#once again this fanfic totally has the right to exist

[necrotic-nephilim]

For the ask game! 3 and 21 please ✨

for the choose violence ask game!

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

i won't screenshot bc i'm not thinking of one post specifically but a couple i've seen- the idea that Tim should be from Crime Alley, not Bristol. which firstly: i need people to understand Tim isn't Bristol rich. Tim is a millionaire and not nearly as high a tax bracket as Bruce is. his family goes *bankrupt* at one point and it's his stepmother supporting them with a job as a physical therapist. like he's not as rich as some ppl thing he is. but that said, he *is* still upper middle class and it's very important to who he is and how his history as Robin is shaped. it shapes how he interactions with other characters. you just... can't make him from Crime Alley? like why would you want to when we *have* a Crime Alley Robin. it changes so much about Tim that he's no longer then same character. and the idea he could just lie about being from an affluent family with a seven-figure company is? i do not get it. like the entire mess of "Tim pretends to be a Drake" is a headcanon that is so bad to me and just tries too hard to make Tim' backstory more interesting to make him the main character. the entire point of Tim Drake was for him to be a *normal kid* becoming Robin. and all that is ruined when you add all these weird things to him. i'm begging fanon to just enjoy Janet and Jack Drake. please <3

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

oooh, i already talked about Joker: Last Laugh and Deat In The Family. is it... bad if i say the entirety of Wayne Family Adventures?

i think i'll be nice and narrow it down actually: the Wayne Family Adventures episode where Jason has a panic attack because a noise reminds him of the crowbar and he runs and hides until Bruce finds him. that episode... oh it haunts me. i think it really fucked up how most of this fandom understands Jason's relationship to his trauma. and the fact that it's *so* popular makes it even worse bc it can often be the only "canon" content some fans have consumed about him. it makes Jason feel incompetent and it misunderstands what his trauma around his death actually is. it paints him as afraid of the Joker and not full of such a violent rage. i just. oh i can usually understand the merits to WFA even if it's not For Me, but that episode i just... don't get it. i don't get how someone can honestly enjoy Jason's character and still think that episode does him favors and is in character. i'm baffled and angry and rolling my eyes all at once.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

If you gave Chloe a redemption how would Zoe fit? Not Vespera just Zoe...

I discussed this in more detail here, here, and here, but canon Zoe has all the hallmarks of a Mary Sue. She shows up out of nowhere in the middle of the show and immediately becomes close to the main cast. She has no real flaws. Everyone loves her. She gets a romance arc with the main character. She's the only person other than Adrien to wield the black cat miraculous. You get the picture. She's the kind of character I expect to see as an OC in a fanfic, not an actual character in canon.

While I will defend the rights of Mary Sue's in a general sense, a Mary Sue has no place in Miraculous canon. It's the wrong type of story for an idealized self-insert that the audience can project themselves onto for many reasons, chief of them being that those types of characters only work as main characters. This makes it impossible for me to use Zoe as-is. I'd have to completely redesign her character so that she had depth and flaws and I have no interest in doing that.

It's not that I hate Zoe, it's that she has no reason to exist outside of being Chloe's perfect replacement. Take away that role and what is she even doing here? What purpose does she serve that you can't give to one of the twenty other teenage characters that canon already introduced!!! And that's not even counting the specials which introduced another three for some reason. Writers, what are you doing? Stop adding characters!!! You need depth, not breadth!!!

In theory, Zoe could be used as part of Chloe's redemption, but that would require them to have an actual bond. As best I can tell, in canon, Chloe and Zoe didn't meet until the start of season four. They're sisters in the biological sense, but that's about it. This once again makes it hard to see Zoe as value added.

If the Kwamis didn't exist and Zoe was Chloe's cool older sister, then she'd have some potential as Chloe's mentor, basically taking on the role I see Pollen in. She'd also have potential as a significantly younger sister who adores Chloe, making Chloe act nice because she wants to keep that adoration. But Zoe is none of those things. She's basically the same age as Chloe, Chloe doesn't care about her, and Adrien already fills the role of Chloe's same-age sibling who grew up in a different home, so why would she need another one?

Another theoretical path for Zoe would be to let Chloe redeem Zoe. We know that Zoe was a massive liar in the past. If she was introduced while still in that phase, then redeemed Chloe could show off her new skills by helping her sister. It would even give you a nice way to address how messed up their mother is.

As nice as that may sound, I still wouldn't go there unless Chloe was my main character. Zoe's redemption just eats up way too much screen time as you have to establish who she is, give her a relationship with Chloe, and so on. Not a quick little addition to the script and not worth the time when her only purpose is fleshing out Chloe. There's also the Sabrina issue. If Chloe is going to redeem someone, it feels silly to add a whole new character when you have an established character right there, ready and waiting. Writing wise, Sabrina feels way more like Chloe's sister than Zoe ever did so why add Zoe?

No matter what way you look at it, canon Zoe just isn't needed. There are no missing roles that she's ideally suited to fill. You'd have to totally redesign her to make her work and, at that point, you're not using Zoe, you're using an OC with the same name.

[opinated-user]

friendly reminder that LO has faked to have cancer "coincidentally" right after her sibling Courtney came out alleging that LO essentially molested her when they were kids

we know that LO faked it for the following reasons: -first she claimed that it was skin cancer on the first stage and the only treatment she ever had was chemotherapy. first stage skin cancer is going to be treated normally with a minor surgery. -when more people started questioning her about it, suddenly LO claimed she never said what cancer that it was. -despite being in chemotherapy, LO claims that the expenses were "minimal", which is hard to believe even living in Canada. people go into debt paying for their treatment while still living on the exact same province as LO. -a normal chemotherapy treatment would last at least 6 months. we're talking about half a year of someone's lives in which your body basically is being destroyed in order to hopefully kill the cancer. not only LO hasn't shown literally no symptom related to chemotherapy during the entire period in which she should have it, but she also never told anyone about it during this process. including her own wife and her immediate family. not a single one of her closest friends ever knew or suspected she was going through this experience. she only mentioned some mild symptoms after some of her critics (including this blog) pointed them out at all. -not really proof, but the way that LO decided to announce she ever went through any of this was through a comic page on pokemadhouse to announce she was in "complete remission" already. to give an idea of how truly evil this is, her wife would have received the news that her wife had been lying to her for six months right before being asked to draw for free a comic to announce it to everyone else. regardless if you even believe that LO is lying or not, i think it's pretty clear we should be able to agree that this is just vile behavior and a total show of disrespect towards her own spouse. -complete and total lack of any real evidence. never a mention of visit to the doctor (only some "asks" teasing about getting "funny results" and nothing else), never a word about the kind of meds that she was taking, never saying a word even about what kind of chemotherapy she went through. this is not to say that she or anyone should owe it to the world to reveal every details of their lives in order to be believed, but we're talking about a experienced liar that has lied about so many things so many times before despite the clear and obvious evidence that still exist so the skepticism, plus the absolute lack of any evidence at all, is completely warranted in this case. to this day LO still claims that Stockholm does not exist. there's both audio, video and text evidence that she was the author and she fully intended to include every disgusting thing on it, that she wanted them there. lie about a fanfic and lie about cancer are two completely different things, but not to a liar who is used to lie for attention. -once again, this narrative of "i had cancer the whole time, but i was also in therapy and now i'm better so i don't really have to talk about any details about it ever again" started out really only shortly after Courtney came out speaking out. when you talk about youtuber or other influencers lying about having cancer for any nefarious reason possible, do not forget to include LO.

