what type of girlie are you
write first, edit later
edit while i write
i have two hands
i don't do edits we die like men
other (discuss in the tags)
See Resultsi do a mix. i can do both, i have two hands
Linwëlin Writes
Writing resources, thoughts, and other words from a fanfic enthusiast
The Power of Silence in Dialogue
We often think of dialogue as something that’s just about what characters say, but let’s talk about what they don’t say. Silence can be one of the most powerful tools in your writing toolbox. Here’s why:
1. The Unspoken Tension
When characters leave things unsaid, it adds layers to their interactions. Silence can create a tension that’s so thick you could cut it with a knife. It shows things are happening beneath the surface—the real conversation is happening in what’s left unspoken.
Example:
“So, you’re leaving, huh?” He didn’t look up from the table, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass, slow and deliberate. “Yeah.”
“Guess I should’ve expected this.”
(Silence.)
“You’re not mad?”
“I’m not mad,” she said, but the way her voice broke was louder than anything she'd said all night.
2. Building Anticipation or Drama
Sometimes silence can heighten the drama, creating a pause where the reader feels like something big is about to happen. You don’t always need words to convey that sense of dread or anticipation.
Example:
They stood there, side by side, staring at the door that had just closed behind him. “You should’ve stopped him.”
She didn’t answer.
“You should’ve said something.”
The room felt colder.
“I couldn’t.”
(Silence.)
3. Creating Emotional Impact
Sometimes, saying nothing can have the biggest emotional punch. Silence gives the reader a chance to interpret the scene, to sit with the feelings that aren’t being voiced.
Example:
He opened the letter and read it. And then, without saying a word, he folded it back up and placed it in the drawer. His fingers lingered on the wood for a long time before he closed it slowly, too slowly. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
TL;DR
Silence isn’t just a pause between dialogue—it’s a powerful tool for deepening emotional tension, building anticipation, and revealing character. Next time you write a scene, ask yourself: what isn’t being said? And how can that silence say more than the words ever could?
How to plant information elegantly
Say, for example, you’re writing a swimming pool scene and you need to plant the fact that Susan is blonde, because in a few chapters, the detective will find a blond hair at the crime scene.
You want the planted information to be memorable, but at the same time not stand out too much. The ideal is to push the information into the reader’s subconscious without a neon light arrow saying, “You might want to remember this, dear reader. This will be relevant!” The planted information needs to feel natural, organic, but memorable enough so when it turns out to be ✨a clue✨, your reader thinks, “I should have seen it!”
Let’s look at some options.
Susan, who is blonde, took a deep breath and dived into the pool.
This feels forced and awkward. The two pieces of information (pool + blonde) are not connected, the fact that she is blonde feels irrelevant and shoved in. If the reader remembers this, it’s because they noticed how the information is forced upon them.
Elegant ⭐
Memorable ⭐⭐
Organic ⭐
The blonde Susan swam across the pool. / The blonde, Susan, swam across the pool.
This feels more natural, but there’s a danger that only the swimming will stick into the reader’s mind because her being blonde is so unnoticeable. There is also a minor danger that the reader will expect an non-blonde Susan to show up in the first variation.
Elegant ⭐⭐
Memorable ⭐
Organic ⭐⭐
Susan was annoyed. She had just washed her hair with that ridiculously expensive Luscious Blonde shampoo and now her friends wanted to go swimming? What a waste of money.
This feels natural and organic, because both elements are conveyed from Susan’s point of view. They are both relevant and connected, and on top of that you get to build Susan’s character.
Elegant ⭐⭐⭐
Memorable ⭐⭐⭐
Organic ⭐⭐⭐
Her friends were already in the pool, but Susan held up her pocket mirror, making absolutely sure that the latex cap wouldn’t let any water in. She just had her hair bleached and after the debacle of 2019, she would never forget what chlorinated water did to bleached hair.
Susan’s POV makes her blond hair relevant to the swimming, as with the example above, but this time you’re presenting a completely different character. It feels organic and personal, and the fact that she is blonde will be lodged into the reader’s mind without screaming “It’s a clue!”.
Elegant ⭐⭐⭐
Memorable ⭐⭐⭐
Organic ⭐⭐⭐
I hope this is helpful! Follow me for more writing tips or browse my entire collection of writing advice now.
