#so its mostly skewed towards that side of the fandom but oh well

[angelhummel]

there were too many awful suggestions to include them all but it's done!!! terrible job everyone <3

#those who don't learn from their glistory are doomed to repeat it #glee #fanfic #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #santana lopez #brittany pierce #rachel berry #noah puckerman #finn hudson #mercedes jones #artie abrams #mine #obviously we were out here reading all the klaine fics lmao #so its mostly skewed towards that side of the fandom but oh well #you know what to expect from me #they arent all... totally horrible.... #skank kurt can live on forever and always im obsessed with that

[bigskydreaming]

I’m almost more bothered by fics that don’t take an actively antagonistic stance towards Dick’s character, because what’s so often viewed as a GOOD storyline for Dick in fanfics is just like.....100% connected to my issues with fanon.

What I mean is this:

So many Batfam fics, even when they think they’re being kind or generous to Dick’s character, treat any relationship Dick develops or demonstrates with Jason in-story as Dick’s redemption arc, for being a shitty brother/person before a certain point.

And then on top of that, a ton of fics that include all the way through Damian by their starting point, then proceed to use any relationship (or attempt at one) between Dick and Tim.....as Dick’s redemption arc, for being a shitty brother/person to Tim at the Robin-Red Robin transition.

And then on top of THAT, you have the Batfam fics that focus on post-Spyral interactions with his family as....Dick’s redemption arc for being a shitty brother/person there, and during the Ric Grayson era we had ‘fix-it fic’ after fic whose idea of fixing it was picking things up at some point after Dick got his memories back and then proceeding to write Dick’s redemption arc for Ric being a shitty brother/person there. And even going all the way back to Bruce and Dick’s era of estrangement before Tim came along, there’s still absurdly so many fics over the years dedicated to....Dick redeeming himself in other characters’ eyes for that chasm with absolutely no effort in the same fics shown towards having Bruce work towards any kind of remption for his own behavior.

Historically speaking, the vast majority of fics tagged as Dick Grayson, stretching back years and still very much present now as well, are almost predominantly ALL somehow some kind of redemption arc for Dick.....

Specifically in regards to events and dynamics which have absolutely no basis (or at most an extremely skewed and one-sided one) in the source material. 

In fact, in the majority of most of the situations Dick’s being ‘redeemed’ for in fanfics, he either did the complete OPPOSITE of what he’s being punished/forced to make up for in fics, such as how his efforts in reaching out to Jason despite his own understandable bitterness stands in direct contradiction of the years of neglect and bitterness towards Jason that fics posit and theorize existed purely so that he has something TO redeem himself for in fics.....

Or then other times in the source material, he’s the literal actual victim of the things that he’s not only being held solely accountable and in need of redemption for in fics, like when he was beaten into going undercover for the sake of his family.....and then has to redeem himself for that in his family’s eyes......or when he was alienated, neglected and gaslit by his family while amnesiac.....and then has to redeem himself for that in his family’s eyes.....

And even in the cases where its SAID within a fic’s narrative (or more accurately, usually its said in the comments sections of fics as fic authors respond to people being disgusted with Dick by saying ‘no don’t be too hard on him’ and offering up justifications for Dick’s actual actions and understanding for his POV that for some reason never make it into the actual text of fics), like, even then, at most these fics TELL us that the flaws of Dick’s that they’re focusing on are understandable and its just human of him to be resentful of Jason as Robin, or overwhelmed and grief-stricken when he made Damian Robin at Tim’s expense, or traumatized and not thinking clearly when he ‘agreed’ to go undercover at Spyral.....

But meanwhile, what the fics actually SHOW us, beyond a few half-hearted defenses of Dick that usually are not at all substantiated by any other characters.....is Dick remorsefully doing the work of making up for the things he did so terribly, terribly wrong and that there’s actually no excuse for.

With this showing being a lot more evident and focused-upon than we ever see fics show Jason working towards earning Tim’s forgiveness and trust for almost killing him, or Damian doing the same, fics just skip past these things entirely to say ‘oh they’re better now’ but like....with Dick....its like the only storyline a ton of writers have any interest in writing for Dick....

Is a redemption arc.

Actively focusing on and SHOWING Dick putting in the work of being apologetic, remorseful, self-loathing, and absolutely committed to doing better by his siblings even if they never actually forgive him - with whether or not he can eventually ‘earn’ his way to a positive relationship with them far from a given - and any and all of his positive attributes or the positives of his actual relationships with various characters all but completely ignored or glossed over, to keep the focus entirely on Dick learning to do better.....

Than the crimes or slights against his siblings that authors first manufactured or exaggerated or took completely out of context, just to HAVE a reason for Dick to need to do better in the first place.

As I’ve said many times before, anyone is free to do whatever they want with fanfic, its an innately transformative medium, but its always going to be significant and worth attention in my mind, that so much of the transformation from the source material when it comes to Dick Grayson is entirely focused around and committed to transforming him from a hero that everyone loves and respects, a guy that always does his best to go above and beyond for family even when he has understandable reasons not to, and the literal inspiration for almost every second generation hero out there, including his own successors......

Into a guy that most people can’t stand, regard as irrelevant to their own careers let alone anyone worth looking up to, and constantly letting people down, especially his family.

All while there’s little to no attention paid to all the reasons in the source material that other characters most definitely have things they’ve said or done to Dick Grayson that need or deserve redeeming for.

Like the physical violence every single member of his family except Duke has inflicted on him at some point.

Or the victim blaming that’s so ingrained into his storylines and reader receptions of his storylines that even the fics that tackle redeeming Jason, Tim, etc for their behavior towards Dick post-Spyral limit this particular redemption to ‘we’re sorry we treated you badly when we didn’t know all the facts’ instead of ‘we’re sorry we treated you badly, full stop’ and ‘we’re sorry we passed judgment without even TRYING to know what all the facts were’ and ‘we’re sorry we display so little interest in your life or your traumas that even now when we’ve been informed you actually died and had to be forced into pretending to stay dead, we have zero interest in exploring if there’s anything else we might be missing if we could miss out on the whole ‘oh you really DID die’ part in the first place, and forget about us actually owning and apologizing for the specifics of how our behavior towards you was unacceptable even if we HAD been right in our interpretation of events.’

Or when mentions of the slutshaming and victim-blaming he endured during the Tarantula and Mirage storylines are limited to just that....mentions made of offscreen characters like Babs or the Titans.....with pretty much no stories I can think of, existing as ‘redemption arcs’ that tackle those characters actually working to redeem themselves for their behavior and trying to earn back Dick’s broken trust in them. Its usually just Jason and/or others finding out, telling Dick ‘hey your friends shouldn’t have done that either’ and then going off and murdering Mirage and Tarantula, the end, because....that fixes everything?

And forget about Bruce redeeming himself for his behavior - the way he works to put in the effort and fix things in so many ‘Jason returns to the family’ fics - but even when actual mention is made of the things Bruce HAS done wrong to Dick or needs redeeming for, its mostly just waved off as ancient history that he’s remorseful about but there’s no apparent need or effort to focus on Bruce putting that remorseful energy into action and actively on the page trying to bridge the gap he created in SO MANY storylines, again and again and again. ‘Bruce is just like that,’ a lot of stories shrug, about the time Bruce made Dick actually feel unwelcome in his own home and forced him to be the one to leave, unlike the way ‘its unacceptable for Dick to be like this’ energy is applied to stories about Dick forcing Tim to leave Wayne Manor....an action that has to be invented for a story’s purposes, of course, given that in the actual source story, Dick relocated himself and Damian to the penthouse anyway, and Wayne Manor was open and available to Tim and Dick never so much as implied otherwise.

Or look at how the adoption issue so often plays out....with it treated as though Bruce finally adopting Dick in adulthood just ‘fixes’ all the angst before that point, like it just overwrites everything he felt or experienced before and up until that.....with very little fandom energy paid to neither just castigating Bruce for not adopting Dick earlier or acting like adoption is a magic all-better now band-aid, but rather examining that both these things can coexist, and Dick can be happy and relieved and pleased to finally have the adoption he not-so-secretly wanted, even if only in adulthood, but that doesn’t mean the mental and emotional upset of his later teen years when he really, really, really could have used that declaration of being family rather than just a ward....like, there’s room for that to have still taken a toll and be worthy of awareness and regret on Bruce’s part, not for taking so long to adopt Dick, but for the damage Dick felt and suffered through BECAUSE of it. 

Its not even about vilifying or punishing Bruce for this, because ironically, like....redemption arcs aren’t actually supposed to be just about punishment or whatever? Its about acknowledging where wrong was done and GETTING what that means for the person who was wronged.....even if it can’t be undone.

People can get this when its Dick being written as having the redemption arc.

So where the hell is this understanding of what actual redemption MEANS, when its Dick that other characters have things to make up for?

The funny, ironic, cognitive dissonant thing about Dick Grayson in fanfics, is the vast majority of his appearances and storylines all somehow come back towards being his redemption arc in some way or form.....

For the made-up or exaggerated fanon crimes applied to him in fic, but that HE’S usually the actual recipient of in canon.

See, its not an obsession with canon that’s the reason for the disconnect between Dick Grayson fans and the takes favored by fans of most other characters.

Its the fact that the transformative energy of fanfiction, in his case, so often is utilized to give HIM reason to tackle the redemption arcs that OTHER characters owe HIM, but that so many of these fans don’t WANT to write their own faves being subjected to.....because they’re fans of these characters as heroes. They have no interest in reading or writing their favorite characters redeeming themselves for actions or behavior they personally don’t view as in character for them.

.....with the cognitive dissonant part in particular, being the way so many of these exact same fans turn around and express shock and bewilderment that Dick’s fans are simlarly uninterested in wanting to read nothing but their favorite character redeeming himself for actions or behavior we personally don’t view as in character for him....because it usually isn’t, according to the original stories BEFORE fanfic transforms him from victim of other beloved characters into victimizer of them instead.

And lol, many of us don’t actually want to see him as victim of other beloved heroes either! We’re in agreement there! Its why we come to fanfic instead of canon in the first place....to find stories where he’s not casually and regularly mistreated by other characters we like. But instead we usually only find stories that take everything people don’t want to see other characters doing to him, and making him do it to others. That’s not an improvement for us, lol! That’s just taking one problem and exchanging it for another. 

Flipping the script to make Dick the victimizer instead of other characters only fixes things if the only concern is making sure those characters aren’t seen as victimizers.

The really annoying part is how so many people can be so clear and cognizant of not wanting this for their own faves....yet are surprised, dismissive and disdainful of Dick’s fans....expressing the EXACT SAME FEELINGS.....about our own fave.

[may-odaigahara]

Fandom: Supergirl

Ship: SuperReignCorp

Summary: Kara surprises even herself as she and Sam flirt relentlessly, much to the chagrin of Lena. Will the three women be able to navigate their increasingly complicated relationships, and will any of them ever just look up what “polyamory” is? Will they all be able to find their happy ending?

This is a no-powers AU

Hey guys, chapter 3 is up! Please leave some comments/kudos!!

Lena finds herself in CatCo, having been invited to speak at one of their all-hands-on-deck biannual staff meetings. Since L-Corp does, in fact, own the entire corporation, she can’t blame them for asking her to give a speech. She feels more than a little out of place, and focuses mostly on the excellent return-on-investment CatCo has been (something that Sam is always going on and on about), and ends with a few quick platitudes about the importance of good journalism and the value of unbiased reporting.

Lena hangs around throughout the entire meeting, since James is going to give a speech as well and that’s always pretty funny, and because there’s a meeting back at L-Corp she’s desperately trying to miss because all of the people in it annoy her. She tries her hardest to slip out and disappear once it’s over, but before she can get to her car who else taps her on the shoulder but her best friend, Kara.

“Lena, hi! That was a great speech.”

