#genuinely it being an it fanfic is so secondary to the plot

[dollarstoreartsupplies]

if you've ever wanted to read a time-travelers/immortal poly lesbian love story that also happens to be a lesbian streddie fanfic (and is also genuinely the best thing I've ever written in my entire life) then oh boy do i have a fic for you

(fic link) (original post)

Full picture/old version:

[thygoddessouijathicc]

Interpreting all the DSAF characters personalities and motivations because I’m bored

I will only be interpreting Flipside squad characters as well as Henry but if this gets enough attention I might come back and do the DSAF side characters.

Spoilers for everything and if you have different interpretations please do share <:

Jack

I had to of course start with my all time favourite character and the main character of the series. Jack is a character so frequently misinterpreted that I jump for joy whenever I see a fanfic who portrays him with any degree of faithfulness to his personality.

As Doggo himself has said Jack is very childish, and we see this ingame. Yes, while often Dave is far more childish and wacky Jack can be just as chaotic and manic from time to time. He’s shown to be immature but capable of realizing the consequences of his actions and growing from them.

Jack is frequently portrayed as a tsundere which is simply not the case. While Jack is as stated by Doggo himself bad at expressing his feelings leading to him bottling them up, as well as being described as a man who doesn’t take shit from anyone, Jack is at no point mean to people he loves to deny that he loves them, he just isn’t good at saying that he does. Jack doesn’t lie about his feelings, he just doesn’t express them.

He’s also not soft as he’s frequently portrayed as, and is very capable of being able to take care of himself, as immature as he is. He doesn’t take shit, he fights his own battles, and he tells people off when needed.

He rarely has his own autonomy ingame as most routes have him following other characters but we still get a feel for his motives in each one although since he varies so fucking wildly from saving all the souls and putting Freddy’s to rest, to having fun and doing drugs, to running a business to just having a thirst for blood I can’t declare definitively what motivates Jack.

Dave

After the Tangerine himself I had to of course talk about the fan favourite secondary protagonist of the third game in the main routes, Dave Miller aka William Afton.

Dave is a pretty clear cut character shockingly. It’s not difficult to understand him. Dave is a manic, chaotic neutral/evil sociopath who acts the way he does due to being raised by Henry who we know from a thing written by Doggo in which he hits a presumably adult Dave with a wrench to be abusive. The abuse, brain damage, and encouragement of negative behaviours led Dave to become what he is in the games.

Dave is highly codependent and once he forms an attachment to a person it’s unbelievably hard if not impossible to sever this attachment, which is notably true because when Jack won’t help him he always defaults to being an enemy in an attempt to maintain the relationship in a weird way. Flipside Dave is codependent as well as Davetrap, but Flipside Dave is far less so and is very capable of severing attachments to people he no longer wants to associate with. The attachments he forms can be platonic or romantic, platonic with Henry, romantic with Jack although they both fill similar roles for him.

Dave is also incredibly stupid and easily manipulated which is why he’s as redeemable as he is as we know for a fact that unlike the FNAF William Afton and even some other characters in DSAF who kill, Dave genuinely didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. He’s a character who is endlessly loyal to those he bonds with even if they treat him badly or make him do things he doesn’t want to. Flipside Dave is again not quite as bad in this regard but he still is pretty bad and maintains for a lot of the plot that Henry isn’t evil. Dave thought the kids he killed would be happier dead and never questioned it due to his endless loyalty to Henry.

He is still however responsible for what he did because it was to a degree willful blindness. Dave didn’t want Henry to be the bad guy so he ignored any indication that he was. Regardless of how much Henry is the problem Dave still actively refused to question his orders. Something we do in fact know he could have done because he did at one point blow up and question Henry after killing Dee because Henry’s reasoning wasn’t quite as on point as for the previous kills. However it still took Dave two children dying to notice killing children to make them happy and make animatronics more lifelike doesn’t really make sense when honestly killing children bad should just be a given. However Dave does redeem himself for what he did and it can be argued his willful blindness wasn’t entirely willful because Henry removed parts of his brain to make him more loyal. While I don’t think brain damage excuses serial child murder Dave’s crimes can be looked past due to his redemption, Henry’s character, and the fact he was taken in at a young age by an incredibly manipulative character.

To briefly touch upon his stalking and obsessiveness it’s a feature of his character that is very much explained. Henry frequently watched him on cameras, and used him as a tool so Dave would see stalking Jack as a normal expression of love, and would also not see the issue with letting Jack take the fall for his actions because Henry would do the same thing and that must be normal. It’s still not ok, but once again, Flipside Dave isn’t quite as bad and the relationship is clearly not one sided. In addition Flipside Dave redeems himself and if given the opportunity, likely would not continue this. He does these things because he thinks they are normal and would likely stop if given enough context to know they aren’t.

As for motivations, Dave has some pretty depressing ones actually. At his core, Dave just wants someone to care about him and is willing to do anything to make that happen. He doesn’t care if this is positive or negative attention as he’s very much willing to fill an enemy role for the same purpose. Everything he does in the story is for someone else, usually Henry. He tries to keep Henry’s dream alive without even actually knowing what it was, only knowing what Henry acted like it was. Dave spent his childhood alone and once he met Henry he was groomed to be incredibly codependent so when left isolated he struggles. The only ways he seems to manage isolation seem to be through chasing serotonin via his many crimes and vegas, acting for someone else, or telling himself that there is someone who cares about him who will come back for him, for instance Davetrap waiting 30 years for Jack to return for him.

Dee

You may or may not know this but Dee is probably my third favourite character after Dave and Jack, and the most clear cut one left so she’s next.

We objectively do not know as much about Dee as we do the other characters, most of what we know coming from other characters and her appearance in the third game unlike with Dave and Jack who are in every game prominently and the phone guys who each have their own game in which they impact every route.

From what we do know of Dee’s personality is that like her brother, she doesn’t take any shit. Dee says what’s on her mind and doesn’t care how it affects others which you have to respect. She’s shown to definitely have a degree of sass to her, but more than that it comes off more as a frustration. While her jokes and attitude are just that, jokes and attitude, they actually do tend to tell a different story when read the right way. Dee is angry about how things turned out for her, probably the second most angry of all the characters. The most angry being Blackjack.

Dee died incredibly young and then directly after her horrible death she was pushed into a position in which she was responsible for helping others who died. She was still, as I’ve said, just a child with no idea how to handle this. Dee was then forced to mature incredibly quickly, and as we know from Jack, the dead don’t mentally mature, so Dee actually does still have the mind of a child, but takes in the personality and responsibilities of an adult, which is an aspect of her character I wish was more explored but I know couldn’t have been ingame because when exactly would it have been?

Dee was also not raised by adults, she was raised by her older brothers who even if Peter was an adult at the time, he was a young one and definitely not in a place to take care of a baby. It’s likely that even before her death Dee had to mature quickly because they all did, but definitely not to the same degree before her death.

Dee and Dave have a strange dynamic, she most definitely hated him for most of the series but was open to being proven wrong about him when she found out about his past and that he was manipulated by Henry. Their relationship is more of a sibling rivalry by the end.

As for her motivations, Dee is motivated by anger and justice. She’s angry about what happened to her and the other children, fuelled by rage for her killers, she set her goals as stopping the killings and freeing the souls. Although as benevolent as this may seem, I do think there is a point to which it’s more about her own suffering and her own justice than it is about the other children’s. Still, she’s a better protector than Fredbear because she does something about the situation rather than waiting until it’s too late.

Peter

Ok I’ll come out and say it, I don’t remember the DSAF 2 Peter routes as well as I remember the rest of the game series, so this particular section may be subject to change, however I do think I have enough of a grasp on his character to write an essay.

Peter is the oldest of the three Kennedy siblings and yet another contender for “who has it the worst in the games” the answer of course being either everyone or Jack depending on how you see the third games good ending. Peter spends most of his time in his debut game brainwashed into thinking he’s Scott.

He spends that game living in a state of confusion as he’s getting dreams with his own past memories, particularly of his beloved wife Caroline. He deep down knows he is Peter but isn’t quite sure and has been told he isn’t. Depending on the ending you can either save or kill him or simply get close to saving him but not actually manage it and have him be killed by the factory.

Peter is far less of a coward than his predecessor Steven, willing to directly attempt to take down the infamous kiddie strangler and in the true ending succeeding. While he never fully recovers all his memory he recovers enough to return home to his wife. In the bad route we see even more of Peter being a fucking badass with his speech to Jack before firing him. Peter tells Jack to cut the shit, calls him out on everything he’s done, correctly guesses his lack of a soul, and goes on to talk about the true situation with the dead kids being that they are really dead kids with families mourning them. Peter is unable to help these families and it eats away at him, he has to carry the burden of the deaths while watching Dave and Jack get away Scott free. He then proceeds to break his own code for the sole purpose of telling Jack to fuck off.

