#i read you can put in au versions of media characters as long as their visual appearsnce is changed. so. stonks

[thekirammanjinx]

I think there are some people that are overly self righteous when it comes to Arcane in particular, it’s like they have missed the entire point of the show. It’s tiring and disappointing. And it’s so much worse when a sapphic couple is involved.

Like when it comes to CaitVi, people are so critical and striving for an impossible “perfection”. I always see antis being like “well Cait is a cop! I can never support it”, “the jail scene was so icky”, “Cait should have apologized this way.” We give so many passes to heterosexual couples and m/m ships than f/f ships. People really need to pay attention to the context of the show , especially when it comes to subtle details in animation. Also like you said, relationships can be messy and unhealthy at times but that doesn’t define it for the long term. They made that clear about Caitlyn and Vi tbh.

Sorry for the long one but I’m just tired of the constant negativity

Truly people are so self righteous and pretentious. Like no you're not morally better than anyone because you don't like the fictional "cop ship"(as if a million of these dont exist for m/f). People truly did miss the point of the narrative and Cait's role in being an enforcer. A character can be a cop without the show being copaganda.(this got long thank you for the ask)

But if these people lack so much cognitive thinking that every show that involves a cop is copaganda then maybe there is no hope. Truly missing the entire narrative. A story is being told, how about stop thinking you're better than people because you think you're above it all and start actually viewing the media in front of you??

The standards that people put on f/f relationships gets so exhausting. Just because the show didn't unravel in the way they would want in some fanfiction then they deem it bad or unsatisfactory. Or suddenly the character is ooc. Actually I don't think alot of these people know the characters. They've just created a version of these characters in their own head.

Fandom has gotten into the habit of labeling everything "toxic". Like no it's not toxic. They handled real emotions poorly. They made bad decisions in the face of battling said emotions. No Cait/Vi isn't toxic or abusive. People who say they are an example of domestic violence... please for the love look up and learn what domestic violence is.

A moment of physical assault does not necessarily equate to abusive. The two can be mutually exclusive. Please read the narrative in front of you.

I don't know what moral grand standing people think they're achieving but I promise the only thing they'll be achieving is continuing to reduce the f/f representation we get on screen. Why do m/f relationships get to be bumpy and have their ups and downs but f/f have to check off every perfectionist and purist box.

Let f/f be complex. Let f/f relationships that exist in complex universes be complex. Let there be moments that they regret because they lashed out because of their emotions. Let female characters be well rounded.

Speaking of details of animation. This show is so richly crafted, there's so much put into the facial expressions and posture and everything. This is visual media people. Please learn to take in the full picture this is not an audio book or podcast. Watch with your eyes please.

Speaking of giving m/f a pass, i love timebomb but nobody says they're toxic or talks about how jinx was terrible to ekko and the firelights. They got one au episode and suddenly forget all that happened before then? Nobody is begging for an apology there. Nobody is talking about how jinx could've killed them both on the bridge. Or how they had little interaction outside of those scenes if any.

Caitvi is deemed rushed or unsatisfying but they had to pull in an au episode/timeline for ekko to reach out to jinx. People say Vi only arc is in Caitlyn(guess we forgot about vander and jinx--again over simplifying a character story just because it's not what they wanted to see), but what was ekko arc at the end?

I'd be fine if people were giving the same energy across the board but no. Once again we are here watching people tear down a f/f ship.

"We deserve better" bitch China won't even let the girls talk to each other on screen and rest their head on each other's shoulders. Get a grip.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

this was quite a while ago so my memory is hazy but it still sort of bothers me, so

AITA for making a quick comment about a ship dynamic(???) i didn't like in the ship tag?

before you jump on my ass, this isn't pro/anti stuff. literally just a matter of preference.

not going to mention the specific characters or media in question for pure anonymity's sake. i'm just going to assign arbitrary names to the characters in question for readability. let's say Albert and Bartholomew, or something. and the ship name can be Fucking BartBert I Guess.

"Bartholomew" had a traumatic experience in his childhood that had a very large impact on his mental state, let's say. as a fan of. um. "bartbert". i had noticed a trend in fan works of this ship depicting an AU version of Bartholomew that had never had this traumatic event happen to him. not that there's anything wrong with that, really. i just found it sort of strange and i was more interested in the canon character, additionally i found it sort of comforting to think that Bartholomew was worthy of love scars and all, so to speak. so i made a short post in the tag expressing pretty much that. along the lines of "why is there so much fanart like this? can't he be loved the way he is?" or something like that, and tagged it as bartbert because i wanted to see other people's thoughts on it. in retrospect it could've been read as dismissive or inflammatory i suppose but i really didn't mean it like that. i was just a little bit annoyed and confused by it.

fast forward a little while and this person comes into my notes saying something along the lines of "for some reason i can't reblog this on my main, but it's because people have been nice enough to make fanart of the AU that i made." i didn't think i knew this person at all, so i essentially just responded trying to assure them that i don't know them and wasn't trying to attack their art or them personally or anything.

i'm not sure exactly what happened after that because it's been like 2 years but in essence, i had actually blocked their main a few months before, because they had been posting about that AU and i didn't like it, so i just blocked and moved on like i usually do with stuff like that because i didn't want to see it in the tags. i probably didn't even realize at the time that they were the creator of the AU. but this person pointed out that i had their main blocked as like, evidence that that post i had made was a personal attack against them, or something like that?? of course i didn't mean it in that way, i had just blocked their main months ago and forgotten about it, and i wasn't even really trying to be rude but they blocked me before i could try to explain myself.

i remember this whole thing pretty vividly because i was at the zoo with my family that day and feeling like i was being accused of something i didn't do, or being called mean or being picked on by someone with a much larger following than me presumably, just for making a single post the night before was really stressing me out on what was supposed to be a fun day. in addition i ended up leaving the fanbase for the work in question entirely pretty soon after because i didn't want people to think i was weird or mean. it's sort of colored my recollection of the work in general, which sucks because i do still really like it.

in retrospect i'm honestly not sure if what i did was wrong or not. i suppose i shouldn't have put negativity in the tag but also i feel like you should be allowed to express negative opinions the same as positive ones, right? as long as you aren't being a jackass about it. although at the same time i can sort of see their perspective because i think if i saw a post like that about something i had made i might've jumped straight to being defensive about it, too...

but anyways it's one of those memories that creeps up on me while i'm trying to go to sleep, so,

was i the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[languajix]

21 and 23 <3

Thank you, Belle! :D

22.) What is your favorite kind of pizza?

I like barbecue or BLT pizza. Tomato sauce is okay but if you can substitute it for other things then the pizza truly rocks. Like peanut sauce; I love a good peanut sauce pizza.

23.) What is one of your favorite TMNT fics?

Okay I'm. I can't pick "one" why is that word even there it's too difficult. So NOPE YOU GET MANY

Ghost in the Shell by Amevello Blue - I love it so much I can't even quantify, it hurts my heart and it is slowly starting to heal it but we're not quite there yet and I am so excited to get there. The journey is long but so worth it. 2k3/Rise crossover proposing "what if SAINW Donny disappeared into the Rise dimension?"