Happy writing!
The Neurodivergent Writer’s Guide to Fun and Productivity
(Even when life beats you down)
Look, I’m a mom, I have ADHD, I’m a spoonie. To say that I don’t have heaps of energy to spare and I struggle with consistency is an understatement. For years, I tried to write consistently, but I couldn’t manage to keep up with habits I built and deadlines I set.
So fuck neurodivergent guides on building habits, fuck “eat the frog first”, fuck “it’s all in the grind”, and fuck “you just need time management”—here is how I manage to write often and a lot.
Focus on having fun, not on the outcome
This was the groundwork I had to lay before I could even start my streak. At an online writing conference, someone said: “If you push yourself and meet your goals, and you publish your book, but you haven’t enjoyed the process… What’s the point?” and hoo boy, that question hit me like a truck.
I was so caught up in the narrative of “You’ve got to show up for what’s important” and “Push through if you really want to get it done”. For a few years, I used to read all these productivity books about grinding your way to success, and along the way I started using the same language as they did. And I notice a lot of you do so, too.
But your brain doesn’t like to grind. No-one’s brain does, and especially no neurodivergent brain. If having to write gives you stress or if you put pressure on yourself for not writing (enough), your brain’s going to say: “Huh. Writing gives us stress, we’re going to try to avoid it in the future.”
So before I could even try to write regularly, I needed to teach my brain once again that writing is fun. I switched from countable goals like words or time to non-countable goals like “fun” and “flow”.
Rewire my brain: writing is fun and I’m good at it
I used everything I knew about neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences. These are some of the things I did before and during a writing session. Usually not all at once, and after a while I didn’t need these strategies anymore, although I sometimes go back to them when necessary.
- I journalled all the negative thoughts I had around writing and try to reason them away, using arguments I knew in my heart were true. (The last part is the crux.) Imagine being supportive to a writer friend with crippling insecurities, only the friend is you.
- Not setting any goals didn’t work for me—I still nurtured unwanted expectations. So I did set goals, but made them non-countable, like “have fun”, “get in the flow”, or “write”. Did I write? Yes. Success! Your brain doesn’t actually care about how high the goal is, it cares about meeting whatever goal you set.
- I didn’t even track how many words I wrote. Not relevant.
- I set an alarm for a short time (like 10 minutes) and forbade myself to exceed that time. The idea was that if I write until I run out of mojo, my brain learns that writing drains the mojo. If I write for 10 minutes and have fun, my brain learns that writing is fun and wants to do it again.
- Reinforce the fact that writing makes you happy by rewarding your brain immediately afterwards. You know what works best for you: a walk, a golden sticker, chocolate, cuddle your dog, whatever makes you happy.
- I conditioned myself to associate writing with specific stimuli: that album, that smell, that tea, that place. Any stimulus can work, so pick one you like. I consciously chose several stimuli so I could switch them up, and the conditioning stays active as long as I don’t muddle it with other associations.
- Use a ritual to signal to your brain that Writing Time is about to begin to get into the zone easier and faster. I guess this is a kind of conditioning as well? Meditation, music, lighting a candle… Pick your stimulus and stick with it.
- Specifically for rewiring my brain, I started a new WIP that had no emotional connotations attached to it, nor any pressure to get finished or, heaven forbid, meet quality norms. I don’t think these techniques above would have worked as well if I had applied them on writing my novel.
It wasn’t until I could confidently say I enjoyed writing again, that I could start building up a consistent habit. No more pushing myself.
I lowered my definition for success
When I say that nowadays I write every day, that’s literally it. I don’t set out to write 1,000 or 500 or 10 words every day (tried it, failed to keep up with it every time)—the only marker for success when it comes to my streak is to write at least one word, even on the days when my brain goes “naaahhh”. On those days, it suffices to send myself a text with a few keywords or a snippet. It’s not “success on a technicality (derogatory)”, because most of those snippets and ideas get used in actual stories later. And if they don’t, they don’t. It’s still writing. No writing is ever wasted.
A side note on high expectations, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism
Obviously, “Setting a ridiculously low goal” isn’t something I invented. I actually got it from those productivity books, only I never got it to work. I used to tell myself: “It’s okay if I don’t write for an hour, because my goal is to write for 20 minutes and if I happen to keep going for, say, an hour, that’s a bonus.” Right? So I set the goal for 20 minutes, wrote for 35 minutes, and instead of feeling like I exceeded my goal, I felt disappointed because apparently I was still hoping for the bonus scenario to happen. I didn’t know how to set a goal so low and believe it.
