#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

It's not as if I think r/fanfiction is complete trash or I wouldn't be there, but honestly...some of the posts on that subreddit have the unfortunate side effect of causing brain cells to fall out of my head. It's like ticking psychic damage.

Almost all the posts about feedback are whining about the exact feedback received or are complaining about the lack of feedback in general. Like I don't know what to tell these people except that the former leads to the latter and almost everyone who gets no feedback is doing something wrong or has set their expectations too high.

There's a post on there today by a perfectly nice person who doesn't know how to deal with the lack of engagement on their fics and there's just not a kind way of saying "you're writing for a 30+ year old fandom and you're not writing what people want to see there" so I had to pretty much just tell them that.

A lot of the metrics for engagement are in your control (the fandom and characters you write about, the tropes you use). If I wrote 100k word long fics for a popular ship in a popular fandom I'd have more engagement than I knew what to do with.

I'm the one who chose to write about a 20 year old fandom. I'm the one who chose to write about an unpopular ship. I'm the one who chose to write about babies and children and pregnancy TWICE IN A ROW (two of the biggest squicks in fandom). I did this to me. I knew going in it might be rough. I feel blessed to have readers at all to be honest.

Like I fully understand that low engagement sucks. My spouse gets on me about "wasting my time writing stuff two people will read" (when I could be doing other things). But I started writing the 'fic knowing damn well there was a good chance I wouldn't have an audience at all.

The person from today's post had someone comment on every chapter of their story and better stats than I can manage in the ToS fandom. I don't think it's just a comparative "they're doing pretty well" situation either. I honestly believe that their stats are pretty good for an old fandom. Why did they expect more, this being their first set of works published?

Again, I understand feeling disappointment, but to go and post on Reddit about it... I just can't. And this isn't even getting into the people who whine about the comments they do receive. I might rant about that later though.

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: fanfiction subreddit

[blorbology]

"Five times x, one times y" fics hold a special place in my heart.

Why, you might ask? THEY HAVE THE RANGE, DARLING. They're deliciously versatile! They can be a bunch of vaguely related scenes following the theme or they can tell a cohesive narrative story. They can be any genre. They can be about any characters. You can have short punchy scenes or long scenes or BOTH IN THE STORY. You can post it as a oneshot broken apart by scene or as a chaptered story where each "time" is its own chapter!

But most importantly, these stories come with built-in guidelines tailor-made for idiots like me who love to imagine scenes in my head. With these fics, I have an excuse to just write a bunch of Scenes about the same shit.

#blorbology 101 #i'm so serious right now these fics are so so good

[blorbology]

In today's episode of "r/ao3 and r/fanfiction are full of entitled people" I was sent a post where someone was trying to tell authors it was okay to delete their works. I swear 99% of the comments on the damn post are people saying things like, "Well yeah it's like...legal sure, but that doesn't mean they should do it. It's [mean/rude/cruel] to delete! Orphaning is superior. Authors should orphan instead. Don't be an asshole, orphan your works if you're embarrassed by them!" Oh, and my favorite, "It's fundamentally wrong to take art out of the world."

SHUT UP.

It's my hard work and if I want to exercise control over my own property then I will. I am not orphaning or abandoning my creation. It's mine. If I decide a fanfic needs to get deleted, then I will delete it. This does not make me a mean, cruel, rude, or otherwise bad person. Period.

I understand that people don't want to see their favorite stories deleted but the entitlement is out of control. The story isn't yours: it's the author's to use as they see fit.

And I can't believe I have to say this, but no, you're not entitled to the reason for deletion: that's the author's business, end of story. Imagine thinking your judgment of their particular reasoning should mean anything to anyone. You don't get to decide if the reason was good enough. Ugh.

If authors want to delete their fanfics they should be allowed to do so without being looked down on for it.

(This isn't even touching the weird camp of entitled people who refuse to engage in fandom yet cry when fics are deleted by an author due to zero engagement. If you liked the fucking story so much you should have taken the time to tell the author so. This is just common sense. But God knows you can't find that on Reddit lmao.)

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: fanfiction subreddit

[blorbology]

While we're at it, maybe we authors can do more to encourage commenters. But to do that, I have to address what I feel is a very concerning trend in fandom lately.