I Get Knocked Down by Justalittleobsessed, perchance you've heard of it, great angst, great character development, I love characters with secrets and I love the painful reveal and I love characters that *heal*

The New York Conspiracy Corner by blueh - a really really good social media fic set in Rise

Skin by Halogalopaghost - A 2k3 Raph who realizes how different he is from his brothers as he starts laying eggs, and the feelings involved in grappling with that reality.

Shrunkified Raph and the Aftermath by 6monthsfromnever is a 2k12 Raph fic where he gets (temporarily) de-aged and the emotions and interactions in it are so good (it's a series but I'm putting it in this list of fics because I love every fic in it)

Where in the World is Neon Leon? by 316_frogs - A Rise fic where Leo learns how to use his portals the hard way, and ends up traveling a lot and getting into a lot of Situations

I'll Be There when the Light Comes In by taizi - another series but I don't care, each one of these crossover fics brings me so much joy. They are just so warm. 2k3, 2012, Rise crossovers.

The Day The World Broke by saladmix - a really good horror story, and I say that as someone who does not like horror. Their own iteration of ninja turtles get plunged into a horror scenario, but various more familiar versions come to their rescue as they track down the source to fix their world.

On Earth 4218 by Astronomy_Nerd - a Rise/Spider-Verse crossover AU by my mutual Astro, a Shellshocked fic in a universe where Miles is the Prowler and the turtles were raised by Draxum! The worldbuilding/history is so cool and I love the Miles/Mikey dynamic and the secret identity plot.

A Tale of Two Spirits by unorthodoxx - a very long very good (on hiatus) crossover between Avatar The Last Airbender and Rise, and it's the reason I got back into the ninja turtles recently. I read it and was so intrigued by the Rise turtles' characterizations that I decided to read some more fic, and here we are.

First Encounters by Cadoodledoodleydoo - a Rise story about some of her cool OCs with some really cool art!

And One to Grow On by Zelgadis55 - a 2k3/2k12 crossover in which the Michelangelos get switched and it's sad and it's good

Second Shot by twignotstick - a really cool iteration and I can't wait to see where it goes because the story is so good and there are a lot of really interesting twists!! And it's really well written

And there's, of course, another one you might have heard of, it's called cuz there's a spark in you (no literally-) and it's by this very creative person who I appreciate a lot, it's a Rise AU where Mikey is possessed by the spirit in his kusari fundo and I can't wait to see where it goes

[the-marron]

[30 questions for authors]

10, 19, 20

10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most?

Ha, that's a very good question really. I think it changes? I used to be very bad with dialogues, I could go on and on with my characters' internal monologues without ever mentioning what the character was doing or where they even were, just paragraph after paragraph of their internal struggles. Now I am more mindful of keeping things balanced, and I think looking back onto how much work I've put into actually paying attention to dialogues, by sheer practice I learned to like them a lot. They are still not dominating the story, but I am really happy about them now! But I like the plot too, especially with longer things where I plant the seeds early on and can hit my characters with a full-blown tree later. Lots of fun, writing is. I think exposition out of these is my least fun - I do have a bias for in medias res, so the exposition usually happens on the go and in limited portions.

19. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

Easiest? Lin Nansheng, hands down. Not because I relate to him so much, hell no, but because I really like what he undergoes in the canon, it explores the themes I am interested in, so writing LNS is like coming to a well-known room full of my favourite stuff. Plus, I enjoy reading about 'his' era, so each time I finish a book that is remotely connected to the Rebel canon I usually end up with a new idea of how LNS fits there. I also really like writing Zhao Yunlan, Luo Fei and Hei Qi and... do I have a type? Absolutely.

Hardest? Jiang Yang and Da Qing.

With Jiang Yang I find it challenging to balance what he is and does in the canon with adding something more to it and not destroying The Long Night's version of him - I like the canon too much to meddle with it and change it, and so my ideas on what to do with Jiang Yang are very limited - how to write more than a description of what he probably thought during different parts of the drama, without changing the drama too much so I end up disliking the world I've built? So far I only managed to stick him in some aus and in one (1) fix it and I am not sure if I have anything else in me. Love the character but he is a bit above my paygrade for now.

An Da Qing... Well, I admit, I like him, but I don't think I ever managed to bring him out of the 'good friend' role. He is much more than that but I never have good ideas to utilise him fully as something more than just ZYL's friend and partner in crime. I simply lack the ideas to give him something more to do, that is not connected with weilan.

20. What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

Minor as in OC? Or minor as in 'character that is not the focus of the show/fic but I liked them?" I am going to answer both, because I like to talk, duh.

OC - Madame Qi in Thousand Flowers Manor (Weilan Derivs). I came up with her because I needed a fretting mother figure that would fit the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies set up of this wuxia romance, and since she was a rather prominent minor character I had to figure out everything about her - her mannerisms, he priorities, her backstory, while still keeping her a mostly comedic character. I had lots of fun with her and when I re-read this story I am truly proud of how she turned out.

Not focus - Zhu Hong. I truly like ZH a lot in the drama, I like her self-acceptance arc and letting ZYL go as part of her journey, and I am also a big fan of how she interacts with the rest of the SID. I think the drama did a stellar job with her and so whenever I have space for it, I like to include her. Most notable work when I am really happy with how I wrote her is Love Resembles Memories series (Mystic Pop Up Bar au!), as well as Through the Window of This Love (Singer au!), but here it's a shared effort with Ascel 🥰. I like ZH so much I wrote an entire fic just about her and her friendship with Wang Zheng, but that doesn't count as minor character, right?

Thank you so much for asking, it was so much fun to answer!

If anyone wants to take part in the game, here is the link: og post

[seabxund]

munday writing detail meme!

repost, don't reblog. feel free to edit/add your own parts!

Name: Rowanberry, Rowan, Vinny Age range: under 18 | between 18 and 25 | 25 and older Pronouns: they/he and sometimes it/its Random fact about me: I was a vtu/ber for a short period, and I am currently an aspiring conte/nt cr/eator in general. I'm planning a series on yo/utube called " I played/read/watched __ so you don't have to " with two versions with one to help people with ADHD/etc to easier consume information on a media.

When it comes to planning threads: I like to wing it completely | I like to plan the start of the thread | I like to plan several key points in the thread | I like to plan every reply | It depends - in the way that i like to plan some beats depending on if we talk about it or not, but i do love to just see where we take each other a lot of the time. i am always down for very specifically planned stories though, especially ships and AUs Pre-established relationships between muses: I enjoy them | I like them occasionally but mostly prefer to play the relationship out | I don't do pre-established relationships When it comes to replies, I like to: Keep mine short (1-2 paragraphs) | Keep mine to medium length | Keep my replies long (10+ paragraphs) | It depends - I do a lot of one-liner funny things for quick activity, but that doesn't mean I'll be upset if someone decides to make it serious, or extends the length. I try my hardest to match length if I can, but I do tend to stay in the 3-6 paragraph range most of the time. I generally try to reply in: 1 day | 3 days | A week | Within a month | More than a month - this is mostly because of the nature of one, a multimuse, but also the fact that i am the most active during my work shifts.

