#to be clear: this entire post (including the tags) is a bad idea. I do not legitimately want any of this.

[shower-racoon]

cookie clicker stock market manipulation update

the stock market is uniform across all games, allowing for people to buy, for example, a chocolate stock when it's cheap on their main account and then use an alternate account to cheat in a ton of cookies, then buy all the chocolate stocks they can on their alternate account, making chocolate stock values skyrocket on the next tick

this is a good idea (lie)

[windupaidoneus]

now some people may not like to hear it but even the worst people who exist are still people & there is no human being who has More right than others to decide whether others deserve to live or die (does not mean i personally condemn murder in self defense or anything of the sort or killing fascists or whatever i'm just saying as a baseline This Is How it Is) & this is why the death penalty is not a good thing no matter how good & trustworthy the people in any government might be. people on average also deserve the chance to learn to do better. & no, someone who's been forcefed propaganda their entire life will not let go of that deeply entrenched mindset so easily, it's not particularly unrealistic & it absolutely sucks to deal with but in the context of tangibly working toward world peace it's also not an issue to try & help such people both in material ways & in helping them learn better rather than cut them down or abandon them to a grim fate. all this to say that's why i don't think garlemald is written badly, as unpleasant as the experience might be. walks off the stage

[simplydnp]

hey there!

I kind of consider you the resident dnp expert (at least in dnp culture) so I wanted your opinion on a question that's been building for a while now.

What are the boundaries for dnp now?

There are so many things that I feel have changed even in the last four years: writing smutty rpf was Gross and Weird, along with art along that line, speculating about their relationship was ABSOLUTELY a no-go, all things that I see happening on Tumblr now. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing!! I'm just acknowledging things have changed over time. They're different people now and so are we, and the "we know you know" era is lots of fun.

I was browsing reddit today (bad idea, do not recommend) and came across a post from a new Phannie asking if DnP were in a relationship. And while I agree that we cannot say for absolute certain that they are, the responses had a VERY different vibe than on here, emphasizing how bad the speculation was (true) and essentially saying "don't even think about that, just enjoy their content." (or something to that extent.)

Which... is very different from this here website in which we joke about them being horney for each other constantly lmao.

Being a very rules-driven person, I like expectations to be made abundantly clear for pretty much everything. So that's why I want to ask: Is there a line here? Are we crossing that line? How defined is that line? (All of this, of course, I recognize is your opinion and yours alone, and if this is posted I encourage anyone else to share their two-cents in a respectful way.)

Obviously, trying to find out where they live/things like that is very clearly crossing a boundary. But is there some sort of limit or boundary I (and tbh the rest of the phandom), in your opinion, should be keeping in mind?

thanks xx

hi!

'resident expert' is a hefty title, i'm just here trying my best!

'what are the boundaries for dnp now?' is really a great question. cause the thing is, we used to know. there used to be a fairly well-defined and mostly agreed upon line, and ever since the dapg revival in particular, the line keeps moving.

i'll be honest, i never really saw phanfic as rpf, even though it is. my stance on phanfic is the same as dnps: it's a beautiful expression of art and creativity and is so, so important. they've always been pro-fic (even though we subjected them to some absolutely horrific crack fics), so i don't think 'smutty' fic has ever been gross or too far. they've given their blessing, and, as the conversation has been in fandom communities the last few years, rpf isn't 'for' the people in them, it's for the fans. so i digress.

art is much the same way. they love art! they even included art of them kissing in a tumblr tag video back in the day, so to say that's not allowed especially after they're out is kind of crazy to me.

i think the line with stuff like that was showing it directly to dnp--tagging them in explicit stuff, that kind of thing. but creating it? go for it! it's always been a green light. (i think fans have previously overpoliced this and we lost a lot of great fic, art, and community members over it)

browsing reddit is always a Choice. i've never participated on dnp reddit before but i am aware that it is an entirely different space than here. something that's important, i think (and i think you think this too as you're asking about them), is to respect the fandom rules of the place you partcipate in. tumblr is generally one of the most phan-positive places on the internet, especially publicly facing. we make a lot of relationship jokes, particularly because we run on the assumption it's already true, based on what they've both said publicly (mostly dan).

i won't comment on reddit specifically just because i'm not a part of the community there, but the speculation about dnp online was a Lot for a long time. but the worst part of it was the stalking, the digging into personal lives, the contacting family members--that is what was bad. dnp have always had a connection--and, honestly, they kind of love flexing it and kind of always have. they absolutely play into things now, but they certainly did even way before coming out too. i think a certain level of speculation was to be expected, especially in that era of online fandom. but it wasn't just the 'teenage girls' who cared, the media did too, and so did many others.

i think one of the biggest differences now is 1 the awareness of 'our' past and trying to make up for it, and 2 the broader societal conversations about parasocial relationships.

you see this reflected on the snippets ive seen from dnp reddit and dnp twitter. they tend to be Very 'cautious' about the words they say, often undercutting perfectly reasonable statements with 'but whatever their relationship is'. on one hand, they don't want to cross a line, and i can respect that. on the other hand... it's 2024 babes. they just put out merch of them holding hands. dan's directly, intentionally, and explicitly called phil a bottom on dapg. they reacted to all of the pinofs, made jokes about 'theyre touching', and even joked about the tackle being 'wrestling 👀'. dan posted half-naked catboy pics and showed us phil was taking them. the 'watch your step babygirl' tweet & their reactions to it. phil is credited in WAD. they're making threesome jokes about themselves as a unit. i could go on and on.

to me, there's a few things that have 'moved the line' for us, so to speak.

1 - DAPG returning. for the last few years they specifically were not a duo (for projects) anymore. (and no, not because they hated each other). they just weren't. they wanted to focus on their goals and projects. they didn't have to resurrect dapg, but they chose to. marketing and money aside, they knew that if this went over well, it would well and truly revive the 'dan and phil' brand again. it would be specifically returning to being a duo in the public eye. (however they've also fully embraced this in all aspects, including merch, videos, and general attitude)

2 - pinof reacts. even though they'd been out since 2019, we hadn't had regular joint content from them since before that, therefore, while they had become more comfortable with themselves and their 'outness', we hadn't (in terms of them making explicit gay jokes together). so i really think dnp had to de-fang a lot of the 'theyre touching' of it all, because we didn't really know where we stood on it anymore. i think they succeeded, too. we couldn't be here, with the content of the last 3 months, without them tackling it head on (well, as head on as they're want to do).

3 - dapc. genuinely another big shift. they did this for the real fans. purely a passion project, and a specific choice in doing the handhold. they know what we're like. and this wasn't a brief, unplanned, unscripted moment. it's a specifically blocked out scene. they know it's opening a door, and they chose to. this is doubled by the fucking iconic merch selling, and furthered by phil's twitter likes of arguably romantic phanart, and then dan's full straddle like.

even throughout the current 6 months of revival, the line has moved. i don't know where it will settle. dnp keep moving it, in my opinion, and, genuinely, i don't think it's going to leave much to the imagination. as you say, obviously not the stalking or the contacting, but beyond that? especially here on tumblr? i wouldn't get too worried. obviously people will have their opinions, but as long as you're generally respectful and recognize that humans will see your posts and humans interact with them, i think you're good.

my rule of thumb is anything they intentionally put on the table, we can joke about or at the same level. but in terms of art/fic? go off, live your dreams. dan and phil would want you to.

[chronicbeans]

Hazbin Hotel Rewrite - Worldbuilding

A reminder to everyone that I made this for FUN. I'm putting the critical tags in for those who don't like hearing rewrites and criticism of the show (which I also put in to explain why I make the changes I do).

This post is mainly about some worldbuilding changes. These include things such as how sins work, what sins are, an extra... dimension...? Reality...? Whatever Heaven, Earth, and Hell are considered to be, there's another area just for God's and Goddesses (you heard me right, there's more than just the Christian God here).

TW: Criticism of Hazbin Hotel, Criticism of Religion is Mentioned (as I feel that's what Hazbin is Trying to do but Failing), Some Parts of Lore is Purposefully Confusing Because the People in Charge Have no Idea What's Happening

The world(s) of Hazbin Hotel is going to be changed to more accurately fit what I got the vibe it was trying to do - critique Christianity's ideas of sin and redemption. However, I feel like it fails in many departments simply due to the lack of worldbuilding revolving around it. For one, what if you aren't a Christian or don't believe in the Abrahamic God in general? What is considered a sin? What isn't a sin? How does redemption work? And on a side note, how did Alastor's use of (offensively shown and represented) Voudou actually work if, supposedly, Christianity is the "correct" religion of this universe and we can guess that Voudou isn't due to no mentions of it being so?

I have something that could possibly clear up some of those things, and while it probably creates some plot wholes of it's own, it still fills the very majority ones available: All religions are true and real, meaning all Gods, Goddesses, Saints, and anything in-between are true too. The only reason why Heaven and Hell are the afterlife at the moment is because Christianity is the most common religion in the world, and because most people are expecting to go to Heaven or Hell when dying, they decided to make that the afterlife until another religion becomes the biggest. When that happens, they'll change it to whatever that religion believes the afterlife to be.

This can help with the critique of sins that I mentioned. See, in this world, because all religions are technically true, the Gods/Goddesses themselves don't know. It's become a clusterfuck that they cannot keep track of, so they have decided that whatever you believe causes eternal damnation will be a sin for you. Which, in turn, causes no one to really know what a sin is. One person got into Hell for just committing suicide, which they believed was an unforgivable sin, while someone else got into Heaven despite doing so because they didn't believe it to be a sin at all.

This can also explain how Adam got into Heaven despite not knowing what he did to get in - he is full of himself and believed he did no wrong, and none of his actions in life were things he believed were sinful. And now that he's aware that all religions are technically true, and that everything is confusing because of it, he doesn't know how to answer the question in a way that isn't even more confusing. The whole "All Religions are True" thing is confusing, which is the entire point of it.

