#// thinky thoughts

[ao3commentoftheday]

so here's the thing. abandoning fics is good actually.

if you're a writer and you hate writing a thing? you can just stop. slap THE END? on the last chapter if you want to pretend like it's really finished, but mostly just free yourself from the prison of your own guilt. you're spending your valuable free time and mental space beating yourself up about a thing that was your choice to start writing in the first place. you decided to start making the thing, and you can also decide to give it up.

this also applies if you're a reader! starting a fic doesn't mean that you have to finish it. maybe the tags looked good. maybe the summary was intriguing. maybe you even liked the first couple of chapters. But if the story starts going in a direction that you don't like, if the author writes your favourite character in a way that doesn't vibe with you, if you just get bored with the premise and want something new, you're allowed to stop reading. Just because you sit down at the table with a whole entire cake doesn't mean you have to eat the whole thing. Sometimes you just want a little sliver, and that's just fine.

loving a story for a couple of chapters is still a lovely way to spend your time. get your enjoyment out of however much time you want to spend with it, and when that time stops being enjoyable allow yourself to move on.

falling out of love with something doesn't mean the love was never there. the love was there in the beginning, and it mattered, and it stays a part of you - even when it's not still there anymore.

[purpleminte]

Not me getting secondhand anxiety looking at the absolute chaos of this hypothetical discord user’s life based on these messages-

This person is apparently

• Travelling internationally likely very soon

• Currently having homework for an active biology class

• At least somewhat present in the moderation of a server

• Actively involved in competitive sports

• Has an engagement or event currently planned (that is understandably being ignored)

Maybe I’m lazy or something but this is enough to make me curl up and die

[thebibliosphere]

With hindsight, I probably should have realized I was polyamorous/ambiamorous sooner than I did. (And to be clear, I realized it pretty young. I just didn't have the terminology for it.)

Ignoring the fact that five-year-old me used to watch Signing In The Rain! on a loop and was already making up stories about Don, Cosmo, and Kathy all living together in Don's big house and *gasp* holding hands (maybe kissing), I was never any good at shipwars.

Like someone would ask me, "What's your OTP?" and I'd be like, "Well, I guess I like X/Y, but also Y/Z is good too..."

And they'd be like, "No. I mean your one TRUE pairing," and I'd just blink at them like, I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

I'm sure they thought I was trying to stir shit or being deliberately annoying, but I just... couldn't wrap my head around it. Why did I need to pick one thing? There were multiple options with different things that made them appealing. That's like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and just drinking water. Which is fine! If water is all you want, great. But you don't get to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and judge people for eating different foods...

And when I eventually found out multi-shipping was a thing, I was like, "oh neat, that's what I do!" and while there was a definite feeling of having found my people, it was weird having the moral judgment from other people who seemed to think multi-shipping was a symptom of a greater moral character flaw. Like my inability to settle on just one thing meant I was more likely to cheat irl.

This wasn't helped by the fact that I... kinda already didn't care about monogamy? Not the way my friends did. I didn't mind that my then-boyfriend liked Sarah, too. What I minded was that he went behind my back and kissed her when he'd told me I couldn't kiss anyone else.

It was the betrayal of the agreement that hurt. Because we'd agreed. He'd asked me to be exclusive with him, and I did. And then he... didn't. And my friends couldn't grasp that.

It was all, "How could he kiss someone else?!" and my chief complaint was, "Why didn't he tell me first?!"

Anyway, if I could go back in time, I'd tell teenage me, you're not weird and amoral, you're just queer, polyamorous, and have ADHD, lmao.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I've been doing some introspection to try to figure out why I have such an intensely strong emotional reaction when someone takes a post with a hopeful or positive message and reblogs it with negativity.

I've blocked a lot of tumblr users for calling an OP stupid for being optimistic or hopeful. You know, people who are just being mean and hateful because it's edgy or cool or whatever. I think that's a reasonable reaction and a way to keep toxicity out of my feed.

But I've also blocked folks who read a post about being kinder to oneself and they respond to that with, "That's okay for other people, but I'm not allowed." They don't usually use those exact words of course, but that's the message. And that message cuts me to my core every single time I read it. Blocking those people isn't about avoiding trolls. It's about protecting myself from being hurt.

Because that's the thing. It hurts to see that and feel helpless. To see someone being so cruel to themselves and know there's nothing I can do to show them they don't have to be.

I'll write a post about how oneshots are amazing, or I'll see one talking all about how doodle art is so expressive and charming etc. and I'll see in my notes or in the reblogs a lot of people agreeing and a lot of people appreciating someone sharing that point of view.

