#and it’s fine but sometimes frustrating when that character is one of my blorbos

[darabeatha]

/ Okokokiedokiearchiedokie I'll be trying to cut back to my regular fate shenanigans to not flood up the dash, but thank u all for entertaining the silliness even when we are not in april's fools OITRUOTURTU

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Theyre going to think I like canon and purely canon if I keep going on like this

[stealingyourbones]

I’m fine with posts about my Blorbo getting ignored. It happens. We all know that. It’s disappointing, but you get inspired, start plotting, maybe even start writing yourself, lose motivation, and stop. It’s normal. It happens to all of us. Not a big deal.

But. BUT. BUUUUT. What drives me fucking insane is when some beautiful creative once-in-a-lifetime hand crafted prompt gets derailed into the generic stereotypical tropes that this crossover fandom constantly falls back on. I know that happens to you a lot, how do you deal with it?

In truth, when you sign up for creating content that you allow anyone to interact with, it’s just a part of the gig. It happens a lot, I may not enjoy it but others do and a community of people writing and having fun is what I strive to create.

My main ways to divert posts are either:

1.) Leave it be and let folks do their thing. The point of prompts is to let anyone add their thoughts, it doesn’t matter your personal feelings on a trope or headcanon.

2.) Simply stop interacting with that reply chain. I used to reblog absolutely every reply I got but now I only reblog the ones I enjoy. It has helped my mental health greatly. Additionally, if you don’t reblog responses to your posts, go and do that. It makes people more likely to see the responses you like if they already follow your blog for your writing and you’ll have a higher likelihood of that prompt gaining more replies.

3.) Put in the tags (#not ____ AU/trope/headcanon). I’ve done it a few times before with Ghost King AU’s I believe, mainly because I think that avoiding that trope for that particular post would make people flex their creativity more and write something they wouldn’t even have thought of if not given that limitation. This will sometimes work. Some folks reblog the post without the tag and the trope is posted anyways. People also might see the tag and think you’re being picky and rude and avoid the post entirely.

4.) Complain. I don’t really recommend doing this because people will Not Be Pleased but I am 100% guilty of doing this more than once. I have been pretty vocal on making my opinions clear on: Danny and Bruce’s relationship could also be something other than paternal, the automatic adoptions tropes, Ghost King AU’s, OP Danny, and not consuming some form of DC media is nigh impossible and actively avoiding it prevents you from learning about new characters and giving you new interests and ideas to spread and influence the fandom. This is the second least effective action to do. The first being saying nothing. Venting might be a good way to express frustration but let’s be honest, no one wants to listen to or read someone complaining for a few hundred words when they could be consuming a positive take on something they enjoy. For example: this post might get like 50 notes maybe max. It’s not a topic people like to read of and it’s critical on the things they like so they probably won’t interact with it.

5.) Add back onto your own post or another persons post with the idea of how you thought the post should have gone! If you don’t like the angle other folks are going at it, write your own thoughts on the prompt. A few solid paragraphs of ~500 words are what I have seen work the best in influencing and changing the direction of replies to a post. This is the best course of action to have people write another direction in tropes you enjoy and ideas you view are fresh and new. It might not be people’s favorite response to hear, but if you want a story to go a particular way, you have to write it yourself and hope the audience receives it well and picks up what you’re putting down.

6.) Write something similar again and hope a different audience receives the post and interprets it differently. Add a different spin on the concept and maybe add the (no ____) tag if you really really want something different.

I hope these tips help! Main takeaways if you don’t want to read everything: Complaining solves nothing and action solves everything. If you don’t like the way a post is going, write it to the way you want it to be.

[acetechne]

Greetings, I'm obsessed with your blog, especially your IAmMathewian content. You have a really good artstyle and you capture the characters very well. Would you be open to making headcanons for various characters? No pressure, of course.

howdy! and thank you, I'm flattered :)

i have been part of iamp for fiiiiiiiifteeeeeeeen yeeeeeears (screech), I did art and voice acting for IAMP Back In The Day and I've at least gotten better at one of those; I also run @project-canada which was an attempted reboot I helped out with but now it's just kind of a general repository for fanworks so I try to check the tags once in a while so people can see others who still make stuff in the fandom.