This can also allow people to still act in ways that could be critiqued. In Hell, critiquing anybody is still hypocritical, but when you believe your own sins were not as bad as another's, it wouldn't be surprising if you decide to criticize them for that. Meanwhile, that person may not have even been in Hell for that action because they didn't believe it to be a sin. The same goes for Heaven, where people who have a holier than thou attitude may criticize others in Heaven for actions they deemed sinful in life, while that person, again, didn't see their actions as sinful.

Essentially, sin is whatever you want it to be, which makes it practically meaningless to have those rules in the first place and pointless to judge others based on it.

This would also explain Alastor's powers (which in my own rewrite will be reworked and all of the offensive stuff cut out for obvious reasons, but for the purposes of explaining this rewrite I shall mention). Because Voudou is a true religion, the powers and rituals would still hold the powers they do. The same would go with any other religion, as well, even the religions made as a criticism of certain teachings. Even Pastafarianism, aka The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, which was created to critique the teachings of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, has a place among the other Gods/Goddesses. Why? Because there are people who claim to believe in it.

Speaking of places, the place where the Gods/Goddesses and Saints all stay is called The Waiting Room. It's where they wait for their turns to control the afterlife and be the most common religion. The only ones not present at the moment are the Abrahamic God and Christian Saints, as they are in Heaven keeping things running. The Waiting Room is where you can find many religious figures simply hanging out and chatting to each other respectfully and on good terms, which is a stark contrast to how many religious zealots on Earth treat others with differing beliefs. This is the place where you can walk in and see Baron Samedi hanging out at the bar with Hades, the both of them complaining to each other about how the humans are depicting them so negatively in modern media despite them not really being bad people. Then, you can look to your right and see Shiva and Vishnu fighting on whether to demolish a broken piece of furniture or to try to fix it.

I am not entirely certain yet, but it may take the form of a small world with the religious figures staying in a large hotel. In that way, it can mirror the Hazbin Hotel. While the Abrahamic God and Heaven may not approve of the idea of the Hazbin Hotel, some within The Waiting Room might approve of it. However, since they are not part of the most common religion and have no big power over what goes on in Heaven or Hell unless it involves their religion specifically, they don't have much sway.

If I'll ever make designs for the other religion's figures, I'm not sure. I don't want to accidentally mess them up, so the most I might do is make a design I had in mind for the Von Eldritch family member tricking Alastor into thinking he is Baron Samedi, which is just the Von Eldritch member dressing up in an outfit based on the popular depictions of him. Which some might see as offhandedly designing a part of Baron Samedi. However, if I were to ever write down a chapter or something involving them, I'll try to base their personalities off their depictions in their original folklore/history.

[werewolfsmile]

tysm for answering my qs about werewolf!eliot !! not to keep bugging you lol but i remember you mentioned in the tags of a post one time about a hc/au of parker being some sort of fae or otherworldly being who’s just kinda found herself here in the non-magical world - could you elaborate on that? like how come she’s in the non-fantasy part of the leverage universe, or whether the other characters know, etc? only if you want to of course, no pressure :) i’m really enjoying reading your posts about all these ideas!

You're welcome! And you're definitely not bugging me, I love getting the chance to ramble about my thought lol (werewolf!eliot post here) (link to the post and my tags that started this)

Honestly I don't have as clear ideas for Parker as I did for Eliot, but I imagine her being some kind of changeling or air/wind sprite that was left with humans for whatever reason.

(ooh i'm getting more ideas for this the more i think about it..)

okay, Parker is actually half-fey, half-human

no one really knows who her parents were or how she came to be on her own (me included lol), she was just found on a doorstep as a baby

the people who took her in had their own issues and the state eventually intervened and sent Parker into foster care

she found out at a very early age that she was different to other kids - she could move around without making a sound, she could fit into tiny spaces - all very helpful for a young girl in a foster system that was chewing her up and spitting her out

she also discovered that she could ... not turn invisible exactly, but she could be less visible if she wanted to be; all she has to do is think about not being seen and people's eyes just drift over her

Archie had absolutely no idea what she was when he got his hands on her, but even he knew that she was beyond just a gifted child

he only realised there was something magical about her after she fell off the roof of the warehouse he'd been training her in - then walked it off like it was no biggie

fey creatures love puzzles and riddles, so of course Parker has always had a natural affinity for puzzles (aka locks)

her super artistic talent is a trait that is Entirely Parker and, given that she entered a life of crime early and was surrounded by artistic masterpieces all the time, she never even considered that other people would draw/paint/whatever with any lower skill level

this contributes to her not understanding what the fuss is over art

she gave herself the name Parker when Archie met her and asked her name; it was the first thing that came to mind

she doesn't remember her birth name and isn't bothered by that in the slightest

Eliot was the first of the team to figure out she was fey - being a werewolf, he can smell and/or sense that kind of thing on others

Hardison suspected something was up with her, but then felt bad for thinking that, but then strange things kept happening around her so he started to keep a list ...

pretty much Hardison has a red-string conspiracy theory-style board of Parker Things. He's too terrified of offending her to ask her outright, but he's more convinced every day

(he's also more in love with her and just thinks her fey-ness is another thing to celebrate)

Parker finds Hardison's board of Parker Things and is utterly fascinated. It's like he understands her better than she understands herself. He's super flustered when he finds her poring over the board and tries to make excuses, but Parker's quick to steamroll over that and demands if he knows what she is

Eliot finds them 15 mins later, stuck in an endless loop of confusion over which of them actually knows what Parker is

he just rolls his eyes, says she's half-fey, it's obvious, like, "what? it's a very distinctive smell!"

which leads to how the hell would he know what the fey are and Eliot's like, oh crap, right, they still don't know I'm a werewolf whoops

Hardison and Parker stage a coming-out for her to Nate and Sophie

(Eliot refuses to be involved but still gets roped into carrying the banner. He's still finding glitter in his hair weeks later)

Sophie is thrilled about the reveal and confesses to being a siren (or some other supernatural/magical creature that can manipulate people, idk i have less thoughts about her than i do about parker)

Nate is all like are you kidding me right now what the hell is my life

after a lot of badgering, he confesses he didn't know about Parker, although he has been ... aware of magical beings for some time

no he will not be discussing this any further, can we just get back to the con now??

Parker finds that, now she's aware of her fey-ness, her magical abilities develop further

she doesn't quite gain the ability to fly but ... yeah okay, she can pretty much fly

she wants to test how far this flying ability goes - by, of course, jumping off tall buildings with Hardison in her arms (and no harness for either of them)

Hardison flat out refuses this, so Eliot somehow finds himself the unwilling victim

of course, Parker masters flying while carrying people in no time and proves it to Hardison by just grabbing him and jumping off a building one day

(he's still in therapy for it)

Parker also discovers she can make herself kind of ... misty

this skill is harder to learn but she's already been able to make her hand go misty and whoosh inside a lock

picking the lock is harder in this incorporeal state but Parker's instincts say there's a way to do this, so she keeps practising until she can pretty much disintegrate herself and float through locked doors to rematerialise on the other side

it's a nightmare for the whole team because, sure, it's not like locked doors stopped her in the past. But now she's so excited about it all the time that any concept of privacy completely leaves her brain and she jumps in and out of rooms and safes etc any time of day or night

Wow. This ended up longer than expected! Guess I did have some ideas about fey!Parker after all..

[wander-wren]

almost escaped the anti-ao3 posts this donation round but of course today i get smacked with a few, so i go hunting for this year’s arguments, which, as expected, touch a lot on palestine.

what i’m seeing here is a shitton of inflammatory language and very few sources, and even fewer sources that aren’t screenshots of That One Tweet. most of the arguments from both sides are made on things that aren’t entirely true. i dislike this. so let’s clear the air a bit, hm?

1) ao3 is a racist/zionist organization

ao3 has had its scandals, including the 2023 management scandal in its full glory, which you can read about at the linked fanlore article. that covers several different areas where ao3 messed up. i will not defend these instances. i will, however, point out that very few of the current anti-ao3 posts mention them.

additionally, there is this fanlore article specifically about the issue wherein a volunteer was told to remove “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free” from their status, which is the singular piece of evidence referenced for ao3’s zionism. it has been spread that the otw banned or kicked out this volunteer, which is untrue; they left voluntarily. the otw also offered to allow the volunteer in question to change the status to “i stand with palestine,” communicating the same message in a less polarizing way.

you are allowed to dislike this decision. i do. but the otw slack is first and foremost a professional space, and they are within their rights to ask for political discussion to be kept out—or, in this case, to a politics channel so it can be opted out of. i am not currently aware of anyone having asked the otw board to ban or otherwise address pro-israel sentiments in the slack server, so i cannot actually make any statements about unequal decisions, because those decisions were not made.

ultimately i do not disagree that otw/ao3 have made poor choices rooted in racism in the past, but i also believe many of these posts discussing it now are performative, inflammatory, and misleading, which is not helpful

2) donating to ao3 during a genocide is bad/selfish/racist/etc

there are always problems in the world. this is literally the same argument as every previous year with new paint on it. people can care about more than one thing.

3) ao3 is a scam/mismanages money/gets more than they need/is horrible for not paying volunteers

here is a post i made last year breaking down ao3’s budget. what’s funny is, i saw a post going on for paragraphs about how they “calculated” that ao3 has 2.8 million in reserves (assuming their 2023 numbers shook out, it is like $1.5 million at best. these numbers are public and easy to find) and that they have “no idea” what to do with it and are deliberately not being transparent about it (they have publicly stated in news posts exactly what that money is for).

one very confusingly-worded post seemed to argue that it is morally wrong to have volunteer library workers, which is the same as ao3? something about master’s degrees? i just thought that was funny because. like. what. do you think the volunteers are the ones with a master’s in library science, friend?

also, people have said it’s a scam because they don’t update the site, and i’m like….what do you want them to update, exactly? i just want more tags wrangled. i suppose that translates to me wanting an update on the servers or whatever bit of hardware is limiting the tag system. otherwise i don’t see why you have to fix a good thing.

