#for a certain one of my blorbos without people assuming i want them to Stop Writing That

[roguetelepaths]

It's not often I dip my toes into shipcourse, as an adult who does not like minor/adult ships or harassment and would rather curate my environment in a way that allows me to pretend the former doesn't exist than go out of my way to engage with it for cheap internet outrage points, but one place where the proship ideology loses me is in this idea of having to go along to get along. You can dislike things, sure, but you'd better not talk about the fact that you dislike things or why, because that's Yucking Someone's Yum, and don't you know YKINMKATO? If you complain, you're being a killjoy at best, and at worst, you're actively contributing to harassment.

I want to be able to talk about common ships and tropes in my fandom that I dislike, things that make me uncomfortable or that I think are deserving of criticism, without making it seem like I'm trying to control the things other people write. I'm not. I'm trying to express myself, same as everyone else.

Anti ideology often goes after people for nothing (a height difference between two adults, an interabled relationship between an Autistic and allistic person of the same age, and the childhood friends to lovers trope are all things I've seen branded as "pedophilia", please stop, you do not know what that word means) but proship ideology at this point feels like toxic positivity. Fiction is meant to elicit emotions, and criticism, discomfort, and dislike are all valid emotions that a work of fiction can elicit. Fandom spaces are not truly free unless they provide room to experience and process all emotions that a person can experience as a result of engaging with fandom, not just the happy ones.

[prince-liest]

more self-indulgent jgy abo headcanons

I read a fic so long ago that I no longer remember the fandom nor characters involved, but the thing about it that really stuck in my mind was that it was an abo-verse fic that used the concept that omegas have an ingrained biological need for physical (including platonic) affection, to the point where “touch-starvation” was a medical diagnosis

this is obviously extremely up my alley for ALL my blorbos, but consider jin guangyao in particular:

unlike the usual ‘omega pretending to be a beta’ trope, I think that once he is established at jinlintai, he would not really try to let people assume that he’s a beta. being an omega leads people not only into underestimating him, but also into offering him a certain degree of safety in providing a veil of stereotype-associated demureness, placidity, etc. it is more to his benefit for people to see him as a polite young man, perhaps even one who, yes, is a war hero - but people can’t quite imagine what kinds of things he must have done for that. surely nothing too bad.

but at the same time, this is the character who couldn't even serve tea to people as nie mingjue’s deputy without people making a show of wiping off their fingers after touching the cups. people know he is an omega, people judge him for being an omega on top of all the other things he is already judged for, but I suspect that most of the relevant and appropriate people in jinlintai avoid touching him unless absolutely necessary. in a world where casual contact is thoroughly commonplace just due to the socialities set up by their biology, jin guangyao has a personal space bubble of like 2-3 feet because he's the dirty son of a prostitute.

he walks through the halls, ostensibly the second young master of the tower, and feels like he is drowning in the physical manifestation of loneliness.

who does he have left? family? jin zixuan is not close to him, and frankly is likely an alpha raised by alphas to whom it would not even occur to that such needs need to be minded. jin guangshan certainly is aware, but is using it as leverage, allowing and denying contact as he see fits to manipulate jin guangyao the same way he does with his fatherly affection. there are his sworn brothers, but his relationship with nie mingjue is fraught: certainly da-ge wouldn’t withhold contact as punishment or leverage, but that doesn’t mean he wants to touch jin guangyao anymore, nor does he really understand how the necessity of it feels when he grew up with nie huaisang, an omega who has never been shy about taking whatever affection he wants. and er-ge... he just isn’t around enough.

lan xichen is still the best option, and by the time they have the opportunities to see each other, jin guangyao is pressing nails into his palms to stop from just plastering himself up against lan xichen’s side, which surely would be humiliating for both of them. but still, he’s so aware of it any time they’re in the same room, meting out as many small touches as he can get away with without embarrassing himself. lan xichen slips his fingers over jin guangyao’s wrists as he pulls him up from a bow, intending warm affection. jin guangyao doesn’t want to let him know that it feels like being allowed to gasp for a single breath of air before his head is shoved back underwater.

