tagging/content warning systems for media are often mocked outside of fanfic which is kind of too bad because i do think it'd be a really interesting vector of literary analysis to examine what the author or publisher thinks they should be informing their audience about vs. the actual content of the media in question

tagging my work devoid of any explicit sexual content as "dubcon" and sitting back to watch people fight over what i could have meant by this like i'm a roman emperor watching gladiators being devoured by lions in the coliseum

i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways

a) i forgot how fun this is

b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!

c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"

d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot

me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?

teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.

me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.

You actually cannot skip to being good at a creative endeavour that you haven't put much practice into. You cannot trick your way out of the 'knows that your work is not what you want it to be but don't know how to improve it' stage by planning or reading or talking about it really really hard. At some point you just have to craft through it until your brain finds it's own unique way back to the 'everything I make slaps' stage and be prepared to start the cycle all over again. You just have to make that project you're excited about slightly less good than you want it to be. (Says this standing in a pool of blood and covered in blood and also coughing up a little blood)

everyone stop reblogging this I hate to be reminded of my own good advice

Bob Ross once said "talent is just applied interest". everyone you think is "naturally gifted" in fact put in the exact same amount of practice at their shit as you, they just happened to think practicing was fun so they didn't mind doing it more often

think that everyone has their own personal theme in life

every nolan film is about time. it winds its way through his filmography; it is fractured in memento, distorted in inception, expanded in interstellar, reversed in tenet.

every hopper painting is about stillness. it is found in every brushstroke; at dusk in automat, at dawn in morning sun, at noon in office in a small city, at night in nighthawks.

i have a friend who orbits ideas of power, another who delights in the prosaic and the plain. one weaves around systems and structures, another returns always to wonder at the sea.

there are other elements of course - our lives cannot be measured by single concepts no matter how large they may be - but time and again i think we return to the things that fascinate, the things that intrigue, the things we cannot quite tear ourselves away from. the themes of our lives.

GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3

Other things you can do:

Its fucking amazing. Ao3 is fucking amazing. Can I legally marry a website?

There is nothing better than returning to a text years later and palpably feeling the way your literary criticism skills have expanded since the last time you engaged with the text. It literally feels like you’ve unlocked more text per text each time.

✿ Release: Rosé Pine Site Skins ✿ 

Card Layout

Closer to Home Layout - see instructions

Alternative Tag Styles

UPDATED: 6/17/26

When updating, be sure update all of the skins.

They're finally here! After much ✨ pain and suffering ✨, Rosé Pine skins have finally arrived. Credits to the lovely @zerafinacss for the original neos skin, which forms the bulk of the codebase.

If you notice any issues, feel free to drop a comment on AO3 or shoot me a direct message here.

Also, be sure to check out my userscripts which pair nicely with these skins or the AO3 Essentials script set.

Pictured: My userscripts + FicTracker (BBC's Version)

sometimes i write a scene just to feel something intensely for six minutes and then go back to being a person who pays bills.

An example of why one should use the Oxford comma.

Writer’s Month Prompt List 2026

It's that time of the year again! 31 days of writing prompts. You have two prompts each day, meant to give you a choice if one of them doesn't speak to you, but how you handle them is up to you. Whether you work with only one of them, put both prompts in the same fill or write two fills, one for each prompt.

This even is open for all forms of writing. Original stories, fanfiction, poems, haikus, drabbles or novel lengths. We don’t dictate what you write or how you write it; all fandoms, all ships and all themes are welcome in our event. AI created content is strictly forbidden.

Some important links: Rules (more detailed) | FAQ | AO3 Collection 2026 | Discord Server

As we are halfway through July, a gentle reminder that the events starts in sixteen days!

fic rec ask game

Inspired by the bug me for fic recs ask game. Send an ask with a number and get a fic rec!

We're opening sign-ups a few days early! This is our 7th round, so you might already know how this works, but here are the basics:

🍍 write any AU in no more than 5k

🍍 it's an AU if you say it is

🍍 all fandoms, ships & original fiction welcome

🍍 post any time in August

Complete event info

Sign up over here

The one, the only

every time I don't read for a while I forget it literally feels like a brain massage

Stunned into silence when reading the words "his Daddyship" in an Edgar Alan Poe story