Anyone who thinks em dashes are a sign of AI is welcome to go look at my decade plus of AO3 history.
Getting a new work notification from one of your favorite Ao3 authors, excitedly opening the fic, only to read the tags like
Anonymous asked:
Hi!!! I’ve been following you since I was in middle school and read all your books/fics. I really enjoy the way your characters think and talk about their relationships and identities. 10/10 internal dialogues! I have recently been on a journey of self-discovery about my attraction to women as a college-aged woman from a religious background, and have found the positivity about queer identities in your writing really inspiring.
I notice most of your writing is about m/m relationships (which I love reading) but I really enjoyed reading Sydney’s perspective as a fellow woman in Free From Falling. I was wondering whether you ever plan to write a f/f relationship, either as a published book or a fic. If that’s not your thing, no pressure, but please know that there would be at least one person very excited to read anything WLW that you write!
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is that I started writing mostly M/M pairings in high school as…I suppose a way to grapple with being queer without putting myself/my interest in women into the equation, if that makes sense (perhaps you understand, coming from a religious background). Also, most of my favorite characters/relationships in media happened to be men (and often still are), but that’s a whole other can of worms re the way Hollywood wrote/writes women.
Now that I’m entirely comfortable with my sexuality, I have written F/F pairings in fic (like Quynh/Andy’s portions of Be Gay, Do Crimes) as well as F/M fic/fiction (though someone is always bisexual, of course).
I’m not really talking about my current original fiction project until it’s a bit more finished, but I’ll say that the three intersecting storylines across the series features (spoilers, maybe?) a M/M couple, a F/F couple, and a M/F couple that turns into a M/F/M triad. So I’m really just…open to writing whatever at this point provided the characters are compelling. And the fun thing about original fiction is that I can MAKE them compelling to me, haha.
Anonymous asked:
Pretty bold of you to put your AO3 handle in your Instagram bio. Especially when you’ve been writing there for 10+ years. I would never. lol.
xiaq answered:
Skill issue.
I have no guilt in my pleasures and no shame in my progress.
anon. anon do you know who xiaq is. do you understand how many people followed her FROM fandom. if a person has the self-assurance to write fic, rewrite and publish it as original work, and then write and post fic OF THAT PUBLISHED WORK on the same platform do you really think she's going to fall for that shame-trip. skill issue indeed. xiaq is living the life most of us can only dream.
It took a good long while for my therapist to get me to a place where I was like, “yeah, my old writing sucks but it’s supposed to. I should constantly be improving and seeing evidence of that progress is a good thing.” Let’s all try to be a little healthier about the way we view the fruits of our creative labors over time, yeah?
I feel like there are 3 categories of writers that I subscribe to on AO3.
There are those that will jump to a new fandom and I’ll get the email alert and be looking at the character tags like
“…nah. I’ll skip this one.”
There are those who jump to a new fandom and I’ll be like, “Oh, interesting. I know nothing about this world or these people, but if X is writing it I’ll probably enjoy it.”
But then.
Then there are those who jump to a new fandom and I get the email and I say, “Fuck.”
Because I already know that I will read it. I will adore it. I will fall terribly in love with their version of this world and these characters. And then I will spend weeks if not months backtracking to consume the original content and then combing through other fic fruitlessly chasing the high of that original, perfect, gateway fic, never again quite reaching the initial euphoria that set me down this path.
Story time: A (sex) trope conversation with my husband
Y'all want to hear about a hilarious conversation I had with B today?
Of course you do.
So B knew one of the fic authors I follow had posted a new work and I was planning to read it after dinner while he watched some sports ball. Afterward, he asked me how it was and I said, “Eh, kinda disappointing, but for me reasons not for author reasons––the writing was bomb, as usual.”
And he was like, “How was it disappointing?”
I explained that the story started right off the bat with the “fuck or die” trope which I’m not typically into because dub/non-con isn’t my jam. UNLESS the characters already have a romantic/sexual interest and especially if they are secretly pining for each other and then wracked with guilt in the aftermath for enjoying the circumstances before admitting they’ve been in love with each other all along. In which case it’s
But that was not the case, here.
And B, bless him, was like
“…I think we have fundamentally different ideas of what ‘fuck or die’ means, can you please explain?”
So I did––gave him a couple examples like biological imperatives or heat/rut, pollen or potions, etc.
And he was like, “Ohhh ok, that is…not what I thought it meant. How did that become a fandom thing? Is that a trope in some major franchise?” he asks.
And I was like “My love. My heart. Are you familiar with STAR TREK?? PON FARR??”
and he was like “Why are you shouting I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
So then he got an education.
The man has only seen a few episodes of next generation and the more recent movies so had no clue about the deep and abiding fandom fascination with Vulcan biological imperatives. But boy howdy is he now aware.
the tiktokification of ao3
or: some of you fundamentally misunderstand ao3 and it really, really shows
i was talking about this with a friend a few days ago and since then i've seen multiple posts of various sorts that have just made me think about it more, so. here is me breaking down a disconnect i see particularly with younger members of the marauders fandom (i say marauders specifically just bc that's the only one i'm plugged into):
Anonymous asked:
I'm stuggling as a Harry Potter fan right now because I love the fandom but I really don't love Rowling for obvious terf reasons. I thought as long as I wasn't buying anything new or seeing movies in theater, that it was fine. Like making art and fic and stuff, especially if creators are really clear that they don't support Rowling. Except I've starting seeing Discourse saying that if I'm even talking about HP I'm supporting her and a terrible person for making fan art. Thoughts?
