#WOW i have not used my meta tag in a while

[gizkalord]

I've noticed newer media about tcw era anakin and ahsoka is generally more angsty and has touched more upon anakin's tough love teaching style (aka tales of the jedi ep), and this episode in particular portrays... idk, a degree of emotional unavailability on anakin's end? which is kind of fascinating because it's somewhat incongruent with their actual tcw portrayal which tended to put a lighthearted spin on things—i think it's partly because newer content is made knowing that the main fanbase has aged up, partly because the deep ins and outs of their dynamic was never the main focus, and partly because filoni's own opinions have developed over the years.

at the same time, this is also something that i've kind of suspected for a while?? anakin's whole deal is chronically bottling up his extremely strong internal emotions, so i don't think it's unrealistic that he seems distant/closed off and then sublimates those feelings into extremely overprotective actions and harsh training. which then also doubly explains why ahsoka was always so frustrated by that in earlier tcw arcs, because from her perspective, it's like he's wanting her to be super independent but then is also simultaneously overbearing.

i've always felt they've never had a "talking" kind of relationship (see: old friends not forgotten), and all of this fits with that idea. that being said, both the totj ep and the ryloth vision are set earlier in their relationship, which tracks with how i believe things improved with time as they got to know each other better, with ahsoka in particular getting a better grasp on the more unsaid things between them.

anyways, it's all very interesting and i'm glad their relationship is being shown as complex and messy, because it was!! they both cared SO deeply about each other, but their respective inability to properly communicate and open up when it mattered doomed them, especially in the setting of such a high stress/trauma situation.

[bbcphile]

AO3 Wrapped 2024 (Writer's Edition)

Thanks for the tag, @momosandlemonsoda, and for the asks, @evolutionsbedingt and @hideyseek! :D 

1. How many words have you written this year?

I’ve posted 14,838 words to AO3 this year, which is exciting after around six years of not being able to write because of medical stuff! This year, I’ve also written an addition 72,107 for my MLC long fic draft, and I have an additional 20k words in my “MLC rejected text” docs, plus another 9488 words of meta I posted on Tumblr (I’m not going to look at the wordcount of the “rejected text” file for my CPTSD metas). So, all together, that’s 116,433 words between January 1st and mid-September, which I’m pretty excited about!

2. How many works did you publish this year?

Just 2 fics on AO3: "What's Sealed Away" and "Waning Marks and Dawning Realizations."

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

I’ve talked before about why I’m proud of “What’s Sealed Away,” but I haven’t said much about “Waning Marks and Dawning Realizations” here yet, so I’ll say more about that. It didn’t get nearly as much engagement as “What’s Sealed Away,” but I’m equally proud of it. I was so excited with what I was doing with the flour symbolism and the ways in which trauma leaves its marks–physical and psychological–and that while those marks can’t be wiped away, you can still make a good and happy life regardless. It was really really important to me to write something where even though LLH is healed from Bicha physically, he and DFS still have plenty of emotional wounds from it that they are still learning to navigate. It was fun to write something that was fluffy and sexy and had great banter, but also was an incredibly serious meditation on trauma and the way it lingers. Yay for trying to capture the contradictions of life? Anyway, I hope more people read it/comment on it eventually, because I’m really proud of it.

4. What work of yours has the most hits? 

What’s Sealed Away is the work from this year that has the most hits (1,140).

5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

It was so exciting to get such a positive response for “What’s Sealed Away.” I definitely go back and reread the comments if I need a reminder of my own abilities. It made me so happy to see people quoting the lines they’d enjoyed the most, or identifying the thematic work I was doing, or just having feelings about the characters and how I’d written them! 

6. Favorite title you used? 

I’m still so very proud of “What’s Sealed Away” as a title and the many different ways that can be read and interpreted. :D

7. If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? 

I didn’t use song lyrics in these fics, sorry!

8. Pairing you wrote the most for this year? 

I’ve published the most for Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua, but I’ve written the most for the Lotus Trio (Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing), even though these 3 haven't gotten together yet in the fic. *facepalm *

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? 

It’s hard to say! Dihua is definitely easier for me to write for than the Lotus Trio, but I love difanghua a lot, too.

10. What work was the quickest to write? 

“What’s Sealed Away” was surprisingly the quickest, despite its length. It took about a week between the moment of coming up with the premise to the moment I hit publish on AO3.

11. What work took you the longest to write? 

My MLC long fic, which is 72k and still going, and I’m only just about in the middle of it (*wails *). When I’m not having crises of self-confidence, I’m fairly proud of it and really enjoy working on it, but wow, I sometimes wish I had picked an easier and less emotionally complicated subject with less character development to write about, because then I would have finished it several times over by now. 

12. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? 

*Cries * Heh. Ummmmmmm. Too many? So, my MLC long fic, obviously, and then there’s also the sequel to the anniversary fic which I’m collaborating on with @greentealycheejelly, and then there are about 5 other WIPS for MLC that I have entirely outlined and just haven’t been able to write because life keeps kicking my ass. (Also, I have two different Fangs of Fortune fics that I want to write, but that might not happen because of all the other things on my to write list.)

13. What’s your longest work of the year? 

The MLC long fic in terms of things not on AO3. “What’s Sealed away” (11,135 words) in terms of fics on AO3.

14. What’s your shortest work of the year? 

“Waning Marks and Dawning Realizations” (3703 words). 

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

MLC long fic and the anniversary sequel. 

16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? 

Sharing a bed. :D 

17. Your favorite character to write this year? 

Oooh. Probably Di Feisheng. I just love the gaping chasm between what he shows to the world and what’s happening internally, although that’s ironically less obvious in the fics I’ve posted to AO3 this year compared to what I’ve written for the MLC long fic.

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

Probably Li Lianhua. I love that I get to be a little more poetic while writing his POV, but my main challenge with him is how much he won’t let himself contemplate or acknowledge. I mean, it’s fun to hint at all the things happening under the surface that he won’t fully name or admit to, but I also spend a lot of time rewriting and trying to make things more opaque and less explicit.

19. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

I am very much looking forward to reaching the point in my long fic where Difanghua is actually together and playing with the intricacies and growing pains of that relationship.

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

Probably “What’s Sealed Away.” Normally, I can barely reread my own published work without wanting to delete it, massively edit it, or just hide under a blanket for the rest of time, and the fact that I occasionally voluntarily re-read it and find things to like and be proud of about it is pretty exciting. :D 

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year? 

213! (well, for my new fics. I know I got some for some of my older fics but I don't know how to track that.)

22. Which work has the most comments?

“What’s Sealed Away” (63 comments in 26 threads). 

23. Did you do any collaborative works this year?

@greentealycheejelly and I started working on the sequel to “Waning Marks and Dawning Realizations,” but had to put it on hold while my life exploded. Hopefully we can get back to it in the new year!

24. Did you write any gifts this year? 

I did! “Waning Marks and Dawning Realizations,” for @exitvelocities as part of the dihua exchange.

25. Did you receive any gifts this year? 

I did! And I feel so very loved! Thank you to @the-wintry-mizzenmast for “無路可走可回歸 No One is Lost,” to @omgpurplefattie for “The End of the Tether,” to @evolutionsbedingt for “To All the Things I've Lost On You” and “The Tassel Incident,” to @momosandlemonsoda for “Out of the Spotlight,” and to @eirenical for “From the Mud of Adversity.” And for art, thank you to @greentealycheejelly for this amazing illustration from “What’s Sealed Away.” (Wow, I am tearing up typing this all up! Seriously, thank you all! You’re all amazing! <3 ) 

26. What’s your most common category? 

M/M

27. What do you listen to while writing? 

Heh. Well, it’s the wrong fandom and it’s more sound than music, but I usually put on tabletop audio’s “age of sail” soundscape. I always had it on in the background while writing “Harboured and Encompassed” back in the day, and now it just automatically helps me calm down and focus, even though there aren’t any tall ships in my fics. :D 

I’m still searching for the right music to write to for my long fic, so I really hope I find it soon, because it makes things so much easier!

