#also i'm pretty sure a huge part (if not the entirety) of this fandom is actually neurodivergent

[atlantis-just-drowned]

Cove Holden x Neurodivergent MC headcanons

I said I'd do this kind of post days ago, and finally, here it is!

First of all, a little reminder that "neurodivergent" is an umbrella term to talk about a large variety of "disorders", of divergencies. It doesn't stop to autism or adhd.

• If the MC have been early diagnosed, they will 100% spot Cove's autism, but will probably keep their suspicions for themselves because naaaah, it can't be that, maybe neurotypicals' brains are just not as weird as you though they were. But once Cove starts his researches on neurodivergency and autism, and talks to you about the possibility of him being autistic, it just... Make sense to you. You can't imagine him being anything else than a fellow neurodivergent. It was just obvious the whole time. And during the official diagnosis journey, your moms will definitely help by explaining to Cove how to contact a good professional, who he needs to be searching for, what are the papers he'll need to pass the test, etc... And will also comfort and reassure Clifford while he does his best to accept and understand his son's autism, and how he's not a bad father for not noticing the signs before.

• But if instead, the MC is late diagnosed, they will either understand they are neurodivergent while doing researches to understand Cove, or Cove will understand he's autistic while doing researches right after your diagnosis. There's no other scenarios, you two just want to understand each others so bad, when really you aren't that different. But once both of you are aware of your neurodivergency, it just makes sense that you've always understood each others so well and ended up together.

• Both of you forget stuffs constantly. Either it is dates, anniversaries, chores, or just objects everywhere in the house. The worst is when Cove looses his glasses. The two of you can spend hours circling around the house, looking everywhere and anywhere, even in the weirdest places of the house (like the fridge that you'll probably open quite a few times during the treasure hunt), before you look at Cove long enough to realize that his glasses are, in fact, on his head.

• You also have a big board in the house to prevent you both from forgetting important meetings, outputs or medical appointments. It works, but only half of the time.

• Both of you do chores whenever they remember to do them. You aren't asking to the other to do it and don't care much about who did the most chores in the day/week, since you both know that if you're waiting for the other to do it, there's great chances that you'll both forget it right away and it'll never be done.

• After spending so much time with one another, you took the habit to include the other in your stimming. Echolalia of course, but also especially hand stimming. It can be clapping each other's hand, tangling and untangling your fingers, or playing with them... The thing is, it now looks like you are both unable to function without each other. And of course it isn't really true, but you must admit that whenever you're apart from your partner, you feel a pinch in the heart when you start stimming and you have to do it all alone without someone's hand to play with.

• Over the years you ended up being able to follow each other's train of thoughts while you both zone out during a conversation, which makes it incredibly weird to others when you just stay silent for a moment, and then suddenly start to talk about a completely different and unrelated topic, as if it was the most natural sequel to the precedent conversation.

• You also ended up understanding each others whenever you say stuffs such as "where's the thing?", as if it was the clearest precision in the universe.

• You have a neurodivergent-friendly receipt book at home, with your favorite foods/textures highlighted, so you're always sure to not trigger negatively each other's texture sensitivity/sensory issues.

• If you have special interests and/or hyperfixations, you can be 100% sure that Cove will happily listen to your infodumps and will learn about your interests as much as he can. It even happens that he end up being dragged in it with you.

• He doesn't really say it, but he go feral internally when you try to lean and get involved in his own special interests. That's one of the most intimate and romantic things you could do, to his personal opinion.

• Both of you know the other's triggers and difficulties, and you look out for one another whenever you feel that a certain place, smell or situation may be uncomfortable to the other.

• You're also able to recognize pretty easily when the other go mute, and need silent time or to be left alone. One good point is that staying completely silent with one another doesn't cause any problem.

• If you ever consider having/adopting a child, one of the main point against this project would be that you're both scared to basically forget your child or to be unable to meet its physical/emotional needs correctly, because of your neurodivergencies.

[angel-is-not-creative]

SwampCon

I have to admit, I was a little embarrassed walking through all the Honor Society students and the middle school science fair kids in cosplay at 9 in the morning but I persevered.

I did go to high school in cosplay once for spirit day however I was insufferable in high school so I try not to think about it. I've never been to an actual convention before though so this was a first.

I am pretty heavily involved in fandom culture but god I was shocked by the amount of anime I did not know. I also felt incredibly old because where were the Hetalia cosplays?! I didn't see a single one and it just feels like as a community we have forgotten our dark past. Though I did see a homestuck cosplay so I have some hope left.

