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creepedverse · 3 months

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MOD ASK - For those of us joining or rejoining the fandom, do you have any advice on OC creation like how to make them feel real or part of the creepypasta universe?

Also Im super hyped about the creepedverse!!

d6 - having fun with it is the most important thing. it's creepypasta, it's not that deep. research what you don't know (especially mental illnesses you do not have: i do not recommend adding diagnoses just for the hell of it) and don't be shy to impart parts of yourself and your experiences onto a character. that's what makes them unique.

D - I would say make sure your oc has weaknesses, while I love a Mary sue if you want it to feel real you need drawbacks to abilities, certain things are going to cause trauma but there are different ways ppl cope with it. Figure out what your oc’s coping mechanisms are. Also don’t be scared to give them a fleshed out background. Family friends. How do they interact w different kinds of ppl? Who do they prefer to stay around and for what reason/s? What motivates them? What makes them sad?

T - Look into psychology, study characters from classic literature, give them unique designs (make sure they have something recognizable about them). People aren't going to give a shit about your character unless you show them why they should. Have fun with it, take pride in it. Make it YOURS. Tropes also help as a good baseline. Learn the rules before you break them

N - Make something you're passionate about, something you can fixate on and sink your teeth into the details of. Character sheets are so so fun, but a lot of good characterization comes from how your oc interacts with the world around them, with other characters, with themselves. Write who they are when no one's watching, write how they feel about themselves and other people, write their thoughts, their actions, their reactions, write a world around them, and see what happens. Get visceral with it, give them the capacity to be awkward and clumsy and human. Study whatever medium you're creating them in. If you're an illustrator, research character design. If you're a writer, study literary devices and techniques. Look at characters that are similar, or characters you like, creators that write your favorite characters well and see what specific things they do that makes their characters so compelling. @crushedsweets is a star at character design, and communicating what a character's personality might be through color and shape language. @diasartstuff is great at making a whole universe around a character and giving them an ecosystem, a family, a social circle. @necroromantics writes character bonds so well, the intimacy of relationships and love in it's most prosaic and cynical forms, but writes like poetry, in a way that cements it's importance to his characters. So on and so forth. Study your favorite creators, take lessons from how they work. And don't forget to trust your own judgement, too. Nobody's ever going to make what you make as well as you do.

#u must find a schtick -sucker #mod ask #mod answers #long post

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chihirolovebot · 2 years

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GODD- THIS NEW CHAPTER JAKCKEKDJEKC

I’m literally going feral over the reader’s independence. So often in stories, we see the reader glued to their love interest’s side with no motivation or drive of their own. They often feel like a film of saran wrap that the author just kind of, slaps on, which is why the execution of this story is so goddamn incredible.

The reader has depth and a certain je ne sais quoi that’s so undeniably “Danganronpa” that it only could’ve been achieved with intense, in-depth knowledge and thought about the plot and themes of the game. Not only do they feel like they were yanked straight out of the game, the way they behave and act feels real, and tangible, and human. We see them mourn, and grieve, and cope, and recover, and strive to do better, and AOCKEOKFKDJ- forget the fanfiction sector, there’s almost NOTHING in modern media that executes this kind of story well.

Following that train of thought, the reader’s relationship with the other characters has been developed so well. My worst pet peeve in a story is when the reader only interacts with their love interest and no one else, and yet everyone still seems to love them, but this story doesn’t have that problem at all. It’s so lovely seeing the reader interact with everyone, and provides such a nice breath of fresh air from the usual death and despair of Danganronpa.

God- there’s just so much that’s so incredible about this story, but I’m running out of words to describe it without sounding like a broken record. (Not that I think it’d be bad- you deserve a constant source of compliments running 24/7 for the absolute masterpiece)

So yeah, I look forward to seeing a new chapter at some point in time, but please take as much time as you need to get it up there!

OH WOW this is such a long thoughtful comment hello!!! it took me a minute to answer because i like to dedicate longer answers to this kind of feedback SO i apologise for the wait but here we are!!!

i cannot tell u how big of a pet peeve it is when the reader-insert for a story is just, like u said. a piece of saran wrap. like even if the personality the author gives them isn't anything like mine, it's still way more interesting than them just being a mary sue for lack of a better term. PLUS giving the reader a stronger personality makes writing their development so much more fun and interesting?? i feel??

getting the 'danganronpa-esque' writing n dialogue down was SO difficult because there is just a Way they talk which i cant even describe its just. the most normal dialogue ever followed by monokuma giving the most batshit insane monologue u have ever fucking heard. u go from sobering conversations between shuichi and kaito about guilt and grief to tsumugi talking about getting deepthroated by a squid. the whiplash between characters n conversations was definitely one of the hardest parts to pin down lol. i am SO flattered u think the reader-insert fits into the world of dr, and not only that but they feel real to u?? that is Insane. thank u very much u have no clue how much that means to me personally.

AND YEAH ok ok i think i said this in the preface of the fic in like chapter one but holy shit yeah, imagine going thru the whole story and the only one the reader had attachment to was kokichi. it definitely wouldn't work with the themes i highlight in my work (not just living for other people, living for yourself, and establishing a middle ground between trusting everyone and trusting nobody) especially with a character like kokichi, who blatantly flies in the face of those themes. it also just wouldn't work for the type of character arc i wanted the reader to go through — they want to want to live, and first they do this through loving the people around them and feeling that they 'owed' them to stay alive, and just now they're in the process of learning to live for themselves. but they could never have gotten to that point without the affections and connections to people like rantaro, kiibo, kirumi, kaito, tenko and shuichi. like. if the reader ONLY had a strong connection with kokichi, they could never have learned all those valuable lessons and grow as a person. kokichi provides something else entirely for the reader — he is a challenge and someone that makes them question their morality and the way they think. he's not going to be any help in making the reader realise they want to live (except when he's doing a little mansplain manipulate malewife).

thank u very very much for this!! i apologise that i rambled a lil i just Have many a Thought abt this fic and i could probably talk for days abt it. im very very happy ur enjoying it!!!

#dear venus.#🏚.sleep awake

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leopardfang15 · 3 years

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Kakashi x OC

I want Kakashi to have a damn equal of a S/O. We all know Kakashi is a beast on the battle field. He is known throughout the world for his abilities and his Sharingan, He only has one, he’s not born to it and he’s more famous then most of the Uchiha. Wonder what that says about them XD. Anyways, I was always so worried about making a Mary Sue, then you worry most of the characters in Naruto are Mary Sue with their plot armor so I’m just going for it.

I feel like the stereotype for Kunoichi is that they all do seduction missions and bat their eyelashes before slitting their enemy’s throat. I thought it’d be fun to lean into the stereotype. So, I created Naomi Kinuhari. Jounin of the Leaf known for her high success rate in honey pot type missions. She knows how to build the perfect character for her target; shy and modest or bold and shameless. She will weasel her way into her victim’s heart before leaving them dead and heading back to the village. She’s the only OC I’ve created with a Kekkei Genkai. I liked the idea of her being able to use her hair to attack, like Sindel from Mortal Kombat or Entrapta from She-Ra. Here are my adorable relationship Headcanons between her and everyone’s favorite Copycat.

Naomi and Kakashi have known each other for a long time. She’s actually the same age as Kakashi’s old teammates, making her one year older than him. She used to tease him, calling him the baby of the group. Sometimes she still does. She’ll make a playful grab for the book and say something like “that is not meant for such young eyes!” It’s just her messing around and it sometimes devolves into two grown ass adults playing keep away.

Since girl’s do all their growing before boys, there were a few years where she was taller than Kakashi and was so smug about it. She would do the classic anime wall pin to him all the time. He’d go red from embarrassment every time.

Then after he went into the ANBU and hit his growth spurt he finally did it to her. She was as red as a tomato and sputtering. When did Kakashi get a head taller than her?! The smirk under his mask was one of the biggest smirks he’d ever smirked.

Kakashi’s coping mechanism is his smut books. Naomi’s coping mechanism is music. She has a portable CD player and a massive collection of CD’s. Sometimes she gets specific songs burned on a CD depending on what she needs, love songs, songs on loss or battle music. Don’t know if they have earbuds in Naruto but I’m putting them there because the image of her and Kakashi listening to her CD player while relaxing in a tree is so adorable.

Sometimes she has specific songs for Kakashi to listen to because the song put her feelings into words better than she ever could. She’ll just take him to a quiet spot and offer him an earbud. She shares her music with him when she sees he’s having a particularly bad day. When his demons are at their strongest and she can’t think of anything to help him beyond what helps her.

When she’s annoyed with him she’ll ask those questions or say those things that make you question your existence. “The youngest picture of you is also the oldest picture of you.” “How do you think of these things?” It’s fun to tease him with these things.

Naomi is not a fan of children. She has no plan to have kids, wanting to focus on her career as a ninja. Though she does have a habit on popping in on the rookie 9 teams with bits of advice. “Naruto, stop screaming. Ninja are supposed to be sneaky. Sakura, focus on your physical training so you can leave these boys in the dust. Sasuke stop comparing yourself to others. Focus on your own betterment compared to your last scores.”

I have this hilarious idea of Naomi giving Kakashi’s team her version of the bell test. The objective this time around is not teammwork. Naruto is actually the one who figures out how to get the bells from her. “Can you please give us the bells?” “Sure.” “Wha-!? Why make us go through all that.!?” “Two reasons. 1: it was funny. 2: to teach you guys you can’t go at your opponents head on. You need to be unexpected.” So of course Naruto would get it, unpredictable knuckle head ninja.

Kakashi and Naomi of course need to be in denial of their feelings. It is a favorite trope of mine especially since it makes sense for anyone with Kakashi. “What? No, he/she is just a friend.” Kakashi has intimacy issues and so does Naomi but for different reasons.

Kakashi is convinced that everyone he loves and cares for will die. His father, his sensei, his teammates. If he keeps people at a certain length then he won’t be hurt like that again. He’s convinced that he’s cursed.

Naomi’s whole career is based around creating the illusion of romance. She doesn’t know how to do it for real. She’s gotten criminals and the like to eat out of her hand and make wild promises of love. She’s not sure she’d be good at the real thing.

#kakashi #kakashi hatake #naruto #naruto oc #kakashi x oc #kakashi x y/n #Naomi Kinuhari

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marybeatriceofmodena · 4 years

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TFW when you try to do Anastasia but you also suck at your job: A Master Class by The Rise of Skywalker

Okay. So, I promised you guys a TROS review, and it’s coming, I promise… except I’ll be making two “spin-off posts” about specific issues just in order to clear up some stuff, mainly because in my mind, those issues are important.

First post is going to be, of course, about Rey’s parentage.

So. After TFA, it would have been possible for Rey to have been the kid of “someone”. However, TLJ made it impossible to do so, unless you’d have some serious, bullshit retconning going on – which is exactly what happened.

I know this is a VERY controversial thing to say at this point, but post-TFA, Rey Palpatine “could” have been possible. Okay, maybe not have her be Palpatine’s granddaughter, but more of a descendant of his.

This said, I “tried” making an origin story for Rey Palpatine that “works” for the purposes of this meta, on a hypothetical basis, while making it consistent with canon (something JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio clearly couldn’t be bothered to do, LMAO). I had plotholes no matter what. I do think I could have eventually found something with a little bit of brainstorming, but truth is, IT’S HARD, and a lot of exposition would have been for novels/comics only.

From a thematic perspective, though? It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. For this to work, though, you would have needed to go on full-blown Romeo and Juliet mode with sprinkles of Anastasia, though. I mean, The Lion King 2 did something similar, so why the fuck not. Because, yeah, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the last prince of Alderaan, who falls in love with the last Imperial princess Rey Palpatine while they’re on opposite sides of the war but not the ones you’d think of is the stuff of fairy tales and star-crossed romances, except this one would have a happy ending and brought peace to the galaxy.

Truth be told, I still really enjoy fanfics who go for that story and find a way to make it work in canonverse or in AUs – because it’s genuinely fun. But in canon itself, as I point out earlier… it’s not easy.

So, we have Rian Johnson who said he made a list of potential origins for Rey while he was working on TLJ’s script. You bet Rey Palpatine was on that list. However, he came to the conclusion that Rey Nobody was the best way to go, and whatdyaknow, he made the right call.

Why? Rey Nobody requires minimal exposition. Storytelling-wise, you don’t have a lot of brainstorming to do, and it’s easy to have Ben revealing it, and easy to present it as a repressed memory of Rey’s. On a thematic level, that puts Rey on the same level as Jane Eyre or the main character from Rebecca: she’s a nobody from nowhere who is thrown into a family drama, and since she’s the glitch in the matrix, she must stop the story from becoming a tragedy.

See? Simple. You got your easy exposition, you got your thematic coherence, and you got the literary call-backs.