But I'll also see a lot of people who say things like, "Maybe so, but my writing still stucks." or "Sure, OTHER PEOPLE's doodles are cool but mine are dumb."

When I see that, I just want to tell them they're wrong. That the post applies to them too. That they're allowed to love themselves, and they don't have to wait until they're better or perfect to do it.

Except you can't just roll up into a stranger's ask box and say, "I don't know you and I've never read your writing or seen your art, and the only piece of you I've seen are one set of tags on one post on this entire website, but you're wrong."

I think part of the reason why it hurts so much to see that is the feeling of wanting to help and knowing that I can't. But I think another part of the hurt comes from recognizing that feeling and remembering what it was like to be stuck believing my own lies about myself.

I don't think those things anymore. Or if I do, it's pretty rare. But every time I see those comments the pain wells up inside of me and brings back that feeling of hopelessness I had once upon a time. The feeling of shame that went along with it. The guilt and the anger and the frustration and the desperate need for someone to tell me I was really okay.

I wish I could do that for all of you out there who need someone like that right now. I wish you'd believe me if I tried. But I guess, for now at least, I'll just wish that when you see those posts that you let yourself believe them. Let yourself apply them to you too. Just for a little while.

[tarysande]

The best part about coming back to the source material after a looooong time is you sorta get a fresh look at canon in comparison to whatever the dominant strains of fanon have become. Or, in fact, whatever your own dominant strains of headcanon have become.

I mean, yes, Garrus “I’m not a good turian” Vakarian gets infinitely cooler (and more competent!) by pretty much every metric as the storyline progresses. He does. But fresh out of ME1 and into ME2 through his recruitment, I find myself genuinely amused by how thin the veneer of badass is over a pretty dominant core of straight-up nerd sprinkled with idealism mixed with self-doubt.

When you have Garrus in the squad all the time (and thus get all his ambient dialogue and remarks), you really pick up on the number of times he calls out bad behavior, unethical actions, cruelty, and rule-breaking, especially in ME1.

He’s not actually a hothead who can’t abide rules of any kind. In fact, most of the time he’s pretty pro-law-and-order, and he gets amusingly hall-monitorish when people are breaking rules he considers important and worth following.

Fundamentally, Garrus chafes when his sense of what is just is at odds with what the authorities do about that injustice (or what they stop him from doing). And I would hazard a guess that the reason his actions seem so intense or harsh or "of course we should have shot down that ship in the middle of the Citadel" is indicative not of his impatience but of the degree to which he thinks the authorities have failed to uphold that justice. We know he can be patient. He's a sniper. His whole modus operandi on Omega is precision kills without civilian casualty. But when that long fuse finally burns down, he goes from zero to shooting down ships in the middle of the Citadel in what looks (from the outside) like a heartbeat.

And yes, injured pride hastens the burning of that fuse; he doesn’t like losing. Or admitting defeat. Or failing.

Having just replayed his recruitment mission, a few things really stood out to me this time.

The merc bands really hate him--and they also reluctantly admire him (he's described as smart, resourceful, dangerous, idealistic, brave, slippery; they all agree they only way they managed to get this far is by isolating him and employing dirty tactics). I mean, there's literally a station-wide announcement that Omega can return to "business as usual" once Archangel is out of the picture because he was disrupting things so completely.

The way Garrus blames himself for the deaths of his squad is so freaking turian. Failure reflects on the leader who places his people in danger they can't handle, not the individual who fails. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Yes, Sidonis betrayed him, but the person Garrus blames the most? Is himself. For trusting Sidonis in the first place. For raising Sidonis to a position where he had the means and opportunity to harm others--and the weakness of character to turn coat, to save his own hide, instead of dying to protect the others.

Garrus mentions more than once that he was trying to emulate Shepard. And his tone always implies that he knows he failed because Shepard would never have let a Sidonis into the fold. Again, he's blaming himself. Like a good turian. Yes, he wanted to avoid the red tape and bureaucracy of C-Sec, but his code--Archangel's code--certainly aligns with Paragon Shepard's morality (with a Garrus Vakarian twist).

And since it wouldn't be meta without adding a Tara's Headcanon Twist ... I've always wondered why "Archangel" when it's such a ... human concept. But this time, when I noticed how he spoke about Shepard's influence, and how quickly he brushes aside the name when she asks him about it, I wondered if it wasn't actually his way of honoring the mythology of the dead woman whose example he was trying to follow. Not that Shepard is a God he's worshiping, but ... there is something about the way he talks about her. Garrus doesn't make himself over in the image of a God, though; he's the soldier, the right hand, the avenging angel responsible for carrying out divine punishments suited and proportional to the crimes committed, the rules broken, the selfishness or cruelty of the perpetrator.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So these pictures are gonna be an end of episode Eddie reassuring Buck that nothing will ever come between them isn’t it - it’s the I love you to the core scene.