4) ao3 hosts evil bad fanfiction

ah, the age-old “child porn” argument. or racism is a big one this year. do i have to get into this one? it’s so goddamn annoying. just read the about page or a wiki article with your eyes. anti-censorship. yada yada yada. also, if you use the phrase “child porn” i do not respect you or take you seriously.

okay, first of all, fanfiction does not meet the definition of csam. it’s fanfiction. it’s fiction. there are tags for a reason. none of it is illegal. most of it has been published in real books for money before. you can hate it, but it deserves to exist, and with the way explicit material is getting deleted off the internet (see: wattpad’s new policies, google drive’s new policies), ao3 is a last bastion in the storm.

5) you should check out end-otw-racism for more helpful info

honestly i thought this movement was dead by now, but i’ve seen a lot of it mentioned today so i went to check. some things i found, scrolling alllll the way back to august:

a pinned post from SEVEN months ago that is several paragraphs of back-patting from the mods about how much “work” and “goals” have been accomplished and how grateful they are to the community. no mention whatsoever of what those goals were or what specifically was accomplished. also says the mods are going on break for a while, which presumably is still in effect

a few posts about the otw’s board meetings for various months, each rehashing how a board meeting runs and when the next one is being held. no information about what questions or comments the organization wants to focus on for each meeting or specific actions supporters should take

post about substack being a nazi site now (this is the only post i fully respect)

more board meeting reminders of no substance

a post reviewing the board elections, going over each candidate. the post acknowledges that no candidates mentioned the campaign or its specific goals, and instead grasps at vaguely related topics as if to show the volunteers are listening to them and they have done something

more board meeting reminders

a post about an update to the board’s strategic plan for 2023, which also acknowledges that the update does not really do anything end-otw-racism wanted it to do. many instances of “could have been a great opportunity to” do what they wanted. this one DOES finally state eotwr’s “recommendations” for the next strategic plan update, which literally all boil down to “more transparency,” which i suppose is fair enough

absolutely NO mention of palestine whatsoever

post on the weibo scandal, which is fine but generic, and again, not something brought up ever again despite being made in AUGUST

here i will give you a reminder that some of eotwr’s goals, particularly the ones around moderation and censorship, were unrealistic given the otw’s mission. while i believe eotwr started with good intentions, it seems to have rapidly dissolved into something performative and did not have solid enough organization to actually make any difference. their silence on palestine (and they are still posting despite the “break”) also makes bringing them up in convos about otw’s potential zionist leanings very weird.

at the end of the day, support ao3 or don’t. your morals and reasonings are your own. just don’t lie about them in ways that can be easily disproved, mkay?

this discourse also made me realize it’s been a minute since i reblogged a proper donations masterpost for palestine, so i am on the hunt for a good, up-to-date one now. feel free to link me any you know of.

[loveroftoomanyfandoms]

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, Chapter 2

Pairing: Platonic Steven Grant x Reader (for now)

Rating: T

Word count: ~2800

Story Summary: Steven meets a beautiful woman in the Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum...

...Too bad she's his new boss.

Tags/Warnings: Canon Divergent since Steven still works for the British Museum post-canon, No Jake Lockley, developing friendship

A/N: Here we are with chapter 2!

If you'd like to be added to the taglist for this (or any of my other writing), please let me know!

Title from the song of the same name by The Police.

“...Also, leave room for questions in between exhibits instead of just powering on through -- oh, who am I bloody kidding,” Steven said to himself as he went over his notes in the men’s room before his meetings with Dr. Y/L/N on Friday morning. “I can't do this. I can't. I never should have accepted this position. Is it too late to tell Dr. Y/L/N that I've changed my mind?”

“Hey, no, none of that,” Marc replied in his head. “You're gonna be great.”

Steven caught Marc’s reflection in the mirror. “You really think so?”

Marc nodded. “Your ideas are good. Besides, Dr. Y/L/N wouldn't have given you the job had she not believed you could do it.”

Steven took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Clearly she saw something in me, right?”

“Exactly. Now, go get ‘em.”

Steven squared his shoulders. “Okay, off I go.”

He exited the restroom and headed upstairs to the meeting room, knocking lightly on the door before entering.

He froze as he saw Dr. Y/L/N and the entire Curatorial team already seated. Oh, bollocks. Way to make a first impression. “Sorry, am I late?”

Dr. Y/L/N looked up at him and smiled. “Ah, Steven! No, you're not late at all. Have a seat, I'm glad you could join us.”

Steven sat in an empty seat across from her.

Dr. Y/L/N shuffled some papers in front of her. “Okay, let's get started. First, I'd like to thank you all for making me feel so welcome during my first week as museum director. I know I have some big shoes to fill, but I truly think we have a wonderful team here and I'm looking forward to working with all of you to make the museum's collection the best it possibly can be.

“Second, I'm assuming you all know Steven Grant, who is currently one of our gift shop employees but as of this coming Monday will be our Visitor Engagement Specialist.”

Steven gave a small wave as six pairs of eyes turned towards him. “Er, hello.”

“Steven’s first task as our new VES will be to update the guided tours,” Dr. Y/L/N explained, “so I asked him to sit in on today's meeting so he can include our new artifacts in his planning. Christina, why don't you go ahead and tell us about them.”

Christina, the head of the Curatorial department, cleared her throat. “Yes, well, the Cairo Museum has very generously loaned us the coffin of Akhenaten as well as a rather extensive collection of funerary masks from various ancient Egyptian kings and queens. Steven, I can email the list of who they were made for to you this afternoon.”

Steven nodded. “That sounds brilliant, thanks.”

“We'll have to pull a couple of display cases from the basement to house the masks, but we should be able to fit everything with the rest of the Ancient Egyptian artifacts on the 3rd floor without having to take anything out or move too much around, so that area should only be closed for a few days while we get the new display set up.”

“Excellent.” Dr. Y/L/N made a few notes. “Is there anything else that we would want to add or rearrange in any of the other areas while we're at it, to sort of refresh the rest of the collection?”

“Actually, a member just donated their private collection of first-edition classic British novels,” James, another member of the Curatorial staff, said. “There’s several Dickens, a couple of Austens, and even copies of Dracula and Wuthering Heights .”

Dr. Y/L/N’s eyebrows raised. “Have they been authenticated?”

James shook his head. “Not all of them. We're working on getting that done now.”

“Please let me know as soon as you do. I'd like to have those out on display as soon as possible as well. Anything else?”

Steven cleared his throat. “Er, actually, if I may…”

Dr. Y/L/N turned to him. “Yes, Steven?”

“If I remember correctly, a few years ago there was a lovely collection of Grecian pottery on display, but it was removed and I believe put in storage in order to make room for a statue of Zeus.”

“Oh, I think I know which collection you mean,” Christina replied. “The one that included a scene of Hercules fighting the Nemean lion?”

Steven nodded. “Yeah, that's the one. Do we still have that?”

Christina nodded as well. “Yeah, we still have them.”

“Perhaps we could put those back out?” Steven faltered when there was no immediate response. “Or not, I just thought…”

Christina shook her head. “No… no, you're right. We have the space for them, so there's no point in leaving them in storage.”

“Wonderful idea, Steven,” Dr. Y/L/N added. “Thank you. Any others?”

When no one else offered up any other ideas, she nodded. “Okay then, thank you everyone. I know sometimes things come to people after the fact or they don't feel comfortable sharing in a group setting, so if anyone has any other questions or ideas for sprucing up the displays my door is always open -- unless I'm in a meeting, of course, but in that case feel free to email me.”

As everyone began to stand and file out of the room, she looked over at Steven. “And speaking of meetings, instead of taking up the meeting room with just the two of us, how about you and I meet in my office instead, in say, 5 minutes or so? I need to stop off for some coffee first.”

Steven nodded, starting to get nervous again. Maybe I should brew myself a cup of tea while I'm at it. “Yes, ma’am.”

He headed downstairs to the staff kitchen, where Donna was sitting at a table eating a sandwich.

She glowered at him, but said nothing.

Steven caught Marc's reflection in the microwave. She doesn't look too pleased, Marc said with a smirk.

Steven bit back a smile as he filled the electric kettle with water then turned it on. Yeah, she's barely said two words to me ever since she had to apologize to me on Monday.

God, I wish I had been a fly on the wall for that meeting.

Steven grabbed a to-go cup and chose a tea bag before opening it and setting it in the cup. Me too, actually. It'd have been nice to see Donna get put in her place for once.

I just wish I'd have seen the look on her face when she found out that you were getting promoted to Visitor Engagement Specialist. I'm surprised she didn't quit in protest, especially since it meant she'd actually have to do inventory herself next week instead of pawning it off on you like she always did.

Steven shrugged slightly. I actually didn't really mind doing inventory. The stockroom was always quiet and it made the time pass by.

Once the kettle started boiling Steven poured the water for his tea into his cup and popped a lid on it. Alright, here I go.

He headed back upstairs to Dr. Y/L/N’s office and knocked on the open door. “Dr. Y/L/N?”

Dr. Y/L/N looked up from her computer screen and smiled. “Hi. Come on in.”

She stood and walked behind Steven as he entered, shutting the door behind him. “Have a seat.”

Steven sat in the same chair he had sat in on Monday when Dr. Y/L/N had offered him the VES position.

Dr. Y/L/N sat across from him and reached for a folder. “Alright, before we get started, I have the HR paperwork officially instating you into your new position ready for you to sign.”

She slid it over to him. “You can wait until Monday, of course, but I figured if you signed it today that'd be one less thing you'll have to worry about.”

“Oh, erm…” Steven opened the folder and quickly scanned the documents, still marveling at the massive (to him, anyway) raise that he would be receiving. “I can sign it today. That's not a problem.”

