#but i dunno. i think a lot of people who 'romanticize' self harm are just trying to love themselves

[spartalabouche]

i feel like i have so many thoughts about the way people treat positive self harm imagery (not including people who encourage/fetishize it) but i have no idea how to put them into words. so im just here

[flying-elliska]

Wait I’m starting to see people put s6 in the same “ah shit it went terrible halfway through” category... and I’m like?? I dunno, how do you feel about the season Ellie? I’m genuinely still quite enjoying it, sure there’s a lot going on and some things not so great, but yeah I dunno I’m surprised it’s reached that level of dissatisfaction and when the turning point for that was if you feel the similar?

I actually still like it a lot ! And with a little bit of distance, I actually really appreciated the last few clips.

I am scared about getting an improper resolution, though ; it does feel too much, and my general opinion of the season will really depend on the episodes we still have. If they rush the resolution, I will be pissed.

But honestly, seen as how dark the beginning of the season was, what we are getting now doesn't seem inappropriate at all. It both fits with the plot and the themes. And while yes, it's a lot (maybe too much) to deal with for such a short series, I still think it's narratively coherent and a lot of people claiming "bad writing" simply aren't willing or able to engage beyond the shallow level of "this makes me feel bad so it must be bad."

I actually got worried in the middle of the season that they would resolve Lola's issues too easily, shove them under the rug. Her problems are so massive that to show an easy resolution would have been naive and done her a disservice. With the last few clips, however, I feel we are on track to adress her real issues : her self hate linked to how she has been treated and let down by adults around her ; her tendency towards self-harm/sabotage and picking the most negative version of truth.

I really like that they're showing the darker underbelly of mental illness in a way that is complex, psychologically accurate, and focuses on character dynamics rather than the spectacular bits like we see more often (like idk, vomiting, the aftermath, etc etc). Because by showing how it actually works, you can understand and actually get better. It's not just erratic behavior, it comes from somewhere. Earlier in the season we have seen her get better thanks to the help of other people but at the same time, it felt external, not like she had made a choice herself. This time I think she will have to make the choice to get out of that negative mindset and god it has the potential to be sooooo goood and important.

Same with the fathers drama. I was afraid that the few family hugs would be the end of it and that would have made me angry. You don't solve that level of dysfunction with a few hugs. Now the ugly is coming to the surface, you can actually adress it. "He is trying hard and has good intentions" isn't enough ! Easy warm feelings does not equal a satisfying conclusion!

Honestly, I am fucking angry at a lot of the fandom. You can criticize the writing choices, sure, but a lot of what people are saying doesn't come over like that. It comes over as exactly the type of mindset that creates this intolerance in the first place. Like some symptoms of mental illness are fucking ugly as hell ! It's how you deal with it that matters. But a lot of people don't want to see that because it makes them uncomfortable, they just want to be able to romanticize MI as a "spice" for their love story. They prioritize their comfort over how useful and cathartic these stories can be to people who have gone through this shit and honestly...🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

[mild-lunacy]

The Way Things Have to End

I'm a person who's often deeply torn about fanfic in a way I'm not about other stories, and I can't even defend it. Usually when people have strong feelings, they try to justify them, but I don't feel I have an excuse. Even so... honestly, the very existence of a fic where Ronan and Adam break up for fifteen (15) years and Adam gets married (to a woman), and they only get back together 'cause the wife dies and/or is dying.... How do I put this. It's a wrongness in the universe. It's not wrong like murder is wrong, or like people I disagree with may claim writing about 'bad things' is wrong, or like how bad grammar is wrong. I can try to say it is about characterization-- and it is that, because there's no way canon Adam and Ronan would end up like this-- but that's not why it strikes me as so wrong.

The fact is, this conviction of the wrongness of this scenario coexists with my firm conviction that self-expression is hugely important, and fiction needs no boundaries. If someone wants to do something new for its own sake (and that long of a separation is definitely new in Pynch fics), then that's a valid motivation. It's great to experiment and flex one's writerly muscles and come up with unnecessary drama because said drama allows you-the-writer to write about the things that seem interesting or important. Why not? What is fanfic for if not stretching said muscles and seeing whether one can write a long story with all the fixings? I remember how important finishing my first long novella via fanfic was for me. It felt momentous. And of course, I tried to make it as canon-friendly as possible, but then again Harry Potter was in love (and lust) with Draco Malfoy in it, so I can't throw stones even if I wanted to. Which I don't.

That said, I *have* found that people who say they're 'exploring' things (particularly new things) via the medium of fanfiction end up writing things that jangle and jolt my fannish and/or shippy sensibilities. Ultimately, the thing is, that sort of ambition is suited much, much more to original work than fanfic. I read fic to meet with old friends and feel good. Even angst feels good when the pleasure of character recognition exists. That ability to think 'here I am with Adam Parrish, my dear boy'-- that's what fanfic is for. And sometimes I like to worry about my boy, because bad things happen, but there's different kinds of worry. I don't want to worry that I no longer recognize him, that he's become something other than the boy I care about while I wasn't looking.

There's different caveats there, of course. I remember an AU Adam who grew up without Ronan or Gansey, who became a rather cold, manipulative criminal sort. Mr. Grey and Adam always had more than a bit in common. It's not even unlikely, given Adam didn't know them growing up. It'll be different once that changes; it's OK because Adam *will* change. While I don't want that for Adam, I'm not as dismayed by the idea as the notion that he had Ronan and threw him away-- and for fifteen years. That's pretty permanent. That's a life lived without the other person already. That's proof Adam doesn't need Ronan, more or less, and vice versa, even as a good friend. Like I said, it's wrong. It destroys what was so beautiful about them, about all of the Raven Boys. The way they were all so deeply connected, so intertwined. Even if Ronan and Adam get back together after that, it doesn't matter. This means what tied them wasn't as deep as the books suggested, so it makes the whole thing rather pointless and sad. They're just another couple. My point here is that it's the *constancy* of the relationships that are important with fanfic rather than any exploration of the new and unusual.

