#but that’s the most accurate tag i have

[foreverthemomfriend]

Thank you for tag @dirtandleavesandrain! I hope this week has been good to you!!

I do look fairly similar to my icon, as it is a picrew I did/made of myself. It may not be the most accurate for my current appearance but it’s pretty close. My hair is just a more faded red-purple and I have some of my root/natural colour (and a little grey) now. The near constant blush and the dark circles are the same though.

If you have a real life person as your pfp, I don't care if it's Taylor Swift or something, my subconscious will assume you look like that irl. Sometimes my subconscious even assumes that I look like my pfp irl. And if your pfp is not a real life person... Tbh my subconscious still assumes you look like that irl.

You know what, tag yourself... How close in appearance do you think you are to your pfp? Interpret how you will

[jackoshadows]

"... best you have a new face as well.” He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. “A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own." - Arya, ADwD

A recap and a lesson for fandom newbies -

We have this CANON ACCURATE fanart of Arya Stark from the incredibly talented Tonyloom with the long face, brown hair and grey eyes dressed for feast time at Winterfell as the daughter of the Warden of the North.

A Sansa fan gets triggered by this Arya fanart because it's different from ones that Sansa stans usually like for their 'Stark sisters' fanart - where Arya is drawn dark skinned to highlight Sansa's fair complexion because Sansa is beautiful and Arya is ugly, where Arya is missing teeth, always a sword in hand, messy hair being braided by Sansa to conform to what Sansa likes etc. - and goes on an insane rant about how Arya fans don't want Arya to be ugly because of equating goodness to beauty....

So Arya fans respond to this attack on the fan artist and point to the book text where several characters call Arya pretty and beautiful and ask why they should consider the character ugly when she is not in the text of the books.

A BNF then jumps into the discourse and reblogs the 'Arya is ugly and Arya fans have internalized misogyny' post and pretends that Arya fans are the ones starting this whole discourse on Arya's looks.

BNF tags it as 'This is weird discourse, who cares if Arya is pretty'. Who cares if Arya is pretty? The weird, racist Sansa stan that you reblogged the post from, who got triggered by some Arya fan art and had to go on an entire rant, that's who. Who cares? Well you cared enough to reblog an 'Arya is ugly' post and point fingers at Arya fans, that's who.

And now the BNFs reblog spreads like wildfire amongst the casual fans and we have many who actually think that canon Arya is ugly and Arya fans just have internalized misogyny. This, children, is how the many wrong but popular fanon gets created.

Remember, this BNF had nothing to say about racist Arya fanart. Nothing to say about sexist posts where Arya is masculinized and her femininty stripped from her. Nothing to say about the many posts from Sansa stans/Jonsa shippers about how Jon is repulsed by Arya's ugliness and loves Sansa because she is so beautiful.

But they had to step in and make sure everyone knew that Arya is ugly and it's Arya fans who are the problem.

This is actually nothing new. The reason there is so much wrong misinformation about Arya and Daenerys, and the way this fandom has opinions about these two female characters, is because it's been crafted over decades of fandom BNF's spreading posts and meta like this through BNF blogs like Asoiafuniversity. Explained so well in this post here:

Villainizing Arya fans as 'bad fans' has long been a thing in fandom. Asoiafuniversity, which was the goto place for all things asoiaf in those days, had actual posts equating Arya fans to Walter White fans from Breaking bad who hated on his wife Skylar.

Keep in mind, this is an actual quote from a post on the most popular asoiaf blog when the fandom was very active:

The interesting thing about Arya is that unlike most of the male Bad Fan icons, she doesn’t have a wife to embody her Bad Fans’ frustrations and serve as an outlet for their ire – no Betty Draper, no Skyler White, no Carmela Soprano. Instead, she has a sister, Sansa, who winds up serving the same function. Much of Bad Fandom is a gendered phenomenon, pulling for he-man figures against shrewish wives who just don’t understand them. It’s fascinating to see how the phenomenon can alter itself to accommodate a female-female pairing while still targeting characteristics we typically gender female. The Bad Fan is nothing if not durable.

So much toxic sexism masquerading as feminism, where they equate Arya fans to the chuds who hate female characters and whose unfair target is Sansa because she is 'female'. And Arya is a 'he-man' figure....The mind boggles.

But this was the typical vile sexist garbage Bnfs were spewing about both Arya and Daenerys in the days when fandom was most active and this is where a majority of the sexist opinions about Arya and Dany comes from.

This is why these canonically wrong aspects of these characters are so widespread and entrenched in fandom thought that it doesn't matter if we use actual book quotes to show that it's the exact opposite.

