#Even certain 90s fanfics were progressive enough to do that much

[arikitari-josei-osaka-naru]

KunZoi pride! For @smlgbtqweek 2023, Day 7 (Free Day).

#KunZoi #ZoiKun #Kunzite #Zoisite #Malachite #Zoicite #Kunzite x Zoisite #Zoisite x Kunzite #Malachite x Zoisite #Zoisite x Malachite #But Also If It's Malachite Then Zoisite Is Still Biologically Male In This Art ^_- #Even certain 90s fanfics were progressive enough to do that much #Smooches #smlgbtqweek23

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Rachel Nobel / Rae Lynn

Rachel Nobel, aka Rae Lynn, has 2 fics at Gossamer, but she’s written many more X-Files stories than that. You can also find fics by her at AO3 and various other archives. She’s one of the rare, special authors who’s posted numerous fic during the show’s original run and again in recent years. Big thanks to Rachel for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? Absolutely. I joined a Facebook group for fanfic writers where someone recognized my name and asked about some of my stories that have disappeared from the Internet, and I almost fell off my chair. On the other hand, I go back and read original-run fanfic all the time - the Wayback Machine is my best friend for all the late great fanfic archives. Like fine wines, they get better with age! What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? I was fairly young during the peak of the fandom - I was only 12 when I started watching the show and discovered the fandom online. A few years ago, right around the time we learned the revival was coming, I wrote an essay I called "How 'The X-Files' defined my adolescence," in which I wrote: "If you think about it, 'The X-Files' is a lot like adolescence: You start out thinking it's going to be a little hokey, NBD, and then you end up in its thrall, captivated and occasionally hugely let down. A lot of people behave strangely, and no one gets out unscathed. Mulder, in his own weird way, is the perfect mirror for an adolescent: He doesn't fit in; his life careens between being utterly consequential to the fate of the known universe and being completely pointless; he's socially awkward and can't quite nail it down with the girl of his dreams."

So for me, the fandom is inextricably bound up with adolescence, that feeling of vacillating between desperate loneliness and being on the verge of something enormously significant. Take romance: I was a bit of a late bloomer, and when all my friends were exploring their first relationships I was watching Mulder and Scully navigate this beautiful, complicated, soulful relationship without ever even kissing. That was deeply affecting for me as a teen.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? I started out on mailing lists - there was an EMXC mailing list and one that I think was called X-Angst. [Lilydale note: There was a mailing list called XAngst Anonymous.] This was back at the dawn of the Internet when I only had 10 hours of AOL access a month, and I remember using what AOL called a "FlashSession" to log on, download all the fanfic from the mailing list and log off to read it. I vividly remember the excitement of watching all that new fanfic flood my inbox! Later on I was on atxc. During the long summer between "Gethsemane" and "Redux," it felt like fanfic was at its peak. There was a group of about a dozen women who got together (virtually) to discuss a work in progress by Lydia Bower called "Primal Sympathy." We called ourselves the "Primal Screamers," and we had our own website with fanfic recommendations and other discussions (it cracked me up to locate us as an entry on Fanlore.org). I was still in high school at the time and I was the youngest member; I felt like I had been accepted into a cool underground club. I worshipped these women, who were fanfic writers themselves. They taught me everything I knew about how to be a decent, respectful, enthusiastic consumer and writer of fanfic and fandom. [Lilydale note: I’ve talked enthusiastically about the Primal Screamers here before, including their fanfic primer.] What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? In the '90s, I would have been embarrassed to tell anyone I read fanfic, let alone that I was writing it. Now, I look back on it and realize how talented and smart and passionate we all were. It's something to be proud of. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? The first episode I ever saw was "Shadows," which was on in reruns between the second and third seasons. I don't think "Shadows" is an episode that anyone today would consider thematically significant, but something about seeing those office supplies float spookily through the air - it wasn't like anything I had seen on television, and I wanted in. What got you involved with X-Files fanfic? I've always been a person who, when I am interested in something, seeks to learn more about it. So I guess I got online as a 12-year-old with this new interest and discovered fanfic. It was thrilling to find out that so many talented people were taking characters I loved and bringing them to life for me. When the screen faded to black each week and I wondered, "That's it? What next?", fanfic was always there to fill in the blanks and take Mulder and Scully to the next level. As a teenager, I was self-indulgent enough to think I had something to contribute, too. Most of what I wrote in the '90s would today make me cringe. I remember literally paging through the dictionary in search of erudite words I thought Mulder and Scully would say! But occasionally I'll feel brave enough to read an old story and I feel encouraged to see a spark: a turn of phrase or a fragment of dialogue that I still feel proud of. I write professionally now, but I've never written fiction that isn't X-Files fiction, so it's something that has really allowed me to hone my creative juices in a different way. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Sometimes I feel like the Statler and Waldorf of the fandom, like I'm sitting up in the balcony grousing "Back in my day...!" Because the fandom is remarkably robust, and I've gotten involved with it to an extent on Twitter and AO3, and now all these young whippersnappers idolize Mulder and Scully just as much if not more as I ever did! Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? Not really, no. I've of course consumed a lot of media since The X-Files that I wanted to discuss with others - I'm a huge "Harry Potter" nerd, and I was outraged when Netflix canceled "The OA" - but strangely I've never had the urge to read or write fanfic about anything other than "The X-Files." Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Every Thursday night! I watch a chosen episode with a group of fans on Twitter and tweet about it - #tbtXFiles. That's great fun. There are episodes I've seen dozens of times over the years and episodes I think I only ever watched once, and it's always enlightening to watch them again with a certain critical eye. When I was a fan during the original run, I really idolized Mulder; I loved episodes where we saw him in all his cracked genius glory. Scully was a trailblazer of a character, of course, but I think the fandom has evolved over the years to give Scully her due. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I was fairly stunned when the revival came around and I realized that people were still writing X-Files fic, and that a lot of it was so good. So yes, I do read fic on Archive of Our Own. But my heart is always with the early days of fanfic. In the revival when Mulder says "I've always wondered how this was going to end" - that felt to me almost like a love letter to fanfic authors who had been trying to answer that question for 25 years. Surprisingly, I've never had the urge to read fic in another fandom. Every time I try, it just feels like I'm cheating on Mulder and Scully. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors? My favorite author back in the day was Kipler. Her stories were just like real episodes of the show I could vividly imagine in my mind. I adore syntax6, particularly "20" and "The Birthday Stories," because of the way she perfectly and poignantly captures vignettes that span the entire series. Another favorite is Dawn and her "Blood Ties" series - I started out as a "NoRomo," and Dawn was one of the authors who made me believe Mulder and Scully could have a romantic relationship that really worked. And I always had a soft spot for Profiler!Mulder stories, so to this day I mourn the unfinished state of the great Kronos fic "Ascent to Hell." One fic I always come back to that captures profiling Mulder really well is "Domination of Lies," by cslatton. And then there are stories that I consider classics: "Corpse" by Livengoo, "Oklahoma" by Amperage and Livengoo, the "Revelations" and "All Hallow's Eve" series by Windsinger. What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? I have a soft spot for a story I wrote called "Human Credential." I was attempting, a quarter-century after the first season of the show, to set a story in the very early days of the partnership (which these days is one of my favorite kinds of fanfic to read), and I felt like I nailed it. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? I have been doing both of these, as a matter of fact! Or in my case, they are oldies that made it online but vanished when Geocities went belly-up, for example, that I sometimes go back to and reshape. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As the swallows return to Capistrano, I seem to always return to writing fic at periods of transition in my life. The first time I "retired" from fanfic, I wasn't even in college yet! If one can be nostalgic at 21 years old for something one gave up at 17, I was nostalgic for fanfic, and I picked it back up again in grad school. Then I became a teacher and a wife and a mom and years passed, and the revival seduced me back into it again. But the vast majority of fanfic I've written is firmly planted in the first seven seasons of the show - poor Mulder and Scully never seem to get to grow up in my stories. What's the story behind your pen name? I wrote under a lot of pen names over the years! When I first started writing fanfic, no one knew anything about Internet safety and it didn't occur to me that it wasn't wise to use my real name. There was a period when I would have been mortified if anyone discovered my stories under my real name - now, at least I can write it off as a youthful indulgence! When I finally grew into a more mature writer, I started using the name Rae Lynn, which is almost-but-not-quite my real first and middle names. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? As far as I know, unless my friends and acquaintances have done some sleuthing, only my husband knows I still write fanfic. And he's never read it, though he's kind enough to give me a glazed-eyes indulgent smile if I ever talk about it. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? I am xraelynn on AO3! I have about a dozen stories there - some of them I wrote 15 years ago and some of them are brand spanking new. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Fanfic is a true labor of love. Fanfic authors don't write fanfic for money or fame; they do it because they love it. Sites like AO3 and Tumblr have made it so much easier to show your appreciation to writers (::gruff reminiscing voice:: back in my day, you had to send them an email, and now you can just click the "kudos" button!). I can only speak for myself, but I really thrive on that feedback - otherwise I'm just Mulder in his cramped hovel of a home office waiting for Scully to nag me to shave my beard. Every so often I think about the fact that there is so much high-quality writing about these characters I've loved for decades just available on the Internet for free and it feels like a true gift.

(Posted by Lilydale on May 4, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #rachel nobel #rae lynn

[everlastingfable]

a jumbled mess of my thoughts about voltron

This’ll probably be the messiest post you’ll ever read. I’m done trying to finish this and edit it into something coherent, so I’m just combining the 3 drafts I have written out into one massive post. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing, but each draft is a sort of rewrite of the last, so there’s a lot of overlap. But there’s also a lot of new thoughts too as I kept thinking about this. There’s also a lot of unfinished thoughts.

There’s mostly negativity in this btw. This fandom had/has an amazing ability in making you think that this show was utter garbage. on par with riv//erdale or s//pn, but it really wasn’t. Like many shows they had weak points, it was never perfect, but it’s much better than we’re told to remember it as.

Intro from Draft 3 because I liked the way I started it:

This is all of my thoughts about Voltron, the show itself and the fandom. I have tried to write this post out for over a year or two now, so it was originally intended to be my final thoughts about the show. Obviously, it’s evolved since then into whatever this is. There may be some things that I’ll be wrong about, because I’m not about to dig through hundreds of discourse posts and old interview videos to prove a point that I doubt anyone’s gonna care about. This will 100% be based on my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

That said, I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much I love this show. I’m probably one of the few people who have no regrets about enjoying this show as much as I do. I’d wholeheartedly recommend watching it, because it’s genuinely a good show. Voltron did the unimaginable for me. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi stories. I especially don’t enjoy mecha stories. Yet somehow, Voltron combined the two and made a show that I loved so much I can’t stop thinking about it even though it ended over 2 years ago.

