#I think because it borders on being original fiction????

[milliebobbyflay]

Okay so I've spent a while thinking about how to word my actual problem with homestuck 2, and the works that make up post-canon homestuck more broadly. I think a lot of people resort to nitpicking bits of awkward writing or art in some attempt to pinpoint a source to an underlying sort of hollow uncanniness, which is funny because homestuck's supposed golden age of acts 1-5 are themselves FAR more of a tonally inconsistent mess of odd character beats, jokes that don't always land, and janky looking art.

Homestuck 2 has been written and drawn by very talented and passionate artists from the beginning, I think the actual issue comes down to a mix between the general pitfalls of hiring fans and the particulars of hussie's outsider background and unorthodox writing style.

First is the issue of hiring fans in general; while it can seem like an easy shortcut to finding talented writers already familiar with the voice and story of the original work, you have to be very aware of how fan culture operates. Beyond the obvious pitfalls that fans are unlikely to approach the story from a detached perspective, there is the larger issue that past a certain point fandom becomes essentially self sustaining. Once a fandom has existed for a long enough period, its most avid members have likely spent FAR more time engaging with other fan works than they have with the original art object. Fandom and the art it produces are, in this way, a sort of a folk tradition; artists are imitating and responding to other artists, characters become archetypes through which to explore certain ideas and dynamics, and the values and tastes of the most prolific and influential fan artists become as inseparable from a participants mental image of the character as the original work itself.

For an example, the affected theatrical mannerisms and cruelty Vriska adopts while in her Mindfang persona have become inseparable from the popular view of the character. Despite the fact that it's heavily signposted as a sort of role playing performance from the jump and she's more or less dropped it by the back half of the comic, it was nevertheless how she had acted in the bulk of her scenes around the time the ur-texts of homestuck fandom were being written, and as so an understandable misread of a character became inscribed into the fandom canon, and by extension her characterization in Homestuck 2.

All of this is extrapolated by the sort of unorthdox, building-the-plane-while-flying-it manner in which Hussie's writing style developed.

Based on his commentary, I get the sense that Andrew is an incredibly clever and thoughtful writer who lacks the theory and vocabulary to precisely describe his process. He tends to communicate in sort of abstract metaphors which aim to bridge the gap in explaining the actual conscious process he uses to plot his stories, but the way he talks about technical nuts and bolts writing craft stuff gives me the impression that his approach is largely intuitive, bordering on unconscious. He's a lot better at describing how he writes than what he writes or why.

You can of course piece a lot this together—his approach to art draws from the tradition of videogame spritework, where the visuals exist as a utilitarian vehicle for conveying information first and a work of illustration only inasmuch is needed to serve the greater story. His character writing draws more from a synthesis of literary fiction, sitcom writing, and "making up a guy" style posting humor, where characters are defined more by their life experiences and underlying psychology than by their goals and values, but also seem to have largely been constructed backwards from a starting point of a funny or interesting manner of speaking. Importantly though, I don't get the sense that these were conscious decisions, just that to Hussie they seemed like the logical way to approach these tasks, and I don't really think he could outline them in a way that would actually help a new team of creators grok how to draw and write in a way that feels like homestuck. I also don't think Hussie could actually explain the psychology that undergirds his character writing, I think he was mostly just drawing on his own life experience and imagining how this sort of character might logically speak and act.

As a novelist, and Hussie is one, both your thought processes and the sum total of your worldview and life experience are just as important to your work as the actual conscious decisions you're making, and I think that where there are gaps in understanding, the new writers are filling in the gaps with both a more conventional approach to the creative process and over a decade of accumulated fanon, and I think that's why homestuck 2 never really rises above feeling like a very well-made fanfic to me?

[howtofightwrite]

Speaking of martial competence, do you have any examples of characters that are actually written with this in mind?

Loads. Some actually even make good on that.

So, there's different kinds of martial competence. There are characters who are proficient in combat directly, there are well written strategists, there are characters who excel at military leadership, and when they're written well, you can actuallylearn some things from them.

I'm going to give some examples, and at least one cautionary example.

For, just, raw combat prowess, I still go back to Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories. It's easy to meme on the character, especially 90 years after the fact, with the cultural persona that's grown around him, but Howard's original writing is excellent. The character would not have survived Howard's early (and, frankly, tragic) death if it was just the one note gag you might expect, if your only exposure to the character was through cultural osmosis and the films.

Howard's fight scenes were shockingly well written. To the point that it is still absolutely worth reading if you want to write a fantasy fighter.

For strategists, three characters come to mind, but only two are literary, and all are Science Fiction.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is probably one of the best villains Star Wars has ever produced, it's part of why he's one of the few characters that's migrated from the original EU to the Disney era. My personal take is, as a character, he's lost a lot over the years, but the original incarnation from the early 90s novels is a very solid model for a strategist. Particularly in how he takes time to understand his opponents while looking for potential weak points to exploit.

His practice of studying a culture's art to understand their psychology might sound a bit goofy, but the concept does have a real basis. (At least, until it metastasized into a superpower, in later adaptations of the character.) Being able to psychologically assess your foe is an incredibly valuable element of strategy, and one that you probably want to consider when you're writing a character who is supposed to be a “strategic genius.”

When writing fiction, you want to consider all of your characters as if they were people, rather than as hollow, plastic toys. And, yes, the obnoxious villain who knows exactly what your heroes will do because of authorial fiat is going to be a more compelling character than the ambulatory goldfish villain who exists as a prelude for your heroes showing off how badass you think they are.

Granted, even in Heir to the EmpireThrawn was already drawing strategic insights that strained credibility, but understanding your foe is an element of strategic thinking that is often forgotten in literature. So, even as a villain in a tie-in novel (we're not done with tie-in fiction yet), he is worth looking at. At least when written by Timothy Zhan, Thrawn was a well written character, and even if he bordered on a Mary Sue at times, he escaped a lot of that stigma by justifying his competence.

It's also probably worth mentioning in passing that he's one of the few Imperial leaders in Star Wars who isn't also criminally incompetent.

The non-literary example of a strategist would be John Sheridan from Babylon 5. Unlike Thrawn, Sheridan's main strategic focus is on situational exploitation. A little of that comes from his knowledge of enemy procedures and psychology, but at lot of it comes from a rather ruthless approach to technical limitations. An alien race is using technology that blocks human targeting systems? Set up a nuclear mine and then send out a fake distress single to lure them in. Need to deal with a significantly larger, more dangerous ship? Lure them into a gas giant and and let the planet's gravity well drag them past crush depth. Bruce Boxleitner's performance helped sell the character, but Sheridan is a really solid science fiction strategist, who really exemplifies how technical limitations can have enormous strategic considerations.

I'm not citing Sheridan as an excellent example of a leader per se,it's certainly there, but it is harder to unpack from Boxleitner's performance. It does have some good payoffs much later in the series when he starts making some orders that cause his subordinates to sit up and stop what they're doing. And that is a consistent theme even back to his introduction, but, it's a tangible consequence to an intangible cause.

The last example is a negative example, both for strategy and leadership. And, as much as it pains me to say this, at least Orson Scott Card understood that Ender was a bad leader. At least in the original novel. To be blunt, Ender is a mediocre strategist at best. His highlights in the book involve, “inventing armor,” and creative movement in micrograv. That's setting the bar exceptionally low, and while it is reasonably within the range of what you could expect from a pre-teen, that's not much of a justification.

Again, I'm not a fan of Card, and I'm reallynot recommending Ender's Gameto anyone. However, if I didn't mention it, you know there'd be a reblog going for twelve hundred words about how Andrew Wiggin is the best strategist in literature, which, yeah, no.

Do you want a goofy, tie-in fiction, literary suggestion for the best leader in sci-fi? Too bad, because I'm pretty sure Ciaphas Cain is not that person. The Ciaphas Cain novels by Sandy Mitchell are unusual as leadership recommendations, because of how much Cain internally processes the social manipulation involved in military leadership. He's not a great leader, but he is exceptionallygood at explaining to the reader how he's creating that illusion to motivate the soldiers around him. In fairness, some of that is an intrinsic character flaw, he is incredibly insecure, and desperately trying to hide that fact. And the difference between being a great leader, and effectively creating a comprehensive illusion of a great leader is: There is no difference. As a serious complement, it is one of the few times I've seen an author treat leadership as an actual skill, and not simply an extension of a character's charisma. Which is why I'm singling this one out. It might sound like a joke inclusion initially, and the books are quite funny in a Warhammer 40k kind of way, but there is quite a bit of  value to be had.

-Starke

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[lily-orchard]

which fandom has it the worst when it comes into missing the point of the media they consume?

I can't really think of one, because I'm struggling to determine where "missing the point" ends and "ignoring the point" begins.

Actually shit, I have a scratchpad here about that somewhere.

What is media literacy? It's your ability to comprehend a work. That's all it is. It's when a work presents a theme, and that theme actually registers with you. So an example of bad media literacy is when Star Trek fans complain about newer shows "injecting politics" into Star Trek when Star Trek was always so political it bordered on straight-up communist.

But I'd go as far as to say that even that isn't their fault, because before Deep Space Nine came out and ruined Star Trek with the plague of serialization, it was always really good at balancing those really insightful episodes with episodes where Kirk punches another green alien, or Riker's beard seduces a woman, or the Doctor learns how to daydream and fantasizes about being his own self-insert fanfiction character.

Star Trek is just as goofy as it is political. So it's possible in the reality that is broadcast TV for someone to just not see those episodes. This is also true when Deep Space Nine comes around and just has less of those episodes because it's focused on chasing the trend of serialized Science Fiction about the Space Navy.

Voyager had way more of those episodes, but Voyager was the undeserved black sheep of the franchise for a long time. So it's not even that they didn't get it, they have always applauded Star Trek doing things other than being "Fully Automatic Luxury Space Communism: The Series."

And for several entries in the franchise, it was doing that. So even the best example of bad media literacy is way more complicated than Twitter would have you believe.

Fallout is probably the second best example, as it has tons of right wing fans in spite of the fact that the franchise as a whole has always been deeply critical of American jingiositic nationalism.

And yeah that's a deep paradox right there…

Until you factor in that the most popular entries in the franchise are the ones that don't do that. When you remember that, you realize it's suddenly very easy to be a right wing, jingoistic Fallout fan. You just have to not play the games that told you to your face that you're an idiot.

