#to come up with (& then forever to apply retroactively if i were to do that) so i've never prioritized it even though it would

[coquelicoq]

*whispers* howdy i'm afraid I have been summoned again by one of your "ask me bout/why" so please, why do you tag "not anon" instead of the username?

two reasons:

i'm thinking about the tag from the perspective of my primary audience, i.e., future me. future me is someday going to want to find this post (let's assume). what sorts of things will future me remember about this post that could help me find it? i'll remember it was an ask. i'll likely remember if it was sent on or off anon, but if it was sent off anon, i may or may not remember who exactly sent it, so tagging the username might not be that useful to me as an indexing tag. tagging an ask #anon or #not anon (as opposed to only tagging it #asks) means future me can find it about two times faster than if i had to look through all asks. the balance is between having specific enough tags that if i need to find a post it won't take forever to go back through that tag, and having general enough tags that it's not too hard for future me to guess which one current me might have used. i get asks from enough different people, and the number of asks i receive from each individual person is low enough, that giving each person their own indexing tag would be inefficient overall (time t1 to find a given post within the tag would decrease, but time t2 to figure out which tag to look in would increase, and t1 is already low enough that it's not worth the memory-cost of maintaining and retrieving dozens of different subtags).

i had my original username for about five years. my then-bf did not have a tumblr but knew my username and would sometimes look at my blog. when we broke up, i didn't want him to be able to find my blog anymore, so i changed my username. at some point after that, tumblr changed the way asker and poster usernames were displayed (it used to always retain the username as it appeared at the time of posting, regardless of whatever that user's current name was; after the update, it displayed the current name). i did a search within tumblr to see if there was still anything connected to my old username and found some asks i had sent people during those five years that they had tagged with my old username. the problem was that my new username was displaying in the ask itself, such that if you did a search on my old username, you would immediately learn the new one. this defeated the purpose of changing my username at all lol. so ever since then i've been more careful about when i use people's actual usernames because they're searchable within the body or tags of posts, and people may not always want to show up in searches. it can't always be helped, but at least when it comes to answering asks, not tagging the asker's username is very easy and costs me nothing. but tbh i'm mostly driven by resentment here (so upset i gave up my old username for NOTHING) rather than logic (pointless to apply logic to this situation because i can't be redoing my tagging system every time tumblr changes how searching works and/or how usernames display).

[paragonrobits]

a lot of hot takes about Batman and Gotham in general feel off to me because generally they seem to assume gotham is a normal place that has an unusually large number of costumed criminals and heroes to fight them but is otherwise conventional and, its really not.

there’s a secret society of malevolent rich people who are orchestrating things behind the scenes to keep things getting worse forever. they wear owl masks all the time and meet in deep underground battle arenas beneath the ocean. they use a secret assassin (who is visually based on Batman’s evil counterpart from the crime universe) in an owl costume, presumably completely unrelated to Batman’s own bat themes.

Not that far from Gotham itself is a swamp called SLAUGHTER SWAMP. they dumped a mob boss in there and he rose from the dead as a hulk zombie that used a nursery rhyme as the basis for his entire new personality and sometimes he can only talk in verse from that nursury rhyme. For a while Batman wasn’t even involved with him at all, he was fighting the magic version of Green Lantern who couldn’t affect his powers with wood and also that zombie mob guy was... internally made of wood at the time, i think.

in one continuity the whole city is built on top of a steampunk wonder city powered by energies from a weird chemical pool that heals people real fast and can straight up bring the dead back to life but it also drives you violently irrational and the chemicals drove the entire city into a killing frenzy and then they built Gotham on top of it and straight up forgot about having a city built on top of a murder-laboratory. (If you assume the chemicals are STILL affecting people and are partially responsible for at least influencing people, this explains a LOT about Gotham.)

In most continuities, until the rise of super criminals, Gotham was straight up run by the mafia. The mayor was super corrupt, outright admitted that his fondest desire was to kill all the poor by setting them on fire, and was essentially a criminal head in his own right. The police weren’t just dirty and power-mad, they were an arm of the crime families and they were literally just gangsters in uniforms.

The infamous mental insititution was founded by a guy that ended up being tormented by nightmares of a bat over a hundred years before Bruce Wayne was ever borne, with strong implications that somehow the horrors and madness afflicting modern Gotham were so bad they went back in time and drove the founder of Arkham to madness out of the horror he saw coming. (Gotham is so fucked up it screwed itself up RETROACTIVELY.)

Gotham is so weird and so screwed up that Batman doing his thing isn’t him LARPing, no more than Zorro is LARPing, and its not a case of him not applying his money to charity and public works. He already does that, as well as giving henchmen stable jobs. No, supervillains just keep popping up anyway and odds are good that the average guy running a charity is gonna get a costume and get guns out and start a hold up during the next function while declaring themselves the Flamingo and staggering around on stilts and talking about how they will filter-feed what they deserve from the people of the world and start mugging people

GOTHAM HAS ZEPPELINS FOR NO REASON

basically if you approach Gotham like its any kind of normal city that has some costumed criminals and heroes, that’s kind of missing the point! GOTHAM IS FUCKING WEIRD AND SCREWED UP and it really says a lot that the one time the Joker edited old timey photos to make it look like he was an immortal spirit of discord plaguing Gotham for centuries, a lot of people just went ‘okay that sounds about right’ without actually being shocked

(also it says a lot about Gotham that Mayor Hamilton Hill, exposed to truth chemicals, ranted about how much he really wanted to murder the poor and thought every single horrible thing he did was their fault, and no one even blinked or thought this was unusual.)

[bigskydreaming]

Couldn't the thing with Jason thinking Dick is infallible from Truth and Justice story come from how he is compared to his brother from Bruce. Even when he was Robin with Dick and Bruce fighting, he was told that Dick was better by Bruce. Then he comes back and is a cautionary tale of what not to and how not to be while Dick and Bruce are now getting along.

I mean yeah, you could go with that take, but I��m always gonna argue that even that is more fanon based than anything else, at least before this issue. We’ve seen a lot of that take in the past already, but truth is, there really isn’t that much basis in older stories for Bruce comparing Jason to Dick. And like I’ve expanded on in the past, younger Jason looked UP to Dick, he certainly didn’t resent him. 

With this being true even when he first came back - Dick was the only one he didn’t target at ALL during Under the Red Hood, and when he did finally meet up with Dick a year later, during the Brothers in Blood arc, it was more to fuck with him than any attempt to take things out on him. Like, that arc gets a lot of shit and deservedly so, but I really do wish more people would at least takeaway from it the fact that in it, JASON referenced still thinking of Dick as family. Which just doesn’t mesh up with all the ‘they barely knew each other/they resented each other’ takes.

Pretty much all the times I can think of when Jason was compared to Dick pre ADITF, it was actually not at all what its usually represented as by most fandom takes, such as the time Jason teamed up with the Titans. For pretty much Jason’s entire tenure as Robin up until the Felipe Garzonas arc, Jason was actually portrayed as perfectly secure in his position of Robin and wasn’t threatened by anyone else’s perception of him at all. Even the arc where he loses it on Two-Face has been kinda amplified to make more of it than it was, like.....Bruce was worried about the anger he expressed there, but that was more out of concern FOR Jason and it wasn’t the “Jason was on the verge of getting fired as Robin all along” kinda narrative we tend to see referenced. 

Jason was only made out to be the angry Robin or the less competent Robin or whatever AFTER his death, which is all kinds of shitty, but like......there’s no real basis for any kind of extended history where Jason resentfully suffered under his big brother’s shadow while Robin. The angry/less competent Robin stuff was all DC retroactively railroading him after the fact to justify their choice to kill him off (which was still their choice no matter the existence of a poll), and its the narrative most people have run with because it amplifies Jason’s existence as the misunderstood and unfairly judged underdog of the family.

Now to be 100% clear, as I’ve said in the past.....there is absolutely no reason you CAN’T go with this take if you don’t want to. Nobody has to abide by canon, or a particular canon and I’ll never argue otherwise. My main point has always just been that the thing about fanfic is that its a transformative process, it enables fans to take canon and transform it into something else.....but here’s the thing....those transformations ALWAYS happen with INTENT. People are deliberate in how and in what ways they transform canon, even if they’re not always CONSCIOUS of that deliberation.....it still exists. None of these transformations just happen, they happen for a reason. Because fans want an end result that’s different from what we saw in canon.

So my thing is always just.....yes, transform canon as you like, for whatever reason. But don’t pretend that those reasons don’t exist, and understand that when people look at a canon to fanon transformation that really only results in one major difference.......they’re gonna assume that this difference, achieving this difference, was for whatever reason, the POINT of the transformation.

And here’s where I also want to express something else: my take has never been that most of fandom just hates Dick Grayson. That they’re consciously, deliberately out to smear him or make him look bad. I think there’s a lot of elements in play with how I perceive fandom’s interactions with him compared to other characters, but more often than not, I think one of the bigger issues with how his character is TRANSFORMED from canon to fanon, is just.......he’s collateral damage. I don’t think in most cases the point is even to make actual transformations of his character or characterization......its to apply these things to people he’s in scene WITH......and he just ends up transformed as well, by proximity.

Take a look at some examples:

1) Dick firing Tim

Except as we’ve gone over multiple times, Dick didn’t actually FIRE Tim. He didn’t neglect him, he didn’t turn his back on him, he could have handled that situation differently, sure, but he had none of the ill intent people assign to him when they typically ramp up how bad this period was for Tim. Dick actually called him his equal, begged him to stay, said he was too GOOD to be Dick’s junior partner........but this is not at all how this moment in canon is generally viewed by a lot of fandom. He comes off looking a TON worse, like he just chose Damian over Tim and discarded Tim first chance he got, he didn’t care how Tim was affected, he kicked Tim out of the manor and out of Gotham.

But the thing is.....I’d argue that none of this TRANSFORMATION from canon really had anything to do with Dick. I don’t actually think that tons of fans were just waiting in the wings for the perfect opportunity to make a villain out of Dick and just seized upon this moment as the perfect opportunity. I think it was just all about Tim. It was about accentuating his misery, his aloneness, heightening the whump factor of his character and amplifying the feelings of insecurity, rejection and alienation he was feeling and that people related to.

What happened to Dick’s character in most peoples’ eyes as a result of this transformation, was the symptom, not the point. It was the collateral damage, not the aim.

2) Bruce firing Dick

In contrast, we have more than one canon interpretation of Bruce firing Dick as Robin, with this leading directly into Dick leaving the manor at a fairly young age, keeping his distance from Bruce until he finds out about Jason, Bruce giving Robin to Jason without acknowledging or apologizing for the fact that he was giving away the identity that someone else had crafted and poured their heart and soul into, not him.......but this isn’t how a lot of fandom outside of Dick stans and people who are specifically predisposed towards Bad Dad Bruce like to treat that part of canon.

Here, the transformation is the reverse from what happened with Tim and Dick. Here, the feelings of rejection and alienation and insecurity Dick realistically would have felt during that time are overlooked and even outright invalidated by TRANSFORMING the canon so that actually, this period of extended estrangement is completely disconnected from any version of events where Bruce fired Dick, which he did not do here. And in fact, Dick gave up Robin, he and Bruce had a falling out, and this was mutual and two-sided and thus Dick’s refusal to come home earlier and reconcile with Bruce was not actually him standing up for himself and refusing to settle for being taken for granted and dismissed when convenient but rather just Dick being immature, stubborn and a little spoiled.

But again.....I don’t think that’s the aim so much as a byproduct of the intended end result. Once more, I think that had very little to do with Dick himself, wasn’t about making him look bad specifically....but rather, it was about making Bruce look better. It was transforming the thing he had done in canon which was so hard to defend, ie ignore all of Dick’s feelings on the matter much in the way people accuse Dick of ignoring Tim’s later, and passively rejecting him and refusing to be the first to reach out unlike Dick who actively sought after Tim when he left. Those moments in canon definitively make Bruce look pretty bad, and are hard to reconcile with Good Parent Bruce Wayne, so that is what people are trying to transform. Once again, the way it makes Dick look in contrast is just a symptom.

The further examples are honestly pretty endless.

The aftermath of Forever Evil and Spyral is ignored, transforming Dick into the true villain of that period not because people just want an excuse to hate him, but because they don’t want to or can’t reconcile what Bruce actually did in order to get Dick to act so out of character, or they want to justify Jason and Tim and others’ anger at Dick later rather than have them appear to be inconsiderate assholes just piling on a guy who just had the worst year of his life to date.