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

I love them all, but I guess I’ll choose “What’s Sealed Away,” because I’m still proud of my take on a-Fei with amnesia.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? 

Oh yikes. Um, I’m bad at choosing favorites, so here’s one from each of the two fics I posted this year:

From “What’s Sealed Away”: “Then, he wouldn’t have to wonder what else he liked or didn’t like, or what skills or abilities he had yet to discover. Or why Li Lianhua’s name felt wrong in his mouth, but only his dao had felt as right against his palm as the man’s hand.”

**

From “Waning Marks”: “Di Feisheng stilled, then slowly turned towards him, shoulders almost imperceptibly straightening. Di Mengzhu’s proud and unflinching eyes met his own, but underneath that, like the black zhongyi beneath a coating of flour, a-Fei’s did, too, wearing the wince the rest of him tried to bury. Li Lianhua waited, letting a-Fei search his expression and catalog the twitches at the corner of his lips and the faint dampness at the corners of his eyes that together voiced the words he couldn’t speak.

A-Fei dipped his head in a nearly invisible nod, a hint of a smile curling his lip as his shoulders lost their infinitesimal hint of tension. “Good morning,” he said, as though he didn’t look like he’d been caught in a blizzard and he hadn’t stayed up all night cooking for them.

This ridiculous, dear, impossible man. “You know, Di-mengzhu,” Li Lianhua began, clearing the distance between them, “if you missed snow so much, we could have gone north instead of south for the winter.”

A-Fei snorted. “You never dust. I didn’t think you’d notice.”

Li Lianhua tried and failed to suppress a smile, and covered it by brushing the flour off a-Fei’s shoulder. “You do realize you’re supposed to knead dough with only a fraction of your strength?”

A-Fei rolled his eyes. “I did.”

Li Lianhua huffed out a laugh. “A small fraction of your strength.”

“It’s not my fault the brat’s recipe lacked precision,” a-Fei grumbled, setting the sheet of paper in question on the counter.

Li Lianhua had no choice but to kiss the hint of a pout off his lips, wiping a streak of white off his cheekbone with his thumb in the process.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year? 

That I was able to write at all? That may sound strange, but I’m being completely serious: I’m still so excited that my health was stable enough for the better part of 8 months to write so much, after years and years of barely even having the energy to write an email! I’m really hoping that once we move to the new place and finish getting rid of our possessions the mold apartment 2.0 contaminated, I’ll be able to stop feeling so sick all the time and will get back to writing! Fingers crossed! 

Tagging @eirenical, @evolutionsbedingt @the-wintry-mizzenmast, @howdaretrashships, @la-muerta, @thesilversun, @exitvelocities, and @hideyseek, but no pressure if you don’t want to do it!

[theomnicode]

How I write metas? A meta about metas

If this deconstruction post is going to be useful for any aspiring meta writer on this OPM fandom that I currently follow, then be my guest. :D

Warning: Semi-long post.

Step 1: Inspiration

Nope, really can't get into my head all the time to write stuff as much as I would love to but when I do, it's because I get a good inspiration from something. It does not really matter at this point if it's short or long, just the subject matters. Then if I get inspired, I will usually stew on that idea for a while and think about the points in the manga that fit.

Unfortunately inspiration does not strike all the time so there's always that. I'm going with the route that "you can't force inspiration to come to you, you want the inspiration to become you" or something like that. Take that with grain of salt, I just made it up on the spot.

Step 2: Practice

I've personally been writing fanfics since I was...a teen I believe and meta is just a subsection of writing school essays, except it's actually fun. So writing something has been quite a lot of work put behind it, but nobody says one cannot start from scratch today and the meta doesn't need to be immediately impressive, we're just writing it for fun yanno? For other fandom peeps who maybe wanna hear our thoughts. Just gotta start from somewhere yanno? My earlier metas are prolly a fair bit different than my current metas.

Like they say, practice makes perfect.

Step 3: The creative process

Ok so to the nitty gritty of the meta making... PLOT NO JUTSU!

I oftentimes either discuss the meta on discord channels with likeminded peeps and then start gathering some images from the manga to use as my images to enhance my point and make my texts also visually interesting to look at and make some clarifying points. I tend to find some good relative image to use as my first image because it'll show up in archive search like so:

It'll be easier to search for my metas even without searching for my tags from my archives if they look similar.

Next, I keep a folder for all my meta images in a neat pile and I use paint ms to cut me nice images to post into my meta and I also have cubari , the one site which hosts all the chapters so far, open where I can just grab images whenever. Basically any kind of image tool you got from paint to gimp to photoshop can help you crop images you want to use if you want to use images in your meta.

My brain can sometimes be pretty hard to follow apparently, so I do try to parse a lot when I write my texts and keep it somewhat coherent. Parsing information via the canon timeline can help form a coherent timeline to follow in a meta.

In general, you want your writing progress to be seamless and disturbance free creative process, not unlike drawing. Sometimes ambient music on the background can help focus on the actual meta writing process (currently listening to Ardenweald from WoW), which can take me from 1 hour to all the way to 5 hours in a single sitting, which is quite long but remember, tumblr drafts saves your progress even if you save it nowhere else and it's entirely possible to finish the thinking process another day when you have more time.

Sometimes I include links to either my own metas or some outside source, which I then briefly quote on my text, like in the Saitama mental health meta where I citate depression effects on memory recollection. The quote sources can also be stated at the very end like in a real essay, but to me personally I'm fine without the citations at the end, long as I state my sources and then put quotes into indented text.

Step 4: The writing itself

Paraphrasing helps make your text look coherent and easier to read to just about anybody, so avoid pure walls of texts. I usually write longer texts, but that is up to the writer to decide how short, long or how abridged they can/wanna make their work, which frankly is not one of my best skillsets lmao. Just gotta make sure to put that warning in the front if it's long post.

Nowdays, I also include chapter names and numbers about the relevant information I'm writing meta about in between () marks and itallics to further separate it from plain text, which might be helpful to people if they search for that specific plot point from the manga itself. Then if it's a particularly long meta, a tl;dr at the bottom if I can form a proper tldr.

Sometimes I also get struck by random thought and I just have to write it out haha. Sometimes I ask for aid and opinions on discord channels.

Any long metas should definitely have that "readmore" cutoff in the beginning, else entirety of tumblr or wherever you'll post the meta will hate you.

Step 5: Revision & Tagging

You can hold on from posting the meta the very same day and just keep it revised for a bit longer if you want to correct spelling mistakes or if you think you can maybe adds some more to it. Revision is just as important in writing meta as in writing something like fanfiction and I personally do a fair bit of both.

When tagging, I just use "opm meta" for all my opm related metas and then tag in fandom and characters that apply to the current meta and then some other related subjects like "mental health, character study" etc. I prolly haven't tagged my earlier metas that properly but eh... if you write on another platform and then copypaste it to tumblr, make sure that the plain text shows properly and doesn't create any weirdness.

Closing thoughts...that's about it folks, that's how I write meta and how I wrote this piece as well. Which took me roughtly 1hr 45mins to write down at my current writing speed but I've been thinking about this since yesterday haha.