This is the shift in things that we’ve been waiting for and need - because Buck getting jealous is gonna push him into looking at why he’s jealous.

Is it next week yet?!

[madlori]

So one of the reasons fans get frustrated with the writing on their show is that they are operating from a different mindset than the writers.

Generally, fans are operating from what I call a developmental mindset. How does this plot point affect the characters? How will it affect their relationships? How can it be used to illustrate broader themes or personalities?

This is how you write BOOKS. And most of us interact with fandom via fanfic, and fanfic writers or readers engage with a lot of this kind of storytelling.

I'm not saying TV writers DON'T do this, but it varies, and is somewhat genre-dependent. A lot of the time, they're operating from a more situational mindset. How can I set up this next plot point? How do I get this story from A to B to C in the time allotted? How do I get to use this joke or plot twist I wanna use?

Buck's conflict over whether or not he lunged at Gerrard to save him or kill him is a PRIME example of this.

Here's the difference:

Buck: expresses doubt about his own motivations and worries he tried to kill Gerrard.

The fans: How will this affect Buck going forward? Will it make him feel guilty and more likely to go along with Gerrard? Will it create conflict with the team because of that?

The writers: This will enable us to play a moment of suspense when Gerrard returns when Buck and the audience will be wondering if Gerrard will be mad or not, and then we'll whip the uno reverse on him when Gerrard hugs him. That will be funny and a good way to end the episode.

Aaaaaand that's probably as far as they took that line of thought. They viewed that plot point (Bucks' doubts about his motivations) as a means to the end of getting that stinger at the end of 8x03. We viewed it as a character beat. It's not impossible that it could be both, but it's probably the last we've heard about it.

[the-barefoot-hatter]

thinking about Billford again and besides the obvious toxic yaoi and doomed betrayal and mutual obsession appeal there's the like... soft hopefulness of it happening post-canon, post-book of bill

'cuz... no matter how much Bill wants to stay the exact same and never ever EVER change himself... he shouldn't. It's bad for everyone else of course- but it's ALSO clearly bad for Bill. He looks awful in Theraprism. And he should. Bad guy defeated and at his lowest point. But I don't want that to be the forever for him.

That's a mean ending.

Gravity Falls is all about growing up and forgiveness and letting go of things that hurt you. Changing your priorities. Rotting in eternal failed therapy or reincarnating into a completely different creature with no memories of everything is just death with extra steps. It's not satisfying.

But seeing Bill be genuinely sorry and want to get back in Ford's good graces but know how bad he messed everything up and definitely doesn't deserve any forgiveness- and the Pines extending a hand anyway? That's the good stuff!

idk it's just nice to think they COULD make it to a good place

[realtacuardach]

One of my favorite takes on Frodo, and why I value him so much as a character: unlike so many central characters in fantasy, he was not a Chosen One.

Instead, he was the One who Chose, and that made all the difference.

[kahuna-burger]

Just putting some thoughts down without reblogging from any specific post of the thread that inspired it...

When I became a mother, I knew that I didn't agree with the idea that parents own their children and have complete rights over them as such. But at the same time, I didn't think my son owned himself, because he was not mentally or emotionally competent to be autonomous and wouldn't be for some time.

What I decided, and continue to believe is that children are "owned" by their future adult selves and that as a parent I was in a position of stewardship over my son, on behalf of that future adult. (The term trustee would also work to some extent.) I had the power to make decisions for him, and even overruled his wishes on many (emotionally exhausting) occasions, but that power came from a place of responsibility, not privilege. And those decisions had to be made based on his interests as a future independent adult.

[shaylogic]

Is he doing the teenage girl thing of "sigh can't wait for that handsome guy to burst in and fight my mom for me and whisk me away!"

Do you think he daydreamed these things all day long perched on that stool?

[ao3commentoftheday]

the stats spiral

That's what I call it when I start obsessing over the numbers I get on fics or posts. When I refresh AO3 every five or ten minutes to see if I've got more hits or kudos. When I keep my tumblr activity page open in a tab to see new notes as soon as they come in.

It's not fun. Not really. Even when I sometimes tell myself it is.