I attended for the entirety of the day on Saturday, most of my time was spent volunteering but I did manage to spend $80 somehow like I really don't know what came over me.

Volunteering was very nice and laid back and it is something I will likely be doing next year as well. I was a bit upset that I didn't get to check out the maid cade because I was so busy but I know that it will be back next year so it's cool.

I really enjoyed watching the kpop dancing panel, I don't know anything about it but the dancers looked really good and everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.

To be honest, I don't think I have complimented this many people in my life, there were so many cool cosplays and a lot of them were from some of my favorite shows (lots of sk8 the infinity which I loved, a few soul eater and danganronpa ones as well).

The artist alley is where I lost all of my money. There were so many talented artists with amazing pieces and I'm a huge sucker for supporting small artists. Here is my haul (plus a pair of horns that are not pictured).

For the record I have never even seen My Hero Acadamia I just really love Present Mic and this print was just so cool I couldn't not purchase it. The posters are so amazing and I had to stop myself from buying more things. These were all an investment into my happiness and honestly, cash isn't even real money.

Javi's bad fanfiction reading panel was so funny, I feel a little guilty for contributing in the emotional turmoil of a couple dozen people with my very enthusiastic vote for the most horrendous fanfiction known to man, but also I think those people left just a little more cultured. Fanfiction is a vital part of fan culture and we cannot deny how much of it is just straight-up horrible and frankly disturbing so much of it is (I read over 15 million words of fanfiction last year so I am qualified to speak on this). I did have to leave a little early because at that point I had been at the con for over 12 hours and was starting to fall asleep in my chair.

I met a lot of cool people throughout the day, and it was really nice just knowing that you already have a shared interest. Within the first few hours of being there, someone asked me if I was a "button, keychain, or sticker autistic" and when I told them I was a sticker autistic they handed me a swampcon sticker. It was a really nice moment for me I don't know why.

The other volunteers were also all so kind I didn't really come to the con with anyone but I was always talking to someone throughout the day because everyone was so friendly and open. I even got to talk about Hetalia ships with someone which just made my day. I ran into a lot of you guys there as well which was so fun. If you saw me after like 1 then my wig was off because that thing was way too itchy to wear for a full day, I only made it like 4 hours.

Next year I will not be spending all of my money and I'm gonna drag some of my friends along to make sure I get to do all of the activities like maid cafe and the Miku concert (I did not attend but I helped pass out glowsticks so you may have seen me hehe). This was actually so much fun and I would have attended on Sunday as well if I didn't have so much homework to do.

This was me at the beginning of the day with my volunteer badge :P

[sortasirius]

what makes you think the writers want deancas? not trying to be an asshole, i'm just genuinely curious as to why you think that. i know berens' episodes are pretty heavy with subtext so i can see why you'd say that he wants it, but i'm not so sure about the rest of the writers/dabb. it seems like meghan isn't a huge fan either, given her "they twisted it so fast" tweet :/ of course she's a very new writer (think she's only writing one ep this season?) but still

OKAY this is a great question, welcome to my dissertation.

I’m going to address the end of your question first. Meghan is actually DeanCas positive, she has been for quite a long time. She actually, a few years back, posted a picture of her reading a literal book about Destiel and captioned it “writing reading” or something like that.

This whole thing just comes out of a boiling over of tensions because of how nasty fandom twitter can be. Like I said here, I think this has just gotten blown out of proportion, they shouldn’t have posted all this randomly disparaging stuff, but also like...can you blame them? The fandom is a lot, we always have been, and they’re probably also under a gag order not to talk about the finale, and are annoyed that people keep asking.

So nah, Meg is not anti Destiel.

To the first part!! So let’s take a look at the show runners since Cas has been around.

Seasons 4 and 5: Kripke

Seasons 6 and 7: Gamble

Seasons 8-11ish: Carver

Seasons 11ish-15: Dabb

So starting with Kripke. Okay, yes, I will be the first to admit that we have some pretty incredible Destiel moments in these seasons, but it’s less directly written into the plot and much more from Misha and Jensen’s uhhhh ~chemistry~. The only times it was directly written into the script was when the episode was handled by someone like Edlund (“On The Head Of A Pin,” “The End,” “My Bloody Valentine”). And you have to remember, if in season 5, there are moments here and there where you’re like huh that’s suspiciously romantic dialogue, remember that Cas took Anna’s place. Anna was supposed to be endgame for Dean, but due to a myriad of issues and Misha’s general greatness, Anna was replaced with Cas.

