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zoloteh-volossya · 11 months ago

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BG3 Fanfiction Statistics, Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of my BG3 AO3 fanfic statistical analysis! In part 1, which can be found here, I discussed general fanfic data for the fandom and took a look at pairing trends for the player character, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Minthara. In this section, I will discuss pairing trends on AO3 for Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin, then compare all 8 main characters and talk about pairings more broadly.

Please note that the data for this analysis was gathered between July 21, 2024 and July 24, 2024. I gathered data for the top 300 ship tags in the BG3 fandom, and due to time constraints did not look at pairings with fewer than 5 fics.

I will try and be as transparent as possible when discussing how I obtained and processed this data. A copy of my spreadsheet can be found here and contains all of the tables I will be discussing for anyone who wishes to take a closer look at the data. If you don’t care about the numbers and/or my thoughts about them, feel free to skim through this post and just look at the charts!

I will be referencing the “PC” a lot in this section. See part 1 for an explanation of my methodology, but basically I combined Tav, Dark Urge, Original Character, Reader, and You into one Player Character (PC) supercategory while filtering to prevent double counting. This makes it clearer who each character is typically paired with. It also drops the number of ships from 300 to 162. Throughout this essay, I will use “ship tags” to refer to the original 300 ships that I gathered the data for and “pairings” to refer to the 162 ships that remain when I condense the player character down.

CHARACTER PAIRING STATISTICS, CONT.

In part 1, I went through Tav, the Dark Urge, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Minthara and took a look at who they are shipped with and their fic category (F/M, M/M, F/F, Other, Multi) breakdown. In this continuation, I will look at Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin.

ASTARION

Astarion was included in 50.2% of all fic pairings (the number of fics tagged Astarion/PC + the number of fics tagged Astarion/Gale + the number of fics tagged Astarion/Halsin and so on, divided by the total sum of all fic pairings). This percentage increased to 53.9% when otp:true was applied. This means that over half of all shipping content for BG3 on AO3 involves Astarion!

Astarion is in 7 of the top 10 ship tags and 64 of the top 300 ship tags. When I condense the pairings with the PC down, he is in 7 of the top 30 ships and 40 of the 162 total pairings. The loss of 24 ship tags comes from me having to condense down not only all his ship tags with the PC but also all his threesomes and foursomes and moresomes with the PC.

Notably, Astarion was the only BG3 character to have race specific ship tags – Astarion/Tiefling!OC (68 fics), Astarion/Half-Elf!OC (27 fics), and Astarion/Drow!OC (9 fics). These all got condensed down into the Astarion/PC supercategory as well.

Astarion/Gale is #4 and his next pairings with a non-player character are #8 Halsin and #9 Wyll. Pairings #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 16 are all just him with different tags for the player character. Condensing down all the player character tags yields us his top 20 pairings.

As expected, the player character dominates his pairings with 11,756 fics. His biggest non-PC ships are with Gale with 2,431 fics (of which an unusually high proportion are otp:true – 1,752 – almost three quarters of all his fics with Gale), Halsin with 848 fics, and Wyll with 582 fics. Ignoring the PC, he mostly seems to be shipped with men – the first canon woman to show up is Karlach at #8 with 157 fics (an order of magnitude less than Gale). He has four threesomes (Halsin/PC/Astarion, Gale/PC/Astarion, Karlach/Wyll/Astarion, Wyll/PC/Astarion) in his top 20 ships. I was surprised at how high Cazador (#6, 387 fics) was at first, but a lot of that is likely from Astarion’s backstory.

#20 was Astarion/Astarion with 15 fics, which means that Astarion is following in the proud tradition of tumblr sexymen like the Onceler before him.

As expected from looking at Astarion’s pairings in general, he has slightly more M/M (8,923 fics) shipping than M/F (7,996 fics) shipping. M/M pairings have an unusually high rate of otp:true fics – that’s mostly from Astarion/Gale. Oddly, there’s a small number (51) of F/F otp:true fics – these are either genderbends or mistags.

Looking at the pattern of pairings with the PC only, a different pattern emerges.

This time, there’s significantly more M/F fics (6,910, 58.8% of Astarion’s fics with the PC) than M/M fics (4,182, 35.6%), though the numbers are closer when you look at otp:true (46.7% M/F vs 37.6% M/M). We can infer then that it is more common to ship female player characters with Astarion than men. The Other category is significant (1,601 fics, 13.6%) and likely was used for a tag for nonbinary player characters. There’s still a bizarre 38 otp:true F/F fics.

GALE

Gale is in 19.7% of all pairings and 26.5% of otp:true pairings. He has 33 ship tags in the top 300, which drops to 23 when I condense all the player characters into “PC.”

Unlike Astarion, whose chart was completely dominated by his pairing with the PC, Gale has almost as many fics with Astarion as he does with Tav. The top pairings for Gale are primarily with the player character – #1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all just different tags for the player character (Gale/You and Gale/Reader are synonymous and so have pretty much the same number of fics). Condensing all that down yields the following chart.

There’s a stark drop off after the player character and Astarion – an order of magnitude decrease in fics (#4 Shadowheart/Gale has 111 fics, a massive drop off from 2,431 Astarion/Gale fics). And #3 is just a threesome with both the PC and Astarion. I’ve commented on it before, but Gale/Astarion has a truly unusual proportion of otp:true fics – something that indicates that there are no background pairings in most of that ship’s activity. I would not be surprised if many of those fics are modern AUs or post game fics that don’t feature the other BG3 characters much if at all.

The quartet of Astarion-Gale-Halsin-PC is prominent in Gale’s top 20 ships. All permutations of that multiship are present: #1 Gale/PC, #2 Astarion/Gale, #5 Halsin/Gale, #3 Astarion/PC/Gale, #6 Astarion/Halsin/Gale, #11 Gale/Halsin/PC, and #15 Astarion/Gale/Halsin/PC. Towards the bottom of his top 20 we start getting into his multiships with most or all of the main protagonists. This’ll be more common with the other companions – there are only 11 Astarion / Gale / Wyll / Shadowheart / Lae’zel / Karlach fics, so when these show up the list is descending into very low fic count pairings.

Looking at Gale’s fic category breakdown, M/M predominates with 3,859 fics to M/F’s 2,938 fics. Given the very high proportion of otp:true fics, we can assume that most of that is Astarion/Gale. Indeed, when we look at Gale’s ship with the player character (his only other substantial ship), we see a very different picture.

Gale’s ship with the player character has much more M/F content than his general ship content and also than Astarion. M/M content drops from 57.1% of all his fics to 30.5% of his ships with the player character, while M/F content rises from 43.5% of all his fic content to 68.1% of his fic content with the player character. ‘Other’ shipping is about 9.6% of ship content with the player character. Looking at otp:true content, a little more than half as many male player characters are shipped with Gale as female player characters.

There are, for some reason, 16 F/F otp:true fics for all of Gale’s ships and 7 otp:true F/F fics for his ship with the player character.

WYLL

Wyll is featured in 5.2% of all pairings and 5.7% of otp:true pairings, a truly stunning drop from the ~50% of Astarion and 20-26% of Gale. He is in 24 of the top 300 BG3 ships, a number that drops to 18 when I condense all the player characters into one category.

Interestingly, Astarion/Wyll outpaces Wyll/Tav as Wyll’s most popular ship. Like with Gale/Astarion, the proportion of otp:true fics for that pairing is unusually high.

When we condense all of Wyll’s player character pairings into one category, it (barely) edges out Astarion/Wyll, with 588 and 582 fics respectively (also note that no Wyll pairing has thousands of fics, unlike Gale and Astarion before him). What also happens when we condense the player characters is that Wyll does not reach a full 20 ships – he drops to 18 pairings. He has more than this, of course, but my methodology ignores all pairings with fewer than 5 fics. Therefore, Wyll’s 19th and 20th most popular pairings have 4 fics or fewer. I have represented these missing pairings with little :( emojis, because this is a sad state of affairs.

Karlach is by far Wyll’s most popular ship after Astarion and the PC, with 327 fics. The otp:true proportion is low, so it is likely often a background ship or has background ships. The next highest pairing is #4, Gale, with 54 fics. The numbers rapidly drop from there – by #6 Wyll/Lae’zel we are at 26 fics and by #14 Wyll/Karlach/Shadowheart we are down to only 10 fics.

Wyll’s pairings, like all of the male characters, tend towards M/M, with 1,010 total fics. F/M follows up with 794 and Other with 162. Much of his M/M fics come from Astarion/Wyll, as we can see when we look at Wyll’s ships with the PC.

Like Astarion and Gale before him, the proportion of M/F rises when we look at Wyll’s pairings with the player character specifically. Unlike Astarion and Gale, though, no category even comes close to breaking 1,000 fics. M/F has 357 fics (or about 60.7% of his fics total) and M/M has 224 (38.1%). With otp:true applied, M/F is 56.3%, M/M is 40.7%, and Other has 13.3%. These numbers add to more than 100%, so even on otp:true fics people are evidently tagging multiple categories. This is likely due to “Reader” fics with a generic reader.

HALSIN

Halsin is featured in 9.7% of all pairings, almost twice Wyll’s proportion. This drops to 7.9% though when you apply otp:true – a much larger drop than pretty much anyone else other than the PC. It’s likely because Halsin has a disproportionately high number of fics with threesomes, which eliminate a fic from otp:true if the threesome subrelationships are also tagged.

He is in 31 of the top 300 ship tags and 21 of the top 162 pairings.

Like every other man in this essay, Halsin’s ship with Astarion is very prominent. The first canon woman to show up is Shadowheart at #15.

As expected, Halsin/PC is easily his most popular pairing, with 1,637 fics. Astarion and a threesome with Astarion and the PC follow with quite decent fic counts of 848 and 456 respectively. The otp:true proportion for Halsin/Astarion is abnormally high. Gale and Shadowheart seem to be his other major ships. Gale/Halsin is #4 with 106 fics and Gale/PC/Halsin is #8 with 19. Shadowheart/Halsin is #6 with 36 fics and Shadowheart/Halsin/PC is #10 with 17.

The Astarion-Halsin-Gale-PC quartet shows up prominently in Halsin’s top pairings. In addition to the ships previously mentioned, Halsin/Astarion/Gale is #5 with 92 fics.

