#this meta is for me anyway for when i start writing fics for this fandom

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

one reason i'm grateful a) to have been getting into treating my meta as An Art Form as much as fanfic/art/etc, and b) that there's an import function for that on AO3, is that i write very little prose these days, and Actually Having Substantial Things to Post helps me get past the stumbling block of 'well there's nothing much worth going to the trouble for anyway, is there' to the 'alright let's address all the other baggage that makes using AO3 so emotionally fraught for you bud' step (staircase.)

[beannoss]

So, as I'm writing more than I anticipated when I first dipped a toe into SxF fandom (!) I thought I'd collect the meta & fic links in one place! 💕 (not spoiler-free :)

META

Endo describes Twilight as 'matter of fact' rather than 'kind': there's a profound philosophy embedded in that sentiment.

… that matter-of-factness manifests in ways that are, almost unerringly, kind. Twilight values consent, he values empowerment for those around him (with some limits, if they impinge on his mission), he privately espouses and practices other values that align with progressive ideologies, like feminism and the rights of the child. Obviously he's 100% antifa and anti-war. One could argue (and perhaps this is what Endo means) that Twilight makes those decisions because they often result in the path of least resistance, making his job easier. And okay, maybe. Except...

Anya isn’t needed for Strix. Twilight decides to adopt her anyway.

Twilight decides it — “I’m going to rework the mission so it doesn’t involve a child because that’s too dangerous” and he’s 100% right! Donovan Desmond is canonically a far right warmonger with fascistic authoritarian aims... Also it turns out Anya’s a person which is frankly unacceptable — Twilight had needed and anticipated an automaton, ideally of himself in miniature form... So having entertained this change, why go back when his reasoning is indisputable?

Let's get deep into analysing the meaning behind the choice of the word Forger for our family's last name

[Create (a relationship or new conditions)] can be taken as a whole within the Forger household, after all Twilight did create the Forgers. But more importantly to me, this meaning applies particularly by way of what Anya and Yor are doing within the family, their choices and aims, and how they’re influencing and shaping the Forgers. And then, of course, Twilight’s choices in return, both under the explicit guise of for the mission and those times when the mission is curiously (ahem) absent from or delayed in his thought process.

What moment(s) cinched it for Twilight to start developing feelings for Yor?

It's entirely in keeping with Yor's character, and it's an entirely revealing moment of who she is. And I think this is the moment for Twilight. He's already been trusting her bit by bit, as he says above, intuitively. I'd suggest that maybe even more than that though, Yor taps into something Twilight deeply wants: backup. Someone and somewhere safe. Maybe we could describe a person fulfilling that role in an adult relationship as a partner...?

What about a Twilight x Yor romance, pre-reveal, in canon? (Ask response)

... because I think it would undermine character arcs and dominant themes. Twilight’s arc involves finding and forging a new pack, a new family. Somewhere safe and loving... A big part of this safety and love for Twilight is about being accepted, warts and all... Yor’s arc is also around finding love and security, but centred less around acceptance (although that obviously also explicitly features!) and more around self-worth and understanding her value.

FIC

Let's start living dangerously (T, Complete)

The real reason Twilight was in the park drilling Bond unnecessarily and covertly training Franky very necessarily, was that Twilight was enacting what he'd called The Avoidance Protocol. And was consequently avoiding his wife. In which Twilight kisses Yor and absolutely does not panic about it.

Twilight x Yor. Post-reveal, humour, fluff, mutual pining, romance, and lots of thinking and lots of feelings. Also flirts with 'idiots in love', I'll have to add that tag...!

It's only me, what have you got to lose? (M, WIP, current primary focus)

Loid asked, “Are you willing to follow my lead?” Why — why did that question make her so angry? It was a practical question in the circumstances. It wasn’t one Yor was typically asked but it wasn’t so far outside the norm. And, a part of her which felt very small added, she had happily followed Loid's lead on many things over the months, without question, trusting his kind eyes, his calming practicality, his seeming abiding normality — But. What did any of that mean any longer? In which the Forger house of cards collapses, and with everything that matters in the balance, the value of normal becomes an open negotiation.

Began with me wanting to explore Yor finding out about Twilight, and has, um, expanded. Yor x Twilight. Identity reveals, angst and fluff, hurt/comfort (emotional and physical), touch starvation, lots of feelings, intimacy, some humour (ah, eventually), and the building of something real.

heartlines (T, one-shot complete)

Hello? Appeared on the soft part of the back of his hand, between his thumb and forefinger. He shouldn't have seen it except that something scorching had torn, had burnt, his glove away and he only just noticed that, the way the fabric had curled and crisped and as he stared, as his heart rate went higher and higher — What did that? Could I have lost my hand?! — more words appeared. I could really — this was crossed out— if — crossed out, but then again — if you're — this was then crossed out as well, but the scribbles didn't disappear, just words on his hand with frantic, messy lines through them until one remained unsullied — can we talk?

Soulmark: Anything you write or draw on your own skin appears in the same place on your soulmate.

Twilight x Yor. Based on a prompt from this list of soulmate prompts, canon divergence if there existed soulmarks in the SxF world. Pre-relationship, sort of epistolary until it very suddenly isn't 😊

our melodies overlapped (T, WIP, currently backburnered)

Twilight prided himself on accepting situational changes swiftly and with equanimity. Said swiftness was presently three minutes overdue, and equanimity hadn’t reported for duty. Four times it was for the mission + one time it was for The Mission + one time it was for —

Twilight character study basically! Family-orientated, some Twilight x Yor. Backburnered in part because it's actually led me to disagreeing with myself 😂 and I'll probably need to rework it.

Twilight journaling short fic (T, complete)

After Strix, when the Forgers are well established, no secrets between them, Twilight starts journaling. Obviously this is a security risk, so he creates an elaborate cipher. He tests it on Franky. He tests it on the cipher-breakers at WISE. He even feeds some to the SSS. None break it. Satisfied, he starts to journal. Twilight's journaling time is something he starts to jealously protect; given how much it means to him and helps him process things, Yor starts to protect it jealously, too.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

well i think it has finally happened: my multi-year-long hyperfixation on jin guangyao is starting to wane 🥲 and not because he isn’t still my specialist little guy, aka the most interesting and compelling character in mdzs. i think i’m always going to love and adore him, and by extension xiyao and lan xichen and su she. i can’t see that changing, ever; he’s going to become like robin hobb’s fool for me, a fixture in my heart, a delightfully unexpected gift from another book i didn’t realize would change my life the way it did. truly some characters just become a part of you when you think and write about them long enough.

i just… think i have finally said everything i really need and want to say about him. i don’t have many New Thoughts i’m just chomping at the bit to share, or much motivation to revisit cql or the novel to seek out inspiration for More Thoughts. checking the tags just feels like something i do out of habit now, and not because i’m actually that invested in finding new fic or art. and while the bad takes have always left me tired and annoyed in the past, they do something much worse now: they just leave me bored. boredom is the ultimate creativity killer.

to be clear, i don’t have any plans to abandon this blog or stop posting! i’ll probably also keep my sideblogs going for as long as i can still track down some screenshots that are worth sharing, or maybe i’ll start reblogging and resharing older screenshots. i’d like to find a way to make my meta more easily searchable and shareable so that people who find my blog later can make use of my writing. and i still have some fic ideas i’d like to explore, and doing so while being less engaged on tumblr might be a better use of my time anyway.

so tl;dr i’m not necessarily going anywhere, i’m not bouncing from the fandom, but if it seems like i’m around less, or like my unhinged obsession with jin guangyao actually seems to have some hinges on it all of a sudden… well, now you know why lol.

[ca-suffit]

This antiblack campaign the fandom just tried to kick up again (to avoid talking about the real issue with Nalyra) reveals how powerless they're starting to truly feel now.

They don't have many users left to vilify so they're putting people on blocklists who are brand new (I was here 3 days lol) or not even really in the fandom. That looks goofy and desperate but then it keeps going. DMing strangers to say "the truth" isn't about racism and "talk to me if you really want to know about anything." Everyone's reblogging those blocklist posts now and adding large commentary suddenly, when before they often fully sat it out. They're doing this in a group to look like they have larger numbers and are "revealing" there's a "big secret bullying problem"....except nobody believes them. Because there's plenty of accounts who are out here saying this shit straight to their faces and they pretend we all don't exist. All of this group has to manufacture drama solely because they just don't want to talk about harmful shit they actually do.

Neil has to make an antiblack statement she made suddenly be about antisemitism towards her, Nalyra's antiblackness is "actually" fans upset about shipping and "what's REALLY coming" in S2, showmey0urfangs is always happy to show up with her dumb screencaps and villain monologue nobody asked for so she can make her everlasting outrage about popular black fics and "feminized" Louis sound deeper than it is, Virginia suddenly cries about IRL issues and wants to leave the fandom because she wants to distract from the Nalyra receipts, Keybearer accused another black fan of trolling people and getting accounts suspended on twitter in 2023 when a Marius fan eventually confessed to it and his eternal shame for that means now every black fan except him is a bully (despite nobody talking about this ever anymore except him), chicalepidopterare mocks a black fan for blocking her "because I thought we were supposed to talk about racism" and then poorly tries to frame any retaliation against her to look like bullying ("see, they're misogynistic, they're bullying my art, they're mean for disliking these ships!").

To quote Claudia here, "You must think me an idiot." And the big cherry on top is also how none of these losers can stand to hear any mention of race....in the fandom of the show that nonstop talks about race. They're using very basic (and meant in a gentle, loving way) teasing of Jacob as proof that black fans are racist against Jacob too, black fans hate Jacob's white wife. People hate Lestat for being white too (what?). They can write crap meta all day about Lestat letting Louis "rape" him and only white victims (Lestat) being real victims to the evil black and brown "true" manipulators (Claudia, Louis, Armand) but gentle teasing from black fans about Jacob's haircut is the real racism. Okay lol. Care to tell us again why you think Delainey's Claudia looks "less innocent" now then? This 3D chess you think you're playing isn't playing how you think for anyone else.

I also notice that afaik there's not a single black American in this group. Idek if there's many Americans of any kind in the group. It's been a lot of shaming to black Americans specifically though, again from the show that's focused on black Americans....by people who aren't black Americans.

"There's people pretending to be black so it's okay to keep hating this whole group." It's not enough you already nonstop shit on black fans as it is, now you have to try to angle it as if none of this could be authentic in the first place. Vile behavior. For what? Tumblr isn't even a platform that pays you for whatever clout you have, so really what is the point here. In a small ass fandom on top of it. Some of you have pretty grown kids too, this is extra sad. It makes all the jumping through hoops to coddle Lestat's behavior make sense though, if you're the same kind of person yourself. Anyway, maybe you don't actually know everything because race exists in the real world beyond how Anne Rice wrote about it in her useless books! You make books written by a racist white woman your whole personality and guess what your outlook on life is going to be.

It's been really pathetic to especially watch any fans of color move more to this extreme bullying side as time has gone on. It will never pay off to promote white fandom ideals. These accounts you're trying to cuddle up to aren't even that big. The fandom outside of the tags actually has much more popular posts, supporters, and fics...although that's also half of what this all is actually about, fic numbers. Again, these are grown adults obsessing over this. We could have a whole different fandom if this group didn't exist and keep wanting to gatekeep everything and be the only people who get praise about anything.

It's no surprise that people who worship Anne Rice have major ego problems themselves. It's been fucked up to deal with but the good thing now is that big egos have big collapses eventually and that's what we're starting to see happening now. People are sick of you and able to see through your basic ass manipulation techniques. People just want to have a fandom, they're not here to worship fans who want to be dictators. Nobody is here for your fragility, losers.

