#and turn it into an interesting character trait

[interestingturnofthetables]

Don’t get me wrong, I do also enjoy watching them duke it out in the cage. I think they have a really interesting relationship between them that I love exploring because it’s toxic. I think your version of ‘ship them’ here is pretty much my thoughts on most things too. I just didn’t want to rehash points made above in the tags.

When I say they don’t work together and it makes me sad to see I was more so talking about a specific interpretation (which I didn’t make clear that is on me lol) of post-canon; any variation of Bill shows up at the shack after theraprism and within a week him and ford are somehow in a weirdly stable romantic relationship. I don’t like seeing them in a ‘good’ relationship because it feels disingenuous given their entire history and Ford especially doesn’t deserve that after everything.

As for the au’s, I think there are certain aspects of both their characters that do work well together if they were accentuated. I find it just as interesting to explore that ‘what if’ of any version of such as I do to explore their canon situation. It’s sort of just a chance to mix and match personality traits or motives in a character and see how it turns out. I often very much feel like a mad scientist running a simulation over and over to figure out the perfect scenario and circumstances for my evil plans to unfold.

Even in au situations I tend to lean more towards the ‘everything is terrible! But hey, these guys seem happy!’ premises. (What if Ford was actually just pretty chill with the end of the world? There’s also so much more potential for family angst if Stan is trying to fight this demon but also his brother). I can also appreciate a ‘bill has other motives’ au or the Mr bill pines au where everything is just pretty ideal for everyone involved, because it’s very much just “wow, look what it could’ve been like. How did [canon] happen!?” Which only serves to make the distinction that “yeah. Canon billford is SO toxic” all the clearer.

This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy au’s without romantic/healthy billford. I just think in a different set of circumstances there might be a chance to explore it without it clearly (to the audience) being a manipulation tactic or anything else that is obviously not a healthy relationship. And even without changing every part of their characters, their dynamic is so interesting to explore all the different possible situations, and some of those situations can give them a shot at actually being a good (albeit odd) couple which to me is such a funny concept.

Hopefully that made sense. Tldr: canon billford is toxic but interesting as heck to look at. I just don’t want to see that magically twisted into a ‘healthy’ romantic relationship. And au’s are just like character trait jigsaw puzzles that can give you so many more options of positive or negative relationships under new and interesting circumstances.

The fandom interpretation of billford vs how I interpret it personally has such stark contrast that I kind of wonder if we all read the same book/watched the same show sometimes.

I don’t mean that in a bad way (sorry if I come across as condescending). I find it really interesting actually. I think fandom, in general, has a tendency to ignore darker themes present in a work because they’re difficult to talk about.

I feel a little odd seeing so much fluff and domesticity type stuff surrounding them when their relationship was so terrible. There’s nothing wrong with fluff obviously (I like it sometimes!), it’s just hard for me to fully enjoy … I can’t help but view any moments of Bill treating Ford nicely as underhanded. I am also probably projecting though - part of why I like Billford and interpret it the way I do is because I find it (particularly the darker parts) relatable to me.

I’m curious to hear other peoples opinions on this matter. Sorry for the random rant - don’t worry, I’m working on something! This has just been on my mind lately.

[starburstminibot]

Hey, anon who asked bout the "how things were before Breakcheck was born"

First of all: I read the tags, don't ever apologise for info dumping, I love the dump and will eat it all. I am thoroughly enjoying this au and would love to read/see more of it

Secondly: It's quite alright for not doing art, as much as I do enjoy your art very much and love to see how you draw these characters, I also very much enjoy reading about it

Thridly: You are so right, the writers dont know shit and you get it alot mlre, and i LOVE how you are writing the issues between the 'Cons and 'Bots. Like there is sooo much they just, didn't explain. Megs being the one to become good and the other cons are left to be the bad guys??? PUH-LEASE

And even if they were to no longer be the bad guys, there is SO MUCH to their relationship that is skimmed over, like, c'mon

Anyhow, eating up your au OP. Breakcheck is best boy and I love seeing this goober and his story on my feed, writen or drawn out

Do not give me permission to yap bc i will not stop and you will regret it I promise /lh

IM SO FERAL??!>{£|! OUGHH IM SO GLAD YOU LIKE IT SO MUCJ BC IM GOING INSANE THINKING ABOUT IT

Also… I’m going to give possibly a hot take and it’s that Earthspark genuinely pisses me off sometimes. Because how dare they introduce such an interesting concept of a post-war setting with a redeemed Megatron and complex Decepticon/Autobot relationships and expect me to care about the Terrans.

