#they say your fanfic tells a lot about you and i’ve written about consent multiple times

[leet911]

On Consent (and drunken escapades)

[Spoilers for Reverse 4 You and The Secret of Us]

Honestly, this episode of Reverse 4 You didn’t make me as uncomfortable as The Secret of Us.  In this case, Four is drunk, but she’s also clearly the initiator.  I don’t feel like Wa is taking advantage of her.  From everything that we’ve seen prior, Wa is clearly into Four, and as clueless as Wa may be, as viewers we know Four is also into her.  And I think if you could magic away the alcohol somehow and ask Four if she really wants to do this, she would say yes in the moment.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that she won’t regret it the next morning (damn you ep5 preview), but there isn’t anything against her will happening.  It doesn’t seem like Wa is taking advantage of Four’s impaired judgment.

This is in contrast to The Secret of Us, when Earn takes Lada home from the bar, they haven’t gotten back together yet, they’re both still doing the thing to make each other jealous, and it’s unclear if Lada has forgiven Earn for the past.  As I was watching, I kept hoping that Earn would put the brakes on at some point, and just let Lada sleep it off.  Because if we go by the same measure as above, and magically make Lada sober in that moment, would she have agreed to what happened?  I’m unsure, and that makes me a lot less comfortable.  Even if Lada is being jealous, and she’s still physically attracted to Earn, on an intellectual level I don’t know if she was ready to go back there no matter how much Earn wanted to.  You can see Lada tries to leave when she wakes up afterwards, and she’s trying to get away from Earn.  This one seems more like Earn taking advantage of Lada’s impaired judgment.  And yeah, that made me feel a lot worse about it.

Consent is important y’all.

[djarrex]

Hi everyone, just wanted to address what happened last night along with some other things from before that all tie in together.

There’s multiple parts to the following post - please make sure you read all of it if you’re gonna take the time to even start.

It was midnight and y'all were still jumping in on anon and telling me how I'm awful for not commenting, owning up, or taking responsibility - I should have been in bed. I have a life and job outside this app; and with the several of you in my inbox and it being too late at night to address each, I’m gonna do it now. I can’t not say something about all of this. I just can’t keep quiet and ignore the problem - it’s not fair to you all. Deleting one post already has you guys even more riled up and all I wanted to do was offer something better than a “half-hearted apology” (it was very late at night when I wrote that very short apology, and wanted a redo tbh). 

I really didn't want to make a long post like this. I reached out to a select few on here because I care about them (there's more of you, but like I said, it was at the time after midnight and I was fucking exhausted). but I was being demanded for accountability. So here I am.

Allow me to be real with you all, if that's ok. If it's not, well, idk. First I wanna address all you anons, who, instead of speaking to me one on one about all this, want to criticize me and shame me and my writing when truthfully it feels like you haven't even read more than a handful of my work. I didn’t realize that I write the clones all the same way? That I always make them super aggressive and uncaring and dom? “you write every single clone as so dominant instead as unique individual men with their own personalities” Interesting. See, that right there tells me you haven't read nearly enough of my stuff for me to believe that's true. That's one accusation I absolutely will not back you on because I know it’s inaccurate - saying how I group the clones into some overly-aggressive, and uncaring category - that I always write all of them as mean in bed because they're men of color. And hey, if I do write rough smut - which yeah, it's out there and I write it, as do a lot of you - there are warnings at the beginning, aftercare, dialogue, reader sharing their feelings, and most importantly... consent between the two. That’s what warnings are for, so that you know what you’re going to be reading. That’s why I, as we all do, appreciate warnings listed at the tops of fics; honestly, write them sub or dom or switch or however you want but don’t come at me like that. I’m sorry if I'm coming across as rude because I'm usually not, I’m one of the nicest people you’ll meet, but I will not stand idly by while you chastise my writing (writing that is pretty much the same type of stuff a lot of you write & rb with the same characters) that you haven’t read enough of to back such claims.

Next: Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart,

I get it. Really, I do. I fully understand the problem of whitewashing in SW along with almost everywhere else, and I do not agree with it. It's a huge problem, and it needs to be rectified. Now just because I don't speak publicly about it and opt out of publicly shaming TBB, doesn't mean that I agree with what’s going on. Not everyone is comfortable with sharing their opinions on a subject, no matter what that subject is or which side they're on. You live and you learn when it comes to that. 

