#not fanfic but based on an existing character

[shorthaltsjester]

sorry it so truly laughable to me to look at campaign 3 and determine the success of the stories therein based on screentime like. disregarding the fact that i personally take c3 to be the least valuable in terms of stories told, particularly ones about romantic love, for the moment: on principle it’s goofy as hell to think that a large amount of hours = a story that has something to say let alone something meaningful to say. like, yasha and beau, for example, have a fairly small amount of hours due to the fact that a) ashley missed half the campaign b) they were also generally slowburn, and while that influences the depth of certain aspects of the story, the time spent with yasha and beau has little to do with how meaningful their story is. it wouldn’t matter if they had 10 hours of screen time or 100 if what is in question is the story told; yasha’s story as someone chained by grief choosing to move on & beau’s story as someone angry after a life of being treated like shit finally getting justice for the wrongs done to her which both conclude in their campaign’s finales aren’t successful because I can launch some meaningless number of how many hours it took them to take build those stories together into the ether and say “they did this for women’s rights” just because two women existed beside one another. both yasha and beau resonate as stories that have a significant feminist read because they both deal with fantasy versions of things extremely relevant to women in a way that maintains their agency without shirking their responsibility, and they are particularly strong stories about queerness not simply because they’re two women who fuck but because they deal with emotional themes relevant to queer experiences — anger and grief — and how, while the reasons for those emotions are grounded ones, they both choose to grow beyond the boundaries they allowed those emotions to enforce in their lives.

further, the notion of screentime for a show that takes care to show all of the players on screen at a time in a medium where the player/character distinction isn’t always clear is such a subjective calculation and on top of being a stupid justification for ‘success’ or ‘value’ of a story, is also easy to manipulate to your favour.

it’s just, the screentime for im*dna’s relevance and success doesn’t ring true to me just because it’s a bad reason. but further it just isn’t persuasive. i don’t care if i see someone for 1000 hours or 1, if a story resonates it will do so with any amount of time. whatever amount of screentime they’re calculated to have does nothing to repair or hide the fact that their story as a couple says very little of value in the text, without whatever fanfic extrapolation has taken place (and to be clear, this isn’t to say fanfic can’t be valuable, it’s to say that the character explorations you do in fic or in meta for that matter doesn’t mean that analysis or elaboration is canon). like. halfway through the campaign, before they got together, imogen told laudna “our weirdness is what makes us right” and laudna agreed verbally but now 1 billion hours of screentime later or whatever, laudna has still failed to integrate that belief into her, which is made obvious in a scene after the divine intervention that ties laudna’s life to imogen’s when imogen tells laudna she’s grateful she got to hear the music of laudna’s thoughts, and laudna’s response is “it was probably a bit of the insanity, honestly”, something which on paper might read like a joke but in the moment is played like a (maintained from hours upon hours previous) dismissal of what imogen is saying she values about laudna, evident in the way laura/imogen deflates when she says “well, it was pretty…”. and simply because it’s been a trillion hours of screentime that’s supposed to be representative of a relationship in which the characters help each other to grow.

(addendum to say that stories that are about stagnancy can be just as valuable as stories about growth, but textually and by the sections of fandom im critiquing here, imogen and Especially laudna are treated as a relationship that grows)

truly, if anything, counting up as many hours as possible to dictate the success of imogen and laudna’s story actually ends up working against the story. because i’d probably be more forgiving of the stagnancy if it was a shorter story, but knowing that they had so many hours and still failed to deliver a story with actions and behaviour that matched the claims the characters would make and the tropes/themes that would get applied to them, that makes it worse.

[richardsphere]

