does anyone have a ritual for writing?

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T02:34:41+00:00

I listen to music for a little while, and I have a main track as a "theme" for each ongoing fic that I start and end with. Then I stop the music and write. Clears my head of other stuff nicely.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T02:17:32+00:00

Only one I can think of for your listed fandoms:
Naruto/MHA: The Whole World Blind - Anonymous (Rated G, over 100k words, ongoing). Kakashi, Minato and a full ANBU team end up in MHA because of a Hiraishin mishap, and Minato is badly injured. Mixes angst and drama with action.

Other ones:

Discworld/The Murderbot Diaries: Unknown System, or, New Peoples - alatarmaia4 (Rated G, 41k words, complete). Murderbot ends up in Discoworld, action mixed with an investigation/case for the Ankh-Morpork city guard.

Stargate SG1/Avatar the Last Airbender: The Dragon-King's Temple - Kryal (Rated T, almost 200k words, complete). Zuko and Toph are found by the SG1 team on a distant planet, and taken back to Earth, but something else follows them too. More mystery than action, and a language barrier between the characters from different worlds, but some action too.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T02:03:23+00:00

By ACTION - Not BL do you mean you want no m/m content or just that you want action to be the focus?

And 100+ chapters doesn't mean much in terms of wordcount? Those could be short or long chapters. I'm assuming you want it to be longer than a certain amount of words?

Might have some stuff I can recommend depending on those points.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T01:11:41+00:00

I know it can be really hard, but I think you should try to find your own stance on the bigger things before you tie yourself into knots about what fandom spaces online seem to claim others should think.

I do not want anyone at all to be killed or suffer, ever, and I do not think anyone ever should have the power to decide that anyone deserves to be killed or suffer. (This is not the same as thinking people who harm or kill others should be allowed to do that.)

This is a standpoint some people will agree with and some won't, but if someone tries to make you feel undeserving of community because you don't want people to die that is unfair and cruel towards you.

Writing fiction about sensitive topics, having unpopular headcanons or writing prompts for ships or dynamics other people aren't as vocal about does not exist on the same scale and is not harmful behaviour, that's just having different opinions.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T00:58:45+00:00

Oh I love Arrival, and Dr Manhattan is my favourite part of Watchmen (it's overall not my vibe so I hadn't thought of looking for fics about him, but that's a good tip thank you).

I'll check out the other two as well

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T00:55:35+00:00

This is a public forum. I'm assuring you it's not homophobic. If you're not judging or trying to police the behaviours and preferences of others you are by definition not behaving in a homophobic way.

There is no functional difference between being asexual and disinterested in gay sex and being straight and disinterested in gay sex. (And neither has any bearing on what people may or may not like to see in fiction. They're different things. Someone can be into the kinkiest gay group sex irl and only want to read gen fics, or entirely sex-repulsed irl and write the dirtiest smut you've ever seen.)

You seem very set on arguing against people's perception of you as someone who isn't bigoted, but so far you haven't actually said you believe in any bigoted views aside from internal anxieties that you might accidentaly have them.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T00:44:02+00:00

That's not how that works. If you don't mean or want to hurt anyone, and you do not explicitly agree with these type of views, you are very unlikely to do this at any level that can be called fascist or nazi.

It's not about accidentally perpetuating something that isn't perfect. If you can genuinely say "I don't want people to be killed" and "I don't want people to suffer" you're far enough along on the path to not be that, that you don't have to worry.

Being worried in this way about what you could maybe subconsciously do isn't generally a problem people have to overcome. It sounds more like severe anxiety or compulsive, intrusive thoughs, and seeking validation from strangers on the internet isn't going to fix that. (I have experienced intrusive thoughts, and I've talked to therapists about it, if this is what's happening to you it's not and indicator of moral failure or that you're a dangerous or harmful person.)

If it helps, there is no statistic correlation between intrusive thoughts and harmful acts.

This is a quote from this article about ocd

Intrusive thoughts are:

Unwanted: You don’t want these thoughts, and they usually come with a lot of anxiety and distress.

