#lmao the fanfic i wrote for the fandom is testament to that

[laughingmagi]

Watched Velvet Goldmine again and I feel creatively refreshed and reset. I've legit seen this movie well over a hundred times, and it still hits that emotional and aesthetic cord just right for me. Even more so as I've grown older. I think, though it did shape me in deep, fundamental ways as a person, at sixteen or seventeen, whenever it was I first watched it, I was nowhere near mature enough to properly appreciate it.

[laurasauras]

as a moderately popular fic writer who every now and then experiences a sudden influx of kudos on a fic out of nowhere, clearly signalling someone has shared it with their friends/community, that's always a bittersweet feeling

on the one hand, someone has said something nice about my fic! that's lovely! not only that, but the people they said the something nice to have been compelled enough to click on the link (not a small feat) and to leave kudos themselves! i must have written something special :)

but on the other hand ........ i feel left out :(

i write fic because i love the media i'm writing for--i love it enough to spend hours of Prime Energy Time (time during which i have the energy to be doing anything and therefore have the capacity to write) poring over this concept and trying to make it as good as i can. and i LOVE writing, so this isn't some noble sacrifice or anything. but it's a testament to how much i love the thing as well, because i have a LOT of hobbies

and when i get that uptick in kudos that says my fic has been shared, i think huh. i would have loved to have been invited into that conversation

and this isn't me asking to be invited to more discord servers or anything, i don't want to invade the group chat lmao, but a comment that says "i had to share this with my friends after reading this! this was my pitch: 'xyz'" would also be inviting me in

i joined a server a while ago and a few of the members were like omg it's laurasauras--genuinely very flattering and i'm NOT complaining haha--and i was kind of like aw, thank you, but also you get that i'm a massive nerd too, right? like you have proof that i've spent hundreds and THOUSANDS of hours of precious focus time obsessing over this fandom! i'm not cool! of course i want to talk about the thing i'm obsessed with!

i've genuinely never tracked my stats. i have adhd and i mostly forget my fics exist once i've posted them. (the only thing i've come close to is when i noticed that one of my dirkjohn fics was on the second page sorted by kudos and every now and then i'd remember and i watched it climb the ranks until it was on the first page and that was super exciting, it's very possibly been pushed back again by newer and shinier dirkjohns but that was still very thrilling for my B- inner child.) the daily kudos email and occasional comment emails are happy little bonuses, but i don't write for them. if i got absolutely no comments on a fic i'd worked really hard on, i might be a bit bummed, but i would probably forget about it pretty quickly. if i got no comments on a fic in my early days, i might not have noticed because i hadn't grown to expect them and i wasn't as good as i thought i was haha

i mean, don't get me wrong, i love those emails. even the comments with <3 in them make me smile and that's lovely to wake up to or get randomly during the day. and i think ao3 comments are actually a great place to get a sense of people and i have genuinely made friends through them (including cal who i reblogged this from and who i have had the ENORMOUS pleasure of meeting irl!!!) and i want to be best friends with every single one of the people who comments reliably on almost every fic i write. honestly, being in a small fandom helps so much, my hits:kudos:comments ratio is much more comment heavy in homestuck than it is in bigger fandoms

but yeah i think of it not being so much a comment tax as just a way of acknowledging that the person who wrote the fic is a real person who might feel happy if you said some nice words

if fanfic was a music performance, kudos would be the applause that polite people give at the end of the show, and comments are the people who talk to the musician afterwards. could be a simple "that was great!" or it could be a full conversation. and in the small pub that is my gig (where most of my fics are in the 10s or maybe 100s of kudos) every comment is so precious and has kept me coming to the pub

i'm hanging out at the bar (leaving comments open) not hiding in the green room! if you liked my fic then we have some overlap in our taste and i'd love to talk about it with you! i wouldn't be on the stage and i definitely wouldn't be at the bar if i didn't want to connect with people!

anyway, i love you, fandom person who kept reading all the way to the end. i hope you have a wonderful day and that maybe this gives you the reassurance that it's okay to reach out to other people in fandom. that's the whole point of fandom 💛

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

‘author’ self interview

thank you for the tag @itsmoonpeaches!! sorry im a few days late getting to it 😩

Name: thinkingisadangerouspastime / faerialchemist / amy

Fandoms: all of them, lmao? well, according to ffn:

