#not to make myself a mary sue but like just think about it i MADE all of them i wrote all of their stories i control every single thing

[zombiified]

old oc new design

she’s basically the highest of the gods in the system of them in stray nightmare. she’s above krakrofis and as the name suggests, created him (though destruction rules him)

it is omnipresent and made just about everything and everyone in the sn universe, including all of the other gods. it tends to take on a form that’s smaller than the other gods, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less powerful

i’ll definitely have to do more development for the others aside from krakrofis and eithymera (nightmares and dreams respectively) because they’re very interesting and fun to work with

[fuckingfandomfreak]

lots of complaining underneath sorry I couldn’t fit everything in the tags like usual

I am genuinely convinced that so many Merthur shippers actually ship Arwen but identify more with Merlin, so they just recreate Arwen’s dynamic (simp, over-protective Arthur and I-can-take-care-of-myself!, always-right!, actual-saint! girlboss) and give it to Merthur. Reasons for this are racism (obviously), the fact that early seasons merlin likes to read (scholarly books on magic not a fucking romantasy mind you), early seasons Merlin being 12 lbs, and the fact that Merlin has magic (cool powers, gay allegory, and is oppressed). Other reasons, too, but these I think really contribute to people directly projecting onto him like they do Morgana. I think this makes people feel personally victimized when Arthur does anything to Merlin bc he’s blond jock and Merlin is bookish, sassy nerd.

But fanon merlin is nothing like actual merlin. Merlin is a MAN; he’s just as arrogant as every other MAN. He’s a bit of a fucking lit bro that thinks he’s underappreciated bc he’s into important, valuable things instead of sports (for idiots). He canonically an genius and he’s many times insufferably arrogant, too.

But only Arthur needs to fix his arrogant bc Arthur’s arrogance is jock bro, so it’s more immediately recognizable and disliked. Even tho, I don’t actually find Arthur that arrogant, or i just can’t forget that most of Arthur’s arrogance is a front for insecurity. He’s only sincerely arrogant about sword fighting (which I don’t mind bc he’s literally the best swordsman in the kingdom and it’s not bragging if it’s true) and little presumptuous bc he’s a wealthy royal.

But this is a long winded way to say that some Merlin fanfics feel like weird revenge fantasies (romantasies??? but not in the book genre way) of nerdy girls with their high school football players mixed with a little class anger (but in the most insincere way bc morgana is never criticized for being rich bc she’s mostly portrayed as a gay white woman, and people don’t understand, or don’t want to address, intersectionality).

Which means Merlin’s actions don’t get judged, but do get examined and then excused, until they are in relation to Morgana. Bc Morgana is ACTUALLY skinny, oppressed, gay allegory, cool powers, always right, sassy, genius, sword fighting, resistance fighter white girl that constantly wins every argument she has with Arthur and makes him look like an idiot. That’s why she gets way more forgiveness and grace than Arthur even tho she is a 1000x worse person. It’s also why she and Merlin are usually besties (especially over him and Gwen) even tho they canonically have a very big political fallout.

Even with the Lamia episode. I have seen so much discourse (and a good amount of fics) that criminalizes the knights (jocks) for their treatment of Merlin (and sometimes Gwen) with people wanting them to prostrate themselves in guilt and then get put into the infirmary by Arthur for daring to hurt Merlin when they were LITERALLY ENCHANTED. Obviously, they themselves would feel guilty, but that doesn’t mean they SHOULD. And Merlin is not fucking lectured or made to apologize when he is enchanted to, and attempts to, KILL Arthur. Like, yeah, okay, the knights grabbed him and were mean to him, but Merlin’s a grown fucking man, the most powerful sorcerer, and, by now, literally physically bigger than both Gwaine and Elyan. He’s fine.

I thank god everyday that Arthur wasn’t there during that fucking episode. Every fucking merthur fanfic would’ve been insufferable.

I will never forgive fandom how unfair it is about Arthur

Dark Merlin It's usually good angst. You know, Merlin had had enough. Dark Arthur? Arthur is a fucking rapist, a monster.

Merlin guilty? Merlin feeling guilty and comforted by the entire cast. Arthur guilty? Arthur doing the worst things possible and someone razing him to the ground

Merlin always gets these nice things. always flowers, courtship, everything. Found family? Everyone comforts Merlin because big bad Arthur. (literally almost every Merlin "found family" is everyone loves Merlin and treats Arthur like shit)

Merlin gets an apology. Arthur? My parents will love me faster than someone will apologize to Arthur in fanfiction.

"suicidal, self-harming Merlin" but Arthur has no right to have mental problems (a whole lot of people have wanted him dead since he was born)

Protectivr knights? Always about Merlin.

Even the fucking omegaverse. Alpha Merlin is a nice calm creature who pretends to be a beta. Alpha Arthur... wild animal, keep Merlin in a cage.

No. Just no.

(forever grateful to those stupid British people that arthur never told merlin he was fat. because the fandom understands that something is a comedy if merlin says it. if arthur it would be ,,abuse")

[fgfirenation]

Aaaand I decided to explain myself over my last post from yesterday ( or early morning ), because I just can.

I'm not gonna @ the person, who made me grit my teeth from anger because while I'm a jackass, I'm not a complete one.

For now.

So let me set it straight for you all whining Arena people out there :

While I'm not familiar with Arena, I did research most of the lore with my bff.

And you know what?...

We prefer Journey's lore more than Arena's by a lot.

Now before you pull out your swords and guns at me, and start bitching, let me explain why :

I see that y'all are so attached to your Arena lore, but... COME ON!

That fucking thing is already 5-6 years old! A lot of the lore is ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE! ( Don't @ me. )

Like, grow tf up already! It was about time your lore from Arena had to change.

While it does seem really interesting, I almost had an aneurysm, while trying to understand it ( It's probably just me, but again, who tf knows- ).

A lot of lore things are probably so outdated, that it makes me want to shoot myself without a second thought.

I fully support Lilith Games for changing the lore, because they made it easier for the new players to consume it without somebody having FNAF lore insanity war flashbacks. ( Like me- ) And it feels like a breath of fresh air.

Worse changes have been made before by the writers. ( Gaius from Dislyte. I'm not forgiving you for this, Lilith Games. )

Also fuck you to whoever said that Lyca is a Mary-Sue! ( Yes, I'm holding a grudge now. What about it? )

Lyca is the last person I would ever dare to call a goddamn Mary-Sue. I've been in the Creepypasta fandom for already a fucking decade and when I tell you I have seen all sorts of Mary- and Gary-Sues from there FRONT TO BACK WITH ALL FLAVOURS OF MARY-SUE IN THE EXISTENCE OF HUMANITY!

If you want to call her this, go first to the Creepypasta fandom and witness wtf we were forced to see for years, and then come back to bitch at me. ( Actually don't, because I don't give a shit. Ok, maybe I do, because I'm a dick- )

Also fuck you for calling Lorsan annoying! This mf is the most ADHD little shit-coded thing with Berial, that I have ever seen in my entire life. So move on! He's absolutely adored by a good huge portion of the Journey players. Including me. I dare say he's a lot more boring in Arena than he'll ever be in Journey. I'll never manage to see him as a monk-type and calm character. My brain is short-circuiting, while trying to imagine this.

Also, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, I absolutely love Waves of Intrigue and Song of Strife. I absolutely adore Soren as a character and the ' Jinx and Vi from Arcane ' war flashbacks I got from Sonja and Nara-

Now for the endgame of my angry rant...