As for his backstory, we don’t know quite as much about alive Peter as we do phone guy Peter. We can however infer from context that Peter was forced to take on a parental role at an age he was not fit for parenthood causing him to not mature properly, once he met Caroline he left Jack to take care of a still quite young Dee all on his own which is understandable since he was starting his own family and surely thought Jack could handle it, but he didn’t take into consideration that Jack actually couldn’t, which led to Dee’s eventual death because Jack was not an equipped caretaker and left her unattended which isn’t anyones fault truly but Henry’s because if he had left her at a place besides Fredbear’s she wouldn’t have been kidnapped and subsequently killed.

Peter’s motivating force is curiosity for who he is as well as a sense of justice like his sister. He spends most of his time trying to rediscover himself after being brainwashed into being a slave for Freddy’s, however unlike Steven he doesn’t just play by the Freddy’s code and actually makes attempts to stop the killings and refuses to send employees to the factory instead insisting on proper burials as he knows it’s not right. He has a strong sense of morality which motivates his actions to end the killings but his primary motivator is still to find out who he is.

Steven

Steven is a tragic character, in most series other than DSAF he would be one of the most tragic, however in DSAF where everyone is pretty equally fucked he’s around the same level.

Steven is a first generation phone guy, which means he has little to no recollection of who he is, all he knows being how he died and his name. Steven died standing up to Henry which is objectively one of the bravest things he’s done in the series, in fact, one of the braver things you can do in the series, however beyond that, Steven is a coward. And that’s not even against him, I love Steven, it’s simply a very central part of his character.

Steven has shown he’s willing to throw anyone and everyone under the bus for his own survival which is understandable knowing he’ll be killed if his business goes under as he has a psychotic purple himbo trying to make his business go under who he unfortunately can’t accuse of this crime because of fear so he has to settle on the new employee. That’s not to say that trying to pin everything on Jack was a moral decision, but given the corner Steven was backed into it was practically the only one he could have made. We do know he could have gotten Dave arrested because you can get him to get Dave arrested by calling in a favour, but he likely was only willing to do this because in this context if he did he has Jack as an ally and thus is less likely to get murdered by Dave.

Steven also doesn’t seem to care very much about the murders, which is a little less excusable than his throwing Jack under the bus because Steven is very willing to just let the murders go unsolved and seems to care absolutely not at all about it. Steven doesn’t care much about death in general actually unless it’s his own. He’s more than willing to kill Jack for the stupidest reasons, he was the guy who sent Peter to the factory so we know he doesn’t care what happens to people who end up there, and honestly I can’t blame him.

As I’ve said before Steven was put in an incredibly bad situation where he knows he’ll die if he steps out of line, accuses Dave, or let’s his emotions control him in any way. Thus he’s willing to kill or frame Jack as long as it keeps his business going, he’ll frame anyone for the murders as long as he doesn’t think they’re a threat to him (thus why he doesn’t accuse Matt, Matt is a threat to everyone), and he doesn’t care about the deaths because he’s caught up trying to prevent his own.

Steven in the Flipside continues this pattern of survival at all costs despite actually being dead. He has others fight for him and runs from his issues until he can’t anymore at which point he tries to fight. After joining the squad he changes his tune slightly deciding he does care about what he did and wants to be saved.

As for motivation, as said, Steven is motivated by an overwhelming urge to survive. He’s put in a position where one wrong move could have him dead and behaves as such, putting himself first and ignoring all others out of not just selfishness, but desperation. Everything Steven does is because if he didn’t he be killed and thus he’s not just a “bad boss” he’s a bad boss who wouldn’t be quite as bad if he weren’t stuck between an Aubergine and a Factory.

Blackjack

There isn’t much to be said about Blackjack, people say he’s underrated and while I agree he has his strong points, Blackjack is easily the weakest member of the main cast, and not in personality or lore as always he’s an intensely interesting character because Doggo is amazing, rather because Blackjack simply doesn’t get enough screen time to be a full character, he doesn’t get an arch because he can’t. Blackjack is introduced at the very end of the third game right before the conclusion of the final battle after which he doesn’t have a single line of dialogue, so he’s underrated yes, he’s a good character, but I think his being underrated is kind of fair. We didn’t get to know him very well. It’s incredibly hard to introduce a character so late into the story and have them be popular, because everyone is already so attached to the other characters and the new one doesn’t have time to be established.

As for his character he’s kind of full of himself which is interesting in its own way but is again a bit of a weak point because he acts like he should have an arch but he doesn’t. He treats the other characters kind of like tools going as far as to basically call them freaks and want to use their trauma and emotional turmoil as punishment for Henry. You can understand why he’s this way of course, he was murdered and is processing it. However everyone was murdered and so he comes off a little whiney given that absolutely none of them made as big of a deal of it.

His backstory is just Jack’s backstory with the addition of turning into a dog and doing more than Fredbear ever could with locking Henry in the void. However due to his rage and selfishness Blackjack decides not to kill Henry, and instead to torture him while letting him grow in power by accident. He’s eventually convinced to kill Henry but he should have done it a long time ago.

As for motives, Blackjack is motivated like Dee by anger and justice, but it’s far more clearly selfish. I wish we got a moment at the end with Blackjack apologizing for everything, particularly his behaviour towards Jack but we didn’t and that’s fine honestly. He’s a flawed character who takes out his rage on Henry believing himself to be worthy of dispensing justice to all who wrong him.

Henry

The man himself Henry, the one who caused every single bad thing to happen in the entire series, he’s actually a very interesting villain who while he isn’t physically present for most of the series his impact is very felt and from what we see of him he immediately became the most hated character.

Henry is as evil as they come, this is without question. At every opportunity in the series he does whatever hurts the most people. He’s someone you love to hate. Henry is far more than simply evil. He’s cruel, psychopathic, manipulative, abusive, delusional, and far more, and it’s goddamn interesting.

Henry is like the other characters in the sense that his backstory explains exactly why he is how he is. Henry is a man abused as a child, who grew up to become a Machiavellian member of the military, and then lost his wife and child somehow. Henry experienced nothing but death and suffering his whole life and sought to end death entirely out of his own fear and potentially to bring back his wife and child. We do know he cared about them because of how mad he was at Dave for taking his son’s name. Despite all his suffering however Henry has done so much worse than what was done to him.

In his pursuit of his goal of beating death Henry murdered countless innocents, mostly children, as well as manipulating Dave into becoming a serial killer by basically grooming him into codependency, telling him he would be doing something good, and messing with his mind as well as very likely putting Dave in a situation where he felt he couldn’t question Henry’s authority, he then springlocked Jack, Steven, and if I recall Peter, allowing them to die in agony without even putting them out of their misery, and capped it all off with showing absolutely no remorse. These actions tell ten story of a man who doesn’t care who he hurts to get what he wants. Henry sees what he’s doing as for a good cause and thus it doesn’t matter if he does something bad because more good comes out of it in the end. He has a utilitarian view of the world seeing others as a means to an end.

As for motives, Henry is motivated by fear, selfishness, and narcissism. He’s afraid to die, afraid of the unknown, and will do anything to escape fate, in a similar way to Steven he just wants to survive, but Steven only did what he had to, Henry hurt people he didn’t need to at all, and dragged on others suffering in ways he absolutely did not have to do. Henry is a horrible narcissist who sees himself as the protagonist of the story with the cards all stacked up against him, when really, he’s the one who stacked the cards in the first place, and is just suffering the consequences.

[fazedlight]

20 Questions More

A deeper and more detailed version of the 20 questions for AO3 fanfic writers. Thanks @eqt-95 and @inkedroplets for the tag!!

1) How do you keep getting ideas for your ship/fandom?

Daydreaming. Writing fanfic is secondary to that. It was only in the past couple of years that it occurred to me that I could write some of it down and see what happens.

2) Which authors inspire you in your fandom, and why are they so freakishly good?

@searidings is my absolute favorite, the way she unravels the characters' emotions and angst is absolutely superb.

3) Aside from the characters of your main ship, who are the characters you love to write?

Ohhh I really love this question:

Cat in Inauthentic, as well as this ficlet and this one. I love her sense of humor.

Lillian in Darkness in All Things. For the same reason as Cat, I just love her snark.

Zor-El in Even Though You're Kryptonian. He kind of surprised me when I started writing him, and to this day I don't know if some of his lines are driven by genuine confusion or if he's just trolling.

4) Are there pairings or tropes you know for sure you'd never write about? Which ones?

I'm a never-say-never kind of person. There's a lot that I don't think I would ever write, but I've been surprised on where stories have taken me before, and may be surprised again.

5) What is your writing process and why is it cursed?

"Process" might be an overstatement...

I have a "scribbles" doc where I keep my ideas. I cull ideas often (though ideas often make their way back anyway). As I write more into the doc, a certain idea may get too big for it, so I spin it out into its own doc.

From there, I kind of go back and forward between outlining and writing. I write completely out of order. Which is why, so often, my multichaps are almost fully drafted by the time I publish chapter 1. I've usually already made it to the resolution point of the plot (meaning, no one's in danger anymore, the bad guy is gone, etc), though the final chapter often doesn't get written until later.