I like getting asks for memes I reblogged a long time ago: Yes | No | Depends ( depends on the meme ) I like getting random IC asks from my mutuals: Yes | No | Depends I like getting tagged in unplanned starters from my mutuals: Yes | No | Depends I like getting getting OOC asks from my mutuals to plan our threads: Yes | No | Depends ( yes, but also please don't be afraid to DM me ) I like getting getting OOC asks from my mutuals just to chat about things not related to RP: Yes | No | Depends

I enjoy writing: I like romance, familial interaction, action, hurt/comfort, introduction threads, crossovers, everyday interactions, fights, mysteries, all sorts of things!! I don't enjoy writing: I'm also going to put fights here, because it really depends on the mun and our writing synergy. I also don't think that writing out NSFT/NSFW is necessary, but I will indulge if I'm comfortable with the mun. My favorite tropes are: Mostly relationship tropes, though not romantic/qp exclusive ones. Give me people who would die for each other, give me the two touch starved people yearning for comfort, give me rivals, and oscillating relationships. I also really like family dynamics, and enemies. PLEASE give me the Antagonist and Protagonist who cant function without each other. GOD - Opinion on shipping (for a specific character or in general): Shipping doesn't just have to be romance. I really want to do more threads of interactions and relationships that may be more like how I experience my own attraction as a aroaceflux/quoiromantic person. But I am a sucker for a good ship that has good chemistry. PLEASE please please come to me with your queerplatonic and romantic ship ideas. [ grabby hands ] I get inspired to write by doing this: When it comes to Canons, it's usually through indulging in the source material ( game/manga/anime/etc ), but for OCs it tends to be the sort of " what would __ do in X situation" talks with friends or writing drabbles like I do with Rubel. One of my favorite threads/drabbles/etc: This actually goes to a drabble I wrote on my main MuMu @/lxmitlxss for my Hughes Is Alive Verse/AU for how Acedia felt dying. A writing partner (or partners!) I've enjoyed writing with: @/patetpluvia, @/flamesignite, @/pareidolah / @/fingerfiend A mutual I want to write with but haven't yet: @/seaoftheworst, @/scarlxtleaves, @/moenxs

Tagged by: taken directly from @littlememebox

Tagging: anyone who wants to do it!

[sonic-love-island-official]

Introduction / Project Overview

Synopsis:

Follow a group of gorgeous (silly) Sonic singles in their quest to find love or money on the hottest reality TV show: Love Island.

Sonic Love Island explores relationships, identity, social drama and human complexities through fun and familiar characters and settings.

Overview:

Sonic Love Island was an idea my younger sister and I conceptualised early in 2023 and this passion project is exactly as the title suggests. Our recent obsession with Sonic the Hedgehog and trashy reality show Love Island coincided and one day we began making hilarious headcanons, brainstorming what particular characters in the Sonic universe would do whilst on a ridiculous reality TV show centred around finding love and… We created a monster.

So invested in this Idea, we elected to realise it through The Sims 3 and see what came of it. We made countless sim versions of various Sonic characters, put them all in a villa, turned autonomy on high and allow things to play out how they would on Love Island, with bombshells, recouplings, dumpings and lots and lots of spicy scandal. All of which we documented via notes.

Not having even completed the campaign (in fact, we'd barely started, I recall), a document was born and therefore the beginnings of a ridiculously fun, but awfully niche fanfiction. And as of right now, the original document is nearing 700 pages and there's much more to go!

The purpose of this project is pure enjoyment, really. A load of it is taken seriously (mostly lore and characterisation) but a bunch of it is just for the purpose of being silly and having a long-term project that I, my sister, and perhaps the Sonic community (?) can follow, develop and have a laugh with! A huge part of Sonic (at least, to me) is about connections between characters. Testing those dynamics and messing around with all the different ships in the fandom, without too much commitment, aggressive biases or necessity for it to Make Sense outside of the AU is just a load of fun.

So, if you're all for that, come along for the ride 😉 !!

What to expect in future Sonic Love Island posts :

A little confusion. But don't worry !! It's a learn / follow-along-as-we-develop-type project and unless you were following my shenanigans from day dot, a lot of this will be new information! It's like a puzzle — it'll all fit together eventually :) But I'm going to make sure to keep this place completely up to date, which will include reposting all my gibberish from my old domains onto here under the tag #sonic love island re-runs / #sonic love island re runs. You won't miss a thing <3

Rambles about the project — such as background AU lore, characterisation rants, etc. Some rambles may include plot spoilers, just due to the fact we're nowhere near posting this fic (but the spoilers might just add Intrigue to reading the real thing once it arrives, who knows)

Posts on the creative process as this fic develops

Quotes / small excerpts from the fic

Me constantly referring to Shadow as 'babygirl' whilst simultaneously complaining about how heavily misinterpreted he is throughout other Sonic media & fanfic (I do this a lot. 2024 is the year of Shadow and I plan to do my boy some justice)

PRETTY VISUALS ! Photo dumps of character models, the villa and various re-enactment images from the sims

admin : bee (she/they, 19)

Want to know more ? See :

AO3 — Read up on the characters' shenanigans before and after the AU takes place !

SLI Character Directory — Learn more about the cast

SLI Villa Tour — See around the SLI Villa

[canon-can-fight-me]

💕 for your genshin impact S/I (if you have multiple, I wanna hear about all of them! Or as many as you're willing to do :) ) and your City Of Love: Paris S/I

Oh, thank you so much for the ask! ☺️

Prompt: Since I have way too many self inserts that need talking about: send me a 💕 and the name or source media of one of my self inserts, and I’ll give you a lore dump about them!

It’s a little long so click below to read ↓

[Warning: Spoilers for Sumeru Interlude Archon Quest in the first paragraph!]

To be honest, I have so many f/o’s I haven’t fleshed out all my s/is for them, and sometimes I consider just making them all alternate universes where my s/i is with them, you know? But I will say that in almost every version of Rina, they are a descendant like the traveller, or in other words not originally from Teyvat. I like to imagine my s/i to be very similar to the traveller in the sense that she’s strong and knows many people, but also quite different. As in, you’ll never see her doing commissions just because some NPC can’t pick up wood ten feet away. She prefers to stay in the background and enjoy life on her own terms, and in that sense enjoys traveling the different nations of Teyvat without a sense of obligation or worry. This s/i would be the one shipped with Tartaglia, Al-Haitham, Dehya.

Aside from that, I’m thinking of having the s/i with Beidou and Yelan to be the same person, as she has traits I think would compliment theirs. This s/i (who is different from the s/i in the previous section) is a Ministry of Civil Affairs member who prefers to stay within Liyue, where she knows the terrain very well. She also likes to cook and bake, and is probably one of the few people in Liyue who can actually maintain a work/life balance.