“Really? I thought you’d have qualms about my praise of unbiased reporting. I still remember the rant you went on about how there’s no such thing and a ‘lack of bias’ often skews towards the status quo.”

“Well, yes, that’s all definitely true. But it was still great! Sam’s been talking a lot about the ROI stuff, too. Economics and accounting definitely aren’t my thing, but making money is good. Means we can keep fighting the good fight.”

And there it is. A reference to Sam, already. Lena knows she shouldn’t feel this way, and thus pushes these feelings as far down as they can possibly go, but watching her two best friends (best friends she also has or has had crushes on) embark on this relationship together is hard to handle even when she’s at her best, and public speaking always makes her feel a little more fragile.

“You’re such a bleeding heart,” Lena says, attempting something of a playful smile at that. “And your job is safe. Keep it up and we might even buy you guys a second espresso machine for the break room.”

“Oh, I don’t know if that would be a good idea,” Kara says, grinning. “Daisy – she has an office near mine – already goes through, like four cups of coffee a day. A second espresso machine might be genuinely deadly.”

Lena laughs. For obvious reasons, she hasn’t been spending as much time with Kara as she had before she started dating Sam, but even this is enough to make her miss it. Kara is just so delightfully easy to be around, so willing to carry a conversation, so happy to tell even the dumbest of jokes just to make someone laugh.

“Well, I’ll certainly take that under consideration.”

“Hey, so, do you have some time to grab lunch? I feel like I haven’t spent as much time with you lately and we need to hang out. I’ll even let you choose the restaurant.”

Lena certainly doesn’t feel like she needs to hang out with Kara, mostly because she thinks doing so would slowly kill her. At the same time, though, Kara is looking at her with that look in her eyes and she sounds so genuinely apologetic about not carving enough time out of her schedule for Lena, despite the fact that it’s been Lena who hasn’t been making time for her, and there’s no way she’s going to say no at this point.

“Sure, I have some time. I’m taking you to a place that serves only salad, though.”

Kara presses her lips into a tight line but doesn’t complain, and Lena counts that as a victory.

Kara naturally orders what is genuinely the least healthy salad that the restaurant has – a some kind of monstrosity with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits. Lena just shakes her head fondly as Kara begins stuffing lettuce into her mouth while also trying her hardest to continue telling her story about how she and her coworker, Jemma, have discovered the perfect ratio of Lucky Charms to Frosted Mini Wheats to milk in their morning bowls of cereal. It’s silly and dumb and perfectly Kara to start a friendship over appropriate cereal ratios.  

It’s then that Lena realizes just how deeply in trouble she is. Because she wants this, she wants this always, to have Kara all to herself to tell her dumb stories from work and take her out to different restaurants around the city, to bask in her bright smile and blue eyes. It’s impossible not to fall for someone like Kara.

But, she could never betray Sam like this. Though it’s becoming increasingly difficult, Lena wraps up her feelings in a tight little box and shoves them off into a dusty corner of her mind. She thought that things would be easier now, having tried so furiously to stamp out whatever emotions she had the night of the gala, but everything seems to have gotten worse.

“Hey, what’s on your mind?” Kara asks, voice full of concern. “You seem a little off today.”

“It’s nothing,” Lena says, smiling. “Nothing. Just work.”

Lena swears that Kara can see right through her, see right down to her hidden feelings and buried insecurities and darkest secrets. Those blue eyes are so open and earnest that Lena genuinely considers simply giving all her secrets away, but there’s no way that she could. Doing so would result in ruining not one but two friendships, and Lena is low on those to begin with.

“Okay,” Kara says, plainly not believing her but also kind enough to not press the issue. She rests her hand atop Lena’s, who nearly begins hyperventilating at that casual contact. “Don’t work yourself too hard, alright? You deserve to take a break, just like anyone else.”

Lena laments Kara’s natural, earnest kindness – it is a torture too much for her. “Thank you, Kara. You’re very sweet.”

“Well, you are my best friend and all,” Kara says. “I’d get awfully lonely if you work yourself to death.”

Lena feels as if her heart stops.

Lena knocks on the door to Sam’s apartment and Ruby quickly opens it up for her, a bright smile on her face.

“Auntie Lena! You’re here!”

“I’m here, Rubes,” Lena says, drawing Ruby into a quick side-hug. “Where’s your mom?”

“Mom is here,” Sam says, poking her head out from her bedroom. “Sorry, I had to decide on which t-shirt I didn’t mind getting glue on.  

Lena lets her gaze travel up and down Sam’s figure – she’s just dressed in an old band tee and a pair of slim-fitting joggers, and yet she’s still so beautiful that Lena finds herself chewing on her lower lip just to have an outlet for the desire that coils up in her gut. It’s really not fair, Lena figures, that she happens to have a crush on both of her best friends.

“How do you look good dressed like this? It’s very frustrating,” Lena asks, feigning annoyance.

“Because I’m tall and hot, Lena. And you’re one to talk, given that you always look like that.”

Lena feels Sam’s gaze roam over her body as well, and she certainly couldn’t say that the attention isn’t welcome.

Ruby crinkles her nose. “You guys are weird.”

“Hey, kiddo, when you’re our age you’ll accept any compliment you can get.”

“I’m twenty-four,” Lena says flatly.

“I know! Compared to Rubes you practically have one foot in the grave.”

Lena glares at Sam, who just grins cheekily back at her. “Can we just start this project?”

“Fine, nerd, let’s do it. Ruby, could you please take the floor and explain to Auntie Lena why we’ve gathered here today?”

“We’re making a 3D model of an organelle for AP Biology! Mine is the endoplasmic reticulum.”

“Good job choosing such an easy one to do, Rubes,” Lena says, teasing her fondly.

As Lena had assumed, this little arts and crafts project quickly descends into chaos. Ruby is struggling to properly glue the pieces of felt together in the right way to emulate the folds of the organelle, Sam is having a harder time than she’d like to admit sewing on the beads that are supposed to represent ribosomes, and even Lena herself has already cut two pieces of felt in the wrong shape.

At one point, Sam groans out loud, grabs a bottle of glue, and begins attaching beads to the back of Lena’s shirt. Ruby giggles as Lena dramatically gasps.

“Sam, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, but this project is dumb and annoying.”

“So you’re also going to be dumb and annoying?”

Sam just grins at her as Ruby giggles. Lena, her face a mask of faux fury, grabs a sizable piece of felt and begins pouring glue all over it.

“Lena, don’t you dare,” Sam says, backing up.

“Oh, Lena dares, Sam.”

Lena advances on Sam, who dodges out of the way into the living room. Lena dances to and fro before lunging at her, who trips over her own feet and falls backwards onto the couch. Somehow, Lena manages to get tangled up in her flailing limbs and also loses her balance, ending up falling forward onto Sam. The piece of felt slaps against the wall and slowly slides downwards, its glue-soaked weight working against it.

Lena is laughing so hard and feeling so genuinely joyful in a way she hasn’t in weeks that she doesn’t realize that her body is pressing against Sam’s, the heat radiating from her body and settling somewhere deep in her gut. Her laughter fades in her throat but her smile doesn’t and Sam is looking back at her with an expression that mirrors her own. She doesn’t know what it means and it makes her insides feel like twin coiled snakes of guilt and desire.

“You gonna get off, Luthor?”

The way Sam’s voice wraps around the syllables of her last name is positively sinful and that’s enough for Lena to practically leap off of her.

“Sorry,” Lena says, smoothing down the now wrinkled front of her shirt. “I think I got glue on your wall.”

Sam cranes her neck to see the piece of felt sadly peeling off the wall and laughs.

“Yeah, you did. I’ll take it out of your salary.”

Lena just snorts and looks off to see Ruby staring at her, an unreadable expression on her face.

They all redouble their efforts and finish the endoplasmic reticulum, and Lena politely but firmly refuses Sam’s offer to stay for dinner and heads straight back to her penthouse, where she makes a beeline for her bed and lies there as the colors of the sunset bleed into her room.

Lena wakes up blearily the next morning and the lines of her bedroom seem entirely foreign to her. It takes her a while to realize that she fell asleep in her clothes last night when it was barely eight. She props herself up on her elbows. The light of the early sunrise slips in through her curtains, opened just a hair, and she stares at the way that strip of light illuminates her white sheets for a long moment.

Lena thought she was in love with Sam back when they were in college together. They would make one another laugh like nobody else could, they shared secret glances and smiles and, once, after Sam had put little Ruby to bed, they kissed in the dim light of Sam’s crappy apartment living room. In all of her life up to that point, Lena had never felt anything like she felt with Sam.

Lex was arrested on charges of insider trading a month later, which Lena has always found incredibly, tragically hilarious. They hated him because he was fixing the game, so to speak, but not because he had been funneling money to domestic right wing, white supremacist groups for years. So, after that, Lena decided that she couldn’t let herself get close to anyone ever again.

(Sam had been perhaps too understanding and let this all happen. She was even nice enough to accept the position of CFO and pretend like nothing had ever happened between them).

Lena didn’t let herself get close to anyone ever again, not until Kara came around. And, really, she’s the reason Lena’s in this mess. (Lena’s feelings are the reason she’s in this mess, really, but when is that not the case?) She had thought her feelings for Sam had faded around the time she started falling for Kara. She thought wrong.

Lena finally extricates herself from her bed and walks into her kitchen, soaked in the morning light, and hopes that settling into her routine will quiet her treacherous feelings.

“Hey, what the hell is up with you?”

Lena regards Alex for a moment and snorts. Leave it to her to be blunt.  

“Nothing is up with me.”

Lena tries to hide her pounding heart behind a veil of feigned annoyance, but with the way Alex is looking at her right now it’s like she knows, knows far too much about how she’s feeling.

“Something is always up with you, but especially in these last few months. You’ve been even quieter than you normally are. I mean, we’re at your favorite bar and you’re over here nursing a whiskey by yourself instead of kicking everyone’s ass at pool.”

Lena glances over at the pool table and spends just a little too long looking at the way Sam and Kara laugh over a particularly bad shot by Winn. Alex observes her and narrows her eyes.

“Is this about Sam and Kara?”

Lena begins to panic and it takes all of her experience as a CEO to keep her face an unreadable mask and still her body.

“Do you not approve?” Alex goes on to ask, an edge to her voice, but Lena is relieved that she hasn’t quite guessed her secret. Not yet.

“Of course I approve, not that it matters. Look how happy they are together.”

Lena realizes she must’ve said that too glumly, because Alex’s gaze is now painfully soft and she’s rubbing Lena’s back.

“Hey, don’t worry, Lena. You’ll find someone. You know, if I wasn’t married to the greatest woman on Earth, I’d take you out on a date.”

Lena raises an eyebrow at that. “Oh, you would, would you?”

“Yeah, you know you’re pretty hot, right?” Alex says, leaning against the bar. “You’re a little rich for my blood, though.”

“You’re an orthopedic surgeon,” Lena says flatly.

“And yet, you make as much in a month as I do in a year.”

Lena just stares at her, though it only takes a moment until Alex is laughing. Lena can’t help but join in, and suddenly, she feels at least a little better than she did before. Alex draws her into a warm side-hug and, as Lena rests her head against her shoulder, she completely understand why Kara loves her sister so much.  

“Hey, friends!” Kara greets, bouncing on her heels. “Are we ready to get started?”

Alex takes one look at her and pulls the brim of her cap until it’s covering her eyes. Kara sputters and readjusts it, looking terribly offended as everyone laughs.

“Jock Kara has returned,” Alex says. “Everybody watch out.”

“I’m not a jock!” Kara protests.

The group is silent.

“Okay, who thinks I’m a jock?” Kara asks.

“It’s so obvious,” Alex is quick to say. “You did basically every single sport you possibly could in college and in high school. Total jock.”

“You also spend way more time in the gym than anyone I know,” James says. “I can see it.”