[aroaceleovaldez]

thoughts on the current state of pjo fanart and/or how the fandom interacts with art? sorry if this question is so vague HAHAHHAHAHA i mean we've talked a lot about this in the TA server, specifically how a huge chunk of fandom being a community is lost due to fanartists basically just doing their own thing and the audience largely crowding around fanartists that are more or less established already... i also feel that, same as with fic writers, reception (i dont want to use the word 'engagement,' nor am i sure on if it's the right word to use lol) has drastically decreased compared to before, even though the fandom is reasonably large

Oh i have so many thoughts about this. I actually went on a tag rant on my main blog the other day adjacent to this exact topic.

Basically my current theory is the current widespread-fandom "environment" that exists is a result of a combination of two things: 1.) Widespread social media purges of nsfw material leading to large swaths of fandoms moving to different platforms and a loss of old fandom history and means of communicating that culture to the simultaneous large new wave of younger folks coming into fandom for the first time, and 2.) fandom becoming more mainstream and the way "fandom" as a concept was marketed and presented versus fandom practically.

Cause the way fandom was marketed in the mainstream sense was "This is a subculture surrounding a media. It's all about the media. Fanworks exist but they're just a natural part of fandom - they just kind of spawn or spontaneously appear." There's no acknowledgement of the community that is the actual foundation of fandom (and how some fandoms don't even have a source material!), and implies that fanworks are something guaranteed that you can take for granted and only exist for consumption like the source material itself. It's commodification of fandom.

There's also the secondary aspect of that mainstream marketing of fandom which is the sanitization of fandom, particularly painting large swaths of the community as "those icky weird parts of fandom" and something to be ridiculed, rather than an actual foundational aspect - which is where we see a lot of the purity culture in fandom arise (between that attitude being fostered and the dwindling resources to be able to educate new fans across fandoms). And this once again leads me to my usual spiel of encouraging folks to watch The Fandom documentary by Ash Coyote on youtube - particularly from the 1:03:27 timestamp - because learning pan-fandom history is very important especially right now when we're in a fandom climate where we're seeing a lot of these exact topics and talking points coming up again in different spaces. I seriously cannot stress enough how much I need this documentary to be like base-level fandom education, it's so so useful and important to know general pan-fandom history and major experiences of other fandoms.

Aside from all that though, I totally agree that we've seen a lot more of fandoms - particularly Riordanverse fandom - rarely straying away from BNFs who already have an established presence. I again think that's part of how the lack of community in modern fandom spaces makes it difficult for new fanartists and writers and such to get a lot of traction or footholds, because nobody is actually going out and having discussions or sharing work. The BNFs a lot of the time have old fandom presence and that established audience is how their work continues to travel. But also in modern fandom enviornments they're often treated as secondary source material - which is really terrible for them! Because it's such a rude and entitled attitude to have towards fancreators! And it is absolutely worse for fanfic writers I think particularly because of how when the media presents fandom as a whole in the mainstream, fanfiction very often gets the short end of the stick and is mocked, so new fandom folks don't appreciate it as much or even understand how to properly engage with it.

Especially also given how, because new fans are lacking a lot of fandom cultural knowledge that used to be passed on, a lot of them don't know how to navigate fandom sites like Ao3 and the language and structures used (like tagging systems - most new fandom folks are more used to tagging structures like on instagram or tiktok which is to say, completely nonfunctional) and are struggling with that since the resources to learn about it are difficult to find if you aren't already familiar with fandom - which is exactly why i'm working on my riordanverse fandom infrastructure project.

[thebigpalooka]

Sonic 3 Sonic 3

I've now seen Sonic 3! Welcome back, 2/3s of my dash that I had blocked lol

Spoiler-free impressions, but still behind a cut for those who don't want to draw inferences lol:

TL;DR, Sonic 3 is wonderful and tons of fun, but Sonic 2 was probably peak for my personal taste.

As others have said, Sonic 1 was very different from the games and each movie has now shifted a bit closer in terms of action and pacing. I adored the first movie but I totally get why a lot of folks who thought it was just okay are delighted with the direction things are going. Personally, I just found things a bit rushed on a character level, which was the element that was so charming in the first, admittedly un-Sonic-gamey movie. They hit every note you would want and expect, they just hit them VERY VERY FAST and it does feel like a game where you see an emotional cutscene, the screen fades, and then you begin an action level immediately after lol. Nothing is precisely missing, but quite a lot is kind of just ... told, not really shown.

I adored Shadow, as expected, and was very happy with how they adapted SA2's story generally, but I felt he suffered some of the same problems Tails did in the previous movie, which is that there was too much ground to cover to really develop his emotional arc. It exists, but there's no meat to it, nothing to chew at all, it's a meal replacement shake, one gulp just to get a taste, second gulp, gone. Sonic, too, has a perfunctory character arc in the movie, but it's very shallow: we're told what it is, it occupies a very few minutes of screentime and then resolves in the only way it possibly could. The previous two films felt like we were really seeing things through Sonic's eyes, for the most part; that's really not the case here, and I struggle to describe whose eyes we ARE really looking through, other than Dr. Robotnik.

And that brings me to probably the aspect of the movie I enjoyed the least, even though that's going to be entirely YMMV for people on an individual basis: there was too much Jim Carrey for me, lol. Way, way too much. For obvious reasons, there's a lot of Robotnik in this movie, but it isn't just an issue of lots of screentime: this story is honestly Robotnik's story more than it is anyone else's, and that was ... kind of a bummer to me? Again, a lot of folks disliked how much the previous two movies focused on the human characters, and here, that has been drastically scaled back for everyone else, but seemingly every moment of that screentime is now occupied by Jim Carrey. And he's very good, and very funny, and I'm not even mad about it, but I do wish some of that time had gone to Shadow instead, or indeed, Sonic himself. Creating an emotional journey for a character who didn't really need one and is arguably better without it felt like a shame when it came at the expense of Shadow's story, and I found myself honestly sort of hoping for a new villain in the next movie. It feels like we're running out of juice to squeeze here.

But, end of the day, I AM still completely looking forward to another movie, now more than ever, and truthfully, I'm not sure I've ever wanted to see a Sonic movie MORE than I want to see Sonic 4, lol.

So TL;DR 2: go see Sonic 3 at once and draw lots of fanarts and write lots of fanfics. It hits pretty much all the right notes, it just hits a few of them too loud and misses a few of the spaces between.

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 20

Another Milestone everybody you know what that means! Time for another instance of me trying to be a little extra! 

And today we have a very special piece, cause this ones based directly on a previously mentioned fanfic by Val! Which I will now link!

Chapter 1 of Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed (Give it a read!)

I tried to be a bit more meticulous with this one, for example, I made sure to put the two in their school blazers rather than the outfits featured in the games. Mostly thanks to an offhand mention in the early chapter that Mikan was putting on that outfit. And since this takes place in a Non-Despair AU the two are just attending highschool as normal, so no need to have them wearing their Killing Game attire during school hours. This being a Non-Despair AU is also why Junko’s wearing the hair accessories more commonly associated with Mukuro’s Disguise. As while Monokuma has been talked about in the timeline of Val’s Junkan stories, as far as my memory will allow there’s never been a noted instance of Junko wearing her Monokuma Clips.

Is this me reading into it too much? Was none of that even remotely the intention? No clue! Never thought to ask Val about it, bit late for it too!

(Future Jem Typing) With a lot of hindsight now I realize I might not have been as accurate to Junko's uniform design? (Future Jem No longer Typing) Honestly once the event is further underway I wouldn’t be surprised if I went in and did some cleanup and full linework, color, etc (possibly a full remake if I'm crazy) for this one. I would have done so now but as mentioned in the previous post, burnout for this project is kinda crazy right now. But as my first proper gift to Val as thanks for her work with this ship, I’m still pretty happy with it! Tried to be as close as possible to the original text as I could.

