#add a bit fanon misconception

[ffverr]

Ok so let me add my two cents to this and say how it isn't a good reference to Ororo and Scott's dual or history.

To do that I'll also compare McKay's reference in Avengers (2024) #18, which is a just the proliferation of a fanon cliché at best, with Hickman's reference in House of X and Powers of X, which actually understands the context of the source material.

Storm and Scott's dual in issue #201 of Uncanny X-Men happens in a very specific context that both modern writers and fanon either forgot, don't know or misinterpreted it over time.

I-The necessary context:

Jean grey dies

Scott is deeply hurt by that

Over something like a dozen issues he decided to actually leave the X-Men as he doesn't feel up for it anymore.

The leadership of the team is naturally passed down to Storm that has always acted as a second in command to Scott. He often asked her opinion on plans and she often found last resort solutions when he was backed up against a corner.

On his "hiatus", Scott meets Madelyne Pryor. They fall in love, get married and Maddy is pregnant with a child as we learn when they reappear on the team in the mini: Alpha flight Vs X-Men.

Storm acts as leader of the team but goes through many changes, like losing her powers, which rattles her to her core and gives her some insecurities about her place in the X-Men and as a leader.

An Asgard adventure tells the story of Storm and the new mutants getting kidnapped by Loki.

This emergency makes the rest of the X-Men call Scott back to the team's leadership for a rescue mission.

Madelyne is brought to Westchester to wait for the return of her husband.

After the X-Men's comeback from Asgard, The trial of Magneto is happening in Paris, where they are attacked by evil Mutants. They're immediately teleported to that emergency.

Charles Xavier almost dies, but is at the last minute rescued by the Star Jammers and his love interest Lilandra in order to get emergency care.

Charles is stranded in space, and no X-Men knows if he's even alive

This hurts Cyclops enormously.

During this long absence on the X-Men, Madelyne gives birth to their child, Nathan, alone at xavier's mansion as Scott is gone fulfilling his momentary duty.

After their return, Madelyne feels like this huge absence from Scott and his half frequent comebacks to the team is making her lose him bit by bit.

So, with Charle's status as presumed dead, Scott, very paranoid and depressed, does the only thing he sees fits at the moment. Come back as leader because the team needs him without Charles around. This is Scott's pathetic attempt at regression to familiarity as Charles being dead and him becoming a father is a COMPLETELY new and very scary situation he's not sure to handle.

Becoming a leader again is a delusional idea considering he has pledged his presence and loyalty to his wife and newborn, in ALASKA, and Storm is already leader of the team.

Madelyne, with her insecurity over her husband's presence in their family, begs Storm to challenge him in a duel in order to banish the thought of leadership from Scott's head.

II- THE MISCONCEPTION ABOUT THE DUEL:

Storm didn't initiate it! She did not challenge Scott because she thinks she's a better leader than him or because she wanted to prove herself or gain the leadership for the first time.

She was ALREADY leader and completely agreed with Madelyne that Scott had to stick to his new family and responsibility as a father and husband.

Thus, she complies with Madelyne's request and beats Scott in a duel for leadership.

#201 Uncanny X-Men

He snaps out of his delusional state ( in which he couldn't even bring himself to communicate with Madelyne or be happy about the birth of his kid). He feels completely lost and dejected and comes back to his family. His relationship with Madelyne becomes distant and strained.(This plot continues in X-Factor).

Storm continues being leader of the X-Men and goes through her own hardships and journey for self determination.

So, no. Mackay's vision as this moment in time being "Storm can't go back to being under Scott's leadership because she's better than him or too cool to be a part of an X-Men team she doesn't lead" is utter bullshit.

III-Text, meta and fanon:

This fanon vision of the duel and later history between the characters just further carves the drift between storm and her friends that is already prevalent because of how many writers like to dehumanise Ororo as a character and limit her personal relationships to the X-Men to a maximum.

Her and Scott have a deep friendship built out of mutual respect and their shared grief over Jean's passing.

God loves, man kills

She doesn't believe that her and Scott "can't go back to getting orders from one another" that's just a misconception....

The truth is, neither one or the other would mind taking orders from each other considering they work insanely well as co-leaders. (As they did during their time on the team as leader and second in command from #94 to Scott leaving the team)

The Meta problem :

The issue, of course, is meta-textual, and shouldn't be baked into the text.

Storm hasn't "outgrown" being on an X-Men team or being submitted to hierarchy. This is just mixing up meta textual and text.

