#i'm trying to write something (meta not fanfic) and i want to know exactly where chapter 1 starts

[cyrsed]

does anyone know off the top of their head whether ds1 (2008) ever shows the chapter 1 title before you get on the tram and it goes 'chapter 1: new arrivals completed'? or do you only get to know what the chapter was called once you actually finish it? i've tried lookin at a walkthrough on youtube and i can't find it showing up anywhere before then but maybe i just missed it idk

[littleplasticrat]

Writer Interview Tag

I'm grateful to have been tagged by @tellmeallaboutit, @my-favourite-zhent and @beesht. Sorry it took so long for me to get around to. Honestly I am blown away that anyone would put me in a 'writer' bucket with the other word crabs

Tellmeallaboutit's interview

My-favourite-zhent's interview

Beesht's interview

My answers below the cut for some NSFW discussion

When did you start writing?

The most recent bout of writing started in December 2023 and was prompted by being insatiably horny for Gortash. This is the first time I've written fanfiction.

I wrote a short novel from 2012-2013 and would put that in the fantasy YA category about a magician who falls in love with a phoenix.

As a kid, I wrote a lot, up until around the age of 16 or so when I realised that I didn't want to live the life of a struggling artist and so set my sights on getting work with more consistent pay than writing books.

I actually do quite a lot of writing for my current job. It's industry-specific instructional writing but I feel that some of the meta-skills are applicable between the two genres.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I really only read horror short fiction recreationally, and I've only written one horror story - which I found super challenging and wouldn't really want to tackle again. Luckily, I'm able to excise the horrors by running TTRPG games and thus don't have to deal with the difficult challenge of making something sound scary.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I haven't been compared to any writers - I simply haven't written enough stuff that isn't solid filth XD

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Up until I moved house last week, I had a dedicated home office with a large drawing tablet and my mother's boarding school desk from the 1960s. Until I can get an office set up in the guest bedroom of the new house (I'm in no rush), I'm on my laptop at the dining table downstairs or a local cafe.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

I try to preach that a hobby should be treated like self-care and so not be a source of stress, but I have the heart of a procrastinator and the bones of a perfectionist; if I waited for the muse to strike me with creative stuff, I wouldn't get anything done.

So, if I'm feeling wigged out about life, I'm not going to force anything, but otherwise I have a 'smash it out' approach of breaking down the work as much as possible and going from there. Any writing I do therefore starts life as a series of bullet points of what exactly I want to happen and in what order, and I build out methodically from there.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

The thrill of fancying someone a lot? Horniness? Butt stuff? LOL

What is your reason for writing?

I want to be the freak I want to see in the world.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

Any comment I get is like JAZZ HANDS. Seriously! It's so flattering to have someone slow down and look at my stuff, let alone acknowledge it.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I once read a shitty horror novel where the villain was able to destroy the protagonist's life, because she'd read all his books and so knew him. That rattled me so hard! There's no way I'm skillful enough to develop an authorial voice that isn't my own. So, like, don't think about what my disgusting fanfics say about who I am as a person please [jk]

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I'd say the action is pretty clear, and I can crack a joke at the right time. What more could a reader ask for?

How do you feel about your own writing?

I would like there to be more of it but my art will take priority for now <3

I think most people I know write on here have already been tagged several times, so I shall not tag further.

[erstwhilesparrow]

🍓 🏜️ ❄️? for the ask game? if you want also 🍬?

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

hm... taizi, i think! i started reading their writing right around the same time i started high school and i went, "wait. you can just do this?" i'd read fanfic before this but taizi's work was what made it click for me that fanfic is, like, A Type Of Writing, and you can do it really well, and put it in places where people will see it and enjoy it. so i did the thing. wrote lego ninjago fanfic in microsoft word on the days school started late and i had nothing to do in the hour before the bus arrived.

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

oh gosh, that's difficult. i think, and maybe this is too vague, maybe the ones that get into the crunch of the thing. i am always on my all fic is meta train, so i think comments that seem to Get That, and expand on or pull into the open my thinking are my favourites? also a big fan of when someone says something i didn't think about while writing, but is nevertheless There In The Fic! new insights! that's very cool to me.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

oh god oh fuck. i'm gonna take 'dream' here as meaning i cannot personally Make It Happen because a lot of the things i could say i dream about seeing in a fic are also things i could just put in a fic and tada, there, not a dream anymore. so it's gotta be some kind of stupid plot-heavy ensemble cast AU because that's just not the kind of thing i know how to write well enough to be satisfied with if i did it. i know if you asked me this again, like, tomorrow i would probably have a different answer, but right now i am sighing longingly about some kind of empires smp modern au. catrina belovedgamers and i were talking in dms the other day about a circus au in which some of the strays, stowaways, and outcasts of the world discover, with great joy, that they never have to go home again if they don't want to, and the idea of scott and shrub and joey (these three specifically, yes) getting happy endings amid the shenanigans of Circus makes me really tender. but it also has to be sad and difficult. it has to Deal with the corruption and xornoth and the fact that none of this is easy, and scott still has to try to kill himself and joey still has to get tangled up in xornoth and be just as prickly as he always is and shrub still has to lose everyone. and that's Just the three newest runaways this circus has picked up, all of wra is still here too, and so are pix and lizzie and joel and jimmy, so. do you see why this would be really fucking hard to write,

who would write it best? for it to be warming and gentle all the way through like a cup of tea at just the right temperature, probably taizi. but for it to pluck out the sad and difficult bits exactly right, probably alouette_des_champs, who consistently does The Best modern aus for pretty much every fandom they've written for. they are not in mcyt fandom at all, but they did this with drawga (comedy art actual-play web series), and atla, and naddpod (actual-play d&d podcast, also mostly comedy), and if there's anyone who could do this right i bet it's them.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

[guy who deliberately surrounds itself with people who have good fandom opinions that it generally agrees with voice] do i have. unpopular opinions. about popular fandom characters.

i think canary jimmy is deeply boring and gets focused in on to the exclusion of almost all the Interesting Things Literally Happening On The Screen? i have total faith that it can be a fun/useful/interesting framework with which to consider [jimmy in the life series] but mostly i think.... jimmy's got a personality in there. it feels weird that he seems so popular but so few people have Things To Say About Him outside of what he represents to other life series members.

i dunno, that feels like a really easy take to have, just disagreeing with The Most Popular fanon. and maybe i haven't Reviewed The Literature enough. but that seems like it meets the requirements. so!

[badaziraphaletakes]

As someone who enjoys reading and writing off-canon takes of Aziraphale, could you just... you know. Start a discussion about that final 20% mentioned by OP whose name is very clearly not included here?

Maybe something to do with "fan art and fan-fiction are produced by individuals reflecting their own values through the lens of the blorbo and these interpretations ought not be subject to blanket criticism based on your individual interpretation of the blorbo?"

Please and thank you.

I'm not exactly sure what OP's point was in the screenshot there, I have some trouble understanding things online sometimes, BUT, about what you said:

"fan art and fan-fiction are produced by individuals reflecting their own values through the lens of the blorbo and these interpretations ought not be subject to blanket criticism based on your individual interpretation of the blorbo"

I absolutely agree.

I hope by now most of our followers have noticed that we never criticise fanart and fanfic in here. It's never been featured on this blog. What we feature here are prejudiced metas concerning the canon. We call out ableist, misogynistic (etc) takes about the canon characters. Takes that are trying to "explain" what happened in canon to other fans using veiled misogyny, ableism, victim blaming and anti-autistic bias. Those can have harmful repercussions irl, and we feel we must fight against those prejudices.

However fanfic and fanart are not that at all. Fanfic and fanart are not canon by definition, and are so subjective that they can have thousands of interpretations, so we feel it's not our (or anyone's) place to judge.

It's like playing with your Barbie dolls. You can do what you want with them, it's mostly harmless. If someone wants to make Aziraphale the villain in a fic? Go ahead, that falls into headcanon territory, and headcanon is not canon, it's anyone's land. I personally won't read that specific fic, but you can write it. I'm pretty sure I'd write stuff someone wouldn't read too, it's all ok. The problem is when they start to spread this as canon.

Now it must be said, of course some fics can be triggering (like every art out there), but in my 4 year experience in this fandom, 99% of fics are properly tagged, authors usually overtag for safety, so if you see a fic with a theme you don't like, it's easy to avoid it. Even fanart is tagged in the GO fandom, which is not something I see in every fandom out there. And besides, speaking of fanart specifically, it's so subjective bc what you see there may be just a metaphorical interpretation of feelings and not literal. So if you start scrutinising that you end up falling into censorship territory and that's shady.

Because of all that, we try to focus on calling out bad takes regarding the canon facts only.

That being said, in order to do that sometimes we try to analyse the overall situation of the fandom, bc many ppl try to impose fanon as canon in those metas, consciously or not. So while doing that, we may make commentaries on some fanon stuff, including the most common portrayals of the characters in fanwork. But trust that this is not a criticism of the fanworks at all. Again, it's just an attempt to separate the canon from the fanon, and to try to study the situation to see where the bad takes are coming from. In other words, fanon can be one of multiple tools to understand the fandom's mindset, and we make use of it. Is it possible that we may have (or will) missed the tone while addressing that and come across as if we're criticising fanworks? Of course, we're human, but trust that's not where we're coming from, and we appreciate criticism so we can be better :)

But honestly, if someone writes a fic where Aziraphale and Crowley are a toxic homophobic straight couple that ends up cheating on each other with the Metatron and divorcing, I couldn't care less. Have fun with your Barbies (but pls tag your fic lol).

I know this is a theme discussed over and over in fandoms, but I tried to give my two cents here, and believe me, this blog absolutely believes in "headcanon and let headcanon". Our problem is with ppl spreading misinformation about the canon.