[starbeltconstellation]

So I gotta ask, do you have any headcannons(or cannons I guess since you're the author) about Melanie and Anakin that you can share without spoilers to much.

I'm going through Rewrite the stars withdrawal lol

Awww, thank you so very much for the ask, dear! (And so sorry again about your Rewrite the Stars withdrawal. 😭 Things have been crazyyy in my life. My bro was in the hospital for a while, but he’s okay now though. Also just me fighting my never ending depression spells 🙃). 😅😂

I would be happy to offer some “head” canons! Or canons, technically, as you said. 😂 Lol.

Essentially, this has become like one big, long SW meta analysis and meta analysis on my SW fic, Rewrite the Stars, and Anakin and Melanie’s characters. Sorry for the long response. 😭 I got really into explaining my thoughts. Haha.

I’ll put this under a read more, as it’s VERYYY long:

I’ll just say that the entire reason I started this story is because well, I wanted a fix it fic of course. 😂 But also just because I wanted to write this kind of grand, epic tale in general, just like Star Wars is supposed to be.

A lot of fics I’ve seen like this completely demonize the Jedi most of the time and blame them for their own genocide. And the ones that don’t, also flip it the complete opposite way around and demonize Anakin to where he’s nothing but a cackling demon who kicks puppies for fun (and well… would he do that AFTER the prequel trilogy when he’s in his emo Darth Vader era? Probably. 😂 But he wouldn’t be CACKLING while doing it. He’d be very bitter and callous about it, because Anakin likes to take out his anger on the world when he’s in pain, so by GOD the entire galaxy is gonna be in pain along with him).

But anyways, I’m kinda getting off track.

My point is: the whole reason I started my SW fic is because I wanted to write the type of epic, grand tale of a fic that I’ve been looking for that treats all of its characters with love and respect while ALSO still calling out their flaws and allowing them to grow. That includes everyone: Anakin, Padmé, Ahsoka, Barriss, Mace, Obi-Wan, Dooku, Satine, etc—EVERYONE.

I feel like fandom has become this toxic environment where if you’re criticizing a character, then… (le gasp 😱)… you don’t really LIKE themmm. (Untrue. 😂).

I love, love, LOVE Anakin. He is my hot, insane, child killing bastard of a mans.

… But I also hate him too. 😭😂

I HATE what he’s done and what he believes in after the war and how he just wallows like a child in his pain. I HATE how selfish he is (while at the same time heavily relate to his fear of death and losing those he loves to them dying/growing older). And I also HATE how damn close he was to making a better choice, but he DIDN’T, because in the end, it didn’t MATTER if Anakin technically knew the ‘right’ way to act. He purposely went against it, because he was just too selfish to let go of Padmé (he kinda did a self fulfilling prophecy with her death, but we’re not gonna talk about that part right now), and so he decided his happiness meant more than the entire galaxy, and burned down his childhood home like a school shooter and helped genocide his friends just for the CHANCE to save his wife.

And all of this, in the usual fics I’ve seen, can somehow be undone, just by changing a few little moments in Anakin’s life where he doesn’t get his feelings hurt: ie; Obi-Wan faking his death, Ahsoka leaving the Order/being framed by Barriss, or Mace/Qui-Gon/whoever-the-fuck-you-want-to-say being assigned as his Master instead of Obi-Wan.

And just… no. 😂

As shown through this wonderful SW blog here:

Anakin doesn’t do what he did because, oh, “This, this, and THIS happened to him”, and if you take that away and help him avoid it, he’ll suddenly change and be all warm and fuzzy inside and won’t burn the whole fucking galaxy just because HE cannot handle Padmé (MAYBE) dying and leaving him alone (when he wouldn’t even really BE alone, but Anakin also clearly puts Padmé/romantic love above all else. He might care for his friends and family, but he’d throw them all under the bus if it came down to the wire between them and Padmé). This is something I will go into in the fic as Anakin slowly starts to take a look at himself as he realizes: “wait… wtf? Do I even KNOW what Rex does outside of work? 🤔😨” for him to realize that he’s so obsessive over one person… that everyone else is slowly becoming put to the wayside.

Stopping one or two little things in Anakin’s life during the Clone Wars isn’t going to magically make him see the light and not be a currently ticking time bomb.

That is not how change WORKS. Not REAL change anyway. All of the fics I’ve seen written, usually hand wave a lot of Anakin’s misdeeds and flaws away, and pretend like if you hold Anakin’s hand through certain parts of the war and help him avoid THESE certain moments, that he’ll suddenly just magically become a better person who understands what being selfless and less greedy actually means.

That… is not true change. TRUE change is Anakin HIMSELF realizing slowly but surely as the war goes on that he’s slowly becoming someone he doesn’t recognize in the mirror anymore (*cough* Mel line drop from upcoming chapter? 👀✨ *cough*). TRUE change is Anakin HIMSELF working through his flaws and inner demons, before he gradually begins to realize with a sense of sickening horror that he has been WRONG: ie; massacring an entire Tusken village down to the last child while never telling another soul except Padmé about it and whistling happily to himself without a care in the world as the war rages on.

TRUE change (as you might’ve started to guess from the most recent chapter of my fic) is Anakin HIMSELF slowly but surely starting to question his actions, by comparing them to other people he respects and cares for.

Which brings us to your question on “headcanons”.

The entire purpose of the relationship between Melanie and Anakin (besides me living vicariously through her 😂) is that they are a MIRROR for each other.

Melanie and Anakin, while very different, aren’t COMPLETE and total opposites. There are purposeful parallels between them: their moms, their care of droids, their fear of losing those they love to death, and the PURPOSEFUL CHOICE GIVEN TO MELANIE BY THE SHOPKEEPER 👀 that parallels the choice Anakin is given at the end of ROTS by Palpatine himself in their choice to help the galaxy or be selfish and choose themselves/their own wants instead.

There is a quote I have based their relationship off of. I will share it here (if you are still with me, because I know I ramble a lot 😅😂):

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

—Elizabeth Gilbert

-

Melanie and Anakin are meant to have parallel journeys, even though their personalities are very different. But it’s more than that: their fatal flaws are in direct conflict with each other.

Anakin’s fatal flaw is: greed/selfishness.

Melanie’s fatal flaw is: fear/judgement.

BUT as they are forced into working together… the more they interact with each other… the more their fatal flaws are FORCED to be challenged by the other.

Anakin’s more selfish nature is challenged more and more by just being in Melanie’s presence and watching how she acts with complete compassion and selflessness in certain situations, which makes him slowly start to look at himself internally and take a look at his own actions and thoughts, gradually beginning to realize how selfish he’s slowly become without even realizing it.

Melanie, in turn, has the purposeful flaw of judgment, which can make her self righteous at times (even if she IS correct most of the time 😂), and also the flaw of fear, which as readers have seen, makes her a bit more cautious than she should be in her actions on trying to outsmart Palpatine to save the galaxy.

It’s kind of ironic: just being AROUND Anakin slowly begins to challenge Melanie’s fatal flaws (since she was completely fucking terrified of him the very first moment she realized she was in the SW universe and realized Anakin/Darth Vader was real now 😂). She sees things in such a black and white way at first, but as time goes on, Anakin’s need to be gentle with her and prove himself to Mel, makes her question her judgment with him, which allows her the ability to give him a chance. In turn, just being in his PRESENCE challenges her other fatal flaw on fear, since he’s a walking nightmare PTSD trigger for her pounding heart (and not always in the fun way 👀💓❤️‍🔥☠️😂).

Anyway, my point is that they aren’t just meant to be together romantically to be TOGETHER. It’s because I have purposefully tried to develop a romantic slow burn relationship that comes with my story to weave itself against the original theme of Rewrite the Stars, which is this: TRUE change and atonement/redemption.

Anakin physically CANNOT get closer to Mel, until he forced himself to take a step back and give her some space. If he wants to get anywhere with her, he HAS to start looking internally at himself to try and change and be more gentle with her.

Melanie, in turn, CANNOT outsmart Palpatine and win the war without Anakin’s help and working together with him over the next three years of The Clone Wars. She HAS to get past her judgment and allow herself to swallow her terror enough to give him a chance, because she NEEDS him to win.

This is a chess match between her and Palpatine, remember? And if you lose the king, you lose the game.

ANAKIN is the king. 👀

I bet you can’t guess what chess piece Melanie is. 😂 Lol.

Anyway, I feel like I’ve done a whole lot of taking in circles (sorry about that 😅), because I wanted to go ahead and explain my whole process for this fic while I had the time, so I can also refer this post if I ever need to again.

Now! Getting into some more FUN Stuff:

Idk if you’ve looked up my fic on Wattpad, but I have a lot of cool graphics posted there from my mind and from other artists/authors that have gifted me such wonderful cover art ( @shoniwake ! 👀✨❤️), and in a certain subsection, I have a whole playlist page dedicated as a type of ‘outline’ for the entire story of my fic (fair warning, it’s a lot 😅), just because I think it helps me with planning stuff out.

I won’t tell you all of them, of course. But I’ll share a few of my favorite songs that I always think are the PERFECT songs for Melanie and Anakin’s relationship and their slow burn romantic development. 😭🥺💔❤️💕✨

Innocence by Nathan Wagner

Stronger Together by Lou & SQVARE

Now I See by Lou & SQVARE

-

I love these three songs so much, because of their theme of two people coming together as a team and/or learning to open up their hearts to the other and to help the other person the see world in a different way. 🥹❤️💕

This is basically what I want for Melanie and Anakin. Their relationship isn’t just about having a romance in the story (although that’s part of it. Haha 😂💕). It’s about how their relationship meshes in with the rest of the themes of the story: TRUE change and growth into something better.

Melakin is purposely written to be in direct contrast to Anidala (which is still written with care and not erasing their genuine affection, by the way! I think it’s extremely lazy writing to write a canon relationship OOC just to prop up your OC’s own), which shows the difference between a more healthy developing relationship that is based on genuine care and respect (Melakin) and in contrast with one that is more based around idealizing the other person/ignoring their faults and putting them up on a pedestal that is sure to lead to disappointment (Anidala).

This is, as you know from reading the fic, slowly starting to be shown in how Anidala acts with each other in their trash fire (in my opinion! Don’t kill meeee! 🙌😂) of a marriage, which has them basically talking past each other/not really caring about anything that isn’t SPECIFICALLY RELEVANT to the other person (ie; them. Not anything with their family or job. Just THEM. Because while the love is genuine, it’s also eerily obsessive, which was GL’s whole point of them being star crossed lovers that burn out from their own flawed choices in regards to being together and trying to have it all).

This is also shown in my fic with Melakin vs Anidala contrasting each other in Anakin’s choices and how he interacts with them. Anakin REMEMBERS stuff about Mel’s life and choices that really he has no need to care about, but he does anyway. In contrast, there is a scene in the latest chapter of my SW fic where Anakin forgets a very… important member… of Padmé’s family 😭 (If you know, you know 👀🫣😬). 😂

I guess what I’m saying is is that I’m trying to not PREACH to the readers of my fic. I’m trying to write scenes that SHOW them what I believe to be true in regards to Anidala’s toxic relationship/the Jedi being scapegoats that everyone cruelly blames for their own genocide/how the Jedi culture might not be how THE READERS want to live, but it doesn’t change the fact that it IS a valid culture/way to live, and it doesn’t deserve to be eradicated just because you don’t understand/like/agree with it.