The instances of Bruce outright abusing Dick after Jason’s death and at other times like Night of the Owls are ignored, transforming Dick into an impetuous, overly aggressive asshole who isn’t reacting to Bruce’s initial aggression, but rather just popping off the handle because he isn’t being received or treated just the way he likes.

Dick reaching out to Jason and making an offer to be there for him as Robin and later times they interact in Titans as well as any actual bond they build, even if mostly just hinted at off the page....all ignored in favor of transforming Dick into this bitter, jealous jerk who can’t see past his own feelings long enough to realize he’s taking things out on an innocent kid who doesn’t deserve this, even though that’s exactly what he realized and motivated his actual actions towards Jason in canon. And again, its not so much about making Dick worse, its about overlooking the WHYS of Dick’s hurt, turning the focus from what was done to him that justifies him being upset in the first place, to some greater mistreatment he enacts on Jason and thus drowns out any sympathy that people might otherwise have for Dick.

Dick’s periods of brainwashing like under the Church of Blood being overwritten or ignored in order to transform his deliberately out of character attitudes towards his friends and teammates there into just normal outbursts that were part of his characterization rather than signs that something was abnormally wrong with him. Thus turning everyone else’s treatment of him during that time period into again just their part of a two-way street and nothing they had to feel bad about rather than acknowledge that he’d literally not been in full control of himself while they had no such excuse for their behavior.

To be clear.....this kind of thing is NOT limited to just Dick. It tends to happen any time people want to transform a canon event into something more one-sided, to accentuate a particular character’s position as the victim or the misunderstood or neglected party.....or to turn a one-way street into a mutual antagonism, to lessen a particular character’s culpability in some argument or feud. You can absolutely find examples of this same effect applying to every other character in the Batfam as well.

But the reason it happens so often with Dick, and thus every instance of it happening tends to be amplified by the sheer volume of similar situations......is because of convenience. Because ironically, the reason Dick so often looks so bad in fanon’s eyes when it comes to his treatment of his family....is BECAUSE of how Dick is so much more integrated into every one of his family’s lives (and his friends’) than pretty much any other character. He’s the collateral damage to other characters being deliberately transformed in some way purely because he’s the one who almost always is THERE to some degree. Because there’s no one else in the scene that’s being transformed.

And so to bring it all back to your question......I think you absolutely can go with that take. There’s an argument to be made for it, especially now given that this canon issue has actually established a precedent for Jason feeling that way rather than fanon just running with the idea because it makes Jason more maligned. Its still not something that’s ever going to interest me though, even if I can see the reasoning for it, because its not just the fact that this particular dynamic between Dick and Jason has played out thousands of times before in fic, as I said yesterday. Its also because like I laid out here......my bigger issue is that take has absolutely NOTHING to do with Dick himself, says nothing about his character, but his character is inevitably the one who will suffer fallout from that particular take. That dynamic, as you described it, makes sense.....but its entirely, 100% on Bruce or others for raising those comparisons, not because of anything Dick did to Jason himself.....and thus it makes Jason’s dynamic towards Dick MORE a product of other peoples’ reactions and attitudes towards him and his brother respectively.

And that dynamic IS perfectly understandable and valid. But even if its slightly different this time because of more of a canon basis, it still for me falls into the same pattern of Dick being collateral damage to something that’s largely focused on another character entirely, with him and how he’s impacted by extension being kinda an afterthought. 

*Shrugs* And that’s just......a story I’ve read so many many times before, I’m just never gonna be all that engaged by it. 

[sepublic]

The Old West and Pig Baby Car!

           I love Kez, she’s… SUCH a weird, chilled-out, unusually-attracted-to-anything little ding-bell! With her head constantly in the clouds and always sparkling like there’s stars obscuring her eyes… And her simplistic yet incredibly expressive design, those two beady eyes that as said, go stare into FOREVER…! And how she’s a remorseless disaster magnet and a weirdo who’s always vibing and on some weird wavelength that’s hard to understand, but once you get it, you get it!

           Let me say it again, I ADORE how this show takes advantage of its premise and setting to always do something NEW with the characters, and I love how we’re building up to a conflict of Kez’s past enemies teaming up to get revenge! That seems to be a theme of this season so far, teamwork, coming together, etc., how ironic that collaboration is going to be a danger to the dynamic duo as well! Kez’s weird, clumsy, forgetful, and overall just… MOOD, and way of talk- I love her, I love her voice, she’s amazing! Also, I halfway called it with the sheriff caterpillar metamorphosizing… But into the judge, THAT I did not expect!

           Also, it seems that in this world, only THREE things are constant- Death, Taxes, and Samantha the Cat! When I saw her I legit deadpanned my expression, but c’mon, we all saw it coming, and honestly she’s such a reassuring part of this show, in a sense; We know she’s always there and we can always count on her to be present, she’s SEEN some stuff and she’s a veteran in a sense! Weird thought, but could one say that Samantha is the true protagonist of the show, and the show is about her watching various passengers and their messes?

          Perhaps a final book for the show would’ve had Samantha as the primary denizen, to round things up and cap it all off… Either way, I love seeing her differing roles and how she’s handled in each book- First as this unusual enemy and ally, then as a brief obstacle/cameo, then with emotional resonance and guilt and backstory… And it seems so far here, mostly just a cameo and an ally! It’s neat, I love seeing how Samantha’s story, brief as it may be sometimes, is handled in each book! Who knows, maybe Samantha is writing the books, and that’s why they’re called that! Now I’m waiting for Randall to show up…

          And also, that GAG and cut to Samantha instantly flipping on a (literal) dime for money, even if she’s also collaborating with Kez, was hilarious and so wonderfully expressive of her character in a nutshell, even for veterans who’ve already SEEN her like this! Seems she hasn’t changed much, but with how she seemingly betrayed people, only with the plan to come back… Makes you wonder if that’s what she intended for her and Simon in that Cardboard Box Car with Ghom, only for Grace to inadvertently sidetrack things? Oh god, that’s dark- The idea that Grace unknowingly ruined things between Samantha and Simon, and that plays into Samantha disliking her… But at the same time, she doesn’t seem to hold things against Grace for it, so probably not.

          But oof, that’d just play into Simon’s accusations of Grace ‘ruining’ him, while Grace wants to save and help others like with those kids in the Apex or Hazel, only to misunderstand… The concept of retroactive revelations to characters and thematic foreshadowing, SO GOOD, and it’s making me appreciate more this concept of a Book that takes place in the past, to establish additional context for previous and even later characters, perhaps!

           Also, just… The colors, the zany hijinx and ideas, the premise for each car, the denizens- They’re all so wonderful and unique, and I applaud the crew for their creativity, for never letting things get old… Each car is such a fun place to get stuck in, well most of them… Pig Baby was unusual, and I can see what Owen was referencing with that one pig tweet! I think there’s a clever pun to be made in the way the numbers sync, almost like a duet for music… The motifs, man!

           The jabs at post-war American cuisine were hilarious, and Ryan man… I’m glad to see him learn to cool down; But unfortunately, Min thinks it’s ONLY Ryan, and he doesn’t realize he has to collaborate as well! And I like that… This idea of like; Two people are both contributing to this mess equally, you can’t just pin the blame on one, and they BOTH have to make concessions and work together! It’s a contrast to Book 3, in that it seems Ryan and Min are actually slated to work things out, VS Simon and Grace… With Grace recognizing how the two of them screwed each other up, but Simon refusing to admit his fault! Duet then forms a duality with Cult of the Conductor, one about the downfall, the other about two reconciling… Hopefully, we’ll see later down the line.

           It’s definitely going to be a hard pill for Min to swallow, that he also has stake in this issue- I wonder if he’s under this impression that… He’s more ‘mature’ than Ryan, and as a result, he doesn’t want to confront his part in the situation? Though to be fair, it could just be a matter of circumstance; Ryan was the first to have a puzzle dealing with his own fault, and Ryan was the one who got them on, so it makes sense that Min assumes it’s Ryan’s issue! But dang… I felt for Ryan at the end, I feel like he’s just incredibly lonely himself and desiring positive attention, to feel validated; Whilst Min sort of feels validated? At the very least, I don’t think it’s as much of an issue for him, whilst with Ryan he has to compete with his siblings…

           Hopefully Ryan will be able to find that sort of positive attention, while also still respecting Min’s boundaries and his own needs as a person; Min can’t just attend to his every need, the way the Cow Creamer does for Pig Baby! Also, another random thought, but Kez’s very lax, go-with-the-flow attitude… Honestly, it kind of reminds me of like, the kind of partners that Ryan had, before he went back to Min maybe? I dunno, I recognize that Kez definitely has huge stoner vibes, and a hypothetical Human Kez in an AU seems like the type of person Ryan would’ve encountered… Hitching a ride, taking his van and thanking him, but not being THAT grateful, lol.

           Nevertheless, that’s one stop- Onto the next one! And as Kez reminds us so importantly, it’s not JUST about the destination, but the journey… I’m glad to see Min be self-aware of the need to apply lessons here the way Lake was, and I bet this whole ‘journey and destination’ mentality might apply to Ryan’s whole thing of travelling around and doing performances! We’ll see… Next stop, passengers!

[hopeymchope]

hey, sorry to barge into your inbox despite being a total stranger (and feel free to respond to this privately if you want) but i came across some of your s/n/k critical posts and i just wanted to say i agree SO much. and i wanted to thank you for vocalizing this opinion because i know both i and some others agree with you. i've personally felt that everything after chapter 80 was a mistake (because i thought the whole serum fight over erwin vs armin was pretty fuckin stupid too) and it's kinda funny (i guess) to see the ending 100% validate my opinion completely. i can't believe every character was done this dirty for the sake of a very poorly constructed "both sides are bad" scenario that was also in VERY poor taste considering the explicit allegories to n*zi germany and a literal race war. like what's up with the jews - sorry, the "eldians" - once ruling the entire world via a bloodthirsty empire and also being inhuman creatures? gee, that sure doesn't sound like every antisemitic conspiracy theory i've ever heard. and way to rationalize oppression, too. the entire point of an oppression narrative is supposed to be "hey, the oppressor's prejudices have no rational basis and are literally mistreating this oppressed group due to their own selfishness and cruelty," not "oh btw marley's fear/hatred of eldians kinda makes sense considering eldians once enslaved the entire planet and can turn into giant man-eating monsters." is*yama SERIOUSLY should've just stuck to writing glorified vore lmao.

and while all the characters were either killed, turned into plot devices, or both, it hurts that EMA and the main protag himself suffered this treatment as well. i still think pre-timeskip eren is utterly irreconciliable with post-timeskip eren and the fact that both fans and the author himself try to make it seem like "hey he was ALWAYS a batshit crazy psychopath from the start!" is sort of pathetic to watch. like yeah, lemme just ignore the first 80 chapters of character development for this guy. or lemme pretend that the author didn't spend the significant majority of the decade making eren the most empathetic character in the entire series. or let me also pretend that eren killing those human traffickers to save a 9 year old girl from being a child sex slave is somehow evidence/foreshadowing/etc of him eventually growing up to destroy 80% of the planet. like, what? not to mention he even rebuked himself for recklessly killing those two men like that in chapter 17...so am i supposed to ignore that too?? and don't even get me started on the "eren went insane and accidentally caused his mom's death." bro. BRO. i've watched the entirety of game of thrones yet i STILL have never seen this level of "edgy plot twist for shock value with no benefit or relevance to the story whatsoever" in any media to exist.

well anyway...sorry for ranting in your inbox like this LMAO i really just wanted to tell you that i agree with your opinions about both the series ending and the series as a whole. i doubt i'll ever engage with this cursed manga ever again but at least pre-chapter 80 s/n/k will always be a thing and i can pretend they all got reincarnated into a modern AU where eren and mikasa are happily married and living with their bff armin in a nice condo or something. they alternate between visiting carla and grisha or mikasa's family on weekends. yeah that sounds pretty good. if you made it this far then kudos to you and thank you for reading lol

Thanks a ton for the kind words of commiseration. It feels like there’s a plurality of people who are unhappy, sure... but it comes off as still being a minority, and even among that minority, it seems like most people are still fine with most of the timeskip so long as they stuck the landing. But I think they were much too far off-course pretty fast after the Timeskip started to really correct it very well. It was possible, but the writing was on the wall. The intentions were already clear pretty early on after the skip. 