As for the C:OLP s/i…that one’s a little harder to explain. The straightforward answer is that my s/i is very very similar to the MC in the actual game. Witty, intelligent, sarcastic. However, most of the time I put Vincent in a separate AU with 🏆and ⚖️ and to be honest, that gets pretty complicated because while I aim to maintain Vincent’s personality and core of his character, the stakes in that AU are different (as in, the entire city of Paris isn’t at stake). The s/i in the poly AU has similar personality traits as the C:OLP MC, but instead of a journalist, she is actually one of Vincent’s less than loyal employees who questions his motivations and at the same time goes through a process of learning what it is about her that intrigues him so…

[kokoronbain]

Are you still trying to find a fitting media to put your characters?

Maybe you could put Divania into JoJo? Maybe her Powers into the bullfighting arena are her stand. Or the arena IS her stand.

Idk, let me know about it

OH MY LORD

Have you read my mind? 🤣🤣

There was a moment where I thought that Divania could fit in Jojo indeed. She could be a great and dangerous villain...

But she reminded me too much Dio Brando. So I kind of leave this idea (even if she would be more solitary and smarter than Dio :P). Plus I didn't find the good scenario on it while I should read last Jojo parts as mangas....

I kept however Divania as Dio in my own fucked-up crossover/AU idea xD

Else, I thought also about putting her in Pokemon, since the manga version were very realistic about how Pokemon can kill you, ooooooor putting her in Bayonetta games, as a big boss with bullfighting stuff, ooooooooor even in Cult of the Lamb, as a boss again and being the "One you Worship".

But I am not still convinced to put her in a media yet...

I would like to draw these ideas but that's all.

It's certainly due to her story which is very specific but I want to pratically keep what she got and she is now: A ghost.

And plus, in her story I want to add another very important character which could have a very interesting relationship (or at least, it is to me xD)

So anyway, except creating a whole universe/lore just for her and the other, I won't find the perfect media before a long time :')

[muttthecowcatridesagain]

Wow I didn't realize until this post that people from other countries were setting their modern aus in America bc they thought more people would read it/it would be more palatable

Like generic TV US only reflects maybe 1 or 2 places in the actual US, and it can be very boring/overused

Not to hijack the post (ie not everyone writes like this) but for me the setting is always another character of it's own with it's own traits, quirks, strengths, limitations, etc and needs that thought put into it to be interesting. Ie if I'm writing a modern au set in the US, you better believe that the characters will be having a grand and/or gruesome time in New Orleans with all it's specific culture

Anyway - I went into a rant below. TLDR - it really bothers me that people think the US is actually like that and that they have to write their modern aus in that setting to get views

TV!US/the US culture that is portrayed to international audiences is an extremely sanitized version of reality here meant to be more relatable to a larger audience (and also make the US look like this happy, resource abundant place with no or little personal problems for its citizens).

People who live in the US writing modern aus fall victim to this as well for multiple reasons - for example for a long time TV and other nationwide mediums have been associated with cultural assimilation and even dialect/accent/unique language loss in the US

It was one of the reasons that I was so excited to join the sambucky fandom 2 years ago and read/write in a setting that was familiar to me! But it's also the reason that writers from the US were assuming that there's snow and actual standard hotels in a small fishing town in rural louisiana . . .

Anyway, all that to say - if you're moving your characters out of their canon setting please don't hesitate to set them in your home city/culture. It's interesting and valuable writing! And unless you're really passionate about it, please don't set them in generic US culture - which is something that doesn't even really exist as you've been shown it by the media

I just wanna say, if you aren't American, definitely try setting a modern AU in your country. Fill it with the things you know, to breathe life into it. It's really nice to see new settings, to open up a fic and go 'oh wait, hold up, I know that place'. It might only apply to a few people who read your fic but it's really rewarding to get that feedback.

(Americans keep doing you, just trying to encourage the rest of us lol)

[banditjasper]

Introduction!

Welcome to my blog, page, or whatever people refer to it as! I have had this account for a little while, but been holding off on posting anything until I did something big. I am decided to just post something, instead of keeping forgetting about this account.

My name is Jasper!

I am 17 years old and going to be turning 18 this year!

I am genderfluid, and I use He/Him and They/Them pronouns!

I am an artist and I enjoy doing art! Expect both digital and traditional artwork to be posted in the future!

My motivation is super weird and is always changing.

My current interests in media (shows, artists, or movies) are The Owl House, Sonic, Gravity Falls, Arcane, Ninjago, Will Wood, Squid Game, and Skyrim! Also, I do not seriously pay attention if any of the stuff is controversial, but if anything listed is activity causing big problems, let me know!

^ Heavily emphasis on The Owl House! I have a lot of original characters who are a part of that universe!

Other important things to know about me!

I use ! a lot, it is just to show excitement or happiness! I have a lot of OCs that I can't wait to info dump about. I am also very new to using this site, so any type of help (as long as people are nice about it) is good!

Also, just because I am trying to make a space that is welcoming place! I want to keep my blog in a nice and peaceful area. I don't like causing problems for others.

I am always willing to make new friends and meet new people!

Keep in mind there are dark subjects in some of my characters' stories, and I might draw some things that relate to that. I will put warnings about it on the post!

I will be posting artwork from humanoids to anthros to ferals, to fandoms to original stories!

Do not use any of my artwork without my permission! Unless the artwork is a gift or for a trade, then you need to ask! Never use my artwork for Ai slop!

Do not bring sexual or NSFW content or ideas onto my page! Some of my characters may be adults, but I am not and I am not comfortable with people doing that stuff with my characters or to me!

^ If you are curious about any other boundaries of mine, just ask. I don't feel like going into what I don't like right now, but I am willing to tell people!

Main Characters!

The following is information on my current main OCs! These are characters who I am most likely going to post about!

Axel Hayes | 40s (depending on AU, he can be older) | He/Him | Omnisexual | Mercenary | Witch | The Owl House OC! His main versions are my Good Brother AU and Swordsman AU!

Jasper | 17 | He/Him and They/Them | Omnisexual | Shapeshifting Alien! | Main Persona!

Oliver Parks | 20s | He/Him | Heterosexual (everyone around him questions his sexuality for him) | Scientist | Human | Part of a story I am working on called, Tales of the Shadows!

Rex Heartstone | 16 | He/Him | Pansexual | Student at Hexside and works at Heartstone Bakery | Witch | Another TOH OC!

Spencer Grayson | 19 | He/Him | Omnisexual | Trans | Elven-being | A silly doodle character! Also, a minor Persona!

Vivian Rockwell | 17 | He/Him | Omnisexual | Edgy teen boy | Half witch and half grimwalker | The final TOH OC that is currently a main! His main versions are my Good Brother AU and Swordsman AU!

Conclusion!

If you ever have any questions, let me know! I am willing to answer, if I don't feel comfortable with a question, then I won't.

As I get more used to this site, I will be doing more on it!

Not sorry for this being chaotic. It just makes it more fun!

If you are curious, I am used to using Toyhouse, my username there is LovelyCupid! I will typically be crossing my artwork from there as well!

I am not expecting to gain a bunch of followers. I am just doing this for fun!

