#there’s probably not a lot of overlap for these two fandoms lmao

[procrastinating-falcon]

I was just thinking about how similar two characters I really like are. It’s a wild comparison, I know, but wow, Marco from Animorphs and Carol Peletier (TWD) are like two peas in a pod.

“People don’t understand the word ruthless. They think it means ‘mean.’ It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”

Take that quote from Marco and tell me it’s not Carol.

[lullabyes22-blog]

First of all, I just wanted to say how much I love your Arcane fics. I’ve been following FnF since I stumbled across it at 10 chapters long, and it’s been a wild ride since! Like a lot of people I’ve been all over the place with my feelings regarding season 2, but as far as I’m concerned FnF is my season 2 (and 3, 4, etc.) lol. You’re a gift to this fandom. Thank you for sharing your brilliant mind and imagination with us readers ❤️

You’ve answered some what-if asks and shared other Arcane thoughts on this blog before, so I have two questions for your consideration, but no pressure to answer either of them!

1. As a fellow writer, I’m in awe of the scale of FnF and the amount of planning/outlining that must be involved—HOLY SHIT! Are there any elements of s2 that have inspired you as you continue to write FnF? Have you considered adapting any s2 elements into later chapters (beyond what you’ve already predicted), or have you held fast to a specific Vision throughout the duration of this writing project?

2. Not sure if you’ve been asked this in the past, but what the hell would a living Silco’s reaction be to Vander’s hellish resuscitation as Warwick, assuming he isn’t immediately mauled in a confrontation?? Is Singed (assuming he’s the culprit) definitely fired??? This feels like such a MESSY terrible horrible no-good very bad situation for everyone involved lmao, and I would love to know your thoughts.

Aaaaah thank you so much! I'm super happy you're enjoying the story! I've been having a lot of fun with it, and I'm glad so many other folks are having fun with it as well <333

Also deeply honored you'd consider FnF in any way adjacent to canon material; that means so much T_T Especially since my own feelings on s2 are pretty mixed, and I'm not really sure what I would even do with those ideas, except maybe throw them out as a one-shot sometime down the road.

1. In terms of the s2 inspiration, I will say I was not the biggest fan of the plot's coherence/cohesion as a whole (too much stuff going on in too little time, too many threads left dangling etc). However, I was very gratified by the thematic journeys of the characters in S2, as in FnF they're actually following a similar trajectory (except for Silco who is, well, dead), and a lot of the same conflicts and themes are coming up. There was a happy sense of vindication that came from that, like, "Oh, so this was actually important, and not just me making a fanficcy mountain out of a molehill."

I will say though, that FnF has its own pretty airtight-ish plot, with many aspects already sketched out in advance, so I'm not going to go re-plotting things to match s2's direction unless and until it becomes necessary. In some ways, tbh, there's a sense of gleeful overlap, as a lot of the plot beats do mirror one another. (The Black Rose make an appearance by Act VII, there's a greater emphasis on magic and high fantasy going forward, Jinx is in the grip of an identity/existential crisis and Vi is stuck at a crossroads, Jayce has become disillusioned and split with Mel, Viktor has retreated underground and will be withdrawing deeper into his work, Ekko will be the one to snap Jinx out of a critical juncture and save Zaun in the long term, Sevika will take a greater leadership role etc...) All of the parallels if not the outright similarities were pretty satisfying.

As for how that's manifesting, a lot of the major developments and character arcs going forward are largely set in stone, but I do have a few key S2 events/details I've been mulling over in the background that I can see myself weaving into the plot at some point. But the rest is probably best kept as a surprise :>

2. As for the hellish resuscitation, well, I'd be lying if I said I haven't been thinking about that one a lot hehehe...

But long story short:

Singed is 100% fired because there is NO WAY Silco would sanction such a thing - and if it occured in the FnF universe, then Singed was absolutely doing it behind Silco's back and will now face the full consequences.

 As for Warwick himself - he'd 100% retreat to Silco and Vander's little Brokeback bunk in the mines. And Silco would 100% don his old mining duds and dustry greatcoat and go looking for him, because he needs to be SURE it's not just a rumor, and also because he does, subconsciously, desperately want it to be his Vander. And Vander, who has a good measure of the old Vander's memories, and is 100% aware it's not a rumor, because hello: deranged wolfman, will 100% run towards Silco with every intention of tearing him to pieces.

And that is where the similarities end.

Because Vander is too deeply trapped within Warwick's killer shell, and is therefore incapable of having an emotional reunion with anyone, and because Silco is not an idiot and would never go into a skirmish without a loaded gun and an escape route, the end result would be bloody, messy and tragic.

Worst case scenario: both men would kill each other, and in their final death throes, find boyhood memories resurfacing. They'd die in tears, messily and bloodily entwined, but finally at peace with their own demons - which is how Jinx and Vi, teaming up similar to S2, would find them.

Best case scenario: Silco would find Warwick and be forced to try and capture and contain him. He'd enlist Sevika's help and succeed, but when Jinx finds out, she'd be appalled and retraumatized, and convinced Silco is trying to erase her dead dad and supplant him in every sense. She'd go off the rails and have a complete breakdown, and Vi would be the one she'd run to, because Vi is the only person who understands and cares. The sisters would end up teaming against Silco to try and bust WarVander out, and this would cause an irreparable rift between Silco and Jinx.

Cue mass destruction and an epic family feud.

Sevika, who'd be the only person left in Silco's circle of trust, would have to make the call to have Warwick quietly killed in order to save the city from a war, and then lie to Silco, telling him Vander succumbed to his own madness and perished. This would cause Silco's mental state to completely disintegrate. He'd lose what little sanity he had left, and would descend into a pit of guilt and grief.

 Either way, it's a pretty awful tragedy on both sides, and it would take the entire remaining plot of FnF to resolve the fallout, and for Jinx and Vi to find any kind of peace.

So you can see why I've been mulling a lot, but also left it alone haha.

But who knows?

Maybe the story will change my mind, or I'll be struck by some miraculous idea and figure a way out, though I'm doubtful.

Thanks again for the lovely words and thoughtful questions! They really mean a lot <3

[prismatoxic]

you get it. dont mind me, but this has been nagging for a few days when i saw mentions of chilaios has no 'canon basis' or along those lines or dont get why its even a thing and its really not that hard? like theres a ton of reasons why someone would gravitate this ship and for myself while i enjoy the height difference alot, its their deep mutual trust and respect that has me vice gripped. idk it seems like more ARE catching onto chilaios and its steady rising so its weird to still insist on its 'crackship' status

right??? it drives me insane. i don't know what the hell happened in modern fandom for people to dismiss ships with plenty of material to work with as having "no canon basis".

i guess it has something to do with fandom's increasing gravitation towards canon being necessary for shipping. in this fandom specifically you can certainly ship farcille by that metric, and like... god, i dunno what else. i assume they're just making shit up about how their ships of choice have a canon basis to make themselves feel better about it. bc at the end of the day, dunmeshi is not a romance, and the only kiss we ever see is from a relationship where one is in love and the other is like "aw, you're such a good friend." (kabru was real mean for that.)

either way, back to chilaios--back in my day (shakes cane), what they have was more than enough for a "valid" ship. so much so that no one would have questioned it except people who hated it. which... is probably true here as well, a lot of the time. like, dismissing a ship you don't like as being meaningless probably feels pretty good if you actually believe yourself.

you know what an actual dunmeshi crackship would be? (throws a dart at the wall) mithrun/dandan. makes no sense, right? they were in the same room maybe once, never interacted, and have no reason to interact. that's what a crackship is. it has no canon basis whatsoever.

crackships and rarepairs can overlap, and often do, but a rarepair can also be something with real canon interactions that just didn't take off in the fandom. chilbell probably still counts as one, though it does have fics and art, so your mileage may vary.

chilaios, then, with an entire fucking 14-volume-manga's worth of interactions, several of which were important specifically to the two of them, is not a crackship, and god knows it's no longer a rarepair either, if it even was back before the anime. (i know there was like, 1 fic on ao3, but the manga was being published for like 10 years so i assume the general fandom was just a lot smaller.)

calling chilaios a crackship is straight up just not true. not what that term means. they have the same amount of canon basis as multiple other popular ships, and imo they have the chemistry to back it up, but even that isn't necessary. all told it's a pretty standard ship. they're friends, there's tension between them but there's also a deep mutual trust, and there are very few chapters where they don't directly interact (either because the chapter isn't about the touden party or bc one of them isn't present).

sorry for rambling. i feel passionate about this, lmao... not even just because it's my otp but because misuse of fandom terms drives me up the fucking wall.

[lollytea]

Okay but consider the following: Hunter becoming fandom-famous takes place in the same timeline as Movie.

People don’t really notice who this is at first. His account takes a bit to really get off the ground, and the overlap of people who could recognize the actors in Movie and cosmic frontier cosplayers is not that big but eventually, someone points it out in the comments of his latest pics with Willow. They’re mostly ignored beyond a few comments like hahaha weird or a plain lmao by someone, but the thought is out there now. It’s started.

Someone else notices too. Someone puts a screencap from Movie next to one of their group cosplay pics. More people notice the resemblance. It’s a small group, granted but they sure as hell do exist. Someone even dm’s keikos_husband like “Hey, look at what i found! [Image attached]”. They never get a conclusive response.

The scar thing is the one everyone keeps debating about because spaghetti guy doesn’t have them to the same extent that keikos_husband does. Until hunter posts that pic of his first cosplay. Which, if he’s really that age, matches up perfectly with the timeline of Movie.

Hunter just watches this whole thing like, gus, get over here it’s your fucked up movie again. He’d clarify, but Luz keeps insisting that he not and she thinks it’s really funny, so he doesn’t say anything.

Gus's Fucked Up Movie haunting the narrative more more persistently than Caleb Wittebane is extremely funny to me. Especially considering that these are two different semi-niche Internet corners.