Yes, as a character, Storm deserves to be pushed forward as a leader. It's a spot that suits her and puts her in a very interesting head space. It would be unfortunate for FANS and for the journey of the character to keep her subordinated to other leaders.

HOWEVER this isn't a feeling she has in comics. That just makes her relationship with Scott more bitter when in actuality, there is none of that.

Not to say they both don't enjoy a little fun teasing competition as "who's the best leader?" But it isn't that deep. It's not something they actually querelle about.

McKay's reference just feeds into the misconceptions about them and it sucks because they love working together! And this vision of their relationship just puts a useless drift between them that would, in the long run, take away their interactions from us.

IV-Hickman:

Hickman's reference though is quite good! Not perfect, but it holds an overall good understanding of that spot in their relationship. (And their friendship in general)

In hoxpox Scott says "Once, I thought I was strong -- a leader of mutants. And then you showed me what strong was."

This line stays up for interpretation. But for me, it's Scott recognising that at that time, because of Jean's death and Charle's presumption of death, he wasn't in the right headspace to be a great X-Men leader. He was still dealing with a lot of codependency of Charles and jean and didn't just yet actually stand on his two feet in a way that wasn't fragile, strained and harmful for HIMSELF.

Meanwhile, Storm had lost her powers! She was going through a very very hard identity crisis. Dealing with imposter syndrome and overall depression. But that didn't completely hinder her leadership like it did Scott. She rained in her problems and handled the team the best she could.

Scott running away from his responsibilities as a father because of how complicated his bond to the team's leadership and members is, wasn't real strength. But Storm dealing with these life changing moments and still holding her ground was strength.

And that duel taught him this lesson. And that's why Hickman's reference is great. Not because Storm is an objectively better leader than Scott or whatnot, but because the two of them learned lessons about personal strength and perseverance from each other.

Storm responding with "I learned it watching you" is the cherry on the cake because she did. To a certain extent, on a tactical aspect, Scott taught her a lot about leading missions and that's undeniable.

Anyways, ted talk done.

Stan Ororo and Scott! The greatest leaders of the X-Men! Don't pit them against each other and leave their friendship feeling odd and distant for no real reasons. They'll never grow over cooperating.

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[solitaireships]

📝❤️💌 -- violetsareblue-selfships

Gonna mix things up a little bit and go with Piera for these! Mainly bcs she's my most developed self insert lol

📝: How would your story in canon go? How would you influence the events of the original story?

I'm not too big on getting very canon divergent with my self inserts, but Piera would have been a superhero for a number of years before being approached by Miguel about joining the 🕷️ Society. She's one of the members of the society that was approached earliest on. I don't think that she would influence the events of everything that happened much Miguel and I get along bcs I also love canon events lol, but I do think she would ultimately end up disagreeing with him about the handling of things with Miles and the whole theory that there's a certain way to be a spider person. So they can have a drama arc in there with her deciding to try to help Miles instead

❤️: How popular is you x your f/o? Are you a rarepair?

Just given the sheer mass of ships with Miguel in general (both in terms of people being attracted to him and doing x reader content for him, people shipping him with canon characters, and so on), I don't know that it would be a rarepair but I do feel like it wouldn't be a super popular ship. Like average popularity

💌: How would your dynamic be portrayed? What might people focus on most? Any misconceptions?

Oh boy. Well, first up is the racism would be there hard. Both in terms of how Miguel is often portrayed by the movie fans and by people either ignoring that Piera's part Korean and that's important to her or turning that into some kind of fetishization thing. And all of that will kind of coalesce into some very weird and gross relationship dynamics that people would create between the two of them (despite that not at all being the actual case between them)

Add onto that that Piera would likely get hit by the fanon treatment of women in relationships with men thing where their whole personality is their love interest thing. People would play up her not really getting futuristic tech as much, and use that as a way to make her more dependent on Miguel and act like she's clueless and innocent in general the way people would try to make her more submissive would be a nightmare on like every level. You'd get some people actually realizing that their dynamic is built around them regarding each other as equals, but a lot of people would also force them into the whole loser boyfriend and personality-less girlboss gf thing

Then there'd probably be the classic fandom moment of ignoring anything going on between them. There'd be a solid mix between "actually Piera's awful and sucks bcs (insert minor thing here), so she doesn't deserve Miguel" and "Piera deserves better than Miguel. So we're going to ignore her until the time comes for her to be the supportive third wheel for this other ship"

Basically it would be very bad for her and a lot of people would just not understand her or her dynamic with Miguel at all

[emsylcatac]

not to be bitter but why does Chloe in fandom have like 10x more analysis that analyze her behaviour and how shes secretly a great person, compared to people trying to understand Marinette's behaviour in s4 (or even in general?) which instead had people giving her way more scrutiny😭😭? i like both characters but maybe I'm just confused on why the protagonist gets less effort in analyzing her and less empathy/sympathy, compared to the girl that acted nice like 4 times.

