#by all the writers who fuck up (-> longest running canon timeline writing)

[takaraphoenix]

The thing about comic fandom is that there are so many characterizations and iterations of characters, in main timeline alone thanks to reboots or simply to... different writers on different series with very different takes, on top of adaptations and Elseworlds.

So you encounter "he would not fucking say that", very often in regards to actual canon content. And the majority of them are usually valid and right.

You go by a metric of "okay but this has been canon for So Long that the new, changed, different canon is contradictory to a long history of canon". Usually.

But sometimes, you hear people yell about inaccurate characterizations and you keep reading the comics and you keep running into... very consistent... characterizations, throughout different stories, different takes, different timelines even, and at one point, you should consider that maybe the character just isn't what you want them to be.

Some characters are just bad. Bad people, making bad choices and bad decisions. And it's not an inconsistent writing issue or slander of the character. If dozens of writers and dozens of series/runs/adaptations all agree on it, maybe it's you who wants this character to be something they're not.

[mumufic]

My ranty Author Notes to address questions on my Three Sisters fic

So, I feel like I should put up some notes on a number of recurring questions I get in the comments, for those who don’t really read my responses (because I do provide some detailed explanations for why certain things are happening in my fic, but I get it if sloughing through comments for insight isn’t your thing; it isn’t mine either, hence the A/N.)

Why is Lily so stupid / obtuse / blind about Snape? Let’s level-set a couple of things: A) Lily is about as Gryffindor as they come, and some of the more common character flaws of people who belong to that house is that they rather tend to think a lot less of situations before diving in. That’s the case for Lily in this fic. Snape was her first magical friend that she’d ever met. She cherishes that friendship because she knows it’s returned even though she might not agree with a lot of Snape’s beliefs, not to mention Snape was the first person who told her that all the strange things that have been happening to her was the result of her being magical. For a child feeling the otherness of her abilities so keenly around her perfectly normal, muggle working class family, that is a huge thing. For the first time, Lily thought she’d met someone who understood her and the things she could do, and for that to have happened to her as a child, the person who validates that part of her being is going to play a very central role in her life until she reaches a breaking point. In the books, that breaking point was when Snape’s bigotry included her. For the longest time, he’d always excluded her from his hateful rhetoric, and there’s passages in the books that support that. B) Lily is a kid. She’s 11, and she probably met Snape at a much younger age (I’m guessing around 8 or 9) Kids who value their friends can sometimes be stupidly loyal to them even when their friends are behaving badly. Why do you think peer pressure is such a huge thing among young people? It’s partly because they value the person who is their friend to the point of being foolhardy over said friend’s bad actions. C) A lot of Snape’s bigotry goes over Lily’s head, because she’s never been taught to find differences between magical and non-magical people. Her parents obviously love her and Petunia the same and for her, that means they’re no different. She doesn’t understand the superiority Snape feels over Petunia, and because she doesn’t understand it, and also because she’s just a stupid kid who doesn’t really know better or even understands the slurs that come out of Snape’s mouth, she doesn’t think too much of it. Notice that Lily actually does call him out when he’s being mean to Petunia in ways that she can understand, when Snape tells Petunia that he had no place being in Platform 9 3/4 for example. But then Snape follows it up with reasoning that seems to be perfectly sound - Platform 9 3/4 is a magical location; it might not be the best place for Petunia to be. As for the spoon encounter, Lily had some basic understanding of accidental magic, thanks to Holly, and mostly chocked up that unfortunate event to Snape’s accidental magic rearing up from Petunia’s mean-spirited taunting. Petunia isn’t innocent in that scene, if you go back to it and think critically on it, look at it in the eyes of a normal rational adult. She’s just presented as being sympathetic because the narration is from Holly’s POV, and Holly likes this Petunia and hates Snape absolutely. Lastly, pretty much everything I have on Snape during the Summer with the Evanses part of this story have a basis in canon. He was hateful to Petunia, but Lily constantly made excuses for him, thinking that he’s just mean in general because of his difficult family life. The same goes when they get to Hogwarts. Snape spouts the same bigoted things the Slytherin Purebloods say, and Lily makes excuses for him. That’s canon. Lily made excuses for Snape’s behavior to her sister and her friends (especially Mary, who was canonically muggleborn) until she found she couldn’t anymore because his hatefulness suddenly spilled over to include her. Does that make Lily stupid? Probably, yes. Does it make her human? Fucking hell yes, and anyone who thinks that they won’t behave that way have clearly never figured out conflicted love-hate relationships with toxic people, so good for you, but these things happen to others, and it shouldn’t be surprising. There’s a basis for this in reality, and there’s a basis for Lily’s blind loyalty to Snape in canon.  And barring all of that if you don’t agree, it’s my fic, and I choose to write her this way. If that makes her a stupid character and you think I’m assassinating Lily’s characterization from canon, your interpretation is valid, but so is my right to write what I want as long as I’m not making a cent off of this. Thanks.

