So, this list used to be freely available on cliche_bingo’s LJ comm, but the comm is many years dead and the moderator has deleted, and the list is no longer accessible. I found a cached version, and since I often like to use cliches from this list to spice up a fic or write with a twist, I’m adding it here for anyone’s perusal!
I absolutely did not create this list; just reproducing it for posterity!
As a reader, as a writer, and as a fan I can’t think of a single website that has given me more happiness than Archive of Our Own. Thank you so much to everyone who works so hard to make it such a wonderful place.
Fandom is such a weird place. Like I watched a tv show and thought “wow, these two nerds have a lot of chemistry and I’d like to dedicate a large chunk of my life to thinking about them” so I went in search of other people who also thought these two nerds had a lot of chemistry and then it turned out that a shit ton of people were talking about these two nerds having a lot of chemistry and now it’s 4 years later and we write each other porn on holidays.
listen if you all aren’t following the legal proceedings in the genre romance book community rn re: some asshat trademarking the word “cocky” and suing other authors over describing their male characters as such in their cover copy, you are MISSING OUT ON SOME MSSCRIBE LEVEL SHIT
bc i kid you not, the us patent and trademark office is now fielding a lawsuit petition that involves the phrase “’A Cocky Werewolf: A Gay M/M Mpreg Werewolf Shifter Romance’ by Wolfgang Glasscock”
and honestly i could not have asked for more out of 2018
and it is also an important fair-use legal case that affects all writers, so. that, too. but also, “my house servant is cocky and naughty with secrets” is a phrase that lawyers are arguing about.
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.
I’m never really sure that commenters and rebloggers truly understand the power of their few, kind words to a creator.
Just a few keep me scrambling back, re-prioritizing my day just to make sure I can create more for those people, even if answering their comment quickly isn’t always practical.
I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts.
May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.
I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.
The Last Good Bar 
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