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loudest-subtext-in-tv · 4 years

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Something I know no one will ever contend with when they just want to write a hit piece about us, but...

When Moffat said on the A Scandal in Belgravia commentary, “If you watch the show carefully, there’s subtext about John’s drinking,” what did he mean? He wasn’t being flippant, he’s said one of his favorite writers is William Goldman and writers should study him because he “knows everything.” Goldman’s Ten Commandments on Writing say to “put a subtext under every text” and not to be too on the nose.

So what is the “real” subtext to why John drinks, and why does John drink when he’s alone with Sherlock and trying to get him to open up, or otherwise thinking about Sherlock? If the subtext is not about John’s relationship with Sherlock, then like... who else is in the room in those scenes, what’s going on, who is John actually thinking about, and why is it so important to the story that Moffat would include it? What storyline does the subtext of John’s drinking pertain to? It must be pretty big to not have been revealed yet, so it shouldn’t be hard to make a case for.

Similarly: When Moffat and Gatiss say that The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a movie noteworthy for depicting Holmes as a homosexual in love with Watson, is the inspiration for their adaptation, what do people imagine they adapted from it? Because it wasn’t the characterization, they don’t much resemble the BBC Sherlock characterizations. Barely any plot points were borrowed, and minor ones at that. Why did they pick the big overtly gay adaptation for the basis of their show from a hundred straight alternatives? Why did Gatiss say the thing he liked about it was that Holmes was in love with Watson?

I mean, I know people who hate us will never actually watch it, but the movie is not subtle. The movie isn’t a bunch of gay gags, the movie makes very clear that Holmes is genuinely homosexual and in love with Watson in a deeply painful way that queer people can recognize and relate to, and the same vibe is heavy in series 3 especially. For example, the endings of TSoT and HLV are not gay gags, they are things that happened in the plot and were not presented as remotely funny.

There are two reasonable perspectives on this:

1) It is not especially weird for people who pay attention to what the writers have said about their stories to think all the gay stuff is intentional, and its not weird to have fun chasing down things the writers have taken care to talk about. That’s what fans do, they try to predict where stories are going. No one made hit pieces ridiculing Jon and Daeneyrs shippers because they recognized what the foreshadowing in Game of Thrones was saying, and they were basing it off almost nothing compared to what the showrunners of Sherlock have said and taken care to include in the plot and subtext. People write hit pieces about us because they deeply believe it’s stupid for queer people to think a gay romance could be depicted, we had the misfortune of having a sense of humor about ourselves (calling it a “conspiracy” and ourselves a “cult”), and were enthusiastic about the show and writers whose fandom we’re a part of.

2) The gay stuff is intentional, but all a big joke despite appearances to the contrary. Most of the antis even argued that the gay stuff was intentional, they just thought it was to fuck with people or be provocative. Some of them were even dreading S4, including while it was airing, because they thought we were going to be proven right and we’d be insufferable. If people who hated us worried we could be right, then how delusional could we be?

I can understand someone thinking it all being a big joke is more likely than a TV show depicting a gay romance, but it does not follow that people deserve to be an object of public ridicule because they recognized a bunch of queer allusions and painful queer life experiences that resonated with them and considered that the writers, one of whom is queer and unabashedly obsessed with the works in question, may have positive motives for including those things. It feels like punishing people for doing their due diligence of actually researching the writers’ feelings about things and their influences, rather than just piling on and calling them homophobes. I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s opinions if that’s how they feel about Moffat and Gatiss nowadays, I’m just saying it’s not some shameful thing for people to actually investigate these things and conclude differently. It’s okay to think writers are talented and clever, and their fandom should be a place where it’s okay to explore that.

What makes me most sad about this is that there is genuinely no area of life where people can just play around anymore without being hunted down. Like, politics is fucking miserable, the pandemic is miserable, I just had a friend kill himself a few months ago because of how bad life is lately, a close relative who I never thought would have suicidal ideation has it now, I have been fighting wanting to die for years, in the U.S. none of us have any idea if we’re ever getting any sort of pandemic stimulus again -- so many of us are suffering immensely right now, it should be okay to be goofy and creative in a fandom without someone deciding its their prerogative to profit off us because they think we’re weird, or whatever.

The reason there’s a lot of crazy meta analysis is because this was supposed to be a relatively safe, creative place where people can try their hand at analyzing stories without being graded or made to feel inadequate, so we treat metas a lot like fanfics where it’s not really appropriate to just rip people’s shit apart no matter how illogical it is, and we find things we like about analysis we don’t agree with in that same spirit: it’s a cool idea anyway, it’s artistically inspiring, it got close to a more compelling idea, etc. I have a big packet of fan mails where several people told me they had been scared and self-conscious to share their thoughts on things, and TJLC helped them open up and inspired them to major in literary or film-related majors. People start somewhere and it’s cruel to make fun of them because they weren’t great at something that doesn’t fucking matter.

FANDOM IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A SUPER SERIOUS SPACE. NO ONE PUTS ON A TUXEDO BEFORE THEY LOG IN TO TUMBLR. NO ONE NEEDS SOME OUTSIDER TAKING THE THINGS THEY OFFERED IN THE SPIRIT OF FUN OUT OF CONTEXT TO PRESENT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE THEY DELIBERATELY AVOID BECAUSE THAT AUDIENCE IS MEAN AND SENDS THEM DEATH THREATS AND HOMOPHOBIC AND MISOGYNISTIC SLURS AND SUICIDE ADVICE. IT IS ACTUALLY NOT AN ENORMOUS CHARACTER FAILING TO SHARE BAD ANALYSES OF A TV SHOW, AND SHOULD NOT BE A MATTER OF NATIONAL INTEREST.

But places where people can open up and try things out increasingly can’t exist anymore, because even in a low stakes environment like a fandom there are busybody ghouls who want to profit off being condescending about how people spend their leisure time. It doesn’t add anything to the world except their bank accounts.

#tjlc #Sarah Z

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sweet-curried-powder · 4 years

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Why I Think Sk8 the Infinity Deserves More Than One Season: An Essay

So as many of us in the Sk8 fandom know, after episode 10 of Sk8 drops in roughly 12 hours or so (it probably varies depending on timezones and shit, but for us Americans, it's around there.), there are only going to be two more episodes of Sk8. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, really. Madoka Magica lasted for a single 12 episode season, and while I've only seen one episode of the show, it's got an 8/10 rating on average according to Google, which I think is pretty good for an anime that was released in 2011. But I am really pissed if this is all that we're going to get in terms of Sk8. I got into it about a day after episode 5 released on Funimation, and me and Jitters have been hooked on it since. And for the past few days while waiting for what has seemed like several years at this point, I have not only cranked out several Sk8 fics, I've been thinking for ages about all the things I love about this anime, and also what the second season could focus on, if we do ever get it, hence why I'm infodumping it on all of you, my dear followers. If you followed me for non-Sk8 things or literally anything else, sorry, but I'm not sorry.

Anyways, as for the subject on what the focus of a potential s2 of Sk8 could be, I see three possibilities; Renga, Matchablossom, and Miya. Stick with me, this is not just rambling on about how much I love those three things, I swear.

Let's start with Renga, since it's been a main focus of the fandom. Personally, I'm not really looking forward to Langa confessing to Reki in this episode, since Reki is still going through a lot mentally, and Langa just confessing to him in episode ten would just probably make things so, so much worse.

But I am pretty sure that Reki and Langa will make up in this episode, and while I'm not 100% sure about this, I can see the Renga confession/kiss coming in episode twelve. But if the fucking palm trees come before we see the aftermath I will fly my nerdy ass to Japan and personally fistfight every single person at Studio Bones, I swear to God.