(with nie mingjue, it is worse. da-ge is just as aware as jin guangyao is when they touch, but for all the worst reasons.)

it is the strangest blessing whenever jin guangyao sees nie huaisang. it’s embarrassing, a little - the knowledge that nie huaisang understands, unlike most people in jin guangyao’s life. but nie huaisang takes that embarrassment onto his own self willingly, never hesitating before making a fool of himself in the way that only a terminally younger brother can, and simply flinging himself into his san-ge’s arms. it’s nostalgic, too: nie mingjue isn’t quite so aware of how important touch is with how proactive nie huaisang can be, and so during his days as deputy, it was often nie huaisang who gave meng yao what he could not ask for.

the cultivators at jinlintai look down on him just as the ones in the unclean realm did, but now there is no willing young master to soothe away the tangible, physical ache of it. more often than not, jin guangyao tucks his hands into his sleeves to hide the way his fingertips shake.

anyway this is my petition for jiang yanli to take two looks at this situation and promptly wrinkle her brows just the slightest amount, expressing quiet concern to jin zixuan that it’s strange how she doesn’t see anybody touch his half-brother very much, does she? and jin zixuan is a little confused, a little embarrassed, a little off-balance - he doesn’t feel close enough to jin guangyao to be that casual, but he’s an alpha, he doesn’t get it until jiang yanli explains to him, with a beta’s patience, the value of family bonds to an omega as well as jin zixuan’s responsibility as a brother (older brother? younger? his father claims older, but there’s no way to truly know - ), and isn’t it wonderful, having a little brother?

and then someone pats jin guangyao over the head until he’s feeling a little less strung-thin and out of options, he realizes he has to keep jin zixuan and jiang yanli alive lest he actually lose his mind (sympathy for da-ge? oh no...), and etc etc things end happily ever after, the end, QED.

[kritischetheologie]

1 (the character everyone gets wrong); 3 (screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr); 10 (worst part of fanon) + 25 (common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing) HEHE 🥸

thank you for re-sending this ask with the words I love not having to look up what the questions are

the character everyone gets wrong: my answer about the DTS era gestures in this direction but I think that max has grown and changed a ton in the past five years and that is often under-explored. partly because we all grow up being told that the way to create a character is to have them want something, and it's not clear what max wants. he's achieved what he wanted to achieve. he's made his peace with the childhood demons. he's got a lovely personal life that seems to be helping with item #2. what could max need, that could be the root of a fic characterization? doing basically great is a boring basis for a narrative. and so it's easy to turn max back into the ball of unhealed traumas and frustrated ambitions he was when we all first met him, because that guy is, frankly, a more interesting blorbo. except for how that gets boring too after long enough, because if you freeze him in amber he never gets to grow or change, so all the desire that could have made for a dynamic narrative just becomes static again. max and seb should have some insane affair about what happens when you're not the demon child anymore and you've grown up and become a father and you're satisfied with it, most of the time, except for the days you barely recognize yourself in the mirror and the way you don't know who you are without the hunger that used to propel you. jesus christ someone needs to write that fic.

3. worst take I've seen: I only saw this one when it was already circulating getting mocked but there was a team LH girlie posting after dietrich mateschitz died about how red bull was a nazi team bc he was like, born in nazi austria or whatever, and the sheer nobody tell her what mercedes did during wwii of it all could power my home for a year.

