#(think it's obvious I have bad taste in fictional men)

[keepittoyourshelf]

Since the algorithm on my various socials thinks I actually want to see a ton of people simping over Rhys and ACOTAR, let’s get down to the bones of why that algorithm is fucked beyond all comprehension, shall we?

I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m pro-Tamlin, not in the sense that I approve of what he did, but from the place that I believe he’s worthy of forgiveness in the same way any of the men that SJM otherwise glorifies in her work is worthy of it for any of their transgressions.

I shouldn’t have to do a paint by numbers thing here to make this obvious, but based on the actual text written by SJM in her own words, Tamlin has objectively done nothing better or worse than Rhysand has.

The big complaint is his temper, of course, and pro-Rhysies love to bullshit about how the red flags were all over book 1 and SJM is such a master at foreshadowing.

He locked Feyre in a house against her will to protect her, when she clearly didn’t want to be caged. How is that any worse than Rhysand…drugging her and making her give him lap dances, in order to protect her, when she clearly didn’t want to be dancing naked in front of strangers?

Go on. I’ll wait for your rationalization.

Rhysand’s whole shtick was that he’s only playing the villain to keep Velaris (and only Velaris) safe…those fucks in the Hewn City can eat a bag of dicks, right? But tell me again how Tamlin is the really bad one for enforcing a tithe because it’s unfair to those who can’t afford it (fair point). But Rhysand chooses to save the one city in his court that has zero problems. Let’s let those that might already be suffering from poverty get kidnapped and tortured by a psychopath. That’s probably better than a tithe, right?

And let’s not forget how Tamlin mocked Feyre and Rhys at the High Lords meeting. While funny, it was in poor taste. At least Rhysand didn’t publicly mock Tamlin. He had the decency to do it privately when he went out of his way to go to a deeply troubled man’s house and, in the midst of an obvious mental health crisis, not only had the gall to ask for resources from a man that has no resources because his own wife fucking destroyed them out of spite, but proceeds to rub in his triumph over a man that has nothing left. Nothing to see there, right?

Even if you could ignore all of that (and you’d have to be willfully fucking thick to do so, which a lot of these people are), I shall leave you with Tamlin’s role as a spy for Hybern. That’s obviously supposed to be a real shock because TaMliN BaD at this point, so why would anyone believe him? It’s not like he had a really good explanation like Rhys gave when he murdered literal children and innocents just to ensure Amarantha didn’t know how noble he actually was. Right? RIGHT?! And it’s not like anyone would have a harder time believing someone who had played evil and done actually evil things for the “greater good” (a collectivist dog whistle if there ever was one) for fifty fucking years over the dude that suddenly goes bad after being a progressive and respected high lord for the same period of time? I mean, it’s not like we’re dealing with severe mental anguish and trauma here. That’s crazy talk.

Shadow Daddy does no wrong. Even when he does. Because reasons.

Those idiots on TikTok making stupid videos showing their bf’s being all shocked and I KNEW IT when Tamlin “turns” can chew glass along with all those dipshits selling mugs that say “Tamlin’s Tears” on Etsy right next to merch glorifying a man that literally gaslit his soulmate into believing that forced drunken naked lap dances were actually a good thing, when you think about it.

SJM isn’t a master of foreshadowing. She’s a sloppy writer of moderately entertaining fiction that has a kink for glorifying severely unhealthy behaviors without the benefit of a trigger warning.

Fuck off if you think that’s all okay and think that anyone that says Tamlin isn’t any worse comparatively is the crazy one. Projection is a real disorder. Look it up. Right after you order your 543rd Rhysand candle.

[olderthannetfic]

I've just read an article (in Gazeta Wyborcza) about a very popular series of books among young teens in my country, Poland, called "Rodzina Monet" (Family Monet). The author gained popularity while publishing on Wattpad lol. The article basically said that it's problematic because these books are read by young girls, even 10 years old, and it glorifies violence. Plus it just isn't well written - there were some fragments in the article and yeah it's not well written lmao. A woman in the comments said that her daughter is reading this book and asked if she should forbid it. Since no one answered her, I replied that I don't think forbidding the book is a good solution and suggested talking to her daughter about it, showing her the article and asking what she thinks about it. But I don't know anything more about that situation, for example how old the daughter is. I don't think I'd worry if my child were to read this book, I read trashy stuff too. But I started wondering if maybe there should be some control in such a case? The thing with the books from what I gathered (I haven't read them) is that they are about a 14yo girl, who suddenly lost her mother and grandmother, is sent away to US from Britain where she starts living with her 28yo (handsome) stepbrother and his 3 (also handsome) brothers. She lives in a beautiful villa since the stepbrother is super rich. He's also cold and distant and doesn't understand that she has issues with food (she has some kind of eating disorder). Some of the things he and his 3 brothers do can be described as domestic violence but they apologize, buy her expensive stuff and are all adult handsome men. Yeah it's a young adult fiction. The thing is that it's just not well written so none of the bad behaviours is commented upon.

--

Sounds like typical godawful id trash that people eat up. Making a rule against it will just make it more tantalizing.

It would be far more valuable to kick any worthless partners out of one's life and demonstrate not putting up with shit to a tween girl than to ban her from reading trashy books.

One could always try buying her something better, but IME, people who try that always do it wrong: they buy books that are better written, yes, but the vocabulary and sentence structure are a thousand times harder, there's zero iddy wish fulfillment, and the plot is something fucking depressing and supposedly edifying.

Readers can smell a tryhard "your taste is bad" gift a mile away.

I think it's also important when trying to find replacement trash to understand what the kink actually is. Why is it age gap? Well, have you seen 14-year-olds? They're awkward and covered in zits. Of course the protagonist is young like the readers and the hotties are older.

More importantly, why is it abusive? Absolute idiots will be like "Because society taught girls wah wah wah wah wah", but the actual reason is obvious if you've read trash romance for adults:

It's so the love interest(s) can be in the wrong.

The self inserty protagonist of this type of story has very little power. Not only is she usually younger, but she's poorer, a fish out of water in a new situation, etc. The way she gets power is by the love interest doing something absolutely horrible, realizing they have erred, and then groveling forever. Their guilt is an effective way to manipulate them. And yes, retail therapy is usually the next step from this particular trash classic all the way back to The Flame and the Flower.

You can try giving a teen girl a book about a teen girl action hero who is awesome and whose love interest likes her because of that... But if the reader doesn't feel awesome, she's still going to prefer a book about a loser with a destined, fated love or a misunderstood woobie whom other characters have to grovel to after not initially realizing she was special.

You can't fix self esteem by handing someone a book they don't identify with and telling them their id is wrong. And if self esteem does improve, that doesn't mean the lizard brain is going to switch trash fiction tastes anyway.

One can try leaving other fun books around, but that's about the most that could be helpful.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

I'm the weirdo who has always been into either f/f or m/f, in fact since I have memory, for me to enjoy any media was to hyper fixate into any girl character, didn't matter if it was well written, a main character or just a side character, I always did that, and when I started getting into online fandoms (I'm oooold xD) I was both surprised and sad that apparently no one paid attention to them and in the old days, some people were just brutal when talking about any fictional girlie, and here I am watching the new gen spitting the same rhetoric (that female characters can't be interesting) just with a different flavor and wrapping :/

Yeah people are so quick to demonize or sideline female characters! And of course it isn’t just fandom at all; I’m thinking of the broader reactions to Skylar White in Breaking Bad, and rn Alicent Hightower in House of the Dragon. You’ll have these sensitively portrayed, complex and tragic women and all people can say is that they’re annoying bitches.

I tend to gravitate towards characters that fandoms hate, or that are narratively marginalized. I just get really protective of things like the “annoying girlfriend” trope. Like I immediately felt sooo protective of Misa in Death Note, and then a bit out of left field, perhaps, but also Harmony in BTVS when she’d reintroduced as Spike’s very ill treated girlfriend but it’s all played for laughs. They’re just treated so poorly and that really gets me.

I do want to stress though that I don’t mean to highlight m/f specifically as like particularly groundbreaking lol. Like it does take up most of the art that we have in the world. But again it’s about how people engage with the female characters and whether they’re able to care about them, and what standards they hold them to. Going back to fandom, it’s really so telling that the most popular m/f ships (obligatory Reylo mention) hinge so much on exaggerated and unexamined gender roles, and where it’s clear that the FMC is only incidental and what the fandom really cares about is the MMC.

It all comes back to the tendency to center men. And that’s really disappointing!

As is hopefully obvious by my blog content and fics, I do think that equating taste in fiction with irl morality is ridiculous. My favorite stories are about war criminals! But it’s also silly to act like actual biases and values don’t come through with how people talk about fiction and how they perceive it.

[alyoshka-karamazov]

1-9 for our namesake Macaulay Twins 🫶🏻😚

My besties <3

1. Well I sure don’t like that Charles hits women. Let’s not do that. As for Camilla, I don’t dislike anything about her besides her taste in men. I could treat her better than Henry <3 As for what I do like, I like how fleshed out they are

2. My favorite canon thing about the twins is that story Camilla tells of them as babies playing with the tape measure. It’s cute to imagine

3. Again. The whole hitting women thing. 😐 Camilla again has no flaws and so there’s nothing canonical about her that I dislike. Her arc is sad but it makes sense.

4. I NEED to put Charles in Brideshead Revisited. That man is Sebastian Flyte. I want them meet. They’d either make out or hate one another and either way, it would be fun for me. As for Camilla, I’m not totally sure. Maybe Ninth House? I think Camilla would like saving her demon boyfriend from hell at Yale. Darlington is very Henry-like, so I think she’d vibe

5. For Charles, it’s innocent. For Camilla, it’s motion sickness

6. I am very outwardly aloof like Camilla and I’ve been called statue-esque before. As for Charles, I have the addict in me lmao.