I’m trying to lead up into the themes and lessons of my fic as I go along, is what I’m saying. 😂 Which is a really heavy feat, considering how long it’ll end up being as a grand, epic tale. 😩

And a big part of the theme of my SW Fic: genuine change and growth into something better than you were before (ie; TRUE redemption) cannot happen to Anakin as easily as some of the time travel fix-it fics/other fix-it fics I’ve seen written on A03 before. Changing a few little things so Anakin doesn’t have to deal with a few moments in his life is not GENUINE and TRUE change. What that is is essentially placation. It’s PLACATING and CODDLING someone dangerous, which allows them (for the MOMENT) to calm down, because they are generally happy and have the things they want and aren’t under stress like Anakin was in the ending of ROTS when there was nobody there to hold his hand for him to ‘guide’ him in the right direction.

For TRUE change and redemption to happen for Anakin, he has to admit to himself that he was WRONG.

He has to ADMIT and ACKNOWLEDGE that actions he has taken are horrific (the Tusken Massacre), and accept people’s/the Jedi’s judgment on it without becoming defensive and acting like he’s being unfairly attacked and punished for something not that big of a deal. He has to ADMIT and ACKNOWLEDGE that his thought process has slowly but surely become corrupted over the years without him even realizing it, whether that’s from the war or Palpatine stroking his ego or from the trauma of his childhood making him cling to things too hard—it doesn’t really matter. He has to RECOGNIZE that he has become someone over the years that he can’t even recognize in the mirror in relation to that little nine year old boy on Tatooine (about how selfish he has become), and what he can do to change that.

I know some fans will think I am attacking Anakin and that I hate him or something (and well… I DO hate him�� but I also love him 🫣☠️❤️😂), but that is not the case. I LOVE Anakin’s character and truly relate to him on such a deep level in terms of how terrified he is of losing the people he loves to death. I can recognize myself and some of my worst fears deeply in him.

However, at the same time, I can also acknowledge that Anakin’s trauma from his childhood (from slavery/his mother dying in front of him), has essentially made his entire personality completely self serving. Because yes, Anakin can care about other people. He cares about and loves his friends. He’d do anything he could to keep them from harm (at least in TCW era 🥶☠️), but the hard truth is… he doesn’t think of his relationships and saving them from death in terms of what his LOVED ONES deserve or what THEY will lose if they die. He thinks about it in terms of what HE will lose if they die.

He straight up says it in the scene with Mace and then the scene with Palpatine: He NEEDS to keep Palpatine (who he KNOWS is an evil Sith Lord) alive, because it’s the only way he can keep Padmé alive. HE can’t live without HER.

There’s genuine love there. I am not denying that. Anakin isn’t a cackling villain like Palpatine (it’s the whole reason Anakin CAN be talked into coming back to the Light Side by Luke, whereas Palpatine would melt Luke’s fucking face off without hesitation if he tried). He cares and loves his family and friends and wife and kids… in a TOXIC way. In an OBSESSIVE way. In a way that is essentially all about HIM: ie; selfish.

Example 1:

Out of context, this sounds very romantic and simply just a reasonable amount of worry. But in relation to all the other things Anakin will end up saying while referring to Padmé as essentially a possession, I’m placing it here anyway as perhaps a sign of his darkening thoughts.

Example 2:

Yes, yes, I knowwww… some of you ladies will be like: 🥺💔 at the sad murder puppy moment. And I suppose it’s still very evil wet cat bastard level/blorbo of him in a intoxicating way for people who want to feel loved—at the same time, he’s essentially saying: look, man, I don’t care if I gotta murder some kids and betray my friends and descend the galaxy and Republic into darkness (which I know my wife will be fucking horrified at). It’s very important that I DO NOT have to deal with this pain, okay?? 😭 Everyone else can be in pain, but not meeee. I’ll crush and stab my friends in the back just so I won’t be left alone from my wife dying.

Very sad. Very wet cat villain blorbo of him.

And yet—VERY selfish and evil. 😭🤷‍♀️👀😂

He’s essentially saying—fuck the galaxy. Let me get mine, and I’ll go home. ☠️

Example 3:

This one’s pretty obvious. By this point, he’s lost his shit. His mind’s already cracking at the seams as he tries to keep justifying the actions he’s taken, which will eventually lead into his 20 year long dissociation where he essentially goes, “Nahhh, that wasn’t meee. That was DARTH VADER. Anakin didn’t do that, because ANAKIN is still a good person (he mutters to himself over and over like a maniac at night in his emo villain lair), whereas I AM THE DARK INCARNATE. 😌🖤” so he doesn’t have to admit to himself that HE—yes, THAT he, Anakin fucking Skywalker—has become an actual terrible fucking person with no heart. 🤷‍♀️😭😬

I don’t see why this is so hard for SW fandom to get. It’s a METAPHOR George Lucas uses to say Darth Vader killed Anakin (and also just a way to plug up the plot hole of what Obi-Wan originally told Luke in the first movie). It doesn’t mean that Anakin’s consciousness is sleeping inside Vader’s head like a fucking cat. Lmao. 😭

Not only would that not make SENSE in terms of how GL wrote it, but it also just essentially makes Anakin’s ‘redemption’ (I don’t really view it as a true redemption. More like just the Christian version of salvation for his soul by the skin of his teeth. Although GL did say Anakin was redeemed in the eyes of LUKE only, because he said some crap about being redeemed in the eyes of our children) all but useless. 😭 You can’t say on one hand that Darth Vader’s ‘redemption’ is the most iconic one of all time, while at the same time saying on the other hand that “Anakin never did any of those things. It was DaRtH VaDeR! 🤪🤪🤪” because then you’re essentially absolving Anakin of all of his crimes while on the Dark Side, and if Anakin is absolved of all of his crimes… then wtf is there TO make him the most iconic ‘redemption’ of all time??? 😭🤷‍♀️ I mean, like—what IS there to ‘redeem’ at that point??? Ya can’t have both, kids. Lol. 😂

This is also essentially what Anakin wanted in terms of his relationship with Padmé and the Jedi Order. He wanted it ALL. He wanted BOTH. Sureee, he TALKED about quitting the Jedi Order eventually after the war to be with Padmé in a little space cottage. But could he WALK THE WALK? Could he really give up the thrill of chasing an enemy, or the twitch of his fingers in reaching for his lightsaber? 😑🤔 Me myself has some doubtssss.

He wanted it ALL. He wanted to be married while ALSO having the strength and power that came from being a Jedi Knight. He didn’t WANT to choose. He even SAYS it.

Example 4: Essentially this SW meme

He doesn’t want to CHOOSE. And it’s why it’s BS when it’s argued he was put in this position by the Council’s rules on marriage, because it’s LITERALLY just like a vow of a priest at a Catholic Church. They can’t marry either, just like the Jedi Order. BUT (unlike what fandom likes to believe), the Order isn’t some cult, and you are free to leave at any time (and hell, they’ll even build a statue after you leave, apparently, if the one they built of Dooku that’s in the Archives (I think) is anything to go by), just as a priest is free to leave the Catholic Church at any time. Because it’s a COMMITMENT to that place. And people might think it’s dumb/stupid/not like it—or even understand it! And you don’t HAVE to like something from a religion/culture/belief, or understand something, to still respect it (another theme drop for the next chapter of my SW fic? 👀😂).

So, what some people will probably wonder is—“But, Starbelt! (Le gasp 😱) Then how is the Jedi culture going to be respected in my fic, if Melakin is still endgame at the end of their slow, slow burn?”

And to that question, I say, “I am not a by-the-book-to-the-very-LETTER interpreter of the Jedi Code (although I’m not saying the code of an entire culture is gonna be ‘changed’ for legit one person/couple. Lmao. 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️😂), but I AM a Jedi lover who is of the belief that—even if you don’t completely AGREE or even UNDERSTAND the Jedi Order and their code—it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t be difficult to respect it. It shouldn’t be difficult to not scold a culture on their beliefs, while essentially saying that belief is the reason it is ‘good’ for The Force/galaxy that they were genocided as a ‘clean slate’. 😬🤦‍♀️☠️”

What I WILL say, is that I am going to explore the Jedi Order and the different interpretations of the Code and The Force in general in this fic, and what that means in terms of coexistence, instead of the frankly childish notion of just painting an entire culture as emotionless and wrong in their beliefs, like they are some kind of stuck up, snooty and rich culture that ‘deserved what they got’. 🙄🤦‍♀️😬☠️

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ANYWAY, back to my point with Anakin, and how my fic is trying to complete the most massive and epic of all writing tasks: making Anakin slowly change and grow out of his greed and selfishness into a better person in such an organic way, that perhaps may one day be compared with the likes of Zuko’s redemption from ATLA (I know, I knowww. Pretty high hopes for myself. Lol. 😂).

So, essentially, in the original “timeline” of ROTS, Anakin is freaking losing it, and since nobody is there to hold his hand, he descends right into the core selfishness that is buried inside of him, where he basically just decides, “Fuck it,” and throws all of his morals out the window so he can keep himself from the pain of losing Padmé (ie; it’s really about HIM and his fear, and not about Padmé deserving to live and see more beauty in the world) by cutting off Mace’s hand to stop him from killing Palpatine, because—in Anakin’s OWN words:

Example 5:

Like… 🤷‍♀️😭.

People like to sing “Lalalala,” and plug their ears by pretending Anakin is just so shocked in this scene (le gasp 😱) that Mace is being so UN-JEDI-LIKE, and that it just convinced him that the Jedi Order truly has been ‘corrupted’. 🤦‍♀️🙄

Now see… that might hold some water if Anakin literally didn’t scream “I NeEd HiM! 😡” at Mace like an unhinged five year old, which literally PROVES that the only reason Anakin wants Mace to keep Palpatine alive and not to kill the guy yet is because he needs to learn the super-secret-Dark-Side-magicy way of how to save himself from the pain of losing Padmé to dying in childbirth.

… Because like some may recall, Anakin LITERALLY beheaded Dooku himself all but like… what? 12 hours ago? 😭🤦‍♀️

Essentially, this meme:

So, essentially, what I’m getting at here is: Anakin is a goddamn hypocrite. 😂

Now, in relation to my SW fic? What I essentially am TRYING to accomplish, is to have Anakin slowly CHANGE HIMSELF as the war goes on and he interacts more with Melanie and witnesses her compassion, while in turn comparing her actions to his own.

Melanie isn’t supposed to ‘fix’ or ‘change’ Anakin. Anakin is supposed to be INSPIRED to change from how he grows to care and admire Mel’s choices and who she is inside her heart as the Clone Wars rages on.

I do all of this, so in the HOPES that when he is presented with this scene again, it makes perfect sense to all readers of my fic that his choice may become different—essentially choosing for ONCE, a more selfless route, out of no expectation that he will gain anything in return (that only happens with Luke like—20 years later—and it’s not like he had many other options at that point. 😭🤷‍♀️ Lol.).

