#and the preference for this fandom to give engagement to official characters

[remesrobotics]

Slash Girl~ So glad to see you, my love!

@littlest-centaurii

SG: Heyyy, Sunflower~!

I’d say ‘nice ta see a friendly face���, but yer bein’ here’s kinda what inspired the shop gettin’ set up ‘n the first place... yaknow?

[raintranslated]

Hello Rainfall! I'm a new Code geass fan (also Schneizel x Kanon fan). If I may ask (and if this is the right place to ask) but if not, please don't hesitate to ignore this ask and I'm sorry in advance! ;; Do you per chance know what the episode director in the R2 commentary said about the ship? Since I heard the episode director shot down the ship's canon value entirely there :")

Hello! You're perfectly welcome to ask. 🙂 You aren't bothering anyone. Relax, friend!

That said: Are you sure it matters?

Like, I don't remember that from the subtitled commentaries I've watched on the original R2 boxset that Bandai released, and I would tend to assume that whatever this is was part of a commentary that got an Official Translation, but... I genuinely don't think it's worth your energy to worry about, much less the effort it would take me to track down the specific line and translate it if needed.

It's always satisfying, of course, when a creator says something nice about a piece of our own headcanon. Especially if you feel like your ship isn't very popular in fandom, it can be a real feather in your cap to have a creator say, "Oh, yeah, that was the ship I hoped people would really like." And a Shipper On Deck, as TV Tropes puts it, can sometimes make for a better viewing experience overall.

But authorial intent isn't magic. There are so, so, SO many canonical ships out there where, despite the creative team's intentions, the pairing just doesn't have a lot of chemistry. Writing romance is also a specific skill, and not every writer has it: indeed, not every writer respects it enough to even put much effort in. For plenty of writers, simply telling us that Character X is dating Character Y is all they're willing to do, before they go right back to putting all the actual screen time and development into X's dubiously platonic relationship with Z...

Plus, don't let the occasional shipping manifesto fool you — ships don't begin with spreadsheets that track frequency and depth of interaction between characters. Ships begin with an undefinable gut feeling: sometimes the result of an interaction we saw on screen, but sometimes the result of an interaction we imagined in our own heads, based on how we think the characters would interact if they ever spoke. The manifestos are just post-hoc rationalizations. And you can't reason people out of something they didn't reason themselves into.

Anyone trying to use Word of God to convince other people to abandon a given ship (almost always in favor of their own preferred, "competing" ship) is engaging in a fool's errand. And probably being kind of a jerk, too.

So: there's the first... half of my answer, haha.

It's not easy, and it takes both time and a mental adjustment, but it is VERY worth your while to practice telling yourself, "It literally doesn't matter what the creator said." (This is especially true of ships that aren't The Default, but hardly limited to that.)

More specific to your particular case: ...what does "R2 episode director" even mean? I assume it doesn't mean Taniguchi Gorou. Are we talking about something Ohashi Yoshimitsu said? That's the only name I see credited for a substantial amount of episodes, and only in 2008 (13 total, about half of R2's count).

Like, I wouldn't give Taniguchi Gorou or Ohkouchi Ichirou power over which characters I ship either (they definitely can't make me like C.C./Lelouch as specifically portrayed in Lelouch of the Re;surrection), but at least I'd understand why they were being treated as authorities for Code Geass.

If we're listening to Ohashi, though, why stop there? Lots of people directed the odd episode here or there. Hiroyuki Yoshino and Nomura Yuuichi actually wrote some episodes, let's let them weigh in on which ships are "canon", too. Goodness.

...So I guess the answer to your question is, "I don't know off the top of my head; maybe, but if I were you, I wouldn't let that stop me."

[the-hydroxian-artblog]

General thoughts on interpretations that are opposing your own preferences in a media you enjoy? This could be fan head cannons, art style or just official works.

i made chaos 0 gay. with regard to stuff that doesn't harm discussions or gets in the way of criticisms, let people interpret things as horrendously ooc as they like, and draw in as stupid a style as they like. if too many fans misinterpret or misrepresent a work without apparent malice, then that's just an unfortunate act of god that the writer/artist/creator didn't account for.

it's only an issue if it begins to overcentralize discussions or makes people oddly hostile to each other for disagreeing. The problem is that discussing fandom stuff on social media is horrendous and difficult unless everyone is agreeing something is worthy of praise or dunking. This is despite it being easier than ever to hear every kind of take imaginable, like what omegaverse headcanons people have for sherlock or whatever else. It's easy to hear people spit takes, but it's difficult to meaningfully engage with takes on the internet

that's what makes opposing interpretations that gain noticeable traction with an air of hostility hard to engage with, because ideally i want to understand! ideally, even if I might not agree with other interpretations that oppose my own, I want to engage with opposing viewpoints on how to interpret different characters, but I can't enjoy that if it's the equivalent of running across no man's land in a trench war and asking the soldiers on the other side if they want to call a truce. More concretely, I'd love to discuss ways in which something like archie sonic appeals or fails to appeal to different people, but if people on twitter and youtube and reddit keep talking about these things as all or nothing, there's no way to comfortably do that without it feeling like just talking to a wall.

idk. you should never ask me to give "general" thoughts on stuff like this because i go all over the place lol

[sleepingdeath-light]

sweet crush who he initially thought was cruel hcs ; hunter

requested by ; anonymous (29/03/22)

fandom(s) ; the owl house

fandom masterlist(s) ; main | hunter only

character(s) ; hunter wittebane

outline ; “Hey, is it okay if I request a Hunter x Reader?

It’s kinda simple, the Reader joins the Emperor’s coven, are actually pretty good, and get some promotions to the point where they talk with the coven officials sometimes. Hunter thought they’d be ruthless or strict, since their reputation has mainly been for their strength. But once he meets them, he finds out that they’re actually a really sweet and gentle kind of person. They’re nice to him, and is open to giving him the space he needs, reassurance, all the things he never really received. I’d think he’d be sent in for a loop, but his reaction is entirely your interpretation. :]

adding dating headcannons work too, but i’m mainly aiming for a crush and/or pining type prompt.

he/him pronouns are preferred, but gender neutral pronouns work too.

Thank you so much!!!! ^^”

warning(s) ; none, just fluff!

he’d been hearing whispers of you around the castle for months — it seemed like every one of the scouts had something to say about you and he never went a day without hearing some sort of story or rumour

‘did you hear that the new guy captured two wild witches single handedly?’

‘i heard he killed his own friend when they turned to wild magic’

‘looks like the new guy got another promotion’

‘apparently he’s got a killer stare’

all of these comments slowly helped him paint a distinct picture of you: strict, ruthless, blood thirsty and loyal to the emperor and his coven above all else

the ideal coven member, surely, but definitely not someone he’d like to cross — so he ended up avoiding you as much as possible

until he was assigned to accompany you when you went as representatives of the coven to an event for the local schools — and he quickly realised how wrong his impressions of you were

he was in awe as he watched you entertain and engage the students around you, with plenty of them flocking to you to marvel at your strength and find respite in your kindness

you helped up a younger kid who tripped over and took them aside to heal them and patch up their uniform

you gently corrected another teen’s form and stopped them from giving themselves a migraine

you were firm and professional but so very gentle and kind, a guiding hand and a helpful presence as much as you were a walking advert for your coven

and you extended that sweetness to him, which really startled him as he had never experienced such genuine treatment — at least without any strings attached

when he seemed a bit overwhelmed you took him aside and assured him that you could handle yourself for a while, instructing him to get a cold drink and hang out behind your designated area — where nobody could see him

when someone from another coven called him the golden brat beneath their breath, you stepped forwards and challenged them on it, embarrassing them so much that they apologised and scurried away

you complimented him on his performance and cheered for him loudly when he was doing demonstrations for potential scouts — and he found himself grinning widely beneath his mask at the positive attention

and your compliments weren’t even backhanded — not saying he ‘did good for a kid’ or that his spells ‘were impressive for a magic-less witch’

no

you patted him on the back and told him he did amazing, that he looked spectacular and that the emperor would be proud of him

no conditionals, no ‘but’s just genuine praise

and even after you turned away to answer a try-out’s questions, he found himself unable to stop staring at you — his chest warmer and lighter than ever before

maybe the new guy wasn’t as bad as he thought

[velaryoncoffee]

I need to vent about the hotd fandom

Feel free to ignore if you don't wanna hear someone complain.

I created this blog this week because being on Twitter has been absolutely draining and leaving me in some of the most dejected moods I've been in years. It's not all bad; I've found lovely people in the Lucemond community who love sharing ideas and stories and artwork and edits with each other and they've made me feel very much at home.