I agree that you shouldn’t do anything to actively contribute to Rowling and her platform. I’d mostly disagree that creating fan art or fic supports her. In fact, I think she’d be pissed as hell to see all the Trans HP [insert character here] art and fic that has flooded the internet since she made her TERF stance clear, to say nothing of the “hey I hate [insert problematic aspect of these books] so I’m going to change it” flavor of fic that has existed since the book series wasn’t even complete (exhibit A, the HP fic I wrote a few years back).
Fan works are not created in a vacuum without context. If people are saying they do not support Rowling’s ideology, but they get joy out of taking her characters and narratives and world-building and changing them to explicitly subvert or correct racist/homophobic/antisemitic tropes, I find it difficult to rationalize that as support for Rowling. Someone new to the fandom isn’t going to find a fic/piece of art with an author’s note that says “hey I wrote/drew trans Harry because I hate JK Rowling and want a way to reclaim HP so that I can still enjoy it” and think “oh, neat, I should go buy the original books from Amazon and support Jk Rowling.”
Henry Jenkins said: “Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk.”
I agree, but I also think this can be extended to repairing the damage done by individual authors and their biases.
Basically, I think fandom furthers the idea of the “death of the author.” In this case, fandom isn’t just saying the author is dead, they’re saying they killed her and now they’re going through her belongings and throwing out the stuff they don’t like while keeping/repairing/adding on to the things they do.
So, if you get joy out of making HP fan art or fic and you’re actively trying to discourage people from supporting the original creator, and encouraging them to be critical of the original content’s failings even while enjoying the fandom, I find that far more admirable than problematic.
As is usually the case, when people online are telling you you’re a terrible person for doing a thing you enjoy that harms no one, they’re likely the ones that need to go touch grass and get a little real-life perspective.
teenage us were braver than any US Marine
Nah, fam. I wasn’t about to take that risk. I read my fic on the school library computers at lunch every day. The firewalls were weak. One time the librarian had to leave to run an errand and left me “in charge” because I was the definition of the Good Nerdy Kid and the minute she left I printed my four favorite novel-length fics so I could have copies at home. I had to replace the paper three times and barely had room for all the pages in my backpack but I never got caught.
Okay I know we all love the Fake Dating trope, but I think fandom as a whole has overlooked some potential here. Instead of Character A and Character B fake-dating and then falling in love, what if Character A’s best friend/roommate/sibling falls in love with Character B instead? Think of the potential here!
Like what if Character B spends the night on character A’s couch 2x a week so people can see B leaving in the morning to sell the fact that they’re in a relationship. Except Character A doesn’t even spend time with B, they just peace out to their room. And then Roommate ends up staying up talking to B in the living room, watching movies and cooking and falling hopelessly in love.
Or Character B agrees to attend a wedding/holiday travel etc. with A, except ends up constantly hanging out with A’s sibling and realizing they have so much in common but B can’t act on it because they’re pretending to be in love with A??? And sibling won’t act on it because they don’t want to mess with what they think is a legitimate relationship?? Think of the pining! The drama!
Anyway, if fandom could run with this that’d be rad.
Assistance Needed!
I’m thinking about writing a paper about redemption and recovery narratives in fic (where fandom takes a villain or other canonically “broken” character and actually goes through the–often extensive–emotional/textual labour necessary to redeem/help them). I have several fics I’m thinking of using as examples/close readings in the Marvel, Sherlock, The 100, Teen Wolf, and Check Please! fandoms, but I know the Harry Potter fandom probably has a Ton of these re Draco. Unfortunately, I didn’t get into fandom until just post-HP, and I’m a little overwhelmed with choice re where to start my investigation.
TL;DR Please rec me your favorite Redemption/Recovery Arc fics featuring Draco Malfoy (slash, gen, het, whatev–though if you can think of fic where Harry and Draco recover simultaneously/together post-war that would be Especially helpful). Feel free to rec other works you think may fit within these parameters too! This is basically just an excuse to read fic and call it work.
Thanks!
To other fanfic authors
For many of you, writing is just a hobby. Something you do in your free time. Stories get forgotten because of real life or unedited in your excitement to post.
But to me, your stories are just as valuable as my printed books.
I get giddy when I see your story has a new update, I find myself thinking about your stories in the middle of class. I laugh when I read and sometimes, late at night, there are tears in my eyes.
So thank you to all of you who have the courage to put your words online for all of us to enjoy.
Tagging a few of my favourite authors who I know are also on tumblr. Check out their writing.
@kryptaria @bootsnblossoms @wisepuma23 @timetospy @clotpolesonly @multifandom-madnesss @nagapdragon @astudyinfic @consultingwriters @castillon02 @totallynotmeipromise @elfpen @mistflyer1102 @tokyotheglaive @xiaq
Yo. This legitimately made my day. Especially since I’m just hanging out with the likes of @kryptaria. Thank you!!