The closer to the end the more satisfying it gets…
Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
#preach
Write Your Story
I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3.
Why?
He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn’t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that’s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me – his first beta – and y'all?
He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.
Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, “There is already a Minecraft story.”
Me: Okay? So what?
Lucifer: If there’s already a story, no one will read mine.
Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, “What if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.”
He laughed.
I showed him Mornings Aren’t For Everyone. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.
Then I said, “So do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love… would anyone read it?”
He laughed and said, “No because you already did.”
So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.
I’m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.
Write your story. It doesn’t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn’t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.
And I want to read your story.
This makes me so happy. Kudos to your son for writing about what gets him excited (omg, I’ve got one all immersed in Minecraft; it’s an 11-year-old THING, isn’t it?). And more kudos to you, for showing him what a big world it is out there, and how easily he can fit into it. That it’s INCLUSIVE, not competitive.
This is beautiful and important on so many levels. What a wonderful and thoughtful mother you are, and also what a message for fic writers, who often feel so competitive with one another. We all have something to say, we all have a story to tell, the worlds we create are not finite. Love this.
“I’ve organized a lot of programs in prison. One of the classes I started is called Creative Parenting. It’s the most popular class here. The waiting list is really long. I don’t have any kids myself, but I noticed that most guys are really soft for their kids. So that gave me an idea. Mainly we just make stuff and send it to the kids. We’ll do coloring projects where the father will color half the picture, and the kid will color the second half. We write bedtime stories. Most of the guys write about sports, but we make sure that every story has a moral. Sometimes we’ll take funny photos and send them to the kids. One guy’s daughter was really into My Little Pony. He was a tough guy. He was in a gang and everything, but he put his hair into pigtails and pretended to be a horse. We did another class where we made cards for kids with cancer. I had my family set it up with a hospital. We made about 200 cards. They didn’t want us to write ‘I hope you feel better,’ because that reminds the kids of what they’re going through. So we tried to keep it focused on Christmas. There were 150 guys in my unit, and 60 signed up for that program. A lot of the guys had to wait outside because the room was too small.”
(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)
“My walking patterns have changed since I got a cat.” - Brian Fritz
This post was going around earlier – according to @intheshadowofsignificance (whom I trust) these links are viruses and the whole thing may be a hoax.
Be safe, y’all!
If anyone’s antivirus has “website security” you can also google their database and type the url.
For example, Norton has a huge database of websites complete with user reviews and analysis specifically for safety. There are other sites out there as well but I can’t vouch for their legitimacy.
Anyway, they’ll tell you every single website on this list is suspicious, as well as try to reveal discrepancies in the listed location.
Several claim to be located in the U.S but are hidden / unable to be verified. One is actually proven to be located in the Netherlands (I believe that one is talkfictions but it’s been a bit since I looked into this)
OP’s heart was in the right place but please, P l e a s e don’t click the links!
sorry folks! This happened for real last year on AO3 and I thought it was more of the same.
My friend’s stuff was listed on these sites so I thought it was OK/safe.
Hopefully I caught you before you clicked.@danseru-kun ABORT ABORT!!!!
one of those days
Tender veggies and squishy, slurpable noodles swim in spicy broth in this deliciously satisfying hot and sour glass noodle soup.
windows 8 can suck my dick
I can’t believe how far technology has come