#actually add in some fanfic and its IDEAL

[ughgoaway]

nth much to say but just here to give u some virtual hugs bff,,, when in doubt.... its horizontal hours + matty time :( (my go-tos really- besides ur au ofc)

also for some reason ur garlic bread is in my head (i promise im normal)- ace maybe this is some cosmic sign for u to bake some maybe itll help <3 (i am now craving garlic bread at the ungodly hours of 3am help me)

- bff anon is riding thru this storm with u and miss seeing u on this hell site very much

thank you for the virtual hugs bff, you are such a sweetheart!!!

I have been horizontal for a few days now, and I am excited to finally catch up on all the great matty fic content I've missed!! I will still be rotting in bed as I do it bc that is the only place I can cope with being right now lol. so if you all suddenly see 1000 reblogs from me... shhhhh. (also, it will never fail to make me feel giddy that my silly au makes someone feel better omgggg)

YOU THINKING ABOUT MY GARLIC BREAD HAS ME HOWLING!!!! BFF I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AHAHAHAHAH

you know what, maybe this is a sign from the universe... you'll be happy to know the dough is now rising and I will be eating enough garlic bread for the both of us bestie!!! also 3am???? hello, why are we sending asks at this time?? SLEEEEEEEP!!!

I've missed you lot too, even if it's only been like 3/4 days lol. I was still lurking a little bit, but it was very strange to not post my every waking thought??? so now prepare for an onslaught of annoying posts from me (i say as if i haven't already been doing just that) :)

I love you soooooo much bff, you are an actual angel on earth <333

[distort-opia]

It's strange how differently people from different culture react to famous characters. Even outside of batjokes shippers, I have seen a lot of DC fans of my country just straight up telling that joker loves batman and batman's obsessed with joker. Or just thinking that's he's gay, cuz like, you have a hot Blondie but you only thinking of batman? Well buddy I have something to tell ya. But it doesn't have the same reaction from people from USA, at least the one that aren't from batjokes fandom? Like, they seemed to get offended when someone point out joker obsession with batman and how it would be read this thing they two had....

How do you think people from your country read theses two? Because it was a kind of shock to me see a lot o straight man fans of DC just accepting that, welp, Joker definitely not straight and batman is... 🤨 suspicious for not killing him already. I guess its because the film with heath ledger is very famous here, and the line where he said that batman complete him stuck.

This is a really interesting question, trying to look at it from a cultural standpoint... I definitely heard of or encountered people entirely lacking knowledge of comics, readily agreeing that there's something more to Batman and Joker's relationship. As you say, just with tangential contact with Nolan's The Dark Knight or maybe the Arkham games.

However, I think that no matter where we're from, there's a distinction of three groups, with their own relevant factors, which explain their attitudes (at least to me). There's people who aren't into Batman or superheroes, but who obviously heard of them or maybe saw one movie or two. Then there's casual fans: people who like Batman and maybe watched the movies, maybe liked The Batman Animated Series, maybe played the games-- but you won't find them on Reddit or Tumblr or Tiktok as super active in fandom, just because it's not their main thing. And then there's hardcore fans, people who write and read fanfic, people who post on different platforms about Batman characters, the ones who consistently engage in fandom. But I'm putting the rest under the cut since I got long (with unnecessary psychological analysis, lol).

This is of course simply my personal opinion, based on what I've observed over time. A couple of factors might influence how these groups view Batjokes, though the first two I'm mentioning are a bit more likely to be found within non-fans and casual fans. A non-fan homophobic/conservative individual is still likely to reject actual canon of Joker professing romantic love to Batman or of Batman having to deny more than once he's in love with the guy-- although I guess you could hit them with straight Batjokes, hah (Thomas and Martha Wayne of Flashpoint). Leaving this type of person aside though (which you're more likely to find in some countries compared to others), I think non-fans usually easily agree to a romantic side of Batjokes, or at the very least to the existence of obsession. Just based on the tangential knowledge they have, it's obvious these two characters come as a pair and are defined by the other, so it doesn't take much to convince them. But within casual fans and hardcore fans... and here I'd add someone who's male, homophobic or conservative... well, we start to encounter one big thing about Batman that this kind of individual cannot get over-- projection.

For many men, Batman represents the ubermasculine ideal. He's handsome, at the peak of physical fitness, rich, has the coolest car and gadgets, has got women begging to sleep with him. He's cold and controlling and bad at social skills but still somehow beloved by all. Bruce Wayne has got terminal Main Character Syndrome, and it's undeniable a lot of fans consider him the epitome of the Alpha Male. So if you're gonna bring up that he's gay for the Joker... no matter how much proof you throw at them, they'll employ any and all mental gymnastics to shut you down or prove you wrong. That's not even getting into the guys who project on Joker, and who see Joker as this incredibly cool "agent of chaos" and strive to emulate that; trying to get them to admit Joker has been written as queer for decades (with multiple writers admitting to it) is another exercise in futility. They'll tell you Joker only said he loves Batman to scare him! He flirts with men to throw them off! It's all a tactic... because of course, being gay can only be scary to someone as masculine as Batman. It's the decades-old problem of queer-coded villains which I won't get into. But my point here is that fans who project onto either Batman or Joker specifically for how "Alpha" they are, are not likely to be open to Batjokes interpretations, no matter their nationality. But of course, just as with non-fans, there are plenty of casual or hardcore fans who are perfectly fine with shipping or potential homoerotic connotations. Hell, many times you might get them to go down Batjokes rabbit holes by letting them know about comic or game adaptations. They'll easily recognize the classical enemies-to-lovers trope this ship embodies.

But then again, both within casual and hardcore fans (though it's much more often the case of the latter) you'll have people who have no issue with shipping, who follow comics, who read fics etc. But to whom Batjokes is anathema, because they're too invested in a different way: not in the characters, but rather in showing how Good and Moral they are to other fans, and how they ship only the Good ships. It's the hordes of antis you see on Twitter and sometimes here on Tumblr too: the purity police kind of fan. "How can you ship Bruce with the monster who killed his son?" or "Joker paralyzed Barbara, how can you--" but it's entirely hypocritical and mostly rooted in the current trend of hating Joker. There's plenty of DC villains who have done similar things to Joker, or harmed the Family in similar ways to Joker, but he's the scapegoat right now for multiple reasons I talked about before (Joker fatigue and DC writing him like shit, the pushback from seeing all the alpha male dudebro fans latch onto him and hating that, etc.).

I got way too long, lol. But basically I think these generalized types of fan behavior can appear no matter the nationality, though there's undoubtedly a higher frequency of one or the other in different countries. Frankly, Romania is intensely religious and conservative, so in my country... even among my younger peers it's likely I'd encounter homophobic stances. And purity policing and that way of thinking is more likely to happen among fans from the US, like you pointed out.

[yellowocaballero]

Styles of Storytelling Structure

OK love of God I'm so embarrassed that every post I make gets insane long. I tried to match this explanation up with the previous ask but it got so long, so this elaboration gets its own post. For reference, these tags are referencing this post. Read that one first if you want.

I hope I can find a way to explain this succinctly and non-judgmentally. I do mean it extremely nonjudgmentally. I write both kinds and they both have their own merits.

For me, there's two kinds of fanfic writing. I call 'em Fic Style and Novel Style. This isn't about tropes or content, but about how the author composes the story.

Novel style is the 'traditional' way of writing a story. It has a three act structure, rising action/climax/falling action, tight pacing, every scene does five plot/character/theme related things. It reads like a published short story or a book.