I cannot even begin to understand what the entitled assholes on r/fanfiction are thinking when they complain about the comments they get. Like, what is going through their head when they bitch on Twitter because someone said something about their fic that wasn't glowing praise? Take this entitled holier-than-thou attitude and dispose of it immediately in the nearest waste receptacle.

Please.

I'm begging you.

You can't have lots of engagement without being open to different interpretations of your work. Sometimes that means someone will leave a comment that isn't to your taste. I see so many people on that damn subreddit whining that someone commented something just slightly "off-kilter." "Wahhhh they said they love my story but didn't care for the way I ended it!! HOW DARE THEY!!" "I'm so angry I had to vent because someone left a comment saying I rated my story wrong!" "It's so rude that commenters ask for more writing from me wTF!!!"

I personally don't care if people criticize the hell out of my fic. It's posted publicly and I love it when people engage with my work to such a degree that they can tell me what they didn't like about it (and sometimes how to even fix it). To me, this is the holy grail of fanfic writing, when someone is just completely honest about my work. I don't take every criticism into account (sometimes commenters are wrong or I just like to do things my way), but I value the commenter's "take" for what it is: knowledge about my work and how a real person reacted to it.

That said, the current trend seems to be "don't criticize unless the author asks you to." I think this is fine; it's better to be safe than sorry, it's better to not hurt someone's feelings if you can avoid it. I no longer critique 'fics unless asked because of this.

That said, everyone's line in the sand is drawn in a different place. Some people can't even stand receiving a comment pointing out a typo while other people would be upset if you didn't point out a typo you noticed.

And in a world where none of us are mind-readers, if you really want feedback on your fanfiction, you do sometimes have to accept that sometimes you'll receive the kind of comment that you don't like. Maybe it's just not to your taste, the commenter wasn't nice enough or didn't word things well—whatever the case may be.

Getting bent out of shape over it and crying on a fanfiction subreddit is just embarrassing. Delete hateful comments that are not constructive, don't reply to something that upsets you, and consider just saying, "Thank you for reading!" or even, "I appreciate the feedback!" if it's somewhere in the middle. It really is that easy.

Because when you start getting picky about what kinds of comments others are "allowed" to leave on your work, you'll find nobody wants to leave one at all. (And r/fanfiction has enough posts crying about lack of feedback, lmao.)

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: fanfiction subreddit

[blorbology]

I don't know who needs to read this but fanfiction (and therefore fandom) is a social experience.

#blorbology 101 #i have like 5 incoming rant posts i s2g

[blorbology]

"Writing for yourself" is about the content you produce, not the physical act of writing so that only you can read it. If we were truly writing only for ourselves and our own enjoyment, those documents would stay on our hard drives where we could enjoy them in private.

Most fanfic authors share their work to get interaction and form a social connection to others—yes, even when they write primarily for themselves.

That said, when you tailor your writing specifically to you and your own interests, it does tend to limit your potential readership.

It's not the vicious cycle that many people believe it is, but it is still a cycle.

So write the content you want to read and see in your fandom, because if you're going to struggle to get comments anyway, you might as well get them on a story you're passionate about telling.

#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

I spent years refusing to even outline or THINK about a story until I had a title for it. Not one word. I had a Word document full of titles I wanted to use and if those didn't suit I'd literally sit there with a blank document open until I thought of a title.

I'm not really sure why I was like this except that I was a chronic save-the-file person and I absolutely hated having to save the file as "untitled" or some other nonsense. It's just funny to me that last year when I started writing again, I found that at least fleshing out the concept of a story is enough to either give me a title or direction to find one. In fact, in rewriting a lot of my old 'fics, I've noticed that the titles I'd chosen for most of my earliest works were just...bad—and not bad like 'cringey' bad, but just very generic or meaningless or (worst of all) unrelated to the actual story.

And then there was that time I named a story "ChaChaCha! Charmin!" which was not just very on brand, it was also exactly what you think it was. I literally paved the way for some of the worst fics in the early 2000s anime fandoms, have some respect.

Anyway, currently outlining something I still don't have a title for. Wish me luck. :P

#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

"declining tethe'alla au" this, "mausoleum fic" that. "romance author au" ajglkdsjfadlsa "fake dating story" ARghghghlkgfjsafkdsa NO!!! ENOUGH.

i cannot keep referring to these masterpieces of literature in such boring ways. these rogue bastards need real names. TITLES, my good man. THEY NEED TITLES.

so help me god by the end of the night i wiLL have titles chosen for some of these fics.

