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chainofclovers · 1 year

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A fandom thing that brings me great discomfort is the assumption that "all" queer fans are naturally going to flock around a single ship, and if you don't see it happening you're definitely straight and possibly homophobic. Those are some wild things to assume!

(I'll note a bit of added context here: I don't participate in Twitter fandom, so Discord and Tumblr are my main exposures to character and ship discourse, and AO3 and Livejournal and fansites are the current and past places I've consumed fic. When I'm into a show, I tend to read widely in the main tags even if I usually gravitate towards one or more favorite ships.)

In my current fandom, my inclinations are mostly centered around a m/f ship as well as multi-shipping a variety of monogamous and poly ships (many/most of which are queer). This is a bit of a departure from most of my previous fandom experiences, which have been centered around very subtextual f/f ships in fandom spaces where the fic-writing and discourse is nearly entirely centered around femslash. My corner of this current fandom includes tons of queer fans (of which I am one), as well as plenty of fans who don't identify as queer. In all the fandom spaces I'm in and in all the pairings (and gen fic) I enjoy from this show, there tends to be a lot of nuanced exploration of gender and sexuality, including explorations of queerness, including within transformative works about that popular m/f ship.

Over the last few weeks, I've watched the ship wars in my fandom, which used to be largely focused around that m/f ship I happen to love, kinda shift into what I think is a bit of an emerging-from-within defensive campaign for a popular m/m ship.

(Some more context: I have zero interest in engaging in ship wars. I believe all ships with adult characters are valid ships. I am invested in what will happen in the canon of this show, but "endgame" has never been the driver for my participation in any fandom, and I'd be shocked if I don't continue to create transformative works about my favorite ships for months and years to come regardless of what happens with the show. I personally don't adore the popular m/m ship, although I definitely see the chemistry and for most of the time this show has existed, I've appreciated the enthusiasm for the characters and the ship even if it's not my cup of tea. I enjoy both characters and their canonical relationship, and completely understand why the romantic ship is very popular.)

I find it genuinely kind of funny and amusing that for ship war participants fighting for basically any ship within this fandom, the arguments they experience from antis are incredibly similar--for character x and character y to get together, or for character x and character z to get together, it would be cliche, it would be tired, it would be unnecessary, we already have plenty of rep like that, or there's no way these characters could make sense as rep like that, there's nothing in the text that supports this ship, etc.

What feels newer is this insinuation that to opt out of shipping a particular thing means you are unable to see it. If you just don't prefer it or don't predict that it will happen in canon, that must mean that you believe the people who do see it happening are delusional, and therefore you are the enemy.

And attendant with that viewpoint is this idea that there are only two options in media: "the" queer ship will go canon, or the entire show is a big queerbaity setup. Does queerbaiting exist? Yes! Is it happening right now? No! Queerbaiting is, essentially, a broken promise from creator to fan.

The reason all this bums me out try as I might to ignore it and continue having a grand time is multifold: it's a gender thing and a rarepair thing and a thing about ship-as-campaign that saps the fun and joy out of (sub)text and text and the beautiful mystery of watching a story unfold faster than anything.

The gender thing: the show I'm talking about has a character who identifies herself as bisexual in the first season. Do I want more about that story? Do I think that story could and should take up more space? Yes! But is it there? Absolutely. And it's been disheartening to see people either ignore her completely or chalk this part of the story up to "lame jokes" as if humor and flirtation are less-than or inauthentic ways to engage with one's sexuality. It's disheartening to hear people talk about how they hope this show will have its first queer representation when there's been a queer woman on the show the whole time.

The rarepair thing: fic writers, presumably of every orientation under the sun, have been creating very queer fic about a multitude of characters on this show (including, notably, characters who are women) this whole time. There are queer pairings with twenty or fifteen or even three, two, or one stories in their tag. And it feels like lately all these pockets of fandom, regardless of what we've been writing, are getting lumped into this generic "straight" soup of people who lack the vision for the thing that's now "the" thing. But the things that made me want to write queer fic (and, yes, m/f fic) about all these characters, including one of the characters who is part of the popular m/m fic, are things I picked up in the source material, too.

The ship-as-campaign thing: it's exhausting. And it takes something that's pretty inherently queer--the communal act of engaging with a text and transforming it in a million beautiful (or depraved, or silly, or gross, or genre-defying) ways--and splinters it into factions. And assumes stupidity (or outright bigotry) on the part of those who don't see it the exact same way you do. Of course there's bigotry in this fandom, and among casual viewers. It's shit. So why invent more of it that isn't there when we could all focus on eradicating what is there? I don't think there's anything wrong with hoping fervently that you get to see the love story you want to see play out onscreen. That's absolutely how I feel. It's the way this stuff gets treated like a political platform that needs to do numbers to win...that's what bothers me, regardless of which ship it's about.

This has gone on way too long and I very easily might end up regretting making this post, which is very obviously about the thing it is about. If you reblog it, do NOT use it to campaign for any ships or belittle anyone for enjoying the ships they enjoy. PLEASE. Every single one of the ships is great and interesting and worthy of being explored by fandom, and you're selling fandom and community and queer culture short if you assume all the queers have to go in one room and all the straights have to go in another. We can be excited about the things we're excited about without making those hurtful assumptions and making ourselves miserable over a thing that is actually extremely cool.

#queer things #fandom things #hot dork club #personal #(but you can reblog as long as you don't use it for the purpose of ship wars or campaigns!)#and what the heck i guess i'll tag it with the show?#i don't wanna start anything but genuinely express something that i find hurtful and interesting at the same time!#ted lasso

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edalynn · 1 year

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i gotta admit that i have this habit of checking on ur blog every week or so just to read you+other anons expressing frustration w huntl0w. in a weird way it's like an outlet for me whenever i get annoyed by the constant ship content in the fandom. like vicarious venting. if that makes sense

i honestly don't mind it as a crack ship tbh. like if that was all it was, that would be fine, it's like ppl shipping camila/eda, or gus/mattholomule, or vee/masha, etc... like huntl0w, those are all totally normal pairings that (with the exception of camila/eda) have all gotten VERY brief moments that might *possibly* hint to it being a thing in the future. but that's the point, is that huntl0w falls into that category, but the sheer quantity of content that is/has been produced VASTLY outpaces all the other crack ships.

and that's what gets me about it i think . is that the fanon has elevated it to the point where if all you knew about TOH was what you saw in fandom spaces, any outsider would make the reasonable assumption that huntl0w is integral to the plot and has had several episodes worth of development in regards to their relationship

but it hasn't? ,... meaning there's this weird mismatch between universally accepted fanon-as-canon and what actually occurs in the show. and..... it's really, really weird, and i think the question should be asked: why huntl0w? why is this crack ship specifically getting this strange treatment, and having more attention placed on it than fuckin lumity, or raeda?

and let's be real. it's probably cuz it's straight.

there are prob other factors too, like hunter is the stereotypical attractive bad boy who switches sides, or in luz's words, 'i pretend i don't care but i secretly do' kinda guy. think zuko ,and the amount of ppl that simp for him lmao. so it's possible willow is being used as a sort of quasi-self insert (recall how in a lot of their ship art, the focus is always always always on hunter and his issues, with willow just sort of Being There to fluster him/make him happy). and obviously using willow like that is really weird! like seriously i've got no problem if ppl wanna do an oc x canon situation with hunter. that's fine. but actually use some brain power to make a self insert oc instead of using willow lol

anyway i hope that wasnt too much rambling for an ask i just had some Thoughts about huntl0w lol

YEAH, if it had stayed a crackship I could've just like. ignored it and let it be. I definitely still mocked it personally with my partner irl when we would see it because it just seemed so ridiculous to us, but I wouldn't be as vocally angry or have the trauma response it causes now. The content in the fandom for h/l vs. lumity and raeda combined is depressing to say the least. And yes, you're right. It's because it's straight or straight passing at the very least. It's really telling and really upsetting for a queer-based show's most popular ship to be a m/f ship that's not even canon and doesn't even affect the plot. Honestly, I'd go as far as saying it's disgusting and those artists that I see that ONLY draw hunt/low shouldn't even be watching toh in the first place because this piece of media is clearly not what you need.

And it's amazing actually, what you pointed out. It has literally the amount of implication that any other crackship in the show has aside from camila/eda. Like, I knew that but I'd never really thought too extensively on that point. There is seriously no supporting evidence more than for gustholomule that hunt//low will ever end up canon aside from a few blushes from only one side of the ship in the first place. In any other show it would be taken as just that, a little nod at a potential crackship. I don't know why hunt/low shippers are so aggressively convinced that it's already canon when it's barely past crackship level.

And it's definitely all those reasons you mentioned that it's far more popular even than canon queer ships- it being m/f, hunter being the typical attractive bad boy-secretly good character, and Willow being easy to morph into a type of self-insert made to coddle said bad-boy character because that's the type of relationship and validation they want. 🙄 But for real,, if that's the reason you think you like hunt//low,, you don't actually like hunt//low or even Willow's character specifically- you just want a pretty bad boy to like you and you're using hunter as your outlet lmao. Seriously, just make an OC at that point. It does less of a disservice to Willow's character and can be molded into canon however you'd like. I'd prefer to see everyone's canon insert OCs than constant out of character hunt//low in the tags constantly.

#taako talks #asks #anons #toh #the owl house #huntl0w negative #or be like me and have a full past life with hunter #i say as if it was a choice #fox one day in college 5 yrs ago: yea after you died i remember eating breakfast in the cabin kitchen with a white haired boy like you #fox: i think he was a hunter ot had something to do with hunters #us 4 1/2 yrs later: oh. huh. well would you look at that

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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As I said, @hilichurlrights, you can really tell how ignorant such people are of the composition of fanfic fandom, never mind the rest of the world.

I agree it makes sense...

I just think it makes people fucking morons and they should learn better.

This response is an example of the very thing the original ask was bitching about and with good reason!

AO3 and tumblr are full of m/m shipping. They are equally full of useful idiots doing the work of TERFs and homophobes by accident. That’s where this nonesense about “fetishizing” leads: to trying to force people to avoid m/m content.

(Funny story: I know a 20-something who proudly told me she only has het ships because she knows it would be fetishizing for her to have any m/m ships. Good job, wankers, you sure made fandom more progressive by getting rid of the queer shit.)

It’s very telling that the constant refrain is that WOC are sidelined for two white men, as though WOC aren’t “sidelined” in favor of white het in spaces with more het shipping. I’m not even convinced that sidelining is a good way to look at people spending hobby time on X vs. Y anyway, but it’s definitely not a good way to look at this specific pattern because shippy fic is romance. Women are “sidelined” in m/m because it’s m/m. All of the non-leads, regardless of gender or orientation, are always “sidelined” in romance novels. That’s what the genre is.

This is the kind of insidious rhetoric that the bigots sneak into our spaces to be absorbed and repeated by unwitting progressives.

Do you not get that spreading this nonsense is demanding that people like heterosexual fiction and and demanding that they prioritize hetereosexual fiction as more progressive? Or are you pitting f/f with WOC against white m/m? The examples I can think of where this comes up tend to be about shipping some very popular white guy lead with either the WOC or the white dude from his canon.

