"you can't ship those characters they tried to kill each other!" sounds like someone can't appreciate the inherent eroticism of violence 🙄

Reverse Star Wars AU writing challenge: every time canon fridges a mother, fridge the father instead. Every time a woman dies for the sake of Manpain™️, kill off the dude instead.

(I know this gets particularly complicated with Obi-Wan, because his woman-who-died-in-my-arms count is in the double digits at this point, but I have faith fandom can find a way.)

The only rule is that the story cannot be about a man. It cannot be about man angst. It has to center the women.

Maul kills Obi-wan instead of Satine, she joins forces with Bo-Katan and they sick all of Mandalore on his ass.

Anakin tries to free Shmi from the tusken, dies, and she goes on that tusken camp rampage instead.

Anakin tries to murder Padmé on Mustafar, she develops emergency force powers and kills him instead.

Talzin doesn't sacrifice herself to save Maul, she kills Sidious (can we count him as Maul's father?) and continues his plan and becomes empress of the galaxy.

So,

A couple days ago, on discord, the amazing @uuurgh posted a super neat animation short, which you can see here (shared with permission by @dathomirdumpsterfire) which, after 2 and a half watches, began to spontaneously generate a Time Travel AU in my head. Which I ran some rambles in DMs to develop.

And since Ao3 was down this evening, I decided I would have to whittle away the hours until my husband (Ao3) came home from War (downtime) by writing to him (new fic doc)

And since Ao3 is STILL DOWN, and my muse is quiet now but my impulse is still High, Tumblr gets the 1K Prologue I wrote for this Maul Time Travel Fix-it. Which will probably contain a LOT more Nonsense and Shenanigans than the prose of this first bit implies. It will go up on Ao3 once it's back. (Please come back, me beloved. T^T)

Enjoy, Tumblr Gremlins!

A New Path, Yet Untrod - Prologue

How long?

How long had he been here now?

Would he still have come? If he had known? If he’d known that THIS would be his fate?

As much as he loathed Sideous… as much as he craved the fall of the Empire…

The silence was an enemy he had no recourse against.

Sideous could kill him. And oh, it would hurt. He had no doubt that the Sith Lord would not let him go quickly, or quietly, if ever they met again.

But Sdieous would be a mercy, in comparison.

He could not do this again.

He could feel himself fading. Faltering.

This was a place of ghosts. And he was becoming one of them.

He was a fool to have come here.

He wasn’t a Sith anymore.

He had no Master, and he had no apprentice. Therefore, the knowledge of the Sith was just beyond his grasp. For he was only one. And the Sith, and all they left behind, required two. Always. No more, no less.

His ship was gone. He had no way off of Malachor. And from what he could tell, he was the first to set foot on this planet in centuries. In the deep places, he could find what he needed to survive. Water, stale and ashen in his mouth, but necessary. Fungi, and crawling things. Foul, but sustaining.

But he could not bear to stay in the deep places for too long. Always, he would return to at least the second underlayer of the battlefield. Where there were only stone corpses. No water, no life. Only death so old and final that nothing lived around it. No flies or scavengers or things that grew among the dead. The deep places of Malachor, deeper than the roots of the Temple, had not been touched by this great apocalypse.

But the deep places, where water flowed, and things crawled, reminded Maul too much of days he tried very hard not to remember. Of days he thought he had forgotten. That Mother Talzin had purged from him. Of another deep place, where he had carved out a labyrinth of refuse, trapped in the dark and his own ruined mind.

But when he went too deep, where no light touched, where the air was still and stale and his hands clawed and he licked dampness from the raw, rough stones, and caught wretched sightless things in his teeth… he remembered. And once his stomach had at least a few mouthfuls of food and water, he would scramble back high enough to where he could see the stark white starlight of the pockmarked ceiling of black glass that protected the Sith Temple from prying eyes.

What had he come for?

Knowledge. He had come for knowledge. For a way to destroy Sideous and his Empire.

When would he learn?

