#so so dedicated to the fandom

[creativeimagination206]

Well, with the Cornley Christmas Chaos deadline approaching, I wanted to make a couple quick announcements (partly to ease my own anxiety XD).

Firstly, a huge huge thank you to @blodsten for hosting the challenge—it's such a fantastic idea, and I know it must have taken a ton of preparation. I'd definitely be willing to help make this a tradition if everyone else is on board, especially now that I'll hopefully have more time to be creative.

On that note, I was only able to complete two of the thirteen prompts: though I was hoping to do separate fics for each prompt, life has really... sucked, honestly, for the past few months, so I haven't been as active in writing as I wished. My intention (though I wouldn't hold me very tightly to it) is to continue writing the fics I had planned out even after the challenge is over and post them separately on my AO3 account, so for those who went ahead and tried to guess what each of my titles meant, be sure to keep your eyes out! I hope to get to them all; it might just take me a bit more time than I planned.

Again, thank you all, and I'm so excited to read what everyone's written! I think we've all really been going through it, but it seems like the turnout was great, and I'm really proud of all of us! <3

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x09 - “The Dirt Under Your Nails.”

[blue-nerd-b24]

A GIFT FOR KODI NATION!!!

Behold!

Nobody can convince that those two are not lovey dovey lovebirds

1) Kent and Jodi still in their 20’s,but now with little Sam,their firstborn son

2)one from their past:When Jodi was a wild girl and just met a cute quite guy named Kent

Those two had a history behind their past,I wish CA could tell us more

3)Jodi comforting Kent because she loves him and Even thought she sometimes don’t understand reasons behind his PTSD,she is always there for him

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Shen Yuan rewrote PIDW ridiculously well with beautiful prose and detailed characterization and well crafted plot arcs as a fanfiction just to prove that it could be well written and Airplane is obviously just a sellout hack who couldn’t write himself out of a paper bag and obviously Shen Yuan only did it to prove a point because he’s petty like that and he absolutely does not and never will love the story enough to write 999k+ words about it at all no sir no how no way HE’S JUST PETTY DAMMIT!!

[luckyartdrawer]

Been looking for fun outfits to draw the DCA in, but then inspiration struck and-

Subway Masters Emmet and Ingo Sun and Moon!

(Click image fore better quality)

I could have sworn I saw someone else also do this idea, but I can't find the drawing. I can't be the only one who felt this vibe right??? It's perfect!

vvv Yapping and (a handful) extra images below the cut!!! vvv

Sketch

Isolated Final Version & Close Up

No Sketch & Dark Sketch Versions

Honestly I felt the urge to show all these different versions because all of them were super satisfying to me. The sketch being visible adds texture to the image, but the clean is, well, so clean. Then the dark sketch being visible makes it feel so stylized, like the borderlands sketchy shader the characters have. Love love love it all!

Why Sun's eyes are mostly blue instead of the iconic white is because I wanted to make it match with the blue Moon has as a secondary color, just like how Sun's secondary color red is featured easily as Moon's eyes! I wanted to keep the silver eyes from Emmet and Ingo, so coloring the white makes them pop! (I wanted them to compliment each other well while still having unique designs.)

I don't usually do cell shading, but I've been seeing so many pleasing art styles on Tumblr using them that I just felt like it would be nice to do a clean cell shaded work. :3

(Somehow it took me way longer to cell shade than my usual style... Maybe using the lasso tool religiously for everything had something to do with it.)

I don't really engage with the Subway Masters fandom much, but I love the characters so much. Their designs are so cool and I love BW and gah I hope they put Emmet in the next Legends game. We got to see Ingo now I also need to see the unhinged happy man out of his element!!!

(I'm a big pokemon fan :P)

Once the idea got to me it was like- How could I not? The dynamics are literally perfect you cannot convince me otherwise!!!

[atlalasassy]

Kevin was so much of a history nerd that he went against the fact that literally every Raven took the same subject - I aspire to be that much of a history nerd one day

[locusfandomtime]

A (somewhat) genuine “What your favourite hermit says about you” chart because my joke one was so popular

Obvious disclaimer: do not take too seriously! these aren’t necessarily true! this is like 50% a joke! i mean everything here positively!

i am still right though. anyways let me know who you are I’m a zed fan

[letsmcfreackingloseit]

So yes I have OF COURSE read @naffeclipse new fic Apex Polarity and yes, I AM OBSESSED!

So I decided to make a little comic of how I think their "first encounter" might have looked like from Eclipse's perspective.

I can't help but think about how alien and scary we most look to him (especially if there is a history of fasco hunting polar sirens in the past). With all that gear we look like emotionless beings, just observing and uncaring of this ice world. But then when y/n shows up and probably exudes this joy and wonder for his world + shows respect for the creatures and the environment??? Mmh yeah, I can see Eclipse falling for y/n, especially considering how alone he might be...

