Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:
I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.
IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.
I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.
Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).
Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.
At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).
Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.
So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.
Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.
Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).
Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.
The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.
sin has been swearing since his first appearance but due to his status as the resident pure of heart, dumb of ass cinnamon roll over half the fandom is convinced that he legally cannot know what the word fuck is. the sad part is, they’re half right
Wait people think Sin doesn't know/say "fuck"?? Did they forget something????
hi!!! do you have any writing or anything abt those characters nova, sol, devin, and ruby? im scrolling thru ur tags trying to figure out what their deal is lol
(also that luz + hunter qpr fic you wrote permanently changed my brain chemistry. thank you for putting it into the world. undoubtedly one of my fav owl house fics ive ever read)
oh thank you so much re: the owl house fic!! i love luz and hunter so Much and want to write like 100,000 more words about them
i don't have a whole lot of new snippets to post of the original fiction project but you can look thru my tag for it to see some notes and scenes drafted over the past ~3 years. granted, the project has evolved a lot since i started writing it, so plenty of stuff is no longer canon-accurate!
that said, it's been a while since i talked about these characters and the story they're in, so!
like most of my owl fics (and fics for other fandoms), it's a story that's largely about grief and chronic illness; it's also a story about power and what people do with it
without getting too heavily into plot spoilers, the main cast are:
sol (she/her): full name "winter solstice," certified loner bitch with very clear Issues. she has a stranglehold on the sex work industry in her fictional city in this fictional world & very little interest in ceding that power. she's originally from a place that has been blighted by famine & has a bunch of trauma from all kinds of sources, nowadays she only trusts two people in the entire world fully -- devin and ruby. also, she hates nova's guts and wants nova dead in the most grisly way possible.
ruby (she/her): full name "ruby sunrise," hails from the same place and cultural background as sol, shares her native language and her traditions. ruby cares more than sol about preserving both sides of her heritage & culture (she's biracial), and she's very invested in kindness and decency. what she wants more than anything is to leave a positive mark on the world, but she's lonely and lacks a lot of the support she needs. she loves both sol and devin fiercely.
devin (he/they/she): in pain pretty much constantly because of a chronic illness that's Supposed to be a "blessing"; they're a powerful magician who functions as the reincarnation of a god. this position comes with a lot of responsibilities and varying miseries. devin has made a lot of questionable choices in her quest for autonomy and for making the world better; nowadays she spends a lot of time helping sol do grisly crimes and trying to protect underprivileged people. all while knowing that their magic is a terminal autoimmune disease.
nova (she/her): like devin, she functions as the reincarnation/personification of a god. because of this, she and devin are fated soulmates, which she is determined to honor even though devin hates her and does not want to be her soulmate and has made no secret of that. she comes from a privileged background with an idyllic childhood, tons of adult support, and very little strife. she believes that the best thing that she can do is serve her purpose of preserving the status quo, and she's Extremely Vexed when people make this harder for her. also believes she can outrun the autoimmune part of her magic with yoga and jogging.
all four of them function in my usual sweet spot of "people who all kind of suck and are making kind of terrible terrible decisions, but who are also doing the best they can with what they have." and. i love them
So I’ve been going through the tags (and followed immediately after cuz ur really cool and I love ur art and fics <3) and I’m obsessed with burnt marshmallow!monkey and the whole ‘the glamor acts like an second layer of skin to this very touch starved man’ and now I’m curious how the others would react if it ever accidentally slipped off. Angst inbound 😈
(Anyway ur amazing bye!)