“Fantastic. Here you go then.” Dr. Y/L/N grabbed a pen and handed it to him. “By the way, I've scheduled a meeting with the rest of the Programming staff for first thing Monday morning to formally introduce you as the Visitor Engagement Specialist and to let them know that we'll be modifying the tours.”

Steven nodded and set his cup of tea down before signing the paperwork. “Oh, brilliant. Thanks.” 

“By the way, it was really a great idea to add that pottery collection back to the Ancient Greece display. Your clear knowledge and enthusiasm for history and your attention to details like that is why I know I made the right decision in offering you the Visitor Engagement Specialist position.”

Steven flushed at the praise. “I, er, I took a bit of a wander through each area while I was making notes for our meeting and since I always liked that collection I thought it might bring some fun and excitement to the tours to be able to kind of tell the story depicted on each piece.”

He bit his lip. “I hope I didn't step on any toes by suggesting that though. I know that I was mostly just there to observe.”

Dr. Y/L/N shook her head. “No, I want to see collaboration between departments, especially between Programming and Curatorial. We're all part of the same team and are working together towards the same goal, so don't ever be afraid to make a suggestion.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “Now, what else do you have in mind to improve the tours?”

“Well…” Steven pulled his notebook and a map of the museum out of his messenger bag. “First off, I think we're going about the tours themselves the wrong way.”

He pointed at the map. “Currently, we're starting on the ground floor and working our way up to the fifth, which means when visitors make their way back down after the tour is over they mostly tend to just leave rather than stopping by the gift shop or the bookstore.”

Dr. Y/L/N nodded. “So what do you think we should do?”

Steven moved his finger to the group entrance. “What I suggest is that we have tours meet on level 1 at the group entrance and head up to level 5 whilst whoever is leading the tour gives a general overview of the museum, then we work our way through the collection back down to level 0 and end our tour there with a gentle reminder to check out our gift shop and bookstore.”

Dr. Y/L/N hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Steven was encouraged by Dr. Y/L/N’s positive reception. “Also, I believe we're spending too much time on certain exhibits and not enough time on others. There needs to be a better balance so we're not rushing through the last few exhibits trying to squeeze everything in because we've spent 20 minutes lecturing on the Siege of Lachish.”

Dr. Y/L/N huffed out a laugh. “I agree. I noticed that as well.”

She made a few notes. “Anything else?”

“Just that I also think we should allow time for a few questions about the collection while we're in each area rather than wait until the end of the tour. Again, we frequently run out of time so there's usually not even a chance for visitors to ask questions anyway, or if there is time we've thrown so much information at them that they've likely forgotten what it is they wanted to ask.”

Dr. Y/L/N made another note. “Absolutely. These are all really great ideas, Steven. Think you can implement them into a sample tour for me?”

Steven nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I can have  something put together by Monday if you'd like. It won't include the new exhibits, of course, but it'll at least give you an idea of the direction I want to take the tours and give me a chance to retool them if necessary.”

“That would be wonderful.” Dr. Y/L/N reached for her coffee and took a sip. “By the way, how are things downstairs? Donna isn't still speaking disrespectfully to you, is she?”

Steven shook his head. “No, ma'am. Actually, she hasn't said much of anything at all to me since Monday.”

Dr. Y/L/N sighed. “Okay. I'll talk to her again.”

“No!” Steven cleared his throat. “Er, no. No, that's quite alright. I’d actually prefer it that way. Besides, it's not like I'll have to deal with her on a daily basis after today anyway, innit?”

Dr. Y/L/N took a sip of her coffee. “Regardless, I really am sorry that you’ve had to endure such treatment, especially for so long. No one should ever be spoken to with such blatant disrespect, especially by their supervisor.” 

Steven nodded. “I appreciate that.”

“If Donna does ever speak to you like that again, please let me know.”

“I will.” Steven bit his lip. “If there's nothing else, I er, I should probably get back to the gift shop. Technically I'm still a clerk until Sunday.”

Dr. Y/L/N looked chagrined. “Oh my goodness, you're absolutely right. I’m sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked you to do anything pertaining to your new position just yet since you haven't officially started.”

Oh, bollocks, Steven thought. She thinks I'm complaining. “It's nothing like that, ma'am, it's just that I'm sure you're busy and I don't want to bother you by hovering, that's all.”

“Oh.” Dr. Y/L/N shook her head with a smile. “No, you're not bothering me at all. Most of what I've been doing all week is reading over museum policies and procedures and meeting with the board of trustees and various benefactors, so it's actually been nice to get a little break from that and talk to someone who actually works here.”

Ask her how she likes being here so far, Marc said in Steven's head.

Steven cleared his throat. “How has your first week as Director been otherwise?”

“It's been good. A lot to jump into, of course, but you and the rest of the staff have been incredibly kind and welcoming.” Dr. Y/L/N paused. “I wasn't quite sure how the staff would react to me, especially with me not being British.”

Steven shrugged. “Well, it's like you said, we're a team, right? That includes our team leader, no matter where you're from. Your qualifications speak for themselves.”

Dr. Y/L/N shot him a small smile. “I really appreciate that, thank you.”

Her office phone rang. “Sorry, one second.”

Steven waited as she pressed a button on the phone. “Yes?”

“Dr. Y/L/N, the Chairman from the Board of Trustees is on hold for you,” Helen, Dr. Y/L/N’s executive assistant, said through the speaker.

“Okay, one minute. I'm wrapping up a meeting.” Dr. Y/L/N sighed and picked up the receiver before covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “I'm sorry, Steven, I have to take this. If you happen to think of anything else you want to add to the tours or if you have any other questions or concerns, please let me know.”

“I will.” Steven put his notebook and map of the museum back in his messenger bag and stood. 

He picked up his cup of tea. “Want me to close your door on my way out?”

Dr. Y/L/N shook her head. “No, you can leave it open. Thank you.”

Steven stood and started to walk towards the door.

“Oh, Steven?” Dr. Y/L/N called out. “One more thing.”

Steven stopped and turned back around. “Yes, ma'am?”

“If I don't see you again before you leave today… have a nice weekend.”

Steven smiled. “You too, ma'am. See you on Monday.”

I told you she'd like your ideas, Marc said as Steven headed out of Dr. Y/L/N’s office. 

I really think I'm going to enjoy working with her, Steven replied. She seems really open to collaboration. 

Yeah, she seems great. 

Steven arrived at the elevator and pressed the button to go down. Maybe we can come back on Sunday when I'm off and do a trial run of the tour so I can double-check the timing. I want to be as prepared as I possibly can be.

I'm sure you'll impress the hell out of her.  

Steven waited for the elevator to arrive, then stepped on and pressed the button for level 0 . He had to admit that he not only wanted to impress Dr. Y/L/N professionally, but he also wanted to impress her personally as well. I certainly hope so.

[grahamfolgersdeliciousnotebooks]

20 questions for fic writers

[EDIT: sorry if you got a notification that you were tagged in this post even though I didn't tag you. Tumblr's being weird about this one.]

Tagged by @cirrus-grey - thank you! (Also, sorry this took me like three months to do, executive dysfunction is a hell of a thing)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

33

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

197,768

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The only fandom I've written for as an adult has been the Magnus Archives (and I actually have a lot of thoughts on why tma was sort of a perfect storm for getting me back into creating and consuming fanfic, but I'll spare you for now). There are a couple other fandoms I wrote for when I was in middle school back in the fanfic(.)net days, but some things are better left in the past.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Say You Love Me (Learn to Lie)

I'll take "A Flagrant Misuse of Beholding Powers" for 200

stay with me, hold my hand

Come, my dear, and be a part of my home

please, hurry, leave me, I can't breathe (please don't say you love me)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Sometimes. I really want to get more consistent about it, but my executive dysfunction makes it hard. My big problem now is that it feels weird to go back and respond to comments I got months ago, but it also feels rude to respond to more recent comments without ever responding to those older ones, so I'm feeling kind of stuck. One day, though, my ADHD will be properly medicated and I will get back to responding to every comment I get.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Angst is one of those things that I love to read but don't always think to write, so pretty much all of my fics have happy endings atm. The only ones that can really be said to have angsty endings are the pre-Unknowing and safehouse fics where the knowledge of what will happen next in canon makes any ending automatically bittersweet. With that in mind, let's go with Hold My Hand When My Courage Fails, because I DO think a pre-Unknowing kiss makes season 4 angstier.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Like I said, I write almost entirely happy endings, so it's hard to narrow this one down. I'm gonna go with Say You Love Me (Learn to Lie) because I threw in the completely unnecessary (but still necessary to me) detail that Sasha survives the Prentiss incident at the end of that one.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No! I've been very lucky on that front.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I haven't, though I might someday. As an ace person (somewhere in the sex-nuetral/sex-averse realm) I don't feel super confident in my ability to write good smut. It's really intimidating, but I'd love to try some day.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Not really? The only thing I've written that could be crossover is my fic where Jonathan Sims competes on Jeopardy!, but I'm not really sure that counts.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

My AO3 history should make it clear I'm pretty fond of Jonmartin, but I'm also a big Griddlehark (tlt) fan.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I've started a tma fic that's essentially a Marple AU (with Gertrude as the Miss Marple surrogate) that plays with the idea of sleuth-as-Beholding-avatar, but it's very tricky to blend all the plot threads I want to include together into one cohesive mystery, so I don't know if it will ever get finished.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'll be honest, I don't think I'm a very good judge of my own writing, especially my strengths. It's not that I think I'm a bad writer necessarily, but I really struggle to pinpoint any one thing that I do well - especially because for every aspect of my writing I like, I can point to five writers in the same fandom who do that much better. Right now I'm just glad I'm getting stuff written at all.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I worry that my characterizations tend to be pretty thin. I also struggle in juggling more than a few characters at a time, and sometimes I will omit characters who logically should be in a fic just because I can't think of anything for them to do.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't have anything against it. I could see people running into problems if they write dialogue in a language they themselves don't speak (relying on Google translate, for instance) but in general I don't see anything wrong with it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Uglies series by Scott Westerfield, back when I was in middle school.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Don't make me choose!

