#otp: i just wanted to put some notes in the margins
Note
will/jelena: 3, 4, 5, 12, 17
richard/michael: 2, 4, 5, 16, 23
alex/adrian: 29, 15, 18, 24, 28
Announcer voice: Round 3!
William/Jelena-
3: Most common argument?
Jelena tends to trust too much, and William doesn't trust much at all, so sometimes they'll argue about Jelena trying to help strangers, especially if that stranger isn't human and isn't reaper.
4: Favorite non-sexual activity?
If they are going out, dinner and the theater are really nice. If they are staying at home, reading together and spending time with William's birds.
5: Who is most likely to carry the other?
William loves to carry Jelena around. She constantly teases him that she'll eventually forget how to walk if he keeps carrying her, to which he always replies that that means he'll just get to carry her around all the time if that happens, and he doesn't see a downside to that.
12: Who initiates kisses?
Jelena edges William out in this, but William initiates kisses a lot more than you'd think he would, so she wins by just a small margin.
17: Who says "I love you" first?
William does. Jelena has abandonment issues, but she's afraid if she lets her feelings known, it would be too much, and she'll be left alone again, so she waits until William says something first, at least, with words.
Richard/Michael-
2: Big spoon/little spoon?
Richard is the big spoon, and Michael is the little spoon. Michael rarely comes across people taller than him, since he's got his father's height, and William is pretty tall, so Richard being taller than him is actually something he finds very attractive. Plus, it makes him feel safe.
4: Favorite non-sexual activity?
Dancing. Michael loves to dance with Richard. Sparring is a close second because it's almost like dancing, but they're allowed to do it at work. :D
5: Who is most likely to carry the other?
Richard seems to like carrying Michael around almost as much as William likes to carry Jelena. He doesn't do it as often as William does, but if given even the hint of an opportunity to carry Michael anywhere, he will take it.
16: Who wants to stay in bed just a little longer?
Michael. He very much loves to spend some extra time in the morning just cuddling with his boyfriend as the sun warms up their room, and sleep gradually fades away to let them get their day started.
23: Who comes up with cheesy pick-up lines?
Richard loves to make Michael laugh, so he's been known to pop up at work or even come home with something super cheesy at the ready. It never fails to make Michael blush and giggle like an idiot.
Alex/Adrian-
15: Who wakes up first?
I think this actually depends on the day. Sometimes Adrian is super exhausted from work or spending a whole day doing chores and errands, and sometimes Alex is just hard to wake up, so the only time I can say for sure one gets up before the other is for birthdays and holidays when one wants to surprise the other with breakfast.
18: Who leaves noted in the other one's lunch? (Bonus: What does it usually say?)
I actually see Adrian as more the type to leave notes in Alex's lunch. He loves to remind her that she is a smart, capable, gorgeous, and deadly woman. Or he'll put in a little joke to make her smile.
24: Who whispers inappropriate things in the other's ear during inappropriate times?
Alex loves to make Adrian hot and bothered at the worst times. And she always gets away with it, because Adrian can't help himself around her. At all.
28: What do they do when they're away from each other?
If they're not at work, Alex usually does some experiments at the home lab, or reads, or visits her friend Jelena. Adrian will usually do experiments at the home lab. If he can't do that for whatever reason, he will clean up the house and on rare occasions, cook.
29: One headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart.
When Adrian goes insane, to the point of no return, he has some moments of clarity after particularly bad nightmares, and he cries himself back to sleep, because he knows he can never make up to Alex all of the pain and heartache he has caused her, even if he was able to without his madness.
#william t spears#jelena spears#michael d spears#richard laurier#alexandra coldwater#adrian crevan#undertakerslxt
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Minimserver bubbleupnp server
Minimserver bubbleupnp server android#
Minimserver bubbleupnp server software#
Minimserver bubbleupnp server tv#
Minimserver bubbleupnp server free#
However there was no clear winner, because there wasn’t a single server that was able to satisfy all my requirements fully. I personally chose Twonky as the audio server in my setup.
Minimserver bubbleupnp server free#
*Basic functionality free but a subscription or OTP is required to unlock or continue using some features And the crown goes to… I put the costs in the scores table below. The criteria here was to not cost anything. Hi-fi Cast showing album art on MinimServer Cost Plex and Emby stand out by displaying separate artist art, instead of just the album cover. The criteria here was to be able to see album/artist/genre art for the music library within the controller.Īsset UPnP, Emby, JRiver, Plex, Twonky all impressed and displayed something for these different views. I scored them equally for returning a result.ĪssetUPnP, MiniDLNA/ReadyNAS, MinimServer (all variants) and Twonky all returned results for track, album and artist, Emby and LMS returned a result from song title only. Worth noting that some servers searched the track, album and artist for a match, whereas others were limited to just track. So in order to score a point in this category, you must also be able to enter a search term, and return some kind of result. If you have a large audio library, and you want to find a specific song or artist quickly you need to be able to search for it, browsing alone just doesn’t cut it when you have thousands of tracks in your library. MinimServer, Plex and Twonky also deserve a mention for this. Special mention however should go to Asset UPnP, which offers the most granular browsing capability by some margin (bitrate, composer, year, label, album artist etc….). To keep things simple and award points fairly just the basic browsing categories were required to gain a point here (Album, Artist, Genre). It should be noted that browsing categories vary greatly, with some offering a great deal more granularity than others. The criteria here was being able to browse and search the music library using the controller, one point being awarded if it had DLNA search capability as well basic browsing categories like Album Name, Artist Name. In fact it didn’t even index the album or recognise the tracks. I was surprised that Plex couldn’t play DSF/DSD. The other servers tested didn’t recognise the track or couldn’t play it. To score a point here the track must be played in it’s native format, with no transcoding/encoding.ĪssetUPnP, Emby, LMS, MiniDLNA/ReadyNAS, MinimServer (all variants) and Twonky passed the test, each scoring one point. This particular track was chosen for its high definition format DSF/DSD, encoded at 24bit 96khz. I tried a variety of tracks and file formats, but the real differentiator was successfully playing Deep Purple’s Time for Bedlam track from the Infinite album. The criteria here was to listen to my music in its native format and original quality, from the capable renderers around my home. I’m not going to score them any different, they all run on the Synology NAS, so they all score 1 point.
MinimServer (v0.8 and 2.0 all variants)Īll of the music servers tested can run on a Synology NAS, some of them are installed from the default app store, others need additional repositories adding, and some can only run in docker.
Here are the UPnP/DLNA music servers being tested:
Minimserver bubbleupnp server software#
I want the server software to be low cost, ideally free.
I want to see album/artist/genre art for my library within the controller.
I want to be able to browse and search my library using the controller.
I want to listen to my music in its native format and original quality, from the renderers mentioned above.
I want to run the music server on my NAS, a Synology DS3615xs.
There is no weighting to these requirements, they each get one point for every requirement satisfied: So without further a do, here are my requirements.
Minimserver bubbleupnp server android#
I’m using Hi-Fi Cast as the controller (which i highly recommend), running on a wireless android tablet.
Minimserver bubbleupnp server tv#
For testing, the renderers i will be using are a Yamaha MusicCast stereo, a Sony TV and a Windows PC. This guide will only address the server component. UPnP/DLNA has three components, the server, the renderer and the controller. Some of the music servers tested also serve video and photos and fall into the media server category, which is great but I’m only testing their merits on serving audio.įirst some terminology to get your head around. This review has been written by a tech enthusiast, not an audiophile, with my own personal requirements in mind, but since i went to great lengths testing every possible UPnP/DLNA Music Server i could find, i thought you might also benefit from my conclusions.
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Racism in the Marvel fandom as seen through the number of fanworks per M/M ship on AO3
I talked about this on Twitter, but I'm posting it here with tweaks and additions.
A couple of notes about the ship selection process:
I focused on M/M ships here as they're the biggest and most common on AO3 overall and, for the most part, the Marvel fandom
I put aside my personal feelings, so the following selection ranges from my OTP and ships I like to ships I dislike or am squicked by and NOTPs. The big ships and crack/niche ships are ones that have the most popular male characters or I’ve seen come up the most often, but I'm sure the pattern is consistent with more minor characters and subfandoms with fewer works
I focused on ships that exist in the MCU (film side only, no TV), only or in addition to other universes, just to simplify things. The MCU fandom is the biggest, and it gets complicated once you throw in other universes considering the vastness of the Marvel multiverse
I looked at the overall fanwork count for the ships rather than fanworks for that ship in the MCU tag as people tend to miscategorize their works
As of 6/19/20:
AO3 fanworks of big MCU/MCU-based ships:
Steve/Bucky: 50,501
Steve/Tony: 36,638
Loki/Thor: 13,071
Clint/Coulson: 10,940
Loki/Tony: 9,880
Bucky/Tony: 7,504
Spideypool: 7,271
Starker: 6,073
Ironstrange: 4,844
Bruce/Tony: 4,734
Bucky/Clint: 3,841
Stuckony: 2,331
AO3 fanworks of MCU/MCU-based ships with 1 or more POC where the characters interact a few times, have meaningful relationships with each other, or have genuine or crack potential:
Sam/Bucky: 3,023
Steve/Sam: 2,908
Rhodey/Tony: 1,434
Erik/T'Challa: 578
Ned/Peter: 429
Coulson/Fury: 264
M'Baku/T'Challa: 155
Rhodey/Sam: 149
Strange/Wong: 82
Heimdall/Thor: 50
Scott/Jimmy Woo: 36
Scott/Luis: 24
Fury/Pierce: 16 (fandom is also ageist)
The disparity between the two lists is particularly egregious when you consider:
Clint and Coulson had 17 seconds of dialogue and 7 lines with each other and never interacted again after Thor. This is a generous estimate as I included pauses
Loki and Tony haven't interacted since The Avengers
The only time Bucky and Tony as a duo and Steve, Bucky, Tony as a trio interact is in the bunker in Siberia
Spideypool includes a character who isn't even in the MCU
Ironstrange didn't exist or really exist in MCU fanworks before 2018, and Tony and Strange only communicate once in their second movie together, with Strange holding up his finger silently
Bucky and Clint never interact with each other
I’ll be focusing on the Captain America, Avengers, and Iron Man subfandoms first as those are the three biggest in the MCU. Before I start, here's my thread from last year about some of the ships I’ll be mentioning.
Okay. How does Bucky/Tony have 6,070 more fanworks than Rhodey/Tony and 4,481 more than Sam/Bucky and Bucky/Clint have 818 more than Sam/Bucky? How do Loki/Tony and Ironstrange have 8,446 and 3,410 more fanworks than Rhodey/Tony, respectively, and Stuckony almost as many as Steve/Sam?
The gap is especially glaring when you compare Steve/Bucky and Steve/Tony to Steve/Sam, Sam/Bucky, and Rhodey/Tony; however, though it's important to point out that wide gulf, I lose my mind more over the fact that ships with white characters who have never interacted or only exchanged a few lines (Clint/Coulson never even STAND IN THE SAME ROOM, and they're one of the top ships!) have more fanworks than ships with POC who do or have potential.
I will point out that at least with the MCU Spider-Man and Black Panther fandoms, you do see some diversity with their big ships (I’m including some M/F ships here to make a point in the next paragraph). MJ/Peter has 3,518 fanworks, and in addition to the two T’Challa ships above, Nakia/T’Challa has 286, MJ/Shuri 220, Bucky/Shuri 210, and Peter/Shuri 140 (Black Panther is a much smaller fandom, but some ship numbers are higher if you put BP and non-BP characters together, e.g., Tony/T’Challa (405) and Bucky/T’Challa (345).