Did you really think that your fucking beloved Arena lore would stay the same?

Did y'all for real think it'll stay the same? Well, guess what :

If you did, then I'm sorry ( not sorry ) to tell you whining folks, THAT IT AIN'T GONNA STAY THE SAME!

You needed to see this coming from 2000 miles away, yet you somehow missed it entirely and of course it'll hit you in the face full force!

At this point, Idk if you expect absolute perfection from Lilith, good accurate lore, shitfarts or what else-not.

You change your opinions faster than a League of Legends player. I can't believe that I got angry over what's supposed to be a MOBILE GATCHA GAME! You managed to raise the rage bar for me more than Megamind 2!

I'm sorry to say this ( Everybody can express their opinions, duh- ), but you make absolutely some of the sorriest of excuses I've ever seen.

And I'm gonna quote the YouTuber Schaffrillas Productions for this :

' To the point that I think F-tier doesn't do this justice!

THIS SHIT BELONGS IN G-TIER! '

CONGRATULATIONS, YA ARENA LORE FOLKS!

And I'm gonna end it here before these people come after me and try to behead me.

What a fantastic way to come back to Tumblr after a year, right?

Bye!

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

I used to looooathe Glory. I thought her bad mood and constant sass was really annoying; however, I came to realize how a lot of her behavior stems from her abuse. Since then, she has become waaaay more of an interesting character to me.

Kestrel and the other guardians (but mostly Kestrel) always berating her and making her feel useless is probably why she started off as so snappy and pessimistic. She didn't see much of a point in trying to be better because nothing she ever did was good enough to them.

She doesn't show her emotions because crying or getting angry would've made her vulnerable to further abuse from the guardians. Some people find it strange that Glory doesn't seem shaken after using her venom on someone, but with this in mind, I think her cold attitude makes sense. She buries her feelings deep down (she doesn't even like to let her emotions slip through her scale color).

I doooo have to admit that it's little irritating to me that ever since the first arc, pretty much every dragon that isn't a villain automatically adores her? I guess dragons like Snowfall are initially skeptical of her, but they come to admire her pretty quickly. Of course!! It's great that she's finally getting appreciation after a childhood of neglect, but it just feels a bit forced to me.

I also think she becomes a little bland after the first arc, but I think that's because we don't get things from her POV anymore and generally just isn't that involved. As I said before, Glory tends to keep her thoughts to herself. Plus, she's learning the ropes of being a queen, so she's probably trying to be more mature.

Contrary to what a good chunk of the fandom believes (and what I used to believe), Glory definitely isn't a "Mary Sue." Yes, she achieves a LOT, but she is still flawed. Honestly, I think that term is often used just to be sexist :/ But that's a whole different debate.

This is a pretty shallow analysis; Glory is a surprisingly complex character (so are the other DoD tbh). But I don't have the energy to do a deep dive right now 🥲 So yeah. You can still dislike Glory (even with all of that said, I myself still feel kind of neutral about her), but don't brush her off as OP or a Mary Sue or whatever.

.

[thisoldplacehasmoved]

I think growing up with the peak of "furry/feminist/therian/animation meme cringe compilation" along with the entire art community making fun of mary sues and sparkle dogs and basically anyone who was a little kid with fun and whimsey really fucked with me putting myself out to the public and sharing my ocs and art. I feel like because I would watch those videos constantly, not even because I thought they were "cringe" but because I looked up to everyone in those videos so much for being able to be themselves, made me more scared to be open about myself. I've been terrified to post my art until a few months ago because I was terrified of being plastered all over the internet for being a "weird" beginner furry artist, I'm less scared of that now because I know to avoid instagram, tiktok, and twitter since those places are ruthless but I still can't bring myself to share anything about my ocs because of seeing what happened to people during those times.

I remember when I was maybe around 7 or 8 I learned about therians for the first time through those "cringe" compilations and I thought the beings in those videos were the coolest creatures I have ever seen, I wanted to be just like them and be so open about being a thing but because I was surrounded by all the hate in those videos as well it made me want to hide further from being perceived by anyone. But I still think about all of the wolves I used to see showing their shifts, making videos with their packs, doing quads and vocals, etcetcetc and I'll always look up to them for being themselves. I want to thank everyone in this community for being yourselves and being so welcoming, I want you to know how much you help others 💚

[wisteriasymphony]

I have a feeling that you secretly hate this show and all the writing choices . I just do .

I mean, without this show we wouldn't have the fandom, ergo I wouldn't be able to mess around with the characters and put them in situations, so... no?

My opinions on the show are untraceable and entirely irrelevant, and I tend to agree on a take-to-take basis with people on all sides of the fandom. Were there some things that could've been done differently? Yes of course. But Miraculous is what it is and if it were something Emmy-worthy, I don't know if I'd be so enthralled with it as I am.

Think of it like this:

Most people in the fandom play with the ideas in mlb like Barbie dolls. You dress them up, take them through soap opera plots and (as the wonderful asukiess so eloquently put it) cocomelon tragedies where they're all screaming and crying and kissing and you have a grand old time with it.

What I have been doing, over here in my own little world divorced from reason and sense, is chewing on all of the Barbie dolls' hands, cramming their heads in jars of finger paint, and scribbling on the walls. (And occasionally, just occasionally... my unpredictable scribblings will form a coherent word or thought that might even be approaching something profound about... the human condition or struggles with self-actualization or whatnot. But it's not a guarantee.)

Can you say the latter really... 'hates' the dolls? Hates the way they were made? No. To hate the dolls is to refuse to engage with them altogether, or to make YouTube Essays treating the Barbie dolls like real people with real culpability for their actions and calling them Mary Sues. That's not what I'm doing, not by a long shot.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of what I do would be lost without the context of the show itself and its decisions.

- Kuro Neko was the catalyst in why I started writing TWEOS, and a lot of the impact of how characters act in that is because you need the prior context of both the show and the fandom to back it up.

- Adrien Agreste as Byronic Hero has much less weight to it unless you're used to seeing a version of him that is so clearly not that. The lovesquare in that fic absolutely falling apart by every conceivable metric—down to things as minuscule as Marinette the baker's daughter pursuing Adrien who secretly hates the taste of sweets—feels like less of a betrayal if you haven't seen the way they are supposed to be.

- Adrien and Marinette being presented as a cruel inevitability of a universe that does not care what they have to say in the matter... in because in 37,847 universes and counting, they will be together. In canon, they must be together.

tl;dr Maybe I'm dodging the question, and maybe my actions in changing so much about how the characters act/the world works in my fic speaks louder than my words... But I can't bring myself to hate this show. Percussive maintenance is still maintenance.

[unreadpoppy]

bg3, infographics, misogyny and you

Preface: this is a long ass post that I wrote some many weeks ago, and that because of some stuff I've seen, I'm compelled to finally post it. It's very like a spurn of the moment thing, not extremely well thoght out but I still think it's relevant.

.

Recently, a few people have posted some, in my opinion, really insightful infographics showing the difference in content to how many works (in AO3) there are to the female characters vs the male characters of BG3 and I've been thinking about how it relates to fandom in general, but also...everything.

As a quick rundown, what happens is: almost all of the female characters have a lot less content when compared to their male counterparts (at least writing wise). And I think this is a great moment to stop and think on why is that.

