#when i always put 100% into their interests? am i that shitty of a writer and that obnoxious to listen to lmao

[martyrbat]

👍👍

[hyacinthusmemorial]

writing the third chapter and honestly I dont know how to make the story interesting, I am writing nonsense.

I think I will answer this publicly because writing advice is universally loved and adored (right?). This is more about motivation than mechanics. It's about telling a story rather than about grammar, POV, verb tense.

The first thing to do is just write. Don't think about plot, don't think about characters, don't think too hard, just write. Sometimes you have to spew out absolute garbage to start writing gold. Start somewhere in the action, then describe the surroundings, then describe the character, why are they there, what about them is making them act this way. A fun tip: write what you want to read. I daydream all the time, I go on walks--long walks--I listen to music, and I just daydream. Usually, what you enjoy imagining, other people will too. Slip tidbits of your life in, they don't need to be blatant, just little pieces of yourself to add humanity to it.

The second thing is to have a goal in your writing. When I start writing a chapter, I always have an "idea" of what I need to accomplish according to an internal map of where my story is going. Then I just write (The first point) until I accomplish it. Another goal I have when writing a chapter is that I usually give myself a word count to accomplish. For me, my word count is 3,000 for a chapter minimum, unless its a prologue or epilogue. This word count encourages me to fill in gaps, describe scenes better, but it also keeps me in-line with pacing of action.

Third thing: re-rewrite it all. When I wrote Anele and Forgotten Age, I erased whole chapters, I trashed it (I kept it in a separate compilation document that is multiple chapters long). I went back to the blank page, I said, I can write this more subtly, I can write this more succinctly. I can write this better. Sometimes, you have absolutely NO IDEA what is going on until the characters have taken you to the end of it all, and you have to go back and write it all again BETTER. And sometimes, you have to write it all again.

And, one last thing: Allow yourself to be mediocre, accept mediocre. I have seen more people stop writing because they feel like they suck than any other reason. Put the shitty words to paper--it is absolutely the greatest thing a human can do. Everything we write is a written record that someone existed. And when I write, well, sometimes, sometimes its absolute garbage, and sometimes its fine, and sometimes I feel like there are spirits touching my fingers to the keyboard. No one is good 100% of the time, and that's okay.

I think you said you were a teen somewhere, I can't remember. When I was a teen, my mom told me I needed to "Hurry up and write my novel, so we can get out of here." She had complete and utter faith that I would write something brilliant one day, and she thought that it would save us both from a pretty shitty situation, but I didn't write anything long or brilliant because I just didn't have it in me yet. I had all these ideas, thoughts, concepts, but there was something missing. My mom ended up dying when I was seventeen, and she was sick for awhile. It's been nearly ten years now, but she shows up in my writing--she's a ghost in the background. Sometimes, we can't write our story until we figure out what's worth keeping alive, and that's okay. You don't need to experience tragedy to be a writer, but living experience is necessary. You don't have to know what it feels like to be stabbed to write about it, but you probably know what it feels like to be betrayed by someone. You may not know what its like to kiss someone, but you know what its like to love someone. Sometimes we can't write until there's life there, and like I said, that is okay.

This is a warning: don't treat novel writing like a career option because quite frankly, its not. I'm in nursing to support myself, but writing is my Netflix. Its free. Its fun. I get to make the show I want, and share it with people free of charge on AO3. Unless you have an incredible entrepreneurial spirit to you, writing for a career will eat your soul and your pocketbook. Unless you plan to be an English teacher, don't get a college degree in english (it is literally useless, Stephen King, Rick Riordan--they all had English degrees because they were teachers). The best thing about English is you can read books, and learn grammar, and write on your own and become proficient at it without a teacher telling you what to do or paying tuition or other fees other than library fees for all those books you didn't return. There are obvious exceptions: you have rich parents who let you live in their house and feed you, you have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a trust fund, or you already signed a $14 million book deal with Disney Hyperion Books.

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

ok so since i was tagged i wanna add my perspective on karen, which i hope is alright.

i’ve always related a lot to karen because of her relationship with sheila and a lot of the decisions she made (NOT daddyzgirl tho, lol) but i always found her very interesting. she definitely fell victim to the shameless writers not knowing how to write a woman without having some sort of man involved, but i always liked her. daddyzgirl was something i always hated her for at first, but upon rewatching and finding some deleted scenes i want to explain my perspective.

i’m not defending her at all and if anybody thinks i am they’re wrong, but i think there’s a deleted scene that shouldn’t have been deleted because it adds to the situation a lot (https://youtu.be/EA03ifDH2MA?si=JPjMzvML-52WojeD, 1:35) this scene shows frank praying, and as he is praying, he starts describing karen in a very sexual/pedophilic manner and it changed my whole perspective. not only that, but looking back and seeing how karen would flirt with frank and he would be interested and even after the incident in 1x11 he still admitted interest. i get karen shouldn’t have been flirting, but in that situation the adult shouldn’t feel any sort of way about it and should walk away. that’s my view. the fact that he was always interested in her makes me feel sick, and it’s not that frank deserved to be raped, because that is undoubtedly what happened, but i’ve seen people hate karen and pity frank in that situation and i truly find frank to be disgusting for it. karen was a sex addict and was neglected and starved of attention, and while i don’t think what she did was right i think she was a kid who needed help.

anyways, that wasn’t the point of the post, the point was more with karen’s pregnancy and you’re 100% right about that. not ONCE did karen say the baby was lip’s, she only teased mandy saying she was fucking with lip the whole time, but when it was actually happening i never saw it that way. i forgot the episode but there’s a scene where they’re on the l and karen says, “who says it’s yours?”. people see her telling lip that she never said it was his in 2x11 and they’re furious, but it was the truth. she didn’t. and if i were her, a kid who just gave birth with a ton of people she asked to leave watching her, i would be screaming, especially because of how angry lip was. she never said it was lip’s and they always had the intent of putting hymie up for adoption, but people missed that. i hated sheila for stealing hymie and for choosing him over her daughter and i don’t think she did a good job, but that’s just my opinion. jody was also a predator and she let karen marry him at 16, and when she was 17 with brain damage she knew jody had raped her and she let him leave with her. that terrified me, but people still see it as, “well karen deserved that. she was a bitch!” when she absolutely didn’t.

you’re right, karen and debbie hate is similar in the sense where they’re hated for situations people missed a lot of details on, and a lot of the hate is based in sexism. the two are actually incredibly similar and i could go on about it for days and never get tired. they both made mistakes, bad ones, but people neglect to realize they were extremely traumatized, fucked up, teenage girls who needed help but rarely ever received it. in s3 karen reveals she was almost sex trafficked and all of her money got stolen after she had to leave because sheila wouldn’t pick her. and the hate wouldn’t even bother me as much as it does if people would understand the characters they’re hating on or hate the male characters for their shitty actions, but i don’t see it happen as often.

sorry if i rambled or went off topic but i’ve been waiting to talk about this and i loved your post.

when i first watched shameless i didn’t really like Karen. the main reason for that is because of the daddyz girl phase, and because of what happened to frank. i think i mainly didn’t like her because of how hard that was to watch, not because i found her annoying or anything. a lot of her scenes after that were hard to watch, like the scene where lip is yelling that he doesn’t love her.

so i don’t think i fully disliked her, but her scenes were just difficult for me to see for some reason. i did understand a lot of her motives though, and maybe that’s why i found it so hard.

however, no matter how i felt about her, the first time i watched shameless i was LIVID about what happened with the baby. i was sitting there so confused at lip because she NEVER said the baby was his. she never even implied it. she just didn’t say the baby *wasnt* his because she genuinely didn’t know. it made me mad when people were telling her to keep the kid. that was her baby, if she wanted to give it up for adoption she could - remember she is a teenager with not much money and a mother who couldn’t support karen, never mind a baby (ik sheila did a good job in the end, but it’s reasonable to have thought she wouldn’t). karen also knows that she’s got problems herself, and shouldn’t be responsible for another person.

what makes me mad about karen hate is that it’s similar but opposite to debbie hate. let me explain. people will say debbie was wrong for having her baby at all, that she was stupid and should’ve listened to fiona and shouldn’t have expected any help from her family, forgetting she was a teenager who made a similar ‘mistake’ (depending on how u look at it) that many real life teenagers make. however, when karen is very against having the baby at all, when she wants nothing to do with her teenage pregnancy, basically doing what everyone wanted debbie to do, she gets hate. she gets told she was being horrible to lip, that it was his baby too.

the reason i think this is is because debbie’s baby daddy ran off, but karen’s (if the baby had been lip’s) baby daddy was willing to stick around. the moment a man is involved, the baby is no longer the woman’s according to some. it drives me crazy. it’s SEXISM. pure sexism.

i wanna tag @m4ndysk4nkovich in this because I feel like she'll get it

[glamorouspixels]

Even before I could put a name to my issues, I instinctively developed strategies to cope with some of my brain's weirdness. I always fall into a pattern of being absolutely obsessed with something as long as I'm actively interacting with it, and forgetting it ever existed as soon as I let it go.

The first time I finished MFMM, I was completely blown away by how much I loved it and decided not to let this happen again. This was part of my motivation for becoming a writer. I knew I'd found something special and I didn't want to lose it like I had all of my previous fandoms.

I've written fanfic almost daily for more than three years, no matter how busy I've been and whether I've been in the mood. Now, this habit is 100% the reason I've managed to write as much as I have (or anything beyond my first-ever fic, really). However, it's also completely robbed me of the ability to take breaks, and I have no way of knowing whether I "actually" enjoy writing (or even MFMM).

When something shitty happens, say, the author I've been hyperfixating on leaves the fandom, I am forced to confront the reality that other people's brains Do Not Work Like That. Other people get urges to engage with certain hobbies or media and when those urges disappear, they stop engaging with the thing and it's okay. I... do not get those urges, so if I listened to my brain, I would never engage with any hobby, consume any media, etc.

During the initial period of the hyperfixation, the media currently on my mind will be the only thing I want to think about. With MFMM, that initial spark is completely gone (obviously; it's been over three years). It is still my favorite show of all time and the first thing on my mind when I need comfort, and I enjoy writing for it while I'm doing it. However, I no longer light up just seeing Phryne and Jack on my screen and the lack of new fic makes it harder to get excited about it. Plus, for the past two years I've been more busy than a human should reasonably be and it hasn't exactly helped.