Draft 1: thoughts about a year after it ended without rewatching any seasons since it ended

It’s been about a year since voltron ended. I never wrote my thoughts about s8/the show then so here it is now. Because I decided to wait a year I honestly don’t remember a lot of specifics. But I still have a lot to say about it. This is very long and is basically everything I have to say about this show. I love voltron. It’s been an important part of my life during college. 90% of all papers I wrote were about voltron. But as much as I love it, I won’t deny that it fell apart at the end. 

Note: I tried to categorize these thoughts so I don’t get off topic and can talk about everything fully. But because they overlap so much there’s definitely some minor repeats when I connect two parts but decided to hold off talking about it all the way until the right section.

PRODUCTION

This is something I’ve expressed concern over while it was airing, but in a span of 2 and a half years, they premiered 78 episodes. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that production for s3 started after s1 premiered. There’s a lot of really good voltron review videos out there that aren’t just “oh I’m so cool I hate voltron” but there was one that talked about how the production was a mess and the writers couldn’t make up their mind for the endgame ship. And while that doesn’t sound like an important issue, it really does show when it comes to how characters are written together and (I think) the fandom war. 

Summarizing what that video said because I don’t remember who made it, the writers/producers never made up their mind on which ship was supposed to be endgame (klance, sheith, allurance, kallura). And this really does show in the show itself. I don’t like klance. I especially hate it because of my experience with the fandom, but I won’t deny that they were sometimes written romantically. The same goes for sheith. And that’s the problem. 

I don’t think the world building parts of the show was fully developed either. Shiro was supposed to be a teen like everyone else but then he was an adult. His and keith’s relationship was honestly vague for a good while. I don’t think anyone really knew how each characters’ relationships with each other was supposed to progress. Was allurance always supposed to be endgame? Because they didn’t really interact that much until like season 6, and then it was kinda sudden from what I remember. There was very little, if at all, parts where we were shown oh allura might like lance romantically. Keith’s relationship with the main cast didn’t exist for like 3 seasons. It was messy. 

Speaking of which, keith disappeared for a good portion of the show. I assume it’s because steven yeun was busy. Which is fine but then I think about how quickly voltron came and went, I wonder why they couldn’t slow down a bit so they could still have steven voice keith during those episodes. Maybe it’s because of how much I love keith, but he honestly felt like a central character to me. 

If I think about teen titans, for example, this show also had 5 main characters. Sometimes certain characters would get a spotlight for a season, but all-in-all they were fairly equally represented. It didn’t feel like robin was the main character. But that’s how I feel about voltron. Keith, and shiro to an extent are the main characters. A good portion of the plot relies on them. Shiro got kidnapped, keith leads them to the blue lion. Shiro is the leader with keith has his right-hand man and they mostly interact with each other. So when shiro “dies” and keith takes over, it starts to feel like keith is now the main character. Now he’s the leader and the arc is about him growing into becoming the black paladin and stopping lotor, who is his main enemy. But then he disappears. 

Again this is most likely because of my bias towards keith, but the episodes after that felt lackluster. Lance didn’t really get his character growth to become a good second-in-command. Because that development was supposed to be based around keith. :P. A big part of lance’s growth is to learn to stop needing to feel that he’s better than keith. And him accepting keith as the black paladin was a huge part of it. But with shiro as the leader again lance loses that development. Keith’s not in the picture anymore, and the person in-charge was already in a leadership position and has nothing to learn by being there. 

Before I go way too deep into my thoughts about the plot/characterization, I do want to mention the animation. The fighting scenes are amazing and one of the most beautiful 2d animation I’ve seen. That is, when it is actually animated and not just the camera panning on a still image. Here’s where my biggest concern over the time comes in. 2 years is absolutely not enough time to animate that many episodes. I was genuinely worried for the animation company because it could not have been a good experience. And yes, we got more episodes sooner, the quality definitely dropped and it’s a real shame. Who knows when we’ll get another american cartoon in this style. I love this animation style but it takes time and a lot of skills to do, so not that many companies do it. I honestly wished they took their time with the show not just to get more time to animate, but also to flesh out some of the plot.

PLOT

As hunk said in one episode, they don’t linger on dramatic events that just happened. This show is very fast paced, and that’s not a bad thing. But they never took the time they needed to really feel the weight of everything that happens. Keith’s galra heritage reveal was basically swept under the rug. So was the shiro clone, lotor’s death, zarkon’s death, naxzela, and so many more. In general, that was a big problem with how the episodes went. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of fanfics covering those topics, they were really swept under the rug. It honestly kinda felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with the aftermath of their reveals. But some of these were pretty essential to the plot of the story. 

Keith’s part galra! So he doesn’t look it but there had to be obstacles with voltron forming the coalition. He’s part of the race that caused this war. I honestly think we should’ve seen that reveal become part of the plot, or what was the point of it? They could’ve just as easily wrote keith to be a regular human just like everyone else. Taking the time to add that part of his character needs to have some significance in the story. And yeah, they had krolia appear but she wasn’t really a significant character except to kinda magically fix keith’s problems. In general it felt like they forgot parts that they were foreshadowing with keith. Why could he turn purple sometimes? Did that quintessence he was hit with fix him or help him hide the galra parts? Why does he look so human? What is up with him having that quintessence sensitivity? I’m all for shows ending with some questions unanswered because sometimes it’s impossible to answer it all and let it feel natural, but this just felt like they forgot or decided it’s too much of a hassle and just ignored it.

Okay going into more specifics now, s8 was kinda meh. It especially felt bad because it came out the same day as spiderverse which had a very similar villain motivation, but objectively done better. I think honerva’s motivation came out of nowhere. We see in the flashback episode that she was so intent on getting knowledge that it literally destroyed daibazaal. So, it was established that her motivation is knowledge. Even though she lost her memory and regained it, as haggar she was still very focused on quintessence. We know she was gathering a lot of it, and maybe they said it and I forgot, but we never knew why. Family wasn’t really shown as a motivation for her. Even with lotor it didn’t seem like she wanted to be a family again, but instead was using him for her own unknown motivations. Anyways, the season felt awkward. And the new dynamic they had really needed more time. The last season should’ve expanded to be at least 2 more. It would’ve fit a lot better imo. S1-2 would have zarkon as the main villain, s3-6 would have lotor, and s7-8 would have haggar, who was also the puppeteer throughout the entire show. But she didn’t appear for s7 and her motivations didn’t really make sense in s8 so it evidently felt rushed. There were also so many major characters in s8 we needed more time to see them interact. 

So the ending with allura becoming constellations. Gonna be honest that whole last part had me confused. Especially with the fact that I barely remember what happened, why are the old paladins like trapped in the lions? I could excuse the other 4 but zarkon? Especially a zarkon that’s not corrupted? It was weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t even want to try to suggest an alternative because I think that whole last half of the season is so messy it can’t be fixed. But it was so obviously pandering to the fandom it hurt. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted lance to be altean in response to keith’s galra heritage. The shiro/curtis kiss was very “look see he is gay and not just because we said so” while nice, was very weak (why wasn’t keith in the shot?).

Despite my complaints, I remember liking s8. I really liked the addition of the atlas, even though it didn’t feel like we were watching voltron anymore sometimes. S7 had to be one of my favorite episodes since s2. Not to say that s7 is better or worse, but I really like it because it felt like a genre shift. I usually don’t like space sci-fi or mecha stories. Voltron somehow managed to combine the two and make me love it. S7 did not feel like either of those. First, a good half of it took place on earth. And I believe two episodes didn’t even have the main cast, and when team voltron finally made it to earth, voltron wasn’t even there until the final battle. I genuinely loved it. I think it was a very well done invasion/apocalyptic story that doesn’t get told in animation that often. But if I think about s7 with the rest of the show, it was awful. It broke up the tone the show usually had and it was a very different way of storytelling that voltron didn’t have before. It wasn’t a space sci-fi mecha story, it was an apocalyptic action story. Voltron was so unimportant they sat on a moon for episodes. It stopped becoming voltron and started becoming a spin-off. 

I do have to add that I absolutely loved the color themes in s7. We already had purple for the galra, but in s7 it was very obvious that alteans are themed blue and earth is themed with orange. I loved it so much and it was great. I do like that they gave shiro something to do. Honestly not killing him off in s2 made him an awkward character afterwards. But I didn’t like that they brought back sendak. There was no explanation for it and it wasn’t good imo. He didn’t really do anything besides conquer earth then die. Haggar was also absent the entire season which definitely didn’t help her storyline in s8 because we didn’t know what she was doing the entire time except abandoning everyone who was loyal to her. 

I’m usually not a fan of time skips, it has the tendency to gloss over character development or create glossed over recap. Honestly I wish voltron spent more time over the blade of marmora massacre or just the bom in general. They received no rest. Literally everyone part of that group died except for kolivan. Speaking of that episode, there was no explanation for how keith was able to know where macidus was about to appear and that honestly bugs me. There’s so much about keith we don’t know. He has so many abilities we were just never told. 

Again a lot of problems within team voltron is that there was never any follow up on things that happened, like keith leaving the team. He becomes the black paladin and no one bats an eye. Lance did make one comment about keith leaving but then it wasn’t ever mentioned again. I get that the writers/producers wanted the dynamic the original had, but they didn’t take the time to work up to it. Keith wasn’t a natural leader, but he suddenly is because he spent 2 years on a space whale with his mom and a space wolf. Like I mentioned earlier, voltron feels like keith is the main character but then they dropped him for a few episodes, realized that he’s important and added him back in while saying “oh he went through a time skip so he grew into the role he needs to be in now”. It feels like a cheap pay off.

I’d like to specifically talk about my thoughts on each season and work back but honestly I don’t think I can remember s3-6 separately. So they’re being chunked together. 