Fic style is often reliant on the source material to make complete sense, and its plot or characterization is usually scaffolded onto the main material. For many of these stories you use the pre-existing canon structure. The story isn't as structured or tightly written, scenes are more likely to be there for vibes, and there tends to be more worldbuilding and a slower pace in general. It's worth noting that fic style can often really resemble soap opera, comic books, long-running manga, Dr Who, etc. Anything serialized, meant to continue on for a long time with no definite end point.

(If you're a frequent flier, to give you some idea: New Wave and Good Luck Jake were novel style, Hope Etc and Listen 2 Ur Heart were fic style. Twilight on Owl Creek Bridge was novel/short story style, reel to reel was fic style.)

Neither is better or worse than the other. They can be both equally enjoyable. One of my favorite fics is 'a simple thing' by iridan and it's fic style. Case fics are more likely to be novel style [I suck at case fics]. Shortly, fic style is easier to write, more likely to be enjoyable, and harder to make very good. Novel style is really hard to write. Super hard.

This is because novel-style writing just requires more skills. You need to lock down story structure, plotting, tension, connecting physical/emotional/plot/theme, pairing story beats with character beats, and dealing with a lot of different plot threads at once. I think of it as braiding, kind of: weaving three character arcs, a plot arc, growth of character relationships, and development of the themes and messaging. A scene should ideally do all of these things at once. Everything needs to be perfectly matched together so it all moves as one. The longer the story is, the more content of all of this you have to deal with, and the more difficult it is to do well. You're just juggling more balls. I had to write one bad 100k story and another mediocre 100k story before I got to a kinda-good 100k story. Forget about how long it took me to get to a decent freaking 60k story. I wrote really enjoyable 60k fic style stories before an actually good 60k novel style story.

This is why skills have to scaffold. I think a lot of beginner writers are constantly trying to fight those level 60 boss fights at level 20 and they get frustrated when they lose. You have to figure out how to write decent dialogue and decent prose before putting together a good scene. Then you have to figure out how to string a series of scenes together in a way that makes sense. Then you have to figure out how to put those scenes in the right order to make some kind of coherent and interesting story with conflict and character arcs. Then you start tossing one ball in the air and figure out how to write those 20k short stories. Then you add more and more balls as your stories get longer and more complex. You have to develop a lot of different skills individually to put together a well-structured final product that's fun to read.

Stop getting so frustrated when you can't beat out a 60k story that's Barnes & Nobles worthy when you're a beginning writer! Stop dreaming big! I know how frustrating it is not being able to put what's in your head down on paper. It's not going to be perfect. Of course you're having issues writing longer things, you're still figuring out how to put longer things together.

Pick something to work on. Figure out what skills you still need to develop. Figure out how stories work and what makes a good story, and then try and build it yourself. You do not need to write a traditional novel style story to develop your skills in dialogue, prose, characterization, tone, tension, POV, etc. You can get that stuff down first. If you're interested in working on story structure and pacing you'll have to practice doing things traditionally. No, you're not going to be happy with it. Be proud of yourself that you improved and developed a skill. Be proud of yourself that you're writing. Writing is hard. It's fun, but hard. If you aren't having fun then you're just left with the hard.

Writing isn't about the finished product. It's not about if you wrote something that people enjoyed or said was good. It's about enjoying writing. Everything else happens naturally from there.

[tau1tvec]

💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other sim-blogs to do the same 💕

I see what you did there, lol, ty!

There are so many tho, many I've deleted, so I'll just throw out some that I just happen to have on hand.

The Sims 3 will always be my absolute favorite game to both play and edit, esp since it's the game that actually got me into editing to begin with!

The game's world, and characters are as stunning as they are heavily customizable, and thanks to it's devoted modding community, its truly been my ideal escapist playground through even my toughest times, and has continually brought me joy since it's inception.

Truly cannot thank this game enough for being both fun, and helping me find a perfect outlet for my creativity.

This picture still gets me, bc I remember finding out you could add the x-wing to any lot, and still use it, and I immediately took it into S4S and recolored it just for my sim.

Such a stunning sight seeing it take off through the treetop canopies of Selvadorada.

Cyberpunk 2077 to me is one of the most stunning, detailed, high fidelity games I've ever laid my eyes on.

Every corner of its world, Night City, is photogenic, and the character models, even the NPC's are some of the most impressive works of 3d art I've seen in some time. It's an absolute challenge staying out of photomode in this one, and with the astronomical level of customization the modding community has committed to adding to it, it's easy to see why it's become quite the popular blorbo maker.

I edit other games as well, although I'll typically do GIFs lately, but with how absolutely stunning games are these days, sometimes I still can't resist capturing a well lit cutscene, and throwing it into Photoshop.

[authoralexharvey]

INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @my-cursed-prince

Who You Are:

Lyn || She/her

I’m a social science major who doesn’t shut up about her social sciences despite being the biggest introvert on this planet. Devoted a whole WIP series to it because why not?

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Action, adventure, fanfic, fantasy, psychological, and tragedy. Young adult, new adult, and adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Bestie I don’t know my own genre. I really like things that delve into social issues, regardless the genre. I prefer fantasy setting though, because I can bend rules and it doesn’t require as much intensive research.

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

NSFW. I…really don’t care for romance or sex. I’m not opposed to things, but I’m not looking for these things. I don’t care to write it because of this

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

Adults. It depends? It’s a lot of deeper topics. Some teens might relate, but I don’t know if they would want to read it. It’s a slow-burn series.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

Siblings. I’m really close with my sister, so I put a lot of sibling tropes in there. My best friend I’ve known forever. So I just sorta get the bestie is my sibling or practical sibling vibe.

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

Romance. There are very few couples I swoon over. Most I find annoying as they rely on sexist tropes or are overall super toxic.

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

We Lost Our Sunshine Series! Technically, five years! However, a little over a year consistently. I took a long hiatus in the middle. Ideas birthed five years ago. Ideas formed into fruition a year ago.

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

To process social science stuff. I want to understand it on a more personal level. It also just helps me to process the world around me, and puts out what I’m feeling on paper.

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

About three years? I liked being able to play out the scenarios, and I noticed that writing helped me mentally too.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

Social science major galore. I really just put my studies, internships, friends’ experiences, and personal experiences in this WIP. I try to make it as realistic as possible, because I want to pay tribute to these experiences.

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

Hmm….We Lost Our Sunshine? It’s my first novel, and it’s on my fictionate (Lynn Ellison). For a novel that covers such intense topics, I don’t think I did badly. I’ve edited it multiple times and out of all my WIP’s is the most polished.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

Does it count to be on fictionate? It’s free though, so I don’t think so. Not really. I don’t have the mental energy for it, and it sorta terrifies me.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

None of it appeals to me. I have a huge insecurity that no one would actually like my work because of its dark setting, or that I didn’t try hard enough to research these topics. So….yah, not super into publishing. I also think publishers would want to add everything I hate into this project so there’s that too.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

I think just letting ideas flow most appeals to me. Editing is definitely the hardest, but it is rewarding once it’s done.

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

Pure chaos. I write shit and I edit it later. My characters talk for like 300 pages, and then after that we finally come up with a plan and I scrap a lot of it. It’s a pain in the ass, but it can be fun too. My ideal setup that I never do is to plan and go through with it lol.

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

I wanted writer friends lol. 4 months. I’ve made good friends here!

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

V my beloved. No, they’re super supportive, and I super appreciate it. I get surprised they follow me consistently all the time. I’m like bestie you know how dark this world is, especially since they’re reading We Lost Our Sunshine which is darker than Scattered Sunshine and Poisonous Medicine. Which really says something about that WIP lol. I really appreciate the support, and it helps me feel better about my world and that I have successfully communicated that I try to put meaningful effort into my work. Also elizaelwrites (did I spell it right I’m sorry) is super relatable every time they post. I’m like me too bestie me too. It’s nice to see someone with similar writing struggles.

