#and I write other characters into my canon

[coralchoral]

honestly thinking about the sonadow twitter takeover and how the plummeting to earth thing very much affected Sonic a lot more than it affected Shadow. like in a previous takeover Shadow even made it a positive memory about Sonic trying to save him.

Meanwhile in Prime, Sonic has a moment of saving Shadow from falling into the void that's very reminiscent of that other fall (in the same way Prime has a lot of motivations and references that only make sense from a fandom insider perspective).

Sonic also gets repeatedly tilted, loud and anxious, (which I'm pinning more on RCS's/whatever writer's sense of humor, as is all the voice acting gags) and is coping badly any time Shadow comes out ahead. I think Sonic's insistence on his ability to grow chest fur is as big a Cope as floaties=fashion statement.

But really, Sonic's repeat date suggestions and Shadow's own descriptions of Sonic's behavior (dragging out their races, etc "just to annoy me") reads, whether romantically or platonically, that Sonic just really wants to spend time with Shadow.

He feels he needs to justify it, though, insisting that he and Shadow have something other than occasionally getting in each other's way ("two sides of the same coin") (friendly competition being "why you keep me around-" seemed like odd wording to me).

Needing to make it meaningful, because that's what Shadow wants out of a relationship- Shadow /says/ he dislikes Sonic for being frivolous and inauthentic, that (for instance) his hugs don't mean anything, and that he doesn't want "(Sonic's) kind of hug."

Sonic really wants to spend time with Shadow because he's also intimately aware that that time is limited. Either Shadow's patience (and/or social battery) is limited and he's liable to make a batman exit if he doesn't want to be somewhere (not that we've ever seen Shadow do this in canon, he seems to awkwardly/quietly hang around as if he doesn't realize he can just hit the bricks (or he likes being there and has no idea how to express it re: smiling at Big the Cat) ), Or Sonic and Shadow will get caught up in their own lives again and not see each other until Fate Deigns to Allow Them to Cross Paths Once More.

And Sonic misses him.

(This ties in with my Sonic Frontiers is the Saddest Game Ever posting from a while back, too. Sonic is lonely AF and Needs Other People to Talk To or he'll start talking to the walls and robots, and Shadow will almost always either talk back or groan in exasperation, which is as good a reaction as any.)

All this, plus Sonic's opinion flip-flops (shopping with Amy vs shopping with Shadow, opinion on Orbot) could be either (Sonadow Optimist) Sonic is Down Bad and not even conscious of his mirroring Shadow/trying to appeal to Shadow, or (Sonadow/overall Pessimist) Sonic trying to appeal to the Most Popular Character Right Now and getting increasingly desperate as he is rebuffed.

A few of these Twitter Takeovers have had moments of Sonic in particular getting thrown off and not really able to recover. (which makes me question what the writing is like, if there's any at all and these VA's aren't just riffing on an outline. Considering they don't talk over each other constantly, there must be something like a script, but it also does occasionally feel like a bad roleplay (and I've been a bad roleplayer).) It leads to a Something Is Wrong feeling in the "We're doing this for fun" question-answering joke show. Sonic needs therapy. (We all need therapy.)

Meanwhile, Shadow really is pulling out all the grunts, groans, and whines with Sonic that, if scripted, would be egregious as hell to read or write. He doesn't make these noises in the games (or shows, really?) mostly because there's a sort of efficiency necessary to production that cuts out that interpersonal realism and partly because it's annoying? Shadow, you're the annoying one?

Unrelated, everybody latched on to Sonic's "Go off, King" but nobody even noticed Shadow's "Deal With It."(sunglasses drop) How soon we forget the sacred texts and/or the deep magic, I guess? (It's an old meme, but it checks out!)

[clarekirener]

Maybe I've missed the posts on Tumblr but if you're not on Twitter you might have missed the marketing on the official social media accounts. I'll post some. Amazon knows the Haladriel fanbase exists. That's what the marketing told me: they've learned what's popular and what gets them views. I don't know how much of what's popular will influence the writing and I'll do a post on my speculations in light of delayed renewal- things I've said on Twitter for 2 months.

But right now here's some of the digital marketing:

On the official The Rings of Power account, The Haladriel Nation tweet (4.1k likes) and the tweet with the BTS video of Charlie Vickers and Morfydd Clark (6.9k likes) were among the posts that got the most engagement.

The only two posts with greater likes were a BTS video about the Siege of Eregion (5.7k likes) and one thanking viewers (7k likes). Their other posts average around 2k likes.

The shift was unmissable when Prime Video was comparing Sauron and Galadriel to Daisy and Billy from Daisy Jones & The Six, a romantic couple.

Another account (Amazon MGM Studios) in on the action.

The Rings of Power account social media manager addressing us as Haladriel Nation on the official account and then on his personal account. He got people trying to get him fired for this post by the way.

International Prime accounts on Twitter, TikTok, Insta, and YouTube Shorts.

Prime Mexico calling Sauron and Galadriel "my parents"

Prime Video Brazil made a YouTube Short saying "the love of Sauron and Galadriel speaks louder"

The Rings of Power account on Instagram:

Prime Video Australia/NZ posting Haladriel edits on TikTok:

There are a lot of official accounts associated with Prime Video, Amazon MGM, and then there's the TROP account. They've all been posting edits of the fight from different angles regularly and this is just some of the digital marketing. They do post other dynamics of course but none this shippy and none as much as the Haladriel dynamic. The TROP account started a Fan Artist Friday 3 weeks ago to highlight fan art. They picked a canon compliant non-shippy Silvergifting fan art and they did the same for the Haladriel fan art as well. It was definitely carely chosen to avoid accusations of bias Irving Lopez got over the official account shouting out Haladriel Nation lol. The rest were just character art- they posted Adar fanart last Friday.

Unlike other marketing formats which requires more planning and time to coordinate, digital marketing is the most reactive to fan response. These official accounts were lurking on Haladriel fan accounts and responding to them during S2, and reposting Haladriel fans but it shifted post-s2 into overtly shipping material.