It's important to note, however, that these two films are significantly more racially diverse than all other MCU films; in fact, they're very much the outliers. These ships and Ned/Peter are also heavy indicators of racism in this fandom. These numbers are very low compared to the big ships, and there are fewer works for these fandoms especially in BP’s case. Additionally, ships with white non-BP characters rank second, third, sixth, and eighth in the fandom (Bucky isn’t a BP character as he is only in the post-credits scene). Nakia/T’Challa is canon but outranked by Tony/T’Challa and Bucky/T’Challa, and all other ships with only BP characters, not listed here as the numbers are much lower other than M’Baku/T’Challa (second-lowest among the listed), are outranked by all the ships with white non-BP characters.
To sum up everything I said above:
white M/M ships are extremely overrepresented by a huge margin, even if they have little to no canonical basis
interracial ships are poorly represented even if the characters have meaningful relationships or potential (and even if they clearly have all the traits that would ensure that they would be a big ship had the character of color been white)
the ships with the least representation by a longggggg mile are ones that involve only POC. Their fanwork count is, aside from Erik/T’Challa (578), in the low 100s and 200s. Countless ships are below the 100 mark.
If you want to make this even more infuriating, here's a random selection of white (or in one case, AI) crack ships and ships that are more niche that I’ve seen to compare to the ships of color above:
Clint/Tony: 1,423
Loki/Steve: 1,251
Clint/Steve: 986
Bucky/Rumlow: 984
Clint/Pietro: 837
Hydrahusbands: 770
Grandmaster/Loki: 633
Steve/Rumlow: 547
Steve/Howard: 457
JARVIS/Tony: 414
And just for the hell of it because Darcy, a minor character who appears in only two movies and last appeared in 2013, shows up all the time in MCU fanworks (17,004 (these include ones where she’s not paired with anyone)) and is probably one of the top three or four little black dresses/fandom bicycles:
Darcy/Steve: 3,013
Darcy/Bucky: 2,640
Darcy/Loki: 1,558
Darcy/Clint: 1,107
Darcy/Steve/Bucky: 676
Darcy/Tony: 326
The Darcy situation is a post for another day (she has more fanworks than all other female characters except ~3 women), but in the context of this post, it’s absurd that nearly all of the non-canonical ships above which feature characters whom Darcy has never interacted with (I don’t even remember if Darcy interacted with Loki) have more fanworks than the listed ships of color.
That said, if you like the aforementioned white M/M ships, even if they have little to no canonical basis, that's okay. Anything goes in fandom. It IS a problem, though, if you have more than one ship, but ALL of them are white M/M ships or, if you like F/F and M/F, those are also all white. If you only create and consume works for a single ship, which a good number of people do (many people only get into a fandom because of an OTP!), it's fine if it's a white M/M ship. Honestly, it’s not that surprising either considering most of the screen time and meaty development is given to white characters because of racism (that's a post for another day). However, it IS a problem if most or all of your other ships across your current and previous fandoms are white—and if the only media you consume is predominantly or all white.
This post is longer than planned, but tl;dr, fandom has a racism problem which is nothing new, and we should all examine the following and see and remedy any implicit biases that we have:
our feelings about different characters and relationships, both platonic and romantic
our decision whether or not to seek or make content with characters of color. This includes content with your white ships that have POC in the work because sometimes every other white character in the MCU show up except them or all of them play bigger roles than the POC despite their relationship with the protagonist(s)
the way we interpret and write/draw those characters. For example, is Sam a yes-man? An unofficial or official therapist for white friends? The bro who cracks jokes and/or gives sage advice but seems to not have any flaws, struggles, or life of his own outside of his white friends? The BFF who thinks his white best friend is being dumb about another white guy and wants them to get their act together already?)
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for the character ask thing - gríma (Ik this is an obvious pick but I love him)
I mean I literally always want to talk about Grima so this is great. Any excuse is a good one.
How I feel about this character
Well I obviously love him. I enjoy characters who have been shunted to the margins in some way, shape, or form - or believe themselves to have been regardless of whether it is an accurate reflection of reality - who then make increasingly Poor Life Choices.
Also he is a great example of how isolation - whether self imposed or imposed by others - can lead to terrible things. In his case, it lead to despair in the world and the ability for people to defeat Sauron which resulted in being bedfellows with Saruman. Despair and the loss of hope and fear are such powerful feelings and I enjoy characters who go down those roads and the many iterations those stories can take.
For poor Grima it ended with him being horrifically mistreated by Saruman - like *horrifically* - then dying.
(I do resent that post by a Particularly Popular Tumblr which pitched Grima as the bad roommate that poor Saruman had to put up with as if it wasn’t Saruman who was browbeating and starving the guy, having him crawl on all fours like a dog, making him eat a hobbit etc. Grima is not a good man but Saruman is worse.)
He’s also a spooky snake man?? Who has some form of magical/words-are-power-becuase-we’re-anglo-saxons-on-horses ability?? Which is rad. And he’s so sassy in the books! He even sasses Treebeard which is very sexy of him. (You know, before he was broken down into a empty husk of a man by a certain wizard.)
All the people I ship romantically with this character
Eomer or no one. Depends on my mood. But I would say it’s 90% Eomer and 10% no one/he’s ace or thereabouts.
I know I’m the odd one out in this very tiny corner of the fandom who doesn’t ship him with Eowyn. But that’s because he is a tiny gay goth and she’s a non-binary queer and they should be friends but not lovers.
My non-romantic OTP for this character
Theoden. Hands down. Oh my god I love the idea of Grima just waltzing into Theoden’s office like YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE NONSENSE I HEARD TODAY MY LORD KING. The two just bitching about shit and side-eyeing Gondor.
‘Get your life right, Denethor,’ says Grima, middle earth’s messiest bitch.
If only he didn’t go and ruin it all by committing some light oath-breaking and treason.
For my Rewrite it’s obviously Legolas he’s bro’s with. They’re both uniformly strange. Legolas is 80% feral; Grima is just so messy. So, so messy. Together they’re an unstoppable force of “good gods who let them be friends? Is Legolas fist fighting that orc while Grima runs a book on it? Someone stop them.’
My unpopular opinion about this character
I don’t know that I have an unpopular opinion on him? I suppose, my view that he deserves understanding could be unpopular. Like Sauron, Morgoth, Saruman etc. he didn’t start out the way he became. I think it’s important to understand what made a person the way they are as if you understand that you might because to unpick the knot.
I personally have great sympathy for him but I don’t expect others to.
Oh - he and Gandalf are two sides of the same Odinn Coin. They’re both different aspects of Odinn, essentially. Do with that what you will.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
He should have lived! I’ve banged on about this from time to time but his living would have been a powerful note to end on with the final wrapping up of the war.
One of the tenants of the series is that love and friendship and kindness and generosity of spirit are powerful forces - as powerful, if not more so, than hate. So we have this whole thing about defeating Sauron, melting some nice jewelry, but only the Already Good People live. What about the power of these things to effect fundamental change in someone?
Wounds that make a person do dark things are not formed in isolation - they are born in relationship with others. Therefore healing also must happen in relationship with others.
Essentially, that moment of Frodo’s gesture: You don’t have to go with Saruman. You can leave him, stay with me, take what rest you need.
That gesture is the first step in providing someone the opportunity to take the road of redemption. But everyone who could actually benefit from such an offer (Grima, Denethor etc.) all die. Had a single one of them lived, that would have made for a stronger story.
--
Sorry for the deluge I just have 500 emotions about Grima and I drop them everywhere.
Thank you so so much for the ask! Feel free to slide into my inbox and ask about Grima anytime, because I love talking about him so much.
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nobody asked but i think hanso, brynn, and xandra from neopets’ comic “the faeries’ ruin” are queer | a 1.8k presentation i am presenting to my friends at an online party on the 19th, but you guys get early access because for some godforsaken reason, you like this content from me
Good evening class.
Last last time I attacked your dashboards with a long post, I discussed Neopets that would benefit from therapy. I’m sticking with my Neopets shtick but in a funkier Pride flavor. In this post, I will be discussing why the three main characters of Neopets’ “The Faeries Ruin” are queer.
So what is “The Faeries Ruin?”
“The Faeries Ruin” was a Neopets plot that ran through January of 2011. Plots can affect the website's appearance, services, and gameplay, and this plot was most notable because it turned all the Faeries of Neopia to stone.
Quick crash course on Neopets lore, for those of you who don’t know anything about it: Neopets are the main population of the planet of Neopia, but they share the world with other creatures as well. One of these creatures are Faeries, magical beings who can be benevolent or malevolent. Majority of them are good, and can be visited to receive gifts, abilities, new appearances, better stats, etc. Faeries are the most powerful creatures on Neopia. With the Faeries of Neopia turned to stone, all Faerie run services, from games to shops, were suspended because. Well. It’s hard to run a business when you’re stone.
“The Faeries Ruin” had an accompanying quest to play through, items to collect, puzzles to solve, and most important to our discussion, is the accompanying comic to read.
“The Faeries Ruin” comic is 17 chapters plus an epilogue. You can read the synopsis on the slide, and the story follows Hanso, a thief, Brynn, a guard, and Xandra, a scholar, who are all investigating the curse put on the Faeries.
A lot happens in the comic. Really, a LOT, so I don’t have time to summarize it for you. If you’re curious, you can read the plot here, and I’ll explain plot stuff as it becomes relevant to our discussion, but what’s really important are the characters.
These three in particular, Hanso, Brynn, and Xandra, are who I will be focusing on from the queer perspective.
But because I aim to be inclusive, before we dive into calling Neopets characters queer, we need a quick crash course in ‘queer’ definitions.
This is just so that we’re all on the same page. (Also so that I can use the readings I got from the queer theory class I was in last semester.)
Alex Pilcher in the Introduction of “A Queer Little History of Art” gives the word “queer” three definitions. First is the simplest, the word “queer” can act as an umbrella term for anybody who is not straight or cisgendered. The second definition is “queer” as an identity in itself. Instead or in addition to using sexuality or gender labels, one can opt to identify as queer and that does away with any hierarchies or too small definitions that may bother other people. I, for example, am bisexual, asexual, and nonbinary. However, that’s kind of a mouthful, and sometimes I don’t want to explain every facet of my identity. So sometimes I just tell people I’m queer, and fuck them if that’s confusing, it feels good for me. The third definition of “queer” is what I will be referring to quite a lot of times in this discussion, “queer” as a deviation from the norm. This is a callback to the word’s more archaic use, meaning odd or strange. What is “queer” then is what goes beyond or resists against society’s expectations.
Queer Theory is a huuuuuuuge academic genre, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. But we’re on a schedule here, so let’s queer some goddamn Neopets.
First, we have Hanso.
His Neopets species is an Ixi and he is a young rogue/thief. He knows Brynn because he’s a very shitty thief and he constantly gets captured by her. His personality is self centered and egocentric, but deep down, he has a heart of gold, even if his morals are a little skewed.
Also I think he’s bisexual. Why?
As a rogue/thief, he is outcasted by society, a type of queering from the norm. He is only accepted by those like him, which symbolically is parallel to how queer people often find other queer people to be with. Aside from Brynn, nobody trusts him. They think him to be a liar and a cheat, and this, I think, is parallel to the unsavory trope of the “untrustworthy bisexual.” Much the same way bisexuals are often told to “pick a side”, Hanso has both a desire for good and a desire for mischief, a duality that confuses other Neopets, and makes them wary of him.
Hanso is bisexual. And he isn’t sorry about it.
Next up we have one of my early childhood crushes. Brynn.