Coming from someone more on the other side of the fanbase here... Please know that this is all intended to be sincere, and not as any dig towards your personal enjoyments of the show. Im taking the original question in good faith and am answering in as good a faith as i can. -- I think there is a misunderstanding in the question being asked. None of this has to do with the Antikuma, plain and simple. nor even really if she is or isnt traumatised. But that the things that made Mari's stanbase continuously cried "but she's traumatised so its fine for her to be a hypocrite in X manner" were explicitly confirmed by later seasons to be for non-trauma reasons. Now i as far I recall, The show never portrayed her as traumatised. ( even if the dream exists, though i do not remember it, a single dream does not a trauma-arc make) Or at the least, that the trauma didnt influence those of her behaviours that her fans used the trauma to excuse ad nauseum. Mari's defenders used Chat Blanc as an excuse to say "No she does respect CN, she's just traumatised and cant trust him because of the trauma". It was a thing mari's stans inferred (and at the time, couldn't be adequatly disproven) because it allowed them to easily explain Chat's side-lining without making their favourite character look like an inconsiderate hypocrite. But then the show went on, and had Marinette explicitly state that no. It wasnt trauma, it was that Mari is guardian and Chat is not allowed to expect to be anything but Sidekick number 4 (after Rena, Bunnix and Viperion). No partnership, no negotiation, just subordination without respect or agency. Chat Blanc Trauma would definitly have been part of a better show, and it makes for amazing fanfic fuel. But it just... isnt (meaningfully) cannon. The sum total of influence that Chat Blanc has on the cannon plot is a singular moment (an outright plothole) where they have CN suffer a flashback to a timeline he has no way of knowing about so they can write him out of his own story. As far as the narrative is concerned Chat Noir, a character who does not remember the events in question, is more traumatised by it then Marinette. That is all that CB amounts to. as far the show is concerned, Marinette isnt traumatised by CB, Adrien is. Everything the fans use the trauma to excuse was simply Thomas going: "girl power means boys arent allowed to expect basic human dignity, respect or a voice in matters that directly effect them". The antikuma has brought this topic back into conversation because of the suit going pale creating a similar white-cat visual, but it didnt cause the realisation that the Trauma either never cannonically happened, or didnt cannonically influence LB's multi-season mistreatment of her supposed partner. What matters to the people saying that isnt if the trauma was real, what matters is that as far as LB's chat-based hypocrisies are concerned it might as well not exist. -edit i accidentally posted this unfinished. Once more, i want to emphasize that this is not intended as a dig towards anyone specific, just as an observation and clarification as to how/why the people whom are saying that are doing so.

ok but why the fuck did tumblr fans suddenly decide chat blanc never traumatized marinette in any way? like genuinely how did you get that from watching this show? we saw her having a nightmare with him in it— i forgot what season it was— but like… a gazillion things happened since that time. she fought her boyfriend’s dad and saw him go to the afterlife hellooooo? if anyone’s her prime source of trauma it’s gabriel now and it’s very much made clear in the intro. why does marinette have to think about chat blanc every second of her life damn?

also the antikuma thing… i’m not gonna lie, chat blanc didn’t even cross my mind till i saw people making connections. that’s just chat in a grey suit i’m crying y’all decided he’s reminiscent of chat blanc on your own, dont be mad at marinette for not thinking of him 😭

[firedragon1321]

All You Never Wanted (Short Story)

I'm working on a short story collection called Down With This Ship. It's on the back burner, mostly. But the central theme is "forced love". There's dystopias, artificial intelligence, fractured fairy tales, a horrifying deconstruction of The Bachelor (inspired by the hellsite itself) and an early draft for my novel Tick Tick, amongst many other things.

This entry is a second-person experiment. It's One-Sided Male Yandere Human Cartoon Character x Gender Unspecified "Normal" Reader. This is not meant to be romantic, but that's the clearest way I can communicate the content. It's still a little rough, but I wanted to share the draft anyway. It was kicked off by this post I made in the past, though I may revisit the idea again in a more polished form. If there's interest in this, I may post a few more stories from the collection.

Triggers include- yandere, alcoholism (implied by unreliable/yandere narrator), trauma mention, blood, minor character death, implied rape (of reader), bad end

Short Summary- An ordinary human gets together with ordinary friends to watch childhood cartoons. A drunken spat grows out of control. A wish is made- "may my favorite character always be happy". The morning after, the wish leads a poor soul to a new life. There, they meet the monster they created.

Now, now. Don’t  be afraid.

Don’t you recognize me, love?

It’s your old friend Touya. Y’know—from that kid’s anime? The one with the magical transforming monsters? I’m not a cosplayer or a hallucination. Can’t you see my hand? It’s smooth, without imperfections. Feel it. Haha! Does it scare you not to feel fingerprints? Rest assured- I’m real as you are.

