Writers On Ao3 - Blog Posts

reblog if you believe fanfic writers are as valid and talented as any professional writer who publishes and sells their novels

I’m trying to prove a point

I’m not a perfectionist, but finding a typo or a grammatical error in my own already-published fic is like stepping on a Lego honestly

NEW CHAPTER(s)!

Chapter 3 of Let’s Explore - released today!! Feat. Doey the Doughman, Infox, Miss Marionette, Miss Delight, Miss Cotton and Harley Sawyer <3

Chapter 2 of Let’s Explore - released a couple of weeks ago actually but I didn’t end up announcing it 💔 Feat. Dogday, Simon Smoke(s), Poe, Ollie, Kickin and Bubba <3

Dear Infox, Miss Marionette, Doey, Harley, Yarnaby, Ollie, BigNap and Simon, ILYSM thank you for being in my initiative >:)))) my favourite plot devices fr

Infox belongs to @thattiredgamer and Miss Marionette belongs to @yukitiramisu!

ACID SPLASH IS OUT!

FINALLY!!!!!

Huge special thanks to @thattiredgamer, @bazyboo13 and @kather-has-a-gun-up-to-my-head! I love having you here!! :D <3

Now I can hyperfixate slightly more calmly with the knowledge that yes now when people ask who my Ollie is I can drop them this link and force them to read 5k words

Here’s the plan!!!

Get idiots ready for the Toy Tour, reasonably hyped

Slam-dunk them onto the train

Introduce the nightmare critters - they’re forced to share a train carriage

Make the critters go “:0” as they’re given rooms while Dogday shits himself because he can’t sleep beside BigNap

Introduction to Ollie and the realisation they’ve turned into a dictator

Grand dinner night and the official announcement of the start of training

Slow realisation that the Toy Tour is rigorously controlled

Mass panic, leading to threats of Destroy-A-Toy

The Tour is now a concentration camp where anyone who objects is killed or threatened

Optional additional ideas:

Someone’s poisoned at the dinner party

Ollie teaches the other toys about things like racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia etc and they’re all horrified because these toys have never seen those concepts before (at least, not that they’re aware of)

Dogday makes friends with Infox, who is @thattiredgamer’s OC; Kather, who is @i-am-in-the-mind-fuck’s OC, and SourTail, who is @bazyboo13’s OC

Possibly a snippet or mention of the cult. You’re not meant to know Destroy-A-Toy’s being ruled by the kitty queen, but for those already in the know it would be great foreshadowing!

Teach the toys the Footloose dance because it would be really funny as a training exercise

The above are the things I gotta do forrrrr this series!

May be shabby now but I’ve got the plans! Stories take time! Especially since this is more an original fic instead of a what-if :)

DESTROY-A-TOY POLL!!! WRITING IS COOKING!!!!!

Here’s my idea. The Nightmare Critters represent how the world outside has changed, and how Dogday struggles to cope with change as a whole. Both sets of Critters are forced into a train ride together and DO NOT get along.

I’ll wait for all eight to be revealed, but so far, my plan is that Simon, Rabie and Poe would act as the boss’s spies. ESPECIALLY Rabie. She’s why the boss knows everything about everyone, plus the boss’s own investigations.

So either, they’re just another toy type who gets prosecuted or they play a SIGNIFICANT role.

GO GO GO VOTE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!

I won't lie to you, as a fanfic author I've gone through the most traumatic moments of my life thinking "ah, this is gonna make really good fic material"

Can we kill therapy-speak in fanfic?

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying your characters can’t be familiar with therapy keywords. But the use of it in fanfic is just killing off any sort of real, emotional stakes in certain fics. *cough* the my hero fandom

I’ll be real with you; I don’t want my characters to approach a situation with an acute awareness for any possible triggers or emotional responses in an attempt to build rapport with another character who has experienced severe trauma and/or abuse. And sure, let’s say that it is a professional, whose job it is to approach these situations. That doesn’t mean you have to write them like a mental health textbook vs a textbook victim of trauma.

For example; “Aizawa stepped back, not wanting to trigger any sort of trauma response from the abused teenager.”

Yeah, sure. Aizawa is a professional who, as a professional hero, probably has education in dealing with situations like this. But the way it is written is clinically detached, cold, and also way too professional from a man who has probably attended a total of one therapy session on mandate after witnessing the death of one of his best friends (which he never got over btw).

When you want to write a character who is attuned to other people’s needs and fears, try using less therapy bingo words, and be more descriptive of the emotions of the scene.

Instead; “Aizawa carefully stepped backwards, attempting to show he meant no harm. He knew how easy it was to scare a starving alley cat, you would be surprised how the same logic applied to a starving teenager.”

See? Isn’t it so much more soulful? So much easier to connect with? Sure, the first passage got the point across: Aizawa is aware that the kid he’s approaching is likely a victim of something traumatic, so he is approaching it as such. But the average human doesn’t have the dialogue of an occupational therapist, so writing situations like the characters are occupational therapists, kills off any sort of relatability for readers who don’t attend weekly therapy sessions. And even for people who do, it feels more like sitting in the armchair instead of absorbing yourself in the worlds and stories you’re trying to tell.

I’m not saying to ditch the mental health awareness altogether. Sure, having emotionally stunted characters create for interesting stories, but you can tell just as compelling of a story without having to resort to textbook wording. Instead, use that therapy foundation to build something more around your characters. Because using the therapy speak is just the same as telling, and not showing.

With that, good luck with your next hurt no comfort fic, and happy writing!