Plenty of people don’t read fic about women because they don’t identify with women or because they have trauma or because the media industries and genres they’re into don’t depict women in ways that inspire them. There are so many valid reasons including the very obvious one of other people’s hobby time is not yours to command.

The word ‘fetishizing’ itself is tremendously ambiguous in this context too. This isn’t some universal evil we all agree is real or all agree on a definition for.

Fic is not primarily operating in the realistic family drama space where “good representation” seems to hang out. It’s more likely to be romance novels or crime procedurals in terms of its genre elements. Some of it is erotica. Much of what I see called out as “fetishizing” is actually just rape fantasy--a normal and healthy thing everyone has known was fine since the 70s unless you are, once again, a conservative religious asshat or a radfem. Or, worse yet, plenty of it is just “Women aren’t allowed to write about men” with a whole pile of misgendering, mislabeling of orientation, and demands for people’s RL info.

Writing a female Asian character as some ninja prostitute stereotype is fetishizing.

Being horny for m/m is not. Not even if you’re a cis woman. Not even if you like kink.

Being horny is not a bad thing.

Every time you uncritically call people’s amateur m/m art “sus”, you’re helping out the bigots.

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akatsuki-shin · 3 years

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I... I don’t often call out anyone specifically using social media before, but... I saw this among the reblogs in my first post about MXTX novels English release announcement and I feel that this is just too much...

I’m not going to tag this with the fandom tags because this is literally just my personal rant, and I don’t want unpleasant things to appear when people are happily browsing the tags.

I also censored the person’s blog name. It’s not like I want people to mass attack them.

But I do have some things I want to say about this kind of mindset.

And this is gonna be a long post, so I’ll cut it with "Read More” later below as not to disturb anyone’s browsing experience.

Why do they have to split the books into multiple volumes?

First, you do realize that the original Chinese version and other languages versions are also in multiple volumes that don’t always be published on the same date, right?

SVSSS has 3 volumes, MDZS has 4 volumes, TGCF has 5 volumes.

With the English release, both SVSSS and MDZS get +1 volume while TGCF gets +3 volumes.

Why you ask?

Have you ever considered how long a single Chinese word would be if written in alphabets?

The word “人” in Chinese only needs 1 (one) character, while in English it would translate to “P E O P L E” = 5 (five) characters.

The word “知己” in Chinese only needs 2 (two) characters, while in English it would translate to “C O N F I D A N T E” = 10 characters, or “S O U L M A T E” = 8 characters.

Now apply this to an entire novel. FYI, TGCF has more than 1 million word count in Chinese, so you can do the math by yourself.

I mean, just go watch the donghua or live action in YouTube. One single sentence in the Chinese sub is often translated to two or more lines in the English subtitle.

And have I mentioned that the English release will have:

Glossary

Footnotes

Character Guides

And I’m going to repeat this once again: In China and other countries that already get their official releases, it is also NOT always all released on the same date as a single set/box.

So yes, (not) surprise! For the Chinese release and official releases in other countries, you also often need to purchase multiple times, pay shipping fee multiple times, and wait for certain period of times until all volumes are released.

It doesn’t only happen to MXTX novels, it happens to almost all novels, be it danmei or not.

Why don’t they just wait for translations to finish and release it all at the same time/as a box set? Why the span of two years?

On my part, I already say above that in China and other countries that already get their official release, it’s also not always published all on the same date.

Other than that, I’m not an expert at book publishing, much less when the publisher is not from my own country. But maybe consider the following:

They’re releasing 3 (three) hugely popular IPs all at the same time. Maybe the preparations take more time and effort to ensure everything is flawless?

Since it is very rare (or maybe never, cmiiw) for danmei novels to be published in English, maybe the publisher is testing the market first? Because if they already release them as a huge bundle from the start and it somehow flops, the loss would be very big. If it works well, then good! Maybe for future danmei release, they will consider making a box set or releasing them within shorter timeframe.

In terms of marketing, if they wait another 2 years to release it all at once, will the momentum still be there? You can say “so in the end it’s all about money”, but if not sales number and money, what else should the publisher expect to receive for their work? They’re already putting a lot of effort buying all three IPs from the Chinese publishers, proofread or even translate some from scratch, pay translators, editors, illustrators, printing companies, etc. If it’s not selling well simply because they release it at the wrong time, aren’t all these efforts going to be wasted? And you can bet there will be no more danmei published in English if their first try already flops merely because of losing the momentum.

Are there any other rules or regulations they need to comply that prevents them from releasing everything in one go? But once again, even in China and other countries, it is also not always all released in one go, so this argument is already invalid from the start.

But they make it so expensive like this!

I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’ve compared the prices to MDZS Japanese release + TGCF Thai release and... The price isn’t really that much different.

Btw, I’m using Google’s currency converter, in case anyone wants to know where does my calculation comes from.

Okay, so here’s MDZS Japanese version from CD Japan:

One volume of MDZS Regular ver. cost 1760 yen. This is 15,96 USD before shipping. There’s only like $4 difference.

There’s also the Exclusive ver. that cost 3660 yen (32,92 USD) but we’re not gonna talk about that because they’re basically making you pay for the bonus, which is some acrylic panels and illustration cards.

Now here’s TGCF Thai version from Sense Book:

Translation using Google Chrome page translate:

One volume of TGCF costs 360 baht. This is 10.77 USD before shipping. So there’s about $9.22 difference.

Again, notice the difference of word/sentence length in the Thai words and English alphabet.

"But there’s still difference in price and other releases usually gets merchandise!” - Correct me if I’m wrong, but the US is probably one of the most expensive countries in the world. Do you think the materials, printings, and manpower cost is the same with other countries? Especially compared to one in Southeast Asia.

“But it’s xxxx times more expensive than the original Chinese version!” - Excuse me, the original Chinese version doesn’t need to pay for translators, proofreaders and editors with multilingual skills, and purchase the IPs? If you think it’s more worth buying the Chinese version, then by all means go ahead.

------------

Some last words...

I’m not looking down on those in difficult financial situation, but hey, I’m not filthy rich either? I come from a third world country and even if I’m a working adult, I’m still in working middle class + I got my parents to take care of. My country’s currency is literally just a tiny 0.000069 USD per 1 Indonesian Rupiah.

Every single fandom merchandise that you see me bought, either I’ve saved up for that or I sacrificed other things to buy that. I just don’t show the struggle to you guys because why should I? I’m just here to have fun about the fandom I love, not to flex my struggling financial condition.

These official English release of MXTX novels? All 17 books are going to cost me almost HALF of my monthly salary. But hey, I think it’s a good thing that they didn’t release it all at once, so that I can save up between months to purchase them all and plan my spending better.

If you feel the price is expensive, especially if you have to ship from outside North America, consider the following:

Book Depository provide free worldwide shipping

The books’ ISBN numbers are all available in the publisher’s website, just show it to you local bookstore and ask if they can order it for you

Plus, there are already hundreds of generous fans doing free giveaways in Twitter, even the publishers are helping to signal boost this. You can go and try your luck if you’re really desperate.

Lastly, I know how much love we all have for our favorite fandoms, but remember that fandom merchandise is NOT your primary needs.

You are NOT obliged to purchase any fandom merchandise if you can’t afford it and you should ALWAYS prioritize your primary needs.

Also, if you still want to read the fan-translations that are still available, alright go ahead. But remember that the translators themselves already said fan translations in English are now illegal. You can read it. We all consume pirated contents at one point. But don’t flex about it and diss the official release just because you can’t afford it.

I don’t know if the person who made that reblog tags are going to come at me or not, but even if they do, I literally don’t care. I’m not gonna waste my time arguing with someone with that kind of mindset and will block them right on the spot.

Also Idgaf if they call me out or talk behind my back, I literally don’t know them, so I don’t care.

End of rant.

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hamliet · 3 years

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The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls.

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe.

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too.

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages.

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.)

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today).

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.

Season 7: Yep, the final season was my favorite.

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward.

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world.

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.”

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6:

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic.

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic.

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.)

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow.

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ?????

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch.

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well.

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating.

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention.

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief.

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless.

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.”

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group.

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters. (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.)

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares.

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been.

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People.

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes?

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings:

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex).

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role.

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done.

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away.

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either.

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time.

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad.

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it.

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him.

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying.

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #spuffy #buffy summers #dawn summers #spike #angel #cordelia chase #btvs giles #willow rosenberg #tillow #tara maclay #anya jenkins #xanya #xander harris #jenny calendar #kendra young #faith lehane #hamliet reviews

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into-the-afterlife · 3 years

Text

Why I Ship Johnny/Female V Part 3: V, and You, and Me

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

I’ve spent a lot of time in this essay series so far focusing on one half of the pairing. Johnny is fascinating, but he’s only one half of the dynamic. So what about V is interesting? Why does she stand out as a character, in the context of this pairing?

Across different ships, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern. There tends to be one character that the fandom focuses in on to thirst over and one that the fandom imagines themselves being. In this ship, the thirst-character tends to be Johnny, while the self-insert character tends to be V. And that’s not surprising, considering that V is essentially our self-insert into the world of Cyberpunk 2077. It’s also worth noting that people who engage in shipping and transformative fandom tend to be predominantly AFAB, myself included, and it makes sense that when writing sexual stories we’d want a self-insert who has our anatomy.

But fans being AFAB doesn’t usually impact what ships are popular. Shipping is infamously dominated by M/M couples who are, ninety percent of the time, cis. Usually, that impulse to self-insert results in an exaggeration of top-bottom dynamics rather than genderswaps or increased focus on M/F couples.

And the thing about V is, she isn’t just a self-insert. In fandoms focused on open-world RPGs, there tends to be some focus on the player character. However, that focus tends to be limited to the Tumblr-ish, transformative end of fandom. One of my other favourite video game fandoms is The Elder Scrolls. There, people avidly draw and discuss their versions of the protagonists on Tumblr and AO3. But on Reddit and Facebook meme pages, the focus is much more on the other characters, the lore, the worldbuilding.

In this fandom, though? I’ve seen more Vs on Reddit than I have on Tumblr. On Reddit, you’re bombarded with beautiful screenshots of V after V. On Tumblr, there’s tons of new names for V, lovingly thought out backstories and more. And when I see V being shipped with Johnny, V is almost always depicted as female, despite there being an option for a male V and despite the norms of shipping favouring a male V.

So it’s clear that female V inspires more affection than most RPG protagonists. Part of that is to do with Cherami Leigh’s voice acting that I covered in Part 1. But I also think there’s a lot in V’s writing that influences things this way.

CD Projekt Red’s writers are known for focusing on character and plot over worldbuilding in their writing. There’s no, ‘I used to be an adventurer like you...’ in their games, no blank-slate hero or awkward, generic background dialogue. Instead, their other protagonist, Geralt, reacts to chasing after goats and weird children and ancient beings as his own person. The world he inhabits is similarly richly drawn, with even the most bland of background guards discussing gimps and birthdays.

There’s also no black-and-white morality. Even in The Witcher games, their fantasy series, the morality leans much closer to Game of Thrones than The Lord of the Rings. This means that their characters are always three-dimensional. Their first true RPG is actually Cyberpunk 2077. Oh, sure, they’ve done games with rich worlds and lots of sidequests, with skill-trees and moral options, but they’ve always had an authored character, with his own slants and biases. Even when Geralt picks the moral option, he’s likely to be cynical about it, and he always leans towards being a grizzled libertarian who’s Done With This Shit at heart.

