#but if you then write fanfiction using your canon which is borrowed from my work please credit me because that's... my canon.

[utilitycaster]

Whoaaaa holy shit something just snapped into place reading you mention the concept of creating a shape of negative space bc i've been thinking so long abt the "unspoken things/quiet part" of characters. I've often had this feeling that fandom will go a million and nine yards to red string board an ocean of depth for their favorite blorbo over.... what comes down to what's technically extrapolating based off of xyz canon, but said canon will be like "this character fidgets once, half his dialogue is quoting an in-universe play he tries to recreate (by ruining ppl's lives), and he doesn't understand why someone wouldn't want to be called a monster, therefore he is AUTISTIC and that drives his logic," or "this character has xyz vague background and is TRAUMATIZED because of WAR" inventing an entire character and it's like. Oh boy. This might be a matter of not being invested enough in these characters to TRY and delve so "deep" but I keep thinking that none of this is actually. written or feels purposeful in the context of How Storytelling Works/the Narrative to MAKE me invest or think that it's worth doing so. I always wonder how many people are trying so hard to project a better story onto something without understanding that the story actually needs to BE THERE and ADDRESSED, even subtly, and token moments aren't enough. But then that gets me thinking about how Thereness needs to exist for something to be subtle but written as opposed to Conspiracy off loose projection.

I was kinda thinking abt Laudna and how to use her as an example, because she's one of those characters for whom like, yeah I as a person totally understand the cycle of being upbeat and normal and everything and then having a random spiral of Bad Upstairs before being normal again, but narratively how do you portray that and why does everyone do it so much better than her. With equal screentime, everyone feels like they have so much more meat to their motivations and psychology despite some being significantly less fraught backstory wise. What's happening here because things just feel like they come out of nowhere with her with "oh so that matters all of a sudden?"

Hi anon,

Yes to all of this! With regards to your first paragraph - I feel that a lot too. It's a tricky situation because I think it's completely valid to project things onto characters and imagine them to have specific qualities that either you have or simply that you wish to see in fiction. It only becomes difficult in a fandom sphere when people insist that this is a fully evidence-based endeavor and not a personal interpretation (especially because a lot of that evidence is, as you say, either very much open to interpretation, or else totally spurious. The number of times I've had to shoo people off my posts for talking extensively about how an immensely self-absorbed character who never thinks about others unless forced to clearly has ADHD...but I digress). And as for the conspiracy element, especially when works aren't as good - absolutely. If you haven't read this, which I reblogged a few weeks ago (has Good Omens 2 spoilers) I highly recommend you do because what you're saying resonates a lot with OP's post, both in terms of our need as fans to project or find similarities with characters, and the fact that when people are disappointed by a work sometimes they try to create a better one, but instead of just writing fanfiction and calling it fanfiction they go full conspiracy theorist and assume there's some secret twist, and fall so hard into that all-crumbs-no-schnitzel (to borrow a metaphor from that post) fanon echo chamber they forget it is, in fact, only fanon.

Which brings us to Laudna. Before I go deeper I want to cover three things. First: for me at least, this criticism comes because I know Marisha is capable of doing this negative space work. It didn't come up much with Keyleth since we kind of knew her whole deal very early (which, to be clear, is valid; not every character needs this), but it's present with both Beau (her relationship to her father is masterfully done; the hallmark of good negative space work is that when the reveal comes you say oh of course) and to a lesser extent Patia, who, like all the Calamity characters, conveys a story much greater than the one that unfolds over a single night. Second: I think part of why a number of us in the fandom are so frustrated is that we have been doing that work of generously interpreting Laudna since the beginning, but nothing ever sticks, so it's becoming less and less worth the effort.

I'd have to go back through my archives pretty extensively, but early on, the going expectation for Laudna was that she would explore the idea of being one of the bystanders in a larger story as someone killed simply because of a passing resemblance to someone the Briarwoods wished to send a message to; that we'd get insight into Whitestone during the occupation from someone who wasn't freed by Vox Machina but rather killed, indirectly, because of them. However, not only have we not gotten that, but she also was chosen for being special: Delilah chose her as a vessel because of her inherent sorcery. So then it was perhaps about that tension between finding power in her sorcery vs. warlock levels - Pâté seemed like a clear setup for Pact of the Chain, after all - but then Marisha admitted she had no intention of taking that third warlock level, and always just planned to play Laudna as exclusively leveling in sorcerer, until FCG attacked. And meanwhile, there's no exploration of those sorcery powers, either.

Speaking only for myself, I've been interrogating "hey, why is her backstory that she was chased out of everywhere but for the most part everyone is mostly fine with her?" and "in 30 years she did nothing about Delilah? Really?" for quite some time. There's a number of questions that are not just unanswered, but lack the hints that this negative space work would provide. And to be clear there are ways to explain those things! This meta does a good job of talking through why she may have been chased out, and I've floated, in the past, that even Delilah's unwelcome presence was better than the absolute silence of being truly alone. But the work to support these fandom theories, again, is not really being done at the table, and moreover, even if it starts being done...it's episode 70. It should have come up in some capacity.

Marisha said (to be clear, somewhat jokingly) in the 2022 ComicCon panel that "Yeah. I don't want to think anymore. I'm tired," re: Laudna but the thing is...honestly, in my opinion? A character with Laudna's premise requires far more work than Beau or Keyleth to do well. Not only is she tied into one of the most famous events and entwined with one of the most famous villains of Campaign 1, but she's got 50 years of backstory! Beau and Keyleth are in their early 20s! (I could make a whole other post about this but character intelligence does not equal how hard they are to play; Imogen is an immensely tough concept that Laura's doing a good job with and she's lower INT than Laudna. I'd rather play a wizard than a character like Grog any day of the week because I genuinely believe that the acting burden for making a character like Grog sympathetic and believable without going into cheap mockery and parody is immense).

Going back to that statement, it really does feel as though every 4-Sided Dive episode or panel, when Marisha talks about Laudna, it's always just that she was envisioned as being over her trauma, and the premise was always just "make that creepy girl from her nightmare". And even then: it's fine if she'd done that - simply made a creepy character who was here to be creepy and cheerfully macabre - but through gameplay it's become clear that Laudna is not over that trauma (her arrested development being one of many options), and has acquired new traumas to boot, and for that matter never was really over it given that she displays intensely but they come up so inconsistently that there's never any follow-through. I agree with you completely that the idea of her often seeming fine and happy and then having spirals is believable and true to life, but one does need to actually follow through on the spirals - I think a lot of us finally threw up our hands when Laudna's believable, well-played, and justifiable anger and resentment after being thrown across the world away from half the party, essentially pushed into a fight that isn't her own, being betrayed by Bor'Dor, and feeling Delilah's return melted away without resolution. If you want to make a character who's over their trauma and go-with-the-flow, I feel as though step 1 is to not have an eternal reminder of one's trauma permanently stuck in one's head. "Warlock who dislikes their patron" is actually a premise that requires quite a lot of thinking and effort, and we are consistently not seeing it.

I think what's most telling is that the defense of Laudna for the weird freakout this past episode is both vehement, and in conflict with itself. Is Marisha just making a joke (that didn't really land with anyone at the table nor much of the fandom, and was taken at least semi-seriously by both)? Or is it actually great and good that Laudna is incredibly traumatized and clingy and we should all hope she becomes even more clingy and codependent? When even the people who are shielding Laudna from even a whisper of criticism can't agree what Marisha's doing, it's pretty dire, especially when that criticism is "this character feels directionless and incoherent."

So getting back to negative space: It's my hunch that there just...wasn't a lot of clarity to Laudna's motivations, and the questions in her backstory weren't answered. She's creepy and she's kooky, Sun Tree corpse, Delilah in her head, met Imogen two years ago, was friends with a little girl at some point (which we only know from 4-Sided Dive, which is, to be clear, bad that it's never come up in-game). We don't know how she feels about her sorcery powers other than a vague enjoyment of their creepiness...but she also sees them as a way out from Delilah...but she also barely engages with Delilah and hasn't done anything to get rid of her. We have no sense of how she got to "the worst thing that's happened to me already happened" because while it's completely fair to play her as feeling that way 30 years later, I highly doubt she felt that way as she cut herself down from the Sun Tree. So as a result, it's hard to pick a direction because that foundation is lacking.

The thing about that negative space is that to do it well, you really need to know what you're trying to convey. Which is also why, as you say, characters with much simpler backstories are fine; Fearne was basically hanging out at her grandmother's place until EXU and her parents left when she was very young; she is curious about her parents and loves her grandmother and is a chaotic fey entity who was sent into the Material Plane with the Weave Lens, and mostly she just wants to explore and have fun and hang out with her friends. Ashley just needs to...play Fearne like that, which she does with aplomb. The complex setup for Laudna demands a huge number of answers in the backstory, and my guess is that Marisha does not have them. I think the problem isn't with the acting (in fact, I'm fairly confident it isn't, because, again, I know from past characters Marisha can do this); it's that Laudna's concept prioritized the aesthetic, mechanics, and facts of the backstory, and didn't adequately fill in her beliefs and motivations, so she's just flailing. I also suspect from the most recent 4-Sided Dive and the most recent SDCC panel that Marisha is specifically looking for interparty conflict, and to be clear that's valid...but again, to do that believably and well, Laudna's philosophy and motivations and characterization need to be much more clearly established than they are.

#answered #Anonymous #cr tag #long post #critical role spoilers

[neewtmas]

a non-exhaustive list of fic recs for lockwood & co and stranger things

Under the cut you’ll find my Lockwood & Co and Stranger Things fic recs.

These fics are in no particular order and are the ones that stood out most to me while reading. All of these authors have other writing that should be checked out! Most have their masterlist pinned at the top  of their blog, which is why I didn’t link it seperately. 

Have fun reading these excellent pieces of fanfiction❤️

Lockwood & Co

George

by @maraschinomerry

How to Stand (friends to lovers, fluff, both povs, George teaches reader how to use a rapier)

Matching Mates (friends to lovers, george has a crush, locklyle teasing him about it, Fittes Ball, bestfriend!Lucy is scheming)

Matching Mates Part 2 (established relationship, fluff)

Stay Safe (Reader and George fight a visitor together)

Important Research  (friends to lovers, both povs, george is the sweetest,  misunderstandings, fluff)

I’ve got your back (angst + fluff, hurt/comfort, cuddling)

Offerings (angst + fluff, getting possessed by a ghost)

by @givemea-dam-break

Pretty (friends to lovers, bestfriend!Lucy, locklyle, Fittes Ball, jealousy and awkward George,  he’s a little idiot tbh)

Little Notes (love confessions through letters)

Touch (Gorge is jealous of Lockwood, fluff, a little angst)

masterlist for Lockwood x reader

by @lewkwoodnco

Wildest Dreams (strangers to lovers, reader works at Fittes, very in-character George, slight angst but happy ending)

Be More (valentine's day, FLUFF, george is a little awkward, food fight!! feels like a warm hug)

by @oblivious-idiot

london calling (reader works at Fittes, friends to lovers, fluff)

midnight comforts (after the boneglass, nightmares, cuddling, fluffyyyy)

the break of dawn (fluff, pizza for breakfast, watching a movie)

late night collisions (friends to lovers, fluff, george is bad at uno, stealing shirts)

the only exception (ghost touch, fluff, george is the swe etest)

Stuck in the middle with you by @stray-kaz (18+ only!, reader contacts the ghost of Annabelle Ward, angst, fluff, smut)

Sleep Tight by @honey-lavender-latte (friends to lovers, comforting George, cuddles, his pov)

Lockwood

Just another love song by @tangledinlove (friends to lovers, fluff, mutual pining, love languages, George and Lucy have to intervene, long!!)

