#just saying that the art direction the modern fandom has taken makes me incredibly happy

[insufferablemod]

its the skinny jeans

i find it so funny how u can always easily spot the like 2010-2013 era hs art

[thrillingdetectivetales]

2020 Creator Wrap

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

Okay, okay, I know I’m late with this but the incredibly sweet @irolltwenties and the utterly delightful @anthrobrat were both kind enough to me in this bad boy and it seems really fun, so here we are!

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

According to my AO3 statistics page, I wrote just over 100K of fiction this year, across 17 different fandoms, a few of which won’t actually go live until after the New Year because they’re part of a gifting collection that hasn’t been revealed yet... Anyway, I picked my faves for a variety of reasons, listed briefly after each link. If you have any questions about works I’ve shared (or just in general) feel free to ask!

1. Front Row at the Gongshow

The Pacific, 16K, Rated G  Andrew ‘Ack Ack’ Haldane/Edward ‘Hillbilly’ Jones

Aside from being the longest completed work I produced this year, this is also the first fic I’ve ever written using the “found document” format. While there are parts of it I feel really conflicted about, I’m still incredibly proud of it and think it’s one of the better fic I’ve written...possibly ever. Which is doubly funny because I don’t usually do modern AUs of period fiction, but the hockey angle was enough to tempt and lo, here we are, lol.

[Excerpt from Deadspin]

"You all remember Eddie Jones, right? The corn-fed captain of the New Orleans Rougarou so wholesome he belongs on a box of Malt-O-Meal? The gentleman bruiser who spends his free time playing country tunes for kids with cancer?

Our favorite dapper D-man led his team to 97 points last night in a shut-out victory against the Los Angeles Kings, clinching a playoff spot for the first time in franchise history. Oh! And he also got caught on camera at the after-party, sucking face. WITH A DUDE."

2. Entremets

Hannibal, 8K, Rated E Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter

I have...so many Hannibal fic that I’ve started writing and haven’t finished because all my ideas lead to long plotty epics and also big name fandoms scare me. I did this one up for Eat, Drink, & Make Merry, and I’m really, really pleased with the way it turned out, considering it was my first foray into establishing new character voices and also a successful exercise in writing explicit content, which can be a bit of an Ordeal for me, so overall I’m incredibly happy with it. Plus! My deep and abiding love of writing characters cooking/eating/otherwise dealing with food finally paid off!

“The pâté was supposed to be more of a gesture,” Will explains, spreading a golden sliver of honeycomb out across a slice of sopressata with the blade of his pocket knife. “You don’t actually have to eat it. I’m not even sure if it’s any good.” He smears a healthy dollop of chȇvre across his meat-and-honey concoction and pops the whole thing into his mouth without ceremony.

“What better method exists by which to convey one’s appreciation of a gesture than to indulge it?”

3. An Ode to Matty Big-Time

The Good Place, 2K, Rated T Jason Mendoza/Original Male Characters, Pillboi

This one was actually a request made by my very dear @thesummoningdark, who wanted to see some bisexual Jason per that one fantastic Tumblr post about how everyone in TGP should be bi, and I’m really, really proud of the way it turned out. I love writing comedy and I very rarely get to lean into it as hard as I’d like, so delving into the whole wild craziness of Jacksonville, as explained in the show was really fun. I also love writing original characters, and this was a great excuse to indulge.

“We probably shouldn’t do any butt stuff,” Jason warns, with as much gravitas as he can muster. “I had two of Stupid Nick’s Disaster Buckets when I got here.”

“Yeah, your face is still kinda orange,” Mateo agrees fondly, bringing his other hand up to brush his thumb over Jason’s lower lip. It stirs a little frisson of heat in his belly that Jason is 68% sure isn’t just indigestion. “No chemical burns, though, so I think you came out on top.”

