So as many of you know, there are only about ten days left until Christmas arrives, which means that it’s officially the season for giving, everyone! Unfortunately, I do not have a spare twelve partridges, twelve pear trees, twenty-two turtle doves, thirty French hens, thirty-six calling birds, forty golden rings, forty-two geese-a-laying, forty-two swans-a-swimming, forty maids-a-milking, thirty-six ladies dancing, thirty lords-a-leaping, twenty-two pipers piping, or twelve drummers drumming lying around, so we’re going to have to make do with what we do best in this community. Fanfiction!

You may be asking, “How is this thing gonna happen?” Well, I’ll tell you!

For those that wish to participate in this little event, you will list in the comments your account for either FF.net or AO3 along with your favorite genre. I will be using this site to choose who writes for who, with each person writing a one-shot. I will PM you (on Reddit) who you have been chosen to write for.

Now you’re probably thinking, Why list your favorite genre, well it’s because the person who is chosen to write for you will be writing a story based on your favorite genre. But, not only that, but the person will also be writing for their own favorite fandom. The reasons for this. Is because the author will be writing about a topic familiar to them, but may be writing it in a way that’s new to them, and the person who is being written for will be reading something written in a way they like, but possibly in a different fandom than they’re familiar to. Either way, the desired result is peoples’ horizons being broadened!

Unfortunately, I’ll only be able to select people within the first twenty-four hours. 12:30 AM December 16 to 12:00 AM December 17 will be the time for signups if you wish to participate. So for those that do participate, I hope you enjoy your time writing for your gift receiver!

To recap the rules:

1. To register, list your account name in a comment along with your favorite genre

2. You will be given, via PM, the person you’re supposed to write for along with the genre you’re supposed to write

3. There are no do-overs, whatever genre you get, you will write for

4. You will write a story based around the genre you’ve been given in your favorite fandom

5. On December 25, you will either send a link or the story to the person you had been chosen to write for

6. If you wish to exit before December 25, PM me and the person you are writing for to let them know

7. If you do not finish your one-shot before December 25, just PM the person you were assigned to let them know (It can be completed late)

8. Have fun with this!

I want to write some romantic fluff. The problem is that I’ve never before written either romance or fluff, so I don’t know how to do this without coming off as cringy. Also I’ve never been in a romantic relationship so I’m not entirely sure how one works.

What are some common mistakes I should watch out for? What do the dynamics of a functional romantic relationship look like? How do I write this and still look like I know what I’m doing?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I figured someone would be able to help me here.

Back in late winter 2012 or early 2013, I read an absolutely beautiful rendition of the story of Hades and Persephone. It was told in three parts: one from Demeter’s perspective, one from Hades’ perspective, and one from Persephone’s perspective. It detailed how Persephone melted Hades’ rough exterior and how she came to love him. It was really beautiful and unfortunately, I didn’t save it anywhere to my knowledge. I’d love to read it again. If anyone’s read something similar, please let me know!

Forgive me for the randomness here, but I’ve got to get this out. So, like… I had this line in one of my stories that references somebody being used as masturbatory material, right? Just an amusing throwaway line I included because headcanons or whatever. Welp, predictably, a few of my readers are like, “You should totally write THAT.” And I just… can’t… do it. The dirtiest I’ve ever written was some mild groping. I literally can’t do anything more than that — it’s like a weird mental block. However, I actually already have the non-smutty parts of he story written because I got bored and needed something to do. So! Now I feel like this would be an interesting challenge for myself: finish this dirty story without it actually being dirty.

…But I have no clue what that looks like at this point. The struggle is too real, you guys 😬

So I acceded to my younger brother’s request today.

He was writing a Smash fic and was complaining to me that some of the new characters weren’t in the filters, so I looked up how to add characters into the filters and literally just sent fanfiction.net support an email requesting for a good portion of the Ultimate newcomers to be added into the character list (I don’t even write for Smash, I’m just being a nice older brother).

But man, after using AO3 and its tag wrangling automatically doing the job for you, FFN’s system seems like such a step back in comparison. :P

So, I’m just curious… as someone who has always waited for others to add new characters and categories to FFN, have any of you gotten impatient and ever taken the initiative to submit a request to FFN support yourself? And if so, what did your support email contribute to your fandoms?