#fandom ramble

[getvalentined]

I mentioned this elsewhere but I can get into more detail about it here: one of my favorite things to do when writing fic for a series that isn't placed on some AU version of Earth is to use legitimate but archaic or obsolete terms for things: "dioxidane" instead of hydrogen peroxide, "bhanga" instead of marijuana, "shellshock" instead of PTSD, and so on. I think it gives the work a more realistic air while also solidifying the setting as being somewhere else, and still being something that a reader can look up if necessary.

Also a huge fan of repurposing common idioms for the fictional setting in question. I play in FF7, and these are a few of my favorites:

In for a penny, in for a pound → In for a gil, in for a grand

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic → Washing windows in Midgar at Meteorfall

A bull in a china shop → A grandhorn in a glass boutique

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth → Don't look a gift bird in the beak

Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I [verb] on company time → Boss makes a fortune, I make a gil, that's why I [verb] while I'm paying the bills

Cold as a witch's tit → Chilly as Shiva's armpit

Hung like a horse → Built like a behemoth

If wishes were horses beggars would ride → If wishes were chocobos beggars would fly

Idioms catch on because there's a particular flow and rhythm to them, so you can't always just swap out a word and expect it to work—you can't just plug in "chocobo" everywhere common turns of phrase use "horse," for instance, because the extra syllables throw off the flow and make the phrase awkward to say. You gotta figure out the pattern in the idiom, where the emphasis hits, etc., and then rework that to work in-universe.

Stuff like this is very silly, but it really makes a difference to me with regard to readability and suspension of disbelief, so I really enjoy doing it in my own work, and it's always fun to see it in someone else's!

[ilminnestrone]

Guys, I hate to be that person, but Genesis and Angeal being older than Sephiroth is not a theory: it's the literal narrative of Crisis Core.

Genesis is an academic with a perfect use of language for dramatic purposes, and he told the story of the Jenova Project in perfect order: first Project G, then Project S, using the failures of the former to ensure a good success of the latter.

The progress is clear: Failure (Genesis) < still not there (Angeal) < success (Sephiroth)

Sephiroth being the youngest is not speculation, but intentional storytelling. They could always retcon this, but there was no doubt in the original script, at least the fact that Project G came first.

There could still make Genesis the middle child because their order of birth has not being stated, but there's no doubt about Sephiroth being the youngest, since Genesis stated it in Nibelheim.

Yeah, it would be awkward having a character called "The Origin" not being the first born, but in meta he would still be the origin of the crisis, so it could work. I don't like this option -logically the biggest "error" should be on the first try- but that's the only non-canon thing they could change without retconning.

I could go on telling you that basically Genesis also told us that Sephiroth is genetically sterile. Which makes perfect sense: Hojo could have just made another S by reproduction if it was possible.

I have a bunch of theories about the genetics of AGS, but they could sum up in "Genesis and Angeal are chimeras, Sephiroth is an hybrid" (and most hybrids, expecially males, are indeed sterile due to extra chromosomes).

[secret-shipping-society]

Everytime I see antis go "predators will use 'proship' content to groom minors", it makes me want to scream.

The majority of groomers actually DON'T use minor x adult fictional content. How do I know this? BECAUSE I WAS GROOMED. SERVERAL TIMES. Groomers want their victim to feel special and in the majority of cases, they try to cover their tracks. Aka, they don't use minor x adult content because then they can't go "well I didn't know that [victim] was a minor".

Groomers try to bank on the hope that their victim feels isolated enough that they won't tell anyone. And they tell them things like "you're so grown up, you're so mature, etc." So it would be antithetical to then send fiction that proves that they think the opposite way.

Plus it's a genuinely bad argument in my opinion. We don't ban violent video games despite multiple mass shooters claiming that video games were their inspiration. We recognize that the blame isn't on the video game in that case. So why are people advocating for the blame and censorship of the content in this case?

I understand that it's difficult. I don't like the idea of kids getting hurt by creeps on the internet. But banning and censoring fiction won't help that. You want to believe it will because then maybe, you're helping people. But you're not. You're just screaming at them and accusing them of deplorable things, throwing around important words and degrading their meaning.

