i don’t like to rant here but i need to get this off my chest: short fics are NOT low effort. i cannot stress this enough. you can have your reading preferences, we all have them, but dismissing thousands and thousands of stories because the word count somehow correlates to effort and/or quality really grinds my gears. again, personal preference is fine, but explicitly saying low word count ‘screams low effort’ is dismissive at best, and just plain snobby at worst 

packing a punch in 3k or 2k or 1k or 100 words is not easy. it is a skill, it takes effort, it takes practise, it is not easy

(also, like, so what if you don’t put some arbitrary amount of effort defined by some random stranger into your art? effort doesn’t necessarily equate to quality, and quality is subjective, anyway)

i don’t mean to shame anyone who doesn’t want to read short fics (that’s totally fine), nor anyone who can only write long fics (again totally fine)—different strokes for different folks and all that—i’m just very tired of the attitude i keep seeing where word count is equated to quality and effort

i should add that i’ve not encountered this attitude from anyone here, but i’ve seen it increasingly elsewhere, and i’m frustrated, and also very sorry for ranting

(i think i might go through my downloaded fics and make a rec list (or several) of all the AMAZING shorter fics i’ve read and loved sometime over the next couple of weeks, just to do something positive with this frustration)

So, FYI you guys, sometimes if you go to your favorite writers and flail at them a lot about how much you love their fics with lots of specific examples, they will let you read thousands of words of their unpublished WIPs and you can flail even more. Also sometimes after that you get to be friends, too, and help them come up with ideas. And vice versa! This is pretty much the best thing in the world and it is called fandom.

THIS.  SO MUCH.

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

I just wanted to put this out there. If you're someone who tries to comment on fics. If you're someone who tries to reblog art and headcanons and meta. If you're someone who wants to let creators know that you appreciate their creations.

You're doing enough. You're doing more than enough.

Please don't feel guilty for the times that you can't or the times that you forget or the times that you just don't know what to say.

You're appreciated, even when you don't speak up. You're welcome in fandom, even if you don't speak up at all.

You don't have to pay a fee to enjoy someone's creation. It's incredibly appreciated when you do, but it's not a requirement. You're welcome in this space either way. ❤

Me, seeing a beloved mutual reblog their favorite things without letting cringe culture get in the way of their enjoyment: (:

Tumblr interaction and entitlement

Recently, I didn’t reply to someone who had messaged me on Tumblr and this person reacted by blocking me, so that when I found time to answer the message, I had typed up my reply, and, obviously, couldn’t send it. I thought, well, that’s kind of a petty response to someone not answering right away (never mind that it would be sometimes days or weeks before I answer people’s messages on other forums, and they would be cool with it). I thought about this, and I thought about mentioning it, and the reason I’ve decided to talk about it is because it goes back to perceptions about interaction with others that we all need to be mindful of.

If someone sends me a message that I don’t answer right away or don’t answer at all it’s because:

But, what all this really comes down to is this: no one is entitled to my attention. Message me by all means, but no one has an automatic right to my time or my emotional reassurance, even if I’ve provided it before. I’m a nice person: I like to talk to people and be reassuring and positive, but I am not a bottomless well of understanding and reassurance. I’m someone who needs time to process my own feelings and replenish my own stock of positivity, particularly when I’m upset about something. We are all entitled to make ourselves available to anyone or no one as we see fit.

So, anyone who feels like they’re entitled to my time or yours, and who gets petty or upset when they don’t get it, is not someone I or you need in our lives anyway. Respect yourself and your emotions and your time, and forget about anyone who can’t accept that.

also a moment of silence for female characters who get a lot of shit but would be adored if they were male

People should probably learn the difference between “plot holes” and “things I didn’t like” or “things the franchise plans to explain in the future” or “things film makers didn’t think they needed to explicitly explain because they thought you had critical thinking skills”

Why did “be critical of your media” turn into “find all its flaws and hate it” why did people become allergic to FUN

Because people confuse “critical as in critical thinking” with “critical as in criticizing something,” so they think that “look for something bad, no matter how far-fetched” is what “being critical” means.

there’s something kind of interesting about fandoms where there’s this….. impulse to constantly qualify that you don’t think the canon material is good. even in fan circles for a show, people are afraid to just admit that they like the show

people are always constantly qualifying their love for the canon material with “yeah, i watched the episode…. but there were so many bad writing choices” and “wow, fandom sure is better than canon, huh? if the canon writers are outplayed by fandom, how embarrassing is that? canon is so embarrassing”

like are we just ashamed to admit that we like it? are we too proud to admit to unironically liking the thing that we all came to admire together? 

like guys, I’m not drawing fanart because the show is bad and embarrassing. I’m drawing fanart for it because I unironically enjoyed my time watching it and it filled me with joy. and I feel like that’s true for…. nearly everyone who joins a fandom. 

i’m not saying it’s bad to criticize canon work. that’s great! and there are a lot of good points being made too! i just feel like there’s this expectation in fandom that everyone constantly qualifies that they’re aware of every flaw, no matter how unproblematic, in the media they consume. like it’s a culture where making “it’s bad writing” memes for every minor plot hole makes you smarter and less “cringey” than all your peers

self care is unfollowing people who post negative shit about stuff that makes you happy

self care is blocking two thirds of your own fandom

by this point my entire stance on being in fanbases is that it feels like i’m trying to live peacefully in a secluded cottage and do my own thing while also witnessing the fall of the roman empire right next door

Being overly-familiar with a series is such a weird burden sometimes because like

you’ll see some theory being passed around that you instantly know is wrong. Like it’s surprising to see people supporting it because the flaws in its logic are so glaringly obvious. Until it hits you that, yeah it’s wrong, but only because you were able to immediately remember the 5 second conversation between two background characters 17 minutes through s2e13 that definitively disproves it. And no casual fan would have any reason to remember that off the top of their head and it’s you who’s the weird human encyclopedia with a shot-for-shot memory the entire damn series.

Like at that point you don’t even know anymore whether to argue your point or just…maybe go outside for a little bit.

The creator of what was probably *the* Mary Sue Litmus Test back in the day has disavowed the term/test and doesn't mince words about why.

I was gonna just talk in the tags but I changed my mind because I have some stuff to say.

This test? The Mary Sue Litmus Test? I used this religiously. I would make a new character and then run them through this like my life depended on it. I was thirteen, and I thought that if my characters were Mary-Sues then no one would take me seriously. I bought totally into the popular idea that any woman who had more than two talents was a Mary-Sue. I was convinced that I was better than those other people who had OC’s that I saw as Mary-Sues. I would look at examples of Mary-Sues and try to avoid them, even if they were characters that I personally loved. I didn’t even need to click that link. I still had it bookmarked in my ‘writing’ bookmark folder from seven years ago.

It drove me to change my first ever OC’s. I was thirteen. Thirteen! I was an 8th grader in middle school utterly terrified of people seeing my sexy demon OC or my pretty immortal OC or my cool freedom fighter OC and the first thing they’d think was that they were too good. The culture around (mostly women) original characters needing to be watered down or having to have the character’s (mostly women’s) skills and talents justified were toxic as hell to me, and I’m sure to others.

Seeing this today was a major blast from the past, and I’m so glad that the creator changed their outlook on this whole thing. I hope that disclaimer will ward off another creative eighth-grader before they get tricked into buying into the shame culture that forms around the creation of original characters.