That said, I try to keep this Tumblr mostly positive and DR-focused, yet I still absolutely had to rant about SNK 139. The more I thought about it, the more I disliked it... and this comes from someone who was already unhappy for a while, obviously, so. Yeah. Of course I was gonna dislike it on some level, but I thought it’d at least provide closure to the Timeskip arc, even if I do think the Timeskip arc feels at odds with everything else the series was for 3/4 of its run.

And HOLY SHIT I literally forgot about the Eldians’ history of apparently being horrible, vicious rulers of a sinister empire. You know why? Because I NEVER BELIEVED IT. I was so 100% certain that it was going to be outed as bullshit propaganda from Marley that I never once thought it was plausible, so I just... pushed it out of my mind as soon as I read it. After all, all that kind of talk about the arch-conspiracy of Jews has always been total bullshit from anti-semetic monsters, so why would I put any stock in this kind of talk being applied to the Jewish race of Attack on Titan? 

But now, at the end of the story... yup, I guess he never DID go back on that! So it was fucking true?! The Jewish people in this WWII analogy were apparently an evil master race at one point?! Oh. OHHHHH. Go fuck yourself with a shovel for that one, Isayama. 

And yeah, Eren... god, what a sad story. He becomes unrecognizable as the same character thanks to the Timeskip, the new characterization is never explained or justified retroactively - it’s just opposite day now, forever - and he dies accomplishing nothing. I don’t know what to say, except I do know how much I loved that character and this series before things went south. I didn’t even mind the backstory for the Titans and the horrible story of Eldians in Marley... because it seemed so obvious that it was setting up a battle against a hateful, technologically advanced foe that was beyond the darkness of anything they’d fought before, y’know? Marley, as it was set up in the flashbacks before the Timeskip, is Nazi Germany if the Nazis had tech and scientific horrors and numbers far beyond what the Allies had. And nobody EVER feels bad for killing Nazis, so this was obviously going to be a final battle to destroy the Marleyan military, with Zeke likely to serve as a Final Boss who has totally 100% bought the propaganda and who hated everything Eren stood for. It was all RIGHT THERE. Maybe it was just too easy to tell that story, because instead, Zeke is suddenly supposed to be a gray character (very hard to accept given his backstory), and we end with the “uwu both sides were bad bc war is hell” message that is really pretty fucked up, as you already correctly pointed out.

[simana-x]

Oh yeah, and this is the information page for the BTHB if you’re interested in taking part!

BTHB About Page

Guidelines + Rules

(home ask)

What is this? — Getting Started — How It Works — The Rules — FAQ —

What is this?

This is your motivation to write that fic. Always fun to take prompts when they’re in the form of games you remember from elementary school birthday parties.

You may have seen some bingo cards floating around in the fanfic community. People make a card featuring 24 prompts, and other people will submit a request for one of these prompts to be filled, as well as choosing which character(s) will prominently feature, and occasionally other details as well, depending on the cardholder’s preference. The cardholder then writes the fic and marks it off on the card.

Sounds fun, right? Right.

We all know that some of us are here to get DARK. So, why not make a bingo game focusing on Bad Things?

At this page you will find a list of tropes and scenarios. Currently, there are over four hundred listed. Most are whump-focused, some are more angst, and a few are centered around the ‘comfort’ part of hurt/comfort. Some are fairly general, some are very specific. Some are fairly lighthearted, and some take you right into the heart of Sadism Land.

These are the fics we’ll be writing.

Getting Started

Once you’ve finished reading the rules and FAQ, click on the ‘request a card’ link on the home page or here. This will take you to an application. Let us know the tumblr url you want us to send the card to, and if you want, what fandoms you intend to write for.

Next, you pick your tropes. We’ve got a lot of them, and of course, not everyone would be interested in writing for all of them. Some tropes may not work in the setting you want to write for, some may be difficult to get inspiration for, some may be too dark for you or not dark enough. Go ahead and check off the box next to every trope that you ARE okay with having on your card. You must choose at least 25, so every space on the card has a prompt. (There is no free space; freedom is an illusion.)

There will be a couple of additional questions at the end of the application, then, just submit! Make sure you have your submission box open on your tumblr, with the option to submit a photo, so that we can send you your bingo card. If your submission box is not open, you will not receive a card.

How It Works

When you receive your bingo card, you can start writing! You can write at your own pace and in your own time frame. Go ahead and post your bingo card if you’re making the fics available to your followers, and don’t forget to keep track of which spaces you’ve completed! Doesn’t have to be anything fancy; you can use anything from Photoshop to MS Paint to a text post with strikethroughs to track your progress.

For fic bingos, many people like to take prompts from their followers. Someone will send an ask requesting one of the tropes from your card and a character(s) for the fic to focus on. If you’d like, you can also let your followers prompt other details such as which character you want to have hurt and which one should be the comforter, whether it should be romantic or platonic, an AU to set it in, anything at all. Sky’s the limit. However, prompts are not required; you can select which combinations of tropes and characters you want to write and in what order you want to write them on your own.

Once you’ve written a fic, post it! If in your application you gave us permission to reblog your work, we’ll put it right here on this blog to share with other players and readers. Be sure to tag it with #badthingshappenbingo, or @ us in the post, to ensure we see it. Additionally, please tag the trope featured in the fic, and the fandom you wrote it for.

If you cross-post the fic on AO3, we have a badthingshappenbingo collection, which you can find here! Feel free to add your fic to the collection!

Once you’ve completed five squares in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, you will be added to the Hall of Fame! But don’t feel like you have to stop once you’ve gotten a Bingo; the Hall of Fame will also give special prominence to those of you who get a Blackout - that is, completing every space on your card!

Rules

~ You must have your submissions open in order to receive a card.

~ Although you may request a new Bingo card, you can only have one card in play at a time. We urge you to try to complete your current card before getting a new one if you can.

~ Fics can be NSFW, but they MUST be tagged as such, and all NSFW content MUST be placed under a Read More.

~ There is no word minimum. There is no word maximum.

~ You are allowed to cross-post works you wrote for this event on other platforms, such as AO3, FFN, etc., but we’d like you to also either post the fic on tumblr, or post a link to it, so we can find it.

~ Your entry must be completed before you can mark off its space on your bingo card. The exception is if you are writing a multi-chapter fic, but the chapter featuring the prompt must still be completed.

~ Your entry must be newly written for the bingo, not retroactively tagged or added on to a pre-existing fic.

~ Please indicate somewhere on the post or in the tags which fandom your fic was written for.

~ Feel free to message the blog if we missed reblogging a post you created for this event.

~ Only one prompt per post counts. You can include multiple tropes in a story/chapter, but you can only officially tag/mark off the square for one of them.

~ We love drama in our fics, not on our dash. If a fic is written for a work or a ship that you don’t like, don’t read it. That’s all there is to it. ~ RPF (Real Person Fic) content is not allowed.

~ Although the official Bingo game is a writing-only challenge, you can also participate in this event as an artist. Find the details in this post here!

FAQ

Q: How long does this event last?

A: Forever and ever, I guess. There is no time limit for completing your fics.

Q: How long does it take to receive a card after applying for one?

A: Anywhere from several hours to one week. It depends entirely on how busy the mods are, how frequently applications are coming in, and how long the waiting list is. All of these factors fluctuate wildly from day to day.

Q: Which fandoms can we write for?

A: You can write for any fandom you’d like. This even includes original work, which we like to view as one-person fandoms. The only exception is that we do not allow RPF (real person fic) content. Let’s stick to hurting FICTIONAL people.

Q: I sent in an application, but did not receive a card. Why is that?

A: Most likely, it’s because your submissions were closed. If, however, your submissions are open and you still did not receive a card, it’s probably because either the Google Docs form did not go through, or tumblr ate the submission. Message us off of anon and we’ll get it sorted out.

Q: Can we submit completed fics for this bingo that are also written for other bingos or writing events?

A: As long as the other event also allows it, yes, that’s perfectly fine.

Q: Can we collaborate on fics?

A: When you apply for a card, the username or usernames on the application should always be the author of all prompt fills. If you apply for a card for yourself and another user to share, all works for the card must be a collaboration between the two of you. If you apply for a card for a single user, all works for the card should be written by that single user.

Q: I posted a filled prompt and you didn’t reblog it. Why is that?

A: We aim to reblog all filled prompts. However, due to tumblr being tumblr, occasionally we will miss a filled prompt due to the post not showing up in the tag and/or an @ not making it onto our activity feed. So if you have posted a filled prompt and it has been 48 hours or more without us reblogging, that means we didn’t see it, so you can go ahead and submit or direct message the link to us and we’ll get to it as soon as possible.

Q: Can you add [trope] to the trope list?

A: Probably. As long as it is succinct enough to fit in a space on the bingo card. We would love for the masterlist to be continually expanding. We also want to ensure that all aspects of this event are inclusive to gen writers and to aromantic-asexual characters, due to the fact that they’re so often overlooked or left out of fandom events and activities, so no prompts that inherently require the protagonist/whumpee to be alloromantic and/or allosexual (Unrequited Pining, Cheated On, Left at the Altar, etc.) will ever be included in the masterlist.

Q: Can we make our own cards, or do we have to get them from you?

A: In order to keep track of who’s participating, we ask that you specifically request a card from us. The mods are active, and should be prompt in getting you your card. If you’d like to make your own, feel free - we don’t own these tropes. However, if you make your own, don’t tag the completed fic as #badthingshappenbingo. Only cards made and distributed by us are included in the event proper.

Q: Do we have to post the fics we write for this event?

A: It’s not required. You can request a card for personal/private use if you’d like.

Q: Are there any prizes?

A: Bragging rights, a spot in the Hall of Fame, a sense of accomplishment, and a boost to your grand total fanfic word count. That’s all the reward you need, right?

[bellafarella]

I know literally nothing about all this bc I rarely pay attention to the private lives of celebrities. But it seems to me that it’s possible Noel didn’t know the cop was transphobic. I could be wrong on that, but I don’t think he pays that much attention to social media, so idk. But I will say that until this summer, the overall national narrative about police was that they were largely heroic. Yes, I know these protests have been going on for ages, and the police have been shitty forever. But still, the ACAB refrain didn’t gain national prominence until recently. People are so reactionary. Yes, definitely attack racism in all forms, and especially within police departments as they have a huge problem with white supremacy coupled with what amounts to limitless authority and few to no repercussions. But the “case” against Noel sounds rather thin. I just think we should be focused on real problems like, you know, the actual violently misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, racist police force rather than whether a celebrity used to follow a cop on social media, or baseless rumors about who they hang out with. I’ve been alive long enough to see attitudes, opinions, and language change a great deal within various progressive movements. The people who are so self-righteous about attacking past attitudes, opinions, and language today may be surprised to find themselves in the crosshairs of the next generation’s opinions about what constitutes acceptable behavior and speech. That doesn’t mean that they’re evil now, or that it’s fair for people to retroactively accuse them of being evil. It’s just how things work. And I realize I’ve strayed far from the original topic of Noel’s situation, but I think it still applies broadly. I also know this is controversial, so feel free not to publish it if you don’t want to invite the drama. I’m not gonna go anon for it though bc fuck it. I stand by my opinions. And I appreciate that you do the same and don’t cower before the haters. You fucking rock. Keep it up. Sorry for the essay lmao

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

posting because i fucking love that you didn’t hide behind anon to speak your mind. people have a habit to come on anon to tell me to go fuck myself because of my opinions when others literally asked for it. 

and i just wanna add to what you said about noel because you’re right, we dont know that noel knew the cop was transphobic. sometimes people follow other people not knowing their entire fucking background lmaoo so he might not have known he was, and if he did then yeah its problematic af, but in the end, he unfollowed. its the bare minimum but its something.

but yeah, literally everything you said! so thank you for sharing!

[thisguyatthemovies]

Why so quirky?

It took more than 14 years to get around to it, but the other night I watched the 2005 Cameron Crowe train wreck “Elizabethtown,” a film that sometimes shows up on Worst Movie Ever lists. It’s bad, but its “worst” status is more about disappointment, given the writer-director’s previous track record {“Say Anything…,” “Almost Famous,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”). Still, did I mention it’s bad? A ridiculous premise, plot lines that go nowhere, obvious and heavy-handed symbolism, multiple and sickeningly sweet (and annoying) “meet cutes” and quite possibly some of the worst casting in a major motion picture ever all add up to a movie that deserves much criticism.