It has never been my intention to fetishize POC in my writing, which btw, the same people who are saying that it is my intention are the ones claiming I portray all of the clones as the same, aggressive men, lacking their individuality. It’s a claim that is simply not true, and I know I have followers on here to back me up on that. I know what I've written; how about you check it out and tell me that you don't see the words "soft" or "fluff" or "cuddling" or “gentle” or “tender” within my work linked in my ML. Clone character being a good partner and father? Tender love making? Holding each others faces in their hands? “We/you survived” sex? Taking care of their partner? Saying “I love you” to one another? Confirming the safe word and going slow at first? Oh my - riveting and harsh stuff - totally unacceptable.  

Now: My admittedly problematic writings of Rex + Zygerria,

I went into writing that rp fic totally unaware and unknowing of the true implications. For that, I sincerely apologize. When I posted the NSFW alphabet, that’s when I was called out on that rp fic - not when I first posted it. Which the timeline doesn’t matter, I know that, but it concerns me a little bit that no one spoke up about it sooner - letting me dig myself deeper into a hole that I didn’t realize I was inside of in the first place. I've apologized once, and I know that doesn't negate what happened; I acknowledged my mistake back then, but I suppose that wasn’t good enough. I had asked you, anon, to message me to give me guidance, to teach me on what to do about the fic - you stayed hidden. Well, respectfully, what the fuck? I know we're all adults but don't lecture me and avoid me when I’d literally reached out for guidance on how to properly rectify the issue. I fixed my wording in some of my fics (the things I’ve caught upon rereading them) because I recognized and more importantly learned about and from my mistakes along with the unintentional negative implications of how I wrote those characters. Some of y'all wanna tell me that I "haven't learned"? Who are you, my personal blog police? My professor? My life coach? Are you even my friend? If I'm wrong and haven't learned, then fucking educate me. I worked hard on that rp fic, just like I do with a majority of what I write, but it doesn’t matter because I will delete it knowing that it’s harmful to others and I apologize for inadvertently romanticizing slavery with what I wrote - it was unintentional, and I’m truly sorry to those who have been hurt by it. I know it’s wrong, and there’s no proper excuse for it. Can’t go back in time, but consider it gone now.

Since that first wakeup call, I’ve been working hard to ensure I avoid using certain words and ideas when describing the clones in my fics. If there’s still something you see that isn’t correct or is inappropriate, please tell me! Don’t hold it in but then jump on the “attack M” bandwagon. Private message me, or come peacefully off or on anon, there will be no hard feelings. I don’t mind being corrected when I make a mistake - that’s just part of life, we all make mistakes and we live and learn from them. Making mistakes doesn’t = scumbag human. When you hold your breath and choose not to take the time to guide me, and if I appear to still be making the same mistakes, well, idk. I’m telling you right now that I do not mind if you message me with the good intention of pushing me in the right direction. When you come at me with hostility on anon, well, no thank you. To the anons that came without rage: thank you! I read what you wrote, and I have a better understanding as to how my writing had hurt the lovely followers of mine, and tried to address as much as possible in this post. See, angry mob anons? It costs zero credits to be kind and offer up your thoughts and advice with a good heart. I’m not going to hate you or block you if you try to correct me. I don’t block unless you’re a snoopin’ minor. Just don’t hold a knife to my throat.

Now: Why did I delete the tags and then my response to that anon ask? 

Simply put: I felt awful. Deleting it doesn’t immediately mean I’m hiding from it and ignoring the issue. I wanted to come up with a better apology, explanation, whatever you wanna call it, because my followers deserve that. The ones who enjoy my work, the ones who interact, the ones who I call my friends, the ones who know that I’m a good person. Didn’t want to leave the tags/post floating around all night, giving more people time to sharpen their pitchforks and join the mob while I attempted to sleep. Trust me, I know saying that I had no ill intentions when tagging that post doesn’t make it better nor does it make it go away. I’m just trying to show you my point of view, that I knew immediately how I should not have tagged it that way, so that’s why I deleted them. I corrected my mistake. But y’all are too fucking quick I swear.

One more thing:

I know some of you who had called me out with the passive-aggressive inbox messages are still following me, and for what? You don’t like what I post, which is why one would follow another in the first place, so why bother sticking around? Do you feel like you need to police my blog? You want to be there the literal minute I make a mistake? I’m gonna turn off anon for a bit, so if you wanna discuss, message me. Just know that if you’re going to come at me with knives out, I probably won’t reply to you. 