The issue is that as official content runs dry I believe a lot of people have taken to creating drama as a source of entertainment and community activity... And they do that by constantly instigating tribalistic fights with "the enemy faction" by insulting characters (and sometimes ships). And as someone who loves all characters, this means I've had to watch people shit on everything I like, absolutely fucking everything, for the past few weeks. It felt silly at first, it didn't bother me or touch sides, but over time it has started to become too much, especially as sassy quips turn to insults that you can tell come from deeply rooted contempt.

My fellow Lucemonders will insult Aemond whenever it's hateo'clock, despite him being half of the ship, if not the driving force behind the ship to begin with (and at this point in the series also being one of the few who actually mourned Lucerys the most). My fellow team black folk will insult Aegon II for the crimes he did in S1, talking about us fans of him and other team green characters like we're unintelligent or built wrong for enjoying these parts of them and analysing their characters in a sympathetic, and in my opinion, a holistic and less biased manner. My fellow team green folk either don't bother getting involved at all, or they're even worse, sending out absolutely abhorrent criminal accusations over the relationships and headcanons we prefer to write and draw. I've had people mass qrt me and my mutuals with godawful things, sometimes resorting to death threats and blatant homophobia.

In pettier/less serious situations like with the character hate I've even tried to engage in friendly discussion to see if I could foster a more proactive and calm environment in my circle, only to get absolutely nowhere. It was as if I'd been talking to a brick wall.

Nobody wants to truly get along. Nobody wants to truly hear other people's opinions. Most, to some degree, are incredibly mean spirited and everybody interprets each other in bad faith. They'd rather throw insults and remain in their incapsulated communities where their side is GOOD and the other side is BAD. There's nearly no real analysis that doesn't involve the other side being bad and irredeemable to some extent. And when you try to write analysis, but someone's fave looks somewhat in a bad light, they attack you for it, as if that character's flaws don't make them that much more interesting as a fan.

As someone who is at their essence team green but loves all characters, and whose favourite ship is mostly populated by team black folk, I end up seeing insults from both sides of the isle. And every single fucking time, from every single person involved, they're throwing insults at things I like. I almost never get involved but I often feel caught in the middle catching strays. They insult characters I like. Literary genres and tropes I like. Relationships I like. THINGS I like and give me happiness and comfort. It's like trying to talk with a friend, but every time you want to tell them about your interests they tell you flat-out it's shit and they refuse to be sympathetic or constructive.

It's been very difficult to navigate this, as someone so starkly in the middle. I have a lovely community on discord that are always peaceful and sweet, and I hope this website is somewhat better. I know it will never be perfect, people are way too passionate and tribalistic across the board in this fandom due to the inherent characteristics of the source material, but I've never struggled this much in a fandom in all my many years online.

I have no conclusion to this, only a warning that I am going through HRT and I'm currently in my testosterone peak, so maybe this is all just a momentary mood swing, like PMS for T-boys. If so, it is what it is; if not, and it ain't what it ain't. Thanks for reading.

[calamari-inari]

Playing this game (without the likes) 🫶

1. enemies to lovers, best friends to lovers, lord and their knight ❤️

2. Not sure if these are tropes, but yandere lover (just not a very big fan of yandere), obsessive love (treating their partner as a possession), misogynistic attitudes or abusive power in a relationship (basically a partner defining what their partner, whether it be a woman or man, should do or behave, and the victimized partner finds it hot???)

3. Gradual mutual understanding for one another! I also learn more about the characters' personalities this way!

4. One or both partners experience withdrawal when they're being separated from each other lol. True feelings often emerge from such situations and it's adorable...

5. Multiship! So far, the only ships I really think about now are from FE3H and a few from Engage and TGAA. Here's a list of several multiships I enjoy!

FE3H (Apparently Dimitri is very shippable to me LOL)

Hubert x Ferdinand

Hubert x Edelgard

Sylvain x Felix

Sylvain x Ferdinand

Dimitri x Ferdinand

Dimitri x Felix

Dimitri x Dedue

Dimitri x Claude

Byleth x any lord

Engage

Alear x Alfred

Alear x Diamant

Diamant x Ivy

TGAA

Kazuma x Ryuunosuke

Barok x Kazuma

Barok x Herlock

6. I like both rarepairs and mainstream! Most of the rarepairs I like don't have any canon interaction, so I like to explore the "what could've been" situations.

7. Monogamy. Not much to explain here. It's just my preference lol

8. Using my favorite pair ferdibert, they are reversible, but I have a really strong preference for dom Hubert and sub Ferdinand. However!! I'm not a big fan of where Ferdinand is written or drawn very femininely. This applies to any MxM pair. I'm not against the concept of femininity in males, but when used in a stereotypical fashion, it rubs me the wrong way. Just a subtle depiction of their relationship dynamic is perfect to me! I'm alright with seeing SFW artwork of the reverse and reading said fics, but NSFW is where I draw the line

9. Thinking about the games I've played, I can think of at least one pair I like to see romantically, so yes 😂

10. Not at all important! After all, my favorite is romantic fluff 🥺 Depending on the intensity of my liking for a ship, the NSFW aspect becomes more bareable since I'm still personally embarrassed consuming such content lol. I am vanilla. Ferdibert is highkey the only one I consume NSFW for

11. A lot of my MxF and FxF pairs are platonic to me! This is likely due to my aegosexuality, which is the closest explanation I can identify with. Not everything needs to be romantic. I find close friendships very heartwarming too 🥺

12. My top favorites right now are ferdibert 🖤🧡, sylvix ❤️💙, and diminand 💙🧡!

13. My favorite pairs from fandoms that I'm not really engaging in now are:

Madeleine Cookie x Espresso Cookie (Cookie Run Kingdom)

Victor x Yuuri (Yuri on Ice)

Link x Zelda (Skyward Sword version)

Reyn x Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles 1)

Chrom x M!Robin (Fire Emblem Awakening)

14. Domestic fluff is really cute, but the official legal bonding of two partners isn't on my "must have" list for any romantic pairing. I really love seeing creations of my favorite pairs marrying though! Gives me the tingles every time and I just feel so happy 😍

15. As someone that made OC fan kids in the past, yes that is totally fine and I love seeing other people's interpretations for the same pair (if they don't have canon children). I've even made some for ferdibert before but I never fully flushed them out lol

[piracytheorist]

I've recently migrated to Tumblr from the blue bird hellsite and I'm really enjoying it, a big part of it is due to all the extra fandom content and that includes your blog, so thank you!

You've probably answered this somewhere (apologies if so) but how come you don't read the manga? I really enjoy the anime and the second season and movie can't come quick enough!

Hi and welcome, hope you have fun in this silly little hellsite XD I'm glad I'm one of the people that make your stay enjoyable <3

I did mention in a post some time ago about why I don't read the sxf manga but I think you're the first one to ask me about it so don't worry ;) my quick answer is that reading manga from the small screen of my laptop ruins my immersion (especially in comparison to reading in printed form), and that in general I don't like spoilers and I prefer experiencing a story without knowing anything about it.

While watching the anime I feel fully immersed and I can properly enjoy it because anime is meant to be watched from a screen. I love the story, but as I said I prefer going in on a story almost completely blind, I like not knowing what's going to happen, and I have actually tried reading a few manga chapters before they were animated, and while it was a fun experience, it ended up lessening my enjoyment of the episodes slightly. I was comparing stuff a lot. It's like reading a book and then watching a film that was based on it, you usually spot what is missing and make way too many comparisons. On the other hand, I did not make such comparisons when I read the manga after watching the anime, I could instead enjoy it just as much. That was like reading the book after watching the film, in which case, for me, the film isn't ruined and the book provides cool little details that the film omitted.

So, after I compared my experiences and saw what was more enjoyable to me, I decided to not read further into the manga and only read the chapters after I watch their respective anime episodes. I have full respect for Endo's work and the effort and dedication he's put into it, I've been slowly buying the manga volumes and will continue to do so unless a scandal arises or the story goes full downhill both of which I hope never happen and I neither suggest everyone should do it my way nor do I take pride in it. It makes being in the fandom very hard (since I cannot engage in pretty much any discussion nor interact with most other fans) but I really really really love this story and its characters, and I want to give myself the chance to enjoy it in the way I know will be most enjoyable to me.

I am so jealous of people who like or don't mind spoilers, or who can get fully immersed by the manga alone. I know there's so much of the story and development I'm missing and since my main reason for being on tumblr is a) meta analysis and b) talking about it with other fans, being anime-only is almost contradictory to that. But it's a story promising enough to make me believe the wait will be worth it :)

I've already put a countdown widget on my phone for the movie, and I can't wait for the season 2 premiere date to be officially announced so I can add a countdown for that too! I'm so excited to get more of the story, as well as new stuff with the film! From some spoilers I've gotten for the following chapters, it seems to be an arc with great story and development so I can't wait to experience it for myself :D

[opinated-user]

"Wow you really just uncritically accepted random accusations from an anon about someone that are provably bullshit."