7. I don’t interact with the fandom so idk 🤷‍♀️ I guess I like when people treat them as 3 dimensional characters and not cardboard cut outs

8. I HATE when they villainize Camilla. Yes, she’s not a saint and she’s a murderer, but that’s it. They’re ALL murderers. She’s not some mastermind femme fatale. As for Charles, I don’t like when people disregard what he did to Camilla. You can acknowledge that he’s a 3 dimensional character and find his thoughts/him as a character interesting without trying to act like he wasn’t an abuser. He’s my favorite character but he sucks!! You can like bad people in fiction because they’re not real, guys.

9. I could not be roommates with Charles for obvious reasons. Camilla and I would probably be fine together

[suffarustuffaru]

ram for the ask thing

YOO RAM :O i gotchu anon. and yes this is gonna be kind of long again bc i have a lot of thoughts (yes i wrote a whole essay on ram/roswaal alone).

Sexuality Headcanon: SHE SWINGS HOWEVER SHE LIKES.

A ship I have with said character: ramilia and ram x fred are so cute 🥺🥺🥺 ramilia has their moments in canon already and ram x fred have their canon sickfic side story akdndn (its cute!!! fred takes care of ram!!) and i love the like mix of emilia and fred’s sweet personalities with ram’s sharper one pfft. that and ram x fred would be so fucking funny when you factor in garfiel. like yeah garfiels ultimately a good kid and he’ll get over the fact that his childhood crush is now dating his older sister eventually. and he’ll be very happy for both of them and he trusts ram with his sister too!! BUT LIKE the hilarity of garf wailing in despair (metaphorical and literal) over their new relationship is gonna be so fucking good. ottos just there awkwardly patting garf on the back and going “hey its not so bad seeing your sibling get together with someone you potentially couldve been with��� and garfs like N O O O O O. O O O. i just. the comedic potential of it all. ram gets otto and subaru to babysit garf while she goes on dates with fred.

also. ram x fred comes with the benefit of BOTH OF THEM GETTING OVER THEIR TERRIBLE TASTE IN MEN…. (roswaal and clind)

as for ramilia—can you imagine how unhinged and messy it would get if you factor in wrath if… the same person (natsuki subaru) trapped and betrayed them… and in the aftermath of ram killing him, emilia goes to kill her in retaliation for that. ram, the girl who despises subaru with her whole being but has depended on him to live bc he’s locked her up all alone in a dark room. emilia, the girl who’s grown to have stockholm syndrome for subaru and has been locked up in a complete white room bc of her father figure and subaru agreeing to do that to her. i just think wrath if ramilia would be so fucked up and im so curious about it….

A BROTP I have with said character: this one tends to be a little overlooked but like. ram and otto are great. and like in general ram CARES about more people than just roswaal okay. like she DOES give a shit i dont understand all those people who think she doesnt. like with otto she GOES OUT OF HER WAY to make him tea and bring it to his room when hes working. and then theres the fact that ram and fred and otto are the only ones who drink alcohol in the mansion (other than. roswaal.) but ram-fred-otto drinking buddies moment when…???? also ram and fred of course 1000% know otto and subaru are garf’s older brother figures now. theyre all in the garf protection squad.

also. of course. ram and rem’s complicated relationship with its ups and downs all the way from their backstory to (SPOILER IG??) them reuniting in arc 8…… good shit. i enjoy seeing them together.

A NOTP I have with said character: ram/roswaal for obvious reasons but i will explain in Depth. because okay they have potential in the sense that there is a time and a place to show toxic unhealthy relationships in fiction with nuance and complexity between both characters. like roswaal has So Much influence on who ram is and also they have all that history together. there is So Much to explore there. like its fascinating with how roswaal plays a role in the destruction of the oni village, and then roswaal brings rem and ram to his mansion and roswaal threatens rem's life in order to put ram into a contract to serve him iirc? and ram LOATHES him bc of all that until. until gluttony erases rem and now ram has no reason to hate roswaal as much. now shes got like an Increased Complex Obsession with him thats now significantly less hate-love. like it is a full on cycle of abuse (in a Romantic lense) from echidna to roswaal to ram complete with Significant Age Differences??? like this is ALL so fascinating. and it sure would be in line with rezero's self improvement themes if ram grew to move away from her roswaal obsession and learn that she deserves Way Better than him.........

EXCEPT. EXCEPT IM GONNA BE REAL. most of the time it really feels like ram and roswaal's relationship isnt taken as Seriously as it should??? or theres like just not as much weight to it EVEN THOUGH we see shit like. ram in season one of the anime bringing roswaal's clothes and his goddamn underwear to the baths so she can DRESS HIM??? like i know shes a maid but its like fucking creepy when roswaal practically raised her after he brought her and her sister home after standing by and letting their village get destroyed. like are we not gonna talk about that bc even Without knowing all the context i winced seeing that shit in the anime when i first watched it. and then theres ram's insert song in season two which IS beautiful ngl. it very wonderfully shows all of ram's affections for roswaal and the reasoning behind her burning the book of wisdom. BUT ITS LIKE.... with the way ram/ros are now that song makes ram/ros feel just a tad bit romanticized. and like logically, i know theyre not bc so many characters comment on how bad ros is and how ram shouldnt be so affectionate for him, AND ALSO HE LITERALLY PUNCHES A HOLE THROUGH HER TO KILL HER, etc etc but LIKE. ARE WE.... ARE WE NOT GONNA INTERVENE WITH THIS... ARE WE NOT GONNA ADDRESS THIS SOME MORE... RAM/ROS IN CANON FEELS LIKE WATCHING YOUR FRIEND BE STUCK IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP AND NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TELL THEM THAT ITS BAD THEY JUST. DONT SEE IT. THEY WONT LEAVE :(((( like at this rate i have doubts on whether ram is gonna develop out of this shit. when will roswaal face more consequences than just being punched by everyone in the camp.

i am so sorry anon my rage flowed out just then lajsldfj but like im serious. like. and then theres all the people in this fandom that think that roswaal giving ram her mana treatment is sexual in nature. im so tired. LIKE YEAH thats what i thought too when i watched the damn anime. but it is NOT SEXUAL. GOD.... and the fact that its depicted in a way that vaguely makes it look sexual kills me inside. friendly reminder that she is SEVENTEEN/EIGHTEEN. EVEN IF YOU REMOVE ROSWAAL'S 400 YEARS OF BEING ALIVE HES STILL LIKE. WAY TOO FUCKING OLD FOR HER. ON TOP OF BEING A PIECE OF SHIT. LIKE IM NEVER GONNA FORGET ALL THE SHIT HE'S DONE. AND I AM TIRED, TAPPEI. T^TTTTTTTT i think i heard somewhere that tappei said that he doesnt intend to develop ram that much. which. idk how true that is but either way ram is more of a static character compared to say rem. and its like. tappei. she NEEDS development out of her relationship with roswaal in some way shape or form. we need closure for this. and I WILL punch tappei (metaphorical) if the closure isnt ram saying bye bye to roswaal's bitch ass in some way. (also quick disclaimer i do like stories with darker themes and exploring dark characters and relationships and showing their nuance While Condemning them. and its like yes roswaal is interesting. but ram/ros as of rn in the story feels very. glossed over. as ive said earlier hah)

anyway. my other ram notps are ram/subaru and ram/garf. the first one is bc i feel like its just. stale. bland. and also theyre more like siblings to me. ill make an exception for wrath if ramsuba though bc the TOXICITY and TRAGEDY of it all fascinates me…. and also ram/garf bc. yeah shes literally too old for him. and garf/mimi is SO MUCH BETTER GUYS…

A random headcanon: so like… we barely know shit about wrath if. like at all. but we do know iirc that ram and subaru disappear from the mathers mansion at the same or around the same time. and ram tried to kill him and then he managed to smash a rock on her head. and then when we see them like Later in wrath if, ram’s been locked up all alone, subaru is the only one who knows shes there, and subarus been gathering mana crystals all this time just to keep her alive. like???? how did ram and subaru go from point a to point b, you may ask???? HONESTLY i have no fucking clue but the two options i liked to go with are:

option 1. subaru ran away from the mansion out of fear and paranoia after smashing rams head with a rock. and then ram followed him in order to kill him.

option 2. subaru, still afraid and paranoid, smashes ram’s head with a rock in self-defense. and then he immediately feels absolutely terrible and decides to bring ram with him in an attempt to help (or “help”, depending on how you see it) her bc hes still too afraid to actually go back to the mansion.

ANYWAY i have a many thoughts on wrath if ramsuba. bc its like…. ram was growing a tiny bit fond of subaru in arc 2, u know? and then from her pov subaru goes and KILLS HER SISTER…. meanwhile subarus been betrayed and rams trying to kill him and then subarus punished for trying to defend himself. and then subaru takes it too far and becomes purge king and kills a ton of people while imprisoning ram and emilia. wrath if drives me insane man. rams been locked up and subaru being the only one that knows shes there, along with the fact that ram and subaru disappear from the mansion at the same time, imply that ramsubas had a lot of time in private with just each other. subaru depends on her bc shes in color. rams life hangs in his hands. ram went from being trapped with roswaal to being trapped with subaru. its a whole MESS. i am fascinated.

General Opinion over said character: RAM IS GREAT AND ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO SAY SHE DOESNT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANYONE ARE SO SO WRONG. I LOVE HOW SHE IS AN ASS (I SAY THIS AFFECTIONATELY) BUT ALSO SHE CAN BE SO KIND AND SOFT, ACTUALLY. she also is so fucking funny i adore her. her insert song is so so beautiful like GENUINELY like her voice and then the lyrics are so wonderful ;-;;; BUT ITS ALL WASTED ON ROSWAAL…… GRRR…. anyway she is an absolute queen in my eyes. i love her so much. i hope she gets away from roswaal fr. she deserves everything ;-;;;;;; i still havent read all her side stories but i gotta!!! esp the ones on her backstory!!!!!!! and i would love to explore her and roswaal’s relationship in a fic someday bc it is So Interesting to me….. and i NEED closure on those damn plot points….