There is a part of me that feels bad letting my bias bleed through a lot in this project, because this is not going to be the last time I draw something either directly based on or inspired by one of her fics. But also given that this entire event would not exist without the amount of work she’s put into writing these two, or the motivation she gave me early on in the project, I think it is mildly warranted in this instance. 

And don’t worry, I do have a few days lined up that are influenced by other authors, moreso in the latter half. Hopefully that’ll be a good counterbalance. 

Once again, go read that fic, it’s one of my favorite reads among Fanfic, and both it and the rest of Val’s work deserves your attention! . . . in my totally unbiased opinion. adsjfjlsdjfhsa

[princehendir]

I am so desperate to hear you say more abt Varric because you're right

Do you mind if I kinda babble here for a bit.

Okay so, Like the obvious counterpoint to what I'm speculating here, just to get it out of the way, is "actually Varric is just unfuckable because he has a wretched personality and politics", which I would say is fair except for the fact that has literally never stopped dragon age fans before so why would that stop them now? Clearly there's some other factor or factors at work here, even if they aren't the ones that I'm getting at.

But anyways. I really do think that what makes it most obvious that the State of Varric fanfic has a lot to do with attractiveness and body type standards and the baggage people have in regards to them is just, like, reading any of the Varric fic that actually does exist. Or fic for any dwarven character really.

It's hard to be specific about what I'm talking about here because I'm like, allergic to the idea of directly quoting or even just vagueing other people's fanfiction, even when it's bad. So I'll just say dude. Duuuuude I've read some crazy things, ranging from "This is awkwardly written because the author has never described a man that isn't a hunk or a twink." to "wow. Jesus Christ. Oh my god. You cannot describe a person's body like that what's wrong with you". Like often there's this kind of, thin film of disgust over all the physical descriptions. Or there's a vibe of "you find this strangely attractive even though it shouldn't be. This is attractive but it's objectively strange and weird" in the narration that I'm usually used to finding in monsterfucker fic? But it's layered over descriptions of just totally normal traits that humans irl also have instead of like, you know, tentacles. Which obviously feels pretty bad.

And this is honestly a much bigger thing because the source material is also weird about dwarves & attractiveness. Between word of god comments from writers, to in-game ambient dialogue in the Rose, codex/war table text, and just the fact that while it's not too terrible and there's some other stuff going on there, the idea of women being attracted to Varric is largely treated as a joke, the general vibe you get from most of the da series is that if you aren't dwarven yourself, being attracted to dwarves makes you at best kind of a harmless fetishist and at worst, a huge pervert, derogatory.

So there's a lot to unpack there already but it's still really sad that once again fandom can't collectively manage to be any better than the source material, even when the source material is like, dragon age. Famous bad game dragon age. Like fandom is sooo progressive but cannot manage to be collectively better than dave gaider. Okay.

[sincerely-sofie]

Chapter 7 of Sofie Plays "Slay the Princess": The Stranger

STRANGER DANGER STRANGER DANGER STRANGER DANGER STR---

[ Beginning ] - [ Previous Part ] - [ Next Part ]

The Narrator is a doofus (derogatory) and Ultra Princess (whose name I can't recall--- did she even give one?) lightly chastised me when I tried to sit in the woods forever to have a tantrum over it. >:(

I can't truly express this to all you folks watching at home, but the parallax / scrolling effect that has been ever-present throughout the game is entirely cattywampus in this cabin.

One day, mirror... *clenches fist* one day...

I left the blade behind again. I probably should take it with me one of these days. That doesn't really matter right now, though, because I'm too unsettled by the combination of my fear of heights and these stairs lacking any form of guardrails.

This brick joke is slowly growing on me. Used to hate it and use it as a means of fueling my distrust of the Narrator, but now it's a little comforting whenever I see it. I need to write a fanfic of this game once I'm done and use it in some kind of funny way.

Oh dear. It's an arbitrary choice that will likely have a significant impact on how this run goes... Split the difference, I guess? We'll take the center staircase.

This 100% symbolizes the various Princesses, doesn't it? Oh goodie! I'll wait to trigger the dialogue advancing so I can examine it and---

GEE THANKS PRINCESS. NOW I'M COMING DOWN FROM A HEART ATTACK AND I DIDN'T GET TO ANALYZE THAT SCREEN BECAUSE OF YOU ADVANCING THE TEXT FOR ME.

Okay the contrarian is growing on me. "Wow, what an utterly indescribable and fundamentally unsettling, eldritch experience. Time to be a rascally rogue once more!"

(Lego Movie Robot Background Character Voice) Her face is so generic it matches every other face in our database!

*deep, deep sigh* CONTRARIAN.

Okay I succumbed to the shoulder devil that is the Contrarian and...

... Those shouldn't be highlighted all at once. Sad that there's such a glaring issue in a published game. I'll select the option to leave her in the basement and OH SHOOT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THAT WAY.

Welp. At least we can match, right?

I DO NOT LIKE MATCHING ANYMORE.

Contrarian pls I need a joke save me

Phenomenal voice acting here! I hate it.

Dangit, I wanted to see if I could even help her! You have horrible timing, Ultra Princess.

Alright besties, time to check on how the glow-up's coming along!!!!!!!!! :DDDD

I think we might need to switch up our skincare routine.

Absolutely fascinating dialogue option that is giving me emotions and I need to sit and ponder all of it for a bit.

I finally asked the Narrator if there's some sort of reward I'll receive for slaying the princess--- he answered in the affirmative. Is the reward just a continued existence? Riches? Power? Immortality?

Okay yeah no I pressed him on the subject and he's totally pulling this out of his rear. There's no reward.

This time I'm going to manage to free her--- or try as best I can, at least. Hopefully without any dismemberment this time.

(Continuing this in the next post!)

[awardenandacrow]

Hey! 22 or 17 for the Rook story time prompts!

So I initially was going to jump on 22, because my knee jerk reaction was to laugh at the thought of Naimeryn teaching someone else a skill. BUT, then I remembered that I have this headcannon that Naimy wouod totally wash everyone’s laundry for them, kind of out of habit to fill the time, but also kind of as a “I care about you so I will voluntarily do for you this thing I was for years FORCED to do”, and then I was that gif of excited Chris Pratt as this idea came to me. So, I will circle back to prompt 22 at a later date, and right now here’s the answer to Story Time Prompt 17: Rook teaches someone a new skill.

This functions as FANFIC SNIPPET 37; and will chronologically fall shortly after the snippet where the Bellara and Lucanis find out Naimy’s favorite breakfast food is pancakes.

[Lucanis finds out Naimeryn does everyone’s laundry for them.]

——————————————————————————

“Rook? What are you doing?”

“Oh, Lucanis!” Naimeryn squeaked, jumping and dropping several of the linens off the top of her basket. She turned to face him so she could see him. He looked surprised to have startled her.

“Sorry,” she said before he could speak, stooping to pick up what she’d dropped with one hand, holding the basket against her hip with the other. “I didn’t hear — or see — you leave the pantry.”

“Apologies,” he returned. “I did not mean to startle you.”

Naimeryn straightened up and shrugged with a shy smile. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m just still getting used to the dead zone.”

She waved her left hand next to her face good-naturedly. A thought occurred to her, and she quickly dropped her hand. A master assassin would probably think someone who was half-deaf and half-blind an unfit leader. She smoothed her tunic over her thigh anxiously.

Lucanis watched her for a moment, then said “You… didn’t answer my question. What is all that?”