Lily saying this is so stupid because she does this constantly. As long as she already has a dislike for someone, she will believe anything an anon says about them without ever bothering to look shit up.

She also didn't add anything to this post because she didn't actually know the person the anon was talking about, so I have no idea why she bothered to yell at the op at all. For all she knows, they could be telling the truth (I also don't know who their talking about). If anyone jumped on her post just tell her to go fuck herself because she was taking an anons word for it she would be furious. Especially if they didn't have any knowledge of who her anon was bad mouthing.

It's just so weird to see someone get on someone else's case for something you've seen them engage in multiple times, not all that long ago.

the funny part about this is that those "probably bullshit accusations"... are all true. if you read stitch's work, then you know already that they compare liking reylo with racism and racial motivated harassment. if you as a reylo ever had to be whitewashed or treated as a racist person for no other reason than being a reylo shipper, somewhere down the line stitch was more than likely involved. i can confindently say that anything and everything LO ever said about reylos was more than likely influenced, if not completely lifted, by stitch and her works. if you follow their social media, then you already know how they react badly when they see other POC disagreeing with their takes about media. LO does know stitch, they're... friendly terms i want to say, because they don't give the impression of being actually close to each other. LO shares a lot of their work and i think even tried to defend them a couple of times on twitter, while stitch appeared in a couple of streams to say hello. so even though i do understand why LO wants to defend stitch, in this case... she's arguing for nothing. if she knows that those allegations aren't true, then she could have just said to OP to do their research or show them how they're wrong. but she can't do that, because all those allegations are true. in fact, they're the foundation of stitch's work. so instead she immediately went to the offense and attack because she doesn't care.

i do hope i don't have to clarify that you can be critical about fandom, racism and ships without going to the extreme of belittling other POC/their experiences, just because they happened to ship another set of characters than the ones you'd prefer they ship. that won't ever end racism anywhere.

i don't remember the exact wording, but i remember one time someone asked LO where she did she her research about fandom racism and she said the only source she has was stitch. it's fine to listen to the perspective of POC, of course, it should be encouraged, but to only limit yourself to the opinion of one is a disservice to all other POCs who don't get attention when they also talk about their experiences with racism.

[addictedtostorytelling]

It's me again! I have finished all the original CSI seasons and I'm now on Vegas. One thing I am frustrated with is the lack of GSR kissing. I know a kiss was cut and I have seen your rant about the lack of kisses, but why do you think that is?? They are so happily married and obviously attracted to each other! Why do the writers constantly not give us more PDA between these two??

hi, @i-collect-things!

good to hear from you again!

re: your question:

my sense is that the reason why the writers were so stingy with gsr kisses (especially in the reboot) was because they were laboring under some mistaken impressions even though they really should have known better.

they believed that it was the paucity of gsr kisses that made the few that we got to see over the years special, when in fact such was never the case.

because of the way the fandom had responded to the gsr slow-burn storyline, they essentially mistook our enthusiasm for the few "table scraps" we had ever been fed as a preference for scraps in itself rather than correctly interpreting it as evidence of how much more excited we might have been had we ever been given access to a true feast instead.

they seemed to think that if they had made gsr kisses a regular occurrence for us, said kisses wouldn't have been "special" anymore, and our interest in the ship (and by extension the show) would have diminished.

no two ways about it: they were flat-out wrong, and the stunning lack of kisses in places where there should have been some is just egregious in retrospect, an absolute failure of writing and production, indicative of just how badly the csibods misjudged their audience in the later seasons of the show and reboot eras.

more discussion of the issue after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

warning: here be salt about csi and csi: vegas writing and production decisions. read at your own risk.

__

three kisses in twenty-one years for the only actual romantic couple in the entire csi: vegas storyworld: it reads like a bad joke at first, especially when one considers that said couple goes from being the classic "will they or won't they?" pairing, to dating, to engaged, to married (twice!) over that long span of time and has many of their most significant relationship moments play out on screen.

certainly, the experience is incomparable to anything else i have ever dealt with in my almost thirty years as a fangirl.

gsr kisses are rarer than gemstones, even though there is absolutely no narrative reason why they ought to be.

so what gives?

well, for my money, the lack of gsr kisses all goes back to the fact that, as anthony zuiker talks about in this interview, the original csi, by design, "never brought characters home [or] delved too deep into their personal lives."

that writing choice meant that while gsr was the show's flagship romance, it was never something that received a lot of mainline narrative focus.

—which in some ways made negotiating the gsr slow-burn romantic storyline difficult.

on other primetime shows, a flagship slow-burn romance will typically play out over the course of about three seasons, receiving measured but nevertheless steady development, with little romantic moments scattered in here and there, punctuated by one or two "romantic focus episodes" per season. there will be plenty of pining, some near misses, and usually a midgame ship or two along the way to stir up jealousies, resentments, and personal revelations until finally the two characters come together in the inevitable "consummation moment" that sees them confess their love, hold hands, kiss, and/or have sex for the first time on screen, after which point they are then officially a couple.

however, because csi never had any interest in giving gsr that much mainline attention, they didn't adhere to those traditional patterns. while gsr did get occasional peripheral development during the show's first three seasons—and even played the whole "one endgame character gets into a midgame ship with someone else that causes the other endgame character to get jealous" game for a while—by the end of s3, grissom and sara were actually further apart (relationally speaking) than ever, with grissom flat-out rejecting sara's most overt romantic overture to date.

on a show more willing to expend narrative resources exploring and developing the characters' personal lives (and depicting their actions outside of work), they might have been able to write their way out of this narrative low point for grissom and sara in relatively short order, having them "hit rock bottom" only to then bounce back and get together sooner rather than later, maybe by sometime in mid-s4. but on csi, where grissom and sara's romantic storyline by necessity had to (per the rules of the show) always remain in the margins only, getting the two lovers "back to good" was going to take more time; their relationship wasn't something that could be fixed quickly.

i mean, there is a reason why s4/s5 are such a roller coaster ride, gsrwise. and the fact that it couldn't be meant that the writers now had something of a pacing problem.

writing a slow-burn romance is an art, particularly when it comes to pacing. for as much as it's about teasing the audience's expectations and playing the "will they or won't they?" game for as long as possible, there has to be some indication that the characters are moving toward each other and will eventually reach that all-important "coming together" moment at some point. on the one hand, you have to be patient and draw the development out in order to build up the narrative tension, making the audience yearn for the consummation so badly it almost hurts before you ever give them the satisfaction of seeing it. on the other hand, you need to make sure that even if the slow-burn runs long, it still is in a constant state of progression, with the tension escalating over time until the consummation inevitably occurs, or otherwise you risk losing its momentum (and with it, the audience's interest). with gsr, the csi writers had already drawn things out with them almost as long as they could without overtaxing the premise.

that so, they had to wonder, after grissom's seemingly decisive rejection of sara at the end of s3, was there really any way to move the story forward? had they dragged their feet too long already, making romantic gsr unviable, or was there any way to navigate the coming season so that eventual consummation (maybe two or three seasons on) was still a potential option? initially, the writers thought the answer was "no."

but thankfully billy and jorja thought the answer was "yes," and they advocated for the romantic gsr storyline to continue, eventually persuading the writers to stick things out a while longer.

nevertheless, even once the writers decided to continue writing romantic gsr after all, given that by then they had long "overshot the runway" in terms of the usual slow-burn tropes, they had to get creative with trying to stick the landing—and what they decided, for better or worse, was that since the entire reason why grissom and sara hadn't gotten together previously was that, as a rule, the show didn't focus on the personal lives of their characters, they were going to double down on that narrative choice.

ipso facto, after spending s4 and early s5 slowly moving grissom and sara back toward each other, instead of having that traditional "consummation moment" occur on screen, they opted to just kind of skip over it.

have it happen but not on screen.

have it happen but not allow the audience to know that it had (at least at first).

while there were probably a lot of factors that influenced this decision on their parts, one of the big ones was the fan response they had already gotten to gsr so far: gsr had always been a "love it or hate it" ship, with very few people neutral on the matter.

among fans who hated the ship, certainly there were those who did so because they favored other grissom and/or sara pairings instead; however, there was also a fairly vocal contingent of folks who were just against the concept of csi portraying any romance in general, arguing that it pulled focus from the forensics of the show, posing a distraction from what they viewed as "csi's main point."