Don't worry lots of people analyse Marinette's character in S4 and in the show but it's to say that "she was an asshole to chat noir in season 4 😠😠 nd she caused many akumas!! more than chloè 😠😠 and she's a bitch to chloè she didnt give miraculous to her!! grrrr 😠"

Joke aside (that's not a joke actually rip) and I hate that you're right, there are loooots of reasons I'm afraid (none of them are good though). I would go over each one of them but I think we've said it a lot in the past already and I believe that you too anon knows the answer to this 😔😫

(something that I'm wondering though, is why people are waaayyy madder and intense about Chloé not getting the development they think she deserves (because they're impatient and like being mad but shhh), compared to people hoping, say, Nino would get more onscreen development 🫣 like, we still haven't seen his parents while he seemed introduced as one of the main secondary character since S1, even some white blue haired dude took more importance than him as of late, but weeeeirdly enough that doesn't bother people as much as "Chloé loosing the bee miraculous and being done dirty by the writers uwuwuwuwuwu". I really wonder why hmmmmmmmmm 🤔🤔🤔🤪)

[potteresque-ire]

I’ve got several asks about BJYX supertopic’s recent battle for the top CP ranking. I’ve meant to answer them the way they’re asked, but the answer gets long. Dear Anons ~ please forgive me for splitting the answers into multiple posts!

As with everything I’ve said about CPs, they’re mostly my limited observations—unlike history and news, it’s impossible to find articles about any of this that pass journalistic standards. Therefore, please consider the following to be my personal impressions and ramblings, and as usual, everyone please feel free to point out mistakes and add your own thoughts!

Everyone probably knows already, but the new drama that has brought waves to the Weibo’s CP ranking list is Word of Honour (山河令, which I will abbreviate to WoH), and the CP pairing is known as Lang Lang Ding (浪浪釘, LLD). I haven’t watched this drama yet but as a Wuxia (and slash) fan, it is on my to-watch list. Nonetheless, I’ve been watching the developments surrounding the popularity of the drama and the CPs, and I think I can make the posts long enough just with these observations alone. (I’m incredibly long winded :D )

For the CP competition, I think it’s important to point this out: the LLD supertopic is a mixed character-CP and real-person-CP supertopic, unlike the YiZhan supertopics (BJYX, ZSWW, LSFY) that are real-person-CP only. This means comparing LLD and the YiZhan supertopics is really …  comparing apples and oranges, especially when WoH is still airing (and therefore providing fresh candies for the character CP with every new episode). I therefore wish this kind of popularity competition doesn’t take root in the international fandom; it’s … a bit silly to me, really. It makes little sense.

That said, however, I understand why c-turtles are fighting so hard for the #1 CP spot. C-ent (as is true with many other aspects in the country), numbers and ranking are everything. That 20(?), 40(?) minutes during which BJYX supertopic fell to #2 the first time already made “news” headlines that claimed that WoH had surpassed The Untamed (TU)—an even stranger comparison, if one thinks about it. BJYX, technically speaking, doesn’t have anything to do with TU. It’s a GG/DD real person CP.

But it doesn’t matter—numbers are numbers, and they talk to c-ent watchers, the commercial interests looking for their most promising future investments. The perceived power of c-turtles hinges on them and by power, I mean both fan power and spending power, which are almost synonymous terms in c-ent. Many of you have probably seen those charts that rank the popularity of c-ent entertainers by how much goods, in monetary value, they’re able to sell. How much do the c-turtles contribute to these monetary values? Are they, as a collection of fans, worth keeping, worth wooing?

The notion that only the fan’s spending power means something may cause unease in many i-turtles—and it is, indeed, a very cold-hearted assessment, as it implies that fans are little more than living wallets to be emptied. My observations have been that such a notion doesn’t bother c-turtles for the most part and, IMHO, they’re being realistic for their sociopolitical environment. They also respond to this notion accordingly—while it is difficult to tease out the exact percentage of turtles among Gg and Dd’s active fans (fans that make major purchases goods and merchandises), c-turtles have previously demonstrated their ability to contribute a substantial fraction (in the 10s of percent) of money spent on Gg and Dd. As these splits are only very occasionally visible to the public, the CP ranking likely serves as a constant reminder of c-turtles enormous fan/spending power — without which, Gg and Dd’s popularity will also take a hit.

