#and that fandom had so much genuine love in it. it really shaped me as a person and i'm glad i was a part of it

[prismalmelonman]

Touching on Gale, Wyll, and Halsin's traumas being a bit undermined in parts of the fandom

So one thing I notice on Twitter is how some people act about the bg3 characters whose abuses were perpetuated by women.

Gale specifically for this reason (but I will touch on others)bbecause I see him dismissed super often as "can't get over his ex".

But Gale's case obviously be has the line of Mystra being like "she was my muse, my teacher, and then my lover" and sure to some that's a red flag in itself (when it comes to adults I don't really give a fuck about teacher/student) but if you view it from not only Gale's own words "ive been connected with the weave for as long as i can remember"

And that doesn't distract from his genuine love of magic of course. And it also doesn't mean that he's actually been in connection with mystra for an amount of time.

However, if you ascend Gale, and he becomes a god, you get a bunch of new little things. Tara reminiscing of course, but you get a letter from Elminster, detailing that Mystra had Elminster scope out Gale when he was eight!

And sure is that pretty cool that he's a prodigy that got the attention of the goddess of magic at that age? Yes. Mystra is, however, known in forgotten Realms lore to seek young young boys who are in tune with magic to make into her chosen. And from context clues, her chosen can be anything from Elminster and Volo, dedicated wizards who try to keep things in check, etc etc. or they're somewhat of playthings to her.

Minsc also has a conversation where me mentions that weave-touched boys in his homeland were hidden away to hone their craft, then suspecting that it was because of Mystra, given Gale's case.

Gale always seems so proud that he got to bed a goddess, and on the surface, hell yeah, that's cool.

Gale continued to have her attention even as he went to Blackstaff Academy, and Mystra eventually did take him on as an apprentice directly to her, later making him her chosen, and sleeping with him.

The reason it bothers me that people dismiss all of Gale's stuff to just "he can't get over his ex" is because that's is like almost textbook grooming? She was in his life from a young age, shaping and moulding him up as he grew up to be her perfect chosen, rewarding him by sleeping with him, and so on. And then of course casting him away when he has his folly with the netherese orb (and to be fair, it very well could have looked like to her that he was trying to seize the power himself and yes the orb does siphon off weave. That is a problem for the mistress of the weave yes).

But she also tells gale to KILL HIMSELF for her forgiveness.

Gale is much more than "unable to be over his ex" this woman was in his life since he was a kid. She's almost all he has ever known. If course it's going to be difficult for him to 1. Say no to her. 2. Get over the fact that he's lost someone that he spent his literal entire life dedicated to. Honestly if asked, I don't even think Gale would acknowledge or really see that what he went through was, in fact, abuse until it was spelled out in front of him. (Which does happen somewhat with the player character pleading to him that killing himself for mystra's forgiveness is actually horrific and that he should in fact be angry for how he was treated)

Similarly, and this one has been discussed a lot, Wyll and Mizora. Wyll was 17 and actively trying to help his people. 17, in a vulnerable state, willing to do anything to help and prove himself. Mizora very clearly took advantage of him, and regards him as a "pet", refers to him being "leashed", and so on. Personally, I do dislike the sexualization of their relationship, because it very much is also grooming (although a different type. Rather than manipulating and shaping his life from the ground up, she takes advantage of a vulnerable and desperate state to manipulate and contract Wyll into doing her bidding. I won't go too deep I to this one because it has been discussed to hell and back. But I did wanna touch on Wyll's situation as well.

Also, Halsin as well, though that has also been discussed in many retrospectives by a very good friend of mine. Halsin's trauma often get dismissed due to his polyamory, open sexual nature, and his own somewhat diminishing/dismissal of it, which honestly I love the representation of, cause for a while I did that with my own trauma. Halsin was a sex slave to a house of Lolth-Sworn drow, a matriarchal society, where the men are generally used as fodder or for breeding, though male Lolth-Sworn drow can be wizards and rise in the ranks if wizardry, but are limited everywhere else. (Minthara mentions that the third male, and every subsequent male child after third are killed for being"useless"). Halsin often referred to them as "hosts" rather than being captors, (though he does touch on that if the Player Character threatens to sell him back into slavery). Again, everything I'd have to say here for Halsin has entirely been discussed top to bottom by a friend, their link is below!!

Anyway, long story short, I dislike it a lot when Gale, Wyll, and Halsin's traumas and abuses get diminished, even if/when the character themself doesn't see or acknowledge the abuse in the same lens that we, the players, do.

[nohaijiachi]

Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

Before we get into the subject matter of the title let me preface a couple of things:

1- All that will follow is, big surprise, my opinion and my interpretation of this character. Do I think I am The One And Only Who Gets The Blorbo Right and that my ideas are 100% the way the author(s) intended to convey the character? No.

More likely than not the way I see Aziraphale could be intensely different from the way Authorman sees him, or Actorman sees him, and I don't think that my interpretation is necessarily any more correct than anybody's else.

That said, if I also did not think that I am, in fact, correct on a certain level, I wouldn't have bothered forming such a thought out opinion of Aziraphale in the first place, nor would be sitting here, writing this post that I can already tell is going to be entirely too long and might probably ruffle some feathers.

So I'll be writing the rest of this post with the caveat that I while I do think my interpretation correct, I'm also not trying to change anybody's mind nor to discredit anybody's else interpretation of Aziraphale. We can sit here in the sandpit and hold different opinions and still be able to build sandcastles together, it really isn't that deep at the end of the day; I can assure you, I'm not here to fight nor cause fights with this one.

2- With the above point, comes also the fact that I won't bother continuously saying "In my opinion" for the rest of this post. You already know that. So, if something will come across as a bit caustic, do know that it is very much tongue in cheek and I am poking a bit of fun at general fannish habits that I am also very much quote-unquoute 'guilty' of having partaken into, and will partake into again plenty of times in the future, I'm sure.

So, with that: Here's Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

A large part of the people comprising this fandom prefers Crowley. There, I said it.

This fandom's preference blatantly skews toward Crowley. Can we admit that openly? Let's admit that openly.

To be clear, this isn't meant to be an accusation or recrimination or any other -ation you can think of, I am merely stating matter-of-factly a phenomena I've observed in the last four years.

It is also not a wrong nor bad thing in any way, shape or form. I adore Crowley myself. I love them both so much it's unreal.

But I started with that because I think it is very much a symptom of the fact that a lot of people don't get Aziraphale.

I remember back with S1 there had been plenty of times when I found myself reading discussions and opinion exchanges about Aziraphale and Crowley, their dynamics, all the things that went unsaid behind the things that were said, and found myself genuinely surprised by seeing how some people interpreted certain moments wildly different from how I personally saw them.

I look back at that and I think "Oh, sweet summer child". Nothing could have prepared me from the onslaught of takes about Aziraphale that make me go "Good lord, what???" in the wake of S2, and the infamous Last Fifteen.

Now because I don't want to be pointing fingers at specific things and risk upsetting somebody more than I already am by being open in admitting that, guys, yes, some of the takes y'all have been sharing make me go "Yikes(tm)", I'll move on the interesting part and what I would actually love to discuss, aka cracking Aziraphale's head open and see what that actual fuck is going on in there.

Another preface: Because this duo is intrinsically linked and woven together it is downright impossible to only focus on Aziraphale without also mentioning Crowley, so... Let me circle back to our fav demon bae for a sec, here.

I think the reason why it seems that a larger part of the fandom favors Crowley is because I feel like Crowley is a much easier character to grasp. He is very open in his thoughts and feelings, at any given moment us, the audience, have a much easier time watching a scene and sort of ruminating in the back of our heads about Crowley's motivations for saying the things he says and doing the things he does.

That isn't to say Crowley is a less complex character than Aziraphale. They are very much equally complex and multifaceted individuals with their strengths and weaknesses, their issues and the way they each cope with them, how differently they approach their existence and so on and so forth.

But whereas Crowley as a character presents itself with a certain dynamism and a far more outward openness about his complexity, Aziraphale does the exact opposite; we can say Aziraphale is downright hermetic about it.

For us, the audience, he presents a challenge that requires a good deal of thought being put into him to see over the facade he presents at a more superficial level; he requires time and effort to fully dismantle him in our minds to try and see what makes him thick (other than his thighs), and thus I think it is entirely natural that more people latch on the far easier to identify-with, and relate-to, Crowley.

And that is the inevitable consequence of everything that makes Aziraphale... Well, Aziraphale.

So, where to start? Let's try and jot down what Aziraphale truly is at his core.

He is a contradiction.

This man-shaped being is a walking contradiction, constantly existing in a state of being coated in three thousand layers of misdirection and obfuscation and double thinking.

Why is that? Well. He's an angel.

Aziraphale loves being an angel. It is a tenet of his entire existence and something he cherishes. He wants, so very much, to be his ideal of what a good angel is: An entity who is kind and loving and understanding and forgiving.

Of course us, the audience, know that is utter bullshit, because we know angels can be individuals just as complex as the humans Aziraphale loves so much, with all their inherent flaws and capability for cruelty. And, on a certain level, Aziraphale knows that too.

So there we have it, one element of contradiction: Aziraphale wants to think that angels are always Good and Righteous and Never Wrong; Aziraphale knows that angels aren't, in fact, always Good and Righteous and, by god, can they make plenty of mistakes, too.

What else? How about Aziraphale sitting there, being in love with a demon, fully knowing that at the end of the day demons really ain't that different from angels, and also desperately hanging onto the concept of Good vs Bad.

And he sits there, existing with these two contrasting idea equally taking space in his mind, neither side ever capable of taking over the other.

What else do we have? Aziraphale loves God and wants so hard to believe in Her love for humanity and Her ineffable plan, and Aziraphale also time and again does things that very blatantly go against Her will, lies to Her face, and Doubts. He Doubts, a lot, and that requires the capital letter because those Doubts are what spur him in going against everything he's ever told to believe in order to do the right thing.

Aziraphale's very existence is a constant push-and-pull of things he wants to believe and things he knows are real; things he's told to do and things he wants to do. That's how we get "My side" and "there's a bit of good in you" and "you are the bad guys".

And nothing he's lived through has managed to break him out of this unhealthy way of existing quite yet; that's why he acts the way we see him act in the Edinburgh flashback in S2, or at the start of S1 when Crowley has to ease Aziraphale into the idea of trying to stop Armageddon with the usual song and dance of "temptation" and "plausible deniability" and "you'd be thwarting me", even though from the start we can tell there's a little part of Aziraphale who is clearly not at ease with the idea of the end of the world, and once he's been given 'permission' by Crowley nudging him, he is all the way in with the whole saving the world business, not take-backsies.

Both the moments I mentioned here are very important for different reasons, but of the two is very much the Edinburgh flashback that gets a lot more flack by the fandom and is blatantly misunderstood, which I think is the inevitable consequence of that minisode immediately following the glorious, beautiful, heartbreaking piece of art that is the "A companion to owls" minisode.