I think the trick to making it work this time lies more in the groundwork of training my brain to enjoy writing again than in the fact that my daily goal is ridiculously low. I believe I’m a writer, because I prove it to myself every day. Every success I hit reinforces the idea that I’m a writer. It’s an extra ward against imposter syndrome.
Knowing that I can still come up with a few lines of dialogue on the Really Bad Days—days when I struggle to brush my teeth, the day when I had a panic attack in the supermarket, or the day my kid got hit by a car—teaches me that I can write on the mere Bad-ish Days.
The more I do it, the more I do it
The irony is that setting a ridiculously low goal almost immediately led to writing more and more often. The most difficult step is to start a new habit. After just a few weeks, I noticed that I needed less time and energy to get into the zone. I no longer needed all the strategies I listed above.
Another perk I noticed, was an increased writing speed. After just a few months of writing every day, my average speed went from 600 words per hour to 1,500 wph, regularly exceeding 2,000 wph without any loss of quality.
Talking about quality: I could see myself becoming a better writer with every passing month. Writing better dialogue, interiority, chemistry, humour, descriptions, whatever: they all improved noticeably, and I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.
The increased speed means I get more done with the same amount of energy spent. I used to write around 2,000-5,000 words per month, some months none at all. Nowadays I effortlessly write 30,000 words per month. I didn’t set out to write more, it’s just a nice perk.
Look, I’m not saying you should write every day if it doesn’t work for you. My point is: the more often you write, the easier it will be.
No pressure
Yes, I’m still working on my novel, but I’m not racing through it. I produce two or three chapters per month, and the rest of my time goes to short stories my brain keeps projecting on the inside of my eyelids when I’m trying to sleep. I might as well write them down, right?
These short stories started out as self-indulgence, and even now that I take them more seriously, they are still just for me. I don’t intend to ever publish them, no-one will ever read them, they can suck if they suck. The unintended consequence was that my short stories are some of my best writing, because there’s no pressure, it’s pure fun.
Does it make sense to spend, say, 90% of my output on stories no-one else will ever read? Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that creative energy and time on my novel? Well, yes. If you find the magic trick, let me know, because I haven’t found it yet. The short stories don’t cannibalize on the novel, because they require different mindsets. If I stopped writing the short stories, I wouldn’t produce more chapters. (I tried. Maybe in the future? Fingers crossed.)
Don’t wait for inspiration to hit
There’s a quote by Picasso: “Inspiration hits, but it has to find you working.” I strongly agree. Writing is not some mystical, muse-y gift, it’s a skill and inspiration does exist, but usually it’s brought on by doing the work. So just get started and inspiration will come to you.
Accountability and community
Having social factors in your toolbox is invaluable. I have an offline writing friend I take long walks with, I host a monthly writing club on Discord, and I have another group on Discord that holds me accountable every day. They all motivate me in different ways and it’s such a nice thing to share my successes with people who truly understand how hard it can be.
The productivity books taught me that if you want to make a big change in your life or attitude, surrounding yourself with people who already embody your ideal or your goal huuuugely helps. The fact that I have these productive people around me who also prioritize writing, makes it easier for me to stick to my own priorities.
Your toolbox
The idea is to have several techniques at your disposal to help you stay consistent. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by focussing on just one technique. Keep all of them close, and if one stops working or doesn’t inspire you today, pivot and pick another one.
After a while, most “tools” run in the background once they are established. Things like surrounding myself with my writing friends, keeping up with my daily streak, and listening to the album I conditioned myself with don’t require any energy, and they still remain hugely beneficial.
Do you have any other techniques? I’d love to hear about them!
I hope this was useful. Happy writing!
Throwback thursday to when I was like 12 and I was putting out new writing DAILY...... Like entire Chapters of my then-current wips just, over an afternoon. What the fuck was I on
I drew 14 pictures during the day, and wrote 32 pages a night. Now I can’t do shit.
