#and i don't have any problem saying that something Matt wrote is shitty

[smallishdoggo]

The idea that Dancer didn't and couldn't have known that FCG was a person, and is thus absolved of any responsibility for treating them like an object comes up every once in a while, and, like. Folks. She knew FCG had enough capacity for thought to be worth lying to. She lied to him about having made him. She cannot have considered them basically a toaster. Like, are we imagining that Dancer is out here lying to Pussy the Second to make herself seem smarter?

She bought FCG and restored them, and knew from that restoration that a lot of the technology behind FCG was beyond her understanding. She knew FCG could talk and reason, which is something no automaton we've ever encountered is capable of (excluding aeormatons). She spent four years with him, watching him be very very noticeably different than other automatons. She didn't need to know that he was an aeormaton or what aeormatons were historically capable of; she had all the evidence she needed to understand FCG as a person, and she just didn't.

Like, I can fully believe that she understood all that, that FCG has the capacity to think and feel on some level, and just decided that none of that made them a person. Cause that's the way FCG has thought about themself since their introduction. They think, they feel, they want things, just not how a person would. Not important, not weighty enough to matter.

And I think that matters when thinking about her! Specifically when thinking about her relationship to FCG. Dancer fucked them up! She raised them, he didn't know any other life than the one she built for him till murderbot mode. And I do think she has some responsibility for that. I don't think you can just say that she didn't know any better. She knew a lot! And she could have sought out more information on ancient automatons and their capacities. And she didn't! She knew enough to know she didn't understand FCG and how they worked, and she just. Decided not to do anything about that. She just decided that the thinking feeling robot that she bought should just be a thing that she owns and makes use of, and who cares where it came from or what it might do in the future.

I don't think she's a monster or anything, but it's wild how allergic this fandom is to considering her to have profoundly hurt the person she BOUGHT AND OWNED. Particularly given how gung ho this fandom tends to be about characters having the right to enact bloody vengeance on anyone who has ever made them feel bad.

[soul-dwelling-not]

"This new anime has less depth than the comics!"

See, even as I do not like this anime, I can't say that is the problem, even if I'm not sure I can disagree with this assessment.

The anime opted not to give more depth to Scott--in many ways, regressing him.

But the anime did give more depth to Ramona--kind of...except it is still her doing a murder mystery centered on Scott, someone that I don't think she really got to know that well, and on her past romances. It still feels limiting.

The sticking point I'm having is that I may be confusing "depth" with "breadth."

We didn't get more insight into Scott, and maybe not even into some supporting characters like Kim. They didn't get much more depth.

At best, they did get cool stuff to do--Stephen and Knives bouncing off of each other, which tends to be the strength of this story and just about any good story, when you may not get much depth out of a character but somehow still explore something about them by putting them into a new situation.

That should also work with what is done with Todd, Lucas, Gideon, and Julie. And yet, reading what happens to them, it doesn't feel fun or depth or entertaining. Todd's storyline seems regressive (and an excuse to keep Wallace in the story), Lucas has potential but just isn't as much fun as the film version.

And Gideon and Julie...I feel like I've read this fanfic before on Tumblr (probably because I wrote this kind of fanfic before on Tumblr), so it doesn't feel unique or engaging. I don't mean that entirely as an insult, especially when really shitty people online use "fanfic-y" or "Tumblr" as a shorthand insult usually intended as a euphemism for bashing marginalized people. This should work--two villains finding love in each other. But just reading that scenario, it doesn't sound like it would work--and I'm not keen on committing to this to see whether they pulled it off.

But we did give the lesser-explored characters stuff to do--which, again, seems like breadth more than depth, because even when you are giving stuff to Matt, Todd, and Gideon, that all feels more like you gave them stuff to do, not necessarily digging into them. So the most we get is Matt is into theater? That's it? It makes sense from what we have seen before, but that feels shallow. They get to do stuff--but it feels like it's not going very deep with what they are up to, actually kind of one-note, maybe even as one-note as Scott and Ramona can feel in the comics, film, and now this anime.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

E for nhthcth, M and Q, please?