I might have to go with Say You Love Me (Learn to Lie) because that was the most fun I've ever had writing and publishing a fic - the response to that one was really great, and since that was one of the only times I actually managed a consistent release schedule, it felt really nice having that to look forward to every Tuesday.

But SYLM(LTL) was my answer for like half of these questions, so I'll also throw out Cut My Hair and Changed My Face (I'm Learning How to Forget That Place). I did a pretty terrible job of tagging that one and it didn't get a lot of hits, but it's one of my favorites. I love s4 Jmart angst, I love Jon & Daisy's s4 friendship, and I frankly can't believe it took me so long to write a fic combining the two.

[ludiharambasha]

Hey! So I saw your anti atla posts. I was intrigued.

I have to ask, how would have liked the show to go about Zuko? How to handle him and his plot and arc? And what do you think about him as a character in general?

Hi, sorry that it took me so long to answer this ask, and this is sadly because I am not sure I am able to provide a satisfactory answer. (This is going to be very long). I will try to approach this from several angles.

In short, Zuko's entire conception is one I have a problem with. Zuko is not a character the writers tried to do something with and failed or wrote in a confusing, messy way that could be bettered with some tweaks- Zuko is exactly what the authors of AtLA wanted him to be, and it is their artistic vision that I have a (and at the same time don't- this will be clear to you as you read on) problem with. Not just Zuko, but Iroh as well, and I think this character arc stems from the privileged background of the authors, and a larger context of Western popular art, something I discussed in greater depth when I wrote a couple of posts about The Hunger Games.

Now, there are three angles I read Zuko and his redemption arc from:

1. Redemption arcs generally being indicative of poor or mediocre story-telling;

2. Zuko as a Western, colonial fantasy;

3. Zuko as a character in media intended for children.

I think this is the most organized way I can argument my feelings and thoughts about him as a character.

1.

It was fairly obvious that Zuko was a character fallen from grace that will see glory by the end of the story. From the moment he first graced the screen, it was apparent that he would go through a redemption arc, and that his character was all about that. There are some blogs that I will add here that might have a lot more to say on the issue (I will tag them in an edited version of this post if they would be ok with me tagging them), but redemption arcs are indicative of, at best, juvenile, at worst, flat out bad writing. Redemption arcs are really fine in children's literature because of their didactic nature, but in writing intended for older audiences they should not be treated seriously.

Art really isn't about instilling morals into the audience - art is supposed to make the readers'/observers' ideological, sensory and moral world challenged in interaction with it - art presupposes the already existing morality of the one interacting with it, not a blank slate onto which the art is supposed to leave an imprint. This notion that art is about didactics is a very outdated, passée idea that resurfaces every now and then, usually in think-of-the-youths type of discourse. Art is the fruit of the author's sensory, ideistic and moral world, and innately expresses something about the auhor and the world as they percieve it-it is not meant to indoctrinate or instill something, but to provide someone's perspective on a phenomenon or idea. This does not mean that art cannot be evaluated because it is personal; its merit is decided through analysys, usually of theme(s), characters, motifs, etc., of their quality, inventiveness, coherence, and so on. It is a delicate matter and not all critics agree on every work; moreover, there are different schools of methodology of the analysis of literary works; they do not agree on many things. There are good resources on the internet where you can find more info on lenses, approaches, etc.

I cannot say that evey literary lens or critical approach condemns redemption arcs (some classics with this arc include A Christmas Carol); however, there are two very good reasons to be vary of them in fiction. A) they are moralistic, and b) they are predictable, and these two reasons are somewhat intertwined.

I've already said quite a lot about didactics and moralizing in fiction earlier, so now I will try to focus on why this impacts characterization poorly and give more focus to reason b). When I say predictable, I mean that the character that this character arc goes along traditional lines of a certain archetype, and never once goes beyond them or manages to state anything new about the convention itself or break out of its confines. Zuko starts as a prince fallen from grace and ends up as the new Firelord- there is nothing in his story that even once nods to the fact that anything else was going to happen (him failing to redeem himself in book 2, only to then be consumed by guilt and finally be redeemed for realz is also an incredibly common pattern). There is nothing transgressive or challenging to constructing a character like this. There is no profound idea that Zuko brings forward with his presence in the story. How can someone genuinely say that writing a character that has been written a MILLION times before in the EXACT SAME way to be good? We laud stories that say something; creating a character like Zuko is akin to butting into a conversation, not because you genuinely have something to say, but just to hear yourself speak. Redemption arcs are the death of character- if we know where the character arc is going to go, the readers' perspective is not challenged. It is failure to tell a unique, authentic story.

Redemption arcs are enjoyed because they deal with a commmon fantasy that we CAN do better and be better, eventually. Very few follow up on this and become better people, but reading about people that do sure is reassuring. This creates this self-righteous feeling in the reader for aligning with the right cause. This has a very clear moral and instructive tone - do better. When art is made to instill values is when the art ceases to be creative. This does not mean that art is and should be devoid of morality; on the contrary, art is meant to engage your morality through self reflection. When you read about deplorable characters doing deplorable things, there is no need for the narrator to outright say 'this bad' - how you feel about actions of the characters is inherently a moral excercise. (Why should anyone celebrate art that insults the readers' intelligence and their ability to make moral judgements?)

At the heart of redemption arcs is that they are digestible, easily understood, and reaffirm the goodness of the reader. It is the most simple, juvenile type of writing there is.

2.

There is a reason why Zuko's redemption arc (and many others of the like) have a particularly strong appeal - they are reassuring to white, Western readers. They play into another, more disturbing fantasy - the sins of one's colonial past can be undone, forgiven and forgotten. If a prince of an empire that committed genocides, military occupations, and so on (there is a very long list of the crimes the Fire Nation committed), can be redeemed and become better and help the oppressed people, then so can they (they won't, and don't really intend to, but the fictional realization is enough!). There is also a reason why the fucking beach episode is beloved in AtLA fandom- it goes through the motions of 'humanising the Fire Nation' and showing them full of just some random, 'normal' kids that just live normal lives (in the eyes of the 1st worlders). It is the ultimate justification of white Western conformity, ignoring how this conformity keeps oppressive, violent systems running. Aang's culture being wiped off the face of the Earth, showing us the torture Hama went through, seeing Katara never find peace about her mother being killed by a Fire Nation soldier, never getting to see Jet get justice for the murder of his parents, all the environmental damage the Fire Nation caused is extended as much or less sympathy than privileged kids from the Fire Nation. Let that sink in. Zuko is just the most glaringly obvious realization of this motif.

Zuko's redemption arc is reflective of Westerner's feelings about colonialism and racism. This guilt is something that is part of them, as one has to be painfully stupid to be oblivious to their nations' pasts- everything around them reflects their vile history. They either choose to double down on this fact and percieve themselves as victors and their past as full of glory, others have trouble dealing with the gravity of these facts. And Zuko's moral dilemmas, his failures reflect this "revelation" and (surface-level) abhorrence towards imperialism. And it reflects a more awful truth, that these people seldom truly recognise the true implications of their own involvement in these systems - they often see colonialism as these sins of the past and systems divorced from their own involvement, and not the sins of both the past and present they actively contribute to - and Zuko also realises the faults of the Fire nation not based on what he personally did or has seen with his own eyes; he truly starts to recognise the evils of the Fire Nation when confronted with his past and his lineage. It is not the institution of the Fire Lord and the immense power it carries that has led to these heinous crimes, or the militarism- it is particular people that need to be brought down. Zuko, despite being a war criminal just like his father and sister, is absolved of what he did de facto. Just like the primary audience of AtLA would like to be.

Another thing to note, one that is not analytic but entirely subjective on my part, is that I cannot brush off the feeling that Zuko's redemption is more strongly motivated by Zuko's feelings of inadeqacy, rather than a developed sense of justice (this one is more up to interpretation, as there is proof n the story for and against this assertion).

3.

Redemption arcs and Zuko I don't have a problem with if we are looking at AtLA through the lens of mediocre standard children's media. Children's media should be didactic, because children learn a lot from engaging with the environment, and media is a particularly influential one. A child will not be capable of detecting all the implications of AtLA as a narrative - for them, it is enough to see a simple character like Zuko. I just cannot stand it when people delude themselves into believing he is written well, he's average at best.

That is all I have to say on the matter, for now. Thank you for your question. Take care.