Onto 6 and 7. Hmmm. Gamble. 6 and 7 are my two least favorite seasons and that’s no secret, and that’s not only due to the plain old weird shit in the overall storyline, but also that homegirl killed off Cas in s7 and then Bobby like four episodes later. (Also it ALWAYS rubbed me the wrong way they couldn’t have Baby in that season lol). We still had some great DeanCas moments, but again, it wasn’t really written into the overall arc (until they had to change the end of season 7 because of tanking ratings and bring Misha back lol, anyone remember the fact that Dean kept Cas’ jacket and would randomly dream of him? Yeah.). But we still had those moments, those distinctly romantic moments, probably the best example in these two seasons is from Edlund again, specifically “The Man Who Would be King,” I wrote a little about that here.

We move onto Carver, who gave us, at this point, the most overt DeanCas season with season 8 (season gr8 is a better name imo), and this is the first time Dean and Cas’ relationship is directly written as an arc of the season.  I mean, you have everything in Purgatory, Dean “seeing” Cas everywhere, the fact that he felt so guilty that Cas stayed in Purgatory that he manipulated his own memories to think that he was the one that failed Cas, because he couldn’t comprehend that Cas would want to leave him, and let’s not forget Dean snapping Cas out of Naomi’s hold on him in “Goodbye Stranger.”  It was a very obvious shift, not enough to alert the general audience, but more than enough for most of us in fandom.

It’s also important to note that this is when Andrew stopped co writing with Loflin and started writing his own episodes (”Hunter Heroici” anyone?)  I like Loflin fine, but Dabb was able to stretch his legs a little bit more once he stopped co-writing, and we also began to see some DeanCas themes in his solo episodes.

In any case, them and their issues being a big part of the seasons continued with Carver, and Berens entered the scene, his first episode (”Heaven Can’t Wait”) is one of my favorites, with human Cas and the fanfiction gap and Dean and Cas just generally being awkward and funny and sweet.  This is Bobo’s FIRST episode, remember that.  He comes right out of the gate with it.

Also in Season 9, this is when Dean takes the Mark of Cain, and the Cas/Colette mirror is born, so obviously, Dean and Cas are the fabric of the season once again.  This is also the season where Metatron says Cas is “in love with humanity,” and then immediately refers to Dean as Humanity so uhhhh yeah.

Onto season 10, Dabb and Berens continue with their greatness (I could write pages on the DeanCas date in “The Things We Left Behind” alone).  And then we have one of the best scenes in the entire show in “The Prisoner” where the Cas/Colette mirror continues and Dean, driven by grief and pain and rage and the Mark, still doesn’t kill Cas.  He still can’t kill Cas.

Season 11 is important because it takes choice away from both Cas and Dean, and shows us, as the audience, how much losing each other takes out of them. We saw in season 10 how much losing Dean takes from Cas, but what about Cas losing Dean?  Dean loses his choice with his connection to Amara this season, and loses even more when Lucifer reveals he’s been possessing Cas, and plays on Dean’s connection to Cas like a mockery.  It’s also worth noting that, similarly to season 8, Dean breaks out of the connection with Amara when he’s worried about Cas, and that’s something that even SHE is surprised by.

But then season 12, the beginning to the Renaissance.  This is when we get the writer’s that become important for what Dean and Cas are today, and, truly, why I believe they want canon Destiel as much as we do.

This is the first season with Dabb’s writers: Davy Perez, Meredith Glynn, Steve Yockey, and of course Bobo all come in with their incredible talents and gave us episode after episode of good content.  “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” is probably my favorite, probably the best example of what I’m saying.  An episode where Dean is called out by an enemy directly, told to “roll the dice” on Cas’ life.  And Dean won’t, it’s not even really a hesitation.  And this comes from a character that has known Dean for ten seconds.  I also wrote more in depth about this episode here.  There are also some.....distinctly domestic details we get this season, specifically in “The Future” (written by Berens and Glynn) with the mixtape.  The most tropey of tropes mixtape.  Yeah, I’ll just leave that one here.

And then season 12 ends with Cas’ death, but also with the parallel between Sam and Dean with Jess and Cas.  Sam literally has to drag Dean away from Cas, just like Dean had to drag Sam out of his burning apartment in the pilot.  The episode drives it home in every way that it can: Dean is the one left kneeling by Cas’ body, while Sam goes to find out what is upstairs.  Dean is the one who stares at the sky, finally broken.  This isn’t a random thing, this is Dean’s whole arc, it’s the entirety of the beginning of 13.  Dean’s pain, his anguish, his anger.