I've seen a lot of people lamenting that Aziraphale acts obnoxiously in the Edinburgh flashback and, yeah. He does. But I feel like the fact that we are seeing this after watching Aziraphale struggle his way through saving Job's children, even being willing to go to Hell for it, is a though act to follow and probably soured Edinburgh-Aziraphale for a lot of people, made them think that the character had regressed instead of progressing.

But, see, the way he acts is wholly congruous with who Aziraphale is and has always been and keeps being up to the very end of S2. Yes, even after what he does for Job's children.

If you get down to it, Aziraphale had been ready to give up and let the children die, in episode 2. For a brief moment, after Crowley told him he 'longed to destroy the blameless children', Aziraphale was walking away, having tried all he thought he could try to do to stop this senseless act. That was until Crowley tested him by making the crows bleat, cuing Aziraphale to the fact that his impression of Crowley wasn't wrong, and the he could count on him to do the right thing.

To be clear, I don't want to undermine Aziraphale's action by only giving the credit to Crowley but... It is, also, only thanks to Crowley cajoling him and giving him the right excuses, that Aziraphale feels safe in doing what he's always wanted to do all along.

He'd wanted to save Job's children, and thought he couldn't until Crowley threw him that hell of a lifesaver. He wanted to save the world and thought he couldn't until Crowley nudged him on the path of plausible deniability.

He wanted to save Elspeth's eternal soul, blinding himself to the hardships she'd have to endure in her not-eternal life, and was smacked right in the face by the reality of human suffering multiple times.

The way Aziraphale acts in that flashback can't be a regression, because there never was a progression in the first place: He'd always walked the line between Heaven's and God's will and his own, personal morality and sense of justice.

By all means, if we look at Uz-Aziraphale and modern-day-Aziraphale at the start of S1, his reticence about the whole saving the world business should, by all means, appear as a regression as well. You mean to tell me that he'd been ready to become a demon for the sake of three mortal children, and then suddenly a handful of thousands years later when faced with the prospect of the whole world going up in flames he'd just be all like "Heaven will triumph over Hell and it will be all rather lovely"? Like, fuck off, Aziraphale, you lying double-thinker, you (/pos)

Aziraphale constantly exist while being at war with himself. Circumstances have allowed him to rebel the will of Heaven and God more or less safely time and again, but he never quite managed to break free entirely. He'd always ended up being reeled back in, being fed the party lines, being made to feel shame for his independent thinking, until it all becomes too much and he is forced to step back from that freedom he'd been inches away from grasping.

Back and forth, back and forth, never stopping.

And all of this, all of what he is, makes it so hard for us, the audience, to truly see him. To truly grasp him. To truly watch any given scene with him and figure out what he might be thinking or feeling.

To understand Aziraphale is to understand what he is not saying when he says something, which is a good deal harder to do than it is to understand and relate to a character like Crowley, who very much revel in saying exactly whatever the heck he thinks whenever he damn well pleases.

All those layers of obfuscation and misdirection and double thinking that Aziraphale coats himself in are as much an armor that makes it harder for the audience to understand him as they are his very own downfall because, good lord, if you exist like that, if you exist forced to keep things hidden from yourself, well... It's inevitable that at some point you are going to stumble into pitfalls of your own making.

And I love him for it.

So, there? I hope I managed to explain something with this post, and that it wasn't just the rambling of someone who spends way too much time thinking about her blorbos. To be clear, I don't think people who haven't spent as much time as me trying to dissect and better understand Aziraphale's character are like, dumber than me or anything. It's just that this pair of angelic-demonic blorbos take too much real estate in my mind, lol.

Feel free to let me know your opinion and if you think I am wildly off mark and my Take Is Bad. I might answer, I might not, it all depends on time and my mood ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

[fictionalreads]

This Was Never Meant to Be What It Feels Like

A/N: Hey y'all! I'm not really a writer so this is my first time posting any writing here on Tumblr, but I'm apparently incapable of not thinking about Armando (*Whatta Man by Salt-N-Pepa plays in my head) so this kind of...happened. I figured I'd share ☺️ Also, I know Armando thinks Aretas is his dad in the movies but I changed it a bit.

Title is from Satisfaction by SiR (if you haven't heard it do yourself a favor and go listen)

Pairing: Armando Aretas x Original Female Character

Fandom: Bad Boys Movies

Prompt: Shay (OC) wants to get to know Armando better and figures her best bet is to ask when he's...relaxed.

Warnings ⚠️: Uh...complicated parental relationships. Talk of smut, but no actual smut.

“Tell me something.”

“Hm?”

Shay kept her focus on drawing invisible shapes on Armando’s shoulder with her finger. Her blue stiletto shaped nails going down almost to his elbow before finding its way back up to his collar bone. It was something she did often after they had sex and she knew it calmed him much like it was now. His breathing had slowed into something calmer than the frantic breaths of ten minutes ago when he was trying to catch his breath. The open window blew in a decent ocean breeze, adding to the peaceful feeling in her bedroom. She tried to play it cool, like she wasn’t disturbing the moment, wasn’t asking him to do the one thing she knew he hated - opening up.

Shay had been seeing Armando for about three months now, and she knew next to nothing about the man. She knew it was a red flag, hell she knew he probably wasn’t a law abiding citizen, but she couldn’t help it. 

There was something so magnetizing, so sensual about his presence. He commanded attention even though she got the feeling he wanted nothing more than to blend in and be lowkey. She couldn’t help but notice the way he held himself, the way he spoke and moved with the confidence of a man who was sure of himself. Don’t get her started on the way he smelled - it was divine and pure man.

The point was basically this - he was a ten but he refused to tell her more about himself.

Shay was determined to get to know him better, because despite playing things close to his chest, she was in love with him. She didn’t know his last name, but she knew he would bring her flowers and food if she was having a bad day just to make her smile. She didn’t know what he did for a living - honestly, part of her was glad for this if it was illegal as she was imagining. Plausible deniability. - but she knew if she needed him to, he would fix anything she needed him to or at least find someone who could. She didn’t know what his crucible entailed that made him like this, but she knew he loved her like she was something precious.

So she was taking the risk that this would blow up in her face. “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.” She kissed his chest, like she was softening the blow of the question. Not that she needed to, it was an open ended question on purpose. The more freedom she gave about the topic, the more likely he was to answer.

He gently shifted her to the pillow as he lifted himself on his elbow, facing her with a suspicious look on his face. “Like what?” God, what she wouldn’t give to take whatever hurt that made him so distrustful of her just wanting to know him away. Who had betrayed him? Who took advantage of his trust and made him so wary of genuine love?

She thought over her answer, a million topics coming to mind but needing to pick one that wouldn’t have him shutting down immediately. Armando had let the conversation start but he could end it if she said the wrong thing.

“Your family.” She could feel him pulling away as if it was physically happening so she quickly explained her choice. “Did you grow up with siblings? Are your parents married?” Bare minimum. 

It seemed to have worked he looked at her as if debating what to say, if anything, before laying back down and staring at the ceiling. The relaxed man that was in her bed mere minutes ago, gone. Now he was tense, as if ready for a fight. She slowly and obviously resumed her previous position on his chest, giving him time to tell her no if he needed the space. Her nails went back to their drawings in the hopes of calming him enough to talk. He took a breath before, “I grew up an only child. My mom was my world, she taught me everything I knew.”

Her nails stopped moving. “Was?” It was the word that caught the most of her attention out of everything he just said.

“She passed away a few years ago.” His face was blank, as if he was just stating a fact of life rather than talking about the death of the person that raised him and whom he clearly loved.

Shay rubbed the shoulder she wasn’t laying on in an effort to comfort him.“I’m sorry to hear that.” Armando shrugged it off but she could tell it still hurt him. “What about your dad?”

“Our relationship is…complicated at best. He wasn’t around for most of my life. We were introduced a few months before my mom died. I didn’t even know who he was to me until my mom told me on her deathbed.” 

“You never asked your mom about him before?”

“If there was one thing I knew about my father growing up, it was that my mom hated him. She always told me that he left us behind and didn’t look back at all. As a kid I was curious but as I got older, I started to hate him too. I mean he was supposed to love my mom, and he turned on her and left me behind like I was trash. Fuck ‘im. Now I know it wasn’t so black and white.”

“How so?”

“The few times my mom spoke about him, she always heavily implied that he knew she was pregnant with me and left anyway. Looking back, she never said the words. When I confronted my father about it, he said they were a doomed couple that wasn’t ever going to last. They were both too selfish. Said he didn’t even know she had been pregnant until we met.”

“Sounds like he cares. I mean if he knew do you think he would have been around?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind he would have been there, raised me. I know he loves me, that he just wants what’s best for me, but I’m just having a hard time accepting it. I spent so much time hating him that reconciling this truth with this perception I’ve always had of him is hard.”

“Not to mention it means confronting that you didn’t know your mom as well as you thought you did. The woman she was to you isn’t the woman she was to others.”

“And she’s not here to explain it, which just makes me mad all over again. He’s usually the target of my anger.”

“Makes sense to me.” She shrugged in response to his questioning look. “He’s here. Add in the fact that he wasn’t there for so long its easy to blame him for a lot.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

Like a flip had been switched, he once again moves her onto the bed and hovers over her.

“Enough about them. Talking is not exactly what I had in mind for us tonight,” he pleads. 

She could see the desperation and fear in his eyes. She had a feeling that being that honest with her scared him. He wasn’t exactly the vulnerable type and telling her all this put him on display in the most raw way, an unknown for him. It also meant he had to be honest with himself about he felt, something she didn’t think happened a lot. He wanted to escape the real hurt he was feeling about it all, he didn’t want to face what the truth might mean for his memory of his mother. If a reprieve is what he needed, she could do that for him. She would do that for him.

She bit her bottom lip, looking at him through her lashes, feeling herself get wet at his suggestive tone and slight touches. “What did you have in mind?”

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

The next morning she woke up alone, his side of the bed cold. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence as he often left before she woke. She was used to him leaving and coming back randomly, sometimes being gone for days. After their conversation and the way he seemed to just need her last night, she figured this was coming. Something told her him leaving was different this time, that she had pushed him too far. She had the sickening feeling that he wasn’t coming back.

Round two had been fast and rough, needy in a way. Round three had been teasing and playful, like he was apologizing for being so rough before. Round four was…slow and passionate, reverent almost.

It felt like a goodbye.

A/N: 🫣So how'd I do? Let me know in the comments. Likes and reblogs are always appreciated! OH AND HOW SHOULD I TAG THIS?! Anything I should add to get more people to see it?

Part 2 Part 3

[princeblue]

I’ll never not mourn that we didn’t get the zenitsu arc that was set up, because I truly believe it would have done wonders for how the fandom views Zenitsu.

It makes me quite angry that he’s dumbed down to nothing more than a pervert and a coward, now. I wouldn’t even go as far to say Zenitsu is a pervert, a coward sure, he even says so himself. But a pervert is someone who purposely creeps on women, tries to feel them up, tries to be a peeping Tom.