Thanks for your ask, it's a very important thing to address! I hope I addressed what you were suggesting, if I missed anything, @indigovigilance , please share your thoughts in the reblogs/comments so we can discuss/clarify things. I have a feeling we're both coming from the same place here though 😁

Xoxo,

Mod M 🩶

[bougiebutchbitch]

I started rewatching House and have now rekindled that good ol hyperfixation, and I just wanted to stop by and thank you for providing Bottom House content. I am starving for it. It's weird because I'm not normally super picky about what characters are in what sexual positions/roles, but like. [Disclaimer: Everybody should have fun and read/write what makes them happy regardless of my own preferences, fandom is about having fun, I'm not out here trying to police how people enjoy shit blah blah blah]

...But on god I just cannot imagine watching this show and walking away with the interpretation that House is a confident dom top when it feels like every other episode shows him being such a bratty sub bottom. He's his usual brand of sarcastic about it all, but his sexual jokes and his general attraction to authoritative women... How he encourages his fellows to fight back against him and put him in his place if they think he's going off the rails or that they're right and he's wrong... The neediness... Come on! Man is such a bottom. And that's not even getting into Wilson's whole predisposition to just constantly soft dom House, or just how much more interesting I find it to explore House being a needy little sub while he also has to constantly face the ableism of everyone around him-- YES, he needs someone to make him heel and to express that kind of vulnerability around, but also Wilson and Cuddy do have this tendency to assume they know what he needs and approach his vulnerability in a condescending and (Wilson especially) morally superior kind of ableist way where they just "know so much better" than him about himself and his pain and his experiences. It can make for such engaging conflict and interesting exploration of themes in a way that I just don't really see in fics that position House as a cocky asshole dom top and Wilson as a blushing little softboi, and I often turn away from top House fics because House, Wilson, and their whole dynamic just feel ooc to me.

Bottom House is just more fun to me, personally. And more sexy, I'll admit. But there's such a startling lack of it! Babygirl's show has existed for almost a decade now, and he does not get railed nearly enough in fanfic! So I want you to know I appreciate and value your contributions to the cause. You are braver than any US marine.

I can add absolutely nothing to this wonderful essay because it expresses my thoughts exactly. Apparently a majority of the original fandom back in The Old Days of the noughties watched the show and came out under the impression that House is - a dom??? Like?? WTF???? Were we watching the same show???? Were doms just Built Different back then??? That man is as bratty bottom sub as they COME. Like. THEE OG mold of bratty bottom. All other bratty bottoms aspire to be House.

He constantly pushes buttons until people snap? He's forever testing his friends and coworkers, longing for them to bark back at him and visibly getting off on it when they put him in his place?? If they ordered him to do something he would leer at them and growl 'make me'???

I was chatting about this with a mate literally yesterday, about how we both like a little switching with almost all of our ships - but HOUSE IS ALWAYS A BRATTY BOTTOM BITCH FOR US

HE JUST IS

it's right there in the show

we don't even need to write a meta explanation (though I appreciate yours greatly) because we have an 8 season long essay on the subject

(yes, yes, I am echoing your disclaimer that anyone can ship whatever they want in whatever way they want; no hate to anyone, etc. I'm just. Baffled at how popular dommy top House content is because I do not see it. I am blind to it. I cannot understand it skdhfsldfgsdfg)

And blushing softboi Wilson is just ???????? to me. Where is that man? Where???? I didn't see him in the series, that's for sure!

Is it literally just that he's smaller, traditionally prettier, and more feminine - and as we all know, the shorter feminine guy always bottoms???? /s, I know it can't just be that khgkgkjgh

Eh, c'est la vie! But at least there's a little community of us all shaking each other's hands and going 'THAT MAN IS BLATANTLY A BRAT'.

Also, you are 100% right about the main fascination of this show being (for me, a Physically Disabled) the intersection of the ableism and infantilization House faces, and his desire to sub and be vulnerable with others. That's so fucking juicy, and I think a lot of interpretations of his character miss it T^T

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Orb

Anonymous:

Vriska, by the way? Is that like, the real Vriska?

BB: Yeah.

MM: Are you guys like, friends with her or something?

BA:

CC: What the hell is your problem?

MM:

TG: What the hell is your problem?

CC: Why would you even say a thing like that?

MM: Why not?

CL:

LL:

FB: Everyone settle down. We're getting off track here.

BA: Vriska is actually a really interesting case, I think. She's about the closest thing the fandom has to an anticharacter.

BA: Not in the sense that she's just "a nice person," not in the sense that she's my "favorite" or something.

BA: She's an anticharacter in the "hostile to the story" sense of the term.

FC:

AA: Are you going to elaborate, or what?

BA: Hostile to the story, I'm saying. The way her character has been used. The way she has been wrenched from her initial function in the story (revealed in Act 5, in the Scratch) and returned to her original function, in A5A2.

BA: The "Scratch meta" plotline is, at its core, about how nothing ever works out. How power fantasies get spun and dashed. How authors will write a story that seems amazing, at first, but then you realize they can't keep it going, and eventually they break it off.

TG: Like with Jasprosesprite^2, you mean?

BA: Yes, and, with Vriska. You can't make a hero out of her. You can't have her save the day. The only thing that can happen, when she's unleashed, when you give her power, is that she ends up ruining the story.

BB: That's the story, isn't it?

BA: And that's how it is with fandom: the fans, like Vriska, wanting to change things, wanting to put them back the way they were. I could point to individual stories I've written, where I've tried, in a tongue-in-cheek way, to force the narrative to do the kind of things Vriska is about to do.

BA: But that isn't even really the point. Vriska is about the larger trend, I think. Because, just like Vriska, she keeps barging in and trying to change things, and then . . . then they never get changed.

FB: But it's different in fanfiction.

AA: Magnus was full of stuff like that. Things that "couldn't happen," but . . .

FC: And we liked it, or we wouldn't have been reading it, right?

MM: That's kind of what I was saying. That the whole point of "Scratch meta" is this . . . annoyance with the way things don't turn out. With the way that all the author's strengths end up being things that seem like weaknesses, from the outside, and vice versa.

TT: But that's a hypocritical bargain, no? We wouldn't be reading it, if we didn't like it, and if we did like it, why are we complaining? Why don't we just write it ourselves?

FC: Closer to the original meaning of "Scratch meta," these days. It used to be about stuff like, "can time travel really work?" And so on. We've moved on from that. Now it's about . . . taking the limits of power, and trying to beyond them.

WM: So you see, there's this . . . tension.

BA: A tension between, you know, my new, possibly pretentious, way of looking at things. And old ways.

BA: And what I mean is, there's old ways and then there's old ways. Because there are old ways which I don't like.

BA: And there's one way I hate in particular, the way I'm calling old ways. The way I'm talking about now, which is, like, this popularity.

BA: And, at least in the fanfics I've been reading, there's this weird split.

AA: Uh, split?

BA: Sure, sure. Look, the popularity contest. That's . . . not life.

AA: Is that what you're saying?

BA: But that's exactly what we're doing. The vast majority of fanfics are scrabbling around for popularity like it's the oxygen we're all gasping for. You're all doing it.

BF: Well, maybe not all of us, but . . . yeah, we have to concede that, just going from the number of popular fics.

BA: And why do we do it? What do we gain from this popularity? We are all playing a little game that we made up ourselves. And we get high points for making up our own private rules, and then we get to bask in the glory of those high points, and I can't say that the other popular fics are the anti-Vriskaes of Homestuck, or whatever, but I can say that the most popular fics tend to be the ones where the audience can most clearly picture the characters "as they should be, according to our fanon."

AA: So? Who cares? Fiction is for our enjoyment. Do we have to like a story, to create a story?

MM: I've said before, the hardest trick with A6 isn't that it's not the same as A1-5. It's going to be different, and that's just fine. The hardest trick is that it has to be what everyone wants to read.

CC: Nobody has to read A6.

MM: Of course. But if you're me, and you live on fanfics, then you have to read it, at least a bit. Or else you don't know what people want. And then you can't write anything anyone will want to read.

TF: Or, if you're me, you try to make fanfics that seem like an old friend, something that will just go on forever, and readers will just come to it, and like it, and leave, and come back. And the readers will be, you know, just people who want to read, and all the popularity scores will just be, like, people reading more, and then liking it and going on, and less reading, and liking it. And that's good, because . . . well, I guess that's all I have to say.

BC: But you can't do that if you don't have a job, right? A full-time job? Or a college scholarship? I mean, you're here, with the rest of us, Arquiusprite, but some of us actually, you know, earn enough money to be able to just . . . spend all day on Homestuck fanfics. That's how I'm able to write

[sibylsleaves]

Would love to know your answers to 4, 13 and 27. Thanks!

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Since we're talking about fanfic here, mainly by watching the show. Sometimes by watching other shows--as was the case for my heart's a secret (tell me you'll keep it). Sometimes by scrolling through tumblr and letting the waves of gifs and meta wash over me until something washes up on shore. Sometimes by reading other fic, or books, or whatever--although if I'm ever directly drawing ideas from something, I try to credit it.

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

I legitimately can't think of any common writing tips. Ummmmmmmmmmm ok I guess the best I can come up with is: your characters should have a goal in almost every scene. I don't necessarily consciously follow this (that is, I don't start each scene thinking to myself: what is this character's goal) but I think that has been so ingrained in my mind that in any scene I brainstorm, the characters almost always have some kind of goal, no matter how abstract. Otherwise, it doesn't feel like a scene to me and it gets scrapped.

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

My least favorite part is just getting started. At least, I find that to be the most difficult part! Once I've written a few sentences, it feels like every successive sentence gets easier, until I hit a stopping point.

My favorite part of writing...I guess whenever I write a scene and it turns out exactly like I wanted it to or like I imagined it. Or, even better--when a scene surprises me and unveils something I wasn't expecting. Either way, it's a sign of the same thing--that the story has started to come alive.

send me asks about writing

[wanderingnork]

21 and 28, please (fanfic ask)?

(Asks from this list.)

21: Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what’s your secret?

No, not really.

See, the issue with my writing process is this: I really don't plan like people seem to think I do. I always know where events are going, I know the endgame (for the main couple to get together, for the king to be crowned, for the eldritch terror to be defeated, whatever) I know the mood and character of the story I want to tell, but charting out a map of how to get from A to Z never ends well.

