#there’s no fandom and that’s tragic to me

[marstonsboy]

a lot of people are annoyed by jack, especially in rdr1— and to a degree i understand that. but at the same time, he was a kid. he had every right to be a little shit and irritate people to no end doing reckless, spiteful things, because he was a child. and it breaks my heart that he loses that sometime between john’s death and when we see him again during the epilogue.

i miss when he was able to snark at his parents. i miss seeing him interact with abigail, uncle, and charles around beecher’s hope. i miss when jack could just be a kid without having the crushing weight of grief on his shoulders at all times. we get to see him start out distant with john and very slowly get closer to him multiple times, healing their relationship after everything they’ve been through, only for that to be brutally ripped away when he’s sixteen.

when we meet jack again at nineteen, he’s much more jaded. he’s angry, and aggressive, and he’s lost everything. he’s almost unrecognizable as that little boy that made a flower necklace for his momma, or read passages from his books aloud when she asked, or sat by the campfire loudly singing along with his family— and it hurts, watching him lose that innocence and the ability to just be a kid along the way. he was so young, and he didn’t deserve any of that.

[pretend-i-don-t-exist]

OK SO STROKE OF INSPIRATION

author!sy. can you see it. can you feel me

author!sy who has written some of the best novels known to media, who is gradually approaching global levels of fame. he just has the best world-building and plots! his characters are fully fleshed out and have backstories of their own that make it so difficult to hate any of them, because you can just understand where they're coming from, but they also did some very bad things, y'know?

except... all of his novels are tagged as danmei.

sy just doesn't understand why. he wasn't writing with these characters being together (in fact, he's sworn off romance in writing his novels, bc he thinks they make everything complicated) but somehow,,, his readers think the characters are together? why are his novels tagged as danmei?

so he goes down the rabbit hole and reads gay fanfiction to understand. it's not like he's gay, this is a just very author thing to do! you just want to understand what your readers think and what they want, right?

cue gay panic. he's stubbornly holding on. he fails. so he announces that he's taking a break (to maybe find out what the hell is going with him) and starts to read other novels.

enter pidw. sy absolutely loves the first few chapters. they were so good and the world-building looks so complex! then everything went to shit. he yells at airplane in the comments. he roasts the novel so hard it came out of the oven burnt from the outside in.

airplane only responds with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ secretly, he's loving this new reader who had a history of critiquing novels very harshly, and creating theories that sometimes keeps the fandom alive through dying times

they chat privately, sometimes. there's a convention or smth, and both sy and sqh are invited. sy tells airplane that he's going to find him and yell at him irl. that, of course, happens but not after sqh finds out that /peerless cucumber/, pidw's no. 1 hater, is also the one of the world's top danmei writers.

sqh is like ??? a pretty boy is walking up to him angrily and is that-- oh no, oh no, oh no that is sqh's type

idk where i'm going with this but when they transmigrate sy absolutely writes xianxia versions of his novels and sqh finds out and now they have a competitive write off where they try to find who on earth is the better writer (sqh, now that he's not financially restricted, thinks he can do better than pidw) (sy, now able to shove his issues so far down they crawled out of the other side of the earth, thinks he can do better in general)

anyway svsss becomes less tragic bc sy and sqh are too busy writing gay ass novels to follow the plot, and liu mingyan absolutely writes fanfiction of their novels

[thewondrousdreamer]