And baiting only works for so long before folks stop buying. I've said this before. When people hear there's only one scene, they'll just watch that scene on YouTube or TikTok. This happens a lot with other fandoms. Folks posting YouTube scene playlists and TikTok outright posting everything. But I'll save this for a post about PR in the context of the flux the show is in.

[whinlatter]

sorry if you've discussed this before, but do you think ginny's quidditch talent came out of nowhere? it's a common criticism I see about her but I feel like that kind of overstates how much of a quidditch "star" she was at the beginning, like she was consistently described as good but not great until partway into hbp and I also think it makes sense she'd keep it a secret from her teasing brothers. but maybe they're right and I'm just biased towards defending ginny

thank you for the question, anon!

the short answer is - no, i think it's (just about) plausibly rendered in the books. i think the series gets away with it because:

the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy aka peak obliviousness in corporeal form, so we see what harry sees (and harry notices big fat nothing)

there is an entirely adequate narrative explanation for ginny's sporting skills that most readers not operating in bad faith* can put together, as you suggest: ginny comes from a sporty family who are all good at quidditch; she is of middling-to-good seeking ability when she first joins the team in ootp; she then has a good few months flying several times a week where she would necessarily grow in confidence and experience, leaving her perfectly able to blossom in hbp in a high school sport where she is competing against other children. fine and dandy in my book.

also quidditch is a broadly dumb and pointless plot so ginny being good at it is just a fun extra that we don't need to deep too much because - let's be real - quidditch is a waste of page space.

*i say this because, most of the time, these takes come from those who don't like hinny as a pairing. which is entirely their right and prerogative! it personally doesn't float my boat to spend my days doing worst faith readings of the text in order to make the case against canon ships i don't like, but as this is a race to the bottom - we are all adults dissecting children's books written by a nasty spiteful woman rotting in her mouldy castle spouting slurs, after all - who am i to judge.

(i also suspect the 'ginny is good at quidditch out of nowhere' takes have enjoyed such a long shelf-life on eg. reddit because the films are still most people's primary reference for HP takes so complaints about them then get cast back on the books - and, in the films, ginny does in fact rock up in film 6 like she's mbappé, if mbappé had the charisma of an extraordinarily soggy bath mat.)

with that said... could it have done with a bit more foreshadowing? yes, probably. people who don't like hinny as a pairing and prefer another are never going to be convinced - that's fine! but here i am, a paid-up hinny supporter, and even i think ginny's character development is sometimes wanting, to a frustrating and problematic extent. good writing (usually) means showing not telling, and it's weird and lazy of jkr to be so slapdash about revealing this and other character details about ginny and other (often female) characters. i think it's particularly striking that jkr underserves characters (again, usually women) who exist to serve the emotional development of characters (usually men), rather than the mystery plot(s) that drive hp as a series. (wanted! tonks' personality! last seen making fake pig noses and being the only auror mad eye moody mentored as his successor, for no plot reason!)

while i'm not a die-hard adherent to the chekhov's gun principle, i think one of the strengths of many novels du jour - especially the nothing really happens postmodern novel that crowds the bookshop shelves these days - is that their conventions allow authors to add colour to characters without each tiny detail being pregnant with meaning and in service of a driving plot that must be marched forward at all times. that can be really nice! as readers, we like to get a sense of characters as well-rounded living breathing people who go for a wee and take the bins out and stick on an album because it slaps every now and then; in these novels, we're also happier with the idea that things can happen to characters beyond the protagonist that don't directly impact the plot or demand the protagonist knows more than their own very limited vantage point. you have more room to play with character as a result.

jkr, ofc, isn't that kind of author. jkr is in fact an author for whom everything about her characters serves the plot. this, after all, is the brain that brought you 'remus lupin' the werewolf, and named the bad-guy-turned-good-guy in a book using a big black dog as a red herring omen of death 'sirius black'. jkr wants her audience to notice clues and remember little details about characters because they might be significant later on. this is entirely her wont and - lupin and sirius aside - she's often very good at it. the hp books are all standalone mysteries, and, when they land, those mysteries slap. ginny being the culprit in CoS is a genuinely satisfying resolution to the whodunit plot: this was reflected in critical reception at the time and was part of the reason why hp was able to be marketed as a children's book adults would also enjoy thereafter. there are also very satisfying foreshadowing and mystery plots that straddle the entire series and that reward the reader with reasonably good pay-off at the series end. (my favourite is the foreshadow within the foreshadow - e.g. regulus black barrelling back from ootp in DH, but then regulus' plot turning out to ultimately exist to foreshadow snape's own double agent status... delicious).

for my part, it's also what i want out of the fiction i read and the stories i try to write. i want everything to mean something. i want the weather, clothing, setting, body language etc to all do heavy lifting. i want character work to do work. it makes it fun for me to write and (i hope) it can it a bit more fun for the reader.

the problem is that while jkr is good setting up some mysteries, she is bad at others, and the romantic plot is one she falls down (a bit) on. she sets herself up for this: she wants to be a plot-centred mystery writer, so she does have an obligation to do better in how she deploys character details. jkr does to try to write the harry/ginny romance like a mystery, with little hints throughout the series up to the reveal of harry's feelings for ginny in HBP. (even ginny's full name is nominative determinism, finally revealed in DH once the reader has been told her place in the plot - ginevra, so guinnevre, the hero's queen). and while i will never not tire of pointing out to all of reddit that harry/ginny didn't come out of nowhere, and there is some satisfying foreshadowing knocking about here and there, i think it's fair to say that the harry/ginny build-up is not as satisfying as it could have been because jkr is basically lazier about the clues that ginny is the character harry will ultimately fall for, while she is much better at dropping clues for the series' central plot. that ginny ends the series with no real resolution of the primary tensions that motivate her other than her love of harry is probably the most acute example of this. but there's lots about her character where jkr phones it in a bit in fleshing her out or taking it to any logical conclusions or interesting plot directions. a smattering of examples:

ginny is the character who spends the entire series demanding to be included and not underestimated ends the series... with no real major role in the battle other than causing harry panic, while all other central characters receive a satisfying narrative arc that speaks to their central motivators across the series as a whole. (for an interesting discussion of what should have happened with ginny and the horcruxes, see here. i didn't even pay @saintsenara to write this!)