Season 13 starts with them burning Cas, with Dean, who has begged God to bring him back, who has split his knuckles punching a door, standing, staring at Cas’ pyre with brokenness on his face.

I mean.....

Anyway, season 13 is where it gets interesting (well, I think all of this is interesting but I’m a writer nerd so).  So Cas comes back from the Empty in “Advanced Thanatology” written by Steve Yockey, and then a wombo combo of “Tombstone” by Davy Perez next (”Brokebacknatural” as the PR said at the time).  Listen.  This is the part that SPN crossed a line that they couldn’t come back from.  With Cas being Dean’s “big win,” the fact that Dean and Cas watch movies together, “I told you, he’s an angry sleeper.  Like a bear.” Talked about it here.

This is where, in my opinion, the network stepped in, but the damage was already done.  They had already established that Cas was Dean’s big win, that Dean’s poor coping was not due to Mary’s disappearance, but solely due to Cas, and that Dean and Cas have more married energy than anyone else.  The network had nixed blatant canon at this point, and they writing room had been pushing the boundaries of what the network would allow. 

After these episodes, we see a marked drop off of DeanCas heavy scenes.  They’re still there, still a part of the fabric of the season, but not as...obvious as it had been in early season 13.

And this continued through season 14, we’re back to scraps of Destiel scenes here and there, but to me it always felt like there was something bubbling under the surface, something distinctly unsaid in the themes of the season, even after the walk back of obvious “Dean and Cas are in love” scenes.

And then we get to season 15, which, y’all know I talk about all the time.  What’s important here is that Bobo and Glynn are both executive producers, calling more of the shots than ever before.  Additionally, it’s important to note that, though they only co write occasionally, Glynn and Berens refer to each other as “work husband” and “work wife.”  Each episode has just turned up the volume, and, not for the first time, but certainly the most obvious, Dean and Cas ARE the season.  Sure, they’re trying to beat God, they’re trying to finally find peace, defeat the final big bad, but really?  This season has been about Dean, and Dean’s relationship to Cas.

And not only do we have obvious and clear Destiel in nearly every episode, but we have episodes like “Last Call” which canonize bi!Dean (wrote about that here).

And, maybe most importantly so far, we have “The Rupture,” the breakup, and “The Trap,” Dean’s confession (both written by Berens).  And here’s the thing.  These episodes feel connected, but also feel like they’re missing something.  Beren’s last episode is 15x18, “The Truth.”  We’ve all spec’ed about what could happen in this episode, and I think *I* know what it’s leading to.  But for it to be leading to that, it means that the network has to have approved what we’ve all been waiting for years for.

Who got this change to happen?  Who got the network to change their minds?  It wasn’t us.  It was them.  I am fully convinced that Dabb and Berens quite literally put their careers on the line for Dean and Cas.  They believe in them, they’ve shown that from the beginning, but the only thing standing in the way was the network, never allowing them to take the final step. 

So, to answer your question: I think the writers want canon DeanCas because they’ve already shown us that they do.  Take a look at their episodes, at Dabb’s, at Beren’s, at Glynn’s, at Perez’s, at Yockey’s.  They’ve been telling us what’s going on with Dean and Cas for years.

Sure, I’m not in their heads, I guess I don’t know for *sure* that this has been their thought process, but if we put it all together, from the marked shift when Dabb fully took over in s12, to the change right after “Tombstone,” to the new shift, the blatantly romantic shift in season 15, what else is there?

I’ve said for a long time that we, the SPN fandom, are beyond lucky to have the writer’s that we do.  They’re all going to go on to have prolific careers and we were lucky to get them at the end of our little show.  I give them a lot of credit for what we have in the show today.

Just remember, they’ve been telling us in all of s15 who Chuck is.  He says he’s the writer, right?  But a writer who doesn’t have control of his characters?  A writer who wants to do the same ending over and over because it “works”?  That doesn’t sound like a writer, it sounds like a network exec.

They’ve been showing us what they want for years, and the way s15 is going?  I think they may have convinced the network to let us have it.

[procrastinatorproject]

For the fic asks, two heart emoji and a clown walk into an ask box:

💖 What made you start writing?

💞 Who's your comfort character?

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

Ohhh, what illustrious guests! Thank you so much for visiting my inbox! Let's see....

Sparkly Heart (💖): What made you start writing?

For as long as I can remember, I have been making up stories in my head. I was fully 20 years old before I realized I could probably call this "daydreaming", for me it was always just "making up stories".

