#changed the old pic to the re-edit bc I like it better

[seabeck]

A 24 hour difference

[thirdrootwriting]

Fics I want to Write - FFVII edition

Babysitting AU

Cloud and Aerith time-travel back into their 6/7 year old selves, WITH the caveat that though they have their adult memories, they have the planning skills, abilities, and emotional regulation of a 6/7 year old. (i.e. not great)

Note: still willing and able to cause SO many problems, but unable to actually fix anything with their short arms and baby brains.

Should feature: Vincent (no memories) actually solving all plot points in the bg by going off what the these weird babies and Chaos are saying

Tseng freaking out, bc he think aerith has been kidnapped. Possibly teaming up with Vince, recognizing him, and freaking out more.

Genesis freaking out bc a DEMON dropped off BABIES in Wutai, told him and his friends to babysit, and now Angeal is getting bossed around by the tiny brunnette while Sephiroth refuses to put down the tiny blonde that keeps threatening to stab him.

-

Here’s how Healthy Polyamory Representation Could Have Saved the Timeline

Fudging Crisis Core timeline a bit, but Zack starts dating Cloud and Aerith back b4 shit hits the fan re: Crisis Core. Obviously bc, he loves and looks up to Angeal, he introduces his new bf and gf to his mentor. Zack also mentions how nice it was to have, like, a good role model also in a poly relationship.

Angeal (aware on some level that his personal relationships are trash fire disaster): haha, thanks.

Later, that day angeal bursts into his apartment ready to drag his husband and boyfriend to couple’s therapy by the roots of their over-producted hair if he must.

Genesis: we don’t need that. We have a perfectly healthy relationship with great communication

Sephiroth (genuinely surprised): We’re dating?

Genesis: .... fine, we might need it a little.

IDK, these three idiots get kicked out of a LOT of therapists’ offices. but they do eventually communicate and problem solve. meanwhile zakurith(?) are cute in the bg.

-

Time Travel for the Temporally Orientated

Sephiroth, time travels back to pre-Crisis Core; he is too busy dealing with severe mental whiplash (can’t decide if Jenova’d him was right or if now-him was right; really disorientating to be un-hiveminded and not kinda-dead) to solve or cause any problems. Fortunately(?) he is acting so goddamn weird anyway that he accidentally makes the timeline better whilst navel-gazing. A comedy of errors featuring:

Picks up cloud as an apprentice, but makes zack train him because 1 of the few things Seph can make up his mind about is that he respects/misses older cloud and thier fights. To literally everyone else though, it looks like Seph picked an apprentice he dislikes? why? thoughts vary

Genesis is DETERMINED to get to the bottom of this. he does not. But he does (1) make friends with cloud, (2) become Intense Magic Rivals with Aerith, (3) become frenemies with Zack, much to Angeal’s displeasure

Tifa and Zack become frenemies too, via being pseudo pen-pals to best friends in law. This version has Tension though, bc they kinda want to smooch each other’s SO

Side note, Aerith is having a great (and very bi) time; she is constantly texting Cloud pics of Zack and Tifa’s latest arm-wrestling/lifting/pull-up battles with heart emojis and thirst captions

Zack is putting off having a bisexual crisis, bc he dislikes Genesis too much to admit he’s hot and Cloud is busy being taken. He’s. putting. it. off.

The great saga of what seph’s phone background should be

Who is more Tired (TM) at any given time?: angeal vs. cloud

-

My take on Remake Fic

Sephiroth and Aerith argue from the lifestream / great-beyond via changes to the timeline.

Zack chapters: Saving a soul via compassion / Dying alone bc you couldn’t save anyone

Genesis chapters: Almost a good person, after a knock on the head (ft. cloud does in fact bite) / So much rage, I’m burning the world down around me

Tifa Chapters: Courage to Believe in Promises / Fear to Lies to Hatred

Cloud Chapters: Let me fully elaborate on my 2 am thoughts that Aerith and Seph mean parallel things to Cloud on an X axis and Tifa and Zack mean parallel things to Cloud on a Y axis

[kat-simss]

Kat’s Massive To-Do/Wishlist

Learn how to convert meshes to different bodyshapes (ts2)

Clean out my WIP folder

Redo old preview pictures

Dig out my old (kathcberg91-era) cc backups and see what’s in there, fix mistakes, give them new thumbnails, and put them up for download (I may or may not have broken the links)

Fix links on my old blog (I think the theme is broken too)

Find a new theme (?) and profile picture

Figure out a good way to take family tree pics for my legacies

Finish my characters page for the decades challenge (and also maybe Breckenridge)?