There's a lot of point to begin with but I want to begin with something larger and that is the society most of us are raised in. Obviously, I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's fair to say that most people grew up in places that had its fair share of sexism and give it or take, that does shape how we view the world.

I'll speak from my own experience. Even thought I had a mostly liberal upbriging, I went to a very conservative school and when I was growing up, I saw a lot of videos on youtube that anaylized media in what i can only describe as "god forbid women do anything". Video after video, I saw people commenting on how x female character was a mary sue, how she made no sense and ruined the plot, so many video essays on the """strong female character trope"""" that would end up just enforcing gender roles again. And I'll be honest, this DID affect how viewed female characters.

The best example I can give of this is with bg3 itself. There was one day that I stopped and realized that Minthara was the first time I ever obsessed over a fem character as much as any male character. And the second thought I had after this was 'oh my god why???'

Why did I always cater more to the male characters than I did to the female ones, when most of the times, I liked a lot as well?

I'd like to point out that I've seen the topic of "Most fic authors are cis straight women" being brought up a lot and frankly, I'm not the biggest fan of it. First, because I think it's overall a very...heteronormative way of seeing stuff and it's assuming a lot of stuff that puts a sour taste on my mouth (as a queer woman myself, I really don't like that implication but that's on me). Second, because saying that 'obviously women are going to write more about men' feels very...weird. Third, I just think that this argument fails to really question the why of it all and gives too simple an answer to something is anything but.

One can make the argument that these female characters are written differently than the men, and yes that is true and it's even historical (I wrote a whole project on the invisibility of women in theater through the ages and a lot of it has to do with how women were written, but that's a story for another time).

But I don't think that's true for all cases. It's easy to blame an imaginary writer's room than question that you might have internal biases.

Because at least it's what happened to me. I grew up hearing how female characters were inferior to the male characters and it affected how I viewed them. It's something I had to stop and reevalute and it led me to appreciate characters I once loathed.

And it sucks to realize that. It sucks to realize that even as a woman myself, I was not immune to commiting sexism, that I hadn't fully outgrown the shit I saw as a kid. Does that make me a bad person? No. You're not to blame for being raised in a way that leads you to have certain prejudices.

But it doesn't mean you can't do anything about it.

And no, the solution is not to suddenly go write a bunch of femslash. Because no one is saying that you should feel ashamed for writing more for men, or forcing you to like female characters. But, I ask you to do something much simpler.

Think on the why. Why, even when we love female characters, we don't show them as much love as we do to the male ones. Why we might feel more compelled to write for the men than for the women. Because sometimes it's questioning ourselves that we can find something about us we didn't know and change how we engage with media.

And you can brush this off as just fandom stuff, but I think it does, in some ways, also reflect a bit on how we act as whole as a society. Hell, writing this whole thing made me think of how the way I was raised still interferes with my own sexuality (which is a very personal topic for me to get on here but it was worth mentioning). What I'm trying to say is that sometimes something small is an easier way for us to understand the bigger, systemic issues around us.

I know that it sounds like there's nothing to be done cause fandoms have always been like this. But, personally, this sort of conformity to the norm causes more harm then good. Things won't change unless you decide to do something about it. And the good thing about fandom is that it's small enough that doing literally anything can create some impact than, I don't know, trying to solve big, real life societal issues.

This is getting long so I'm gonna try to wrap this up quickly. No one is shaming you if you write or obsesses more or even care more about male characters than you do female ones. I just ask you to think about it and be honest with yourself. Because then maybe, just maybe, next time you engage with another media, you might end up enjoying a female character much more and obsessing over them just as much.

[scaly-freaks]

how did you create amara? she's so compelling. i'm itching to create an hotd oc (mostly for aemond tho) but i'm absolutely unable to. i grew up on the era where every female oc was called a mary sue and every time i think someone could think that of my oc i become unbearably sad. enlighten me senpai

Aaahhh the Mary Sues. Such a silly way to diss what were usually teenage writers simply trying to explore the foundational stages of creating a character. There are so many popular Gary Stus in popular media (James Bond is definitely one) but men don't get called out for it the same.

I will say it took time for me to lean into writing a character who isn't just better than me in every sense of the word, and is allowed to make her own mistakes. I have to empathise with her a lot when she does some stupid shit and I'm sitting there like girl...

The key is probably to mix the stupid shit we all do on a daily basis (and judge more harshly when done by a fictional character) with real emotions and inner thoughts that would connect to most readers. Insecurities, anxiety, etc etc. But it's important to show her wanting to get out of these pitfalls of human nature, striving to do better even when she fails. She can't be perfect and smart and sassy out the gate or there's no fun watching her become a more well-rounded person.

The most important thing about an OC isn't how she's created at the start, but how she ends up at the finish line of the journey you're taking the reader along on. Don't flesh her out too much. Give her a few key traits - habits, emotional instabilities, insecurities - and then let them expand as she interacts with Aemond. Let her be human. Rolling the eyes, smirking, and sassy comebacks are all well and good, but real people don't behave like that. Sometimes, I like to put myself in the situation and realise I would never have such a put-together response because a fic writer isn't actually writing me (unless God has something to tell me about the sham of a plotline my life currently is). Once you've figured out what you'd do in a scene where you're stuck on what to write next, then bring back all you already know about your OC and modify your own response to become hers.

I didn't plan Amara at all when I put her into Burning Jasmine. My aim was to give Aegon someone that he could call his own in a way no one else in his family was. But I also knew Aegon is a dipshit. So, their first meeting is him basically yelling at her to get him more wine and stop telling him he needs a doctor, and her immediate reaction is girl fuck you, ew. Then, he softens, because the urge to be loved always comes out in the end (see here's where canon existing does help), and then I created Amara's background with the kidnapping from Lys, and how her parents raised her with love, and understood that she would see his anger as a facet of his isolation and vulnerability, not as something independent to him that he wields like a weapon.

Also my last pointer is always going to be the same but read, read, read. I would suggest contemporary books as unlike with fantasy, they're not worldbuilding, all they have are their characters. Learn from them. Get comfortable with inner monologuing for your OC that doesn't constantly revolve around Aemond, and how she is an accessory to him. She's the main character in her head, with a whole inner world of her own, and that'll be the best way to approach it.

If none of this made sense, disclaimer - I'm not the best with advice *-*

[coimbrabertone]

A Self-Indulgent Blogpost About My Motorsports Fiction

So, this weekend, MotoGP had a good sprint while the main race was a snoozer, and NASCAR ended with a twenty-eight-car pileup followed by a plate merchant winning the race.

Which makes me not really want to talk about either of them.

I could talk a bit more on Andretti - Michael revealed today that stepping back was a personal decision after forty years of being involved in Indycar, half as a driver, half as a team owner - but I don't really have a ton more to say on that either.

So, what do I want to talk about?

Well, I kinda want to talk about my writing.

I've kinda wanted to do that for a bit now, but I always thought that one: it was a bit self-indulgent to promote my fanfic on here too much, and two: I wasn't sure if people would particularly care. Well, I talked to some friends about it, and they encouraged it, so I figured...why not?

Thus, today I'll be talking about my motorsports fiction, my racing fanfics that I primarily post on AO3. I've completed one story Life at the Speed of Formula One, I wrote a 1950s Grand Prix one-shot called A Beautiful Race, and I'm currently writing two stories: An 1980s CART Indycar story called The Fastest of the Prancing Horses, and a 2000s NASCAR story called Racing in the Golden Age.