6) What is your favorite part of your writing process?

I love when I've finished the first pass of a chapter/one-shot, and I'm in the editing stage. The story really feels like it's coming together at that point, and it's before all the self-doubt starts bubbling up (that hits hard just before posting).

7) What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to research for a fic?

A friend of mine is a professor in astroparticle physics, so I spent a couple of hours asking him about quantum mechanics stuff. But only a small portion of that ended up being relevant to the fic and the rest was just for fun.

8) Is there a particular writing rule you struggle with (grammar, spelling, tense, reality in general)?

When I'm first sketching out a scene, about half the time I write in present tense (it feels more like I'm writing a play at that point sometimes), but I publish in past tense. So I end up needing to do a bunch of revisions 😭

Also TYPOS.

9) What was your hardest scene to write so far and why?

Fight scenes are ROUGH, man.

This is probably one of those answers I'll change every time depending what's at the top of my mind. But writing out a fight scene - like in Even Though You're Kryptonian, Darkness in All Things, or It's a Metallo Life - gets surprisingly difficult if there are more than 2 people.

I know exactly how I'd shoot those scenes if I had a camera crew, special effects, etc. But it's hard making sure the audience is aware of where everyone is positioned, why they can/can't act in the moment, etc.

10) Have your characters ever done something you didn’t expect, changing your plot completely?

All the fucking time, man. From the very beginning, even. I was trying to have Lena still be angry by the DEO scene in So I Kept Pretending, but that didn't make sense anymore.

I actually recently had a fic idea dissolve because it wasn't vibing with the characters. Which is fine, it became a ficlet instead!

11) If you could converse with any of the characters, who would it be and why?

Absolutely Kara. I have so many questions about kryptonian culture and how it drives her character.

12) What are some of the tropes or themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

Trope-wise, I definitely return to the Rift again and again. I find themes around forgiveness and understanding to be really interesting. Can two good-hearted people with conflicting needs hurt each other while still loving each other? How? What does that mean for the aftermath?

I think that's part of what draws me to supercorp - the complexity of their relationship. How they can both be right, and both be wrong, and love each other enough to rebuild from the ashes.

13) What's your most important resource as a writer?

Coffeeshops and libraries. Getting into slightly busy, cozy environments, out of the house, really helps shake loose the stuff in my head.

14) Can you share some of your strategies for editing and revising your work?

Especially for longer works, I tend to put the work down (and circle to other works, or go outside, or whatever) before coming back to it. It helps to step away for a bit - it's easier to pick up on repetitiveness or unclear passages when coming back.

Though I always find mistakes in my stories much later, so I'm not sure I'm one to give advice on this anyway 🤣

15) Which is worse: making the summary, picking the tags, or the anxiety when you post your fic?

Posting anxiety is the absolute worst. If I leave myself in front of my computer I'll end up refreshing constantly waiting for the first kudos (if it's a one-shot or first chapter) or the first comment (if it's a later chapter) to figure out if I've accidentally pissed off everyone in the fandom somehow.

Luckily, my partner will usually pull me away to go on a walk or grab lunch or do something else to take my mind off it 💗

16) How do you define success for your fanfic - hits? Kudos? Comments? Bookmarks? Or just if you like it?

I only publish what I like. Sometimes I'm nervous that other people won't like it, but I will always like it. Stories that aren't going a way I like - even if I think the idea is cool! - will dissolve. Just recently I dissolved one that felt like it was a cool idea, but it didn't make enough sense for the characters.

Kudos and comments always make me feel appreciated as an author!! Sometimes I'll get a user subscriber out of it, too, and it feels like an honor that someone would want to hear from me more than once.

The thing that feels most precious, though, is when someone comments on how something made them feel (I love making people laugh at my dumb jokes, or cry when a story is supposed to hit emotionally), or when they pick up on something that I wasn't sure would get picked up on.

I tend to lean towards understatement in my stories. For me, the biggest success is knowing that someone recognized what I was going for, without me being overt.

17) Do you have a playlist for your favorite character/ship?

Alas, I don't. But given that Kara is canonically a Britney Spears fan and musicals nerd, I feel like my default playlist works 🤣

18) If fan art was going to be made from your work, which fic would you pick and which fan artist would you like to create it?

Oh gosh, I don't want to pick someone and create pressure, or not pick someone and make them feel bad. This fandom has so many great artists!

That said, some of my favorites do commissions, you can see everything I've commission here.

19) How many WIPs do you currently have?

1 supercorp & 1 rojarias (for @supergirlmayhem)

For me, 2-3 is my happy number, so I'm relieved to be down to this after being so high (I think up to 11?) for so long.

20) What's your advice to new fanfic writers?

If you're wondering why you can't find that story you want, it might mean that you're the one to write it 💗

- - - - -

Tagging (respectfully and without pressure) @rustingcat @luthordamnvers @sssammich @tinyvariations @thatonebirdwrites @theredcapeofk @sideguitars @luthordamnvers @mycatismyeditor @inkedroplets @nottawriter @snowydragonscave @jetgirl1832 if you want some rapid-fire q's thrown your way. But also anyone who'd like to do this!

[sidleyparkhermit]

fanfic director's cut: talk about what went into your characterization of Chilton in interrupted stitch because i'm still amazed that you managed to capture a version of him that feels in-character without making me want to dropkick him. also tell the people about interrupted stitch

Thank you for the lovely ask and always being such an encouraging reader. I'll try to fulfill both requests as best I can, in reverse order, without wandering off to complain too many times

So: Interrupted Stitch originated as NBC Hannibal hiatusfic, though early in the outlining the second season premiered and the story officially became a canon-divergent AU. It had many elements that might seem in retrospect to be dunking on seasons 2-3 of Hannibal but simply came from looking at the plot and characters of season 1 and thinking about things that would make sense to happen.

It involves... how do I explain this. It exists because one time Aaron Abrams tweeted about Raúl Esparza being cute. It was supposed to be a PWP. It quickly grew a plot, wherein some traumatized secondary characters eventually solve the Chesapeake Ripper murders with the powers of gay S&M and friendship. It's my first foray into what I would call genuine crime fiction. My joke logline for it is "PTSD, BDSM, and some FUBAR MDs." Also, Beverly lives, of course.

I worked hard on it for a long time, but it's only really been seen by @stellerssong, partly because of [real life redacted] and partly because, as longtime readers will know, I hate the Hannibal fandom.

As to the Chilton question!

So, I think the most important thing to begin with was to take him as he is (or was at that point in canon). He's annoying, he's arrogant, he's not qualified for his job -- those are just facts on the ground. They don't have to be explained away.

What else is he? Well, despite the fact that he clearly should not have been in his position at what my old friend gamesiplay dubbed CrazyJail™️, he advanced this far as such a relatively young age somehow. He and Zeller have in common the quality of being overachievers in high-stress and high-risk occupations. I figured right away that he would be continuing to work as much as he could after the Gideon kidnapping, not just to take his mind off things but because that's his personality.

What does he want? In some cases he wants what everyone else can see is the wrong thing; he cannot help trying to get back to the BSHCI despite all his disastrous mistakes. But since we're seeing him outside that frame as well, we also see the quite ordinary human things he wants that were taken away, in some cases permanently, by Gideon (and Lecter): to enjoy food and sex, to hang out with normal people, to have one goddamn night of good sleep. To drink a cup of coffee.

What Chilton endures in "Rôti" is so extreme, from the point of view of the real world, that I feel like simply exploring its effects is more than enough to make the reader sympathize. Because Chilton is annoying, but he's not evil, and he lives in a world deeply infected with true evil. Hannibal Lecter thinks being evil is superior to being annoying, and I guess Bryan Fuller does too, but they're both wrong.

So, I think part of the answer is vulnerability, and mainly just the vulnerabilities already opened up by the text. (I guess the text didn't inherently suggest the humanizing effect of discovering a character's embarrassing sexual fantasies, but I think I ripped off that trick from Terrence McNally [Love! Valor! Compassion!, 1995].)

I think Zeller's POV, and Zeller being himself someone who alternates between brilliant overachiever and human disaster, also helps kinda equalize them. Like, yeah, here's a dude that makes bad decisions, I too am making bad decisions, who the hell would even be making good decisions at a time like this.

They -- and the others in that story -- aren't normal people, obviously. But what they are is people with normal kinds of flaws. And when you are just regular messed up, when you may have thought you were ready for the worst because you're very clever and you've done so much research, how do you deal after your own life is changed by extreme evil? That was the kind of question that interested me.

[brickmail]

Hello Hello your boyfriend linked me hear sorry I was sleeping but let's get into it. I want to start with I don't bare ill will to you, just your man I just felt like being self destructive and picking a fight but I feel better now and you're reply made me smile. If your boyfriend had as much patience as you this conversation could've already been over. Anyway I just quoted you with my general reaction to what you said.