“Yeah, but Kara also loves art. I remember when we visited National City’s museum of modern art – I don’t think anyone could’ve gotten her to stop rambling,” Lena says fondly, a thrill going through her just from being able to say that she has this memory of Kara that’s shared just between the two of them. “So, she’s an art ho.”

“An ‘art ho?’” Winn asks. “C’mon, Lena, that’s not even on the Nerd-Jock, Goth-Prep axes. And, besides, Kara is a total nerd, just like me.”

Everyone stares at him.

“Okay, fine, not just like me. But, Kara does have all of the nerd credentials – multiple degrees, a deep love of science, an ability to recall minutia about the pop culture she consumes…”

“At least I don’t play Magic,” Kara says, grinning at him.

“Hey, Magic is cool! It’s a lot of strategy and high-level thinking!”

“Right, totally,” Sam says, patting Winn’s shoulder. “You are right, though, Kara is a total nerd. She was at my apartment the other day and she spent half the time helping Ruby with her chemistry homework. Voluntarily.”

“Chemistry is fun!” Kara says. “I mean, they’re just getting into, like, stoichiometry, which is pretty basic but still very important!”

Alex groans. “Oh god, you are a nerd.”

“You’re the one with the biochemistry degree,” Kara fires back.

“Yeah, but I’m also super cool. Orthopedic surgeons are the jocks of the medical world,” Alex says, before turning to Maggie. “Right, babe?”

“Uh huh, you absolutely are, babe,” Maggie says, a playful grin on her face. “Very cool. Super, super cool.”

“Ugh, traitor.”

“Can we please just start this hike?” Lena groans.

Lena knew she would be in trouble. She knows what both Sam and Kara look like in athletic clothing, but to have them both here in front of her, a light sheen of perspiration on their skin as they conquer this hike with ease as they laugh and flirt, is just too much for her. They both had the audacity to wear perfectly form-fitting workout shorts and tight tank tops and Lena finds it nearly impossible to look away. Kara’s biceps alone draw her gaze back in about a half-dozen times.

“Luthor!”

She turns around to see Alex marching up towards her with ease, like the crushing incline of their path doesn’t even register to her. It’s incredible unfair that both of the Danvers sisters are in absurd shape.

“Danvers. What’s up?” Lena asks, trying to make it sound like she’s not terribly out of breath already.

“So, I was thinking about that conversation we had the other day, at the bar.”

Lena is surprised. That had been over a week ago, and Alex is still caught up on it?

“There’s woman who works in the admin department at my hospital,” Alex continues. “I think you’d really like her. She’s smart, funny, and attractive in a sort of ‘reformed punk/goth’ sort of way, which I can only assume you’d be into.”

“I never should’ve shown you those high school pictures,” Lena grumbles.

“Anyway, she’s single and aggressively bisexual – you would not believe how many bi pride flags, pins, and stickers she has around her desk – so if you want me to set you two up, I absolutely can.”

As Lena mulls the offer over in her mind, she can’t help but steal another glance at Sam and Kara. They’re walking side-by-side, their shoulders brushing even though the trail is wide enough to accommodate them both, and Sam is smiling in that way she only ever does around Kara and…

“Yeah, that would be great,” Lena says, managing a smile. “What’s her name?”

Chloe! You guys will hit it off, I promise,” Alex says, rambling off about her, and Lena hopes this is what she needs. A worthwhile distraction.

Lena gets Chloe’s number and invites her to a casual yet highly-regarded French fusion restaurant downtown. It’s fun, in its own way, to go through the rituals of going on a date, something she hasn’t done in a very long time. She agonizes over her outfit, she does her makeup and hair to perfection, and she even revels in the way her heart speeds up with nerves as she’s waiting for her date to show up.

Chloe is exactly as advertised. She’s incredibly smart, funny in a surprisingly and refreshingly sharp and biting way, and easy to talk to. Not only that, but she’s stunning, with warm, kind eyes, a strong jawline, and, as Alex had alluded to, the underside of her hair is dyed a hypnotic blend of blue and purple in a sort of concession to the days when he hair was entirely dyed in those shades. Lena genuinely can’t remember the last time she had a first date that went this well. Even her first date with Jack was awkward and uncomfortable at times.

Chloe isn’t Kara, though, and she’s not Sam.

And therein lies the problem.

#superreigncorp #supergirl #superreign #supercorp #fanfiction #personal writing

[merryfortune]

Day 2 - Summer

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc V

Ship: Sayaka/Ruri

Alternate Universe: Into the Forest of Fireflies

Warnings: Fluff with a Sad Ending

Word Count: 2.4k

  The countryside appealed greatly to Sayaka. Always had and, as she planned ahead towards her future now that she was nearing the end of her high school career, always will. Though, there was a specific place, her aunt and uncle’s residence out way, way into the countryside where the grass was more gold than green and where the air was fresh. The lack of people appealed to her greatly; she felt like she could breathe, especially compared to the pollution-clogged streets of Heartland.

  But, Sayaka would admit with a blush in her cheeks, there was one person who did exist in the countryside: someone all for her.

  She had met this person – this girl – when she had been a child. Her name was Ruri and she didn’t exist. She was neither human nor a ghost. A willowy waif in between, wearing a yellow sundress and with feathers attached to her mask which was bird-like, specifically in the shape of a robin. She had been an adolescent when Sayaka had met her in the summer about a decade ago; or more accurately, twelve years ago now.

  Even though she was so much older than Sayaka, she had adored Sayaka’s presence in her life, as fleeting as it was. After all, Ruri had all the time in the world, in her own special way, but Sayaka’s time upon this Earth was even far more finite. After all, she was only human, even when she was teeny-tiny but in a different sense, she was finite in that she only had the summer. She would arrive at the end of the first week of June and then leave before the last week of August. It was pitiful but Sayaka didn’t mind. Nor did Ruri.

  The days of Sayaka’s childhood were halcyon. Breezy afternoons by the stream, watching birds and watching the clouds. Ruri knew how to do fortune telling using both of them; a spirit, a proper spirit, of the forest had taught her. Ruri was a child of the forest, she said. After all, she had been human once, but she never died. She simply transcended because the forest wanted to keep her, this tiny abandoned baby with a bottle milk and a jewelled ring to play with in a woven cane basket plied with stained white sheets. So, the spirits of the forest kept her, turned her into something else, and gave her that white mask she wore to signify that though she may look human, she wasn’t quite.

  Over the years, Sayaka would visit every summer. Summer quickly became her favourite season. She spent the autumns, springs, and winters yearning for the summer to return so that she may return to the wonderful side of the quiet and nearly enigmatic Ruri. At first, she wasn’t sure though but later, Sayaka became certain of it.

   She wasn’t solely in love with the summer, she was in love with Ruri too. After all, they had spent so many summers together, Sayaka was nearly as tall as Ruri now. Her age too, visibly but Sayaka feared that one day, she may surpass Ruri, grow older. It was a melancholic yearning which was why Sayaka resolved that not only would she spend the summers with Ruri, she would spend the other seasons together, as well. After all, she thought of this girl and this girl alone throughout it all.

  Sayaka thought – dreamed – of touching Ruri.

  Again, Ruri was only human in shape. She was like the moon: beautiful, luminescent, smiling, but completely and utterly untouchable. It was the price for her existence, transient yet seemingly endless. The spell placed upon her, to keep her in the forest filled with spirits who adored her was that she was forbidden to touch a human. If she should, she would disappear.

  But, Sayaka wanted to touch her anyway.

  There had been a close call in the past. When Sayaka was about eight, she was walking along the pier with Ruri, near the shallows, when she slipped. Ruri had gone to catch her hand and pull her back but then her heart stopped. She remembered that if her hand met Sayaka’s, she would disappear so, she let the young girl fall. Sayaka was drenched but she would rather be drenched than alone, but it was that moment, Sayaka realised, that she wanted to officiate her connection because to be touched and to touch others, she felt, was to be human. But to be Ruri, she had to forsake such a simple pleasure despite her deceptively human shape.

  To hold Ruri’s hand, to kiss her, those were the sweet, melancholic yearnings that Sayaka had in her quiet heart but for now, Sayaka cherished the time that she could spent with Ruri, side by side. For now, and hopefully, for as long as possible. As long as there were summers to be had, Sayaka would remember Ruri and love her.

  When summer came this year, Ruri seemed strange. Stranger than usual. Sayaka spieled about all her plans for after school. Ruri listened, saintly, and nodded her head. Yet, she sounded uncertain from behind her beaked mask. That made Sayaka a little nervous, right up until Ruri spun around, dress twirling, and breaking out into a flippant promise: tonight, would be the best night of any summer that they had ever had. And ever could have.

   “Let’s go to the summer festival tonight, Sayaka.” Ruri said.

  “Huh? Why? Isn’t it dangerous?” Sayaka replied, quivering.

  “What? No, not at all. It’s not different to the festivals that humans hold. In fact, we were inspired by them. In fact, sometimes, humans slip in anyway… You’ll be fine, dear. I’ll pick you up tonight so wear your best. We’ll meet here, like we always do.” Ruri said.

  “Alright…” Sayaka mumbled.

  She and Ruri parted thereafter. They had been hanging around the temple but once Ruri turned her back on Sayaka, she seemed to disappear completely before even moving off the temple’s threshold. The forest welcomed her back and somewhere, a wild bird sang sweetly. Sayaka’s heart trembled. Her heart swelled with elation: her first date with Ruri but her soul trembled; something about it bode ill.

  Regardless, Sayaka was able to produce her best clothes. Her aunt permitted her to wear her yukata; it was supposed to be saved for only the most special occasions as it was that precious to her and their family. It had belonged to her grandmother originally and was still in as stunning of a condition as when it had first been sewn. Sayaka felt almost unbecoming wearing it due to its legacy but at the same time, she felt beautiful in it. It was pale pink with a dual motif of feathers and flowers. With a smile, Sayaka’s aunt did up her hair in a high bun.

  Ruri had been waiting for Sayaka for some time when Sayaka returned to the nearly abandoned temple where they liked to play and hang out. Twilight had completely descended into the Earth by the time Sayaka arrived but Ruri thought she looked magnificent. She smiled girlishly, though her expression hidden by her mask, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear then extended a hand to Sayaka.

  Sayaka flailed her hands about, “You mustn’t, Ruri!” she murmured.

  Ruri giggled and she jerked her hand about. The ribbon she had tied around it began to loosen.

  “Here,” she said, “tie it around your wrist.”

  “O-Oh.” Sayaka murmured.

  She drew in closer and took the ribbon. It was of a soft, white material. With ease, Sayaka was able to tie it around her wrist similar to how Ruri wore it. She smiled up at Ruri and blushed.

  “Let’s go.” Ruri said.

  She tugged on the ribbon and like a child’s toy, Sayaka was tugged along with it. She was once more caught up in Ruri’s aura and she adored it. Together, they stowed away in the darkness and into the forest. Ruri led her through the woods where the grass crinkled pleasantly underfoot. The woods were dense but orange lights flickered just beyond them and soon enough, Sayaka felt as though she had set foot in a very familiar yet simultaneously alien town.

  The paths were stony underfoot and the bunting flapped above overhead. She looked around whilst Ruri gently led her through the crowds. Sayaka couldn’t help but look at everything at once in some vain attempt to absorb all the sights. Some of the people here looked just like her: completely human. Others had animal ears and others again had limbs in all the wrong proportions. Yet, everyone in this crowd meant peace and joy. Sayaka didn’t sense a malignant force amongst them. Everyone just wanted to enjoy the festival. Ruri must have been feeling similarly as she skewed her mask, allowing her face to feel the night air and allowing Sayaka to bask in the presence of her unbidden smile.

  The festival was loud and noisy. People crowded and clustered. Amongst them, musicians played their instruments and others sang. Vendors lined the streets, lit with orangey lamps and selling all sorts of things: food, games, costumes and more. Sayaka and Ruri drifted through, purchasing a bit of this and a bit of that. Mostly talking to one another, clinging onto the ribbon which bound them together no differently than the act of holding hands.