For this blogpost, I will mainly be talking about LatSoF1 because it is finished and because as my first real motorsports story, it more or less set the mold for the rest.

The link:

So...where to begin but the tags?

I have this story labeled under two fandoms, Original Work and Formula 1 RPF, why is that?

Well, it boils down to the fact that I don't quite think it fits firmly into either category. It is an original work about Formula One, but it's not really RPF either.

RPF, for those unaware of fanfic terms, means Real People Fiction.

In my stories, however, I've decided to fictionalize living people, particularly those central to the plot. There's a few reasons for this, one is that I felt odd having my OC (original character) interacting with real drivers - and admittedly a part of that is that I didn't really want this to read like a self-insert fic, where my Mary Sue gets to race with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel and all that - especially when I'm going to tackle things like tabloid rumors and opinions on homosexuality and driver feuds in these things.

The long and short of it is that I feel more comfortable having fictionalized driver Felipe Alvarez as an antagonistic figure rather than Fernando Alonso himself.

Does that matter to people reading it who are just going to connect the dots and see Alvarez as Alonso anyway? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Let's get back to establishing the context.

The story begins in 2007, with Kazakhstan-born ethnic-Russian driver Tamara Shchegolyayeva signed to Williams banked by Kazakhstani oil and gas companies.

Let's unpack that a bit.

Why 2007?

The initial idea of the story, before it branched off into something larger, was to cover the tight and dramatic 2007 championship battle from the perspective of someone in Formula One but outside of the proper title battle. Almost like a third-person view on the title challenge from a first-person perspective.

Tamara Shchego-what's it?

Okay, so admittedly Kazakhstani driver with a really long name probably isn't the most believable package for a late-2000s Formula One driver, but I think that's part of what made this idea interesting to me.

I'm a geography and history nerd, so I'm drawn to off-the-wall places where so many different cultures and histories intertwine. Kazakhstan has the Silk Road, the Mongol Empire, Russian Imperialism, and Soviet Communism all in its history. Its people are like a microcosm of all of Asia with East Asian, Turco-Persian, and Indo-European phenotypes all present, with people ranging from literal nomads to Kazakh Muslims to ethnic Russians.

Thus, I decided that it would be interesting to write a protagonist from there.

However, Formula One is also...Formula One. So how does a person from there get to the cynical, cutthroat world of big money global motorsport?

Well, I made her the daughter of a petty oligarch and sponsored by oil money.

This also allowed me to explore a number of things. The legacy of Russian Imperialism, the question of where she belongs - I placed her ancestry right on the tripoint border of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, had her born in Kazakhstan, and had her grow up and live in Monaco - the morality of oil money, the morality of sponsorships in general, and, eventually, of being a gay woman in a male-dominated, conservative, globe-spanning sport.

I won't pretend I covered these areas perfectly - and at least in some cases, I wrote Tamara as having complicated, potentially problematic feelings on things - but I think it was at least interesting.

Fictionalized Drivers.

My general rule with people in the story is that the more involved in the plot they were, the more I'd differentiate them from the drivers they were based off of.

Thus, German Nico Rosberg became Finn Tommy Koskinen. The background was generally the same - Finnish father, German mother, raised in Monaco - but by distinguishing him from the driver he was based off of in these ways, I felt more comfortable having him interact with Tamara, to show his opinions, to have a teammate dynamic with her.

This extended to Anthony Harrison, probably the most fictionalized of the drivers. Based loosely off of Lewis Hamilton, Anthony is the son of a black American army mechanic and a white Englishwoman, growing up in that background to become a top Formula One prospect with McLaren.

He enters the plot as a fellow rookie to Tamara, and eventually, the two of them bonding leads to tabloid rumors that they're a couple. A bit of drama that Tamara wants no part in, but foreshadows a later storyline that turns her career upside.

Kazakhstan and Russia.

I mentioned before that Tamara struggles a bit with representing Kazakhstan as an ethnic Russian, but as part of her caught between two worlds storylines, I also had her struggle with her Russian identity as well. She's got it in her blood, but she wasn't born there, didn't grow up there, and has no love for the regime there.

This got more complicated because, in real life, Russia escalated the war in Ukraine a month after I started this story.

One of the cited reasons was Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine.

That made writing about a Russian from another post-Soviet country awkward, and I wanted to find a way to address it within the context of this story.

Thus, during the 2008 season in LatSoF1, I talked a lot about the Russian invasion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia, where Putin and Medvedev tried more or less the same tricks. Using Russian minorities in those countries to justify naked landgrabs.

This allowed me to solidify Tamara's position as someone who was born in Kazakhstan and is of Russian descent, and loves the people of both countries, but does not love either regime.

And come 2009 and 2010, the final two seasons featured in the story, and she gets away from depending on either country for sponsorship.

So, that's a whole lot of background out of the way, now...let's talk about how I wrote the story itself.

Writing Races.

LatSoF1 was my first real racing focused work and therefore in the early days, there were some adjustments to how I wrote things.

I decided on two races a chapter being the norm, thinking it would be an efficient way to get through the season without getting bogged down too much in yapping about a fictionalized version of a real race.

And to a degree, it did its job.

However, I did also end up more or less skipping the Malaysian Grand Prix that first year as I jumped to the race results. I don't think I'd do that now. I'd write about how the race was going overall and what Tamara was doing and then end on the results.

How did I get the results? Well, to keep things grounded in reality, I based Tamara's 2007 results on what Alexander Wurz achieved in that 2007 Williams irl. I can get the results real quick on Wikipedia, maybe go to Racing Reference for an obscure race or if I need more detail, and another thing that helped a lot for LatSoF1 specifically is the old F1 season review videos. I watched the reviews for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 in the making of LatSoF1.

For CART stuff more recently, it's been a bit harder to find some specific information for like qualifying sessions from 1989. Some of that stuff is preserved on VHS rips on youtube and I've used those before, but what I've found to be helpful is actually some skills I picked up as a history major in college: old newspapers.

The LA Times and Chicago Tribute have tended to be my personal favorites because they have a significant digitized backlog, and don't require signing up to read through it like the New York times.

Hell, earlier this very day I was looking for some information on the Galles-Kraco merger ahead of the 1989 season - I wanted to know if Kraco stayed in the Compton garage or if they moved in with the Galles team in Albuquerque - and finally found the information in a brief mention at the bottom of an LA Times article.

This one, to be exact:

Thank you very much LA Times for making random stories from June 1989 accessible.

So yeah, sometimes it's easy and I can just get what I need off of Wikipedia and work from there, other times I need to go digging deeper, but the point remains: I find the real results and use them a s a baseline.

All that being said, it would be a bit boring to just slap my OC's name on a real driver's results and call it a day, so once I find what I need, I tend to change things around a bit.

First thing that comes to mind from LatSoF1 is the 2007 European Grand Prix, where Mark Webber finished third, just barely holding off Wurz.

In LatSoF1, Tamara got him in the last corner and took a podium finish.

That being said, I made sure not to get too carried away either.

At the end of 2007, Tamara finished on 18 points with two third places (Canada and Nürburgring) being the highlights of her season. In comparison, Nico Rosberg - and indeed Tommy Koskinen - finished 2007 on 20 points, whilst Wurz irl finished on 13.

Five points gained on real life is hardly Mary Sue behavior imo, so i don't consider that too obscene.

Who did I take those points off of? Well, I tried to keep that pretty even-handed as well, switching Mark Webber's third for Martin Weaver's fourth place in Europe.