meanwhile, fans who loved gsr were (by this time) annoyed that the relationship had been teased for so long without being made canon.

by sublimating the consummation and making it happen off-screen, the writers spoke to those two disparate responses, essentially saying, "yes, this is something that's happening (see, gsr fans?), but, trust us, it's not gonna be a distraction from the show's main focus. grissom and sara have already been together for a long time, and you didn't even know it (gsr haters)!"

it seemed like a good way to compromise between doing what was right for the characters and gratifying some of the fans while at the same time honoring the show's thesis and production values without alienating the other fans altogether.

unfortunately, taking this particular approach also created a problem: just because the writers decided to skip over the initial consummation moment didn't mean that all that pent up tension and expectation for it just evanesced.

fans still wanted to see a gsr kiss, dammit, and the longer they didn't see it, the more ravenous for it they became.

and so the writers had written themselves into a bit of corner, making it so that any gsr kiss they might write would be, by its very nature, chimerical: a first kiss from the audience's perspective but a thousandth kiss from the grissom and sara's.

writing such a kiss would require finesse.

however, it also wouldn't have been impossible to do.

it's just that the writers chose not to do it.

part of their decision to keep holding off undoubtedly stemmed from that same old reluctance to focus on the characters' personal lives too much (and from a fear of alienating fans who either hated gsr and/or just didn't want there to be too much romance in the show in general).

however, part of it also undoubtedly came from the way fans were responding to lack of kisses so far—i.e., by being super vocal about wanting to see a kiss, campaigning for it online (as by now online fandom was definitely a thing), tuning in in numbers every week and particularly for episodes that touted heavy gsr content, and by just generally engaging with the show on the basis of wanting to see a kiss happen.

essentially, at the same time that the writers had officially concluded the gsr slow-burn storyline, they had also (largely inadvertently) stumbled upon a way to prolong the whole "will they or won't they?" of the thing, sustaining the same narrative tension that had kept them afloat for so long.

even though the couple was officially together, the audience still had something to yearn for with them.

and that yearning was too sweet to just easily relinquish.

so the writers milked it.

they dangled the promise of the kiss™ overhead, tantalean, making sure to remind us all the time that grissom and sara did in fact have a physical relationship but never letting us so much as glimpse it.

they teased it all through s7 and into s8, even going as far as to stage a "near miss" kiss during grissom and sara's engagement scene in episode 08x04 "the case of the cross-dressing carp" just to drive the fans up a wall. and who knows how long they might have continued in that same vein going forward, except for the fact that, all of a sudden, jorja fox was going to leave the show.

—and just like that, the writers were out of time.

jorja's impending exit essentially turned the kiss into a "now or never" proposition—and, thankfully, since grissom and sara were still very much in love (and were even engaged to be married) even with sara's departure looming, the answer had to be "now."

the writers had to finally write that kiss they had been withholding for so long.

luckily for them, their old problem of "how should we stage what is a first kiss to the audience but a thousandth kiss to the characters?" was essentially solved by the circumstances.

by having the first gsr kiss also be the last gsr kiss, that made things simple.

the significance was all wrapped up in the moment.

they didn't have to go out of their ways to stage or fame anything.

of course, as you might imagine, reactions to this kiss were mixed. while on the one hand, fans were pleased to finally see their beloved otp lock lips after 7+ years, on the other hand, the context of the kiss was so heartbreaking that it was hard for anyone to truly be gratified. many fans could not help but feel cheated that the first time they got to see grissom and sara kiss was also going to be the only time they ever would do so and also that the kiss itself was so overwhelmingly sad, with sara in tears and grissom confused and scared for her. the moment of the kiss itself was overshadowed by the harsh reality of sara's departure.

while i have no way to prove as much, i think, retroactively, the writers realized that they had fucked up—that they had waited too long to have the first gsr kiss altogether and that what ended up being the first kiss was just kind of unintentionally cruel to the fans.

mercifully, one season later, both the writers and the fandom got a chance for a redux: an opportunity to see one last gsr kiss, this time in circumstances much happier, during grissom and sara's reunion in episode 09x10 "one to go."

that kiss, they stuck the landing on.

it was triumphal. it was significant. it was everything that fans could've asked for and would have served as a very fitting ending to the entire gsr slow burn, had it indeed been the final word on the thing.

except.

then jorja came back to the show.

and her coming back raised once again the problem of how to depict gsr pda anew.

of course, without having billy on the show with her, there was no way to really portray grissom and sara kissing (much less having sex); innuendo was the only option.

and innuendo only would've been okay, circumstances being what they were.

except.

the circumstances changed.

billy did come back—first in his cameo in episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms" and then for his more substantial guest role in "immortality."

and this is the point where i truly get baffled by the writers' choices.

why they didn't write an ending to episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms" that involved grissom showing up at the lab after all was said and done with the bombing case, i don't know. if they could get billy on deck to film the webcam scene, then presumably they also could have gotten him on deck to film something in the same room as jorja. presumably there could have been a kiss.

and this one wouldn't even have had to be a big deal™ kind of thing! it could have just been a very lowkey kiss hello between a married couple that hadn't seen each other in a few weeks.

even more confounding is their choice not to include a kiss at the ending of "immortality."

like.

i literally cannot wrap my head around how they biffed that one so badly.

as i talk about here,

from a production standpoint, i cannot think of one even slightly defensible reason to not include a kiss, particularly given the way the scene is set up.

i mean, gsr is the show’s flagship romantic pairing, and the scene is the culmination of their love story, which has spanned every season of the show.

it would be one thing if billy and jorja hated each other, so the writers and production staff decided to spare them from having to kiss. 

but billy and jorja don’t hate each other. 

they’re dear friends who’ve kissed on screen before, and they even kissed each other (in a friendly way) unprompted at paleyfest. plus, they understand how their characters feel about each other and how television shows work.

all of that being so, i don’t think they likely objected to anything. if they’d been told that grissom and sara had to kiss, they undoubtedly would have gone for it as directed.

so the fact that there’s no kiss in the finale speaks to someone in power having made a very poor production decision along the way—either a writer or producer, who chose not to write a kiss into the script; or a director, who chose to ignore a kiss already written into the script; or even an editor, who took a filmed kiss out in post production.

somebody zigged when they should have zagged.

the csi powers set up the final scene of the episode perfectly to scaffold a kiss. based on the way grissom and sara’s reunion is staged, the music that’s playing, the narrative context, and even the camera angles, the audience has every reason to expect that grissom and sara will lock lips.

because the stage has been set for a kiss, not having one is such a letdown.

not only would a kiss have blown the audience’s collective mind just because gsr kisses have historically been a rare commodity on the show despite the fact that gsr has been a thing™ since day one—2.5 total kisses over fifteen seasons! not even a full kiss when grissom and sara get engaged!—but just in terms of the story that is told in the finale episodes, with all the longing and hesitation and pining and lovelorn looks, a passionate kiss between grissom and sara would have been the way to go. it would have been so narratively satisfying...

you can’t write a finale that is so intensely gsrcentric—to the point where it, frankly, neglects most of the other characters in favor of telling grissom and sara’s story—and spend the equivalent of two full episodes playing the “will they or won’t they?" game, showing ad nauseum that grissom and sara are still desperately in love with each other but too scared to say as much, and then have sara finally make the brave gesture, go to grissom, and lay her heart on the line, and not consummate the moment with a kiss!

based on the way the story has been told, a kiss is what the audience is wanting and expecting. 

a kiss is what would make sense from a narrative and cinematographic perspective. 

a kiss should be the pièce de résistance to what has essentially been “grissom and sara realize they can’t live without each other (and that they’re idiots for ever thinking they could): the two hour made-for-tv movie.”

everything is there, just ready to play out—but somehow anthony zuiker and co. completely fumble the setup.

just as they stoke the expectations of the audience to a frenetic pitch, they decide to bail out and instead go with the letdown move, inserting the hug.

it’s the television equivalent of failing to touch home plate after rounding third with the whole baseball game on the line.

one cannot even attribute the lack of kissing in the finale to the same desire to "build tension" that had led the writers to withhold kisses during s5-s8, as, in this instance, they had good reason to believe that it might be the last time they'd ever have the opportunity to put billy and jorja on screen together as grissom and sara again. it wasn't like there was more "will they or won't they?" territory left to be explored; the answer—they will! they have! they are!—had already definitively been given, and the story was ending on that very note.

all i can figure is that maybe they were somehow laboring under the delusion that gsr fans wouldn't want to see a kiss in that particular narrative situation—like maybe they were worried we would consider it overhasty (in the wake of the divorce and the fact that grissom and sara had been apart for two and half years) or believed that we would more appreciate the "subtlety" of a hug.

