#Well and truly despise it

[bearotonin-international]

Please post pandas, they're bears! You give spectacled bears a pass and they're not 'proper' bears :(

We do post pandas. Occasionally, as befitting their Occasional Bear status. We said nothing about them being or not being ‘proper’ bears. They are Occasional Bears and shall therefore appear occasionally in posts, as according to their status.

A note for anyone reading this, the more asks we get telling us to post pandas or irritated by their Occasional Bear status, the less inclined the team is to occasionally post Occasional Bears.

[sandwichsapphic]

“an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman but… mentally he is negligible - quite negligible” is the Jeeves and Wooster equivalent of “she is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”

[rookflower]

honestly most of my least favourite warrior cats could be salvaged if they didn't always have to be in the narrative right (despite when they do heinous things, and/or are presented in opposition to characters the narrative has unjustly placed in the wrong. usually for gendered reasons). like if brambleclaw's part in firestar's attempted assassination was some huge scandal, and the way he treated squirrelstar was textually recognised and remembered as cruel and abusive at times then he would be wayyy more of an interesting and nuanced character to me than "this guy is really good and heroic and noble just ignore all of the bad shit he's done". if nightheart was worse, if he really was an unreliable narrator at first, if the books didn't require finchlight and sparkpelt to turn around and belittle him for real to justify his feelings, if sunbeam didn't talk about having babies with him immediately after feeling abandoned by him twice back to back, and his impulsivity and selfishness were character flaws and not just funny quirks (that would be UNFORGIVEABLE were they placed on a female character. i really need to emphasise just how different the gender standards are in this series and fandom in terms of consequences) then yeah honestly i would maybe genuinely like and be invested in him. lack of consequences or flaws being recognised for flawed (primarily male) characters where (primarily female) characters frequently see unlimited fucking miserable consequences for less is like, my number one issue with characterisation in these cat books. but yet it is so damn prevalent

[jerksbitch]

twitter has poisoned this fandom i fear ... we used to be a community..

[uncanny-tranny]

"The world isn't a safe place, so get used to it!"

Man, as somebody who's survived multiple, long-lasting instances of abuse from a very young age, I was under the impression that the world was, indeed, so safe and conforming to my desires. I'm practically stunned to learn that this is not the case, and I have been severely humbled

(Sarcasm fully intended)

[sweetshire]

So, @silv-paru sent Sherlock Holmes for the character opinion bingo. thanks a bunch for this (and for your patience. my god, i’m answering this a week late. typical me behaviour). you’re a darling :D

Did you know, i used to tell these stories to my friends? they delighted in them AND i got a chance to sort of ramble on and on abt him and watson. it was a win-win, really. ah, those were the days! now i haven’t reblogged much of him this month at all. i miss him. I MISS HIM.

Onto the bingo: well. he’s The quintessence of gender™ to me. and i relate to him so so much. fav character of all time fr. i want to carry him in my pocket at all times & study him. like. do i want to BE him OR am i IN LOVE with him, ykwim? pssh who knows? certainly not me. uh-huh ‘a beast unleashed’ -does this refer to me or him? you choose. oh re: canon, i’m ignoring the part where holmes dies (or y’know, is dead for 3 years). that’s too angsty.

[cliff-and-the-kid]

(So. Today has been awful and is only going to get worse before it gets better. I've been staring at my laptop screen for the better part of an hour, unable to muster up the will to work on anything, be it drafts here or new fanfic or my original stories. Gonna try something else as a means of engaging my brain without getting stressed over trying to genuinely be creative...)

[gameclam4]

day two of several bug bites. i know that if i don’t touch them at all it’s easy to not get into scratching them and they’ll just fade away but they’re all on my legs so it’s really difficult. worst part about summer.

[kimbureh]

it's so funny that fandom mischaracterizes every character under the sun, but people only go apeshit when it's done to jean vic

[dogsrot]

the fact that like . . fenrir technically doesn’t exist ??

[afroscribble]

Amazing. A post expressing empathy about Palestinian Muslims near their annual worship period being disrespected and violated, routinely, and a reblog immediately followed by "I will debate you" going "Well, Akchually" 🤓 to the validity of their entire ethnicity and apologia for the state of Israel. Beyond parody

[void-botanist]

"🚘 What’s inside their glove box?" for Graham

"😴 If they talked in their sleep, what weird jumble of words would come out?" for Dez

Graham's car is a bit of a mess at all times (space Red Bull cans, and stuff that he says is related to all the space Red Bull cans, but when he tries to tell the stories it gets real confusing real quick) but he keeps his glovebox neat. He's got all the manuals, the registration and insurance and so on, all in a little zip-up bag - a lot like the DVD holder I used to have. Plus there's some emergency tissues and tampons (he doesn't need them but someone's going to eventually) and a bag of all the specialty sockets that come with the car. He also whittled out the front of the glovebox door so he has a place for his ice scraper that won't get the inside wet. Woe betide anyone sitting in the passenger seat on an icy day, though.

