Side Note To Fan Fic Authors

Side Note To Fan Fic Authors

Here’s the thing.

I read a lot of scripts.  A lot.  From professionals to aspiring writers to complete newbies.  Features and pilots.  Specs and treatments.

And 8 times out of 10 the fan fic that I’ve read over the last, oh, 15 years is leagues better than this stuff.  It’s more inspired.  It’s more compelling.  It’s genre bending and creative and heartfelt.  It’s well-paced and intense and funny and sexy and meaningful.  It’s smart and thoughtful and good.  It’s novel-quality.  Better than, sometimes.

Rare is the script I don’t want to put down, but how often have we stayed up until 3am to get to the last chapter of a 100k fic? And it’s not even a fan fic author’s day job.  This is what they do on the side.  In their spare time.  For free.

So my point is, fan fic authors, you’re good.  You’re good writers and great storytellers.  I know it doesn’t always feel like it, especially if you’re one of the authors who’s not a BNF and doesn’t get the notes/hits that a few do.  And  because some people still view fic as “not real writing.” You guys know the shit that gets made into movies.  You’re better than that.  So be better than that.  If writing is what you think want to do, then just know you’re already doing it.   You’ve already started.

And you’re more talented than you might think.

birthday shenanigans and other party tricks

C(S). Jungwoo x Reader, Doyoung mention | WC. 1119 | G. Fluff

warnings: jungwoo being cute!

July 1st, 11:04 p.m.

Three beeps signal a successful entry of your apartment’s entry code followed by a quick and loud opening and closing of the door. You possess no supersonic hearing but the sounds of huffs and mild curses indicate the person at the door having trouble with god knows what. 

Getting up off the kitchen stool to investigate what your late-night intruder is doing, you find him bent over picking up two big bags and a small box. Standing back up, he greets you with a soft smile. Shuffling over to you with all his items still at hand, Jungwoo does his best to wrap his occupied arms around you as a greeting which results in a rather awkward half-hug and half-pushing against your chest bump hybrid.  

“Happy Birthday!” he exclaims. Moving back a little to hold up the bag in his hands. “I have food, cake and your presents of course!”

You try to take one of the bags but he dodges your hand and starts to move towards the kitchen with you trailing behind him.

“Jungwoooo, there is still like… an hour till my birthday,” you laugh shaking your head at your partner’s eagerness.

Placing everything down as carefully as possible, he turns to you and now with free limbs wraps you in a tight bear hug, a proper greeting.

With your face pressed into his chest, you try to mumble out how he didn’t need to do all this but before you can finish your sentence he shushes you.

“This is just a fraction of what I wanted to do for you, I take my job as your partner and number one birthday wisher very seriously you know,” he answers as a matter of factly.

Ever since your first birthday together where he forgot to wish you until half the day had passed, Jungwoo had made it a mission to be the first to wish you, even if that meant wishing you a day early.

Touched by his devotion to being the first to wish you on your birthday, you lean up to place a small kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you for your hard work love,” you coo.

Your kiss and words trigger a soft blush to bloom on his cheeks and ears as he leans his head to capture your lips in a small kiss before frantically pulling away.

Reaching into his left pant pocket, his eyebrows furrow, he then reaches into his other pocket and breaths a sigh of relief. Pulling out his phone he checks the time which now reads 11:26 p.m.

“Ok let me set up everything so you can blow out your candles at exactly 12!” Giving you a quick kiss on the cheek, he turns his attention to the bags he brought in and starts unpacking. 

Once again you attempt to help but he fusses you to sit down and just watch, it was your “special day” so you weren’t allowed to do anything. 

“Sit like royalty and watch me work my magic” were his exact words.

You watch him remove the bags of food and plate them. Pulling out two wrapped boxes he places them opposite one another and finally, the cake, decorated in white frosting and fondant hearts all around, and a cute plastic knife set in between the presents. 

Moving around the kitchen opening and closing drawers, he searches for the finishing touch, candles and a lighter.

“Bottom drawer, next to fridge love” you point out.

He gives you a small thank you as he moves to the drawer pulling out the candles and the lighter, his actions getting more rushed feeling the clocking ticking towards midnight.

With the oven clock now reading 11:50 p.m., Jungwoo stands back to admire the setup. 

He moves towards you offering his hand to pull you off your seat. 

“What do you think?” he asks with his famous puppy dog eyes.

“I think…” you stop to ponder giving your best “thinking” face before putting him out of his misery. “...That it’s amazing.”

He mutters a small “yes!”, proud of his work and your compliment.

The loud shrill of the default Apple alarm startles you both, and Jungwoo makes haste to find his phone now lost under some discarded bags and take-out containers. 

