#canon is but a framework for the putting of Guys in Situations.

[necromycologist]

is he part of the charter? kept alive by the charter? free magic infected so he can’t use the charter? free magic and charter? charter dead zone? walking charter generator? charter mage? fuck if i know baby hes any of them depending on the fic. goldenhand can die by my blade

[roopnavarro]

Octoboss-related ask: I know this is a big hypothetical but there is this story on Ao3 called 'Guardian of Gastown' which involves Octoboss becoming the ruler of Gastown after the negotiations go haywire and Dementus and his crew get captured.

In your mind, what kind of ruler would Octoboss be?

Hey there! Excellent question! Thank you so much for the ask! I’m going to check out the fic later, thanks for the rec! But I’m going to answer this question before I indulge in reading it, because I want to go in blind, and I don’t want to seem like I’m rebutting or trying to invalidate another author’s work. Whenever I give my takes, that’s never the case. I think it’s wonderful that we have this wellspring of creativity and a myriad of interpretations around this character who has like, five lines and two minutes of screentime! I’m also going to give you a primer on how I portray Octoboss and his decision-making process. Disclaimer time! Everything henceforth is PURELY my speculation on what makes this imaginary horned biker tick. So even if it sounds like I’m making a definitive statement on how he “should” think or behave, I’m not. I just want to put this disclaimer out front so I don’t have to constantly couch my language in terms like “I speculate…” and “I think that…” I’m only discussing my view on the character and how I choose to portray him in RP and fanfic. With that in mind, let’s dive in!

As mentioned prior, I portray the character in roleplay. Since roleplay is like a mix between improv acting and writing, I needed to come up with a way for him to make decisions that are reasonably consistent with what we see in canon AND reasonably easy to replicate consistently in on-the-fly storytelling AND fun to interact with for collaborative storytelling. Rambling time, but I PROMISE this is necessary groundwork to cook up the answer. So how do we delve into the mind of a guy that tortured a woman and then gets pissy when his subordinates are shot by an ally? My first belief is that Octoboss doesn’t use a moral code. There’s no list of rules he follows; instead, he looks at each situation, in its context, and does his best to make decisions that uphold/advance a guiding principle. So let’s figure out his guiding principle. — I think that principle is “Maximize good for the Mortiflyers.” “Maximize good” can mean “help them avoid harm/distress,” “provide more/better resources for them,” and anything else that could be argued to improve quality of life or reduce unhappiness. 

Therefore, his decision-making process most closely mirrors a wacky Wasteland version of Act Utilitarianism. To oversimplify this, Act Utilitarianism weighs the morality of an action based on the outcomes for the “greater good.” For Octoboss, the Mortiflyers (and the Horde, pre-rift) are the “greater good.” As he saw it, Mary Jabassa held the keys to the Green Place, and it was morally IMPERATIVE that he take them from her, in order to make a better future for the Horde, by any means necessary. Now, sure, we could get into the weeds and say the Green Place isn’t big enough to sustain them, but Octo doesn’t know that. This use of torture is actually a prime example of a common criticism of Act Utilitarianism — it justifies some VERY bad behavior if the potential outcome is good enough!

(Hilariously, Dementus also seemed to be using an Act Utilitarianism framework when deciding to sacrifice the Mortiflyers in the Trojan Horse ploy — their deaths produced a benefit for the Horde and the rest of the Mortiflyers. Octoboss realizes this, but the pain of betrayal and loss are mingling with his understanding of Dementus’ moral justification for the killings. This makes Octo fume like mad. Got bit in the ass by his own philosophy…) However, Octo’s moral framework doesn’t exist to justify cruelty. It also undergirds the gentleness and approachability that defines my portrayal of the character. It’s better for the greater good of the Mortiflyers for them all to cooperate and communicate openly. Their whole gimmick — two-person motorcycle-launched paragliders, two-person motorcycle crews, and two-person flyer/driver combos — involves cooperation and communication. Their actions seem very practiced and well rehearsed, and in order to achieve that, they need to be quite open regarding what works, what doesn’t, and what could be improved. They need to be able to say to each other “I need more speed to launch,” or “I need you to get me closer to the target,” or “When you took that sharp turn and I was up in the air, that hurt my shoulder, and now I can’t throw thundersticks right.” The Octoboss does all he can to facilitate this by leading through example. 

In terms of emotions, information, and guidance, he is very open with the Mortiflyers. He believes knowledge is meant to be shared.  He also doesn't shy away from critique if he notices a member of the gang doing something that would endanger another. And he's not the type to simply tear someone down. He'd work with the gang member to fix the bad habit or remedy the issue that's causing them to behave erratically. Similarly, he’s open to critique from his men, especially if they can explain how his actions are negatively impacting them. All of these positive traits are built upon a foundation of “gotta do what’s right for their greater good.” 

So now that we’ve got a glimpse into his decision-making process, let���s move on to discussing his approach to power. From what we see in canon, it doesn’t seem like Octoboss is ruling by force/coercion, or with an iron fist. A random Mortiflyer is brave enough to look DEMENTUS in the eyes, after getting a direct order, and say “I take orders from the Octoboss!” There’s so much conviction in his voice. It’s loyalty to Octoboss, not fear of him. There are SO many ways this scene could’ve gone. Imagine if the Mortiflyer said “N-n-no! The Octoboss will have my head if I disobey him!” But no. That’s not how it went. Instead, the Mortiflyer almost sounds like a kid saying to his stepdad, “You’re not my REAL father,” which indicates preference, affection, and loyalty to the OG dad. You don’t get that kind of loyalty by being a dick to your people. I don’t think he’s hoarding resources from them, keeping them in the dark about plans, and generally just being an authoritarian prick. He cares about them deeply, and they return his sentiment. Within the greater dynamics of the Horde, I think the Mortiflyers have a decent amount of soft power. They’ve practically got a uniform, they’re loyal, and they don’t even seem to have a numerical advantage over the rest of the squad. This brings us to a discussion of hard power vs. soft power. Hard power is rule through force and coercion — locking people up, killing people, taking stuff away from them. Soft power is the ability to influence rather than coerce/force. The Mortiflyers seem like they’d be among the elite troops of the Horde, and I wouldn’t be shocked if other horde members aspired to join them, or at least be in their good graces. This “soft power” approach will have to get a bit harder if tasked with ruling over the entire Horde AND Gastown. With these factors in mind, let’s run down some steps I think he’d take if he were left in charge of Gastown.

Distance himself from the actions of Dementus when dealing with Immortan Joe and the other members of Gastown’s high command. Submit to Joe’s rule, since that’s the route that’s least likely to result in casualties on his side. Make it known that he and his men WILL work within the system and improve operations at Gastown. Do his best to IMMEDIATELY ingratiate himself to Joe by discontinuing most non-essential generator usage and adding that gas to the trade deal, in exchange for more food and water. Promise to boost fuel production by fixing issues in the production chain. 

Once again, motivated by the best interest of the Mortiflyers, he crunches some numbers. According to Lachy Hulme’s interview with Empire, there are about 4,000 bikes in the Horde. We can safely say every bike has a rider, but some bikes have more than one rider (people riding backpack, Organic Mechanic with History Man on the back of his trike, and so forth).The Horde also suffered some losses during the confrontation with Scrotus and Rictus at the first Citadel meeting, but the majority of the Horde was out of Thunderstick throwing range. I don’t think their losses were in the 100s. So for quick and dirty math, let’s just say there are 4,000 people in the Horde. Now let’s look at Gastown’s population. Australia’s largest oil refinery employed about 1,100 workers. Gastown also drills oil, and I haven’t been able to find much solid data on how many people you need for the extraction portion. The closest ballpark number I’ve been able to get is 100-200, but *shrugs* that may be off. So let’s add on various others in Gastown (Sanitation workers, kitchen staff, medical staff, mechanics, War Boys/Polecats/Flamers, Imperators, resource managers, guards, repair workers,  Gastown nobility, misc staff, children of anyone listed here). I think it’s reasonable to estimate 2,000-ish people, in total, in Gastown. In light of this information, Octoboss would immediately realize that Gastown has a carrying capacity problem due to the influx of new residents and its limited amount of food, water, and space. He knows they trade guzzolene for food and water, but they won’t be able to up guzz production enough to pay for the food and water needed to support all the new residents, especially since the population has skyrocketed immediately. And would the Citadel even need that much fuel at once? Probably not, fuel has an expiration date and can’t be stored indefinitely. People WILL riot and starve unless the population is curbed quickly. So that brings us to the question — how would Octoboss reduce the population? Well, he understands that the Horde is full of hard-working and resourceful people with valuable skills. He’d want to brief them on the idea of being traded to another settlement, and take a tally of who can do what jobs. Who would be open to working in the Citadel gardens? How about the sick bay? Can you weld? Would you be up to cast bullets or reload rounds? How about swinging a pickaxe or working in a kitchen? Who wants to be a War Boy BUT FOR REAL THIS TIME? Naturally, some people would be resistant to this idea. He’d give them the option to return to nomadic life, but he’d give them a fair warning that anyone raiding the empire’s shipments WILL be met with lethal force. And of course, some people wouldn’t want to work with the leaders that killed Dementus and friends. If that erupted into a civil war, it would curb the population, albeit in a less-than-ideal way.

Familiarize himself with the operation. His ass does NAWT know anything about running a refinery or drilling operation! And he knows this! To better understand his duties, he’d need a tour through the facilities. He understands guzzolene production isn’t just wizardry, it takes skilled workers, and he’d defer to them when they explain the limitations of Gastown’s production capabilities.

Identify quality of life improvements needed to boost guz production. Go from being the Octoboss to the OSHAboss! Despite what some people will tell you, a safe (or at least safer) work environment is more productive. IRL, oil refineries work 24/7, 365 days per year. Accidents are common, and also slow down production (a machine isn’t gonna run right with some dude’s arm stuck in it!). Due to the constant flow of work, it’s likely that some health and safety aspects of Gastown’s oil refinery have fallen into disrepair, and could use outside help. A high turnover rate due to death/injury is a problem, because training new employees takes time and distracts from the guzzolene production process.  Glancing at some cursory work injury data, it looks like entrapment, getting hit by equipment, and falls from high places are the most common injury causes. Ventilation issues are also common, and can lead to workers getting sick and reducing productivity. Some of these issues can be remedied pretty quickly — the Mortiflyers have lots of experience working at heights, and would probably be able to rig up a pretty simple (but useful) clip and harness system for workers in fall-prone areas. Identify spots that need guardrails and other safety barriers. Employ some Horde members to go scavenge some materials to build the stuff, and get the Horde to work on these improvement projects. Poorly ventilated areas (likely understood as “places that’ll make you feel yucky if you hang out there too long”) would be baffling to Octo, but I feel like he could consult with someone to figure that out. And when it comes to providing ventilation, well… Which faction has access to large fans? And probably understands how to build and repair them? …That’s right! In other words — use the Horde to improve Gastown, because this helps the Horde integrate better. It proves the Horde’s worth.

Identify the criticisms of the old Guardian of Gastown. The former Guardian of Gastown seems like a bit of an ivory tower kinda guy. He’s clearly put a lot of time and effort into his hobbies and beautifying his personal surroundings. His clothes are clean and neat, which is an “accomplishment” considering he lives in a friggin oil refinery. Wait, did I say “accomplishment?” Nah. I mean “this man has never done a day of manual labor in his life.” There HAVE to be people that have beef with the guy, particularly the workers. Listen to the workers. Win over the workers, because unlike the nobility, they’re the actual backbone of the operation. The workers of Gastown become a part of Octo’s priorities, since their work and productivity is essential for keeping the Mortiflyers safe, fed, and housed. 

Woooowhee! Nearly 2,500 words in this response! No such thing as “Shut the Fuck Up Friday” for RoopNavarro. Writing about this makes me want to play it out in an RP or write a fic to really delve into these thoughts (although I might skip that, given that it’s likely redundant with the fic that already exists, and I never want to step on another author’s toes).