in any case, whatever was or wasn't in their heads, not having a kiss at the end of "immortality" was about as big of a fuckup as ever there was one.

and they definitely heard fans say so.

the csi twittersphere talked about the choice ad nauseum for a while, and though there were a few defenders ("the hug was good enough!"), there were many more folks who made their disappointment well-known.

so you think tptb would have learned their lesson for the reboot.

but no.

prior to the debut, fans excitedly speculated about what it was going to be like to after long last have a happy and married grissom and sara together on our screens. many of us speculated that we might finally get to see some regular gsr kisses for the first time in twenty+ years of shipping—a speculation that was only fueled by some of the early press surrounding the show, in which billy and jorja hinted about the show including more intimacy, with jorja going as far as to say "the show is going to air at 10pm, so we can be a little edgier than we were last time" in direct response to an interviewer asking her about the potential for gsr pda.

but then the first several episodes aired, and while we got to see a lot of cute gsr interactions, none of them included much physicality. some of us wondered if maybe pandemic safety restrictions were preventing kisses from being filmed.

but then the promo for episode 01x04 "long pig" dropped, and all such speculation went out the window.

obviously, kisses could be filmed—and one had been.

eureka!

for a few blessed days, the fandom rejoiced.

after so many years, we thought that finally we were going to get to see our otp just share a regular, everyday "just because we're happily married and it's how happily married people say goodbye to each other for the day" kiss.

imagine our devastation when the episode then aired and the kiss was nowhere to be found. the scene it was supposed to feature in came and went, and no middle-aged scientist lips got locked.

fandom complained.

loudly.

and bless her heart, jorja fox responded, tweeting out confirmation that the kiss had indeed been filmed, and she had no idea why it had been cut.

the fandom had no idea, either.

it would have been one thing had no kiss ever been filmed, but since it obviously had been, it made no sense for it to have then been omitted. since it was only ever meant to be a little goodbye peck on the lips and not a major turning point in the story, it couldn't have been edited out for storytelling reasons. ditto on time constraints, as it would have added only a few seconds (at most!) to the episode's run time, and there were definitely some long transition shots that could have been whittled down if needed in order to accommodate it.

my suspicion at the time was that the choice had been made because the powers that be were intent on teasing the fandom—trying to pull the same cutesy "tee-hee! we gotcha!" bullshit that they had been pulling on us for twenty years, withholding kisses just to string us along.

lo and behold, my suspicions were confirmed when showrunner jason tracey gave an interview in which he stated, "when you shoot something and the folks at [the] promo [department] get a hold of it, it’s a very enticing moment [to be included], but from a storytelling standpoint, i think that when the audience sees where we left things [with the season finale] and how we kind of brought it all home for those two characters. sometimes rewards are sweetest if you kind of have to wait. we like the shape of the story that we told. i hope people don’t feel too cheated, but we’ll see how they feel when they’ve gotten to absorb the finale and see that maybe we saved the best for last.”

basically, he thought that the roller coaster kiss in episode 01x10 "signed, sealed, delivered" would only hit if it were the sole gsr kiss of the season. he believed that having another kiss in the mix earlier on would somehow dilute the finale kiss's potency.

which.

jesus fucking christ.

after twenty+ years, you would think that the writers and showrunners would realize that it is not the paucity of gsr kisses that makes the few that we have gotten to see special but rather just the fact that it's grissom and sara and we love them and we love seeing them together.

that they were still laboring under the delusion that we only cared to see gsr kisses because they happened so rarely is just utterly baffling.

a cursory perusal of any kind of fandom space would show: we have been imagining all sorts of gsr intimacy for over twenty years now and haven't either tired of doing so yet OR exhausted the limits of our imaginations.

the actors were willing.

the story would allow.

we would have been happy to see it any which way and at any old time—but especially at those instances where it truly would have made good, solid narrative sense.

people kiss their beloveds at big reunions.

people kiss their beloveds at goodbyes.

people kiss their beloveds when they're giving comfort.

when they're celebrating.

when they're trying to seduce them away from their work in the middle of the night.

when they rescue their lost wedding ring out of a vat of liquid human decomp.

putting kisses in those parts of the story in no way would have cheapened those moments or inured us to the magic of the thing. it just would have made sense.

as i say elsewhere, "poor is the writer who can’t make a hundredth kiss feel just as special as the first one"—and especially not when they're working with such fantastically physical actors as billy and jorja who have natural chemistry in droves.

it's such a shame that the csi and csi: vegas teams never learned that lesson and instead persisted in thinking that they had to keep dangling that carrot in front of us in order to get us to watch.

anyway, suffice it to say, i'll be salty about this bad choice forever.

three kisses in twenty-one years!

infuriating.

what a complete waste of so many good opportunities.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[vicwrites-and-acts]

Writblr Introduction

I've been on Tumblr for a bit now; mainly lurking on my other blog, until I decided i'd make a new one to actively engage in the community, and share what I am most passionate about. So here's my official introduction!

About me:

My name is Victoria, but most call me Vic, so I am fine with whatever you'd like as long as its not derogatory. I'm 24 and very unsure of where the future is going for me. She/her pronouns for me preferably, but I'd also answer to dude or bro, because it's a love language.

I'm a mom of three, so writing or engaging is sometimes limited to my free time. I'm American (I know, I know, how boring.) Kidding. Mostly. I'm also Neurodivergent, but that's probably pretty obvious.

I've been writing since I was eleven, and it's always been a major passion; there's just something so raw and real about storytelling, and I've always been a pretty immersive reader. The book just transforms on the page and I'm swept away into different worlds. Until recently, my writing has mainly been fanfiction. I found it so much easier than being confident in my own abilities as a writer, because the foundation was already laid before me.

I can almost never focus on one thing at a time. So you'll probably see me flip flopping around like a fish out of water.

I'm also an aspiring actress as well as an author. So you'll probably see some things related to that – I hope you don't mind. Some other interests include: Soap making, candle making, sewing, knitting, and Psychology!

Asks and tag list/tag games friendly!

Side note: I am not at all familiar with writblr/tag games at all so any tips is 100% appreciated. Always open to new friends as well!

I will more than likely use this blog for posting about my OC'S, my WIP's, aesthetics, moodboards, Playlists, poetry, and reblogging helpful writing tips, as well as reblogging and helping the writblr community.

ABOUT MY WRITING:

I enjoy reading/writing sci fi, dystopia, fantasy, and horror on occasion. My works will almost always have a romantic subplot because I am a smol hopeless romantic in a big, big world.

HUGE fan of redemption arcs. Yes, please. Give me the morally grey character who does awful things but in the end makes a huge turnaround and is just so chefs kiss

Some of my works will have triggering content, and it will be marked with trigger warnings when applicable.

Some fandoms I engage in and do writing in on my main blog @johnmurphysgirl is as follows:

LOST

The 100

Stranger Things

BBC Merlin

Jurrasic Park/World

There's probably more but my mind goes blank. Rip

My WIP:

Title: Tempus (subject to change/filler name)

Genre: Sci fi, dystopian, romance

(think Lost in Space meets Hunger Games: Catching Fire)

Current status: hahahaha panic induced screeching; chapter two is halfway finished, but I've been struggling with severe writers block for months.

POV: third person, eventual switching, multiple povs.

Plot: Scientists have always meddled in things they couldn't begin to understand; mixing viruses and making bio weapons in the same containment area as cures for all manner of ills. The scientist in question lets out a dangerous disease, a vampiric mutation called the NightWalker Virus.

Only a select few were chosen to go to the Odyssey; a space station that would lead them to safety on a newly discovered planet.

Eris Matthews is an unauthorized stowaway on the Exodus with her best friend Cashmere Moni, and the owner's son, Rhys Grey. The ship's capacity was only meant for four people, not six. They crash land onto their new home, far from the civilization they'd hoped to find.

They'd fled to the stars in hopes of salvation, only to find their new home riddled with demons and unanswered questions, betrayals, and it is not at all what it seems.

[yuikomorii]

Who do you think are the most mentally strong diaboys?

// I'd like to make a top three, even if I believe number one is already obvious:

3. Kino

Being forgotten by your true "father" and abandoned in Rottenberg is a very sad scenario. Kino was also bullied because of his race, since the ghouls did not treat someone like him well. However, after releasing his powers, they began to respect him, so Kino became their leader, and unlike other characters, he also got Yuri, his friend, by his side. Kino is a mentally strong person, but he still struggles with it, especially given his resentment of the Sakamaki brothers for obtaining Karl's "love," even though they did nothing to him. He also gaslights others for "having it better," and dwells on his past to the point of obsession. It feels as if he doesn’t live for himself anymore, but merely for recognition.