Author has written 61 stories for Teen Titans, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, [redacted], Ouran High School Host Club, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, Avengers, Dragon Prince, Good Omens, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Fruits Basket, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Avatar: Last Airbender, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Winx Club.

right now, i am active(ish) in atla and the mcu as well as monk and medium, although those last two don’t really have fandoms (at least not large ones, lol)

Where do you post: faerialchemist on AO3 is where my better works are, lmao, but i also post on FFN, Wattpad, and Quotev under different handles. and when i remember, i try to promo my works on Tumblr, too!

Most popular multi-chapter fic: in terms of true multichapter fics (i.e. not a oneshot collection), No Ordinary Exchange wins for hits, kudos, everything. i think that can be attributed to the fact that a) it’s long, b) it’s complete, c) it’s rayllum (most popular tdp ship), and d) it’s a college!au (a popular trope in fandom overall). although tbh, i only have like one or two other true multichaps posted, one of which is incomplete and the other of which is half-focused on an extreme rarepair, so there’s not much competition 😂

Favorite story you’ve written so far: i am going to cheat and say my favorite fics i’ve written so far are the three in my why’d you have to go and make things so complicated? series. here’s the series “summary”:

A series of (mostly) Flash Thompson-centric fics set in a canon-divergent AU beginning after Spider-Man: Homecoming. Niche headcanons*, one-sided rivals to friends (to lovers), and Flash Thompson appreciation abound! 

*Headcanons I have pioneered so far: Flash Thompson has dyslexia, Flash Thompson likes art history, Flash Thompson likes origami. Stay tuned for more. ;)

basically, it’s 50k worth of fics (so far) that serve as a testament to how much i love mcu flash thompson 🥺💛 he deserves the world!!

Fic you were nervous to post: i was pretty nervous to post one of my more recent fics, actually! the fic is called Is This Love?, and i was nervous for a few different reasons:

- it’s half sambucky, which was fine bc sambucky is popular lmao, but it’s also half sarahmay, which is a sapphic rarepair i came up with between sarah wilson and may parker. the mcu fandom has a heavy preference for mlm pairings, so i was nervous by virtue of the fic being partially wlw-centric, but it all ended up being fine! i have converted so many people to sarahmay 😤

- the fic also features my demiromantic!sam headcanon. i myself am aspec but (maybe) not demiromantic, so i wanted my portrayal to be respectful, and as such i was nervous despite everything i’d looked into prior to writing and posting the fic, lol

- it’s a multichap. multichaps make me nervous solely because they are multiple chapters. adds stressTM 😂

How do you choose your titles: song lyrics, randomly coming up with them, a specific line/word used in the fic, and brainstorming with friends are probably the main ways!

Do you outline: sure do 😤 it varies from fic to fic, so some outlines are a detailed list of events in the appropriate order, while others are a more general idea of “here’s stuff i want to include,” lol. generally speaking, though, i always try to go in with some sort of plan!

Complete: all of my recent fics are complete! (although that’s bc i primarily write oneshots 😂) on ao3, i think i only have one fic that’s truly incomplete. (oneshot collections are a weird in-between, because they essentially are always complete unless i feel like adding to them.) on ffn, though, i have four incomplete fics, three of which are from middle school. i don’t think they will ever be finished 😩

Do you accept prompts: technically, yes! but my policy is that i am under no obligation to write any of them. i write fanfic for fun and as a stress reliever, so if im not inspired by a prompt, i am not going to stress myself out trying to write for it, lol

Upcoming story you’re most excited to write about: i actually just finished writing this story today (by hand, it’s not typed yet lmao), but im gonna let it count for this question anyways! it is probably the most self-indulgent fic i’ve ever written: a monk and medium crossover. that’s right, two fandoms absolutely no one in the world cares about but me. i wrote this fic solely bc it was something i wanted to read 😂 it is - if i counted correctly - 78 1/2 pages long, which is probably in the range of 30-35k words? once i type it up (in like,, december lmao) i’ll have more specifics, although the “patching” that occurs when i type handwritten drafts could push the word count closer to 40k. but who knows? time will tell!

anyways, im just so excited about this fic bc it has so many things i like lmaooo (examples: allison whump, joe x allison content, sharona being her wonderful self, and what i hope is an interesting murder mystery!)