In that sense, c-turtles are fighting for their right-to-exist. Remember when I talked about the “traditional” thinking that CPFs < solos, and that one CPF = one (loyal) solo lost? This means c-turtles must be able to demonstrate their ability to offer something that the solos cannot, and more importantly, that their offer will not come in any other name. If c-turtles proved last year that they wouldn’t change their name to solos, then this year they’re set to prove they’ll not change their name to LLDs or other CPFs. 

If the latter sounds a bit like a battlecry, it may be exactly that. Ever since the announcements of the long line of upcoming Dangai’s, ample inflammatory posts have been made on the platform to get c-turtles to “defect” to the new dramas, or predict that as soon as another pair of random, beautiful men start to throw candies on screen, c-turtles will promptly forget about Gg and Dd and join the fun. The latter, especially, can be quite insulting to read, as one can imagine. However, with c-turtles being a loosely connected group of millions, despite their apparent firm stance that they shall stay turtle, their underlying nerves that these “insults” may turn out to be true can also be felt — the worry that c-turtledom will haemorrhage when the next popular Dangai with enticing M/M CPs (character or real person) come along. 

WoH, as the first drama that fits the criteria, is therefore a test— a test that many c-turtles likely view they must pass with flying colours to prove their point, to stand with their heads held high among those who do not care about BJYXSZD (not necessarily solos—many solos, BTW, have actually helped the turtles out this time); to show that turtles are not only every bit as loyal as other Gg and Dd fans, they’re not so … cheap as to take any random “industrial saccharine” (工業糖精; referring to ZQSG-free candies created solely to lure in fans) and walk away.

The reform of the BJYX supertopic (which now allows candy analysis and explains the sudden appearance of many old candies), the flood of BTS videos from almost every Zhan Jie previously involved with the YiZhan CPs, the temporary retaking of the top 3 CP spots by BJYX+ZSWW+LSFY ... can therefore be viewed as a rally of c-turtles. The message is: we’re not going anywhere. We’ve got enough candies that no other (M/M) CPs can hope to match in quantity, in quality.

(And the parade is indeed impressive.) (The reform also didn’t come out of thin air; there have been discussions about the supertopic’s candy sharing rules before.)

Some c-turtles have rightfully been concerned about how such a parade of candies can affect Gg and Dd. They point out that some candies should still remain 閱後即焚 (“burn after reading”, instant return to hiding after release like certain BTS videos); that at some point, c-turtles have to let go of their obsession of staying on top of the CP rankings. TU is already almost 2 years old, and being a little lower on the CP ranking list will take the heat off the YiZhan fandoms in the long run, incite less outside forces trying to fan the flames between the shrimps and the motors and the turtles.

The rules and guidelines of c-turtledom therefore remain a work in progress, and c-turtles, the millions of them, are still learning as they go.

Personally, I have faith in what will come. I also haven’t been too concerned about the candy parade, because most information is already out there for those who’re determined to find them — on Bilibili, Douyin, Zhihu etc. I spent some time talking about the Gg Assistant fic not with the goal of eliciting pain or panic, but rather, as a demonstration of why it has been the tradition of CPFs—not only the turtles—to play things very cautiously, with 閱後即焚 and 圈地自萌 (“to play within the circle”; ie, keep all information and candies within CPFs) being the default rules even after removing the “queer factor” from the discussion. Real person CPs have fate as one of their writers and so, unlike character CPs, their candies can have unintended, unpredictable consequences. As the YiZhan fandoms have now grown big enough that their candies can no longer be realistically well-contained, it may not be such a bad idea for especially the sensitive candies to return under the “jurisdiction” of the BJYX supertopic, so to speak. c-turtles can then gain better control of their comes-and-goes. Their narratives.

(CPN below.)

About narratives. @rainbowsky have previously written a thoughtful piece on the possible reasons the YiZhan fandoms have been allowed to thrive, and I’d like to add the following hypothesis—it may be a way to take pre-emptive control of the Gg/Dd narrative in preparation for the scenario where their relationship is exposed without their consent. Some i-turtles, I think, may have already gained a sense of how ruthless, cruel and above all, quick the c-ent rumour mill can be. If Gg and Dd get outed by a third party, chances are they won’t have time at all to create a fresh narrative, and the one that come out of the rumour mill will likely be … very ugly, containing every worst misconception people have against homosexual relationships. Whereas now, c-turtles already have a narrative at hand—the canon-fanon that, while c-turtles may not agree on every detail, is largely agreed upon on the important milestones. The supporting materials are also ready: the videos, the images, the voice and arrow guides on them.  

