#in their og lore they're just a detective

[watari-apologist]

do you think there would have been watari/L shippers within the death note universe?

personally, i think pre-kira, there was a small fandom surrounding the top detectives like L, deneuve, and coil, and most of the people in the community would ship them amongst each other. but there would be a dedicated subsection of the fandom made up of mostly people whose favorite detective was L who were absolutely obsessed with watari/L. i feel like most of the fics would either be really soft fluff portraying them with a sort of king/knight dynamic, or shameless smut of a bdsm dom and his hyperobedient sub.

post-kira, the detective fandom tag on ao3 would get flooded by kira/L fans who are unfamiliar with the fandom's history, inside jokes, etc, thus causing the older fans (especially ones who like deneuve or coil more than L) and the watari/L fans to develop a superiority complex over the new fans since they're, like, veterans or something. i don't know

(teeeeechnically death note takes place at a point in time slightly before modern fandom, the way we know it, but let's pretend haha)

while that kind of fandom would definitely see a lot of new people joining (as is the case with most fandoms when A Big Thing Happens, in this case the lind l. tailor broadcast), the impetus of kira/L would probably still come from the og fans themselves. prior to the broadcast there'd be theorising on if/when L would get involved, i imagine, and a select few fans would already be writing kira/L fic. mostly a crackship thing at that point, you know.

(also there is DEFINITELY already kira rpf, which exists separately from the detectives fandom at the time, so kira/L is crossover created by the fans who are in both communities)

fic of L, deneuve and coil setting their differences aside voluntarily or being forced to team up in various couple or threesome constellations to solve the kira case - and have a lot of very plot relevant gay sex on the side - springs up almost immediately too. sometimes kira kills one of them to heighten the drama. L taking the case, getting killed and then deneuve and coil banding together to avenge him is a fan favourite.

the watari/L crowd are on the ball as well: you've got the obvious where one of them gets killed by kira and the other tearfully avenges them. you've got watari getting kidnapped to blackmail L (which was probably already pretty popular in watari/L fics tbh; it's just good angst). and of course that one writer who has every watari/L shipper scream praise and obscenities at them in the comment section because 50k words into a fic, they drop the reveal that watari was kira all along and L is completely at his mercy now and things get REALLY dark REALLY fast.

and then tailor gets killed live on television and L directly challenges kira. the few fans lucky(?) enough to live in the kanto region who actually saw the broadcast in person come in screaming and crying, first liveblogging what's happening and then posting recordings uploaded to youtube, and the fandom LOSES ITS MIND. it's the middle of the night for some of them, but it does not matter. everyone is blowing up the message boards (or discord channels, or wherever the fandom is congregating), the first few fic writers are already hard at work, fanart is being created, the 'lore' people are drawing extremely funny conclusions about L's personality based on this daring move of his. it's a wild night/day for everyone.

and then... well. the excitement is so intense that others from outside the fandom bubble take notice. probably also a healthy dose of people going "haha what if anyone shipped kira and L together and wrote fic what a hilarious and unlikely idea" and then being shocked when searching the pairing on ao3 - or whatever the in-uniserve equivalent would be - brings up actual results. screenshots get passed around, there's the first inklings of disdain from the uninitiated (isn't it weird to write fic about real people? isn't it kind of fucked up to write fic about real life crimes and murders, especially?), maybe a small news article reporting on the fandom as a curiosity. you know how it goes.

but all the attention doesn't just attract the ones who find it weird or creepy. more than a few people look at the idea of shipping kira/L - or making fan content of kira and/or L in general - and go "i hope this doesn't awaken anything in me" and then (spoiler alert) it definitely awakens something in them. here is where the big influx of new people happens - and while yes, some og fans would definitely be disgruntled by the upset, it's probably just a lot of excitement for the most part, a lot of art and fic and what have you being created because there are suddenly so many more people.

this would of course lead to ship wars (it always does lol) - the kira/L crowd, mostly newcomers, might not even know about deneuve and coil and watari because their only point of reference is the broadcast. cue the og fans creating big 'lore' summary posts with all the important info and fandom history. some of the new fans don't care and will never read them, but i like to think that it wouldn't be a stand-offish 'old vs new' mentality. fandom isn't about animosity, it's about showing the thing you like to other people.