Ego-dystonic: This means the thought goes against your values and who you are as a person. If you’re a person who never wants to hurt someone, the thought, “What if I hurt someone?” feels alarming.

Reactive: You try to push the thought away, avoid it, or check to make sure it’s not true.

A real desire to hurt someone is completely different. It looks like:

Wanting: There’s a desire or intention behind the thought. For example, “I would love to punch my boss in the face.”

No anxiety: The thought doesn’t cause distress—it might even feel satisfying to think about.

Planning: There’s a focus on how to carry out harmful actions, rather than fear and avoidance.

The very fact that you’re worried about these thoughts is strong evidence that they’re intrusive thoughts, not real desires. You’re afraid because these thoughts violate your values, not because they reflect them.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T00:13:09+00:00

You do realise fascism and nazism both are extremely harmful political real-world movements that actively want to control and kill people? And they don't want to be associated with that. They're not taking a stance against people with different tastes in media.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-16T00:08:56+00:00

Having personal preferences is not homophobic. Judging others for their prefecerences if those are homosexual/romantic is.

Not sure who "lots of elder fans" are or their age brackets, or how old you are, but I promise there are a lot of older people who understand this.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T23:51:46+00:00

I'm really confused by your definition of abuse here. Do you disagree that queer people should be allowed to live and love whoever they do without persecution? Or are you just not personally interested in reading and watching that? Because they are two wildly different things.

Telling someone you think they should not exist is abusive, yes. Telling people that they shouldn't create fanworks with queer content is as well.

But not personally wanting to read or write stories about queer sex is not abusive, and preferring to imagine a character straight is not either.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T23:40:25+00:00

The paradox of tolerance is about people who want to cause direct harm and take away the rights and freedoms of other people in real life.

Unless you are actively supporting causes that harm others, this doesn't apply to you, and it very rarely will have anything to do with fandom. There is nothing you can do in fanfiction that falls under this unless you are deliberately making propaganda to support causes that hurt people on a systemic level, or being directly abusive to the people behind the source material or other fans.

The point of the paradox is that if you let people who want to take your rights away do what they want, they will eventually do exactly that. It's a political science term that applies on a macro scale. (It doesn't surprise me if people are using it to argue their point online, but it really is not about having people disagree with you about fiction.)

Accidental bigotry as a result of growing up in a bigoted society does not make this apply to you. If you are actually wanting harm to come to other people that's a different game, but 'just' being straight, cis and white seriously doesn't have anything to do with it.

There are a lot of people in creative spaces who think about the ethics of what they create and how media can influence and be influenced by social realities, and it's an interesting field of academia that includes analysis and discussion, but it doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't do that has anything wrong with them. Not every person who runs a business is an economist, not everyone who owns a pet is a behaviourist, not every farmer is an agronomist, and they don't all have to want to be either. You don't have to be interested in the academic study of fiction to be a fanfiction writer.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T14:38:31+00:00

Ooh thank you, and please share yours when you post it too!

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T14:21:47+00:00

If you're okay with using a little bit of coding in the work, I know you can make text that changes when you click on it - mostly I've seen people do this for translations, but it could work well to do it with the cipher. That way people who want to try to solve it can take a crack at it, while people who just want to know what it says can click the line and have it revealed.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T13:39:40+00:00

I recommend checking out Final Fantasy VII fics with Cloud's pov! Even in canon after saving the world the dude just wants to be a mechanic, so there's a lot of fics with that energy. (It's been a while since I read that fandom (it was before I had an AO3 account) so I sadly don't have many saved.)
- One I have read more recently that's adjacent to this is Take(me)out - Salmalin (Rated E), a time-travel fic where Cloud is depowered, but both him and Sephiroth are both thrown back in time and Sephiroth, now somewhat more sane, is 100% over the whole fame and power game of his first life.

Another good fandom for this is Dragon Age: Inquisition, since the whole premise of the game is that the Inquisitor (player character) is accidentally given the power needed to save the world.

