#I KNOW MY FANNISH WEAKNESSES OKAY????

[nostalgia-tblr]

filtering a tumblr tag in case that missy-looking mcu woman turns out to be either evil or scary or hubristic or all three and drags me into whatever her show is about with her hot witchy hands

[mlobsters]

supernatural s4e18 the monster at the end of this book (teleplay julie siege, story julie siege, nancy weiner)

ack, it's samantha! in a 30 second cameo.

the x-files s2e17 end game - megan leitch as samantha mulder

aforementioned keegan connor tracy who was on the show before that i know from the magicians.

i have an aversion to their ~quirky~ music because usually it's a type of humor that makes me grind my teeth but once we got past the whole talking about dirty incest fans and the thing with the book publisher, it's been surprisingly ok. glad they mostly transitioned to digs aimed at the show itself. but every time that music starts playing, i brace for the worst. i also just don't love the composed music for the show, i think it does it a disservice. i probably have complained about that before.

like okay dean needs to get chuck to participate in the archangel spooking lilith plan and it's all been very serious up until this point, but then the music goes to the cheesy rousing inspirational business which makes it feel very much like it's a joke. and it does go a little funny, but i think the music was too much. bleh. anyway.

i feel like i've seen him in a bunch of things but scrolling through i'll say evil is probably the only thing i've seen him in recent memory. should have gotten a cap from the previous episode with the bright lighting.

evil s1e5 october 31 - kurt fuller as dr kurt boggs

the tone on this episode was all over the place! my friend is eagerly, patiently, waiting for me to have an opinion on castiel and i'm eagerly awaiting having one. i feel like there was a bit more something happening with him and dean in this episode, giving him the tip about chuck. otherwise he just hasn't been around enough for me to have any thoughts, and he's pretty dry when he is. dry like his lips! get the dude a manual on how to care for your human suit. with some lip balm.

also, the winchester gospel. the guffaw i made, okay spn writers. i liked chuck, and didn't expect to. maybe it was another case of them making the writer(s) sympathetic. but i'm glad they didn't try to ham it up too much. i get that the concept of introducing the books would be hard to do in any serious manner, but i could have gone without the fannish specific bits personally.

also ALSO using the previous episode to kind of quickly temper the truly horrific over the top terrible events in the Torture Episode and then this one kind of easing more into the main arc and being serious but not too serious, well. was zachariah doing his little demo to dean that he'll always be a hunter deep down all we needed to address with that episode? other than sam bitching dean isn't himself and is too weak since he got back from hell.

"You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out."

i mean as far as i can tell, nothing really changed with dean. does starting the apocalypse-guilt cancel out embracing/enjoying torture again that you're also probably extra guilty about too?

there's not enough time in the day to deal with it anyhow and we've got plot to plow through. the apocalypse isn't gonna start itself!

i was trying to talk it through with someone and my feeling was like. earlier seasons, the traumas were smaller. sam and dean talked a lot. more than most shows do. it feel like things maybe didn't get resolved per se, but there was something going on there. they were looking at it, at least. and some things did get wholly dropped (like the mystery spot aftermath hello, bitter) but more often than not, it felt like they dealt with things. but the traumas get bigger and coming so fast, you can't keep up, there's not enough time. everything is always escalating. and i think it's exacerbated by the plot that sam and dean aren't really on the same page anymore. and maybe cas is supposed to fill that spot with dean, but it's a hard sell for me when we don't really know cas and at this point he has no personality to speak of.

i'm just feeling pretty grumpy about everything at the moment.

[olderthannetfic]

To try to add to the discussion regarding anon, wanting insta-friends, and boundaries ... I think a lot of people in fandom personally overestimate how many people are approaching fandom as their main social hangout. Lots of people in fandom don't care about having lifelong best friends and generally treat fandom friends as acquaintances who share a hobby. While a lot of us are lonely nerds, many people in fandom either already have a close-knit friend group and aren't seeking it out in fandom or don't even want one in the first place.

If you go into a social interaction wanting or expecting the other person to form that relationship with you but they're entirely uninterested ... then I think they can very easily come across as rude, standoffish, cold, or as if they dislike you.

--

I think you're right. A lot of people—or at least the kinds of lonely and confused people who often find their way to anon ask boxes—arrive in a fandom space looking for their Destined Best Friend like a wuxia hero falling in mancrush 30 seconds after meeting some dude. (Look, I was just thinking about Ancient Detective again, okay.)

That perception of coldness is definitely driven, in many cases, by unrealistic hopes.

But I think the problem runs even deeper.

I 10000% approach fandom as my life. My OKCupid profile was balls-to-the-wall crazy fandom shit to weed out the weak. Aside from my college roommate (according to her—but this is the woman who wrote her college diary as Harry Potter fanfic, changing all our names to HP ones, so...), basically all of my offline friends are fanfic nerds and have been for decades.

But...

While I'm a very loud and TMI person in many ways, I'm also an emotional clam. I'll tell you I laughed or that I was angry five seconds after meeting you. I won't tell you I was sad or vulnerable. You gotta reach the ten year mark for that or something. 🤣

Even as a person who prefers fandom friends and an extrovert who is always open to new friends, I still don't just instantly fall for every geek I come across. I've had those love-at-first-sight-but-platonic experiences. They don't happen very often, but they do exist. The most intense one I can think of is somebody I met at a bunch of cons one year, but then I moved across the country and don't go to those cons anymore, and she's not online much. Boo.

The holy grail of fandom friendship happened to me: A bunch of us met about ten years ago via a meetup, and we somehow just gelled. Part of it was random chance in terms of who showed up, what their native personalities were like, and how much free time they had, not to mention whether they lived a long or short drive from each other. Part of it was that I was having weekly dinner parties. We'd have liked each other regardless, I imagine, but we wouldn't have come together like that without regular interactions during the time we were getting to know each other. Side people have come and gone, but that main group coalesced all around the same time, and we're pretty solidly all friends with other individual members of the group as well as being a group together. We have a stupid name for our friend group, it's that much of a Thing. (TBH, I suspect that the level of gelling that happened is why new people haven't usually stuck around. It probably feels hard to break in.)

I'm not saying this to brag but because the interesting thing is that I tried to get that to happen after I moved away, and I couldn't. It wasn't possible to recreate the magic. I made friends, but I never succeeded in making another group like that. I might have been able to with more effort and time and fewer trips back to see my old group, but effort alone wasn't enough. IMO, it requires both a lot of luck and the right effort at the right time. Proximity matters a lot too if you live in a place with horrible commutes. I know several other fannish friend groups like mine around here, people I like who like me, but I'm not part of their pods because we live at least an hour apart and we just never get around to visiting.

A lot of the fandom best friends I know of, people who've been close for 10, 20, 30+ years, are people who meet offline too. They may live near each other, or they may see each other at cons. A lot of them also have private chats of some kind with just two or just a few, in a space that's safer and more intimate than a big fandom discord. I don't think you have to meet people offline to be besties, but many humans form friendships better face-to-face. (So even if that's not you, it may apply to people you want to be friends with.)

--

The point of this self involved ramble is that I too, despite my friendliness, do not warm to overshare-y randos in discords that quickly.

I want fandom friends for life whom I'll still know when I'm old. That is what I'm here for.

But I've also had very close, long-term friends, and I understand that it takes work. I also understand that genuine intimacy is slow to develop. Barfing out your angst creates a false sense of intimacy very quickly, but it doesn't result in the same kind of bond as working up to it.

What matters most is some intangible cocktail of personality traits. You have to approach the world in compatible ways. Your senses of humor have to line up. Shared specific fandom interests matter a little. Overall fandom interest matters a ton to me personally. But a lot of it is "are we compatible humans?", and that's not something you can easily answer just from a couple of discord chats.

--

I think some fans who try to make friends too quickly are interpreting other fans as standoffish not just because those fans aren't doing what they want but because of fundamental misunderstandings about what's possible.

Feelings aren't controllable.

You can engineer situations that make them more and less likely. (Doomscrolling-->more anxiety, taking a walk through nature-->more peace of mind, doing fun activities with people-->more positive emotions about those people, etc.) But what you're doing is planting a seed and watering it. Some seeds are duds. Some were misidentified and grow into something you didn't expect. A seed is just potential. It's not a guarantee of a mature plant.

I fail at befriending people all the time. I too strike out.

Friendship is like romantic love: sometimes, there's nothing wrong with the person, but you're just not feeling it. Sometimes, it hits you right away. Sometimes, it grows from knowing someone a long time. And some people can only feel it after knowing someone for a while.

Going into something thinking only about your needs is shooting yourself in the foot. You have to think about what makes humans tick. If it's love at first sight for both of you, great, but it won't usually be. That's not how most bffs happen.

--

I think many people dream of some kind of fictionalized version of In The Soop where they're on a bucolic vacation with their eternal besties. And it is possible. But you've either got to put in a decade of work first or have your eternal friendship imposed on you by a talent agency and a bunch of reality tv editors.

[measuringbliss]

<3

OKAY THAT'S SO NOT FAIR!!!

I wrote a video script on Edelgard (specifically why I find her fascinating but also why as bisexual representation, she doesn't escape the usual "queer=evil" trope inherited from the Hays Code, which feels weird to talk about for a Japanese game but the American soft power probably shaped at least slightly some cultural expectations around the world and also, people didn't wait for the Hays Code to demonize sexy people)

Anyway I think I'm too lazy to actually turn it into a video? I'm not in the most rationally bestest of places to edit a video right now. I'll see what I do with it.

I didn't want to rant about that though

I want to ramble about Glee but I actually have no idea what to say because the fandom as it currently is feels... very weak.