Im properly gonna get hate for this but I need to get this out there. As a Gojo lover and self-shipper I’d like to take a minute to explain how Satoru is so mischaracterized by his fan girls and how you SatoSugu shippers and the jjk fandom as a whole really get on my nerves. Disclaimer even tho im not a SatoSugu shipper I’m not hating on the ship just the fandom. And I don’t want to hear “she only hates SatoSugu bc she ships herself with Gojo. 😡” When in reality I hate all jjk ships bc wtf is Gojo X Megumi & Gojo X Itadori??? First off Gojo RAISED Megumi and his sister like a FATHER. He was their GUARDIAN since they were little kids. Secondly they’re minors Megumi and Itadori are literally 15 and some of y’all are shipping them with a 29 year old man??? That’s crazy and disgusting. Some of y’all are even shipping him with Sukuna the person who killed him and had y’all crying. I don’t even know how that ship makes sense tbh. Satoru is a tragically written character. He was a person with good morals, dreams and ambitions. Ever since he popped out of the womb he was forced to be the strongest bc of his gifts. He didn’t even get to have a childhood bc of that burden. Satoru has witnessed lots of deaths and has more blood on his hands then necessary AND he lost his best friend the person who really understood him the most. Satoru felt alone bc no one tried to get to know him as a person and not just as the strongest. No one even had the Human decency to even once ask him was he okay or even how his day was going. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t do what Geto did and turn villainous bc no one saw him as a person, not his colleagues/peers AND DEFINITELY not his fangirls. He died for sticking to his beliefs and morals. He died trying to protect people and properly felt weak bc not only was he forgotten by his students but his sacrifice wasn’t even acknowledged. He didn’t even really get a burial. But when season 2 came out some y’all really made Satoru’s entire personality about Suguru, His BEST FRIEND. Like I get it, Satoru and Suguru had great chemistry and went well together. They were fire & ice, yin & yang but I honestly don’t see them as nothing more than brothers not to mention the ship is not only overhyped but also over sexualized and it’s fandom is toxic. Like some of you guys are literally on twitter arguing and sending death threats to people who simply don’t like the ship. And are telling other Gojo lovers to off themselves bc they ship him with themselves or their OC’s and it’s not even that deep fr. And don’t even get me started on what some of y’all are doing to the Gojo figurines…. Absolutely disgusting💀. Then you guys literally read the manga and watch the anime not for the plot but just to prove to everyone that Satoru is gay and that it should be canon or just bc Satoru is pretty and y’all see him as ‘daddy 🤢.’ Satoru is also over sexualized for no reason everywhere I go there’s fan art of him sucking off or being balls deep in Suguru or someone either (A. Doing some twisted period blood ritual to his figurine or (B. Someone on tumblr is posting on the ENTIRE INTERNET how badly they want Satoru down their throat with his nut sack against their chin. some of y’all need to touch grass fr bc honestly wtf. It’s the same thing with SatoSugu it’s so sexualized for no reason. If it’s not freaky fanart of them it’s again, more tumblr post of the freaky positions Suguru would have Satoru in bc Satoru is a bottom apparently. I’m not hating on bl or gay ships but like why are they so sexualized? Especially by straight people, straight women to be exact. And not every thing needs to have ships or be gay. Satoru is so stripped out of his character not only bc he’s pretty but bc y’all took his bond with Suguru and made it in to something else entirely. Like why can’t two women or two men be best friends without getting shipped together? This happens in real life friendships too. Not only does this ruin the friendship but it takes away from the characters personality. Being in this fandom is tiring and just not fun.

[isaidyoulookshitty]

idk it is so upsetting to me that veilguard is the first dragon age game i won't be replaying. when i was 15 i played origins so many times (almost a dozen) it is one of the only games i have ever 100% finished. da2 was the same! and while i didn't make it through as many playthroughs of inquisition i put hundreds of hours into it and made an effort to get to the bottom of everything the game threw at me. until veilguard, i had bought every available dragon age dlc for all games, tried to play almost every route given in the story choices, and spent hours reading through codex entries to soak up as much lore as i could.

veilguard has rendered all of that completely null.

it feels almost spiteful at this point that this new frakenspliced bioware cared so little to honor the bones and meat of the first three games. 15 years i have spent loving and cherishing (and criticizing) this franchise and now i feel like a fucking idiot for it. my grey warden? canonically awol and never addressed again. hawke? irrelevant and, for some players, potentially stuck in the fade forever. inquisitor? stripped of any complexity or depth i had given her in favor of the most syrupy, out of character fairytale true love's kiss ending with a man that shattered her worldview and broke her heart. how do you take 10 years to craft an ending this dissatisfying and thoughtless?

and the world i spent a decade and a half fighting for, shaping with player choices, and calling home? gone. "overwhelmed by the blight." literally scorched earth for the next game to build on with whatever the writers pull out of their ass to make players forget all about the original dragon age. it's tragic! disrespectful to longtime fans at best, at worst it feels intentional and like i am being made the butt of a joke told by writers who in the promotional material sound like they could not even be assed to play the games they're attempting to draw from. veilguard is just a product to be sold, not a story worthy of The Dragon Age Setting.

and i haven't even touched on all my gripes with the game's writing, the sanitization of any canon conflict that could be uncomfortable or difficult to address, the stale and cutesy therapyspeak and lessons in basic morality that are baked into every in-game interaction (most of which are shallow and all the same anyways) compared to the dialogue trees from the other 3 games. it is so frustrating to see that the devs chose to cave to a decade of vitriolic fandom politics in favor of addressing the kettle they wrote themselves into.