You see, it starts out exciting! I've put a thing out there and now I get to see the reactions to it! I'm like a kid on their birthday who can't wait to see their presents. What are people going to say? Will they like it? Will they talk to me about it?

I'm lucky enough that I do get notes on tumblr posts and I do get comments and kudos when I post on AO3. But depending on how excited I am about the thing that I made and depending on how uncertain I am of whether it's any good, I want to get a lot more attention than I end up getting.

I know that that's a normal feeling. I know it's even a rational one! I've put a lot of effort into making something, or I've made something that I think my community will like, and not hearing back like I'd hoped can sometimes feel like rejection. It can be a huge disappointment that makes me doubt myself, my abilities, my connection to my community.

That's why I say it's not fun. Because even though 'engagement' can give me a really high high, it can also give me a really low low.

When I finally realize I'm in one of those lows (and it sometimes takes me a while to realize that I am), that's when I know that I need to step away.

When it's really bad, I just stop posting until I'm in a better mental space. For me, I now recognize that those feelings are often coming from me wanting a connection of some kind. The need for attention is coming from a feeling of loneliness or isolation, and so I need to counteract that by reaching out to people I know and care about to have a chat or a meal or just some time spent doing something communal.

When I can catch it early, then I force myself to close the activity tab here on tumblr and hide whatever stats are making me spiral on AO3. I've learned to recognize that I'm looking to those metrics as a way to feel important or special or cared for in some way and that I need to figure out where I'm feeling insecure in my life and how to get some reassurance - because strangers on the internet won't be able to give me what I need.

If you're currently spiraling, first of all lemme give you a hug ❤️ I hope you can take some time and figure out what it is that you want those stats to tell you about yourself or what it is that you think those stats will give you that you're not getting from somewhere else.

And if you haven't heard it lately, I'm glad that you're in this world - no matter what kind of numbers you have on your posts.

[froldgapp]

I'll write a one shot with the "winner." It'll be sad and nostalgic and hopefully a little fun too.

[boozles]

I was telling my brothers how a lot of people are negative about Love You Teacher due to the age regression of Santa’s character and how it’s uncomfortable. I was saying I felt that’s a little ableist because there are some conditions that can cause age regression, and even other similar conditions. Plus, it’s not like Pobmek is going to be ‘romantic’ with Solar when he’s in regression.

To me, I felt the negative reactions a little hurtful? I’m a full time carer to a disabled parent who has had moments of slight regression.

To me, this series is gonna be about a guy who has to become his boyfriend’s carer and there are times when their relationship cannot be ‘normal’ (for lack of a better term) and he needs to become more of a parent than a lover, and that is extremely common in many relationships - especially in the LGBTQ+ community. My brother’s partner has to be his carer due to his disabilities.

So, whilst I can get people automatically jump to HES A CHILD but he’s not. He’s an adult that has a disability, basically. I don’t see how that’s as predatory as people have been saying. If it was an age play type thing I could understand people being uncomfortable, but it’s not. It’s a disability.

I just feel like perhaps people could be a little less mean about a series that hasn’t been filmed yet? Like I said, I can understand that upon first hearing the plot it might sound odd, but when you boil it down it’s really about a couple who are dealing with one of them having a bad accident and ending up with a brain injury - this is not an uncommon thing, yet some people reacted like it was something predatory and gross.

I’m not saying that you all have to like it and support it, and it’s totally okay to not be comfortable with it! There’s plenty of shows out there with content or themes that make me personally uncomfortable. My only ask is that you not be mean to those who end up liking the series, or perhaps can relate to it.

(This isn’t aimed at anyone on here btw - I saw some nasty comments elsewhere on other hellsites and I just had to vent ❤️)

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

This morning I find myself thinking of the phrase "write for yourself" and how it can be interpreted in more than one way.

Up to this point, I've thought of it as "write to please yourself" or "write to challenge yourself" etc, but it's always been centred on my own perspective.

I think that interpretation might not work as well for someone who is very community-minded or for someone who relies on the opinions of others to feel confident in what they wrote. But this morning, I thought of an addendum that might help those folks?

Write for yourself, and for other people like you.

This phrase could also be interpreted in multiple ways, but the way that I'm thinking of right now is related to audience.

We all have our preferences when it comes to characters, plots, themes, tones. Whatever aspect of storytelling you want to think about, each person has things they love, like, dislike, hate, and feel neutral about. No two people will overlap perfectly, but for any given one of those things, you'll have at least a few other people who feel like you (or adjacent to you).

So if you like a thing, write a story that will appeal to people who like (or love) that thing and don't try to please the people who hate it. No matter how good your storytelling is, the likelihood of "winning them over" is slim to none.