Why is Sirius spouting the bigotry he vehemently disavowed in OoTP? And why did he call Holly a mudblood? I don’t know about you, but I think Sirius had to have been an extremely sheltered child, growing up in a magical house surrounded on all sides by a muggle neighborhood. I think he started questioning why he wasn’t allowed to play with other children whom he could probably see from his bedroom window, but he didn’t actually know how and why he needed to reason it out with his parents until he met people who taught him how to articulate the feelings he had over his parents’ bigotry against muggles and muggleborns. As for why he called Holly a mudblood, again, has a lot to do with the normalization of hate in the household he grew up in. Walburga and Orion Black taught their children to hate anything and anyone that didn’t subscribe to the same Pureblood rhetoric as they did. And since Sirius thought Holly lived with the Evanses, who were muggle, and not with the Potters who were Purebloods, he didn’t see a distinction for her blood status from Mary or Lily, who were actually muggleborn. Hell, I don’t even think Sirius understood blood status all that well at all as an 11-year-old. He was just repeating shit he heard his parents say because he didn’t know any better. I’m not going to tell you how to interpret your reading of my fic, but generally, I wouldn’t ascribe knowledge that I know of characters and events to the characters within the story, because they can’t be expected to know and understand what I know and understand, especially in a fic written in such a limited POV, and things like Holly’s blood status, would not be known to Sirius because Holly had never actually told James or him about her parents, other than that they were Potters. And while you can make a case for the fact that Holly told Sirius and Regulus in Chapter 7 that she’s not muggleborn, I still stand by the idea that the Black exclusionist ideas that Walburga and Orion taught their children would still have Sirius identifying her as one simply because of where he thinks she grew up in.

Why is Holly so stupidly letting so many details from her timeline out to her friends? I think we should all cut Holly some slack for spilling so many details about her life to Lily and Petunia. She’s an orphan who’ finally met the girl who would be her mother. She can’t shut up about her life because OMG my MUM! I finally got to meet her! On top of that, up until the point where Holly met Fleamont Potter, the last time Holly had been warned about meddling with time had been when she was in third year, and it was rushed and the warning hadn’t even been made to her; it had been McGonagall warning Hermione and Hermione repeating the same information to her. So the meddling about time? Holly didn’t exactly give a shit. Lastly, we have so many references in canon of Harry Potter being an exceptionally impulsive little blockhead to the point where he constantly gets himself into trouble. Running after the Philosopher’s Stone in PS, continuing on to fight the basilisk and look for Ginny while Ron tries to get help in CoS, haring off to the Ministry in OoTP, Sectumsempra in HBP, uttering Voldemort’s name and getting them caught by Snatchers in DH… the list is actually pretty damn long. So why should it not be a character flaw for Holly in this fic to be stupidly impulsive in the information she gives out to a person she thinks is her mother, one she’s loved and idolized and put on a pedestal all her life? Why shouldn’t she spout similarly incriminating information to a boy she knows would be her godfather, whom she trusted and loved up until he got killed? It’s a character flaw, yes, and I’m not here to write perfect characters, because perfect characters who only do the right and intelligent thing make for a dry, boring read. If you weren’t about annoying flaws like this, then you’re welcome to click off my fic and find some other story where Harry is the perfect godsent angel come to save us all. That’s not what this story is about.

Why aren’t you patching up any of these inconsistencies that multiple people have already pointed out? Some of them, because that is how I want to write the characters in my story. Some of them, because there will be points in the future where these things are addressed and resolved. And yet still some of them because I don’t want to. Yes, even the stupid ones that really don’t make sense and should probably be changed. I don’t want to go back and change them. That’s how I am as a fic writer, and last I checked, this is still my fanfic.

Want to have a say in how I’m planning the characterization and plotting out? I’m still looking for a beta who I’d like to be able to help me with things like plot inconsistencies, annoying characterization (ok, shut up about Lily already. I didn’t make her this stupid; JKR did when she wrote Lily insisting on her friendship with Snape all the way up to fifth year!), and just generally talk about how and where I intend for the story to go.

If you’d like to beta for me, hit me up on my main Tumblr, @mumuinc  or DM me on Discord; my profile is mumuinc#7662.

[sixteenthbuny]

Fanfiction Questions

Fandom Questions

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in? warrior cats

2. What is your latest fandom? Doctor Who

3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in? BBC Sherlock

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms? no??? but wc is tough to cope with tbh-

5. Which fandoms have your written fanfiction for? YGO, Assassin’s Creed, Warrior Cats, Naruto, Bleach, Noragami, D. Gray-Man, Supernatural, BBC Sherlock, Doctor Who, Avengers, Hobbit? etc.