What’s notable about Halsin’s fic categories is the abnormally large number of fics tagged Multi – 1,257 fics, or 37.4% of the total. Given that he’s the poly companion, this makes sense.

Looking at Halsin with the PC specifically, the typical pattern appears. The percentage of M/M drops and M/F rises. Unlike the other characters and like his general shipping situation, the percentage of Multi fic is quite high – 32.7%.

CHARACTER COMPARISON

Now that I’ve looked at all the main characters individually, let’s take a look at how they compare to each other across a variety of metrics.

FIC RATINGS

In my individual character discussions, I didn’t talk about their relative rating proportions much, even though I was carefully tracking it. This is because all rating plots look just about the same until you compare people against each other directly.

Taking a look at all fics, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, Wyll is the companion with the least amount of horny fic written about him, with 33.4% of fics that include him in a pairing being rated Explicit. Halsin is the horniest, no surprise, with 52.8% of fics that include him in a pairing being rated Explicit – over half! Astarion has 41.2% Explicit fics while Gale has 43.6%. Amongst the women, Minthara has the highest percentage of Explicit fics (47.8%) while all three other women are within 38% – 40%.

Interestingly, the percentage of fics rated Mature remains within 22% – 26% for all companions except Minthara, who has 27.8%. The proportion of General fic is between 9% and 11% for Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, and Karlach. Wyll has more than that, with 11.4%, while Lae’zel and Minthara have less than that with 8.4% and 5.6% respectively.

The situation does not change appreciably when I only look at fics with the otp:true condition.

FIC CATEGORIES

I have been talking about the percentage of M/F, M/M, F/F, Other, and Multi fics for each of the main characters. It’s interesting to compare them with each other. Please note, though, that in the individual character sections the percentages given were the percent of all fics for that character, and so the percentages added up to more than 100% because many fics tag several categories. In this section, the percentages given are a percent of all pairings. They therefore all add up to 100%, but it also means that fics that tag multiple categories are counted multiple times in that 100%.

The men all have more M/F than the women do (Astarion and Gale have the most while Lae’zel and Minthara have the least). Halsin, unsurprisingly, has the most Multi fic while Minthara has the least. Karlach has a surprisingly low proportion of F/F fic.

An interesting note is that the men all have less F/F fic than the women do M/M fic. This means that women are in background pairings to M/M ships or have background M/M ships in their focus fics proportionally more often than the men have background F/F ships or are in the background of F/F fics. The exception is Wyll, who has a F/F percentage close to the percentage of M/M fics in the womens’ fics.

Looking at ships with the PC specifically, some interesting patterns emerge.

Astarion, Gale, Wyll and Halsin have significantly (by more than 10%) more M/F content and less M/M content in their ships with the PC than their ships in general. Lae’zel and Minthara see a slight (less than 5%) increases in M/F and decreases in F/F as well. Shadowheart mostly stays the same. Karlach, on the other hand, sees a moderate (between 5% and 10%) decrease in M/F and increase in F/F in her ship with the PC specifically.

But remember, all these values include background pairings, and we have no way of knowing what proportion of each category actually contains the character we are interested in. So, what happens when we strip background pairings out of the equation by applying otp:true?

Wow! What a difference! Now, these values aren’t necessarily representative of all their pairings – just the ones that authors like to focus on without any background ships. Recall from the individual character analyses that often the second most popular ship after the pairing with the PC had an unusually high otp:true ratio. So we can assume, for example, that a large proportion of the M/M fics for Astarion and for Gale are from Gale/Astarion.

Every woman except Karlach is gayer than all of the men. Surprisingly, Karlach is the straightest companion by this particular metric.

Applying otp:true to ships with the PC specifically yields very different results.

Like what we saw with all ships, ships between the PC and men have significantly more M/F content than the mens’ ships generally. In this case, every man except Astarion jumps to around 50% M/F, and Astarion still jumps from 24.3% to 42.9%. The consistent pattern is that when looking at otp:true fics, M/M is preferred unless the pairing is with the player character, in which case M/F is more popular.

The conclusions for the women are not as clear cut. Karlach has more F/F and less M/F when looking specifically at ships with the PC, while Lae’zel has almost twice as much M/F when you look at her ship with the PC than her general otp:true fics – almost certainly due to the loss of Shadowheart/Lae’zel. Shadowheart experiences a significant (>10%) decline in the proportion of F/F fics, while Minthara sees a smaller one (~5%). What remains true, though, is that the majority of the player character shipping for the women is F/F.

The green bars in the chart are for the Other category, an expansive category that includes a lot of nonbinary PC shipping. You can therefore estimate how popular it is to ship each main character with a nonbinary Tav. Karlach has the most (18.6%) while Lae’zel has the least (5.2%). Everyone else is between 10% (well, 9.8% for Gale) and 12% except for Astarion who has 13.6%.

PAIRINGS

Most of both parts of this essay has been spent looking at each main character in relative isolation. But if you plot all pairings next to each other it paints a very interesting picture about each character’s relative popularity.

Astarion shows up 7 times in the top 10 ship tags and 12 times in the top 30 ship tags. The first non-Astarion ship is #4, Tav/Gale. There are no canon women in the top 10 ship tags – the first to show up is Shadowheart, at #14. Wyll does not appear until #18, in a pairing with Astarion. His pairing with Tav is #25. Lae’zel’s ship with Tav does not even make it onto this plot, at #38. Minthara is in an even worse situation – she first shows up at #60.

The results when I condense all the player character tags into “PC” are... stark.

Astarion dominates the BG3 fanfiction sphere in a way that is very surprising for a piece of media with six strong main characters. In fact, in order to actually be able to see the teeny tiny bars representing everybody else, here's a second graph with Astarion/PC excluded.

Astarion/PC is far and away the most popular ship, with 11,756 fics. Gale/PC is the second, with 3,500 – less than a third as many. Next is Astarion/Gale (2,431 fics) with an unusually high “otp:true” ratio, which indicates that it is frequently being written without any background ships. Surprisingly, Gortash/PC is fourth with 1,891 fics, followed by Halsin/PC with 1,637. Shadowheart/PC is the first woman to show up, at #6 with 980 fics. This is still 657 fics less than Halsin/PC and 911 fics less than Gortash/PC, which means that Gortash/PC is almost twice as popular as Shadowheart/PC. Astarion/PC has 12 times as many fics as Shadowheart/PC.

Karlach follows Shadowheart at #7 with 890 fics. Of the main cast, Lae’zel is next at #10 with 694 fics, and unlike every other Origin character her most popular ship is not with the PC but with Shadowheart. Wyll/PC does not make it into the top 10 ships, coming in at #11 with 588 ships. Notably, Raphael has more fics with the PC than either Lae’zel or Wyll, coming in at #9 with 745. Astarion/PC has a whopping 20 times as many fics as Wyll does and Gortash has over three times as many fics with the PC as Wyll does.

Lae’zel/PC finally shows up at #16 with 348 fics. Rolan/PC has more fics (#13, 477), and Astarion/PC has 33 times as many fics. Minthara/PC, meanwhile, is all the way down at #23 with 234 fics. Raphael, Rolan, Zevlor, the Emperor, and Haarlep all have more fics with the PC than she does. Halsin/PC has 7 times as many fics as Minthara/PC.

If you add up all the pairings each main character is tagged in, you get the following chart.

Astarion is far and away the most written about character in the BG3 fandom, followed by Gale and Halsin. If you divide these numbers by the total number of pairings, Astarion is in 50% of pairings, Gale is in 20%, and Halsin is in 10%. No other character breaks 10% - Shadowheart is in 7% of pairings, Karlach in 6%, Wyll in 5%, Lae’zel in 4%, and Minthara is in 1%.

Out of curiosity, I tallied up the numbers for Gortash as well. He appears in 6% of all pairings and 7% of otp:true pairings. This means that Gortash breaks even with Karlach and appears in more pairings than Wyll, Lae’zel, or Minthara, and if you look at otp:true he beats all the women and Wyll. This is despite Gortash having very few ships with characters outside of the PC, unlike most of the main cast who have notable secondary ships like Shadowheart/Lae’zel.

PAIRING ANALYSIS

Why am I focusing so much on pairings? Mostly because BG3 is an ensemble game – many fics will tag characters who show up for any significant length of time, even if just in the background. Therefore, if a character is tagged that is indicative that they are being included but not necessarily a sign that they are being focused on.

AO3 is a largely romance focused site (only 12% of all BG fics are categorized as General) and so characters in a pairing are more likely to be a focus of a fic. Of course this is not a hard rule, as in-depth character studies may have no pairings tagged at all or may tag a pairing that shows up in the background – but I have no way to distinguish these fics from a fic that tags a character because they show up for one paragraph. There is also the problem that many pairings are background pairings that are tagged but show up only briefly. To try and avoid that, in the following conversation, I will often be focusing on ships with the PC specifically. Fics pairing a character with the PC are especially likely to be focusing on that character and their romance and are much less likely to be a background ship than other pairings.

Looking at the data, the four most popular characters to ship with the PC – Astarion, Gale, Halsin, and Gortash – constitute the majority of fan works. Astarion, Gale, and Halsin in particular are shipped in all the possible configurations and these pairings are comparatively popular. Astarion/Gale is #3, Astarion/Halsin is #8 (above any Wyll or Lae’zel ships), Astarion/Halsin/PC is #14 (above Lae’zel/PC and all Minthara ships), Astarion/Gale/PC is #26, Gale/Halsin is #33, and Astarion/Gale/Halsin is #34.

So I did a little experiment. I went through my data and counted all the pairings that contained ONLY Astarion, Gale, Halsin, Gortash, and/or the PC. Then, I went through and counted all the pairings that weren’t in that group but did contain at least one of Astarion, Gale, Halsin, or Gortash.

Pairings containing ONLY a combination of the PC, Astarion, Gale, Halsin, or Gortash constituted 66.9% of all fic pairings in the BG3 fandom and (in a neat coincidence) also 66.9% of otp:true fic pairings. Adding in fics that involve at least one of these men with someone else ups the numbers to 73.3% of all fics and 75.0% of otp:true fics. Which means that only about a quarter of pairings do NOT include one of these four white men.