Regardless, I am ALWAYS open to answer any Octoboss questions you may have! Thanks again for dropping by and wanting my take!

[urhoneycombwitch]

love ur roommate Eddie but also all the time spent together between sexy times stresses me out

at least with husky neighbor Eddie he's across the hall and if you're not in the mood to see him, then you don't have to

but roommate Eddie is literally in. your. walls.

what about when you just have ugly days when your hair is a mess and you walk around the apartment smelling a lil before you hop in the shower

what about when either of you get sick and it's real nasty?

is there only one bathroom?? do y'all gotta coordinate times???

what if he insists on putting the toilet paper the wrong way around???!!! what about the hair clogged in the shower drain!!

what about the arguing and the tension and the resentment that arises from sharing a space with someone on the worst of days??

like maybe Eddie is the best roommate to ever fictionally exist ever but I can only imagine that there's gotta be some issues that arise especially when they're blurring the boundaries

and roommate!reader seems really strict and anal (same) with her rules so I figure that also extends to sharing a space

I know it's normally default to want to imagine that they figure everything out and live happily ever after, but do you see roommate!Eddie and reader being long term? how do they work out their issues with both sharing a space and finding footing with their agreement? what's the first problem to arise? and if they don't work out, what to do think is the largest issue/ what finally breaks them apart?

anon I love love love this. thanks for asking the nitty gritty questions they are so IMPORTANT!!

okay full transparency, when I started writing for roommate!Eddie I absolutely used the fic logic of “everything is perfect here” because I wanted to focus more on the relational/emotional aspect of two people who have already learned how to share a space. at the time, I think the first meeting/time it took to iron out issues were less interesting to me from a writing standpoint. however, I certainly had the framework for their backstories in the back of my head while i wrote!

I’ll share my thoughts below for those who are interested in the roommate!Eddie+roommate!Reader story. but also don’t hold me to anything I say here for future stories bc my personal canon is subject to change. lol.

in this no-magic Big City AU of mine, I imagined reader and Robin meeting in college and becoming good friends. you were in a horrifically boring history class together (Robin for her smarty-pants Psych/Art double degree and you for a Literature degree) and started hanging out outside of school. by proxy, you also hang out with Steve, Robin’s roommate, and by the time the three of you graduate you’re all good friends.

and then you’re staring down the barrel of a mostly useless degree, a shit ton of college debt, and nowhere to go. you land a job at a local publishing company, but it’s mostly boring and corporate and doesn’t pay for a two-room apartment in the heart of the city. which is unfortunate, because your last roommate (a nightmare by all accounts. quite literally never learned how to clean up after herself) moved out a month ago and you need the extra income to keep the space.

enter Steve’s mysterious friend Eddie. whom you’ve only heard wild stories about. apparently, he’s looking for a room- and according to Robin, he’s “well-mannered for a boy”. you ask a million questions before agreeing to meet with him (neither Steve or Robin gave you a straight answer as to the guy’s career which is weird…), and you make it really clear you’re not in the mood to be screwed over. or stuck with an unlivable situation. 

but your friends assure you it’ll be a good fit. and when you meet for drinks later that week, Eddie is extremely charming and honest. tells you he is, in fact, in the drugs business, but promises it never follows him home. he agrees to all your house rules. he also flirts a lot. but you learn to take that with a grain of salt.

so Eddie moves in and yeah, absolutely there’s an adjustment period. learning the rhythms of each other’s days and nights, figuring out how to split household duties, all the mundane shit that comes w/ a new roommate. there’s an awful first winter where the heat goes out; you two alternate getting colds and stomach flus, multiple nights spent sweating over the toilet or kitchen sink (one bathroom is a KILLER for the sick season). 

there’s a camaraderie that forms after those sucky cold months. you absorb into each other’s lives, friend groups, spaces that extend outside of your apartment. you become real, actual friends who enjoy each other’s company.

and also? Eddie is happy to appease. he’s not a pushover, but he is really respectful of you and your space. he puts effort into learning your little quirks, or things that tick you off (there are a lot). you both figure out early on that open communication is the best policy. Eddie’s the type to tell you if there’s something he doesn’t like or wants to change, so neither of you end up holding secret quiet grudges.  

which is why I think reader finds this whole attraction thing so scary (and uses rules as a defense mechanism sorry I wrote my own OCD into this!! lmao) like Oh, fuck. if this goes sideways, if we have a big fight or fall in and out of love and can’t be in the same room anymore… we’d have to move. I’d have to say goodbye to the best roommate I’ve ever had. our shared friend groups would be dispersed. it would be devastating on so many levels.

anyways. here’s the masterlist if u read this far and want it ;)

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

What would movie Tails think about Tails Sails Mangey and Nine?

Hohoho...

Just to warn you in advance then, my answers will be a mixture of canon interpretation and headcanon.

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Prime!Tails:

First impression:

I think in the case of Prime Tails, he'd largely see the similarities and be like "Oh! We're the same!" Whether it's a first meeting or meeting him from afar, I think he would have a healthy mix between seeing him literally as another him, while also wondering just how similar they actually are.

After getting to know him:

At this point, Movie!Tails would know just how similar and different he and Prime!Tails are. Ultimately though I think he'd be surprised by how similar they turned out in personality and image regardless. Other than that, I think Movie!Tails would be jealous that Prime!Tails' Sonic actually saved him from bullies and that they've been able to adventure and be best friends for so long. Movie!Tails would probably hope his relationship with Sonic could become as strong as theirs one day, while also taking it as a sign that it will be.

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Sails:

First impression:

Definitely "A pirate me?" I think he'd wonder how Sails became a pirate or whether he was just kind of born into it. If they get a first meeting though, I think Movie!Tails' first impression would be that Sails is surprisingly nice for a pirate (not that Sails is usually nice to the first random people he meets (*cough* the first meeting with Sonic *cough*) but Movie!Tails doesn't know that). He would find him friendly, and he'd assume that Sails' contraption is exemplary of him still being a tech/mechanical guy in this universe.

After getting to know him:

I think he'd still consider Sails a pirate version of himself, but he'd see that Sails isn't necessarily a peach either. He's still a pirate, and he still itches for excitement, but he's also loyal to his crew and his friends, something that movie!Tails can respect.

Now, Prime never really gave us backstories for anyone other than some of the New Yoke variants. Personally, I like to headcanon that Sails was an outcast on his island, and he was in a bad spot when Dread first found him. I like to headcanon that post his initial failure to get the Devil's Lighthouse, he still couldn't ditch the sea life. So, though he wanted to put himself in a position where he'd never zero in on that treasure and hurt people again, he still needed a crew to continue the sea living. With this, the idea is that Dread picked up his crew members out of bad spots and offered for them to join his crew. Under this framework, my personal headcanon is that it was Dread that saved Sails (either by directly confronting his bullies or by taking him in while he was in poor spot health wise in the wake of his treatment as an outcast). If this was the case, I think Movie!Tails would be surprised at the knowledge that this world doesn't have a Sonic, but he'd definitely be able to relate to Sails. I think he'd be able to understand why being a pirate on the Angel's Voyage is home to him by relating the similarities in their lives.

Anyhow, the tech/mechanics thing. With getting to know him, Movie!Tails would find out (as Sonic did) where his strengths lay. Sails has a natural talent for it of course, but he gets his start in "contraption making". His world does not have the same technology as Movie!Tails' world.

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Mangey:

First impression:

I must admit, if he watches how Mangey acts out of context, his first impression would probably be that Mangey is "me but crazy" or have questions about his intelligence level. As long as Movie!Tails doesn't present himself as a threat and make a bad first impression on Mangey, though, in a first meeting he'd probably thing of Mangey as a sweet little thing.

After getting to know him:

If you spend a while with Mangey you get to understand who he is and his situation better, and Movie!Tails is no exception to this. He may even feel a bit ashamed for assuming that Mangey was "crazy" or "savage". While he can't personally relate with Mangey quite as well as he could with the others, I think he'd still be able to relate with that idea of having found home. I also think he'd logically end up learning of Mangey's inate technological talent as well and would patiently learn how to communicate with him. Not that any of that is easy, it's just that I think at some point Movie!Tails would "see the signs" so to speak and realize that even though Mangey is different and life is different for people here in general, he's still a person with thoughts and feelings. I can also see him apologizing for how he initially saw and/or treated Mangey.

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Nine:

First impression:

It depends upon what era of Nine's life Movie!Tails sees him in or meets him in. In general though, I think he would see Nine as "me but a villain" at worst, and "bad end me" at best. Nine is a version of himself who is isolated and also doesn't have a Sonic, so though Movie!Tails' opinions are dependent on how much knows at this point, I can see him at baseline feeling a bit sorry for Nine. Even if he thinks Nine is a bad guy who caused all of these problems, I think he would baseline feel sorry after imagining a possibility in which Nine was him.

Idk. Like I said his opinions would be very context heavy. If his first impression was like. S3 Nine at his worst, I can see him sort of shutting down the empathy center and just seeing him as a bad guy. But if he's just seeing him pre-meeting Sonic, being bullied or trying to stay isolated, he would just straight up feel bad for his living situation. It's...nuanced.

After getting to know him:

I think in a way the level to which he relates to Nine would be a little scary. It wasn't scary with Prime!Tails because the two aren't terribly different on the surface. Just two people who met Sonic and became heroes in a bit of a different way.

But if he learns Nine's story, where Prime!Tails' story is interesting in it's similarities and differences, a story that holds shared happiness in finding someone like Sonic to look up to and relate to, Nine's story is more terrifying in the ways Movie!Tails relates. In its most basic and shallow form, Nine's backstory is exemplary of what would happen if there was no Sonic (or if there was no one who would save Tails from bullies or inspire him). Even before meeting Movie!Sonic, Movie!Tails was already a tech and mechanical guy. We know he straight up had traps and weapons in his backpack, he'd developed the Miles Electric, and could fly a plane. With Nine's story as reference, I personally headcanon that if Movie!Tails hadn't started watching Movie!Sonic live and become fixated on him as someone he could relate to, he would have had a similar end as Nine (code: just trying to isolate himself from others so he won't be hurt again).

Essentially, I think that if Movie!Tails got to know Nine's story, it would probably shake him to see what might have happened had he never learned about Sonic, and had he eventually taken it upon himself to get rid of his bullies permanently. And I think if he knew how things turned out for Nine by the end of Sonic Prime, he would feel very sorry for him (both for his great loneliness and in not being able to be around Sonic or really, truly at home).

In other words, complicated feelings. Nine's reality would probably make him feel uncomfortable, but in the end, Movie!Tails would want for him to be happy and truly "home" as well.

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Thank you for the ask, anon! While I see most versions of Tails as surprisingly judgy (surprisingly in the way that they can be a bit surface level and dependent on first impressions), I think especially when it comes to other versions of himself Movie!Tails would become more sympathetic or empathetic upon actually getting to know them. And since none of these four are really bad guys at the end of the day, I think he'd be willing to see them subvert his initial impressions of them.

[fllagellant]

2, 4, and 12 for Lann in that character ask game :3

YAAYAYAYA OFC :33

questions here !

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Can his idle animation stretches be the answer ? I jest <- idle animation enjoyer . I really like how he interacts with the world , if that makes sense ? A lot of him wisdoms and how he sees things pull back to the idea of living in a tribe and having to care for the entirety of the tribe If you want to survive .. like it is a nice and extremely understandable way to approach the current situation by laying the framework of his own clan life structure overtop of it and building from there ..

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

The Witcher feels like a cheating answer for some reason but it also . Was the first thing I thought of . There is a vision here , beyond me just throwing things at my biggest interest and hoping they stick , I just do not Know what it is yet …. Idk I feel like he would have Fun . It would be Fun for him . Enrichment for the Lann . Put him on the Continent he would have Fun

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

His borderline confirmed bisexuality . Sorry . I feel like he is the sort of guy who chews on things to keep focused ? Like . A little chunk of moss or something similar to chew on while he’ s training or travelling to keep his head In It . Just an extra thing to pay attention to that keeps him in the moment . The kinda guy with a piece of wheat hanging from his mouth .. rip Lann you would have loved to experience 5 gum

[unhelpfulfemme]

7 and 17 for the ask game!