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

It helps keep me accountable in planning. I also like the interaction and tag games. I also make myself laugh with my shitposts loool.

What do you think writeblr could improve on? How do you think we can go about doing so?

Probably reblogging more? Or just being more mindful of hyping up other people’s work? But I also get that people have lives, different tastes, and I totally need improvement too. Also, all of us are in different time zones. It’s not really a critique, but a sad reality lol.

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

I try?? To hype up other people’s work?? I could be better tbh. Tagging people in tag games. I suck at tagging people after being tagged. It’s the introvert.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

Mmm….I like it when people reblog my excerpts. It makes me smile. I also like reblogging others excerpts even if I drag my ass.

What kind of posts do you most like to make?

Shit posts. It’s my notebook of things I need to remember to include.

Finally, anywhere else online we may be able to find you?

Fictionate! Under Lynn Ellison. I have We Lost Our Sunshine on there completed! Just make sure to check trigger warnings because there are so many. Also feel free to comment! The book is free!

[raksh-writes]

Ive spent most of yesterday doing all my uni stuff for finals and a couple hours today too, and I should be doing much more, but I can actually feel my brain giving out on me rn. Im starting to develop a headache and that's very much Not ideal. I have A Lot to do and not a lot of time to do it, ughh...

Forcing usually doesn’t work on me though, so even though my anxiety will prob have a field day, I guess I'll try to take a break, maybe play some Skyrim, maybe write a lil' more fanfic if my head feels better, and who knows, if in the evening it feels up to it, I can try to add some more to that big project Im trying to finish or start on a presentation for a different class. Either would be nice, but if its not possible tonight, then I guess I just gotta hope taking a break today will help me get back at it tomorrow.

Here's to hoping!

[rush-the-stars]

idk what kinds horror in a/b/o you mean, but i immediately thought about the subtle horror in this reylo fic called "Until You" by ever-so-reylo on ao3 (sorry if you dont like reylo. i dont. but i recognize reylo authors can be BEASTS and i just use cognitive dissonance if i need it) where it's like.. horror in the sense of how society limits and treats omegas and it's all very normalized. like the fic describes a marriage pathway, alarms on doors, omegas cant be present to hear the results of their own doctor appointment, how not getting pregnant is reason for annulment, and so on, and it's just so wildly subtle in how horrific itd be to live like this and i think the scariest part is, in parts of this world rn, there are places where women are treated very similarly to this. it's a one-shot and not super long, and Kylo/Ben/whoever isnt a dickbag or anything, he treats Rey well, and the author is good about making a distinction between "this is how it is here" and "that doesnt mean its good or ideal or warranted" which i think just adds to the horror kinda sorta, i dunno, i could see you having fun writing about a similar kinda world

regardless, id love to hear more about how youd wanna add further horror to a/b/o, bc what i was talking about was Handmaid's Tale-adjacent (not that i like Handmaid's Tale bc the author's a fucking terf and also, m'am, that IS how the world is like for many woc in various parts of the world, it isnt "even more horrifying" having it happen to white women too jfc idk if it counts as "apocalyptic" if its happening here and now and no one seems to care tho; but you get what i mean when i name-drop it however. anyway. i digress) and im curious if you mean in a monster-fucker way or sex pollen way or what, i find the concept of a/b/o + horror fascinating so, again, id LOVE to hear more pls ♡

firstly anon thank you for coming into my inbox and taking the time to share all this with me!! it is greatly appreciated!!

now to get into this!! i’m gonna put this under a cut w some warnings just in case!!

cw: sexism, mentions of violence against women/feminist horror, reylo (LMAO SORRY), a/b/o, uh romantic cannibalism, blood

i am so sorry anon i detest reylo lol. and sorry if anyone follows me and likes them </3

also i think this is very fascinating that i mentioned horror and your mind jumped to what is essentially feminist horror! not a bad thing—just something observed!!

i personally read a lot of horror outside of fanfiction and i read a lot of feminist horror specifically. or i see or have been apart of plays/theater works/etc. that feature feminist/gender horror in various ways. i write short stories that are not fanfic about this topic as well, so with fanfic, i tend to avoid this a great deal! it’s an incredibly heavy topic and for a whole year last year, i had surrounded myself in it (and acted in shows where stage violence was enacted on me by men, acted in roles where i was often in distress because of male characters, acted in emotionally straining and difficult scenes) and realized i was actually…very drained. and learned what i liked to see in these stories and what i thought was needless violence against women reiterated again and again as torture porn of some kind. but long story short, fanfic was a reprieve of that for me!!

(i know you’re thinking—but cielo! you seem to love yandere content! and you are right! but i think all my yan content i enjoy is seeped in a warped love rather than a gendered violence. not that both can’t exist. it’s sticky.)

more than that, i am also interested in a/b/o that breaks gender constructs and dynamics in ways and is not just an afab omega enduring societal and personal violence!

the horror i was mentioning more i think had to do with body horror, possession (as in, almost…demonic. spiritual.), etc.! romance as a horror. (“but the horror? the horror was for love”)

blood lust being tied to heats/ruts. an omega, feverish and in heat, slick with blood and wild eyed. some romantic cannibalism with the way a bite is for claiming. it’s vampiric. it’s a devouring.

it’s a conjoining. a possession. two souls being forcibly twisted together. the horror of having only one true mate that you cannot choose. that is, for better or for worse, only yours. the horror of not just being yourself anymore, but someone else and vice versa. your uncontrollable “other half”.

sublime heats/ruts where you cannot tell what is real or not, shaky snapshots of mind melting ache and pain, only relieved by one person. hallucinations or ailments that come from deeply lonely and isolated omegas and alphas. nightmares when it reaches a fever pitch.

omegas with needle sharp teeth and so much hunger that need to feed and take relentlessly from alphas. omegas and alphas with eyes that glow in the dark and watch too keenly.

rituals where heats/ruts are watched, the horror of bareness and vulnerability. the horror of being an animal in a human skin. of your own desire or pleasure.

also just the horror of being dependent on someone. of needing someone so greatly you’ll be sick with it. the horror of being powerless to their love. the horror of their power over you. or yours over them.

the twisted care. i am interested in strange/more uncommon dynamics; alphas who are nurturing and motherly in awful ways. who hand feed and coddle and smother. omegas who are possessive and violent towards other alphas or omegas.

i just think there is A LOT that could be played with. thought of. messed around with.

i also think we don’t see enough historical au with a/b/o….i’m thinking also gothic-style. western man vs. nature. cowboy a/b/o…victorian…ancient civilization….etc.

anyways, i hope you don’t take this as me like scolding you or hating on what you’ve said in any way—defs not that!! i just had a different sort of horror in mind!! like i said, fanfic for me is all about romance at its core! it’s a reprieve and escape from the work and art that often is very serious and heavy (whether feminist/gender horror, capitalist horror, etc. etc.) that i usually spend my time creating or apart of in my day to day life! it’s deeply important work to me, just not something i wanna do here really!!

[codylabs]

Yo I saw your Bubblegum Crisis fanart a week ago and I thought they were really cool! (yes I know they are old but whatever)

I'm not sure if you still are a fan of the series but I've got a question:

Hypothetically speaking , if BGC was going to release today as say a remake/soft reboot- 12 episodes ideally what would you add or change? (Outside of some obvious things like flashing lights)

Personally I'd make Leon a tad more likeable and give each Knight Saber a bit more development.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm

I would give the suits ankles.