Now, it isn’t unusual for a couple of people to dominate a fandom like this. Many fandoms’ creative output primarily consist of only a couple of popular characters and their associated pairings. What is notable, though, is that BG3 is an ensemble game with 6 strong and nuanced main characters, three of whom are women, and two additional strong side characters, one of whom is a woman. But the four primary objects of fandom’s focus are 2 of the main characters, one of the side characters, and a villain.

This discrepancy is especially notable for Shadowheart and Lae’zel. For ages, when I’ve seen people bring up the relative scarcity of women in fanfic, the rejoinder is that the true culprit is the source media. Stories just don’t feature complex, interesting women with fully realized arcs, people say. There’s no narrative meat to for fandom to sink their teeth into.

This is not the case in BG3.

Both Shadowheart and Lae’zel have excellent narrative arcs that are well embedded into the game – Lae’zel has two game areas dedicated to her plotline (the creche and the astral plane) and you literally cannot progress the game past act 2 without interacting with Shadowheart’s dedicated area. The characters grapple with crisises of faith, culture clashes, and important decisions throughout the game – and who they end up becoming changes depending on the player character’s actions. This is great stuff! But it does not translate into fanfic popularity.

Lae’zel in particular is underrepresented. It’s notable that she is main character who is integrally tied into the plot and yet she is only tagged in 16% of fics – even including all the fics that merely tag her as a background character. She only appears in 4% of pairings. Her pairing with the PC comes in at #16, with 355 fics. But hey, her largest ship is with Shadowheart, so let’s look at the total number of pairings she shows up in – 1,319. Gortash/Dark Urge has 1,594 fics – that single pairing has 275 more fics than all of Lae’zel’s pairings added together. Gortash’s total pairing count is 2,052 and exceeds Lae’zel’s by almost 700 fics. Halsin’s total pairing count is over 2.5 times as large as Lae’zel’s at 3,346 fics total. Gale’s total pairing count is over five times as large, at 6,760 fics total. Oof.

Shadowheart is a bit better off – her pairing with the PC is the most popular woman at #6 with 980 fics. But this is still 657 fics less than Halsin/PC and 911 fics less than Gortash/PC, which means that Gortash/PC is almost twice as popular as Shadowheart/PC. When you take Shadowheart’s other pairings into consideration, things improve a little bit. She has 2,418 pairings total, which is about 400 more than Gortash’s total, though still over 900 fics less than Halsin’s total. But any Shadowheart/Lae’zel fan can tell you about sifting through their fics and finding that many only feature them as a background pairing for Astarion/Tav or some other more popular pairing. So let’s take a look at the otp:true numbers. Looking at otp:true fics only, Shadowheart has 765 fics and Lae’zel has 495 fics. Meanwhile, Halsin has 858 and Gortash has 800 – more than Shadowheart and much more than Lae’zel.

Neither Gortash nor Halsin really have arcs in game, though both of them do have implied arcs that happened before it. They’re interesting characters, sure, but undoubtedly Shadowheart and Lae’zel have more going on, more narrative meat to chew on. And yet, they’re completely overshadowed in fandom.

Speaking of being overshadowed, let’s talk about Wyll. Wyll is the only man in the main cast who is not particularly popular. He does not even make it into the top 10 pairings! He has fewer fics than Shadowheart or Karlach. Notably he has far far fewer fics with the PC than any other major male character and even several male villains. Gortash/PC has over three times as many fics as he does, Halsin/PC has 2.78 times as many fics as he does, and Astarion/PC has a whopping 20 times as many fics as he does. Even Raphael/PC has more fanfic! Even taking total pairings into account, Gortash still has more pairings than Wyll’s 1,770 total, while Halsin has almost twice as many.

A counterpoint that is commonly raised in this fandom is that Wyll is a boring character with less content than other Origin companions. Now, I disagree with this assessment of Wyll’s comparative boringness (I find him more interesting than Gale and much more interesting than Halsin, personally) but for the sake of this argument let’s not dispute this. The fact of the matter is that even if Wyll’s arc is half baked, Halsin has no arc at all and much less content in game. Gortash has even less content, with any potential past entanglement with Dark Urge being merely implied. Raphael doesn’t even have the implications of a past relationship with the PC, is never in a position to be in a relationship with the PC, and is canonically bad in bed to boot. And yet these men have far more fanfic with the PC than Wyll does.

I cannot help but notice that Astarion, Gale, Halsin, and Gortash are white men and Raphael presents himself as a white man.

What’s also notable is who doesn’t show up. Many minor non-player characters have quite sizable followings with a significant number of ships. Rolan, for instance, has 586 fics across 9 pairings. Zevlor has 393 ships, Dammon has 257, Kar’niss has 131, and Abdirak has 112. Other male characters that showed up on my list include Ansur (110, all with Balduran/the Emperor), Blurg (69, all with Omeluum), Vellioth (55, all with Cazador), Rugan (54), Kith’rak Voss (49), Sebastian (47, all with Astarion), Orpheus (40), Geraldus (29), Nere (22), He Who Was (21), Yurgir (18), Loroakkan (15, all with Rolan), Aradin (12), Danis (11 with Bex), Barcus (9 with the PC, not Wulbren), Petras (8 with Astarion), Guex and Ikaron (8 with each other), Franc Peartree (7 with Gortash), Lump the Enlightened (6), and Cal (6).

Meanwhile, if I eliminate Aylin and Isobel (not really “minor” NPCs), the first female minor NPC to show up in my list is Alfira with 58 fics. Nocturne follows with 57, Lakrissa with 34, Bex with 11 (all with Danis), Councillor Florrick with 8 (all with Minthara), Duke Stelmane with 8 (all with the Emperor), Kagha with 6, and Cerys with 6 (all with Rolan).

Councillor Florrick is notable because she has as much of a role in acts 1, 2, and 3 as Rolan, Zevlor, and Dammon yet she has no fics with the PC that showed up in my dataset; her only appearance is as part of a ship with Minthara. Ulder Ravenguard – a notable NPC from act 3 – never shows up at all, while Geraldus – a very minor NPC from act 3 – does. Rugan shows up but his boss Zarys never does. Neither does Roah Moonglow, who has a role in acts 1, 2, and 3 while Rugan only shows up in act 1. Araj Oblodra does not show up, but Sebastian does. Cal and Rolan show up in my dataset, but their sister Lia does not. Petras is the only vampire spawn to have over 5 of a pairing – Dalyria, who is present in all scenes where he is, does not. Alfira has the same presence in the story as Rolan (if anything, she has more), yet she shows up in less than a tenth as many fics. Vellioth, who never shows up at all, has 5 times as many fics as Viconia, who does.

The fandom has a definite trend for who gets written about, and it’s not women or Black people.

I’m not writing this to try and shame or guilt anyone. I have a dear friend who absolutely adores Astarion, and fandom acquaintances who I respect that are deeply invested in Gale, Halsin, and Gortash. And I don’t blame anyone for seeing a minor character and being intrigued enough by him to write fic. It makes sense that people are drawn to these characters – they’re really well written characters with engaging storylines. But all of the main characters in BG3 are well written, and who fandom chooses to focus on and prioritize says things about whose stories, whose lives, we pay attention to and care about.

I don’t expect this essay to change anything. Honestly, it’s mostly a primal scream of annoyance, broadcast to tumblr in hopes that other people who are annoyed by this phenomenon can find it. But it’s also a cold hard repudiation of any claim that the reason that women or Black people are underrepresented in fandom is solely due to the source material being lacking. BG3 proves that false.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #fanfic #fandom #shipping #ao3 #statistics #data visualization #astarion #gale #wyll #halsin #lae'zel #shadowheart #mine

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dandelionsresilience · 5 months ago

Text

Dandelion News - February 8-14

(I’m finally starting to get better from having had pneumonia for 2+ weeks, hopefully next week’s news should be on time)

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. Solar-powered device captures carbon dioxide from air to make sustainable fuel

“[The] solar-powered reactor could be used to make fuel to power cars and planes[.… It] does not require fossil-fuel-based power, or the transport and storage of carbon dioxide, but instead converts atmospheric CO2 into something useful using sunlight.”

2. How artificial light can boost coral reef recovery

“UZELA is [an autonomous submersible] designed to attract zooplankton […] by emitting specific wavelengths of light. [… In a ”six-month testing period,” it] significantly increased local zooplankton density and boosted the feeding rates of both healthy and bleached coral.”

3. Next-gen solar cells now fully recyclable with water-based method

“The recycled solar cell has the same efficiency as the original one. The solar cell is made of perovskite and the main solvent is water. […] They are not only relatively inexpensive and easy to manufacture but also lightweight, flexible and transparent.”

4. Green walls cool cities and create urban habitats

“The researchers measured a cooling effect of up to 0.6–0.7 degrees Celsius [… which] could help combat the urban heat island phenomenon. […] The researchers [also] found that plant-covered facades hosted over 100 animal species, including insects, spiders, and birds.”

5. Major cause of honeybee mortality can be easily reduced

“If treatment occurs too soon, it may not fully eliminate the mites, allowing them to rebound before the season ends. […] Similar to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, mites that survive mistimed or improperly applied treatments become more resistant to future applications.”

6. Uganda community group restores shea groves and livelihoods

“As part of a larger effort to restore Uganda’s shea parklands, the cooperative has successfully rehabilitated more than 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of degraded land, integrating shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) and other native species with maize and sunflower crops.”

7. Senate Renews Commitment to the Great Lakes

“The [Act] represents the most significant federal investment in the health of the Great Lakes, addressing critical challenges such as pollution, invasive species, and habitat restoration. The Great Lakes […] hold 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater[….]”

8. Earth Gets Its Largest Protected Tropical Forest Reserve

“The Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor will […] protect 108,000 square kilometres of primary forest and support 60 million people who depend on the forest for food, energy and jobs. […] Through this approach, the DRC is empowering local communities to protect the forest while fostering economic growth.”

9. Australia’s Rarest Bird of Prey Spotted in Central Australia After 30 Years

“Dr. Henderson’s finding is an encouraging sign of the health of the sanctuary’s ecosystems as well as the bird’s continued migration into new areas. This bird’s presence in the sanctuary is particularly significant as it is the first confirmed sighting in the region since the mid-1990s.”