There are a lot of headcanon type posts on my main blog @allbeendonebefore since I've been around for a long time. If I remember to tag them its usually under iamp headcanon on there. Again, grain of salt, etc. that not everything about IAMP aged well, there are things I've changed my mind about as I've grown as a person and travelled and listened, and there are things that I like to focus on that aren't everyone's cup of tea and that's fine.

going to ramble a little bit, so headcanons fall into one of the following:

1. based on lived experience (i have lived in 3 provinces and 1 territory and have family who have spent time in those places at different times; I have travelled to/through four more provinces on top of that). I am happy to contribute info to those places and explain my perspectives and biases with those because I'm One of the Idiots Who Lives There.

2. based on history (I am not a capital H Historian but my degrees come out of the history and classics department and I am currently doing local history as my Job, I was the person who made the rough timelines of characters' histories when the Project Canada reboot was active because I felt like the only person who had the stamina to do that for every character.

3. based on things that make me angry (or things that are funny!) on the news (some people find it hard to distinguish what is and isn't stereotypes/satire if they're not keeping up with me so the usual disclaimer that I Don't Make Characters Reflect My Actual Views All The Time and there's a difference between "this is how the character is in my mind" and "this is me using blorbo as shorthand for taking out my frustration at the State of Things because i live in a province where the governing party thinks starting Literal Actual Tire Fires is good policy." It's one of those things of "if you are unsure just ask" and I will explain, but I think its usually obvious when I am doing salty political comics vs "this is how I legitimately think the characters would interact", its just striking that balance gets hard sometimes.

4. stuff I hear from other people based on their own experiences or just like. reading and listening a lot.

oh and stuff that other people tell me and i go sure that tracks why not.

Yeah, I'm down to talk about whatever/more specific things whenever, I'm just also very particular about some things and I like it when headcanons are based on something a little bit tangible before I fold them into whatever the hell I'm doing at the time. I also tend to disappoint people because I tend not to approach things from the lens of shipping so... even if it appears its usually in a weird and Stupid way that is for max comedy and not max romance so there's that.

I do also do a lot of side stuff with my own city ocs on @battle-of-alberta because i like the granularity and nuance of municipal stuff to sort of poke holes in the whole flattening national/provincial stereotypes thing. yeah.

again i can talk about this stuff all day but uh i realize I tend to ramble incoherently so I'll cut myself off there. Thanks again, enjoy your exploration, drop me a line if you like etc etc. peace.

[stingslikeabee]

mun ask meme: dash commentary, fanon interpretations, another rpc you're no longer part of

send a number for me to talk about one of the following topics . accepting

1. dash commentary

I'm mostly... Neutral about it, I guess? I don't engage in this practice at all simply because I do not favor rapid-fire / crack interactions (I always felt that being iconless contributed to this, haha - I just prefer asks and threads over this type of activity). What I will add is that participating in dash comm once landed me in one of the very few cases of 'drama' pertaining to roleplay, and I'm just doing fine without reacting to stuff I see.

(Also I think it's complicated to follow - sometimes I just see part of the thing the commentary is about and without context I simply Do Not Get It, so I just keep quiet, haha.)

2. fanon interpretations

I like to see them around! While I am personally canon-compliant to the extent possible with a lot of headcanons to get all the canon stuff together, I do enjoy reading about other's perceptions of certain events/characters or even plotlines. I will say that I am more interested/favor those that are created in a canon vacuum where they just elaborate upon/create things to explain a given canon event or further detail things that are not shown in-game altogether.

I tend not to follow / interact with severely canon-divergent portrayals of certain muses (particularly on my canon blog) if they vastly disagree with something I (as a fan) see differently, haha. This is less common on Melissa, but it has happened with my other blorbos.

The last thing I have to say on the topic is that it's never comfortable when you're in the minority of the fandom - I can vouch for this for both Akiyama and Cid in their fandoms. Going by the tags, I just keep finding stuff from the RGG and FFXVI fandoms that I just cannot agree with and it makes me steer away from the blogs that actively incorporate that in their portrayals (not that it matters now because I'm not active, but shhhh). I won't go in detail and I think everyone has their own space to create their children as they see fit, but sometimes it can be lonely when you feel you're the single one supporting a given take, haha.