Despite their provision of a relatively blank-slate character in this game, this influence lingers on in Cyberpunk 2077. One of the big critiques of the game at launch was that the much-hyped lifepath system felt clunky and didn’t have much of an influence on later gameplay. It’s true that the backstory sacrifices some smoothness of plot and introduction to the world.

But what it gets rid of in those aspects, it makes up for in characterisation. No matter what path you choose, V is never an anonymous prisoner, a mysterious courier or a long-forgotten colonist. She has a clearly defined context, and real roots in the world around her. Even after you move past the prologue, V has the network of people around her you’d expect for someone already embedded in the world. After you’re shot, you don’t just go to some random ripperdoc; you go to Vik, her regular ripperdoc and friend. You don’t get the tarot sidequest from reading an anonymous shard; you get it from Misty. Jackie dating Misty suggests that he introduced V to Misty and Vik. V getting to know them through Jackie feels natural, and just like the kinds of close communal networks that spring up in large cities. Meanwhile, the unique dialogue options for each lifepath keep reminding you that V had a life before you met her.

And that’s true even for the other dialogue options. Here’s a minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from Cyberpunk 2077:

And here’s a similarly minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from a recent RPG that shares a lot of tonal and thematic similarities with Cyberpunk – The Outer Worlds:

Notice the difference in attitudes allowed by each set of dialogue options. The player character of The Outer Worlds has the opportunity to respond compassionately, snarkily or lie for their own advantage. Deception is specifically highlighted and controlled by a skill tree, and each dialogue choice has its own tone and flavour. Meanwhile, all of V’s dialogue choices can be interpreted as some kind of attempt at deception. They’re also all written in the same voice. While The Outer Worlds offers matter-of-fact kindness, brevity and colourful imagery, V’s dialogue choices all share sentence fragments, spunkiness, bluntness and emotional volatility. No matter what choices you make, V’s attitude and voice always stays the same.

The way dialogue choices are controlled is also worth examining. There seem to be more choices on the surface in Cyberpunk, but a full half of them are controlled by skill trees. Level V up differently to this YouTuber, and they may not even be available. The skills themselves also betray a lack of choice here. While speech is split into five different skills in The Outer Worlds, and the skill used here is directly named ‘Lie’, in Cyberpunk 2077 the skills are simply named ‘Reflexes’ and ‘Cool’. That’s partially due to differences in RPG mechanics, which is beyond the scope of this essay. But look at the names themselves. While The Outer Worlds singles out deception, and bluntly names it for what it is, Cyberpunk 2077 frames quick thinking and bluffing as simply part of the reactions and social attitudes required to survive in Night City. Even the very names of the game mechanics are coloured by V’s attitudes.

While V’s status as an independent character is coloured by CD Projekt Red’s previous experience, it’s definitely not an accident. They had an entire trailer dedicated to answering the question of who V is. For the question of whether V keeps her own personality to be compelling, V has to have a personality in the first place. And in the Temperance ending, the emotional impact of seeing V as an NPC in cyberspace, as well as the final, long shot of V’s face on the bus, depends on you having built up a relationship with her as a separate character. She’s a fascinating mix of self-insert and defined character, and purely from a writing perspective, breaks a lot of new ground for RPG protagonists.

But back to the subject at hand: shipping. She’s just self-insert enough for you to imagine yourself as part of a heightened reality, as someone blisteringly witty, quick-thinking and intelligent. And feeling competent and confident, whether in the real world or in-game, brings you back into your body and makes you feel confident enough to pursue what brings you pleasure. But V’s also just enough of her own person that you can care for her and want her to be happy. That combination of affection and wish fulfilment is what the best ships are made of.

Another huge part of V’s popularity in the Cyberpunk fandom comes from the way gender, or the lack of it, interacts with her characterisation. Of course, you can make her look and dress however you want; that’s one of the beautiful things about RPG protagonists. But her lines and interactions with other characters, thanks to them having to be voiced by male V as well, are refreshingly gender-neutral. To understand this further, let’s take a look at some concrete examples.

Cyberpunk 2077, particularly during the prologue and Act 1, takes a lot of inspiration from Grand Theft Auto. Fast cars, exciting crimes, the obligatory strippers and prostitutes; they’re all there.

These kinds of gritty, sexualised game worlds have attracted criticism from feminist media analysts for normalising violence against women and normalising extreme violence as the default and desirable way of responding to the world. What I think about these takes would take its own essay to get into. But the part of these critiques I do agree with is this. By having protagonists in these worlds always be hypermasculine cis male protagonists, and by having victims of crimes and sexualised characters always be cis women, these worlds repeatedly and unnecessarily sideline anyone who’s not a cis man from imagining themselves having power and agency.

However, where Cyberpunk 2077 differentiates itself from other examples of these game worlds is its lack of gendered differentiation for its protagonist. Ninety-nine percent of the time throughout the game, male and female V voice exactly the same lines. This means that if you choose to play as female V, female V is characterised exactly the same way as male V.

Let’s take a look at some concrete examples of this. The biggest is V’s relationship with Jackie. It’s rarely that you see a male-female friendship that stays as platonic as this one does in media, and I welcome it. The quest called ‘The Ripperdoc’ demonstrates this, in the conversation when Jackie and V drive to see Vik:

Jackie [with relish]: ...I got a date - me and Misty.

V: You don’t say...

Jackie [confidentially]: She’s soooo sweet. Really gets me, y’know?

Jackie describes his relationship with Misty in respectful terms, and isn’t afraid to detail the emotional aspects of his and Misty’s connection. But he doesn’t hold back on the macho bragging either. In these lines, and especially in the pleased, suggestive tone of the first line, it’s clear he’s proud to be the kind of guy who could date someone like Misty. The presence of both of these attitudes together shows that Jackie both trusts V and considers V a part of his traditional-masculinity-valuing world. It’s less ‘not like other girls’ and more ‘not like other mercs’.

Similarly, while V’s first interactions with Johnny do draw from highly gendered relationship dynamics, the actual content of V’s responses undercut any feminising this would give her. Here’s one exchange from ‘Playing For Time’:

Johnny: The fuck kinda joytoy are you supposed to be?

V: Fuckin’ ghost off!

Johnny calls V a whore. Before and after, he physically hurts her in ways that, in my opinion, have a highly sexual undertone. But the crucial bit is how V responds here. She neither responds in a helpless, damsel-in-distress sort of way, nor in a defiant, sassy heroine way, where she might take the gendered insults and own them or prove them wrong via physical prowess. In fact, she doesn’t react to the gendered aspect of Johnny’s comment at all. Where a game with a Strong Female Character (TM) would use gendered jabs to refocus attention on said character, Cyberpunk blows them off to focus on the reality of this particular character’s situation.

Outside of V’s closest relationships, this gender neutrality can also be seen in the wider world of Night City. Dexter DeShawn is one of the most tropey, Grand Theft Auto-esque characters you meet in the game. As such, he’s one of the best barometers for how gender interacts with the ‘usual’ state of the world. And how does he react to a female V?

The answer is, not at all. He addresses her as ‘Ms V’, but that comes across as less about her and more about him being high up enough in the world that he can afford affectations. Her gender simply isn’t relevant. While this is increasingly common in pop culture, it’s still rare in worldbuilding like this, where gender is all too frequently used as a lens through which to explore violent, chaotic worlds. In a type of world and tone where gender roles are traditionally emphasised , V slips past those roles and is allowed to exist beyond them.

But why does gender neutrality make V more appealing to ship? To answer that fully, it needs to be combined with my next point.

V is also compelling to ship because her characterisation gives a safe platform from which to imagine her being vulnerable. What I mean by that is this. The main aspect of V’s characterisation in canon is her status as a merc. How you experience her life, through gameplay and through the situations she gets into, is through her skills at hacking, sneaking and killing. You don’t just witness her competence, daring and toughness; you share in it.

When writing fiction that focuses on romantic relationships, one of the toughest balances to get right is that of competency and vulnerability. Any good romantic arc involves watching a character’s barriers come down, seeing how they react to the other person when they lay aside their protective pretences. But this can’t happen too soon, or too much, for either the protagonist or the love interest. Competency and assuredness are huge parts of what makes someone attractive, and they’re also huge parts of feeling like you can come out and play, sexually speaking. Even for the biggest submissive on the planet, the submission has to be a deliberate choice to be hot.

Taken together, V’s canonical characterisation and the possibilities and conventions of fandom provide the perfect balance of those two qualities. Canon makes it clear that V is capable and strong. When you or I imagine our Vs with Johnny, that buildup of ‘competence capital’ makes it feel safe enough to imagine V vulnerable.

And that safety is vital when shipping any character with a character like Johnny. This is where the gender neutrality I talked about earlier comes into play. Imagining V vulnerable feels safe. So does imagining V in a dynamic with a guy who’s a tropey bad boy. Because V is written in such a gender-neutral way, it lets the player enjoy all the deliciously dangerous aspects of her relationship with Johnny without the distractions that may come from feeling disempowered. It also refreshes all the clichés of Dangerous Guys, making their impact feel fresh and new again. Her ability to walk the line between wish fulfilment and independent characterisation inspires simultaneous identification with her, affection for her and boosts in confidence for the player.

This is why she’s compelling to ship. Johnny brings in the familiar emotional arcs of classic tropes, while V makes them new. So what happens when you put these two characters together? Just what about the way they bounce off each other has inspired the majority of fic and art in this fandom?

That’s what I’ll talk about next time.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

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blarfkey · 3 years

Text

Writing Tag Game

I've been tagged by like ten people for this so thank you everyone who tagged me! @redinkofshame, @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold, @kunstpause Consider yourself tagged if you see it and like it.

How many works do you have on Ao3?

38!

What's your total Ao3 wordcount?

702,253. I would love for it to be more but I am a slow writer lol

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Woodstock 83 --3480 Kudos

Xmen fic set after Apocalypse where Peter keeps getting these golden opportunities to tell Magneto/Erik that he's his son, and keeps chickening out at the last minute.

I know I wasn't the only one who walked out of that movie theater pissed that Peter came so close to admitting this secret since the previous movie and never did, so I wrote a fix it.

2. The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes -- 2567 Kudos

The sequel to Woodstock 83, told in Magneto's POV where he's coming to terms with being a father while he cares for his sick son. This is probably my fav X-Men fic I've ever written because I loved having these two figure out what their father/son relationship would be like long after Peter has grown up and how Erik has wanted a child again but doesn't know how to process having one.

3. Jail Break -- 2488 kudos

The first Peter & Magneto fic I ever wrote and the first fic I ever published! This takes place post Days of Future Past and it shows how Magneto could have found out that Peter was his son and build that reluctant connection. Peter has a lot of freaking out about whether or not he wants to accept a supervillain as his father.

4. Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right -- 2396 Kudos

The third part of the series Jail Break Started. For some reason this is the most popular one shot in the series. In it, Peter has a huge fight with Magneto and then gets kidnapped by The Bad Guys and doesn't think his dad will come bail him out. But of course he does! And murders everyone in the compound to do it.