2. Kou

Losing your wealth, ending up in a manhole, then in an orphanage where you were assaulted and exploited because you were a pretty child... As horrifying as it may sound, Kou has a very realistic past because the events that happened to him actually occurred in Romania during that time period. Honestly, despite his background, I'm surprised he's generally such a cheerful person. He would have been first on the list, but Kou never moved on from his experiences. He, like Kino, held a grudge against the Sakamakis for having "a better life" than him, despite the fact that he was unaware of their past. Anyway, he was in MB at the time, and based on DF and LE, he's doing much better now and is a sunshine boy, so he deserves this spot.

1. Ayato

I guess it's always been obvious that Ayato is mentally the healthiest Diaboy. His past is almost on the level of Haruka from Moshikami, which says a lot because it's so messed up that I wouldn't have been surprised if he lost all hope, but he didn't, which is really admirable.

Ayato never complained about what he went through, never gaslighted others for having it better, never engaged in a harmful coping mechanism and never projected on others. Yes, he has insecurities; he is afraid of not being loved or not being the best, but he is not dependent on these. He could still live peacefully without achieving them. Furthermore, he doesn't need a person to "fix" or help him deal with his struggles; he simply wants someone to appreciate and believe in him.

He's a carefree person who surprisingly prefers to look on the bright side and holds no resentment toward those who have wronged him as long as he knows their reasons and that everything turned out well. His ability to forgive people so easily is both a strength and a weakness because some people do such horrible things to you that they no longer deserve your forgiveness.

I like Kino but he literally burned you alive, beat you up, stole Yui, and wanted to sell you to the church to be slaughtered, but in the end, you gave him a second chance and were the first to integrate him and recognize him as a Sakamaki?? And normally, I wouldn't mind this since I give a bunch of second chances too but the thing is, nobody is willing to forgive AYATO if things go wrong, and that's painful because it's so unfair. ://

I might have realized why Karlheinz thinks Ayato is more special than anyone else, and this quote from his DF Ecstasy epilogue perfectly explains it:

Karlheinz (describing Ayato): Valuing your life, grieving, lamenting your misfortune, suffering…

And resisting!

That’s what Adam is all about!!

Basically, what makes Ayato the official Adam is the fact that unlike other demons, who are ignorant to death, he still has a desire to live and fights for it. No matter how much pain he has endured, nothing can break him.

One of the reasons his LE route was so reviled in the Japanese and English fandoms is that nothing hurts more than seeing an energetic and strong-willed character who appeared that way in seven games suddenly lose all hope and drown in misery.

I have written a too much about Ayato, but he deserves it. He’s not the smartest or most calculated guy, but he is unquestionably the most mentally strong one, and I doubt any other Diaboy would have ended up as approachable as Ayato if he had been in his position.

[xjulixred45x]

Carmelide/Cameliard Headcanons/4kota

I want to stay up all night and that's why I bring something like a small section where I dropped all my Headcanons and ideas from certain worlds/Fandoms just because, because I can. Opening with the concept of the kingdom of Carmelide/Cameliard from Nanatsu no Taizai or 4KotA.

(besides, I hate information gaps about potentially interesting or little-explored places, so let's go)

I'll take some references from the original King Arthur legends and what little we could take from the series. We'll see.

Cameliard in the Arthurian legends

Both the NNT and 4Kota characters are inspired by the legends of King Arthur and we can even get several spoilers or ideas from these, characters like Meliodas, Ban, Merlin, etc. They are references to their counterparts from the legends.

There is also talk of the kingdoms, but only today we will focus on Carmelide or Cameliard, as you prefer.

The only official information of Cameliard to date in the manga is only that it is the kingdom where Guinevere comes from (the Loli of my nightmares). And nothing else, literally nothing. So let's go directly to the Headcanons

According to Arthurian legends, Cameliard would be located near Wales, that is, quite close to what would be the city of London.

It is a country with little climate change, it is almost always raining or cloudy, there is quite a breeze and it is usually quite cold.

The kingdom's main raw material is its Sorcerers and Wizards, similar to the giants, they lend their best wizards to fight battles for a price.

The wizards in Carmelide have a magical level above the average person, as well as spiritual.

It is a super Catholic country, but I would not say that in a homophobic(?) way, since they accept Adelfopoiesis practices (marriage or ceremony for the union of two people of the same sex).

They have marked gender roles as to what each gender offers to Carmelience society.

The most marked example is in the monarchy, the women who ascend to the throne are vigorously educated in the areas of politics and strategy, they are highly educated and even if they do not reach the throne they are responsible for generating alliances and peace treaties with other women. nations.

Women are given a leadership role in the sense that they are the brain of the population, they are attributed to intelligence, class, elegance and order.

It's a pity that because of this they are not usually trained in the direct offensive area, they are highly guarded.

There is a certain paternalistic governance structure...

Men, on the other hand, are trained from an early age to be able to defend themselves and their brothers or sisters, are mainly instructed in war and physical and mental training for battle.

They are nicknamed the war machines.

They tend to make up most of the armies and velic posts of the court, giving them heavy and bloody jobs.

They have a magical control of another level, the especially strong ones are sent to "lend" to help the kingdom's allies.

The man usually has a more powerful, strong and fierce connotation, they mainly represent the brute force and aggressiveness of the kingdom.

But sadly they are considered very rude for political issues or treaties of any kind.

It tends to be generalized that most men are more brawn than brains.

Due to the mostly cold climates, both royals and citizens tend to be heavily covered, although royals are free to have more revealing clothing ensembles.

The wedding within royalty is usually arranged, but at least they have the offspring to present the fiancés before the engagement to see if they get along.

Lovers are absolutely prohibited, both for kings and queens, they will be considered guilty of adultery.

Despite being a fervently Catholic step, they continue to worship the king/queen, it could be said that they combined the position of Pope and that of the ruler to make it less confusing.

The official language is British English, but the highborn learn French and even Latin.

The kingdom's flag has a red/green dragon on its shield.

Royalty often wears a lot of jewelry like emeralds for men and quartz for girls, though they can be exchanged for rubies and sapphires respectively.

Its architecture is based on the Gothic cathedrals of the Renaissance era, with domes, columns and pediments similar to the Greek ones and a lot of space and care with interior details, the murals telling stories of the creation of the kingdom or the bible are the most frequent.

It is not exactly necessary to be the son or daughter of the king or queen to be considered a prince or princess, it is enough to be a descendant of the same generation as the same, moreover, if the youngest son of the heir to the throne has children before the aforementioned, that child has the right to inherit the throne when his uncle dies, even if he has issue later.

The privilege to the throne is relative in that aspect, basically whoever has children first wins (and no, they are not valid if they are adopted).

Sports such as horse riding, croquet and sport hunting are practiced.

Wow, this was more fun than I thought, maybe I'll do something similar with other animes, what do you think?

[la-hannya]

The yashamine manga is still going on 😭😭😭. I honestly thought it was finished. This is when you know yashamine killed the inuyasha fandom because it’s been so dead. Like even the tweets for yashamine barley get 2k likes. Even went on rumiko Twitter and the likes for anything yashamine related are so low. Actually most of her tweets have low likes. And I think the kagura post is her only recent post that had huge engagements. The only ones who are still invested are sinners and maybe some inukags who just want to see inuyasha and kagome.

Sadly, it has not finished but it's mostly due because it's a monthly manga. Those take a loooong to finish depending on plot but from I saw with the peak I decided to take, it looks like we reached the part where Zero disguises herself as a ordinary woman to torture Towa. Though, in this case she takes the form of Towa from RT's Mermaid Saga. Which is kinda strange since Rumiko never did big Easter eggs like that in her own mangas last I checked (the studios that adapted her works did though in the animes). More evidence that is a "fanservice work", I say. It's Shiina's version and interpretation of how Yashahime went down after all. He said so himself. Sumisawa is cooperating with him in the script and Rumiko is just credited as main character designer. I'll be honest though, I haven't seen this manga in any ranking and not even in the lower ones. So I don't expect it to last years.

And when it's finally done. It will probably go into obscurity.

What really bothers though is how much damage this "fanfic" has caused to the brand and it's fandom. It's like when Trump started racing for president and suddenly you got all these bigots coming out of the sewers, the rest is history.

The situation is similar. Most people have just gone and it's all thanks to how awful said fic was. For people like me, Inuyasha was or is literally their go to comfort show. To have that stained and twisted—it was like a mental break. And for most people that damage was irreversible and unforgivable (no going back) and between that and the horrible harassment of pro-hny fans even for things as people just not being into the story...

It was a done deal.

They left.