“Elizabethtown” also is notorious for inspiring the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (or MPDG). The phrase usually is credited to Nathan Rabin, who wrote a piece about the movie, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: ‘Elizabethtown,’” for AV/Film nearly 15 months after its release. In it, he describes Kirsten Dunst’s character, Claire, the inexplicably bubbly love interest of suicidal-but-handsome protagonist Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), as the embodiment of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Rabin describes the type as such:

“The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”

By that definition, applied retroactively, Dunst’s Claire isn’t the first MPDG in movie history (some include Katharine Hepburn’s early roles on MPDG lists), nor is she even the best example of one (think Natalie Portman in “Garden State,” or Zooey Deschanel in “Yes Man” or the TV show “New Girl”). And the term, which Rabin reportedly now regrets coining, has become better defined with attributes that don’t necessarily fit Claire, even though she will forever be considered the epitome of the trope.

In case you have not seen “Elizabethtown” (and you’ll probably be just fine never seeing it), Bloom plays a shoe designer who works for a company not unlike Nike. Somehow, he is saddled with all the blame for a shoe that is so bad that it is recalled and will cost the company (somehow) nearly a billion dollars. Bloom’s Drew Baylor is fired and decides to off himself, but a phone call about the unexpected death of his father interrupts him during his first attempt. Drew, a West Coaster, is enlisted by his family to travel to Elizabethtown, Ky., his father’s hometown and where the elder Baylor has passed away, to bring the body home for cremation. Relatives in Kentucky have other plans for his final resting place.

Drew takes a flight to Kentucky and – wouldn’t you know it? – is the only passenger on the plane. That’s where Claire comes in. She apparently is the lone stewardess, and she is a talkative one at that. She won’t leave Drew alone from the get-go, and she (somehow) senses Drew is troubled and needs help because, for a guy who had a relatively important position with an internationally known shoe maker, he has no idea how to live this thing we call life. She does what any upstanding MPDG would do – she makes the repair of his damaged soul her sole purpose in life.

Claire would seem to vary from the standard trope in that she has a life of her own, at least when she and Drew meet. Her career would afford her at least a modest independent existence. She seems to have a nice place. She even has a boyfriend, though it is not clear if the guy really exists or, if he does, he is all that into her. But Claire quickly becomes a genie let out of the bottle; Drew’s every wish is her command. She just happens to show up wherever Drew is so much that if the roles were reversed, Drew would be accused of stalking. She says all the right things, even as Drew continues to hint at ending his life. She even (somehow) has the availability to, within a brief period of time, piece together a scrapbook (including hand-drawn illustrations) that will help Drew navigate a soul-discovering solo cross-country road trip AND (this being a Cameron Crowe movie) has provided the soundtrack via mix CDs that are (somehow) timed perfectly to coincide with landmarks during Drew’s travels. So omnipresent, so magical is Dunst’s character that some have suggested she was written to be a guardian angel sent to save Drew’s life. That interpretation at least makes some of Claire’s story semi-plausible and almost tolerable.

Claire is selfless to a fault, and she certainly is strange, maybe unstable. But, if anything, Manic Pixie Dream Girls lost even more sense of self and picked up more strangeness as the stock character turned into a full-fledged trope. Think Deschanel as Allison in the 2008 Jim Carrey vehicle “Yes Man.” As is always the case in these things, Carrey is a cynical, disillusioned man looking for meaning in life. He happens upon Allison, who hits a lot of stock MPGD notes. She zips around town on a moped. She wears mismatched clothing from vintage stores. She performs avant garde (and awful) music. Her primary means of supporting herself (?) is by teaching a class that combines jogging and photography. She is everything Carrey’s Carl Allen is not, mostly carefree. They, of course, engage in romance, even though Carl is notably older than Allison (that’s the case in many films, not just MPDG movies).

In 2010’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” two characters combine for the role of MPDG. The titular character, played by Michael Cera, is a slacker musician a few years removed from high school. That doesn’t stop him from dating a high-schooler, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), whose sole purpose is as a superfan for Scott’s band. Then Scott meets the girl of his dreams (literally), Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is at least older than Knives but still is quirky (she works delivering packages while on roller skates) and impulsive (she often changes her hair color) but is too aloof and serious to be a full-on MPDG. She does, however, end up being a sort-of trophy, to be won if Scott can defeat her seven evil exes. So, her existence still is minimalized.

Some movies have addressed the MPDG thing head-on. Though sometimes cited as a MPDG, Kate Winslet’s Clementine in 2004’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is actually the anti-MPDG. Sure, she wears orange hair and gloves with the fingertips cut off, and she’s impulsive. But she also is flawed, sometimes dark and independent (MPDGs typically don’t get any of those traits). And she says this, which seems like a direct response to the trope, even though the term didn’t yet exist, as written by Charlie Kaufman: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fu**ed-up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind. Don’t assign me yours.”

Those are sentiments Claire in “Elizabethtown” never would have expressed, her focus being on a lost, sensitive young man and his happiness, not hers. Nor would she be allowed to even think such, given she and MPDGs like her are the products of writers and filmmakers who want to believe that this idealized version of young women is out there. That will probably be the case as long as men are writing movies, just as the male equivalent of the MPDG – the ridiculously handsome man with washboard abs who manages to accumulate much wealth despite always being around to tend to a woman’s needs and whisk her off to beaches on his private jet – will always exist as long as women are fantasizing about them and flocking to see them in rom-com-drams and reading about them in romance novels.

A little healthy fantasy is fine, but movie tropes and stereotypes are not, if we believe they can shape how we live in real life. Manic Pixie Drew Girls, though not totally a thing of the past (Joi, the A.I. girlfriend in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049,” comes to mind as an updated version), are becoming outdated as more and more females are having their voices heard in Hollywood. MPDGs are being replaced by independent women who are the focus of the story and don’t have to be bubbly if they don’t feel like it, who aren’t required to be quirky and can chase their own happiness. These characters, unlike Manic Pixie Dream Girls, are multidimensional. They give a movie depth, not just gloss.

Imagine if that’s the kind of character Dunst’s Claire could have been. “Elizabethtown” wouldn’t show up on so many Worst Movie Ever lists. And it wouldn’t have been forever linked to a tired movie trope and the terminology to describe it.

[burtlederp]

BTHB About Page

Guidelines + Rules

(home ask)

What is this? — Getting Started — How It Works — The Rules — FAQ —

What is this?

This is your motivation to write that fic. Always fun to take prompts when they’re in the form of games you remember from elementary school birthday parties.

You may have seen some bingo cards floating around in the fanfic community. People make a card featuring 24 prompts, and other people will submit a request for one of these prompts to be filled, as well as choosing which character(s) will prominently feature, and occasionally other details as well, depending on the cardholder’s preference. The cardholder then writes the fic and marks it off on the card.

Sounds fun, right? Right.

We all know that some of us are here to get DARK. So, why not make a bingo game focusing on Bad Things?

At this page you will find a list of tropes and scenarios. Currently, there are over four hundred listed. Most are whump-focused, some are more angst, and a few are centered around the ‘comfort’ part of hurt/comfort. Some are fairly general, some are very specific. Some are fairly lighthearted, and some take you right into the heart of Sadism Land.

These are the fics we’ll be writing.

Getting Started

Once you’ve finished reading the rules and FAQ, click on the ‘request a card’ link on the home page or here. This will take you to an application. Let us know the tumblr url you want us to send the card to, and if you want, what fandoms you intend to write for.

Next, you pick your tropes. We’ve got a lot of them, and of course, not everyone would be interested in writing for all of them. Some tropes may not work in the setting you want to write for, some may be difficult to get inspiration for, some may be too dark for you or not dark enough. Go ahead and check off the box next to every trope that you ARE okay with having on your card. You must choose at least 25, so every space on the card has a prompt. (There is no free space; freedom is an illusion.)

There will be a couple of additional questions at the end of the application, then, just submit! Make sure you have your submission box open on your tumblr, with the option to submit a photo, so that we can send you your bingo card. If your submission box is not open, you will not receive a card.

How It Works

When you receive your bingo card, you can start writing! You can write at your own pace and in your own time frame. Go ahead and post your bingo card if you’re making the fics available to your followers, and don’t forget to keep track of which spaces you’ve completed! Doesn’t have to be anything fancy; you can use anything from Photoshop to MS Paint to a text post with strikethroughs to track your progress.

For fic bingos, many people like to take prompts from their followers. Someone will send an ask requesting one of the tropes from your card and a character(s) for the fic to focus on. If you’d like, you can also let your followers prompt other details such as which character you want to have hurt and which one should be the comforter, whether it should be romantic or platonic, an AU to set it in, anything at all. Sky’s the limit. However, prompts are not required; you can select which combinations of tropes and characters you want to write and in what order you want to write them on your own.

Once you’ve written a fic, post it! If in your application you gave us permission to reblog your work, we’ll put it right here on this blog to share with other players and readers. Be sure to tag it with #badthingshappenbingo, or @ us in the post, to ensure we see it. Additionally, please tag the trope featured in the fic, and the fandom you wrote it for.

If you cross-post the fic on AO3, we have a badthingshappenbingo collection, which you can find here! Feel free to add your fic to the collection!

Once you’ve completed five squares in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, you will be added to the Hall of Fame! But don’t feel like you have to stop once you’ve gotten a Bingo; the Hall of Fame will also give special prominence to those of you who get a Blackout - that is, completing every space on your card!

Rules

~ You must have your submissions open in order to receive a card.

~ Although you may request a new Bingo card, you can only have one card in play at a time. We urge you to try to complete your current card before getting a new one if you can.

~ Fics can be NSFW, but they MUST be tagged as such, and all NSFW content MUST be placed under a Read More.

~ There is no word minimum. There is no word maximum.

~ You are allowed to cross-post works you wrote for this event on other platforms, such as AO3, FFN, etc., but we’d like you to also either post the fic on tumblr, or post a link to it, so we can find it.

~ Your entry must be completed before you can mark off its space on your bingo card. The exception is if you are writing a multi-chapter fic, but the chapter featuring the prompt must still be completed.

~ Your entry must be newly written for the bingo, not retroactively tagged or added on to a pre-existing fic.

~ Please indicate somewhere on the post or in the tags which fandom your fic was written for.

~ Feel free to message the blog if we missed reblogging a post you created for this event.

~ Only one prompt per post counts. You can include multiple tropes in a story/chapter, but you can only officially tag/mark off the square for one of them.

~ We love drama in our fics, not on our dash. If a fic is written for a work or a ship that you don’t like, don’t read it. That’s all there is to it. ~ RPF (Real Person Fic) content is not allowed.

~ Although the official Bingo game is a writing-only challenge, you can also participate in this event as an artist. Find the details in this post here!

FAQ

Q: How long does this event last?

A: Forever and ever, I guess. There is no time limit for completing your fics.

Q: How long does it take to receive a card after applying for one?

A: Anywhere from several hours to one week. It depends entirely on how busy the mods are, how frequently applications are coming in, and how long the waiting list is. All of these factors fluctuate wildly from day to day.

Q: Which fandoms can we write for?

A: You can write for any fandom you’d like. This even includes original work, which we like to view as one-person fandoms. The only exception is that we do not allow RPF (real person fic) content. Let’s stick to hurting FICTIONAL people.

Q: I sent in an application, but did not receive a card. Why is that?

A: Most likely, it’s because your submissions were closed. If, however, your submissions are open and you still did not receive a card, it’s probably because either the Google Docs form did not go through, or tumblr ate the submission. Message us off of anon and we’ll get it sorted out.

Q: I posted a filled prompt and you didn’t reblog it. Why is that?

A: We aim to reblog all filled prompts. However, due to tumblr being tumblr, occasionally we will miss a filled prompt due to the post not showing up in the tag and/or an @ not making it onto our activity feed. So if you have posted a filled prompt and it has been 48 hours or more without us reblogging, that means we didn’t see it, so you can go ahead and submit or direct message the link to us and we’ll get to it as soon as possible.

Q: Can you add [trope] to the trope list?

A: Probably. As long as it is succinct enough to fit in a space on the bingo card. We would love for the masterlist to be continually expanding. We also want to ensure that all aspects of this event are inclusive to gen writers and to aromantic-asexual characters, due to the fact that they’re so often overlooked or left out of fandom events and activities, so no prompts that inherently require the protagonist/whumpee to be alloromantic and/or allosexual (Unrequited Pining, Cheated On, Left at the Altar, etc.) will ever be included in the masterlist.

