#there's a very elaborate reason this happened

[takaraphoenix]

I truly can not put into words how much I hate the tag limit on AO3.

Look, I get it, they put it up back then for a good reason with the bullshit spam in tags. But could we lift it again? Or at least raise it to a reasonable amount?

Because 75 tags is nothing.

Not when it is total tags. Not when you are writing elaborate multiple chapter fics.

Between character tags, relationship tags and additional tags? It is so damn easy to reach 75 tags.

Hell, if you are writing am OT3 BDSM fic set in the ABOverse, you are already 17 tags in with just the core basics (3 character tags, 4 relationship tags if you tag the OT3 and the individual relationships among them, alpha/beta/omega dynamics, Polyamory, Threesome - [constellation], BDSM, 3 tags for the characters' ABOverse designations, 3 tags for their Dom/sub roles), that is not even including what kind of kinks or sexual themes will be in it and those can, depending on how much fun you're having, easily take a dozen tags too. If you also have important side characters or pairings? Or platonic dynamics that matter? And if you also have... you know... plot? Tropes or other things that would be great if findable through a tag?

I get it, 75 tags sounds like a lot. If you're posting a oneshot. But a lot of things tend to happen in longer fics. I find it impossible to contain a 50k fic to 75 tags, I have no idea how people whose stories range in the 100k+ length handle this.

If it were, at the very least, just about additional tags? If relationship and character tags weren't included in that count? I think that would actually be a more realistic number. It'd still limit spamming, but it'd also give more freedom to actually tag the important parts of the story.

Because I do want to cover the things I think are important for people to be able to filter, either to find or to avoid a story. I don't want to have to choose which thing to leave untagged, just because the story is long, elaborate and contains a multitude of themes, kinks and tropes.

[thewistlingbadger]

I'm annoyed that the many issues with canon Timebomb due to the rushed way the show handled the pairing have started to seep into the fanfic sphere too - namely, Jinx's mental illness being downplayed, Ekko having no personality, relationships or individual motivations outside of his relationship with Jinx and the Firelights being non-existent.

It's got to the point I actively seek out fics published between S1 and S2 over newer ones. They are more likely to nail Jinx and Ekko's characterisation and their dynamic where even the show's writers couldn't.

As someone who doesn't ship timebomb I completely understand your take and it is VALID. Timebomb as a concept is very interesting because theoretically you have these two childhood friends that lost each other only to be reunited later in life as enemies on opposing sides. That is some really compelling groundwork for a romantic relationship! However, the show doesn't really do anything to actually frame them like this. We rarely get to see Jinx and Ekko interact in the whole show, let alone exchange any dialogue with each other.

The timebomb "content" in season two feels misplaced and undeserved because it IS. The only time we've seen these two actually together in a meaningful way in s1 is their fight one the bridge. That fight made it clear that these two have a history that the audience isn't privy to and this one scene is the entire foundation for arcane! timebomb. Ekko has an entire episode in season two that is NOT dedicated to expanding his character, NOT dedicating to elaborating on his relationship with Jinx, but an episode that is dedicated to exploring an alternative reality where Jinx grew up to be a different person. We spend all this time with Ekko and Powder and then the show acts like their dynamic is somehow transferable to Ekko and Jinx by showing us that somehow when Ekko went back to Jinx he was able to reconcile with her and save her life and get her to fight one last time.

To me this makes no sense because episode 7 really didn't show us anything illuminating about Ekko or his relationship with Jinx. It didn't explain what happened between them, or why Ekko would have romantic feelings for Jinx. We go the whole show without ever actually getting any context as to what happened between them, so the nature of their relationship is truly a mystery. Ekko doesn't go through any major development in that episode, he stays consistent throughout the whole time. Ekko in general is unfortunately a character that goes unexplored throughout the whole show. We don't know much about who he is as a character and his goals, motivations, or reasonings. This same issue occurs with The Firelights. We know they're a group of rebels, but what do they ACTUALLY want and what are their plans to achieve their goals?

