don't ya, big boy?

you know what i'm gonna get sappy for a second bear with me

there are a lot of posts and memes for writers about how hard writing is and how annoying it can be and how dispiriting it can feel when we don't make progress the way we'd like to. and those are true, and relatable, and funny! i've been there!

but maybe it doesn't get said enough in the other direction, so I'm gonna say it: I love writing. i love the process of putting phrases together and testing them for cadence and flow; i love knowing that there is a word for exactly the thing I want to convey, even if I just can't think of it right now, and going onto a thesaurus and being like there she is, that's the one!

but more than anything, I love the ritual of constantly asking myself "okay, and then what happens?" and feeling the same sense of delighted surprise every single time when somehow, a part of me I wasn't consciously aware of knows the answer. that experience, where my brain provides me solutions I didn't know it was working on, feels like a miracle every time. and getting into a productivity groove where I keep knowing the answers is one of the best feelings on the planet.

and sure, sometimes I don't know the answer, and it's hard and unsatisfying and see above about how easy it is to joke about how writing's the pits, but... that just makes it even more special when I'm firing on all cylinders, you know?

anyway, yeah. w r i t i n g.

Writing is magical. Sometimes you feel blessed, sometimes cursed, but nothing beats chaining together words and producing feelings as a result.

I'm pretty sure someone else said it but you really did have to be there when Yuri on Ice aired in 2016. Tumblr was going nuts for this show. I'm pretty sure we broke Tumblr and Crunchyroll from the sheer force of fans trying to see and talk about the finale.

Not to mention that it was 2016, and canon queer characters were incredibly few and far between. It was a recipe for a massive fandom.

(Yeah, there were people who insisted up and down that Yuri and Victor never canonically kissed on the ice because they didn't make on screen lip contact, which was incredibly stupid logic. There was definite homophobia going on regarding if it was Canon Queer or queerbaiting/'fujoshi bait'. But it was so important for people who, perhaps, never thought they'd get anything close to canon queer characters, or at least not in a show like Yuri on Ice.)

Anyway, RIP Ice Adolescence. We'll always hold this series in our hearts.

though the movie might be cancelled, yuri on ice will live forever in our hearts. thank you yoi fandom, it's been real ♡

the only silver lining in the YOI movie getting shelved is how it's brought the fandom out of the woodwork. it feels like we're all old neighbors who have come back to the old local diner one more time before it gets closed down.

when you're crying about the cancellation but remember how good YOI was to you

If you told me at the beginning of heartbreak high that amongst all the incredible multifaceted characters my favourite would be the fucking eshay?? THE ESHAY??

ca$h’s nan just hanging out with darude lmaoooooo i’m obsessed w her

Will McDonald & James Majoos as Ca$h & Darren Rivers Heartbreak High (2.04)

the foreshadowing though

ONE DAY ↳book > screen

In truth, he had never seen the point of cuddling. Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp.

He pressed his mouth against the top of her head and thought this must never, ever happen again. - One Day, Chapter 1

Modern-day emerging omegaverse enemies to lovers accidental pair bonding fic, anyone? Read it here.

★ Welcome to the Madness ★

thinking about that post of people assuming ao3 has an algorithm and also about how bonkers persistent the view is that ao3 is social media lite. like with startling regularity I get comments saying something along the lines of "it's probably weird to comment on a fic this old--" no it isn't!!!! this is an archive I am literally just assuming you searched for a selection of specific tags or sorted by kudos or looked back on my pseud or any other number of completely normal ways to use an archive site ?? kill the tiktok ghost in your brain and comment on old stuff it's NOT weird

Guess how many people contact us regularly to ASK for us to have an algorithm, go ahead. Because it's many. And I always take a little bit of enjoyment in explaining that no, we're not going to build a system to recommend fics to you based on your kudos, because for one thing that would be extra work, and for another thing that would require us to be tracking and using a lot more of your data than we want to. We actually do not want to monitor that people who liked Fic A also liked Fic B, or that people who like the tag "butt plugs" might also enjoy the tag "anal fisting", or whatever other nonsense seems to be the expectation these days. I already know enough (more than I'd love, in a perfect world!) about people's reading habits, and I don't want to have that knowledge deployed via algorithms on the Archive just because someone really wants an automated conveyer belt of content being streamed directly into their feed based on us extrapolating from their most commonly used tags or their most frequently visited works or whatever.

(I also do not want to imagine how many people would contact us to yell at us the second they got a 'bad' recommended fic. "I can't believe that you recommended this to me, you monsters!")

Anyway here's my favourite sentence to include in my answers: "We hope instead that users will take control of their own experience using the Archive, and choose for themselves what works they wish to view or not view." Apparently a novel view in this day and age.

Fairytale of the winter prince❄️👑

you’re saying i need to write my fic in order for it to be written ??? what the fuck