Because I am "stuck" in this routine, I can't take a few days off to see if I would still feel the desire to write. I know I wouldn't, because my brain delivers no reliable signal of whether I like something if I'm not actively interacting with it. So basically, I either have to keep going indefinitely or make the active decision to let MFMM go. The latter feels like punishment for having a broken brain, so I would like to avoid that option if at all possible.

However, I'm absolutely terrified of running out of fic ideas, so perhaps I should leave while the decision is still mine to make and before my brain makes the decision for me. It's not what I want, though. I've debated leaving any social media and only posting fics and interacting with MFMM through AO3, because Tumblr is a massive source of stress for me. But if I did that, I would lose one way I keep MFMM present in my mind (i.e., Tumblr posts), potentially taking me further away from my enjoyment and speeding up the process of losing interest.

I know this is deeply fucked up, but I don't have access to any form of treatment and... 😞 I very much want to keep loving MFMM. It just feels like there's no point in having any interest or following any hobby, if it always ends with me completely forgetting it ever existed and having no fond memories of the time whatsoever.

[dreamylyfe-x]

Your trevor meta is making me realize how weird it is that the writers and cast were so insistent that mickey wasn't coming back, because I don't think theyve ever really known what to do with ian's story without him. They put him in these lukewarm relationships and tell us they're so much better and healthier, but then have ian straight up admit that he still loves mickey and nobody else has made him feel the same way. How do they set that up and then have him go back to trevor? They set up ian moving on with "I'm not that person anymore" and follow up with season 8. It's like okay...who he is now is gay Jesus? Lmao. He's always been the shows forgotten middle child and after they wrote mickey off "for good" they could have taken him in a million directions but they chose one so shitty it basically made cam leave lmao. Sometimes it feels like fan insistence kind of forced mickey back but in actuality, the seasons where he's gone just hammer home that he was always the inevitable end to ian's story. So bizarre how little the showrunners understand their own story sometimes.

Ok. I’m going to be a little more Doylist here than I usually am, because we’re talking about what the writers are thinking. And I’m also going to take this opportunity to share this fascinating article from the AV Club in 2016: When Fan Engagement Goes Wrong. Everyone beware, it contains significant spoilers for The 100. But it’s also largely about Gallavich, the fact that online promotion of Shameless leaned hard into the popularity of the couple, and were up against it when Noel left. I’ll quote: 

“[Supervising Producer Shelia] Callaghan’s choice to be honest and straightforward when engaging with fans is admirable, and yet also on some level futile. She can’t tell them exactly why Fisher chose to leave, she is (logically) unwilling to spoil future storylines outright, and she can only speak her own mind as part of a collaborative process over which she holds only some influence. So while many fans respect her effort to maintain the connection to this now marginalized community, others attack, reinforcing that attempting to manage these situations is a full-time job that no one has been properly trained for.” 

This article links some tweets and the one I find the most interesting is this one:

“But the actor left.  So...what to do? Have them just break up?? Felt way less true to me than a forced separation!” 

That tweet is from Krista Vernoff, who wanted to convey that they tried really hard to come up with what they do with Ian now that he’d lost Mickey. And I’m sure they did try really hard. And.... People hated it. Mostly. 

Here’s what I think, based on what I’ve read and the interviews I’ve seen, on deleted tweets and Tumblr rumours and YouTube clips: The show didn’t want Mickey to leave the canvas. At all. Noel wanted more money. The show could not come up with both that money and the money they needed for everyone else. The show let him go. And hoped they could solve the creative problem their budgetary problem had dumped in their lap. 

I actually think Ian’s story in season six is decent. I miss Mickey, of course. I find the last scene with him really painful -- but it’s not painful because the show is trying to diminish him. They write and then cut together a scene where Mickey is DEMONSTRATIVELY still deeply in love with Ian. He’s carved his name in his chest. He is looking at Ian like he’s the most beautiful creature ever given breath. And Ian can barely meet his gaze. They tell us Mickey is being sent away for 16 years but when we see the last of Mickey Milkovich in season six I think “God, this is so sad. They love each other so much and this is so fucked up.” 

I do NOT think “We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together.” 

The show always knew what it had with Ian and Mickey. They leaned into it promotionally. They gave meaty storylines to the characters, particularly given that Ian was the fourth lead on a family dramedy built around six children. John Wells replaced Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. He knows how hard it is to follow a phenomenon. 

The more I think about it, honestly? I don’t think they tried. I think they knew that they couldn’t bring in Mickey Milkovich, the sequel in season six, so they brought in Caleb. And maybe they meant for him to be a LITTLE more viable than he was... but I think there’s a pretty good chance they were just throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, while being fully aware that the important storyline in season six was getting Ian from despair to a fulfilling career. Caleb was just there as a catalyst. 

Season seven if more interesting, because Trevor is brought on and it’s very much... “Hey, let’s do something new. Let’s bring on a transmasc character and put him into a relationship with Ian and explore those complications.” 

“Great! Put it up on the board!” 

“Also. Let’s call Noel Fisher’s people and see what we can work out because we can do better with Mickey’s send off and people are yelling at me on the street about it.” 

Quite honestly, these are not equal tasks for his writer’s room. You have one story -- Create a whole ass new character. The only thing we know is that he’s trans. Figure out the romance from there. You have six episodes to get them together as an established couple. 

Then: Bring back the well-established and beloved character for an epic romantic two-episode arc where he reunites with his true love and they run away together and then ultimately realize it cannot be, and say goodbye and it all feels like I Will Always Love You should be playing in the background. They actors worked together for five years. They have a great professional partnership. They like working together. They have a ton of history so there’s lots of juicy subtext. The longing and sexual tension comes pre-established. See what you can do. 

HOW do you make both those things work out so that they are equal? You need lightening to strike. And that already happened on How I Met Your Mother. They squandered their good luck and now there is none left for Shameless. I do not disparage Elliot Fletcher at all when I say that for Trevor and Ian to really work he’d have had to have come with scorching chemistry with Cam, rich material that really gave them a good opportunity to build rapport between the characters, and A wizard standing by to cast spells in the wings. They had SIX episodes, a pretty average connection between the actors, and the “these are the LGBTQ+ people in your neighbourhood” scene. 

I just can’t believe that someone with as many years of TV writing under his belt as John Wells has expected that to work. He hoped the Trevor story might be good, and was certainly going to break some ground in terms of telling trans stories. And the Mickey story was going to be the highlight, because he knew people wanted it and he also knew that they’d had something pretty special to start with. Which is why people were yelling at him at Comic-Con. I DO think he hoped it might placate fans a bit. But... he wasn’t going to completely close the door on Mickey this time, either. 

So... I don’t really think the show every intended to write Mickey off “for good”. I think they wrote him off “for now, and we’ll see what happens...” -- and they did that with Karen, Shelia, Jody, Steve and Fiona, too. They only brought a few of those people back... They brought Mickey back three times. They ended Gallavich FOUR times. Noel is in ever season except eight. I don’t think they wanted Mickey gone -- but I KNOW the fans also made it pretty hard for them not to know his value, so absolutely I think that played a role. But when you create something people love and you get that lightening in a bottle like they did with this story, I think writers are always going to be excited to get that back. They like praise! They like people to be excited about their show. And Gallavich was always one of the things that got people excited about Shameless. 

I think they also wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story. But that’s why the lightening in the bottle is so valuable. You can’t just get it anywhere. 

[captnjacksparrow]

What are your full thoughts on Sakura's confession to Naruto? I've seen some fans blame it on Sai as he "emotionally manipulated" Sakura into doing all she can to stop Naruto which led to the fake confession.

Thanks for this ask @dinainwater 👍🏼 I always wanted to talk about that arc where all the characters' motivations were clearly set up. Sorry for the late response, Sakura’s prompts always makes my skin crawl.

I never knew that Sakura wankers would retort to such tactics by shifting the blame on Sai. I've said this in many posts and I don't mind repeating it here. Sakura was always written as a narrative tool to propagate the main characters, Naruto and Sasuke. This was always the case right from chapter 3.

This is also the arc where Team 7′s loyalty was put under the microscope for us viewers to observe. What will Team 7 do, when they hear about Sasuke who turned into a wanted Criminal??

SAKURA’S FAKE CONFESSION 

Let’s start with Sai. He is also a member of Team 7. Sai doesn’t give a damn about Sasuke and he doesn’t have to. Because he never knew anything about him. But Sai really cared about Naruto more than Sakura ever did anything for Naruto combining Part 1 and Part 2. Unlike others, Sai started to care about Naruto because he saw something in him that reminded him of his brother Shin. Naruto didn’t have to prove anything to him to win his friendship like he did with Neji and others. In fact, Naruto hated him in the beginning.

Sai, a guy who couldn’t understand any feelings, has slowly started to understand something and he started to help/save Naruto without any motivations or expectations.

Well, I feel Kishi meant to parallel Sai with Sasuke not only in terms of looks but also when it comes to protecting him. 

That’s why Sai went to Sakura to call her out for being a lazy donkey by dumping all the works on Naruto whereas she was sitting on her cool Ass without doing anything.

Well, I want everyone to put yourself in Sai’s place. What would you have done?While Naruto is getting beaten up for Sasuke’s sake and Sakura is sitting there leaving everything with Naruto to deal with the rough parts.

Now the wankers may make silly excuses like, ‘Naruto asked her to leave it to him’.

I am asking them, ‘Well, That didn’t stop Sai from not following what Naruto was about to do. He was worried about Naruto and followed him to see what he was going to do. And defended him from Karui’s attacks. Why couldn’t Sakura do this?’.

All these panels proves,

Sakura doesn’t give 2 shits about Naruto. But Sai genuinely cares about him a lot.

[[No wonder, Sai is one of the people with whom Naruto contacts a lot in Borutoverse also]]

Emotional manipulation is when someone uses their own feelings to make the other person feel guilty. I am pretty sure you all know who manipulated whom emotionally throughout the series. 

Sai was simply acting here as the viewers’ voice. I don’t know about how viewers felt about the confrontation scene. I felt that Sai was asking what I was feeling about Sakura, the whole time!!! 

Simply put,

“Just now, Karui beat Naruto into a pulp. He just doesn’t want to worry you by telling this. But why are you sitting simply without worrying about what’s happening to others? Do you really care about Naruto, a bit? You made some shitty promise with him some time ago and I don’t even know what it was. But he means to carry on that promise for the rest of his life because he likes you. Don’t you think you should take responsibility for putting such a burden on him?”

Now, This is where things get really interesting. Sai just observed Naruto’s behaviour around Sakura and concludes that Naruto is bearing all this pain for Sakura and to an extent for Sasuke but mostly for Sakura.