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in. YamiYugi, Yullen, Destiel, Sam/Gabriel, Tony/Gabriel, Johnlock, Sheriarty, MinaKushi, NaruSasu, TenRose, human!Smaug/Bilbo (LMAO), KakaObi, KakaNaru, Desmond/Altair

7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in. i’ve only felt the NoTP for Sherlolly tbh-

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom? BBC One

9. What are the best things about your current fandom? the amount of debates on tjlc and theories tbh, it get hilarious and ridiculous, and mofftiss is probably having as much fun as i am watching everyone

10. Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in? no, not really

Ship Questions for your Current Fandom

11. Who is your current OTP? Johnlock, Sheriarty

12. Who is your current OT3? don’t got one but i’d read a good threeway anyday

13. Any NoTPs? SHERLOLLY

14. Go on, who are your BroTPs? tbh, Sherstrade

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love? LMAO MYSTRADE-

16. Are their any popular ships in your fandom which you dislike? S H ERLOCLLY

17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite? Johnlock, and i love them because their chemistry echoes from hell and back in all 200+ SH adaptations

18. What ship have you written the most about? ObiKaka

19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them? i don’t think so

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking? Sheriarty, Mystrade, human!Smaug/Bilbo and Twelara

Author Questions

21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote? oh god.. idk? warrior cats, definitely :) such old times, i miss those days

22. Is there anything you regret writing? um yuri licking a knife fic lmao

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it. i’ve got a few, and one of them is “sherlock in the vignette” because it fits my short attention span and it allowed me to cover a female-genderqueer!Sherlock falling in love with a male!John because i don’t see those often. it’s also tragic in some ways and it gave me stress-free flexibility to allow johnlock biological child happen without any scientific probability complications that fucks me over like it has been for the past four years lmao.

24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit? Live in the Moment. a plotty naruto mess fic..

25. What’s your most popular fanfic? um. probably Disturbed w/ 44k reads, 120+ favs and 100+ follows, and Ephemeral with ~10k reads, 130+ favs and 190+ follows (both on ff.net)

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles? sometimes they embody the main plot point or the whole point of the story or a simple characteristic or they’re just punny and random

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries? SU MMARIAES SKSJNXBFK

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of? um.. i’m not sure; either Disturbed, Ephemeral or The One Who Is Bound; they were liked and they would probably be something action-based, or a character?

29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not? no, i usually am the beta reader and i am my own beta reader

30. What inspires you to write? my muse and thoughts and fascination with the concept of fandom

31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing? “it’s brilliant, i love it, you do amazing with your plots and word choices,” kind of complements. they’re really nice and i feel really appreciated and loved when people say those things to me

32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you? i always listen to music. it’s like an addiction tbh, and i listen to varying things from chilltrap to epic steampunk mixes. doesn’t inspire me for sHIT tho lmaoo

33. Do you write oneshots, multi-chapter fics or huuuuuge epics? all of them on a good muse :) but mostly huge epics because i do not have chapter tolerance

34. What’s the word count on your longest fic? um ??? 50k? or 80k. somewhere in between, but i’ve written up to 100k words before dividing it into two stories that never made it because the decision may or may not have been a bit premature asdjkijhahn

35. Do you write drabbles? If so, what do you normally write them about? no, i usually try but they tend to fail

36. What’s your favourite genre to write? angst, hurt/comfort, family, romance, action, adventure, drama and suspense

37. First person or third person - what do you write in and why? third person present or pst tense, depending on the story. i don’t do first pov unless i’m r e a l l y feeling it lol

38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs? i don’t use ocs as often but they have come across my stories multiple times

39. What is you greatest strength as a writer? i’m not sure. my craftiness for a plot, i guess.

40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing? staying with it. so basically what everyone else suffers from LOL

Fanfiction Questions

41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading: The Loss of Flesh and Soul on AO3 (Sherlock/Silence of the Lambs) http://archiveofourown.org/works/387339 and that is literally it :(

42. List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing: @vitruvianwatson tammy hybrid (already tagged) @blackkatmagic @highfunctioninggaybaby i haven’t really got anyone else on my tumblr that i read.. not off the top of my head at least, but they're all so much fun to follow and read!

43. Is there anyone in your fandom who really inspires you? Sherlock and Minato tbh, their minds, priorities and moralities are inspiring

44. What ship do you feel needs more attention? um mystrade lmao especially in canon

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic shit, i’m not sure. i’ve got a lot, but i really like reverse and backslide :) they were so original and golden for me, thanks to kat for blessing fanfiction.net with that lol

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why? probably Disturbed, The One Who is Bound, The One Who is Free and maybe Son of Pseudo Gods ??? only two of them are finished tho

47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr - where do you prefer to post and why? all three of them, everyone’s stories on here are fantastical whenever i run into them and i need some more on my timeline

48. Do you leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/Why not? yes, sometimes. it depends on the amounts of reviews already received/types of criticism. and my energy to actually write one beyond saying (contextually) “I LOVE IT I NEED MORE AAAAA”

49. Do you care if people comment/reblog your writing? Why/why not? DEFINITELY! i would recommend everyone at least give some feedback or love, especially to new authors. criticism is vv important :^)

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction? i started by writing my own at the age of 8 thinking “omggggg no one else has EVER DONE THIS! I WILL BE THE FIRST!” and then discovering many other authors..

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

SH I P AWARS A RE OVE R. L E TTHE M BE O VER

and the lack of recognition is kind of ridiculous. i’m talking like professional recognition because i have read fucking. fanficjtions that harare better than actual fucking bookks fjosbfknd