there are lots of shades of colour to ginny's character that are introduced pointlessly. i have previously talked about my beef with arnold the pygmy puff. we know ginny is popular but we know nothing of her friends who are all faceless plotless nobodies. we know ginny supports the all-womens quidditch team in a way that implies a nascent feminist politics after a childhood being excluded from playing a sport she loves by her brothers - yet we know nothing of it. we know ginny loves the one wizarding band that seems to exist because she has a poster of them on her wall and it just.... is something we just get told about her. now, all of these suggest ginny is a good time gal and a right laugh at the pub. and that's nice! i too am fun at the pub! but why does it matter? it wouldn't, in another series. but in a series where Everything Matters, it really stands out.

now..... i don't think all of this is an unsolveable problem for those of us writing fanfiction about ginny or harry and ginny as a couple. i don't think this makes ginny an inherently bad character. i hope the amount of life i have wasted thinking about this character is testament to this (...) and i personally find trying to cook up some fleshed-out characterisation and a satisfying arc for ginny, and for female characters more generally, from the crumbs of the original source material to be a very rewarding way to pass the time and a fuck you to a woman who thinks she can gatekeep womanhood while writing some astonishingly antifeminist fiction. i think harry and ginny are a deeply compelling and eminently plausible couple, and i think i return to writing about them as much as i do because i think they have a ton of potential as narrative mirrors and as characters with a rich well of tension but also devotion between them. as i say a lot, i think one of the things the harry/ginny pairing does refreshingly well compared to other romantic lead couples in YA fiction is show a couple that, at heart, genuinely get on very well, have a laugh together and enjoy each other's company in completely mundane lovely day-to-day ways (laundry and taxes u know). i think that's a striking and refreshing dynamic that i like to spend time fleshing out and playing with and writing about. but i can also see that there is an inconsistency in jkr's character work here, particularly her character work writing female characters, of which ginny is among the most acute examples.

[riddlers-roulette]

luv ur arcane post!!! totally agree. like it’s so frustrating?? i was going thru the caitvi tag the other day and i saw a post where someone was responding to an ask that said smth like “i noticed cait always resorts to sexual behavior when vi is emotional” and the askee was like “omg yeah ive noticed that too vi’s body is constantly a tool” except op went on for a bit basically. literally was just two clowns going back and forth. op was a vi x oc shipper too so explains the cait bashing lol

I’m glad you liked my post anon!

Also wanna preface this by saying (more as a general thing than a message to you anon!) that while I appreciate the asks, I in no way want drama brought to my blog! So please, if you all have a gripe with a blog in particular or something specific, I am asking you not to bring it here. A general fandom or character related misconception or gripe is fine however! Thank you :)

Now onto the actual ask—while I’m not an x reader or x oc fan myself, and never have been, it being something I never myself understood, I do know that oc shipping is something a lot of people do, and I’m not going bash it. Fanfiction takes all types after all.

I am going to point out though the absurdity of the “Caitlyn always uses sexual behavior whenever Vi is emotional” statement is absolutely absurd. First of all, the sesbian lex act, which happened at a time Vi was distressed and emotional, was initiated by Vi. It was initiated by Vi after Caitlyn proved her deep care for Vi, admitting that she had moved all the guards so that Vi could have an easier time breaking her sister—the person who kidnapped Cait, killed her mother and countless innocents, amongst other things—out of prison. Caitlyn, who once, in the throes of grief, asked Vi to put on an enforcers badge and help her track down her sister, was now admitting to giving Vi everything she needed to help said sister escape.

This concession coming at a time when Vi was doubting herself and fully expecting Caitlyn to be feeling betrayed instead of accepting. Vi moved in for the kiss first. Vi initiated the sesbian lex. And Caitlyn doesn’t let Vi go into it blind. She pulls away and explains that she was with someone while Vi was away—something that wasn’t cheating I might add, as they had ended things in Act I. And, “was with someone” implies either a) her thing with Maddie is over, or b) her thing with Maddie was a FWB type thing, something non-exclusive.

Look at the end of the day, if you want to write an x oc fic, that’s absolutely fine! You don’t need to create a new narrative and pass it as canon to do that though. It’s not required to bash a character just to justify shipping your fave with one of of your own?

[velvet-cupcake-games]

It's About to Get Real Gay in Here

I am fully transitioning to work on John's route this week, and I realized that from here on out in the main game, all Made Marion romances are unambiguously Queer 4 Queer (except Gui's, which is Almost Certainly Q4Q But It Doesn't Really Come Up). I didn't mean to put the two most hetero guys first. John was actually supposed to be the second route, but his route and Robin's are two of my most emotionally complex to write and I wanted a break in-between.

For newer fans, it shakes out like this (in modern terminology):

Marion is and always has been bi/pansexual.

John is a bi/pansexual cis man.

Meissa is a bi non-binary person with a preference for femme-leaning partners.

Alanna is a lesbian cis woman.

Gui is some flavour of non-hetero and is cis but gender-nonconforming.

Geoffrey is a demisexual cis man (and probably somewhere on the aromantic spectrum as well).

So let's put down a few Ask Box Ground Rules!

I will brook no homo-, bi-, aroace-, or transphobia in the ask box. If your question is offensive it gets deleted. I've been blessed with a generally quite pleasant ask box so far, let's keep it that way!

Yes, these basic sexual preferences are canon. I don't use modern sexuality terminology in the game because research strongly points to pre-modern peoples not thinking of sexuality as an inborn orientation. But of course pre-modern people knew that different people have different sexual preferences.

Why do I use bi/pan for Marion and John? Because they could easily use either label to describe themselves and because I like to reinforce the fact that bisexuality is not trans- or non-binary exclusive. This is not up for debate on this blog.