Define the Sabers' weaponry and equipment a little more rigidly, so that combat sequences can follow a little more internal logic than their current "we've got newer upgraded suits that can punch harder than your lasers can lase" or whatever.

I would make the suits a little bulkier to allow space for internal machinery and enough... Oh heck I won't keep going on about the suits. You saw the fanart so you already know the attributes of my opinions on such matters.

Uhhhh get rid of the topless scenes; for Various Reasons I'm not a big fan of fanservice in general.

Make Mackie and Linna actual characters, with character traits and character arcs and characteristics and stuff. One of the only good things the 2040 reboot did was make Linna a sort of POV character as the only 'normal one.' I thought that worked really well. In the fanfic I wrote, that's how I use her. And Mackie... His big sister is a closeted psychopath with the fortune and propensity to fund a private army, frequently makes him drive through exploding factories in the dead of night, and in the morning he has to... Go to school? Do his friends just think he spends all his time on some obsessive hobby, so when they come over he has to pretend to be some kind of expert in building model trains just to keep up appearances? Do the Sabers go on a mission only to discover they can't fly, because Mackie had hockey practice and forgot to fuel the thermal rockets? Is Sylia on the PTA??? This is comedy gold.

As far as animation style goes, the original nailed it in terms of what I want and what I like. Yeah it would be cheaper today to CGI it, but that sounds worse to me for reasons. And yeah I know how much difficulty and baggage is added to art by costly development, but I want to have my cake and also to eat it. Pwease.

The show is usually fairly good about this next one, but I'll say it because a lot of modern stories fail at it: keep the plot small-scale. The show kind of lost me when they exploded all the Genome buildings around the planet, and the reboot REALLY lost the plot. Like, the protaganists are just one team, they should fight one-team sized threats. Just like Spiderman shouldn't face anyone bigger/badder than Doc Ock, the Sabers shouldn't ever deal with anything bigger than "somebody stole the codes to a military satellite." The codes to a military satellite is big stakes for them. That's a big deal. Their regular fair should be bagging/tagging/pacifying rampant androids or sabotaging corporate mischief. There's tons of ground to explore there. Maybe they can go biggish for a finale. Maybe. If they behave and are good. As a treat.

I like that the original was very episodic. Every episode can stand on its own as a little movie. I like that.

Sylia should appear to testify in court wearing full armor with a darth vader voice synthesizer. Nothing would be funnier than this. The show should be a little funny. It should be a little campy. The cast are all funny people with strong personalities. They should be allowed to be funny.

I disagree that Leon is currently unlikable, I think he's great. Obviously, he's a huge simp and a total tool, but he has tons of good aspects as well, and is an all-around swell dude if he weren't ever exposed to w o m e n. IMO, being a perfectly moral star child isn't what makes a good character, and if he has flaws that's opportunity for growth. But I concede that he does need to do more in the plot though. I'd give him an arc, some development or at least resolution to him and Priss, maybe he figures out Nene's secret ID and acts as their man on the inside, maybe he shows up with the calvary, maybe he's actual useful for once in his life, IDK.

Wild west episode.

Show boomers active in everyday life, I guess. We hear a lot about how useful they are in industry, but all we ever see are state-of-the-art combat models that look all scary, or weird one-offs like illegal vampire hookers. There are innumerable directions you could take domestic androids .

There's probably more I could say, but it's 2 in the morning and I'm pretty much just procedurally generating ideas like an LLM at this point. I still do like this show a lot, though maybe not as much as I once did.

[simowis]

Monthly nonsense 23.9

I would prefer Mass Effect to be an Idealism/Realism system than a Paradigm/Renegade system and lean more towards Rationality in its options. Rather than the all-encompassing black/white moral dichotomy. It's a pity they've given up the philosophical space for options

Having gone through another dozen or so Prothean/Javik-related fanfics, I realise that my understanding of him is not quite the same as what's in those fics. After re-examining his behaviour in the game, I'm sticking with my own thought of him.

The understanding of the character necessarily depends on the reader, who is a mirror personality created within each individual. As a reader, I'm pretty open-minded, as long as the fanfic representation of him doesn't drastically conflict with the in-game representation; after all, all of Javik's plot dialogue only adds up to two hours in the game, and he certainly has a lot of room for imagination. As the creator, I also hope that my reflection of Javik's performance doesn't conflict with the game's content, but that's as far as I can go.

The moment the work is made public, it has nothing to do with the author, and the meaning of the work is to be discovered through the reader's interpretation; on the other hand, readers have their own subjective preconceptions, and they can never recover the author's original intention, as Harold Bloom said: "All reading is misreading".

——

Javik says: To the Protheans, the ability to sense touch is as natural as breathing. So I guess for their race, most of the daily communication is done by touch. Talking is a very inefficient way to spread information. They don't have auricles, just modest ear holes. So their auditory system isn't that important, and lower volumes might be inaudible.

I can reasonably surmise that in their flourishing cycle, communication by speech was a condescending courtesy when confronted with other races. Nowadays, with everyone watching countless videos every day, it's easier to imagine. If you have information so important that it would kill everyone not to listen, and you need to tell it to a few primitives, you don't show them your 'magic mobile phone video' right away, because that would scare them, but you learn their language bit by bit and convince them in their own way. That's what Javik is doing. So why would anyone have the impression that he's arrogant?Obviously, his way of dealing with 'primitives' is polite and fair.

——

Javik and the Turrians have very similar opinions about war. They can actually get along quite well. He and Garrus will eventually have a good relationship.

It's interesting to imagine communication between Protheans. Mere touch shouldn't be enough to put the other person in a state of first-person experience, and their tactile exchange should manage to be limited to sharing some of their senses.

How big can his mouth open?

Fanfic is so hard to write :(

The Hanar language translator may have come from the Protheans, as the Protheans' gift allowed them to help the Hanar move from an optical language to a sonic one.

I always thought prothean was once aquatic.

I get a sense of the ideological differences through country differences in fiction.

Love is selfish, love is possessive, love cannot be selfless. That's why protheans don't get it.

I often wonder what kind of advice he would give me if I didn't do well enough. Maybe he'd say something about not being able to compete with others, or maybe he didn't care too much about it, or maybe he'd say not to overwork yourself and that the most important thing is your body? He's not as strict as Vegeta, not in the way that Vegeta would strive for perfection. Maybe he'll be the side of my personality that tells me to do things in a moderate way.

what kind of music fit him?

So Javik use the word “affection”, not “love”, to comment the “join” fact about Shepard…hmm.

His subconscious was filled with despair. Without stopping his speech, his line includes how to live and how to die properly. This is the truth of his inner thoughts.

I had thought that the internet would be eternal, and that my story would be seen by more and more people as it was shared on the internet. But no, the Internet is still young and has yet to suffer major setbacks, parasitic on countless companies, servers and personal computers. The carriers of information are constantly changing. How many oracle bones can the current generation see, how many old books still contain all the information? The medium evolves, iterates. The old medium gets old and disappears with most of its information. I envy the Prothean Echo Shard, the high level of technology they have preserved is testament to the peak of their civilisation. The stories of the Protheans can be remembered for as long as there is a single Prothean left in the world.

I feel like my love for him has calmed down a bit. Instead of a blazing fire, it's now quietly smoldering. It's been four months and I've been blazing a little longer than last time. He's still there, he's become a part of me.

LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!

Still cannot resist him, cannot love any other person now, oh, why?

It was clearly ill-considered and made most people think negatively of him when he said something like 'rule over you primitives' in the first communication in Normandy. It probably didn't matter to him, there was no hope of resurrection, his race was gone, all he had to do was find a battlefield to die on. He had never thought that there might be a future, even if it wasn't his own.

