dulharpa

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I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

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silly seals from outer space

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There's something... tremendously funny and bewildering to me about AU choices in fanfiction that are distractingly irrelevant to the story. I'm going to pick on omegaverse here for my example, because my feelings on it as a setting are complicated and nuanced and also often petty as hell. But it can apply to any other AU type.

I view omegaverse as, essentially, a speculative science-fiction concept. It asks questions like "What if there were these 3+ accepted genders?" and "What if people had THIS weird feature of biology?" and then it runs with that, creating and exploring new worlds and, in doing so, making statements on our own world's relationships to sex and gender and sexuality and bodily autonomy and so on. There are many, many different ways to do omegaverse, some of which admittedly squick me out personally, some of which I just don't like.

Sometimes, the world building is fascinatingly intricate and thoughtful. Sometimes, the world building has the painted-cardboard quality of a "Star Trek" episode: it's just there to make a heavy-handed statement about sex and gender discrimination and it'll fall apart if you poke it too hard. With fanfiction, it also generally becomes a tool with which to examine a specific character's relationship to sex, gender, sexuality, and so on.

Sometimes, the main purpose of omegaverse as an element in a story is sexual titillation. It's a vessel for kinky stuff, like power dynamics and fantasy sex characteristics, uninterested in the broader world implications, and that's fine! Great! "Porn without plot" is still a purpose! It's very relevant to the story!

One of the many ways omegaverse settings can squick me out is when... hmm... it feels anti-feminist and anti-queer, like the author is uncritically creating "Bioessentialist Cisheteronormative Amatonormative Anti-Abortion Patriarchy Nightmare Scenario 2!" worlds, in which they've given no thought to what it would mean to be intersex or transgender or aromantic or asexual or sex-repulsed or polyamorous or disabled or childfree or infertile/sterile or adopted or mentally ill or a victim of abuse or a victim of assault, and so on. (Or the author outright states that all cultures around the world view sex and gender the exact same reductive way in this world, which is pretty racist and also very boring.) Yikes.

Like, uh, feels weird sometimes when you take a homosexual couple of characters and then turn them into an alpha/omega relationship, which is not only socially accepted but the equivalent of straight in this particular world, so that they can have bio-babies together. Feels bad when the author starts outright insisting that omega/omega and alpha/alpha couples are biologically impossible in this world and always doomed to failure. Feels absurd when the author is so into these exaggerated fantasy dominant/submissive concepts, such that there could apparently NEVER be a dominant omega and submissive alpha couple, that they accidentally imply that this world doesn't even have the cowboy/cowgirl sex positions. What the hell.

Like, you're using the weird sex world concept and insisting that people are only having this world's equivalent of vanilla, straight, reproductive sex? And also actively shitting on other stuff? Like the basic concept of sex toys??? Fuck off!

But, you know, even the bioessentialist reinforcement of gender roles, even uncritical enthusiasm for benevolent sexism, is still a purpose for a narrative element? I hate it, but the omegaverse is still actively doing something in this story even if I think it's doing something bad.

It gets REALLY confusing to me when omegaverse is included but irrelevant. Character 1 and Character 2 are in a Modern Coffee Shop AU, having a very basic romance, and they just also happen to be an alpha and omega. No, there are no heats or ruts or weird sex. No, there's not even any weird scenting things going on. No, there's not really any commentary on gender roles or discrimination. The story is just doing a full-world gender-bend with fantasy genders for... no clear reason?

Maybe it's to assure us that the characters won't face any societal homophobia and will be able to get married and have bio-babies down the line without issue? (Again, yikes.) But even that's unclear.

Like, damn, might as well make up a new set of fantasy genders based on star signs and apply that to your AU just because. Might as well make up new irrelevant genders based on the four seasons. If you're going to go "Imagine an AU where the characters are Red Gender and Blue Gender!!!" then I kind of expect you to have an answer if I ask, "Why, though? What's the appeal? Is it relevant to your story? Is the world changed in any meaningful way?"

I am not approaching anyone's self-indulgent fanfiction in this way, to be clear. If I don't like it, I just leave.

The answer to "Why is this story element here?" can be: "I just like it." But I do think it's funny and weird to encounter AU elements that, in my opinion, are actively dragging a story down.

Omegaverse generally doesn't even have a great aesthetic going for it. "Imagine this character as a modern punk!" or "Imagine this character as an enjoyer of gothic lolita fashion!" at least gives me some mental visuals and character self-image study thoughts to chew on, even if the author isn't explicitly using those fashion choices as a tool to examine a character's relationship with gender and to a community and to broader society.

With irrelevant omegaverse, what the author has written might be some otherwise interesting character thoughts or a meet-cute, but I can't focus on that because I'm too distracted wondering why the fuck the speculative kink genders are here.

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On one hand, I don't think that Shen Yuan's plan to "fake" his own death is actually a bad escape idea generally. He is missing additional insight into the head of a person (Luo Binghe) who now has very good reason to hate him forever and (in another life) famously likes to take gruesome revenge on anyone who has ever wronged him. Only way to get away from that kind of grudge, it seems.

