#I’d forgotten how good it can feel to be engaged in fandom

[dancingmusique]

“That being said, the relationship between Lo and Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an influence in the writer's room. We referenced that relationship over and over again. The intentional parallel is that they are equals and their relationship is earned through mutual vulnerability, not intimidation or manipulation.”

This is what it feels like to win! This interview is full of delicious morsels for #Oshamir

Leslye Headland prefers #Oshamir as the official ship name by the way. So it is written!

I’ll be back later to wax poetic about #Oshamir…

[independence1776]

@gellalaer From the comments on this post (because I’d run out of space in the comment box and also this is a lot of tangential navel-gazing):

It was nice to read your viewpoint on things. I'm so saddened to hear you feel the way you do. I know how you feel with not wanting to engage anymore. I'm barely holding on by a thread here, myself. I would miss you and arizonapoppy, if I left tomorrow. All my usual fandom friends I've grown apart from, since my Mum died, as I'm not on the sites they're on, anymore. Thanks again for the asks.

It’s a tough place to be in. I’m sorry you’re feeling this way, too.

I can’t participate with fandom like I used to for numerous reasons. Part of it is serious offline life stressors; part of it is that grad school got me out of the habit of fandom because I was too busy to participate. (Like, it took me weeks to read a fic over lunch/dinner that I would normally be able to read in an evening type of busy.) I relied on rec lists then and haven’t gotten back into the habit of looking for fics on my own; also, I’ve been reading mostly original fiction this year. Part of it is that it’s very hard to maintain a squee/positive mindset in most places because random strangers will come onto your posts to debate, argue, or insult you when all you wanted to do was love something in public. And part of it is that I’ve lost my joy and enthusiasm and I don’t know how to regain it. (And in my worst moments, I ask myself if anyone would even care if I left fandom entirely.)

For Tolkien fandom in specific, I know a good chunk of my desire to not engage is anxiety brain. I said in the original post that “I can’t even read Tolkien right now without my anxiety ramping up because I feel like I’ll be forced to take sides in whatever arguments are ongoing and because I’ve been only tiptoeing in the very shallow end of the fandom for years now, I feel like I have no right to participate because I haven’t been reading Tolkien fic.”

Fault lines exist in this fandom. Some of them have changed over the years; some have gone dormant; others are newly created. I’ve been so quiet in Tolkien fandom I don’t even know where most of them are nowadays. And heaven forbid you don’t ship the popular ships or dislike the popular fanon or prefer Silm-version over HoME-version. 

It’s stuff like: I said in an answer to a question in a previous meme that I tend to see characters as either straight or ace. I lost followers for that. Well, when I ship, I’m primarily a het shipper with side jaunts into m/f/f or m/f/m poly or femslash and I flatly prefer canon ships over noncanon ships. I can only assume those people didn’t know that. And I’m ace enough that I primarily write gen and that if someone isn’t explicitly said in-canon to be in a relationship, I will likely see them as ace. Yet because that’s an unpopular opinion in an area of fandom dominated by m/m shippers who sometimes act as though their ships are canon, it’s a fault line I’m on the wrong side of.

There is something very wrong when I can’t even read books I love without feeling afraid I’ll be questioned about my opinions of them. It’s anxiety brain. No one online knows if I’m rereading Tolkien if I don’t mention it! But I can’t shut up the fear I’ll be dragged into debates that I don’t care about, think are a waste of time, and are utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things but that people treat as matters of life and death.

As for the “no right to participate” part: I know it’s fixed by asking for recs for currently formative or popular fics from the past five years or decade. But I have no guarantee I’d read any of them, remember enough of canon to understand them (the amount of Tolkien lore I’ve forgotten is ridiculous), or that people will respect my reading preferences. (I have asked for gen recs before and been recced mostly slash.) It seems like an awful lot of work for something that’s supposed to be fun; it turns fandom into an obligation.

But that is what I feel like right now: that people know me because I haven’t left the SWG spaces but I’m not reading Silmfic but people probably assume I am so I don’t dare act like I have no idea what’s going but sometimes I do and many times I don’t and I don’t participate in Tolkien fandom on Tumblr at all but people often act as though this is where the fandom is and everyone knows everything that’s going on. So how dare I roll in here acting as though I haven’t been participating in the fandom for years even though I really haven’t been active outside of chatting on the SWG Discord and making things for TRSB. (And wow that’s a run-on.)

Add in the constant, underlying pressure that people want more and more content (never stories, always content and few seem to care about the difference between content and creations/art) and that you’re irrelevent if you aren’t constantly writing and posting new things. There is far less a sense of a community of readers and writers in this together these days. But it also seems that it’s events events events and what’s wrong with you if you don’t participate in them? (And this even though I love some events.) There’s a constant pressure to fit in and be like everyone else, that everyone is in fandom for the same reasons and writes fic for the same reasons (which often means either shippy fic or “must fix canon because canon sucks” fic). The assumptions that everyone in fandom loves and prioritizes shipfic, that genfic is inherently less valuable or worthy of attention, and that shipping the only reason people are in fandom really gets on my nerves.

Well, I’m not exactly prolific. I don’t post WIPs; I can’t talk about what I’m currently writing to drum up interest. I can’t talk about what I want to write in the future. Because some of my fics contain darker subject matters, I’m worried that I’ll be jumped on by people who think those types of stories shouldn’t exist. Participating in events means I don’t work on my own ideas; I didn’t finish a story I really wanted to this year because I signed up for a couple of things in the back half of the year so my attention shifted to those stories. (I don’t regret writing them at all but it’s a matter of prioritization.) I don’t feel like I fit in with modern fandom.

I don’t want to leave and don’t plan to, but I’m not sure anymore there’s a place for me in much of fandom.

[squeemcsquee]

Anime Central 2023, Day Three (Sun)

Sunday kicked off with an early morning wakeup in order to snag a working elevator and get all of our gear to the car. Well, there was one elevator, and we were able to snag it. So, victory - I shudder to think what it was like for other attendees later in the morning. 

As awful as getting up early on Sunday can be, it’s worth it to not wait 15 minutes to squeeze into an elevator full of other people and their bags. We finished loading the car by 0730 and so were also able to grab breakfast before things got too busy there as well. 

But it really is a sad state of affairs when you realize that being inside an elevator feels like a novelty for the weekend. 

I also need to give props to Embassy Suites staff for their patience and assistance when I went racing back from the con center to the front desk to request to be let back into the room we had checked out of because I’d forgotten a prop.

Yep, I’d forgotten my headphones for cosplaying Cecil. Thankfully, getting back into the room wasn’t an issue and that was the very last time I had to climb the Embassy stairs for four flights that weekend. 

Our first event of the day for the con was the panel “10 Good Animes Under 20 Episodes.” As the panelist went through the list, I realized that I’d seen a few of the titles, though never in full. Specifically, Paranoia Agent, Midori Days, and Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto. FLCL I’ve seen now a couple of times. I do have an interest in checking out the other titles at some point.

               The panelist liked to offer trivia questions at various points during the panel, and @lechevaliermalfet​ answered one of the questions correctly. He is now a certified weeb.

               After this panel, we went to another Helen McCarthy panel: Cyberpunk: Peach John – Outlier or Omen? The Disruptive Power of A.I. in the Manga Industry. As I’m sure anyone reading this is aware, artistic work utilizing A.I. is under very close scrutiny and the implications are hotly debated. Given how in-depth McCarthy was able to go on the topic, I was very shocked to learn she had thrown it together in just under three months. And I think she handled the issue fairly even-handedly, explaining both how creators using A.I. can still feel they have truly made art of their own, why traditional artists feel slighted, and routes forward that the industry might take with regards to A.I. If she repeats this panel at other conventions, I highly recommend it.

               We had time to kill after until our next panel. See, originally, after the snafu about the History of Cosplay panel Saturday night, it was supposed to occur at 12 on Sunday. Well, we noticed a slight problem in Guidebook – Grffin Burns was supposed to hosting a Genshin Impact panel in the exact same room, at the exact same time, that Helen McCarthy would allegedly be doing her History of Cosplay panel. Yeah. They’d borked it up again. We spoke to a few different staffers before being informed that Guidebook was in error again and that the panel we wanted to attend would actually be taking place at 2pm.

               Ok, cool. That meant we had a decent amount of time to go back through the dealer area. Check on the finished chalk art, finally get some Wild Bill’s soda, etc. 

I hopped in line for the Crunchyroll booth to try my hand at the free claw machines. And of course, trailers for current Crunchyroll new releases were airing inside the booth so that we had something to watch while we stood in line. It moved at a pretty decent pace, but I think I was probably still in that line for 25 minutes or so. Sadly I didn’t win anything during my turn. I did see others winning and I do think it was a cool way for Crunchyroll to engage with attendees. They were also running a contest online to win a free year of Crunchyroll, so I tried for that as well.

               I wanted to hit up the Nobody is Cosplaying From My Fandom shoot at 1pm, but was a little late because of having been in the Crunchyroll booth. But I still had a lot of fun and got to hop in on a few photos. I really love this concept and I hope it grows to be something that’s done regularly not just at ACen but at other cons as well. Don’t get me wrong – photoshoots for specific fandoms are a great way to connect over a shared love. But the Nobody is Cosplaying From My Fandom shoot meant the opportunity to talk to other attendees about properties that aren’t as familiar and to see cosplay that usually gets lost in the sea of people dressed as the popular stuff.

               After the shoot, it was finally time for the actual History of Cosplay panel with Helen McCarthy – no more scheduling snafus. Now, you might expect the panel to start with the beginning of cosplay at conventions…but McCarthy goes further back than that. All the way back to the days when passion plays were super popular (beyond just Christmas/Easter, which is when most of us in the West are probably familiar with them). Passion plays and ritual costuming then led to more traditional theater, pageantry, and costumed balls. And at costumed balls, people might mimic historical figures or popular characters of literature and comics of the time. In turn, this led to fan costuming at science fiction events. And from there, into cosplay as the phenomenon we know it as today. I think even if you might disagree with McCarthy about the roots of cosplay being buried in passion plays and the like, it’s still a fascinating walk through history and fashion in its own right.  I would recommend attending it, but McCarthy hinted that she may be retiring the panel soon and turn to writing about the subject instead.

               We left the panel and caught a bit of an impromptu dance session going on in the entrance hall of the Stephens Center. We then went to @artbyquinton​‘s booth to say goodbye and to pick up some of his new prints. And once that was done, ACen was over for us.

Oh! And just like during previous ACen weekends, Sunday was a Pokemon Go community day - this time for Fennekin. So, naturally, I was also playing the game while we were doing our final con stuff.

               All in all, it was a good year. Sure, maybe I wasn’t prepared to have leg day each day that weekend, and there were some things that I’ll definitely be noting on the feedback form as needing improvement. But I still had a lot of fun and feel that I got my money’s worth, and that’s what matters. I’m looking forward to hopefully being at ACen 2024.

All of Anime Central 2023 Coverage

Day Zero - Thursday 

Day One - Friday

Day One Cosplayers

Day One Photoshoot - My Little Pony

Day One Photoshoot - MXTX/Danmei

Day Two - Saturday

Day Two Cosplayers

Day Three - Sunday (current post)

Day Three Cosplayers

[fffinnagain]

10 Years of Sherlock (TV)  AO3 stats!

Sherlock fans, new and old, click below to read a long list of graphs and comments about our communities fanworks over the last 10 years. I scraped AO3 again and demonstrate that:

More creators are writing longer works in 2020

Readers engaged more as the fandom changed after S4

Top ten new tags per year for the last 10 years

And a lot more. 

PS the code to gather this data and analyse it can be found way over here. 

Activity over 10 years

The last 10 years in the BBC Sherlock fandom have been tumultuous, but this community persists, with engagement from new fans and continued creative output. To commemorate over a decade of squee, I’ve done another scrape of the fandom’s imprint on the Archive of Our Own and will share some insights from the numbers in these plots. A very late update on my post S4 snapshot from 2018.

Note: This analysis is of completed public fanworks only, about 101000 of the 122000 Sherlock (TV) works available at present. This is to remove the late WIP effect, which adds a bulge to the last few months, and out of respect to creators who wish to have their material reserved for other registered AO3 users.

The works are still coming

Counting the number of works posted per day, we can see the peaks associated with each series airing (in UK and US). After that, the number of works continues fairly evenly, 20-30 per day, plus seasonal peaks. This rate is continuing on without a hint of new canon in sight. So who is posting all this work?

Creator-waves, monthly output

Years ago I started plotting creator waves, basically I group fanwork producers by the year they first posted to the fandom and then count how many of this group are active in later time intervals. This lets us get a sense of how long people are contributing and whether new fans are getting the urge to create. 