To conclude:

I’m sorry. Truly sorry for the entire Rex + Zygerria outfit + slaver ordeal with both the fic from a while ago and then the tags from last night. We can’t go back in time; the only option is to correct past mistakes that are able to be corrected, and then move on with new knowledge that’ll aid in me working even harder to ensure my writing isn’t inappropriate or offensive, and doesn’t hurt my followers nor the characters I write for. I’m still going to write self-indulgent filth and fluff, post-order 66 Rex, and other misc shit. I enjoy writing fanfic, as I know a lot of you enjoy reading what I write and love to talk to me about it. I hope that this didn’t come off as me being a bitch, because I’m really not. I enjoy interacting with the handful of people on here that I’d call my friends, and I love reading your reactions and tags to my fics when you’re excited and/or horny (LOL). It’s just after lunch time where I’m at, so I hope you have a great rest of the day/night/morning whatever for wherever you are.  

<3 

M

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: Coffeegleek Day 1

Author : @coffeegleek​ 

How did you get into Glee and Glee fandom?

I saw the premier when it aired during the summer and was hooked. Having been burned by a fandom shortly before that, I tried to resist joining Glee fandom. Then about halfway through Glee airing routinely, I could resist no longer. I needed more. I needed the interaction with other fans that weren't immediate family. (Hub and son love the show, but were watchers and not into fandom.)

In general, what drew you into writing (and/or creating)?

I'd written for other fandoms before as well as a lot of original poetry and science fiction. One day I finally caved and co-wrote two crack Klaine fics. About a year or two later, I wrote more crack fics that got no traction on tumblr so I stopped writing for a long time. (I was and still am a small fish in a large fandom pond, though that pond has shrunk now that the show is long over.) Then a couple of years ago, my son left for university and I couldn't shake this one small fic idea I had about Burt and Carole as empty nesters. I had to get it out and it exploded into this huge verse. In-between those fics I wrote more crack fics.

What was it about Glee that made you decide to write fanfic for it?

Part of it was Kurt and Blaine being wonderful characters. Part of it was the joy of challenging myself as a writer be it serious stuff or Klaine advent challenges which are fun. Yet another part was to write fics I wanted to read or tropes I wanted to explore more.

Have you been a part of other fandoms before? Have you written fanfiction pre-glee?

Oh, yes! Many fandoms and many fics on many accounts I've long lost user names and passwords to. Out there on FFN is a Buffy/Farscape crossover and a couple of Pretender fanfics. Those are just three of the many fandoms I've been in. I met my spouse through Star Trek fandom and was involved in (and left) the very toxic Fox fandom board for the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fandom. (My fandom before Glee.)

Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

AU is my crack and I love political Klaine be it Kurt and/or Blaine in politics or as President. I love the ones where Burt is president. Despite being a huge West Wing fan who's rewatched the series multiple times, I don't think I could do a Glee characters in that verse justice. I really wish I could though. Before the pandemic hit, a friend and I were going to do a Blast from the Past movie challenge where folks would write their favorite 1980's and 90's movies with Glee characters. I was all set to write Running on Empty and still have my notes for it.

Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

A few. Certain kinks and especially those that involve fluids, marking, and mpreg. 

Another nope - Large age differences in a consenting relationship. To clarify with a personal experience of why it’s a huge no: There was a guy in my family’s social group who was in his late 60’s/early 70’s who would brag to hub and I (for some reason) about his conquestions with barely legal guys. The things he would say about even younger guys were creepy AF. My out gay son was nearing his preferred age and we (and son) kept Creepy Guy far away from him. No one believed us when we tried to tell them about him. So any kind of huge age gap is a big nope for me unless it’s written as a “this is wrong and not appropriate” because I can’t help but think of the guy everyone else had labeled as But He’s Such a Nice Guy. I’m not criticizing the authors or readers of consensual, everything is happy, large age gap fics. They’re just not for me and I accept my bias. 

How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

I want to finish writing/expanding a fic for my Empty Nest verse that takes place between A Nest of Scars and Empty Nest. I also have a few one shots between Kurt and Carole and Kurt and Burt that I keep writing in my head while cooking, but never getting them onto a google doc. I want to finish last year's Klaine Advent challenge fic entitled, A Very Weird Christmas Adventure. I was so close to being done and had it all figured out too. I'd also like to write the Running on Empty crossover fic. I love that movie so much. I'd love to tackle a Handmaid's Tale crossover, but haven't worked out enough of the logistics for it.

