#the authors look down

[build-a-problem-musical]

Theo used to keep his bed warm and stacked with blankets, but now his bed is completely flat. I’ve drawn him sleeping on his back, though I’d imagine he goes sideways every so often.

What’s the sleeping situation? Does your OC have a ton of pillows and blankets? Do they sleep on their side, their back, etc?

[build-a-problem-musical]

Here’s Stars Restitched Emma as an ambulatory wheelchair user (using saszor OC maker by saszor and 2c4ub)! She can stand and walk short distances on flat surfaces, hence the cane, but her weakened right side leaves her off-balance, and she uses the chair (aluminum alloy) for more demanding terrain and longer distances. She’ll need it less and less as she goes through a lot of hard work at PT, though her balance may never quite return to what it was beforehand and the cane will be a fixture in her life. (If her hair’s a bit too long, no, it isn’t. None of the short-haired options suited her. Maybe she can grow it as a treat.)

[build-a-problem-musical]

Thinking about the fact that there was one dark AU where…well…Elaine didn't care, Emma died, Thomas upped the manipulation, and Celeste had to deal with everything and she wasn't handling it well. I’ll call this the Starless Sky AU.

There's a roleswap AU where Emma and Theo are dating. This Theo is still the quiet kid who wants to merge with people but doesn't have many friends with whom he can. However, he's more indulged and entitled in this version, and he tries to make her tend to and complete him. Celeste takes longer than canon Emma to notice anything's wrong because there's less of a clear shift in Emma's desires. Without a project as a vehicle, she tries to talk to her individually and is rejected.

Thomas fulfills the worse parts of what canon Theo could have been if he were less well-intentioned. Canon Theo can't draw a boundary because he doesn't want Celeste to be alone, but he's not taking advantage of the situation like roleswap Thomas is (keep in mind that although it's certainly wrong regardless of Emma's interest, she has shown none and he keeps pressing anyway). Roleswap Thomas, as an inverse of canon Theo, feels worse about the lost opportunity than he does about his own actions that led him there.

Roleswap Theo probably can't instigate an altercation with Thomas, so he just makes threats against himself. Emma has no other recourse and tells Celeste; the girls argue because Celeste contacts the proper authorities for him and Emma doesn't think this was the right course of action.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Something something Theodore as the violence of omission. When we first see him, he is sitting at an empty lunch table, drawing a dragon, and remarking to himself that he thinks he's getting over Celeste. He mentions tearing out the portraits (implied to be ones he drew depicting her)…and also that they're in their own drawer. We next see him being friendly to her and erring on the side of supporting her over avoiding his own temptation. Things he doesn't do leads him to the kiss, which is the one big thing he does. When Thomas comes to fight him, Theo lies down against the table as a kind of admission that he feels that he deserves it, but this just provokes Thomas instead. That might have been the intended effect depending on how the (nonexistent and never to exist) actor portrays it. In his final appearance, his clothing is short-sleeved (there are no explicit setting mentions time-wise, but it's around the fall when it's far too cold for him to be wearing that) and he refuses Celeste's forgiveness.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Not a ship, but...Celeste and Emma.

shipping win! they have different but equally terrible coping mechanisms

[build-a-problem-musical]

Note that I tag some reblogs as dodie songs not because they're actually lyrics, but because they express sentiments found in the scenes leading up to the songs in the musical's book.