Brynn is a Kougra, a feline like Neopets species. She is a guard/soldier from the land of Brightvale. She knows Hanso because she keeps catching him, he’s a terrible thief. Her personality is one dominated by courage and a duty to Neopia’s safety.
And I think she’s also bisexual, but more interesting to me her queer expression of masculinity.
Jack Halberstam, a transgender man, wrote a book called “Female Masculinities” prior to his transition (I mention this because I know a lot of you may be wondering why a man gets any say about women’s issues, but I think this is a special case and that his views are still valid.) Halberstam, in his book, posits the concept of masculinity divorced from maleness. What this means, in simplest terms, is that masculinity is not something inherently male, just predominantly male. A female masculinity is thus outside of the norm, and a unique and queer expression of gender.
Concepts related to masculinity are things like power and rebellion. Strength, force, will, that kind of stuff. When we remove these things from maleness and allow femaleness to have these concepts, one of the results is tomboyism. The phenomenon of tomboyism is when a girl, usually young, exhibits masculine qualities. The thing about tomboyism is that it is reluctantly permitted during childhood but less expected as one grows older, the assumption being that a woman will submit to the societal expectations of what a woman is “supposed to be.”
I cannot find any canon sources to say that sexism is a huge problem in Neopia, but gender roles are still present. While we don’t see Brynn’s childhood in “The Faeries Ruin”, it doesn’t take much to imagine that her peers would be surprised with her choice to join the Brightvale Guard, a traditionally male pursuit. And yet she does it. She works hard and becomes such a good soldier that she aids King Altador himself during the story, that King Altador trusts and respects her opinions. Brynn rebels against society’s standards and asserts her own power.
Her personality exudes masculinity as well. Throughout “The Faeries Ruin” she is often dominant over the course of investigation, taking initiative, sometimes omitting truths for the greater good, and generally holding her judgement in high regard.
Her choices, especially in regards to her relationship with Hanso, is also something of note. Brynn is the one doing the catching and Hanso is the one being caught, an interesting subversion of expected gender roles. I will admit now that I have been withholding some information. Hanso, later in the plot of “The Faeries Ruin”, admits that he wanted to get caught by her as often as possible so that he would have an excuse to see her. Brynn did not know this, but I see it as a Hanso recognizing Brynn’s power and masculinity. I see it as a very romantic submission of Hanso to Brynn.
So Brynn is bi, because I say so. And she expresses masculinity in a unique, queer, and female way.
Now, before we move onto the last character, Xandra, I need to talk to you guys about Brynn and Hanso’s relationship. I think it is very good, it was one of my first OTPs, and here’s three reasons why it’s a good ship.
Reason 1: They’re both queer, so like, it’s better than the usual M/F couple. Bi people have more genders they’re attracted to, so the person they do end up choosing had to be better than literally everybody else. We can rest assured both of them are good eggs that are compatible with each other.
Reason 2: Their relationship over the course of “The Faeries Ruin” is that of the “enemies to friends to lovers” trope. Which, HELLO? GOOD SHIT? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP? THE HOSTILITY SLOWLY GIVING WAY TO RESPECT? THE RESPECT TURNING INTO ADMIRATION? Your honor, it’s delicious.
Reason 3: This reason is an NSFW concept, so if you don’t wanna see that, just Ctrl+F to the phrase “This brings us to our last character, Xandra” to skip it. We good? Everybody continuing to read wants to see this? Okay.
BRYNN TOTALLY PEGS HANSO. Like, I don’t have any sources, but by this point in the presentation, I hope I’ve established myself as an expert authority, and I hope you just believe me. She has the sword, in this relationship. Both literally and metaphorically. She pegs him and her strap is huge.
This brings us to our last character, Xandra.
Xandra is a Xweetok and also a magic scholar. She studied under Fyora, the Faerie Queen, and helps Hanso and Brynn with their investigation of the faeries’ petrification. She’s a lesbian because I say so, but uhhhhhh…
She’s also evil. Towards the end of “The Faeries’ Ruin” it was revealed that Xandra was the one who petrified the faeries all along. So yeah, she’s evil, buuuuuuut she’s super queer about it. How? Well, the answer lies in her motives.
The reason why she petrified the faeries was because she wanted to start a new Neopia without them. She believed that the faeries were hoarding power instead of using it to truly help Neopians. She actively wanted to destroy not just the faeries, but a symbol of power and control that arguably rules the world she lives in. She criticizes against that which controls the social expectations, and this criticism and questioning benefits the marginalized, the queered from the norm. Her intention was to create a kind of utopia free from a governing body that holds all the power. That’s pretty damn queer.
Honestly, I’m a little pissed she was branded as evil for this, but it was revealed that when the faeries were petrified, their good magic was gone and left Neopia vulnerable to evil magic shadows and Xandra didn’t really care. So uh, she had good and radical queer motives, but she went a little bonkers with power. I still love her though.
So, Xandra is pretty awesome, I hope she gets therapy then attends a Pride protest. She would totally be there reminding everybody that Pride started with riots. Also she loves women.
Thank you all.
(Read my other off the shits analysis essays at actualbird.tumblr.com/tagged/nobody-asked-but! If you have a request or suggestion for an off the shits analysis essay I can write, send me an ask!)
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Dear Yuletide Writer
Thanks for signing up for this superfun exchange! This is the sixth year I’ve participated now, and I’ve always enjoyed it– I hope you do, too.
Below you’ll find the following:
General Likes/Kinks
General DNWs
Fandom Specifics/Prompts
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano
Legally Blonde (Movie) - Elle Woods
Mad Men - Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
Superstore - Jonah Simms, Amy Dubanowski
I’ve tried to list some varied prompts for each fandom, but please don’t feel like you have to stick to what I’ve come up with. If the rest of my letter gives you another idea you’d like to write, I’d love to read it!
a little about me to start:
My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like, and my tags for each of my requested fandoms here:
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend | Legally Blonde | Mad Men | Superstore
general likes/kinks:
I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped in an enclosed space, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!
I have a great love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs and private eye AUs, and these days I’m (perhaps unhealthily) invested in US politics/news in my everyday life, so if you want to have any of my requested characters run for office, I’d never turn that down.
Epistolary fic, either as part of a story or as all of it, is always fun to me, if it’s up your alley. Phone calls! (Phone sex?) Emails! Letters! I love it all!
I love strong-but-flawed-and-realistic female characters in general. Ladies kicking ass through cleverness and wit and competence is the best, and I love it when they’re allowed to make mistakes and fuck up and dig themselves into a hole, too.
Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex/sexting. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk. Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.
general dnws:
Superangst and sad endings. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm/abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV.
fandom specifics/prompts:
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano
I loved this show from beginning to end. It’s clever, it’s feminist, it’s funny, it’s real (even as it features elaborate musical sequences!), and the characters are so flawed but so great.
I shipped Rebecca and Greg so hard in the early seasons, before he left. When I read that they were bringing the character back but recasting, I was naturally a bit suspicious-- how would that work? Would it diminish my love for the ship? Reader, it did not diminish anything, and in fact made me kind of love them even more. Skylar Astin’s performance of Greg, a little grown up and a little more put together, made me swoon. And I began to see how they could make an adult relationship work. Naturally, things went awry during the course of the final season, but I think the finale left us with so much hope that they would find their way back to each other.
I love all the other characters, so feel free to mix them in-- especially Paula!
Prompts:
Rebecca and Greg find their way back to each other! How does it happen?
Rebecca/Greg + any number of tropes– stuck somewhere together; inconvenient bed-sharing; fake dating, the works.
Maybe West Covina has run its course for both of them, and they decide-- together or separately-- to move somewhere else. Maybe Rebecca decides it’s time for her to go back to New York to give her Broadway dreams a try? Maybe Greg tags along? Or maybe it’s fate, and just as she’s made the choice to head back East, he gets a job offer there, too, so they’re both moving to NYC but aren’t technically together, and how does that work?
It’s Christmas in West Covina, and Greg gets Rebecca’s name in Secret Santa. How does he find the perfect present that says both “I’m still kind of sort of in love with you” and also “I spent no time on this whatsoever because pssh who cares?”
Legally Blonde (Movie)
Elle Woods
This movie is such a classic to me, one I can quote, and one I can’t help but watch when it’s on TV. I love Elle Woods’ determination and relentlessness, and how she’s a shining example of how prettiness and positivity doesn’t preclude smarts and success. I want more about the unstoppable Elle Woods, charging toward her ambitions with a designer handbag and the perfect pink lip.
(I generally dig Elle with Emmett in canon, but I don’t really care much about him, so if you’d rather write her solo or with someone new, go for it!)
Prompts:
Elle Woods for President! Tell me about Elle on the campaign trail. Tell me about the debate between Elle and her opponent. Tell me about how Elle interacts with her campaign staff, or her strategy to win Iowa.
Elle Woods AS President! Tell me about her first night living in the White House after she wins, or her first big challenge, or what it feels like looking out on Washington and thinking about how far she’s come.
Elle heads back to Harvard– does she become a professor? Is it to mentor young law students? Is it for a case?
Elle the Vampire Slayer AU
Mad Men
Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
I love and miss this show so much. It was so smart and made me feel so many things, and in truth, Peggy Olson is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.
Peggy and Stan is such a great ship, to me, and one I was on board with from the very beginning. Omitting his boorish behavior early on, once they established a rapport, they were such equals, and he seemed to respect her so much, and vice versa. They got on each other’s nerves and knew how to push each other’s buttons, but that’s just because they connected so well and really got each other.
Prompts:
I absolutely adore the time period where they’re basically phone buddies. Maybe an AU where they get together earlier in the series, during that time? How their phone conversations evolve from discussing work to discussing everything to falling for each other (or realizing they already had)? Phone sex (or getting ever-so-close to it before realizing they’re in the office and it’s inappropriate) is a-okay here too.
In the same vein, epistolary fic could be really fun to play around with here. Maybe a story told through a series of interoffice memos, messages, notes in the margins of copy pitches and along the edges of spec art?
What are things like now that Peggy and Stan are working together and being together (and possibly living together)? It’s got to be frustrating at times but worth it in the end, right?
NASA/Space Race AU– Peggy’s a NASA scientist/engineer and Stan is an astronaut
Superstore
Jonah Simms, Amy Dubanowski
This is such a fun and funny show, one that snuck up on me but that is reliably a show I look forward to every single week. Amy and Jonah’s slow burn was a delight to watch, and I love their occasionally contentious attraction to each other, and especially how supremely dorky, pretentious and pedantic Jonah can be.
I love all the other characters, so feel free to mix them in!
Prompts:
I’m really interested in exploring Jonah’s ambition or lack thereof. Does he have any, at this point? What if he decides to quit Cloud 9 to pursue a dream? Does he get an MBA or a creative writing degree? Does he decide to write a screenplay? Give me all the pretentious but well-intentioned Jonah.
A look at before Jonah and Amy got together, or if they’d gotten together earlier-- sneaking around the store, or UST in the break room.
AU where some kind of scary outbreak (zombies? werewolves? giant bats?) has hit the town and they’re trapped in Cloud 9 while they wait it out.
So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process this Yuletide season, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!
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VLD Season 7 Reactions
My inbox has been busy non-stop since Season 7 dropped, and I thought I’d share a few with you, @dreamworksanimation and @voltron, just in case you’ve missed the fandom’s reaction to the new season.