the detectives fandom is pretty old; it has been around at least since L started solving cases, and there was probably a select few people who shipped coil and deneuve and other top detectives even before that. (hilariously, that means there were probably newbies who came into the detectives rpf fandom when L showed up and had to be lectured by those fandom olds back in the 90s or whenever haha)

of course there will always be bad eggs. people who look down on the newbies and go "i liked x before it was cool." you always have people like that, but they're not usually the majority. most fans would just be excited that there's suddenly so much happening in their previously so tiny community.

one thing that might ruffle a few feathers is the way L is portrayed visually. before, it was likely a tma jonathan sims situation where obviously nobody had any idea what L looked like, so there was sort of an agreed upon 'fanon' look for him that artists who drew him and writers who described him in text would reference. after the lind l. tailor broadcast, a lot of the new fans probably start drawing L as looking like tailor just because it's a convenient visual reference (and because tailor is admittedly kind of good looking. which of course brings with it the moral handwringing of whether it isn't kind of fucked up to draw fanart of a guy who got killed live on tv, and who was also a criminal on death row)

(also, consider the tiny subset of the fandom who ship L/tailor and make up AUs where he wasn't actually a criminal at all but L's childhood friend who has helped him solve cases all along and sacrificed himself for the greater good and L is mourning him fiercely. anyway)

then again, back when the fandom was tiny they probably also had their fair share of debate about what L and watari look like (and deneuve and coil, if they were anonymous detectives. otherwise they would get portrayed the way they look irl, obviously). tiny fandom wars were waged over their ages, their backstories, what the exact power dynamic is between them.

top L defenders go to bat for the master/servant dynamic while top watari fans shoot back that L could just as well order watari to top him, or even headcanon that watari is the one in control actually and L is just his mouthpiece. "watari didn't work for L; L worked for watari," as the german death note audio drama would put it (reset the clock, i've mentioned it again). watari gets drawn in the trenchcoat+hat+mask combo A LOT and it's generally agreed upon by watari/L shippers that L finds this outfit extremely hot and has ordered watari to keep it on during sex at least once.

also kira gets drawn as an eldritch horror creature with tentacles sometimes for obvious reasons. the doujinshi are wild.

og fandom in-jokes for your consideration:

personally apologising to L (primarily when posting smut) - the fandom likes to joke that L probably keeps tabs on what's being said about him online, mostly to squash attempts to locate/identify him and other nefarious plots, and is therefore probably at least tangentially aware that there's fanfic/art and stuff being made of him. opinions vary on 1) whether he reads any of it and 2) if he is actually secretly One Of Them

variation of that last point: "i'm not L." which is exactly what L would say if he were one of them, of course. there's one fan in particular who has been jokingly suspected of being L for years because of their really specific headcanons for him

watari's height - nobody has any hope of figuring out what L looks like, but there exist at least a few photos of watari and the fandom has been desperately trying to figure out how tall he is based on the height of the people he's been photographed standing near. general consensus is somewhere in the 5'10 area, but there's one person who stubbornly insists he's 6 feet (it's me. i'm that person)

there's an infamous watari/L crackfic where orgasming is the only way L can solve cases, and all that that entails. it's considered an integral part of their fandom's history and is one of the first things the new post-tailor broadcast fans are subjected to when they join

#original words #long post #this really got away from me whoops

[personthattoleratesme]

soo, this is not the first time I'm getting into a fandom that's over a decade old (i seem to have a knack for it) and it's always so exciting, it almost makes me feel like an archaeologist or detective piecing together the history of an ancient civilization

well, okay, back on track:

after those initial videos i mostly watched their post 2019 joined content which turned out to be a great thing because a) there isn't that much of it, so it felt very approachable b) it helped immensely in getting to know their current selves (this probably sounds weird, what i mean is that they have changed over the course of the years (even beyond the obvious 'they are out and more true to themselves than ever before') and it was good to get to know the status quo before diving into the past) c) it's simply great entertainment

i then went on a Dan's Long Videos™️ spree, watched daily dystopia and phil's newer videos and finally gave into the urge to take a look at the tumblr fandom, which I'd been avoiding on purpose up until then because honestly, i was scared of what it would be like. i was quite pleasantly surprised at how chill is here (I won't lie though, there were a few things that almost activated my fight-or-flight reflex because they sounded a bit too similar to that fandom, but overall i have come to the conclusion that i do like it here).