I'm getting better at this, but I still get surprised. @laughinglynx bid on me for a decently short fic (5k-10k words) in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction and, uh, that's going real well and I'm totally not already past 4k just from scripted dialogue and meta notes. Same thing happened with @apfelgranate last year, bid on me for 5k-10k and then next thing I know Glitter & Crimson is 30k long.

I find sequels easier: they're usually roughly as long as the fic that spawned them. The sequel to "Patron Saints of Blissful Imperfection" (about 86,000 words long) was never going to be less than 80,000 words, but it also isn't going to be much longer than that, if it's longer at all. That's a projection I feel safe to make.

28: Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

The only advice I will ever, ever, ever give as a prescription:

just fucking write

Throw "good" and "bad" out the window, forget any idea of publishing or posting or sharing, don't bother with a beta reader, turn off your spellcheck, and write.

Change your font to comic sans or wingdings, make the color white on a white page or black on a black page so you can't see what you're doing, write longhand or by typewriter or with a stick in the fucking sand, as long as you write.

Write two sentences, forget them for ten years, then write two more. Write a novel you never share. Write about taboos. Write about things you don't know and don't bother to research them. Write about things you think you know and research them until you realize you don't know them at all. Write about your day. Write about a day in the life of a snail. But write something.

Focus on exactly one genre or dabble in a dozen. Use third-person omniscient future tense. Exclusively use "said" and never use adverbs. Never use "said" and use every adverb the thesaurus can give you. Avoid the letter "z" at all costs. Play profusely with purple prose or speak spare sentences. JUST WRITE.

...

Look. You can study how to write a story. You can spend time fine-tuning your word choice. You can read endless books and take notes on what you want to do and what you want to avoid. You can learn everything there is to know about your chosen genre. You can sit and plan for all time and work out what to do in your magnum opus down to the individual sentences in your scenes. And maybe, someday, you'll produce something you're happy with. And if you do that, you're still a writer. I promise.

But...I believe you will be an infinitely happier writer if you write.

Because when you don't write, you're not learning what your real voice as a writer sounds like. You're keeping that locked inside of you, for whatever reason, and...even you can't really hear it. Not even if you think you can. You can only hear your voice as a writer when you set it free.

Try to mimic the voice of your favorite writer and find the places where you can't get it right, because those are the places where your real voice is breaking through. Write something designed to piss off your least favorite person, write something just to make yourself happy, and compare. Take a stab at composing some sonnets, and if you decide you don't like that try some free verse. If you only write original fiction, try writing a piece of fanfiction--if you only write fanfiction, try writing a piece of original fiction. Step outside your favorite genre and write something in a genre you've never touched.

Or throw out everything I've said, ignore every random piece of advice here, and keep working on what you want. Write the stories that you want to write. They're not bad. They're not good. They're stories spoken in your voice, and even if no one else ever hears it, you deserve to hear yourself speak.

[matan4il]

Okay okay but the look on Eddie's face after Carla said, "Be sure to follow your heart, not Christopher's," and then the way they stared at each other after Eddie got shot. The fact that Eddie, after falling to the ground, automatically looked for and found Buck, and they way they reached for each other...I'm not imagining where its leading to, right? I swear this shit is right out of fanfic. I think I read almost the exact plot somewhere before 😂

jsdfhjsdgfhsd The way we were on the same wavelength exactly! XD If you’re imagining this, we ALL are, thousands of people in this fandom, at which point either we’re all suffering of shared psychosis or it really is right there. I feel exactly like I did after watching the kitchen scene only EVEN MORE SO. If either Buck or Eddie were of the opposite sex, NO ONE would doubt where this is leading to. I don’t remember anything shot like this between a man and a woman who are just two platonic friends with nothing raging beneath the surface between them! Thank you for the ask, love! xoxox

Your buddie 413 meta was absolutely gorgeous 

Nonnie! ;_; Thank you so much for the kind words! Every week I hope I’ll manage to produce something worthy of reading and worth the effort that I put into writing this meta and reaching out to have gifs made for it, doing my best to post it as soon as I possibly can. I’m so happy you liked it this week! Seriously, it makes my heart grow twenty sizes to know my words bring others joy, and that I didn’t disappoint! Thank you again! I’m sending you so much love, you wonderful person! xoxox

Not just this Nonnie, you were all so kind and sent a lot of asks. Thank you all for these! I will always try to reply to each one, but I got home not that long ago and I slept a total of 3 hours in the last two nights and my days are hectic, so... I’m going to try and reply to as many as I can under the cut and those I don’t get to today, I will reply to tomorrow. I hope you all understand! And please don’t hesitate to send more asks. Even if it takes me a moment to reply, I always will! xoxox

Why would the writers do this to Bobby and Athena?? They're literally the only straight couple I care about 😭😭

Oh Nonnie! I feel you so much, Bathena are wonderful together. But that’s the thing about a TV show, either characters/couples go through turmoil, or they’re pushed to the background and get minimal screen time. I think this is the show saying it cares about Bathena and hasn’t stopped just because these two got together, settled and are very happy together. I’m sure that they are being tested only to come out of this an even stronger couple! I think the show’s decision not to let Bobby fall off the wagon is in itself an indication that, just like him, they might come across challenge as a couple, but they will be okay in the end. I hope this helps, lovely! xoxox

the golden shimmery thing on the ground after Eddie fell down isn't his St. Christopher medal, is it? bc I feel like that'd somehow make it worse

also, was I the only one waiting for him to mouth Buck's name ?? idk, I feel like it would've fit the dramatics of the situation

@astronomicalflowers​ Thank you so much for this ask! I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought of the medallion! :D I did check out that shot at the end of the ep, when Eddie’s on the ground and I don’t this it’s that necklace there, since it’s silvery rather than golden, but I do think the show wanted us to have the medallion on our mind, because there is a glimpse of it earlier in the ep, as I mentioned in my Buddie 413 meta. And you weren’t the only one waiting for him to mouth Buck’s name. I think the main reason we didn’t get this is because the show already gave us Eddie looking for and at Buck before and after he fell, reaching for him twice, and someone was probably worried about it becoming ‘over the top’. So the decision was made to make his calling out to Buck more through subtle gestures, which suits the sense of shock and paralisys that characterizes both Eddie and Buck in that scene! Thank you for sending me this ask, darling! xoxox

That episode was truly like something out of a fanfic, there's just one thing that I didn't get: the flirty vibe with Charlie's mother. Was it supposed to point out Eddie's lack of chemistry with Ana, do you think?

Hi Nonnie and thank you for sending this ask! I’m so happy we’re all on the same page, that this ep was straight out of a fanfic! XD As for her, I don’t think Eddie was meant to come across as flirty, more like friendly enough right away that it would be hard for her to object to him staying with Charlie while she’s being taken to the hospital, leading to the kid’s save... I hope this helped! xoxox

Just read your meta and an amazing analysis, I always look forward to it ☺️

You are so right about when one person is significantly injured we do get a look at their significant other - like Bobby and Athena last season. I find it interesting that in the bombing we even get a clip of Ali watching the news when Buck is under the truck, but we have nothing with Ana in this one, like not even Eddie messaging or calling her that it all worked out as she did help him find out about the scam technically, she isn’t a thought to him, he’s just focused on Buck.

So anxious for next week now and how this will all play out especially with Buck talking to Christopher!

@charlyrose94 Thank you so much for the kindness, lovely! *HUGS* And yes, EXACTLY! I was thinking of Ali in 218 (even though what’s notable about her is that in her case, she sees it in order to realize they shouldn’t be a couple... while Eddie is right there, tensely watching the wounded Buck and just waiting for the second he can rush to his side, and unlike her, we only see him more involved in Buck’s private life after the bombing, not less), as well as countless couples/destined-to-be-couples on other shows and movies, thank you for adding Bathena to this! And yes, it’s so freaking telling that once things really matter, Ana is nowhere to be seen... Like you said, there were ways they could have brought her into it (I could suggest even more), but they chose to leave her out. And I cannot wait for next week. I’m on pricks and needles for all of that, so it’s nice to know we’re in it together, hon! xoxox

[agirlunderarock]

For the meta ask for writers, 2, 8 and 20 or 21?

Dude yes always! I know I take forever to always answer asks, but thank you so much for sending this in!

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

So I've got a couple of projects going right now. I'm working on some prompts tor Febuwhump. I've never done that before so I'm trying to see how many I can get done. I've got about three of them done, technically four since I've combined two of the prompts. But I'm also working on some fanfic for my star wars oc- I guess what would be like her origin story if she were to be "canonically" introduced. Theres two scenes specifically that I really want to jump to. One of them is a chase/fight scene. I'm not very good at writing them, as I've learned from my Febuwhump drabbles, but I think this one is going to turn out to be a lot of fun. The other is more about Anakin and getting to see a part of him I wish we'd see more in media. Honestly I have outlines of some of the things I'm really looking forward to, and I hope people enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

Yes and no? I don't know? See I like a lot of action and adventure in the books I read. Fanfic usually depends on my mood. I'm here for fun times and adventure and character growth. Like the best example of what I like to read in fanfic, is this one ThorXBrunnhilde fanfic called Better Latte than Never by Funnefatale. It takes place after Endgame and is written from Brunnhilde's POV as she and Thor try to emotionally recover from the last five years since the snap, by building a coffee shop in New Asgard. The romance doesn't come in to the story until the very end, its one chapter, but theres so much development for the characters. Its a sweet fic, that really breaks down a lot things for them, but its also about their friendship and the ways they help each other and their people heal. Do I write things like that? Sometimes? I had another account @thatgirlunderarock where I posted a lot of LotR and Hobbit Fanfic- most of my favorite ones I've written have to do with Thorin, Dis, and Frerin. I guess I kinda like slice of life with big implications.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