It's sad that we've gradually gone from being excited to new seasons to feeling worried and skeptical. There was a lot of dread in the fandom instead of anticipation for s7 and the interviews fueled it. People used to make intriguing theories but now it's all "how s7 would have been better" and "this is a crack theory but knowing vld it might be canon" We are supposed to be right before the grand finale of a space opera but people can't wait for it to be over. What a great way to end a series!
The grand space opera became a space tragedy in one season. We’ve waited for a payoff that will seemingly never come - including the end of the lion swap. An introduction of a new mecha should have exciting but was overshadowed the permanent demotion of Allura from commander to foot-soldier and the banishment of Shiro from Voltron and his lion, the latter with whom Shiro shared the strongest bond. This also ended Shiro’s internal struggle of “can I be worthy of the paladin mantle” with the answer, “no, you can’t be.”
Season 7 could have the fandom’s resurgence, after a strong Season 6 showing, but from the standpoint of almost everyone in my inbox - the fandom is just tired and ready to move on.
More under the cut.
I commented on a Youtube video how I didn't like the Atlas consolation prize, and someone replied saying I need to stop because they “clearly“ aren't trying to bench him or anything. It took everything I had to not respond with a rant.
Wanting to rant is understandable. I’ve had this conversation a few times - messages, on my blog - about why Shiro being in Atlas isn’t a satisfying conclusion to his character’s arc. It’s not about him being benched, per se - though he is. Shiro’s internal struggle was deciding if he was worthy to be a paladin after everything that happened to him - and what he had to do to survive. By putting him in Atlas, the show is saying he is unworthy of the Black Paladin mantle.
Sending this demoralizing message in the same season that we learn Shiro is also LGBTQ+ representative is reprehensible but perhaps ignorant. Saying that Shiro is also unworthy of the Black Paladin mantle as a multiple-minority, LGBTQ+ character with PTSD and a disability, is unconscionable.
I honestly think the dream works execs weren't told the full story on what they were planning with Shiro. The way they speak about the Atlas, the DreamWorks execs seemed to be left out of the picture as to how much distance they put between Shiro and his team - or how he goes half the season being nothing more than a background prop. The way they say “the Atlas does something really cool“ makes me think they never gave the impression Shiro was going to be next to irrelevant.
Could be! But now it’s DreamWorks’ job to correct the issue. They need to come out with a statement, say that recognize there is an issue, and that they are taking steps to correct it. However, the only communication we’ve gotten from DreamWorks was JDS’s apology (and subsequent tweets by LM), and that letter was ineffective. It addressed queerbaiting, not what the EPs did to Shiro, a LGBTQ+ character, or even to Adam, Zethrid, and Ezor.
So I’m not sure if DreamWorks’ execs have acknowledged that there are offensive and harmful messages in Voltron, especially Season 7.
My deepest wish was that after they came back from Sven's reality, they actually went to another reality, very similar to the original and never realized, and in the end of season 8 slav will tell them that and they'll go back to their own reality, and continues on s9 with Shiro being actually alive, just captured again by haggar, then rescued and he is the bp for ever and keith is back to red and allura is back to castle and lance is like blue i missed you and blue is like [expletive deleted] me too the [expletive deleted]
Duuuuude. Can we make this canon?
I know being salty helps nobody least of all myself, but I'm so irked that the EPs pat themselves on the back for making Shiro gay, when a)they don't get that Adam's death is an issue that goes way beyond OTPs, b)they did kill Shiro, c)even though Shiro eventually got back, Kuron didn't, not in any piece of actual canon, and presumably Kuron was gay too so that's 2 dead gays (4 if you count the implied lesbians), and d)apparently Shiro being Asian, mentally ill and disabled doesn't matter as rep
Being salty helps. Really. It helps DreamWorks to determine what worked well and what didn’t in their latest season.
Though I understand how some fans felt queerbaited by VLD, the fact that it is the only thing addressed in JDS letter tells me DW is waving a hand over all the other implications. DreamWorks didn’t want to address all they did to Shiro, so instead, they apologize for the least offensive issue and hope people will be satisfied. (From my ask box, they are not.)
melissa18999 said: So even the execs thought that shiro was an interesting character. I can see why. The writers wrote him to have one of the saddest backstories ever and he’s the only human on the team that has experienced the galra’s bullshit first hand. The other 4 paladins pilot voltron because they’re told to. There doesn’t seem to be the same drive that shiro had. Sure there’s Pidge but she was the one trying to quit voltron to save her family. removing shiro exposed the others lack of a call to action.
It exposed that practically none of the other characters had any stakes in Voltron. We can say that Hunk received his stake in Season 1 when fighting for the Balmera, and Keith’s stake was Shiro. Lance? Nope. Never really had one and really never got one, considering his family was safe and sound on Earth. You could make the argument that he cares for Allura and wants to be a better paladin because of her, but...we don’t actively see him trying to do it for her. We saw him trying to be a better paladin before she and he connected.
And now they’ve removed the aforementioned motivating character from Voltron. Yeah. Not cool.
The thing about the execs liking Shiro and demanding that he gets a better role... is that we always hear about creatives who want to get rep on screen but the EEEBIL executives say no. And here we have a case where the creatives saw a mentally ill disabled poc character that broke all stereotypes, and they could see no place for him in the cast, while the execs recognised his incredible potential and wanted him to shine. So I have zero sympathy for the EPs here. The execs were RIGHT, damnit!
The reason I liked VLD S1/2 so much was because it broke tropes. Shiro is strong leader but also needs help. Allura is a warrior princess and isn’t scared to go toe-to-toe with the emperor of the universe. Keith and Shiro hug. Look, no matter how you view their relationship, hugs just don’t happen in cartoons, especially between men. So I just loved that part so much. and it made Voltron progressive. (You can share and show your feelings and not be scorned for it.)
Oh, and Lance was originally the heart of the team, not Allura. She became so after moving into Voltron, but having a male character being the heart? That was groundbreaking, too.
Sure, VLD had its issues, but the show was empowering to so many marginalized groups - until Season 3.
perhaps the worst part of Shiro's placement is that he's effectively become the side character of an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SERIES. I've started watching robotech, and CANNOT see the atlas as anything but the ship from that (down to the transformation), or the MFEs as a mix of Vehicle Voltron and the robotech fighters.
I would argue that the worst part about Shiro’s placement is that Shiro is no longer a part of the eponymous character, has no family, and is a multiple-minority character who proved that he can not only be a part of the team but also be the strongest part.
And then Voltron decided to show people who identified with Shiro - that’s not the case. In fact, you can’t even be a part of the team or win your own battles. You have to rely upon others to do so.
But you have a valid point. That part’s bad, too.
Please note: I received more asks with VLD Season 7 reactions. I’ve answered some on my blog, but I’ve also deleted a few that were too harsh to post.
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JLY Analysis: The In-Depth Post
Hello and welcome to what may very well be the world’s longest post about Louis Tomlinson’s recent lyric video for his song “Just Like You”! You may have seen my prior posts about the video - here’s the link for my JLY tag if you want to catch up on my prior analysis!
To preface, this post is the result of an actual frame-by-frame analysis of the entire video (all 6,155 frames), and it’s everything that I haven’t seen other bloggers mention.
I’m here to present the content of the video so that everyone has access to it! If I’m missing something, chances are I’ve already posted about it or saw someone else post about it, but feel free to send me a message if you spot something I didn’t catch!
Anyway, let’s get on with it! Hopefully somebody reads through all of it, but it’s a lot, lmao. All 65 pages of my screenshot document are analyzed and laid out below the cut. 😎
First up is the headline under “whole world in my right hand”: All of the headlines that have visible words around/beneath them have obviously had the actual title replaced with the lyrics, but you can still source the original article if you have enough words.
This is actually from the original wanted poster from the infamous Elizabeth Short case, often called the Black Dahlia case. The case has been unsolved since it occurred in 1947.
Next is this travel deal, from a trip to Norway advertised in The Times.
The crossed-out headline also in that frame says “really not a petrolhead”, which is from this article.
Next is this headline:
It comes from this article:
Near the Thomas Paine article is a review of this book:
Moving on to a series of cars:
“23″ written on the seat.
The above picture is actually this one of Lindsay Lohan with her black Porsche, from June 2013 as far as I can tell:
I didn’t try to find the other cars, but I believe they’re other celebrity car pics. Here’s one last one:
Next is another trip advertisement, which I believe is from a China Yangtze cruise.
The upper left text is from this football article:
This “party” headline is next:
It’s from this article, a review of a comedy that - according to the link - was first published all the way back in February, then recently update online.
Funnily enough, one of the stars is a familiar name :-)
This next frame has quite a few articles:
The main two are these:
Here’s the frame with the relevant parts underlined:
I don’t know what the “global” logo is. On the right hand part of the frame is the obituary of Pat Sephton.
Pat, as the obituary title states, was the woman who founded the Bottoms Up strip club.
I don’t know where this next part appears in the video itself, because my document got mixed up in some places, but an anon pointed out to me that the megaphone featured is the same one in the History music video.
Some blue n green in this frame:
And this one:
The upper corner of this frame has a tiny clipping of an article:
These next two frames feature text from these two articles:
These two frames contain whited-out dialogue from a Dear Deidre column:
“I’ve, erm, I’ve been … Erm .. Well, now that you ask...”
“They said you weren’t working tonight, so where have you been?”
The green silhouettes are consistent with the couple in the article:
The article is about “Cathy” who’s cheating on her boyfriend, “Max”, with “Darren”. Darren is cheating on his girlfriend “Jill” with Cathy.
Max and Jill actually end up together, both the victims of their boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s infidelity. Jill gets cold feet with her relationship with Max, and Darren feels the same about Cathy, so Jill and Darren try to work things out. In the end, Cathy gets left out in the cold - the cheater who started the whole mess.
Next up is the frame that the “happy eggs” article is on. It features a headline from Volume V, Issue VI of something, but who knows what.
“Alex” hides onscreen for a few frames :-)
The full article is this one:
It discusses Manchester United at length. Interesting, given the fact that we know someone who is an avid fan of that particular team. :-)
If I remember right, he talked about Manchester United at his show this year, didn’t he? I digress - there are several more small mentions of the team, though looking through my document, I don’t think I screenshotted all of them. Interesting nonetheless. :-) Moving on!
An article about China’s Communist Party Congress.
I know we already found it, but here’s the pic and website of the Queens Arms, located in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham:
There are two articles in this frame:
This one about Andrea Pirlo, a footballer whose career ended this year:
And this one about mental illness:
The quote that’s featured in the video is:
“'One in four of us will have some form of mental health episode at some stage in our life. If we're moving 400,000 passengers on the DLR each weekday, a significant number of our customers will be going through something, without necessarily showing the symptoms.”
This headline is from the following article about the National Trust:
The National Trust is the governing body of protected sites of natural beauty or historic significance.
In the above frame is this article:
The text in this frame is from this article:
The National Trust comes back in this frame:
This is the article:
This next frame is rather content-heavy:
In the bottom-left corner is a photo of St. Vincent, from a review of her new album Masseducation. Kudos to Louis for adding another LGBTQ+ artist to the video - St. Vincent dated Cara Delevingne for 1.5 years :-)
The same-sex marriage quote is from this article about Tim Minchin, a composer.
The right-hand picture is from this article about Dizzee Rascal:
Finally, the upper-middle person is actually a sideboard called “Ziggy” from a bespoke handmade furniture site.
This was interesting to me because there’s obviously no person in the photo that was used - the animator just cut one out. I have no idea who it is, and I’m interested as to why the sideboard was advertised in a newspaper in the first place, considering it’s very limited edition. [shrugs]
This is from another horse-racing article:
It discusses a particularly feisty filly; fans of the horse are fighting for her to continue racing, but her manager is thinking about taking her off the track.