This plot of the Sherlock (TV) fanworks on AO3 shows the standard shape of plump participation in the first year of any given set of creators, followed by a slowly thinning tail as they because less active over time. Turnover is natural in fandoms, with most only posting a work or two within a fairly limited amount of time, while a precious few persist for years.  The surprise for me here is that the ratio of new creators is higher in 2020 than it was in 2019. Maybe the excuse of lockdown encouraged more folks to take a turn at creating content. 

Another way to look at the output of fan creators on AO3 is to see the total amount of words being shared across all fanworks. The total has been pretty close to 300-400k words per month since 2018! To get a sense of what that means per work, I also plotted the median number of words per fanwork in these monthly sets. The median in higher in the last year than it had been staying for a while. 

Reader behaviour: Hits & Kudos & Comments

Fan creators are only part of the story. Stats on engagement are a bit trick to interpret, I’ve got some plots here that tell us something about how works have been engaged with over time. 

The obvious first to consider is Hits. Above is the total number of Hits given to works published each month. This is the current totals, not a historical snapshot, so we have a very strong bias  towards early works, what we might call the Classics Effect. Works that have been around longer have had the chance to be seen by more people, and in particular those works that become must-read classics in a fandom, extending their exposure through prominence in top ranked works and recommendations. 

To cut down on the advantage of the classics, we can also consider median hits per work for each month. As most works get a lot attention when they are first posted and then fade out of sight, the median number of hits reflects instead the ratio of readers to creators, basically how many eyeballs are around to look at the latest work, regardless of status. The median plot shows how the hyper-visibility of the few work available before 2012, and then a more steady curve once the fandom had gotten established on the platform after Series 2. Amazingly, the hit rate for the median work was steady through the big bumps in activity with later series, a 1000 hits for median works between 2013 and 2018, followed by a slow decline. I’d expect the 2020 works to continue gaining for a few months yet, but the median is probably 50-60% of what is was when the show was in production.

Kudos counts and medians show a similar story to hits, but there is a dip down around 2013 for kudos reflects the frenzy of productivity that saw the fandom grow during the Series 2 hiatus. Readers were getting spoiled! From the airing of Series 3 (2014) until a year following Series 4 (2018), the median work received an even 60ish kudos and 1000 hits, a niche audience that decreased to 50/750 through 2018-2019. The numbers of 2020 suggest a smaller community of readers again, though these numbers may still rise a bit in the next few months before the median works are forgotten. 

The statistic that tells a different story is Comments. Looking at the total comments counts, there isn’t a drop after Series 3 (2014). Instead, the fandom compensated for changing numbers with more feedback and discussion attached to works. This is reflected in the median comment rate as well, which shows seasonal variation but doesn’t really drop off until 2020.

It’s remarkable that without fresh canon we continue to have new creators contributing to the fandom, and while that may be outpacing the readership somewhat, the standard of engagement has been very high. One could say the fandom is chugging along quite nicely!

What about Tags

So, with all that turnover and shifting population, is there a change in the kinds of works being posted? We can look at tags, all tags and freeform tags, to see if there were any meaningful trends. 

First up, I did a creator-wave like analysis of works just for tags, to see how tags continue to be used after being introduced. Unlike the creators, tags clearly persist for years. After 2015, it looks like the core tag set has been established, with very few tags persisting in usage per  subsequent year.

This graph reports numbers over time that are not proportional to the number of works or creators active. Instead, works on AO3 have been getting more and more tags over the years, with the average steadily growing from 5 in 2011 to 15 in 2020, with freeform tags (not characters or ships) from 2 to 8.

To get a sense of fic and tagging culture changes over time, I counted the most popular NEW tags of each year (wave). Note: this analysis is using exact matches, not the networked associations of tag meanings wrangled into AO3 today, so some things that pop up aren’t new concepts but instead newly popular TAGs for whatever they represent. 

2011: 2752 (First year, so all solid stuff, tags that continue to be popular forever)

Angst                 323

Fluff                 232

Humor                 216

Hurt/Comfort          188

Romance               168

Friendship            168

Crossover             138

Crack                 121

Alternate Universe    119

First Time            106

2012: 11637 (still early, first references to Series 2)

Fluff and Angst                           145

Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall       97

Kid Sherlock                               54

Puppies                                    50

Sad                                        48

Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia     47

Mathematics                                42

Season 2 spoilers                          38

Omega Verse                                38

Feels                                      38

2013: 16176 (Omegaverse nomenclature is growing, Top/Bottom terminology, new challenges)

Alpha Sherlock                               65

Omega John                                   61

30 Day OTP Challenge                         59

Tumblr: letswritesherlock                    56

Top John                                     49

Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach    44

Bottom Sherlock                              40

Reichenbach Angst                            30

Don't copy work to another site              29

Age Regression/De-Aging                      27

2014: 19256 (Mostly Series 3 related

Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow         249

Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three    167

Post-His Last Vow                    149

His Last Vow Spoilers                142

Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers           128

2000 AU                              100

The Sign of Three Spoilers            74

Fatlock                               72

Post-The Sign of Three                66

Post-Season/Series 03                 57

2015: 14272 (New challenges, new prominent Sherlolly tags)

Chats                                      47

International Fanworks Day 2015            34

Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015    27

S3 referenced                              25

Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper Kissing       22

English Accent                             22

Sound cloud                                19

Eventual Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper      19

Protective John Watson                     18

but not that kind of graphic               17

2016: 13517 (New stylistic tagging, TAB references, a lot of epilepsy?)

Slowwww burn                         92

John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes    37

Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson    33

post-tab                             30

JME                                  27

Post TAB                             25

Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy          23

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2016     19

epileptic                            19

fraternal love                       17

2017: 15067 (Series 4 tags and challenges)

Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective         133

Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers            93

Post TFP                                     73

Sherlock Series 4 Spoilers                   69

Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem            60

Post-Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective     55

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2017             50

Post S4                                      48

Sherstrade Month 2017                        44

31 Days of Porn Challenge 2017               41

2018: 10733 (Lost of new challenges, seasonal and weekly)

Towel Day 2018                       64

Mystrade Valentines Calendar 2018    25

Kinktober 2018                       23

Pregnant Molly Hooper                23

Soft Smut Sunday                     23

Tom Robbins                          23

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2018     21

Inktober 2018                        20

established universe                 16

Always1895                           16

2019: 7785 (More prompts, and character attitudes)

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2019    25

221B Autumn Challenge               21

A-Z Christmas Prompt                19

KatsJohnlockXmas2019                16

Whumptober                          11

Poor Greg Lestrade                  11

Kinktober 2019                      10

Dissonance                          10

John Watson is a Good Friend         9

Sleepy Sherlock Holmes               8

2020: 8074 (Not all COVID related, thank heavens)

Mystrade Monday                           59

COVID-19                                  48

Coronavirus                               46

Mystrade Monday Prompts                   40

Whumptober 2020                           36

warning for a covid-19 setting            33

Flufftober prompts 2020                   24

Do Not Translate                          24

they're all right they're just at home    23

Granada Sherlolly                         21

A little note from looking across all freeform tags, not just the new ones, we see a curious pattern with regards to two actions: First Kiss and Anal Sex. They appear amongst the most common tags as of 2014, neck in neck for two years, than Anal Sex drops off the top ten in 2016. From there out, First Kiss stays in the top 5 from that point on, while anal sex appears at rank 9 from 2017-2019 and is gone again in 2020. This probably says something about the fandom, somehow. 

Bravo for making it to the end and thank you for reading! 

Questions/comments welcome.

[marvelslut16]

Oblivious

Prompt number: 18 “you don’t see it?”

Fandom: Saturday night live? Pete Davidson?

Paring: Pete Davidson x reader 

Rating: T

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: An asshole cheater. Mentions of Ariana Grande (yes that’s a warning- don’t come for me). Swearing. Mentions of slight sexting- just mentions boobs nothing graphic. Mentions rehab. Slightly angsty ends fluffy.

A/N: So I broke my one rule and wrote for an actual person. Pete Davidson is precious and doesn’t deserve the hate he gets. I was also almost hella basic because I was so close to titling this the king of Staten Island. Anywho, the cheating scum part of this story happened to me and I immediately thought Pete would never do this to me- so I wrote this lmao. I think my love for the Knicks seeped into this story a bit. 

You had been talking to a guy for close to three months now. You thought he was charming, and sweet, and he was built like a god! You’re friends were a little weary, none more than Pete, when you admitted you hadn’t met up with the man yet. Their faces would go from being happy for you to pitting you instantly. But you knew you weren’t being catfished, you video called with Henry multiple times a week. While Henry wasn’t your first choice, he never would be, you were starting to see a future with him. 

But that vision went to shit with one simple text. You had gotten a new bra, maroon and lacy, and boy did it make the girls look good! Feeling a little flirty in your new bra, you texted a picture to Henry to be a little tease while he was at work. Almost instantly you got a text back, and it read; ‘shit baby, you’re tits are way better than my girlfriends!’ with multiple heart eye and drooling emojis to follow. 

You had never felt more embarrassed in your life! And that’s saying something considering Pete makes jokes about you on SNL and in his standup routines, all approved by you beforehand of course. You had met Pete years ago, while he was scrawnier than he is now, had a lot less tattoos, and right when he was just starting SNL. You had bumped into him on the sidewalk while trying to catch a cab in the pouring rain, you expected to be yelled at with a thick New York accent for what felt like the millionth time that day, but it never came. Instead Pete hailed the cab for you but not before exchanging numbers and promising to show you around since you had just moved to the city for college. 

After showing you around the next day, you were surprised when he continued to text you for the next month. To pay him back for his generosity you took him to see a Knicks game, lucky for you your dormmate had a fight with her boyfriend so she sold the tickets to you for dirt cheap. The seats weren’t great, all the way up in the nosebleed section, but you were in Madison Square Garden watching the Knicks! Pete was pleasantly surprised by you when you could name the players and you actually knew how the game was played, unlike girls he had dated. Of course before you left the arena you had to splurge and got yourself a Carmelo Anthony jersey! 

Many years and Knicks games later you’re still friends with Pete. You’d call him your best friend, but you know Colson is his even if he claims it’s you when you’ve asked in the past. You’d be by Pete’s side every time he admitted himself into rehab- making sure you were there to pick him up when he got out. You had been there to pick up the pieces after Ariana- hell you were picking them up when they were still together. You were beside him every time he got bullied off his social media by stupid haters or little Ariana stans after they broke up. He made sure to be at your graduation, and he was there to rant to when you had a bad day at work. Pete was there to hold your hand when you got your first tattoo, which he wanted to pick out for you but you refused. Pete was there to pick up your pieces when a guy hurt you, like right now. 

You’re in his basement, curled into his right side, his right arm slung securely over your shoulder, his fingertips making soothing trails up and down your arm. You had convinced him to watch an old episode of SNL- before he was on it, but new enough that Kate McKinnon and Bill Hader were on it together. You snuggle further into his warm side and let out a content sigh. 

“You were too good for him, (Y/N/N),” Pete finally brings up the elephant in the room. You had hoped that watching an episode of SNL would put the ‘you deserve better than him, he’s just scum,’ talk Pete gives you every time you go through a break up.

“If I was too good for him, then I’d still be with him,” you murmur a line from the movie clueless into his baby pink sweatshirt covered chest. 

“None of these guys deserved you, (Y/N/N),” Pete says sternly, you roll your eyes not in the mood for him to tell you how amazing you are but not make a move on you, yet again.

“Pete, stop,” you pull away from his chest, his arm falling off you as you scoot to the front of the cushion. “I really don’t want to have this conversation again, no matter how many times you tell me I still won’t believe you. I should get going, don’t want to miss the last ferry back to the city.”

“(Y/N), please, wait,” Pete’s skinny fingers wrap around your wrist as you stand and go to walk towards the door. “We just ordered pizza, just stay the night.”

“I can’t Pete,” you whisper, staring down at your sock covered feet, you had gotten Pete to take better care of his hardwood floors by convincing him to have a no shoe policy. “Give some pizza to your mom and your sister.”

“You’re off tomorrow, you originally planned on staying,” if you didn’t know any better you’d say his voice was laced with hurt and disappointment. “Why won’t you stay now?”

“I can’t keep doing this Pete,” loud laughing coming from the studio audience on the now forgotten episode of SNL only seems to be mocking you and your feelings. “Every time you tell me how amazing I am and you don’t- it’s just hard to believe when no one seems to agree with the sentiment.” 

“You don’t see it?” his voice is soft, he stands from his seat, getting momentarily stuck in the blanket that was draped over your laps. “You really don’t see it,” this time it’s not a question, it’s a statement. 

“See what Pete?” he lets go of your wrist to spin you around to face him. 

“That I’m in love with you,” his eyes shine in sincerity, but they aren’t what you’re focusing on. “That I have been since that first Knicks game!”