Weak in multiple ways:

- lack of content. I guess it was more popular on LiveJournal, but I just can't find much stuff on Tumblr. That's what I miss from the Harry Potter fandom, you had multiple repositories for meta, you had multiple places for discussion, even your local language community was probably pretty well developed. Was some of the meta reaching? Absolutely! But it was fun, and there was A LOT. Fanfic wise, there was so much choice, and there still is! Obviously, there's still a lot, but it doesn't feel the same with the author just insisting on being a pain. I was invested in that fandom, and there was *always* new stuff coming out. Even your rarepair had GOOD content. It's something that is thoroughly lacking with the Glee fandom, even though it had a huge presence. Nowadays, only two ships have any visibility on Tumblr and that is Klaine and Brittana. Which, great! Gay canon couples, we stan, whatever. But as soon as you step outside of this, it is THE VOID. Good luck finding one (1) satisfying fic for your ship. I had to resort to using ffnet for the first time in years to find interesting stuff! *FFNET!!!* And I do realize that both source materials are completely different and HP lent itself much more to analysis and mysteries and stuff. Whatever you think about She Who Must Not Be Named, HP inspired a lot of us to just... write! I have a novel-length HP fanfic that I just kept wanting to write for, and even though I eventually gave up and wrote a summary of the last few chapters, it inspired me in spite of my ADHD. Nowadays I'm not inspired except for horny stuff, because I'm a horny gremlin. There hasn't been any other fandom like it, and a lot of works deserve much more than what they get. Even awful movies deserve people writing meta and stuff. But fandom on Tumblr is chaotic af and HP motivated a lot of people to create communities around it, specifically for HP. It's something that we'll probably never get again and it's sad.

- so yeah the Glee fandom feels weak firstly because there's practically no content. The second thing and I touched on it a little bit, is that the content isn't varied at all. Only two ships are considered, and the activity is almost exclusively gifs sharing. I've seen the show, I know what they look like!!!! I guess Tumblr was key in making gifs a major component of fannish activities but I'm pretty much not sensible to that. There's a few metas out there but even then it's only for those couples. And I know that the Glee community used to be huge and DIVERSE, because the show itself mentions several times SHIP NAMES and in particular, Faberry is joked about in later seasons even though it's not canonical (notably with Kitty saying something like "If you're going to go all lesbo, get it on with Quinn, I heard that the whole world is cheering for you") . Like, "Furt" (Finn/Kurt) is mentioned in S2. Season 2!!!! There was a big fandom and it got so loud that the show kept referencing it (and fanservicing it, hello to the Quinntana hookup, a surprise to be sure but a welcome one). But this content is nowhere to be seen. Ffnet is the main hint that there was something, but Tumblr is empty. I guess they were all on LiveJournal? I know there were heavy ship wars (Brittany literally mentions IN THE SHOW that she can't get with Sam or Artie–I don't remember whom– because there's hords of fangirls who ship her with Santana and they'd make his life hell) and I understand how these conflicts could sour people on the show (hello Hannibal Twitter fandom from 2020 or 2021) but it's still so weird to expect to be able to interact with resources and reflections and even just reviews... and you don't find anything. It's weird! I had the same issue with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but

1. Actual books have been written about Buffy and its fandom and there's a term for that kind of stuff, Buffystudies I think.

2. Buffy aired as the modern conception of Internet started setting in, so fandoms didn't have such centralized spaces and I understand it can be difficult to find them today. It was still very lovely to stumble upon that Spike/Xander fanfic archive.

Also, Buffy had naturally more interesting stuff to think about because it was, from the start, shrouded in prophecies, metaphors, and the likes.

Glee fanfics are all about their Starbucks AU. I'm exaggerating, but also kind of not? Not judging on these AUs, but it's not something I seek out.

So lack of content, and lack of varied content. I have nowhere to go to talk about Furt, Seblaine (well Seblaine does have its fans here) and so on. The Glee fandom also seems to be VERY homogenous. Everyone hates Will Schuester because he's a creep. Everyone hates Finn because he outed Santana. Everyone hates Finchel because they're Finchel. Everyone loves Furt, "but only as friendship". "The S4 newbies suck." "Shooting Star is an awful episode." "Sue should be in jail." and so on and you just see THE SAME. DAMN. OPINIONS. EVERYWHERE.

(Doesn't help that the show itself never knows if it's honest or satire, and YOU CAN'T EXPECT THE SAME THINGS FROM BOTH. Yes, Sue never goes to jail. YES, WILL IS INAPPROPRIATE. THAT'S THE POINT. DO YOU KNOW MANY TEACHERS WHO STASHED DRUGS IN A STUDENT'S LOCKER JUST SO THAT THE STUDENT WOULD PARTICIPATE IN THE GLEE CLUB?! OF COURSE NOT. OH MY GOD. People always talk about realism with this show and you motherfuckers, HANNIBAL IS A MORE REALISTIC SHOW THAN GLEE. Outside of being homogenous, Glee discourse is so asinine. The writing is so inconsistent that wildly different interpretations of the characters are completely possible. I–Ugh! Fiction discourse is already bad most of the time, but if you don't get how the source material prevents you from applying real-life values to it, your media literacy is pretty damn low. I will concede and repeat that the show's writing didn't do it any favor. Even the first episode never knows if it's a parody or a heartfelt drama. Goddamnit.

The show is still entertaining by the way.)

I feel like it's the kind of fandom where different opinions were shushed or something because EVERYWHERE, I see the same exact comments. Oddly enough, the Glee subreddit seems to be the current healthiest place for the fandom? Which is weird because you know. It's Reddit.

Like I don't know, with the Hannibal fandom you could (before The Event) totally say that Hannibal (the character) sucks, that Hannibal is great, that S3 is totally the worst, or the best, that Will/Brian is more compelling that Hannigram, etc. There was some kind of lightness where people didn't care too much and there was a lot of weird (and lovely, because weird is good) stuff and VARIETY.

The Buffy fandom has more defined mindsets (you're either Team Bangel or Team Spuffy, either you love S6 or you hate it, but everyone agrees that S7 sucked to some degree) partly due to its age, but there's still a variety of content. Hell, there was a lot of stuff that was discussed and envisioned that would get you harassed for years if you so much as talked about it today.

I don't know, I feel like fandom sucks nowadays.

Well seems like I had a lot of things to say, in the end.

[lorenfangor]

What do you think all the people Sauron or Crayak wanted dead had in common? I think I'm missing some of the finer points (I know Aragorn and Faramir and Beren that has to count for something lol) but is the point just that they're all very good men?

okay.

I have written like six different versions of this, but I'm going to try to keep it brief-ish. (the relevant background here is that I've been involved in Tolkien scholarship for years, and been well-versed in Tolkien on a fannish level for going on two decades; I have a lot to say and trying to explain it concisely is not my forte, lol)

ultimately, the common thread of all the people I mentioned (and people I didn’t mention, like Celebrimbor, Maedhros probably, Túrin, etc) comes down to this quote from Jake in The Forgotten:

“Not much of a plan. But I was the leader, and a leader has to give people hope. Even when he doesn't have much himself.”

The people I compared him to were High Kings (Findekáno, Aragorn, Finrod) and high-hearted lords (Barahir, Húrin Thalion) and brave warriors who fought to keep people safe and not for the glory of battle (Faramir, Beren). They clung to the hope that all would end well, even when they couldn’t see it, and they fought to make the world a better place even if they weren’t sure they’d live to see that better place. They kindled hearts, and passed down wisdom, and defended the weak and the frightened. They were destined - because fate is a very real thing in Arda, fate and free will intertwine and play off of one another - to be great leaders who propelled their people into new futures and brighter dawns, or to foster alliances and friendship between different races, or to bring about the end of hardship and strife, or some combination of all of those things. They were kind, and compassionate, and respectful of those around them, and capable of incredible acts of self-sacrifice like sneaking alone into the strongholds of a Dark Lord solely to rescue a single person or drawing all of the enemy’s attention onto them as a sacrifice play. They spat in the face of dark gods (literally, in Húrin’s case) and never backed down from the onslaught of evil, because the world might be going to shit but the people living in it right now need heroes to hope on and be inspired by.

That is the kind of person Sauron always both wanted dead and actively tried to kill. Sometimes, like in the cases of Barahir and Finrod, he succeeded. Sometimes others did the dirty work for him, either his underlings or his superiors. Sometimes he didn’t get what he wanted.

The fact that Jake Berenson is specifically included in that list, when those are the qualities everyone else shares? It speaks volumes as to the kind of man he was capable of becoming and perhaps even destined to be, and the fact that he was broken down by evil and personally marked for death before he even hit adulthood is heartbreaking. “You might have been the next Beren Erchamion” is a hell of a thing to see when you look at somebody, and a hell of a tragedy to bear witness to when you see him fall apart thanks to the efforts of the forces of evil.

Fucking hell, Crayak, I hope you get sandwiched between a pair of black holes and stuck there forever.

[atlantis-scribe]

Okay I really do love Atlantis, but the amount that some people woobify Rodney actually drives me crazy. And I actually love Rodney as a character but like my boy's an asshole sometimes!! like he's not a perpetual victim, let him be wrong about stuff and grow and improve as a person!! (also the recurring theme of having random women in his life be abusive for... no textual reason?? is a little sus) like I'm getting to the point where I can hardly (1/2)

(2/2) enjoy hurt/comfort with Rodney bc I'm so wary of this... which just makes me sad 😭 Really sorry for ranting in your inbox you are my fave Atlantis blog and I like your take on Rondey

hello there!

please don’t apologize for ranting. my inbox is always open to rants. they’re encouraged, even! (long as I get to rant back lol)

and my oh my is this one of the topics that also get me going, particularly because 1) Rodney is also my favorite character, 2) I, too, see this woobification tendency, and 3) it’s complicated af & touches on several running themes not just in Stargate but in almost all fandoms.