I think that is all I have to go into for this blog! Thank you if you read my introduction!

[sonnyinthesky]

A big long post about HP and my stance on it and how I use the characters as OCs and shit like that

A big long post about HP and my stance on it and how I use the characters as OCs and shit like that

I'm making this cause i'm probably gonna start posting about HP characters from now on and i think this disclaimer is super super important!!! Read below cut.

Ok SO- I hate HP, right? Well....it's complicated. It was my special interest for 6+ years, and while I tried my very best to hate it, and I did for some time, I'm starting to like it again. I am thinking I may begin to interact with fandom again, but very cautiously. I despise JKR for a lot of reasons (I'm not gonna list them cause I assume you can google why she sucks ass) and I also strongly dislike the books and a bit of the movies too (again, you can google all the reasons why they suck), but there is a catch. I LOVE the characters. The characters mean the absolute world to me. I also love the FANON. Not the canon, that sucks, but the FANON. Or really my own personal version. My own personal version is in short, a muggle au. It's nothing like the original plot, its very much my own thing that is very loosely based on the characters of HP. THIS is what I like. I like my own fanfiction pretty much. I also kinda like the fandom because it means I get content of my characters, but I don't like fandom content that is very heavily tied to the canon if that makes sense. I like what I can pretend is about my version pretty much!

So what is my version? My version follows my blorbo of all blorbos, Bill Weasley. He is the main character. It's a muggle au, so no magic or anything. It is entirely centred around the extended Weasley family, and it's next gen / modern, meaning all the next gen kids are there, and the original characters are grown up. It features all my headcanons and my versions of the characters, and pretty much all thats the same as canon is characters names and appearances and the ships / dynamics. Some things are very to canon, like the boarding school aspect (all the kids go to the same boarding school and the whole extended family went there too), and some of the character deaths, but thats it. Also, there was some sort of reality show made about the Weasleys/the school in the 90s, and now theyre all kinda famous. This is important only to me and my daydreams but i may reference it at some point so im putting it here.

some characters/eras are triggering for me for reasons i wont explain so just stay away if you mostly post about them. Those are the marauders and molly & arthur weasley. It sounds weird that those things are triggering but they remind me of super bad times and memories so please just dont bring them up and dont follow if youre a hige fan of them!!!

I won't ever tag the main HP tags, rather just the characters first names and a CW for HP, not anything that brings attention to the actual media or its fans. I do this so i dont give any more publicity to JKR than necessary.

TLDR: i dont like hp or jkr but i fucking love the fanfic i write in my head and will never publish. I may interact with fandom content only because i like the characters. some characters/eras are triggering for me for reasons i wont explain so just stay away if you mostly post about them (the marauders and molly & arthur weasley). I wont use HP tags but will tag a CW for it.

[writingmochi]

Hey I was reading your latest heesung fic and there is something that I noticed, maybe tht is your style or something but I feel like you should know about it, so when you write the dialogs in the fic, it sometimes feels too dragged out, you see it's not a novel or a small book, it's a short story each a every line kind of counts and when you add soo much of unnecessary dialogs it kind of distracts the reader from enjoying it, as someone who writes too I understand how one can go with the flow and keep writing dialogs, but I think you should maybe try and be precise with you dialogs or shorten them so they don't take up too much of the main story for example the part where y/n is with her friends talking about them eating the same thing as then, or the time in the car, as matter of fact I sometimes do this, make a shorter and longer version of the dialogs and check which prompt conveys the message better,

Again this is not a hate comment just constructive criticism

lissie: hello anon! thanks for reaching out with constructive criticism. this is my first time getting this so i'm actually pretty pleased to read and dissect it as it's also an avenue for me to show how i write and (maybe?) help others to improve as well.

first of all, welcome to the blog, and thanks for reading the fic! to answer you ask, i will dissect the points you have mentioned and what is my thinking process for it.

will put the discussion under the cut so that it doesn't bother other people's dash

spoiler warnings for both parts of laurel hell!

*ignore this cause i think tumblr glitch the read more to move it lower*

"it sometimes feels too dragged out, you see it's not a novel or a small book, it's a short story each a every line kind of counts and when you add soo much of unnecessary dialogs it kind of distracts the reader from enjoying it"

based on your ask, this must be your first time encountering my blog. for a brief introduction, this blog specializes in long fics, which are fics above the 10k word count. i know that that is pretty rare to find on enhablr which is mostly drabbles and social media aus but it is frequently seen in the likes of ateezblr and txtblr (two other groups i also write for), nctblr, btsblr, and other kpop fanfic side of tumblr that also have a large audience.

i treat my work as a novelette (15k) to novel-level works (above 40k) as, for me, that is the correct range of words to tell the story that i wanted to tell because it feels more complete. long fics are very famous on other platforms such as ao3 where you can find novel-level works that, if printed, they can produce even 500 pages. my fics are in the 100-200 page range if printed.

so, yeah. you are right that this is my style of writing.

as someone who writes too I understand how one can go with the flow and keep writing dialogs, but I think you should maybe try and be precise with you dialogs or shorten them so they don't take up too much of the main story ... as matter of fact I sometimes do this, make a shorter and longer version of the dialogs and check which prompt conveys the message better,

interesting take right there on dialogue as i think it comes from differing perspectives between writers.

i presume you write shorter fics, maybe around 500-5k max where you try to take a prompt and elaborate more on the idea of said prompt. i also have a guess that you are a social media au maker that could churn out multiple series within a year and you prioritize shorter dialogues as it is what you usually see in your day-to-day life when chatting and such. my writing style isn't like that though. so you can definitely feel the jarringness when you compare the two.

i also took ideas from prompts like you, but instead of elaborating them: i decided to combine them with other prompts. for laurel hell, heeseung's character could be divided into multiple different prompts which are:

rivals to lovers!heeseung

baby daddy!heeseung

childhood friends to lovers!heeseung

basketball athlete!heeseung

and more...

but when combined, you create this much more complex heeseung character that you could encounter in your everyday life. why? because people's lives cannot be defined into one single prompt or trope. what i love about writing long dialogues and long fics in general is the exploration of the characters that are being written and how their ideologies and beliefs bounce with each other. can it create harmony or will it create a conflict?

taking one example that you've mentioned [(y/n) and her friends talking about them eating the same thing], i want to show that they have a camaraderie going on.

as pregnant (y/n) could only eat certain food items yet she lives with three other people, you can imagine how the dynamic change when they usually drink a bottle of wine after class now has adjusted to the new situation. sure, her friends could continue eating their usual food or order fast-food takeouts, but (y/n) can't eat those, and it, implicitly, becomes a conflict between (y/n) vs. her friends as both options affect the money that they will use to buy them. her friends decided to follow (y/n)'s diet for reasons unmentioned in the fic, though you can easily understand it just by reading between the lines. this decision shows us who is living (y/n)'s pov that "wow, my friends do care for me so much that they change their diet to match mine."