Tl;dr: Inspiration, practice, creative process by saving images and thoughts as they go, writing and paraphrasing, revision and tagging properly.

[wereoz]

@cnka i wanted to reply to ur question abt my thoughts on the tsn doc on my actual post but the tags were so insanely long i was like. i need to make an actual post

SO IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

first off, wow im just so astounded by the fervent love that went into making tsn. it was a risk and so unlike other projects fincher and anyone else there had done but w/ their commitment to it it turned out SO amazingly. the fact they sat around a table and argued for hours abt how the lines fit and everyone could make their case is just. WOW!!!! they really made sure everyone understood and loved playing their characters.

erica's and christies actresses werent very common appearances like mark but they really went all in too im in AWE!! NOT TO MENTION MARYLINS WOW!! rooney mara really just. god she went so hard into making sure all of ericas kindness and leniency and frustration were so clear, she was so focused in the behind the scenes footage and obviously having so much fun <33 i love that brenda song was able to relate to christie's jealousy and fear eduardo was cheating. the fact all the actors ARE the characters ages and are as chaotic and fierce and dedicated and ambitious makes it soooo<3333 rashida jones describing marilyn as a greek chorus just watching hit SO hard. the second hand experience of this young man going through this epic tale by just hearing it thru testimony is a crazy thing. the act of listening is so simple but becomes so emotional even as everyone wants to keep it professional

on the twins: i find it so wonderful that the actors armie and josh played both twins. it just WORKS bc twins take the 'know u better than u do' that siblings have and take it to absolutely insane levels. the fact these actors have literally got access to both the twins minds takes the performance to a whole new level like those twins know each other inside and out!!!! its a meta thing that goes truly crazy.

you have already seen me say the bts of the erica and mark breakup truly kills me bc. he is being an asshole and not listening and the fact he doesn’t mean to doesn’t change that he is. she has to leave, but it’s so sad that she does bc… fincher calling him 'damaged goods' implies a universe where whatever makes him like this isnt present. where maybe he’s fine. so. GOD :’(( (i think it’s autism + the bad life experiences that come from that & being queer + the bad life experiences that come from that, heightened by the era)

on a more positive note i love that on set picking out the accessories andrew says ‘i’ when hes speaking as eduardo. he’s really dedicated to the role its great. also that he and jesse had conversations in character like these 20 year olds r crazy truly. love them for that !!

during the whole thing, everyone is so suspicious, and condemning to mark: like, noting that he is driven by ego, jesse jokes mark is okay with the cold because he doesn’t feel anything, and also, there’s a part when sorkin, fincher, andrew, and jesse are sitting around and talking about the scene where mark & eduardo argue abt ads. essentially, they make the argument that mark always says ‘i’ when eduardo says ‘we’ because in his mind, eduardo hasn’t contributed much at all. while mark is up coding for hours straight, eduardo is at some phoenix thing so? what gives?

so i was reframing my understanding of mark (which. is very indulgent cus i love him), and trying to get as close to his brain as i could and i was coming up with him generally being pretty… hard on the outside for lack of a better word. he’s not traditionally intimidating (like the script states) but its hard to crack him and you can really see this with jesse’s physicality like he’s so stiff. that’s pretty innocuous but i think this is something he uses to put distance between him and his loved ones- very frustrating. and i think every time i realise how much mark is an asshole i remember so many reasons why they added *trying to be.

when fincher called him damaged goods it’s like. the most in the doc people give him the benefit of the doubt (also sorkin saying he wanted to balance out all of mark’s character). which is pretty good because marks good traits are supposed to be very subtle and hit you when you don’t expect it. that’s very much how i felt when i suddenly remembered ‘sorry. that was mean.’ he truly is just trying to be an asshole. he wants to be nicer than he is but he also wants more power than he does and as someone who felt pretty powerless the rest of his life, that trumps the rest. he really thinks he can have both experiences, power and love, and he just hates that every time he takes a step in one direction it cancels out the other. this actually really fits in well w/ my next point

i also want to say that the fact mark videoing everyone was explained as him wanting to force proof that everything is fine, and they’re happy is making me so :(( MARK!!!! :(( he is so. i mean its two things: its the ‘i won, but did i?’ of it all. mark won the argument but its a hollow victory, being some sillicon valley titan isn’t emotionally fulfilling, it will never be enough. especially not when its costing him a good friend. the way the end is laced throughout the entire movie is so sick to me

re marks bullshit i also love how they mentioned that marks jealousy about the final clubs is more than just wanting to be in eduardo’s position its like - i thought we had some loser solidarity and now its like you’re a whole different person. its less of a horrible feeling when ur at the bottom with someone and mark feels betrayed. ofc mark doesn’t feel safe to express this emotion (bc bullied nerd boy whos probs bi in the 2000s), or doesn’t know that’s what he’s feeling, and decides it’s eduardo’s fault and freezes him out for it.

this is just off the top of my head i certainly have more and will probably talk more abt this lovely doc again :^))

[lurkingteapot]

Last Twilight ภาพนายไม่เคยลืม Ep 1

I watched this last night and was pleasantly surprised! I trust P'Aof with narratives of queerness and with social critique, but disability to this extent is a new topic for him and his team to tackle as far as I can tell, and it's very very easy to catch me on the wrong foot with that even without going to the extent of, say, Fighting Mr Second. Yes, I know Moonlight Chicken treated Heart really well. still. WORRIED.

I mentioned that the final trailer reminded me a little of French comedy-drama Intouchables (2011), especially the interview scenes. I got those same vibes while watching the actual scenes from the show, rather than the trailer, but in a good way -- and already, this is clearly its own thing.

oh I like the blur on the advisory message

urgh what's with this flashiness, that's not great, this ep needs a seizure risk warning (flashing black/white lights right after the adivsory message ends until about 00:00:33)

this seems like a horror film

Film!!

I bet P'Aof quizzed Mark extensively for this

ffs Day, call a break

the tone of this is so different from what I expected and I think I like it

oh wait I know her face

Phawjai, huh?

sisters named Rung just do not have a good track record in these shows

he's "ba~"-ing that dude, WHAT. that does not sound like a strategy that's likely to lead to success with your probation officer, just saying

he's literally out on probation, huh, they REALLY leaned into that with the ankle bracelet and everything.

timeskip?

oh c'mon clearly-not-professor-Pichai

he's going to just fix the chair, isn't he

CALLED IT

man this show does already not pull its punches

I like that they at least tried with the five o clock shadow on Jimmy. He still looks like a model, but they clearly TRIED.

love to see Mawk among all the social worker types

wait wait wait I know glasses, why do I know glasses

they're ALL TALKING LIKE HE'S NOT HERE what the FUCK

adsfasdfasdfasdfasdfadsfasdfasdfasdfsd wow the SHADE I love it

asdfsaf RIGHT BACK AT HIM I love this

Oh god Day is an ASSHOLE and I love it

Night hates himmm and I get it

does Day not even realise he's there on that lift?!

wow lady that's unprofessional

holy shit I get that, on a meta level, this is for the exposition, but exposing someone's medical history like that?! YIKES.

oof

loaded sibling relationship there

wow he's an ASSHOLE

Annnd Night's an ass right back but uh. I kinda get it.

oooh he's in visible distance

I guess Mawk is just used to dealng with assholes, huh

oh my GOD I love this le petit prince quoting bit??? did not expect that!

Mark looks his actual age as night, love that for him

for a second there I forgot that not all doors lock automatically like the hotel doors of all those "apartments" or "dorms" we see and was like, wait, he can just walk back in? just like that?