instead of hand-waving racism toward elves, the panic over qunari, the isolation of the dwarves, the corruption of the chantry, the abuse in the circles of magi, and slavery in tevinter, we should have been given the chance to confront all of it. to put a real end to it. we will never get to do that now. in fact, in their failure to follow through, bioware has only succeeded in exacerbating all of these issues. they have made the elves, which they have openly ADMITTED were "inspired" by Jewish and indigenous peoples, their mouthpiece for white guilt and shame passed down from one's ancestors (while also gutting elves' religion, culture, history, social differences, etc. i could go on). they PERPETUATE the same stereotypes of barbarity, violence, and warmongering imposed on the qunari by the rest of thedas by continuing to make them an opposing enemy force with the exception being a couple of friends they have neatly packaged for us. the unsatisfying conclusion to the mage-templar schism in inquisition is inconsequential. who the player chose to HEAD THE SOUTHERN CHANTRY as divine is deliberately made irrelevant. the dwarves are still isolated and ignorant of their origins save for harding (assuming she doesn't end up killed) and a single closed-off group. and the slaves in tevinter (again, mostly elves)? conveniently kept out of sight and conversation when we finally get to minrathous. everything that happened to fenris to make him the character he is, arguably the most impactful and sympathetic out of all the da2 companions, is not even addressed, much less tackled. all of it is swept under the rug.

i could go on about how i, a queer and nonbinary adult fan, thought their handling of gender and LGBTQIA+ identities was heavy-handed, infantilizing, and felt so out of place within the setting it makes easy fodder for the "woke=broke" crowd that wouldn't have been receptive to queer rep anyway, but that would need to be another post in itself. not to mention the romance! unfortunate that i chose to romance lucanis not knowing his is now notorious for a lack of content, meaningful dialogue, pacing, and actual development. i won't even get to see the other romances in comparison because, as i have said, i will not be replaying.

i wanted dragon age: dreadwolf. i wanted a solid conclusion to a story almost 20 years in the making. a dragon age reboot might even have been a great idea somewhere down the line, but this was not the game to do it with. it was supposed to be a sequel and they couldn't even get that right. did i enjoy parts of it? of course! i finished it! but i won't be doing it again. the game clearly intends you to, considering a significant portion is locked away by decisions players are forced to make pretty early on, but i can't make myself do it. it makes me way too sad.

[19catsncounting]

Hey I think there's something that I have to keep reminding myself and maybe you also need to remind yourself of sometimes and that's that it's actually really hard to Fandom wrong.

Like there's a lot of writers and creators who produce works better than I could. Frankly, I suck at meta. And that's fine! I'm not gonna get called to the Fandom Principal's Office to be told that I'm failing in Fandom and need to get my grades up or I'll lose my spot on the posting team. I can commit to the most wildly OOC portrayal of a character and people will just not like it and that's!!! Okay!!!

No one is getting paid for this! You can't get fired! It's nice to find like-minded individuals but you don't have to change your mind for the sole purpose of finding community!

We are playing in sandboxes and it is Normal and Good to play in your corner and see other people playing differently in theirs. You should fight any urge towards conformity in your mind because it is the final sanctuary where you can be free.

And while this is mostly a "Hey feeling insecure about how you participate in Fandom is something you can and should challenge" I do also mean "Hey people who make Fucked Up content and people who make Fixed Wholesome content are not and never should be enemies."

I tend to make things leaning towards Fixing and Found Family but that will never earn me a place in heaven and has no weight to my own morality and does not make me a good person and I would drive any Noncon Torture Sadist Darkfic creator to the airport at 5 AM and bring us both homemade lattes. I have taken so many pieces of great characterization for my domestic hopeful comfort fics from Really Fucking Dark fics because those fics break open characters in new and intense and beautiful lights. The ONLY reason I don't write hurt/no comfort is because that's not the enrichment I'm looking for, it isn't the treatment I need for my personal psychic wounds but it is perfectly! Beautifully! Worthy! As a trope all the same! And it is beneficial for people who are not me!!!

Fiction is morally neutral in every way - no matter what you create, whether it is hopeful or tragic, or beautiful, or mediocre, you are allowed and encouraged to make it.