For me, another interesting question is whether this c-turtle rally and parade of candies are truly necessary in the end.

I’m curious about what will happen to the LLD supertopic when WoH completes its airing. There’s really no precedence for this kind of a mixed character + real person M/M CP supertopic setup — the history of Dangai is short, of popular Dangai’s, even shorter.

Guardian (鎮魂), the first successful Dangai aired exactly a year before TU (in the summer of 2018), never had a dedicated CP supertopic (please holler if I got this wrong! I know there’re Guardian fans here ~ hello! *waves*). Discussions of Guardian’s CPs were found within the drama’s supertopic (剧版镇魂); the real-person-CP also never had its own name; its discussions were hidden under the character CP (巍瀾) tag.

Then came TU. Its real person CP (BJYX) split away from its character CP (WangXian) long before the airing for the drama—the birthdate of the BJYX supertopic was 2018/04/28 (TU’s airing date: 2019/06/27).

After TU, two Dangai dramas have already aired before WoH that seemed to have largely passed the attention of i-fandom: The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (成化十四年) and Winter Begonia (鬢邊不是海棠紅). Winter Begonia, in particular, was well received. Their character CPs never really took off, however, being conceived and perceived as more brotherhood than romance. Age also played a factor for Winter Begonia—Yun Zheng (尹正), known to many turtles as Dd’s motorcycle buddy, is 34, and Huang Xiaoming (黃曉明) is 43. The associated real person CPs also never became popular as a result; Huang Xiaoming’s famous marriage to a beautiful actress also meant that a real person CP was likely to be off the table for Winter Begonia from the start.

The best reference I can think of then, when it comes to speculating the fate of LLD, is therefore the fates of the CP supertopics of 2020’s summer hit, Love and Redemption (琉璃). I’ve talked about its character CP before; essentially, just days after the drama was done airing, the (het) character CP (初遇夫婦) was broken up and in a manner largely criticised as unnecessarily cruel to CP fans. Its supertopic closed immediately afterwards. The supertopic for the real-person-CP (冰橙汁) got to live, however, and is still active today.

The commercial forces behind WoH will likely break the character CP as soon as the drama is done airing; popular het and non-het character CPs in the recent years have gone through similar fates. What does this mean to LLD then? Does it mean the supertopic will be shutdown, since the drama itself already has its own supertopic? But what will happen then to its real-person CP, which has been incorporated within the LLD supertopic? Will the real-person CP be broken at the same time as the character CP to allow for immediate “purification” of real person CP fans into solo fans, to avoid future “headaches” like BYYX—a bound between the actors that cannot be severed—or 227 that, in the eyes of many passerbys, remains an issue of solo vs cpfs?

Only time will tell, and I very sincerely hope it’ll get a happy ending. Fans are made to love, and it saddens me every time to see them being severed from their loves, or pitted against each other especially when it’s clear it’s the social media platforms, the commercial interests behind the scenes — not just the production/media companies but the YXHs, the water armies — who will reap the benefits in the end. Personally, I feel no joy in seeing anyone’s favourites getting torn down, even if they aren’t my own. Gg and Dd’s safety — and the safety of every upstanding, hardworking c-ent entertainer like them — doesn’t hinge so much on their CP or solo or drama ranking, but whether their fans can refrain from bringing their conflicts into the public eye, from “occupying social resources”—ie, deflecting the public’s attention from the “core socialist values” the government intends it to focus on.

Fandom is big enough for us all.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

hi steph, hope ur doing well!! i was wondering if you knew the origins of some of the classic johnlock headcannons, such as the red pants, sherlock’s love for bees, moving to sussex, and john’s rough childhood. thanks!!!!!! xxx

Hi Lovely!!

Oh, I don’t know ALL of the “classic headcanons” but I will enlighten you on the ones you mentioned plus a couple other ones (John always makes the tea, John loves ) that came to mind as I was replying to this :)

So the red pants was started, I believe by Reapersun when they started up “red pants Monday”, though that I don’t know why it started... I guess they just drew John in red pants on a Monday, and everyone else Liked That™ so it became a thing and now it’s fanon that John has Red Pants™. The bees AND the Sussex thing are ACTUAL CANON; Canon Holmes has an interest in apiary in canon, and I do believe either in later stories he moves to Sussex to keep bees in his retirement. I’m not 100 on the deets, but I’m pretty certain that it’s canon.

