#Kylia writes a novel in the tags

[kyliafanfiction]

Every now and then, I get tempted by the idea of writing a fic where Amy stays being raised by Marquis, and Vicky is a single child, and someday the two of them end up meeting, superhero daughter of the superhero and supervillain daughter of the supervillain and get together and have a fun drama story around that, but like...

It's not really Amy at that point. Amelia Lavere in this story, even if she has the same powers as canon Amy, isn't... Amy. There'd probably be some personality similarities, yes, but she'd be unrecognizable. Vicky would be different too, though probably still recognizeable.

(Though god knows what having Carol's full attention might do to Vicky. Nothing good, I imagine)

It's an interesting concept for a story more broadly, but like... not really as an Amy/Victoria story, you know? I mean, if you're gonna write Amy/Victoria, Write Amy/Victoria, right?

Like, I'm sure I could tell an interesting story as a Worm fanfic with that, but I mean... what would the point of it?

[kyliaquilor]

Always love it when people swing so far in ‘Imperialism by White Europeans in the New World Was Bad” (very true) rhetoric that they swing back around to the infantilization of the cultures of the Native Americans, which is exactly the same thing the White Europeans were doing.

[kyliafanfiction]

I mean, caring more about shipping and memes and characters is usually a bigger thing in fandoms over the themes anyway, so Worm's hardly unique in that regard.

I've written before about how I subscribe to a specific form of the Death of the Author theory that I call the Primacy of the Text; that is, when evaluating a work of fiction, the most important things to consider is the text of the work itself. All else, including the pronouncements of the author, are of at best secondary importance.

So, this is why I don't really pay much mind when authors try to use "word of god" to establish facts about their stories. If it was really important, it should have been in story. Wildbow, for example can say all he likes that Taylor is 100% straight, but that's not the text he wrote. He wrote her acting like an in denial bisexual, and it's the text that should carry the most weight.

I don't get particularly annoyed when he does this, though. I don't really pay much import to it at all. Everyone has a right to their headcanons, after all. But that's not how most of the fandom seems to view it. Most of the fandom seems downright offended when Wildbow says stuff about the stories that he wrote.

I've also written before about how the bulk of the Wildbow fandom doesn't seem to have much interest in engaging in the text of the work. This is true of many fandoms, but seems especially true of of the Parahumans fandom, where a sizable minority hasn't even read the text, and even those who have seem more interested in shipping and memes than in seriously engaging with the themes of the story.

And I suspect this is why the fandom gets so mad whenever Wildbow ties to use Word of God on them. Since they don't engage with the text directly, headcanons are the only thing they have left, and so of course they'll be outraged when Wildbow tries to act like his headcanons are more valid then theirs.

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

There is this really fucking annoying elitism at the core of the Fallout Fandom, from those people who played 1 and 2 and thus feel like they understand everything so much more perfectly, their opinion of everything even stuff purely in later games is thus automatically right, and anyone who hasn't played the older games is just never gonna get it, never gonna understand the whole 'point' of the series, etc, etc.

And oh man, the way people just love to shit on Bethesda. Fucking Christ, people hate on Bethesda more than they love fidget spinners.

[kyliaquilor-archive]

What happened to make conservatives with no reading comprehension decide to frequent my blog?

[kyliafanfiction]

Anakin Skywalker was 'greedy' in the sense that he was holding on to Padme so tightly that he was willing to do anything to save her. That's true.

He made the wrong choice. A lot of wrong choices, really.

But we can't ignore the fact that he'd been groomed by an evil space archmage for 14 years. We can't ignore that the visions themselves were at least influenced by Palpatine (because he knew they were happening to make his Plagueis story have an impact. One wonders what he would have used as leverage if Padme wasn't dying in visions - unless he was full on sending them). We can't ignore the role what happened to Shmi played in all this, and why that led him to be even more closed off about what was happening (since Obi-wan had been dismissive of the visions of her death, calling them merely dreams. I think Obi-wan would have taken these visions more seriously with the hindsight on Shmi's but I can see why Anakin didn't think so). We can't ignore that the force is an emotional feedback loop and yes that's part of the reason why the Jedi have their rules, but once you're feeling the fear and anxiety, etc, then yes, you're just gonna have it keep mounting up and 'just let it go' isn't exactly a great solution.