[ieetbeez]

Small Rant About RE

Hello gang... This has been on my mind for awhile. Today we're talking about Resident Evil and particularly Leon stans. Now I'm gonna come out and say I am one of them! I love that silly little blonde man and he's like number 1 on my favorite capcom white boy tier list next to Cody from Final Fight/SF.

tw: mentions of rape, pedophilia, incest, abuse, and my opinion

Let me make it clear, I'm not kink shaming, I'm not advocating for censorship. Art and literature shouldn't be censored. Sex is cool. Kink is cool (when safe and consensual).

I'm gonna be one of those fans real quick and say, I've been an RE fan since I was like 7. That doesn't really mean much since I can't drink legally but I've been in love with Leon since elementary school. I watched my Dad and brother play RE6 co-op and man... Aka I've been in the fandom for a fat minute. Before the RE2 remake came out I'd see the occasional Dead Dove fic but that's whatever. But I have never seen this much dark romance about Leon of all people!

Like. Call it the T-Virus the way it's everywhere I swear I can't scroll down the damn tag without getting hit with a sexual crime. And let me say, I'm not new to fandom culture. I take don't like don't read to heart (I'm super picky LMAO). And I understand that, that's just how big fandoms are, more people, more bad eggs. I'm sure the majority of y'all are sweet people.

BUT I feel like I shouldn't have to say that romanticizing things like pedophilia, rape, abuse, and incest is disgusting in the big year 2025 but here we are. Honestly, I feel this way about a lot of the fics of other fandoms I'm in. I feel crazy seeing it everywhere and it makes me feel like some sort of sexual puritan. Am I insane for wanting freaky smut and not ...freaky smut??

There for sure is a bigger conversation here about how easily accessible porn is and how quick people to fall into these pipelines. Or how booktok caused a rise in the normalization of dark romance troupes and just pure porn writing (I still hate icebreaker). Or how quick form constant content is slowly leaking it's way into everything. But we’d be here for forever…

And like, it's just completely out of character?? Like if you're gonna write about that can it at least be in character? Wesker fits the dark romance thing LEAGUES better. But LEON?? THE POLICE OFFICER?? Did you even watch a walkthrough? Leon is a sweet upstanding guy with lots of trauma, that is the last thing he'd do to ANYONE! Not saying fics have to be completely accurate all the time but there's literally nothing fun about "Omg what if Leon RAPED you!?" HES NOT THE EVIL RESIDENT HERE GUYS! At some point it's not even about Leon (or whoever the fic is about) anymore, it's just someone wanting to share their sexual fantasies online.

These topics are almost never written with any care and are insanely insensitive to the survivors of these acts. I don't know, sexual crimes are literally some of the most deplorable acts of hatred and depravity someone can do onto another person. I can't imagine getting off to the suffering of others (in a heinous crime way not BDSM way) (BDSM is cool). Have some fucking empathy and stop thinking with your goon wad guys <3

Like at least take it to AO3 so that I can filter it out or smth...

Edit: I just woke up and remembered what else I was gonna say.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their fictional characters. Another thing I don’t like are the Gooner mods for the games. Like they’re fun every once in a while and like if it’s a capcom game you have to expect it. At some point though, it just stops being sexy and feels gross or uncomfortable.

Idk maybe I’m in the minority here but there has never been a single time where I was playing any RE game and thought to myself, “man… I wish I could see Leon’s end rod whipping in the wind rn…” Obviously, I wanna see that man oiled up butt booty naked doing jumping jacks like as most normal people do but… zawg…

That’s also like an actual person?? At least for the remakes. Maybe this just isn’t my dove to eat but the treat Leon like some sort doll. I know it’s kinda weak to be like this for a fictional person but yeah </3

[hiding-under-the-willow]

obsessed with ancient/stone age human culture (would have gone on to study it if life hadnt gotten in the way) and so your ghosts au bdubs has me chomping at the bit. what a brilliant and wonderful choice. i dont have a lot of coherent thoughts rn but i love love love the tags in the og post of your recent fanart of him and i hope to see more of him and i love to turn him around in my brain. & wanted to tell you that.

i also think sometimes about how long he spent alone in death before any of the other ghosts joined him and oh, my goodness. how, uh,, how do you think he's doing?

Ghosts AU Bdubs is so interesting to me bc I came in at the beginning mostly just basing him on the portrayal of Robin from the show, which I knew wasn't entirely historically accurate in the first place so I would probably want to go more in depth with him at some point, but I just hadn't taken the time to do the research necessary to actually go through with that development, and then this semester half of my classes these last few weeks have been discussing Paleolithic and Neolithic people and art and something just snapped in my brain and I was like. Ah. Okay. The potential there is crazy actually. So there'll definitely be more of him!! I'm like half using him as an excuse to explore the stuff I learned in my classes more in depth and half using the fact that I learned about this stuff in my classes as an excuse to finally go through and develop him the way I wanted. Symbiotic relationship or whatever.