Q: Why are some of the tropes on the masterlist hotlinked and some not?

A: Some of the tropes are unusual, complex, or use fandom jargon. Those tropes are hotlinked on the masterlist to take you to a page or post that expands on or explains the trope. Those that are not hotlinked are self-explanatory. However, if you do not understand what one of the non-hotlinked tropes means, send us an ask, and we’ll answer and link the trope to that answer.

Q: Can we make our own cards, or do we have to get them from you?

A: In order to keep track of who’s participating, we ask that you specifically request a card from us. The mods are active, and should be prompt in getting you your card. If you’d like to make your own, feel free - we don’t own these tropes. However, if you make your own, don’t tag the completed fic as #badthingshappenbingo. Only cards made and distributed by us are included in the event proper.

Q: Do we have to post the fics we write for this event?

A: It’s not required. You can request a card for personal/private use if you’d like.

Q: Are there any prizes?

A: Bragging rights, a spot in the Hall of Fame, a sense of accomplishment, and a boost to your grand total fanfic word count. That’s all the reward you need, right?

[timeagainreviews]

5 Moments when Doctor Who SUCKED

Imagine, if you will for a moment, that you are a brand new Doctor Who fan. You don’t even know to call yourself a Whovian yet. You get on a few facebook groups, see a few YouTube videos and discover, much to your dismay, that Doctor Who is, in fact, ruined now. Woe is you who set path down a trail leading toward mediocrity, and eventually utter devastation. I ask you to picture yourself in this manner because I want you to realise that only a person new to Doctor Who would believe such drivel. Everyone else saying this seems to have rose tinted glasses. The rest of us all know that Doctor Who is a show that sometimes requires forgiveness.

Am I saying Doctor Who is a bad show? Not hardly. Much like pizza, Doctor Who is still pretty good, even when it sucks. I would venture to say that one of the things I love most about Doctor Who is how campy and silly it can be at times. Why is it then that so many people are turning their backs on a show that’s filled their lives with so much joy? I’m really trying to avoid the "because sexism," argument. But I can’t help but feel like if you were to switch the Doctor to a male, nobody would be calling the show "ruined." Furthermore, how do you even ruin something that has gone through so many changes throughout the years? Oh right, it’s the Doctor Who fandom. Where the only language allowed is hyperbolic.

Perhaps these fake geeks are mad because making the Doctor a woman takes away their ability to call her a Mary Sue. Especially when you consider the same character once burst out of a golden birdcage and floated to the ground in a wave of Jesus energy. That might mean they’d have to retroactively apply the title to every incarnation. Could the Doctor ever escape the distinction? Unnaturally talented, charismatic, good at everything he does, brilliantly smart. Or is it that these attributes only belong to men? We can believe Tom Baker’s Doctor is capable of walking into a burning furnace to save K9, but hell no, a woman can’t be the Doctor.

You have to face it, Doctor Who has had some terrible moments. Yet we continue to tune in because we forgive it. We forgive when Doctor Who is bad because of the moments when Doctor Who is wonderful. Which I know is how you would describe an abusive partner, but I’m gonna let it slide for a television series. Especially this series. Because unlike that dickhead who never texts you back, Doctor Who can change. If you don’t believe me, please peruse this list of five instances when Doctor Who was terrible.

1. The John Nathan-Turner era

My God, how could I not start with this? While there is no denying there are some wonderful moments in JNT's Doctor Who, it's easily my least favourite era of Doctor Who. And as much as I personally love Colin Baker, his Doctor got the lion's share of poor scripts and erroneous costume choices. Never has a man more game for a role, been dealt such a bad hand.

Introducing a Doctor that was cowardly, and even violent toward his companion, was seen as a bridge too far. While I understand the desire to try something new with the character, this wasn't the way to go about it. While the show begins to pick up around the end of McCoy's tenure, it's evident that this is more the influence of studio notes and the hard work of script editor Andrew Cartmel. I can't think of anyone less suited for the job of showrunner.

It seems that for a good nine years, Doctor Who had a madman at the helm, and not in that cute Matt Smith way. Dressing in flamboyant Hawaiian shirts, Nathan-Turner brought that same brash sensibility to the program. From Six's garish costume, to question mark lapels, to Mel's entire timeline, it's a big fat mess with him sitting in the middle. Add to all of this, the allegations of him being a predatory creep toward young male fans, and it's a surprise the show ever survived. Oh wait, it didn't.

2. Racism

Ok, maybe I should have started with this. While Doctor Who has taken efforts to address its racist past, it still happened. They drop a racist slur in "The Celestial Toymaker." Even the term "celestial," is used to mean "Chinese," in describing the titular character played by the very white Michael Gough, fully clad in Oriental silks. This tradition follows into "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," when Li H'sen Chang was played by John Bennett.

It's an uncomfortable miracle that they didn't allow Patrick Troughton to play the role of the Second Doctor in brownface. Not to say his era escaped the odd bit of racism. While Toberman in "Tomb of the Cybermen," gets a few heroic moments, he also gets none of the lines. Cast as mute manservant, we learn nothing about the inner workings of a black man who died so that white people may live.

Later, the show used characters like Ace to talk about racism. She shows disgust with a "No Coloureds," sign hanging in the boarding house she's staying in. When the evil Morgaine had her under mind control, it was calling her friend Ling Tai "yellow," and "slant-eyed," that she was able to snap out of it. Real Ace would never say such things. But even with that groundwork laid, the new series still struggles. From the Doctor being weirdly dismissive toward black people, to it taking nearly 50 years for the first black TV companion, Doctor Who is still grappling with its race issues. Yet you all kept watching.

3. Ace gets molested

This one is a bit of a lesser known infraction as it takes place in the books after the show had already been cancelled. Kicking off the Virgin Media "New Adventures," is 1991's "Timewyrm: Genesys," by John Peel. In it, the Doctor and Ace travel to ancient Mesopotamia, where they meet King Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh wastes no time going full blown creep, groping Ace and pawing at her like he was Joe Biden.

The Doctor's reaction to this is to tell Ace to just go with it, and that it's part of the culture. While I agree that, yes, Gilgamesh may not be the sophisticated modern man that hugs a bro and supports equal pay, the Doctor's reaction is some straight up bullshit. If you're going to go there, maybe try saying something with it other than "Women are men's property." This could have been a great opportunity for the Doctor to puff up and use Gilgamesh's own primitive mindset against him. "How dare you touch my woman!" the very tiny Doctor could say to the very tall man. It would have been a funny visual, mixed with the Doctor utilising male privilege in a way that helps his companion.

This is really an objection I have against most of John Peel's work. He writes women in that "she boobed boobily," manner. Much to my dismay, Peel is one of the sole writers of the Dalek books, so any time you want to enjoy a tale involving our enemies from Skaro, you have to also partake in his brand of women. I'm talking women being described as buxom babes with shoulder length blonde hair, voices like baby goddesses, and legs up to their neck. While on the other hand, we get men described as having a hat and probably some other features. I may be embellishing, but seriously, John Peel, your women suck. Yet it still spawned a rather large book series.

4. Minuet in Hell

Doctor Who has never been known to nail accents. Tegan is vaguely Australian. And Peri must have moved around a lot due to the fact that nothing about her American accent sounds like a regional dialect. That doesn't mean that Robert Jezek's Foghorn Leghorn meets the KFC Colonel performance as " Brigham Elisha Dashwood III," is any less painful. But bad accents aside, the biggest demon in this Big Finish audio is one of Doctor Who's oldest enemies- sexism!

While I understand that Charlotte Pollard may be a fan favourite among many Big Finish listeners, her character will forever be tainted for me, and it's all due to this story. In it, Charlotte, or Charley, gets literally human trafficked. They kidnap her, force her to wear lingerie in a very creepy and misguided attempt to add some sexiness to the story and force her to wait on rich businessmen at a casino.

Now, allow me to clarify, it's not the human trafficking that taints her in my eyes. People who get trafficked are victims, obviously. What bothers me is that neither Gary Russell or Alan W Lear thought to give her a single line of dialogue where she protests. She doesn't even complain a little. Sure, the Doctor often gains intel by getting captured, but this is ridiculous. Add this to the weird disjointed story, and "Minuet in Hell," easily serves as one of the lowest points in not just Big Finish history, but Doctor Who as a whole.

5. Sexism

(Image by Billy Darswed)

It makes the most sense that this is the last one on the list. Because let's be honest, it's a huge problem in the fandom. A lot of early Doctor Who audios and books smack of moments when it feels as though the writers never considered the existence of female fans. Women are often utilised as a means to make the Doctor look better, and for the baddies to look scarier. Mind you, it's not always been a pantheon of swooners and screamers. We got the occasional Sarah Jane, Leela, and Ace.

Even the strong women are long-suffering. Liz Shaw (and her real-life actress Caroline John) left the role of companion over sexism. Beginning her time on Doctor Who as UNIT's top scientific advisor, she was demoted to assistant, holding beakers for the male Doctor who stole her job. The Fourth Doctor acted similarly when telling Romana her qualifications had nothing on real life experience. The same excuse has been used for decades to keep educated women out of the workforce. "Come back when you've got some experience, sweetheart."

While Rose Tyler was a refreshingly real character with a family and life of her own, it doesn't mean that she wasn't horribly mismanaged. In "The Stolen Earth," we see a darker, more serious version of her character. The Rose we used to know is now fully devoted toward one mission and one mission only- getting her man back. It's as though her personality disappears and is fully dependent on having the Doctor in her life. She rises to greatness so that she might bask in his once more. Maybe it's romantic, but maybe it's bad writing.

If you were to ask me who my favourite Doctor Who writers are, I'd have to say Robert Holmes is up there, and he wrote "Talons of Weng-Chiang," a serial full of yellowface. I'd also say Russell T Davies, who wrote the aforementioned "Stolen Earth," and also saw it in his wisdom to turn Shirley Henderson's "Ursula," into a blowjob dispensing garden brick. Or even Steven Moffat who believes the Statue of Liberty could sneak around New York, undetected, and that nobody notices his predilection toward dominatrix women in stiletto heels.

In my review for "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos," I quipped that Chris Chibnall had not yet written a truly great episode of Doctor Who. However, since "Resolution," I can no longer say such a thing. I may even go as far as to say it's one of the best Dalek episodes ever. It would seem then that, given enough time, he could become a great showrunner. And it seems that given enough time, any writer, yourself included, could one day write the latest "worst episode ever."

Every new era has had its stumbles. Not every Doctor gets it correct 100% of the time. Capaldi decided he was the kind of Doctor to exit through the window, a trait we never saw again. The Fifth Doctor decided to sleep his way through his first adventure. The Eighth Doctor was "human on his mother's side." And Ten took so long to regenerate that I'm beginning to think it was old age, and not radiation that did him in. If you can look at all of these stupid, stupid moments and still say you love Doctor Who, then maybe, just maybe, you can get over a bit of spotty writing, like you always have. Or is it still the female Doctor thing? Oh...

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

I wrote before about how the Elders of the Universe had been dilluted and ruined by contributions by Steve Englehart and Mark Gruenwald and the current editorial that clearly have no interest in the actual established lore and heirarchy of the Marvel Universe.

So, I thought I'd try and resolve issues.

Firstly, the Elders of the Universe should remain enigmatic and Cosmic. To this length, their origin shouldn't be entirely known. We've had various different origins and a common one is they are the oldest beings from this Universe. I’d go with this one, alone it is enough to quickly establish their place in the MU.

I would say there are 8 real Elders of the Universe: We have the Collector, Grandmaster, Possessor, Gardener, Contemplator, Champion and Runner.

The Stranger would, or rather, could be an 8th... but his origin would remain a secret and filled with contradictions, as it has to date, but it should definitely be presented as one possibility.

These Elders were planning war against Cosmic Powers such as Death, Galactus and potentially eventually Eternity itself in Steve Englehart’s Silver Surfer. 

To this end, they had to recruit more to their fold.

These other Elders - including all those introduced by Steve Englehart, Mark Gruenwald and so on - aren't actual Elders of the Universe, they are like Second Wave Elders. They don't share the same origins as the first Elders, in fact, maybe a large portion of them are actually the result of the first Elders attempts at procreation and in-breeding among themselves, to create a greater number of their own. I say that as there's actually some similarities in power or appearance between a lot of those like Trader and Judicator and the first wave Elders. I won't go into them all. This would also mean adding Carina, the Collector's daughter from the Korvac Saga, to the Second Wave Elders.