Don't write for the haters. Don't write in fear of being rejected by the haters. Write for the lovers and the likers and the "I haven't really got strong feelings one way or the others."

Pleasing yourself first is the best way to keep your motivation. Focusing on things within your control (like word count or completed fics or learning to write a new character) will always be better for your mental health than focusing on things that other people control (hits, kudos, comments). But, aiming yourself at a friendly audience and not worrying about people who are going to hate your stuff no matter what, just because of the content in it? Not a bad thing to do either.

[tarysande]

There are a couple more Garrus-Vakarian-related hills I'm willing to die on.

Maybe this particular bit of fanon has faded over the years, but there used to be a lot of insistence that Garrus is young and somehow inexperienced when he meets Shepard. Canon doesn't really support this. Turians start their mandatory service at 15. Garrus has at least a decade of experience. Even if he's 2-4 of years younger than Shepard (according to Patrick Weekes), he's got at least as much field experience as she does by dint of the difference in turian and human "enlistment" ages.

Garrus is really damn good at his job at C-Sec. You don't give the Case of Investigating the Rogue Spectre to a greenhorn. You give it to your best, most tenacious agent. Pallin may not always approve of Garrus's actions, but that doesn't actually stop him from putting Garrus on the tough case. Also, we don't know much about how C-Sec works but we do know a bit about how the turian hierarchy works, and we know C-Sec was essentially a turian initiative. That means it's a meritocracy where failure reflects on the superior, not the one who failed. So, in roughly a decade (Shepard's 29 in ME1; I always think of Garrus as about 27), Garrus has not only done shipboard military service, but he's also risen to be one of C-Sec's top investigators; Pallin wouldn't risk having Garrus's "failure" reflect poorly on HIM otherwise. I'd say that actually makes Garrus as remarkable in civilian law enforcement terms as Shepard is considered to be within the ranks of the Alliance military.

Of course Garrus was scouted by the Spectre program. And honestly, if his dad hadn't stepped in, I think Garrus would have become a Spectre, no problem. Especially for a turian, he's cut from precisely the cloth the Spectres would be looking for: extremely skilled, extremely capable, and--most importantly--he's a turian not just able but willing to work outside the chains of command that turians are taught from birth to revere and be loyal to above all else. This is the reason Pallin is leery about Spectres: he's a good turian. Good turians follow straight lines; they don't carve out their own paths.

Garrus's dad's not dumb, and he's not cruel, and he, too, rose to the top of the C-Sec hierarchy. He took one look at his kid, I think, and said, "I love my child, but I'd say it's a 50-50 chance he ends up a shooting-first-asking-questions-later Spectre like Saren Arterius, and I don't want to see that happen." Yeah, he uses his parental influence to try and jam square-peg-Garrus into round-hole-C-Sec and Garrus resents him for it, but there's no way he did it just to stop his son from getting his way or because he doesn't like Spectres. I expect Vakarian Sr. had to clean up more post-Spectre-interference messes than we can possibly imagine. But we also know he and Alec Ryder were pals later.

So the importance of what Garrus learns from a Paragon Spectre Shepard is this: You can't just do what you want and claim the ends always justify the means. That's what Saren does. Over and over again. Garrus's code and his idealism and his sense of justice and his ability to work alone should make him a great Spectre, actually, but he needs Paragon Spectre Shepard's actions to show him the lesson he tells her he's learned during ME1: "If the people I'm sworn to protect can't trust me... well, then I don't deserve to be the one protecting them." (And the seed of Archangel was planted.) I think for the first time he realizes that even though he believes his sense of justice to be correct, it doesn't matter for shit if he can't show others why that's so. And that's where the trust comes in. (Also, ow, the extra level of importance this gives their exchange where she tells him she trusts him and he tells her she's about the only friend he has left is... a lot. Cool, cool. I'm totally fine. Nothing to see here.)

When Shepard asks him what happened on Omega, he replies, "My feelings got in the way of my better judgement." Something tells me that this never happens to "good" turians, which just makes the line so much more devastating. And although the lesson some might take away from this is "feelings bad; no feelings ever," the "grey" that Garrus has to learn to deal with is precisely the grey of recognizing feelings, validating them even, but not acting on them until they've been examined. (Which is why my Shepard stands between him and Sidonis; she doesn't give a shit about Sidonis. But Garrus has refused to process his own feelings of failure and self-loathing, so they have to take the therapy session to the Citadel and deal with it there.)

Ahh yes. The mountain range of character analysis.