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: tales of symphonia #me 7000 words into an outline: mausoleum fic #NO!! you dumb bitch! use your brain! come up with a title! pLEASE

[blorbology]

i love losing brain cells on r/fanfiction

#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

every day i go on r/fanfiction and every day i lose brain cells there. i kind of want to study some of the people there like bugs. why are some of the takes there SO DAMN BAD? why are people so incredibly rude?

stay tuned

#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

It's been a hot minute since I've written a prologue to anything, mostly because I find the majority of prologues are unnecessary and add nothing to the story.

In Break Open the Sky it made sense to slowly unravel the party scene through dream sequences and memories because nothing was really hinging on that evening mattering or not; it was more of a personal hangup for Raine in the, "I did something stupid two years ago and I hope he doesn't remember/hold that against me" sense—a hazy memory that embarrasses her but doesn't affect the main events of the story.

However, Love Is the Crooked Thing's equivalent scene is a very important conversation followed immediately by a substantial timeskip (10 years!). I can't help but feel that a prologue featuring that conversation is the best way to open the story; without it, we lose that connection to the characters as they are when they actually have the conversation and only see their thoughts after they've had ten years to consider it.

Capturing their immediate reaction felt important to explain why they act the way they do ten full years in the future—especially Regal, in this case.

Anyway, all of this was for me to say: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I hate what I wrote with every fiber of my being and I'm not in the right frame of mind to edit it now, so I have to wait patiently (not my forte) for tomorrow to read it over again with a fresh brain. But at least I have something down. (You can't edit zero words, after all.)

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: tales of symphonia #writing project: love is the crooked thing

[blorbology]

zOld Fic is where I hide the shame of my youth; pay it no mind.

When I make a folder for something...that's when you know I'm serious about it. My works in progress have names. The truly difficult thing here is to pick just one to work on. (I LOVE ALL MY IDEAS EQUALLY I SWEAR...)

This doesn't even include half the dumb ideas I've had (and might have even outlined). I'm hoping I can blast out another 100k this year, but we'll see.

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: tales of symphonia #behold my beautifully organized fanfiction

[blorbology]

The other day I was thinking about the fact that I've been told my longer fics are written in a fairly unique way. While I view this observation as neither negative nor positive (it is what it is), I thought it might be interesting to dig into that particular topic more.

I feel like writing style works similarly to artistic style: you tend to come into your own eventually after enough practice and work at your craft. I couldn't actually cite a specific writer as inspiration for my writing style (or "voice" I suppose), but I also tend to not want to mimic prose styles—not even the ones I like the most. Because of this, even my earliest "writing voice" would probably feel somewhat familiar to anyone used to my work.

It feels weird to say I've always had a stable writing voice, but that's more or less the truth for me. I've bettered it over the years (versus finding it the way some do), but I think I've always felt secure in what I had. It probably helped that the old days of FFN gave me hundreds of reviews on 'fics and a lot of encouragement.

A long time ago, I saw a piece of fanart I really liked, and sought to redraw it in real life. This was the early 2000s, maybe 2002 or 2003. It was an MLP fanart of...I want to say Glory and Baby Glory (from the 80s), and I redid it on a huge piece of paper I'd taken from my school's art room. I busted ass to replicate the piece. It was a great replica, actually, and I posted it online, eager to share my hard work. I'm sure you can imagine what happened! The community recognized the source immediately and was annoyed with me. They scolded me for copying an artist, explained why that wasn't a good idea, and I never did it again. (I felt stupid but I realized that day that nobody cared how well I could replicate someone else's hard work; people wanted to see my spin on the idea.)

After that, I always had my own very recognizable style of art and I didn't seek to recreate the work of others, even if I liked it a lot. I just started drawing what I wanted how I wanted to do it—in my own style.

While I found many things to like about the prose of friends and published authors, I never tried to mimic someone else's prose wholesale. I've never even been tempted by it; writing like someone else feels so incredibly unnatural; I'd sooner give up writing entirely than tell my stories the way someone else would.

That said, this post isn't really about writing "voice" so much as the specific way I tend to tell stories, though I do think actual writing style factors in here, and I'll get to that in a second.

