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antebunny · 2 days
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hello!! I love love love your fics and your writing style, and I'm so happy I just discovered your tumblr! I was wondering if we're allowed to ask prompts or meta about your fics? For example, I was rereading thunderstorms again and I was wondering what your inspiration was for jiang yanli as a ribbon dancer, and if she starts to perform, maybe for her family at her brothers' insistence, after the war in your mind. also, what do you think about zixuan's snap change in mindset after seeing jiang yanli fight? Thanks for existing and have a nice day!
yes absolutely nothing stokes an author's ego like asking them questions about their stuff
i wanted to have some justification for the fight scene at the end, considering she never formally learns how to fight, and the ribbon dancing -> whip-wielding pipeline seemed like a decent explanation. plus i googled it and the internet told me ribbon dancing originated in China, and the internet would never lie to me.
i never thought about what she does with ribbon dancing after the war. a good argument could be made either way ("she picked it up for herself only so it stays private" vs "she'd like to show off what she can do now that people know")
idk i thought maybe jin zixuan saw jiang yanli covered in the blood of her enemies and thought it was hot?
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antebunny · 3 days
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antebunny · 13 days
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Good morning, you have to be the thing that saves you
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antebunny · 13 days
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The Three JCs
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antebunny · 15 days
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Most recent five (2024/2023):
These days, Barbara mostly just runs off imposter syndrome and a lot of audacity. (you asked if i was feeling it / i'm psycho high)
In a weird way, it’s Bobby Thompson that Dick has to thank for getting legally adopted. (the mortifying ordeal of being a teenager)
Honghua hasn’t seen the sun in days. (hey bro, 你有没有朋友?)
Hermione outs Bill in front of the whole fucking family. ("to suffer the emptiness")
The prisoner is calmer than Tim was expecting. (the second worst thing to ever happen to those orphans)
First lines also used for summaries. Attempt at "what is going on?" style (why hasn't Honghua seen the sun, who's the prisoner, how did Bobby get Dick adopted, everything about #4). Decent.
First Five (2018):
Everyone knew that Petunia was jealous of her sister, including Petunia herself.
“I used to live here, you know,” Peggy said. “You didn’t need to walk with me.”
“Do the assembled have any further business they would like to bring before the general assembly?”
“Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good.”
Leia Organa is seven when her friend Dijan dies.
Mostly scene-setting. "This is what's happening right now."
Favorite Five:
Jiang Yanli cannot remember a time in which she was not angry.(thunderstorms)
Lotus Pier disappeared on a Monday. (The Pirate of Lotus Pier)
They’re going to sing him to death. (decay)
I couldn't think of five that I actually liked. I really gotta get better at this, huh.
Favorite five fics:
In The Ring (part 2/2 of a fight you were born to (lose) series). Most well-written thing I've ever put out there. I had the characters, the narrative conclusions, the symbolism, a fight scene! and so much heart put into this. Almost all of my favorites lines that I've written for fanfic come from this one fic.
GO HOME, IDIOT. Like In The Ring but shorter, less well-written and without the symbolism or narratives.
thunderstorms. 11k of me giving Jiang Yanli a character arc.
the second worst thing to ever happen to those orphans. By far the weirdest writing process, but result is 36k of satisfying (to write) found family angst.
"to suffer the emptiness". May be recency bias but this one means a lot to me personally.
At the end of the day fanfiction is self-indulgent for me. My favorite lines come from the non-fiction and original fiction that I've written. None of which is on Ao3 or Tumblr lmao. Two exceptions: 1) a lazy self-indulgent one-shot I put on Ao3, and this goose-centric fairytale I put on Tumblr inspired by this poem.
writing patterns meme!
tagged by @englishsub and @megafaunatic 💞
rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!
The first time, Tim actually calls for help on purpose. (buy back the secrets)
Lan Zhan raises his hand again, trying to summon enough spiritual energy to activate his flare talisman. (never been away so long)
Wei Ying was 85% sure he wasn’t going to pass out. (i will be chasing a starlight)
Wei Wuxian has been living in Gusu for just over a year when, for the second time in his life, he finds a white ribbon in a box. (on the back of a hurricane [third installment])
According to the rumors, Hua Cheng sees everything that happens on set. (spin something out of nothing)
“Are you listening?” says Jin Wang. (you’re the trouble that i always find)
Ways in which Wei Ying’s house is in no way ready for Jiang Cheng’s arrival: (all your sums and your pieces)
The smoke from the destroyed shuttle is a smudge on the horizon when Lan Zhan realizes Wei Wuxian isn’t beside him anymore. (electric heart)
The cottage is nearly empty. (a wave crashes to shore)
“I don’t think,” Wei Ying says, wedging his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he tries to coax some change out of the self-checkout machine, “that a dozen white doves are going to solve my problem.” (i’ll have you and you’ll have me)
wow i sure do like my This Is A Statement openers huh! (also so glad the last one here made it on, that's still one of my favorite first lines.)
tagging @yuebings @tlumeti @cafecliche and anyone else who wants to do this!