Sai comes to this conclusion because he never knew what happened between Naruto and Sasuke in part 1. He never saw their interaction or what’s going on between them. But Sakura does. 

Sai feels deeply empathetic towards Naruto’s sadness and doesn’t want him to get hurt anymore. Hence he is calling her out for her insensitiveness when asking Naruto to make a Life Time Promise. Sai went one step ahead and added that everyone relies on Naruto too much. As a friend, Sai thinks that they all should shoulder Naruto’s burden. 

There’s nothing wrong with Sai and his perspective.

Also, if he really intended to manipulate her, Sai shouldn’t have to tell Naruto about everything that had happened with Sakura and his Academy friends when he met him in the Land of Iron.

Even the most sensible Shikamaru thinks Sai was right.

For me, All of her Academy Classmates were speaking sense. Because, they were just observers. 

Simply put, Sai and Everyone thinks that Sasuke has joined Akatsuki, the organization which destroyed their Village to the ground and was also hunting Naruto. But Sakura’s promise is putting Naruto’s life at danger because they feel Naruto is doing these for the Life Time promise he made 3 years ago before all of her Academy Classmates because everyone knows that Naruto never go back on his words.

Where is the emotional manipulation here?

The only problem from their opinion is that they never factored the extent of Naruto’s and Sasuke’s relationship into the equation and it’s not their fault. Because no one knows. But Sakura knows, atleast a bit if not entirely. We, the audience knew what happened in the VoTE1.

Sakura openly acknowledged to Sai that Naruto considers Sasuke as his brother. She even saw Naruto fall into the ground and bawling like a baby when Sasuke left with Orochimaru.

Can’t she put 2+2 to know that, Naruto is not just doing this for her??

Well, Since when has she ever been emotionally perceptive of others’ feelings? She always thought everything revolved around her. So, it’s not really surprising. 

Well, in this scene I genuinely thought, She was going to do something good once and for all. 

What Sakura could have done?

She should’ve confronted to them like a strong woman (as much as her wankers portrays her to be), ‘Naruto is not doing this for me. He may love me. But He is doing this not just for me. I knew about Naruto better than anyone. He truly wanted to save Sasuke for himself as well. We all should talk about this to Naruto and decide later.”

But she didn’t!!!

Later Sakura went on and proposed to Naruto pathetically and got rebuffed. She really thought Naruto would believe her proposal. She still thinks ‘Naruto is an idiot’. Even Kiba couldn’t believe this bullshit. 

‘Sakura, You Dumb Biashhhh’, This is what Kiba must be thinking inside.

This is just another way for Kishi by dissing her and telling us that ‘Sakura never reached any emotional maturity. She is a self-absorbed girl who thinks that she is the center of everyone’s life. Sai, who spent very little time could understood Naruto better than Sakura, who was with him for a long time’.

From Writing point of View, 

Up until that point, Kishi tried to build some platonic crush between Naruto and Sakura. But he decided to break that crush by making Naruto reject her Fake Confession and prefer Sasuke over Sakura.

Furthermore, He used her as a tool to make Naruto and Sasuke meet under the bridge, which was the iconic scene of the entire Series and that’s the moment, that particular Arc was leading upto. The writer is telling us that, 

Even though Sakura wholeheartedly love Sasuke, when things don’t go well, she is not a person who will try to understand why Sasuke is doing whatever he did so far. Instead, she plunged right at him.

Even though Naruto likes Sakura, Sasuke trying to kill her will not evoke any kind of rage as one would display for their loved one when they gets hurt. Which means Naruto places Sasuke higher than Sakura.

Even though Sasuke plunged into the depth of darkness, seeing Sakura would not evoke any kind of positive feelings in him. But Naruto can. 

Even though Sasuke turned into a killing machine, and the entire world turned upon him including his former Team, the only person who will stand with him will be Naruto, no matter what.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Sai has nothing to do with her delusion. Sai simply spoke his perspective about Naruto and his pain, excluding Sasuke (because he didn’t know about him). As someone who knew both Sasuke and Naruto, Sakura should have a better judgement in this matter. But she didn’t. She made a fool out of herself by taking a worst decision to confess dishonestly before Naruto and tried to kill Sasuke without understanding what both of them are going through. 

Even if you live with this woman for 100 years, she is incapable of understanding anyone.

[bitimdrake]

idk talia having sex with a minor esp one not in a great headspace kind of sucked

anon, you have certainly gotten me off on the wrong foot here with the passive aggressive tone but okay. I've taken a breath and come back, so let's actually talk about this, with sincerity and genuine analysis. hope i don't regret posting this one

First off, that post was really specifically about the widespread tendency of fandom to, when absolving Jason of the blame for all his villainy and murders, decide that actually Talia “made him” do it, or at the very least she was a terrible terrible influence who corrupted him. Which, as I said and stand by, is absolutely not accurate.

But as I also said in that post, Talia doing bad things in general is canon too. A lot of that is dc's extremely shitty tendency to turn their WoC into stereotyped villains, and people more eloquent than me have talked at length on that--but while I don't think many of Talia's actions in the last ~15 years have been in character, I'm not claiming that they were all totally okay actually. (Morrison's Talia, for example, is indeed a bad person, no arguments--but because of racist misogynistic writing.)

I don’t mean to imply Talia is perfect in Lost Days either. She cares about Jason and tries to nudge him to good, but, even discounting the terrible sex scene we're about to get to, she also has an ulterior motive of wanting to impress/appeal to Bruce by returning his son. That doesn’t negate her concern for Jason, but it complicates her very morality.

So getting to That Scene.

It sucks! I don't like that it happened, I don't like the way it was done, I don't like the lack of follow up, I don't like it.

However, at the risk of discourse, the reason that I dislike it isn't because it's blatant assault. On the contrary, my feelings are really messy because it's something that in real life would almost always be awful and predatory, but in this specifically written piece of fiction...isn't? Like, it's skeevy and doesn't reflect well on Talia, but it also determinedly avoids making her abusive.

Despite your claim, they are both adults. The sex is consensual in the moment. But it's a situation that raises a lot of red flags for potentially awful power dynamics, and yet...that isn't really written as an aspect of it.

First off, Jason is 100% meant to be an adult at the end of Red Hood: Lost Days when said sex occurs. By the logical timeline of the bat-family overall, he's 18. By the timeline presented in Lost Days, he's at least 18, and more likely 19 or older. Of course, through a realism lens it seems weird to count the time he was dead or comatose--but DC has kept to their pattern of declaring characters to be mentally/socially the same age as they are physically, for simplicity's sake. (see, e.g. Conner Kent and Bart Allen for other examples of this) It doesn't always make sense! But it's one of those things--like kid sidekicks being morally okay--that we are asked to suspend our disbelief about when dealing with dc comics.

Now, I am of the personal belief that “but they’re 18″ is a pretty shitty excuse and not that different from 17--but it’s about the gap, and Talia's age is even more unclear. When she was introduced, she was very close to Dick's age. But that was pre-Crisis, and may or may not be true post-Crisis. And Dick's age is unclear as well. And sometimes Talia is interpreted as Bruce's contemporary instead, since she is his love interest. And how old is Bruce anyhow?

Basically: Did Lost Days writer Winick think Jason was 18 in that scene, or more like 20? Is Talia in her mid-20s, or is she twice his age? We have no idea.

As for their headspaces--Jason is in a bad one, but I feel like you might have the wrong impression of exactly what that entails. He’s not in the middle of a breakdown when that scene happens, or desperately vulnerable for connection; he’s pretty put-together, coolly refining his plan to return to Gotham. BUT he also certainly isn’t “acting like himself” at any point during Lost Days.

And if we're talking about headspaces: Talia's has just been altered. That scene is stated to occur shortly after Ra’s’ (real) death, which means it occurs shortly after Death and the Maidens, where Talia was herself repeatedly murdered and thrown in a Lazarus Pit, and came out changed. And--though it’s annoyingly not given any editor’s note or other call out in Lost Days, so it’s easy for people who don’t know the story to miss the context--that’s not an incidental detail. Talia’s behavior is notably different in that scene (her last scene in Lost Days) than it was in all previous issues. She goes from trying her best to turn Jason away from revenge to suddenly endorsing his plan to hurt Bruce. And she goes from caring about him in a maybe-maternal way to...that.

Per an interview with Winick that I unfortunately cannot seem to find again, they're both in a bad place and reacting in unhealthy ways. And imo, that is successfully portrayed. (But don't get comfy, Winick, I'm coming back for you.) It's two people who used to be kind and are now acting in disconcertingly out of character ways, and they have very uncomfortable for the reader sex as a terrible coping mechanism and shared desire to hurt Bruce.

But most important, let's talk about the power dynamic.

Talia was a caretaker for Jason when he was catatonic. However, as soon as he gets out of the pit, he leaves the league and is taking care of himself day to day. Talia sets him up with teachers and gives him resources over Lost Days, and he wants those resources, but he doesn't actually need her. He could cut her off at any time he likes, which we know because Talia is very concerned that he will if she pushes too hard against his plans. And while there’s a maternal aspect to Talia’s feelings for him--which, yes! makes the sex real squicky!!--she’s not actually a mother to him.

Lost Days Jason is characterized as fairly cold and cut off, and doesn't seem to hold any strong emotional attachment or deference to her as a mother/caretaker. He likes her? I think? But his lack of emotional expression is a plot point in Lost Days, and he's fully independent.

Basically: their roles have been set up with Talia in the role of former caretaker and patron, but she just isn't portrayed with the power to actually coerce him, logistically or emotionally.

Which is mostly an example of fiction breaking off from probable reality. Because if some similar set up to this occurred in real life, there are very good odds that the older patron would hold significant sway over their younger trainee, and complete negate their ability to safely refuse consent. There would likely be grooming involved, a predatory intent, a coercive set up to the sex--

But none of that is present in the comic. In the characterization, in the relationship between them, or in the scene itself.

And that unlikeliness makes it icky and uncomfortable and questionable at minimum--with an argument to be made that it's outright irresponsible. Winick said the scene was supposed to be uncomfortable (and boy did he succeed on that front) but I think it was uncomfortable in a lot more ways that he intended, and there were much better and less messy ways to make his point. And ultimately it just feels like...he really should not have done this. This was a shitty thing to write.

Anyway, I would love a final answer here where I could either fully agree Talia is a terrible monster or pull out panels to prove she's innocent, but I can't do either. If she is meant to be notably older than him, sleeping with an 18-20 year old is certainly shitty, even if in this specific rare instance it's not predatory.

