#because let’s be real I love it in media that isn’t trying to be whump just the same

[straight-to-the-pain]

Just so you know I am always and forever a defender of women getting to hurt and be hurt in fiction

[atlantis-scribe]

Okay I really do love Atlantis, but the amount that some people woobify Rodney actually drives me crazy. And I actually love Rodney as a character but like my boy's an asshole sometimes!! like he's not a perpetual victim, let him be wrong about stuff and grow and improve as a person!! (also the recurring theme of having random women in his life be abusive for... no textual reason?? is a little sus) like I'm getting to the point where I can hardly (1/2)

(2/2) enjoy hurt/comfort with Rodney bc I'm so wary of this... which just makes me sad 😭 Really sorry for ranting in your inbox you are my fave Atlantis blog and I like your take on Rondey

hello there!

please don’t apologize for ranting. my inbox is always open to rants. they’re encouraged, even! (long as I get to rant back lol)

and my oh my is this one of the topics that also get me going, particularly because 1) Rodney is also my favorite character, 2) I, too, see this woobification tendency, and 3) it’s complicated af & touches on several running themes not just in Stargate but in almost all fandoms.

• the Rodney Woobification is ancient practice. the SGA (specifically McShep) fan community has been around for a while now, and the Stargate fandom as a whole is even the birthplace of many established tropes that people still use to this day (Daniel Whump, anyone?). I understand the appeal. hell, I love angst and hurt & comfort for reasons almost exactly the same as other people who woobify characters love to do their thing. I don’t always comment on it (I don’t wanna be That Dick raining on other people’s parades) because it’s a slippery slope that so often leads to outright gatekeeping. there’s really just a fine line between being critical of fic characterization — being ‘true’ to the source material — and having fun with fannish works (specifically, using art as an outlet to do the most bizarre things polite society would ostracize you for)

• that being said, I am also not a big fan of woobie!Rodney. there’s a reason why I had such a visceral reaction to the Post-Trinity Phenomenon & the Lemon Chicken trope.

you have to understand, I came into the fandom a little over two years ago. about a decade too late, really. all the stories have been written, the takes taken, and the discourse over & done with. it’s pretty lonely, but the fun is in trying to sift thru what the OG fans left behind. so to stumble upon such a treasure trove of fics with the same running theme and have such a fierce ‘Nope!’ reaction was pretty memorable. I love Trinity because the Rodney in that episode was allowed to be his most obnoxious, his most arrogant, his most unlikable, but still remain layered & nuanced & complex, and that’s pretty damn good writing there. I saw the ‘asshole’ label when I bought it, after all. I certainly don’t want it erased or buried under a rug. I want it explored.

• canon writing is a-whole-nother problem altogether. it’s hard to justify exactly what makes Rodney (& Sheppard & Weir & everyone else) genuine or true to form, because —  let’s be honest — SGA is not a prime example of stellar TV writing and/or storytelling. it’s addictive as all hell, but it’s severely flawed, and that includes how it handled consistency in characterization. this brings us back to the dangers of gatekeeping and yelling at other people for how they write (however beloved) ‘public domain’ fictional characters.

• what I want to advocate now in terms of woobie!Rodney is for other fans to maybe examine why they like Rodney. is it because we are all just weak for white, asshole geniuses who are shippable with other white (often same gender, often male) assholes? if that’s the case, and you want to continue making your content, go ahead. it’s frankly a pretty boring reason, but we’re all boring nerds here. some more than others. just, you know, tag properly & don’t be rude to other fans who may have different reasons.

me? I love Rodney because yes, he’s a white asshole genius (that archetype is like crack for real) but portrayed so wonderfully by a very talented actor that it left me with a nuanced character whose gaps I can fill with attributes I want to analyze as a lifelong fan of the human condition who occasionally writes fics for popular media. woobifying him would be a disservice to how I see him & the things I love about him, which would then render me unable to enjoy the Rodney I ‘stan’. that would defeat the entire purpose of why I engage with the fandom, because at the end of the day, I’m here to have fun.