Carla Bruni, a musician, is featured here:
as I noted - the words featured are “world war”, “manipulating”, “exhausted”, and “tensest sense”. It’s a review of the World War II film “Land of Mine”, from this article:
This is from this article, a book review:
Beetle Bailey flashbacks! hahah
More Cillian Murphy mentions! I hope he’s hinting at an upcoming guest appearance on Peaky Blinders, lmao
This frame is from this article:
This headline is from this article, all the way back in 2014:
Anyone else getting flashbacks to.....
:-)
This frame is from a review of a Van Gogh movie called “Loving Vincent”
Not to be dramatic, but “revolutionary artist” is exactly how I would describe Louis :’)
I just thought it was funny that the dead-center word in this word search is....
OTP :-)
And yet another shout-out to Cillian! Me, too, Louis. Me, too.
You may have seen in my prior analysis that “Ruby In The Dust” appeared, and I wasn’t sure what it referenced. This is actually the article it’s from:
This is the first line of that article:
:-)
The text on the right half of this frame is from this article:
Hi, Manchester United :-)
This is an advertisement for McCarthy & Stone retirement homes. They have locations all over the UK, but the ads are location-specific - I thought this one was from Cheshire, but the phone number didn’t match up. It’s 0800-201-4215, but I can’t call it because I live in the US, so who knows where it’s from! [shrugs]
OTP shows up again!
We’ve already pointed out the nautical star, but I have to include it again because, as a lesbian, it makes me so happy :-)
my heart is warm :’)
I’m including this frame because I’m interested to hear other opinions - “Loui” was spelled and left up for a few seconds, then this end letter was added. It looks far too flat to be an “s”, IMO, so does anyone think it could be an “e” to spell “Louie”?
Finally, the last few frames are various articles with white paint obscuring most of the text. The “LGBT” article from earlier appears once at the beginning of the end segment, then it comes back at the very end. It’s the very last thing you see before the video ends :-)
And that’s the end! I’d like to thank @parodiesofuktabloids for helping me find the love rectangle Dear Deidre comic, and @ann-fortunately for her help with the mirror article! I’d also like to extend a major congratulations to Louis for creating a video that’s absolutely packed full of content - I really enjoyed researching everything featured.
I couldn’t be prouder to be a fan of someone that so clearly has made a point to use his platform to represent marginalized voices through this video. As a lesbian, Louis’ representation of LGBTQ+ news and culture was particularly meaningful to me. I can’t thank him enough for putting this video together - it absolutely took an incredible amount of skill and intelligence to film and create, and I feel honored to have been the one to reverse-engineer it these past few weeks.
Onto the next video, Louis? 😎
#just like you#this took me WEEKS and I am finally done!#if you want to leave a nasty comment in my box: please don't. I won't publish it and it won't change the fact that I've already done this#analysis#take it somewhere else!#anyway I hope someone actually read this whole thing lol#I can't believe I finally finished it!#if I missed something Louis is gonna have to give me an OBVIOUS hint lol I won't find it otherwise
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Salty asks: 1-27.
Assuming this is the fandom of your namesake.
1. OTP that I just don’t get. Probably Sam/Tron. Not to say some folks can’t REALLY fucking rock it (see the “We Are Pilots” verse), but it takes a lot of work. Their only meeting in canon was in a duel to the death with the Program being brainwashed and crazy, and Sam has very little if any reason to even like the guy, even in a post-Legacy setup.
2, Fandom OTP I only BroTP: Probably Tron/Ram. Ram had too much chemistry with Flynn, and Tron was single-minded enough about Yori to put his deity on hold. While I can very easily see group marriage as a normal part of Program society, it’s not something I can see in canonical circumstances.
3. Unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? Nope. But if they trash my faves, I hope they can back up their dislike with a very good argument.
4. A NoTP for my fandom. Not touching Sam/Alan with a 10-meter Rod Primitive. The age gap for one, the paternal role Alan took for two, the fact Lora is not dead in this timeline third, the fourth is the possibility of OT3: Shall We Dance making this ship even more brain-breaking.
5. Has fandom ruined a pairing for me? Not in this fandom, but I’ve avoided the hell out of some shows because I saw the fandom for them was such a big ball of crazy that I wanted to avoid it like kryptonite.
6. Has fandom made me enjoy a pairing I previously hated? I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, and I’m not sure I’d call it “enjoy,” but there are some Clu/”Rinzler” fics that almost make the whole thing come out as something marginally less squicky and more interesting than “sadist and his sex slave.”
7. Anything I used to like but dislike now? Y’know, I kinda used to dig Flynn/Alan slash. But after I realized I could make a drinking game out of them (take a shot if they mention Lora, chug the whole thing if they mention Jordan - stay sober the whole night), they lost a lot of appeal. I’ll make an exception for “Shall We Dance” scenarios. Heck, I love Shall We Dance because it’s a very different matter if Lora’s aware and on board with the whole thing. Heck, if someone upgrades it to an Ot4 of “Shall We Dance With Jordan,” then I owe them a six-pack of top-quality beer or cane-sugar soda and my enthusiastic gratitude.
8. Anon hate? Yes. Received it. But over politics, not fandom. It’s to be expected. The Galaxy Rangers list used to have “don’t talk to Allronix about politics” as one of the bylaws.
9. Most hated character? Probably Pavel. He’s such a transparent slimeball with little in the way of interesting motivation. Tesler? While he’s a nasty piece of work, there’s wiggle room to argue that he’s doing what he’s doing for the good of the system and doesn’t like doing what he does. Sark? Incredible ham and definitely one note, but David Warner plays the best creeps ever. (He out-creeped Malcolm McDowell, that’s near-impossible)
10. Most disliked arc. Probably the Isos. I’m still not sure what they were, or why they were special or what was so great about them, or how they would change everything, aside from the implication they were partly biological. Which is great and all, but the way it was handled has an “organics rule, synthethics drool” vibe that is pretty insulting when everything else in the franchise shows that the Programs are just as capable of love, hate, morality, humor, and free will as the humans who built them.
11. Unpopular character I like that the fandom doesn’t? I just had to have the bad luck…or the good luck…to latch on very hard to the Tron 2.0 characters. Good luck in that it’s unexplored territory. Bad luck in that I seem to be the only one who writes Mercury, or Crown, or I-No.
12. Unpopular arc I like the fandom doesn’t? 2.0 again. What got me about it is that the 1982 and Legacy films dealt with malevolent AI who were cruel of other AI and wanted to extend the cruelty. 2.0 inverted it; the uncorrupted Programs were, with very few exceptions, wanting to protect themselves and their home. The corrupted Programs were driven insane by a User who embraced the worst parts of the role. And then you had F-Con who planned to crank that up even more so that they could rule both worlds from the shadows. It really needed to be explored more, as it was a great start.
13. Unpopular opinion about a character: Sam Flynn kinda spooks me. He has no reason to be merciful or benevolent to Programs. As far as he saw, his dad believed in them, and they stabbed his dad in the back, kept his dad away from him, tried to kill him, tried to kill Quorra, killed all of Quorra’s people, and eventually killed his dad right in front of him. And he’s taking over command of a software company with barely any time to process that trauma. It’s probably not going to end well for the Programs unless something intervenes.
14. Unpopular opinion about the fandom: They have very little interest in reclaiming the female characters from the margins, and that’s quite frustrating. Quorra and Paige get some fics here and there, but even those petered out. Yes, this fandom is VERY heavily skewed male, but you’ve got Quorra, Paige, Mara, Gorn, Lux, Yori, Lora, Gem, etc. in Legacy canon, and some great potential with Mercury, Ma3a, and Eva Popoff if you import from 2.0. I was hoping to see at least SOMEONE write up a fanfic about Jordan. What kind of woman could handle a brilliant, cheerful, crazy ball of energy like 80′s!Flynn?
15. Unpopular opinion about the canon: Legacy is very difficult for me to watch. Even though it totally brought the whole thing back from the dead, it’s just frustrating to watch. Not to say everyone didn’t bring their A-game to it, but it took everything that made the first film so much fun and destroyed it, ending up as a depressing waste where everyone loses, and Dillinger Jr is just waiting in the wings to cause even more trouble.
16. If I could change anything about the canon, what to change? Tron 2.0 totally happened. It would not be hard to come up with a workaround for Ma3a that keeps Lora alive. There’s probably about three or four ways I could come up with other than the made of crack one I’ve got going in my fics.
17. Instead of X happening, I’d go with Y: If you want something other than “instead of 2.0 being thrown out the airlock, it’s part of canon,” I would have loved to see Sam get rescued by Bartik’s crew (Bonus points if Yori’s running the damn thing) and then meet up with his dad and Quorra. That way, there could have been a little more complexity to the Grid situation and a way to avoid the whole “Programs are evil!” thing Legacy ended up with.
18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased? Shipping, IMO is shorthand for schools of character interpretation. Someone who ships Quorra/Sam is going to have a different take than someone who ships Quorra/Zues, or Quorra/Paige. They’re all looking at the same data, but the interpretation of the data is going to vary.
19. One thing I dislike most about my fandom: It’s a back alley of the 80′s that its own company barely wants to admit they did. This makes canon and newcomers a little hard to come by.
20. Purest ship in the fandom. Tron/Yori was my first OTP. They’re still my OTP, because 82!Tron was such a sweet, earnest dork and Yori was such an adorable, sneaky badass. Post-Legacy? It’s going to be one heck of a climb no matter which guess you take about Yori’s fate (And seriously? Morgan got gypped), but having those two limp off into whatever digital sunset there is would be the closest we get to a happy ending that’s canon-compatible.
21. Crack ships? A crack ship for the sake of a crack ship is a “no thanks!” But there are ships that look like someone did them on a three-drink dare that actually manage to work. I’m thinking to KOTOR fandom where someone made a REALLY awesome case for Canderous/Bastila that should not have worked and totally did.
22. Popular character I dislike: It’s not so much “dislike” as “I’m not sure what to make of them.” Really wanted some development on Sam. Quorra got Evolution and a nice episode of Uprising, but Sam…he’s still a bit of a blank to me.
23. Unpopular character I adore: I especially latched on hard to Jet Bradley after reading the Ghost in the Machine comic because he had clearly done a lot of thinking about what being a User means in that setting, and was bringing up points no one else bothered with. As such, he makes an excellent foil and walking deconstruction fleet while still being, ostensibly, one of the good guys.
24. Would I recommend Tron to a friend? Only with a ton of disclaimers. This was made in the EARLY 80′s, by people who apparently had no fucking idea what they were doing, and Disney probably signed off on it while under the influence of something. But the combination ends up as something inexplicably brilliant and probably launched thousands of computer animation careers and hundreds more IT careers.
25. How would I end it? I’ve got fics in mind for it. I kitbash 2.0 and Legacy shamelessly. The ending I have in mind? Well, Alan and Lora end up giving up their lives in analog to rebuild the Rome Flynn started. Jet ends up dedicating his life to serving the Programs and goes a bit native. Mercury and Tron act as the primary “knights” of Alan and Lora. Sam and Quorra handle much of the rest in the analog world, slowly trying to open up the world and make it ready for the revelation of the digital one. And Yori runs a reformation of the Program religion so that they are prepared to accept the Users as fallible beings who are still powerful, but less “worship as deity” and more “we depend on one another - don’t screw it up.”
26. Most shippable character? Probably Flynn. I can see him as a fellow who would (prior to the coup) enjoy himself and his opportunities to the fullest, including trying anything twice sexually.
