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i know that the way warhorse writes women makes a lot of us uncomfortable a lot of the time, but to me, fandom has never fandom'd harder than some explaining why they don't think about Theresa or they don't wanna deal with the Jitka situation or they feel bad for Katherine but don't want to delve into her trauma because of this or that, but then have entire backstories and fascinating canon motivations detailed for like, Gules and Ranyek and Svatya

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clawing my face because deciding on tone in a KCD fic in the 2nd draft is one of the projects of all time. do i want the tone of the games? or the tone of a historical fiction novel with heavier prose? a mix of both? is it enough to be as specific about the Bohemian setting and historical Czech culture as humanly possible? or do i somehow, someway, also have them speak some Czech without readers cringeing so hard i die in 4 dimensions? because i am looking at this piece of dialogue and "friend" is not the word he would say here. and yet i am going to make someone pass away from cringe, i am certain of it, if i use "druh" or "kámoš." the real solution, i know, is "mate." pretty sure it's used in KCD1. and boy. so modern. fuck

opens the Middle English Dictionary

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the tag is full of AI with 20 comments per chapter while the best fanfic in the fandom only had 2 people comment on the most recent chapter. there is no justice in this world and hell is not hot enough

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finding out hans is trailing his fingers down the skin of henry's back in their romance scene has left me unable to function. it pops into my brain every couple hours and i just have to put my head in my hands

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"Thank you for... the encouragement before my journey"

please don't nuke this post please I swear nothing is happening they're ken dolls down there it's oKAY IT'S FINE

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dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum. "Finally, when we have kissed many thousands of times, Let’s mix up the number of those kisses So that an envious man will not be able to put a curse On us if he finds out the exact number of our kisses." - 'Carmina', Catullus (pt. 2)

Bonus pic bc I love their red ears

and an alt version of the 6th pic with a different focal point

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seeing anyone compare Hans Capon to Adolin Kholin is enough to turn me into the joker. my dislike-boner for sanderson is gonna show here, but like. if they weren't both blond and smiley this comparison would not cross anyone's minds

Adolin Kholins may exist in this world, but it is so obvious that sanderson's message here is: why punch up when you might hit an Adolin? can't you see that Adolin doesn't deserve that? :((( and expecting to criticize Adolin for what sanderson actually ends up asking you to criticize Kaladin for is meant to be a clever gotcha

meanwhile, warhorse: here is a rich nepo baby you will want to kill with hammers. and every time he opens his mouth, we do, in fact, want to kill him with hammers. it's just as heartwarming as it is frustrating when he shows humanity and kindness only to still be tragically himself. who the hell is Jan Ptáček? why am I on wikipedia suddenly? he dies WHEN and WHERE? oh NO - and Hans and Henry actually share multiple character flaws, including hypocrisy, blindness to male privilege (KCD1 Henry in particular will always be famous), just enough naivete to cause problems, etc.

sanderson thinks he created this paragon and antidote to unfairness in multiple kinds of social strata in happy nice impossible-to-hate Adolin without putting in the work to show how agonizing, embarrassing, and most of all, unlikely-to-be-perfect that process is for even the average conservative, or at least, the average child born to a conservative and privileged environment. all of that awkwardness and agony is given to Kaladin instead for Some Reason. it must be nice to have already unlearned 90% of your society's messed up ideology before the story started, only to meet some plucky protagonists that help you shed that last 10% to show your "growth." wouldn't it be nice to be born a best boy in a world that was made to serve you and make you happy

meanwhile, Hans is the olympic champion of lying to his own face while internally screaming every second he's on screen and even most of the time he's off it too. he savors the privilege he was born into and is happy to rub it in anybody's face the second he thinks it will get him some attention or put someone in their place. he is casually suicidal. he has no friends and he is not respected and it is not difficult to see why. he changes for the better and yet he is still often either the worst or the most pathetic person in the room without realizing it. and we love him for it. the system is killing him in every way and his finest dream is to prove himself and go to war for it, escape it forever, and reap its benefits all at the same time, somehow. he will never be happy because of this. but he will smile and act out and fail at what he is absolutely capable of doing until that changes, which it never will. no one in KCD is more doomed by the narrative and nothing the player does can ever un-doom him no matter how much Henry wants to. Hans suffers every consequence of his every action and he's suffering the consequences of the actions of every single powerful person around him too, and he does not deserve all of it, but he deserves juuuuuust enough of it that he will never be a perfect victim

also, sanderson would rend his own clothes and agonize for years before he had the stones to make Adolin a misogynist. he had to give that character flaw to Kaladin, too

meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the only thing more disappointing than the thoughts Hans has about any given woman in his vicinity are the thoughts he does not have about women. and once again. players adore him

one approach to character writing is preachy. the other understands how irony and human emotions work

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i was not prepared for how common AI fanfiction is

anti-AI posts here get upwards of 100k notes, so many stances on how AI doesn't belong in fandom, and like. it's common sense and it's human nature that 1) there are people who stay silent on the issue and then post AI, and 2) there are people who say one thing and do another

and my jaw is still on the floor every time i go into one of my fandoms' tags and at least 10% of the fics on the first page clock as AI just to my human eye. let alone what an AI detector finds. if 10% of fics on the first page are copy-pasted from stitched-together prompt results, think of how many more use AI intermittently, or were edited heavily by a human, or use it as a tool to nudge the writing process along

a part of me to this day refuses to believe that people would fill a fandom with AI. like, it does not compute. but people want the recognition and they want the comments and they want to be finished and they do not want the backlash. it's funny that anyone ever thought that people would tag their AI fanfic. now i have 2-3 AI detectors open in my tabs forever

on one hand, like that one post said forever ago, i feel like i can now identify the presence of the human soul simply by being able to recognize when it is absent (testing AI detectors sounds like freak behavior but it's helping me to identify AI writing on sight and i'm getting better at it by the week). on the other hand, i hate it here

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