a fanfic with a weird and unusual premise posted on ffn by a...I want to say moderately famous to famous fanfiction author. I, being however old I was (high school??), read it, and got fully attached to it. Like, completely and fully attached to it. It hit me right in the gender euphoria, had a really interesting premise, and was already well on its way into an interesting plot with a lot of sick cultural details. I didn't have an account, so all my lurking was undocumented and anonymous.
The author only ever added one more chapter. After that, it was on hiatus/abandoned for years. You know how it went on ffn. It was posted, but the years crawled on without updates or notes. I still religiously went back to that fanfic, year after year, though, to reread it when I remembered it existed.
And then one day. It stopped showing up in my search results. My heart broke.
I remembered the author's name, but I couldn't find them; I figured out eventually that they had changed it, so I hunted them down, got into contact with them-- somehow, idk, did I drop my email in a comment or something??-- and went pretty pretty PLEASE do you still have the document, I need it for my emotional well-being!!
And they were like "huh. Uh, yeah, here you go. There's some unreleased stuff in here too."
And I cried like a baby.
The moral of this story is that literally anything could be someone's comfort fic, and you will never know. That half-finished fic from a fandom you feel mildly ashamed of now could be someone's holy grail. YOU could stumble on a half-finished fic and find out it was YOUR holy grail. And the only way to know is to appreciate half finished fics for what they are: cool as hell and with room to grow alongside the author.
Read unfinished fics. Comment. Show your appreciation. All of it matters.
Guys I know we all love AO3 for hosting our fanfiction, and the OTW for defending our right to create it. But please remember that they can only do so as long as the fanfiction is shared for free.
I know a lot of writers (and artists) will do fic commissions or submissions to fanzines (free and paid). But you cannot mention the fic was paid for on Ao3. This includes for charity drives where the writers don't keep anything! Ao3 staff has stated this explicitly in the past.
And please, please, do not run a charity drive or zine where the recipient of the proceeds is Ao3/OTW. You are publicly exposing them to legal attack for funding them by selling fanworks! You can't even mention that you do that on Ao3, do not then make a paper trail right to them!
And keep any mention of your paid work off your Ao3. No links to commissions or patreons or ko-fis or notes that the work was commissioned, or even links to author stores of unrelated books. All of these are prohibited by Ao3 itself in order to protect fan creators and their works.
Fanworks for profit is a sticky legal place, don't make the OTW's job of defending us harder or even impossible by paying them with fanwork proceeds.
my girls if you ever feel cringy for writing a fic, headcanon or whatever script where you are the protagonist remember dante alighieri literally wrote an entire fanfic of HIMSELF going down in hell with his... um... friend, and it's now considered one of the most beautiful and representative art creations in the world <3
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
amandla
jimmyeatworldofficial
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
stormborns