4. This and Who I Used to Be

The Tick (2017), 3K, Rated G Arthur Everest/Superian

Another new fandom I haven’t written in before, this was a fill for the Rare Male Slash Exchange that turned me on to a pairing I’d never even thought of before I wrote it and am now low-key obsessed with. It is also, to date, the ONLY Arthur/Superian fic on AO3 at all, which is a cool weird honor and fairly indicative of my life’s goal to eventually write my way into smaller and smaller fandoms until I come out the other side with original works. It was really fun to explore these characters, and to figure out some world-building for Superian’s backstory that fit within the tone and established canon of the extant Amazon!Tick universe. Also featuring an original character that nobody asked for but I’ve come to love unconditionally.

Arthur glances down to where Superian has one cheek pressed against his shoulder, humming something off-key and unintelligible with his eyes closed. Arthur sighs. “Let’s get you inside.”

He hauls Superian in until he can prop him against the wall while he shuts and locks the door behind him. When he looks back over, Superian is smiling at him, soft and lazy. He swings a finger in Arthur’s direction, a broad, sloppy motion, and announces, “I knew you’d say yes.”

“Technically I said fine,” Arthur rebuts. He gestures down the hallway toward the kitchen—which leads on to the bedroom, as Superian well knows—and sighs, “Come on. I don’t know what those handcuffs did to you, but you should probably lie down and have a glass of water or something.”

5. Rain in Its Season

Band of Brothers, 12K, Rated G Edward ‘Babe’ Heffron/John Julian

Oh boy. What to say about this one. It’s maybe not as polished as I might have preferred, but I feel that way about mostly everything I write and at the end of the day I do really love what I managed to do with this piece. Written for the Heavy Artillery Rare Pair Exchange, I managed to lean heavily into both my love for needlessly granular period research and original characters, which are abundant herein. Frankly, based on the very little we see of him in the show, Julian himself is practically an OC, but I digress. This was another of the longer pieces I’ve ever finished and I’m proud of it even if I’d’ve liked to write another 15K or so, time constraints notwithstanding.

“Tell me. Please. Why’re you here?”

Babe flinched, gaze dropping to the floor. His heart was a raw, swollen welt in his chest. He swallowed and licked his lips, slow and pained.

“Come on, Julian,” he rasped, low and quiet. “You know why.” He laughed, soft and hoarse, and shook his head, once. When he looked back up, Julian had taken a careful step into the center of the room. His eyes were very dark, his mouth very red, hope and fear warring in his every feature. Babe fisted his fingers in the cotton sheet underneath him, halfway to pleading as he insisted, “You gotta know.”

Julian sighed and came over to hover at the edge of the bed. Babe spread his legs to accommodate the intrusion.

“That was - ” Julian started. His voice failed midway through the protest, and he swallowed, took a breath, and regrouped at a lower volume. “You said that was just buddies, what we did over there. That it didn’t count. That you didn’t want it to.”

The TL;DR of this all being that while I didn’t write as much I wanted to this year in terms of volume, I feel like my quality has been improving consistently and hope it continues to do so into 2021 while I try to finish out some of my years-long WIPs and get into longer completed pieces.

I’m not sure who all to tag, so I’ll say @thesummoningdark, @blahblahblahclintnickiscanon, @thisbadge, @incognito-insomniac, and anyone else who’d like to join in and hasn’t been tagged yet! (If you’re the latter, feel free to @ me so I can see what you’ve written!)

Happy New Year everyone May the fanworks you create this year be prolific and soul-affirming!

[tigerlover16-uk]

In a way its really wierd to me how angry people get over Super. It's clearly just trying to be a simple comedy action series aimed at kids. Though I suppose there is the ageold ruining my childhood thing. But it doesn't really strike me as very provocative to inspire such strong negative feelings. Im just mostly looking at what it's trying to be. It doesnt strike me as tryhard either. The most powerful being is a audience selfinsert that just wants to have fun. Its so selfaware on many levels.

