Have you ever dreamt about a stranger? Every night the same stranger is in your dreams, and every day you wake up feeling more and more like you were reliving a fleeting memory instead of dreaming.
What would you do if, one day, you saw someone who looks just like this stranger from your dream?
Hi guys :] I’ve been working on a concept for a webtoon recently so I thought I’d share my characters! The plan is to have it be a relatively short series. Not sure about when I want to start posting yet but I’m currently finishing up the plot outline🥳
to the debate about whether writing fanfiction makes you a better writer or not, I’d like to add: who gives a shit? all that matters is if you’re having a hell of a time
Any writing makes you a better writer compared to not writing at all.
fanfic really is. like. it really is about the community. it’s about the comments. it’s about the story you rip directly for your heart and bleed out on your keyboard. it’s about the i loved it when you… and the i screamed when you wrote… and the keyboard smashes and the i can’t believe you did that!!!! and the i’m suing you for damages like it. this is community. fanfic is literally. an act of community. the greatest act of community in fandom because it comes with such raw, overwhelming vulnerability. whether you’re writing kink fic or 100k words of trauma exploration, you’re just like. hi hello this is my soul please embrace it and people do. oh my gosh
[ID: the hierarchy of needs triangle. Text reading “people saying kind things about my silly little drawings and my silly little fanfics” has been added in large black letters over the entire triangle. End ID]
They have many names—beta reader, friend, Oh Fuck You—but you know who they are: they’re the person who is as rabid as you about a ship or a character, the one
you DM with your most twisted
headcanons, the one who agrees that YES, he SHOULD be tied to a chair and slapped in the face—that she SHOULD be allowed a little tragic backstory, as a treat—that they SHOULD be roommates who are secretly pining for one another…the one who hashes out with you, at past midnight, how soon is reasonable for people with superpowers to have sex after one of them has been shot in the leg.
They’re the person who reads your fic before you send it to anyone else, and raves with you about that plot point that you COULDN’T WAIT for them to reach, or points out where you’ve forgotten that they were at the bar, not the library, so you need to remove the reference to book stacks, or pokes you to finish the goddamn next chapter because they want to read it, okay?
Fandom would not exist without them. They enable and encourage. Some of them are also fic writers, and you get to enable them right back. Some of them create fan art, or meta, or text post edits, or run prompt fests, or edit wikis…some of them are simply just as in love with the same thing that you are and want to feed the squee.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone like this in your life, you’ll know how much impact they have. It’s different to getting comments and kudos (wonderful though those are!), because they come in before the fic is finished, sometimes even before it’s started, and say ‘yes, do it!’. The fact that I’ve written so much for Community and The Umbrella Academy is completely down to @bethanyactually and @wheresmytowel respectively, and I count myself incredibly lucky to have them both in my life (and not just for all this, but also because they’re both incredibly lovely and smart and fun).
It was Fanfic Writer Appreciation Day yesterday (Aug 21st), and it made me think that we should also give a shoutout to the co-conspiritors, because without them, an awful lot more fic writers would be stress-scrolling through tumblr instead of working on their WIP, and there’d be so much less fic in the world.
you know that expression, “dance like no one is watching you?”
try writing like no one is going to read it
it’s easier to let yourself go and just enjoy the process of creation when you aren’t also playing 6 dimensional chess with your insecurities and anxieties
write because you have fun writing and if you never post it anywhere that’s totally fine because you enjoyed your time with the process
try drawing like no one is gonna see it
I would do this, but unfortunately I am primarily motivated by external feedback
Someone teach me how to feel self-driven internal joy
The first thing you need to do is change what you think is important.
If the things you value are comments, likes, kudos, reblogs - those are all things that come from other people. All of them are external. Since you can’t control what other people will or won’t do, you have no control over those motivators.
The only person you can control in this world is yourself, so you need to focus on the things you do that you can control. These are different for everyone, but here are a few ideas:
aim for a specific word count (either overall or per writing session).
decide on a particular feature of your art that you want to improve and practice it, looking back at your older attempts every so often so that you can see how far you’ve progressed.
look at each of your creations and identify one thing in them that you love. Don’t just focus in on quality, either. Maybe there’s a turn of phrase that made you giggle or cry. Maybe there’s an ink line that has a really satisfying swoop to it. Big or small, find something that brings you joy.
buy a notebook/sketchbook that makes you want to fill it up and celebrate when you finally make it to the end of that last page.
If the only things you care about are things that require other people, then your motivators are going to stay external. You don’t have to give those up completely, but by mixing in some things that you can do for yourself, you’ll find yourself less reliant on the whims of strangers online and more able to find that joy in yourself.
you know when you tweet on circles and then have an additional thought to add in a second, shadier, much funnier tweet? those are your tags
no one knows how many followers you have. all are equal in this ring of hell. who among us can dictate the order of sin?
if you get a mean anon just screenshot it, block the person who sent it to nuke their ip address from your blog, and post the screenshot with your funny reply.
you will probably never get a mean anon unless you do something very funny and cool but keep trying
getting a lot of notes on a post does absolutely nothing but show you that 80,000 humans can have the exact same thought and tell it to you, heedless of those who came before. day in and day out the wheel of fortune turns you toward madness
your theme is like your carrd but if your whole twitter was on your carrd? i guess
you can curate your space but it will never fully free you from your demons and those of every idiot you were foolish enough to follow. for ten years you might follow your virgil only to watch helpless in horror as he sinks into the mud of powerpuff girls discourse in the two thousand twentieth year of the lord. and then you will walk alone. as we all do.
everything in the dark loves you
everything in the dark wants to eat you
you can change your dashboard color theme in the settings 🤯