I guess if I have an overall thesis it is: the crafting and set up of this specific piece of fiction make Jason/Talia an icky yet fully consensual encounter, but the fact that a similar situation in real life would almost always be coercive makes the fictional scene even more uncomfortable.

[choerrypuffs]

OH RIGHT ALSOOOO

can i have some writing tips? i asked my other fave authors and ofc how could i forget my ult fave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i've been trying to improve my writing but i just can't seem to make it like,,,, particularly good or my own style? im just not satisfied with it. I want to have the same type of writing like my favorite authors but its just not right to me :(

do you have any tips on making my writing more sharp or emotional? i find it extremely bland for my own good and it just doesnt hit a spot for me >:(

thank you queen!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!! <3

- ccsa anon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 (sorry for the bunch of asks :') )

FDJKSLD i really don't think i'm the one you should ask bc i genuinely have no idea what i'm doing BUTTT i will try my best <3

1. write in your own style — everybody's style is different and trying to imitate someone else will always feel unnatural. personally, i found it easier to develop and get a feel for how to write when writing shorter works, like <1k fics/drabbles/timestamps. it's a lot less daunting to write something short rather than something super long when you're still trying to get a feel on how you want to write. keep your writing focused at first and then slowly begin adding in smaller details.

2. character and dialogue — this may not be for everyone, but when i write, character and dialogue are the most important for me. make sure you know what kind of dynamic you want your characters to have because that will influence how they speak to each other! for example, if it's enemies to lovers, then it's probably going to be fast-flying insults/banter. the most important factor is that the characters and dialogue feel natural. keep in mind that natural does not necessarily mean realistic either! i think it's okay for conversations to not be 100% accurate to real life because fanfiction is supposed to be an escape. i just mean natural as in the characters and dialogue play off each other well, like a smooth transition - not awkward. i think this will help with writing that feels a bit bland, and it will also help your readers connect with your characters.

3. emotions — honestly, i think the easiest way to put more emotions into your writing is simply drawing inspiration from your own life. if you're like me, your life is extremely boring, so i strongly recommend you to romanticize everything! that random guy in the grocery store made eye contact for a second too long? write a fic about how [insert character here] fell in love with y/n within those three seconds of eye contact! or add an elaborate background story about how the two were starcrossed lovers in the past and that brief moment of eye contact made them recall all of their memories together! the world is your oyster! cat @luvdsc writes most of her stories based off her own experiences, and her life is a hell of a lot more interesting than mine, but her fics are great examples of turning real life into fiction! not to mention her fics are just literary masterpieces in general 🥰

these are all i can think of right now, but let me know if you have any more questions! i'll do my best to answer but please take my advice with a grain of salt because i am just a shitty fanfic writer that writes everything at 4am

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

so this morning, while scrolling through my fb feed, i came across an nyt opinion/advice piece from a 27yo (ie basically me lmao) who is obviously lucky, in a sense, to finally land their “dream job using my (their) skills” etc. like obvs i can’t read it bc of the stupid “you get one free article a month if you either don’t have an account or subscription” (my one free article was used up reading an article about adult adhd like last week)….. thing that nyt does.

but anyway. back on topic lol. the crux of the article in both the headline and the quote snippet was that the advice asker was really dissatisfied with the 40 hour work week that came with her “dream job”. with how having this 40hr workweek gave her no time to do her busy chores like house cleaning or laundry or didn’t even give her time to let her have her hobbies/creative pursuits (whatever they were/are).

however, in the comments on the article (and apparently from those who read the article on the comments, the advice/opinion column writer) a good bunch of like gen Xer’s and baby boomers (im assuming) were ganging up on the asker like “suck it up princess, it’s what life is!!! i work 70+ hours a week and LOVE IT and have just resigned myself to the fact that i have NO time left over to do my “chores”! learn to O U T S O U R C E these life admin tasks to someone else!!! everyone MUST LEARN this in america!!! it makes life so much easier ☺️” and such.

of course, there were plenty of the same bs comments that you see on anything about careers or home ownership towards millennials/gen Z’ers about “learn to go WITHOUT and save save save and squander your time so that you NEVER live and HAVE FUN or TIME FOR HOBBIES! my bet is that your parents did that and they survived just fine while also raising your ungrateful spiteful ass (not including any type of health issues they might have picked up from such long hours/shitty working conditions) so why can’t you just L E A R N to do the same you precious spoilt brat!!! because the reality of Real Life™️ is that you can’t have it both ways!!! then you’ll have early retirement guaranteed, hopefully!!! and know that hobbies really are time wasters most of the time ☺️ or at least they were for me!!! and your precious so-called “creative pursuits” most definitely are time wasters. no one needs THOSE.” and so on so forth.

they also had jibes for her bc the asker wanted to start a family at some point apparently… and apparently it’s “much worse” once you have kids. like. thanks geraldine and henry. you’ve just told us how much you’ve resented having your kids/family in one fell swoop. your opinion which you’ve framed as unhelpful, condescending advice is now voided.

like. i don’t know how rhonda or paul or deandra or philip could miss the point so fucking entirely. why the fuck should anyone- nay everyone (bc that’s what they make it sound like)- learn to outsource their busy chores like laundry/house cleaning/grocery shopping or god knows what else- to someone else???? why is that apparently a standard expected to be learnt in the US???

like why the fuck are you so desperate for people not to have free time to do these things (unless of course they live in some of those shitty nyc or other big city apartment blocks that don’t come with individual private laundries in the self-contained flats or a communal laundry on like the bottom floor or w/e for example) frank????

deidre why the hell are you so bitterly hankering about “be grateful that you have it easier than most and learn that hobbies mean jackshit and just sell your soul and time to your boss!!! when will the generation stopping being “me me me!!!” and “work life balance!” and think about the company’s bottom line!! learn that “work life balance” is never important! work like a slave for 50 years and see if your valuable experience is needed then! that’s when you’ll learn that those hours where you were never being lazy, instead of just expecting life to be handed to you, will have paid off!” or whatever other ridiculously toxic capitalist bullshit they were spitting out.

obviously there were FAR MORE people actually supporting the question asker and echoing the idea that the 40hr workweek is now redundant. they were also putting down the opinion/advice piece writer’s advice to the asker….. that was apparently similar to the all the bitter people on the comments saying that the 27yo was just “asking for too much” and had to “learn to suck it up instead of being a petulant and overly selfish dick!!” etc etc etc. we all know the spiel as thoroughly as the macarena now.

because whats so fucking wrong with wanting time to yourself and wanting time to do your busy chores??? why the fuck should i be outsourcing these to other people (unless of course you’re still living at home and your parents are still like “hey what clothes do you need washed i’m doing a load rn” or you have a partner that works from home or has some type of parental leave etc)???? i want to do my own laundry. i want to do my own gardening (ok lawn mowing or tree lopping (if needed) i’d actually outsource bc i can’t lift or push lawn mowers bc they’re heavy af for me or and i obvs can’t use a chainsaw)… but i want to do my own grocery shopping. i want to do my own cooking (although i would consider the meal kit services once i had job that allowed me to afford like $50 a month for one of those meal kits sub services) i want to do my own cleaning.

why, if i lived in the US and not australia, am i just expected to learn to outsource all of these tasks even if i don’t have the money for it??? like why the actual fuck are so many of you so fucking weirdly proud of being absolutely worked into the fucking ground for your “great country” (although this is actually bleeding through to australia too and i hate it); working like literally close to 100 hours a week???

because i wasn’t aware you had to be whatever the fuck his name is from 127 hours and cut your fucking limbs off just to fucking survive a job in either corporate america or just let alone any goddamned job in america….. all so they can supposedly “learn to like working for free and devaluing your worth even more to your employer through overworking yourself and always being available!!! mental health is for those who aren’t built for the Real Adult World™️!!! this person is a prime example of the younger generations being weak and dissatisfied with life so often because of their “oh poor little me!!! care for me!!” act. NO ONE CARES FOR YOU today. stop being so over-expectant/demanding and juvenile!!! only YOU care yourself and you should NEVER expect someone else to pick you up from YOUR bootstraps!!! you’re fucking whiny and conceited babies. the lot of you!!!”

because i honestly don’t know who the fuck would enjoy working 70+ hours week with no time to themselves to do what they enjoy doing…. or enjoy having zilch time to catch up on errands and life admin duties or just general house chores; especially if you’ve moved cities or an entire fucking state/s away from your family and support network. let alone doing the same thing on 40 hours a week.

and on top of everything, let’s not even get started on the time spent commuting to and from work or even commuting for life errands/tasks etc etc- especially if you’re like me and you’re nowhere near the capital city’s centre (ie sydney australia for me) for there to be reliable enough public transport and longer commute times to certain places in those cities (that i’ve bitched about plenty before on other posts on here about work/jobs).

get your head out of your asses warren and viola et al and realise that work life balance is literally NOT ASKING FOR MUCH and is asking employers to just have basic respect for their employees time if they work fulltime. it’s literally detrimental to ones health if they have to sacrifice what feels like (or what is literally like) their entire fucking existence to their employer just for meagre pay and just to fucking survive.

because i read a heart-breaking article last night from huffpost (posted by buzzfeed on fb) about a woman in the US who literally hid her having a second baby from her employer for an entire fucking year (literally the entire pregnancy and birth of the baby and the first 6 months post pushing the baby out) during the pandemic all because she was scared she would get demoted or lose her leading of a project and lose her bs “temp” job which had really turned into full time work although the employer never said anything about it being actually full time hours or whatever…. and plus the lady herself was apparently to scared to ask to be put on the books fulltime too for some weird reason.

like honestly. fuck capitalism. fuck thinking that “work life balance is just too hard for employers to add and regulate. it’s an excuse and ploy for workers to be unprofessional, unproductive and lazy!” or whatever the fuck. everyone deserves time to themselves to pursue their interests/hobbies and busy chores/life admin. no one deserves to waste their entire life working 70+ work weeks for those employers who literally have no respect for their employees personal lives and time.

and particularly during the time that is the pandemic as we’ve seen so many companies having to learn to wholeheartedly embrace working from home and more flexible schedules for their workers. worklife balance is absolutely fucking beneficial for everyone involved.

america fix your bullshit work ethic right now lmao.

[freddieofhearts]

Bye bye, dears (for now!)