YouTube essayists are like "After years of dormant activity, we've gotten a new lead in the Gus13 case in the form of a micocelebrity in a 90s sci fi book series fandom. Many have theorized that popular cosplayer/writer/prominent voice in the Cosmic Frontier community, Hunter Noceda, also known by his URL Keikos_husband, is the infamous "Spaghetti Guy" in the even more infamous "Movie" But does this theory hold any water? Let's dive in. But first, let's talk about today's sponsor, Hellofresh,"

Gus definitely cosplays a lot too and him and Hunter have done a few O'Bailey and Avery shoots. So Gus has a good chunk of Internet fame of his own. However he probably uses an alias so suspicion is initially nonexistent. Until somebody digs up an old reel Willow posted of their behind-the-scenes process (cleverly editing out the whole part with illusion magic). There's this one bit where the camera focuses on Hunter and Gus in an immature squabble as Willow's voiceover speaks to the viewer. It's hard to decipher and nobody has really cared until now. But now, with the new Gus13 buzz, that little moment has been studied under a microscope and people are now theorizing that Hunter says something along the lines of "Shut up, Gus,"

GUS??

The guy who does the insanely realistic special effects is named Gus???

Hmmmmmmmm.....

The conspiracy boards go crazy. Craft stores all over America are running low on yarn.

Luz keeps reblogging Gus13/Spaghetti Guy is Keikos_husband memes on tumblr and its driving people insane. Like is it a joke or not girl, is it a joke or not??

Willow makes it a million times worse when she posts a selfie of to her story, with Hunter eating dinner in the background, which she captions as "Made my man some spaghetti 🍝 💀"

[finniestoncrane]

Could you reccomend some similar accounts like yours, that do bat villains x reader smut? Only if you have time to no worries if not :)

yes i can and i would freaking LOVE TO!!! 💚

so i could have gone crazy and included a lot of people, but i tried to stick to similar accounts (style/content/rogues/frequency) as requested otherwise this would have been a massive list BUT while that means that some people were left out, all of the fics and writers i love are in my fic rec tag so please check there too for people who are danonation writers or only ocassional posters!! 💚

and i am by no means saying these people write like me, they're all better and it's likely embarrassing for them to be associated with me lmao

@riddle-me-ri so obviously, first of all, my sweet bestie ri. in contrary to popular belief we are not the same person lmao! writes for a mix of rogues, mostly riddler, hatter and penguin and does headcanons/long fics/short fics and we have very similar interests so there's a delicious overlap in the topics of our fics >:) @mischievous-marchie marchie writes for hatter mostly, but they share a love of other rogues too! they write headcanons sometimes but mostly sweet fics, and we share a lot of similar tastes too, especially when it comes to sweet jervis and zsasz

@pompous-puffed-up-penguin emi has a direct line to my fuckin clit. writes for a variety of rogues supremely well. mostly longer fics, but my god it's like she climbs into my head and scoops the filth out

@acapelladitty frequent poster, committed to the filth. good variety of all the rogues and a bit of a fandom staple. i'm just assuming you're already following ditty so you know what you're in for lmao

@quandaryqueen abby writes for a variety of rogues, some of the less loved ones too which is refreshing!! they're writing hits the spot, and they tend to focus on longer fics!

@cactusmisslittle so far, i have gotten around to reading two of cactus' fics and i liked them so much i am just straight up including them here. very good writing, shared love of pegging some bad boys

@sweetlikehoneystingslikeabee i have so many of belle's fics saved to read, it is my resolution for the month to get through some. they write for a variety of rogues, including my beloved arkham!eddie and i am excited to get into their stuff

@like-rain-or-confetti so many rogues! headcanons/long fics it's really a variety with vannie! there's a nice consistency with their version of the rogues too so you can get super comfortable with them

@batmanrogues-scenarios a whole load of rogues to choose from. mostly headcanons, but i think pati has been here for long enough to also be a fandom staple so you're probably familiar with her stuff too!

[aeternxm]

RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING PROMPTS OOC , THEN TAG OTHERS YOU WANT TO GET TO KNOW BETTER.

roleplayer name: shan. i am not original, it's literally just a shortened version of my government name lmao.

roleplayer pronouns: they/them -3-

muse name: we got axel/lea, we got michael, ichigo, eddie, trip, takeshi, takeo, and eito. i'm pretty sure that's all of them lmao.

preferred communication: discord bc i am on mobile during the day so i'm always lurking over there.

experience: jesus uhh, coming up 14? 15 years?

preferred roleplay type: listen, LISTEN - i am and always will be a mess for angst - and shippy things. bonus points if the two overlap. but anything that makes me hurt is a win. i love me a tragic backstory and some inner turmoil. but i do prefer writing long replies because i don't write a lot of talking usually? it's just a lot of describing mixed in with the dialouge almost taking on the personality of the muse i'm writing so uhhh, yeah.

oh and i love crack posts they give me life.

but also just writing fucked up shit in general okay.

pet peeves & dealbreakers: this is just for the canon muses but like, broski, don't push your headcanons onto my canon muse and try and make me write them that way. thank u much appreciated.

but also ah, how do i word it? let evil muses be evil. some of the muses i write are not redeemable in any way. no your muse can't fix them, no your muse isn't going to make my muse have a change of heart. don't be surprised if my evil/morally grey muse does some fucked up shit. we knew this was going to happen. i've had a lot of trouble in the past, especially when i was actively writing in the dmmd fandom with that.

i also just love writing mean characters or unhinged characters okay. i love the psychology behind it and it makes my heart go doki doki. gotta use that degree for something, right?

plots or memes: memes memes memes. i reblog enough of them. and if i reply to a meme u have full permission to turn that shit into a thread. plotting is cool but i'm dumb and tired. unless u already have a plot in mind and u just throw it at me screaming saying we're doing this now.

best time to write: AHAHAHAHAHA, i work full time, have a very busy irl life AND i live in good old aotearoa/new zealand. i am usually never online when anyone i write with is. and if i am... i'm questioning why u guys are on here at the same time as me. it's late for u, go to bed.

are you like your muse?: i am probably too much like lea for my own good, but i am also takeo at the same time okay. done with everyone's shit - very awkward. looks like they hate affection, actually loves it.

tagged by: @foughtbelief

tagging: ??? IDK UHHH @hoshizorax @the1iars @gravesung @astarab1aze and anyone else that wants to do it. i feel like u don't need to be tagged to want to do it but -3-

[moonvigilant]

oh do i have some personal opinions about this, lmao

i do agree that they should break off from wotc and do their own thing (and said 'thing' is probably divinity 3? who knows)

bg3 fandom and larian critical ranting below, ig, and i do mean ranting

initially, i was very positive about bg3 and by extension, larian studios themselves - i mean ffs my top posts evidently are all bg3 related despite me moving on from the fandom (still enjoy the game, just don't want to be associated anymore).

this continued until i want to say... around patch 3 or 4? where they very obviously starts to pander to a very specific part of the fandom. you know the one - the one that clings onto the game like it's the only thing they've ever known and borderline worships each frame and pixel, playing the game like it's a dating sim visual novel, that one.

the most egregious example is of course, them removing that gortash letter. yes i (and a lot of other queer people that i know) know exactly what you're doing, larian. there's something to be said about the 'queer positive' game having the most rabid straight fandom i've ever seen since the dragon age/mass effect days (and 'coincidentally', the two fandoms overlap very frequently).

and i say all this as someone who does love a certain really popular character, lmao. but this on top of their (allegedly, from what i've heard) very dismissive attitude towards modders before they announced official modtools has made it pretty difficult for me to in good conscious sing praises about them.

it's really nice to see people who are starting to be critical towards them because i also feel like they could use it. their egos are getting a bit too inflated with the fangirlies gassing them up for every single little thing they do. keep those coming friends

Incredible power move to make one of the most beloved crpgs ever made using a modified dnd 5e system, make a ton of money and shit on most AAA game studios in the process, then say “cool. Anyway fuck dnd 5e and wizzards of the coast. We’re doing our own thing now.”

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

I find it really intriguing how the ATLA writers could have gone a “brotherly love” route with Zuko and Aang, but they never did. Even in LOK, the only thing that I remember Iroh saying about their relationship was that they canonically became the best of friends and that Zuko knew Aang better than anyone, even more than Katara and their children. I find the direction of their relationship a contrast to how often the bond between the male protagonist and the male antagonist that are spiritually linked in other media is reduced to “they were like brothers” and put aside for the respective heterosexual romances of the leads, even though the relationships between the leads often have homoerotic subtext and can be interpreted through a queer lens. I guess what I’m wondering is: would you classify Zuko and Aang’s relationship as brotherly? Do you support interpretations where their relationship is viewed as brotherly? And finally (I’m sorry for all of the questions): why do you think the ATLA writers - who seem to mostly be composed of cishet men - never took the “brotherly love” route and left the nature of their relationship ambiguous?

This ask has been in my inbox for a Hot Minute 💀 my apologies, my friend. And since I haven’t seen LOK, I won’t try to speak on the front. Before I continue, though, @likealittleheartbeat has an AMAZING analysis here about the interpretation of Aang and Zuko’s relationship through a queer-platonic lens that I found to be an incredible read and arguably could answer this ask on its own, lol!

I guess the general “issue” that must be addressed to answer these questions is simply how we define brotherly. That “we” can be divided into the viewers and the writers, only adding another layer of complexity. Because the reality is that we can’t jump into the creators minds and see exactly how they intended Zuko and Aang’s relationship to be interpreted. We can make deductions, e.g. the existence of Kataang and Maiko suggests Zuko and Aang were not intended to have a romantic relationship within canon (duh, lol). In fact, you could even add another division to the “we” - the writers, the viewers, and the characters themselves (i.e. interpretation through the cultural lenses that inspired the show).

All of this is to say that there is not going to be one agreed-upon definition of “brotherly,” lol! Since you seem to be asking for my personal opinions, I’ll go with my personal definition. If anyone has differing thoughts in response to these questions, please feel free to add them in a comment or rb! I think there’s a lot to explore here and my sole opinion is Not the be-all and end-all, lmao.