Lotor had the potential to be a really great villain. But he had to be foiled with keith. They have a lot of similarities that I think could’ve really played off well together. Lotor isn’t really allowed to have a leadership position. Yeah he was technically in charge while zarkon was recovering, but haggar didn’t really allow him full control. But, he was a great leader. He knew how to read his enemies and form an alliance. Meanwhile, keith had a leadership position thrusted to him, and frankly he wasn’t a good leader. He tends to keep to himself so he never really has to make decisions with a team. It could’ve been great, but shiro had to still be in the story. I’m honestly conflicted about this because on the one hand, I think it really ruined character developments for the main cast, but then I loved the clone shiro plot line. I think keeping shiro prevented keith from growing. He was able to remain dependent on shiro instead of actually bonding with the rest of the paladins. And of course he had to just go awol. Also, lance didn’t really get to have as prominent of a role as I think he could’ve had with keith. 

These seasons are also when the lions stopped being sentient robots that specifically choose their paladins to just really cool spaceships. We don’t get that level of bonding that was so prominent in s1 and 2. That’s also something I’m conflicted with. I think the lion swap was a great way for character developments, but it also removed a lot of it. It kinda made the bonding feel useless. The swap also changed the dynamic of the group. Instead of shiro and allura being co-leaders, and everyone else feeling like they’re on equal footing, it felt like Keith was the leader with lance being a needed right-hand man. Hunk and pidge were off doing their thing and allura was a leader but also not. Maybe if they had spent more time working with this dynamic it would’ve felt better. But they didn’t and it didn’t. Voltron also implied that allura was the only one that could control the castle ship, but then she goes to become a paladin and who’s driving the ship?

I do wish we could’ve gotten more about the altean colony and the reveal about lotor’s plans, but that got overshadowed and forgotten by the clone shiro reveal. Maybe I just missed it, but I wasn’t sure what the galra empire and lotor were collecting quintessence for. Was it just to make mechs to rival voltron? Lotor’s death was also very unclear. 

The coalition was a much needed thing, but I think very badly executed. They were gathering people from malls. These people are regular civilians who probably don’t know how to fight or fly a ship. I thought it was really weird that they were just getting regular people (aliens?) to sign up like they’re applying to be part of the army. But we never see them maybe join the rebel force matt is part of to learn how exactly to help. I think about avatar and how they also had a rag tag group of people to fight against the fire nation, but these weren’t just regular people living in a village. They were either warriors or very skilled benders. The voltron coalition was just regular people. That genuinely annoyed me because the voltron show just felt like those army propaganda ads, but exciting. Not to mention it was a very hard to watch episode. 

It was definitely making fun of how the fandom complains about how characters are getting reduced to a certain characteristic. But it wasn’t done in an entertaining way like the ember island players episode from atla because some of those were legit complaints (like hunk being the fat/food guy) and that stuff wasn’t resolved. Like the ember island players made fun of sokka constantly talking about meat or katara crying all the time, but the show made it very clear beforehand that these characters are much more than that. Is hunk really more than the food guy? As far as the show mentions, the only things he’s done was make the machine to help find the blue lion, and help save the balmera. All of which was in season 1. After that hunk honestly took the backseat in voltron.

I mentioned earlier, but the time skip on the space whale felt like we were cheated out of keith’s character development. I mean we got development, but we didn’t get to see it. The vlog short showed that keith believes a lot of his problems stems from not having a mom (and a dad) in his life. But instead of seeing keith learning to trust and open up to people despite having so many people in his life leaving him, we get a cute montage of him with his mom. As if it makes sense that two years with his mom would fix everything. (side note, I know a lot of people were saying how obvious it was that krolia was keith’s mom, I genuinely did not know until she said so at the end of that episode).

I’m not gonna talk about my thoughts on s1 and 2 because I’m pretty sure I live blogged those and honestly I don’t think I remember it. 

CHARACTERS

Now I’m finally talking about the characters and I’m starting off with keith as if I haven’t talked about him enough already. I love keith. He’s undeniably one of my (if not the) favorite characters ever. And he’s obviously a fandom favorite if we’re considering the two biggest ships in the fandom. Or maybe he really is just the secret main character of voltron. We know so much about him, for someone who loves keith, it’s great. We basically know his entire backstory, and yet we know no one else’s (except maybe lotor but even that’s iffy).

I never rewatched a single voltron episode since it ended, and I can’t watch any of the connected shows (meaning shows that have the same ppl that worked on it or the same fans, think dragon prince and she-ra) because the fandom was the absolute worst one I’ve ever been in and parts legit trigger me. I am fascinated with fandoms. I love it. I chose my major because it was the closest I could get to just learning about them 24/7. But the voltron fandom was so incredibly toxic and over two ships? Honestly the fandom itself was a major reason why I couldn’t get super invested in the later seasons. I get afraid when it seems like a certain ship might happen. I actually hoped that certain characters just didn’t interact. (I’m not gonna get much deeper in this because I don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, at least not now) Aside from that, I think that the plot and characterizations for voltron got really messy post s2. The lion switch was never handled well imo, and post switch the lions lost that sentient personality that was established in the first two seasons. It also didn’t make sense aside from the writers wanted everyone in the original lions. Or at least, we never got the proper character developments into those roles. Keith left right after becoming the black paladin. 

I think another major problem with the show is how some decisions felt like pandering. I remember hearing that they didn’t kill off shiro because he was a fan favorite, so he had to stay for marketing and to make more money. But then keeping shiro alive would’ve derailed the original plot idea. I wish I could see how the story would’ve played out with shiro staying dead.

Draft 2: rewatched the show then started writing this

So I wrote a draft of this like a year ago, realized I don’t remember the show much, so I rewatched the whole show and started rewriting my thoughts.

Pre-rewatch thoughts: It was a good show that was poorly executed

Mid-rewatch thoughts: it’s a really good show that just has some weak points (the second half of lotor’s arc, team voltron’s importance in season 4-6 it feels like a lot of filler episodes until keith shows up again)

End-rewatch thoughts: it's actually a really good show. It has some weak points and some really strong points. Season 8 was confusing though. I went through most of it going yeah okay I guess that can happen.

Final verdict: it's a genuinely good show

What went wrong

It ended on its weakest season, which was also the most abstract and different season. While the main antagonist changed throughout the seasons, it still continued to be the galra empire. Even when lotor joined, the team was still fighting fractions of the galra empire. Meanwhile, season 8 didn’t have any conflict with the galra. The antagonists were honerva and the alteans, who are very different types of villains compared to the galra. There was also little build up to that change. Sure, we got to experience that briefly in season 3 when they went to the alternate reality, but I don’t think that was built up well. Also, the protagonists and the audience are just not prepared. We don’t know how the alteans work like the extent of their abilities, but we were given dozens of episodes to learn about the galra. As a result season 8 just wound up with me feeling confused and thinking “uhh sure I guess they can do that, that makes sense maybe?”

It could not pick who its protagonist is. Yeah the five humans plus allura (and coran?) are the main characters but most shows with multiple major characters still focus one one character as the protagonist. Like atla has aang, adventure time has finn, umbrella academy has five. Voltron just never picks someone and the group constantly changes too, so you end up having to not focus on any character for the sake of time. Of course not all shows do that. Teen Titans had each season focus on a particular member of the team, and tbh I was wondering if that was what they were planning for the show, especially when season 2 was so Keith focused but guess not.

It feels like they did not have the time to fully flesh out the story. Voltron came and went so incredibly fast. They had 8 seasons (technically 6 if you group up the halved seasons). But also the show only lasted 2 years. It honestly horrifies me to think of the time crunch everyone on the team was going through, especially the animators. You can see the drop in quality as there were very few scenes that involved actual animation for the middle bulk of the show. So then, how much time did they have to develop the story, in addition to execs telling them what they can and can’t do. There’s so many arcs that seemed to start then get forgotten, and I don’t blame the writers for that at all. Although I wish we could’ve learned more about Lance and the Altean sword and Keith with his apparent quintessence sensitivity, they probably just didn’t have the time to plot those out.

It had too much outside influence. Such as, the writers wanting to kill off shiro, but then being forced to keep him on the show because the execs said to. And honestly, the fandom. For example, the whole last episode with Lance getting the Altean marks (an obvious omage to ppl wanting Altean Lance).

What went right

There’s a reason why the show became so popular (aside from being a reboot of a popular 80′s show) and it’s because of the characters. I’m not about the whole “we become attached to characters because the writers did them wrong but we fans can see the potential and that’s why fan works are better” bs that I see going around this site all the time. The first season particularly wrote these characters so well. They’re relatable but also intriguing enough for you to care about what’s going to happen to them. 

Some thoughts regarding popular fandom discussions:

It’s a plot-driven show with character-focused fans

I like to think of there being two ways to tell a story: by being character-focused or plot-driven. Plot driven shows are ones like atla, young justice, legend of korra, etc. There’s a conflict that gets introduced and the story revolves around that conflict. Character-focused shows are ones like adventure time or we bare bears, they’re less concerned about a plot line and focus more on the characters interacting with their world. Of course all stories incorporate both parts, just some focus more on one than the other. So, here’s where I think a lot of the issues about voltron and the fandom comes from. Voltron is a very obviously plot-driven show but the fandom is very character-focused. I won’t deny I loved the episodes about keith. Season 4 and 5 were hard for me to watch because I missed my boy. But that’s where the arguments come from. People get upset that their fav isn’t in the spotlight

It didn’t queerbait

I understand watching a show for representation, I really do, but voltron is not that show and that's okay. Not every show has to be revolutionary in its representation of marginalized people. I won't pretend to know the harmful tropes for marginalized people. My consumption of media is not usually diverse. But I will stand by my stance that a large part of voltron's later seasons is about the casualties of war. So of course a lot of people died. I also firmly believe that the producers had a much easier time adding diversity to their own created characters than the main voltron characters, because of rights and all that complicated nonsense. So as a result the ones who were more expendable and could die were also the same characters that they could add diversity too.

I’m gonna add the definition of queerbait here so we’re all on the same page:  Queerbait is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

But here’s the thing. We were told at comic-con or one of those cons that Shiro is gay, and he had a boyfriend. They actually gave us that. Yeah it wasn’t as explicit as She-ra got, but that’s another point for later. There was no lying about it. Shiro is canonically gay, and his boyfriend was Adam. If anything, this whole thing came out of wanting Keith in a relationship with Shiro or Lance. Yes. I will admit, there are plenty of scenes between Keith and Lance, and Keith and Shiro that can be read as romantic. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but did any of the cast members tease the possibility of Kl//ance or Sh//eith (VAs don’t count, sorry but they don’t really have a say in the story)? Because unless they did, and they did repeatedly, the fandom queerbaited themselves. So many people in the fandom were so certain that Keith would be in a relationship with one of them, there was basically an all out war. Even if there was a chance, did you really think the creators (who were pretty active in early fandom days) would continue that development? It was so so toxic they were forced to shut off any possibilities of that.