I will be particularly cranky if there is hate toward John as a bisexual man who has had male partners in the past. I've seen this happen to other LGBT/amare romance VN developers and I have no tolerance for it. If I get flooded with this kind of thing, I will simply turn off anon.

In a similar vein, I have been open about the fact that Meissa has a penis. I don't do ambiguous genitals for non-binary characters because I write explicit love scenes and it would absolutely not be fair to be all "and then they touched each other in their happy spots" for only non-binary characters. We all have bits, regardless of gender identity. This does not mean that Meissa is a man. They are not.

Everybody good? Good! Let's have fun, be gay, and, well... as this IS a Robin Hood game... DO CRIMES.

[fmluder24]

Might Be One Yourself: A Brief and Normal Look at Jewish Fox Mulder

As the only Jewish fan of The X Files that I know, I feel compelled to make some comments about this show’s writing around Judaism. This is all in the spirit of being a fan and criticizing something I enjoy, not an attempt to “cancel” anyone or anything.

One popular headcanon in the X Files fandom is that Fox Mulder is Jewish. I think headcanons are all well and good but many people seem to be under the impression that Fox Mulder is canonically a Jewish character. I think this assumption is telling and I don’t entirely fault people for interpreting the character in that direction given how the writers play with tropes and stereotypes around Jews and Judaism. That being said, I do not think that this interpretation of the character would exist if not for David Duchovny’s personal background as being Jewish on his father’s side. I think the writers want to entertain the possibility of Mulder being Jewish as a way to heighten tensions in certain episodes and along the way they intentionally or not brought in a lot of antisemitic tropes into the narrative. This will be my attempt to aggregate these odd moments of tension and their implications into an analysis of how Fox Mulder being read as a Jewish character shapes how we can think of the X Files as a whole

First of all I think that the X files inherently plays with some antisemitic tropes with the focus on conspiracy theories. On top of that, there’s ways that the X Files references the history of World War Two that trivializes that history. I think on some level the writers were aware of some of that and wanted to use Mulders ambiguous Jewishness to deflect from criticism. Let me summarize the tropes that are used in the show with regards to Mulder and Jewishness.

1. The elephant in the room

Mulder was literally born into the elite globalist cabal headquartered in New York City. It doesn’t get much more stereotypical than that.

2. Rich and a cheapskate

His family is quite wealthy and is shown as having several homes due to all of Bill Mulder’s shady business with the government. Despite this Mulder is implied to be a cheapskate with numerous scenes where he refuses to tip or tips next to nothing to a disgruntled service worker. Both of these tropes play into historical stereotypes around Jews and money.

3. Operation paper clip

Bill mulder is implied to have helped nazis escape justice after World War Two by involving them in US government projects related to the alien conspiracy. This is similar to the current right wing conspiracy theory that certain Jewish families were complicit in Nazi crimes to get ahead for themselves. If you look at how the far right talks about George Soros, you will see what I mean about antisemitic accusations of collusion.

4. Died in the holocaust

Mulder literally recovers his repressed memories from dying in the holocaust in his last life during the events of “The Field Where I Died.” There are not many experiences more pivotally Jewish in the eyes of non Jews than that. I get that Scully also canonically died in the holocaust in her prior life as well but I personally think the weight behind it is quite different when delivered by an actor who wouldn’t be here if his grandparents had missed a boat out of Eastern Europe in the 1920s.

5. In with shady figures

He strikes up a very fast friendship with Mr Saperstein in “Fight Club.” Saperstein greats Scully by saying “Ma Nishtana,” the opening phrases of a Passover song. Jewish people do not use this to greet each other but Chris Carter apparently thinks we do. Mulder is delighted by this and then says goodbye to him in Yiddish with the phrase sholom aleichem (peace be upon you) to which Saperstein replies “yo momma.” I think this is Chris Carter taking a swing at Jewish people, Black people, and Black Jewish people all at once. But for our purposes this is a scene where Mulder is supposedly sharing in some culture knowledge with a person who is implied to be Jewish. Saperstein is stereotypically for both communities out to hustle people rather than deal honestly

6. Dislikes his appearance

The season 4 episode “Sanguinarium” has multiple scenes where Mulder entertains getting a nose job. I would like to think the writers were trying to be aware around gender by making Mulder the vain one instead of Scully, but the decision to portray a nose job specifically must have been an intentional dig. Beauty is political. Being conventionally attractive or not is political. A character played by a Jewish actor, who is written with many stereotypes around Jewish men as we will continue to see, wanting to have a different nose is not in my opinion an innocent writing decision but rather an intentional message about beauty standards and adhering to a white Gentile idea. This is underscored because the final message of the episode is that one should rise above one’s tendencies to be vain, not that Mulder should like the way he looks.

7. Faces antisemitism

The episodes you are almost certainly thinking of when reading the word antisemitism are Kaddish and Drive. In both of these the villains see Mulder and going off appearance alone assume he is Jewish. If this happened in more benign circumstances in addition to or instead of these malevolent ones, it would not have the oddly accusatory weight it has in the world of the show. People only clock him in situations where violence is a factor.

There are two other episodes that are not brought up as examples of antisemitic violence towards Mulder but that I think cannot be separated from the overall context of the show. One of these is Triangle, where Mulder is trapped in the 1940s on a boat with Nazis. The majority of the fans seem to just see this as a fun homage to the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, but coming off the heels of Drive, one cannot escape the parallels of him being trapped in moving vehicles with violent antisemites two weeks in a row. The escapist time travel fantasy is hampered by the fact that most families like Duchovnys were wiped out by men like the villains in the episode. It takes an ahistorical white American eye to decontextualize Nazis and Jewish people so thoroughly as to make Triangle what it is —- all style, no substance.