Tamara also took Ralf Schumacher's eighth place in Australia from Roland Ziegler. Another eighth in Turkey off of Robert Kubica/Piotr Kaminski, a third eighth place in Italy off of Jenson Button/James Buxton, and a fourth eighth place in Brazil off of Jarno Trulli/Ivan Tripoli.

Pretty even-handed overall. No one driver was bullied for his results, and I didn't cause any massive swings in the championships.

Speaking of all those drivers I just named...

Fictionalized Names.

How did I come up with driver names? It varies.

Some names, particularly for people who didn't feature too much in the story, were just playing around with their real name. I'd put Martin Weaver for Mark Webber and James Buxton in that category.

Other names are little inside jokes I have with myself. I can't think of any from LatSoF1 off the top of my head, but in my CART story, real life driver Rich Vogler is renamed after Saints Row 2 antagonist Dane Vogel.

Why? Because I love Saints Row 2 and that popped into my head when I saw Vogler. Vogler-Vogel, it makes sense.

A good amount of names are ripped from players I had in Football Manager saves. Piotr Kaminski (Robert Kubica) I had at Cracovia in a save on FM21, and later on that same manager moved to Napoli, where I had a Japanese winger named Yoshikazu Higashiyama. I loved that player so much I used his name for Kamui Kobayashi once I included him in the story.

And other names are in reference to other drivers. In the late 2000s, Red Bull had a fetish for drivers named Seb: Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastien Buemi, Sebastien Loeb, Sebastien Ogier, and of course Sebastian Vettel.

In LatSoF1, that's replaced with a fetish for drivers named Max, in reference to their current boytoy Verstappen: thus, it's Maximilien Lecroix for Bourdais, Maximilien Longpre for Buemi, and Maximilian Renner for Seb Vettel.

Oh, and I made Longpre a Luxembourger in place of Buemi who is Swiss. Why? Because I like throwing in a comparatively underrepresented country every once in awhile.

Fringe Benefits.

On a lighter note, this is something I enjoyed about LatSoF1 a lot: it was a Formula One story, but being set in the near past, there was so much little stuff I could touch on. Tamara would have thoughts on geopolitics, video games, TV shows, other racing series, other sports, she'd get to tour a nuclear reactor at one point, she's get to rock some cool outfits, and she'd build up a bit of a car collection.

It was cool!

Most of the stuff I wrote before LatSoF1 was like historical fiction or Star Wars stuff, so it was nice to just be able to write about a person who, outside of an extraordinary job, is more or less just a regular person.

When I was getting into MotoGP for the first time, I could write a scene about her discussing MotoGP with some Italian engineers.

When I was watching Chernobyl, I got to have her tour a Soviet nuclear reactor in Saint Petersburg.

When I wasn't loving Formula One as much as I used to, I had her dabble in sports cars and Indycar during a bit of a sabbatical I had her in.

Speaking of, that brings me to...

What I'd Do Differently Now:

I started LatSoF1 in January 2022 and finished it in June 2023. I still consider it to be one of my best works and I'm proud of it, however, part of writing - and this is for everyone, not just me - is that you're always learning more. I'd say my writing back then was good, but I think it's gotten better now - certainly not perfect, but better - so...what would I do if I was doing it now?

The first two things are more technical:

One: I think I'm better at breaking up big blocks of text now, alternating between paragraphs and short lines, which I think makes for a more readable experience.

Two: I was getting better at this as I was writing LatSoF1, but I still think I could've been better about dialogue. I think dialogue is a bit of a weakness in my writing, one I'm working on, but a weakness nonetheless.

I probably could've done a better job with dialogue in LatSoF1.

Beyond that...I struggle at having my protagonists do things that are out of my character. Part of that is inevitable - write somebody long enough, particularly in first person, and parts of you will bleed into that character whether you like it or not - but it also led to me dropping one and a half plotlines.

One and a half? Let me explain.

There is a part of LatSoF1 after the 2008 season where Tamara loses her sponsorship in F1 and goes on a bit of a downward spiral. I initially had the idea that she'd develop a drinking problem during this point and eventually recover for it, to the point where she wouldn't drink podium champagne and would always just spray it before handing it off to the team.

I chickened out on this because I didn't feel comfortable writing about someone struggling with alcoholism given that I don't drink.

Then we move onto the half.

I initially wanted Tamara to be a bit more promiscuous once she comes out, and she'd have a few different girlfriends and maybe a few one-night stands throughout the storyline. It the end, I chopped this storyline way down.

Roksana is her first girlfriend, she has a one-night stand with Daniella, and then she's with Ysabella for the rest of the story.

Alexis was supposed to be another girlfriend, but in the end she's just the Ferrari PR that follows Tamara around for that little half a season she did there.

Again, my only romantic experience has been monogamous, so I chickened out of writing something I didn't know.

Now, who knows if writing out of my comfort zone would be any good, but I do wish I tried.

As I move on from LatSoF1 and onto new projects, I'm trying to be better about writing outside of my comfort zone. Right now with the CART story I have Vincenza Taghzouti becoming more assertive and combative in the media, arguably taking a bit of a villain role as she battles the American "boys club" of established drivers.

Meanwhile in the NASCAR story, Lilith Zilinskas has been more promiscuous and had a bit of a self-destructive streak for awhile, and now is dealing with her ex-girlfriend reentering her life...with a daughter, no less. This lets me explore some of the themes I chickened out of doing with Tamara, and also adds in a bit of a parenting aspect in the current day that I've never touched on before.

I'm excited to see how these attempts play out, and I hope that by the end of them, I'll have sufficiently differentiated my three protagonists.

Anyway, this has been a long and self-indulgent blogpost, but I very much enjoyed writing it. Please feel free to ask questions below, because I could go on much, much longer about my writing if given the chance.

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Am I the only person who doesn’t like Wonder Woman and thinks she is, in fact, a Mary Sue? I haven’t read or watched much with her in it so maybe I’m just basing my opinions on one Wonder Woman book I read where I thought she was written poorly.

But I don’t know. She’s literally everything a modern woman is supposed to be (sexy, strong, righteous, soft, etc.) and she never struggles. She’s always right, she never makes mistakes, and she’s very boring to me as a result. I haven’t seen the recent film, but I dislike the fact that they made her love babies. A lot of pressure is put on women to love babies/children and/or want one of their own, and if a woman doesn’t like or want them then she’s seen as a cold, callous bitch. So to me, that part seems like the writers put it in thinking ‘see she’s not an evil man hating feminist you guys, she loves babies!’

Idk. I know she’s seen as THE role model for women and girls but I just can’t understand her appeal. What exactly do you like about her?

Hello there!

As someone who grew up with a lot of Wonder Woman content, I have to personally disagree!

Like any major superhero, Wonder Woman gets a lot of good content and plenty of bad content, too.

Yes, she's idealized - but almost all superheroes are idealized. Superman is literally a mirror of the philosophical concept of the "Ubermensch," a term coined by Nietzsche meaning "superman" and describing an ideal human being. By this standard, he could also be described as a Mary Sue!

But just being beautiful, powerful, and good does not a Mary Sue make. These idyllic superheroes work well when they're put in circumstances that challenge them. It's fascinating to see characters that seemingly embody the highest reaches of human potential pushed to their limits, when we see that they too have flaws and weaknesses that they can overcome through perseverance.