John’s rough childhood, I’m honestly not sure where this comes from... I think it’s just based on how he’s portrayed in Sherlock and others relating to John in the show. He seems very “repressed” in the first series, and post TRF, that people presume that his internalized self-loathing is because of how he was brought up, and watching his sister suffer possible homophobia. Plus the propensity the Watson siblings have to alcoholism is a clue to alcoholism being a family thing. John NEVER talks about nor TO his parents in the series as well, so that leaves people to speculate as to why. Given John’s overall nature, people assumed it was the rough childhood angle: Abusive and/or alcoholic one or both parents who were homophobic (hence his anger and trust issues and his repressed sexuality and rough relationship with his sister, and possibly developed depression and suicidal ideation); escaped to the military to pay for his medical degree and “get out his repressed anger issues” which in turn only fuelled or started his danger addiction, and possible exploration of his sexuality; probably realized then he also liked helping people given his doctor profession, if it helped people not go through what he did; abruptly forced back into civilian life which only reminded him of a past he was trying to escape and led to severe depression. So then being with Sherlock then tied all that up in a nice bow (caretaker, addiction provider, gave John something to live for again), John could forget about his family and make Sherlock his priority.

The tea thing, well, that was just a misconception, I believe, that John always made the tea in the show because it just “seemed right”, until someone analysed the series as a whole and realized, No, Sherlock is actually the one that always makes tea, and that in turn turned into Trash John, where we realized John is actually I giant trash bin of a roommate and it’s no wonder no one likes him, LOL.

The Jam thing, I HONESTLY have no idea where that came from. I think it’s just because John has the dichotomy of appearing soft and British on the outside, but really he’s a loyal and danger-addicted grumpy bi LOL.

If anyone has any others to add, or have any additions to what’s been pointed out here, please let us know!

[keiths-salt]

What is a Mary Sue?

Good grief. As someone who critiques and specializes in the Mary Sue topic, don’t call a character a Mary Sue simply because they’ve got skills.

Misconception: The major misconception I see going around regarding Mary Sues is that they’re super amazing characters with skills anybody would be jealous of, thus people start labeling any character both canon and OC who shows special skills as a Mary Sue when they are in fact not.

Origin: The original Mary Sue came from the Star Trek fandom, and was a parody of all the female OCs showing up in the fanzines who were better than the characters at everything, but whose skills were not just special, but unbelievable. For example, she graduated from the academy at an age which was nay impossible, I believe twelve, when most were in their older teens or later. (Weasley Crusher went when he was sixteen if I remember correctly). Add to this, everybody loved her, and she could do no wrong.

Birth of the Anti-Sue: People started to believe that Mary Sues were “perfect” characters, so they started tried to make their characters flawed to avoid the Mary Sue title. But in regards to these flaws, they were never, ever handled properly, nor believably. Notice how I brought up “believe” again? This led to characters like Bella Swan, and the debate of whether or not a canon character can be a Mary Sue, and the answer is yes, as it is possible for a canon character to not believable.

False Accusations Against Canon Characters: This in turn has led to false accusations against canon characters, because the consensus now is that canon characters can be Mary Sues. (It’s where we get the most talk about Gary Stus, as fanfic favors females publishing, and traditional favors men.) However, there is still this misconception that Mary Sues are “perfect”, so people only look at the “perfect” traits.

Ke/th and Sh/ro aren’t Mary Sues: Yes, both characters are gifted in things such as piloting and leadership, with Sh/ro being the Garrison pride and joy. However, despite these mad skills, they aren’t perfect. Ke/th is anti-social, struggles with connecting with people and even dropped out despite the fact he was supposed to be the next Garrison pride and joy. Sh/ro has got serious PTSD going on, but there is also a darker side to him that really only Ke/th has seen, but is hinted at in the series. We see a bit of it come out in episode one of season two. Plus, they’re guys. You’ve got to use the proper term, Gary Stu or Marty Stu.

Fanon L@nce is a Gary Stu: No, seriously. You want to talk about Gary Stu, here he is. They try giving the positive traits of the other characters to him, he steals the spotlight from other characters, he’s a major woobie to try to counter his fake perfection, yet every which way you turn, he’s not a believable character but just a bunch of wish fulfillment.

P.S. I’m suddenly wondering what Canon!L@nce and Fanon L@nce would get on the Universal Mary Sue Test… scores would vary depending on person.