5. Two Lonely Souls in a Fish Bowl -- 2361 Kudos

The direct sequel to Jail Break where Magneto keeps showing up in the dead of night to visit Peter as they both figure out how they want this weird parent relationship to be.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! Even if it takes me a while. I love the interaction and I want people to feel noticed and appreciated.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Um, i don't really like angst. I think it would be Spark Me Up for Xmen. Professor X/Magneto angst with my first ever written smut. It was a remix of another person's fic for an exchange and they had an angsty ending so I kept it.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

The last installment in the Jail Break/Come Together Series -- Shine On You Crazy Diamond. In it, Peter's little sister Wanda comes into her powers and they go through a lot of pain before she settles into them. It ends with Peter's mom coming to stay with them and her, Peter, Wanda, Erik, and Charles becoming one big family. I've had several people tell me it made them cry lol.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I'll write something like a set of characters from one fandom in the set up/premise of another fandom/piece of media. Like Dear Fen'harel is a crossover of Dragon Age with an old book called Dear Daddy Long Legs. But I don't combine different universes of different fandoms, it's too weird for me and I can't buy into it.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

took over and finished. We have an AU in our plans but so many other fics keep getting in the way! Sort of? I wrote the first part of a Solas/Maria/Varric series that@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I did receive a weird, angry message on one of my Xmen fics because they didn't like a fight that had happened between two characters but didn't read till the end to see it resolved so the bitched at me for the fact that the fight was mean? Which made no sense. But other than that, nope.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! Though it's not as much as my non-smut. I didn't write smut for so many years because I didn't think I knew how. I tried to write some out a few years ago and kept it to myself until one of my tumblr friends read it and said it was really good! So shout out to @salexectria, you're the reason why I write and publish smut!

I write all kinds of smut, from dub con to vanilla, from f/f, m/m, and ace spectrum characters. Its all about the characters and what would fit them/the situation more than it is about a specific type of sex.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, I don't know about it.

What's your all time favourite ship?

Ummmmmm, that's hard. I don't think I have an all time favorite. I will say that Charles/Erik (Professor X/Magneto) was my first ever "otp" that I got completely obsessed with. Actually, I have never been that obsessed with another pairing. I write pairings that I enjoy or that I want to see a certain dynamic from, but that doesn't make them my favorite above all others.

I do really love Solas/Cadash and I prefer Solas rare pairs like Solas/Dorian, Solas/Cassandra, and Solas/Josephine over Solavellan.

What's a WIP you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I will never not finish a WIP. I hate it when it happens, even though I know IRL gets in the way, but it's so frustrating for me as a reader. So I will finish all my fics. However, I am very slow and very busy so it may take a while.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and character voice. I also am really good at developing friendships and platonic bonds or the slow burn get-to-know-you part of a romance. Apparently I write good smut, though its very hard for me lol.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions and transitions and pacing.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

The only thing that bothers me is if they never put in a translations somewhere and you have to just kind of guess. I don't care about reading something in another language and having a footnote or a note at the end of the chapter. I do it all the time in DF. I do think that putting "said in {insert language here}" is a bit of a cop out.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The first ever fandom I wrote for and never published was Harry Potter at 13. I wrote a story about a muggle neighbor who had to emergency babysit the baby Weasleys and was shocked by the magic. But I tried to submit it to a website that only published fic by application and it didn't get in and I was like "whatever, I'll just read fic" and then didn't touch fanfic again until I was . . .24 or 25 lol. I mostly focused on my original fiction.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

I can't possibly have one favorite. I do really love my Peter fics, especially The Sun Will Shine When Morning Comes. I love my ACO fic with Apollo!Alkibiades. I love my Solas/Cassandra friendship fic Time Does Not Bring Relief. And I love Dear Fen'harel, of course, because it has so many things I wanted to change for Solavellan or didn't find, as well as a good analysis of myself and how I deal with anger and sorrow and homesickness, ect. through Ellana.

#asks #fanfic #writing #dear fenharel

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gascon-en-exil · 2 years

Note

i have to ask... what was the les mis discourse about? i wasn't around for the peak of the fandom, but i'm curious to know since you mentioned it

Oh, this takes me back...Les Mis was the first Tumblr fandom I interacted with, because I joined in late 2012 a few months before the big (and now considered quite mediocre) film adaptation of the musical came out. The movie brought in an influx of new fans, many of whom hadn't read the book and only knew the story via the musical which understandably cuts a lot out.

As such you had your usual, mostly civil book vs. musical discourse, with people who'd read the book (affectionately dubbed "the Brick") making lengthy contributions to fandom via Hugo's excessive prose and unsubtle theming. There was translation discourse as well, except it was also mostly civil and in a language I can actually understand (and that is generally much more accessible to English speakers than Japanese is). Fandom really took to Les Amis de l'ABC, the group of nine male students who all die in the story's fictionalized version of the failed 1832 rebellion and who have all manner of little and not so little bits of homoerotic subtext going for them. That was true even in older Les Mis fandom, but the movie really got it going with new fans getting attached to that version and the actors in those roles.

That was all perfectly fine, and predictable given the general M/M-loving thrust of transformative fandom. There were however shipping wars, the biggest between Enjolras/Grantaire (the gay fandom juggernaut, and the one with the most subtext to go off both in book and musical canon) and Enjolras/Éponine (a purely fanon M/F alternative because the two never interact in canon, but given surrounding shipping dynamics it got popular all the same). Fans of the former accused fans of the latter of homophobia; those fans retaliated by accusing their opponents of misogyny. This was my first encounter with the underlying thrust of what in a few years would come to be called purity culture or anti-shipping: the (ab)use of social justice terminology to try to gain the upper hand in fandom arguments.

More annoying though was the general fandom shift toward a fanon AU that transplanted the characters to a modern and typically not French university setting. Popular headcanons for the Amis' physical appearances (most of which are sparsely described in the novel) and relationships got elevated to the level where pretty much everyone agreed on them, although a lot of fan wank grew out of attempts to make the cast more inclusive in terms of race and gender identity. This came across as especially ridiculous as the arguments were purely over headcanons, and more and more the bulk of fandom moved away from even musical canon to essentially become its own entity that had little in common with Les Mis apart from the names. To some extent this is understandable; canon is fairly inaccessible for fanwork unless you're willing to research the particulars of 1830s Parisian society, and it's a downer ending for almost everyone in the novel so the desire for stories where everyone lives and gets a happy ending (aside from in the abstract political/allegorical sense that Hugo intended) is understandable. Even so I gradually distanced myself from the fandom after around a year or a little less, and moved on to other media.

#Les Misérables #I haven't had to use that tag in years

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carbootsoul · 3 years

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erika+ephriam+lyon for ask game 👀? and a witch hat character of your choosing if you like as well :3v

omg clint you're spoiling me :) also this is mostly unrelated but i was listening to kat flint today and a) her music is so good thank u for introducing it to me years ago and b) VERY witch hat atelier vibes which was fun. im putting my answers under a cut bc i am sooo verbose about characters

eirika: a song that reminds me of them: this is just the first that came to mind but oh what a world by rufus wainwright! oh what a world my parents gave me / always traveling but not in love. the rly interesting mix of idealism and pragmatism that she embodies- both being in awe of and in love with the world and the people in it but also not hesitating to accept that they are in a war and the tragedies that come with it what they smell like: i think for most of the game she smells like sweat and dirt an otp: eirika and l'arachel is actually the best ship in the whole entire world they're sooo funny. they keep meeting and every time eirika is like ???? and l'arachel is just falling head over heels in love a notp: eirika and lyon romance honestly very textually relevant in the game and adds to the story and whatever but they're both so absolutely homosexual that i can't conceptualize it favorite platonic/familial relationships: eirika and ephraim 🥺🥺 but also eirika and seth he's such a good big brother figure!! but also eirika and colm and eirika and tana and eirika and lyon. it's like.. rag tag army as family.. a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with: there are like two posts about her on tumblr dot com but her fire emblem heroes characterization makes me insane shut up about your brother shut up about your brother the position they sleep in: on her side one leg curled to her chest

ephraim a song that reminds me of them: omg lies by marina abt his relationship with lyon. you're too proud to say that you made a mistake / you're a coward till the end i really wish we had been able to see more of ephraims reaction to the true story of what happened with lyon, since he obviously forgives him but also seems to be angry about it and that's such a good dynamic. also oc can't let you go / i just want it to be perfect / to believe it's all been worth the fight. they make me... ugh what they smell like: he has also been living in tents for months so he probably also smells like horses and sweat an otp: ephraim and lyon do get to me... 🥺 also he and innes as a like teenage fling is hilarious to me they're so funny to each other i can't believe they don't have supports a notp: if i ever see another incest joke i'm killing someone favorite platonic/familial relationships: he and his sister are so good!! they're so siblings! a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with: again i have never rly interacted with the fe fandom but something from canon i disagree with is the assignment of the sun to him and the moon to his sister he is so obviously the lunar twin im furious abt this the position they sleep in: absolutely sprawled out. he takes up as much space as is given to him

lyon a song that reminds me of them: ache with me by against me just happened to be playing rn but it's very him. do you share the same sense of defeat / have you realized all the things you'll never be / ideals turn to resentment, open minds close up with cynicism / i've got no judgement for you / come on and ache with me. what they smell like: roses but in a fucked up revolutionary girl utena way like the roses symbolize something sinister an otp: lyon and ephraim.. admittedly lyon is kind of carrying why this ship is compelling with his tragic backstory but ephraim is such a boy so he's important too a notp: see eirika :/ favorite platonic/familial relationships: he and eirika and ephraim as a unit are so important to me they are so [unintelligible] a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with: i haven't rly seen this much but i guess any tendency to soft-boy him bc of his character design like this guy sucks a lot and he has a lot of flaws that almost ended the world :/ the position they sleep in: hugging a pillow

and for the wha character.. agott bc she's so girl :) a song that reminds me of them: pretty little things by the crane wives! but trust is now something i make people earn / so i'm not inclined to just give it away / to a pair of blue eyes with some nice things to say what they smell like: grass in the best way possible! an otp: she and coco are SO !! im in love with them. sasunaru dynamic but better in every way. all the panels of coco hugging or complimenting agott and agott blushing furiously are the new wonders of the world. shipping kids in media always feels a little weird but i think they're a rly cute like first crush dynamic a notp: i dont think she's been shipped with anyone else lol favorite platonic/familial relationships: agott and olruggio are rly interesting to me! i've probably just drawn lines between them because they're both grumpy but i could definitely see agott becoming for coco what olruggio is for qifrey and i love when children are friends with their adult narrative foil it's about helping the younger generation overcome the things that they couldn't! it's also about olruggio being able to connect with agott because they're both grumpy :) a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with: not a headcanon bc again the fandom is tiny but so much of her tag is ppl being mean to her about what she did in the second (?) volume like yeah that was mean but she's like 12! 12 year olds do fucked up stuff all the time they're still learning what interpersonal relationships are the position they sleep in: on her stomach clutching her pillow a crossover au i’d love to see them in: anything that would allow her to say swear words my favorite outfit they’ve ever worn: the like single panel where tetia is getting mad at her about not liking wearing costumes and it shows her dressed as a prince! she looks so good

djskflj i feel like i wrote a novel about each of them and tbh i do not know if u will make any sense out of it but thank u for sending this it was super fun to think about them for a while!!!