(And as I said—MAY become different… 👀 After all, Melanie still has a long way to go before the end of the war… 👀)

But yeah—that’s my plans with my SW Anakin x OC Fic, Rewrite the Stars, and how I’m planning it and Melakin’s relationship to go. I placed a big feat on myself. 😂❤️💕

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If you wanna see some of my like… ideas/notes on what I have planned to eventually place in there somewhere, I will show you a few things, because it’s not really SPOILERS, since I already talk about the Jedi genocide a lot anyway (it drives me up the wall when SW fandom refers to it as ThE FaLl Of ThE jEdi 🤪🤪🤪). Guess it makes it easier to blame them all for their own deaths that way if you refer to their genocide and slaughter as a “fall”. 😭🙄 Idk. 🤷‍♀️

I also have some stuff with the history of Churches splitting into different factions (ie: The Great Schism of 1054), which I will be weaving in as a parallel at some point. 👀👀 I will not explain why, as that would be too spoilery, but I’m sure some of my more in depth analysis readers on my work could guess if they thought about it hard enough… 👀

There are also some comparisons on the Jedi genocide in the SW universe, and how it parallels the Air Nomad genocide in the ATLA universe pretty much to a T in terms of how fast it all happens in one day, and also how any survivors were hunted down and lured out with relics of their own culture, not to MENTION just the fact that both of these cultures are just non-western inspired in general (seriously, what is with people and killing monks in Temples? Lol. 🤷‍♀️😂). It’s also just an interesting comparison in general, because where the ATLA fandom usually is quite sympathetic to the Air Nomad genocide, on the other hand, the SW fandom is so nauseatingly nonchalant and cruel about the Jedi Order’s genocide that it’s almost downright weird. It’s almost like the SW fandom has this THING about never calling the Jedi’s “Fall 🙄” what it actually was—a horrific genocide. I swear to Godddd, SW fandom must be allergic to the word. 😂🤦‍♀️

I also threw in the ‘Hero’s journey’ thing I’ve been using for Melanie to try and make her a relatable protagonist, while also still having her own character arc along with Anakin’s. It was really important to me that she had her OWN arc away from Anakin, and that she had more connections and relationships in the SW universe than just him. Not only does it weaken her character if she had been made to be all about HIM, but it also just makes a certain… choice… 👀… with The Shopkeeper (her antagonist who parallels Palpatine, Anakin’s antagonist) hit all the more harder, because saving the ENTIRE GALAXY isn’t even about saving ANAKIN at all for her. Not at first, anyway.

Instead, from the very beginning, it’s all about how Melanie grows to care and feel compassion for the people she meets in the SW universe and becomes friends with, and how she cannot turn away from them and leave them behind to die, when she has knowledge that can help change their fates. It was SO important to me that Anakin is not even on Mel’s RADAR at first. She doesn’t hate him or anything. She doesn’t want him dead, but it’s not really about SAVING him either (if that happens along the way, it’s a happy bonus for her). Because—as you know—she’s TERRIFIED of him in the beginning, and just plans to avoid him like the plague.

And in doing so, she grows closer to others in the SW universe: Ahsoka, Rex, Yoda, Fives, Obi-Wan, all of the other clones, etc. ALL of that is so important for a certain choice she makes with The Shopkeeper (which I won’t spoil for any new readers who may stumble across this post and want to read my work 👀😂).

So, essentially, my fic is a grand, epic tale, that our main protagonist, Melanie Bains, is going on to save millions of lives in a galaxy far, far away from death and suffering.

No pressure, huh? 😂😬

That’s definitely going to crack and fracture at Mel’s psyche as time goes on… 🥶 The weight of such a feat on one’s shoulders essentially all alone becomes overwhelming. 😓💔 (*Cough* Hint for next chapter? 👀 *cough*).

So I’m really trying to follow that ‘Hero’s journey’ format. I already have her character arc outlined with a clear beginning and end. I just have to find the will to write the thousands and thousands of words to get there to that point. 😩😭😂

It still makes me so happy how many people relate and enjoy Mel. 😌🥹❤️💓🥰

Some planned themes I am going to weave in as the story goes along:

Example 1: Genocide

Air Nomad genocide propaganda from ATLA:

Jedi Order genocide propaganda (Not sure if it’s from before or after Order 66. Either way, it’s meant to rile the populace up against them and demonize the Jedi as ‘other’, like emotionless wizards that are barely human and aren’t capable of true compassion since they’re a ‘cult’ and not from ‘true’ familial structures, unlike the ‘good ol’ regular populace with their attachments 🤪’) from SW:

Example 2: Church factions splitting up/The Great Schism of 1054

Example 3: Hero’s Journey (Mel’s character arc)

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… Now, moving past that long meta ramble, here’s some more songs from my playlist on Wattpad for Melakin’s developing romantic relationship and it’s slow, slow burnnnn. 👀💓❤️‍🔥😂

Borderline by Florrie

Let Me In by Michael Corcoran

The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson

Minefields by Faouzia & John Legend

Unlike the previous songs in the earlier part of this meta post, THESE songs are more about Melakin struggling to open up to each other. I’ll admit, a lot of it is more focused on Anakin trying to get Melanie to open up to him, because he doesn’t understand why she’s acting so terrified of him at first.

The one song that’s more about both of them trying to find common ground is “Borderline”, which is meant to be them both reaching out and trying to meet each other halfway. 😊🥰🥺❤️💕

And if you’re wondering what my favorite song is out of all of them?

It’s the “Innocence by Nathan Wagner” song. WITHOUT a doubt. It’s the PERFECT Melakin song that is basically what the whole arc of their relationship is supposed to be. 😭🥹❤️💔💕

Whew, that was a long post! So sorry about that. 😅😂🤷‍♀️ I just got really into talking about my fic and my writing process. I think this has even helped me with motivation! Losing hyperfixations is a bitchhhh. 😖😖

The only other thing I will add is this to hopefully ease your and everyone else’s minds: I may have to go on hiatuses every now and then because of writer’s block or a family/life problem like the recent one with my brother being in the hospital for a while. BUT! No matter WHAT, I will NEVER abandon this fic. It is literally gonna be my damn life’s work—I swearrrrr. 😖✊😂

To end this long SW meta off, I’m going to link another two great Pro Jedi SW meta posts from the wonderful Pro Jedi blog I mentioned earlier. Feel free to check it out if you want, because it’s a lot of Mel’s thoughts on the Jedi, and part of the problems she has to find a way to solve as the war goes on by trying to keep the Jedi in favor of the public’s eyes:

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To any new readers that stumble across this and are curious enough to check out my fic:

Tags:

@ensomniaa

@heartfairy

@fangirlteallie

@xreadersunite

@shoniwake

[monstersinthecosmos]

I'm so glad you're back!! I was so panicked when I saw your blog was gone, because you are truly one of the absolute stars of VC fandom!!

I joined VCblr a few months ago because I have been obsessed with Marius since I was 13, like my Marius obsession literally changed my life in multiple ways and I saw VC was becoming popular again so I wanted to join in! but like one of my first posts got these comments from people I'd never even spoken to before about how I was disrespecting Marius and his fans, and to be a little dramatic the way some of these comments were written, I felt like some of them seemed to actually really hate me personally. It just killed my desire to write fic or meta anymore so I just deleted my tumblr and now I just have an empty one so I can lurk on people. Like I have really limited time and energy for fandom, and I don't want to spend it writing stuff that people just hate seeing and making them feel bad, and then feeling bad myself for liking the stuff I like.

Anyway, I found your blog a little while ago and I am OBSESSED with your creativity and your perspective on like everything, so I'm sorry to be a weird rambling anon but basically I'm just trying to say your blog has made a difference to how I feel about my own freaky way of loving Marius and I just love your openness and acceptance and your ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS A++ MARIUS TAKES and you genuinely have improved my VC experience 100% and I'm glad you haven't been erased from existence.

ugh see this is what I mean dude!! I'm so sorry to hear you had that experience!!!!!! Please talk to me off anon any time, I'd love to see your posts if you wanna come back and share again!

I BRING THIS UP NOW AND THEN so I'm sorry if I'm like a rambling old man telling the same story 400 times, but, now and then I think it bears repeating. But like, when I was 13, a boy at my school bashed my head open on a locker (I had to go to the hospital and get my head stapled shut) and he punched me in the face so hard that I have permanent ligament damage in my jaw. And it was because I was like, a baby bat and I was into numetal and Wicca and I was like the only kid in my small town school who didn't go to church. The day it happened I was wearing a Korn shirt!!! And I had blue hair! And I'd been like very intensely bullied my whole time in middle school, and the adults in my life NEVER protected me. This was RIGHT after Columbine and people were still buying into the propaganda that the killers were bullied goth kids and not fucking neo-nazis, so like, the entire time I was getting violently harassed, every day!, no one protected ME because they thought I would turn out to be the violent one. And yet, I was being put on hit lists. I had a gun pointed at me. A boy one time stole my Wicca book out of my backpack and read it to the class to make fun of me, but *I'm* the one who got in trouble for it because they thought I wanted to cast spells & curses on my classmates. The boy who assaulted me was a KNOWN problem in our school, and I wasn't even the first girl he hurt! MEANWHILE I still got a week of detention for having my head bashed open because they said I started the fight. ((This is up for debate: Yes I actually did throw the first punch LMFAO but he HAD been teasing me incessantly for like ever so like come the fuck on. I deserved that one.))

idk why I was just born like, without any shame or something, I guess it's innate, the rebel streak, I can't explain, but none of this really hurt my feelings? Every time people would make fun of me I was thinking "Yeah but I love Korn and they're so COOL and if you're making fun of me that means you're NOT cool and I don't really value anything you have to say????" And that really sustained me through all of this.

So yatta yatta terfs & conservatives poisoned the fandom well on Tumblr and I always think that it's not so different -- being picked on because you like something weird & offputting or whatever, and being treated like a threat or a danger when you're the one who's vulnerable to harassment and violence. In the digital space on Tumblr it's going to be about like kinky stuff and villainfucking and IRL it was because I was the only goth at my school and I liked horror films. It's the same shit, being harassed because of the fiction you like and the media you consume. And on Tumblr it's people being absolute fucking dickheads and IRL it was me being put in the hospital because a guy put his fucking hands on me, he was that upset that I was into cool shit.

And just. Yknow. It does suck when you want fandom to be a chillout space and you get your feelings hurt. It fucking SUCKS when people show up here specifically to be unkind to others, like I can't think of a less productive use of time. But part of me always thinks "I didn't get my head stapled shut for some grassless little fucking weasel on tunglr dot com to shame me over vampire porn" lmao.

(As an aside if you ever want to look into other examples of people being IRL fucked over over STUFF THEY LIKE, google the West Memphis Three ((innocent metalheads who did 20 years on death row because people thought the weird metal boys MUST be murderers)) or the FBI trying to file Juggalos as a GANG which means anyone who had an ICP phase and got a Hatchetman tattoo as an 18 year old is now in jeopardy of losing their fucking children for affiliating with a gang, okay. And this isn't even to scratch the surface of the way people treat hip hop and way it's mired in racism. Censorship and thought policing are always going to come down to Christofascism and white supremacy, but I digress.)

So blah blah all that to say, I'm not going anywhere and it pisses me the fuck off that people can't keep this bullshit to their private group chats. I have NO idea what anyone gains by acting like this in public.

Like, yeah yeah, fandom is silly, whatever, but hobbies are legit! And we deserve a space to unwind that isn't ruined by capitalism and bigotry and just, some little space to land. ESPECIALLY when, let's be real!, it's very very very common for fandom folks to be neurodivergent. I mean why else would we be so obsessed and blorbo-sick lol. So like, it just feels extra fucking shitty of people to be rude to fans like that, to make you feel shame for the thing that excites you.

Fandoms SELF GENERATE. Someone has to be here posting shit and we have to interact with it and create community. And genuinely if all you can contribute is your horseshit attitude, you can go fuck yourself!!! And I can't begin to tell you how much it breaks my heart when I see this infighting in one fandom, because like, being a Marius fan - BELIEVE ME - when I tell you I've done my time as persona non grata, the antis have fucking come for me LMFAO, I'm on the blocklists, I've been accused of absolutely heinous bullshit for liking a stupid fake vampire character. Like, listen!

I've had my head bashed open on a locker for liking numetal! You're not going to chase me off Tumblr!!!!!!

Anyway this got away from me, idk what I'm trying to say, I'm saying that I'm so sorry you had a bad experience and I hope you come back some time! And I encourage everyone to block & curate your space as needed to make for a happy escape zone. EVEN BLOCKING ME, I KNOW I GET ON PEOPLES NERVES SOMETIMES. And my content isn't for everyone! It's fine! Stay safe please, and I love you, and I have your fucking back dude!!!