7. I'm gonna be honest and say that this happens very rarely to me because if there's one virtue I have (and I have very few of them) it's the capacity to attribute blame correctly. So if fandom is weird about a character I usually start hating the fandom and withdrawing from at least that part of it rather than letting it influence my opinion about the character. Alternately, I'll perhaps review the canon and realize that the fandom is right and I had skipped some key details about the character or how they were presented, which will make me change my opinion about the canon character or the canon's framework overall, but I don't think that's what the question is asking.

BUT there is one notable exception, and that's Dara from the Daevabad trilogy. Which is barely a fandom LOL, like the entire series gets 2 Tumblr posts every six months, but I do love those books and I do get livid about the way the fans treat this particular character to the point that each time I see fanart of him I recoil in disgust.

I put in a cut because this turned out longer and angrier than I expected lol but I guess that is the spirit of the poll?

Basically you know the age-old debate about whether Kylo Ren fans are racist towards Finn and whether Kylo is a better or worse character than Finn and whether people just like him more because he's white etc. etc.? I generally think that's a stupid thing to hoist onto the sequel fans when it's the canon itself that encourages a superficial reading of Kylo as tragic and dramatic and of Finn as a plucky comic relief guy whose emotions shouldn't be taken seriously. But Dara and Ali from Daevabad are the perfect examples of the trend the people who complain about it are trying to highlight and I reeeaaally wish those books were more famous in wider fandom circles because we would be Having so many Discussions about them.

Dara and Ali are basically the two angles of what's a lowkey love triangle with the series' (awesome!) protagonist, Nahri. In my eyes, Dara and Nahri have so little chemistry that I nearly quit the first book 30% in because I thought it would all be about them, but YMMV I guess. Then I saw Nahri and Ali interact once, thought "man, I wish these two were being set up for a grand romance instead" and was then thrilled to discover that actually they were and the author was clearly phoning in the Dara/Nahri parts because they were there to make a point rather than to be romantic or appealing.

Dara is an asshole, but in canon, he's a well-written asshole and there's a point to his characterization. He's an extremely talented Proud Warrior Guy who is really patriotic and cares about his family and his country and about making them proud. He's also arrogant and short-tempered, but so is Ali. The thing is, Dara's superiors send him to commit genocide, and Dara does so to mixed success. Then the people he's tried to genocide come for his own people to exact revenge and brutally kill his family. This all sparks a massive civil war, in the middle of which Dara ends up trapped in a Fate Worse Than Death kind of situation for thousands of years, until he is somehow saved and joins the protagonist. He feels anguished and vengeful about his family dying but is also still chauvinistic AF and never examines his own role in all of this. He still believes that blindly following authority and being loyal to people of his religion and ethnicity is his highest moral duty. This makes him commit even more war crimes, end up in another fate worse than death situation, and only manage to get out of it by sheer luck and through the other characters being kinder towards him than he would have been in their shoes. He also always thinks he knows better than anyone else and routinely overrides Nahri's wishes because he thinks he knows what's good for her.

Now, he also has positive traits, like he's a kind and patient teacher and has a code of honor etc. etc. but his narrative is clearly about radicalization and cycles of revenge and, well, toxic masculinity. There honestly isn't much else to him.

Ali is also stubborn and arrogant, quick to judge people who are different than him, and prone to foot-in-mouth incidents. He's more of a warrior poet type, equally badass but also bookish. BUT he's also Black and a practicing Muslim, which I guess puts some people off of him. The thing is, Ali is a wayyy more complex character than Dara, he has a whole-ass family and his relationship with every one of its members is lovingly and intricately drawn by the author, and he also has nuanced and complex thoughts about his code of ethics, the system of governance of his country, his religion, and many, many other things. He is put into a lot of interesting situations and forced to make many difficult choices and is just overall a more complex and interesting character.

And still! STILL! Like 80% of fanart and fan content for this series is all about Dara, a frankly quite unsympathetic character if you think about it for more than 0.2 seconds and the flattest one of the main three to boot. I would have been content to read Dara's canon story and recognize it for the well-crafted story it is and even empathize with him (he was quite young when all that happened to him) but the amount of passionate insistence by the fans that he is the poorest meow meow and so much hotter and more interesting than Ali makes me have an irrational and visceral negative reaction whenever I see him.

17. Superficial answer?

We need more Padmé Amidala/Asajj Ventress content. For some reason I really like the idea of the two of them together and there are like 4 fics with them on Ao3 of which 3 are orgy fics with 10 different characters. The reason I like the idea of the two of them together is totally not because they represent the two types of women I tend to develop crushes on and I'm just mashing my dolls together.

Deeper answer?

I really really love those posts where people apply whichever discipline they're working in or are passionate about to fandom works? Like that biologist who made up a theory according to which Wookies and Caminoans have a common ancestor?

I can never get enough of that and wish I could see it more often. I want more biologists squinting at the weird plants in the back of scifi series. I want political theorists to try to make sense of the politics in Vorkosigan. I want art historians to try to develop a theory of how art and fashion changed between Hot and GOT.

Make me a bastard child of your fandom special interest and your professional special interest. I will eat it up, I promise.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

ideas about pseudo love triangle antics for benstuk who we guess end up married and winston as the third party here. pseudo in "not considering 'b/c winston is dating someone or trying to!' as the main factor ever, though it could feature" and "also romance is fake and i oppose it" sort of getting in the way of possible frameworks being peak relevant. it's that through these characters' interactions, components and aspects of character could be (dis/un)covered, changes &/or actions could be prompted, kind of like wow this really rendered this character dynamic

for example like peak general situation: tuk & ben meeting & having a dynamic as in canon. later on winston befriending tuk &/or vice versa as in canon. this ultimately goes well enough re: whether this can also be a triumvirate as in canon but along the way: biumvirate shakeups!

less peak general: put benston in there somehow. discuss

pseudo love triangle like ohh ben&tuk existing but now tuk is hanging out with this other guy & ben is like :( in possibly various ways & degrees. Revealingly. does not resolve "properly" insofar as these are my ideas so inevitably it'd be shit like oh yeah sure i, tuk, will date you, ben, but not like "oh i gotta break up with winston over this" b/c we weren't dating but not like "oh i've never made out &/or hooked up with winston" b/c i have. forever gonna decide in further character dynamics that there was a fun "two pairs of preexisting friends bond further via: this casual foursome & hanging out thusly" just out of frame thanks to canon, for example. see:

winston's involvement in laying the foundation for bentuk by way of "tuk questions his sexuality" lmao like. crashing the party with drinks & maybe someone Is like "idk would you make out with each other lol" as just a quick skill check like well if these people get pissed off at the affront to their heterosexuality & leave then nbd, but if not, the Are here, conveniently, joie de vivrely....winston responding immediately like =D 4x08 style utterly repurposed lol & tuk is not affronted really but still a bit nervous & especially so re: "oh no is my failure to reject a possible wisp of homoeroticism gonna get me in shit already with Coworkers still a dozen feet away :(" but mostly joking for now so just [didn't fail the skill check] enough & back to the joie de vivre. later on it's like "yeah we had a foursome but if there was a woman involved maybe that makes it sufficiently Not Gay / Straight? still keeping it secret ofc" later on was like lol there can even be drama like winston is comfortable around tuk / about it, Too comfortable vs tuk's simmering crisis here, where winston's canon "failure to indeed be Sufficiently defensive against / repulsed by even potential wisps of homoeroticism ft. yourself (&/or in general really)" is in play, ease & affection can be another manifestation of that failure with or without trying to flirt, hook up again, anything ""further"", The Intimacies....like it could just make tuk nervous & [oh no! the dissonance within me! the Questions i'm not yet willing to fully ask much less answer!] like perhaps there's increased distance as a result, whether in antics of suddenly trying to avoid winston, whether in rising impatience / annoyance around winston which is a real ":(" one, but, Drama....tossing & turning like my Past drama with my middle school bestie betrayal with music of significance to our relationship....it would resolve, along with the "as winston encourages confidence in tuk, it could apply to [yeah it's Wrong around here to not be straight(tm) but] confidence" & like wouldn't it be hilarious then to discover ben like oh all along i've been queer & just keeping it to myself b/c Yeah :/ You know (anyone does know) & wouldn't it be easier to discover you're down to get married to ben. bonus: combine things yolo, bentuk & winstuk being largely separate before this, ben is :( about it in a way, gradual winstuk rift for no externally obvious reason that neither of them are happy about either but it's secretly tuk's Questioning time that he's not really willing or even able to name much less discuss right off, surprising benston moment somehow in winston having cause to try asking for a hint from ben b/c not like he's unused to friendships souring or starting sour & continuing apace but it does feel like something's gone wrong & he sure feels :( about it in a way.....no moments of mere total psychouts cleared up & cleared away nor of asserting exclusivity in some form to save the day. getting expansive & tangled in there good for them

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Was Napoleon a tyrant? I don't necessarily think he was: at least, I believe he was a better alternative to the absolute monarchs he was fighting. But there are those who disagree. What are your thoughts on the subject?

This is a can of worms to be sure.

I mean....how are we defining the word tyrant? All monarchs are tyrants to someone. Monarchy, by its very nature, is tyrannical in one way, shape, or form, no matter who is at its head. Even in the more neutered forms we see now days with the British. The Queen still exerts a ridiculous amount of power, all things considered.

Napoleon was no better or worse than any other monarch in Europe at that time. Indeed, better than some, worse than others. Because you know, he was human!

-

This got VERY long. SO LONG. Choice excerpts from below the cut:

"'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it."

"(And I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system. Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door. Napoleon: Hush.)"

"Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor."

"Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight! (I'm putting my money on Napoleon.)"

--

tl;dr: a more or less benevolent emperor who had his faults and who was intimately aware, for better or worse, more than most monarchs, that the head is only tenuously attached to the body. (Skim to the bottom for my thoughts on the personal things i.e. how I interpret Napoleon's actions and brain)

But, more seriously, as with most absolute statements, I am opposed to calling him a tyrant because it is reductive and serves no purpose except to make broad sweeping political statements that I believe are far more about the person making the statement exemplifying their modern political, republican position (as in, actual republican-I-support-the-existence-of-republics not the gop) rather than expressing any sort of truth about the past. (wHaT iS tRuTh.)

For historical purposes, it can over-simplify the situation and lead to skewed interpretations of events because you're coming in with this word that has a lot of modern, 20th and 21st century baggage to it.

And, because these people are coming in with this big, bad word of tyrant as a label for Napoleon, it doesn't allow them to engage with the nuance and complexities of his reign.

Anyway.

Napoleon, as emperor, supported centralized power held in his own hands, with support from other governing bodies (senate, council of state etc.). However, Napoleon had a lot of influence in the structuring of these governing bodies and the subsequent appointments as a means to exert control over entities that would otherwise be able to act somewhat independent from him and impinge his power.

We see this consolidation of power beginning, obviously, under the consulate. 'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it.

There was the whole theatre around the Tribunate offering to extend Napoleon's tenure as First Consul for another ten years as a means of thanks/showing gratitude for all he did for France (Fouche was like: fuck that, let's just make a statue of the guy). Napoleon played the part of Humble Servant of the Public and refused both statue and the ten year extension. (Very Julius Caesar: You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?)

In actuality, though, he was pissed because he wanted it extended for life.

This resulted in the Council of State deciding "independently" (i.e. Napoleon wasn't present but he sure as hell influenced that Council session) to hold a plebiscite in order to ask The People two key questions: 'Should Napoleon Bonaparte be consul for life?' and 'Should he have the right to designate his successor?'

Napoleon nixed the second question saying to Cambaceres, 'The testament of Louis XIV was not respected, so why should mine be? A dead man has nothing to say.' Which is to say, he knew people would vote for him to be Consul for life, but the prospect of him choosing a successor, a la the Roman Empire, and having that choice be without input from the people and respected upon his death? Less clear.

(And, I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system.

Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door.