OK ALSO ADDITIONALLY several several months ago i bought a blind bag rezero keychain irl and GOT RAM so like she is proudly going on all my adventures with me. ram my beloved.

here she is

and also. i cant fully articulate all my feelings on how her backstory has shaped her (and i want to make sure i am AN EXPERT on her backstory first akdndn) but like it is very very interesting. and she IS a strong person in fact!!!!!!

[darkfictionjude]

Etymology nonnie here!

1) About 70s fashion: It has good things, of course (and I must admit I completely ignored female fashion because my mind is filled by hot men), all decades have. But I'm someone who will always choose the first half of the 20th century when it comes to fashion. Sorry.

And I do remember the crop tops and slutty shorts men wore at the time. So it's not like I'm immune to the 70s charms. Yet, if I have to say what decade of the 20th century has the worst fashion, I'll still pick the 70s. And say the best fashion is arguably late 1930s, late 1940s or early 1950s. But that's just me.

Yet, I must also speak about the architecture and interior design of the 70s. Is awful. It may be colorful and bright. But it's an acquired taste. And would you really choose anything built on the 70s over Art deco arquitecture? Yeah, I thought so.

2) About sex: Who says sex is irrelevant, dear Jude? I'm all for fictional sex. The thing is, both the Mafia and Hayes coded Hollywood have a level of restrained lust, secret desires and profound yet in denial homoeroticism. It's more of a matter of what flavour you prefer. And as submissive as I can be, and as alluring as Boss who can take my life or reward me as he wishes may be, I'm significantly more seduced by the idea of being forced into a world of hypocrisy, where I can be an active player, a star with my own shine, even if I have a significant part of who I am lost in the shadows. A word that shines like gold, yet hides what truly is going on. A world that is at once desirable and terrying, where there is always a real chance to simply retire and live in the glory, yet the temptation to stay is ever present. A word of appearances, of masks, of beauty, virtue and sin.

It's just so erotic. Even if there wasn't sex involved, it would be so erotic.

3) About superhero IFs. Did the nonnie mean the IF where one of the RO's cucks the MC? I understand the outrage, even though it was an interesting thing to try and it is really obvious is going to happen. But that IF has multiple other flaws stacking over that problem, the cuck situation is just more evident. I think it's made worse because that specific RO is like the most attractive female RO the game offers. Had I been straight or bisexual I would have considered only her as a romance choice. Although, that game didn't have very interesting RO's in my opinion, since most of the interesting characterizations and dynamics went to non romanceable characters. It saddens me the bad reputation that IF has, given that, if I'm correct about what IF the nonnie was referring to, the author is a fellow Latino.

Also, I understand the need to do something because someone said you couldn't do it. But just due to the decade you wanted to set the IF you would have multiple differences with all of the superhero IFs that I know of. Since most are set in modern times. Often, in regards to time frame, what makes them interesting is that they are an example of alternate history. Like Fallen Hero (God has forsaken me and made me, even if he is non existant, into the fan who brings up Fallen Hero in every conversation).

The thing is, superhero stories do offer a lot of variety. From the themes, the conflicts, the way the powers are relevant to the story or not (for example Unsupervised allows such a variety of powers they are not as central to the narrative as Fallen Hero, in which the story does not work if Sidestep had another variation of super powers).

4) Apologies to Selfie again. I do also think you are cool still. And support you being horny publicly. I'll never be as brave (this is not a backhanded compliment, yet I'm aware it could be understood as such, hence this explanatory parenthesis). I'm too fond of playing around identity, I guess. And anonimity provides something exciting. Weirdly erotic, if you will. A mask. I'm a gray being in the minds of others, a non presence who is also present. It's natural for me to identify more with an actor than to with a mafia member. Even if both include lies, acting and secrets.

5) War can be won, fellow nonnies! I believe in our cause! I may have lost the options I wanted the most, but I will not die on the embarrassment of defeat! No. Yet, I depend on you. May you be the strength I cannot give anymore, and let my spirit fill you with my support. Believe in my smile, my fraternal embrace, the gleeful light in my eyes. Believe on our cause, fellow nonnies! We can win this round!

Ok I do like art deco buttttt I also love sleazy 70s mafia aesthetic the leopard print, the abundance of gold and the smell of cigars

Yeah I heard of that IF it’s always a source of contention on the forums and Reddit 😭

Yeah I think that’s one of the interesting things about the superhero IF it’s not in modern day, it’s 50s Americana

Maybe you can finally get selfie to see the light! They are refusing to leave the cave and prefer to look upon the wall (Plato reference)

I love this IF war going on it invigorates me 😌

[cosmos-dot-semicolon]

Requesting Nya, Edgeworth, and Theif for the character bingo!

(It didn't surprise me that you have good taste in characters. Also, I should watch The Last Unicorn...)

(asks about my favourite fictional characters in 2024)

Oddly enough you got me kind of going on a theme with this one - they're all characters I expected to be tropey in a bad way, who all turn out way more interesting than I could've ever imagined. Huh.

A lot of words lie below about Dicey Dungeons (up to Reunion), the first two Ace Attorney games, and Ninjago (up to the end of season 6).

Spoilers for Dicey Dungeons (up to Reunion), the first two Ace Attorney games, and Ninjago up to the end of season 6. A warning for a mention of a suspected suicide in a backstory.

I'll start with Thief since I need a bit of warmup for the other ask you sent me:

Thief is the only time I've genuinely enjoyed a protagonist that… I'm not sure how to put it. Is shown to be a jerkass and a realist amongst a cast of otherwise very whimsical characters? Who's drawn to look roguish, sneaky, and clever, whether the writer backs that up or not. And for bonus points, is styled after D&D's aesthetics.

I usually hate characters like this. I think it's an oversaturation problem. Ronin's the closest example I have - a character that does nothing for his season's story and wins against the ninja purely out of plot necessity. Or consider Jax, who takes up a lot of screentime in TADC making the rest of the crew suffer, whose snarking really only makes the creators look insecure about the goofier elements of their own work.

And Jax has been confirmed to be a creator's favourite, which is… not concerning, but it's one of those things a creator can say to make you realise you see something very different in their work to them. Plus, a lot of people like him in the fandom. Which isn't technically part of the work. But it is annoying to see how so many people focus on this archetype even when it doesn't bring anything new to the table. This trope is always extremely obvious, and extremely obnoxious if you don't like it.

The worst thing is this isn't just relegated to the realm of fiction. Do you remember when Rick and Morty was a thing, and you had hordes of people looking up to Rick Sanchez as a role model because he was both smart and an asshole, and therefore the takeaway was that it was okay to be an asshole if you (thought you) were smart?

Maybe this is just because I made the mistake of using Reddit as a teenager, but I'm so sick of that attitude. Throw in the way it only ever seems to apply to men…

(as for the last point - I like the concept of magic and fantasy, but I'm not white and I'm fucking sick of how the genre is based in very strict archetypes when you could do anything with it. I won't elaborate on this or it'd be a whole 'nother essay; let's just say I dislike any aesthetic based off D&D.)

Thief is the only time I've seen a work dress this down: his whole arc is realising that he's been outclassed by somebody who knows the game much better than he does, and actually has the power to back it up (and is much funnier to watch too).

As Lady Luck so elegantly puts it:

"…Thief, who is so strangely proud of being clever and unpleasant! Do you think he minds that I'm so much cleverer, and so many times more unpleasant?"

You know that creeping feeling of dread you got playing the game? He's the character that embodies it best. I expected the game to play this completely straight like all those characters above, but it doesn't. It's not so much a twist as the objectively correct take on this trope, but it's still unique and genuinely insightful in a way I haven't seen since.

(Fun fact: it was actually seeing the episode 2 dialogue between Lady Luck and Thief that got me to stop playing the demo and get the full game! The streamer was fast-forwarding through all the text, but I paused and was like 'wait. this is good dialogue. I have to buy this.')

Reunion really drives this home. I love how he instead starts directing his snark outwards to keep his new friends safe. He actually does things now, as the tough negotiator of the group, rather than just claiming he's better than them. He's still kind of got his old greed in him with how he respects Lady Luck's plans to paint the moon as her face, and how he's here for profit first and foremost, but it's clear he's been forced to grow out of that previous obnoxiousness after being put through hell and back.

Dicey Dungeons has such good commentary on character tropes y'all. Seriously.

Nya's a character that had a personal impact on me growing up. I didn't notice it back then, but at least in the early seasons she's just. Objectively the coolest character in the cast. Albeit only because of misogyny reasons as you've noted, but a signifcant amount of Ninjago's appeal lies in its cool factor, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I always thought she was going to be Green Ninja as a kid.

I had to go back and check this, but we get the Samurai X reveal just before season 1 gets onto the full potential episodes. There's something about having to build your own power in a way that one-ups all your peers while keeping it secret from them that's so cool to me. While I have mixed feelings on whether it's a good thing or not, it reminds me of how I studied a lot of maths in my own time in primary school and did better than everyone else by a long shot. Plus you don't usually see girls straight up build mechs, so this blew my fucking mind as a kid.

It was cool to see representation like that. I really like how that specialisation then leads into her potential in season 5 - when she finally begins to branch into learning something new that doesn't seem to be her thing. I've seen people doubt how realistic that is, and while you can debate how well it was paced or whether it's a good decision for the series, that's a real problem you can run into when you're AFAB (or in any other oppressed group) and talented at one thing.

You get attached to your best skill, because that's how you prove yourself as a person. It comes easily to you and you never really work on anything else, and when you're pushed to do it, you hate that it doesn't come easily to you. I didn't consider myself an artist or writer or programmer for years because I thought the stuff I made was ugly and awkward; I knew a trans guy in secondary who straight up told me that he liked his subjects because they came easily to him (which good for him, but it still proves my point that this is a real thing people go through).

I'm reminded of Wu telling Nya that while earth is strong and air is fluid, water can be both. I thought it was just a thing they wrote in to sound wise back then, but on reflection it's some really kind encouragement for her to branch out. And I like how she quits angrily in her training and tries to run for ages. How she doesn't figure it out until the end. I can see myself in that. It's very nice.