Also yeah, that long ass gap of time where he was the only ghost around certainly has been bouncing around in my head a bit. I don't have. completely coherent thoughts about it at the moment. I certainly think he might've coped in similar ways to the way Robin does in the show, getting attached to the people living on the property, spending a lot of his time learning from them and talking to them even if they don't realize he's there. I think he probably would've been a much more serious figure in life, and also in the early days of his afterlife (I mean not completely, it's still Bdubs we're talking about lol, but still), that spending all that time alone might've unraveled him a bit. I feel like it's hard to get a definitive grip on like. Who he is. Some days he's kind of obsessive and neurotic, in everyone's business, easily worked up, other days he seems perfectly content to ignore the happenings of the house, just do his own thing out on the property. I feel like most of the other ghosts wouldn't know much about his life, or even his early afterlife, he doesn't talk about it much and when he does it's always some crazy one-off anecdote that doesn't let you in on much of what was actually happening at the time. I think, like Robin in the show, he probably has his moments of like complex emotional or social intelligence that seem kind of out of nowhere from an outside perspective until you think about how long he's been around to have observed and learned about the world, about people.

[b-plot-butch]

you know what’s been driving me CRAZY today. i was thinking about how the reluctant father figure trope is so popular in media and why do we never see reluctant mother figures, and i think it’s because for too many creators the concept of a woman not taking naturally or eagerly to parenthood does just Not Compute. and that’s. stupid

[frascospecimen]

Ok hi here’s an actual post with examples lol

I’m doing commissions hiii

Fullbody fully colored like the stuff I usually draw for 30 dollars (usd) I’ll draw basically whatever. Fanart ocs I don’t really care LOL I just won’t draw like celebrities or hazbin hotel or south park or whatever. If you have questions about what im fine/not fine drawing just ask!! I don’t bite lol

Commissions will look something like this v (the fully colored one)

(some of these examples down here are a little older but still get the point across I think)

I take paypal dm me and we’ll talk!! 30$!

[necrotic-nephilim]

@profandomhopper i was going to reblog the original post this comment was left on but i felt it divorced itself from the original topic so much, you get your own post for giving me delightful permission to ramble about this. buckle in people this is long.

so, DC is a big fandom that expanses a lot of different types of content, and like anything, is subject to crossovers. the obvious ones like Marvel are for the reason of being a similar and equally popular superhero world, so it's easy to transpose the worlds onto each other and overlap the characters. both of these worlds deal with multiverses and endless, endless heroes. it makes sense and there's no real stretch to think Batman and Spider-Man could co-exist. i mean, there have been canon crossover comics. and even some more random crossovers like White Collar have pretty easy to trace origins, being an actor in WC was a popular Dick fancast back in the day so there was some bleeding over that led to a well-loved niche crossover space.

but Danny Phantom and Miraculous Ladybug are where it gets interesting. because at a surface, MLB sort of makes sense. it's a superhero world, you're following a teen girl superhero and sure the mechanics are pretty contained, but the crossover should make sense. but when you compare it to the crossover numbers of other superhero media like say My Hero Academia, Ladybug takes the *crown* with such a bizarre popularity. and of course, DP feels like it makes even less sense. sure, you *could* lump it into at the very least, superhero-adjacent media, but it's not a true hero world like MLB or DC is.

but, the thing to always understand about DC, *especially* the Batfamily (which is where the crossover content propagates the most) is this: a *very* good chunk of fans don't interact with the comics. i would venture to say even most Batfamily fans don't read the comics and actively talk about it. we've all read a very fandom big Batfam fanfic where the author's note mentions the writer has never touched a comic in their life. typically, these fans are either cobbling together their understanding from fandom content, or by frankensteining unrelated DC adaptations to understand each character. you take Bruce from Batman: TAS, you take Dick from the animated Young Justice, you take Jason from Batman: Under The Red Hood animated movie, you take Damian from the DCAMU Batman vs Robin, and you read some fandom metas to fill in the rest and well, you've got some sort of an understanding of these characters. read enough incorrect quotes, some genfic, a couple of character metas, and boom, you understand the Batfamily fandom enough to start creating your own content. and of course now. now you have Wayne Family Adventures so it's even *easier*. a pretty easy to pick up webtoon that's filling in all the gaps for you. but i've been in this fandom long enough to remember before we had WFA and even then, this was still a common, if not the most popular way, to ween yourself into the DC fandom space. you cherry-picked the canon you liked and then plunged into the depths of fanon.