On the other hand, the death that actually gets executed ends up being SO wildly dramatic and mind-bogglingly mysterious and unintentionally gut-wrenching that it's... laughable. A lot of this is not really Shen Yuan's fault, imo, as a lot of wild cards were coming up and his escape window was closely rapidly, so he seized it while he could. But the sheer MESS left behind... Incredible.

So, I'm currently imagining a scenario where Shen Yuan chooses and somehow manages to frame someone specific for his "fake" death. There needs to be some little story, right? Shen Yuan picks some truly loathsome demonic villain to blame like he's planning protagonist enrichment: Binghe can take some nice revenge on these losers for them "stealing" his original revenge from him. Neatly tied loose ends!

Airplane: "Holy shit, I don't know if I hate anyone this much to do this to them, bro. Wow. Okay. This'll be... uh, fun? Haha, what the fuck..."

Even better if Shen Yuan's scheme basically destroys Shen Qingqiu's body so that no one can do any weird necromancy shit. SUCCESS: Shen Yuan wakes up in the plant body a few years later. (Maybe the System is back; maybe it's mysteriously vanished.) He's expecting Luo Binghe to be more or less back on the path to becoming Demon Emperor of the world now that that strange Huan Hua Palace subterfuge isn't necessary... except... uh...

Well, it turns out that Luo Binghe and Cang Qiong Mountain Sect teamed up to curbstomp the poor villains that Shen Yuan threw into traffic here, and known Heavenly Demon Luo Binghe is just... hanging out on Qing Jing Peak again. There's a- ahem... obviously highly fictionalized song claiming that Luo Binghe basically had a breakdown cursing the evils of demons in front of Liu Qingge... and apparently they were both so mad at Shen Yuan's targets that they forgot to be mad at each other? And somewhere in there, the other peak lords got involved, and Wei Qingwei and Mu Qingfang did NOT like that cursed sword, and thankfully Yue Qingyuan was there to help wrestle a distraught Luo Binghe down at the end there, for Shen Qingqiu's sake.

Airplane: "Yeah, bro, I really don't fucking know. My protagonist is maybe getting something like therapy now...? Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge still look like they're chugging vinegar sometimes, but they're maybe trying to 'respect your memory' or some shit. Huan Hua Palace is sooo mad. Do you know how much shit we're getting from the other sects constantly for having a demon disciple? You broke them, bro. You broke my fucking story. Luo Binghe is teaching a junior painting class later and then going out on the town for drinks with his old classmates afterwards... If he's going to burn the sect down at some point, then he's being really fucking weird about it."

And Shen Yuan is, of course, horrified that he has apparently caused the protagonist to lose his groove. Were his deathbed words of wisdom too much? Luo Binghe is acting like some... normal guy trying painfully but earnestly to get over something? He has a pet dog. He's bringing snacks to weekly games night with other senior disciples. He's acting like a widower instead of collecting wives. It's incredibly "pathetic" compared to the ruthless go-getter main character of PIDW.

Shen Yuan, watching Luo Binghe try to achieve mental stability and healthy outlets: "Wow, it's worse than I thought. He's not himself at all! Should I do something to fix this?"

Airplane, who's kind of pissed that his story is in ruins but also lives here now and knows the way that PIDW was supposed to end: "Uh, maybe? Wow, I guess you could, if you really want... The broken System might like that, but... Quick question: bro, do you for real hate this kid?"

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anon hate

Witty response

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can someone please tell me what the fuck I just saw

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The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.

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Link to thread

Link to news story

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Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

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i think a really funny project that a statistics professor could have their class do is like. put a bunch of random, patently untrue demographic statements into a hat. "the most popular tv show among white men ages 24-27 is Bluey." "the majority of business majors are middle children." "bisexual women love hot chips." and each student picks one out of the hat and you gotta like. design a whole study and survey a group of people to specifically achieve that result. you have to prove it true. by whatever means necessary. you have to construct the most biased study possible and wrangle in your exact demographic to make that statement a statistical reality. i think people would learn a lot.

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Character who doesn't get to die & character who doesn't get to live. Is that anything.

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Do you ever get reminded of that one really intense longfic that you had every intention of writing and had meticulous notes and complicated outlines for but then something happened and you aren't in the fandom anymore and you still have the desire to write the fic but it's slightly hollow now because it's a good idea and you think it would have been a great fic but you haven't been in the fandom for literally years and you don't have that bit of passion for it that you did when you were writing it and have just a weird moment of nostalgia where you want to reread it but it never existed

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do you think they know how much they contributed to online literacy? to the spirit of curiousity? to the idea of doing research yourself instead of always having it laid out in front of you?

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im stacking extension cords on each other like theyre tinker toys. constructing a tower of babel in the name of the god of electricity. there'll be at least 100 outlets when ive hooked these boys up nice and good. ill never run out again

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characters going “we were lovers once”: eh, it’s okay i guess. it’s nice enough

characters going “we were friends once”: absolutely devastating. one hit knockout i’m gone