Want to hear Mordin’s suggestion about sex with prothean and human…

It feels like he would say that you humans are full of liars and that your race needs a great purge. Then he listened some more and understood. So, there are so many different factions of your race, then he can understand and says that your race is very skillful in deceiving each other tactically.

[wordsknowsnobounds]

I remember, although now not if the freshness of when I actually started in the fandom, but I still remember the dissonance I felt as I had just finished the book and dived into the fanfic and found so much hate and misunderstanding over characters I found so easy to understand their motivations.

I can't say some of my views were later tainted by fandom, the longer I dived into fanfic before I found myself into a Discord group where I could find people that knew more than I did about Danmei and Xianxia. MDZS wasn't my first experience with both, considering I have watched some movies and other dramas before, and my first MXTX book was TGCF, but I hardly knew enough. So entering the Discord group was like a breath of fresh air in terms of knowledge and learning more about a culture and small details we miss as an outsider audience.

I even re-examined what I knew about the characters, and learned more about others I didn't care as much I still have some I don't care even after, but I did learn more about them and found some respect for them, and I guess that my dissonance with fandom at large grew even more. But then I remember my experience in another fandom - Teen Wolf - that it's just as full as its own complicated relationship between fandom and canon, and something someone I met in it said stuck with me, "People have limited empathy to give characters, and they bestow it onto their favorite characters" or something in similar words, and this couldn't be any less true.

People are more inclined to analyze, or overanalyze, a character they care more, they give that character more leniency or more reasons for the way they act if they identify with the character more. However, the problem starts when the analysis becomes something personal instead of steaming from the character written in the text, and the fact MDZS has so many versions that bring with them their varied canons makes it even more complex.

Because we have the novel with flawed, but three-dimensional characters that have a variation of reasons and motivations for the actions they did, and even in it some are afforded more slack than others. We have a TV Drama that had to pass through a censorship in both content and ideals, they couldn't have a hero that lost control or wasn't as pure as some wished him to be - and taking WWX blame of the ones he was guilty of took a lot of him as a character - and threw all the guilt on another one took a lot of the narrative that the world isn't as simple or black and white. We have the donghua that added some little more flair to certain circumstances and gave a more villainous plot for something that was a good change in the novel, and completely butchered another character. Not only that, but we also have an Audio Book version and a Manhua, but since I haven't either heard one or read the other, I can't say much about them.

All these different canons end up leading to different interpretations, but also leads to misunderstandings and people talking in different "languages", since The Untamed and the Donghua have crucial differences in relation to the Novel. Another thing that adds into the dissonance I have with fandom at large, it's also the whole problem I see of the interpretations that disregard cultural and historical differences. Yes, MDZS happens in a fantasy ancient China, but they still have a different set of morals and beliefs that differ from what we consider as the norm today.

I've seen too much fics of characters raising a fuss about things they never did and would never do in the context they lived and because of who they were and believed in, because they weren't considered amoral or wrong in context. Although, MDZS discussion shouldn't be about morality at all or who has the higher ground to claim it. Or who is right and who is wrong, because that's not the story, that's not what we should have taken of it, because the beauty of MDZS it's because it tells a story of very much human characters, with human motivations, human fails and human emotions.

It feels frustrating to muddle through fics and metas that you read, and your first reaction is: no, that's not it, that's not 'character x'. It feels disheartening that if you try to disagree with something or have something to say about a character or that the majority of fandom have a specific opinion you're either said to be an anti or an apologist. It's rare to find spaces and places where you can have good discussions without someone attacking you for one reason or another. So working that dissonance becomes an even more difficult task when you feel you can't speak because of fear of being targeted.

But I guess that I got tired, and just wanted my frustrations to get out and about on the outside world, so here I am. I'm putting my face out there, I might get burned, but I think I needed to try.

-The Sole Nie out.

[wangxianficfinder]

I have a question, im only a beginner at ao3 i was wondering if someone could tell me what does fall under the line of something you should definitely report? For example when i was just starting i came across fanfics about pedophilia, Cannibalism, rape non con and i still do, I understand personally the reason people might write about these trauma's, but some i have read are just completely writing CP, I've wanted to report it for awhile but I have no idea if its Against Ao3 policies to do this even if it is CP? Also, if someone has chosen not to use archieve warnings, But the fanfiction is something that dearly dearly needs it, what is the best course of action? Do i ignore that? @geraltofriviafan

Hi! I personally wouldn't report those fics unless they are actively causing harm, i.e the author links to real CP, Cannibalism, Rape...etc or references them IRL in a very suspicious manner.

Usually fic is just that, fiction.

While I don't condone these things in any way or form, someone writing about something is very different from them actually doing that thing.

Even the AO3's terms of service state it's not against policy despite them also not condoning some of the types of fics posted, "As provided in part I.E.3 of the Terms of Service, the OTW is not liable to you for any Content to which you are exposed on or because of the Service.

Unless it violates some other policy, we will not remove Content for offensiveness, no matter how awful, repugnant, or badly spelled we may personally find that Content to be."

My point is, if you don't like a certain type of fic, and the author isn't actively causing or promoting harmful things, just block the tag.

As for things to report, again, if an author is being actively malicious, (ex. Causing unnecessary cruelty or promoting harmful ideals, linking to things they shouldn't be, especially without warning, being annoying by spamming people/arguing with intent to purely annoy...etc..) or stealing work from other authors without permission/giving credit/linking to the original author, or spamming by posting the same fic or comment multiple times.

Here's a link to the full list of Terms of service on ao3.

As for fics that aren't tagged properly/don't have a tag you think it needs, I would personally, kindly ask if they could add it through a comment on the fic. Most of the time, authors will gladly add a tag when asked, if they don't, then don't press it. It's easier to just click back and forget it then chance an unexpected argument with them over something easily done. I know a few authors don't tag what they should because they don't like "spoilers" even though that's exactly what a tag is for.

Anyway, Sorry for the long reply 😅 I wish you luck with AO3, most of it is trial and error until you figure out how to best use the site for yourself.

I do have two suggestions to help have a good time on ao3 though!

1. The back button is your friend. Instead of complaining about not liking a fic in a comment and potentially upsetting the author/yourself, just hit that back bar and forget it even existed. Trust me, you will have a much better time if you do.

2. Make use of the filter bar, excluding tags really does help a lot with avoiding fics you know you won't enjoy! Even if it doesn't get all the fics, it gets more than it would without!

- Mod C

Hi! I didn't know you could report a fic on ao3, would you mind explaining to me how i could do it? Unfortunately im also on other fandoms where people repost other people's works and won't delete them

Thanks in advance!

The way I know how is you scroll down to the bottom of the page until you reach this ↓

Click on Policy Questions & Abuse Reports under Contact Us. It will bring you to a new page, scroll down until you reach this ↓

Fill everything in and press submit. If you do it from the page you want to report, the link to page line will already be filled in.

If there is another way, please leave it in the replies so I can add it here ^^

- Mod C

(I am so sorry! I thought I had it wrong the first time but I didn't! I mixed up the screenshots but it IS fixed now! Please reblog this updated version and not the other one!! Again, I am so sorry my brain is broke 🥲)

[octaviasdread]

any girls! dark academia movie recs? i really struggle to find anything not about a group of boys (as much as I love them)

SO MANY!!! This is probably a far more detailed answer than you were expecting but this is a popular question and I want to keep a list for myself and others.

Feel free to add to it/give opinions. I've tried to give a tw for anything I can remember

Girls! Dark Academia Movies/TV Shows

Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

1950s Women’s college

Art professor! Julia Roberts

She’s legit the female Mr Keating of the art & college world

Feminism vs. Tradition

Maggie Gyllenhall x Ginnifer Goodwin; their characters were more than friends. Fight me.