So, JJ and Terrio decided to retcon this shit because, as they said, they thought it was boring. I think Colin Trevorrow probably thought it was boring too, because I have my reasons to think a lot of TROS is from him (but more on that in my main review). But thing is, it’s not it’s “boring”, it’s literally that they didn’t know what the fuck to do with Rey. No, more than that, they don’t understand her, and frankly, they can’t be bothered to do so. She’s an empty vessel they can toy with at their ease, and in the process, turn her in a Mary-Sue. Because yes, TROS!Rey was a Mary-Sue, whereas TFA/TLJ!Rey was not. So, what I say above regarding Rey might be a bomb for some, considering how people are (understandably) defensive when it comes to that statement. I promise I will elaborate more about it in the main review, once again.

So, with the lineage aspect addressed, it’s time to talk about Rey’s parents themselves.

It’s hilarious how HARD JJ and Terrio tried to make Kylo’s explanation work – because as much as they butchered the shit out of him, they said: “Well he’s a bad liar, right? Gotta keep that in mind.”

Although, I don’t think it was a case of them being concerned with Kylo’s characterization – they’re not that graceful. They had to figure out QUICK why the hell Kylo wouldn’t have known Rey was a Palpatine from the get-go, because the Force is a great DNA test and shit, and I guess that’s how Palps located Ben’s Mighty Skywalker Blood™. Except that still doesn’t work because Palps couldn’t even locate his own goddamn granddaughter, but I digress.

Seriously, why would Kylo lie to Rey about her being a nobody instead of her being a Palpatine? It makes no sense, because if you’re going to roll with the theory Kylo just wants UNLIMITED POWAH, the Palpatine princess is not only a great asset (since marrying her legitimizes your claim to the throne in the eyes of the Imperial Remnants, I mean, that’s literally why Henry VII married Elizabeth of York), it’s also the one argument she needs to hear in order to sway her to your side. So I guess JJ and Terrio’s one shared brain cell kinda flicked a bit at that moment.

This said, getting the Palpatine princess on his side is clearly Kylo’s intention in TROS (which, again, makes no sense with what was set up in TLJ but that’s something I’m keeping for another post), except they trip all over themselves by having Kylo say he didn’t lie to Rey in TLJ. Except…

So, what Ben said in TLJ was the following:

Her parents sold her for drinking money.

They’re dead and buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere on Jakku.

Rey is related to no one.

Here’s what Ben reveals to Rey in TROS:

Her parents sold her for her protection.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle (nah, for real: the actress who plays Rey’s mom is Jodie Comer).

So, um, yeah, it’s the EXACT opposite of what Ben said in TLJ. Just say Palps was fucking with Ben’s mind-reading or Rey’s memories instead, JJ. Not that “Oh Ben was telling the truth, but he didn’t have the whole story”, because that’s not it.

For the latter, once again, it would have been feasible: the one thing, for me, that was possible to be added was that Rey had killed her parents accidentally, by having their ship to leave Jakku crash down with the Force: that’s what made her Force powers go dormant for all those years and provoked her trauma. It would also make sense that Ben would willfully not bring that back to her memories, because she’d understandably not be able to cope with the truth, which is often what happens to a lot of trauma victims. THAT was the theory I had pre-TROS, because that’s the only answer I could come up with when it came to JJ saying that there was more to Rey’s past. I guess I expected JJ to be, like, actually able to write, lmao.

I even wonder if that was actually in the cards, considering we see Rey in TROS bringing down a transport that supposedly has Chewie in it… but I guess they deemed that to be “too dark” for their heroine. Except the bullshit that comes instead is actually… much worse.

To make things simple, I’ll just take the above points and develop them.

Rey’s parents sold her for her protection.

Okay, so, Rey’s parents need to hide her to make sure Palps doesn’t get his hands on her. Fair enough. This said, why did it have to be Jakku and not, like, ANYWHERE ELSE? Especially that Palpatine had interest in Jakku at some point and that maybe having Rey anywhere close to that place would not be a good idea?

But let’s play the game and say that Jakku is the only place they can hide her because… I don’t know, it’s hard to find someone there with the Force. Whatever. Even then, why the fuck would they think Unkar Plutt is a proper guardian for a tiny little girl? You know they could have walked a few miles more and found a nice old man who likes the Light Side of the Force and the Jedi and all that shit called Lor San Tekka? Hey, why not even try to find a guy like Luke Skywalker who’s like, a Jedi and shit, and have him take care of their little girl and protect her?

Even then, why the hell doesn’t Rey’s mom stay with her daughter? Her husband is the Palpatine, not her. All Rey’s mom has to do is find a nicer hiding place for her and Rey somewhere on Jakku, like, not Niima Outpost (again, Tuanul is just a few miles away), and just let Dad hide somewhere else. He’s a grownass man, he can take care of himself and he just has to hide on Nar Shaadaa or some shit. Fuck, why don’t all three of them hide on Nar Shaadaa? Or in the Coruscant undercity? ANYWHERE ELSE?

Also, wouldn’t Plutt clearly see two desperate parents as a business opportunity? Like, if you want to do a Les Misérables comparison here, he wouldn’t “buy” Rey from them, he’d try to get money for them à la Thénardier with Fantine. Except Rey’s parents make Fantine look like frigging Einstein because at least she had the excuse of thinking Madame Thénardier would take good care of Cosette since Éponine and Azelma seemed well-cared for.

Again, a creepy-looking alien who exploits the outpost’s inhabitants for portions in exchange for junk, who asks you to pay him to take care of your kid should be a big fucking red flag – unless you want to involve blackmail, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, why the hell would Rey’s parents even ACCEPT money that comes from selling their own child? Were they really that desperate? Fuck, even if I had no other way of getting off Jakku, I wouldn’t even THINK of using money that comes from selling my own child. Any parent who’d even CONSIDER doing that is automatically a godawful parent in my book. Shame on you. And shame on JJ for trying to make me buy them as saints, because THEY’RE NOT, JUST BY THAT SINGLE ACTION.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

I didn’t notice it until Jenny Nicholson pointed it out in her TROS review, because it SOMEHOW completely escaped my notice, but… Rey’s mom saying Rey is DEFINITELY NOT on Jakku is like the worst fucking lie I’ve ever seen in a film because it’s so hilariously bad. Congratulations, Space Villanelle, may you be forever remembered for this line.

Also, it’s stupid af that Oshi (that’s his name, right? Can’t be bothered to Google it, might just call him Barney the Bounty Hunter from now on) just kills Rey’s parents, because HE’S EVUL MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA, because he literally creates a dead end for himself. He still has no fucking clue where Rey is, and he just killed off his only leads. CONGRATULATIONS BARNEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER, YOU SUCK AT YOUR JOB.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle.

So, Rey’s dad looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, right? Maybe a little younger than Luke and Leia, then. So, unless he got frozen in carbonite at some point, that means Palpatine fucked at some point while looking like this:

Anyway, I sure hope Sly Moore was Grandma Palpatine because she’s pretty much the only person who’d be game to smash raisin ass. Which leaves me with extremely disturbing pictures of Palps and Sly having sex, so I’ll spare you the more graphic details of my twisted mind that’s screaming for an end to this misery.

I sure hope having Rey’s mom as Jodie Comer isn’t a clue that we’ll get spin-offs with those two (GOD PLEASE NO), but while I crack jokes about how Rey’s mom is Villanelle and Palpadad kinda looks like Ramsay Bolton… I find it fucking hilarious they dressed Rey’s mom in BLUE. LIKE, SEE? SEE? SHE’S IN BLUE, LIKE THE VIRGIN MARY, BECAUSE REY IS SPACE JESUS!!!! GET IT??? GETIT???? PLEASE TELL ME YA GET IT, OKAY???? *gross sobbing* I knew we should have had Rey born in a manger, that would have made the artistic intentions clear *wipes tear*

All right. There’s a lot more that could be said about Rey’s lineage, but I’m keeping that for my main review because what’s left to say ties up to the bigger picture. What I tried to point out with this preliminary post is that while Rey Palpatine *could* have worked, in different circumstances, it couldn’t have had post-TLJ… and we’re left to see a mutilated horse who was dead on arrival. And that’s tragic.

#star wars #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #rants and reviews #anti tros #rey #reylo #my meta #reylo meta #rey meta

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adrienscroissantx · 3 years

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Idk if anyone remembers the show but im concocting a veronica mars au in my head. This show gets me every time.

Sabine cheng, used to be the Local sheriff until she got fired for botching a case. Now she's a personal detective. Marinette is her daughter, who is now working as a private eye herself.

Her previous good friend uhhhh Bridgette, has been murdered, and to cope with the grief shes trying to find out who did it. This is also conveniently, the case that sabine botched, and feels responsible for her girls grief. Tom is still around, and their marriage is struggling a little bit, but they always come out strong in the end and give marinette a positive role model for her relationships.

Anyway, onto the fun bits.

Adrien, felix and kim take the place of the Rich Kid Boys. Adriens more the duncan type, sweet and nice and successful but kind of a bystander to his friends more Ugh actions. Felix is more of a wildcard, academic and professional but not without his uh Bouts of Insanity and snobbishness. Overall, comes off as a general douche, no matter how many sweater vests you give him. Kim is just... Kim. Very crazy and off the hook party guy, with a hidden soft side, but mostly just kind of a jackass. Leaning into early portrayals of him here, but he will get Humbler as the story goes on. May add more boys if the story demands it.

Chloe is popular and rich too. Shes marinettes enemy at the beginning, bullying her in a very madison sinclair way, but is brought on as an ally later once she finds herself needing help.

Alya is Mac, but significantly cooler and more upbeat. She can make her way around a computer all right, but shes also very interested in the inner workings of the school. Basically, gossip queen, can access the student records from her connections, and knows how to hack and code certain websites and other such things. Fun gal. Perfect for intel and stake outs, but uh may or may not have trouble keeping any information she finds secret.

Marinettes best friend (the wallace) is nino lahiffe, but theyve been friends since forever. Witty and snarky, a passion for music, always ready to help out on a case if it's needed. Biggest foil to chloe, since nino, mari and chloe all went to preschool together, and while marinette is more prone to forgiving later on, nino is not.

There's a big divide between the rich and the poor still, and id like that to be explored. Current rich kids include Adrien, kim, felix, chloe and kagami. The rest are working class and tend to struggle.

There are tons of relationships to explore. Sabrina being the new sheriffs daughter vs marinette the old sheriffs daughter, Alix who is very anti-establishment and her father who suddenly gets a raise and finds themselves in the richer part of town, max a nerd and kim a jock and their friendship blooming, anything involving lila because she's just great, the eventual nino and luka crossover band forming with kitty section members, etc.

I wouldnt make the mysteries as dark, but i do love mystery shows so uh sue me? I like the possibility for shipping here because really anything goes as Veronica in the show ends up having multiple relationships. So uh, adrienette can happen, felinette can happen, ninette, marikim, chlonette, lukanette, djwifi, its all fair game really.

I personally like the idea of marinette and Adrien being exes, felix having dated Bridgette before but uh. Her being murdered n all is not great for the relationship. So they all used to be friends. But now there's tension. And eventually felinette happens, but felix becomes too toxic and then adrienette 2 happens. Etc etc.

Anyway dumb au ideas brought to you by adrienscroissantx ill be here all week

#Veronica Mars miraculous au #Bc i never stop #Ml au #Mlb au

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judydreamer · 4 years

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I am really interested in the coping/rationalisation mechanisms of disabled and/or traumatised kids that don't get written about because they're so unique and complex and impossible to explain. Like I just wanted to post like "huh, traveller's oblivion was actually just fatigue or dissociation" but that requires so much backstory to make sense to anyone else. But I feel like infodumping about how I was a weird kid and this feels like the place to do it. And I'm not doing it for pity etc! I had fun doing this as a kid and I think it's genuinely fascinating how elaborate it was!

[[MORE]]

So from about year 5 to... Definitely until I left secondary school, and maybe even occasionally in sixth form? I had this imaginary friend, except she was me, so I guess more like an OC that I would roleplay as in my head? Her name was Kamala. I didn't know Kamala was a real name until last year when I found out Kamala Harris exists, and I was pronouncing it differently, but point is I thought I'd made it up. (Elements of this character may well have been problematic and normally I'd say age is no excuse but I literally created her when I was nine).

Anyway, I'd pretend to be Kamala and narrate her/my life in my head, like on the walk to school I'd be like "I'm walking down [Street] to meet my friend and as I go into the park the sun is just starting to rise" etc. All my friends and family existed in this universe but I renamed them all, and all the locations I went to existed but were in a fictional country called Sangori. It was like my life, but better? And I didn't realise at the time but the ways that it was better pretty blatantly correlated to things my actual life was missing. My parents were really rich and had a massive house but a big part of this universe was that they provided rooms free of charge to anyone who needed it and if I saw a stray cat or whatever I'd be like "I ring my parents and they tell me to bring it home and we can keep it" and that kind of thing. Kamala also had loads of siblings - she still had one who died as a baby, but everyone in the family acknowledged it etc. And she was good at sports and had loads of friends and was pretty and basically a textbook Mary Sue.

