#but oh my gof is it time consuming

[amamaiiya]

girl, are you anatomy? cause you're giving me a hard time

[diaphamin]

stranger. — mark lee 𝜗𝜚

in which mark lee attempts to text his ex girlfriend, not knowing her number was switched over to you.

part eleven, read part one or twelve at the bottom

super cool time skip to the future (three months later)

━━ 𝜗𝜚

you scrambled to clean the various mess in your apartment, making sure everything looked decently spotless before mark showed up. in the months you spent with each other you really grew to know each other, felt comfortable in your own personalities, and realized that the both of you enjoyed being completely consumed by one another.

now when mark ramblingly confessed to you, you were still a bit skeptical due to the timing. instead of jumping right into a relationship you decided that you wanted to take it slow, one to give yourselves time to get used to really wanting to be around each other, and two to see if he really meant it. you wanted to know if he would truly wait for you, and not just hop to somebody else two weeks later.

you had also felt guilty being with mark, knowing at the time you really hoped giselle didn’t want him back. you didn’t mean to be so selfish, but you couldn’t control those feelings. you started to feel a bit better after had talking to giselle— without marks knowledge, while out on another trip with karina. she felt happy for you, something you didn’t expect. giselle had admitted that she didn’t truly hate mark, she just wanted him to move on. she didn’t think they were good for each other, and she thought he was just right for you.

after a while there were several loud knocks at the door, followed by loud chants of your name. you quickly took one last once-over of your apartment before rushing to open the door, “mark, you’ll get me a noise complaint if you keep shouting like that!”

he laughed at your outburst, before pulling his arm out from behind his back, “your favorite.” he had a large bouquet of your favorite flowers in his hand, “wow, what a gentleman.” you giggled as you took the flowers from his hand, walking back into your apartment to place them on the table.

“say it.” he spoke from behind you, startling you from the sudden closeness, you turned around to be met with his face. “you scared me, mark.” your voice sounded shakier than you wanted it to, “tell me, y/n.”

“i’m ready to be with you.” he smiled before pulling you into his embrace, letting himself melt into your warmth, “does this mean you’re officially my girlfriend?” he mumbled, holding you tighter as he took in your scent, “yes mark, i’m your girlfriend.”

he pulled away from you slightly bringing his hands to cup your face, “can i kiss you?” he asked, his eyes never leaving your lips, “gross.” you giggled. he smiled down at you before placing a sweet kiss to your lips, deepening it as you wrapped your hands around his wrists, “i love you, mark.” you broke away from his mouth,

“i love you too, stranger, always.”

yapamin: there’s tears coming out of my eyes i am crying i am OH GOD I AM CRYING I CANT EVEN I DKNT WANT THIS TO NE OBER LELSDE MATK MARL Y/N GISRRLTE PLEASE I LVOR YOU OH GOF NO PELASE OH GOD THe PAAIJ.. ONE MOFR CHAKTER THATS A BONUS SO TECHNICALLY SOEAKING THIS IS OVER FOR RESL KF GOD I WANNA DIE also idk how to write like that so i hope you could kind of enjoy that.. thank you all for tuning into this messy story 💔 stranger mark nation i will miss you.. stranger haechan we are coming for you.

i love you so much oh my god guys

[read part one here] — [read bonus here]

taglist: closed @shxhhsjs @jakeshuneybby @aek1ra @missus-aquafina @nmlee @jeongintwt @knjuri @blondiedae @candied-czennie @222low @dudekiss3r @jakeslucifer @thegracerammy @raevyng @clean-soap @swanyvess @wonnieluv @shoguntzu @nosungluv @kittydollzz @hyuckdolle @kodasity @pikibell @strawberrysavi @sunghoonsgfreal @painted-hills @mango-bear @leehanlovebot @noceurrs @rem-mp3 @chicang0 @tynlvr

[fansplaining]

Hi guys! I recently marathoned Black Sails and i loved it! the only thing I'm sad about is that i didn't watch it in real time... I don't care if my ship is cannon, but I found that seeing it all at once means i know what happened to everyone, and I'm having a hard time shutting it off. I want to be into it, bc there are so many characters and ships i like in BS, but i don't know how to make the story feel open for exploration. any ideas or thoughts on how to incept myself into BS fandom?

