Creating a main character with depth requires a careful selection of traits

Avoid the temptation to overload them with a plethora of flaws, wounds, and virtues. Instead, focus on developing one dominant positive trait, one glaring flaw, and one profound pain. This approach allows you to delve deeply into each aspect, creating a character who is not only realistic but also compelling. By embodying these three elements to the fullest, your protagonist will be more than just a collection of traits—they will be a multifaceted individual with a clear, meaningful story arc. Embrace this approach, and your hero will stand out as truly unique in the literary landscape.

I don't think fic writers know how much they matter

Do you know how many times you distracted me when I was hurt or lonely? Do you know how many times a line or a scene from fanfic marked me so much that I remembered years later, even though I can’t recall my own phone number? 

Even if the fic isn’t perfect or popular or multi-chaptered… Sometimes there’s just one sentence that changed me.

You, miles and miles away, changed me.

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

Also, you don't have to like, delete it from existence. Keep a second document full of the Darlings. You never know when you'll need it later.

talking to people while holding a beverage is awesome because you don't have to know what to do with your hands and when you don't know what to do with your face you can just take a sip

Being a young adult is so strange. You enter a coffee shop. The 20 year old girl waiting behind you cried all night because she just came to a new city for university and she feels so alone. That 27 year old guy over there works a job he is overqualified for, he lives with his parents and wants to move out but doesn't know what to do about it. That one 24 year old dude already has a car, a house, and a job waiting for him once he graduates thanks to his dad's connections. The 26 year old barista couldn't complete his higher education because he has to work and take care of his family. The 28 year old girl sitting next to you has no friends to go out with so she is texting her mother. That couple (both 25 years old) are married and the girl is pregnant. The 29 year old writing something on her laptop has realized that she chose the wrong major so she is trying to start all over. We are not alone in this, but we are actually so alone. Do you feel me

there’s a misconception that grief only happens when we lose people. this is not true. we can grieve circumstances, relationships, missed opportunities. in fact, sometimes when you find yourself plagued with waves of emotion from sadness to melancholy you may be grieving yourself. the version of yourself that you might have been if things had been different, or if only you had said something, or if someone had stood up for you.

guys I just found the greatest video on the internet

What did I watch

Cinema, that's what

Damn you Natasha Romanoff... Why'd you have to go cliff jumping!!

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

I actually think about this so much you have no idea.

I mourn every friend that's gone off somewhere

I actually

think about this so much you

have no idea.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

there’d been a few times that you and princess wanda had slept together, and each time, you stay a little to hold her while she cuddles close, not saying very much since you didn’t have much to say and wanda didn’t know how to say anything she was feeling, with you always ending up leaving though wanda always asks for you to stay overnight. the maids don’t come in until the late afternoon while she’s out doing her duties and no one ever checks up on her, but you’re never interested in staying

one night, a suitor gets bold with wanda, telling her that she ought to offer him pleasure for the efforts he had gone through to court her. she had seemed to have liked him at first, but after kissing, she was disinterested. she was able to force herself away from him when someone else entered the gardens, and wanda sped back to her bedroom for the evening

then she spotted you. you had been asked to work later that night because there was another event that would that place in the morning and the bushes needed to be trimmed before then

she begged for you to come to bed with her, and you did. but instead, she brought you to bed after having stripped each other of your clothes and just had you hold her. she said that you could leave at the time things would have ended anyways if you did end up having sex. you agree, and this time, you end up falling asleep with wanda and stay the night, just holding her while she had her face nuzzled against your chest

“You didn’t jump,” Kara said.

Lena glanced up from her lo mein container, chopsticks in hand. “Jump?” Lena asked curiously.

Kara nibbled her lip thoughtfully, staring down at her potstickers. The evening had been a quiet one - a welcomed change of pace, after a wonderful and chaotic afternoon at Alex and Kelly’s wedding. When all was said and done - after the couple had left for their honeymoon and the party had quieted, after Eliza had taken Esme home for a fun week making chocolate chip cookies with her grandmother - Kara and Lena had found themselves in Kara’s apartment, settling down in their pajamas with a dinner of Chinese takeout.

“For Kelly’s bouquet,” Kara said. “You didn’t jump.”

Lena shrugged, digging into her food with her chopsticks again. “It wasn’t heading towards me.”

“You could’ve used magic,” Kara suggested, thinking of how a certain other super had used her powers to yank the flowers midair.

“And start a duel with Nia?” Lena grinned. “Seemed unwise. Besides, she has a likely candidate.”

Kara smiled. 

“At least I was there,” Lena teased softly. “I didn’t see you in the crowd.”

Kara shrugged. “It’s a human tradition.” 

Lena tilted her head. “What did Krypton have?”

Kara grimaced. “Genetic testing. AI matching. Rules about guild marriages,” she said, “My uncle destroyed the AI, at least. But romance was secondary on Krypton.”

“What about now? On Argo?”