  It was a wonderful way to spend their time. Every moment had Sayaka’s heart racing. At the end of the night, she and Ruri watched the fireworks. They shot up and exploded into beautiful jets of gold and crimson. They whistled and spat, hissed and fizzled. The sparks bloomed ephemerally in no particular shapes or patterns, but they were still beautiful to watch as they drifted down against the inky black of the night sky speckled with silver stars.

  But even such beautiful and exciting things paled in comparison to the grace of Ruri. Her eyes looked gorgeous, lit up with awe and with the vanishing lights of the fireworks. Her lips were parted slightly in a wondrous smile and Sayaka watched Ruri watching the fireworks; a tentative observation. She wished, desperately, that she could kiss Ruri.

  Ruri must have noticed Sayaka staring. The fireworks were finished. Ruri pulled on the ribbon; Sayaka’s fingers quirked.

  “Let’s go visit the lake, it’s the right season for fireflies, yeah?” Ruri said.

  “Mmhm.” Sayaka replied.

  So, Ruri took off again with the wind in her hair. Sayaka trailed along, smiling, and they disappeared further into the forest again. When they arrived by the lakeshore, it was likely about midnight. Here, the night was pleasantly cool and balmy. The lake was still and lively with the reflections of the night sky: slowly shimmering stars and illuminated by the moon. And in such serenity, green lights – the lit tail ends – of fireflies drifted through the air.

  Sayaka was awed by the sight. Ruri was awed by the sight of Sayaka’s smile. Her heart ached and yearned in equal measure, perhaps even more, unto Sayaka.

  “Sayaka,” Ruri murmured, “I love you.”

  Sayaka’s eyes widened behind her glasses. She gasped and Ruri drew closer. She carried a cool air with her. She unlatched her mask from the crown of her head, and she placed it on Sayaka’s face. The light, white wood it was carved from bumped against the frames of her glasses. Sayaka swallowed hard as she squinted through her new, all-encompassing darkness.

  Ruri kissed the mask. She kissed the protrusions of the mask’s lips, just beneath the beak which jutted out. Her cheek slid beneath the beak, a gentle nuzzle as she kissed as soft and as hard as she could. She poured all her feelings into that kiss and it could have made her cry. Instead, it filled her with a sweet and earnest joy.

  She hoped that Sayaka knew that she was kissing her. She hoped that Sayaka liked the kiss when she drew back. Sayaka shivered slightly and she removed the mask. She clutched onto it tenderly.

  “That was wonderful, Ruri.” she said, tears in her eyes. “I love you, Ruri.”

  “I know, Sayaka, I love you too.” Ruri murmured.

  The fireflies around them flitted and before their feelings unto one another could unravel any further, they heard the squeal and laugh of children. They smiled and turned their head. A boy and a girl, no older than eight from the looks of them, dashed through. The girl sprinted ahead whilst her companion was unable to keep pace.

  The boy tripped and Ruri, without thinking, raced to his aide. She helped him up and he had grass stains up and down his legs, but he was fine. He thanked her and his friend called to him. Ruri let the boy go and soon enough, the pair of children disappeared.

  Just like Ruri.

  Sayaka watched in horror as specks of green light, no different to the lights the fireflies wore, began to break off from Ruri’s body. Sayaka screamed. She dropped the mask. It landed in the grass at her feet and Ruri turned around. And she smiled because of course she smiled.

  “Sayaka, it’s okay…” Ruri murmured. “I don’t think I had much time left anyway. I wasn’t meant to live this long but I’m glad I did because I got to meet you.”

  Her words were soft as those specks of light billowed off her. She sparkled in the night, no different to a firework or a firefly. She drew in closer and opened her arms.

  “Please? Sayaka?” Ruri said.

  “I understand.” Sayaka said.

  Her arms flung out and she embraced Ruri. She nuzzled in close and inhaled what was left of her scent. Sayaka buried her face in Ruri’s breast and held onto her tightly. Ruri reciprocated such a tight embrace. She finally felt contented; something she hadn’t truly felt in years as she had been plagued by her yearning.

  “Thank you, Sayaka. I love you. Please don’t forget me.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” Sayaka sobbed as she was slowly brought to her knees.

  The lights drifted upwards and soon, Sayaka was by herself. Her scrawny arms wrapped around her own body where Ruri had been. She was gone. Sayaka bawled. All that remained of her dearest Ruri was the mask and the white ribbon, still entwined around Sayaka’s wrist and the other half piled in a loose curl but now, Sayaka had no one left to hold onto.

#arc v rare pair week #writing tag #guiltshipping #ruri kurosaki #sayaka sasayama #yugioh arc v #arc v #yugioh #this is twice as long as i thought it would be #anyway i hate the prompt summer #because it is COLD #femslash

[kylermalloy]

My Official Unofficial Ranking of Supernatural Seasons That Nobody Asked For

This was...surprisingly easy. For someone who has a hard time picking favorites, I’m apparently quite eager to throw some seasons of one of my favorite shows under the bus.

My reasonings for this ranking are...all over the place. Since I’m considering seasons as a whole, I look mostly at the overall narrative structure, the prevalent themes, and the major character arcs. I won’t take individual/one-off episodes into much consideration...except for when I do. I won’t like some seasons/story arcs for any rationale between “this was sloppily executed,” “the message is misunderstood by viewers,” or even just that gif of Chris Evans “I don’t wike it.” I’m trying to look at seasons and storylines objectively, but I guarantee my Sam!girl bias will peek through at some point. Also, I reserve the right to change my mind at any point after I post this!

From bottom to top:

14 - Season 14

Ah, the twilight years of SPN. Now that we know this is the penultimate season, I’m a bit more lenient toward its shortcomings. Long running shows usually do stutter to a halt, story-wise. But still. I’m not taking it out of the bottom spot.

What was this season even about? Michael overtaking Dean? Nah, that barely lasted three whole episodes. Jack becoming evil? Not until the last six episodes. Team Free Will becoming a cohesive family unit? Lol. For a season that tried to set up Jack’s evil arc as a kid betraying his family, I hardly saw this “family” except in fanworks. The most heartfelt moments remained between Sam and Dean (not that I’m complaining about that—I loved those moments!) Was there an overarching theme besides “nobody is okay, especially Sam”? Season 14 is clumsy, unfocused, and does a poor job of telling the story it tried to tell. Even Mary’s second death reeked of “well, we didn’t know what to do with her and we needed a tragedy.” Oh yeah, and John was back for a hot minute.

13 - Season 9

Here’s one of these weird seasons. I like it, but I don’t. It’s well done, but it’s terrible. Also, I’m taking fan response into consideration on this one, since it colored my perception of it so negatively.

Season 9 could have been great. In a way, it was great. It was Dean’s dark arc—the part of Dean’s dark arc that I like. I’m not here to debate, just lay out the story. Dean stepped over a line. He tricked Sam into possession, lied to him for months, then refused to apologize afterward. He took the Mark of Cain as a penance, but it blew up in his face and turned him into something worse than he was before.

This is where fan response comes in. Fandom (from what I can tell; I wasn’t here back then) vilified Sam for setting boundaries with Dean, overwhelmingly siding with poor Dean who just didn’t want to be alone. The show, on paper, wasn’t trying to make the audience think this, but the POVs were skewed in such a way that we hardly got a chance to see Sam’s perspective and Sam’s trauma—so casual viewers didn’t really have a choice.

On a completely unrelated note (see, this is why this season is ranked so low) we have the angel storyline. What could’ve been a really cool and impactful story of celestial beings walking the earth, as well as Castiel exploring his new humanity in a way (that wasn’t just about sex) ended up a trite, dull affair about underdeveloped politics and characters I don’t care about. Did Metatron (the supposed big bad) even care about the Winchesters? I can’t remember. Only the actor’s indulgently entertaining performance saves that character. Even Castiel’s human arc was so short and ignored I sometimes forget it happened. This was a season that was so all over the place—good bones, bad execution.

12 - Season 12

This season is just...forgettable. Yet another season that was so all over the place—but unlike season 9, the story arcs did not culminate in a cool twist that pushed the SPN story to new heights. We had the BMOL, Mary’s return, and the Lucifer/Kelly/Dagon/nephilim story, and...honestly I can barely remember anything about them. The twisting story threads got interlocked at some points, like Mary working with the BMOL, and Sam and Dean working with them to take down Lucifer, but the threads were all wrapped up independently. To me, this suggests a lack of true investment in the stories and season arcs. Ultimately, Mary’s return was utterly wasted, the BMOL might as well have never existed, and the Lucifer storyline is a bloody, bloated carcass being dragged along behind the show by a fraying rope (called Buckleming) complete with a bad smell.

The reason I rank this season above season 9 is that I don’t shudder when I hear people talking about season 12. I don’t generally get angry when I think about it (except the way they did Crowley dirty) and it did give us Jack, the greatest fanon projection the show has ever given us. (I’ll elaborate on that in a minute)

11 - Season 10

This is the season in which I don’t like Dean’s dark arc. By that I mean...it wasn’t much of a dark arc. Instead of exploring Dean’s inner darkness and the choices that led him to take the MoC, we get a meandering season of (pretty enjoyable) one-offs. We are repeatedly told Dean can’t fight off what he truly is—except we’re also being told that Dean can’t truly control what the MoC is doing to him, meaning the MoC isn’t what he truly is. It’s a mixed message, and it ends up being too many episodes in a row of Dean staring moodily at his arm while he drinks. Sorry, an ancient tribal tattoo does not a compelling big bad make.

Speaking of bad guys, though, season 10 gave us Rowena! And more Crowley material! And the Stynes—wait, no. We don’t talk about...whatever they were.

I do like Sam’s determination to save Dean, and I even like the underhanded methods he used to get the MoC off. Charlie’s death was a horrifying shock, but it actually fed the story very well. And I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about individual episodes, but Soul Survivor and Fan Fiction are both epic.

10 - Season 8

...this season. This season is such a mixed bag you could almost rank it as two separate seasons! ;) This was Jeremy Carver’s first season as showrunner—and while I like what he ended up doing, I hated the way he played with the brother dynamics throughout the season, especially the first half. Season 8 starts out disjointed, very unconnected from the previous season. The story thread of “Sam didn’t look for Dean” is overplayed and very tired. Also a bit of a reach, considering the season 5 finale. My point is, Sam and Dean both act like pod people for the first part of this season. Dean is mad at Sam for...doing exactly what Dean himself did a few years ago (fandom misses the nuance of Dean’s hypocrisy and jumps right in the blame-Sam boat with him) and Sam is suddenly...living with a strange woman we barely get to meet and okay with not hunting anymore?

This is another example of the skewed POVs hurting the show’s message. We don’t get to see Sam’s grief the same way we saw Dean’s struggle in purgatory, and since Sam’s Amelia arc makes very little sense anyway, we’re forced to imagine it—and this is a disservice to both Sam and the overarching story.

However, the saving grace of season 8 is the second half. We get the bunker, the Trials storyline, which is a whump goldmine for my Sam-loving heart, and one of the best season finales this show has ever produced. I mean...they got married. In a CHURCH! I’m not really a wincester, but seriously how do you not ship it just a little when the show gives you stuff like THAT?!

*deep breath* I’m good. Moving on!

9 - Season 13

I...have a soft spot for this season. Anybody who follows me on here can probably guess why. That’s right, it’s Jack, the greatest fanon projection the show has ever gifted us.

Let me explain. The narrative structure of the season is a mess. The exploratory theme of Sam and Dean as parents is derailed by the fact that Sam and Dean spend less than six episodes with their surrogate child and spend the rest of the season spinning their wheels until it’s time for the finale. Lucifer as a villain doesn’t give a crap about the protagonists, which makes him a really boring and terrible antagonist—to say nothing of the fact that two of the writers try to make him sympathetic and end up assassinating the character harder than Michael!Dean did. I only found Scoobynatural mildly entertaining. As for Asmodeus...who’s that?

