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.
Seriously, for anyone out there who have ever thought “Oh, it’s been done,” you know what? DO IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT WILL BE YOUR STORY AND THAT ALONE IS AMAZING.
children aren’t dumb. we knew that trophies meant nothing when everyone in the fucking class got one
Also who was giving out those fucking trophies? SPOILER ALERT IT WASN’T US. IT WAS YOU.
Who the fuck got trophies?? I got a piece of paper saying Participation on it with a cheap-ass shiny sticker in the corner!
Sometimes they were ribbons.
Sometimes they were just the gnawing awareness that you could never trust any praise an adult gave you.
^^^^
When I was in 7th grade, the administration at my middle school decided to make a bunch of changes to pep rallies, including changing the spirit award to the grade that showed the most school spirit to three spirit awards SO THAT EACH GRADE COULD HAVE ONE.
We decided in about 2.5 seconds that this was fucking stupid and that it was pointless to have a school-wide spirit contest IF NO ONE WAS ACTUALLY ABLE TO WIN. Our entire grade organized ourselves and boycotted the pep rally in protest. We still went to the pep rally, but the entire 7th grade sat quietly in the bleachers and refused to cheer or otherwise participate.
AND IT INFURIATED THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. INFURIATED THEM.
They ended up giving one spirit award to the 8th grade and two spirit awards to the 6th grade. At which point, our entire grade stood up and cheered, and the principal screamed into her microphone that we needed to sit down and stop cheering.
Because we hadn’t broken any school rules, the administration realized they couldn’t punish us, and they changed back to one spirit award and got rid of the other unpopular pep rally changes. But they never forgave us. The principal saved up all of her anger for a year and a half and then called a special “promotion ceremony rehearsal” for our grade right before we graduated from middle school specifically so that she could spend an hour yelling at us about how THIS WAS NOT FOR US, THIS WAS FOR OUR PARENTS AND OUR TEACHERS AND THE ADMINISTRATION AND THE SCHOOL, AND IF WE FUCKED THE CEREMONY UP IN ANY WAY, SO HELP HER, SHE WOULD MAKE OUR LIVES A LIVING HELL.
So, yeah, tell me again about how my generation expects trophies for participating. I dare you.
Someone somewhere has a great post about how all Millennials learned from this “everybody gets a trophy” culture foisted on us was to distrust conventional feedback methods (if everybody gets one, the system must be wrong and someone who tells me I’m good at something is probably lying). So the fact that we’re a generation filled with insecure overachievers with a well-documented lack of interest in conventional life markers is partly due to all those stupid participation trophies.
Ruined a perfectly good kid that’s what you did. Look at it. It’s got anxiety
THIS IS THE BEST BONUS STORY MARVEL HAS EVER PUBLISHED!!!
It’s funny b/c Spider-Man making no quips is usually code for “someone fucked up and Spidey’s on the warpath”. That’s probably why the fourth guy just said “uh-oh”.
not to mention since all the guys are actually conscious and upright in the van, it heavily implies that the villains, in fact, had just surrendered in naked TERROR, probably while begging Spidey to not rearrange their skeletons
the fishbowl head guy is Mysterio, who’s tangled with Spider-man enough times to know that when he’s not quipping, it’s generally a VERY bad sign, akin to when Batman starts smiling or LAUGHING.
about every time Spider-Man’s been quiet, near silent, or completely serious, it’s usually because someone’s screwed with his family badly and he’s hit the breaking point, or cause one of his loved ones is in danger/hurt/dying
I wish more people got this because some ‘low-empathy’ people are the most compassionate and sympathetic in the universe, and I hate it when that’s taken to mean ‘unfeeling and probably hostile’ when nothing could be further from the truth
Or, as my dad put it,
Sympathy: I know how you feel Empathy: I feel how you feel Compassion: is there anything I can do to help?
Sympathy: that sucks bro empathy: I feel that compassion: want me to send you some puppy and kitten pictures to make you feel better?
When my mom was in pain while pregnant with me, a male doctor was like “I empathize with you,” and apparently my mom snapped “No, you SYMPATHIZE!”
jinlinli 