Hello! Of course Elizabeth is answering this. This is a GREAT ASK, thank you, and not just because the entry point to this question is Black Sails ⚓⚓⚓. 

(I’ll have you know this is one of, like, three gifs of Flint smiling in the entire series. I also googled “Black Sails happy” and…no one looked happy.)

OK so it seems like there are a few things going on here. Apologies for taking what’s ostensibly about one show and turning it into something broader, but I think it gets at fundamental questions of fannish engagement, so I’M GOING IN.

1) Watching/reading a series all at once 

Flourish and I talk about this one a lot, because we (and many others) have observed that younger/newer Harry Potter fans approach characters and plot elements VERY differently than we do, and we chalk a lot of this up to reading the books as a complete text versus reading it with miserable long gaps in which to turn over every freakin detail only to have 75% of it jossed when the next book came out. In 2002 I legit read this one page of Dumbledore dialogue in GoF 100 times thinking there was a clue that was just…under…the surface.

I think that with some texts and with some fans, the serialized nature of TV and book series are the way in—we climb into those gaps and lingering there, waiting and obsessively turning things over and imagining all the branching possibilities, all the future reveals, all the resolutions, is part of the pleasure. I sure as hell wouldn’t have fallen for Sherlock if I hadn’t shown up to poke at the gaping emotional wound between s2 and s3. (Frankly if you showed me all four seasons at once I’m not sure I’d even like the show—my lingering emotional loyalty was the only thing that kept me saying anything nice about s4.) 

If I had not watched Black Sails all in one go it would have been LITERAL TORTURE FOR ME. I had to pause for a week while traveling and I started to read fic that actually spoiled parts of the fourth season WHOOPS. :-/// But I can also understand how watching it all in one go wouldn’t give you enough space. But then, we watched the same way and I am deep in it, plotting out fic and everything. So maybe… 

2) A complete text can stay with you but might not give you a way in

This happens to me with books *all the time*. I’ll read something that shakes me—I’ve often used the metaphor “knocks your world off its axis” when describing a really great book, like it can be the subtlest tilt and you’ll feel like everything’s changed. I think it’s pretty normal for texts to stay with you? If they’re good or if they touch you in some specific way? Especially if you’re fannish and really feel the media you’re consuming.

But one thing I often find about books is they’re more…complete. Even when television shows end properly, rather than being cancelled, they might stretch for longer than what was initially planned, for example, so it doesn’t feel like the arc of the plot was as carefully constructed—often it can’t be, especially with long-running American shows (and of course with classic episodic television, say, a monster-of-the-week show, it’s not even structurally designed to have the same sort of ~ABCDE structure as a novel might). 

Black Sails is not one of those shows—they knew they were bringing the story to a close, and the entire show rests on carefully-plotted narrative arcs. (Not to mention there was an actual ~canonical endpoint for all the Treasure Island characters, ie where the book begins (like, sort of). I mean, there were also canonical endpoints for Jack, Anne, Vane, Blackbeard, Hornigold, and every other historical figure, but…)

Over the years I’ve joined fandoms for WIPs as well as finished products, and often for me fandom’s been a way of trying to mend the wounds of a media property I found incomplete, either narratively (with bad writing) or literally (like, when a show ends abruptly). I think for some fans, this is a crucial piece—they say that when they find something too complete, there’s nothing to mend. 

3) Different modes of fannish engagement

So here’s another thing I’ve observed—different friends have different definitions of “fandom.” So people are like, “Oh yeah, I’m in the fandom, I love that show!” And I find out that means they enjoy the show and livetweet it and look at some gifs and that’s that. Which is totally fandom! And then there’s me, nodding nervously as I debate mentioning that, “Oh yeah, I’m in the fandom, I love that show!” for me means “THIS IS THE ONLY THING I WANT TO THINK ABOUT, HELP ME, I AM DROWNING.” It’s funny, sometimes I think about archetypal nerdboy fandom and its dick-measuring fact recitation, and then I think about all the times I tried to read the room to see if it was safe to let another person know how much I thought about something I loved, how much I felt about it. Even in totally fannish spaces, I still hesitate. :-/

There have been some things in the past few years that I’ve really enjoyed and toyed with checking out fandoms for, but what I’ve come to realize over the years is for me, it needs to be like falling in love. I think for some people, interest and obsession grows, and for others, you fall in head-first. And for others still, it depends on the thing. 