Napoleon: Hush.)

For the Plebiscite, there were around 3.56 million votes for Yes to the question of Napoleon as consul for life and only around 8,300 for No.

The turnout rate was 60% which is uhh...impressive! (To be fair, there was no real evidence of tampering with the vote. Unlike in subsequent Plebiscites, such as the results for Do We Make Him Emperor, which were absolutely doctored. But, considering the highest turnout ever seen in the French Revolution was around 30/35%, double that is certainly something.)

Lafayette was pissed with this. He kicked up a fuss in the Senate and wrote to Napoleon saying that his 'restorative dictatorship' had been well and fine for now but has Napoleon thought about restoring liberty? and that he was certain Napoleon, of all people, wouldn't want an 'arbitrary regime' to be installed!

Napoleon: Bold of you to assume that, Lafayette.

There were, at this time, some mumblings and grumblings about tyranny from the liberals and those still wanting to continue the experiment of the French Republic, to be sure. They increased as time went on and Napoleon's power continued to consolidate.

Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor.

Lafayette: WhAt Is tHiS??

Napoleon: Look into my face and tell me honestly that you are shocked.

--

His government, as Consul and as Emperor, was centralized and very top-down in how it operated. Little was done without Napoleon's input.

The seemingly democratic institutions that had propped him up into power were retained and Napoleon used them as a means to facilitate his rule. As noted earlier, Napoleon had a heavy hand in appointments and the processes in place to fill various offices. Nothing was really...independent of him and his influence.

Though, in terms of Image Building of Empire, Napoleon worked hard to try and maintain the façade of impartiality as emperor. That he was head of state, sure, but all state apparatuses operated independent of him.

(Why is Napoleon's hat so big? because it is full of lies supporting the imperial image making machine.)

That said, when it came to filling those offices, Napoleon focused on merit more than anything as he wanted his governing officials to be capable, hardworking and, above all else, loyal.

(A good quote from Napoleon in one of his more Eat the Rich moments of the consulate: 'One cannot treat wealth as a title of nobility. A rich man is often a layabout without merit. A rich merchant is often only so by virtue of the art of selling expensively or stealing.'

Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight!

(I'm putting my money on Napoleon.) )

--

This is getting really long and I feel that I've not addressed anything in a useful manner, but am I going to stop? No.

--

Napoleon, himself, at least in 1803, did express some conflicted views about assuming an imperial title. To Roederer he said, 'So many great things have been achieved over the past three years under the title of consul. It should be kept.'

Cambaceres said to Napoleon that upon assuming an imperial title 'your position changes and places you at odds with yourself.' No longer are you merely a public servant, an upholder of the Republic's ideals. Now you are a man wearing a crown, trying to be the upholder of the Republic's ideals.

(nb: I feel that duality is something Napoleon never fully got a handle on. He would veer strongly into authoritarian monarch then have moments of Rousseau-ian Idealism.)

Napoleon was insistent that his rule be a parliamentary monarchy (keeping the governance framework implemented in the Constitution of Year VIII, if I am not mistaken. But don't quote me on that.) and that the French were not his subjects but his people.

So, the imperial government worked thus with the Legislative process divided between four bodies:

Council of State which would draw up legislative proposals,

Tribunate which could debate on legislation but not vote on it,

a legislative body which could vote on legislation but not discuss it, and

Senate which would consider whether the proposed legislation conformed to the Constitution.

The Senate and the Legislative body could, theoretically, curtail Napoleon’s freedom/power. However, considering the fact that he was involved in the appointment process of these offices, and the general rhythm of daily governance, how much power they were able to exert over him was limited.

(This is at his height! Of course, towards the end we see a shift in that. But that's largely tied up in his military defeats and the British banging the door knocker demanding to be let in. Also they brought with them some friends. You might have heard of them? Bourbons?)

The initial terms the Senate brought to Napoleon with their offer of accepting him as a hereditary monarch included, but weren't limited to:

liberty cannot be infringed

equality cannot be jeopardized

sovereignty of the people must be maintained

the laws of the nation are inviolable

all institutions were to be free from undue imperial influence (e.g. the press)

the nation should never be put into a position where it needs to behead the head of state. Again.

Napoleon was uh. Not best pleased with this and had a new version drafted up that included acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the people, but a lot of the other things (e.g. freedom of the press) were cut out.

Yet, Napoleon maintained certain parts of the French Revolution's values which were reflected more in the 1804 Code Napoleon and other legislative and legal pieces than in the initial terms of Senatorial acceptance of his imperial title.

Some of the things enshrined in the Code that were carry-over from the Revolution include, but aren't limited to, the abolition of feudalism, equality before the law, freedom of conscience (to practice their own religion), gave fixed title to those who had bought church and émigré lands during the 1790s, and the equality of taxation was maintained (tax those aristos and the church). Also, there was affirmation of the idea of careers being "open to talent" rather than an accident of birth (as touched on above).

The Freedom of Conscience clause in the Code was a further formalization of several Articles Napoleon amended onto the Concordat in 1802. The Articles guaranteed the principle of religious toleration and made the Protestant and Jewish churches similarly subject to state authority (alongside the Catholic).

These are just a brief summary of some of the more liberal/revolution-informed aspects of Napoleon's governing.

The non-liberal ones I believe we're all pretty familiar with: suppression of the free press, roll-back of rights for women (women are for babies!), reinstatement of slavery (which he later reversed circa 1810/12-ish), top-down Emperor-has-final-word approach to ruling (Napoleon was all about Authority From Above, Trust From Below) etc. etc.

At the end of this, I would say Napoleon's empire falls into that "benevolent monarch" situation. For a given value of "benevolent." As stated at the start, he was like most other monarchs in Europe at the time. Better than some, not as great about certain things as others.

--

Really, it all ties back to Order and Stability.

Napoleon's assent, and his approach to strong, centralized ruling, was a result of uncertainty and constant government change over ten years of revolution alongside the growing belief, by 1803, that a republic like the Romans or Greeks was not going to happen any time soon. Not without constant warfare and the forever looming threat of a Bourbon restoration.

In addition, Napoleon was doing imperial drag. (If that makes sense.) He was dialing the notch of Emperor up to 11 - being the most emperor of all emperors. So, state control was absolute because he couldn't show any signs of weakness - either in his own body, his familial body, or the body of state. The court protocols were intense and over-the-top at times because he had to prove he was not just a second son of a parvenu lawyer from the sticks. No! he was worthy of this pomp. He was worthy of imperial majesty. He was worthy of the crown and scepter.

Napoleon was not raised to be anything other than a military officer and a middle-class head of a family (would have been a MASTER at doing Sunday Dad Puttering About the House). When he dawned the mantel of power, particularly that of empire, he had to make it up as he went along. For such a self-conscious and proud man, this was difficult. He never wanted to misstep and be embarrassed - on a personal level, political or military.

At the same time, he was reared on Rousseau and Revolution so still had those values and ideals imbedded in him, and those fears and memories. Napoleon knew as well as any Frenchman that a monarch's head is easily removable should it become necessary. Therefore, he sometimes ran roughshod over the liberty to ensure security. For better or worse, that was the choice he made.

--

Napoleon was a flawed leader with a complex approach to governing that was focused on a centralization of power within him while, at the same time, trying to be the Successor of the Revolution, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Layers! Like an onion.

His approach as emperor really was within the realm of normal-for-the-times when compared to most other monarchs on the European stage in 1800. He also granted liberties to his people that were unheard of in other countries.

I feel like all my Napoleonic ramblings end with the same message: Dude was nuanced. Dude was complex. Dude did good things and bad things. Dude helped people and hurt people. Dude contained multitudes. Because he was simply human, at the end of the day.

--

ANNNNNNND we are done.

Gods bless all y'all who made it this far.

Have my favourite picture of Napoleon at Tuileries as a prize.

hmm that beautiful heavy, handed symbolism.

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[crimeronan]

Can you explain the appeal of Julian Blackthorn? This is a genuine question because I read the books and came away utterly bored by him and unconvinced of his moral greyness as opposed to like, Adam Parrish’s. He seemed so one dimensional to me but I want to know if I’m Wrong TM considering I tend to be very very biased toward my favourite characters and bored by the rest, and my favourites were Mark and Kieran. So maybe I just didn’t pay him enough attention??

it’s been a while since i wrote any earnest tsc meta but cringe culture is dead and the chance to infodump about my julian thoughts has me vibrating where i’m sitting so.  yes okay.

technical stuff

(aka: things pertaining to How The Story Is Constructed)

cassandra clare’s characterization has become much stronger just in general since she first began writing the series like twenty years ago

perhaps most importantly: the more recent stuff i’ve read from her has involved characters who actually grow, change, and learn from their past mistakes 

rather than repeating the same stupid decisions over and over again

and over and over and over some more

seriously take a shot every time someone in tmi miscommunicates or self-destructs in ways They Have Learned Not To Do for no real reason. u will die of alcohol poisoning

in tda this shines ESPECIALLY with the evolution of mark, kieran, and cristina’s relationship, but that’s a separate post

clare’s trademark is also the angsty traumatized jerkass love interest with a secret heart of gold

the woman is almost singlehandedly responsible for draco in leather pants and the proliferation of this kind of character type in fandom and teen lit. this isn’t a criticism it’s me marveling at how if you commit hard enough to a single trope you truly can change the world.  follow your dreams

sad jackass with a heart of gold isn’t an Inherently Problematic Character Type

but poorly done it can lead to relationship dynamics in which one partner is constantly being hurt by and then forgiving the other despite them making no real effort to change, because they are narratively absolved due to being sad

(there’s a lot of this with earlier jace content.  in some ways i think will was later created specifically to be a same-archetype protagonist who actually does get called on his shit and grow. that’s also another post)

also if all of your sexy male love interests are tortured jackasses with a heart of gold then people start calling you a one-trick pony

enter julian blackthorn!

from the very start everything about him is designed to be the INVERSE of the heart of gold jackass.  which immediately makes him interesting just from a meta perspective

(mark and kieran are also both alternate angles on this time-honored archetype.  mark gets the heart of gold and kieran gets the jackass and then they’re both much more deeply messy than that.  yet another post)

julian is kind, self-sacrificing, empathetic, artistic, emotionally supportive, responsible, and favored by old grannies everywhere

so a completely nonthreatening milquetoast guy, right

immediately forgettable if you’re only here for the dramatic conflicts and shithead antics of clare’s other protags

except that he is A Mess

and that he has structured his priorities very carefully, and they are as selfless as you expect from The Hero (TM) but they are also Not Heroic (TM) and they do not align with the moral framework The Hero (TM) is supposed to use

moral ambiguity in characters always exists in relation to their narratives imo. you mention adam parrish - trc’s narrative already mucks around in different ethical shades of gray, and adam falls on the canon scale about where julian does on his canon scale.  both more willing than the average pov character to do the ruthless thing or make the fucked-up choice if the ends justify the means; both with an intensely strong sense of internal priorities that they adhere to at all costs, both so unbelievably fucking down for murder; etc

i do think there are ways julian’s choices could have been pushed even further, but considering the number of readers who hate his guts already, i can see why clare opted not to go for the most controversial possible conflicts

so we’re flipping the narrative

instead of seeing this angsty bad boy and peeling back the layers of his trauma to find his heart of gold, we’re seeing the put-together selfless family man and peeling back the layers of his Responsibility Mask to expose the rotting husk underneath