in the real world, this is the equivalent of when a person wants to have a weight loss diet and they have a friend who is doing the same diet with them even though they don't have to. but they want to because it'll support the person who wants to have the diet. (y/n)'s friends changing their diet shows that they have unconditional support and love towards (y/n) and, in my opinion, makes them more "human" than just simple side characters a protagonist has in their story.

those little bits of dialogue might seem unimportant and dragging to some people, but for me, it is a stepping stone for character growth; which also includes the stepping stones for side characters so they don't seem like caricatures. in my opinion, it makes the world of the story much more livelier or movie-like as other people have mentioned to me about my works. you can show little nuances that a person has without explicitly telling the reader that they have it--the example of the phrase you usually hear when writing: "show, don't tell."

though this is the longest enhypen fic that i have posted here (not the longest fic on my blog because i have a 120k complex-world-building urban supernatural series that stars txt's yeonjun and soobin), i can't say that laurel hell is my magnum opus as i believe there are better enhypen fics i have written in compare to it. out of all the enhypen fics i've written, my favorite is crossroads--which might be a nightmare for you who likes shorter, tighter dialogues as this fic has so little dialogue because i make the (y/n) in it a silent protagonist who doesn't talk much. all of the character growth is done basically through narrations, how (y/n) thinks, and how (y/n) is being perceived by the world. but you might appreciate the efficiency of it more than laurel hell as it is a long analogical narrative of how people have their own crossroads in life.

laurel hell is also a comeback fic for me as the last fic i posted was in 2023. so i do feel like i'm also getting rusty. but i think that this is a great exercise for me because, as it is stated in the genre, laurel hell is a slice-of-life story, and using the little chapters/stories as a jumping board to make chapters that encompass one theme/arc is how i convey the slice-of-life style of the story. i interpret this story as a sitcom with different episodes telling different sides of the same group of characters as they grow from the start of the season to the end.

apologies for the long post! i just like this type of discussion as it increases my knowledge of the audience type who is reading my stories. i hope you can understand why i added those "dragging" dialogues in laurel hell.

once again, thank you so much for sending the ask and creating this discussion forum. in return, i do hope that i can maybe take a look at your blog and read your stories, too? if you want to share it with me, of course :D

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

(for the fic writer ask meme) 💞 🍭

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language I'm a character kinda gal through and through. When consuming media - any kind of media - the first thing I fall in love with are always the characters. Nothing makes me opt out of a new book or show faster than characters that I find shallowly written or that I can't relate to. I hope that this shows in my fanfic, too. I write a lot of AUs, enjoy putting these guys into the wildest situations (I guess worldbuilding is another favorite of mine). But no matter how far I stray from the source material, I always try to stay true to the core of the characters. I want my readers to say "yes, I can totally see them acting like this in that scenario". 🍭why did you start writing?

I've always been wildly interested in words and languages, for as long as I can think back. I was the kid who devoured books way outside my age group, who had a whole pile of books next to her bed, who would rather stay inside and read than go out and play with her peers. I've always loved immersing myself in the worlds of those books, going on adventures with those characters. And I've always deeply admired the people who wrote those stories, who built these fantastic, intricate worlds with nothing but their huge, wonderful minds and put their stories down in words for us to experience. I wanted to be able to do that, too - so I started making up my own worlds and writing down my own stories. What made me get into fanfic, specifically, was the "fix it" genre. I was fourteen (I think?) and one of my favorite characters had just died in the canon - I was devastated! Until a friend told me about fanfic, that there were people out there who were just ... making up entire, alternate versions of canon where things went differently. From that moment on, I was hooked! 😂❤️

Fic writer asks

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

ok so hi first things first- nothing i say here matters at all, you can do whatever you want forever. i just really enjoy complaining and i am the world's pickiest bitch.

second things second- evos is long and i genuinely understand why people don't have an interest in watching it (even though it IS good and i do recommend it) so i'm trying to make the lore of the series more accessible. i currently have an episode by episode summary of pearl's evos series available here, and i'm working on one for jimmy rn (and because jimmy and martyn are literally inseparable, it'll functionally be a summary for martyn's as well.) after i finish jimmy's (which will take a while, it's over 100 episodes long), i'm planning on doing a summary for grian and bigb as well.

third things third, uh. third things is the point of this post and it is going under the cut cause i'm really really bad at explaining things when i'm not just straight up summarizing them so this is gonna get long and winding and probably very confusing. i am so sorry.

ok actually one more thing before we start talking about the actual topic at hand: the watchers and listeners that exist in martyn's eyes and ears story have become pretty divorced from the watchers of evos. they are no longer a metaphor for the audience, there's the whole council thing, etc. etc. so theoretically, evos wouldn't be like, required reading for making content about eyes and ears but... ok, here's the best way i can explain it.

eyes and ears is a fanfiction of evos, basically, alongside being a life series au (which is what martyn actually refers to it as). it's taking some of the main parts of evos and some of the characters of evos and putting them somewhere else doing different things. it's also a pretty canon-divergent fic, in this analogy, because it's divorcing the watchers and listeners from their original intentions. and let's say you read a fanfiction for a piece of media you've never consumed and you really like it, and you decide you want to make art/fic/posts/etc about this fic. very exciting! you should!

but here's the thing. this fanfiction, eyes and ears, has a lot of secrets, a lot of unknowns, because it's an ongoing series and the creator is secretive. there are characters who are not particularly focused on because they aren't the main character here and there are things you just don't know. realistically, you are going to cover those characters or those things in your creations, and you're going to have to make up your own thing to fill in the gaps. in this scenario, you can either fill in those gaps with things that are informed by the source material, evos, or you can not. and if it's not informed by the source material, things might get... weird, out of character. and then those things travel to another person who hasn't consumed the source material and they get more off and then another and then another and then you get a person who thought the listeners were fanon which is, i will be honest, part of what prompted this post. it just results in a lot of confusion regarding what is and is not based in canon and it's confusing for everyone! and oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so many words in and i haven't answered your question yet WE ARE MOVING ON.

so the things about evos lore that get butchered by the fandom-

the watchers do and don't get butchered. like, they are assholes, and depicting them as villains is not at all inaccurate, but people so frequently do it in a way that just feels... wrong and weird and out of character. like, the very popular headcannon from the last few sessions of limited life that the watchers pushed jimmy off of skynet. the watchers are not nice to the evolutionists. they put them through shitty and grueling puzzles and they kill their animals and they place bedrock on their chests and they make them travel long distances in a version of minecraft where that was literally the worst part of the game, etc. etc. etc. but they are not malicious in that way. they are never personally reaching down to fuck with things like that, and like people very frequently depict them as doing. there's a reason that grian's departure from the series involves him becoming a watcher- when you are a watcher you are very divorced from the players despite also being very up in their shit. they’re interacting with players a lot, but never while the player is there. they’re always leaving stuff behind for players to find, not showing up as a ghost at their house to screw with them or kill them directly. that’s a very very rare occurrence, if it happens at all (it doesn’t, to my memory, but i may be wrong) does that make sense??? god i hope any of this makes sense.