I still like the Terrans, i think they are so silly goofy, and I like the idea of new characters to explore. But THE BACKGROUND PLOT IS SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING TO ME. The human alliance that turned out to be anti-cybertron??? Mandroid literally killing bots and experimenting on them?? grimlock getting mind controlled and having ptsd??? The rest of the Decepticons fighting for power and seething in rage of their leader’s betrayal??? Megatron trying to navigate his new life while being repentful of his past actions while also not crumbling under the guilt of his mistakes??? The fact that they are stranded on an alien planet and can’t go home?????? STARCREAM’S ABUSE GETTING RECOGNIZED????

they keep introducing these really interesting plots and then abandoning them for the sake of the Terrans getting more screentime.

I think these things would be easier to juggle if there weren’t so many of them tbh. I would rather just have Twitch and Thrash be these new Cybertronians that can guide the viewer through these complex plots because like us, they weren’t around for the war. They have a fresh untainted perspective on life.

(Dont get me wrong, I love Hashtag, JB, and Nightshade, but sometimes it feels like there isn’t enough screentime to flesh them all out and they end up getting characterized to one singular trait) (if all of them are around, I would rather them have their own focus show without the background plots of Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, ect.)

Also they are REALLY trying to hit the family theme over our heads. They keep saying “family this family that” but deadass they talk about being a healthy family more than they actually act like it. Show me how much they love each other instead of putting it in every other line of dialogue.

Ok that is all, I didn’t mean to go on such a rant LMAO. I still like Earthspark, just sometimes it feels like they are trying to be two different shows and they are stuffing more into the plot than they have time to flesh out. (Breakdown, Starscream, and pretty much all the Decepticons deserved better)

[certifiedducky]

adrien purring to self-soothe is such a good example of someone taking a character trait and pushing it further within the bounds of canon i think. i remember the first time i read a fic where plagg called him out on it my jaw dropped and my heart broke.

[angel-clouve]

*sighs*

I understand now...

I have found the keywords.

"Italian mafia with bombs"

... technically speaking Gokudera is only half-Italian but you get my point, right? 😂😭

pro-tip: if you ever wonder why one or two of your current fictional crushes seems to be different from your usual favorite type of fictional characters, just look at your list of past/childhood crushes and you may find some unexpected results hashsdkdkdlldl

[commajade]

its a rly insidious form of lesbophobia when people start calling a masculine lesbian a man if they do something personally hurtful or morally unsound. its fucked up when it's a real person which i've seen happen to my friends and it's rly annoying when it happens to characters. esp when it's ppl who say they love complex and flawed and morally gray female characters but when it's a masculine woman ur just gonna demonize her and say she's acting like a man.

[metanarrates]

the scenarios require an endless raising of stakes, playing games with people's lives until they paradoxically cease to have impact. a dokkaebi's life depends on playing this system well. in certain ways, constellation lives depend on it too. there is a necessity to create an endless churning of content no matter who gets crushed under the wheel.

but in kim dokja's wake, something changes. we have constellations who will continue watching an unpopular story, despite it losing a lot of what made it exciting. and we have a dokkaebi who will continue facilitating that unpopular story, despite the fact that its influence is waning. they have come to care about it regardless.

a lot of orv's situations and characters reflect kim dokja in some way, which makes sense considering that orv is a million words long character study in the form of a fantasy novel. but something I find interesting is that when kim dokja changes people, it doesn't make people any less a reflection of him, despite how much he often hates himself. instead, so many the positive changes he enacts are ones that make other people more like him. the ones who come to love the story will act more like the reader who loves the story above all!

[emmodii-mode]

Just finished my first playthrough of BG3. Romanced Lae'zel, but ending up turning into an Illithid because the idea of making Orpheus or Karlach do it didn't sit well with me (or my character).

I told Lae'zel to leave with Orpheus in the end (I heard she wouldn't stay with a ghaik anyway, which she's valid for, but also, it doesn't feel right to ask her to stay when I know how much her people mean to her). And like-

Her face before she flies off---

She looks so heartbroken and sad.

[llycaons]

tgcf art is fun bc xl generally looks really nice and hc generally looks really mean. they just. complement each other lol. that's true love

[truethes]

“go to hell” is basic. “i hope you have the opportunity to write a romatically dense character in a situation where even you can see the other characters romantic sense” is smart. it’s possible. it’s terrifying

[otogariado]

i get why people would opt to say walter was a terrible person since the beginning, but i think that's like, the most boring takeaway you can get about his character. he was already insecure and prideful from the start, and it's what would hurt him and keep hurting him. but like, being insecure and prideful are regular traits any regular person can have. the actions that he makes because of these traits, which in turn keep fueling his ego more and more, are what makes him an interesting character. and he was already pretty capable of hurting other people, but he wasn't doing it out of malice, but more because of careless selfishness at first. what makes walter terrifying is that the more he does it, the more he becomes aware of what he's doing, and the more he keeps going and keeps being more and more meticulous and deliberate about what he does that hurts people and even to the point when it was specifically to hurt people.

i think the traits were there in walter from the beginning—the pilot did a pretty good job of establishing how powerless he's felt all his life and just how susceptible he is to letting this newfound perceived power get to his head so easily. he even says this explicitly in 5x06 "Buyout" when he tells jesse "i'm not in the money business, i'm in the empire business". but saying he was this monster from the start kind of implies he didn't undergo through a character arc throughout the show when it's quite literally what he did. he got worse. so much worse. through mostly the fault of his own fragility.