i'm not here to make in depth commentary on if i think this is a good or bad thing. trust me i have that commentary in my head, but that would need it's own post. i'm very split on it and my feelings are complicated. my feelings on WFA are even *more* complicated. because oftentimes, the attitude expressed by these fans who are frankensteining this version of the Batfamily/DC world they have in their head is they don't *want* to read the comics. the comics don't contain the content they're after. and to an extent, i understand that. if you're looking for light-hearted vibes of the Batfamily all getting along and having the occasional hurt/comfort moments but in the end, they hug and make up, you're right. largely, you won't find that in canon. of course there are so many comics to recommend for Batfamily interactions, but you have to get specific. you'll find them interacting in small groups, Tim and Dick bonding here, Duke and Cass bonding there, but largely, the comics don't care to balance the ridiculously large cast they've given themselves. but fandom does. it's easy to toss them all in a blender and ignore the parts you don't like. the default argument to ignoring the comics or writing something OOC is always "well the comics are OOC and inconsistent too" which, while a flawed argument that massively misunderstand how comics work as a medium, isn't an entirely incorrect one. you could serve on a silver platter to these fans, an easy and accessible way to get into comics and they wouldn't be interested. it's not what they're here for. fandom is always character-driven above all else. it's driven by character relationships and dynamics. if someone wants to consume content where Tim idolized and stalked Jason as 'his Robin' and now is trying to help him rehabilitate and they're super complicated but have this long epic forgiveness arc, why *would* they read the comics? because they're sure as shit not going to find that dynamic in the comics. it's laughably OOC and not canon at all, but that doesn't matter. what matters is the sandbox. most Batfamily fans care *far* more about the sandbox canon gives them than the actual canon itself. feel how you feel about that, this really isn't being negative toward that attitude, but it is a common attitude.

so, you have Batfamily fans playing in the sandbox and building their own narrative. common fandom headcanons are so common, you could practically write a guide on how the fanon Batfamily works with how consistent people are about it. or you could just read WFA, which is practically the new manifesto of it. even now, with this sudden spike in people talking about canon accuracy and "actually this happening in the comics", they don't actually care about the comics, just what they can cherry-pick for fodder. (even if they rob it of so much context they're just as OOC as they were before. see specifically: the recent phenomena with Tim Drake going from the woobified weakest member of the Batfam who everyone needs to save constantly and he's the smart boy but he's also the one with a sad tragic neglectful past who gets overlooked being the way Batfamily fandom played with Tim for years. but recently, people seem to be pushing this idea of a ridiculously badass Tim, Tim who *totally* has a kill count because of his actions in RR (2009) if you take them completely out of context, Tim who bested Ra's and is even more badass than Jason and he's the 17 yr old CEO of Wayne Industries being cool and flawless it becoming the new fandom zeitgeist. neither of these versions of Tim are canon, and the second fundamentally misunderstands his arc in RR (2009) but the shift has undeniably happened and it's been fascinating to watch. the same thing happened with people suddenly deciding Jason isn't the "angry violent Robin", he was a sunshine sweet boy who was perfect as Robin. neither of these are true, but the second feels more transgressive and new to fandom from cherry-picked panels.) the point is largely, Batfamily fans would rather build their own canon than play with the actual canon.

and then, you have Danny Phantom. i'm not into DP and have no interest to get into it, but what i know about it via fandom osmosis is this: DP fans sort of also don't give a fuck about canon. once again, the canon of DP is a sandbox, not a rulebook. the concepts and the characters are the draw, not the plot itself. i've seen DP posts explaining characters who are essentially OCs, but have become so dominant in the fandom via fandom osmosis. there are concepts and ideas about how Danny's powers work and potential concepts with his ghost nature that either aren't in canon or only happened once in canon and fans decided to expand on that and doesn't care about it's own in-universe logic. i've seen a lot of DP fans also express they haven't seen the show and they don't have plans to see the show. because the show is just some children's cartoon with some inconsistencies and a simple plot, as you'd expect from CN. the show isn't the point. no one cares about it's plot, they care about it's characters. they care about pushing the concept of half ghost boy to a logical extreme and seeing what you can get out of that. can you make it weird and fucked up. how much can you highlight on his trauma and body horror. what identity crisis can you give him and how can you build his interactions with other characters in his world around that and also make those characters fun and unique on their own. sure, the skeleton of canon is there, but the meat lies all in the fanon.