In regards to minority characters

Again, I'll admit vld is not the place to go for real, proper representation. Their characters tend to be characters that happen to be a part of a minority rather than a minority character. wtf does that mean? Well, you can swap (earth) races for just about any character and it wouldn't make too much of a difference in how they act. There's some lines that wouldn't work like Lance's "I'm just a boy from Cuba" but other than that there would be no significant change. Of course this goes down to preference. Would you want a minority character whose struggles reflect those in real life and as a result be defined by that aspect of themselves, or do you want a character that just happens to be a part of a minority group but whose life is not really affected by that? 

Draft 3: months after the rewatch, mostly an attempt to reorganize the previous two drafts

I’m gonna start with the negatives just to get the ranting off my chest. Season 8 was bad. Yeah. No argument there. Although I wouldn’t say it was bad in the same way Game of Thrones and Supernatural was bad. Rather, it was an interesting and complex premise that didn’t have the build up it needed and honestly needed a few more passthroughs to iron out some parts. At worse, I felt it was confusing to the point where I just accepted whatever new worldbuilding thing they threw at me. The issue with Season 8 vs Seasons 1-7 is that Season 8 had a completely different villain, and a brand new cast dynamic. We got 7 seasons (65 episodes) developing the Galra as the villain. We got to learn who they are, their motives, how they operate, etc. Not only that, but they were pretty basic and easy to understand villains. They’re conquerors. They don’t have any sort of magic, they really just use brute force to attack and enslave the planets. In striking contrast, the Alteans in Season 8 weren’t conquerors. They didn’t care about controlling the universe. They also had magic abilities that our main characters don’t understand and didn’t explore. Season 8 had villains who could create illusions, mind control, and manipulate quintessence. The Alteans are leagues beyond the Galra in terms of complexities as an antagonist, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fully developed.

Also, Season 8 essentially doubled the cast size. So despite the fact that we have yet to see much of Keith-as-the-black-paladin Voltron group dynamic, now that screentime is being balanced with the MFE pilots and other Garrison characters. Essentially, there were too many characters, and too little time to flesh out the ideas of this season. A side note, Haggar’s (Honerva?) motivations were lame. I think it would’ve been much more interesting if her plans were just to continue the research she did 10,000 years ago with the rift. That would’ve also brought back the rift monsters which we never got an answer for. What even are they? Instead, her goal to have a family again is really weak. Even in the flashbacks she never showed any care for the more familial aspects of her life. It didn’t make sense for that to be her drive. It also didn’t help that Season 8 came out on like the same day as Spiderverse and the antagonists for both had the same goal, but Spiderverse did an immensely better job.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Keith giving the speech to the rest of the Galra. He is not the right character to give that speech. Sure he’s Galra, but he didn’t even know for most of his life. For him to say “we” like he’s also a citizen of the Galra empire feels so weird. He never grew up with the Empire’s influence, and we never saw him experiencing Galra culture with the Blade. He learned about the Galra as an outsider, and despite the fact that he’s part Galra (he doesn’t even remotely look Galra), I don’t think that gives him the authority to say a speech like that. The speech is similar to Zuko’s at the end of ATLA, and that makes me feel like it would’ve been a lot better had Lotor said it. I think even Kolivan would’ve been a better fit than Keith. 

The more I’m writing about Season 8, the more I’m remembering just how messy and confusing it was. Additionally, the last bit of Season 8 was so obviously pandering to the fandom it gives me second-hand embarrassment. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted Lance to be Altean in response to Keith's galra heritage. The Shiro getting married was just to make it more obvious that he’s gay, but had no build up. (There were definitely more but I didn’t write myself a list and I’m not rewatching that season)

Second, “Voltron queerbaited”. [this was posted before here]

Speaking of which, Voltron premiered summer of 2016 and ended in winter of 2018. That’s about 2 and a half years where they aired 78 episodes. That’s stupid fast, especially for an animated series. I’m constantly worried about what the people working on that show had to endure. For sure, Season 3 with Shiro coming back wasn’t written until at least Season 1. I recalled the execs demanding that Shiro not be dead since he was a popular character. It’s honestly concerning how little time they had to work on the show, and it unfortunately showed. In the later seasons, a lot of the shots were just still frames that moved across the scene. And the plot line with Lotor could’ve used some work. Although, I think Shiro being forced in there was also a reason for it being so shaky.

I honestly hate Seasons 4 & 5. I cannot tell you what happened because my brain keeps erasing it. Obviously, the lack of Keith had a huge impact on my opinion of those seasons, but it also felt like a whole lot of filler episodes, and not the fun ones with character development. With Keith mostly out of the picture, and Lance becoming the right hand of Voltron, that should’ve been a great time to develop Lance to become a second-in-command. To have him go through an arc where he overcomes his insecurities. It would’ve also been an amazing time to develop his and Shiro’s relationship. But we didn’t get any of that. 

I genuinely believe Keith was supposed to stay the black paladin and Shiro wasn’t supposed to come back. Keith would be an amazing foil to Lotor. They’re both half-Galra. They’ve both been given a new leadership role that they don’t want. The middle arc always felt so weak to me, and as I mentioned earlier, the Allura/Lotor interactions were awkward. It feels shoehorned in because someone has to interact with Lotor and I guess the writers decided Allura was the best option?

Season 3-6 felt like the epitome of what happens when showrunners are forced to do whatever the execs say and have no time to properly develop their story. I’ll forever be bitter at all the character and relationship development we lost because of that. We never got to see Keith really learn to open up to the team and start to trust others. But Keith still had to get to that point, which is why I assume they had the time jump for him. It’s so disappointing because we lost what could’ve been a great character development. It also made Keith being the Black Paladin again feel cheap. We didn’t get to see the struggle he had to be the leader Shiro saw he could be. He was just suddenly leading them and they worked like a proper team.

Voltron also had a lot of plot holes. Now, I don’t expect shows to answer every question, because it’s impossible to tie everything up and leave no questions unanswered in a natural way. But, there’s a lot of things that felt like the beginning of a plot line or honestly needed some answers. Like, Lance shifting his bayard to a sword. What was the point of that if it was never mentioned again? It felt like that was an important start to an arc for him that just got forgotten. Also, what was up with Keith’s quintessence sensitivity? How was he able to sense where that druid was. How did he know he could summon his bayard to him. I think the part that bugged me the most was that Keith was the only one who did that. Also, Keith’s eyes becoming slitted during his fight with Kuron was never addressed, and I really wish it was. It felt like such a throwaway moment that could’ve been interesting to explore more. Although I’m not too upset with that one as I think we were given enough to piece together a reason for it. 

#have fun with this monstrosity of a post #over 7k words #personal #my thoughts about #frxstguardian #kingofthewilderwest #honestly the only two people this post was intended for #I give up!!

[rigelmejo]

7/23/2021 Reading Progress - Almost 2 Years

I know I posted a little about reading progress a few days ago, but it’s really just exciting to me! And really really motivating!

These past few days, I’ve been reading one of my favorite fanfic writers. I started intensively reading, and now I can get by reading faster (which for me is only 140 characters a minute ToT so still quite slow but hey its something) and just looking an ACTUAL only 4-5 new words per chapter (which is 4000-5000 characters).  Just the fact I am ACTUALLY 98% comprehending chinese reading material. And material I actually want to be reading. Goal reading material! Because like? 

Even when I was extensively reading before, I was reading stuff that was ‘hard’ to read extensively (enough that I’d need to think and use any clues from context to guess what’s going on for certain key words and phrases I didn’t know but needed, and there were enough of those that I needed to focus a lot). This is really like the first extensive reading I’ve been able to do where I can actually just relax and speed read the extensive reading if I want to. Where it feels more like reading Lord of the Rings fast, or Dracula (some vocab I don’t know or weird phrasings for me but its fine to get through until I get used to it) - or some stuff easier now like reading Good Omens (where its an easy read where I get comfortable fast). Where it feels much more like reading english, just slower (and with less context hints for new words lol - since english I can sound out and guess if I heard it before and already know all the ‘word stem’ hints of meaning). Now, because of there being less ‘context stuff’ i can rely on compared to english, i do plan to keep using a digital dictionary to read sometimes (especially because it is the FASTEST way for me personally to reinforce new hanzi pronunciations). 

Like. This past week I’ve been following the Silent Reading audiobook along with the novel, and also just reading the Chinese novel. And also just reading some new stuff by one of my favorite fanfic authors. And I’ve been able to. The fanfic story is a bit easier, so I suppose I can read it with no prior context! (That’s what I looked up about 5 new words for - chairman, deputy were the keywords I needed then most of the rest made sense from context lol). And Silent Reading I read in english but like years ago, so many paragraphs felt new to me but they were fine to read except a few description-dense sections where something economic-related was being said (along with some 4-character phrases I wasn’t sure of). I knew lately I’ve been able to read new Guardian chapters while following along with the audiobook without the english translation, if I don’t want to know every single word but just follow the plot/most of it, so its been really cool seeing this week that I can do it with Silent Reading too! 

I’m fairly sure my level of comprehension is like this: the more murder mystery, investigative/detectives, more contemporary, more supernatural, more romantic, more daily life - the more I will comprehend it. 

Those seem to be my more ‘comfortable domains’ vocabulary wise. Specifically mystery/supernatural/contemporary (since most anything I watch or read is in usually at least one of these genres partly). When I get into xianxia, the farther it is from the very joking/basic SVSSS xianxia vocab the less I can comprehend. I did read 28 chapters of Tian Ya Ke before so maybe some of that will help with reading wuxia genre, but I’d argue it was months ago and tyk doesn’t really go very deep into using wuxia genre words compared to some novels. So basically my xianxia and wuxia vocab is very basic main-plot words like you’d hear in show scripts, but not necessarily enough to follow the details of novels - I do think I know enough to follow the overall main plot though. Happily, Tian Ya Ke and Qi Ye are on my reading list in the future, so they may both help more with political/court and wuxia genre words so that those genres get more comprehensible for me. 