also, on the topic of watcher!grian- there is so much we don't know regarding him. if anyone ever tries to claim something as canon for watcher!grian you HAVE to ask for their source because there is simply so little fact about him. he doesn't seem to be aware he's about to become a watcher when he becomes one, but he also doesn't seem mad about it in the credits sequence. so how did he become a watcher? why was he cool with it? we don't know, and i think there are a lot of fun things you could do with that! simply don't listen to anyone telling you anything regarding grian's accession to watcher-hood is canon because there is a 99% chance it is not true. also, i'm not acknowledging anything grian gets up to as a watcher, because we don't SEE HIM as a watcher in evos. obviously martyn and eyes and ears has some watcher!grian stuff going on, but that is not the point of this! moving on!

the real big thing that i see get butchered with evos lore is the listeners, because people simply don't seem to know anything about them. this is probably at least partially because they don't appear in grian's series at all, which is the one i think most people are most likely to have seen, partially because the only series that they appear in more than once are martyn and jimmy's, aka the LONGEST povs by far, and partially because they are a generally pretty new addition to eyes and ears and we just don't know much about them so far. so frankly, i'm just gonna tell you about the listeners! if anyone who has watched more evos than i have has managed to make it this far and you notice anything i get wrong here- please tell me! i'm only human and making my way through jimmy's series is pretty slow going.

the listeners are heavily implied to be ex watchers (this is never explicitly stated, but like i said, heavily implied, and it’s explicitly canon in eyes and ears). around the time of the end fight, the listeners decided that the watchers had gone too far in their treatment of the evolutionists and rebelled. they initially contacted martyn and jimmy, and promised that they would return later with a mission for them. after the dragon fight, the evolutionists (sans a few members) respawned after the fight somewhere far away, and had to walk back to their houses and the proper spawn manually. they returned to spawn and found it in shambles. there was a message from the watchers there for them, saying that they needed to move thousands of blocks away to "new spawn", and they were only allowed to bring with them as many items as they could carry in their inventories, at risk of "a ban". when they went to their homes to collect their things, they found brand new ender chests that included a message from the listners. the listeners basically said "hey, we think this rule is bullshit, and here's a bit of help in circumventing it". how had these ender chests appeared here, you ask?

well, back in the past, jimmy escaped his dragon fight and also woke up at spawn, long before the other evolutionists got back. however, rather than being confronted with the message from the watchers, there was a message from the listeners, telling him to deliver the end chests to the other evolutionists for them. he did, and then waited for his next mission, and hopefully some help in getting home/finding his friends. his next episode opens with him totally alone in downtown evo and deciding to go back to spawn to see if anything has changed. at spawn, he finds the watchers' message this time, alongside a message from martyn telling him where new spawn is, because apparently all the other evolutionists had appeared here and left in the time he wasn't looking. and the listeners are supremely unhelpful here. jimmy has to make his way to new spawn all on his own. the listeners then go pretty awol for a while. they finally return at the "end" (end is in quotes here because it was the end for martyn+the end of evos in terms of eyes and ears but pearl, netty, and jimmy stayed on the server for a few months after the fact). they offer the evolutionists freedom from their contract with the watchers and open a portal that will take them 4 updates forward instead of 1, to the latest version of minecraft, 1.12. the evolutionists go through, and that's the last we really hear from the listeners until martyn's limited life.

basically, we know VERY LITTLE about the listeners in both eyes and ears and evos, but evos gives us more insight, which i think is extremely important when it comes to talking about them in the context of eyes and ears. the listeners are weird, and they're working against the watchers but they are far from trustworthy, and no one seems to know about their relationship with jimmy, or if they do they have a very skewed/inaccurate idea of what that relationship is, so now you know!

i'm sorry this got so long and i don't even think it was comprehensible. uh. TLDR of things people frequently get wrong about evos!

the watchers are far from good, but they're evil in a different way than people tend to depict them. they act in a very hands off manner, putting the evolutionists through puzzles and fights with mobs rather than getting their hands dirty and fighting/hurting them up close and personal 99% of the time. they rarely, if ever, interact with the players when the players might be there to see them, instead leaving them things while the players aren’t there. this also seems to be true of the life series, where, for example, they can't/won't touch scott and make him act the way they want him to, but they're willing to manipulate martyn to try and make him do it for them, or convince him to try and kill scott when that doesn't work.

we know extremely little about watcher!grian, which means there is so much space to play with him, and also anyone who tries to claim things are canon about him is probably wrong. ask for sources always and forever.

the listeners exist and they are SO WEIRD and we know very little about them. they also seem to be unable/unwilling to put their own will on the world and have to act through players. they are extremely secretive because they are (implied to be) ex-watchers actively working against them, but also potentially for other, more sinister reasons, we really can't know.

jimmy AND martyn were agents of the listeners, but jimmy was the one they went to for missions. they also were not very helpful bosses.

evolution smp 🤝 comics

having a pretty large backlog of content that many people are unwilling to consume before getting into the fandom so they make art/fic/posts from a “solely read fanfiction and not consumed the media itself” space and it results in beliefs about the world/characters/lore that are extremely divorced from the series itself overtaking the fan space.

[edjectedly]

Fanon vs Canon

Alright y’all buckle in cause this is gonna be a long one. Here lately I have seen a lot of discourse over fanon and canon and frankly I am growing tired of it. I by no means think that this post will be the end all be all of this discourse, but I am hoping to at least shed some light on the importance of fanon and its impact on content, especially in regards to comics and accessibility.

TL;DR: Everything boils down to if you don’t like something there is absolutely no need to comment on it or interact with it :) Comics are hard to get access to and canon can be hard to experience. Fanon is a crucial part of fan culture. 

Recently, I have started devoting a lot of my time towards the Batman fandom, as superheroes have been something I’ve loved for a while and something just clicked when I first found Young Justice back when it was still on Netflix. I watched all the episodes and then realized afterwards I wasn’t content with the amount of content I got regarding my boy Dick Grayson, so I switched over to AO3 to find anything more. There I was introduced to the extended BatFam and that led me to reading exclusively Batman fanfiction so I could see more of these four brothers. A few years passed, my hyperfixation changed to Sanders Sides, and now I’m back neck deep in Batman. I don’t know what triggered it this time but I’m super happy to be here. Let me get to the point; I got into the Batman fandom through Young Justice fanfiction.

So why does that matter? Well, I tried to find a way to read all the comics so I’d have an understanding of canon so I could make my own content because I had just gotten out of a fandom where I was creating content regularly and I wanted to continue. I couldn’t find a way to read them, so I stuck to just reading fanfiction and finding stuff on Tumblr and slowly I stopped wanting to create things. I was too nervous that I wouldn’t abide enough by canon that I’d get roasted for what I created. The second thing I posted I even clarified that I hadn’t read the comics and that my knowledge came from fanfiction and so this was based on my canon and I still had people in my inbox and on the post telling me that I wasn’t being canon compliant. Which I wasn’t trying to be. This put the brakes on me creating again for a bit, but this time I got angry and started thinking of new ways to make things.