3. another rpc you're no longer a part of

I am technically still in a lot of them because Melissa makes my head full of contradictory stuff being fandomless, but I will try to narrow it down to two particularly niche rpcs where I saw certain trends that made me a bit frustrated.

RGG is the first one - I was weirdly surprised by the amount of OCs with RGG verses that appeared to just ignore the franchise dynamics (or even the irl thing, for that matter) by establishing immensely powerful characters that would not fit in a world that is already so ridiculously populated with over the top, invincible types. It was either another criminal lord that could rival the Tojo at a stupidly young age or someone with ties to certain canon muses that would have been affected by the existence of these relatives / connections. It just made me very frustrated because nothing about it felt real (granted I know Kiryu fought tigers inside Osaka-jo with his bare hands and that 'realism' in RGG can be a bit of a stretch but I like to be as close as I can to the sources haha).

Another rpc that surprised me in a way was Path to Nowhere - it didn't really flourish and I imagine it's because the game is very niche and small compared to other gachas, but I truly expected more people to be writing about the game lore and trying to dissect the story. it's one of the greatest things about it, literally every player will tell their friends about how good and insanely well-crafted the storytelling is... And yet I don't see it in the rpc. We got more bits of story added in and I just don't see anything about it being expanded. It felt like a very... Superficial rpc with the exception of a few blogs, and largely inactive, haha. I get that not owning a certain character can lock you out from certain profiles/interrogations, but they're available online. I just... Don't know. For a game that creates such an interesting 20 minutes into the future scenario with superpowers, I find the writers very unwilling to explore the canon we have. I wished people yelled more about their thoughts.

[countessravengrey]

Stuckies stop posting anti Peggy Carter shit in her tag challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]

Sorry for the confusion, but I'm not anti-Peggy Carter, and I certainly didn't know there was a challenge going on.

But I am going to call out when she does something stupid or terrible (as I assume this has to do with the post about her shooting at Steve).

It is terrible for her to shoot at Steve in an unsafe testing situation and smirk it off because she was jealous.

It's also not smart on her part, given how women are treated during that time period and in the military to work her way up to her status and then do something like that which would only be seen as irrational and the worst parts of femininity...she might as well be shooting at herself, and it was one of the things that frustrated me about a character I actually loved in the first and second movie.

I'm sorry to tell you this is light criticism, considering what else gets posted about her on here, and totally in keeping with basic non-toxic character critique.

I don't say this to rile you up or invalidate you. I feel strongly about my blorbos, too, and sometimes we gotta take the little critiques and save our battles for the truly toxic shit. Calling out someone's bad traits doesn't negate their great stuff, and she did some great stuff. (I'm speaking specifically of the early movies and the series, as I personally dislike Captain Carter. She was just fine without being enhanced.)

I am anti-steggy, so I will note that in this post's tags, and as I assume that this is for Women's History Month, I will leave off the peggy carter tag for this one.

I hope you enjoy your challenge. Cheers!

[wiretism]

important not all important question. Would Aaron, hypothetically of course, skip to the end/spoil the ending of something when reading or watching something? In like some modern au or whatever au needs to exist for him to be able to watch stuff like shows,,.. Anywasy my reasoning for this actually not very important but very important question is that like. Me and my friend took an old “what character are you quiz?” and obviously those don’t actually mean anything and I know that. It’s fun to do every sixty months but hey whatever’s. Anyways we got Aaron and Alex and I was like “huh that’s neat. Didn’t think I’d get him” (Aaron) and my friend got Alex. Now I would’ve just continued on in my life but my dear amazing friend seemed really happy about that!! He hasn’t read anything about them just heard me say random stuffs about them haha, but he thought it was really cool that we’d get twins because there’s a lot of stuff about the both of us which are pretty cool coincidences. Like how both of our birthdays are a day apart, along with our younger sisters birthday being a day apart. Both our parents having the same name, both of them knowing one of my really olds friends mom (but I guess that isn’t too crazy). There was a BUNCH of other stuff but my memory sucks 😓 Anyways he was really happy about it, so it hasn’t left my mind like usual! obviously I don’t think we’re anything like them, but it’s still fun to see your guys explanation on like certain things about characters and go “haha wow I kinda do that. That’s pretty cool that characters awesome”. Anyways this kinda brings me to your post(s) about Aaron wanting to be in control (?). I’m not sure if this really correlates but I quite literally live off spoilers, and I tried watching an anime without spoiling it for myself. This had a lead me to the conclusion that I literally can’t watch something without spoilers. I had not a clue what would happen in those next few seconds, didn’t know if the character was going to stay dead, and for the life of me it was bugging me out so bad idea to go search up if the character is actually dead. There was like a few seconds left but I couldn’t tell whatsoever if he was going to get back up and spook us all. The minute I learned he did die, but comes back later as some sort of puppet, I was fine to keep going on! The same with books, no matter what I’m reading I have to look at the next few pages to see how it turns out or the next few paragraphs. I can not stop myself, and I know it’s a pretty common thing to do probably, but eh. What I’m getting at is, do you think Aaron would do that? Or another character maybe? Because it’s like, not knowing what’s going to happen, but you have the opportunity to know what happens if you spoil it for yourself, so you gotta do it? I don’t know it just kind of reminded me of that one post you where you were explaining the whole “in control” thing. Also if this isn’t a bother already, who do you think would walk on their tippy toes all the time/sometimes?? There’s gotta be at least one person from all those books…..,