I’m really excited about the tyk and qy reads now, since I planned to read them extensively while glancing at the english translation for help if I didn’t understand. And since I’m starting to be able to extensively read some of priest okay, then doing that with a novel while using the translation so its like a bilingual-resource to reference making things easier, should not be as hard/intensive as it might have been a few months ago. 

This is just. For me a very big milestone. I’m at a point where some of my goal reading is something I can extensively read without too much pain, and have enough hanzi-knowledge to guess some new words and phrases from context a decent amount of the time.

Summary: it’ll be 2 years in a month. And I’m officially at a point where some of the goal novels are able to be extensively read, genuinely, and some of the ‘goal other stuff’ is extensively readable now (some fanfics, some easier bl novels, etc). Past me would be really excited. ToT

I plan to: keep reading intensively and extensively (with an emphasis on reading through a lot more characters/words), keep doing L-R Method and listening-only during day (keep working on improving listening). And occasionally shadowing now/repeated listening/practicing speaking. In the long term: I’d like to read my grammar guide and practice writing/speaking from what I learn. 

That plan has worked really well the past few months

-

Related: my japanese reading skill! Because weirdly enough its been seeing improvements too!

So, I already realized me knowing more hanzi definitely helps me ‘guess more japanese words’ from context. Because: 1. its like english-french, while some are false cognates with nothing actually in common I can sometimes figure that out from the fact the scene is ‘wrong’ for the word I would’ve guessed, and I do know the word endings in japanese so that helps guess if its noun/adjective/verb, and I do know around 2000 common japanese words specifically so that also helps me notice what’s not actually similar in meaning. 2. so i’ve got this basic framework to guess stuff from context: 2000 japanese words I do know, some basic grammar recognition, ~2000 hanzi I do know and then however many chinese words I know, rough recognition of some of the katakana words, and then I usually try to read something I have prior context for so I’ve either read/played in english or know the overall plot main points in english. Apparently all of this helps a lot.

Now its not putting me on anything near 98% comprehension lol (except maybe KH2 since I know that story so well I really do figure out a lot but its more like idk 90% and me just very good at telling ‘unknown part’ was ‘probably X’ but not actually able to be sure, so i can follow fully but i’m not able to learn from a certain amount just cause i can’t be sure its not perhaps actually-something-else more nuanced). But whatever comprehension it puts me at, its enough to follow the main plot (better than I could ever do before with japanese lol with anything more than... well anything... i couldn’t follow even simple manga main overall plot unless i had a dictionary at year 2.5... so now the fact i can generally follow main plot of games, and catch a decent amount of details - not a majority but still regularly noticing some details, all without a dictionary, is pretty cool to me). 

Lately I’ve been watching some REALLY old Shin Megami Tensei and related game lets plays in japanese, with the player reading aloud (so hopefully I learn some actual word pronounciations my biggest weak point). Because I understand enough right now that I can pick up a lot more just by continuing to watch. Like, playing KH2 I could pick up the ‘reading’ of some new stuff and grammar. But with a voiced lets play, I can also try to pick up those new words and maybe if I’m lucky how the more common ones are pronounced as they’re said again and again. I figure I can probably learn a lot more words this way, and continue getting used to the grammar, for a while before I see less frequent payoff. For now, I’m seeing constant easy payoff from doing it. I’ve got a lot of grammar I’ve read details on but not seen regularly enough to get used to, so that all gets reinforced and learned better. And I’ve got a lot of hanzi I know, and doing this helps me start learning the similar-cognate kanji and words writing/pronunciation, the slightly different ones and their rougher meaning along with writing/pronunciation, to be aware which ones are totally different (tho depending on scene context i may or may not learn these words at least i’ll know they’re not the same). 

My point is: now engaging with japanese is a lot more relaxing and enjoyable. (I realize lol a few months ago playing in japanese or watching a lets play was doable but exhausting, so perhaps i am getting more used to it or actually have learned a little lol). In the sense that, now it feels a lot more like ‘reading french when i started learning’ - i feel like i have a LOT more scaffolding to lean on and help me when i’m struggling, whereas i know the first 2.5 years i studied japanese i felt drowning since nothing was familiar - not the grammar, not the words, not the sound, not the lack of word-spaces, etc. Now it feels like there’s a lot more i have ‘some prior experience’ with (from grammar being restudied over and over now lol and i still need much more lol, to onyomi kanji pronunciations now being my favorite lol and kanji my favorite part of reading), so when i’m diving into japanese instead of drowning i have some floaties to grab onto usually (unless i go outside of the domains i’m used to).

By domains i mean - if I try listening-only i still drown (since then i only have grammar and 2000 japanese words i’m still rusty on listening to), if i do listening-watching without subs i have fewer floaties to grab (i have my 2000 learned words but am super rusty on hearing them especially without kanji to see for reference), obviously if its an old or technical text i will drown (im used to modern japanese, and very specifically daily life or supernatural/light-fantasy video game stories). So like... nier, kh2, crisis core, persona games, smt games, are much more in my comfort level of following a plot (again with subs, because without subs it HAS to be something i know the english well for if i’m going to follow much besides simple daily life parts since i’ll need the visual context and prior context to guess what’s going on just in general - not understanding those parts of the japanese). 

Long story short, its been super fun for me lately engaging with japanese. Japanese is NOT even in my ‘realistic’ study plan right now lol!

But this month I still: read a chapter of japanese translation of Guardian, played 4 hours KH2, read the opening scenes of the script of FFX (fyi: in Idiom app they made HUGE improvements I can now play the audio line by line and repeat-automatically as much as i want AND the definitions now come from much better dictionaries), watched 40 minutes of SMT game lets plays (both with and without audio - though since my pronunciation info literally doesn't exist for so many words I decided adding audio as often as possible would be better). 

My ultimate goal for japanese was to be able to play the games I like in japanese, and follow them before localization changes. I’m not picking up the level of info necessary to be fully satisfied with how much I’m noticing. But I do follow enough now that I’m able to start practicing/studying japanese BY playing the games I want or engaging with them in lets plays/scripts etc. And its very motivating to know I’m far enough into this goal to be studying by doing (at least for now, if it stops paying off as much I’ll likely need to approach it from new angles for a while). But like? I can taste it! I’m starting to do what I want, not as well as I want but I am starting to be able to do those things. And that’s really exciting. 

Side notes: I still personally want to continue reading my grammar guides until I've finished them (japanese in 30 hours, tae kim, sakubi), and keep going through clozemaster. Both of these were helping, do help, and ensure I’m building the weaknesses (grammar i just need SO much more help with for japanese, and clozemaster gives me actual word definitions and pronunciation and lets me practice listening skills and grammar in context which are ALL weak points for me). So that’s the overall japanese goal for a long while (yes i might also finish Nukemarine’s memrise decks if i ever feel up for flashcards again lol). 

In the LONG long term, i would probably want to move onto my other japanese study books i own while continuing to go through clozemaster - i have two reading-japanese books i think would help a ton especially if i want to speed up reading speed and/or read novels more, a sentence pattern book that for me personally would help with reinforcing and getting comfortable with grammar and common words (particularly for long term active use). I also have a kanji remembering book i probably could go through - although by then idk how many kanji i’ll remember the pronunciations and meanings for by then.

#study plan #july study plan #july progress #july #reading #reading progress

[vexus-u]

Anti discourse is eating fandom from the inside-out at the moment. This sort of thing is everywhere in the past few years, because the minority of people who gun hard for that sort of thing are so widespread, self-assured, and so ready to drop vile accusations at the drop of a hat that they are almost impossible to ignore.

I feel like a lot of people see this going on but don’t want to talk about it or comment on it, because they’ve seen the sort of fire that can be drawn if you don’t toe the line absolutely. People skirt the issue, or avoid talking about it, because really, who does want to deal with that whole mess? Who wants to risk the backlash? And then there are the folks who haven’t engaged closely enough to see through the buzzwords; the people who see a post that proclaims that it’s condemning “real pedophiles”, and like any outsider rightly would, thinks, “oh God, that’s awful!” and clicks reblog.

It’s a good camouflage, maybe even the best. I feel like these people might even have one-upped the TERF posts claiming to rail against misogyny, but by analogy at least I think people can be shown what’s really going on.

If we are going to make fandom a safer and less toxic place, I think we need to start facing this behavior head-on and stop averting our gaze as a community. As an individual it’s hard, I know. But there are real world consequences; self harm, mental illness, and suicide attempts (believe me when I say that I know from experience), that cannot be swept aside as easily as antis/fandom police can proclaim that anyone who disagrees with them simply deserves to die. If you’ve ever had tangential contact with that sort of discourse and have internalized what these people say as the norm, I think it would benefit you to take a step back and realize how unhealthy a mentality that is to have. It’s easy to denounce anyone who questions you as a degenerate unworthy of life. Makes things a lot easier for you, but I think that we all know where that can lead.

If you are reading this and truly are unaware of what I’m talking about, let me give you a brief run-down. I don’t have the time or the stomach to jump into this discourse as deep as the rabbit-hole goes, but I will give some context as to where I am speaking from. I am a queer woman with clinical OCD. So called anti-shipping/anti-fic/fandom purity discourse started appearing in my sphere round about four years ago, and pretty much nothing since has been as dangerous to my mental health. I cannot begin to sum up how much self-hate and anguish this sort of gaslighting has resulted in for me, but let me tell you, it’s been bad. My compulsion to deal with this sort of thing tends to manifest as anxious research, and so, trust me. I know what I’m talking about here.

Namely, if you are a complete outsider, there is a school of thought that has taken root in certain younger fan communities, among groups that feel like they lack control over the world at large. As fandom is often the main community that these folks have (I counted myself among that crowd), this frustration has evolved into an reactionary ideology that takes ideas about the cultural impact of fictional works in our society to ludicrous, absurd extremes.

Ideas about poor portrayals having the potential to convey negative ideas to a reader have evolved into the creation of a code of morals that frames any interaction with fiction as a form of moral advocacy for that which it contains. Shipping is reframed as an expression of beliefs about desirable relationship dynamics. Depictions of abuse are reframed as advocacy for abuse. The concept of romanticization, which usually is only applied to ideas in the context of otherwise contextless mainstream works without prior warnings, is transformed into an indictment of any depiction of any that could be perceived as harmful which is not followed by an explicit condemnation of said act. This becomes even more absurd when you consider that these attacks are often aimed at fanfiction which has already been tagged with explicit warnings for the reader. Always invoked to justify this is the spectre of “negative influence on the children”, but this is both neither the responsibility of random internet users operating in adult-tagged spaces, and also, as with the video game violence scare of the 90s, mostly unjustified fearmongering.