• so no matter how much I (and you as well, I suspect, my dear anon) would want to police this practice, it just isn’t our place. the best (and the right) thing for us to do is curate our fandom experience and create the content we actually want to consume. who knows, we may just convince / inspire enough people so there’d be more of the same kind of things we enjoy out there :)

- kit

[rosesareviolentlyread]

WIJ Day 6: Water

SECOND PROMPT surprise yes it’s still Fae bb things. But this one is her perspective! Once again, this is a modern magic world heavily inspired by @0idril0 and @whumpywhumper‘s Nico & Markus/Lucien series respectively. (idk when I’ll stop plugging them and their series’ because I LOVE IT) I HIGHLY recommend you check them out. 

CW: Intimate whumper, religious whump, captivity, toxic religion, toxic family, drowning/waterboarding, passing out from said water torture, creepy whumper 

Besides the whole bathroom situation, it really isn’t any different than the intense bible study camps her parents would send to. Just the thought makes Faith’s heart ache, the thought of those times. So easy, so much taken for granted. 

She will never take God’s gifts to her for granted again. 

The Reverend isn’t bad per se. There’s a mini fridge down here filled with healthy snacks for her, chilled water, and leftovers for lunch. Every morning he whips up a bed & breakfast level creation: orange zest pancakes, eggs over easy on fresh baked bread with avocado and vegetables, bagels topped with salmon. Hell, she’s eating better than she ever did in her house. And he brings her fresh clothes, a rotating series of white dresses that remind her of Sunday School as a little girl. 

But it doesn’t change the fact that the door out of the basement is locked. It doesn’t change the fact that all she has down here is a Bible and her thoughts, both illuminated by candlelight that dances on the walls. She’d figured out after the first day that it was sound proof, for some reason. A reason that chills her, that she doesn’t think about. 

Because he cared. That’s what this was. Every day, he’d take time over dinner with her to discuss the Bible, Jesus, salvation for people of magic like her. Helped her meditate and pray, focus her mind where it had wandered away from Him. She knew it had, knew she had started to get deeper into the magic community, to drift away from the church that had been the cornerstone of her entire life. But isn’t that what growing up is? Exploration and growing?

Most people just don’t tend to grow into a magical heritage they had no idea of. 

The worst thing is when he makes her watch the videos. Read the press releases. The news clippings, the facebook posts, the tweets. Never on a device, always printed, in black and white ink she can pour over for hours as if it’ll change things. Change the fact her parents have really disowned her. Literally, in every sense. Attempting to declare her - their real child, the one her real mother had put her in the place of as a changeling - as dead. It’s awful to read people’s posts, opinions, the ways they tear apart her thesis without having read it. Or if they have, they choose to scrutinize details and grammar rather than her intent.

But none of it, not a single word is from Adam. He’d been in the background of the first few videos behind her parent’s speeches. And then nothing. Gone. Somehow that absence, even from words of hatred makes her feel hollow, the way the days without a message from him did. A response. He hated her, she knew, but to hate her so much he couldn’t even come out and say it?

It's exhausting, so much so she’s grateful when the Reverend lets her read the Bible instead. 

The source, the True Word. It’s comforting, words that slide in and out of her mind so easily she’s had to start marking it up over and over to stay focused. Based on her counts hidden in the pages, she thinks it’s been about a month, and she’s on her second copy now. The first is more penmarks and highlight than words anymore. 

In a way it’s started to feel...better. Everything. All the awful things, all the thoughts so far away in the real world. Sometimes she wonders how her magic friends are. If they care or remember her. They certainly aren’t looking for her, no one is after her post about leaving to ‘go find herself’. For all the media is concerned, she couldn’t take the criticism and vanished.

It’s like Bible Camp. Just a time to refocus herself, her efforts, get it together. The Reverend has helped a lot with that, assured her this is only temporary, only for the safety of her soul. She hated him at first, hated all of this, screamed, but now, she just wants out. She just wants to appreciate the world again, to be able to love every part of it in her bare hands instead of her imagination surrounded by concrete walls and candlelight. 

It’s why she perks up when he finally says, “You’ve done well, Faith. I think you’re ready.”

“Ready for what Reverend?” Faith tries to keep her voice innocent, humble, to not betray the excitement that makes her heart flutter in her chest, a moth as desperate to escape to the sunlight as she is. 

“To become purified again, my dear. You have been sullied, but I believe you have embraced Christ again as your savior. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.“ The words are so familiar in his dark voice, one that has followed her throughout her college career, but right now, they’ve never sounded so beautiful. 