Which is a whole... two of them.

To give a less politically charged example, Baldur's Gate 3 has an origin character called The Dark Urge, which is a Bhaalspawn whose story is about resisting the impulses of their tainted blood. This goes hand in hand with another character, Orin the Red, which is both a second and third generation Bhaalspawn, being the daughter and granddaughter of Sarevok (no you didn't hear that wrong).

A lot of people who play Dark Urge save it for an evil murderhobo run, but I've heard many people claim they love the idea of a good-aligned Dark Urge that resists Bhaal's taint in stark contrast to their sister.

What most people who have played this game are unaware of is that this idea is literally the entire plot of the previous games. Gorion's Ward and Imoen's conflicts with their brother Sarevok, and the rest of their siblings among the Five, and how they resist Bhaal's essence and strive to do good is the entire plot of the best series of RPGs ever made.

Yes Good-Aligned Dark Urge players, this story would be compelling. I would know, because I played it twenty years ago.

And if I were a weaker human being, I could call this Bad Media Literacy, but I know better. Most people who have played Baldur's Gate 3 flat out haven't played the older games. They might vaguely know the story, but the level to which the story is about Nature versus Nurture would fly over their heads. This is partly why I often say that Baldur's Gate 3 is a better game if you haven't played the originals, because it often steals storylines and plotlines directly from the original games wholesale and repackaged them with more preservatives and lube.

I haven't found an instance of poor media literacy that has not been able to be explained away by the simple reality of personal preference or the reality that no human being can consume every last piece of art on the planet.

Most people don't have time to see everything, and honestly it isn't a crime to be dumb. What I have seen is this technical sounding term be thrown around by fandoms angry about discourse they don't like, because the worse a work is the more adversarial and abusive the fanbase is.

In the eyes of fandom, the themes of a work are self-evident of it's quality. It's impossible to both understand a work's themes and still think it isn't good. So if someone thinks their favourite thing is bad, they must not have understood it. This is an offshoot of the way fandom treat's a trope's mere presence as quality itself regardless of execution.

Fandom is full of self-protective bullshit arguments like this.

[queen-of-meows]

I just wrote a long rant about one particular wank in one particular fandom, but you know what ? It's not what I am mad about so I deleted it and I'm gonna rant about what's really on my mind.

Certain fandom spaces are extremely anti-fantasy in general. Anything that doesn't fit the narrow borders of realism is dismissed as "wierd" or "gross" and allegories are always treated with suspiscion because they are not a 1:1 representation of real life situation. And this is a problem in lots of big fandoms.

As an amateur fantasy writer, this tendancy is worrying me a lot because I am aware it is rotting my brain. I've noticed I am becoming more hesitant to write things as simple as relationships between humans and humanoid aliens, I am worrying about acceptable age gaps between characters who are millenia old, I am thinking of cancelling whole plot lines because I worry about the ethics of time travel (no matter the symbolic importance of those stories).

And it's not even the fear of being called out, I mostly write for one obscure sci-fi novel from 1997 and it's a miracle I gathered 4 readers at all. It is more insidious than that. I am becoming my own anti.

So yeah, I am worried to see how online fandom spaces are killing us inside (I can't be the only one). As human beings, we need stories to go through life and process things that are too big for us. Even when we sleep our brain weaves those stories, isn't that the proof creating fantasies is an inherent part of our humanity ?

Of course I am not saying that in fiction anything goes. We should be mindful of tropes with bigoted origins, and be critical of our dominant culture. But sometimes our brains need to make things bigger than life and it's what overzealous fandom culture is killing right now. I'm sure you all have a few exemples in mind in your own fandoms.

[foofenshmirtz]

My version of the slender forest/ creepypasta universe

Everything in this is fiction, the names and characters said in this universe aren't mine unless said otherwise and nothing is canon. Everything is just my interpretation and purely for entertainment purposes.  Please also forgive any spelling or grammer errors this is all just a summary of my au and not a full written story yet.

In this Au non of the creepypasta characters live in a fancy mansion or anything like that, but most do reside along in similar woods.

 In my interpretation of the woods everything takes place in the Appalachian mountains (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, and all of West Virginia.)

The logic behind this is because of all the paranormal sightings, cult activity, and murders that have happened over the years along these trails and states, and its unrealistic to think that all these creatures and murders would resided in such close proximity of each other, but i do still think they would interact or at least know each other due to the portals and pathways around these woods.  

Much like the similar (and real, yet its speculated if actually haunted) goatman's bridge in Texas, these woods have many portals along the trees which can be used to access different parts of the forest. These portals are often hard to find but have markers that help the creatures and criminals living in the area help navigate the mountains and forests with ease. 

Along many of the trees there are the slender pages that help indicate to residents where these portals are and also try and help scare hikers or any other passersby away from the portals or the deep sections of the woods.  

The proxies in this Au have the job of patrolling the woods, killing and getting rid of anyone unwelcomed, and keeping slendermans pages up near the portals. There are around 11 proxies but there are around 3 different types of proxies. (hollowed, agents and revenants)

The Hollowed are proxies who have almost no conscience and act rather animalistic, attacking anything in sight and act more like zombies than humans. They seem more skinny and tend to look like they are decaying and slowly dying. They often roam the woods looking for victims, and don't seem to care much about anything other than eating. The hollowed can be seen near caves or just around roaming the woods, attacking hikers and feeding on the bodies to stay alive, though most hollowed don't live long. They are the proxies who couldn't handle the mind control and went too insane to keep any of their original personalities, now just being used as an extra layer of protection to keep normal humans away from the portals.

Agents are a lot more human than the hollowed in the sense that they have feelings, interests, and a sense of their past, though most of their passions revolve around being a proxy. These are loyal followers who aren't fully in the head to understand what they are doing is wrong. Agents are loyal dogs who often act animalistic and don't question why, they do as they are told and when they are told to do so. Agents do a lot of stalking and cleaning up, they help keep the forest somewhat clean and decent around the borders so as to not alert authorities. They mostly hide bodies and are the ones who make the signs for the portals and put them up in areas that are needed. These proxies are quick and look mostly human but aren't typically seen during the day.

Revenants are the scariest of the proxies, these are the ones who are harder to kill, are faster than most humans and seem to have faster regeneration nor do they seem to age. These proxies do have feelings, passions, interests, and goals but have a clouded memory and are typically ruthless with their kills. They do what they need to do and they get the job done quickly and oftentimes messily. These proxies are often in charge of everything though are mostly on patrol duty, walking around the forests looking for hikers or anyone who doesn't belong, or making sure none of the portals close or are disturbed. If faced with one of these proxies there is a very low chance you will make it out alive.

[aufi-creative-mind]

What would have lead to Hyrule being MORE then 10,000 years old in your timeline? Most states and cultures IRL don’t even last above several centuries at most, so I wonder what’s the reason for it’s epithet as the “Eternal Kingdom” as mentioned in one of your posts

So... the name "Eternal Kingdom" is mainly what other countries outside of the Hyrule's border called them. Since from their perspective, the Kingdom of Hyrule had a very long and unbroken rule over its lands for 10 000 years under the same name and same ruling royal family. With evidences that they do have some level of divinity to back them up.

As opposed to themselves who may have gone through cycles of change. For example, my version of Ordon - their own recorded history goes back at least 9000 years with multiple eras of different rulers, governance, disasters and significant events that shape them into their present-day state. These countries and their people don't essentially need to know Hyrule's origins and take it into account with how they view this ancient Kingdom. But as far as they are aware, Hyrule has always been there. Until the day of the Second Calamity and how that shattered Hyrule's 10K year long streak.

.

As for how old Hyrule actually is, I put an asterisk on the " 10 000 years* " since it's a bit vague and they didn't really give definite dates on when exactly certain events occurred and how far apart they happened from each other.

My interpretation of the BotW-TotK timeline is that the Founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule, the Imprisoning Wars and later the First Calamity happened WITHIN the Ancient Era of 10K. And the Age of Zonai along with precedessors of the Ancient Hyruleans existed for some time before the Kingdom's founding. (The exact number of years / dates lost or forgotten from historical records ).

At least from the standpoint of BotW/TotK's present-day. Since it happened so far back in time that its all mashed together into a blur.

Its implied that very little of recorded history from back then survived to present-day. Either because of written text being lost or destroyed, language drift (similar to how Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were misinterpreted/untranslatable for the longest time until the Rosetta Stone discovery in 1799) or they were forgotten from living memory. Or even a combination of all above.

TL;DR - the Kingdom of Hyrule is estimated to be 10 000-ish years old in the BotW-TotK timeline, based on in-game lore and history. And because of their extreme longevity, the Kingdom is sometimes called the "Eternal Kingdom" by their neighbours.

--

Lastly, this is a rule I give to myself when it comes to worldbuilding, whether it be with the Legend of Zelda or...any fictional world I play around with.

The fictional world and their lore does not essentially have to be realistic, to our real world standards. It only needs to be believable within the rules of their fantastical universe. (Quoted by me cuz I made that up, 05 Sept 2023)

What I mean by this is that, it is okay to take inspiration from real world history, culture and people when building up your stories and the world that it is set in. How realistic you want your worlds and stories to be is completely up to you. BUT it is not essential. You can be as fantastical and mind-blowing as you want in your world and stories. As long as it is believable to the reader / player.

Hyrule being 10 000(ish) years old is frankly mind-bending and almost eldritch to think about. And that's okay. You can accept that official canon or not. And let's be honest, Nintendo is not that well-known for their lore building in their games. And the canon Zelda timeline is already a mess to follow with.

(Also do check out Overly Sarcastic Productuon's video about BotW-Hyrule and its environmental storytelling (pre-TotK release). It has influenced how I interpret this specific version of Hyrule).

Personally, realism for me is more of a source of inspiration rather than a hard rule to how my worlds work. I build my worlds to be...places that I want to explore. With that feeling of exploration to immerse people into what this world is like and their in-universe lore adds layers that can excite the imagination.

And that's the beauty of worldbuilding. You can make the most fantastical world with magic, dragons and aliens, or the most realistic world based on real life but with mechas, dinosaurs and cowboys. Because why not!

The only limitation is your own imagination and how you build it up.