So, what is my personal definition of “brotherly”? I’m not going to try to make a formal definition, lol, but the gist of my interpretation is a platonic relationship akin to that of siblings. To me, there is a difference between having a “brotherly relationship” with someone versus a “friendship” (I almost used “friendly relationship” but that didn’t feel right jskdfhakdls). I think these two can overlap and/or be the same, but - for example - I have friends who I would say without hesitation that I am incredibly close with, but I also would not classify that friendship as “sisterly.” (Again, these are strictly my personal thoughts, and I encourage further discussion in comments/rbs!)

I’ll take your questions one at a time:

Would you classify Zuko and Aang’s relationship as brotherly?

Personally? Probably not. To me, there is a sense of superficiality associated with the term “brotherly” that in my eyes can be reductive to platonic relationships between men (can be, not always lol). I think with Zuko and Aang, the relationship just runs much deeper than “brotherly” can connote. For one, they are the primary narrative foils of the show! The only relationship that comes close to theirs in terms of narrative significance is Kataang (which is a very different dichotomy, btw, I’m not trying to compare them lol). We have numerous episodes dedicated to the parallels between Aang and Zuko, including but not limited to “The Storm” and “The Avatar and the Fire Lord.” I mean, this is an actual quote from the latter episode:

Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?

We see variants of this line and the notion of friendship itself associated throughout that episode explicitly with Roku and Sozin, Roku and Gyatso, and of course the Gaang at the end, but implicitly we also know it’s about Aang and Zuko, too. Aang says, “Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation, have to be treated like they’re worth giving a chance.” One common take with this line that I’ve seen is interpreting it as foreshadowing for Aang’s decision to spare Ozai - which obviously is a fair assessment - but we cannot also ignore how much it applies to Zuko joining the Gaang. Specifically, Zuko reconciling with Aang.

We all know Aang was the first person to extend friendship to Zuko back in “The Blue Spirit” and tbh, after he saw Appa licking Zuko, you can tell Aang was nearly willing to extend a second chance to Zuko then and there lol. Aang and Zuko’s friendship, them being drawn together, is a relationship that transcends lifetimes, transcends social norms/expectations, transcends a loss greater than anyone can imagine (for Aang) and offers a new opportunity arguably far more than deserved (for Zuko). I think ascribing a qualifier of “brotherly” to their relationship therefore limits this transcendence because of how much their dynamic encompasses.

Do you support interpretations where their relationship is viewed as brotherly?

Of course! One of the reasons I love A:TLA - especially my small corner of the fandom - is how many interpretations that every relationship presents, be it a small “difference” (such as calling Zuko and Aang’s relationship “brotherly”) or a more drastic one (exploring fanon possibilities with rarepairs, let’s go #AangRarepairWeek 😎). So even if this interpretation isn’t one I’m inclined to in the literal sense (i.e. it’s the “brotherly” qualifier I feel I dislike, because I do love platonic Zukaang as much as romantic Zukaang), I absolutely encourage others to make the most of their fandom experience and product/support content that they enjoy!

Why do you think the ATLA writers - who seem to mostly be composed of cishet men - never took the “brotherly love” route and left the nature of their relationship ambiguous?

I will say that we don’t really have any way of knowing the sexualities and gender identities of every single A:TLA writer, lol. I’m not saying they were all queer in some way, of course, but I just want to establish that we don’t and can’t know unless told. If that makes sense 😂

As I mentioned earlier, I have no way of getting inside the writers’ minds to determine their intentions when they were writing Zuko and Aang’s relationship, so all you’re gonna get here are my best guesses lmao! For one, there wasn’t really a need to outright label Zuko and Aang as having a “brotherly” relationship. The existence of Kataang and Maiko again speak for themselves. Most viewers - especially casual watchers - don’t need the show to state “these two only love each other in a brotherly way” to conclude that the relationship was platonic (or rather, was not romantic), especially considering that the show was made in the mid-2000s (i.e. sad but true, most people weren’t watching A:TLA with a queer lens 😔). So I wouldn’t say they left the relationship “ambiguous” so much as there wasn’t need to qualify it further than simply being platonic.

Of course, I do think there is an ambiguity that comes with Aang and Zuko’s relationship, which I love to exploit in my Zukaang fics 😌. Was that ambiguity intentional? Again, I’m inclined to say no. But I can’t speak with certainty and - as I discussed earlier - I truly think Aang and Zuko’s relationship would be limited by being called “brotherly” when their connection runs so deeply and is intertwined so heavily with the spiritual themes of the show. Thus, it’s possible the writers were purposefully emphasizing that spirituality by not labelling them as “brotherly”! But as I said, there’s really no way to be sure.

At the end of the day, I don’t think it matters how someone chooses to label Aang and Zuko’s relationship. I mean, I’m always a little horrified when a person completely overlooks their narrative significance as foils (because I personally can’t imagine dismissing either of their importance to the other), but hey, to each their own. Brotherly, queerplatonic, romantic, and hell, anything in-between - these interpretations are anyone’s for the taking. Have fun with it! 💛

(I hope this at least kind of resembles the answer you were looking for, anon 😂)

[sonicenvy]

tag game: fic roundup!

new tag game i’m inventing for everyone and anyone who writes fanfic! Fic roundup!

how many fic documents do you have/where do they live?

80 in icloud notes

30 in Gdrive

7 in OneDrive

6 on MB Pro HD

30 on MB unibody

we will not speak of the ancient sins of my fic that live on my old windows PC. there are probably more than I’d like to think and all of them are from when I was under 20.

So, a grand total of 153 fic documents. oof. all the unfinished fic is haunting me y’all. granted, there is probably an overlap of ~10 or so items, but generally speaking all of these are unique (or unique but related) items lmaooo.

what fandoms do you have fic for?

doctor who, this is probably number 3 in fic quantity, also my OG

star wars, probably the greatest number of fics i have are from star wars

lois and clark, clocks in for number 4, but most of the fics i have for tnaos are LONG af in comparison to a lot of the others.

lucifer, probably number 2 in fic ideas. sorry again to all 150 tgatd fans for not finishing that fic. love ya!

castle, basically 3 main AUs because i recently got re-obsessed with that stupid show. beckett’s hot okay?

miss fisher’s murder mysteries, but only once because my ability to actually write period stuff is low, but this one idea kinda wouldn’t stop screaming at me until i jotted all 2500 words of it down haha

captain america/agent carter. also probably going nowhere, but ya know. the idea was there.

need (carrie jones) (there are literally TWO whole fics for this criminally underrated trashy paranormal teen romance series from 2009 on AO3. TWO fics y’all. anyways Need should have blown up instead of Twilight. All the same goofy paranormal romance love triangle nonsense without the complete disrespect of native american tribes. + norse mythology.)

prodigal son, but mostly only in my head lmao. me: everyone (except martin) on this show deserves to be happy for once. justice for gil/jessica and brightwell!

percy jackson. me, writing fic that’s just about sally jackson?? its more likely than you think. also me, writing latin teacher percy?? also more likely than you think.

how to train your dragon

the x-files. i remembered how sad i was that mulder and scully never got to raise their kid and then wrote mulder/scully & william on the run together to make me less sad about this.

sleepy hollow (tragically. shhhh i can still be sad over all of the lost potential of this show. #icabbie2022)

once upon a time (shhhh this one’s really old. i still sometimes enjoy my favs from this trashy fairytale soap opera ok?)

tldr; i write too much fic for too many things.

how long is your longest unpublished wip?

~11K words (53 pages). It’s a Lucifer case-fic that I first conceived up in the hiatus post “The Good the Bad and The Crispy” as far as I remember, but I didn’t get back to it again until late 2019 early-mid 2020. The in show context of the fic is still somewhat vague even after FIFTY f**king pages. I am still back and forthing about whether I want it to be an AU post “The Good the Bad and the Crispy” or an AU post “A Devil of My Word”. If it’s an AU post “The Good the Bad and the Crispy” I’ve obviously not had pierce/cain show up as a character thus far, and so I’d have to decided if he even exists in this AU. Maybe not because I wanted to yeet him into the sun when i was watching the show lmaooo. Still incredibly grateful to the wonderful @petrichorishly for their encouragement on this dumb, crazy idea. <3

what fic types are most common in your wips?

I’m a slut for AUs and UAs in my fic unfortunately. Like honestly, 90% of the 153 of these fics are AUs/UAs of some flavor or other.

do you have any ongoing ‘verses/series in your wips, if so, what are they?

Yup. too many.

luke leia switch fic. ft. a real outline (probably split into 5 fics overall: short pre-ANH, ANH, ESB, ROTJ, short post ROTJ epilogue/future fic)

hounds of hell lucifer ‘verse (short, sweet, fluff or h/c one shots in the same ‘verse)

water ‘verse for DW, aka the telepathic Rose Tyler AU. probably split into 1 fic per season, 1 chapter per episode, somewhat like nancy kelley formats her behemoth TMMOT)

witch!chloe AU ‘verse for Lucifer (probably a pre show short, a fic for S1, a fic for S2)

force sensitive!padmé ‘verse(s) (one is basically just a bunch of one-shots in the same-ish universe. lot less organized lmao)

eldritch horror skywalkers fic (probably 1 fic per skywalker or something idk)

long or short fic?

both. both is good. I have a lot of short little introspective semi-AU stuff, but I also have a number of single fics that are long as fuck. for the purposes of this post making me think about writing, I’m going to list those here:

Smallville murder mystery fic. Biggest decision I haven’t made is whether or not this fic is in the continuity of my already published lois is an alien fic “starchild”

Hiccup succeeds in running away from berk with Toothless AU fic

castle witches AU

caskett high school sweethearts AU

Vader survives ROTJ AU, ft. legends solo kids

Leia O swaps universes with Leia S fic

lois and clark future kids fic

divorce attorney beckett fic

single parents caskett AU

lois and clark one night stand AU

tagging @otterandterrier @whopooh @lajulie24 @fantastic-nonsense & @petrichorishly & anyone else who wants to join in chatting about their writing! love y’all 🥰🥰🥰

[flyingcookierambles]

sadness over a3! eng i guess

oof just on my 700th day.....