Perhaps even worse, this logic is extended to fictional elements that might be thought to recall certain negative ideas in the mind of the reader. Short characters are, fairly offensively, dubbed “child-coded”, and it is verboten to include them in any adult works. Similarly, adult AUs of younger characters which include sexual content are condemned simply because the characters concerned were initially portrayed by a different author as younger! This leads into a deeper rabbit hole, where fictional characters, who are plot figments with no “real” version or portrayal, are effectively reframed as if they were actual people, who can be harmed by the way that they are portrayed in fanfic. In some extreme fringe cases, I have actually seen this been expressed literally; by invocation of alternate realities in which fiction is real, or through otherkin.

These people will claim glibly that they are fighting against real abusers, and who would want to hear what a dirty abuser might say in response? But don’t be fooled. This lens is almost solely turned back on people in fandom communities who are most vulnerable, and is driven by an underlying fear of sex, sexuality, queer expression, and perceived “degeneracy”. Any slight excuse to construe a transformative work as impure is taken as license to reframe the author or artist as scum, and therefore worthy of the harassment they will ultimately receive. Tellingly, the most affected groups are often queer women, and this sort of thing can and does destroy lives and careers. Moreover, the vicious cycle of social pressure and retribution for stepping out of line ensures that this toxic ideology holds people who step into it in its grip, lest they be expunged from their communities. Sight is lost of the fact that, at the end of the day, all that the perpetrator is guilty of is creating fanwork that some people might find distasteful.

There’s a lot more to say which I won’t, but I will stress again that the harm that this sort of thing is doing cannot be underestimated. It’s an insidious and toxic mode of thought that seeps into communities through the buzzwords it leverages - accuse somebody of being a pedophile and people pay attention! But these words are being misused, and this discourse distracts from actual predators even as it is cause for unjustified targets to be suicide baited, driven from fandom spaces, and vindictively destroyed. People who already suffer from mental health issues, and especially anxiety disorders such as OCD, can be driven to self-destruction by the repeated accusations and gaslighting. We need to remind people that these behaviors are not normal, are not the righteous causes they present themselves as, and are not tolerated. In fandom communities particularly, I honestly believe that this issue is one of the most insidious and dangerous that we currently face. Fandom has become nominally progressive, at the expense of trojan horse ideologies such as the anti/purity discourse positioning themselves as too risky to shout down.

I think it is time to stop turning a blind eye, recognize what is happening in our communities, deradicalize the people who are responsible for the harassment, and try to fix some of the damage that has already been done.

[lookatthisdork]

Meditations of Jason Todd (Draft)

In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I’ve made several attempts at drafting different fic ideas, which inevitably meant blocks of Batfam fanfic drabbles that don’t have any coherent plot, flow or continuity. They’re all basically unfit for internet consumption right now, except for this first attempt at writing in Jason’s voice. 

(Um, I’m still reading Pre-Crisis and 90s comics in my free-time, so the only canon Red Hood I have is his single animated movie. Since this is set significantly after that in his character arc, I’m not super confident when writing him. I have a problem writing characters I haven’t read the canon for, honestly.)

The problem with trading and selling drugs in a city like Gotham is that no matter how careful you were with recruitment, no matter how high your people’s morale and loyalty, you inevitably have to get your hands dirty to keep the money flowing. There are always incentives for both defectors and saboteurs to take pot shots at your stake. Offing a boss could mean a bigger piece of the pie for yourself, better job security (in the short-term, if your employment was tenuous), averting your boss throwing you under the bus for a job gone wrong. If the guy up top doesn’t maintain an aura of invulnerability, a willingness to crush any dissent under his boot, he quickly finds himself faced with with mutiny.

Dealing in drugs always ends in blood, one way or another. Jason was well aware of this. He was also aware of the fact that if you wanted to finance something really expensive quietly and quickly, drug money was the most sure-fire way of getting what you wanted.

(Actually, well-done white-collar fraud was the most sure-fire way, but if there was one thing he’d absorbed from watching Oracle, it was that fraud was never as secure as people made it out to be. It only took one individual with a computer and more skill than you to blow your operation to bits. Maybe it was old-fashioned, but at least drug-money was a physical object that couldn’t be “lost” with a few keystrokes.)

(Also, fraud was boring as a sole source of income. Too much time behind a screen, not enough explosions and punching people in the face.)

The Red Hood had been a damn-good drug lord, Jason liked to think. He’d run a tight ship, and the “severed heads in the duffel bag” shtick had quickly established just how out-of-their-league everyone else in the game was. Sure, he hadn’t stayed in business all that long for several good reasons (only one of which was Bruce), but extorting organized crime bosses was like riding a bicycle – really hard to forget. There was no practical reason for why he shouldn’t just recycle his old plan in a new city for some fast cash. Wasn’t like the shit-hole he was stuck in had anyone equipped to take him down.

Of course, striking fear into the hearts of criminals by decapitating their peers wasn’t the best strategy to use when your little brothers had front row seats to the carnage via helmet-cam.

He could just disable the cam for that part, of course. But the brats would definitely put two-and-two together and hatch some plot in response. An unnecessary headache when there was no Dick to foist them off on.

And...Jason wasn’t the best role-model in the world. He could admit to that. He used the phrase “little brothers” to refer to Tim and Damian very, very lightly in deference to the uncomfortable number of murder attempts among the three of them. Nowadays, he did regret all the stabbing and shooting and general dickery. Even though Damian was genetically engineered to be the most aggravating child on the planet and Tim kept stealing Jason’s alter-egos out from under him (unrepentantly now, the little shit). They were still better than uninterested-and-unhelpful-unless-I’m-sending-you-to-Arkham Dick and fucking Bruce. They didn’t deserve half the shit they were dealing with.

But his regret didn’t magically fix everything. There were 100-to-1 odds that neither kid saw Jason as anything more than “that one fuck-up that we don’t discuss in polite company.” Fair enough. Still, didn’t mean that the Red Hood had to live down to their expectations. He could do better – be the responsible adult, make sure they were fed and watered regularly, maybe (maybe) address their allotted emotional-expression-of-the-week.

Jason blamed his previously non-existent brotherly streak on Cassandra. She’d not only spoiled him by re-familiarizing him with friendly human contact, but she also subtly planted in his mind the idea that hey, you know who else would appreciate Jason’s company when Cassandra was busy? Tim and Damian. And you know who would benefit most from Jason’s unique perspective on life? Who needed a reprieve from Bruce and Dick and all of their frankly impossible expectations? Who could always use another person watching their backs, making sure they end up in an early grave?

(Honestly, Dick should watch Cass in Big Sister Mode and take notes.)

A soft huff of static came through the comm in his ear without warning, followed by the ridiculously-identifiable Damian’s click of the tongue. (Bruce was trying to train him out of doing it in costume so people wouldn’t catch on - with no success, of course.) “Todd, have your remaining neurons finally ceased to function? You’ve been standing outside the warehouse for five minutes. Are you ready or not?”

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” he said as he checked the indicators for the explosives one last time. (Still all green, ready and able to wreck a certain someone’s next fiscal quarter.) “I was just reminiscing about the good old days, back when we all hated each other’s guts and I still blew up drug dens with the dealers inside instead of out. Ever miss those times?” he asked, heavy on the sarcasm.

Tim’s voice was dry as a desert, even with the slightly-tinny reception. “I miss them as much as I miss the knife that was embedded in my spleen.”

“Well, you have to admit, a knife in your spleen was probably the most exciting thing that happened to you that week, even if it was bad for your health long-term.”

“Clearly Todd’s mental dysfunction is worsening,” Damian said. As usual, his tone gave no indication if that was meant to be a joke or an insult.

Probably both, actually. Kid got a kick out of riling people who weren’t Dick up.

At least it was a joke clearly aimed to get a chuckle out of Tim instead of a joke at his expense. If there was one thing this months-long jaunt into the multiverse was doing, it was driving the boys together through their shared survival instinct and the fact that Jason deprived them of all baked goods whenever he had to break up their fights.

(Bribing his brothers with freshly-made cakes and brownies in exchange for good behavior was really the only reason they were three months into this shit-show with no major casualties.)

“Ain’t that a shame,” Jason replied. “It’ll just be you and Tim, stuck all alone in Not-Gotham. What a perfect opportunity for you two to bond.”

No,” both boys said at the same time.

Then the sound of Damian trying to land a hit on Tim (and failing judging from the lack of a pained grunt) filtered through Jason’s headpiece. Because Damian couldn’t stand to agree with Tim on anything for more than 10 seconds without ruining the moment.

Well, whatever. The brotherly-bond was a work in progress. “Stop fist-fighting so we can finish this,” he said. “I’ve got Falcone’s heroin wired up to an irresponsible amount of explosives, and I’d like to get our racket money before dawn.”

What I just wrote makes no sense out of context, but since this is the only thing I have written for this AU, I’ll just explain here:

This is from the “Jason-Tim-Damian get stuck in Flashpoint” AU I mentioned at some point, a few months into their impromptu stranding. How they got there isn’t super important, and I’m handwaving intervention from standard Earth not being able to get them back home in a timely manner. (Note: Bruce, Dick, Cass and everyone else aren’t trying really hard to get them back; it’s just not working for Reasons.) 

After thinking about these three in a strange Not-Gotham for a while, I came to the conclusion that they’d lay low and avoid drawing attention to themselves instead of trying to approach Thomas-Batman or Alt-Cyborg or someone else. Things might be different if Dick or Cass were the oldest sibling on the ground, but Jason’s much slower to trust, as are Tim and Damian. A virtual stranger that also happens to be Batman would be the last person Jason would trust with his and his brothers’ safety. 

Naturally, that means the guys need to find a source of income and a place to hole up. The former, Jason gets by extorting the local organized crime - charging money to sabotage competitors and charging money to not sabotage his employers. Lighter on the murder than his first return to Gotham, but Tim and Damian noticeably don’t bring that subject up anyway. I imagine they picked a spot that was an auxiliary batcave on their Earth and fix it up as a temporary base where Tim is trying to engineer something to send them back to their Earth (funded by Jason’s extortion racket). Damian is stuck as the odd-jobs kid, which he handles with as much patience as he can. (Hint: he’s not a very patient person.)