“You don’t love me,” your voice shakes as you stare at the heart that was once Ariana’s bunny ears peaking out above his left ear. You reach up and gently trace your finger over the heart. “You’ve dated models, and movie stars. You were engaged to Ariana, even after you knew she didn’t want us to be friends. Because she didn’t trust me. You didn’t love me Pete, you chose her, and yet I was still there to pick up the pieces after you ignored me for months, because I love you. Because I didn’t care how much I was hurting, I knew I had to be there to make you feel better, to be able to see your smile again.”

“I was settling for Ariana!” he grabs your cheeks so you can’t look away. “I thought I could get her to warm up to you, I’ve never wanted you out of my life (Y/N)! You were with Eric at the time, it hurt like hell to see you that happy with someone that wasn’t me! So I proposed to Ariana because Eric bragged that he had a ring for you! But then you guys broke up and I couldn’t just break up with her right after I proposed.”

“Eric did propose, I said no and broke it off,” you smile sadly. “He, like Ariana, didn’t want us to spend time together, so I dumped him. All of the guys eventually realize they’re second to you, so they either break up with me or ask me not to see you anymore. And I was selfish every single time, I hurt them so I could be happy with you in my life.” 

“Fine, you want the truth?” Pete asks, and you nod. “It wasn’t the Knicks game. I knew I wanted to date you that night. But the first time I knew I loved you was when you came with my mom to pick me up from rehab the first time after we were. You didn’t run far away from me, you still wanted to be around me and you put up with my shit. Everyone leaves when I go to rehab, they think I’m too much to handle.”

“Well I don’t! I never have Pete!” you’re crying by now. 

“I know! Fuck, you’re too damn perfect for me (Y/N). I convinced myself for so long you were too good for me, that you couldn’t love me,” you don’t know how to verbally respond, so you do the first thing that comes to your mind. 

You grab the back of Pete’s neck and pull him into a kiss, it’s all teeth and tongue. The passion sends jolts of electricity through your body, a wave of giddiness rolls over you as you realize that this is really happening. You’re really kissing Pete, he really loves you too. As the kiss continues it becomes slower and more gentle, both of you want this feeling to last as long as it can. When you finally pull back, lungs burning and desperately in need of air, the feeling of his lips linger on yours. 

“I do love you, (Y/N/N). There’s never really been anyone else,” he caresses your cheek and gently brushes his lips on your forehead. 

“I love you too Pete,” you lean in for a peck, which he quickly deepens. You pull away giggling, “so much.”

Permeant tags: @crimson-knuckled-queen​ @rexorangecouny​

[honkster]

Why the Dream SMP’s way of storytelling is IMPOSSIBLE to recreate in any other medium.

This has been in the back of my mind for the longest time. I think I finally got it.

People have talked about this before, and they’ve put forward some good points, and good for them – most of them are correct. It’s the way the ccs interact with each other, it’s how plot is mixed in with banter, that’s all good! I wanna put more out there.

So you know how you open a book to read, you start a new show, you sit down to watch a movie – that’s all produced by some sort of company, someone who made it specifically for you to enjoy. You expect a certain dramatic flair to it, certain cinematic choices, certain ways of writing, certain camera angles, certain reactions to things. That’s just ingrained expectations of things now.

The DSMP? Doesn’t have that.

The low expectations work very much in its favor. It’s a Minecraft role-playing server with a bunch of famous youtubers/streamers, who are all good friends and have great dynamics with each other. So when you expect “just another Minecraft video” but in stream form, or you watch the videos because there are certain people in them, you don’t expect to be dropped into extreme lore and sensitive topics, realistic situations proposed in game form, a combination of serious stuff and just fun times with friends goofing around – and you’re pleasantly surprised.

We, the fandom, are used to it a bit more now. How excellently they manage to make a serious story in such a “ridiculous” medium, how much it affects us all and gets our creative juices flowing. But even the ccs can’t predict some of the things that happen. And that’s fun.

The whole election ending the way it has? That was on us. And it made some of the most angsty content there has been in the DSMP. People still theorize about the arc and make connections to now – that’s pog!

Fundy being adopted by Eret – that sparked the whole “Fundy just wants a dad – let’s get him some love” thing that made FundyWasTaken and other Fundy+someone ships happen. I see a different person paired with Fundy every week, and somehow, I agree with all of them. I really got into Fundy because of that stream where Eret “slept through the adoption” and Fundy confronted his real dad and spent time with his granddad. That little stream gave us more insight into Fundy’s whole character (Nevermind Fundy showing off his acting skills – you go you funky little fox), but also justifies some of his actions now. DryWaters? Wanting to kill Technoblade? Fucked up reasons, but we still love him.

Phil being broken out of house arrest ahead of time – still made a great stream and Phil agreeing with Techno’s want for revenge – that made us all very happy. The SBI!!! The AE! And that’s also a thing!

That even if we do know or have predicted what’s going to happen, begged it out of the ccs basically, it is still incredibly fun to watch. Where some books/shows/movies fall short and reveal too much and end up being “too predictable”, they’re not fun anymore. I read this somewhere before, that sometimes holding back EVERYTHING from the reader, and relying on shock value to make a good story is just bad. Whereas if you progress the story naturally and let the reader make some predictions of their own and then they end up being right – that’s a lot of serotonin right there. It’s the re-readability that makes it slightly better the second time.

The DSMP takes this concept and fucking yeets with it. Letting fans engage in the story, letting them theorize and then be right, even acknowledging the fanart that was made, just engaging with the community that their roleplay created – that makes it so much more fun. I bet that even if the whole script was revealed to the fandom we would still watch every plot stream. Even if we knew vaguely what happens in the stream, we would tune in and enjoy every second of it. Because the ccs are just that good, we love them that much, we love this plot that much.

Oh and the unpredictability helps too. Tommy in exile was the vague concept of a lot of the streams – it’s taken that and ran with it in a lot of different directions. All quite enjoyable.

Having said all of that… The fact that this type of telling a story is impossible to recreate in any other medium is… kinda saddening? It is incredibly unique, and I’d say has things that not a lot of the people that produce mainstream media would even consider. “Just friends hanging out” – how would that make the script progress? “Engagement with the fandom, even considering their wishes for the characters” – but we’re telling a story here!

The only thing I can think of that would come close to the vibe, would be just a bunch of writer friends coming together, thinking up a universe and general plot, and then each deciding to write a few of their own characters in that universe. When one author focuses on their main characters, the side ones can feel left in the dust, or not fleshed out. The DSMP is just “every character can write their own story”, which takes a lot of the strain from the “main writers”. But the general thing of “just friends hanging out” would be taken away from it. We’re being serious here, why would we change the tone so quick?

With all of that in mind… I kinda wanna make some predictions? And I don’t know if they’re correct, but it’s fun to theorize. See?

1. L’manburg will die.

And not just because Techno has 54 withers. The country is cursed – it definitely is. There is little sentimental value that can be felt for a few flimsy stilts built on top of a crater. It might go out in a blaze of glory, with the withers (Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?), but it might just be forgotten. Yeah there have been some angsty headcanons about how “no one cares about L’manburg anymore, save for two people” and it just gets abandoned, but how about it just becoming irrelevant?

This all comes back to Dream, it always does! His want, need for the server to be “one happy family again”, it just means one thing. He wants the server to return to the peaceful anarchy that it was before L’manburg. No rulers, no factions, no nothing.

That’s never going to happen.

Try as he might, Dream cannot affect that change that L’manburg did to the server. The introduction of a faction, one that can exist without the interference of a higher power – why do you think so many factions have sprouted up since? And it’s not even serious factions a lot of the time, it’s just a few friends deciding to build their bases on a plot of land that they claim is a nation now. L’manburg has changed the mindset of these people, now an alliance with somebody is a political move. An alliance doesn’t exist if it doesn’t have a faction, and that faction can remain neutral for only so long.

Basically, L’manburg introduced the factions mod into the server.

And the fact that every faction now has enough relevance to hold weight in a war also means that every nation on the server is doomed to follow the downfall of L’manburg. Eventually, they will get into a fight they can’t win, go up against the wrong people, anger someone they shouldn’t have. All factions will either be destroyed, or lose relevance, until their creators, residents and such just… move on.

(And really you can go into meta and talk about real governments and compare them, but it’s far more simple than that. The server isn’t built for peace, it isn’t meant to be a relaxing place where you can just vibe, it may have been made for a few friends to play Minecraft together, but it has turned into An Author’s Curse. The curse that follows any kind of story being told – the fact that peace is boring. People watched the first streams of the DSMP because they liked the ccs, and that’s valid. But how many more people tuned in to watch the war streams because there was PLOT and there was CHAOS and there WASN’T CALM PEACE ANYMORE – that’s the curse of every writer. That you can write about someone just living their life drama-free, you can make interesting peace with characters or circumstances, but it’s always leading to one inevitable conclusion – war, drama, because people read that. And at this point, it’s just a predictable outcome. No matter how much you say that you are retired, that you’re done with violence (Technoblade), something will happen that will prove to you that you believed in people too much. No matter how “neutral” you may be in the matter, no matter how much you claim that you have no allegiance (Philza), you will be forced to pick one, because out of all the bad things, you pick the least worst one, the most appealing to you, the one that can benefit your want of revenge.

And I can go on, but this is far too deep for one simple reason – The Author’s Curse is so prevalent here because THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO STAKES. It’s a video game – you die? You respawn. Something gets destroyed? You can just rebuild. Sure, you’ll want to kill the person who did wrong to you, but whatever they did wrong can just be replaced, remade, recreated. So why not have wars? Why not cause massive amounts of destruction “for the plot”?

It’s literally a playground. How all authors have their little playground with their characters that they meticulously plan out, the DSMP is that playground for all of these people.

And it’s fun! Sure! I like it! I’m just really skeptical whenever someone in character says that they “just want peace”, “are retired”, “swear off violence”, “are building just a little city for themselves”. Because you can do that, nothing wrong. But eventually, no matter how much you distance yourself from all of the chaos happening, all of the wars, you will return.

Because it is just much more fun.

It’s the curse. A cursed cycle.

And everyone is in it.)

2. The prison.

I don’t have anything on the prison because I don’t have anything on the book. Yeah I’ve done a whole post where I overanalyze what it could be, but it doesn’t make it any clearer. Whatever it is, it’s made out to be a huge plot point, something that can only be revealed when the prison is finished.

Cursed. The prison’s reason for being constructed is the book, but the book is only relevant when the prison is finished. We can only wait, and theorize, as we do.

(My only theory is that the book is information about another op on the server. Or at least something related to op or creative mode. Dream only fears one thing on this server, and that’s Technoblade, so if his one fear is the most skilled player on the server, what else could give him existential fear?)

3. The SBI.

Again, I don’t have anything! Yeah the reunion seems to be going smoothly, one member at a time, but there is already conflict in their beliefs among each other. And all that’s happened is a vague “maybe one day we’ll strike”.

Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

Is L’manburg’s destruction AGAIN really necessary to hammer home the idea that no one likes that place anymore?

I don’t know. Whatever happens, no one’s in the right. No one’s in the wrong either. They’re all not good people and that’s that on that.

4. The Clingy Duo.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

That’s all.

(Okay seriously? All of these arcs are connected. You know what happens when everything seems to be connected to one another?

A giant, dramatic final showdown between the two opposing sides.

Cause it’s just Chaos vs L’manburg. Those are the sides. People that want L’manburg to exist and people that want it gone. There are no other sides, there isn’t someone who’s like “Well maybe it can exist if we do this and this” cause no one wants to put in anymore effort into this cursed country. The only people were the clingy duo and now they’re separated and everyone is just leaving and Tommy is on the Chaos side like at this point he doesn’t care about L’manburg he just cares about Tubbo but he has to convince Tubbo to leave L’manburg but will Tubbo be convinced but will Tommy even consider leaving L’manburg and breaking free from its curse AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Goddamit.)

5. The Egg?

Dunno shit about it. Like the prison – it seems important, but we’re just not being given enough information. Is it a coincidence that the moment Dream commissioned the prison the Egg popped up? Or are the two directly related?

I don’t know. But as long as someone is finding ways to fight the Egg, that’s fantastic. Bad juju indeed.

6. Oh the Butcher Army want to kill Dream!

Hah.

Okay I’ve seen people make the case that the Army is just a bunch of people with trauma repeating the cycle of ab*se that they went through and yes.

Just yes.

And the fact that no one is actually looking at it that way and no one is there to like.. help them or even help them understand that what they are doing is just irrational, even though their reason for doing it and the result they hope to achieve is YES and the only thing that a lot of the people of the server who want peace should try to go for as well, they cannot stand up to Dream on their own. They just can’t, they will get punted into exile. They need allies, and they need powerful ones, people that have also been wronged by Dream and want him gone.

But the cycle continues, and no one knows where it ends.

(Okay but from a writing perspective? Getting rid of Dream is the end goal. It is the be all end all of all conflict, well… most of it, at least most that’s related to the supposed “good side”, or “the side that’s been most victimized”. But from the same perspective, that side is just… no longer. It has proven that is just as bad, if not worse than the final boss. I have to agree that Techno has to pay for his crimes, even though I like him a lot, but Techno did in fact cause insane damage. Yeah L’manburg rebuilt, yeah Wilbur probably caused more – still he isn’t completely free.