TL;DR - You can worldbuild the most realistic or fantastical world as much as you want. As long as it is believable to the reader that they too can imagine your world in their own imaginations.

[v-arbellanaris]

I have no idea why but I absolutely hate how Ameridan' story was handled, they basically dumbed it down to him worshipping both the creators and andraste/chant of light, which kind of proved Cassandra's dumb (and incredibly disrespectful) point of an inquisitor having "room for another god". It's also so unfair how they made the evanuris to just be power hungry slavers and tyrants, my only hope is that if the creators were disproving then I hope it would be the same for the chant of light and maker (seeing asnit was solas who made the veil and not the creator) I really hate how centrist the game has gotten, like flat out, whenever I hear the words grey morality and nuance I can't help burn cringe, that's how much dragon age has ruined it for me.

It's also so incredibly funny how the devs are genuinely surprised that most of the players are pro mage, like of course we are?

i think it's particularly extremely aggravating, the way bioware writers write about a pantheon as if polytheistic religions are simply a thing of the past and dead and some kind of mystery/mythology. according to bioware, this kind of writing for polytheistic religions is fine because no real religion these days would everrrrrrr worship multiple gods /sarcasm. (note that the links are just some examples and not comprehensive in the least)

there's a lot of writing choices i quite simply disagree with in dai, and there's some that are just... i don't even disagree with them because that implies it's something to argue about. some of their writing choices are just wrong. after borrowing so heavily from ethnic groups to shape their fictional histories, the disrespect of writing their fictional oppressed minorities as being responsible for their own oppression because they were not "open" enough to include/absorb expy christianity into their religious beliefs and fought back against violent colonialism. the resulting clumsy collation between isr*el and the indigenous people of the americas wanting to reclaim their lands stolen from them by white colonisers makes my blood boil.

ameridan is just another piece of the puzzle that makes me seethe. we have a man who apparently ~existed before hostilities between the elves and the humans~ which is now the fault of drakon's son who invaded the dales after ameridan was long gone. that's already absolute bullshit because ameridan lived in the fucking dales. elves only started living in the dales AFTER ANDRASTE'S REBELLION. after the fall of arlathan, and hundreds of years of enslavement at the hands of tevinter humans???

additionally, the battle of red crossing happened in 2:9 glory, but tensions between the elves and humans had been building up since the second blight. drakon the first died in 1:45 but the elves apparently did "nothing" to help montsimmard when it was overrun by darkspawn in 1:25 divine - twenty years before his death, there was already simmering resentment. additionally, it was drakon the first that expanded the orlesian empire and the orlesian chantry - wotv2 notes his battles against the darkspawn did more to spread the chant of light (specifically, the orlesian chant of light which he, yknow, fucking made up) than any of his other attempts. by the time the exalted march on the dales happens, over three quarters of thedas is under orlesian rule. maferath himself handed the dales to the surviving elves from andraste's campaign in -165 ancient and the elves lived in the dales peacefully until the orlesian chantry was salivating at its borders. and the orlesian chantry has a history of wiping out "cults" - i.e. other sects of their own religion that differ from belief, no matter how minor, to their own. including, notably, the wholesale genocide of a non-violent sect centered around fertility rituals and, later, the dragon worshipping sect in haven off their own land. (and i'm willing to BET MONEY that they were originally alamarri themselves, considering that andraste was brought there to rest, and considering how cultural variance in religion usually occurs [i.e. through the blending/adoption of folk beliefs or the cultural/religious practices from Before]. so the andrastians slaughtered the cult AND THEN TOOK THEIR FUCKING LAND.)

the entire way andrastianism is treated in inquisition makes me violent. and unfortunately, it does not look like it's going to change - there's been multiple statements about how the maker's existence will continue to remain "a mystery" out of a reluctance to confirm or deny the existence of a One True God which, coupled with how they've shat on every other religion in the game - the tevinter chantry, the qun, the stone, the elven pantheon, every other sect worshipping the maker/andraste - gives me absolutely no hope that the writing team is going to get their heads out of their asses about it.

[cycas]

Fanfic: what is it anyway?

This post set my thoughts rambling about the edges of fanfic and its many definitions again.

At one end of the Fanfic Definition Spectrum, you have people who consider fanfic to be stories written in the time period to which modern copyright laws apply, which use copyrighted characters and settings, and can be shared publicly only because they make no money.

Many people seem to believe that the fanfic that is closest to this definition is also least likely to be 'real writing' because of its relative lack of originality.

I don't think this is true. Writing within a set of tight constraints may look easy, but doing it well is as hard as, say, sticking to a complex rhyme scheme or writing to a strict word count.

The fact that some people are doing the thing without any great skill does not devalue the people who are doing it with artistry. Disliking a story for conforming to a pattern is individual taste, not an absolute judgement of writing skill in the task undertaken.

This definition of fanfic is obviously incomplete. Fanfic can be and is written for canons outside legal copyright protection. And a great deal of content published as fanfic is highly original, in that it does not use the setting it is riffing off, makes massive plot and characterisation changes, focuses on characters who barely appear in the canon.

Sometimes the only hint that this story is fanfic of a copyrighted work is that it has been tagged as such.

Some of these stories are written by skilled writers with a depth of research and creativity that frankly seem to outshine the work they tagged as their inspiration.

Some are not much of a delight to read for anyone except presumably the writer. I am not sure we can deduce anything from this, except that the barriers to entry are low and there's no requirement for fanfic to please anyone but the writer. The fact that there are terrible fanfics does not make the superb fanfics bad, in the same way that the novel is not permanently scarred by the terrible works that have been given that label.

But originality is definitely not the border of fanfic. Fanfic CAN be commentary on an original canon, but it can also be a story that nobody has ever told before in which all the characters are ferrets.

So both the legal limitation (it's about copyrighted stuff) and the originality limitation fail. Neither is a good border around the outside of 'what is fanfic'.

At the other end of the Fanfic Definition Spectrum, you have people who consider all writing that uses existing ideas, characters and worldbuilding to be fanfic, regardless of date or copyright status.

A good thing about this approach is that it actually includes all the fanfic.

The first definition means that all the fanfic about things that aren't copyrighted works of fiction is excluded, despite the intentions of the writers.

If I write a story about, say, Beorhtnoth, and publish it as fanfic, I can't see why I should be excluded from being read and judged as part of the body of works-that-are-fanfic, because both the historical figure and the literary work The Battle of Maldon fall way outside the period covered by modern copyright law.

The awkward thing is that this broader definition includes content that pre-dates the term 'fanfic', and/or co-opts writers who did not think they were writing fanfic into that category.

Tolkien wrote a story based on The Battle of Maldon, and presumably did not intend it to be fanfic, though it absolutely fits all parts of the fanfic definition apart from the copyright/date term invented one.

I think I'm coming back to the definition: that thing people have been doing since the dawn of time? Some of us call it fanfic, when we do it, now.

But that does lead me again to say: why can we NOT call it fanfic when someone else does it? Why is that label writer-opt-in, rather than reader-applied? It seems like the only reason that really fits here is 'because a lot of people think the word fanfic is an insult.'

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

So, I weirdly haven’t written enough about this on this blog so far, given what a big thing it is for me – I’m going to the fucking UK this summer. For real this time. For real. Here is a post about it.

I first posted on this blog about wanting to go to the UK in early 2021, I think. I remember making posts about how maybe once the vaccines were finally released, and I was all vaccinated, travel would be safe, and I could go for a little while before I start my college courses again. That didn’t happen for quite a few reasons.

I spent much of 2021 planning a hypothetical trip, knowing it probably couldn’t really happen, because obviously things like this don’t really happen, but I needed something to fantasize about in the depths of lockdown. It’s odd that a global pandemic made me interested in international travel for the first time. Pre-COVID, my life was so full of a single sport that I didn’t really have time to think about anything else as a hobby. I was on the road most weekends, but that road was the 401, driving off to the same few cities anywhere from two to twelve hours away, to sleep in a cheap hotel or on someone’s gym floor and then shout at teenagers at day and immediately drive home. Every once in a while we’d go to a tournament in the States, which counted as exciting international travel. The idea of actually seeing places that are not in or near the border with my country just hadn’t occurred to me.

Then the world ended, I fell deep into the Britcom rabbit hole, all that stuff. And in 2021, I got really into 1) memorizing how to label all the countries and major cities in the world, and all the counties or other regional areas in the UK and Ireland, on a blank map, because I’d learned that the larger world existed and I wanted to be clear about where it all is, and 2) going through places I’ve never been on Google Earth, usually while listening to audio comedy. I also took to looking up things to do in the UK on Trip Advisor, mapping the route on Google Maps and following it on Google Earth, knowing this was all for a hypothetical fantasy trip but still researching things like train fares and schedules because it was more fun if it felt like it could be real.

I’m fascinated by the idea of places that are Different From Here being actual real physical places where people could actually go. Which is especially weird in this case because I actually have been to the UK. I have a godmother there, whom I’ve met in person three times, twice when she’s come to Canada and once when for my sixteenth birthday she paid for my mother and I to go to England for a week. We stayed at her place in London, did all the tourist-y things, also spent a day in some spot in Somerset but I’m fuzzy on where or why, it was 2006. My clearest memory of the week is seeing Spamalot on St. Patrick’s Day and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I’ve also got fairly clear memories of climbing stairs at St. Paul’s Cathedral, thinking Westminster Abbey was the most beautiful building I’d ever seen, and seeing some extremely cool stuff at the British Library including some original handwritten Beatles lyrics. And I remember the tube and being impressed that the cars really do have driver doors on the wrong side, that’s not just a thing they made up on Fawlty Towers.

Still, it was so long ago, and it was such a short time compared to the amount of time that I’ve spent watching Britian on TV, that it does feel a bit like Britain is a fictional place that exists on TV. Obviously I realize that’s a very ignorant North American thing for me to say, and in my defense I think I know a hell of a lot more about Britain than the average ignorant North American. I can label all the regions in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in under five minutes. But I’ve got to admit, on a visceral level, learning all that stuff does feel a bit like memorizing lore in a fantasy novel.