With this in mind, this next season could showcase how Reki and Langa's relationship changes once things take a romantic turn, but it could also showcase the conflict of wondering if they should make their relationship public to their families and peers. Remember, Sk8 takes place in Okinawa, a city in Japan. I did some research on LGBT rights in Japan a while ago, and while Japan's culture and whatnot doesn't really have any history of being hostile towards homosexuality and such, it doesn't really recognize same sex couples, and gay marriage isn't legal there either. And there are always some people who are against LGBT rights/are homophobic, etc. So there's a chance that Reki and Langa could deal with that, but honestly, it feels like there's a real slim chance of that. But we probably would get more Renga in a s2 of Sk8.

Next up, Matchablossom. In this past season, we've seen glimpses of what Cherry and Joe were up to as teenagers, but it's been confirmed that Cherry and Joe are childhood friends. Not "we've been friends since we were teens". They've known each other since they were children, most likely around elementary/grade school. We might get a deeper look at Cherry and Joe's relationship from their past, maybe even revealing how the two met, that is if it's not revealed before the last two episodes air. We might be able to see the reason why the two of them fight like an old married couple, maybe the two of them had some sort of big fallout after their friendship with Adam fell apart. Or maybe an event of some sort could cause them to become closer than they were before. I'm not sure what that sort of event would be, but I feel it'd be rather interesting.

And last but not least, Miya. He hasn't really gotten too much focus in Sk8, which is honestly fair, since he's a supporting character for the most part. But I'm curious about a lot of things involving Miya. For example, why'd he start skating competitively? How did he get involved with Adam? And is Adam a reason Miya got involved with S? There's a lot of questions that I have about Miya that have been left unanswered, and I hope that maybe we'll get answers to those questions.

Anyway, that's just my theory/take on things. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

#sk8 the infinity #sk8 #long post #sorry for the ramble #just wanted to get out some thoughts i've been thoughting lately

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makeste · 4 years

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I was originally going to send this message declaring my undying love for your metas and chapter reviews aND THEN - AND THEN MAKESTE - I READ THE ANSWER WHERE YOU SAID YOU WERE ARO AND THAT MAKES ME SOOOOO HAPPY. I'm aroace and it is SO FRUSTRATING to want to consume platonic or familial interaction between people and CONSTANTLY only get romantic or sexual. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING YOU CONTRIBUTE

woooo up top! solidarity lol.

for me it’s like... I don’t know if “frustrating” is the word I would use, but I do wish there was more gen out there. and that’s also something I’ve felt awkward about wanting in the past, because my early fandom years took place in a time where slash was much less of an everyday commonplace thing than it is now, and liking it was still a fairly controversial thing. the internet was a much more openly homophobic place than it is now. like, picture the purity police of modern day tumblr, but if they attacked any kind of non-heterosexual relationship as being sick and perverted and wrong. that was pretty much the general vibe. this was before AO3, and people who wrote slash often didn’t post it on ff.net and only posted it to their own private blogs and/or locked and moderated communities instead just so they wouldn’t be harassed. and there was absolutely no canon representation out there at all, or next to none. it was very much a “[rolls eyes] oh the yaoi fangirls are at it again” sort of thing where non-cishet relationships in fiction and fanfiction were at best not taken seriously at all, and at worst were treated with outright scorn and disgust.

and so like, with this being a common attitude at the time, I felt guilty for not always wanting to read slash myself. like, I don’t mind reading about romantic relationships at all, but for me there also has to be some other kind of element in play as well, or else it’s just not going to click for me. if a fic is just romance, just a lot of pining and slow burn stuff without anything else really going on in the plot, I just get bored and disinterested. I almost want to use the word tired, even though I’m not sure that makes much sense. I just can’t connect to the emotions, and so I disengage pretty quickly. and so I tend to steer clear of time-honored fandom staples like coffee shop AUs or And They Were Roommates, just because for me there’s rarely anything there for me to latch onto. I like angst, but I can’t relate to “so and so doesn’t feel the same way about me”, or “I want to be with them so bad but I don’t know how to confess”, or “they’re with someone else and it hurts like crazy every time I see them and know we can’t be together”, because none of those are emotions that I have ever personally felt, and I just can’t make myself feel them. what I can relate to are things like “this person makes me feel safe”, or “I feel a strong connection to this person”, or “I trust this person more than anyone else” because those feelings aren’t exclusively romantic in nature. I can relate to closeness and caring and love and affection and trust, but what I can’t relate to is the feeling of having a single person occupy all of your thoughts all the time, and very badly wanting to be the most important thing in their life as well, and feeling incomplete otherwise.

but anyway I spiraled away from the point I was trying to get to, which is that for a long time I actually felt guilty about feeling this way. because even though it’s rare to find fanworks where gen/platonic relationships are at the center, actual canon is chock full of said relationships. and so it’s like, what right do I even have to complain when I get to read all the time about so and so being friends, but the people who actually want them to be in a relationship in the actual canon so rarely get to see that actually happen. because that much has not changed in the past 20 years, even though society has become far more accepting of LGBTQ+ relationships. most canons are still far more likely to tease a non-hetero ship -- on purpose, even, hence why queerbaiting is a thing -- than actually commit to it. and so I often feel like I have no right to voice my desire for more genfic, because genfic has never faced the same kind of scrutiny as slashfic. gen has always been acceptable, and there is plenty of canon representation of platonic and non-romantic relationships, and so it’s not something I have any business whining about.

and even now I feel fairly uncomfortable voicing this lol. I write almost exclusively genfic myself, and up until very recently, I’ve always defined gen in my head as being just a lack of romantic or sexual content, rather than being its own distinct category. I think that’s one of the reasons it took me so long to realize I was aro (that, and I’d honestly never even come across the term until just a few years ago). for me, my lack of interest in romantic affection always felt more like a lack of identity rather than an identity in and of itself. I always felt like I was missing something. and for a very long time it never occurred to me that this might be a permanent thing; I just figured, okay, I just haven’t had this feeling yet. it just hasn’t happened for me yet. but eventually it would, and I just hadn’t met the right person, or whatever. but it was never anything I particularly wanted, and I never felt like I was missing out on anything by not having it. I never felt any kind of longing for it or felt incomplete without it. I was actually perfectly content!

but because society treats romantic orientation as the norm and places such a huge emphasis on it, I still had the uncomfortable feeling in the back of my head that if I never fell in love with someone and never wound up having a relationship with someone, my life would somehow be less meaningful and whole. like, we’re raised to think that romantic love is basically the pinnacle of the human experience, the purest and truest emotion that anyone can feel. and at the same time, there’s this idea that a life without that kind of love is just sad and unfulfilling and tragic. and so for a very long time my experience with my own aromanticism was characterized by me thinking of it as a lack of something that everyone else said was very important. and it took a long time to realize that that wasn’t the case, and that it was a valid orientation all its own and not just a matter of me being deficient in some way. and that was actually such a relief to finally come to terms with. I can be whole and complete on my own and still have a rich and fulfilling human experience even if I never experience romantic love, and that’s fine. I’m not missing anything. I’m not wrong for feeling like I’m not missing anything. it’s fine to be content with just me as I am. like, holy shit. and that was such a weight off my shoulders to finally get that.