“Romans 6:3-4” The words come automatic now, a product of the quizzes she’s been subjected to every day. Before this, she had known her bible well. But now it feels like they are imprinted in every wrinkle in her mind, honeyed ink colored by his voice she doesn’t think she’ll ever erase.

But if she can get out of here, she can recolor it. Color it in love and forgiveness. Forgive him, for this, for all this. He was simply following what he thought best right? 

Hell is full of good meanings after all.

“Yes, good. Come, I set up the tub in the other room” The other room. The one that’s locked, that she’s never seen the inside of. She’s seen the Reverend go in there before. Heard only gospel music reverberate loudly through the door. She’s imagined maybe it’s a study, perhaps a secret collection. Or a music room of sorts, since he loved to ‘feel’ music, with speakers to boost the bass. But now, it holds a tub? Still, her confusion is outweighed by the prospect of freedom. 

Gently, he helps her from her kneeled position, the one that makes her knees ache in a way she longs for, only because it’s something that reminds her this is real. She is real. She will get through this, as the Lord intends. 

The room itself is shockingly spartan. It’s rectangular concrete, blotted and patched over time like the ugliest watercolor of brown and grey. A spigot in the corner has a green hose attached, laughably out of place as it fills a large basin, what looks like a trough. 

Something in her asks why she hadn’t seen him bring it down, thinks to the dinners and evening teas where she felt too tired to continue talking. But she crushes it under the belief that this is release, and she shouldn’t question God’s Plan. 

This has to be God’s Plan. 

“Come” Is the command as he beckons her into the tub. Slowly she lowers herself down to her knees, breathing in. God, it’s hot. She’d expected it to be freezing, but it feels more like that sudden dip into a hot tub in the winter, and overwhelming burn that leaves her skin tingling as she struggles to adjust, to focus. 

“Thank you Lord, for bringing this lamb to my flock. For allowing her to grow under your light, to fail, so that she may grow greater for it. So that we may bring people into your light, and show that none of us are born sinners, or are abandoned for sinning. I do not know if I would have discovered this path you have intended for me without her, so I thank you. Truly, You are great.”

A thick hand, so much stronger than she ever realized before this basement, hold her arms crossed to her chest. The other cups the back of her head, gentle, but with a grasp that digs into her scalp in a way that would send a shiver down her spine if the water wasn’t so hot why did he make it so hot?

“Because of your Faith in Jesus Christ, I baptize you now in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” 

There’s barely time to grab a breath before she’s dipped back into the water, which hasn’t cooled, not at all. It burns on her face, a feeling like her face is being held over a fire, moments ticking by as the heat goes from uncomfortable to unbearable. It forces the air from her lungs until Faith’s left gasping as she’s pulled back up. 

But something’s wrong, because the Reverend looks angry. 

“Because of your Faith in Jesus Christ, I baptize you now in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!”

“Reverend wh-” The words are cut off as she plunged back into the water and how is it hotter? How is it getting hotter and hotter until she’s surrounded by boiling water, a lobster clawing out of its skin as it cooked, a witch melting into a puddle. 

But it’s worse because he isn’t bringing her up. She thrashes, tries to buck against his hand as what little breath she had trails away in bubbles, hopes releasing on the surface far away from her. But the hands just dig in. How are they not burning? How is he not burning? 

Her eyes open in desperation, trying to see. It’s a mistake. Even as she shuts them they are being boiled alive inside her head, eggs cracked on pavement in the summer sun, a snail covered in salt by sadistic children. 

Just as she doesn’t think she can hold on any longer, he brings her up. The only response she can do is gasp for air. 

This time, as she blinks through blurred vision she thinks his face isn’t angry, but..sad? That his visage of fear and pain matches her own. 

But the words come again, faster, with desperation dripping away any hope she has until she grasps a last gasp of air

“Because of your Faith in Jesus Christ, I baptize you now in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!”

It’s no better, even as her own tolerance for it increases. It seems a battle is waged. Is this what those women burned on pyres she learned in history class felt like, dying for a husband? Is this what witches burned at the stake in Salem felt like? 

Is this what hell feels like?

Her skin must be burning off, burning away at muscles as the water eats every bit of her like acid, inside and out. The air runs out too quick, too fast, and her body twitches violently, trying to get away from the nothing that’s creeping in  the corners of her vision. Some base instinct cries out and she tries to scream, only for the water to come rushing in. 