A lot of people obsess over Dragon Ball and want it to remain this (In their heads) perfect, untouched work of art I think. I’ve never agreed with that sentiment, but Dragon Ball IS one of the most iconic and influential anime and mangas of all time and has a special place in millions of peoples hearts. With that kind of pedigree, I get a lot of people having very high standards for any kind of a follow up.

There are legitimate grievances to be had with Super, and plenty of things that can theoretically go wrong with continuing Dragon Ball’s story (Just look at GT for proof of that).

So it’s perfectly reasonable to have concerns… but, unfortunately the Dragon Ball fandom has the same problem as the Star Wars fandom, Sonic fandom, and really a lot of other major fandoms out there: They let their nostalgia and obsession with the series get completely out of hand, and treat every mistake, big or small, as a sign that the end times have come and that the series is ruined forever.

Some of this does come from nitpicky aspects of the series that only certain obsessive fans actually care about and the majority of viewers are actually casually ignorant to (Like power scaling), some of it does come from places of genuine concern (Animation issues and messed up production early on, stuff like the Future Trunks saga ending, the show running in circles with certain characters rather than letting them progress further, etc), but a lot of it is, frankly, people just wanting an excuse to complain because “It’s not like Z!”.

As someone who grew up with the Star Wars Prequels and 3D era Sonic games, and prefers them to both franchises earlier outings (Mostly… 06 WAS a complete mess, nostalgia aside), I tend to have little sympathy for people whining about how a flawed sequel has completely ruined their favourite series and thus their childhood forever. 

And while I do sympathise with more reasonable fans who have fair reasons for disliking it, I think people in general are being incredibly myopic if they think that Super can actually damage Dragon Ball as a whole.

Like, you want to know why I keep comparing it to the Prequel Trilogy? Because for all the handwringing from petulant manbabies about how their precious (Dated and somewhat overrated, FTR) sacred movies had supposedly been ruined forever… the movies didn’t actually hurt Star Wars much in the long run, let’s be honest.

The Original Trilogy still exists. They’re the same movies they’ve always been, and if you don’t like the Prequels you’re free to ignore them and enjoy the original three movies for what they are, since they do function as a self contained story. There’s still plenty of tie in material from the old and new EU for people who want MORE Star Wars content not related to the Prequels too.

And on that note, we’ve had PLENTY of good Star Wars content since the Prequels came out too, with the tv series Star Wars: The Clone Wars frequently being hailed as one of the greatest works in the entire franchise, if not one of the best cartoons ever made, with some Prequel detractors even arguing it SALVAGED those movies. And let’s not forget how the first installment of the sequel trilogy became the first franchise film to gross over $2 Billion at the box office.

That’s not even getting into the fact that the Prequels also brought in a whole generation of new fans and lead to their love of the franchise, myself included.

For whatever problems the Prequels had (Real, imagined or grossly exaggerated), in the long run… Star Wars was fine. 

Even now with the Last Jedi, which many argue is a horrible movie that hurts the overall story of the Star Wars Saga (Funnily enough, I’m actually in that camp this time), I think similar logic applies. I, and other fans may not like it or a lot of stuff the Sequel Trilogy has done, and with stuff like Solo the Star Wars franchise may be going through a bit of a rough patch in terms of public interest at the moment… but honestly, I don’t think things are going to be bad forever.

People will eventually move on with their lives. People who don’t like the Sequel Trilogy can move on and enjoy the old movies while pretending they don’t exist, and enjoying whatever other spin offs they like, while fans who do like the Sequel Trilogy and modern star wars content can look forward to more stuff they enjoy. 

I can complain about certain directions the series has taken, but as someone who’s endured having people tell me that my childhood favourites ruined their lives (To which I have to say… please go outside and get some air, for Christ’s sake), I have no interest in wangsting about the state of things when I have a lot of better things I should be doing.