“Romantic love is… still an alien concept, on Argo,” Kara said thoughtfully, popping another potsticker in her mouth. “It existed in some of our stories. But our upbringing, our culture- we had to squash a lot of that down.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s like…” Kara’s voice had lowered to a murmur, and Lena noticed a pink tint rising in her cheeks. Kara cleared her throat, staring into her food. “Now it’s like they’re marrying a close friend,” she continued. “I wouldn’t say they have romance like Earth does.”

“Like marrying a friend,” Lena mulled.

Kara quietly picked at her food.

“And what about you?” Lena said, partially curious, partially… well. She knew Kara could hear how her heart had started pounding, as much as she wished she could hide it.

“Me?”

“You grew up there. But you’ve been here for so long. Where do you fall?”

Kara’s brow crinkled. “I think I…like all the little things,” she murmured. “Giving flowers and chocolate. Kissing. Holding hands.”

“But?”

“Not a but,” Kara said as she glanced up - still avoiding Lena’s eyes, but looking thoughtfully ahead. “It feels so alien to me, but in this wonderful way. Exhilarating. Strange. I feel like I have this chimeric type of romance in my head - not Earthian, not Kryptonian. Like romance is…”

Kara grew quiet, turning her head to her food again, staring silently as the blush on her cheeks seemed to deepen. 

Lena watched for a moment, taking in the unmoving kryptonian - the hint of tightness in her posture, the unusual muteness and stillness. “What is romance for you, Kara?” Lena whispered.

Kara slowly tilted her gaze up to meet Lena’s. “My perfect partner at a game night,” she confessed quietly. “Knowing someone so well that it feels like magic when we’re together.”

Lena let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.

Kara nibbled nervously at her lip. “You- you don’t have to see it that way,” Kara said, her voice cracking. “It’s not- it doesn’t have to change anything. But I’ll understand if it’s too much…”

“I feel it too,” Lena whispered. “When I’m with you. It always feels like magic.”

“Really?” Kara said. “You could want- you-”

“I didn’t want to catch the bouquet unless it was for you,” Lena confessed. “I just- all I want is to be with you.”

Kara smiled wide, and Lena watched on as the tension seemed to melt away from the still-blushing kryptonian’s frame. “I love you, Lena.”

Lena smiled back. “I love you too.”

you know i have never heard a convincing arguement as to why AO3 should not moderate the content that is posted to their website and i think a lot of the arguement against moderation on AO3 boils down to, terminally online people thinks community moderation is the same as government censorship and personally sending the cops to someone’s house to arrest them irl/

Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. When it was founded the people made a promise to its users. “We will host all transformational works(fanfic) allowed by US law.” This promise came about after other sites had routinely purged fanworks without warning. Not just the same things people call for moderation on now but far more reaching and random. Like FF.net purged ALL mature/NC17 fics from their site, they also purged and banned the ENTIRE genre of songfics(written equivalent of fan made music videos made by putting song lyrics between paragraphs of story prose)

Ao3 bringing in any sort of content moderation or limits on what fics they will host would be breaking that initial promise to their users.

I guess if you’ve never woken up and found chunks of your fave fandom, some fanworks you yourself created just gone, because whoever was hosting it decided to change the rules on you, you wouldn’t understand. And unless you primarily read fics at sites other than Ao3 because of their determination to keep that promise you won’t have to.

see that is the thing that i really do not get, Like the thing that i cannot understand about this arguement is that bad moderation means no moderation should be allowed? It’s ok for AO3 to host racist fanfics and child porn, because the alternative is just random deletions? Like why is the alternative to no moderation bad moderation? Why do AO3 defenders keep on acting like the only options are either no moderations at all, or else it will be fanfics deleted without rhyme or reason? Like why is the argument always in black and white extremes?

One. Ao3 does not host child porn. You can stop with that lie right the fuck now. Child porn(or the more correct term Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material) is when someone has a child under their control and forces them to perform sexual acts and either photographs or films it. It is a recorded documentation of abuse and is in fact illegal(and therefore not allowed to be hosted on Ao3) It is wrong, immoral, and illegal because a real live, breathing child with thoughts, and feelings is being hurt and will have to live with the memory of their abuse for the rest of their lives.The term does not apply to non-photorealistic fanart, or to written words depicting events that did not actually happen(meaning there is no victim and no-one has to live with the memory of the events).  Treating either fanart or fanfic as the same as  real life abuse is an insult and dis-service to every single child that has ever been sexually exploited because you think their suffering is equivalents to lines on paper.  That you think the immorality of CSEM is because it makes you feel “icky” and not because they were being hurt and exploited.  People writing fanfic of two teenage characters making out is in no way equivalent to a real life child having their rape recorded, but I routinely see people calling for moderation on Ao3 acting like it is.