10. Australian company wins contract to design “hydrogen ready” high speed ferry

“The ferry, the Horizon X, will have capacity for 1,650 passengers and 450 cars, and will be able to travel at a speed of up to 35 knots. […] The ship will also have a specially-designed propulsion system arrangement that repurposes exhaust from the engine to help propel the vessel, in theory reducing its emissions.”

February 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

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slaaverin · 2 months ago

Note

1. Gcf in Tokoyo

2. Gcf in Saipan

3. Rosebowl ear suck moment

4. Staring at each other while being centimeters apart

5.Whipped glances/stares at each other

6. Jimin's birthday Vlive

7. Jimin being Shy around Jk

8. Nagoya Moment

9. Dropping Honorifics( huge thing in S.K)

10. Dangshin ( Darling in a endearing way to say You ( used between couples ONLY. If using outside the love context then it's ONLY used by The OLDER NEVER the Younger. And Jk said Dangshin to Jimin and the members did not even React. Other than love context word is considered rude))

11. Serendipity ( released on Jk's Bithday )

12. Jimin singing the chorus of Euphoria ( yeah yeah )

13. Jimin saying Baby to Jk

14. Members trying to separate Jikook on stage

15. Never saying Jikook unlike all other members who mention Ships.

16. Being with each other at night ( 1am or 4am )

17. Always travelling in the same car.

18. Jimin sending food to Jk's room if he orders food at night

19. Jk's bite Mark when they were drunk and Jimin 'bit' him when Jk picked him up and spun round and round and would not keep him down . ( Theory: That's a Hickey ) 20. Members saying Jimin and Jk Name together ( Are Jungkook and Jimin not coming- Jin )

21. Comforting one if the other is feeling down

22. Sharing clothes

23. Looking at each other lips and licking their own

24. Jealousy

25. Checking each other out.

26. Jimin grabbing Jk below the belt to pull forward

27. MMA 2018

28. Jimin staying back when Jk was injured while all other members left.

29. Almost kisses

30. Unicorn photo shoot ( too close )

31. Know each other's sleep schedule , weird habits ( Jk sleeps like* showing his mouth * - Jimin .How will Jimin know how Jk sleeps. )

32. "Most memorable thing is Waking up and Seeing Jk ( You can't see someone after you wake up if you don't sleep next to each other )

33. Watching the first snow together ( Romantic in Korea- Supresrtition is that If you watch the first snow with the person you like love will blossom between them )

34. Travelling 15hrs to go see Jk on his birthday

35. Jimin buying a rainbow cake for Jk's birthday

36. Landing in Korea and immediately going ice skating together

37. Jimin reminding Jk to bathe and clean up before sleeping.

38. When Jimin asked Jk if he was going to cook this at home... Jk replied no at the dorm. Therfore Jimin refered to someplace called Home. Which is NOT THEIR DORM.

39. Jimin washes dishes while we dance to a slow song or Jimin watches the dishes while I cook ( Jk saying either one of those)

40. Wearing Matching clothes ( thing couples do in S.Korea)

41. Vlive in Osaka

42. JIMIN'S Vlive next day

43. Holding hands after light is switched off after the concert

44. In some concert Jimin had a rose in his hand and lights were switched off and when the light switched on again Jimin and Jk where touching heads with rose between Jimins teeth.

45. Always flirting

46. Jk running to Jimin in middle of his workout becoz Jimin was feeling awkward 47. Jk tattoo on his ring finger adds up to JM.

48. Jk mom saying I love you to Jimin

49. Jimin addressing Jk's mom as Mother

50. Jk's brother liking Jikook and Jimin fanarts on Insta

51. Jimin's father and Jk's brother and father going to drop Jk and Jimin on their trip alone to Tokyo

52. Transparent bathrooms in their hotel in Tokyo which was shared

53. Spotted at a Jewelery store which sells Men's wedding rings as well .

54. Matching rings

55." Want to eat Ramyeon?" - Jk to Jimin Korean slang for Netflix and Chill

56. ^^ The said scene was deleted from airing on National TV

57. JK'S fav. Moment In Japan was when Jimin was up all night playing on his phone and they were late the next day. (Out of all the things he could have said :- food,clothes, shopping etc he chose this. Does not make much sense to me )

58. I wanted to be a police officer- Jimins statement, Please arrest/catch me - Jk's response

59. Some lip reader K-Army translated that In MAMA 2018 Jimin asked something like - What am I to you ? / What are you to me ? JK responded with Husband at first then Hyung's Boyfriend.

60. K-Army's said that Jikook were very touchy and couple--y that day ( MAMA 2018)

61. People who did not know Jikook when saw the Gcf in Tokyo they thought they were a couple( Jikook )

62. " I like my * Jk pointing to Jimin*......Voice

63. Gcf in Tokoyo had Many similar shots compared to a video by VIDEOCLASS HOW TO MAKE A VIDEO FOR YOUR BF/GF

64. JK himself said that He looks at Meaning of a song before using it so therefore He knew what " There for you by Troye Sivan ( who is an openly Gay artist ) meant . (NOTE: That Troye made this one for his BF's 23rd Birthday and Jk took jimin for this trip and filmed this vdo for Jimin's 23rd birthday.)

64. Jk stopping Jimin from leaving his room by showing him a picture of himself that he took . Jimin immediately said that he won't go Jk then repeated that I took this really nice selca. Jimin agreed again that he was not going to leave .

65. Jk posted this sleca later that same night and he had a bruise on his neck. JK is very sensitive so it could be a rash but why did Jimin agree to stop once Seeing this picture.Why? Was that an Hickey by JM to Jk.

66. Jk Turing his whole body towards Jimin when he(Jimin) speaks

67. Jk saying I purple you then pointing to Jimin at 'you' at SoFi stadium

68. Jikook pointing towards each other after Jk ' Borahae' then pointing towards Army.

69. Jk putting his hand on Jimin's shoulder and heart and leaning super close while Jimin was singing l and Jimin was getting so shy.

70. Jk coming to Jimins room 3 times (even at 1 am , I mean isn't that sleeping time. ) a day just becoz he was bored and His(Jimin's) room is the closest.

71. When V visited Jimin's room He thought that it was Jk's room becoz he opened the door lol.

72. Looking for opportunities to hold hands.

73. Jimin did not know that what Jk filmed him was going to be released which meant that he was genuinely happy and acting goofy for the 2 of them.

74. Also Jimin did not find it odd that Jk is filming him ? That means Jk films him regularly.

75. Jikook are the only members in Bts that have travavelled alone without managers, cameras, etc.

76.Jk does not like sightseeing while Jimin is a fan of them that's why he organized a 4-day trip just for the 2 of them.

77. Jikook is the number one kpop couple shipped in S.K.

78. Making each other flustered.

79. Jimin telling a fan that when Jungkook's says "Jimin-ssi" he uses a bit flirty tone to him( Jimin) when the fan tries to say 'Jimin-ssi' like Jk.

80. If you search "couple trip vlog" GCF in Tokyo shows up, that means Hybe must have put some keyword related to couple/ couple trip.

81. Worrying/ caring for each other. (Don't fling it at jimin - Jk said that to V on Bon Voyage when Jimin was not even sitting close to V and V was going to flip something in pan.)

82. Jikook selca on White Day.

83. Someone asked that I'm jealous. I wanna hold Jiminie and Jk replied with "Your jealous of me? I'll keep holding Jiminie"!! On his Insta Q/A session

84. Jikook were spotted at a restaurant eating together with Jimin's friends.

85. OP asked Jk that How to make a move on their crush and Jk replied with go to your crush and say (he said in satoori) "Eat with me , hold my hand" and then said to take them to amusement park. GCF in Tokoyo had all this.

86. In the middle of concert (PTD - LAS VEGAS ) He stopped in front of Jimin and said 'love you'.

87. In the Vlive of Hopevminkook Jimin was saying something he said 'I think it was her (his grandmother's) birthday he glanced at Jk after saying that seemingly checking if it was and Jk nodded like he was confirming.

88. Jimin being there by Jk's side when he collapsed even if all the members left to give him privacy even the cameraman

89. Matching bracelet from Polycshop.

90. Matching rings- one with white and one with black but the SAME.

91.When Jikook were taking a selfie and a camera man appears and Jk got really nervous.

92. When Jk was taking a shower, Jhope walks in and says his body looks good and Jk replies with you should not see this but when the camera turns Jimin was already there. (100 Times Jikook were too real by In-orbit at 28:16)

93. From now on, Together…Together? *stares while the hyung line goes crazy*

94. Letter By Jimin while Jk does bg vocals ( It is the only song with any other members singing and it's a love song / Jimin calls it the secret of the album, if it was a fan song, why would it be a hidden track?/)

95. Jimin flew to US and he was seen hanging out with Jungkook

96. Jk booked an entire restaurant for them and then covered it with flowers fully so that no one else could enter but them.

97. They enlisted together using buddy system which takes a long process

98. Jungkook BEGGED Jimin to come do a live together ( WHILE HE WAS NAKED).

99. GETTING SNOW FROM THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN WHEN EVERYONE SLEPT JUST FOR JIMIN.

So the list got 99 points long.

I'm so embarrassed by this because I started this when I was a baby Jikooker and I love seeing them interact so I kept a list. When I saw ur lastest ask about how the anon said that jk doesn't do enough which is bs btw I got reminded of this. So yes.

Oh omg thank you for your service anon 🥹💜👏🏻

I can even add a 100th, you missed "JK reacting to Jimin's content on multiple lives, (which no one as done before) hyping him up during his whole album promo"

There are even more things. But this is already a good summary of everything.

Jikook do have some valid points to their case 😂

It's nice you kept a list, so we can have things in perspective 😌

For any doubters out there, look at this list against you and think twice before sending silly asks thank you 🙊

#jikook #an actual list #ask #valuable

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teamingmate · 4 months ago

Text

What Wakes Alone in Ice: The digest-sized paperback version is here!!

Want my Reanimator + The Thing + Lovecraft Antarctic horror adventure/queer romance fic mashup on your shelf?? [AO3 link (18+)] It's available for $7 USD + shipping. You can order and get it sent straight to you at [this link].