27. Least shippable character: Probably Esomond Baza. He’s a coward with so little self-esteem, self-respect, or a moral compass that he needs a few months of therapy before even thinking of a date.
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Fanfic writer’s guides: a linkdump
You know how I always go on about that hallowed fanfic writers’ culture that existed Back In The Mailing List Days? The sort of snarky and intelligent culture that bred the absolute best of fanfic writers? All that information that those of us who were there learned, but now bemoan the loss of in fandom? Well, it turns out that at least some of the websites I remember from that distant past are still standing, so I thought I’d link to them. Share the living crap out of these links, guys, because they contain so much really basic information that fandom somehow has largely failed to pass on, probably because post-LJ/Ao3 fanfic became so huge.
Now, some of the stuff in these things is dated, and they contain things I don’t always agree with myself (oh, how broadband access to gay porn–thankfully–changed a lot of the ‘well, my husband says’ attitudes about what guys supposedly like in bed!), but there’s so much valuable information that it *will* help anyone and everyone to become a better writer (and reader). Guys may cry more in media these days (these were mostly written *before* Sam Tyler, after all), but the exhortations to avoid epithets and ‘said’-phobia and the like are still valuable.
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Ten Little Peeves. Really great, basic stuff everyone should know.
“The desire to set people off by their jobs or physical characteristics is even stronger in scenes with lots of people, but if you aren���t very careful, it ends up like this scene from Blake’s 7: The little thief fucked the burly rebel so hard that he screamed as he came, waking up the emotionless computer expert. The Auron telepath had been awake for some time, and she nudged the blonde pilot, who woke with a big jerk. The big jerk grumbled, “My limiter is killing me.”
Citizens Against Bad Slash Snarkery to the max. The Writing and Rants sections are great.
“Don’t worry. The word “said” isn’t going to come after you with a shotgun. It’s your friend. Embrace it.“
Ms. Nitpicker: How To Write Marginally Readable Fanfiction. Absolutely fantastic stuff: her explanation as to why you should never, ever start posting a WIP before you’ve finished it is the best I’ve ever read.
“Remember, when you post a story, you are signing a contract with the reader. If real life or writer’s block interferes and you never finish the tale, you have broken the contract. You have lied. You, in fact, have no honor. Do you promise children a Christmas, and entice them with tales of presents and Santa, then on Christmas Day announce that real life interfered or Santa ran out of ideas and Christmas is postponed?”
Bad Fanfic! No Biscuit! Ahhh, I remember this site way back from the Sith Academy days. Some of the intentional badfics are hilarious–and educational.
“Too many writers ruin an otherwise promising sex scene by using sex words that don’t fit the scene. If you use the technical terms (penis, vagina, intercourse), your story may sound too clinical. Similarly, you want to avoid the silly flowery terms found in dime-store romance novels. There is a happy medium, and that can be hard to find. Think about the kinds of words you use, or like to hear, in bed. Those are likely to be the words that feel the most natural in a story as well.“
Minotaur is sadly no longer with us, but his invaluable guide, Minotaur’s Sex Tips for Slash Writers, lives on. Slash tips from a gay man’s perspective. (Of course, every person is different, so everyone would give you different advice, but this site is great for the basics.) Rereading this site, I’m realising just how often I think of phrases and concepts I first picked up from here as a fledgling slasher, and how they really have stuck as great rules of thumb. Also comes with NSFW illustrations.
“Much has been said on the subject of how to prepare a guy for anal penetration. Many a rant has been raved in response to stories that don’t include (in the ranter’s view) enough prep action. The “one finger, two fingers, three fingers, dick” has pretty much become de rigeur in slash. Well, kids, it ain’t necessarily so.”
Dr Merlin’s Guide to Fanfiction. Another oldie'n'goodie.
If you can’t spell correctly in the summary, I’m not going to read your story. If you misspell the title of your story, I’m going to point at you and laugh, and still not read your story. Also please note that if your title and/or summary give away the end of the story OR if the summary contains the phrase “a mysterious new” *insert description of your character here* I still won’t read your story and I may make fun of you in a public place because I’m mean. Just so we’re clear.
This is not a writer’s guide, but I’ll include it anyway: The Generic Slash Defense Form Letter. A reminder to the “my m/m OTP must be made to have anal sex on the screen or the writers are HOMOPHOBES!” generation that not long ago (this document is from around 2000), us slashers were still pariahs, and seen as evil perverts. It’s a short collection of very intelligent and very articulate comments from slash fans from way back when. Surprise surprise, it’s from a Blake’s 7 mailing list, the fandom with pretty much the brainiest and best fanficcers out there. Anyway, this will hopefully put things into perspective for some folks. Even 17 years ago, we had to defend slash, its very existence, and it was most definitely not something to expect from TPTB for the sake of inclusivity or something.
“If anyone objects to stories that make Avon homosexual, why don’t they object to stories that make Avon out to be a paranoid psychopathic killer? Hmmm? The implication is, of course, (you all knew this was coming, didn’t you?) that it is somehow ‘better’ to be a thief, an embezzler, a traitor, a psychopath and a killer than it is to be a homosexual."
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Feel free to add other links to similar sites, if you know of them. But in this day and age of “what’s a beta reader?” I’d love to see this get some circulation.
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15 Baby-Sitters Club Books the Netflix Show Needs to Adapt
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For readers of a certain age, at one point in our youth, there was absolutely nothing better than Ann M. Martin’s The Babysitters Club. The books followed the story of a group of preteen girls who start a babysitting business together and while there are plenty of tales of unruly kids and overbearing parents, at its heart, this is a series about the bonds of female friendship. The BSC is comprised of girls from a variety of backgrounds who all bring unique points-of-view to the group, but who support and uplift each other whenever possible. (It’s basically shine theory, before shine theory was cool.)
Martin’s series, which is comprised of over one hundred and thirty books, plus ancillary supersized “Super Special” or “Mystery” editions, represented a first exposure to feminism and diversity for many young readers, and it sounds like the upcoming TV series of the same name will embrace that same progressive and inclusive spirit. And with so many stories to pick from, the possibilities are fairly endless, from serious to silly and everything in between.
Here are fifteen of our picks for classic Babysitters Club stories we’d love to see play out onscreen.
Kristy’s Great Idea
There’s no way that the Babysitters Club Netflix series won’t adapt this story, but it still deserves a spot on this list because it’s the book that starts it all. Kristy’s Great Idea details Kristy Thomas’ brilliant notion to open a babysitting business and tells the story of how she brings a group of very different girls together to help her run it. It’s an adorable story of female entrepreneurism, and a great reminder that at the heart of this friendship tale is a pretty amazing fact: These girls open a wildly successful business! In the seventh grade! If Leslie Knope were a pre-teen girl, she would be Kristy, essentially.
And the novels never let you forget it either. From expanding so rapidly they have to tap associate sitters, to coming up with fun additional benefits for their charges (the Kid-Kit is really a pretty useful idea) and staging special parties and events, Kristy and her crew are constantly reevaluating how the club is working and whether they’re doing the best jobs they can be. How many of us wanted to start clubs of our own after this?
Editor’s note: This is adapted in the first season!
The Truth About Stacey
While this may be just the third installment in the Babysitters Club book series, it’s still one of its most memorable. This is the story that reveals cool former city girl Stacey McGill’s life isn’t as perfect as it seems – she has diabetes and often struggles with her treatment, largely thanks to her intense helicopter parents who keep dragging her to doctors in search of a miracle cure and don’t give her a voice in the health care decisions that impact her life.
Over the course of this particular story, we see Stacey claim some much-needed agency over her own health and future, but this is hardly the last time her diabetes comes up as a narrative issue in the series. From making distinct choices about what she eats to monitoring her health, her condition is a lived-in fact of her character. (There’s even a story later on – Stacey’s Emergency – in which she ends up in the hospital because of it and has to figure out how to adjust her treatment.)
Editor’s note: This is adapted in the first season!
The Ghost at Dawn’s House
As stories go, this particular The Babysitters Club installment isn’t exactly groundbreaking. There are no big social lessons involved and no one has a personal crisis or gets a boyfriend. But it is a story that feels made for a television series, a teen-sized adventure with a creepy flair.
The gist of it is basically what the title says: recent California transplant Dawn Schafer thinks the eighteenth-century house she and her family have moved into is haunted. She’s hearing weird noises and even discovers a secret passageway in one of the walls of her room. (Seriously, didn’t we all want to live this story as teens?) The story involves everything from a mysterious legend of a local missing historical figure to a sitting charge that keeps disappearing, and honestly if there’s a more perfect story for a Halloween episode, I don’t know what it is.
Logan Likes Mary Anne!
At its heart, The Babysitters Club is a story about the friendship between a diverse group of girls from a variety of backgrounds who all have different perspectives and experiences to share. But that doesn’t mean that boys aren’t—or shouldn’t be—involved. Nerdy Mary Anne Spier and sweet Logan Bruno are basically the OTP of The Babysitters Club, and this is the novel in which they first admit that they, you know, like like each other.
Naturally, when one of the gang gets a steady boyfriend that’s more serious than just another entry than Stacey’s myriad list of crushes, things change a bit. Yet, the story of Logan Likes Mary Anne! Is really a lesson in how your life can have room for many things in it at the same time. Mary Anne doesn’t push her friends away, they all go to the school dance together. Logan’s even allowed to become an associate member of the BSC that they assign jobs to in emergencies. And this book isn’t just about Mary Anne’s new boyfriend – it’s also a story about her experiencing growing up, and pushing back against her father’s need to keep her a child forever. (She doesn’t have to wear his chosen outfits or put her hair in braids anymore.) And she even gets a kitten! Everyone wins!
Jessi’s Secret Language
After Stacey McGill moves back to New York, The Babysitters Club series welcomes two new regular sitters to the team – Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey. Jessi’s the group’s first African American member and Jessi’s Secret Language is the first story that features her character as its lead. (It’s hard to overstate how impactful her character is either, as one of the few mainstream Black girls in YA literature at the time.) It’s occasionally an almost saccharinely sweet tale: Jessi becomes a regular babysitter for a client with a deaf child and subsequently ends up teaching her friends and half the school sign language. But it’s still an important one.
The Babysitters Club book series does a wonderful job telling stories about different kinds of families and children, even those with more specialized needs. Jessi’s love of sign language is both cool and admirable, but so is the series’ willingness to make space for a story about deaf kids. There’s also an interesting parallel here that it’s Jessi, who has barely been accepted by the community she and her family live in, who fights so hard to make sure another marginalized child feels welcome there as well.
Stacey’s Mistake
One of the best things about the Babysitters Club series is its realistic portrayal of how friendships can change over the course of our lives. Friends move. They come back. They become different people in the meantime. But it doesn’t mean the friendships have to end. It just means that sometimes, they have to change, too.
As the BSC’s resident New Yorker, Stacey’s one of the series’ characters who moves between homes the most often. (Dawn is the other, as we’ll get to elsewhere on this list.) But that doesn’t mean that she leaves her Stoneybrook friends behind. But the way they all relate to each other does necessarily have to adapt to their new circumstances and that can be challenging.
When the babysitters visit NYC, things get awkward fast. The Stoneybrook girls feel out of their element in the big city, Claudia gets jealous of Stacey’s NYC BFF Laine, and Stacey’s suddenly feeling embarrassed over things she used to love about her Connecticut friends. All eventually ends well – thanks to the magic of Broadway – but the fact that this series doesn’t pretend that being best friends doesn’t mean you don’t have to face problems is refreshing.