Set all of my cc to show up in one place (in order in CAS)

Reorganize my projects folder

Learn how to shoeswap things

Learn how to make separates (preferably for categories other than casualwear)

PUT THE SECOND PART OF MY MEDIEVAL HAIR DUMP UP FOR DOWNLOAD (ya’ know, the one I’ve had finished for like half a year now but am just too lazy to bin and take preview pics for???)

A few “mini defaults” for ts2 (e.g. separating the “extra” parts from sunni’s medieval ui defaults)

Figure out mesh-making (I’ve been making renders in blender and playing with the physics engine and it’s really fun so far!)

Convert some ts4 terrain/terrain paint as a default terrain for ts2

Maybe figure out a way to make custom roads reference your default terrain rather than needing to edit the textures individually

Default replace all of the careers, cards, etc. in ts2 with they/them/non-gendered pronouns bc I learned how to edit in-game text the other day and I like to torture myself with long-term projects, apparently

“Finish” my genetic skin setup and put it up for download (the kinda-current version is on my “WIPs folder of doom” page, but I still want to add more, clean up the swatches, find a better way to organize it, etc.) + edit the sortindex numbers

Re-organize & compress my dl folders (again)

Figure out a way to quickly make new packages (I’m currently working with MacroRecorder, which works well, but the free version only allows for 10 repetitions, which isn’t ideal)

Figure out a way to quickly change the sortindex value of a package so you can arrange cc in a certain order without having to edit each individual package file

And now for the wishlist (ts2):

Color wheel (like I said, a girl can dream, right?)

Batch edit for simPE so I don’t have to spend ages editing each individual file whenever I do...anything, really (WITHOUT having to merge files), I should probably post something on mts about this

Less hideous lot imposter textures

A lighting mod that is basically @dreadpirate’s edit to gunmod’s lighting mod, but with the indoor brightness of spookymuffin’s/@dreadpirate’s mm lighting mod, which can be switched back and forth between almighty-hat’s “a world lit by fire” edits (a function of @dreadpirate’s edit of gunmod’s mod)

Figuring out why CAS lags with lots of accessories, makeup, etc. while Bodyshop doesn’t (and if it can be fixed, I’ve double-checked and it’s apparently a known issue, even if you only have a little cc and your computer is capable of handling it)

64-bit version of ts2 (c’mon EA. I’m waiting.)

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey Steph, I’ve been following the questions and your answers re: S4 and S5 and this really brings up a lot of memories as a decades long X-Files fan. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the “life story” of the franchise but briefly I’ll mention that there were 9 original seasons, 7 of which were considered “classic” X-Files and the last two an abomination (!!) because David Duchovny LEFT and two new main characters were introduced, then there was a movie in 2009 which was considered quite bad until the revival seasons in 2016 and 2018 were so painful and offensive I literally deleted them from my memory. Having joined the Sherlock fandom quite recently I read your opinions and I feel your pain! In the original 9 seasons run Chris Carter, the show creator, DENIED for 9 years the romantic relationship between Mulder & Scully even though it was heavily implied THEY HAD A CHILD TOGETHER *smh*. In the revival seasons they were broken up and never really got back together again which is really a what the hell situation. Also, everyone laughed re the revival seasons that David and Gillian are too old to be running around chasing monsters but at the end of the day, the real problem of the revival was not the actors’ age or the fact that the world was very different, but the fact that it was written by a showrunner who was stuck in the 90s with his storylines and sensibilities, and didn’t accept the fact that things are so different these days (ahem ahem, Moffat). Honestly, watching it was like watching a bad parody. Gillian ended up washing her hands from the show due publicly on Twitter, like the queen that she is, which made me so proud of her. So on TXF we got not only 1 but 3 “revivals” over the span of 14 years, who would have thought!  I missed them so much and there were things that I wanted answers for unsolved issues like their child, their romantic relationship, their career etc. On the other hand, once I got it back, it was so horrible I deleted it. So I don’t think it’s impossible for the show to ever return due to BC and MF being busy in the next couple of years; things change, and after 2009 I never would have imagined we’ll get two additional seasons because back then Gillian and David were busy doing bigger and greater things and even tried to distance themselves franchise. The real problem is will it be any good? It won’t. I don’t think Moffat, like Chris Carter, will change and become a better writer with time. If anything, we see the opposite has happened with Dracula being quite meh in terms of popularity and reception (and his next project is what, a play starring Amanda Abbington? Not exactly high profile). I don’t think his “old world” sensibility will/has developed in terms of Johnlock. If BC and MF came to the same realization about him, I’ll appreciate them more for *not joining* him again in the future and encouraging his behavior.