I know there have been a lot of rumours and some posts about me leaving, so here I am to set the record straight and say a quick ‘au revoir’. This post is long, and I don’t expect everyone to read the whole thing—if you just want information on how to keep in touch, or about access to my removed fics, scroll to the bottom. ⬇️

*

Why are you leaving?

Firstly, of course I’m not leaving Freddie. This is just an ongoing hiatus from the social side of fandom, because while I have some incredible friends here, who have done all they can to support me and have made this experience wonderful in lots of ways—it’s also true that the social space has become more and more toxic for me.

I get a wild amount of hate. Despite never having my ask box enabled on here, people create new accounts just to message me and tell me all the problems in this fandom are my fault, that I’m faking being sick, that I should kill myself, that I’m fat, etc. I also very regularly get hateful comments on AO3.

Obviously I realise that I’m not the only one who receives these cruel attacks, but it’s become increasingly hard to handle them—especially as some people (‘real’ accounts, not faceless anons) do continue to blame me for wider problems in the fandom. It makes me feel consistently sad, anxious, and paranoid, so that I can’t focus on anything Queen-related that I enjoy.

More pressingly, it’s affected my mental health, which is—imperfect at the best of times. As I’ve occasionally alluded to in older posts on this blog, I have a history of anorexia, OCD, PTSD, and some other overlapping issues. Most people who know me in the fandom are also aware that I’m ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ to Covid-19, significantly immunocompromised, and have been isolating at home for eleven months.

The combination of all of these things + the constant toxic messages has really been triggering me, and leading to an uptick in disordered behaviours, which my body cannot sustain. Every new instance of hate from an anon—every time there’s another indication of groups in the fandom wanting to ostracise me further—my reaction is deeply self-punitive and unhealthy. Ultimately I need to be out of this environment for, at least, a protracted period. My therapist, my partner and my close friends in the fandom support this decision.

*

So, what went wrong?

In 2019, I expected to be an absolutely tiny blog in the Queen Tumblr landscape. The fandom was already well-established, and I have never worked to ‘build a following’ on here—I think I’ve linked my own fic a maximum of three or four times!—in fact, more or less the opposite. As I mentioned above: ya girl is nutty as a fruitcake. As a result, I often avoid extremely niche things in daily life which cause severe anxiety for me, Relevant examples here: I never look at my timeline. I never intentionally look at my follower number. Yup, it’s strange, I fully admit it, but it’s best for me to go with these things—usually. In Queen fandom, however, this avoidance both of analytic stats and of most direct engagement led to some problems... My followers grew without me realising, and way more people were reading my blog than I was aware of. I was still in a—“Wow, this fandom is very frustrating, and rife with ableism, racism, etc., so how do we fix this???”—mindset, and I wanted to share my opinions, sure! but I also thought I was sharing them with 15-20 like-minded people.

Now, intent is not impact, and I recognise that I was brusque, didn’t phrase things particularly sensitively, and absolutely did hurt some people by criticising the fandom so freely. I still regret this—and I regret just as much the fact that some assholes have used my criticising the fandom on my own blog as implicit justification for attacking authors. I have said on here many times that I don’t condone that behaviour—but I also think there’s some truth in the presumption that these anonymous malcontents felt my critiques somehow ‘permitted’ them to engage in abuse. For the first few months, though, I genuinely had no idea there was a link at all—and so I was initially slow to condemn this abusive behaviour in public, because I was taking it for granted all authors agreed it was shitty. It took someone directly telling me (shoutout to @a-froger-epic) that people had identified a connection between my posts and the anons, before everything fell into place.

I would like to offer my apologies to the fandom at large for not being more quick on the uptake about this, because I feel that had I realised sooner that these people were taking ‘inspiration’ in some way from me, it might have been easier to put a stop to it. It does seem that there is still a lot of confusion about whether I support them and which of their views I agree with. Let’s be 100% clear on this: I do not support the anonymous commenters on AO3. At times there is some, limited overlap between parts of their views and parts of mine, but even that is less than you may think—I often see anonymous comments from so-called ‘Freddie fans’ that I substantially disagree with.

Perhaps even more importantly: I do not support anyone who sends anonymous hate on Tumblr.

*

What’s all this about ‘overlap’ with the anons?

Let’s do a mini-summary of the myths vs. the truth. There are views I hold which are genuinely unpopular in the fandom—but which I own up to completely, and have never tried to hide in any way. I’ve never needed to use anonymous to share my opinions because I’m completely open about them! What people who don’t know me tend to have ‘heard’ about me, though, is usually a drastic distortion of my real opinions.

What people think I think:

- Freddie should never top.

- It’s okay to send anon hate if someone writes Freddie ‘wrong’.

- It’s more important to correct ‘wrong’ portrayals than to respect other writers.

- It’s inherently wrong to be more interested in band pairings than canon pairings.

- Freddie should be overtly written as a r*pe survivor/victim (and not doing this is wrong).

- Freddie should be overtly written as having an eating disorder (and not doing this is wrong).

- Kink fics are wrong.

What I actually think:

- I believe Freddie did have a strongly defined sexual identity with marked preferences, but I don’t think Jim Hutton lied when he said that Freddie topped. I believe Freddie did top, but this isn’t the time or place to get into my thoughts on why/when/how much. I do believe that my analysis of the sources relevant to this subject is as historically accurate as one can reasonably be in matters of sex (where historical accuracy will always be particularly limited and imperfect)—but I don’t think it’s morally wrong to write Freddie as topping more than he probably did.

- I don’t believe there’s only one ‘right’ version of Freddie (all others being ‘wrong’). I do believe it is possible to be more right or less right—but I’m also conscious of the fact that this scale of value is not one by which everyone measures fanfiction. As a result, then, I don’t think that any perceptions surrounding ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ justify sending anonymous, non-constructive criticism, or outright hate.

- I do believe constructive criticism is a good thing. I welcome and appreciate it myself; I have received it on my fics in Queen fandom, and it has made them better. I have been in writing workshops which included very forceful criticisms, and the value of such feedback has been intimately and immediately part of my life as a writer for years. However: in this case, I have accepted that my opinion differs from the general community preference, and so I no longer offer any constructive criticism (outside private beta-reading). I haven’t changed my view, but I’ve changed my practice to align with community norms.

- I do not think any single, individual writer has a personal responsibility to write about Freddie Mercury in any given way. That ranges from including the more distressing topics to which I’ve devoted attention (such as trauma)—to concentrating on ‘canon’ pairings like Jimercury—to, even, focusing on Freddie at all.

“Now, that doesn’t sound like you, @freddieofhearts,” you might be thinking. And I know it doesn’t; I think something I’ve done a poor job of articulating is the difference between how I view each individual fan—namely, as free to shape their creative experience at will, even in ways that I might find distressing or offensive; even in ways that you might find distressing or offensive—and the way I view the Collective. I think people have interpreted some of my critiques of ‘Queen Fandom’ as meaning something like: “You-in-particular, a specific Queen fan, are doing it wrong and should change everything about how you do it; also you don’t really care about Freddie.”

And—that’s not it. What any given fan, as an individual, does, isn’t a problem. And that can be true alongside—concurrently with—a multivalent critique of how the fandom is lacking in representation of Freddie’s life, with all that that (wonderful, deservedly celebrated, but also profoundly traumatic) life entailed. I still hold that view; I still have myriad problems with ‘the fandom’ (structurally, collectively, historically and presently—from the 1990s to the 2020s). Some of what I want to work on (away from the social life of fandom) is expressing those critiques with greater nuance, in ways that can’t be misinterpreted as shading any particular fanfiction author or subgenre of story.

In brief: I haven’t changed my mind, but I think Tumblr is an untenable environment in which to discuss the things I want to analyse, especially as there is an ever-present danger of hurting someone.

*

Can we keep in touch? Where is the fic?

I will drop by this account periodically to check out posts that friends have sent me, so you can always sent me a private message to ask for my contact details on the other app that I’m using now for fandom friends. Multiple Freddie conversations and projects are going on over there, off-Tumblr, with a much ‘gentler’ environment and no bad actors—I personally love it!

All my fic has been downloaded and saved. I don’t want to deal with constant harassment on AO3, but I’m happy to share a copy with anyone who missed it and wants to read/re-read something. I also saved everyone’s lovely comments and thoughtful con-crit, so none of that has been lost or erased.

Thank you to everyone who welcomed me to the fandom, made me think, taught me, shared with me, sent me into fits of the giggles, collaborated with me creatively, and otherwise made this one hell of a ride! Love you all. ❤️

[sinagrace]