And while Skybound's very. Divisive. I think it's a good 60% of a season for her. Her story up to the ending of episode 8 has been compelling - she wants Jay to respect her boundaries, she struggles to make herself known as a new part of the team due to her status, maybe she doesn't mind being in a relationship, but she wants to at least choose for herself. And the sheer amount of optimism encouragement and energy she has throughout the season for everyone is just great.

Yeah. She's great. She kicks ass. She's unfortunately stuck in a show lead by Male WritersTM but we sometimes stumble into some decent characterisation for her despite that. She's unfortunately lowkey but that means there's less parts of her to mangle over time.

…Ninjago was such a great show. It's such a shame it was capped at 6 seasons, but at least that means they treated Nya with respect throughout her runtime except for that one time…

Also I don't know how to tie this neatly into the essay. But a while ago LEGO released a really funny Ninjago explained video done by the Honest Trailers guy, and I still fucking love how he goes off about how talented Nya is for ages instead of making fun of most of the other Ninjas' archetypes (sans Cole), and just ends it with:

'so naturally she was the last one picked for the team. Seriously, they picked [Jay] over her?'

Edgeworth I have the least to say about - it's been a hot while since I've touched AA (and only the first two games at that) and I don't want to risk misremembering fandom concepts as canon.

But the main impact he made on me was that he seems so tailor-made to be your frustrating, comically evil anime rival for the entire plot. Opposing colour scheme, stupid animations, and all. You go in thinking he's made to be a smug bastard you can knock down, and you come out recoiling from that as soon as possible in horror.

And you feel so powerful when you finally get to team up with him against someone.

Yes he does pull out absolute bullshit like the updated autopsy report, and he's still pretty insulting even in later installations. But when you're working your way throughout the first game, and you start to poke at his motivations a little further? He has an iron-clad reason to want to become a prosecutor, even as potentially corrupt as his methods may be. He seeks to help Wright if it truly brings someone to justice, which is a better portrayal of the legal system than I've seen than from many other places.

And in the end, after he saves you, you have to go back and do the same for him. And it's the best case of the game. You not only blow open a decades-old case that's been hinted towards throughout the entire game, but you also finally cut your friend loose from the ghost that he didn't even know was haunting him for years. It ties the overarching plot and the main characters' personal endeavours together so well, which is the series' greatest strength, despite what the memes going around about its wacky hijnks would have you believe.

Plus, while it's not Edgeworth's doing himself, the amount of dedication Phoenix has towards this guy is great. Whether you read their bond as romantic or platonic (or otherwise), you get the sense Edgeworth must've been someone really special to Phoenix for him to try and chase him down through years of law school and all the bullshit you're put through in the previous 3 chapters. That's devotion right there, and it catches you entirely off-guard with what you go in expecting.

He feels very human. You learn about things like his Steel Samurai collection, you give him advice on how to grow beyond the mess that is DL6. You see him take that in the worst way possible by running off to a foreign country and implying that he might've killed himself. You expect none of it. It's very touching.

[marshmallowprotection]

so I've had a thought knocking around in my head for a while. i know the twins are past the age where they'd get the most growth BUT i looked up if boys can still grow when they're a little older and the short answer is: unlikely, but possible. anyway, i keep thinking about ge saeran growing just a tiiiiiiny bit and ending up as tall as or even a cm taller than saeyoung. i want saeran to tease him and saeyoung to go full overdramatic drama queen whining and pouting like he's a tragic shakespearian hero (he's just being silly)

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for them. As you said, it's not something that's likely but it's not completely improbable. It could happen. Saeran has always been shorter than his brother due to malnutrition. No matter how much Saeyoung tried to take care of his brother by giving him the most food and care, it just wasn't ever going to be enough to give him what he needed.

Saeyoung had the luck of being able to leave the house. He could get sunshine, extra food, and fresh air. Sure, his growth was stunted just like Saeran's, but he had a little leverage on his twin. Even if he did a lot to help Saeran's health, Saeyoung was only a kid, and as hard as it is to hear, he couldn't ensure Saeran's health every day. Saeran had to stay inside, lose out on fresh air and sunlight, and struggle with little to no nutrients.

There is a reason why GE Saeran mentions that he hates the taste of white bread. It was one of the few things he could eat every day and now it makes him feel nauseated.

Hell, I'm surprised the twins are as tall as they are. I tend to shake it off as the logic of a fictional otome setting where they want many of the characters to be taller than what they just assume is the average height of the players.

I mean, I look over at Fullmetal Alchemist and think about how Edward's growth was stunted and ultimately played a role in his health and height. Ed did get a growth spurt near the end of the series where he grew from 4'11" to 5'6". But, the difference with his story comes down to his automail. It weighed his body down for a long time... on top of the fact his body was keeping Al's alive at the portal of truth...

I think the average height around the world is 5'9" for cis men, but for South Korea specifically, I think it's 5'7"? So, that means Saeran and Saeyoung are taller than the average statistic. Their father is tall from what we're shown, but we have no point of reference for Mother Choi and her height on top of their stunted growth.

The twins do have poor health because Rika thought Saeyoung was a lot younger than he was when they met for the first time. That's just a reflection of the obvious. The boys are smaller than people their age for years. I've thought about this a lot, though. I think about this sort of thing a lot but the game doesn't really want me to.

I digress. I do think that it'd be hilarious for Saeyoung to wake up one morning and look at Saeran and pause, "Wait a minute. My baby twin is taller than me! Oh, no! Whatever will I do! How can I protect him if I have to make him slouch behind me to avoid a villain?! MC! Help me out here! What do I do? I can't make Saeran hurt his back when I have to protect him from a bad guy!"

[slickshoesareyoucrazy]

The Fictional Men We Crush On

This actually isn't a post about the men I make up or the fictional characters that remind me of J. I've written plenty of shit about that before. It's clear I have a 'type.' (Tall, quiet nerd. Bonus if he wears glasses. Double bonus if he's got dominant traits. For the maybe 2 of you who didn't already know that, and/or forgot, and/or don't find it painfully obvious). We all know I love Egon Spengler and Chris Stevens and Dwayne Wayne and George Bailey and Ned the Piemaker. Like...there it is.

And it's not a Celebrity Hit List post either (everybody probably also knows I have a monster crush on Ben Folds and Hozier because I mean...tall quiet nerds who PLAY INSTRUMENTS with gorgeous hands and sing about love and at least sometimes wear glasses...like it's kinda not fair if you wanna be real about shit here). There are fictional characters I dig a lot but don't particularly care for the actors who play them at all (lookin' at you Andy Dwyer from Parks and Rec). And vice versa (I hear that kid who played Joffrey in Game of Thrones is actually a sweetie pie and a half).

This is a half-silly (but half-not silly) post about how the fictional men my man-loving friends crush on should clue me in on who THEY (my man-loving friends) are. Because as I sit here on the exercise bike counting minutes until I can get off and go back to housework that's less sweaty, I'm thinking about who the man-lovers in my life like or have liked. A lot of them like Gomez Addams. And Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of Music. And Wayne from Letterkenny. And there's Team Michael versus Team Rafael for Jane the Virgin fans. And of course, Mr. Darcy. All good choices, I'd say, even though they aren't my choices. And I have a couple friends who are 'villain' girls who like Killmonger from Black Panther (I get it in that case; truly). I can be friends with a lot of people who don't share my tastes. In fact, I have an amateur, untested theory that men-loving people (and probably also women-and nonbinary-loving people) make easier friends with people who don't share exactly the same taste in attraction. All my best man-loving friends do not share my type, but they understand it. That's cool. I understand why most of my friends like most of the people they like (any gender; fictional and non-fictional). But I guess I got to thinking about one person who was recently in my life because Pretty in Pink by The Psychedelic Furs came up on my shuffle here on the bike and how her taste in fictional men should have been a tip off to me that she wasn't really my kinda person.

Let me explain that a bit (or try at least). This woman said she'd always had a crush on Steph, the James Spader character in John Hughes' classic 80s film, Pretty in Pink. James Spader is probably an alright guy in real life (I don't know though), and I have some submissive friends who liked him in Secretary (I've still never seen it), and he's certainly a handsome man (or he can be one and was one in the 80s). But dude, that character is a first class piece of shit. An arrogant, elitist, sexist douchebag by any measure. He is the villain of the piece and he doesn't have a righteous cause or a tragic past like Killmonger; he's just a shitbag. I mean, my favorite line in the film, delivered with quiet but cutting ire by Andrew McCarthy's dreamy but unfortunately named hero character, Blaine is, "She thinks you're shit. And deep down, you know she's right." She went on to swoon over and defend a lot of other seriously flawed and disturbing men, both real and imaginary to me throughout the course of our interactions (I can't call it a friendship anymore)...Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (rapist; at least he had some redeemable traits sometimes but still...I liked Giles and Wesley and Oz; I guess I'm just not a vampire girl), Viggo Mortenson's Walker from the film A Walk on the Moon (he's not really a bad guy, but he tries to break up a marriage and family where the husband is a definitive GOOD guy...Liev Schreiber, another one of my swoony celebs because he reminds me of J and wow his character was the dreamy one for me in that movie), musicians with well established histories of abusing women and/or anti-Semitism. She just went to bat pretty regularly for people, both real and not real, who were at least unjustifiable in the bad shit they did, if not wholly irredeemable. And looking back, it's not surprising she did, because I think those are characters she might see herself in.

Anyway, if you're reading this and you're like, 'But I like this one villain in this one show...' and it turns out that character has this giant growth arc (Petra in Jane the Virgin; Nathaniel in Crazy Ex Girlfriend; I'm sure there are countless other examples), or really you just like the actor (Adam Driver, Jamie Dornan, and on and on and on...), that's not the same as waxing poetic about fucking Steph from Pretty in Pink. And if you ALSO like heroes sometimes? Even really imperfect or unconventional ones? Yeah. Egon Spengler, remember? They're not STEPH from Pretty in Pink. :-P

OK bike time and rant over. I'm probably gonna go watch Pretty in Pink while I finish housework now. (Blaine and Duckie forever. Steph can go kick rocks).