There is kind of an appeal in the idea that… okay, the last time I was this obsessed with something besides a sport in which I actually participated, I was a kid in the Harry Potter fandom. I was a kid who read a lot of books, and a lot of my favourites happened to be British fantasy or sci-fi novels (Harry Potter, CS Lewis, Tolkein, His Dark Materials, Douglas Adams), but Harry Potter was the one that took over my life from the ages of about ten to fourteen. You classic situation of – didn’t have friends in real life, all my social interaction came from Harry Potter message boards, a vast chunk of my free time dedicated to reading every passage of the books over and over and over and analyzing them and writing things about them and I made some friends on the internet who loved Luna Lovegood as much as I did. Then I got to high school and started wrestling and made some friends in real life and slowly moved away from online fandom, didn’t do anything except that for fifteen years, then the world ended, I came back and found a new online fandom that was also British but had less magic and more panel shows, then the author turned out to be a terrible person and ruined my childhood.

Anyway. The point is that I remember when I was a kid, obviously I spent ages fantasizing about being able to actually go to all those places in Harry Potter. But I couldn’t, because those are not real places. Well, my new foray into fandom also feels a bit like that – like this fictional thing I’ve got obsessed with that no one around me knows anything about but some people on the internet are into it. Except that this time, the place where all these things happen is actually a real place, and I can pay money to go there. This concept remains amazing to me.

So I mapped out the idea of this trip a couple of years ago, and for a long time, it stayed in a limbo between fantasy and genuine possibility. I did actually start working out budgets and putting money aside for it, but all the while thinking this won’t actually work. I was starting to do things post-lockdown again, the sense that we were all locked down so nothing is real so I may as well engaged in some escapism and plan some fantasy trips – that started to give way to regular life, and in regular life, I’m not a person who does shit like that. I can’t just fly across the ocean to see a fictional place. I still had it vaguely in my head that maybe someday I’d like to, but I stopped actively planning anything.

But at the same time, the whole concept of Britain was starting to feel a bit less fictional (I’m… I’m feeling the need to clarify, again, that this is just a sort of emotional automatic response to put “the place where Britcom happens” in the “fictional” category in my brain… I did not at any point genuinely think the United Kingdom was fictional… especially since I’ve been there before). I do remember the first time I got physical, tangible proof that the people in the fictional Britcom world are real, when Russell Howard came to my city in March 2022 (my then-girlfriend got us tickets because she knew I liked British comedians, she was excited about it so I didn’t tell her that actually I’m mad at him for the Jordan Peterson apologism so don’t want to go, it’s not something I’d have chosen myself but it was a thoughtful gift and to be fair an extremely fun night), and I could not get over the idea that the man from the fictional place was here in real life displacing air like he’s a real human being and actually all of it is physically real. Over the next few months I did an 8.5-hour drive to New York City to see Nish Kumar, and then two months later a 2-hour drive to see him do the same show in Montreal, because it was that fucking great a show. I also saw James Acaster in Montreal, and a club night with Dara O’Briain and Fern Brady and Phil Wang and Tom Allen and Sindhu Vee and every single one of them was an actual real person breathing the same air as me. Before the show I saw Dara O’Briain on the street and was so shocked that I hit my mother too hard to show her and she jumped and the commotion attracted his attention and I didn’t know what to do except stare at him like he was a zoo animal until he smiled awkwardly at me and went on his way.

Things like this did rather renew my interest in a trip, not just for the novelty of seeing a place that feels fictional, but for the more practical purposes of seeing my favourite comedians live. My interests within Britcom were starting to shift significantly toward stand-up, I got obsessed for a while with learning everything about the history of the Edinburgh Festival in the 21st Century, it seemed like another world, the time of the Chocolate Milk Gang and 24-hour shows from the early 00s, but then I watched videos on the internet that were filmed at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival and realized this place is actually real and still happening now and it is technically possible to go there.

After that, the concept rapidly became de-fictionalized in my mind when I sent someone a message on a comedy forum, in the hopes of finding a few comedy recordings that I heard existed, and by complete coincidence stumbled upon the best person I possibly could have. I’d thought worst case scenario is he doesn’t reply and I will be left to assume he saw my message and considered it horribly rude, great scenario is he has a few things I’m asking for, amazing best case scenario is maybe he has lots of stuff and is willing to share. As it happened, I got the best case scenario, plus far more than that. Specifically, a the coolest fucking person I could possibly have found, as a new friend, direct interaction that made all of this seem a hell of a lot less fictional very, very fast. He said things like “So are you ever going to come out here and actually see this stuff yourself”, and I said things like “Obviously I have plotted a route and looked up train fares but don’t be silly, that was just the stuff of lockdown-induced dreams.”

I quickly started planning things more seriously, but at the same time, the editing work I’d been doing started drying up, I had a bit of a financial crisis where I became concerned that I’d be unable to pay rent, and couldn’t save for a trip. I followed the 2023 Edinburgh Festival from afar, from NextUp streams and hearing stories about it from a friend who actually went there and sent me pictures, which was so fucking cool, and it was all so very very real.

I got a new job, this one much harder because it involves leaving the house all day for five days a week, but also it’s much more stable than the editing work I did for all of lockdowns, and I was able to start saving money in the second half of 2023. I learned that the place where I work shuts down for the last week of July, and the Monday of the following week is a holiday. So I put in a request for just four days off, the Tuesday-Friday, to create a two-week holiday. One week in London at the end of July, and one week in Edinburgh during the first week of the Edinburgh Festival.

The time off got approved (barely, I was told I can’t book any other vacation time in 2024, but I got it) in late 2023, and it was so exciting, and that’s the first time it started to feel even a little bit real. Then I booked an Air B&B for the week in Edinburgh, because it’s my understanding that accommodation availability and prices are a huge issue there and you want to book early. I think I did well, though. Found a place that’s not cheap but not unfeasibly expensive, I can have my own room and it’s a 50-minute walk or 10-minute bus from Edinburgh city centre. It was so exciting to book the place, put some money down, finally have something on the books for sure. Though I did triple check that it’s fully refundable if I cancel up until pretty much the day before, just in case something goes wrong.

I booked the flights over Christmas. They weren’t cheap, but I was able to afford them without destroying my ability to pay rent, because it turns out there is a reason why I put myself through human interaction for 8-10 hours five days a week. I did pay an extra fee to give myself the ability to pay another fee and cancel them, because still, it felt like I can’t be totally sure this will actually work. But that was a big commitment.

And that’s pretty well the main things sorted out. I still have to book a whole lot of train tickets, but I have the flights. I have the time off work. I have the Edinburgh accommodation. I have accommodation in London, because the absolute coolest person I could possibly come across on a comedy message board has a spare room, and is extremely kind and generous with his time and space, and I’ve said some pretty disparaging things about that message board before (based on some quite bad threads from like fifteen years ago, that I spent weeks reading in their entirety because, you know, autism), and I would like to take them all back.

Now they’ve announced the first bunch of acts at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival, and I’ve been going through picking out which ones look most interesting to me, and for maybe the first time, it’s finally feeling completely, entirely real. This is happening. For real this time. I am going through an Edinburgh Festival catalogue not just to take screenshots of the most interesting blurbs so I can save them in a folder and/or post them on my blog to say here’s an interesting piece of history. I am going through it to pick what shows I wish to see.

So here’s my plan, that I’m writing because I now feel confident that I think it’s actually going to happen. Obviously I have a spreadsheet with various tabs, and a KMZ file so I can open Google Earth with all the places I might potentially want to see already marked. I have been planning this trip for years. I have two weeks in the UK, and I don’t want to waste a single second. I want to make sure all that time spent planning comes to something, because as a fundamental part of my personality, I have always believed that there is a level of planning you can do to guarantee that everything goes right. This belief has been proven wrong time and time again, but I’ve never tried something with this much planning beforehand, so surely this time it’ll work. No taking a chance on some tourist attraction that might turn out to be shit, because I’ll have looked at it all on Google Earth beforehand and ranked things in order of how cool they look.

I have organized my spreadsheet into seven tabs: overview, plan by day, places to eat, things to see London, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge, and things to pack. I have organized each “things to see” tab into three sections: things I want to see for reasons related to general tourism, things I want to see for reasons related to comedy, and things I want to see for reasons related to Harry Potter. I apologize for the latter, and obviously I will not be doing anything that would give revenue to JK Rowling. But nothing JK Rowling can say in the 2020s will change my childhood, and I need to spend some amount of time indulging my childhood dreams of running around fancy buildings feeling like I’m in a magical British land.

London, tourism: pretty straightforward. Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral are on the list, because I remember how cool they were last time, and because for some reason when I stopped being Christian at age 16 I did not also get rid of my awe at fancy churches. I want to see Parliament and related areas, I want to try to get a picture of the Number 10 door as seen in Yes Minister. I want to see some bridges. Take a cable car across a river. Go look at Douglas Adams in Highgate Cemetery (I realize there are more famous people than Douglas Adams there, I’d like to see them too, but mainly Douglas Adams). Go see what The British Library has going on while I’m there. There are too many pubs on the list given the fact that I’m currently trying to stop drinking, I am going to cut some of those pubs off the list and I’m just trying to decide which ones, but I really love a good pub and the ones in London look so cool and even if I can’t have a pint I want to sit there in the atmosphere and have a burger or some shit.

Harry Potter tour of London is simple. Obviously I want to go look at King’s Cross Station, I did it when I was 16 and it was so fucking cool, I don’t care how stupid that is. Otherwise, I’ve looked up three different areas that were used in filming Diagon Alley, and according to Google Earth, seem like the do sort of look like Diagon Alley-like places. That’s what’s interesting to me. I’m not really interested in places where the movies just happened to be filmed (the movies were fine, I’ve seen them a couple of times each, but it was the books that I read until I had them nearly memorized), I want to see places that look like they could be where the books were actually set. And Goodwin’s Court appears to look like where Harry Potter could have actually been set. So I’ve made an appointment to go walk down a road.