“Aha, here it is” he holds up his phone turning it off in the process. “I forgot I set it to start your birthday countdown,” he admits sheepishly.

He hands you his phone, instructing you to keep an eye on the red clock hand as it makes its way towards 12, in turn grabbing the lighter to light up the specialty heart candles he picked to match the cake decoration. 

“Jungwoo, 20 seconds,” you threaten, forcing him to stop admiring the set-up and take his place next to you. He takes the phone from you to countdown the final seconds.

“10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1” he chants. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVE!” shouting with so much glee that your shoulder jumped up startled.

His hand snakes around your shoulder as you bend down blow out the candles, and before you can even start cutting he swipes some of the icing off the cake to smear on your cheek.

“JUUUUNGGGWOOOOO,” you whine, laughing and moving away from another attempt of your face being ambushed by frosting.

Before you can get anywhere, however, Jungwoo already managed to wrap his long arms around you, effectively preventing you from moving further. 

You’re both a laughing mess but you don’t move away even after the laughter dies down. 

There, in the middle of the kitchen, you gaze into each other's eyes, dopey smiles carved on your lips, and you, still smeared with the white frosting. 

Jungwoo opens his mouth to speak, which you think will be a cheesy confession but instead…

“Can you…make sure to tell the other members that I wished you first?” He pleads, batting his eyes in an attempt to be cute. “Doyoung hyung tried to threaten me that he would be the first,” he scoffs remembering how smug the older member had been thinking he could beat Jungwoo. 

You roll your eyes at the dumb but endearing rivalry Jungwoo has with the members who try to one-up the other on who can wish a member first. 

Before you answer, you begin to close the gap between you two, sensing where you’re going with it, Jungwoo closes his eyes expecting a kiss. Instead, he’s met with a hand full of cake smushed along the right side of his face, payback for his previous frosting attack. 

Shocked by the unexpected revenge attack, he opens his eyes to see your teasing smile at his cake-painted face. 

“I’ll think about it.”

So is reblog is also not permitted?

That’s the difference. Reblogs are good! You promote the artist and their work.

At least for me repost is ok only in one condition: you asked permission and the artist said “yes”.

I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since I’ve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

“Pedophilia is bad.” -> Obviously, you agree with this. You’re a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.

“Because pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.” -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesn’t it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic. 

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.” -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you don’t. But still, it adds up, it’s a very easy flow. After all, we’ve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?

“Since people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, it’s okay to harm them.” -> Here’s where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ‘justified’.

The pattern now repeats for anything else that’s considered “morally impure”, and “pedophilia” is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. “Abuse” becomes any ship that the person pushing doesn’t like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.

This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

“Murder is bad”

“Because murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.”

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.”

“Since people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, it’s okay to harm them.”

Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

Okay?

I had a dream that the king and the queen of a small country had a daughter. They needed a son, a first-born son, so in secret, without telling anyone of their child’s gender, they travelled to the nearby woods that were rumoured to house a witch.

They made a deal with that witch. They wanted a son, and they got one. A son, one made out of clay and wood, flexible enough to grow but sturdy enough to withstand its destined path, enchanted to look like a human child. The witch asked for only one thing, and that was for their daughter.

They left the girl readily.

The witch raised her as her own, and called her Thyme. The princess grew up unknowing of her heritage, grew up calling the witch Mama, and the witch did her very best to earn that title.

She was taught magic, and how to forage in the woods, how to build sturdy wooden structures and how to make the most delicious stews. The girl had a good life, and the witch was pleased.

The girl grew into a woman, and learned more and more powerful magics, grew stronger from hauling wood and stones and animals to cook, grew smarter as the witch taught her more.

She learned to deal with the people in the villages nearby, learned how to brew remedies and medicines and how to treat illness and injury, and learned how to tell when someone was lying. 

Every time the pair went into town, the people would remark at just how similar Thyme was to her mother. 

(Thyme does not know who and what she is. She does not know that she was born a princess, that she was sold. She only knows that one night after her mother read her a story about princesses and dragons, her mother had asked her if she ever wanted to be a princess.)

((Thyme only knows that she very quickly answered no. She likes being a witch, thank you very much, she likes the power that comes with it and the way that she can look at things and know their true nature.))

The witch starts preparing the ritual early, starts collecting the necessities in the winter so they can be ready by the fall equinox. Her daughter helps, and does not ask what this is for, just knows that it is important.

The witch looks at Thyme, both their hands raised into the air over a complicated array of plants, tended carefully to grow into a circle, and says, sorry.

Keep reading

Ao3 writers are the strongest Avengers