[presidenttyler]

i am not a member of the terror fanbase myself and i have only read the book and not seen the show - (but i'm really into the actual historical event hahahahaha, hence my proximity to the fandom). so i'm probably not a good person to be throwing my hat in the terror discourse ring. but i do just want to share my own thought because i think i fall into the category of person criticized in the post.

for some people i think it can be as simple as just not really liking magical elements in stories. it's not always a matter of "not getting it," it's not like "monster bad because idk why the monster was there." i understand what the tuunbaq was supposed to represent and why it would be included - but my personal taste in fiction made it difficult for me to feel immersed and "believe" the story since it departed so much from anything i could imagine actually happening. to me that is a vital part of my personal enjoyment of a story. does that mean i shouldn't be reading fiction - maybe it does lol. (i don't watch or read fiction almost ever.) but that is why for me, when engaging with terror stuff, i would find it much more appealing to come up with a realistic explanation for the fantastical element.

imperialism and the human conquest of nature is a real life thing, and it's not bad in real life because monsters will eat us when we do it. if we are waiting for the monster to eat us, we will wait forever - the actual consequences are more easy to ignore and write off (at least, until they are simply too dire), which makes them a lot more dangerous, in my opinion. i mean, people kept trying to sail the northwest passage and eventually someone did. one of the tragedies of the franklin expedition is that it didn't stop anyone from keeping trying. and eventually we managed to get through. and now look what we are doing to the arctic in modern times, etc. it's crucial, to me, that there IS no monster that will keep stopping human conquest in its tracks - that's why this is all so dangerous.

a bunch of men gloriously sailing away on a fundamentally useless, wasteful, and unnecessary trip to discover a northwest passage which doesn't even really meaningfully exist, and then very ungloriously freezing to death and eating each other, is a more obvious representation of the folly of ridiculous imperialistic quests, than having a monster eat them. my opinion only

why does all the terror discussion i find outside of the fanbase keep going on about "tuunbaq is probably just a polar bear and they're lead poisoned. that's how come it looks like that. i'm so smart." do you hate metaphors. do you. do you need everything spoonfed to you because you hate metaphors. is that it. is tuunbaq's status as a personification of nature's fury and the consequences of imperialism sailing right over your head the way the terror isn't sailing through the northwest passage. is that it

[infinitelycomplexpuzzles]

// one thing people who follow me probably notice is that my autism hates inconsistencies in writing

I very much have a hyperfixation on storytelling and the process that you use for it

because storytelling isn't like painting, it's very precise and there are reasons for conventions that exist

for example, I am very much a believer that Chekov's gun is one of the most important rules of writing well. I believe internal consistency is more important than nearly anything else. And I believe this, because writing is the only form of creation where the creator has total control over how the consumer understands things.

In visual mediums, you don't have that. An actor can turn your villain into a hero simply because they're hot, see Loki in Marvel. A drawing of a character can entirely change how they are perceived, because visuals are a facet of how we understand things.

But in writing, a reader cannot know anything that you do not tell them. Their window to the world is entirely controlled by you, the writer.

A character who is vicious and mean and spiteful can be described as such, and the reader will have no reason to think otherwise, because their mental picture is entirely painted by you. There are no accidental elements added to it. There's no 'oh the actor interpreted this scene this way, the viewer took something else away from it, ect.'

For example, there are lots of people who interpret the protagonists of Fight Club, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad as aspirational figures. In the case of Fight Club, you would never take that away from the book, because there's no way for a reader to take away anything about these characters or their interactions beyond what they can see through the writer's eyes.

But beyond this, writing conventions exist for a reason.

A long time ago, I did a couple of years in film school. A waste, honestly, lots of debt from that. But, at the time, one thing I saw a lot was that people wanted to make pulp fiction but none of them understood why the director was able to make the movie without using the three act structure. It's because the director wrote the book on how to use the three act structure. Meaning that he understood better than anyone how to break the rules without destroying his story.

I think that now, there are probably other movies that have replaced Pulp Fiction in the 'non-linear narrative' movie slot that young people all think they can do without understanding how it actually works. You cannot simply replicate a thing without knowing why it is the way it is.

Here's an analogy that fits. My landlord worked as a fabricator for heavy machinery. While constructing such a machine for a client in China, something broke, and they couldn't simply take it apart or remake it. So they improvised and shipped it out. Later, they began to get questions on how to fix this part that was improvised, because the Chinese company that bought their machine had copied it without realizing that they had messed up, and so when they recast it, they recast it with the error included.

That's what it's like when people try to circumvent storytelling conventions without knowing why they exist or why people have used them for so many centuries.

Writers who have been doing it forever aren't perfect writers. But before you can improve upon what they've done, or innovate, you have to actually understand what they're doing and why.

Otherwise, you're doing the storytelling equivalent of adding salt instead of sugar to the cookies because you think that the only reason people are using sugar is because no one has ever considered using salt before in the history of baking.

'What makes writing good' is up to personal tastes a lot of time.

'What makes writing bad' is usually not, because it's often blatantly obvious when writing is bad in a way that it isn't in a lot of other mediums.

[nappainanotherdimension]

☹ !

{For every ☹ I get I will show a sample of a muse I used to play but don’t anymore. Or send a ☻ for a muse I would like to play, but haven’t yet! || Open and Accepting!}

*cue another theme for this former muse o’ mine!* 

Things were pretty dull lately for the God of Metal. No worthy dark ones to fight around these parts. They all were migratin’ away, heh, runnin’ away more like! It’s a shame the weaker ones scampered off. Coulda used their souls to increase his own power. Every little bit helps him get closer to his ultimate goal of overpowering his master, Lord Ozum. 

Rumor has it there was a nasty Night Warrior coming this way. Yet here was Lord Raptor, laying around in his human façade waiting for this threat to come. “Bloody fools.” The Aussie rocker muttered to himself. “I’d recon if they’re really that strong, all the more reason to stick around and fight! I bet their soul’s both powerful and tasty!”

Sitting up with a light groan he continued speaking to himself out of boredom. “Been an awful long time since I’ve had a real challenge, and I’ve done my part terrorizin’ the locals. Doin’ my best not to take all their souls. Leavin’ just ‘nough behind to get the word out of a powerful darkstalker lurkin’ ‘ere.” 

There’s another town up ahead. Tiny, with lots of innocent people runnin’ round. The souls of the wicked were much more delectable, but if this’d bring the highly anticipated Night Warrior to him sooner…

Conjuring up his electric guitar, the zombie transformed into his true self with the power he sacrificed a hundred of his own devoted fans – and his own mortal being – in order to gain. 

Boney fingers stroked the taught strings to cut the silence of the night with electrifying wails of his instrument that were loud enough to awaken the dead from their nearby graves. Literally. What kind of rock star went around on a killin’ spree without an entourage? He might be dead, but he still had a reputation to uphold! 

“Whaddya say we play another small gig before we hit it big, boys?” Raptor rhetorically asked his zombie troops. 

Before they could shamble along to his side or even moan out in agreement, a blur spun into sight, choppin’ and cuttin’ ‘em all down! RUDE! When this challenger landed gracefully a couple o’ meters away from him, they turned out to be a downright gorgeous undead sheela! Greetin’ him with a pretty lil’ smirk and a cheeky “Ni hou.” 

“Ni how are you doin’ love?” Raptor quipped as he eagerly posed himself for a scrap.

Looks like all the darkstalkers didn’t hightail it outta here after all! FANTASTIC! Maybe if he beats her, she’ll go on a date with ‘im! If not well…he could always add her soul to his own power. They’d be together forever then! 

How ROMANTIC!!! ♥

That’d make a good power ballad too, come to think of it.

A Former Muse: The Looney Goon of DoomLord Raptor from the Darkstalkers franchise

Man is Lord Raptor fun to write! As you can probably tell from how long this sample got. Wish I could have fit in some more puns and jargon jokes into there, but no point in overdoing it. This dude is both goofy and terrifying at the same time! That’s not always an easy thing to balance, but since comedy and horror are my favorites, I feel like I do a good job portraying him whenever I have the pleasure of doing so. 

When I first began to seriously play Darkstalkers, I was scared of him. He’s fast and twitches around like crazy, and if I wasn’t careful he’d beat me in a match. Didn’t even realize he was a zombie. Then one day I decided to play him and what’d ya know?  He’s a perfect fit for my play style! Learning he was a zombie made him even more awesome to me. The rest is history.

As I mentioned in the last ask, I also played him in that Wreck-it Ralph roleplay. Few people were playing true bad guys, and even though he wasn’t up to anything evil, he was exactly the type of person that people could love to hate as an antagonistic presence. 

I think it really shows how much I love this character. Even though I moved back into the DBZ and Tenchi fandom as my main focus and creative drive, still got a place in my heart for the Darkstalkers franchise, and this ghoul in particular. ♥ It also helps that currently Udon’s doing the Streetfighter vs Darkstalkers series which I’ve been keeping up with collecting by some miracle! (All the icons except the chibi one at the end came from that comic series.)

His English voice actor is one of my favorite voice actors, Scott McNeil aka, Ocean dub Piccolo and so many other characters. I just love it when my faves also get the same voice actor as other faves. 

Also the Lord Raptor Rap from the dopey American cartoon always puts a smile on my face. Always. 