• the Rodney Woobification is ancient practice. the SGA (specifically McShep) fan community has been around for a while now, and the Stargate fandom as a whole is even the birthplace of many established tropes that people still use to this day (Daniel Whump, anyone?). I understand the appeal. hell, I love angst and hurt & comfort for reasons almost exactly the same as other people who woobify characters love to do their thing. I don’t always comment on it (I don’t wanna be That Dick raining on other people’s parades) because it’s a slippery slope that so often leads to outright gatekeeping. there’s really just a fine line between being critical of fic characterization — being ‘true’ to the source material — and having fun with fannish works (specifically, using art as an outlet to do the most bizarre things polite society would ostracize you for)

• that being said, I am also not a big fan of woobie!Rodney. there’s a reason why I had such a visceral reaction to the Post-Trinity Phenomenon & the Lemon Chicken trope.

you have to understand, I came into the fandom a little over two years ago. about a decade too late, really. all the stories have been written, the takes taken, and the discourse over & done with. it’s pretty lonely, but the fun is in trying to sift thru what the OG fans left behind. so to stumble upon such a treasure trove of fics with the same running theme and have such a fierce ‘Nope!’ reaction was pretty memorable. I love Trinity because the Rodney in that episode was allowed to be his most obnoxious, his most arrogant, his most unlikable, but still remain layered & nuanced & complex, and that’s pretty damn good writing there. I saw the ‘asshole’ label when I bought it, after all. I certainly don’t want it erased or buried under a rug. I want it explored.

• canon writing is a-whole-nother problem altogether. it’s hard to justify exactly what makes Rodney (& Sheppard & Weir & everyone else) genuine or true to form, because —  let’s be honest — SGA is not a prime example of stellar TV writing and/or storytelling. it’s addictive as all hell, but it’s severely flawed, and that includes how it handled consistency in characterization. this brings us back to the dangers of gatekeeping and yelling at other people for how they write (however beloved) ‘public domain’ fictional characters.

• what I want to advocate now in terms of woobie!Rodney is for other fans to maybe examine why they like Rodney. is it because we are all just weak for white, asshole geniuses who are shippable with other white (often same gender, often male) assholes? if that’s the case, and you want to continue making your content, go ahead. it’s frankly a pretty boring reason, but we’re all boring nerds here. some more than others. just, you know, tag properly & don’t be rude to other fans who may have different reasons.

me? I love Rodney because yes, he’s a white asshole genius (that archetype is like crack for real) but portrayed so wonderfully by a very talented actor that it left me with a nuanced character whose gaps I can fill with attributes I want to analyze as a lifelong fan of the human condition who occasionally writes fics for popular media. woobifying him would be a disservice to how I see him & the things I love about him, which would then render me unable to enjoy the Rodney I ‘stan’. that would defeat the entire purpose of why I engage with the fandom, because at the end of the day, I’m here to have fun.

• so no matter how much I (and you as well, I suspect, my dear anon) would want to police this practice, it just isn’t our place. the best (and the right) thing for us to do is curate our fandom experience and create the content we actually want to consume. who knows, we may just convince / inspire enough people so there’d be more of the same kind of things we enjoy out there :)

- kit

[bedlamsbard]

Writing tag game -- tagged by @lessattitudemorealtitude

how many works do you have on Ao3?

Discounting podfic on which I’m listed as a co-author, 24.  My concept writing doesn’t go to AO3 and the vast majority of my Narnia fic was never cross-posted there.  (Or reposted there, actually, I think most of it pre-dates the AO3.)

what’s your total Ao3 word count?

1,050,810.  oh, huh, I didn’t actually realize I’d passed the one million word mark (probably with Crown).

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

all of these ended up being Star Wars, which is not a huge surprise.  Morning will probably reach Dirt in the next couple of updates, I’d guess.

Immutable, or, Five Times Obi-Wan Kenobi Compromised His Jedi Ethics for Anakin Skywalker -- this is not the oldest Star Wars fic on there, but I think it’s the second oldest. people just really like 5 times fic.

Wake the Storm - did you know that when I started Wake I assumed it was a very niche trope in what was, at the time, a pretty dead fandom? the kudos count on Wake actually outnumbers Gambit by more than 1600 kudos, so the number of people who go from Wake to Gambit is a lot lower than you might think.

Queen's Gambit - a significantly lower kudos count than Wake or Immutable.  Gambit’s such a weirdo of a story, tbh, I can’t be surprised by anything about Gambit anymore.

On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone - about 600 kudos less than Gambit, so less difference between Gambit and Backbone than between Wake and Gambit.

Dirt in the Machine - another older fic.  I’d rewrite this one if I cared enough to do so, because it’s not at my current standards (Immutable isn’t either, for that matter) and I kind of wince every time I get comments on it.  this is the first one of the top five to have below 1K kudos.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I’ll usually respond to direct questions, but I very, very seldom respond to comments in general.  This is an old standing policy of mine that’s now more than a decade old -- it used to be I’d wait twenty-four hours before responding, then I’d respond right before the next chapter went up, and for a while I’d only respond to comments on the first few chapters of a story.  Now I just mostly do not.  The reasons for this are: (1) many, many years ago, I lost my temper pretty badly at a comment on a fic of mine (this was pre-AO3, this was back in my LJ days), and after that I moved to the “wait twenty-four hours” response so I didn’t say anything without thinking about it, (2) I do go back and reread comments but I hate rereading my own responses, (3) I prefer to know the comments numbers on my fic are all from actual comments and not from me saying “thanks for reading!”, (4) I can’t take that kind of responsibility for answering every single comment, man.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Of stuff I’ve written in the past ten years? (I can’t really remember before that.)  Maybe Backbone, because it ends on that pretty upbeat “yay team we’re going to be rebels now!” note.  or Devil’s in the Details (other side part 1), though I don’t really want to consider it a finished fic even though it’s technically finished; it has another “yay team we’re back together (minus Ezra)” ending.  I tend to end on complicated and reasonably open endings, not like...happy endings.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably Gambit for the “everything is super fucked up” factor and also the fact that I never wrote the sequel. plus it ended with the entire Wake trio split up in a whole new universe, plus back in the Gambitverse Amidala not able to go back to Naboo, Ahsoka shunned, Palpatine’s new empire, Rex trapped in the Gambitverse, etc.

do you write crossovers?

I did in my Narnia days. I don’t anymore. Working in widespread fandoms like Star Wars or the MCU is basically like writing crossover fic within the same universe, anyway.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

*hysterical laughter*

...yes. yes I have. it’s the reason every time I get a comment notification on Gambit or Wake I freeze in absolute terror. people HATE Wake and Gambit.  I hate to say never, but I will probably never write those characters or in that series again.

do you write smut? if so, what kind?

not really?  I’ve done relatively non-explicit sex but it’s not something I’m super comfortable writing, especially in recent years. I’m much more likely to do a fade to black.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think Gambit got scraped once when it was still in progress and my response was something along the lines of “good luck, bro,” given the whole “still in progress” thing.

have you ever had a fic translated?

I’ve gotten a couple of translation requests but I can’t recall if anything’s ever been translated.  (Or if I responded to them...I know a few I forgot to respond.)

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back in my Narnia days.  Some SW concept writing and that ended so badly that I’ll never co-write again.

what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Kanan/Hera, of course!

what’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

gods, Dust in the Air, my Narnia Last Battle AU.  Back when I started it in 2008 or so I didn’t have the self-control or discipline I do now, even if I had a lot of the worldbuilding ability and the ability to conceive of if not execute long plot arcs, and I broke off more than I could chew.  If I ever went back to it I’d probably have to do a complete rewrite and it has the unique problem among my WIPs of being the last major fic I wrote in present tense -- I now write exclusively in past tense.  The bones of the story are good, I’d just have to go back to the bones and not just pick up where I left off.

what are your writing strengths?

Plot, worldbuilding/environment, action.  I also do genuinely think I’m very good at characterization too, but I think they’re all inter-related.  (Except the action, that’s me alone.  I love writing action and I generally get a lot of compliments on my action scenes.)  look, I know it’s conceited, but I’m good and I know I’m good, and I’m good in a pretty well-rounded way for the genre I write.

what are your writing weaknesses?

brevity. can’t do it.

honestly, there are others, but I don’t write stories where they’d come up.  I think I have a tendency to get to bogged down in dialogue in a way that I’ve never quite solved.  I also let my emotions take over too much and not in the good fannish way, in the “I’m having a fucked up relationship with canon or fandom and it’s affecting my ability to work” way.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

please stop having your Asgardians speak Latin for magic, man, that’s my feeling on it.

okay, my feelings on it for me -- I’ve sprinkled bits and pieces of Huttese, Twi’leki, and tee-tiny bits of other stuff here and there in fic.  I’d not be comfortable doing more than that because the only other language that I really feel comfortable doing anything significant in is Latin, and even then I’d hesitate. also, like, Latin! not a language that comes up in the fandoms I write in.  even then, like -- any extended dialogue should be intelligible to the audience, and I don’t expect my audience to be able read anything other than English; I’d rather just say “they switched to Twi’leki to say” or something similar.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

like, online? Harry Potter. for things that I didn’t post online because I didn’t know what fic was yet? probably either The 10th Kingdom or The Mummy.

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone.  I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s the most tightly plotted, I think it’s got the best worldbuilding, I think it’s remarkably consistent thematically, and it was, at the time, a fic that I was very devoted to finishing or dying trying, because I was going through it at the time and some of it was connected to the fic.

I don’t tag people, but please go for if you want!

[absynthe--minded]

The Consent discourse regarding the sex scenes?

oh boy this is gonna be a long one.

tl;dr up front: MDZS is a romance novel, and I’ve read a lot of romance novels, and I think it handles its consent issues way better than a solid 95% of the other books in this genre that I’ve bothered to go through cover to cover. that being said, nobody should ever have to feel like they need to defend or tolerate something that triggered them, or upset them, or hurt them in some way, and I am absolutely fully in favor of these issues being discussed and talked about in a way that warns people they’re there. I am fully in support of anybody who doesn’t like the book because of the presence of dubiously consensual sex. that’s a super legit reason to be uncomfortable or triggered or upset. I’m also not ever going to say that not liking dubcon in a story is a bad thing. my frustration with the consent discourse is basically that I feel like it’s a conversation being held by people who aren’t familiar with romance as a genre, or with the places where MDZS rises above other romance novels, as well as a conversation that ignores that romance uses sex as a narrative device and a metaphor and not just as an idealized portrayal of true love.

more below the cut - tw: discussions of rape, dubcon, and consent in fiction.

