#did i really just write an entire meta on this crackship

[thousandflame]

meta oc asks: What plot points would change due to the inclusion of your character in canon? // What do you think the fandom for your character would be like? Are they a fan favorite, a love to hate villain, derided for whatever reason, or something else? // Are there any tropes fandom would put upon your character, for better or for worse? // If your character isn’t designed for shipping/isn’t interested in shipping, how hard does fandom have to mangle them to make them shipping material/open to a relationship? // What is the wildest crackship you can imagine for your character, whether in-universe or in crossover?

What plot points would change due to the inclusion of your character in canon?

I honestly think that her inclusion would be anything but intrusive. She left the main stage prior to canon even starting so she would be mostly present in flashbacks. Her only unnegotiable connection to a canon character is to someone who died about a decade before the manga starts (Rob). And I did not create Cymbie to change canonically established facts, I am more interested in examining what was written between the lines (Ma.karov being kinda shitty as a guild master).

What do you think the fandom for your character would be like? Are they a fan favorite, a love to hate villain, derided for whatever reason, or something else?

So I just had the nightmare thought of there being a semi-canon prequel manga where she would appear. And I had the jarring, jarring thought that the fandom would go off to ship some really wild things (surely including I.van/Gil.darts) and to keep Cymbeline away from the fandom favourite ship, she would be relegated into the role of the "mean lesbian bestie". But her actual fans? I think she would be a recurring side character and I think she would ideally attract the meta-writing and character-study-creating types of fans that would want to engage with her themes.

Are there any tropes fandom would put upon your character, for better or for worse?

A while ago, @reivun and I were discussing something regarding our dnd characters and we were talking how sometimes, fandoms give a character a [food item] trait. It is when a character states once in canon that they enjoy a certain thing and suddenly, fanon decides that this one thing is their entire personality. And I fear that this would happen to Cymbie, she says she likes mozarella sticks one time and . . . #cheesetraitcymbie

If your character isn’t designed for shipping/isn’t interested in shipping, how hard does fandom have to mangle them to make them shipping material/open to a relationship?

Cymbeline is canonically a biromantic asexual. She does experience romantic attraction now and then. It is rare, but it happens---typically after she developed some sort of deeper bond with a character. To make her 'easily shippable', I think she would be mangled in the sense of making her a biromantic asexual because that makes it so much easier to just ship her off with anyone in her age range.

What is the wildest crackship you can imagine for your character, whether in-universe or in crossover?

It's my own bisexual Layla H. agenda showing, but that is the craziest one I can think of because I don't think that shipping Cymbie with any of her old peers would be a "crackship". Maybe a rare pair, but for me, it is the nature of a legitimate crack ship that the shipped characters have never really met.

the meme: accepting

[daedalusdavinci]

spell homestuck

GOD. THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN TWO FACE. i typed too much and theres too many qs so under the cut it goes

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or....... i guess comics, these days, but i HATE READING COMICS they juST HAVE MORE COMPELLING FANDOMS. book fandoms are PUNY nad everyone is STUPID. youd think actual literary fandoms would have reading comprehension and understanding of literary critique but no!!!!!!!!!!!!! its literally my eternal fuckign struggle. somehow comic fandoms hit the perfect medium between compelling, readable content and the enthusiasm of cartoon fans without the childishness of cartoon fans

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

this isnt really a thing i do. the only time i associate characters w songs is my own ocs. barbies theme is miltons tower from the what remains of edith finch soundtrack!

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

i have also never really been one to project myself into stories. its just not how i consume media. i think sollux and rose already closely resemble the kinds of friends i make, so maybe them?

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

(freddy fazbear vc) vanessa.... ive done things, im not proud of.

i dont even know if i want to answer this question bc its so fucking humiliating LKJSNDLFSDNFSDF the truth is yes. i am solely responsible for. a lot. particularly in the pjo fandom. i created several crackships ground up all on my own way back in 2014 and developed a following for them and i. dont wantto tell you what those ships were. LSKJDFNSLDJNSDFSDDF ive also pioneered many ship tags for other fandoms and i ship a lot of rarepairs and stuff but i dont think im RESPONSIBLE for them?? in that some ppl already were into them/talking abotu them or tht theyre still not popular (augh. to the ones that became popular) but i AM liTERALLY responsible for some crack shit in the pjo fandom and its. it haunts me sometimes. i dont want to talk about it. IF YOU REMEMBER WHAT I DID NO YOU DONT

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

this is so vague. my headcanons are shifting and nebulous and aus are my constant companion in everything, but uhhhhhhghhusjkdjnsdg i think. roxy writes the same way dave draws comics. its extremely memey and meta and self aware and largely just for the personal lolz, and were all doing her a disservice by pretending her writing looks like roses, when in reality dirk is probably the one whod make comics the way rose makes books (which is probably why he doesnt make comics). its more of that thing where roxy and dave are the same and rose and dirk are the same ykwim. well YOU dont corvus but im sure someone else does

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

jason takes after bruce in terms of like. adopting entirely too many kids. he broods

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

harvey is a heartwrenching character when written well, with a complicated view of morality, heartbreaking ties to our main hero, and a lot of internal conflict. something about such a hopeful character deadset on making a different in the system becoming a victim of it, and the potential he has as a vehicle for critiquing the law.

percy is my favorite character from pjo bc it was the very first time in my life i ever read a book and saw myself in it. hes aggressive, impulsive, and rebellious, he fidgets and has a hard time standing still, he acts on emotion without always thinking it through, he gets in trouble in school and hands his mom a murder weapon to kill his stepdad, hes just... hes a lot of the things ive always gotten in trouble for, things i couldnt help being, and hes a hero. he means everything to me.