Stories you’re most excited to read: literally anything and everything my friends are working on! off the top of my head: @shifuaang’s tysuki fic, @praetorqueenreyna’s dark!zukaang fic, @itsmoonpeaches’s fruits basket fic, and @ambivalentmarvel’s spider kids fic 🙌

i think a lot of my atla mutuals have been tagged to do this already, so tagging some marvel friends! (this is starkravinghazelnoots, btw 💛)

tagging: @ambivalentmarvel, @friendlyneighborhoodsecretary, @lunannex, @kalliopecosmos, @omg-just-peachy, and anyone else who wants to do this! just say i tagged you 💕

[petruchio]

Fave hoo book?

ok this is tough bc i kinda have mixed feelings abt all of them and they’re low key all my favorite but for different reasons??

like i rly enjoyed tlh for like... actually introducing us to new characters, and i think it set up a series really nicely (tho sometimes i wish jason piper and leo had just like... had their own series? bc they were really compelling in the beginning and then it just became the percy show and they took a backseat but i wish we could’ve like actually spent time with just them and expanded on the dynamics and relationships that book built) ((that’s why i say it sets up A series nicely... idk if it set up THAT series nicely if that makes sense)) plus it has like a compelling plot and it wasn’t just fanservice like it had a direction and was a compelling read ((((((((fun fact my first url on my first pjo blog was a quote from tlh LMAO))))))))

son was my favorite one to read, partly because we got back into percy’s head which was Iconique and also I think son has the tightest plot and i actually kind of enjoyed that it introduced the rest of the characters in the series on their own so we got to really get to know frank and hazel outside of the context of the “big” quest of the whole series, and in the beginning they were super compelling and interesting characters that left a lot of mystery while still being well rounded and exciting to read about ((also the ending to that book... never have i lost my mind so much at a book)) (((this book also inspired me to write literally the only fanfic i ever wrote so... always a special one)))

moa is just!!!!!!! like how many ways can you say ICONIC!!!!!!!!!!! like the number of theories and the time we spent waiting!!! W O W like that book had a lot of hype in the fandom!! tbh I think i find it hard to divorce the excitement i has for that book from the actual book itself so i just always remember that book fondly because it was such an exciting read, good cliffhanger, and has one of the cutest romance moments in the whole series so! loved that!! but i do think this is sort of where the cracks in hoo started to show and it was a bit disjointed compared to the first two, but like i said, the excitment i felt reading that book is really a testament to the strength of the beginning of the series as a whole

hoh was p special as well, i mean lbr that book is the percy and annabeth show and like??? it really works???? at least those parts do!! that’s where it started to get like honestly pretty dark and it was like the books were aging with the readers ((bc by that point i was getting pretty old and the tartarus scenes really brought the tone to a level that i think was appropriate for that point in the series and as a reader)) its another one that’s a super compelling read and just like!!! you wanna get through it!!!

i have no words for boo, i can’t pick a favorite but that’s my least favorite

[fireeaglespirit]

beyond-far-horizons

This is awesome and because *hangs head in shame* I dont play the games (i'm a noob with no money and my parents never let me have video games so I just like the story okay?) I have never seen this bit.

I ADORE multiverse/underworld stuff as you know or perhaps you don't as I don't know how far I got explaining Aeq and Midnight Palace but it is FULL of that stuff. I love the symbolism and it is very Jungian (I am the Priest of Jung okay, welcome to the New Testament of Jess!) But I need to sleep rn so we can get to it later.

Thank you for showing me because then I can reference it if I have time but I have so many other things going on right now and dunno I love fanfic and these stories but then I get down because I get virtually no response and I need that interaction to continue. It is my luck to always like dead fandoms with minor prequel characters I guess...still I do feel the fanfic has improved my writing and vice versa

I was thinking alot about hell and demons and what 'heaven' would be as I had a very detailed review on FF.net asking me all this questions, like why Sparda would long for the light if he is a demon and dunno, it always comes back to my pet theories of light and dark and the union of opposites. Sparda is so interesting because I feel he came to 'justice' on his own but probably also cemented by this mysterious priestess who he had to sacrifice. At least that is the way

the way I would go if I was developing the lore or a prequel game. It seems the most juicy option. Anyways this 'light' ties into my feelings about the transcendent, this higher power/reality urging all to grow and develop. I guess I would see demons as base and vicious aspects of reality and sources of wild and violent energy - very much as both Jung and early cultures saw them or primal gods or 'titans'.