The Second Wave Elders also included recruits. The Elders sought beings who shared a similar power level and similar origins to their own. This is where Ego the Living Planet and a few others come into it. And also, where I tidy up the In-Betweener's involvement. The In-Betweener is not an Elder of the Universe, he is a Cosmic agent in charge of ensuring the balance of Chaos and Order (as has always been the idea). He had aligned himself with them in Silver Surfer. The Elders perhaps extended an offer to join them, as he was a being of great power, and this is maybe why he keeps showing up with the Elders of the Universe when Tom Brevoort edits books. Unlike the other Second Wave Elders, he was also treat as being in league or worthy of being with those First Elders (as was Ego in Silver Surfer).

Another thing I'd do is, I'm not even sure if this is something people care about anymore, but I used to see so much nitpicking and complaining about when the Great Powers of the Universe came together and there'd be Elders or other figures with powers significantly below Eternity and Living Tribunal. I have always seen it as, and think it should be seen as, that the Elders are of significant Cosmic power and their inclusion isn't to hold them up against Eternity but as they are capable of actually involving themselves in whatever crisis is ongoing. My opinion is that if Eternity or Living Tribunal show up, there's a chance entire star systems or the Universe could be destroyed in the ensuing conflict, whereas the Elders and Galactus and the others are capable of acting on their behalf and cause less damage.

Another bit of clean-up: remember when Death cursed the Elders so that they could never die? Well, how come some of them have died? Well, here's my thinking: first, that their deaths were usually caused by supreme beings (Beyonder, Thanos) but the actual curse/law that they would live forever was retroactively removed when Thanos recreated in the Universe in The End. They can once again be claimed by Death. Maybe even, Thanos fixing it so that death means death ONLY referred to the Elders (though, that is a spectacularly weak reading/retconning of it). Anyway, Thanos overruling the laws of Death certainly happened in The End and it was only after that series that they did start dropping dead (Collector and Grandmaster in Jeph Loeb's Hulk). Any instances before that were, as I said, the case of supreme beings who again could overrule Death. Death’s curse only applied to the original Elders and none of the Second Wave Elders or recruits.

Despite claims, there are not “thousands” of Elders out there...

So in conclusion:

Elders of the Universe: Collector, Grandmaster, Possessor, Gardener, Contemplator, Champion, Runner and possibly Stranger.

Not Elders of the Universe: Architect, Astronomer, Caregiver, Carina, Ego the Living Planet, Explorer, Father Time, In-Betweener, Judicator, Obliterator, Trader, any of the new ones.

[gyeolsim]

📝 👀 for both of my kids cause i dont want to go through this twice

📝 me (sort of):

lucy said that reagan is a staple of wsc and that is SO true, i think reagan was the second? app we ever got and i was so taken by how it is Exactly what we were looking for. we’ve gotten a lot of excellent, creative characters, but at the risk of playing favorites, what were the odds that the second person who ever applied almost felt like they were reading our minds and hearts and aesthetics?  like the unapologetic, fearless, creative weirdness of it. senior members came and went but reagan has become so intrinsically wsc that losing it would be such a blow to the group and lore and storytelling that we’ve weaved together here. not to be gay casper but i think you’re such a strong character writer and it’s very clear that reagan is such a passion project for you and where you’re pouring a lot of your self-indulgences and that is so fun to interact with.

lucy already said it and i know a lot of people will remark on reagan’s shameless badness, and i feel like my interpretation of reagan is somewhat clouded by misha’s, but the first thing that comes to mind looking past it’s nonchalant, whoopty fricken doo attitude, is someone who desperately wants to fully inhabit and make its own that space it occupies between worlds, and someone who is in that transitional almost teenagehood-allegory period where it is neither here nor there and it doesn’t know still how to make a home out of it, just that it wants and maybe even needs to. reagan is so… like i am SO aware that everyone else is gonna disagree with me lmaooo, DISCLAIMER i’m PROBABLY WRONG, but what truly stands out to me is the virtuousness of that pursuit, not only how charming it is that it is so true and so unapologetic about who it is and how it wants to live its life, but in how little actual moral failing there is in that, because if you advertise it then it really isn’t deceit. fair warnings and all of that. maybe it’s just because i haven’t ever seen reagan do anything truly abhorrent beyond being a dick now and then that i can’t quite picture it being so selfish that it would choose to truly cause pain and harm and death, maybe it’s that i write misha lmao, maybe that is its bad ending and i am too inclined towards kinder storytelling paths. 

either way, i think this all comes from just how unbelievably well you flesh out that arcane, mythical archetype of a blue/orange morality seelie court native. when i think of the fairy court i picture these violet-tinged, glittery, almost eldritch in its incomprehensibility people-shaped beings that we only ever see a glimpse of, a slice of, and you’ve managed to have reagan live there and be affected by its utter unfathomability and made something so painfully human and dare i say, relatable out of it.

OK THIS IS VERY LONG U GET A READMORE

👀  the saddest boy in the world:

when i first read reagan’s app –and i’m not sure you left this intact in the rewrite, btw– there was a line about how it is callous but can sometimes be found secretly helping out a distressed freshman, and even though reagan evolved a lot as a character this is the part that stuck in misha’s… i don’t want to say rose-colored, because misha is not one to kid himself, but hopeful, i guess, perception of it. his optimistic, fiery stubborn kinda dumbass i-want-to-believe-that-everyone-has-a-little-bit-of-goodness-within-themselves perception of it. idk if reagan developed into someone who still helps little kids regardless of the whole [vague hand gesture] eating souls thing, but to retroactively explain misha’s almost naive faith in it i have to say misha must’ve seen it helping a kid the first time he ever laid eyes on it (most likely way back when misha was new and wide-eyed and didn’t speak much english) and, like, the rest is history. ever since then misha’s held the current reagan up to that standard, not in a way that sees it being unkind and finds it lacking, but in a way that makes him decidedly, unquestionably certain that there’s capital G goodness inside of reagan, that there’s a reagan within a reagan that is virtuous and gentle and driven by… god okay, not to open another great parenthesis of Tangent but i feel it is necessary to explain how misha defines goodness to explain his fatal attraction to reagan, and it is this quote by terry pratchett: there is no hope but us. there is no mercy but us, there is no justice, there is just us (…) but we must care, for if we do not care we do not exist. 

so i think all of this is to say that misha has seen reagan capital c Care, with little kids once upon a time and with the Union that one time he and moire managed to rope it into their two-person circle, he can feel it caring even when reagan wants to bury that passion deep within itself and show its, like, who cares whatever i do what i want facade to the world.

and like… this is hard to articulate, but like.. misha’s faith is not blind, misha’s patched up from contradictions himself, it’s not like he doesn’t realize that reagan is a bastard and an asshole and sometimes sincerely enjoys messing with people. he just sees reagan’s contradictions and finds kindship in them, like, a recognition. a hey, it’s you. they come from the same place, they’re made of similar stuff. misha sees reagan and knows that neither of them have had the privilege of soft, full childhoods because of that wobbling, in-between limbo space where they were spawned into the world. even if misha doesn’t know if reagan acknowledges its contradictions or not – he never claimed to be a mind reader– he just doesn’t have an issue with the apparent dichotomy of reagan being a dick and also being a person (a being?) that misha legitimately thinks has the potential to do fucking good.

lmao i feel like im rambling and saying the same thing and i could go ON FOREVER waxing poetry about the intricacies of misha’s feelings for reagan BUT… at least that’s what misha thinks lol. take it with a grain of salt given that misha’s tragique type is Massive Assholes so that certainly clouds his judgment lmao. he can’t resist a leather jacket!!!!!!!!

also when it presents masc it sometimes is kinda hot but misha’s like, surprisingly at peace with that because he wholeheartedly believes reagan when it says it finds him gross, so in a way it’s kind of a healthy, fun experience for misha to feel vaguely crushy towards a completely unattainable person lmao. most of the time misha legit just wants to hang out and have a wholesome, happy fun Good Time with it and he does like challenges so he might not realize he feels a little bit triumphant every time reagan is even slightly pleasant towards him. this is misha’s tiny little bitter person like a sentient espresso.  

THESE TAKE MORE TIME THAN ANTICIPATED so actually wtf dude send me one from calli’s blog for organizational purposes!

[warriorgays]

I'm going to ask the most broad and annoying question so forgive me, but what happened to everyone after Through the Gay Days ended? I have never been more invested in a group of characters in my life and I desperately want them all to be happy, whatever form that takes, in the end. Also! what other sources did you draw from besides Coming Out Under Fire? I was so impressed with how well researched everything was. 💖

OH MAN I didn’t expect to actually get a question, lol!! And that’s one I’m happy to answer, because I did think a lot about it. idk if I’m ever going to actually write a follow up, because my WIP list is soooo long and, tbh, the 50s are SO DEPRESSING in terms of LGBT stuff.

IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO WRITE THIS UP. I APOLOGIZE. UNDER A CUT BECAUSE HOLY FUCK. I apologize for any typos but I’m just publishing instead of proofreading because what the fuck.

In terms of sources... I really think Coming Out Under Fire was the main “intentional” one. I have a BA in history and I’m getting my MA right now, so I’ve READ a lot of history and probably unconsciously drew on a lot. the other one I can definitely think of is Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, by Lillian Faderman, which covers lesbian U.S. history from the early 1900s to the 1980s. she draws on COUF for her 40s chapter (which is kind of a bummer because I was hoping for more WWII lesbian-specific content lol), but she’s good at covering some of the broad-strokes history of sexuality and LGBTQ identity. Becoming Visible by Molly McGarry is a really cool illustrated history, too, I’ve read that a few times over the years.

SO, for post-war lives, I’m going to warn you real quick it does get depressing for everybody for a little bit because uhhh the 50s fucking sucked? Faderman talks about this a lot, and actually Stephanie Coontz is a good source too--she has this book titled The Way We Never Were, which basically debunks the idea of “the ~traditional~ family” and looks at the ways our perceptions of society’s values have changed. and one thing she points out is that the 1950s are really the first time when society looks at single men--all single men--and thinks “there must be something WRONG with them.” before that, people were willing to accept that some dudes just didn’t want to get married, for plenty of reasons that had nothing to do with homosexuality, but in the 50s everyone was so gungho about The Family that anyone not into it was looked at with suspicion. add that to the whole “homosexuals are susceptible to Communist blackmail, better fire them all” and things fucking sucked.

I PROMISE HAPPY ENDINGS, THOUGH, because the whole “LGBTQ people lived depressing lives until these Enlightened Times” trope is my least favorite trope ever.

SO, for Gene Roe, my first thought for his post-war life was this Gaslight Anthem lyric that @antiquecompass prompted me for a Snafu/Roe fic foreverrrrrr again: “I’m in love with the way you’re in love with the night.” so I imagine that Snafu comes home, and they try to just settle into things as usual, but Snafu starts really pushing Gene’s buttons. being more snide, being disrespectfully obvious about being nonmonogamous (like it’s one thing to go cruising and another to bring dudes home to the apartment you’re sharing with your boyfriend, COME ON MAN), trying to pick fights. and of course the impetus for all this is Snafu struggling with PTSD and thinking that Gene is too good for him but not being able to end it himself. of course Gene doesn’t put up with this bs, so one day Snafu finally admits he’s doing this because he’s afraid the war turned him into kind of a fucked up asshole, and Gene’s like “you were always a fucked up asshole? what’s your point? I love you?”

so then things kinda simmer down. Gene’s not Officially a doctor anymore, but he and Snafu live in an apartment building in the poorer part of the city with a lot of ~ethnic~ folk nearby some black neighborhoods, so he does some informal community doctoring around those buildings, and that earns him enough goodwill that he and Snafu don’t really have to worry about getting caught out. it’s the kind of neighborhood where a lot of people have to... bend the law a bit to get by, to be happy, whatever, so people trade food and skills as needed and there’s always an alert if the cops are coming by. it’s a good place for them. they’re happy. I’ve only really thought ahead like ~ten years, but I can imagine them eventually moving on when the community moves on, you know, whether to another city or somewhere a little more rural, depending, and that being okay. and I think, with Gene’s influence, and seeing how strong the ties are between the Pansies with Parachutes(TM), Snafu is able to reach out to Sledge and Burgie and the rest more than irl/show canon.