We can't ignore that Anakin had spent the last 3 years in a constant state of stress and danger and crisis and clearly not getting much sleep, I doubt he was eating right and he hadn't had a moment to actually gather himself in AGES.

None of this and any of the other factors excuses what he did. Not even close.

But to just dismiss it as 'Anakin was too attached' and 'Anakin was greedy' is -

It's bullshit. Anakin had to be put through the kind of emotional and mental wringer that would have killed almost anyone on this website to be brought to the brink, and he still hesitated up until that final choice.

None of what he did was justified, or okay, or mitigated to a degree that removes his culpability, his crime, the sheer monstrousness of what he did. But by any reasonable measure, Anakin was not operating under his full faculties.

In-universe, he deserved lifetime imprisonment in supersupermax (and I only say no to death penalty because I just don't like death penalty, but he would have deserved that too, to be honest) just for what happened in the first three minutes of into walking in the temple. One minute even, probably.

But Anakin is fictional. And we can acknowledge those mitigating factors and appreciate that it was complicated.

And simple, yes, but many things can be both.

Anakin's fictional. He didn't kill any actual people. And it's a tragedy because it's a tragedy. Anakin's tragic flaws were indeed the problem, but -

Context is important. Especially in a movie like RoTS, everything is there for a reason.

[kyliaquilor]

Yeah, and both of those turned out great for France and Russia. Really great idea to emulate them. Just, wonderful plan. Nothing ever went wrong for either country or their people after doing that.

(also, if Brits really want to get rid of their monarchy, they can vote it out of existence. The monarch’s ability to stay in existence if the Parliament votes to abolish it is virtually nil. Democracy works.)

Hey Brits, you do know you don’t have to have a monarchy, right?

Like, the French and the Russians both did something about that. You should look that up maybe. Idk. Just saying.

[kyliaquilor]

You ever see someone post a really, truly, deeply noxious freezing cold take, and you want to ask them a question about a related topic just to expose their hypocrisy, but you also don't want to actually touch them with a fifteen foot pole to ask?

[kyliafanfiction]

I guess ultimately, my issue with the way some people emphasize that the Jedi code works and that the Jedi were doing really good and that they really didn't fail Anakin in any way (or at least not any way that can really lie in their fault), and the way the Order does things in the Prequels era is excellent and good overall is that -

In the Prequels, the Republic is broken. Republics don't collapse out of nowhere. Institutions don't just implode like the Republic's did for no reason. The Republic's fall was the result of generations of complacency, corruption, stultification, ossification, cutting short term deals, overreach, underaction - there's a reason so many people were onboard with the idea of an Empire at first, and it wasn't all just bribery, xenophobia and fear.

And I guess - I just can't accept that the Jedi were just humming along fine this whole time, without also turning inward too much, without also ossifying and becoming complacent. Because the Jedi were too bound up with the Republic for that to not be the case.

[kyliafanfiction]

Nothing will kill your faith in human empathy faster than watching a fandom in action.

Jesus fucking christ.

[kyliaquilor]

I don’t disagree, but I am not convinced the lack of political goodwill that kept giving Cromwell shitty parliaments was the result of the purge or taking several years to enact the Heads of Proposals - and if we need to blame anyone for that, we should blame the Rump, rather than Cromwell for giving them more time than they deserved. Nor, frankly, do I think things like Pride’s Purge were unwarranted - negotiating with the King was a path to nowhere, and refusing to pay your soldiers and ordering them to disband without pay is just a suicidal idea in that day and age. I agree having the Rump call new elections much sooner would have been good, but the first session of the second protectorate parliament actually went pretty well, proving that some degree of functioning was possible. But the obsession that too many of them had with parliamentary supremacy and their refusal to work with the ‘Other House’ was the problem, not Cromwell. 

Not saying Cromwell didn’t make mistakes, or do bad things - he did. I’m just not convinced the people in the parliaments that refused to work with him don’t bear more of the blame for things exploding. 