I take you like you do your tea, with lemon and with honey by @lewkwoodnco (first person Lockwood, Lockwood is in love, pure poetry)

Deck The Halls (and not your partner) by @bella-rose29 (long! 12 part series, enemies to lovers, fake dating!! set around christmas time (with everything that entails), fluff, angst, mildly spicy towards the end, lockwood is a little shit from time to time, fantastic couple dynamic)

escapism by @aislinrayne (18+ but no actual smut, reader is drunk, insane tension, lockwood is a simp, lot's of lockwood pov)

Little Pink Heart by @maraschinomerry (SAD, NO happy end, established relationship, reader dies on the job, it's a beautiful read tho)

Locklyle

that funny feeling by @givemea-dam-break (ANGST and only ANGST)

Untitled by @lucelockwood (the most beautiful thing you'll ever read, 100% pure love)

Borrowed Time by @waitingforthesunrise (angst, post Hollow Boy, serial killer prompt)

Policy 8 by @the-biscuit-agreement (on AO3, very long, it feels like reading another Lockwood & Co book, angst, fluff, it has everything)

The Whole World Filled With Silence by @13atoms (focus on Lucy, post canon, talents fading but it's bittersweet instead of angsty)

Just An Act by @czenzo (extremely in character, so funny, the skull is the best)

George & Lucy

5 times George missed Lucy, 1 time he admitted it by @givemea-dam-break & @ikeasupremacy

Stranger Things

Series

Dancing with myself by @ambrossart  (finished, fluff and angst, happy ending, ALL the feels and just simply amazingly written, everyone needs to read this one)

You are in love by @missscarlettangel (finished, strangers to friends to lovers, kinda slow burn, just a super sweet feel-good story and absolutely worth the read)

Eddie Munson

Dirty Dreaming by @eddiethefreakkmunson (smut! best friends to lovers, Eddie has a wet dream about the reader and deals with the repercussions)

Listen to the Trees by @ethereal27cereal (includes smut, fluff, best friends to lovers, mutual pining, plus size!reader, ‘there’s only one bed’-trope, a very handsy wet dream,  both povs)

My favourite Person by @pollenallergie (best friends to lovers, slow burn, starts out with them as little kids)

Oneshots

by @copycatkillerfics 

Head over Heels/ Code Lime Green (fluff, friends to lovers, kinda insecure but very in love Eddie, Dustin plays matchmaker)

Angel/ What’s left unspoken (angst & fluff, friends to lovers, both povs, cliche in the best way)

A spark (angst and fluff, friends to lovers, truth or dare goes a little wrong, butterflies guaranteed) 

Since the Sunflowers (angst and fluff, shitty boyfriend alert, Eddie is a sweetheart in love, happy ending)

by @marymunsonloves

Hellfire Babes (best friends to lovers, you wear Eddie’s clothes and he can’t handle it, both povs, halloween party)

All dolled up (angst & fluff, friends to lovers, slight misunderstanding, a little jealous Eddie)

More to love (best friends to lovers, implied plus size reader, Eddie helps you with body issues, accidental confession)

by @munson-blurbs

Flattery works with me (smut, a revealing bikini at the pool is all it takes to get Eddie going)

Clueless (fluff, the hellfire boys push Eddie to ask you out)

Bookworm!reader (fluff, shy reader, Eddie joins reader in detention)

by @singularattitudeofasafetypin

If you wanted me, you really should’ve shown (friends to lovers, kinda shitty boyfriend, Eddie shows you what you’re missing in the most beautiful way)

How you get the girl (friends to lovers, Eddie overhears you telling Steve how to step up his game, Eddie’s pov)

Crazy Forever (established relationship, Eddie is insecure)

by @corrodedcoffins

Different Kind of Jealous (best friends to lovers, mutual pining, jealousy, both povs, all the good stuff)

New Outfit (fluff & angst, friends to lovers, reader tries to appease Eddie by changing her looks, confession during a fight)

Man of my dreams (smut!, best friends to lovers, reader has a wet dream about Eddie, relentless teasing, the gang hangs out together, platonic steve x reader moment, jealous Eddie)

Love comes walking in (best friends to lovers, fluff & angst, jealousy, Eddie is a clueless idiot, Dustin is the sweetest little guy, Eddie makes it up to you beautifully)

by @sunflowergirl522

Teardrops on my guitar (best friends to lovers, Eddie is so in love, jealousy, mutual pining, misunderstandings)

He’s my brother (strangers to lovers, mutual pining, movie nights)

by @forever-rogue

Miscommunications (best friends to lovers, fluff & angst, jealousy, a fight, mutual pining, insecurities)

In which Eddie drives you crazy (friends to lovers, fluff, intense flirting from Eddie)

by @eddie-van-munson

Elvira’s Movie Macabre (friends to lovers, bestfriend!chrissy, fluff & angst, both povs, Eddie is an idiot, but he makes it up to you)

Peanut Butter Cookies (best friends to lovers, jealousy)

masterlist by @ghosttownwherenoonegoes (found it hard to narrow down here)

meet me at midnight by @maria-scribbles (fluff, aquaintances to lovers, new years eve party, henderson!reader)

Are you leaving? by @fluffansmut (fluff, both povs, Eddie is insecure)

The Morning after by @ashtonsbff (fluff & angst, best friends to lovers, insecure reader and insecure Eddie)

is something wrong with me? by @djarintreble (best friends to lovers, mutual pining, some insecurities, Eddie shows you that there is nothing wrong with you)

Taking Eddie’s virginity by @usedtobecooler (smut!, best friends to lovers)

One Call away by @uselessastheginlasagnaa (fluff & angst, best friends to lovers, toxic/abusive relationship but Eddie is always there for you)

I think I’ve loved you forever by @cinemaquinn (smut!, fluff, best friends to lovers, insecurities, misunderstandings, mutual pining)

hold me like i’m more than just a friend by @heartthrobinsficrecs (best friends to lovers, intense fluff, henderson!reader, mutual pining, Eddie is your first kiss, both povs)

Someone that actually likes me by @oddlykilledghosts (aquaintances to lovers, fluff, Dustin’s a matchmaker)

Angels & Demons by @galaxy-siren (friends to lovers, fluff, bestfriend!chrissy, halloween party, both povs)

Have you seen my sweatshirt by @waratah-moon (established relationship, cheerleader!reader, fluff)

On my doorstep by @softharrington (smut! friends to lovers, idiots in love, mutual pining, both povs)

#ficrec #stranger things 4 #eddie #eddie munson #eddie x reader #eddie munson x reader #lockwood & co #lockwood and co #lockwood and co x reader #george karim #george karim x reader #anthony lockwood #lockwood #fic rec

[solacefruit]

Hi there! I ADORE your one-shot about the cat of many colors! Would you mind if someone were to use that story as worldbuilding in own of there own fics, with credit to you as the original story teller? :)

Hello there! Thank you for saying so, I'm so pleased you've enjoyed the story.

As for your question, it extremely depends what you mean by that. There are some instances of use that I would extremely mind.

For example, if you want to quote sections/the entirety of that story in your own work, that's plagiarism and I'm definitely not okay with that. Even with citation, that's definitely not welcome, because it's theft.

However, if you want to allude to my work in your story (but not quote it)--i.e., "Whitewhisker told the kittens to story of the cat of many colours"--that would be fine with me, provided you cite me and my work in the notes of your fanfiction.

Where it can get tricky is if you'd like to take ideas from my work and apply them to your own, because there's a difference from just straight up lifting chunks of my world-building (i.e., the Riverclan shrine, the nine winds of Windclan, etc.) and acting like they're your own versus asking me if it's okay to remix or borrow these concepts to explore in your own work. I'm happy for people to play in the spaces I'm creating but I would absolutely want to be consulted first and always appropriately cited.

So basically what I'm saying is: maybe! If you can tell me exactly what you had in mind re: "use" of my story, we can probably work something out. While these stories are free to read and I'm happy to share them with you all, they're not free use stories. They are actually the culmination of considerable work and creativity on my part.

tl;dr: if you'd like to use my work in some way re: your own, please get in touch with me and tell me what you had in mind, since I have to judge these things on a case-by-case basis and can’t just give a blanket “yes that’s fine” or “no please don’t” without knowing the details of your intended use. Thank you!

#it's very flattering that you enjoy my work so much! but please remember i'm not a canon writer #i'm another fan creating fanworks for fun and not for profit. i'm proud of my work and i love to share it with you #but it is still work to create (what i hope are) high quality and well-crafted world-building and stories. #like if you like my story/stories and want to go 'oh this is part of my canon now' that's fine! #but if you then write fanfiction using your canon which is borrowed from my work please credit me because that's... my canon. #does that make sense? i'm the opposite of upset when people are inspired by my work but also please recognise the part my work played #reply

[e-lec-tric-in-di-go]

Would you ever write t+c fanfic again?

Hi anon, to be honest with you, I don’t think I will. Not in any long form anyway.

There are a couple of reasons for this, some of them related to my interest in them as a couple specifically, and others related to the way I’ve changed my mind on fandom, and real person fiction (RPF) in particular.

Initially, I was just going to list those reasons and leave it at that. But because you’re not the first person who has asked me about this, I hope you don’t mind me sharing my thoughts.

Let’s start with personal interest first. In any fandom I have written for, I have always been most interested in pairings that have an underdeveloped degree of tension to them. This gives me the most exciting options for exploring their relationship on the page, and since I write fanfiction first and foremost as an exercise for my original writing, I need to be able to fictionalize tension and mold it in ways that give me what I want.

With a pairing like Toni and Shelby from The Wilds, which is the only fandom I write for at the moment, canon has set them up in a way that leaves so much unexplored tension in their dynamic. Because I love character studies and “raw” relationships, this really works for me.

For a couple like T & C (leaving the RPF aspect aside for a second), the initial appeal they held for me, was the fact that they were unconfirmed. Just like many of you, I got pulled in by blogs and gifs and the need to see real life queer representation, which I think a lot of us seek and find in sports fandoms. I really enjoyed fictionalizing the initial thread of tension.

However, the more established they became as a couple, the more I started to lose interest, turning to other pairings instead. This is not because I believed any of those other players (say, Sonnett and O’Hara) were actually together (we’ll get to that in a second), but because that’s the kind of tension I crave to explore in my writing. To put it more simply, I’m just not that interested in T & C anymore.

Then, of course, there are the general issues with RPF. It’s taken me a long, long time to understand my own feelings about this. One of my most popular fanfics – if not the most popular one – is “a sum of small things”, which is RPF. I’ve struggled immensely with that story, to the point where I’ve had actual breakdowns over it.

On the one hand it is the most personal (and therefore original) story I have ever written. I’ve worked through a lot of my own past and heartbreak in the pages of that story. I reckon that’s why it resonates with so many people in the first place – it’s recklessly personal in a fictional way that allows people to project their own feelings on it.

And at the same time the people I wrote it about are not fictional. They are real people with real personal lives that have nothing to do with mine. And the fact of the matter is that I built the entire arc of “a sum of small things” on a perceived relationship between two young girls who I had absolutely no business writing about. A perceived relationship that was not only constructed entirely within a fandom, but one that was truly privacy-invading and harmful to those who were involved.

Here’s the thing. People will come and say that RPF is not about the people you write about. That the characters are their own and that RPF isn’t so different from writing for a fictional fandom. They’ll say that they just “borrow” the names of real people but that they could be swapped out for any other names at any moment. They’ll say that they never personally reach out to the people they write about, that it’s all just a bit of fun, a little imaginative experiment, and that that is what makes it okay.

I disagree. I used to say this, too, though. I used to excuse my role in the damage done by RPF, especially in the Fifth Harmony fandom, by saying that my stories didn’t imply anything about real life and that people were reading too much into it. You can make your au as au as you want (and I’m guilty of that too), but the truth is that even then, there is a very strong parasocial element to RPF that is impossible to ignore. The fact that we dare speculate about any of these people as though we know anything about them at all from what they show us online, has layers of damage to it that can be harmful even when “it’s just a bit of fun”. Even unintentionally, it can be privacy-invading, deluding, and compromising to the way we perceive entertainment, celebrity, and social media in general.

And this is not to shame anyone. I completely get wanting to see relationships in the real world that are like stories. I get being desperate enough for representation, any at all, that it’s easy to let your imagination take over. But for me, personally, I’ve had to grapple with the ways I was telling myself something was okay without ever truly thinking about whether it really was.

Of course, there are all sorts of nuances to this. I feel very differently about the writing I used to do for the Fifth Harmony fandom than I do for, say, the USWNT. Factors such as age, race, and (confirmed or unconfirmed) sexuality can further complicate RPF. It is also a discussion that fits into a broader cultural debate on the freedom of the author, one that is too complex for a tumblr post.

If I want to come to any point, though, it is this; I don’t regret writing what I have written, in any fandom. But the writing I have struggled with the most – the writing I have felt shame about and have felt deluded by and have had to come to terms with with regard to what it said about myself – is overwhelmingly RPF. I don’t think this has to be the case for everyone. I don’t want to preach or tell anyone to stop creating. But I do think everyone should ask themselves questions about the things they put out into the world.

I know a lot of people want to know if I’ll ever finish “a sum of small things”. This ask is not about that fic (sorry, anon), but for now my answer is: I don’t know. That story is mine in ways that make it important for me to finish it. But it also isn’t mine and the parts in which it isn’t, make me never want to look at it again.

May it be clear that, either way, I am thankful for anyone who has ever read anything I’ve written in any fandom, and I’ve loved what these stories have meant to people.

They mean a lot to me as well which is why I’ve come to feel this way in the first place.

#thoughts #sorry this response is so long #and sorry that I made your ask into something so big anon #but I’ve been looking for a way to talk about this #and your ask made me think

[djmarinizelablog]

A Conversation with the Author of City Comma State, kippielovesyou/ForcedSimile

Had a short interview with the author of City Comma State, @kippielovesyou/ForcedSimile and asked her if I could share our conversation online---she said yes!

Did you know that Hange and Levi in her work was based on Spongebob and Squidward's interactions?

Read the entire transcript below:

-------------------------------------

djmarinizela (D): if i may ask, where and how did you learn to write so good? what inspired you to write city comma state?

kippielovesyou (K): i don't mind at all! it's genuinely just years of practice. i've been scribbling stories since kindergarten (i had a long standing multi part series in first grade about all my classmates). i think one thing is certain: having a strong understanding of characters whether you borrow them or they are your own is pretty key.

a lot of points [in Isayama's story] could have been better thought out or tighter. however, we all love his characters. a weak plot (or in the case of city comma state: no plot) can be ignored or forgiven if everyone loves the characters

i'll be honest, i spend a lot of time trying to understand why a character does things or reacts a certain way. and yes, sometimes, that means i act out scenes in my car while driving. it's embarrassing...

there's a lot more to it, but to me that's the most important thing

as far as how city comma state came about: i wanted to do a slow burn romance centered around levihan, but I also wanted to show how all these characters care about and support each other. i knew in the confines of the AoT world, anyone could die at any moment and that didn't work with the softer feelings i wanted people to enjoy. how can you enjoy the friendship between mike and hange if he dies? it's possible, but it upends all the warmth we were enjoying. so i wrote an AU. i wanted to keep levi with a rough background with many walls, and i wanted hange to have her own issues that they can work through together. and i love the idea of them adopting/supporting the 104th kids without the fear of sending them out to war

D: your answer is so profound and helpful, thank you so much! I can honestly say you pretty nailed it when it comes to character development---everyone has a character arc in your fic! [my next question] is about the gender discourse in your story. I know you started City Comma State pretty early in 2014, but even back then, the nonbinary identity wasn't widely known before. How were you able to flesh out the discourse on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum and play it out on the dialogues and backstories?