Zenitsu does literally none of that, he’s a girl lover/chaser when we meet him, I’ll admit. But he in no way shape or form harasses a woman from the point on where Tanjirou rips him off the woman he’s begging to marry him. After that, he’s very kind to the women he meets, cringe sure, but still polite and respectful,and he’s extremely devoted to Nezuko. Even if she cannot reciprocate, and even then he’s not a fucking creep, he just has a puppy crush on a pretty girl.

So to compare him to someone like, let’s say mineta from MHA, is not only extreme but just plain wrong.

Back to Zenitsu’s cowardice, I think it’s actually pretty cool he’s a coward. We get to see him grow from it, we get to see him learn to be more confident with the support of Tanjirou and Inosuke behind him, the most noticeable moment of this is when he defends the girl that Daki is harming in anger, even if at this point he’s semi aware he’s found the uppermoon, he still steps in front of her and tells her off.

Even during the actual confrontation with Daki, he still tells her she’s wrong, and cruel. And tells her to apologize to the poor girl she hurt.

And Zenitsu is intimately aware of his own flaws, even going as far to say “I hate myself more than anyone else” and listing off that when he’s scared, he freezes or runs. But he also mentions that he’s hurt that Inosuke and Tanjirou just left him at the mountain, he says that if they had tried to coax him, he more than likely would have went. And this claim is 100% supported by the flashbacks we see with Jigoro Kuwajima who was the only character to never give up on Zenitsu and constantly push him to be better and stronger.

If Zenitsu truly wanted to leave the demon slayer corps, he would, now that he’s a full fledged demon slayer and out from under Jigoro’s thumb he had every single opportunity to leave the core and go pursue an actual life outside of it, and yet he doesn’t. Because he wants to make his gramps proud, because he wants to help Tanjirou, because he finds a support system/family with Inosuke and Tanjirou that he’s never had with even Jigoro and Kaigaku.

He’s insecure, he has anxiety, he has anger issues, he wants to honor his mentor and help and protect his friends, he wants to live a happy life, he wants to be respected, he wants to be genuinely loved. He’s so much fucking more than a “pervert” and a coward, but the fandom still sticks to this perception of him because we never got the Zenitsu backstory, I don’t like the term “there’s always a duo in a trio” but at times it really felt like Zenitsu was just kind of there, while Inosuke and Tanjioru continued to get more depth and he didn’t.

[king-crawler]

HEY HI HELLO

Sorry for the random message here In the asks, it's ok if you don't see this or answer it since you probably got a lot already and I understand if you don't see this!/gen

But first of all, I just wanna say

I CANT BELIEVE I HAVENT WATCHED YOUR ANALYSIS VIDEO SOONER IM SO FUCKING LATE MAN

It's so well done and so fucking funny, I was literally smiling and cackling through the whole thing, it's shocking how similar our humor is

NOT TO MENTION THE END SCENE AREE YOU KIDDING HOW DID YOU MATCH THE LYRICS SO PERFECTLY TO THE FUCKING LORE ITS INCREDIBLE 😭💜/GEN, POS

It's insane how much dedication is put into it, let alone singlehandedly feeding turbo fans as myself

Genuinely thought it's so nice seeing more content for a hyperfixation I've had since 2012, and the fandom coming back along with this video Genuinely brings me so much joy as someone who's loved this movie since I was a kid

Sorry for the ramble but genuinely thank you for making that video, I can't wait to see what other stuff you do, wreck it ralph or not I WILL be tuning in/gen, pos

Okay second of all

The main reason why I'm sending this is because of sometning I noticed while rewatching a scene in the movie

Now, this might be me over analyzing as I usually do but it feels TOO. OBVIOUS.

SO

IN the kart bakery scene where vanellope and ralph go to bake a kart, they obviously make their way into the building and into the main room

You see all the Karts of course, and It pans to the one vanellope chooses

Which, at first glance you wouldn't really pay too much attention, especially when watching it for the first time, she's just picking the model she likes

..but looking back at the scene

Vanellope's kart model, how it was supposed to look, looks very

Familiar

Because the kart she chose..

...is a red and white kart

With stripes down the middle, with a very similar shape to a..certain persons kart. Now this might just be nothing, it's probably just like I said, and over analysis on my part

But the kart the chose looks WAY too similar to turbo's, not to mention the stripe is down the middle, just like turbo's car on the cabinet art of him

And vanellope could've chosen ANY kart

But it was that specific kart she chose, out of any of the karts

Not to mention in some of vanellope's concept art...

(Art made by Lorelay Bove)

..Vanellope's concept design and turbos designs strike SCARILY uncanny resemblances to each others designs

From the helmet and colors

All the way down to her GOGGLES having the SAME. YELLOW. TINT. that candy's have in the movie, which have the same effect here. There's no way that this didn't have the intent to mirror turbo purposefully

So with that in mind, the kart vanellope chose in the kart bakery scene being turbo foreshadowing, wouldn't be too out of place, nor would it be too far off

Turbo's foreshadowing was always prominent, even in the smallest details you wouldn't focus on, just like he's infecting this world as a virus, little by little, everywhere. You. Turn.

Aaaand that's basically all I have to really say

Sorry for the long ramble, I've been thinking of submitting this for awhile now, especially after I told a friend about this and they mentioned that this should be submitted to you

So I decided to go ahead and just do it, no matter how wild my comparisons might sound-

Anyways, I hope you have a good day, night, or what time it may be, and keep being awesome! I can't wait to hear back if you see this! Bye-bye! ❤️🏎��

P.s

I've been quoting these since I watched the video and haven't stopped

Thanks for destroying my humor even more-/pos

Okay bye bye now-

-skitters away-

NO YOU'RE SO FUCKING RIGHT OH MY GOD VANELLOPE WAS ALWAYS A TURBO PARALLEL??? CHAT IS THIS TRUE. IVE NEVER SEEN THAT CONCEPT ART OF HER TEEHEE THANKS FOR SHARING

also God. This is 99% just a coincidence with zero merit because its such a common gesture- but Ralph and Vanellope doing their thumbs up.. maybe Turbo parallels ?? and like the EXACT same poses too:

Vanellope having one hand on the steering wheel and the other doing a thumbs up while facing the camera.

Ralph hunched over doing the double thumbs up with the visor tinting his face yellow. EXCUSE ME HMMM?? WHAT THE FUCK??

NOW COULD I BE CHERRY PICKING? PERHAPS. but when Turbo has barely a minute of screentime, there's not a lot i can pick from, and things SURE ARE LINING UP... (I'm cherry picking)

SO SHHHHHH... ❤️❤️❤️❤️ LET ME HAVE MY LITTLE CONSPIRASCY

[takaraphoenix]

Four months into my Teen Wolf renaissance and I am kind of fascinated by the way my interaction with it changed and shaped with this current rewatch of the show, the shift in priorities.

I used to monoship in this fandom. There was Sterek and nothing else.

Now I'm juggling multiple ships and my first ever poly-ships for this fandom. Which is a delight, because I'm a polyamorous person first and a writer second so to actually have poly-ships in this fandom sparks a whole lot of joy for me. So does generally having multiple ships, because I've always been a multishipper.

It's interesting though, that with these multiple ships, it has become very clear to me what's my actual most important dynamic for this fandom. Because it doesn't matter what the Stiles ship is, it doesn't even matter who the pack Alpha is and what pack we're talking about, I need Boyd and Erica to be alive and to be in Stiles' pack. These three mean the fucking world to me, they're the core. The pack around them may change, the romantic ship for Stiles may change, but those two are alive and together and beautiful and Stiles' pack.

Other things, I am much more flexible on. There are characters I don't particularly care whether they're portrayed as good friends or bad friends, but if a fic goes outta their way to keep Boyd and Erica alive just to have them be bad to Stiles, I am out of that story faster than you can look.

Jackson is slightly more negotiable. He's still very important to me and I prefer him to be in the pack, but there is also something appealing to him being in London and him and Stiles building a long-distance friendship after the Nogitsune, that phone calls and texts might make it easier for Stiles to talk about what happened, that the Nogitsune trauma and the kanima trauma bonds them. I prefer them to be pack, but they don't have to be, as long as they are still friends. If I have to see Jackson post season 2 sticking around and being pack, just to then be a bully to Stiles, I am also out.

Like. I do fully understand that all three have, you know, more or less antagonistic pasts toward Stiles. I also understand fics that just turn everyone aside from [romantic partner] against Stiles for max angst. It's just that these three? These three hurt me to read as bad friends.

The more I write and read for the fandom, the more important does Alpha Peter become to me too. Even outside of romantic Steter, it just... feels wrong to me when he's a beta even more wrong when he's Scott's beta ngl. There is so much healing, redemption and hope in the idea of Peter as an Alpha who gets to rebuild the Hale Pack and keep his family's legacy alive.

Used to be Derek for me, but the more I think about it, the... unhappier he seems as an Alpha in canon and the fonder I grow of the idea of him getting to be a Right Hand. Of him getting a second chance with a Hale Pack but without the burden of having to try and be the Alpha. (I do still love writing and reading Alpha Derek though, especially when it's Sterek. But if I had to pick a favorite Hale Pack dynamic, it'd have to be Alpha Peter and Right Hand Derek.)

Now, out of this list, Peter was the only real surprise. Even back in 2014, when I first got into this fandom, I preferred my Berica alive and as friends with Stiles and I liked my Stackson brOTP.

But genuinely the biggest surprise to me is how much I latched onto Spark Stiles, because this was something I used to actively avoid. I used to think of that as nonsense. I mean, come on, that was one episode and canon moved on from that, how did you grow that attached to it.

Somehow, this rewatch, I just feel very indignant about the fact that they really gave Stiles magic for one episode and then did jackshit with it. What the hell. After ten years, I finally understand why the fandom couldn't let go of that.

Comfortingly enough did my favorite thing not change in the past ten years though. Give me Pack Mom Stiles or give me death. That's still the best damn thing this fandom ever did, in my opinion, and whatever the ship or the pack or who the Alpha is, Stiles is Pack Mom.

But it is interesting to see how my own interaction with the story and the characters has changed over the past decade and on this third to fifth watch (depending on what season we're talking about. I've seen the first two seasons more often than the rest).