I’m not a scholar of romance novels the way I’m a scholar of Tolkien, so I can’t really trace the development of trends in the genre, but I do read a lot of romance, because I’m a lesbian and I like urban fantasy and historical fiction and stories about women having fun adventures and getting what they want, and romance novels are an easy way to get those things as fast as possible. most of my observations are in this kind of fannish capacity.

but. romance has a consent problem, and it’s had a consent problem as long as the genre has existed.

this isn’t the post for a long drawn-out exploration of things like “how many humans on average tend to have rape fantasies?” or “why is it a statistical average that most people are bottomy in their sexual fantasies, rape or otherwise?” but one of the things that I think is worth bringing up wrt MDZS and WangXian is that constrained consent or a lack of consent and how the characters react to that is often endemic to romance as a genre. and I’m not just talking about sex scenes, either (though we’ll get to the 80s bodice rippers, I promise)

you’ve got plots like “My shitbag father fucked over an angsty rich guy so he’s keeping me hostage in his mansion and I’m not allowed to leave” (Anne Stuart, Night of the Phantom) or “I was going to be executed for stealing food but the local lord took pity on me and brought me to his house explicitly to be his wife and I’ll be expected to sleep with him whether I like it or not” (Amanda Ashley, Beauty’s Beast) or “I’m the heir to a substantial percentage of England in terms of sheer amount of land and I’m an orphan and the King has to marry me off to someone who’s both popular with the common people and strong enough to fend off attempts to seize my assets” (Kinley Macgregor, A Dark Champion). you’ve also got the eternal urban fantasy plot of “I’m a normal human woman/human-seeming woman with Power I Didn’t Know About who saw something forbidden to mortal eyes/otherwise became a target of the bad guys, so now I’m being held against my will by a brooding angsty magical creature so he can Protect Me”. that one is actually worse than a lot of the others because the woman in the standard urban fantasy plot usually tries to escape or constantly talks about how she’s being kept hostage, and it’s intended to be a signpost to the audience that she’s not a weak and passive damsel in distress but that she has Backbone and Intelligence and all that.

all of these are, on some level, about the main character(s) being placed in situations they didn’t consent to, and how they cope with that. (a lot of the time there’s also really clumsily written Threats To The Heroine’s Virtue from a cartoonishly unrealistic would-be rapist, in addition to whatever else is going on. the amount of times that I’ve read a book where a hero all too happy to dubcon his way into the woman’s bed then turns around and saves her from Evil Snidely Whiplash Rapist as a way of proving he’s a good person underneath... sigh.) and a lot of other plots are that way too! the Consent Discourse about MDZS is tapping into a conversation that’s existed wrt romance as a whole for a long time.

here’s why I think MDZS is different from basically every other romance novel: it knows it’s about consent.

the vast majority of the stories I alluded to up there really don’t seem to know that they’re dealing with a plot that centers around the heroine (and sometimes hero) coping with a loss of autonomy. she winds up being totally happy to be held hostage, or married off to some stranger, or protected by a brooding angsty dark magic man, or bound up in destiny and fated to fall in love. the violation of her consent is the framework for getting her in the same environment as her love interest, and we-the-audience are supposed to accept it as - well, if not okay, then acceptable, because it’ll all work out in the end. (there’s a lot of sometimes-unintentional commentary here about how specifically AFAB people in Western societies are often expected to deal with/make the best of/find happiness in situations outside of their control, but that’s also for another post, perhaps.) MDZS doesn’t do that. MDZS addresses the fact that neither Wei Wuxian nor Lan Wangji have been taught how to effectively communicate with one another, and their failings have consequences.

Lan Wangji ambushes WWX and kisses him while he’s blindfolded. This is done without permission, and without WWX even knowing who it is that’s put him in this position. He then goes on to treat it like one of his most egregious moral failings, and lose confidence in his ability to be honorable when it comes to dealing with WWX, and this matters to the story. LWJ viewing what he did as more or less unforgivable means he doesn’t open up to WWX about his feelings, which means WWX has no clue LWJ loves him. And as one of the many consequences to this, they spend the majority of the book married but one party has no idea it’s actually happened! They blunder around, and refuse to acknowledge how they feel, and need alcohol for any semblance of honesty because it breaks down their inhibitions. They almost completely fail at being a couple because when it comes down to brass tacks they cannot spit it out.

this lack of openness and lack of communication manifests in their lives further when it comes to the various dubiously consensual moments of intimacy that they have. their sexual incompatibility is a direct consequence of their failure to talk. they do have problems, and when those problems come to light, they’re meaningful and impactful. there is dubious consent in the first time they have sex, in their making out, in their near misses and their brief meetings. this is the point. they’re not supposed to be a healthy, functional relationship yet. they have sex for the first time and then have to deal with the fact that it happened under false pretenses and due to miscommunication. the theme of the book is learning how to come together and work together. they have to learn to communicate before their dysfunction is fixed.

and they do! the climax of the book is WWX admitting his feelings for LWJ, and LWJ realizing the depth of their miscommunication, and both of them coming together finally. the theme of this book is made manifest in their healing and joining. and only then can they have a true healthy marriage. and I like that? I like that the problems and the issues matter, and that both parties have to resolve it? I also like that just because WWX liked being kissed doesn’t mean his consent wasn’t violated and that this transgression doesn’t matter, because that’s in stark contrast to the 1980s bodice rippers where the heroine can be basically sexually assaulted or raped but it’s totally fine, she secretly enjoyed it so it doesn’t matter. (there’s yet another post I could make here about how this is a direct response to sexual mores harshly applied to women, where the only way they could feel safe admitting their desires was in situations where resistance was impossible, but that’s not for here)

I’m just one person, and this is a lot of text about consent, but ultimately? I like that MDZS deals with these issues realistically. I like that violation and miscommunication and unintentional deception are all weighty and meaningful.

this is one of the most realistic-feeling romance novels I’ve ever read, and its flawed characters that are supposed to be flawed are part of that.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with RivkaT

RivkaT has 28 stories at Gossamer and 270 stories at AO3, so she knows her way around fanfic and fandom. She's also a co-author of one of the most well-known X-Files fics of all time, Iolokus. I've recced that here before, along with some of my other favorites of her stories, including And Dance by the Light of the Moon and Into the Woods. Big thanks to RivkaT for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I think it's amazing! Writing styles have changed so much, along with everything else, that it's really nice to know they're still being visited. I tried to show my son the pilot episode, and it didn't move him at all, but it's good to know it's not forgotten.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I made a number of good friends, and had my first taste of bitter fandom battles. I made dumb mistakes and, I hope, learned a bit about navigating fandom spaces. My long-time writing partner MustangSally taught me that it was always worth blowing the budget in writing--go over the top if you want. I put that to good use in my next big fandom (Smallville).

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I started on Usenet! Then mailing lists, and webrings, but mainly the Gossamer list.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

(1) Serials are different than works posted all at once, and have different strengths and weaknesses. (2) There are many ways to write a good fic, and somewhat fewer (but still a large number of) ways to write a bad one. (3) Most good fics are bad to some readers, and many bad fics are good to some readers, and that's okay. (4) Summaries can often instruct many readers how a work is meant to be perceived, especially if they already know you as a writer--the importance of authorial intent is clearly not dead and may be unkillable! (5) Fandom has awfulness and greatness in it because fans are people.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

Dana Scully. Enough said! (Ok, it was Jose Chung's From Outer Space specifically, but Scully generally.)

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I mentioned to a friend that I was really into the show and she said that if I went online there were people writing stories about the characters. I knew about fanfic from childhood fannishness (Star Trek etc.) and so I went looking on this vaguely-understood thing, the internet. At the time I didn't have a computer that ran Windows so I logged onto Usenet at home and used Pine and Mosaic (an early search engine). When I wanted to see pictures I had to go to the computer lab at school.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

An ex where I don't have too much memory of the bitter and drawn-out breakup and just have vague nostalgia for the good times. Of course all that was about the show, not the fandom!

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

A bunch, including BTVS, Smallville, and Supernatural. I loved them all--my relationships with those fandoms were equally intense, but associated with different times in my life and therefore different availability of time and other resources. I wish I had that new-fandom love again, but right now it's just not happening for me, even though I've experimented.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Dana Scully, because she is Dana Scully: smart, driven, and good at her job, with occasional daddy issues. Subsequently, Lex Luthor, Olivia Dunham, Dean Winchester. I like characters who are driven by a sense of mission and who are really good at their jobs: competence porn!

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Not very often; I last did a rewatch about thirteen years ago.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I rarely revisit the XF, but I could definitely be persuaded. I read a fair amount across various fandoms now, but mostly it's dabbling.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Waaaay too many to mention. But if I had to choose: Jane Mortimer's The Sin Eater. Totally blew my mind about what fic could do. [Lilydale note: it really is a great fic!]

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I go through patches of love and hate for my own work. Right now I might pick my SPN/Smallville crossover Under Darkening Skies because I had fun with the character voices and I got at least one great set piece out of it (mannequins in a hell dimension).

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

It seems unlikely but I have learned never to say never.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

For the past few years it's mostly been Yuletide, but I'd love to get back into it more if I can be inspired.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I have no idea! Usually it was something that bugged me about an episode, or a chance to play with a classic trope, or a random news story that would spark an idea.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Not much of one--it's a variant of my nickname that was available on AOL and I managed to snag it on most platforms fans use, which has been lucky!

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

Most of my friends are fannish and know everything; my family knows generally but basically doesn't want to know specifics, which is fine with me.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Archive of Our Own.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Dana Scully Forever!

(Posted by Lilydale on August 18, 2020)

[mollyamory-again]

And then I wrote a really long reaction post for Endgame...

Here’s the short form:  <3 <3 <3... ??  @#(*$A)(@#*!?! <3.....<3 ....?<3? <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 !!!

The super long form is below the cut...

So, I went into this movie with a lot of feelings, and I came out with a lot of feelings, and it's taking me some time to process them.