K: it's pretty funny, a lot of the LGBTQIA+ has always been discussed i my family. we've had gay, lesbian, trans, gnc, bi and asexual people in my family for generations, as far back as the 20s (that we're aware of). hange's gender being debated made it a prime opportunity to write such an experience, some of which is borrowed from my own life. when i read older chapters i see certain slips in dialogue where i could have made an effort to be more neutral. we're in such a binary society that sometimes even if you feel in between, it slips in. in fact, i'm sure some people might take issue with the fact that i stuck with she/her for hange. i'm not sure i'd make a different decision today. i like this version of hange the way she is, and i hope hange's nb/gnc status comes across in more than just pronouns. hange's full identity is so much more than that and that is what i wanted to explore. and i think no matter where you fall on the whole LGBTQIA+ spectrum, you are more than just the label you've chosen. yes, in this story levi is bi/pan. but i don't think he ever says that explicitly, and he avoids labels. it seems fussy to him, which feels levi. discourse would not be his thing. i think even having a debate about whether or not he was bi or pan wouldn't be something he would want to engage in, he just wants to do what he wants. instead it's heavily implied. i think we forget since so many of us experience this discourse online and want to label things that there are people who don't want to involve themselves in it. it goes back to how would this character act. for instance, based on how levi is in canon, i can see many ways to interpret his sexuality. there's cues for a lot of different takes. but levi doesn't seem like the type that would need a definitive label in order to be happy. there's many ways to interpret hange's gender (and i've written several takes, some where they're more insistent on their pronouns), but i think hange's more excited to explore life than worry too much about much about how they're addressed or how someone talks about them. maybe another character might be more caught up in labels but hange and levi not so much

D: No, don't be sorry, I am more than thankful for your answer. I really appreciate it! I don't get to have these kinds of conversations with other writers, so I am grateful for your insights.

K: a really funny anecdote for you: i loosely based the idea of my levihan off of spongebob and squidward. you know, since they start out as neighbors and hange is more invasive than levi is used to

D: that's.... a stretch. but thanks for the tidbit! was the annual star wars contest also something that you do in your family? that part as well as all the geeky references won me over tbh!

K: it was an extremely loose inspiration! but hange mowing her lawn in the middle of the night so levi wouldn't be mad at her is on par with a spongebob move. and um...my family, while they can be a little nerdy, is not nerdy enough to do the star wars tournament! i made that up entirely

i just imagined hange having eccentric family, so they have very unusual traditions that none of the children question

i'll be the first to say a lot of city comma state is unrealistic and a little bit of a domestic fantasy. there's a lot of problems with money, employment and such that hange and levi SHOULD have but that's a little too real and not what i want to be the focus of this story. like hange landing a job that gives her a day off and she doesn't suffer a severe pay cut as a result? unrealistic. but i have other things i want to tackle. plus, in canon we have humans that turn into giants and 3D maneuver gear which would probably kill its user in real life. i think making certain parts of this fanfic a little idealistic is okay

D: are there other works that influence your writing? or authors that inspire you to write?

K: There's too many influences to count. reading is so important and even things that are bad are helpful. i actually was trying to read a YA series that seemed really cool and i had to stop reading because so many things were so annoying (I won't reveal which, since i think it has a small but dedicated fandom and i don't want to rain on their parade, it is purely a taste thing to some degree). instead of being upset and thinking that I wasted my time, i took note of what made me stop reading (that is a long list of things i didn't like so i won't bother to outline each one). even if it's something as small as a fanfiction that you had to click out of, ask yourself why you stopped. Especially with fanfiction: you already like these characters, what you're looking for is usually pretty specific (a pairing, an au, a specific scenario, etc). why, when this author has ticked all your superficial boxes, did you stop reading? and when you love something as yourself why. Ask yourself why you love the source material even! do you really love the plotlines and the world or do you love the characters? Is the dialogue strong? something to also pay attention to: people in general. how do they speak, gestures, facial expressions. really listen to how people talk (Youtube podcasts are really good for this!).

i think people would be surprised, a lot of what i really like to read is very all over. from surrealist novels, to classic literature, to science fiction aimed at children (i'm finally reading animorphs after almost 20 years!). and what i write for original fiction doesn't reflect what i'm probably best known for.

D: thanks for this, Kippie! looking forward to reading more of your works!

K: i'm still amazed at the response! writing is so solitary to me and i don't really look at my numbers. it never occurred to me that people would be discussing my fic!

-------------------------------------

If you haven't read Kippie's Levihan fic yet, here's the link to get started: City Comma State

#levihan #aot #snk #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #interview #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 #mine #djmarinizela

[chaoslynx]

hey, I'd like your input on a certain question I have pertaining to a hypothetical alternate ending of banana fish (the one where ash survives his stab wound). if you're not sure how to answer, that's completely fine, but I've seen so many people in the fandom claim so many different things about what would have happened if he survived, and I'm searching for a solid opinion.

I think the majority of the fandom can collectively agree that ash didn't need to die in order to heal from his trauma. I've see a lot of idiots say that even if ash lived, he would never heal or escape his past trauma, and so dying was the best outcome for his circumstances, which I'm sure the majority of us with more than 1 active braincell knows that's utter dog shit, and that survivors can heal no matter how big of a wound they may need treated.

however, I've seen people say that dying was his best option, NOT because he wouldn't have healed from his trauma, but because he wouldn't have the chance to heal considering the fact that he'd always be hunted down by his enemies. I've also seen people claim that even if he moved countries, he'd always be in constant danger because people would never stop looking for him. that he, as well as eiji, would have to live in fear and would never find peace due to the enemies ash has made during his lifetime.

I'm not sure what to think of this. I believe he'd be able to fake his death, borrow a new identity, and fake a passport to get on that damn plane headed to Japan. some have said that he wouldn't be able to due to his criminal record and so he'd never be allowed on a plane, which I also believe is dog shit. if that blond can scam millions of dollars out of and buy a condo right across from his #1 enemy without being caught, he can fucking travel. it's absurd how part of the fandom STILL underestimates his abilities, considering that he's shown time and time again of how capable and intelligent he truly is.

If you're able to answer, I'd like your opinion. we've established that survivors are able to heal no matter how big the baggage, but do you think he'd get the chance to heal, or would he always be on the run? would he forever be preoccupied with running from his enemies, or do you think his enemies would die trying to find him? I personally think that since his #1 enemy, D*no, is charred to a crisp, that he'd be somewhat safe from the rest. I don't think they'd even find him in an entirely different country in an entirely different continent.

but what do I know, honestly? maybe Yoshida confirmed that even if he did survive, he'd still be on the run until he died. I know she's said that murderers didn't deserve happy endings (bullshit, considering the circumstances that ash was in), but I'm not sure if she's clarified whether he would be on the run if he did hypothetically live. what do you think? no pressure :)

First of all, I'm a big fan of ignoring things Yoshida said.

I'm glad we agree that trauma survivors can heal! Also a big fan of that. Not gonna discuss that more here since we're already on the same page 💖

Before I get into whether or not Ash could ever escape from his enemies, I'd like to establish something about myself and my beliefs. I, personally, think that living is always going to be the better option. I am not going to be taking this question as a "could Ash have escaped his enemies, or is it good that he died?" That's not the problem here. The question I'll respond to below is "could Ash have escaped his enemies, or would he have always been on the run?"

This is an important distinction, because the first question implies that some lives just aren't worth living. I think your intentions here were good, so please don't take this as an attack on you in any way! But I'm not a fan of "living in fear [or living any other way] is worse than death" for a number of reasons. For one thing, dying is permanent. Once you die, there's never a chance of it getting better. It's literally a permanent solution to what often has the potential to be a temporary problem.

Also, any sort of "death is better" logic is a very slippery slope to be walking. If death is better than living in fear, is it also better than living with a permanent disability? With a chronic illness? At what point is it bad but still worth living through? Will Ash, on some level, always be living in fear due to what's likely post-traumatic stress disorder? Healing is obviously possible, but healing means learning how to cope better with a history of trauma, not getting rid of it.

So we're essentially asking the same question that we've already established the answer to: Is it better to live than to die? And, uh, yeah. Yeah, it is.

So anyway, moving onto the question I believe you were intending to ask: Would Ash have been able to escape his enemies?

Yeah. He would have.

For one thing, most of the people who actually gave a shit were already dead. Sure, the Corsican Foundation still existed, but most of them probably didn't think much of Ash besides him being Dino's favorite. There were those who saw Ash's mind in action during that month he spent with Dino during canon, but without Dino there, they have no reason to want Ash dead. Same with the ones who wanted Ash dead before the National Health Institute arc, if they weren't already dead themselves by the end of canon (like Kippard).

If Ash weren't going after them, I don't see why any of them would go after Ash.

Yut-Lung arguably had more enemies than Ash did by the end of canon, which was even Blanca's excuse for agreeing to work for him, but I don't see anyone arguing that Yue should have died. (I believe that he was canonically killed by one of his enemies at some point after Garden of Light, but does that mean that those 7+ years of freedom that he lived were pointless just because they came to an end?)

As far as traveling, yeah, Ash absolutely would have been able to fake an identity if he needed to. Like you said, he's done worse, and it's not like he doesn't have the connections for it. Although ...

I don't know if I've ever fully explained it in a fic or on here, but here's how I usually write post-canon.

Ash and Eiji stay in NYC. We know that moving back to the States and staying there is possible for Eiji, because ... it's what he does in canon after Ash's death. It's mentioned in GoL that Eiji moved back before he even healed completely from his gunshot wound, and that he got his Permanent Resident Card five years later.

As far as Ash, as much as a fucking pain in the ass it would be for him, I usually write him as actually testifying in court against ... fucking everyone. He gets help with this from Max, of course, and also from Jessica (who leaked Max's investigation, including the evidence they obtained from Frog, to the media in episode 23). In return for his testimony, he's granted total witness immunity for his crimes. ((Keep in mind that I know nothing about legal processes and how this would actually work in real life, but for fanfiction purposes that's how I choose to write it.))

So basically: Fuck Yoshida. Fuck death. Live your best life. YOLO.

#banana fish #ash lynx #cw death mention #long post #answers #anon

[zet-sway]

@the-wip-project day 35:

I don't know what today's question is but I gotta write a wall of text about what happened last night because holy shit

I was on the verge of falling asleep and, like I usually do, I decided to hunt for some spicy fanfics to read on my phone. I found one.

All my posts are long but this one is real fucking long. CW for touching on dub-con and injury mentioned in the type of context it probably shouldn't be.

It's time for me to admit that not only am I a oneshot writer, I'm also a oneshot reader. I am drawn to short fanfics. If I click on a chaptered fic, it's (usually) because it's rated E for smut and I'll go in with every intention of skimming it for the spicy bits. I'm not proud of this. I've avoided saying this for years because I don't want to disappoint people who work hard on their very long and well thought out chaptered stories. I have a short attention span, and I know what I want.

But anyway, last night I clicked on a fic with 5 chapters and some amount of words, around 30k? Long, by my standards, but I was tired and I just wanted something to read while I dozed off.

This particular fic hooked me in, though. I still skimmed it, but the writing was so unique in a way that made me writhe with writer's envy and admiration. Whoever wrote this had their own language - nothing borrowed - their own vision.

I guess I should tell the good people who read my posts (ya'll, seriously, thank you) that the fic in topic is called Fault Lines by Recidiva on AO3. I would link to it but uhhhh I may be using my work PC for "extracurricular purposes" right this moment ^^; so maybe when I get home I'll remember to add it.

I skimmed it - like I said above - for the spicy parts. It generally follows the plot of Bioware's canon. Thane begins as possessive and manipulative, likely uncomfortably close to dub-con for a lot of people. He kisses her and knows full well that his kiss will make her willing but intoxicated, and how he will use that to fulfil himself. But as the story progresses, he falls in love. Their relationship is what I'll call "edgy." Both of them are renegades. There's a scene where they get down in the shuttle after a fight and they're both still injured and it borders on downright unrealistic but fuck it, it's fanfic and I bought it. However their relationship develops a certain heart-wrenching tenderness. She asks him what Siha means over and over again, and eventually tells him she thinks "bitch" when he says it. But in that moment they have a playful banter, he knows full well she's probably already looked it up on the extranet, and they fall into bed together. The smut is mind-boggling.

By the time it gets to Shepard's arrest, he's taken up a place on Earth and visits her, breaks into her house arrest. There's a scene where they see each other for the first time in a while, she tells him how much she's missed his mouth and how it's not right how bad she wants him, and wants him bad enough to smother him with affection. She says something to the effect of "if you're looking to die, I'd volunteer to be the cause," implying that her lust is powerful enough to endanger his life. And it was at this moment I realized I fucked up.

It's established that I live in my own headcanon and I'm not burdened with considering the end of Thane's life as part of my fics. And the suspension of disbelief was such that I forgot he doesn't make it. So at this moment in the fic, chapter 4 out of 5, I realized "Oh shit this isn't going to have a happy ending." I skipped to the end right away, I wanted to confirm my fears.