Dawn on the Coast
In the Babysitters Club book series, Dawn’s relationship to her California home and upbringing is constantly referenced, much like Stacey’s connection with New York. And, also like Stacey, Dawn visits her home state fairly regularly and gets involved in stories of her own while there. (She even moves back at one point, later on in the series.) Netflix should take advantage of this second local and show us some of the adventures she has while there. (A new setting, a new slate of characters – what’s not to love?)
In Dawn on the Coast, she’s particularly excited about her California trip because it’s her first one since her brother moved back across the country to live with their father. Dawn spends a wonderful week with her dad and brother, going to Disneyland and hanging out with her California BFF Sunny. And Sunny, as it turns out, has even opened her own version of the Babysitters Club called the We Love Kids Club. Everything’s so great, Dawn actually considers whether she should move home too. And she spends a couple of chapters weighing the pros and cons of this decision and trying to factor in both her own desires and what her family and friends expect from her. This one is another example of a BSC story that really represents what it’s like to be a child of divorce – which, let’s remember, was a much rarer thing back in the late 1980s.
Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger
Another Babysitters Club installment that isn’t particularly groundbreaking in terms of its story, but one that features precisely the sort of adventure that would make for an ideal Netflix episode. When Mary Anne’s kitten Tigger goes missing, she’s frantic to find him and enlists the help of the BSC. The girls make posters even pool their cash to offer a reward for his safe return. But when a ransom note shows up – does that mean Tigger’s been cat-napped?
The story is entertaining enough on its merits, and while they’re searching for Tigger, the babysitters get to both be sneaky and pull off a complicated scheme together to try and catch the potential cat-nappers in the act. (I was obsessed with Tigger when I was younger and so worried about whether he would turn out to be okay, so let me tell you all that Mary Anne gets her precious fur baby back just fine.)
But this book is also about Mary Anne’s often controlling nature – she recognizes that she’s being overprotective of the cat the way that her dad used to be over her – as well as the first problems in her relationship with her boyfriend Logan, who turns out to be involved in the story in an unexpected way. Actually, he’s kind of a jerk, here, which is a new and potentially troubling development, and lays the groundwork for the two to break up for a bit later on in the series.
Claudia and the Sad Goodbye
Claudia Kishi’s grandmother Mimi has been an important part of the Babysitters Club story since the series began. And, naturally, you can tell right away from the title and cover image that this is going to be the Mimi Dies book, and it is and it’s as heart-wrenching as you might expect.
Despite the fact that her grandmother’s health has been in decline for some time, Mimi’s passing still comes as a shock to Claudia. But the story’s presentation of grief is nuanced and well-rounded, showing how the death of their loved one impacts everyone in the Kishi family and not just Claudia herself. The whole thing is emotional, heartfelt and really honest about how difficult and confusing death can be, especially when you’re young. Claudia’s vacillating between various stages of mourning is so well done.
There’s even a sweet subplot involving Claudia and Mary Anne, perhaps the most polar opposite of our babysitting heroines, being paired together to start an art class for kids and helping a new kid named Corrie Addison, whose mother is always late to pick her up.
Dawn’s Wicked Stepsister
Blended families are a reality of many teenagers’ lives. And even if you get your dream – that one of your best friends becomes your stepsister – things can be a lot more difficult than you ever expected. When Dawn’s mom and Mary Anne’s dad get married, they think everything will be great. They’re finally sisters, they live together now, and even share a room. But unfortunately, things don’t go well at all. Dawn’s annoyed with all the changes the Spier family has brought into her home. The two girls have different study habits, can’t stand sharing a room, and are often at each other’s throats over small and stupid things.
Dawn’s Wicked Stepsister is such an entertaining tale precisely because it thoroughly allows both its leads to be generally terrible toward one another. Mary Anne’s constantly criticizing people, Dawn’s always annoyed, and it turns out that Mr. Spier and the Schafers are extremely opposites attract types. The solution to this madness is straight-up ridiculous and actually downright cruel in some ways, but it would make for an amazing Netflix installment. It involves Dawn faking that her room is haunted and scaring Mary Anne out of it and then just never telling her it wasn’t true. At least everyone learns to compromise by the end, I guess.
Kristy and the Secret of Susan
Yes, yes, Kristy and the Secret of Susan is another sort of message-based book, but it’s one that could be vastly improved through a proper television adaptation that delves into the complex issues that a YA book from the 1980s was deeply unaware of or simply ready to tackle. In the novel, Kristy gets a month-long sitting assignment for eight-year-old Susan, who usually attends a special school outside Stoneybrook because she’s autistic. While on the job, Kristy becomes convinced that she can not only help Susan make friends but that she can help Susan’s parents decide to keep her at home and send her to school with the “regular” kids. The bulk of this story is Kristy coming to understand that the specialized help for Susan’s condition is necessary, but basically, it’s also supposed to teach kids about being kind to those that are different from them.
The downside of course is that multiple important elements of this story feel extremely dated now. Author Ann M. Martin’s knowledge of autism is rudimentary at best and, of course, this book existed long before doctors had established anything like the spectrum as we understand it today. Kristy and the Secret of Susan represents a perfect opportunity for the Netflix series to take the bones of one of the series’ lesser stories and remake it for a modern audience.
Poor Mallory!
The Babysitters Club series was honestly so ahead of its time when it came to telling different kinds of realistic stories about its central group of characters. Poor Mallory! not only acknowledges that money is a thing that exists in this universe, but attempts to tackle the ways that not having any – or simply having less than your friends do – can present real and complex problems for our heroines.
When Mallory’s dad loses his job, it’s naturally a big deal in the Pike household. It’s sort of generally been implied that the family has been living pretty frugally already due to the fact that they have a lot of kids, and everyone does their best to pitch in when disaster strikes. The adorable ways the other Pike kids help out—Vanessa styles hair on the playground!—are charming, but the story doesn’t shy away from illustrating the ways in which their lives are negatively impacted by Mr. Pike’s job loss. From being made fun of by other kids to Mallory’s complicated feelings about working for the rich Delaney family, this BSC book is an honest look at how money impacts life.
Keep Out, Claudia!
Yes, this is The Babysitters Club faces racism book. But, honestly, is there a timelier moment for this story than right now? The club picks up a new client, the Lowells, and everything seems normal. Mary Anne has an easy time sitting for them, but when Claudia gets the same assignment things don’t go nearly so well. The kids are rude, and Mrs. Lowell barely acknowledges her. In fact, when she calls the club again, she specifically requests that anyone but Claudia watch her children.
It’s sort of heartbreaking watching Claudia think that she doesn’t dress conservatively enough for this family and try to figure out what she did wrong, when the reality of the situation is that they’re just incredibly, openly racist. (They won’t even allow Jessi into their house!) It’s a deeply uncomfortable installment of this normally fun and fluffy series, and exactly the kind of story that the Netflix could lend a bit more nuance and impact to.
In the book, the Lowells are racist to the point of caricature—at one point they even seem to dislike Catholics?—and while that may be an understandable teaching tool for young readers, a TV series would be able to tell a much better and more realistic version of this story. After all, a family simply refusing to allow a black teen into their home isn’t the sort of racism most viewers would encounter today. But there are still worthwhile discussions to be had within and about this story – is it the BSC’s job to teach their charges to be better people? To stand up for what’s right, even if it means speaking out against adults?
Baby Sitters On Board!
Each of the regular The Babysitters Club novels was centered around a particular character and followed her journey for the entirety of the book. But, for a treat, a few times a year “super special” editions of the novels were released. They were always quite a bit longer than a regular Babysitters Club book and featured stories that allowed all the girls to take part equally. (They even had alternating POV chapters from each of them.)
The first of these super specials is entitled Baby Sitters On Board and chronicles the entire group’s trip to Florida, which includes a cruise around the Bahamas and then three days at Disney World. Epic, right? Well, sort of.
The plots in this story are actually nothing special, but they’re still so much fun. Dawn and Kristy fight about how messy Kristy is. Mallory decides to spy on everyone and make observations because she just read Harriet the Spy. (We stan a relatable queen.) Claudia gets notes from a secret admirer. The kids they’re sitting for are kind of monsters, particularly Karen who lies all the time. Plus, they go to Disney World! It’s all just a ton of fun, and a nice change of pace from the traditional series formula. It has a great season-finale-of-the-TV-show feel.
Baby Sitters Summer Vacation
Another Super Special installment that would translate perfectly to the small screen is Babysitters Summer Vacation, an installment that sees all the girls and the regular kids they sit for spend a summer together at Camp Mohawk. The babysitters are counselors in training, the kids are campers and basically, it’s all supposed to be like regular sitting, just happening in the woods instead of their own neighborhood. Spoiler alert: It’s not. At all. But that’s what makes it fun.
In true Super Special style, this story involves the girls in lots of different sorts of adventures and summer camp hijinks from Stacey falling in poison ivy to Mary Anne attempting to sneak into the boys’ side of camp to Dawn and her campers getting lost in the woods. And, of course, there are new friends, new crushes and lots of babysitting. A truly charming and adorable story that’s just the right mix of fun and serious. Another perfect contender for a season finale.
Editor’s note: This is adapted in the first season!
The new Baby-Sitters Club TV series will be available in its entirety July 3rd on Netflix.
The post 15 Baby-Sitters Club Books the Netflix Show Needs to Adapt appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish where we get a new topic for a top 10 list.
Not so long ago I wrote a post on my dream book conference panel. We all have authors we’d love to meet in person. Unfortunately for me, most authors that do a UK book tour tend to stick to the major cities, meaning that I’d have to commute at least 2/3 hours to the closest destination. One of these days I will go to a bookish event, so with that in mind here are the authors I’d love to meet.
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1. Victoria Schwab: Who wouldn’t want to meet her? Her books tend to put me in book comas and her characters are all morally ambiguous and wonderful. I’d love to pick her brain about anything and everything and see if I can squeeze some post A Conjuring of Light info about my favourites.
2. Leigh Bardugo: To start, I’d make sure she knew how I felt about a certain characters fate in Crooked Kingdom. My heart is still in mourning. I’d also take the chance to see if I can check in with Kaz and the crew. I’d also love to know how she creates such a complex world.
3. Neil Gaiman: The master of fantasy. Gaiman has definitely left his mark on fantasy literature. As a veteran author I’d love to ask him how fantasy fiction has developed and been commercialized over the years.
4. Pierce Brown: Who wouldn’t want to gaze into those piercing eyes? If I knew I’d get to meet him it’d probably give me the motivation to pick up Morning Star and power through the emotional turmoil the book is bound to put me through.
5. Heather Demetrios: One of my go-to authors. I’d read anything by Heather Demetrios. She covers some really tough topics in her books and you can see the time and care that’s gone into exploring the topic on hand. I’d also like to check in with Skylar and Josh, my OTP.
6. Melina Marchetta: When it comes to characterizations, Marchetta hits all the right notes. Whether it’s been her fantasy work or her contemporary ones, I’ve never not been able to connect to her characters.
7. Markus Zusak: His books have always packed a few emotional punches but I’d love to know about how he came to the decision to use Death as the narrator for The Book Thief.
8. Sarina Bowen / Elle Kennedy: My go to New Adult authors. I’d love to go to an event featuring these two authors. I can see it being such a fun event to attend.
9. Ryan Graudin: Two words, Luka Lowe. I will never get over his fate. It hurts to even think about it and I want her to know just how much pain she put me through with that choice.
10. Adam Silvera: Who wouldn’t want to meet this guy? His books are just as amazing as he is.
Those are the author’s I’d love to meet.
Who would you like to meet?
Top Ten Tuesday: Must Meet Authors Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish where we get a new topic for a top 10 list.