A huge part of this is because you've gotten better! And now, when you're drawing/writing/doing whatever creative task, you're not just mindlessly throwing thoughts at your paper, you're thinking as you do it. Children can churn out a lot more work because it's not yet refined, but when you're older and have more practice, you work with all these thoughts running through your head about form and shape, color palettes or word choice. Now, you're making a dozen decisions with every moment of work, and you're also questioning the decisions you've just made, wondering if you can do it better. Don't beat yourself up about producing less work now than you did back then, because every sentence or shape involves a lot more effort for you now, than it did when you were ten and brand new to this hobby.
Also you have a job now and the never-ending bullshit that is laundry and dishes and feeding yourself.
okay, I actually really needed to hear this
It’s the same two people desperately searching for each other across time and space, in different lives, in different places, always reaching…
… and never finding.
you could be sad about your otp but consider:
- one making awful breakfast for the other and the other eating it because they appreciate it that much
- one putting their ridiculous music on in the car and singing along while the other sits in the passenger seat with their head in their hands
- the two of them going down to the beach and one getting sunburned really badly so the other slathers them with aloe gel when they get home
- one getting home from work later than the other and stretching out on top of them like a big lazy cat while they sit on the couch in front of the tv
- one inexplicably bringing home an animal and refusing to drop it at the shelter so they and the other have to take care of it
- the both of them going out to a park and getting ice cream to sit with and eat on a bench
- one sending memes to the other while they’re at work so much they turn their phone off in exasperation
- one giving the other their jacket and not getting it back from the other until it stops smelling like them
List of British words not widely used in the United States.
Lists of words having different meanings in American and British English.
List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom.
OH MY FUCKING GOD. THANK YOU
If you’re having writers block…READ!!!! CONSUME MEDIA
I feel like I don’t hear that given enough as advice for writers block..just read? Watch tv? Movies? Find inspiration in media.
Writers block is a lack of inspiration, so go collect more.
Fifteenth Day of Gift-Giving
Fifteen Fluffy Moments
- each quietly doing household chores, meeting each other every now and then in a room, giving each other a smile or kiss while passing by
- going on a walk together, walking their usual route, hand in hand, talking about work, friends and whatever they have on their mind
- reading together on the couch, one lays their head on the other's lap, getting their soft hair played with
- winning at game night, the tension during the game and the laughter when they realize one won by a small margin
- napping together, either in bed or on the couch, just deciding that now is the perfect moment for a nap, enjoying each other's closeness
- sharing their clothes, one wearing the other's sweater, the other one only going out with the other's scarf wrapped around their neck, smelling so lovely
- reading the newspaper for the person who's making breakfast, telling them about the latest news, until they decide it's too sad for an early morning and switch to the quiz page
- working on their hobbies next to each other, each doing their own thing, showing off what they've done from time to time, praising each other on what they've accomplished
- fighting over the blanket, pressing their cold feet against the other's calf, cursing and play-fighting until they settle back down, holding each other close
- doing each other's hair the way they like it the most, not letting the other one sneak a peek at the mirror
- sitting in the car and singing a song together, both trying to outshine the other
- bringing each other flowers without having a special occasion, just picking up a small bouquet from a vendor on the streets and bringing them home
- cooking together, bumping into each other while going from the fridge to the stove, each knowing their parts, letting the other taste the food before deciding that it's perfect
- showering together, washing each other's hair and trying to keep close to get some of the warm water
- kissing each other goodbye, in the morning before work, when one goes on a short trip, when one goes out for the night with some friends
i think one of the reasons i get mildly annoyed about worldbuilding threads that are 200 tweets of why you should care about where blue dye comes from in your world before saying someone is wearing blue is that so few of them go up to the second level of "and that should impact your characters somehow" - i don't care that blue dye comes from pressing berries that only grow in one kingdom a thousand miles away if people are casually wearing blue
a couple of people reblogged this so i was thinking about it again (ok i'm almost always thinking about material culture worldbuilding tbh) & a lot of my problem is that these kinds of worldbuilding threads and posts treat it like an obligation and not an oppurtunity --
"blue dye is rare" is a world fact that could be a plot obstacle (character is a dyer and needs blue cloth, of the right shade, for a festival); a clue (main character notices someone wearing blue and realizes that they're in disguise); a way to inform character (main character sees a blue banner and thinks its owner is showing off); and any number of other things, from small to large.
and if the rarity doesn't serve any of those functions in your story, then the existence of blue dye is not important enough that you, as the author, need to consider it.
i'm a trends and forces guy - i believe any given worldstate is created by billions of coinflips leading up to that moment, some random (the sun rose on the day of the battle and gave one side victory) and some more directed (a law was enacted with a specific intent). expecting, as an author, to have generated a worldstate that coheres and connects in the same way and with the same complexity as ours is going to lead to paralysis more often than it is to interesting worldbuilding, or worldbuilding that supports the story you're trying to tell.