It's also why I have a headcanon Sparda a)is fascinated by humans - they have the same struggles as him and b)he has a huge library on religions of the world, history, philosophy and science because he is still trying to discover the nature of reality just like Eva and this is what really brings them together.  I wrote this line last night when Eva looks at all the books 'So you devour our souls metaphorically instead of physically now?'

I debated on making Sparda saintly, like he has already has his struggle and is now secure in himself but that isn't interesting to me plus you know our shared love of fighting with the feral nature to ultimately make the person better. Plus I kinda like the romantic angst that way like with MadaMito hehe

Okay I need to go to bed now.

Ok, prepare for huge contrived reply incoming...

First of all. What??

I hate when parents do this. I’m so sorry, I never knew about it... I really hate this.

Video games are just another media, I never understood why people would pick on that and forbid their child from having some fun. FFS. 

If you want to play something some day I’ll always be there to help you installing, finding them, etc.. whatever you might need. Or even just finding anything related to games, etc.. I don’t play much these days as you know the multiple reasons but it was such an important part of my life I can barely imagine being cut out from this, even thought we always had old consoles this was very important.

About Sparda and the fic. I need to be sincere and say I’m taking so long to reply for two reasons. First because I LOVE the way you wrote Sparda but I was afraid of being too simplistic with my reply so I delved a lot on things...

But... tah-dah : I lost the huge reply I had wrote before. My note has 0 battery so its glued to the wall and it just turns off sometimes suddenly and I’m dumb and don’t save things so yeah. I kinda lost myself and got angry about that. 

Anyway, I understand what you said here, especially your feelings about the fic, in many ways I can see how my fandom views reflect in the original world I’m making, and the inverse is contrary. There are many parallels. It really helps and fandom work is as worthy as original, imo, I’ve been thinking about this. Our obsession with prequels and obscure characters has a reason and that is exactly because we want to explore what is hidden behind the veil... exploring the possibilities.

Sometimes it comes to shipping speculation, and this too has a reason.

Thinking about your views on Sparda and Eva, I thought a lot on what it truly means to write or develop an obscure ship and why we are so interested in that (think about that, many of our common favorite characters from prequels, etc..)

I came to the conclusion that in Eva/Sparda just like in many of our other ships, has the common theme of the heroin facing her ‘dark reflection’, her ‘animus’ as Jung would say (OH BOY I’m entering that with you), and she, at first rejects it like she reflects her own darker aspects, her unconscious… its abhorrent for her so she seeks to destroy it as rapidly as possible as seen by Eva’s renewed determination after learning Sparda’s true nature in chapter 1. The animus represents her doubts and unconscious... However what we see in your story is much more interesting. 

Most stories of this kind focus solely in the female aspect changing from her interactions with the male, who is already developed, but here we have Eva being able to re-awaken some viciousness in Sparda when it seems he has been quite restrained from quite some time (centuries) but also, something that is much more interesting.. it calls to his own determination and his own personal story and sacrifice, for some reason his ‘lust’ and brush with the dark side makes it all more important and more powerful than if he simply had been saintly at that point, like you said. It makes he revisit it all and ponder.

I love how you added lines of ‘temptation’ from Mundus, part of Sparda seeks to surrender to his ‘nature’ as its just so easy, like slip in a pair of old shoes... while the priestess memory, albeit silently, fights it and reminds him of his struggle and his ideals and ultimately her sacrifice which was also his own sacrifice (of his old ways). I think his darker side has been neglected and I think you will use this to develop Sparda into greater heights. Its great we get to see this in the actual story and he is not perfect, but he certainly is incredible. 

Also, just as a side-note I loved how you described his hunger as mostly non-carnal as he glimpses her spirit and its light... when we see Sparda’s POV we get reminded every time of his non-human nature and his non-human perception of things which is clearly different. A demon’s prey is not flesh but spirit and this makes a lot of sense and a lot of potential.