Like any good Mary Sue, she also had (fairly mundane) powers, even though magic wasn't a thing for anyone else. She had "the gift of the click" where if she/I clicked her fingers she could instantly record everything that was happening to show someone later, and probably more I've forgotten. But she also experienced 'traveller's oblivion' where if she went far from home or was in an unfamiliar place or had been away a long time, everything felt very dreamlike and fuzzy, but that was somehow a good thing with in-universe benefit? I don't remember what the benefit was but it got to the point that when I noticed it happening I'd get excited to narrate a scene with Kamala experiencing it.

Now it's pretty obvious I just wanted to make sense of never being believed about things I was seeing and having dissociation/overload/fatigue. But I just find it incredible how, in the absence of the internet etc, that's what I came up with as an explanation. I was always fully aware I wasn't actually Kamala, so maybe explanation isn't quite the right word, but yeah. When I got tumblr and started learning about autism and mental illnesses I stopped doing it quite as often, but there was a couple of years at the end of primary school where I'd be super excited for the walk home so I could narrate my life from this perspective.

#even me writing it now is a terrible explanation #it wasn't a delusion and it wasn't playing pretend either?#and it wasn't quite like daydreaming either #internal roleplay is the closest thing I guess #long

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sworntoprotect · 4 years

Text

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all had witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat. Long post!

MUN NAME: Pie AGE: +25 CONTACT: IM, Ask, Discord (mutuals only, by request)

CHARACTER(S): Cullen

CURRENT FANDOM(S): Dragon Age

FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR: I have a modern verse for everything not Dragon Age, but I might add some actual alt verses for other fandoms

MY LANGUAGE(S): English (native), Spanish (intermediate), Korean (baby lol beginner), bits and bobs of other languages (namely French and French Patois)

THEMES I’M INTERESTED IN FOR RP: FANTASY / SCIENCE FICTION / HORROR / WESTERN / ROMANCE / THRILLER / MYSTERY / DYSTOPIA / ADVENTURE / MODERN / EROTIC / CRIME / MYTHOLOGY / CLASSIC / HISTORY / RENAISSANCE / MEDIEVAL / ANCIENT / WAR / FAMILY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SCHOOL / ADULTHOOD / CHILDHOOD / APOCALYPTIC / GODS / SPORT / MUSIC / SCIENCE / FIGHTS / ANGST / SMUT / DRAMA / ETC. (I started this and realised I’d be bolding almost everything, so: EVERYTHING)

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: ONE-LINER / 1 PARA / 2 PARA / 3+ PARA / NOVELLA. / ALL

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / NON-MUTUALS / PERSONALS / ANONS.

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?: YES / NO / OCCASIONALLY - only by Mutuals?: YES / NO

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / CASUAL / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK. / ALL

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?: YES / NO.

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (after my paper is submitted, yeah sure)

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. (irl makes coping difficult sometimes)

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ WEEKS / MONTHS / YEARS. / DEPENDS ON MOOD AND INSPIRATION, AND IF I’M BUSY

I’M OKAY INTERACTING WITH: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS / A RELATIVE OF MY CHARACTER (AN OC) / DUPLICATES / CROSSOVERS / MULTI-MUSES / SELF-INSERTS / PEOPLE WITH NO AU VERSE FOR MY FANDOM / CANON-DIVERGENT PORTRAYALS / AU-VERSIONS.

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC. (I strive for more IC over OOC, but my queue does a lot of work too)

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING: Talk with me over IM, asks, or Disco. I’m down for almost anything as long as I see it’s feasible.

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER: Transparency. If you have an idea, let me know! If you’re stuck, let me know! If you want to start something new or scrap something or whatever...LET ME KNOW! I promise I don’t bite and I understand.

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?: I’m not very good with coming up with plots myself, so I’m typically the weak link when it comes to that. Sorry! But you bet I’ll pull up a plot generator and start throwing things down to see what sticks haha.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?: I’m all about equal opportunity, so I try not to leave the plotting work to my partner. Let’s negotiate and find something that makes both of us happy. That’s the point after all.

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - AND WHY?: If you want to drop a thread, I’m completely fine with it. I want to know so that I don’t end up replying to something you have no interest in anymore. Saves both of us the time.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?: If drafts eat it (as they are wont to do these days) or if I feel it has reached a natural conclusion. I rarely, if ever, drop a thread in the middle. I’ll just let you know I’m going to finish it on my side and allow you a chance to finish on yours if you’d like.

WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO. - AND WHY?: You don’t need to chat with me every minute of every day, but I like knowing the people I’m writing with. Discerning your personality and your approach to your muse gives me a much stronger understanding of how to write with you, and what vibes between us. Plus, it’s easier to remember different people’s boundaries if I talk with them a lot, too.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: I am all for constructive criticism. Even if you think it’s nitpicky, it’s going to be a great help. Good crit allows us grow as writers and as people in general. However, I am not for baseless accusations, childish name-calling, or outright insults under the name of “constructive crit”. Remember the “constructive” part: we need to build each other up.

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: I love a good story. While I don’t agree with everything Cullen does (and no one should, for anyone real or imagined), his story is intriguing. He’s a deeply flawed, deeply broken man. I love to take on a character, toss them in every situation I can think of, and watch them evolve and grow.

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS: A real redemption arc, for one. A realistic struggle with substance abuse and recovery. A future of happiness.

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE: Rape or sexual assault, unless being spoken about as a past event (as I truly believe that Cullen was sexually assaulted at Kinloch along with the other psychological and physical torture he endured). In-game racism is baked in, unfortunately, but it’s not something I seek out to roleplay as a PoC myself. Finally, while I play Cullen as canon-straight, I will not play out homophobia and most definitely not transphobia. If he rejects your muse for hitting on him, it’s not because he’s being homophobic: he’s just not interested. That also doesn’t mean he’ll never be interested; people can and do change, and I ship chemistry overall. He doesn’t hate your muse for their gender, orientation, or sexual preferences. I feel like I really have to spell this out for people who don’t understand. If you feel personally insulted by this somehow, feel free to address me directly, off anon. It’s probably an issue of fuzzy wording that I’m 500% willing to fix and talk about.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: I love starters that set the scene and provide plenty to work with, be it in terms of interacting with the environment or with the other person. If your muse shows immediate disinterest in communicating (and I don’t mean argumentative, which is perfectly fine), I am not going to respond. I might politely ask for more if I feel like it’s a salvageable interaction.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?: Stoic soldier types, bubbly short girls, and semi-mad scientists.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?: Characters that come across as Mary-Sue / Gary-Stu types. No flaws and barely any room to grow.

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I'm very easy-going and I have an unearthly level of tolerance for almost everything. I try to provide partners with as much to work with as possible IC, and will pretty much support your very existence OOC. I believe in open communication so you’ll know what’s going on with me and/or our threads. Also, I typically reply within a week or two. Currently I’m tethered to finishing a big paper so I’m not a good example of that right now.

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I can get overwhelmed by too much which slows my pace down considerably. I’m also a bit distant and do shut down on occasion; that’s usually no fault of my partners, though. Just my brain being a dick.

DO YOU RP SMUT?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (the closer we are OOC, the easier getting here will be)

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (it’s not going to be XXX but it will be descriptive)

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN, FADE TO BLACK?: YES / NO.

WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?: I prefer to write smut for character development and to mark a progression in a relationship. Plus Cullen is not a “one and done” guy so getting to the smut stage will take a bit of build-up.

ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?: Hmmm things that he personally wouldn’t go for I guess? Honestly I don’t know. And obviously, no rape/animal abuse/predator nonsense.

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?: YES / NO Ships are a great way to further explore a character and their motivations. People do not exist in pure isolation, so I don’t believe characters should, either.

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. I bolded both because the focus of the blog isn’t ships, but this thirst trap guy is really easy to ship with other people I tell ya hwat. I am severely picky with romantic ships for Reasons, but I don’t eschew any other types of ships. I encourage them!

DO YOU USE READ MORE?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU: MULTI-SHIP / SINGLE-SHIP / DUAL-SHIP — MULTIVERSE / SINGLEVERSE.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: Characters who challenge Cullen into revising his point of view and force him to be a better person. Also, characters who understand his past and they are in no ways obligated to forgive it, but do recognise that he’s struggling very hard to mend whatever mistakes he can and is willing to pay the price for his decisions.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - Be a good salesperson and I might buy it.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: Cullen is a massive stick in the mud, which means it’s incredibly easy to taunt him and get him flustered all at the same time. He’s loyal, he’s intelligent, and he’s largely self-aware. He likes swords and using them. Anything your character hates about him, he most likely hates about himself 100 times more.

WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?: Those from the start that show absolutely no interest in speaking with/interacting with him. Mun and muse are going to struggle to stick around. I’m not going to fight for attention and neither is he.

WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, WHAT IS THEIR GOAL?: Redemption. He wants to be a better person and make up for the past as much as he can.

WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?: He can sniff out a fellow Templar a mile away (or several miles, in the case of Samson).

WHAT DO THEY VALUE IN A PERSON?: Honesty, a strong will, devotion (not necessarily to the Maker or the Chantry, but to a just cause that focuses on protecting others).

WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?: War stuff, chess, books, trebuchets, dogs.

WHICH THEMES BORE THEM?: Lectures about anything. He did his time in Azkaban in the Circles. No more. Please no more.

DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?: His parents died trying to escape the Blight, he was tortured for weeks/months on end by blood mages, almost all of his friends died because of it, he was manipulated and brainwashed by his superior, he was forced into a near-debilitating substance addiction by his workplace... yeah just a few things.

WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?: Darkspawn and abominations.

IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?: Darkspawn and abominations. Blood mages on principle. Regular mages (but he’s working hard to remedy this extremely bad and prejudiced thinking). Himself.

IS YOUR MUSE EASY TO APPROACH?: YES / NO. - BEST WAY TO APPROACH THEM?: Just be polite and he won’t turn you away. He’s guarded, yes, but not impossible to talk to.

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSE?: You’ll find out by writing together! ;D

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

tagged by: pirated tagging: anyone who actually read this

#a quiet inquiry (memes)#// long post #// very long post

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d20trashcan · 4 years

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Lmao rlly? I just assume all fandom blogs I like the content of are around 3k asfhsdjf... no idea you were so new to this you give off big blog energy

I think its because of my 9 years of social media centered towards fandoms. I’m 21 so almost half of my life was devoted to fandoms, creating and getting involved in any kind of fandom creativity, from fanfiction writing to roleplaying ocs.

I started out on deviantart, with my first account solely focused on one anime fandom. I wrote alot of xReader fanfiction and got oddly popular there. Its probably my second highest follower count.

A year later, I discovered tumblr through a dear friend, a bit before peak tumblr. I also got involved in that anime fandom there as well. Fun fact, I apparently created legendary memes in that fandom that seems to still be shared. And when I say legendary, I mean like an average of 1K likes and probably more cause they have been shared outside deviantart still only got a bit less than 300 watchers there

After a while, I started getting into Superwholock, more so towards Doctor Who than the rest. I had a balance of those 2 fandoms for a long time. in both deviantart and Doctor Who.

However, somethings happened and I left that anime fandom and created a new deviantart. I forgot why but I wanted to just cut myself off from that fandom. Around this time, I had been deep into One Piece, especially the One Piece OC fandom.

I don’t think many people know this, but my passion had always been making OCs. My oldest oc was a One Piece OC that I still have now and kicking. My deviantart was where I posted alot about my op ocs. I owe alot to One Piece and its influence to my life. I wouldnt have the friends, experience, or even art skills without it.

After awhile, I kinda dropped the Doctor Who fandom as Superwholock ended. I became a jack of all trades in fandom, where I knew different fandoms and was into anything from video games, Youtubers, anime, books, and the like, but I was still focused on One Piece.

After a a year or two, I got into rp on tumblr. I made an rp account for my op ocs and did stupid things here and there with my friends in the community. My art skills were still not that great at the time nor was my writing skills but I kept going at it.

Even then, I dropped that rp account to focus on other things like art and more oc development and creation. It was during the time of Mary Sue witch hunting. If you were a part of the One Piece oc community, you will know what I’m talking about. It was around this time i was more active on tumblr than deviantart. There is just a easier way of sharing art and creative works here than on deviantart, where you would need a strong following to even get your work noticed.