Yeah you don't need to know where everything comes from. What you need, which I think a lot of these demands are actually angling for, is a good intuitive sense of where your setting differs from your present reality.
I don't care where they get their common blue dyes if it's not relevant to the story, but I do care if the narrative's handling of clothes and their color reflects a 'pick out entire readymades from the mall' relationship to wardrobe in a technological and social milieu where that is not logically an option, and there's no sign they're going for one of those surreal modern-pop fantasy settings.
You really do see this quite regularly, coming from writers who just haven't thought about it; they haven't noticed their own cultural framework is historically contingent and actually super abnormal.
'Who domesticated wheat' and 'where does the blue come from' are very handy as sort of shortcut checkpoints to make sure you're making regular contact with material worldbuilding at all--if you know where the blue is from you don't need to decide where the red is from also; you've done the important bit of aligning your thoughts about clothing color with premodern dyeing practices. Other details will tend to accrete on that surface now as they arise.
But yeah if these are approached as literal dictums you just overbuild to no purpose.
#my current textile bugbear is rags#we've basically abandoned them as a society#and now you routinely get people who *have* done some worldbuilding thinking and are doing okay with the period content#but don't really grasp where rags come from or what they're good for#apart from labeling The Poors#and will say things like the torn and bloodstained garments had been thrown out#as they were no longer even fit for rags#how so????#what do you imagine the minimum qualifications of a rag are??#kakl;jdkdfa
#look rags are kinda the plastic bag full of plastic bags of the premodern era#only they're useful in a much wider variety of ways#and much more expensive#i threw out the rags because they were stained is like. i threw out your socks because they were stinky.#normal people don't *do* that#disposable fabric has made us insane
Just to give you some idea of why even rags were very valuable in any pre-industrial setting, here are some facts about fabric production throughout history.
In the Viking era, when drop spindles and vertical looms were the height of technology and every step had to be done by hand, it too about seven hundred hours to make a blanket big enough for one person. First you had to harvest the fiber that you were going to use, then you had to clean it and prepare it, then you had to spin it, then you had to weave it and then you had to finish it.
To support a household of five, and keep them supplied with a bare-minimum of fabric needs (so they weren't naked or cold), took approximately 40 hours of work per week just on textile production. In a reasonably prosperous family, everyone would have two outfits (one for every day work, and one nice one, and when the nice one became too worn or stained to be "nice" it would be your everyday outfit and (if you were lucky) you would make a new one to be nice, and your old everyday outfit would be either passed on to someone or (if it was in too bad a shape for that) would be cut up for various other uses.
As technology progressed, all of the steps in fabric production ended up taking less time; for example, the spinning wheel spins thread much more quickly than the drop spindle does. But it was still a hell of a lot of work.
In the 18th Century, here's the life cycle of bed sheets:
They start out as sheets (flat, both top and bottom) and are needed because they are MUCH easier to wash than your sheets than a blanket. As sheets get used, they develop worn patches to the middle. Those get darned. When even darning is not enough to save them, you cut them in half down the middle, flip the pieces, and sew the edges together so that what had been the edge is now a seam down the middle and the worn parts are on the edges (where the fact that they're worn doesn't matter much). When the new center gets worn out, you cut the fabric apart and turn the usable bits of fabric into pillow cases. When the pillowcases get worn out you turn the usable bits of fabric into handkerchiefs.
And the pieces of fabric that are truly too worn to be used any longer were not thrown out: they were sold. To a ragpicker. Someone whose entire job was buying rags and scraps from households and then selling them on to merchants and tradesmen who could use them. Rags too worn to be used as fabric any longer could be made into paper, for example. Or used as stuffing padded/quilted garments or cushions.