Banning fiction and getting outraged over pixels does nothing for the real people in reality.

[soleminisanction]

Here's one of my continuity pet peeves. I don't blame anybody for this because continuity is huge, the writers themselves seem to forget this all the time, and WFA especially spreads a ton of misinformation, but it is something that'll make me instantly back out of any fanfic or headcanon that uses it as a basis.

If you create some tradition Bruce celebrates with his kids/Robins at certain points in their development -- especially if you're trying to comment on the Tim's 16th Birthday thing -- and you include Stephanie as a recipient in any way, you are 100% barking up the wrong tree.

Steph became Robin when she was 18. Maybe the last few months of 17 at the very youngest. We know this because she's two years older than Tim, and Tim's 16th was kind of a big deal. Steph's two months of probation (minus the three weeks she explicitly didn't work after the Scarab incident) was the longest she ever worked with Bruce in any capacity, and she didn't even know he was Bruce Wayne at the time. Prior to then her primary contacts were Tim and Cass, with some secondary training via Babs, Helena and the Birds of Prey that Bruce arranged but he only ever contacted her sporadically. After War Games and the Robin kerfuffle that followed she almost exclusively worked with Babs, Dick and Damian.

It's weird because I mostly see this happening in stories that're intended to twist the knife on how differently Tim-as-Robin got treated compared to the others but it just... rubs me the wrong way.

[abbey-abdominal]

Oh. Oh. Okay. Well, then. Thanks Glitch. Thanks a lot.

I fucking love this show. Shit was wild. It was beautiful.

[average-hyperfixator]

Yk since I like to hc some faith characters as autistic (in this case Gary) partially because anytime my undiagnosed ass tries projecting some of my own traits onto a character they end up being autistic traits but THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS RANT IS ABOUT

WITH GARY I’d like to shove my love of human anatomy and torture/execution methods onto him bc like. Yes he would have a special interest in forms of torture/execution he was AROUND to witness some of them LIVE.

Also I like to think that Gary just finds humans and their anatomy fascinating and finds torture/execution methods as ways of “pushing the human body to it’s limit”

However, since he’s a demon and a cult leader no one wants to listen to him talk about blood eagles, crucifixions, iron bulls, the intricacies of Aztec death rituals, anything relating to torture/execution in general, because they think he’s crazy.

Admittedly he is but like C’MONNNN LET HIM INFO DUMPPPP

Me if you even care

[silverantagain]

I want to un-archive lock all of my fics bc I miss my guest readers! I miss seeing the "x amount of guests also left kudos on this work" :(

But like there's been more controversies happening in the fanfic community (readers believing that they're entitled to authors' works and threatening to re-upload deleted fics, websites scraping the archive to plagiarize fics without crediting the author, antis getting worse, proship people purposely antagonizing antis, an uptick in guests leaving hate comments on fics, etc) and it makes me think that it's probably a good idea to keep them locked.

My multi chapters aren't locked only because they're unfinished, while all of my finished works will remain locked.

I miss the old vibe fanfic communities had. I miss how cozy it was, readers and authors got along and now it's so impersonal. When I initially started writing my fics, I'd sometimes get anons on my Tumblr leaving sweet asks, and idk. Now it's nothing, it's like the community is kinda gone. So separate. I try to leave comments whenever I can, I want people to feel the way I did when I first started writing.

Idk maybe I'm just crazy. I feel as though fandom has changed so much. It also used to be so easy to make fandom friends. And I feel like because everything is so separate, you can't really connect with people anymore. Maybe I'm just bad at making friends.

Maybe I'm just different, and projecting my differences onto fandom as a whole.

[otaku6337]

The Entitlement, and the Appreciation, in Fandom

Imma just shove in a quick “this is a generalisation/ a trend I happen to have personally seen for my friends and I/not meant as a personal attack or lecture” disclaimer etc etc, because it isn’t always the case and definitely isn’t all of this demographic of readers, most of them are lovely-

But why does it seem as though the entitled readers are almost always the ones who don’t post fics themselves?