My favorite genre of fiction for a good number of years was historical "inspirational" fiction. You may laugh if you wish, but I grew up in a very strict Christian household, and...frankly there wasn't much literature to choose from. My mom loved doing "daily devotions" and at some point, on the recommendation of someone else, she started reading us "Love Comes Softly" by Janette Oke. All four of us kids really loved it. We memed the hell out of it and to this day we have at least one in-joke based on it. It was part of a long book series, and eventually I read them all. This book tackled a surprising amount of issues, including domestic violence, and had a great trope that I still adore: a marriage of convenience.

I was obsessed with Janette Oke's books after that. Roses for Mama, The Bluebird and the Sparrow, A Bride for Donnigan, the four-book seasons series, and They Called Her Mrs. Doc. There were plenty more, but those were some of the most iconic to me.

If you didn't know, the very specific subgenre of Historical Inspirational Romance Fiction (can I call it HIRF?) tends to read similarly across the genre. Some novels play up the romance a little more, some the relationships between the characters, some the faith aspect, but generally speaking these books tend to have predictable elements. The male lead usually has a bestie he's emotionally vulnerable and open to. The female lead's friends, siblings, and/or other family members are important to her and play a role in the story. These stories tend to feature or utilize animals. There is almost always a focus on relationships overall, in every story. In Roses for Mama a family of four is orphaned and the oldest two siblings raise the youngest two and run the farm. The primary relationships are between the four siblings and their friend group(s). The challenges of "parenting" siblings are here. Kids tend to act like kids in these books too. There are huge varieties in the ages of characters and some young women have best friends who are decades older than they are. Some of these writers are very serious too about being accurate regarding the places they're writing about (coal towns full of immigrants who are mistreated by the coal companies for example).

The first book I loved was I'll Always Love You by Hans Wilhelm. The Velveteen Rabbit also holds a place in my heart.

Relationships are ALWAYS at the core of everything I write these days. I love exploring how people affect the world around them. I like to write about the complexities of sibling relationships and friendships over the years. I love history and how "the times" impacted the way relationships worked. HIRF was foundational to me as a reader and a lot of those elements are things I have chosen to carry with me. Everything I write is about a character journey more than it's about anything else.

Yes, I want to write about the blorbos in situations, but these situations are a means to an end. I want the situation to happen but I want to explore every facet of how it affects the blorbos.

Dumping a baby on Raine in Break Open the Sky was a way to explore a character trying to do the right thing but feeling completely overwhelmed by it. It was about breaking cycles and doing better for the next generation. It was about choices, about how difficult they can be to make even when they're selfish. And it was about learning to trust and love while finally having a place and the safety to begin healing from trauma. The baby was the means to that end—a plot vehicle, yes, but hopefully she didn't feel that way because she had her own needs and impacted the story right to the very end.

I think my particular writing style, my "voice" if you will, lends itself well to this particular type of slow-burn character-study-esque storytelling. I try to hit a middle ground with descriptions and write a lot of engaging dialogue. I try to write people being people without being too sparse or detailed. Both sparse and detailed writing have their places and genres they do really well in, but in the very weird subgenre of writing I've nestled into I do think my voice tells the story to satisfaction.

As to what subgenre I'm writing in... I honestly don't know what to call it. It's like HIRF in spirit, but I tend to substitute more "adult" themes for the romance and have less or no focus on religious faith (though it depends on the characters). I don't actually think there's a name for it, though of course if someone has a name for it, I'd be happy to learn what it is. In the meantime I'll just consider what I write to be HIRF-adjacent.

#blorbology 101 #writing

[blorbology]

so far this year:

i feel...pretty powerful right now

#blorbology 101

[blorbology]

The World Could Be Beautiful is complete and the ending is exactly as sappy as you might imagine.

I'm going to be off my gourd over this for at least 24 hours. Maybe I'll rewrite something old tomorrow idk.

#me panicking instantly: what do i write next #blorbology 101 #blorbology: tales of symphonia

[blorbology]

don't mind me, i'm just beating myself up every time i type stupid phrases like "humanly possible" that would just read as terribly fucking awful if i didn't caTCH theM ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'M SORRY RAINE I DON'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!!!!

#blorbology 101 #blorbology: tales of symphonia #there are SO MANY PHRASES that are like. just. hard to remember not to use