Hey fanfiction writers: If no one's ever told you this before, it's not just fanfiction.

It's something you spent hours, days, maybe even months on, pouring your heart out onto a page because you were so full of passion and thoughts about a story or characters, you felt like you were going to explode if you didn't get it out. Maybe you lost sleep because your mind was racing with ideas or you forgot to eat or drink water because you were so focused. Maybe your back aches from being hunched over for so long, unmoving. Maybe you even felt like you were going a little feral because you were so excited about what you were creating, or were frustrated when you got stuck. Either way, you put your heart, mind, soul, and body into making something.

It's okay to want people to read it, and it's okay if you're disappointed that they don't or it doesn't get as much of a reaction as you were hoping for. Humans are social creatures. Sure, we write for ourselves, but we also share because the joy of doing so is just as powerful as the joy of the process. Of having created something.

We all experience that joy and that disappointment, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

So it's okay. It's not just fanfiction.

so I have a lil idea I wanna do…not sure how it’ll go though!!

starting a little poll for this! 🫶🏾 vote if you’d like

As someone who has been fat her whole life listen to me when I say that there is no person who’s more fatphobic than a fat person who has lost weight and is now “socially acceptable”

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY!!

-April 6th

This is Price. You can't change my mind

okaysophi on ig

Nami who hordes things. Sometimes food, sometimes valuables, sometimes other items. Nami who collects little trinkets and can't get herself to throw anything away. Picks up every penny she sees on the ground even though she doesn't need it. Gets almost irrational if anything she owns is moved around or she can't find it. Steals things and then puts them back to just to prove she could take them if she had to. Habitually scans every room for items of value and anything sharp she could defend herself with. Nami who is free and happy and following her dreams, but Nami who will always have a scared little girl surviving as a thief inside her.

You wanna talk “coping” in fandom? Okay. Let’s talk about the mental health of fans of color. Let’s talk about how racism causes persistent emotional stress that negatively affects mental health. Let’s talk about how people of color who try to deny the existence and effect of racism can suffer lower self-esteem and internalized self-hatred as a result. Let’s talk about how even everyday microaggressions can pile up and cause depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms including pain and fatigue. Let’s talk about how a study of Black Americans found that distress from racial discrimination may contribute to age-related diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

Every single issue fans of color have discussed–the racist stereotypes, the fucking slavery and Holocaust AUs, the fetishization, the whitewashing, the erasure, the demonization–has been about their mental health. Every single step they have taken, from elaborate search filters to massive block lists, has been about getting some breathing space in a fandom that is relentlessly hostile to them.

So if you’re so concerned about the mental health of fans and the means they use to cope, why are you disregarding entire groups of fans who are trying to cope?

This is why it’s so disingenuous to answer discussions of fandom racism with “But what about coping?” Even leaving aside the fact that not all coping mechanisms are useful or healthy and that coping through racism is a pretty wtf proposition in itself, this response makes assumptions about mental health that are easily countered by research–that mental illness is necessarily an individual issue, and that discrimination like racism is not a significant, society-wide threat to the mental health of people affected by it. As though mental illness has a certain look that doesn’t include fans of color. As though fans who are outspoken about racism in fandom are posturing for moral high ground about an issue that harms no one. The “coping” response erases the mental health issues of fans of color, something they face all too often in real life.

— ★ CAPTAINS AS WORK HUSBANDS