I feel like every time I get a shitty comment offering unasked for criticism or complaining about my choices or being demanding about something, I always click on the account and there it is, yet again, the “0 works”.

You don’t know what it’s like to spend hours, days, weeks, of your life writing something, and then mustering up the confidence and courage to post it online, where it might not get any attention, or where people with too much time on their hands and too much emphasis on their opinion might try to tear it apart, or where, and this is the bit you hope for, at least one person might just enjoy it, maybe even enough to tell you that they did.

We’re not magicking up some “product” for you to “review” like this is Amazon or some new restaurant in your town. We’re not machines, we’re not being paid, we’re not here for you.

If you have never posted a fic and you decide to try and criticise my work, I will never respect your criticism on it. It’s as simple as that. You’re not achieving anything. I’m not going to change my writing to suit you, particularly if you’re an arsehole about it.

If a regular reader asked me a respectful question, I would happily explain. If a new username asks me a respectful question, I will explain.

If some random person comes in with passive aggressive comments, demeaning jokes, or criticism in general, thinking that they have any right to try and tell me what writing should be, they will be ignored at best, or refuted at worst. If you haven’t written, then you have no idea.

To the readers who don’t write and who are lovely - keep doing you. You’re wonderful.

Being a positive, encouraging reader is just as big a part of fandom as being a creator, in many ways, and I will always appreciate a kind reader no matter what perspective or fandom background they come from. You don’t have to have written fics to be able to appreciate someone else’s writing, and I’m lucky that so many of my readers and those in my fandom circles embody that.

And if me saying this upset you, then perhaps examine your own previous fandom experiences. Consider what perspective you come into fandom with - do you create, are you a reader/watcher etc, are you both? How do you treat people in fandom whose views or creation differ to your own? Are you, intentionally or not, giving pointless, mean, and unasked for criticism, “constructive” or otherwise?

Do you appreciate what the other people in fandom do for you?

If the answer is no, then it’s probably time to think about that. To remember that fandom is a hobby, not the be-all and end-all of your life, or anyone else’s.

It’s okay not to like something. It’s not okay to be entitled or cruel because of that difference.

And so here endeth the ramble, or whatever. Just, please, consider what the writers and artists in fandom do for you, how much time and effort they put in, and how your complaint is never going to “fix” whatever your personal issue with their stuff is.

If you don’t like, don’t interact.

And if you haven’t written and posted fics? I’m never going to take your criticism seriously. I don’t need to either. It’s not like I’m trying to sell a product  ;)

[squicks-and-giggles]

I'm almost done with ToH, and something struck me about it that I wanna try to articulate. A lot of this is colored by growing up as a medicine and surgery nerd surrounded by people who were a lot more squeamish than I was about those topics, so bear that in mind.

The boiling isles are characterized throughout as being... pretty damn gross, in a biological kind of way. The whole society is established on the body of a massive dead creature, so landmarks are discussed and named in terms of anatomy. The scenery is made up of tendons and veins, of teeth and bones and offal. It probably smells bad.

And this kind of thing is a trademark of horror. Body horror is frequently used as shorthand for things that are fundamentally evil or opposed to humanity in their nature. But ToH is very matter-of-fact about it. The way it presents all this borderline-gore is as completely mundane, or even just shy of scientific. And when you think about it, there's no reason that "this character has too many teeth and eyeballs, woooooooooo" should be a signifier of evil. Those are just... body parts. We are all ultimately sacks of the same meat, so sacks of meat are actually kind of mundane, even if they're startling to look at initially.

Which makes sense with the overall message of the show: Just because something looks freaky or scary at first, or gives you an instinctive "nope" vibe, doesn't tell you anything about its actual substance or character. Those things that disgust you, shock you, make you want to dry heave--anything can be a source of beautiful and invaluable knowledge when looked at from a different perspective.

This ends up baked into the very setting--we consider our nature beautiful, and Eda does too. Hers is just, y'know. Made of meat.