anyways, at that point i would've felt pretty lost facing such a giant mountain of lore and videos if it wasn't for dan and phil and phannies being so goddamn nostalgic. just by hanging around here and watching their videos you get a pretty good idea of what is important, be it a rough timeline of what happened when and where or what the most iconic and best videos are.

i had so much fun going through the pinofs, the crafting channel, their more or less desastrous attempts at baking, the og google feud, random gaming channel vids from golf to the impossible quiz and i could go on, it is honestly addicting. it's also quite dangerous because there is always more to watch and i know that i have barely scratched the surface.

also, it's really interesting to go back to the first videos I've watched and to see how much my perspective and understanding of them has changed in that short amount of time

by now I've dialled down the binging a little bit and am just jumping from one recommendation to the next, but i do (possibly ignorantly) feel like i have the most important things covered and am now simply enjoying the ride.

if you have any personal favs you feel like i might not have seen yet, please do feel free to share them! :)

- a now very tired new phannie

anon you seem to have taken a pretty good approach. starting with the post-2019 joint content is definitely a lot easier than watching the mountain of joint content from before that. eventually you'll probably catch up on everything but in the meantime as long as you've got most of the important videos i think you'll be fine in the fandom.

i do think there's still some demon phannie tendencies here on tumblr (i include myself in that) but i think generally we do try to keep it respectful, and also we try to kind of keep it away from them and just have our demon discussions in our safe little pocket of the internet.

yeah you've truly come here at a great time in terms of nostalgia. i mean the roblox video alone is just pure nostalgia content and probably helped you get to know the lore of the iconic london apartment. and generally we're all just really sappy about them and their relationship so old vidoes and gifs are always circling around.

you just made me do a deep dive into all of their channels to remember what videos they even have and i think i have a good selection of recommendations in case you haven't watched them:

the photo booth challenge (dan's channel), and the wardrobe (phil's channel), both iconic fan favorites

all of the day in the life videos (manchester, london, festive, japan, australia), they're not big on vlogging so it's nice to get the occasional little slices of their domestic life

dan's internet support group series, not too big of a series but very dan

dan's diss track, also very iconic

giving the people what they want

all of the sims videos (it's a lot, i know, but it's great to watch if you're ever bored)

overcooked, they played it a couple times on live streams and there's just something about them without any editing that's very fun to watch

keep talking and nobody explodes

the top dan memes videos, great to catch up on some lore

there's a lot more probably but these are the ones i can think of right now.

there's also a lot of lore hidden in all the live things they did, which there is a lot of cause they each used to to weekly live streams, they had a weekly radio show, and then the lockdown stereo shows. i would recommend just looking up some compilations of those, they usually contain a lot of the important lore moments. the stereo shows are quite fun to listen to as podcasts, so i would recommend doing that. also because it's a lot more recent than their old live streams it's a lot more relevant.

anyway, another very long answer. if you have more things to say feel free to do so :)

#anon ask #answered

[nebulousfishgills]

Random ask bc I was thinking about it and now I'm curious:

What is the most unique power, skill, or trait that you've given an OC, and how does it impact their story?

(alternatively, share the most unique trait of EACH OC, if you'd like to be a bit more thorough with it :D )

Well, you know me and being thorough! So we're gonna do that!

I'm apologizing in advance.

We're gonna go in order, so...

-Olivia Iridottir-

If I had to pick her most unique trait, I think it's summed up susinctly enough in these excerpts from "Time Variance Detected:"

-

Olivia is a being who is equally capable of both good and evil depending on the universe she's in and it can massively impact her story. "A Song of Stars and Magic" covers the nitty gritty of this and the reason why that story in particular is unique... which, sidenote, someone left a really sweet comment on it the other day and I was flattered and a bit shocked bc I didn't expect anybody to read it in the year of our lord 2023, let alone like it.

I really plan on remastering it at some point since before Diplopia, THAT was my masterpiece of fiction. It's an inside joke among my knowing friends that it just never ends. 2020 was when I started it, I posted all of its chapters in like, early 2021 (so it was very much a covid pet project) and I finally stopped nitpicking it in July of 2022, and that was because of, you guessed it, Stranger Things.