That’s not to say no one should complain of course, there are legitimate failings to the Sequel Trilogy and Last Jedi in particular and people have every right to complain (As long as they’re not the toxic fanbrats whining about the “SJW AGENDA!” And bulling the cast, those people can jump off a cliff along with the people who bullied Jake Lloyd and drove Ahmed Best to contemplate suicide). In fact, it’s a good thing for people to be critical since actually constructive criticism is necessary and good feedback for studios responsible for these pop culture franchises.

Going back to Dragon Ball, I personally enjoy Super. I think it’s done a lot of good things, though also had various missteps along the way. But despite those issues and while I hope future works take steps to fix and improve on things, I’m fairly happy with the current state of the franchise and eager for more.

I do think you have a point too, anon. Super itself isn’t honestly trying to be anything revolutionary or even on Z’s level. If you actually examine the show as a whole, it’s basically extended filler that mostly serves to expand the universe, create a big sandbox for future stories to possibly build on, and further develop several characters. The only time it really tried to do anything particularly ambitious was in the Future Trunks saga, where we had villains who questioned the state of humanity and there was an ideological battle going on between them and our heroes, mostly Future Trunks.

Other than that though? We got two movie retellings that were basically self-contained conflicts, a small-stakes tournament that mostly served to introduce a bunch of new recurring characters, and a multiversal tournament that, while it did do some interesting thematic stuff here and there… was mostly an excuse to introduce EVEN MORE new characters, give old ones a chance to shine and develop some more, and have a lot of cool looking fights.

Super isn’t really trying to be Z. It just wants to be a fun show for kids and which nostalgic fans can hopefully enjoy. If anything, I think it was mostly a test run to see whether continuing the franchise with more stories beyond the occasional movie was viable.

There’s certainly gripes to be had, but really Super’s status as a fill-in for a time gap in the Z anime to me just makes it feel a lot more low risk than an immediate sequel to the end of Z, since things do still end the same way they did regardless at the moment. It exists for fans to enjoy if they want to, but it can be easily ignored for fans who don’t and prefer the previous series.

And personally, I don’t think it’s really possible to truly “Ruin” Dragon Ball because the story already got an ending. The original manga, and the two anime adapting it, are a complete story on their own. One with a very open ending that leaves the door open for future stories, yes, but it’s a complete story nonetheless. Whatever directions future series may take, good or bad, it’ll never truly change the story as it originally was, because that manga and it’s anime will always exist for people to enjoy as it was intended.

I hate GT and I’ve complained about it plenty, but while I have very personal reasons for why it annoys me… at the end of the day, it’s irrelevant now. We got a different continuation that ignores it, it’s divorced enough from the original canon that I can just go about my days pretending it doesn’t exist, and I got my closure over it with that last re-watch sorting out my feelings on the series. 

So, really, flawed as it is there’s nothing to be REALLY mad about, is there? It exists, but it doesn’t do me any real harm, and it’s there for people who do enjoy it (For whatever weird reason, lol) to watch at their leisure. So in effect, it’s harmless… or at least it will be once we get another post-EoZ series to prove it didn’t completely close the door on those being made.

Dragon Ball’s kind of lucky in that way. It got to a point where it had a satisfying resolution where it can hopefully stand the test of time as a classic work of fiction, but people who want more still have the opportunity for that. 

And people who don’t think it should continue, or just don’t like those continuations, are free to not watch those works and enjoy the series the way they want to. Or, even if they don’t like Super, it’s still possible a better series or other products like movies can be made down the line that they can enjoy better.

Just like with Star Wars and the Sonic games.

I may have issues with Super from time to time, but overall I think it did a lot more good than bad, and most of it’s faults could be improved on in future series. The worst thing it actually did was destroying the original future timeline, but even that’s fixable if they just have another story with Future Trunks coming back and have somebody go “Hey, maybe we can use the Super Dragon Balls to bring your timeline back”. 

I get having personal attachment to the series and it’s characters, I do too. And I get people getting emotional when they feel something they like is being disrespected in any way. If people think the show handled Goku’s character badly or did something to hurt the overall ongoing story, then they’re within their right to complain and be upset about that. TO A REASONABLE EXTENT.