[enduringmoth]

If it’s not too much to ask and if u weren’t already planning on it, I’d love to hear that secondary post about the consequences of the party’s actions regarding Durge’s reveal 👀👀 the first post rly resonated with me and honestly I’m a little obsessed with the idea of what drastic actions a redeemed!urge might take in the face of rejection,,, it was a rly interesting read nonetheless!

hello there!! i'm happy to talk a little more about it, absolutely! ^^

for those who didn't peep at the tags of my last post, in which i discussed how painful it must be to a seeking-redemption durge to be so heavily rejected by the party, i wrote in the tags:

this might not be exactly what you were looking for but i will do my best!

at the absolute least, i believe the minimum consequences of this interaction involve durge shutting down and withdrawing from most of the group. thinking in particular of my seeking-redemption durge, asha, she carries guilt interwoven with resentment -- she knows she has done wrong and that she deserves to bare the brunt of their rage, but she is also so furious with the idea that these people do not know how much she has done for them since waking up in that pod.

how many urges has she squashed? how many easy kills has she passed up on? does anyone other than gale (her romance interest) even begin to comprehend how painful it was to resist killing isobel, killing gale himself, and yet she did it anyway? because it was the right thing to do?

and yet here, when they all learn the truth -- durge included! they have fucking amnesia! -- it's almost like not a soul left there cares that they've clawed and fought and bled for the entire party at every point.

i think a lot about the dialogue durge has with astarion the morning after realizing they're a bhaalspawn. of all of the companions, he is the only person to realize something is wrong from minute one, and he asks about their sleep and their weights they carry. he then proceeds to empathize with durge, saying they are alike, and that he believes they will succeed.

and yet it seems no one else in the party feels the same, and that has to be agonizingly isolating for durge.

now, onto gortash.

at this point in act 3, the durge has (likely) found the prayer for forgiveness in balthazar's lab in act 2. this scrap of their past lets them know enver gortash was a source of tension in their following of bhaal, enough that they are begging for forgiveness from their father over their admiration and fondness for him.

for us durgetash enjoyers, this is a romantic entanglement. for those who do not see their relationship as romantic, it's still a clear platonic attachment for durge that shook their faith in bhaal's plans.

the people who have traveled with the durge for weeks are (seemingly) regretting that decision, and blaming them for things they cannot recall doing. enver gortash greets them like a friend, offers them a metaphorical and literal hand, reaching out to them when others are pulling away.

at minimum, it creates tension. gortash is "bad" and their party members are "good", right? certainly the durge cannot go on to support gortash in damning the world when that's the "wrong" thing to do -- right?

and yet.

if even those who the durge may have started to believe should be able to understand and accept them, due to having similar-enough struggles in their own past with domineering patrons/gods/masters -- if even they cannot understand, what hope is there for anyone else in the world besides enver gortash offering them that same acceptance?

why save a world that cannot and will not open its arms to you?

thusly, the next step is for the durge to minimum consider what gortash is offering. for me, the durge is most likely to kill orin before gortash anyway, so the first steps here are simple.

depending on how the party continues to respond, the wedge may deepen or back out. depending on how the durge continues to be exposed to enver gortash, they may be more drawn into him or pushed away.

another step up (or down, as it were) would involve who orin kidnaps. we know that she may take gale, halsin or lae'zel, or take the child, yenna.

a particularly bitter durge might let them die. why waste their breath on someone who could not find it in their heart to forgive them?

we proceed apace. i know it's (huge spoilers ahead) canon that gortash is slain by the netherbrain. but if we pretend that that can be avoided one way or another, i believe the second-to-most-nuclear option here is the durge taking over the world with gortash as he originally suggested. in turn, choosing to reject redemption (largely, considering they are still sparing gortash and bhaal wants everyone dead) purely because the party could not see them as redeemable.

(and let's not even get STARTED on how this would involve killing astarion too, the one party member who even got close to seeing her, because the pain drowned out his love too entirely.)

the most nuclear, of course, would be the durge deciding they could not even trust gortash, and instead killing him and embracing bhaal entirely, drowning the entire world in blood as bhaal would have wanted.

now, the bittersweet twist on all of this would be something of a happy ending with a redeemed gortash twist, as so many of us love. perhaps the wedge drives them closer to gortash, but along the way the party is able to prove their willingness to support and accept the durge. but now durge is tangled up in enver, and the only path forward, it seems, is to attempt to free both the chosen of bhaal and the chosen of bane from their masters.

(essentially the consequences of their semi-betrayal being that durge gets in too deep with gortash and they (read: karlach, mostly) have to accept that, but they all live happily ever after because the power of friendship yadda yadda-- my durgetash brain needs a crumb of fluff now and then.)

anyway, this is as disjointed as my sanity but i do hope you got some enjoyment out of it!

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: death, descriptions dead bodies, blood and wounds, gore, violence, murder, implied sa references, trafficking references

AO3 link

Note: I only freaking went and did it again *facepalm* Sorry, I once again updated on ao3 and left the tumblr post completely written and open on my laptop without actually posting it - but at least this time it's only been a few hours instead of an entire day haha. Love to y'all, thanks so much for reading <3

Chapter 31 - Kaz

“Kaz-”

Kaz looked up from his office door, his gloved hand half closed over the handle, to see Jesper working his way across the room towards him. He sighed and shifted his weight against his cane, leaning heavily against it as he waited for Jesper. The weather had begun to clear up after the storm but the air was still damp and clingy, and his leg never liked the wet or the cold. Convenient, for Ketterdam. 

“I just spoke to Layla,” said Jesper, as he reached him, “About that girl from the Sweet Shoppe-”

“Inside,” Kaz nodded to his office door.

Jesper faltered slightly, but followed him in and pushed the door shut as Kaz sat down behind his desk. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him. 

“I’ve seen her,”

“Layla?” asked Jesper, frowning, “I thought she said-”

“Amethyst,” said Kaz, “I saw her,”

It hadn’t been pretty. Jesper grimaced, leaning back ever so slightly in the chair he’d taken up.

“You mean…” he gestured vaguely up and down his own face, as though miming the place Amethyst had been cut through.

Kaz nodded. 

He’d been to the Exchange just before their job this evening was supposed to start, only there to remind someone what he knew so that they’d agree to update him on which guards would be working over the coming nights. It wasn’t for a while that he’d be needing the information, but they might get ideas of lying to him and if they did then he needed to make sure they knew what would happen to them. He also couldn't afford for the night they chose to be the night he needed to know, so the work would have to begin in advance. Finding Amethyst spilling her innards down the steps had been unexpected - and unwelcome. Kaz hadn’t been prepared. 

“Perfectly,” he added, watching the grim look on Jesper’s face deepen, “Straight in half,”

“Some Grisha can do that, can’t they? They say the Darkling could,”

Kaz shook his head. 

“A weapon specific to very powerful Etherealki, I believe. No frightened runaway in the middle of Ketterdam could have done that, or at least not anyone who’s been flying under the radar for long - and anyway, I don’t think the Cut’s precise enough for two equal halves. I’ve heard some stories,”

Nina had an unnerving habit of dropping such things, things she’d witnessed as a child during the Ravkan Civil War, into casual conversation and being surprised when people were taken aback, but Kaz had heard of it from a couple of others as well. As far as he could tell, the Cut would have been even messier than what he’d seen today. 

“So then, what?”

“I have no idea,”

There was a brief pause, before Jesper ventured. 

“Do you think it’s the same person? Tara - she’s the girl from the Menagerie - Tara and Amethyst, do you think-?”

“I don’t think,” Kaz sighed, “I’m certain. The patterns are far too similar, the murders far too close together, the mode of operation is exactly the same - except the death itself,”

And was there to that? Everyone, Kaz included, had thought that the Leopard, Tara, had been strangled; the bruises around her neck were heavy, inkblots on her too pale skin, and her body was otherwise unmaimed but for scars and the remnants of old injuries. But bruises could have been placed there, couldn’t they, by a Corporalnik? Though Kaz couldn’t imagine any possible motivation for that. None of this seemed to quite make sense. 

“The question is whether they have real motive or if this is just mindless killing - and the answer is that mindless killing, even in the Barrel, is much rarer than people think. In any case it doesn’t get this much attention. Mindless killing is messy, its random - mindless killing is corpses with no connection to each other, usually lower effort, sometimes a more fleeting motivation fulfilled and the victim killed in the aftermath. Mindless killing isn’t premeditated, it doesn’t involve such long-term kidnappings - remember both had been missing for at least a week, Tara for two, but those bodies were fresh. When Tara was first found, maybe we could have struck that up to mindless. The seeming randomness of it, the returning her to the Menagerie, even the method; all of it could have just been Tara’s very bad luck. But looking at it all together…” Kaz shook his head, “You know a girl from West Stave died in a similar pattern last month? From a smaller house, didn’t get much notice; I didn’t start to connect the dots until Tara, but when Amethyst went missing I knew. Something’s happening here, and if something’s happening then someone’s making it happen with intention and with motive. These are setups, and there’s somebody pulling the strings behind them,”

Jesper fidgeted a little, and Kaz saw his hands drift towards his gun belt. He’d swapped his prize revolvers, still sitting in Kaz’s safe, for two sad little lumps of pistols and apparently they weren’t giving him the comfort that his own guns usually did. He always laid hands on them when he was antsy, like a child seeking the comfort of a favoured doll, and now his fingers were dancing over the replacements like they couldn’t quite decide where to land. 

Kaz flexed his gloved fingers and gripped his cane tighter. He could have given Jesper his revolvers back, the safe was right behind him, but he didn’t move. Jesper hadn’t asked for them, he knew the deal was incomplete, and Kaz could admit to himself that part of him wanted to punish Jesper a little. He owed the sharpshooter nothing, and if Jesper hadn’t left her behind then maybe the Wraith wouldn’t have been injured. Kaz may not have lost money on the proposed deal with Wylan, but Jesper’s proposition had cost Inej something more. And it was costing Kaz the loss of her skills these past few weeks, leaving him in the dark on details she could have gathered for him. He was well within his rights to keep the guns, by the deal they’d made at least, but he knew that if Jesper asked for them he would hand them over. But Jesper hadn’t asked, so they continued to gather dust in Kaz’s locked office. 

“Who died last month?” asked Jesper, a little quieter than before.

Kaz shrugged.

“I don’t have a name, but the point is that whatever’s happening here is building up. The first didn’t get attention, the second wasn’t atypical of West Stave it was just showier. But Amethyst? This is new,”

Kaz suppressed a shudder at the thought - he’d never seen a body like that before. Amethyst had been splayed over the steps outside the Exchange, stripped bare, leaking blood onto the stones. Her entire body had been sliced in two, from head to foot, and the open flap of her chest cavity spilled structures Kaz probably couldn’t even name free from the cage of her ribs and flesh and skin. His eyes skirted quickly to her face. It was impressive they’d managed to identify her, he thought, and then a minute later realised that they hadn’t needed to. Her face was smashed and blood-soaked and split into two equal halves, but the dismemberment had left her arms untouched. The Sweet Shoppe tattoo, dancing on her skin in time with the mist. 

Kaz swallowed tightly, stiffening his hand on his cane and readjusting his bad leg. There were more stadwatch on their way, in fact it was surprising the entire place wasn’t crawling with them yet, and Kaz didn’t fancy being the only person around the corpse when they arrived. He didn’t want to look at it any longer, everything in him was screaming to turn and run, but Kaz’s feet would not move. Amethyst’s bulging eyes stared up at him from their unnatural distance apart, and even standing there he could feel the cold skin, taut over bloating flesh, wet beneath his palms. 

