Articles by Cecil Wilde

About Cecil Wilde (5 Articles)

Cecil Wilde is a professional bisexual villain, procrastination enthusiast, full-time huge nerd, and secret robot. When not plotting the downfall of humanity from their volcano lair, they write romance novels.

That’s Problematic: How Critical Discussion in Fandom is Going Wrong

April 13, 2016 // 1 Comment

At the end of last year, I left Tumblr for good. I then deleted my account a month or so later, when I realized I was happier and more mentally well than I had been when I was spending several hours a day—most of my free time—there. For me, that was a huge shift. For a long time, Tumblr had been the only thing holding my mental health together—I went there to find validation that my feelings and experiences were real, to be reassured that I wasn’t alone, and to enjoy the media I was //

Write Better Fanfic Using Romance Structure

January 24, 2016 // 0 Comments

The structure of romance stories traditionally looks something like this: Meet Cute Relationship Development Black Moment Resolution Happily Ever After The terms Meet Cute and Black Moment may not mean anything to fanfic readers, but they’re almost always present in well-written fics. The meet cute is when two protagonists meet for the first time or first see each other as possible romantic partners (this second option happens most often in the case of friends-to-lovers stories, though //

How To Make Your Own Fanzine

December 17, 2015 // 3 Comments

Before the rise of the internet, people got their fannish content from fanzines—amateur, small magazines printed in small batches and distributed by post or in person, often at fan conventions (and sometimes, secretly!) You can check out the Fanlore entry for fanzines if you’re curious about the history of the practice, but in short, fanzines are the direct modern precursor to the forums, Tumblr accounts, and fanfic archives of today. As fans, we owe a lot to zines. However, zines are not //

Where Should I Post my Fanfic?

November 21, 2015 // 8 Comments

Gone are the days of distributing your fanfiction via printed fanzines, mailing lists, or Geocities pages. Today, we have modern conveniences such as archive sites, and if you’re not old enough to remember the uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow times, consider yourself lucky. This article is going to cover the pros and cons of three major archives: FanFiction.net, Archive of Our Own, and Wattpad. Whether you’re just getting into fanfic for the first time or you’re an older fan looking for //

E. L. James is My Hero, Kinda

October 21, 2015 // 1 Comment

In 2005, I told my friends I had written some fanfiction. They laughed, but it was too late to deter me from continuing, and ten years later I write romance novels for a living and they all have office jobs. Who’s laughing now, is what I’m saying. In 2011, 50 Shades of Grey hit the shelves and became everyone’s favorite controversial subject, whether they’d ever had contact with fanfic, romance novels, or BDSM before. There’s still a thinkpiece about it every week, so this week, //