So in short, if we’re to learn from past experiences, revivals or new seasons of shows with dickheads for showrunners that come after a very long hiatuses are usually a cause for much heartbreak (Veronica Mars, anyone?) and while I do miss Sherlock and John, I dread what may become of them and accept the fact that I won’t be happy with any future editions. It’s sad, but the odds are that’s exactly what will happen. I’ll be more than happy to be proven wrong though. xoxo!

(submitted by captainouterspace)

--------

Hi Lovely!

Ahhh, the pic you attached didn’t load, so sadly I don’t know what it was to search for a similar one :(

But that said, YES!! I’m ALSO an original X-Phile, and I know that “shipping” came from this MotherShip, Sculder! :D I watched since S1-E1 first aired, and stopped after Mulder and then Scully left (I didn’t like Robert as the replacement) and I sadly just never saw the new seasons... I was waiting for them to come out on DVD and then I just.... forgot about them, LOL.

I was still young and not as internet savvy so I wasn’t super into the fandom like I am with Sherlock... I came into Internet just after Usenet was sort of trailing out and FFNet was brand new and LJ was where all the good fics were until they got bought out and purged. My first major fandom was Sonic and I was really into the Furry fandom on Side7, LOL.

So YES! I know about X-Files’ history because I OBSESSIVELY bought EVERY BOOK about it, and I read a few of the novels. I think about it fondly because my dad and I would tune in together on Sunday Nights to watch the new episodes. We loved it LOL. And yes, I thought it was great that it came back for a short little bit; as far as I understand they tied up some lose ends and stuff. I really would love to see like a 10 years later thing for a one off season or something, but Mofftiss are really protective of their property, so I doubt it will happen unless they can get something out of it *shrugs* but it’s totally okay to hope. But for a new S5 within the next couple years, yeah, I’m pretty much indifferent about it. I feel like Ben and Martin, if they could go the Johnlock route OR at least back to cases and friendship and admiration for each other, they would come back for special in a decade or so when they’re both not in such high demand anymore.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

Is it just me, or are most people in the VC fandom women? (Not saying I mind, I'm just legit curious if and why.)

(Reminder: I am/was not a gender studies major, nor a student of fandom. This is just an entertainment blog and all that follows is my opinion only.)

This is a highly sensitive topic that people study academically for many fandoms, and I will hardly do it justice here. But I felt it was important to share what I can, anyway. Some links are under the cut for further reading about this topic, even though they do not apply to VC fandom specifically.

The short answer is that, from my experience, yes, most ppl in the VC fandom seem to be women. This is based on the past 20 years of AR’s booksignings I’ve attended, online communities, interviews/articles over the years, AR’s FB (her own posts + comments from her People of the Page), and AR’s Twitter. However, I would add that she absolutely does have fans who are men, NB, agender, genderqueer, transgender, etc. It would be difficult to do a thorough demographic study of all of her fans (current/past/specific time period(s)/etc.), so I wouldn’t know what portion of the fanbase is made up of women.

Let’s take a brief look at our superfan from movie!IWTV:

^What is superfan thinking? Does she think Santiago is a REAL VAMPIRE? Does she want to die? … or, is she simply a groupie of that media and enjoying it as a fantasy situation? We don’t get her backstory in the movie, so we may never know.

^Santiago has had to deal with hecklers and admirers for years so he’s not really fazed by her disrupting his show, and when he shuts her offer down, it draws a laugh from the audience. Laugh at the fan who confessed her love for the fantasy of it all and offered herself as tribute. 

