#iaw fandom thoughts

[indiaalphawhiskey]

Hello hello! I’m new here but not new to the fandom by any means but I’ll be truthful, I’ve been inactive for years. I saw one of your answers floating around Twitter so I decided to dust off ye ol’ tumblr and have a chat. My question is: does it ever just feel? Overwhelming? I firmly believed in H&L for years but it got to the point where we were analyzing tee shirts for hidden messages (this is post RBB/SBB saga) and celebrating when one of them wore blue or green or certain numbers and it just felt like I was participating in nitpicking. Like the fandom was literally nitpicking tiny things to validate our beliefs. Then I left. You’ve been here for years. It never feels overwhelming at times? Like “what are we doing analyzing tee shirt references or other minute things? Has it really come to this?” I think I struggle with guilt feeling like “are we actually listening to them? Do they want us to do this or are we way overstepping?” And I don’t know how to reconcile those feelings. Your thoughts?

Yeah, of course it feels overwhelming. There have been some particular points that come to mind where I was personally like 'dude, I'm out'.

But, what I'm getting from your ask is that you largely felt overwhelmed based on the content you were surrounded by, and not what was actually happening. And to that I say: a big portion of the fandom remaining somewhat fun is making sure you're getting content from the right people. In other words, people who know their shit -- who know facts, who will honestly differentiate between canon and headcanon, and who are also willing to adapt their understanding of who Larry are now versus who they were in the earlier years.

For example, the blogs I follow don't read into coded clothing anymore, unless it's in an overtly attention calling way, like at Glasto. And, even then, the call to read into Louis' shirt came from a series of events -- liking the tweet + H stunting -- and not just because he was wearing a shirt, you know what I mean?

Sure, the blogs I follow will make memes and jokes, but they know that the coded clothing heyday of Larry is very much over, the same way the era of RBB/SBB is also over.

Longevity in fandom (in any fandom, as I've learned) is down to finding people who can have measured and reality based conversations about things, and who know when to put headcanon and speculation to bed. I think a lot of the more measured takes on Larry have been buried by the Old Guard leaving, because I remember a time when we really really really cultivated a culture of vetting and fact-checking, and it feels like we've largely lost that.

A lot of us have forgotten the reason we got into Larry in the first place, which was to support two people who were asking us to see them and their love. Signaling to us. Fighting for themselves and needing our support to do it.

I think there are much fewer Larries now who hold true to that call, and are willing to adjust their expectations based on what we're reading from older Larry and what they need from us now. Many more people would now prefer to treat this like a huge game of Come Out Clue and then will throw tantrums when they're no closer to "winning" than they were a year ago.

And yeah, if those are the people you're seeing content from, then I'm not surprised it took a toll on you.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

“look at me”

prompt: “look at me” 

whumpee:sonny carisi

fandom: Iaw and order svu

hey several disclaimers - i have never seen the episode (18x07) i based this on, only gifs. idk what actually happens after the scene at the beginning so who knows if this could even happen in canon. i also have not seen a whole lot of the show, certainly probably not enough to get his characterization down at all. nonetheless the idea for this fic came to me like last week and then earlier today i wrote the whole thing in my head and decided i had to get it down. surprisingly i really like how it turned out but i have no idea if it is like. good for the show or not so. keeping it out of the tags and such :)

He thinks that he should probably pray. The gun is pressing into his forehead and his knees are aching against the floor and he knows there’s only one way this ends. But he can’t make himself pray and in fact can’t make himself do much of anything at all except stare forwards at the man who currently holds his life in his hands. Maybe he should try something - try and escape, knock the gun away, something. Because if he’s dying anyway, he might as well die trying to save himself. But he doesn’t move. Can’t move, maybe. He is going to die, and there is nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t want to. But the metal is against his skin, cold and unrepentant, and he is dying. It’s just a matter of when. 

Bang. 

He flinches, closes his eyes. His ears ring with the shot and he still can’t really think but he must be dead. Right? Except he didn’t think it would feel like this. Like his knees still hurting against the hard floor. Like something wet and warm on his face. Like him still breathing. 

He opens his eyes. 

There is so much around him. Movement and light and noise and his brain refuses to focus on any of it. He looks around and tries to work out whether he is still on Earth when a shape draws his attention and answers his question. 

It’s Tom Cole. He is lying facedown on the ground and there is a hole in the back of his head seeping red blood into the ground and his gun is still in his hand and he must be dead but he still has his gun, the gun that had very nearly killed Sonny, but hadn’t (because if he is dead, he’s pretty sure Tom Cole wouldn’t be here with him, so he must be alive). He reaches out and pushes it away and then sits back hard and stares at the dead body that is not his. 