#Adam Silvera#Authors I&039;d Love to Meet#Elle Kennedy#Heather Demetrios#Leigh Bardugo#List#Markus zusak#Melina Marchetta#Meme#Neil Gaiman#Pierce Brown#Ryan Graudin#Sarina Bowen#Top Ten Tuesday#TTT#Victoria Schwab
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Chocolate Box 2016 Letter
Fandoms Requested:
Agents of SHIELD (Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons)
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Rebecca Bunch/Greg Serrano)
The Good Place (Eleanor Shellstrop/Trevor, Eleanor Shellstrop & Trevor)
Mad Men (Peggy Olson/Stan Rizzo)
Dear Chocolate Box Writer,
Hi, and thank you for signing up and for writing for me! This is my first time doing Chocolate Box, though I’m not new to exchanges, and I’m excited to get started! Hope you are too :-)
In this letter you’ll find:
General Likes/Kinks
General DNWs
Fandom Specifics/Prompts
Agents of SHIELD
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
The Good Place
Mad Men
I’ve tried to offer a variety of prompts for each fandom and pairing, but don’t feel beholden to what I’ve suggested! If the rest of my letter gives you an idea you’d like to write, go for it! I’m sure I’ll love it.
A little about me:
My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like, and my tags for each of my requested pairings here: Fitzsimmons, Rebecca/Greg, and Peggy/Stan (and I don’t have a tag for Eleanor/Trevor so The Good Place).
General Likes/Kinks:
I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped in an enclosed space, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!
I have a weird (not weird because it’s uncommon, more weird because it doesn’t fit in obviously with the rest of my likes and favored tropes) love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AU type fics, as well as Vampire Slayer AUs.
I prefer to read about the getting-together parts of a relationship over established relationships, though I’m not totally opposed to the latter.
I love strong female friendships, strong-but-flawed-and-realistic female characters in general. Ladies kicking ass, preferably through cleverness and wit and competence as much if not more than through brawn, is the best, and I love it when they’re allowed to make mistakes and fuck up and dig themselves into a hole, too.
Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk/sexting. Light domination (aka more like just bossing each other around than full-on D/s stuff). Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.
General DNWs:
Darkfic. Sad endings. Gore/intense violence. Miscommunication that could super easily be avoided. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm/abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV.
To the fandoms!
Agents of SHIELD - Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
I love Agents of SHIELD, and Fitzsimmons is my main OTP these days. I love reading about them getting together, or being together, in any capacity. I’m a big fan of the friends to lovers dynamic, and how they have always been it for each other in some way. As Elizabeth Henstridge put it, he’s deep down in her bones, and vice versa.
I’m also a big fan of AUs for this fandom, and love the idea that they’d come together in any universe.
Prompts:
A story driven by secret messages-- they are in a situation (could be SHIELD-verse or a full-on AU) where they are forced to communicate with coded/secret messages. Epistolary or otherwise is fine!
Paranormal investigators AU where they are super skeptical of what they're hunting for, or maybe they are hunting for it to prove it DOESN'T exist
Or keeping with the AUs, maybe they are high school science teachers, or the two astronauts sent to colonize a new planet?
The first night spent in their new apartment.
---
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca Bunch/Greg Serrano
This is one of my favorite shows on TV right now, for so many reasons. It’s clever, it’s feminist, it’s funny, it’s real (even as it features elaborate musical sequences!), and the characters are so flawed but so great.
I ship Rebecca and Greg so hard, in spite of their many flaws, and am so bummed that Greg’s gone, and hope they find a way to bring him back someday. I just love their chemistry-- bickery battle-of-wits style relationships are a huge favorite of mine. I also really just love Rebecca as a character. She’s such a mess and makes so many mistakes but I find her really relatable.
Feel free to write something that takes place before Greg left, or something canon-divergent as if he never left, though future fics with them are also totally great!
Prompts:
Rebecca/Greg + any number of tropes– stuck somewhere together; inconvenient bed-sharing; fake dating, the works.
What’s their dynamic like in a couple of years when he returns from Atlanta? Are they over each other or not quite so much?
At the end of Josh’s Sister Is Getting Married!, Rebecca propositions Greg in the bar and he staggers off into the store room with her in his arms. What happens next?
---
The Good Place - Eleanor Shellstrop/Trevor, Eleanor Shellstrop & Trevor
There’s not much on Earth I love more than a Mike Schur show, and I’ve always loved Kristen Bell, so I was pretty destined to dig this show. It’s just so clever and interesting and fun to watch!
That said, I wasn’t really shipping anything on the show yet. I like all the characters but nothing leapt out for me romantically. But then they introduced Trevor, and the thing is, Adam Scott is my weakness. If he exists on a show, I can’t help but ship him with somebody, and I have loved his and KBell’s chemistry together in other shows (Party Down! VMars!). I’m not proud of it, but my mind immediately went there.
Bottom line is, I know the show’s not going to go there, and I know Trevor is literally the worst, but I can’t help but want all the enemies-to-lovers, bickery fic for them.
Sidenote: Not that interested in actual AUs (as opposed to just like, canon divergence) for this fandom. The universe is so interesting on its own!
Prompts:
Eleanor ends up relocating to The Bad Place with Trevor, and to both of their surprise and disdain, they’re each other’s Bad Place soulmates.
Somehow Trevor gets stuck in The Good Place. Does its goodness rub off on him? If it does, I bet he HATES that.
Any sort of stuck together/trapped in an enclosed space tropefic would be great-- especially if they start to have feelings for each other.
Nothing wrong with a little good oldfashioned hatesex.
---
Mad Men - Peggy Olson/Stan Rizzo
I love and miss this show so much. It was so smart and made me feel so many things, and in truth, Peggy Olson is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.
Peggy and Stan is such a great ship, to me, and one I was on board with from the very beginning. Omitting his boorish behavior early on, once they established a rapport, they were such equals, and he seemed to respect her so much, and vice versa. They got on each other’s nerves and knew how to push each other’s buttons, but that’s just because they connected so well and really got each other.
Prompts:
What are things like now that Peggy and Stan are working together and being together (and possibly living together)? It’s got to be frustrating at times but worth it in the end, right?
I absolutely adore the time period where they’re basically phone buddies. Maybe an AU where they get together earlier in the series, during that time? How their phone conversations evolve from discussing work to discussing everything to falling for each other (or realizing they already had)? Phone sex (or getting ever-so-close to it before realizing they’re in the office and it’s inappropriate) is a-okay here too.
In the same vein, epistolary fic could be really fun to play around with here. Maybe a story told through a series of interoffice memos, messages, notes in the margins of copy pitches and along the edges of spec art?
NASA/Space Race AU– Peggy’s a NASA scientist/engineer and Stan is an astronaut
Peggy the Vampire Slayer AU (maybe Don is her Watcher? Or Bert? Or Roger? So many fun and funny options.)
I hope that gives you something to work with, and that you enjoy writing something during the exchange! If you have questions for me, feel free to message me on anon! I’m happy to help if I can. Thanks again for signing up!
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Dear Yuletide Writer
Thanks for signing up for this superfun exchange! This is the fifth year I’ve participated now, and I’ve always enjoyed it– I hope you do, too.
Below you’ll find the following:
General Likes/Kinks
General DNWs
Fandom Specifics/Prompts
Schitt’s Creek - David Rose, Patrick Brewer
Legally Blonde (Movie) - Elle Woods, Emmett Richmond
Mad Men - Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
I’ve tried to list some varied prompts for each fandom, but please don’t feel like you have to stick to what I’ve come up with. If the rest of my letter gives you another idea you’d like to write, I’d love to read it!
A little about me to start:
My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like, and my tags for each of my requested fandoms here:
Schitt’s Creek | Legally Blonde | Mad Men
general likes/kinks:
I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped in an enclosed space, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!
I have a great love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs and private eye AUs, and these days I’m (perhaps unhealthily) invested in US politics/news in my everyday life, so if you want to have any of my requested characters run for office, I’d never turn that down.
Epistolary fic, either as part of a story or as all of it, is always fun to me, if it’s up your alley.
I love strong-but-flawed-and-realistic female characters in general. Ladies kicking ass through cleverness and wit and competence is the best, and I love it when they’re allowed to make mistakes and fuck up and dig themselves into a hole, too. And I will also never turn down a Vampire Slayer AU.
Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex/sexting. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk. Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.
general dnws:
Superangst and sad endings. Gore/intense violence. Miscommunication that could super easily be avoided. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm/abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV.
fandom specifics/prompts:
Schitt’s Creek
David Rose, Patrick Brewer
This show is so funny, dry and smart and sweet at the same time. I love how absurdly out of touch the Roses are, and how the show balances their outrageousness with the everyday humdrum of the town of Schitt’s Creek.
David and Patrick took my heart by storm, and are the kind of ship that makes me clutch both hands over my chest as I watch them. I loved the slow burn of them coming together and falling in love, and how much they really just LIKE each other. They really know each other and see each other and it’s so lovely.
Prompts:
David and Patrick moving into their first place together. Can they agree on the decor? Does David keep breaking things because he likes to watch Patrick play handyman?
I love the more sensible characters on the show teaching David how to adult. What perfectly normal things has he never experienced or done before that Patrick has to walk him through?
I’m interested in Patrick’s journey from being so shy and new to everything when he and David first kissed, to being bold enough to sing a love song to David in front of half the town. Tell me more about how he got to that point, and how (whether he knew it or not) David helped him get there.
Legally Blonde (Movie)
Elle Woods, Emmett Richmond
This movie is such a classic to me, one I can quote, and one I can’t help but watch when it’s on TV. I love Elle Woods’ determination and relentlessness, and how she’s a shining example of how prettiness and positivity doesn’t preclude smarts and success. I want more about the unstoppable Elle Woods, charging toward her ambitions with a designer handbag and the perfect pink lip.
I like to think that Elle and Emmett stayed together post-movie, but while I would happily read Elle/Emmett fic, I would be equally happy reading a story that focuses primarily or entirely on Elle. She’s the star.
Prompts:
Elle Woods for President! Tell me how she got there. Tell me about Elle on the campaign trail. Tell me about the debate between Elle and her opponent, or tell me about her first night living in the White House after she wins.
Elle and Emmett team up on a huge, high-profile case. Does it put their marriage to the test or do they make a killer team?
Elle heads back to Harvard-- does she become a professor? Is it to mentor young law students? Is it for a case?
Mad Men
Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
I love and miss this show so much. It was so smart and made me feel so many things, and in truth, Peggy Olson is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.
Peggy and Stan is such a great ship, to me, and one I was on board with from the very beginning. Omitting his boorish behavior early on, once they established a rapport, they were such equals, and he seemed to respect her so much, and vice versa. They got on each other’s nerves and knew how to push each other’s buttons, but that’s just because they connected so well and really got each other.
Prompts:
I absolutely adore the time period where they’re basically phone buddies. Maybe an AU where they get together earlier in the series, during that time? How their phone conversations evolve from discussing work to discussing everything to falling for each other (or realizing they already had)? Phone sex (or getting ever-so-close to it before realizing they’re in the office and it’s inappropriate) is a-okay here too.
In the same vein, epistolary fic could be really fun to play around with here. Maybe a story told through a series of interoffice memos, messages, notes in the margins of copy pitches and along the edges of spec art?
What are things like now that Peggy and Stan are working together and being together (and possibly living together)? It’s got to be frustrating at times but worth it in the end, right?
NASA/Space Race AU– Peggy’s a NASA scientist/engineer and Stan is an astronaut
So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process this Yuletide season, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!
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