OH

and that's the foundation: Mawk trusts Day to do things for himself

this mum does NOT look old enough to have kids Sea and Mark's age, what's her secret

I really enjoyed that! strong first episode, already not pulling any punches on the social commentary. I really enjoyed everyone's acting here-- Jimmy especially seems to have improved a lot, I look forward to seeing where this goes.

Now! to unblock the tag and see what everyone else is saying :D

[ladysomething]

at the end we didn't re read, but rather read Archive of Our Own. and you know what. I was fucking right. if it's yours, is good. that a goddamn law by now.

1. I'm soooo Charles trying to explain Max about ao3. sadly, truthfully, I do not have a hot best friend to yap to and force to read the stuff I read who has a spot for me. WHERE IS MY OWN MAX. also yes Charles. the notes. the tags. so important. you don't wanna learn it the bad way.

2. I got a flashback reading when Max called out Charles and writers. literally my roomie. and now, look at him. he's gone so far, my boy is all grown up 🥹

3. I can absolutely see the grid turning this into a competition. egocentric bunch of competitive assholes (affectionate) also the press con? excuse you?

4. omg maddie the phone scene was FIREEEEE. dare I say, you professed your own fic because as much as I loved the end, the call was a little hotter than the actual thing.

5. so we've all agreeded that Max is oblivious as hell? yes? alright. like. the names? the titles of the fics? ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?! Charles was almost screaming at the top of his lungs and Max was like uh yeah. how was it? I want him to be happy and to be there to see it for the rest of my life? my bed is cold and empty without you? I miss him so much my chest aches? the cuddling as well?!?! (I screamed) yeah buddy. so so friend coded. suuuure.

+1. I decided to open a bottle of red wine yesterday and I laughed so much reading this. like so so much. met me tell you, that was a bad combination. my couch now has two stains of some fancy italian red wine. one is my fault. the other one is from my gay roommate hearing about spit as lube for the first time. you had to see his face.

+2. Max does indeed has, a breeding kink. I know. I was one of the unused condoms from the strip Charles had.

+3. writer+blogger+lestappie+chussyandbottomcharlestruther Charles holds a special place in my heart. also, the reader that called him out on characterization and wheel. knowledge LMAO. and finally, how the fuck did he found out about ao3. and how do we not get there.

can't wait for the next wygig chapter, whenever it comes! also, loved this completely short and not almost completed fic-like one shot. ❤️

the levels of meta of Max being quintessential written by a woman character while at the same time in fic critiquing fake Max being written by women .............

so we all went through the 'is this morally ethical' to enjoying omega verse pipeline then huh ...

literallllyyyyyyy they all got so into it. the sniff of a grid wide competition and they al run off with it

when I had the idea for the phone sex I was like "my mind. wow." so I totally agreeee

max was so deep in denial that he came out the other side and was pining hopelessly the entire time

+1. not the red wine stains!!!! also when my gay best friend found out I was writing gay sex he was like "ok you do you but if you use spit as lube I will kill you" so. that pipeline is also very real.

+2. oh my god. screaming crying throwing up. that's so funny. (and yes you're right. he totally does)

+3. he for sure already knew about ao3 and fic but had never read it and then he was casually watching some lestappen edits on TikTok to pine over Max, saw someone in the comments talking about a fic they'd read on 'ao3' and then was like 'wow I could take my pining to the next level'. and then boom. suddenly he's realised lestappen are losing to maxiel and then he's barging into Max's apartment 30 minutes later.

[jay-j-otter]

hey hey, do you mind sharing your akiyama headcanons? just saw ur tags talking abt how theyre dark and im very interested!!!! your fem ryuaki fuels me in ways i cannot describe and i havent even played dead souls FHKGJG and your tanimuras have my whole entire heart!!!

Oh wow first of all THANK YOU for the ask!! It's been only couple days since I've discovered I've had them disabled all this time so I'm very happy I noticed it before you found my blog (,:

I've already complained a bit on twt that when I've started to write down ryuaki headcanons, it prompted me to make a 35+ pages google doc with meta on both of them 😅 It pushed me to write more fun drafts tho, so all is well, but it won't fit in this post for sure ahbfght

But ofc, I will share a little about Shun specifically. (TW for implied SA)

Akiyama... I have complicated feelings about him, because on the one hand, he got betrayed by his closest people, lost all the standing in society and lived as a homeless person for a long time, and that's a big trauma to have. But on the other... He's got back up by a miracle, and now he's trying to recreate the miracle for others. He assumes the role of a judge for other people while himself being too young, too flawed, having black and white morals.

(In Y4 I downright despised Akiyama when he refused a loan to an abused woman on the basis that she didn't want to apply for sex work, but in the same substory gave some cringefail guy 4 chances to complete the test just because it was amusing.)

But I've just completed Y5, and it gave me lots of food for thought.

First of all, from what I see, Shun here was written (rewritten?) as a more sympathetic character. For example, now when it's implied that he's gonna make some woman "use her body" for the loan, it means he's sending her to work on the construction site. Well, alright. I'll take the bad taste joke over previous cases.

There's also an important quest when Akiyama meets his former boss, who not only initially fired him on false accusations, which started his downfall, but also married his ex-fiancée. And Akiyama finally admits that at first, he wanted to use his position as a loan shark to be selfish and to get revenge, but got disgusted with himself after seeing some humanity and principles in the former boss.

So, here finally comes self-awareness about his actions. Interesting tidbit.

Another big part of the character building we see now: when he is alone in Osaka, without Hana around, he's a complete mess. His new office is dirty, he barely eats some instant ramen and clearly just uses the place to escape Tokyo and the responsibilities he created himself. If in Y4 we saw him within his element, managing Elise and doing loan business (with a messy table because he's just soooo quirky and lazyyy \s), then in Y5 we get to see a bit of what's inside his head. And it's not pretty.

He's clearly distancing himself - from Hana and his new yakuza friends, because they have their own lives to care about. (Tanimura too mayhaps, but this is a separate friendship that I also like to talk about a lot)

Aaand he escapes to his ugly nook to have his ugly depressive thoughts. Can't let them witness it, can he? They'd lose all the respect for him.

At the same time, he throws himself into helping Haruka with passion, because that's the thing he actually cares about, for the first time in a couple years. (He also provides her with some much-needed parenting about the importance of being selfish, because, being raised by Kiryu, she's entirely too self-sacrificing.)

And suddenly - he's lively and energetic again, he's bouncing off other characters, he risks his life for what he deems right, he's helpful, organizing, charming. He's everywhere.

(But he's also afraid to acknowledge that he's got too close to people again. So he's ready to literally die for them and Haruka's dream, but avoids calling them friends, settling for "acquaintances")

Not much needed to imagine that, after everything settles down, he falls apart again. Because in his head he's never really needed or too important for the people around. They carry on with their life and plans. Such as Eri, Arai, Yasuko. Even Hana got fed up and left at some point, and has been keeping him at an arm's length since. (Good for her, that was unhealthy)

He's not only not that interesting, his trauma is "ugly" (by his self-admission). It's not heroic and it's very mundane. There's no clear villains to blame, like with Majima's torture in Y0.

It's just - waking up is hard. Akiyama can't see the point in much of what he's doing anymore. Money is just paper for him now, they might have bought him the freedom of choice, but somehow it didn't help. Even with all the financial help to struggling people he can't buy healing for himself. Most alive he felt actually was when he lost the money briefly in Y4 - it made him work to get them back again.

Now it gets a bit tricky, hence the TW.

I think that a lot of things about him actually make sense, if while living on the streets, he had it bad enough to the point of selling himself for food. Like, I don't want to make it into torture porn or downplay the traumatic experience of homelessness overall, but something for sure ruined him and his self-perception. That's why he's bouncing between playing a self-righteous entity and hating himself.