Another shape approaches him, and he backs away out of instinct. But the shape stops moving, then bends down so that they are at the same level, and he recognizes it as Liv. He relaxes slightly, because if she’s here then he must be safe, but then he raises a hand to his face and wipes away the wetness and his fingers come away bright red with fresh blood and it doesn’t hurt but there’s blood on him and maybe he hadn’t gotten so lucky, maybe he really is dead, maybe - 

“Carisi? Carisi. Sonny. Can you look at me, please?”

Liv’s voice breaks through the ringing in his ears, and he slowly looks up at her. She smiles at him - soft, comforting - and he doesn’t know what to do, he can’t think, he can’t - 

“Breathe,” Liv says, and there’s a hand on his chest and he leans into a bit without really meaning to. He tries to breathe but he’s aware that he’s not really doing it right. His lungs feel tight and the air feels thick and choking and - 

“Look at me. You’re safe. He’s dead and he didn’t hurt you and I know it’s a lot to process but you are okay. Sonny. Can you look at me?”

He does. “You’re okay,” she repeats, and he nods, jerkily, and breathes just a little easier. 

“Do you wanna get out of here?”

He nods again. He really wants to get out of here. Away from the blood and the body and the voices of everyone else and the way that they are trying not to pay attention to him, trying to pretend like he’s okay, which he’s grateful for but also hates because he knows that they know that he’s not okay. And he hates that he’s not okay, because this shouldn’t be a big deal, right? He’s alive and not even hurt so he shouldn’t feel like this. 

But that’s all entirely too much to be thinking about right now, so he stops thinking about it and simply lets Liv pull him to his feet. For a second everything starts to spin and he worries that he’s about to collapse, but then the spinning stops and Liv’s hand is on his back, steady, supportive, and he doesn’t bother to try and pull away.

They walk slowly out to the car, and then he’s in the passenger seat and neither one of them says anything and he thinks that he kind of wants to lock himself away and cry and he kind of wants to scrub at his face until it bleeds, because then at least the blood on his face will be his own (he knows, now, that it’s Tom Cole’s blood - it has to be - and he wishes it wasn’t). But neither of these thoughts are very rational or helpful so he decides that mostly, he would like to sleep. Just sleep for a long time and forget that this whole thing has even happened. 

--

When they get back to the station, he shrugs off Liv’s attempt to help him out of the car. He feels bad about it, but she looks like she understands and she doesn’t look mad. She lets him walk back inside on his own, even though he’s sort of stumbling - he’s trying to focus on walking, but everything is just so much at once and it’s distracting and disorienting. Still, Liv lets him walk apart from her - he imagines that she knows that he needs this, needs to do this one thing. 

On the walk in, he gets a few curious stares and well-meaning questions (there is blood all over his face, after all), and he decides that actually, what he wants right now is to disappear, just sink right through the floor and never come back. At least then no one would be looking at him.

And then they’re in Liv’s office and she’s closing the door and he wonders for a second if she is going to yell at him. 

She doesn’t. He sinks down onto the couch and she disappears - he doesn’t know where to - and when she comes back, she is holding a washcloth, and she sits down next to him and places it in his hands. It’s warm and wet and he imagines that he is supposed to be doing something with it but he can’t make his hands work.

“Can I touch you?” Liv asks, and it’s not quite her victim voice, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood, and he thinks he should hate it a little, but he doesn’t. He nods, and she takes the washcloth from him. 

“Turn towards me?” she asks, and he draws his right leg up onto the couch and turns his torso towards her. She smiles at him and takes his hands - he realizes that they’re shaking. He hadn’t noticed that before - and cleans them of the blood that he’d streaked across them earlier. 

She moves to his face when his hands are clean, and he can’t stop himself from leaning forwards into the warm and gentle cloth. He closes his eyes, and only opens them when Liv again asks if he can look at her.

The washcloth is gone now, and the dampness it’s left behind feels different than the blood had, but not different enough for him to be completely sure that the blood is really gone. He asks her, tentative, slightly aware that he’s probably being paranoid. It’s the first words he’s said since all of this, and Liv gives him a careful once-over, even though she must know he’s being paranoid. 

“It’s gone,” she confirms with a nod.

He nods back, satisfied with the answer, and then turns away, putting both legs back on the ground. He rests his freshly-clean chin in his freshly-clean hands and tries to think of something other than this but finds that he can’t. All he can think of is the gun and the shot and the body and the blood and above all, the fear, raw and intense and unwelcome and unyielding, and then there is a hand on his shoulder and Liv says, “look at me,” for what must be the fiftieth time that day. 

He turns and looks at her, and he isn’t really sure what he expects to see on her face, but it's definitely not the sheer understanding that he’s greeted with. It startles him for a second, but Liv keeps looking at him, and he can’t make himself look away, and then he breaks. 