I started writing them down in earnest when I was... 11, I think? Took me a few more years to find out I had technically been writing something called "fanfiction", and other people did it, too!

I basically didn't read or write any fic for 10 years, before I slowly started to rediscover it in 2019. I couldn't even tell you what got the ball rolling. I'm pretty sure it was the discovery that this kind of story I had tended towards and always felt deeply ashamed for enjoying not only had a name (Hurt/Comfort), it was so incredibly popular it had a nickname (whump) and entire fests and huge communities dedicated to it! And then I discovered Musketeer fics and the wonderful, wonderful people writing them.

And then season 1 of Star Trek: Picard aired, and against my expectations, I fell instantly in love with it. And a lot of people whose Musketeers fics I loved also started getting into the Aramis in Space fandom. And I started out 2020 by thinking: "I'm going to start writing again. I'm going to write, and at some point, maybe in a year or so, I might have enough practice and be good enough that I dare post something I have written. Maybe."

Sharing the first bit of substantial writing I had created in ten years with a friend was one of the most insanely nerve-wrecking experiences, but it was also exhilarating! My conviction to wait and practice for a year or so before posting anything went out the window pretty quickly, and I posted the very first real story I had put on paper. The first story in my life I ever finished, I think. And then the dam was broken.

And MY GOD the amazing friends and community this adventure has brought me 🥰

Dancing Hearts (💞): Who's your comfort character?

Er... I think it's going to come as a surprise to absolutely no-one that it's Emil 🙈

I just... I love to read and write stories with this man in them. He is snarky and irreverent but also caring and kind, under the slightly exasperated exterior (because he is part of Rios, so how could he possibly be anything else?)

I have loved him from the very first moment he stalked onto my tv screen, and I can't wait to continue writing things to give him more life and adventures.

And I should probably mention the other holos, too. Those five hyper-competent disaster boys make me feel all warm and fuzzy and at home, and if I could only ever write stories about them for the rest of my life, I'd be content.

Clown Face (🤡): What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

The entirety of A Night at the Opera.

I laugh at my own jokes and my own writing A Lot. But this one... when I started dreaming up the idea for it, I think I spent a good fifteen minutes sitting in my armchair and just cackling like a maniac!

And then there were so many jokes and exchanges in it that just made me laugh out loud when they occurred to me, and then again when I wrote them down, and then again every time I reread them.

But as a taste, I am always going to be proud of this particular exchange (talking about the roomba-like cleaning bots):

Xyr leaned around the Tactical Hologram to get a better look, wincing as he accidentally put weight on his injured hand. “So, what exactly is it you hope to do with the bot if you catch it?”

“Emmet and I have some exciting ideas to increase their defensive capabilities”, Enoch replied, rising slightly from his crouch to get a look of the action over the top of the others’ heads.

“I don’t know, they already seem plenty capable. The way they keep disappearing to evade capture?”

[...]

“Just imagine what they could do with a few added features.” Enoch waggled his eyebrows again.

Xyr seemed deeply intrigued. “What sort of features?”

Enoch said “Statically charged forcefields”, at exactly the same moment that Emmet said “Knives.”

I don't know why this one gets me so hard, but I always burst out laughing at "knives" 🙈🤣

Thank you so much for your ask, this was a blast!

If anyone else would like to join the fun, here is the list of questions 😁

[upstartpoodle]

I can't believe I've found this blog! Its so funny I'm in the Mcu fandom just for Loki as well and about a year ago stumbled on Poldark and of course have a weird ass obsession with George and Elizabeth. So how did you first stumble apon Poldark and find interest in this ship?

Hi, thanks for the ask! So I didn’t so much as stumble across Poldark as the whole family got dragged into it by my mum. She used to love the original 70s series as a kid so when she heard there was going to be a new one, she was determined to watch it, and so me and my dad got pulled along for the ride despite the fact that I had no idea what it was or what it was about. I was a pretty casual viewer at first – I quite liked it but it didn’t really stand out against any of the other shows I was watching, but I started getting properly into it around 1x08, which was probably when I started properly liking George as a character. Then I went off to university and started getting obsessed with Loki so by the time s2 came around I’d pretty much forgotten about it and we as a family are collectively terrible at catching up on shows (seriously my parents have about ten different series they’re meant to be catching up on back home, they just record them and forget about them) so Poldark s2 met the same fate for about a year after it aired.