I once wrote a fic which I was and still am very proud of. it was a genfic, and it had a really intricate plot with a big twist at the very end. and there was a ton of emotion in it, and it got very intense at times, because these were two characters who cared a lot about each other and would literally die for each other if they had to, and I’d put them in a situation where that possibility was very much looming over their heads at every turn. and I really put everything I had into trying to convey that kind of bond as strongly as possible. like I poured a ton of my heart and soul into that fic. and the responses were almost universally positive and kind and made me really happy.

there was one response though, that still sticks with me to this day. it was by and large very positive, just like the others. but it ended with a single sentence that, at the time, kind of just lowkey gutted me. Not gonna lie though, would have loved some slash in there.

like, that just cut me. way more than this person actually intended, I think. I’m pretty sure they just meant it as an offhanded comment, not even a concrit or anything. just “haha would have loved it if they’d kissed though lol.” but it stung. because this was something I’d put every ounce of emotion that I could conjure up into. and even though it wasn’t mean to be hurtful in any way, to me that comment read as “this is still missing something.” because there was no romance, the fic was incomplete. the characters’ feelings were incomplete. even though I’d struggled so much to convey all of these complex emotions which to me were so real and powerful, and even though the comment even acknowledged that I had by and large done so effectively, to me the single takeaway that stuck was that the feelings were less meaningful because there was no romance.

and that felt like a failing on my part. I even apologized for it. and here we are, ten years later, and that comment still pops up in my head any time I feel the urge to talk about a popular ship which I support but which I also enjoy as just a friendship. “just” a friendship. I still feel guilt over that. I still feel this urge to overexplain that I’m not trying to invalidate the actual romantic ship. I worry that I’d be perceived as ungrateful and/or a bad ally if I ever just came out and said “I wish there was more gen” like you were able to say so freely, anon. I worry about people getting offended if I were to say “I headcanon so and so as being aroace” because it might be viewed as an attack on their ships, or as latent homophobia, or something. like I have this paranoid fear that people might take it as me being puritanical and all “oh no, icky sex” or whatever, and so I end up just never bringing it up at all.

and that’s the thing about aromanticism, though; it’s so easy to just never talk about it at all, because for so many people it is just defined as a lack of something, rather than a something all on its own. it’s so easy for it to be something you just never bring up, and which just kind of quietly exists as the boring, bland, inoffensive yet uninteresting lack of a relationship; the default blank slate that most everyone is dying to fill in as soon as possible, except for you. and I’ve gone on thinking about it that way myself for so long that I’m still struggling now to sort out how to embrace it as an actual identity. it’s something I still have a lot of work to do on I guess.

anyway! so that all got very long and rambling and personal, far more so than I intended; clearly I have a lot of pent up thoughts and feelings about this lol. I guess I probably could stand to talk about it more, since the evidence would indicate that I clearly want to. but eh, baby steps. but anyways you are super valid anon and thank you so much for the love and comments. <3

#aromanticism #meta #aromanticism in fandom #personal #long post #ask #anon ask #hey um just an addendum this is a pro aroace post NOT an anti-shipping post #just to make that clear #like you can be for one thing without bashing the other #so if you want to reblog this that is awesome and I'm grateful #but please don't use it as a launching pad for any weird toxic 'shipping is bad' takes please and thanks

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sakura-haruka · 4 years

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Mike aka captainpoe is talking shit about me so let me get things straight.

He’s gonna do screenshots of what will makes him look like the victim, like he always does so you will have to believe me on my words (since I coun’t found our conversations by pm) but most people who know me or I've been following me for a long time know that I usually stay out of the drama. Big thanks to my friends for telling me what he was doing behind my back like the adult he is.

3 years ago Mike started following me, I was back then a small blog and I thought “wow a big blog is following me!”

He started to talk me and really fast told me to send him my edits by messages and I did! he also reblogged me on his mcu blog (and his sw blog too... I think).

I was really stressed with a big exam around July and I became obsess with EVERYTHING, I was a true pain in the ass to everyone. I’m not gonna lie. So yeah I also became obsess with my Tumblr notes, I did gifs to relax but it was not working very well back then. my behavior was childish and I apologized to him after!

(He accused me of wanting to be reblogged on his sideblogs, it’s true, but it’s natural to me to reblog everything that people send me or tag me in on my sideblogs, I sincerely don’t understand people problem with reblogging on sideblogs things ).

When he got harassed on here, more like called out (it was actually around the same time I was a dick) he asked me to take his defense and to reblog a post he made, he was basically whining about how he was the victim and never harassed anyone, he sent me messaged telling me that he was a married man in florida and never did anything against the once upon a time fandom, wasn’t homophobic and meh meh meh... Back then I believed him because he was the nice guy who was helping me getting notes in the MCU fandom. He used me, after talking to other members I realized that I wasn’t alone.

I WANT TO APOLOGIES TO THE POEPLE I DIDN’T BELIEVED BACK THEN. I KNOW WHO HE IS NOW.

He started being aggressive but nothing worriedly when TLJ came around, it was a real little thing but I wasn't shipping Rey x poe and I felt like it was problem for him that I wasn’t shipping them. I didn't thought too much about it but still, it left a bad taste in my mouth, I wasn’t talking a lot to him after that.

When I had problems and got hate on my blog he didn't do shit to help me.

I was still sending me my edits because... Notes. I can’t lie about that, like every creators here I want my edits to get notes.

I think we haven’t talked for a verrrry long time, I was sending my edits that’s it.

Last year he asked me to join my GOT blog, after all the reblog he did for me I thought It would be really bitchy to me to not add him as a member. But I also noted that it was funny how he joined both the B99 and the GOT fandom once he realized that it was very popular.

He did edits on the blog so no problem at all, until s8 ended. I’m like everybody, I hated that season but when someone join my sideblogs, especially my got one, I am very clear about the no hate rule (I had problems with that on this blog before). But he thought that since he was popular he could do what he wanted, I deleted the two first he reblogged, one of them was calling people to harass D&D and I hate what they did but as someone who has been victim of bullying at school and still suffer from that I was disgusted by what he posted but I haven’t told him anything since he’s really popular and I didn’t want to create any drama... I have a life so I finally forgot about it.

My laptop broke and gosh, I really understood who he was at that moment! I sent a messages to all the members of my sideblogs asking them to keep the blogs active while I can’t, normal stuff for an admin. I had my tablet with no photoshop... spidey got “fired” and like a lot of other people I thought about that scene in iw where Tony told him “you’re an avenger now”, lucky me I have already made that gifset before so I took my tablet and just reposted my own gifset, it took me so long because I had to convert it back to gif format because of Tumblr... Anyway, later he sent me a message accusing me of having copied him and I haven’t seen his gifset so told him exactly that. He then accused me of doing that ALL THE TIME with endgame and I told him “listen bro we’re both using the same 30 seconds YouTube clips that marvel gave us”, like 20 other people (they were not a lot of people because that channel was weirdly unknown), it’s true that I was doing them after him but it’s just because I have a life and cannot always do gif, I make them when I have time. He also basically told me that I must be rich for having replaced my laptop that fast, I haven’t, I was using my tablet but even if I did replace my laptop, mêle toi de ton cul ( I have no English expression coming to me ).

I really understood who he was then.

He totally stopped making edits for my got blog, because it stopped trending so it wasn’t interesting him anymore.

a few months past and I think the only thing he told me is that he was scared of clowns... Literally.

And then the BIG ONE, I know he was a douche but omg. Mike asked me to reblog ALL his posts on a sideblog I'm only a member of. He told me that the admin have blocked him because she was shipping reylo and well reylos hate him because he’s posting shit on them , they were a huge misunderstanding then (because i’m French and I may not have explained myself right) , I told him that I wouldn’t reblog him if the admin didn’t want to see his posts on the blog, he was blocked! and I was, at the same time, talking to another member of this blog who is a close friend of the admin and she agreed with me. he was very insisting and I told him that the admin was checking what we add to the queue and would certainly delete his posts, it was the big misunderstanding that could have hurt the admin of the blog, I just meant I know she checks what’s happening because she told me when I don’t tag a post with the right tags, it’s just what a good admin (unlike myself) does. I also told him that it was a new blog with “only” 14k followers, he must have something like 50K followers sooooo, and that his edits were getting 100K notes, more than anybody here. He became... I have no words to describe that. He told me that it was a dictatorship if I couldn’t reblog what I wanted, and that I should leave the blog, I stopped answering pretty fast after that.