Ultimately it was decided that none of this mattered because instead of using the groundwork laid out in season one, season two only had one thing in mind: their end goal. And that end goal consisted largely of fan service, which is why we got a timebomb kiss. Not because it added to Jinx and Ekko's story (the kiss wasn't even between Jinx and Ekko lol) but because the ship is popular and they knew a kiss would make fans happy. A large part of the fandom is very happy with the fan service they received in this season and now they are, predictably, running wild with it. Timebomb has become even more popular than it already was and most of the content is very sweet in nature. I'm glad that shippers are fed and enjoying themselves. However, I cannot look past how the adoration for the ship has made people turn a blind eye to what was established prior to season two. The Firelights are important to Ekko, and Jinx killed many of them over the span of several years. Jinx was born with mental illness and her illness impacted her everyday life. Ekko and Jinx seemingly have a complex history that needs to be unpacked before they can even ATTEMPT to be on good terms again. The last time we saw Ekko and Jinx in s1 they LITERALLY tried to kill each other! This is a relationship that deserves and NEEDS time to be understood.

As for Jinx's mental illness being downplayed? 100% true. In season one Jinx's mental health was vital to the story the writers were trying to tell. They didn't want Jinx to seem like a manic, Joker-type character. They wanted her to be someone the audience would simultaneously pity and fear. But in season two, the end goal was to have Jinx reconcile with Vi and be a hero. To the people behind season two, this wasn't possible without stripping Jinx of everything that made her a fan favorite. Season one was all about rejecting the past and embracing who you truly are and what you've become. Jinx's final action in season one is sitting in the Jinx chair, proclaiming she has changed, and then nuking topside. But in season two, Jinx answers to the name Powder and says "Jinx is dead." In season two, Jinx becomes completely pacified and is no longer a murderous criminal who struggles with daily hallucinations. The erasure of her mental illness and identity has led fans to come to the conclusion that she was never really "that messed up" to begin with, all her problems were because of Silco and now that Silco's gone, she's better. This view is incorrect because we see Jinx have meltdown before she even meets Silco AND arguably Jinx reverting back to Powder isn't inherently a good thing. Powder isn't inherently the "better" version of Jinx. The fact that she even reverts at all goes completely against the message of season one and Silco's dying words, "Don't cry. You're perfect."

[yavieriel]

our clothes-making technology has improved in ways that make it easier to make cheap, simple, comfortable, warm clothing

Not really. Cheap, yes, but simple, comfortable and warm have always been pretty easily acheived. What's changed is people's priorities around the function of clothing.

Historically your clothing would be very much about indicating your place within and adherence to the local social structure. Wealth, marital status, your trade or other type of employment (e.g. knights, priests), any formal organizations you belong to like a guild or a specific monastery, etc. are all things that people would expect to be able to determine from your manner of dress. If you stepped outside of that you would face varying degrees of social censure according to the type of deviance, whereas dressing appropriately earned social support in eras with few to no formal social safety nets.

"Comfort" was pretty far down the list of priorities. Clothing needed to be warm/cool enough for health purposes in local climates, and generally these adaptations would happen on a broad societal level. But clothing being tight fitting and somewhat restrictive, and/or requiring active management while performing daily tasks (even such as walking up steps) were not seen as problems but often as features that demonstrated your place within the leisure class. Many 18th and 19th century bodices are cut in such a way that lifting the upper arm above the shoulder is impossible. You also see this heavily with middle-class Victorian women, whose elaborate dresses were very much designed around a life of domestic leisure, with the working classes aspiring to this while demonstrating more practical restraint.

Since the start of the 20th c., for a whole complex tangle of reasons visually signaling your social status to everyone you meet has slowly become unnecessary and downright gauche. So fashion has frankly lost a lot of its driving forces, and been forced to adapt (with somewhat mixed success) in order to stay relevant.

is there a word for the phenomenon over the last ~80 years of clothes shifting towards more comfortably and less concerned about aesthetics in america? yknow, dressing less "fancy". and all that. like, obviously its related to a bunch of other societal changes. but it's very specific and material in a way those other changes arent as much

[froschli96]

🗣️ Darlin', you give love a bad name

Found this in my old wip folder and it feels now more relevant than ever :)

Also these don't know why I never uploaded these they were just sitting there completely finished:

[jesuis-assez]

↠ Tim & Lucy ↳ 2x10 - The Dark Side

[juniperleafdelivery]

[lakesbian]

oh that would make more sense than the "general character relationships" way i interpreted it. it is so funny he includes "assault and battery" on that list when worm (inappropriately) gives them a romcom enemies to lovers tone. note that he also includes parian & foil and dragon & defiant on the list of couples with power imbalances, which i agree with--parian and foil is generally bland, but there's clear playing with power dynamics in the chapter where they get together, and the same can be said for dragon & defiant's mutual modification. if he finds the parian-and-foil or dragon-and-defiant level of power dynamic notable enough to put them on this list, then sy and jessie should more than qualify for appealing to him in that way, for reasons elaborated on in an earlier rb. it remains ridiculous to state that jessie suddenly succumbing to downright classic transmisogynistic writing after her transition is a mere coincidence in light of all of wildbow's other handling of lgbt characters. especially because he does literally write plenty of cute and romantic scenes between sy and lillian; the reason the imbalance between them is interesting is because their relationship is convincing.