“Oh! It’s everyone’s laundry. I try to do it on days I don’t have to leave the Lighthouse. Make sure everyone’s sheets are nice and fresh, that kind of thing. I know it’s only been a few days, and you don’t really… sleep. But, do you want me to do yours?”

Lucanis frowned. “You… do the team’s laundry?”

“Yeah…” Naimeryn’s chest squeezed. Was that… wrong? “It’s just something small I can do so no one else has to worry about it, you know?”

Lucanis looked unconvinced. “Doesn’t the Lighthouse just… provide clean sheets?”

Naimeryn opened her mouth. Shut it again. She hadn’t thought about that. “Oh… I don’t know. I found the laundry room right after Bellara moved in and I just… started doing it.”

“Do the others know?”

“I… I don’t know that either. Does it matter?”

“I feel like I’m upsetting you.”

“*No,*” Naimeryn said quickly, dropping more of the laundry as she reached out to touch his arm reassuringly. Quickly pulled her hand back. What if he didn’t like being touched? She shouldn’t be overly familiar. They’d really just met. “No, no, I — *ow*!”

They’d both bent down to pick up the fallen laundry at the same time, and their heads had collided.

“I am *so* sorry,” Naimeryn said miserably as he rubbed his head. “I — I’m gonna just. Go.”

“You have a lot there,” Lucanis said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “Would you like some help?”

“I —“ Naimeryn didn’t know what to say. No one had ever offered to help her with a chore before. Would it be all right to accept his help? Before she could decide, he’d gathered the fallen items in his arms.

“Let me help,” he said firmly. Naimeryn felt her cheeks flush at how earnestly he was looking at her.

“All right,” she mumbled. “It’s this way.”

She led him past the stairs up to the deck, to the stairs that lead down, beneath the dining hall. It was still strange to her how the room had simply not existed when she’d first explored the Lighthouse, but once there were four of them, the stairs had just… appeared.

“I must warn you,” Lucanis said, stepping onto her right side as they walked down together. Her heart fluttered. What was wrong with her? “I have never done laundry in my life.”

Naimeryn started to laugh, then caught his expression. “*Never*?”

He shook his head. “I’m the First Talon’s grandson. We had servants for that.”

*Servants?* a nasty voice prickled at the back of her mind. *Or* slaves?

Naimeryn swallowed the thought and forced herself to smile at him. “I guess that makes sense. I guess I never really thought about how lucrative being a Crow must be.”

“Our services are *very* expensive,” he allowed with a slight bob of his head.

“Good thing Varric’s coffers are paying then,” Naimeryn wanted to sound carefree, but nerves stirred deep in her core. It never occurred to her to think about the money. “Anyway, here we are.”

She walked to the large round tub at the center of the room, reaching up to pull the chord to fill it with hot water.

“Where does the water come from, I wonder?” Lucanis said, more the himself than to her, setting the clothes and sheets in his arms on the stone edge of the tub.

“Hm, dunno,” Naimeryn eyed the spout as she put the basket down as well. “We’re basically right under the kitchen, so logistically it makes no sense. But then, Fade logic is its own beast.”

As the room filled with steam, Naimeryn went to the shelf and gathered the soaps and two washboards.

“This is not easy work,” Naimeryn warned Lucanis, turning back to him. He was already rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. Naimeryn swallowed thickly.

*Get it together!* she groaned internally. *They’re just forearms, Creators have mercy!*

“I am no stranger to hard work,” he cocked an eyebrow at her, further dizzying her feelings. “I did not mean to imply that.”

“Okay, Crow boy,” she smirked, opting to tease rather than reveal how uncomfortable she was making herself. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Unexpectedly, Lucanis proved an *excellent* listener. He followed her directions exactly as she explained how to measure out the proper amount of soap, and watched intently as she demonstrated washboard technique. Once he’d gotten the hang of it — it was a simple enough task, this was nearly immediately — they settled into a rhythm, and a companionable silence.

Naimeryn found she rather enjoyed his company. She supposed it could have been any of her companions, really; it was just nice to not have to be alone, even while doing something as mundane as washing clothes. He needn’t even have been helping. She supposed he could just have easily been reading a book or, she didn’t know, sharpening his knives. Just having him in the same space at the same time was… comforting.

Once the clothes were washed, she showed him how to hang things on the lines to ensure they dried completely — spread out, nothing overlapping. When they were done, she admired their handiwork and smiled at him with her hands on her hips.

“Not bad for a first-timer,” she teased.

“The credit all goes to my instructor,” he smirked. Naimeryn’s cheeks burned again, and she ducked her head.

“You were an attentive student.”

[smaller-comfort]

2024 fanfic year-in-review!

tagged by @tearitar tagging @ocelly, @kyuohki, and @the-starry-lycan if you want- and anyone else who'd like to!

number of stories posted to ao3: 14- which averages out to more than 1 a month and that's fucking astonishing

word counted posted for last year: 107,457 WHAT. Granted 10k of that was Love Is War which mostly was written in 2010 but STILL.

For some perspective, my total ao3 word count, which includes stuff I wrote going back to 2005, is 144k. That's a 289% increase! what! the! fuck!

fandoms i wrote for: Sea of Stars, The Messenger, Twice Dead King/Warhammer 40k, and Assassin's Creed.

pairings: Aephorul/Resh'an (philosopher's bone(r)); B'st/Resh'an (musical theorems); Oltyx/Yenekh (monster boyfriends); Djoseras/Zultanekh; Altair/Malik/Maria; Monk/Ninja

stories with the most kudos, bookmarks and comment threads: Hilariously, Love Is War has the most kudos. I'm not sure it should count, though. (I promised an update, and I swear I'll do it this year.) Love Is War and A Certain Slant of Light are tied for most bookmarks. And Hotel California has the most comment threads and second-highest kudos, which makes sense because it's got the highest chapter count.

work i’m most proud of (and why): Every time this question comes up I seem to have a different answer- right now I'm  proudest of Love Is Not All, because it was my first exchange fic and I was leery of my ability to finish. It pushed me way out of my comfort zone, and I'm proud of myself for that.

And I think it's a very fun story overall, but my favorite part is the ending- it kind of wraps up with my thesis statements for both characters as they approach biotransference. Djoseras in particular is an extremely difficult character for me to get my head around, and when I wrote out that scene it really helped to make him click in my head. (It's the closing scene, but it was one of the first parts that I wrote.)

work i’m least proud of (and why): I love all my children equally! Once something gets to the point of being posted, I have to be proud of it.

There are certainly places where I think I could improve, but a lot of that comes down to my writing style shifting over the course of the year. I'm still trying to figure out my own voice.

(I'm not that satisfied with the shopkeeper chapter of hotel california)

share or describe a favorite review you received: man. every comment is cherished, but some of the comments/responses to Dreaming Still and A Light Exists In Spring made me cry.  I was in kind of a "crawl into a hole and never speak to anyone ever again" frame of mind when I first posted Dreaming Still, so those comments were the blessed dopamine shot I needed to get my head back in order. And for ALEiS, it was the weirdest/most niche thing I'd written at that point, and I was not expecting such an enthusiastic response. For both of those stories, I had comments that pointed out themes I hadn't even realized I was writing- and as a writer, that's really the most incredible feeling in the world.

Also shout out to that person who comment-spammed most of my SoS fic with tons of quotes and emojis. You are a shining star in the sky, a bright beacon of light in the darkness, I owe you my life/my firstborn/a slice of cake, etc.

Sea of stars fandom has spoiled me rotten when it comes to comments, and I love all of you.

a time when writing was really, really hard:  uggghhhh right now actually. Christmas killed my momentum and now I keep making hissing noises at all of my wips instead of actually writing anything. words r hard, brain iz dumb.