“you're assuming i have a problem with men that can get pregnant when i am a man that can get pregnant” Maybe I wasn't being clear. I was giving the most common examples people quote when saying omegaverse is gross or transphobic. One of those examples is ew cis men getting pregnant that are demasculinizing and gross (which is harmful to transmen) OR it’s transphobic because cis men getting pregnant ignores trans men (which there's transmen).

“omegaverse is often times misogynistic because the works use misogyny trauma porn as a plot point while simultaneously replacing the women” Yes OFTEN they can do this but it doesn’t all the time and that’s a authorial choice not the choice. It's not the fault of Omegaverse there’s no rule of omegaverse fics that says 'erase woman and use their oppression'. Also half fanfiction or fiction in genre is misogyny trauma porn my earlist memory was this story about a guy kidnapping woman and murdering them but the main character was just to amazing and changed him. Or you have more mainstream stuff like the handmaids tale. “This trivializes a serious world issue.” It doesn’t in my opinion. If that were true a lot of work written by women would be trivializing the issue because oppressive misogynistic society is perhaps the most common thing in stories. This becomes a problem when women are completely removed but a lot of stories DON’T remove women and create new oppression. It's not a rule of the genre. The genre as you love to point out is being written mainly by cis woman even though we really don't have the statistics. So it's woman erasing woman which points to internal misogny OR as a lot a woman like to say they like to remove themselves from the situation because it reminds them of things they've actually gone through which is some BS occasionally.

“omegaverse is all-the-times transphobic because it blatantly fetishizes trans people,” No it doesn't for example if I use ao3 (sorry) of 168,000 (I'm rounding up) fanfics 35,000 are teen or Gen 14,000 are not rated. So it's not at ALL times because there's people that genuinely want to a explore a world like this. Also how do I say this? It was never about trans people in the first place (like we weren't a thought it the eyes of these people) and trans people were added in later after various complaints were made. Mainly about anatomy but also about a lack of trans people. The people adding trans people into fics are mainly trans, the people that had complaints about anantomy, and then the possible fetishizers. “while disguising it by making up entirely new sex designations so nobody has to worry about getting called a chaser.” Making up new sex designations was the point of omegaverse well actually that not true I think those came later because I remember early on the groups in it weren't settled yet the actual point was fuck or die a trope that came from star trek it being about gender came later. I don’t think it was intended to be malicious or fetishize trans people fuck we don’t even know who made it, so they may be trans. It’s a secondary sex meaning you still have societies made up of gender roles like man, woman, ftm/mtf, and nonbinary then you have an add-on that doesn't replace anything really. 1/2

i cant feasibly respond to all of this but i did read it and im going to post it so other people can too

👍

[kimabutch]

I’ve already alluded to it plenty here, so: let me tell you about my friends’ TTRPG game. 

So, almost two months ago, my friends @hgb94​ and @nilim​ started what was supposed to be a oneshot of Ships That Pass, a two-person game about queer spaceships in love. Because they like to talk a lot (affectionate), they didn’t finish. So they played a second session, and still didn’t finish. And then, because they liked their characters, they started adding extra scenes and secondary characters. And then they started adding flashback scenes to create extra context for the characters. And then they threw out the rules entirely, and it became largely-improvised collaborative storytelling. 

Oh, and they’d recorded it all from the beginning, so they started editing the present-day and flashback scenes together to create episodes, complete with music, soundscaping, and narrated scene introductions. Not for anyone but themselves, but, well, I did start listening. 

But the story, friends, the story. It’s so good. It starts off simply: the Elysium (Ely), a luxury cruise ship and a bit of a prankster, meets the Scythe (Scy), a biomedical research ship and a stickler for rules, while both of them are near a plasma cloud. They start talking, and Ely’s sense of humour enchants Scy as much as Scy’s stories of the wonderful phenomena she studies enchant Ely. They start finding excuses to pass by each other. Scy introduces Ely to an ice storm. Ely starts writing poetry for Scy. They’re frankly adorable. 

But things aren’t that simple. Both ships have close bonds with their captains and crew. Ely has been flying with her captain, Richard, a kind, gruff, and Tired man, for fifteen years; Scy’s been with her cool but Disaster captain Manon for less time, but they care for each other deeply. However, in this world, AI are seen as property — and dangerous property at that. Fifteen years ago, there was a brutal war fought over AI rights, where the colonialist Coalition used propaganda about “rogue AI” to justify invading other planets, and the rebels fought (and lost) to try to protect their ships and planets. 

But that was fifteen years ago — it’s all “settled” now. Supposedly. 

When one of Manon’s crew dies of illness, both she and Scy are brought in for psychological evaluations, and Manon’s suspiciously pro-AI and anti-MAN (Monitors of Artificial Norms) sentiments put her under further investigation by the MAN. They assign her an Agent, Oliver (Ollie), who comes on board to monitor both Scy and Manon. 

Fortunately for them, Ollie’s a young but incredibly bright Agent on his first mission, and particularly sympathetic to AI. Doubly fortunate, he’s the protégé of Theresa Williams, a ruthless senior man Agent who’s been plotting undercover revenge against the MAN for over a decade because they reprogrammed her ship. Williams “recruited” Ollie out of university — that is, discovered Ollie had pro-AI views that might get him in trouble and then blackmailed his family so he’d join the MAN and be “protected.” She’s mentored him ever since, and despite her insistence that attachments are a weakness, she cares deeply for him. 

Williams assigned Scy’s case file to Ollie after she noticed Scy & Ely’s anomalous flight patterns; she wants to help. She hopes no one else notices this dangerous pattern — particularly because Richard and Manon should not be meeting. See, while Richard and Manon know that Ely & Scy are in love, they don’t know who the other’s captain is. 

Manon doesn’t know that Ely’s captain is Richard, her mother Elske’s lover, who was almost her stepfather — who was forcibly conscripted to the pro-Coalition side, while her mother fought and died for the rebels. Richard, who never contacted Manon after the war. 

On the other hand, Richard doesn’t know that Scy’s captain is Manon, the daughter of the woman he loved; the woman who he saw die, for whom he punched out a Commanding Officer, for whom he was ready to die. Manon, whom Richard was forbidden by the MAN from contacting after the war, who was used as leverage for Richard’s silence about the war. 

When they find out who the other is, well, that’s when things really start going to shit. Because Agents aside from Williams and Ollie have started noticing what’s going on, and that puts everyone in danger: Scy, Ely, Manon, Richard, Ollie, and Williams. To get out of this mess, the captains & ships will have to trust the rogue Agents, Manon will have to trust Richard, and they all will have to believe there’s a life outside of the MAN’s control. 

And that’s about where I am in the story so far — I’m told it’s not even halfway done. I am literally bouncing with excitement for every single upcoming episode. 

And like! The story is beautiful — it’s a queer romantic love story between spaceships yes, but also a queerplatonic love story between ships and captains, a story of love lost and found, of found families, of redemption, of healing, of learning to care and hope after trauma. And the characters, goddamn, I love every single one of them: Scy, sweet, reserved, a little naïve, a bit of a know-it-all but in the most loving way; Ely, hilarious, protective, and hopeful even after 200 years; Manon, simultaneously carefree and incredibly angry; Richard, weighed down by years of guilt but learning to be courageous; Ollie, who sees the best in everyone even after years of being told that it will only hurt him; and Williams, cold and ruthless and vengeful but really broken-hearted and more kind than she wants to admit. 

And that’s not even mentioning the side characters; at this point, both players play over half a dozen characters each — some love-to-hate villains, some loveable goofs. And they play them so well, like, I’ve played with both my friends in the past and I know how good they are at role-play — but they’re still blowing me away with the strength of their RP in every single goddamn scene. And their shockingly good audio editing makes it feel… well, genuinely like a real podcast. 

It’s just… amazing. I’m so proud and astounded by my friends, and feel so lucky that I get to sit in on (and write fanfic for, and create a fanvid for, and make a fanwiki for) this story. It’s really cool, and like. Wow. I have cool friends. 

[dribbonart]

Steven Universe Rewatch: Steven Universe Future

After ~130 daily posts, it makes sense that my first break in the schedule falls on the break between the movie and Future. That felt like a long time, the first time around.

I think generally, Future is less liked than the main show. It’s easy to think of some reasons: 

Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Even if the same team of talented people work on a similar project, that doesn’t mean they’ll be talented and lucky, which is what you need to make something truly exceptional.

Future isn’t part of the main story arc. The events of the original show were being thought about for years, Future is its own, smaller group of ideas.

Future isn’t going anywhere. Where the rest of the series held the promise of something more, Future is only promising an end. When the original series did a silly story, it’s fine; there’s more coming. When Future does something we don’t like, it’s one of our precious few last moments with the show. 

Similar to the last point: We blame Future for any “missing” plots we want to see. Future doesn’t have the Morganite plot. It doesn’t have the origins of Diamond civilization. Of course, the original series doesn’t have those plots, too, but we think of it as a Future’s failure.