For the comedy-related locations in London, there are a few venues I want to see. Ideally while something’s playing in them, but even if there’s nothing I’m interested in at the Soho Theatre while I’m there, I’d still want to go in and just see the building, after the all the shows I’ve seen and heard that were recorded there. Same with The Bill Murray. Battersea Arts Centre. I also wish to make a pilgrimage to the bit of Regent’s Park where Daniel Kitson’s done some of the most landmark nights of comedy in the last twenty years. Obviously I want to go stand outside the gates to the Taskmaster house and see just how close it is to that golf course. (There will also be a few hours of the itinerary where I might just leave some of the details blank, no need to get too much into what I want to see there, it’s in my spreadsheet as just “Crystal Palace”, and I will say that if you don’t want people to go look at a place where you used to live, don’t make your address the title of your theatre show – I need to stress again, just so we’re clear about what level of creepiness I’m talking about here, it is a former address, not anywhere that anyone significant lives now or has lived for the last fifteen years, it's just the subject of comedy stories that are now long in the past, as are various surrounding landmarks, it’s archaeology.)

Now, in Edinburgh I’ve put a lot fewer things on the itinerary, because I want to leave most of my time for going to see comedy shows. And going to see a couple of music shows, because that first wave of events they’ve announced includes a couple of traditional Scottish music things that I am so excited about, it’s going to be mostly comedy but I do want to do that as well. Celtic music, Harry Potter, British comedy – all the biggest special interests of my life besides the one where you beat people up, all easy to access at this festival (I mean, technically Edinburgh has something called wrestling too, but it’s best if I don’t hear anyone try to compare the Max + Ivan wrestling to the sport that I do).

I do want to climb Arthur’s Seat, because I’ve done it about a hundred times in Google Earth so I just have to do it in real life. When Mark Watson released his book last year, I got the signed and dedicated version and he said we can tell him about a problem we have for him to solve in the dedication. I said my problem is I’m going to London and Edinburgh next year and need advice on where to go, he said I should climb Scott’s Monument. Even though my levels of respect for Mark Watson have dropped significantly since that book actually came out, I am still going to climb Scott’s Monument because Mark Watson told me to.

Similarly, this extremely kind and cool person I know recently got the chance to get me an autographed copy of Tim Key’s new book (which I unfortunately won’t get until I go to London and pick it up in person, but it looks great), where he also asked Tim to give me some advice for my trip. Tim Key said to go to Mosque Kitchen, and Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, so I’m doing that. Oh, and while I’m in London I have to go to a place called Kebab Kid, because it’s Nish Kumar’s favourite shawarma place in England, which I know because I know a guy who could just walk up to Nish Kumar after one of his gigs and ask him what his favourite shawarma place is. Have I mentioned how fucking cool this is?

Anyway. That’s the extent of my interest in Edinburgh tourism, mainly. I mean, if I were going when the festival weren’t on, there would be plenty of other stuff I want to see. But I don’t want to take time away from festival events. I might do the castle. The castle’s probably cool. I definitely want to walk up that hill, as I’ve done many times on Google Earth, and look at the castle. Whether I pay to go inside will depend if there’s a hole in the comedy schedule, I guess.

In the Edinburgh – Harry Potter section, I have a few things. Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, the graveyard with the story about the dog that’s probably bullshit (I mean, it happened, but I think someone was just feeding that dog) but the story about how it inspired Harry Potter character names that’s true. Go get a picture of Tom Riddle’s grave. I’ve marked a couple of streets and a couple of buildings that look particularly like they could be from Harry Potter, those are on the list of places to walk. There’s a Harry Potter store that I want to go in and look through the stuff because the interior seems really cool, but I promise I would never spend money in there.

And then Edinburgh – comedy will probably take care of itself. I want to see The Stand and The Gilded Balloon, as the sites of many of my favourite comedy events over the last twenty years. But I’m hoping I’ll end up in those places anyway to see shows, so no need to make a special trip. If not, though, I’m making a special trip. I have to see the stage where the cow got torn apart. I absolutely have to go see it in person.

There is also the Cambridge tab, because I have blocked off one of my London days to take a train to Cambridge and back. I have made a Google Earth document with about 20 of the most interesting-seeming colleges marked. Obviously I’m not going to see 20 colleges, I’m going to look at them all in Google Earth and then rank them by how cool they look and go see as many as I can in order. I have also, of course, marked down which ones let you take tours and at what times. The place I’m most excited to see is the Wren Library, which appears to be a library from Harry Potter or His Dark Materials or something. I want to see Trinity College because it’s the college on which Douglas Adams based the college in the first Dirk Gently book. A few of the colleges have chapels that look really pretty and are interesting to me because I have for some reason not lost my awe of pretty churches. And mainly, I just want to walk around the Cambridge University grounds looking at stuff.

Oh, and we’re leaving another day to take a train to Kent, where they have an archive of stand-up comedy materials that I wish to see. But I haven’t made a tab for that, because I just want to see some stuff in the University of Kent and then go back to London.

I am also hoping I can block out one day from the Edinburgh week to not book any shows, and just take trains around Scotland. I have always wanted to take trains around Scotland. I have always romanticized trains, I have always romanticized Scotland, taking a train through rural parts of Scotland will make me feel like I’m on the Hogwarts Express, it’s everything my over-romanticizing heart fantasized about when imagining this trip. I’ve checked, and while it would be an incredibly long day, it is possible to take a train from Edinburgh to Mallaig in the morning, have a couple of hours in Mallaig, and take another train back at night. This would take me, twice, through something that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world, from Glasgow to Mallaig. Mallaig is a tiny village on the West Coast of Scotland and it’s got a hiking trail and a pub and I just want to take a train across a country and walk around the trail and then sit in that pub and look at the ocean. I want that so badly. It’s been a rough couple of months, I find it hard to spend 8 to 10 hours a day interacting with other people, the thought that one day in early August I might spend one hour sitting in a pub in Mallaig looking at the ocean is really getting me the through the day at this point. There are a few pubs in Mallaig, but obviously I’ve picked out my favourite. I want to eat seafood. I love seafood. That’s not just a Mallaig thing, seafood is my favourite food and I always eat lots of it when I visit the East Coast of Canada because it’s better near the ocean. All of Britain is near the ocean, so I want to eat all their seafood.

Okay, that’s the plan. I was going to write about what I’m thinking in terms of actual shows to see, but I might let that turn into a different post. Right now, I’m just excited about the idea of posting this on the internet because it is real and I am actually going to do it and having this to look forward to is way too big a proportion of my motivation at this point in my life.

[liugeaux]

Thoughts on Strike Force Five

I've always had a respect for late-night talk shows. They're a staple of American culture and are synonymous with classic television. Almost vaudevillian, they're a manicured window into the world of entertainment that for generations has reflected the pulse of the nation.

With the writers' strike lasting all summer, the 5 big late-night hosts, Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, and Oliver jumped on Zoom and made a podcast to support their unemployed staff. It was a noble gesture, whose only flaw was arriving 3 months too late.

They took turns hosting an hour-long podcast where they chatted about their experiences as talk show hosts, how their shows are similar yet differ both in front and behind the cameras, their respective career routes that led them to late night, and even some fun personal life anecdotes.

The stories and convos were fun, hilarious, and often fascinating, but the real meat of the cast was getting to hear their banter. 5 professional funny dudes, gently ribbing each other while clearly maintaining a healthy friendship. The show revealed a lot about each host. Everything from their ability to tell an unscripted story to how quick they are on their feet. Each host has their own strengths and as morbid as this sounds, getting them on a cast together was a unique venue in which to size them up.

Here's what I learned about each host after listening to all 12 episodes of Strike Force Five (insert thunderclap). We'll sort these by Late Night tenure.

Jimmy Kimmel (2003-present: Jimmy Kimmel Live!)

Oddly enough, Kimmel has been on the air longer than any of his peers and despite being the least naturally funny of the group, seems like the most driven. Not to say that Kimmel isn't funny, he's just not comedian-funny. He is great at long-form jokes, and situational pranks, and some of his more absurd stunts border on artistic brilliance. Kimmel is undoubtedly a good hang. He comes from a more awkwardly offensive time, and in this unscripted show you could, at times, hear him wanting to drift towards Man Show style humor. To his credit, he never strayed too far from his Disney-approved late-night persona, which at this point might actually just be his natural self. He's an idea man, and the bigger the idea, the more he wants to do it. He was apparently the brains and engine behind Strike Force Five and those traits track through his surprisingly long and often bizarre career.

Stephen Colbert (2004-2014: The Colbert Report, 2015-present: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)

As the oldest host on the cast, Colbert emerged from the Second City Chicago improv scene and found a home in the John Stewart stable of comedy writers. His journey to network television was weird, primarily because before taking his job at CBS he was famous for reporting news as a fictionalized version of himself on the Colbert Report. On Strike Force Five, Colbert was very much the elder statesman. His storytelling style was a noticeably slower template, leading to his tales being a bit long-winded and meander-y. In another setting that would be fine, but alongside his late-night peers, the difference was much more obvious. Part of this might also be a by-product of his Southern upbringing, but for what it's worth, as of 2023, I think The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is the best "traditional" late-night show on TV. Colbert feels like a writer's comedian, he has a brilliant delivery when given a script and, if needed, he can seamlessly fall back on his improv training.

Jimmy Fallon (2009-2014: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 2014-present, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon)

The most aloof member of the Strive Force is easily Jimmy Fallon. I've long thought of Fallon as the accidental lottery winner of the Leno vs. Conan late-night war of 2010. He was a no-brainer to replace Conan on Late Night, but once Leno's original successor was out of the picture, the big-boy-job of the coveted Tonight Show fell into his lap in 2014. He's turned it into the most modern late-night show with his higher-concept, Youtube-friendly, celebrity bits. Jimmy's energy is what the Tonight Show needs, but when placed among his peers, Fallon seems outclassed. He's inherently more charming than the rest of the Strike Force, and pretty fast on his feet, but for long stretches of the podcast, it almost seemed like he was either on-mute or not paying attention. Maybe he was waiting for his opening and just more polite than the others, but his soft-spoken demeanor got bulldozed through much of the series. With that being said, his willingness to play the buffoon might have turned him into the star of Strike Force Five. The infamous episode 5, in which Fallon created a match-game style quiz for the hosts and their spouses quickly devolved into a confusing train wreck that only got funnier as it spiraled into chaos. The potential for antics like this became one of the reasons to check out the show. Fallon leaning into his sheep-ish oaf routine had him emerging as the comedic battery of many of the episodes. He seems like the kind of comic that can show up half-prepared and still crush a room, just because his quick wit and charm do most of the heavy lifting. The most disappointing thing about Fallon's presence on the podcast was a complete lack of acknowledgment of the Rolling Stone article scandal, which was published a mere week after Strike Force Five's debut.