Miraculous Ladybug also exists in this similar vein. the characters, the concepts, those hold intrigue. and not even mentioning the fact the original concept for this show was supposed to be aimed to an older audience, so you can see the bones of something a bit more mature and nuanced under this typical, villain of the week magical girl transformation show. the show itself is a bit shallow and that's not a *bad* thing, it's just the medium it exists within being aimed towards children. but the concepts of a teen girl who's basically a sort of chosen one, a boy who doesn't know his father is the big bad of the show, and their weird identity porn love... square thing. those dynamics are *so* complicated and such a fun sandbox to play in with character-driven fandom.

so, at the core, you have three fandoms that care more about the culturally accepted fanon than the canon, with a good chunk of people often not even consuming the original canon content. and well, DC is an *easy* world to transpose just about anything onto. a boy who's half ghost and fighting supernatural threats? that makes sense, DC has ghost heroes like Deadman already. a girl who has this magical item that gives her animal themed superpowers? i mean that's practically the same thing as Vixen's Totem so that one makes sense too. they fit in pretty easy, no needing to change the world to accommodate them. and of course, if you're a fan of *one* fandom where you don't care for the canon content and only like the fandom sandbox, chances are, you'll get drawn in pretty easily to another fandom with similar mechanics. if you can teach yourself the DP fandom rules/concepts, you can teach yourself the Batfamily fandom rules/concepts. and well, since there's so much crossover in fandom members, why not write the fanfiction? crossover fics will always exist, but with such a shared member base, you have a really big boom.

it's why the characters you see DP interact with in DC are *always* characters who are far more driven by fanon than canon. Danny and John Constantine is a *massive* concept. for people who don't read Hellblazer comics. my poor partner, @divine-dominion has lamented to me pretty often about finding DP content in the Hellblazer tag that is essentially turning Constantine into an OC. because whatever version of Constantine is being written about isn't one bit comics accurate, and really, isn't trying to be. and the same thing happens with Shazam. you watch Young Justice and understand him well enough, you get drawn in by the character concept that you just run with it. people put their favorite blorbos in the same place because hey, wouldn't ghost boy be pretty cool in a city like *Gotham*. how would Batman even react to him. and then, the shipping. because ages for the Batfamily can be easily hand-waved and moved around based on where you plop Danny into the timeline, you have your pick of the litter with him, and same with Ladybug. of course there are the most popular ships but largely, the world is your oyster.

i don't think this is the worst thing in the world for either fandom. it's not hard to filter out the crossover tags and scroll past content i don't like. and sure, i see the appeal of making your blorbos from two different places meet. i've got my drafts *full* of DC/MHA crossover ideas because well, i like them both and think that would be cool. i think my only gripe with it is when DP or MLB crossover content seeps it's way into the wrong tags. using the above example, if you're writing about Danny and Constantine but there's zero content of the actual Hellblazer comics, i don't think you need the Hellblazer tag, just the Constantine character tag. tbh i wish this extended onto Ao3 and people utilized fandom tags better. if you're writing Batfamily fanfiction that is very clearly and obviously WFA driven in characterization and concepts, i would far prefer those fics be tagged with the WFA fandom tag rather than the Batman (comics) fandom tag. because well, you're not writing about the Batman comics. and there's nothing wrong with that, but it helps if you don't confuse yourself for content striving to interact with canon more. (this especially extends to Young Justice, by the way. if you're writing for the Young Justice tv show please, please stop using the Young Justice (comics) fandom tag. i'm at my wit's end- /lh)

the whole thing is fascinating. i've got zero interest in entering DP or MLB as fandoms because that's not my speed, but witnessing it as an outsider is my favorite pastime. i see a *lot* of posts going around the DC x DP space that are helping explain to people who's who, what's what, and understanding the canon/fanon of both of these properties so others can better enter the space. which is not something you'd need in a fandom driven only by it's canon content, but it is sweet watching others try to help newbies enter the space. it's a very inviting fandom space, i think, whether you lament it's existence or not. they're just sitting in their corner with their blorbos, and i gotta respect that. the posts explaining the Batfamily to DP fans are always fun for me to read, even if i disagree with some of the characterizations in them because it helps shine a light on what the fans of this crossover regard as "important" enough about each fandom to be worth including those sorts of primers. very fascinating stuff.

[chamerionwrites]

First things first: yeah! That’s an entirely valid interpretation of the story - in fact it’s probably the most straightforward interpretation of the story - and one that I have zero problems with. I can see how this might not be immediately clear, but I do not in fact have any objection to that reading. When people break out the above quote to argue that - as you said in the tags - “grimdark hopeless isn’t any more realistic or true to life than all the other types of stories we tell to each other,” I agree with them!

And I do think it’s important, here, to acknowledge the context in which those discussions are often taking place. Namely: there exists a very tired argument wrt SFF in particular that speculative worlds aren’t believable without racism/homophobia/misogyny/etc, and that defends even the most slapdash and thoughtless writing about such issues as “realism”. Funny enough this concern for realistic worldbuilding rarely seems to get raised in the name of exploring sociopolitical injustices, and how they’re created and reproduced, and their effects on people’s lives. Instead it’s usually deployed as an argument for slapping those injustices unchanged and unexamined onto every imagined world - with zero thought about all the other ways a setting might be wildly different from our own! - and also for Why All Protagonists Should Be Straight White Men. Nobody else in the universe has ever done anything interesting or worth reading about obvs! (This is an ideological position that we’re going to describe as “realistic” and “historically accurate” without the slightest hint of irony!) We love the mental puzzle and challenge of creating and imagining other worlds and ways of being….but in this one specific respect, the way our world is and has been is the ONLY realistic way that a world can or could (…or should?) ever be!