The first, and maybe the most important thing I want to say, is that regardless of my personal fannish/emotional reaction to some of the events -- the film itself was an absolute triumph.  I mean - it was amazing.  There were a great many things to love - and that is a list that includes some things I hated.  Love/hated.  Both!  The fact that they could bring a series of films that spans over a decade together in a way that had people laughing and crying in the theatres, often both at the same time - it's just truly, truly awesome.  It says something that they were able to build these real and true characters who feel important enough that their fates can actually break our hearts.  

So I applaud that, and I hope the film industry takes a good long look at these films and learns from them.  Audiences are willing to wait for the pay-off, we're willing to tackle difficult things, we're willing to fall in love with what we see on the screen if the writers and producers and directors put the effort into allowing it.

That said...

I really liked this movie overall, but I went into it really wanting two specific things for myself, and I didn't get them.  In fact I kind of got the opposite of them, and a lot of my coming to terms with the movie has been coming to terms with just... not getting what I wanted.  And finding a way to be okay with that.  

I wanted Tony to live - and if you're back here behind my spoiler cut, you know I didn't get that one.  It was really hard to lose him.  He was my favorite character in this whole crazy cast. I loved that he could be so wrong sometimes, and with so much utter conviction.  I loved that he could be terrified out of his mind and then just do the terrifying things anyway, because somebody had to, and he could.  I loved how smart he was, and how vulnerable he was, and how he built walls of words to defend himself and define himself.  I loved how hard he loved the people that HE loved, and how much he was willing to do for them.  I loved how great he was with kids (and I love that he got one of his own!) and I love how that seemed at least in part because he never finished growing up himself.

So while I am wrecked that this is the end of Tony in this particular strand of the comics universe, I can't deny that it is 100% true to who he was. He was always going to be the guy who would do this, if it needed to be done.  And it did, so he did it, and it broke my heart - but in the end I have to be okay with it, because yeah.  That was Tony Stark, distilled down to his purest self.  I hated it, but I also loved it, and more importantly I think, I bought it.

I also really would have loved to have a kind of on-screen farewell to my pairing, and I didn't get that, either.  I'm a Science Boyfriends kinda gal, and there was almost zero interaction between Bruce and Tony - there was zero relevant interaction.  But it is what it is - this was never going to be everything to all people, and that's one of the relationships that didn't get priority.  I'm okay with that, too - mainly because its absence means they didn't do anything TERRIBLE to it, either!  When it comes to my pairings, I'd far rather TPTB leave them alone than do something I don't like.  That said - it would have been nice if they'd you know, exchanged a couple of lines?  And it would have been SUPER nice if Bruce had been around to react to Tony's death. Getting past it, getting past it.... ;)

My biggest fear going into this movie was that it would kill my fannishness about the Avengers.  I just recently rediscovered it, and I've been writing like a MAD thing.  I've stayed up too late writing, I've gotten up way to early to write... I've written through nights when I was supposed to be raiding with my online pals, or watching stuff with my housemates.  I've definitely done quite a lot of writing when I was supposed to be working! And it's been fun, and it's felt really good, and I just didn't want to lose it.  I missed fandom and other fans, and I missed caring so much about characters and pairings.  Having it all back again these past couple of months has been a blast -- so I went into Endgame a) pretty sure they were going to kill Tony and b) pretty sure that killing Tony would kill my fannish joy.

I am happy to report it did not.  I'm still in love, and I'm still writing like crazy.  I gave myself some pretty stern talking-tos in the lead-up to the movie, along the lines of "Are you really going to let a couple of rich white geekboys decide what happens to YOUR Tony Stark?" and in short form, "CANON IS NOT THE BOSS OF ME!"  I think it helped.  I'm still here, anyway!

There are a few other things I really didn't like.  One - the CGI for Bruce was a horror show for me.  It landed right in the Uncanny Valley, and I could barely stand to look at him on screen.  Every time he showed up, it was like a cartoon character appearing in my live action show.  I think that actually may have helped me with the Tony thing, though -- because it yanked me out of the movie when Bruce was onscreen, and that gave me the distance I needed to not become a puddle of shivering misery on the floor when Tony died saving the world.

Don't get me wrong - I really do like that he's able to integrate now.  I like that he has control.  Still, I'm not sure this is a road I ever really want to go down in my writing.  I like Hulk too much to want to see him essentially killed by Bruce (which is kind of how I'm reading this.)  I get that Hulk IS Bruce IS Hulk and if I were his therapist I'd be all over it.  But I'm not his therapist - I'm one of his slashfic writers.  And as such, I prefer him splintered and angsting over it.  :)

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Natasha, and I'm not sure they're particularly coherent.  I think if Endgame had happened exactly the way it did, WITHOUT the disgusting Ultron lines about how she's a monster because she can't have kids, I'd be fine.  As it is, Ultron happened and then Natasha gave herself up for a guy with a family, and from a purely Doyle-ist perspective I find that sequence of events suspect, and deeply gross.  

On the other hand, from a purely Watsonian perspective, I fully agree with what  <a href="https://cesperanza.tumblr.com/post/184622436895/i-cant-believe-that-as-a-prominent-woman-in">cesperanza had to say about Nat</a>, so I'm just going to let that stand for me, too.

Probably the final thing I didn't like was fat!Thor.  I do get the arguments on the other side of this, that it's cool to show even a super hero can get depressed and live off cheez whiz and get fat and disaffected. But I also think that's not all there is to this; I think you don't make Chris Hemsworth run around in a fat suit without on some level doing it for the point-and-laugh. And I find that kind of "joke" toxic and disgusting.  I'm not going to go on and on about it here, but in short just - a world of no from me on that.  

So what's my score so far?  2 things I wanted but didn't get, 3 things I didn't like?  But on the bright side...it's now time to move along to the bright side! And the bright side is pretty damn bright.

I was incredibly happy that Tony and Steve were able to repair their relationship.  Civil War was such a tough movie to watch, and while there was at least a thread of hope for them at the end of it, this resolution was a long time coming.  They're so very different in their worldviews and methods, but so very alike in their absolute dedication to protecting people and doing the right thing - the friction has always made perfect sense, but getting to see them come to terms with each other ... that's something I have really wanted for a long time.  I was extremely sad watching Tony just chew into Steve at the beginning of Endgame, but not at all surprised - Tony was completely done in, physically, mentally and emotionally.  Just seeing Tony that physically wasted and weak was hard.  Steve's reactions to it were perfect, though, just perfect.  I don't think I could have asked for any more than I was given for the two of them.  

I loved Tony's relationship with his daughter - in fact, I love Tony's relationship with every character below the age of majority that he's ever been on screen with.  Tony may be my OTP (One True Parent) in fact - he's just so deeply interested in these kids (Harley, Peter, Morgan) as human beings.  And he treats them oddly as equals, while still somehow managing to parent well for each of them.  He's hilarious and snarky and caring and he connects.  I don't know, I just adore it.  We didn't get to spend a lot of time with Morgan, but it was obvious she adored Tony and was well on her way to growing up to be just like him, and I wholly approve.  

And before I leave the topic of kids - Tony mourning Peter broke my heart, and his love for Peter when he came back knitted it back together again (that hug omg, </3 -> <3) and then Peter's breakdown when Tony was dying, finally calling him "Tony" instead of Mr. Stark or sir...there it goes, heart broken again.  BROKEN.

I and the rest of the universe loved Steve wielding Mjolnir (and Thor KNEW it!). We all saw this coming from way back at the party in Ultron, and a part of what this series of movies has managed to do that I love is take moments like that, a billion movies ago at this point, and pay them off one by one.  Sure, it's fan service, but because they were patient, it feels earned.  I adore it.

I'm going to wrap this up for now because if I don't, it's never getting posted - I have a ton of thoughts and even MORE feelings about this movie, and I'll be posting more of them because how can I NOT.  But I do want to talk a little about one of the major things that literally filled me with joy: 

The return to Avengers 2012!!! <3 <3 <3

I just want to go back and live there - like, I want to build a tinyhouse with a telescope in the window and just stare at it all from the shadows forever.  I could literally sit for days upon days of "what happened in Avengers 2012 around what we saw on the screen in Avengers 2012" - that could be an entire TV series and I would tune in for every freaking episode.  It was SO. MUCH. FUN!  From "feel free to clean up..." to "take the stairs" and "SO MANY STAIRS" to Loki pretending to be Steve and Loki stealing the tesseract and poofing out to Thor saving Tony with his hammer and both of them so jazzed about it... OMG.  I just love it all, and I'm so happy they did it.  I loved everything around it - I loved Bruce trying half-heartedly to smash, I loved the Sorceress Supreme up on the rooftop fighting the Chitauri, I loved Bruce getting smacked out of Hulk and Hulk on a lounge chair with a sunhat over his face.  EVERYTHING.  I just.  <3

I went into Endgame expecting the worst for my favorite character, and I got the worst for him.  But the more I think about this movie, the more I find that it's a happy place for me. It gave me what I didn't want and it made me like it.  Like - a LOT.  I went into it expecting/fearing that it would kill my fannishness about Avengers, and it's done the exact opposite - it's brought me back into fandom, back into contact with fans, back into thinking all the thoughts and feeling all the feelings and wanting to share them with other people who are thinking and feeling about the same thing.  

I feel like this entire series of movies, this slate of characters, this universe they've built - it's a gigantic wonderful amazing heartbreaking heartmending accomplishment, and I'm just super glad it's all here, and that I got to experience it all.  

(And I can't wait to write a metric fuckton of stories that ignore it! Tony may be gone in this timeline, but he's never going to die in mine, damn it!)

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

(I posted this as part of a thread earlier, and @otatma asked if I would cut and paste it into its own thing, so if this sounds familiar, that’s why!  The inciting incident was a discussion about how people will get very emotional, to the point of aggression and genuinely antisocial behavior, over differing preferences in fictional ships, which -- yeah, strikes most people as super weird the first time they run into it, but quickly becomes just a thing that we all know will happen, just a regular part of Life in Fandom.)

I used to find this weird, but after lo these many years in and around fandom, I finally twigged that shipping wars, or really most fannish disputes, are never about fictional characters.  The kind of people who find it easy to get invested in and noisy about fandom stuff have a particular – gift? talent? weakness? thoroughly value-neutral tendency? – that allows them to weave their own life stories and recurring issues into stories they read.  People angry or defensive or super protective of a character or a relationship between characters – that’s *never* about the story in an objective way.  It’s always about the person speaking.