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

THAT IS FUN AS FUCK

then when julian DOES lash out in hurtful, uncontrolled ways, he has significantly more narrative justification for it than most of clare’s protagonists (will elaborate in characterization thoughts)

julian is also interesting as fuck because of how his struggles allow for a more in-depth look at the failings of shadowhunter society, something that’s also sorely lacking in clare’s earlier work

his apparent amorality is simply the result of him making pragmatic and impossible choices because he has been faced with fucked-up ethical dilemmas since age 12 Because Society Has Failed Him

which opens the door for narrative exploration of how and why he’s been failed so badly & what needs to change

i also love that he has such a coldly calculated way of analyzing situations and allowing harm to occur when need be, bc a lot of clare’s early protagonists have such a bad case of Rush In And Get Myself Killed Because I’ve Got Feelings About Impulsive Heroism syndrome that i wanna push them in front of a truck

probably there’s other meta narrative stuff i could say but i’m stopping myself and moving on to character analysis

characterization stuff

(aka: reasons why i’m also attached to him in a vacuum)

i don’t read him as one-dimensional at all tbh

u may feel the narrative pushes “ruthless julian blackthorn” too much without delivering enough actual ruthless julian But i don’t think that’s the same as having only one dimension

from the get-go, the big question centered on julian is always “how far are you willing to go?” and the narrative pushes the stakes slowly higher and higher to continuously test julian’s “the price is always justified” mindset

he has a far more layered and realistic response to trauma than clare’s early protagonists - trauma affects every single aspect of his personality and how he conducts himself, and the effects vary depending on the circumstances

his conviction that he has to be the perfect parent to his siblings because they will fall apart if they see him show weakness??  rooted in how he feels like he’s fallen apart since losing the stable adult support he once relied upon

his willingness to hurt semi-innocent people, commit coldblooded murder, manipulate people using political leverage, allow harm to befall any stranger if it protects his family??  rooted in how he has already had to ask himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice, and how his family is his only source of stability when the world has never done Shit for him

his conviction that he has a darker heart than anyone else because he killed his possessed father, even though intellectually he knows he was saving his brother’s life??  rooted in having no means of processing this trauma and being unable to voice his feelings for fear of backlash from a deeply non-understanding society

the way he represses every single negative emotion he ever has, to the point where emma - his actual literal magic soulmate who can feel his emotions - is startled to find him hurting or angry??  once again all about how he has to be the perfect father or he’s failed completely

the way his anger is so totally disproportionate to different situations and the way his negative emotions can only come out in completely uncontrolled breaks??  all that repression baybey.  this kid has not processed a single bad feeling in five years.  every single real grievance and petty annoyance has been festering indefinitely inside him like a slowly spreading infection

julian’s arc involves him needing to get thru being his worst self to actually start to heal

as in, he has to actually learn to acknowledge his feelings, take care of himself, lean on his family, and let other people take some responsibility

he also has to learn that in his quest to be the perfect emotionally controlled authority figure, he has not actually learned how to control or deal with his emotions. like. At Fucking All. good god

the narrative setup is also about asking “how far are you willing to go?” until the answer is finally “not this far.  not this far”

and once he reaches that point, he has to reevaluate everything about how he weighs his priorities and morals and plans, etc

(i also like that emma has a perpendicular arc in which she’s always the one tempering julian and telling him “no we can’t go that far” until she’s willing to do something horrific that he absolutely won’t and HE has to stop HER. very sexy)

it’s also just really nice to have a character who’s learned to relate so well to literally every single member of his family while still having a very detached ruthless interior consciousness. i have similar feelings about how adam teaches himself to love people, but with julian it’s spelled out more explicitly in canon & it’s a more central character theme

i’m sure i’m also forgetting stuff here but this post is long enough so i’m gonna say good enough

and like i said in the tags on my other post, there are things i’d personally write differently if it were my story - plot points i’d shift, character contrasts i’d up, themes i’d explore differently, pacing i’d adjust, etc.  i have plenty of ways i could be nitpicky and editorial about the effectiveness of julian’s arc.  but i also don’t feel like writing them out at the moment & none of my critiques on effectiveness have an impact on the core appeal of his character 2 me.  he’s so fucking good

[morwensteelsheen]

for the character meme: faramir and cassian

yaaaaaaas thank u 👑👑👑

Faramir

How I feel about this character

Oh boy. Yeah. So I see in Faramir what I wish I were — not just the good stuff like the pacificism and the intellectualism and the romanticism, but what I wish my flaws were too. It’s hard to not treat him as something of a literary patron saint of historians for all the incredible exposition work he’s given throughout the books, y’know? Like he has this incredibly historically-minded perspective on things, yet instead of taking it and behaving (as I tend to) in a sort of deeply pessimistic, confrontational, and defeatist way, he uses it to enable his (over)confidence. And I think that’s really brilliant and something I wish I could do. Yeah. God. I feel a lot of things about Faramir all the time, constantly torn between gender envy for him and normal, slightly furious envy lmao.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

lol whoops it’s just Éowyn lol. I am very much pro he and Aragorn shagging, if I don’t think too hard about it, but there are basically no other characters in the book who have forceful enough personalities to act as a countervailing force to some of his, uhhhh, Extremes, and I think Éowyn ends up being his [David Duchovny voice] human credential, which is lovely.

I guess I’m also partial to the Faramir-As-A-Sloppy-Bitch hypothesis which has him behaving like a bit of a fuckboy, but that’s not really shipping so much as character development? I guess?

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I’m buying him one of those awful one man wolfpack tshirts lmao, my dude absolutely does not have pals. I think he’s got loads of decent working relationships with people and is definitely charismatic when he wants to be, but outwith that……. lol

My unpopular opinion about this character

looooooool, I feel like the Faramir Is Not A Crybaby one is well trodden ground at this point, but one of my favourite unpopular opinions is that I think he’s, like, 15% more cynical than everybody gives him credit for. I think a lot of what he does can be construed as very obviously, uhhh, putting the moves on, I guess? Like I think he’s not making grand statements to Éowyn because he’s Magically Compelled To Do It, but because I think he absolutely 100% knows it’s stroking her ego. And I think playing one man good cop/bad cop with Sam and Frodo isn’t him rapidly changing his Take on the situation after getting new information, I think he’s very purposefully trying to unsettle their psychological defences a bit so he can get a better sense for what’s really going on and whether these two guys are going to end up handing Isildur’s Bane™ over to Sauron.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

Actually nothing super significant. I guess I think the one kid shit is nonsensical. Even without turning on dumb horny shipper brain that says 0% chance he and éowyn weren’t fucking loads, I genuinely refuse to believe that any self-respecting feudal lord would not at least go for the And A Spare, if not And Several Spares, especially if you’re Faramir and your entire family got obliterated leaving you — Man Who Was Not Meant To Hold The House Down — the sole survivor.

Beyond that Faramir gets exactly what he ought to out of LOTR (though I would have loved to have read about his misery life in the Fourth Age), and I can’t really complain? Maybe a line or two at the trothplighting in Rohan? A chat with Galadriel? idk he really did fine for canon appearances imo

Cassian

How I feel about this character

There’s no way to say this without sounding slightly unhinged, but the scene in R1 where he shoots the injured informant on the Ring of Kafrene is genuinely one of my favourite moments in all of Star Wars. It threw down the gauntlet for visceral depictions of the unfeelingness of the GFFA in a way that hadn’t really been done before. Both the OT and the PT make gestures at it (the destruction of Alderaan is a good example, as is the slightly-bungled slavery subplot in TPM), but neither really show how fucked up people can get when they’re living in a fucked up world and they never show good guys doing things that are of ambiguous morality. Cassian ends up making a (surprisingly, given it’s a Mouse™ production) sophisticated argument for how the Real World works once you get past the golden boy heroes. Yes Luke blows up the Death Star, and yes he brings Vader back to the Light — both things that are unambiguous moral goods — but the reason he’s able to do that is because there’s someone like Cassian out there taking the karmic/emotional/spiritual/whatever hit to enable the Golden Boy behaviour. And I think that’s a really beautiful, really exciting bit of narrative development for SW generally, but to also do it in the context of Cassian — who actively defends his choices? That fucking rocked. I’m bracing for impact with the new show but R1 Cassian is absolutely one of my favourite SW characters, lovely wee man.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Literally just Jyn. Actually funnily enough he’s very much like Faramir to me in that I think if he didn’t end up with Jyn, he wouldn’t have really ended up with anyone at all. Not in a weird comphet or soulmates way, just in that I think sometimes people need a very specific kind of personality to wear down their defences and sometimes it’s a very specific kind of personality.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Okay in a fix-it AU I like to think he and Hera would get along fabbo, but from a great distance, as I think each of them would prefer it. Otherwise, I’m sorry to say it but my guy absolutely does not have pals lmao. Cassian no mates rip

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t think he’s actually repentant for the fucked up shit he’s done. When he tells Jyn that he’s had to do stuff he isn’t proud of, he’s not saying that because he’s seeking absolution or a chance to do penance or whatever, he’s saying it because it’s objectively true. He has done some stuff he’s not proud of, but contextually I think it’s pretty clear he’s able to justify it to himself well enough that he’s not looking for redemption or whatever.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

I feel like I need to whisper this so the monkey’s paw doesn’t curl in advance of the show, but it would be genuinely very interesting to see him try to build an actual espionage network for the Rebellion. SW: Rebels touched on the notion of industrial sabotage (actually Mando did too, didn’t it?) and I think it would be especially interesting to see them try that out in a resistance/rebellion framework via Cassian. Let him do some covert ops organisation of workers to undermine Imperial production/supply lines or whatever.

Give me a character xxoo

[karahalloway]

Fanfic Ask Game 💖 👨‍👧‍👧 🌈 (Sleepless) 🤔🌝💻💭

Thanks so much for the ask @petiteboheme!

💖 What do you like most about your own writing? Right, I hope this doesn't come across as pretentious or self-aggrandising (my new word of the day! lol) but I like that my writing is a good mix of humour and realism (this is what I am aiming for, anyway, and based on the feedback I've received, I seem to be hitting the mark!)

👨‍👧‍👧 Do you tell people in real life that you write fic? 

Hell no! 😅 People I know in real life do not need to know I write smutty fanfic!

That said, there are people in my life who know that I write, like my husband (bit hard to hide from him the fact that I spend several hours per week slaving away in front of my laptop; plus, I keep asking him random questions for things I need for particular chapters, so he knows what I'm up to), and I've told my sister (because she used to write as well, and we actually collaborated together a few times in the past).

🌈 What inspired you to write Sleepless in New York?

I don't remember what inspired me, exactly... But at some point last year, I started toying around with an idea of Drake meeting Harper by himself while the guys were in New York for Chris' bachelor party and then lo and behold! @aussiegurl1234 publishes a (then) one-shot called The Sparrow exploring exactly this situation (which later turned into Golden Boy)😅 So she kinda beat me to the punch lol.

But, my HC remained, and after marinating it for a good few months (I actually came up with the basic outline of the dive bar chapter first - I knew Harper would get into some kind of kerfuffle with some drunken pervs and Drake would step in to save her), I finally started writing. And everything else (the arrival, the subway, the karaoke) came on the fly.

And even the dive bar chapter ended up turning out rather different than I had imagined it originally - I had originally thought that Drake would take the guy(s) 'round the back and beat them up, but when I actually wrote it out, it didn't feel right, so he just sent them packing verbally - but his quip about having "to make it seem like I wasn't actually here for her. Otherwise, we'd be going 'round the back, and taking on four guys by the dumpster was definitely not on my list of things to do tonight" is a nod to this original iteration 😇

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?

The writing part 🤣

Don't get me wrong - I love writing! But the more I move away from canon, the more new ideas I have, but actually getting the ideas organised into a coherent form on paper is sometimes quite hard (because I don't have the safety-net / framework of canon to guide me).

For instance, it happens a lot that I get a random hit of inspo about a part of a conversation (a few lines usually) that I then need to figure out how to work into the rest of the conversation; not to mention how to arrive and then wrap up that whole conversation!

🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?

Freya.

Your request to explore her a bit more got me mega intrigued, so on my list in the near future is a one-shot written from Freya's perspective that will explore in more detail the day she met Drake.

And, I have finally found an FC for her, so I'll be able to put together the moodboard for the chapter that I had in my head 🤗 (which was actually one of the things that's been delaying the writing 😅)

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done? Oh yah! I research all the time! 🤓 See here and here.

But the deepest dive I've done to date is researching Italian for the conversation that Drake has with the pervy Italian-Americans in the dive bar in Sleepless. Because not only did I have to write the conversation in Italian - but three different versions of Italian (Italian-American, 'standard' Italian, and Corsican vernacular - because I like to make my own life difficult 😅)!