It would be a waste of the setting not to get the three of them involved with Thomas-Batman and possibly even the main plot of Flashpoint, so this scene would be a sort of in-between-scene prologue before the status-quo changes. I’m leaning towards either Red Hood crashing one of the Cyborg-Batman scenes because he needs tech only Cyborg has or one of the guys interrupting Martha-Joker’s last crime.

Of course, this premise requires a long-form fic, which I’ve never written before. This is all wild speculation, really. I’ll probably never write all of this out.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

BUT IF I DO, you can count on Jason finding out that in a world with no Bruce and no Robin, he STILL ended up dead and resurrected. The multiverse just has it out for him, clearly.

#batman au #au #fanfic #mine #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #flashpoint au

[magpiefngrl]

The Year of Finishing Things, or What Self-Indulgence Taught Me

I can’t remember who it was (Gaiman I think? Or Stiefvater?) who said that they learned the most from finishing a book, seeing a project to the very end rather than any other writing aspect.

It intrigued me, that comment, probably because it touched a nerve; aside from a handful of short stories of 2-2.5k and some fic oneshots (most under 1k words), I hadn’t really finished a long piece of writing by then. My longish fics were abandoned at a convenient – or not so convenient – point and to this day remain unfinished on AO3, gathering virtual dust and cobwebs. This failure to complete a project became an internalized conviction that I am incapable of reaching the end of a WIP. These convictions become self-fulfilled prophecies if you let them ­– and I did. I’ve been working on my YA novel for over 2 years, on and off, and I always stumble at the 60-70%, quite probably because I expect that I’ll stumble there.

Last year I wrote an impressive 148k words and I have nothing to show for it, besides a short story which I had beta-read but which I have since put off revising. So not even that. Determined that 2017 will be the Year of Finishing Things with regards to my writing, I decided that instead of abandoning the plot bunny that dragged me by the nose at the start of January, I should give in to temptation, write it and Finish the bloody thing.

And by god, I did. I posted the last chapter yesterday on AO3 and it’s fucking done. I expected it to reach 22k but it rose to 37600 words, the Longest Piece of Writing I Have Ever Completed, proper novella length, and the work I’m most proud of so far.

In January a couple of friends expressed concern over my prioritizing fanfiction over original writing and I see their point: if I’d devoted all those writing hours to my YA novel during the past seven weeks, I’d have made some pretty good progress. But I don’t regret it for these reasons:

1. Firstly and most importantly, because by finishing the fanfic, I smashed my stupid internal conviction to bits. I’ll return to my novel now without the self-recrimination (“if you could do it, you’d have finished it already, why don’t you give up and maybe stop writing altogether”) but with the attitude “Bring it the fuck on, I did it before, I can do it again.”

2. Also, I learned so much from this particular project, more so than any other project ever. I’ve learned what kind of writer I am. For instance, I confirmed that I’m a pantser through and through, and that I should trust myself and this stupid, broken brain inside my skull, because the story is there even when I doubt it, and I can bring it to the page with some perseverance. I’ve learned that I’m one of those writers who’ll have a perfectly polished 90% of the book before even drafting the very end and that works for me. I noticed that, like my YA novel, I blasted through the first 20k, stumbled in the middle, but that the momentum picked up again at the end.

3. What kept me going through the dreaded middle is that this fic is the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written. I loved writing it; there were mornings that I woke up raring to get to it and days when I spent over ten hours writing like mad. I even read it some nights in bed instead of another book because I like it so very much. Is it arrogant to say? I don’t think so, for all I know it’s a shit piece of work, but whatever it is, it’s totally my cup of tea.

That’s when I realized what my YA novel was missing. If you told me that I should love the story I’m writing, I’d tell you that of course I do, I love my characters, I’m even more in love with my setting, I love the voice and tone I’m going for. But see, that turns out to be not completely true, because I’d let thoughts of the nameless public, possible agents and what-have-you infiltrate and make me question and doubt my instincts. Example: I love writing party scenes. Dances, balls, raves, wakes, social gatherings, you name it, I enjoy writing it. However, I hesitated including many such scenes in this novel, because I feared that people don’t like reading things like that. Or that there were too many of them. Or that they’re not literary/ exciting/ adventurous/ whatever enough.

This is the final lesson then: I don’t feel nearly as much excitement about certain scenes in my original fiction, mainly because I haven’t allowed my writing to be completely me.

4. I’ve had some other minor me-as-a-writer insights, too. Like, if I can’t find my way around a scene and I’m struggling with what the characters are meant to be doing or saying, it helps me to describe the setting, to write some sentences about the surroundings even if I won’t include them in the final draft. By allowing me to focus on a different aspect of the story, this technique helps me visualize the scene while removing the stress, and then the writing flows. It’s like tricking my rational, anxious brain so I can get to the imaginative well where stories reside.

So what now? I’ve taken on an obligation for another fic, but it doesn’t have to be long and what I have in mind should need no more than 10k. After that, finally, I return to original writing, and hopefully things will move along more smoothly than before.

Tl;dr: Be self-indulgent in your writing as much as humanly possible. Write whatever the fuck you want. And whatever you do, make sure you Finish it.

#my craft or sullen art #fanfic life

[nulled-corner]

Resurrection of Creativity: Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress Themes

I started utilizing WordPress in 2005. I’d just been learning HTML and CSS for two or three years. I even had a home-blended blog that pulled posts from plain content records at a certain point. I knew enough JavaScript to do spring up alarms and other irritating things that filled no need and made for a poor client experience, regardless of whether they were a good time for me.

This was my second endeavor at utilizing WordPress. This time it was after a messed up go of making PHP Nuke act how I needed. I had huge dreams for my site yet came up short on the coding aptitudes to get them going. WordPress was basic enough to hack for a tenderfoot like me at the time. Certainly, I broke my site a greater number of times than I could check, yet I figured out how to assemble my first genuine topic.

I popped open Photoshop; got a couple of pictures from Angel, my preferred TV appear at the time; and started my work. I’d as of late watched Soul Purpose, a scene that investigated whether the main character was really the saint referenced in an antiquated prediction. It was prognosticated that the vampire with a spirit would shed his devil half and live as a human. It investigated topics of the character’s place on the planet. At 21 years of age, it’s the kind of scene that resounded with a youngster who was additionally searching for his place. I thought it fitting to work that into my subject’s plan and started hacking ceaselessly at a header for my topic.

Around then, there was this approximately associated underground of themers and specialists who were building WordPress subjects dependent on their preferred TV arrangement, motion pictures, comic books, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. That was my first genuine prologue to WordPress. These individuals were not building subjects for benefit. They were scanning for their place in this little corner of the web. Probably, some were searching for approval from similar individuals who may make the most of their specialty. It was about creation for creation. Anybody could be a craftsman with a basic exercise in CSS, a picture control program, and enough coarseness to empty their spirit into the venture for a couple of hours.

In the event that there were ever a period that WordPress topics kicked the bucket, it was the point at which the specialists who worked for unadulterated energy were dominated by business interests.

Try not to misunderstand me; business interests assumed a significant job in impelling WordPress to turn into the most predominant CMS on the planet. In any case, the parity has unmistakably moved for structure WordPress subjects for business and web based business instead of for the devotees who simply need to make. Different stages have better taken into account these clients and filled in the holes left open by WordPress. Tumblr turned into a place of refuge for pop culture fans. DeviantArt a home for specialists. Wattpad for hopeful journalists and fanfic darlings.

Incidentally, we lost the honesty and imaginativeness of structure WordPress topics for its unadulterated fun. WordPress grew up and WordPress topics alongside it.

The present Themes Are Not Tomorrow’s

In his post, The End of WordPress Themes is in Sight, Ben Gillbanks stated, “Subjects as we probably am aware them will never again be made.” It is a depressing take a gander at the eventual fate of WordPress theming. He takes note of that he doesn’t accept that he’ll have the option to bring home the bacon building WordPress subjects in the following couple of years.

His stresses are justified. They have been shared by a few topic creators over the recent years as the square supervisor (Gutenberg) was advancing into center WordPress. The official subject audit group has examined the group’s future job encompassing the coming changes.

Gillbanks’ post goes ahead the impact points of a post composed by Matias Ventura on characterizing substance square territories. Basically, the thought is for WordPress to enable clients to alter regions outside of the post content by means of the square editorial manager. Anything from the header, footer, sidebar, or generally would almost certainly be reasonable game.

In such a framework, subjects would be consigned to characterizing square territories, giving base styles, and planning square yield. From various perspectives, this is the thing that WordPress subjects ought to be. Some may state that WordPress is returning topics to their appropriate spot of basically styling substance. With the behemoth topics with hundreds or thousands of highlights we’ve seen in the course of recent years, this could be a much needed development.

There’s enormous potential for originators to step up and make their imprint. I, for one, wouldn’t see any problems with seeing CSS craftsmen released in the WordPress subject biological system.

Gillbanks proceeded to state:

There are distinct advantages to doing this from a client’s point of view – they will have full control of their webpage – yet it will bring about some exceptionally exhausting site formats.

This is where I’ll deferentially oppose this idea. Placing control in the hands of non-creators will be anything other than exhausting.

Do we as a whole so effectively overlook the times of GeoCities? The sites worked from it might have been frightfully out of reach. They may have boomed midi records when you opened a website page. They may have even had a blazing, looking over marquee dashing over the header. Exhausting isn’t the word I’d use to depict them.

As much the same number of us need to put those days behind us (Come on, you had one of those destinations at a certain point, isn’t that so? Come clean.), there was something captivating about everything. Genuine individuals manufactured these destinations since they were enjoyable. The locales revealed to you something about that individual. It was a profoundly close to home investigate this present more bizarre’s reality. Here and there it was only a lot of garbage heaved onto the screen, yet most destinations were an impression of the site proprietors by then.

It was monstrous and excellent no different.

Web engineers and planners joke about those dim days of the web. It’s anything but difficult to glance back at destinations from the ’90s and recoil at the preposterousness (It makes you wonder what creators of 2050 will consider the present plans, doesn’t it?). I look affectionately upon those days. It was a period before I turned into a “planner” with principles to pursue.