Iceman’s been back on my mind lately. It started with the internet rumor that Shia Labeouf was being considered to play the role of Bobby Drake in a Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the X-Men. My DMs and @Mentions on social media were a mixture of intense reaction and then asking my take on who would make a great Bobby Drake (for the record: in my head I always saw him as a younger Antoni Porowski with a theater background, ‘cuz playing the funny guy with a vulnerable streak requires serious acting shops). My mind went back to the time of BC, when I was doing a lot of touring, and answering this very question because of my work on the Iceman book at Marvel. One thing led to another, and I decided to take a trip further down memory lane to look at my favorite volume of the series: Amazing Friends. Now, I know I’ve spent equal amounts of time publicly stating what a gift working on Iceman was, while also calling out the challenges that came with the experience, but the third volume really was a pure blessing. I was able to take every valuable lesson I learned as a writer, and apply it to telling a story that would be interesting to one person: Me. I’ve been a lifelong X-Men fan, I live and breathe comics, so my own expectations for a return to the series seemed like the only ones to really worry about meeting/ surpassing. The first two volumes had been so bogged down by rotating editors, complex continuity, company-wide events, multiple artists… The third volume was my chance to focus on what an Iceman series was outside of so much context. All that mattered was challenging myself to do an X-Men story that focused on the aspects of the franchise I felt were valuable and relevant, meaning: excuses to have Emma Frost be an asshole and finding an opportunity to make fun of Kitty Pryde’s haircut. Before moving on from Marvel, Axel Alonso made time to call me for a pep talk about the series. I wanted to get the series extended, and he wanted to help me succeed with the ten issues he could commit to. First, he offered an eleventh issue to give me more time on the stands. He took a look at everything I had planned, and basically told me to restructure with an eye for ramping up the pace. My writing background comes from prose and essays/ think pieces… both of which are methodical and provide some allowance from the reader to really take your time and set up the world before diving into the meat. That’s not the case with comics. You gotta work fast. Especially in today’s market, there is less and less room for a retailer to say, “give it two volumes, because shit starts really coming together by the third trade.” That was literally my speech for hooking people on such iconic series as Invincible, Fables, and Strangers in Paradise. Nowadays, every single issue is not a brick to be laid down as foundation so much as a bullet in your gun. Conflicting imagery, but that’s the point. Axel told me to think about the Big Moments in my life and sort out how to inject the mutant metaphor into it and make the most compelling comic book story I could. This was epic advice that I took with me into the new arc, but I struggled a bit with what could be bigger than the “coming out” storyline in volume one. Love was off the table because I wanted to keep Bobby single and ready to mingle. Death was off the table too, because my editor felt like we’d done enough with Bobby’s parents in the first two volumes. Upon looking at my own life, and considering the stuff me and my friends were dealing with, I landed on something a bit more reflective than LIFE or DEATH. I wanted to focus on that moment when a gay guy looks outside of himself and realizes the folks around him may not have it so easy. After everything we’ve been dealing with this summer, Iceman’s “big issue” of the arc feels oddly prescient. Bobby Drake had to reconcile his accidental complicit role in keeping the Morlocks down, and he has to investigate new approaches to being a better ally to those who don’t want to or can’t live under the protection of the X-Men. I used the Morlocks to allegorically speak to the issues that the trans/ NB community face today. Considering that trans folks are facing higher rates of homelessness and murder than other members of the LGBTQIA+ community, all I needed to do was find a perfect villain to treat the Morlocks as “lesser-than.” Cue Mister Sinister, who I wrote as particularly Darwinist with a major flair for interactive theater. While Amazing Friends definitely is the most fun I’ve had working on the book, it was also full of the heaviest shit I’ve written about. I’m so grateful that my editor let me use Emma Frost for a story about the trauma of gay conversion therapy with her brother Christian, but I’m still annoyed he wouldn’t let me put her in a sickening Givenchy outfit for her reveal. Similarly, creating the Madin character required that I chat with several mental healthcare professionals and members of the NB community to respectfully portray them as a resilient and fleshed out hero. I included personal lessons that I learned from years of the therapy (the sandcastle / sea image, a Jay Edidin fave moment). My editor and I weren’t always aligned, but we definitely were on each other’s side. He understood what I was trying to do and asked questions when something flew over his head, and he even had the good instincts to stop me from going too heavy handed with the ending. My original idea for the arc’s finale was to have Bobby become permanently scarred in his fight with Sinister, where he’d have a cool ice gash running across his face or something, a la Squall from Final Fantasy 8. The goal was to show Iceman stripping himself of his ability to pass as non-mutant to save the Morlocks, but the Mutant Pride fight scene being a stand-in for the Stonewall Riots kind of already made enough of a statement. Plus, no one in editorial wanted to deal with remembering to track his scar in other books. At first I tried to balk at his point of view, but when I looked over my original notes for the series, the point was to focus on optimism and hope. Giving Bobby a permanent scar and emphasizing the notion of sacrifice was too bleak a message for a series wherein the hero carbo-loads hoagies while riding an ice scooter and mutant drag queens emcee local festivals. Of course, the crowning achievement of the series… my mutant drag queen :) I’ve witnessed a lot when it comes to the world of pop culture and myth-making, and I 100% believe that you can’t plan the success of something. I’ve seen bands forced into breaking up because labels spend six figures failing at making listeners connect with an album. I witnessed firsthand how The Walking Dead was built from relatively humble beginnings as a buzzy cable drama into a literal international phenomenon over the course of its first three seasons. Everyone hopes for the best, but you never know how something will land with audiences. When the Shade character took off, I was truly astounded. Things I posted on Instagram while half-asleep became official quotes on major news sites. Queens and cosplayers were interpreting her like Margot Robbie had unveiled a new Harley Quinn lewk. The impact was so legit and immediate that we had to jump in and give Shade a proper Marvel hero alias, to truly welcome her into the X-Men canon. Hence the name change to Darkveil. (Funny story: I tried to fight hard for Madame X as an alias, but CB didn’t want another Agent X / “X-Name” character. Three months later, Madonna announced the Madame X album. Phew!) There was a time where I felt uncertain that the folks in charge at Marvel would bring Darkveil into any stories outside of the ones I wrote. My understanding was that Hickman was like the Cylons and had A Plan-- one that didn’t include her character. I made peace with my contribution to the Marvel Universe being contained, but then someone on social media pointed out that Darkveil showed up in an issue of Marvel Voices. After breaking down and reading Hickman’s House of X, I saw that his Plan was one of endless possibilities, and that he was moving EVERY character into new and dynamic places. I have hope now that he sees the possibilities with Darkveil, and takes advantage of her and all of her many body pouches. Amazing Friends really is my favorite thing I’ve done for the Big Two. I made a lifelong friend out of artist Nate Stockman (DC, please hire us for a Plasticman book), and I got to run a victory lap with the most encouraging and supportive readers out there. It was worth every dreadful conversation, every shitty thing a person said to me online, and all of the fun nonsense that goes into being creative for a living. Being stuck at home in quarantine has given me a lot of time to reflect on the gift that my career to date has been, and I feel so grateful to be where I am today. Other people may groan when they have to talk about something they’ve moved on from, but not me. I made people happier, I got to work with my favorite characters at Marvel, and and I'll say it again: it’s a frickin’ gift to make people move from your work. So, I will engage every tweet or message asking me my thoughts about who should play Bobby Drake in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… I’ll just never have a good answer.

[sammansonn]

My Thoughts on the 100 7x10

Okay y’all this was a Time and i am Still Reeling

lets start with sanctum because i am Still processing the bardo plot

i’m so sad madi doesn’t have clarke rn and even though i know clarke has other things to do i Wish she could just protect her daughter rn

jr bourne is Such a good actor and i am Terrified of Sheidheda especially with that eye scar

the more scenes i see with murphy being cute with kids the more i’m leaning towards believing the theory that emori is pregnant 👀👀

during the fight with indra and sheidheda i was Really hoping murphy would just show up and shoot a bullet into sheidheda’s head because he Deserves it

honestly so proud of madi for Slicing that dude but also my poor babie girl you need to be Careful you almost Died Again

just generally concerned for sanctum as i usually am

okay now lets Get Into this bardo plot which is Taking me places

first of all after watching that prequel episode about the shepard i’ve decided i hate him (and anders) more than sheidheda

i think it’s similar to the umbridge vs voldemort becuase one Knows theyre evil but the other genuinely believes they’re doing the right thing which makes them Worse

very glad echo wasn’t actually brainwashed like sorry bb i was just worried should’ve known

but also... Echo...what the Fuck are you up to

the hug with octavia and clarke Genuinely made me tear up i love those women so much and their literally sister in laws so im glad they’re good now because they deserve it

i’m Very Upset echo hurt Levitt like that bitch be Crazy rn

watching Octavia leave levitt fucking Hurted even though i know its what she should've done but looking at their faces in that scene like my poor babie boy😭

see at first when thinking about echo killing all of bardo it obviously reminded me of clarke and bellamy killing everyone in mount weather but like echo Literally said, clarke and bell did that to save their people, whereas echo was acting out of pure vengeance which is a Shitty thing to do

listen, i genuinely like echo most of the time, she’s not my favorite character but i definitely don’t hate her but girl needs to get her shit together

you can see in some of my other thoughts for this season i understood some of her actions because i Get her trauma and why she behaves certain ways

and while i Get why she did what she did this episode, that doesn’t justify it

everyone in this show has been traumatized and abused and is generally fucked up, but at some point they’ve all been held accountable for what they’ve done (clarke and octavia especially, i feel like sometimes bellamy is held Less accountable but whatever)

i've said before that echo and bellamy’s relationship is Not Good, and not because i ship bellarke but because its just Not Good and you can see that in this episode as echo has a fundamental misunderstanding of what bellamy would want and who he is

i really think echo should be held accountable next episode because this shit was Not Okay

also speaking of echo that “emotional” talk between her and raven? i didn’t feel a Thing

like i know i’m Supposed to be emotional about it but i just Wasn’t

i don’t see them as “sisters” because we didn’t Fucking see them on the ring together

last season there really should been one episode following spacekru (like there was one whole episode for clarke and one for the bunker) because not Only is it hard to understand becho, but relationships like raven and echo just Don’t make sense

also because i cannot remember the last time i’ve seen them interact on the ground, like even without seeing spacekru i can see the love between emori and raven but i just Cannot see it with echo

honestly i feel like echo’s character Could’ve just been better, like they shouldn’t have put her with bellamy (because there are some bellarkers who Just hate her for that) and she should have had some Actual character development so honestly i blame the writers more so because echo Could’ve been good

okay back to actual plot and less analysis

even though i don’t Love jordan he did come in clutch for this episode and if clarke Isn’t the one taking the test to save humanity?? what has this show even been about, ya know?

also really like niylah just being surrounded by dummies love that girl (wish we knew more about her, she deserves more screen time)

the scene with the shepherd and gabriel was interesting idk it just really emphasized my hatred of the shepherd but i laughed at the fact that they were drinking kombucha

when hope sliced anders neck i Literally stopped breathing, i just gasped and forgot to exhale for a solid minute in Shock

that whole final 5 minutes Broke me 

Dioyza Deserved Better and i’m Sad

like hope Really fucked up

i’m worried because I (and a lot of other people) really liked hope at the beginning, and i still like her but she needs to be told to get her shit together because (just like echo) you can’t always be trying to get revenge it Doesn’t Work

she’s just being a dumb bitch honestly and Aunty O needs to slap some sense into her, but maybe losing her mom will help her realize that she's Fucking Up

but also i’m still so upset about diyoza like i think i’m partly in shock because WHAT ya know

so next week is the bellamy episode and i am Excited and also Nervous because jason ya know he be fucking shit up sometimes but also i’m just generally excited to see my boy i miss him so much 

[messofcurls-creative]

Day 15 - Joshua

First Impression: I used to know boys like you 😕 Final Impression: …well, fuck. Ouch 💔

Joshua, Joshua, Joshua… There’s a lot to say about this guy, and not all of it good. He’s a tough one to get my head around because his character has so many sides to it. The game gives us his attributes: thoughtful, loving and complex, and BOY did they deliver. I mean, I know they said complex, but did they have to go SO HARD?

This is a long post. I’ve got a lot of thoughts. Going into essay mode (sorry!)

Character development in three acts The gradual deterioration of his character is so interesting to me and done so well. There are essentially three stages to it.