it also really needs to go with saying that the type of power dynamic matters--it doesn't matter that he writes het pairs with power imbalances as well, when the het pairs are almost entirely along the lines of "they loved each other but xyz differential didn't work out" (sy/lillian, taylor/brian) or "there's little odd bits around a healthy core that give the relationship texture" (blake/green eyes, dragon/defiant) and it's the gay people that broadly happen to be the outright sexual predators and violating or corrupting forces. it's true that there are obvious trends in wildbow's work informed by him not caring about romance, and it's also true that, within those trends, he's still capable of writing meaningful romantic scenes, and it's also very true that, within both of those trends, LGBT people demonstrably receive the short end of the stick in ways that line up with extremely common bigoted tropes. he'd like it if it wasn't prejudice informing the choices, but it definitely is. aromantic or not, there's no excuse to write a trans woman like he did, and the onus is on him for failing to confront the obvious transmisogynistic bias behind it. there's a reason why jessie is the one lamb other than helen & the boys that sy never shows attraction to, and it's not that wildbow didn't want to write their Healthy Romance, it's that he just straight up does not comprehend trans women as viable partners.

ok so im not at all interested in doing Wildbow Apologism and i acknowledge that this take might be extremely charitable to wb so take it as you will. but one thing i did think about while going through your twig lb and the parts about sy's relationship with jessie feeling bland and underdeveloped compared to with lillian, is the part in his Ward retrospective where he talks about how he "tend[s] to find the power imbalances in relationships to be one of the more inherently interesting parts of relationships" and how thats why many of the relationship dynamics he writes play into that and why those relationships tend to get more focus. which does make sense when you think about how his writing of Healthy and Equal relationships virtually always feels bland and underdeveloped (see: dragon & defiant, foil & parian, probably a bunch of others i cant think of right now). so i do idly wonder how much that might have factored into the discrepancy there

youre making excuses for him yeah. no, the author who successfully wrote relationships like taylor/rachel, aisha/alec, blake/evan, blake/green eyes, and so on and so forth, did not lose interest in a character (who he had previously given massive focus to developing sy's relationship with) the literal second she came out because he was "less interested in their healthy relationship." he's just transphobic. do you hear yourself. also do you recognize how it's dumb to cherrypick a shallow and uninteresting lesbian relationship from a well-known homophobe's work as being a demonstration of him making healthy relationships underdeveloped. come on now.

[moe-broey]

I'm gonna bully Lif again

I'll admit, some of these answers don't cover all the bases, but. What are we thinking, here. What is The Truth behind The Twink Death? 🤨🎤

I will also be accepting write-in responses as usual 🫡

[retourpresdetoi]

now i did not like Nosferatu (2024) for a variety of reasons. but let me tell you. seeing the purity-centered, pearl clutching, absolute disgust-first opinions dominate negative reviews has me feeling like i watched a different film. "this movie is for deranged sex-perverts" my biggest criticism was that it didn't go far enough! all that for a 2hr 12min movie and it was boring!

[todayisafridaynight]

would it be okay if u told me why u like aoki😭/gen😭😭😭😭BEEN TRYNA LIKE HIM FOR SO LONG I JUST CANTT but i love ur art so much so i still consume it otherwise lol

i liked tohru adachi in high school and tbh i think that alone is enough of an explanation for why i ended up liking aoki

[reporpoisedphantasies]

.

[obnoxiousarcade]

I have a longing to be understood more than anything else i think

[swagging-back-to]

im actually floored by how well the girls are getting along. they're all running on the wheel together and just napping. they are literally so chill together rn it's insane

[gifti3]

Leviathan (whb) was in my dream last night

[spectral-central]

dick grayson (as nightwing) deserves a spiderverse moment give that mf the spotlight in a preferably animated, passion project that's both a love letter to old fans and a good starting point for new fans and that also redefines the way pop culture sees that character i don't think you understand how much i need that

[total-drama-takes]

hello i will be taking a break of unknown length (like. a few days probably. ill have to be back for tti. actually i could have just not said anything. anyway) due to sha-mental health sha-problems i cannot be here rn <3 think of lightning for me