Summer was rough as well, although in retrospect I actually got quite a bit of writing done. My brain was being astonishingly awful for a lot of it.

a scene or character you wrote that surprised you: 

Aephorul, in general. Most of Save Scumming. The way B'st just completely came in with a steel chair and usurped Resh'an's spot as my favorite character- though in retrospect, that shouldn't be surprising, given that he's kind of tailor-made to appeal to me.

The last chapter of Hotel California happened almost entirely by accident. I later found out that the Shopkeeper/Muse theory is a pretty common one, but at the time it made me feel slightly feral. Shared fandom braincell; the games force you to extrapolate a lot, and its very fun to see what conclusions people arrive at independently.

a favourite excerpt of your writing: 

“I don't blame you." Aephorul turned to lean his head against Resh'an's, and press a kiss against his brow. "Not anymore.” “Maybe you believe that, too.” He closed his eyes, listening to the echo of the false heartbeat in Aephorul's body. “And maybe we're both better at lying to ourselves than anyone else ever was.” Aephorul's arms tightened around him. He didn't say anything; there was nothing more to be said. They held each other together, and the stars moved in their slow, inevitable circuit above them.  > Continue? Maybe not quite yet; you can rest here a little longer. You've got all the time in the world.

I get excited whenever I can tie things in different stories/different scenes together. The cyclical mirroring thing that Resh'an and Aephorul do in all my fic is mostly intentional, and kind of integral to the way I approach their characters. So the way the ending to Save Scumming refers back to the ending to Loser Takes All is one of my favorite things about it.

(But I'll be honest, sometimes this happens unintentionally; there's a really funny repetition in YMTE(E) that I didn't catch until after I posted chapter 2, but I actually love that it's there.

Theres that post that's like "sometimes as a reader you just want nine carrot cakes in a row" and I have embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly.)

how did you grow as a writer last year: I wrote so many words! So many. Just an absurd number of words, gosh.

I think I'm getting better at taking risks and being less apologetic about what I write.  Don't get me wrong- I do think I'm hot shit, actually. I'm not reflexively apologizing for the quality of my writing, just the content; the mortifying ordeal of being known gets me every time. I used to get hysterically panicked every time I posted something, and now I don't, mostly. Progress!

how do you hope to grow this year:  I'd like to try writing longer, plottier things; there are some wips (outshine the sun, the obyron/zahndrekh thing) that I've been avoiding because I'm not confident enough in my ability to execute. I'd like to find that confidence.

Also 2025 is the year of the snake so idk I should really write more monsterfucking. Get weirder and hornier about everything, write some new kinks, push myself further out of my comfort zone.

who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer, beta, cheerleader, etc.): so many people. most of what I wrote this year probably wouldn't have happened at all if not for the friends I've made here on tumblr. Fandom is this perpetual game of "yes, and" and it's been a delight getting to play it with all of you.

I struggle a lot with making and maintaining connections with other people in general, so just know that if we've talked or interacted at all over the past year, it means a lot to me.

anything from your real life show up in your writing last year: ahahaha oh god. Well, the setting for my modern AU is really just places I've lived with the serial numbers sandblasted off. And in lieu of doing actual research, I'm just pulling from my own memories of the early 2000s for the college-era au. (It's not autobiographical at all; my memory is so fucked that it's really just vibes at this point anyway. But those vibes specifically are very much 'being queer and closeted during the bush administration wasn't great, actually.')

There's also a bunch of the medical/mental health stuff that comes from my day job, but most of that is pretty obscure. Again, rather than actually doing research, I prefer to just absorb the stuff that's going on around me at any given time. Sometimes this is my growing familiarity with all the ICD-10 F codes, and sometimes this is all the things I wish I didn't know about my coworkers' sex lives. *sighs very, very deeply*

any projects you’re looking to starting (or finishing) this year: I don't really think ahead about starting things; I'm kind of always just flying by the seat of my pants. But I definitely want to write more snecrons, and finish all of my current posted wips. So, Love Is War; the parting is all we know of heaven series (which has an actual plot trajectory, I swear); You, Me, Them, Everybody (Everybody); Devotional. And then there are the wips that haven't gotten posted yet, like all the various Etudes stories, the sequel to Save Scumming, and half a dozen other modern AU things.

I'd love to clean up/expand some of my very old ffvi fic, too. Mostly, I'm looking forward to writing more! It's been a trip; I hope 2025 is just as productive.

[anulithots]

So I found this on bird app :

"i only like ge/go when it’s doomed and they have no longterm future

same with go/ge. they’re about the same to me but i think gojo bottomed more and was a total pillow princess about it in their teens. as adults they probably switched equally. i can see gojo developing his experience more with topping as an adult

either way they’re better as exes. gojo deserves more from a partner than someone who would leave him to start a cult "

Can I ask your thoughts, please?

………… I don't ship them sexually. Because I'm not comfortable with it.

(I have aroace spectrum satosugu headcannons I'm quite fond of. So basically I ship them queer platonically and semi-romantically and flip flop between the two.)

Sorry about that!

But in terms of are they better off being okay with being apart, or if they should stay together regardless…

Complex answer. Depends on the context really.

They loved each other a lot. And I disagree with 'Gojo deserves a better partner than someone who left him to start a cult'. Like… he does but also… that's not the entirety of the situation?

If Geto loved Gojo, why didn't he try to recruit him? by @ellionwrites

How much Geto canonically loved Gojo by @ellionwrites

These two analysis's explain it very well. Also there's a fanfic called Carry me home that is just 100/10. Character analysis interwoven and it perfectly explains this part of Geto's motivations.

Geto COULD NOT go on for much longer without coming to a breaking point. His cursed teqnique requires him to go through painful experiences over and over and over again. The very coping mechanism he prided himself on ('I do this to protect non-sorcerers') has fallen to pieces and Gojo isn't there (for his own reasons). He's grappling with his entire sense of self and it's been repeating in his head for A YEAR.

And Geto did not want to confront Gojo during the whole 'kfc breakup scene'. (Again, analysis above explains it really well.)

Shoko called him there. For good reason. I don't think either Shoko or Gojo had a good idea of just how bad it was getting because Geto (a) didn't tell anyone (b) Gojo was doing 'okay' (he wasn't) and (c) Geto's strong in morals and in resolve. He'll be okay.

(Gojo especially believes this. Strong sorcerers stay safe. Especially Geto. I have… a lot of posts talking about how Gojo depends on Geto to be around him when interacting and just… existing in general.

Gojo gets so fixated on being stronger so he wouldn't make the same mistakes like with Riko. He isolates himself to do so. ~~~ Backstory ~~ explains this.

The Gojo clan isolated Gojo, told him he's the strongest, and gave him rules and responsibilities for that - along with safety and confidence. So - in Gojo's mind - the only way to get stronger is to double down on these things. More responsibility. More isolation. He'll be able to take care of things once he gets stronger. )

LONG STORY SHORT -

Geto's ideal was fixing the world - partially for Gojo as the strongest, partially for himself because he was struggling and didn't have any foothold.

And… listen… sometimes you have to take priority over your partner. I don't think the way Geto went about it was right, by any means, but… at least he did something, he had to.

At the end of the day, the system is to blame. It's the system that drove them both to this and it's the system that let it perpetuate.

But let's say they met right before JJK0-ish and decided to forget the world for a little while and escape from it all together.

It would be… strained to say the least.

Because they are canonically soulmates. A pair. Do not separate. But they have and it's been going on for ten years despite the fact that they both very much still love each other.

Gojo just couldn't leave the society that gave him meaning (other reasons too), Geto couldn't leave the thing that gave him meaning.