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antebunny · 19 days
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a great video essay about this:
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I really think the trend of hating modern art is an expression of insecurity. our society encourages and rewards anti-intellectualism; if you don't understand something, don't try to educate yourself or interrogate your own thoughts and feelings on it. the only appropriate response is mockery. to approach a piece with sincerity and curiosity, maybe even self-reflection, is to expose a vulnerability.
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antebunny · 21 days
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Whenever I make a joke about a trope or cliche everyone in the notes is like “Oh this is specifically about xyz story isn’t it” and they always list different stories and franchises. It’s almost like tropes and cliches are common things that appear in multiple works of fiction or something.
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antebunny · 22 days
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neil babygirl how does aziraphale take his crepes
...orally?
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antebunny · 25 days
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"This fic was ai generated—" Cool, so lemme block you real quick
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antebunny · 25 days
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just checked the notes on something i put on tumblr a while ago and
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y'all
first of all,
no i will not tag you
nope! no more! i kinda wish i'd seen that before i'd actually written more, cause then i would've never posted the update.
on the bright side, both of these accounts are now blocked! so they'll never have to worry about missing an update :)
secondly, while tumblr is generally less polite than ao3 commenters, i've noticed an uptick of similar behavior on ao3. maybe it's just me. but for me, people getting real pushy, real hint hint, nudge nudge, about updates and follow-ups and sequels and "well *I* would've ended the fic this way. here's one i got just a few days ago.
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please note that this is the second comment they'd left asking for an update. both of them were polite enough that i responded politely, but i did roll my eyes.
you know, it's funny that you "really wish" for a sequel, dear commenter, because last i checked your internet connection is roughly equal to mine! seems like your wish could come true if you'd just open Google Docs or Word or hell, TextEdit, and start writing.
i too suffer from Lack of Time, Lack of Energy, and that thing when your brain tries to melt out of your ears and you plug yourself into the internet to escape. i fully understand not being able to write things that i wish i could. you know what i don't do? i don't comment on people's fics about what they should've done or how what i'd like to see in a sequel.
sometimes i scour the internet for a fic with a particular premise or trope. i don't mind those posts about "i read this fic and it wasn't quite what i wanted. i'm looking for a fic that..." generally they won't get back to the author, and even when they do, it's not OP's fault. but as someone who has done that for years, a word of advice: no matter how thoroughly you look for a fic, you can't search it into existence. you know what does work? writing. you can write a fic into existence. works every time. and if you can't write it as well as you would like? well then why are you bothering other people to do something for you that you can't do yourself?
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antebunny · 25 days
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Edit to say: I found the original! It's What We Can Carry by Miss_Lazy_Tuesday over on the good old archive.
You're fae!Tim ah is so so good, it's amazing, and heart wrenching!!!! And so so soooooooo good!!!!!
thanks! i decided i'm not willing to put in the effort to make it a full fic. it's inspired by a fic with the same premise that i can't find anymore. if anyone would like to make their own thing inspired by this, they're more than welcome!
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antebunny · 26 days
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a cuckoo in the nest pt.2
[part one] aka the fae!Tim idea i said i wouldn't write any more of. oops my hand slipped.
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Tim clenches the Cliff granola bar tightly in his fist, inhales deeply, and steps through the fairy circle. His footsteps leave deep indents in the soft grass before vanishing completely. 
If one of the Waynes were to wander into the woods behind Wayne Manor and stumble upon this particular clearing, they would quickly notice the small footprints leading into a patch of dirt and never emerging out the other side. Fairy circles are subtle things, easily moved and created, but just as easily spotted if you know what to look for. 