“Kaz?”

Kaz snapped back to the present, gaze fixing on Jesper and forcibly anchoring him in the room. He felt an unfair rage fizzing straight through him, crackling down his arms and all the way into his fingertips. 

“This is new,” Jesper prompted, “What…?”

“I don’t know what kind of weapon could do that to a person,” Kaz shook his head, “And I don’t know why someone wanted to kill Amethyst, or the others. But I know they had a reason,”

It probably wasn’t anything to do with the girls themselves. At the end of the day they were easy targets, weren’t they? Heleen and Pekka may even have had some money slipped to them under the table, Kaz wasn’t sure he’d be surprised. Though maybe not, or they might have done a better job of keeping the original disappearances under wraps. It didn’t matter. Kaz didn’t think that Tara and Amethyst, or the other girl, had been chosen individually for who they were. They’d been chosen because they would get no more attention than Barrel gossip, and because no-one was going to expect the stadwatch to solve the murder of an indenture from West Stave. Kaz doubted the first victim had even been reported to them. Who would have said anything? He just didn’t understand what they’d been chosen for. If they’d all been killed like Amethyst was, he’d assume someone was testing some kind of new weapon. But something didn’t add up here, and it was putting Kaz on edge. 

“They’ll do it again,”

It wasn’t a question but Kaz nodded anyway, and Jesper leaned back as he drummed his fingers against his knees. Again Kaz thought he might ask to have his revolvers back, but he said nothing. 

“They’re getting braver,” Kaz mused, “Who says this only started last month?”

And what comes next? 

There was a long silence.

“You were late,”

“I was setting up a sling for Inej,” said Jesper, readjusting on his seat, “And I had to wait for Anika so there was someone to stay with her,”

“How is she?”

“Restless. In pain. Improving,” Jesper shrugged, “You might know better for yourself if you spoke to her,”

Kaz didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. He hadn’t spoken to Inej since she woke up in his office a few days ago. Her sudden panic at waking up in a room she only had hazy memories of dragging herself to through the clouds of pain that were clinging to her, lying on the floor, wearing someone else’s clothes, had been palpable in the air even before she’d scrambled away from him across the boards. As soon as she moved her face contorted in pain and she shuddered to a halt, pulling her arms into herself and pressing into the cupboards behind her as she shook herself properly awake and her dark eyes found Kaz’s. 

“Don’t try to walk until you’re ready,” he told her, “Nina’s outside, she’ll take you back to the Slat,”

Inej watched him for a moment, shaky breaths filling the air between them. Kaz stood slowly and began to walk towards the door, wary of Inej’s eyes on him. 

“The body’s been moved,” he said, feeling something soften in his voice whether he wanted it to or not, “If you’d rather swap to a different room maybe I can-”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, and he couldn’t help but turn to see her, “Thank you,”

Kaz’s heart was in his throat and Inej’s eyes were wide and dark enough to drown in. 

“I’ll get Nina,”

It was all he could bring himself to say. 

[lestappenforever]

going through the lestappen tag and seeing all those anons in your inbox with a similar take, something has clearly shifted between charles & max. before they were more, awkward around each other but since last week they are more…blatant and confident in their flirting and interactions. idk what changed, i mean the people leaning towards it being for pr have a point but i don’t see why they’d be doing that being that the championship has been won so it’s like they are fighting for one rn and their teams need to keep things cool to avoid a war. and this effort has been 99% on rbr’s side re-emphasizing that yes they are indeed posting lestappen. also i know maxiel is popular too so they could’ve use that for the engagement not use their main rival team’s no. 1 driver. i mean if it’s for pr also why not use yuki and pierre? i mean pierre was with them for so many years so it would go to show that there was no bad blood. why not max and carlos? they have their moments too and carlos used to be in toro rosso with max. why not max and lando? i mean???what is going on? and no it’s not about ea sports because if it was about just racing, there would be race related activities and teasing. yes, there’s a 70% they have a ea sports collab coming up but this is so much more than that. and no, this ask/unsolicited opinion has been sent with my lestappen rose colored glasses removed. the way charles is looking at max and engaging him is something else entirely. and whatever it is, i’m here for it.

psa: i sent this to you because you are the most level headed lestappen blog out here. ilysm jsyk

🌸

I very much agree with your take on this, anon. Something has definitely shifted between Max and Charles recently, and I firmly believe it’s because they both have wanted it to. Their relationship and their interactions have a whole other vibe to it now than it did a few months ago, and given both their personalities and how they are both definitely mostly in charge of their own brands and how they’re coming across, it appears to be 100% genuine. It’s because they genuinely do like and respect each other, and they enjoy each other's company. That much is clear as day on both their faces whenever they’re in each other's vicinity. The change in their relationship, I believe, is entirely organic and genuine.

Now, as for RBR and Ferrari posting Lestappen content on their social media channels lately? Part of my full-time job includes quite a bit of marketing, and over the years I've garnered quite a bit of knowledge about the topic. And one thing that is very important to remember is that any and all content posted to social media channels belonging to big, famous brands such as Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari is in some way, shape, or form a markering ploy. For those types of brands, there is PR value in just about everything, and the people running those accounts are not idiots. They’ve seen the impact and engagement Lestappen content triggers, and they are absolutely seeing it as an opportunity to profit off of it. But what I do find incredibly interesting about this, though, is that we have no idea why they're doing it. Exactly what their end goal with this type of content is or what it’s building up to, only time will tell. And I, for one, am very excited to see where this will end up going.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, anon. Your brain is a truly wonderful place.

Babe, you are far too kind, and I'm so glad you think my blog is a level headed place! I do try my best to be. There are so many wonderful Lestappen blogs out there, so it’s such an honor that you chose to send this beautiful ask to me. 🥹

I love you, and hope you will have a beautiful Sunday. ❤️

[sleepy-moron]

A lot of tag discussions about gay Mike have happened recently and it has brought a point that I was aware of but hadn’t really posted about to the front of my brain again:

Will is defined as gay almost entirely outside being attracted to guys. Will’s queer coding is implicitly tied to other people’s perceptions of him, mostly revolving around Will behaving in ways that aren’t seen as “masculine”. In my mind (being that I didn’t really get into the show until season 2) the second we see Will at the snow ball dancing with that girl but looking at Mike I knew he was intentionally being written as gay rather than just a character that has gay coding. This is a pretty common thing, to define gayness by the way a character looks and acts rather than being attracted to men. Usually the big exception to this is characters who follow the armored closet gay trope. While these characters are defined by being macho guys who constantly insult and accuse other people of being gay, they usually do show attraction to other guys to make sure the audience understands the dude in the closet is actually gay himself.

Will has character depth and he probably wasn’t written to conform to gay stereotypes but he is definitely read that way by the audience. People have been taking the more reserved artistic kid and making him much “softer” or more feminine than he actually is for years because that’s how media has trained them to view gay people. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people started saying Will is going to become a bad guy, or die at the same time they started calling him a home wrecker. There’s an implicit mold that a lot of gay characters follow so people project traits associated with that formula onto all gay characters.

Mike is a very different story. Mike is gay coded through symbolism and a noted disinterest (and in some cases displeasure) in girls. Sure he’s not athletic but Mike certainly breaks the mold a bit for gay characters. He’s defensive and reckless, the archetypical generic guy hero who gets the girl and lives happily ever after. How many action oriented shows and movies can you think of that have a gay dude as the main hero without using the hero being gay prominently in marketing? I can’t think of any but I also don’t watch a lot of tv so I could be wrong….

The audience has no idea what gay coding for a character like Mike is really supposed to look like because it’s not something that happens. If a character is gay coded he either never expresses any interest in women (including having a female love interest) or it’s made very clear through either explicit confirmation or use of general character tropes that this character is meant to be gay. Mike has a girlfriend, and while I think after s2 the show goes out of its way to suggest Mike isn’t into girls he doesn’t act the way gay characters who have girlfriends are expected to act. Mike acts like the standard loser dude with a girlfriend who should be way out of his league is expected to. He has trouble emotionally opening up with her, he’s controlling and overprotective, and he complains about women while burping loudly after El dumps him. People can’t conceive the idea of Mike being with El for (in their mind the whole show but actually only two seasons) for as long as he is without the show making sure you know this character is gay.

The tropes for establishing bi characters work very differently. Usually either the character is seen being attracted to men and women very soon after being introduced or they are usually assumed to be straight until they either come out as bi or figure out that they’re bi. This feels like a much more reasonable way to make Mike queer and result in endgame byler because this is something that has precedent. Heck they literally did the same thing with one of the robins from Batman like a year ago.