Does that indicate that they do not love each other/shouldn't be together because they both value their respective ideologies? No.

(We're going to ignore Geto's whole 'kill the monkeys' thing for a second and pretend like it's just an opposing idealogology for the sake of the argument <3)

The circumstances, their respective coping mechanisms, and the system, very much the system, makes it so they went their separate ways. Just because their ideals got caught up in this thing and they went for their own paths does not mean they don't love each other and wouldn't jump at the chance to have a 'perfect world' with the other in it.

(the sunset scene, Geto's death scene… need I say more?)

If the society decided that "… maybbeee we shouldn't put all this traumatic pressure on children and say that the only answer is isolation and acceptance and instead give them the help and support they need" then Geto and Gojo would've stayed together.

But it wouldn't have been JJK then, would it? Without the friendship that haunts the narrative?

Sorry if I'm rambling, what I'm trying to say is - it's complicated. The story itself drove them apart and canonically they never got back together while mourning their separation the entire time.

And Gojo never moved on, never let go. If you wanted to - and this is something I played around with in my head - and if JJK miraculously got rewritten as a slice-of-life post hidden inventory, then part of GOjo's arc could be about letting go of Geto, as painful as that may be.

But honestly? Comfort people are hard to find. Geto and Gojo were specifically created to be a pair. Gojo was so detatched from the world that Geto tethered him to it. After Geto left, Gojo went on to be a teacher and do what the Suguru he remembers would've wanted him to do, and he 'doesn't feel lonely anymore'…

Gojo loves his students dearly, but he can't ask his students to understand him. And more than anything, Gojo wants to be understood and loved for it. The only one who fit that criteria was Geto.

(Gojo's whole sentiment about 'not as a human, but as a living creature' is Gojo saying that he (a) didn't feel human without Geto there (b) didn't let himself feel human and instead made himself a tool, gave himself the role of the strongest.

Because otherwise Riko happens all over again.

ANNNDDD I'm going off on a ramble.

Last point!

Narratively, should Gojo and Geto be a tradegy, where they never get back together? (AKA, as it is in cannon)

Yes. That is a huge part of their characters, along with being a huge draw to JJK in general. There's something about the separation exemplifying how much SatoSugu loved each other that gives it nuance and the possibility for lots of fix it fics.

So I can understand why the bird poster thought that SatoSugu works a lot as a tragedy, it does. But if SatoSugu had a well-written redemption arc, that would also be extremely compelling I think.

But alas, this is JJK we're talking about.

Thank you for the ask! This was fun to ramble about at 2am.

[lorkonsghost]

I'm sad today for a few reasons work, and the soon to be three year anniversary of a friends death I will now tell you why I prefer bad mother Talia and why his favorite Robin was Damian Wayne. My friend was raised from birth to 14 years old not knowing who his dad was and mildly abusive mother I don't want talk about all thing she did because she's going to take up most of story and the sole reason my friend dead so fuck her. But when my friend was 14 because his mom got fired from her job and she didn't want to actually go looking for a job she dropped my friend off at his bio dads told him he was his son and left. Now like Damian he looked just like his dad and his dad had no clue he had a kid and unlike Damian he had no siblings and his mom 100% had no good relationship with his dad and definitely took advantage of drunk college kid who 16 years younger than her. So imagine your 35 year old man and the woman who he had sex with once almost 15 years ago tells you have kid and he looks like you but dose that even matter she just abandon her kid at his door step and like Bruce Wayne he doesn't kick the kid out or blame the kid but has DNA test done to prove he his well you know what happened he was his kid. So know he goes to court to get parental rights so he doesn't have to go back with his mom. Now some more Damian Wayne similarities he was angry who had undiagnosed autism who was neglected by his mother was desperately touched starved but his dad was a saint and tried to help him the best ways he could. Let me tell you I wish this story had happy ending but he got good few years after that we met up read comics together at my place since me and my family have decent comic collection I can't remember the run name on top of my head but we read the run Damian was introduced he was so happy a kid who had same shit hand dealt I remember my first time reading hating how Talia was depicted but now it my favorite Talia because everytime I read it I remember my friend and his shit hand and how his dad tried to help his son. Now I should explain why it's his mom fault my friend dead he was diagnosed with something I don't feel totally ok with sharing since you could find out who was with it but safe to say he was told he needed to be in assisted living situation shortly after his mom tried to force the court to put him under her care again since she would be given tax exemption from him just living their and she hired a really good lawyer and my friend saw his and his father's hand in the case and their was a good chance she could take him back so instead of even chance with living with her again he killed himself the trail never even made it to court. This is why I like bad mother Talia because every time I write something she deserves her getting her just deserts I feel a little better it's or anything bad happening to her I know it was the creator being islamophobic I don't care if can write legally distinct fanfic about a person who I hate and getting beaten up I'll take it.

I feel like you guys are owed some more facts about him he used to call his dad his Batman when he talked about him. He eventually had a step mother who actually tried to be a mom but sadly she only knew him for a few months I remember her crying the hardest at his funeral how it wasn't fair she couldn't hold him longer apparently she couldn't have children so when she learned her boyfriend at the time had a kid although he was adult she was happy. He liked Godzilla a lot he had some of black and white movies. He was the only person I ever met who liked the batman and Robin movie the one bat suit nipples and Mr freeze. He had hated when people ignored him he would start to hit your arm until you at least acknowledged his existence he tried this once with a teacher and he got detention so fast. He wanted to work in 3d animation. He owned but never read the homestuck epilogue books. I only got one thing from him sadly his 3d model folder I would show you guys his work but I can't look at his art without crying so I rather not.

Goodbye my friend my Damian Wayne from your Jon Kent

[floralcyanide]

Last Chance to Lose Your Keys

Austin Butler x Reader

request: Can you write a fanfic we’re Austin is so madly in love with the reader and wants to be more then friends they start dating and have the time of their life while together. And the reader can be whatever you want and the story can also be who ever you want. But can the two have a kiss I the fanfic at times. by @austinstyles

warnings: from Austin's POV, gender neutral reader, fluff.

summary: Austin has some trouble with how he feels about you, but what he doesn't know is that you feel the same.

word count:1063

author’s note: hello hello! here's the 4th request for my 2k celebration! I hope everyone enjoys (:

masterlist | add yourself to the taglist here | 2k celebration prompts here | request a prompt here or in my asks.

"I've been thinking about you and me girl, and we've got something going on.”

You’ve got this. You’ve totally got this.

I brush off my button-up for the tenth time, trying my best to get rid of the non-existent wrinkles. I tousle my freshly cut hair a little again, studying my reflection in the mirror timidly. Shaking myself out, I take a few deep breaths before forcing myself away from the mirror and out of my bedroom. I quickly grab my keys and head out of the front door, trying to convince myself that my plan will go exactly how I keep imagining it. Today was going to be the day.

Trying to keep myself pumped up, I played some Elvis on the way to Y/N’s house. We were having a movie night like we always do every weekend, but this time it was different. This time, I’m telling them how I feel about them. Usually, I’m cool and collected, but whenever I’m around them, that facade just melts away. I find myself stuttering and struggling to find the right words to say. I get this fluttery feeling in my stomach, and my heart races every time we hang out. We’ve been friends for so long, and a part of me is afraid they don’t feel the same about me. But I guess we’re about to find out. 

When I pull up to Y/N’s place, my heart begins to thump wildly in my chest, and my palms start feeling clammy. I remind myself to take deep breaths, so I don’t get too overwhelmed. I force myself out of my car and make my way toward their front door. I stand there awkwardly for a moment, wondering if I should knock on the door and go through with this. What if they don’t feel the same? What if they laugh in my face? What if-

“Hey, Aus! You okay?” they open the door, their face falling in concern at my visible nervousness.