Sweet grass, spices, something wild and dewy and the sick smell of cruelty. The fae realm is just as Tim remembered it. The Unseelie Queen, too, is just as Tim remembers her. She’s eternally young, after all. Her crown of thorns tips toward Tim as she bends down, gnarled hand reaching for Tim’s granola bar. He quickly shoves it behind his back, and the Unseelie Queen’s hand freezes. She cannot take that which is not freely given.
Long ago, a lifetime ago when Tim was nine years old and stupid, the Unseelie Queen used his naivete to get everything she wanted from him. She asked for his name and he gave it. She offered him fae food and he took it. She told him that the deal his parents made was unbreakable and he believed it. For an eternity, though now he knows it was three years, he believed her. 
He knows better now. That’s what made the Unseelie Queen strike a bargain with him in the first place. Tim cannot believe that it took him three years to realize that his parents had no right to sell him away. That he could’ve left the moment he’d arrived, if only he’d known to run. But by the time he figured it out, he’d eaten their food and given his name. Become fey enough for the Unseelie Queen to control, if not own.
Now the only question is whether he can outsmart her. Whether he, the twelve year old who just got his very first iPhone, can beat the Unseelie Queen at her own game.
“How wonderful to see you back in my domain.” The Unseelie Queen still looms over Tim as she greets him. “Though you reek of human.”
Tim lifts his chin. “Because I am one.”
A blood red smile stretches across thin lips. White teeth shine like stars. “That will be changed in time.”
She’s just trying to scare him because she knows that he can see through her lies now. Tim is not bound to the fae realm, not yet, anyways. She has no power over him. (Not yet). Not ever. 
“I’m just here to tell you that I’m winning,” Tim says, faking a confidence he very much does not feel. “Dick and Jason both said I’m their little brother. Alfred cares about me. Even Barbara likes me and they care about what she thinks.”
An infinite number of somethings dances in the Unseelie Queen’s dark, shining eyes. Tim does not dare name any one of them. She is not one to be defined by physical appearances. Sometimes she has four wings like large leaves, humming on her back. Sometimes she is a young girl with the voice of a thousand nightmares, other times an old woman faking good intentions. All Tim has learned regarding appearances is to not look into her abyss-like eyes for too long.
We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits.
“And what of Bruce Wayne?”
“I’m working on it,” Tim says stubbornly. “I have a month left.”
“Be careful, little one. Wayne men do not love easily.” The Unseelie Queen’s smile widens into a grotesque length. “Even when they should.”
Tim squeezes his granola bar until it bends in two. “That’s my problem.”
The Unseelie Queen laughs, like a murder of crows taking flight. “What spirit. Will you not consider staying to entertain my court? We so miss your colorful antics.”
“No,” Tim says firmly. He whirls around and marches back to the fairy circle. The plastic wrapping of his granola bar grows slick with cold sweat. 
“Stay,” the Unseelie Queen commands. The single word thunders, layered with the thousands of humans before Tim that have fallen prey to her. “Timothy Jackson Drake.”
Tim’s steps falter. One foot hesitates in the air too long, and he stumbles. In the human world he sometimes is weightless, a touch lighter than humans. In the fae realm Tim is weighed down by his humanness. His knees sting as he resumes his march. Not so long ago, such defiance would have cost him far more than stinging knees. He’s grown strong on Alfred’s cooking, movie nights with Dick and Jason, and Barbara buying him a phone and a subscription to Crunchyroll because “every boy needs one.” On human food and love. 
She doesn’t have this power over Tim. Not anymore, not yet. Not even with his full name.
A screech rattles around Tim’s brain. A claw curls around his neck. Tim freezes, heart battering at his ribcage. She cannot hurt him. She doesn’t own him (Not yet). 
“If you will not stay,” the Unseelie Queen concedes, “then please, won’t you take a gift with you?” 
Her hand retreats from his neck, scraping skin gently as it goes. In her palm it appears: red and dripping, or bone white, green like fireflies, purple like the sunset. Fae fruit. It hums in her hand, singing a song just for Tim. Even though he knows the cost now, the fae fruit calls to him, promises pure ecstasy and eternal love if only he takes a bite.
Tim shakes his head quickly, eyes shut. “No, thank you,” he whispers. “I brought food from home.”
So saying, he twists the Cliff bar wrapper in trembling hands and attempts to rip the plastic open. The truth is that he hates Cliff bars. They’re his least favorite snack of the many that Alfred has gotten him to try thus far. He brought it to the fae realm for such an occasion, selected out of his many options because he would not mind associating Cliff bars with the fae realm. He already hates them as it is.
