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.
Holy crap, this is A+ parenting and such a good lesson.
Can I just say that I really like that the person who is telling the story tried to “help” the crayon too? I think that’s really important, that the pencil tried to sharpen Blue. I think a lot of us have felt like we could fix people or had people try to fix us, or tried to fix ourselves. If I just try hard enough I can be what people expect me to be…
I can’t help but think how important a book like this would be to a kid, especially the crayon at the end saying how much Blue’s work moved it. You can give so much to the world by being yourself, your true own self. ;_; I just have a lot of feelings.
Yes, I am crying, thank you.
@roughkiss, I’m positive that one day one of your kids in school will be happy you have that book. ❤️
I’m working on a new riso zine! This one will be about convergent evolution!
The cover shows off a bunch of different times opposable thumbs have evolved in the animal kingdom (specifically, mammals.) Primates are most well known for having thumbs, but other animals, like the Virginia opossum (back paw), giant panda, red panda, koala, and pencil-tailed tree mouse (back paw), also evolved some good grabby grabbers! The really cool thing is that giant pandas and red pandas aren’t actually related to each other (giant panda is a basal bear, red panda belongs to its own group called ailuridae) but BOTH evolved “thumbs” in a unique way by using a wrist bone instead of a finger bone. This is because both animals primarily eat bamboo, and that sorta hand shape is perfect for gripping onto bamboo!
“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
So I work at a video game store in a mall and across the hall from us is this really nice suit shop. One day one of the guys came in an asked if they could use our microwave (the store they used to go to closed down) and we bargined for use of their bathroom in return since the mall bathrooms are like a 5 min trek.
So for like three months now we just have these men in really nice suits come in and talk while using our microwave and teach them about nerdy shit? Then I, the goblin king in various shitty tee shirts and paint stained pants, walk into their super expensive store and just get greeted with “Yo dude what’s good?” and talk about the pains of steaming silken dress shirts properly and it’s my favorite business interaction every day
A new jewelry store opened up right next to our store and when I used the bathroom today we were talking about it. I hate it on principle (they flooded our systems closet during building) and immediately both Suit Guys™ working went on mini rants. “Their suits are baggy as hell, I wouldn’t trust them to sell me a $9,000 ring when they can’t get a fitted jacket. They look so unprofessional, ” and “I saw one of the dude’s wearing a teal shirt. It’s fall, and you go with teal? At least get a color to match your store if you’re gonna ignore the seasons like that, Christ, but teal is awful.”
I told the guys (Teal Man is Spencer and Baggy-Suits Guy is Arnold) that this post got this popular and they’re both super excited.
Arnold: “Sweet, we’re internet famous!”
Spencer: “131,000?!”
Arnold: “What are notes? What does that mean, is that good?”
Arnold bargined that if it gets more notes, I can A: post a pic of them crouching with peace signs in front of the Notorious Jewelry Store and B: post the video of him long boarding down to Macy’s and back lmaoooo
Shuri shouting out the floor is lava and recording the confusion among the avengers wondering why tchalla king of Wakanda hopped up on a counter cause goddammit his little sister pulls this shit all the time and peter is stuck on the wall because he’s also a child of the internet and understands the meme life and now his fate is sealed there will never not be a time Shuri isn’t camera ready and yelling out the floor is lava to see the wackiest places she could get peter to stick on
T’Challa ignored her once so she developed synthetic deployable lava and the next time she yelled the floor is lava it actually was. T’Challa lives in fear now because he knows if he doesn’t pretend the floor is dangerous, it will be.
together we will create a home with no loud anger, no explosive rage, no slamming doors or breaking glass, no holes punched into the walls so hard that the foundation rocks and cracks. our home will be gentle, it will be warm. i will keep you safe and you will keep me still. no fear, no hurt, no worry. we come from broken and twisted places but together we will build something whole and safe. we will curl around each other like a pair of quotation marks at night, warm and comforted. in the mornings, you’ll sing in the shower again. we will heal, and we will raise a family that doesn’t need to heal.
Such a wholesome post, love it.
Oh, I have some muses hugging their little family right now…
Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption. Fandom is sitting for hours in front of a TV screen a movie screen a computer screen with a comic book a novel on your lap. Fandom is eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome and not enough exercise and staying up way, way past your bedtime.
Fandom is people you don’t tell your mother you’re meeting. Fandom is people in the closet, people out and proud, people in costumes, people in T-shirts with slogans only fifty others would understand. Fandom is a loud dinner conversation scaring the waiter and every table nearby.
Fandom is you in Germany and me in the US and him in Australia and her in Japan. Fandom is a sofabed in New York, a roadtrip to Oxnard, a friend behind a face in London. Fandom talks past timezones and accents and backgrounds. Fandom is conversation. Communication. Contact.
Fandom is drama. Fandom is melodrama. Fandom is high school. Fandom is Snacky’s law and Godwin’s law and Murphy’s law. Fandom is smarter than you. Fandom is stupider than you. Fandom is five arguments over and over and over again. Fandom is the first time you’ve ever had them.
Fandom is female. Fandom is male. Fandom lets female play at being male. Fandom bends gender, straight, gay, prude, promiscuous. Fandom is fantasy. Fandom doesn’t care about norms or taboos or boundaries. Fandom cares too much about norms and taboos and boundaries. Fandom is not real life. Fandom is closer than real life. Fandom knows what you’re really like in the bedroom. Fandom is how you would never, could never be in the bedroom.
Fandom is shipping, never shipping, het, slash, gen, none of the above, more than the above. Fandom is love for characters you didn’t create. Fandom is recreating the characters you didn’t create. Fandom is appropriation, subversion, dissention. Fandom is adoration, extrapolation, imitation. Fandom is dissection, criticism, interpretation. Fandom is changing, experimenting, attempting.
Fandom is creating. Fandom is drawing, painting, vidding: nine seasons in four minutes of love. Fandom is words, language, authoring. Fandom is essays, stories, betas, parodies, filks, zines, usenet posts, blog posts, message board posts, emails, chats, petitions, wank, concrit, feedback, recs. Fandom is writing for the first time since you were twelve. Fandom is finally calling yourself a writer.
Fandom is signal and response. Fandom is a stranger moving you to tears, anger, laughter. Fandom is you moving a stranger to speak.
Fandom is distraction. Fandom is endangering your job, your grades, your relationships, your bank account. Fandom gets no work done. Fandom is too much work. Fandom was/is just a phase. Fandom could never be just a phase. Fandom is where you found a friend, a sister, a kindred spirit. Fandom is where you found a talent, a love, a reason.
Question of Smoke 