And that’s okay if you’re hip to it and you use it productively, for Art Reasons or to help you gain clarity or feel less alone – shit, ask me sometime about why I’m at risk of losing my goddamn mind when people say things I don’t like about Ronon Dex or Castiel or Quentin Coldwater, three characters defined by their sense of lacking a homeworld, of being stranded where they don’t fit and will never belong.  I am not a neutral observer here.

The problem is that a lot of people are reactive about this stuff.  They ship based on what they feel would meet their deepest needs, or validate the stuff about them they most need validated, and that’s fine, unless you don’t have the discernment to realize that what a character or plotline or ship means *subjectively to you* is not objective reality.   Then suddenly criticism of The Thing that you’re all tied up in feels like an *objective,* tangible, hostile unwillingness to see or hear who you are.

And people who feel like they’re being intentionally and maliciously denied that kind of validation and acceptance – well, it’s easier to understand how that feeling unlocks some fighting instincts in a lot of people.

It takes emotional calibration and maturity to be fully comfortable going, “Yeah, this has nothing to do with me and I don’t need to respond to this.” Like, I’m much, much better at it than I used to be, but I’ve still had to eliminate certain people from my fannish world because I was finding it such a struggle to watch them be OBVIOUSLY WRONG in certain specific ways that I was taking far, far more personally than I should’ve been.  I’m sure they’re lovely people, but they were mashing buttons for me that – like, life is just too short, I needed to move on.

So I get it. And in Ye Elder Days when I was a slip of a fangirl, I sometimes handled that tension in ways I can’t recommend.  It’s hard, I get it.  And line-crossing that seems obvious from the outside doesn’t necessarily feel obvious when you’re defending vulnerable parts of your own psyche.

Still, you practice to get better.  You practice setting boundaries for yourself and holding to them – “no name-calling or death threats even if you’re sure they deserve it” is a good one to start with. You practice accepting that other people may not see things like you do no matter how right you are or how well you explain, and that’s just a life thing that never goes away.  Mostly, I think the core practice is learning to say to yourself, “Self, this reaction feels really strong, given the low stakes involved. What is this signaling me to pay attention to in me?”

But not everyone’s there. Some people are just going to feel a thing and get mad and lash out – particularly when internet fandom is probably a much safer outlet for expressing pent-up aggression than anywhere else in that person’s real life.  It sucks, people should try harder and be kinder, but we’re all where we are in life, you know?

Anyway, tl;dr it’s never about the thing, it’s always about whatever the person has projected onto the thing.  So it’s less bizarre behavior than it seems at first glance.

[terriblelifechoices]

25, 26, 37 for the shipping meme! :)

From the Shipping Meme.

25.  Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of the gifs and graphics or similar?

Ahahahaha.  My friend, I do this all the time.  I think that’s how half of my fannish obsessions get started. 

I don’t know if other people do this, but for me, this is a carryover from when delicious was still a thing and you could use it to bookmark fic and also, see how many other people had bookmarked something and what they thought of it.  It was a really great way to curate your fannish experience, and then yahoo sold it to avos and suddenly everything sucked.  Most of the fannish people I followed switched over to pinboard.in/ instead, and I still follow some of them.  And if someone whose fannish taste I trust dips their toes into a new fandom, I will check out the fic, because why not?  Maybe I’ll find a new fandom.  (NGL, sometimes this ends badly.  Like, curiosity killed the cat badly.)

But honestly?  I got into Fantastic Beasts because someone I followed started reccing Graves/Credence fic, and I wasn’t terribly interested in seeing the movie before that, so I think it’s working pretty well for me.

26.  Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping?  Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to?

NGL, I had to outsource this question to my sister, because for someone who is actually pretty decent at pattern recognition/prediction, I remain an oblivious dumbass about my own quirks.  I feel like I should get points for recognizing that I am an oblivious dumbass, though.

She texted back with: “hahaha, well, in my critical textual analysis of your work, with the full authority of my English PhD, I would say you have a shipping tendency towards the tragic!badass!protector and the powerful!cinnamon roll.”  (My sister is the smart one and I am really proud of her.  Also, her answer totally cracked me up.  She’s not wrong, though.  I am super weak to that.)

37.  Do you have a favorite trope and/or AU for your OTP?

*Flails.*  There are so many how can I choose?

Okay, so, for Graves/Credence, my favorite trope is probably fae!wizards.  The entire concept fascinates me.  There’s something about the intersection of myth and fictional worldbuilding that is intensely cool.  The two best versions of it I’ve seen are the king of oak, by saltpans, and the Cold Iron and Old Blood series by Kimi_Ichisaigosuki.  Both fics are these gorgeous, glorious works on the power of old magic and how that fits into the existing canon.  They’re lush and evocative and seriously amazing.  If you haven’t read them, you really should.

[dsudis]

Hello! I'd like to know what got you into Stucky fandom. When did you realise that you ship those two? What movie (1st, 2nd, 3rd?) or gif set or post was it? When did you have the realization you want to write something about them for the first time? Have you ever read metas?

Hi! 

I remember being... pretty invested in the fact that Steve LOST Bucky after seeing the first movie--I actually went and looked up the comics canon about what happened to Bucky and discovered the whole Winter Soldier storyline, and after that felt pretty confident that they would someday be reunited and Things Would Be Okay. But like most of the rest of fandom, I was more interested in the Steve/Tony possibilities than Steve/Bucky at that point.

Then Avengers came out and a) clearly did not set Steve and Tony up for the kind of profound friendship they had in the comics, and b) established that Tony and Pepper were a thing, and I am honestly kind of weak for canon het ships, so I pretty much stopped reading Steve/Tony and wandered off into ... Generation Kill and Teen Wolf and whatever else I was fannish about at that point.

And then Winter Soldier came out, and, from my years-earlier researches, I KNEW that this meant Steve would be reunited with Bucky, but I was kind of ehhhh about the movie for whatever reason--I just wasn’t super into the Marvel orbit, and I guess the movie looked like it was setting them up as antagonists, which is not my preferred dynamic, so I didn’t even go and see it right away when it came out. But after a week or two I did go and see it with a friend, and went “...aw, Bucky,” but still not feeling particularly compelled to DO anything with it, fannishly speaking.

And then I went and saw it AGAIN, with my BFF, and came out of it ranting to her about the impossibility of writing in that canon. “I mean, how could you even ever write Bucky’s POV?? His head is just short circuits and blanks, like. How. How could you even write that character.”

And then I woke up the next morning and thought, Wellll, okay, maybe there are a couple of things he knows. He could build from there. He knows he’s a soldier. He knows there’s a war. And then I wrote Daylight Breaks, that day, and ... just kept going from there. :D

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Tony & Bucky were in the beginning part of their real first date when the Avengers alarm goes off setting off a chain of bad luck that ensues. Tony ends up with an injured leg, their homemade dinner ends up both undercooked and burnt to a crisp. Tony gets food posioning, Dum-E blasts them with the fire extinguisher & Steve wont stop intruding on their date. As far as first dates go not good but they just want each other & cuddling can be a good fall back bc Tony gives the best cuddles.

“What?Do I have something on my face?” Tony brushed frantically at hisgoatee.

“Nah,”said Bucky, flushing a little. “I just can’t believe we’reactually doing this.”

“Wehave been dancing around it for a while, haven’t we?” That wasprobably an understatement; it had taken them over a year of piningand the intervention of Sam, Natasha, Bruce, and a small herd ofgoats to get them to admit their mutual attraction and finally make adate.

Coffeewas probably softballing it a little bit, but it had been a rockypath just to get them to the point of friendship; it was probablybest to take things slow and easy. And the coffee shop in the lobbyof Stark Tower was convenient, had a carefully-vetted staff that knewbetter than to get all fannish, and had really good coffee to boot.

Tonycollected his foam-topped mug and carried it back to the quiet littlenook they’d staked out. “So,” he said, and his phone beganbuzzing and emitting a distressed-sounding series of beeps that hadbeen carefully selected because it could cut through even Tony’sbest engineering haze. “Damn it!” He pulled it out and flipped upthe holoscreen, which immediately expanded into a situation map.

Bucky’seyes rounded and he scrambled for his own phone. “Ah, hell,” hegrumbled, scrolling through the sitrip. “Guess we’ll have to takea rain check and go be heroes.”

“Lookslike it,” Tony agreed grudgingly. Still, he let Bucky take his handto help him back up out of the chair, and they shared a weak smile ofmutual sympathy and frustration before parting ways, Bucky demandingdetails on the terrain and Tony barking orders for JARVIS.

[mobile readers, ‘ware the readmore!]

Doombotshit hard, but they weren’t exactly an alien invasion, so the wholefight was wrapped up just in time for dinner. Tony shot ahead of thequinjet on the way home instead of pacing it like he usually did, andstopped off at a market for supplies. By the time the ‘jet landed,Tony was in the workshop unpacking his purchases.

“J,ask Bucky if he’d like to join me down here for a quiet dinnerafter he’s had a chance to clean up.”

“Ofcourse, sir. And might I suggest that you clean up, also?”

“What?”Tony looked down at himself; he was still half-in the suit, andspattered with hydraulic fluid from where one of the Doombots hadgotten in a lucky shot. “Yeah, that’s a good call. Thanks, J.”He rushed through the rest of his preparations and shoved the dishesinto the oven to keep warm, then scurried off to the workshop shower.

Bythe time he’d finished and gotten dressed, Bucky was already in theworkshop, though he wasn’t alone. He was leaning on a table,arguing with Steve about whether the hit he’d taken to the head during thefight merited medical attention.

“–ifit were anyone else, Buck, they’d be laid out!”

“Butit ain’t anyone else, Steve, it’s just me,” Bucky sighed. Hebrightened considerably when Tony came around the corner. “Tony,hey!”