***

Check out Coffeegleek’s Fics

Empty Nest - Revised - Empty Nest started off as just this little thing I was going to write. The idea had been kicking around in my head for a year. There's a stray cat that's taken shelter under our front porch for years & runs whenever he sees us. When my son went off to university, I started thinking about what if the cat was really homeless, hybrid Kurt? And in October of 2017, I finally started to write what was going to be a ficlette & nothing more. It's now late January 2018 & the verse has grown to two fics, a series of Klaine Advent one shots, 98,442 words, & is still going.

When I reached chapter 12 of Rebuilding the Nest, I felt the time had finally come for me to revise the verse, especially Empty Nest, correct any errors I'd missed before, & clean up the time line inconsistencies. When I first started writing, I had no clear cut idea of how hybrids had come about or what they were like. I was just going with the usual trope flow. As chapters went on, I fell more & more back on my science fiction writing roots & established them as a single evolved race. That was my biggest change to Empty Nest & reason for the revision.

I hope you enjoy it.

Rebuilding the Nest -  Sequel to Empty Nest and takes place immediately after. Kurt is a runaway, homeless feline hybrid. Burt and Carole are empty nesters who see him sleeping under their porch. During the months that follow, Kurt slowly learns to trust them. Unlocking the door to the Hummel's enclosed back porch was a huge step. There were so many more left to go.

Burt's Nest -  This is a retelling of Empty Nest and Rebuilding the Nest from Burt’s POV. While it does stand alone, in order to fully understand Kurt’s actions and experiences, the original fics should be read first. In short: Burt discovers a homeless hybrid teenager sleeping under his front porch and takes him in. This fic let me get out all my parenting and love of Burt and Carole feels. If you notice a blatant take on the racism and homophobia pervading the U.S. in this dystopian verse, then I’ve done my job expressing part of the bag of emotions I feel as the parent of gay, POC, young adult son. The same trigger warnings for the previous fics apply here as well, though not all chapters have them. Please see the tags.

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[selkies-world]

A little bit of a rant?

"X magazines to publish your fanfiction"

"X self-publish methods to publish your fanfiction"

"X best companies to publish your fanfiction"

Sound familiar? Yeah, these posts have gotten pretty popular over the last year or so. Initially I didn't have an issue with them. But then I realised - "publish your fanfiction". As in "sell your fanfiction". As in "earn money from your fanficiton".

And that's when I got.... not mad, definitely not mad, but something along those lines that my brain won't give me a word for in English at 5am.

Because all of these posts are not only telling you how to earn money from your fanficiton, but that it's alright to. Which, honestly, it's not.

Fanfiction - itself and the community it creates and sits within - is built on being indulgent, selfless, and for sheer enjoyment. Just enjoyment. The enjoyment of others, the enjoyment of fandom creators, the enjoyment of imagination, whether it's purely self indulgent self-insert or if it's en masse indulgement through a popular trope and dynamic.

It's meant to be profitless, in the sense that no one earns money from it. That's a core part of fanfiction - in general, and especially on ao3. For fans, by fans, with no personal profit.

When did that get forgotten?

Now, it's true that fanfiction writers often get overlooked within fandom communities, since a lot of people put more emphasis on fanart. Fanartists earn money from their work, so surely fanwriters ought to be able to, right?

Wrong.

Fanart is entirely different from fanfiction. Why?

Because fanart is self-explanatory and open to interpretation, legally speaking.

Fanart, while it may be very distinctly obvious which characters / celebs it's portraying, is open to interpretation. By which I mean that an artist can create a piece of art for a specific fandom, and it can be loved by people in that fandom, but someone from another fandom can come along and see that same piece of art, and interpret it as something to do with a different fandom. Another person from yet another fandom can come along and do the same again. And again. And again. Even if the artist states "this is x and y from z", viewers are 100% open to seeing it as a and b from c, if they really want to.

Yes, fanartists often have patreons and go-fund-me's, but they also usually have multiple pieces, OC's and original content, too. When they make a profit, it's arguably from their style and skill, rather than directly from a piece of fanart.