In their final exchange, she asks him to lie to her - something that's repeated in other chapters of the story. I forget what he says, I was reading desperately, but he asks her in return to tell him something true. She kisses him and tells him she loves him, and he breathes his last breath with the lingering tingle of their kiss to carry him to the other side.

I was so entrenched in the depth of their relationship up to that point. The level of fathomless love the author conveyed, unlike anything I've ever managed to write before, but more realistic to my own understanding of love as I've experienced it. Not because they're renegades, but just the selflessness with which they feel, communicate, banter, and make love.

When I read that last paragraph, something inside me broke. That sounds dramatic but that's honestly how I would describe it. It felt like waking up from a night terror, when you bolt up in bed from a dream so bad you immediately get up even if it's 4am because nothing feels real and you're so terrified you have to get up and do something - literally anything to take your mind off it, to ease you back into reality. I put my phone down and stared into the darkness of my bedroom and told myself "it's just a fanfic, no need to get upset." And then I started to cry and I didn't stop for 30 minutes.

My husband was downstairs watching Bohemian Rhapsody and I went down there and wrapped myself around him so tight and cried. Bless this man, from the bottom of my heart - bless him - for his unfathomable kindness. I felt like a fucking fool because I was crying over fanfiction but he paused his movie and just listened while I tried to articulate how it wasn't exactly about the character death, or the characters at all, it was just the writing and how it wormed into my brain so convincingly. I felt the loss like it was my own loss. I am terrified of losing my husband. So many feelings coalesced and I realized one day I may be in that situation, kissing the man I love goodbye for the last time, never to hold him again. I'm at work right now and I'm tearing up because it's so hard.

I tip my hat to the author, but I genuinely wished I hadn't read that fanfic. And isn't it kind of funny after that grandstand I took yesterday about not wanting to write the pain of loss and grief, that I ended up reading it instead and probably fucking myself up just as badly, if not worse, than if I had tried to write it myself?

It gets worse, too. Because it got me thinking about my own writing, and how I could never hope to achieve what that author did. So I sat there crying out my painfeelings while simultaneously feeling like a shit writer and like nothing I put out matters. I got up from the couch, sat down at my PC and picked up where I left off in the Omega DLC in ME3 because video games are great for taking the mind off things. It didn't exactly help with the intensity I'd hoped for, but I managed to fall asleep, by 3am.

Fast forward to this morning. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed 4 hours later and drove to work. By some fucking miracle, no one is here right now except our field director. And I'm stewing in how this one fic really fucked me up bad, reconsidering everything. I feel like I've been put in my place.

So what changed?

Yesterday I posted about how I'm struggling to write a plotline. I know what happens, but I'm not interested in the little bits that tie it together. I want to write the romance. I think there's a way to write the plot and the romance at the same time, but it's damn hard.

I started doing this because I wanted to grow my skills as a writer, and I knew it might be more than I could chew. I'm at that moment now where I'm about ready to give up.

Even if I felt like a shit writer last night (and still kinda do this morning), I know that the stuff I've put out has value. We can't all write these epically tragic smut-romance-renegades-to-lovers tales, we'd all be sad all the damn time. There's a time and a place and - I would argue - even a need for lighterhearted fic out there. There are really no rules. I'm confident in what I know how to do.

But the plot. Fuck it, man. I think maybe I'm trying too hard to be something I'm not. I'm trying really hard to write like other people. I may have mentioned before that I saw a post about how many artists spend their time pining for the skills of others, thinking "wow, when I can draw like that, I'll have made it as an artist." That same post cautioned against this, basically saying you already have your own unique style, it's just harder to see through the lens of your own eyeballs. It's fine to challenge yourself but try to acknowledge what you do that sets you apart already. I feel like I have that something - maybe not to the extent that I wish, but I have something.

So what's the point of the plot? Why do I need to tell my readers how I cured Keprals? I'm asking myself important questions here. I like to think I've come up with ideas that no one else has, but as I said above, I don't read a lot of chaptered fics. I very well may have come to the same ideas as other writers and I'm not even aware of it. I don't know if my ideas are unique but I still arrived at them all by myself.

The challenge here - the thing I'm struggling so much with - is how to put them together with the same elegance of my fellow writers. I'm looking at you, shrios fam (yeah I'm calling you that, yall know who you are). I know I can write words, but it's like I have a bunch of pieces from completely different jigsaw puzzles and I'm struggling to make a new picture out of them. I struggle with the transitions between them.

The point here is I have to find my own way. And I have to stop taking myself so seriously. In fact this level of "seriousness" is one of the things that got me into so much angst over World of Warcraft over the last two years. At least I know how to recognize it.

I have to find my own way. I have my own things that are worth sharing. The author I read last night had a language all their own, and I have a language all my own too. Their wordplay was actually more choppy than I would ever write. I've talked before about how I'm scared of starting too many sentences with pronouns, how I maybe write too many run-on sentences, whatever. This author did that with reckless abandon. It worked for them. So if they can make that shit work, I can make my own shit work.

I have to find my own way.

My most current WIP is Thane and Shepard's first time. I've been working on it pretty nonchalantly because I hadn't intended to publish it until I built up to it. It takes place further into my timeline, and it would probably ruin the point of a slow burn if I put it out there now. There are some really memorably moments in this WIP, and there are other moments that need to be smoothed over as well. I never knew what I'd really imagined for their first time but I think I've mostly developed something that's unique in its own right, and I think will be fun for people to read.

I'm just so fucking torn over what to do with it. I feel guilty for working on it. I should be writing "other shit" leading up to it but I don't fucking want to. I actually wrote probably 2-3k words this weekend, which is a pretty staggering amount by my standards. Some of it was for this smutty WIP and some was for something I just threw together, Thane observing Shepard on Horizon and the emotional toll it takes on her. He's seeing her humanity. I don't know if it's worth it to continue but I wrote a lot of it and the words are more precise than usual for a draft, I don't know. I have so much fucking insecurity. Fuck dude. I want to write this longfic, but I don't want to write it. I want to skim to the spicy bits like I always do.

I am wracked with insecurity, of my own making. I know what I can do but I feel compelled to see this idea through. Somehow I have to find my own way.

TLDR I feel like if I don't publish something soon I'm going to burst and I don't even know what the fuck to work on first and fjslfjsojoiejrj

I would be really down for, like, a bunch of hugs and a bowl of ice cream shared over memes and fanservice.

#this post is EXTREMELY fucking long send help #ITT: i read something that probably changed my brain chemistry for a few hours and it's painful #zet vs 100days #i'm just glad to get this off my chest good lord #anyway if people want to send me links to their favorite shrios fluff i would welcome it

[ganymedesclock]

K, N, and P for the fanfic asks please?

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

See this is a bit tricky because I have a somewhat contentious relationship with the idea of 'angst'- not as it's typically used, but that I feel like sadness is a thing you have to balance and blend just right, or you end up with something that feels exaggerated and hollow and melodramatic.

My personal pedantry aside, though, I think that the majority of stories I write have some element of darkness and certainly some elements of hurt/comfort to them, even when it's about sparing a character who dies in canon. I have this "no free lunch" corollary where if a character avoids death, I feel like it should be a near miss and have consequences. So I have a take of Maria Robotnik somewhere where the gunshot wound didn't kill her but it did permanently damage her spine and she's a paraplegic wheelchair user; PK in Refuge For Resolve not only has the facial crack his unresponsive body in canon gained but he's also got a void-related affliction he's trying to manage, and Tiso in Nos Morituri survives taking a mawlek to the entire body, but has to face the possibility of permanent disability muscling in on the strength he was so arrogantly proud of to get himself into this situation in the first place, and changing his entire fighting style as a result.

It probably isn't astonishing to say that I also am a co-author on a long-runner Zelda fic I've mentioned a few times before and scars are a huge theme in that. But I don't generally think of this stuff as 'angst'- I think it's a lot of just, what interests me personally so it's stuff I like to play with. It makes it hard for me to really tell what qualifies as Really Heavy Stuff to other people.

Of my current projects, admittedly I'd say the Zelda fanfic is probably the darkest compared to its source material- like my HK fanfiction is set in a full-stop gothic horror universe so if I have PK surviving and actually reaching the emotional health to regret a lot of his actions and make sincere effort towards a better future that's pretty darn chummy compared to HK.

But that same tone- which is again, to me, neutral, because I just really like gothic horror and it's a flavor I put in anything- really stands out in Legend of Zelda which absolutely has fucked up stuff but largely consigns it to being sorta isolated and/or forced to share a game with robots that flirt with your sword and cynical clown men whose raison d'etre is shooting people out of comically oversized cannons.

So, uh, fucked up-ness is relative? it's relative. And it feels like, presumptuous as a horror writer to crown the most fucked up of my own ideas. That's for the audience to do. Squeeze the tears back into your body and tell me how they tasted.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

See this is another tricky question because I think all writers have some manner of love hate relationship with the idea of magic button that make story go brr without your input but also the pride in our creations hinges overwhelmingly on the fact that it's ours, and damn the gales or the ravages that made it hard to create.

Incidentally this is also why I rarely feel too miffed about people taking inspiration from my works or borrowing ideas to use for their own writing; technically anybody else could write another idea for me, or pick up one of the countless ideas or half-finished fics I'd discarded with time, and that would certainly be something interesting; it just wouldn't be mine, it'd be theirs instead. Which I think is a good thing about art. We can get very up in arms about faithful or unfaithful adaptations (sometimes, for very noble reasons!) but I think that in many ways the thing about ideas and stories is that even people with mutually perfect grasps of the text will have completely different notions about what it means.

And I think this is the biggest reason I like having an audience. I love hearing about what my stuff means to other people.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

I quite frankly could afford to do a lot more planning. I don't just mean this as idle self-deprecation!

Generally, ideas come very easily and naturally to me. Putting any amount of media or content into my brain causes it to ping all over the place like kernels in a popcorn machine. Even leaving ideas to fester just boils them down into stock that feeds new ideas. It's one way that my adhd definitely works with my writing process on a formative level, and I think that it is a big connection to the way I engage and interrelate with media. At the same time, though, if it has a drawback, it's that it's always easier to run off on a new idea than stick by a current project.

In that sense, to run with the 'gardener' metaphor, I have tremendous success getting things to take seed and grow, but not so much with an actual nice or orderly garden- but I've met some people with some absolutely beautiful topiaries and ivy-encrusted fountains, and getting older and more experienced myself, I've been getting more precise with the pruning shears and thinking harder about what things are going to mean. A great comparison for this is if you compare my 'early draft', Refuse and Regret, to my current ongoing one of the same story, Refuge For Resolve, I planned absolutely nothing in Refuse and Regret. I had the VAGUEST notion of where I wanted some things to go but I was really just running with it and deciding chapter-to-chapter what I wanted to happen next and while this meant it was tremendous fun to write, in hindsight it's pretty labyrinthine and potentially directionless. RFR, meanwhile, I thought a lot more on it- if nothing else, lining it up with my friend Meta's parallel fic meant I've had to think about certain achievements or thresholds PK runs into.

Admittedly, this does mean that a lot of ideas for Refuse and Regret went to the wayside. There was a concept I entertained briefly of PK leaving the Ancient Basin by way of the Deepnest Tram Station and getting shoved off a ledge to his (temporary) death by Galien.

#fanfiction ask meme #readmore #curse my unwillingness to make short replies and call them good

[signs-of-the-moon]

Where did you get most of the inspiration for your main story of sotm? I Love all the characters so much (which i think is pretty obvious by now ♥️)! And the same with the cute clan names :)

Tbh the clan names are very unoriginal. I chose them because I wanted the clans to be named after different biomes. Although Oceanclan used to be called Waterclan, and Mountainclan was Rockclan so I think you can see why those changed. If I recall correctly there was also once a warriors video that somebody made talking about their fanclans and 8 year old me thought it was the coolest shit so I borrowed their naming concepts.

My inspiration from the series comes from many places and differs between books. Warriors itself of course is the biggest influence, especially for Book 1: Moon Rise. I looked to Into The Wild for ideas on how to start things off (and I'm sure its easy to tell) because I honestly didn't know what to do with the beginning of Book 1. I had all the end story beats plotted and even pre-scripted but the start was difficult. If I had to start writing Moon Rise nowadays though, I have a better idea for how to begin. I borrowed story beats from a game I used to play with my stuffed animals when I was little. And I was also inspired by @scourge-sympathiser's medicine cat oc Yewheart when it came to choosing a villain for the story. Leafpool's Wish and Mapleshade's Vengence were also vaguely influential when it came to Snowfrost's story in particular.