kinda sad because of the announcement about A3! ENG server shutting down soon due to financial difficulties at LIBER/CYBIRD in the past two years (covid-19 related, etc.). according to a rather in depth reddit comment that had links to LIBER's publicly available financial reports + some financial reports from LIBER's parent company, Aeria, in english, covid-19 really hit LIBER hard since they had to cancel many money making events, from pop-up shops for the typical anime merch trinkets (keychains, plushes, pins, etc.) to the huge in-person events (voice actor meetups, the stage plays of MANKAI LIVE, etc.). due to shrinking player base on the ENG server + major loss of profits on both JPN and ENG servers, LIBER had to choose one or the other and they chose the JPN one, which i totally understand since it's way bigger there and the JPN fanbase will continue to give the franchise money more often. also, another person found a financial report/estimate from the google play store or something, and A3! ENG only made ~$20K to ~$10K in the past few months, which i guess is not enough to keep a server and localization company afloat. 

i got pretty attached to the characters and it was a great game to help get by during college. and honestly, while i am very sad about this, again, i understand why LIBER did this, looking at their financial report from 2020. I would LIBER save the entire franchise rather than shut all the servers down, making us all unable to see our favorite actors ever again, even if it means that we ENG fans will have to go thru the extra steps of finding/reading fan translations, wikis, etc., to read any further stories from where A3! ENG left off. still, A3! ENG's localization was something special. i'm saying this as a TKRB JPN player who read the wiki for all the character voice lines and then had to see the official TKRB ENG localization make Yamabushi Kunihiro a rapper for some reason? lol. it was....weird.... meanwhile, all the memes and slang in A3! ENG didn't seem out of place and all fit their personalities because 3/4 of the troupes were all high school to college age and 3 of them were ~Gamers~. Out of all the gachas i've played, i feel like the only other F2P gacha game that had this incredibly smooth, all cultural jokes/puns translated in a way that still makes sense/fits the character/doesn't require a galaxy brain and some TL note to understand, is probably dragalia lost and that's only because it has frickin Nintendo localizing/publishing it globally for CyGames. Nintendo. i'll eventually read the fan translations of A3!'s Act 3 on the wiki, but it won't be the same without Kazunari's super high-energy influencer slang of "'whoa fam! that's totes 'blammable, gotta take a pic!" or Itaru's gremlin Gamer speak of "lol get rekt noobs" or Tsuzuru's tired dying breath of "that ain't it chief." the appropriate slang and relatable meme speak of the localization really helped humanize these characters as people of their respective ages, rather than just a typical formal speak or some directly translated JPN slang -> ENG that turns out super awkward that can be found in bad localizations.

going back to the reddit comment too, the death of A3! ENG servers could have bad repercussions in the future for other joseimuke games. josei, if you for some reason have been in the anime fandom but still don't know this term, is basically the genre of stories/video games/media/etc aimed at women. it's the mature adult counterpart to seinen, media aimed at adult men. basically shoujo/shonen = elementary/middle school/high school aimed while josei/seinen = high school/college/adult aimed if that helps. Joseimuke is a part of josei that is not specifically romance. while some josei/joseimuke can overlap with otome, aka female aimed dating sims/romance media, they have many things about them that make these all separate genres. one of the official A3! ENG translators and a known fan translator of another joseimuke gacha, Mahou Yaku/Wizard’s Promise, minami, goes more in depth with this in a twitter thread. 

A3! was an actor raising game, and a big part of it was found family and relationships that were platonic. yet it got advertised as an otome, which has more connotations with dating sims and brings to mind other shoujo/otome games and anime where the cast is all high schoolers and the setting is most often in a high school. but, other than some characters making flirty jokes or implied to have crushes on Izumi/player character, many character relationships with Izumi are platonic and not romantic at all. Spring Troupe in the game also jokingly calls themself a family. the entire Mankai Company is basically found family. plus, since the game actually has time passing in story and the characters age with each year, half of the characters aren’t even in high school anymore. a large majority of them are in college or are graduated by now, with only a few still in high school. i’m not surprised if a reason that some people left the game was due to feeling bored with the slice of life/not romantic story, feeling that they were lied to about it being an otome, which was falsely advertised since it is a game meant for the older teens/adults demographic of josei/joseimuke.

i’m worried that other japanese companies will look at this shut down as a “josei/joseimuke doesn’t work well in the west” and never localize other josei/joseimuke gacha games like Mahou Yaku, EnStars, Twisted Wonderland, Helios, etc.

while i like otome and shoujo, i, as a 23/soon to be 24 year old college graduate and now tax paying adult, want more stories that have more mature themes and characters that are more my age so i don’t have to feel awkward when i’m playing some dating sim and i, a literal 23 year old adult, and trying to woo a 16 year old. it’s...a little awkward to say the least. i would gladly welcome more mature media that is categorized as josei/joseimuke.

sorry if this is all over the place, but overall im just sad that A3! ENG is shutting down. i don’t know if i’ll join the JPN server yet. i’m def going to read the Act 3 story via fan translators on the wiki, but A3! gameplay was...boring lmao. as much as i love A3!, im sure that the constant event grind/burnout and boring rng gameplay turned people off too and i dont blame them. i felt the burnout bad since i participated in basically every event since day 1. it. is. rough. i’m not joining the hellish thunderdome that is the JPN server and im not ranking anymore as a F2P player lmao. literally had to play almost every waking free moment to get into the 30%-20% bracket as a F2P person and i never got to top 20%-10%, much less top 1% lmao. i’m don’t whale enough lol. 

i feel like i should probably just. crack open my genki 2 textbook and uhhh totally legal pdf copy of tobira. so i can just. get the JPN version of games in the first place so i don’t have to worry about getting shafted since overseas fans are often considered expendable. 

i wish that, when any games that are online end, gacha or mmo or anything, anything online, companies will let fans archive things. or like. release a book that is just the story text or something. like. CYBIRD is letting us still technically play the game and have the story and all, but what if they eventually later shut everything down? why not just release a pdf/ebook that’s just the text of the eng localization for some money? i’d buy it. for nostalgia and rereads and all and also archiving purposes. i think i’ll try to help with any english localization archive projects if i can so that the hilarious and incredible localization that was a work of love from the translation team doesn’t just disappear forever.

well.

that’s it for now. as i said, guess i’ll head to the app for one of the last times to read the last unread stories and mini stories i have left, then the wiki for Act 3, and then i guess i’ll crack open genki 2 and bunpo.....

some fun random links for you to think about!

random ffxi article that came to mind (if ffxiv ever shuts down in the next 20 years or whatever i’d be cool to get a statue of my character at the end)

and death of a game playlist by NerdSlayer Studios on Youtube that has me thinking a lot about game preservation and losing MMOs and games

the lost media wiki  and blameitonjorge’s lost media iceberg

other gacha games i’ve played that have shut down that i think about sometimes because the loss of A3! ENG isn’t my first rodeo:

terra battle & terra battle 2 (1)

AFTERL!FE

(related kitsu post link for archive reasons)

[riacte]

Unnecessary Hermit MCC Team Speculation

So according to Scott, teams are in the works, applications likely closed a few days ago, MCC 14 date is known to participants, MCC Twitter says they’re gonna steal CPK’s spotlight after wishing him a happy birthday. So we’re getting MCC 14 relatively soon. Hence I’m making my 284927391 hermit MCC team speculation.

Hermit duos:

Actually I think we’ll be seeing more duos in MCC S2.

1) Hermits and Scott have probably realized hermit duos perform way better than trios/ quartet (the only hermit duo team that didn’t get to DB is the first time False and Ren played)

2) They wanna meet new people, but they also want to play with friends. So 2+2 will be a good combo. You can meet new people while having a buddy you a stick to.

False + Cub

I don’t think any of the hermits are confirmed to join (Doc has shown interest) but I feel these two would most likely be in MCC 14?

1) False has been in every MCC since debut

2) Cub plays every other MCC, and he skipped MCC 13

3) Most important of all, they’ve both been polishing their skills through parkour and speedrunning etc. I think they’re currently the most competitive of the hermits, so I won’t be surprised at all if they pair up for a competitive team.

False + Grian

A surprisingly popular duo in post-MCC 13 team predictions. I like them as a duo, and I used to think we’ll have a bigger chance of getting False + Cub/Ren, but now I think about, the team predictions may be right.

1) False has been with Ren and Cub for their first victory, so according to ✨meta✨ she’ll be with Grian for his first victory and her third. The Hermit Winner enabler.

2) Grian is the only hermit regular who hasn’t won yet, and really really wants to win (he said he was gonna cry himself to sleep after he lost MCC 13 lol)

3) False is seen as the most competitive

So if Grian wants to win and go full competitive, and I feel Scott will likely pair him with False. Also Reddit loves this duo apparently. Another incentive.

False + Ren

Ah yes, the hermit team staple. Ex base-buddies my beloved. The duo that’s always been together. I miss them lmfao

I feel they’re gonna continue pairing up because False said she’s gonna collect all ranks with Ren? Also I feel Ren likely asks for False every time (Scott said someone asked for False back in MCC 9, we thought it was H, but apparently neither H or Fruit specified a person, so I guess it’s Ren. Makes sense because Ren’s with False literally every single time).

There’s not much to say except if they team up again, everyone saw it coming.

But also exactly because they’ve teamed up for so many times that they may decided to split for a MCC or two? That doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing though.

Ren + Cub

Honestly every time I think of this potential duo, I just see False sandwiched between them lmao. Because this a hermit trio. These two are probably False’s most frequent collaborators?? (Although there’s not much False and Ren collab this season)

Basically I somehow can’t see this happening without False. I’m sorry lmao

Grian + Cub

To a lot of people’s surprise, they haven’t teamed before. They’re probably the duo that collabs the least often on Hermitcraft so I kinda get why. Still wanna see this duo.

Grian + Ren

They’re close enough that they apparently visit each other irl. Which is very sweet. I can honestly see them as a duo, just chilling and having fun.

