#that poor fic author

[alistair-blackwood]

encountering other jjk yaoi fans and sussing out how much they genuinely like the series before i can start bitching about it

[arcanegifs]

me, after seeing emo vi in her s2 teaser

[keferon]

What are your thoughts on a decepticon prowl?

Oh I'm all for it. But! Only if he's actually a Con. Like. Wholeheartedly.

Not "nnnooo we're doingg a bad thing and I kind of dont wanna do bad thing but I have no choice poor me".

You know how in canon he truly believes he's on the right side and makes everything to ensure that Optimus wins the war? You know how he's willing to make every tough decision so Optimus doesn't have to risk his reputation? You know how he literally makes Autobots look like shiny brave and clean heroes who did nothing wrong ever?

I want all that but the other way around. I want him to do that for Megatron and for the Decepticons. The implications would be so fucking dramatic I could write a whole essay.

Low rank Cons would hate him so fucking bad.

Starscream would try to murder him at least once a day.

Megatron would absolutely treasure him. Autobots would have it r o u g h

Can you imagine

[letitrainathousandflames]

I just read one of the best fics ever which was tagged properly as Graphic Depictions of Violence and had a myriad of warnings in the tags that went from asphyxiation to torture, horror, psychological abuse etc. After reading (and loving it) i head down to comment and see this exchange between some dipshit and the poor author:

Like. It's a fic that fills in the blanks of an off-camera moment. Of course it wasn't gonna advance the plot, that's not what these type of fics do.

And telling the author "maybe you're just into detailed depiction of violence" in a fic tagged as graphic depictions of violence? No shit, sherlock!

Like... you're free to (politely) tell an author what you didn't like in a fic, but if what you didn't like was the fact that a fic turned out to be exactly what it said in the label, then its more of a you being dumb as a brick problem.

[dukeofthomas]

why does every reconciliation fic go like this

[easy-revenge]

my biggest win on this earth is creating such a concrete personality for matt from death note in my brain based on any and all fan media ive consumed about him and info dumping all of it so effectively onto my poor partner that they'll unironically send me targeted content and caption it "mail jeevas" at least three times a week

[il3x]

"she's not gonna update the fic bro" she will. she will if I comment good

[estrellami-1]

If I Should Stay

I’m late! I’m sorry! Life happened. Next update will happen as if this wasn’t late, so it’ll be on the 15th. 😊

Part 1 | . . . | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65

Days pass. El gets stronger. Everyone gathers, once again, for one last mission.

“Anyone wants out,” Steve says seriously, “you have it. This isn’t like last time. We’re not fighting bats. These are grown men who are smart, mean, and will not hesitate to kill you.”

“Papa is a bad man,” El adds. “He has bad men helping him. I don’t want them to hurt anyone else.”

“Kid,” Hopper starts, looking at Steve, “I think this is a job for the government-”

“The government knows,” Steve returns, turning back to everyone else, focusing on Nancy. “If we have to retreat, Nancy, I want you to get everything you can on them. I’d rather not call him unless we absolutely have to, but there’s a man who can help. You’re a great journalist and i know you can get this place torn to the ground if need be.”

“Meaning, if we can’t,” Eddie adds, and Steve nods at him.

Nancy looks between them. “Oh,” she says, brows furrowed. Suddenly she looks at Steve, eyes narrowed. “Him? Really?”

Steve frowns, confused. “What- Nance, what’re you-”

“Don’t Nance me,” she bites back, eyes sharp. “Not when you dumped me for-”

“And that’s enough,” Alli cuts in, tone sharp and eyes sharper. “You’ve officially overstayed your welcome, Miss Priss, I’ll consider letting you back in if you apologize.”

“Oh, stop it,” Nancy begins, but is stopped by Robin, who stands in front of her with her arms crossed.

“Out.” She says, low. Dangerous. “I’ve been through this shit twice. You don’t want to know what I’m capable of.”

Nancy looks at the two of them, looks from Wayne to Hopper to Joyce, then storms out when no one seems sympathetic. Jonathan follows her.

Steve sinks into his seat with an exhale. “I didn’t think- I mean, I knew she didn’t know, but I didn’t think it would- she would-”

El clambers onto the couch next to him. “Do you want me to help?”

