#SIX FANDOM WHERE YOU AT

[katherines-howard]

lina: this was a 100% successful trip

jane: we lost anne

lina:

lina: this was a 100% successful trip

[locusfandomtime]

i hope you guys understand my vision

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[necrotic-nephilim]

I started in DC by reading fanfics, but as I began to read actual comics, I started to be unable to read the actual fanfic that got me into it in the first place because it's so out of character.

But there are still some stories that I love to read because I love the found family trope so much, even if it isn't really accurate to the source material.

As a comics purist (sometimes), are there tropes that you like enough that you'll still enjoy a fic even if it's not accurate to canon?

oh my god this is SUCH a fun question. bc while i started with the comics, there were certain characters and/or character dynamics where i was exposed to the fanon before the canon (just bc it's hard to read everything when you start out just to read some fanfic) and so i've definitely experienced the fanon to canon transition. (*especially* with Jason Todd. i had only read 80s/90s stuff where he was already dead or the New-52 bc that was on-going when i got into comics and man. the fanon misunderstandings i had about him before i got frustrated and sat down to read all his pre-Flashpoint stuff were absolutely bonkers.) and aside from that, whilst i tend to prefer canon over fanon, i'm not past giving fanon its flowers for occasionally having really interesting insights. occasionally. so some of my fanon "guilty pleasure" tropes would probably be

Morally Grey Tim Drake - this is one where if you try to back it up with canon, i *will* get salty about it. of everyone in the Batfam aside from maybe Bruce and Cass, Tim has the *most* black and white morals. often his internal conflicts are routed in such an inability to compromise his moral views and it can cause him to clash with other characters. he's *very* stiff and rigid in his beliefs and is *rare* to compromise in even the smallest ways. i mean, DC has repeatedly used Tim Drake of Tomorrow/Savior/Gun Batman!Tim for a reason. it's to demonstrate that of everyone, Tim *cannot* have his morals compromised. there's no grey area for him. he's zero or a hundred, so if he tips over the edge of "too far" he tips *all the way*, and doing so is one of his worst fears, how he could go "too far" if he let himself. a couple panels out of context from Red Robin (2009) (which was a grief spiral for Tim to begin with) don't change that. now that said. if it's done *right*, i sort of love Tim being morally grey in fanfic. it takes a specific flavor for me, and it's incredibly important to include that mental spiral along with it, of him struggling to justify it. i don't have any interest in "Tim Drake is loosy goosy with Bruce's morals and has the highest kill count and no one knows teehee" bc it doesn't play with the interesting parts of making Tim morally grey, which are fracturing his psyche. but all in all, i think it's fun to put Tim in a morally grey area and i will read it in fanfic and i enjoy writing it a lot

Joker Junior!Tim Drake - i've not written it on this account (yet) but on my main ao3 account one of my biggest fics surrounds this concept. this is one of those "well *technically* it's canon but only in a specific very divorced from the comics universe and would not work at all in the main timeline" so, i categorize it as fanon in that 95% of fics exploring the concept are not doing so within the Batman Beyond universe, but the main timeline. i just love it. I'll take any excuse to whump Tim, but this concept is so fun. psychologically breaking Tim will always be my favorite pastime. there are so many ways to explore the long-term effects this could have on him, how it could affect the Batfam. i'm not a fan of it being used as a "gotcha" to Jason or Babs' trauma with the Joker to paint Tim as the Ultimate Victim, but it is fun to see how their relationships would be affected by being mutual victims of him. (i have a vague JayTim idea where TIm fully retires from being Robin after being Joker Junior and killing the Joker, making Steph Robin for most of his typical Robin era and Jason still tracks him down out of curiosity bc he wants to know what happened and all. very underbaked but i've got thoughts.)

Renegade/Apprentice of Slade!Dick Grayson - this is another one where yes, this happened *sort of* in canon, but i highly doubt most people writing Renegate!Dick have read or are actually pulling from Nightwing: Renegade. it's just an exploration fo the concept fo Dick being Slade's apprentice and i will always eat it up in any capacity. whether Dick grows up with Slade from a young age, or chooses Slade for whatever reason later in life. it's not anything that works in canon bc it compromises Dick morally (similar to the above with Tim) and therefore will always come across incredibly fanon in most fics. but i can't say i don't enjoy it. it's fun to make Dick a little morally fucked up and see what you can make him under Slade's tutelage.