Future is more about trauma and “negative” emotions.

I’m genuinely not sure what I think about Future. I think I only saw it the once, and I haven’t really thought about it the way I thought about the rest of the series. Only the hardcore fans engaged with it in the way they made fan art, OCs, theories, and fanfic for the original series. This means my reactions will be more raw and less considered.

How about those opening credits?

They start with our core cast,

expand to the “Secondary” cast,

then show us everyone. What a great way to show their larger ambitions.

Ah! Robots! 

The perspective work is amazing, but it’s a little lifeless.

Oh, this gallery of villains was once so promising. Who would have guessed that basically all of them were just a new angle for Steven to process his trauma? (In retrospect, we should have seen that coming.)

They really went hog wild for the perspective on this opening. End of an Era has the lines by Takafumi Hori, and they’re really something.

This makes it seem like it’s going to be lighthearted. Look at Garnet’s goofy smile and Steven’s tongue!

I love that Peridot gets the last words.

Did anyone figure out the significance of this shot? Just a picture of a car driving off into the night is enough to make me emotional.

Tomorrow: Little Homeschool!

Twenty days later, I should be done with the series. Then I’m going to do a few of the books/comics. Then, if anyone asks, I’ll do a post about a specific character or whatever. Just think: early next month the remnants of the Steven Universe fandom can breathe a sigh of relief that I’m no longer clogging up their tags.

Thanks to everyone that has liked and reblogged the posts. A special thanks to everyone (all three of you) that gave positive feedback!

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

Go ahead - final thoughts (yes I went ahead and found versions on YouTube). So spoilers ahead.

This drama reminded me a lot of my other favorite family drama, Because of You, with Sun Yi and Deng Lun. Completely different plot and more angst, but fundamentally a family drama where OTP romance is secondary.

I’m glad the show left Yueliang single. I think she has a lot of work to do for herself (gaining self esteem, independence). I’m also glad for a drama that doesn’t feel the need to pair up everyone because life doesn’t wrap up perfectly like that.

I’m also glad the show didn’t end with Ling Xiao and Jian Jian getting married with 2 kids. I think it’s interesting that the show basically background dropped progressions of their relationship. Like if this was a pure idol drama, this whole “your mom doesn’t like me” would be the front of center of their relationship problems. But Ling Xiao has a lot of problems he needs to work out, and what we saw in the last 2 episodes is only the beginning.

So I actually really liked the Yueliang and her mother storyline. I think it’s really interesting because her family is almost the inverse of Jian Jian, Ziqiu, and Ling Xiao’s. The “model” one child family. The dad who is indulgent but then (I’m glad Yueliang called him out on it) we realized that it wasn’t out of a genuine desire (like 李爸) to want the kids to do what makes the happiest but to avoid responsibilities. Yueliang’s story hits me pretty hard because I saw reflections of my parents (particularly) in Yueliang’s mom. As I get older I sometimes do wonder if some of my rebelling in my teens was worth it.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I was always decently sympathetic to He Mei. I’m not sure if I buy the He Mei and Li ba relationship BUT I think the show is somewhere aware of that. That said, there were some pacing issues and I wonder if having 5 more episodes would have done the trick. For the amount of storylines the show was trying to cram, 40 episodes seemed low.

But also Ziqiu’s pleased face at He Mei picking him up!!! Ziqiu opening up a new cafe with He Mei’s friend’s advice!!!

Lastly, Chen Ting. I don’t know how they were going to redeem her, and I don’t think she’s as much “redeemed” as finally realizing that she was in the wrong. I think that would have been the only way to really “redeem” her as a character. She had previously blamed everyone except herself. Finally realizing that she was wrong, and Ling Xiao telling her that only by living can she right her past wrongs, is the beginning. I honestly hope she seeks psychological help.

I really wanted more fluffy trio moments. But I guess that’s what fanfic is for. Like in my head canon at some point Jian Jian ends up spending more nights at Ling Xiao’s and almost partially living there (like group breakfast ended up being split between apartments). I’m halfway convinced Ziqiu goes from pearl clutching to mumbling about why doesn’t Jian Jian put the dishes away bc let’s face it, her apartment with Tang Can and Yueliang was a mess.

It’s still one of my favorite dramas of the year. I don’t know if I would rewatch it as often as Find Yourself. But I think (despite being opposite of Fanxing in my relationship choices aka my husband is older) I connected with Find Yourself more because I’m a lot closer to Fanxing’s age group.

Lastly, bc this is the genre of cdramas I watch the most, someone cast Tan Songyun and Song Weilong in some angsts 50+ episodes palace drama.

[luckyharbinger]

I think there is a difference between Jaune who was Phyrrah's partner and teammate for a year and Qrow who was basically a temp. Also the point of the angst over the pin is to solidify the relationship and have the characters actually say out loud and describe why the relationship is so important. Plus people who are angry focus on all sorts of things. Harriet could be mad Clover is dead and have the pin be a final straw. Finally talking about the pin is great set up for a flashback.

Alright, first of all. Back off of Qrow. The teams have clearly been there for some time (RWBY doesn’t get to be as good as the grown ass Ace Ops without some significant amount of time passing; I personally would argue they’ve been there for a minimum 5 months for that type of skill increase but whatever). Qrow was not a temp. You don’t get to the point where you’re fighting without callouts, without getting in the way of a giant scythe in the middle of a small alleyway, without spending a LOT of time with a person. There’s someone in my life right now that I’ve known since August and if anything happened to them I’d lose it, especially if I witnessed it. Yknow why the Tyrian vs Birds fight of 11 was so much cleaner than RWBY vs Ace Ops? Because Clover and Qrow were in sync. They harmonized together. They meant something to each other. Qrow and Clover cannot more clearly love each other, whether you ship Fair Game or not, and having someone you love taken from you hurts. You don’t get to tell someone that they’re not allowed to feel pain or have a keepsake for someone they loved just because they haven’t known them as long as you.

Second of all, it’s clear you didn’t take the time to think about what I said. I already stated that Harriet can be pissed off about two things. But for you to expect her to be SO focused on the pin as opposed to the fact that Clover is dead not only A) actually caters to the angry black woman trope but B) doesn’t make any sense. Is she gonna mention it and be mad about it? Yeah, maybe, but the pin is a thing that plays off Clover’s death, not the other way around. The pin is more justification FOR being angry about Clover’s death, not more justification THAN Clover’s death.

FURTHERMORE you are expecting the woman who deadass said “My teammates aren’t my friends. This is a job” to act like she has any more right to Clover’s belongings than Qrow? If something happened to me, should I leave my prized possession to a dear friend of three months, or should I give it to the guy at my work who I’ve known for two years who I really don’t give a damn about? You can’t say “I want Harriet to be angry about this” and “I don’t want Harriet to be defined by her anger” at the same time in this instance. We don’t know shit about Harriet’s motivations. She had already landed face first in the “angry black woman” trope the minute she lost her shit at Ruby. And her being angry that someone died is a thousand times more realistic and subversive of the angry black woman trope than a professional huntsman losing her cool because some teenagers she claimed to not be friends with hurt her feelings.

Additionally, of what you said changes the fact that Jaune had the armor Pyrhha died in melted down, and he clearly did not ask her family if he could do that. Her mother acted like she didn’t even know who he was. Don’t you think her mom might’ve wanted to keep that? Don’t you think that woman might’ve wanted the armor her warrior-in-training child sacrificed herself in?

Now, if you think these people are just going to believe Robyn when there is blood on Harbinger, we are having two different conversations. If you think it’s going to be as easy as Robyn being like “oh he didn’t do it actually” and have everyone else go “oh okay never mind Qrow, you’re good bro” then I genuinely don’t know what to tell you. They are GOING to think that Qrow murdered him. And even if they do believe them, he’s on the way to murder James on purpose, so it won’t even matter.

And Finally.

Finally.

The problem with all these asks (and why you are so pressed in my inbox, I genuinely don’t know) and MANY OTHER takes in this fandom is that people are treating Clover like a main character. He’s not. “Important to the plot” does NOT equal a main character. This is not the Clover and Qrow show. This is RWBY. This season covers a span of 48 hours. Do you HONESTLY think this show is gonna take one of their precious 18 minute episodes in the middle of a goddamn Salem invasion to introduce us to Clover’s entirely unmentioned family? Lets think about this. How many characters have mentioned family members that don’t directly engage in combat on-screen?

Weiss and Jaune. Two main characters. That’s it. And these family members were NOT introduced in the middle of serious action arcs like a Salem invasion. This season does not have time to make us care about Clover’s family that May Or May Not Even Exist. There are a million fucking things going on. You cannot make an audience care more about Clover’s Maybe Family than Qrow right now.