But I really enjoy the lore I came up with for that story, especially with how this particular Dark Variant of Olivia seemed like... reaaaallllllyyyy bad. It was because of that Accident, but also because of how volatile of a being she is naturally.

-Keira Browning-

I mean, obviously she's *puts on the garbage Boston accent* Wicked Smaht, which gets her to her position in her story. She's smart enough for MIT, smart enough for Oscorp, and smart enough that it catches Norman's attention before they even formally meet. Her life was set for this trajectory, it's really her own decisions after the fact that set her on that darker path.

Ironically enough, her logic failing her gets her into this mess to a point where it can't get her out of it. I even say as much before they test the Performance Enhancers in the lab and it All Goes Wrong:

Which, obviously her smarts can only go so far at my own behest. I'm smart but not as smart as she is. So, you know I come up with bullshit frequently and call it Keira Being Smart. It's comic book science, it doesn't have to make any sense, really.

But you know, obviously a pregnancy hormone is the way to go here, good job, me.

-Emily Ripley/Many Last Names-

I mean, obviously her lab grown (maybe) abilities are the big one, but rather than talk about those, let's talk about the reason why they seem weaker than Henry's and how the OG 002 and 003 factor into it.

Obviously I don't think Brenner knew what he was doing with the initial experiment trials since the nature of Henry's powers were still a mystery. A blood transfusion was all it took, but I really think the Mind Flayer had something to do with it. As it stands in my theory mind, the Mind Flayer fused with Henry and physically put its particles into him like the other hivemind creatures. These particles could have been in his blood, which explains how the transfusion worked at all and how 002 and 003 got powers as well.

But I don't think they ended up being as powerful as Brenner wanted, which is why he was rather dismissive when they escaped. Admittedly that's a loose thread on my part, but I think a proximity to Henry also exacerbates it, like the Hotspot in my Bluetooth metaphor. Maybe after they ran away their powers just... faded away, maybe they're still out there, who knows.

But Emily. I think Emily's time in the abandoned Creel House allowed the Mind Flayer access to her as well, just not as much since she only spent so long in there compared to Henry. Then she gets her own blood transfusion and it gives her powers. Probably more powerful than 002 and 003, but less than Henry since there just isn't enough Mind Flayer in her...

And her continued attachment to her humanity. Henry always likened himself to a predator superior to the human race, Emily had human relationships post banishment when she would go to the Overworld. And I think only she was able to create gates because the Mind Flayer allowed her to. She was doing spy work for it as much as she was doing it for Henry since the goal is to get Eleven and, later on, Will. Having a woman on the inside (or outside, depending on her perspective) helps massively. But that connection to her last shreds of humanity is what's ultimately holding her back from her true potential.

Notice how Emily doesn't get all that tired during the Massacre when clearly if she's weaker than Henry, she probably should have. She wasn't behaving fully human, the Mind Flayer took over (as what I believe happened to Henry) and it granted her more strength and power the more she killed and absorbed for her and it. But I think after she undergoes her transformation at the end of The Piggyback (what Nancy called "the Upside Down poisoning Emily") and fully gives up her humanity and sort of "surrenders" to the Mind Flayer like Henry had, she'll get much stronger.

I expect that rot will spread. Where we leave her she still looks Emily-ish, still somewhat human, just with wings and a few vines. Maybe by the end she'll be a whole lot more powerful and look closer to Lilith from Diablo 4:

(Ooo now I kinda wanna draw that)

Basically I think in Season 5/HTM Part 2 (we'll see what I end up titling it) Emily's gonna go full Beast Mode with the Mind Flayer becoming her puppet master just as it became Henry's.

***

For the fun of it, let's dive into one small trait/power/etc for my smaller OCs (at least the named ones at the bottom of my masterpost... I have others I wanna make at some point, I just need to sit down and do it.

Lydia Roberts - Her mastery with dough and going rogue to make berry pies when meat is in short supply is the only reason Mrs. Lovett's business has lasted as long as it has.

Irinerys - Obviously she's an RPG stand in and can only do as much as she's coded to do, but I think despite the fact that she started her story as a former slave turned acolyte, with the power she's gained over the course of her story/the campaign I believe she's incredibly vain and gets very good at hair and make-up to make herself seem more important than her humble origins would have you believe. Since Ashara is the only female companion, Irinerys does her make-up as a bonding thing when not on missions, but absolutely used Andronikos as a canvas at some point. He's a space pirate, she 100% gave him some Jack Sparrow type eyeliner at some point.