So finally we were staying with my grandma around about June last year and the trailer for s3 came on the TV and we all just went “oh crap” since we hadn’t watched any of s2 at that point, so we just binge-watched the entirety of s2 in the week before s3 started (at which point I could barely remember anything that happened in s1) and I suddenly got really obsessed with George and Elizabeth both individually and as a couple. I’m still not quite sure what got me started on them (they’re pretty much the only ship other than Rumbelle from OUAT that I really properly care about) but I found them both interesting and enjoyable to watch as characters both in s2 and in s1 when I went back to rewatch it, and their interactions always brought out new facets to their characters (George especially – he’s a lot gentler with her than he is everywhere else and it’s a part of his character that I wish was explored further in the show) which I always liked watching. So I guess that was what first drew me into liking them as a couple, and I was reasonably optimistic going into s3 about their arc.

S3 was essentially the reason I’ve kept my obsession with them going for so long, and it’s mostly (slightly weirdly) because I really did not enjoy the series as a whole. There were some nice moments but overall…eh. I won’t get into my many problems with it here because I’ve complained about it on this blog enough times already. But anyway, the reason I set up this blog on the first place was because I was annoyed by Debbie Horsefield’s writing for the series and needed an outlet to get it off my chest (because everyone I knew irl was sick of me complaining ha). That then led to me deciding to write fic for the ship since there wasn’t a huge amount of it out there at the time, and also in the hope of fixing some of the things I had problems with in canon. Basically, I wanted my two favourite characters to be happy, both as individuals and together, and that’s ultimately the reason why I’ve stuck with the fandom and the ship even though I no longer properly watch the show.

[checkers-dance]

today's music recs are gonna be completely different. so because im back into mlp im revisiting old brony content for nostalgia reasons and that includes the music! and honestly, imo it still holds up to this day, and its such a lovely piece of the brony golden era. i miss those days so much!

anyway! listen to rainbow factory. it was based on a really popular creepypasta of the same name, which used to freak me out as a kid (i spent wayyy too much time reading mlp creepypastas as a kid lol).

aside from that, i wanna recommend twilight, applejack and pinkie's theme songs from the fighting is magic soundtrack! fighting is magic was a fanmade fighting game that hasbro shut down, which im still mad abt (even though it looks like a similar game got made eventually by the same people which i will probably look into), but you can still listen to the songs for the game and honestly theyre all pretty amazing!

in particular i adore twilight's theme like WOW i didnt remember it being so good! but like the ppl who worked on the music for this are all genuinely super talented. brony's get a lot of shit, and a lot of it is completely deserved, the mlp fandom had ISSUES, but like there was some good. i have a lot of really fond memories of it.

Damn, no wonder it freaked u out as a kid, I watched the vid of the song and I didn't expect it to go as far as pony murder. It was fun tho. I love how fluttershy is the mastermind behind it, behind her shy persona she has this huge secret 😔. What the song also reminds me of are the creepy vocaloid songs from late 2000s to early 2010s (uhhh there's this specific one that I'm thinking of. Dark woods circus???? I remember this one specifically bc there was an amv of black butler that I found when I was 12)

Twilight's theme is so sweet and it sounds so hopeful, I rlly like it! I esp rlly like the interspersed soft piano bits w the more triumphant parts of the song. Tbh at first I wasn't sure abt applejack's song, but as it started to get going I started liking it more. The guitar riff was rlly cool, and the song overall is p catchy. There's a part of this that reminds me specifically of that song in undertale that plays when u fight asriel (hopes and dreams, I think it's called?). I love how pinkie pie's theme has a cheerful beat throughout its entirety. It sounds like what cotton candy tastes like

[nyxelestia]

I think I'm going to merge two of my AUs into one: "Everyone Has a Story" and "Winter Wolves.

My most popular series is Winter Wolves. But, believe or not, that wasn't originally the AU I prioritized the most. No, my most valued AU was Everyone Has a Story - a rewrite of the show as I wish it'd gone, with a lot more attention to character development and less fridging.

The thing is, a lot of the Teen Wolf worldbuilding of Winter Wolves is just stuff I originally thought up of for Everyone Has a Story, adapted to a world with the MCU in it. I actually still have twice as many notes for Everyone Has a Story than I do Winter Wolves! I did a tremendous amount of supernatural worldbuilding for the Everyone Has a Story series, but at the rate I'm going, it'll be literal decades before I get to use them in EHAS, and meanwhile, I keep using those ideas for Winter Wolves.

I detail some of the reasoning for it under the cut, but tl;dr version is that the plots would combine really well, and it would give a lot of story to some characters in Winter Wolves that I didn't originally have as much planned for. Granted, a lot of EHAS story would get lost when combined with WW, but honestly, that AU wasn't that popular, anyway, so I wouldn't call it a huge loss.