This ask actually made me so happy HI BGASDFMA;OGHOAWEF I am also obsessed with Burnt Marshmallow!Monkey King bG;LKMAWOEF
I actually have a bit of something in the works regarding the Burnt Marshmallow. It's a slow moving work in progress but *evil cackling* UR RIGHT ABOUT ANGST INBOUND MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Funny thing is tho, the initial reveal of what he actually looks like isn't something I have planned out yet, I more have aftermath moments and stuff like that planned and half-written and the recovery from complete alienation from touch for hundreds of years bKAMOKLJSADF
Anyway though, sure is gonna be fun. Imagine seeing something that was your mentor/father figure one second and then suddenly it's this demonic pile of burnt fur with red eyes and sharp teeth. Once Wukong realizes his glamour's down, all of his attention focuses on Mk and the way he flinches back when he looks at him. Involentarily because he looks so different, he doesn't know if it's actually him. Heck, Mk's had people (looks at macaque) pretend to be Wukong before, so this could just have been another person trying to impersonate his mentor-- But to Wukong that's fear of him. Of what he looks like. Not fear of... y'know, him being a completely different person. He's so paranoid about his own appearance he misunderstands the way Mk steps back. Mei draws her sword, he doesn't even really register it, because all he can see is Mk being afraid of him. And it's gonna take them a hot second to figure out what's happening because he certainly isn't going to be up to communicating when his worst fear is his reality.
Just bear with me, you guys. I went through the efforts of making this concept art sheet because I very much needed to give Ursa a full makeover X'D bottom left is a reference for what she would have looked like as she was seen in Gladiator chapter 207, so not that much of a spoiler!
In a slightly more distant future in the story, though... upper left + the center and right ones are meant to depict Ursa's more cleaned-up appearance. I wanted it to look dignified... but I also wanted it to be simple, to a fault. The royal grandeur is supposed to be mostly absent from anything physical, only retained by the stern expression and her stance, hence, making it so her dignity is more than skin-deep? :'D if that works?
I really don't do character design sheets like these often (... or ever, really), but I needed to solidify my idea of what she looks like in Gladiator in order to depict her properly here xD I really wanted to get it right and give her a very different feeling and atmosphere from canon's Ursa while stil holding a handful of factors in common with her. I was also very determined to ensure there were maaaany gray hairs: Ozai should have just as many if not more of them, but Gladiator's Ozai has already confessed he plucks them out because he's a diva that way. Our Ursa's more down to earth than him in just about all regards as of late, including not losing her mind to vanity over her graying hair xD
Anyway! I hope you guys like this Ursa concept art. It's wild that the day has come when this character has me so HYPED, but I never imagined how much potential I'd find in her by just letting canon be its own thing while I develop her in ways that felt right for me and my story. There's so much about her that I can barely wait to share with everyone... but I have to be patient xD for now, though, I drop this little concept art for everyone to join me in the hype train of finally seeing Ursa taking a bigger role in Gladiator chapters yet to be released...
i find it disturbing how many people, particularly other queer people, are now looking back at their own personal history of ceaselessly harassing and traumatizing their fellow community members for being aspec, mspec, nonbinary, polyamorous, etc. and still not see anything inherently wrong or fucked up about their actions/words.
on the other hand, i want to thank the people who have come forward about their role in targeting people in these communities and working to learn and do better, and put an end to exclusionism and lateral aggression in queer spaces, both online and offline.
regardless of whether they've apologized or even feel bad at all, i hope these people know that none of us will ever be obligated to forgive them. i personally never will.
despite the writers' best efforts to make them all shallow caricatures except adam--especially ivan--the sutekh-shu-ras are an excellently sad, fucked up dysfunctional mess in all directions and i really need to write up meta about them
WHY DON'T PANIK AND TYTO HAVE DESIGNS. THEY'RE COOL AND RELEVANT!!!! 😤😤😤😤😤
ok answering this now just to say that it's because almost all the other characters had a design first and THEN a personality/role. tyto and panik had their role made later and I DID go thru a design or two but since I was working backwards it just. didn't work out? like ok a character getting a design at the same time as they got a personality/role is EXTREMELY rare with all of these. if a minor character has a face it's probably because the face came WAY before the character lol. like pedal had a design before gazer did but wasn't shoehorned into the story until like a few months ago. nil only got a face until like MAYBE a year ago after not having one for almost 4 years despite having a VERY developed character arc. like I've also got a hefty amount of other unused designs I probably COULD make tyto and panik but I just haven't clicked with anything yet
me: hey, remember how you have like three WIPs right now and you really wanted to work on one of those today?
also me: mhm, yeah, ok...but hear me out. what if we planned our next longfic instead?
me: I--
also me: it's gay
me: …you're not playing fair
also me: i mean, this idea could have remained a oneshot, but you had to keep thinking about it. so that's on you