Aneadora Fír - I haven't played actual D&D with my friends in a bit since we've been doing Thirsty Sword Lesbians instead, but she's a Reborn Tiefling (we were all undead creatures) and has some Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas stitches and various body parts (they all look grey compared to her blue skin). I feel like she'd sometimes undo the thread holding her pieces together and change their colors, so now her arm is held in place by pink stitches.

Marlina Nerys - So, fun fact, I was the first one of our party to get romantically entangled (literally I got laid in our first session and now it's a gag where I get laid every session). But she had a past as a Reformed Villain and in one of our last sessions (we're on break for summer) she learned a horrible secret... her ex, literal partner in crime, killed her parents after they tried looking for her (she ran away from home as a child). Determined to keep Marlina to herself, her ex tracked her parents down and killed them, never telling Marlina that her parents were even searching in the first place... TSL is a goofy system and nine times out of ten it gets very silly but our DM always has to give us something angsty. I came up with the secret, but she was the one who had me do so... it was either this or forget my girlfriend so I'd rather the horrible secret any day.

#fishgills speaks #asks #oc asks #stranger things oc #avengers oc #spider man oc #various other ocs #fishgills ocs #beloved mutuals #my inbox is open

[bcneheaded]

HELLOOO good afternoon <3 a kind of sort of half assed doodle dump for yall on this fine saturday (bc i was goin through old stuff trying to look for a particular drawing so therefore ! a handful of miscellaneous yet related to this blog ones). kinda long?? maybe? apologies

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puts a handful of Aether into ur hands <3 this is !! eros' ex lover (also primedorial god of light, & the personification of the air in which the gods breathe (shes a fucking asshole to him now fdfsDSFS) pls my god dont look too hard, these are so fucking old LMAO vv

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vv ghJFDJGD OLD DOODLE PLAYING W THE IDEA THAT HE NEVER SWEARS LMAO vv

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HAZEL AND ARTIE !! old snippet of a doodle/comic of when! she finally takes off her mask and lets him see her eyes!! she has Soul Eyes .... and what I mean by that is like she just has.... so many colors in there. vv

vv idk i think i shared this wip last time of The Tailor but here the mans is vvv

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vv some old edgy badru thing vv

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vv ALSO !! I might've mentioned Lord Schwarz once or twice thus far but if you see me talking about him, this is the skeezy pos mfer right here. the op vampire bastard vv

vvvv this is his brother, Indriik. the less pos gross mfer man that is the only creature on this planet that can back talk his brother without being killed jfdjgdfg vvv hateful german vampire brothers <3

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vv fucked up spirit of a lady that was drowned by her lover in a lake outside Schwarz' mansion ?? i think idk vv something something,,, the only entity Schwarz, for some reason, is gentle to vv

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OH THE OG DRAWING FOR FATHER TIME (clock-head detective <3)

vv then the new version i did this year (owow look a recent drawing jfjdjgd) he is yet another very dramatic weird-headed entity (he has..... /some/ lore. Artemis knows him, and is made uncomfortable by him bc of what he actually is fddgfdg but thats another ramble for another time) VV

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vv and then a Whisper!! the little "casper-like entites" i might refer to now and again. they kinda wander Artemis' shop. they're echoes of souls of the living, animals, and supernatural that died of natural causes. they're gentle and very simple creatures, enjoy helping and are attracted to magic. Artemis happens to have a lot of that within his possession in the shop kfkfds so naturally they tend to like it there

#( ooc ) #( myart ) #long post #there is maybe one or two quality things in there but do not have high expectations; these are snip tool images JFJSDJD #i swear writing will happen im just jgjdfdf all over the place atm #also working on adding another slide to artemis' slides #((open that directly in google drive btw!! otherwise it probably will look weird)) #also hope yall enjoy the prime text formatting in this post bc its gonna stay like that bc the editor wont let me #open/edit the post <3 JFHDUJDFGD #alsox2 only bc i just remembered it but im pretty sure the idea behind the spirit of the lady in the lake #was meant to be like /made of leeches/ #And schwarz finds her both disgusting and pitiable so hes like.... aight... u can exist i feel bad for u