So yes, that's what I have for today! If you want to read the fic I'll link it right here. I can't recommend it enough, but as always, read the tags so you know what you're getting into! And lastly I also want to @themeeplord beacuse Eclipse's design is basically their design in my style (god I love their design so much, their character/creature designs are the BEST) so all the credit goes to them! Polar!Y/N is my design thou! ;P

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read the two latest chapters-

YIPPEE!!!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The world if people stopped applying their understanding of "conservatism" and "religion/christianity" through a very modern, deeply American view onto Death Note (a manga from the Early-mid 2000s which is very much set in the cultural and societal context of early-mid 2000s Japan and all that entails):

[brainrotisseriechicken]

(heaven is you,)

(heaven is you,)

(heaven is you.)

everything else was stressing me out so i drew a bunch of hands to relax (thus me not bothering to polish them) (did its job for the first couple hours then i got anxious again)

[varpusvaras]

I swear to god, DC fandom is the first fandom in my life where people are up an arms vagueposting about AU's and fics when they're not directly canon compliant all the time. I'm not even talking about the dreaded fanon, I'm talking about fics in general. Like???? Yeah I know this isn't how it goes in canon, what about it??? It's not supposed to! And also if only one person is writing that kind of AU, then the person seeing you whine about them writing the AU does know that you are talking about them. In my almost 30 years of life I've never seen this kind of behaviour before. Don't worry, since you don't know how the block button works, I'm going to do it for you! I'm a nice person like that <3

[gimpxmetal]

Christmas gift from Mengele <3

merry Christmas,, lol,, i hope you all enjoy this because it took me a little while,, based on a photo of marilyn monroe!

[meowshinjiro]

my god, i thought you were someone to rely on.

me? i guess i was a shoulder to cry on.

merry newtmas to the angst couple ever

[moodlesmain]

Hi. Look at this.

I just spent two days straight making a digital conspiracy board trying to piece together my favourite genre that isn't really a genre and more just a very particular niche which doesn't really have a name.

If you want to look I reccomend downloading and zooming in on the image to read everything LMAO, I want to try and convert it to a page on my neocities at some point so its easier to view but for now you guys just get a big ol' jpeg. You're welcome :)

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay you know what actually yeah. I was tired but I had a point.

Why. On earth. In zelda fics. Do people not shut up about everything being hylia's fault forever and ever.

Like, the one deity out of a dozen odd who got cursed into this right alongside Link. All the focus on one great all being power who then gets blamed or blessed for everything that ever happens. It's just... I don't know, it just seems like a culturally Christian thing. Not even that - American catholic.

Especially Legend omg when people write him he never shuts up about how everything bad that's ever happened to him is all hylia's fault and she's doing it on purpose with no thought to her poor beleagured hero. He sounds like someone who grew up in an American conservative household who turned out to be queer and never bothered to unpack any of it and acts like he's now atheist.

But even then you could do something interesting with that!! The common headcanon that Legend is hylian royalty - of course that family would put immense worth and worship on hylia as her descendants, she who founded their kingdom. And maybe legend could feel bitter about not inheriting the magic, or the throne, or whatever meant he grew up away from the castle. Give him some unexamined religious trauma! Heck, he could bond with Flora over disappointing your family's expectations or something! They could work on unpacking it together! If you must make it part of his character at least think about why!

Because that belief is wrong, because hylia is literally the one deity we can pretty safely understand is not all seeing, all knowing, all being.

Every time she has a voice, a role, we see her make mistakes or be tricked and have regrets.

Skyward sword, she's literally zelda. She's a young protective warrior goddess (she used a sword and lead armies to battle against demise) who was created by the Three to guard the triforce and keep watch over hyrules lands. By the time ss starts she's already made several tough calls, not limited to yoinking hylians into the sky. When she was zelda she hated every second of leading Link around and even then!! It all hinged on him being completely willing! He was never forced to do anything, she didn't even have her memories with the plan until after she'd fallen to the surface! Their relationship was entirely genuine and she very nearly overestimated her own willingness to go through with the plan! And even then she still managed to get kidnapped lmao. That's not what happens when you're in charge of fate.

And in botw and totk - she's in her full divine form, her full divine powers, she's ancient and magic and worshipped in every corner of the kingdom. And (spoilers!) she loses contact with one of her own mf statues. Not just any ten apples high chibi statue you see in the towns, no, it's The Big One. She's got no idea what happened to it, but she's (rightfully) worried, and asks Link to check it out. And in an entirely separate instance, her OTHER big statue in the ToT gets overridden!! By a triangle head! And ol creep in the deep is the one who releases the statue! It's been what 20k years of power and worship - if she's not all powerful then she never will be.