[pearl-likes-pi]

i honestly dont know hoe to say this, but you really had a hand in shaping my brai chemistry while i was growing up, no kidding. i remember when i was 13 or so and whenever you posted a pearl rap career chapter it would unironicaly make my day (specially when you dropped the peridot chapter i had a stomach infection or smth, so that video and the last one out of beach city episode were on replay for me for a few days). its really weird seeing that rebecca managed to make a safe space for lgbt folks (it was really hard for me to accept myself as gay, it seems really simple nowadays but back then it was so discomforting to even thinm about it so su and its fandom, and by some extent, your vids, helped me externalize some feelings or queernes i guess, do you remeber when someone said your video editing was raw and masculine? lol). anyways, its wild to think i was in 5th grade when i first watched laser light canon and now im finishing my journalism course in college and seeing how this show raised me in some way and helped me to be aware of my own mental health i only have good memories, thankfully, and its really sad to see that it ended, but i honestly wouldnt have had it any other way. its kind of a long rant but id like to thank you, mackenzie, your videos made me laugh a lot when i was a teen and they still make me now. this show was truly a gift, it made us connect to something bigger and magical. this was kind of a long rant since ive kinda forgotten that su existed and remined that it existed because of some dreams lol. i remembered back then when i was super anxious about the cluster episode, i remeber checking your tumblr everyday and seeing fanon content. i really dont know how to express myself since english is not my first language and i tend to ramble on a lot on my native one, but id like to say youve made me smile a lot, it was so cool seeing you present the su podcast and being an intern at CN. i honestly wish you the best.

Dude it means so much to hear that my lil shitposts have had an impact on people!!!! I completely understand where youre coming from re: SU's impact on your life (and acceptance of queer identity) and feel the same way!!! im so grateful for this show and everything it represents. in a world without Steven Universe my current life would be completely unrecognizable. like genuinely I dont think any single aspect of my life would be the way it is without SU. which is nuts but it's true!!!

I love engaging with this community and it gave me a lot of support when I was at a place in my life where I felt pretty isolated. I'm kind of rambling now too but this seriously has been sitting in my inbox for a bit now and I just knew i needed to respond and say thank you for sharing. <3

ALSO LMAO I FORGOT ABT THE RAW AND MASCULINE COMMENT THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME HAHA

[olderthannetfic]

i was listening to the fanficmaverick podcast episode you did on fanfiction history, in which you mentioned (~55 min in) that you were one of the main people writing the terms of service for AO3 and bringing up the types of "would this be allowed" test cases, that these were not "oh it's a slightly problematic kink" but "violent snuff porn of gillian anderson, not scully, but gillian anderson" — and that you all eventually landed on "kinda gross, but legal in the US, and therefore would host." question: was this the most contentious case? any other memorable/notable test cases, or other interesting discussions you can remember?

i'd also love to hear more about how the major archive warnings were decided on — on what basis were these chosen? which others were considered? — if you happen to know!

sincerest thank you for all the work you've done for fandom and the preservation of fandom history. ❤️ seriously, such a feat, and so interesting!

--

I think even then my personal level of wallowing in annoying wank or looking at horrifying fic was vastly higher than everyone else's, so this was pretty much the example we looked at.

Though, if you want to laugh, astolat's original post is still up on LJ with the comments, and there were totally people going "I'd be interested in this new archive project, but not if it includes RPF!" or "Not if it includes any underage fic at all!" etc.

--

On usenet in the 90s, there was somebody or somebodies who were reaaaaally into that specific type of snuff story. I remember noticing how many of them involved not only hangings but very specific imagery of one high heel falling off. I was 13, so I really couldn't tell you if it was one dude with a specific fetish or genuinely super widespread. But it made an impression.

The alt.sex.stories hierarchy was a wild time.

Anyway, in practice, badwrong RPF of female celebs that sounds like it's aimed at straight dudes ends up on fetish sites for whatever the fetish is, not on fic archives for the most part, but I thought it was a useful example because it was so far into actually offensive to AO3y types. We're not talking the weaksauce shit people are always asking me about on here like "Oooh, what if someone posted [bog standard slash trope] to AO3?" as though it's a gotcha.

--

Man... were there other test cases? I'm trying to remember. This was all in like 2008, and of course, I didn't keep internal documents when I left OTW. Not that half of this was stuff I'd have had documented on my computer anyway.

My memory is that the general shape of the content policy had been decided by the founding Board before Content Policy started up. I don't think we were actually making the ruling on RPF ourselves.

I'm pretty sure most of what we were up to was looking at wank and trying to determine how to head off shitty behavior with the ToS. Trying to define harassment is a mega pain in the ass, let me tell you.

One major internal wank there was was deciding whether to allow Original Work. I was the one who'd been in anime fandom, and I was very used to archives that have an original section, often for the "original slash" and "original yaoi" that had nowhere else to go at the time. (These days, you'd just become a "m/m romance" author, as I in fact have.) Fanfiction.net had spun off its original years ago at that point, but a lot of the non-English archives and a lot of the archives in other parts of English-speaking fandom found fannish-but-original to be a normal thing.

I am a grudgy bitch, and I am still not over how much pushback I got on this.

AO3 went live with a ban on original work, but the policy never ended up being heavily enforced. We waited to see what would happen with posting, and it was predictably that people from those backgrounds outside of US Media Fandom posted some original without even thinking it might be banned, but they didn't post so much it overwhelmed the archive.

The big fears had been that #1 people would flood AO3 and drown out the fic. This was predicated on the idiotic notion that original = inherently not fannish, so there's no dividing line. In reality, the people who were used to posting original to fic archives had an internal sense of what belongs and what doesn't. Fear #2 was that people would try to post chapter 1 of a commercial story and then go "See here to buy the rest". Little did we know that this would soon be a problem with fucking fan fiction itself. (Also, commercial spam was always against the rules and needed no extra anti-original work rule.)

People didn't just disagree with me: they looked at me blankly.

Pretty sure I vented about this on that podcast too though. Anyway, most of the shit people find contentious now was already decided before we started writing the ToS, I think... though I don't really remember clearly. We were more looking to plug up holes in the rules that nitpicking trolls could use to harass.

The kinds of things we were deciding were often like the policy that AO3 doesn't necessarily tell you if someone reported you. If they need info, they'll contact you, and if they decide you broke the ToS, you'll hear about it, but obviously bogus reports don't get passed on. This is to remove the temptation to use the team as a proxy to harass a target. An official e-mail, even if it's "You're fine, actually", can be disturbing.

--

Re the warnings themselves, I know I'd done a survey of what archives were out there at the time and had come up with a list of a few dozen. This was early on in OTW's development process, not just for Content Policy. You can still find the list somewhere on that LJ group. Anyway, for the ToS writing, we looked at the commonplace warnings from archives past, which were basically character death, character death, and also character death.

It always cracks me up when people are like "Um, rape makes sense, but how dare they downplay these other bad things with a character death warning?" Old fandom places were full of unwarned for rape, but woe betide the person who posted surprise character death of a main ship!

We needed an under-18 warning because we had a lot of Australian fans who were like "Dude, my government is a bitch, and I cannot use this archive at all if I can't filter that out". Past archives had mostly just banned it entirely or been full of death eaters raping teenage Harry Potter characters with nary an underage warning in sight.

I don't remember why we picked the violence one. It really wasn't common, but maybe we wanted to make a philosophical point that sex doesn't have more cooties than violence.

CNTW was a compromise with older fandom standards where people objected to literally any warnings existing. A lot of the really oldschool warnings debates aren't about which ones you should have but about whether you should have them at all.

I think people around here miss how non-universal warnings are and how many other communities and spaces even today don't think you need all that.

I don't recall if we seriously considered any specific others. I don't think we had a big list, then ruled them out. It's more like we accreted a few must-haves as we went along. We probably looked at the metadata for the eFiction archives that actually had ticky boxes for search (as opposed to the very low-metadata norm on many archives). But a lot of those filters would have been fandom-specific or redundant or hella vague.

One thing to keep in mind is that this was an Era of Archives, so there were fucktons of examples to look at, though only a few flavors of example since a bunch used eFiction or otherwise copied each other's design. It was possible to make some judgements about past norms on archives, not just go "Are we copying FFN or not?" A lot of fans now see fic hosting as the big three or see AO3 as the only option, but we were used to having many archives with many designs.

I know we wanted a short and manageable list of warnings, and we wanted unambiguous things that could be effectively enforced. If I'm populating my hard-coded 90s website with other people's fics, I can go through each for dubcon before I post it (not that you'd ever have warned for dubcon in the 90s). On a big fic archive, making judgement calls on vague ass categories like dubcon is a nightmare.

We did do some focus groups where other interested fans came in and critiqued our work. I can't recall how much was about our ToS wording and how much was about the actual policies. But we did workshop this shit extensively with people who were around at the time. I think many of the whiners now assume it wasn't enough of a community effort (since we didn't decide things they like). But actually, a bunch of people weighed in. Maybe elf remembers what we actually asked them. I think she was in a focus group.

[oscconfessions]

I feel like gushing about how much this fandom has meant to me for a moment. Having a Time.

I genuinely love the memories I have of the OSC that I've been collecting since I joined the fanom in 2015. I've spent so much of my life in this fandom and it genuinely has done so much for me.

I got to witness idfb's release. I was THERE. It's hard to believe sometimes. I got to watch the comments freak out as they realized it wasn't bfdia 6 but something entirely different. Some positive, some negative. All surprised. I remember being so mad I couldn't vote or contribute because I was too young to have a YouTube account at the time. I remember watching idfb a million times in pure awe that it wasn't a competition show, so excited for the next episode to come out.

I remember when Kick the Bucket released and everyone collectively gasped at the reveal that Apple wasn't truly using Marshmallow and that it was all Bow. I remember how excited I was that my theory was RIGHT. I didn't know how common of a theory it was back then, I was just so excited because I'd been able to figure it out. I remember how surprised I felt when Nickel got eliminated alongside Balloon and how excited I was to see how Suitcase's character was going to develop. It was the first time I'd really watched something that intense and gotten so invested in it. I remember waiting for each and every episode of II past that point on the edge of my seat, eager to see what would happen next.

I remember when the first episode of bfb released. I wasn't expecting it. I don't believe anyone was. I found the art style so cool, and I loved how different it was from the traditional bfdi style. I loved the huge cast of characters and I had such fun trying to get a grasp on their personalities. I was so THRILLED when I realized I was able to cast my very first vote on a bfb episode. It was so fun, realizing that I could truly contribute to the community for the first time in my life. It was just one vote, but it filled me with pure glee. I was a part of something. It was a feeling of collaboration I'd never felt in any fandom space before.

I remember waiting through every hiatus, every pause in production, because I was so in love with these shows I was ready to wait my entire lifetime for them if I had to. I loved discovering new shows and new ways to interact with the community outside of the shows themselves. When I realized there were fandom spaces outside of YouTube that I could talk to other fans in I was over the moon. Finally, I had people who I could share my adoration for these silly talking objects with. I had people who I could start considering my friends.

I accepted the loss of bfdia because it meant there would be new stories that could be told with characters familiar and new. I adored each new story beat added to II because it meant these characters I'd grown to adore would get to have new, interesting scenes for me to watch over and over again.

And now. Here I am. Finding myself falling back in love with the community that shaped my childhood. Still giggling over the newest bfdia episode, and awaiting the next part of the Inanimate Insanity finale with nothing but pure JOY.

This community has meant a lot to me. And I'm so glad I've always found my way back to it. I know the community is pretty rocky (hah) at times, but it's been so special to me for so long.