Jason & Damian Meeting in the League -there's no world where i believe this could work in the canon comics. (maybe in the Young Justice cartoon i suppose, but even then i think it's iffy) i would go as far to say it's wildly unrealistic. i don't see a world where Ra's would let Jason anywhere *near* Damian, bc Jason was Talia's pet project that he didn't approve of. that all said, there's something very interesting about how they *could've* met and them potentially bonding during that timeframe. them being somewhat brotherly during this time because Jason sees Bruce in Damian and sort of latches onto the kid and Damian is full of wonder hearing real stories about Batman and Robin, then that getting violently ripped away by Jason leaving the League is fun to me. it's fun how that could affect them within the Batfam and all. it's super fanon to me, but i do not care. i will eat it up

Bad Dad Clark Kent/Good Dad Lex Luthor - i will admit as a late, i've been less and less kind to this particular fanon bc of everything i've argued with people about, *this* one seems the most pervasive as misunderstood fanon. i don't mind when fanon exists, my gripe is when ppl try to claim it's canon. and the *arguments* i've had over this with people who can never seem to cite an actual comic are... frustrating. but that said, i think there is something fun to this strictly in fanon. the duality of who you expect to accept Kon and who you expect to hurt him being flipped is just sort of fun for the occasional guilty pleasure fic. it can make Kon's internal conflict a bit more interesting. the same goes for the Jon favoritism from Clark, it's not a canon thing (and i rlly wish ppl understood how complicated the timeline of Kon and Jon is and any distance from Clark toward Kon isn't malice, it's that Kon is from a timeline that Clark does not remember in the current canon so Clark just straight up doesn't know the poor kid.) but it's sort of fun to give Kon that complex of being overlooked and forgotten sometimes. making Kon just a *bit* more Luthor than Kent will *always* appeal to me in fanfic, especially if he *knows* it's wrong but craves approval from anyone who will give it.

Good Dad Bruce Wayne - i'll die on the hill Bruce is canonically a shitty father. maybe not to the extreme some people write him as, but he's not great at it. that said, i enjoy it in fanfiction. sometimes, i just want silly fluff or hurt/comfort where Bruce finally gets it right and manages to comfort whatever Batkid is in the fic. one of my favorite fics of all time is hinged on Bruce being a good dad, so i think it's just fun to explore how good the relationships *could* be, if Bruce was slightly less of an asshole. i usually prefer him as an asshole, but there are times i want low stakes nonsense.

Gotham Rogues Having Soft Spots for Robin(s) - just about every Rogue in Gotham has done something absolutely irredeemable, and most of them don't like or care about anyone in the Batfamily. but if there's a fic where one of the Robins inexplicably is sort of close with a Rogue and they have a cute silly relationship out of it? I'll eat it up i fear. Steph and the Riddler are besties? I'll believe it. Tim and Scarecrow get along pretty well? give me ten of these. Rogues protecting Robins just hits a spot. the unexpected nature of the relationship, as well as the fact they see each other regularly, can make a lot of good fodder.

[jackfrostimposter]

genuinely why is there so much misinformation about the guardians of childhood book series?

[okurrroye]

See what we not going to do is dangle Darilyn again instead give me Benius you idiotic cowards.

[nashvillethotchicken]

"Lestat would get woken up by the macarena" "No he'd get waken up by dubstep" "No he'd get waken up by Call Me Maybe" You fool's. You absolute fools. Lestat is buried/out in the dump of New Orleans, a city that's 60 percent black. He's getting woken up by Back That Azz Up by Juvenile

[sodaspoppers]

Woah!! Redraw upon ye

This is and always has been a Yuki Juza friendship household

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Underappreciated aspect of The Great Race: Gordon and Philip's evolving relationship.

It's so pure how Philip consistently calls/refers to Gordon as "the Shooting Star" (even when he's being menaced by that mean American lug and shoved off a cliff! even then, he still remembers Gordon's new 'pronouns'!)