Before we specify why women are in VC fandom, one thing to consider is What is fandom? In my opinion, it’s a group of people who are drawn to a shared space bc of a shared interest in specific media. Within that, you still have to reach out to individuals in order to become friends. You don’t necessarily have to agree on every aspect of the media you each enjoy, but having chemistry certainly helps. Participating in fandom can also mean creating/consuming fanworks without having any personal connection with other fans. Sometimes it’s just in posting fic and/or leaving kudos. Some join a skype chat group so that they focus primarily on their personal connections with other fans. It’s a wide spectrum and there are different ways to engage with other fans within a fandom.

Why VC fandom? We all have our reasons for being in VC fandom. I would prefer not to speak for other fans as to their reasons, but everyone is welcome to respond in the comments/reblogs of this post, or message me on/off anon, and I might gather up those responses and add them to this post. 

Why I was drawn to VC: Personally, I’m a woman, and I’m in this fandom bc the canon/fanon is intellectually stimulating to me. I’ve made some of my best friends here. We share a love for these characters and we discuss them at length. This does not mean we 100% support everything the characters do in canon. We enjoy them as fictional characters, not necessarily as role models.

Secondly… I had posted a personal account about my reasons for being into VC canon, but later deleted that post bc I was informed that my reasons weren’t acceptable. That VC was not for straight women. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ll briefly tell you my reasons for being attached to VC, under the cut. 

Brief historical context:

These books are/were written by a straight white woman, and she’s always advised her fans to “write the book you want to read.” She currently writes for herself, presumably, as she does not use an editor in the traditional sense. She began VC in the early 1970s with the short story, “The Master of Rampling Gate” (which eventually became the full novel IWTV). The short story was published in Redbook magazine at the time, which is/was a magazine for women, and the short story was written in the vein (pun intended!) of the older gothic romance novels that were extremely popular in the ‘60s. 

^In fact, this edition of IWTV is straight-baiting, as the only female love interest that Louis might have gotten into that physical position with would be Babette, and that… definitely doesn’t happen.

IWTV is a dissection of Louis’ feelings, and Louis was a stand-in for Anne herself. VC in general has a lot of emotion, both in the dialogue, and the introspection woven into the narrative itself. The fact that these books are mostly written from the 1st person perspective is a very intimate means of communication to the reader, and makes the novels that much more emotionally rich. Some might say that such emotional writing tends to appeal to women.

The books are intimate. There is a constant thread of intimacy throughout which seems to appeal to women of all sexual orientations, in my opinion. I started the series with IWTV when I was 11 yrs old and I’ve heard from other fans of other genders that they also started VC when they were young, even around the age that I did. Being right before puberty, maybe that adds some extra addictive quality to it, that it explores a kind of intimacy when we’re in the phase of life where we’re just becoming interested in sexuality. I remember mooning over pics of Brad Pitt in my table group at lunch, and we would talk about him, but I doubt any of us would have wanted to actually kiss him at the time, we just wanted to speculate about dating and romance!

After the first book, the intimacy continues with TVL, where we get Lestat’s backstory, and as the series progresses, it just keeps going. Whichever book new VC fans enter the series, they’re going to hit that vein, more or less. It’s not as strong in the most current books, but it’s still there. I would say that AR found that the way she wrote the first 2 books was so well-received that she felt validated in her style of writing, that it was appealing to her readers, and continued to produce it.

There’s also quite a lot of wealthporn, where the characters describe their expensive clothes, jewelry, or lavish surroundings, none of them have to hold a dayjob or anything menial like that. Since many of us do not currently enjoy such luxuries of material goods and/or freedom of leisure time, it’s another element that might make it appealing to certain demographics. There’s a ton of wish fulfillment in the books.��

Hit the jump for a little more.

My reasons for being into VC

Basically, I was bullied when I was 11 (for having a bad fashion sense and bad teeth), which is right around the time that someone gave me a copy of IWTV. I had always loved horror novels and scary stories as a way to study monsters and see if I could unpack them and better understand them. I drew inspiration from the way the VC characters handled their own obstacles, I loved getting Lestat’s backstory, he was not just a colorful antagonist, he had his own reasons for acting the way he did. Reasons are not EXCUSES, but in understanding monstrous behavior, we can equip ourselves to weather it when we see it in real life. Eventually, I got braces, grew out of my 90′s grunge phase, and while the bullies changed form over time, I learned how to deal with them. 