Aside from his crippling depression from all this being shunned deep inside and not addressed, there's the attitude about sex work I've mentioned he has in Y4. He is distancing himself from the situation yet again. A little bit of a trick to calm his mind: "If I treat it like every other job, it won't feel as dehumanizing applied to myself". And also: "Well, I was not above doing that! I was not too proud to do it! Why should anyone else be?"

Now, of course he doesn't want to subject his former boss (and, by extension, Eri) to the same hardships. Even though he is, actually, a bit of a cruel person.

So here's Akiyama in Y4-5. Not super pretty and kind of greasy, but nevertheless charming, gallant and crazy smart. Fighting and dancing and singing and networking equally well. VERY annoying, because he considers himself an expert in all things he read about even once (I also hc him eidetic memory, which makes it worse). And with every year getting more secluded and miserable.

That being said, fem ryuaki has slightly different tone even in all-fem AU because of gender expectations. Akiyama's upbringing for example.

I hc his parents seeing him as this very "proper" son, encouraging his risk-taking neurodivergent activity ONLY when it helped to build onto that image. They happily bragged about their son - with prestigious business degree, good banking job and pretty fiancée. But ofc, when it's all came crashing down, they didn't want to hear about him anymore. Nowadays they acknowledge his existance with some disdain, because they care about reputation more then about him or his wealth. And he has some "disgusting jobs, no respectable friends and no wife".

(It's all kinda complicated from both sides, mb I'll get deeper into it in fanfic that I'm writing)

(And forgive me for saying this, but fem Akiyama is more interesting for me to write in this narrative, because she needed to balance fitting "proper little quiet Japanese woman" with her loud banking career, and while she was always openly feminine, she was never proper or quiet "enough". And now she's "not enough" among actual living legends.)

Well, that's all I have to say for now!

I'm always open for further questions and discussions 😊

[teaveetamer]

Also also something I thought of while I was making prev post, and something I've been thinking of the past few days since y'know went and tried to put my anon on blast on Twitter.

It's just kind of wild how the death spiral of negativity continues with, again, Certain People. Cuz I mean. Like what on god's green earth possesses you to take random social media posts you don't like and try to blast them all over every platform you could possibly find. What even fuels that kind of misery. I can't even imagine.

I'm trying to not piss in anyone's cornflakes m'dude, at least with regard to the actual meta discussion stuff (happy to piss in your cornflakes all day when it comes to your harassment tho). I intentionally use this blog in a way so that people do not accidentally stumble across my posts. Every time you post a screenshot of one of my posts (or anyone's posts really cuz you do this with everyone) or shit talk my takes it's like you're scooping my piss out of the toilet, dumping it in your own cereal bowl, and then screaming "WOW LOOK AT THIS BITCH OVER HERE PISSING IN MY CORNFLAKES!!! HERE LOOK *sprinkles piss in every direction*"

You must realize that people are eventually going to start noticing that you are the one sprinkling them with piss, right? Your fandom identity is literally just being a curator of highly-specific, tailored ragebait )and then constantly complaining about how you have to keep looking at stuff that baits your rage). Most people wouldn't even know 90% of these posts exist if you didn't keep calling attention to them, and you don't have to look at them if they upset you that much.

At this point I'm genuinely not even mad about him screenshotting multiple posts of mine and posting them elsewhere or shit talking me. I'm honestly just baffled. Like, I refuse to believe he thinks he looks cool at this point given how embarrassing it is.

Clearly it's not earning him a huge fandom presence. I think every single blog I've ever run has had more followers than his twitter, including this one, which was literally made in the midst of Tumblr's deadest fucking userbase period (post NSFW ban, pre-Reddit and Twitter setting themselves on fire) and where I literally never tag anything and intentionally try not to appear in searches.

It can't be because he wants to make sure people avoid me, cuz I've gotten heaps more engagement since he started directing people to actually look at my blog (that's kind of what happens when you scream "HEY LOOK AT THIS! HERE'S THE USERNAME AND LINK!!!" over and over. I assume he's aware that when you keep telling people to look at something they might actually go look at it).

If he was looking to "pwn" me in some sort of epic battle for the heart of the fandom then I hate to break it to you, but anyone who communicates via anime girlie screenshots has already owned themselves harder than anything I could ever hope to do to them.

So like, yeah. Genuinely confused over here. Unless he's just that angry when people disagree with him that it's worth cutting off his nose to spite his face.

[ohchosen]

GET TO KNOW THE WRITER - VAL EDITION !

what  made  you  pick  up  the  current  muse(s)  you  have?   i  first  played  ffxv  back  in  the  fall  of  2017  and  fell  head  over  heels  in  love  with  the  game.  to  this  day  i  don’t  think  there’s  ever  been  a  cast  of  characters  that’s  had  such  a  lasting  impact  on  me  as  the  boys  have,  and  at  this  point  ever  will.  i  actually  first  started  off  writing  prompto,  sometime  in  early  2018  and  shortly  thereafter  kind  of  fizzled  out  of  that  because  i  was  new  and  super  shy  and  didn’t  really  know  anyone  in  the  community.  i  was  around  18/19  then  and  actually  took  a  break  from  tumblr  for  a  little  while,  but  always  kept  in  touch  with  the  xv  community  on  twitter/instagram  so  the  love  i  had  never  went  away.  fast  forward  to  2020  and  after  replaying  the  game  i  decided  to  pick  up  noctis  who  at  that  point  had  been  my  end  all  comfort  character  for  a  few  years.  he very quickly became my little pincushion and then unintentionally a processing tool i used to process a lot of issues in my own life. i notice  a  lot  of  nuance  in  my  old  notes  and  ramblings  that  100%  reflect  my  struggles  at that  time and its like huh! wow! didnt know it did that. regardless, noctis is the muse i hold most dearly to my heart and someone i will love for the rest of my life. < he 3

is  there  anything  you  don’t  like  to  write?  ive  seen  it  all  brother.  i  can  be  convinced  with  one  skimmed  over  ao3  tag  and  then  some.  regardless,  i  don’t  have  any  hard  no’s  that  aren’t  the  incredibly  obvious,  and  i  think  rp  is  a  great  way  to  develop  and  analyze  your  likes  and  dislikes  in  a  safe  environment.  it’s  okay  to  be  into  something  in  one  thread  and  then  change  your  mind  later,  that’s  something  i  had  to  learn  the  long  way  but  i'm  better  off  for  it!

is  there  anything  you  really  enjoy  writing?  i  really  love  angst.  not  sure  what  happened  developmentally  to  get  here  but  we’re  here.  i  think  that  shows  a  lot  in  my  preferred  range  of  media  i  write  in  (or  just  consume  casually,)  there’s  just  a  certain….  je  ne  sai  quoi  🤌  in  writing  your  character  going  through  the  absolute  extremes  of  the  human  experience.  besides  that,  i  really  go  crazy  with  character  analysis/general  meta.  i  love  to  deep  dive  into  mundane  (or  otherwise)  aspects  of  a  character  and  build  up  traits  to  fully  flesh  out  a  muse. 

do  you  write  in  silence  or  do  you  play  music?  i  need  complete  silence  or  i  will  literally  never  finish  a  sentence.  i  am  way  too  scatterbrained  to  focus  on  two  things  at  once  and  need  to  lock  the  fuck  in  when  i’m  writing  a  reply. 

do  you  plan  your  replies  or  wing  them?  who  do  i  look  like  shakespeare.  i’ve  never  planned  out  a  thing  in  my  life  im  consistently  operating  strictly  off  vibes. 