The rags for paper making (because, not to digress too much, paper made from wood pulp is the OG enshittification and only dates back to the 1840s) were so valuable that most European cities that had a strong paper making industry had laws that forbid selling rags outside city limits to make sure they all get fed into the system.
it drives me nuts when an upper class girl carelessly dirties her skirts and this is presented as valorous; for example a young lady muddying and tearing her formal gown because she's so tough and empowered and she chafes at the patriarchy. a formal gown in a lot of eras an investment: depending on the era and setting, this is on par with driving daddy's car into a telephone pole. thousands of (wo)man hours go into embroidery and if a horse or a goat tramples that kind of work into the heather, it can't just be scrubbed clean. ruining a dress, a fine dress, especially a court gown, sacrificed months or even years of skilled labor. of course your sassy princess is getting scolded by her mum, she needs to understand the value of the things she's using.
even worse is when fine fabric is torn up for emergency bandages or a lady is very careless of blood getting on silk or velvet outer skirts, and this is shown as noble and generous and nothing is ever said about who is going to deal with the material mess after our brave wounded hero survives. like getting blood out of velvet? in regency times??? laundering ruffled silk? good luck! AND SHE WOULD HAVE HAD PETTICOATS. LINEN OR COTTON. not to mention a handkerchief! it drives me nuts.
if you're writing a pre-industrial story, your characters' clothes are expensive to make and time consuming to clean. have some respect for the material constraints of your world.
I enjoy the Two Cakes Philosophy and I believe it deserves its place enshrined in fandom culture.
Forgive me for the extended metaphor but I also want to simultaneously celebrate what I’m calling Bakery Display Case Philosophy. You know when you walk into a bakery and the display case is full of beautiful treats? And there’s a variety of different colors, textures, and flavors to discover? And that’s so deeply exciting?
You might say to yourself, “No one is going to want to read this pairing. No one is going to want to want a character study of that character. No one wants genfic in this fandom, only shipfic.”
And you might use that to discourage yourself from writing a certain fic.
Fandoms, like bakeries, need cakes and cookies and éclairs and cream puffs and shortbread and brownies and pies and tarts and petit fours and turnovers and cinnamon rolls and madeleines and meringues—and so many other things—to survive.
Write your dark chocolate pistachio croissant fic. Your fandom needs it actually.
My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.
Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?
What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?
Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.
I don't remember where I saw this piece of advice so I can't credit it, unfortunately
But it was along the lines of "instead of asking whether something is out of character, ask 'what would it take for this character to do this'"
Which I think fits really nicely with this advice of making the actual action itself also feel in character
I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.
I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.
Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.
Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.
Are there any other particularly egregious examples?
This book already exists, sort of! Or at least, it’s a biology textbook but I bought it for writing purposes:
It starts with a chapter about freezing to death, and it is without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve read in years (and I read a lot of horror fiction).
wandercuriosity-deactivated2024
This book can be downloaded for free on Researchgate, posted there by the author himself:
The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments
IMO: people's willingness to endanger the entire fanfiction ecosystem for their own personal gain is a direct result of capitalism being a dick
first it makes us think of EVERYTHING in terms of economics, "productivity" and money, money, money
then it makes us desperate to make ends meet (#eattherich)
and then side-hustle culture convinces us that our hobbies are worthless unless they're monetized
so the math adds up and desperate people look at their empty pantries and then at their time-consuming hobbies that pay them nothing, and it's no fucking wonder they start asking "hey, can i perhaps make a buck off of that hobby to soothe the misery of this financial hellscape somewhat?"
and i get the impulse, truly i do, but the problem with fanfic is that YOU CAN'T DO THAT
fic is a labor of love and i'm sorry but it's not the answer to our monetary problems, because those problems will get a lot worse for you if you wind up fined into oblivion over copyright infringement
enough people start turning fanfic into a black market instead of a grey one and we'll get chased back underground and then your nice little side-hustle goes up in smoke along with the entire fanfiction community as a whole
allow me to remind us that capitalism is a goddamn liar, side-hustle culture is a trap, and:
you are allowed to have a hobby that isn't profitable
hobbies are not worthless if they don't generate cash flow
turning your hobby into a side hustle often saps the joy out of it
try finding joy through the act of creating, not through the money you might make doing it
good luck out there
I will personally teach you how to crochet, sew, or embroider if you want a hobby to monetize.