For Moon High, I got the plot from an old story I'd made up as a young teen. The story was created during my time animating for Flipnotes Hatena (my beloved, I miss you </3) but I can't really recall what drove me to create that original story in particular. Probably some warriors AMVs I used to watch. Also, some of the plot and characters in this book are inspired directly from fans of Signs of the Moon (can't explain the specifics on that because that leads to spoiler territory)

And Moon Fall's inspiration comes from a combination of old stories ((like my first warrior's fanfic called Sammystar's Path. That book only vaguely inspired the idea for Moon Fall's villain tho, and not much else. You can check this story out if you want, its really old and cringe. Im considering rewriting it)), the plots of the two previous books, and from hopes/wishes coined by warriors fans for the canon series. There's also a bit of research brought in from a special interest of mine, which is cults, but I can't really get into that rn (because spoilers ;3)

In general I get a lot of ideas from other creator's works, like from their AUs, AMVs/MAPs, and fanfiction. If I have to name the biggest influences I'd have to give that credit to: the Fire and Water AU by @warriorsfireandwater here on tumblr, the original comic made by @foxglovesound also here on tumblr, What Is There To Do by aquastorm- on Wattpad (which inspired my idea for Grassclan's Partner system), another Wattpad fanfic called Icebreath's Decision by icebreathwarriorcat (the story is kind of cringe now but I can't help but credit it for it's influence on me and my motivation for writing), and a third fic from the site called Spark by POPPYTEA

#tysm for the ask Im really enjoying talking to people like this!! #also ik this is a kind of long and rambly post but idk a simpler way to explain this stuff lol #viti shoosh #ask #nyan-1233

[bao3bei4]

i have basically covered the material in this post several times on my twitter. but this is, in my opinion, the only s*xy t*mes with w*ngxian take you need. 

(cw transphobia, transphobic slurs, antiblack racism, mentions of csa and bestiality in fiction)

edit 6/10/21: hi! i’m realizing people are still reading this! this was written in response to aja romano’s vox article on the fic that was published in late february of this year. i had been frustrated with how their article seemed to miss the point in many ways, because they never talked about the substance of the fic. which, i mean, fair. i wouldn’t want to read a 1million word fic either.

but i already had, so i thought i’d write about some things that i believed needed to be part of the conversation. namely, that its author wasn’t a harmless troll, but a person i genuinely disliked who i believed should be deplatformed.

i think virtual1979 is a bad person. 

i think a lot of people mainly know about sexy times the phenomenon more than they do sexy times the fic itself. i have the dubious honor of being one of the few people who has actually read large portions of the million word fic, and that’s why i wanted to write this meanspirited hit piece. 

the fic is down right now and the author’s notes and comments have both been deleted, which is why i cannot provide screenshots. however, these are all quotes i have saved from when the fic was online, and i’m happy to talk with anyone if you feel any of these quotes are mischaracterizations of the fic. 

i also want to be clear this is not a “callout post” and i’m not trying to “cancel” them or whatever. i am just explaining why i don’t like them, why i don’t feel bad they’re being harassed, and why i do not find them sympathetic at all, and perhaps why you should also adopt these stances. 

let’s start with transphobia. 

sexy times with wangxian is transphobic. this much is apparent from the tags. virtual1979 tagged the following: F*tanari, d*ckgirl, Sh*male. they use this language in the chapters that include a character with both a vagina and a penis. 

they refer to this character (wei wuxian) with the pronouns “he-she.” the following excerpt is a fair representation of how this wei wuxian is referred to in the chapters where wei wuxian has a vagina and a penis. 

[Lan Zhan] would never be turned on by a female, and he would actually be turned off by a drag queen - but this… this Wei Ying, it’s Wei Ying, and he-she looks [...]

i know these words are common in porn categories, but they are also slurs. virtual1979 also uses hermaphrodite to refer to this set of anatomy, which is not strictly a slur, but definitely a stigmatizing choice of language. 

they have repeatedly made clear they are not open to criticism. they have also since removed the comment section. making an intersex character for the express purpose of using transmisogynistic language towards them in your million word porn fic isn’t annoying the way their tags are, it’s actively fucked up. 

fanfiction has a transphobia problem, and if we’re talking about sexy times with wangxian in any capacity, we must be clear: sexy times with wangxian is part of that problem too. 

secondly, virtual1979 is also complicit in ao3’s racism problem.

i think the way they write about chinese characters and settings is annoying and racist, but they are a malaysian chinese person, so i do have some sympathy for them. i am committed to having some patience for people who are annoying if they themselves are working through the prejudice they have faced. 

they’ve commented as much: 

Not gonna lie, this fic has been a steep learning curve for me despite my roots being Chinese as well, but I have absolutely zero knowledge in some of these aspects!

and i’m happy on some level they can get in touch with their roots. who among us has not been cringe and diaspora. any criticisms i have of their portrayal of chinese people will stay private and be made to other people of color.

i’m going to be clear here i don’t think the actual comment they made makes them super evil or anything. but this essay IS clearly in response to That Article, which did mention racism in fandom. so.

i think we have all seen the infamous karen comment they made, in which they compared people who criticized their tagging with “Karens,” equating antiblack state violence to... mean comments on ao3? and “SJWs,” which, eye roll. no ageism but you’re 41 why the hell are you complaining about sjws

anyway. i am deeply frustrated by the co-option of the word karen. a stand-in for a particular type of racist violence white women specifically can and do inflict has become fused with that reddit-type mommy issue “can i speak to the manager” internecine white resentment. 

so their trivialization of antiblack racism is another reason i don’t like them. again i KNOW it’s petty to point this out here, but this to me shows that virtual is afflicted with the same kind of fandom brainrot that aja is, where everything comes back to that same sort of self-centered bullshit. 

sorry for that jab. julian told me that aja thought that cql was about callout culture and all i could think was “wow! just like virtual thinking that--” because i also have spent too much time on twitter this week. 

this is just like. part of this ongoing pattern i’ve noticed with virtual, where they’re aware enough of real problems to acknowledge they exist (police violence, accessibility issues caused by their tagging) but are determined to double down on their minor relative persecution as king, shittily drawing parallels between like... real problems and fandom problems. equating the two or allowing the second to take priority over the former is like... par for the course for this type of person! 

third, this is just another clarification on more parallels between ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on by That Article. 

i would rather DIE than get into discourse. but why did they write this sentence: 

Lan Zhan’s rational mind finally broke with a tsunami of pedophilic lusts [...]

by the way that is the start of a 430 word sentence. and yes this fic does contain hundreds of thousands of words of aged down wei wuxian. make of that what you will. 

also why would you make wei wuxian teach baby chickens how to sexually pleasure him. do you hate these characters. what’s going on. i think mxtx should be able to sue virtual for that one. 

there’s a very obvious connection between mainstream ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on in That Article. sexy times contains multitudes and some of those multitudes are bestiality and explicit childfucking. 

this is not unrelated to fannish culture, they are not unfamiliar with fannish norms, blah blah blah. this is just normal fandom. they’re not subverting shit, they’re just a normal fan who unlike 99% of fanfiction writers on twitter, spends more time writing than posting. this has taken their fannish tendencies to cartoonish heights. 

finally, they don’t care about mdzs or wangxian. they’re literally just horny and spiteful that’s it. this isn’t a question of like... “ohh they were a good faith participant in fandom until they went joker mode” and the REAL villain is society/ao3. like no they wanted to write shitty porn, and when they found out they were annoying people, they decided to double down because they could be the main character of the mdzs ao3 tag every time they found a spare hour to write. 

here are some select receipts on that topic:

they do not care about canon: 

MDZS has quite a complicated and expansive plot and history, and enough content that one can choose to tune out certain parts and still get to the end of the story in one piece. Also, because of its source, some fans may not fully realize the nuances, cultural aspects (ooh, cultural appropriation is another triggering topic) or the full breadth and depth of the source material, such as a person like me, who is half-baked in terms of knowing what the canon universe is all about. So I end up playing with characters and settings technically borrowed from the story, and make them do things that would otherwise run counter to the original source material - and that draws quite some flak from those opinionated people I mentioned just now. It's part of what makes the fandom toxic. It's like they're the self-appointed guardians of the source material and they act like they own the rights to question such questionble fanworks, and dare I say, try to take down those that cross certain lines too.

they are just horny: 

After that giddines of extra drunken Lan Wang Ji scenes at the beginning, I'm blessed with Lan Wang Ji (Wang Yibo's, actually) fuzzy nips! Bless Bless Bless, and Amen! muahs the nips on the screen

anyway they did get nuked over wishing covid on people. 

so yeah. i want to be really clear. this is my thesis: i do not feel bad for them. you should not either. i do not like them. you should not either. that’s ALL!!!! 

#x

[brujahinaskirt]

@missn11​ says:

Ask and ye shall receive, fellow neonate! <3 Bear with me, because I’m about to hammer out 2000 words very quickly...

This massive rant by its topic nature is sort of Nines-critical, so lemme start by saying that, in my own way, I love Rodriguez. (I was partially self-burning in the shitpost that ignited this rant because I SEVERELY exaggerated Nines’s canonical shadiness levels in my ancient fanfiction, and for no other reason than because I was a teenage edgelord. I am appropriately embarrassed, but only by my excess and melodrama, not by Troika’s characterization. I think the writing behind VTMB’s Nines is superb.)

When it comes to Bloodlines, I think he’s one of the most psychologically interesting profiles in the game. In fact, I could never get into LA by Night because they so de-toothed Troika’s vision of him. Not to say LA by Night’s Nines was a poorly-developed character in his own right, ‘cause he wasn’t at all, but “my” Nines will always be unapologetically and only Troika’s: boiling angry, viciously pragmatic, a survivor who doesn’t let anyone too close lest they see through him, whose over-the-top confident façade cracks a little more every time his back’s against the wall. Troika’s Nines is the epitome of greater VTM’s “fallen rebel” archetype, and even though we don’t get to see it on all playthoughs, that makes it even better and more believable.

But as with all characterization in Bloodlines, we have to read between the lines and between our own play styles a bit to piece the truth of the puzzle together...

Besides the direct evidence Troika gives us—i.e. the music cues, which are a bit overbearing if I’m honest (sorry, Troika! ilu); the absence of Nines in Rosa’s prophecy re: people you can trust; and the overt warnings Camarilla-aligned characters give us about him—the biggest red flag about Rodriguez, imo? It’s twofold:

the way the characters he surrounds himself with talk about him and the type of vampire he chooses to fill his den. Namely: Nines exclusively recruits angry, spurned, mistreated people who are younger and far less experienced than he is

those messy, ugly, fleeting moments where you see his toughguy everyman personality crack

So! Starting with point one:

THE PERSONALITY CULT ITSELF

We can’t deny that Nines does not surround himself with peers. He surrounds himself with followers—people who don’t challenge him in any way, who are fanatically loyal, who openly profess their worship of him and their conviction he could never/would never do anything wrong. If you listen to how Damsel and Skelter talk about him, it’s with frightening adulation, often repeating Nines’s lines word-for-word without truly understanding the argumentation behind them. (Damsel’s the main offender here with her “IT’S A PYRAMID SCHEME… it just makes sense, you know? It just makes sense!” And then, of course, she gets pissed and refuses to speak to you when you push her into elaborating.)

Nines has clearly made himself much more than just a friend-figure or a Sire-figure to them. He’s utterly and completely mythologized by the LA Anarchs, held up next to other politically mythologized names like George Washington and Ho Chi Minh. His followers love him… but there’s a pecking order, and like good body shields, they believe their lives don’t matter as much as he matters. And they love that, too. They want to die for Nines. They’re not just willing to or resigned to it; they’re eager to die. Damsel will volunteer this information the first time you meet her. She just can’t wait to prove herself by taking a bullet for goddamn Nines Rodriguez. It’s literally how she introduces herself to new people.

And yet Nines deliberately withholds his attention and time from his followers. He uses his attention as a reward, as incentive. He rations some care and reassurance and help—makes you feel good and gives you reason to crave his attention—and then he pushes you away, back into his adoring ranks until the next “two minutes” you earn from him in which you’re special enough for such an exceptional, important, cool guy to talk to. That’s a classic manipulation tactic, and a classic personality cult tell.

And Troika is so damn fuckin’ brilliant about it because they don’t stop at showing us that an Anarch-aligned fledgling might feel this way—no, they make the PLAYER also feel this way. On our first playthrough of Bloodlines, we’re desperate to talk to Nines. We want the reward. “Let me finish the plaguebearer quests… let me run to the Elizabeth Dane… I hope Nines talks to me again now! Quick, to the Last Round! Maybe if I say the right thing to make him like me, he’ll give me another free EXPERIENCE POINT!” (iirc he’s one of two characters who will do so, and the only one who gives multiple points.)

But at the end of the day, Nines is indisputably the leader of the Anarchs, and even fledgling figures that out. (“Sounds like you’re the Prince of the Anarchs.”) He’s very much the Baron of Downtown LA, even if he won’t use that language. As for the grating day-to-day management and leadership stuff that might make him somewhat unpopular among the Anarchs, though? He fobs all that stuff off on Damsel!

Damsel, his Minion No. 1—whom a lot of players will hate on their early playthroughs, because she assigns tough missions with little to no reward. Damsel, who has no real power role in the Anarchs and functions only to serve Nines. You help Damsel, and you do Nines’s work—i.e. you do the work of the Barony of LA—and he doesn’t even have to take the admiration hit by having to ask you himself.

There’s only one non-follower of note around Nines. It’s Jack, and by his own words, he’s not one of Nines’s people; he disparages them, in fact. And we’ll notice that Jack—who is stronger, older, and wiser than Nines—very much doesn’t talk about Nines the same way Nines’s followers do. While Jack doesn’t directly insult him and occasionally defends him, Jack also has a downright shocking response to the announcement of the Blood Hunt. When fledgling desperately asks what they can do to help Nines—Jack says, word-for-word: I could give a damn.

Something ain’t quite right about this place.

Moving right along:

NINES IS A FAKE ALPHA MALE WHO KNOWS HE’S GOING TO DIE

Part of why Nines is so attractive to someone scared and weak like our fledgling (or Skelter or Damsel) is that he seems utterly fucking untouchable—like nothing scares him, and that must be reassuring when two of your age-old enemies are moving into town. But Nines’s tough, cool, Devil-may-care persona outs itself as a protective shell, too… and this is another thing I think Troika handled so subtly and so well.