This argument has been done to death enough and we’re on the same page enough that I don’t feel the need to say much more about it here except that yeah, on top of being nakedly reactionary it’s also mind-numbingly stupid and boring. Long story short, my frustration in the op is very much NOT about people insisting on the artistic validity - or the artistic value - of imagining other, better worlds.

What does frustrate me is a loud minority of folks who insist on making a super unfounded (imo) rhetorical move from “[not] only pain is intellectual, [not] only evil is interesting” to “pain and evil, failure and darkness, CAN NEVER be interesting.” They’re not just arguing for the value of imagining better worlds. They’re arguing that their own preference for happy, escapist fiction is a moral imperative, that dystopia and tragedy are a failure of artistic and political imagination. And it’s that, specifically- that smug disdain for sad or dark or confrontational stories, the insistence that they could only ever appeal to pretentious reactionary edgelords - which I was objecting to up top. First because I think that’s an equally simplistic and ungenerous and impoverished way to engage with any fiction. Second, because I think it’s a wildly unjustifiable reading of Omelas specifically.

Because whatever sort of story you prefer and whatever you believe that Le Guin is saying, the truth is that the power and punch of that story derives from dystopia. The reason that people remember it, and argue about it, and write spin-off stories about it or in dialogue with it, is because that vividly horrific premise - the tortured child and the society that turns on the child’s suffering - gets into people’s heads and haunts them. I have enough respect for Le Guin to believe that if she had solely wanted to make a kind and just world real to the reader, and defend the artistic merit in doing so, she could have. But she didn’t. She sketched a society so upsetting that it practically spawned its own micro-genre of professional fix-it fics - and then she pointedly refused to elaborate on any alternative. (“The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist.”)

THAT is the context in which that quote about “the treason of the artist” exists. Which means one of two things. Either “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is astonishingly lacking in self awareness, an abject failure by its own artistic standards - or Le Guin was making a more complex and graceful point than just dystopias bad and boring. Those are the terms.

I happen to think she’s making a more complex and graceful point! I think those internal tensions in the story are productive, not self-contradictory. I don’t think that “a story about the world as it is” and “a story about the world as it should be” are in any way mutually exclusive. I think you can engage with an unjust reality without dismissing alternative possibilities. (eg “We live in capitalism; its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”) I think you can harness the metaphorical and emotional and provocational power of tragedy and darkness to insist that other, better worlds are possible. Isn’t that precisely what Omelas is doing? Isn’t that what a story like Black Sails is doing? The narrative works not despite but BECAUSE the audience is watching from a future in which we know there was no widespread successful 1715 slave revolt that overthrew colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the dramatic tension relies on some part of you believing in it. For the tragedy to work, you have to be able to imagine and mourn for that better future!

Does all of that make sense? I’m not saying your above reading of Omelas is wrong (to the contrary). Nor am I claiming that dark fiction is more intellectual & interesting, or that people aren’t entitled to their genre preferences. But ngl I have zero patience for anybody ripping that quote out of context to claim that a story about prevailing injustice can have no possible value. Injustice prevails every day, in real life. Many revolutions have failed in real life. We already live in Omelas - except that our version devours the lives of far more than one child. If the human mind and heart could comprehend the magnitude of corruption and colonialism, suffering and slavery, torture and rape and murder, ruined ecosystems and communities and dreams and lives and futures, that has been required and is STILL required so that you can buy bananas for sixty cents a pound at any time of year, then at almost any given moment you would be falling to your knees and weeping brokenly in the street.

Failure of imagination is one reason that kind of injustice is allowed to continue, for sure. A closely related reason is complacency. Because the proverbial Omelas kid is locked away in a basement where we don’t have to look. Because - as Black Sails spends a whole lot of narrative and thematic energy trying to illustrate - Civilization™️ is a machine that runs on mind-breaking amounts of devastating violence, and yet that violence is tolerated or celebrated when it isn’t entirely invisibilized.

So yeah, I agree that there’s a lot of value in imagining more just worlds. I’m simply not willing to concede that there’s no value in engaging with unjust worlds, because some people feel squeamish about injustice when a story asks them to truly look at it.

Guess I’m never going to stop seeing red about the unholy number of times I’ve seen people quote “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” out of context in order to condemn stories that focus on dark or troubling subject matter or that don’t end happily (“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”), when THE STORY ITSELF is about a society that closes its eyes to suffering and evil in order to live in comfort and has a hopeful but at best bittersweet ending

[haleswallows]

shamelessly from @bloggerspam

Rules: copy-paste this prompt. choose 4 of your favorite characters from 4 pieces of media as options and let your tumblr pals decide which one most suits your vibe.