Because things don't feel the same no more. Some got over it but others even closed their accounts, not even saying goodbye to friends. Complete MIA. All that's left is some good people and ya know the rest.

The RT Kagura twitter post getting so many likes is evidence of what people really prefer. The actual general fandom. I think People wanted Takahashi to know that in some way and they took it. And not just that, the recent Inuyasha or official Japanese anime polls say it all too. The little girl doesn't even reach top...

Like just recently in the Japanese anime characters of all time the only Inuyasha characters that made it were just Sesshomaru and Kikyo. I was surprised that Inukag didn't get a spot this time 🤷🏻‍♀️

On the brightside Shiina has stated once again that "this is his interpretation" to summarize while talking about this chapter on his personal blog.

Just remember "it's a fanfic of a fanfic", don't give it ratio, let it fade into obscurity and support Inuyasha content characters who actually care about the og work. This fandom needs it and you'll be so much better. Trust me.

[sally-mun]

Any general tips for someone who is about to get into writing Sonic related fiction?

Know your lore without being a slave to it.

Writing, in general, necessitates a lot of research before you get started, whether you're doing a fanwork or not. There's a reason the adage goes, "To write well, you have to write what you know." Trying to write about something without adequate research will obviously open you up to things like misinformation and personal bias, but beyond that it also means your work will be incredibly shallow and flat. Readers will bounce right off and probably not come back for anything else you write, either.

This goes for fandom works just as much as it does for original works. You need to know the canon to expand upon it, or else your work won't come across to your readers as authentic or sincere. We're all familiar with how it feels to consume a piece of media (including official sources) that clearly came from writers that didn't know what they were talking about; depending on how important that story is to you, even one uninformed writer can make a work feel downright offensive for so badly disrespecting the source material. No one wants to give that feeling to their own readers, so I BEG of you, do your research before you even start.

HOWEVER, familiarizing yourself with canon does not mean you've been handed a rulebook. At the end of the day, you're the only one that can decide what does and doesn't help the story you're trying to tell. If there's a piece of canon that's in your way, don't feel like you have to write around it (or worse, forcibly incorporate it); you are completely free to yeet that shit into the wild blue yonder if it's not working for you. I literally can't even tell you the amount of things I've outright omitted from my stories because I decided they were unnecessary, nonsensical, out of character, a deus ex machina, conflicted with other established info, or just plain boring/stupid. Canon's not your real dad, it can't tell you what to do. Provided that you clearly establish early on to your readers 1) what you have changed, and 2) why you have changed it, they'll usually be willing to go with you on it.*

That said, though, it's very important to be well-read on the fandom you want to write fiction for. Even if you're not directly drawing inspiration from or utilizing a piece of canon, there are countless ways you can incorporate bits and pieces of it to fill in fine details and give your story more depth. It can be as simple as a particular item turning up as a set piece. Those little references are the things that make readers go "Ah, I see what you did there!" and pats them on the back for recognizing the same bit of lore that you did. Small acknowledgements like that are little ways in which you can indirectly thank your reader for spending their time reading YOUR story as opposed to anyone else's.

If you're working from a fandom that has multiple branches of canon -- as the Sonic series is well-known for -- it would be in your best interest to have at least a passing familiarity with as many of those branches as you can, by the way. Lots of readers are going to be familiar with more than just the specific branch you're drawing from, so that's extra opportunities to reward them for giving your story a chance! More importantly, though, you'd be surprised just how much inspiration you can find from transferring a piece of lore from one canonical branch to another. It prompts you to think more deeply about your existing story and ask yourself questions that may not have otherwise crossed your mind before. Even if you don't end up using that transfer in the end, it's still a great exercise to engage in, because you can still uncover new ideas that DO ultimately make it into the prose.

---

*As far as establishing the what and why of the changes, this can be done in-story or simply be a notice in a description. I personally prefer establishing these things in-story with context clues or this-therefore-that events, but if that doesn't work for you, a brief explanation outside of the story itself is perfectly acceptable.

Also, keep in mind that not all readers are going to be interested in the changes you've made -- and that is NOT a reflection of the quality of your work, so don't take it personally. We all have specific tastes in our fiction, and not every story is going to work for us. Likewise, the fandom you're writing for isn't a monolith, and the individuals that make up that fandom also have their specific tastes and preferences. Your story isn't going to be for all of them, so just focus on the audience you are writing for and give them the best story you can craft.

[sleepingdeath-light]

fluff hcs ; milk cookie

requested by ; anonymous (21/04/22)

fandom(s) ; cookie run

fandom masterlist(s) ; hub | specific

character(s) ; milk cookie

outline ; “Hi! How are you? Hope you're doing well! Wanted to ask some cute fluffy relationship headcanons for Milk cookie and his s/o!

Keep on the good work!!”

warning(s) ; none, just fluff!

calls you a bunch of cute nicknames like ‘darling’, ‘honey’, ‘sweetheart’ and ‘angel’

his preferred cuddling position is to have you curled up on his chest so that he can hold you close and give plenty of kisses to the top of your head

he’s an amazing listener and is an expert at giving solutions and workarounds to the situations that are bothering you or making you anxious for one reason or another

remembers all of your favourite things which makes him an expert gift giver — he also remembers every important date (the day you met, first date, when you made it official, and so on)

writes you so many love letters when he’s away that you have half a chest of drawers dedicated to storing them

very big on casual affection and will happily carry you around, hold your hands, peck your cheek or rest his head atop yours as you go about your daily life

incredibly cook and loves treating you to breakfast in bed whenever he’s home

whenever you’re sick he basically turns into a mother hen and keeps track of all your symptoms and makes sure that you’re taken care of

is your biggest cheerleader when it comes to your hobbies and interests, always checking up on them and doing some light research of his own so that he can engage you about them

made a recipe book of your favourite meals and treats so that he always has something up his sleeve to keep your spirits high

if you have issues with mobility in one way or another then he’s constantly scoping out new locations (such as restaurants) for future dates that are accessible for you — carrying a little notebook with him when he’s out (which purple yam finds quite inconveniencing as they end up stopping every few minutes so he can write down something or another — but he’s understanding enough and doesn’t complain too much)

[bad-at-names-and-faces]

I posted 1,939 times in 2022

That's 719 more posts than 2021!

175 posts created (9%)

1,764 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@annaofthenorthernlights

@snowfall-in-summer

@late-to-the-fandom

@annas-hair-donut

I tagged 345 of my posts in 2022

#100 word drabble - 76 posts

#frozen fanfic - 49 posts

#kristanna - 46 posts

#kristanna halloween days - 33 posts

#kristanna days - 33 posts

#modern au - 33 posts

#ffc 2022 - 32 posts

#fictober22 - 31 posts

#original fiction - 31 posts

#prince of two realms - 17 posts

Longest Tag: 126 characters

#totally not me suddenly thinking of starting a colonial delware frozen au now that my mind is thinking of finnish backwoodsmen

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Spellbound

@kristanna-days

Witches and Wizards

Anna and Kristoff had been invited over to the simple cabin of Mrs. Bakke, the last resident of the parish of St. Sunniva in the mountains above Arendelle. It was a lovely fall day, and even the old graveyard looked cheerful on a day like this. 

The woman walked straight to the fireplace and put on a kettle of water.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked them.

“Yes, please,” Anna replied. “Thank you.”

“And you?” the woman asked Kristoff.

“Sure,” he replied. 

In the dark, she looked like some witch or wizard over a smoking cauldron. 

“Here you go.”

12 notes - Posted October 20, 2022

#4

My OCs: Inga

[picrew image of Inga (by me)]

Basics: Inga is the oldest daughter of Anna and Kristoff, born the summer after the events of Frozen II.  She gives her tutors a run for their money, and mostly tolerates the public nature of royal life, but she prefers to spend time with close friends and family. 

Official name: Princess Anna Iduna Ingeborg of Arendelle

Birthday: August 18th, 1847

Inga interview

Inga’s first appearance in my writing: Chapter 4 of The Young Diplomat: The Family Portrait

Other chapters where she features:  Ch.5: The State Dinner ; Ch. 6: In the Royal Bedroom ; Ch. 11: A Visitor ; Ch. 14: Engagements and Familiarities ; Ch. 15 Name Day ; Ch. 16 Interlude ; (after this, she features in almost all of the chapters)

Shorter works featuring Inga in the same timeline as The Young Diplomat/Prince of Two Realms: Twenty Questions ; Domestic Fluff ; Map ; The Hanging Gardens ; also, many other drabbles.

Also, Inga features in my canon divergence drabble collection: What If

More pictures:

See the full post

13 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

#3

The Cave

The long-awaited sequel to Midsummer...