AND EVERYONE ELSE JUST, HOLY SHIT BE NICE TO PEOPLE. IT COSTS $0 TO BE FUCKING NICE TO PEOPLE. IF YOU'RE NOT BEING CREATIVE YOU'RE BEING DESTRUCTIVE!

[bluedalahorse]

A highly incomplete introduction to AuDHD for YR fans who want to write more Sara Eriksson

Greetings, friends! In my time in the Young Royals fandom, I’ve seen a few people mention they were interested writing Sara but they didn’t know how to approach her neurodivergence, or that they find it intimidating. I figured it might be worth compiling a post where I share both ADHD and autism resources I’ve found helpful, as well as elements of my personal experience I draw on when writing Sara.

This post is by no means exhaustive, and I could probably say a lot more. But I figured I’d get it out there in case it was helpful to anyone else.

Part One: Resources and Such

Yo Samdy Sam is an AuDHD vlogger who talks about her experiences, and I find her video about how autism and ADHD show up together pretty informative. Since Sara is both it’s good to have a grasp on these nuances! Yo Samdy Sam’s other videos are also ones I’d recommend.

I’m autistic, now what? is also a good channel to check out for someone talking about their day to day experiences of autism. Her videos are a little longer, but she focuses often on how things have changed from her childhood to her adulthood, which can be helpful if you’re thinking about Sara at different ages/writing flashbacks/working on fic set in the future/etc.

Chloe Hayden, who stars in another teen drama called Heartbreak High, is both autistic and ADHD, and very fun and positive. She presents quite differently than Sara does—lots more talking and energy—but I think she’s a good example of every neurodivergent person presenting differently. Also, people should watch Heartbreak High and write me some fic where Sara and Quinni meet because I want it.

How to ADHD is mostly geared toward practical life skills when you’ve got ADHD, but it doesn’t neglect the way those interact with emotional well-being. Sara might try some of these strategies while working on her school work and chores, either because an adult recommended she do so or because it’s part of a system she worked out for herself. Also, the videos are perfectly designed for ADHD brains, and i have acquired many ways to self-accommodate by watching them.

Jessie Gender is autistic and does commentary about lots of nerdy things and trans rights. I really liked her video on The Queen’s Gambit where she talks about autistic girls and sex. If you’re planning to write spicer fic about Sara (which people should write more of imo) then Jessie might be a good resource!

Marieke Nijkamp is a multiply disabled author, and one of her disabilities is autism. I still have to get around to reading her novel length books but her short story “Better For All the World” made me cry and is one of my formative sargust mentor texts. I really recommend it if you can get a hold of the anthology The Radical Element. (Although, heads up, the story deals with the Buck v Bell case of 1927, which is difficult subject matter.)

Disability in Kidlit has some great resources on writing autistic characters from a craft perspective. If you’re going to write specifically from Sara’s point of view, or even if you’re not, it’s worth reading this article about the autistic voice in fiction and this article about humanizing autistic characters. Other articles on the site are also great!

I’m going to talk more about my personal experiences under the cut below…

Part 2: My personal experiences & takeaways

Sooooo if you’ve met one AuDHD person, you’ve met one AuDHD person. I can’t really claim to speak for all AuDHD people, and I’ve only recently gotten my diagnosis anyway. That said, a lot of my own personal experience colors how I write Sara. So in the interest of transparency, I’ve gone ahead and listed some of the things I’ve thought about when I write her.

An important note before I get started—this is not, actually, meta or analysis of the show. I’m not trying to tell you want I “really” think is going on with Sara Eriksson, or what the writers intended, or what the show is saying. You may read her differently, and I’m sure your interpretation is just as informed by your own experiences as mine. So please don’t take this as a criticism if your interpretation is different.

What I am explaining here instead are the ways that my personal experiences as an AuDHD person have influenced my perception of Sara, which in turn translates to how I’ve made sense of her storyline and written her in fanfic. None of these are “excuses,” but they are explorations. You can look at it as me examining my own thinking and writing process. I’m also opening up about some of my experiences and being a little bit vulnerable. If you have questions about any of these things below, or you want to know more for your own fic, you are always welcome to message me. I may not be able to get back to you right away but I can help however I am able. There are also some things I might feel more comfortable discussing in depth one-on-one, so direct messages might be better in that case, too.

Anyway, let’s begin…

Polarized strengths and weaknesses: In my own experience as an AuDHD person there are some pretty dramatic contrasts between what I’m good at and what I suck at. I’m in the 99% percentile in some skills and the 2% percentile in others. This adds up to stuff like, I read the Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time when I was eight and Les Misérables when I was eleven, but I cannot drive a car or learn a choreographed dance no matter how hard I try. This is inexplicable to some people because they’re like, omg but you know all these advanced words! Surely if you can’t drive a car, it’s just because you aren’t trying hard enough! Likewise I think it makes sense to write Sara with a spiky profile of her own, and have characters react to that accordingly.

Perceptions of maturity: AuDHD adults aren’t children. AuDHD teenagers aren’t children either. And yet part of ableism is the infantilization of AuDHD people. I don’t have a lot of huge narrative squicks, but this is one of them, and it’s rooted in frustrations I’ve had over people treating me like I’m still a child. I always write Sara as the age she’s intended to be in the fic. If I see fanfic scenes or headcanon scenarios where someone is treating Sara like she’s five, and that’s spun as positive or never questioned, it can make me really upset and it’s an immediate back button. This is something I would recommend writers be on the lookout for if they’re incorporating Sara into a scene. Maybe this one bullet point is spinning a little far into criticism of other folks, but I think if I could communicate one thing to other people writing Sara, this would be it.

Special interests/hyperfixations: The thing about special interests is that autistic people often turn to them to replenish their energy and get their nervous systems back to a state of equilibrium. (For instance, me writing this post right now about my blorbo Sara Eriksson is me engaging with a special interest to put my nervous system in a state of equilibrium and put energy back in my body.) Sara’s time spent with Rousseau isn’t just wonderful because she loves horses, it’s also something that’s probably helping her recharge after a complicated day of navigating social situations at Hillerska. This is why she panics at the thought of losing Rousseau. Now, there’s still issues here in that Rousseau isn’t actually Sara’s horse. And I do think many teenage and adult autistics with low support needs, like Sara, understand that they can’t engage with their special interests all the time. But in order to write and understand Sara, I have to understand that she’s counting on Rousseau and horses more generally as something that helps her self-regulate and stay grounded. (In Heart and Homeland I also added art as one of her hyperfixations, so she often draws to recharge and make sense of things.)

Alexithymia: Alexithymia is essentially a trait people can have where they struggle to read their own emotions. It’s pretty common in autistic people and other neurodivergent folk; I have a mild version of it. For me, tuning into my emotions is a bit like trying to figure out what song is playing on a staticy radio. I might have to wait and “mess with the dial” a bit before I can fully understand what I’m feeling in a given situation. The question “how are you?” is a bit of a nightmare for me sometimes. Because my alexithymia is mild, I usually can figure out what I’m feeling in time, but I still often need extra effort to discern the nuances. I tend to apply this trait to Sara when I write her, mostly because she seems to need to sit with her feelings to understand how they’re affecting her. This is most evident when she’s trying to figure out if she like-likes August, though it comes out in other ways, too. Sara might just need a lot of time to process her emotions. Even when she’s showing her emotions and in them, they might take a lot of time to leave her system, and she might not catch on to how they’re affecting her right away. In Heart and Homeland, part of the reason Sara keeps a diary in the first place is so she can sort through what she’s feeling.

Heightened empathy: There’s an old stereotype that autistic people don’t have any empathy. This is not true, and some autistics even have an excess of empathy. I would argue that Sara (at least the way I interpret and write her) is one of them. This may seem counterintutive to some, as I have seen people argue that she is insufficiently empathetic to Simon and/or Linda. I see it differently, however. In my own experience, having an excess of empathy doesn’t always mean that I come across as loving and sweet to the people in my life. Sometimes it can make it so you’re so full of feelings toward others that you can’t act. I often function clumsily in conflicts, and feel like I’m caught between different parties, especially if it’s a situation where everyone appears to be hurting. It’s enough to make me shut down and not do anything, or even side with the person who to everyone else is obviously wrong. Especially when I was a teenager, the answer about “who to side with” in a conflict wasn’t always clear to me. For instance, in college, I dated a girl who constantly belittled me and many of my friends, and I let her get away with it because I was sensitive to the ways she was genuinely hurting about life. I am not proud of it now, and I did break up with her eventually and made efforts to patch things up with my friends when I could, but it also took me two and a half years to get there. Thanks to life experience and therapy, I am now better at recognizing red flags and overriding my excess empathy to call people out on their shit when they need it. It took me time, though, and I can’t help reading a lot of that into Sara. In a way, I tend to think her hope that August will own up to his actions is born out of heightened empathy for both August and Simon. She pins her hopes on this solution because, in her mind, it meets Simon’s needs because the person who harmed him has come forward and is willing to be held accountable for his actions and it meets August’s needs because he can find relief in owning up to his shit and stop drowning in regret. Now, yes, Sara is absolutely misleading herself and ignoring crucial details of the situation because she’s in love, and she does misread what Simon actually needs in the situation. This is very typically teenage. At the same time, when I write her in fic, I see this as tied to an excess of empathy, and not a lack of it.

Inertia/Executive Functioning Struggles: Building on what was said above… some AuDHD people (like myself) can really struggle with making a plan and getting started on tasks, and the bigger the task, the bigger the struggle. “Tasks” is a word we usually apply to things like doing laundry, so we tend to think of executive functioning as an unemotional thing, but it can also apply to emotional stuff like, say, having a big conversation that needs to be had or breaking up with someone you know you need to. (Like I said above. Two and a half years with that shitty person in college!) In fact, I would say inertia can even make things harder with social/emotional stuff, because math homework is at least consistently math homework, but social/emotional situations can shift and become more complicated over time. At Hillerska, we see Sara get involved in ever-shifting social politics, and it takes things escalating to the field scene for her to take action at the end of S2. (In a more minor example, Sara taking a while to get ready in the parents’ weekend episode, and Linda rushing her out the door, is a great example of Sara being affected by inertia.)

Menstrual ick: Increasing numbers of studies show that people with uteruses who have ADHD, autism, or both are way more likely to have painful periods and PMDD. This is true for me—one of the biggest signs that my period is coming is that I am absolutely convinced everyone hates me. I don’t know how to apply this to Sara directly, but periods are part of life and if you happen to write about her dealing with menstrual nonsense, this might be something to keep in mind.

Sensory issues: A lot of people are aware of sensory issues for neurodivergents, and every neurodivergent experiences sensory issues differently, and not always in ways that are immediately apparent to neurotypicals. For me, I hate vacuums and car horns and bananas, but for my roommate, she hates any lights on after 7 PM and finds chocolate overwhelming. Sara doesn’t mention any particular sensory issues, but presumably she has some and masks her reactions, so uh… make up the ones that make sense to you, I guess. Or, don’t make them up, but maybe read about a bunch of different people’s experiences of sensory issues and work from there. External stuff like being tired, sick, or being on one’s period can heighten sensory issues, so think about vulnerability factors that might increase them for Sara.

Rejection sensitivity: Many people with ADHD feel rejection or criticism from others with a high level of intensity, even as physical pain. (Fun fact: PMS makes my rejection sensitivity even worse!) I don’t know if we see Sara feeling rejection sensitivity onscreen much in YR, but I can’t help but imagine she’s dealt with it in the past, based on the way she says she sometimes feels like the worst person in the world, when she’s talking to August in 2.3. If Sara’s had therapy (which I assume she’s had in some form because she knows breathing exercises) then maybe this is something she’s worked on coping strategies.