Tagged: all of you (no pressure, and let me know so I can vote on yours 👀 )

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

fuck, ok, i'm watching episode forty again because i am nothing if not supportive when someone i know needs to devastate themself, but it does mean that i have once again watched the 'i'm a little hungry now. go make me a meal,' exchange.

i have noted before that this scene kills me, because it's the one time that fang duobing doesn't let li lianhua distract him. he sees the attempt at the distraction, he thinks he knows what's happening, and he says 'actually, no, not this time,' and he brushes it off.

li lianhua hands over the 'recipe book' knowing full well that if fang duobing opens it, he'll see what it is. he'll see what it is and he'll know what it means, because how could he not?

you have to wonder if part of li lianhua hoped he would. if he hoped that fang duobing would open it and realise what it was, because that would change things. it would have to change things. it's a quiet, miserable bet that he makes with himself: he knows fang duobing well enough to know that he won't look.

and he wins. fang duobing runs off, hoping against hope that he can still fix this, that he can still save li lianhua. he won't realise until he comes back and finds li lianhua gone and opens the book on the table to realise what he's been left.

you have to assume that fang duobing spends the next three months, if not longer, playing this back with a lot of what ifs in his head. what if he'd listened. what if he'd waited. what if he'd looked. it's the last thing that li lianhua ever asked of him, and he brushed it off.

li lianhua, on the other hand. fang duobing brushes him off, sets the book on the table and runs off to find guan hemeng. li lianhua wins his bet with himself: he knows fang xiaobao just as well as he thought he did. he knows him well enough that he can tell himself that he'll be fine.

he's known all along that it would end this way. he's known all along that he was dying and he would leave. he knew fang duobing wouldn't open that book, and he didn't; he freezes li lianhua and he leaves. and li lianhua watches him go, protesting, and when he thinks fang duobing is out of earshot, he goes quiet. he sighs. it worked just like he knew it would. he slumps a little bit. (maybe it worked just liked he hoped it wouldn't.)

and then

he fucking

smiles.

[darkandstormydolls]

Crooked saints alright-

Please note that most of these are totally insane and/or placeholders

Shot at Dawn: the story starts off with an execution by firing squad and also was inspired a bit by reading about the Shot at Dawn memorial

Siren Song: it’s the name of the ship, which came from my friend and I brainstorming pirate ship names

Fires/Fires of Gor’thall: it’s the name of the country. Where does the name of that country come from, you ask? Well, I stole it from a Minecraft map in the fifth grade (it was a building prompts map, which was the thing that inspired the world.) That was what one of the regions was labeled and I just rolled with it. I’m to attatched now to change it

A Prophet Without a God: a line one of the characters says in the dream that inspired the scene that became this story. Myxorali refers to herself as “a prophet without a god” and that just sounded so cool that I made it the title

Windchill: a friend suggested it to me, because so much of it was about the winter weather and, no matter how accurate, “Victorian game of thrones” does not really hold up as a permanent title

(I have others but they’re all named placeholders like “time travelers” or just the name of the main character)

(I know I have too many projects going on okay)

@ominous-faechild and anyone who wants to join in!

(I’m afraid I don’t know many writer people, especially not ones who haven’t already been tagged)

Writer tag game!

Tell me where you got the name for your wip!

I got "Anima Saga" because well. Anima are a core part of the initial concept. And saga bc it sounded neat. (I also call this wip t&o, as in totsuka and ola tho...)

@aromanticsky @seastarblue @thewhumpywitch @mottinthemainpot @inkwell-and-dagger @i-eat-worlds (no pressure) and whoever wants to!

[bootsieboots]

Can u tell who my favorite character ever iz? Can u... can u tell?

(Come look @zeddyzi i have stolen ur boiz identity. Im not giving it back)

[johnslittlespoon]

Buck + Bucky Timeline Info

For fic writers or just curious readers!

Referencing different archives and articles, I've done my best to compile John and Gale's Air Force timeline pre–England, because I feel like a lot of it gets muddied and sometimes we wanna write pre–MOTA canon events lol. Hope it comes in handy!

They meet (on or around) March 29, 1940 and become Flying Cadets at Randolph Field in Texas until August 30, 1940.

Still Flying Cadets, they move to Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas from September 9, 1940 to November 14, 1940.

Both promoted to 2nd Lieutenant Air Corp Reserve on Nov 15, 1940. A bit unsure on the events before their next promotion, because Gale seems to have gone to Barksdale Army Air Field in LA in March of 1941 for advanced flying school, but haven't found anything on whether John went too; I'm assuming he did.