For transparency, since I legally can't profit from IPs that aren't my own, production cost of the book is exactly $7 and I make no commission:

These copies feature a couple of my illustrations too. Readers, I really appreciate your support for this work ♥︎ ♥︎ And thank you to my friend Scully for binding this first & inspiring me!! I had a lot of fun laying out the cover and interior.

!! Tags and content warnings can be found on AO3. This is an 18+ adult work. !!

#what wakes alone in ice fic

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tncts · 7 months ago

Text

✨💜SH✷P OPEN💜✨

Happy holidays everyone, my 2024 shop update is now LIVE! Featuring lots of new keychains, stationery items, risograph prints and much more. My store will be open for two weeks before closing on Friday, December 13th at 11:59pm EST. This will be the final opportunity to grab something before the year is over!

Below you will find additional info regarding the update. Please read if you are shipping to either the EU/UK or Canada! Thank you so much for being patient, I know it's been quite a while since my work has been available online to purchase. Likes + Reblogs are sincerely appreciated! Thanks for looking and happy shopping!!

✨💜 SHOP HERE 💜✨

✷ STOCK ✷ All items stocked are leftovers from the 2024 con season with a good quantity of each product available to purchase. If by chance anything sells out, I will offer preorders (depending on the item) which may ship out later to account for restocking. Anything that is marked as "Last Act" has a low quantity and will not be restocked in the future. This will be the final opportunity to purchase these items other than in person at cons if any stock is remaining after the shop closes!

✷ DAFT RALLY ✷ I know a few people expressed interest in the DP Stamp Rally prizes from Anime Expo way back when. Just to be transparent, there's only 3 available (sorry)! That includes the sticker sheet and two risograph prints along with the original packaging for the prize. While the sticker sheet will not be reprinted, there will be a listing for the risograph print I created for the rally available separately for anyone that's interested!

✷ SHIPPING: EU/UK + CANADA ✷ I will be shipping both domestically and internationally but there will be some changes this time around. Regarding shipping fees, there will be a slight increase to $25 for orders outside of the US to account for the holiday season but like domestic orders ($7), it will remain a flat fee.

While shipping is available to the EU/UK, customers will be responsible for any VAT fees on the package. I've read there is a regulation change coming that could make it impossible to send packages to the region in the future. Therefore, all EU/UK orders must be received on or by FRI, DEC 6TH to be shipped before they come into effect.

Regarding shipping to Canada, USPS has suspended all package types for delivery due to the ongoing postal strike. However, I will still be accepting Canadian orders to be held until further notice. Please keep in mind that I do not know when service will resume and it could potentially be after the holidays! Any alternative carrier would cost approximately $40 at the minimum but if a customer expresses interest, I can ship a package sooner. If you're located in Canada and are interested in a USPS alternative, please let me know in the order note and I'll contact you!

✷ TRACKING ✷ Smaller items such as stickers and patches are sent via stamped mail by default. This delivery method is low-cost and does NOT include tracking information. If your order contains small items but you would like tracking included, please include the "Tracking Add On" in your order from the shop menu. All other items will be sent through Ground Advantage and includes tracking.

Thanks for looking! ✌🏾✨

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mishaapocalypsse · 1 month ago

Text

Title: Starlight in the Wake

Pairing: Rodimus Prime x Cybertronian!Reader

Word Count: ~2,200

Warnings: Emotional vulnerability, some peril, light angst, romantic tension, fluff

⸻

You hadn’t meant to stay this long on the Lost Light. In fact, you hadn’t meant to be here at all.

The research station orbiting the mining colony of Vion-7 was supposed to be your last stop before returning home. But when the Decepticon raiders attacked, scattering your crew and damaging your ship, it was Rodimus and his team who had arrived in a blaze of light and fury to push them back.

A temporary rescue. That’s what they called it.

Three weeks later, you were still here.

The Lost Light was alive in a way you hadn’t expected—metallic, yes, but vibrant. Its corridors hummed like a song. The crew were eccentric and brilliant, sometimes dangerous, sometimes ridiculous. There were philosophers and gladiators, warriors and poets, and then there was Rodimus.

Loud. Daring. Infuriatingly charming.

“Are you still mad I hotwired your comms console?” he asked one day, leaning against the threshold of your temporary quarters, arms folded, mouth curled in that half-smile that made your stomach twist.

“You mean am I still mad that you rewired my personal messages to play the ‘Rodimus Was Right’ jingle every time I got one?” you replied coolly, not looking up from your datapad.

“I thought it was a good use of time,” he said. “Morale booster.”

“For who?”

“Me.”

You sighed. “Rodimus, what do you want?”

His grin faltered for a heartbeat—so quick most would’ve missed it. But you didn’t. You were beginning to learn the nuance in his expression, the subtle shift of plating over facial struts, the flicker of emotion behind his optics.

“I want you to come with me,” he said. “To the observation deck. Just for a bit.”

You frowned. “Why?”

“I like the way you see things.”

You stared at him. “That’s… weirdly poetic for you.”

He blinked. “Was it too much? I’ve been reading Rung’s recs. Emotional intelligence. Trying it out.”

You raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. “Just you and me?”

“Well, yeah. Unless you think Whirl would make it more romantic.”

You choked on a laugh. “Fine. But only if you don’t rewire anything on the way.”

He mock-saluted. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

⸻

The observation deck wasn’t technically a deck. It was a dome—transparent, framed in reinforced poly-alloy—and it gave you an unfiltered view of the stars. A celestial theater, always in motion.

Rodimus stood beside you, unusually quiet, hands clasped behind his back.

“They don’t look dangerous,” you said softly, pointing to the streaks of light trailing past the dome. “But they’re fast. Violent. Untouchable.”

He didn’t respond right away.

“I used to think I was like that,” he said finally. “A star that burned fast and bright. That everyone admired until it got too close and scorched them.”

You turned to look at him. He wasn’t smiling now.

“That’s not who you are.”

His optics flickered to you. “No?”

“You’re bright, yeah. But you’re not distant. You dive headfirst into everything. You don’t just burn—you light up the whole damn room.”

The silence between you stretched.

“You keep doing that,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Saying stuff that gets past all my armor.”

You looked away, heart pounding. “Maybe I just see more than you think.”

He reached for your hand—careful, slow—and his metal fingers brushed yours. Warm, despite the alloy. Steady.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever seen me the way you do,” he said.

⸻

The next few days passed in a blur of shared meals, rerouted patrols, and too many close encounters with existential danger. You fought beside him during a scavenger mission gone wrong on a derelict moonbase. You patched his arm when it was nearly torn off by a feral spark-eater. You caught him looking at you more than once when he thought you weren’t paying attention.

“I could stay,” you said one night, more to yourself than anyone.

But he heard.

“You could.”

“I mean, it’s not like I have a ship anymore. Or a crew.”

“You’ve got one now,” he said quietly.

You looked at him.

He looked at you.

Neither of you said anything more.

⸻

Then came the distress signal.

A rogue quantum anomaly had swallowed half a science vessel on the edge of uncharted space. The Lost Light was the closest ship. Rodimus made the call.

The jump was brutal.

When you came to, the bridge was half-dark, and you could barely hear through the ringing in your ears. Systems flickered. Sparks danced from the ceiling. The floor trembled beneath you.

“Rodimus!” you called, coughing.

He stumbled into view, singed but upright, face grim.

“You okay?” he asked, crouching beside you.

You nodded shakily. “Mostly.”

“Good. Because we’ve got company.”

Out of the smoke, the intruder emerged—more shadow than mech, twisted by the anomaly, its spark energy unstable and writhing. It surged toward you, and you flinched—only for Rodimus to throw himself in front of you.

He took the hit. All of it.

You screamed his name.

The blast sent him flying into the far wall, crumpling on impact. You scrambled to him, hands shaking as you reached for his face.

“Rodimus—!”

His optics dimmed. “Guess I really lit up the room this time, huh?”

“Don’t joke—don’t you dare—”

But he was fading.

And the enemy loomed.

You didn’t think. You acted. You grabbed the damaged energon conductor beside you and slammed it into the anomaly’s form. A pulse of light erupted—and silence followed.

When the smoke cleared, the creature was gone.

And Rodimus was still offline.

⸻

He woke three days later in medbay, groggy and confused.

You were at his side before he could speak.

“You idiot,” you said, tears on your cheeks. “You nearly died.”

“I had to protect you.”

“You could’ve died.”

“I’d do it again.”

You didn’t let him finish. You leaned forward and pressed your forehead to his. “You don’t have to burn for me, Rodimus. You just have to stay.”

His fingers brushed your cheek. “You really want me to?”

“Always.”

He smiled. And for the first time, it wasn’t flashy or overconfident—it was soft. Real.

“I’m not great at this. Romance. Feelings. But if you give me a chance… I want to try.”

You laughed, wet and broken. “You already are.”

⸻

The rest of the crew pretended not to notice the way you lingered at his side, the way his arm always curved protectively around you during briefings, the way you stole quiet moments in corners of the ship that no one else used. But there were jokes, of course.

“I give it a week,” said Whirl.

“Three days,” said Swerve, passing out betting slips.

Rodimus ignored them all.

You didn’t.

You kissed him in front of the whole command crew during a particularly heated debate about protocol just to shut them up.

The room went silent.

Rodimus looked stunned. Then delighted.

And then you were pinned gently against the console, his mouth warm and hungry against yours.

When you finally broke apart, he murmured, “You keep surprising me.”

“Get used to it.”

“I plan to.”

⸻

Nights aboard the Lost Light became less lonely. You slept curled in a nest of wires and cushions he rigged in his quarters, surrounded by the low hum of his systems and the faint glow of the stars beyond the viewport.

He told you stories of Cybertron’s past, of adventures and failures and moments he wished he could rewrite.

You told him about Earth, about your dreams and the places you wanted to see.

“We’ll go there,” he promised one night, tracing a circle around your wrist with his thumb. “Everywhere. As long as I’m with you.”

“You mean that?”

“With everything I am.”

You stared at him, overwhelmed.

He caught your gaze, optics soft. “You’re not a detour, you know. You’re the destination.”

⸻

And when you said “I love you,” whispered under a canopy of stars while the ship drifted through a sea of nebulae, he didn’t hesitate.

“I love you more than anything in the universe,” he said, voice low and reverent. “And I don’t care if that makes me reckless.”