(I think Cromwell refusing the offer to become King was arguably his biggest mistake, though I agree the optics would have been terrible, Parliament did genuinely vote to give it to him, so it’s not like he was actively seeking the Crown. But taking the Crown would have let him reset things on firmer footing - and made it easier, I think, for ‘King Richard IV’ - England knew how to handle dubiously capable kings, less so dubiously capable Lord Protectors which were defined as much as a military position as a political/executive one)

After Oliver Cromwell's death was the Commonwealth doomed, because of structural factors, or a republic like the United Provinces could have survived but it failed because of contingency and individuals' actions? How guilty is Cromwell for not setting solid foundations for the continuity of the Commonwealth?

Yes, the Commonwealth was doomed after Cromwell's death, but the reason why is both structural factors and contingency/agency - because the actions of a few individuals (including but not limited to Cromwell) set those structural factors in motion.

In term's of Cromwell's guilt, I would say that he bears ultimate responsbility for the institutional weaknesses of the Commonwealth. To be totally fair, he did try to fix those weaknesses repeatedly - but because of the actions he took at the beginning that set up the structural factors in question, those efforts came to naught.

That's the TLDR, I'll do the specific explanation below the cut, because it's going to go long.

Background

Just to make sure everyone's on the same page: in 1640, Charles I is forced to call Parliament even though he hates doing it. He dissolves Parliament after three weeks. (Hence why it's called the Short Parliament.) He's then forced to call Parliament again, and this Parliament is the Long Parliament. The Long Parliament enacts a whole series of legislation that Charles I hates, and then in 1642 the conflict between King and Parliament breaks out into the First English Civil War (1642-1646).

During this first phase of the conflict, it takes a while for Parliament and the Parliamentary generals to get their act together. Things begin to turn around in 1644 when the Scottish Covenanters join the war on Parliament's side and they win the Battle of Marston Moor - which gives Parliament control of the North of England and is the first battle where Cromwell plays a major role. The next year, Parliament gets rid of the original Parliamentary generals through the Self-Denying Ordinance, forms the New Model Army under Fairfax and Cromwell (the one guy specifically exempted form the Self-Denying Ordinance), and Fairfax and Cromwell go on to completely destroy the Royalist armies at Nasby and Langport.

Charles hangs on for a bit, but is eventually captured in 1646 and the first Civil War ends. The question is now: what do we do, now that Parliament has won?

The Putney Debates

Once the fighting was over, the political fighting could begin and it was quite complicated. You had the Long Parliament, which was dominated by the moderate "Presbyterian" faction who had been locked out of military power by the Self-Denying Ordinance. You had the New Model Army, which was religiously Puritan but split politically (more on this in a second). You had the Scots, politically constituted by the Scottish Parliament and militarily represented by the Covenanter armies, who wanted Presbyterianism to be extended throughout Britain. And then you had the Royalists and Charles I, who were usually but not always the same faction.

I'm going to focus here on the part of this conflict that involved the Long Parliament and the New Model Army. The Long Parliament wants to do a deal with Charles I - although the problem is that Charles is stretching out negotiations in the hopes that if everything collapses into anarchy he might get himself back on the throne - it wants a unified British Presbyterian Church established (because it had kind of agreed to set one up as the cost of getting Scottish support during the war), and it wants to get rid of the New Model Army which it views as dangerously radical and way too powerful.

The New Model Army isn't sure what it wants, because it's split between the Agitators (i.e, the Levellers) and the Grandees (the senior officers of the Army, led by Cromwell and Fairfax) - although the one thing both sides agree on is that they're not going to accept a single established Presbyterian Church and that they aren't going anywhere until they get their back pay and some sort of reforms happen that justify four years of civil war.

In the mean-time, everyone's getting very testy. First, the Long Parliament orders the New Model Army to disband in early 1647. The New Model Army refuses to disband. Then the New Model Army takes control of the prisoner Charles I in early June. In late June, a pro-Presbyterian mob invades Parliament calling for an established Presbyterian Church and for Charles I to be brought to London, causing all of the Independent (i.e, Puritan) MPs and the Speaker to flee the city and seek the protection of the New Model Army. Then in August, the New Model Army marches on London, and forces Parliament to enact a Null and Void Ordinance undoing everything the Long Parliament had done since June, which causes the Presbyterian MPs to withdraw from Parliament (temporarily), which means the Independents are now in the majority.