The other episode with subtext that people seem to have missed is The Pine Bluff Variant. In it Mulder has to gain the trust of a right wing militia. The one character that seems to see through his act is the shaved head thug who gleefully tortures Mulder in the course of the episode. The fact that the character with the shaved head distrusts him and takes such delight in harming him is intentional, because this character is a skinhead. The political affiliation of the character is made obvious by Mulder referring to him as a Nazi in the torture sequence. While it is never directly stated, the fact that antisemitic characters regularly assume Mulder’s Jewishness on sight , combined with what a shaved head means in the world of the militant far right, gives the strong implication that this is further antisemitism.

Final thoughts

Taken together what are we as fans to do with this? I believe that the writers knew that they were playing with a lot of antisemitic elements with the general conspiracy theories format. They tried to cover for this by having some antisemitic villains come at one of the main characters. In doing so they enforced the trope that Jewish people have a certain look. Furthermore, combined with the stereotypes present in how Mulder is written there is the awkward dynamic of writing a stereotypical character, trying to make it clear they were not endorsing the stereotypes, and then reinforcing the equation of the stereotypes with Jewish people. So we are left with Mulder as a character with many Jewish stereotypes, who is fetishized as a perpetual victim of antisemitism, with no positive aspects of Jewish identity and community portrayed.

However, Duchovny himself headcanons Mulder as Jewish and if it makes any of my fellow fans happy to do the same, they should go right ahead and enjoy. There are many good fics on AO3 that explore the possibility of Mulder’s Jewishness in ways that exceed what the show portrayed.

[kwillow]

regarding romance involving your characters, im aware you've talked about how you likely wont engage in making content surrounding that topic (WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY FINE obviously), but do you mind if others do? i personally find a lot of enjoyment in those kinds of scenarios and itd be good to know if thats something you're fine with when it comes to your own creations. (im sure you get enough asks about romance already, apologies!!)

and related to this, are there any strict boundaries or hard lines youd prefer not to be crossed when it comes to fan content of them? even anything that just makes you uncomfortable; if youre alright with sharing, that is <:-} i would really like to know just to be certain

Hi there! This is a very kind and conscientious message; thank you for that. ^^

Short answer: sure, I don't mind if people want to make romantic-themed art or writing with my characters. It's flattering!

I don't really have much in the way of hard limits when it comes to depictions of my characters (not counting nsfw/kink art, where I'm also pretty permissive but want to be communicated with in advance), but here are some personal boundaries when it comes to how people treat me, the human:

My characters aren't able to be "claimed" by people for exclusive shipping purposes (either with other characters or for self-shipping). When people get jealous of either other people who want to ship themselves or their characters with mine, or jealous of the characters' in-story love interests, it creates a highly uncomfortable situation for me.

I'm happy for people to enjoy their romantic fantasies with my characters, but I am not included in that bargain. Liking my character does not mean one knows or is in any kind of relationship with me, platonic or otherwise (especially not otherwise).

Likewise, I probably won't reciprocate a lot of self-shipping or Your OCxMy OC type stuff. Of course I'll comment and appreciate the effort and the expression of being interested in my silly stories! But I won't necessarily make a lot of ship art in return or trade head-canons or what have you (again, I just am not super into shipping and I have my own story stuff I already don't have time to draw orz).

My characters aren't made to be boyfriend material. I also have not drawn/written/shown every part of their awful personalities or actions. In the future, I might reveal something about them that makes them unappealing or unsexy. People can ignore the unpleasant qualities I give my characters in their fantasies/fics, but I won't change how I write or draw the character to make them better suited to someone's tastes (yes this is something people have asked me to do).

I feel like stating some of these things makes me look a bit neurotic, like "oh come on, that's not going to happen," but unfortunately all of these things have happened to me before when people got, I guess, a liiiittle too romantically invested in my characters.

So really, I don't have many boundaries in the way of content. Go forth and write or draw or just imagine what pleases you (general you). Write them getting married, having unrequited crushes, being one of the last survivors of the Titanic and sacrificing themselves so that the other character can live her best life beyond their doomed romance, etcetera.

All I ask is that the appreciation is centered on the character as an imaginary being, and I, the real and very boring human woman, am largely ignored in the equation and not pulled in to do matchmaking, officiate any weddings, or act as a conduit to manifest a tulpa.

[isaidyoulookshitty]

idk it is so upsetting to me that veilguard is the first dragon age game i won't be replaying. when i was 15 i played origins so many times (almost a dozen) it is one of the only games i have ever 100% finished. da2 was the same! and while i didn't make it through as many playthroughs of inquisition i put hundreds of hours into it and made an effort to get to the bottom of everything the game threw at me. until veilguard, i had bought every available dragon age dlc for all games, tried to play almost every route given in the story choices, and spent hours reading through codex entries to soak up as much lore as i could.

veilguard has rendered all of that completely null.

it feels almost spiteful at this point that this new frakenspliced bioware cared so little to honor the bones and meat of the first three games. 15 years i have spent loving and cherishing (and criticizing) this franchise and now i feel like a fucking idiot for it. my grey warden? canonically awol and never addressed again. hawke? irrelevant and, for some players, potentially stuck in the fade forever. inquisitor? stripped of any complexity or depth i had given her in favor of the most syrupy, out of character fairytale true love's kiss ending with a man that shattered her worldview and broke her heart. how do you take 10 years to craft an ending this dissatisfying and thoughtless?

and the world i spent a decade and a half fighting for, shaping with player choices, and calling home? gone. "overwhelmed by the blight." literally scorched earth for the next game to build on with whatever the writers pull out of their ass to make players forget all about the original dragon age. it's tragic! disrespectful to longtime fans at best, at worst it feels intentional and like i am being made the butt of a joke told by writers who in the promotional material sound like they could not even be assed to play the games they're attempting to draw from. veilguard is just a product to be sold, not a story worthy of The Dragon Age Setting.

and i haven't even touched on all my gripes with the game's writing, the sanitization of any canon conflict that could be uncomfortable or difficult to address, the stale and cutesy therapyspeak and lessons in basic morality that are baked into every in-game interaction (most of which are shallow and all the same anyways) compared to the dialogue trees from the other 3 games. it is so frustrating to see that the devs chose to cave to a decade of vitriolic fandom politics in favor of addressing the kettle they wrote themselves into.