Because - unbenownst to me when I started - this scene required several hours of research on YouTube (listening to native Italians explain the differences between the different Italian regional dialects), looking at online slang dictionaries for Italian-American (and comparing to 'standard' Italian vocab/slang) and then coming up with Drake's own vernacular (combination or 'standard' Italian and Corsican pronounciation).

And bear in mind that I do not speak Italian...at all! Nor can I seem to be able to wrap my head around it because even though I speak French, I find Italian to be so different in terms of spelling and grammar that I have a really hard time making heads or tails of it!

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

I don't think I say this specifically anywhere, but I HC that the story takes place in 2021 (because that is when I started writing the story - I actually wrote Chapter 1 of (Un)Common Attraction in Nov/Dec of 2020, but then I left it for a while and picked it back up in Jan/Feb of 2021).

Obviously an alternative 2021 (because there is no Covid) 😅 but whenever I mention dates (in conversation or in phone screen shots) I am using dates from 2021.

If anyone has any other burning questions they'd like to ask, the full list of questions is available here.

[okay-victoria]

Status of Women in The Empire

Summary: LN gives some evidence women have a better status than they did in OTL Germany. It gives little to nothing in the way of evidence that we are in post-sexual-revolution territory. It presents little enough evidence generally that you can use this issue in your own story as you wish; however, using how humans actually work as your baseline, it would be a very definite handwave to think that gender equality is much more than marginally better than OTL would have been at the time, or that Tanya wouldn’t be negatively affected by it in some significant ways in daily life. On the other hand, the original story handwaves an eight year old enrolling in a modern military and getting promoted to a mid-ranking officer by age eleven, so as a reader, I’m obviously pretty down for handwaving some realism for the sake of a good story.

Evidence:

V1/C1

“The armed forces have a practical exception in place for just about everything.” <= I think in fanon the entire Empire as seen as this sort of “everything we do is logical” territory where gender discrimination would have had to be eliminated, but in reality it’s presented as the military, and they are making an exception for a rare and incredibly militarily useful type of person to be able to be put to use by them without gender discrimination stopping it.

V1/C4

“But in the far-from-gender-free world of “ladies first,” Tanya with her outwardly girlish appearance is, albeit only relatively, blessed compared to the other students” <= YMMV, but I would not describe modern society as a world of “ladies first”. Do people do/say it to hark back to pre-1960s chivalry? Sure. Is it really the standard we live by anymore? Not so much. Tanya seems to pretty definitely still be living in those days.

“Basically, apart from the mage branch, the army is a man’s world. Actually, even most of the mages are men.” <= this is notable because it is said when Tanya is in War College, at which point the war has been going on for long enough that available mages have been conscripted, so there is no selection bias that men have simply chosen to pursue a career as a mage more often than women. This is actually weirdly important because it either means:

Magic talent is like, an X chromosome trait and men are thus more likely to have it [in which case, it would probably be taken as natural evidence that men are superior and worsen the gender equality situation]; or

There in fact is a Youjo Konki-esque exception for married women and/or mothers. A nation has to still be relatively in the infancy of gender equality if Female Mage #102 has children with Infantryman #1,000,102 and the military decides that since it can’t leave these children parentless, it has to conscript the dude who is substitutable for literally anyone else and not the human weapon.

Tanya has a long-ish reflection on women in the military. Important points are, the rules have only been overhauled recently to make it practical for women to serve in combat. Women in combat didn’t really exist prior to this war, and women in the military were basically limited to noble/imperial families having their daughters serve out nominal duties. Whatever boost women as a whole get from serving in a capacity that people are used to seeing men in, it has not had time to transform society all that much.

V2/C2

“Women administrators are not uncommon, but in the Empire where gender equality still has a ways to go, their qualifications are always questioned.” <= YMMV as to what degree this is meant to be a statement on something that still troubles women in modern times, or something that indicates gender equality is not particularly close to modern.

V2/C5

“After all, now that I’ve been turned into a girl, I’m faced with this annoying military framework where men are superior. Just the thought of my promotions being blocked by an invisible glass ceiling is enough to dampen any desire I might have to act all girlish for propaganda…apart from that, the Empire’s personnel system has adapted extremely meritocratic principles for the war, in a way, so I’m more or less satisfied with it.” <= sort of same as above, YMMV on whether this is just Tanya realizing what life is like for a woman in modern society or meant as a “no, it was worse” point.

However, I will say this: I highly, highly doubt any men chosen for high military honors were photographed doing anything other than looking ultra manly in uniform. Women serving in modern militaries are not forced to put on showy dresses when they get their photos taken, they are treated, at least in photos, with the same respect as their male colleagues. The fact that anyone found it appropriate to only photograph the recipient of the highest military honor in cute girl clothes speaks to some deep discomfort with anyone outside the military seeing women not doing what they’re supposed to.

V6/C6

“The Imperial Army has already tapped all the population pools that can be mobilized, but it still has two options. One is to begin the general conscription of women. That said, they’ve already been mobilized in the industrial sector.” <= YMMV, again, on how willing a modern country would be to conscript women to fight a world war, but if you are as deep into a world war as the Empire is and no one’s trying it, at the least we can say the Empire is not the bastion of cold logic it fanonically is outside the military. Also, it pretty much seems like women working in large numbers has only become a thing because all the guys are off fighting, which very much sticks us in pre-1950s territory.

V8/C1

Andrew reacts surprised to see a female reporter from the Federation, and reflects that they are quite liberal in some ways <= while this is a non-Imperial guy, given his familiarity with the Empire, it would seem weird that if the Empire was particularly more advanced than his country that he would still be so surprised.

Other Working Knowledge Your Author Has On This Subject:

Women serving in the military, while certainly helpful to the cause of gender equality, by itself is not going to create a broad-based transformation in society. That sounds a bit like saying: As we all know, the US dropped any racist laws or regulations as soon as we started allowing non-white units in the military. After Elizabeth I serving as the Ruler of England, a very manly role that her tiny woman-brain didn’t fuck up too bad, the people who thought women were naturally stupider than men were quickly relegated to the margins and gender discrimination mostly became more of an annoyance than a real hindrance to the average woman’s goals. It just doesn’t work that way. And I’m not here to say that the US is a post-gender paradise, but the US, which has never had a woman president and is pretty slow about expanding military opportunities for women, nonetheless is a lot better on the gender equality front than some countries that have had women leaders and allow women a fuller range of military opportunities. There’s a lot more complexity to it than: My country respects military => military allows women => guess I’m going to stop being sexist

The same goes for something that isn’t about gender equality at large but how it relates to Tanya: The view that while gender equality may be non-advanced, Tanya specifically is exempt from dealing with it because she is “one of the boys”. It Does Not Work Like That. At All. And the further you go back in time, the less it worked like that. Within the military specifically Tanya will probably be alright, but society at large punishes men & women that break gender roles as brazenly as she does more than it rewards them. This is an entire essay unto itself, Google is your friend.

This is going to sound silly and facetious but I’m being dead serious, from what little we know of fashion in the YS world, it matches what would have been the case in the real world in the WW1 era. If society at large was really that different, that wouldn’t be the case.

There is no canon evidence that magic has made any scientific advancements outside the military sphere of influence. Before the advent of things like dishwashers, vacuums, microwaves, especially refrigerators, and especially laundry machines being common household items, the ideal family model was: one person makes money outside home, one person takes care of house. There wasn’t enough time in the day to work and run a household. Many women in poor households had to work, generally at the expense of being able to keep their own household running smoothly, and even then they often worked in capacities that allowed them to be at home or ones that allowed them the flexibility to take care of some of this stuff. It really just isn’t possible to have a society remotely approaching equality when one gender is automatically assigned to home unless necessary.

Same goes for something else - contraception. Women having access to a contraceptive device that they control is a major component of setting a society on a path towards equality. Birth control pills didn’t become widely available until the 1960s. Without being unable to at least kind of balance the outcome of sex (even between married couples) between men and women, women as a class have a hard time escaping from the housewife-mother archetype.

Not to get too political here, but the Empire matches OTL Germanic-Prussianness too much to ignore. Living under a military-worshipping, religiously-inclined traditional monarchy has not, in any real life example I’m aware of, gone hand-in-hand with anything other than a fairly conservative and patriarchal society, and I feel like the burden of proof is on the other side to explain why that isn’t the case in the Empire, and our original author makes approximately zero effort to do this.

Being X turns Tanya into a woman for the purpose of making her life worse. It seems simply illogical [although I guess Being X’s decision-making skills are questionable] that he would then drop her into a world that had undergone broad-based gender reform instead of a world that was just barely tweaked from our own in such a way that it would allow Tanya to serve in the military.

My conclusion: the most likely option is that gender equality is exactly enough better as it needs to be to allow the military to convince the lawmakers that they should be able to use a very rare & dangerous ability to be part of their arsenal without respect to gender, or age, and no more. That difference is not likely to make life for women significantly better than it was in the equivalent OTL time period.

[rhinozilla]

🖊 How did you come up with the personalities of the canon 07 characters?

Hoo boy! This got long XD

I was mostly inspired by the squad on Brooklyn Nine Nine and the vibe of these distinct personalities all gelling together into a cohesive team.

Most directly, I drew a lot of inspiration for Person from Rosa Diaz. I also wanted Connor to have a buddy dynamic with one of the human officers that wasn’t Hank or Gavin, and my fic “Protect and Serve” was an exercise in figuring out who that would be. And Person won XD She was the first one that I really latched onto and developed into a realized character. I also really wanted her to have an eldritch energy about her, just to take her a tiny step beyond the suspension of disbelief. So she is freakishly strong and has a tendency of appearing and disappearing at will in certain situations.

For Tina, I started with the general vibe that the fandom had landed on for her character, and I built from there. She’s the chaotic one, to match Gavin’s gremlin personality. So there’s some Gina Linetti energy there.

Ben is a mix of some Terry Jeffords and Charles Boyle. He’s the Team Uncle, and I wanted him, as a senior officer, to be softer and more emotionally healthy as a foil to Hank’s more sweary, angry, depressed vibe. Mostly I wanted him to be the one that everybody just gets along with and likes to be around. He’s a safe guy who isn’t put off by any of the weirdness that the others bring to the table. He’s also a giant nerd.

Wilson was a lot of fun to develop. He has some Terry energy as well, being a family man who feels protective over his teammates. I knew I wanted him to be married to a very successful woman, and she would be the ‘breadwinner.’ I also knew that I wanted him to be the most attuned to androids’ immediate needs, like shelter, clothing, money, stability, and a feeling of security. While others had loftier and noble goals like androids being allowed to open bank accounts and own property and get married, he is aiming more for in-the-moment needs. Like, “how can I make sure that these androids are going to be alive and healthy and mentally stable by the time they get those rights?” That kind of came hand in hand with Polly being very close to the whole Wilson family. I wanted Wilson to be just a good man, one of those unsung hero types that restore your faith in humanity.

Chris had something of a characterization in canon, so I didn’t really embellish much beyond that. He’s a family man, loves his wife and his son, and is always willing to help out wherever he’s needed. He’s arguably one of the only ones on the squad who is just cool. He doesn’t make a lot of waves, and he is amused by the shenanigans that his coworkers get up to. He also finds Connor and the staff androids’ occasional awkwardness very charming.

It was kinda hard to find Gavin’s voice in Detroit 07, because I had both his canon character and the variety of fanon characterizations that are very prevalent in the fandom. I didn’t want to just copy/paste his personality, so I took where he was left in canon and tried to find my own voice for him beyond the two-dimensional asshole. I went with that attitude being rooted in insecurity and fear that androids would eventually take his job. If an android replaces human janitors, housekeepers, construction workers, etc, then that was no real skin off his nose, but now there was an android detective? He harbored resentment toward Connor for not “earning” his rank and basically coming out of the factory with the training and education simply downloaded into his brain without him having to do the work of learning any of it. Sometimes Gavin still feels that way, but now, some years after the revolution and after working with and around more deviants, he has learned that it isn’t that black and white. Androids didn’t come out of the factory with any experience or referential framework for dealing with their own new emotions. They were never given the tools or the means to develop the tools to handle that, and seeing Connor and others struggle with that softened Gavin toward them considerably.