Volcanoes are fountains of pain, she decides, as lava runs through her veins, burning away her voice, her lungs.

Burning away her belief in good intentions being anything but hell itself

Burning away her hope that there is anything that will end this except death

Burning away her awareness until there is nothing left but nothing. No light at the end of the tunnel. No sudden darkness. Nothing is an absence, and Faith has never been anymore.

Coughing is the next thing she remembers. The concrete is blessedly cool against her cheek, even as its hardness presses on her skin that feels tender all over, like a sunburn. Lazily blinking through the tears in her eyes, she sees it looks like that: freshly pink. 

Like a cotton candy, something that’s slowly unhinging inside her laughs.

The Reverend’s shaky hands are petting her head, and he’s speaking but she can’t hear over the water that’s still burning her ears. Everything about her feels like a wasteland, a brushfire gone wrong that’s left the land salted and barren. She wishes to go back to the nothing, to the safety of not being here, no longer on fire but doused into damp ashes of who she once was. Who, she knows somewhere deep inside her, she will never be again. 

But the world will not stay quiet, and eventually she becomes aware of his words as he shifts her, so that she’s sat up leaning against his chest. The warm arms wrapped around her, gently rocking no longer feel like safety. They feel like a prison. 

His voice in her ears is honey that has led her into a spiderweb she’s spent her whole life spinning, a fly creating its own trap. 

“Shhh, shh, that’s it, just breathe. I’m sorry, Faith, I’m so sorry. I wanted to believe. That you were ready. That you believed. Lacing the water with iron was a failsafe, a way to burn away the last of the sin. But I know, the wicked tongue of the Fae. It deceives even you, yourself. But we’ll fix it. We will help you believe, not just in pretty words, the truth of Jesus’ salvation. We’ll need to have faith, make changes.”

She wants to make a response, a retort of some proverb or biblical story or line but her brain feels burnt out, bleached to nothing as everything she was is eaten away. All that comes out instead is a wet sob that quickly turns into more coughing. 

“Shh, it’s alright. I’ve got you. Don’t speak.” The suffocating comfort continues quietly for a moment. “We’ll start with barebones. Make sure you understand completely what you are. Yes, that’s it, you must not have truly believed of the sin you are born with.” It doesn’t matter what she believes, she realizes. What she was born as will never change to things like iron, no matter how hard God or the Reverend tries. Hadn’t a major critique of the magical community been the lack of miracles, real miracles? To not be what she was would be a miracle. 

And any belief she’s had in miracles, well, the water has purified that. 

“From now on, we’ll make sure you know. Your name will be Fae, until you have earned back Faith” 

Faith though has been abandoned in the true face of God.

Tags: @bleedingandfeverish @sableflynn @starry-whump @whumpmasinjuly (let me know if you want to be added or removed from the tag list!)

[citrusandbergamot]

hmm, so. I am an adult. and I am aware enough to know exactly how the fic I tend to read reinforces all kinds of mental processes. there is a thin line between self-care and enabling. 

I read a lot of romance, soulmate, love you forever kind of stuff. I read a lot of unrequited love, I read a lot (as in a fuckton) of angst. Whump, character death, pining, guilt, dub-con, rocks fall everyone dies, you name it. I like angst, always have. I want characters to hurt because I want to feel their hurt. And sometimes that’s fine and fun and okay, and sometimes I use it to escape my life. I am really good at escaping. 

Fanfic is not like...to blame for my escapist tendencies. It’s perfectly suited for it, sure. But, like, I am an adult, I know (more of less) what my limits are, and these things tend to go in cycles. Fanfic is very, very cut-and-dry lately; you get exactly what’s on the tin, so you can really, really find the stuff you think you want. There is some absence of variety in style and tone, perhaps, but a plethora to choose from, so that’s okay. 

but like. I know the things I have read have shaped my expectations of various things. I also know that it’s fake. I know that my expectations have been shaped by a variety of things: the media, by the way I was treated as a child, my parents, my own self-image, my fucking terrible, terrible health, my sunny fucking personality. I am not free from the influence any of these things, and they work on conscious and subconscious levels that I could spend a lifetime trying to understand. But I am not a child, I have been stuck with myself for 30 years, I know (mostly) what’s real and what isn’t. There might be something truthful reflected in fantasy but at its core, on a extremely basic level, stories are stories. They are not recitation of fact. It’s a story, a fantasy. Even if it’s about real things, it changes in the telling. It changes in how it’s heard, and there is nothing the teller can do about that. All this talk about how stories and fantasies ‘change the brain/affect reality’ is just like...it’s making it harder to put that distance between reality and the fantasy. It’s making it harder for people to know there’s supposed to be one. 