Hermit trios:

False + Ren + Grian/Cub. With the FRG trio happening more often in recent MCCs, FRC trio happening more often in the early, chill days. Hermit trio + S tier (aka. Lime Liches) is the most powerful version of hermit trios, and may even rival the strength of hermit duo + S tier teams.

FRG:

Honestly this seems like a feasible trio, especially when Cub skips a MCC/ plays with non hermits (MCC 7, 11, 12). There’s also the Lime Liches bias with this trio, so Scott might be more inclined to put them together?

Also if Cub skips, it means Scott will either have to make a hermit duo + solo hermit OR make a hermit trio. And Scott will probably put the solo hermit with hermit adjacent (eg. Grian with Pearl). Also pretty sure for this case, it’s gonna be False + Ren duo, Grian with hermit adjacent people just like MCC 9. That being said, MCC 9 was special because I think False and Ren specifically said they were gonna go competitive, while Grian not, so it makes sense for the split. For the current meta of competitive hermits, it might be easier for Scott to stuff the hermits together in a trio (eg. Lime Liches)??

FRC:

The last time this trio appeared was MCC 8. From that moment onwards, Cub has been in competitive teams either in a duo or solo, and had gotten to Dodgebolt in all his post-MCC 8 tourneys. So I honestly don’t know if we’ll see them together again. Maybe we’ll get something like Lime Liches.

New hermits:

I can see False-Ren-Doc as a trio for Doc’s first MCC.

1) This team appeared in CotC

2) To use Ren and Doc’s words: #ShipRendoc

3) Putting False here because I feel non hermits will be very ?!!???? at the Rendoc flirting

I can also see Iskall in a hermit trio. In particular Iskall-Grian-Ren

1) We got Team FRIC in MCC 5, so maybe something new?

2) Renskall. That’s it.

3) Everyone wants Grian-Iskall interaction, especially because they don’t collab that much this season compared to the last

But really I can see Iskall with every hermit regular. The reason I feel newcomers will be in trios not duos is that having two veterans to coach the newbie(s) is better than having one.

Hermit quartet

Genuinely don’t think this will happen if the hermits go competitive. Maybe we’ll get this for a chill MCC. Maybe not.

The hermit quartet in MCC 5 did pretty good though, but team standards have changed a lot since then. I kinda wanna see Iskall in another hermit quartet.

Others:

The famous Grian-False-Techno-Wilbur team, if you ignore the swearing thing and opposite Dodgebolt strategies. This team will have a fuckton of clout, probably comparable to MCC 13 Pink.

I actually feel this might happen because it’s highly popular and highly requested

But also 1) the swearing thing 2) Scott tends to put people who have similar attitudes (eg. hermits play with people who advocate arrow splitting) 3) they’re a powerful team. So maybe not.

Lime Liches. I seriously believe this might happen because of the very high demand and the Blue Bats bias. They got screwed over bc of parkour, many people think they deserve a redemption. They’re not too strong as a team either. It’ll be like MCC 8/9 Green.

Also the Fruit+Grian duo. I’m pretty sure this duo will happen at least once in S2. Grian famously commented he wants to team with Fruit, Fruit replied, even had an alt Twitch called “grianstanaccount”. Won’t be surprised at ALL if they ask for each other. Maybe this will happen along with LL redemption.

Hermits and H? This is to pacify the Blue Bats fandom. Also if we have hermit trio + Fruit, why not H lmao. But H said he wants to play with new people, and I think he said he wants to team with Puffy, sooo.... imagine we get sth like False Cub H Puffy. Lmao.

Hermits and Dream? I said I can’t see this happening, esp with Ren, but maybe Scott will do it for the Dreamslayer memes

Hermits and Quig? After Pete and Fruit, Quig is probably the most hermit friendly S tier. I think people said he would vibe well with the hermits. Quig is also involved in the X Life circle, which overlaps with the hermits’ circle.

Anyways. I’ve liked all Hermit teams so far, I’m sure Scott will make them fantastic as always. If you’ve reached this point, thank you for reading my pointless speculation. See you when MCC 14 teams are revealed :)

[illfoandillfie]

ok sorry but how many people do yall think rog has ever slept with cos i’m guessing four figures no lie

okay, i don’t normally respond to messages like this because, frankly, i dont really feel like its my place to speculate on roger’s sex life. Theres a difference between writing a fiction story with a character named after and inspired by him and discussing his actual personal life which i have no real knowledge about. What he gets up to in his free time is between him and the women he does it with. but i didn’t really feel able to ignore this one. please don’t take this as me telling you off or shutting you down or anything like that. If you want to speculate about roger’s body count thats up to you, go nuts with it. and i love when you guys message me and I don’t want to discourage you from feeling like you can talk to me or just send me your random thoughts or whatever about any subject. But I feel like I need to address why I disagree with this sentiment. Also so I can ask ya’ll to please stop asking me questions like this. 

So firstly, just to get this out of the way. 1000 is a lot. even 100 is a lot. I think if rog had slept with 1000+ people he’d have a least a few illegitimate kids and probably would have been checked into rehab for sex addiction (not to mention STIs and such because lbr people in the 70s specifically probs werent the most careful especially if drugs were involved). I mean even if we were going to say Rog got lucky with a different woman after every show we wouldn’t reach 1000. According to google, Queen played around 700 shows in their entire career. If we add shows played by The Cross thats only another 67 odd shows (according to wikipedia). 

now, i think there are 3 things that contribute to this idea of roger as especially promiscuous. 1. His attitude/demeanour/general way he sells himself. 2. the generally held conceptions about rock stars and rock star behaviour. and 3. what i’m going to call fandom dumbassery (but i mean that with a lot of love) 

So lets start with the man himself. Roger Taylor is loud and opinionated and not particularly humble. He knows he’s talented and attractive though for at least some time he was a little self-conscious about how feminine he looked. He’s always up for a laugh, likes to party and has admitted to enjoying his drink and his women. He’s had kids with two different women, who’s relationships “overlapped”, and is currently married to a third. At least that’s the perception we can gleam from his interviews, behind the scenes videos, and other public appearances. 

It’s easy to see how that image leads to accusations of being a womaniser and a cheater and basically a bit of a slut lmao. But here’s the thing. I think Roger, in part, markets himself that way. The thing is, if you look at his solo songs and the relationships he currently has with his kids and their mothers, and things other people have said about him/his relationships over the years, I think it’s fair to say he also has a bit of a romantic streak maybe? idk if thats the best way of describing it...he’s self confessed to not being a fan of marriage and the like but he’s not opposed to writing and singing love songs and seems to believe in ~love~ as a concept/power. He certainly cares deeply for those closest to him. Whether or not that translates to an agreement with monogamy I can’t say for certain. It’s hard to draw conclusions here because a lot of what we know of his personal life was fed to us through magazines and news paper gossip column articles and they were never looking for the truth, they were looking for scandal and sensationalism. 

For instance the whole thing with the overlapping relationships. I think most people who have read anything about roger and dom and debbie realise that it’s not as cut and dry as “he was cheating with debbie and left dom for her” even though that was the story being sold by the press at the time. The reality (or at least the version closer to reality since obviously no one outside of them and whoever they were closest with knows all the nitty gritty details) is that rog and dom had already split when they got married. it was a marriage of convenience to make sure her and the kids would be looked after financially etc even after he’d moved out. So while it looked to the public like he married one chick and 30 odd days later was spotted with another, there really wasn’t anything untoward happening.  I’m not saying he never had casual hookups or one night stands and i’m not saying he never cheated, but I do think some of it’s been exaggerated, whether by him to encourage the rock star perception or by newspaper/magazine articles.

Now, obviously, we have stories of rog, particularly in the late 60s and into the 70s, being with multiple women. There’s that bit in the Interview with a Queen “Groupie” (which is a fantastic read and i defs recommend checking it out if you havent already) where she talks about roger being a chick magnet and says that, at the time, it was pretty common to sleep about. But, she also says she didnt notice him doing it more or less than anyone else and seemed to mostly be with Jo (his girlfriend at the time). This is the same Jo that got a mention in the Queen in 3D book (”i think we all had the feeling that these two were together for life, but it was not to be”). Conversely, we have that quote (which i cannot find rn but i’ll link it when i do) about roger sometimes having one girl upstairs while another waited in the garage for them to be finished. I think it was about Rog in the mid-late 60s in Truro but whatever. Obviously he wasn’t anywhere near celibate and it’s likely was sleeping with people outside of his relationship(s). But one has to assume that as he got older those kinds of antics stopped happening, at least as frequently.

There is one potential story that I remember reading somewhere along the way about Roger cheating on Debbie while she was pregnant. But, take that with a grain of salt because I can’t find the article again and also I think it was from like The Sun or something equally as rubbish. The press was notoriously always printing mean shit about the boys and that might have been another thing they published to create scandal. Even so, if we assume it’s legit that is still only 1 story. Not to throw him under the bus but Brian is the one with multiple confirmed affairs, who literally wrote songs about it all. So why is Roger the one with sleazy reputation? 

This is where my second and third points come in. There is a pervasive idea about what it means to be a rock star. The whole trashing hotel rooms, sleeping with groupies, passing out drunk every night thing. And I’m sure that Queen was like that to an extent. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that all of them got up to shit on the road. Between innuendo laden interviews and songs, videos and accounts of their parties, stories CT has put online, and other stories like the one of Roger bringing out lines of coke as dessert when he was having dinner with motley crue. They definitely embraced the rock and roll lifestyle. And I think with Roger’s personality being what it is, it’s easy to link him to those traditional rock star tropes and say it was all true all the time. I also think Roger has done nothing to counter those beliefs. He’s been open about how he wanted to be a rock star since the minute he picked up a guitar, he’s labelled himself as a great lay in magazines, he’s joked about girls pulling their tits out over dinner in interviews (though he said he didnt take her home), he’s written songs like One Night Stand and Dirty Mind and Airheads which explicitly mention his preference for women and alcohol. I think it’s fair to say he’s kind of encouraged that view of himself. Whether it was just a side effect of being part of such a well known band and having such a boisterous demeanour/personality, or whether it was intentional as a version of promotion i don’t know. maybe a mix of them? I mean I’m sure it didn’t hurt sales and stuff. it’s the whole guys want to be him, girls want to be with him thing, right? Maybe that’s just me being cynical though lmao. 