I also wanted to avoid the tropes around Gavin’s fanon characterization that he has a lot of damage and baggage and trauma that makes him the way that he is, or that he’s this disaster human. I felt like if I did that, I’d just be replicating what others have already done, and I wanted to go in a different direction. That’s where Hannah came in, because I wanted Gavin to have a healthy relationship with someone that wasn’t in the squad, to keep him a little more grounded.

Fowler also had some characterization in canon, and I rolled that up with some Captain Holt. Fowler is more abrasive and quick to anger than Holt, but I wanted to soften him just a little and make him more approachable. He’s a good captain who cares fiercely for his squad, but that doesn’t mean that he necessarily wants to be friends with any of them.

With all of them, it was mostly drawing inspiration from B99, then planting more seeds of individuality and seeing which ones took root. Like Ben being a Star Trek nerd and Fowler being a stress baker, etc. I really like developing characters and worldbuilding, so it has been fun to create Detroit 07 in my own little sandbox XD

[serendipitous-magic]

what's your writing process like? do you plot things out beforehand? or do you sort of write it as it comes? a mix of both?

Depends on what I'm writing!

In general I'm a planner. I can't write from a blank page, unless I'm just like... really really captivated by whatever I'm writing, which was what happened with the first chapters of both The Art of Living Your (Second) Life and The Partnership Plan.

a) In general, if it's a fanfiction I'm writing, I tend to build the plan as I write - meaning, oftentimes I'll be inspired to write the first chapter, and I'll write that with little idea what the rest of it will be. Or, even if I have an idea what the rest will be, it's more of a vague skeleton than a full plan. And then, as I continue to write, I think more about where the story is going and I continuously add to and refine my plan kind of alongside the actual writing. In this way, the plan grows at the same time that the actual chapters do - but because the chapters take significantly longer to write than planning does, the plan outpaces the "real" writing and I usually know the basic story arc from fairly early on. Then it's just a matter of fleshing it out, adding detail, writing down scenes I thought of, etc. And then when I get to that point in the actual writing, I have a framework in place already.

-_-_-

b) Sometimes for fanfic, I have a more complete plan upfront - although I use "complete" here to mean "from beginning to end," not "completely detailed." So, more like a full skeleton than a full body, if that makes sense. I did that with Roll for Strength. What usually happens is that my plan will look something like...

...

Chapter One

-Will suspects Mike has a girlfriend and is kind of put out about it but thinks he's over Mike so he tells himself he doesn't care

-Will walks in on Mike and his BF (name??) and has a crisis (they don't see Will, so Will knows about Mike but Mike doesn't know that Will knows)

-Will might get off to that later, guiltily? (Or move to chapter two)

Chapter Two

-Do Mike's POV to tell about how he ended up dating a guy, how he got very disillusioned with the world after canon events and got into a "fuck it, the rules don't matter and I hate them anyway" mentality, which eventually snowballed into him kind of realizing and accepting his sexuality earlier than usual fanon

-Also introduce BF (name??) in a scene

-Set time and place - season should set the mood if not already mentioned in Ch 1

-Maybe also do BF's POV briefly to introduce him?? Or leave that for later

...

Etc.

And that's the original skeleton plan. And then it gets expanded upon more and more and more as I continue to think about the story, sometimes even with full pages' worth of unbroken text blocks as I get inspired and start basically thought-vomiting an entire scene. So by the time I get around to actually writing it, it might look like the above, or it might be a few steps shy of an actual draft already, depending on how much I've thought about / worked on that part.

See #5 in this writing advice post to see what I mean about a "thought vomit" draft.

-_-_-

c) Here's the thing - the above was for fanfic, or for short stories, or stories that I'm just kind of having fun with.

For original stuff, I adhere much more tightly to the "rules," because the guidelines for original work (that you might try to publish in the actual publishing market) are much stricter - and for good reason! Fanfiction is a sandbox, and we're all invested in the characters and worlds and settings already. We're all reading and writing fanfic because we already love these characters and this world, and we just want to play in it.

It's a different situation with original novels that you hope to publish. The plot, pacing, tension, and story beats have to be much, much tighter and more polished. Because people reading original work have no prior reason to be invested in it or care what happens - that's work that you have to do. For fanfic, that work was done for you by the original thing. Not to mention, the publishing world is so absolutely choked with competition, and the emphasis lies so heavily on sales, that if your book isn't fucking top-tier compelling, no publisher or agent will take a second look at it. Which is kind of unfortunate, because there's value in slower, more relaxed, more reflective storytelling, too - it's just not what capitalism has decided to value, which is sad.

But anyway.

When writing an original thing, I basically need a full plan - beginning to end, covering all plot points. Not necessarily all the details, just all the plot points - I need a skeleton and I need connective tissue. The rest comes later. But to start, I need to know what happens, why, and how the characters get from event to event. I need to know the physical story events, the emotional beats, and how those things logically flow throughout the story.

Some people can write without this and it still turns into a compelling story, tight narrative, etc. I envy these people. I have all respect for these people. I cannot do this. If I write original work with no plan, and especially without at least like 50-75% of a plan, I end up with something slow, meandering, and kind of limp. No bueno.

So, I usually use a beat sheet.

What's a beat sheet?

It's a 15-beat plotting structure used by screenwriters. And, yeah, technically it's for movies / screenplays. But storytelling is storytelling. And it's highly flexible. (And my favorite professor ever taught it to me in college so you can pry it out of my cold dead hands.)

Google it. It's what I use to make sure my (original work) plots are tight, have momentum, have a satisfying character arc, etc.

Okay, okay, I'll paste the basic structure below just so you can see wtf I'm talking about:

-_-_-

-Act I:

1) The First Frame

-What is the first thing we see? This should be a snapshot of the main character’s problem, before the story begins

-Ex: the Star Destroyer in A New Hope

2) The World Around Us

-What is the main character’s world like at the beginning of the story?

-What is missing in the main character’s life?

3) State the Theme (sneak this into The World Around Us)

-What is the story secretly about? This should happen during The World Around Us

4) Inciting Incident (smol tentpole)

-What happens to put the hero on the road? This is where the hero’s life changes forever.

5) The Hero Questions

-1st introspective moment

-Can the hero really do this? Should the hero chicken out?

-Oftentimes the hero fails at something

-Ex: Luke gets his ass beat by the raiders

-Act II:

6) Crossing the Threshold / The Emotional Hurdle (big tentpole)

-The main character makes a choice

-Beginning of Act II

7) The B Story / The Love Story

-Introduced here

-Often but not always a love story

8) Promise of the Premise

-Fun and games in the world you promised

-Horror movie? Creeps here!

-Sci fi? Space battles!

-Animation? Shenanigans!

9) Midpoint (big tentpole)

-The hero finds out that what they want is not what they need

-Luke rescues the princess - turns out that’s not really what the story was about

10) Bad Guys Close In / Throwing Rocks

-Events conspire to tear the hero’s goal to shreds

-Wesley is mostly dead, Inego is drunk, Fezzick is part of the brute squad

-This is the other side of the fun and games coin where things are no longer fun

11) All is Lost

-Something super bad happens, and that goal is impossible

-If someone important is gonna die, it’s probably now

12) The Pit of Despair (smol tentpole)

-The hero mourns the death (if someone died) and wallows in his/her lowest point

13) Inspiration

-A fresh idea

-Act III:

14) Come and Get Some / Final Confrontation (big tentpole)

-The final confrontation - the final showdown

-A and B stories wrapping up at the same time

-The theme makes sense and the battle is engaged

15) Final Frame

-Opposite of the first frame

-The hero is changed

-_-_-

It's what I use. But hey, you don't have to. What works for me might not work for you.

I'll finish this off by pasting in a section of actual real-ass planning I have open in a document for one of my novels at this moment (it's giving me the evil eye, I swear) so you can see what I kind of mean by "thought vomiting." Also note that in my actual document, the bullet points are indented incrementally to be kind of "nestled" underneath the relevant points, if that makes sense, and that it's a whole eye-watering mess of different colors. But for Tumblr, it's this:

-_-_-

-You have to be rescued by the rest of the team, because you fell down that hole - and you are, eventually, after screaming yourself hoarse some more (plus it’s been like an hour or more now, so they have since noticed that you were missing)

-I could gloss over this, like end the chapter when you run away, and open the next one with “It takes another half hour of screaming your throat nearly bloody before the team finds you,” or something

-They berate you for chasing after ghosts - you say you didn’t find anyone down there, because you know for damn sure nobody’s gonna believe what you think you saw, and you don’t even think you believe it

-This leads to a trip to the local doctor (a clinic, probs, akin to UrgentCare), which you’re not happy with because that’s more people taking notice of you

-However, you’re also going through the change in mindset here - see below

-Note: I as the writer don’t have to worry about the paperwork or whatever that you’d normally have to fill out, getting hurt on the job, because you weren’t officially hired - however, it would be a good “humanity is okay” moment if the guy who hired you came in and helped you with the medical expenses because he felt bad - he’d also probably be a little nervous about you suing or something, but you assure him that you have zero interest in that

-I could include a funny line where the guy says he’ll pay for your doctor bill and you try to say no (being indebted to someone is bad news for you) but he insists, because he says he feels responsible, and you just kind of stare at him and then blurt, “Do you need me to kill anyone for you?” (Something you probably regret as soon as you say it, not because you expect him to accept but because you abruptly remember what happened two days ago.) (Would it be too much to also add like “You want me to murder anyone for you? You want a blowjob? I will do anything,” and he gets flustered and bats it off like “Nah, nah, nah, chill out. You’re crazy, man.” And insists that you don’t need to pay him back)

-Here’s a decision I have to make - does the guy pay for your doctor bills as well as paying for your work today (leaving you enough money to potentially split town, but you decide not to), or do you have to pay the $2,500+ in doctor bills with no insurance for the injury, which raises the stakes by depleting all your money?

-I think I like Option A best, because it gives Sam more agency as a character if they decide to stay despite having the option to leave, versus them just being stuck completely - plus I don’t know how else I’d be able to explain away you having money for the hotel

-The guy who hired you pays you for the work day here - and maybe, just maybe, that gives you barely enough to buy that used car (although, why would it? It couldn’t have been more than like $200 for 8 hours of work, maybe $300 if he was really really desperate - if it was a really cheap used car, that might give you barely enough to buy the car but literally nothing left over)

-Point being, maybe you have enough money to bolt now, if you chose to - and you have to make the choice not to

-The car you found might be a $1,500 Honda Civic (or Jeep or whatever) with a dead battery, and the guy selling it says it should run fine with a new battery, which you Google (apparently it would be somewhere in the range of $100-$200) - maybe you think of how nice the mechanic was for you and wonder if you could cut a bit of a deal with him, if you get this car - and if the guy pays for your trip to the doctor and pays you for the temp work, this could just tip you into the margin of being able to afford the car, if you haggle with the seller

-_-_-

Or another example, with more actual sentences:

-_-_-

-As you approach the trailer you start to register a smell that turns your stomach - something like a porta potty and something like the sharp tang of rusting metal. It makes you pause - maybe there really is someone in there, using the place to live whether there’s a sewage hookup or not - it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing you’ve heard of. But after standing for a bit, silent and listening, and then hiding behind a large tree to chuck a rock at the vehicle to no response, you continue forward. You’ll just have to be cautious. Your spirits lift when you see the door. It’s completely grown over. (Leafy vines lace over it, tangling in the handle, yellowing and unbroken. If someone is living in there, they’ve been using the window to come and go, and that doesn’t seem all too likely. Bolstered by a new swell of confidence, and picturing the unlikely riches you might find stashed away in a cabinet or a glove compartment, you cross the last few feet towards the shape.