During 2014-2015, my experience as a oc creator went to a next level. So a tdlr in the op oc fandom. Because of the anime and its pirate crews, its common to have people create ocs for preexisting pirate crews. During that 2 year time period, I decided to create a original pirate crew called the Nemesis Pirates. I won’t go into big detail, but this pirate crew was and still is my main ocs. Anyone in the OP OC community who know me will only know me by my pirate crew. I received a lot of love for my pirates and my art skills were improving very vastly. I also started writing more, but alot of it was never published work. Around this time, I got into sports animes as well and made a lot of ocs for them.

Right before college, a huge event struck and hit me emotionally bad. Thats when I really got into the rp fandom hard. I created a new op oc and made an exclusively op oc rp blog to cope. People really liked my oc and I got pretty active and kinda popular in rp terms. That stayed like that for about 4-5 months. Then university started and I got my first relationship. There was so many things to balance, I just had not enough time to devote my time to the rp blog so I left. I was so busy, I even had no time to really get into my art or basically the OP OC community and was kinda inactive for 2 years. The only thing that kept me even involved was my discord group.

During 2018, this is where things changed a bit. I got back into OPOC creation and talking to my friends and also that’s when I was introduced to DnD. I think out of my friend group in college, I was the most passionate because DnD is not that different from OC creation and rping so I was like basically prepared. I got back into art but for some reason, my art was incredibly stagnant. It didn’t improve but it felt like I had regressed. It was a pretty low point in my art career.

However, that didn’t stop me from wanting to enter a Webtoon contest. Around June there was a contest to make a webtoon comic and I wanted to enter. I...uh...never even got to publish the first episode. I did en up publishing the first episode around Dec 2019 but thats because I felt like I might as well get something out of my hard work. My art steadily got a tinge better in 2019, my wrtiing also improved slightly. I was a bit more active in the OPOC fandom. I even made an instagram for my art and ocs. Summer 2019 happened, drama was brewed and I was left alone for Fall 2019. I missed my old friends and I missed the times we had together but we all couldn’t go back to those times.

One night, I was going through tumblr and found posts about Dimension 20. Some were about “Are you My Dad” some were about going up a corn monster’s butt. I knew of Dimension 20 because for like a year, ads for it was spamming my videos. It was late night, I was depressed and bored and they had episodes on Youtube. And in 2 days, I finished Fantasy High. In one day, I finished EFTBK and in 3 days I caught up with The Unsleeping City. These were the best days of that year because also during that time, my favorite Youtuber , Markiplier was made a Youtube Red series and a Audio Story podcast. I was drowning in content and I was even talking to my discord friends much more often. I was lonely, a bit depressed, and still hurt from the Summer but I wasn’t fully alone.

Fantasy High went by and strong, I was more active with the OPOC fandom on instagram and Discord, oddly enough. Because of the quarantine, I had more time to make art and I somehow have improved so much. A Crown of Candy was on the horizon and I thought to myself, I know live blogs, I’ve seen people on twitter. why I don’t try it. I’ll just live blog the first episode.

One April 4, right after the last episode of Fantasy High Live, I made d20trashcan. I just made a few memes here and there and people liked them. The first episode came out, I lied blog, made some memes and was gonna call it a day. Yeah, well we can see what happened.

A month later, I’m at single digits away from reaching 400 followers, creating a Webtoon, gained huge art improvement.

TDLR: I’m a huge nerd and people seem to like that

#personal #trashcans comments #sorry this is long but i figured this would give some perspective #Anonymous

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lovenotesandneonstars · 4 years

Text

And That’s Enough.

Wanna hear a secret?

Every writer I've ever known has, at some point, faced a soul-crushing anxiety over whether or not they're really a writer.

"But Topher," you might say, "That's not a secret!"

If I were being clever, I might give you a wink and the slight twitch of my nose that all the wise old men do. But I'm not very clever, I'm not necessarily wise, and I'm not old. So instead, I figured I might tell you about how I learned to solve that crisis for myself. But in order to get there, we have to start at the beginning.

I was a fairly lonely kid, never really had a steady friends' group, and when I was in second grade I started deliberately getting lunch detention so that I could spend my lunch period reading without being harassed by my classmates. I thought it was a genius plan. Well, that, and my second grade teacher (who was also my third grade teacher, yay for small towns!) and I had a personality clash. I would finish my work too fast and start reading from my pocket dictionary (yeah, I was THAT nerd), and would correct him in class. He, in return, would try to find any way possible to punish or humiliate me. It was fun! I loved reading no matter what trouble it got me in, and getting in trouble just gave me more time to read.

Ask any writer you know and they'll tell you that in order to write, you have to enjoy reading. And I was always excited to read (which hasn't changed much as I've grown, I just find less time to be able to read these days. #Adulting, right?) at any chance I got. When I was in 5th grade, I stayed in the truck with no AC and just the window rolled down for 3 hours while my mom went grocery shopping to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (which took me a whopping 5 hours to finish!). When sixth grade rolled around, I started wanting to try my hand at creating something instead of just consuming it. For a lonely, depressed kid, the world of fiction was the best friend I had.

The first thing I remember writing was House MD fanfiction. It was my favorite show and I started out as any respectable fanfiction writer does: with a Mary Sue self-insert! Eventually, I had a small cult following on the school bus, and found my way to the big leagues of fanfiction.net about a year later. I moved onto another overdone trope: songfics. From there, I kept writing fanfic, even after my mom found it and banned me from it. I just enjoyed writing so much. House MD turned into Harry Potter which turned into Glee. I should also mention the other kind of writing I found as an eleven year old, right after I started writing fanfic: role playing. I stumbled upon a Harry Potter RP one day while trying to find video games for my favorite franchise and, with the help of a kindly more experienced role player, was taught how to RP. I was hooked. Soon, all my free time turned to writing. I was neglecting my video games in favor of blasting my favorite album at any point and writing more and more. And when I wasn't writing, I was reading. Harry Potter, The Princess Diaries, Percy Jackson, whatever I could get my hands on. Middle school was consumed by writing and reading, whether it was the actual series I was into or fanfiction for it.

Then came high school, and my RP site shut down, and my book pile ran out, and I fell into a deeper depression than I had before. I had always loved music, but I got more into it as I couldn't find much to read that I was interested in. But on the bright side, I was making real friends! I wasn't spending my lunch times alone anymore, and I had people to talk to about the fandoms I loved. Writing and reading fell to the wayside as I explored more music and l got back into video games. I was also a theatre kid, and was getting ready to audition for my first high school play.

Everything changed when my mom passed away on December 5th, 2011, 4 days after her 52nd birthday. My dad made me stay home for a week, and when I came back, all my "friends" refused to talk to me or spend time with me. My depression hit heavier than ever, and I was even lonelier after having had a taste of regular friendship. I spent all my time playing video games and listening to dark, angry music, until June 2012, when I watched a movie called It's Kind of a Funny Story, based on the book by Ned Vizzini while I was sick. It instantly felt like I needed the book in my life, and my dad, thrilled to see me wanting to read again, let me order the book. I fell in love, and to this day, over 8 years later, it's still my favorite book. Soon after, my love of writing came back and hit me and I got back into role playing. I had a role model to look up to who wrote something so relatable to me that it hurt so good, and the video games took a back burner. I was inventing people left and right to see what kind of trouble I could get them into.

My world came screeching to another halt when my newfound role model took his own life on December 19th, 2013. This time, though, instead of backing off from the role playing, I dove deeper into it. I found new friends on the internet and kept making new people. Not long after that, I came out as transgender, and used writing to cope with my dysphoria and strained relationship with my family. Every waking minute I was either role playing or thinking about role playing. I snuck on my phone in class to write replies when the teacher wasn't looking. I wrote replies in my notebook to type up when I got home. I went from short, 3-sentence replies to hundreds of words at a time.

Then, in May 2015, I graduated high school, and I was off to college as a psych major! In the time between, I had graduated to running RP sites as well, and I was constantly writing. My summer was filled with writing, and once I made it to college, I got back into fanfiction, this time on Archive of Our Own. AO3 seemed far more professionally laid out, and it had more freedom of what could be posted. I started writing band fanfiction. I made friends through my fanfiction, now, in addition to RP. It was where I would retreat when homework was too boring or my classes were too much. In November 2015, I participated in my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I instantly found the community I was meant to be in and made many friends that I would come to consider family. Ny first NaNo I came in just shy of 13,000 words on a band fic. I couldn't believe I had managed all that in one month with being a college freshman, starting a new job, and continuing to work on my role playing! Things were great! For the next year, my life was nothing short of amazing. I got a summer job on campus, went to my first Pride, and made more friends.

Once again, my life came to a screeching halt on November 2, 2016. Remember how I mentioned I'd always struggled with mental health issues? Well, I ended up in the hospital for just over 21 hours for suicidal intent. This was pretty much the darkest moment and a turning point in my life. It was also kind of ironic, because my favorite book had to do with much the same thing. After getting out, I dove back into NaNoWriMo for the second time, still working on band fic, and this time, ended up just short of 20,000 words. I was doing more, and using it to take away the anxiety I was feeling in my classes. I was hating my major, and the RPs I was in were falling through, but I had a project to work on. For the first time, I kept working on the project after NaNo was over. Things were good again, and over the summer, I made the decision to change my major from Psychology to Creative Writing, but ultimately had to wait one more term because I was already signed up for classes.

I completed my third NaNoWriMo in 2017 with fewer words than the previous year. But I was committed. I had helped start a Discord for my home region for NaNo and was now spending almost full-time hours volunteering for my region. I finished my last semester as a Psych major and then I made my way home for the holidays, where I continued to write, diving back into fanfic for TV shows and now adding Youtubers to the mix. When I returned to school at the beginning of 2018, I started my new life in all my English classes, including my first writers' workshop, and I fell in love. I was still writing fanfiction, though, while others were writing original fiction, and all that I could think was that I HAD to be a fraud. How could I be a real writer if I was just writing fanfiction for my classes? It was frustrating to think that I was stuck writing something that most people saw as mindless drivel, or even ripoffs of the works and lives of others. After my first term of creative writing, I took some time off from my fiction class, and used that to take a break from anything that wasn't RP.

Fall 2018 brought with it many challenges. For one, my college converted to the semester system, and having to confront a new length of term was difficult. It also brought around an intermediate fiction course for me, as well as a creative nonfiction course. Here, I found something I enjoyed: I was able to write about my own life, instead of the lives of band members. After a while, I got to know the band members, which completely killed my desire to write band fic. Life seemed a lot easier without that urge, and I started writing original fiction. In November 2018, for the first time, I wrote original fiction for my 4th NaNoWriMo, and my word count grew, once more, to just under 22,500 words. It was progress, and I felt great. I finally knew how to work on something original on my own.

Spring 2019 was even harder than I had faced before: I had received the news that I was not getting financial aid, and would not be able to return to school the next year. I was devastated, and determined not to have to return to my dad's house for the following year, back to the small town where I had no prospects. I scrambled to find a job, but nothing worked out, and for the next seven months, I jumped from living situation to living situation, relying on my friends to keep me alive and ending up in a tightly packed studio apartment with 2 friends and their 3 cats.

One of these 7 months was my 5th NaNoWriMo and my second attempt at original fiction, this time trying to use a character I had been RPing with for some 6 years at the time. I started using new writing tools, like 4TheWords, and threw myself into NaNo, using it to deal with the frustrations of everyday life. This was the first time I came so far: 28,611 words! And still... My project stalled out. As a major pantser, I had gone into the project with one developed character, one who only had a name and profession, and the plotline "They fall in love". It was freeing, to have something new to work on that I had no idea where I was headed and that I had someone brand new to create. All this was helping me adjust to the new job I found in September, a job I found myself absolutely loving. It was the best time in the world, all I could ask for. I found a new RP site and made more friends. Come December 31st, I found a new place to live, and was finally living on my own.

Then, my writing on that novel stalled out. I couldn't figure out where to go, or what to do with my characters, and so I dove back into role playing. It was all I could do, really, to keep myself occupied when I wasn't working. Things were looking up: I found out I was returning to school in fall; I loved my job; my roommate and I got along well. And then, things fell apart again, to the point where I had to stay somewhere else for over a month while there were construction issues on my apartment. I was depressed, but RP and writing kept me going. Finally, things settled down, and life seemed well again.

That is, until halfway through March, when COVID-19 ended up basically destroying the world I lived in. I lost my job (live performances during a pandemic are a no-no) and had to move back in with my dad, and, well, here we are. 4 months post job loss, I'm trying to get ready for all online classes, and trying to cope with moving back to the town that I couch surfed to avoid. It's been hard, and writing hasn't come easily. I haven't been able to really focus on anything other than role playing until now, and I still find myself questioning whether I'm REALLY a writer every time I realize that this essay or my RP is the only writing I've done in months. After all, how can I claim to be really dedicated to NaNoWriMo or even my writing in general if I can never finish a project? It's been almost impossible for me to do so in the past. All I've been able to do is come up with yet another idea that I've yet to attempt to actually write, and that has no real plot, and that I'll (probably) never finish, either?

