#generic-fandom-name

[ash-and-starlight]

one day, in a thousand years

[juliaroseghost]

You can't tell me that something like this wouldn't happen to them lolol. They belong together you honor!

This took me so long to draw tho omg, but I def want to draw them in more Makoto Shinkai movies so look out for that 🤗

[ifindus]

Human names for HWS Norway

I’ve seen several posts about human names for the nations going around lately and I wanted to offer my own opinion on Norway’s name, as a Norwegian person. This is not meant as critique of other people’s headcanons, it’s just my personal opinion and meant to offer some insight into the cultural and historical background of certain Norwegian names. I’ve made several posts about this topic, but I realize that it’s been years since last time and I think it’s about time to make a new one.

First; some background on naming traditions in Norway. In Norway surnames especially are very diverse and carries a lot of history and meaning behind them as they often are names of farmsteads or places where the families lived in the 1920s. This is when it became mandatory to inherit surnames from your parents. Before this, people often changed names when they migrated and took the name of the place they moved to, as a sort of “nickname” when people needed to distinguish you from other people with the same name. “Oh yes, that’s XXXX from this farm, not XXXX from that farm” etc. The patronyms had a similar function to this and prior to 1920 everyone was named in official documents in this fashion: “First name, Name of father -daughter/-son, Name of place/farmstead”. This explains the origin of the modern surnames ending with “-sen”, where “sen” means “son”. These surnames were inherited by people who did not have a connection to a farm or a place, perhaps because they lived in the cities and were working class.

Next; a critique on the more widely used name in the fandom: Lukas Bondevik. Neither of these names are good picks for Norway in my opinion. Starting with the surname; Bondevik. As its own name, it is fine, it means “farmer’s bay”. The problem with it is due to its close association with a conservative politician who at one point was prime minister in Norway. The Bondevik-government is not uncommon to talk about and when I just google the name “Bondevik”, every single result on the first page is of this politician. Again, because Norwegian surnames are so personal and geographically locked, you end up giving Norway a history relating to this specific family. There are only 201 people in Norway with this surname, most of them are related to each other, and the name will be associated with this conservative politician. It would be similar to England being named Arthur Thatcher or Arthur Churchill, or America being named Alfred F. Kennedy or Alfred F. Reagan. There is no avoiding this.

Continuing with the critique on Lukas. There is no way around this name as it has been the go-to choice for the fandom for several years now, picked out of a list of names Hima suggested. Personally I do not think this name fits Norway as a character due to both cultural and historical Norwegian associations. Lukas is not a name that was used in Norway before the 1990s and it did not become a popular name until 2008. Lukas is not a name with Norse origin, its origins are biblical, and is a new trendy name that has entered the Norwegian society with the globalisation and Americanisation of our media. It is a very young name and you will not find people over 35 with this name still today. If you talk about hws Norway where he exists before 1990, he would not have this name. It is both culturally and historically inaccurate. It is also, in my opinion, a bit of a fuck-boy name – it gives modern, upper-class or city boy vibes. Not a name that I think fits hws Norway.

Lastly; my own suggestions of names for Norway. I will never stop advocating for Sigurd as the best name for Norway. It is a name of Norse origin and has been relatively popular through all time periods, never going out of fashion, a solid Norwegian name. Because of its history you can find this name in any social class (though perhaps not upper-class today?), and it does not betray any age nor will it ever become outdated. Its meaning is “victory” and “guardian”. I must admit it does not sound very good when pronounced in English, but it is a very pretty name in Norwegian (the "d" is silent). The name has a long history, but is not closely associated with one specific person. There is a famous myth/story with origins to before the Viking Age about “Sigurd Fåvnesbane, the dragon slayer”, and I like the parallel between hws Norway and this myth, and hws England and the story of King Arthur. Sigurd is a good Norwegian name and its connotations fits the character of Norway very well.

My suggestions of surnames for Norway are Nordvik and Ødegård. I still cannot choose between these two as I love them both. Nordvik means “northern bay” and it is such a generic surname you can find it everywhere in Norway where there’s water. I like it because it ties in with the original meaning of the name “Norway”, the way to the north, and associates with the sea, which has been of huge importance to Norway through history. Ødegård means “desolate farm” and only became used as a surname/nickname after the Black Plague, which saw many farms abandoned. Ødegård was the name these farms got and people who moved there took it as a surname in the process previously explained. I like this name because it is not tied to any specific region either, so the geographical origin becomes more intangible and creates an air of mystery.