-You find the body and recognize it as one of the two obnoxious vlogging dudes from the motel

-I’m kind of imagining the moment of discovery like the wardrobe moment in Narnia where, during your nice forest trek, there’s been some pleasant acoustic music playing (like All the Pretty Girls by Kaleo maybe) and then it just stops abruptly in the middle of a phrase, maybe echoing slightly, when you see the body, and all at once everything is sickly silent.

-Oh dude, maybe you continue thinking it’s a duffel bag (possibly feeling pretty upbeat, though cautious until you’re literally about to step over it, and then you happen to glance down and get a sickening, chest-slamming shock when an empty human face is staring up at you

-Note: there should be mushrooms growing in, on and around the RV, because mushrooms are Creepy

-You go to investigate the RV

-Maybe you recognized the body as one of the vloggers and you’re trying to see if his friend is around - or maybe, in a kind of sick daze, you short circuit and find yourself doing the only thing you can think to do: continuing along your trajectory, stumbling towards the RV and tearing the rusted-out door free from the lattice of brittle vines that held it in place (this is what alerts The Dude that someone has been here), like if you just get to your original goal that’ll fix everything - somehow, if you just keep moving forward on the track you set out on, that thing won’t be real anymore - at the very least you have to get inside, to put a door between you and the body, like you’re pulling the blankets over your head to shield yourself from the boogeyman. Just as long as you’re not out there with, with...

-_-_-

Anywho, I'll stop.

I apologize again for... (scrolls up for a million miles) all of that, but you asked me about my passion and now you pay the price, lmao.

[chaoslordjoe]

RWBY - Do I Ship It #2? Ruby Rose

I’ve decided to continue this whole shebang with going over ships for individual characters each time. And for this one, we’re looking at our favorite cooking-deepthroating reaper, Ruby Rose...That may be one of my favorite character descriptions I’ve ever typed.

With introductions outta the way, let’s talk some Ruby ships.

White Rose

kinda leaves me indifferent?

overrated

would read a fic about it

Ideally, White Rose has become one of those ships that half of the FNDM loves to hate. But me, I’m not as triggered by it, let alone nowhere near as angered by it’s presence simply because it’s not Bumbleby.

Unlike BB, in which it’s presence makes me wanna slug my screen every time I see a comment thread screeching high praise about it, I can look at White Rose and just be more like: “Eh. It’s okay.” Simply because I have seen WR content that I enjoy, and that at least many WR shippers know when to shut up when they’re called out unlike Wasps.

Really, a lot of the content has a lot heart put into it to where I really can’t get mad at it. I know it’s a WLW ship. I know that’s become a thing to generally hate among RWBY fans. But I do think that WR is the lesser of two evils between that and BB not because I have a lot of friends who ship it, but because I think folks crap on it way too much compared to the demon that BB has become.

Am I saying there aren’t toxic WR fans still around? Hell no. They need to be called out on it, too. But I’m also generally more relaxed about the ship. Nothing major really.

Ladybug

I SHIP IT

CUTENESS OVERLOAD

underrated

hELL YES

Ladybug has become a recent addition to my ship list a while back. But I’ve fallen head over heels for it in such a short amount of time.

Even many folks I’ve spoken to who tend to gag at the mention of WLW ships in a fandom as egregious as RWBY’s agree that the Bugs are really harmless given soft the content of this ship often is. I’m not saying that Ladybug is all “wee-hee-we’re-a-couple-of-happy-go-lucky-dorks” because that would make it unoriginal and boring to read in many cases.

No, the reason I’ve grown to adore Ladybug so much is because I’m one of those who parrots how much of a missed opportunity (like the show is as a frigging whole) how many interactions there could be between Ruby and Blake.

Why wouldn’t they? They’re both into fantasy stories, both have darkened color schemes, and share some general views on why they fight. Really, Ladybug is just a good way for me to fill the void of just how much Rooster Teeth doesn’t give a fuck about how to organize their characters properly?

Volume 5 gets Freezerburn, and not onwards? Come on, RT.

But before I end up turning this into a rwde post, let’s just move onto the next ship.

Nuts & Dolts

I SHIP IT

CUTENESS OVERLOAD

Soulmates

I WOULD DIE FOR IT OKAY

Yeah this one was pretty obvious. But who cares?! I frigging adore Nuts & Dolts.

Let me just be clear in saying that I can ship it platonically/romantically, simply because I love the bond that Ruby and Penny share. They’re both hyperactive, kindhearted and strong-willed girls with a penchant for bladed weaponry and wanting to make the world a better place for everyone.

This initially made N&D into a guilty pleasure ship for me. But over time, I just couldn’t resist or get mad at it because I love how soft it feels. Same reason as Ladybug for the most part. But overall, I like N&D because of just how much soul there is between two people who were born differently with a set of powers that aren’t what you’d call “ordinary”.

As someone who’s been called “unique” or other labels with the disability I have, I usually find it very pretentious and downright grating to see stories that are supposed to be uplifting about being born in a different manner because that can be really damn annoying after a while.

Yeah, stuff like disability or other stuff is under-represented in pop culture. But often it’s portrayed in a very “Hollywood” fashion even if it’s not a work from that culture and work mindset.

I’m not saying N&D is one of those “unique” portrayals, but as something that shows what happens when two saviors who wanted a normal life have someone in each other that they can trust and even love for their shared experiences of being born differently.

Which is why I’ve grown to accept Ruby and Penny as the popular fan portrayal of being girlfriends or platonic friends. They have so much in common, which makes it that much more endearing for me personally.

Okay. Those are some Ruby/Other girl ships outta the way. Now let’s discuss some Ruby/guy ships...Here’s where it gets a little odd.

Lancaster

BROTP

overrated

no thanks

Oh boy. I’m probably gonna get some flak for this entry...

Let me just be clear that this is a post that is NOT meant to attack any particular shippers. This is me stating what I feel about certain ships and me occasionally talking about how I think they would turn out. 

It’s not my headcanon interpretations, per se. But instead it’s more how I picture it based on my experience with viewing relationships in my own life before I started discussing fandom ships.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s discuss Ruby/Jaune.

When I first started watching RWBY, my first ship, like many others was Arkos (more on that when I cover Jaune). I felt that Pyrrha was just the right fit for a lovable dweeb like him with how it helped kick-start his character development and the framework for how he would improve himself overall.

Granted, I wasn’t really expecting Arkos to be canon since Pyrrha had died in V3. It was a tragic outcome for a ship that had so much buildup. And most of the FNDM agreed that Jaune needed a hug along with his friends to help him through it.

When I started to hear about the fact that Jaune was shipped with other girls in the main cast, I wasn’t really shocked since White Knight was already fairly popular. But when I found out about Lancaster, it was like: “Wait a second, people actually ship him with Ruby?”

Was more confusion than astonishment, to be honest. I didn’t really think that it would’ve been fitting despite how close and similar both team leaders were. But I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try with reading a couple of Lancaster works.

I got bored.

I’m not so much angry whenever I hear about Lancaster as I am just not impressed by how much fanon works recycle many tropes and plot elements.

Ruby is secretly in love with Jaune.

Jaune does something adorkable or manly which attracts Ruby.

Ruby makes/attempts to make a move on him with some crazy or titillating way that, while in-character for her, has been repeated one times too many in this or other ships featuring her.

Jaune is generally being a good boi throughout. I like Jaune, but I feel that he’s put in too many fanfics in which he’s overly good and pure. Again. It’s fitting for him, but sometimes a bit of difference in fan interpretation is nice. Make him angry, have him lash out at his friends at times. Just don’t make him a “perfect” boyfriend.

Both dorks often have to hide their relationship because of the possibility of Pyrrha being jealous, Yang going apeshit, or other characters reacting the way they do which is often buzzwords in a fic like that.

Lancaster shippers, I am not attacking you since this is your thing. If so, fine. But it’s not mine as I am giving an attempt to give constructive criticism about some of the ships listed here while talking about ships I like to make these posts all about even ground.

I prefer to see Ruby and Jaune as besties. Hell. I prefer to see them more like siblings considering how much Jaune acted like a big brother to Ruby on the road to Mistral with how Yang was bedridden with depression in V4. I also think that Jaune needs a friend right now rather than a love interest. The same could be said for a lot of characters right now, but that’s a different topic.

My biggest criticism for LC is that while I understand the similarities that they share, it’s the whole “opposite-gender-leads-fall-in-love” trope. This trope can be done right *coughRENORAcough* but is put in so many works that I’m not one of those fans who’s impressed with it.

The ship isn’t original, but it’s nothing to make me wanna rage-post like I’m Keemstar on Red Bull or the like. And I know people who are into it, to which I tell them: Good for all of you. It’s simply not my cup of tea.

Rosegarden

would read a fic about it

meh

not really my thing

Oh god, how I wish it wasn’t harvest season!

Kidding. Kidding. Rosegarden is legit, and all my friends in the group who ship it are wonderful people.

Another ship that I can’t really get angry at since compared to other ships that cover things like young love or ships of people who were born differently (see my Nuts & Dolts entry), RG is pretty fucking harmless and I can tolerate it more even though I’m not into it.

While I understand why it seems hypocritical of me to share and repost stuff related to RG on occasion, this is simply because I have reason to share it based on how much I’ve interacted with shippers and how I’ve actually had productive discussions with them outside of their ship.

It’s the community which I like more than the ship because of how much more chill they are. But there’s also a big reason why I know that some people crap on this one.

Ozpin.

Dude, if I had a Dollar for every “RG-is-pedophilia-because-Oscar-is-Ozpin’s-puppet” fallacy that was posted I wouldn’t be needing a stimulus check. Let me explain to y’all why that’s bullshit.

(RWDE mode online)

Is Ozpin eons of years old? Yes. He’s from Humanity 1.0 and was thrown into the bodies of men in the modern world in his war against Salem. It’s a rough situation with a lot of baggage to any relationship he puts up or wishes to even build-up and I don’t think it should be swept under the rug because there’s a lot of stuff that should be brought up about the guy.

Is Ozpin intervening on any potential interaction between Ruby and Oscar? No. Canon or no, Oz has been a neutral party in whatever interactions the two kids have because it’s not really his business. Do you honestly believe that if Ozpin would be the kind to boss his host around that he would attempt to butt in on their friendship?

As an Oz critic, I can say that while I understand both interactions, I draw the line at this ship being considered pedophilia.

I mean, come on! The FNDM ships Ruby with villains like Roman, Cinder and Salem, who are adults when she’s a teenager! And suddenly it’s okay to claim pedophilia just because Ozpin is present?! ARE YOU HIGH?

If we’re going with that logic, fine, just have Ozpin ascend from his brain after Salem is 86′d, THEN we can have a development in RG’s friendship whether it’s romantic or not. But leave the fans of this pairing out of it!

(RWDE mode offline)

The reason I don’t ship Rosegarden is because I’m not a fan of the whole “young love” trope either. I wouldn’t mind it so much if Oscar wasn’t relegated to a support role due to being an Oz host and he had more screen time rather than the old wizard.

Maybe I’m just too cynical about stuff like this to really care. But the point is, I can’t get mad at this ship either and I’m willing to read up on it in small doses.

Strawbana

I ship it

CUTENESS OVERLOAD

the sexiest pair

we need more of it

underrated

Sun Wukong, you magnificent monkey bastard! You always seem to brighten my day whenever I’m looking through critical discussions related to this show.

Much as I love BlackSun, I’m definietly curious to learn more about other ships involving my homeboy here. Solar Flare, I also like. But Sun/Ruby? Thank you sir, may I have another!

Ugh. Can’t believe I just quoted Animal House to describe my love for this painfully underrated ship. Somebody get me some soap...

Other than their VAs being married in real life, I like Strawbana/Red Sun the same reason as Nuts & Dolts with this being a ship that features two extremely upbeat characters finding love in one another with just how much they kick ass for the reasons of just being good people.

Kinda/sorta the only straight Ruby ship I’m into just because of how much they could rub off on one another, and how much I’d love to see them interact more in canon material. Not just the show but any other tie-in stuff.

Next time, we cover Weissu.