Then I think of why I started to write this. I needed to have some writing to show some people I want to impress, and I started angsting over whether or not I'm actually a writer, and if I'm really cut out for this. And the fact that there are over 2500 words more on the page than there were when I started means that, in spite of all my anxieties, I am a writer. All these words I've put out into the world the last several years would never have come into the world the way I've decided to use them if I wasn't a writer. Even now, as I sit here writing this post, for something that I truly love, I'm reminded that I'm not a writer because I follow XYZ formula, or because I plan things meticulously, or because I have some famous novel out there. I'm a writer because I write. And that's enough.

#essay #2020 #writing #am i really a writer #nanowrimo #life #creative nonfiction

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arreole-lavendelle · 4 years

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Okay, Saw TRoS the 18th. After I exited the cinema, I sat down and wrote this messy review to keep myself from crying my eyes out (Which I did for a whole day afterwards. Still am.)

I've defended the new trilogy. I've defended the whole Skywalker saga, so how...HOW could they do this to me? TO ALL OF US?! JJ and LF, how could you? How could you kill Ben like that? Make him smile so wholeheartedly and then just let him fade away like that. At least he got to save his girl Rey, but where is the FUN and HOPE we were promised for him? WHERE IS IT??!!! How is this a satisfiyng ending??!! TO THE WHOLE SKYWALKER SAGA???!!! I hope Tatooine was just a stop on her way back to Finn/Poe and to finding a way to get Ben back, let her please just be there to hide the lightsabers. Why would Poe let BB-8 behind with her? It's his droid. But if she stays on Tatooine, then she also gets screwed over royally. All she wanted was to belong to a family, who could understand her. A place to belong. Those persons got taken away from her and her SOULMATE died in her arms. NOPE. THAT'S DISGUSTING. And let's talk about other stuff. Like what the fuck happened to Hux. WTF. So much wasted potential. It was not a secret that he hates Kylo, but to become a freaking spy for the resistance, something he hates even more than his supreme leader, NOTE; This guy was happily blowing up Republic planets for the sake of his First Order. And here he says that 'It doesn't matter who wins the war, as long as Kylo Ren loses?' What bullshit is this? His ambition would never let him stoop this low. How did they even got this idea? And even if he had the right reasons to be a rebel spy... HE GOT KILLED LIKE ONLY A MINUTE AFTER THE REVEAL! Like really? And what kind of stupid name is the FINAL ORDER. Come on, that's just lazy writing. The whole character of Palpatine felt off. It looked like they were jotting down ideas and just decided to run all of them at once. Kill Rey, keep her alive to she can rule with him, kill her yourself and take all her energy... *Sigh*... He felt like a stupid comic book villain. And then Rey. Rey Palpatine. That came so out of left field and totally ruined her backstory. The thought of her being nobody and the message that everyone can be special, was powerful. Now they changed the message to 'See, you need a powerful bloodline to be succesful.' Sorry, but they kind of made her a Mary Sue in this movie. All the voices of the Jedi were a nice touch, but WHY HER? Ben is suposed to be the Chosen one, he is the SKYWALKER, the DECENDANT OF VADER. Now all the fallen jedi rally behind Rey and she just... Blocks Palpatine and kills him. Just like that. And what even were the things on the stands? Maybe I overlooked something, but they couldn't be sith ghosts because they could be physically harmed (fallen rocks) It was also such a waste to not show a couple of force ghosts. That was a really save choice they picked, which made the moment feel kind of bland and anti climactic. COWARDS. Also, the Knights of Ren were wasted. You never saw them in action, just standing in the distance, looking cool. Or stalking people but not really do anything. UNTIL they have to kill Ben because of reasons. So they belonged to Palpatine all along? The reveal of Leia's Lightsaber also came out of left field. So she was force trained by Luke and now she force trained Rey? GOOD TO KNOW... This movie is an illogical mash of events and downright lazy and insulting to call itself the final in the Skywalker saga. There were good parts in the movie. But they slipped my mind right now. The death of Ben is still haunting me.I will need a lot of time to mourn him and get myself back together again. HE DESERVED BETTER. JJ and some of the cast are all LIARS. And when Ben died... they don't show how Rey is coping with it, the pacing is so off that the next shot is her just flying away as if nothing really happened and she just made an arrant to the supermarket.It was stated that they could not life without the other, that's how strong their bond was and now they tell me that he just dropped dead after saving her? FUCK YOU. And suddenly, she got a yellow lightsaber... WHERE? WHAT? HOW? Ben.. Poor Ben. They gave an abused man hope and a glimpse of love from his SOULMATE and he just gets thrown down an abyss, to survive that, finds his loved one dead on the floor, cradle her into his arms, uses his force energy to resurrect her, hug her, kiss her, SMILE AT HER and then JUST DIES A MINUTE LATER??!! FUCK YOU. The Resistance... Is just the Resistance. The only thing that made that interessting were Finn and Poe. Not their uncountable love interests. But just the amount of bickering like an eldery married couple, made me enjoy through those parts.But there were also characters with zero to none background info but who seem important enough for lots of screentime. Some even nameless, like how should I get attached to any of them? And they just pushed Lando in like, here is a face you know! CARE FOR IT. AND WHY DID MAZE SMILE? WHAT DOES SHE KNOW THAT WE DON'T? Why is this movie so fucked up? If I could trade the whole resistance, maybe even with Finn and Poe on the line, to get Ben back. I would. BEN DESERVED BETTER. Maybe I will write another train of thoughts when I have scraped myself together and discuss the good parts. Like, the moment Rey is confronting Palpatine and Ben is facing the KoR. They force bond and she hands him the lightsaber. THAT WAS HOT. For now, I try to focus on the posive notes, but it's so damn hard to do. Well, thank you for reading this mess. May the force be with you.

#StarWars #TROS #TROS spoilers #Review #Depressed #Reylo #Wasted Potential #Stop saying this was fun and hopefui #Rant #not my star wars #All over the place

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hyper-archives · 5 years

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Mary Sue Rant/Ramble

(I’d like to say this is a cohesive essay but I was really just writing whatever came to mind)

I’ve seen a lot of people lately talking about how they don’t like the term Mary Sue and won’t use it, and hate how its thrown around, and personally, I’m very happy about it. At the same time though, I still use the term, just not in the way you might think. Allow me to explain.

Say there’s a kid or teen who wants to have some fun, or wants to feel important and validated and simply hang out with their favorite characters, and they make this self insert or OC who’s just absolutely overpowered and/or flawless. They don’t know much about writing and character dynamics. They’re simply using fiction as a means to escape, cope, and to figure out who they are, what they like, and how they’d respond in certain situations. Labeling their character as a Mary Sue/Gary Stu can be damaging to them, especially if they're doing this as a coping mechanism.

For example, when I was a teenager, I had this self-insert for Transformers Animated. She was, like another character in the show, part human part Cybertronian, and, like that character, she had superpowers. In reality, the chances of that characters biological makeup and particular situation happening again was a million to one, but thankfully, I never got attacked for it, because the community seemed to have been on the same page as I was. And you know what? I had fun. I bonded with other fans. I used the “techno-organic” concept as a means to escape, vent my frustrations, and imagine what I’d do as a hero. I’ve since tweaked that self insert to be more believable in the canon, but I’m also not ashamed of her history as a techno-organic.

While I made the defense for a child or teenager’s self inserts and OC’s, the same can be said for adults who are simply trying to escape and have fun. Some of us, we make fan characters, we make OC’s, we role play, but all we want to do is escape for a bit. I’m not asking you to make all of my fan characters canon, just let me be. That's all I want.

Now that I’m older, I’ve caught myself doing the very same thing I did when I was younger in the form of a “Spidersona”. But again, a lot of other people are doing the same thing, and’ were all having fun, and ‘were NOT HURTING ANYBODY. I’m using this as a coping mechanism and so are many other people who are just trying to get through the day. What someone called a Mary Sue(why? I don’t know. Why are they doing this?) might be someone’s way of liking themself. The thing is you don't know, so don’t attack

Funny, I actually put this self insert through one of those antiquated “Mary Sue tests”, and boy, did she stride into Mary Sue territory. After all, she’s an alternate version of a canon character, but somehow still me, has an army of spiders, a visually appealing costume, and has, gasp, a tragic backstory!

That also leads me to another point that a lot of people back then were hyper-critical of ANY interesting, edgy traits that defined a character. Their version of an ideal character must be pretty boring. Funny, cause I also remember people ESPECIALLY attacking any OC’s that were shipped with a canon character? Could it really have been just overprotective ness and/or jealousy? Anyway, Mary Sue tests should be rendered obsolete because not only do certain traits like rainbow hair and angel wings NOT MATTER AT ALL to how a story is written, but sometimes, said traits actually really work in canon! An alternate version of a canon character really works for a movie like Into the Spider-verse, and, last I checked, angel wings and rainbow hair works really well for My Little Pony.

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m contradicting the point of that opening statement so much and wondering when I actually would refer to a character as a Mary Sue. Even if it is only in certain circumstances and certain times(where I want to say a quick term instead of “badly written character”), is for canon characters.

What I commonly call out as badly written canon characters are written by educated, experienced, sometimes even older people, who are making something official, and getting paid for it.

Still there are certain circumstances, as I’ve mentioned, where I won’t condemn characters to this type of label. Sometimes it will be just an actor/actress who portrayed the character poorly. Sometimes the whole plot of the characters movie was changed halfway through production and they only had so much more time to develop them. It can even be that a character didn't have time to properly develop before a show got canceled, which was the case for that Transformers Animated character I referred to. Those circumstances I consider unfortunate. They make me sad at the lost potential, but not angry at the entire staff behind something for letting this happen.

I don’t even mind when professionals make self inserts. I don’t watch the Star Wars movies but it seems that Luke Skywalker is a good example of a character who isn’t too overpowered but is still tragic and complex. It is only when, a character is thoughtfully planned, by an experienced professional, since day one, to be a character who exceeds inhumanly in everything they do, gains favor from every single one of their allies, constantly stealing the attention in every scene they’re in. Nowadays I only occasionally call characters like those Mary Sues or Gary Stus when I’m trying to quickly express my opinion of a character being a sorry excuse for a story element.

Even so, when I do find a character like that, I’m NOT condoning an excuse to attack anyone who likes that character. I am confused, and, admittedly, slightly bothered, but hey, the character is making them happy, and as long as they’re not influenced to believe the world will revolve around them, who am I to attack them for liking something? That would be mean.

I’d also like to offer a more updated “test” to figure out whether a character is a well written one or not, for those who are interested, a question I heard somewhere: Does your character react to the canon world, or does the canon world react to your character? Which is...really all that test needed to ask instead of this toilet-paper-roll-long Salem witch hunt.

In conclusion, stop asking yourself if people will attack you for your character being too flashy, edgy, tragic, or attractive, and instead ask why some people feel like they have to attack you for having fun when they don’t even have to take part in it. Consensual constructive criticism is one thing but don’t feel like you have to get verbally assaulted for everything you post.

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juliabohemian · 5 years

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Being a Loki fan: My Journey from Excitement to Despair and back to...Nope, Still Despair

I'm warning you up front that I might say something in here that offends you or that you might not agree with. If that's the case, unfollow me, block me, do whatever you have to do. But do not reblog my shit or comment to argue with me or try to change my mind about anything. I have zero fucks left for people who want to argue about Loki. Less than zero.

When I saw the first Thor movie, my immediate impression of Thor was that he was a bully, that he was a violent, impulsive, pompous ass. And that was not a surprise at all. Because Thor is a classic hero, meaning that he is intended to have a fatal flaw. I honestly thought that the purpose of the film was to show him coming to terms with this flaw (or flaws), and striving to overcome it.

So, when Thor was banished to Earth and it became clear that the plot was headed in that direction, I genuinely expected Thor’s process of overcoming his flaws to include acknowledging what a dick he had been to his brother, and making things right with him. When the movie ended with Loki trying to kill himself (yes, that's exactly what he was doing), I fully expected that the next movie would pick up where the first had left off. I thought that Loki's trauma regarding his adoption and his jealousy of Thor would be addressed.

When I watched the first Thor movie, I had never seen Tom or Chris before. But it was only Tom's performance that had resonated with me. And when the movie ended... I wasn't thinking about what a great guy Thor was, for getting his hammer back. I was trying to figure out how he got it back when he never sorted things out with his brother. All I could think about was Loki being so devastated that he would rather fall to his death than go on. I thought...no way could they just leave it there.

When Loki showed up in Avengers wielding the scepter and behaving like a man possessed, it was clear to me that Loki was not operating of his own volition and might actually be doing so under the threat of death or torture. So, I thought SURELY Thor would notice his brother was behaving strangely and address it. Surely Thor would wonder why his brother was suddenly interested in ruling a realm that he had previously given zero fucks about for the first 1000 years of his life.