He slowly turns to her, brows furrowing again. “Help?”

“Yeah. I can make her trip on the sidewalk. Or make a bird poop on her.”

“Do that one,” Mike says, “it would be funny.”

Steve pulls El into a hug with a sigh. “Thanks, Ellie, but that’s alright. It’s not nice to get back at people who are reacting out of anger.”

“Why’s she angry at you? You didn’t do anything.”

Steve sighs. “I kind of did-”

Robin raises a brow at him. “You broke up with her about a week before she would’ve, Steve, this is not on you. You told me about the conversation behind the school. If she couldn’t say it then, she couldn’t say it now. Simple as that.”

Steve sighs and tilts his head so his cheek is resting on top of El’s head. “I dunno, Robbie.”

“Well I know,” Allison says. “And you can tell me I’m wrong, but that would just make you wrong.”

Steve smiles. It’s a slow, small thing, but it’s there. “Sounds like a waste of time.”

“It would be,” she agrees, moving to press a kiss to his forehead.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Dustin frowning, looking from Steve, to Wayne, to Eddie. Finally, the lightbulb comes on. “Your boy!”

Steve groans, leaning his head back on the couch. “I knew it wasn’t gonna last forever, but could we not have one day alone?” He laments.

“No, just- dude,” Dustin says, looking highly judgmental. “He’s way too cool for you.”

Steve sighs, fighting a smile. “Never change, Henderson.”

“Lies,” Eddie says dramatically, “lies and slander, I played guitar and he killed an evil wizard, kid, he’s the most badass of all paladins, are you kidding me?”

“Well,” Dustin gestures at Steve, “sure, but look at him!”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and grins. “I do.”

Dustin’s lip curls up. “Never mind. You two deserve each other.”

Steve and Eddie exchange a look. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Steve asks, but Dustin’s already turned to talk to Mike, Will and Lucas.

Wayne clears his throat. “Someone should go talk to her,” he says. “I’d do it, but I dunno if she’d listen t’me, on account of Eddie bein’ my kid and all.”

“I’ll go,” Joyce offers, already standing.

“Can you maybe threaten her a little bit?” Robin asks hopefully. “If she tells anyone-”

“I’ll talk to her,” Joyce says firmly. “And if she decides not to listen… well, El’s her own person, and no one can really stop her.” She winks at El, who giggles and grins back.

“Thank you, Joyce,” Steve says quietly. “Be nice to her, please. She’s just fifteen.”

“So are you,” Joyce reminds him, and closes the door behind her.

“So,” Will says, brows furrowed, “you and Nancy were dating? And then you broke up with her, because the first time around, she broke up with you?”

Steve chuckles. “Not exactly. We- the first time around, you and Barb were both missing, and she was pretty frantic about Barb. I tried to convince her to keep going with her life, mainly because that’s how I cope. The problem is, that’s not how she copes. We had a fight, and I tried to talk to her the next day and she couldn’t tell me she loved me. She never broke up with me, but later that week she cheated on me with Jo- uh, with- with a friend.”

Will sighs. “It was Jonathan, wasn’t it?”

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[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[best-jrwi-fic-quotes]

safe and sound by spidercicle

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

That time your wife and you have the same OTP for once and wind up flirting back and forth in your favorite fics comments.

[ktanissevrdeen]

how this chapter of poor puzzled moon is going…

[endwersed]

it is insane to me that people seem to flock to AO3 -- the reading website! -- to then simply... refuse to read

[arunneronthird]

wanted to come clean about something real quick, i am annoying about canon all the time

however, i will never tolerate fic slander, ive dropped thousands of fics at this point cause i dont agree with the characterization in the same way i dont agree with some artists' renditions, but thats people spending their time writing something they love so "this fandom has horrible fics" is a shitty thing to say always

[seobstarr]

when you read a real good fic that changes ur life but you can’t talk about it with ur friends because they don’t read fics like you do

[coffeeshib]

I stopped reading comments on supercorp fics because of all the Kara hate. It's killed a lot of my enjoyment of reading new fics and I stick to writers I know and trust. When it comes to Kara you're one of the best and I love all your work! Thank you for gifting us with your amazing and horn writing!

bro,, thank you for your kind words i'm s*ft