But that’s a discussion on morality more than laws.

L’manburg is doomed to die. Dream is doomed to be fought, and probably won against (simply because he has won far too many times already, you know how everyone seems to hate OP characters…). But the Butcher Army is doomed to fail against Dream. So how does that work?

Welp.

Is history repeating itself and interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

The answer is no.

I’ve repeated that question three times now, and the answer to it is no. No it is not. L’manburg can be destroyed again, and it can be rebuilt again, but the sentimentality that people feel for it will not remain. The cycle of history ends somewhere, and it’s not too far a fetch that it ends here.

So what happens when Technoblade, Philza and Tommy roll up to L’manburg with withers and a destruction wish, only to be met with a bunch of traumatized children with axes and a death wish?

Well, I’ll spare the details, but from a purely writing standpoint…

The two sides team up.

Think about it – The Butcher Army doesn’t care about Technoblade anymore. They’ve seen that Dream is the one pulling the strings, they know that even if they do care about trying to eliminate Technoblade again, they have to get rid of his strongest ally – Dream. But through their anger, they’ve lost their fear. You should fear Dream, he’s a fuckin op. Techno is correct in not wanting to go against him.

But after Tommy? After seeing the Butcher Army at their lowest, screeching about Dream being the villain?

Will Techno finally go past his thinking of “government is evil, always government is source of problem” and realize that Dream has the most evil government in mind for his rule?

I’m still kinda sad that Techno isn’t making the conclusions he should about Dream. But he’s starting to – and really, the SBI-Butcher Army team up is the most logical thing that could happen.

Watch me be completely wrong or miss something and I’ve got ALL of it wrong. I would love that.)

(Also it’s very funny to me that Dream is literally simping for Techno while he’s just here like “Listen bud I would stab you on sight if you didn’t have creative mode”. Dream KNOWS that Techno can and will kill him given the opportunity. Techno knows that that opportunity may never arise.

It’s a weird type of stalemate, to be sure. But goddamn is it interesting.)

Anyway... if you read through all of this... I could bake you a cookie? Thank you! I like to ramble.

[bigskydreaming]

Also, just a little PSA on the subject of “Things I’m kinda over bothering to engage with” in the new year:

Guys, please do me the courtesy of assuming I know that everything I say or post about is in fact my own subjective opinion, and address it in the vein of just being something I personally think or believe instead of something I’m trying to mind control all of tumblr into accepting as gospel truth. 

I can only speak on my own viewpoint, and just because I don’t pepper every other sentence with reminders that all of this is just IMO or my interpretation of things, I’d appreciate it if other posters didn’t try and engage with me as though I don’t understand that people can have different interpretations and the masses need you to protect them from me bullying them into only seeing My Truth as valid.

Disagree with me all you want! I’m totally down to defend my reasoning or logic or interpretation with anyone as long as I feel like they’re coming into the conversation in good faith, but I’m just gonna literally Not with the people who hop on my posts or into my inbox to remind me that I’m not the boss of other people and don’t have a right to strongarm people into having just my opinion and no other.

Tumblr’s a largely opt-in experience, and while I certainly have my faults, I do a pretty good job at not regularly hijacking posts by people I disagree with and largely just create my own posts specifically BECAUSE I’m not trying to convert everyone to the One True Interpretation To Rule Them All and am literally just out here saying what I think and feel about shit. Yeah, I’m vocal and opinionated and forceful in a lot of my takes, but if all that makes you not want to be my friend, the block button is your friend and I promise I’m not gonna be hunting you down to ask Literally How Dare You for not engaging or interacting with me. 

I one hundred percent with total sincerity PROMISE you that when I rant about something I dislike in terms of fanon trends that I have not actually forgotten that people are totally allowed to and justified in continuing to write fanfic in ways that I personally do not like or agree with. That isn’t actually ever in question or being threatened by me saying what I think about a particular trend or why I feel so strongly about it. You wanna have a conversation or debate about where our thoughts on a particular trend diverge, or why some people might feel so strongly about a trend that others think is no big deal, again, we can do that, but “this is what I hate about x” is never actually a post threatening to put all fanfics featuring x on the endangered species list, so would be super hella cool if we didn’t engage in debate tactics that treat vocal fandom opinions as though they’re actionably hostile and an active threat to anyone who disagrees.

This has been a casual PSA! Lo, the PSAing has been had! Thanks for reading and hopefully understanding where this is coming from!

[jaskiersvalley]

Ok so this is an idea that's been plaguing me but couldn't find it in fic anywhere. Feel free to not write it btw, I just had to share it with SOMEONE. Anyway, imagine a de-aging curse that wears off gradually and in the process, the cursed individual gets older. Like, aging years in a night while staying mostly the same during the day. Imagine the angst potential of Jaskier meeting a pre-Blaviken Geralt who's chatty as fuck. Imagine him meeting Geralt who's just heard of the sacking of KM.

You. I love the way you think. Because this is an idea that I had been toying with about three fandoms ago but wasn’t writing at that point so it never came to anything. Now you come along and reignite the spark. Thank you for the excuse to write it!

CW for injury and past abuse (of the witcher trials kind)

If Only Every Day Was A Birthday

In the grand scheme of things, it was a dumb as fuck thing to do. A ring of toadstools had cropped up on the doorstep of Kaer Morhen one winter morning. Naturally, it was Jaskier who found it and decided that this was within his skill set to deal with, primarily in the form of charming the fae with his songs, charm and overall delightful existence. Even worse, it worked. The witchers watched him chatter away with their less than desirable guests, filling a whole morning with stories, songs, poetry and even a few cruder jokes. In the end, Jaskier talked about birthdays and how sad he was for his witchers that they had forgotten when theirs should be celebrated.

“We wish to reward you for your time,” the fae crooned, getting ready to leave.

“Oh thank you but I couldn’t possibly accept. I have everything I need to make me happy right here.” Jaskier shot Geralt a soft glance.

“Very well. Your reward can be transferred. May the birthdays be as good as you described.” Just like that, the fae melted back into their realm and the toadstools withered.

Looking around, nothing had changed so Jaskier shrugged. Maybe the fae were mistaken or their reward was something like a cake being delivered on a certain day. Cake was always good, Jaskier hoped it would be chocolate. If only the gift had been a simple cake. Nobody was any wiser until the next morning.

“What the fuck?!” Lambert’s shriek was heard throughout the keep and everyone rushed to him in a panic.

In the hall where they had a tendency to gather after dinner, there was a child sleeping in Geralt’s chair. The very chair he had fallen asleep on in fact.

“Where’s Geralt?” Jaskier asked, a sinking feeling in his gut.

The child stirred and blinked sleepily up at the men peering down at him. Brown eyes, brown hair but the features were familiar despite the changes.

“Fuck.”

Child Geralt was chatty as anything. He happily followed them all around, was inquisitive and playful. Jaskier watched him beg Eskel to throw him in the air again or for Lambert to spin him. Even Vesemir was approached with a request to read him a story for an afternoon nap. Maybe the fae were onto something, Geralt had needed a break from everything and if this gave him a chance to enjoy life, Jaskier wouldn’t dream of begrudging him a few days.

Only, it wasn’t just a few days. It was all fine for the first few days. Eskel especially seemed happy to dote on Geralt, carried him around on his hip and even showing him how to cook things in the kitchen. Truthfully, Jaskier was a little enamoured, especially when he walked into the kitchen to see Eskel had Geralt sat on the counter, a whisk clutched in tiny hands as it was licked clean diligently.

If only things could have been so simple. Nobody expected Geralt to wake up on the third morning in tears, crying out for his “mama” and rushing around the keep, trying to find her.

“It took him a while to settle here,” Vesemir said sadly. “He was loyal from a young age.”

Each day, Geralt changed a little, grew older. A tension settled around the witchers that Jaskier just didn’t understand. On the whole, after that one day of Geralt tearfully looking for Visenna, he seemed to settle. A little quieter but still bright eyed and eager to please.

Then Geralt woke up with a black eye, a gash across his arm and looking generally miserable.

“Training.” That was all Lambert had managed to grit out before he stormed out. “Means he’s about eight.”

A birthday a day. Jaskier swallowed at the realisation and the knowledge that it was his fault. He watched from the sidelines as Eskel patched Geralt up, brought in a cloth packed with snow to put over the bruising. In a way, Jaskier envied Lambert and the fact he could just storm off to deal with his emotions. It wasn’t a luxury Jaskier was afforded. This was all his doing and he wasn’t a coward to run from his mess.

The next day the bruising and the cut were gone. However Geralt was timid, especially around Vesemir, kept his eyes to the ground. The only one who could coax a smile from him was Eskel. Not even Jaskier’s singing and attempts to pull Geralt into activities seemed to do much. That night, Geralt went to bed and the others sat in a heavy silence around the hearth.

“He’s what, 10 tomorrow?” At least Lambert had come back but he was no less agitated. If anything, he seemed to avoid Geralt at all costs. “I really hope this spell wears off tomorrow.”

The spell didn’t wear off. A bloodcurdling scream signalled the fact Geralt was awake. As one, the witchers were rushing to the room he had been given considering he didn’t remember his own and Jaskier couldn’t face leaving what had been their shared room.

“Don’t go in,” Lambert had warned but it was too late. Jaskier had peered into the room and blanched. There was blood. So much blood. Eskel was sat on the edge of the bed, holding Geralt down who was crying red tears, fingers flexing, trying to fight off the grip so he could claw at his own face. A foot caught Eskel in the ribs and he grunted but didn’t let go of Geralt.

There was hope in Jaskier that maybe the pain would last maybe a few minutes. At worse, an hour. He was proven wrong when the gurgle screams and cries lasted into the afternoon. Not once did Eskel leave him. It was only as midnight came that silence fell across Kaer Morhen once again. That night, Jaskier stayed outside Geralt’s room, the sheets had been freshly changed from filth sodden to something cleaner. The Lambert had dragged Eskel to his room and Jaskier was grateful he didn’t have witcher hearing. Even his human ones could pick up on the dry sobs coming from the room.

In the morning, a yellow eyed but still brown hairs Geralt greeted them with his arm in a sling. As Jaskier made conversation with him, he could hear Vesemir’s murmur of “one down, four to go” and that was the most chilling thing Jaskier had heard.

Sure enough the next day was more choking screams. Eskel looked haggard and they didn’t even snap at Jaskier to get out. Even though Vesemir tried to give Geralt potions to numb him or even knock him out, they didn’t seem to work. Three days of torture. On the second day Eskel barked at Lambert to take over and he hurried out. Each night found not just Lambert and Eskel curled up but Vesemir and Jaskier also ended up in the pile. It wasn’t a pile borne of good moods and love though. Some nights Jaskier watched the witchers, they all looked lost in their own heads, hollow and haunted. It wasn’t a good look on any of them.

White hair on a young teenager looked odd. But Geralt didn’t seem too fazed by it, he looked almost proud when he next woke up coherent. He was also a lot more inclined to tussle with Lambert and Eskel, gleeful in their battles. Even when he woke up with broken bones, on one memorable morning a locked jaw, he still seemed in good spirits. On the surface, the others were too but more than once Jaskier had walked in on Lambert and Eskel looking downtrodden.

“I’d forgotten how bright he was,” Vesemir said, leaning against the wall next to Jaskier while the others were engaged in some kind of strange wrestling that seemed to end up with Lambert and Geralt teaming up against Eskel and tickling him until he was on his knees and laughing while begging for mercy. “The Path had not been kind to him.”

It was an understatement. Watching Geralt grow up and become a witcher was difficult enough. To see him each year, sometimes cocky and sometimes lean with a spark of fury burning through him was fascinating. Until he woke up sullen and quiet. Still a young man but so much more like what Jaskier knew.

“I should have been there,” Geralt murmured and looked at the other witchers. “We’re all that’s left.”

That evening was somber, Geralt leaning heavily against Lambert’s shoulder as they drank.

“It doesn’t get easier,” Lambert murmured darkly. “But you learn to live with it.”

The next day Geralt seemed better but the others were clearly suffering, unable to shake everything that each of Geralt’s birthdays was bringing up. And just when Jaskier thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

Things had been going vaguely okay in their own way. Injuries, aches and pains came and went. Until Geralt woke up and didn’t get out of bed. He was scarily thin, looking worn and in pain on a level beyond physical.

“Renfri,” Eskel had muttered and, without another word, slipped into Geralt’s bed, curled up behind him.

“The year the whole Butcher of Blaviken shit went down, Geralt didn’t come home for winter. Never did tell us where he went or what happened.” Lambert cast a look into the room where Eskel was holding a shaking Geralt. In the end, Vesemir brought them up food and drinks, a second serving for Geralt when he saw how emaciated he was. Everyone ended up curled together in Geralt’s bed that night, quietly grateful that Geralt did actually come back from that disaster.