Should Clover have more people in his life than just Qrow? Yeah. But guess what. This isn’t The Clover Show. Nobody has time for that shit right now and they may not ever. We don’t know shit about James’s family, we don’t know shit about any of Ozpin’s old family, we don’t know shit about Taiyang’s family or even anybody in the Branwen Tribe besides Raven, and these are characters that have been around since V3. What makes you think CRWBY is gonna dedicate that time to a dude who’s been around for 1 season, when they haven’t even had time to tell us why James is so important to him?

This isn’t a fanfic. CRWBY has 18 minutes a week to show me that somebody is fucked up and pissed about Clover and clinging to that pin and it’s gonna be Qrow. and there is NO ONE on screen, NO ONE that the audience will have ANY emotional investment in, that deserves to have it like Qrow does. You are asking a show that painted these two like soulmates to put substantial investment into Clover’s outside relationships while Qrow is on his way to kill his boss.

And the pin’s primary focus is to give Qrow something to hang on to, to think that in some small way, Clover is still with him. People asking if he deserves it a secondary narrative plot device.

If Harriet is gonna be pissed about the pin, then okay. Sure. Assuming that Qrow even lets anyone but James see that he has it. But it’s going to be presented like she is in the wrong, if only because we don’t know her like we know Qrow and we never will. The audience is not meant to care more about Harriet Bree, or any of Clover’s other relationships, than Qrow Branwen.

[emisfritish]

Emma!! GMMTV really came at us and said "We hate all female characters and can't write them as anything but plot device", and I'm so mad. I really hate GMMTV sometimes, I can't believe it.

Hi dear anon !

So, I’m guessing this is about the Still2gether news and the lack of Earn that seems pretty much guaranteed in the series ? (RIP Earn and my Earn/Sarawat friendship :( You’ll forever be alive and happy in my fics).

I get where you’re coming from, truly, but I’m going to have to partially disagree with you on this. You see, as much as many people love to shit on GMMTV (and trust me, I know it’s justified sometimes), GMMTV isn’t the issue here.

GMMTV gave us The Gifted the series, which has several very strong female characters who are an integral part of the plot and clearly have a lot of the brains in the series.

GMMTV gave us 3 will be Free where you have Mew who’s a woman with a complicated past who’s both allowed to be a total badass and sensitive at the same time. And where you have Mae who is a trans woman whose storyline actually wasn’t turned into ridicule and where the show both explored what it’s like to live as a trans woman, while still making her a fully developed character outside of that part of who she is. 

GMMTV gave us My Dear Loser where you have Ainam, one of my very favourite characters who is kind, driven, damn smart, compassionate, etc.

GMMTV gave us He’s Coming to Me where you have Praifah who is a fully developed character with complex emotions, who was a great friend and damn smart, and was showcased to have feelings for the main character without being turned into the villain of the story.

And these are just a couple examples. So I get your point, I really do. But truly, GMMTV isn’t the issue here.

The BL industry as a whole though ? Yeah, that’s a different issue. And in many of those shows, we definitely have issues with the treatment of female characters.

Part of that can be explained by the fact that these are shows where both of the leads are men, and that they are often showcased to have groups of friends that are entirely composed of men too, and that when you have secondary couples they also tend to be m/m, therefore with the format of the show itself you already limit your screen time for female characters.

But I think for many it’s just lazy writing, and this is where it gets sad. I can count on one hand the BL shows which had female characters that I genuinely liked and were well written (Praifah in He’s coming to me, Kitty/Sandee in Dark Blue Kiss, Chaaim in Love By Chance, Yihwas in Together With Me) to give you a few.

On the other hand so many BLs have no significant female characters or have female characters that are just written so awfully : 2gether is definitely part of this list with how they treated some of their female characters, but let’s not pretend it’s a GMMTV based issue only > 2moons2 had no significant female characters at all, Why R U only used the women in their cast to push the leads together by making them look very unflattering sometimes (writing fanfics about your brother... no comments), My Engineer has Ting Ting who although she made me laugh a lot, was always relegated to being the comedic relief, and the list goes on...

Don’t get me wrong, there are some shows in the list I just gave you that I still really liked or even loved, but we still have to recognize that it’s an issue in many of those shows, and blaming it all on GMMTV seems a little too easy to me. 

So yeah, I agree with the sentiment behind the ask > Female characters should be written better. But I don’t think it’s a GMMTV issue as much as it is an issue in the industry as a whole and we have to acknowledge that before anything else.

Anyway, sorry for the long answer, especially considering it probably wasn’t what you were looking for at all ! But I have many thoughts on the issue and your ask gave me the perfect opportunity to share them ^^

I hope you have a great day/night anon :)

[nyadversary]

18, 19, 25

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

totally, although usually the “alternative versions” are just super early drafts that don’t go anywhere. i do have an example to share though because i’ve got all my early draft notes from the story i wrote as a senior project in high school (it wasn’t done in a traditional format, i told it online via character blogs, but it ended up running somewhere between 60k-70k words iirc). 

the initial idea for the story was about a twelve-year-old girl named luna who discovers a gateway to a magical realm (as one does) and goes on strange adventures (as one does) but i wanted it to be some sort of genre deconstruction. i was like fifteen and edgy when i was first planning out this story so naturally my first thought was “what if it’s all in the protagonist’s head and she’s crazy” and that’s what i ran with initially. problems i ran into were 1) this has been done to death and 2) her inability to distinguish fantasy from reality made her a really unreliable narrator. i wanted to tell the story in first person from her perspective but i realized that at a bare minimum i needed a more grounded secondary character for her to play off of. probably someone older, just so i wasn’t totally trapped in the perspective of a child when telling the story. 

so i came up with another character. initially this character was a boy named john patrick who was a few years older than luna (fifteen/sixteen) and sort of a big brother figure to her. i wound up deciding after a short time that i didn’t want to write an older boy / younger girl dynamic as the central relationship in the story in case that was misinterpreted as inappropriate on the part of the boy, especially since the intent was that they were strictly friends. so i thought, okay, john patrick is now jacqueline patricia. then i changed that to patricia jacqueline because i thought it sounded better. then i wound up just calling the character “jack” for short. the idea of this character as a girl never fully took in my mind or something because i wound up giving jack a whole host of Gender Issues and essentially implying she’s transmasc but hasn’t figured it out yet. complete coincidence that i came out right around the time i finished writing this story

anyway. jack wound up becoming primary narrator, i wound up having to explain under what circumstance these two were even spending time together (given that the age difference was such they wouldn’t view each other as peers, and i wanted them to be strangers at the beginning of the story) and that led into a plotline about luna’s eccentric/absentee parents hiring jack to hang out with their daughter, while hiding the arrangement from luna. jack agrees to this because she’s actually lonely enough to take any “friends” she can get and figures it’s a win/win if she has someone to hang out with AND gets paid, plus sees it as a fuck-you to both sets of parents for putting them in this situation (general teenage resentment + plot issues that would take a while to explain) if she manages to genuinely befriend the girl. once i had that idea in my head i just started writing mostly seat-of-the pants and it wound up being a story about a toxic/codependent relationship that ends pretty badly for all involved. not at all what i’d originally planned, but definitely better, i think.

i’ve played with going back to those characters and written some stuff that could wind up being a sequel / rewrite / combination sequel and rewrite, but all that is currently on the back burner lol

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

there are definitely words/phrases i will habitually use, but it changes over time, i’m not sure what the current go-to examples would be. i dunno what i describe too often, if anything, as i actually feel like writing description is an overall weak point for me (i don’t have a super visual imagination). as for trope i can’t get enough of, i have way too many favorite tropes and listing them off would just turn into a callout post for myself

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

i love writing dialogue! it always feels like the most organic part of the process — just letting the characters play off each other. you can fit so much characterization etc into dialogue even if what they’re actually discussing is unimportant to the plot, wrt. fanfic, literally the main reason i like writing fanfiction is sometimes i see a character and think “it would be fun to try writing that character,” and doing that well/convincingly boils down in large part to getting their voice down and understanding how they talk down to the minor details like phrasing, word choice, verbal tics, etc. which, like, i also love overanalyzing fictional characters, win/win really

[cassercole]

HAPPY 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY REALITY IN MOTION!

published december 3rd, 2017. 470,161 words. 83 chapters. 115,023 views. 841 reviews. 284 follows. 234 favorites. 

wow. wow. wowie. i seriously can not believe it’s been two ( 2! ) years since i published this story. never, ever did i think i’d still be writing it today ( literally updated on sunday lol ). and yet, here we are. this is the longest i’ve ever kept up with a story lolol. thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review, send me an ask about q proctor or the story itself, or even make me something. i truly never expect anything so i’m always pleasantly surprised when people take the time out of their busy lives to do any/all of the above.

this story has been such a Journey to write. i’ve learned so much about writing and plotting and of course, steve rogers. i know it’s not the most popular story out there, but it’s one of my personal favorites because i really do love writing it and the characters/world i created (weird, right??) which means much more to me than reviews (though i do love reviews lol). 

there are a few people i want to thank personally, so bear with me cause ya girl is gonna get Sappy! 

first and foremost, i have to thank my wife, my sister, and my daughter, @whindsor for helping me come up with q that fateful night when i decided to watch ca:tws after a long flight home. then literally coming up with q’s name (and i have the screenshot to prove it). ever since, she’s been in my corner, cheering me on and encouraging me to write even when i didn’t want to. she’s constantly inspiring me to better myself as a story teller and one day i hope to be as smart, poetic and beautiful with words like she is. and tbqh, this story wouldn’t exist without her. 

side note -- here’s the screenshot: 

@missjanuarylily: because jan. that is all. no, lol, but because seeing your skills and talent and attitude inspired me to try and become an all around better oc community member. from working hard to improve my manip skills to reblogging other people’s work even if i’m not in that fandom to leaving reviews on everything/anything i read, and always striving to be kind in this community, you’ve been a HUGE example for me and i’m so so so happy and honored to call you a friend. and also i cherish everything you’ve ever made me.

