inbrightshadows
Welcome to my Random Bullshit Box (fandom edition)
23K posts
fandom sideblog! I fell into a turtle hole and I have no plans on coming out. I tag my posts with "bs posts" and my writing with "my writing"
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inbrightshadows · 2 hours ago
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Wrong party
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Screenshot redraw
[Insert AM from IHNMAIMS Hate speech here]
I have come to the realization that they do not wear pants.
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inbrightshadows · 3 hours ago
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Ok so AO3 has just announced changes to their terms of service. Mostly it's just rewording ambiguous phrasing and clarifying some points. But they are also changing the archive warning 'Underage' to 'Underage Sex' (because some people were using it for like, teenagers kissing or for underage drinking, which isn't a massive problem but it's not what the tag is for)
It's a minor change and should be a non issue, but I've seen people saying that AO3 isn't requiring you to tag underage sex anymore, which is categorically untrue. I do however know why they think this, and its a combination of not fully reading the updates and a misunderstanding of how the archive tag system works in the first place.
You can find the full wording on AO3 itself but the relevant part is as follows: "If you have a work that carries the "Underage" warning and you don't want it to display the "Underage Sex" label, you can replace it with the "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" label at any time."
Any fic that currently has the 'Underage' archive warning will be updated to have the 'Underage Sex' warning instead. If for some reason you don't want that, what the above statement is saying is that you can use 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings' instead.
Makes sense. However, if you don't understand the archive warning system, you might interpret that as not being required to tag underage sex.
The way it works is that there are five archive warnings: 'Underage', 'Rape/Non-con', 'Graphic Depictions of Violence', 'Major Character Death', and 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings'. There's also 'No Archive Warnings Apply', which is used when none of the others are relevant.
The site classifies the first four as specific archive warnings (meaning they refer to a specific topic) and 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings' as a non-specific warning, which means that a work tagged with it could contain any archive warning.
It can also be used where you might want an additional tag for a non-archive warning (for example, Drug use), but don't want to tag it for spoiler reasons. This is a perfectly acceptable use of the tag.
The issue is, some people think that's the only thing its meant to be used for, and any archive warnings have to be tagged no matter what. If this hypothetical person came across a work containing major character death, but the only archive warning was 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings', they would consider the work incorrectly tagged.
So then, if this person read ToS update, and found the part about replacing 'Underage'/'Underage Sex' with 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings', they could easily interpret that as the site no longer requiring underage sex to be tagged. In actual fact, underage sex is still a required warning, you just don't have to use the specific archive warning. You can use the non-specific one instead. (To be fully clear, this has always been the case)
Nothing is actually changing in terms of what content has to be tagged, it's literally only the wording of the archive warning, because it was a little ambiguous before.
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inbrightshadows · 3 hours ago
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listen to me. listen to me. I am taking your hand. I am looking into your eyes. That's how serious I am about this:
Writing advice is not holy writ.
you do not have to do exegesis on "show don't tell". you don't have to justify yourself under its sacred law. you don't have to work yourself around thirteen different leaps of logic to make "show don't tell" mean "do exactly as much telling as you feel like". you can just say:
I am not following that advice today.
and you can tell and not show, and nobody can stop you, and you are not committing any sin.
You do not have to show-not-tell. You do not have to kill your darlings. You do not have to delete all your adjectives or avoid all adverbs or never say "said" or always say "said". You do not have to explain how killing your darlings really means this other thing.
Sometimes the advice you decide not to follow might have made your work stronger. That's fine. You can learn from that. But you don't have to justify yourself as if you were following that advice all along.
It's writing advice. You can disagree with it. You can ignore it. It is not your God.
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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Evil dude that’s way in over their head: We will take over this “Ghost Zone” and from there use it as a base to take over the rest of the multiverse!
Danny: umm yeah okay but you’re gonna have to talk with the Ghost King about that.
Evil dude: Whose the Ghost King???
Danny, the crown of fire suddenly appearing over his head: Me
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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When it comes to sex scenes, the rules say things like: Don’t write them at all, and if you do, don’t use these words. Don’t write them silly, porny, dramatic, tragic, pathological, grim, or ridiculous.
My whole practical thesis around the craft of writing a sex scene is this: it is exactly the same as any other scene. Our isolation of sex from other kinds of scenes is not indicative of sex’s difference, but the difference in our relationship to sex. It is our reluctance to name things, the shame we’ve been taught, our fraught compulsion to an act a theatre of types. It is indicative of the lack of imagination that centuries of patriarchy and white supremacy has wrought on us. 
To teach sex scenes is to talk about plot, dialogue, pacing, description and characterisation: all those elements that make a captivating scene. A sex scene should advance the story and occur in a chain of causality that springs from your characters’ choices. It should employ sensory detail that concretises and also speaks symbolically to the deeper content of the story. Or if not, it should service your work of art in whatever ways you want from your scenes.
“Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex” in Body Work by Melissa Febos
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.
My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.
My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.
This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.
Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.
I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.
So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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Minato lives
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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Venus doodle
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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The Princess Diaries is one of my absolute favourite movies of all time but I still believe with wmy whole entire heart that Princess Mia Thermopolis should have had beautiful curly hair post-makeover
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She also should have kept her glasses but that's a different conversation
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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ur telling me batman (a hero whose power is like 65% fear 35% money) has a villain who is all about weaponizing fear and he’s not the main villain? ur telling me batman (man with a secret identity so strong that there are questions of who the real person is at the end of the day and whose entire creed is about stopping One Bad Day™️) has a villain who is his childhood friend that has physically separated his dual violent-nonviolent nature and is all about duality and chance and he’s not the main villain? ur telling me batman (man with strong ideas about the Right Way to stop crime and who emerged from the destruction of his own family structure) has a villain who is his undead son/former sidekick who he couldn’t save and now disagrees with the way to address crime in gotham and he’s not the main villain? ur shitting me about this clown guy right
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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an interaction im very tired of in online autism spaces. aka when you don’t have a special interest / when your special interest isn’t [character] or [fandom]
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inbrightshadows · 4 hours ago
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extremely normal about the unhesitating faith that someone will always be there to catch you
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inbrightshadows · 7 hours ago
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Inktober 2024
Day 24 - Shikamaru x Shadow Creature
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inbrightshadows · 21 hours ago
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How the Infinite Realms/Ghost Zone fits into DC canon, as well as the GIW.
So I read Spirit World, which actually explains a lot of things.
To get from the world of the living to the world of the dead, you have to walk. There is no teleportation. You walk through the In-Between, the Space between Spaces, and you need a bridge. The only denizens that can walk/wander through the Space between Spaces are the denizens of that realm, which are not supposed to be in the world of the living or the world of the dead.
This is where shades live, as well as "monsters". It is also possible for spirits on their way from point A to point B to lose the path and get lost, wherein they forget themselves and are unable to escape. They become one of the denizens of the medium.
It's fairly ambiguous BUT THE POINT IS that this is the Infinite Realms, a medium that connects all worlds, living and dead.
SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT
The more important point, though, is that Spirit World is a comic arc following DCs very own canonical halfa. Non-binary/genderneutral, they don't have a separate spirit form because, unlike Danny, who was in the process of dying, they were caught up in a botched attempt at reincarnation.
So while Danny has to turn into a ghost form, which is a separate thing because he is still, for the most part, alive; Xanthe Zhou, the half-dead half-alive bridge between worlds, is always in theirs, and it's always able to be perceived by the living as well.
Danny and Vlad also differ from Xanthe in that they, unlike Xanthe, were formed in the Space between Spaces. Xanthe, conversely, was formed in the World of the Dead, straight up.
The Spirit World/World of the Dead also has different tiers of strength in spirits/gods, as well as a council that dictates almost all things.
The Infinite Realms/Ghost Zone has different tiers of strength in spirits/gods, as well as a council that dictates almost all things.
Both Xanthe and Danny (and Vlad but ugh) are considered freakishly powerful, and this can be directly attributed to being half dead and half alive.
Spirits contaminated with the Space between Spaces, or spirits that lost who they are, look awful familiar.
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Does that not look like a ghost straight from the Ghost Zone? Also the person with the giant sword is Xanthe.
Now, moving on to
The G.I.W.
In Static Shock, there's a legitimate shadow-agency pretending to be the government and rounding up people off the streets.
Not only is the Justice League not doing anything about it, but no one at all comes to investigate.
Even though this takes place after Meta protections, it doesn't matter. They're still kidnapping people and experimenting on them, and no one bothers to protect them.
That being said, it is 100% feasible for the G.I.W to go full on Raze the Earth and the Justice League to not only stand by, but turn the other way.
In Superboy, CADMUS, while not necessarily stealing people off the streets (normally) was still doing some pretty shitty things.
Things that the Justice League couldn't really step in to stop.
So canonically there's, like, a lot of organizations that violate protection acts and not enough time or resources to handle them all.
It's usually left to the locals to handle, or the local vigilante.
The Justice League gets roped in, or it's affiliates get roped in, when the situation spirals out of control and leaks past the borders it set for itself.
However, it's far more likely that even if it does do that, then it'll be a team up between the local vigilante/hero and the next nearest one, not a full on Justice League response.
The existence of the G.I.W. would be a surprise, just not much of one, and more likely to be met with tired acceptance of "oh, another one? let's add it to the list."
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From Static; doesn't she already look like a G.I.W. scientist with her outfit and lack of morals? Now imagine her partnering up with the G.I.W.
Terrifying.
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inbrightshadows · 21 hours ago
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showing nmj this
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inbrightshadows · 23 hours ago
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At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.
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inbrightshadows · 2 days ago
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