Take ‘based on real events’ stories. Does it fucking behoove anyone to forget that it’s still a story? That it needs some kind of arc, or point, or narrative, a beginning and an end (maybe some stuff in the middle?) Stuff that happens in real life is not so neat, not so linear, not so definitive. Real life doesn’t end when you close the book. The big revelation doesn’t stop the hurt the next day, understanding doesn’t beget immediate forgiveness. Things fall apart in ways that can’t even be explained, let alone written down. That’s why we keep trying - art and music and poetry and prose and theatre. Hundreds and thousands of emotions and connections, all stemming from the same kind of animal, with the same kind of consciousness, living a life until death. We’re fascinated by it, we’ll never run out of stories. But stories and real life are not the same. This should be shouted from the hilltops and proclaimed in every school, at every level. Stories and real like are not the same. Expecting real life to match a story is going to lead to some jarring realizations. It is not the fault of the story. It’s the emphasis placed on it. It’s the lack of diverse information. The lack of critical thinking skills. It is not the story’s fault, nor the fault of the person who wrote it. 

Fanfic is not my only source of knowledge about like, romance and unrequited love and heartbreak. I have my own experiences, and the experiences I’ve helped others’ through. It’s hard though, to feel something purely, cleanly, discretely, when it’s happening in real life. Like, my father died 6 years ago. There isn’t a single narrative out there that could capture the complexity of my relationship with him. There’s no way to describe it. There’s no way to explain it to someone outside of my immediate family - not in the way that counts. Not in the way that wouldn’t demonize or sanctify him. Neither of those would be correct. There is only what I know, what I feel. What I can let go of, what I can forgive, what I can’t. The things I miss. The things I don’t.  I could write a dozen, a hundred stories, and all they ever would be is a reflection of one aspect, one facet. And maybe somebody reading it feels a kinship with that aspect, feels it resonate. maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re searching for something else. 

If the brain changes with thoughts, then surely thinking about stuff in a critical fashion, after the emotion is done, will also change them. And surely to fuck we are not supposing that action and thought are equivalent. You can think about practicing the piano all you want. You still have to touch the fucking keys to be able to play. Our brains are terrifyingly capable. But action and thought are still not the fucking same. 

We are real, and complex, and living complex and real and messy lives. It’s a fucking terrible world and we all have the capacity to be terrible people, every single one of us.  There’s....I really don’t see the point of trying to sanitize that aspect away. Be vocal about it, sure, warn people who are younger that this is fantasy. But like. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. Reading it doesn’t not make it real. Watching James Bond kill people in cold blood does not make me a murdering.  Playing violent video games does not make me more violent. Playing only violent video games and dropping out of society entirely and only have social contact through those very games is something else entirely. See where I’m going with this?

There is a lot of ways that fanfic can instill terrible coping mechanism and thought patterns in the young that have nothing at all to do with dark!fic, or rape fic, or whatever. Fanfic cannot be like, the only outlet and/or role model.  Real life does not work like fanfic. Doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy it. Doesn’t mean we can’t still work out dark, twisted feelings, get them out. Keeping them in is really, really not awesome. Constantly bringing them back up and re-exposing yourself to them is also not good. There’s a ...balance, or there should be. 

But like, dude. that’s self-care v. enabling. Nobody else can make that judgment call, you gotta find that line for yourself. I don’t see why fandom at large has to be involved in that. I sure as fuck don’t want anybody passing that judgment on to me. I am responsible for myself. I am a goddamn adult. 

(oooo no, think of the children. Please. Let children ask questions about stuff, let children know that what they are reading is meant for mature audiences, let parents know about parental-block. It’s really, really not my responsibility to do anything more than that.) 

Anyway, this mini-rant is because I fucking love ao3 and I am so, so thankful to astolat and the others for creating it and for making the policies that are in place. They took the stance that policing fandom was none of their fucking business. It’s a goddamn archive and it’ll be there forever, no matter how much people shriek and gnash their teeth, thank fuck.