I do also get the feeling a lot of people just can’t handle Dragon Ball having a flawed follow up, aswell. Given that Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are influential classics, it makes sense that a lot of people would be unhappy with anything that didn’t live up to that quality. But I think some people do get overly worked up about it.

Fact is, all franchises have both flawed installments, and a number of duds to show for them. Star Trek has bad movies and the bad series here or there (Enterprise). Doctor Who has had bad seasons. Marvel and DC have had plenty of bad comics and media adaptions. Mario and Sonic and Pokémon and lots of others have had bad games or adaptions. But that hasn’t ruined everything that was good about those series, or stopped them from putting out good new content.

Every piece of media has it’s flaws to be frank, and every franchise will inevitably stumble here or there. Dragon Ball has had plenty of duds before Super. The Broly movies, GT, Return of Cooler, Episode of Bardock, a bunch of bad video games most people don’t even bother to remember, FREAKING DRAGON BALL EVOLUTION. And plenty of stuff about the old series themselves has aged terribly (Especially in early Dragon Ball). But none of that has managed to kill the franchise.

We’ve had bad, mediocre and decent though heavily flawed Dragon Ball stories and products in the past, and we’ll have plenty more in the future. And while there’ll be stuff that is worth griping about, really at the end of the day it’s not the end of the world, and people who do get legitimately angry thinking it is need to relax now and again.

I get people thinking that things should have just stayed the way there were, thinking that Dragon Ball shouldn’t have been continued if that continuation wasn’t going to live up to it’s predecessors. And I’m never going to argue that people shouldn’t complain about things (I certainly do).

But realistically, Dragon Ball was going to have follow ups sooner or later. It’s the biggest franchise Toei and Shueisha have, and one of the most iconic series of all time. Whether I or anyone else thinks Dragon Ball needed a follow up or not, it was bound to happen because we live in a world where milking popular franchises is the name of the game. 

People can complain about it, people can and should have issues with flawed products. People can insist on Dragon Ball’s legacy needing to be preserved. But like I’ve said... the series as you loved it isn’t going anywhere. No one is obligated to support everything the franchise does. So I don’t think getting overly angry or worked up about Super or GT or whatever not being everything they wanted them to be is something to freak out over.

Fact is, for all the complaints... a lot of people still love Super and enjoyed it. A lot of people still love Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Super has brought Toei nothing but monetary success, and interest in the franchise is at the highest it’s been since Z finished airing in the West over a decade ago and the franchise went truly dormant for the most part. If anything, I think Dragon Ball actually gets more respect these days than it did for most of the latter half of the last decade, where it became sort of an internet laughing stock in the West.

We’re still getting plenty of high profile and quality products, like FighterZ, which along with Super itself and the movies preceding it has helped draw in a lot of new fans and brought back a good chunk of lapsed ones. There’s a generation of children the world over that are going to have grown up on Super as their first Dragon Ball series, and it’ll be an important part of helping them get into the franchise and the previous series, much like Kai before it. 

And we’ve got a new movie coming out that’s generating a lot of hype and which looks to be giving the franchise a much needed and exceptionally positive visual overhaul, which it’s needed for a while now.

For all the ups and downs, and there have been plenty... Dragon Ball is doing fine. Regardless of what any individual person thinks of Super, Dragon Ball’s legacy isn’t in any danger. The franchise isn’t collapsing, and the overall story and all of it’s characters haven’t been completely ruined beyond repair.

Things could be better. But Z and Dragon Ball could have been better in a lot of places too. It’s okay to be unsatisfied about the current state of things and to voice complaints, as much as it’s okay to be loving the thrill of having Dragon Ball really make a comeback.

Things will be fine. With Super currently off the air, I think now’s the time for everyone to just take a chill and relax. The world didn’t end, and it’s not going to any time soon. (Well, unless Trump throws a hissy fit and launches nukes at everyone but, you know, hopefully that won’t happen).