I’ve always been here for you…

I’m sure you don’t remember the wish you made. You had a full plate of drunkenness last night, with a side order of high. Do you like poisoning your brain? Does it scare you? Maybe it’s your little friends. I don’t know why you all need drugs to have a good time.

When you have me…

You were watching my cartoon for old time’s sake. Laughing at the corny jokes. Laughing like asses. Hee-haw, hee-haw! Though I can’t blame you for being under the influence of those drugs.

And your stupid friends…you never needed them…

It’s been years since you’ve seen my backstory, but you never forgot it. I remember it, too. But it’s no longer a part of me. It’s all thanks to your wish. 

I owe you so much. I love you so much.

Still don’t remember? Picture this—the cold beer in your hand, your friends laughter like cheese graters, the stench of pot. The screen, in sepia tone, showing my little brother falling out of a tree house. It was because I wasn’t careful. He nearly died because of my negligence. It always bothered you, since

—you always loved me—

I was a child then. How can a little boy be expected to care for a toddler? All I cared about was adventure—the shining sky above, the world like ants below me. I didn’t want to leave my brother behind. I’d get in trouble if he was alone in the house. Yet, I still was the fool. I took the fall. It wounded me forever.

It wounded you too, love.

Your friends said something stupid about over-dramatics. Like every other character didn’t also have problems. They kept their mouths shut on them. But me? It was “going too far for a kid’s cartoon”. It made you furiously angry.

See? You don’t need them…

That’s when you made the wish. It was a challenge, almost. You were egged on by their asinine behavior. They had to stop their dumbass hee-hawing. Seeing me suffer was never a joke, even when you were drugged out of your mind.

Because I was always your favorite.

You wished I never suffered. You wished it never happened. You wished I would always be happy, and the sun would always shine upon me. 

It worked. I’m here, aren’t I?

You said a lot of other things, too. Many of them were angry. Your friends called you a baby. You never took well to insults. The drugs didn’t help. A few fists flew. A glass or two broke. One donkey hit the coffee table. He didn’t die, but there was a lot of blood. That’s when the others got scared. They scattered from your house, back to the pasture.

I think it was worth it—don’t you?

So here we are, in your bedroom. The posters of me—hand-drawn or official—are missing. All the toys on your shelves are gone. Your wish whisked me out of your room. It purged me from your life. I’m a puppet that danced on your screen as a child- no more, no less.

But you still remember me, don’t you?

I was always worried—about my brother, about other people. I longed to prevent that kind of suffering. My pain turned to love, my love to courage. That was what you envied most about me—courage. You craved it like a fetish. Without beer, there’s not a brave bone in your body. People like you long for a sip of valor. It’s pathetic, isn’t it?

And because of that, no-one loves you but me.

If not for my trauma, I wouldn’t be brave. Without my courageous heroics, you were never enthralled by me in grade school. You never carried me through your life. In rewriting my life, you rewrote your own life. But I still clung to your nostalgic memories.

You love me too, don’t you?

So here we are—in a bedroom with drab adult decor. You don’t know those smelly donkeys. You’ve never touched a single drug. Life is better, but not grand. You’re an office worker someplace. You go to work, clack on the keys, and go home. Only your boss and your parents know your name. You’re a blank face in the crowd. No-one knows you. No-one loves you.

No-one but me.

At least your wish worked for me. I have everything I could have ever wanted. One night, I dreamed of you—a shining star. I saw your little shit-show. Then, a gentle, maternal voice told me that I would be reborn. I would recall the dream, and my past life. I would remember you. But I would wake as a small child, ready to do my life over.

I’m eternally grateful.

I encountered no obstacles before the first episode began. The old me had to struggle to lead the team. I floundered for episode after episode, like a fish gasping for breath. But after your wish, I have no such issues. I lead with power, not courage. 

That is still appealing to you, isn’t it?

I killed that annoying bitch who told me I was being too harsh. I smashed her head against a log. It made me think of your donkey-friend. Hee-haw! Hee-haw! 

You were on my mind the whole time.

But that’s only the beginning. My rival? Monster chow. That one kid who worried about everything? Unfortunate accident. The others scrambled to find the monster who did it. They never checked the boy in front of them.

I did it all for you.