[thesecrimsonstrings-if]

My type of fictional men are the ones written by women. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the WIP IF with the men of my dreams was written by a cis straight man 🚶🏾‍♀️ Even the female characters are so well-written and I’m just in awe, even if it’s the bare minimum for male authors. Are you free on Friday cause I’m free on Friday so we can go out if you’re free on Friday to get something to eat on Frid---

okay, so i get that this is a compliment (if i ever heard one) but since i've gotten a lot of asks like these, i wanna talk about this in a little more depth.

i agree that sometimes when cis straight men try to write about female characters, it just comes off clunky and plain misogynistic. but i can also say that about female authors who write about male characters with not much of a personality. the gender of the author doesn't really matter if they're just ignorant about the people they are writing about.

i don't mean to go off on you here because believe me, i've read a lot of stories where i've wondered if the male author had ever interacted with a woman before. but there are also many men writing strong female characters who aren't eye candies or damsels in distress or mary sues. i personally think it all comes down to the male gaze vs the female gaze. salem tovar has made a very good video on how both of those gazes can be harmful and you can check it out here.

young boys are often made fun of for liking genres like romance (trust me, i have firsthand experience for this) and their literature taste often just drifts off to more ‘acceptable’ ones. for example: horror, historical, science fiction, etc., just all things that the society consider to be ‘manly’ genres. female characters in these type of stories are... let's just say that they're not typically written very nicely, but this is the type of literature they grew up reading.

AFAB people typically write male characters who are desirable to their targetted audience because they actually meet all the standards that real men in their life could never even come close too. however, sometimes they write so many cringey men that it either makes me laugh or throw up in my mouth a little.

like, sarah j. maas? what is wrong with the men in your books? i can practically smell the testosterone leaking from the pages to the point that i thought you were a male author disguising yourself as a woman. rhysand tries to come off as a feminist so much that it ends up feeling like a hate crime against women. all the female characters are either incredibly weak like elain or a straight up bitch like nesta. aside from feyre, of course, perfect little feyre who can do no wrong. i have absolutely no idea why there are so many SJM fans who are ready to lay down their lives for this musty crusty dusty hormonal smut fantasy series.

now, let me stop before i go on a whole rant about this god-awful series and SJM in general which will be longer than azriel's ‘wingspan’.

anyways, it's obvious that men who have no idea how proper female characters are written, end up writing them in a way that make you wanna bash your head in with the book and that's completely understandable. i, myself, grew up surrounded by romance books because my mum didn't really give a shit about what genres i liked as long as i was happy reading them. of course, i didn't tell her about the smut books i had on my wattpad library when i was 12.

have we consumed years of literature written by men which depicts women through a sexist lens? yes. is romance a genre that is dominated by the AFAB authors? also yes. can women write female (and male and NB) characters just as badly? hell yes. it's really not a question about the author's gender but more about if they actually know about the characters they're writing about.

and while i understand why people don't usually like it when AMAB authors write romance novels, i dislike the sweeping generalisation of them all being very bad at writing the characters.

[haifengg]

Pairing: NanamixGN!Reader

Note: I think I got this ask quite a while ago but due to my hiatus it got postponed a million times. Now that I am slowly coming back and am publishing the bits and pieces I wrote during being away this A-Z is finally leaving my drafts as well.

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?) Given his S/O is a sorcerer as well I think he would limit PDA at work to a minimum. Even if they are officially together or even married. He just likes to separate work and home. Tho it doesn’t mean that he is not making small intimate gestures at work like randomly dropping in with coffee or - when they are on a mission - sending a text asking how they are doing.

At home he is pretty affectionate. Randomly pulling them in for a hug, giving small back rubs when they are doing the dishes after he cooked. This kind of thing.

B = Before (What were they like when they had a crush?) Distant. Nanami would probably be a person who maybe actually mistakes the feeling for some other emotion at first. Leaving him confused about why he thinks about them so much. The poor man would likely be irritated every time they are nice to him. Why the heck doesn’t his heart stop pounding? And why is he suddenly excited to go to work? Disappointed when he is not assigned the same mission as them? Or - if they aren’t a sorcerer - sad when a mission takes him away from wherever he met them for too long?

C = Confession (What was their confession like?) Well-planned and straight forward. Nanami was already observing them for a while before making a move. Although he doesn’t actually confess it is pretty obvious when he likes someone because it happens so rarely. Just imagine him asking someone out for dinner. That gives away so much - don’t you agree?

D = Date (What was the first official date they went on?) If we don’t count the dinner mentioned above … I guess it would be something like a gallery. Nanami would definitely want to test his s/o’s taste in art because it tells a lot about a person’s character. What kind of art they prefer (paintings, photography, sculptures, … ) and how they look at it as well.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?) Professionally. He would state the fact on why they aren’t compatible anymore and what made him draw this conclusion. I don’t think either one of them would cheat on the other mainly because Nanami wouldn’t get into a relationship with someone capable of doing that in the first place (I hope). He would sit down with his (not) s/o and talk it through. There might be tears on the other side but not on his. He thought about it a lot and made peace with his feelings before starting this conversation.

F = Fights (What would fights look like? What are things that upset them?) Kento barely looses his temper. And if he does I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily a bad thing. Getting him so worked up about something does only mean he cares. Fights would mostly be on the calmer/diplomatic side. He might be upset about something but there is no need for him to yell or anything. If the problem can be resolved just by talking about it - great! Why waste his precious energy on negative things, when he can use them elsewhere?

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?) We all know - and all those rough sm*t fan fictions can’t proof me wrong - that he probably is the most gentle character in entire JJK. He despises the violence of his job therefore he doesn’t want to inflict pain or anything on anyone on his good side. Especially his S/O. Nanami has the most gentle touch, fleeing kisses, he will hold them tight but never smother them.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?) As mentioned above: Tight and secure. Or soft. His S/O almost automatically buries their face in the crook of his neck because - who wouldn’t. Is there anything else I have to say about hugs by Nanami Kento? Yes. Am I able to put it into words? No. It’s just a very overwhelming feeling - that’s all.

I = Intimacy (What is their favorite form of intimacy? Do they have problems with it?) For him I think it would be things where they take care of him. While he shows his love through cooking and providing (which he takes a lot of pride from), he loves being taken care of as well. Maybe in departments he doesn’t know so much about. Like skincare. If his S/O teases him about his wrinkles and stern look he would gladly accept any advice in skincare from them, let them do their magic with face massages and serums. He doesn’t even care if it has any effect on his skin - he just loves the attention he gets and thrives on the feeling how much his S/O cares about him (and his skin apparently).

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?) This one I am really indecisive about. I can see him get more jealous that we would expect him too - which would be a nice surprise tbh. But also not jealous at all because he is confident. Kento knows what his S/O likes about him and he also knows what separates him from other men. What makes him special. I think the times he gets jealous are the days he doesn’t get to spent with his S/O because of work or a mission. Which rather results in being mad at Jujutsu Tech than jealous of someone else.

K = Kisses (Are they a good kisser? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?) Forehead. Kisses. It doesn’t matter what height there S/O is. It is one of the most protective gestures and he enjoys giving those as much as his S/O enjoys receiving them.

The back of the hand cheesy kisses. Because they are his everything, he wants to treat them like it. Nanami knows it’s cheesy but neither one of them thinks too much about it. When they sit across the table, fingers sloppily interlocked on the table top, he occasionally picks up their hand and places a soft kiss on the back of it. Almost absent-minded.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?) He is not very fond of them. Not saying that he won’t love and do everything for his own kids but other people’s kids are usually a nuisance for him. If they are loud or misbehaving he is really not having it. Though he would never lash out or raise his voice against them/their parents. ‘Children’ as in ‘his students’ … he always makes sure to treat them as children in a way he wants them safe/won’t put them in unnecessary danger.

M = Messages (How often do they text his S/O?) Kento strikes me as a kind of guy who doesn’t text often. Mostly because in his line of work sharing attention could easily be his downfall or worse. He will let his s/o know if he’s running late or occasionally ask if there is anything they need from the store or things like that but aside from practical messages he doesn’t text much.

Though if he is on a long mission and away from his s/o for quite a time span he usually rather calls them than text.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?) Nights as in ‘Nights Out’? Date nights? Well, he is a foodie so dinner is always a popular option. He takes the time to carefully research about the restaurant and the menu. If the rotate dishes, he will make sure they’re going at the exactly right season to get the best culinary experience possible.

Nanami is old fashioned. So he will hold the door for them, pull back the chair … helps them into their coat.

He also likes going to the movies. The intimacy of the dark theatre gives him the confidence to reach out for their hand or have his arm around their shoulder. Since he usually limits PDA in public this is exciting for him.

O = Opinion (Would they ask for their S/O’s opinion a lot? How important is it in terms of decisions?) Probably more than I would expect him too. Maybe not about the smaller things but decisions that involve the both of them he would definitely ask.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?) Due to the time he spends exposed to Gojo this man has the patience of a saint. Literally. He rarely snaps at his S/O.

Q = Quizzes (How does a bar trivia night teamed up with them look like?) Stressed. Yes, this man in very educated and cultured but imagine him sitting in a loud-ass bar, having to answer questions about the transformers or Megan Thee Stallion. Absolutely absurd. How old he must feel …

R = Remember (How much do they remember about their S/O or their relationship in general?) Not everything but a lot. He will remember little things they mentioned early on in the relationship and bring it up again later. He also uses this ability for presents and such. As well as in fights. If they think they can outtalk him with something you accusedly said or didn’t say some time ago - I suggest they surrender, because he will remember much better.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?) Very Protective. I mean yes, he knows that they can stand up for themselves but why should they have to do that if he is around? One of the big perks dating him is that he is who he is and that his presence confuses most people. So he might as well use it. Not so much in a physical way but rather in addressing the people bothering his S/O directly in the typical manner of his.

I think his understanding of being protected equals being taken care of which plays into the skincare thing I mentioned earlier. It is not so much physical procreation from danger but preserving a future together where one cares about the other deeply and only wants their best.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?) Medium effort. He prepares and researches but he rarely comes up with a new idea. He knows what he likes and his S/O probably does too. His work is so stressful and has close to no repetition so that he enjoys doing the same things on dates over and over. That does not mean it will get boring. Because Nanami sometimes thrives on going the extra mile. There is a restaurant across the country that he really wants to dine at? Buckle up - he is going on a vacation. Short trips or spa weekends are also things he appreciates.

Since he remembers dates and anniversaries well he is usually well prepared for those occasions. He puts a lot of thought into presents and barely ever gifts useless things. He does not like to have a lot of stuff laying around so what he gives to people usually serves a purpose.