Seth Meyers (2014-present: Late Night with Seth Meyers)

Meyers is secretly the funniest member of the Strike Force Five. While his career may not be as prestigious as his podcast-mates, (this was hilariously made clear as the crew discussed the sad t-shirt rack of Late Night shirts in the NBC studio store at 30 Rock), Meyers is the most accomplished stand-up comedian of the bunch and that can't be ignored. He's the fastest with a joke, the funniest with that joke, and can craft a long-form story from his life with a careful-comedic-nuance I've never heard from any of the others. His version of Late Night strays from what Letterman, Conan, and Fallon did by being more of a Weekend Update or The Daily Show-style news desk show, but he's comfortable with that format and it works for his humor. A lot of Strike Force Five was 5 funny dudes fighting for air time, and while Kimmel and Colbert did the most talking, Meyer's joke-per-minute rate was off the charts compared to the two more talkative hosts. Like one of his predecessors, Conan, Seth Meyers does not get enough credit for the quality of his work and like Conan, he will likely get screwed out of The Tonight Show job. Conan's was a true screw job, but Seth's will more-than-likely be an age hurdle. Meyers is the same age as Fallon and both of them got their current shows around the age of 40. If Fallon hosts The Tonight Show for 25 years (which is reasonable, Leno finally left the show when he was 64) both him and Meyers will be 65. I don't see NBC giving their premiere late-night franchise to a 65-year-old Meyers. Note: Watch Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby on Netflix and you will understand my love for his stand-up.

John Oliver (2014-present: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

Like Colbert, John Oliver comes from Jon Stewert's stable of Daily Show correspondents. He's carved out a unique place in the Sunday night landscape, where his often outlandish and troll-like dark humor has thrived. He's my personal favorite of the bunch, and his show is the most likely to teach you something genuinely valuable. He's the only non-American-born host on Strike Force Five and the only host without a nightly show. His inclusion is curious, yet welcomed. Juxtaposed with his Strike Force peers, Oliver's bitingly dark wit and chaos-favoring humor stands out. No one enjoyed Fallon's Match-Game going up in flames as much as John Oliver and he seems to genuinely gain his life force from getting under the skin of the subjects on his show. On the podcast, Oliver was one of the more quiet hosts, and that led to his presence feeling more like a courtesy than an obligation. In my mind, I can hear him saying in his most polite British voice, "Oh, I'm aware that I don't exactly belong here, but I'm appreciative of the opportunity." Like Colbert's Southern roots, maybe John's just too British to dominate time on a podcast with so many white American hosts. Oliver is a great stand-up comic too. Like Meyers, if his TV career ended tomorrow, he could easily fall back on his remarkable stand-up talents and find excellent work for the rest of his life. John Oliver is a gem that I think would be dullened by a nightly show, and as a huge fan of both him and his show, I'm super grateful he was asked to be a part of the podcast. Hearing him hold his own with the more mainstream late-night stars was wonderful.

As a whole, the show was really fun. It's a snapshot of a moment in time that will never be captured again. Imagine if, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Tom Snyder, Jay Leno, and Dennis Miller had a radio show in 1997. What would that have sounded like? What would we have learned from it? It's just fascinating. I guess I need to mention the John Stewart and David Letterman episodes of Strike Force Five. It was great getting two legends of the format in on the conversation, but I don't know if it was necessary. Note: Letterman is super old now, but he's still sharp as a tack and maybe the best to ever do the late-night job.

One of the elephants in the room on Strike Force Five is the distinctive lack of any representation of people of color. As it stands, I'm not aware of any current major shows hosted by people of color. Both the Late Late Show and Daily Show's desks are currently vacant with the former likely to not be filled at all. The all-white Strike Force Five panel might just be a by-product of who is still watching these shows. It's probably middle-aged white people who are irreversibly accustomed to watching late-night television, and as the format dies, they will go down with the ship. In turn, the risk-averse networks stick with the white male hosts to not scare their tiny remaining audience away. It's not just, but sadly it's probably true.

Network talk shows might be a dying genre, but while they cling to relevance, Strike Force Five could go down as an important moment in the history of late-night television and I'm thrilled to have been here to experience it in real-time.

[fagcrisis]

i am asking abt funerals. my starwars knowledge is tiny but my interest in fictional funerals is large please do tell

THIS GOT INCREDIBLY LONG I APOLOGIZE

okayokayokay. i actually had multiple extremely long posts about this on my old blog but theyre like lost media (unless some of my old star wars mutuals have them but i think only like, nick and lucky remain)

coruscant is the capital city of the galactic republic in star wars, and i mean that literally, because the entire planet down to the core and up to the very border of the atmosphere it is a city. it was originally inhabited by zhells and taungs, the latter being the spiritual (if not biological) ancestors of the mandalorians, who lay claim to the planet city because of this connection and its the cause of their conflict with the republic. stream vode an

theres a criminal lack of stories that utilize the incredible potential coruscant has (in my humble opinion), save for one legends book i havent read and a level in a game i havent played. i think coruscant being the melting pot for the entire galaxy's cultures and species could create really interesting areas and conflicts that would be worth exploring if star wars was good instead of very bad (except for andor). i also had a series of posts theorizing about different districts having humidity controlled and even flooded districts, areas where the air is not filled with oxygen and so on. me and @katschipper have an oc named kees, they're an ex jedi turned pizza delivery guy and i would also love to talk more about him and the conflicts and such he encounters (id also love to write things with him but we cant have everything im a busy man)

so anyway now that you have context. coruscant is a planet city with either trillions (canon) or one trillion (legends) inhabitants. law enforcement is shown to be ineffective at the best of times, and straight up replaced with jedi in some cases (you should ask me about my thoughts on this also) and even if they were effective, acab. crime and poverty run rampant through the city, housing is a nightmare, healthcare is basically nonexistent in the lower levels, the corpse per hour ratio must be INSANE. where the fuck do they put all the corpses

we very rarely see funerals in star wars, and save for a few theyre almost all jedi funerals. the jedi also have interesting funerary rites you should ALSO ask me about, by the way, and ive heard there is a great funeral scene in andor but ive yet to watch andor (im on it guys). the only funeral that actually takes place on coruscant that i know of, is in the clone wars and it's a jedi funeral. so beyond this point is purely headcanon zone

because on coruscant social standing is extremely linearly tied to the levels, i came up with two main places where people are laid to rest.

the first is necropolis districts. because coruscant originally was just a planet like any other, populated by the ancestors of humanoid species and more specifically mandalorians im assuming (based on my knowledge of mandalorian funerary rites, also super interesting, ask me about that) that some sort of mass grave situation must have been going on as that is how mandalorians bury their dead. after the taungs left and the city gradually enveloped more and more of the continents and eventually oceans, having cemetaries in every city must have become incredibly ineffective with the amount of dead

coruscant is comprised of levels that are split into districts. the lowest levels of the city are not officially inhabited, haunted by strange creatures and PROBABLY RADIATION ASK ME ABOUT NUCLEAR CORUSCANT. i think on every level there must exist one, if not more funeral district, a necropolis spanning half a continent housing more dead than the level has people. sanitation has to be on POINT in a city of this size, and due to space restrictions people cannot afford to not burn their dead. that is a right reserved only to the richest of the rich, just as sunlight and breathable air is. because coruscant is repeatedly shown to be a hypercapitalist society, taking inspiration from cyberpunk media (aka really weirdly orientalist i could also talk about this for ages) i'm assuming a space for the ashes of a loved one, or even a nameplate you can bring flowers to, is a luxury few can afford. the industry around death is massive with necropolis districts being surrounded on all sides by generations of families who have made their living off the funerary industry. funeral districts are not solemn, quite the opposite, bustling with life and new corpse deliveries to the incineration rooms every hour.

a moderately well off person living close enough to the surface to be able to dream of seeing the sky one day only has to start worrying about their final resting place probably around the time they retire, but for poorer families on the lower levels it is a constant worry just like making rent every day. diaspora species and cultures that require more complicated funerary rites have traditions that specifically grew around the restrictive laws of coruscant. ashes or the bodies of the desceased cannot be kept in the home, and being discovered with them after the allotted mourning time comes with a hefty fine or a long stay in a prison colony where your family will never get your body back from. certain workplaces offer insurance for your corpse up to 3 years after your death, so your family does not have to worry about the rent for your grave while they mourn, but obviously these jobs comes with a way higher risk of injury or death. when a child is born their parents have to consider where they will be buried. coruscant, the beating heart of the galaxy, is a planet obsessed with death.

as the skyscrapers of coruscants reach ever higher, and as the lower districts begin to be choked by their corpses the upper crust of coruscant must consider a new approach, and so as always, they turn to the sky

there are four naturally formed moons that orbit the planet, centax 1, 2 and 3 and Hesperidium. Centax one is a penal colony (also interesting but not relevant) 2 housed a jedi training facility for a bit and then palpatines weird ass legends bullshit, and 3 was blown up by the fucking yuuzhan vong i forgot that happened jesus christ star wars is stupid. the planet is also orbited by so many artificial moons and satellites to the point where direct entry to the athmospehere is a challenge and many ships just dock on stations around the planet and their passengers and cargo take shuttles to the surface.

i think there are maybe a dozen funeral stations orbiting coruscant taking away precious airspace from way more important things, where you can pick out of several options for your body after your death. these include being completely suspended in time, surgery on your barely cold body so you are even more beautiful and the people who visit the station (because im sure they do, its the weird ass shit rich people tend to do) can be jealous and marvel at how much better previous generations were. these stations are as much exhibitions of the wealth and power of the desceased, as places of mourning, if not more so.

if you really are rich, if your family has maintained their power and their money for enough generations, maybe you can be buried in real soil on centax 3 (before the yuuzhan vong blow it up) and brag about it to your less rich friends at parties, and list the benefits of natural decay to the environment, as you sip imported wine they made in the orphan crushing machine or something

regardless of social standing the obsession with death is rampant throughout coruscant and many people commit egregious crimes for their body to be disposed of exactly how they would like, even disregarding their actual life in the process. coruscanti movies and books and music are extremely concerned with the subject and many romance movies are about couples dying together on their own terms or someone attempting to bury their beloved according to their wishes. sanitation workers are somehwat demonized due to this. many parents wish their child would be born force sensitive, so they can be buried in the jedi temple with their body intact, instead of whatever fate they will have as a civilian. many of the pushback against the clone army when they were initially introduced to the public was due to the fact that many generations grew up romanticizing the warriors who fell in the mandalorian wars and were buried on other planets in real soil

its been a bit since i wrote star wars meta but man i fucking missed it! as always you are welcome to argue with me about any of the points brought up (in fact please do) and if youre interested in anything i mentioned here i love to talk about the version of star wars that lives in my head and is good instead of bad. i swear i will watch andor

[archduchessofnowhere]

The Accidental Empress Reading Blog III: Very Belated Final Thoughts

After I brought up Pataki again last night I realized that I never finished to give you my opinion of her Sisi novel, so let’s say goodbye to the year with a final review! I originally had planned to make a detailed commentary of parts two and three as I did with the first part (you can read it here and here), but ultimately I decided to just write my final thoughts without going too much into detail since firstly, I don’t remember every detail of the plot anymore, and secondly, my main problems with this book can actually be boiled down to only two points.