But there was one thing I still wanted. I made myself king. It was easy. The world was too scared to say no. My monster kept them all in line. The world saw what my creature of death could do. Every villain was torn to bloody shreds by his fangs. The goody-two-shoes were as grateful as they were afraid. All I had to do was ask, and the crown was mine. 

Doesn’t every king deserve a consort at his side? 

I couldn’t marry you as a child, though I had longed to. Luckily, my creators made me older, season by season. So I waited until I grew up. 

Then it was time for us to finally be together.

I went to the heart of my magical world. There, I slaughtered the great guardian of time and space. I still remember his blood on my hands, like gooey stardust. The barrier between worlds that he guarded became mine. I left several monster slaves there, to ward off any nosy donkeys. Then, I came here, to your world, to bring you back to mine.

We were always meant to be together.

You sweat like a pig with a knife pressed to its neck. Don’t be afraid. It won’t be so bad. You’ll finally be something. Haven’t you always wished for that? You may be a coward, but I still love you.

It’s the reason I love you.

Here—feel my chest. These are the velvety robes you gave me. I’ll give you a matching set—a thousand times more beautiful. I’ll give you the sun, the moon, the stars—whatever you wish. You won’t be able to leave my side. But you won’t want to.

I love you so much.

A weak word creeps from your lips—“no”. This isn’t what you wanted? Too bad. This is exactly what you wished for. It’s everything you ever wanted. After one night, you’ll remember how much you love me.

Even if I have to force you.

The portal won’t stay open forever. My time runs low. Good thing you’re easy to carry. Is that fear making you immobile? Your skin is like ice. Your blood is frozen syrup. Ironic—by defending courage, you plunged into further cowardice. But you must still love me. I’ll just have to remind you. After one night, you’ll never want to leave my side again.

We’ll be together—forever.

[egophiliac]

Where can you play ride kamens? It looks fun looking at your blog but idk where to play

it'll doesn't start until the 30th, but there's some pre-release episodes/character bits that are scattered around the website and twitter! (the links to pre-reg/download are also on the website :D)

honestly I'm really enjoying it just based off of the pre-release stuff, these characters look like they're going to be exactly that blend of ridiculous and emotionally constipated that hits me so right.

[tangledinink]

Whats your opinion on alters (did/osdd traumagenic systems) formed from your aus? Since alters can't really control their source asking for a friend/lh

Go off, do your thing, feel free, etc etc etc. It doesn't bother me, if that's a concern. I've had a couple people tell me they have fictives from some of my AU's chilling in their heads and if anything I think it's kinda fun and funky and exciting to hear about? So far I'm aware of a Gemini!Mikey and a Swanatello out there in the world.

[saneriddlefan67]

If you struggle with productivity I recommend turning into a writer. You'll find yourself doing every single task you have ever put aside just to pretend your draft doesn't exist.

*Me kneading dough to make some brioche bread* "This is helping the writing process of my fic so much" (SPOILER: it's not)

[purpleandstarlight]

Btw this just in? Hateweasel is 100% right. Making ocs out of random canon background characters rules, actually.

[deer-with-a-stick]

At this point I stay exclusively on this website and Ao3 for fandom stuff but DAMN what the hell happened with the reviews

Castlevania Rotten Tomatos below for comparison

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

MACCC!! for the fanfic ask game thing. ummm i don't know a specific word 2 send but i am intrigued. eyes emoji. (<<on computer and do not want 2 look up emojis just to copy/paste one) what r u writing!!! what's ur fav passage in it so far!!!! i wanna hear abt ur writing!!!!

omg whiskey i forgot we were not mutuals while i was in my fanfic writing arc. omg. i have not written a fic since we became mutuals holy shit !!!!!! absolutelyly insane . ANYWAY i write about my ocs all the time and also silly little self indulgent stories that i dont share bc theyre just for me. BUT. CURRENLTY. i missed writing fics so i am in a months long hiatus of a fic for mission to zyxx which is a silly improv comedy podcast that i was super into right before i got into trigun !!!!!!!! its my beloved ever. however the trigun brain worms overtook me before i finished my fic and i have not gone back to work on it much :( i WANT to finish it tho bc the fandom is very small annnd i literally read every single fic in the ao3 tag in the span of like a week. i need 2 add to it.