Not that the next several days were much better. Gone was the cocky, confident Geralt. In his place was a ghost. He ate, he replied is spoken to but stayed out of the way. Lambert was the one to track him down to any hiding place and try to forcibly draw Geralt out.

“It’s what I wish I had done all those winters,” he admitted quietly in the dark one night.

When Geralt laughed about a week later, Vesemir looked ready to cry. He hurriedly excused himself to the kitchen and Jaskier followed.

“He’ll be back to his usual soon,” Vesemir said, trying to keep himself busy by starting on dinner preparations - only three hours too early. “It gets better from now.”

“What changed?”

“You came along.”

Sure enough, Geralt slowly blossomed again. Not at all like what he was, he was more thoughtful, much less likely to rise to Lambert’s asinine riling. But he was no longer a storm cloud haunting the halls of Kaer Morhen. Jaskier went from a terse “bard” to “Jaskier” to “Jask” and, in the end, he was “mine” which was a relief.

They lost track of the years, not like any of them knew exactly how old Geralt was. But the last few days of the spell were only trackable by the scars Geralt’s skin bore.

“Do you think it’s worn off?” Eskel asked one morning.

Geralt gave him a funny look. “What’s worn off?”

So probably not. It was another two days before Geralt sat up in the middle of the pile eyes wide and he growled.

“Fucking fae.”

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think so many can't see that RWBY's writing isn't that good? I get why people enjoy the show despite it's poor writing. I'm not talking about that. I mean people who really do think it's such a well put together show that is only getting better and better.

I honestly think a lot of it comes down to how you watch the show. I’ve spoken extensively about how many fans tend to re-write RWBY’s scripts as they watch, overlaying scenes with their preferred interpretation, filling in that gap with a headcanon, assuming that this random detail is a pointed allusion/reference/symbol/etc. and then just... ignoring the rest. Everything that doesn’t fit into the concept of “RWBY is a fantastically written show” is either changed, justified, or if you can’t manage either, ignored. This is particularly easy to do if you’re a younger viewer, simply because you may not have engaged with and thought critically about enough similar shows to spot where RWBY is faltering. After all, a Hershey bar is the absolute best chocolate ever and will remain the best chocolate ever up until you get the chance to try, say, a Belgian chocolate from a skilled chocolatier. It’s all a matter of comparative reference. It’s also just easier to get emotionally caught up in the characters you adore when you’re a kid, pre-teen, or teenager. I say this not as a means of dismissing everyone who fits those ages, or to make claims that everyone supporting the show must be younger, but simply because that used to be me and I have experience with that exact phenomenon. I can clearly remember being ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, even eighteen years old, absolutely immersed in my favorite media and defending them with a passion as only a young fangirl can. I didn’t yet have the experience or the education to spot a lot of those problems for myself and the few times they were pointed out, I recoiled at the mere idea of someone saying my favorite thing was bad. I didn’t yet have the emotional maturity to separate a critique of something I loved from that love itself, so any attack on the story felt like an attack on my taste, my intelligence, even my identity. And a lot of that was pre-social media era. So now, combine that emotion, that passion, and that limited experience with a fandom who is able to get buddy-buddy with the creators. RT very much presents themselves as friends of the fans, whether that’s responding to someone’s tweet, referencing theories in Q&As, or giving explanatory rundowns on reddit. Now, in 2021, a critique of a show can feel both like an attack on the fan and an attack on the creators, people who are no longer just a face on the back of a book cover, or a celebrity you saw interviewed on TV once, but someone you “know.” How dare you say this doesn’t make sense when the explanation I personally made up is so well done? How dare you criticize the show I’m so emotionally attached to? How dare you say anything that implies the writers I feel like I’m pseudo-social media friends with aren’t geniuses? All of which is wrapped up in not recognizing that the knee-jerk response “How dare...” is a problem all its own. 

Obviously this quick, meandering response doesn’t even begin to touch on all the reasons why someone might defend the writing, or even do anything to prove that it’s actually bad (always a subjective opinion). But I’d say the fans’ relationship with the crew, limited experience with well written media doing similar things that RWBY is attempting, limited experience with analysis/how to test the cohesion of a story, and the sheer importance that RWBY as a franchise holds for many people all probably play a part. Interestingly though, for some RWBY has reached a point where even that instinctual desire to defend the show isn’t enough. This is the first volume I’ve seen where a significant number of fans are going, “I used to defend the show, but now...” That reaction is likely due both to the declining quality and the fact that these problems are now extending to fan favorites. Volume 6, when I got off the “RWBY is great” bandwagon, didn’t have as large an impact because the fandom as a whole didn’t care for Ozpin, so the writing problems connected to him were reframed as deserving for an “evil” character. But now, in Volume 8  — particularly the finale  — the favorite MCs are getting done dirty too, so even die-hard fans are pausing and entering the “I hope this volume was just a fluke” stage. It’s easy to come up with those explanations/ignore various problems when the characters you’re emotionally attached to are soaking up all the good parts of the volume. But with the bees still not confirmed, Penny dead, Watts dead, Jaune getting attention again, Maria forgotten, Yang taken out in one hit, etc... anyone whose interest relates on any of those aspects (and others) is suddenly wary post-episode 14. The stuff that we’ve said for years is a problem is now, suddenly, a problem for the parts of the show bigger chunks of the fandom are here for and that gets people to pay attention. 

[phantomsilva]

Thoughts on Rott

I’m not very active because of time, but I really need to put this out. So now that everyone has had their rants on rott… It’s my turn.

A reminder that all I’m going to talk about, is simply my opinion on the matter. Oh, and this will be a pretty long text.

ROTT SPOILERS(I guess)

I’m not even gonna talk about how OOC the characters were in the movie, I think other profiles already did a pretty good explanation of that, and I actually expect it from a movie.

I’d like to talk about resettings and about how as a writer myself (at least in my native tongue) I swear I’ll never use a timeline resetting as an ending in any canon fiction of mine.

To begin with, resetting being used as a resolution, an ending, is by concept disrespectful.

First, it disrespects all characters’ arcs.

Everything every character went through, their growth, their pain, their victories, is completely thrown at the garbage. It means nothing anymore because all of them went back to the start, none of it ever happened and there is no way in canon to know if it will happen the same way again.

I don’t know about you who is reading this but a big part of the reason I follow a series is for character development. That was the one thing in toa I was always proud to affirm it was chef’s kiss. Well, none of this exists anymore, jokes on me.

So, my second point: Ending with a resetting disrespects the viewer.

I think it is bad enough when you waste two hours of your life watching a movie, for the resetting to happen at the end. But then it was only two hours. Rott was a movie, but it was a part of a 5 years franchise. 5 years that we spent waiting for new stories to come, to see our favourite characters grow, come back or even die. All the engagement, happiness, and other emotions we felt while following these same characters were completely meaningless when the franchise ends with “And so we are back to the beginning”. I think it is even worse when they complete it with “and now everything is different and you don’t know what is going to happen… But we won’t tell you how”.

The disrespect doesn’t even end there for me lol . Besides the “So, and it was all for… nothing” feeling, I think the specific way it was done in toa affects it on another level.

Trollhunters was a comfort tv show for me, I found it in a very difficult time of my life and have been rewatching it for fun in stressful weeks.

I saw someone commenting “how can I enjoy the rewatching if I know in the end none of this ever matters?”. That is my problem with the specific way they used it. It affects my rewatches. Maybe it is still too early, but everytime I think about rewatching season 1, I realize there is no reason to do it. And not because I already watched it several times (thanks anxiety), but because all of this was undone and maybe never even happened.

I never expected an ending would ruin a whole franchise for me and I followed Steven Universe weekly. Worst case scenario, I thought we would have had a weak ending that could easily be forgotten, or continued in our fics. We would lose some characters, like we’ve lost Draal, but when we revisited them in past seasons they would still be there.

Revisiting past seasons now just tastes bitter.

I see Jim riding his bike on episode 1, I see Strickler with his character arc, Steve that has grown so much as a person.. And then I remember it was all for nothing. All of it was erased and, canonically, they will always be on square one.

I saw someone today saying “It is worse than ‘it was all a dream’ ”, and that is it. “It was all a dream” is already a disrespectful trope, this was worse.

If you are still here, I'm sorry, there is more to this rant. I won’t be repeating the disrespect thing though, I think I’ve made my point.

There is another aspect of the resetting that I really want to talk about.

Have you ever watched Dragon Ball? Yes, guys, I’m that old.

Dragon Ball was known for the trope of reviving characters. We always used it as an example to criticize this trope.

Reviving characters out of nowhere or with frequency takes the weight out of a character’s death. The spectator doesn’t care anymore when they see someone die, because they will come back in the end, and you feel that the writers take killing people very lightly because of that.

Difference between Reviving Characters and Resetting Timeline as an ending is that Reviving Characters can be good if used with caution. Resetting Timeline can’t, and that affected writing in Rott.

I found it strange how so many deaths felt light there, and to me the explanation is: they knew in the end it wouldn’t matter, so they didn’t need to put that much weight into it. “If none of this ever happened, I can kill whoever I want however I want.”

Which takes me to my last point of “Ending with Reset Timeline is bad by concept”.

When you know you will reset a whole world to the start, you can do any crazy thing to the plot or the characters because you don’t have consequences from that. Which, to me, explains the “wtf” feeling a lot of the fandom got while watching so many OOC scenes and silly situations during the movie. From a fandom who was waiting for an ending for more than a year, it is really disappointing.

Now, of course I’m not saying any of this was done on purpose, or with malicious intent. I think the writers had very good intentions, we know there were crew there who worked on other seasons of TOA. I even get the concept of “the adventure will continue forever”. I just think they forgot to read the fandom room.

Anyway, I really wanted to share my feelings about the “Resetting Timeline as an ending” trope (?) because I don’t think the issues here are limited to TOA. All points T made are pretty general and I got it from all the works I’ve seen using this “solution”. I’ll advocate any day that this is a lazy and disrespectful solution, no matter who uses it or where it is used. Unless, of course, you do give me the whole franchise rewritten after the resetting, but that ain’t ever gonna happen.

I’ll take from TOA the amazing artists and storyboarders I found out here. The stricklake discord that gave me so much joy over the last two years and let me meet great people. Even the screenshots and beautiful scenes from the movie because the art was Amazing! That part I'm taking with me. Oh, Good Aaron, of course, cause now I’ll be following his work wherever he goes because this man is amazing. Actually, only him to make a good situation out of this. As he himself said, all headcanon is now canon.

So I’ll be disregarding the existence of rott, as I disregard the existence of the last airbender, take the rest of the franchise with me and any post-Wizards/rott rewriting fics I’ll find. And if I don’t find one I’ll write one. Nothing can be worse than resetting timeline ending.

I hope someday I can revisit the old seasons without this bitter taste, though.

That being said, I’m open to fic suggestions. Rott AU's, Rott erasement, post-wizards AUs, you name it. Do you need a reader? Send it to me.

And I’ll be doing stricklake month, once I recover from this.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[nightswithkookmin]

still same anon. this was another one of my asks from months ago. basically it was a comment I made about jikook's intimacy. it was from this interview: https://youtu.be/T--BOS8oTec the moment I'm talking about happens from 3:00 minute timestamp onwards. i was saying how despite this moment being "skinship" or whatever, it kinda hit different? there's also intimacy there. bc you see how jimin doesn't have to say anything and jungkook immediately understands what to do and starts massaging his neck. jimin literally threw a glance at him, tilted his neck a lil and jungkook didn't need a second more to know what to do. I wanted to talk to you about it since I know that you're not big on skinship defining jikook's relationship, but I think there ARE jikook skinship moments worth noting and this is one of them imo.

Oh ok. Thanks.

SKINSHIP IN CONTEXT

I think skinship by it's very definition is an intimate act depending on the level of familiarity between the parties involved in the act.

From my understanding of skinship, it's basically interactions that would otherwise be viewed as sexual outside of their culture but viewed as acceptable platonic behavior between the same sex or even the opposite sex.

The objective of skinship is to be intimate with another person on a level that's only next to romance.

I remember my sister telling me how shook she was when she found out for the first time, around 2011 when she first moved to Seoul, how she couldn't even keep her pants on at a 'Jimjirban' because all the gals in there were expected to walk around butt naked in the spa. No towels, no pants, no robes butt nakedttt.

'Mehn, this doesn't happen where I'm coming from' she said to her companion.

A. I'm black.

B. I'm not flat.

C. I'm wearing my pants.

Her very naked friend, a native SK, whom she says she'd only met for like a week, then grabbed her underwear and pulled it down her thighs exposing her deforested vagina to the winds and a dozen other curious gazes. All females.