Kristoff took a deep breath.  The men of the family were helping him get ready–well, they weren’t family by blood, but that didn’t matter. He had grown up here, and watched others go through this ceremony, and now it was his turn. It was his wedding day.   

Somehow, Anna had agreed to this.  He had explained to her in detail what would go on, and as insane as his family’s traditions were, she had agreed. He had heard people use words like “cult” or “commune” when he told them how he grew up, but she had been merely curious, not judgmental. That meant a lot.  He often felt bad that she didn’t have much family, but her sister, Elsa, would be coming.

“She’s here!” one of his cousins whispered through the door.  

“Are you ready, Kristoff?” Cliff asked him. 

“Ready,” Kristoff affirmed. 

He had seen this countless times growing up: they put the white linen over his head, tying it with a blindfold over his eyes.  He would see Anna again once they were married.

He stood there under the midsummer sun listening to the familiar incantations and exhortations about the meaning of marriage, which all took a deeper meaning now.  He was glad they hadn’t invited any of their friends to this, because he was pretty sure he would be an emotional wreck at the end of this once the blindfolds came off and they were really married.

He heard the final words of the ceremony, and someone linked their hands. He didn’t remember Anna’s hands feeling so cold before, but she was probably nervous.

The blindfolds came off. 

“Elsa?” he gulped.

“I said I’d be here!” she said cheerfully.

“Where’s Anna?” he whispered, realizing that his family was already coming over to congratulate them.

Elsa didn’t seem to immediately grasp what had happened.  Bulda came over to congratulate her.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you, Anna!” she gushed.

“I’m not Anna,” Elsa told her.

“You’re not Anna?” Bulda repeated, looking confused.  “Would you prefer we called you another name?”

“Elsa, I’m Elsa. Anna is my sister.”

“Ah, I’ll go let everyone know that we should call you Elsa.” Bulda cheerily went off to inform the rest of the family.

Elsa was looking over at the road to the farm. Kristoff realized it was Anna’s car that they were watching approach.  

Elsa looked at Kristoff.  He stood, staring. Anna cheerfully stepped out of her car.

“Elsa! Kristoff! Oh! I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long!”

“Anna, there’s…” Elsa began, obviously not sure what had happened.

“Kristoff,” Anna said as her sister trailed off, “I thought you said I wouldn’t be able to see you until the ceremony was over.”

“So, um, Anna,” Kristoff began, “it’s a funny thing…”

 “Well, if everyone is just waiting around,” Anna said, “maybe I should just go introduce myself and then get changed.”

“Anna,” Elsa grabbed her sister’s arm, “I’m so sorry, I have no idea how it happened, but the women thought I was you, and they dressed me up in this, and blindfolded me, and I’m not quite sure-”

“Technically, Elsa and I are married now,” Kristoff explained.

“Wait, what?” Anna exclaimed.

See the full post

16 notes - Posted May 15, 2022

#2

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!

Thanks to @inkandmoonbeams for the tag!

(1) Eugene Fitzherbert had certainly seen quite a lot in his life, but he was fairly certain this was the first time he was being inspected by rock trolls.

(2) The men left, and the boy and his little reindeer couldn’t keep up.

(3) The band was playing some old English carol, and Kristoff stood in the corner of the ballroom. 

(4) Mrs. Allen looked at her daily schedule and sighed.

(5) “Here you go,” the man said as he put a pint down on the table. 

(6) Elsa sat at her desk sipping at her ice tea, staring out the window.  

(7) Frederick and Meibel stood at the dock, waiting for the last possible minute for Frederick to get on board.

(8) Hey, Olaf, are you busy?

(9) Tom pulled the car up to the roadside inn.

(10) It was a warm summer day, and everyone in Arendelle had gathered for a fair.

(11) Princess Anna of Arendelle sat in the library at the castle with Rapunzel, looking at the map spread out on the desk, smiling curiously.

(12) Kristoff sat on the couch, flipping through the channels.

(13) It was a hot afternoon.

(14) Inga stood on the balcony at the palace, looking down at the capital city of the Kingdom of Corona.

(15) The candles were lit.

(16) It was a warm summer evening, and the carnival was in town, and nearly all the servants had been given the evening off to attend, since the family was away.

(17) “Emma, are you well?” Mr. Knightley asked, putting his hand on her shoulder.

(18) “It’s so quiet,” Anna whispered. 

(19) “Kristoff, what are you doing?” Anna asked as she stepped into the bathroom.

(20) “The Crown Princess Rapunzel of Corona,” the royal steward announced as he opened the door to the Queen’s study.

Given how many of these I wrote in February ( did one of these in early February, and there’s no overlap), I find it amusing how many of the opening lines reference warm or hot weather.  As far as a favorite line, I don’t know.  

Tags: @dreaminghour @mrs-steve-harrington @pterawaters @alondradina @mrpinniped @ghoste-catte @only-here-for-the-star-wars @snowfall-in-summer @fericita-s @justfrozenthings

19 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Midsummer

Day four of the February Ficlet Challenge... Elsa and Kristoff... 

Elsa drove further along the highway, into the unknown.  She didn’t quite trust the GPS to get the right address, but there hadn’t been any cross streets for miles, so she couldn’t have taken a wrong turn.  She was singing to herself, since the only radio stations out this far were not exactly to her taste in music.  She wasn’t much for public performances, but singing in the car by herself was a little secret indulgence. 

Rolling farm fields began giving way to hilly woods. She glanced down at her phone.  There was no service whatsoever out here. Probably the hills took care of that.  Elsa didn't mind this drive. She liked Anna’s boyfriend--well, now he was her fiance, and by tonight they would be married.  Kristoff had said he was from nowhere in particular, but Elsa hadn’t realized that he was really from this far out in the middle of nowhere.  He was nice, though, and since Anna had first brought him home, she had trusted him. He had become a good friend, so even though this wedding was a bit sudden, she had given her blessing and jumped at Anna’s request to be her bridesmaid. 

“I just wish she would have agreed to ride with me,” Elsa caught herself saying out loud. She sighed. Anna would be there, but she insisted on driving herself so that she could pick up a few last minute items, and she wanted to make sure that someone got there on time so that Kristoff wouldn’t worry.

“In five hundred feet, turn left,” the GPS voice suddenly announced.

Elsa blinked and shook her head. She had zoned out. Lifting her foot off the gas pedal to make sure she had time to turn, she put on the signal despite the complete lack of other cars for miles in either direction. There was a dirt road to the left, but still no houses in sight.

The road was bumpy and rutted, curving this way and that, slowly winding up the hill. The woods began giving way to rocky clearings. Around a rock outcropping, she saw a group of irregular houses, and what she could only guess was a tent for the wedding. 

“You have arrived,” the GPS informed her.

“That’s obvious enough,” she muttered at the electronic voice coming from her phone.

She slowed down, the rattle of the gravel quieting down as she pulled to the side of the road at the first house to the right. 

Any other cars must be parked elsewhere.  She stepped out of the car, and grabbed the dress hanging in the back seat.  She needed to find where she could change clothes.  Why couldn’t they have planned to at least have an overnight before the ceremony? Anna said she’d never been to this place, either, but Kristoff insisted that they weren’t allowed to be there until right until the ceremony.

***

“Who even does that?” Elsa asked.

“Sorry,” Kristoff apologized, “it’s how my family does things.”

“Where are they from, anyway?”

“Mostly nearby,” Kristoff shrugged. “It’s… kind of their own thing.  I guess it’s kind of new.  I mean, it’s not new, don’t tell them I said it was new, please…”

“Wait, is this like-”

“It’s a kind of a commune, okay? I promise they don’t do anything too out there.  I know there’s that Norwegian movie-”

“I saw it, but it’s Swedish, not Norwegian,” Elsa corrected, immediately realizing she was missing the point.

Kristoff groaned. “Right…  People keep talking about that movie when I tell them about where I grew up. I swear it’s nothing like that.  I’ve told Anna about what’s going to happen at the wedding, so just… play along?”

***

Elsa stood by her car holding the dress in its plastic cover, looking around. Thankfully it wasn’t raining this week. The place would get entirely too muddy. She could see why Kristoff had brought up that movie.  Kristoff didn’t give her bad vibes, unlike- she wouldn’t think about Anna’s ex. She never liked him.  

Elsa walked toward the closest house.  “Hello?” 

She heard some commotion, and some women came out of the house.  

“She’s here!” several said. 

Elsa smiled nervously. “Is this where I can change?”

“Don’t worry about that,” one woman said, taking the dress from her. 

“You can change into that later after the ceremony,” a younger woman assured her.

Kristoff had said to go with it.  This was for Anna. 

See the full post

22 notes - Posted February 5, 2022

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