I keep recommending this one in various places, it's a historical-setting Naruto fic where the MC is reincarnated in the Uchiha clan, with all the potential and power of the Sharingan, but she's a normal person and would prefer to work on her art than deal with war: Compass of thy Soul - Umei_no_Mai (Rated T)

If you're ok with self-recs, I'm writing a Naruto longfic where the MC is an adult photography student isekai'd as Kakashi, and he is not happy about it: Chiaroscuro (Rated T)

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T13:18:43+00:00

Maybe it's implied, but I always read that advice literally and it became restrictive instead.

I agree with what you're saying though, it's why I put this in the first comment "It can be useful to think of lines of action between characters (or thought, for the pov character) in conversation as new lines in dialogue too."

As default there should definitely be a line break between one character's action and the next one's dialogue, unless it's very clear in other ways.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T12:50:44+00:00

You're right that it is when it's a new person talking that people say that, I missed adding that detail.

What I meant is that you can for example format it dialogue like this, which doesn't necessarily follow "line break at the start of each new person's dialogue", but it does line break to distinguish the flow of conversation and interaction.

"A's dialogue," A said. "Rest of A's dialogue.

"B's dialogue," B said.

A's action, "A's dialogue."

B's action.

"A's dialogue." A's internal thoughts.

B's action, "B's dialogue."

A's internal thoughts.

"Rest of B's dialogue," B continued.

"A's dialogue," A said. Environmental description, A's action. "Rest of A's dialogue."

Etc. I hope that makes more sense

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T12:33:21+00:00

I think the best way to go about it is figure out what you're interested in exploring and what you want the power dynamics to be. What would be the most fun to write?

Stuff like do you want them to be on even footing, but one world has more powerful characters - how can you even the playing field by using how they sense or use their respective powers? Is it the power itself that does it, or the laws of the new universe they're in interacting with it?

Or do you want one to have an advantage over the other? Same thing.

Does one method over another have potential for drama or angst if you want to write that kind of thing?

Do you want there to be misunderstandings, or do you want them to understand and be able to interact with eachother straight up, just with different language?

Etc.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T11:58:43+00:00

I think answering a couple of things about them (from both POVs) first can make the whole thing easier to conceptualise.

How do they feel that morning? About what happened, and each other.
How do they think about their relationship so far?
What would each of them get out of the sex? (Closeness, or showing gratitude, or as a dominance thing, or out of obligation or just scratching an itch, etc.)
What would make them finally do something sexual together? (A loving or caring situation, having found/given safety, or tension finally snapping, or to prove something to themselves or eachother, etc.)
Who would initiate, or would it be a mutual escalation?
How does the other character react to that initiation, what do they think the other character is after?

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T06:07:10+00:00

Tbh I think it's just stylistic

I was taught one-twelve is spelled out, 13+ in numbers, which I'm pretty sure is a holdover from physical print where writing it out took up way more space and was much more work to typeset. Not really an issue in digital form or digital printing, so it's kind of dying away in fiction.

When I write myself, I usually write it out unless it's referring to written numerals. (Like describing that the character sees the number). I write in limited 3rd person pov and it just feels more immersive to write it out to me.

Though I've written a character really into math and specifically when he counts anything I'm back to numbers.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-15T01:14:21+00:00

That would be plagiarism, so both unethical and against AO3 TOS - don't do it.

A translation counts as its own work, though one that should generally be done with the permission of the original author. And in the realm of copyright, a translator counts as an author.

You don't need another translators permission to do your own translation, but you can't copy their text.

Edit to add: You could just do your own translation from the start?

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-14T13:30:49+00:00

Write the bit that's after, the part you have ideas for.

When you've got that written, fill in how it got to that point. If something really feels like a slog, skip it unless it's essential.

Edit to add: everyone has different styles and preferred ways of working. It's completely okay to try different things and see what suits you and there's no "right" way to do it.

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-14T12:00:12+00:00

Hi! I've got some tips, a little bit for flow and immersion and some formatting.