In our last conversation I was vulgar. (it’s in the post he sent to my friends), he really need to get over it, I’m French and from Normandie : I am vulgar! wtf. It’s also the last thing he ever posted on my game of thrones blog. It was a Sunday either two days after after the last star wars movie came out or ten days ( I don’t remember if he waited a week or not) but he reblogged a text post from his blog sending hate toward the writers of both got and sw and spoiled the entire Star Wars movie on my game of thrones blog, which was “the drop of water that caused the vase to bleed” like annoy me all you want but when people goes on my got blog they don’t want to be spoiled, it was so rude and mean and that post had nothing to do there and it was at least the third time so I told him to “fucking stop” and since mr thinks he is the king he went all “you can’t talk to me like that” “I'm an adult” meh meh meh. I told him to never go in France ‘cause he wouldn't like us. And it was the last time we spoke. Nothing to do directly with me but I would never do what he does to get notes, that man he’s ready to use any big events such as pride or women’s day to get notes. I do make edits for those events too but I'm actually a bisexual woman and not an heterosexual man and I really don’t think he’s doing those edits to show his support to those movements but just to get notes, this year he did the same thing with blm movement I thought it was disrespectful at best, he even made the famous “I we burn you burn with us” gifset from the movie and no, just stop dude. Making that gifset of Naya before she was even found was awful, a lot of people are doing gifs to feel better about things but I don’t think it would have came to anybody else mind to have it ready in their draft. It actually make me think of myself because after they died I made a gifset of Carrie Fisher and Stan Lee and in my head it was a tribute but now that I think back about it I wouldn’t make gifset when people dies anymore, I said it once again but in my head it was a tribute to those wonderful people life and work. I did to feel people and myself a little better in those situations but it didn’t makes me feel better. I thought about it even more, especially for Carrie, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Billie and losing my mom is the worst thing that could happen to me. You can say that, at the end, Mike makes me realize something.

He has been calling out for his behavior but instead of facing it like an adult he just want to take people down instead of him, I'm one of them and I certainly won’t be the only one. it’s someone who doesn’t know how to face the consequences of his behavior and still think he’s untouchable, me and one of my friend said that he thought he was the king of Tumblr and I sincerely think that in his head he is.

Sorry for the grammar I'm French and it’s almost 4 am so I'm gonna check the grammar tomorrow.

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folderalconspiracy · 4 years

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Stop hurting people

First, I want people who are talking about Destiel with no knowledge to think about something. And that's who I'm talking to here:

I know there are some Destiel shippers who aren't happy, although I think you're mostly unhappy because you think this is the end...but I think you're wrong, and sorta you're being duped into that by the people I've addressing, who have decided to become giddy about queerbaiting or something. If you are Destiel shipper, or even a current viewer of the show, I'll know everything I'm about to say, and you might want to skip to my conclusion.

And let me be clear: I’m not a Destiel shipper, in the sense I really care about the relationship. In fact, I'm not really a 'fan' of the show exactly...I watch it, but often a season or two late. I just have caught up to 'see the show out', if you will...I watched it from the beginning, and I will see it end. And it's not like anything else is on. So I'm saying these things as a general, moderately engaged viewer of the show, not a shipper or fan.

If you are not a viewer, here's a ton of background about Cas 'dying':

You do not understand how this show works. Stuff is happening at the cosmic level, and almost all the players can immediately bring anyone else back to life.

And not only is death a revolving door, Cas didn't 'die' anyway. Jack went to The Empty, the same place as Cas, _literally earlier this episode_. And was sent immediately back out. The Empty is not hell...and also hell isn't hard to get out of, the main characters have wandered into hell (the actual hell) three times this season, once to borrow a cup of sugar.

Besides the Empty, Death can bring anyone back, and, she just died (We think?), meaning there's a new Death out there...although we don't know how that relates to everyone vanishing.

God probably _can't_ pull people out of the Empty it...or, least, we don't think he can. We're not sure. He's been upgraded a bit now that he has merged back with his sister. (No, I'm not explaining this show to you.)

Speaking of that: The end of this eposide had God erased all people from existence except the main characters. Probably cleared out Heaven and Hell too. The dead aren't going to stay dead, or this the most downer ending that has ever existed.

I mean, I get you don't watch the show, but you didn't even watch the _episode_!

As for the relationship:

These two characters have been in love with each other for quite some time. This isn’t me being a ‘shipper’, which would be something like promoting it or wanting the ship...I don’t really care. I am aware this relationship exists because it is clearly, textually, there. By both characters.

Dean has had worse reactions to losing Cas than losing his brother. (And had one at the end of this episode, although I don't know if the ten second clip you all apparently watched showed it.)

So, every single person who thinks Dean doesn’t love Cas is...hilarious wrong. It is maybe possible to argue it isn’t romantic on Dean's part, and it’s even more possible to argue that Dean can’t let himself go there, either out of some level of self-loathing homophobia and toxic masculinity, or the actual answer: He can’t let himself be in a relationship with anyone, because he knows it will end horribly, which is, of course, a thing I know because I watch the show. (And Cas literally said that thing in the very scene.)

Meanwhile Cas has said, a few times, how much he loved Dean, although he has tended to immediately backtrack in the way he did in this speech...saying he loved Dean, and then saying he loved everyone...but in this speech, he went back to talking about Dean. Making it very clear.

Other things I know, that you don't:

The phase ‘I want things I can’t have’ is a meaningful phrase as it has been used by Dean, about himself, talking about love, in regard to flirting with an imaginary women.

Dean recently has had a lot of realizations about himself, and some closure on his relationship with his father.

Only two episodes ago, God explain that this universe went sideways due to Castiel. In other universes, the apocalypse story (waaay back in season 5) played out as intended, but in this one, it didn't. Castiel used his free will, and the entire story, and universe derailed. And here, this episode, we get Cas confessing about how he learned to love due to Dean.

Thus, Castiel love for Dean saved the universe. Not metaphorically, or a shipper reading that in. That is a textual fact within universe of the show Supernatural: According to God, Castiel's free will derailed the End Times, and according to Castiel, his love for Dean is the reason that happened.

You guys basically just watched She-Ra and turned it off when Adora apparently died and ran online to start yammering about the show is homophobic for doing 'bury your gays'. Good job, everyone!

And I almost leave this out because I don't even want to have to say it: While it is a bit shitty for you, who don't know the character at all, to attack an actor portraying emotional responses in a normal way for a character, whatever. But it's incredibly offensive to imply this was due to the _actor_ being homophobic. You can attack the acting, because you...don't know anything and...came in with some weird assumptions based on whatever the clip said. But don't attack the _actor_. At worse, he's a bad actor. (He isn't.)

--------------------

And that brings me to my conclusion. It's technically a hypothetical:

When Cas comes back, either to be part of the next two episodes, or just to say goodbye, and when Dean manages either to stammer out his love confession or...not do that but somehow manage to indicate it's really there but he's not able to deal with it...

...how do you think all your clowning is going to look?

And how do you feel about shitting over all of this, when you don't know how it's going to end, and you don't even really know what's going on?

I'm part of the Supercorp fandom, and we, right now, have been talking about how we _might_ be seeing the buildup to the slowest, most epic slowburn on TV.

What if Supernatural beat us, what if they've been playing the long game for...not this entire time, but like five years or so? And create the slowburn to end all slowburns.

And _this_ is how the internet responded right at the end, by memes about being sent to super-hell for being gay, because we couldn't keep our fucking memes in our pants for two goddamn weeks?

So maybe all you clowns just...stop? Wait it out.

Because it's possible that the greatest Supernatural quote of all, which predates Castiel and certainly was intended as a joke at the time: And here we were thinking that, you know, we were teaching you and all this time you were teaching us, about heart, about dedication, and about how gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day.

...ends up being how the show ends?

#destiel #supernatural #gaylovecanpiercethroughtheveilofdeath

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aceandart · 4 years

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Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.) the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc). the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else. hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were. (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot.

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.)

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast. I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season. aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot? spn should have it's own page for both.

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser.

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc. huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke.

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind" (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women. {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.}

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes" (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development.

usually Black men but in general men of color:

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color. again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc)

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie. they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub. the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically. (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.)

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.) other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.)

d) "buddy"

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???) minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are). How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one.