#leo.ask #hope you're having a good day btw!!

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gaycey-sketchit · 2 years

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(Gary anon) I remember when Goh's concept art was first shown; some, if not most thought he was non-binary or used "they/them" pronouns. (Especially with his name not leaning any particular way; it's just "Go") And with Chloe appearances being sporadic, this is the first time a m/m relationship gets to be dominant in a generation series for once; where in previous series they either tied with certain m/f ships or were drowned out considerably by them. (Same, if the dynamic is strong

(Part 2) to begin with, I don't mind it as much. But literally any character; usually female, that gets mentioned as a love interest; I have to brace myself on them [or the "bond"] being near non-existent throughout most of the story) One thing I wish more writers would understand is that romantic partners of main characters literally can't be off-screen as easily as friends and family can. If people end up feeling like the bond is "stronger" with the friend [who appears more] than the spouse

and THAT becomes the popular ship, you can't blame the audience for what they've been given) Heh, when the foundation isn't there, sometimes you have to make it yourself. I have seen some rarepairs get their lucky breaks in canon later; often due to their dedication. (Even Misty and Dawn; who I have seen shipped with Gary, Green always wins out in content. Probably cause the first two have more popular ships surrounding them) For Leon, I highly suspect Ash to use his JN team against him.

(Part 4) Since AG, Ash always uses his new regional team for a full battle at least once, usually against prominent rivals. Unless Ash is fighting Bea again; which I doubt, the all-star PWC team is fighting Leon. Now, something that has Charizard, Infernape, Greninja, etc. on the same team? Can't see them double-dip on that with Leon. (I'll always consider the Johto League battle an important one for both, but I think even back when I first saw it air, something felt off about it. Kinda rushed.

(5) Now that Ash and Gary feel more fleshed out since then, I want a battle to highlight that. Their eternal bond; something that feels more "them") Feels too early to be Goh's last or else it just reinforces that PM should've been introduced much earlier. And, there's still the adventure to find Mew. (I'm glad Gary's teasing nature is back, but I really hope there's a flashback of him provoking Ash to re-showcase that concept [of pushing Goh to new heights] and not just an attempt to 'redo' OS)

I remember that! Nonbinary Goh is still a very good take. And yeah, Journeys feels so very gay and I love it. Goh and Chloe's friendship feels like gay/lesbian solidarity, Ash and Goh have such an adorable dynamic, and Chloe bonding with Dawn was delightful.

Yeah, I feel that. There's something I can't help but find a little funny about how some media (especially shonen anime/manga) ends up coming across as super gay because of misogyny--the lack of development for female characters means the protagonist's male friendships end up so much stronger than his relationship with his supposed love interest.

Yeah, rarepair shippers really put in the work and it's very cool to see (and both very fun and sometimes very tiring to do).

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me--I don't use FFNet much anymore because AO3's whole interface feels so much nicer (and there's no ads), but from what I've seen I'd honestly expect Gary/Leaf to be the most popular Gary ship there (though due to FFNet only letting people tag a maximum of four characters, it'd be hard to check); on the other hand, over on AO3 I did check and the most popular Gary ship there is PalletShipping (a win for the LGBT community, haha).

Makes sense!

Fair--and yeah, it'd be absolutely fantastic to see another battle between them, to show how far they've come over the years.

For sure. I wonder how the Mew thing will play out.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

#Andrew answers #Gary anon

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jonathanrook · 3 years

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legally i have to give you intern 2

em you have awoken an ungodly beast inside me so i need to warn everyone that this post is. incomprehensible. but so is mymusic so i guess we're all used to it.

How I feel about this character:

i watched mymusic as it was airing/running/coming out specifically bc i'm a jack stannie, and as a kid melvin was my second favorite character (w scene being in first, obvs) for mostly that reason. he basically hovered around this ranking until my most recent rewatch in the summer of 2020, which was actually spurred by some events in my personal life that vaguely reminded me of scene's season two arc w jeff, and i thought it'd been a funny/nostalgic way to get my mind off things.

(i want to side note here that -- i know you didn't ask, but -- i love jeff. i have since i was a kid. like, obviously not as a person but i think he's honestly the best written character in the series, w indie close in second. idk what it says about the f*nes that their most interesting and well rounded characters are the villains, but i digress. to this day i'm salty that jeff never got added to the theme song and wasn't really included in promotional merch.)

however, in said rewatch, certain things about how he was written started to really get under my skin, and certain moments in particular have really stuck out to me in a negative way. like, for the entirety of season one and a good chunk of season two he's one person, and then he leaves mymusic and we have an entirely different person, but not in a nuanced character building sort of way.

i've said a few of these points before but i'll repeat them here regardless. at the risk of sounding like i've put on a tin-foil hat, it's my sneaking suspicion that scindie was supposed to be endgame, but since fan reception to it was pretty neutral, and scenechart stans were, at the very least, more vocal, changes were made to the intended finale, which is why in the last scene he's basically just. indie. like, if everything about the show was exactly the same but indie was the one who had ended up w scene in the end that would have made so much more sense since a) scene had a crush on indie that he/everyone knew about and b) indie was kind of a dick despite the half-assed attempts at redemption, so both combined make it slightly less weird/out-of-nowhere that he kisses her w/o her consent (since, even though like. implied consent is not real at worst and a fuzzy subject at best but you could argue that scene would want indie to kiss her); and this isn't even taking into consideration that c) melvin is heavily queer-coded in both seasons, with his friendship with nerdcore being, dare i say, homoerotic at times, and his arc about leaving the company and changing his name mirroring nerdcore's almost perfectly (with nerdcore being a character who b*nny [at least] has all but confirmed is actually gay).

i've also been on the fence about melvin's behavior in that final scene making more sense for indie's character being an intentional decision as a way of shoe-horning in a theme about the lasting effects of abuse/cycles of abuse/the corruption of power but i also don't think the f*nes are smart enough for that. however, for the sake of defending my straw theory, i also point to the scene where indie comes to visit the acid factory after melvin told him to shut up, and we see melvin use reggie as a foot-stool, going as far as to say that it feels good to do so (which, in all honesty, i think is a bit that was entirely improvised, since the f*nes were "notorious for never saying cut" [paraphrased from a bts video], but work w me here). he's also given a seltzer mug that perfectly resembles indie's kombucha mug. in these moment melvin is directly emulating the behavior of his previous abuser, purposefully or not, literal moments after being promoted to an equal position of authority, which was totally just included as a joke, but could also be argued is meant to show that he's becoming indie; or, if we acknowledge that the f*nes have no fucking clue what they're doing and were just directing like chickens with their heads cut off, it at least shows that melvin's new position of power is leading him to understand where indie was coming from, which is supported by their conversation in the finale.

the following contains a couple brief mentions of irl sexual assault so if that's something you'd like to avoid skip to the next section!

HOWEVER, that alone isn't what i have a problem with, since i think melvin is completely justified in being a dick to indie (and also reggie enthusiastically consents to being used as an ottoman so good for him i guess). the issue comes completely in how he treats scene in the scenes where the f*nes clearly thought what they were writing was super romantic. like, the fact that the only thing he's got hung on his cubicle wall is a single picture of scene taken from the fucking opening credits (like. how hard would it have been to have. literally any other photo[s] esp since there's an abundance of cute bts pics of the cast in costume that could have been put there) and him scrolling through her twitter at work really creep me out (and at the risk of oversharing the weird, like, social media stalking angle really fucks w me bc that may or may not have been the exact fucking thing i was trying to escape in rewatching mymusic in the first place). also, having him sexually assault scene as a means of comforting her after she had just been sexually assaulted in the same way by someone else was... a choice (which is also, uh, personally familiar).

again, i recognize that demonizing melvin wasn't what the f*nes were trying to do here, and i perhaps seem hypocritical for opening liking jeff, but what makes jeff work is he's intentionally "the bad guy." having melvin do the same things as indie and jeff uncritically only proves further that the f*nes can't write for shit, and ruins his character which had, up until he quit mymusic, been unironically good. like, it's obviously not beneficial that the exact asshole things he does are personally triggering, but the character would still be a mess and i would still dislike him regardless.

i want to say though that jack delivers a surprisingly great performance despite how shoddily his character is constructed and how little experience he has as an actor. like, it's clear he was having a lot of fun on set and i would love to see him in something, like, good; i think he could pull off even like, guest television roles, which is a lot more than can be said for other youtubers.

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All the people I ship romantically with this character:

nerdchart should have been canon i'm sorry. i know that close, nonromantic male friendships are valuable, esp between queer men, but also gd wouldn't it have been baller to have a canon interracial mlm ship. like. c'mon. and they could have been such a good friends to lovers story! we already got to see how melvin was the only person nerdcore could really be himself around so it would have been so cool if melvin's self-advocacy arc/flowchart arc had revolved more around nerdcore with a little role-reversal! and then they kiss! like god intended!

also i ship him and indie bc i'm a grubby little gremlin man ohoho. enemies w weird sexual tension? sign me up. not even enemies to lovers i'm not saying this one should have been canon i just love the vibes. do you think melvin and indie ever explored each other's bod-- *gunshot*

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My non-romantic OTP for this character:

i wish him and scene had just been bros. god remember in season one when they were just bros that was the life.

alternatively, i wish we'd seen more bonding w him and metal, as a means of reconciling that. uh. moment from season one. along similar lines i would have loved to see him get closer w rayna in a similar way to how she bonded w nerdcore in season two. i think that could have also worked to show how she'd grown between the two seasons.

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My unpopular opinion about this character:

HIM. AND. SCENE. SHOULD. HAVE. JUST. BEEN. BROS. (though i think my general dislike of him is pretty unpopular, lmao).

when the show was coming out i don't think it's unfair to say that scenechart/scenetern 2 was the most popular ship (aside from potentially techstep whatever) but luckily we're all gay and have better taste now. unfortunately i totally fell into this camp and scenechart was even my otp for years (until it was arguably more unfortunately usurped by reddie in 2019) and i didn't even realise that it's a hot mess until, again, the summer of 2020.

when actually watching the show the choices the f*nes made in regards to how the ship actually became canon are so odd and out of place, too? okay, so, on one hand everyone just shipped scenechart bc it was the whitest hettiest ship in the show (esp in season two when idol left) aside from scindie (and we already discussed what's wrong w that). but, on the other hand, lainey and jack clearly also just got along? and i suspect that lainey probably also admired jack's work and was happy to be working with him bc we have so many shots throughout even the first season when the ship wasn't the intended endgame of lainey scene looking really fondly at jack melvin at times when it doesn't make much sense at all, esp since she's smitten w indie? this trend continues into the second season which arguably works but it still seems really out of place for him to be the one to ultimately make the first move on her since it's clear she was the one crushing this whole time and also he's gay! this bitch is gay what the fuck!!