You smiled. “You were reckless long before me.”

“Yeah,” he said, nuzzling your temple. “But now I’ve got a reason to be even more reckless.”

#rodimus mtmte #rodimus #transformers discord #transformers more than meets the eye #mtmte oc #mtmte rodimus #hot rod #cybertron #cybertr0nian #transformers #IDW #idw mtmte #transformers idw #tf fanfic #tf mtmte #tf rodimus #rodimus prime x reader

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blorbologist · 9 months ago

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S3 eps 7-9 thoughts below the cut

This is all fresh after the episode and I gotta be up in a couple hours so it won't be fully thought out but...

I love a lot of the creative choices being made! But I think many weren't implemented well, or balanced nicely.

Just! as someone who has deconstructed Campaign 1 and made deviations to the timeline of events and etc (mind you, without the same goal of condensing things for television… but somehow the show has an equivalent perc'ahlia focus to a ship-centered fic?) I think… I can see several avenues of narrative choices that would strengthen the ideas they're going with instead of weakening them.

(My credentials here are 'almost 300k canon divergent AU that converged on a handful of similar plot points to TLOVM', but also the aims of an AU fanfic =/= that of a show. I understand and respect that challenge the team faced. But when a single amateur can point out issues that would be pretty easy to solve and detract from a very enjoyable experience... there might be a Problem)

Ripley doesn't need a sob story, she's getting a book anyways leave it there. Fully agree with @/aq2003. The whole point is that she's monstrous and evil and got her PhD out of a fucking cereal box. Percy is less like her than he thinks. But he dies and she just??? escapes??? IF Percy had to die without VM being present, having Ripley either die of her wounds right after or be unable to flee and get torn to shreds by them would have been excellent.

On that note - only Vex and Cass seem to show strong emotion about his death. Keyleth's supposed to be his best friend, and he and Grog were close this season, but. Well, not like we have any platonic relationships. Everyone's just Kinda Sad.

MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE OF THE MUSIC OVER PERCY'S DEATH HUH. Flashbacks to watching Vampire Diaries as a teenager and pop songs coming on over the end-of-episode drama.

Again just. All the platonic, non-familial (Pike n Grog count. to me. buddies <3) relationships are so scant, which is especially hard on characters who lean on that so hard! Grog and Keyleth especially are hurt by this. Does Keyleth have a single conversation (not quip, conversation) that isn't with Vax? And in group contexts she only loudly brings up her distrust of Raishan without any of the solid backbone it has in fact. (Also her going from Raishan was right last time we should trust her now / She betrayed us! Knew it! / oh maybe she didn't and I should apologize. girl. come on. please)

I have Concerns about 'late Game of Thrones teleportation' syndrome happening here. Scanlan goes from Wildemount back to Whitestone (which are completely different continents) with no explanation. Kash and Zahra make it to Emon (again, different continent to Issylra) just in the nick of time. Which, sure, would take a couple of days to carve Percy a nice likeness (but you have a druid who can manipulate stone right there), and if Kash and Zahra changed their minds and set out as soon as Vax talked to them they might make it! But uh. There's a lot of transport that's omitted, while the scenes give the impression everything is happening within a short period of time. And a lot of these conversations are one-on-ones with the relevant characters without acknowledging they couldn't be there without magical transport. Where is Allura or Gilmore or Keyleth in the back of these shots twiddling their thumbs 'hey can we teleport to the next person on our HELP US list'?

IDK what's going on with Kash. He's likely gonna be used as a lead-in to Something to rez Percy (and him?) but. That quick buildup of him being too carefree to getting smushed was very transparent and Zahra's grief didn't feel earned (though it WAS baller. yes they made them bleed girl <3).

The fact Vax didn't ask him At All about the resurrection ritual in the Tomb stuns me tho. You think Vax remembered the offhand comment Kash made about the body needing to be warm while his sister was dead? We as an audience could have used a reminder, and Vax too. Because anyone who Doesn't remember this one line from S2 is Extra frustrated at everyone for being stupid.

Raishan or Ripley being moved to be the 'Vox Machina, united, with all their Vestiges' fight is... hmn. You could argue Raishan has solid buildup (what with the cameo in Brimscythe's lair), and it does follow campaign canon. She lacks the devastating power to justify the use of all the Vestiges (tbh given Thordak it might feel like a curbstomp unless her necromantic plans are successful)... but I could see it working. But why the fuck has Ripley escaped A THIRD TIME. Percy even duped her twice! How many times are we gonna do that song and dance?

If anything, I'd have moved some Ripley stuff here. If she escapes so be it but VM putting the fate of the world on hold to avenge their friend, THEN have Percy be back for Thordak, would be tasty.

... wait does this mean Percy might not have Cabal's Ruin by the final dragon fight of the season? ffs-

DID NO ONE LOOT CABAL'S RUIN FROM THE FACTORY.

Thordak fight was baller, having all our NPCs there to worry about? a bit much. Cass why are you here. Go home before Whitestone loses its last de Rolo.

Also. Thordak my dude I know you're insane. mad even. but uh... you sent your children into battle. A TON have already died by the time you sadly nuzzle the hatchlings. This was kinda your fault. There's a reason animals don't send their babies into combat. then again you're a large reptile who talks about milk so what do I, a reptile researcher, know -

(Don't give me that crap about reptiles being bad parents we have several snakes who require maternal attendance after birth or they're Asocial Weirdos, crocodilians are VERY goo parents, and there are social lizards too.)

'fix him - FIX HIM' being gutted fucking killed me :c

I sure hope Pike's 'IT'S ME' was uh. about faith in herself. Not abandoning the god she spent all of S1 figuring out how to devote herself to. While wearing the Vestige associated with another god. the vestige that explicitly made this possible and not a nuke fire falls u all die tpk. haha. ha. (@/burr-ell)

Yes yes yes I know the voiceover and visuals fill in for 'I hear my mother in the morning. Fuck you'. but. idk. Felt like the grief of that moment was taken out of it? Also it's a banger line

Raishan's little killsteal attempt being bumped from Vorugal to Thordak was tasty! Go green girl go! ... except it did nothing but set up a few quiet moments before she turned on everyone again.

The amount of times I'm seeing things happen Again in this is... not great.

Glintshore is Not Glinting. Where is my broken glass difficult terrain?

Perc'ahlia arc fuckin impeccable tho. Delicious

And Pike got lots of fun and stunning moments so far! And Grog takin down the lair!

I love a lot of this though. The hallucination gas. Percy vs Ripley in the factory was so cool. Percy downright being Put in a Box for a while. VEX'S CONVERSATION WITH SYLDOR!!! SO MUCH!! Her being the leader and feeling so responsible for all this, and seeing herself become her father! ELAINA BACKSTORY! Scanlan leaving the party only to miss Kaylie too! Thordak being A Dad! Percy's death/Vex's grief being the catalyst for Vaxleth! The animation was fucking stellar - Vax killing Thordak, Percy's death, Pike mastering the Plate.

I don't have concrete thoughts on how I'd restructure the episodes/season (seasons?) to better balance platonic and romantic relationships, and utilize the changes to their fullest potential. But damn if the temptation to do ANOTHER canon divergence rewrite / exploration of cause and effect to make things hit a bit more nicely... make myself a challenge to only use X amount of scenes per episode/chapter, to try and match the difficulty of adapting this to television... idk

#tlovm spoilers #cr spoilers #I keep editing this w more things i enjoyed but... there definitely were some choices I don’t quite Get

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rosieberg18 · 1 month ago

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fleet in the offseason

i have scoured the fleet instagram to find contract details. here’s what i’ve found.

this is for all the fleet fans who are hate cheering for ottawa because frankly you’d be nuts to root for minnesota at this stage. also to ice the hilary knight announcement of retiring olympic play in 2026 wound.

returners (+ years remaining):

*hilary knight (1)

*megan keller (1)

*aerin frankel (1)

sydney bard (1)

hannah bilka (2)

daniela pejšová (2)

alina müller (1)

jamie lee rattray (1)

sophie shirley (1)

hannah brandt (1)

emily brown (1)

*note: in full transparency i’m fairly sure the original three all signed 3 year contracts in 2023 but it wasn’t specifically mentioned on the insta so i don’t have a solid source for that.

folks i’m unsure about because it wasn’t mentioned on the insta:

amanda pelkey (she signed a 1 year contract in 2023 and magically showed up again in the 24-25 season so i guess she signed an extension? but the insta did not report)

shay maloney

jill saulnier

olivia zafuto

klara peslarová

susanna tapani

everybody else is a free agent!

obviously the expansion draft is gonna shake up the roster but with at least 11 players on contract going into the offseason, losing 4 will be devastating but there will be a guaranteed 7 ships returning to the dock (unless trades which 🤷🏻‍♀️) so there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

also the reason i’m mentioning the insta over and over again is because nobody reports about it. anywhere. i don’t even want to know numbers just years and it is not anywhere i have looked on the internet. besides the insta😎

#pwhl #boston fleet #hilary knight

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pleistocene-pride · 5 months ago

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Eumicrotremus orbis, better known as the pacific spiny lumpsucker or pacific spiny lumpfish is a species of bony fish in the family Cyclopteridae which inhabit the Northern Pacific coast of North America from Washington state, to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, as well as the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and around northern Japan. The tend to be found in near shore waters up to 500ft (150m) in depth, where they dwell around eelgrass beds, rocky reefs, kelp patches, bays, ship wrecks, docks, harbors, and other aquatic structures. They tend to live alone or in small groups and feed upon various slow moving invertebrates such as worms, small crustaceans, and mollusks. They are even know to occasionally pick the parasites off other fish, a behavior that has lead these lumpfish along with there relatives (particularly the atlantic lumpsucker) to be kept as a form of biological parasite control on fish farms. Pacific spiny lumpsuckers are themselves preyed upon by cod, sablefish, sculpins, and lancefish. Reaching 1 to 7 inches (2.5 to 18cms) in length, Pacific spiny lumpsuckers are a globular-shaped fish with a wide mouth, large lips, protruding eyes, squared dorsal fin, rounded caudal fin, and thin, transparent pectoral fins. The lumpsucker's pelvic fins have evolved into a large, fringed suction cup, allowing it to attach to surfaces like rocks or kelp. This sucker also compensates the fish for its lack of gas bladder, also they are poor swimmers they tend to set motionless and use camouflage to avoid detection. They do not have scales, instead the body of the fish is covered in cone-shaped plates, called tubercles. They may vary in color from green to yellow to brown to red to orange. Spawning occurs in shallow warmer waters from July to October with females laying around 200 orange spherical eggs in a sheltered hole. After the eggs are laid they are guarded and cared for by the male until hatching some 3 to 8 weeks later.