love this ask tbh but UHM! I think maybbeee he would. impatience ig? possibly being new to expressing himself freely and reading a book and like. clutching his knees and staring and digging his nails into his legs. so while he's learned to be patient w people its like okay but what then. i can also see him getting frustrated with books in general idk. he's not rlly my blorbo so i dont have a super clear answer for u </3 my pick is yes sometimes. as for the in control, yeagh that DOES make sense for me. but by the time he's reading anything that CAN be spoiled he's already let go of that need for control and now wants to live on a tiny little island and plant things with his grandfathers

as for the tippy toes!! I can see Henry doing it when he's younger. Maybe Crow too. Uhmmm. Meg as well!!

[ziptiesnfries]

putting under a readmore bc it got Long, but i decided to ramble a bit about my personal relationship to whump/the whump community/my writing

i'll be real, i was really confused when i first found the whump community. i came here from writeblr, so i was like, "...okay, but why is this a separate community? don't all of us writers already torture our characters?" after a little while it became clear to me that there is a difference, because whump is specifically about the hurt, whereas writeblrs do a lot of things with their characters that don't always involve hurt. but i've been writing very angsty, violent stories since i was a kid, so for me it's all basically the same thing.

and for that reason, i feel like i don't consider most of the things i write to actually be "whump," even if they contain violence or characters getting hurt. i could describe it as whumpy, but for me to consider something i wrote as whump is like ... i wrote it for my whump blog, with the intent/main goal of portraying gratuitous amounts of violence or a specific trope or what have you. and most of the stuff i write doesn't fall into that category. i write a lot of stuff (fun fact: i am a Writing Major), and 99% of it is never posted online, especially on my whump blog, partly due to personal preference but partly because a ton of it is character-driven stuff that doesn't qualify as whump and would probably get like 3 notes on here (if my other character-specific blog is anything to go by, lmao).

it took a long time for me to start an actual dedicated whump blog, separate from my writeblr, and when i did that, i decided to just make new characters that were "my whump ocs." partly that was so that no one could identify me by my ocs (which is something i no longer care about; now all my blogs are cross-contaminated with blorbos from my brains), and partly it was just for organizational purposes. like, i have these characters over here on my writeblr, who i'm writing a novel about, and then i have these other characters on my whumpblr who i'm just messing around with and torturing.

more recently, i've kinda come to realize ... i don't care as much about my whump ocs? like, maybe this has to do with How I Make Characters. they have to age like fine wine; i can't just make up a dude on the fly and expect myself to care about them for more than a few weeks before i lose interest. i don't wanna say that i don't care about the ocs i post about on here At All, but my interest in them definitely comes and goes. this is why i sometimes vent about the frustrations of everyone else really liking my One-Off OC Of The Week - because i have characters that i've put literal years into developing, and they never seem to get as much interest. and like, obligatory disclaimer that obviously i really appreciate it when people like any of my writing! it's very validating! i just have a weird relationship with those oneshots, because usually the characters seem very shallow to me and i'm not actually interested in developing them; it kinda seems like everyone else likes them more than i do 😅

so i guess the TLDR here is i write a lot of stuff outside of what i talk about on my whump blog, so whump occupies a pretty specific niche in my writing-life. and that's also why i go for long stretches of time without posting any writing on this blog. like, i'm always writing something, but 9 times out of 10 it's not particularly suitable for here.