All of this is very confusing, and no one in the New Model Army is sure what to do now that they hold all the cards. So the New Model Army decides to have a public debate at Putney in late October in order to hash out what the Army's position is going to be.

At Putney, both sides put forward manifestos for what the Army should stand for. The Agitators put forward the "Agreement of the People," which calls for:

the Long Parliament to be dissolved and elections to be held for a new Parliament.

these elections to be held after a reapportionment of Parliament to establish equal districts on the basis of one-man-one-vote.

elections for a new Parliament every two years.

the electorate to be made up of "all men of the age of one and twenty years and upwards (not being servants, or receiving alms, or having served in the late King in Arms or voluntary Contributions)." (i.e, fairly universal male suffrage).

Parliament is to have full Executive and Legislative authority, except that the people shall have liberty of conscience, freedom from conscription, equality before the law, and there shall be amnesty for anything done or said during the Civil War.

The Grandees, who freaked the fuck out when they heard these terms and started immediately calling the Agitators "Levellers" (i.e, 17th century for "commie bastards"), put forward the "Heads of Proposals," which calls for:

the Long Parliament to be dissolved and elections to be held for a new Parliament.

these elections to be held after Parliament decides on "some rule of equality of proportion...to the respective rates they bear in the common charges and burdens of the kingdom," or on the basis of some other rule that will make the Commons "as near as may be" to equally proportioned.

for the next ten years, Parliament and not the King has authority over the military, finances, and the bureaucracy.

for the next five years, Royalists aren't allowed to run for elected office or hold appointed public offices.

the Church of England will continue to exist, but you don't have to read the Book of Common Prayer if you don't want to, you don't get fined for not going to CoE services or attending other services, and there will be no imposition of a Presbyterian Covenant.

You can see that there are some overlapping areas (no more Long Parliament, elections every two years, some form of reapportionment, some form of liberty of conscience) but there are some really significant differences - a republic versus a constitutional monarchy, a unicameral Parliament versus retaining the House of Lords, and universal suffrage versus property requirements.

During the Putney Debates, Cromwell flatly refuses to accept anything other than a constitutional monarchy, Ireton (Cromwell's son-in-law) refuses to accept universal suffrage, but the two sides agree that a committee will work out a compromise on the basis of everything else from the "Agreement" as long as the Agitators agree to go back to their regiments.

Then the King escapes from captivity and everyone panics. Cromwell and Fairfax scramble a new manifesto together and try to get the New Model Army to approve that manifesto along with everyone taking a loyalty oath to Fairfax and the General Council of the Army, the Agitators see this as a stab in the back and start up a mutiny, and Cromwell and Fairfax crush the mutiny and arrest the Agitator leadership. In late November 1647, Charles I, who has been recaptured by this point, signs a secret agreement with the Scots to invade England and restore Charles to the throne in return for Presbyterianism being established in England.

The Second Civil War

Things slow down for a bit, because the Scots are actually quite divided about this agreement - the Kirk actually condemns it as "sinful" - and it takes until April for the pro-agreement faction (known as the "Engagers") to get a majority in the Scottish Parliament.

In May 1648, Royalist uprisings break out across the kingdom, with South Wales, Kent, Essex, and Cumberland being particular centers of Royalist strength, and the Scottish Covenanter army crosses the border and invades England. Unfortunately for Charles, the Royalists, the English Presbyterians, and the Scots, they completely fail to coordinate their actions and the New Model Army is able to completely crush the uprisings one-by-one and then turns its attention to the Scots.

At the Battle of Preston in August 1648, the New Model Army under Cromwell wins another one of its ridiculously lopsided victories that make his emerging belief that he had been chosen by God somewhat understanable, and the formidable Covenanter army is crushed.

By this point, Cromwell and the rest of the Grandees are convinced of two things: one, no more negotiating with the King. As the Army Council put it rather ominously, it was their duty "to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed, and mischief he had done." Two, the (English) Presbyterians could not be trusted. They had conspired with the King and their Scottish co-religionists to overthrow the government and abolish religious liberty, and thus they had to go.

Thus, in December 1648, Pride's Purge is carried out, in which a detachment of troops acting under orders from Ireton (and thus from Cromwell) bar 140 MPs from taking their seat and arrest 45 of them. This effectively ends the Long Parliament, and the remaining 156 MPs continue to sit as the Rump Parliament. In the New Year, the Rump Parliament then votes to put the King on trial for treason and then afterwards establishes the Commonwealth as a unicameral Republic.