#fish #pleistocene pride #pliestocene pride #lumpfish #lumpsucker #marine life #animal facts #pacific #pacific spiny lumpsucker #pacific spiny lumpfish

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liss-art · 6 months ago

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Hi, your pin says you dabble in merch, do you have a store open right now? Love your art btw

I don't have a store, unfortunately, but i sell my merch. Via tumblr or twi. Just DM me. 1. Merfolk keychains - 5$ each 2. Naga keychains - 3$ each 3. Pins - 3$ each 4. Stands: Liu Qingge, black-and-white naga (it's transparent), Zhuzhi - 22$ Rk900-N - 10$ Pins - 6$ 5. Prints - 2$ each 6. Stickers: A5 - 3$ A6 - 2$ If you order paper things only shipping costs 7$, if with acrylic or other NONPAPER stuff - 21$ shipping.

#digital art #fan art #by liss art #merch

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chthonic-cassandra · 2 months ago

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Tagged by my dear @awildwickedslip! I think I did this one a couple years ago and it's not like I've published much fic since then, but it's maybe an interesting exercise to do it again without looking at my earlier answers first.

1. How many works on AO3?

115.

2. Total word count on AO3?

320, 935.

3. Top five fics by kudos?

Shattered Mirrors - Jonathan in Dracula's castle, Yuletide story (2009) - 376

Make It Through the Wintertime - Hadestown!Persephone backstory, Yuletide story (2016) - 345

To Burn the Castle Down - Jonathan kills Mina angst, really melodramatic (2008) - 312

Compromise - Mina/Dracula/Jonathan darkest timeline train story, the start of my only completed novel length fic ever (2009) - 273

Minor Initiations - basically the same premise as Compromise with Mina and Jonathan's roles reversed. and the story is much more of a mess. (2009) - 231

I included the actual kudos numbers because I rather appreciated that @awildwickedslip did; there's something interesting about that demystifying transparency.

You'll see that these are almost all 15+ years old, with the one exception being the fluke of writing a Yuletide story for what was at the time about to become a pretty popular musical. 20 years of writing in extremely tiny fandoms!

4. What fandoms do you primarily write for?

Historically it's been overwhelmingly Dracula alongside scattered multifandom endeavors of which Shakespeare plays and various Greek mythology versions have been the closest to consistent. I now have substantial WIPs in other fandoms which for a change were created less than 100 years ago, and we'll see what happens there.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Somewhat erratically. I do try! I feel so fortunate with the comments I receive.

6. Angstiest ending?

I think most of my fics end with someone either dying or resigning themselves to some kind of life of profoundly restricted choices. Right now the one that's coming to mind is Enthralled By Destiny, one of my Sade stories which is also really a Bluebeard story.

7. Fic with the happiest ending?

I mostly write happy endings only when I get Yuletide assignments requesting them, and then I struggle all the way because it is just not my strength at all. This past year my assignment was quite literally to give Macbeth and Lady Macbeth a happy ending in which they didn't do evil things and I went sort of out of my mind about it but I did manage something. Caucus-Race, my 2019 Yuletide assignment for Alice in Wonderland, came more easily.

8. Do you get hate?

Not really. I'm lucky and write in tiny fandoms and also am pretty conflict avoidant on the internet. I've intermittently gotten some frustrating responses about the ways I write about abuse dynamics in my Dracula stories but not much for a while. I have a sense that in this post-Dracula Daily era there are some people who very much don't like the kind of fic I write, but that's fine as long as people keep it to themselves.

9. Do you write smut?

I do not!

10. Do you write crossovers?

Rarely, when I think there's something interesting to be said with them. I tend to get more crossover ideas than I actually write.

11. Ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge! I've read a few fics that seemed very clearly inspired by mine, but that's a sweet thing even if uncredited.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Well...

14. All time favorite ship?

To write or read or just to have exist in the world? To write, by my numbers, it's certainly Mina/Dracula/Jonathan. There are a number of other ships which really compel me conceptually and for which hopefully I will write/finishing writing more in the future.

15. WiPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

So many. Philomela's Tapestry and Furious Docility were both things I posted with the knowledge that they would probably never be finished, just making the judgment call that if even a couple people got something out of reading the parts I had written it was worth putting them up. Of the dozens of unpublished WIPs whose fate is not yet determined it is perhaps better not to speak.

16. Writing strengths?

Interior experiences of violence (perpetrating or experiencing); selecting telling details; complicated relational dynamics; bittersweet moods

17. Writing weaknesses?

Smut; happy endings; characters speaking in more casual/modern tone/voice; finishing things

18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?

I don't feel great about doing it in a language I don't know well, and Ancient Greek dialogue is just show-offy and rarely useful. I've talked about this in fic commentaries, but several parts of Compromise have highly plot and character relevant moments of characters switching between languages, and I ultimately made use of the choice to keep it all in English to what I hope was interesting effect.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Lord of the Rings. It was Sauron/Galadriel.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

For a long time to come I think it's going to be the Compromise series, taken as a whole.

Tagging, if they'd like to do it, @kareenvorbarra @child-of-hurin @mysikrolik @poorshadowspaintedqueens @tomatowrites

#my writing #fan fiction

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echonidae · 7 months ago

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✦ COMMISSIONS REOPENING on monday, December 2nd!! ✦

hello there!! i'm a good deal late again (i miscalculated how much time it'd take to get everything ready for this new batch orz), but, i bring news of a new commission batch, scheduled for monday, December 2nd!!

i have a bunch of things to report, which you can read under the read-more (or over on [deviantArt!]) but yes, the important bits:

all commission types available!! regular orders: 12 slots total (3 active, 9 in queue) doodle orders: no limit so long as it's open!! (6 active slots!) pagedoll orders: also no limit!! (2 active slots!) the queue(s) will remain open indefinitely the waitlist for the next batch is unavailable until further notice ✦ digital medium only! the commissioned pieces are all .png files; no physical items will be shipped. ✦ for regular orders, max of 2 SLOTS per person; i'll be working on multiple orders one at a time (the second order will be moved into the queue) ✦ waiting period is 2 months at most! i tend to work fairly fast, and i'll keep you updated throughout the whole process!

here's a link to the commission info website!!

more info on the upcoming commissions + new stuff under the read-more!!

so!! >:3c

a new commission option!! we'ge got pagedolls now!! :"D

they're lil' stylized full-body portraits with transparent backgrounds, clean lineart and flatcolors :'3c i just posted the examples separately, you can check them out [here]!! they have their own queue, like doodles, but function the same as regular orders in terms of feedback and client updates– the different queue is just because pagedolls are faster to complete, and therefore it'd be nice if they didn't take regular-order-slots instead :')c no limit of orders per person, but i will be working on those 2 at a time c':

speaking of full-body, from here on all commission options offer full-body portraits, replacing knee-up!! i feel more confident with my art now to tackle full-body stuff :') with this, i went and changed the nomenclature of shoulder/waist/knee-up to just bust/half-body/full-body, which i reckon better suits how i tend to go about where to cut off portraits (uh... ribcage/mid-thigh/mid-calf-up x"Dc)

portraits can now have up to two characters!! slooowly climbing towards just having multiple extra characters x'Dc but for now, just the two!! prices vary depending on how much of the second character is visible (plus an extra fee if the 2nd character is Very Very Intricate design-wise). more on this below, and on the [website] too :')c

that said, familiars / pets / companions don't count as extra characters!! they have their own stipulations, also described below!!

this time i'll be (once again) working on a reduced amount of slots for regular orders (doodles and pagedolls exempt!), in an effort to finish things up in a more timely manner by focusing on a smaller amount of orders, and to then open new batches more often (since the last one was over a year ago). this time around, there will be a total of 12 slots for regular orders: 3 active slots that i'll be getting started on right away on monday, and then another 9 waiting in queue c: again, no deadline for those!!

since it's a small number of slots, regular orders slots are limited to two per person!! so that folks have a good chance of getting a slot :')c and given how it's just 3 active slots, i'll be working on multiple orders one at a time c':

doodles and pagedolls do not have those limits, and i'll just go about finishing them up as i can c: six doodles at a time, and two pagedolls at a time as well, but their respective queues have no slot limit, and folks can order as many as they want at once :3c

in a different note, over the course of the year, i've gone from using Paint Tool SAI to drawing and painting on Rebelle 7 instead, and have since acclimated well enough to continue commission work with no issue– i can now send the finalized files at better resolution too :"Dc yey nanopixel :3c

which reminds me, icons are now sized 1000px square insted of 800px!! minor change but still noteworthy x')c

lastly, cases in which no sketch presented is suitable, and no amount of editing said sketch can help its approval and the client would rather a new sketch be made, i can do so for a flat fee of 35% of the original order's price– this does not impact choosing between sketches and such, or my tendency towards working on more than one sketch for orders, or if the client has presented multiple sketch ideas for the same order :')c the modifications, big and small, of the sketch phase remain entirely part of the process and free of charge!! this is just in case an entirely new sketch is necessary, since the sketch portion of the process is usually the more complicated and time-consuming bit of the commission c': so, edge case, but it's a new thing added in and i want to make mention of it!!

other than that, prices have been updated, and there's been minor edits in wording for the sake of clarity in the terms on the [website], on the forms, and the descriptions of the options and extras c': i've also, as you may have noticed, updated all the examples on the info sheet and on the website to be past commissions!! some of which i have yet to post (orz on my way!!! ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ), but that you can see as well over on the commission-info-place :')c

and that's it for all the new stuff!! :'D

thank you so much again to everyone who ordered last batch (i'm so happy folks like the doodles so much, for one!! they've been a heckin' blast to work on, thank you all again!!), and everyone who reached out and sent messages and stopped by the commission-info-website for orders or to just say hi, i appreciate it tons :')c i'm looking forward to this new batch!! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

thank you again, and i wish everyone a dang nice day!! :"D i'll be posting until then, but cya monday!!