E: If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?

The thing about nhthcth is that it's going to be very bad for a very long time and then it's going to all get resolved one way or another, for better or for worse. I don't want to say anything about how that ending is going to go, so I'm going to keep it vague.

I'd probably do a sequel with a drastically different tone. Now, it's all plot and serious dark stuff. I'd probably do something really fluffy as a sequel. Like, roadtrip/roommate sitcom/silly fun happy stuff as a sort of "where do we go from here" recovery healing thing. No plot whatsoever. The ending yall get is going to be the ending of the plot, and it’s going to be absolute.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

oooh soooooo many. i think the ones i'd most like to one day write (if i ever had the time) would be:

Buzzfeed Unsolved!AU with Gerry Keay, Jon Sims, and Danny Stoker, wherein a few idiots on the run from the supernatural try to cover up their monster-filled lifestyle by pretending to be like, really shitty ghost hunters, only then they accidentally become popular. for being skeptics. as to the existence. of the supernatural. that. they're on the run from. oops. featuring a gertrude who cannot believe that these idiots are actually succeeding.

Peter Parkers Roommate Drama following nwh, wherein they got a fucked up glitch while the wizard was doing magic that let them bounce back and forth between dimensions, so they just. find the one that has the cheapest rent. and all live there together. commute to their own dimensions for Spider-Man and work. because it's too expensive to live alone but they can't have roommates without risking their secret identity. featuring multiple daredevils, avengers, wade wilsons, and j jonah jamesons.

Bucky Barnes Designated Driver AU, wherein Matt Murdock makes so many wrong decisions they round around to the right decision. Daredevil helps out the Winter Soldier, offers him a safe place, and the sheer dumbfuckery this asshole is capable of starts tearing through years of hydra brainwashing and leaves bucky barnes as the only one with sense stuck with the entire new york vigilante population. featuring a half feral peter parker, a may who has been convicted of felony arson and only regrets getting caught, a long-suffering foggy nelson, a terrifying Karen page, and a bucky barnes who cannot believe how fucking stupid these assholes are.

this isn't a fandom I've put anything out for before but I have this elaborate Fake Dating AU between All Might and Inko from My Hero Academia, except instead of Fake Dating it's fake bitter exes. Problems at the entrance exam results in Izuku's parent being called, only he doesn't want this to be how his mom finds out he has a quirk so he calls all might to get him instead. only. they already called his mom. And he called his “dad.” And everyone just sort of decides to roll with it to cover up OFA. So everyone thinks inko and all might had a reallllllllllyyyy messy divorce and are trying to hold it together for their son, that they had together. featuring an exhausted aizawa, an enthusiastic and earnest iida, and a shinsou who has learned entirely too much about the symbol of peace’s home life.

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

also so many. there's a lot of stories that I love but that I’m pretty sure I’ll never write, and a lot of stories where I ended up changing the shape of the story and losing some of what I had. In nhthcth, there was originally a storyline involving Naomi herne and Evan Lukas. I ended up trashing it because it mostly served to bring in another character, and I could do that in a much easier and more direct way. Danny’s story is actually the opposite—he had a much smaller role, and then he ended up getting developed and becoming a central character. I ended up trashing Mike crews original role in the story as a result and rewriting it entirely.

Jon and Gerry made me so sad in nhthcth that I actually have like? 90ish pages? Of a fanfic of like, my own fanfic, where Elias didn’t do his due diligence and bind Jon young and they actually escaped. Agnes Montague was there, and aged down for the sake of the story. In my head, it was called the Gerry Keay Home for Disillusioned Child Messiahs. Fun story, but I’ve ultimately discarded it.

There’s a lot of stories that are just too long for me to commit to writing, so theyre effectively discarded. I had this one Jon Sims/Danny Stoker dated in uni story (based on another tumblr post, I have no idea where that is though, I’ll go back and edit this with credit if I find it again) that was so sad that my friend went into the groupchat to tattle on me for making her sad when I was telling her about it. I wrote like? Twelve pages of it? Then I got distracted with something else. But I love it still.