Gordon seems to really appreciate Philip being the only one to respect his preferred name, too. He clearly finds Philip annoying at the beginning of the movie, but they be rollin' along together at the end.

[isnt-it-pretty]

Catch me writing fanfiction for niche fandoms again

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

People on social media will get mad as hell and call you problematic if you enjoy a villain for being, well, a villain.

[sagittariusdarkarrow]

So let me see if I understand what this week is about: apparently I'm in a bad plot of Arranged Marriage AU (I have no explanation for how a monk came to this). Also apparently I'm always cooking - and Vince @victorian-pirate isn't - and that says something according to Fixa's essay (where's that, @fixaidea ? We have a point to make here). Also outsiders are thinking we're having some sort of fandom event (maybe we are @dual-domination). Also people wonder if everyone on the team is gay, except @meluci-fer that is lesbian (I am, but Luci is bi, actually). And most importantly: due to recent events, my baobei was promoted by Deputy Chief @tazzy-ace from sweet Professor to Ghost Slayer.

[dirtytransmasc]

this post is gonna seem so fucking random, and its really not at all important, tiktok is just being tiktok, and I have something to say that really doesn't mean shit but would get me flamed on that hellsite, and I hate not saying whats on my mind, even when its in my best interest so I'm saying it here, cause I can, just ignore me.

there seems to be this devote group of people in the SoC's fandom (*cough cough* I've only seen them on tiktok, and they're always those types of fans, that just like, care way to much about others opinions. *cough cough*) who hate people who see the dynamic of kaz and wylan as a father/son-esque relationship, like getting all types of mad about it. again it was like 5 or 6 people, but it was enough to make me really think about it and then proceed to get pissy, cause I'm a stubborn asshole at heart who can't just drop something once it's pissed me off, and it really only pissed me off cause someone said interpreting them like that was "infantilizing gay men" and I just... no, please no, that's not at all whats happening, I promise.

so here's my unnecessary two cents, cause I can't just move on;

what would you like me to call their dynamic hmm? kaz is only a bit older in age, but forced himself to mature and take on burdens that make him much older then he is, burdens he won't let anyone take off his shoulders. while he is very much like a mentor or older brother to wylan, trying to be who he needed after losing jordie, his role within the group as a whole puts him into much more of a caretaker role. he's the dad of the group, he is provider and protector, he is the brawny brains so to speak, a very paternal energy as head of the 'family'. he is the protector of his crows, he takes care of them, all of them, in his own fucked up ways, being what they need him to be. he would do anything for them, even if he tries to hide it, and this typically ends up with him in one way or another taking on a nurturing role of sorts (describing this man is so hard, cause his internal vs. external actions are so fucked by his mental state. going above and beyond for him and like bare minimum to the average person, and I don't know how to verbalize it). factor that into the fact that wylan lacks a father figure, a good one at least, he naturally plays that role in a very similar way that an older brother or mentor would fill the void of a younger sibling/mentee. wylan also looks up to and takes after kaz a lot, which points into the father/son-esque vibes. all in all, no they aren't your traditional father/son dynamic, but like, that's the closest simple term I can slap on them, cause I'm not giving this little speech a million times. their dynamic is messy and layered and complicated by both of their metric tons of trauma, paired with the overall found-family/trauma-bond thing those littles shits got going on over there. let them be messy and let me just sat father/son for my sanity, I beg (if someone tells me I'm infantilizing wylan cause he's gay/dyslexic/autistic-coded I'm gonna have a stroke, I just want my boys to be vaguely happy and have some semblance of family alright, and sure, maybe my daddy issues play into it, but that's none of your goddamned business)

please say I'm not the only one to encounter those fans, and please tell me this makes sense to someone, I beg of you.

[parvuls]

okay wait I'm writing an actual post so I can start handling all these emotions

[good-to-drive]

One of the weirdest things about this website is clicking on a seemingly normal mutual and finding out they reiterate anti vax talking points like it's a competition

[doesnotloveyou]

Seeing a lot of innocently ignorant polls lately where op exposes their gaping lack of knowledge on the subject they're polling about. the schadenfreude is rich today, my friends