instead of hand-waving racism toward elves, the panic over qunari, the isolation of the dwarves, the corruption of the chantry, the abuse in the circles of magi, and slavery in tevinter, we should have been given the chance to confront all of it. to put a real end to it. we will never get to do that now. in fact, in their failure to follow through, bioware has only succeeded in exacerbating all of these issues. they have made the elves, which they have openly ADMITTED were "inspired" by Jewish and indigenous peoples, their mouthpiece for white guilt and shame passed down from one's ancestors (while also gutting elves' religion, culture, history, social differences, etc. i could go on). they PERPETUATE the same stereotypes of barbarity, violence, and warmongering imposed on the qunari by the rest of thedas by continuing to make them an opposing enemy force with the exception being a couple of friends they have neatly packaged for us. the unsatisfying conclusion to the mage-templar schism in inquisition is inconsequential. who the player chose to HEAD THE SOUTHERN CHANTRY as divine is deliberately made irrelevant. the dwarves are still isolated and ignorant of their origins save for harding (assuming she doesn't end up killed) and a single closed-off group. and the slaves in tevinter (again, mostly elves)? conveniently kept out of sight and conversation when we finally get to minrathous. everything that happened to fenris to make him the character he is, arguably the most impactful and sympathetic out of all the da2 companions, is not even addressed, much less tackled. all of it is swept under the rug.

i could go on about how i, a queer and nonbinary adult fan, thought their handling of gender and LGBTQIA+ identities was heavy-handed, infantilizing, and felt so out of place within the setting it makes easy fodder for the "woke=broke" crowd that wouldn't have been receptive to queer rep anyway, but that would need to be another post in itself. not to mention the romance! unfortunate that i chose to romance lucanis not knowing his is now notorious for a lack of content, meaningful dialogue, pacing, and actual development. i won't even get to see the other romances in comparison because, as i have said, i will not be replaying.

i wanted dragon age: dreadwolf. i wanted a solid conclusion to a story almost 20 years in the making. a dragon age reboot might even have been a great idea somewhere down the line, but this was not the game to do it with. it was supposed to be a sequel and they couldn't even get that right. did i enjoy parts of it? of course! i finished it! but i won't be doing it again. the game clearly intends you to, considering a significant portion is locked away by decisions players are forced to make pretty early on, but i can't make myself do it. it makes me way too sad.

[recurring-polynya]

a cool thing about writing bleach fanfic is that i have read certain parts of the canon so many times that i feel like i know it really well and then i'll realize there's something i have absolutely no clue about. today's example: in the wake of Ichigo storming Soul Society, how widespread was the knowledge that Urahara had been assisting him?

Aizen knew, obvs, for Aizen reasons, but some of the stuff he mentions, like Urahara's known base of operations being in West Rukongai-> the involvement of known Urahara associates Shiba Kuukaku and Shihouin Yoruichi and other clues probably had a number of characters such as Yamamoto, Ukitake, Kyouraku, Unohana suspicious. I feel like Soi Fon and Kurotsuchi could easily have put it together as well, but I did not get that vibe from them so either they didn't or they were just too distracted or in Kurotsuchi's case, he probably did put it together and just didn't care (or pretended not to care)

When the captains finally show up in Hueco Mundo, we learn that Urahara had been working with the Gotei for some time so obviously his involvement has been known at some high enough level of security clearance.

Did Byakuya ever officially report the fact that Ichigo Hollowified right in front of him, which may not have meant much to him, but probably would have been a big tip-off to Yams. On one hand, it does not feel very Byakuya of him to leave something like that out of a report, but on the other hand, I really feel like he just kept it to himself.

Would Rukia have mentioned Urahara in her debriefings after she was arrested? On one hand, I do not think she understood who Urahara was and would not have thought much of mentioning him. On the other hand, Rukia is a "snitches get stitches" type to the marrow of her bones and I feel like she would have intentionally wiped any mention of him from her narrative 99% on principle and 1% for the purposes of protecting Ichigo

If I were banished from Soul Society and hiding out in the Living World, I would use an assumed name, probably all the time, but AT VERY LEAST for the case of interacting with active-duty shinigami. The only person who actually did this was Isshin and I honestly believe he just changed his name for wife-guy reasons.

Ichigo did, very much, straight up tell Ikkaku that Urahara taught him to fight and it was quite clear that Ikkaku was fully aware of who Urahara was. Did Ikkaku tell anyone this or otherwise do anything with this information? I feel like he did not.

Does Ikkaku have a security clearance???????

I would not give Ikkaku a security clearance

If I were going 100% by the manga, I would assume that Yoruichi ghosted after they failed to arrest Aizen, given that she's still very much banished, but in Honey Dish Rhapsody, she apparently hung around with Soi Fon for a while. Is it possible that she had some meetings with the Gotei higher ups in the interests of re-establishing a relationship/working on getting the banishment reversed? My heart wants to say no, but Yoruichi often makes herself freely available to the Gotei in filler arcs, so who knows?

When the Advance Team first goes to the Living World, Renji goes to stay at Urahara's in the interest of "asking" Urahara why he put the hogyoku in Rukia (I assume "asking" is a euphemism for breaking his nose). I feel like this could be the natural follow-on to the idea that Renji just got handed a file of classified info related to this mission and is freshly Hot Mad at this dude he didn't know existed up until now.

Presumably, Rukia also could have given Renji a more detailed version of her time in Karakura in a non-official capacity

Presumably also, the Karakura kids could have gone around telling anyone who would listen about their Mysterious Shop Keeper Friend

I think the answer I'm leaning towards is that the Gotei higher-ups knew about Urahara's involvement and re-established communication with him, possibly in an obfuscated way so as not to run into trouble with Central 46 (fairly easy to do, since they were dead at the time). It's a pretty poorly kept secret, but on the other hand, Gotei op-sec seems to lean pretty heavily on the assumption that people who accidentally learn state secrets don't know what they are looking at and will most likely forget it in a day or two anyway.