Basically, the only shining light in this season besides the brothers is Jack. And we don’t even get a consistent characterization of him. He’s essentially a blank slate, which means we as fans and fanwork creators get to make him whatever we want. While he’s supposedly the Winchesters’ kid in canon, it’s rarely shown—that falls on us as fans to make a reality. And boy do we make it reality! This is where I found my corner of fandom, and that’s why this mess of a season ranks relatively high for me. Still in the bottom half, but it gave me one of the greatest gifts the show has ever given.

8 - Season 7

I shouldn’t have to defend myself, but while most of the fandom harbors a little black spot of hatred for this season...I don’t. Like, at all.

I don’t agree with all the creative choices of this season—the Leviathans were an out-of-nowhere big bad with no connection to the Winchesters. However, the guy who played Dick Roman did a fantastic job hamming it up. And I love how all the pieces came together in the end—Sam and Dean, Cas, Crowley, even Meg as a surprise reluctant hero. We also got Charlie! And Kevin! Bobby got a fantastic arc, both before he died and from beyond the grave. And Crowley, even though he helped win the day, also rigged the game so he took all the pieces left on the board. Mad respect for my king.

Also, as a stalwart fan of Sam whump, Sam’s hallucination storyline was all kinds of awesome. (Except for how it abruptly ended and was never spoken of again)

I know objectively this season isn’t very good, but I still find myself rewatching it a surprising amount. I have a soft spot for Sera’s storytelling, and she did not have complete control over the creative decisions for this year. Season 7 only barely misses out of the top half.

7 - Season 3

This season is great, it really is. I think the main reason I rank it so low is because of the shortened season—Sam’s aborted arc. And that was obviously out of everyone’s control; the creators had to just pick up the pieces and make do with what circumstances gave them.

Basically, I don’t have anything bad to say about this season. It’s a brother-lovefest, it gives us Bela and Ruby, and yes we get some truly great one-off eps. Bad Day at Black Rock, A Very Supernatural Christmas, Mystery Spot, Jus in Bello, and Ghostfacers are among my favorite episodes to rewatch. I just mainly miss the end of Sam’s arc. Although I do appreciate the writers’ strike giving us Castiel instead, I still wish we could’ve gotten to see boyking!Sam save his brother.

6 - Season 2

While on the surface season 2 is barely different than season 1, it also gives us loads of gamechangers. It’s the coming-of-age season—Sam and Dean aren’t kids anymore; in fact, they aren’t anyone’s kids. The season bookends of John’s death and Sam’s death make a horrible tragedy that I don’t even care much what’s in the middle.

But then again, everything in between is so good. There’s not much of an overarching story, just a sense of dread and desperation as...something...draws near. (We don’t even know what it is, but it still scares us! It’s masterful!) The tone is consistent and effective, the brother dynamics are still balanced enough to fully enjoy, and of course...there’s Playthings. :)

(Y’all are gonna stop believing me when I say I’m not a wincester, I can feel it. What can I say, I have incestuous shipping tendencies.)

5 - Season 11

This is a season that I could tear limb from limb for falling so flat in the end, but...somehow I can’t bring myself to. I didn't find myself into the Amara storyline too much, mainly because the God/Darkness sibling dynamic wasn’t developed enough to parallel with Sam and Dean invest in. But this season does an awesome job of healing the brother dynamics. While seasons 8, 9, and 10 were fight-heavy, Sam and Dean spend this season in relative peace. In times of potential crisis, they band together instead of fracturing apart. And that, honestly, is enough for me to forgive...well, a lot, plotwise. The Dean/Amara connection that went nowhere, the Casifer storyline that went nowhere, the Darkness’s grudge against her brother that...went nowhere...and I’m not even going to touch on the Sam/Lucifer dynamic that started out SO GOOD and then...well...

Again, I’m not going to touch on it. I love this season despite its flaws.

4 - Season 1

Here it is. The season that started it all. I said I was going to consider mostly narrative structures for this ranking, yet here season 1 is without much of a narrative structure, fourth from the top.

The first season of a show is always the feel-around-in-the-dark season. This is where we learn the rules of the show, how the world works, and most importantly, who our characters are. We spend 22 episodes with the writers and actors just...figuring out who Sam and Dean are, most especially who they are to each other. They were so successful in this that they spawned a fifteen year phenomenon centered around this fraternal love story. As an additional plus, since the characters were so new, season 1 gives us the most balanced POV between the brothers. We get to feel for both of them without being pitted against each other, and I appreciate that more than words.

The horror is old-school, the storytelling can be a bit cliche, but every show has an origin story and I’m in love with this one.

3 - Season 6

Again, I love Sera Gamble’s storytelling. It’s most evidenced here in her first year of showrunning. This season had the astronomical task of following up season 5. How do you follow up the literal apocalypse?

...Astoundingly well. To me at least.

This season’s narrative structure is my favorite. It’s kind of a noir thriller, with more twists and turns than Supernatural usually gets. In fact, having now watched Vampire Diaries and The Originals, season 6 of SPN kind of echoes those shows. (I don’t think it’s coincidence that TVD aired its first season one year prior to this)

Instead of trying to outdo the literal devil (the mistake of latter seasons) we spend most of season 6 not knowing who the big bad is. We meet a few baddies, get backstabbed by former friends, and we’re told Raphael is a threat, but in the end the big bad was the friend we made along the way—Castiel. It’s depressing, it’s not what we expected, and it’s honestly a departure from “traditional” SPN. But I like it. I like it a lot. If Sera had been allowed to do more seasons like this, she probably would’ve stayed longer.

2 - Season 4

I love a lot of things about this season. The way they handled the angels was great—the right way to do unknowably powerful beings. I like Sam’s dark arc. It’s coupled perfectly with his good intentions and his all-consuming love for his brother. The plot twist at the end is perfect—Sam, in doing the right thing, unleashes the worst evil this world has (yet) known.

The tone is also perfect. It’s dark. A little edgier. Edging toward eldritch horror rather than ghost horror. Balanced out with light episodes that pack a hard punch in the feels regardless. And this is a little thing, but the color grading shifts back to more sepia after the technicolor of season 3. It gives us this little sense of dread throughout the season without even knowing why.

I could complain about the skewed POVs, about how fandom still sometimes crows “Dean was right about Lilith!” when all Dean opposed was Ruby and the demon blood—he wanted killed Lilith too. But as this instance of POV-warp serves the storyline in a good, necessary way, and Sam truly did need to be brought back from his dark path, I’m choosing to ignore it.

1 - Season 5

Are we surprised? Maybe some Sam fans are—I know some who get vexed about the blame for the apocalypse being solely and constantly placed on Sam...but I’m not. The overall story of season 5 is just so good. Lucifer is a good villain in this season. Sam and Dean have an excellent healing arc. The angels are good villains, also ironic mouthpieces of the overarching themes—despite touting “fate” and “unavoidable,” they are champions of free will, since they do whatever they want in their father’s absence. Zachariah most notably. Castiel was utilized in a good way (whereas now he struggles to still have purpose in the show) Bobby and Crowley both were good in this season (and also sparked a rarepair that’s—hilariously—canon) and this season did not pull any punches when it came to death. Even the main protagonists were shot point-blank halfway through the season! (Don’t talk to me about the samulet, I can’t do it without bawling)

And Swan Song remains my favorite season finale and overall episode. Dean relinquishing control of his little brother, allowing him to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the world. I still halfway wish the series ended with Sam and Dean both throwing themselves into the Cage, destroying themselves for the world, out of love for each other. (insert “poetic cinema” meme)

And there we have it! To my mutuals, I’d love to hear your thoughts or your rankings. And to @letsgobethegoodguys - Steph, since this was so hard for you, I did it myself so I could feel your pain. 😘

#supernatural #through the seasons #spn #rankings #kylerrambles #listen—i welcome discussion! #pls talk to me! #but if you come on my post just to argue with me—don’t bother

[incarnateirony]

The Problem with DreamHunter...

Is that there is no problem with DreamHunter.

You're probably like "wait, what?" So let me clarify: This is absolutely not a Dreamhunter!Critical post. In fact, I have a lot of accolades for DreamHunter. I'll address a few complaints I've read from a surly, never-happy swath of stan twitter, but this post isn't actually about that - it's about a pervasive cultural issue involving coded phobia and how Bobo Fucking Berens showed his level of quantum literary and social brainfunction to do everything from canonize an LGBT ship to run a far deeper and more exposing social experiment on the fandom at large.

We've all seen the gif sets. I can't find the video in my vat of poorly maintained blog, but I'm sure someone else could, wherein Bobo on Twitch was talking about being ecstatic over us seeing what he wanted us to see. To the fandom that keeps their ears open, none of DreamHunter's premise is new to us. The only new thing was a certain confirmation, "First love strikes quick."

First, to the part that is NOT the point of the post, but I feel needs addressed before people start yelling at me:

Now, this has opened up a floodgate of hard-end-stan-twitter complaining like "Oh so they didn't just kill a WOC but a queer WOC and then after-texted it?" Well, no, fam. They were setting up a queer romance of the century with her dream half and potential return to the self while facing the darkest parts of challenging the self and deleting our weaknesses, and maybe even going so far as to make a statement of self imposed biases. Wayward just wasn't picked up so they've had to funnel and condense the concept in other ways. Dark Kaia wanting to target Claire after seeing what she meant to Kaia isn't an arbitrary and random sentiment. But arguing literary romantic value with stan twitter is like arguing algebra with an ill-behaved goose, so that's as far as I'm going to take that explanation beyond "y'all are often our biggest enemies on content."

Now then... to the actual point of the post:

I've mentioned it before, but it really deserves its own rebloggable master post not attached to some overlong thread, and able to be brought into fuller scope. The problem with DreamHunter is almost nonexistent. In fact, the simple fact is: with a line that simple, it was universally accepted as a truth, whether people are screaming about tropes they want to read in the worst light before the romantic element ever got a chance to get its feet under it. Nobody's out there saying it doesn't exist. Nobody's out there downtalking that line.

THAT is the problem with DreamHunter - that there is no problem with DreamHunter. And by that, I don't mean to say we should have a problem with DreamHunter. It's that DreamHunter reveals a hugely systemic coded bias in our culture.

And honestly, I think Berens did that on purpose.

There’s a certain level of coy battle in acceptance going on. First of all, people naturally seem to accept F/F before M/M due to a bunch of cultural reasons. Mostly because F/F has been convenient to publicly fetishize while M/M freaks out dudebros that are really uncertain about themselves, so for a longer time, GA has been exposed to and accepting F/F. And I think of anyone out there, My Big Gay Author King Berens is going to understand that.

WLW still has its own stigmas, I'm not saying it doesn't, but acting like resistance to it is on any cultural coding level parallel to the stigma against MLM is a weird display of intersectional privilege and lack of awareness.

Acting like it’s coincidence that they monkey-stomp packed as many identical lines and scene arrangements into all of one episode as possible, then dropped a bomb like that episode two, is silly. We know exactly what he’s after – hell, he said he was ecstatic we saw what he wanted us to see. So the real question is, why is it that “first love strikes quick” is taken without argument from the GA but a thousand up-nods for the M/M pairing with the same content – and TBH, far far far more that could never be packed into a single episode – has people take lines like “attached at the everything” and immediately have a portion of the audience start laughing, despite the surrounding substance around it?

Destiel fandom read into yet-again heaven and hell believing DeanCas are an item; antis decided it was an insult to “annoy” them. Even the angel in the past threatening to gouge Cas’ genitals over it. Because that’s what I do when I don’t believe it but am a religious zealot. Threaten to cut dicks off to annoy people. But somehow, it’s far easier to negotiate, to these people, that the male queer coded content is a punchline, rather than either a genuine or perceived truth. Antis choose to interpret MLM as a punchline. It’s that simple. No amount of surrounding content or story thematics can convince them otherwise. 