#spn #fandom stuff #inbox and admin stuff #//#also this focuses on canon #(and ok a little abt the cast/crew)#(though among other things not mentioned is how actors of color and actresses got treated re cons & crew demographics)#however fandom has it's own fucking list and I can come for them at any time too #anyway that was a very nice ask #and if you want actual details about any of these I could provide #but I wanted to stick with patterns because I feel like that says more than the individual things they do #of which there are legion #anyway a summary of what I and many other people have discussed over the years about how much this show sucks #////#i really do get the urge though #one of my mutuals makes s15 destiel sound good #but fool me once shame on you and fool me 50x fuck you spn #//////#this is long (you asked a very wordy person) but tbh I've written longer meta #and oh man back in the day this thing would have been full of links that would have taken you to other metas #///////#eta: fucked up my formatting I had to add a) because bullet points wont indent

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eyecicles · 4 years

Note

🌻

It’s fascinating to look back at fandom spaces around ten (or more) years ago. I vividly remember how different ship wars were in some aspects.

Very often the subject of ship wars was if the characters in question could at all be seen as “gay”, and what it said about you if you think that they could, in fact, be read as something other than straight.

To be blunt: deeply homophobic reasoning was much more accepted.

What’s interesting to see now, though, is that fandoms seem much less... straight? Maybe this is mostly the case here on tumblr, but I remember how hard it was for me to find people that were openly LGBT (I wasn’t even out on the internet back then, but I naturally still looked for other people I could relate to).

There was one lesbian writer who wrote almost exclusively about a rare fem slash ship for the HP fandom. I wasn’t interested in the characters, but I liked how the author conducted herself in the forum, so I began reading her stuff. And I liked it more than I thought I would.

It stuck out to me a lot of reasons, and helped me ease some of my internalised homophobia. Why? Because it proved to me, without a doubt, that writing about gay characters in love has just as much worth as writing about canon straight relationships. And that you absolutely don’t have to give one fuck about how “canon” the fictional relationship you interested in is.

There’s, without a doubt, a very long history of homoerotic subtext in all sorts of fiction, but straight people clearly don’t know how it feels to so rarely see an important part of yourself represented in stories. While it’s not untypical for a male and female character to suddenly become a thing without any sort of, well, warning (anyone remember Digimon?). It makes it easy to mock people for looking at it from a different perspective, one that doesn’t necessary hold the Word of God above individual interpretation or deliberate reimagination.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I read following comment today:

“I know you all want your hot Yaoiz but (a popular m/m ship that is widely accepted to be more than subtext, even by many cishet men) has no chemistry and shipping it is grasping at straws *proceeds to negatively compare it to an undercooked het ship they’re into*

And I briefly had to check the date because I thought I was transported back to 2009, haha. Really made me realise how far we’ve come, since I can’t remember the last time I saw someone express their opinion in such a manner.

#ask meme answers #anon

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echo-bleu · 5 years

Text

New Year

Title: New Year

Fandom: Roswell New Mexico

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 1436

Characters: Alex Manes, Maria DeLuca, Rosa Ortecho

Summary: New Year's Eve at the Wild Pony is hard on Alex.

A/N: This is a little snippet of a fic that wanted to be written today. I had the first sentence, then it went wildly different from what I expected, but I like it like it is.

[PTSD flashback/panic attack, implied alcoholism]

Read on AO3

Coming to the Wild Pony's New Year's Eve party was a terrible idea, Alex decides as he squirms in his seat, nervously checking his watch. He's starting to wonder if the hand is frozen at twenty minutes to midnight. He doesn't even know why he caved in to his friends' relentless nagging. So they would leave him alone, probably. That plan failed spectacularly, since he's now stuck in a corner of the packed bar, watching Maria, Liz and Rosa dance and trying not to flinch every time someone comes within three feet of him.

He knows that Maria hoped tonight would be an opportunity to start repairing their damaged friendship. They've barely seen each other since she ended things with Michael, only days after they first hooked up, when the revelation that not only Michael was an alien but also that he helped cover up her best friend's murder proved to be too much for her.

Alex wants to forgive her. He wants to go back to their easy camaraderie, to support each other over drinks and talk about boy problems and Maria's mom's health and what Alex will do after his discharge. He doesn't want the pang in his chest every time he thinks of her and Michael, the tears he can only stop by snapping at her with a biting comment. They did nothing wrong, he tells himself. He and Michael were not together. Alex didn't tell Maria the full story. She didn't know.

“Alex,” a voice shakes him out of his thoughts, and he looks up. Maria just slid into the seat across from him, her cheeks red from dancing and drinking. Alex's hand tightens around his glass.

“Tired of dancing?” he asks with his best fake smile.

Maria clearly sees through his facade, but she plays along. “I want to dance with you,” she says.

“I don't dance anymore,” Alex says.

Not that he's danced a lot in his life. He went to prom without a date, since the whole school knew he was gay anyway. No boy offered to parade around with him. Then the military didn't offer many opportunities for dancing.

Maria's eyes flicker down to his legs. His left leg is moving quietly in rhythm with the music, but his right stays still, missing a working ankle to bounce.

“Come on. I'll go easy on you.”

Alex looks away, not letting their eyes meet. He hates himself for not being able to do something as simple as faking it. Why is it so hard tonight? He's a master at pretending he's fine. He smiled his way through his hospital stay and his rehab. He smiled his way through his abused childhood. He can do this.

“Okay,” he decides suddenly. He stands up so brutally that his chair screeches on the floor, but it's drowned out by the music. It's loud, too loud in here. Alex can't hear people approaching him. Sounds fade into each other and make his head pound. His leg aches.

Maria's small hand slips into his. Alex is briefly grateful for her not going over the top, or being too tentative. She's trying, and so is he. It's awkward and painful but they're doing their best.

She's apologized, several times, for not understanding, for breaking her promise. Alex doesn't know why it doesn't feel like enough.

Liz lightly bumps into him, as Alex starts moving his hips in rhythm with the music. His leg doesn't love it, but it's not too bad. It's a song he likes, even though the noise is hard to bear. Maria smiles, and Rosa high fives her.

They're happy together. Now Max has been resurrected, and Rosa has a new identity, the dust has settled and they have a moment of peace. Alex swallows.

They've all cheerfully abandoned the Caulfield files to him, leaving him to spend his nights watching footage of aliens being tortured−Alex can handle it, can't he? He's a soldier. He's seen worse. Hell, he's done worse.

He hasn't slept two hours in a row in months. When it's not nightmares, it's the pain. He keeps things close to heart, though. It's his own fault, he knows, for not telling anyone.

In a moment of clarity, Alex identifies the feeling that's been nagging him since that night he found Maria and Michael kissing. It's loneliness. Maria's betrayal hurt so much because she was the first person he ever told about Michael, and she treated his confession of love like a joke. Michael keeps throwing his father in his face like he's the only one who's ever been hurt by him. Kyle knows bribes, about the abuse, about Michael, but he doesn't ever ask more. No one knows about the homophobic jokes Alex smiles through at work, where he has to pretend to be someone he isn't. They don't know about the scars on his body that aren't from the war, and the ones that are. They don't know about the pain or the flashbacks or the fear that grips him sometimes. They don't know about the men who died under his command and the people who died by his hand, and how much they haunt him, every single day.

No one asks.

Feeling like he might choke, Alex steps away and escapes through the front door. Less than ten minutes to midnight, his watch tells him. He glimpses a cowboy hat, but it's not Michael. The alien siblings are here somewhere tonight, he knows, but he hasn't seen them.

He toys with the idea getting into his car and just driving home, but he resists the impulse and goes the opposite direction instead. Maria's red truck is parked at the end of the lot, closest to the bar's back door, so he lays down the back and sits on the edge, crossing his arms over his chest. He's cold.

In a minute, everyone else will be heading out to see the fireworks, starting at midnight. Alex has been dreading this moment most. He braces himself, trying to take deeper breaths. The music still resounds loudly, even with the doors of the bar closed against the cold.