What Comes Next?

You'll note a couple things at this point: first, Cromwell's political positions are fairly fluid and change with events, so that he goes from being a staunch constitutional monarchist in late 1647 to a determined regicide by January 1949. Second, even though it's been a few years since the Putney Debates, Cromwell and the Grandees haven't implemented the "Heads of Proposals" - most crucially, they haven't dissolved Parliament and called for new elections, nor has a new Constitution been established.

Initially, one might say that Cromwell was distracted by his campaign to crush the Confederate-Royalist coalition in Ireland and then to crush the alliance between the Covenanters and Charles II. But by 1651, he's back in England and there's still no election and still no Constitution. Cromwell tries to get the Rump Parliament to call for new elections, establish a new Constitution that incorporates Ireland and Scotland now that they've been conquered, and finds some sort of religious settlement.

For two years, the Rump Parliament deadlocks on practically everything except the religious settlement, where it manages to piss off everyone by keeping the Church of England and its tithes, but also getting rid of the Act of Uniformity and allowing Independents to worship openly, but also passing all kinds of Puritan moral regulations. In April of 1653, Cromwell proposes that the Rump Parliament establish a caretaker government that will deal with the Constitution and new elections, but the Rump deadlocks on that too. This causes Cromwell to completely lose it and dissolve the Rump Parliament by force, culminating in one hell of a speech:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

Now there's no more Parliament and Cromwell and the Council are running the country on their own, but they don't have a plan for what to do next. A Fifth Monarchist member of the Council proposes appointing a "sanhedrin of saints" on the basis of religious credentials who will set up a godly commonwealth and bring about the imminent return of Christ. That doesn't happen, but the Council does like the idea of an appointed (rather than elected) body called the Nominated Assembly, which becomes known as Barebone's Parliament. This Parliament doesn't make it a year because of how badly it's divided between moderate republicans who want a functioning government and Fifth Monarchists who believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to Earth any day now, so why bother? Ultimately, Barebone's Parliament dissolves itself.

This then leads the Council to pass the Instruments of Government, which was essentially an adapted version of the original "Heads of Proposals." Under the Instrument, Executive power would be held by the Lord Protector who would serve for life, Legislative power would be held by a Parliament elected every three years, and then there would be a Council of State appointed by Parliament which would advise and elect the Lord Protector upon the death of the previous occupant. Thus, the Protectorate is born.

In 1654, Cromwell finally manages to get the First Protectorate Parliament elected...and it only lasts a single term, agrees to none of the 84 bills that Cromwell and the Council of State, and is promptly dissolved as soon as the Instruments would allow. And so on it went through the Second and Third Protectorate Parliaments, and then Cromwell died and the rest is history.

Conclusion

Coming back to what I mentioned at the very beginning about the interplay between structural factors and individual actions, I think we can see a kind of ratchet effect whereby decisions taken early on that foreclosed certain options compound on each other over time, leading to structural factors that weakened the Commonwealth.

The crucial turning point(s) to me are the decision to reject the Agreement of the People in 1647 and then the failure to enact the Heads of Proposals in 1647 after the Putney debates, or in 1648 or 1649 after Pride's Purge.

With the Agreement, you could have had a small-d democratic republic which would have offered ordinary working people new political rights and protections and the opportunity to buy-in to the new regime through an election for a new Parliament. With the Heads of Proposals, you could have had a more conservative republic that would have offered much the same to the traditional landed political class, which would have then granted their consent to the new regime by both standing for election and voting in that election for a new Parliament.

That kind of legitimacy was absolutely necessary in order to ensure the long-term allegiance of the population to the new regime in the face of Royalist revanchism, let alone the kind of radical changes (putting the king on trial, declaring a republic, establishing a religious settlement) that Cromwell and the Grandees saw as essential.

[kyliafanfiction]

There’s really no indication that Wolfram and Hart actually had any real plan behind bringing Darla back. Like, apart from ‘mess with Angel’s mind’, it seems clear from 2x07′s final scene they weren’t expecting Darla to give him a happy, so what on earth was their plan? Bring on the mauve phase that we see later? That sure accomplished so much for them.

