#any escape

[autistic-science-cryptid]

#this is so funny to me bc creative writing classes have taught me that you can't give meaningful critique w/o knowing author intent#like 9 times /10 there isn't enough context to even critique someone on anything other than basic spelling and grammar in fanfic#craft is subjective let writers do whatever they want unless they ask#fanfic talk

These tags also highlight why, far as I’m concerned, with very few exceptions, criticisms based on the idea of the “overpowered character” are garbage. Most stories are NOT intended to be blow-by-blow performances in the vein of a pro wrestling match. Often the fights, or other acts (or heaven forbid, even the way things just end up magically fixed at the end of a story sometimes) are metaphors for other things.

There is one way in which this can be kind of justified, mind you, but that’s less to do with power or strength and more the idea of a character being pulled along too easily by the plot. And very often this kind of “overpowered” does NOT manifest itself in fights. Often it’s an unrealistic level of social finesse, or characters falling at the protagonist’s feet in ways that read as saccharine and like you’d expect some conflict or at the very least disagreement in a real relationship but here, it doesn’t happen. And I’d put the emphasis on saccharine here. Like it reads as some kind of promise. And said social finesse tends to extend to non-romantic encounters or else gets treated as the romantic equivalent of a celebrity idol in the flesh (or like the guy in fundamentalist Islam who gets the forty-two virgins as a reward for committing a terrorist act)

And even then, there are many ways in which things that look like this kind of overpowered-ness can be justified by the narrative. Like if it’s a comedy, or there are religious themes, or there is a good reason why multiple people might fall behind someone (this can happen if a character falls into a place which makes them a figurehead, which can happen to anyone, at least in theory, especially if they fall into a situation where people, or even one person, might be desperate for a savior). And sometimes the character might even attract something romantically akin to celebrity in the flesh because they really are a celebrity of a sort and that is clearly justified in the plot and they didn't just fall into that status without so much as a warning (and they may or may not take an actual lover or family).

Or sometimes (as in Sword Art Online everywhere except the Underworld which would be unusually primed to receive saviors) a character is just genuinely nice and happens to fall in with the right group of people and all those people like them but when other people are shown they don't like that person at a rate significantly higher than the average person would (and sometimes even some of the people who were part of the protagonist's group kind of brush them off initially). Or when there are crushes, they may not be connected to reality due to high stress situations.

Pretty much the only times you can reasonably say this kind of overpowered-ness is unjustified (with the reminder that genuine story overpowered-ness is usually socially based), without knowing the intent of the author, is if the story literally reads like some saccharine religious tract (as in, the character just falls into the situation and has their deepest desires granted with the same feel as Publishers Clearing House showing up to the door).

Or the other favorite of stories with overpowered protagonists, the “everyone clapped” kind of story. Which can be entertaining in its own right and might even have some good morals, but it’s for good reason that “everyone clapped” stories can be considered junk food entertainment (after all, usually every feat shown there is designed for maximum entertainment value and often doesn't speak to a deeper meaning).

As can their opposite, the psychological thriller, also junk food entertainment, in which characters are usually really underpowered, though sometimes they also take much longer to die than real people would in equivalent situations. Because those are really just designed to trigger vicarious fears, and even when people do add “depth” to those, it’s the barest amount, sometimes forced, and sometimes it doesn’t even come across and the characters feel like they exhibit a severe lack of intelligence that is not justified by an intellectual disability (I could go on about that, this is one of the types of stories I find most annoying and even the few of those I like I could easily imagine being disliked by others who share my personality but not my actual life experiences).

And I’d remind folks again that I’m talking about the obvious extremes here, because there really is a huge gray area, and I mean huge, between the extremes. And plenty of stories get accused of overpowering characters unjustifiably and most of the time it’s a metaphor. And even some of the ones that aren’t are merely logical extensions of magic systems which maybe didn’t take into consideration a believable character whose behaviors and/or coping mechanisms dovetail perfectly with that system.