Babe and Spina are the other two that totally make it, soulmates, heartbreakingly cute. but I promised a little heartbreaking, so basically my idea is that they actually move in together a little while after the war, but at some point Babe’s mom realizes what’s up and... does not take it well. gives him an ultimatum, break up with Ralph or she won’t let him near the family, which Babe finds agonizing because he’s really close with his family but Ralph doesn’t have very many relatives, at least not close by (in this verse at least), and even if he could bring himself to break up with Ralph, at this point he doesn’t think his mom will ever treat him the same anyway.

in my head there’s a really sweet scene when Ralph finds out what happens and a lot of hugging and comforting. but yeah. that briefly sucks. what DOESN’T suck is when Babe decides, after a few months, that he has to tell Bill (because Bill has gotten so close to the Heffrons that of course he notices when Babe suddenly isn’t speaking to them), and Bill proves himself to be a total Bro who decides that, well, the typical idea of a homosexual CLEARLY doesn’t fit Babe and Spina so... it’s all good? like c’mon they went through a war together, that’s worth something, right?

I think eventually Babe and Spina move, too. not super far, just maybe to, idk, New York, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, somewhere they can visit everyone but maybe far enough to put some distance between them and bad memories, and also because South Philly is small when your family isn’t speaking to you, you know? possibly they end up in the same city as Luz and Tipper (see next), I’m not 100% sure but I’m vaguely attracted to the idea of everybody ending up on a commune, lol.

so I think I’m probably meanest to Luz, because I imagine him getting arrested at some point. sorry, boo. his reaction is to pay the fine and slink out, and get out of dodge for a while to avoid his family getting any blowback, and he ends up visiting Tipper, who’s really frustrated (which I alluded to a bit at the end of Through the Gay Days) because he just doesn’t click with his old friends as much and he hasn’t had a lot of luck romantically. and again I have this clear scene in my head of Tipper helping Luz dress in drag for the first time, lots of giggling and teasing, but Tipper doesn’t really do drag anymore because he can’t keep his balance in heels, and they end up talking about their frustrations and venting and whatnot. and eventually Luz is like “you know what? fuck it! run away with me!”

and Tipper’s like “fuck it, let’s do it!” so they just kind of live a semi-nomadic life? idk, maybe not really nomadic, but they get jobs that let them move/travel, so they don’t have the pressure of expectations. I’m on the fence about whether they do this as lovers... I would say not, like, REALLY. like possibly a friends with benefits thing (and I’ll point out that Luz is one of the only other named characters who interacts with Tipper, other than Liebgott, because Tipper’s in charge of the map during the Major Horton scene, so that chemistry could totally work). because they’re, like, the two from the fic whose relationships don’t end up going anywhere, and I don’t want them to pine after the Joes forever, and they don’t, but sometimes people just don’t find their soulmates, it happens, and they can at least make each other happy.

this is one of those verses where I’ve decided Liebgott gets to keep his wife-and-kids dream. I do think he’s gay in this verse, and when he gets engaged he writes a letter to Tipper basically seeking closure, admitting he dealt with things in kind of a shitty way and admitting it might be nice to have a Gay Posse, but he also takes his marriage seriously even if it’s not a love match, and doesn’t seek romantic or sexual encounters with men. idk if Joe Toye actually gets married in this verse, but I don’t see him as gay. if we were to retroactively apply the Kinsey scale, I’d say he’d be a 1 or a 2, in which the situational aspect of war kind of pushed him towards interactions that he may have subconsciously desired, but definitely wouldn’t acknowledge in a normal time and place.

as for Chuck! I kind of like the future I give Chuck, partly because he conveniently is from the LA area. so for him, I imagine that at some point Ron Speirs just kind of shows up on his doorstep one day and they become, like, an actual Thing. and it’s good for a couple of years, but Ron seems... restless. and eventually Chuck sits him down and flat-out says “look, I really don’t think you’re cut out for this settled-down long-term-relationship kind of thing. we had a good run, we can part on good terms, but you can travel and have adventures and do all the stuff you want to do.” and then, correctly, points out that one of the reasons Speirs is so reluctant to do that is because he feels guilty for Chuck getting shot, which doesn’t really make any sense. Chuck’s only request is that Ron NOT GO BACK INTO THE ARMY, because fuck Korea, have you heard how many gay soldiers are getting kicked out of the military nowadays? Speirs agrees and they break up amicably.

(is Chuck still in love with him? yes. does it hurt like a motherfucker? yes.)

ANYWAY. the L.A. is where the Mattachine Society, the first official homosexual organization in the country, was founded in 1948... or maybe 49. I forget. the founder started asking around a while before he found people who were actually willing to join up. I figure Chuck eventually joins up and is the first of the Pansies with Parachutes(TM) to really develop a political gay identity. and through that org he eventually meets Beth, a lesbian who’s just broken up with her gf and is kind of panicking because now she might have to leave her apartment and go back to her parents in Nebraska, and they become fast friends and fuck it, why not get married? it’s good cover, and I could have also gotten a chance to talk about the working class lesbian bar scene in the 1950s, which is a cool topic.

if this were a formal fic, I would end it with 1952, when the entire group reunites in honor of the 10-year anniversary of them meeting at Toccoa. since it’s not, suffice to say they do have all-group reunions, and they also visit each other and call and write letters and stay friends 5ever. at some point Babe and Spina have a not-wedding (there’s a picture of a wedding in the 50s with two grooms in flower crowns in Becoming Visible, I love that picture) and they all come and celebrate. OH and at some point between Luz getting arrested and meeting with Tipper, he definitely visits Gene in Louisiana and they make out a bit. because, tbh, I caught a bit of UST in Through the Gay Days--I don’t know if it’s a ship I’d ship in any other verse, lol, but in this verse I feel like they need to make out.

anyway. eventually the 50s end. I want to say that by the time Stonewall happens, either Tipper&Luz or Babe/Spina (both??) are living in NYC and for three days everyone is frantically calling each other going “DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS???” and Chuck becomes totally into the California gay scene, and Babe’s nieces and nephews eventually reach out to him, Tipper and Luz either... idk, become real boyfriends or get hot younger boyfriends and become Wise Gay Dads to the younger crowd. Snafu and Gene grow old together, as hard as it is to imagine old Snafu.

EVERYBODY IS HAPPY AND FRIENDS AND GAY, THE END.

[loopy777]

Which character you think is the biggest victim of Yang biased writing? Aang, Azula, or other characters? (I'm so interested in your criticism and commentary )

Well, I wrote a whole essay about Ursa, so I think she wins by default. XD

However, to be sure, let’s go through the whole list of major characters:

Azula: While I don’t like the way Azula herself has been regressed on her character journey, I don’t think she’s been damaged by Gene’s writing. I actually think he has a fairly good grasp of her characterization, preserving her tactical genius, and making her a functional driver of Story while still dealing with her mental issues. Fixing the problems with her is just a matter of moving her forward, something that can be done while still keeping her as an antagonist.

Mai: I think Mai has escaped unscathed. I'm not a fan of the way the Maiko breakup has been written, but it has nothing to do with Mai. She's been true to form, reacting reasonably to Zuko's bad characterization, and hasn't been blamed unfairly for the breakup or written to give up her understandable complaints for the sake of a happy reconciliation. Heck, I almost wonder if the breakup hasn't been going on this long because Gene wrote himself into a corner and can't figure out how to fix it without either compromising Mai's character or bashing his own characterization of Zuko. My only complaint about Mai's portrayal is that Gene is going a bit overboard in showing her loyalty and love for her family, but considering Mai's reputation with the fandom, I can't get too mad about an over-correction.

Sokka: While Sokka has mostly been written as dumb comic relief, that was a trend started in the cartoon, so I can hardly blame Gene for that. And again, the writing hasn’t damaged Sokka at all.

Toph: Here’s where we get into failing characterization. While Gene gets the broad strokes of Toph, I think her characterization is exaggerated in the same way that fandom and even some of LoK does it. (And I might even be guilty of this, too, in my fanfic writing.) Toph’s argument with Aang in The Rift came across as really dumb, since it started off with a contrived miscommunication. And Toph’s dynamic with the “Lily Livers” regresses her teaching style to Bitter Work mode, when she should have learned that yelling at people doesn’t always lead to good results. I don’t see this as a regression, like with Azula, because I don’t think Gene is aiming for an earlier characterization of Toph; I think he thinks that’s just how she always is. And with the fandom largely perceiving Toph as Little Miss Shouty, Gene’s characterization is helping to perpetuate a more shallow view of the character.

Katara: As I’ve mentioned both in my earlier Katara post and some discussions on ASN, Katara has suffered in the way she’s used in these stories. I think her characterization is mostly fine, but while she was the one who mostly set the episode-to-episode agenda in the cartoon, she’s just Aang's tag-along in the comics. In the cartoon, Katara would frequently decide what stops to make and which people to help, or at least heavily figured into the decision when Aang was the one to have the final word. In the comics, though, that's been limited to North & South. So the comics create the illusion of the more passive Katara, something at odds with her characterization. By itself, this wouldn't be too bad, just another case of non-damaging fumbling that could be easily corrected, but when combined with the way LoK turned Katara into the most passive of the surviving gAang and pushed her back into the Healing Huts for all the important events, it creates a characterization for her that has her effectively retiring at 16.

Aang: Ugh. Here's our first major candidate. Aang has been permanently damaged by Gene's writing. The whole finale of the cartoon hinged on a very specific aspect of Aang's character, that he values life above all, to such a passionate degree that he unconsciously summoned the last living god and learned a dangerous spiritual technique with the potential to change the world forever. Whether you think Aang was right or not, whether you think the plot was well-implemented or not, it boggles my mind that Gene's first story starts Aang as someone willing and even eager to kill an opponent. And the best Gene can offer as an explanation is some babble about Buddhist monks having a provision for killing that didn't apply to the events in The Promise and wasn't even invoked by the story itself. That it was Zuko, of all people, who Aang hugged in one of the last scenes of the show and declared a friend, just makes it worse. Aang comes across as a murder fetishist, considering killing Zuko before even understanding the reason behind Zuko's actions, and then going back to the murder solution after finding out that Zuko considers himself to be in a moral quandary about the colonies. If we count Aang's eager acceptance of Roku's (out of nowhere) racism until he realizes that he won't be able to get it on with his Water Tribe girlfriend, then it makes it even worse, recoloring the accepting, well-traveled kid we met in the cartoon as a snobby tourist. So Gene's writing has made Aang a weaker character who might have gotten brain damage sometime between the cartoon and the comics, considering how different he became.

Zuko: Ugh. Here's our other major candidate. Zuko has been permanently damaged by Gene's writing. Yes, in real life, people sometimes regress in their development and victims of abuse frequently don't just move on, but even worse than Aang, the way Zuko goes crawling back to his father and reacts to every disagreement by trying to kill or exile his friends retroactively damages his journey in the cartoon. It makes for a terrible story. That moment in 'The Day of Black Sun' when Zuko denies Ozai and claims Iroh as his true father figure? It's not a triumph now, because Zuko has been proven to be one bad day away from choosing to be more like Ozai. That moment in the finale when Aang hugs Zuko and they talk about how they're friends? That's meaningless now, because Zuko consistently treats Aang without any respect, and often with violent hostility, practically demanding that Aang act like a sycophant. That moment when Zuko learns how deeply Mai cares for him, finding out that she'd give her life just to ensure his survival even if she doesn't quite understand why he's made his choices? Well, apparently Zuko didn't learn anything, because he shuts Mai out of his life unless he wants some lovin', and doesn't even think about her unless she's literally standing in front of him begging for some attention. Every single one of Zuko's progressions in the cartoon is undone by Gene's characterization of him. And Zuko's progressions were not only a major part of what made AtLA so good, it's arguably THE factor that elevated beyond a merely really good children's show. So Gene's writing for Zuko has retroactively ruined AtLA. And no, I'm not exagerating.

Well, gotta give it to Zuko, then. Special mention to Ursa and Roku.