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One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon:

at this point i'm struggling to think of anything i haven't covered yet. oops.

i've talked at length before about how he should have been a woman/lesbian, but the tl;dr is that it would have solved a lot of the queer-coding "problems" that just didn't get resolved in the show. if he'd been a lesbian then not only would the friendship w nerdcore still made sense, but scenechart would have as well (not even mentioning that both of scene's other relationships w men make a lot of sense as comphet anyway).

#long post #this took me an hour to write i literally had to get a snack in the middle of it #mymusicshow #mymusic show #question #mlentertainment #also having a character named scene when you have to write about scenes like. in a story is an absolute bitch

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welcome-to-the-gay-bar · 3 years

Text

So I we started to watch Attack on Titan again after many years and I’ve just finished season two and before starting season three I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and look at all my old favourite AOT fan fictions from 2014 (and see what’s popular nowadays that I may have missed, since wow, a lot has changed since I was last present in this fandom and compared to what’s happening in the current episodes season one was tame).

I’ve noticed a huge divide between fanon and canon and I kinda wanted to ruminate on this a bit.

Eren’s character in the show isn’t my favourite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fond of this brash idiot, but he’ll never be my favourite. He falls into this shonen protagonist trope of being hot headed and ill tempered. He doesn’t take advice, he’s not going to listen to plans or authority, he always thinks he’s right and only follows his moral compass, and to tie it all up he’s not even that strong. He can’t back up the threats that he’s laying down and yet he always rushes into situations with fists flying and never thanks or appreciates the characters (Mikasa) that get him out of those tricky situations. The only way to get through to him is to physically beat him down and even then it may not work if he hadn’t already somewhat respected you (Mikasa again). This character type is seen so often in shonen and I’m really not a fan, I like the cool and calculating protagonist better. Someone who has the power behind their threats and doesn’t rush into situations. Again, I like Eren, but I think it’s the other characters in the show that balance him out and the plot itself that makes me like Attack on Titan.

Compare this to fanon where his default character is happy ray of sunshine who’s a little bit naive. It’s a rather jarring comparison but I also don’t necessarily dislike it either. To me canon and fanon characteristics are almost completely seperate. If I had to always think a d compare fan fiction to canon I probably couldn’t read it. I read about happy fanon Eren and see canon angry Eren and to me they are two completely different characters - two completely different people even. If I had to read fan fiction about canon Eren I can 1000000% say that I just wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d be totally bored. As I said before, I like Eren but it’s the people around him and the plot itself that makes him bearable. I can watch a show about him because it takes less time and emotional energy, but I couldn’t invest in reading a book about him (which is why I haven’t read the manga either).

This isn’t even exclusively towards Attack on Titan. Back in my Teen Wolf phase I noticed how different canon and fanon characters were. Small secret - I was knee deep in the Teen Wolf fandom before I realised that I hadn’t actually watched an episode of Teen Wolf. One of my mutual’s reblogged TW artwork that was linked to a story and from that I never looked back. When I actually did get around to watching TW I can honestly say I was more than a wee bit disillusioned. Derek and Stiles are obviously not the main characters and I was prepared for that, but then they barely interacted, and when they did interact it was nothing like what I had read about - nothing like what their fanon characters or interactions were like. I can honestly say that I never made it past the first season - the show just wasn’t for me - but I was still thoroughly invested in the fandom for another year or two.

Something about fanon Sterek dynamics just did it for me, their characters and relationship was just so on point for what I wanted, and this is kind of when I came to accept that canon and fanon can be so different that it almost feels as if it’s two pieces of completely different media. I mean, fanon has its own set of rules, it’s own character tropes and story arcs that even completely different authors with completely different stories somewhat instinctively know to follow. I think that’s amazing, but it’s also a double edged sword. See these first two examples were of shows that I A) never watched/finished before reading fan fiction, B) don’t necessarily love love the characters in canon. That means that fanon is more appealing because it takes something I don’t care too strongly for and changes it to something more appealing. But what about when fanon takes something I love and cherish and remoulds it?

I want to briefly take this time to talk about something I’ve dubbed “the twink affect”. When you take a character that’s originally strong willed, self sufficient, and somewhat masculine and you pair the, up with someone EVEN MORE strong willed, self sufficient, and masculine - the “Alpha male” of characters if you will. I find that fanon is incapable of seeing two strong men together in a relationship and will eventually slowly twinkify one of them. Make them smaller, softer, lonelier, less self sufficient and more reliant on others, they need to be taken care of, they’re now a ball of sunshine that’s radiant and joyful, they’re cotton candy that melts on your tongue. You put them next to the pairing you ship them with and instead of seeing two strong men you see a bear and a twink. That’s definitely what’s happened to the two characters/pairings mentioned before and I honestly didn’t mind because I wasn’t protective of the source material, but when it does happen to a character I love it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, and I can’t even complain because I’ve already reaped the benefits from other fandoms. (I am going to complain though, this is my blog and I can do what I want mum.)

I’m going to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi. Beautiful story that I love in (almost) all its various adaptations, but I’ve noticed the ever slow changing of fanon’s Wei Wuxian. For anyone reading this that hasn’t read MDZS (or if anyone’s reading this at all, I am expecting to just be shouting into the void at this point) Wei Wuxian dies - not a spoiler, it happens at the very beginning of the story - and comes back to life in the body of Mo Xuanyu. Mo Xuanyu is small malnourished and twinky - he even canonically wears makeup (or at least has it in his possession, I’m getting the various adaptations confused and I can’t remember if in canon Wei Wuxian woke up in Mo Xuanyu’s body already wearing the makeup or if he just finds the tin of makeup in Mo Xuanyu’s possessions). Wei Wuxian’s character is also a bit of a tease, and now he’s alive and unburdened by the past he’s much freer now than he was in the past, couple that with the fact that he’s pretending to be Mo Xuanyu (a character who is rumoured to be gay and also a bit insane) he goes all out in pretending to be a shameless flirt, and it’s honestly hilarious, I love his character. So in a sense he has all the makings of a canon twink and I’m really not here to shame on those who portray him that way while he’s in Mo Xuanyu’s body.

My personal issue is with the same extreme twink portrayal while he’s in his original body. In his original body Wei Wuxian is BUFF. He’s hunky, he’s in the top five most eligible bachelors, he’s *car honks* woof woof bark bark *whistles* puurrrr, he’s one of the most powerful cultivators of his generation, he’s a genius too. He’s hunky. He still has the cheeky shameless character, but when you compare him to the male lead Lan Wangji, they’re about the same size and strength. My favourite type of fan fiction in MDZS is fix it/everybody lives nobody dies/no war/etc etc. Basically stories where Wei Wuxian keeps his original body. The fanon twink portrayal of him being so small and soft and weak while in canon he’s one of the strongest and smartest urks me in ways I can’t explain. It’s not what I want, not what I’m looking for. I love him for who he is in canon and to see his character so distorted by fans of the original work is frustrating. I just want to read about Wei Wuxian as a jock with his equally buff and tall nerd boyfriend.

I want to pause here and say that I have nothing against authors that write him in a twinky way, I respect your work and your characters (and as I said before I’ve reaped the benefits of other fandoms twinky character portrayals numerous times), if I read a fic that I’m not happy with the characterisation I just close the tab and move on so absolutely no hate to anyone who enjoys this character type. I’m just ruminating on the fact that I’ve been seeing it happen more and more often lately to the point where I’ve kind of bounced the fandom and am sticking to other works like Scum Villain that haven’t yet twinkified too much (there will always be one or two stories in every fandom that twinkify and honestly? I respect that. Authors said twink rights ONLY, good for them).

Mo Dao Zu Shi isn’t the only fandom I’ve been in that I’ve negatively reacted to fanon. Another one would be Batman (I love Tim with all my heart and I love him getting treated nicely but damn I sometimes wish people would remember how freaking strong and amazing he is too), 2Ha is another I’ve started to see “twinkified” (although I don’t mind seeing Chu Wanning being soft and taken care of, he is canonically called handsome and masculine and he’s quite tall too), I’ve even seen the canonically “top” character (and that seems so weird to write oml) be twinkified by fandom because they want to see him get bottomed for ~equal rights~ because apparently bottoming is seen as a “woman’s position” to them and they’re trying to be woke by switching the sexual positions up but failing to see how misogynistic and homophobic that take is (imma stop myself here because that a WHOLE ‘nother can or worms to be opened right there).

What I’m trying to say is fanon is a double edged sword and I’ve definitely enjoyed some and hated some. I think it’s important to seperate the two. I do think it’s annoying for fandoms to be flooded with mischaracterisation when you actually do like the original characters and I wish there was some way to seperate fandom into “actual canon fans” and “fans of fanon”, but I don’t have a solution and I’ve definitely contributed to the problem in the past so for that I’m sorry.

I don’t know how to end this long ass rant, I don’t know what the goal was in writing this, but taadaa ~ here’s my exceptionally long take on fanon.

#rant #I don’t know if I should tag the fandoms mentioned in case I wake a sleeping bear #but I’m going to do it anyway in case someone has the tags muted #mdzs #aot fanfiction #AOT #mo dao zu shi #fanon #ao3 #attack on titan #ereri #wei wuxian

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swiftlythebest · 4 years

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In Defense of Lake Meriwether

All right, strap in folks, we’re discussing an unpopular opinion! Lake Meriwether is not a bad character and she goes through some realistic growth. Additionally, she and Felix are shown good development and I ship it. Yikes, lots of unpopular opinions in so few sentences.

Sidenote before I delve into everything: there is certainly a danger in media made for children and young adults being looked at through the lens of someone not in that target audience. I am 26, meaning the way I’m going to consume media differs from that of a teenager, especially considering that we’re apparently in different generations (which is weird, but that’s a whole other story). All of that is to say that I am an adult talking about a piece of media made for teenagers by older adults. It’s complicated, and I am in no way claiming that what I have to say is universally correct.

This whole whatever it is ended up being really long, so I’ll put it under a cut. Also, I know a lot of people probably won’t want to read it.

Sense of Identity

First of all, let’s keep in mind that Lake is 15/16. I have no idea how old people reading this post are, but if you’re older than 16, and out of high school, try to remember how you were at that age. Your brain hasn’t fully developed and much of your sense of self comes from interactions with your family and peers, not so much the world at large. That’s certainly altered by the widespread reach of social media, but someone that age is still navigating identity and their place in the world with limited experience. We can’t expect a girl who has grown up in a privileged bubble to be a bastion of morality. We can’t hold her to the same standard we would a full-fledged adult. She acts like a typical 15/16 year old who is insecure and trying to hide it while living in the shadow of her best friend.

And hey, it’s true, Lake is primarily known as Mia’s best friend. Mia is described by Felix as the hottest girl in their grade and loved by everyone. Mia has the affection of the cute new boy, as well as the popular jock that Lake initially likes. I’m glad they don’t fall into the trap of making that friendship toxic and unbalanced, which is so often the case. I think within their friendship, they are very much equals who love and value each other. But to the public, Mia is more liked than Lake, and she is definitely at least somewhat aware of that. Lake is not Summer Roberts or Lydia Martin in the sense that she is not viewed as a highly desired person in the same way those other two characters are; she is viewed that way by the nerdy love interest, but not the student population as a whole. There are definitely parallels to be made with Summer and Lydia (Summer especially when you consider the intense similarities between Lake’s speech about public couples being scrutinized and Summer’s incredibly similar speech to Seth in Season 1), but that’s not one of them.