The Front (I am a normal human boy) From the outset, Josh’s video message to his friends is… well. Hm 😕 At the time I thought it was a bizarre way of coping with his sisters’ disappearance and maybe even a little lazy by the writers—a flimsy premise to get the characters back to the lodge. Of course, once you know the extent of Josh’s plans, the nonchalant video makes perfect sense. It’s a front. But as far as we’re concerned, he’s fine. Fine, fine, fine. Other than the video, we get a few glimpses of what Josh is like early on through Sam and Chris’ conversations.

Chris: “I-I don’t know how he keeps it together… I’d… I mean, I’d be a wreck…” Sam: “Well we’re all just gonna have to keep an eye on him. He must be going through so much… and he seems like the kind of guy who’s not going to just ask for help, you know?”

It sounds like Josh is sort of coping. I didn’t overthink it because I was still getting used to the characters.

Then he shows up.

When Josh and Chris try to get into the lodge, Josh seems okay enough, but his Ashley pep talk had me rolling my eyes because he sounded like a sleaze. And fuckin ‘Bone Zone’? That killed me. In hindsight, it’s probably because a lot of his big plan involves Chris and Ashley’s romance arc, but without that knowledge, it comes off as a bit much. Then there’s his flirtation with Mike and Jess when he sends them up to the cabin. I mean fuck, calm down, son 😅 The front he puts on is so forced that I found it kind of offputting, but I guess if the other characters don’t see it as out of the ordinary, then that’s what he’s usually like?

So yeah, wasn’t 100% loving Josh at this point exactly, but I was certainly intrigued by him and his relationships.

Shortly after, there’s his trip to the basement with Sam, and it seems like he lets himself be a little more vulnerable, like his “I’m fine, let’s fuck” act gets put on hold. The recollection of how he used to play baseball with his dad made me feel for him. It’s clear he’s not 100% fine, but that’s okay. He has his friends around him.

Later, there’s the seance. Josh takes it seriously and seems generally freaked out by it. He storms off, and again, I felt for him (the manipulative fucker). AND THEN. THE SAW SCENE. He dead! And I was pretty gutted.

The Reveal (I’m not so fine) …right up until he showed up again, the little shit. His reveal was such a big fuck you, and I felt a lot of conflicting things. Like, he’s clearly having a breakdown, and that is the Worst. But he was alive! So that was good? But he did a bad thing, so that was shit? This moment helped everything that came before finally make sense. All the pieces of his personality that didn’t quite sit right with me fit together at last. Post-reveal, Josh quickly goes into decline. He’s a total mess in the shed, wide-eyed and lashing out. There’s so much bitterness and anger, and I love how misdirected it is, especially when you consider that Chris and Sam didn’t have anything to do with the prank the year before! We know how much the others have been through because of Josh, so we’re angry at him, but it’s also just so sad to see how badly the events from the year before affected him.

The Fall (Peak Despair) As soon as Josh is taken to the mines, any last little bit of coherency he possessed vanishes. The hallucinations, his bumbling walk and stuttered words… he’s gone. Comparing the Josh we see in Chapter One with the Josh in Chapter Ten side by side shows just how far he’s fallen. By the end of the game, he is an emotionally broken human being. It’s sad to see a character deteriorate so quickly over the course of a night, and though his motives and actions are open to debate, it’s still easy to feel sorry for him.

More Rambles Through investigation, we find clues that highlight how close he was with his sisters. There are photos and doodles and anecdotes that make it clear how much he cared about them, not to mention the massively elaborate Revenge Fantasy he just acted out. He’s wounded and doesn’t know how to process what he’s feeling, so (in my mind at least) he channels it into the prank— something tangible he can do after being made to feel so helpless when the twins disappeared. He’s a tragic figure, using his inner demons — Dr hill and his sisters — to goad himself on.

There are also the therapy sessions, which take place in Josh’s head and show yet another side to him that we don’t realise at first. They’re full of fears and self-loathing and all kinds of terrible inner turmoil—sad stuff. It’s all going on beneath the surface, and they also deteriorate. It’s such a good game mechanic.

Final Thoughts

There’s always been the argument that Josh didn’t deserve what he got, and 'deserve’ is the word that should be focused on. Josh did some truly shitty things to his friends, we can all agree on that at least? However, deserving something is 'receiving a reaction which rewards or punishes something or someone as appropriate.’ With that in mind, perhaps Josh didn’t deserve what he got, but only in the same way that none of the characters deserved any of this. There are outside forces at work beyond their control. Nobody wanted anyone to actually get hurt. The punishment — whether it be the prank or death — doesn’t fit the crime for anyone involved.

Josh is many things, and I like that fandom reflects that range. He’s so interesting to write. I genuinely like his character, not despite the dubious aspects of it but because of them.

I suppose his biggest flaw is his attitude that revenge is the best medicine, when, in fact, medicine is the best medicine 😔

[combat-wombatus]

uHm if you do these and if you want to do it I’d love a bnha matchup <3?

• my name is Aubri, I’m bi but prefer MHA boys tbh. I go by she/her, too.

• I’m a very Gryffindor person. (Sorry if you don’t know Harry Potter - 😖)

• I’m a June cancer, and I have ADHD and anxiety. My anxiety can be literally crippling somedays, but it’s gotten better overtime.

• I’m a bit of a class clown and usually just a clown 🤡 but that’s irrelevant. My teachers all hate me but like school-wise I do well so we have a love and mostly hate relationship 🤧

• I’m usually the ‘entertaining’ friend, in elementary the popular kids would invite me to play games with them because, “you’re funny” and it was like the biggest achievement ever 😭👍🏻 then they’d ignore me but that’s another therapy session

• I’m usually made fun of by people for being ‘weird’ and ‘insane’. Like all through elementary everyone thought I’d be a criminal when I grew up JUST BECAUSE I HAD UNDIAGNOSED ADHD - I hate it here 😐🦶🏻

• I’ve always been super into crime stories/true crime (where my anxiety comes from, I’m always worried about a pesky serial killer just killing me. It’s usually being kidnapped tho lmao) so I knew and still know like all these murder facts and sometimes I’d just randomly be like;

“Hey did you know it takes 12 hours and 2 days to dissolve a body in acid?”

or

“If you bury a dead deer over a dead body you buried deep in the ground, when police dogs sniff it and people dig they’ll just think it was the deer and won’t dig any farther.”

• So maybe people had a reason to be scared of me and think I’ll be a criminal someday, i dunno.

• I love love love reading and writing, and also debating. The things I’ve wanted to be when I grow up are basically: Dog shelter worker, actress, FBI agent, politician, and a writer. But usually I just want to do something that makes a positive impact on people. Like i wanted to be an FBI agent to solve crimes for people. I wanted to be a politican so I could actually help a lot of people. The entertainment industry also seemed like a way to make people happy. Idk, but then I decided I couldn’t be a politican at 10 because they were all corrupt and to be one I would have to be too. 😫🤌🏻 we love some good childhood angst

• the only subjects I’ve ever excelled at are ELA and Social Studies aka History, and Math I can’t do to save my life. ELA comes easy for me and I usually don’t have to work that hard and/or get too stressed over it. But I always get the meanest teachers for some reason. For example, one time I did my final essay for like 30% of my grade in 30 minutes the day it was due and I got an A+ 🦟🦗🦟🦗

• Uhhh id describe myself as a pretty loyal friend, I’m a ride or die type of girl. A story from my childhood that summarizes it pretty well is when I was in 2nd grade my friend wet her pants and she didn’t want to go to the nurse for it alone so I peed my pants so I could go with her and she wouldn’t have to be alone. Like, you know, a professional problem solver

• and I have genuinely attacked people for fucking with my friends but don’t snitch pls 🕳🏃‍♀️💨

• But also just anyone, people at my school tend to come to me with their problems for me to either help solve them by reasoning, or just to confront the other person like the bad bleep I am 😈😈

• I also have a huge daydreaming problem, it’s literally maladaptive daydreaming. So paired with my ADHD I don’t get shit done like ever.

• I have really high empathy levels I guess, like I always say hi to everyone I see on the street, especially if they look sad 😔 I’ve done it ever since I was a little kiddo.

• My fashion sense is very much a preppy/alt style. I wear those ripped tights and fishnets, I also have the MOST BIZARRE JEWELRY- like who allowed me to buy the gummy worm glittery earrings, hmmm???????? and those Mary Janes???????

• But I love crew necks and pleated skirts so I always obide by the National “hoes dont get cold” policy 🇺🇸😫🦅

• I wanna move somewhere someday, I don’t want to stay in America for very long

• I can speak Latin, French, and my native language which is English.

• My music taste varies, but my all-time favorite artists who all of their music they’ve ever put out has been my favorites are, Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez, and Conan Gray.

• I no-joke have a sign in my front yard that says;

In ✍️ this ✍️ house we ✍️ don’t ✍️ worship Jesus ✍️ but instead ✍️ Melanie ✍️ Martinez

• My favorite shows are MHA (duh), The Promised Neverland, and Malcolm in The Middle.

• and I’m not going to tell you what I prefer in a partner, because that ruins the fun 😤

• but I will say I cannot be friends with someone who doesn’t really make me laugh. Like I’m used to doing most of the talking in convos but if you’re just boring I’m sorry it’s nothing personal but no thanks 😐✌🏻

• About my physical appearance, I have fluffy n curly brown hair, but when it’s in the sunlight it looks sort of brown but golden yk?? It’s shoulder length :) I have bleach blonde streaks in the front. I like wearing eyeliner most days, too. I’m pretty average size/ on the skinnier side. Kinda high key inscure abt my body bc I got flat shamed in elementary EVEN THOUGH I HAVE TIDDIES NOW- whatever 😤🙄. I also have crystal type blue eyes, and I do have fairly big eyes. But, like, not weirdly big. A good big. My cheekbones are ALWAYS PRESENT so sometimes I get called a Tim Burton character but it’s cool ig ☠️☠️ oh and I’m kinda short. I’m 5’3, even though my doctor said I’d be 5’7. I feel like I was either tricked by the doctor or someone just stole my destined height while I was asleep. It’s probably cause I didn’t keep an eye out for Selener 👁 😔😔

• I’m a definite night owl, like all of my energy comes at night which really sucks cuz I can’t do much since everyone else is asleep.

• My love language is touch starved so I’ve never figured it out ✌🏻😗🔫

• but I am an attention whore so idk 😏

• I’m a huge introvert with social anxiety. It isn’t as bad as it used to be cuz I used to not be able to like go to restaurants but now I’m much better.