The same substance they monkey stomped, condensed, and largely stripped down for time limitations, into DreamHunter?

I’ll give a hint: it’s the same cultural stigma that – which late night show was it, where they started playing well-edited slash videos and the audience started laughing despite it being well timed and edited? It’s that. It’s the same thing that made Ateo unable to play queer roles in the industry as being “not believably gay” despite being a gay man himself, until the Hunter Husbands. It’s a horrific stigma that the audience has been coded to bite and gnash back against M/M content unfairly to the queer male audience and it’s gross, but it’s just there, sort of in the collective mind.

I absolutely don’t think Berens, of all fucking people, is unaware of this. And I see what he did as a really, really fucking coy set of actions beneath already masterful writing.

Berens knows exactly what he’s fucking doing and has basically coded a social experiment into the show that betrays people’s biases against M/M queer pairings while allowing the saturation (largely by fetishization) of F/F pairings to do the heavy lifting for him. Nobody out here yelling that Jody could be wrong about it or that “we didn’t see a kiss so it didn’t happen LOL they’re just in a sismance” – it is what it is. And here we are.

So on a social level I am fucking fascinated to see where he takes this next.

Berens has come out swinging for the queer male community whether anybody wants to accept it or not. Which is, modernly, by our demographics, at least an equal if not the greatest portion of our primary male demographic of viewers for the show. And I'm not just talking about the fandom census. I'm talking about Nielsen's demographics shift on gender since season 10, and general Kinsey-scale-esque testing of the true target demo at large in the US. Our ads count 18-49. CW targets 18-34.

Following the work of Berens within Supernatural will give you a very blatant papertrail. It started in deeply layered subtext; his first episode Carver directed Misha to play Cas as a Jilted Lover; after that, he took Robbie's work on Cain and manifest the Colette parallel coded into our story; he chose to take Dabb's Dean-speech from 12.1 and turn it into our coffee-Mixtape-Win spree that other authors shed from their pen in his wake, just like later in season 10 people continued his Colette grind. Berens has been an internal motion for the legitimization of truly structured and admittedly intentful elements of Destiel in the show. And people can scream that they don't like or see it all they want, but it's right there -- and with DreamHunter, it was What He Wanted Us To See.

It's grossly disingenuous activism to try to accuse SPN's first overtly queer author of queerbait while internally shifting the motions of our author room mechanics towards genuinely structured and intentful romance-skewed storytelling, whether it remains subtextual or not. Especially as that author continues to throw wrench upon wrench upon wrench into the no homo gears in ways the GA is perpetually exposed to and spun into having to think about. An eternal negotiation of poignantly delivered lines that catches even the most resistant ears and at least plants a seed in their mind about something else. A true normalization of it as a potential element to the story.

The same sort of normalization hyper-condensed into DreamHunter, but as per the above discussion, far more readily accepted. I have literally heard, from people who argued the "bromance, I'm not entirely convinced" on Destiel, that DreamHunter had been "obvious" to them and the "first love strikes quick" wasn't even necessary, because everybody knew. Cue me sending simple gifsets and script line side by sides and blowing their brains because suddenly their entire world scope just got bent sideways in -- why do I accept the one while I negotiate away the other?

Well, I covered why, above.

The problem with DreamHunter, I repeat, is that there is no problem with DreamHunter. People accept and see that it exists, without argument, even going so far as to label it "obvious" from a single episode, of a highly condensed version of only a fraction of the moments of another queer-coded duo in the show, but simply with culturally differing gender dynamics.

The concern troll of "bromance" or "why not let men be close" dies here. The idea of a bromance is letting two men have a friendship with the form of openness platonic female friends can have. That's fine, that's great. Dean-Benny would be a great example of this, and even then we once again had the offset of Dean-Cas to show different operations. I might even say Dean-Sam as an idea of that, but I don't think "bromance" is necessarily needed since brothers natively have a different sort of dynamic from growing up together. But once you are going out of your way to dismiss elements that we accept in hetero pairings with a laissez-faire “duh”, or even WLW scenarios as “it’s so obvious”, because it's MLM, we have left the area of "bromance" and "why not just let men be close without making it gay" and into “I am negotiating this away due to some sort of coded unwillingness to accept it, perhaps subconsciously, even if I consciously consider myself an ally.”

And that's the true masterpiece of this social experiment Bobo planted in the Supernatural universe with DreamHunter.

The world is grossly unfair and tilted in remaining cultural stigmas about queer males after ages of repressing them to limited niche capacities and stereotypes so strong that masculine gay men couldn’t even get cast in roles as gay men, where the world reads queer men as a punch line rather than a “duh” or “it’s so obvious” or “it’s just right there”, and DreamHunter is a walking fucking social experiment putzing around in Supernatural universe that gives no choice but to pick a side of the fence once you’re aware of these things.

Whether or not it’s physically consummated does not make it not-romantic. Being queer isn’t just about sex. It’s about feelings. And yes, we want our feelings to lead somewhere, and they deserve to lead somewhere, but is Jody acknowledging Claire’s “first love” now what suddenly makes it romantic, or is it the motions, the stories, and the feelings that preceded those lines, even though they never kissed and all hand-holding could be negotiated away the same way we can negotiate away our canon touches for two very emotionally involved men? “She was just leading her through the gate because she was scared,” “she was just consoling her as she died.” See how easy that is? But we won’t do that. And now, frankly anybody that does looks like a jackass.

So why, oh why, is this treated with ambiguity? This is a canon statement of “this relationship is being in love.” It was young love - it struck quick, in only an episode - but it was love. But name an element DreamHunter has to define that love that Destiel doesn’t? If you bend over backwards and try for the handholding, I can raise you hundreds of moments of intimate style contact. Try again.

Canon just confirmed what we already knew -- that Destiel is romantic. That there is love there. And not the kind of love we dismiss as Bros. Bobo just did that. Because every element of their relationship exists in Destiel, and a hundred times more. But it was first love. Dreamhunter was young love that came quickly, and not a single soul argued. Destiel is the same showcase of love, older, more matured, grown over years with dozens more moments of contact and display -- but in the very least, those moments -- those ones lived through DreamHunter in parallel -- that’s love. Canon literally just painted those sparse, compacted down elements, these behaviors we’ve seen, these moments, as coded romantic and in love. If you take nothing else from that -- take that. The elements that build Destiel are canonically romantic, when within DreamHunter and the question is -- without any physical affirmations or DreamHunter on screen, why is it romantic to them and not to Destiel? Why do we even humor this as a discussion, though we expect it, and what does this say of the coded phobias in fandom that we even have to expect it?

Dean and Cas haven’t kissed or dual-confessed to it in public, but you know... neither did DreamHunter. Unless of course we don’t talk down the timely placement of Need Yous and Love Yous and Big Wins and whatever else like people insist on doing with the MLM arrangement. Nobody’s talking down Jody’s third person “first love,” because we know better, and there’s not a mix of MLM and ship warring in play with DreamHunter. Bromance ends at the same line platonic female friendships end. Everyone accepts that DreamHunter is not platonic. Even without ceasing previous negotiations around poignant DeanCas lines, DreamHunter has established the romantic and loving engagements in retrograde. Canon has literally confirmed -- this relationship is romantic and in love.

And until this post, not a single person has tried to argue it down as Just Young Sis Love. Because we all know. Just like, deep down, everybody knows it about the mothership, some just don’t want to accept it. For whatever reason, subconscious or otherwise. I’ll laugh if the same antis that just tried to blind parallel it to W*ncest as a proof of love, while disconnected from the very origins and confirmations of DreamHunter, suddenly start rambling that doesn’t make DreamHunter canon either once this post gets around.

Berens is a fucking master ISTG.

I mean, I guess you’re free to celebrate any network level blockades going on right now while Bobo does Big Queer Fatal Combat from within, but allow me to celebrate DreamHunter whether or not we get consummation for Destiel, an MLM-scenario ship that has to deal with entirely other stigmas on a network primarily run by a bunch of old dudes. This is there. This will never be taken away. And cheering any blockades being run against MLM content with blatant intent does not make you the gr8 person here, m8.

This post is probably gonna have a low level of spread because it’s also something that forces even Destiel fandom to negotiate with themselves too -- how many lines and moments and whatever-else have we negotiated down, talked around, and chosen to interpret in the most left field way as if arguing ourselves from the position of an anti, only to get crack slapped across the jaw in this? How many have yelled queerbait without really observing what Bobo has been doing from within, how many have to face-or-deny the unfair queerbait shouting? How many hold-outs are we putting up, ourselves, because it isn’t the type or level of confirmation we want; we’re sitting here waiting for a bigger more dramatic reveal than a third person statement like that, or what-have-you, but when it’s not “our ship” that we are eternally defending from antis, and not a ship being targeted due to a mix of ship warring and MLM social issues, this is fine? And why is it okay when it’s not The Mothership and we totes accept it for DreamHunter canonization but we’re still talking circles around DeanCas like we’re our own antis? Why do we let anti-dom spin everyone’s head up in such knots that the majority expect Dabberens to live in stan twitter, abandon narrative properties and quality, and have Sam walk in on something while they profess their love and walk away with pictures as hard sealed photographic evidence when that isn’t expected of literally anybody else?

Can anybody tell me why Bobo Bookends Berens, who penned Cain -- Dean’s kindred spirit and fated path parallel -- calling out -- as confirmed -- that Castiel was his Colette, his wife, the love of his life that knew who he was, and what he was, that loved him unconditionally, forgave him, and only asked for him to stop -- a third person perspective -- has a third person, offscreen confirmation of the same sort, with far less plot weaving, taken universally as canon without the play of shifting goalposts via MLM social stigmas and/or ship warring stan twitter getting up in everybody’s heads?

Cuz it’s the same dude, guys. Same pen. A moment nobody even dismissed or TRIED to heckle out. If we just want to go third person while dropping punchline perception, we have everything from The Angel In The Dirty Trenchcoat Who’s In Love With You to Attached At The Everything. Y’all really think Bobo Berens is out here using his own sexuality as a tool and a punchline to be laughed at though? Bobo, “I protest human trafficing and ICE engagements front line in the body walls while people are being arrested” Berens? That guy? 

You’re gonna go out of his way that hard to miss the point just because you have phobic asshats on twitter, and/or asshole haters with “opposite ships” on twitter, or it’s just not the kind YOU wanted to see for Destiel, even if it’s enough for you to take it as canon in DreamHunter, when you already Been Had It for Destiel?

Meh. So many problems with DreamHunter, in there not being any problems with DreamHunter.

All Dabberens. Every Dreamhunter moment was a Dabb or Berens written previous Destiel moment. The meaningful third party line from Jody was Berens. Just like the meaningful third party line in Executioner’s song, also by Berens. Not just a random jab - someone who knew them inside and out. And that - people will take that as canon, again, when there’s no rival ships or MLM phobias in play. Every inch of Dreamhunter (and far, far more) existed in Destiel, by the same authors, porting the same concepts across, piece by piece, and like magic, nobody protested.

And if you’re protesting, or worse if you hilariously ship Dreamhunter but reject Destiel, despite -- I dunno -- Bobo’s own book reviews on issues like queerphobia and intersectional issues -- you may want to introspect on the real reason you’re denying it.

Because that, my friends, is a strictly personal problem.