You say that she "never struggles," but a good Wonder Woman writer knows that she NEEDS to struggle to be interesting. In shows like the animated Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, she and all the other major heroes are put in situations that challenge them on every level - physical (like fighting literal gods) and emotional (being banished from her home for bringing men to the island).

And also funny scenarios that put them at disadvantages, like being turned into children or a pig that then must be chased through the city by Batman (yes, both real episodes) that humanize them and show that they're not invulnerable.

For the more recent, live action movies, I liked the first Wonder Woman but not the second. I personally liked the fact that she was excited to see a baby, especially in the context that there were no babies on her island, because women are often expected to reject feminine characteristics to be strong.

I see your point, but I also have a different view regarding children: I think a lot of the oppression experienced by women is also experienced by children, and children are frequently dehumanized.

Not everyone who says they don't like kids is a bad person - I know plenty of great people who say they don't like kids - but I'm not really comfortable with the concept of disliking an entire group of human beings. Children have such varied personalities, just like any other group.

Granted, most people who say they don't like kids don't mean they dislike ALL kids, but it's still a sentiment I don't really like from a cultural standpoint.

As for women who don't WANT kids, I agree - it's deeply messed up that many people don't see women as complete or fulfilled unless they have kids. But (though it's been a while since I've seen it) I don't recall Wonder Woman in the 2017 movies planning to have children of her own. Plenty of women like children without intending to have them, myself included.

Again, though, I do see your point that the writers may have been trying to soften Wonder Woman in the eyes of the audience by having her love babies.

I still prefer that over the original Joss Whedon script, where a little girl at one point asks her to get a cat down from a tree (I think. Perhaps it was a lost toy) and Wonder Woman callously tells her to get it herself. To me, that plays into a sexist stereotype that women must reject all feminine attributes in order to be strong.

The sequel film, on the other hand, really embodies how NOT to write Wonder Woman in every way: largely exempt from moral criticism, inherently better than those around her, and with few meaningful challenges that aren't solved through plot convenience. She isn't "always right," however, because another flaw in that film's plot is the fact that she's learning a vague and contrived lesson of not cheating to get what she wants, though that's never explored in any way that feels human or applicable.

To conclude, I'll reiterate -- and this is just my opinion -- Wonder Woman is done GREAT when written by someone who understands the appeal of the character. Her idyllic characteristics apply to most superheroes, and can work great if the person writing her knows how to challenge her. I don't mind when she has feminine characteristics, and I love when all superheroes love kids, male and female. And last but not least, Justice League and Justice League unlimited reign supreme in terms of superhero content.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ramble and spill my potentially controversial opinions!

[fainthedcherry]

When I was a child in 2013, visiting Nickelodeon's site and finding a treasure-trove of Spongebob, Winx and TMNT flash games was like magic to me. BUT MAN. The TMNT flash games are one of the best ever to me I've played in my life. (on an aesthetic stand-point! Turtle Tactics and Dark Horizons are so awesome man, legendary flash games to me.)

Since I am utterly autistic about 4 green alien turtles and their rat dad...Here we are again. With me posting OC cringe 2016 me would've killed myself over :V (cry about it 11 yo/ me, afraid of cringe culture back then, it's DEAD NOW)

Gonna sneak-post my redo of that ancient drawing I did of Alex 2 years ago, for the base-post : D

2 years ago, I used flashpoint to replay it for the first time in years and I remember crying of glee LOL (I still play Dark Horizons and turtle tactis to this day btw). I played Dark Horizons and Turtle Tactics and also TMNT: Throw Back (NO I DID NOT NAME THIS LIKE A MEME THIS IS ITS NAME. I STILL BURST INTO LAUGHTER LIKE A CHILD OVER THE NAME AGING POORLY DUE TO INTERNET LINGO)

Those 2 flash games are just so...Technically advanced?? For its time?? LIKE A FULLY FLEDGED 3D FLASH GAME WITH UNITY ENGINE BASIS? DAMN. And then Dark Horizons? CHEF'S KISS I LOVE THAT GAME SO MUCH. AESTHETICALLY AND THE COMBAT FEELS RLLY NICE TO ME IMO, AND JUST...Everything about THAT flash game, god TIMELESS CLASSIC I COULD YAP ON FOR HOURS ABOUT THIS NO JOKE.

I am enthralled by the designs and art of Dark Horizons, it's why I made this drawing. The game just..Speaks to me on so many levels. IT'S JUST SO PLEASING TO SEE ALL THE ARTWORK I EXTRACTED. As far to my knowledge- it never got released, so I might make a post of just a few favourites I liked from the game. :D

I just wonder if I can post those in the first place, it's after all, not my artwork, from a flash game, and TMNT, so yeah, legal IP and stuff. I unfortunately don't know who the artist if of the flash games, but if I can find that out via googling or digging for credits in the game or the files, I'll see if I can credit them, so that posting will be fairly accredited!!

OH YEAH RIGHT ALSO QUICK BANTER ABT ART SORRY I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT THOSE FLASH GAMES AS YOU CAN TELL,,,

I studied the in-game sprites for a good few hours back then, and did my best to replicate it to the best of my abilities!! I think Mushu maybe could've been done better looking back at it, but I think it was the best that I could do back then. :D Plus, I remember being really happy, excited and proud of this piece, as it reflected something, my childhood self always wanted: For Alex to like.."fake" being an official character LOL. I had sooo many dreams where Alex was hanging out with the turtles and Ninjago and throwing in Power Rangers for good measure, just...Everything I liked as a child, I somehow connected in my dreams via either "OH YEAH THE RAINBOW FAIRY!" or "OH YEAH SUDDENLY PORTAL AND MY MARY-SUES JUST BRAVE IT WHILST THE OFFICIAL CHARACTERS DRAMATICALLY TELL THEM NOT TO GO"

^I had vivid and....Creative dreams as a child to say the least, sometimes even Darth Vader and Eggman appeared as the bad guys, despite TMNT and Power Rangers and Ninjago w/ the snakes and lord Garmadon or however you spell him (I never checked + I'm German so ofc his name might be different in english)- I- do I have to go on about the dreams I FULLY remember I had, as a 6-9 yo/, until I told myself at 10 how embarassing my dreams are and stopped doing so? I DIGRESS. I..Need to be more professional in these, instead of such pure fandom trash oml, I feel bad for whoever actually has to read through my blatant autistic interests as a child and thinking "wtf is he on about" dfgklfdg

ANYWAY NEKST POST IS THE BASE. I SWEAR. SORRY I LOVE RAMBLING

[raccoonfallsharder]

i need your help

i have finally surrendered myself to the reality that my day job is going to keep forcing me to attend weekly multi-hour meetings that have nothing to do with me and do not make the best any use of my skills, so I am going to try to use those blocks of time to practice-doodle

doodle what? great question.

i would honestly love to love your gotg oc (especially if they’re vaguely humanoid femmes with a thing for raccoons). i fuckin celebrate ocs of all body types, skin colors, etc. are they a half-angel/half-unicorn self-insert mary-sue with healing powers, acrobatic fighting skills, and a sword that always strikes true? LOVE EM. are they a battle-scarred emotionally-constipated cretin with a screeching voice and rat-infested hair (and possibly still a self-insert)? ALSO LOVE EM.