Anyway, the fandom brain has taken all of that and compressed it into memes and jokes about rog being the band slut. Which i’m not complaining about, lord knows i’ve made the same jokes and reblogged the same posts and used those tropes in my fics. They’re funny and lend themselves to interesting fic concepts. Plus, i think roger is the sort of person who would probably laugh about most of it. But it’s an idea that keeps feeding into itself through fandom, perpetuating what is probably a misguided view of his personal life.

Again, I am sure he’s had his fair share of fun and I’m not trying to make out that he was always perfect or whatever, but I don’t think he’s been with as many women as the popular discourse would imply and I certainly don’t think he’s in the 4 digit numbers. 

[softly-savage-mint-yoongi]

content creator year in review

I was tagged by the ever-delightful @j-pping to do this and I am so touched this is a lovely thing to do :c Thank you so much darling! <3 first creation and most recent creation of 2020: First creation was... according to my archives, I posted the second chapter of Allotrope on New Year’s Day. Most recent creation was...the Allotrope Christmas Special. one of your favorite creations from 2020: Oh! I really, really loved the Robinhood AU I wrote for @guardians-of-exo based on her moodboard way back some months ago! It has since been removed and launched me into wanting to write an interwoven AU based in Medieval era with her, so embarking on that adventure has been really fun and adventurous! a creation you’re really proud of: Hm, literally without turning this into a gush-fest about Allotrope, I’d say... the universe of our collab series, An Adventurer’s Guide to Romance. It might not seem like it but making nine timelines connect and overlap is hard. It only gets harder to entertain and write something new and fun without getting repetitive- especially when writing the same situation from another character’s perspective. I’m proud of how well it has gone so far and I can guarantee to you that’s why it takes so long to write each one after the next- I have to go back and reread and follow timelines and stuff to make sure I’m at the correct point in time of the story! a new style you tried this year and a gifset/fic that uses it: Uhh... I don’t have anything like that. I suppose you could say for style, that would be the series mentioned above that I collab on with @guardians-of-exo. I had read the entirety of Welcome to the Exodus Mall, an amazing and brilliantly colorful series by a writer I admire, @yehet-me-up. I was so blown away by the way she weaves everything together and felt inspired to write something in that fun kind of interwoven space because how freaking cool is a bunch of backstory and from characters you love when their arc is over??? a creation that took you forever: Ohoho, does it count if it is not over...? I have four creations that have been WIPs all year. One is Heat Seekers, a Chanyeol x f.reader set in a futuristic/dystopian AU, a really super personal piece for Yoongi called Desiderium, a fluffy and domestic Baekhyun piece that I can only write when I am in a very specific and soft mood, and lastly is my multi-chaptered Namjoon x f.reader Magic AU, Moonchild (which will probably get a rewrite). your creation that received the most notes this year: Without a doubt that would be Allotrope chapter 2, with 280 notes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for every single one, but I would probably be a lot more discouraged by the perpetual decrease in notes as the story progressed if I didn’t absolutely find this story loving and wonderful and if I were not at peace being proud how honored I am to have been able to write it for Junmyeon. a creation you think deserved more notes: This is a cringe-worthy question. But I suppose, if I could wish for it, it would have been that the Allotrope chapter 7 would have received a bit more notes. NOT for the fact that I feel like it wasn’t well-loved, but the anxiety in me wants to make sure it was seen by the people who care to have read it through and I feel like its current count isn’t accurate enough to reflect that wish. I want people to know how the couple ended the story. Really, I know the two biggest fans of it, @jenmyeons and @kyungseokie read it more than once (I love you both thank you so much always), and that they love it so much. I just want to be sure everyone who ever gave me support and liked this story has had a chance to read its ending. <3 a new fandom you joined and a creation you made for it: ASLKDHALSLKFG Stray Kids because Changbin and Chan choose violence daily, but I haven’t had a chance to write anything for it yet. Although, I’ve had plenty of time to read things for them and lemme just say, bless you Skz fanfic writers. MVPs, all of them. Perhaps one day when I can’t contain myself anymore I’ll write something, ha! a creation you made that breaks your heart: Without a doubt, Allotrope. Breaks it down into tiny pieces and builds it back together again over and over. Also more recent, the quick and dirty Estiferous, all because of its cause for inspiration that was the fake scandal that dragged Chanyeol through the mud. dearest @saebyeog-i and I were in a fucking FIT. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written but it was still heartbreaking to thinking about it and then to write it. JUST LOVE HIM. a ‘simple’ creation that you really love: THIS IS EASY- Ameliorate! This sweet domestic fluff fic I wrote for @kyungseokie when she was not quite feeling so well and I had just finished writing Saccharine for AAGTR after watching 100 Days My Prince so I was hella in my Ksoo feels. a creation that was inspired by another one: This one isn’t writing lmao, it’s this portrait drawing I did of Chanyeol, which was inspired by his photos for 1 Billion Views, so technically inspired by another work, just, still not of the writing variety. a favorite creation made by someone else: Ooh for sure there are several, even if not written this year! Welcome to the Exodus Mall series by @yehet-me-up as mentioned above, Fortune Favors the Brave and Meminerunt Omnia Amantes by @j-pping,  The War by @guardians-of-exo. Bitter Brews by @saebyeog-i (I love you and like it’s your fault, even without this adorable story, that I have a big fat crush on Johnny). Transference by @dark-muse-iris that I scream about whenever I can, Void and other works (like Gwanghae Flow) by @btssavedmylifeblr, literally anything and everything (but especially Light Sakura) by @yeoldontknow, I’ll be Yours by @jiminbbyboy The Rich Man’s Crochet Club by @kpopfanfictrash along with every other work she’s written. Sweeter Than Sweet by @gimmesumsuga, Wanted (and Tentacledipity of the same AU) by @jincherie, and all things written by @jenmyeons (but extra love for Fine Dining Chanyeol and The Dating Problem Junmyeon, omg.) and @kyungseokie (especially Dichotomy and the following Car Je T’aime and Clair de Lune (I am a sucker for her Baekhyun okay T~T)). literally so many others, oof. some of your favorite content creators of the year: See above. uwu Enjoy the last few days of 2020 and ring in a safe, healthy and happy New Year for 2021, everyone. Love you! <3

[mandaloriandy]

Fic Writer Interview

I suppose I should... actually get around to doing this.

I was tagged by @maderilien, @stormwarnings, and @willowcrowned! (that’s what I get for putting off doing this, I get ganged up on.) (I’m just joking, I am very touched that you all thought of me)

How many works do you have on AO3?

49

What's your total AO3 word count?

339,898

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

oh fuck there's so many. uhhhh 32 apparently. big yikes. I'm just gonna copy-paste the list over, that'll be easiest. A lot of these are overlaps but alas such is life

1. Star Wars - All Media Types (24) 2. Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (18) 3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types (7) 4. TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms (4) 5. Homestuck (4) 6. Doctor Who & Related Fandoms (3) 7. Avatar: Legend of Korra (3) 8. Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (3) 9. Marvel Cinematic Universe (2) 10. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV) (2) 11. The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types (2) 12. Doctor Who (2) 13. Ender Series - Orson Scott Card (1) 14. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) (1) 15. Iron Man (Movies) (1) 16. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (1) 17. Original Work (1) 18. Sherlock (TV) (1) 19. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) (1) 20. Big Hero 6 (2014) (1) 21. Emelan - Tamora Pierce (1) 22. The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 23. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga (1) 24. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 25. Captain America (Movies) (1) 26. Paranatural (Webcomic) (1) 27. Torchwood (1) 28. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica (1) 29. Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types (1) 30. Star Wars: Rebels (1) 31. Doctor Who (2005) (1) 32. The Hobbit - All Media Types (1)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

To nobody's surprise, my top 5 fics by kudos are (in order) the first 5 parts to the Jedi Shmi AU.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Oof. I used to. But I ended up spiralling pretty badly uhhhh a couple years ago and had to stop. I feel like I should reply to comments, especially those wonderful long ones, but even though I do this whole writing thing, I always have a really hard time, like, knowing what to say to them? Like "akjsdfk;jf thank you" always feels inadequate, but writing a well thought-out reply takes a stupidly large amount of brainpower, and I'll leave them marked as unread if I want to reply to them and then they just accumulate in my inbox and I end up spiralling again, since it just continues to exist as a mental load of something I have to do and the avoidance just gets bigger and bigger the longer I put it off and–

look, I just get into my own head too much about it. I respond to questions, usually. I love all the comments but I can't let myself overthink it, and the easiest way to do that is to not let myself reply.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I guess Obi-Wan’s Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Life doesn’t count because it... doesn’t have an ending yet? and I don’t know how angsty that ending is going to be. Even Composing Hallelujah doesn’t count because it ends happier than in canon, even though it’s... y’know, not exactly happy-ending.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Hahaha I don't do crossovers often, but I have done them, and the craziest one I've actually written is probably my Sailor Moon/Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic. It’s especially crazy because I’ve only seen a few episodes of sailor moon lol

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

lmao YEP

There's this one, like Ender's Game/Doctor Who fic I wrote and posted on FFN back in middle school. And it got a ton of hate, as far as I can tell mostly from the same person, talking about like, how bad and non-canonical and whatever it was. And when I migrated over to AO3, I reposted it there too. This was in like 2012. The migration, at least, the fic was written in... idk, 2010?

And then. In 20-fucking-19.

I got a comment saying "Terrible. Makes zero sense. It’s like the author threw canon out the window and took a shit on it." like lmao what??????

(for reference: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361723?show_comments=true#comments and https://www.fanfiction.net/r/7621672/)

(like what the actual fuck was this person on)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Not any that I've been brave enough to post. And… also… nothing that I've actually written more than a few paragraphs on… I keep chickening out. I did recently make a deal with a friend, though, so… we'll see. If I do, it’s probably going to be quite dark, because that’s the kind of smut I like to read.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I sincerely hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! See how the blackbird walks into russian and just recently In all your wanderings into french!!!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've tried. It's never gone… especially well? I don't think any of them ever actually ended up complete, they all just petered out after a while.