“Hithere,” Tony returned, feeling weirdly shy. “Steve, relax, I’vegot this. I’ll keep an eye on him to make sure he’s notconcussed, okay?”

Stevehemmed and hawed, but finally agreed. “Oh, and the suit took somedamage, too,” he added. “A rip between the third and fourthlateral plates. Can you fix that, or…?”

“Yeah,sure,” Tony said. “Bring it down whenever.”

Stevefinally left, and Bucky leaned against the counter of the littlekitchenette that Tony mostly used for storing smoothie ingredientsand protein bars. “Smells good,” he said.

“Yeah?It’s been a while since I’ve made my mom’s lasagne,” Tonyadmitted. “But it’s good, you’ll like it.” He was justreaching for the plates when the smoke alarm went off.BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP–“Oh,shit, shit, shit–” He grabbed for the oven mitts and pulled thepan from the oven. The cheese on the top was burnt black. “Shit!”

DUM-Erolled over, fire extinguisher at the ready, and Tony stopped himwith a sternly pointed finger. “Back off, you bucket of bolts, orI’m turning you into a coffee machine.” He looked back at hisruined creation. He’d set the oven too hot, he thought, trying tocook it faster.

“Hey,it’s okay, it happens,” Bucky said, soothing. “Come on, I betif we scrape that off, the rest will be great.”

“Whatthe hell kind of lasagne doesn’t have cheese on the top?” Tonycomplained. But he didn’t have any other options, so he peeled offthe burnt cheese and cut slices for them both.

Itwasn’t too bad, if a touch al dente… Okay, more than a touch.Okay, the pasta hadn’t baked nearly long enough to soften thenoodles, and they were still crunchy. It was slightly hilarious towatch Bucky trying to pretend he liked it, but Tony stopped him afterthe third bite. “No, stop, that’s just… It’s terrible, okay?I know it’s terrible, you don’t have to fake it. Just… Stop.”He dropped his head into his hands.”

“Relax,Tony,” Bucky said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Shit happens.I really appreciate that you went to the effort–”

“SoI checked with the others,” Steve said, coming into the workshopwith an armful of uniforms, “and some of them need repairs, too,and I thought I’d just–”

“Stevie,”Bucky gritted.

“What?”Steve’s eyes were round and bewildered.

Buckypinched at the bridge of his nose. “Pal, I ain’t got a spare datefor you this time. You need to get going.”

“Spare…This is a date?”How about that: Captain America squeaked when he was startled andembarrassed. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize! I’lljust… go. Then.”

“Bye now,”Bucky said pointedly.

Theywatched as Steve hurriedly left the damaged uniforms on the nearestflat surface and scurried for the door. Bucky huffed as the doorclosed behind him. “Punk. Now, as I was sayin’…”

“Holdthat thought,” Tony said, suddenly queasy. He bolted for thebathroom and emptied his guts. “JARVIS,” he croaked. “Is itsome kind of poison? What’s going on? Did one of the ‘bots get meafter all?”

“Youseem to be suffering a mild case of food poisoning, sir,” JARVISsaid. “It should pass momentarily.”

“Whatdoes momen–” Tony had to stop and dry heave for a while. “Oh,god, someone kill me now.”

Awarm hand brushed through his hair, and when he looked up, Bucky wasthere, offering him a glass of water. “Here. Better’n havingnothing in your stomach, trust me.”

“Thisis not how I was hoping this would go,” Tony said. He took atentative sip of the water.

“Believeit or not, still not my worst first date ever,” Bucky said. He toldTony that story while Tony nursed the water, and that was okay –Bucky told it wonderfully, with great expression and just the perfectamount of exaggeration, and after a while, Tony was laughing, andBucky was smiling back, and–

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

“Oh,shit, dessert!”Tonyscrambled up from the floor and made it to the oven just in time forDUM-E to empty the fire extinguisher all over him.

Tonywiped the foam from his face and glared at the robot. DUM-E had thesense to guiltily back away and return to the charging station. Tonyturned off the oven. He propped his elbows on the counter and droppedhis head into his hands. “Is it the worst now?”he muttered.

“Nah.I’ve got one more idea, okay?”

“Can’tpossibly be any worse than the rest of it,” Tony sighed.

“Yougo get cleaned up again,” Bucky suggested, “and then come an’meet me in the living room.”

“Theliving room? It’s movie night,” Tony protested. “Everyone willbe there.”

“Trustme,” Bucky said.

“Well,if you’re going to put it like that.”

Buckypatted his back, and left. Tony didn’t move from his dejected poseuntil he’d heard the door close behind him.

Everyonewas in the living room, as predicted. They were watching ThePrincess Bride,however, which wasn’t what was on the schedule.

AndBucky had somehow managed to wrest Natasha and Clint out of theloveseat, and was already holding a big bowl of popcorn. He tuggedTony down next to him, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders,fitting their sides together like pieces of a puzzle. “There,” hesaid warmly, balancing the bowl on their legs. “Don’t need to beall fancy. Just wanna be close to you.”

Ittook a little while for Tony to really relax into it, to begin tobelieve that no further interruptions were imminent. But finally,just as the grandfather was reassuring the grandson that Buttercupwas not going to be eaten by the shrieking eels, Tony snuggled downinto the cushions and let himself lean into Bucky’s side, lettingout a slow breath.

Buckynuzzled at Tony’s temple. “Still think this is the worst firstdate ever?” he murmured.

“Maybenot the worst,”Tony admitted, suppressing a sappy smile.

~ @27dragons

[yomigaere]

Why I love Tokyo Xanadu

I just posted this gushfest to my Dreamwidth, and I thought I'd post it here too because I really want this game to have more fans; at the very least, I'd like to let people know just what it is I like about this game so much!

Cut for length, but there shouldn't be any spoilers.

What is Tokyo Xanadu, I hear people ask? To those who know nothing about it, it's an action RPG by Falcom, best known as the creators of the Ys and Trails series. TX takes elements from both of those -- Ys's action gameplay, plus emphasis on story and especially characters a la Trails, on top of using Trails of Cold Steel's engine in particular -- and throws it all into a modern Japanese setting instead of a fantasy world.

To most gamers, TX probably gets a lot more comparisons to modern Persona games. It is mainly about high school students who get involved in fighting otherworldly terrors and summon psychic weapons to do so, after all.

One big thing that separates TX from Persona for me, though, is that it's a whole lot more player-friendly. I admittedly never got very far in P3 and never actually played P4, but much of the reason why I stalled on it early was because I felt so utterly intimidated by the amount of time management involved in doing all manner of key things in the game with all their deadlines; it left me feeling like I needed a detailed guide to even play the game properly, which is not how I prefer to do things.

TX doesn't do that. It always lets you know what major quests are available in a chapter (though there's usually more that you have to find for yourself), which characters you can increase your relationship values with and how many opportunities you have to do so in the chapter, where you need to go to advance the story, and so on -- and when you do go to advance the story, the game tells you when doing so makes you lose out on optional stuff and makes sure that's okay before moving the plot along, so you always have the chance to get everything you want to do over with beforehand.

On the action front, combat is fairly straightforward but pretty fun, with an emphasis on targeting enemies' weaknesses by switching characters (all with their own fighting styles) on the fly. Dungeons are mostly quite fast to get through, too -- I think even the longest one only took me, what, half an hour the first time round? -- so you'll never be trudging in a given dungeon for ages. There's also some big ol' bosses to fight, which pose a good challenge.

As I sort of touched on further up, though, just because TX is an action RPG doesn't mean it neglects its story or characters; in fact, the characters are among my favourite things about it! While one could whittle them down to tried-and-true archetypes, they're very endearing and have a decent amount of depth to them, and they're nuanced enough to feel more like people than anime clichés.

I'll talk about Asuka as an example, because she's one of my favourites. She's basically the defrosting ice queen type, but her aloofness and tendency to keep people at arm's length is rarely to the point of being a downright asshole, and her sense of duty is always apparent; she'd more than happy to save your friend for you, she'd just rather not get regular people involved in the dangerous stuff she'd entangled with. (Kou, of course, insists on getting involved anyway because it's gotten personal for him.) Even before her character development kicks in, there's a touch of warmth to her. There's also little details like the fact that she has a thing for Japanese sweets (she lived in the US for several years before the start of the game). Oh, and it helps that she's very hot and badass, but that's just me going into shallow mode.

Speaking of little details, one minor aspect of the game I have a soft spot for is the fact that, after beating minibosses in dungeons, the characters sometimes compliment each other on doing a good job. Every character has a quote like that for every other character, which helps to give an element of camaraderie between party members.

There's also tons of NPCs to interact with! Aksys makes a big deal out of talking to every single NPC while playing, and it's easy to see why; they all have their own little lives going on and many of them have their own quirks, and since their dialogue changes every time the plot moves forward, many have their own character arcs outright.

What's more, the game rewards you for immersing yourself into the world of Morimiya City that way. Not only can talking to NPCs let you find hidden quests to do (with rewards to be gained for doing them, naturally), but the game remembers optional things to do. For example, if you take a character out for a boat ride at one point in the game, the next story event will acknowledge that this happened, and character development that NPCs go through as a result of doing certain quests will stick throughout the game instead of being forgotten by the next chapter. That kind of attention to detail is my other favourite thing about the game!

Oh, and the music's great, but it's a Falcom game so that's to be expected.

With all the gushing I've done, I'm not saying TX is a perfect game by any means. Its main flaws are that it gets off to a slow start -- it takes a while before you get to do any fighting -- and that the localisation has a lot of typos and inconsistent terminology. I've also seen people being unhappy that the voices are Japanese-only with no English dub, but outside of wishing that a certain part near the end had a few extra subtitles, it doesn't bother me at all (and in fact, I'd be worried about mispronounced names if the game did have an English voicetrack).

Other than that, I adore this game and I hope my fannish ramble might pique other people's interest and encourage them to give it a try. :3

[anghraine]

So, my sister wanted to watch ANH, and I’m a noble and selfless big sister (:P) and agreed. It’s been ... at least a year? 