I just love this fandom. A lot.

alright time to go die out of embarrassment now!!!!

.

[mintaikk]

You know what? I'm bored, so here's a list of my favorite ship names

I bully ship names, but I like a lot of them because some of them sound really pretty and are genuinely creative, and some are just funny, and I like the way they sound. Imma try to be multi fandom here, but my hyperfixations will show, since ill obviously know the ships in my own fandoms better. I'll also be explaining them here. There's also no order here, it's by the order I remeber it by.

Honeymoon (Beelzebub x Loona, Helluva Boss)

This shape name is super cute and super pretty, and I love it, and it also makes sense. Bee is a honeybee, and Loona is designed to look like the moon.

Dragonfruit (Mei x Red Son, Lego Monkie Kid)

I didn't get it at first because the fruit at the end didn't make sense, but apparently it takes the first characters in their Mandarin names which can be combined with other characters to make it translates to dragin fruit, and their color schemes also resemble one, which I think is pretty neat. Also, draginfruitsblook pretty

-Stolitz (Stolas x Blitzø, Helluva Boss)

A combination of their names that sounds like 'stole it', which is what Blitzø did with the grimoire. I love it

-Bluetooth (Caine x Moon, The Amazing Digital Circus)

The ship was named by @dovewingkinnie and has been growing in popularity, and I love it that I got to see a ship name being born. They're named Bluetooth because Moon is blue, the blue moon cycle, Caine is dentures, and Bluetooth is a way to connect wifi, which makes sense in a digital world.

-Amourshipping (Ash x Serena, Pokemon XY anime)

It's simple, but I like it. It's called Amourshipping because Amour means love in French, and Kalos (the region the series takes place in) is based on France

-Lumity (Luz x Amity, The Owl House)

It's another combination of names, but it sounds super pretty! To me, it sounds like illuminate, which fits because Luz's name means light and Luz literally showed Amity a light glyph when they were first becoming friends.

Goldengarden (Hunter x Willow, The Owl House)

It sounds so pretty omg

BurningLeafshipping (Red x Leaf, Pokemon [adventures manga])

The name sounds so pretty actually I love this name sm

Royallectureshipping (Cheren x Lear, Pokemon Masters)

Because Lear is a royal and Cheren constantly lectures him. It's litteraly perfect

Verbie (Barbie Wire x Verosika Mayday, Helluva Boss)

It's a combination of names. It sounds like furby. I will be bullying this name later.

Trainwreckshipping (Emmet x Volo, Pokemon)

This is such a perfect name for them. A lot of the fanon interactions stem from Emmet finding Volo to try and get revenge or force him to help him find Ingo, and then they have a whole enemies to lovers thing. It's called trainwreck shipping because ITD BE A GODDAMN TRAINWRECK. And Emmet's a subway boss, and Volo wanted to destroy the world

MedievalStoryShipping

(Gardevoir x Gallade, Pokemon): I didn't even know this ship had a name until I found a blog dedicated to it a couple of months ago. They were names MedievalStoryShippimg because Gardevoir was based off a princess and a knight and gallade was based on a prince and a knight. Also, not to put my own opinions, but I have such a sentimental attachment to this ship because I shipped it so hard in 5th grade and made so much (very bad) fanart of it

-Goldenheart (Ballister Boldheart/Blackheart x Ambrosious Goldenloin, Nimona)

It's another combination of names, but it sounds super cute and very angelic.

-Vorbee (Vortex x Beelzebub, Helluva Boss)

It's a combination Bee and Vortex's name, but it sounds like Vore, and considering Bee's whole thing with eating to excess, I can see that

[laniusbignaturals]

re: Honest Hearts, its especially bad when you consider the truly disgusting history of mormons slaughtering indigenous people. on playing it, i, as a native person, felt MASSIVELY weird about a mormon inserting himself into indigenous people’s cultures, the caricatures of native people lauding him as their great white savior one of their own, him being “their only hope” of survival—and honestly a lot of that paternalism that pervades much of the legion’s narrative (like ugh. uuughhh how visceral it is that the revived roman empire is swallowing up indigenous cultures again. ouch. but it feels like a bit of a hamfisted metaphor, and also why do all our stories in media have to center genocide all the time, it is so exhausting!)

it was really visceral, too, after having heard a professor/menotr of mine recounting his great-grandmother’s experience at the bear creek massacre. like this is real and tangible and painful. it made me feel so weird. mormons in general also have exquisitely bizarre beliefs about native folks.

honestly the whole dlc makes me have such conflicting feelings. on one hand, the region is beautiful, and seeing indigenous people reclaim a national park as their land is kind of nice? on the other— the white saviorism, the choice of making joshua & daniel not only white saviors but MORMONS, the accents, the paternalism that leeches into every part of the narrative. the vibes of the dlc are interesting and appealing to me. the portrayal makes me feel sick.

anyways sorry to rant in ur inbox i love ur blog 💖

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, we’re telling “adverse psychological responses to being surrounded by dehumanizing narratives” stories now? I found out my family had a cross burned on their lawn in the 80s around the same time Outlast revealed its new villain was a member of the KKK. The fact itself wasn’t quite as upsetting as the subsequent shift in the community, wherein a bunch of young white people loudly bickered over whether or not it was okay for them to publicly thirst over the Klan member, brazenly prioritizing their own self perception as a group instead of paying any heed to the experiences & opinions of players of color, even though. Y’know. That was the group of people whose brutalization the story was commenting on in the first place. Putting up with this shit is genuinely taxing, and that’s why so many POC leave fandom entirely, which creates a feedback loop - white sensibilities are given precedent, people of color decide to stay away, so fandom remains predominantly white, so white sensibilities are given precedent. This is a tale as old as time.

The trouble with Honest Hearts the story is that it, like most anti-indigenous media, callously lifts existing cultures and warps them into whatever shape is necessary to make then effective narrative tools for the white protagonist, or perhaps more accurately the predominantly white audience consuming them. I play this game on a $50 PlayStation Three that’s old enough to vote, so I’ve yet to get the chance to play Honest Hearts, though I’ve watched it. And while I’m grateful to have never had to wade through the discomfort of actively participate in that narrative, the fact that the most well-known of FNV’s dlcs is densely populated with anti-indigenous caricatures has repercussions on the game’s broader community. It’s for that reason that simply eating around media racism is more difficult in practice than in theory.

[ckret2]

whats one thing that bill loves that absolutely NO ONE wouldve guessed? like not in a TRILLION YEARS cause thats how out-of-pocket it is for him to like said thing???

also love your work <33 :) its one of the very few fanfictions where i can feel the true essence of bill cipher and that is very important to me

Thanks! I've tried to squeeze in as much Bill essence as I can.

"What's the most unexpected thing he likes" depends entirely on what you expect, and I feel like that's subjective. You could argue some of the things he likes in canon are pretty unexpected; while, on the other hand, even the unexpected stuff "makes sense" if you have the reason for it. So here's a list of random things that, while they make sense for Bill, might be surprising if you're trying to think of what would fit the image of an evil chaos party god:

First the canon. I feel like "silly straws" isn't exactly SURPRISING for Bill, but I doubt anyone would have expected him to like them enough to voluntarily bring it up if he hadn't. Like there's a long list of likable things he skipped over specifically to give silly straws a shout out.

Some people headcanon he can't actually play the piano and his little performance for Ford was all magic, but I like to headcanon he actually knows how to play and enjoys it. Which implies an unexpected amount of patience and dedicated practice out of a pretty flighty guy.

I mean I don't think anyone would have assumed that meditation fits his vibe.

Fandom's got a pretty good handle on associating him with brightly-colored busy patterns, but only with traditionally masculine or gender neutral aesthetics. Think bowling alley carpets patterns, lava lamps, Hot Wheels-style paint jobs, fire and lightning and lasers. But there's a tendency to overlook aesthetics that are associated with femininity. He WOULD be into Lisa Frank, decora, intricate neon nail art, magical girls that look like they're wearing hyper-saturated overly-complicated dance outfits covered in 24k gold and jewels as big as your thumb, extravagant hats, extravagant jewelry, girly drinks, girly desserts, glam fashion & decor, bubbles, bouquets, rainbows, and hot pink. To Bill, everything is gender neutral.

I think most people wouldn't expect Bill to be into surreal cerebral art films rather than, like, juvenile slapstick or action. But on the other hand, the line between "this is haunting" and "this is boring" is razor thin for him, so he doesn't always like the cerebral films.

He hasn't discovered this yet but he'd love the beach. Sunshine and swimming. The lake would do too.

I don't think anyone would anticipate that Gravity Falls is, actually, in fact, one of his favorite places in the dimension. He mainly keeps complaining about the town because every time he's there, he's TRAPPED AND CAN'T GET OUT.

He's really into math, just recreationally. He would read a whole book about proving Fermat's Last Theorem. He probably proved the theorem himself by 1700. Told no one. He was just bored that week.

Ford got him into DD&MD. Bill wasn't just humoring his human pawn, he genuinely enjoys it. Gets really into the roleplaying and storytelling. He hasn't had anyone to play with in thirty years. Prefers the 90s edition.

Everyone assumes Bill's just humoring Mabel by letting her put on Color Critters tapes. It's like Care Bears crossed with Rainbow Brite and the morals are twice as heavy-handed. But he actually does enjoy the show, it's just for the wrong reasons.

You'd expect the guy who destroyed his home dimension to hate it. There are books, songs, instruments, cars, plays, hotels, cities, convention centers, dams, field trip destinations, even rocks that he misses dearly and will never see again. He still writes to himself and talks to other shapes in his native language. He still constructs houses without ceilings. He still hugs with one arm and shakes hands sideways. He loves his dead dimension. Few people outside of the other surviving shapes know this.

So you decide which is most unexpected!!

[starleska]

welcome to...starleska's f/o round-up 2023! 🥳🥳🥳

below the cut is every single character i've had a crush on in 2023...and there are 30 in total!! 🙈💖 these are given in chronological order of fixation, and they are all new crushes (so re-entering a fixation for a character i've simped for previously doesn't count 😂) now be warned, this is a genuinely unhinged list. they are largely villains. one is a mushroom. one is a vehicle. one is a casino-themed duck-shaped robot. my autism is indiscriminate in the characters it fixates on, and they are all suitably embarrassing 😭💖 without further ado, here we go...