• I’m a huge history person, mostly like sad history LMFAO. Uh but a lot of my hyperfixations have been on history. Some examples are The Roman Empire, Julius Caesar himself, Anne Frank, The Titanic, the Black Plauge, Helen Keller, Marie Curie, Slavery in the US, Joan of Arc, and just a lot more. I always love talking about these things if someone would let me ramble to them but no one ever does 😖 it also got to a point where for all these subjects I’d go to the library and try to find a book on them but usually I’d either have already read it or I’d read it and know all the information.

• I’m super into Greek Mythology, I have 7 books filled with the stories, I’m going to Greece maybe this summer to see it’s history, and named my hamster Aphrodite but we call her Aphie. I also will talk about this forever and ever if you let me.

• My favorite color is yellow, my favorite food is literally nothing I never have an appetite, my favorite planet is Saturn, favorite song is Tag Your It by Melanie Martinez atm but it changes like everyday.

• Music is a huge safe-space for me if I’m feeling down or having a panic attack. It calms me down n is overall my coping mechanism 💃🏻💃🏻

• Biggest fear is spiders, even looking at one gives me a panic attack and I cannot sleep at all for that night, adding to my insomniac ass 🧎🏻‍♂️🏌️‍♀️

• I’m mature for my age, I don’t exactly like hanging around kids my age and I get along better with older crowds.

• i don’t like conventional dates, (I PROMISE IM NOT TRYING TO SOUND ‘QUIRKY’ AHAHA) I kind of like having a best-friend type partner more so dates that aren’t as romantic as like the movies or a fancy restaurant suite me better. My dream date is playing Monopoly on my bedroom floor 🦧

• Also I hate getting gifts. End of story. If someone gets me a gift like awe that’s nice but never again, I’d prefer to get you one. Especially in a romantic partner 😐 i keep a journal of my friends’ interests and hobbies so I can get them the perfect gifts for their bdays and Christmas’s. Been doing this ever since 4th grade.

• Though I don’t have much actual experience with relationships🧍🏻‍♀️

• I’m a huge believer in ‘family isn’t blood, it’s who you make it’ because I have a pretty shitty family life and my childhood has been trash. My friends are my family to me.

• Also if my friends don’t like my romantic partner ✨ GOODBYE ✨. Sorry girlie, bros before hoes 🦨💨

I was going to put more but I’m so so sorry for how LONG AND COMPLICATED THIS IS- idk if this is a autobiography or a matchup at this point 🤦‍♀️ don’t feel pressured to do this and if matchups aren’t open IM SO SO SORRY LMAO uh yeah ilysm 🦎🎂🧃

OMG ASLDFKJHASLKDJH

🥺 i’m so sorry bby but matchups are closed ;-; my 100 follower event was over while ago (i guess i should’ve specified that in the asks i answered LKSAJHFLKJAHDS SORRY IT’S MY BAD) but you sound so cool?? i had a lot of the same hyperfixations interests (heLLO helen keller was badass AF and the roman empire was messed up but still v cool, anne frank was awesome too) i also may or may not have wanted to be a politician when i was younger alskdjfhalkdhj but now i’m just 🧍🏻‍♀️ lost and anyways you’re amazing >.< love u lots and don’t forget to drink water and eat a lil something hehe :p 

[goodlifewrites]

I received this review for my story, The Potters and the Weasleys, the other day from a user called Celine Griffyndor:

“to me, Harry is a dick, why didn't he say what he really thinks about the other boy? and also Harry agreed to go with a girl he didn't even know and threw Ginny to the enemy, I thought Harry would try to talk to Neville to call Ginny. Harry doesn't really look like James' son, unfortunately, he has the profile of a withdrawn teenager (as well as growing up with his uncles). I really liked the fic proposal and the plot, congratulations on your creativity and writing. however, this Harry is an idiot and I also agree that he does not deserve Ginny, are you sure he has already kissed and been with other girls? why would Ginny be interested in him? It is quite contradictory. this last chapter left me very frustrated”

There are differing opinions on whether or not people should post negative reviews on fanfiction.  I do understand the desire by some to be 100% positive, all the time, when it comes to fanfiction.  Because, at the end of the day, we do this for free.

I disagree with this.  As long as they are constructive and not just mean, I have no issues with negative reviews.  On the contrary, they often can be helpful.  So, while I think the above reviewer could have been a bit more tactful with their words, the existence of this review does not offend me. 

We seem to live in this world where people believe there can be no negativity in the public sphere.  Everything must be 100% positive, all the time. I’m sorry, but this just isn’t reality.  When you make the choice to post a fic online for the public to consume, it is their right to consume and respond how they see fit.  As a writer, you don’t owe your audience anything (with some obvious exceptions).  But your audience is not obligated to sing your praises.  They owe you nothing back.

When I write my stories, I want people to like it.  Writing is not simply a matter of personal expression; otherwise I’d never publish it. I am putting my story out there to be judges and critiqued. Just because I do it for free does not absolve me of that criticism.  Because then we get back into the terrible mindset of real art meaning something you make money from.  

Additionally, we should always strive to be better.  If I want more engagement on my fics, which I do, I need to improve and earn that praise. If my fic is bad, I don’t get engagement and reviews. Thus, it stands to reason that constructive criticism that makes my fic better would yield more reviews and praise.  If I don’t take the time to get better, how entitled would it be of me to demand more reviews and kudos.  What even is praise worth if every person is getting the same “great chapter” from scrappy?  

When I read a review like the one above, I do get upset for a moment.  It does suck when someone doesn’t like your writing. Let’s not pretend one bad review doesn’t equal 10 good ones. But after I get upset, I start thinking about the comment. Are they right?  Maybe my Harry is too passive and weak? Why would Ginny like him.  So you know what I do if I think the critic’s review has merit?  I fix my writing.  Already, this review has given me some ideas on how I can show Harry in the way I always intended him to be viewed.

Because as a writer, as a Hinny writer especially, I’m going to fuck it up from time to time.  I will get characters’ voices wrong, create contrived situations, do a shitty job of representation, etc.  I hope I  will get called out for it.  And I’ll acknowledge my fuck up and strive to do better. 

That’s a good thing.  Writers, including fanfiction writers, need to be ok with being called out. And reviewers should assume the best in the writer instead of the worst. If we get a character’s voice wrong, don’t assume we deliberately made that choice all the time.  Assume we intended the best for the character because we love the character and want to do right by them, but we missed the mark.  Help us get better. Don’t just say “Harry is a dick” or Harry is a wimp.”  Explain that you think Harry’s actions are coming off as mean or too passive. Make a suggestion on how to improve it.

As an avid reader of fanfic, and a newer writer, I want every fic I read to be of a high level.  I want writers to legitimately get better and produce strong stories. So, if you are a reader of my dumb stories, please tell me how I can get better.  Fanfiction shouldn’t be an echo chamber of false praise. 

[comradesummers]

A few scenarios for you: Willow or Cordelia, Buffy vs. Jasmine (I'm 90% sure you've watched all of Angel) and Buffy + Satsu (again I'm 90% sure you read some of the awful Dark Horse comics haha)

Hi, thanks so much for asking!

Willow or Cordelia

This is a fascinating comparison because, in a way, they’re very similar characters. Both of them initially perform these very stereotypical roles, while repressing anything that doesn’t fit the stereotype. So neither of their journeys is really about changing, exactly, but about rediscovering and confronting the parts of themselves that they kept hidden for so long.

At first, Willow views herself as the bullied, put-upon nerd. As part of this self-image, Willow has to believe that she’s the good guy, the victim of the shitty people who make her feel small, and therefore, an essentially good person. And because of that, she often fails to recognize it when she crosses a line. So when her desperation for power and validation leads her to do some dark shit, she doesn’t really recognize it as such until she’s forced to directly confront the consequences of her actions. And I’ve always found that really interesting and painfully relatable, and it’s pretty much the reason I love Willow. But I kind of struggle with her in the earlier seasons. The writers hadn’t fully realized yet that they were writing a tragic hero with a fatal flaw. So she’s straightforwardly portrayed as this cute nerdy girl who’s always right, and those kind of characters always rankle me. Not sure why, but I’m just not a fan of the resident cinnamon role written to be the fan favorite type. I guess it always struck me as kind of fake or fetishistic or something. Of course, in Willow’s case, it is fake, or at least not the full picture, and that’s why I love her. But we have to wait for the later seasons to get to that point which is why I prefer Cordy.

Cordelia is such an excellent character and I love her so much. Like Willow, she’s initially a stereotypical character, but unlike Willow, the writers clearly wrote her that way with the intention of subverting the stereotype. So they very quickly introduce us to this idea that Cordelia is a very lonely person who surrounds herself with people she doesn’t like and who don’t really care about her, because she genuinely believes that that’s the only alternative to being completely alone. And so her journey on Buffy, and even moreso on Angel, is all about her finding a family and not feeling lonely anymore. And the way she finally figures out how to do that is by tapping into this wealth of compassion that she’s always had. She’d repressed that compassion because she didn’t believe it fit the role she was playing. But by finding it within herself she actually manages to get close to people in a way that she hadn’t allowed herself to before and I find it really touching. It’s a great arc, that works beginning to end (or well not to end, but let’s just pretend that season 4 of Angel never happened).

Anyway, after writing all this, I’ve realized that the main reason I prefer Cordelia to Willow is that I prefer the reformed mean girl trope to the cutesy nerd girl trope and it’s not that deep.

Buffy vs. Jasmine

I have seen all of Angel, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I’ve thoroughly repressed pretty much all of Angel season 4 for the reasons mentioned above. Anyway, this is my long winded way of saying that all I remember about Jasmine is that she can mind control people and that she’s played by Gina Torres. So based on this very limited information, I’d say Buffy wins the fight, because she has shown that she is capable of resisting mind control, at least after prolonged exposure (see: Prophecy Girl). 

But let’s be real, I chose Buffy because she’s my favorite, and Jasmine, as much as I love Gina Torres, really isn’t. Basically, I’m biased as hell, this is not exactly a scientific conclusion.

Buffy + Satsu

I actually haven’t read the Dark Horse comics. However, because I’m very gay, I have of course read some of the Buffy and Satsu bits, and I am all for this ship.I mean, I’m not super invested, because I’ve read like two pages. But based on those pages, Satsu seems cute and I’m 100% here for Buffy exploring her sexuality and realizing she’s bi. And yes, I’m aware that the comics go totally off the rails with this storyline, which is a big part of why I refuse to read them, but I’m here for this ship as long as its written by people who know what bisexuality is.