#supernatural #lgbt #destiel #dreamhunter #bobo berens #mine

[meta-shadowsong]

Some Thoughts on the Jedi/Jedi Doctrine

So, I’m sometimes hesitant to write meta about the this topic/set of topics, because I kind of feel like I have to make a huge disclaimer that the more critical of my points don’t mean I think that the Jedi were Really Evil/Wrong/what have you, because they weren’t. Like, there are clear Bad Guys in SW and the Jedi (overall/as an institution; obviously there are outliers like Krell running around) are not among them. Fortunately for me, Star Wars fandom is big and broad enough that it’s easier to curate my experience and avoid the Super Polarizing Debates than it has been in some other fandoms I’ve participated in, but the nature/relative Goodness of the Jedi Order is one of the ones that’s just...a fact of life in the PT-era/Clone Wars sections of the fandom that are my focus. And it’s basically Discourse™ bait.

(Which is not to say I don’t want discussion! If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be posting this in a public/semi-public forum, lol. Just that…IDK, there’s a difference between discussion and Discourse™, especially on topics like this.)

Anyway, all that aside, my stance can basically be summed up as: “The Jedi did far more good than harm and were, on the whole, well-intentioned people doing the best they could with the resources and information they had; however, I feel like there are some notable issues in their doctrine and practices which are worth discussing.” In other words, I generally lean more towards the Jedi Positive end of the spectrum – but, given the polarization in fandom on this particular topic, this occasionally makes me feel almost guilty when I make any kind of critical comment. Hence, massive disclaimers, to make up for that and attempt to be clear on where I’m coming from. But when my disclaimers start to feel almost as long as the actual essay I’m trying to write, that starts to take the fun out of it for me, hence my occasional hesitation.

That being said, for a variety of reasons, I decided to write up a few things that have been percolating in my head for a while, because why have a meta blog if I’m not going to use it, right? So, here we are.

This post is kind of a grab bag of three or four things, discussing both the Jedi themselves and how they’re sometimes portrayed, on varying levels of specificity. Being a grab bag, it’s not necessarily super coherent/a nice flowy essay, just some Thoughts. Oh, also, as a note – since, as far as I know, we lack a good canon catch-all, I use ‘Force adept’ as a general term for trained Force-users who may or may not be Jedi or Sith.

All right. Once again reiterating the massive disclaimer that I don’t think any of this makes the Jedi evil – here we go.

First, one of the things I have a problem with is more a perception/discussion thing than an in-universe thing – the idea that comes up sometimes in Jedi-positive discussions, that the Jedi path is The Right Way, or at least The Best Way to be an active Force adept without being Evil. Full stop. For all people, under all circumstances.

I think I’ve touched on this before, but my feelings on this particular issue really boil down to, “The Jedi aren’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on being right.” And I tend to come away from some Jedi-positive meta, even if I overall agree with the point the person in question is trying to make, with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling like it’s been framed as a One True Way type of thing. This is, admittedly, my problem, and not anyone else’s – which is why I’m discussing this in my own post, rather than derailing any of the ones I’ve seen that rubbed me in this particular wrong way. But it’s part of why I’m somewhat uncomfortable discussing my thoughts on Jedi practices and philosophy with anyone other than a select circle of fandom friends who I know for sure don’t skew that way. Even, as I said, when I lean more towards the Jedi-positive end of the spectrum.

Anyway, back on topic.

Practically speaking, there is a certain amount of truth to this idea by the time the PT rolls around, because of the relationship between the Order and the late Republic, and the overall sociopolitical setup of the main/focal portion of the galaxy. The Jedi have authority and reputation and presence in a way that other orders, if they’re out there, and/or independent Force adepts don’t. For example – off the top of my head, I believe the Guardians of the Whills, whether Force-adepts or not, whether Jedi-affiliated or not, seem to work in a pretty narrow geographic range; Dathomir (which, as I believe I’ve discussed previously, seems to be an entire planet/culture of people who are Force-sensitive to a perceptible degree, though not everyone necessarily reaches Jedi potential) also tends to mostly concern itself with its own affairs, apart from Mother Talzin and her ambitions. (There’s also the fact that they tend to read as/be grouped with Dark Side adepts, and I have some Thoughts on that/the Nightsisters as Dark Side adepts vs. Sith as Dark Side adepts as well, but that is a topic for a separate essay.)

But this isn’t about practicalities, it’s about philosophy/doctrine, and that’s where it starts getting sticky for me.

Okay. The Jedi basically have a core principle, and everything they do/believe comes from that – be more compassionate than you are selfish. And that’s great! That’s a good foundation for just about any philosophy/religion/culture. Quite a few IRL belief systems can be broken down to something similar, or even if it’s not a fundamental tenet, would still generally be considered a good/ideal way to live one’s life(1).

The problem is, when you break Jedi philosophy and doctrine down that far, it kind of loses a lot of its actual meaning? Which is to say, everything that makes it specifically Jedi philosophy – since, like I said, this is not an uncommon precept.

But the Order, like most belief systems, then takes the next step and says “okay, we’ve accepted this premise/goal, now here is our view on how to actually do that.” And at that point, when we start getting into the specifics, there are things that are not universal.

For example, considering the idea of avoiding attachment – not as it’s normally used in discussions about the Jedi, i.e., in the individual/interpersonal relationships sense, but in the broader/community sense.

The Jedi are more or less a closed community; while they do interact with the wider world when called upon, to provide aid, they’re pretty insular in their daily/personal lives outside of missions. And that is one way to achieve this core goal, to set the organization up as truly objective outsiders/advisors/judges/what have you.

But another would be to be fully integrated in a wider/outside community, either as individuals or as smaller groups/lineages, with connections to the overall Order that can be drawn on to share knowledge/resources/etc. as needed. Basically, trading outsider perspective for insider knowledge. Different ways of gaining the trust of the people you’re trying to help, with advantages and disadvantages to both. (For an IRL analogy, consider the way different orders of, say, Catholic monks and nuns operate, some more cloistered than others. Not a perfect comparison, necessarily, but something in the ballpark. Same goal, different approaches.)

My point here is not to imply or say that the Jedi path is a bad one, because it’s not. My point here is, as I said before, the idea that it’s the only correct path, or even the best path for all people (and/or Force adepts) in all circumstances, really sits wrong with me. Of course, this is all reflective my own personal beliefs, which tend to be pluralistic and avoid like the plague anything that claims to be the One True Way. Because that doesn’t even really hold up on Earth, which is a single planet with a single sentient species(2). If we expand that to an entire galaxy, with multiple species, it seems even shakier. And, yes, I know that Star Wars doesn’t actually do a whole lot with the idea of making alien species and their thought processes Different from humans beyond superficial details/attributes(3), but there’s still a point to be made here.

TL;DR: the galaxy, and, by extension, the Force, is far too big and complex for there to be only one right answer/path. Even building on the same baseline premise of “be more compassionate than you are selfish.”

Okay. Moving on to my next point, which is less about the way the Jedi are talked about and more about the Jedi themselves, and how they communicate with outsiders.

Short version: the Jedi are really, really bad at explaining who they are and how they think/operate to outsiders.

And, you know, I’m not saying they have to be good at it, or even necessarily that they should be. They don’t owe anyone those answers.

But it is something that can very much work against them, especially when they play a public role in galactic life. It’s easy for Palpatine to turn that on its head, especially when the Jedi don’t have the tools or the experience or the desire to play the propaganda game themselves. Again, not saying they should, just that they don’t, and there are downsides to it as well as advantages; and they’re up against someone whose primary wheelhouse is playing against exactly this kind of disadvantage.

That’s not the thing I want to focus on, actually, but it’s the most obvious thing so I felt like i should mention it. But that’s really more about the role of propaganda in the galaxy itself and other people, who are much smarter/more focused than I am and have put a lot of work into that topic have done it a lot better than I ever could.

But another way this comes into play is with their recruitment practices. For at least the past thousand years(4), the Jedi have only taken in infants/toddlers/very young children. Meaning, everyone that they do need to make understand Who They Are and How They Do grows up steeped in all of this, learning more or less by osmosis (because early-childhood neuroplasticity augmented by the Force) so there isn’t all that much need for overt explanations of How and Why the Jedi do things This Way, because it gets absorbed on a subconscious/instinctive level from the very beginning.

And, obviously this isn’t 100% successful – see, the Lost Twenty, not to mention any who left the Order as Padawans/before whatever marker makes them Count among the Twenty/as I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty sure we only have actual identifying information about like 1% of the Jedi Order (~100 out of ~10,000), so any broad statements should be taken with a grain of salt.

But what I’m trying to get at here is that this practice has put the Order in a position where they’ve basically lost the skills and reference points needed to teach people who come to it late. Converts, in other words.

And then it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy/a cycle which continually reinforces itself – older students have difficulty adapting to the lifestyle/culture, but is that because they’re past a set point where they can’t learn it/adapt, or because the Order’s approach has left it with a weak point when it comes to helping them through that transition? Which then leads to older students having difficulty adapting, which leads to the Order not taking in older students unless they Have To because they can’t adapt, which leads to further adjustment/integration issues for the few they do take, and on and on.

This is especially the case when it comes to older kids from…let’s call them complicated backgrounds, which we see with both Anakin and Ventress.

(Again interjecting a disclaimer – this is in no way saying that Anakin was justified in what he did, or that the Jedi Order deserved it, or anything like that. I have a meta buried somewhere that uses an elaborate road-building metaphor which I should probably post at some point about the various factors that go into Anakin making all the wrong choices; jumping off from that metaphor, this is probably one of the ways the Palpatine got his paving materials, but that doesn’t make the Order responsible for either what Palpatine did with them, or Anakin’s choice to walk on the road Palpatine built for him.)

Anyway.

With Ventress, Ky Narec keeps her away from the Order as a whole, so she’s deprived of the community aspects of the culture – but also insulated from the can’t-fit-in problems she probably would’ve faced with her peers (because, even without the additional communication issues I’m talking about, this is a thing that happens when outsiders/newcomers attempt to join tight-knit communities, even if no one is being overtly/deliberately exclusive). Assuming he’d have even been allowed to keep her if he’d brought her back (which is not at all a guarantee; look at what it took for the Order to accept Anakin). …y’know, on that note, I really wish there was more about the two of them and their relationship/how he taught her/why he decided to handle her this way/etc. But I digress.

Of course, in the end, Narec’s choice ends up being a negative – when he dies, she has no one else to turn to. As far as I know, we don’t have any information on whether she attempted to reach out to the Order and explain herself/hope for acceptance there before running to Dooku, so there’s maybe an additional story there. Either way, we know where she ended up. And this issue of how to handle/communicate effectively with candidates who got locked out of the loop because of when and how they were identified probably played a significant role in her story. If only because it almost certainly informed Ky Narec’s choices.

With Anakin, of course, he’s raised within the Order, and gets the full impact of the community – both the positives and the negatives, being essentially an outsider. We don’t have a lot of canon about his first couple years there, but given everything we do know about his early childhood and the culture he was trying to join, I think there were major cracks in the foundation from the start, despite probably everyone involved trying their best to make things work.

The background radiation of Anakin’s childhood, whether he experienced this directly or not, was that he has to prove he’s worth keeping, or he’ll be thrown away. So, bearing in mind that a lot of this is conjecture, my guess is he spent the first couple of years really trying to measure up, and hiding where he was having problems, because he doesn’t want to seem like a bad investment. Fake it til you make it, essentially(5). Especially given the way his induction was botched – and I’m not saying that the Jedi should have automatically accepted him, but the back and forth on the issue and the way initially refusing him was handled (he really should not have been in the room for that conversation) didn’t help matters/reinforced this issue/made him hyper-aware of how hard it had been for him to even get here, let alone keep his place(6).

Meanwhile, on the Order’s end of things, once they did accept him, I believe they genuinely tried to help him adjust. But, again, they’re making this up as they go along, too; so I feel like those first couple years was a lot of not-quite-meeting in the middle. They get close enough that the deeper issues are masked, but they still just slightly fall short of one another. Which, at least at this point(7), is not really anyone’s fault, just a difficult situation because of the conflicting backgrounds and expectations of the various parties involved, that didn’t necessarily actually get resolved, so much as compensated for. But those foundational cracks still present, leading to a complete collapse later.