A lot of people seem to write fic just to use material they love, and play in the sandbox they enjoy, rather than as an *homage*. And it doesn't need to be, certainly. There are no rules. My point is just that-- for example, imagine a Peter Pan story where Peter decided to grow up, to become a banker in London, married to a woman who's not Wendy. OK, let's imagine Wendy and Peter may still secretly pine for one another, but Peter is married and his wife is dying, and Wendy herself isn't a young woman anymore. She can barely believe she once thought she flew to a make-believe magical island where no one ever had to grow old, or stop having adventures. She doesn't think she'd enjoy it the same way anymore, anyway. After all, she's thirty-something now and has gotten used to running water and coffee down the street. Thinking of Peter makes her a bit weepy, still, but she tells herself it's better this way, and most of the time she even believes it. So of course, it's quite a shock when Peter waltzes back into her life, over thirty and as handsome, urbane and charming a finance guy as you could imagine.

Now, maybe this story could have a happy ending (say, Peter and Wendy end up adopting a dog, and actually have very good sex sometimes, and sometimes they take a vacation to the Bahamas, which isn't Neverland but at least it has running water and coffee). But surely that happy ending wouldn't matter. More importantly than anyone's happiness, Peter Pan would have been thoroughly destroyed by this. In fact, the old, real Peter Pan wouldn't piss on this man if he were on fire, so to speak. No 'happy ending' is actually possible at that point, no matter how happy anyone is eventually, because it doesn't *matter* anymore.

As a matter of self-expression and experimentation (say, as a parody or a commentary on our lost childhood or the excesses of capitalism or what have you), one could see why a person would actually write this story. On an individual basis, there's no need to justify it. However, as a story-- as another story in the world of stories, existing in the ether of dreams and nightmares rather than stuck as a product of a particular person, time and place-- this would be an abomination. Not because it depicts any nasty or unfortunate acts, but because it's the antithesis of its original truth and beauty. No fan of Peter Pan who really cares about the character and his world could enjoy or appreciate a future where everything is in ruins. In this sense, Barrie's original bittersweet ending-- where neither Peter nor Wendy ended up happy, per se-- suddenly seems like the height of satisfaction and good sense. The characters remained themselves. They weren't happy in the tritest possible sense, true, but that doesn't matter, because they were themselves. Nothing was lost, and an adventure was had. A story was told and then finished, nothing and no one harmed, with only character growth as a result.

It's not the *sadness* of Adam and Ronan's long estrangement that bothers me in the break-up fics. Similarly, I don't consider it a 'fix' to know they end up together again in the end. Happiness isn't the point. Happiness isn't the *goal*, not even of love stories. It's not about happiness: it's about being, *becoming*, your best self. It's about how love becomes a part of you. It's about how another person is *necessary*, even if you don't need them on a basic level. This isn't something you can lose or give away. To deny it is to deny that love even existed.

I realize that it's just that other people don't see it that way, obviously. Generally, the point here is that in 'real life', all sorts of unfortunate and sordid things happen, even if they shouldn't. We lose things we never should've lost. We end up places we never expected, for reasons that just kind of... made sense at the time. No more and no less.

I get that this kind of 'realism' is why some people feel motivated to write fiction, but I'm talking about writing fanfic for a genre work that is much more abstract, much more idealistic and much more of a Romance (in the sense that Peter Pan or The Raven Cycle are Romances, nothing to do with the genre). In the case of such romantic, literary works, you have heightened realism at best and idealistic romanticism as an average. To translate such characters to some kind of sordid realism requires a deft hand and an understanding of just what counts as central underpinnings of the original text, not to be messed with.

In some ways, you could even argue the Harry Potter books are more amenable to gritty realism than The Raven Cycle, because JK Rowling is always trying to reference and comment on social issues (just indirectly). So I dunno, it's not a stretch if Harry's actually seriously abused as a child and never gets to Hogwarts at eleven, or Remus actually had AIDS, and Sirius has all sorts of things that happen in and after a stay in prison. Harry's a heroic character-- he's smart, brave, and true-- but you can do all sorts of things to heroes and still have them end up heroic. Harry was pretty messed up in the actual books, too. Love stories aren't quite so resilient, or resilient in the face of the same things (abuse, abandonment, or even being focused on something else entirely and having no extra time or effort to spare). There's a reason Harry only got together with Ginny (and Ronan got together with Adam) at the end. It's OK when you're friends/lovers who're going through tough times that require plenty of patience and forgiveness-- like Remus and Sirius, for example-- but it's not OK if your tough times are your own fault, and they happen after you're supposed to have figured it all out. At that point, it's not the same story anymore, essentially.

I honestly think that stories have their own flavor of 'reality', and don't benefit from the introduction of any improved airs of 'realism' if it's not native. Note, this is separate from something like a non-magic AU. I mean 'realism' as in the philosophy that just about anything can happen, just because. Why not? Well, it's fiction. There's actually plenty of reasons why things had to happen just how they did and that's it. Fiction isn't random, and good endings (happy or otherwise) are the most rational and inevitable things of all. In a good story, things end up how they're supposed to be, on a very, very deep level. Ignoring all that to say 'well, it could all go poof tomorrow!' seems to ignore the underlying nature of stories entirely. That's the sense that I mean when I say this is 'wrong'. It is definitely very wrong to argue with the way stories *want* to be, the way they are meant to be.

As a writer, if I know anything, it's that.