To sum it up, you snatched the best of both worlds and is about to develop both characters under a relationship, as they have a lot to learn and gain from each other. I think this is the way your narrative is going, more or less.

These developments are unique aspects which I find extremely interesting and you are doing this in such a genial way and I can see already by the end of the latest chapter the strings of the themes I mentioned are pulled and ready to be followed.

So yeah, they’re in for a journey of development together. Neither of them starts the story as a ‘perfect’ entity either way... This was shown in a very nice way as you pointed out misconceptions regarding both sides involving the duo of protagonists.

“I was thinking alot about hell and demons and what 'heaven' would be as I had a very detailed review on FF.net asking me all this questions, like why Sparda would long for the light if he is a demon and dunno, it always comes back to my pet theories of light and dark and the union of opposites. Sparda is so interesting because I feel he came to 'justice' on his own but probably also cemented by this mysterious priestess who he had to sacrifice. At least that is the way I would go if I was developing the lore or a prequel game. It seems the most juicy option. Anyways this 'light' ties into my feelings about the transcendent, this higher power/reality urging all to grow and develop. I guess I would see demons as base and vicious aspects of reality and sources of wild and violent energy - very much as both Jung and early cultures saw them or primal gods or 'titans'.”

I abstained a bit from the conversation earlier as I feared my careless/godless (lmao) perception was too disturbing for you or anyone but I also pondered on concepts such as heaven and hell, salvation, damnation, etc.. when considering Sparda’s tale. I know DMC isn't Christianity but its imagery is somewhat based on Abrahamic religion/mythos so I’m bound to take in consideration some of my ideas regarding biblical mythology, as in... 

When I started reading the bible so long ago it always puzzled me to imagine what exactly were angels/demons. I mean, are they even able to think in the same way as us?? Or are them more like ‘robots’, AI following orders (especially angels sometimes strikes me as that) and perhaps demons are those ‘robots’ that rebelled against their determined function, idk.

Something I wondered more than a decade ago was if demons in the bible are truly lost in every way so I started thinking within the dmc setting. I’m interested in that all and those things I mentioned. The interesting part is that I once asked that to my catechist if demons could be redeemed (lmao I was crazy, I know, but bored above all). She was at first very mad with me (she was always) but she reluctantly told me that demons had known god up close and felt his power so their sin in not following him is much bigger than a human’s, something of the sorts. So it sounded like they are also able to choose their way and I sort of apply this to dmc, lol. I’m weird, I know...

Are they capable or ‘worthy’ of forgiveness, because demons in dmc clearly have free will and thought like us, or at least similar to us. Some of them, like Sparda have clearly a lot of intellect, but like you said... others are very ‘primal’. Perhaps this is the key. The ‘evolved’ demon develops intellect and power... perhaps you are in the right track and it goes hand in hand? Does this make any sense?? The more powerful and developed they are, the more they develop ‘higher brain functions’ and star resembling a human more, idk because the lower demons in dmc are clearly more animal-like and primal while Sparda has a human-like shape and intellect.

I think I know where we are going and this looks like both angels and demons are actually a ‘reflection’ of human psyche. So, demons are the primal ancient aspects of the brain are somehow walking around hell just like that, while heaven and its inhabitants are mysterious. I really like the way you described hell and its inhabitants, it makes a lot of sense to imagine it as a part of human psyche embodied, in a way. I imagine Heaven as the exact inverse of Hell so it has its own creatures and they’re born from ‘order’ instead of chaos as stated above.

We have Bayonetta as a source of inspiration and I think its very valid to use that in order to understand Sparda. Heaven isn’t exactly good there, is it? In fact it appears like a very controlling environment.    

Hell: Primal, violent, survival of the fittest anyone? Hell inhabitants embodied  the most basic aspects of the brain, as you said.

Heaven: It might stem from higher planes of thinking and represent the more ‘sublime’ or ‘newer’ aspects of the evolving mammal brain.

It might make an easy choice for heaven but also such tight atmosphere is bound to become stagnant, it is no longer permitting flaws and strong emotions (thus angels look apathetic af in Bayonetta). 