@mystic-scripture: for always sending me an ask IMMEDIATELY after finishing a chapter with your reactions, thoughts and feelings. plus, your love for dawson has truly warmed my heart and helped spring him from his secondary, background role to being one of the most important characters in this story (sans q lol). 

@inkoutsidethelines: for being there when i needed a Genuine Opinion on a choice i made in the story, and not holding back when telling me i probably shouldn’t have done the thing i did -- and for reviewing every chapter you read. thank you for your honesty and constant reblogs of chapter updates.  

@universalfanfic: for (i think) being one of the first people to ever draw?? q??? when i tell you i reached PEAK fanfic author? i truly mean it. i think about that storyboard you did of q and steve’s bar tour at least once a month. and in the same breath, @starsandstormyseas for the INCREDIBLE profile of q -- even with her butterfly hairpin! i appreciate both your artistic skill and the very detailed reviews you left while reading -- i loved them so much! 

♡ to those who always are up for a crossover chat ♡ @sgtbuckyybarnes  @nellie--crain @daaeleira @luucypevensie @thegalanerd @hrhatbat @perfectlystiles @anotherunreadblog @chuck-hansens @isaaclahys @susiesamurai​

♡ to those who constantly support the story and it’s characters by leaving reviews, reblogging edits, making me things or sending in asks ♡  @fraysquake @ofbadchoices @iceandwaterfairytail @the-elena-show @tandybowcns @samwilsonns @chlobenet @emiliachrstine @curious-kittens-ocs @moirei @heirsoflilith @xlavenderseas @witchofinterest @jamezvaldes @purple-and-red-ribbons @seize-the-droid @jarvis-is-my-copilot @peterparcour @ohhitherekatie @drbobbimorse @fiercefray @avengiers​ 

i know there’s probably a bunch of people i’m forgetting, but just know that i am forever grateful for your support. i couldn’t have done it without any of you. it’s cheesy, but it’s true. so thank you and here’s to another two years lol (oh god) 

[not-poignant]

Hi pia-just wanted to say I adored the final chapters of eversion. As conclusions, both felt so earned&true to the world you created&now I catch myself being surprised when I see actual Android Connor in fic. I’m trying to be a writer&I’m fascinated by how the case became the background plot so to speak & that you still managed to resolve it in a satisfying way. Hope you enjoyed writing it, cos I enjoyed reading it.(I’m also loving seething seas rn!! but this msg is sposed to be about eversion,)

Hello anon!

I’m so glad you enjoyed the last chapters! And haha, I did have a while of forgetting that Connor was an android and then I’d see fanfic and be like ‘OH THAT’S RIGHT.’ But in a way, I’ve spent a lot more time with human Connor than I have android Connor.

I love android Connor too though. But he gets all the love in fandom so he’s doing fine :D

I’m trying to be a writer&I’m fascinated by how the case became the background plot so to speak & that you still managed to resolve it in a satisfying way. 

I think what I had on my side was that everyone who read it always knew that it was going to be a Hank/Connor relationship fic, and that any other genre was probably going to be fairly secondary to that. Like, I didn’t go in saying ‘no one’s getting together, this is pure casefic, anything else is incidental.’ I was writing a (weird) romance that was couched in a casefic, before I decided I didn’t like the formula very much (apparently I enjoy watching it much more).

In terms of the transition, I did a few things:

1. Agonised over it and felt like I was going to fuck everything up.

2. Began to make it clear that Connor didn’t want anything to do with cases anymore. He’s our narrative POV character, and if he doesn’t want to do the case - and we’re the ones sympathising with him (like if that worked) - then theoretically, readers will also care less. Like, not in a ‘no one gives a shit about Veritas’ way but like, if Connor shifts his priorities, and the payoff is good, that is a payoff readers get to experience too.

Which is why the official shift from ‘casefic’ to ‘absolutely not a casefic’ was literally around the time when Hank dropped Connor off at Kara’s. In fact around then, you can see Connor start repeatedly saying ‘I don’t think I want to work in law enforcement.’ I mean Connor felt that way, but I had it come up in dialogue more than once to just gently be like ‘okay guys, let’s leave casefic formula behind and focus this way more on Hank and Connor.’ The payoff? More genuine communication between Hank/Connor, and more sex scenes, lmao.

3. After that, the case was still important, but it was intrusive rather than a focus. Like, the case came into the story to create conflict, fear and tension, rather than it be something that Connor and Hank are really into. It’s the thing that causes Connor to overdose and lose touch with Hank. It’s the thing that takes Hank away from Connor. It’s the thing that retraumatises Connor re: Zlatko. So there was a clear: ‘this case is bringing nothing good to these people.’

I mean I wanted drama, but a lot of things that happened in the fic weren’t initially planned when I imagined it - and that includes the overdose and revisiting Zlatko. They ended up being some of my favourite scenes, because they give Hank and Connor more motives to bond, and refocus the story into a relationship fic.

Idk if you wanted a real answer anon, but I did actually...give a bit of thought to it. Not a ton, just enough to be like ‘okay, fuck, I need to change tracks here and do it in a way that feels - if not organic - then like something that will still keep people interested.’ I’m sure for some people I failed, but for those of you that stuck around, I’m incredibly grateful.

Because to me this was way more fun than a casefic :D

[sunderedazem]

Fanfic Ask Meme: I, K, O, T, V

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

Ooooh, yes to both~ My guilty (actually totally unapologetic) pleasure is ending a chapter on some kind of angsty cliffhanger - either writing OR reading. I genuinely enjoy the frustration of not knowing what comes next - and that goes DOUBLE when I do know what comes next but my readers are yelling at me XD

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

God. I write MCD. Um. 

Probably a ficlet I wrote, actually, for HxH. It’s here, if you want to read it, but. Uh, the premise is Alluka and Nanika’s powers actually do cost something. And it’s Gon’s POV. 

I’ve also written a few hella angsty Bleach oneshots, a couple of years ago, which are mostly ffnet-exclusive. They’re almost all death-fics, and they deal with some pretty heavy stuff. (There’s a theme, can’t you tell?)

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?

Oof, hm. Kinda both, honestly? When I’m writing fanfic I tend to build my characters into the plot, and vice versa. Usually it starts with either a scene or an aesthetic I like for the character, and then the plot blooms out of that, and then the characters act within that plot, creating more plot - it’s a massive feedback loop.

I definitely plot everything out before I write it though. Like. I make RIDICULOUSLY long bullet-point lists of plot. It’s bad.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

If it can be solved by having a straight-up conversation, I hate it. I’m one of those people who’s a little bit socially-blind irl, so like, my maxim is - ‘Listen, if you have a problem with me, tell me or I will NOT pick up on it.’ So when I see characters in a fic or book like, do this stupid dance around each other, I’m just like - this is stupid, someone take the damn plunge already and SAY something, this is absolute horse turds.

Yes. This means all those college AUs or Modern AUs where there’s literally no conflict besides the two lead characters being MORONS, I can’t stand. (sorry T^T)

V: A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?

LOTS OF THEM, OKAY.

Bleach: Tatsuki, Chad, and Soifon. (love these three and wish there was more for them!)

HxH: Zeno, Machi, Pakunoda, Kalluto, Gotoh, and Canary. And as POV characters, not “Zoldycks/butlers” or “Troupe members,” if that makes any sense.

Thanks for the Ask!

[sovinly]

*chinhands* Tell me your thoughts about Nirvana on Fire! Orrrrr, if that is two broad a topic (since it's FIFTY FOUR DAMN EPISODES), tell me your thoughts onnnnnn...your favorite lady from the show!

Oh maaaaaan, okay :D I have just finished my WIP draft for my NIF fanfic (170k what the fuck), so this is a GREAT TIME to answer this! Thank you for such an inspiring topic!