Nope. Thor sold his brother out to the Avengers after 3 seconds, even making light of the fact that he was adopted (in case there was any doubt that Thor had been made aware). Thor spent the movie trying to stop Loki, made only one minor attempt to figure out why he was doing what he was doing. Loki stabbed his brother with the smallest knife he could find -which to me was an obvious show for whomever was controlling the "would be king". I was genuinely horrified to see Thor taking Loki back to Asgard with a muzzle on his face.

Fast forward to The Dark World. Loki is on trial for his "crimes" on Earth. Which I found strange because he comes from a realm that pillaged its way to the top via violence. Loki’s trial was hardly even a trial, since no real questions are asked about what he did there or why he did it. Loki's insecurity is off the charts when it comes to Odin. So, I did not expect him to admit to being tortured or mistreated or coerced. I thought it was even possible that Loki thought Odin might be impressed by what he'd done, especially if he’d been brainwashed beforehand. What I did not expect is for Odin to coldly tell his already devastated son that he was being sentenced to life in prison and should basically be grateful that he wasn't being executed, since he was never supposed to survive past infancy to begin with.

Thor broke Loki out of prison, only for his own personal gain. Not because he missed Loki or wanted connection with him. Just because Loki had something he needed. That’s it. And Loki, desperate to avenge his mother's death, allowed himself to be used. When Loki was killed, I was sad. But it was bittersweet. He’d sacrificed himself to save Thor, to avenge his mother. I thought it was a good end to his story. In fact, it probably should have ended there.

But then came the post credits scene...Loki is alive! Okay, I was admittedly glad. But my brain began exploding with ideas. I hadn’t written any fanfiction in a long time. Suddenly I was thinking about doing it again. There were so many possibilities. And if Loki was still alive, that meant it was still possible for him to reconcile with his family. Thor could still make things right with him. So could Odin. His issues could be resolved.

Sometime between Age of Ultron and Ragnarok, I decided to join the fandom online. Although I'd been a fan since the beginning, I had avoided online fandom because it had been a source of stress for me in the past. I thought perhaps things had changed (spoiler alert -they haven't) and that I could find like minded people who were also eager to see Loki vindicated, and perhaps even receive proper apologies from Thor and Odin.

This is the part that you might find offensive. This is the part that will require you to show some restraint and just press the "back" button or unfollow me, instead of feeling compelled to argue.

What I found was a hot mess of people who were either obsessed with Loki's sexuality, or whose perception of Loki was skewed and distorted.

The first wasn’t completely a shock. I've been in and out of fandom since before the internet existed. Slash is hardly new. But what shocked me was that with the wealth of issues this character had developed in canon, people's focus seemed to be how hot it would be to see him taking it up the ass. Not just taking it up the ass, but from his own brother no less. Still can't wrap my head around that one and please don't try to explain it to me. I’m not kink shaming. It just does nothing for me, personally.

I have slashed many characters. I have no problem with homosexuality. My issue with people insisting that Loki is gay is that it validates toxic masculinity. How? Because you are basically agreeing that Loki not meeting the standards for typical Asgardian masculinity means that he must be attracted to other men. Studious? Likes to read? Doesn't want to beat the shit out of people for fun? Graceful? Dresses nicely? Must be gay. Saying Loki is gay is validating the stereotypes asserted by those who insisted there was something wrong with him because he was different. The other reason it's offensive is because most people don't even slash Loki because they identify with his marginalization. They slash him because Tom Hiddleston is hot and even I can't deny that it's fun to think about hot men fucking other hot men.

I want to point out that I don't have a problem with fanfiction. People should write whatever pairings they like. Write every pairing. That's what fanfiction is for. I’ve written lots of slash fanfiction. I'm talking about the aggressive and frankly asinine insistence that Loki is some kind of gay icon, or that any future depiction of him should somehow validate that belief. This phenomenon (which seems fairly isolated to Tumblr) continues to baffle me. If Loki were gay in canon, I would have no problem with it. But the fact is, he’s not. He’s not straight either. he’s not anything. Because his sexuality isn’t relevant.

Sometimes I wonder if people really do want to see representation in canon, though, or if it’s actually the slashing of straight or ambiguous characters that turns them on. Take Versailles, for instance. There’s a delicious canon gay pairing (Prince Phillipe and Chevalier) two extremely hot men who are madly in love and who actually fuck on the show, several times. Where is the excitement about that? Nowhere. That’s where. I could barely find anyone online getting excited about it. If you haven’t watched it, by the way, you should. I did you not, never has two men kissing been so beautiful. But I digress.

Then there’s the other group of people who have reduced Loki to a hetero sex symbol. Their perception of Loki seems to include either a “50 shades of grey” Loki who wants to dominate them, or a “Disney prince” Loki who wants to marry their Mary Sue or self insert OC. And this was not a shock either, frankly. Every attractive male character has such a following in fandom. I was just surprised that someone like Loki, who has SO much substance, didn’t have a larger chunk of his fanbase dedicated to exploring something outside of banging him

Then there were all the people who were convinced that Loki was a bad person, evil, a murderer, wanted to commit genocide etc. I don’t have time to go into that here. Because I’ve written enough about that already. I was genuinely shocked that so many people had watched the same movies that I had watched, but had somehow come away from it completely missing the beauty and depth of this character.

For me, personally, the focus of my interest in a character is almost always to see their storyline properly resolved. If that storyline doesn't involve their sexuality (which I'm sorry, but Loki's doesn't) then I would consider exploration of that to be unnecessary and a waste of time. I absolutely despise is when a character has all kinds of shit going on and writers get lazy by throwing a love interest at them. I'm pretty methodical in that regard.

So, I entered the fandom before Ragnarok, and amidst the anticipation of Ragnarok. I was very excited to see the film. My expectation was very high that it would include some kind of resolution of Loki’s issues with Thor and Odin. Needless to say, I was super disappointed. About the only thing in that movie that was satisfying was its use of Led Zeppelin. I’m a big Zeppelin fan.

And thankfully, I did manage to encounter a small group of like minded fans who also wanted to see Loki’s storyline resolved.

As I coped with my Ragnarok disappointment, I told myself that hey...there’s another movie left with Loki in it, and it’s not being directed by the same guy who directed Ragnarok. Maybe. JUST maybe it will include some kind of resolution for Loki. And it didn’t, of course. It just murdered him brutally in the first five minutes. Because turning him into a rodeo clown in Ragnarok apparently wasn’t enough.

All I wanted was to see someone admit that Loki got a raw deal. I wanted to see someone ON SCREEN say “yeah, you know what? That sucks. I’m sorry you were adopted and then lied to about it. I’m sorry you grew up feeling like less than your brother. I’m sorry you felt misunderstood. You deserve to be loved. Everyone deserves to be loved.”

And I need to just let go of that. Because it’s not going to happen, folks. The MCU is a profit seeking entity. They want to sell tickets and merchandise. They don’t care how Loki feels, or how Tom feels about Loki. They care what Tom can do with Loki to help them rake in the big bucks. That’s it. It doesn’t have to make sense, or be ethical, or be consistent with canon. It just needs to sell tickets and merchandise. That’s it.

And I need to find a way to just not care about this anymore. Because I’ve devoted far too much time and energy to this fictional character already. I’m going to wrap up my current Loki WIP, maybe polish up the one-shots I have sitting in the queue and post them, and exit stage left.

This is one last reminder NOT to reblog this or comment on it, just to argue with me or try to change my mind.

#Fuck you MCU #Loki deserves better #Loki deserved better #just finish this already so I can stop thinking about it #Loki meta #gagnarok #juliabohemian #please unfollow me if any of this offends you #op #lokimeta

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freedom-of-fanfic · 6 years

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I'm kind of torn on the Mary Sue issue. On one hand, I don't care what anyone writes for their own amusement, but writing is still an art that does and should have standards for professionals. As someone who has degrees in writing and does it as a profession, it's a little insulting to be told that the work your poured tons of research and time into is on the same level as amateur self-insert fic. That's why I advocate for different standards for fandom vs pro work.

I feel you, anon. and I have a lot of respect for people like you who got degrees and write professionally, because words are held rather cheap with the internet being around and anyone who can get paid to write words impresses me to some degree. but:

I’ve always felt like comparing fanfic and original fiction to be not exactly congruous? and

I think Mary Sue suffers from maligning because she’s disproportionately evoked by the youngest/least experienced of writers.

this got … pretty long … so i’m dividing it up a little for ease.

the concept of ‘standards’

first of all, I also advocate for different standards between published/professional/marketed works and fan works, but I do so because of 1)potential spread and 2)they aren’t accomplishing the same thing.

In general, a fanwork will have limited appeal outside of the fans of the canon the work is based in; they cannot stand on their own without some additional effort. Further, fandom has its own language to some degree or another, and fanworks are frequently best understood in the context of other fanworks, like scientific papers citing other scientific papers in passing because the audience is expected to be other scientists in the field who have read it. In other words: the audience is probably fairly niche and in on the ‘lingo’. its potential damage circle is therefore relatively small. if somebody fucks up their research for a fic, it’s nbd, for instance.

On the other hand, an original work with a professional marketing team will certainly reach a much more diverse audience and probably a much larger one. It’s therefore responsible, imo, to be proportionately aware of the potential impact of the subject material and approach it accordingly (though true fiction will always have an unpredictable effect on any given individual, so there’s only so much the creator can do). I’d expect accuracy where research was done, if for no other reason than to avoid spreading false information to such a big potential audience.

and of course I’d hope that if somebody is being paid to write, their grammar/prose/proofreading will meet a certain standard of readability. (the same cannot be expected of free works done for fun that take a few minutes to post on the internet.)

having said that: standards for quality fiction writing will always be subjective. I’m always going to have questions about why The Sound and the Fury is an American classic (I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I tried). What gets published can be as simple as having good luck with the slush pile reader that day. I’ve seen fanfiction complimented with incredible research: there’s a Tokyo Babylon work-in-progress with an author who has traveled to fic-relevant locales to nail story and character details. I feel the line is blurring these days, especially because there are people who make a living off writing commissioned fanfiction now (too small-scale to be an IP concern, of course).

I think the fundamental difference between fanworks and original works is not quality of the work itself or effort expended. It’s related to structure and aim.

Fanworks, even AU fanworks, are like interior decoration. A 'good fanwork’, even an AU fanwork, works within a pre-built framework to elaborate on or add to or evoke what drew its audience to the framework in the first place.

Original works build a whole new house, creating a new framework from bare construction materials to draw in and house the emotions of its readers. (and then maybe its readers decorate the house with their own fanfic.)

tl;dr: if an AU fanfic was so different from canon and the characters were so OOC that the author can shave the serial numbers off and repurpose it as an original story, it might be a great original work. But it wasn’t a very good fanfic, was it?

why is mary sue so offensive to us?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the post Mary Sue, What Are You?, but what I keep coming back to is its iconic opening. the author describes an OC at length: orphaned as a child when her parents were killed in front of her, she decided she would dedicate her life to fighting for justice. She grew up to be rich, athletic, beautiful, sexy, angsty, a genius, undefeatable in a battle of wits and agility, and everyone who meets her is instantly lovestruck. In other words, a classic Mary Sue …

but also Batman with female pronouns.

I think one could argue that Batman is not always well-written, but the relevant point here is that Batman - and Mary Sue - might be 99.9% perfection in the shape of a human around whom the universe revolves, but if its their own canon and the universe doesn’t recognize their perfection the way the reader/writer does, it’s not really 'bad’. (And there’s something to be said about why giving this power fantasy male pronouns seems to render it so much more palatable than female pronouns, but for more on that I point you to the referenced essay.)

Your ask is worded to suggest that Mary Sue is synonymous with unprofessional writing. I … kind of agree? Mary Sue is frequently the main character of Baby’s First Fanfic, and let’s be real: Baby’s First Fanfic is often being written by somebody who might be as young (or younger than) 12-13 years old, with all the inexperience, grammar mistakes, and lack of training that suggests. and as far as characterization goes, I think that anyone who takes decent writing classes will be discouraged from writing a Mary Sue. But like Batman, Mary Sue can be a perfect princess and get away with it under certain circumstances.

I posit that Mary Sue characters (or Gary Stus) - whom I will call Flawless OCs from here - are not really a problem on their own. Further, Flawless OC is more agregious in fanfic than original works. Because what makes the Flawless OC so irritating isn’t their perfection, really: it’s what the character’s presence must do to the universe (which is, in the case of fanfic, the universe the reader came to experience in the first place) that’s the real problem.

To show what a good fighter Flawless OC is, they defeat the best canon fighter.

Flawless OC has a backstory more tragic and painful than the most tragic canon backstory, and they cope with the trauma of it better.