1. James the Red Engine | Thomas the Tank Engine

...shut up 😂💖 at the start of this year i truly lost my mind and fell headfirst into the Thomas the Tank Engine fandom (everyone there is so lovely and creative!!)...and of course, the vain train is my favourite 🙈💖 James is cute okay!! i don't need to justify myself!!! 2. 'Big' Jack Horner | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

there's no way anyone missed this one - we are quite the tight-knit and dedicated group in the 'Big' Jack Horner fandom 😳💖 come on, look at him...a huge, powerful, obsessive, fancy-bastard collector with an affinity for magic??? he's stunning 🥴💖 i made so many lovely friends through gushing about this horrible man!!! we had so much fun making OCs to ship with him 🙈 one of the most intense fixations i've had all year, and one of the best villains we've seen in years...he is fantastic 🥰 3. Pizzahead | Pizza Tower

i don't know what's in the water of Pizza Tower but it's impossible to be normal about any character you like from that game 🙈💖 of course the evil sentient pizza slice took the top spot, he's so cartoony and ridiculous!!! the amount of power he exerts is also quite the draw 🤭💖 i'm not gonna lie there's a couple other characters from this game i may get into later...we'll see 😉 4. Fingers | Dead End: Paranormal Park

have you heard this guy's voice. can you blame me. deliciously evil fruity monstrosity with supernatural powers? sign me up to whatever sinister scheme Fingers has going on now or in the future 👉👈 he hits a lot of boxes...between the cabaret-style makeup, the posh, dismissive and manipulative personality and the inexplicable Eldritch body, he was always gonna be a crush 🤭 5. M.O.D.O.K. | Marvel

wheeze okay, this was originally a JOKE!!! @thelighttasteslikelasagna sent in this message joking that i look like i'd find M.O.D.O.K. hot, and i was really angry about it for five minutes...and then i discovered the stop-motion cartoon where he's exactly the kind of cringefail malewife villain i enjoy (in the Augustus St. Cloud vein), and the rest is history 🙈💖 definitely one of the silliest crushes i had this year, but he holds a special place in my heart :3c 6. Gargamel | The Smurfs

nah man i was on some serious mental illness at the start of this year 💀 i just can't help it when bad guys are like this, alright!!! Hank Azaria's performance as Gargamel is sooo silly and over-the-top, i couldn't help but love every second he was on screen 🙈💖 Gargamel's just a whole lot of fun!!! who doesn't love a magic-wielding freak hellbent on the destruction of a group of little creatures?? (i cannot and will not be taking any questions at this time 😶) 7. Wally Darling | Welcome Home

my God, the Wally Darling fixation hit the entire Internet like a train 🤭💖 soft-voiced, ambiguously-moraled rizz puppet that he is, how could we not all fall head-over-heels? i have to thank this guy for throwing me headfirst back into fanfic writing, as the whole Welcome Home story really inspired me...not to mention all the lovely folks who wanted to imagine different ways of getting to hold Wally's hand 🥰 hooray for our pretty puppet boy!! 8. Killa Harkan | John Wick: Chapter 4

...yes, i know, it's funny that Killa's the first of two cartoonishly evil German-accented bad guys with sleight of hand tricks and gold teeth on the list this year 😂💖 sitting in the cinema, the second he opened his mouth my partner just turned and stared at me, because they knew. i refuse to apologise for appreciating a really awful bastard - especially one who dresses so sharply 😉 9. Ian Hawke | Alvin and the Chipmunks

yet another member of the 'it started off as a joke...' club 🤭💖 listen, Ian serves!!! we can't resist a smarmy music producer/manage type, can we? Ian's in the same camp as Gargamel for being a deeply evil man whose capacity for doing harm is directed at little creatures. all i'm saying is, he can sign me up for a dodgy deal any day 🥴 10. Myc Cellium | Inside Job

i can't tell if it's my monsterfucker tendencies or my consummate attraction to Brett Gelman but the crass sentient mushroom got me down bad 😭💖 he's just such a menace!! he's got that intoxicating combo of being horribly socially inappropriate and an actual outcast...fellas, Myc was fixation bait for me 😭 11. Klaus Kickenklober | Sing 2

i don't care if you think you're not a furry, someone can and will get you from the Sing franchise, and that is a threat 🙈💖 yesss laugh it up, Star's got another stern and vaguely European cartoon villain added to the list 😂 i just find Klaus so impossibly delightful!!! he'd be a terrible teacher to have in real life, but in fiction, i think i could fix him :3c 12. The Spot | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

ohoho, i know you guys were living for The Spot fixation because i remember your reaction to the x Readers 😉 look at him and his incredible design!!! the transformation of The Spot from weak laughable villain to reality-bending monstrosity had me by the throat...and i can't wait to see more of him when the next Spider-Verse drops 👀 13. Mad Mod | Teen Titans

MAD. BLOODY. MOD!!!!! i think our favourite British bastard has to take the crown (literally and figuratively) as my strongest fixation out of the whole of 2023, i lost my mind over this guy. he just consumed my every waking thought!!! 🙈 the style, the voice, the unbelievable engineering skill...Mad Mod is one of those once-in-a-lifetime f/os that you know you'll be obsessed with for a very long time 😳💖 i look back so fondly on those wonderful few months of Mad Mod fandom resurgence, and how that still continues today...here's hoping even more people find out about him and develop their own crushes 😉 shout-out to the lovely @iriso-page who suggested him and Music Meister to me 🙈💖

14. Control Freak | Teen Titans

sdfgdf okay back on form with the fat dweebs, i know, i know!!!! my ravenous Mad Mod fixation wasn't enough to ignore Control Freak, one of the most delightfully stupid villains in Teen Titans...!!! he hits all my buttons (ha!) and i genuinely think his design and powers are kind of epic. would love to see him utilised in the future 😉 (i am never beating the Discord kitten allegations...) 15. Ken | Barbie

well, this particular blond himbo was quite the surprise!! 🤭💖 i'm not usually the one to go for such a stereotypical hottie, but Ryan Gosling plays Ken as so unhinged and...off for the whole movie, he activated the same neurons which come with the weirdest of my crushes 🙈💖 Ken's a misguided sweetheart and i'd love to help him feel a little bit wanted;;; 16. Buck Ruffler the Duck Shuffler | Toontown: Corporate Clash

fell into the wonderful world of Toontown: Corporate Clash and imprinted on this fucker like...well, like a baby duck 😂💖 is this not the most spectacular design for an original Cog you've ever seen?! i love that Buck is an absolutely scrambled robot with a gambling addiction, and i think he'd be lovely (and hilarious) company 🥰

17. Barnaby | Billie Bust Up

ohhhh yesssss Billie Bust Up caught my attention with this sinister goofball!!!! fancy, flamboyant and very into murder...Barnaby has all the traits for any Tumblr Sexyman, and i cannot wait for the full game to drop so we can see even more of him 👀

18. The Mad Hatter/Jervis Tetch | Batman

Jervis Tetch my beloved!! this has been the year of fancy blonds in top-hats, as well as deeply silly hypnotists, and Jervis kicked off this trend with a bang 🙈💖 i'm a Mad Hatter fan generally but B:TAS Jervis is a special kind of pretty stalker, and that voice is delicious 🥴 thanks to him for kicking off an Alice in Wonderland fixation and for finally getting me into drinking tea...the things we do for our crushes, eh? 🥰 19. Music Meister/Darius Chapel | Batman

and here is the first character played by Neil Patrick Harris who made it onto this year's list!!! 🙈💖 another camp, theatrical Batman villain to add to my collection...gorgeous voice, such an immense sense of style, and wonderfully good fun!! i think more people should get a little obsessed with the Music Meister 😉 20. Buggy the Clown | One Piece

none of you can judge me for this one - i remember all the TikTok edits!!! 😂💖 Buggy is pathetic and so much fun - i wasn't expecting to enjoy him as much as i did!! although my fixation for him may have been short-lived, my love for him certainly isn't 🥰 21. Pat Butcher | BBC Ghosts

ohhhh, every now and again a little sweetheart will get me right in the feelings, and Pat Butcher is added proudly to my f/o collection as the second Yorkshireman (next to Salad Fingers 😭). i just love what an upbeat, lovely man he is!! he's so soft and warm to everyone he meets and tries his best to do everything right by his friends...i'd love to cuddle with him 🥺 22. Josh Levy | The Eltingville Club

a classic return to form with Josh Levy, à la Comic Book Guy and Control Freak...really telling on myself by collecting these horrible greasy nerds who would 100% call me something derogatory if i tried to talk to them 💀 i appreciate every last one of The Eltingville Club but Josh, as a failed writer who remains just as toxic as he was when he was a teen, is my undisputed favourite 🙈💖 23. Swan | Phantom of the Paradise

oh God, reawakening my crush on Paul Williams by discovering Swan damn near killed me!!!! 😭💖 i was so obsessed with this man as a kid and the moment i saw him as Swan in POTP i felt intense attraction and gender envy in equal parts;;;; Swan's whole aesthetic and demeaning, inhuman approach to people is impossibly sensual, and i can't overstate enough how little evil dudes in tinted shades will always get me down bad 🙈💖 24. Kinger | The Amazing Digital Circus

my love for Kinger was such a pleasant surprise!! 🤭💖 sweet, anxious fella that he is, all i want to do is get him out of that digital hellscape and ensure he can wrap up in as many blankets as he likes!!! i love his always-on-the-edge-of-a-breakdown portrayal and am so eager to learn more about him and his backstory 👀 25. Peter Gregory | Silicon Valley

ahhh, kicking it the old-fashioned way by getting extremely invested in the most autistic character on the show (and that's saying something, given the high neurodivergent coding of everyone in Silicon Valley 🙈💖). Peter's style and methods of communication are traits i simply find attractive in real life, and although he sadly wasn't with us long, he absolutely stole the show ✨ 26. 'Action' Jack Barker | Silicon Valley

given my love of nerds it's no shocker that Silicon Valley hit me with two f/os, and 'Action' Jack Barker - the tech-field Colin Robinson - was a surefire entry 😳💖 what is it about these milquetoast men who are so whitebread yet are capable of such terrible things which gets me every time?! Jack is such a fun character and i'm glad we got as much of him as we did 🙈 27. Avery | Pokémon: Sword and Shield

i cannot believe none of you guys told me about Avery, the most amazingly dressed character i've ever seen in the whole of Pokémon 🙈💖 shhhh he is so very pretty and petty and his powers are incredibly cool. i just love everything about him and would delight in helping him develop a real sense of self-esteem, because he does not deserve the dismissal he receives from his family 😭💖 28. Matthew Patel | Scott Pilgrim

oh my God, heart in my MOUTH seeing Matthew Patel get the glow-up villain arc he so desperately deserved!!!!! 😭💖💖💖 Matthew is just the epitome of style and power in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and it was so fantastic getting to see him grow as a character and get self-actualised. plus his fight scenes were some of the coolest things i've ever seen. Matthew can i have your number please 🥺 29. The Toymaker | Doctor Who

!!!!!!!!!! i don't know if you guys can tell, but i really love the Toymaker...and even predicted that he'd completely consume my mind months before we got The Giggle 🙈💖 e v e r y t h i n g about him just gets me so bad. his reality-bending, his teasing attitude, his ridiculous accents, his gorgeous costumes, his emotional inconsistency, his tragic backstory...god, if i so much as look at him smiling i melt 🥴💖 characters played by Neil Patrick Harris really get me!! i'm so proud to be modding a server dedicated to the Toymaker now, and have met so many brilliant, wonderful friends through him and falling back into Doctor Who!!! i think we're all going to be brainrotting over him for quite some time 😉💖 30. Dr Mark Fry | Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Dr Fry, rushing in at the finish line!!! 🤭 the second my pals saw this guys they were all spamming me, begging me to watch Dawn of the Nugget!!! and ooooh i was noooot prepared for the specific brand of soft creepy genius he is 💖 even if they'd played Dr Fry purely as your run-of-the-mill mad scientist he would've gotten me bad, but they just had to make him equal parts freaky and brilliant with just a touch of arrogance, didn't they?? Melisha scored well 🤤 (also, three whole Yorkshiremen in my collection now!! is it the accent? 😭) aaaaand that's everyone!!! phew, is anyone else out of breath? 🥵 what a wonderful, silly year of fixations this has been 🤭💖 thank you all for being here, brainrotting happily alongside me for some of these characters, and for all the other characters you love!!! i hope 2024 is awesome to you, and that many more fictional characters are around the corner, ready to make you smile 😉

[thefirstknife]

Hi Bel,

I keep seeing comments about people complaining about the quality of destiny’s writing and story in the last few weeks. I haven’t really engaged with destiny since season of defiance, what’s currently gotten everyone so riled up? I thought that people were enjoying Season of the Deep/Witch in terms of narrative, why is Season of the Wish causing people to deride the destiny writing staff again?