[panlight]

anon please! I voted for 'most criticisms of her are in bad faith but I still don't like her' and I'm really glad that was an option on the poll. There was such hatred and backlash against Bella for mostly dumb reasons when the movies were popular that I felt as if I had to defend her, even though I didn't actually like her as a character myself. Even now sometime I feel like I can't say anything negative about her because then Renaissance fandom has reclaimed her as their blorbo

Yeah, been there! Bella's not my favorite but more because I just . . . don't tend to like main characters much in anything. I especially don't like them when the narrative goes out of its way to be like LOOK AT HOW SPECIAL!!! AND AMAZING!! THEY ARE! (so the "wow Bella you're the best vampire ever!" stuff in BD just made me roll my eyes) and Twilight generally has a big protagonist-centered morality problem which doesn't help. So I voted for that one (she's fine but the way the narrative treats her is annoying), but I do agree that a lot of the mainstream criticism of her is unfair and came from a "things girls like are BAD!" place, at least originally (critiques are more nuanced in fandom space obviously) . . . but it's still okay to just . . . not like her that much. I don't personally find her very compelling because I'm here for vampires and she a) only became a vampire in 2005 so there's no history there and b) was instantly good at it and loved it so there's no 'what have I become?!' angst. Her story is Not For Me and that's okay! It is frustrating that it's a first person narrative so I have to experience the stuff I'm more interested in through the lens of her romance but, eh, we persevere.

[lovecolibri]

Eh, don’t really get the outrage. Carlos avoiding difficult subjects seems so in character to me.

I agree that it seems on brand for him, but what is getting to me is the way it was brought up out of nowhere. And yes, Covid and Liv leaving threw everyone for a loop but just a hint here and there that a) Carlos and Iris were close friends, and b) that there was *something* Carlos wasn't telling anyone could have gone a long way. A mention of some past *something* that his parents didn't approve of in the episodes centered on Carlos, a scene of Carlos taking a very vague one-sided call with Michelle (or even Iris) and hanging up when TK arrives, would have given the audience some build up and giving Carlos a little more depth/backstory without having to majorly tie the whole thing to Michelle. And they could have had Carlos take the call at work or something at the start/end of an emergency so it flowed with the episode, it wouldn't have been *too* hard to drop some hints along the way if this storyline was always the plan.

As for people being upset, I get it because I can be that way about MY blorbos so I'm not gonna shame people for being frustrated or pretend it's brilliant writing, however for me personally, at the moment I'm wiling to see how it's going to play out because the "Judd has a secret son" thing was something I was prepared to HATE but I ended up really enjoying how it was handled. So I'm going to give it a few weeks and see what they're going to do with it.

I will say, one of the most brilliant to me personally lines about relationships that has stuck with me is from the first Outlander book and to paraphrase, Jamie basically says that he knows there are things Clair maybe doesn't want to tell him yet or CAN'T tell him, and he has things he isn't ready to share yet either. Then he says their relationship has room for secrets, but not lies, so when she decides to tell him something to tell him the truth and he would do the same for her. We all have things we may not want to share or maybe even don't think are a big deal because it's been a thing for so long and then you tell someone else and it clicks that maybe it IS a big deal. Carlos is NOT in love with someone else, he hasn't been lying to TK about having a secret husband that he planned to build a life with but something happened, he had a marrage of convenience (which he may have said was "in name only"? I don't remember off the top of my head) to someone he cared about as a dear friend and nothing more. He wasn't lying to Iris either about who he was or what the marriage was about. Clearly he thought he had time to resolve the matter quietly without having to inconvenience or upset anyone because we all know how he can be about trying to manage everyone else's emotions. And so far I really like how TK is handling it though I hope we get to hear him talk about his feelings (you can understand a person's actions and still be hurt, and upset at the situation you find yourself in), and I'm excited to dig into Carlos more! It's time we get to see more past that perfect exterior he likes to project and into his complexities because it's been hinted at that he's not as together and he wants everyone to think and I just KNOW Rafa is going to deliver some Performances.