There’s no room for Flawless OC because canon wasn’t holding a spot open for a self-insert, so now there’s a 6th Lion or a 10th Fellowship member or a Second Child Who Survived Voldemort.

The entire universe bends to ensure Flawless OC has perfect luck; their enemies are helpless before them. Everything seems to go their way except in the chapter where the their love interest is supposed to rescue them from danger. (the rescue goes flawlessly, of course.)

Depending on the author wish that Flawless OC is meant to fulfill, Flawless OC will defeat any undefeatable enemy, solve the unsolveable problem, be the envy or lust object of any character, etc etc, often without regard for the original context of the enemy/problem or the canon personality of the character.

In short, Flawless OC usually have two major issues:

they render canon irrelevant to glorify Flawless OC, and

the universe constantly validates their choices to a degree that wrecks narrative suspense.

what makes each of these things 'bad writing’ is different.

The first problem I mentioned - warping of mythos, plot, and characters to accomodate the Flawless OC - is a fanfic problem. Canon-warping absolutely allowed, but what makes it fanfic - the canon source that acts as our shared experience and usually our main reason for being a potential audience to the fic - is almost always nigh-unrecognizable. That makes for bad fanfiction, but it doesn’t always make for bad fiction. Change all the parts of canon enough and you’ve arguably got an original work. It might even be a good original work if the author has writing skill.

The second problem - the validation of the universe - is what makes Flawless OC a dull read in any context. If Flawless OC wants something, you know they’ll get it. If Flawless OC hates someone, you know they’re going to catch hell. If Flawless OC needs to be vulnerable for their love interest, something just bad enough to make them vulnerable will befall them. The perfection of the OC is less of an issue than the lack of meaningful conflict. (A character can have no faults and still be interesting to follow if they must struggle against a universe that doesn’t care.)

to wit:

there’s a fantasy book by David and Leigh Eddings - The Redemption of Althalus - that I read long ago. it stuck with me to a peculiar degree because for a book with such a unique conceit, it was incredibly boring. This is published fiction: it had editors, a marketing team, and was written by professionals with lots of experience! But looking back, none of this saved the story from featuring Gary Stu in a universe that catered to his every need.

The main character, Althalus, is ostensibly a person in need of redemption for being such a bad person all his life and never punished for it, but he’s a loveable, quick-witted rogue almost from the start. To 'redeem’ himself, he’s tasked with saving the world from Enemies (we’re told they’re evil, but I don’t think we see them more than once or twice). Protected by the Goddess of Luck - literally - for the entire novel, there’s never a single moment where Althalus’ victory over the Enemy is in question. He never does anything really awful that would explain his need to be redeemed (in fact, it turns out the Luck Goddess is the one who protected him from punishment all his life). The enemy is weak, forgettable, and constantly outwitted, and the protagonists, supposedly people of gray morality, never did anything worse than be snarky.

The unique conceit that kept me reading was the House at the End of the World. Being the home of the Goddess, it had doors that opened to anywhere on the planet. but for an idea with such double-edged possibilities, it turned out to be an impregnable fortress of Good. The House and its owner were the forces that bent the whole book’s universe to the inevitable triumph of the main character and his companions.

A counter-example might be Miraculous Ladybug. I’ve often wondered if Mary Sue could be written well and be likeable, and Marinette - the titular Ladybug - is probably close. She’s good at almost everything and always outwits her enemies; even when she seems confident to the point of arrogance, it’s justified by her endless successes. (Her only real flaw is being clumsy when she’s distracted, and it only happens when it’s conveniently cute. this is a walking Mary Sue cliche.) Her power is to be lucky, after all.

However: even though everything ends up right for Marinette at the end of every episode, she’s not rewarded when she acts poorly towards others. She causes herself problems when she does. Her luck powers give her the ability to bend the universe a little, but the universe is otherwise unforgiving; she’s subjected to the same banalities as everyone else and learns to be a better person along the way.

OTOH if you put Ladybug in another canon with a makeover to recast her as Flawless OC, changing everything so she could occupy a central role like the one she has in her own series, she’d be insufferable: hence Ladybug is a solid example of how a Mary Sue can prosper provided she’s in a universe designed to both feature her and contain her powers for the sake of Good.

I apologize for how long a reply this is. Still: I hope it successfully illustrates for you that:

though original writing and fanfic writing use the same tool (words), and both can use them masterfully, what original writers like you do and what fic writers do are, in general, very different things.

And Mary Sue is what you make of her. In the right universe, she’s just a very lucky person. :)

#in defense of mary sue #in defense of fanfic #origific vs fanfic #fandom meta #miraculous ladybug #david eddings #i think i read that book because I liked some other book of his #but wow it was a dull read #I kept waiting for everything to fall apart #but it didn't #anywho #long post #y ik es #Anonymous

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childrenofthedas-a · 4 years

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THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

MUN NAME: JINN AGE: 21 CONTACT: IM, Discord

CHARACTER(S): Mahariel, Tabris (HoF), Lavellan, Trevelyan (Inquisitors), 4 OCs.

CURRENT FANDOM(S): Dragon Age

FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR: I don’t have any yet for the moment!

MY LANGUAGE(S): Italian (native), English (proficiency), French (Intermediate)

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: 2 PARA / NOVELLA

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / ANONS

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?: YES / NO / OCCASIONALLY - only by Mutuals?: YES / NO

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / CASUAL / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK. / ALL

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?: YES / NO / DEPENDS

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (college)

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. (irl makes coping difficult sometimes)

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ WEEKS / MONTHS / YEARS.

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC / BOTH IN A BALANCE

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING: Honestly? Come up to me and talk! I swear I’m friendly and don’t bite. I’m not particularly shy so I am the one writing first at times.

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER: Just honesty and mutual respect. I like to throw ideas and memes at plotting partners, and I will acknowledge if someone isn’t into a particular idea. I like having the same :)

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?: Usually I write to the partner for new ideas, maybe to spice up the thread a bit.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?: I often throw as many ideas into the story as I can, I don’t mind if some of the ideas that land are mostly mine but I like the concept of two people throwing ideas around, given that there’s the same interest in the plot!

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - AND WHY?: I don’t mind if people drop one liners. They’re supposed to be casual and entertaining to a point. Ih the thread in question is a plotted one, I don’t mind if the other wishes to drop it — just let me know!

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?: I usually never drop threads intentionally, it’s mostly due to... the drafts nightmare that this website has. However, I may drop casual threads. Rarely plotted ones, and in that case it might be because of lack of time.

WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO. - AND WHY?: It’s nice to get to know the person you’re plotting with. Sometimes I forget to reply to messages, but I enjoy talking with other people on Discord, even if it can be brief. Communication at any level keeps a point of understanding for the plot as well.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: Naturally, as long as it’s constructive. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to accept every critique I will eventually get, since writing is what I do for my job. Given that this site is a guilty pleasure and only that, I use trophies / cliches / repetition in some characters / backgrounds, because it’s fun. So there’s not a high level of seriousness on my part here, honestly.

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: I love stories, I love writing. It’s something to keep me in training with english and writing in general. Keeps my mind active.

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS: I will eventually make a wishlist post for each and everyone of my characters. Though the ones that would be more interesting, for the moment, would be an arc for Milot in which he grows a bit from the idiot bigot child he is while getting some recognition for his abilities an arc for Feirun who has trust issues and would simply like to feel like she belongs somewhere, thus indulging in friendships — and an arc for Dianor regarding the Calling, to see where it could lead, whether to the finding of a cure or to his death.

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE: There aren’t specific themes I will never explore, but some themes, however, like suicide, I’d be willing to explore if done with taste and regard to others and with a person who would be willing to explore it with me. I’m about realism, and given that some themes are a bit heavy for me as well I always do it in a manner that does not diminish neither the theme nor the person involved with it.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: I can usually work with anything, but one liners that feel empty in attempt are usually really frustrating.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?: Going for the cliches: innocent young ones, honor-bound ones and villains. I don’t have much of a preference but these tend to be more fun for me.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?: Self-inserts that claim to be self-inserts and that end up being straight up mary sues. I like self-inserts when portrayed naturally and truthfully, even if it’s the type of character that doesn’t catch my eye at first.

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I’m very laid back and I’m patient. Given that I actually spent a lot of my time on this site and know the kinds of people wandering these halls, I know who to avoid in case of senseless drama and how to handle it if directed at me or at my rp partners. I would also like to add feel lucky to have met people who are the same on this site.

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: It can often be consistency. I can be really pumped up for a plot, then be extremely slow in replying to threads. Right now it’s mostly due to the fact that all of these muses are new and I have to think about what they’d say and do. An initial idea shared with a rp partner, too, might fall apart the moment I realise that it couldn’t work with my muse for the same reason.

DO YOU RP SMUT?: YES / NO / DEPENDS on the character I’m writing. It has to make sense for the muse; if my current muses are, for example, Dianor, Vincent or Lottie, they have a higher chance of being open to smut. Others need an emotional connection or very specific requirements. I’m not against it entirely, though I’m terrible at writing it.

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN, FADE TO BLACK?: YES / NO.

WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?: Again, depends on the muse.

ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?: As said above, I’m open for most “unpopular” themes, if treated with regard and taste. Big nopes are themes like animal abuse or child abuse.

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?: YES / NO. Ships can be of any kind — platonic, romantic, familiar and so on. Human connection is important in stories, and to find some is always a good thing for me.

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. I do have some ships going on but I’d still run my blog if there weren’t many. I like exploring different kinds of relationships, not just the positive ones.

DO YOU USE READ MORE?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU: MULTI-SHIP / SINGLE-SHIP / DUAL-SHIP — MULTIVERSE / SINGLEVERSE.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: I enjoy it when particular romantic ships lead to internal conflicts within my muses. For example, Feirun has 0 interpersonal skills and has never been with anyone before, therefore seeing her accepting the fact that she has feelings for someone, and growing a sense of worth that leads her to go for it, is fantastic. For Octavia, too, despite her lack of interest in sex, she can still be romantically interested in people, which happens rarely due to her difficult character; when it does happen, she tends to become a bit softer, and that’s my jam.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: Dianor is the worst warden on the website, probably, reckless and a troublemaker; he can lead to plots with adventures, theft and unexpected camaraderie. Tristan is an Inquisitor who only wishes to be strong enough to protect everyone, he can be all about love and support to other muses or create interesting conflicts. Feirun is a feral squirrel, honestly, but due to her background she can lead to interesting plots tied with Tevinter or the Qun. Milot is a young soldier who wishes to prove himself, he is often in need of guidance but he himself can teach a thing or two about being comfortable with one’s self. Vincent is a particular kind of abomination, thus it could be interesting to have him interact with other mages / templars / really, anyone who has a problem with demons. Lottie is an orlesian spy and a functional psychopath, it can lead to many interesting plots with a large variety of characters. Octavia could be one of the most interesting ones given her background, since the actions of whoever surrounds her in the Inquisition could lead her to find actual morals and discover emotional intelligence rather than having her stay the same person she was before.

WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?: Characters who see everything in black and white.

WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, WHAT IS THEIR GOAL?: Dianor just wants to find a cure for the calling and live freely. Tristan thinks he wants to save everyone, but he really needs people who help him overcome his own issues. Feirun wants somewhere to belong, people to be close with, having been alone for most of her life. Milot wants to become a knight and be treated like the other soldiers, without the special treatment he often gets due to his age. Lottie just wants money, I think. Vincent wants to either find a way to get the demon out of his body or die. Octavia would like to take revenge on her father and go back to Tevinter, but she might need some emotional guidance at first.

WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?: Dianor gets along with other rogues. Tristan is like a dog, happy to see anyone. Feirun has a particular interest for the Qunari. Milot greatly regards knights and people in power who show honor and integrity. Octavia likes people who do their job and are unapologetic about it. Lottie enjoys meeting any kind of character that she could get something out of. Vincent is often very happy to see other mages and men, honestly.

WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?: Dianor likes to tell stories of any kind. Tristan enjoys talking about plans for the Inquisition. Feirun likes to talk about lore, archeological finds, books and magic. Milot... likes to talk about battles, I guess. Lottie enjoys discussing Orlais fashion. Octavia loves discussing magic, blood magic specifically. Vincent likes to discuss art.

DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?: Dianor lost his best friend Tamlen and had to save Thedas, now the Calling is killing him from the inside. Tristan couldn’t save a clan of dalish elves being attacked by a Teyrn. Feirun was abandoned by the dalish when she was 8 and was beaten and hunted by Templars for a while. Octavia discovered she was an half-elf and fruit of scandal and went on the run for it. Vincent was friends with a spirit who turned into a demon while saving his life from templars. Milot saw his farm, his home being destroyed by battles between mages, templars and demons. Lottie... once wore bad shoes?

WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?: Darkspawn for everyone. Mages for Milot. Templars for Feirun and Vincent.

IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?: Darkspawn. Mages in general for Milot, he’s really afraid of them and would not hesitate to bring them down in battle. Feirun and Vincent detest the Templars due to the abuse they’ve faced because of them.

ARE YOUR MUSES EASY TO APPROACH?: Dianor, Tristan and Vincent are the easiest ones to approach. The others can be... difficult to handle at first.

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSES?: I apologise for some of them being sluts or bigots. I love them all the same.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

tagged by: indecently stolen! tagging: anyone who actually read this i guess!

#┊♞┊jinn. ( ooc )

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vrenaewrites · 4 years

Text

AFTER by Anna Todd thoughts: Prologue - Ch 50

Full video here.

Originally wattpad fanfic about Harry Styles??????

PROLOGUE:

“I didn't know college would be more than academics”

Confused by (her roommate’s friends) inattention to structure: How fucking lame are you

“And that’s when he crept into my heart” Is he italicized in the books i bet it is

Dude’s name is hardin? More like hard-on amirite

CH 1:

It starts with an alarm going off?!?!?!? Rule number one!!!!!

She spends the prologue telling us she’s been prepping for college all her life and then spends a good half a page telling us that again

“Whatever else teenagers else do, that wasn’t me” We got a mary sue here guys

Razor from the knees down - ok virgin - why was this a detail?

Oh shiiii she got a boyfriend? And his name is NOT hardin guys

She told us multiple times that she prepped for this day forever but also keeps saying she has no idea what to expect...does this take place before the internet? Like...google it??

CH 2:

She just said she saw the school online, like you can find pics of the school but you couldn’t find a single youtube video about “what college is really like” foh

So the mom sits in on orientation but is expected to leave before seeing the dorm room how tf that girl supposed to get all her shit up to the dorm?!?!?! Parents usually help you move in??

So the car was packed FULL of her stuff but then she says she only brought clothes and books and her bf doesn’t have much to carry...so what is the truth?

Oh shit her roommate has tattoos

“Where the dorms are tiny and the parties are huge” and this information is fucking earth shattering to tessa and her mom and not-hardin

CH 3:

Two closets in this tiny dorm room…

“College is not what i expected” you said MULTIPLE TIMES you didn’t know what to expect so what is the truth?!!?!?!?

“Both genders” yikes on bikes

CH 4:

HE HAS A THICK ENGLISH ACCENT goodBYE

“Hardin scott is not my boyfriend” okay, so many things. No one fucking talks like that unless they wanna introduce the full name of the love interest in the clunkiest way

Also HS are his initials goodBYEEEEE

CH 5:

“Destroyed his body with holes and tattoos” omg

CH 6:

Hardin is fucking neg that calls her Teresa when she asks to go by Tessa and as someone who constantly gets called Vicki when I ask to go by Viktoria, I am on her side in this instance and this instance only

CH 7:

She is so upset that someone called her prissy but then she can’t even bring herself to think of what those people are doing in the frat house bedrooms

CH 9:

The word bottom. As in, steph pushed her bottom against a guy as she danced with him...BOTTOM

She’s in a bedroom with her drunk roommate and a really great collection of books and I GUARANTEE this is Hardin’s room

Wuthering heights ffs

KNEW IT

CH 10:

And she’s crying

CH 13:

She introduces herself by her full name and landon does the same whyyyyyy who does this?

He’s a nice kid unlike you - i’m shocked at my harsh words

Am i just a bitch or is she the weakest

So they’re just walking and he screams, “Stop staring at me” out of nowhere and walks away...sounds stable

CH 14:

“Noah is my boyfriend and I would never do anything to hurt him” This is what we call foreshadowing my friends

“A man who is rude an intolerable being made into a romantic hero? It’s ridiculous” hardin

Foreshadowing…

She literally just said her boyfriend is like a little brother…ew

“I’m aware that my hips and breasts are larger than most women my age”...women are fully developed at 18...i don’t understand…

Mary sue shit

CH 15:

“She’s intimidated by you because you’re not like other girls” is that a real thing…

“You look...different” - hardin PUKE

“Are you a virgin?” i puked again

No one seems surprised - bitch you dress like a nun

CH 16:

These chapter breaks make no gd sense

“Hormonal college rock n roll misfits”

Immediately takes a shot of vodka

Hardin looks disappointed that she took a shot because she’s not like other girls…

Slut shaming.com / tessa re: molly

CH 17:

“Sorry if i don’t dress like a slut” no you just wear pleated skirts and khakis like a mormon mother

Hardin doesn’t drink OF COURSE they are sober lil bookworms together

I want to be an author. Of course because she is the mary sue of our generation move over bella swan

She’s drinking again after almost puking

CH 18:

“We don’t need to have sex, we have fun by going to the movies...and going on walks” ON WALKS.

OH SHIIIIIIIII THEY KISSIN

CH 19:

This girl has never been horny before and she cannot cope with the feeling

Am i bad a person for feeling like “Well she already cheated by kissing him, might as well keep kissing him?” like i know that’s wrong but…

CH 20:

Oh my god she’s not telling her boyfriend that she kissed someone else??!?!?

Oh shiii hardin’s in her dorm

HER MOM IS AT THE DOOR

WITH NOAH?!?!?!?!?!

When i say weakass you say bitch

CH 21:

The fork at breakfast reminds her of hardin’s lip ring….

She just called Hardin Mr. Rude. “Mr. struggle” lol anyone else watch Cody Ko??

Noah won’t kiss her in public and she does NOT get horny with him

CH 22:

Pride and prejudice is not a magical book tessa

Landon’s mom and hardin’s dad?! Oh shiiiii

“Are you ocd or something” christ

Literally he’s throwing her notes all over the floor like what a four year old

“Eyes burning into mine” AGAIN

They kissin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh shit they doin MORE than kissing

“You’re so sexy tess” I PUKED

Steph’s eyes are clapping with glee?????

“You could learn a lot from Hardin, like, sexually” - steph

okay………

CH 23:

They’re talking about the use of foreshadowing in pride and prejudice about if you could tell that darcy and elizabeth would end up together…

What kinda hamfisted shit…

And then she and hardin get in a screaming match about their situation but it’s coded in darcy and elizabeth language like come onnnnnnn

So much twilight vibes: “your mood swings give me a headache” “i should stay away from him, i know he’s dangerous” dangerous how? Because he has tattoos?

FIRST FULL BODY CRINGE: “You’re thinking about me and you have that feeling, down there, don’t you, teresa?”

Twilight: “i don’t wanna stay away from you”

CH 24:

“He really is bipolar” dude

She likes bon iver and the fray...of course she does

CH 25:

SHE FOLLOWED THIS STRANGER INTO THE WOODS

No murderino instinct at all

“He must be cold in the warm ass water because he can’t be getting flushed seeing me, a girl he’s made out with multiple times and is obviously attracted to, in nothing but his t-shirt” bitch COME ON

“I’m having real fun, not watching a movie fun”

This is such a dig at noah who she says doesn’t need to fuck her because they watch movies together

SECOND FULL BODY CRINGE: “These lips, the things you could do with them”

THIRD: “Oh Hardin,” I moan and squeeze him with my legs. “I want to make you moan my name over and over again” - hardin

My hormones are out of control - who is thinking about their hormones at this point

FOURTH: She goes to cover up and he’s like don’t ever cover yourself from me, i’ve been with so many girls but none like you

And they’re not gonna do it but “there are many other things he wants to do to her first” and at this point my body is contorted like a jumbo shrimp

FIFTH: The whole fingering scene honestly. Just all of it. He made her towel off with his shirt...am I missing something? She had already put her pants on...what’s the point of that???

SIXTH: “You haven’t said a word to me since” - “since i gave you your first orgasm?”

CH 26:

Wtf is this dude’s problem? She ignores her boyfriend’s call to keep making out with him and he’s like “don’t break up with him on my account, there’s no us going on” like dude y’all just went on a date...so you can keep saying you don’t date...but you just did…

CH 27:

She’s so selfish!!!! Calling Noah because she got rejected by Hardin!!!!!!!! Noah deserves better 2k20

And then she mentions it in front of Hardin to make him jealous WTF

Hardin petty ass Scott says, “noah, that’s a nice cardigan you’re wearing”

Thanks I got it from the gap!!!!!!!11

CH 28:

SEVEN: Tessa wants noah to get her horny so she keeps trying to kiss him and when he won’t let anything happen she stops and he says, “that was nice, tessa”

Tessa takes noah’s car to go help hardin and leaves noah in her dorm room alone when he drove 3 hours to see her!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CH 29:

Hardin toxic asshole Scott threw a hissy fit and tessa comes to save the day

He dresses her little glass cut after telling her she’s pathetic...woof

CH 30:

Holy manipulation station nation

Then he forces himself on her and her dumb bitch ass KISSES HIM!!!!!

BECAUSE HE SAID HE NEEDED HER, THAT’S ALL IT TOOK

Cringe throughout: that she describes his lips as pink. It’s weird as fuck.

EIGHT: “You know who i think you are when you’re with me?” “Who?” “yourself”

CH 31:

NINE: He’s telling her if she says the word he’ll leave her alone: “Tell me teresa,” he coos, and i whimper. “Hardin,” i whisper. WHY?

SHE IS GONNA STAY WITH HARDIN WHILE NOAH IS WAITING FOR HER?!?!?!?!!??!

CH 32:

“I don’t know if it’s his smile or the fact that he’s only in boxers, but I’m in a much better mood than before” you skank ass hoe

TEN: He says her clothes hide how sexy and curvy her body really is. Sexy and curvy. Both.

CH 33:

ELEVEN: “I know this happiness isn’t going to last” - the happiness being her straddling this guy that isn’t her boyfriend - “and i feel like cinderella waiting for the clock to strike midnight”

“I can behave any way i want with hardin tonight, because in the morning i’m going to tell him to leave me alone forever” HUH

TWELVE: I am just as intoxicated by hardin, as hardin is by the bottle of scotch he drank

THIRTEEN: Who is this girl straddling this punk boy and asking to touch him...down there?

CH 34:

FOURTEEN: He says he wants to taste her and this dumb bitch licks her lips like “yeah we been kissing wtf” and he says “no, down there” EW

CH 35:

Noah standing up for himself!!!!!

FIFTEEN: Then he calls them those gothic people...gothic? Not goth. Gothic.

HARDIN DONE BARGED IN!!!!!!

CH 36:

Hardin and Noah about to get into it!

Hardin making tessa be honest with noah OMG THE DRAMA

SIXTEEN: I am a moth to hardin’s flame and he never hesitates to burn me

CH 39:

Tessa gets a makeover to go out with steph and i KNOW she’s gonna see hardin and they’re gonna be inappropriate in public

And hardin is here OF COURSE

Oooh and he’s with molly! Tea

She is a slut - TESSA NO

Chapter 37: hardin will ruin tess if she ever comes around again chapter 39: he’s driving her home and making sure her burger doesn’t have ketchup

CH 40:

Noah will get back with tessa if she promises nothing with happen with hardin and we are only halfway through this book BITCH

CH 41:

Oh he drunk and at tessa’s dorm

This BITCH. JUST. GOT. BACK.TOGETHER. WITH. NOAH. AND. IS. GETTING. IN. BED. WITH. HARDIN. TO. WATCH. A. MOVIE.

CH 42:

He picks her up and forces her to sleep in the bed with him despite her saying no

CH 44:

She admits to herself that sleeping beside hardin is worth losing noah and then is trying to talk herself into believing that noah is hotter than hardin????

“You don’t need makeup” “well i like it” “well you’re bad at it” negging ass

This man at the store says, “hardin?” in an english accent and she’s like “i knew it was his dad” well how many fucking english dudes are in this small washington town my friend

This bitch agrees to go to dinner with hardin’s dad knowing damn well he and his dad are NOT on good terms...she’d be walking home…

CH 45:

And then because he doesn’t wanna go to dinner with his abandoning father, she says she’s gonna go to his dad’s house for dinner with ANOTHER DUDE?!?!?!?!?!?

She ignores noah’s call

It is stressing me tf out that she isn’t calling noah back and is instead getting ready for a date with hardin’s family...this poor cardigan wearing man

CH 46:

I LITERALLY DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE FAMILY!!!!!!!! GET BACK TO THE CRINGE NEGGING AND ALMOST-BONING

CH 47:

“He rubs the back of his neck like he always does” - this is the first time he’s done this??

CH 48:

SEVENTEEN: “Oh tessa the things you do to me”

Fingers her without asking?!?!?!?!?!?! She literally says “Without my permission”

CH 49:

She is staying at hardin’s family’s house for the night, asks for her own room because she has a boyfriend - YOU JUST GOT EATEN OUT BY ANOTHER DUDE FIVE MINUTES AGO

~~~~

#reading #fiction #after #anna todd #hardin scott #tessa young #harry styles #fanfic #cringe #cringe books #cringe review #negative review #book review

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