I don't know!

Deep and Witch have been absolute bangers in every aspect to me. I've been enjoying all interactions and lore tabs we've received. A lot of them are stuff that we've never had before, a lot of reunions and closures, a lot of development and interactions between characters who you wouldn't really think would have much in common.

Sloane's return and healing from what she's been through has been fantastic, Drifter opening up with her to help her because he also got help from others was fantastic, Sloane reuniting with Aisha and Shayura brought me to tears (Shayura's descent into madness was triggered by immense trauma of Sloane staying on Titan and Titan disappearing), everything with Sloane and Zavala...

Witch was just incredible in every single way; the focus on Eris, the amount of Eris and Ikora content!!!!! Everything about Xivu and Savathun and their interactions together!! Eris finally fulfilling her goal she promised Savathun YEARS ago, getting that closure.

Wish so far has been equally great to me. All the new stuff about Ahamkara is amazing, finally giving us proof for long-standing speculation about Ahamkara and how they aren't universally evil creatures and expanding on them as a species. I love all interactions we've had so far; finally we have Petra back, Mara's singleminded focus on figuring out how to defeat the Witness and her continuous work to improve as a person, ALL SJUR MENTIONS!!!!! I won't talk about the "leak" because we have no context for it so I will wait for the full story to be revealed before I can pass judgment; something that I think should be a lesson to learn from this entire year. Maybe wait for the story to finish before judging the story.

Literally everything this past year that involves Osiris, but especially this season now that he's back in his element with the Vex. And of course every little detail we get of him and Saint. Osiris honestly shaped this year for me with everything that he's done to uncover the biggest mysteries. I think a big reason is that a lot of people just don't like Osiris, which I consider a massive skill issue.

Other than that, I don't know what are the issues people have besides just not being interested in any of these storylines and attributing it to a nebulous "bad writing" claim. I also genuinely believe that way too many people get wrapped up too much in fandom, imagine storylines they want to see and then get disappointed when the actual story doesn't go there. Almost like people forget that this isn't their story and these aren't their characters. A lot of it is also fandom completely warping characters into not what they actually are and then feeling like the canon story is the one that's wrong.

Whatever is the reason, I guess everyone is entitled to their perspective of the story and everyone is free to explore the story in different ways through fanfics and AUs and whatever. I do that too!

But I would definitely ask people to be normal with how they engage in criticism, especially in the current state of affairs. Writers are developers; they experience a ton of harassment and negativity from the community and also from inside the company. And they are online: they can see what we're saying. It's been documented that community commentary has been used to harass writers:

Imprint this into your brain and never forget what these people had to go through. Let's not forget also the way people treated Seth Dickinson on social media when he was active with Destiny fans. "Fans" were actively arguing with him about his own work (telling him that HE is wrong) and were utterly disgusting towards him when he tried explaining what he wrote. His works are now hailed as the best writing in Destiny and people want him back. If I were him, I wouldn't want to come back ngl, not with how he was treated and not with how fans are still treating writers (and hey, Seth wrote LF Collector's Edition! So he was back, technically, this year!). Let's not forget that a lot of writers are members of various marginalised groups. And I'd definitely not want to go back with zero support from leadership.

Which is also an important aspect for all developers, including writers: sometimes they have orders they may not like, but can't argue against. They do the best they can with what they're given, the time they have and directions they receive. And with that in mind, I am enjoying everything we've gotten this year, obviously with some specific complaints about things I didn't particularly enjoy (like the universally mid reception of Defiance; I've spoken about my gripes with it before, a big one being the shafting of Suraya who should've at least been mentioned in a lore tab).

I can tell that there is passion in their work, even if maybe they would prefer to do more with it, but can't. Maybe even if they want to take different routes, but can't. But from what we got, I can feel that they care about this world and these characters. I can tell that someone lovingly wrote about Sloane and her friendships with two grieving women. I can tell that they deeply cared about Sloane's friendship with Zavala and that they loved showing us Saint and Drifter caring about a fellow trauma survivor.

I can tell that the writers are immensely careful and loving towards Eris; everything she went through was crafted with love and passion from both writers and her VA. Eris' story is such a fundamental aspect of Destiny and I can tell that this was important to the writing team and that they gave her everything they could to do justice to her character and her arc and her healing and her release from the cycle she was trapped in for so long.

I can tell that there are writers who care a lot about Osiris and Saint and their relationship. I can tell that someone cared a lot about expanding on Ahamkara and giving them more personalities. I can tell that someone cared DEEPLY about Sjur and Mara and that her repeated mentions are the passionate work of writers who want us to remember her.

I could go on. And I know that not everyone sees it this way, which is fine; we all have different ways of perceiving stories. I enjoy discussing things we in the fandom disagree on and I enjoy hearing different perspectives! Unfortunately, this has recently become rarer and rarer. And for the love of god, please try and treat writers with some respect, especially now, especially those who are still working and doing their best with the shitty situation they're in. None of the cries of "poor devs" ring true to me unless the same is given to writers, instead of treating them like punching bags.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

From Criminial Mastermind to Fairy Tale Hero: The End of Artemis Fowl

Here we are, everyone: The final Artemis Fowl book. It has been a journey revisiting the first series I was old enough to follow and fandom, and it's wild to me that we're finally at the end. Especially since I picked up the first Artemis Fowl book in late elementary school (I'm genuinely not sure when though, because the first book came out in April of 2001, when I was in fifth grade and it's very possible I didn't pick the book up until sixth grade, which would have put me at 11, same age as Artemis in that first book) and the final book came out in 2012, when I was in my junior year of undergrad. So at that point, Artemis, Holly, and Butler had been part of my life for a long time. And now here we are, to say goodbye to them again after this leisurely re-listen/read. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian.

Artemis grew and changed so much across eight books, which makes sense because holy cow do kids change a LOT between 11 and 15. We get so busy living life in those years that we don't really think about how much we truly learn and grown between prepubescence and full-on teenagerhood, but that is a time of massive change, and I think that more than anything else really justifies how Artemis goes from a chillingly vampiric child to a teenager with enough compassion and empathy to understand that sometimes the right choice is a heroic self-sacrifice for the people that your people (both humans and the people, in this case) love. Artemis also did a really interesting version of that thing so many teenagers do where they hit a point where they can't just phone in their abilities anymore and have to actually put effort in, but for Artemis it was emotional rather than intelligence. And yet even when making said heroic sacrifice, we have the absolutely beautiful callback to the end of book one, where Artemis drugs his mother, Butler, and Juliet to keep them from being harmed by the bio-bomb. To stop Holly from preventing him from stopping Opal, Artemis sedates her. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Except where best villain ever Opal Koboi is concerned. By this book, Opal is so disconnected from reality that she is willing to risk literally going nuclear to escape captivity, and then just...casually sparks off the apocalypse because if there is one thing our girl wants, it's to be Empress of the World, and if that means using spirit zombies and an ancient fairy doomsday device, then I guess it's a good thing she's already versed in black magic. Or something. Opal is fully and completely off the rails at this point, and if you catch yourself referring to yourself as "Mommy" in reference to the spirits of several scores of ancient elven berserkers who would--barring a geas--murder you for it, you might want to stop and take a long, hard look at your life choices. And maybe don't forget that you've cloned yourself, because that's the kind of little detail that can completely ruin your chances of being Empress of the World.

Holly quite possibly deserves every medal that exists for managing to drag Artemis's extremely out-of-shape butt through increasingly dangerous and high-stakes missions while navigating fairy politics and *checks notes* breaking up with her commanding officer after a disastrous date where they both got kicked out of a crunchball match. (And once again...HOW DARE Colfer leave this in exposition and not show us this amazing disaster of a date!?!?) Holly has also just been through the emotional wringer with Artemis and every time he decided to double-cross or lie by omission to bring off a plan and every time he does something infuriatingly human that drives up her blood pressure and yet makes the mission succeed. And then she has to sit there and watch him die to save humans and fairies. Seriously, the fact that Holly Short is a functional being rather than a hot mess is nothing short of a miracle.

And then we come to Butler. Long-suffering, super fucking over it, broken-hearted Domovoi Butler. Artemis got DAMN lucky that the whole "put my spirit in a clone of me" plan panned out, because if it hadn't, Holly was entirely correct: Butler would never have recovered. Butler and Opal might be my two favorite characters in the entire series at this point. That's not where I started--for a very long time, Holly was my favorite character, and Commander Root still gets an honorable mention--but as a grown-ass adult (I'm not doing that math for you, if you want to know that I'm old, you do the math), I cannot escape how dedicated, competent, kind, and just AWESOME Butler is. I feel like the vibe here is very similar to the thing that happens when you watch Sound of Music as a kid and either Maria or one of the kids is your favorite character, but when you come back to it as an adult, Captain Von Trapp is EVERYTHING (RIP Christopher Plummer, we loved you). Butler has a similar vibe but in a different genre.

So, I was an adult and had enough experience of watching fandoms to see the mixed reactions to this book being released. People were sad the series was ending, people were disappointed because the series had seemingly drifted, and people loved it. My reaction was pretty mixed, because I had a lot going on, I knew there were good things here but I was also kind of missing the heisty, criminal mastermind vibes, but also OPAL KOBOI. So I was pretty unsure how to feel about this book when it came out, and then I didn't reread it for literal years because I went to grad school.

Returning to this book now, I have suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch respect for how Colfer tied up the series and how he pulled off a new Irish mythological cycle, but updated for the twenty-first century. I have enough life on me to appreciate the changes Artemis goes through, and enough literature degrees to have a new and deeply fulfilling perspective on the series structure. Last Guardian is not my favorite book of the series--it's not even in the top three--but I think that what it does is genuinely impressive and I love how you can finish this book and go instantly back into the OG Artemis Fowl. The story does not, strictly speaking, have to end. And that is a vibe I can 100% get behind.