Dez has actually tried sleeping before and it was such a waste of time he quit. But let's say he could actually sleep in a humanlike way - his sleep talk would trace his internal linked data structure. He might speak out every node, or might skip between them, but eventually he'd get from "Anni" to the radiation index in Sailla-ghe or something equally apparently nonsensical.

[rominasaintofthebud]

God Please No.

[iightbringer]

am i the only one who despises the concept of the batfamily shit. firstly that man would NOT procreate, he would not willingly put a kid thru the stress of not knowing if their parent is gonna make it home. absolutely not. the only reason romance is an option for him is bc his self worth is in the can so obvi to him he can see them going on living if he happens to go splat. and bro would not recruit people/children to fight with him just bc they have similar tragic backgrounds?? girlie never wanted to inspire people, he wanted to be a symbol for them. girlie does it so no one else has to.

second. ???? bro does NOT work well w others aside from old men. let alone fellow do gooders. girlie uses, manipulates and flips on his allies CONSTANTLY from situation to situation. girlie befriends grizzled old men n wacky lesbians exclusively.

[nellasbookplanet]

I've never liked the term 'fix-it fic'.

When I read and/or write a fic with a different pairing than in canon, it doesn’t mean I necessarily think the canon pairing is wrong and needs to be fixed. When I read alternate endings where someone lives instead of dies, it doesn’t mean I think the original story should’ve kept that character alive.

It’s all about possibility, curiosity, exploring dynamics we only glimpsed or didn’t get around to at all in canon. I recognize the themes and their importance and see how these things might actively have worsened the source material, but in a fic, operating under different themes and having zero impact on the canonical outcome? It’s fun to explore. It doesn’t mean I wanted it to happen in canon.

But sometimes I come across people who seem to think the only reason people read so called fix-it fics (god, I really do hate that name) is because they’re in denial, unaware of or doesn’t grasp the themes of the source material, too immature to handle dark themes in fiction (and, if the accuser is feeling especially mean, therefore too immature to handle the darker aspects of real life).

Conversely, there certainly are fix-its written with the express purpose of 'fixing'. Sometimes they are even right! (something being canonical doesn't automatically make it good, you know?) But most of the time they come off as dismissive, entitled, and, yes, even as denial of the canonical themes in favor of others (often much more shallow and not as supported by the narrative), and are also the exact kind of fics that I avoid.

Much as I enjoy a Molly lives-fic (I just want to see him interact with the nein and find out about all the hijinks they got up to post his death!), erasing Kingsley and ignoring his purpose as a character feels wrong. Writing off Jester's feelings for Fjord as comp-het or their relationship as toxic to facillitate another pairing (what would Jester finding out about Beau’s or Caleb’s feelings have looked like? let's explore!) feels dismissive of her character and ignores much of her development and growing understanding of romance over the course of the campaign. Shadowgast fics that write off Caleb’s feelings for Jester (or even retroactively give him feelings for Molly instead) feels dismissive of Caleb as a character.

But the assumption that ALL alternate happy endings, everybody lives nobody dies, different main pairing-fics operate under 'canon sucks and I refuse to engage with the narrative themes, also I refuse to reckon with death and tragedy as a concept' is just. Mean and dismissive, and the term fix-it fic doesn't help in fighting that.

[musical-chick-13]

Truly, trying to be me in a fandom context makes it like. Impossible to do anything. I am a Big Fan of the theme of love as corruption and horrible romantic relationships that make people worse, but not all examples of this work for me because my needs are Very Specific which means that I hate the few of these kinds of dynamics that actually get popular. I like characters who are terrible people, but it’s never the universally-agreed ✨sexy✨ ones, it’s always the “I will send you death threats if you like this character” ones. There are some ships I have that are genuinely positive, healthy relationships, but 90% of the people in those tags believe that if you like Bad Topics in fiction you are a danger to society. I love to complain, but I’m not an Anti™, nor would I ever wanted to be associated with them in a trillion years. The few times I get feral over something with few female characters in it, the male characters I like are extensively reviled. I love dark media, and I hate H*nnibal. You see my problem.