Hello, hello! I decided to update my pinned post because I wanted to. No other reason besides that. So welcome to my blog! Please read these things before you decide to follow or interact with me.
If anything mentioned makes you uncomfortable, you’re welcome to block me and move on.
I’m what you would call a ‘proshipper’, but I don’t use that term for myself. Personally, I don’t care what you ship, what your kinks are, or what you enjoy. I’m too old to give a damn about those things. As long as you don’t shove things down my throat, I can get along with pretty much anyone, regardless of what you like. But the second you try to tell me your ship is 'superior’ to others or try to shove things down my throat that I’m uncomfortable with, you’re gonna get blocked.
Religious vampires trying to find ways to balance their ideologies with their needs
Sirens learning sign language so they can communicate without enchanting anyone
Disabled fairies who can’t fly pushing for accessibility
Spirits helping save people from fires and other natural disasters because they can access areas too dangerous for the living
Dragons becoming foster parents and providing super safe homes for “hordes” of children until they grow up
Female werewolves with facial hair and body hair not letting anyone make them feel bad about it
Fae snatching children from abusive homes and raising them in safety while the changeling wreaks havoc
Liberated genies using their power to fight for human rights
Witchy cooking shows where witches try to make specific potions or find creative magical solutions to problems
Psychic psychologists and medical doctors who are able to figure out exactly how to help even if their patient is non-verbal, young, or afraid of being honest because they’re with an abuser
Psychic teachers knowing just what to do to help students with learning disabilities
Yes please.
I just slammed the reblog button so hard my phone broke.
I forgot how lonely it is to write original fiction.
Where are the kudos? The subscriptions? The comments? The people cheerleading me chapter to chapter? Where are the kind words and compliments and reassurances that what I’m writing isn’t complete crap? Where are the unhinged emojis? The asks on Tumblr? Where are my mutuals in my dms apologizing for not reading the latest chapter right away (side note, you know you don’t have to apologize at all, right??). Where is the fanart? Where are the recs?
Where is my motivation to keep going?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, actually, lately. How the experience of writing fanfic is so unique. How you already have an audience, willing and waiting and captive. And that’s really it, isn’t it? You have an audience. It’s almost performative, writing fanfic. It’s being on a stage, a one-person show (or two, if you do it with a friend); it’s getting live reactions to your performance, it’s feeding off the energy of the crowd and informing it back in a feedback loop; it’s improvised, sometimes, in almost-real-time. It’s building something that you couldn’t have built by yourself. A thing that takes on a life of its own.
It’s an experience you can’t get writing original fiction, and, honestly, not having it is making it hard to write something original at all.
“Where is my motivation to keep going?”
It’s where it always was before fanfic, before online support; before recs, before asks, before moots, before fanart.
It’s in realizing you’re the story’s only way out into the world.
In a world full of gatekeeping, this is the gate that only you keep. Turn your back on the responsibility to open the portal to the unborn (original) story and keep it open, and the story dies. And that death is on you.
Yes, it’s lonely work, without the constant rush of input we’ve been trained to be used to. It’s been lonely work for a long time: since the first storyteller came up against the silence that wanted to keep the story away from the breath that would make it real in other people’s ears. And you could make a case that all the online adornments are just our recent generations’ way of keeping both the storytellers and the listeners from being overwhelmed by that loneliness. (Because the listeners have their own version of it: the fear of what happens when the people who can tell stories fall silent. Good storytellers respect that fear, and remember every day their responsibility to do something about it.)
Where do the characters come from? A surprising amount of the time, without warning, they muscle their way into the back of your brain and grab you by the hand (or hair) (or throat) and shout Tell about me! You have to tell them, there’s no one else who can do it! …Sometimes you have to sneak up on them from behind, as you do get the shy ones occasionally whom you have to take by the hand and pull into the light. But give them enough silence—build the space for them—and they’ll come.