[daddysboydean]

i have discovered all (most?) of eugara's orphaned fics on ao3 and i will be unavailable until further notice

i made a list in the reblogs :)

[amywritesthings]

writers! do not! owe you! updates!

this is not tiktok. we are not content mills. we are posting our stories -- oftentimes short story or novel-length -- for FREE.

free. adverb / without cost or payment.

you get these stories (not content, they are actual stories people write out of their own blood, sweat, and tears) without having to pay a singular fee or monetary transaction. these authors often have day jobs or university or both. they even have families! children! pets! social lives! if we have other things going on or simply do not have the brain power, then we do not owe you our time nor our energy for updating our stories or wips or ideas we throw onto the dash or ao3.

i am fortunate that i haven't gotten a demanding anon in a minute, but i am so sick of watching my mutual writers get harassed about their update schedules. the ironic part is that you're only making us not want to write said update when you demand more. not ask, not hope, but demand.

learn some empathy, and above all else: learn to be less of an anonymous coward demanding someone's free time for yourself.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Emma is adopted in an implied-by-casting way.

when u come up with a tiny change for your story that not only makes the writing flow better but also hammers in the character motivations and story theme

[theabigailthorn]

finally watched all of Hazbin, definitely cried a bit at Episode 7 and sent Morgana a tearful message

[goldensunset]

‘x the canon player character of a game’ and ‘x reader’ are different. DIFFERENT!!!

[build-a-problem-musical]

Pinterest Pics for the BAP Leads (1/3): Emma Gardner

Shoutout to my mutual (you know who you are even though you keep changing your URL) for cultivating OC boards from which I could take these pictures.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Fic idea where Emma, Celeste, Thomas, and Theo all have to do community service cleaning up a park together. Thomas is self-explanatory, and I feel like the rest would attract keyboard warriors. (Emma and Celeste would be falsely accused of abuse, and Theo would be falsely accused of purposefully manipulating the situation with Celeste.)

[nellasbookplanet]

I recently started reading (and ended up dropping partway through) an m/m retelling of an old legend, and it made me think of this reoccurring thing I've come across a handful of times now in m/m fiction and how they approach women, equality, and world-building.

Let's call it the omegaverse problem, because that's where it seems the most blatant (I've only come across it twice outside of fandom spaces that I can remember). Basically, it's when the writer looks at the unequal and sometimes oppressive roles women serve in society (today and historically), and goes 'this is a good basis for dark romance but there are too many women here' and then just. plops men into the roles traditionally served by women and recreates heteronormative tropes but They're All Men Now, none of those icky women.

Now, completely removing any and all gender based inequality isn't a bad basis for a queer-inclusive fantasy! But thing is, this type of narrative isn't interested in women, so they often read as if women have mysteriously disappeared from society (except for the occassional mom or sister). They don’t bother to include women in traditionally male areas (the book I dropped had plenty of male courtesans, with diplomats and bodyguards and advisors also being male) nor to create new roles for them.

They also generally don’t bother to look critically at the systemic and societal inequalities they're mimicking. The concept 'typically sexist society but they're all men (or all women)' could be used to alienate and deconstruct our ideas of what’s 'normal' and what’s oppressive, a way to compare the intersections of class and gender. Instead, this kind of story is only interested in using inequality as inter-character conflict and set-up for romance. And it sucks.

[hadesoftheladies]

"we need more men in--"

no. no we do not. we do not need more fathers, we do not need more men in healthcare, we do not need more men in universities, or boys in school or whatever

we do not need more men PERIOD

what we actually need is more women in all these fields getting paid their fucking dues

the less men there are, the less war, the less violence, the less terrorism, the less economic collapses, the more we have a chance at fixing these worldwide catastrophes and healing the earth (this has the entirety of human history's worth of documented and observable evidence)

women and girls are not only healing society but the earth; the fact that boys and men hate that school is no longer boy's club, the fact that they have made themselves useless if not destructive without their precious fabricated masculinity, the fact that they keep expecting a parade in their name for doing the barest of minimums isn't our problem, it isn't a human crisis, it is a crisis of the male identity

no one needs to resuscitate it; let it die a natural, deserved, overdue death

[andypantsx3]

urgh i was listening to a podcast where they alluded to some published romance authors dunking on other authors for writing "gratuitous" and "less tasteful" smut and it reminded me of the time i also accidentally implied something like that on here while i was talking about the less descriptive vanilla shit i write and i want to build a time machine and go back and break my own fingers before i could type that reeee