So its a little hard for me to get meta about my writing sometimes, just because I don't know what other people see in it. Like one of my friends was reading a draft of one of my Febuwhump prompts- because I'm using a few of her oc's in it- and she like that the way her oc died was by the thing that was supposed to protect her, which mirrored a lot of the feelings of the characters in that specific drabble. That was not intentional, I chose her helmet to get twisted and janky purely because beskar armor does not twist and deform easily and the other day she decided her oc's helmet was not made of beskar and I took advantage. Some of the things I have set up in the first chapter of White Lie were not completely intentional, but again I don't know what exactly anyone would hope to see from that. I will say I think something that come across in a lot of my writing, is that a lot of my characters feel demiromantic to me? I say that, but I could be wrong too- I like the idea of two characters growing into their friendship and then into a romantic romantic relationship, ones that can be platonic or romantic and its just not until the characters decide to try that step and see if they still work and feel just as comfortable in a romantic relationship. This is specifically about my oc Sas and her relationship with Obi-Wan. I like that I've written for them to choose to be friends, and like depending on how I feel about it when I get to that point in the story, they could easily be platonic (qpr) or romantic. I don't know I just- I'm a person who wants to read about romantic relationships that can be platonic- romance feels very platonic to me, like if there isn't a good platonic foundation, then the romance isn't going to be as great. But thats just my opinion, but it does show up in my writing. I don't know I never keep writing a story long enough to really show the development I plan in my notes. But I'll let you guys be the real judge of that. Like this February will probably be the most writing I post at once.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

That depends. I can write decently without a whole lot of dialogue and get really descriptive with my settings, and I think those kinds of things would be good for like graphic novels or comic type things. But I'm also not super familiar with how to tell a story that way, so I could be totally wrong and it wouldn't transfer well. On the other hand, most of my writing is pretty dialogue heavy, and I've been listening to more podcast while I drive to work so I'm trying to do things where I move the plot a lot through dialogue, and imply actions have happened through dialogue. Its a fun little challenge that I like, and it kinda lends itself well to star wars, specifically because its clone wars fanfic and its episodic, and you have to use both the visual and dialogue to do that. But I think that kind of focus in mind has helped me develop character voices more distinctly.

Thanks again Bene for ask!

If anyone else would like to send something in heres the link!

[thatpinkbetch]

I'm going to answer it this way, because I'm actually not a fan of some of those, and I've heard this is the way to do it if you don't want it ending up in the tag or the search I think? If i censor any of the ship names it's not out of malice! I simply don't want any of this to end up in front of eyes that just want to enjoy their ships 💖💖💖 if there is anyone who doesn't want to see opinions against t*d*d*ku, k*r*b*ku, or even iz**ch*ka, please don't read any further! Oh my goodness i hope this is all legible...

Anyways, hello!! Thank you so much for the ask!! I love talking about my opinion avkvmsocnaocjsoxks it also makes me really happy you like my blog 🥺🥺🥺 (I hope this answer doesn't ruin that avskvneognsocjs)

I'll start out by confirming that I'm not a multishipper. It makes me excited to see how the act of shipping itself can make others happy, but it's just not that way for me. I actually never read fanfic until I got into bnha (bkdk is just that powerful 😁😁) I'm actually...a little serious when i ship, or when i enjoy media, i analyze pretty heavily, so also, if that doesn't sound like anyone's cup of tea, i would once again recommend to stop reading and enjoy your day please!

I love analyzing characters and storylines and dynamics, but i will admit, I'm not a fan of most of the ships - not romantically. I think all the characters have interesting relationships to each other, all of the kids are great friends, and I love bonds and friendships so much 🥺🥺🥺

Those first two are perhaps the biggest, at least they definitely were the biggest when I first entered. Once i caught up, I didn't really understand the enthusiasm, but people have fun shipping, so that's nice! I think of those two as easy ships, if that makes sense? They're pretty simple, and easy to digest.

I personally am not a fan of romantic t*d*d*ku for a very specific reason; it feels weird to me for Todo to immediately fall in love with the first person who's ever shown him kindness (since his mother of course). Todo had never had any friends, nor any want for friends, obviously because of the abuse he faced as a child. Mido was his first exploration at a life outside of his father, a life he got to make for himself, it just doesn't feel right to me that he should immediately think "oh, is this romantic love? Is this the one and only for me?" Well, perhaps a teenager might think that way, but i don't think that's actually how he feels deep down, and I'm sure that's something a lot of us have to learn as we grow (I've definitely struggled with my own understanding of romance for the past 8 years). I think he still is trying to learn how to socialize and to make friends and to be a friend (and he's doing SUCH a good job!) But to immediately plunge into romance, which can be complicated, i don't think that would be right for him. I hope that makes sense! I know they're a very cute ship, which makes for fun! But again, I can be a little serious when i ship...

K*r*b*ku kind of falls into similar territory for me? Baku definitely had friends growing up, but he's seemed to always have trouble understanding his feelings and where he stands with others, causing trust issues. Kiri is really the first person he knew where he stood with, a person for him to be comfortable with and feel on equal ground, which i think is such a huge and positive role in his life, and i don't necessarily think that it needs to be romantic - for both of these, i think these relationships are incredibly important, to everyone involved, and making them romantic doesn't make them any more important!! In fact, i feel like them as friends actually can offer a more complex, interesting, and human dynamic between these characters, as sometimes people simply default to romance and then end up pushing for the same old tropes and ignore all the intricacies Horikoshi includes in his writing.

Again, I love Mido's friendship with Todo, and I love Baku's friendship with Kiri. I think these relationships are incredibly important, and friends are incredibly important. People who ship them are having fun, which is so lovely, and i hope they continue to have fun! I hope you personally find more fics about them that make you smile and brighten your day 💖💖💖

Iz**ch*ka is a little difficult, because they certainly are cute, separately and together. I thought they were cutest before Ura was told about her potential crush on Mido, when she was simply a source of bubbly energy and positivity that helped Mido open up and feel comfortable around other people. I feel though that, romantically, it's extraordinarily one-sided, and at this point, i have to wonder if they really are "end goal." End goal for shounen, of course, is hardly ever explicit ahzovndlfjsoxo but i feel like a better storyline for Horikoshi to take would be for Ura to realize that she's been confused, and these feelings haven't really been a positive experience for her. I've definitely gone through things like that as a teenager. Now, the ship can be very cute! They're basically the same person, and they're cute and bubbly! But again, it simply isn't for me.

I think Momjirou is very cute!! Of course, as a lesbian, i sense strong lesbian vibes from Momo, and strong bi vibes from Jirou, and I also saw the ship potential ever since the USJ attack - which i think, so did everyone else ahaovndofjsojfsk they're best friends without a doubt, though i have to say, i really like Kamijirou. She just makes him so soft, and he's so in awe of her, and she thinks he's so funny, I love how supportive he is of her, especially since she can be really insecure 🥺🥺🥺

I also think Ura and Tsu are very cute but another easy ship, and i kind of really like Ochamina 🥺 they're both pink and space themed, they're bubbly and energetic and kick ass, and i think they'd be super cute...

I saved todobaku for last, because, you know what they say, best for last! 😇😇😇

I've said it before, but if there was no Mido (impossible obviously, and i would never want that) then todobaku is where my heart would lie. Baku has never really been shown chasing after anyone except for Mido...and Todo, which really gets at my heart. There's a grudging respect there - very, very grudging ahakckdkfjskdk which i find very appealing! Todo is very important to Baku and he has also been able to show Baku some things about himself that he needed to question and reevaluate. Meanwhile, Todo puts up with exactly 0% of Baku's shit, which i find absolutely hilarious. It's funny to me how Baku wishes to intimidate Todo as he does everyone else, and Todo simply does not care. And Baku wants to be mad, and ends up mad that he can't be mad since Todo is a strong and worthy opponent. They just have such an interesting chemistry, there's so much friction, so much tension, and I enjoy it, particularly since they clearly should be friends, would be great friends, want to be friends, but Baku simply won't get over it 😂😂 I do prefer them as friends, but friends that are incredibly close, two people that understand each other on almost a telepathic level, two people that give each other shit while also refusing to take the other's shit.

I do agree that many people in this fandom seem to think their ship stands on some moral high ground? It could be a disconnect from the previous generations of fandom, or it could also be the growing mentality on this site that everything needs to be a battle of moral superiority, and also that what you like is part of your personality, and if someone doesn't like what you like, then they don't like you or that they think you're factually incorrect. I personally have stopped going into the bn/ha tag simply because I don't enjoy, well, many things i find there, and I'm happy with those that i follow. I've definitely seen hatred and invalidation for both LGBT ships and m|w ships, neither of which I'm comfortable with. I definitely don't go off tumblr for fandom stuff because there's practically no acceptance for any same gender ships, or any queer headcanoning, which, I'll be honest, makes me scared, as i am a very anxious person avdkvndkfje i do think it should be noted that we should be as accepting of cishet ships as we are of queer ships - no debate on this one - but again, you are right when you say that many cishet headcanons have been used to invalidate LGBT voices, and any and all allies must always be aware of this! It is much more often that queer voices are silenced, that queer ships are ridiculed, that queer shippers aren't allowed to enjoy or see themselves. And to anybody that doesn't want to be an ally... Whelp ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what are you doing here ajxkvmdogjdicjsicjsodj I'm gay

I haven't really read much of anything recently, let alone other ships, platonic or otherwise, because energy has been low for me for a long time. I wish i could participate more and support all my friends and other fans, but it's been a bit of a struggle 😣😣😣 I'm so sorry! Something that I can do is make posts and analyses and metas, as those are quick and make me excited, so I'm always happy to respond to asks like these! (I say as i take two hours to write this response...)

I hope people have been taking care of themselves and remember that tumblr is really good at letting you cater to your own interests! I hope if you've made it to the end of this response that you enjoyed it, and you're not mad at me ahsovjekgjsocjwodkso if you are, that's fine, I'm sorry, I probably am really bad at social/internet etiquette and such that help you filter 😣😣

To any who are curious, you cannot change my mind ahdogmdocjdidk thank you to whoever sent this ask!!! A lot of this is a bunch of rambling I've always wanted to talk about but was frankly too scared to post! I hope I made sense and answered everything you were asking!! Please have a good day/night/life!!! 💖💖💖💖💖

[mittensmorgul]

I've just read through your previous ask about a yellow bathroom from S13 and some older color meta posts, but I'm wondering if you had any thoughts on the use of yellow specifically thus far in S15. You noted, "Which brings us to yellow (and also yellow and blue together, which have always been a warning sign on Supernatural… she says as she’s watching 9.01 and looking at Hael wearing a sulfur-yellow sweater over a dark blue dress. Those are the colors of Heaven and irresistible duty)." Con't..