Does not end how you expect

Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird (1998)

MY FAVOURITE!!!

Free on YouTube under one of its various names

Comedy

1960s all girls boarding school

Young Kirsten Dunst

Group of girls plot to sabotage a merger with a boys school less prestigious than their own

Secret attic clubhouse meetings of the D.A.R aka Daughters of the American Ravioli (eaten cold, ew)

girls get political & advocate for their rights using ANY elaborate and chaotic scheme

TW: eating disorder, vomiting & creepy male teacher but the girls plot against him too

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

based on a short book I read for uni by Muriel Spark

1930s girls school in Edinburgh

Scottish teacher! Maggie Smith, controversial with a focus on romantic ideals

Spoiler alert, the liberal teacher is actually a fascist

Her group of fave students has cult- vibes and it’s fascinating

Picnic at Hanging Rock

1970s movie or 2018 mini series

Never watched either but I plan to

Wild Child (2008)

00s romcom every UK teen girl loves

Emma Roberts as the spoiled rich American teenager sent to a strict English boarding school

Plots to get herself expelled but oh no she’s making friends with the girls who help her

And the headmistress has a hot son, and he’s nice??? Double oh no

ICONIC SCENES

Everything! Goes! Wrong!

omg she burns the school down

Feel good, comfort, nostalgia

St Trinians (2007)

English girls boarding school

The kids are all criminals, no joke

So are the teachers

CHAOTIC

gay awakening for british girls

Art heist pulled off by school girls

Government tries to shut them down but oh no, the education minister & the headmistress are ex-lovers

Colin Firth x Rupert Everett in drag

Superior cast: Jodie Whittaker, Gemma Arterton, Juno Temple, Stephen Fry, Colin Firth, etc...

embodies the phrase 'problematic fave'

St Trinians 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009)

Mystery, pirate ancestors, hidden treasure

omg Shakespeare was a woman

girls disguised as boys to infiltrate and rob the posh boys school

Villain! David Tennant in that ICONIC boat scene

Teen girls vs. ancient misogynist brotherhood

like the first film but MORE chaotic and BETTER!???

The Falling (2014)

1960s all girls school

best friends! but its unrequited love

Agoraphobic + distant mother aka mommy issues

Sudden death and the school suppresses/ignores the students grief, sparking mass hysteria & a fainting epidemic in the girls

Cast: Maisie Williams (GoT) & Florence Pugh (Little Women) & Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders)

TW: teen pregnancy, death, vomiting, underage s*x, sibling inc*st, past s*xual assault

READ THE PLOT SUMMARY FIRST

The Book Thief (2013)

Based on an amazing book by Markus Zusak

set in 1940s Nazi Germany

Daughter of a communist whose family were taken by the Nazis/died is fostered by an older couple who teach her to read & she paints a dictionary on the basement walls

Coming of age story about a compulsive book thief. No joke, this kid steals books from banned book burnings and breaks into the mayor's library through the window

Family hides the Jewish son of an old friend in their basement and he helps her to start writing about her experiences in the war

TW: death, bombings, WW2 anti-semitism

Mary Shelley (2017)

Overall good & roughly biographical

Pretty costumes and aesthetic

Modern feminist take on Mary Shelly in her own time period

So many INACCURACIES for the drama so don’t take it as truth

Percy Shelley slander and not all of it is justified

Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, and Maisie Williams

The Secret Garden (1993)

Based on a fave childhood book

1901 colonial India & Yorkshire, England

Orphaned, spoilt & neglected girl sent to live with her reclusive Uncle in the English countryside

Gothic elements, mysteries, secret doors/passages/locked gardens

local boy with a flock of animals, magic, kids chanting around a fire and all around immaculate vibes

Happy ending!!!

Hidden Figures (2016)

African-American women as mathematicians for NASA

1960s space project

Women balancing a career and family obligations

Deals with racial & gender discrimination

Loosely based on the lives of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who worked for NASA as engineers & mathematicians

Anne of Green Gables (1985) & sequel (1987)

Adaptation L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

Canada (late 1890s/early 1900s)

Highly imaginative & bookworm orphan is adopted by a reclusive elderly brother and sister duo

Small town & school years comedic drama

Unrequited Enemies -> Friends -> lovers

Inspiring new woman teacher

Girls re-enact Tennyson’s poem and nearly drown for the aesthetic™

Dramatic poetry reading with INTENSE 👀eye contact👀

Writer! Anne & English teacher! Anne dealing with unruly girls school antics

Collette (2018)

biographical drama on french writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette

Victorian & Edwardian era France

More talented than her husband so she ghostwrites for him

Fight for creative ownership of her wildly successful novels

Affairs with a woman called Georgie and also with Missy, born female but masculine presenting

Cast: Keira Knightly, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark)

Enola Holmes (2020)

Netflix book adaptation

Younger sister of Sherlock Holmes

Victorian era! feminism/suffragettes

Mother-daughter focus

Mystery, adventure, secret codes, teens running away & escaping from (and eventually fighting) assassins

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, Millie Bobby Brown

Ginger & Rosa (2012)

1960s England

best friends since literal birth navigating troubled teen years

poet & anti-nuclear activist! Ginger

off the rails but also catholic! Rosa

Shout out to Mark & Mark the gay godfathers we all want

family troubles 

TW: older man has an affair with a 17 yr old

Testament of Youth (2014)

based on WW1 memoir by Vera Brittain

young woman (writer & poetry lover) escapes traditional family & goes to study at Oxford University

abandons to become a war nurse

romance, tragedy and war trauma

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington (GoT), Taron Edgerton (Rocketman), Colin Morgan (Merlin)

Little Women (2019)

Writer! Jo & Artist! Amy

Mother/daughter focus and sister dynamics

the March sisters’ theatre club is *chefs kiss*

champagne problems edits of Jo x Laurie are a mood

Ambivalent ending perfectly captures Louisa May Alcott’s dilemma with the book the movie is based on

set in 1860s America

ALL STAR CAST and a Greta Gerwig masterpeice

Lady Bird (2017)

coming of age in early 2002/2003 Sacramento, California

all girls catholic school

writer! Christine aka Lady Bird wants to get outta town and start her life again at college 'in a city with culture'

Mother/daughter dynamics - so realistic!

I live for that Jesus car stunt & the nun's reaction

school theatre program

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein

Another Greta Gerwig gem

Beguiled (2017)

Virginia, civil war era

Girls school with only five students and two teachers left

Find an injured Union army soldier & bring him inside

Women & teenagers want his attention (v. problematic) before uniting against him

(tbh you'll either love it, hate it, or watch once & forget it)

Sofia Coppola film so its very feminine gaze

TW: violence, death, underage

Legally Blonde (2001)

No questions will be taken

Elle Woods was the blue print

TV series:

House of Anubis (2011-2013)

I know it’s a kids/young teen show but I still unironically love it

ANCIENT EGYPT!!!!