10. worst part of fanon: most of fanon lando is, like, basically unrecognizable tbh. there are a few writers I will read writing lando but 90% of the time I'm like who are you even talking about.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing.

ok buckle the FUCK up because I have had a long day and I am fucking choosing violence

I am so fucking sick of gifmakers (in particular) complaining about not getting enough reblogs on things. it's particularly galling when they're like "I spent hours on this." like, I spent 10 fucking months on the URBP. do you even know what that feels like?

by all means, reblog things. I am not telling people not to reblog things. I block every empty blog I see, even the ones who aren't bots, because fuck you this isn't a spectator sport. but jesus christ the way the rhetoric so often goes where they're like the fandom would DIE without our work getting reblogged. like my gifmaker in christ I literally follow you and so could everyone else who wants to see your stuff?????? I consider it a treat and a privilege when people rec my fics because I assume they're deliberately bringing it to their audience, which differs from mine, and implicit in that is the statement that their audience likes different things but my stuff is good enough to make it across that chasm. gifmakers with thousands of followers act like nobody will see their gifsets if people aren't reblogging them. fuck that.

and the way they so often throw around terms like labor and exploitation. the fucking entitlement to complain about the "like to reblog ratio." I complain about certain fics flopping, sometimes, and then I feel extremely guilty about it. they complain, in general, with the way the fandom engages with their work. to which I say this is a fucking hobby, if you're not having fun then just stop, if you don't feel like you're being fairly compensated for your work then consider the fact that you've let the logic of capitalism poison your love of a thing you're supposed to be doing for fun.

and I get it, I work in a relatively creative industry where "you're doing this because you love it" regularly gets used to justify underpaying us... but tumblr is not that. this is not a fucking unpaid internship this is a hobby. just like fic is not the rent you pay to be in fandom, we do not pay you for your gifsets in reblogs. get a fucking graphic design job if you want to bitch about your compensation.

[naranjapetrificada]

Fanfic Friday!

I still don't completely understand it, so this week I'm just gonna reflect on things that happened while writing this arranged marriage longfic, some of which I posted about on here and some of which I didn't.

I gave up on the Soup Paragraphs that were haunting me and realized I can introduce them later if I must.

I got in some "let go and let god" practice when I realized I don't have to get every little throwaway detail right, especially when it slows down my progress/makes writing miserable.

My therapist wants me to see about applying this Free Yourself skill in my non-writing life, to which I say I know you are but what am I

Characters put themselves in situations without my input and it was great!

Ceremonies are hard to write but at least I now know what Ed and Stede would be like if they were kids in a school play.

I started watching Rome again after thinking about it last week in the wake of the cancelation (I've had it on DVD for years). Still problematic in the way something made in 2005 will be, but otherwise it holds up incredibly well.

I've also stopped caring as much about all the people using the world's problems as a bludgeon against OFMD fans and the campaign to to save the show. For all the reasons other people have already articulated well but also, on a personal note, because of what this show has done for my relationship with writing.

I won't get into too much detail but suffice it to say I have a lot of baggage around writing, because of all the "gifted" nonsense of my childhood and my MFA experience as an adult. I don't blame anyone per se, but unhelpful social frameworks were unhelpful. Let's just say that when Pop-Pop said "if you were ever good at anything go do that" to Ed, it didn't not remind me of feeling obligated to do something that used to be rewarding but isn't anymore because it's what you're "supposed" to do. Anyway.

I wrote three short (<2000 word) fics between seasons 1&2, the first fic I've felt like writing in over a decade. It was liberating as hell to write again in a low-stakes environment, and with blorbo motivation to power me through the difficult parts. I never, ever thought I would write anything longer than 2000 words, but for the past (several?) weeks now I've been alternating between two drafts in tropes I can't get enough of, the shortest of which is around 10,000 (admittedly unedited) words.

The other is longer, and every time I work on it I keep having to break shit up so the chapters stay under 5000 words. This is unprecedented for me, and I've wanted to share it so much that I'm running out of shit to post on WIP Wednesday that won't reveal the plot or require too much context. I've never been in a fandom as creative (and creatively inspiring) as this one, nor have I every written so much in a single fandom before.

My relationship with writing wouldn't be healing like this at all if it weren't for this show and this fandom, and in particular I want to highlight the freedom in embracing the "David Jenkins School of Historical Inaccuracy." In fact, I've been keeping a running list of AO3 tags for the fic I've made the most progress on, and there are several "David Jenkins School of ________" tags, including Archaeology, Theology, and Comparative Politics. Thanks to seeing DJ's philosophy at work it's now possible for me to move on from certain details when I get stuck because they're "inaccurate" for the setting or whatever in a way I never could before. Now I feel empowered to move on from tricky details by asking myself:

Is it funny?