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

i read 'the gender of mona lisa' and i feel. both extremely seen and yet incredibly infuriated

[perenlop]

i get the frustration with so many villains now getting treatment like “oh they had a sucky childhood so actually you need to feel bad for them and not hold them accountable for their actions” but the counter of “this person was born evil and cant ever grow and its pathetic to assume that they can, also people cant be redeemed no matter what and this is fantastic writing actually” is so exhausting. 

[13eyond13]

.

[aeide-thea]

god i know that complaining abt fic which most of you haven't read, and which i won't, for politeness' sake, identify in this post, is a great way to come across as both dickish and boring—

but i've been rereading a very long, very satisfyingly plotty series that's a fandom darling and the thing is, when you read like 400k of an author's work at once it really starts to become painfully apparent what their priorities are, by which i mean two things:

holy shit they're obsessed with 'what if strong powerful men who could hurt you didn't (but did hurt Bad Guys) (and it was sexy of them),' which leads into

holy shit they do not appear to have thought through the implications of saying 'i will have my heroes take over the same power structures that have enabled abuse, make no real changes to those structures other than swapping out the leadership, and then claim that everything is wonderful now bc Good Men Are In Charge'??

like. i don't necessarily need every passing fantasy to present me with a coherent, revolutionary system of politics and ethics—sometimes things are just fun and sexy and not especially Examined and that's fine!—but by the time someone's written literally almost half a million words, and done a lot of worldbuilding while they were at it, i am going to start squinting if they seem to think a Good Man can e.g. become an emperor by killing off the leadership of multiple countries and installing puppet kings loyal to him and still remain a Good Man, even if the justification was that the original leadership was maltreating its citizens and deserved to be extrajudicially executed. like. this shit was a bad, autocratic move when the US did it in real life and it's still bad now that you're having our mutual blorbo do it in fiction! and that's not even getting into the whole thing where like. they've got servants who the Good Man and his friends ""treat well"" but who very much remain second-class citizens in terms of how the story actually frames them and their concerns. [this was also a huge issue i had with foz m*adows' most recent book—everyone wants to write about fantasy nobles but they also want to make them good people and it's like. honestly i think it might be better to get comfortable writing about flawed people, but also—if your aristos aren't treating their servants like equals and your text isn't either, you haven't actually cracked the Moral Aristo paradox, sorry!] like, there's nothing that says your story has to depict a fully Healed World, nor should there be! but it's troubling if you seem to be convinced you've written one (and have your wide-eyed love interests constantly marveling at it!) when you very patently haven't.

[birchbow]

Thank you for PoF it literally rewired my brain a normal amount eons ago when I first read it. Every time I make a new character for anything and I start to worry maybe they're just a little too unhinged, I remember PoF, and know that I'm valid and so are my insane little horny characters 😌❤️

I am so excited that you say this because it's important to my heart! Insane little characters with strong wild opinions or reckless horniness or huge blind spots or weird personality quirks or frequent fuckups they often learn very little from are the heart of stories that keep my interest and provoke reaction from me as a reader!!!!

Let every character be a character!! I have never been more bored as a fanfiction reader than the other day, when I read a fic where only the villains were allowed to be rude or irrational or petty or angry without immediately apologizing in uniformly articulate and modern "I've learned what people are supposed to say in apologies" speak. Because they're a Main Character! They're a Good Guy! But sometimes good guys and main characters are going to fuck up!! Sometimes they're going to be bizarre! Sometimes they're going to be at odds with other characters who are Good Guy Main Characters, over things that may or may not be a big deal for their characters!

Listen!! Sometimes I write a character talking shit and I'm wincing the whole time, not just because they're being an asshole, but because I know they're going to double down on it later! Because they just,,, don't think or feel the same things as the person they're being an asshole to! Do I the author agree with one more? Probably! Do I necessarily have to resolve "and this one was right, so the other one apologized"? No! Characters conflict with the other characters! It's uncomfortable to write sometimes! But my level of comfort or discomfort with the uncomfortable is part of writing stories where THINGS HAPPEN and goddammit I am out here for things happening otherwise what is even the point. >8U

[rhapscdos]

Demi-Phoenix Gen for a friend ♥