The silence may be key. One of the smartest pieces of advice I was ever given was that, for half an hour in the morning every day, before starting work, I should sit down and do nothing, and listen. No music, no TV, no news, no reading, no nothing. Sit and listen. It’s not meditation; it’s not mindfulness. It’s listening. Story’s voice can be hard to hear, sometimes, until you get better at pushing aside all that relentless rush of situational and sensorial input, and better at waiting to hear the story that’s as yet too frail to push its way through the portal without assistance.
To be clear: Fanfic work (or any work in universes not of your making) is a different kind of listening. Working well in already-extant universes requires sharp attention to the tones, concerns and qualities of voices already speaking there; and to a certain extent, to the voices speaking about them. And if you love the characters, too—one of the best reasons for fanfic, really—that’s a pleasure.
But when working in your own universes, the listening also requires a selective quality, as the characters find their voices and their proper passions. And as for the love… you’re the only one there is to love them, till you get them out into the world. If you’ve ever been the only one to love somebody, you know how tough that can be.
Then add to that the fillip that those people (or situations) won’t be really real until you’ve worked with them long enough, hard enough, all by yourself? It’s a tough row to hoe. And you can’t ever be really sure that a summer will come to reveal whether the crop’s taken root, and whether it’s all been worthwhile.
Nonetheless: it’s good work. Some of us don’t seem able to stop. Some of us even like it that way.
When you’re ready, take that leap and come join us.
ive been seeing a new wave of transmedicalists lately I think we gotta start being vocal again about how nasty they are. you don’t need to take hormones or have surgery to be a trans person. changing your name and pronouns is gender affirming care. wearing new clothes and hair and makeup is part of transitioning too. you dont need to pass to be trans, you don’t need to be male or female.
nonbinary, agender, genderfluid, genderqueer people are trans too if that’s a label they want to use for themselves. and anyone who says otherwise is a piece of shit. it’s not “anti-transitioning” to say so, it’s anti-telling other people what to do with their bodies. it’s pro-minding your own fucking business and letting people do what they want with their gender and treating them with compassion and enthusiasm
Got a touch of GID/whump in here, but even if not, it’s writing, so here it goes! I’m slowly working on this Supernatural fic, but feel free to read and ask questions if you have any. owo
Content warnings for ENTIRE fic below. Content warnings for THIS CHAPTER in tags.
c/w: swearing, literally all things supernatural, emotional trauma, violence and physical trauma, character death
Summary: It all started with a paycheck. Lyn wants to find the Winchesters, her brother Christian is dying, and Gage has no idea what he’s getting into. He certainly didn’t know just how wild things would get upon actually finding the Winchesters, but things never seem to slow down once he and Lyn track the brothers down. It only gets weirder from there, but somehow…none of them can seem to stay away from each other for long.
–
“Well, that was fucking gross,” Gage comments idly as he wipes a glob of mud off of his face.
“What’d you expect?” Ashlyn—no, Lyn—replies, making a face when Gage flings the mud at her. “We went through a creek bed after a storm to get here. It’s supposed to be gross.”
“Correction, you made us go through a creek bed after a storm.”
“You wanted to go in the front, guns blazing, and probably get us killed, so yeah, I wanted to go through the damn creek bed.”
I finally have things all ironed out for new commissions, so I’m hosting a sale on all new commission types! (You can still order the classics, they just won’t be discounted)
What’s discounted?
10% off anything NEW! That’s simple illustrations, illustrations in my painted style, black & white sketches, colored sketches, & weapon designs!
This 10% is only to characters/base weapon, not to any additional fees (complex designs) or extras (backgrounds)
This stacks with patron discounts as long as it’s still $20 or higher after discounts.
When’s the sale end?
March 31st, 2024, end of day. As long as the order is timestamped before april 1st and is a new type, the discount is applicable.
Thank you so much for reading this over! And an even BIGGER thank you if you reblog this, getting the word out about your art is half the battle and it helps independent artists like me so much!
If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the post, or shoot me and ask or DM!
Sometimes guardian angels don’t have a lovely singing voice and a set of fluffy wings, sometimes they have a deep frown on their face and a very bad attitude.