It is a novelty, having opinions about human food. Preferences and dislikes. Dick has a tier list of vegetables that he and Jason argue about every once in a while. Jason also has strong opinions about food, but somehow he knew just what to do when Tim said helplessly that he didn’t have any, that he’d eat whatever he was given.
Before Tim can get the granola bar in his mouth, the Unseelie Queen pushes the fae fruit in his face. He retreats, and she pursues, arm outstretched, fruit still calling out to him. 
“Eat,” she insists. “Timothy Drake.”
The command takes root in Tim’s bones, peels him inside out until right is wrong and wrong is right. Against his will, Tim’s free hand reaches for the fruit that is magenta and lime green and coral pink and mushroom white. The texture is soft and a bit rubbery, the shape somewhat like a still-beating heart. Warm, wet, and just a little alive. Tim wishes he could throw it at her. Instead, he takes a bite. It tastes like–
Decay on the wind, petrichor and honeynut squash, spices and arrowroot, freshly overturned dirt still composting, dancing underneath moonlight-dappled branches around firelight, ancient tales told of stars, mirror-like water and water-like glass, lies and trickery and cruelty and brutal honesty–
It tastes like the fae. Seeping into the walls of his throat, leaving dark purple residue on his tongue, a sharp berry taste for him to remember it by. Making him just a little more fae, a little less human. His blue eyes a little brighter, his step a touch too light. It is not such a terrible thing, to be wild, to be fae. But Tim cannot bear the cost.
Tim squeezes the remaining fae fruit until the juice bursts from the skin, running down his fingers in wine red and shining green rivulets. The song dies. He licks his lips. Juice drips from his chin. The Unseelie Queen watches on in satisfaction.
“Thank you for the gift.” Even now, when Tim wishes for nothing more than the right to scream at her until he cries, it would not do to be impolite. One must respect the fae, to say nothing of the Unseelie Queen herself. 
Still, when Tim walks through the fairy circle, he thinks I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, until the words burn into the inside of his brain. 
We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soils they fed their hungry, thirsty roots?
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antebunny · 1 month
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random observations about kudos/hits ratios on ao3
so i've been reading fic on ao3 since uhhhh about 2016? 2015 maybe? and writing since 2018 ish. during those years i've made a few observations about common ao3 reader/author behaviors. i thought i'd share them with the obvious caveat that i am limited to the fandoms i've been in and my own personal experiences
One-Shots
generally the standard for one-shots is a 1/10 kudos/hit ratio. meaning if a fic has 3,000 hits, it has at least 300 kudos.
if a fic has a kudos/hit ratio below 10%, it probably has an unsatisfying ending. i almost never see the ratio lowered for poor writing quality.
the exception is fics tagged Unhappy Ending or Hurt No Comfort. those get less hits but the people reading know what they're getting in to. those fics will generally stay within a 10% range.
generally fluff one-shots or fics that are all comfort, no hurt have the highest ratios of any category of fics, sometimes reaching as high as 20%.
Multi-Chaptered Fics
these fics are damn lucky if they reach 10% lmaooo
this is a gradient of sorts, though. complete fics with 2/3 chapters have a much higher chance of being near a 1/10 kudos/hit ratio, while those decade-long 400k 50 chaptered epics are probably near 1%.
based on how ao3 hits work, i would guess that this is because there's a higher chance of ao3 registering another hit even if the reader is just reading the latest updates.
basically, a 2-chapter fic started and finished within two weeks has a very good chance of being above the 10% ratio. that really long fic you spent a week reading three years ago which made you feel like you just ran a marathon? not a chance.
a brief tangent into chapter lengths: a higher length correlates with higher quality. i want to emphasize (actually, i want to tell twelve-year-old self this, but 12 y/o me is beyond our help now) that quantity does NOT make quality. just because you can squeeze an extra thousand words into chapter 3 doesn't make the story any better. however, in general, the writing quality of a 30k fic with 3 chapters will be higher than that of a 30k fic with 30 chapters.
there are exceptions! i once read a very long fic with very long chapters where the writing was, for lack of a better descriptor, extremely childish. the author mostly rotated the same ten verbs around and around for 100k. also sometimes you read a 400-word one-shot that mentally destroys you for weeks.
of course, at the end of the day none of this matters. i wrote a barely decent 42k 5-chapter fic which is somehow over the 10% ratio. i cannot for the life of me understand why this is. it's not good, you guys. it's really not. on the other hand, i wrote a 37k one-shot which is below the 10% ratio. the kudos/hit ratio has not changed how i view the quality of those fics, it just convinced me that some of y'all have no taste.
these really are just random observations i've made from my six ish years putting fic on the good old Archive. it's not meant to be a reading guide, just something that makes you go "huh."