For all his ambition, for all his pride, for all his drive… he was nothing. This was just another goal he would never reach. Another destiny not meant for him. And in the dead quiet, he would scream and beat his fists against unfeeling obsidian pillars, and cut stone corpses to pieces with the last gasps of energy from their own millennia-old lightsabers.

And in the quiet, after, as he sat panting in the dust, he would clutch at his horns, and tremble. For he could not tell if the Force was whispering to him in comfort… or if he were going mad again.

And he feared the madness. More than anything, he feared becoming so hopelessly lost again. There was no Savage or Talzin to save him this time. If he went mad here, he would never return. By now he doubted, truly, if he would even notice the moment his body died, and he was left to wander Oblivion.

But Maul was, above all else, too stubborn to die. So he wandered, but never too far from the Temple. He braved the deep places, to sustain his slowly withering body. And he waited. He’d had a vision of this place. So he had come. This was where he needed to be, so this is where he was. The Force had made sure of it, taking his only means of leaving away from him, so that he could not falter from this course, when the solitude threatened to shake his resolve.

Weeks.

Months.

Years.

He wondered what had happened to the empire he had built, of greedy scum and grasping criminals. He wondered who had come out on top when his absence had inevitably created a power vacuum in Crimson Dawn. Perhaps it had just dissolved back into its original syndicates. Not that it mattered. It had been a means to an end. The power to know and to control what he could, when he could, where he could. All gone now. As much metaphorical dust as the literal dust that softened his steps here and now.

He leaned heavily on his cane as he walked around the base of the Temple. He needed it more and more these days. His metal limbs seemed to grow heavier every day. There was a hitch in one of his artificial hips that he could no longer be bothered to correct through sheer force of will.

You will not be ready, when the time comes… something whispered to him. He sighed.

“I am running out of time. Surely you can see that.” He murmured in reply to the emptiness. His voice had grown soft and weak from disuse. He sounded as old as he felt.

There was no day or night on Malachor. Not here, under the pillars. The obsidian ceiling let through its cold, sharp beams of ‘starlight’ into the dark. Maul took sleep when his body told him he needed it, wedging himself beneath some ledge or outcropping. Not that he needed shelter from any elements. It did not rain here. It did not grow colder. It was only to give his body some sense of ‘night’ from the unblinking shafts of light spilling down from above.

One ‘morning’, when Maul woke, something felt… different. The still air was heavier.

“So… today is the day?” he rasped, to nothing and no one. He picked up his cane, his spine crackling as he stood. With slow, shuffling steps, he made his way beneath the looming shadow of the Temple.

yeah bro it's a character study. the 2 thousand words of blowjob is vital to the study of the character

the "canon isn't real we make our own rules" to "i am begging you people to revisit the source material" pipeline

#you have to know the rules so you can break them with intention and precision#otherwise your work will never be truly transformative

Shoutout to the dedicated cheerleaders of wips who comment on each chapter and motivate the poor fic writer to keep going you are crucial to the ecosystem

@crumchycow love your vision of pavlovsdogging writers into writing more. Brilliant

Well, locking up all my fics including any new ones I post to AO3 bc I absolutely refuse to let AI programs scrape through my work for a profit that I legally can’t have for the tens of thousands of hours I spent learning my craft. Sorry to those who aren’t registered on AO3 and were following anything i happen to not have locked but unfortunately I have to protect my work from the scourge for my own sanity

@nicolabarth what I’m concerned about in this situation is the fact that Betsy Rosenblatt, Head of Legal for AO3 is pro AI and has stated so by suggesting that AO3 allow AI scrappers the use of the site for those programs to learn from writers within the last two days in an interview. This is especially concerning with the current WGA strike going on and the fact that programs such ChatGPT would profit off the work that we, the fanfic writers, cannot profit ourselves (or at least not advertise it on AO3 for legality reasons which I’m 100% understand why that rule is there and support.)

Like I know it’s not possible to combat everything regarding the scrappers, but I don’t want someone on the board of AO3 to be supporting AI this way bc it’s not helping the community and is extremely suspicious to release such an interview right after the donation drive occurred. Betsy should be protecting the site/community of AO3, not the thing that threatens the jobs of most writers.