I understand this ask might have been specifically looking for resources or suggestions and while I’d just say if you’re not feeling it in this way, that’s cool, there are lots of different ways to fan, and you can keep thinking about something even if you aren’t drawn to, say, create transformative works about it? But maybe I should say something about Black Sails in particular…

4) Black Sails-specific: unreliable narrators and transformative works

If anyone hasn’t finished Black Sails, stop reading here, I’ll keep it vague but there’s only so much I can do. This is one thing that’s especially interesting to me about this ask: while I’m going on about how final and precisely plotted it all was, it’s not…that final. Because the entire point of the show is about narrative, right? Who gets to write them, who gets to own them, how they can be manipulated, how they shape “civilization.” Characters constantly talk—and constantly show—how both Flint and Silver (and, like, most of the characters, from Max to Thomas to Vane to Woodes Rogers) are these masterful shapers of narrative. Flint is the victim of clashing narratives: what’s actually happened to him, what he tells the world he’s doing, what he’s actually doing (note that explosive scene when Miranda calls him on this, ahhh I love Miranda). But the show’s choice to shift to Silver’s narration to wrap up events is a really fascinating one: the man who works so hard to obscure his past, laying out the narratives of the future. Should we believe him? 

I recommend this interview with creators Johnathan Steinberg and Robert Levine—the Flint section at the start is really delightful if you’re into artists being super into open-interpretation of their work. “Do we have a sense of what we imagine is happening?” Steinberg says when asked if we should believe Silver’s speech to Madi. “Yes, but if I was someone else, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my interpretation coloring it.” They talk about how this is essentially a transformative work (they don’t use that term)—a certain decision “made sense as a way to both acknowledge the book and spin it.”

So this is like the literal opposite of, say, JK Rowling, who seems intent on letting us know every freakin detail of canon and post-canon and seems genuinely unhappy at the idea that people will interpret things in ways that “aren’t true.” (At least in interviews I’ve seen/read of hers in the past few years.) Steinberg and Levine seem to be the ultimate “open to interpretation” guys, which really is like this big blank slate for fandom building on and playing with this world they’ve created. That being said, if oppositional fandom is your cup of tea—if you love fic and fandom as a corrective, as a way of wrestling a creator over the text—then the, “Go for it, interpret however you want” thing is probably not super appealing. 

This is the first time in my entire fandom life, going on two decades now, that I have simultaneously been really satisfied with a show’s ending and still wanted to write and read fic. And that seems…weird to me? So I don’t think it’s that weird that it wouldn’t work for someone. TL;DR: I’d just say if it happens, it happens. But it’s OK to love something and not find a way into the fandom. But if that changes for you, I’ll be there. :-)

[idreamofdraco]

Of course I want the long rambling in-depth answer to the shipping question!

Oh geez, you asked for it. Here is a long, rambling, probably uninteresting and irrelevant history of idreamofdraco shipping DHr and DG, which kind of, sort of explains how I, idreamofdraco, can possibly ship both DHr and DG:

DHr was my first true OTP. It’s the ship I latched onto when I discovered fan fic in 2004. It’s the first pairing I wrote for, a love which spawned a 140,000-word fic and its 55,000-word sequel. (I linked to them, but you probably shouldn’t read them. They are Embarrassing and Not Good, but I was 13-17 when I wrote them, so give me a break hahaha.) My only reason for liking them back then was because bad boy/good girl pairings are hot and, even more simply, because Draco was Harry’s main/overarching antagonist (besides Voldemort, okay), and Hermione was the main female character. I did not have complicated tastes when I was 13.