Still, I was seeing things about canon vs. fanon and how fanon was bad for changing characters. I decided not to care and now we have the Alternative Introduction AU I so love creating for. I thought about Sanders Sides and how that had been a big issue in the fandom, people characterizing characters differently from canon. I contributed this largely to a lack of content, the issue with Batman is that there is so much content.

Comics are weird. There are many timelines, versions, writers, etc. Canon changes writer to writer, and frankly I think that allows for a lot of different interpretations. Others, however, try to pick a set way characters should be. One of the biggest, or at least most memorable to me, was Tim Drake and his coffee addiction. Fans latched onto it, whether they saw it as funny or relatable or whatever, it became very popular. It made sense and people enjoyed it. This is great! People are engaging with the media, making it enjoyable for them, and expanding on characters in a fun way while forming connections with other members of the fandom. Then, I started to see people angry about this little thing people saw Tim Drake doing. This anger only grew when it happened to make its way into a comic. I think it was like one panel? No matter, it wasn’t big but I know people who got mad. They got mad that fanon became canon cause they didn’t agree with it.

Here’s the thing we have to think about; media convergence. Henry Jenkins researches Fan Studies and Culture and has an entire book about it. I am not gonna cite directly because that is a lot of work and honestly I am tired. But, the big idea is that fandom is ever evolving and changing across multiple platforms. No one can actually have all the knowledge in a fandom, it’s impossible. This idea of media convergence shows a shift in how we view culture in general. Media has become more participatory than in the past where most interaction came from spectation. People are seeking to make connections across different forms of media which leads to the adoption of fanon.

Where am I going with this? I have laid out a lot of pieces but some have lacked connection, so here we go. Comics can largely be inaccessible, leading to people seeking out the information in other ways as Henry Jenkins discusses, this leads to an adoption of different headcanons creating fanon. Now, how does this tie into my personal experience in creating content? I am not alone in the fear of retribution for not following the strict guides of canon. I was able to move on from it, mainly because I am full of spite and anger and ready to fight at the drop of a hat, but not everyone is comfortable doing that. How many people are we keeping from fandoms in general because of adherence to canon? I am wary of using the word gatekeeping because there is a trend of people moving towards dismissal of anything using the word, but this is what it is.

Gatekeeping is occurring in a different way than normal. In this instance the strict adherence to canon is pushing out those who cannot find a way to get ahold of comics or don’t have the time to parse through everything. I was one of those people, hell I still have issues getting a hold of comics and even though I know how to pirate them now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I have the time to go back and read everything. In addition to having multiple iterations of one character, comics also present the unique challenge of having multiple writers per character per timeline. I know in one of the only comics I’ve read that was released recently, Dick is twelve when Bruce gets him and that his parents are shot instead of falling. Batman kidnaps him and purposefully antagonizes the Justice League, which he isn’t a part of. From fanfiction, I know that Dick was eight in a lot of iterations, that his parents fell because the lines to their trapeze had acid on them, that Batman is a founding member of the Justice League and among other differences.

What does this mean? Canon isn’t clear cut and can be confusing. Strict adherence to this idea of what is right and wrong leads to the lack of participation in fandom spaces, and can even oust people who would otherwise enjoy this space. Fanon is fun, hurts no one, and provides spaces for creative liberty. If you don’t like how people are characterizing your favorite character, simply don’t read it. (This is different from people attacking characters, which if anyone wants that essay I’ll write it but that isn’t what I’m here for today.) Why are you so annoyed at people enjoying headcanons? If it has become fanon, that means it is widely liked, why do you feel like you have the authority to dictate how characters are? Besides, this is fandom/fanfiction/fan interactions, they aren’t canon. This is fans having fun and should be regarded that way. Shitting on other people's interpretations can and has stopped people from contributing their own fan content and limits the amount of growth a fandom can experience. Basically, it boils down to if you don’t like something there is absolutely no need to comment on it or interact with it :)

I could go on with the idea of fan service, but once again I am tired. If anyone wants that essay let me know lmao and I’ll work on it.

[olderthannetfic]

Do you or your readers have any opinions on formatting dream sequences in fic? Or any thoughts on what makes a good one? To italicise or not to italicise... to signpost early or reveal at the end... what do people love or not love about dream sequences? (Apologies if this has been asked before)

--

You know, I don't think it has been asked before, actually.

For me personally, I usually like it signposted early if it's going to be a long sequence, but it depends on what function the dream is serving in your story.

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Italics are acceptable, but reading huge blocks of them can be a pain. In many cases, it's probably best to begin the dream at a chapter break or big scene division, then make it crystal clear in the text when it ends (starting a paragraph with "X woke" or something) rather than using a lot of formatting of the dream itself.

However, it depends entirely on the structure of the work. If it's a fic that is punctuated by little snippets of dream that grow and eventually reveal the whole dream, recontextualizing the fic thus far, I'd absolutely put the few little dream paragraphs in italics. They'd be visual dividers between different parts of the fic.

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I can't think of anything I love about them. I can think of many things I hate, but they all boil down to "Why is this here?"

A dream sequence should serve a purpose in the fic, so if it turns into too many paragraphs of impenetrable purple prose, I'll feel like it has overstayed its welcome and is no longer serving a good purpose. Even if it's short and well-written, I'll still get annoyed if it doesn't seem to be well integrated into the rest of the story.

Think about how dream sequences are used in other media.

Plenty of tv episodes have a character waking from a prophetic dream. They worry about it. Eventually, when the events come to pass, they either avert disaster because of the dream or the real events turn out to technically match the dream but are completely different from what the character and audience assumed. These dreams add foreshadowing, set up up irony, or raise the stakes.

Some dream sequences show what a character is worried about and thus are character development. Maybe the dream itself shows this. Maybe the dream is them being a villain or being into weird sex or whatever, and it's only when they wake that they go "Oh no! What does this mean?!" That reaction is the point and the existence of the dream sequence should serve it.

Some dream sequences exist to show that a character has been given hallucinogens, a psychic is messing with their mind, etc.

Once in a while, a fic has a tragic dream, and then the character wakes up and everything is fine. The one I recall like this that I actually enjoyed was a BTS fic where the point was the dreamer going and getting cuddles from another member after waking up. The whole thing contrasted their music video AU with their real lives. What I liked was that observation of how weird it would be to spend time on an AU of yourself that's sad and awful and how it would mess with you. It wasn't just that a character had a scary dream and then got comforted: there was a bit more specific reason to show that dream on-page.

A fic needs a twist, coda, or commentary other than "It was all a dream! LOL!"

Bad versions of dream sequences (which are numerous, I'm sorry to say) tend to just rely on "Surprise! It was fake!" If you just wipe out everything that has happened, then the emotional stakes you set up within the dream don't matter. You're telling the reader that the story doesn't matter.

It is crucial that the dream have lasting, real world impact.

The dreamer realizes something about their own feelings that they didn't before the dream. The dream is literally prophetic and changes how the character reacts. The dream is imposed by an outside force on purpose. It can be a realistic, internal, emotional impact. It can be a sff plot device where the dream is more than just a regular dream. But there has to be something.

Otherwise, you're writing filler, and your fic would probably be stronger without it.