However, here’s the significant point. We are not the authorities of the web. It’s about the client. In the event that somebody needs a squinting Justin Bieber GIF in their site header, more capacity to them. It’s the designer’s business to empower the client to do this in a simple to-arrange way.

Pause? So Geocities is your contention for full-site altering in WordPress?

Understanding why WordPress should turn into a full-site editorial manager means understanding the normal client. Designers are increasingly able to see things in an organized way. I went through over 10 years sharpening my advancement aptitudes. Rationale and request are old companions.

With end-clients, things may appear to be more clamorous. A young person should mortar an image of her preferred band anyplace she needs on her site. A soccer mother should demonstrate her child pummeling home the triumphant objective. An artist may need to feature one of his sonnets as a foundation picture on his blog. People are innovative creatures. While our extraordinary image of aestheticness probably won’t speak to other people, it’s as yet something we hunger for to share.

It’s likewise critical to comprehend that building WordPress subjects is not even close as straightforward in 2019 as it was in 2005 when I begun hacking endlessly. The code is significantly more perplexing. It’s not exactly as simple for another client to sort out something fun as it once might have been. Except if you have a topic or module that enables you to do this with basic intuitive or comparative devices, clients have little power over their very own locales. What’s more, that is the reason the Gutenberg venture is so progressive. Its crucial to return the power in the hands of the individuals.

Topic creators need to advance. They should figure out how to offset great plan standards with the crazy measure of opportunity clients will have. There’s nothing preventing fashioners from ensuring the Bieber screengrab looks progressively adequate.

Are WordPress Themes Dead?

No. However, the subject scene will positively change and not just because. We need not take a gander at that as a terrible thing.

Those specialists who like to tinker with their site, they will by and by have control that was such a long time ago lost to further developed code.

There will likewise be sub-networks inside the WordPress scene. A few people will need something increasingly likened to great WordPress. Others will need a basic blog took care of with Markdown (side note: I’m one of those individuals, and Gutenberg really handles sticking from Markdown well). Modules will be worked to take into account each client’s needs. Topics will exist for various kinds of clients. Customer constructs and undertaking arrangements that look in no way like center WordPress aren’t going anyplace.

There’s as yet a lengthy, difficult experience ahead. Subject creators should be increasingly engaged with the improvement of Gutenberg as these highlights advance into the module and inevitably into WordPress. Else, they’ll hazard losing the chance to help shape the future topic scene.

In all honesty, I don’t know what subjects will resemble in a couple of years. I have an unpleasant reputation with expectations. In any case, I believe it’s sheltered to state that there’ll be a spot for planners.

I’m energized on the grounds that I sense that it will bring back the potential for clients to have the control they once had and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The post Resurrection of Creativity: Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress Themes appeared first on Nulled Corner.

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#IFTTT #WordPress

[nulled-corner]

Resurrection of Creativity: Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress Themes

I started utilizing WordPress in 2005. I’d just been learning HTML and CSS for two or three years. I even had a home-blended blog that pulled posts from plain content records at a certain point. I knew enough JavaScript to do spring up alarms and other irritating things that filled no need and made for a poor client experience, regardless of whether they were a good time for me.

This was my second endeavor at utilizing WordPress. This time it was after a messed up go of making PHP Nuke act how I needed. I had huge dreams for my site yet came up short on the coding aptitudes to get them going. WordPress was basic enough to hack for a tenderfoot like me at the time. Certainly, I broke my site a greater number of times than I could check, yet I figured out how to assemble my first genuine topic.

I popped open Photoshop; got a couple of pictures from Angel, my preferred TV appear at the time; and started my work. I’d as of late watched Soul Purpose, a scene that investigated whether the main character was really the saint referenced in an antiquated prediction. It was prognosticated that the vampire with a spirit would shed his devil half and live as a human. It investigated topics of the character’s place on the planet. At 21 years of age, it’s the kind of scene that resounded with a youngster who was additionally searching for his place. I thought it fitting to work that into my subject’s plan and started hacking ceaselessly at a header for my topic.

Around then, there was this approximately associated underground of themers and specialists who were building WordPress subjects dependent on their preferred TV arrangement, motion pictures, comic books, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. That was my first genuine prologue to WordPress. These individuals were not building subjects for benefit. They were scanning for their place in this little corner of the web. Probably, some were searching for approval from similar individuals who may make the most of their specialty. It was about creation for creation. Anybody could be a craftsman with a basic exercise in CSS, a picture control program, and enough coarseness to empty their spirit into the venture for a couple of hours.

In the event that there were ever a period that WordPress topics kicked the bucket, it was the point at which the specialists who worked for unadulterated energy were dominated by business interests.

Try not to misunderstand me; business interests assumed a significant job in impelling WordPress to turn into the most predominant CMS on the planet. In any case, the parity has unmistakably moved for structure WordPress subjects for business and web based business instead of for the devotees who simply need to make. Different stages have better taken into account these clients and filled in the holes left open by WordPress. Tumblr turned into a place of refuge for pop culture fans. DeviantArt a home for specialists. Wattpad for hopeful journalists and fanfic darlings.

Incidentally, we lost the honesty and imaginativeness of structure WordPress topics for its unadulterated fun. WordPress grew up and WordPress topics alongside it.

The present Themes Are Not Tomorrow’s

In his post, The End of WordPress Themes is in Sight, Ben Gillbanks stated, “Subjects as we probably am aware them will never again be made.” It is a depressing take a gander at the eventual fate of WordPress theming. He takes note of that he doesn’t accept that he’ll have the option to bring home the bacon building WordPress subjects in the following couple of years.

His stresses are justified. They have been shared by a few topic creators over the recent years as the square supervisor (Gutenberg) was advancing into center WordPress. The official subject audit group has examined the group’s future job encompassing the coming changes.

Gillbanks’ post goes ahead the impact points of a post composed by Matias Ventura on characterizing substance square territories. Basically, the thought is for WordPress to enable clients to alter regions outside of the post content by means of the square editorial manager. Anything from the header, footer, sidebar, or generally would almost certainly be reasonable game.

In such a framework, subjects would be consigned to characterizing square territories, giving base styles, and planning square yield. From various perspectives, this is the thing that WordPress subjects ought to be. Some may state that WordPress is returning topics to their appropriate spot of basically styling substance. With the behemoth topics with hundreds or thousands of highlights we’ve seen in the course of recent years, this could be a much needed development.

There’s enormous potential for originators to step up and make their imprint. I, for one, wouldn’t see any problems with seeing CSS craftsmen released in the WordPress subject biological system.

Gillbanks proceeded to state:

There are distinct advantages to doing this from a client’s point of view – they will have full control of their webpage – yet it will bring about some exceptionally exhausting site formats.

This is where I’ll deferentially oppose this idea. Placing control in the hands of non-creators will be anything other than exhausting.

Do we as a whole so effectively overlook the times of GeoCities? The sites worked from it might have been frightfully out of reach. They may have boomed midi records when you opened a website page. They may have even had a blazing, looking over marquee dashing over the header. Exhausting isn’t the word I’d use to depict them.

As much the same number of us need to put those days behind us (Come on, you had one of those destinations at a certain point, isn’t that so? Come clean.), there was something captivating about everything. Genuine individuals manufactured these destinations since they were enjoyable. The locales revealed to you something about that individual. It was a profoundly close to home investigate this present more bizarre’s reality. Here and there it was only a lot of garbage heaved onto the screen, yet most destinations were an impression of the site proprietors by then.

It was monstrous and excellent no different.

Web engineers and planners joke about those dim days of the web. It’s anything but difficult to glance back at destinations from the ’90s and recoil at the preposterousness (It makes you wonder what creators of 2050 will consider the present plans, doesn’t it?). I look affectionately upon those days. It was a period before I turned into a “planner” with principles to pursue.

However, here’s the significant point. We are not the authorities of the web. It’s about the client. In the event that somebody needs a squinting Justin Bieber GIF in their site header, more capacity to them. It’s the designer’s business to empower the client to do this in a simple to-arrange way.

Pause? So Geocities is your contention for full-site altering in WordPress?

Understanding why WordPress should turn into a full-site editorial manager means understanding the normal client. Designers are increasingly able to see things in an organized way. I went through over 10 years sharpening my advancement aptitudes. Rationale and request are old companions.

With end-clients, things may appear to be more clamorous. A young person should mortar an image of her preferred band anyplace she needs on her site. A soccer mother should demonstrate her child pummeling home the triumphant objective. An artist may need to feature one of his sonnets as a foundation picture on his blog. People are innovative creatures. While our extraordinary image of aestheticness probably won’t speak to other people, it’s as yet something we hunger for to share.

It’s likewise critical to comprehend that building WordPress subjects is not even close as straightforward in 2019 as it was in 2005 when I begun hacking endlessly. The code is significantly more perplexing. It’s not exactly as simple for another client to sort out something fun as it once might have been. Except if you have a topic or module that enables you to do this with basic intuitive or comparative devices, clients have little power over their very own locales. What’s more, that is the reason the Gutenberg venture is so progressive. Its crucial to return the power in the hands of the individuals.

Topic creators need to advance. They should figure out how to offset great plan standards with the crazy measure of opportunity clients will have. There’s nothing preventing fashioners from ensuring the Bieber screengrab looks progressively adequate.

Are WordPress Themes Dead?

No. However, the subject scene will positively change and not just because. We need not take a gander at that as a terrible thing.

Those specialists who like to tinker with their site, they will by and by have control that was such a long time ago lost to further developed code.

There will likewise be sub-networks inside the WordPress scene. A few people will need something increasingly likened to great WordPress. Others will need a basic blog took care of with Markdown (side note: I’m one of those individuals, and Gutenberg really handles sticking from Markdown well). Modules will be worked to take into account each client’s needs. Topics will exist for various kinds of clients. Customer constructs and undertaking arrangements that look in no way like center WordPress aren’t going anyplace.

There’s as yet a lengthy, difficult experience ahead. Subject creators should be increasingly engaged with the improvement of Gutenberg as these highlights advance into the module and inevitably into WordPress. Else, they’ll hazard losing the chance to help shape the future topic scene.

In all honesty, I don’t know what subjects will resemble in a couple of years. I have an unpleasant reputation with expectations. In any case, I believe it’s sheltered to state that there’ll be a spot for planners.

I’m energized on the grounds that I sense that it will bring back the potential for clients to have the control they once had and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The post Resurrection of Creativity: Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress Themes appeared first on Nulled Corner.

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