[nealiios]

The Derrick: Part II - Making Faces With My Friends

Once upon a time, designers were able to make games without graphics. Dungeon Masters rendered breathtaking worlds full of beauty and danger thanks to the amazing power of IMAGINEOVISION, a game engine that required only the human voice and the creativity of its players. Choose Your Own Adventure books and text-only computer games formalized the process into descriptive chunks of text between which the player had to choose, again without relying on a single pixel to aid -- or to hinder -- the player’s imagination. The power of decision-based storytelling was, and still is, one of the most compelling forms of gameplay available, but the introduction of computer graphics into the adventure genre with Mystery House forever changed the game. In order to attract and hold the attention of a modern gamer, even the best text-based adventure usually requires at least a modicum of eye-candy.  

As we discussed last time, The Derrick will primarily take the form of a text adventure. In order to illuminate the people and places of Adams, Oklahoma, I’ll be creating not only the story and design for the game, but also the pixel art as well -- a first in my 27 years of game development. Because I’m not a naturally talented artist, it’s taken me several years to develop my art style, and what follows is a brief exploration of how I’ve developed the approach that I’ll be using in The Derrick. 

                                                      *     *     *

I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I’ve envied so many of my friends who could sit down with a sketch pad and a pencil and just DRAW anything they wanted. My friend Kenneth Mayfield valiantly spent many hours trying to teach me, and he let me watch as he worked with an airbrush to create the covers of many of the Starfleet Battles strategy games. I picked up as much as I could from him, and even got to the point that I could paint halfway decent nebulae and planets, but mastery with traditional media eluded me. My hand eye co-ordination was poor, and no matter how long I worked at it, I never felt like I was making measurable progress. I might have given up on it entirely if Photoshop hadn’t come along in the early ‘90s to show me another way. 

My first experiments with digital photo manipulation were typical surrealism. I cloned my dad and made him sit in his own lap. I placed myself on the cover of important magazines. I did all the silly things that most beginners did with Photoshop, and learned how to blend out scratches and obliterate wrinkles from extant photos. But not too long after I began to experiment with the tool, I began to see it not only as a way to change photos, but also to create entirely new images from scratch. I could make up for my natural deficits in hand eye co-ordination by zooming in and editing pixel by pixel, and I could undo mistakes with a simple keyclick. The program didn’t give me the talent that I didn’t have, of course, but it did provide me with the confidence that I might be able to grow and develop in a way that I hadn’t been possible with mere paint and canvas. 

I’ll be the first to admit that my first fully digital “painting” was terrible. I was no better an artist than I had been in junior high, but it wasn’t a bad place from which to start. 

WALL OF EYES - As a whole, my first digital painting was terrible, but isolated bits of it revealed that I might be able to do things with digital painting that I hadn’t been able to master with traditional techniques. 

When I got to work on my first painting, I’d had no concrete plan for what I wanted to draw. I started with the face of a cyber-punk girl and worked outward, but everything about her showed off my weaknesses as an artist. She had no structure to her face, the balance was wrong, her proportions were deformed -- from head to toe she was a nebulous mess. I’d also put zero thought into her background before starting, and as a result had to retroactively paint in a wall around her rather than painting her over it (a process that would have been a lot easier if Photoshop had had layers, but that feature wouldn’t come along for a few more years). Slowly the wall took on a kind of life of its own, becoming a rotting wood-plank fence. As the gaps and holes began to appear, my mind began to wonder what might be lurking behind them. It became evident to me that the real subjects of the painting were the eyes behind the wall rather than the girl in front of it. “Wall of Eyes” would name itself, and would later lead to two “sequel” images. 

COULD SOMEBODY GET ME SOME VISINE? - Using the power of layers in Photoshop allowed me to “focus” more on fine details of the image.

With the original version of “Wall of Eyes,” I’d felt extreme hesitation at trying to fix any aspect of the image for fear of destroying what few elements I’d liked. The introduction of layers into later versions of Photoshop, however gave me not only a new way to experiment, but it also made me look at the creation process in an entirely different way. 

In traditional art, it’s very customary to “build up” an image one layer at a time, painting several coats of translucent paint over each under until a net color or other effect is achieved (a core lesson I’d learned from painting nebulaes). With layers in Photoshop, I realized I could achieve the same effect without running the risk of messing up coats of paint (which would require destroying and painting over flubbed layers.) I could simply lay down different colors and textures and then alter their opacity however I desired. I could also reorder the layers in an instant, and change how they mixed with one another. Ultimately it began to feel more like the process of creating a collage, and it was freeing to realize that I could experiment without fear of messing something up. 

My first use of this new feature was to return to “Wall of Eyes” and enlarge one eye that I’d found particularly menacing. Inspired by an old comic book cover, I recolored my “refocused” painting with lurid, pulp comic colors. 

THE THING IN THE BOX - Taking center stage, the eye pops even more with contrasting values of heat and cold, and even greater layers of detail veining its malevolent gaze. 

As I continued to toy with it and refine, I “cooled down” the fence with tones of moonlight to draw contrast with that hellish eye, and lavished more details on the eyeball itself. Using layers not only of color but also adjustments to saturation, and contrast, and other elements, I arrived at a final nightmarish image of something that none of us wants to find beneath our beds. 

When I started thinking about the character portraits for The Derrick, I realized that a lot of the lessons I’d learned about painting could be used in the modification of existing materials. I could take photos of friends of mine and transform them into heavily stylized portraits that would fit the mood and style of the game I wanted to create. My portrait transformation for Delphine Mack is a fairly good example. I began with a photo of my friend Sarah Berry in vintage clothes appropriate to our 1920s setting.

 The original image was black and white, and Sarah was posed against a crowded black background that had to be knocked out in order to make room for a different environment. Finding the boundaries between her dark dress and the dark background were a challenge, but it was an important step in isolating her for modification. Next, I began to hand tint the image for a slightly vintage-postcard look, and applied filters to create a paint-like “surface” to the image.

Next I turned towards the creation of a mysterious background, cloaking her in a graveyard-like fog of blue that fits the mood of the game. It felt as though she should be creeping around in graveyards or down at the riverboat dock. 

Once the fog was done, I realized that I liked it, but it seemed to compress the image into a single plane, and the color was too monochromatic. So, for a remedy, I created masks to draw a noirish slash of light across her face, while also creating contrasting bands of orange and red behind and below her for a final mysterious effect. 

The irony of Delphine’s portrait creation is that I hadn’t meant for her to be a major character in The Derrick. She was intended only to be one of several non-player characters with whom the player could interact during the course of the game. But as I watched her come alive during the creation of her portrait, I began to see her as a daring and brilliant protagonist that would be very different than your usual Lovecraftian hero, and a perfect centerpiece for the tale. Many of the other characters you’ll meet in The Derrick likewise found their narratives while I was busy “painting” their faces, some of which required a great deal more compositing of elements and layers than Delphine. Phineas Book is a great example of portrait that actually required the combination of several disparate elements -- one man’s face, another person’s hands, a suit that was appropriate for the time period, and a theatrical-looking fireplace that provided the perfect backdrop. The fire itself was hand painted for final effect, as were the eyes and other smaller elements of the scene. 

[unixcommerce]

Lower Corporate Tax Rates Make C Corporations More Attractive to Small Businesses

For years, experts (myself included) often advised startups and small businesses to consider the Limited Liability Company (LLC). The alternative C Corporation possessed less flexibility, ease of administration and tax advantages. However, changes in the tax law from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act now create a new potential for big tax savings. And they make the C Corporation a strong option for businesses of all sizes. 

A full tax season has passed since the Tax Cuts and Job Act was enacted. So it’s time to take a new look at corporate structure. And to determine if the C Corporation structure is right for your business. 

C Corporations, S Corporations, and LLCs – a brief overview

Let’s look at the new tax implications. Start with some of the basics of a C Corporation. Then continue with S Corporations and LLC. 

A C Corporation exists as a type of company owned by shareholders. And an elected board of directors run it. But from a legal perspective, corporations are separate entities. And they can get sued and sue. Consider this important point. The corporation becomes responsible for legal and financial liability. And owners are often shielded from personal liability. 

In addition, corporations become separate tax payers. And they pay taxes at a corporate tax rate. But this leads to the commonly known “double taxation” issue with C Corporations. The IRS taxes income first at the corporate tax rate. And then taxes come out at the individual tax rate when dividends are distributed to shareholders. 

Individual tax rates were cut in the 1980s. And the C Corporation structure hasn’t made much sense for smaller businesses since. So savvy business owners often created pass-through entities like S Corporations and LLCs where business income passes through to the individual’s tax return. In fact, the C Corporation offered little advantage to smaller businesses who weren’t going public or looking for venture capital funding. 

The two common pass-through entities are the S Corporation and LLC. An S Corporation is a C Corporation that has elected pass-through tax treatment with the IRS. Like the C Corporation, an S Corporation is owned by shareholders and run by a board of directors. 

An LLC is a different kind of entity. As the name implies, it helps shield owners from personal liability with the business (like a corporation). But, an LLC is much less complex to run and manage. With the corporation, you need to appoint a board of directors, hold an annual shareholders’ meeting and directors’ meetings, document key shareholder and director decisions, and file a separate corporate income tax return. For an LLC, you typically just need to file an Annual Report with the state. 

Tax Law Changes Make the C Corporation more Attractive

A major reduction in the C Corporation tax rate remains one of the big goals of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It dropped from 35% to 21%. This lower corporate tax rate combines with additional benefits of IRC 1202 to make the C Corporation particularly attractive for some businesses. 

Haven’t heard of IRC 1202? You’re probably not alone. It’s a generous capital gains tax exemption that was championed by President Obama. But it didn’t receive much attention until the corporate tax rate was lowered. In essence, if you qualify for IRC 1202, you might be able to exclude 100% of the gain up to $10 million or 10 times your original investment. You need to hold the stock for five years and there are many other requirements too. To learn more about IRC 1202 here, I recommend this post, as well as talking to your tax advisor. 

With the lower corporate tax rate and IRC 1202, the C Corporation can now be extremely advantageous for the following scenario: you launch a business, expect to start smart small, make profits and plan to keep earnings within the company, and then cash out after holding the stock for five years or more. 

What Business Structure is Right for Me? 

Without factoring in all the specifics of your individual situation, it’s impossible for an article to provide a definitive answer on which business structure is right for you. With that said, there are a few things to consider…

Do you need to live off your business’ profits each year? If so, taking money out of the corporation will trigger dividend taxes – and therefore, business profits will essentially be taxed twice. If you are planning to put the business profits in your own pocket each year, a pass-through entity, like the S Corporation or LLC, might be better. 

Are you planning on keeping your business “forever”? Keep in mind that capital gains taxes are erased at death, so if you’re never planning to sell your business, you may not need to bother with a C Corporation/IRC 1202. 

Are you looking to keep things as simple as possible? As I mentioned before, running a C Corporation or S Corporation requires more regulations and paperwork than an LLC. If you form a C Corporation/S Corporation, be ready to spend more time keeping track of tax, business and financial records. 

Do you plan on holding the business for at least five years and then sell? If so, the C Corporation could be very advantageous – particularly if you will be keeping profits within the business until cashing out. 

Are you concerned about your personal liability? One of the key reasons to form an LLC or Corporation has always been the ability to minimize the personal liability and protect the personal assets of business owners from things that happen in the business. This holds true whether you form a C Corporation, S Corporation or LLC. 

How to Incorporate

If you are interested in forming a C Corporation, it might be easier than you think. Follow these steps…

Choose an available business name for your state

Appoint the corporation’s directors

Register the C Corporation with the state, and draft and file your Articles of Incorporation. You can do this yourself or have an online legal filing service handle it for you. 

Issue stock certificates to the initial shareholders

Obtain the necessary local permits and business licenses

Apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the IRS

If you have an existing business that’s currently structured as a pass-through S Corporation or LLC, you may decide it’s now more advantageous to operate as a C Corporation. If you’re an S Corporation, it’s an easy change to make. With majority shareholder consent, an S Corporation may revoke its S Corp election with the IRS (depending on timing, the revocation may retroactively apply for the whole tax year, or you may need to split the tax year between S Corp status and C Corp). 

If you’re an LLC and want to restructure as a C Corporation, your state may allow a statutory conversion, which is a streamlined process. An alternative route is to create a C Corporation and then merge your LLC with the C Corp. This involves a bit more paperwork — but in some cases, the tax savings could be worth it. 

The bottom line is your business structure doesn’t have to be set in stone. With the current changes to the tax law, this could be a good time to think about your business structure of a new or existing business. 

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “Lower Corporate Tax Rates Make C Corporations More Attractive to Small Businesses” was first published on Small Business Trends

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