“What's wrong?”

Alex looks up in time to see Rosa approach. He's missed her leaving the bar. She sits down beside him, one leg tucked under her.

“Nothing,” Alex says. They haven't talked a lot since she was resurrected. Alex still isn't used to that thought, that he now has ten years on her. They used to be good friends.

“Don't give me that. I may be dead, but I'm not ignorant. I can see you're struggling.”

Alex sighs, but he doesn't answer.

“I am too, you know. It's hard to watch so many people drinking. Liz and Maria have good intentions, but they don't think sometimes.”

Neither does Alex, apparently, because he's hadn't even noticed. “It's gotta be hard,” he says.

“You know what? I'm really glad you didn't just ask me if I was thinking of having a drink. I'm not, by the way. It doesn't mean it's not hard.”

“I know,” Alex murmurs. “It's hard to be around so many people. And so much noise.”

Rosa nods. “Yeah. Let's stick together, okay?”

“Um,” Alex agrees. On an impulse, he adds, “It's five to. Fireworks soon. Can you−”

Rosa shifts and grabs his hand. “I'll be here,” she says.

“Thank you,” Alex gives her a small smile. “I've missed you.”

“Oh, mijo,” Rosa murmurs. “It wasn't long ago for me, but I thought...when I first saw you in uniform, I thought you'd changed too much. I thought you weren't you anymore. You've all...everything's so different.”

For a moment, Alex sees his own loneliness reflected in Rosa's eyes. “I'm still me,” he murmurs. “Just more...jagged. Burnt.”

“Old,” Rosa laughs quietly.

“Yeah, old. And you're a baby.”

They keep holding hands as the countdown starts, and the parking lot fills with people shouting along. At zero, Rosa leans in to press a kiss to Alex's forehead, then she wraps her arms around him as he flinches hard at the first cracks of the fireworks. He loses himself for a moment, gunshots and cries echoing in his head, but he never stops feeling her embrace.

It gets easier, progressively. He opens his eyes again, and he only sees the parking lot, and Liz and Maria looking for them among the crowd.

“You with me?” Rosa asks.

Alex nods and swallows. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, mijo. Anytime.”

Alex lays his head on Rosa's shoulder. “Happy New Year,” he murmurs.

“2020,” Rosa whispers. “What a concept.”

Alex laughs.

I couldn't resist the Russian Doll reference! :D I hope you liked it, I would love to hear your thoughts.

#roswell new mexico #roswell nm fanfiction #alex manes #rosa ortecho #maria deluca #echo's fanfiction #mine

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inactiive-shit · 5 years

Text

Old Flame

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Warnings: past toxic relationship, talking about some of the unhealthy behaviors, mentions of drug abuse and alcoholism

Pairings: post-romantic Prinxiety, platonic Prinxiety, current Anxceity & Royality

Words: 2,625

Summary: Roman had a high school sweetheart. He hasn't him in over ten years and for all he knows the man could be dead.Then he shows up unexpectedly, and it turns out to be something both of them needed.

Note: Hey everybody! This deals with a dicey topic and I can’t rightfully say how well I managed it, but I wanted to write something about reconciliation and forgiving people who messed up - especially when no party involved was completely blameless. So I gave it a shot, but please be aware that they do reference an unhealthy relationship and some shitty things that happened.

Thanks, and I hope if you read it you enjoy it!

When Remus looked up, stiffened, and growled, “Don’t look now,” Roman assumed he had seen one homophobe or another they had become accustomed to running into in their town. The last thing he expected to see when he turned around was Virgil Eli, a decade and a half older and looking - better.

Roman freezes, staring down someone he had never expected to see again. When Virgil looks up and sees Roman’s eyes on him, he seems just as immobilized as Roman is by what’s occurring.

Then he leans down to say something to the man whose hand he’s holding and jerks his head toward them. The man examines Roman shortly before pecking Virgil’s lips and releasing his hand, saying ‘go’. Roman can see the breath Virgil takes, the way it expands his chest and slowly drains out, and he wonders why it seems so alien on someone he knew so well, once.

Remus snarls when Virgil starts approaching and it snaps Roman out of his daze. He looks between his brother and his ex, looks between the person who had done most of the picking up the pieces and the one who had done most of the breaking, and stands between them. Remus, he knows, is more than willing to have this confrontation on behalf of Roman. But whatever is about to happen is something that Roman needs to face. On his own.

“Roman?” Virgil says. His voice is deeper and rougher than it had been before. It’s still quiet and unsure, too, but for some reason there’s a different ring to it.

“Hey, Virgil,” Roman says. He doesn’t know how to continue this conversation or even if he should. Long time, no see? Where have you been? How’s life been treating you? Where on Earth did you run off to?

“It’s, um, been a while.” Virgil rubs the back of his neck, something he used to do whenever he was feeling overwhelmed or attacked. It was something Roman is intimately familiar with, yet it felt different now, somehow. “Can we talk?”

Roman opens his mouth without a clue as to what he’s going to say when Remus stands up from the table, glaring at Virgil like he’d never seen something so disgusting. “Anything you have to say to my brother can be said right here. Or you can walk the fuck out. Better yet, why don’t you just walk yourself right in front of a car?”

The other members of their group choke, shocked. It occurs to Roman that he had never properly explained the situation with him and Virgil, or how any of it came to pass. Or why Remus would want Virgil to walk into oncoming traffic.

“Hey, dude,” Roman says, holding one hand up to Remus. “It’s okay. Stand down, please.” He redirects his gaze to Virgil, who does not, to his limited credit, seem the least bit surprised or offended by Remus. “Sure. Let’s go outside.”

“We can talk here, if you want,” Virgil says, but there is the slightest tremor in his voice that tells Roman he really does not want that to be the case. “I don’t mind if they hear what I have to say.”

“I think it’s a conversation best had in private.” Roman shrugs on his jacket and leads Virgil out of the coffee shop. There’s a bench conveniently placed right outside the big window, and Roman takes a seat on it, sipping at his coffee.

“What’s up with you?” he asks. It’s not the right question, but it’s not wrong either. It’s hard to say how a conversation as loaded as the one he intends to have should start, but pleasantries could always come first.

“Nothing too much,” Virgil says. He rubs his hands together, causing a chorus of tiny clacks as his rings smacked into each other. “How’s life been treating you?”

“Good,” Roman says, and it’s truer than it’s ever been. “What are you doing back here?” Another not right, not wrong question, but the questions are getting closer to what was really important.

“It’s home.” Virgil crosses his arms tightly over his chest, staring out at the road. “I grew up here, know every one of these roads like a locksmith knows keys. I think I was always going to come back.”

“Where did you go?” Roman asks, and that is the million dollar question. They had been childhood best friends, high school sweethearts, in love into adulthood. But things hadn’t gone well for them, had gone as awfully as Roman could imagine them going, and one day with no warning Virgil had left. Left without a note or a number to call, never picked up the phone when Roman did call him - until one day someone else did and Roman figured Virgil had died.

“I-a lot of places.” Virgil isn’t looking at him, and that too is reminiscent of the Virgil Roman knew but not quite the same. He can’t pinpoint the differences, but there has to be something. Otherwise Roman would probably feel a lot more sure-footed than he currently did. “Not many worth mentioning, though. To be entirely honest, which is the least of the things I owe you, I was so fucked up most of the time I can’t remember most of them.” Virgil shrugs like it’s no big deal, but Roman gets caught on the words, replays them like a broken record. So fucked up, so fucked up, so fucked up.

“Oh,” Roman says.

“I got sober, though,” Virgil continues like Roman hadn’t said a thing, and Roman doesn’t say another word so that he can hear whatever Virgil has to tell him. “And clean. I went to rehab for a while, therapy. Got put on meds that didn’t make me-well, that didn’t make me crazy.” He smiles, and it’s the happiest smile that Roman has seen on his face since they were nine years old.