I haven’t read the interview you refer to, but I googled and found a different one (I think?), and yeah, Betsy Rosenblatt is saying some problematic shit. WTF?

”I tend to agree with Stability AI’s statement. I would like to see courts consider the “training” process separately from the process of generating works. It is, of course, possible that a machine could generate an infringing work. But the process of training that machine involves something very different—turning expressive works into data and creating relationships based on that data collection. We call it machine “learning” for a reason. A well-trained machine won’t generate an infringing work, but it needs as large a pool of data to work from as possible to do that. The mere fact that an AI can create something infringing doesn’t determine whether the gathering of information is infringement.”

Source

She’s probably right from a purely legal standpoint, but the way she’s saying that she’s excited about AO3 being mined for data sucks

just watched a few scenes again and thought: what if someone heard Hob shouting after Dream in 1889? he was pretty damn loud. What if they started watching him and he gets himself caught? Will Dream notice?

"Fuck!" Hob swears loudly as his stranger's back fades into the dark.

"Fuck fuck fuck!"

He spins around, walks back in the direction of the Inn, then turns again and hurries after him, but when he rounds the corner his stranger is nowhere to be found. Hob rakes his fingers through his hair and lets out a frustrated whine.

"No no no... Please come back. I didn't...I just..." He stops himself begging the empty street for answers and heaves a shuddering sigh. A scraping sound makes him turn but there is no-one to be seen. Dejected he makes his way back to the Inn. He still has to settle the bill. Might as well have another drink or three.

Later, when Hob feels blessedly number than before, he makes his way home through the dark streets of London. It's too late to find a cab and so he walks. His lodgings aren't far but he'll have to bribe the manager to let him in at this hour. He's glad the man likes him and sees in him a confirmed bachelor like himself. He hasn't invited Hob into his room yet, but it seems like something not far off, if Hob's experience is anything to go on. Maybe tonight that'll be the price for a dry and warm bed. He laughs and stumbles onwards. Maybe someone to take his mind off his stranger will do him good.

Hob leans against the wall of the closest building for a moment when the street before him spins a bit too wildly. The sound of footsteps coming closer has him try and focus. Getting stabbed is uncomfortable and Hob would rather avoid it. The footsteps stop close behind him and Hob turns with an exasperated groan.

"Listen, take my money, mate, but please don't put a hole in this coat, it's new-"

He is knocked over the head and falls back against the wall with a grunt. His vision blacks out and the last thing he hears is a haughty man's voice: "Take him away. We'll test his claims at the manor."

Interlude

Lucienne's time is precious. She hasn't got the time to read every book in the library. She chooses certain topics or individuals to focus on, depending on the century, the trends of certain dreams or nightmares and sometimes personal interest. Her lord's mood is of singular interest to her at all times, and so when Lord Morpheus returns from his meeting with Robert Gadling like a pitch black emissary of the Void trailing newborn nightmares like an open box of Pandora and shuts himself in his room without so much as a glance at any of his subjects - well, let's just say that the books of a certain immortal individual have just been pushed to the top of her reading list. Especially after the thunderstorm hits the castle.

After several hours of turning pages she takes off her glasses and pinches the top of her nose, sighing.

"Mervyn? Do you have any alcoholic beverages on your person at the moment? I need a drink."

~ Hob regains consciousness and immediately wishes he hadn't. His head is hurting something fierce and he groans. There's a gasp nearby and a shuffle, than a young man says: "By all that is holy!" And another, much more satisfied voice that sounds vaguely familiar: "I knew it."

Hob tries to lift his head and opens his eyes a crack. The light of gas lamps on bare stone walls. Darkness above. He is lying on the floor. He feels the cold of the stone through his shirt. Did they take his coat? Damn them.

"Father, this is a miracle!"

"No such thing, Randall. This is a gift... something that can be gained by any man, if this one is anything to judge by."

Hob feels dread coil in his gut. His gut that feels surprisingly tender... Did they?

"Did you...stab me?" he groans and tries to sit up. His stomach pulls and he winces, but the wound seems healed already. He opens his eyes more and looks up at the two men standing above him. One is a man in his prime with a sharp nose and a cruel smile. The other is younger, the son, probably, only on the cusp of adulthood. He looks frightened. Out of the corner of his eyes Hob sees two more men standing guard at a door a few feet away.