On that last item, I’m looking at the Force here, mind you. Any issues that might come up re: Rey are really issues with the Force in general. You see, George Lucas never took into consideration what would happen if you took the Force and added to it a character whose primary coping mechanism is magical thinking, and he really should have, the number of characters who use magical thinking as a coping mechanism in fiction is truly staggering (for obvious reasons which are often justified given the nature of the art form).

And this issue can also apply to other poorly considered magic systems, which don’t take into account what might happen if a common type of coping mechanism was introduced, because sooner or later, if you create a diverse cast of characters and your system is poorly written, a character will come along who checks all the boxes and needs little to no training to master that system. and you know what? Even some well-written magic systems have characters who fly through all the progression with no training.

And that’s sometimes the point. Take Mary and the Witch’s Flower, for example, as shown in the Ghibli film. The magic system in that story (or at any rate the metrics of it as judged by those who train in it) is actually intentionally poorly designed and the protagonist is supposed to fly through the progressions without training. Because it turns out the practitioners of that magic system care only about increasing their power level and creating lots of pretty tableaus and have zero regard for actually controlling that power or fine-tuning the purposes they have for it. And it turns out that their magic system can collapse as easily as a house of cards just by chanting a spell. In other words, one of the lessons of that story is the idea of “easy come, easy go”.

Nah, fam. It's not about "taking" criticism. It's about the fact that unless a writer asks for it specifically, it's a dick thing to do on a website that is rooted in community.

If a writer wants critique they will ask trusted friends or professional associates (in the relevant field). When a writer shares a fic on AO3 it's not necessarily with the aim of improving their craft (there are better places for that). It's about sharing joy.

Positive comments enhance that feeling of joy and community. Negative comments do not.

Fic isn't a product to be evaluated. If it's not for you, then you can just walk away. 😁

[pidgydraws]

⚙️ for a moment we had it all... ⚙️

[littlefankingdom]

Bruce Wayne is canonically a very handsome man (he is called a "pretty boy" and he is in his 40s, for fuck's sake), and he is pretty famous as a rich philanthropist who doesn't want to leave his awful cursed crime infested city. So, there must be a ton of people thirsting over him on the internet. Fancams, edits, fanfics and imagines ("kidnapped with Bruce Wayne 😍 by a Gotham rogue"), the whole charade!

And anytime one of the batkids stumbles on a thirst post, they have the most dramatic disgusted reaction, loudly gagging, before sending the link to the batkids chat, because if they must suffer, then they should all suffer. Clicking on a link in this groupchat is like playing russian roulette, and getting rickrolled is a good ending.

[emacrow]

Constantine is noping this situation, you can't make hi-..ah fucking damn it

John was already paled when Kronos got revived, but seeing the eyes scalding blinding Fear of God staring into your very soul and judgment every inch power that was in that godlinng babe was enough for him to started drinking his emergency booze.

He is not dealing with Greek Gods bullshits, especially if that what he puzzling in the pieces together Then Kronos's story was becoming twisted all together. Nope, he isn't. Batman can bribe him all he wants. He is fucking leaving now!!

Fucking with THAT right there especially with the contract he still owed Kronos for, he rather suffered the complete obliteration of his soul being torn to shreds once he dies then have that god find him. He is escaping of here before She even noticed that he is Here with her ol time relic still in his pocket.

Before he can even get one step in the portal ready, he already felt his chest tightening as if his entire chest was being squeezed like a kid's teething toy.

Fucking dammit, he should've left right when Kronos was still having that psychic backlash, he knew he should've trusted his gut, fucking time Goddess and her all knowing of when and where.

Part 6 << >> Offical Quiz that Decision the Fate of this continuing fic >>> Fic Released

[finehs]

It's difficult for you to say aloud, I know, so I won't ask you to. Rather, I would ask you to consider a proposal. Stay on permanently. 

[be-queer-do-arson]

We NEED to talk more about Neil's escape from Columbia because I don't think anyone's fully appreciating just how unhinged it really was. Neil really hiked six miles along the freeway in the South Carolina summer heat, face bruised from being knocked out cold dressed like a homeless person carrying a big ass duffle bag and started strolling up to truck drivers like, "Hello there! I'm just a regular sociology student interviewing long haul truck drivers to learn about their culture! Would you allow me to interview you while you drive to your next stop?" And then he did in fact interview a truck driver AND take full notes like he was really doing a presentation on it. That is FERAL

[dukeofthomas]

I find the fact that the confrontation at the end of UTRH is often summarized as Jason asking Bruce to kill the Joker for him fascinating.