U = Unique (What makes them unique as a S/O?) Literally everything I mentioned above. Namai Kento is a unique mix of all his traits. A very balanced person.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?) Well … he wears the same freaking suit everyday so … but yes I think cares about his looks and hygiene in general. As far as clothing goes he probably has one brand he is loyal too, which automatically sets his fashion style in stone as well. He has the same haircut for quite a while and sees no point in changing it.

Overall just the classic hetero dude who ones figured out what works for him and stuck with it. lol.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without their S/O? Yes. His S/O is the other side of him. Is what balances his inner peace. Without them he worries too much, stresses too much. He needs them to tell him it’s going to be okay.

X = X-Ray (How transparent are they?) Nanami doesn’t actually tells them everything but will disclose if they ask. He just doesn’t think they are interested in small details about him.

Y = Yuck (Everyone has flaws. What is theirs?) He. Doesn’t. Do. The. Dishes.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?) Kento never lets go of his S/O. Which can be annoying. And suffocating. Especially in summer. He is not clingy and they don’t fall asleep like this but in the morning he always spoons them or weirdly holds their hand. Sometimes toes interlocked lmao. Which makes them even more lonely when they are apart, because they got used to it way too quickly.

@kpopsnowball @soleilsuhh @jeonghanmoon @himitsu-luna

@sagedevans @shampoocifer @your-consulting-fangirl @gwynsapphire​

MASTERLIST

[livvyofthelake]

i’ve been doing such a terrible job selling the infernal devices i just know helena is watching me post like “damn she really expects me to read this flop trilogy??” so i am now going to write up a potentially very long post where i try to reason to myself in real time why i was wrong when i read it in middle school and it’s not as bad as i’m describing and if i reread it as an adult with better taste i would enjoy it immensely. ok. so first of all i don’t like steampunk shit i think it’s cringey in the same way panic at the disco is cringey. however my brain was probably just over saturated with cringe due to being 13 years old in 2014. if i read it now it would be post-cringe, camp even. secondly, i didn’t vibe with the love triangle stuff. i hate love triangles and it always seems incredibly and annoyingly obvious which one of them will be endgame. tessa and will are still no exception to this, it is painfully and annoyingly obvious in tid that they’re getting together in the end, as much as cassie tried to trick us with tessa and jem’s engagement. she didn’t trick me. HOWEVER. NOW i know that i was looking at it wrong. i was 13 what did you expect from me i literally was performatively obsessed with one direction back then. so NOW i understand that the whole appeal of tessa and will and jem is that they are three people who love each other equally and it’s not necessarily a choice between any of them as much as the eventual outcome was dictated by circumstance. technically in canon will and jem are just platonic besties but like if cassie can log on to HER tumblr and say “hey. they might be gay. who’s to say really” then i think i can log on to MY tumblr and call these men gay. and of course, will and tessa only married because jem had to become a silent brother, and then a hundred years later he stopped being a silent brother due to yk. jace accidentally blasting him with the heavenly fire that was consuming his body (it happens). and then immortal tessa and still alive jem got married. and she doesn’t love one of them more than the other. and sorry for spoiling the ending in my defense these books are nearing a decade old. my next point i don’t remember what number i’m on. when i first read these books i thought will was too mean and i thought jem was too boring. so i wasn’t into tessa interacting with either of them really. like. i was right, will was mean, and jem was boring, but like. will wasn’t as mean as he seemed, he was just a bit of a cunt. and jem wasn’t as boring as he seemed, he was just kind. i was a divergent fan ok kindness wasn’t exactly a trait i was used to seeing in my fictional dudes. but am now and i think jem has nice boy swag even. well ig he’s a man now but he still has that nice kindness swag!! and he’s my bestie kit’s dad! will does still serve annoying edward cullen-esque ya love interest energy but i think i just have to forgive and forget that considering cassie is Weird about her herondale men sometimes. idk something is just wrong with that woman! i forgive her tho. i’ve forgiven more for less. and finally. i did not care for the plot! however! who does? i already know the plot, if i reread it, i can just skip the dumb stuff. everybody wins! in conclusion, i think we were ALL haters when we were 13, and when i’m done with chain of iron i’m gonna give tessa and her boys another chance for the first time since literally 2014. i’m optimistic about it those guys are literally my buddy lucie’s parents… if nothing else they are my buddy lucie’s parents!!

[robininthelabyrinth]

This is a very vague plot but I would love to read an Emperor or very powerful WWX fic from you. I enjoy Boashan Sanren’s Emperor!WWX AU and I also love fics where WWX really is powerful and free to kick ass and just wreck shit. I really think your take on these tropes would be an interesting one and enjoyable read for all. Thank you for all the fics and your efforts in the fandom so far. Take care yourself. ☺️

fictional 18th century France in which the entire century is happening at once - part 2  

- for part 1 see: ao3 or tumblr -

Wei Wuxian came to Nie Huaisang for advice.

Well, technically, that’s not quite right, Nie Huaisang reflected. Wei Wuxian, when faced with a situation that exceeded even his formidable talents, reverted back to his old ways in times of severe crisis. Namely, he ran back to ask for advice from his adopted family – which by this point consisted only of Jiang Cheng, what with the majority of the Jiangs having perished in the infamous massacre. 

(The newspapers had dubbed it “le massacre des lotus”, a poetic way to elide the horrific mess of blood and death and despair that it had actually been.)

Naturally, Jiang Cheng didn’t have any idea what to do with the hot potato he’d been handed, and so he, and Wei Wuxian with him, came to Nie Huaisang, who always knew what to do. Who else did they have to ask?

Sure, Nie Huaisang supposed they could have gone to seek the advice of Lady Jin, formerly Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng’s older sister, but luckily Jiang Cheng was self-aware enough to know how much of a political disaster that would have been. Regardless of her personal merits, of which Nie Huaisang was certain there were many, the former young lady Jiang had married into the Jin family, a move that was widely viewed with suspicion. 

After all, the spectacle of yet another wealthy noble marrying another wealthy noble in exactly the sort of thing the Revolution and the abolition of noble privileges had been meant to stymie – and this particular marriage especially suspect given that everyone knew that the Jin family’s politics leaned heavily monarchist, having only just barely refrained from becoming émigrés themselves by the thought of the financial advantages they thought they could get following the fall of the Sun King.

For the Jins, the marriage had been a coup, giving them a claim to legitimacy in their new era; for the Jiangs, it was far from being the best move, politically speaking, no matter how much they swore that it was a love match.

It must have been, for the normally astute Jiangs to make such an unforced stumble.

The marriage itself was bad enough, but if Wei Wuxian, grand (if highly unorthodox) hero of the foreign wars, was seen consulting with the Jins, allowing them to influence him…well, it wouldn’t end up good for anyone, except maybe the ones who wanted to overthrow the Revolution and reestablish the rule of the Wen dynasty on the basis of the divine right of kings.

Apparently, chopping off the heads of the last set wasn’t enough to warn the rest of them off.

Fucking émigrés.

At any rate, that was how the whole mess had ended up in Nie Huaisang’s lap.

“I’m not sure what you’re looking at me to tell you,” Nie Huaisang said, idly fanning himself. That wasn’t exactly in fashion either – fans were very much seen as an affectation of the previous political order – but it was garnished with the appropriately patriotic rosette and anyway, everyone knew he liked fans, useless self-indulgent dandy that he was. Good only for throwing parties and keeping an active salon for his own entertainment, albeit one very in vogue and coincidentally very popular with all the famous revolutionary thinkers of their day.

Besides, no one in their right mind was going to claim that Nie Mingjue’s little brother wasn’t sufficiently revolutionary.

“Don’t pull your good-for-nothing stunt with me,” Jiang Cheng said, rolling his eyes at him. “I was there when it all started, remember?”

Jiang Cheng had lucked in to being there when it all started, since unlike many of the other people Nie Huaisang had so carefully invited to his salon, Jiang Cheng had been invited purely on the basis of being an old friend from school. That he’d become a hero of the Revolution instead of being imprisoned and executed after the massacre of his family by the increasingly paranoid and dictatorial Sun King was his own good fortune and hard work, naturally, but he wouldn’t have even known where to start if it hadn’t been for Nie Huaisang and his connections.

“I remember,” Nie Huaisang said. “I also recall that you and Wei Wuxian broke ties long ago, isn’t that right?”

Obviously that little façade had been entirely political.

It would have been awkward for Wei Wuxian, darling of the armies and terror of the continent, inventor of a brand new form of warfare and at least half a dozen new pieces of artillery, to be so closely tied to any one noble family, no matter their history together. It would have led to accusations that the Jiang family was seeking to take advantage of the Revolution to strengthen their own power, no matter how passionate a revolutionary Jiang Cheng was personally - the Jin sect had already started spreading rumors, casting allegations, implications, smears...

Their show of very publicly disowning each other had put an end to that.

“Don’t play dumb,” Jiang Cheng said impatiently, because he knew that Nie Huaisang knew that it was all bullshit, even if the newspapers Nie Huaisang bankrolled pretended to swallow the bait down whole. “Are you going to help us or not?”

“Of course I will,” Nie Huaisang said, rolling his eyes at him. “We’re friends. But because we’re friends, I’m going to tell you flat out that you already know what the choices ahead of you are and you know which one is the best move. What you want is for me provide you with any other options, and I’m not going to be able to do that.”

“This is just insane!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. He was pacing around the room, face pale and cloak black, as looking dashing as always. Nie Huaisang wanted to get out his paints and force the man to pose for him and maybe a dozen or so of his closest artist friends; it would be stunning. “I can’t – why would they ask me? A few years ago, I was just an artillery captain! Son of a servant and a runaway novitiate!”

“The whole point of the Revolution was to favor merit, not birth,” Nie Huaisang reminded him. “And anyway, who cares that you were an artillery captain back then? You’re a general now. The Lion of Yiling.”

“The Menace of Yiling, the Fiend of the Burial Mounds, the Nightmare of Europe…” Jiang Cheng murmured, recounting some of the less polite versions. Nie Huaisang waved his fan at him – he wasn’t helping.