The older man says in a pleasant voice, like he's discussing the weather: "You were stabbed, yes. We took you in to look after the wound. But it seems to have...sorted itself out. You, my friend, are a very interesting man."

His grin is splitting his face and Hob finally realises what kind of trouble he's in.

~

The Dreaming is wrecked by thunderstorms and rain for weeks. Mervyn complains about it constantly, especially when Jessamy drags in rain water and flicks it off her wings directly in his face, which is. Rude. But Lucienne knows that Mervyn needs something to occupy him, and the less he has time to think about WHY it is raining, the better.

Lord Morpheus hasn't left his rooms since he returned. Lucienne knows she will be met with fury for daring to disturb him, but something needs to be done. Something is nagging her and she doesn't like to be this distracted. She takes a deep breath and knocks on Dream's door. There's no answer.

"My Lord? I am sorry to disturb you, but... several subjects have complained about the current weather disturbing their homes and hindering them in carrying out their functions..."

She clears her throat. "They request an audience."

There's a shuffle from the other side of the door and it creaks open. Morpheus stands in the doorway, looking like he hasn't rested in days, deep circles under his dark eyes and a harsh downward twist to his mouth.

"I will not grant it. At this moment. The weather...will be dealt with. Soon."

He shuts the door in her face. Lucienne frowns and then speaks again, knowing he can still hear her.

"There's another matter, my Lord. Robert Gadling..."

A crash sounds from inside the room and Lucienne blinks and takes a quick step back from the door before it is flung open again. The King of Nightmares rises up out of the doorway like a roiling black cloud and stares down at her with flames dancing in his eyes, his face a mask of stoic rage.

"You DARE interfere in my PERSONAL affairs? Lucienne?"

She does not step away further but lowers her gaze deferentially. "I wouldn't, my Lord, if it did not affect all of us." Dream cocks his head and sneers. "And HOW does Robert Gadling affect you, Lucienne? I said the weather will be dealt with."

It affects us because it affects you, she doesn't dare say. Instead she says:

"I...came across his latest book of dreams and I...thought it prudent to inform you...of the change in his dreams."

Dream scoffs and turns away, back into his room, pulling black smoke and dreamstuff inside after him. "I have no interest in the dreams of one human. I do not want to hear his name spoken again in my presence."

Lucienne steps after him before he can shut the door in her face again. "My Lord, he has only nightmares! The worst kind! Was that...is that...by your intention?"

Dream freezes. She sees the hand at his side clenching violently before it forcibly relaxes. The King straightens his back and steps further away. As he closes the door he says in a clipped voice: "He has lived many years and seen and done any number of horrible things. Why should he not have any number of nightmares? I do not care."

The door closes with a final heavy thud.

I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week.  At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read.  I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos. 

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom.  I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it.  On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button.  Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked.  Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos.  Before that - 10%, and then 16%.  I’m not even going to get into the comments.  Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot.  I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc.  And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted.  Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them?  Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button.  It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert. 

TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.

Reblogging again

So much this

You know, kudos and comments are much beloved by all esp. yrs truly, but I have to say: I’ve been posting fic for 20 years, and I have never in my entire life had a story stay above a 1:9 kudos to hits ratio (or comments to hits, back when kudo wasn’t an option). Usually they don’t stay above 1:10, once they’ve been around for a few weeks.

I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 - and I do sometimes see it - that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;

Again, this is not to say we, as readers, should all go home and not bother to kudo or comment or engage with fic writers. That definitely is a recipe for discouraging what you want to see in future. But this is not the first post I’ve seen that suggests a 20% kudo ratio is the equivalent of yelling into the void, and I’m worried that we as writers are discouraging ourselves because our expectations are out of whack.

I think about this a lot, because it’s important to know what a realistic goal to expect from an audience is, even though I admit it definitely is kind of depressing when you look at the numbers. I was doing reading on what sort of money you can expect to make from a successful webcomic, and the general rule of thumb seems to be that if your merchandising is meshing well with your audience, about 1% will give you merch. I imagine ‘subscribe to patreon’ also falls in this general range. 

Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.

And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.

When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve. 

And IMO, if numbers matter to you (kudos, comments, etc) be honest about the fact that you CAN improve those things by marketing yourself better. The ‘I just produced my art and put it out there and got insanely popular because it was just so brilliant’ is less than a one a million chance. Lots of amazing content is overlooked every day because there is a lot of good content and a metric fuckton of mediocre to bad content. You can only SORT of judge the quality of your work based on the audience it generates, but if what you WANT is an audience there is way, way, WAY more you can be doing than simply producing whatever you immediately feel like. Marketing yourself is a skill and if you want the benefits of it you have to practice it.

I have a professional background in internet marketing as my day job and a moderate hobby business. My definition for “moderate” is “it pays for itself, keeps me in product, and occasionally buys groceries.” In the day job, which is for an extremely large global company, there are entire teams of people whose entire purpose of employment is to ensure a 3% conversion rate. That’s it. That is for a Fortune 100 company: the success metric is for 3% of all visitors to a marketing web site to click the “send me more info” link. My moderate business that pays for itself has a 0.94% conversion rate of views to orders. Less than 1%, and it’s still worth its time – and this is without me bothering to do any marketing beyond instagram and tumblr posts with new product. I know it feels like no one is paying attention to you and you’re wasting your time if you don’t get everyone clicking kudos or commenting but I promise, I PROMISE, you are doing fantastically, amazingly well with your 10% rate. You probably aren’t going to go viral AND THAT’S FINE. You’re only hurting yourself if you’re expecting a greater return – don’t call yourself a failure, because you’re NOT. You’re just looking at it the wrong way. I promise, you’re lovely just the way you are.

Reblogging this bc it is a take on fan engagement at AO3 that I haven’t seen before, and as a writer I find it helpful to have this reality check. Also I wonder which came first: the overall low engagement rates in internet commerce, or the freaking shit-ton of unwanted spam and advertising we’re constantly bombarded with?

I think as writers our assumption (my assumption anyway) is that the portion of hits that don’t convert to kudos equals the portion of readers who looked at your fic, didn’t like it, and never finished it. But it would seem that is an overly pessimistic assumption. 

I should know this, because I ‘like’ very sparingly here and reblog only less sparingly, and yet I read and enjoy a lot of posts I don’t like or reblog. 

#also something that is really obvious that none of this points out#(probably someone did somewhere in the notes but I do have a life)#your hit count will go up by virtue of PEOPLE REREADING YOUR FIC#a hit count disproportionate to kudos/comments#which are things that are only really done once #is INEVITABLE#and a GOOD thing #people rereading your fic is a good thing

Also, while I will always defend people’s right to take down their work if they want to, I will point out that taking your work down simply because you think it didn’t get enough engagement prevents you from having the experience of seeing it slowly grow over time. You’re doing the equivalent of cancelling a TV show that doesn’t have an amazingly successful pilot episode, without waiting to see if it gains a devoted following by mid-season. It’s short-sighted. It means you’re not going to potentially have the pleasure of someone commenting on it 5 or 10 years later to explain that it was their favourite story, that they re-read it 20 times, that they shared it with their friends, or even just that they’re so glad they found it on that specific day, years after you posted it. You might not even have the pleasure of going back to re-read it yourself and see how you’ve progressed as a writer.

AO3 is an archive - it’s there to preserve fanfic. It has longevity, and if you leave your works there, they can have longevity too. And you never know when something is going to be rediscovered, or who it might mean something to (including yourself).

It’s also important to remember that your numbers/ratios are also affected by factors like which fandom/ship you’re writing for and the rating of your fic. There’s different fic-interaction cultures in every fandom (for example, in some fandoms, there might be a stronger comments culture, which leads to a higher average of a comments to fics ratio than another fandom). Smut fics always have a lower kudos to hits ratio. If you’re a writer trying to evaluate how your fics are doing, base it off of the numbers on fics in the same fandom/ship (and rating), not your previous works or your own expectations. You’ll find you’re doing much better than you think.