You’ll notice that even Nines’s voice is dramatically different in a couple different situations: when Ming Xiao is borrowing his body, when he’s afraid, and when he’s distracted or deeply disturbed. (A successful Malkavian mind read will really slam a crack in his coolguy persona. For a second, the nonchalance shatters and he childishly screams SHUT UP!)

But whether you Malk him or not: In those isolated moments, the Coolguy Nines Rodriguez we normally see frays. Physically, even! His accent loses its burr (that ballsy rural American everyman accent), shoots up to a higher register—and reveals a much softer voice than the one he uses in front of other people. No wonder; part of Nines’s charisma comes from his performance of masculine confidence, and even if it’s not a toxically patriarchal masculinity in the way we often picture it, the fact this performance cracks at all shows it’s not his genuine self. He’s acting. In the way a lot of toughguy men do—but for Nines, whose survival depends upon attraction now, he’s acting toughguy for his very life.

I think those little fray-under-pressure moments are the “real” Nines, or as close as we’re going to get: scared, desperate, worn-down, and very aware of his doom.

Now, all that said…

BLATANT FALLEN REBEL CONCEPT APOLOGISM

I don’t think we can quite throw Rodriguez into the same Mean Monster Morality Dungeon for Evil Vampires as other Big Bads in LA. This is where motivation comes into play, at least for me. We know Nines can be merciless and violent, and he doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own soldiers (namely, um, US!) to protect his holdings. But he does seem to have a twinge of genuine anger over injustices wrought upon “little people” (look no further than Nocturne)—one that seems like it stems from a sense of right v. wrong rather than sheer pragmatism. This stands in stark opposition to the rationed pacificism of characters like LaCroix, who simply doesn’t want the headache of cleaning up a pile of dead humans on his nightly to-do list.

Nines also, of course, just doesn’t have the same kind of disaster reach other Bloodlines Big Bads do in how much harm he can cause. When LaCroix gets up to some bullshit, he crashes the national economy. Nines, like, crashes a car into a corporate office window or takes over a street or something. Can’t really compare the two when it comes to the scale of damage done.

And even Nines Rodriguez is, for all his strategy, still an honestly angry person. Not all of him is fake—what’s troubling about him is what he’s willing to sacrifice and do to satiate his anger-passion. It’s the standard Brujah emotional-moral struggle. Even though I agree with much of what he says about bloodsucking late capitalist vampires (tbh he seems to hate vampires in general!), one wonders if it’s not partially the anger-passion that’s warped him into the façade of a noble leader he’s become. It’s not a pure anger anymore; he’s weaponized it in selfish, unhealthy, destructive ways.

But if he’s a fallen rebel—and since he is still apparently capable of some genuine anger and sadness—then we can infer he wasn’t always like this. He fell, and narratively, that’s key to understanding Clan Brujah. Maybe he fell in a way all of us angry rebel-types risk falling if we let our hatred of the bloodsuckers in real life outgrow and consume our care for the real-world little people.

I think we also have to appreciate that—as far as we know—the shady shit Nines does, he primarily does to prolong his power. But for a threatened Anarch like Nines, power doesn’t mean expansion or accumulation as it might for an ascending Ventrue; it primarily means survival. The Camarilla and Kuei-jin incursions into LA have numbered his days, and he can’t possibly have any delusions about this, no matter how much he swaggers. So he does what he can do with the skills and limited resources he has. He corrupts vulnerable, angry, abused people by giving them the appearance of friendship, family, and hope they can become stronger—much like effective gang leaders do.

If he’s morally nastier than other power-players like LaCroix in some way, imo, it’s here. It’s the intimacy with which he manipulates the people around him. LaCroix may lie to you; Strauss may withhold information from you; Ming Xiao may double-cross you. But none of them ask that you love them. That’s not their goal; that’s not how they operate. None of them expect or encourage anyone to happily die for them of their own free will. If they get you killed, you’ll die resenting them—resenting that you had to die, at all.

But when you die for people like Nines Rodriguez, you do it willingly, if only because you believed he cared somehow and that he’d fight tooth-and-nail for you, too. You believed that you were a member of his little outcast family—or that you would be, if you just proved yourself a little bit more. If you just fought a little harder. If you were just a little happier about having the chance to die for the cause. Maybe if you die for Nines, then Nines will love you, too.

I don’t think he does. I don’t think he will. If he’s a true fallen rebel archetype, I don’t know if he can anymore.

That’s enough Anarchs for now! I’m gonna peace out with some copy/pasted lyrics from the theme song of Nines’s den: the ballad of the charming and vengeful Lecher Bitch. Stay sharp, my little Bloodlines fanatics!

Tell me your story Don't worry, I've been there Crown me your savior Don't worry, I'll be there

[Chorus] I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay I'm diggin' all the way All the way down I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay Gonna rip you every way On the way down again [Bridge] Don't belong lording above me Won't be hard to pull you underground It won't be long 'til you love me And I'll be coming at your back To break it down

#vtmb #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #nines rodriguez #tune in next week for my 5 page essay on why Wong Ho is the only nice person in Bloodlines! #not really #but maybe really #in conclusion nines ain't shit [drops mic] #[is mauled by damsel]

[hehron]

Golden Trio Midlife Adventure!

Hi, just trying my hand at post-canon HP to participate in the happy birthday harry writing fest by @fightfortherightsofhouseelves !

“What’s the birthday boy doing sitting all alone?” Ron asked loudly as he plopped down in the armchair in Harry’s study.

“Not brooding, I hope.” Hermione added, shooting a disapproving glance at the glass in his hand.

“It’s just pumpkin juice.” Harry told her, then a little defensively asked. “And why would I be brooding?”

Ron and Hermione gave him knowing looks.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Ron tutted in a dramatic fashion. “The fortieth is an earth-shattering explosion, like our new Fakequake Wheeze, especially for the faint of heart such as yourself, who don’t have all my hard-earned wisdom.” Ever since his great leap into the forties, Ron, heavily influenced by George, had leaned into the whole ‘Wise Old Dumbledore’ talk, despite Hermione’s reminders that he was nowhere near half of Dumbledore’s age or have half his wisdom for that matter, she added to Harry privately one day.

“Like I say every year, I feel lucky to have lived this far.” Harry insisted, though the churning in his stomach told him otherwise.

“Then why did you make Ginny exchange that comfy armchair she bought you for that new Dragon Taming Kit?” Hermione asked slyly.

“I need it! It could be useful on a case.” He defended.

“Yeah, right.” Ron snorted. “Unless you have the sudden desire to go on one of Luna and Rolf’s expeditions or developed a sudden, secret crush on Charlie-”

“Fine,” Harry cut him off. “Maybe I am a little upset but it’s still nothing compared to your I’m-Still-Not-Minister-Yet or Where-Did-My-Thirties-Go crisis.”

“It was a very understandable crisis!” Hermione said indignantly. “I was behind on my life plans by two months!”

Harry and Ron shared a look. Hermione’s life plan had been the catalyst to many fights and the butt of many jokes over the years.

“Love, you know our plans never really work-” Ron began.

“You mean your plans. My plans work out perfectly as long as you two don’t interfere.” She said with a pointed glare at Harry.

“No work talk on my birthday.” He grinned.

“Fine, but I want those papers back first thing tomorrow morning.” She said with a half smile.

“We should start our plans for today though. Don’t want to be late for Ginny’s big party.” Hermione said briskly while Ron’s face broke out into a huge grin at Harry’s confused look.

“What plans?”

“This is ridiculous!” Harry spluttered as they stood at the entrance to Honeydukes. A few people were milling about the streets but it was nothing compared to Hogsmeads’ usual bustle during the school season.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Just like old times.” Ron chuckled, pushing him forwards.

“I can’t believe you’re going with this.” Harry said to Hermione.

“It was her idea.”

“What?!” Harry exclaimed as Ron burst into laughter.

“Don’t look so shocked, Harry. I’ve come up with just as many silly ideas as you two. Or have you forgotten about Christmas 2002?” Hermione asked with a self-satisfied smile.

Harry shook his head, grinning.

“Still seems a bit childish.”

“It’s supposed to be childish, mate.” Ron said, slapping his back.

“So you don’t forget what it’s like to be young.” Hermione said, before rummaging through her bag and pulling out a silvery cloak.

“Where-” Harry began.

“I borrowed it from James. What’s an adventure without the invisibility cloak?”

She threw it over them, and they trued to squeeze themselves together. Harry suddenly had a flashback to the last time the three of them had been in a similar position in the town and felt a rush of gratitude that the two situations couldn’t be more different.

“Our feet are still outside.” Ron grunted, trying to stretch the cloth.

“Don’t rip it Ron!” Hermione exclaimed. “We can just cast invisibility charms on our feet.”

“Yeah, now it seems like a good thing that you quit the Aurors. You’ll get your feet blown off with those kinds of ideas.” Harry teased.

Ron made a rude gesture before Hermione dragged them both down the hidden one-eyed witch passageway. It was a lot longer but considerably less dirty than they remembered it.

“Must be the kids. They sneak out to Hogsmeade at least twice a week.” Ron whispered.

“If they ever found out about this after all the grief we gave them about sneaking out-” Harry started.

“Bit rich coming from you, isn’t it?” Ron snickered.

“As if you’re one to talk.”

“Yes, yes, we were rule breaking hooligans and have descended to stuck up hypocrites. But what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Hermione said.

“You’ve been spending way too much time with politicians.” Harry said to which she rolled her eyes.

Ron suddenly yelped as he knocked right into the exit. Harry cracked the door open and peered outside. Now that they were actually there, his heart was thudding frantically, a sort of exhilaration and nostalgia hitting him. A part of him had always missed it, the adventures with Ron and Hermione.

Hermione laughed quietly as Ron made an exaggerated show of tiptoeing outside. It was strange. They were adults, getting older by the second but at that moment, it seemed as if time had been reversed back thirty years, and they were the same giggling children they had been when they had first set foot in Hogwarts. That inexplicable feeling of remembering all the moments of happiness, bitter sweetness and everything in between, and knowing that they had not only made it out together but were still as close as they were back then, closer even, and that despite everything Hogwarts would always be there to welcome them home was all he needed.

The halls were just as Harry remembered it. This time tough, they brought back more than just their memories. They were mixed with several new anecdotes of the children and their escapades, with the three of them convincing themselves that they were definitely not hard teenagers while struggling to maintain straight faces. They had just entered the courtyard when they bumped into Neville.

“What are you guys doing here?” He asked, surprised.

“Oh, just, reminiscing.” Hermione said nonchalantly.

“By breaking into Hogwarts?”

“That’s the way we did it back then too, wasn’t it?” Harry grinned.

“How’d you know we broke in, by the way?”

“The Headmistress said the portraits said something about a secret passageway. I was just dropping off some forms for Hannah’s potions and said I’d check it out. Didn’t expect to see you guys.” Neville laughed.

“Oh, Happy Birthday, Harry!”

“You already wished me at midnight.” Harry said amused.

“Yeah, but I was knackered after the party. Can’t say I remember it.” The other man grinned.

“Particularly strong firewhiskey, mate. I had to take two doses of sobering potion in the morning.” Ron said sheepishly.

“You really shouldn’t have done that, Ron.” Hermione admonished.

“I know but...” Ron argued.

“Merlin! It’s like we’re really back at school again!” Neville exclaimed.

“Tell me about it.” Harry muttered, with an exasperated look at his best friends. 

“Oi! We’re here to celebrate my birthday. You can have your weird foreplay after the party.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Hermione rolled her eyes.

“He’s not wrong about the foreplay though.” Ron said, kissing her cheek.

“See what I have to suffer through?” Harry sighed to Neville.

“Like you haven’t done worse with my sister in front of me.” Ron said with a mock-glare.

“Why isn’t Ginny here, anyway?” Neville asked.

“She’s making the last minute party arrangements.” Hermione said.

“She’s going berserk trying to make it perfect.” Ron added. 

“Funny she says it’s for me but threatens to hex me if I get five feet near the decorations. I’d have hidden in the attic with a butterbeer if she hadn’t invited the whole PU team.”

“Harry has a crush on their seeker.” Ron teased.

“Who doesn’t?” He shot back, knowing Ron had Quidditch Weekly articles stacked away in his trunk.

“Well, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at the party.” Neville waved.

“Don’t rat us out, Neville. Or Hermione’ll have to stun you again.” Harry called, earning him a light shove from the brunette.

They made their way down to Hagrid’s hut and Harry was reminded of the many afternoons spent in a similar fashion.

“Looks like he’s not home.” Hermione said, noting the relative silence, that was only broken by a flutter of wings.

Harry whipped around to find Buckbeak standing there, looking at them curiously. He bowed and slowly egged his way closer to the majestic creature.

“Hey Buckbeak.” He said softly, petting the hippogriff. “Want to go for a fly? For old time’s sake?”

Harry turned around to find Ron sitting on Featherwhite, another hyppogriff, Luna had gifted to Hagrid, trying to get Hermione to get on as well.

“Come on, Hermione.” Harry called, mounting Buckbeak. “It’s my birthday.”

“There really should be a limited number of times you can use that to convince me.” She said, waving a finger at him but wearily got on behind Ron.