“That’s good,” Roman says, and it is good. It’s good that Virgil got better than he was when they were together. It wasn’t-it wasn’t a good time for either of them, not something that Roman can usually look back on fondly.

“Yeah, it is.” Then Virgil does look at Roman, and Roman realizes that he has snakebite piercings and an eyebrow ring. The bags under his eyes are all make-up now instead of the ever-present exhaustion they used to be. The beanie on his head and his hair dyed black almost completely obscure his ears, but Roman can make out the telltale glint of quite a few more pieces of metal. Virgil has changed. A lot.

“One thing they teach you in AA, and in therapy, is about making amends. Especially where I went for AA, they were always driving home that you needed to apologize and mean it to the people you fucked over while you were fucked up.” Virgil pauses, releases another breath that Roman can see puff in front of his face. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. At Roman’s look, he twists his mouth into that familiar, cute sneer that he used to pull when they were together, but it seems softer now as he says, “What? You have to have some vices,” and inhales smoke.

“I suppose so,” Roman agrees.

“Anyway. Roman, you are the person I have needed to apologize to the most. While we were together, I was-I was fucking despicable to you. I was hurt and broken, and I expected you to put me back together despite you having to face your own problems and me not putting any effort forth for the same outcome. I thought being in love with you would fix me, and when it didn’t I blamed you. I did-I did a lot of things to you that I regret, enough that I’ll probably never be able to think of them all.” Virgil flicks ash off his cigarette, and Roman realizes that Virgil seems calmer than he used to; less jittery. “I treated you like shit. As much as I loved you, I treated you like you weren’t worth anything. And I’m sorry. Sorry doesn’t really begin to cover it, not with all the ways I messed up with us, but I am sorry. I wish everything that had happened between had been better.”

“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” Roman says, because it’s true. They had fought all the time, for a while. They had blamed each other for everything. The night before Virgil disappeared, Roman had yelled I can do so much better than you in a rage and stormed out the door. When he had come back the next day, Virgil had taken all their loose money and booze and left.

“Yeah,” Virgil agrees and that easy, amicable way is enough to really shock Roman. Virgil had never liked it when Roman contradicted him and was right. “We both contributed. But I caused a lot more of it than you did, and I failed to consider you in what I did. I was a shitty, shitty excuse for a boyfriend, Ro. The things I did and said are-are pretty unforgivable. I’m sorry I put you through it all.”

“It’s,” Roman says and stops. He was going to say it’s okay, but that would be a blatant lie. Nothing about the end of their story was okay. He starts again with, “It was terrible. But I forgive you. I forgave you a long, long time ago.” At Virgil’s surprised look, he elaborates. “I was mad at you for years. Pissed. But it was making me miserable, so I eventually went and saw someone. I, uh, I worked through a lot of the things that you did, and the ways I provoked the situations. Neither of us were at a great place, Virgil. Maybe in a different time, under different circumstances, we could have worked out. But as it was...we weren’t ready yet.”

“Huh,” Virgil says. “You’re right.”

“I usually am,” Roman says, grinning. Virgil smiles back. It’s nice, Roman thinks, in a way he didn’t think this could ever have been.

“You said they put you on meds,” Roman says after they’ve been sitting for a minute. “Doesn’t that mess with your addiction?”

“They only put me on non-addictive shit,” Virgil says, “and I only ever take what I’m prescribed.”

“How long have you been clean?” Roman asks.

“I stopped using nine years ago. I had my last drink six years ago. Nicotine and caffeine are my last guilty pleasures,” Virgil says, letting out another puff of smoke. Roman snorts.

“I like the piercings,” he says.

“Thanks. I wanted some, Dee convinced me on others.” Virgil smiles, reaching up to touch his eyebrow in a move that seems like he’s unaware of it. He looks dopey and in love and incredibly happy. There’s a part of Roman that wants to be mad, that wants to be pissed off that Virgil could have gone through so much, caused so much and still come out the other side this content and happy with who he is and what he has, but most of Roman is relieved that they both made it out alive. It’s easy to drown out the voice that wants to fall back into old habits after all these years.

“Dee?” Roman asks, because asking Virgil these questions and hearing the answers is simultaneously satiating and feeding every curiosity he’s ever had about what happened to Virgil once he slipped out the door when Roman wasn’t looking.

“My fiance,” Virgil says. He points into the cafe at the man he came in with. The man pulls a smile and waves, and Virgil waves back. They both have a punk style to them, ripped jeans and flannels, old shirts and beanies, piercings and tattoos and fingerless gloves. It’s a good look.

“Getting married,” Roman says, and he gets excited despite himself. He loves weddings. “That’s exciting.”

“Yeah. I love him. I asked him out five years ago and I’ve never been happier.” Another difference between them; Roman had done the asking out when they were young. Virgil was too shy to even say hi. Virgil takes one last puff of his cigarette and crushes it under his boot. “Well, what about you? I assume both those men in there aren’t your brother’s.”

“No, no, you’re correct. My adorably freckled beau, the one dressed in light blue. We’ve been dating for two years. He is my everything. I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

“I’m glad,” Virgil says. Roman tears his eyes away from Patton to see Virgil, and he notices the tears shining in his eyes. “I am so glad you found him and that you’re happy. I was so scared for years that I had fucked you up so bad that you’d never be okay again. I was terrified that you wouldn’t ever get to be happy. I’m glad you’re happy. I’m grateful. You deserve it so much, Roman. More than anyone else I know.”

“I am happy,” Roman says. “And I do deserve it. But you deserve it too, and I’m glad you’ve found it.” Roman reaches out and squeezes Virgil’s hand. He smiles at Roman, and it is so much happier than Roman can ever remember seeing him it’s overwhelming. “I’m glad you got better, Virge.”

“Me too.” Virgil lets out a watery laugh and wipes his eyes, smearing make-up across his face. “God, I knew I should’ve put on the waterproof eyeliner this morning.” Roman laughs with him, pretending that he isn’t just as affected. Virgil stands up and looks down at Roman. “Maybe I’ll see you around, Princey.”

“It wouldn’t be too terrible if you did,” Roman answers. Virgil walks back into the coffee shop. Roman stays where he is for five, ten, fifteen more seconds before he pitches his cup and goes back to his table.

“That was Virgil?” Patton says, Roman’s world. He looks worried, and Roman knows this will be a lot of explaining later, but he feels lighter.

“Yeah. An-an old ex of mine. We had a rough time.” Roman takes Patton’s hand and kisses his knuckles, relishing the feeling. “But we’re both better now, so I think it’s okay.”

“What did he have to say?” Remus demands, glaring across the cafe. Roman almost asks if he glared at Virgil’s fiance the whole time they talked, but decides he’d rather not know.

“He apologized,” Roman says, and that takes Remus back for a moment.

“He can shove his apology up his ass,” Remus spits, but there’s less bite to the words.

“I believe this one of those ‘all’s well that ends well’ times, Remus,” Logan says. “Perhaps it would be best if we left it as it is.”

“Specs is right,” agrees Roman. “We both did things we shouldn’t have, and we both moved past it. That’s what’s important here.”

As Roman settles back in to his table and lets conversation about other, trivial things go in one ear and out the other. Roman thinks on everything. He spent years of his life with Virgil, years of his life being in love and suffering for it. He spent years in an unhealthy relationship that they both should have gotten out of if they were smarter. But they didn’t, and it changed them. Roman can’t say whether it was for better or worse, but he knows that he would be an entirely different person without the experience in his life.

When Virgil walks by the window outside, leaving and holding his fiance’s hand, he waves at Roman. Some things, he supposes, always stay the same. Others, however, change for the better. He knows this situation is one of the latter.

He smiles as he waves back.