My first major issue was something that I already noted on my previous posts about the novel: the pacing. The book is divided in three parts, each which makes up of about a third of the total length. Part one is set during August of 1853, and covers about four? five? days. I personally don’t think the engagement deserves that many pages, specially when you’re planning to cover Elisabeth’s life up until the Hungarian coronation of 1867: the part dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, and soon I was very bored. We already know Sisi is going to marry Franz, why did we need over a hundred and twenty pages to tell that? Let’s get over it quickly and jump to her being empress please!

… Is what I thought while reading part one, but that ended up being a monkey-paw wish, because from part two onwards the painfully slow pacing turns into INCREDIBLY FAST. The second part covers from September of 1853 until sometime after Rudolf’s birth (the timeline becomes foggy at this point and it’s not really clear anymore in which year we are), each chapter covering about a year. The change is jarringly noticeable: we go from having a detailed day-by-day story to entire months being described in sentences.

And the pacing gets even WORSE in part three, which covers from August of 1862 until the Hungarian coronation. You may be wondering, didn’t the previous part end in 1858? What happened in-between? Well, guess what. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Part two ends with Sisi’s “flight” from court, which in reality happened at the end of 1860, but in the Patakiverse after Rudolf’s birth. Part three starts with her returning to court after being away FOR FOUR UNINTERRUMPTED YEARS. I won’t go on details on how CRAZY this is: to summ it up, the real Elisabeth was away from court for two years, but she did came back to Vienna in-between her trips, and the last months of her “flight” she spent them within the borders of the empire. And she was always in contact with her husband and updated about her children! What annoys me so much of the four years off-page isn’t the inaccuracy however, but that Sisi comebacks with AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PERSONALITY, because the years away hardened her and made her more aware of how she can use her beauty for her own ends. A change I would’ve love to see happening ON PAGE! But no, the only thing we learn of Sisi’s years away from court is this:

(Lobkowitz wasn’t even Elisabeth’s Oberhofmeister anymore at this point)

And to add insult to injury, this isn’t even the only time it happens! Because after we get two chapters set in 1862… WE HAVE ANOTHER FOUR YEARS TIMESKIP TO 1866 AAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Sorry. I just didn’t like the pacing. Let’s move on to my second major issue: this is yet another Sisi story that revolves almost entirely around men.

I’ve complained about this before, but in general I don’t like how in fiction Elisabeth is often reduced to the relationships she had with the different men in her life. We know for a fact that she also had close relationships with many women: her mother, her sisters, her ladies-in-waiting, her daughter, other fellow royal women. So it’s deeply frustrating to me when these relationships are ignored in favor of, for exemple, a fictional affair with a man she was just friendly with. Which is exactly what this novel does.

In the first half of the book Sisi’s entire character revolves around Franz Josef: she starts out as a lovestruck teenager and as the story progresses she slowly falls out of love with him as she discovers that he won’t stand up to his mother for her and that he is cheating on her. During this part Sisi doesn’t have almost any positive relationship with a woman: her sister Helene completely disappears after part one. Her mother only returns a little before the end of the second part (in a very inaccurate scene that I still liked only because it redeemed Ludovika’s character). Archduchess Sophie is a stereotypical evil mother-in-law, Countess Esterhazy is the controlling “governess”, and her two ladies, Countesses Caroline Lamberg and Paula Bellegarde are depicted as scheming women who conspire against Sisi and try to seduce her husband (… what). Needless to say all these characters are incredibly shallow, because the only person that is given a somewhat more nuanced characterization is Franz Josef.

This trope of “every woman is out there to get our super special female protagonist” is already annoying on its own, but here is also accompanied by a lesser known trope that is equally annoying to me: “the only women who are good are the servant characters that have almost no character traits other than adoring our protagonist and serving her loyally”. Sisi has a (fictional) maid called Agata that accompanies her to Vienna, and is the only person who treats her well during the first half. But we know NOTHING of this maid other than she is Polish and she loves Sisi. She is a fictional character, you can give her a more important role if you want!

Meanwhile, the real life people that had important roles in Elisabeth’s life are also turned into this kind of character. Marie Festetics, who entered in service of the empress in 1872, was one of her closest ladies-in-waiting, and while we know that she did adore her mistress, she could also be very critical of her. In The Accidental Empress, Festetics is a lady-in-waiting since 1854, and her role is completely minimal. We are told (specially on the last part) that she is Sisi’s oldest and most faithful friend at court, but they interact so little on-page (and their moments together are always so bland) that it’s hard to buy. Worse of all, however, was the treatment of Ida Ferenczy: she only appears a couple of chapters before the book ends as a maid that Andrássy recommended. While Pataki keeps in her story that Ida was hired to help Sisi practice Hungarian, on page her only interactions with Sisi consist in fetching her things and receiving orders from her. In real life Ida was a gentry girl that amazingly managed to enter court despite her lack of noble ancestry (there is even a theory that she was actually infiltrated by Deák and Andrássy to influence the empress in favor of Hungary), and Elisabeth liked her so much that she CREATED a position for Ida (the reader of the empress) so she could stay in her staff. This is one of the cases in which the real Elisabeth asserted her agency and power in court, which the book completely takes away from her and by doing so destroys her special relationship with Ida!!!

So you remember how I said that in the first half of the book Sisi’s entire character revolves around Franz? Well that’s because in the second half her entire character revolves around Andrássy. Yep, this is one of those stories. I won’t go into details, but honestly it wasn’t even the made up affair what bothered me: it was the implication that Sisi only got involved with the Compromise because she got personally involved with Andrássy. Elisabeth isn’t allowed to have any sort of political ideas on he own, she must be guided, she must be told what to think by the men in her life. This role must always be fulfilled by a man, and that’s why we can’t have Ida Ferenczy or Marie Festetics discussing politics with Sisi, that’s why they are just background servants that only fetch her things and help her cover up an affair while Andrássy gets to be the dashing hero that saves Sisi for her trapping and passionless marriage.

And I’m just tired of this kind of narrative.

If you read until here, thank you! I’m incapable of writing short reviews. All this being say I do plan eventually read the sequel, solely out of an annoying completionist drive and because I’m curious if Pataki cared for and listened to any of the critics she received from people who like the real Elisabeth. Please let me know of you’d like another in-depth sort of commentary or prefer a general review!

[yanderefairyangel]

Maybe it's just me but I noticed that people who tended to like 3H were sometimes trying to find some of the topic it dealt with in Engage thinking it's the only way a story can be deep rather then focusing on the topic Engage does tackle and try to see the full depth of it.

I think the example I think of is the banditry in Engage. People assume the bandits are doing it because of economic struggles inherent to society because it's how it was tackled in 3H rather then going by what the text says about it, that's to say that banditry in Firene is implied to be born because of the laxism of the governement created cause by the over-pacificist side of Firene (dialogue of post battle in chapter 6) rather then by economical struggles, which story wise make more sense as Firene is presented as a country who is the complete opposite of one that would favorise the birth of banditry due to poverty. We do know however it's a country whose military aid is more defensive then offensive, that it doesn't have guard border to protect it and that the banditry activity mainly takes place at the border of Firene/Brodia. The support and the main story and Anna's paralogue dealing with banditry made it rather clear that each time, those bandits were operating near the border or Firene and attacking merchants, the one exception being Teranada who slaughtered an entire village near that border. In the original version of her A support with Alear, Céline never mentionned the nationality of the thieves she excuted. Teranda possibly comes from Brodia whose economical struggle due to war are actually knonw, as for Mitan... well, we don't really know either but seeing how Anna from from Elusia, she could be from somewhere else too and decided to settle near the Brodia/Firene border to do her mischief, taking the ruins as a base. After all, even if a character comes from another country, he can still beneficiate from the nationality. Take Mauvier for example. He is a Firenese native yet his name is based on a color, like all the member of the Gradlon faction. He also wear the priest clothing of Lythos, which all people linked to Gradlon such as Zelestia, Veyle and Nel. Rafal wears the Brodian outfit. So even if she came from another place, Mittan could still wear the Firenese color and theme simply because she moved to live there. Teranda however, we know settled in the montain only for a moment since it's rather recently he killed all the villagers. So it makes more sense for them to be bandits who took advantage of the weakness of Firene's defense and their laxist approach to the matter then it being poverty or economical hardship... since we never learn if there is any economical hardship to begin with.

But rather then going in this direction, people will try to bring Fodlan as a proof they are right and then will complain that Engage isn't following the direction that it never even tried to grasp to begin with but hum. My personal take on fiction when it comes to politics is that if a setting is fictional, then it's the rule of this setting that should be applied, independtly of irl events and the rules for other settings. In 3H, banditry is said to be caused by financial struggle, we notable see that in the war phase, as the merchant of the monastery reduced to banditry because of the poverty and misery war created upon civilian.

However, Firene doesn't at all fit the description. It's described as the wealthiest kingdom, called the Kingdom of Abundance. Its name pattern theme being fashion brands comes from that and they choosed spring as their season for crying out loud ! Spring. It's the season of wealth and peace. The symbolic is clear.