Okay so this is already a super long and really excellent post - but I have a couple really, really important notes to add as someone who has had the title “prolific” attributed to them, more than once.  (With good reason as I am a handful of fics away from 600.) 

@sp8sexual - Called out that fandom matters.  It does.  It does SO MUCH and you don’t even realize it.  When I went from writing Sabriel (Sam Winchester/Gabriel) to writing Malec (Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood), the engagement increase I saw has been METEORIC in comparison.  It’s insane.  I knew what to expect the relative engagement to be for a fic when I posted it in the Sabriel fandom, and I posted enough of them that I knew what to expect - I was happy and more than fine with that.  Going into an active, popular fandom by comparison?  Blew me out of the water when I realized what a difference in can make.  You have to realize what is “good” for you, and for your fandom, and set your expectations accordingly. 

I’ve been tracking my Ao3 data weekly for 2 years now - and I regularly go in to peek at my overall stats, mostly out of curiosity and look at different things to see stuff! I checked so many of my fics (and I could be considered a well-known author in my chosen fandom at present, if not a popular one) and here’s a few of my fics: 

Three of those five fics are my most popular hit fics out of any I’ve ever posted to Ao3.  None of them, not a single one, break a 10% Kudos ratio.  It’s not a realistic goal, I promise it’s not. 

Hell, I’ll even go a step further and say that I don’t think it’s healthy for a lot of authors to chase those kinds of numbers.  (My personal opinion, obviously.)  I think you get up chasing a number that feels almost impossible to budge. 

And while I am fascinated (and I will emphasize, fascinated) by my own data and can engage with it in a healthy way - because I’m only comparing myself against myself - that doesn’t mean that everyone can, and that’s okay.  I promise it’s okay. 

Chasing hits, chasing kudos, chasing comments, every author out there wants engagement, every author wants to feel that rush of an Ao3 email hitting their inbox.  I get it.  I get it.  Encouraging people to comment is always a good thing - especially making it a good place to just leave a single emoji when people can’t leave more.  That means something to me, always. 

But at the same time, I think writers really, really need to understand what their baseline is in turns of numbers before they start getting disheartened by numbers.  You’re all doing great - promise.

There are some particular pairings where I’m just like… “Yes, hi, I know this is a fluffy Coffeeshop AU. Yes, I do understand that. But, frankly, I must ask you if you know that it’s just not really this pairing without at least one murder going on in the background? Yeah, yes, I know we can all do whatever we like in fanfiction. But it’s just never going to feel like those characters and that relationship to me, personally, unless the characters still have their bizarre backstories and their VERY SUSPICIOUS skillsets (adapted for the AU of course), and every single customer who walks in immediately gets the sense that this coffeeshop is a front for something. There just needs to be murder happening here, I’m sorry. It’s just not them without the crimes.” 

The AO3 Tag of the Day is: The best kind of ship

[Image Description: Tag reading “love at first snark”]

Look, it’s my kind of ship!

Pin Me Up

Pairing: Mentions of past Sam/Brady

Rating: Mature 

Word Count: 1,543 words

Warnings: None

Tags: Inappropriate pictures, Sam Had a Modelling Career, Pin Up!Sam, Prior Sam/Brady, Mentions of Soulless!Sam, Season 6 Divergent, photography!kink

Summary: Crowley greeting Sam after Sam retrieves his soul leads to revelations

A/N: This was commissioned by @spnyoucantkeepmedown​ because she’s amazing and I love her! <3 

Link to AO3

Sam’s soul was back, and Dean couldn’t be happier. Sure, the wall was very slowly breaking, but memories DO come through, and it’s not like Sam was actively scratching at the wall.

As far as Dean was concerned, the less Sam knew about what he did while he was strolling among the earth for a year and a half without a soul, the better.

Of course, Dean didn’t know everything. He didn’t know most of what he did when his brother was with Samuel, and Samuel wasn’t even sure of half of the things that Sam did.

So it was a big surprise to them when they saw Crowley for the first time after Sam’s soul was back.