Because that's not what happened.

Jason holds a gun up to Joker's head, gives Bruce another, and tells him that if Bruce doesn't do something (shoot Jason), he will kill Joker.

Jason doesn't give the gun to Bruce so that he would shoot Joker. He isn't expecting Bruce to pull the trigger on the clown. He's asking Bruce to do nothing. To be inactive. Because that will still be a choice, and despite having done nothing, everybody clearly agrees that Bruce would still, at least in part, be responsible for Joker's death.

...And to me, this moment is a kind of- microcosm, of the rest of Jason's point. Because after being captured and carted off to Arkham, the villain will escape again, and will kill more people. The only way to truly prevent that from happening would be to kill them; Bruce refuses to do so, and I respect his right to choose such a thing for himself, but it is still a choice, and if we agree that Bruce's inaction during the confrontation would leave him at least partly responsible for the Joker's death, then we must also agree that his inaction in permanently preventing the Rogues from killing more people means he is also, partly, responsible for all of those deaths.

[hedgehog-moss]

I always underestimate how easy it can be to entertain a teenager. I have this preconception that small kids find everything fun even mundane stuff while teens are jaded and self-conscious and need elaborate or cool activities, but my teen cousins are visiting this week and when they arrived I was in the greenhouse having an issue with the filter in one of the tanks, so I asked them if they could catch all the fish from one tank and move them to the other tank, and they were delighted to be given little dip nets and sit on the edge of the tank to hunt fish for 20min. As I asked them to do it I was thinking, it’s like those duck-fishing fairground games from when they were toddlers, they’ll probably think it’s a bit cringe, and five minutes into it these jaded teenagers were like, hey it’s like duck fishing at the funfair when we were toddlers, I've missed it, it’s fun :D

[volatilemask]

left to die

[mummer]

rhaenyra outsourcing motherhood to rhaena and assigning her that passive feminine role was REALLY interesting….. rhaenyra as a character is at her most fascinating when she is forced to navigate and ultimately perpetuate the gendered structures she despises and wishes she could transcend— the seeds of her tragedy already sewn here. just great character work

[arcanegifs]

[benevolenterrancy]

May your hardened heart be woken By the soft and distant song Of all you left here unspoken All the shards we keep stepping on - Take this body home Take this body home Call the wind, and let her know Take this life outgrown Take this broken soul Call the stars, call them all And take it high, take it far, take it home

[moeblob]

Just two guys on a pier attempting to brood.

[itslilacokay]

idea!

more in op tags for those that see this post reblogged (unless reblogger included the ideatags)

[theladysunami]

I had a very odd dream where a train (or bus?) I was on got yanked into another world. While my dream had nothing to do with SVSSS, it did have my waking self thinking about how hilarious and/or horrifying such a thing could be as an AU.

Imagine Shen Yuan riding the subway, train or bus one day, when something happens and his whole car gets yanked into the world of PIDW. Nobody else in the car knows anything about PIDW, so Shen Yuan finds himself with the self imposed task of keeping this eccentric group of strangers alive in a weird world full of demons, monsters, and aphrodisiac plants.

The group’s first assumption would probably be that they’re still on modern earth, and just got teleported somewhere. Their second assumption, if they come across common folk, might be they somehow ended up in the past.

Then they run into some monster, or people riding on swords with specific uniforms, or a commoner mentions a name or event only Shen Yuan recognizes. The rest of the party debates what sort of Xianxia or Wuxia world they’ve ended up in, while poor Shen Yuan sweats bullets. He knows exactly what world they are in, and they are so screwed.

I have this image of poor beleaguered nerd Shen Yuan successfully protecting and leading this group of primary school kids, their cute teacher, and a handful of grannies and grandpas, while all the other adults and older teens keep wandering off and getting themselves in trouble.

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god