If a country doesn't fit the same economical situation/political situation/social situation as another this means the rules and stakes are different. You cannot judge Firene by using Fodlan, the rules established by 3H etc. You can only judge it by what the story says about this country, what it establishes etc.

It's a choice made by the writers. That's how it is. Take the writing as is and try to see how deep it can go from there rather then try to take a notion from another setting to apply it no matter what the actual text says about it and be disappointed it doesn't take things into account.

[not-poignant]

Do you view Gary/Ef as a 'fanfic' ship? Like... for me, Augus/Gwyn, Eran/Mosk, all the canon FT ships... whenever you wrote a different setup with them, I loved it, but I was sort of aware that it was a fannish thing. But somehow I don't get the feel here? Like I know Arden/Ef came first, but Gary/Ef feels just as canon, if that makes sense? Maybe bc the Rainbow verse is so fleshed out, idk, but I thought it was interesting and I'm curious how you feel abt it XD

Hi hi anon!

This one's complex, so I'm gonna try and explain how I think about it as clearly as possible.

To me, everything I write that's set in my own world with my own main characters is original fiction.

That includes the alternate universes, because those alt universes are canon within those universes. So what happens in The Wildness Within isn't canon for the main universe, but it's certainly canon to TWW, and not only that, but about 70% of the extra character details are canon to the main universe, they're just things I couldn't share there, for whatever reason.

On the other hand, if someone else wrote an FT story, it wouldn't be canon to anything at all, except for like, their own story.

I think of many of the Fae Tales AUs as being fannish in nature (they're serials, they go up on AO3, I'm pro transformative works, they show characters in different or new scenarios etc.), but to me they're still original fiction. I've never seen a single AU that I've written as a 'fanfic' ship, no matter how connected it is to the original canon (like The Nascent Diplomat and The Wildness Within which I think we can say are probably the closest to the original world, and the original canon).

However, when it comes to almost complete departures, where characters like Efnisien become almost unrecognisable compared to his original counterpart, I think of those as new worlds. For example, I almost never tag any of Underline the Black with 'fae tales AU' anymore, because it doesn't really mean anything. It's not helpful to newcomers. It's not useful.

Most of the cast never appeared in the canon. (This was also true for the main cast of Falling Falling Stars sans Efnisien - Arden, Gary, Kadek were all newcomers; for me, if a story is 75% new main characters and 25% one holdover vastly AU character, that's now another canon universe lmao).

But back to Underline the Rainbow:

Kadek, Gary, Anton, Flitmouse, Caleb, Faber, Nate, Janusz are all either original characters or were developed as original characters in AUs (like Kadek). Kadek, Caleb, Faber, Kent, and more aren't AUs of anything, they're original to the story. Characters like Gary, Anton, Flitmouse, Nate, Janusz were never anywhere near the Fae Tales canon, or the early Fae Tales AUs, and to me they have nothing to do with it. Which makes classifying Underline the Rainbow as a 'Fae Tales AU' make about as much sense as classifying it as an 'FFS AU' - there's about as much crossover in the characters, after all. And not only that, but main ensemble characters more fundamental to the canon - Ash, Mosk, Eran, Julvia, Gulvi, Augus, Gwyn, either haven't made an appearance (or been mentioned once), or have only been one or two chapters out of 50+.

Proportionately, the amount of characters remaining from the original canon Fae Tales universe stands at about 10%. If you had a dog that was 90% border collie and 10% beagle, you probably wouldn't call that dog a 'beagle AU' or a 'beagle cross' - you'd probably just start calling it a border collie with a weird grandpa. Falling Falling Stars is the same to me, honestly, because so much of the core cast was original to the story, and everyone else from the original series mostly got 'cameos' if they weren't Efnisien or Gwyn. I made a conscious decision to give more weight to original characters - even side characters we don't see much - Vicki, Bridge, Han Yuen, Leo, Nate, Janusz, Teddy, Mika, Gary, Arden, Kadek, etc. The story is nothing without them.

To me, this kind of process (10% og characters remaining) separates Underline the Black out into its own universe. It has very heavy, fairly robust worldbuilding for an omegaverse story (enough that I need to use worldbuilding software to keep track of some of it). I don't need to go back to the Fae Tales canon ever to write it (which I did have to do sometimes for The Wildness Within, and have very rarely had to do for The Nascent Diplomat). I don't need to go back to the Falling Falling Stars/Spoils universe to write it. It stands fully on its own, complete and contained.

Because it has some links to Fae Tales (Efnisien + Gwyn's family mostly), it still has like... a Fae Tales flavour. And now that I've started working on like completely original world stuff in the background, there is a difference.

But yeah no, for a start I don't consider any of it fanfiction, and it's weird when people do, because it's not fanfiction if it's something the OP is doing. We don't call comics by the same comic author - that happen to be different versions of the same world - 'fanfiction.' If the Russos direct two Marvel movies focusing on two separate characters, but the first character cameos in the second in a way that retcons the character's narrative, we don't call the second movie an AU of the first, or fanfiction of the first. It's still an original property.

Underline the Black and Spoils are both separate universes as both have like less than 25% of the original story/characters within them (Imho Iron Man is still Iron Man just because Loki or Thor cameo, or join the ensemble as minor characters). It could be that the Spoils universe feels less fleshed out to you because it's contemporary, for me they're on a similar keel. Especially because Efnisien was literally a 2 dimensional paper cut-out of a fae before Spoils who exists for like 5 seconds in the canon, and he bears almost zero resemblance to his originating character except in name, family and appearance. But certainly not in personality, origins, actions or capacity for growth - i.e. everything that makes the character a character.

But it is fannish.

Tl;dr: I definitely don't see Gary/Ef as a 'fanfic' ship. I don't see any of my AUs as 'fanfic ships' because I don't see any of my original writing as fanfiction even though it's fannish in nature.

If anything, Underline the Black is a Spoils AU, lol.

[bethanydelleman]

Could you please elaborate on the "enmity" between Brontë and Austen?

This question relates to this post.

Charlotte Brontë wrote of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

And what did I find? An accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses. (1848)

[A]nything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well ... [But] She no more, with her mind’s eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. (1850)

So I think it's safe to say she wasn't very into Jane Austen's works.

Also, the lack of "physiognomy" part makes me laugh because it's clear the Brontes were all addicted to phrenology (a pseudoscience where skull shape was used as an indication of intelligence/personality/propensity to commit crimes etc.). St. John trusts Jane Eyre while she's still passed out because of her head shape and in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen is freaked out when her husband reveals his real head shape to her which has been hidden under his curls.

There is a hilarious insert about it in The Younger Sister by Mrs. Hubback written in 1850:

Had phrenology then been in fashion, it is possible that the origin of this weakness would have been discovered in the absence of the bump of self-esteem; but this not being the case, and in consequence, his head never having been phrenologically examined, I cannot answer for more than the entire absence of the quality, and Mr. Howard cannot be brought forward in evidence of any phrenological theory whatever.

Poor people in the early 1800s! How did they know themselves before phrenology was invented!!! It's like a modern person saying that without Myers-Briggs no one understood personalities... but I'm on a tangent.

Anyway, I've read that Charlotte Brontë disliked Austen because people compared her to Austen and she thought they wrote different genres. As this article states: In short, Bronte criticized Austen so fiercely because critics kept attempting to put her and Austen into the same category of "lady writers," criticizing her not on the strength of her own work, but based on the idea that she and Austen must be similar and pursue the same narrative goals.

To which I say to Charlotte: fair.

As to if Austen would have liked Jane Eyre, I like to joke about how JA mocked Attic Wives in Northanger Abbey, but to write a novel mocking Gothic tropes, one must read a lot of gothic fiction. It's clear that Austen read and liked a lot of the novelists of her time, even if she wanted to do something a little different or a little better. That's my take anyway.

[kieransometimesthinks]

I think we as a society really need to make an effort to focus on the nuance of humanity and existence. Here’s what I mean by that.

I came across a Facebook post of someone saying that they didn’t like Uncle Iroh from ATLA because he’s a war criminal. (Fair point.) and the comments section was truly wild.

There were some people arguing over the textbook definition of war crimes and whether or not he *technically* committed any during his siege of Ba Sing Se. Which objectively, is kind of a silly point to argue because you know damn well what the original poster meant when they talked about Iroh committing war crimes. The fact that he laid siege to a city for like 600 days is an incredible act of violence, even if he didn’t do anything egregiously terrible like bomb hospitals or target children.

But then you had people arguing that since you know he’s good by the end of the story, you should apply that perspective to the lens through which you view his previous actions. Since you know he’s gentle towards others and rebellious against Ozai now, clearly you can interpret his previous actions as being gentle and rebellious as well. Therefore he was always a good man. And the people making these arguments are VERY passionate about this.

But I think they’re missing the entire point of Iroh’s story. The entire point is that his story is supposed to be uncomfortable. It’s supposed to cause cognitive dissonance. Because we don’t want to think about the kindly grandfathers in our lives being literal warlords in their youth. We don’t want the gentle people in our lives to have complicated and messy paths. We want to put them on a pedestal and imagine them as pure, wholesome, and unchanging angels who have always tried to be good.

But people like that don’t exist outside of fiction. And that’s the entire point of characters like Iroh. No one makes it through life without hurting others. No one makes it through life without making mistakes. We all do things we wish we could take back and there’s nothing we can do about it. And the consequences of those actions will forever remain entirely out of our control. Iroh can’t undo the lives lost at his hands, nor can he truly do anything to atone for it. All he can do is try not to hurt people in that way moving forward.

And that’s all any of us can do. We are all complicated, flawed, and nuanced creatures constantly bumping into other creatures just as flawed and nuanced as we are. And that existence is messy. It creates dissonance. And we have to learn to be ok with that.

The point of characters like this is that while no one is beyond redemption, they are not immune from the lingering echoes of their past mistakes. No amount of good that Iroh does will ever change what he did to the earth kingdom. And there are people within its borders who will never forgive him. And that doesn’t stop being true just because he’s a kind old man now.

Seeing takes that deny him that messy nuance is so frustrating because it’s like “Do you honestly know anyone who’s never hurt another person?” The world cannot he cleanly divided into pure, nonproblematic people and evil, douchebags. That’s not how anything works. So idk, maybe just keep that in mind as you approach messy, uncomfortable characters.