They took off and their laughter, and in Hermione’s case, shrieks, filled the air. Flying over the Quidditch Pitch, Harry promised himself to have a hippogriff race with Ginny as soon as they both had time.

They landed by the lake with Hermione swearing that she was never getting on one of those again.

“That’s what you said last time.” Harry reminded.

“And the time before that.” Ron added.

“And the time-”

“All right. All right.” Hermione laughed, shaking her head fondly.

They plopped down by the lake and watched the squid make a strange clapping motion with three of its tentacles.

“Even the squid’s wishing you a happy birthday.” Ron snorted.

“Even the squid wouldn’t believe a forty-year old could fly like that.” Harry boasted.

“Even the squid can’t handle two generations of Potters and Weasleys so close together.” Hermione said solemnly.

They chuckled and then descended into a comfortable silence, just enjoying the sunlight glinting over the still water. Harry thought back to the sunny days with Ginny in sixth year when the future he now had seemed like something out of a dream, and he realised that he was lucky, not just to alive but to be surrounded by the people he loved and who loved him.

A little while later, they strolled by the edge of the forest, talking about nothing and everything until they reached the whooping willow. Hermione was searching his face nervously while Ron casually suggested taking another exit. He knew they didn’t want to bring the mood down, especially on that day, and there might have been a time when he would have been too caught up in bad memories to even consider it. But now, all it reminded him was the thrill of flying a car to school in second year and the time he first met Sirius and the many, many, stories told by his kids. After all this time, he finally knew when and how to look for the silver lining until it outshone the black. They made their way out of the Shrieking Shack and walked towards the apparition point.

“That was...” Harry began.

“Oh, Harry! We’re so sorry if you didn’t like it. I just thought you would because you missed the field work so much and-”

“Hermione,” He cut her off. “It was amazing. The best birthday present I could ask for.”

“Don’t let Ginny hear you say that.” Ron interjected.

“Seriously, I loved it. I didn’t even know I needed it. Thank you.” He said, hugging her.

“A bit too sentimental, don’t you think?”

“Oh, get in here, Ron!” Hermione laughed as they pulled him into their embrace. It really was one of Harry’s best birthdays and it was only going to get better.

#happy birthday harry writing fest #harry potter #hermione granger #ron weasley #golden trio #post hogwarts #harry james potter #harry’s fortieth birthday #humour #romione #hinny

[tanoraqui]

ok my last review of my own SPN fic from the early 2010s gets its own post bc the other two were getting long and honestly this was more Good Omens fic than anything. Literally I lost steam on it when faced with the prospect of writing Supernatural characters other than Crowley (the fic, of course, being centered around the idea that What if That Was Proper, GO Crowley, and if so, How).

Once More Unto the Breach proposes that, shortly after the events of Good Omens, Aziraphale was yanked back to Heaven and tortured for a while until he, ah, saw the light again (with input of later seasons, I suppose I’d include Naomi in this somewhere), and Crowley was yanked back to Hell where he was tortured...and just kinda. Tortured. A lot. And had his grace stripped out, this one of the last of the angels who’d followed Lucifer in his fall (and idea SPN never got into but hella could’ve tbh; it fucks). And then, now that he was basically a normal mortal, for some reason they dropped him back in the timestream in like 1500s? Scotland with no memory, planning to let him lead a normal human life and then SURPRISE you’re back in Hell! Bitch! Suffer! 

Except instead of leading a normal human life, he (per canon spn) sold his soul to a crossroads demon for a bigger dick, and then, uhhhh, paperwork got lost and he just kinda ended up in the shuffle as a normal demon working his way up through the ranks, eventually becoming the SPN!Crowley we know? Aziraphale, meanwhile, has been sent out again to participate in the newly destined Apocalypse, Michael vs. Lucifer - ineffable!

And then, ofc, they meet a time or two...mostly very awkward and Aziraphale is like, “he’s superficially familiar but no, it’s obviously not My Crowley - who was evil and lied to me, ofc”, and Crowley is like, “what a weirdo.”

The Apocalypse fails to happen again. Aziraphale attempts to quietly duck out of Heavenly duties and resume his bookstore in London. Ch.2 of this fic - which I wrote! - is a pretty solid fic all on its own, of alternatingly Castiel’s and Raphael’s side showing up and trying to persuade him to join their team, and Aziraphale trying very hard to politely send them away before eventually snapping and joining Castiel. In the middle of a fight in a random heaven that happens to be an early 19th century British Navy ship in the height of a storm, because fanfiction is for SELF-INDULGENCE and nothing else.

Actually, u know what, just

“Is that so,” Ezekiel asked softly, playing with his blades. He had three now, his own and Castiel’s. “And how, exactly, are you going to stop me?

Aziraphale made up his mind. “He’s not,” said the bookseller, stepping between them and spreading his wings like a shield in front of the wounded rebel. “I will.”

“What are you doing?” hissed Castiel. “You do not need to die!”

Ezekiel laughed. “You?” He stepped back mockingly, and spread his arms in challenge. “Little brother, you are even lower class than the pathetic excuse for an angel cowering behind you. Who are you to challenge I, Ezekiel, Weapons Master of the Heavenly Host?”

Aziraphale stood up straight, spreading his wings wider. Lightning flashed for the first time in the tempestuous sky above, illuminating their feathery expanse.

“I am Aziraphale,” he stated, “Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden.” The scabbard appeared at his side like it always did, like it hadn’t done for over 6000 years. He reached down and drew the sword, hilt conforming perfectly to his grip. The blade caught fire instantly, and any raindrop that came near evaporated to steam before it touched the flame. “And I wield the Sword of War.”

Ezekiel’s step backwards was genuine this time, as was the fear in his voice.

“The Sword is a Weapon of Heaven, and belongs to Raphael!” he managed.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t,” Aziraphale said gently. It was an elegant sword, long and thin and rapier-like, and very clearly meant to kill. “This is the blade given to my hand by Michael, Commander of the Heavenly Host, when we all trained together as brothers. Before all the senseless bureaucracy took hold. From me, it passed to the human Eve, and there it became a Symbol to the humans, of War. It’s their Weapon, really, so I will use it on their behalf. If Raphael considers that ‘rebellion’, then so be it.”

ANYWAY. So, Aziraphale joins Cas’s rebellion and mostly starts sorting records in the very neglected Library of Heaven that contains a book recounting the life of every single person ever, bc that’s my idea of heaven and I’m right. But also he needs to rescue the nice young rebel angel whose capture kinda prompted him into this decision in the first place, and that means breaking into the really serious heavenly prison area...so he goes to the new King of Hell and bargains to borrow one of the lost Treasures of Heaven (remember those, from s6?) that Crowley has ended up with. They agree: Aziraphale can have the Crown of Pollution thing for 24 Earth hours, and in return, at a time of his choosing, Crowley will get a treasure of Heaven to which Aziraphale has access for 24 hours.

Upon getting the Crown back, Crowley informs him that the treasure he’d like is...Aziraphale, actually. The Sword of War, if he wants to be fussy, and Aziraphale is welcome to come along with it! After all, surely a warrior of Heaven is as valuable as an artifact. “You want me to...smite your political enemies?” Aziraphale says slowly. “Sure,” says Crowley. “Also, come to tea for 10 minutes once a week or so and tell me hte latest news from your little war. I never said the 24 hours had to be consecutive.”

Obviously Aziraphale is Pissed AF, but he’s also stuck, and afraid to tell anyone that he’s been Dealing with a demon. So he goes once a week to tea, and gives absolutely monosyllabic answers full of ice...

Crowley fills some of the silence by starting t just bitch about work...and offers booze every time...once, after a hard battle, Aziraphale accepts...he offers bitchy comments about the demons Crowley complains about...don’t do this, Aziraphale tells himself firmly; it’s not YOUR demon, and anyway that was still probably a lie, and even if it wasn’t (it definitely wasn’t) you can’t find him; he’s probably dead...and this one’s MUCH trickier... There’s an assassination attempt on Crowley in which Aziraphale throws his sword across the room to him and it catches fire just as it does for Aziraphale, just as it doesn’t do for anyone else...

And that’s kinda where I stopped writing, bc I kept just...not wanting to write scenes with actual SPN characters, even though I really did need to involve Castiel, if I wanted him and Aziraphale to have a, “wait, you’re working with Crowley?” “Wait, YOU’RE working with Crowley?!”

I don’t really know how the rest of all that was supposed to go, with Purgatory and the Leviathans and everything. Cas WAS definitely having Aziraphale do research, while he alphabetized the Library, into Purgatory, and that’s a whole additional level of “wow I thought you were legit but Apparently I’m Disappointed Again.” Aziraphale is angry at both Crowley and Cas, but *checks outline* when Cas absorbs all the souls and goes nuts, Crowley runs, worried, to tell Aziraphale. Aziraphale tries to confront/calm Cas, and gets the dubious honor of being the first person “spared” by the new god.

Somewhere in here, logically, Aziraphale must tell SPN!Crowley about GO!Crowley, and Crowley’s like, “weird. I mean, I guess I’ve had dreams now and then of flying or being a snake or burning-but-in-a-good-way, but doesn’t everyone?” (I didn’t write this down anywhere but, like...it must happen.)

Somehow (Library of Heaven? Someone finally found the lost paperwork in Hell?) Aziraphale and Crowley find out that GO!Crowley’s (OG Crowley’s!) lost Grace is in, where else, Hyde Park, turned into, what else, an apple tree. If he is proper Crowley, it should woosh back into him when he touches the tree...

Aziraphale watched it breathless anticipation (not that he usually breathed anyway) as Crowley rested his hand on the bark of the tree. 

Nothing happened. 

“Well, that was a bit of a disappointment,” said Crowley. He reached up and carelessly grabbed an apple, brought it down and bit into it.

Everything exploded in the bright light of Grace.

In the planning document, I’ve written that Crowley goes back to Hell to try to wrangle it and Aziraphale ditto Heaven, which I guess...is reasonable. Good Omens ends with them both happily fucking off to stay on Earth and that’s the happy ending, but here, early SPN s7 with Cas having just fucked off into a lake and exploded with Leviathans, both Heaven and Hell could really use a sensible guiding hand, and unlike every other time (ie, all the time) that’s true, there’s a genuine opportunity for someone to step in and have influence. So...

Verdict: 11/10 this fic still SLAPS; thank you for coming on this exciting journey of nostalgia with me.

#supernatural #spn #my fic #good omens #p.s. SHOUTOUT to the PAGES document format that these are all in bc i wrote them on my high school desktop computer #goddamn that was a While ago

[thessalian]

Thess vs "Original Material”

Fastest I’ve ever unfollowed someone on Twitter in my entire life:

“All fanfiction is bad. Doesn’t matter if you like it. It’s bad.”

This individual gives a pass to “reinterpretation and adaptation”, saying it’s “not the same as fanfiction”. It’s not even the quality of the work - someone called him on it and basically got, “anyone whose work is worth reading writes original material”.

To which I say:

FUCK YOU.

A few more coherent points:

He’s talking about “writing characters and worlds you didn’t personally invent in your own head” as making a work immediately bad. He gives a pass to reinterpretation and adaptation, fine, but ... what about comic books? I mean, any comic book franchise has had more writers and artists than I can keep track of, and they didn’t make up any of those characters! Or movies? What about the MCU, or the Star Wars universe? By his rationale, every single Star Wars thing from The Mandalorian to Rogue One to that Thrawn novel everyone dies of squee over - anything in the Galaxy Far, Far Away that wasn’t penned directly by George Lucas his whole-ass self - was ‘bad’. Okay, some people might agree with him and I’m not getting into that, but I don’t think it’s considered bad just because someone other than Lucas wrote it. Hell, given some of the dialogue Lucas came out with, only saved by the actors, that might be a plus.

Side note: I bring up the comics first because the man has written multiple comic strips and knows a few things about the industry WHY ARE YOU MAKING THAT STUPID ARGUMENT YOU SHITHEAD YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

Unless you are word-for-word copying someone’s dialogue and prose, you are writing original material. Doesn’t matter how canon you’re keeping the characters; the words are yours. What you bring to the work is what makes the work special. Characters and worlds take on the flavour of the writers who write them - like mushrooms soak up the flavour of whatever other stuff is cooking in the same pan. So that kills the argument right there: EVERY AUTHOR WRITES ORIGINAL MATERIAL UNLESS THEY ARE DIRECTLY PLAGIARISING. And plagiarism’s a whole different thing. That’s not writing; that’s malicious use of copy/paste.

Even if you wanted to press a point ... maybe the characters and worlds aren’t original, but the stories are. Doesn’t matter if it’s a slice-of-life between bits of canon plot or a coffee shop AU or PWP crackfic - the story is not one the writers of the original material wrote. The stories are original material. And yes, you could slap different names on the characters and change the world a bit and maybe turn it into original material, but that’s missing the point. The point of fanfic is often taking the world you love and exploring it in a whole new way. What is that but originality?

FIX-IT FICS. What about the people who write work specifically to fix shit that canon fucked up? Because let’s face it - in this time where some unfortunately very prolific and lauded writers place more value on GOTCHA shock moments than narrative cohesion, pacing, and subtext, canon fucks up a lot of shit. We’re allowed to want to fix that. We’re basically looking at Frankenstein’s monster, abandoned by his creator, and getting the poor sod a blanket and a hot meal and a few days’ rest while also starting a donation drive so he can get some therapy for his dysphoria and abandonment issues and maybe some cosmetic surgery if he can’t come to terms with the surgical scars. That’s not adaptation. That’s reinvention. That’s extrapolation in an original way. Doesn’t matter if the characters aren’t yours. Hell, if the characters and world were yours, you wouldn’t have pulled that shit in the first place.