[roseganymede95]

i don't have much to say other than that i've been absolutely LOVING your dead boy detectives series SO SO SOO MUCH

i think mark is such a fascinating, well-written OC, and he has been living in my head rent free all month. he is such a great character, and not because he's a good person or does good things, but because he's so complex. he's horrible and he's an asshole and yet charles looks up to him so much; he's such a shitty person, and you love to hate him, but his motives and way of thinking are also so interesting that you can't seem to look away or ignore it.

he and charles' dynamic has been so interesting to see play out — the way they clearly have an unconventional sort of friendship, one sewn together by repressed underlying feelings — and this is made all the more intriguing by the fact that mark ultimately never ends up confronting his feelings and in fact, chooses to do quite the opposite.

the way mark, who spent his free time with charles talking about literature, who kissed charles (and cried about it right after) is the same mark who murdered charles; the same mark who was so terrified of people seeing him beneath his façade that he tried to drive off charles' only real friend has me absolutely SAKJNASKSNJAKSN

again, i don't really have anything to ask, and this is more of a rant than anything, but thank you so much for your contribution to the fandom, because i've been losing my mind over your fics in the absolute best way possible!!!

Oh no oh no help that’s too many compliments AH!

I have sincerely loved writing Mark. He came into being as kind of an afterthought while I was writing Grenade, just me reflecting on what Charles’ relationship with his jock friends would have been like before he died, and it occurred to be pretty early on that he probably had at least one homoerotic bromance in the mix. Charles is so openly affectionate and flirtatious, I was just 1000% sure that at least one boy in his social circle was completely gone for him. Mark just sort of grew from there, like a self-loathing fungus.

It has also come to my attention that some people seem to believe he’s a character I lifted from the comics, which is truly the highest honor of all. I have usurped canon. My OCs are communal fandom property now. I told you people I was the captain now, and I meant it.

[fenrysmoonbeamswife]

On my Lucien and Feyre post someone said Tamlin didn't abuse Lucien or Feyre, Feyre was just a spoiled little brat who wanted to be the center of attention and I—💀

I am not a Tamlin hater, I'm not a fan but I'm not a hater, and I'm fully open to Feyre criticism but that is ridiculous

I honestly feel like some people have allowed their disdain for Rhysand and the IC to cloud Tamlins actions, it's like people can't go from one extreme without going to the other. But one characters actions don't negate another characters actions.

Rhysand being abusive doesn't mean that Tamlin wasn't

The IC having toxic relationships doesn't mean that Tamlin and Lucien don't

SJM retconning doesn't change the fact that what she wrote is canon and in that writing, Tamlin was abusive

Liking a character doesn't change what they've done

Yes, Tamlin has trauma and definitely PTSD. Yes, Tamlin was dealing with his own issues. Yes, he and Feyre both should have communicated more. Yes, Feyre was a big cause of a lot of their problems not just Tamlin. But he abused both Feyre and Lucien. As much as the reader community seems to think so, abuse is not a debatable topic. Abuse is not based on opinion. You are not so holier than thou that you get to decide what does and doesn't count as abuse. You're empathy for and/or romanticizing of a character does not change their actions

This same person tried to argue that Cassian wasn't abusive either and that Nesta should have treated him better so I didn't engage but I thought it was important to make a post because I've seen this rhetoric a lot from Tamlin fans. I can definitely give Tamlin a bit of leeway, a bit of empathy and understanding. Definitely more so than with Rhysand and Cassian because his abusive actions aren't inherently self serving, they're clearly more of a trauma response but they're still abuse and this fandom needs to stop trying to make excuses for abusive characters

More in depth post about how Lucien is in fact a victim of Tamlin incoming

[avelera]

idk how to explain this but jayvik is giving the same vibes as dreamling. i just can't prove it.

Serious answer, they do match some of the Red Oni/Blue Oni tropes that are very popular with a lot of slash ships, including Hob/Dream, Jayce/Viktor, Newt/Hermann, and Kirk/Spock, where one is more passionate and governed by emotion and one is more remote and intellectual.

It's also very common for such ships to have physical characteristics that match these personality characteristics, like the "Red" Oni figure being physically larger, broader, and more imposing with a body that runs hot, with the "Blue" Oni figure being lean, pale, and cerebral with a body that runs cold (as we have seen over and over and over with these style of ships where one is presumed to "run hot" and the other is always cold, yes I am guilty of writing this too, it's a fun trope).

(Fandoms often tend to exaggerate these differences even further, make the height differences even more pronounced, the Red figure bigger, the Blue figure even more waifish, and often throw in a Masculine/Feminine angle to the differences which further remove the characters from their canon selves, but that is a raging pet peeve of mine for another day.)

But I would say, unique to Jayvik and Dreamling's similarities are things like Viktor ascending to become an Endless, Dream-like figure, able to touch the consciousnesses of uncountable lives, and in doing so becoming a solitary figure that only one person seems to be able to reach in his loneliness. And there is a similarity between Hob and Jayce with them being the more passionate, loud person of the two, who seems more grounded in the "physical" world and its pleasures.

Certainly when I write Jayce and Viktor I have to be careful not to dip too much into mannerisms and tropes I've been writing recently for Hob and Dream. For example, Jayce speaks informally about 80% of the time (and with poetic eloquence about 5-10% of the time, usually when talking about magic or higher concepts like morality), but he doesn't use the bloke-y British slang terms I ascribe to Hob. And Viktor speaks informally about 60% of the time, but he's not nearly so rigidly formal in his diction as Dream often is, and he sometimes uses English as a second language grammar, rather than purely formal grammar.

(I also borrow elements for writing them from my time writing Newt and Hermann for Pacific Rim, but that's mostly things like awareness around Viktor's disability, first practiced while writing Hermann, and the analytical way Newt and Hermann both talk applies to Jayce and Viktor as scientists first and foremost, but Jayvik lacks the Newmann bickering and they are actually very affectionate and in sync with each other from the start. It's been very rewarding to pull from some other ships I have more experience with to write Jayce and Viktor, and this ask gave me the chance to ramble about it a bit lol so sorry about the tangent).