[angelasscribbles]

What Could Have Been: A Bad Romance One-Shot

Series: What If but more specifically Maximum Damage (the alternate ending)

Original Series: Bad Romance

Fandom: The Royal Romance/The Royal Heir

Pairing for this chapter: Liam x Max (now), Liam x Riley (past), Riley x Max (past)

Rating: MA

Warnings for this chapter: character death mentioned.

Word Count:  812

A/N: This was written in response to an ask from @kyra75 for the angstgiving event hosted by @choicesprompts. The request was for the prompt "What could have been" and was specifically for the Bad Romance gang. Since BR had a happily ever after, I couldn't come up with a good, angsty what could have been until the alternate ending popped into my head. Once it did, this just suddenly existed in my head and I had to write it.

My other stuff: Master List.

The crown princess of Cordonia was getting married to the love of her life. It was a watershed moment in her life. All of Cordonia would be watching as she walked down the aisle.

The king was sure that there had never been a prouder father in the history of the world. His little princess was all grown up. She was happy. She was radiant. She looked just like her mother.

He turned his head to observe his queen. The years hadn’t dimmed her beauty one bit. She was as beautiful as the day he’d first lain eyes on her in that bar in New York.

Liam had been born into wealth, and raised to rule, but the greatest privilege of his life had been raising their daughter. It didn’t matter that biologically speaking; she was Drake’s daughter. Her DNA didn’t matter.

Drake. The best friend he’d ever had. His childhood companion. His partner in crime. His closest confidant. His brother.

“Don’t get too sentimental. You promised her you wouldn’t cry.” Drake smiled at him from the seat on the other side of Riley.

“How can I help it?” Liam responded as tears slipped down his cheek. “You’re here. You’re both here for her big day.”

“Liam.” Max’s voice intruded on the scene.

Not yet, Max. Just a few more moments.

Riley leaned over and touched his hand. “She’s so lucky to have you. You’ve done a wonderful job. You and Max both. Thank you.”

“Liam. Liam.”

Not yet, Max!

But it was too late. They were already fading.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

“Liam, come on, it’s time to get up.” Max shook him gently by the shoulders. “We don’t want to be late for the wedding.”

Liam blinked against the onslaught of brightness flooding into the royal suite. “Max?”

“Yeah, who else would it be? Are you okay? You were crying in your sleep.”

“I was dreaming, but Max, it seemed so real! I was at the wedding, and Riley was with me! Drake too!”

“Oh, babe.” Max climbed back into the bed and wrapped Liam in his arms and tears sprang into his own eyes. “I miss them too.”

Twenty six years later and he still blamed himself. If only he hadn’t dropped the damn cell phone that day. If only he’d pulled over to the side of the road before trying to call 911. If he’d done that, then Riley and Drake would both still be here. Hope would have her biological parents. Liam would have his queen. He would have his everything.

But that’s not what happened and now all they could do was dream about what could have been.

Liam looked up into his husband’s eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. It was a tragic accident.”

Max smiled through his tears. Of course Liam knew exactly what he was thinking. Liam was the only reason he was alive. Liam had willed him to live and pushed him to walk again.

Getting out of that wheelchair had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Not because of the grueling months of physical therapy, but because he had felt like he deserved to be there. He would never understand why he had Liam’s love and forgiveness when he knew he didn’t deserve it, but he was grateful for it. And he was grateful for the daughter they shared. The one whose heart stopping smile was the spitting image of the woman they had both lost.

“I know,” Max lied. Today was a happy day, not a day to wallow in recriminations. “We both promised Hope that we wouldn’t cry today.”

Liam laughed, a bit of sunshine returning to his life. Max had a way of doing that. “We all knew that was a lie when we said it.”

“Oh, a bald faced lie! She’s our baby girl. Of fucking course we’re going to cry!”

Liam laughed again as the last vestiges of the dream wisped away.

Riley and Drake would be there in spirit. Hope had left two reserved seats empty to represent them.

Hope was what they had left of their lost loved ones. And she had brought exactly that into their lives. Hope was what they had clung to in those early days of grief. She had brought sunshine and joy, laughter, and beauty back into the world.

Drake had certainly named her appropriately all those years ago.

Four hours later, they watched her say I do. They both cried copious amounts, but they were happy tears.

And while they both wished that Riley and Drake were there with them, they were thankful to have each other.

The king glanced at the two empty seats. He swore he could feel them there. Maybe, somehow, in some other existence, they were.

Deep in his heart, Liam believed that somewhere out there, in an alternate universe, what could have been, was.