ANYWAY basics of the fic (spoilers for mission to zyxx incoming !!) :

the main character has a bug egg laid in his eye and throughout all of season 2 it just grows in his eye and makes it look all fucked up until the s2 finale where the egg hatches and another character pulls his eye out before the bug makes his head explode. << its not as fucked up as it sounds bc this is a full comedy podcast so everything is played for goofs and this moment only lasts a total of like 6 seconds but i am a sucker for body horror especially when it involves gross bugs so !!! i am judt rewriting that scene with my own headcanons ans making it scary and emotional 😌 hi my names mac ghostiezone and i love horror and gay people.

I HAVE TO REREAD MY ENTIRE WIP TO FIND A PART TO POST i cant believe ur making me do this (<< THANK U I HAVE NOT LOOKED AT IT IN WEEKS) apologies in advance for my setup i like 2 write on my phone in the middle of the night so my google docs is in perma-darkmode:

<< we love an alien mind contrrol parasite that makes a usually cowardly docile character behave like a monster 😌😌😌😌

[mars-ipan]

why does nobody share my massive huge epic brain

[fictiffelix]

What stage of obsession is it when you're rewriting movies in your head to fit the world building. Like if American Psycho was set in perfumare I think Patrick Bateman would be a dream shaper but they'd leave it unclear what level and part of the intrigue is whether he's in reality or the dream world

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

I love being a writer. When I was younger I thought I would become a bestselling author. Instead, I'm writing fanfiction for the Unknown Armies campaign I'm a part of. It's like 1000 words of just the thought process of a ghost. I wish I could go back in time to my younger self and show them my 1000 words about. Again. The thoughts of a made up ghost.

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

[libidinous-weeb]

it’s a magical girl. it’s like if you do a sexy sailor moon cosplay??? if you wanna hate anyone hate levi for being a lolicon or something

Ive seen people do nsfw leviathan posts with mc in a ruri-chan cosplay..

i would get it if it was just like random anime character he liked, BUT RURI CHAN?? Dude thats a child…😨

Cosplaying as a child while having sex is weird even if the actual person is 18+

[sleepdeprivedandoverthinking]

Saying this as both an Outlast and Mouthwashing lover.

A lot of people in the Mouthwashing fandom would not be able to handle it in the Outlast fandom, especially when it comes to liking characters.

Especially on tik tok, it seems the Mouthwashing fandom is so strict with what it does and doesn't allow, like I hate Jimmy as much as the next guy, but it's not a crime for someone to draw him or include him in the cast. He's an IMPORTANT part of the plot. The tik tok fandom also seems to say Mouthwashing shouldn't have a fandom point blank period because it's "too deeply thought out" and fanfics, ocs, and such shouldn't exist because it "ruins the story".

Meanwhile Outlast is a horrific, well thought out game with several installments, and the fandom is (mostly) chill. Like it's abundantly clear these guys aren't good people or even conventionally attractive to most people, yet they're adored and people make silly jokes of them all the time and make tons of fanfics, aus, and ocs. Hell, 90% if the fandom's favorite or second favorite dude is a guy who cuts people's dicks off and then kills them.

This isn't meant to say you can't have boundaries or things you like/dislike, but much of the Mouthwashing fandom overpolicies the fandom, and some even say Mouthwashing shouldn't have a fandom period because it's "too serious and dark" while Outlast is serious and dark yet no one cares what you do in the fandom.

Both are horror games with great stories.

Both produce gorgeous fanart and deep theories, and it's clear love is put into several art pieces and theories.

Difference is, a majority of one fandom can't handle fandom ACTING like fandom.

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

Mini edit: Honestly this could be about fandom as a whole nowadays but given they're both horror games, albeit different types, with fan bases, that I love, I decided to compare them. Lets try to be civil please in discussion.

Edit 2: Okay, this got a lot more attention than I thought. TO AGAIN CLARIFY, its okay to have boundaries and personal reasons you may not like a character but like another. Same goes for certain aspects of fandom culture. But there's also the aspect of "block/scroll and move on". Frankly, my examples from Mouthwashing were things I have personally seen that you may not have, hence why some of you may be confused.

[cyber444angel]

i’m going crazy bc pink+white by frank ocean just,,,,,,, fits so well with sCENES :’)))