Accommodations in school: I don’t actually know how this works in Sweden specifically or at a school like Hillerska, but I’d love to hear how it works! Someone else should weigh in if they know things. But I would not be surprised if Sara has the legal right to certain accommodations in school such as extended time on tests, guided notes, etc. (Not being Swedish myself, I’m not sure what the equivalent to the Americans With Disabilities Act would be in Sweden.) One thing to note here is that Sara would get to decide herself whether she actually uses her accommodations or not. I would say, based on my observations of teenagers, is that some neurodivergent teenagers tend not to use their accommodations so they can avoid sticking out among their peers. This seems like it might be the case for Sara, since she wants to make friends at Hillerska and not stand out. The other thing she might encounter at Hillerska specifically is teachers who don’t want to meet those accommodations because they’re “old school” and, frankly, ableist. Accommodations are something one should take into account when writing Sara’s academic life, though.

Double empathy problem: This is something that the psych community is talking about more lately, and essentially the idea here is that neurotypicals communicate best with other neurotypicals whereas neurodivergents communicate best with other neurodivergents. That doesn’t mean both groups can’t communicate with one another (and even reducing it to two groups is kind of oversimplifying things, because obviously culture and other things impact communication too) but there are different patterns of communication at work here. In my own life, I vibe well with people whose neurotypes are similar to mine—this is exactly why @coruscantrhapsody and I are such iconic roommates. The Double Empathy Problen is theorized to have played a role in stereotypes about autistic people not having any empathy. (PS: I don’t actually think August has undiagnosed ADHD in canon, at least not according to the writers. Still, I think it would be pretty interesting to write him in fanfiction as someone who has a missed childhood diagnosis given the way he struggles with rejection sensitivity, impulsivity, and emotion regulation, and the way that the adderall addiction could be a form of self-medication that has gone awry. For that reason I think it’d be interesting to see a fic where the sargust relationship is viewed through the lens of the double empathy problem. Obviously not in a way where the ADHD excuses August’s harmful behaviors, but you know. An added layer of delicious nuance. Alternately, I know some folks like to headcanon Wille as autistic. Sara really clicking with autistic!Wille when they finally get a chance to talk is something I’d like to see!)

Neurodivergent community: As far as I can tell, Sara doesn’t really have neurodivergent community. This makes me sad, as someone who strongly benefits from friendships with other neurodivergent people. I would like her to have some in someone’s fic, please! Let me know if you write it.

That’s all for now… maybe I’ll add more in a future post.

For any other AuDHDers, do you have any elements of your personal experience that you incorporate into how you interpret or write Sara’s character? Feel free to reblog and add on, if you feel so inclined. (But also, no pressure.) Like I said, every ND person experiences this stuff differently, so someone else may have completely different experiences than me.

[crimeronan]

On the topic of How Do You Handle XYZ Comment, I've always wondered how you handle terrible responses on your toh takes. Like I know the toh fandom doesn't lack piss on the poor reading comprehension and they also really enjoy wildly out of touch takes, but I've never seen any comments on your princess luz stuff of that nature. I'm sure they must be there but maybe I'm too early? But anyway, how do you tend to deal with the "acktually shipping luz and Hunter is incest" and the "ur not a real lesbian because putting amity in a poly ship is lesbian erasure" and the "as a white person kinda sus you make the poc woman an empress" kind of responses? Ones that are technically not hate and maybe if you squint could be from people who aren't inherently trying to do bad but just lack the maturity needed to engage with the internet at large?

this ask made me giggle. honestly, i haven't received as much pushback as you might expect! way less pushback than i expected. in the princess AU, i've gotten a LOT more "this is actually too grotesque for me to stomach" comments than "this is problematic" comments, which is fine. horror-thriller isn't for everyone, those comments do not upset me.

i have had a Few run-ins with bad faith people, whom i mostly block. there's one prolific commenter in toh tumblr fandom who would repeatedly write angry essays on my humor meta posts -- essays that were all about how belos is too evil to be sympathetic and/or about how hunter is a soft gentle boy who shouldn't be jokingly referred to as evil. then they'd go "i can't help my active and conscious decision to type a bunch of rude fucking words and then my active and conscious decision to send those rude fucking words because i'm autistic :(((" around the fourth or fifth time this happened, i was fucking done with that nonsense and finally blocked them. shoulda done it after the first comment tbh!! no more autism exceptions.

as for the rest of it, my main management strategy is to simply.... preempt the bad faith comments?

i had a LOT more unpleasant and conflict-filled fandom experiences when i was in the raven cycle fandom. that was my first exposure to "you can't ship multi-gender polycules if anyone involved is gay" and "queerplatonic het relationships are just heteronormativity shipping that you're trying to get away with." having dealt with those takes before, i've found a few different ways to disarm bad faith readers before they get started.

first is to be super open and honest about my interests. i talk about what i find compelling in different relationships All The Damn Time. it's really hard for anyone to accuse me of only wanting hunter to fuck amity if they've seen, like.... anything i've said about hunter and amity.

same with hunter and luz. the only negative reactions i've really gotten to how they're written in the princess AU is like.... two people being squicked by camila thinking they're romantically involved. i REALLY expected more pushback on the touchyfeely bed sharing stuff, but from what i remember, there's never been Any....? not even from people who consider them siblings.

i expected a lot of pushback on how mean hunter and amity are to each other, since it's taken So much farther than the canon. but it turns out that there's a very large overlap between people who like dark horror AUs and people who like hunter and amity murdering each other. (in a fluffy fic i don't think this characterization would fly Nearly as easily.)

i find that being funny really disarms people, too. when you look at any of my toh meta posts that could be controversial, they're basically all funny. people are a lot more willing to listen to what you have to say if you make them laugh, and it's harder for them to get angry at you.

and then the last thing is that i think i'm in sort of a privileged position in toh fandom. i've written a lot of controversial subjects and relationships and characterizations.... but i've also written some WILDLY popular mainstream fic. and people who like the mainstream fic don't really want to beef with me about differing niche opinions, bc there's a level of respect there. which they might not have for a writer they don't like.

but anyway. when things Do happen, i almost always just block and move on. there are so many people here who get what i'm talking about that there's no need for me to try to convert people who don't, you know??

[helaenalyst]

i cant believe ryan condal is the reason i'll be quitting my job but lmao. i've been dealing with a horrible work situation but refusing to quit because of the money. it's been making me absurdly miserable so i've been injecting this show directly into my veins to cope since season 2 started airing exactly when shit hit the fan. honestly this fandom is the only reason i was able to hold on to this job for so long after that, i've been basically glued to my phone all day reading y'alls wonderful metas and writing fic and so on. anyway. "beloved dragon meleys" took me out of the show's immersion so bad that i was forced to face reality and accept that a tv show can't save me and that i have to face my life problems eventually or i'll just keep sinking into a worse and worse mental state. i'm putting in my two weeks today and taking some time off to finish personal projects and focus on my studies for a while. i feel so ridiculous. thank you ryan condal

[user-needs-new-hyperfixation]

Informal Semi-Kinda-Sorta-Hiatus

So I'm realizing that I've accidentally let fandom slip into the mental realm of Chore/Work. Which is absolutely no one's fault but my own: my experiences with people in the fandoms I hang out in have been almost entirely lovely, and while I'll pat myself on the back a bit for having such fussy curation, most of it is just people being wonderful. Nobody has made me feel pressured about anything.

And yet I'm noticing that I've started treating myself like a Content Creator™ and a Social Media Manager™. I worry about things. Have I been posting often enough? (No.) Am I balancing original posts with reblogs correctly? (No.) Do I have the right meta-to-shitpost ratio? (No.) Am I active on all the platforms where I have a presence often enough? (No.) Have I replied to all my A03 comments? (I have not. I am so sorry. There are almost 40 sitting there right now oh god.) When am I going to update those WIPs? (Hell if I know.)

This past week I posted a oneshot anonymously (go find it if you wanna lol, I do NOT think it would be hard for my regulars to spot) just because...I didn't want to write the lengthy author's notes I usually do (something which I know I do not have to do, yet I feel beholden to the precedent I've set). I didn't want to analyze it for every possible trigger and warn accordingly (something which I know I do not have to do, yet I feel beholden to the precedent I've set [trigger warnings of course are excellent within reason but I have definitely sometimes overdone it]). I didn't want to acknowledge and justify my ridiculous characterizations (something which I know I do not have to do, yet I feel beholden to the precedent I've set). I didn't want to feel guilty for writing a silly oneshot off the cuff instead of working on my WIPs (something which I know I do not have--- Well. You get the picture. Fic writing and blogging have started to feel like homework or a work assignment instead of the escapist hobby I desperately want them to be.

So what's the solution? Well, the title, really. I'm not leaving, I'm not saying I'm definitely not gonna be doing anything, I'm just...backing off a little bit. Truth is that right now I'm hyperfixated on a video game, but it's not something I have any urge to be fandom-y about (and I'm not naming it cuz I've talked to too many people offline about it who I know are also on tumblr and who I don't want finding this account lmao.) So I'm just gonna go enjoy that, whether it be for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. I'll still be on here probably every day, just more lurky than necessarily active. We're super close now to new Yuumori and I'm hoping that will kickstart that interest again. I really really want to write that omegaverse, and I really like what I have of it so far, but the drive just isn't there right now. And I haven't forgotten about Disrepute or Slow and Steady.

Anyway, hell, for all I know next week I might get struck by a sudden bolt of wild inspiration and bang out 10k words. But I'm gonna stop making myself feel bad for not being in the mood to force it.

You are all absolutely delightful, I appreciate you all so very very much, and I will be lurking in your notes. ❤️

[navree]

ooh, pls expand on your dae/jae/aeg3 ideas! 😃😃😃

This is what happens when I wake up at 3am due to stubbornly persisting jetlag (pro tip, if you're gonna go to a country that's, like, sixteen hours ahead of your's, just block off a solid week of not doing anything when you get back because your sleep is gonna be FUCKED, my European jetlag has never been this longlasting or this bad), I create Ideas in my head and then use them to help me fall asleep. And it's honestly highly likely I'm actually gonna write something with this, it's quickly moved really high in my ASOIAF fics priorities list, just behind my Dance AU (I really should also write my version of Aegon's Conquest but it would just be so fucking looooooooooong and fall quarter is about to start for me at school anyway).

So, unlike most Greens, I actually quite like Daenaera, sue me, sometimes character are just Your Baby, and she's mine (I've enumerated why here for the curious). But I do understand the narrative issues some people have with killing off Jaehaera to make room for her, so I'm merging the best of both worlds here. A lot of the same things I talk about when it comes to why I like Daenaera's relationship with Aegon can also be applied to Jaehaera, she's also someone who likely would have felt lonely and isolated and deeply depressed after all she went through, and there likely wouldn't be many people she could try and connect with. There's Gaemon, her bastard half-brother, and there's Aegon. But can Jaehaera really bring herself to connect with him, or he with her? Aegon's father sent men to murder Jaehaera's twin and threaten to rape her; Jaehaera's father not only kept Aegon a prisoner but also made him watch his mother's execution via being eaten by a dragon. That's a huge emotional gulf for two children to overcome on their own, and that's where Daenaera comes in. Kids need socialization with other kids, we know this, and given that Daenaera becomes a ward of Aegon's half-sister Baela, her visits to King's Landing to see her brother often include bringing her young charge (I'm also reducing the age difference between Aegon/Jaehaera and Daenaera, because it is rightly weird as Hell that so much emphasis was put on six year old Daenaera being the hottest preschooler in Westeros). She socializes with both Aegon and Jaehaera, since she's on a similar social level, given not just the closeness between the Velaryons and the Targaryens, but her being kind of a member of Baela's family, and thus technically the royal family by extension. And Jaehaera is queen, so it's not unreasonable for someone to go "OK she needs some noble female companions" to allow her and Daenaera to hang out more.