This is my personal take on the names for hws Norway, and again; is not meant to be a critique against anyone using the popular fandom names. I know habits are hard to change and at this point is probably very integrated when talking about the character. Anyone is free to use any name they want of course, I am just offering some cultural and historical background and insight on them as “Norwegian names”. If anyone has other name suggestions for Norway they are unsure about or wish to know more about, I’ll gladly make an input if Norwegian advise is wanted.

[verecunda]

There are certain shippers in certain tags who seem intent on setting themselves up for a fall, and... oh god, I just can't be doing with it. Why can't shipping just be a fun wee bonus, a fun game of "what if?" on the side? Why do some people insist on making it the be-all and end-all of their enjoyment of the actual material, and building up their hopes on whether Character A and Character B kiss or not? (Especially when the source material isn't romance-focused!) The result is always the same, and it's always ugly, and no one ever seems to learn from it. I'm seriously considering blocking certain blogs, which I don't really want to do, because I do like reading some of the shippy meta, but fuck, I just can't be bothered going through this particular rodeo yet again.

Why does it matter if it's canon or not? People, that's why we do fic and art and all that in the first place - to explore the roads not taken in canon.

I'm seeing people saying things about feeling "anxious" about a series finale in case Ship X don't get together, or being "traumatised" because the actors of Ship Y have been saying in interviews, "We love the whole idea of people shipping these two, but we don't know if they're actually going to get together." And if this isn't just glibness, and they are genuinely feeling anxiety and trauma over these things... I'm sorry, but they need to stop. They need to get off the fucking computer and get some help, because it's not healthy to invest that much of your mental health in something that isn't real.

[takaraphoenix]

Absolutely in love with the fact that the "Stiles Stilinski is Part of the Pack" tag automatically redirects to the "Stiles Stilinski is Part of Derek Hale's Pack" tag.

Because. That's not what that tag, with that phrasing, HAS to mean. The Pack could refer to... ya know... the canon pack he's a part of, in that "reassurance of sticking to canon" way that isn't even rare on AO3.

But no. Nope. AO3 knows what pack we're talking about. And it delights me.

[slimslamflimflam]

HERE’S OLDER AVA STUFF I FORGOT TO PUT IN WITH THE OTHER DOODLES

[vaggieslefteye]

HELLUVA BOSS (2020—): 2x08 - "The Full Moon" ↳ "Blitz, I think so very highly of you... I didn't realize you think so low of me. ...Goodbye, Blitz." "Stolas, wait! I'm s—!"

[hpnextgenthings]

LMAO Imagine Albus Severus having beef with Harry the instant he’s born

Ginny: Here’s your second son

Ginny: *hands him over to Harry*

Harry: Aww hi there little guy

Harry: I’m gonna name you Albus Severus

Albus Severus: *spits in Harry’s face*

[justarandombrit]

Characters who are just some random guy, my beloveds... (Descent into madness optional)

[mayasaura]

not to throw another coal on the discourse fire but the overwhelming whiteness of the tlt fandom and the series itself being clearly white written makes me particularly averse to certain people reading the whiteness as john's fault. "if john is so indigenous, why is the series classically themed 😏" nevermind all the immediate answers to that (and the immediate optics of that when you have white people questioning people's indigeneity based on their education and background, which happens all the damn time irl, and especially since those same bloggers do it to real indigenous bloggers who disagree with them LOL), do you know how CORNY it would be if white as driven snow muir was like here's my protagonist… Hinenui o te Iwa

Zjdhdg okay but hold on. That. That is a very good point.

Hinenui o te Iwa taught the Cohort haka, reinvented tāmoko, and organized the peoples into waka instead of houses. He summoned the heirs of each rangatira to Kurawaka to become atua. Which are of course identical to lyctors except in name.

[holyfreaks]

can we start treating fictional characters as fictional characters and real people as real people instead of the other way around ://

[elyonblackstar]

Some drarry sketches to warm the heart 💖

[auroral-melody]

"i ship a rarepair" can either mean "this fandom is huge and my side of it only constitutes a small percentage, but there are still 1000+ fics" or it can mean "ao3 hasn't acknowledged it as a tag yet because i'm the only person who writes for it" and by talos in both realms i am in agony

[i-give-u--art]

Fox and I were at HEB with my mom

Fox is an angel in disguise her soul is pure and I love her

[shootingst4rpress]

finally getting around to posting this since i finally have a scanner… augh it’s quite smudged but some traditional pearl art! coloured mechanical pencil, then copic markers and shaded with diluted drawing ink :] hounds of love by kate bush THE pearl song!!!

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.