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

@paindragon re: free speech & these tags on this post because god do I know how to talk--

I'm going to use Naziism as an evocative example of obvious hate speech throughout and because the ACLU's dedicated attention towards protecting nazis has built a significant portion of american case law surrounding free speech as a whole. the nazis also built their eugenics laws based on US eugenics laws and movements and while Germany literally outlawed it, the united states had to develop critical race theory to suggest that we start removing the eugenics shit from our social and legal systems and fox news told americans that it existed to teach their children to "hate america," which they did absolutely believe and agree with which launched the current book banning spree. (weird how free speech laws aren't protecting any of those books, huh. what are they for again?)

it's possible for a government to neither outlaw nor protect something. it can be left to informal or nonlegal systems. you do not actually have to give nazis or the cultural fascist equivalent legal protections for societies to work. societies do not need to go out of their way to keep fascists legally safe from social or financial retaliation to keep functioning or to be healthy. this is just one obvious option between protecting nazis and making any speech actively illegal. there's a whole world of options between those two points.

part of the reason we TELL OURSELVES we do is because our society is extremely fascist and we don't want to address it. or have never been not-fascist-enough to address it. american and american-centric political scientists struggle to define fascism as a political phenomenon and practice not because it's that confusing but because any clear definition obviously indicts settler-colonialism, slavery, and segregation. which have to be different in some way because the US is incredibly powerful and has some of the most brutally violent history in the world with all three that it has never remotely addressed and does not want to.

the idea that by legally protecting nazis because they're the most bad, everyone else is automatically included and protected under that umbrella is just. not real. it's not real in practice--see jewish people arrested for 'antisemitism' while participating in unfree-speech protests against US support of the palestinian genocide & aforementioned cop city RICO charges, which use unfree-speech of the term mutualism to indict participants of unfree-speech protests against our government. protecting actual literal anti-semites did not protect use of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". and it's not real in theory for the same reason that tolerance is not a paradox but a peace treaty. "I won't punch you if you don't punch me." =/= "everybody does whatever they want and we just kind of have to accept it, punches included."

tolerance feels like a paradox to a fascist in a fascist society, for whom it is real that equal rights are a threat to 'their way of life'. allowing advocacy against racism in a racist society feels like a threat to them personally because their way of life is racist and challenging racism does actually threaten it. a slave-owner actually for real believes their rights are being taken when the enslaved are freed. segregation was fundamentally fascist, and despite that obvious and clear evaluation, I doubt Joe Biden or most other americans consider him/self in any way fascist despite strongly advocating for segregation for like the first 10 years of his career. christians (everyone from the Mormons to the Catholics) consider it an insult against their entire religion and a violation of their religious rights to demand that they cease exploitative conversion practices internationally and evaluate the ethics of "missions" which offer aid to the vulnerable and displaced in exchange for attending religious services.

when bigotry and white supremacy are the widespread norm, it feels like protecting bigots the same as radicals is creating equal protections for "violent" words. but is it? it should not be surprising to anyone when i say white supremacist christofascism is alive and well in the United States and remains its dominant political ideology. is protecting nazi-ism, homophobia, xenohobia, bigotry actually creating equal protections for the residents of a country or is it emboldening and protecting the most violent members of its most powerful class?

the idea that actively creating legal protections for bigotry somehow protects the marginalized from civil infringement because both things use similar verbiage sometimes is a weird fairytale/bedtime story that americans tell themselves in order to cater to their worst instincts and avoid addressing a deep and disgusting reality about our supposedly freedom and equality loving culture. it lets white americans rest easy by saying the most violent white supremacists aren't something to be fought anymore, they're actually legally necessary to protect the marginalized from... white supremacy.

does that actually make any sense? or maybe is this all some bullshit mental gymnastics to avoid admitting that identifying and counteracting social violence of this nature would indict most powerful people as well as most systems of power in this country. acknowledging the reality of fascism would immediately require acknowledging how pervasive it is in our society and how deeply it's sunk into the walls. so instead we protect its worst excesses and pretend that somehow does anything other than perpetuate it

the idea that protecting the violent speech of the nazis protects the marginalized or government critics or political radicals or leftism is also more about settler colonialist self-projection than any real or common similarities. the idea that landback means indigenous americans will kick everyone out or that Black people will massacre white people during the "great replacement" is projection because WE DID THAT. we literally got here and just started killing everyone and taking their shit. so we iMAGINE that eventually they're gonna want to 'get even' and it will look something like our worst violences (nazi-ism). but it doesn't, does it? it turns out the leftists who are challenging systems of white supremacy don't sound like white supremacists and aren't protected by case law built around protecting white supremacists. "mutualism" isn't protected free speech, but "kill all jews" is. "social solidarity" isn't protected free speech, but (real trump quote) "No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals" is."

it also propagates the myth that all violence is the same because america has solved for equality and the impartial government just needs to mediate. there's no difference between nazis and militant civil rights leaders because we got rid of all of ours and cleaned it up, so they're baaasically as marginalized 'as an ideology' as Black, Indigenous, queer people with radically leftist politics fighting for equality. like i think people forget that most americans literally believe racism was solved during the civil rights movement, a confidence which was temporarily shaken during BLM and the George Floyd protests but has settled back in nicely after biden promised more money to cops but only for increased diversity trainings (and also because everybody started shoplifting for no reason?!?!? so we really need them to reinforce Law and Order right).

[otaku6337]

WIP expectations are (often) unrealistic

okay so i’ve posted about this general topic before

but posting once a month is not “an update limbo”, it’s not an “abandoned fic” - it’s normal

it is fine to have an irregular or infrequent update schedule (using the word schedule here loosely lol)

I have a fic that I refer to as 28, and I update it on the 28th of every month (the chars went through 28 timeloops, are you sensing the theme here yet?), and have been doing so for... around a year now, actually - I refer to this updating schedule several times in author notes, in the series notes etc, because I deliberately chose the theme after I counted how many loops I’d put them through

yet, on the 26th or so of this month (i’m not getting the bookmark back up but it’s from a few days ago) someone tagged it as “update limbo”

it’s been less than four weeks since it was last updated

like, even if I hadn’t made it super clear on multiple occasions that this fic gets updated on the same day every single month, a few weeks is *nothing* like limbo. sure if it’s been a few years, maybe even down to six months, but anything under three or four months, to me, just means that the author is a busy person and-or has some sort of writer’s block/other ideas they’re focusing on/any other myriad of factors that means that they aren’t posting for that specific fic right now and, unless they’ve said it’s going on hiatus or the like, it’s not abandoned or in limbo or really anything at all except a WIP

i’m not making this to specifically call out this person (i’d be including a screenshot in that case lol), and I’m not saying they or others have bad intentions, not at all, but to me it was just the epitome of so much of this consumerism, WIP-negative, high-expectations sort of culture that seems to be developing around fic writing/fandom creation as a whole

it’s been less than a month, and it feels like people will write off fics entirely for not having been updated in the last fortnight at most. some writers will, perfectly validly, go months between updates, and if anything that just makes it more exciting when a chapter is posted

so, again, this isn’t targeted at any specific person, and I’m not saying people have to read wips if they prefer completed stuff ‘cause that’s valid, but I felt like it needed reiterating that taking time between updates is realistic, not selfish or abandonment - take your time creating, make it something you’re as happy with as possible, and readers please be patient with us, we’re doing the best we can even when you can’t see that directly

[felteverywhere]

here’s a plot wishlist of things i’m thinking about lately but would prefer to plot than write opens for. i’d also prefer to plot on discord but it’s not entirely necessary since obviously i’ll be writing on this account. some of them are kind of variations of the same thing but i think it makes it clear what kind of stuff i really love lmao. if you like this i’ll im you, but even if you like a lot of them it would be amazing if you could whittle it down to 2-3 tops. reblogging and messaging people when i’m online in the morning!

hot & heavy by lucy dacus inspired — the angst of your first love, homoerotic teenage best friend angst coming back to haunt you, bitterness and nostalgia mingling in the worst way, you hate her and you still love her after all this time. optional: period piece (70s, 80s, 90s, early 00s), a dead friend dragging them back to town, one of them is still closeted. 

fear street inspired — small towns where dark, horrible things have happened and keep happening but not everyone can afford to clear out, young people taking on a legacy of evil in the name of love, the truth of the past being unearthed, the loss along the way. optional: period piece (90s), we can run with something similar to fear street in terms of why the killers exist or come up with our own thing. 

college sleuths — a body found in a classroom or maybe an old unsolved mystery, a small campus cradled by woods and hidden from the world, a desperate need to uncover what everyone else wants to cover up, a righteousness or maybe an obligation to the dead, an eventual game of cat and mouse as they creep closer to the truth. optional: literally everything i listed can be tweaked, i just love the idea of a pair of people (even reluctantly) solving a murder. 

scooby doo inspired, college cryptid/supernatural hunters  — they’re the only ones who believe and maybe that’s okay, could be a mumu/could utilise npc characters if we’d like a group. optional: more of a buffy style scooby gang who are solving problems/include creatures in it. 

dark academia, the secret history inspired  — 

zombie apocalypse romance... with a twist on top of that — what’s more romantic than finding your soulmate at the end of the world? well, i guess if she’s also an unhinged person who will murder humans too, if they cross her. finding out she killed her last s/o somehow doesn’t phase you. basically: muse a has met someone after so long alone but muse b is a little crazy and they get into shenanigans. 

thoroughbreds inspired — unsettling girls forming a strange bond in rekindling a childhood friendship, uncomfortable step fathers, murder as a tool to solve problems rather than a ghastly act, taking blame as a romantic gesture. gifset for fun inspo. 

a return to the hurt/comfort fanfic tag. i’d like to explore deeper things while also dealing with the relationship between two characters. optionally but not limited to: grief, abuse (tentatively and with discussion about parameters), child custody issues, divorce, etc. 

this post but like no really, let’s write it. 

people who believe they are impossible to love pushing away the one who is demanding that they let them in!!!! not strong enough by boygenius vibes also 

an affair happening in a position of power, in a place it absolutely shouldn’t, where everything could turn to crap if they gave in but... they really can’t help themselves. people who are slaves to their own feelings no matter how toxic they are with one another. bad people being so passionately and deeply in love that it destroys everything. oh also this. 

still would kick things over for a normal people plot. i’ll never be over it!! never!! gifset for visual. shame and regret almost overpowering love but not quite, hurting each other, miscommunication, all the things. “i'm not a religious person but i do sometimes think god made you for me.” it should be illegal for someone to say that but jeez i am obsessed with it. 

someone truly deranged and evil and bloodthirsty and the only one who can stop them, but also the only one who can understand them. the only one who knows them. the only one who loves them? ah?

figure skating partners for carling i beg on my knees. fc optional i honestly might change her regardless. 

more song inspo without long winded thoughts: reckless driving by lizzy mcalpine, taken by muna, holding back/crowded places/waiting game by banks, forever winter/tis the damn season/cowboy like me by taylor swift but also really any taylor swift song.