And if a company, celebrity or the original content creator decided to sue or take legal action against the artist, the artist has that small net to fall back on - the "I created this piece of art inspired by x but it wasn't intended to reflect x directly, and I didn't make any personal profit from it".

But fanfiction? No. There's no questioning which original content is getting written about, there's no interpreting the characters as anything but the ones they're literally stated as, regardless of if the fanfic is canon-compliant or not.

Writing fanfic is 100% ok. Uploading it to a non-profit platform for others to enjoy is 100% ok. Read and let read, and all that. But publishing it, even for yourself? Not ok.

Because officially publishing fanfiction - in any capacity - goes against the core of fandom communities: for the fans, by the fans, with no personal profit.

As soon as you publish something, you're stating "I deserve recognition for this", and "I deserve money for this".

Fanfiction is meant to be created out of pure indulgent love and enjoyment, not out of the desire to be recognised or celebrated or to make a profit. And I think somewhere along the line, that core, fundamental part of fandom communities has been forgotten.

It's not fundamental just out of some hippie-dippy "free love and enjoyment man" energy. It's fundamental because it has to be, for legal reasons.

If the original content creator tried to sue a fanfiction writer for copyright infringement, the fanfiction writer's only defenses are "I didn't make any personal profit from it" and "I didn't breach your copyright or personal rights because I didn't distribute it in a way that could be interpreted as gaining personal profit from it without your consent".

Because that's happened before. More than once. And it can happen again.

As long as fanfiction is written for free, out of your own spare time, and is on a public platform, which the creators do not earn a single penny from, it's legal. But as soon as you cross that line by self-publishing your fanfiction, you lose that small net to fall back on if you're called on it.

As soon as you self-publish your fanfiction, you're intentionally profiting and / or distributing with the intent to personally profit off of someone else's property without their consent. Because that's what you're doing - you are taking someone else's property (the original work) and redistributing a version of it (your fanfiction) with the intent to claim rights and recognition for it (putting your name on it) with the intent to earn something from it (money or otherwise). Which breaches 99% of copyright agreements that original creators put in place.

Which makes you liable to being sued.

On top of that, when you self-publish, you give the publishers - no matter how big or small that avenue or company or magazine is - at least partial rights to your creation. Rights which, as fanfiction writers, you do not have in the first place. Because those characters are not yours, and they are not your property, physical or intellectual. No matter how you've spun the story, no matter if you have your own OC's in it, as long as you have at least one of the characters or settings or places mentioned in the original work, that is not yours to claim and it is not yours to hand over to another party (the self-publishing company).

When you self-publish something, you give the company rights to distribute, and the rights to earn their own profit from that distribution (they have to earn a living somehow and to pay for the inks and papers used in creating the printed version). They then hold onto those rights for a certain amount of time, and you can not undo that (as in you can't change your mind and tell them to cancel it after handing your work over to them. If they want to continue distributing your work, they can) or take those rights away from them after giving them up in the first place.

As a fanfiction writer, you do not have the rights to those characters, places or worlds in the first place. Only the original content creators have those rights. If it's a book or series that your fanfiction is based on, then the original author and publishing house hold those rights. If it's a TV series, the director and producer hold those rights, along with the filming company. If it's a movie, same again.

And if your fanfiction is based on / surrounding a celebrity, then your self-publishing it goes against their human rights. Because you're then profiting and / or distributing with the intent to profit off of them, without their consent. Them being a celebrity does not entitle you or give you any right over their autonomy. I'm sure everyone reading this can think of at least one case where celebrities have said "we love our fans but x kinda makes us uncomfortable / x feels a little bit odd / but we just try to avoid x because it's objectifying".

Writing fanfiction about them isn't illegal by itself, as long as it's free. But as soon as you self-publish that fanfiction, you're handing over rights that only that person has, and you're handing them over to another party (the company) to distribute as they wish, with the intent to profit from it. You do not have those rights to hand over in the first place.

Now, I'm not a lawyer. And I'm only 20. But I'm sure some older generations of fandom creators will be able to back me up in saying that fanfiction platforms of the past have been taken down due to copyright infringement. I'm sure they'll echo what I've said here. And I'm sure they'll have their own anxiety-driven story of waking up one day and finding all their writing just gone, because the original creators or celebrities threatened to sue the platform they were on, and the platform buckled. And those fandom creators knew they had no legal rights over anything they had created, and so had no argument to stand on to get it back.