if you’re interested in giving me the gift of letting me doodle your oc and/or helping me not lose my mind in 3+hourlong weekly meetings that my body thinks should be naptime, please reblog + tag me with one or more existing pics and/or a description of your OC and rant/rave about everything that makes them lovely/soft/rad/bad/sad/cool/fuckedup/magical/etc (you’re also welcome to send me an ask or a message if that’s more comfy for you darling)

i reserve the right to not draw your oc if i run out of time, get too many requests, or get yelled at for drawing in meetings lol. doodles will likely be above-neck or -shoulder portraits only (color or no-color will depend on my mood/time), at my own pace, and I will absolutely give preferential treatment to whichever ocs happen to inspire my imagination (it doesn’t mean yours isn’t cool - it just means the chaotic gods in my brain have made A Decision)

[cali]

who is princess xixi...will you tell us more about princess xixi? I feel a profound affection for her

great invitation for me to babble thank u um

i dont hjave any set setting or hard ideas for her cuz i dont like having concrete details for something like an oc- it doesnt mesh well with my head- so i made myself one that changes constantly. also i wanted to be as self indulgent as i could and made her some type of rlly powerful thing that manifests as a little brat heiress that loves playing and animals. i dont think ill ever create any reasons for why she would exist in my head but i like whenever stories have some type of entity thats just a manifestation of an ultrabig concept that is enacting its will with this conduit body to spread its influence so maybe she could be that. but i dont think ican boil her down to one ideal to represent. i think she likes staring at stuff endlessly, thinking of animals, making animals with her mind and drooling. i think while she has the capability to understand a lot of stuff she doesnt care to and seems kind of naive. like a ditzy popstar personality but also could breathe a hole thru you!! my mary sue hihi ummm what else... in the footlicker comic my idea was that the entire top right and bottom left of the pic is moreso her true body thats putting itself into the places that she needs to be in to interact with the maid liek marionette strings and wooden cross its strung on, the pic where she gives someone a headache the idea was that if she doesnt keep herself contained/composed her concept goes into ur head and is reallyhard to handle like the most complicated thought ever. anecdotes. i like that "how did u make that sound with ur mouth" type stuff where someone audibly says an emoji or something so i think she can speak like dat, like talk a speech bubble that is a row of clay pigeons getting shot and if she says that to u its like u lived that experience as maybe the 5th pigeon in the row. could be dreadful but i think if u were like im a clay pigeon my destiny is to get shot then itd actually be fun. exhilarating even. i think it would be very exhausting to be around her unless u have insane mental. u need buddha mindset like tyler1 or the maid. i typed a lot sory hgehehe well thanks for asking that. i hope that didnt ruin any mysteries? wellwhatever then its an invitation for me to create better mysteries ontop of the old one

[vellichorom]

HI HELLO!! I LOVE YOUR ART SM!! 10/10 would put it on my skin-

I wanted to quickly ask, as a practicing artist looking up at you, if u have any advice when it comes to sketching and putting ideas down on paper? If that makes sense? :o

ON YOUR SKIN !!!!!!! nice as that is i don't think you should do that... i think my art would encourage acne & oils... 😳

THANK YOU THOUGH, you are TOO kind...

i've been rolling your question around in my brain for the past couple days &... gee, i'm not too sure... 🤔 because " just do it " only goes so far in terms of advice huh...

WELL. I WILL SAY - do it all SHAMELESSLY. if you're not making nasty shit that hurts people ( like the genuinely immoral shit (( they're debating the validity of incest on twitter apparently isn't that fucking wild, sport )) ) then by all means make WHATEVER kind of crazy shit you want

live INDULGENTLY. live Deliciously. do what i do & draw your favorite characters in mlp creepypasta costumes, make a self insert or OC & ship them with all the characters ever & make them live in a big house together, make perfect " mary sue " OCs- LIVE & DRAW & WRITE TO YOUR WILDEST & MOST SPECIFIC DESIRES because life is too fucking hard to not strive for happiness in any way, shape, or form & why SHOULDN'T you. because some miserable bitch on twitter told you they don't like it? because some rando on youtube with a thousand subscribers told you it was wrong? tell them to SUCK IT !!!!!!! or explode, whichever you prefer

so ditch conformity & " normal artwork " & do WHATEVER YOU WANT. do you ever think about that? you can make WHATEVER you want !!!! WHATEVER YOU WANT !!!!!!! & you should live by that rule

you should also ditch the idea that your art has to be perfect & polished & entirely completed & " correct " to be worthy of being seen or appreciated, I PROMISE HAVING A LOOSER MINDSET ABOUT IT ALL WILL HELP YOU A LOT. practice !!! or don't !!!! use sketches to start with or don't !!!! art is such a bendable & breakable rule so by all Means, just ditch organization & formatting if it feels good, or vice versa if THAT feels good

ALSO you need little to no context for what you're doing. i'm one of those people who feels like i need a Reason to do anything & that hurts the creativity, i think. i'm going to stop myself from doing ANYTHING because i need " valid context " or reasoning for it? HOW ABOUT we just draw & figure it out later...

JUST !!! FREEDOM IN EVERY REGARD, I SAY take the " i made it just because i can! " approach about it !!!! gooooooooo !!!!!!

& i don't know if this was the kind of advice you were looking for but i GENUINELY hope it helps you out or gets the juices flowing some !!!!

[lara635kookie]

Okay...Not the ship analysis yet but a little snippet of it. To write the analysis I had to think about why I like Red Crackle so much. And I realized one of the reasons why is that they remind me of another ship I also love:

(Warning:Spoilers of both Carmen Sandiego and Spider-Man Into/Across the Spiderverse ahead.)

Yes, they got differences but also massive resemblance either that once you notice, you can't unsee it. It isn't noticeable when you try to compare Gray and Miles and Gwen and Carmen, but once you switch...

Both Miles and Carmen are latino main characters, just that Miles is black and Carmen is brown. While Puerto Rico is a USA territory, in culture terms they share more with Latin America. And Even Miles not being born in Puerto Rico, his puerto rican roots and heritage are clear. 8/B in spanish is nowhere near as bad. As a Brazilian, we speak portuguese, which is a very similar language to Spanish(I myself know a little bit of spanish), but overall, both languages tend to sound very difficult, specially when you're learning in a place that doesn't speak any. Carmen didn't seem to be totally fluent in spanish either since in the Lupe Peligro episode she says her Spanish is getting better. So not fluent, at least in that point in time. Maybe that changes after that so I'll just assume both Miles and Carmen are working on their spanish. Another point is that they are both very smart. Carmen knows her geography and history AND can speak multiple languages and Miles is great at physics AND art, both very different areas from one another. Saying that, Carmen had everything to be a Mary Sue, just like Miles had everything to be a Gary Stu but instead, while they are extraordinary, we also see their weaknesses, flaws and mistakes. On the first two episodes of the first season of Carmen Sandiego and on the first spiderverse movie, we see Black Sheep/Miles Morales transition to becoming Carmen Sandiego/Spider-Man. And on that transition, someone was always by their side...