“Glad to see you with some clothes on, Moose,” Crowley said lightly, the words rolling off his tongue in patented Crowley snark.

“What are you talking about?” Sam and Dean asked in unison.

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know, Mr. Man,” Crowley rolled his eyes. When he got two very blank looks from the Winchesters, he heaved an overly dramatic sigh. “Idiots,” he grumped as he dug into his freshly dry cleaned suit and pulled out his phone, unable to stop the smirk on his face at his lock screen. He unlocked his phone and did something to it before handing it to Sam and Dean.

Keep reading

Thank you! I love how it turned out!

(And good question at the end xD)

Title: Angels of the Night (AO3 Linked In Title)

Rating: Mature

Word Count:  23,937

Archive Warnings: Underage

Tags: prostitution AU, Pimp!Chuck, Chuck is a Shit Father, The angels are prostitutes, tw mentions of abuse, TW Mentions of Sex Work, Asexual!Raphael, Asexual!Death, TW Mentions of Horrific Treatment of Sex Workers, Angst, Fluff, Not really smut??, Like it’s heavily implied, But there’s no explicit stuff, Tattooed!Michael, Tattooed!Lucifer, Pierced!Lucifer,  Very Unhappy Big Brothers, this has a happy ending, Notary!Michael, writer!Lucifer, Librarian!Lucifer, Pathologist!Raphael, Photographer!Gabriel,  Journalist!Balthazar, Marketing!Castiel, TW Dubious Consent, Like majorly dubious,  Especially towards the end,  Underage!Castiel,  Underage!Balthazar,  They were 16 when they started, Chuck Shurley is Not God, Chuck Shurley is an idiot

Ships: Gabriel/Crowley, Balthazar/Samandriel, Castiel/Benny, Michael/Dean, Sam/Lucifer

Summary: Chuck Shurley is a poor, penniless writer with six children. He needs an income that will help him out until he gets a book published. His solution?Having his sons sell their bodies for money.

A/N: I wholeheartedly blame @samwise-the-true-hero and @spnyoucantkeepmedown for encouraging me to write this and not telling me “finish a long fic before you do this fic” and for being generally helpful. One could say @madamelibrarian also encouraged this.

I thank @spnyoucantkeepmedown for beta'ing.

I know this is a deviation from my normal type of thing, but… It was begging to be written.

Any errors that are in here are probably because I wrote this entire fic in four days.

Aesthetic Made By Me

The Usual Sinners:  @mogaruke @meganwinchester1999 @welltheysayimdifferent @hunters-hiraeth @platonic-rabbit @ofdragonsanddreams16 @tattooedluci @yo-ho-yo-ho-thefandomlifeforme @maturity-kills @charlie-bradcherry @coffee-queen448 @decaffeinatedbluebirdjellyfish @riversong-sam @september-daydreams @natalie-wheres-the-tampons @lucifer-in-leather @jesspfly @heartsaved @gaylemonshark @agentpennymajere @hexparker @justanothersaltandburn @drakevampire @zzzett @spnyoucantkeepmedown @brieflymaximumprincess @dr-dean @randomfandomlucineedssomelovin @askatosch @godhatesmichael @samslashdeantogether @purgatoan 

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Holy Lord Lucifer, woman. 20,000+ words in four days?! Who did you sell your soul to in exchange for such prolific skill? (I may or may not want their contact info)

I swear, at one point she was writing it faster than I was able to read it. You could say it was ...

This makes me think of Just Deserts. Sam is “holding” Gabriel’s candy again.

Ao3 Ao3 There might be an update Ao3

pro tip “he freed his erection” is the most useful phrase in any smut writer’s arsenal because it means never having to figure out a dude’s pants situation. how did he do it? were there zippers? buttons? some kind of bizarre lacing situation? maybe he cut off his pants with scissors. maybe it was a wizard. maybe it busted out like the hulk busts out of his shirts. no one knows. no one cares. his dick is out now and that is all that matters. thank you helpful dick wizard.

MASTER HAS GIVEN THE ERECTION A SOCK THE ERECTION IS FREE

Why is this fandom like this?