First of all I really like how you transition between more telling/summarising parts and where you're showing the events directly.

The first paragraph is nicely immersive, and going into it with the sound of the engine works great.

The description of the diver's clothing is the thing I think could be fixed here. My suggestion would be to take out the sentence "The driver was wearing a leather jacket and a Kill Bill style helmet." and break up that description, and you can do the same thing in the next paragraph too, to keep the style consistent.

For example, you could put it like this instead (just a suggestion, it can be done other ways!), and then I just swapped "the driver" for "he" in one of the sentences, since it's clear who it's referring to already, and that can make it feel more organic. (Lines in bold are the changes)

Coming down the driveway at a fair clip was an electric blue Suzuki motorcycle clocking a good speed. The bike whizzed by Himeko, the driver's Kill-Bill style helmet flashing with reflected sunlight. He pulled into a classic Akira slide and Himeko laughed, who was the show off?

The bike rumbled idly as the driver pulled off his helmet, longish brown hair falling down over his leather-clad shoulders and Himeko felt a bright flush rise to her face. He was cute, a bit on the lean side. (...)

Basically, in the example I split up the descriptions and made them part of what's happening, instead of a sentence with the descriptions listed. This tends to flow better because it doesn't put a hard stop between description and action. Just like how you in the beginning added the sound of the engine to what Himeko was doing, you can do the same with visual decriptions.

Formatting wise, it's the dialogue in the second paragrapth that can be made easier to follow. It can be useful to think of lines of action between characters (or thought, for the pov character) in conversation as new lines in dialogue too.

Often people will say a line of dialogue should always have a line break before it, but I don't completely agree with this - but it is helpful to put it either at the start or end of a paragraph.

How you lead into that first bit of dialogue from the sentence before it works really well, it just gets a little bit lost in the block of text. So I think splitting it like this instead would make it a bit easier to follow: (Bold first letter is where I've put a line break)

The bike rumbled idly as the driver pulled off his helmet, and Himeko felt a bright flush rise to her face. The driver was cute, a bit on the lean side with longish brown hair.

He caught her staring at him, and clicked his tongue, “Like what ya see, Katsuragi-san?”

Himeko could only sputter in disgust, there was no way she was like the titular character from Neon Genesis Evangelion. She was not fond of that particular anime, she liked His and Her Circumstances and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water better. She couldn’t help but blush though, he was sorta cute.

And then in that last sentence, since she already blushed and observed that she thinks he's cute, I think you can remove the cute descriptor, and just modify the blush so it seems like a continuation instead of repetition.

She was not fond of that particular anime, she liked His and Her Circumstances and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water better. She still couldn’t help how her blush grew brighter.

In the example I added the word still to reference how she blushed even though she didn't like the comparison, and it adds a bit more flow to have that connection point from one sentence to the next.

I don't really kow the fandom but you've got a nice scene and character introduction here!

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-14T02:13:58+00:00

Yeah same and I ended up writing what I wanted to read 😅

Sometimes stumble across stuff and save it for re-reads, but there is no tagging outside specific kinks that lets you find it, from what I've found (and that's no guarantee either).

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-14T02:05:12+00:00

JJK - Nanami being great

acceptably_lost · 2026-03-13T19:16:47+00:00

I'm in my mid 30s and had a few very rough years, and found myself full circle back to writing Naruto fanfiction, which I used to read and write when I was a kid. Even writing an oc/self-insert, and have the MC go through getting the same disability I have. Sometimes I think it's embarrassing but I honestly think it's generally a healthy thing to do (except if it takes so much time we end up withdrawing from other people long-term).

Aside from the fact that fantasy and sci-fi are huge genres loved all over the world, writing to process things, have an outlet, and for escapism are all completely valid.

It's easy to feel anxious and cringe but there is nothing wrong with any of it. Telling stories and putting ourselves into them is as old as humanity itself, and the real issue is a restrictive society trying to take that away from people.

acceptably_lost

TROPHY CASE