[some-pers0n]

I'm always entertained by people doing those "canon VS fanon" memes where both are misunderstanding characters to such a violent degree 'cause like

[girlashfur]

new tumblr game. put in the tags a GENUINE flaw your fav(s) has. cant be something like "too kind" or "loves too much" like something genuinely bad messed up morally wrong they are or have done

[getvalentined]

Thinking about Sephiroth's motivations in Rebirth and getting super emotional because fuck, man, I get it. I get it. It doesn't excuse anything, but I get it in a way I can't even describe.

The Gi establish that those who aren't native to Gaia can't join the Lifestream basically at all, they're held separate entirely; the Gi have never been in it directly, their ghosts wander in a little liminal space they crafted for themselves. This is because they're entirely foreign—the Gi appear to be interdimensional travelers that were somehow marooned on Gaia at some point in ancient history, where they died and were left as ghosts, lingering forever unable to move on.

Sephiroth is slightly different in that he was born on Gaia and he does have human parents as well as Jenova, so he can force his way into the Lifestream as we saw in Lifestream Black and Advent Children, but he can't disseminate into it. He's still conscious and cognizant in some capacity even as the Lifestream fights to strip away the parts of him that belong on the planet, the parts of him that were human. This is, presumably, why his memory is all fucked up postcanon, whether we're talking novels or spinoffs; the Lifestream has been trying to take him but it can't, because there's too much Jenova in him, so the parts of him that have survived are just the parts that are the son of Jenova. He hasn't been fully worn down by the time the Crisis rolls around, likely because his body is still partially intact in the Northern Crater. (Again, see Lifestream Black, as well as the OG.)

And here's where everything starts to hurt.

He's alone. No matter what Sephiroth does, he's entirely, completely alone. There is nothing in the world like him, the planet won't accept him—it's not death, it's a homecoming, and Sephiroth has nowhere to go home to.

And he's done this before, this is a repeating timeline, he's been through this before over and over and over. And he's always alone in the end. He's always there at the edge of creation, the end of all things, the kindling of a new universe, and he's still there. All alone.

So this time he's calling for the ultimate Reunion. He's not just calling his Clones home, he's pulling all of time and space together into a single planet, bolstered with the lingering Lifestream of hundreds, thousands of others, timelines where things fell apart and Gaia sat on the precipice of death before Sephiroth found her and tore the Lifestream loose to feed the timeline he's chosen as the most likely to survive.

Three friends go into battle. One is captured (Genesis, in Deepground), one flies away (Angeal, who chose his own death), and the one who remains becomes a hero.

Heroes save the world.

But it doesn't matter, does it? Because he's going to be alone. Zack asks how he could turn his back on everything, and he says "Easily." Aerith asks how he could possibly want an eternity alone—because she doesn't understand, that's what Sephiroth has waiting for him anyway. That's all he's ever had waiting for him.

Sephiroth is going to save a world that will never accept him, because that's what heroes do, and then he's going to be alone forever. But this time, for the first time in every timeline he's experienced, he's going to do it on his own terms. He knows what he is, he knows how this ends, he has no questions of that. But for once in his existence—and it's a long existence, unending, eternal in a way that neither human nor Cetra could never even comprehend—he's going to control exactly how that happens.

Sephiroth knows he can't control whether or not he ends up alone, but he can choose how it happens. He can do things right this time. Maybe if he saves the world it will be different. Maybe the planet will accept him. Maybe he won't be alone.

And if he is (and he knows he will be), at least it was on his own terms.

At least, for once in the whole of creation, Sephiroth had a single flicker of control over his own existence. For once in the entirety of existence, Sephiroth made a decision for himself.

He'll have to live with that decision, alone, for eternity—but it was his.

[ilminnestrone]

This was originally meant as a reply to @rottenpumpkin13, but I didn't want to drown her in an endless rant, so I'll continue here.

A lot of fanwork that depicts homosexuality has its roots in mysogyny. I said what I said. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it myself, I wasn't brought up in a magical bubble and everyone is entitled to their kinks, including me. I'm an AFAB masochist sub with a humiliation kink, so believe me when I say it's perfectly fine to enjoy things that could be considered mysoginistic in the safety of our bedrooms.

