Freddie Mercury

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If you’re dealing with chronic illness like me, I just want to remind you that you aren’t failing because you can’t “positive” think your symptoms away. You aren’t failing if you can’t use “mind over matter”.

You can’t will your body to work the way you want it to, and that really sucks, but you aren’t a failure for it.

Whether you have 5 followers or 5,000, reblog this to let them know they’re appreciated.

creators see your reblogs. creators read the nice tags you type in when you love their work. creators beam when you ask to be added to the tag list, or tagged in their edits and writings. creators see your comments saying how beautiful their content is. creators smile when you send an ask telling them how much you like their work. creators appreciate interaction with their content and love you for it, really. so if you like something, reblog it, say how much you love it in the tags, reply to it with a nice message. you’ll make someone’s day.

Seek knowledge, always. It is your armor.

[drawing of a blue bird saying “It’s okay to be proud of your work.” in a blue speech bubble.]

Respect disabled people. Not because we're "just as capable as you" or "just as smart as you" or "just as normal as you" because many of us aren't - and you should still respect us simply because we're just as human as you.

there’s this rush and this pressure, sometimes, for huge, mind-blowing numbers on ao3. thousands of kudos and comments and ppl obsessing over ratios, but like - there’s something so incredibly wonderful about, idk, even ten kudos. ten? you mean ten people, TEN total strangers, found something I wrote and clicked on it and read it and liked it? ten comments: you mean ten people took the time to tell me what they thought about my work, took the time and energy to write about MY WORK in their little comment bubble? ten people?? fifty?? one hundred???

but even just one - if one single person took the time out of their day to tell me how much they appreciate the little bit of my soul I just put out into the world - idk, it just means everything, doesn’t it?

I just love *clenches fist* talking about character analysis and why characters act the way they do. It’s supremely satisfying to figure out motivations of characters and see how that ties into their core nature and how they perceive the world around them.

Reader Appreciation

I’ve been seeing a lot of amazing posts lately thanking fanfic writers for that good, good content that we’re all disappearing into right now. And I love these posts, and FUCK YES, the healing power of art during these rough times, it can’t be said enough. But I feel like there’s something missing from these posts, and that’s the readers.

A lovely friend of mine recently shared something with the caveat that they “contribute basically nothing to fandom” and I was fucking floored. Like. This person has made playlists for fic, and shared art, and reached out to me to talk about my stories and other stories and like - that is the Work. They made me feel like my shitty writing was good enough to share, and that made me write more, and connected me with more people, and that sort of contribution doesn’t get acknowledged enough. I don’t write fiction because I have to, or for the likes or hits or whatever; I write it because I have a story I want to tell. On the days when my brain is cooperating, writing is a pleasure. On the days when my brain isn’t cooperating, comments from readers make my words feel meaningful anyway. This isn’t a one-way street, a producer/consumer situation. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like that to me.  And my best writing has been done when people are holding me accountable, or are pushing me to do better and I’m so grateful for that. And so grateful for you.

So. To the readers who comment on every chapter. To the readers who leave thoughtful essays in the comments and the readers who leave 😭❤️😱 or keysmashes. To the readers who are inspired for the first time to make art or write something themselves. To the readers who leave kudos. To the readers too anxious to comment (I’ve been there, sat in a space where I had no idea how to express how a story made me feel) and the fandom ghosts who dip in and read and vanish.

To readers who like or reblog or share or rec or send messages or don’t do any of these things.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for building this community.

Thank you for reading.

As chronically ill people, we spend a lot of time asking ourselves, “What am I doing wrong to feel this badly?” 

The answer is nothing. You are doing nothing wrong. You are doing the best you possibly can to make yourself feel better. You don’t deserve the guilt you so often assign yourself.

Reblog if you respect fanfiction writers and believe a fandom would be nothing without them.

You deserve to be respected as an autistic person. Not in spite of your autism; you deserve to have that part of yourself acknowledged and respected too.

(Image description: four images with a teal background and a white border, white text in the center of the images reads “There is no singular nonbinary gender. Nonbinary is an umbrella term used by many people with many different experience of gender. There are as many different ways to be nonbinary as there are nonbinary people. All experiences of nonbinary gender are valid.”)

true or false, everyone should be making their best effort 100% of the time, it’s lazy to do otherwise.  

excellent! now true or false: leisure time is only valuable if you spend it productively. if you are not creating something or enriching yourself, you are just wasting time.

terrific work!

so logically, you can stop feeling guilty about “wasting” time on “useless” things, because it’s neither wasteful nor useless if you enjoy it.

That autism feel when you have met (even just online) the greatest people thanks to your special interests.