What's your all time favorite ship?

I don't really have an "all-time favorite" anything, let alone a ship. I'm a horrible multishipper and I'm going to cause problems on purpose

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Sigh. Probably my intricate, 30-something-k unpublished Silmarillion Helcaraxë fic. It has so many moving pieces. I know where most of them end up but it's going to take so much effort to get there

What are your writing strengths?

writing

What are your writing weaknesses?

writing

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Hm. Given that I mostly write fic for SF/F, I don't run into the "real life languages" problem a lot. I end up working with conlangs of various complexity, for the most part, and for those… I'll sprinkle in a word or two if it makes sense, especially swear words and stuff. But for most of those conlangs, grammar is… less well-determined than vocabulary, so I almost never do phrases, let alone full sentences. I'll just put it in italics (if the POV character understands it) or say "and they said something unintelligible in [x language]" or the like.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I think………. let me check the dates on this. I think the actual first fanfiction I wrote was sometime in fifth or sixth grade, for this "Zenda" book series I read?? Either that or Harry Potter.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

A big shout-out goes to The Lichtenberg Figure, which I can’t believe is the only Tamora Pierce fanwork I’ve published, but for my favorite... it's gotta be Messenger. Like, looking back, there is a bunch about it that I am very not happy with, and a lot of things I think didn't come across the way I wanted, and things I would not write the same way now, years down the line, as I have very differently balanced understandings of… well, a lot of these same characters. But, fuck, I just can't let go of Mandalorian!Beru.

No pressure tags!! @apaladinagain @determamfidd @faeymouse @lumateranlibrarian (apologies if you’ve already done this one and I haven’t seen it!)

[g-perla]

The ACOTAR Series is a Romantic/Gothic Horror Stage and Only Nesta Got the Memo

Not even SJM knows what’s going on.

Ok, this is going to seem off the rails but bear with me.

So I'm a big fan of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (top 5 books and all that jazz) and I was thinking about it because it deals with themes of the Other and the supernatural, Nature as Character, the overlap of the animalistic and human, blurring of established binaries...fun, Romantic shit like that. Interestingly, this overlaps with how SJM illustrates her world and characters a lot of the time, hence why I was considering it while working on my Nesta project. I’ve mentioned before that Nesta really gives me Byronic heroine vibes and that’s a character construct of precisely this literary tradition.

I started thinking about Heathcliff and Cathy and how they're ridiculously extra and just feel the most intense emotions towards each other but also towards literally everything (nothing half-assed ever, this is a Romantic novel after all). I then remembered how so many people ship them, but like in earnest, in a totally aspirational way. It's not a #cursed ship to them at all. It's...romantic to them not Romantic. I even read often that people quote it at their weddings, specifically the infamous "two souls" quote.

Then I had an epiphany. I was like "wait, what if SJM is one of those people?? What if she has the energy of a Cathy/Heathcliff earnest shipper and that's why all her ships are messy??" Because if that is the case, my friends, oh boy oh boy would it explain so much. I will post some sections from Wuthering Heights:

Doesn’t the acotar series seem like a 1/50 dilution of that energy?? And that is barely a taste of all the spiciness this book has to offer. To illustrate further: SJM gave us the F/eysand suicide pact and the near-death battlefield Nessian scene. One is certainly more outlandish than the other, but both are the result of intense emotions. To that Emily Brontë raises the following: Heathcliff asking the sexton to dig up Cathy’s grave to see what’s up because her ghost has been haunting him since he personally dug up her grave 18 years prior and she has been haunting him ever since. He later demands to be buried in the same exact grave when he dies so they can decompose together. They both married other people though which only adds to the mess. (I am not lying to you the Romantic tradition really gave us these gems lmao. As an aside, Mary Shelley was also a writer of the Romantic tradition and she confessed her love to husband Percy Bysshe Shelley on her mother’s grave. Her mother was liberal feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft by the way which only makes this even more amazing. Additionally, biographers believe that the Shelleys also had sex there. Talk about Romantic 😉.)

Then I had ANOTHER thought! (Dangerous)

If we read the series from the point of view of just another YA high fantasy things might get a bit boring because the world-building is honestly lazy and the magic system is pretty soft, which isn’t a pre-requisite in high fantasy (The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system) but it's not the norm and it doesn't pay off in this series. Not to mention that the plot is pretty lackluster and derivative. To add to that the romantic and sexual relationships are questionable in their healthiness and consequently are the source of much argument in the fandom. 

But, dear reader, if we think about the ACOTAR series as being a sort of thematic and ideological 21st century YA homage to the Romantic tradition of the 19th century (within which Gothic Horror also lives), things get REALLY, REALLY SPICY.

No longer do we just have a romance fantasy with messy, hyper-emotional, animalistic characters who constantly partake in morally grey situations rife with dubious dynamics. No longer does plot really matter. No longer do we require quasi-scientific descriptions of the world and the magical system. No! All that matters now are the characters and the mood. Now we have potential! Add a lot of Nature ambiance: expanses of dark woods, great mountains, the unknowable and sublime energy of the ocean, a violent rainstorm/hurricane/tsunami, an impending snowstorm whose intensity reflects the growing emotional intensity of the characters as the story goes along (I’m looking at you impending snowstorm in acofas that curiously matches the growing complexity of Nesta’s emotional state). Blur the lines between any imaginable category: life and death, human and animal, known and unknown, Self and Other, beautiful and monstrous, good and evil, masculine and feminine, the list goes on. Most importantly make your readers uncomfortable by frustrating their desires to sort things into easy binary categories and don’t apologise for making them question their assumptions about the world, morality, gender, and any other kind of previously constructed Order. 

Basically write the story with Dionysus-in-a-Greek-tragedy energy and bring to us mere mortals artful Chaos.

Once that is done we can have a literal Romantic/Gothic Horror story.  The Acotar series could have been this unapologetically, with the added element of being told through the eyes of the "Cathy" character instead of through the lens of a third person getting second-hand accounts about what went on. This whole series is honestly enough of a chaotic mess of Byronic-like heroes and heroines and cursed familial relationships that it could have been that. That alone is peak entertainment. The problem, however, and the main reason why I can’t really say that this series truly delivered this wackiness is that SJM committed the act of not fully committing to the bit (very un-Romantic of her, I know). Now, I am not saying that SJM actually intended this. I’m just saying it really could have accidentally been this genius with some tweaks. Unfortunately, she made the crucial mistake of trying to justify too much, trying to make things too neat, too tidy, too sensical (in other words: the reason we really can’t have nice things). 

I could end this here, lamenting the potential of what SJM had set-up for us were it not for one element, one gift:

Nesta 

OHOHOHO DO THINGS GET GOOD HERE SO BUCKLE UP

Most of the characters refuse to fully commit to the bit in their desire to satisfy modern sensibilities, by which I of course mean they want ridiculous things like political power, to conquer lands, to be a Girl Boss, to get married, have kids, celebrate holidays, converse about mundane things, be relatable, etc. You know, pretty pedestrian stuff that only requires a bit of genetic luck, a sprinkle of energy, and the right circumstances within the world of Acotar. I would like to reiterate the beginning of this paragraph: most of the characters. 

Let’s say you’re stubborn and you decide to still read the series through the lens of the Romantic/Gothic tradition, what happens then? 

The most hilarious thing (for the Nesta stans that is. The antis would probably hate this)

Nesta, based on what we know about her through Feyre and the limited amount of other scenes, is the only character who really takes the performance seriously. She's the only one that SJM hasn't managed to confine through justification. Nesta just shows up and simply refuses to make sense (her POWER what a queen 👑). She is endlessly fascinating because she just exists in her world on her terms, established categories be damned, and in this manner she frustrates not only the sensibilities of the characters in the stories but those of the reader as well. This double duty is, I suggest, the result of the other characters not fully inhabiting the nebulous world of Romantic characters and thus being a little too plausible and understandable even if they are not justifiable. 

Ok, you may say, but I relate so much to Nesta. I do understand her. I don’t justify all of her actions, but I understand where she is coming from. (You’re not alone, friend. I like to think these things too. Alas, we are but plebs).

To that I reply; Nesta does things, certainly, and we can spend hours trying to explain through extrapolation, educated guesses, and personal experience why she did those things, but the fact is we really don't know why. We are never explicitly told. Our insight into who she is and her motivations comes predominantly from the understanding of her youngest sister and from our own interpretation of the actions she takes. I must make clear that our own interpretations are rooted in pre-established assumptions about what is sensical and orderly in our own world and in our own lives. We cannot interpret with the tools available to us that which may be, by definition, unfathomable. It is simply paradoxical. Nesta, as we currently know her, is a construct derived from a limited number of scenes and our interpretations and projections of these scenes. Even the scenes where we get third person narration don’t explicitly tell us her motivations and her logic. For all we know there really is no comprehensible reason for her actions and that is endlessly amusing to me in how utterly Romantic it is. Acosf may and likely will change this of course, but as it stands, Nesta is a whole Romantic character. Her divisiveness in fandom and in the narrative could be due in part to her refusal to fit the discrete categories available in her world and ours. 

Isn’t that wonderful?

To illustrate this a bit more I will share some details SJM gives us about her/ elements she sets up that fit in with the characteristics of the Romantic tradition (these are not exhaustive by any means):

The absolute pettiness (and extra-ness) of being so angry at her father’s inaction that she is willing to starve to death to see if he does something.

How in Acowae she is described as shifting between emotions as if she were changing clothes and feeling everything too strongly (probably to the point of destruction)

She is constantly being compared to animals, even when she is still human. Granted, SJM compares everyone to animals, but that strengthens the blurring of lines between usually discrete categories. It is still most powerful when used as a comparison when she is human because it dehumanises Nesta.