Hyrule - every hyrule - is very, very polytheistic. She's not even a goddess of time to be in charge of stuff like that! There's multiple of them: Naryu, Cia (and Lana), Farosh to an extent, and many artifacts that can cause time travel, like the harp of ages, the ocarina, the big portal in ss, those time shift stones in the same game, the statue in wind waker. Please stop treating her like the magic elf equivalent of Monotheistic American Christianity God.

She was introduced in skyward sword. The game that came out before botw. She did not exist in any of the games that came before that. There was a lake hylia! In the kingdom hyrule! That's it! Her name or even existence wasn't even hinted at before that. It's actually canonically pretty unlikely any of the chain (cough cough legend) have even heard of her! And her assigned job is protector of the triforce. That's it. And she can't even use the thing. She can very explicitly as a main driving force of the ss plot not use the triforce she protects. And the triforce, shockingly, is not even in every game.

Cases that hylia often gets the most flack for (links awakening and all the trauma from that, Link failing in botw, the events of totk) hylia has absolutely zero part in. Hilariously. And she has zero power over wishes made to the triforce or who makes those wishes or what the triforce does about it.

She even gets all the blame for the cycle of the hero, the reincarnation! Which? We know exactly how that happened. Blaming her for a curse she herself is a victim to?? Demise, in skyward sword, explicitly, on screen, doing it ON PURPOSE, cursing the spirit of the hero and the blood of the goddess.

Hylia, I don't know if you've noticed, also has her own blood. Whether or not she lost that blood upon return to her divine form, she still couldn't break the curse. Link, spirit now tied to whatever demise had cooking up, is basically to reincarnate in time for whenever the Interesting Times happen. And it's demise's fault, who, again, did it on screen, on purpose, explicitly, pointing at the camera with text bolded and everything.

So why do people even blame her? I think it comes down to this:

Her name matches the kingdom. Whatever her connection to the people with the same name, I don't know, but she did found the surface kingdom as a mortal. Being named zelda at the time I wonder who chose the name XD!

Her worship in botk as a high ranking deity. Again, not monotheistic, there's temples to the Three and there's Malanya and Satori and the great fairies and the yiga worship ganon, but hylia is the most widespread for all she's basically a side character working for the new heart piece situation. Again, this is only the case in ss/botk, she doesn't appear in even aoc.

A misguided belief spread in fanfiction that in linked universe, hylia is the one opening and controlling the portals. To my knowledge, lu canon is that the portals are opened by dark link, or at least that's the working theory. I think it's assumed that hylia is the one who gathered the heroes together to combat it? If that's true? Congratulations! We have one (very plot necessary) act of hers in a fan comic. That is not canon to The Legend Of Zelda series.

An american Christian (I hesitate to say evangelican?) cultural understanding of religion. The differences between polytheism and monotheism. How one might feel if the divine was proven real on earth. Zelda is a Japanese property, it is not a Christian country. Though it draws aesthetic inspiration from western medieval fantasy it is not and never will be culturally western. The majority of ao3/tumblr users are American or at least English speaking, and that will always affect interpretation. It's giving 'be thankful to God no matter what for he always has a plan. Trust in him and your suffering will be rewarded' which is not a universal religious belief.

Something I've noticed to be surprisingly common in fandom, is where a mentor or figure of authority who is anything less than perfect or all forgiving can very quickly have their reputation ripped to shreds by the fandom. And then newer authors come, read those works, internalise that about the characters and produce new works that assume that character's cruelty to be par for the course. I will not be listing those characters or fandoms for a variety of reasons lol. But it is amazingly common and very hard to untangle, especially in larger fandoms. It's character bashing in a way near identical to cancelling people irl. It's not 'giving them depth' or 'making it more realistic' (grittier equalling realism is an ice cold take proliferated by dudebro comic authors and wrong besides.) Have some critical thinking.

Lately, I've also been running into a great many fics (not so much comics) that make hylia do some fairly heinous stuff... And then unironically blame her for it. They do remember they're the ones deciding what the characters do, right? She's not an abusive master playing with her puppets until they break, she's quite the opposite! Use the right tags (dark hylia/ooc characters/character bashing/author made them do it, idk) or dial it back. This is a growing percentage of fics and I'll never restrict content but yanno, if you're going to make hylia evil or manipulative at least understand it's a canon deviation (and do something interesting with it, I once read an amazing botw fic with evil hylia and fierce deity!).

TLDR, To summarise, hylia is canonically incapable both emotionally and physically of doing the majority of things characters in fics blame her for. Stop using her as a scapegoat especially when demise is right there. Please give your whumpees deeper characterisation than hating on hylia. Please give legend deeper characterisation than hating on hylia every time he or someone else is sad. Please remember wild can talk to hylia if he wants. Please double check anything you're not sure about :D!