So far what’s jumped out at me is Amara’s yellow pant suit, the girl tonight (avoiding spoilers bc timezones) wearing a yellow beret and tie-thing, and most glaringly, Dean’s yellow over shirt at the end. We never see him wearing yellow, certainly not that blatantly, or at least not that I remember. (My memory is unreliable) ‘Heaven and irresistible duty’ certainly fit, but I’m wondering if you have any new thoughts or anything else to add.

***

hello! And welcome to the continuation of the chat I initiated with you while trying to work out what exactly to say here. I’m copy/pasting my chat rambling here and then going forward from there…

(editing this, because tumblr borked the formatting when I posted it... thanks for that >.>)

the way Lilith’s clothes were coded in this episode were effectively a trap. SHE was effectively a trap, I mean Chuck had “written her into the episode” specifically to “seduce dean” after all… and she did that… wearing an outfit that ScREAMED Cas, so I want to put together something coherent for you before replying :’D

coinofstone Gotcha. Thank you for teaching out. I don’t generally follow color meta, someone pointed me to some of your #color and temp posts so I dug through a little before sending in the ask - Lilith’s comment about Chuck’s pervy obsession with Dean was a giant klaxon that made me think of Dean’s concerns about Cas too. But it’s also another “Hey remember Amara” moment

mittensmorgul yeah, and it’s a really good point

coinofstone Absolutely. I look forward to reading your post on this, once you’ve had time to digest and get it all written

mittensmorgul you mentioned the “duty to heaven” association with that mustard yellow/tan color, and that seems really relevant since Lilith’s entire presence there was in service to Chuck’s story, even as an unwilling participant in it, while Dean’s wrestling with his entire relationship to Cas, questioning if any of it was even real, since Cas’s mission originated as “Duty to Heaven” in saving him from Hell

mittensmorgul And I think all of this will become textual in 15.09, in Dean’s prayer to Cas…Foreshadowing! But not the kind Chuck’s writing…

mittensmorgul heck, I think I might just copy paste what I wrote to you here, and reply to your messages. I think I’ve worked out what I need to say

(and now that I have permission to post this, we can move on to why this is so interesting)

Lilith lampshaded herself as Chuck’s plot device, effectively. She was reenacting her own previous plot line from 4.18, seducing one of the brothers. Last time it was Sam, this time it was Dean. I’ve already posted something else about this tonight. She actively critiqued Chuck’s writing all along. She saw through Chuck’s story enough– even while she was a basically manufactured element of his story– to be self-aware of her own function within that story, as well as to point at other elements of the story and tell Dean “this is foreshadowing, isn’t it dull and predictable?”

She’s like… the opposite of Becky in 15.04.

Chuck basically BEGGED Becky to give him “notes” on his draft, and Becky had approached it in a fanfic-mindset of good faith, assuming Chuck was basically just writing fanfic as any human would. Lilith is self-aware, and knows the meta-plot. She knows she’s been placed there as a character in Chuck’s story, and she knows all about the story Chuck is trying to tell… and she HATES it.

She says she was given the choice of three vessels, and chose the one who’d apparently “picked the hardest road” for herself. She could’ve chosen one of the other girls, but this is the story that resonated with Lilith. Did she choose this, or did Chuck create her story out of whole cloth as even more foreshadowing, and with heavy references to the past when he’d done exactly the same thing with her? (rewriting her from a child into a “comely dental hygienist” when that suited the narrative he needed to tell?)

But that brings me back to Ashley/Lilith’s weird choice of clothing. Even back in the opening scenes in the tent, her two friends are dressed normally– t-shirts, like one might wear to sleep while camping. But Ashley… had the tie on. Scarf. Neckerchief. Whatever. She looked weirdly like she was trying to be a girl scout just because they’d been on a camping trip, you know? So, weird neckerchief. Which in this case looks both like Cas’s tie, AND Marie’s outfit in 10.05.

And Chuck told her, “not bad.”

Yeah, school uniforms for Marie and friends, but… Ashley/Lilith apparently chose this for herself, right down to the weird little beret.

Marie’s outfit was trimmed in this mustard color, but Lilith’s is just full-on mustard accessories.

Because Lilith was entirely self-aware through this entire episode that she was nothing more than Chuck’s plot device. She had no free will. She said repeatedly that she would’ve tortured and killed Sam and Dean both if she could, but she couldn’t, because she was entirely limited by what Chuck created her for within this episode. HOW FRUSTRATING, RIGHT?!

I guess, hence the perma-fake-tear visual of that wound on her cheek. Which was emphasized in the episode with her actual tears coursing over the cut.

This… was her chain. She could COMPLAIN about her role, she could complain about the stupidity of Chuck’s entire story. She could even laugh about his obvious asinine plot devices and foreshadowing– including her own incongruous appearance at this point in the story. But she was entirely bound by the construct Chuck created for her, and was unable to act outside of his plot.

Duty. Bound. And it’s tied right around her neck like a choker she can’t take off, in the color of duty to Heaven.

AND SHE WAS A DEMON, NOT AN ANGEL.

That doesn’t exempt her at all from being a pawn in Chuck’s narrative.

She even talked about her original purpose, to die for the original story, to free Lucifer, and her frustration that it was all for nothing. There was no grand purpose fulfilled because of her sacrifice. As far as she;s concerned, everything her entire existence was built around had been a lie. And she’s seen Chuck whole story for what it really is as a result of that. And yet here she is, playing another role for Chuck, in his unending narrative where he hopes maybe this time around things will work out to his liking. But it never will.

She also lampshaded the whole Free Will versus Destiny conundrum which we’ve been saying for years was the central theme of Supernatural since… forever. And pushed Dean to reiterate his stand on it– that he wouldn’t give it up, that he’d take all the bad he’d ever endured all over again, as long as he was making his own choices in his life. I’m not even sure that was what Chuck was going for here, or if Dean’s continued assertion of his own belief in free will was what broke Chuck’s hold over Lilith as a “character” here, and allowed her to begin voicing her critique of Chuck’s story, you know? If Dean had given in to her seduction, would she have ever been able to wrench free enough of Chuck’s written story to voice her own opinions of it? I like to think that Dean’s act of rebellion there changed the script, or allowed her to go “off script” enough to fill him in on some of the realities of Chuck’s interference.

But that remains to be seen. As far as Lilith goes, I think she was a construct for this episode… literally an agent of Chuck entirely created for the purposes of this episode as a test just as she was in 4.18. Was this the “real Lilith” brought from the Empty? Or just Chuck doing his thing and creating a story? How much can a writer really lie within the construct of his own disintegrating story?

[thefloatingstone]

Hey C-Puff! So I know I keep saying that I love your taste, but I'm curious, what would you consider essential scifi movie viewing?

Oof! (and thank you! 8DD) It really depends what kind of mood you’re in. Because “sci fi” is essentially a weird genre, because it can be mushed with literally any other genre and still work without straying too far from the ‘sci fi’ concept. Sci fi is a genre the same way fantasy is a genre or horror is a genre. You can make a horror-comedy or a fantasy comedy, but you can’t make a drama-comedy (At least without some major tonal dissonance). So it REALLY depends what you feel like watching or what mood you’re in or what tolerance level you have in some aspects.

I can list a few though which I feel are super essential viewing but are vastly different from each other. I’m not gonna give a full summary break down of each one because it’ll take me like 3 hours to write (these things take a while sometimes) but I’ll give a little indication!

Edit: oops…. I ended up spending 4 hours writing this….

1: Alien (1979)(Sci-Fi horror)

These days the Alien franchise seems to automatically = Xenomorphs. So it can be hard to remember the very first movie that not only started the franchise but literally changed sci fi as a genre, you barely see the Xenomorph on screen, and when you DO the film does its best to hide what it actually looks like with lighting, camera angles and editing. Because the first movie’s Alien costume was not really good, and the movie had a VERY small budget comparatively speaking. So it literally has the opposite goal of trying to show off the xenomorph as much as possible.

Originally sold as “Jaws but in space”, the whole idea of the film was “What if you were a bunch of truckers in the middle of space and nowhere to run, and something unknown started picking you off one by one. Where can you run? Who can you contact? What can you do?”

The original’s entire focus is on fear. From long sequences of Ripley running where it’s filmed facing her so you can’t see “behind you” as the audience to instill paranoia, to hearing what sounds like extreme amounts of gore off screen where you can’t see it, the entire film is designed to be terrifying.

It’s difficult to remember that with what the franchise is known for today.

Also noteworthy is that so much of what is Alien came from Jodorowsky’s “Dune” which was never made, but nevertheless still achieved Jodorowsky’s goal of changing sci fi forever.

2: Blade Runner (1982)(Sci-Fi Noir)

in 2012, Ridley Scott said in an interview; “30 years ago, I saw the future”.

As far as I am aware, the first movie to ask the question “where exactly does ‘being human’ start or end?” regarding robots. The original Blade Runner is filmed in a way to replicate a 1940s style crime noir story, complete with brooding detective and femme fatale. However, it is set in the FAR OFF FUTURE of 2019.

The story follows our detective, known as a “Blade Runner” chasing down a specific class of robot which is illegal on Earth (but used in off-planet labour deemed too dangerous for human work) after the model number started a riot on one of these off-world labour camps. Detective Decker is tasked in finding and “retiring” a group of robots recently landed in futuristic Los Angeles, especially since the robot group is tracking down and murdering the designers in charge of creating their line.

However, the further Decker investigates things, the more uncomfortable questions he finds himself asking. How are these robots so much more different than us humans? What are their motives? Are they really just machines gone berserk? Or is there something very very human they are trying to achieve.