#artists on tumblr #digital art #commissions #commission info #commission sheet #digial art commissions #art commissions #art #\ ;w; /#i'll be reblogging this one until monday and on the day as well :3c

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scoobydoodean · 1 year ago

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I was wondering if you, as a Dean fan have opinions about the different writers? Mostly because I see a lot of Dean fans really strongly dislike Dabb for some reason and I don’t really understand why. I’ve never seen a concrete explanation beyond “he can’t write Dean/doesn’t understand Dean/actively hates Dean” but with no examples as to what he does that’s so bad. And I see this in every shipping lane. I don’t have a strong opinion about him as a writer one way or the other.

I'm exploring this more as I rewatch the show (currently on season 6) so I'll speak mainly from that perspective on my most recent thoughts. I am not a big fan of Dabb or Loflin, but have tried to be fair about things so far when talking through each episode. I am a fan of "Alpha and Omega"—it's my favorite finale (it's also... a finale for a season Carver started as showrunner? So I don't know what the implications are there as far as storyboarding). Also points for having demon Dean stab a guy through in 10.02.

I'll focus on the negatives you asked about in this post, but in the links you'll find me moving the narrative this way and that toward much more charitable readings... I think. (I do have a tag #dabb disk horse which you can either peruse or blacklist at your leisure). What I can tell you is something almost always strikes me as a off about Dabb/Loflin episodes so far in this rewatch in terms of character work.

Dabb/Loflin's first ever episode was 4.06 "Yellow Fever". In the aftermath, Kripke felt the need to release a definitive interpretation of their episode to the public, stating, "Dean is not a dick... he's a hero." The whole episode toyed with, to an extent, the idea that all the victims of the MotW were bullies. You can take this other directions—for example, queer meta, or meta about Sam as the real bully. However, the story a lot of fandom latched onto was that "Dean is a jerk and deserves to be humiliated and punished for that" which obviously didn't make Dean fans watching live in season 4 happy—and this theme of Jerk!Dean continues into their next episode, "After School Special", where they once again parallel Dean with a bully literally nicknamed "Dirk the Jerk" by Sam, and throw what I think is transparent shade at Kripke's issued statement from before the Christmas break (post here)... or maybe they mean to throw shade at the Dean fans who got angry. In this episode, they also make illusions to Dean wanting to have sex with barely legal high school cheerleaders, which also did not ingratiate them to Deanfans at the time. I said on my last rewatch, "In After School Special, Dean seems more unlike himself than any episode ever in the history of Supernatural up to this point" (post explaining that here). I carry similar sentiments about portions of 5.06 "I Believe The Children Are Our Future". Yes—I am aware of performing Dean meta. I just... feel like they try a little too hard. It feels hamfisted—desperate. To the point it doesn't feel like Dean anymore sometimes. In 5.06, they also have Dean (guy who is generally very protective of kids) suggest to Jesse that he'd be good to have in a fight???? I can see how they got there, but again—it just feels... off. The last episode I rewatched that they authored, 6.04 "Weekend At Bobby's", also leaves a bad taste in my mouth—not in what it's trying to do with Bobby or what it's trying to do on a meta level—but once again, with dialogue from Dean that just makes me think "he would not fucking say that" (post here). I think looking at all of these, you can probably see deangirl ire toward Dabb has a long history. It's been around as long as he's been around, whether he deserves as much ire as he gets or not.

I haven't circled back yet on this rewatch, but Dabb and Loflin also penned season 7's "The Girl Next Door"... do I need to say anything specific? Maybe I'll just link my entire #amy tag. What narrative did they want you to get from that episode? Who the fuck knows. And that's often the problem:

When you watch various episodes I've mentioned, you can work around to a meta that tells you something different than you might at first think the page conveys—something hidden and maybe contradictory. The thing is... you could also... not do that? And that wouldn't be so bad, except that sometimes the two narratives you can most easily grasp completely contradict each other. "After School Special" can be an episode that points to Sam's envy of Dean and John deep down and foreshadows Sam becoming a bully, but on a meta level, it also just as easily says Sam becoming a bully is somehow Dean's fault, and Sam is some poor captive baby. Dean is a creep and a bully and a cheater but we should all coddle him because he saw his mom die when he was a child and he's sooo sad. "Yellow Fever" can be a queer meta story and might also foreshadow approaching Bully!Sam in 4.14, but it also very much does call Dean a jerk (should we take that seriously? should we not?) and implies Dean should be punished for the outcome of three decades of reality-bending torture. Even if it's a queer meta underneath... it's just as easily one about how closeted men should be humiliated for cowardice or how being closeted turns you into an asshole.

Jumping way ahead, I have to mention 15.10 "The Hero's Journey" just because. Yes, it is full of jokes and Garth goodness, but also tries to sell you the story that nothing about Sam and Dean is real, to a degree that feels like you are being flipped the bird for ever watching this show. And again—you can make meta that it's all a ruse! But is it? Or is Dabb actually just telling you to go fuck yourself? Like he totally wasn't when, after the SPN finale when fans were Not Happy™️, he tweeted a sign reading, "Don't feed the baboons"? Yet again—we play into the motif of the "hero" who isn't a hero at all but some pathetic loser who deserves to be publicly humiliated, bookended with Dabb's opening episode in his opening season. I'm not saying that's what it is on purpose—but I am saying you can make these arguments easily, and that leaves me consistently annoyed with Dabb for being fucking sloppy and leaving me to deal with some of the most insufferable meta imaginable that carries little support outside of episodes written by Dabb or the Dabb/Loflin writing team.... Yes—I am in fact saying that Dabb and Loflin's hamfisted episodes (regardless of their intentions) are largely responsible for some of the most insufferable, loathesome fandom metas about Sam and Dean's relationship around.

Look at 5.16 "Dark Side Of The Moon", and 7.08 "Time for A Wedding!" and 8.14 "Trial and Error", 11.17 "Red Meat", and 15.20 "Carry On". Along with 4.13, while they might or might not say something deeper or contradictory on a meta level, on a surface level, every single one of these episodes sows the narrative that Dean is needy and clingy and needs Sam more than Sam needs him—something I intensely disagree with for a multitude of reasons... but I'll just link this. Many of these episodes also follow a surface level narrative of "normal life obsessed Sam" (and here I'll link my entire #sam the hunter tag and #in which sam is not a helpless little waif with his hands cast over his eyes being carried along by the tides of the immutable sea). When I look at this episode list, I also don't find it at all difficult to believe that Dabb wanted Dean to die in the finale. There is nothing at all shocking about that. And yes—you can argue he's pointing to the opposite—that this fate should be subverted and that's what makes 15.20 the dark ending, but I think you can just as easily argue that yes it's a dark ending and yes Dabb has always dreamed of this ending. A "tragic" ending where Dean dies and Sam goes on to have a white picket fence... while also leaving you little hints along the way that maybe it's all a big ruse because how could he not? He never has to explain anything. Someone else will pick up the story and make it make sense. He's already fucked off to piss all over fans of Resident Evil.

That said, when I mention what I feel is off character work, I mainly mention Dabb/Loflin episodes from my recent rewatch, which suffer from the two of them being newer to the series (coming onto the writing team in season 4) and also leave questions about whether, perhaps, they had conflicting ideas about characterization. Was Dabb the one penning these lines? Was it Loflin? Was it both? Did they trade out who took the lead? I didn't really say anything negative about "Sam, Interrupted" or "Jump the Shark"... (though "Sam, Interrupted" also calls Dean "codependent") who wrote those? Is it possible that the messiness of the meta comes down to two writers at war? I have to imagine though, that they got along, or else they wouldn't have written together for four fucking years. If they didn't get along...? My mind always comes back to their first solo episodes, right after splitting up in season 8. Dabb's first solo episode is "Hunteri Heroici"—the only episode to lend any perspective to season 8 Sam's reasons for abandoning everyone—paralleling him checking out with Fred's catatonia, which Sam has to save Fred from. It is the only episode that lends Sam sympathy in the early part of the season. He follows it up with "Trial and Error"—where Sam promises to save Dean from suicidal thoughts. Loflin's first solo episode is what I would regard as the most scathing solo episode commentary on Sam in the entire series—"Citizen Fang". Then he writes again right after Dabb's "Trial and Error"—penning "Remember The Titans" where Sam tells Dean to get over the promise Sam so passionately made in Dabb's episode and face reality.

This is why we're exploring this rewatch.

DISCLAIMER: Now I just devolve into bitching because I'm writing at 3AM. Proceed at your own risk.

It seems like these days, everyone demands an explanation for disliking Dabb (something about some sort of destiel battle... I don't know what that flamewar is and I don't give a damn tbqh.) I guess I've just been wondering what's actually so great about him. Because it feels like people have overcorrected to basically acting like he's god's greatest gift to mankind. People point to how meta his episodes can be, but I think other writers easily best him on that front on multiple occasions (particularly enjoyed by me so far on this rewatch: 3.10 "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", 4.04 "Monster Movie", 4.12 "Criss Angel Is A Douchebag"), and without leaving their meaning so up in the air that you don't even know what the hell they were actually trying to tell you because there are two different completely incongruous narratives you could just as justifiably claim were the intended one. Some people may find that duality praise-worthy. I don't. I find it sloppy—and when I add in mediocre character work, I just land on the side of him being, at the very best, mid.

Add him in as showrunner, you have... at least two of my least favorite seasons (13 and 15). Add that he's a one-trick pony in terms of the Sam and Dean conflicts mentioned above that he continuously rehashes rather than come up with anything new or fresh, and the same conflicts between Dean and Cas being played out until they both die (shut UP I'm not talking about canon destiel as the alternative—I am literally just asking for more diverse conflicts). I can't say I understand what I''m supposed to find so impressive.

(Before anyone so much as breathes this near me, Berens also sucks and I am going to tear off your nose hairs if you start bringing him up as if disliking Dabb for some reason means wearing rose colored glasses about Berens. Berens can eat a whole cactus raw over "The Trap" alone.)

#writer disk horse #dabb disk horse #mail #4.06 #5.16 #5.06 #6.04 #15.20

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