There’s nothing new under the sun; everything borrows from everything else. It’s the interpretation that matters, what the writer brings to the concept. Basically all writing is bad at this point, simply because it borrows concepts from other works. Some things are pretty ubiquitous across genres.

Thing is ... I don’t care if he believes it or not. People can believe what they want. But you don’t say it. Especially when you have a fan base, a lot of whom write fanfiction (hell, some of them write fanfiction based on his own work) ... you don’t fucking say it. You don’t shit all over someone’s genuine enthusiasm and hard work and wonderful story that way. You don’t shame people for doing what they enjoy, especially when it’s not hurting anyone. You don’t make definitive statements, not even qualifying them with “I think” or “in my opinion”. You do not turn around to the people who respect you on the basis of your work and tell them not even that you think their work is bad, but that the thing they are doing is, objectively, bad and can never, ever be good because of the very nature of what it is.

LET PEOPLE TELL A FUCKING STORY. I don’t care how they do it. I don’t care whose characters they use to do it. If people want to tell a story, let them tell a story. It’s not bad. Fanfiction is not bad in and of itself. Fanfiction is good. There are bad examples of the breed, yes, but fanfiction is good.

I hate people who declare things like that. At least have the humility to call it your own opinion rather than objective fact. And that’s how you got removed from my Twitter follower list so fast I think I bruised my mouse-clicker finger, shitbird. And so I leave anyone who thinks that fanfic is bad just because it’s somehow not ‘totally original material’ with this:

#Thess writes stuff #A lot of it is fanfic #All fanfic writers are valid

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

I want to make one thing absolutely clear before getting any further into this: I am not in any way or form saying you are not allowed to ship whatever you want. I am not here to call you Toxic™ or Problematic™. In fact, I get hives when people guilt-trip others because of their fictional ships and make them feel like there’s something wrong with their head. I have many dark ships myself and know how the bashing feels so I would never do something like that to others. 

For a long time, I didn’t actually have a real NOTP, and this one was mainly born out of the fans’ reaction to She Li and his recently revealed backstory rather than the ship itself. To me, it seemed like some people took the “easiest” way with SL and MGS’s relationship and jumped straight to romantic love. When, in fact, I find their past and relationship much more complicated.

I liked what OldXian had to say about the matter, actually. Thank you @nira18 for going through the trouble of posting and translating OX’s comments for us. (I’m going to borrow them for a while 🙏) But before that, a few words about what I’ve learned about interpreting during my years as a literature major.

Usually, I have mixed feelings about authors “explaining” their stories because fan-readers often use them to attack other fans’ interpretations that differ from their own and make them less valid. There are actually three major players and powers when it comes to interpreting: the author, the text itself, and the reader. You can study texts from any of those major perspectives, but you’d be surprised how little the author’s intentions weight when reading and interpreting. In fact, scholars and students of literature are very rarely interested in them at all.

What many fan-readers don’t perhaps realize is that interpreting isn’t supposed to be some kind list of correct and incorrect that you should check with someone to see if you “got it right”. As long as you can argue your point by using the text, your interpretation is valid. Which is actually an interesting issue since so much of the fandom culture stems from the fans’ almost rebel-like ways of reading characters and stories. For example, one reason why fans write fanfiction is to fulfill their own interpretations the author hadn’t explored. Actually, fan-reading revolves around the age-old question of literature: to whom does the power of interpreting belong after a text has been published, the author or the writer? So, why are we somewhat hypocritical when it comes to fan-interpretations that differ from our own?

All that being said, I’d still like to take a look at OX’s comments. But I don’t wish to use them as weapons, though. I’ve been saddened by how people seemed to almost rub them in the shippers’ faces.

“Two people can’t just stand in one place together and fall in love! [Laughing crying] There are many kinds of feelings in the world, family affections, friendship affections, romantic affections, hatred, jealousy, etc. I personally believe that the often interesting relationships (?), are complicated and unexplainable.” X

As I said earlier, when SL’s backstory and his first connection with MGS were revealed, some fans jumped straight to the romance wagon and saw SL being so hung up on MGS as romantic jealousy. I see where the shippers are coming from but find that a whole plethora of feelings that would fit between hate and romantic love is in danger to be bypassed. As OX said, there are many kinds of feelings in the world, and many of them are nuanced even though they share some common denominator. I am not saying people can’t see SL and MGS romantically, but it’s a bit frustrating if they choose to ignore all of other, more complex options. Just because 19 Days is a shounen-ai doesn’t mean there can’t be any other kinds of relationships.

Partly, my frustration stems from my “protectiveness” of SL’s character. It’s no secret I’m very interested in and intrigued by him. I realize he’s the bad guy of the story and fully understand why the majority of the fans hate him with a burning passion. But I can’t bring myself to dislike him. He’s in the long line of antagonists who have found their way into my heart.

I find SL’s character highly complex which is why I don’t want to brush his feelings towards MGS and role in the overall story off as romantic love. It feels way too hasty. To go to such extreme as “love” is too easy and cuts too many corners.

What I think SL and MGS’s relationship could be boiled down to instead is “misery loves company”. SL had once managed to pull MGS down with him and intends to keep him there. Because if MGS gets freed from SL’s world, it would quite painfully point out how messed up SL’s life is, too. Which brings me back to OX’s point about nuanced feelings. To see others you thought shared your misery actually try and climb out of the pit, is its own form of jealousy. When I see SL being so hung up on MGS, I don’t see romantic jealousy but something more complex.

I like what @casually-inlove said about the different roles of SL and HT in her answer. HT is a savior of sorts in MGS’s life, someone who believes in him and strives to make him “an outstanding person” aka not ruin his life by becoming a part of the criminal gangs and underworld for good. The opposite of what SL ultimately wants to.

And the change in MGS must have been apparent enough for SL to take notice. Since MGS has gained more people who actually see good things in him and even admire him, it’s given him more self-esteem and confidence and started to convince him he’s not an outcast good-for-nothing delinquent. He’s been looked down by his peers since his childhood and after a while, he’s started to believe in that image, too.

Hope is a very strong motivation in life, and SL seems to despise the idea of MGS having any of it. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel that would ultimately lead MGS out the world he’s shared with SL.

Up until HT got involved, SL had managed to snuff out MGS’s hope quite effectively. He’s manipulated him by using the carrot by talking about “destiny” and seemingly giving MGS what he knows he’s desperate for:

But he also wasn’t hesitant to use the stick when he needed to remind MGS of his place. There’s a lot to be said about using gratitude as a way to manipulate others but it’s very effective and something SL seems to go for a lot:

I don’t know if SL actually believes MGS owes him for the rest of his life and sees himself as some kind of grand savior. It’s possible, I suppose, and would somewhat explain why he’s trying so stubbornly to hold on to MGS even though he obviously has quite a lot of followers already. SL seems to have a compulsive need to control and possess other people and sees MGS trying to leave his side as a betrayal. No one is allowed to think their debts have been repaid until he says so. Now, why is it like that is the million-dollar question. Why is he so desperate to shackle people to himself like that? Is it simply about power or something deeper?

We don’t know exactly how SL saved MGS either, but ultimately I think it’s about giving MGS a place to belong when others discriminated against him. He took advantage of MGS’s growing bitterness and strengthened his poor image of himself by creating a vicious cycle of being involved in gangs and further more estranging him from his peers. As I said in my earlier post regarding MGS’s character, there’s no faster way to turn someone into an outcast than by making them bitter and pushing them to join like-minded people.

However, it’s also possible it didn’t begin that way. It’s unclear to us how long MGS and SL have known each other. Their first encounter was revealed in ch 294, but it seemed one-sided. How soon after this

did MGS and LS meet again? Did SL recognize MGS? Were they actual friends at some point, and it all went to hell later on? Did they perhaps bond over both being seen as weirdos and outcasts by others? (As a side note, I’d like to recommend this piece of fanart by @naesol that I think offers an interesting possibility of how things might’ve gone down between them.)

At this point, you might rightly wonder how on earth I could like a character like that. A despicable manipulator who exploits others’ weakness and wants to drag them down with him. It’s actually partly why I don’t see a romantic connection between MGS and SL.

As crazy as it sounds, I relate to some of SL’s character. Up to a point, I see my own shortcomings in him. When I see him being jealous of MGS trying to turn his life around, ultimately leaving him behind and feeling betrayed by it, I 100% recognize that feeling because I’m prone to it myself. In those situations, I don’t go wielding pocket knives or try to manipulate them out if it, of course, but I can’t bring myself to genuinely root for them, either. Instead, I tend to feel jealous, envious, and bitter. When I see others fix the things in themselves that I hate about myself, I silently wish them to fail because if they can do it, what’s my excuse for not doing the same? I’m not proud of this side of myself but it is the truth.

And that’s why I think it’s dangerous to bash other people for what they ship or what characters they like. You can’t possibly know the reason why and can make them feel really shitty about themselves by assuming they just don’t know right from wrong or want to romanticize problematic things. The thing about fiction is that it provides us a safe environment to experience and discover different feelings, some of which can be weird or scary or conflicting, and possibly recognize those feelings in ourselves and work on them. And people should be allowed to do that without being bashed or made assumptions about by others.

All in all, because I relate to what I interpret SL is feeling I don’t recognize the romantic aspect some readers find between them. I think it’s more based on fanon than actual canon, but that doesn’t mean I have the right to tell anyone what to ship.

30 day 19 Days challenge

#30 day 19 days challenge #she li #mo guan shan #19 days #kinda long post again #but this has been on my mind for a while now #and what sometimes bothers me about this fandom

[saltymedicaesthetic]

･*+.Fanfiction Recs.+*

Continuity by ladydragon76

Rated M, 13k one-shot, G1, the best MegaRatch thing to ever be written

Ratchet is transported to the past in an accident and who’s the one to find him but a young Megatronus? He comes to find the poet and inspirational leader someone he wants to spend time with and completely forgets all about trying to find his way home. The focus on pre-war Megatron is just 👌👌👌 there are no words. Even if you don’t ship it, give it a try. You might be shipping it by the end (which is amazing btw).

Terms of Service by @xenargon

Rated T, 137k, TFP/RiD, the reason I like sparkling fics now

This fic make my aroace heart happy with the decided lack of blatant shippiness and sexuality. Still, it primarily features WaveWave and follows them in a post-war space adventure with the other Decepticons. There are elements here borrowed from the Metroid video games but since I’ve never played it was like reading an original story with my favorite robots hehe. Very compelling, very plot driven, and the characters are so well done it was like watching the show. The baby is just a delightful bonus! There’s a sequel currently in the works as well.

Déjà Vu by MooseKababs

Rated M, 115k, TFP/RiD, one of the best fanfics I’ve ever read

I ugly cried at the end, it was so good. If you want a fix-it for KOBD that simultaneously gives us an in-depth look into their past and how they got together, then this is the fic for you. Follows along the plot of RiD from Knockout’s perspective and gives a much needed look at Cybertron during all that chaos. Also has a flashback every other chapter to the war pre-Earth. Might as well be canon, that’s how solid the writing is. Shout out to my boi Sunstreaker who finally gets addressed. I’ve cited this on a post before as my go-to comfort fanfic even though I’ve never reread it. I should though. I might now that I’m thinking about it haha.

Taking it Further by @dangerouslyclassyhottub

Rated M, 112k, IDW Lost Light, also one of the best fanfics I’ve ever read

This fanfic is everything to me lol. It’s one of the few fanfics I’ve ever reread because it’s the best. Primarily features ThunderRod with a notable amount of Dratchet and some other ships sprinkled in. Basically what would happen if Rodimus initiated a secret relationship with the Greatest Autobot and would do anything to keep it secret. I was frustrated with the two of them like the whole story. Himbos who can’t be honest with their feelings. Lots of pining even though they’re literally sleeping together. Getaway is an ass as usual but it’s delightfully devious. It’s a great read. Inspired by Taking Its Toll by kibahshi which is also very good for a PWP.

Ultra Magnus Drabbles by charivari

Rated M, 68k, IDW Lost Light, incomplete but that doesn’t take away from the story

A collection of drabbles all focused on, you guessed it, Ultra Magnus. Primarily features RodiMags and MiniMegs, but there are a lot of other little ships here and there. They really satisfy my polyamorous ass haha. It follows a linear pattern; most of the drabbles are connected. Amazing Shattered Glass drabbles. This fic is the reason SG!Minimus is my favorite SG character now hehe. Another one of the few fanfics I’ve reread, it’s that good.

Kill Your Heroes by Eisengrave and selwyn

Rated M, 138k, IDW, the reason I love Tarn as a character now

This is a roleplay thread in fanfic form that focuses on a post-war Cybertron where Tarn becomes one of the world’s leaders. Primarily features Pharma/Tarn, with some tasteful MegOp on the side and a brief dabble in Overlord/Trepan. It is by no means an example of how relationships should be, but it was delightfully tasty in the evil Tarn department. It also inspired me to search for a TF roleplay partner of my own! Now I have a new fwiend lol

#transformers #g1 transformers #transformers prime #idw transformers #maccadam #fanfiction #fanfic rec #fanfic #tfp #robots in disguise #rid2015 #megaratch #wavewave #kobd #thunderrod #rodiclash #dratchet #rodimags #minimegs #tarnma #overpan #rocky.rambles #i hope these blurbs do my faves justice