In 2006, my eyes were opened to the complexity of Ginny’s character. Every time I finished rereading CoS, just like Harry, Ginny being possess by Tom Riddle’s soul fragment never crossed my mind again. So when I read Dark Directed and realized how interesting and unexplored Ginny’s character was, I jumped on the SS Fire and Ice. I wrote my DHr fan fic while reading and eventually writing DG. The only difficulty doing this was sometimes I accidentally typed Ginny’s name instead of Hermione’s. Pretty sure I caught them all before posting chapters.

It’s as easy as that. That’s how I can ship both. Both ships were interesting to me, both were entertaining, both made my heart pound, made me squeal out loud, cry, and inspired me and my imagination. That’s all I need to ship a ship.

I kind of lost interest in reading DHr after the WIPs I was reading were completed/never updated again, but I continued to write my DHr story for two years after I stopped reading the pairing. I didn’t dislike the pairing; I was just consumed by DG. I began to actively dislike DHr whenever I saw its fans hating on DG. The dr*nny tag used to be full of DHr shippers talking about how disgusting DG is, which blew my mind because Draco is the character who is coded as racist/antisemitic, yet DHr was not a problem but DG was????

The hate made me realize how similar these two ships are. Of course, the most important thing they have in common is Draco. ;) Ginny and Hermione both have reasons to hate Draco, and he to hate them. So there’s that fiery/feisty antagonism and competitiveness that is so popular in both pairings.

Draco hates Ginny because her family is poor and full of blood traitors. Draco hates Hermione because she’s a Muggleborn and way too smart for her blood status. They both hate Draco because he’s a bully and a bigot and he’s always picking on Harry and Ron. Both Ginny and Hermione can be written as brash and feisty. They’re Gryffindors. Hermione follows rules UP UNTIL she decides they no longer apply to her. Ginny, too, will break rules if she deems them unworthy of being followed (not being allowed to play Quidditch with her brothers, for instance, so she practices by herself - that wasn’t a rule, but you get the idea). Both are competent witches: Ginny stands up to Malfoy in Flourish & Blotts at the beginning of CoS and she uses a Bat Bogey Hex on him in Umbridge’s Office in OotP. Hermione, as we know, always verbally fights back against Draco, and she physically slaps him in PoA.

They can both be written as vulnerable, too. Ginny face a traumatic experience in CoS, which she doesn’t mention again until OotP and HBP, but no doubt she suffered with what happened to her and what she did in silence. Hermione has insecurities and cares about what people think of her (in GoF, she was very upset by what Rita Skeeter wrote about her being a heartbreaker and the responses she received as a result of Rita’s article/s). Just because she’s intelligent doesn’t mean she’s not afraid to fail, and as a Muggleborn, failing for her would be an even bigger disaster because she’d just be proving people like Draco right, that she’s not cut out to be a witch. (Okay, that one is slight interpretation or fanon, I don’t even know at this point.)

Anyway, the list could go on. The ships and the dynamics between both witches and Draco are very, very similar.

But I only became interested in DHr again when I found a new aspect of Hermione’s character I’d never explored before: she’s not very likable. She’s bossy and logical and annoying and overbearing. The movies glossed over that part of her, and I think it happens in fan fic, too. Once I remembered her flaws, I started finding her interesting again, and Draco is probably my fandom bicycle, so I figured I’d give DHr another try.

I like DHr, and I have no good reasons for not liking it as much as I like DG, even though it was my first love and I just typed out that list of similarities between HG and GW as love interests. The only thing I can figure is I’m still a little bitter about all the unnecessary DG hate I’ve seen/used to see from DHr fans (a small number of them, but still). When I started getting back into DHr in 2014, every DHr fan I spoke to was wonderfully, wonderfully kind and welcoming, but, IDK, I guess bad feelings linger.And the DG community is just so small and cozy (DHr feels so huge in comparison), so I think there’s a level of comfort in DG that I don’t have in DHr. I don’t read much fan fic anymore, so I interact with each fandom with my writing, which is more personal than just going out and reading a ton of fics and gushing about them with people. But if I just focus on my stories, on what is interesting and exciting to me about the characters and the plots I come up with, then I have no problem shipping both. :)

So there’s that. Is that better?