Could I have drawn inspiration from other books/movies/music? Yes! And I did. But VC, for the intimacy of the stories, for the vibrancy of the characters, for so many reasons that I can’t go into on a post I’m trying to keep brief… this is a piece of media that I’ve held onto over the years. Not the only one, but certainly the main one, for me.

A few good posts to check out re: women in fandom:

And I don’t mean to attack you, Anon, but these posts are written with a tone because there is so much criticism of what women in fandom are not allowed to enjoy. Please read at your own risk, but they have some very good points about why women might be into certain things in fandom.

a comprehensive guide to mlm shipping habits in transformative fandom

THE DEPTHS OF MISOGYNY THIS PLACE PLUMBS

villain-relatable marginalization 

[starchild--27]

i was tagged by sweet Feli @myeonplane for this sort of check in-tag game ~ thank youu <3

1. why did you choose your url? the initial thought was "when there's the term "moonchild" why shouldn't there be "starchild" as well?" so i just went with that concept xD the 27 is just my favourite number for no real reason other than it's like... re-appearing in my life occasionally.

2. any side blogs? not really a side blog, but i'm an admin at @wolveswithblackpearls and as we quite recently deleted the original blog by accident, we are still trying to collect our followers again so.... self-promo i guess? we do moodboards and we try to post regularly and it's mainly exo as we are reposting our old work but we try to be more multifandom in the future so yeah... pls check us out if you read this and haven't already? anyway, i have another sideblog but nobody shall ever know about it so 🤫

3. how long have you been on tumblr? since 2016-ish ?? so 5 years.

4. do you have a queue tag? no xD i rarely use the queue function with this blog lol. i just save everything in my drafts if "i don't feel like reblogging" (pls don't ask, i can't explain, it's a gut feeling or maybe laziness) and then i just spam post these posts at some point xD

5. why did you start your blog in the first place? one of my favourite youtube creators was quite active here back in 2016 so she brought this social media to my attention and i really fell in love with the way this site functions (or malfunctions xD)

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp? it's an edit of a pic a friend took sort of accidently but it was aesthetic so i made my pfp basically everywhere lol but ngl... with all the new exo pics that came out i really feel the urge to change my theme again xD

7. why did you choose your header? bc it states the truth :c

8. what’s your post with the most notes? umm... I think it was the "no thoughts. only jekyll by exo." post and it is still a mood 😌

9. how many mutuals do you have? i don't even know how to define mutual, really 😅🥲 always insecure about my relationship with people

10. how many followers do you have? 233 (hello y'all I hope your doing fine~)

11. how many people do you follow? 413 but I feel like I only see max 20 on my dash 🙊

12. have you ever made a shitpost? yes i have. multiple xD

13. how often do you use tumblr each day? ... :) a lot.

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? not really a fight, but somebody was pretty rude towards me after i reblogged a moodboard or sth and tumblr deleted the caption. it probably happend a lot before so they were really pissed about that. i didn't intend this to happen though, i didn't even know it was possible, but yeah that person who gave me shit for it wasn't even the original poster?? i apologized anyway, explained that i didn't know and even reblogged it again with the caption (ironically i really liked the caption, so i really didn't want it deleted) and they never said anything to me again so... rude but nothing heartcrushing. i felt bad about it tho

15. how do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts? i don't need to do anything thank you :)

16. do you like tag games? alwayyys ^^

17. do you like ask games? they satisfy my oversharing tedencies when they bubble up, so yes, of course :D i also like to read other people's answers <3 getting to know a mutual better is the best thinggg~

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous? i have literally no feeling for who's famous and who's not xD i feel like i'm caught in a huge tumblr family here where everyone somehow knows everybody. i'm always like "oH you know each other too???" in my head xD

19. do you have a crush on a mutual? all of them. you are all so lovely and for real, i get so excited when i'm texting with any of you, if we ever met irl i'd probably lose my ability to speak and be very embarrassing xD typical crush behaviour.

20. tags? @byuns-coco @heartcravings @guardians-of-exo @his-mochi-cheeks @xiu-bee @artemiss-moonchild @kkoongiees @saintloey @ouvuo @changshapatrol (only if you want to, of course) and everybody else who's up to this ^-^