But yeah I do think there's similarities, you're not imagining things. But personally I find the places where they are different from other Red Oni/Blue Oni style ships to be the most interesting parts about them.

[frownyalfred]

res you did such a good job writing duke^^^ he and cass are my favorites and its so rare to get a fic centered around him. eye in the sky was awesome and i can't thank you enough for giving him his spotlight. you wrote his powers out so coollll. i wish i was smarted so i could give more nuanced compliments but im literally just so happy the fic existing. congratulations on finishing it!

Thank you so much! I will say, since I’ve been getting a lot of comments about it — I absolutely fucked with Duke’s canon powers for this fic. Some parts are the same, others are absolutely manipulated for plot reasons. I have never written Duke before this fic, so there are definitely some things I’ve gotten wrong, just since I was working off the wikis and my own plotting needs haha.

I think Duke is an excellent character to provide contrast and comparison to the Robins before him. He’s so different from them, but also very very similar where it counts.

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe–Centric perspective on Multiversus #6

Yo! Please know I understand these comics aren't supposed to be canon and that the people writing this are not in charge of the Steven Universe IP. I'm just commenting on stuff I thought was interesting, funny, or wrong from the perspective of a SU superfan.

(I only comment on the SU content, sorry.)

Multiversus #1 commentary

Multiversus #2 commentary

Multiversus #3 commentary

Multiversus #4 commentary

Multiversus #5 commentary

On #6:

I definitely had a laugh at Steven's name for the Joker.

Steven is following mysterious instructions to do some welding here. Well, he's sort of encountered a blowtorch before. And used it with his dad's help to make a grilled cheese sandwich. But he's taking this very seriously and it's cute. He's not interested in helping the Joker escape.

Garnet and Harley Quinn team up to do some battle. And. . . .

Sigh. Well that was phoned in. The Crystal Gems aren't "Crystalline Warriors." That's not a thing they say. Garnet would definitely say something just as awkward as this in this situation though. "WE INHABIT THE INNER SANCTUMS! ONLY ACCESSIBLE THROUGH MAGICAL EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL DOORS!" comes to mind.

Garnet seems very Not Amused by Harley Quinn.

And there she goes with weird hesitant speaking and ANOTHER QUESTION. Followed by another one:

One of my big complaints about this series is that they always put the questions in Garnet's mouth! It's the weirdest thing to see!

. . .

And I don't even know what this is. But it's cute.

And thus the tournament style play of Multiversus is explained, and we no longer have to wonder why the hell these characters would ever fight each other.

[bleeding-seraphic]

There is a part of me that is rather sad about the omission of Zerum from this particular AU. I had been craving very much someone's take on both her character, as well as exploring both the impact such a situation as Sebastian's would've had on her, as well as earnestly exploring what their dynamic really is like and actually learning about her presence and her manner within the world of Pressure.

Your reasons for excluding her are understandable to be sure, but man, there is still that desire with me on that matter. That, and consciously writing both her and Sebastian with your projection in mind..might yield something interesting in of itself.

I do hear how some aroace people get married or even marry each other for reasons OTHER than romantic feelings, most especially to express/reinforce the bond they have and their commitment to one another in their own manner, different from this overarching norm that exclusively caters to romance itself. This, I feel, has a lot of potential if done right, but that's all just yapping about hypotheticals you can tune out if you'd like.

This was an interesting read and I see where you're coming from!! I'm just not sure how I would portray her in the first place- she's not a character in Pressure itself but she IS a real character that belongs to someone, and I wasn't sure what to do with that. It was a complicated situation I'm not very confident in my ability to portray existing characters with nuance if I don't get them, and I definitely don't get Zerum('s character) because she's not IN the game, nor do I have a good feel on their relationship besides them being happily married. So I decided to focus on familial relationships because family angst is my jam.

Also I actually don't really ship them since I never actually got to see any canon interaction so it was hard for me to get invested enough to want to include their relationship in my au

I love Zerum very much and she seems very sweet and I don't like that people get on her case, but overall it's just not something I want to put my in Asylum Harbour canon. I hope you get to find the nuanced content of her that you're looking for! :)

[snowdropflowers]

Why do e/riel shippers want Elain to be out of character? Why isn't it enough for them that Elain loves flowers or cooking?

If Elain's book had something to say about her becoming a spy, a warrior, and a singer, Sarah would leave easter eggs about it in her other books. But there are no easter eggs about any of them.

Sarah left easter eggs that Nesta would become a warrior. Nesta ACOWAR also joined the IC and wore Illyrian skins. ACOFAS also commented that Rhys Nesta is Illyrian at heart. As we know, Illyrians are a race of warriors. And Nesta also became a warrior.

Canon also confirmed that the Sarah 2 character sings. Az and Gwyn. Elain doesn't know how to sing or have any talent for it.

Elain will not be a warrior. If it did, Sarah would have dropped a lot of easter eggs about it. But no. Illyrian blushed when he saw the skins and agreed to bring the dagger with Feyre's reassuring look or word. (I don't remember this scene exactly, I can't look at it because I don't have it in the book right now.)

In Azriel's bonus chapter, Azriel rejected Elain. Not because of Rhys or because of him. As a result, he refused. At that moment, Azriel disobeyed Rhys' command and they kissed. And Az gives up the fight for Elain. He's not fighting for it. He immediately obeys Rhys' command.

And Sarah, I don't think she's going to write a forbidden love book. If he had written, he would have written to Feysand.

And they insistently say that e/riel's book will be Hades and Persephone. 😒😒😒

Sarah wrote this to Feysand anyway, why would she write it again, and their stories don't match. Rhys kidnapped Feyre. Where and why did he kidnap Az Elain? Rhys took Feyre to his palace under the mountain. So, where will Azriel take Elain if he doesn't have such a palace?

P.S: I may have spelling mistakes, I am not English and my English is not that good.