Impressions this time:

- ANH is really a magnificent film, just in terms of how everything comes together and how completely balanced the different elements are. It is what it is—a fancy Western-meets-Kurosawa fairy-tale space opera—and instead of trying to ~transcend~ its origins, it embraces them and goes for executing them at peak quality. Overwhelmingly it succeeds. I think that’s really its strength among the SW movies: it’s not the most ambitious, it’s not the most creative, it’s not the most inspiring, but it is the most cleanly, evenly executed, the one that succeeds most completely and unambiguously at the kind of thing it is.

- I definitely think the TFA=ANH thing is overblown. They’re very different movies with very different characters. The only exceptions are 1) the cantina and 2) the trench run. Speaking of which, the cantina scene remains spectacular. (And the trench run! My God.)

- Rogue One fits in REALLY WELL, while also feeling like an even more profoundly dissimilar film. But it really felt like it picked up right where RO left off. Like a lot of people, I was cackling at Leia’s sheer gall in her “???? HOW DARE” at Vader. Unfortunately, the near-seamlessness had me completely convinced that RO just happened and so I was like “wow, okay, Vader just took off after Leia and Jyn and Cassian just died WAIT WAIT ABORT MISSION DIDN’T HAPPEN BYYYYE”

- I thought the criticisms of RO!Tarkin were overblown (tbh I tended to think that a lot of them tended to forget how uncanny valley Tarkin is to begin with), and that’s also only more cemented. He seemed absolutely like the same person. I also don’t think I noticed before how ... bored? he seems with a lot of it. Like, Vader thinks the Death Star is shit but is gung-ho about Doing Empire Things and Victory!!! while Tarkin tends to be more “eh.” Gets a kick out of puppy-kicking Tuesday, though.

- I know it’s been litigated to hell and back, but the SE additions are in nearly all cases very jarring. (OTOH, going back and updating the terrible 70s computer graphics would have been a very feasible choice!) Similarly, I know it’s stale and everything, but the suggested backstory does seem very different from what we get in the prequels; I kept finding myself mentally working to make it fit. 

- If it’s possible, I feel even more strongly than before about how wrongwrongwrong the soft, fluffy, sunshiny!Luke* thing is. Despite his streak of fatalism, he’s also almost invariably confident—sometimes to the point of braggadocio, but in most cases in fact correct. His goals are largely heroic, but he is far and away the most purely pragmatic of the main trio. He’s incredibly naive, but also resourceful; almost all the actual ideas for what to do come from him, and in most cases in a single moment. When Han snaps that “he’s the brains,” I don’t think he’s actually being sarcastic (though obviously he’s being annoyed). Luke is the idea guy, Han is the shooting things guy (which both find frustrating on occasion). Luke combines a streak of earnest gentleness with very frequent abrasiveness. He’s very much Leia’s brother.

(...on that level.)

- Han is incredibly brash and reckless! Sometimes hilariously so. I continue to love the scene where he runs from stormtroopers only to run into WAY MORE stormtroopers and just runs away screaming. He’s interesting because he’s not at all a comic relief character, but he does actually have a lot of it. I think it contributes to his lovability.

- Threepio and Artoo’s relationship remains the cutest, omg. And how did I forget Artoo’s built-in fire extinguisher??

- HELLO WALL-E

- LEIA LEIA LEIA LEIA

- There’s a gifset about how Leia is the only person unafraid of Vader, and I actually disagree. She quite plainly is afraid of him, IMO, quite naturally in the torture scene and then when she backs into him to get away from Tarkin. She just doesn’t let it govern her will or conduct even a little bit. <3

- I remain convinced that all probability is that Vader argued against the destruction of Alderaan, though not for any heroic reasons. I also remain creeped-out by Tarkin’s behaviour towards Leia accompanied by his genuine shock that she would lie to him. Vader is just “duh????” 

- I’ve also noticed it before, but it never ceases to amuse me: when Luke and Leia scream at Han about shooting in the compactor, they sound exactly the same. 

- Luke is the one who thinks to shoot out the cameras in the detention center.

- Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is the proper shade of blue, but Luke’s/Anakin’s has been left at greenish for some reason.

- ROBOT IS A CANON WORD

- I also think criticisms of the Obi-Wan/Vader duel are overblown. It’s a very different style, which seems odd, but ... looks like pretty normal fencing to me? A bit slower than Vader vs Luke in ESB, but that’s what you’d expect. I definitely got the feeling that Vader was drawing it out for maximum enjoyment, lol, but could have ended it at any moment.

- I love Threepio, but I find Chewie super irritating, sorry.

- Leia and Luke are so pretty!!!!

- Han’s snark about “female advice” remains as “well, fuck you, Han” as ever. I’m also not a huge fan of him going on about how he doesn’t care about the revolution or about her, considering that he knows perfectly well that she just saw her planet wiped out. How Jyn trying to survive is worse than this is just ?????

- Nevertheless, ANH Han is by and large my favourite Han. He’s genuinely charming, while his pseudo-devil-may-care is just ... aww, here’s your YOU TRIED star. Setting the implied incest aside, the back-and-forth with Luke about Leia is super cute. I also love the “no reward is worth this,” haha, along with “either I’m going to kill her or I’m starting to like her.”

- If I didn’t know better, I would definitely have thought Harrison and Carrie’s affair was during ESB, not ANH. The UST seems much less intense here (definitely present, but in a more lowkey, adorkable sort of way). 

- Luke and Leia both seem to feel this irrational, near-immediate bond. They tend to pair off and Leia flips out when he’s pulled underwater as much as Luke did when he realized she was scheduled for execution. Luke tends to back her when she’s pissed at Han or ignore it altogether. I also think it’s kind of ... sweet isn’t the word, exactly, but when Luke gives Leia the blaster to cover him while he gets his swinging cord out, he doesn’t seem to have the slightest doubt about her capabilities. And she doesn’t seem to doubt that he’ll be able to carry her with one arm across the BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DOOM. 

- That’s also there in the celebration scene; with Han there’s the UST with his wink + her I’M PUTTING ON MY PRINCESS FACE NOW, while with Luke he grins at her and she grins back, like they’re kids together. (Also, I think, a reason the twin retcon—while certainly awkward at points—works more than not. It's much more about this easy natural camaraderie they have than anything else. They’re bros before they were bros!)

- Leia actually isn’t certain if the plans will show a weakness or not, which suggests 1) she wasn’t told Jyn’s full testimony, or 2) she’s not at all sure about it either. 

- People generally seem to treat the Imperial Senate as a legit concern—not just Leia, but many of the Imperial officers, and Vader himself takes care to create a smokescreen to keep them from realizing what happened to Leia. The OT is not much for politics, but I suspect the abrupt dissolution of the Senate might have contributed to the expanded Rebellion of ESB and ROTJ.

- Even here, though, the Rebellion does seem very well-funded, and Han’s reward appears to be no problem at all. Also, everyone rides around on little carts.

- Luke totally knew Obi-Wan already and I am personally very doubtful that it took just a few hours or a day to get to Alderaan. Think: Leia supposedly caves about the Dantooine base right before Alderaan’s destruction (i.e., after Han&Co go into hyperspace). The Empire sends a contingent to Dantooine from Alderaan, who find and search the abandoned base, and send a report back. I definitely don’t think that’s something that in its entirety would be handled in a day. 

(I always get a sense with the OT—and RO—that we’re seeing snapshots of a wider story, with plenty going on in the empty spaces that’s just not critical, or which can be inferred from what we do see. Luke’s bit with the remote is clearly not his only interaction with Obi-Wan on the trip, say; it’s just a representative bit we see that coincides with the destruction of Alderaan. I think it’s part of the reason it’s compelling in a very fannish way, even though I have very very few issues with the series as-is; normally I get really fannish about things that are super compelling but have a lot of issues I feel the need to address. SW, though, manages to provide those spaces where I want to fill in the blanks, but as a form of storytelling rather than faultlines.)

- Aww, it’s for little children! also have you noticed that one of the charred skeletons at the homestead is contorted weirdly

- I love Carrie’s low voice

- the development of Artoo and Threepio’s relationship is not something I’ve really noticed before, but I was genuinely touched this time? They’re friends, clearly, but they start out at this snappish, intolerant place and Threepio gets increasingly more and more concerned and less selfish. He manages to look devastated when Luke shouts that Artoo is down and then when he offers his own gears and circuits for Artoo, it’s just... awwwww. (Also when they ask Luke if he wants a less beat-up droid and he’s NO WE’VE BONDED. Luke <3 <3)

- Alec Guinness, whatever his private feelings, does a really great job with Obi-Wan as this shrewd, tricky mentor with a deep sense of ambivalence. I think it’s part of the reason the retcon works so well; his behaviour seems entirely credible as someone who’s lying. I also think his :| at Han is pretty hilarious? He’s just seriously?? so much of the time.

- The whole deal with the parsecs was obviously meant to be stupid bragging from Han. There’s no need for an explanation; Obi-Wan and Luke’s faces are both like “...sure, bro.” 

- Even the damn summary of the title crawl on the back was like T_T

The Jedi Knights have been exterminated and the Empire rules the galaxy with an iron fist. A small group of Rebels have dared to fight back by stealing the secret plans to the Empire’s mightiest weapon, the Death Star battle station. The Emperor’s most trusted servant, Darth Vader, must find the plans and locate the hidden Rebel base. [etc]

*sob*

But, just incidentally, there is never the slightest indication given that the team of spies didn’t actually make it out of their mission or that there’s any particular tragedy around the first!!!! victory!!!!!!! They’re never explicitly pointed out, but there also isn’t any occasion for doing so; we don’t see anyone outside the purely military arm. No senators beyond Leia (who’s only there to bring the plans, and had originally intended to go to Alderaan anyway), no Mon Mothma, no operatives of any kind beyond soldiers, pilots, and commanders. It looks like they evacuated everyone else, so even if the Scarif mission had gone precisely according to plan and like 75% of them made it out, there’s no reason for them to show up in ANH anyway. But yeah, basically all we know is that the team that recovered the plans was a small and brave one affiliated with the Rebellion.

*feel free not to remind me that the sun is powerful and dangerous. this is a metaphor