do  you  enjoy  shipping?  im  a  dirty  little  shipping  whore. shipping is god's gift to the planet what else would i do if not daydream about my two little guys passionately kissing in a field of wheat.

what’s  your  alias/name?  val  :3  my  psn  tag  is  a  variant  of  valkyrie,  and  after  i  was  tired  of  my  old  alias  i  looked  there  for  inspiration.  say  thank  you  god  of  war  (2018)  for  shooting  me  into  another  norse  mythology  frenzy,  feels  just  like  middle  school. 

age  &  birthday?  my  golden  birthday  is  this  july  (25th)!!!  ((mild  existential  dread))

favorite  color?   green,  brown,  black  and  purple❗️

favorite  song?  recently  rediscovered  since  u  been  gone  by  kelly  clarkson.  having  daily  religious  experiences  for  it. 

last  movie  you  watched?  lord  i  have  no  idea.  i  don’t  watch  too  many  movies  and  the  last  one  i  can  place  is  catching  the  second  half  of  47  meters  down  when  i  was  having  dinner  with  my  dad  a  few  weeks  ago.  yay  sharks.  and  mandy  moore!!!!

last  show  you  watched?  i  love  a  good  netflix  documentary  and  i  just  finished  one  called  the  program:  cons,  cults  and  kidnapping,  which  was  about  exposing  the  troubled  teen  industry.  it’s  a  super  interesting  watch  but  deals  with  quite  a  few  heavy  topics  so  if  you’re  interested  please  heed  caution!   i  also  just  started  american  nightmare,  but  im  only  about  30-ish  minutes  into  the  first  episode….  gotta  lock  in. 

last  song  you  listened  to?  according  to  spotify  it  was  safari  song  by  greta  van  fleet  but  according  to  the  fortnite  festival  session  i  just  had  it  was  carry  on  my  wayward  son  by  kansas.  literal  war  flashbacks. 

favourite  food?   dude  there’s  this  fucking  sandwich  place  by  my  house  and  they  literally  make  the  best  chicken  sandwich  i’ve  ever  had.  imagine  grilled  chicken  on  a  brioche  bun  w  cheddar,  bacon,  a  corn  salsa  and  slathered  in  chili  aioli.  walk  with  me.  it  sounds  wack  but  it’s  SO  GOOD.  i  dream  about  her…

favorite  season?  i  love  winter  i  love  being  cold  and  tucked  into  my  electric  blanket  listening  to  the  rain  outside.  all  of  you  summertime  elitists  need  to  get  off  my  lawn. 

do  you  have  a  tumblr  best  friend?   i  have  my  gaggle  of  tumblr  friends  turned  irl  friends  in  my  pockets  at  all  time  and  i  wouldn’t  trade  any  of  them  for  the  world.  i  met  one  of  my  oldest  friends  in  ye  olde  supernatural  rp  back  in  2013?  and  over  ten  years  later  WE’RE  STILL  FUCKING  HERE.  so  many  of  the  most  important  people  in  my  life  i’ve  met  through  tumblr and the amount of shit we've seen through the rpc's we've been in has bonded us all for eternity lmfao.

tagged by: @13nth thank u tea my love :* tagging: my homies @sherez @tactition @liegacy + anyone who's interested :3

[authorangelita]

2023 FanFic WrapUp

Thanks for the tag @loves-2-read ! I'm so glad you're here to be a part of the Mac community!

1.How many stories did you post?

I posted 17 stories, some chapters of the Rewatch Missing Scenes series, and 1 meta post about Mac's Army uniform.  There was a total of 32,563 words!

2. Which ones were your favorites?

That's tough because I liked all of them for different reasons, and it's hard to choose favorites.  Observations was a really interesting and difficult one to write, and I'm so proud of how it turned out.  It's the one from James' POV where Mac is shot and turns to Jack for comfort.  Fubar is one that I really like how it turned out.  I had the idea of Jack watching Mac bleeding out but not being able to get to him, and it took a little while to figure out what that situation would look like.

No Better Company than Family is also a favorite.  I don't write Bozer that much, but I felt like I really got into his head for this one.  Plus it was about the team rallying around Bozer in one of his most vulnerable moments (the anniversary of his brother's death), and I cannot get enough of that. 

3. Which one was the most satisfying to write?

I wrote a lot of outsider POV fics in 2023, and I think the most satisfying was Charlie Foxtrot.  I introduced a new OC (Viv) to be the main character, which can go a number of bad ways, but I felt like she really worked and had a great POV of Mac and Jack's relationship, especially when Mac was badly injured.

4. The most difficult?

Aside from Observations, Hangin' Tough was hard because Mac was hanging upside down in a parachute tangle.  I wanted it to be realistic, so I spent a lot of time picturing how Mac was hanging and then figuring out how best to describe it.  It was a mess in my brain, but I finally got it written out. 

5. Rec something that you're proud of.

Caretaker + Ginger Ale + Sleep was another difficult one to write because it's from Diane's POV, and we just didn't get enough time with her on-screen to build a full character in my head.  However, I love the Foster Mac verse, and I thought this story worked well with Diane struggling to take care of a sick Mac.

6. Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next!

Oooh! I have so many WIPs - Let's see.  I have the sequel to Out is Through that must be completed this year; it's been a long time coming.  There's also another story in that verse that will take place before Out is Through, but I don't want to give anything away about it except that it will be about grief.

In the Foster Mac verse, I have a fic where Mac moves in with Jack, Diane, and Riley.  And, of course, gets up to shenanigans with Bozer and Riley.

The next fic that will be posted will probably be the one where Jack is in the war room listening over comms when Mac takes a bad fall.  I really wanted to explore the idea of Jack hearing something happening but not being there to actually stop it or help. 

I've lost track of who has played, so if you want to play, please consider this your tag to do so!

[wondrousmay]

Thank you for tagging me @nightofnyx8

Wow, time really flies! I still remember writing my greatest hits of 2022 last year and now it’s already the end of 2023! This year had its ups and downs for me but I think it’s been a positive year in terms of my personal growth. Hoping next year will be a good year for everyone!

Greatest Hits of 2023:

1. I overcame a depressive period with the help of people around me. In the middle of the year, I felt really down because I felt like I was falling behind my friends. They are all moving forward while I feel like I’m stuck in place. I feel like I’m doing my best but it isn’t enough compared to others. However, when I went out to dinner with my friends from university. I discovered that they’re all feeling the same way! I’m not alone! I learned to not dwell on social media much because stuff that are shown are not always the full story. I’ve been reminded to be kind to myself as well.

2. I’m approaching my 5th year at my job next year! An important milestone since it wasn’t a job that imagined doing but I’m grateful to have this job. I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a person. Of course, there are frustrating things that happened and annoying people that caused drama but I also learned how to deal with them. Working in HR helped me to deal with annoying people in the fandom too haha.

3. Fandom-wise, I’ve made a lot of changes in the way I approach fandom. I used to take negative comments against my favourite media personally but now I just don’t care. I can’t control what other people think but I can control how I react and choosing to ignore annoying comments has made my fandom experience much more peaceful. I’m going to continue to enjoy things in my own way! Also curating my various social media feeds by muting and blocking is a blessing to my mental health! Being detached from the fandom and experiencing the story with a few trusted mutuals/friends really is the best way to enjoy fandom 😄

4. I managed to figured out my priorities in life: what truly matters and what doesn’t. I’m ashamed it took me so long to figure it out but I’m glad I did! I want to be more outspoken about the things I care about and to not be afraid to admit that I was ignorant about many things.