[fangirlynjunk]

Adding more to my thought process about Jerry, Jeri, and Max because I know some people might be squinting about ages, and the way I understand it the best personally.

I am using the starkid wiki to get these ages so I’m trusting the fandom

Ok, from my understanding we KNOW Ted is 35 in Time Bastard.

18 years ago he’d have been 17, which is presumably the right age to be going to camp idontwannabang.

We don’t seem to have any clear idea how old Jerry and Jeri are, but Jerry mentions Ted in such a way that implies to me he has personal beef with Ted.

If I had to guess knowing Jerry, he invented a scenario in his own head about Ted flirting with Jeri much like how he is currently projecting onto Pete. Because I can’t see a time where Jeri and Ted would have interacted outside of school.

Meaning, I believe Jeri and Jerry were 15-17 during the conception of Max/Lumberaxe

Young, yes, but this is Hatchetfield.

It could also be that Ted has hit on Jeri sometime after he adopted his sleazeball personality, so it’s not concrete evidence

But Ted did seem to know Lumber Axe was out there, and Jeri mentions Axe was massive by the time he was 2, hence why I assume they were 15 or 16 when he was born, and therefore 17 or 18 by the time Ted was in camp.

Which also makes sense for Max

However, this is the only age we have for Ted pre time displacement , and we have two for Paul

Paul is 31 in TGWDLM and 33 in NPMD

This is because of the two year gap in the timeline.

Which means we have to make sense of it, though I would say with confidence that I doubt that Emma and Paul ( or rather Emdroid and Paul 23) would get married after only dating for a few months. I’d wager they would at least be 32.

This only changes the math to subtracting 17 from 35 which would make Ted 18, which would make more sense as he does seem to be making Pete go at the age he did.

I’m also relatively hoping that Jerry and Jeri are about Ted’s age because younger just gets perhaps too tragic because while they do seem to kind of suck , I can’t fully blame them considering their circumstances.

Now why is Max well.. Max? My guess, a birth complication causing the Jerries to go to the hospital or someone coming across them in the woods (hidge maybe?)

[spoonhead]

finally finished lonesome dove and holy shit.

i don’t even know where to begin this book has fucked me up. like. it was 858 pages of cowboy shenanigans (in the most serious way possible) and it’s over now. i’ve been reading it for like 5 months and now it’s done and i NEED more

i need to see what happens to Newt and Call and the Hat Creek Outfit and the new ranch in Montana. WHAT ABOUT CLARA AND LORIE AND JULY AND DISH AND MARTIN AND THE GIRLS WHAT HAPPENS DO THEM. do they get to live happy peaceful lives?? or do they get slaughtered like half of the main cast??

it has 37 fics on AO3, and they’re all about Gus and Call. i’m still going to read all of them, but I WANT MORE DEETS AND JOE AND ROSCOE CONTENT. THEY HAD SO MUCH LIFE AHEAD OF THEM BEFORE THEY GOT SCALPED. WHAT THE HECK.

ALSO SEAN. WHY WAS HE THE FIRST TO GO

the urge to make content for them is insane, especially July. his whole life after Arkansas is insane and deserves a music video to Johnny Cash. i’ll do it don’t fuck with me

anyways overall PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEEE READ THE BOOK SOMEONE I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT GRAHHHHHHHHHH

[ashdoesfandomarchieved]

category of blorbo called "technically i like them but fanons obsession with them to the exclusion of other characters pavloved me into having a negative reaction whenever i see them"

[sinisternoodles101]

Recovery AU thingies !!! i am very much still solidifying these ideas, but doodling them out helps me so here’s some y/n stuff ♥︎♥︎

[hinamie]

theyre soft your honour

[thatsitso]

So I finished orv

[garagepanic]

one path among so many others

[tiredandoptimistic]

Oh the struggle of being obsessed with the same relationship as the rest of the fandom but they see it in a romantic way while you are enlightened enough to understand their true form (QPR).

[oddishblossom]

— Imagine being loved by me (1) (2)

[somewhereincairparavel]

I just realized that Piper PRAYED to Aphrodite that she should let Jason live, for the sake of their love. But the moment Piper broke up with Jason, his life went downhill and he died a few months later. What if piper's prayer to Aphrodite had kind of "sealed" jason's life, but it was only as long as they were together, so the moment they split, the prayer lost its protection, breaking the invisible thread of security jason had, since Aphrodite wasn't obligated to ensure his safety anymore. Uncle Rick owes me tissue boxes.