Again, this doesn’t excuse the particular way Anakin handled that collapse at all. Also, IMO, none of these issues are necessarily insurmountable – without Palpatine actively working towards the worst possible outcome, my guess is that things would’ve come to a head in a much less destructive manner, and maybe earlier, as well. Whether the resulting course-correction/repair would’ve kept Anakin in the Order or not…IDK. Could go either way. The point is, between Anakin’s particular background and the Jedi Order’s general lack of facility in dealing with older students/kids from complicated backgrounds/outsiders in general (and some active reinforcement from Palpatine), there’s a not-insignificant gap in understanding/communication/trust right from the start, and it’s never entirely healed.

Insert clever segue here, and we move on to my third point, about the Chosen One prophecy.

As a note, I come at this mostly from a fanfic writing perspective, rather than a literary analysis perspective. And in my fic, I don’t actually deal with the prophecy all that much. But when I do, I really like the reading that the Chosen One is intended to be a catalyst for change. To put the Jedi Order/galaxy as a whole in a position for the final defeat of the Sith, whether by defeating the SIth with their own hands or by sparking a shift in the way the Order interacts with the threat/the galaxy as a whole.

Basically, per my reading of the situation, the Order has, over the past thousand years, become a little bit ossified/stagnant(4) in terms of its doctrine and practices. They’re pretty inwardly focused on their traditions and This Is How To Jedi (as an group/institution; as in most practices/cultures, this varies from individual to individual, with some being extremely flexible in their application of doctrine and some much less so), with intervention in the outside world in specific crises as they arise. This approach is at least in part a result of the way things were restructured following the Ruusan reformations, because that is what the Order needed to be at that point in time. But then they just sort of got…stuck there. This is, again, not necessarily a mark against them/proof they’re Really Not The Good Guys or any BS like that. Like I mentioned before, they still do way more good than harm, and are genuinely well-intentioned on the whole. It’s just a Thing that tends to happen. Institutions – and the Order is an Institution, in this sense – are slow to change on their own, and tend to just become The Same Thing But More So. Especially when they’re put in a position where they don’t necessarily need to change, and attempting to do so might cause a fair amount of short-term, maybe even long-term, damage, which could be either internal or external.

But this tendency, and the particular way they’ve become The Same Thing But More So, has left the Jedi Order woefully unprepared and unequipped to deal with the particular threat that Palpatine, and the generations of Sith legwork he’s building on, present.

Which brings us to the Chosen One.

Who is, in this reading(8), essentially a wakeup call from the Force, that the shit is about to hit the fan.

But Anakin and his induction/relationship with the Order were mishandled, as previously discussed. Once again, I feel a need to disclaim – I am not in any way blaming the Order for what happened. Anakin may have a Destiny, but he’s also a sentient being with free will and he actively chose to fulfill said Destiny in the worst possible way.

What I am saying is that the response to this warning was maybe not as thorough/helpful as it could have been. Both on a small scale, when dealing with the individual beings directly involved, and on a large scale, in terms of the questions Anakin and all that he is (with or without the full weight/text of the Prophecy as a factor) could have raised about Order doctrine and practices, which might have put them in a slightly better position when Palpatine initiated his endgame. It may still have been too little, too late – or it may have been enough to significantly change the outcome.

And, to be fair, I think that the Order – or, at the very least, Master Yoda – realized this over the course of the Clone War. That the Order had become stagnant/too attached to Tradition/not as dynamic as it needed to be, I mean. And, if Anakin had made better choices or if circumstances had fallen out differently, I genuinely believe that the Order would have seen some significant change, to adapt to the galaxy as it had become, not the one it was at their last major shift a thousand years ago. Which they do anyway – granted, we don’t know much about how Luke was running things in canon, but in Legends, he took a slightly different approach to the core philosophy and the doctrine built on it, adapting what he’d been taught to the galaxy that he’d grown up in. But, again, that’s as a result of Anakin serving as a catalyst for change in the worst possible way because he made all the wrong choices.

…yeah, that last section, in particular, I’ve been sitting on for a long, long time, trying to figure out how to word it without sounding creepy and victim-blamey. As I keep stressing, none of this changes the enormity of Anakin’s choice, because he had other options and he chose this one. And while the Order could have handled things better in the lead up to that final crossroads, which might have put all of them in a better position when they got there, they didn’t make that choice for him any more than Palpatine did.

So…yeah. There it is. Some of my more critical thoughts about the Jedi Order of the PT/Late Republic era. Like I said. I’m not sure how coherent this is, it’s just…sort of a grab bag of thoughts.

To sum up: The Jedi were well-intentioned and did more good than harm; they were not wrong, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on being right; there are some flaws in their approaches to certain issues such as communication, particularly with outsiders, and change, which in no way mean they caused or deserved what happened to them; however, in the full knowledge that I am looking at this from an outside perspective/with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, there are better choices they could have made which might well have improved the situation.

(1)Disclaimer: it’s been at least ten years since I’ve done any serious comparative religions study, but this is broadly true to the best of my recollection.

(2)Debates about cetaceans, etc., aside.

(3)Which is actually one of the things I really liked about Alliances, and the way Timothy Zahn handles the Chiss in general – it’s a little closer to the CJ Cherryh style of sci-fi, where aliens may be similar to humans, but there are fundamental differences in the way they think and organize themselves; so the fact that Chiss Force adepts function very differently from Force adepts in the main part of the galaxy is pretty cool to me. Whether the two approaches could adapt and learn from each other in the long run is a fascinating question…

(4)Going by Legends canon here; current canon has yet to give me any deep backstory, so my approach to anything more than 100 years pre-TPM is ‘canon until proven otherwise,’ because there’s little to no historical context for things without that. And I feel like discussions on this topic are really hard to have/missing something significant without that historical context.

(5)I also think that this particular strategy – fake it til you make it, excel in specific areas which cover up the deep flaws in others/your foundation – is something that the Order is vulnerable to in general, even with children who did grow up in the culture. See, Barriss. …there’s probably a whole essay or three, talking about the ways Barriss and Anakin and Ventress and their stories parallel one another, but that is a topic for another day.

(6)Granted, he does get past this, at least to some extent, later (as we can see in the way he deals with his superiors in AOTC and ROTS; if nothing else, he’s identified how much wiggle room he has and is confident enough to go right up to the edge of what he can get away with, even risking going past it in certain contexts and on certain issues), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this has actually been fixed, just that he’s found ways to get around it and function in his new environment.

(7)As sort of implied in the last footnote, there does more or less come a point where Anakin kind of stops trying with anyone other than a few close, trusted people – and, again, on the one hand this shows a remarkable success in rewriting some of the coping mechanisms he developed in childhood which are no longer helpful for him in his new life, in that he’s less focused on Being Worth Keeping apart from not wanting to disappoint, for example, Obi-Wan; but it also doesn’t necessarily address some of his root issues. And because of this gap in understanding, Anakin comes away with the impression, accurate or not, that he’s never really going to win the trust/approbation of his peers and superiors, which alienation Palpatine can prey on later. Again, none of this excuses the way Anakin eventually acts on that alienation. But it’s there.

(8)There’s another reading that I kind of like – though it leans a little harder into the Fate end of the scale rather than free will – which is that Anakin is at the nexus of both the Jedi Chosen One prophecy and the Sith’ari prophecy from Legends. I.e., some ancient Jedi and Sith did the same thing Ezra and Maul did, bashing a pair of holocrons together to seek some kind of Revelation, and came out with conflicting but not necessarily contradictory answers. But, again, that hits the Fate end of the scale a lot harder than I normally like, though the possibility of it is interesting to contemplate when I write stuff where ROTS happened as in canon (i.e., I referenced this idea in Sanctuary.)

#star wars #fandom #originally posted july 2019

[soundofez]

some notes on ao3 stats

here’s the thing: i don’t like obsessing over numbers (that’s the fastest way to drive yourself crazy on the internet), but i still like numbers, so i. y’know. made a spreadsheet to analyze my ao3 stats. because Numbers. (but also because i like throwing in the stats from friends’ fics when the numbers start getting into their heads and whispering horrible, horrible things. it’s gonna be okay, y’all ♥)

now, ao3 doesn’t have the best stats— the hit counter is a little arbitrary, because sometimes it registers when people hit “next chapter” but sometimes it doesn’t, and ofc some people just use “view entire work” and skip that step entirely, but! the only problem with that is that my numbers undershoot reality— that is, they say there are less people than there really are. (for real guys, popular fics will break the numbers, and by “break” i mean “there are more kudos on this fic than estimated number of readers”)

something about numbers?

oh yeah, numbers!

disclaimer: i have all of 39 fics on ao3, which is, yk, not very many.

the biggest numbers i track are hits per day and kudos per hit. (while i do track comments and bookmarks, i don’t get enough of them to really be significant, and they tend to reflect kudos and hits, anyway.)

hits per day is wildly skewed toward newer fics and a little bit toward multi-chaptered fics (thanks to that weird thing ao3 does with chapters and the hit counter), but it is especially useful when gauging lasting popularity for older fics.

this is how you tend to rank fics, and why you will be convinced that your fics are just Not As Popular As They Used To Be.

kudos per hit is a more interesting number, as it reflects how many people liked your fic enough to poke the button.

it is also ever-so-slightly skewed toward newer fics (not as many people have reread the newer fics, so there are less people coming back and raging that they can’t give more kudos)

more importantly, it has better numbers for one-shots (whether they be rare fandoms or rare pairs)

with that in mind, numbers!

my TOP hits per day fic is exactly the one i expected, mostly because i still get kudos notifications for the top fic every other day or so. it is over two years old, and it averages 11.43 hits per day. 11 whole eyes! every day! on this fic!!!

this is the kind of fic you know you should write to get attention: big ship, big fandom, delicious angst with a happy ending. the only thing working against it is its length, but it’s not particularly short, either, at a single chapter of just over 2.5k.

it was also written at the height of fandom popularity as well as my popularity specifically— people were at their most engaged, myself included.

(bonus numbers: this fic also sees the most kudos, at an average 1.22 kudos per day. for scale, my next most-kudos’d fic gets less than half that number, at 0.53 kudos per day.)

(bonus numbers again: the second-most popular fic sits at only 6.27 hits per day. that’s barely over half the number of my top fic.)

my top kudos per hit fic surprised me, as it plods along at only 2.31 hits per day (there are worse, but there are also definitely better). it gets one kudo for every 7.34 hits (13.61%). (turns out, this adds up reasonably well— i do in fact see kudos for it every 3-4 days.)

things that work for the fic: big fandom, vaguely shippy, humor abounds!, a solid friendship/slice of life fic, derived from another popular fic.

things that work against the fic: a mere 1521 words, mostly gen.

that said, my second highest kudos per hit fic has more interesting numbers, with one kudo every 7.69 hits (12.99%).

why is it more interesting? because it has 230 hits.

for reference, the top hits per day fic? 10.71% kudos to hits. out of 9000+ hits. so yeah, the top fic has more kudos, but guess which fic technically has a better approval rating? yup, my little 230-hit fic.

so what happened? let’s look at the list: in an older (shrinking, but dedicated) fandom, written for an event, inspired by two very friendly artists, on the short side at 3 chapters and 4.8k, rare pair.

by the way, my worst kudos per hit fic for that fandom? has the second-most hits, after the one top fic, and the third most kudos out of all my fics.(it’s multichaptered, though, and had a relatively regular update schedule, so people were definitely coming back for new chapters and triggering the hit counter.) (i’m not accounting for the number of hits vs number of readers skew, btw. it’s just. too much. too much.)

i can provide the link to the spreadsheet if anyone wants it. in the meantime, remember! numbers are weird as hell, don’t trust them when they try to tell you that a fic is less popular than you thought it would be.

#fandom stats #archive of our own #numbers! #fez talks #long post #probably