Plot(s)

The general plots of Everyone Has a Story and Winter Wolves are the same - in that neither of them were contingent on a dramatic change of the plot of Teen Wolf. For both of them, I was going to follow the plot of Teen Wolf while changing it for the purposes of that AU (though both would also diverge further away from canon as time went on).

And ironically, while I'd originally planned for them to both go completely off the canon rails by Seasons 5 and 6 (since most of this was getting planned back during and after Season 4). But Season 6B has actually ended up playing right into the themes I have planned for both those series. *shrugs* Go figure.

Honestly, a lot of my "season"/Teen Wolf plot rewrites for Winter Wolves are watered down versions of what I'd planned for Everyone Has a Story (mostly watered down for breadth/space in the story, rather than depth/complexity).

I'm thinking of sort of abruptly ending the Everyone Has a Story "series' where it is, and instead re-establishing "Everyone Has a Story" as a fic/sub-series within Winter Wolves. The "plot' of Everyone Has a Story would get cut out, focusing primarily - almost exclusively - on character development. The "actual" plot would be Talking Cure, and Everyone Has a Story would be wrapped around that.

I think it says something that it would take very little retconning and editing of Everyone Has a Story, as it currently is, to make it "compliant" with Winter Wolves.

I feel like this would also be easier on readers. Partially because if I kept them as two separate stories, then reading them would get repetitive. But also because, weaving them into one story would make updating them easier.

Character Development

This would involve a lot of greatly expanded and nuanced expansions of characters who I didn't have much planned for in Winter Wolves. Jackson and Danny would take a much more prominent role, especially. Danny's story from EHAS involved, among other things, a sexual assault subplot that was gonna go to some pretty dark places, which could either match up perfectly with the hints of a Rising Tide background for his WW story, or completely work against it. Not sure, yet.

Though this merger would probably mean cutting out a pretty funny abortion subplot. I mean, hopefully I'll find a way to work it into the merger, but I'm not exactly counting on it, either...

The downside is that that I'm probably going to lose Cora. She was barely in EHAS, and not in WW at all. Since I'm keeping Erica alive, I was going to 'keep' her dead/not miraculously bring her back to life for just a few episodes and then pretend it never happened. *side-eyes Teen Wolf* But her plot from EHAS was already incongruent with the story as it was (I wasn't too happy with it), and 'keeping' her dead works out a lot better for Derek's story and the worldbuilding in general. Kinda sorry, but I don't want to include a character just for the sake of it when I don't have much of a story planned for her.

The other confounding factor will be the twins, especially Aiden. I guess I'll wait and see what happens to Ethan in 6B to be sure, but Aiden's EHAS story and WW story don't mesh together very well, or even outright contradict each other, even though they ironically end the same way. Ethan's EHAS story will either fall on one extreme of really not working well with the Winter Wolves universe, or will work really well with it.

The downside is that some characters' stories would be pretty fundamentally incompatible. In particular, Everyone Has a Story was originally built around Scott, Stiles, and Allison as a "core" of the AU, so their stories would get subsumed to Winter Wolves, and most of my EHAS plans for them would be lost.

Gender and Sexuality

I guess I also have mixed feelings about the taking the greater role of gender and sexuality from EHAS and introducing it to Winter Wolves. But overall, I think it would be a good move. All too often, trans characters and queer characters (outside of gay white males/queer fetishization) tend to not be included in fanfic that much, or they appears predominantly in fanfic that is about someone being trans or non-binary or a asexual or whatever.

A big theme of EHAS is that, being teenagers, a lot of the characters are sometimes exploring their gender or sexuality - but at the same time, it always takes a backseat in the story, not because their identities aren't important, but because life-and-death supernatural shenanigans are the main focus. Trans and non-binary and queer characters can have stories that aren't about their identities just as much as straight/heternormative characters do in mainstream media and cis-slash/gay ones do in fandom.

I like the idea of furthering this with Winter Wolves - i.e. teenagers exploring gender and sexuality in the context of not just supernatural drama, but the politics and chaos of the MCU as well. I just don't want those stories to get too marginalized or underwritten, either. This will be a pretty tricky balance to maintain.

Jackson's is going to be the most confounding. His plot was heavily dependent on Season 3, and involved him coming to terms with his asexuality (and still working out a relationship with Lydia who had to come to terms with being aromantic, yet still having quite a libido). In Winter Wolves, though, he's not going to be around for Season 3. I hope I can work it into Season 4. I enjoyed this arc specifically because they were portrayed as highly sexual or romantic in the first two seasons. While not true for everyone, some aces and aros "overcompensat" for their lack of the attraction in their youth, so I wanted to explore these characters from that angle.