Two. As for the racist(and every other kind of bigotry that can be depicted) I’m going to be honest. I don’t trust the various fandom communities to make a set of standards that aren’t just one group of fans forcing their will and preferences onto the rest of fans. I don’t know what fandoms you’ve been in, but I’ve seen fandoms with interracial ships where if you have the black character top you’re being racist because it’s playing into racist mandrigo tropes. But at the same time you would have people claiming that having the black character bottom you’re also being racist for making the black man submissive. So are both depictions/options racist, are neither of them, or are people just trying to make their personal fic preferences/interpretations some sort of moral issue and force people to cater to them?  I’ve been in fandom communities where the admin/moderators refused to let anyone post fics that didn’t match their preferences(despite claiming to be friendly to all fics) So it’s very much coming from a place of experience that says trying moderate Ao3 based on racism, or any other problematic metric/rubric you want to use will just end up being used to silence people(including other fans of color)

Racism exists in fandom because we live in a racist society and that will filter into ALL media, including fanfic. Trying to remove so called racist fanfic won’t make society any less racist. All it does is give a tool for bullies to try to control and harass people. Everyone has their own personal biases some conscious, some only in their subconscious that they haven’t bothered to unpack  Trying to moderate content based on standards like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc… will inevitably lead to the moderators own personal biases leaking through resulting in uneven, inconsistent moderation resulting nothing but hurt feelings and fighting. 

Third. I would just like to mention just how heartless and unempathic you sounds when you act like random mass deletions and purges are no big deal. You have no idea how much it hurts to wake up and find something you created just gone. To find large swaths of fics that you enjoyed again and again, that you found comfort in, deleted never to be recovered. To say nothing of when Livejournal caved to a bunch of right-wing christian evangelical trolls and deleted a bunch of users and communities. People were devastated. people lost support communities and were frantically trying to find the friends they had made in those communities.

I know it may be hard to believe but fiction and art do not cause harm just by existing. A story that may be upsetting and triggering for one person, may bring healing and comfort to another, because everyone brings their own set of experiences and persepctives into every story they read, and therefore each takes something slightly different from it.  But you and every other person calling for moderation on Ao3 act a story causes harm to everyone, again just by existing.  It’s an insane perspective that makes no sense to me. A story I am not forced to read can’t hurt me any more than someone practicing a different religion can hurt me.

There are several ways that you can moderate AO3.

If you read a story and have strong opinions on it, e.g. you think it’s racist to write Adeline as a bully when she’s such an amazing hero character in the source material or you think that author CerseiFan69 writes such creepy stories that you never want to interact with them ever, it’s great that you’re thinking for yourself and trying to do some critical analysis.

You deserve the power to control your own reading experience, which AO3 gives you. However, I don’t trust you to tell the difference between a badly written story by a young writer who is black and wrote Adeline as a bully because Adeline’s accent reminds her of her real life high school bully, versus a badly written story by a writer who’s actually horrible. Likewise, you shouldn’t trust me to tell you which authors you should read as spine-chillingly excellent takes on dark content versus authors who make you want to scrub out your brain with steel wool.

I love the freedom of AO3, where I might write a bad story but at least I know that some moderator won’t judge me harshly and take it down.

Listen. The 11th Commandment is not “Thine beliefs are codified and just”. It’s “Don’t like, don’t read.”

You have no right to censorship. Period.

if you are lucky you will love someone and their hair will thin and their breasts will sag and you will kiss them everywhere over and over again

I was having a conversation with someone who was lamenting over how to maintain attraction to our partners as their bodies change and age and feeling self conscious herself about that process and I was like. we should be so lucky as to see them through these many years as we are seen ourselves. Hope that helps u understand

reminds me of this quote i love

Glasses // Jonathan Coulton

What's One Little Kiss Between Friends? | viii

viii: Prepping the New Year

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Jealous!Nat. Scheming!Nat

Note: My holiday contribution <3 This occurs after Mistletoes Are For Excuses

College AU set. Feel free to request parts in my inbox!

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Count: ~1.2k

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

New Year's has always been one of your favorite holidays. There's a sense of relief and melancholy about saying goodbye to the year and welcoming the new one. 

And, well, there was the New Year's kiss.

No one showed up for the last story time.

I totally read this as the first line of a post-apocalyptic dystopian scifi novel.

No one showed up for the last story time.

Tuesday afternoon had been story time for thirty seven years and for thirty six of them Miss Madeline had held court in the antique rocking chair in the north corner of the Willow Valley Public Library. She’d seen hundreds of children come and go, sometimes coming back with children of their own, but the stories remained the same; timeless classics read to each new generation that found a spot on the carpet in front of her chair. 

In retrospect it might have seemed odd to even hold the usual Tuesday afternoon story time given that most folk were huddled in their houses with their loved ones, listening as shocked, red-eyed news anchors read off each new city that had fallen to the uprising. But as sure as the sun rose in the east, Tuesday found Miss Madeline sitting in her rocker at three o'clock sharp, a well-worn picture book held in her thin, trembling hands.

The sharp creak of wood echoed in the empty library as Miss Madeline settled her aching bones into the rocking chair, her slim fingers clutching the book that perhaps meant the most to her out of all the books in the world. Her mother had read it to her as a little girl, and she had read it to countless other children, so often that she didn’t even need to see the words on the now tear-stained page.

Her voice weary and shaking with grief, the distant echo of explosions rattling the windows, she tendered traced the watercolor illustrations with one finger and began reading aloud to the empty room.

“In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…”