Modern day with Victorian era links to treasure hunters & Egyptian research expeditions (stealing from tombs)

Chosen one plot lines, curses, kidnapping, mysteries, secret tunnels under the school, elixir of life

Teens have investigate & protect themselves cus oh no the TEACHERS are involved in some shady stuff

new American kid at British boarding school is the actual premise not just a fanfic au

Nostalgic, light-hearted, funny, and kinda cheesy but I will accept no criticism

The Alienist (2018 -now)

Mid 1890s, New York

Woman’s private detective agency (Season 2)

Serial killer mystery

Woman secretary turns detective and teams up with a criminal psychiatrist and a newspaper editor to solve crime

TW: violence, child pr*stit*tion

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, Daniel Bruhl

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)

Woman chess prodigy

1950s & 1960s

TW: drug & alcohol abuse

Gentleman Jack (2019 - now)

Based on the diaries of Anne Lister

Victorian Yorkshire, England

Upper-class lesbians

Confident, suit wearing! Anne Lister x shy! Ann Walker

Business woman! Anne running the family mines

Cast: Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster) & Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders)

TW: violence

Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)

bubbly/ambitious single mom + intelligent daughter

bookworm! Rory Gilmore gets into a prestigious private school and then an Ivy League college

Small town drama is comedic gold

Fast dialogue packed with pop culture and literary references

Comforting & nostalgic

TEAM JESS

Anne with an E (2017-2019)

Loose adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

they completely change the plot lines but it’s still very good content!

Orphan girl with trauma and a love of books/poetry is adopted by an elderly brother & sister duo, bringing light and fresh ideas to a rural community

Feminism, girls writing club, lgbtq safe spaces, girls eduction, black/indigenous representation

Miss Stacy as THAT inspiring teacher

Aunt Josephine’s lavish gay parties have my heart

TW: creepy male teacher tries to marry a student, racial discrimination, indigenous assimilation school

Victoria (2016-2019)

Adaption of Queen Victoria’s life

Victoria navigating her political, royal, and personal life

Albert’s involvement with The Great Exhibition, 1851 (on cultural + industrial innovations)

Alfred Paget x Edward Drummond is exquisite

Gorgeous costumes and aesthetics

TW: bury your gays trope

Derry Girls (2018-now)

1990s Northern Ireland during the troubles

Comedy, episodes 20-25 mins long

English boy sent to an all girls Catholic school with his cousin

✨Dead Poets Society parody episode ✨with a free-spirited female teacher

Sister Michael, the sarcastic nun who hates her job & reads the exorcist for giggles

Wee anxious lesbian! Clare Devlin (plus her friends wearing rainbow pins)

Badass with bad ideas! Michelle Mallon

Main Character! Erin Quinn

Lovable weirdo who would fight a polar bear! Orla McCool

Wee English fella & honorary Derry girl! James Maguire

Dickinson (2019-now)

Loose adaption of the poet Emily Dickinson’s life

Set in 19th century Massachusetts, US

Historical drama with modern dialogue & music that works SEAMLESSLY

gives a great understanding of Emily Dickinson’s poems

💕Vintage gays! Emily x Sue💕

Theatre club, writing, poetry, dressing as men to sneak into lectures, love letters, teen drama, feminism, and an underground abolitionist journal as a brief side plot in season 2

Wiz Khalifa plays death in a horse drawn carriage

TW: opium use

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017-2019)

Based on great childhood books

Bookworm! brother, Inventor! sister, and baby sister with sharp teeth

Mystery, secret organisations, orphaned siblings figuring things out & fending for themselves against the villain after their fortune

Adults either cartoon evil, comedically incompetent, or SPIES

Boarding school, library owner, scientific researcher, and theatre episodes

Ambiguous time period which is really fun to try and pin point

Killing Eve (2018-now)

Classic detective who has homoerotic tension with the assassin she is tracking down

British Detective! Eve Polastri figures out the notorious assassin MI5 are investigating is a woman, is fired & then put on a secret MI6 case with a small team

Assassin! Villanelle, a psychopath with a tragic past and a mastery of both accents & fashion

Woman MI6 boss! Carolyn Martens, head of Russian section

Travel Europe following Villanelle’s killings and escaping the assassins sent by Villanelle’s organisation

‘You’re supposed to be my enemy and moral opposite but omg you’re the only one smart enough to get me and why am I obsessed with you????'

🚨 GO IN FOR A KISS AND THEN STAB YOUR ENEMY 🚨

Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable (2017-2020)

Spanish drama set in 1920s Madrid

Four young women at a telecommunications company form a group of friends and help navigate the difficult situations they are all in

Secret identities, dangerous pasts, murder, crime, lgbtq couple & throuple, trans man character, feminism/suffragists

girls commit crimes for humanitarian reasons and cover! it! up!

UNDERRATED SHOW!!!!

Gorgeous costumes and set

Haven’t finished it yet and I’m catching up

TW: abuse, violence, death

Outlander (2014 - now)

haven’t watched yet but plan to

Woman time travels to Scotland, 1743

Rebel highlanders, pirates, British colonies, American revolutionary war

Time jumps between 18th & 20th century

[perpetual-stories]

How To Fight Writers Block

hello, hello. hope everyone is doing well. as you can all tell, this post will be about how to fight writers block.

it’s really annoying to me when I hear people say “oh you don’t have writers block, you’re just lazy.”

first of all, yes, I am naturally lazy. second of all, how dare you. writing isn’t as easy as many think. granted, all you have to do is write down words on paper, but it’s not always easy to find the right words to express what you are feeling, or what you wish to say.

I have had terrible writer’s block for the last few days and it’s horrible! as a business owner or a small writing store, I have to be ready to write and fulfill my clients’ ideas and orders.

it’s not easy. It takes a heavy toll on my imagination, and digs me a deep pit of blockage, drowning in the lack of originality because of the constant writing and repetition or certain phrases and sentences in different projects.

i am making this post in the hopes to remind myself about over coming the dreaded and sometimes skeptically believed writer’s block.

What is writer’s block?

Yeah, I know. We all know what that is, but let me define it.

is the state of being unable to proceed with writing, and/or the inability to start writing something new

some people believe it to be a real problem, others believe it's “all in your head”

What Causes Writer’s Block?

in the 1970s, clinical psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios decided to find out

they concluded that there are four broad causes of writer's block:

Excessively harsh self-criticism

Fear of comparison to other writers

Lack of external motivation, like attention and praise

Lack of internal motivation, like the desire to tell one's story

How to overcome writer's block: 20 tips

1. Develop a writing routine:

Author and artist Twyla Tharp once wrote: “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.”

it might seem counterintuitive

if you only write when you “feel creative,” you're bound to get stuck in a tar pit of writer's block

The only way to push through is by disciplining yourself to write on a regular schedule. It might be every day, every other day, or just on weekends — but whatever it is, stick to it!

2. Use "imperfect" words:

A writer can spend hours looking for the perfect word or phrase to illustrate a concept

You can avoid this fruitless endeavor by putting, “In other words…” and simply writing what you’re thinking, whether it’s eloquent or not

You can then come back and refine it later by doing a CTRL+F search for “in other words.”

3. Do non-writing activities:

one of the best ways to climb out of a writing funk is to take yourself out of your own work and into someone else’s

Go to an exhibition, to the cinema, to a play, a gig, eat a delicious meal

immerse yourself in great STUFF and get your synapses crackling in a different way

Snippets of conversations, sounds, colors, sensations will creep into the space that once felt empty

4. Freewrite through it:

free-writing involves writing for a pre-set amount of time without pause — and without regard for grammar, spelling, or topic. You just write.

The goal of freewriting is to write without second-guessing yourself — free from doubt, apathy, or self-consciousness, all of which contribute to writer's block. Here’s how:

Find the right surroundings. Go somewhere you won't be disturbed.

Pick your writing utensils. Will you type at your computer, or write with pen and paper? (Tip: if you're prone to hitting the backspace button, you should freewrite the old-fashioned way!)

Settle on a time-limit. Your first time around, set your timer for just 10 minutes to get the feel for it. You can gradually increase this interval as you grow more comfortable with freewriting.