Lake’s mom sucks. It’s clear that Lake has grown up in a household where her every move was judged and she was made to see more flaws in herself than she had. Think about how that must have affected her psyche and pressured her into believing that who she was to the public was what truly mattered. That’s ingrained in her. We see that almost immediately with her being obsessed with Creek Secrets and trying to make herself more appealing to Andrew at the party. I’m not sure she knows who she actually is, just who she’s been molded to be. She wants approval and in the beginning, it’s clear she really only gets that from Mia and Felix, albeit, the latter is from afar.

Importance of Friendship

Once she and Mia begin to hang out with Victor and Felix, she begins to shift. We do see it even before when she confronts Andrew at the Battle of the Bands, showing us that she at least in some way knows her worth, but I’m not sure how much at that point. Victor and Felix add a new dynamic to her friendship with Mia and give her more people to genuinely think she’s great and make that known to her. While she’s still clearly insecure, we can see that start to chip away. When she impresses them with her excuses, something she’s likely only done to Mia so far, you can see how their approval makes her light up. And Felix’s compliment is quite possibly the first step towards her developing feelings for him.

DJ F Bomb on the Track

So we’ve now arrived to the Felix of it all. I want to say that I absolutely love Felix. I think he’s funny and sweet and a great friend; he was my favorite right off the bat and that opinion was only reinforced as the series progressed. Our first introduction to Felix is outside of whatever image he has at school and with his peers. We are told about his status as an outcast by him a few scenes after we’ve gotten to know him, so we already have formed our opinion of him beyond his public image. We know he’s quirky and anxious, but it comes across as endearing; the audience doesn’t know that his unique personality is not the main thing working against him. To Lake, and a vast majority of his peers, he’s Lonestone, an awkward and weird boy who doesn’t fit in and has a truly unfortunate nickname and reputation. We don’t have five years of taunting to affect how we view him. The audience view of Felix versus his peers’ view is important to distinguish when talking about why Lake is so hesitant.

Felix initially comes on too strong. He recognizes that in Episode 7 and, with the help of Pilar, he learns to back off a bit. The angler fish speech is sweet, but was I the only one a little put off by how obsessive it sounded? He’s saying someone should sacrifice everything for the one they love, which is a lovely sentiment in a fairytale, but a bit much when you’re 16. His growth isn’t as explicit as hers, but he still does have to soften his approach in order to really make it work. And I want to be clear that while Felix is definitely a better person than Lake, I’d caution to say he’s a better character, in the sense of complexity and growth. I like him more, as I think pretty much everyone does, but Lake is a layered character with logical development, which shouldn’t be overlooked because you may not like her as a person.

It’s supposed to be Felix for her. We as an audience, as well as Felix, know it when she says the same thing he said about DJs in episode 3. She catches on a couple of episodes later after they steal the cake, but she’s clearly in denial. Lake likes Felix. And she seems to like him more and more as the season progresses. But he doesn’t fit into that perfect image she has spent so long cultivating and trying to maintain, so she’s having to come to terms with that throughout their relationship. When she shoots him down for the dance after seeing his apartment, you know she doesn’t want to. It’s clearly killing her to say it, but she’s not there yet. And Felix knows his worth so he ends it, which also clearly kills her.

She told him upfront that no one could know, and she repeats it a lot. He can walk away if he’s not comfortable with that, and we do see him almost do that in episode 8, until she tells Mia. He’s right to want to revisit that part of their relationship around the dance, and especially after baring his soul to her at his apartment. He’s right to break it off when, after such an emotional afternoon for them, she still won’t be seen with him. He’s right to accept an invitation from another girl. His reaction is completely valid.

She doesn’t expect to be jealous at the dance because she thinks it’s the natural progression of things. Kieran is the kind of boy she always saw herself with: a popular jock. And then he’s boring. He talks about working out and fantasy football and it’s boring. She can’t be herself with him. Then there’s Felix, at the dance with another girl who seems to make much more sense paired with him. He’s wearing a goofy ruffled shirt and joking about the smell of his hair and telling Lake he just wants her to be happy. I think she needed to see that what she thought she wanted she actually didn’t, and also that the boy she liked genuinely cared about her as a person, not just an object of desire. He makes her happy, something I’m not sure she had fully admitted to herself until that moment. And yeah, the big public declaration of love is a huge cliche and overdone and all that, but it works so very well in visual media.

Conclusion?

Look, all of this mess is to say that Lake is not a bad person, nor is she a bad character. We all latched onto Felix pretty quickly, so naturally, our standards for him were going to be sky-high. But in a show of tropes, this relationship was obvious from the start. Lake felt authentic, like a scared teenage girl navigating her self-esteem, public image, overbearing mother, and falling for someone unexpected all at the same time. She grows and develops, learning to go for what truly makes her happy, not what she thinks should make her happy.

TL;DR: Lake is a complex, realistic portrayal of an insecure teenage girl with an overbearing mother, who spends a lot of time in her best friend’s shadow. She’s in denial of her true feelings for Felix for a while, going so far as to sabotage something she knows is good and right in order to continue to feel secure. By the last episode, she has grown and learned enough to understand her own autonomy when it comes to her happiness. We should all cut her a little bit of slack and let the immature 16-year-old be immature and 16, while learning how to be just a bit more mature.

#love victor #lake love victor #lake meriwether #felix/lake #felix weston #felix westen #long post #i have opinions and you're all welcome to ignore them #love victor spoilers

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thejustmaiden · 4 years

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Why do you think Sunrise did that event in with Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs mirroring InuKag? They have already done that CD Drama, do you think they did that to give hope to the shippers? What if after so many hints, if they reveal in the anime that Sessrin isn't canon, aren't the shippers gonna be disapointed? This may be a dumb question and your answers are always smart and well-articulated, but i seriously don't understand their marketing strategy, do you care to explain for me?

Oh, hey there! I appreciate all the love you've been leaving on my blogs lately. I really hope I'm able to give you an answer you're satisfied with. Sorry it took some time to get back to you. I hope this makes up for it. 🙏

I'm not gonna lie, I'm up and down about how I feel about that livestream and what it means for the future of this ship. My brain has been on roller coaster mode since basically the moment the sequel was announced. We're in the home stretch now, and we better get the answers WE WANT the second that sequel comes out. Since it's evidently not going to happen anytime sooner- welp!

Before the livestream aired, I really thought us fans were on the verge of discovering the mom and that it was going to be Rin. We still had hope she wasn't, but at the same time most of us antis were "bracing for impact." lol

Then nothing happened.

We were pretty shocked but obviously relieved. The days before it came out, I was telling others (as well as myself lol) that just because Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs had a livestream together doesn't confirm anything. Besides, why does that have to automatically mean that both pairings need to be romantic? We all know how integral these characters are/were to each other's storylines, so these pairings make the most logical sense, wouldn't you say?

In the previous livestream with the voice actors who play Inuyasha and Kagome, they discuss the new character Moroha and introduce her as Inuyasha AND Kagome's daughter. Now let's compare that to the other livestream with Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs. When they described Towa and Setsuna, they did so as Sesshomaru's daughters NOT Sesshomaru and Rin's daughters. That to me is the most telling piece of evidence.

Like how could they not use that prime opportunity to tell us Rin's the mom when her voice actor was literally sitting right there??! We were all expecting it and they still insisted on giving us nothing! What this tells me is that it's possible this mom is a new character, and it even appears she is quite pivotal to the new series. I keep changing my opinion on that part though to be honest with you, because sometimes I think she won't be important at all in the grand scheme of things. (See what I mean about being up and down? lol) Idk about you, but it seems to me like we haven't even met her character. If it was Rin, why keep it a mystery? It's not like Sessrin's popularity is exactly a secret in this fandom. Why wait until the big reveal if it's "so obvious" in the first place? How does Sunrise benefit from hiding this information?

If it does end up being Rin, it would've been better to just come out and say it. If this ain't just pure fanbait like some of us still hope it is, why hold back? Give 'em what they want already and let us antis be at peace. If they hope to think that I'll change my mind and give this sequel a go just because I've waited this long so might as well, they're sorely mistaken. If anything, I'm going to be pissed they kept us in the dark this long when they could've just saved us all the trouble. I imagine that goes for a lot of us, shippers and antis alike. Whatever way you look at it, I won't be invested in this sequel if Sessrin goes canon- period. I cannot and will not be on board with a series that promotes such a harmful and insulting dynamic.

Which brings us to Sunrise's marketing strategy. Well, I definitely think they have been catering to the fans of this ship for quite some time now. Because, ya know, money. Whether that's because they plan to make this ship canon or not remains to be seen. "Show meee the moneeeeyyyy!" *yells in Jerry Maguire*

There was first the drama cd and more recently that calendar which included art of adult!Rin with Sesshomaru, but neither of those are canon first off. Also, does anyone know if it was actually confirmed to be pro-Sessrin fan art? I mean, I know it doesn't look very good when the artist who made it is a Sessrin shipper and certain fans are fawning over their OTP, but that doesn't necessarily mean the calender automatically is either last I checked. I wonder why it can't simply be Rin as an adult visiting with Sesshomaru. I believe in one picture she's seen giving him a flower, much like little Rin would've done, or just as any child does for a loved one. So if Rin is still bringing him flowers as an adult, I would assume that means their relationship dynamic hasn't changed at all. That's what's supposed to happen, too! If an adult's relationship was established with another person while they were just a child, then that adult will always view them as a child no matter what and vice versa. Even when those children become grown-ups, that won't change. That's just how things are, or how they're supposed to be rather. In other words, a normal healthy adult-child bond does not resemble one like Sessrin.

Both Sessrin fans and antis agree there haven't been any romantic implications between Sesshomaru and Rin in the original series. That's why I can't understand for the life of me why we're even having this discussion. Alas, here we are. This is what happens when society has conditioned us to believe that the only proper (aka "best") way an adult male and a young female's closeness can evolve is with romance. So maybe it's not obvious at first (because that would be illegal), but we should EXPECT their relationship to shift in that direction. Why, you ask? Well, simply because sexualizing young girls is the norm so why not, right? No clues or foreshadowing required! Because like I just said, that would be illegal. Fiction has loopholes for this kinda stuff, so problem solved?

Nope! Aging her up counts too, folks! When you look at a girl character and the first thing you think is, "I can't wait till she grows up so she can f*ck" then, yeah, you're a part of the problem. You may not realize it, but you are. That's not to say you're a bad person or that it's even your fault, just saying that there are times in all of our lives where we start to question some of our beliefs. If you not only support but desire the idea of a romance eventually forming between a grown man- yes, 19 is an adult- and a young girl, then you should probably ask yourself why that may be and re-evaluate. Please stop using cultural differences and history that dates back almost a thousand years to justify this so-called tradition.

"You all shouldn't think too deeply about this, it's just fiction! Ugh, you're ruining the fun! Antis should all just shut up! Only we can have problems, but when you do it's just complaining!"

Right....

And by the way, most of us are not even complaining. We're being critical of the content we're watching. Criticism isn't always pretty unfortunately.