A film that exploded in Japan and essentially caused every anime between 1982 and 1995 to be in some way a Blade Runner fanfic, it changed the genre even more than Alien did. This time letting philosophical questions and atmosphere do most of the work, as the cyberpunk aesthetic of future Los Angeles was as important a character to the story as any of the human players. It was the first time we truly saw Cyberpunk, and literally EVERYTHING we consider “Cyberpunk” these days came from this movie’s direction and cinematography.

Watch the Director’s cut. DO NOT watch the Theatrical version. The Theatrical version was forced to add narration to the long stretches of silence as the movie distributor thought audiences would be too stupid to handle a movie with so little dialogue in it. The Director’s Cut is how the film was meant to be watched, doing away with all the needless talking and letting the film’s visuals and music speak for itself.

3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)(Sci-Fi Mystery)

Yes yes I’m biased because it’s my favourite movie. But even if it wasn’t it’s an essential film to watch in the Sci-Fi genre.

Some people will think E.T. holds this title, but E.T. came out 5 years AFTER Close Encounters and so, Close Encounters is one of the first movies if not THE first movie that came out and asked… “What if the Aliens came and were our friends?” Because up until this point, All the “Big-Eyed Grey Aliens in Flying Saucers” movies portrayed them as invaders trying to take over the planet. And the sci fi stories and movies that DIDN’T have this narrative, the aliens were always human looking (Star Trek, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc)

And so, this is one of the first movies that suggested that maybe the weird looking space aliens from another planet who look nothing like us could be our allies. Would want to speak to us. Would want to know us.

Not that the movie is full of love and friendship. in some places it feels more like a horror movie than anything else. But that’s because the film thinks its audience is smart, and it doesn’t have to have a character EXPLAIN things to us. We can understand what’s happening by WATCHING. And if something is strange and doesn’t make sense, it either will by the end of the film thanks to context, or it was never that important to understand anyway.

Also a giant part of the film’s power and influence comes from its visuals, but even more importantly, its soundtrack which I can’t communicate in a gif. And so I am left linking a trailer.

I think it says a lot that it was THIS movie, not Star Wars, that helped the first Star Trek movie to be made a few years later, and with that, helped give us Star Trek TNG. Not bad.

(You can watch any of the 3 cuts of the film. I’m most familiar with the Director’s Cut so that’s my fave and what I would recommend but I haven’t heard of any of the 3 cuts being “the bad one”)

-

4: Total Recall (1990)(Sci-Fi Action)

It was only a matter of time before Arnie showed up on this list, being in no less than 3 Sci-Fi game changers in the 80s and 90s.

What makes Total Recall Unique, however, is that we have Paul Verhoeven as director, who likes movies that have a little more to say than “Arnie shoots a bunch of bullets at things” (as great as that is, don’t get me wrong) And I think the fact that people will STILL debate this movie says a lot about it.

The story is set in the far future, where normal construction worker Arnie is bored with his normal life (which is weird considering he’s built like a truck and married to Sharon Stone but I’m not here to judge). He’s been having reoccurring dreams about going to Mars, as well as a strange woman he meets there. One day while traveling home on the subway, he sees an ad for a copany called “Rekall” who can use a sort of brain implant machine to give you instantaneous fake memories. Basically, you can take a vacation that lasts 6 months in your memories within the span of 10 minutes real time.

Arnie’s character decides to visit, and asks that his fantasy take place on Mars, and describes the woman he meets there. However, during the fake memory implant something goes wrong. VERY wrong. The machine drags up suppressed memories Arnie has of being a sleeper agent, put on Earth until needed, as well as images he’s been seeing in his dreams. The Rekall employees have to sedate him and send him home, refunding him for the poor experience.

However, Arnie can no longer just forget what the machine dragged up from his subconscious, and starts to question if his life really is his life. If his wife really IS his wife. (after all…. Someone who looks like Sharon Stone married to a construction worker who looks like Mr Universe living in a very cushy apartment? Something doesn’t add up.)

Arnie finds himself suddenly dragged into a massive conspiracy plot revolving around Mars, the corrupt governor running it, the rebellion and its mysterious revolutionary, as well as who the hell WAS he before he was who he is now?

That’s the movie’s plot at least. But as many people who watch the movie has pointed out, despite the movie itself never making a point of it, funny how all this adventure and conspiracy hits Arnie right after he’s plugged in to a fantasy machine at Rekall. Convenient.

Nobody to do with the film has given a straight answer as to how real the movie’s events are supposed to be, and film fans have been arguing to this day of it was all real as the movie shows it to be… or a meta narrative.

5: Robocop (1987)(Sci-fi Satire)

The movie that very almost got an X rating for its violence, also directed by Paul Verhoeven and even more biting in its meta-narrative than Total Recall.

The STORY of the movie is that future Detroit is a complete shithole so full of crime that the police force just can’t keep up. After a police officer named Murphy is blasted to fuck, his corpse is used by the CPO company to create a “robotic law enforcer” meant to be put on the street to handle crime. Robocop is his name, and if he proves to be effective, CPO is planning to mass produce them. During the course of the film, however, Murphy learns to regain his humanity through the help of his police partner, and uncover the scrupulous CPO company’s hand in the city’s crime wave.

So that’s the STORY of Robocop… but it’s not what Robocop is “About”.

Robocop is essentially an enormous criticism of Corporate America in a way that’s basically come true since the movie came out. Robocop is one of those rare movies that is BETTER now than it was when it came out.

OCP is essentially Apple or basically any current American company. Focused on rushing out products for the good press it’ll give them before ironing out the problems and bugs, and taking MASSIVE and inhumane shortcuts in development to meet a deadline, uncaring who gets hurt in the process.

This message is further highlighted by the fake commercials peppered into the movie, a very clear criticism of everything from America’s extreme focus on its military and racism of other countries, American manufacturer’s disregard for what is environmentally safe in favour of “Status Symbols” in its fuel guzzling cars, America’s obsession with defending people’s ownership through unethical violence, Medical and health advertised on television like a luxury product, as well as just the inane meaningless garbage that is/was American television.

As a native of the Netherlands, Verhoeven pours so much cynicism and criticism towards American culture, both in the jokes as well as the core theme of the movie, that the film as a whole is less “Watch Robocop shoot his handcanon at bad guys” and more a dystopian nightmare, and finding humanity in it despite it all.

The only movie to top Robocop in its criticism of American culture would be “Starship Troopers” also directed by Verhoeven. But that movie is so depressing I almost can’t even reccomend it, despite it being GENIUS.

It’s the movie where the human race wins a war against giant bug aliens… and that’s the worst ending that could happen.

6: Enemy Mine (1985)(Sci-Fi drama)

*leans forward and smiles at you* hey there, friend. Do you like aliens? Do you like enemies to friends to lovers? Do you like found families? Do you like “Racism is bad” narratives? Do you like non-binary aliens who have no gender? Do you like romantic undertones between non-binary aliens played by a male actor and a cis white dude also played by a male actor?

Because BOY DO I HAVE THE MOVIE FOR YOU.

You think I’m joking with that description…. I am not. Not even a fucking little.

I very rarely see anybody talk about “Enemy Mine” and that’s a fucking crime because this movie is friggen AMAZING. The fact that it exists at all, let alone was made in the 80s is borderline absurd.

The movie takes place in the future. Humanity is in an intergallactic war with an alien race called the Dracs. Battles and skirmishes between the two races explode throughout the galaxy on various planets whenever the two species run into each other, and we follow our human main character Davidgewho, during a spaceship confrontation with the Drac, crash lands on an uninhabited planet, along with the Drac pilot named Jeriba Shigan.

The planet they crash on is a violent world battered by meteors and storms, which forces the two pilots to seek shelter in a cave near their crash site (and there was only one cave!). Despite them both needing shelter, the two absolutely despise each other, completely prepared to kill the other one the second they make a move. It’s a tense and paranoid stand off where each one waits for the other to move first. Neither of them do.

They find out that the planet is sometimes used by human miners for its rare ore (who use captured Drac as slave labour) but they only visit the planet periodically when the years- long bad weather settles. And so, Davidge decides to wait for rescue, despite knowing it may take several years before any human comes to the planet. Until then, he just has to survive and NOT get killed by the Drac he’s sharing the cave with.

So… the two wait. And a weird truce is called. And they wait… and time passes… and with literally no other life to turn to for company… well…. they start talking. First spitting and insulting each other. Then, slowly, learning more about each other. Then, slowly, sharing cultural information with each other, learning about their different species, learning about what each’s species have been telling them about the other. And well…. after several years… it becomes very hard to see the only living person you have been talking to for years as an enemy.

And then, after a while, Jeriba (nicknamed “Jerry” by Davidge) brings up a tiny problem.

He’s pregnant.

Davidge asks how the fuck that’s possible. Jerry explains his race has no gender or binary sex, and they produce asexually. So… ok…. Now you’ve got an alien you don’t FULLY trust who is pregnant and going to have a baby on this hostile planet.

…..oops.

Also, as time goes on another problem arises. The humans who will eventually show up to mine this planet use Drac as slave labour. This wasn’t ORIGINALLY a problem…. but it’s kinda become a problem now.

This movie is fucking amazing and nobody talks about it. Go watch it. Although be prepared for tears and feelings.

7: Galaxy Quest (1999)(Sci-Fi Comedy)

In modern day America (or rather 1999 America) there use to be a show called “Galaxy Quest” which DEFINITELY WAS NOTHING LIKE STAR TREK OK???

It was a very big show, but it eventually got cancelled. However, it is still considered a massively popular and influential tv show, enough to have its own conventions and dedicated fanbase. (AGAIN. IT’S NOT STAR TREK STOP SAYING THAT!)

The actors who starred in it many years ago now struggle to get work in other roles which they all deal with in different ways. Our Kirk Character played by Tim Allan is an egocentric selfish asshole who bathes in the “glory” of his role as the captain, despite it having been years, in complete denial that he’s a has-been and the fact that none of the other cast like him. Our Spock character is played by Alan Rickman who wants to know where his life went wrong. He use to be a REAL actor. He use to star in Shakespear plays. How did it come to this? He hates all of you. As well as Sigourney Weaver who had the important role of “Sexy Girl” in the show (a fact she resents) and a handful of others.