If that's what happens when fanfiction is free, imagine the legal shithole you'd find yourself in if you made someone (including yourself) pay for that fanfiction.

Fanfiction is amazing. Please, please, please stop trying to profit from it, and please for all fandom creators sakes, stop self-publishing it.

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

"unjustified" you actively support drowning out lesbian voices on issues with your own white straight one just to live out your fantasies and kinks with wlw characters who are minors in half of your fics and don't believe that laws about statutory rape should matter because "age is an arbitrary measure" fuck off and stop pretending you're somehow innocent in this

just admit you were wrong and move on

….

Where do I even begin?

I have written one smut scene in my entire life as a fanfic writer. One scene in one episode of Iron Coin Chronicles Season 2. In that scene, both Faith and Amy are over 18, and they were over 18 before they actually got together and had sex (their first time together was fade to black). When Xander and Cordelia had their first time (that was off-screen/fade to black) in ICC Season 1, I’m actually not sure offhand what their respective ages were, but given that it’s entirely possible that Xander was 17 when Faith had sex with him, Faith was almost certainly under 18 in Season 3 when she had sex multiple times with various people (or so we’re led to believe), and Buffy was 17 when she had sex with Angel, that’s not exactly outside of how things have been written in the show. And again, it wasn’t onscreen. So “are minors in half your fics” thing comes from… nowhere, I guess?

I have written a few fics (the number depends on how you count) where I hint at the details of the sex lives of various characters, usually but not always, Faith and Amy, because I have a lot of feelings about these two characters. I think about the sex lives of all my ships, including the m/m ones, (albeit those I think about in the least detail, for reasons that has been touched on before). I just don’t talk about my sexual headcanons as a general rule because I’m very embarrassed about talking about them. It’s just that Faimy as a relationship is one that I have so many feels and ideas about that I feel compelled to share everything I think about them.

Also, I appreciate you hate the fact that I think people can, in their own fics, write the characters as whatever orientation they want to write them, but what does that have to do with my f/f ships? I’m not following the imaginary connection in your head, anon.

I just dug through my blog, and I can’t find any post that says anything along the lines of the notion that I “don’t believe laws about statutory rape should matter because “age is an arbitrary measure.” 

Because I’ve never said anything like that. What I have said is something to the effect of calling Angel a Pedophile over having sex with Buffy when she’s 17 is an absurd argument because the age of 18 is a line we drew randomly, and Buffy (a fictional character) is pretty clearly capable of making her own choices. I didn’t say that real laws about statutory rape didn’t matter, or anything like that. I made a specific comment about a specific fictional scenario. (Also, even if what Angel and Buffy did was wrong, Angel wouldn’t meet the definition of pedophile, but that’s a different discussion entirely.)

Also, the age of consent isn’t 18 everywhere in the US, let alone the world, and hasn’t always been the age of consent historically, and many jurisdictions have “Romeo and Juliet Laws”  because lawmakers realize that things can be tricky when we draw lines in the legal sand because the line must exist somewhere. 

I’ve never ‘drowned out’ lesbian voices on anything. Disagreeing with a lesbian (or even several) is not the same thing as ‘drowning’ them out. Or drowning ‘lesbians’ out in general. 

I’m not going to just ‘admit that I’m wrong’, when I don’t think I am. 

This discussion started because I said three things.

Canon: Willow is a Lesbian 

Canon: Willow Loved Oz

In Fanfiction, You Can Do Whatever You Want To a Character’s Orientation

Now obviously the first one isn’t the issue here. I’m not getting hate from the small phalanx of ‘Willow is actually bi’ people (they do exist). The second one is certainly a possible source of hate, but given the serialized nature of TV Show writing, and the actual events that happened, it’s really hard to claim that Willow didn’t love Oz with a straight face. That love, once we figure in her actual lesbian-ness, could easily not actually be romantic, but it was love.

Now, the one that actually seems to be the source of most of the hate is the third one. The central thesis of you and yours, along the lines of traditional ‘Anti’ logic, is that fanfics that feature a canon lesbian as bi is harmful to actual lesbians in the real world, because it will somehow encourage people to… what, tell lesbians that they’re actually bi? I’m not really following where that happens. 

Also, it apparently says something about how the writer feels about lesbians, which is also silly as fuck, but also… I haven’t written Willow as bi in anything. She’s gay in every fic I’ve included her in. My ICC series has Willow with Oz until he dies, but that’s because in-canon, Willow was already with Oz when ICC diverged, and Willow will realize she’s gay and get with Tara soon enough, though the process probably won’t be complete until ICC season 3. 