“Your brother is a general, too,” Wei Wuxian pointed out, a little desperately. 

It wouldn’t help him.

“Mm, he is. He’s also nobility of the sword - well, saber - from a line that has existed for generations, even if we did have rather ignoble origins,” Nie Huaisang said. He was not without sympathy for Wei Wuxian’s predicament, but really, some things were obvious. “We all know he’s the incorruptible and all that, but it’d be far too easy for the newspapers - and our enemies - to paint him as having done it all for his own selfish interests. There’s a reason he announced all the way back at the beginning of the wars that he wasn’t interested in political power when he was done, that he’d retired like a modern-day Cincinnatus. Who would have trusted him as commander-in-chief if he hadn’t?”

“Me,” Wei Wuxian grumbled. “Sane people, if they’re thinking straight! Your brother is incorruptible. He doesn’t even like war, even if he’s damn good at it. People should be chomping at the bit to get him to be the one – the one to – !”

“They are,” Nie Huaisang said dryly. “The innocent ones and the ones egged on by the Jin family both. They know the only way to tear down his influence is to get him to make a mistake.”

“And you won’t let him do that,” Jiang Cheng said knowingly.

Nie Huaisang snorted. What did Jiang Cheng know? “I didn’t need to say anything. He was offended on principle by the very thought of it.”

All three of them sighed in unison – Nie Huaisang a little long-suffering, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian a bit dreamily.

It was a good thing Nie Huaisang had long ago accepted that every young man in France between the ages of twelve and thirty four, at minimum, was at least a little in love with his brother, or else he would have found it all far more aggravating than he did.

“To get back to the point,” Nie Huaisang said a moment later. “There’s simply nothing for it: you have to be the one to take it. No one else will suit half as well as you.”

“Why does someone have to take it at all?” Wei Wuxian demanded. “The principles of the Revolution -”

“Because we can’t function with these endless wars on our borders, as well as within them,” Nie Huaisang said, losing patience, and both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian scowled, not wanting to accept the truth of what he was saying. “We need a stronger executive than we have right now, simply put. As for the form of that executive, well, the Revolution simply happened so fast that people are refusing to accept it without at least the trappings of the ancient regime - even if it’s not quite the same as the last time around. And as for why you, that’s because you can be trusted to shepherd it, to let it grow to the maturity it requires, and we will not fear you clinging to power when the time comes for it to return.”

Wei Wuxian scrubbed his face. “You trust me too much.”

“Not really,” Nie Huaisang said with a shrug. “You’re upright, moral, selfless…it helps that you’re exclusively interested in men, of course. No heirs means no dynasty.”

They both started spluttering.

“Oh, I’m sorry, had you not realized that yet?” Nie Huaisang barely bothered to hide his smirk behind his fan. “I thought it was obvious. You flirt with women for sport, not profit, and of course there’s your taste in pornography…”

“Back to the subject!” Wei Wuxian shouted, his normally shameless face flushing bright red. “Back to the subject!”

Nie Huaisang snapped his fan shut, making them both jump.

“All right,” he said. “Back to the subject: you have to become emperor, Wei Wuxian, or else someone else will, and they’ll be worse. I’m not saying that you’ll be good at it, or that you’ll enjoy it, or that it won’t end up with you exiled to some island in the middle of the ocean for thirteen years before making a miraculous return to save the country from itself –”

“Oddly specific.”

“Be quiet. What I’m saying is that you have to do it. The army supports you because you’re their darling, the people support you because of your victories in the war, the Jin and the other aristocrats support you because they think they can manipulate you through Jiang Yanli, the Lan and the other members of the Church…well, to be frank, most of them think that you’re a horrible blasphemer, which they think about all of us, but if you agree to let them crown you they’ll get over themselves and endorse you anyway. Even the foreign nations that we’re currently at war against would support your ascension to the position because the greed for power of a single man at least makes sense to them and accords with their understanding of history, as opposed to our Revolution, which is new and makes them afraid of what they might lose if it’s allowed to live. In short: it has to be you.”

Wei Wuxian sat down heavily on the couch. Jiang Cheng went over and put his hand on his shoulder.

After a few moments, he cleared his throat. “What about the rest of them?”

“The rest of them?”

“The other revolutionaries. What will they think? Your brother – he’s one of the most ardent proponents against the institution of the monarchy. How can he be happy with an empire?”

Nie Huaisang went and sat next to Wei Wuxian, pressing a nice pastry into his hand. “You went to the same classes I did, Wei Wuxian. You know that in ancient Rome, the position of Emperor - the imperator power - was originally established in the form of the ‘dictator’,” he said. “A magistrate granted absolute power in extraordinary times, for a limited time, for the purpose of rescuing the Republic.”

The most famous example of which was, of course, Cinncinatus, the man his brother was so often compared to. 

He thought Wei Wuxian would be a good example of that selflessness as well.

“I did attend class, and more often than you did,” Wei Wuxian said with an uncalled-for amount of snark. “And I remember very well that in ancient Rome, the institution of the position of Emperor meant the death of the Republic.”

“But not this time,” Nie Huaisang said confidently. “That’s what all our enemies will think, yes, but in truth you’ll be a dictator in the old-fashioned sense of the word: you’ll take the power, you’ll do the work, and then, when the Revolution has progressed enough to continue on its own, you’ll step down. My brother would support something like that. They all would.”

“But what if I don’t step down? What if the power goes to my head and I start to see myself as – as essential?”

“Three things,” Nie Huaisang said. “First, you’re an arrogant piece of work who already sees yourself as essential, and it hasn’t made you go crazy yet. Second, you’re fundamentally lazy and indolent at heart – take it from someone who knows – and while you’re very industrious if you think it’s your duty or the right thing to do, if given a chance to do the right thing by not doing work, you’d jump at the chance.”

Jiang Cheng looked as if he would protest the characterization, but Wei Wuxian nodded. He’d always loudly dreamed of retiring to the countryside to be a farmer or a mad scientist or something, and if Jiang Cheng had always thought he was joking then Nie Huaisang, at least, had not made that mistake. “And the third thing?”

“If you really do end up fucking it up, my brother will turn Baxia on you.”

Jiang Cheng choked, and Wei Wuxian snorted. 

“That’s oddly comforting, actually,” he said, and smiled. “Okay. Fine. You’re right – I’m the only one that can do it and do it right. And since that’s the case, I’ll accept: first the position of Consul, and then, as necessary, the position of Emperor. But you have to help me – you, your brother, Jiang Cheng…even Wen Qing. I insist on it; I won’t let her get executed just because of her name.”

“I can work with that, and really, no matter what the Jin say, I don’t think that’ll be a real issue. Having a daughter – well, cousin, but who’s counting – of the former dynasty working for you is a good move,” Nie Huaisang said. “Set her up with something that’s both important and yet non-political so people don’t feel threatened…revitalizing the hospitals and improving public health, maybe. She’d like that; didn’t she always want to be a doctor instead of a princess?”

“Anyone else I should make sure to add in?” Wei Wuxian asked. His eyes were avid and serious, which he rarely was in peacetime; Nie Huaisang looked forward to the day when he could be frivolous and light-hearted again. 

Still, it was good to see that he was committed.

“Jin Guangyao is the least objectionable of the Jin family, even if he is a belatedly recognized bastard,” Nie Huaisang said. “He’s more treacherous than a snake, but since we know that, we should be able to manage him appropriately. Put him in charge of the police and the spy network; he’ll do wonders with it.”

And probably end up assassinating his father, but in Nie Huaisang’s opinion that wouldn’t be that bad of a thing either. He resolved not to mention it to the others.

“Jin Zixuan isn’t objectionable,” Jiang Cheng put in.

“No, he’s very pretty,” Nie Huaisang agreed. “Your sister can hang him on her wall as artwork.”

“…he really doesn’t have many other talents, does he?”

“I’m given to understand that he spends money very well,” Nie Huaisang said dryly, and both men winced: as a dandy, Nie Huaisang had the most experience in such things. “You should also take Lan Wangji into your administration.”

“Lan Wangji?” Wei Wuxian’s face was a bit red. “Doesn’t he hate me?”

“After all the polemics he’s written in your favor, you still think he hates you? Just because of your little tussle back at school? Please get over yourself.”

“They’re in the Revolution’s favor, not mine…”

“Actually, no, he’s right,” Jiang Cheng said. “There are definitely some explicitly in your favor, and he wouldn’t do that by mistake - not with how eloquent a writer he is, even if he’s practically a mute in person. But...Nie Huaisang, what role would you put him in? He may be from a family that’s closely affiliated with the Church, but he’s not actually a priest himself – and anyway, if we were going to have to appoint an archbishop to help support us, I’d rather it went to someone like Xiao Xingchen. Everyone likes him.”

“And the fact that Xiao Xingchen is beholden to no one and interested in charitable works to the exclusion of all else is an extra bonus,” Wei Wuxian said, showing that he did, in fact, know some politics underneath his thick-skulled appearance. “But that’s a good point. What role did you have in mind for Lan Wangji?”

“I mean, ideally he’d be Empress,” Nie Huaisang said breezily, and enjoyed seeing Wei Wuxian’s face heat up and Jiang Cheng start spluttering again, “but since that’s at least ten years out, might I suggest appointing him as your chief of staff, and his brother as your foreign minister? That way you can keep Lan Wangji nice and close by, his aura of righteousness and habit of policing everyone around him will help stop the flow of corruption, and it’ll appear as though you’re using him as security against Lan Xichen – nice and distant and not at all corrupt, even as his writings continue to make the populace swoon over you. Jiang Cheng can continue to lead the navy, as he does now, and my brother the army; we can work out peacetime posts for them later on.”

“Hold up,” Wei Wuxian said. “Go back to why he’d be the Empress…? He doesn’t even like me!”

“That’s not the problem with that idea,” Jiang Cheng squawked. “Wei Wuxian..!”

Nie Huaisang went to pour drinks.

His work here was done.