One day at a convention, they are approached by some super awkward and weird cosplayers, who ask them in-character if they could help their alien species, the Thermians, who are getting decimated by a warrior race lead by a General Sarris. As the Thermians are peaceful and have no experience in battles, they’ve come to ask the “Crew of the Starship Protector” to aid them. Alan Rickman agrees, believing it to be a promotional gig, and signs up his co-stars (only telling them after the fact which they resent him for)

The next day they play out their roles as they did on the show rather unenthusiastically, ordering the Thermians to simply shoot at General Sarris to defeat him, and then take them home.

Things turn complicated tho when the Thermians show up again and say “uhm… it didn’t exactly work. general Sarris is still alive and killing out people.”

And then our motley crew find out… the Thermians are NOT actors. They are in fact a real alien race. An alien race who are unfamiliar with the concept of “lying”. Their species had picked up the radio waves from the Galaxy Quest TV show and, believing it to be a historical record, modeled their entire civilization after the show. And now they need the crew of the “Protector” to help them in the face of this threat that could wipe them out as a species.

So our washed-out has-been actors find themselves pretending to really be their characters in a real space mission to save an alien race. Which is kind of a problem considering they have no idea what they’re doing at any point during this adventure.

8: Terminator 2 (1991)(Sci-Fi action)

I could have put the first Terminator movie on here… but I didn’t. Beause although both are excellent I personally prefer the second one. You don’t really need to have seen the first one to understand the second one either. I saw the second one first and it’s pretty easy to follow since the first movie’s plot wasn’t that complex.

10 or so years ago, Sarah Conner was visited by a time traveler who revealed he was from the future, and that in 1997 an AI known as “Skynet” would launch all the world’s nukes, causing the human race to almost become extinct. But Sarah Conner is the mother who will one day give birth to John Connor, the human rebel leader who will one day vanquish the machines. The machines know this, and Skynet sent back a robot called a “Terminator” to kill Srah Connor before she can give birth to humanity’s last hope.

Fast forward to this movie, Sarah Connor has been put in a mental institution (for rather obvious reasons) and her son, John Connor now 10 years old, lives with his aunt and uncle and is what we call a “problem child”. With no father figure in his life and his mom “going nuts”, John is a kid who smokes, steals bikes and is constantly in trouble. Then, one day, a robot from the future shows up to kill him. An advanced NEW kind of terminator sent by the machines, made of liquid metal, it is another attempt by the machines to kill John Connor before he can grow up to be the rebel leader.

This time however, Humanity has sent someone else to protect John. The exact same model of Terminator who tried to kill his mother, repurposed and reprogrammed to protect John from this lethal machine.

John, being a child, has to cope with the fact that not only is a killer robot trying to murder him, but ALSO his “nuts” mom turned out to be right. And he also starts developing a weird relationship with the robot sent to protect him. Looking for some kind of father figure to fill that hole in his life.

Although the first Terminator might have been more impactful in terms of visuals and ideas, the second Terminator is the one people remember as a movie. This is where “Hasta La Vista Baby” come from. This is where “Made from Liquid Metal” comes from. This is where THIS comes from

and where this comes from

and this

I don’t know if I can call it a BETTER movie than the first Terminator… …except it kinda is…. And one of the very few sequels where it ended up having more of a cultural impact than its predecessor.

9: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)(True Sci-Fi)

One upon a time there was a show called “Star Trek”. It then had a movie which did kinda of ok at the box office but many thought was rather boring.

And then they made Star Trek 2.

Set several years after the original show, where all the main characters are off living different lives. Kirk is an admiral working on Earth behind a desk. Spock is a training instructor to students who will one day be pilots and crewmembers in the Federation. The rest of the Enterprise’s former crew are all scattered across the Federation, either on Earth or on other Starships.

Far off in space, a Federation ship is looking for a dead planet to test a brand new technologcal creation called the “Genesis Device”. While doing so, they find Khan and his crew, who 15 years ago were left on a lifeless planet by Kirk after they tried to take over the Enterprise for use in Khan’s mad plans revolving around Genetic engineering. Khan and his crew take over the ship and learn of this “Genesis Device” with its power to destroy all life when unleashed on a living plan. Khan only has one goal in his mind; Revenge.

While on a 3 week long training mission under Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal, and go to investigate.

This movie honestly has no right to be as good as it is. Even if you have 0 knowledge of Star Trek (as I did when I first watched it) it makes complete and perfect sense on its own, and its extremely easy to understand what’s happening and why. It helps if you’re familiar with the characters, but the film on its own portrays their friendships and relationships with each other so perfectly that you completely buy every scene with them together, and WHY they’re friends. And how LONG they’ve been friend, without having to watch seasons and seasons worth of episodes to catch up. You don’t even need to watch the first Star Trek movie.

The film is a story about revenge… but it’s main core theme is about grief. Grief in many forms. Khan’s grief over the death of his wife which he blames Kirk for and his burning fiery hatred. Kirk’s grief as an aging space captain, unable to cope with himself growing old and the fact that he never truly learned how to handle loss, as someone who ALWAYS believes there is a way to save the day. Grief over lost relationships with his ex-lover and a grown son he never knew about and lost an entire relationship with.

Despite being about spaceships in space shooting at each other and long drawn out tension filled scenes between Kirk and Khan, it’s a movie about mortality, and the need to face it.

10: The Last Starfighter (1988)(Sci-Fi Adventure)

I could have put many things down for “Sci Fi movie about having an adventure”. I could have put ET or Explorers or Flight of the Navigator, but I decided to put The Last Starfighter. Even though ET may be the better known adventure film, it’s also the movie most people will have already seen, and Flight of the Navigator might look better, but it’s story is far weaker. So Last Starfighter it is.

In backwoods tiny-ass American town there lives completely normal teenager Alex Rogan. He doesn’t have that much going for him. He lives in a trailer with his mom and younger brother and has just recently had a scholarship rejection. Frustrated with his life and with little else to do in the trailer park, Alex spends most of his time playing the only arcade machine called “The Frontier”. After a lot of play and effort, Alex manages to get the high score on the machine.

After doing so, he is approached by the creator of the machine called Centauri, who is there to offer him a ride in his fancy car as a prize for holding the grand score. Having been taunted by the other teens around the area, Alex decides to take Centauri up on his offer, only to get abducted. And not in the “Teenager kidnapped by a creep” kind of way, but the alien kind of way.

It turns out there is a very real intergalactic war going on between Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire. And the arcade machine had been placed on Earth as a sort of recruitment tool for new pilots to fly for Rylan Star League.

Given the chance to actually have something happen in his Life, Alex has to learn how to be a Starfighter with the help of Centauri who reveals himself to be an alien, and the rest is simpy fighting the Ko-Dan Empire and saving the day.

Most notably, The Last Starfighter’s space battles were all done using early CG and it has… .not exactly aged that well tbh.

But is still incredibly impressive for 1988 and helped paved the way for special effects, leading to their peak in Jurassic Park in 1993. But although the CG might be why the movie is important to the genre on a technical level, the reason most people remember this movie is nostalgia in its purist form.

Who wouldn’t want to be so good at a video game that aliens come and give you a spaceship and ask you to save the galaxy?

I personally find the scenes on Earth without the CG to be the better parts of the movie, but it does what it sets out to do. To be a sci fi adventure film for teenagers and kids to watch and enjoy and see the hero win. Uncomplicated, fun, and easy to digest as a movie.

I was gonna leave it at that but I gotta add one more

11: 2010: The Year we make Contact (1984)(pure Sci-Fi)

in 1968, a year before America landed on the moon, Stanley Kubrick made the groundbreaking movie “2001: a Space Odyssey”. The movie is a sort of horror movie in space, but also not quite. It tells the story of an enormous black rectangular monolith being found on the moon in the year 2001. Upon human astronauts touching it, it sends off a signal into space. Not long afterwards, another monolith, this one more than several kilometers in size appears orbiting Jupiter.

A crew of 5 men and an AI computer are sent to investigate. But the AI, called the HAL 9000 goes mad and kills off all the crew except for one, named David Bowman, who takes the HAL 9000 offline before leaving the spaceship and entering the Monolith.

The original movie is a masterwork of film, suggesting that the monoliths are responsible for jumpsarting human evolution. But it is also a very SLOW film. Famously taking 40 minutes before the first line of dialogue is spoken. And its horror of distrusting computers maybe be seen as rather old fashioned by today’s standards.

Then in 1984 they made a sequel. 2010 takes place 9 years after the first movie (obviously). Several American astronauts and scientists are approached and recruited for a secret mission joint sponsored by America and the Soviet Union. Their mission is to travel to the long abandoned space station, find what information was retrieved from the monolith, and try and discover what caused the HAL 9000 to malfunction. Time is of the essence as the abandoned space station will crash on Jupiter’s moon Io soon. The Soviets want to know what caused the disaster, but they need the Americans’ help to get into the space station, and an uneasy joint mission is formed, lead by Dr Floyd who was in charge of NASA when the original disaster occurred and had since been disgraced, but who would prove the best person to find out what happened to cause the disaster.

The movie, although perhaps slow by modern standards, moves at a much better pace than the original, and although you could say its plot is more basic, it’s also easier to follow and understand. There are moments of extreme tension from multiple areas. Reactivating the HAL 9000 and having to try and NOT repeat whatever it was that caused it to murder the original crew. The time limit before the space station is set to crash on Io, the mystery of what happened to David Bowman. The presence of the silent monolith orbiting Jupiter. And the seemingly unimportant political differences between the American crew and the Russian crew, despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.

It also has some of the most incredible space cinematography I’ve seen in a film. Rather than the modern depiction of space in movies as a swirl of navy and stars and colourful nebulas, the space of 2010 is pitch black, with endless stars and enormous looming planets in the foreground, and nothing but a wall between you and the endless void.

Anyway those are my reccomendations.

Please consider donating to my kofi…. this took like 4 or 5 hours to write.

☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

[destiny-smasher]

12, 23, 45, and 50. Also, you're pretty cool and All Wounds is amazing. Hope you have a good day! Also-also sorry if I picked too many, I'm just curious.

Also, you're pretty cool and All Wounds is amazing. Hope you have a good day!

12. Have you ever written a fic and decided never to publish it? Why?

Hm, actually, yea, I think so. I wrote a ‘test’ fic in short story format about characters from the indie game Freedom Planet. See, the creator of that game was my first fan, back in 2001 when I was writing Smash Bros. fic (which is where my username comes from, actually, I’ve been using it ever since), and years later after we’d reconnected through FP, he wanted to bring me on board for the sequel to help with writing, as I guess they want to go with a more dialogue-heavy story with less cinematic flair and more straight-up character interaction and such.

Given how the original game starts with three cutesy cartoony misfit teenagers cracking jokes about cooties and ends up involving a protagonist being tortured to the point parts of her body get torn off I mean, yea, that’s a world that’s willing to go in different directions.

So I wrote a test fic taking place right after the first game, the creator seemed to like it OK.

Problem was, this all happened like, last spring, when the drama with the LiS fandom went down and I was struggling with matters of gender identity, wanting to come out but not feeling safe or comfortable to do so, hating my day job (which I still do but I was full time back then and that made a world of difference for my stress), lost a friendship that I saw a lot of potential in (hell, lost a handful of those within a short span, online and off)...Basically, I was in the worst place I’ve been in since my senior year of college. And I was supposed to be getting brought onto a team of people who were already friends, already familiar with each other, who got paid for their work as actual staff members of the team who made the first game.

And I was just some other person, getting squeezed in without any actual role or title or specific duties or assignments, getting drunk to cope with all of my stress, already struggling with feelings of inadequacy (of “I’m not good enough on my own”) and it all just did not jive with the new team. Plus, I just didn’t know why the game’s creator wanted me in -- my style of writing wasn’t compatible with the more Saturday Morning approach they were trying to go for. They wanted to have my best friend Aivi (who does music for Steven Universe) join in on the project, and I think when she realized I was off the team it sapped her interest, as well (she still wants to work with me on an indie game team together somehow, just hasn’t lined up yet).

Anyway, this isn’t at all to say that the team at Galaxy Trail doesn’t make great work, Freedom Planet is one of the best Sonic games that exists and it’s not even a Sonic game (I mean, Sonic Mania only just came out but before that I would’ve easilly said FP was the best Sonic style game). It was all just another example of me being at my worst and feeling ‘not enough’ and getting rejected as a result of that self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone who was once a fan of my work has been able to convert and adapt his own fancontent successfully and succeed and get paid for it and I’m...still stuck in retail. And so the shortfic in turn only reminded me of all these things, and I just never felt quite comfortable posting it.

23. What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten?

That’s hard to say, actually. I’ve gotten a number of really inspiring ones over the past few years, mostly about What I Learned at SRU. Mainly, the nicest reviews tend to have a recurring theme of expressing how the story I created helped influence how they decided to approach real life. All Wounds has gotten some similar comments, too, though that story is inherently less pleasant.

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

I like to use the phrase, ‘In-between The Panels.’ It’s a term I got from the movie Super (which is a batshit crazy movie that does some weird stuff with the comic-super-hero genre).

While I wrote a Teen Titans fic in high school that literally followed this concept (taking place inbetween episodes of an alternate reality Season 2 and we’ll just leave it at that), it wasn’t until I started becoming familiar with certain anime series that I became self-aware of what I was really seeking -- slice-of-life storytelling. While anime as a general medium features stories full of cliches I dislike (and let’s be real, so do western cartoons) there was a MUCH higher degree of consideration for the slower, thoughtful moments.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and its meta-commentary on genre storytelling was probably the moment I became fully self-aware. Since then, I’ve come to adore the slower paced, deliberate pacing of shows like Michiko and Hatchin, Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, Mr. Robot. This taste has led me to be excited for video game experiences that capture a similar tone (which is exactly how I got into Life is Strange before it was even released).

I tend to gravitate toward slice of life moments about characters in-between the action. Whether that’s taking a break from said action, or coping with what’s already transpired, or simply trying to exist despite events, my stories typically center around those slower, down-to-earth moments.

In a lot of ways, Life is Strange: All Wounds is like a culmination of all of these types of scenes and stories I’ve written, tying it all around two protagonists across a span of years.

If you want a more traditional answer to that question, I’d probably say ‘slice-of-life’ or ‘drama,’ or whatever combines the two. The question itself is odd because ‘fanfic’ isn’t a genre at all, though.

50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive?

Unequivocally yes, it has had a significant impact on my life. Moreso than anything else I’ve ever done. It has not always been positive. For example, my Walking Dead fic Versatility got me a few irrational haters who missed the entire point of Telltale’s second season of the game and tried to harass me for...writing about one ending of that season and not the other?

I also experienced a lot of drama in the Avatar fandom while Legend of Korra aired because...by and large that show’s storytelling was a goddamn mess (parts of it were fucking brilliant, which made it all the more frustrating when you had to wade through a bunch of lazy crap to get to the good stuff). And I don’t just mean that in comparison to its successor, I mean just in general as a show that wanted to be taken seriously. That’s a whole can of worms I’ve already opened multiple times. But suffice to say my opinions spurred a lot of drama. I anticipate something similar might happen with Before the Storm so I might not be active in that fandom for a while.

Oh, and this all sidesteps the biggest offender, the drama I experienced last spring in the Life is Strange fandom. I had the biggest negative impact on that, myself, as opposed to any other situation, but if I hadn’t been writing All Wounds none of it would’ve happened. Then again, I would never have met my girlfriend, either. Or any of the friends I’ve made in the past year since. Similarly, struggling with my dissatisfaction with Korra’s writing connected me with people in a unique way.

In the end, even the negative stuff -- even my worst mistakes -- in fan-creation culture have ultimately led toward great positives. While writing SRU I was essentially functioning as a Patreon creator for a couple of years (paying my bills with funds donated by an extremely generous fan).

My best friend I met because she made piano arrangements of Mario songs. That person who made Freedom Planet, met through fanfiction. My girlfriend I met through making PriceField content. And many of my online friends, some of whom I go on to video chat with and even meet in person eventually, they’ve basically all been connected to fan-content creation.

Even if the source material has problems, even if fan culture itself has problems, these characters and their stories still consistently connect us to each other, because that’s the entire purpose of a story -- to equip us with the motivation and inspiration to empathize.

[whenshiphitsthefan]

(disclaimer, I had a drink before deciding to reply to this and I think I rambled)

are you a fic writer? because all of us who are fic writers are exactly what Chuck is. yes we are an audience of the show but we also are writers of other AUs which are equally real as the Apocalypse World, or the Titanic-didn't-sink AU, etc.

if you are writing fanfiction, you are doing EXACTLY what Chuck does and the only difference is that it's not on your television screen. you are providing events/situations that propel Sam and Dean to do what you want them to do. you're not mischaracterizing them if you don't write them quite like the "canon" versions; you're just writing an AU where that's the way they are. that's why there's no wrong way to write fanfic!

Part of me loves season 15 because as horrible as he is, I totally get Chuck! I spend way too much time watching the saddest/most emotional scenes of SPN, and writing alternate versions of those scenes that get EVEN ANGSTIER because I fucking love angst and I love how far Sam and Dean will go for each other.

I understand that if Sam and Dean were real, this would be horrible because that means I like to see them suffer for my own entertainment (or to stimulate emotions in myself that I don't easily feel otherwise) but the truth is that audiences like conflict. You like fluffy fics, right? Curtain!fics? Me too, but what are the fics you REMEMBER? What are the ones that stuck with you? It's not the fluff or the PWPs. It's the angsty ones, the ones where Sam and Dean struggle to be together.

I'm no longer sure what ending Chuck has in mind (it might not involve one brother killing the other) but I do know that I love Sam and I also love seeing Sam and his brother in pain. Even though it will hurt Sam, I WANT Chuck to straight up tell him "either you never see Dean again or Eileen dies" and Sam picks Dean and has another death on his conscience. Isn't that terrible? I want Dean to be upset at first but then admit he would have done the same and then the brothers share a Look of "I have given up everything else and will always give up everything else to be with you."

you are right that if the brothers were split up then Chuck wouldn't want to watch anymore, so my guess right now is that with Sam there he can fix the Equalizer wound so that he can leave this universe but his parting shot to Sam and Dean will be separating them as punishment for Sam shooting him. and removing the temptation for Chuck to stay and watch this Sam and Dean. He'll be like "Dean will fight monsters in Purgatory forever with Castiel AND Benny because he's okay with that existence and you will get to save people and hunt things with Eileen. There's, the end of your story."

this went off topic; I was trying to begin the expansive meta @amoreanonyname mentioned but I failed because mild euphoria and my angst obsession and my "I totally get Chuck" thing so I hope I contributed something meaningful there.

know what the Eileen thing is?

it's reiterating that Sam and Dean will always choose each other, and you may ask "what's the point?" after we've already seen both of them choose each other over other people, but Eileen is being set up as a female replacement for Dean. before they could pretend it was the Life that they were choosing/being forced to choose rather than each other, but here Sam doesn't have to choose between girlfriend/normal life and brother/hunting. His options will be girlfriend/hunting and brother/hunting. Eileen drives with Sam riding shotgun, she eats burgers (saying that feels like grasping at straws but it's significant when paired with Sam eating salad), she kicks ass just as well as Dean. She's everything Sam needs in a hunting partner.

so in about five weeks we're probably going to see Sam have a chance to continue the same life he's had, just with Eileen instead of Dean, and he's going to reject it because the whole point is his brother. He even said it back in season 10 that he doesn't want to hunt without his brother, but they are going to shove it in our faces one more time that the whole point is Dean, that what Sam wants is Dean, and he will always choose Dean.

I said before that I hypothetically don't mind them rehashing this "guy picks his brother over a great girlfriend" story as long as it builds to a new height, and sadly this is probably all the height we're getting.