Kind of a mixed bag on a trans arc. The only real story I had planned for Cora, herself, was about her being trans. But as I mentioned, a big part of EHAS was that while exploration of sexualities and gender identities was a huge part of the characters' stories, it wasn't the center or entirety of their stories - but I didn't have much of an arc for Cora. I don't want to keep a character around just for the hell of it, or tokenize a trans characer. On the flip side, while I do have a story planned for Hayden, it's a little shallow - mostly just because I was waiting to see how her story would end (I hadn't known until 6B started that she wouldn't be in it), so I hadn't gotten around to it, yet. For a variety of reasons, her being trans would actually work pretty well with the story, and this way, I wouldn't just have a 'token trans character', and could have a pretty solid story about Hayden being a trans girl that isn't contingent on her being trans. (Not to mention that while Hayden's story isn't dependent on Liam, her having a trans arc would actually play well into Liam's arc.)

I've got mixed feelings on how I'm going to include Stiles' story. He's pretty firmly bisexual and that's never really a question for him. But in EHAS, a pretty dark consequence of the nogitsune so thoroughly mind-raping him is that Stiles basically loses his sense of bodily autonomy, which leads to some pretty unhealthy sexual practices and attitudes towards his own body. It fit well with the themes and structure of EHAS, but I'm not sure how well it would work in Winter Wolves, which is a lot more plot-oriented than EHAS, and in which Stiles' arc is a lot more specific to his mental state, rather than his 'relationship with his body' so to speak. Not sure how well I can keep both of these balanced, but I think I can work something out. The downside is that this subplot for Stiles in EHAS was also heavily dependent on Derek, whereas right around the time it's happening is right around when Derek leaves Beacon Hills for a bit in Winter Wolves. (Don't worry, he comes back, and a lot sooner than in canon!)

Gonna be interesting to try to work demisexual!Scott into Winter Wolves, though. His love life in Winter Wolves is, in style, kind of a mish-mash of Bucky's and Steve's comic-book love lives, so it'll be simultaneously very easy and very difficult to rework that around demisexuality.

For most of the other characters, though, my plans for them in EHAS should work out nicely with WW.

Politics

I guess one downside is I'll lose a specific element of worldbuilding with this merger - supernatural politics.

A huge element of the worldbuilding, and the "expansion" of the plot, from EHAS, involved some nuanced supernatural politics...especially a somewhat more realistic take. I've seen a lot of urban fantasy politics, including in Teen Wolf fanfics, that read an awful lot like high fantasy politics jam-packed into a contemporary environment. It's a bit like fitting a square peg into a round hole. I wanted to take on what supernatural politics would look like in the modern world.

But the MCU already has so much politics as it is, that while I could "start" the political storylines from EHAS in Winter Wolves, the reality is most of them would get subsumed pretty fast by the superhuman politics of Winter Wolves/the MCU.

That said, I'll definitely preserve one of those 'political' subplots: the Hunters. Specifically, when Allison changes the Code, she fucking changes the code. While the Argents aren't the only Hunting family, they are the most prominent and longest-lasting, and the leader of the Argent family is often an implicit leader of Hunters as a whole. But that doesn't mean they are the leader, and Allison still has a bit of an uphill battle in effecting real, systemic change. At the same time, Hunters aren't a monolith - even as a lot of people oppose the changes she's trying to make, many Hunters support it, and have been quietly shifting in that direction for a while, anyway. This merges quite nicely with what I have planned for Winter Wolves.

Similar deal with Scott. While not at all a leader like Allison is, being a True Alpha does give Scott some unique abilities even for an alpha, and does get him a lot of attention and a certain amount of wary respect among werewolves, and supernatural creatures in general. He does have to deal with that a lot, which I can carry over from EHAS to WW - though WW actually turns this up to 11, which means the actual, original EHAS story of him dealing with it will likely go out the window.

Stiles' political subplot also goes out the window, but mostly because magic takes a greatly reduced role in WW compared to EHAS. In WW, I'm taking a very scientific bent on the supernatural (as anyone who watches Thor or Agents of SHIELD has likely already started to suspect), whereas in EHAS is was still much closer to the 'fantasy' part of Urban Fantasy. On top of that, Stiles already has a superhero-related political arc in WW, one which is pretty incompatible with his supernatural/magic political arc from EHAS.