It is such a good show. The costuming is often exquisite and obviously very carefully planned out, and the sets are also wonderful. Visually, it’s fucking stunning and just gorgeous to watch, minus some Not Great CGI here and there. The casting is also fantastic, and the actors are all so good - there’s so much subtlety and attention to detail. Even the minor characters are consistent and complex, and there’re a bunch of veeeeery small characterization details that are nevertheless continually incorporated, and I was so delighted when I started to pick up on them. Even the antagonists are well developed and make sense coming out of their contexts (for the most part, at least), and though they can be sympathetic to an extent, that doesn’t negate or minimize the genuine harm they’ve done or the way they’ve created their own downfalls.

Narratively and structurally, the show is a masterpiece as well. The political plots are very cleverly woven and intertwined, and characters’ motivations and ideologies are consistent and well developed. The amount of detailed foreshadowing is stunning, and every time I watch a scene or a section, I feel like I pick up new nuances. It’s just very tightly written. The last episode has some rather rushed pacing, and I have some issues with some things (there’s some fridging that I am Not About, for example), but overall, honestly, the writing and structure are fucking solid, and I enjoyed figuring things out as the story unfolded.

I also really like that, even though it’s a Magical Wuxia Illness, Mei Changsu’s illness and limitations are actually pretty fucking realistic. It resonated with me a lot, and it is, again, consistent throughout. He’s not well, and he makes things worse by pushing too hard, but overall, there are things he can do to mitigate the effects. There are consequences to things, and it comes through. Even secondary characters: Fei Liu is always treated with agency and like he’s actually his age, and Yujin’s eyesight is consistently shitty. Small things, but I really do appreciate it.

The major draw of this show, though, is its ethical and moral stance. It picks apart a lot of assumptions of power, and is very blunt and honest about living under a ruler who grinds down all dissent and promotes people based on his own emotional state. It’s a theme that’s developed throughout, and is critical of such self-serving paranoia. It’s also ruthless in its critique of privilege and the people who take advantage of it - that unthinking cruelty is the downfall of so many people who don’t think those beneath them are people.

It’s also a show about truth and justice and taking down a terrible government. There are so many characters who decide to contribute in what ways they can, and about the fear of what happens to those who push back, and about continuing when things are exhausting and seem to get you nowhere. It’s about making an impossible situation better, and about exposing convenient lies and giving justice to the dead. It’s about honesty and loyalty and actively making choices. It makes no bones about how hard and exhausting it is to fight back, but it’s also about hope. Hope, and seeing others clearly, and doing better even when you think you have nothing left to give. It is... in a lot of ways, it’s a story about people we thought were lost returning to us - literally or metaphorically. “What do we do with the time that is given us?”, y’know?

When good people band together and confront evil, we can go from surviving to thriving. I think that’s a message I really need right now, and it’s fundamentally a hopeful one.

It also has amazing friendships and the Only Redeemed Dad I will allow in media, so that’s a plus too. Please watch this show, because even though it’s a big time investment, it’s a really good one.

So, let’s finish off with some of my favorite ladies, because I cannot pick one, I love them all.

Nihuang: very badass and also gorgeous, sharp as her sword, that one. I love that she’s much more observant and politically aware than anyone ever gives her credit for, because she is so fucking smart, she is terrifying. I love her. It’s so cool to have a character who is a badass general and who can be just as underhanded and snarky as the main protagonist, but who is uncompromising about her emotions, too. She isn’t afraid of being sad, or of obviously loving her little brother, or of admitting that she’s upset about something Mei Changsu did. Also has many A+ looks.

Xia Dong: ALSO super badass and incredibly driven and loyal. I started the series all “but can I really love this essentially a private-FBI-agent?” and the answer is yes, yes I can. Loyalty is virtue #1 to her and everything else kind of derives from that, and the complexities of that become so much more clear through the course of the show. She’s smart, and clever, and she cares a lot about her people. She also loves her husband so much, she’s still grieving over a decade later, and she’s still so upset about the betrayal. I love her.

Consort Jing: quiet and wise and clever and beautiful. God, she’s so fucking cunning, and so very unassuming. Watching the way that she manipulates the situations in the court, and the way that she is so genuinely goodhearted and yet so ruthlessly intelligent is such a blast. A Good Mom and a Good Aunt, deserves every good thing in the world.

Grand Princess Liyang: Liyaaaaaang, she is amazing. Her story is SO FUCKING SAD but she’s so good. Her perseverance and her doubt and her bravery just reduce me to a puddle every time. She never gets a fucking break, and she has so much trauma and fear, but she is always brave, when it comes down to the wire. She also deserves every good thing in the world.

All the women in this show are good? They’re all interesting, and I wish we got to see more of them doing more things. I am keeping this list to just four, because otherwise I will be here all day, but man. This show has so many things to say about women and power and surviving in a sexist society, and it’s pretty fucking great.

[tigerlilynoh]

fic stats meme

I was tagged by @chiisana-sukima Thank you for tagging me.  This was fun to figure out.

A quick note before I begin: If you go to my works on AO3 you’ll see about 15 separate works that all fall under the umbrella of The Uncomfortable Adventures of Sam in Law School. Originally, that was just a collection of vignettes, so I wasn’t posting them as chapters of an individual work, but instead as parts of a series. After a while it developed into a greater story and I started posting to a multi-chapter work within that series. I consider the whole series to be a single story/work, but because of the formatting issue my metrics are a bit skewed. In order to compensate for this, I scaled down that series for a more accurate representation of my work based on where it lands as a percentage of my fics, both quantitatively and qualitatively. 1. What’s your first and second most common work ratings? #1 Explicit - 9 #2 Mature - 6 2. a) What’s your most common archive warning? b) Least common? c) Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

A) Graphic Depiction of Violence B) Underage  C) I like to think so. I’m not sure if I check the boxes that people might normally associate with an adventurous writer, but I try to push myself and my work. Probably the best manifestation I can think of is a friend and I were discussing the difference between Job & Family and Beyond the End, There is a Season. J&F is essentially three (or more) seasons of a television show, whereas Beyond is an artsy director’s take on a horror movie. I think both were different than a shorter or more standard fic, and I hope that taking those chances (and hopefully producing a satisfying result) shows the lengths I’ll go to to tell a story the way I feel it needs to be told. 3. a) How many fics have you written in each relationship category? b) Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

M/F - 15 M/M - 7 G - 4 Multi - One, but it’s a major part of Uncomfortable Adventures B) The majority of my stories are Sam x Ruby because I’m committed to providing content to that ship, so it makes sense that my works are predominantly M/F. I wish that there was more F/F in my work, but honestly I feel like that’s a symptom of Supernatural being so male-focused.  To this point all of the F/F relationships in my fics have been secondary to the point of not warranting a tag.  I’ve considered doing a sex-swap fic or pairing two secondary female characters more prominently, but I haven’t yet ventured into that territory since I mostly write Sam-centric fics. 4. a) What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? b) Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot? A) I’ve only ever posted Supernatural fanfic. I started writing for this fandom in November 2014, and haven’t had any desire to change fandoms, despite what I consider a decline in the quality of canon. Hell, I’m probably more motivated to write to make up for the shit canon at this point. 5. What are your top 4 relationship tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Sam/Ruby: This is my otp, so ride-or-die... or at least for non-two-dimensional versions of Ruby. Dean/Cas: I don’t actually ship Dean/Cas, but I know that that’s a ship that a lot of people like and it has plot potential (see J&F). Sam/Brady: Brady is such a non-entity in canon that basically in Uncomfortable Adventures I had to develop him from a few snarky quirks, which wasn’t terrible. I genuinely love all of my original characters, so there’s a soft spot in my heart for my version of Sam/Brady— but canonically I couldn’t care less, except to the extent it exists as a glimmer of hope that Sam is queer. Dean/Jo: I’m a bit warmer than lukewarm on it. I think there are other fine pairings for each of them, but I do enjoy their banter/chemistry enough to be down to write them. 6. a) What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? b) What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top two: Sam Winchester’s demonic powers, angst Bottom two: Ruby hating postmodernist aesthetics, Sam drinks tea and braids hair Hypothetical fic: Sam uses his powers to style Ruby’s hair, but he makes it too haute and they get into an argument over hair. 7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

Uncomfortable Adventures is a WIP, which I’m continually tinkering on, but I’m at a very delicate part of the story and want to make sure I don’t fuck up the setup leading into the point-of-no-return. Look For Me and Operation: Odin’s Eye are both listed on AO3 as complete, but I’ve received requests asking from them to be expanded, and I’ve been casually working on adapting them to multi-chapter stories.  I’m planning on not beginning the expansion of those stories until either I’m done with Uncomfortable Adventures or I have at least the first 3 chapters of them ready for posting. So it’s less that I’m planning on dropping these two and more that I’m delaying further expansion until I feel like I have sufficient content to release. I’m gonna be real, I’m not sure which of you who write also like tag games. If you want to play for this one and I didn’t tag you, feel free to message me privately and I’ll discreetly go back and add you ;) For now, let’s go with: @puppydeanandjen @mount--cleverest @rae-gar-targaryen91 @monicawoe