It might seem at first glance that heaven is good, hell is bad, however I think, if you delve into heaven you might realize the beings born there might be too ‘disembodied’ as they represent exactly those parts of human psyche which are the most sublime. Let me explain, I always felt like too much spirituality tends to make people leave behind the reality of things, it might make them lack empathy for living beings who have to commit difficult decisions on a living basis, basic survival, starvation, the struggle for life, etc..

Think about enlightenment and Bodhisattva, also the rituals of mortification which are legit scary and reminds me of this concept as only those who leave behind all that is ‘mortal’ and are detached to an extreme, can reach Nirvana. I know this has not much to do with Christianity but even in this religion we find analogous associations regarding detachment as divine and saintly. Its also harmful in a way, or am I reaching? While too much focus on the primal/carnal leads to obvious horrible things: vice and chaos; too much detachment leads to apathy.

I do think some level of detachment is necessary to reach happiness but too much of it makes people forget the reality of life and makes them not able to relate anymore to the ones around them, as the focus becomes solely spiritual it kind of deafens them to the ‘real world’ and ignore it.

This is all about reaching a balance as its is our favorite theme, too much light is bad, too much darkness is bad, etc.. or else the story would fall into itself as the reality of the three settings (heaven, hell, earth) would be rigid.

So here we have a darker aspect of heaven, imo, to balance things out.

Heaven is clearly ‘order’ and hell is ‘chaos’ so we might as well find a balance... our favorite theme as always. The fact that one being like Sparda, born amidst ultimate chaos would gaze upward in delight and desire something else doesn't surprise me. The fact is he could be bitter about it, you even gave away the line on your fic where Sparda mentions he has been denied ‘light’. I wonder what exactly that means and this is one of my favorite aspects of your Sparda is that he is aware of his condition and even thought he worked against it its still lingering to him.. like his own flickering appearance.

But he hasn’t made his way up to heaven, huh? 

So its not a far reach to believe in it (that he desired ‘light’, whatever it is) but my personal belief is that too much ‘light’ is not good either and Sparda realized the beauty in flawed humanity, which sits right in the middle of light and darkness, order and chaos... that’s why he became enamored by the concept of humanity and all the struggle our own condition imposes upon us.

For me this is an archetypal theme.

Just food for thought.

The matter is... how? What exactly awakened him to justice? 

This makes stuff much more interesting. This was a huge ramble, I know but I needed to develop this and see if it works,

It's also why I have a headcanon Sparda a)is fascinated by humans - they have the same struggles as him and b)he has a huge library on religions of the world, history, philosophy and science because he is still trying to discover the nature of reality just like Eva and this is what really brings them together.  I wrote this line last night when Eva looks at all the books 'So you devour our souls metaphorically instead of physically now?'

So yeah, about a) I’m totally with you and I can see why Sparda would empathize with humans, as I talked earlier and I think my explanation on why Sparda would be fascinated by humans instead of ‘angels’ is made up above and I hope this doesn't sound too weird, just my line of thought.

As a demon, he’s born from a very ‘imperfect’ reality. He knows how shitty things can be... Now I really wonder how his life was before he ‘awakened to justice’ he must have witnessed some remarkably horrible things in his life..

Under the setting I mentioned, it would be I think its kinda easier for a demon to do this since angels would be too stuck up in their haven, idk so this is how Sparda, the unlikely hero is the first of these beings to take arms and defend humanity. Sparda is so special as he was the one to side with humans by his own decision and free will. What a guy!

I debated on making Sparda saintly, like he has already has his struggle and is now secure in himself but that isn't interesting to me plus you know our shared love of fighting with the feral nature to ultimately make the person better. Plus I kinda like the romantic angst that way like with MadaMito hehe

I’m glad you didn't! This is probably a gradual process even thought they say he ‘awakened to justice’ which makes it seem like he suddenly just did so I believe he had brewing feelings from his life as a demon in hell... 

He must have been such an unique individual to perceive truths his peers where not ready to learn and truly, an act of rebellion against the system itself coming from someone who is ‘supposed’ to do only harm is really something we want to see on screen and I’m so glad you didn't simplify it as being a single event in his life.

I’m really in love with this theme because it shows these beings are able to change their own destinies, even someone with such dark origins.