For me to admit that I’m wrong, I’d have to believe that you’re right that a fanfic can hurt real world lesbians, and you have yet to make a convincing case that reality is that impacted by a fanfic in a fandom that is done. You’ve gotta cite some sources, gotta give me some evidence to support your thesis that a fic where Willow is bi (in that fic) is going to somehow lead to someone mistreating an IRL lesbian or whatever it is you claim is going to happen.

[ithilien-writes]

Hey, I absolutely adore your writing and I have read all of your fics multiple times. I would just love if you could tell me what are some of your favourite Malec fanfics? So basically if you could do a rec list of sorts. Thank you and once again you are very talented hope to see more from your Malec wedding planner au fic.

ok but this is so nice tho?? also i'm working on the au i promise, i promise. i finally posted the lightwood family dinner scene i've been futzing around with for way too long and the next part is where the malec starts to pick up so i can't wait tbh!!

but more importantly, recs! so i read an enormous amount of malec fic and i always mean to do a rec post but then i.. don't. i'm sure i'm leaving out some that i'm going to kick myself for later but this has already taken way too long, so here are some of my faves (these are my own thoughts/non-official descriptions for these fics, so if any author wants me to remove theirs, just let me know!):

Magnus Bane's School for Young Warlocks (WIP - Part 21/30) - single dad!alec meets teacher!magnus au set in the shadow world. this is one that gets rec'd a lot, but there is a reason for that because it is fantastic. single dad!alec is such a weak spot for me and insomiak writes him so well

Strange Love - fake dating mundane au. mutual pining kills me and this fic does it really well. super cute and frustrating to no end

Never Stand Between Two Mirrors - canon!alec meets alt!alec au. i am such a sucker for this trope, and oncethrown's characterizations are always the best. you will love every character you already love a little bit more after reading this fic

Blue (WIP - Part 8/?) - dom/sub au set in the shadow world. aaaaand yet another trope i'm hopeless against, but this story starts off really strong and well-written so i'm excited for it to be continued

Five Times Alexander Lightwood Almost Lost His Virginity (and One Time He Learned Virginity Was Imaginary and Stupid) - this is a slightly different take on alec than i've typically seen (one where he's been in love before), but such a great look at his character through the lens of different relationships (and non-relationships) he's had over the years. really, really great

A Fighting Chance - mundane mma fighter!alec meets dance instructor!magnus au. oh my godddddd. this might be my favorite fic in this fandom. it's so so good, and the payoff at the end is fantastic

morning's come, you watch the red sunrise - single dad!alec meets neighbor!magnus mundane au. just super cute and fluffy with great characterizations

Counting Lies - heroes/villains au? i don't even know how to describe this fic except to say that you should give it a shot. it's a wild ride from start to finish and leaves you with a ton of questions about the world you just stepped into (in a good way)

We Face the World - future canon!verse. despite the fact that this 5+1 style fic deals heavily with homophobia, it's also a really sweet look into the lightwood-bane family

Guide Me (To You) - blind!magnus meets cursed mute!alec au set in the shadow world. this is such a cute story? the premise of alec's situation is a little odd, but it has a great payoff at the end of the story

spend the days dreaming and the nights awake - canon!verse magnus and simon roommate shenanigans. this one is kind of more gen with a heavy focus on simon but it is soooo perfect (and there's background malec and simon/alec interaction that's golden tbh)

White Wine and Lamp Posts - canon!verse. this one's very gen but i still want to include it bc it's just some really cute alec and clary friendship in a way that feels like it fits with their canon relationship so far

+ some smut:

can't take my eyes off of you - kinks: masturbation, voyeurism. alec gets bored and impatient waiting for magnus and starts without him and then magnus watches him finish, a++

coax the coals - kinks: figging. oh man... did not know what figging was and did not think I would enjoy this from the description, but boy was I wrong. wow

Everything Golden - kinks: sex pollen. this fic deals with issues of consent since it's a drugged, 'fuck or die' scenario, but if you're a fan of the sex pollen trope, this fic does it really well and in a way that definitely has angst but with a generally happy ending to balance it out

don't take it easy - kinks: edging. !!!!!!!!!!!!! this is my favorite malec smut ever. there are no words