If Sunrise and Rumiko do decide to go through with this, then I will disappointed, sure, but not surprised. Romanticizing these sexualized images of young or pre-pubescent girls has been happening for far too long, after all. We've become desensitized to it sadly enough, especially when the media continues to glorify it. I wish we'd realize how many young girls- or minors in general- we're putting in danger by sending messages such as this.

To you young teenage girls and even boys reading this, you may not fully understand right now, but it's never okay for anyone to tell you that your body being sexualized is a natural and beautiful thing. It's going through through a lot changes at your age, yes, but they should never use your curiosity to satisfy their sexual needs. Don't allow some of these stories to be an example of what is acceptable to occur in your own life if you were ever to encounter a similar situation, especially if fiction is all that you have to compare it to. It is not in any way, shape, or form okay for an adult to say or do sexual/romantic things to you. Even a conversation that may seem harmless at first could have dire consequences. No, not even if you trust them and they're one of your favorite people in this world are these things ever appropriate. What they're asking from you or showing you is dangerous, and even if it doesn't seem like it they are very likely taking advantage of you. If you're ever unsure about something, don't hesitate to come to me. Or maybe you have a loved one that you can go to, that works too. 😊

Idk if I even gave you a definite answer, but perhaps it's because I'm still figuring it out myself. If I ever do, ha! I hope by allowing you to get inside my head for a little bit you got a better idea. Or maybe not, and I just made it more confusing for you. Oops! lol Feel free to hit me up again, dear, and have a nice day/night!! 👋

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #anti sessrin #asks #answered ask

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felineincognito · 4 years

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Just A Tentative Theory

So I'm new to the Larry and 1D fandoms -brought in by Harry and Loui's solo careers- and I've just binged so many proof videos in literally the two months I've been a part of this thing. Along with all of those I've seen a fair few proof vides of other ships within the fandom, some really biased and others that almost make sense.

Not hating on or discrediting other ships!! This is all just based off my own observations and what I’ve been able to piece together from all of the content I’ve gone through. And I'm sorry it's so rutting long and rambley at bits, I am running on so little sleep I wanna cry and caffeine fumes.

So... this is my babyfan theory and feel free to comment or run with it just remember I'm new to all this and had to get this idea out?

So what if in the beginning, when Louis and Harry met on X-Factor, you have these 2 sweet young boys who like each other but don't really have a lot of hope of anything working out because they're both contestants shooting for the same prize so they harbor these innocent little acquaintance crushes like you'd get on someone you sit down the row from in class in highschool or something right? But then they get made into a group and all of a sudden they're all up in each other's space and they're bunking together and they realize they really do like each other but neither have much experience in relationships yet or more intense emotions so they keep it fairly quiet. They figure that with the press they're getting with the show and the stress of wanting to do well and everyone feeling each other out as a group they really would rather their little romance be just theirs for a little while longer. And of course people in charge of publicity encourage this mindset, telling them that if they come out as a new/forming couple or let it be known they like each other (or just boys in general) that way there would be more attention on that (not all of it good either) than their actual talents or performance(s) and the other boys would be pushed to the sidelines in favor of them and that's just not fair to the other 3 now is it?

Then they don't win X-Factor and they think that's it until they get brought in to make a boyband even though they didn't win because they're just that f-ing popular. But this thing between them is still new and fragile and they haven't had time to work out just what it is or if it's something that's going to last and the label swoops in with a legal gag dressed up as a temporary fix. They don't tell anyone about them, don't do anything overt in public, maybe be seen/paired off with a girl or 2 as a red herring for the press, giving them time to just figure this all out and see if they really will work. And they take it because they're young and this is the chance they've always wanted and there are 3 other lads who will suffer if the two of them turn this down. So they sign and they try to follow the scripts and listen to what their handlers and managers tell them but they're cheeky kids in puppy love and it's almost like a game to see how far they can push it and just what counts as too much when all of the boys are so tactile and affectionate with each other.

And they really do fall in love. In the whirlwind that is the first couple of years, the song writing, the tours, the hours put in at the recording studio and every single press conference and public appearance in between, they fall in love. And it's great and it's good and somewhere along the way they think this might be it for them and they're ready to come out but then the label hits them with the gag they signed and they realize just what it means. They realize that they basically signed away their rights to talk about it or show their love or share it with their fans because it might hurt their image, affect their popularity and hurt their profits. But that's okay, because they have each other and they're in love and the girl Louis is 'dating' isn't so bad and she's cool about the whole thing.

But then it gets hard. The press is making Harry out to be this womanizing sex symbol and pushing for Louis and the girl he's with to start getting serious because supposedly they'd been together while Louis was on the show and really it's about time isn't it? And during all of that the Larry Stylinson fandom has been born and they're putting the pieces together and the lads are cheeky things who are hurting because they can't tell the world they're in love and while Niall supports/ships them (at least from how he acts in proof videos I've seen) Liam agrees with management about not being open about it while Zayn is an odd mix of the 2. So they push it and they let things slip and they give the fans enough to put it together without violating their contracts and yeah management pushes back and takes measures so they don’t seem as close and to hopefully quiet the rumours but overall it's okay again for a while.

Then Harry starts figuring parts of himself out. And he wants to start wearing pretty shirts, bright colours and flashy patterns and painting his nails but they tell him he can't because those are girl shirts and it's too femme to paint his nails and wear bright colours and pastels and it hurts because he just can't be himself. And he wants out. He's tired of being scared he's going to mess up on stage or people won't like their songs enough for the label's liking and he just wants to be able to love Louis without worrying about what everyone else thinks and their little codes and touches just aren't always enough anymore.

So they start to fight. Louis is too scared to leave because he doesn't think he's good enough without the band and they're both still so young and have only been in this world for a few years how can they be sure they'd make it? How do they know that they won't just crash and burn and that will be the end of it? So they fight and they hurt each other and they're already living apart and barely seeing each other outside of work related or group functions because of management and Louis kind of lets himself fall into the illusion of the relationship he's being made to partake in and Harry finds himself growing closer to the other lads and pushing his limits with his wardrobe and public persona.

Now the next bits are where my theory starts to get a little more wobbly because like I said I'm new and my info digging skills are not as good as others in the fandom. A lot of it is based off of videos by freddieismyqueen (before she took them down), larrystylinson 28, Larry Stylinson's Utopia, s e p t e m b e r 2 8 and FireproofLarry.

So in the midst of the fighting and the hurting and both being so scared for so many different reasons they kind of fall apart. To Harry, Louis has chosen his career over their relationship and Louis is hurt and upset that Harry can't/won't see where he's coming from on all of this. And this is where Zarry comes in.

Throughout the Larry jealousy videos one of the things that stuck out to me was that there were a lot of Zarry moments and they seemed closer to the end of the 1D timeline. Before that most of them were just the references to Harry with girls, him being 'flirty' with interviewers or fans or just general cheeky sort of passively possessive moments probably played up to irk management and give the fans more to go off of. But then we get to the points where Harry and Zayn interact more on stage and Louis starts to look right pi**ed and just watches without doing any sort of possessive holding or touches or cheeky little looks and whispers like we're used to. No, Harry and Zayn start flirting on stage or being closer during interviews and Louis is angry and passive aggressive. And in the background Niall looks like he has no idea what the heck to do about all of this and Liam is just done with their cr*p.

So Louis gets his head out of the dirt and tries to make it up to Harry. And it works because this lad is head over heels for Louis and Zayn is left behind. But maybe Harry doesn’t realize that things were a little more on Zayn’s end. Maybe it hurt a little more than expected when the two lads finally figure themselves out. Or maybe Harry and Zayn really were just friends and the ‘Zarry’ moments just ruined his friendship with Louis and he felt it ruined his friendship with Harry too because Louis sees Zayn as a threat now so there’s bloody tension and such all over the place. (personally I’m leaning towards the last and that Louis’ jealous streak probably came out and he had a few a**shole moments because come on guys, he’s only human and they went through a lot as performers in the public eye and if you listen to a lot of his interviews there’s a lot of insecurity issues he’s dealt with over the years)

Then that blessed September 28th happened and it helps their relationship because honeymoon phase yo. But that’s 2013. Life goes on and it gets hard again and they’re pushing it again and life happens. Zayn leaves and it hurts the band because they’re in the middle of a tour and from what I’ve gathered he kind of just shut them out of his life. And so Harry is hurting because losing a friend is hard and Louis is upset that the band is falling apart and the media is having a heyday with the story and they’re in the middle of a blasted tour and that good old jealous streak comes out with Harry being so upset over Zayn leaving. So he’s scared and hurting, and mistakes are made.

Now we know that Liam confessed to a drinking problem at one point and there have been references of Louis having his moments as well. And Louis and Harry still have to ‘date’ girls and Louis is always the long-term one so it would stand to reason that he would have a decent rapport with the girls he’s seen with, that these would be people he learns to be comfortable with. And overindulgence in the presence of someone you trust or are familiar with when you’re hurting can lead to lapses in judgement. Which is probably how we got little Freddie. (And that is all being said of him because we don’t need to drag a child into all this drama people)

Louis being unfaithful, even if it wasn’t intentional, right after Zayn left would put a strain on their relationship and would cause another off period. But they’re still fools in love and married at this point so they try to make it work and they kind of come together again and they figure out how to move forward. But Louis is going to be a dad and their contracts are almost up and Harry still wants out.

So the band splits and Louis is so scared of what comes next and he’s trying to make it all work and the songs he’s released get good responses but not as much as he’d hoped and X-Factor doesn’t pan out and the other 4 are off living their lives. Zayn’s music career is a success and Niall waits awhile but his music is popular fairly right off the bat as well and Liam at least is still in the public eye and Harry is making waves. He’s wearing clothes he couldn’t before and he’s wearing all of the bright prints and flashy colours and those pearls happen and he’s in a movie ya’ll and he’s good at it.

And it takes Louis awhile but he finds his sound and he starts to make music he’s happy with and proud of and he’s finding himself. But he’s still with that old label and the same management.

So here’s where it gets closer to the present. Harry has a thing with Kendall but they part on good terms and I’m guessing it has to do with he tried for appearances sake and she gets it and probably low-key ships them but understands being discreet and giving them time to work it out.

So Louis wants Harry. Harry wants Louis. Louis is probably bound by another form of that dratted legal gag. So Harry waits. Because Harry isn’t scared anymore and he’s figured himself out and he’s happy with himself and he’s in a place where he can be himself and can encourage others to do the same. He gets it now that he’s older and seen more of the industry outside of their 1D bubble and he’s had to handle stuff on his own and he’s killing it.

Louis writes songs about them and being young fools and how love hurts and you have to be either young and dumb or just f-ing brave to go through with it. Harry writes songs about the stages a relationship (specifically theirs) goes through and they have their little rendezvous and Harry fosters this community of love and acceptance of others and Louis talks about finding yourself and being happy with yourself. And Harry has found himself, is happy with himself and Louis is almost there and he’s got that pesky legal gag anyway.

So Harry waits and he’s okay with that because in the end they love each other and he knows where Louis’ heart is and no matter what they have each other, He’s waited this long he can wait a bit more to tell the world just how much he loves this stupid wonderful man.

#larry stylinson #larry is real #larry theory #larry stylinson theory #harry styles #louis tomlinson #treat people with kindness #only the brave

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