“Oh, yeah, of course! Just had too much coffee, is all,” I lie, smiling to cover it up.

Y/N steps aside for me to walk through the doorway, and I enter their place. They go to sit on the couch and motion for me to join them. There are snacks all over the coffee table, ranging from popcorn to sweets. I sit down on the couch but not directly next to them. They furrow their eyebrows at me for a moment but then focus their attention on the tv.

“So, what are we watching tonight?” they ask me, scrolling through the various streaming apps.

“I haven’t had time to think about that,” I say, “Maybe we can finish watching that show we started a few weeks ago?”

“Good idea,” Y/N says, opening Netflix.

I try to focus on the show, but my mind wanders anxiously. How do I bring up that I need to talk to them without worrying them? What do I even say? I can’t just blurt out, “Hey! I am lowkey in love with you!” I try to push away the thoughts, turning my attention back on the show. But still, my imagination keeps getting the best of me. For a while, everything seems fine. Well, to me, anyway. We’re into our second episode of the night when Y/N suddenly pauses the show.

“Are you okay? You’re acting weird,” they frown, studying my face for any giveaways.

“Of course I’m okay, and why do you say that?” I scratch my head.

“Because you have hardly said a word so far, you haven’t dug into any snacks, and this show always makes you laugh, and you haven’t laughed once.”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair, “I’ve been thinking about you and I. A lot.”

“What about you and I?” they ask, a concerned expression still etched on their face.

“I have feelings for you,” I gulp.

A look of realization crosses their face, and then a big smile.

“So you’re telling me the Austin Butler has a crush on me?” Y/N jokes.

“Yes,” I say, nervously looking them in the eye, searching for any hint of rejection.

“I have feelings for you too, I’m not gonna lie,” they confess, scratching the back of their neck, “I figured I’d have to hide it forever, but I’m glad I don’t have to anymore.”

“Really?” I ask, raising my eyebrows in surprise. They like me back?

“Yes, really,” they chuckle, “But the thing is, what are we gonna do about it?”

“I have a few ideas,” I say, feeling bold.

“And what are they?”

“This,” I say, moving closer to Y/N and grabbing the back of their neck, pulling them into a kiss.

They kiss back, and I try not to smile into the embrace. Finally.

The rest of the evening is spent watching the show and cuddling on the couch. We decided to take things slow and plan a first date, nothing too serious. A coffee date that following Monday is the final decision. We sit in the back of the coffeehouse, where it’s somewhat private, and we often sneak kisses when there’s no one around. 

“I like kissing you,” Y/N smiles when she pulls away from yet another kiss.

“I like kissing you, too,” I smile back, and it feels like there are hearts where my eyes should be.

That Friday, we went out to dinner and had a great time. When we leave, I sneak my hand into theirs as we walk to the car. They beam at me, their face bashful at the gesture. We arrive at their home, and I walk them to their door, our hands still grasping each other. 

“I had fun,” Y/N says, and I nod in agreement.

“We should definitely do it again sometime,” I say, looking into their eyes.

They lean into me, connecting our lips for the first time tonight. I let go of their hand, running my now free hand around the back of their head and through their hair. After a few minutes, we both reluctantly pulled away.

“See you later,” they say, smiling at me before heading inside.

I stand there momentarily, wondering how I should surprise them with another date. As I walk back to the car, I keep mentally pinching myself because I can’t believe this is real and they like me back. I never thought I’d be so lucky.

taglist:

@anangelwhodidntfall @butlersluvbot @austinbutler17 @misspygmypie @mamaspresley @mirandastuckinthe80s @sodonebruh @lizzymizzy-blogg @defnotreadingfanfics12 @izzvoid @homebodybirkin2003 @thatonemoviefan @sarachacha @kittenlittle24 @alltheflowerstomav @tubble-wubble @annamarie16 @adoreyouusugar @amiets2 @mrs-butler @ari-nicole @austin-butlers-gf @feral4austinbutler @inlovewithchrisevans @shynovelist @mommy-maia @karamelcoveredolicity @thtguyovrthere @starry-night-20 @coldonexx @hangmanswhorey @mavericksicybabe @coco-bitch @bobthefishiesworld @emmymaehereeeeee @myguiltypleasures21 @rainydayz101 @finelineskies @cryingabtab @kaitaesupremacy @ash-omalley @latenighttalking13 @tom-whore-dleston @cece05 @poppet05 @every-dayiwakeup  @whore-for-hewitt @butlerslut @rosepresley @fangirl125reader

[flock-of-cassowaries]

I’m having a deep think right now about the overlaps and the differences between the appeal of fascism, and that of libertarianism.

On one level, this is because I am writing a Sucession fanfic, and trying to get into Roman’s head.

But on another level only reason I’m even writing Succession fanfiction is that I identify with Roman, and that is in large part because he is a queer person who is philosophically in the thrall of his terrifying conservative father, whose love he desperately craves.

And once upon a time, that used to be me. And I feel deep and abiding shame about that.

(Not the sexy kind of shame. The devastating kind.)

But as I delve into philosophical discussions of fascism and conservatism (and honestly, I have not yet delved the deeply), I’m starting to realize that maybe I have less in common with Roman, and more with Connor (if we leave out his weird S3 white-nationalism dog whistles about the evils of onanism).

I’m basing a lot of this on the first chapter – which is all I have read so far - of “The Reactionary Mind” by Corey Robin; which I came upon via the source list for the linked YouTube video.

[link to “Endnote 2: White Fascism” by Innuendo Studios, on YouTube.]

Robin (if I’m understanding him correctly) posits that the end goal of conservatism is fundamentally Fishstick fascistic, and that the real animus driving political conservative movements is always the desire of the privileged to remain above those the existing social order oppresses.

I have certainly voted for, and carried water for, conservatives (a fact of which I am, again, deeply ashamed), but I don’t think that was ever the real appeal for me.

I’m not saying I didn’t internalize beliefs that were (I now realize) racist, classist, ableist, and elitist; but I don’t think that was ever the main draw, so much as a side effect of reading the goddamn National Post every fucking day

But for me, I think the main appeal of conservatism was the illusory promise of total self-sufficiency, and of being impossible to further hurt. It was the libertarian lie, bound up in the same nihilistic appeal as the Nine Inch Nails song whose hook is “Nothing can stop me now, cause I don’t care anymore.” (‘Piggy’ is the song.)

In this respect, I think I had more in common with Connor; I was also the discarded child who grew up to think of themself as “a flower that grows on rocks and feeds on the insect that land inside of it.”

Honestly, that soliloquy (from S4E2) could’ve been me at thirteen.

I felt rejected and shunned by the world, but I was also rapidly becoming aware that I could use my looks and intelligence as currency (just a Connor uses his literal currency as currency).

It was only when I was 21, and ended a long relationship, and found myself with no one to turn to, and no idea who I was, that my father swooped in to be my new best friend; and that’s when I became more Roman-like in my fawning attempts to appeal to him.

But I think Roman truly believes that his father is better than him, whereas a much more significant part of me always knew my own dad was a false prophet.

I think the world reaffirmed this belief in Roman, because his father has been so successful, and I think his father, concerned with legacy, has been much more active in fostering this mythology than my own father was.

(My dad would tend to just willfully ignore that l existed for several years at a stretch, if I was acting too cringe [i.e. not stereotypically conservative-lady feminine enough] for his conservative sensibilities; something I am assuming that Shiv could probably relate to.