'For a second, I thought I had been tricked into an orgy of a sort. I was very naked without my consent. Wind whistling through my shy butt cracks. Watching very naked females of varying ages stare on with pride and smiles on their faces as if I had just saved a village or something and when I jiggled when I walked I could hear them gasp, amazed- Goldy, how is this not gay?'

'You think skinship between their men is weird, wait till you see their women. Wait till a very attractive Korean girl is breathing down your neck and caressing your nape and complementing your skin while showing you pictures of her boyfriend on her phone.'

She says it took her a while to get used to the skinship between women in SK and seeing the men interact in a certain way messed with her brains for a while. She said she felt her intelligence was being played with most of the time.

I guess if you want to look at Jikook's skinship as intimate then there's nothing wrong it.

Skinship is intimate at the very least.

But skinship, for all intent and purposes, is platonic and nonsexual in nature. And maybe this is a fatal flaw on my part. Or maybe thanks to my sister, I'm desensitized to this form of interaction but I have a hard time seeing Jikook's intimacy as platonic or even seeing most of their skinship as romantic- in anyway. It will make sense in a bit, hold on.

I have a hard time equating skinship with romantic intimacy. But that's just me.

I wasn't able to click on the link you sent but I'm guessing this is the moment you are talking about?

I wouldn't call this skinship. I mean it is but I wouldn't call it that. Skinship is meant to show how close two people are. How familiar they are with eachother.

This doesn't show how close Jikook are. But It shows how caring and affectionate JK is as human being, as a dongsaeng, and as a boyfriend.

I'd rather we celebrate that. JK doesn't get highlighted enough. He caters to the people he cares about. He is an attentive person.

Hate to be a grinch but I can pull up a couple of times JK has done that very gesture with Jin or Tae or Hobi. Remember Soop? Remember when Jin complained of feeling cold and JK went up to him immediately and 'warmed' him up?

Of course, Jimin kept stealing glances at him like he could throw a shoe at the back of his head if he could but that's beside the point.

The man is an empath. He's said several times he feels a lot of pain watching his hyungs go through it. Fact is, Jk cares about people. He's kind, loving and he shows this aspect of him through gestures like these.

He does it for Jimin. He does it for all the members because as he's said, they are all a family.

It's stressful hearing people claim he doesn't give a fuck about Jimin, that he doesn't care about JM because he shows affections for others besides JM.

At some point we would have to make a distinction between what acts flows from their unique personalities because of who they are at their core and what act flows from them being a couple.

Most people who see Jimin as a natural nurturer and what not are able to separate this identity from his ship moments but JK isn't accorded the same privilege. It is why most people are quick to lash out at him when he interacts with others in the same way he interacts with Jimin.

When JM acts nurturing towards V or RM or Suga he is seen a good, kind person.

When JK does something affectionate it's seen as a beautiful Jikook moment or Taekook moment or Jinkook moment and is soon swept under the carpet, soon forgotten and never tied to the personality of JK- perhaps because most of these shippers don't care to know who JK is as a person and as a human.

When Jimin does something affectionate its 'awww Jimin is such an amazing person' even if that act is merely performative sometimes.

I try not to engage in conversations that perpetuate this horrifying discrimination against either of Jikook. They are both individuals.

There are a lot of Asks sitting in my box highlighting the various ways JM is awesome and kind and amazing as s boyfriend to JK and not a single out of 500 plus posts talking about how empathetic JK really is. How thoughtful he is to even pack motion sickness drugs to go on trips even though he doesn't get motion illness and JM is the one that often complains about motion sickness on trips.

The heteronormative lens, on opposite ends of the spectrum in the shipping community, which dictates we perceive on Jikook as either feminine or masculine is a telltale sign of the misogyny and misandry prevalent within this fandom.

The fandom's heteronormative lens filters Jimin as the wildly feminine archetype, wildly fragile, sexy and womanly right down to the way we praise him as the 'good woman' in his relationship with JK- loyal, faithful, nurturing, kind, silent in that he continues to perform Jikook even when Jikook are not in a great place. etc.

Yet because he is seen as womanly or feminine, the part of the fandom that hates women hate Jimin. That's where all the slut shaming, bullying and harassment stems from- misogyny.

Jk is viewed as the opposite of that. By most, he is very masculine man and as such harbors all the traits of masculinity the modern woman detests- toxic masculinity, cheating, disloyal, fuckboy who treats women like shit. All forms of hatred and intolerance towards men is projected on to him especially by male intolerant people or dare I say feminist women within the fandom.

And you see them in the way they are always fighting for Jimin against JK as if Jimin were a fragile faithful woman whose man don't treat him right thus further perpetuating the heteronormative stereotypes of Jimin.

What's disconcerting is Jikook are both men and yet depending on how their masculinity or femininity is perceived, they are both treated very differently.

You hear Tuktukkers talk about how Jikook is as a result of heteronormativity and thus prescribe Taekook as the ideal homonormative ship- because to them, Tae and JK are both seen as two whole men.

To them Jimin is just not man enough to even be gay- isn't that the foundation of homophobia?

Gay men not seen as men at all?

Whereas amongst Jokers, Jimin's manliness is often forgiven and JK's is abhorred. Jk is too much of a man and men just ain't shit.

This may sound like an over simplification but Tuktukkers hate women, Jokers hate men and either side suck. In my opinion.

Jimin is a nurturer he cares about people including his boyfriend. JK is an empath he feels the pain of those close to him including his boyfriend and is often moved to ease or take away some of that pain.

It's thus annoying to hear people out here yell and complain on every turn each time JK interacts with the others how JK 'doesn't act exclusive' with Jimin or how he doesn't care about Jimin.

Should he not care about anyone besides Jimin just because he is dating Jimin?

It's annoying when they say the same about Jimin. Jimin nurtures everyone ergo there's nothing special or exclusive about the way he nurtures JK.

Nonsense such as these are spewed without taking into account that those acts in themselves speak directly to who these people are as human beings first and foremost; secondly, to how they feel about the person at the recieving end of their affections.

If they are treating everyone the same it's probably because they love everyone too- in a non romantic way of course. It's their love language. They love others with the same heart they love eachother with.

It doesn't take away from how they feel about eachother. JK admiring another member does not mean when he admires Jimin it's nothing. It just mean he admires Jimin too.

Not everything has to be romanticized or given a romantic context. They are each expressing themselves and their feelings for their bandmates. It's about them not their bandmates or their relationship with said bandmates.

Certain moments are just attestation to their love language be it platonic or romantic and it says more about who they are as people than what their relationship with the other person is. It's not all about their relationship.

People need to start treating Jikook as individuals. They are humans first before a ship. Shipping them shouldn't take away from their authentic expressions of self.

That's how they each end up getting cussed out in these streets left and right.

It's ridiculous.

This is JK being JK. Imma leave it at that.

This is from the same interview where Tae was talking about how they love showcasing their bond.

It's ok to celebrate it. Just see it for what it is- as flowing from JK's kind self. This is not Jikook. This is JK. Jeon Jungkook.

Don't fume or act disappointed when you see him do the same kind gesture for another member just because of the meaning you are imposing on this moment. Know what I mean?

That being said, there are certain Jikook 'skinship' moments that crosses the line of skinship right into sexual foreplay.

If 'skinship' leaves you 'sexually excited' it's not skinship. Nobody can tell me nothing.

Make of this moment what you will. Just be responsible with it. I think. But don't mind me. I'm grumpy.

Signed,

GOLDY

[radiantmists]

ooooh i'd love to hear your thoughts on an rqg and stormlight crossover!

absolutely.

(send me 2+ fandoms and i’ll give you thoughts on crossing them over)

okay so first of all I’ve thought about this just a little already, in that i saw a significant link between zolf’s new ethos, the whole not-hope what-comes-next thing, and the first ideal, especially as presented in Oathbringer. The radiant orders in general actually feel like... especially codified paladins/clerics, where you get powers in exchange for subscribing to a certain set of ideals.

so i cheated a little and consulted a conversation i had on the rqbb server about radiant orders for the party; using that plus this radiant order guide, i came up with the following:

sasha’s an edgedancer. this is the one i’m most sure about; the slid-ey powers fit, but ‘remembering those who’ve been forgotten’ is also very sasha, especially with her Good End being starting an orphanage. plus she just has The Vibe, you know?

grizzop would make sense as a skybreaker, extremely lawful good and focused on justice, defending the innocent and punishing the guilty. also the idea of him being able to fly brings the chaos gremlin in me joy.

I’d make hamid a dustbringer, honestly because the description in the link above fits the narrative i’d like him to have, regarding the importance of responsibility and self-mastery as one’s destructive power grows.

cel i’m less confident on, but i think i’d go with willshaper; there’s a focus on personal freedom and self-expression, liberation from tyranny, and the order also has an association with creators. (if ppl have thoughts on this lmk because i dont have that great of a handle on cel tbh)

sidenote, skraak would definitely be a willshaper too.

azu is... difficult. i want her to have regrowth as a surge because i feel like healing is a really important thing for her, and she does kinda vibe as an edgedancer... but the stonewards’ focus on dependability and team dynamics, their refusal to bend their ideals, and even just the minor bits like interest in athletics just really fits for her, so i’d have to go with that. i guess kaladin has healing as a central part of his character without it being a surge, so... yes. stoneward. go read the description, the more i think about this the more it seems Correct.

and finally, zolf. the source of so many headaches, i do not understand this man. i can kinda see him as a windrunner, stoneward, skybreaker, or bondsmith, but i’m not confident with any of them. i would lean toward bondsmith just because both the source above and the textual evidence we have with dalinar and navani suggest that bondsmiths are hard to categorize, as far as values, other than them being leaders.

but the question of zolf brings me to a big question-- would they all be radiants? i think they would all have the potential, certainly, any one of them has enough bullshit in the backstory to have cracks that would allow a nahel bond, and enough determination to speak the first ideal and mean it. but that doesn’t mean they’d all attract/bond spren, and i havent even decided how, if at all, i’m dealing with the whole humans vs. singers thing.

(adding a readmore discussing where i see zolf going bc it’s getting long)

but, uh, here’s something rough: i think zolf would pull a baby-shallan and kill his first spren. probably, this would be a highspren; early zolf is very strongly dedicated to the idea of an unbendable truth, divine justice. and i think his point of breaking might even be similar to his questioning of poseidon in canon, because stormlight/cosmere actually engages with the question of “how does someone become a god,” and the answer is “by killing the old one” which very much would not qualify them to be an arbiter of justice in zolf’s eyes.

i think stormlight!zolf would find out that honor is dead, along with the revelation about humans being the invaders (if that’s still what’s going on in this crossover), and have a paris-equivalent breakdown about what ‘the right thing’ or ‘justice’ even mean. he wouldn’t believe in his ideals anymore, he’d ‘kill’ his spren, and that would make his spiral a lot worse.

i’m not sure what would happen from there. 

it’s possible that he’d wake his highspren again by speaking a higher ideal the way kaladin does, though i’m still not perfectly clear on the mechanics of that; zolf actually does still have the dedication to punishing the guilty, he just doesn’t look for an external code as the source of justice anymore, and that’s actually consistent with some higher skybreaker ideals. but he doesn’t really vibe with the whole ‘order and codified law’ thing.

i can see him returning as a bondsmith, but in an awkward sort of situation similar to navani’s, where the spren isn’t fully comfortable with him and he’s doing it largely out of need. but also i don’t want that for him?? his turn in canon to the new source of power feels like it was good for him, and i’d want to do something equivalent, and this feels like it would be almost self-destructive.

but as i was noodling around on the orders explanation page, i noticed this in the description of bondsmiths: “Beyond that, many of the retinues that protected the Bondsmiths were considered members of the Order–going so far as to swear oaths, even though they didn’t have a spren and never would. Some even called this the most pure form of being a Radiant, because these were oaths sworn not in the name of gaining powers, but simply for the good of the oaths themselves.”

and my brain lit up at that, bc you know whose arc is about growing as a person and dedicating themselves to uniting people and leading? wilde. so i’m imagining wilde becoming a bondsmith, and zolf not bonding a new spren but swearing the first ideal in spirit because that is genuinely what he believes, and just being part of wilde’s team, keeping him safe as a regular human/maybe having some squire powers.

WELL i’ve done a lot of thinking about orders and almost none about plot or even actual character backstories, but I’ve spent a while on this. i’m very likely to come back to this because rqg is definitely my current Main Fandom and (as you can tell from the url) the cosmere is my beloved, so... yes.

[dappercritter]

She-Ra for the ask meme! (Maybe a bad time with the final season so close, you can save this until after if you like.)

(Based on this meme.)

Well, did I save this for later or what?