So right now, I'm willing to go on this journey but I get it if some people aren't because we've all been there! It's okay to feel your feelings, it's okay to hate it and come around later, it's okay to be fine now but hate it later, it's okay to hate or enjoy it entirely. It's your experience, do what you need to in order to have a good time (and sometimes that means bitching to like-minded pals until you feel better).

[carpisuns]

For the artist meme -- 20 and 6! 🎨 if you like xx

20. how often do you get art block?

all the time 🥰 it's like clockwork lol sometimes i get sooo frustrated and cranky bc i hate all my art and i'm like "woe is me!! i've lost all my skills!! i'll never draw again!!" and then i'm like wait . i know what's happening here. i just gotta wait it out I'll be fine lol. it's nice that i also write bc then i can switch to writing for a while until the art block clears up 👍 i've found it's best for me to just take a break from drawing for a bit and not try to force it so my brain can like reset itself

6. tag your favorite artists/inspirations!

oh man there are so many!!!! i could name like 100 people lol but i'm gonna limit myself to the ones i think have had the most direct influence on my art style. hope u guys don't mind the tags<3

@ileniagennari was one of the first artists i latched onto stylewise. i used to study their work a lot because i am obsessed with the fluidity and softness of their linework and i just really like how they draw faces and bodies. their rendering is also amazing and feels sort of cinematic somehow? i've always wished my art could have a similar feel!

@anna-scribbles has also been a huge style influence for me and she's just also been a big inspiration in general as a close friend<3 i ADORE her work and have studied it specifically a ton. she draws the most blorby blorbos ever. blorbyness is her art trademark imo. and i want that for me too so i tried to steal it. i also think just sheer proximity to her and her art has made me pick up a lot of things from her automatically haha. in particular, i feel like the way she draws smiles is so perfect, and i always try to channel her when i draw smiles myself haha

@ladybeug inspires me so much and has taught me really valuable art skills! a while ago i came to a point in my art journey when i felt just really stuck and frustrated. like i could not for the life of me just DOODLE. i took everything too seriously, even if it was supposed to be simple and silly. i really needed to learn how to loosen up and enjoy drawing more. stephanie is like the most esteemed and delightful doodler i know so i came to her for advice and she DELIVERED. she gave me super helpful tips and invited me to make daily comics with her and it's been lifechanging! it's helped me focus on communication over perfection and feel more confident in my art, which i think had a visible difference in my style too. i learn SO much from just regularly enjoying stephanie's work, including her webcomic @datmcomic!!

@rileyclaw is a good buddy of mine and his work is so hugely inspiring to me! it's really educational to see his wips and learn from his process. and since he's an incredible animator as well as an illustrator, enjoying his work is part of what inspired me to finally take a leap and make my first animatic. i really love how he pushes/exaggerates body and facial expression to communicate emotion and how he makes such careful choices about comp and color and just Everything to tell a whole story with every piece of his art. i've learned a lot from riley on the storytelling aspects of art and that's something i continue to try to build on!

@knockknockknockingonhootysdoor's art is like an instant and intense shot of dopamine to my brain every time!!! i cant even tell you how HAPPY it makes me. i just stare at it and eat it all up and i'm always asking myself HOW does he do it?? how does he make me feel this way. and i think it's just like....how genuine it is?? i can just feel kryan's love for the story and characters in the way he draws and im not sure that is a stealable quality lol. but in particular something i really admire about his art is how SHAPE it is. i love how he builds each character with different shapes and how each design feels so unique and so fitting for them. i am trying to incorporate that more into my own art!

man i already have rambled so much and there are so many other artists i could go on and on about alskjdfjkla ok just real quick i have to shout out @picayunearts bc i intensely enjoy her work in both the ml and toh fandoms and her coloring and use of light and gradient always stands out to me so i kinda try to channel that sometimes! @smallpapers is another fav and i love how soft and simple her art feels! it's always inspiring to me. @raystel's work also inspires me a lot, whether it's fanwork or original stuff. she is so creative with character design and seeing the way she expresses her ideas in art is so cool!

and i would be remiss if i didn't shout out my sister @mozzys-studio who is the first person i came to when i wanted to learn how to draw and she taught me a lot! her art is beautiful<3

thanks for the questions! :D

artist asks