In my head, the first closeness happens between Jaehaera and Daenaera, and not only as a meta-rebuttal to fandom weirdos who wanna pit two little girls against each other like it's One Tree Hill because you've all got big feelings over a fictional succession crisis. But I think Jaehaera would be more openly receptive to friends than Aegon. I mentioned it in my above linked post about Daenaera, but Aegon's one friend in his minority was Gaemon, and he had to be very careful about that friendship because of how Gaemon could be treated, so he was probably recalcitrant from getting close to anyone, along with his other issues. Jaehaera doesn't have that hangup, she's just a lonely girl without any friends, so having someone who's canonically sweet and charismatic enough that her sunny disposition uplifted the people around her would definitely help her out, and make her appreciate Daenaera as a person and want her around. It'd be almost something similar to what HOTD has between Rhaenyra and Alicent, close female companions bordering on homoeroticism and sapphic first loves.

On the Aegon front, a lot of what I talked about when talking about their canonical relationship can also apply here even before a marriage. Aegon's two main relationships to people his age are Gaemon, with the issues mentioned above, and Jaehaera, which does come with its own issues from the Dance. Daenaera would still be the first major guilt-free relationship in his life, someone he can interact with and be close to without feeling the burden of his own sins or the ones of those close to him on his shoulders. And again, along with that same temperament that endeared him to her in canon, and would endear her to Jaehaera in this AU, that's how they draw close and forge their own independent friendship. On all three sides though, it would likely be restrained to something like courtly love, where you can have concretely romantic feelings and even certain minor expressions of those feelings, but you can't ever really do anything, you just pine and have unspoken thoughts about everything. Aegon and Jaehaera are married, to each other, and they're also still growing, considering they get married when they're ten, so even if they grow closer and start communicating about shared desires more, it's still gonna take some time to parse out what it is they feel and what they want. Similarly, Daenaera would also need the time to grow and realize what she wants as well, and what her feelings even are, given that she's also young. And while I've talked about how Aegon and Jaehaera would grow closer to her, even beyond Daenaera being a naturally friendly person, there is something for her in those relationships as well. Companionship with people her age, for one, and a more calming presence from two people who do seem pretty even keeled, if melancholic, after the chaos of her own early life, and a measure of stability after going from two parents to just a father to orphaned to living with Baela.

One thing that would, in my view, firmly solidify the idea that Aegon and Jaehaera like having Daenaera in their lives and want to keep Daenaera in their lives is the secret siege. In canon, Daenaera nearly dies because of the poisoned fruit tarts, it's only because maesters give her something to make her throw up before the poison gets too much ingested into her system that it doesn't, unlike what happened to poor Gaemon. In my head, there's a period of time, probably a couple hours but still, where it's verrrrrrry touch and go for Daenaera and both Aegon and Jaehaera are really worried about her. Because they know death, they've seen death, not only have a lot of their family members died but they have personally witnessed someone not just die but be killed, be murdered. They know what it looks like and they both realize that they don't want that to happen to Daenaera, that she's important to them. After all, when I said "aegon and jaehaera and daenaera as the conquerors reborn", I wasn't just being facetious. I've mentioned in a lot of my Conquerors meta that Rhaenys appears to have been the glue that held her and her siblings together, and I can see Daenaera occupying a similar role. Like Aegon I and Visenya before them, Aegon III and Jaehaera are likely people who would be reticent in expressing emotion, though for different reasons (trauma vs just inherent personality), whereas Daenaera is not. And having kids socialize with someone like that, and learn to socialize with other people, including each other, like that, it's important, and it makes Daenaera important to them, along with the personal feelings that might become involved, especially with them all maturing emotionally and sexually at the same time. Post-secret siege is when I think things would take a concrete turn to the romantic, and given that the most successful Targaryens of all time were very famously in a polygamous marriage, that's when a plan can start forming about bringing Daenaera into the marriage, not unlike Rhaenys getting brought into Aegon and Visenya's marriage.

(though, unlike my headcanon where Aegon and Visenya never wanted each other romantically or sexually due in part to incompatibilities as Visenya was a lesbian, and they both wanted Rhaenys, all three participants in this poly couple would want each other. I think that Aegon and Jaehaera might like Daenaera individually more than they might like each other, cuz again there's a lot of baggage involved, but there's romantic attachment and sexual interest, though to varying degrees, from all parties to all parties)

A marriage including Daenaera also helps deal with the unseen faction of the Dance: the Velaryons. The Velaryons kinda got shafted by both sides in this war. The Blacks in general treated a lot of members of House Velaryon badly in the lead up (Daenaera's grandfather, again, is Vaemond Velaryon. That Vaemond Velaryon), along with Rhaenyra imprisoning and threatening the House head, Corlys, over her own neuroses. The Greens, meanwhile, not only kept a member of House Velaryon as a prisoner (Baela, who is also the current king's sister), but are responsible for the death of a member of House Velaryon through marriage, since Aegon and Aemond killed Rhaenys (fuck you HBO for ruining that team up, sorry I'm done now). The toll of the war on House Velaryon was pretty severe, with wrongs done by both sides, and there does need to be some element of House Targaryen going "my bad" and offering some kind of recompense, especially considering the ways House Velaryon helped both sides with the allegiance switch (also, if we're moving up Daenaera's age, you can have her father be a casualty of the Dance, rather than the Daughter's War). Having a Velaryon at the table, given a prominent seat at the table, can definitely be that, especially someone who is historically pureblood Velaryon, without major Targaryen ancestry who can clearly advocate for House Velaryon. So if the two Targaryen monarchs go "we want this Velaryon as our queen", that can work from a political perspective and allow the match to go forward.

And if we keep the dragons around, which I want to, because I like dragons, that's something that can also connect Daenaera and Jaehaera. Say Morghul never dies in the storming of the Dragonpit, now Jaehaera has a dragon, and we know Daenaera loves dragons, whereas Aegon can't stand them (reasonable, given what happened to Rhaenyra). So Jaehaera can't bond with Aegon about dragons, but she can bond with Daenaera, who'd be very interested in hearing everything about it. If Daenaera wanted to claim a dragon herself, and we know she expressed the desire to have one after seeing Rhaena and Morning in canon, Jaehaera could be the one to help and facilitate that. Not to mention, I put in a response to someone asking who might Sunfyre have allowed to be his rider if he survived Dragonstone (can't find it for the life of me tho, sorry!) that Daenaera was a likely candidate, given that they're both pretty sweethearts. So if I get to be self indulgent and have Sunfyre survive for a bit, Daenaera can connect with him and Jaehaera can have some link to her deceased father, Sunfyre's original rider.

So yeah, these are just a couple disjointed thoughts I had based on that idea, but in my head that's how it should be. I'm sure I'll think of more about them as actual proper adults and reigning monarchs, cuz right now a lot of this was childhood and teen years focused along with a spotlight more on how they got together than how the relationship unfolded into adulthood, but hope you enjoyed the expansion anon!

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

Let’s talk about 16th century Italian theatre.

No wait come back I promise this is actually related to Sanders Sides

So, last night I was talking with some friends about an AU I’m currently working on. I’ve been away from the Sanders Sides fandom for a good while now, but recently my hyperfixation reactivated and now my brain is so ready to write a ridiculously long longfic with a convoluted premise and horrifying implications. (I’m like 25k in. Having the time of my life. No doubt I’ll talk about it more later. This isn’t about that.)

Since I’m not the sort of person who usually writes AUs - I prefer to stick to canonverse, and canonverse-adjacent fics - I eventually brought up how worried I always am about characterization of the Sides in AUs. Because although I do adore an AU; I devour Love and Other Fairytales like candy and think about Lavender For Luck all the time and don’t even get me started on WIBAR, when it comes to my own writing, I secondguess myself a lot. I don’t like to stray too far from canon concepts and characterization. I get worried when I don’t draw enough connections to things that happen in the series, because it feels like a betrayal of the source material - if I change a character dynamic from how it’s usually portrayed, I spend entirely too long thinking about how to make it work. 

And someone else said, well, I don’t usually worry about that sort of thing very much anymore. 

And I said, why not?

And they said, well, I haven’t watched the actual show for ages. I mainly treat the Sides as stock characters for the stories I write, and my brain fucking exploded.

...Exploded in a good way. I have to stress this so, so hard. My personal opinions on writing characterization and AUs apply just to my writing. I judge my own work entirely too harshly and work too hard at Getting Characterization right, and that doesn’t apply to other people’s work or AUs at all, I enjoy them all without a problem. This meta isn’t about OOC being a bad thing, or AUs that are completely removed from their source material being a bad thing, because they aren’t, not at all, they’re a form of creative expression just like any fanwork. And if someone starts getting on your case about that sort of thing, just... just block them.

Anyway, where was I. Exploding brain? Ah yes.

So a few other people chimed into the conversation at this point, agreeing that in a lot of cases, the Sides for them were stock characters with fun names, established personalities and tropes to play around with, and part of the fun for them at this point came less from interaction with canon and more about interactions with friends and fellow writers. Which is very different to how I do things.  I was fascinated, and my brain had one big delighted thought, oh shit! You’re treating the Sides like Commedia Dell’arte characters! I get it now!

(Disclaimer: I haven’t done drama or theatre for a good while now. If I make a factual mistake, either patiently bear with me or gently correct me.)

Commedia Dell’arte was a form of Italian improv theatre that was first popular in the 16-18th centuries through Europe, and didn’t have any proper established plots or scripts. The actors were almost never the same from performance to performacne, the comedy was over-the-top and often satirical and absurd in its physicality, it focused on plots about romance and jealousy and love.  Emphasis on an ensemble cast. Very stylized, very distinctive. Here’s one beng performed in Venice, for the Vibes.

[image description: a photo shot of two masked people in period costume conversing on a small wooden stage, taken over the heads of a crowd in Venice.]

The key, the thing that ties all Commedia Dell’arte together? The stock characters. There’s a list of all of these character archetypes, all with specific names and associated masks assigned to them, and when you’re performing this sort of theatre, all the actors pick one of the archetypes and put on a mask and work out what the situation is, and bam, you’re on the stage and off to the races. You’ve got the servant of two masters, the stuttering statesmen, the Sad Clown (relatable), the utterly obsessed lovers who won’t stop making doe eyes at each other on stage from behind those masks of theirs. 

Pretty freaky-looking masks, admittedly. Look at that nose on Naso Turco, the sly servant!

[image description: eight blue-and-black stylized Commedia Dell’arte masks, all labelled with their roles]

And the thing is, audiences would recognize these archetypes upon seeing them - it wasn’t so much about having characters that were perfectly ported from one story to another, like you might have in adaptations of fairy tales, it’s more about the archetypes. The personalities. Their status, and the way they interact with one another. Apparently all of the original cast of stock characters (you can find a list of them on Wikipedia, or maybe elsewhere) were "originally intended as a kind of characteristic representative of some particular Italian district or town." They’re representations of archetypes. You might even say that they’re conceptual representations. 

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s not hard to see where I’m going with this.

In Commedia, stock characters are almost never played by the same actors because the cast is always different, and might be an entirely different theatre troupe - so the way of recognizing certain archetypes is by their clothing style, or other symbolic context clues. 