The first character I first fell in love with: Entrapta. Aside from her colour scheme—I do love a good purple girl, to say the least—I adore her for her enthusiastic, inquisitive, compassionate, and rather eccentric personality. Not to mention her design is an absolute joy to watch in action; from the goggles to the prehensile hair, is creative and adorable. She steals every scene she’s in with her loveably manic energy. The fact that she’s a scientist, who specializes in advanced technology no less, makes her an important character in a magic-driven fantasy setting—her design helps her stand out among the more traditional looking princesses, too! The fact that she’s some of the most effectively authentic examples of autistic representation in children’s fiction only enhances her likeability, in addition to the most interesting and sympathetic examples of morally grey characters that I’ve seen. Her wonderful chemistry with the rest of the Horde adds both to her charm, and really helped lighten things up on the villain’s side for the first 2-3 seasons, and her relationship with Hordak… Well, I’ll get to that shortly! 😉

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Madame Razz. I figured Razz was going to be a fun mentor character, but I could have never suspected she’d be the best mentor I and Adora could ask for! I’m not familiar with her original counterpart, but whatever they had to work with, I applaud the crew for taking the silliest looking character in the original line-up and turning her into this charming little old lady whose equal parts Yoda and Ghibli grandma. (Or at least that’s how I describe her.) Her design gets special mention, too, for just how dang cute she is! The big glasses, the raggedy dress, big fluffy hair with moths flying around, and her witch broom all come together so well. Out of all Adora’s mentors, she’s the best— having no ulterior motives, agendas, or any manipulative or toxic behaviour laced into her teaching style, offers the best life advice she can to someone who clearly needs it out of kindness. And because she bears a certain resemblance to someone she once knew in a similar position.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: Catra. Shocking right? Look, I know that she had an awful time growing up in the Fright Zone and by the end of the show she became more well-rounded and likeable. Any grief I have with her is pretty much over done with. Problem is though… it is pretty hard to forget everything she did. Now, I know it’s all in the past and a lot of people haven’t forgotten what she did either, and that some of it has to do with the ugliness of the Catradora vs. Entrapdak dynamic discourse and I don’t want to go into that. I really don’t. But put as simply as possible, she was a toxic friend, especially in regards to Adora (the Season 1 and 2/3 finales in particular) and Entrapta (who she betrayed, left to die after lying about her to her lover/best friend, and the offering the bare minimum of an apology), and escalated a war just to get back at Adora. After she tried to destroy REALITY to get back at her. I’m glad she changed but it still feels like too little too late.

The character I love that everyone else hates: Swift Wind. Sure, he’s a talking horse with a design that can wander a good ways into the uncanny valley, and who tries too hard too hard to be funny, but in spite of that I think he’s got a good heart behind that strange face of his. He does his best to be a good friend to Adora, supporting her both as herself and when she’s She-Ra, as well as doing his best to support Adora’s other friends as well (see “Boy’s Night Out”). Chiefly by trying to make light of Adora’s duties as She-Ra by trying help her find the fun and excitement in it. Of course, he doesn’t just try to keep the energy up, he shows genuine concern for Adora and all her friends, not hesitating to rush to their protection or point out when a situation seems especially dire. (see “Beast Island” and “Failsafe”). But I think my favourite example is from “Hero” where he casually reveals that he regularly checks in on Madame Razz because, as he says, “You gotta check up on old ladies alone in the woods.” What a horse!

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Glimmer. I used to love her personality and her design. A peppy rebel who lived for adventure and a good friend to Adora and Bow. Even if she had her flaws like her impulsiveness and her stubbornness, she was still pretty likeable. But then she called her mom a coward for acting as a strategist and looking after Bright Moon, which ended up convincing her to sacrifice herself to close the rift at the end of S3. Alright, fair enough, some things can’t be avoided. Then she took over as queen, and I can understand there was A LOT of factors that were in play—namely grief and Double Trouble deliberately playing on her strained friendship with Adora and Bow as part of one of Catra’s plots—but boy howdy, did she start showing a pretty unsavory side what with her increasingly ruthless demeanor, trusting Adora’s abuser (hi Shadow Weaver, be with you in minute) over her, choosing to leave Entrapta in very real peril on Beast Island, and willingly using a weapon she knew could destroy all of Etheria to win a war. Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded as much if season 5 didn’t rush through her apologies and redemption so quickly, but the fact remains that Glimmer’s character took an awfully dark turn that’s not quite going to be so easily forgotten.

The character I would totally smooch: In a dark future where Entrapta never found love with Hordak, for one terrible reason or another, I would totally give her a smooch. I’ve said it before and say it again: Mad scientist princess is best princess! The character I’d want to be like: Bow. In some capacity I’m already like him, namely being super emotional and doing his damnedest to be a good friend even when things are tough, as well as being the voice of reason and a tinkerer (what? Tinkering with artsy stuff counts!). But I’d like to follow his example of being more level-headed, softer, optimistic, but also more assertive as opposed to my impulsive, harsher, cynical, and reserved current self.

The character I’d slap: Shadow Weaver. Need I explain? No, and anyway I can’t slap her anyways because she pulled the most manipulative heroic sacrifice I’ve ever seen. Dammit it, Shadow Weaver! (I really wanted to say Horde Prime but I feel like he wasn’t developed quite enough to be as hateable as he could be. Not to say that he isn’t an absolute piece of trash who deserved what he had coming already, but we didn’t get to spend three whole seasons getting to know the depths of his manipulative depravity while simultaneously weaseling his way into a twisted version of a redemption arc, unlike someone else I just talked about.)

A pairing that I love: Entrapdak. In case, it wasn’t already obvious. To summarize, in spite of all the drama that surrounds them and their actions, they honestly have the sweetest, most affectionate, and quite possibly the most healthy and engaging pair of the entire show (next to Spinnerella and Netossa, of course). Shoot, if it weren’t for these two and my hopes to see them reunite again, I would have left the fandom entirely at this point! (No seriously, I’m getting tired, folks.)

A pairing that I despise: Hordak X Horde Prime, but I think that’s the point, since most people use it to explore toxic relationships from a distance. Anyways, I really do not want to talk about abusive alien selfcest.

[lorei-writes]

for the ikesen ask thingie

What would you tell people who are interested in IkeSen?

Can we get a glimpse of your avatar?

Favorite thing about the IkeSen fandom?

Least favorite thing about the IkeSen fandom?

Ahhh, thank you for retyping the questions, it’s very convenient! And thanks for asking! <3 

What would you tell people who are interested in IkeSen?

Well, it’s an interesting game with characters who offer plenty room for interpretation and possible developments, although it does entail plenty simplifications and misconceptions (especially in MC’s approach to the future). In other words, it’s not perfect, like basically anything, and should not be treated like it is - it can and even should be critiqued at times, imho. You don’t have to support everything happening in the game with 100% of your heart to be able to enjoy it, although it is also good to ask yourself whether caring about every single little thing is really worth it.

Don’t buy too much into gatcha, event epilogues are often so-so, save up chapter tickets for lucky time (or for when your fave’s route drops), birthday stories are really sweet, but they do come back each year (so don’t stress it too much) :D 

Can we get a glimpse of your avatar?

*gulps* I haven’t seen it in months, honestly. I have no idea what to expect. Let’s give it a go.

It’s not too bad, I guess? Usually it’s just a mess-creation of the items from all the routes I’ve played through, haha.

Favorite thing about the IkeSen fandom?

Oh, I really like the fact we have users of all ages! I mean, hm. It makes for a more varied approach to certain topics? I really appreciate it. I like the fact that there aren’t that many dramas too (although I seem to be extremely lucky? Even when some are happening, all of the information regarding them seems to steer away from my dash, haha). Overall, I’d say it’s a rather positive community, I’m not aware of any ship wars or the general bashing I was used to before. Perhaps it’s because we have a set MC? Huh, curious.

Least favorite thing about the IkeSen fandom?

*pours tea* There are a few things that fall into this category, although I suppose it’s just something that happens in every fandom. Emm... Let’s start from the less serious one.

People seem to be afraid to just babble or otherwise talk? I mean, hm. Not just in regards to comments, but ask games, sometimes tag games, in my case even requests. I mean, it could very well be that none of those things are interesting to anybody, but gash, I HOPE it’s not the case, haha. Like, come on, dudes, I’m just a student who tires to get by. I sleep with an otter warmie. I have to stop myself from hugging my unkillable mint plant. I’m just a person, if you feel like talking about the fandom or the game, or anything involving it, or even just chat - my DMs are really open, the same as my askbox. Although I guess such reassurances do little to easing anxiety, eh. Oh well. 

The other one is...Hmm... Well, this is going to be hard to explain, as it is in the language being used then too. I also think it applies to fandom spaces in general.

I know IkeSen plays on very strong feelings. It is hard to distance ourselves from them sometimes... But it’s necessary. Not all fights are worth being fought. Not all should be fought. Sometimes we feel very strongly and are absolutely wrong about the topic - or our feelings cloud the situation and we’re fighting the windmills. 

And sure, somebody may say that oh, you can’t stand indifferent in the face of injustice or something else of the like. And sure! You shouldn’t. But somebody misunderstanding your favourite character isn’t unjust. Somebody not agreeing on a fandom topic isn’t unjust. Somebody portraying somewhat possible scenario that does not reflect your personal feelings, values and experiences is not unjust. Pixels don’t have feelings. Bashing people for it isn’t going to change a thing. If my line of reasoning holds up, such behaviour could fall within the borders of discussion - and those, as shown by various studies, rarely change people’s minds on things.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be able to share those feelings. But it is better to let them mellow down a little before hitting post. Otherwise communication is hard or even impossible. Talk to your friends about it. Scream your heart out then - and if the matter is still that relevant, do read the message again and make sure you are replying to it, not to the picture of it painted by your hurt feelings.

And like, somebody may say that it’s easy for me to say so, that I was never made upset by a thing. But I was. I just don’t react to it. I blocked some people whose content upset me. They probably don’t even know I exist. Overall, not just in fandom, I do not engage in discussions with people who attack the strawman rather than the actual argument. I scroll by personal opinion posts I don’t agree with. I was sent anon hate on my main. I screamed my heart out and cursed to my friends when issues which regarded me personally were completely misunderstood and twisted. And then I sat down. And wrote a post. Calmly. And moved on. 

The language we use is especially important during fandom dramas and I don’t think many people realise it. Honestly, I do admit to purposefully using language speaking to anger and hurt - and to using it to try to convince people to ignore the person sending anon hate and to instead do something positive for the victim of it. Eye for an eye and the entire world goes blind. I understand the hurt. But spiral into it too much and it gets ugly. Unnecessarily so. 

It isn’t so that the matter should be forgotten and that the victim should suck it up. It’s only that posting in distress means the message will most likely not be clear. It will be loaded with feelings. People will react with anger over injustice (rightfully so, as anon hate is disgusting), but... They may use this energy in a destructive manner. And in the end, given how it all goes, we are all partially strangers to one another - they will know only as much as was written down. It isn’t to say that the victim is lying or to insinuate anything of the like. Just that, a few words too angry, at the wrong time, and instead of people giving you support, you will have people hurting the other side in hopes of making you feel better. And this isn’t right either. At least in my eyes. 

Oh, I also don’t like the fact that a certain person named Lorei ALWAYS comes up with complicated things and writes pages long essays, like girl, eat some chocolate or chips or chocolate chip cookies, will ya? smh. #callout 

[im-gettingby]

30 Days of Carry On

posted (and written by?) @captain-aralias

(I’m doing most of these at once because I said so. it’s long so under the cut)

1. Favourite major character

I literally thought — Simon no Baz no Penny no, Agatha!

I guess I will pick Simon, since I relate to him the most — or at least, my connection to him led me into the fandom.

2. Favourite minor character

I think we all know this one 🐑🐑🐑

I have written many a treatise on Lamb Rights. I’ll spare everyone now

3. Character you relate to the most

Oops— I already answered this, kinda. I relate to them in different ways: I relate a lot to WS Simon because he has abandonment issues and “kid who was told he was extraordinary and then grew up to be ordinary” issues. We also both have a “fix all the things for everyone” complex, too.

Baz — It took me a while to get into Baz’s head, but I would say, I relate to him because of his intense emotional world and tendency to see the world through an intensely romantic/tragic lens. But also he’s a Pisces. and I’d never do that like a Pisces does. (Sorry, not sorry.)

4. Which character would you like to go to lunch with?

SHEPARD obviously. I don’t feel the need to elaborate.

5. Favourite non-Snowbaz ship

Ooh! Probably Lamb/Baz or Simon/Shep or just...literally anything. Like, I will read anything as long as it’s well written. The weirder the better. (Within...legal and moral limits.) in my other fandoms I’ve been a big multishipper and there’s not a lot of options for that in CO - which is fine - but wholeheartedly support rarepairs :D

6. Favourite non-romantic OTP

So, obviously Simon/Penny and Baz/Penny are great ones, but I think the nearest & dearest to my heart is Simon/Agatha. The kind of siblings/unwillingly dating/weird exes dynamic and the way they both shaped each other’s lives is just so interesting. And while Simon & Penny are closer, Agatha and Simon represent their aspirational selves to one another. And the way that they were both tied to one another along with their gender roles/places in society and both broke away at the same time is just...mwah

7. Favourite Baz outfit

I honestly dress kinda like Baz. Anything involving a printed silk shirt or a floral brocade suit, so like, all of them? I love WS Baz, his fashion sense is so thoughtful yet fun. He’s so expressive with it — in the sense of both being guarded, being sexy, and playing with masculinity/femininity.