Both Gwendolyne Stacy(Spider-Woman) (or Gwanda ;) and Graham Calloway(Crackle) have a four letter nickname that starts with G and the protagonist always call them that(Gwen and Gray). Both have a surname that ends with Y. Both are a little bit older than the main character(Gray is two years older than Carmen and Gwen is 15 months older than Miles). Both are trans to a lot of people(I don't actually believe this, I think both Gwen and Gray are cisgender, specially Gwen, because of the comics and because while I think her revelation to her father was made in purpose to resonate and pass as a metaphor for coming out, I believe in the less popular theory that she was an ally and her Peter was actually trans and that is one of the reasons he suffered bullying and Gwen defended him and had that "Protect Trans Kids" poster in her room, this is literally the vibe she passes me:

Some time ago I saw a theory that the relationship of Miles and Gwen was a metaphor for one of the difficulties that interracial couples pass that the most privileged has to learn that the same society system that protects them, won't protect their partner in the same way, and that is shown through the way Spider Society treats Miles and I know there are more black spider people like Hobie and Margo but the parallel still works:he is not being accepted because he is different. The thing is, that theory kinda breaks the trans Gwen theory because if she was trans, sadly, the system wouldn't protect her either. I also don't believe it because of the voice actors. Some years ago, an adult could dub a children if he did the right voice. Nowadays, they cast a voice actor more similar to the character. Like, black characters need to have black voice actors, etc, otherwise they get canceled. And both of the voice actors for Gray and Gwen are cisgender, and I saw people complaining that if the producers wanted to make characters "potentially trans" they should have casted trans voice actors, for both characters. But anyway, I don't mind and respect the people who think they are trans). Both got competition for the other's affection(Gwen has now Spider-Byte and Gray has Ivy, Julia and pretty much everyone you can ship with Carmen in this show, which is a lot of people). Both are the lighter skin love interest not from where the protagonist is(Gray is from Australia and Gwen is from another dimension).

And now with the storyline similarities. Both pairings start as friends, so both lead to a slow burn. Both were an amazing partners in crime duo, working really great as a team, and being just the two of them or even with more people, their connection always stood out. Miles and Carmen never became official members of Spider Society/V.I.L.E. but disagree with them and escape from them to do what they believe is right. Both Gwen and Gray make a mistake and are expelled from Spider Society/V.I.L.E. (Gwen with the portal multiverse dimension go home machine or whatever and Gray by having his memories wiped) and then they realize too late they made a mistake with Miles/Carmen and now have to fix that mistake. Also both Carmen and Miles say "Goodbye Gray/Gwen." in the most DRAMATIC way possible before doing an grand triumphal exit and I love that for them. And the look Gray/Gwen gives them before they leave is THE EXACT SAME LOOK, I SWEAR. So as you can see, both ships leave a room for A LOT of angst and drama. Also just the way they look so fondly at each other and the way both Carmen/Miles and Gray/Gwen look sad when they have to leave or when the other has to leave them says it all. Platonic or not, both couples have an undeniable bond and just work so well together, being as friends, lovers, partners...They are each other's ride or die. They are each other's everything.

(Also just an personal opinion is that both Spiderverse and Carmen Sandiego have the MOST BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION I HAVE EVER SEEN) (Along with the new Miraculous movie) (Ladybug and Chat Noir are also very similar of Carmen and Gray but that's something more noticeable to pretty much everyone, I don't have to elaborate much on that matter) (I've got nothing to say about LadyNoir/MariChat being similar to Red Crackle that hasn't been said before)

The major difference about them is that, while both the Spiderverse movies and the Carmen Sandiego series don't have romance as their main focus, Miles and Gwen will most likely be canon in the films, just like they are in the comics. I think it will be a movie trilogy so they'll probably get together in the third movie(Beyond the Spiderverse in january? Anyway, 2024, save the date). I mean, Spider-Byte is cool and all but she's a game avatar or something so I don't think Miles and her can get together, even if he travels to her universe and decides to stay there or vice versa. They introduced her just now and we barely know anything about her, and Miles and Gwen clearly already have a whole build up story going on with a consistent arc so why mess it up? Besides, I think we need more main interracial couples representation in media. Aside from these two, the only GOOD main interracial couples I can think of are Druig and Makkari from Eternals(I never even watched Eternals and I know they are better than Ikaris and Sersi)(They are also an interracial couple but they clearly don't have the chemestry Drukkari does and Ikaris seems to be kind of a jerk tbh), Ricky and Gina(from HSMTMTS, which I don't watch either but their clips I saw on YouTube are just the cutest thing), Ben and Devi from Never Have I Ever, Daphne and Simon and Kate and Anthony from Bridgerton, and Julie and Luke(Juke) from Julie and The Phantoms(JATP) which is literally an impossible love story since Luke is dead(he's a ghost) and Julie isn't(she's alive) and the series was cancelled(still mad about it and will forever be). My point is:Couples with different ethnicities are not only little but the ones we do have are mostly either impossible to happen, unfairly treated/messed up by writers/not well executed or when treated right, we don't get enough content of them/they are forgotten, in the majority cases, and that needs to change. Anyway...Meanwhile, with Red Crackle, as Carmen Sandiego had a pretty open ending, canon can be whatever the hell you want, and for me is red crackle. That's it. Thank you for coming to my ted talk. Will be posting more "written podcasts" soon.

[therealslimshakespeare]

Hi! I had this thought the other day and I just wanted to share. I know you sometimes worry about making a character who is too Mary Sue but I just wanted to say that for an Indigenous woman in a male dominated field in 1940s America, that’s probably exactly what Lu would try to be. Like she wouldn’t have the luxury of getting to be brash or of getting to push buttons/be mildly irritating and still know that at the end of the day, she could do her job and be well liked and respected. The opposite actually, she’d probably have to try so so so hard to be perfect just to be on the same level as others. So I don’t feel that it’s at all unrealistic that she might seem “perfect” because she’s demeure and respectful of authority and a very hard worker, I think those are just things that she’d have to be. And of COURSE she’s extremely intelligent and competent, she would have to be!

Also, this is in no way a dig at any of the other OCs! Yes I did say some things that are specific to Maureen (not at all in a hateful way though I promise) and I’m not gonna lie and say that I didn’t, I just wanted to explain that I don’t think that behaviour would fly if it came from Lu, let alone allow her to receive promotions, and that’s why it makes sense that she’s NOT that person. I’m not saying that all the women didn’t have struggles because just as women, they obviously did, but the experience wouldn’t be identical for Lu. And I know you’ve acknowledged that several times, I more so just wanted to say this to try to articulate that I don’t think you should worry about her being too Mary Sue!

Starting off the day with this lovely encouragement and extremely hot take! Nonnie you’re on fire. 🔥

This was a debate I had with myself when crafting both Sanchez and Lu. And making them so very different on the surface. And why I chose to make Lu as she is beyond her original nature being sweet.

It’s a tiny pet peeve of mine in a period show or story when there is a constant and repeated effort to show a WOC being loud and brash and girl boss to the max and yet it has no ramifications in her male, white, no nonsense and very precarious field. Not that I don’t like or support of think there were WOC Girlbosses back then😂 but I do know they would unfairly be the first on the chopping block for demotion or washing out. Thats how it was. Unfair but real. So who ends up slipping through multiple gauntlets of discrimination? The ones like Lu, and that by the skin of her teeth and keeping a tight lid on a lot of injustice I’m sure she felt despite her mild outward manner. In other words -all the points you made above.

Sanchez on the other hand came from an entirely Mexican unit, she wasn’t an oddity alone, she was in good company with other Mexicans folded into the Air Force and kept apart (as the real Aztec Eagles were) and so she wasn’t been trying to integrate before. Her bearing is different. Since we’ve known her she’s lost and separated from that and her behavior as a result makes sense, I hope, as to why it’s not as meek as Smith’s.

Anyway, a ramble tacked onto you’re succinct and lovely take, don’t mine me

Xo