He’s crying and he can’t stop and the tears on his face are warm and wet and feel horribly like blood, and he sobs, once, and then Liv is pulling him close and somehow his face fits perfectly against her shoulder, and he thinks that there are probably a thousand people who have had that exact same thought. She holds onto him, softly, gently, and he knows it’s so that he won’t feel trapped. He doesn’t. He feels safe, actually safe, for the first time in what feels like forever. Liv doesn’t say a word, and he knows that she will let him stay right here for as long as he needs. 

Eventually, he falls asleep, exhausted, still leaning against her shoulder.

thanks if you read this! i haven’t been this nervous to post a fic since i posted my first work to ao3 lmao. maybe that nervousness is justified maybe not. we will see. anyway like i said i have only seen a couple gifsets of the beginning scene and not that much of the show with him in it. this might suck. idk. 

[zot3-flopped]

indiaalphawhiskey*tumblr*com I think that anon meant this blogger. She is not new, been around for years and is a larry smut fic writer m|m fetishist like Gina. She writes very long posts about "stunts" as tinhats call them. Another psedo-intellectual manipulating minors in this fandom

If IAW is the one then yes, she's been around for five years plus. I thought it could be @bluewinnerangel who seems fairly new unless she's a rebrand.

[indiaalphawhiskey]

I wish Harry's management would lean more into the quirky angel-wings-wearing, 1D-shirt-selfie-taking, tipsily-men-cuddling side of Harry instead of the model-type-kissing version of whatever Harry Styles™ is supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking really hard about how to answer this thoughtfully and fairly, because I wholeheartedly agree with you. Stunts are useless to me, completely ineffective (even, clearly, to the GP) and diminish everything worth knowing about Harry.

What’s interesting though, is that in my deep frustration and disappointment about yet another unnecessary stunt, I bought My Body by EmRata on audiobook (I’m halfway through). And in the book, she says something really poignant:

“I wasn’t just famous; I was famously sexy.”

That quote has been haunting me all day because it explains Harry’s PR image so well. That one additional word is the key to understanding the ceaseless stunting circus HSHQ keeps putting us through.

See, Harry is a multitude of different, interesting, enigmatic, visionary things to us, his fans and even to the casual observer. But none of those things - not his talent, or his music, or his kindness - is what actually made him famous, or what set him apart from the 1D boys from the beginning. What made him famous, what made him different, what made him wanted, was his sex appeal - his brand and commodification as a sex symbol - which has been cultivated since he was sixteen (gross, I know. Very aware.)

And we can sit here and argue until we’re blue in the face about whether that’s something he does or doesn’t want, whether was pure marketing or something unique to him, or even how many other, more impressive, better, beautiful attributes he has and has developed since, that can and should be capitalized on.

But none of that is actually the point. The point is that this was always what his selling point was in the wider (albeit shallower) ocean that is entertainment. It’s his brand, like it or not, the way it was Marilyn Monroe’s brand, the way it’s EmRata’s brand, and you don’t keep the status of sex symbol by dating under-the-radar, interesting, talented people. You keep it by feeding it constantly, by reminding everyone of it whether they (or you) respond well or not, by remaining controversial and being linked to equally controversial PR personas. (E.g. Tom and Zendaya are cute as fuck and totally respectable. Their relationship is hardly ever in the headlines for more than 24 hrs, though, and neither are branded as a sex symbol per se.)

I’m not saying any of it is right, and a certainly don’t like it and very much wish it would stop. But sometimes, we have to look outward, and understand that things don’t live and die by the hand of fandom, as much as we wish they would; things don’t even live and die by the hand of good press.

I’m not saying don’t be frustrated or mad; I’m not saying accept it or don’t wish it would change. I’ve just found that finding a way to sit with it and understand that we (fandom) are not the audience and praise and respect aren’t necessarily the objective helps me gauge where my red lines are and what my sanity and longevity as a fan are really up against, especially when highlighting everything I don’t like seems like such a personal attack.

[indiaalphawhiskey]

Just a gentle reminder that fanfic authors not wanting “constructive” criticism from total and anonymous strangers on the internet does not equate to fanfic authors being unable to take proper, and truly constructive criticism gracefully.

It just means that fanfic authors are exercising their right to pick and choose the sources by which they obtain said criticism, in order to get the full value of the critique in the right place, the right way, with the right context, and at the right time.

Fanfic authors are not here to write for you, they are here to share something they wrote for themselves with you. If there’s something in their writing that doesn’t work for you on a subjective level (because, LBR, who really has the right to say any style of writing/art is objectively wrong?), please understand that you are not the person they had in mind when they wrote the story, and therefore, it is not your place to demand that each and every aspect of their work caters to your particular taste.

If you have strong opinions about writing that you feel you must share to better the authors of the world, you can: 1) become a creative writing teacher, 2) participate in creative writing groups that aim to teach and critique, 3) pursue a career in professional editing, and 4) volunteer as a beta here, via @twopoppies’ list.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. Have a good night and remember to be kind to fandom creators. They literally create entire worlds out of nothing, for free, for fun, and for everyone to enjoy. 😘