Often, SJM describes her characters as forces. Forces of nature, for example. Acofas is full of details like this in relation to Nesta. There is a storm brewing leading up to the solstice party and it is in full swing when she arrives at the townhouse. The language used there suggests that Nesta herself may be the storm (against the onslaught of Nesta). It really adds to the Maleficent energy tbh.

She is often associated with death post her transformation

She is Other even to Others. She was Made like Elain, Feyre, and Amren in a sense, but the process of her specific transformation differentiates her greatly from the others. As it is, she doesn’t fit in anywhere

Her intense attachment to her femininity and its expression are at odds with the ideas and assumptions about the performance of womanhood and a woman’s role in her world and even in ours. She is unapologetically feminine in her physical presentation, but her character, her thoughts, and possibly even desires transgress the unwritten rules of acceptable femininity (unfortunately there still are abject expressions of femininity in our ‘”progressive” mileux

She displays in many of her actions a disrespect towards authority and to the status quo. This is particularly notable when her intensely polarised sense of right and wrong is aggravated.

Her self-destructiveness. This is referred to most strongly in Acofas, but I would say she was remarkably blasé about self-preservation in Acowar as well

She is described as intelligent, cunning, ruthless, attractive, and prone to debilitating extremes of emotionality. All of these are characteristics of Byronic heroes, a subtype of the Romantic hero

Here are a bunch of quotes that touch on many of the elements that I have discussed above:

“I looked at my sister, really looked at her, at this woman who couldn’t stomach the sycophants who now surrounded her, who had never spent a day in the forest but had gone into wolf territory...Who had shrouded the loss of our Mother, then our downfall, because the anger had been a lifeline, the cruelty a release. But she had cared--beneath it she had cared, and perhaps loved more fiercely than I could comprehend, more deeply and loyally.” 

--Acotar, emphasis mine, note the strong emotions. This is a recurring element for Nesta.

“Cassian’s face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe...Only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.” 

--Acomaf, animal comparison

“Nesta is different from most people,” I explained. “She comes across as rigid and vicious, but I think it’s a wall. A shield--like the ones Rhys has in his mind.” “Against what?” “Feeling. I think Nesta feels everything--sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

--Acomaf, emphasis mine

“I knew that she was different [...] Nesta was different [...] as if the Cauldron in making her...had been forced to give more than it wanted. As if Nesta had fought after she went under, and had decided that if she was to be dragged into hell, she was taking the Cauldron with her.”

--Acomaf, Nesta had her own plans for the Cauldron what a queen

“Something great and terrible.”

--Acowar, referring to her eyes. Oooh, spooky Nesta 👻

“The day she was changed, she...I felt something different with her [...] like looking at a house cat and suddenly finding a panther standing there instead.”

--Acowar, a two in one here: difference + animal comparison. Boy does SJM really go heavy when establishing Nesta as Other.

“‘Not in flesh, not in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones...’ Amren’s remarkable eyes narrowed. ‘But...I see the kernel, girl.’ Amren nodded, more to herself than anyone. ‘You did not fit--the mold that they shoved you into. The path you were born upon and forced to walk. You tried, and yet you did not, could not fit. And then the path changed.’ A little nod. ‘I know--what it is to be that way. I remember it, long ago as it was.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’“

--Acowar, show don’t tell gets thrown out the window here, but it is useful for the present purposes

“What if I tell you that the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something--something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth. What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?

What came out was not what went in [...] How lovely she is, new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter’s sunrise.”

--Acowar, who knew rocks, darkness, and the sea were such gossips, but look how many connections to nature! To be compared to the sea, a significant example of the sublime, is peak Romanticism. If any of you have read Moby Dick, think about what the ocean and the white whale might have represented there and how that might relate to Nesta.

“I think the power is death--death made flesh.”

--Acowar, Feyre referring to the possible nature of Nesta’s power. Alluding to her powers possibly being related to death is quite significant because that is something most of us cannot comprehend, nor can most of the characters. For Nesta, a “reborn” but very much living character to have death associated with her is a strong blurring of the lines. The case of her being labelled a witch is similarly significant as it solidifies the elements of the supernatural while simultaneously comparing her to pretty much the only exclusively female-coded monster in western pop culture. I will touch more on this when I do my study of Nesta through the framework of Barbara Creed’s Monstrous Feminine.

“I am not like the others.”

--Acowar, we love a self-aware queen.

“Nesta took in his broken body, the pain in Cassian’s eyes, and angled her head.

The movement was not human.

Not fae.

Purely animal.

Purely predator.”

--Acowar

There are a lot more details and quotes that support this interpretation, but I didn’t write them all down in my archived notes. This post is obscenely long, however, so even though there is more to be said, I’ll leave it for another day. If you made it this far you really are an MVP and probably love Nesta to a concerning degree like me. Please rest your eyes if you’re actually reading this 😂

I’d love to read about any other takes and thoughts that might have come to your minds after reading this monstrosity,

G

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

ok i know you said that reblog didn’t just refer to Rakepick (i’m assuming that’s who you meant by “her” but correct me if not) but i don’t really see how it could refer to her character in the first place?? if you could elaborate that’d be great cos i feel like it’s flying right over my head lmao

Happy to! As I might have predicted, I did get several messages about the post I reblogged so now I’ll try to clarify my feelings on this, as I know it’s been a touchy subject in the past. (This ended up being quite long, so...) @dat-silvers-girl and @heleneplays I thought you might find this interesting.

The original post was talking about shipping and the difference between enjoying character dynamics and actually projecting onto characters to see the relationship style you would want in your own life. I feel like both of these things can happen and that’s okay, but the point was that shipping two characters doesn’t mean you condone any implications that such a relationship would have in real life. Enemies to Lovers is a great example. 

In regards to fiction, I took that mindset a step further and talked about characters in general, notably villains. The same way we shouldn’t assume that people like a certain ship because they want a relationship like that in their own life, I don’t think it says anything about a person if a villain is their favorite character. Very often, villains are the most interesting or fleshed out. They have a unique relationship with the story itself as they are often the driving force or representative of its message. You could say that Harry Potter is a story about love and family...and Voldemort exists as someone who cannot comprehend either, to demonstrate their importance. Anyway, the point is that there’s nothing wrong with liking a villainous character. 

When I was growing up, it didn’t seem like this was a contested idea. It was actually common, particularly for villains who were seen as “cool” and many of them were. You’ll find few people who don’t agree that Darth Vader or Darth Maul look cool. However, in recent years, I’ve noticed that purity culture has spread to the point where liking a villain is considered questionable. It no longer seems to be enough, necessarily, that one is merely enjoying the villain as a character. Just like the idea of shipping two characters now means one must condone that kind of relationship in real life, sometimes it seems as though liking a villain is now tantamount to condoning their actions. 

Then again, there are people who feel sympathy for villains and attempt to justify their actions. Sometimes it’s due to a personal attraction. It’s a meme that people get horny for villains, and there’s probably some overlap there with folks who lean toward the “projection” style of shipping I talked about earlier, but never mind that. Other times, this sympathy can overlap with seeing potential in the character. There is a fine line, of course, between rooting for a redemption for the villain and arguing that they did nothing wrong in the first place, but these days it seems as though rooting for a redemption for the “wrong” kind of villain is something people take as an insult. (Severus Snape comes to mind.) Alternatively, people also seem to take it as an insult if you don’t believe the “right” kind of character deserves redemption. (This happens a lot with Princess Azula.)

Now all that being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with hating a villain and just wanting them to go to hell and die. Like, that makes perfect sense. There are villains out there that we love to hate, characters who are so despicable that most people would agree they deserve a slow and painful death. Joffrey Baratheon is a great example. (Actually, a lot of Game of Thrones characters would apply here...) If a villain inspires true loathing from you, then paradoxically that also means they’re great, because they’ve been written in such a way that you as an audience can feel the evil. But this can become complicated if they overlap such despicable villains with the ones who have potential to be more interesting. It becomes complicated because of the aforementioned binary that now seems to be prevalent. The idea that everything one likes in fiction reflects what they believe should go on in real life.

Which brings us to Rakepick. 

Wow, we finally got here. I appreciate your patience. Rakepick is that character who has overlap. Whether we like it or not, she was presented as an ally for two years of the game’s story, before her betrayal. She spent a lot of quality time with MC and the other apprentices. We got to know her. It is not at all surprising, I don’t believe, that some of us see that “potential” to be more in Patricia Rakepick. But on the other hand, she sure has gone above and beyond in the effort to be one of those villains you just hate, given what she’s done. Having been part of this discourse, I think what’s going on is that the players who still feel a connection to Rakepick feel attacked by the players who ruthlessly condemn her. The players who condemn her feel insulted by the idea that players still like her after the terrible crimes she’s committed, after what she did to Rowan. No one is wrong here. Rakepick is a fascinating character who’s done unspeakable things. We do not need to fight about her. 

Everyone has different opinions about characters for different reasons. I have villains that I simply love because I see something more in them, or because I just think they’re cool. I also have villains for whom I feel the same contempt people have for Rakepick. Villains who I cannot stand and it makes me cringe to see their actions justified or considered - Cersei Lannister comes to mind. Likewise, there are just as many heroic characters that I love and adore, and some others that I find problematic. Others still that I flat out despise because of what they’ve done, villain or no villain, like Nozomi from SMT. Albus Dumbledore is probably the character I hate the most in fiction, even though he’s one of the good guys. I’m “Anti-Dumbledore” but when it comes to Rakepick, I don’t even like to use the term “Antis” because when a character is unquestionably a villain...isn’t it the default setting to hate them and root against them? 

Here’s the main thing. They’re fictional characters, first and foremost. They aren’t real, so it’s not like they know if we’re defending or condemning them. All of us are part of fandom to enjoy their story and share our enjoyment with each other. I feel like that should come before anything else. No matter if Rakepick is one of those villains you find “cool,” no matter if you love to hate her with how evil she is, no matter if you see more to her and wish she wasn’t considered a villain...or even if, like most of the HPHM fandom, you simply can’t stand her and root for a shallow grave...all of us have these opinions because we like HPHM. That matters more than our specific opinions about characters. Even villains. Even ones who have crossed as many lines as Rakepick.