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.
“That story was great – I never want to read anything like it again,” said no one ever.
Addendum: If you wrote your story, but think later that you could do it better? Write it Again. Nobody is going to stop you, no Gods, no Masters.
Upon graduating the academy, each superhero in training is granted the choice of training under a full fledged superhero. If you select their name, they are secretly notified and will come and find you, to see if they want to train you. There’s always a massive rush and squabble over the best names, the recognisable ones, in the records office. When looking through the names, you find one hidden at the back, having slipped out of the case. Its dirty, slightly torn, in elegant old writing, and seemingly long forgotten. Something inside you says that this is the one for you.
I wonder what would happen if that hero had turned into a villain a long time ago and still wanted to train the young hero for being so clever
Honestly? That’s exactly the direction I was hoping someone would take this in.
canonically the way athena’s kids are born in PJO is literally insane what do you mean athena takes an interest in a smart human and then a child just shows up on their doorstep like annabeth is literally the immaculate conception SHE’S JESUS?! imagine you charm a woman with your insane autistic rizz about a topic bc you’re an Intellectual and the next day you HAVE A CHILD IN A BASKET ON YOUR DOORSTEP?! also that means PJO-verse Athena DECIDES to CREATE A CHILD FROM HER THOUGHTS whose whole life is about to be suffering and may not survive. like she may be the most darksided olympian
Adults with ADHD tell stories of missing meetings or deadlines because they got so absorbed in something that they lost track of time. In one extraordinary case history, cited by Nadeau, a woman with ADHD was so focused on a project that she failed to notice that her house had caught fire. “It was only when firemen came through the house, searching for anyone left inside, that she looked up and realized what was going on,” says Nadeau. (x)
I feel this on a spiritual level.
I wonder if this is why some experience the whole “I’ve only got 2 hours until I head out, guess I can’t do anything” thing. Because they know if they start something, they won’t stop and they’ll be late