5. Relax on your first draft:

Many writers suffer form perfectionism, which is especially debilitating during a first draft

“Blocks often occur because writers put a lot of pressure on themselves to sound ‘right’ the first time. A good way to loosen up and have fun again in a draft is to give yourself permission to write imperfectly.” — editor Lauren Hughes

perfect is the enemy of good,” so don't agonize about getting it exactly right! You can always go back and edit, maybe even get a second pair of eyes on the manuscript

6. Don’t start at the beginning:

the most intimidating part of writing is the start, when you have a whole empty book to fill with coherent words

instead of starting with the chronological beginning of whatever it is you’re trying to write, dive into middle, or wherever you feel confident

7. Take a shower:

Have you ever noticed that the best ideas tend to arrive while in the shower, or while doing other “mindless” tasks?

research shows that when you’re doing something monotonous (such as showering, walking, or cleaning), your brain goes on autopilot, leaving your unconscious free to wander without logic-driven restrictions

showering is my favourite thing to do if I may add

8. Balance your inner critic:

successful writers have in common is the ability to hear their inner critic, respectfully acknowledge its points, and move forward

You don't need to completely ignore that critical voice, nor should you cower before it

you must establish a respectful, balanced relationship, so you can address what's necessary and skip over what's insecure and irrelevant

9. Switch up your tool:

a change of scenery can really help with writer's block. However, that scenery doesn't have to be your physical location — changing up your writing tool can be just as big a help!

if you’ve been typing on your word processor of choice, try switching to pen and paper. Or if you're just sick of Google Docs, consider using specialized novel writing software.

10. Change your POV:

great advice from editor Lauren Hughes: “When blocked, try to see your story from another perspective ‘in the room’ to help yourself move beyond the block. How might a minor character narrate the scene if they were witnessing it? A ‘fly on the wall’ or another inanimate object?

11. Exercise your creative muscles:

Any skill requires practice if you want to improve, and writing is no different! So if you’re feeling stuck, perhaps it’s time for a strengthening scribble-session to bolster your abilities

12. Map out your story:

If your story has stopped chugging along, help it pick up steam by taking a more structured approach — specifically, by writing an outline

13. Write something else:

Though it's important to try and push through writer's block with what you're actually working on, sometimes it's simply impossible

feel free to push your current piece to the side for now and write something new

14. Work on your characters:

It follows that if your characters are not clearly defined, you’re more likely to run into writer’s block

15. Stop writing for readers:

write for yourself, not your potential readers

this will help you reclaim the joy of being creative and get you back in touch with what matters: the story.

this is something I really need to do. because of my etsy business i don't write for fun anymore, but instead as a business and a deadline. i'm going to have to pull out my old crappy wattled fanfics or write some new ones.

16. Try a more visual process:

when words fail you, forget them and get visual. Create mind maps, drawings, Lego structures — ideally related to your story, but whatever unblocks your mind!

17. Look for the root of it:

writer’s block often comes from a problem deeper than simple “lack of inspiration.” So let's dig deep: why are you really blocked? Ask yourself the following questions:

Do I feel pressure to succeed and/or competition with other writers?

Have I lost sight of what my story is about, or interest in where it's going?

Do I lack confidence in my own abilities, even if I've written plenty before?

Have I not written for so long that I feel intimidated by the mere act?

Am I simply feeling tired and run-down?

once you identify what's wrong, it'll be so much easier to fix.

18. Quit the Internet:

If willpower isn’t your strong suit and your biggest challenge is staying focused, try a site blocker like Freedom or an app like Cold Turkey

19. Let the words find you:

meditate, go for a walk, take that shower

Word Palette is a great app that features a keyboard of random words, allowing you to simply click your way to your next masterpiece.

You can also try AI auto-completers like Talk to Transformer, where you can enter a phrase and let the app “guess what comes next.”

even though they often produce nonsense, it's a great way to help that writer's block.

20. Write like Hemingway:

And if your biggest block is your own self-doubt about your prose, Hemingway offers suggestions to improve your writing as you go

it's a pretty cool app if you ask me.

it highlights your sentences (if need be) and makes suggestions on how to improve them!

well, there you have it! a lengthy post on how to fight writer's block. now i just hope i can combat my own soon.

like, comment and reblog if you find this useful! feel free to reblog in instagram and tag me perpetualstories

Follow me on instagram and tumblr for more writing and grammar tips and more!

[camilliar]

recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in  The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

[aiweirdness]

AI + Vintage American cooking: a combination that cannot be unseen

A week ago, in a sudden fit of terrible judgement, I decided to find out what would happen if I:

Asked people to help me collect examples of the worst, the weirdest, the most gelatinous recipes that vintage American cooking has to offer, then

Trained a neural net to imitate them

People submitted over 800 recipes in all, including such recipes as:

“Beef Fudge” (contains marshmallow, chocolate chips, and ground beef),

“Circus Peanut Jello Salad” (also contains crushed pineapple and kool-whip), and

“Tropical Fruit Soup” (contains banana, grapes, and a can of cream of chicken soup)

“Lemon Lime Salad” (also contains cottage cheese, mayonnaise, and horseradish)

As I watched this dataset coalesce, much as one might watch a speeding dumpster begin to spin out of control, I began to approach the state I dreaded: all the recipes began to seem normal.

Shrimp + grapefruit + lemon jello? Citrus seafood is a thing.

Chili sauce + lemon jello + cottage cheese + mayo? Well it's not SWEETENED jello, so

I began to wonder if I would actually be able to tell the difference between the neural net recipes and the real thing. Jello was supposed to be easy-to-prepare, after all - maybe through repetition an advanced neural net like GPT-2 would learn how to make basic jello, and then anything it would decide to chuck in there would be technically reasonable. Maybe it would even coalesce on an ideal form, one that distilled human invention down to its essentials.

No, as it turns out. Here’s a neural net recipe.

It does cocktails, too.

The training data contained a lot of things. It contained eel only once. For some reason the AI has decided to use eel a LOT.

It also invents ingredients.

Some of the neural net recipes bear at least some resemblance to the human versions, but manage to mess them up profoundly. Without a sense that the recipe directions are describing ingredients and things that happen to them, the neural net never gets the hang of jello - that you need hot water to make it gel, that it doesn’t go in the oven. It also forgets to add all of its ingredients, or introduces some that were never mentioned before. This is partly because its memory is terrible, and partly because it doesn’t know what’s important.

I couldn’t find a setting at which the neural net recipes could consistently pass for human. Set the chaos levels too low and the neural net would repeat the same few recipes, forgetting a different key step or ingredient each time. Set the chaos levels too high and the neural net would get ever more inventive, producing recipes that promised creamy lime and called for golf balls or elk hide, or directed the chef to remove the lamb’s giblets.

Some of its recipes were beyond bizarre.

Remember that today's AI is much closer in brainpower to an earthworm than to a human. It can pattern-match but doesn't understand what it's doing. Commercial AI is not significantly smarter than this recipe AI. Humans have just hopefully done a better job of preventing it from making oblivious mistakes.

It got to the point where I would see a recipe like this and be excited and proud of the neural net. Then I would realize just how very low my standards had fallen.

One thing the neural net has learned from humans is that it's good to include a story with your recipe.

It is bad at this.

The neural net puts lots of words in its recipes that were never in the jello-centric training data. It’s drawing from its initial general training on internet text. It read a LOT of fanfic on the internet during its initial general training, and still remembers it now. Except now all its stories center around food.

It’s trying. It’s startlingly bad. It wants us to remove the internal rinds twice. AI’s not ready to take over the world - it can’t even figure out the kitchen.

Subscribers get bonus content: More jello-centric neural net recipes, including some that were too long to post here. Be especially afraid of the ones that aren’t exactly “recipes”.

My book on AI is out, and, you can now get it any of these several ways! Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s