Is it related to the plot?

Is it character-building?

And if the answer to all of those is no, then so is the answer to question 4: "does it matter?"

Assuming I finish these longfics they'll be the longest creative pieces I've ever written and beyond the longest works of fiction I ever thought I would write, and for that I'm eternally grateful. Even if the world we live in is a crumbling disaster. Especially if the world we live in is a crumbling disaster.

[tornrose24]

Heyo! For the recent ask meme, can you do the Spiderman Film Series please? Or more specifically, No Way Home.

For this meme

blorbo- Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus. I already loved him to begin with in Spiderman 2 and he was especially amazing in No Way Home. I was worried the film would ruin him or make him a joke, but thank God that wasn’t the case (well, he did suffer a little humiliation, but it was well balanced). I love how they struck a balance between his villainous side (the casual cruelty and quick thinking that Doc Ock is best known for) and his true personality (the sweet, well meaning scientist that ends up helping Peter, and oh my god that scene where he regains control of himself for good and thanks Peter is one of the most heartwarming scenes in MCU history for me). Trust me I could go on and on about how much I love him here and how he finally got a proper happy ending without having to die. Also the fact that he’s pretty much the team dad to all three live action Peters in the fandom’s eyes is as awesome as it is adorable.

(Also, out of all the MCU super villains to go out on a date with, I'd pick Otto because he's both attractive AND we know from both SM2 and NWH that he's actually just a huge sweetheart when he's not under the AI's influence).

scrunkly-Peter Parker/Peter 1/SpiderMan. MCU Peter was always a sweet, intelligent boy and I loved him even more after this film. I know he makes some reckless choices in this film, but I love that this boy was always thinking of others before himself and then decides that he wants to help the villains so that they don’t have to die, which you don’t see that often in MCU films. Also he doesn’t need to hide his identity from these villains and he uses his talents as PETER (and not SpiderMan) to try to make the devices and formulas needed to help them. He’s truly destined to surpass the original Avengers as well as his mentor. But the poor boy goes through so much traumatizing shit in this film and I just want to give him a hug and more. I hope the next time he appears in the MCU that circumstances will be far more favorable for him. (Also he won a lot of points for some of his best actions in this film).

-Scrimblo bimblo-The M.I.T. Representative. She actually recognizes Peter as the hero he really is, but before that she doesn’t just brush him off for being what many assumed to be Mysterio’s murderer. She also agrees to reconsider M.J. and Ned’s applications, but it was sweet that she did the same for Peter. Then she gets even better by snapping at Doc Ock for all the destruction he caused/nearly killing her (as a bit of unintentional revenge for the bystanders in Spiderman 2) without trying to get in a fight with him, and it also shows how tough some citizens of the MCU have gotten after years of numerous incidents. I would love to see her again in a future MCU production.

-glup shitto–I do remember that one man in FEAST who pointed to where Aunt May was to Peter in one scene, as if he sensed why the boy was freaking out. Alternatively I’d like to know more about the two apprentices that were at the Sanctum.

-Poor Little Meow Meow–I don’t know about this one. Maybe Sandman/Flint? He and Curt don’t get as much love as the main three villains, but the guy just wanted to go home to his daughter. Too bad he started to lose his patience and didn’t side with the Peters.

-horse plinko–Remember how when they set up a call line to report voter fraud in the 2020 election? And people prank called that number? I would do that and more at the MCU version of J. Jonah Jameson. He’s so annoying in this film and I would gladly prank call him since he can’t stop snooping around Peter’s life for more than a day. (And the fact that he feels too much like certain annoying news reporters adds to my desire to torment him).

-Eeby deeby–Green Goblin. I don’t need to say why if you’ve seen the movie. Also that annoying lady who claimed that Spiderman hit her at the very beginning.