Both promoted to 1st Lieutenant, Air Corp on April 25, 1942. Not clear on whether this took place in LA or back in Texas or elsewhere.

Became instructors for the 29th Bombardment Group at McDill Air Force Field in Tampa, Florida on May 25, 1942.

Promoted to Captain and transferred to Gowan Field, Boise Idaho, but possibly at different times? All I can find is that by October they were both for sure there, but Gale was promoted to Captain on July 28, 1942 and transferred then, and John was promoted to Captain in August of 1942, but it doesn't specify when he transferred.

At Gowan Field in October of 1942, Gale was promoted to Commanding Officer for the 350th Bomb Squadron/100th Bomb Group, and John was promoted to Operations Officer for the 100th Bomb Group.

Transferred to Walla Walla Army Air Field in Washington in November of 1942.

Transferred to Wendover Army Air Field in Utah in December of 1942.

Both promoted to Majors in Sioux City, Iowa in January of 1943.

Transferred to Kearny, Nebraska (assuming to Kearney Air Force Base) in February of 1943. Cue P1 of MOTA!

In May of 1943, John traveled with an advance party to Podington, England to prepare the base for the 100th Bomb Group. On May 27 1943, Gale (with the 100th) left for Bangor, Maine. From there, he flew out across the Atlantic and arrived at Thorpe Abbotts on June 9 1943. And we know what happens from then on. :-)

If any of this is incorrect or you have extra information to add to the timeline, please let me know!! I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed things, but this is how their flight school/pre–England timeline went to the best of my knowledge. Hopefully this is helpful for some other writers too! I can throw together a timeline for their missions/events during MOTA as well if that's something anyone's interested in; it's easy enough to find mission dates in comparison to finding these pre–100th dates, but it might be nice to have them all in one place. x

[deanpinterester]

having sally yell at baby percy feels so fundamentally wrong. i didn't mind when she got frustrated with him in the pool because that was just one instance of sally losing her temper but now it's like oh. this is just how the show version of her is.

like. idk. one of sally's defining traits was that she never got mad at percy. that didn't mean she was weak. that was her strength. that she could pull through tough times by putting a smile on her face, so that she didn't scare percy, so that she could protect him.

i just feel like it would have been a much more well-defined scene if we got to see how sally manages to talk percy out of the car by. being nice?? coaxing him??? explaining the situation in a way he would understand instead of just saying "there are things i have to do that you don't understand" (if you say that to a kid they are 100% not going to listen to you bc. yeah they don't understand!! so you have to explain it in a way they WOULD understand!!)

if sally had already been dating smelly gabe at this point, she could have leveraged this. she could have put a funny spin on it and said "i'm just trying to get you away from smelly gabe's stinky gym shorts." if she wanted baby percy to not feel like she was abandoning him and separating him from the rest of society, she could have said "the kids in there are just like you." she could have given him a keepsake, to show she will always be with him. there are SO many ways the writers could have spun this and they just didn't. they went the easy way out.

all of these flashback scenes are painting a very unfortunate picture that percy didn't actually have a good relationship with his mom. and i know that's not the vibe the show is trying to go for, but they've got to understand!! that not everyone who's watched the show has the read the books! we don't all automatically know that sally and percy have the bestest mother-son relationship ever! if you only show sally being frustrated at baby percy, we start to think oh dang, maybe this whole time percy doesn't actually have a good relationship with his mom!

[taruruchi]

Keeping promises? (Part 2 of this post)

Notes under the cut!

YES I FINALLY FINISHED IT RAHHHHHHH 19 DAYS AFTER MY BIRTHDAYSJNDJDKD Anyway. The whole necklace thing is a reference to Azul's chat from the lessons!

Shading gave me an aneurysm but at least it's done. My favorite part is the chibis tho so I hope everyone enjoys that <3 Even made Azul go :3 as a treat

Edit: @jewelulu I forgot u wanted me to tag u when I post art, so sorry 😔😔 But yeah new art :D

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

3’s a Crowd, 4’s a Posse

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (live action movieverse) | 15k | Read on Ao3

Summary: After coming back to make sure they all made it out alive, Shadow is subject to Sonic’s tendency to latch onto people who have tried to kill him.

Okay, like I said, this is my first time writing these characters, and I don’t really go here (yet,) so have mercy on me if the characterization is a bit off. I’ve wanted to write a fic for the movieverse since I watched the first one but I never did finish the drabbles, so it’s cool to have gotten absolutely taken over by Shadow and Sonic’s dynamic so I could write 15k of this. (Could have been more, but I honestly needed to stop before plot happened or somethingjKGLSDF) In any case, time for sleepover shenanigans and more! Enjoy!

Snippet:

Keep reading on Ao3