5. I’ve been writing a lot more this year and I’m so proud of my progress! I found my place as a meta/analyses writer and sharing my thoughts on my favourite media has been a lot of fun! I still have a long way to go but I’ll continue to do my best! Thank you to all the people who encouraged and supported me! I appreciate all the interactions with my posts! I have a big personal project planned for 2024 and I’m very excited about it!

Tagging @askmeagaintmrw @jade-efflorescence @prettyblubox @astersugar @hanamukes @yellowcrazycricket (only if you want to share!)

[cmdonovann]

quantum break appreciation month: a quick retrospective

so, first of all, wow, it was WAY more effort than i thought to just POST SOMETHING EVERY DAY. i put a lot of pressure on myself to only post The Good Stuff to this blog, and boy golly is my standard of "good stuff" higher than it ought to be! so this has been great practice for me in "finished is better than perfect."

second of all, i wanna put together a quick rundown of everything i did this month!

Announcement post

April 1st: My Bleeding Clock (My Immortal AU) fanfic for April Fool's Day

April 2nd: Playlist to go with My Bleeding Clock

April 3rd: Sketch of 2010!Beth

April 4th: Sketch of Jack and Beth

April 5th: Reblogged my old post about last year's anniversary zine, as well as a new little sketch to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the game's release

April 6th: Doodle of Beth in a skirt (with pockets!)

April 7th: I literally just posted a passage I like from the QB:ZS novel

April 8th: Started posting old art... completed set of the halo series here!

April 9th: More old art (Jack/Paul this time)

April 10th: More old art, LNEHH edition

April 11th: More old art, Will Joyce edition

April 12th: Some Jack/Paul art to celebrate me and my husband's anniversary :3c

April 13th: QUANTUM BREAK HOMESTUCK AU!!!

April 14th: Surprise! it's even more old Jack/Paul art!

April 15th: Wow! I can't believe it's more Jack/Paul art!

April 16th: Apparently I was busy this day because I just reblogged LNEHH, lol

April 17th: Quantum Break characters, but as Skyrim characters

April 18th: Some blinkie gifs I made using blinkies.cafe

April 19th: A sweater I made using the linocut stamps from last year's anniversary zine

April 20th: Another blinkie gif, hehe

April 21st: Meta post about color palettes and color usage in Quantum Break

April 22nd: A little QB divider I made for my fansite (WIP)

April 23rd: Some terrible glitter gifs, also for the WIP fansite

April 24th: Minecraft skins of a bunch of QB characters!

April 25th: I was also apparently busy this day, cuz all I did was make a stupid phone background for myself XD

April 26th: Took a swing at pixel art

April 27th: A promo for the Quantum Break Discord Server I run!

April 28th: Wrote another chapter of My Bleeding Clock...

April 29th: Art of Jack and Paul :3

April 30th: Started a new longfic: The Symmetry of Fear!

holy shit. that's a lot. i am retroactively impressed with my past self for doing all this, lmao. nice.

third of all! i wanna note that i started several projects this month that i have yet to finish. of course i'm not confining my quantum break posting to one month of the year (impossible) but i will take my time finishing the... uh... three fics and two meta essays i have unfinished, as well as the fansite i am working on. i want these to be GOOD, so i'm not going to rush them. i'm glad this month gave me to juice to finally get these projects started, though!

and lastly... why did i even do this project/event in the first place?

well... good question. i imagine i'm not the only one who has been Going Through It for a while now, and i just... really needed a big project to focus on for a while. and quantum break is like, one of the only things that i never get tired of thinking about, so... are you seeing my logic here?

all that said, i do genuinely want to work on putting more love out into the world. and i love quantum break! i want other people to love it too! (or at least, i want other people to look at my passion for it and be like "i dont go here but you keep doing your funky little thing my man," you know what i mean?)

so, big thanks to everyone who has encouraged me this month, whether it be in reblog tags, in the quantum break discord server, or elsewhere. also, big thanks to my husband, who i would not have married if not for our mutual obsession with quantum break, and who is always down to listen to me talk about my various theories and fic ideas. and finally, a big thanks to remedy, for making this dumb game that i love so so so much.

[deedala]

TAG GAME: FANDOM EDITION

thanks @michellemisfit for tagging me to play!! and thanks @celestialmickey for making these tag games :>

your name: Deanna

your age: 39 🦂

your first fandom(s): the x-files was the first and oldest fandom i dabbled in by signing up for some fanfic listservs. but the first online fandom i was really deep into was Newsies (the 1992 movie)

your current fandom(s): Shameless and Dragon Age

how did you first get into fandom? i honestly cant even remember...we all had geocities websites attached by webrings and chatrooms on AIM. there may have been a forum somewhere?

how long have you been engaging with fandom spaces? 25 years I GUESS?? After newsies i went through my weeb era, i dunno if we can call anime fans of the early 2000s a fandom? And then my focus was on WOW for several years. And i was always vaguely apart of the mass effect and dragon age fandoms but when DA:I came out it totally rewired my brain.

how often do you read fanfics? not often anymore. i just dont have time to read usually. thats why i consume so much tv. i need things playing while i work and do chores.

top 3 characters from your current fandom(s): Shameless I would say Ian, Mickey, and Debbie. Dragon Age? Gosh thats rough theres so many characters...ok if we exclude the protags I would say Solas, Felassan, and Varric.

have you ever written a fic for a fandom? if so, shout it out! oh sure, i have some da:i fics on ao3 but whether or not you fuckers can find em is none of my business.

have you ever drawn fanart for a fandom? if so, drop a link! haha yup, everything is under the tag #my art

share a personal headcanon that you feel very strongly about: Solas and Pira fucked. And Mandy starts hanging out with Ian and Mickey on a regular basis after they get their own place and Terry is gone 🥰

you’re trying to convince a friend to get into your current fandom(s) with you. what episode, clip, or scene are you showing them? i have gotten THREE people into shameless so far and I did so by showing them music video edits and out of context hilarious scenes. (carl beating the shit out of the guy trying to rob captain bobs, ian chasing mickey with the dildo, mickey "killing" sammi are some of the clips i used on my husband lol) 😈

and finally, what does fandom mean to you? nerding out with people who love the same media that i love! spiraling out over metas and fics and fanart and cosplays and gifs. putting on our clown make-up every time theres a games event where new info might be announced lmao. and making friends who i get to love and keep in my pocket forever 💖

@maizzycakes @canticle-of-apotheosis @salesmain 🙃

[riddlerosehearts]

your post about mailee says everything i’ve felt about how this fandom (and many others) treat female characters, especially in the context of sapphic shipping.

i could never personally get into mailee due to the annoyance that is it’s fandom. the constant bashing of certain sapphic ships by proclaiming them as toxic (as if that isn’t the appeal) was so annoying to see in 2020 that it sadly left a sour taste in my mouth.

it also just fits into the most boring stereotypes of cute and fluffy sapphic ship!! something that tends to be the case nowadays.

but even with all that aside it’s obvious why mailee exists. they’re a side pairing for more popular ships and oh what a surprise, it’s a mlm ship leading it. i can’t deny that zukka fans mostly contribute to mailee content because they do but also how deeply annoying it is to see this pattern of wlw side pairing for mlm over and over again.

especially with atla of all shows. a show that actually has a complex female character whose unintentionally lesbian-coded but people will not bother exploring her queerness because shes “mentally ill” or “too much” or “she doesn’t need that rn” or whatever excuses people come up with.

it’s a shame to see all this play out but i’m not surprised. at the end of the day it’s always going to be mlm or f/m at this point.