I deeply love the Artemis Fowl books, and I cannot recommend the series enough. They have so many strengths, are incredibly well-written, and they live rent-free in my head even now as an adult.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  Cchapsticck! @cchapsticck has 9 fics posted to AO3 in the Stranger Things fandom and all of them are in the Steddie tag!

@dreamwatch recommends the following works by @cchapsticck

UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988

ANACRUSIS ca. 1987

RED ATMOSPHERES rcd. 1995

THE UNENDING HOWL EP rcd. 1999

wait, runner

"cchapsticck's Eddie is one of my all time favourites. It's one of the most complex depictions of Eddie I’ve every read; every work is a beautiful character study. Eddie’s history and trauma are laid bare; it feels real, and it hurts. cchapsticck’s writing is just insanely good, lines hit like massive gut punches. I love the METALHEAD series so, so much, and if you're a fan of 'musician Eddie' fics then it's a must read. Every fic is incredible, hit after hit. Writing this good deserves to be celebrated." -- @dreamwatch

Below the cut, @cchapsticck answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

I’ll be honest, it's probably exclusively because of Eddie. I’ve been a fan of Stranger Things since its original release but wasn’t really participating in the fandom side of things until season 4. As a Dungeons and Dragons nerd with an abrasive taste in music myself, of course there was the kindred spirit-ness of Eddie’s introduction to the series, but more than that he made the normal midwestern town of Hawkins feel more a character than a setting to me than it had been previously, and that really amplified my interest in his character and the space he takes up in the narrative environment that were only just then learning about. There were so many implications about him and about Hawkins that were just left on the table that I couldn’t get enough of. Prior to season 4 Steve had been my favorite character, I’d always been invested in his little redemption roadtrip and his “otherness” stumbling blocks over the seasons. How he’s cultivated this arc of rallying against an archetype that’s comfortable but worse for him in the long term - and I found myself really excited by Eddie’s sort-of inversion of that same journey as Steve’s. Both of them still sort of stuck in their ways assigning social value based on arbitrary factors and are comfortable in the more judgmental impulses they have when they first really meet, but they’re coming from opposite perspectives on the nerd/jock hierarchy and the self imposed tensions between them there and what it might take beyond the actual end of the world to overcome those things. I love a mess.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I wouldn’t say that I’m a reader who specifically seeks out any one particular trope over another in the strictest sense, I have the capacity to be just as invested as an enemies to lovers as I am a childhood friends to lovers, kind of thing. But generally speaking I love a character study - I genuinely enjoy works that have the creators really deeply held headcanons and making a whole world with and around it, I love some angst - I’ll never say no to a little melodrama. I really enjoy work with a really strong point of view, and I like to be sad.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

I love an unreliable narrator, I love a flawed perspective, I love a narrator who lies to themselves (and you, dear reader) a little about what’s going on. I have a lot of fun as a writer getting into the way we talk to ourselves about the things we’re living with and the shapes we bend ourselves into to do the living.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

This is hard, I have read so many impactful fics I could easily fire off 5 right now but for the sake of brevity I will say this: I rotate afterlight by Kostas around in my head like a rotisserie chicken on the regular. There’s such a deeply felt and embodied sense of Eddie’s past throughout, and how it manifests in his present - as well as some genuinely charming details about Eddie’s present and his benign quirks that have only helped compile his bad reputation and how the life he had prior to getting wrapped up in the supernatural fits into the public narrative of canon events. The very nostalgic vibes of fall and what we of the American midwest get up to at that time feel so real. And it's so genuinely sweet, the getting-togtherness, while also being not-that-simple. It has so much going for it, really truly, and navigates and emotional complexity and honesty that I’m envious of as a writer.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’ve written very little about Dungeons and Dragons in all of my writing about Eddie and Stranger Things (I guess a lightweight AU not withstanding?), and that feels like such a missed opportunity for me to have a lot of fun. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was in high school, I have such a deep love for ttrpgs and collaborative storytelling but man, 1e of D&D is so dense and incomprehensible part of me wonders if it's actually really boring to write about to-hit statistics and spreadsheets but alas it stands as a really nerdy sirensong to me.

What is your writing process like?

It's a whole mess. It’s genuinely a wonder I get anything done. I tend to get fixated on granular character things that I want to explore and it all sort of explodes outward from there. I’m almost entirely a stream of consciousness writer, and I usually only loosely have specific beats or emotional landmarks I want to hit when I begin writing but it's a pretty amorphous sense of what I’m trying to write. I tend to write mostly chronologically while I’m in that first pass of story dumping and it’s pretty rare the structure changes dramatically after that. From there I make several editing passes to fix anything from grammatical errors to character voice. I’m pretty sure I could be in the “nit pick it to death” phase forever and have to bully myself into calling it quits in order to publish.

Do you have any writing quirks?

My perspective might be a little flawed, but I think I tend to write without an abundance of plot? I think it's a product of how I write; where there aren’t a series of events that I hope to navigate, but more a series of emotional car crashes I wish to describe? I also make playlists for everything. Sometimes a playlist is 3 hours of music, other times it’s about 4 songs I listen to on a loop while I write. Each of my published works have a pretty distinct “theme song”.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Oh, finished writing - no question. I cannot be held to a schedule, I’m so allergic to it. I am horrifically at the mercy of my fickle creative drive. I struggle with writer’s block not infrequently and I’ve definitely put myself in situations writing on a schedule where I felt like I had to brute force my way through the block to meet a publishing goal and ultimately wasn’t happy with what I put out there because I didn’t give myself the kind of time I need to work.

Which fic are you most proud of?

I think that goes to dog at the door. It definitely was the fic that gave me the most trouble, and challenged me the most with what I wanted to accomplish and how it forced me to deviate from my normal writing process, I’ve never written suspense or horror before and I genuinely do not have an objective read on how successful that was. I have mixed feelings about the piece as a whole, but I’m proud of the work and of myself for sticking with it and getting it out there despite the way it challenged and frustrated me at times.

How did you get the idea for UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988?

I grew up in the Great Lakes area in the not too distant future of the events of the show in a semi-rural/semi-suburban town that Hawkins always reminded me of. Similarly, I spent a lot of my teenage years in go-nowhere bands and driving around the state at basement shows for other go-nowhere bands and I had been thinking about the kind of community that experience that built for me at that time, and at the time - in the fandom, I was seeing a lot of Rockstar Eddie and I was very charmed by this desire a lot of people in the fandom seemed to be having about affording him a kind of positive notoriety, for once in all of our various hypothetical futures. And that personal reflection of a period of my own life, plus what was spinning around the ecosystem of the fandom at the time sort of coalesced into this character study I wanted to do about The Midwest and Alternative Music and Finding Yourself Authentically within the boundaries of those spaces. Steddie wormed its way into the concept because one, I like it. Two, as much as it's clear that Hawkins is a burden to Eddie and his character, I think the same can be said for Steve, but again, a little in reverse. It's good to leave your hometown, even when you’re comfortable and welcome there. It felt like an appropriate experience for them to both have, together, to different ends.

When writing UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988, what was something you didn’t expect?

That there was going to be so much of it! METALHEAD, the series, was initially just the first UNTITLED segment and when I’d wrapped that up I realized there was more I wanted to do. Both with form and I just felt like I wasn’t quite done with this version of Eddie I was writing, it didn’t feel like the whole story even though I felt like I’d written the whole story. No idea if that even makes sense.

What inspired ANACRUSIS ca. 1987?

Honestly, I think I mostly just wanted to try to write Steve’s voice and perspective. I only briefly described the “getting together” moment in UNTITLED and I thought it would be kind of fun to have that exist more concretely, but I’d already established Eddie’s perspective on it by that point and to retell that moment from his perspective felt needlessly repetitive, so there really seemed like there was only one appropriate narrator. And while I was writing it I think I realized I wanted there to be some kind of indicator that despite things going well and being good in UNTITLED, they were still sort of missing each other where they were at, in that moment.

What was your favorite part to write from RED ATMOSPHERES rcd. 1995?

The periodical segments! I actually had a lot of fun looking up back issues of genre magazines from the time. I definitely lost a lot of writing hours just reading Metal Edge. I used to read Kerrang! and AP when I was a teenager and I remembered the articles in those magazines always had a certain kind of journalistic voice and I wanted to try to capture some of that from those periodicals. Ultimately I think I ended up abandoning a lot of that specific tone and erring a little more contemporary with the focus and tone because I wanted the journalistic perspective on Eddie as a sort-of public figure to serve a specific contrast to the reality of his inner life, but it was a fun research project to be sure.

How do/did you feel writing THE UNENDING HOWL EP rcd. 1999?

I think HOWL had about 3 or 4 false starts, I had all these ideas for it to be a lot of different things when I first set out to wrap up METALHEAD and I stalled out on every single one of them. The scope was really broad and I was struggling to pull out anything that felt important in what I was writing. It was really discouraging for a long time because I felt really committed to this final element of the series and I wanted this sort-of catharsis at the end of it all, fragile as it kind of ended up being, but I just could not write something that was working for me. I couldn’t say why or how, but it was actually a The Wonder Years song that made everything click into place about funerals and closure and yadda yadda yadda but up until that moment there was a lot of doubting myself and floundering to finish the series. I think my relationship with HOWL is still a little fragile, as a result of me feeling really insecure about its process, but I think ultimately I’m proud of being able to just to finish an undertaking like METALHEAD.

What was the most difficult part of writing wait, runner?

Fighting the desire to make everything okay! runner started its life as a lot of scrapped sections of UNTITLED and some cut material from my first ST fic, sunflower broke because it became clear to me I was preoccupied with certain elements of Eddie’s inner life; staying in Hawkins, being a pariah, self medication, etc. and so much of that and its place in a post-canon-Eddie-lives world is tremendously bleak. So it felt dishonest to make some kind of unambiguously and clearly happy way forward, but the self loathing and self doubt I was writing in that piece felt so oppressive I kept catching myself trying to mitigate some of that and make these characters happy and I kept having to back down from it because it wasn’t really the point of any of these writerly meditations on this character.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

I really enjoyed writing the very low stakes banter in head line, particularly Steve and Eddie being able to talk about their respective reputations without getting too deep into it: “Well then let me fill you in: I’m bad news. Headline bad news.” “Sure, but I like you.” Sure, like he agrees. But, like it doesn’t matter.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

Not so much! I have a few fics in the works that I’m hoping I can massage into something fit for public viewing but I’m not really working on a timeline right now.

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Oh gosh, not much. Just a thank you to who nominated me, I am genuinely touched. But also to thank the mods of this blog, this is really wonderful work you’re doing here!

Thank you to our author, @cchapsticck, and our nominator, @dreamwatch! See more of Cchapsticck's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!