And that’s exactly how you recognize the Sides in fanworks when the AU is too far divorced from canon to understand them otherwise. If you’ve changed their ethnicity, or genderbent them, or given then a different species, you look for the context clues because at this point you’ve learned to read them like a language. 

If it’s just fanart, or the names haven’t been brought up yet, how do you tell it’s Roman? Well, Roman’s costume is pretty distinctive, even when modified - and failing that, even if he’s just in jeans and a t-shirt, or even if he’s an indistinct jello-y blob floating in the distant reaches of space - he’s going to be the red blob. They’re color-coded for our convinience. Virgil’s stormclouds and spiders, Janus has his snakes and almost always has something going on with one side of his face. 

Do you find this delightful? I hope you do. Because I do. I find it really, really delightful, and I’d never put conscious thought into this before last night. The Sides aren’t quite as flat and archetypal as the colorful cast of Commedia Dell’arte - they’re more fleshed out, for one thing, and even if writers don’t always pull on it, there’s canon backstory and plotlines to draw from. But they’re still archetypes, deliberately so in the context of canon. Someone in the server I was discussing this in summed it up really nicely - [..] we have Roman the artist, we have Janus for all the drama and deception, we have clever Logan to represent the science spirit. We have Patton for the morale lessons. We have Virgil for the memento mori style, and we have Remus for all the gore and dark comedic relief. 

Which is such a great updating of all of the classic theatrical archetypes. Because (although Italian improv theatre is still performed! People still use these old roles and costumes, but it’s definitely more historical than modern) the idea of servants and masters and cunning peasants and all the complicated dynamics between these roles, well... it isn’t super relevant to modern storytelling. When Commedia Dell’arte is performed nowadays, it’s almost never hashtag-relatable in the way it used to be. You know what’s more relatable? Archetypes of the nerd who doesn’t acknowledge his emotions, the grumpy loner with a heart of gold, the theatre kid who won’t stop singing. You can take those and all of the rest and shove them into all manner of situations, and you can make some really cool stories out of that. 

(National Theatre has a really nice video breaking down this theatre form a lot better than I can, with details I didn’t include here. Check it out here if you’re interested. It also includes details about the various archetypes’ physicalities and movements, which I think is kind of interesting, because in canon Sanders Sides the character’s physicalities are terrifyingly recognizable. That’s not really relevant to the idea of AU Improv Theatre, though, so I won’t poke any further at that thought. ANYWAY.)

I’ll level with you: some of the things people write in this fandom, I just don’t vibe with and I don’t get, and I’m okay with that. It’s the maxim of Mind Your Own Business, I just don’t interact and I keep on moving in my own lane. But, like... maybe I don’t need to get it. I’m pretty sure there were people in 1600s Europe who showed up to a Commedia Dell’arte performance and went ‘no, this one isn’t for me, did you see how they absolutely butchered the characterization of the Innamorati? Disgraceful’. But for many other people, maybe that particular performance just hit the spot, because they’d always wanted to see an interpretation just like that, that diverged from the norm just a little bit. And even if nobody in the audience at all liked it, maybe the performers were having enough of a blast that it more than made up for it.

And if not any of that - well, there’s always the next show!

[image description: four masked Commedia Dell’arte performers crowded around a prop cafe table, exclaiming dramatically over a menu that they’re all bent over.]

I don’t know if my brain will ever be chill enough to let me write something completely separated from canon. (Although... now that I’m typing that, I recognize that the chessboxing AU is not so much separated from canon as a tragic widower of a dinosaur-related apocalyptic divorce. Okay. Nevermind. Still, you probably get where I’m coming from.) And I’m probably not going to stop treating characterization like I’m going to be sentenced by a vicious panel of judges to a cruel and untimely death if I get the slightest bit of it wrong, but... I don’t know. The realization that it’s all comes back to this makes me happy, somehow. Just generally joyful about the state of the fandom, and the things that people create, and the community that’s been built up around it. 

Commedia is all about exploring stuff in improv like love and romance and dynamics, and isn't that exactly what we're doing as writers? Throwing character archetypes together and making them kiss and talk to see what will happen? It's not really improv, but it's not like we have any stage to act on except the AO3 posting page.

We didn't set out to make the characters from a web series into stock archetypes that so many people pick up and play with to Work Out Our Issues With. (Writing is free therapy. We all knew that already.) That was definitely not the original intention of Sanders Sides - or any similar fandom, actually. (I know TSS isn’t the only one this happens in, not even close.)

But, hey, we're humans, and it always comes back to us wanting to play. And there's nothing new under the sun, not really. Of course given an infinite internet sandbox and a goofy web series about some guy’s identity crisis, we would accidentally reinvent the original Italian comedy theatre. That’s kind of brilliant. 

You know what, I think 16th century Italians would enjoy Sanders Sides AUs a lot. I bet they’d make some pretty banger masks for the boys to wear. 

God, I wish I had a time machine.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

What do you think about the fact that this fandom, like every fandom, HAS to have a One True Villain and no one seems capable of being normal about them (tends to go Jiang Cheng->JGY->XY->WRH/WC->JGS and stop there). I think it's ironic.

i think i'm tired. lol.

but more seriously anon, i think you're right that this seems to be a thing with many fandoms these days, which is a (relatively) new and unpleasant experience for me as someone who has been kicking around various fandom spaces since the late 1990s. i'm not sure what sparked this particular change in how fans interact with stories, or with each other, but i first noticed it about 15-ish years ago when i got into the dragon age video games and started writing fic/interacting with other fans on livejournal, and then here on tumblr. the "no one seems capable of being normal about [the antagonists/villains]" energy was very real even back then (the shit i caught for liking loghain mac tir, you'd think i decided to stan charles manson), but at that time it was mostly coming from a small but obnoxiously vocal minority of dragon age fans. and, as i've discussed previously, even in that environment people rarely blocked each other unless they had beef with each other.

...what was my point, i forgot lmao. anyway!! yeah fandom's inability to be normal about antagonists or the people who like them and want to explore them in fic and fanart and meta will never not grind my gears.

[sapphire-weapon]

So. I gotta say some shit.

I think we all have a tendency to be more gracious to Ada's character than she rightfully deserves. I'm guilty of this, too. We all want to give her the benefit of the doubt and insist that her character serves a purpose and is worth talking about because she's A. such a huge part of Leon's character and B. the only non-white member of the cast, but like.

There's nothing there.

I noticed this when I rewatched Separate Ways recently (because fuck ever playing that shit again holy fuck Separate Ways sucks to play).

After RE2, Ada isn't a character anymore. She has absolutely no arc; her character never develops or goes anywhere. She's not tied to anyone or anything in the plot in a way that matters -- even her relationship with Wesker doesn't fucking matter, because there's no fallout or consequence as a result of anything she does to/with/for him, whether it's beneficial to him or against him. She has only one facet to her personality: snarky and mysterious. We never see her emote or speak in a context removed from either of those two qualifiers. Ever.

She has some softer moments here and there, but they last for like a single line of dialogue or two and then the scene just completely moves on without them -- so, those softer moments never actually matter anyway.

She doesn't enhance or enrich Leon's character in any way; the only thing her character serves to do is isolate him from the main cast, which gives his character nowhere else to go other than horrible, spiraling depression because every action he takes in his life turns out to be completely meaningless -- because it's not allowed to mean anything, because he's become so far divorced from the central plot of the series.

The only functional purpose that Ada Wong actually has is as a plot contrivance to explain how a bad guy did a thing. Other than that, she exists solely as a pair of legs and tits for Leon to chase after.

We all hold out hope that Remake is going to change this and turn her into a real person with autonomous motivations and goals, and there might be some merit to that, but like

She's not there yet. She's just not. There is no there there, when we talk about Ada's character.

And this tiptoeing around that we all do to try to make it seem like we're supportive of her character just

strikes me as silly a lot of the time, man.

I understand wanting to give credit where it's due, but it's not due for Ada's character. And I understand the desire to not be seen as misogynistically bashing her, but I feel like supporting her character as it currently exists is what's actually misogynistic. Because her portrayal in canon is misogynistic.

And I also understand the desire to not be seen as being a ship war fuckhead, but like. It's not about the ships, man. It's about Ada. Specifically Ada. She just sucks, dude.

And this is coming from the person who has probably written more meta about Ada Wong in an attempt to justify her character than basically anyone else in the fucking fandom.

idk I've just been thinking about this lately while perusing EagleOne fics. It feels like everyone in this ship feels obligated to address The Ada Problem before they can start to justify a relationship between Leon and Ashley, and it's like

No, you don't. Especially in Remake canon, you absolutely do not have to bring up Ada at all. Because Remake seems very self-aware of the fact that the problem with Leon's character has always been Ada, which is why they seem to be actively writing her out of his overall arc.

Like. Let's just call it for what it is. Ada is the worst part of Leon's character. The relationship is poorly written and poorly executed and doesn't make any fucking sense for who both characters are actually meant to be. They actively hold each other back -- not as people, but as characters who are meant to meaningfully contribute to the storyline.

And idk I'm just tired. I'm just tired of always having to do the hand-wringy "oh no no, Ada's really cool and great and I'm not trying to diss on her, and her relationship with Leon actually matters" shit, man.

Because she's not cool or great and her relationship with Leon doesn't actually matter -- and if it does matter at all, it's due to the negative impact that her presence brings -- not just to him, but to the entire fucking plot of the series.

She's the worst recurring element in the entire series, and there's not even a close second.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I first watched ofmd about 6 months after it came out which means the fandom had a little bit of time to develop some of its own ideas. Anyway. The absolute shock and confusion I felt after finishing s1 and finding out izzy had fans! I was like “wait what is there even to like about that guy?”. And then after thinking about it for a while I was like “ok I guess he is actually kinda interesting and it is pretty common for people to like the asshole antagonists” so imagine my disappointment when I came online and saw people trying to paint izzy as the rational good guy and Ed as out of control. And it’s still happening to this day! *sigh*

This rant brought to you by me seeing yet another meme implying Ed is acting irrationally and out of control in s1 and izzy is just the sensible rational guy trying to keep everything working smoothly. (God forbid ed meets someone he can have fun with and who actually respects the real him and experiences any amount of joy)

I was there, Gandalf. I was there like two years ago, lurking as this shift started happening, and it was something to see let me tell you what

I wasn't active in the fandom until just before s2 started airing, but I watched s1 for the first time right as the final episodes dropped, and I lurked around a bit. At first, in those early days, it truly felt like most people were on the same page. There was some racist shit (Ed eating soap was the big one back then) but on the whole the fandom's attitude towards Izzy, at least from my vantage point, was pretty uniform. Lots of "he's gay and homophobic" jokes. Lots of talking about how fucked up and wet he is.

And I remember thinking that the first posts I saw about how Izzy's actions were justified were satire. That was how uniform the fandom felt for those first few weeks. I was like, wow, that's kinda a fun thought experiment to try and twist things so Izzy's actions are justified. It's not for me but it's kinda interesting. And then after a while those things kept popping up and you realized they were serious. I remember it had gotten truly concerning by June that year, but it might've been earlier - I was just lurking around more around that time following hopes for the renewal.

Yeah, it's honestly really disappointing. I couldn't care less if someone likes Izzy as he is in canon - he's interesting in the same way a lot of antagonists are interesting. The issue comes in when they insist that their fanon perspective is the correct way to interpret the text and start writing fic and meta based on that premise, which becomes really racist really quickly. Izzy views Ed in a racist way, trying to push him back into a caricature of himself and talking about him like he's an animal, so when you take his word as gospel, the way you think and write about Ed is also going to be racist.

[charredashes]

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