Let's start with the obvious here: the seme/uke stereotype has obvious homophobic roots, especially when it is culturally appropriated and taken out of its original context (a context in which it is mainly aimed at young women who want to identify with the uke character). The sterotype being:

the top is always the dominant one, he's tough and strong, sometimes even sadistic and brutal and quite abusive;

the bottom is always submissive and breedable, feminine, frail and small, and he looks like he's not really enjoying himself.

Let me stress the homophobia in case it's not clear: you have to be feminine to enjoy dick. And let me stress the mysogyny: you have to be frail and not really into sex to be feminine.

So here we are: bottom-shaming (yes, it's a real thing!) was a thing even in ancient Greece and Rome. "To be fucked in the ass" still means "to have it bad" in Italian. The point is that being penetrated is humiliating because it's something women do, and being a woman is inherently bad. And if it's humiliating it must be painful too. Both the giver and the receiver orgasms are always depicted as some sort of debasing punishment.

There is no such thing as top and bottom stereotypes we portray in our fanwork in real homosexual relationships. Bulky hairy men can be submissive bottoms. Small twinks can be relentless tops. Most gay people switch. The younger partner can top the older. People with the same body type have sex (and it's actually easier that way, this comes from someone who's 5' and can't do certain things because of size difference!).

You know how much I love @birdblacksocialclub. One of the reasons being the fact she depicts achillean men in a realistic way: her Genesis and Sephiroth are both slender and muscular, roughly the same size and they want to have sex with each other because they're both young and hot. Who's the top? Probably Sephiroth, but it's actually unclear most of the time. Who's the dominant one? Ah, it depends, it's a battle of wits. Who's mainly? Both, because they're fucking men in their twenties. Who enjoy himself most? BOTH. They're smug and hedonistic about it. They're having sex for God's sake, it's one of the most pleasurable things in life alongside with pizza and punching a nazi.

This isn't really going anywhere. It's just my desire to see more variety and realness in gay fiction. I want to be able to find a Bottom!Sephiroth fic and not be overwhelmed because it's the first one I've ever read. I want people not to see a soft-spoken and queer coded character and immediately assume he wants to be pegged. I don't want people depict oral sex as submissive (it could be but it realy depends on how you do it). I don't want people to portray a character as small and feminine just to get him fucked.

And fucking please, let bottoms enjoy sex. We do. A lot. I swear to God, we're not suffering (even if we whine).

(And yeah, this is basically why I can't really stomach Omegaverse stuff).

[secret-shipping-society]

Watching people that are ace outright claim that any sex depicted in media is automatically porn and then blame it on them being ace. And it's like. Babe. I'm ace and I can recognize it's not porn. I get uncomfortable when there's sex scenes too but to act like a few seconds/minutes of actors fake humping under a blanket is the equivalent to any porn ever is just strange.

Sex scenes can have merit and meaning to the plot. This doesn't mean that all sex scenes do. But we shouldn't stomp out any and all sex scenes just because some of them "make you feel icky". Jeez.

Sometimes sex is there to show how a character (healthily or unhealthily) copes. Sometimes it's there to show us that their situation is so bad that even normal nice things aren't nice to them. Sometimes sex is there to move a relationship forward, or as an allegory for something else. And sometimes it's just there because the average viewer likes sex.

We shouldn't be cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Stop acting like sex (an important facet of the average human's experience) should be banned from media. :/

[beanthebugboi]

Canon/Headcanon likelihood chart

So I've been thinking about @macdenlover 's "levels of headcanon" chart (about how heavily a HC is influenced by canon), so I decided to make my own scale about how likely a HC is to be true (including different levels of canon) using queer cartoon characters as examples :)

I just spent an hour making this because I was bored. Enjoy.

Inspiration:

[abbey-abdominal]

I really don’t understand why Pomni’s character has this forced implication that she’s this pathetic loser (even by Glitch the studio). Like are we watching the same show, Glitch? Pomni is … kind of a heroic protagonist. She’s so far from being pathetic, but ??? Hey, man, that new Pomster plush is adorable. Whatever man.