#sanders sides #ts roman sanders #ts virgil sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #ts roman #ts virgil #ts creativity #ts anxiety #post prinxiety #old flame #fanfic #my fanfiction #ts fanfic #ts fanfiction #my writing

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aewriting · 5 years

Text

Authursday: Tasyfa

For today’s Authursday, I wanted to highlight @tasyfa

Tasyfa has not only produced one of the best long fics in the Roswell NM fandom, but she has also created this entire AU world set in Toronto that explores a sub/dom relationship between Michael and Alex. In preparing this post, I realized that she has actually written 41 fics for the Roswell NM fandom, which is incredible! Quite a lot of range, and the writing is always high quality. For the purposes of this post, I am going to focus on her masterwork, “Through the Violet Glass,” as well as her AU series, “Spinning Circle of Flames.” There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read these, go now!

I think we are really lucky, in the Roswell NM fandom, to have a lot of talented writers, including folks that make some excellent longer, novel-length works of fiction. There are a few of these longer works that I read real-time, such as beamirang’s “The Old Astronomer” and myrmidryad’s recent “Shadow Work” (both excellent). For whatever reason, though, I did not discover “Through the Violet Glass” until it was well underway. From reading works in tasyfa’s “Spinning Circle of Flames” series, I was pretty darn sure that I would like it, but I wanted to be able to really sink into it and enjoy it, and that can sometimes be tough to find the time to do with a long fic.

About a month ago, I unexpectedly had to go on a lengthy road trip with only my youngest child (little enough that it wouldn’t really matter what I listened to in the car). I was contemplating what I wanted to hear – podcasts, playlists, audiobooks? And then thought to myself, I wonder if there’s an app that would read a website to me? That would, um, read “Through the Violet Glass” to me? So I downloaded an app called Motoread, and that is how I “read” “Through the Violet Glass!”

II was so impressed with the plot of “TTVG.” I think that, at times, when you’re working from canon (and a fairly limited one, as tasyfa started this work early in the series), you can be somewhat constrained in where you take your plot, but oh my god, there were a few twists here that were SO good and so creative. I remember being in the car and gasping when Alex found out that his father had married Violet, the fourth alien. I also thought that tasyfa’s choice to make Sanders the fifth alien, and to reveal him the way she did, in the midst of Alex’s showdown with his father in the junkyard, was very well done. I always appreciate a twist that is creative but still earned, if that makes sense, and I believe tasyfa really delivered in “Through the Violet Glass.”

As much as "TTVG" is focused on action, adventure, and intrigue, though, at its heart it’s a story about Michael and Alex rebuilding trust with each other and trying to form a real relationship. This is a really good slow burn. Their physical relationship feels very hard fought, and I think tasyfa does a nice job of exploring the impact of Alex’s PTSD, and of Michael’s psychological scars from his upbringing and feelings of isolation and abandonment. There are some beautifully written passages that really stuck with me. I thought Alex and Michael’s initial attempt to help Michael control his powers, which included Alex goading him in some not so nice ways, was well-done, as was the scene in which Michael first puts up a bit of a bubble-like “forcefield” and allows a bottle to shatter over it in Alex’s backyard (and tasyfa is able to work in fragments from the bottle in a meaningful, romantic way). I also loved a scene with Kyle, in which he finally gets Michael to speak about the injury to his hand.

Perhaps some of the best scenes, though, concerned Alex’s relationship with his father and his sexuality. There was a really excellent exchange (Chapter 49) in which Jenna speaks to Alex about his relationship with Michael, and it incorporates an analogy using apples that speaks to the larger issues of homophobia that Alex had to face in his relationship with his father:

“Oh, come on. Look at the people who were here last night. Your oldest friend from the first day of school? Two more from elementary school. Almost everyone else was from high school, which was more than ten years ago, as you just pointed out. That is not a chosen family assembled by a guy who can't commit," she asserted.

"Well, yeah, but those are friendships, not romantic relationships. Apples and oranges."

"No, Captain," her headshake was vehement. "That's Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Two varieties of apples and they both make good pie. Family."

"They're different for me," Alex disagreed.

"Because someone taught you one variety was rotten and you were too young to know it was a lie."

"You sound very sure of that," he was taken aback by how sure.

"Look, you're not the first gay soldier I've seen struggling to get out from underneath the horseshit their daddy piled on. Your father is an extreme case, and it's all extra complicated because of real live aliens and government conspiracies and God knows what else, but the bottom line is the same damn thing. He convinced you your Golden Delicious apples were really oranges and no good for pie. And he was wrong."

Tasyfa revisits this message during a conversation between Violet and Alex as well, in which Violet is very dismissive about Jesse Manes and his homophobic beliefs, having trouble believing that such hatred for Alex stems from Alex’s sexuality (Chapter 52):

Violet cocked her head. "Why does he hate you, Alex?"

No beating around the bush here, and Alex answered in the same vein, "Because I'm gay."

She stared at him for long minutes, brow furrowed in confusion, and finally asked, "That's it? Because you're gay?"

"That's been his problem since I was 13 years old, yes. I'm sure he's added more reasons over the years, but that's the foundation," Alex said mildly.

The way she snorted in disgust and rolled her eyes was eerily reminiscent of Isobel. "He's even stupider than I thought."

"That isn't a nice thing to say about your husband."

"If I had married him for love, perhaps."

"Fair enough." This ranked up there as one of the strangest conversations Alex had ever had. "Why did you marry him then?"

"Security. Stability. Continuance of life." She shook her head. "All that obsessive idiocy because one of his brood is gay. I thought it was a real reason."

Alex couldn't think of a response. To say that her dismissiveness and scorn for his father's opinion of Alex's sexuality was a shock to hear, didn't begin to cover it.

"This is a personal matter, this gayness. It has no place in a warrior's professional vocabulary," Violet sounded frustrated now as well as scornful. "Men don't get their balls out on the battlefield."

"No, they don't," Alex agreed, maintaining a calm façade when he wanted to burst out laughing. She seemed offended his father had mixed up the personal and the professional.

Like he'd broken some kind of warrior's code.

Again, if you have not read “TTVG,” it is well worth a read (or a listen)! Well-written, well-plotted, with fleshed out supporting characters and a great Michael and Alex romance at its core, as well as a really thoughtful take on some of the psychological aspects of these characters, and the impact of Alex’s relationship with his father.

AND THEN, tasyfa creates a WHOLE different universe in her “Spinning Circle of Flames” series. As I was preparing this post, I tried to think about what stood out to me the most about this series, and it was two things: 1) smut, and 2) world-building.

So, smut first, ha. The premise of this series is that Alex is a Canadian, ex-military musician, and Michael is a happy-go-lucky grad student. They meet at one of Alex’s shows and embark on an extremely intense sexual sub/dom relationship. Tasyfa does an incredible job fleshing out the power dynamics at work here, as well as detailing the conversations that must take place in a relationship like this. This is a topic I don’t know much about, and it honestly felt like an education, just reading this. Some of these scenes, too… my goodness. Sometimes smut can run together, but it doesn’t here. Like, this is a very detailed, thoughtful exploration of a sexual relationship between two complex people, and tasyfa handles it so well. It’s fascinating to see what she does with these familiar characters. Like, they are still Michael and Alex, but with different backgrounds, and thus somewhat different personalities and approaches to life.

I also love the attention to detail and worldbuilding that tasyfa includes in this story. The story is set in Toronto, and I think that the city is described so beautifully here. There’s a real sense of place. Like, I can practically taste the chocolate croissants she writes about, see the intimate Italian restaurant, hear the clatter of the public transit, see the little fairy lights in the bedroom. It’s so rich in these sensory details, and that really adds to this already-sensual story. Just very well-done. I also love what she’s done with the supporting characters! Isobel and Maria are in a relationship, and Kyle shows up as one of Alex’s past lovers (and I truly hope she gives us more background on that relationship in her sequel, because I loved Kyle and Michael’s exchanges and the reaction it provoked in Alex).

All this to say that tasyfa is an extremely talented and creative writer. I am always excited when I see a new work from her! So thank you, tasyfa, for creating such excellent works!

#authursday #tasyfa #fic recommendation #roswell nm #malex

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