oh wow i'm glad to hear i'm not the only one feeling this way!! like i mentioned in my previous post, i honestly don't really like mai, but i've tried to get myself to over the years. in 2019 i had rewatched the show and thought "hey, mai and ty lee are kinda cute together, i still don't love mai but maybe i could if i try to think more deeply about her character and see if i can find some meta and fics and such that flesh her out and examine her good points. maybe ty lee could be someone who really understands her and brings out the good in her". but mailee was very much a rarepair back then and i could only really find fluffy drabbles to read. i like fluffy drabbles and all, but they just weren't what i needed in this case. so then in 2020 the show gets put on netflix, i come back from a tumblr hiatus to see there's been a massive fandom renaissance, and now mailee is so popular it's getting to high numbers on weekly fandometrics lists! great!

so then i again look for content about them and see that a ton of it is either zuko-centric or zukka-centric with them as a side pairing at best, and zukka just isn't for me. i have a close friend who ships it so i understand the appeal, but i'm always and forever a zutara stan. i could've multishipped (i do reblog cute fanart of them on occasion) if i didn't keep seeing things from the zukka side of the fandom that really frustrate me, this being one of them. and every time i choose to dive back into the fandom and see if things have improved it's still the same, i should not have to go through 53 of the most kudos'd fics in mailee's tag before i find a fic about them especially since they have less than 1/5th the amount of fics as zukka in the first place, and it just makes me sad that this is an issue in almost every fandom. i may not like mai, but you would really think the people making shippy content involving her would like her and be willing to actually focus on her in said content!

as for the constant bashing of other more "toxic" f/f ships and unwillingness to examine another female character's complexity and potential queerness while using her mental illness as an excuse... i believe i know exactly who and what you're talking about it's an issue with certain mailee content for me as well. see, even though i've loved ATLA since i was a kid and have been on the internet just as long, i used to always dismiss the concept of tyzula because i myself never appreciated azula enough and wasn't interested in ships with her (and because frankly i really hate how azula's voice actress sexualizes the ship). but on my current rewatch of the show i've started loving azula a lot more and now like to imagine her redeemed and happy, repairing her damaged relationships with her family and friends and maybe even falling in love. i've realized that part of the appeal of tyzula for me is that while, yes, azula's entire dynamic with both mai and ty lee is toxic and messy during the show, i don't personally think it always was. i think the three of them were genuine friends until things gradually got fucked up because of how ozai's treatment of azula fucked her up. and i think that if azula were to have a redemption arc, the 3 of them could salvage what once was and have a healthy friendship again.

a lot of mailee fans do not seem to agree with this, though, because i've seen several metas and headcanons that rely on the idea that the two of them were always just afraid of evil, nasty azula and that they can bond over how much they hate her. i am not here for that, and yeah, i'm also not here for the whole "this ship would never work because [insert character] just isn't ready for a relationship, i ship them x therapy!!" thing fandoms love to use as a way to demonize certain ships. mentally ill people can be in happy, loving relationships and they can go to therapy while in said relationships. they can even use therapy to--gasp--figure out how to keep their mental health issues from getting in the way of continuing to have healthy relationships! this happens in real life and i fully believe it can happen in a fantasy cartoon for children. also, i know some people use the comics to justify the idea that mai and ty lee have just always hated and been afraid of azula, because apparently it's implied in those that they were fake friends? but fuck the comics, they're OOC and horribly written lmao.

this ended up being a much longer reply than i initially intended but yeah, all this is to say that i 100% agree with you and thank you for sharing your thoughts, anon. sapphic ships and the female characters within them deserve just as much space in fandom as m/m and m/f ships get, to be fully explored and appreciated in their own right and even to sometimes be complicated and imperfect.

[ooc-miqojak]

Given that staff is already turning this place into Tiktok by forcing us to opt out of the terrible 'tumblr live' (tiktok but worse) every 7 days, how are we supposed to trust them on this? Especially when they say stupid shit like 'people only see 25 posts' and 'those have to immediately engage you in tumblr or else'... What??? I see hundreds of posts a day - one swipe of my thumb, and I see at least 25 posts? And since I have cultivated my dash,I see what I want to see. I even use the thing that suggests what my friends are liking - but if it gets any more algorithmic than that, I don't want any thing to do with it. If I want insta or facebook/meta bs, I'll use those? There's a reason I chose tumblr!

Push notifications are part of the technological addiction problem that's happening at present - much like a slot machine, you get a little ping/buzz, and wow! Look at the notifications! Feel the rush! You're admitting that you're trying to be more predatory and addictive, guys.

"Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr."

Oh, so you're just saying the quiet part out loud, now? You'd like to encourage the addictive nature of apps? It's already an impulse to constantly check notifications on apps - as stated, that's literally the point of push notifications. (There's a documentary or two out there that discusses this.)

So you want to reinvent the wheel in changing the way the feed/dash works, despite a poll showing that over 90% of people saying they don't want that, as well as trying to make this worse version of Tumblr more addictive?

Maybe try asking the artists and 'small creators' you claim to want to help... what they want/think would help them! Instead of forcing changes on everyone that no one wants while claiming it's for our own good. Use whatever mumbo jumbo tech-talk and excuses you want, but most of us can read between the lines, on this one.

If you force me to see blogs I'm not following on my dash 'because it's outdated' to only see what I'm opted in to see, you're no better than any other social media site, and are actively removing my reason for being here! I follow tags to find new blogs! I follow other blogs with whom my mutuals interact - Tumblr has always been a bit 'build your own experience', and that's what people love! If new users want something more like Meta or Tiktok or Insta, those already exist! Tumblr isn't hard to use by any means - you just can't be lazy and expect to be spoonfed content like on other sites... and the spoonfeeding is what people say they hate anyways! So why force it?

Don't homogenize. You should be expanding on what makes Tumblr great... not cutting it off at the metaphorical knees to make it like the trash that already exists. Like, say... make the tag search function more user friendly - an actual user request that's gone ignored for years. Work on that instead of forcing things no one really needs or wants or asked for.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[icharchivist]

My (unspecified) Light raid team works pretty well imo

I'm sure if you have any knowledge on the meta you'll think "Wow, that's awful, you could optimize this to hell and back", but it used to be Zooey, Yuni and Sara for Defense and then I moved Yuni and Sara to the back row and replaced them with Lu Woh and Light!Narmaya and it works really well

Zooey is great because she can dodge God, Lu Woh handles the heals (and so does Yuni when she tags in), Sara does well for defense imo and Narmaya just deals big damage

Also Danchou is in the Superstar class because I haven't unlocked any of the classes beyond that, but I'm personally very fine with that

If there's a dark boss in an event, I can murder them pretty quickly

It's fun and it makes me happy

I even took out Lv 100 Olivia once and while it took forever to chip away at her HP, my healers negated any damage she threw at me, so that was super satisfying. I finished the battle with full HP

Yuni is especially busted in that regard

aahh i'm so glad it's working so well for you!!

tbh those ARE busted units in general, like, all of them are really, really strong units that all help your survival. Zooey is an extremely good defense unit, Narmaya is always a busted attack unit, Lu Woh is great at healing, and Yuni is one of the core unit for some HL levels because she's genuinely extremely good (+ synergy with Zooey in general).

Lu Woh especially should help with heals if you have some others sources of heals, so superstar and the likes are genuinely very good ways to feed on it.

All and all, even if it's mostly built out of love, you actually set up a team that allows them all to amplify each other's strength, so it's a really good deal.

i'm glad it's working for you so well <33333

good luck moving even more forward with this!!! i believe in you!!