Wolfram and Hart never really seemed to have any plan for Angel, beyond fuck around and find out.

[kyliafanfiction]

Honestly, if I thought it might actually be possible to just... exorcise the Amy brainrot from my head and move on with my life, fic ideas unwritten, fics unread and Worm unfinished, I'm tempted to.

Not because of the brainrot itself, but because of how fucking annoyed thinking about Ward and all the Ward-era WoG shit Wildbow pulled gets me.

[kyliafanfiction]

Is there anything more annoying than Tolkien stans going after GRRM?

Well, yes, but still.

[kyliaquilor]

Yeah, but unfortunately, this isn’t technically a war. Nor do the Geneva Conventions generally apply to domestic/internal crackdowns. It’s kind of one of the ways you can get a bunch of countries to agree to them, even dictatorships.

Now, these are horrifying and awful things that probably *should* be held at the level of being war crimes, but they aren’t. The Media absolutely should be talking about all this - but they also are talking about many instances. Not enough, in part because there aren’t enough hours in the day, and in part due to various other, less acceptable reasons (including media sensationalism focusing on violence, corporate pro-police standpoints and yes, racism on the part of some/many executives and the like in the media beyond a shadow of a doubt) But these things are bad in of themselves - bring up “war crimes” and “the Geneva conventions” is unhelpful because broadly speaking, neither applies in this context and two, because these things are just bad in of themselves. 

[kyliafanfiction]

so, I read the full fanlore page for that whole ‘fandom ghost’ thing about m/m and the way there’s this one character that keeps being written into every character over and over, across pairings, inserted into a usually minor or underdeveloped character, etc

and there was a section on a female ghost that also tends to show up in a lot of these m/m fics, a smart, sassy, beautiful female character who is also reduced to being an enabler for the m/m ship, etc. 

And while I don’t really read m/m, that does track with my limited exposure.

BUT, I think there is also a fandom ghost in f/f fic too. I honestly don’t read the wider f/f widely enough to articulate it as much, just what’s in my fandoms and I don’t really have an expansive set of them or add new ones that easily.

BUT in my experience, and from what I see in summaries and tags on ao3 and posts here on tumblr, there is a common character archtype wedged into characters regardless of if they fit, across a lot of femmeslash stories.

I can’t give a solid point by point as I write this at 5 in the morning, coming off stewing over the thoughts in my sleep, or so it feels, but like:

the m/m fandom ghost is a type a personality, controlled and tsundere and hypercompetent and gets wrecked by the messy guy that comes in and destroys their carefully crafted life, etc.

The f/f fandom ghost that I’ve seen is actually the opposite. That is, when given two characters that seem like a viable ship, one of the characters is whacked with a hammer until she fits a mold: an often clumsy or perhaps more accurately careless, butch (and made more so than her canon presentation), very muscular (again, more so than her canon presentation), often quite a ladies woman, very toppy, definitely plays opposite a more repressed or controlled character (but usually one who is bettered rooted in canon as being that), and destroys that character’s neat little world. They are usually, despite their butchness, a lot sillier or softer outside the bedroom, again, and they think sunshine comes out of the other character’s ass even before they get together and -

I’m starting to run into some limitations on the specific words because I just don’t read this enough to stop and articulate it (because I often close out of F/F fics that get too into wedging the characters into archetypes like this rather than the characters themselves (because it does happen a lot) but I very much do have a ‘I know it when I see it’ thing happening here.

I’ve seen it crop up in Buffy/Faith, Kara/Lena, Regina/Emma and in others I have read less extensively (there are F/F ships I’ve never seen it in, like Tara/Willow) that I’m not thinking of specifically

And like, there is a bit of a difference between the m/m fandom ghost, which is really the same character being dressed in a new skin over and over, and that skin usually being a minor or secondary character, etc, and this f/f one, which is more likely (but not always) to be fit into a fairly prominent character, and is less like one character wearing different skin and more many square characters being badly bashed into one round hole, but

I feel like I’m on to something here. For some femmeslash writers, there really are a lot of fics that feel like they’re not writing the two characters. They’re writing the one character and an archetype that may not actually fit the other character all that well, but damn the Torpedos and full speed ahead.