8. How do you feel about Wayward Son?

In case it wasn’t obvious, I absolutely love it. I mean, from a writing/narrative standpoint, I don’t think it’s the most elegant or engaging book ever written, but it’s just so raw and fresh. I don’t see many examples of an author trying to do what Rainbow did, which is build a complex emotional AND plot-driven story with so many characters and so much lore. I’m very excited for AWTWB.

9. Favourite scene from Carry On, besides Chapter 61

I like what the book does/sets up overall. Honestly probably the first scene, where Simon walks to the bus stop & takes the train and just thinks about his life and makes lists -- I love Simon. I know Rainbow said she thinks that bit is boring, but it honestly says so much about his character in a short time. (and he’s an extremely complex character!) Also, Baz’s dramatic entrance. Also, the chapter where Baz says “and I’m hopelessly in love with him” because it’s just so dramatic, and it comes out of nowhere

10. Favourite scene from Wayward Son, besides Chapter 41

Baz and Lamb’s journey across the Strip - vampire lore, jealous Simon, Baz getting to be his own character— it’s beautiful.

11. Remind us about something in canon readers might have forgotten about

Ahahaha um. Simon says he thinks Baz’s cousin Marcus is fit. That’s pretty funny.

12. What are your hopes and fears for Any Way the Wind Blows?

I don’t have any hopes because I don’t want to be disappointed - and that’s not a cynical thing, I just want to go into it with an open mind. (I’ll take a break from fandom and reread the books beforehand so I’m (more of) a blank slate) I guess just...interesting emotional journeys, whatever that ends up being. There’s a lot that Rainbow has to do in the book and I don’t think any one person could get through all of it -- that’s why we have fanfiction.

Fears? I don’t know. I think just...the series ending. Even though I’ve been in fandom for less than a year I just really love this fandom & the thought of that kind of eroding away is sad. But also I don’t think that will happen immediately, and change is a part of life. I’ve never related as much to Cath as I do now :’)

13. An unpopular/cracky opinion you hold

unpopular: Lamb is the best character; I don’t want Simon to get his magic back; both Simon and Baz should have other romantic options.

14. Something from your head fanon

Hmmmmmmm well. Just mean things about Baz really. Like that he’s weird looking, not that great at football, and actually has kind of garish fashion sense. (which is a self-roast as well - see above.) I just feel like Simon/fandom put him on a pedestal, and Simon’s an unreliable narrator re: Baz anyway. So I like the idea that Baz is this average looking kinda strange nerdy guy who is everything Simon has ever wanted in life.

And before you tell me that Baz was hot at Watford and Agatha was into him, have you ever been to a tiny boarding school? Standards get weird 😂😂😂 and Terry being into him — come on. The guy’s a violent pervert.

also - back to Watford being a tiny school. Baz doesn’t have much competition to be the star of the football team. (also, does anyone except Simon even think that he is?)

16. Favourite location other than Watford

Vegas!

17, Favourite location in Watford

I’m pretty bad at Watford lore/geography bc again, I’m way more into WS. Probably the floor in the Cloisters where everything happens the same way, just a day later. There’s a fic there, but I can’t wrap my head around all the time travel implications enough to write it.

18. What would be your favourite subject at Watford?

Any potions-esque subject because I loved chemistry lab. Latin because I loved Latin in school. Uhhhh I don’t like history class, so not that — maybe a literature course focused on the derivation of spells.

19. What would your magical implement be?

Ooh! This is a good one. I’d like to think it would be a weird body piercing. Or a belt a la Gareth. Maybe some kind of traditional south Asian jewelry, like a nose chain or mang-tikka or something. maybe a hat. like, imagine your magical instrument being a fedora and you just have to...wear a fedora all the time.

21. Favourite canon spell

Hm. Kiss it better? Candle in the wind?I should try to think of a non-horny one. honestly they’re all so cool and clever - I love the magic system in CO/WS.

22. What would your eighth year spell at Watford be or do?

Maybe something from a poem I love. That would probably be pretty but not very functional. Or a healing spell.

23. Who would you want as your roommate?

Agatha is uptight, Penny is passive aggressive, Simon is a slob, Baz is both uptight and passive aggressive.

Definitely Shepard.

24. Favourite item of merchandise, official or unofficial

My @subparselkie sticker

25. Favourite book cover design

WS. Oh, another unpopular opinion - I don’t like the kevin wada cover of carry on. their faces look so weird and the colors don’t work for me. I own the version with the blue and yellow cover art instead

26. Do you want a movie? If yes - any fan casts for the movie?

Probably wouldn’t want a movie! Because I am way too possessive of these books/this version of the story. And I am historically extremely disappointed by adaptations — I get upset with the smallest of changes 😂

27. If they made a movie, what scenes do you think they’d cut that you’d be furious were missing?

See above. A LOT haha

28. If you could ask Rainbow Rowell one question, what would it be? (If you have already, you can share if you like)

What is Lamb’s full name????? Is it actually Lamb Lambert Lamborghini the third???

What is Rainbow’s relationship with sheep and goats. Why are there so many references to them

29. Have you read any of Rainbow’s other books?

Only Fangirl

30. How did you get into Carry On and/or Carry On fandom?

I read fangirl & the pages at the end mentioned carry on, so I read that, and enjoyed it but I wasn’t obsessed. Then I read WS spring 2020, reread it a bunch of times, reread CO, freaked out about the cliffhanger/cool vampire stuff/unresolved sexual tension, had pandemic cabin fever, got on AO3, and the rest is history.

As @annabellelux knows, I wrote my first (published) fanfic after reading her amazing fic Drop The Game. and the first fanfic I read was @captain-aralias’ Greener Grass. I was so obsessed that about a month later, I searched through the AO3 tags for it, because I couldn’t remember the title or author but kept thinking about it.

[katherinewilliams221b]

For A Greater Good Fun Facts and Self Assesment (spoilers)

Long Post

What worked and what didn’t:

I think the overall structure worked pretty well. The most difficult part was, with the plot and subplot already created, scattering all those ideas throughout the text in such a way that at least made some sense. I regret not writing more about Mer Yankelevich, I feel like the crumbs I left on the way were not enough; in my attempt to make it subtle it lacked information about her. The key piece was of course her sister, and I should have introduced her sooner.

MC’s evolution. I feel like Kate’s learnt a lot with this experience (I’m not only referring to the Deathly Hallows or Grindelwald) When it started, she was very discreet and kept a low profile, not knowing what to do really, not taking more risks than necessary. And then she ended poisoned and splinching just to protect a document she thought was important. I hope her evolution is noticeable for the reader.

Worldbuilding. Grabbing HP concepts that were forgotten and full of potential, plus a dash of original ideas from me and blending them with muggle features was my absolute favourite part of the process.

On that note, I dont own these concepts: Durmstrang, Igor Karkarov, Nerida Vulchanova, umbrella flowers, fanged geraniums, billywigs, Appare Vestigium, glow-worms, trick wand, chamaleon ghouls, 

If you’ve read the fic and thought: “everything happened so fast” or got a general odd feeling about the timeline it's because I made a series of  monumental mistakes: setting a chapter limit, telling you about it and then tried to stick to it.  At first the idea sounded nice: this is my first “big” story  with complicated components. I should (and I did) do an outline of what I want to happen in each chapter and stick to it methodically so I don't forget what's happening or lose track of the plot. Well...it kind of backfired. So I wrote the first 3 chapters and at that point I thought “okay everything is going as planned, I’m going to put it out there”, bam, instantly cursed. After that it got ridiculously difficult to make the story that I wanted. Why? I needed chapter space that I convinced myself I couldn’t add. Dumb.

The major consequence of this was the lack of character backgrounds. It started out good, but as I kept writing and publishing I realised that I missed some great opportunities to make amazing ocs. That’s Corentin’s fault in a way: he wasn't going to be a major character, really, just a piece to help Kate a bit. But we all fell in love with him so what was I supposed to do? Also, Sheyi Mawut owns my heart and he got just a bit of spotlight. A shame.

I wish I had written more about them, but I think I wasn’t ready just yet to make it even more complicated.I just wanted to prove I could concoct a mystery plot and now that I know I can manage a fair amount of information I think I can take it a step further and deepen new ocs a little bit more.

I’m thinking about the datura series and I know why I got blocked and tired of writing it; it wasnt going anywhere because I wasnt prepared, and I didn’t do the months of outlines and planning that I did with this one. I’ll come back to the datura story one day, subjecting it to a sever rewrite. The ideas are there, I just need to be organised.

Although the chapter limit was problematic it was also a good exercise of managing space and deciding which things were unnecessary for the story. I dont think there’s any filler chapters, perhaps the last ones, but there is important information there too so... However this sentence  from the blog  wordsandstuff reassured me (and I think I did a good job at that?)

If you set out to write 10 parts and you write a fantastic story in 8, you haven’t failed and it’s not too rushed. Concise writing is an underrated talent. Focus on how effectively you engage the reader, not for how long.

I spent more than year writing this! When I started, I had a lot of ideas, I wrote the last two chapters then the first 3 and I really thought it was going to be that way with the rest of the story... okay... lesson learnt. #humbled

Other thoughts:

I received a couple of comments on ao3 that said that they were pleasantly surprised. Maybe I should change the tags because they are misleading? Clearly this wasnt what people were looking for lol.

One particular comment stood out to me and quoting it said:  “You did not choose the easy way with a fiction with so few characters from the fandom.”  And I’ve been thinking about this since I read it. It didn’t occur to me that there were few mystery fics (maybe I should write more things like that? Maybe throwing some power couple detective work 👀 ) In any case, I’m glad  I contributed with something different to the fandom, and the fact that the Charlie bits are very scarce but people who read it still liked it is really flattering.

I wanted to make sure that all the characters had strengths and flaws, I didnt want to severus-snape them so maybe I overdid it with that bit of introspection kate does at the end...

Also, I did the kiss and fade thing twice to mention sex. I know some people dont like that but since it wasnt the point of the story and I havent done research on how to write sex scenes I didnt include them. I have that on my “to learn” list.

Conclusions:

Writing the whole thing was incredible. It's my first ‘big’ project and its not a great work (there are some things I wish I did better, thats what you get when you are an agatha christie wannabe) and not writing more character backgrounds will haunt me to this day,  but I think it's at least good for a first series and I’m proud of it. I loved spending hours doing research and trying to piece together this puzzle. And of course I’m not an expert and I dont want to sound pretentious (like this is my first story) but if you are planning to write this type of genre I can be another source of tips and tricks for you.

If I read the story after a while and I dont cringe, I would call that a success.

FUN? FACTS!

Bakunawa really belongs to Filippines mythology

Snapdragons have different meanings, one of them being: “grace under pressure or inner strength in trying circumstances”

The entrance to Grindelwald’s room was going to be in the duelling classroom, strangely shaped as a triangle. I had this system where one of the round candle lamps descended and lined up with a line on the floor (serving as separation for duels) it created the Deathly Hallows symbol. I couldn’t make that work because it wouldn't make any sense for Nerida Vulchanova to shape a room like that.  Here are some sketches:

Lucius Malfoy was going to appear as the Ministry employee that goes to Durmstrang, but after revising the events of the OoP I realised it was impossible.

Kent Jorgensen was going to be around Kate’s age and the charms teacher and he would have a small crush on her. After seeing some pics of Pen Medina, I rewrote the character completely.

The series was going to be 6 chapters long (I’m glad I decided not to) one for each month. The chapter names were ridiculous: January of Beginnings, February of reputation, March of Students, April of Discoveries, May I? and June of Endings. #tragic

The Dolohov family was going to be a part of the plot but I had to erase that part because it was unlocking another layer of complexity that I just couldnt handle.

I dont remember exactly the chapter but I got really confused with the names Rhode and Hodges and there’s one chapter where I accidentally mixed them (I corrected it I think), but for a while I could stop calling Rhode, Hodges, and vice versa lmao

Here are some sketches that helped me describe and imagine things

Thank you for accompany me in this journey, especially if you endured the process with me lmao. You’ve been here for over A YEAR! <3 Mindblowing

Also I’d love to know your opinions about the way you read the story, I mean, I know some people read it as I published, and some other readers found the story already finished, what are the differences? Should I stop the updating system and drop a story all at once? I know it is difficult to keep up with a complex story if there’s a lot of weekly or monthly gaps between the chapters, so I wanted to know.

Sending you a virtual hug 💜💜