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antebunny · 1 month
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thoughts about atla from someone who didn't know any chinese when i first watched it but knows a little chinese now (yes i've seen the netflix live action no this isn't about that)
so yuè 月 means moon in chinese. and guess which character is named Yue. that's right it's the one that turns into the goddamn moon. i bet there were chinese speakers watching this show for the first time thinking "oh haha her name means moon waIT WHAT IS SHE DOING. GIRL GET OUT OF THE POND. OHHHH THEY THINK THEY'RE SO CLEVER."
another one i realized recently: the forest spirit, aka the panda that gets turned into the terrifying black and white monster because the fire nation burned down the forest, is called hei bai. and guess what hēi bái 黑白 means in chinese? black white. they named it BLACK WHITE.
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"hey guys what should we name this thing" "uhhh idk nothing really stands out about it"
like imagine if they named aang "orange yellow" or "blue tattoo"
of course, just like yue, atla doesn't use tones for hei bai, so technically hei bai doesn't necessarily mean 黑白. bai could also be, for example, bǎi 百 which means hundred. and Princess Yue, who turns into the actual moon in the goddamn sky, is not necessarily named after the moon. but like c'mon.
anyways there's probably more that i don't know about because i only like 300 words in chinese. but i'm having the time of my life going over my favorite childhood show and realizing the writer's room was laughing at all of us non-chinese speakers all this time.
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antebunny · 1 month
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ok i know it’s my fault for going through bookmarks but this gave me so much emotional damage
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tiktok???? they put my fics on TIKTOK?????
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antebunny · 1 month
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for a good summary of this watch Tone Armor by Overly Sarcastic Productions on youtube. it’s about the type of things that an audience can expect to happen/not happen given the genre of the story.
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Maybe not the biggest culprit behind the Radioactive Bad Takes on this website, but the one that’s bugging me the most lately: Please, I am begging you, learn what genre conventions are and read the text accordingly.
Fiction is not reality and pretty much every genre of fiction has certain standard ways in which it deviates from reality. And I’m not just talking about how we shouldn’t nitpick the physics of how Superman is able to fly. There will be ways in which the characters’ behavior and relationships will be informed by the genre as well and it makes just as little sense to judge them by realistic standards as it does to complain about something in Star Wars being scientifically implausible.
For example, “Adults are Useless” is a well-recognized trope in children’s literature. But that’s not because children’s authors are all going around writing adult characters who are terrible parents or teachers. It’s because the protagonist of a story written for children is almost always going to be a child, and the protagonist of the story has to get into trouble and solve problems themselves for the story to be any good. Yes, in real life, teenagers shouldn’t be fighting in a war. But if the grown-ups stepped in and stopped the teenage protagonist of your action-adventure series from fighting, there would be no story.
Does that mean the grown-up characters in that series are evil people who use child soldiers? No, because we accept a child being in these kinds of situations as a conceit of the genre of children’s fiction, and we interpret the characters and their choices accordingly. We don’t apply a realistic standard because the very premise is unrealistic to start with.
Another example: An adult hitting a child in real life is horrible. But if the child is a superhero, and the adult is a super villain, and they are in a cartoon, then we can’t read it the same way. All cartoons with any kind of action or fighting in them use violence unrealistically, and if the child and adult characters are presented as equally matched adversaries then that’s how any violence between them has to be understood. The villain might be a real bad dude, since he’s, you know, a villain, but hitting a child superhero in the context of a super-fight does not make him a child abuser, specifically.
I’m focusing on children’s books and cartoons here because I think that’s where tumblr fandoms have the biggest trouble with this but it applies to everything. Characters in a romantic comedy won’t behave realistically, characters in fairy tales won’t behave realistically, characters in police procedurals won’t behave realistically, all of them will behave as characters within their specific genre have to in order to make that genre work. The second you start trying to scrutinize every single action a character takes by realistic standards, you miss the point.
Repeat to yourself: “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”
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antebunny · 1 month
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Just learned about garden path sentences.
They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.
So we get gems like
The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)
The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)
The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)
The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)
The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)
We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)
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