The scene where Logan tells her he wants her back in the fold was very similar to what my father did with me when I was 21, and I glowed just the same way she did.)

But yeah, I think an internalized belief on Roman’s part that his father truly is better than him, and a desire to “be as good” as his father in order to redeem himself and overcome this inadequacy in his person, really feeds into Roman’s affinity for fascism / conservatism.

And I think that belief structure is with him in that bathroom with Mencken, unacknowledged and subconscious, and even more insidious than his conscious priorities of wanting to win points with Logan, and maaaaaybe wanting to be pushed to his knees and have a fascist phallus (a fascllus? I’m going to hell) thrust upon him.

Anyway, if anyone ever reads this, feel free to suggest some books / essays / videos to my reading list.

So far, in addition to the above-mentioned Cory Robbins tome, I am planning to actually finish “The Ur-Fascist” by Umberto Ecco, and to at least dip into “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Horkheimer and Adorno, and “The Authoritarian Personality” by Adorno.

[bottledfool]

Imma be real with you, Nomura is writing this, so I don't think he's trying to push some message about the value of remakes versus the value of fanfiction. I think he just can't help but turn everything he writes into Kingdom Hearts.

Near the end of the first game, the evil plot ghosts eventually merge together to make this thing:

It's a big spooky monster that throws black holes of magic at people in a place where the world appears to be ending and oh hey look at this totally unrelated recurring Kingdom Hearts boss fight

What's especially funny is that, until like the 95% mark, Remake follows the plot of the original almost completely, with only slight deviations being added for the purposes of expanding upon events. When Remake first came out, the common fan reaction was "Oh, this is the part Nomura worked on," since everything that happens in the final hour and a half of the game was basically just Kingdom Hearts again.

Rebirth is the same way. In order to make that fight with the evil plot ghosts happen in Remake, two of your party members are blessed with meta-knowledge of the events of the original game, so they know exactly what's supposed to happen.

The problem with this is that this makes it very difficult to write a story that in any way resembles the original, and the trailers made it very clear that Rebirth is, much like Remake, almost 100% faithful to the original story, with a few deviations in places where things are expanded. So off-screen, the plot ghosts just take away the characters' meta-knowledge, so the story is allowed to play out the way it did before. I don't know if this was course-correction, but it sure felt like it was.

It's only in the final couple of hours when Nomura, the creeping chaos, the lurking specter haunting this franchise, makes his return that you have to fight Hyperdimensional Fanfic Sephiroth with Zack and Aerith from another dimension.

Obviously, all art has some sort of intention behind it, but in Nomura's case, I sincerely doubt it's to make commentary on the value of remakes and fan content. I think he's got a style of story he likes to create, and while it doesn't fit at all with the original game's story, by god, he's going to fit that square peg into that round hole.

What I imagine - and this is purely based off what I think would be funny, rather than any evidence - is that Nomura was allowed to do basically whatever he wanted with the endings, but the rest of the games had to at least mostly adhere Final Fantasy 7's story. That's why, until right before the end, both Remake and Rebirth are mostly pretty normal and recognizable as the story of the original game.

It wouldn't surprise me if the third game - no doubt titled Final Fantasy 7 Revengeance - also dials things back for a bit, like making it so the Aerith that Cloud can see fades away for a while, or maybe something happens to make the cast forget that alternate dimensions exist, or something like that, because once you introduce that as a plot element that the characters know about, it's difficult to have a normal story after that.

Okay, so: the premise of the Final Fantasy VII remake is that the audience's demand for the remake to follow exactly the same plot as the original has manifested as a horde of evil ghosts who intervene in order to keep the story on the expected rails, with a particular emphasis on ensuring that characters in the remake die at the same times and under the same circumstances as their original counterparts. At the end of the remake's first instalment, Cloud and friends fight and defeat the king of the Evil Plot Ghosts, an act which breaks time and creates a multiverse where everybody's fanfic is real. Sephiroth subsequently merges with all the fanfic versions of himself and becomes some sort of fucked up metanarrative god. Later, Cloud simultaneously succeeds and fails in preventing Aerith's death, which partially dislocates him from the prime narrative reality, and he begins perceiving an adjacent fixit-fic universe where Zack never died. The Aerith of that universe then teams up with Cloud to fight Hyperdimensional Meta Bullshit Sephiroth, a battle that ends inconclusively when Sephiroth flees, stranding Zack-lives-universe Aerith in the prime narrative reality, though only Cloud can see her. The game closes with the revelation that, unbeknownst to everyone else, Sephiroth slipped the Black Materia into Cloud's pocket during their fight, setting in motion the events of the unpublished third instalment. Have I got all that straight?

[redbayly]

Hey, guys. I normally try to live free of drama, but drama sometimes just catches up to me. In the last 24 hours, someone started leaving some really rude reviews on one of my most popular fanfics on Fanfiction.net. Now, this is not something new. Despite how well-liked this particular fic is and how many wonderful, kind, and thoughtful reviews I’ve gotten, the nasty ones stand out.

These latest reviews were, by no means, the worst I’ve ever gotten. I once had someone spam me with some of the vilest, most disgusting insults and threats I have ever seen. What set these reviews apart is that they wrote them under their own account. Normally, these guys like to post their nastiness under the anon/guest heading, so it’s fairly simple to just delete them. Not so when posted under an account.

The messages, as I said, were initially just rude. Insulting my OCs (who were basically just background extras) and just generally not contributing any critique of substance on this roughly ten-year-old fanfic. They then left one neutral comment and then one actually kind of nice comment, but then completely shifted into saying I was making “stupid decisions” and that I was “going to destroy everyone’s character” before saying they were dropping the fic. 

They then wrapped it up by telling me to kill myself.

This is the first time I have ever had to report abuse. Again, I normally just delete anything hateful or rude because it’s usually anonymous, but I couldn’t do that here.

What’s more, no one ever, EVER, has any business telling someone to kill themselves. Not only is it incomprehensibly cruel, it is actually illegal to do online. I told my father (a retired lawyer) about what had happened and he said, “Yeah, no, they can’t do that, it’s a federal crime. If Fanfiction doesn’t do anything about it, that is a liability to them.” So I’m fairly confident that there will be some consequences for this person’s atrocious behavior.

Thing is, though, I’m not even angry about it. I’m just really disappointed that someone feels that it is acceptable to say such things to a stranger online. I had sent a couple PMs to them before I reported them, but got no response. I really do wonder what is so messed up in their life that they didn’t see what they were doing as wrong. The gentler, more nurturing side of me really wants to sit down with this person and ask if they are okay. 

I recently applied for a teaching job (English) and one of the things I’d like to do, if I get it, is teach my students about how to give good critique. I’ve seen too much toxic stuff online and I feel the best way to combat it is by teaching young people how to express their opinions on other people’s work in ways that are constructive and healthy. Part of the problem with reviewers like the one I dealt with, I think, is that they weren’t taught that disliking something doesn’t give you the right to be abusive. And that is something that needs to be learned as soon as possible.

All in all, though, despite how that person treated me, I just feel sorry for them. It doesn’t matter to me that they hated my fic. If I’m totally honest, I’ve fallen out of love with that fic, myself. But the amount of anger that has to exist inside of someone for them to tell another human being to kill themselves (over a crappy, old crackfic at that) speaks volumes about what kind of a place they are at in their life. I only hope they find better outlets for that anger than leaving comments like those. I have had some problems with mental health and suicidal thoughts in the past, so telling me to kill myself really strikes at a sore spot. However, I was able to take it in stride and, while it will definitely linger for a while, I will be able to move on.

What worries me most is that they might say something like that to someone who can’t move on. And that could have far more serious consequences.