vriska, i will maintain until the day i die, is one of the best homestuck characters- maybe just characters?- ever written. shes dramatic, shes impulsive, shes manipulative and mean and creative, and shes just so messy about it. shes a mean girl in a way that feels real, where her trauma impacts and shapes her as a person, and shes complex, with warring wants, and people she cares about, and dreams, and shes so messy. shes rough and rude and shes doing what SHE wants to, being a version of herself that feels right to HER, rather than some caricature of the hot badass evil lady. shes thirteen!! and she FEELS thirteen. shes a thirteen year old weird girl who is kind of an asshole, and she means literally fucking everything to me. shes a pirate!!!!! shes a swashbuckling badass dressing up in her larping outfit and yelling at her friends on the playground to swab the deck and she is the bestest ever, the end.

i didnt mean for each one of these to be longer than the last but here we are.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

i hate jdedave peace and love it just feels weird as hell to me. dave, for the most part, is hyper respectful of other peoples choices and boundaries but when it comes to jade hes always trying to mke choices for her, to protect her, and it gets to the point where even jade points out how much it bugs her. jades crush on dave also seems to come from a place of misunderstanding to me, admiring a lot of the parts of himself that he exaggerates and pretends to care about as a result of trauma. it always felt like a kid crush that they shouldve grown out of with time. dave also just sort of seems to... go along with whatever romantic relationships people push him into at that age, rolling with whoever flirts with him jsut bc hes trying to maintain the image of a player, so its really hard to take him seriously any time he hits on someone?

that is just my interpretation of it tho

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

well. i havent finished my reread of homestuck, so that feels difficult to comment on just yet, bc im sure ill have a different opinion when i do finish it. no one in dc gets character arc bc theyre all just undone immediately, so thats like. yeah. and in pjo the arcs are pretty weak bc 1) kids books and 2) RICK UNDOES THEM ALL. AUGH. regardless of all of this, i am going to say jason grace. he had a lot of development in like the last two hoo books, or maybe just like.... hints of how he couldve developed? promise? which rick immediately set fire to in toa when he killed him, but fUCKING WHATEVER. UGH.

anyway actually tho eleanor from the good place. bisexual icon. queen. probably one of the best character arcs of all time. the episode w her mom has some of the most powerful fucking dialogue ever and i think about it. all the time. i should rewatch the good place.....

[queerdiaz]

Where can i find these Reggie x Nick thought i heard from you? I'm intrigued.

Sorry it took a bit to answer this, Nonnie! But thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about this new crack ship that I can’t help but love. They haven’t yet reached the same level of love I have for my other “technically” crackship, that is basically canon to me, Flarrie (aka Flynn x Carrie who has become an otp to me and @alexs-fannypack and is a beautiful ship in our canon and deserves to have a ex friends-enemies-lovers sl in s2 and beyond. FIGHT US.) BUT, I literally just came up with the idea of Reggie x Nick like yesterday, so it’s new. However here’s why I really like the idea of them (even though there’s absolutely no basis for them):

How I came up with them was that I was seeing a funny post about Nick and Juke. And it reminded me about my feelings about Nick. Like even though I don’t really ship Nick/Julie and Juke is my OTP of OTP’s on this show (along with Willex), I still felt really bad for him, especially at the end of s1 (they better get Caleb out of him ASAP). He was always so nice and supportive to Julie. Like even after Julie rejected him, he was still so supportive and happy her when she and the band performed at The Orpheum. Nick is just a supportive sweetheart and deserves all the love in the world. 

And then it hit me. You know who else is also a supportive sweetheart that deserves all the love in the world? Our very own Reginald, of course. 

While Luke has Julie and Alex has Willie, my boi Reggie deserves to have someone too. And he’s such an adorable precious bean who loves and supports everyone, and who deserves more love. And yes, that’s basically my whole basis for them. However, I think pairing two characters who both like music and are such supportive sweethearts, together can be really adorable. They can show that love and support to each other. 

Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s cute and all. But one’s a ghost and one’s a lifer who can’t see him like Julie can. How’s that going to work?” Well, I’m glad you asked. There’s two ways that this can be solved. 

1) I mentioned before that I think after Julie saved her himbos The Phantoms, they got more powerful which explains how she was able to touch them, and were now able to do more stuff. I have different theories of what that exactly entails. But right now we’re going to focus on others seeing them. And there’s two ways that came to mind to help with Reggie x Nick. Either, only people can see them when Julie’s around and/or touching them, or if the ghost has like an emotional connection to them or something. In my Alex fic that I wrote, I explained it being a bit of both. 

2) After Nick is possessed by Caleb and they somehow save him (bc they’re gonna save him dammit), maybe it did something to him that not only makes him able to see the ghosts but touch them as well. 

Now that solving how they can see each other is out of the way. Here’s other random/silly thoughts on why I like the idea of them: 

-Like most of the characters, they both really love music and are really talented. But it’s not really focused like the others. For Reggie, we do see is it (like in The Band Is Back) but it’s mostly either through jokes (e.i the best country song not yet made, Home Is Where My Horse Is) or through their band’s love for music in general. And with Nick, we barely see him in music class in the beginning of 1x01 (which I will expand on in just a second), but I think it’s safe to say that he loves music and that it means a lot to him. It’d be cool to have how they first bond is through music (like with Juke).

- Speaking of their love for music. They both can play the guitar extremely well. Reggie with his bass and Nick with the electric. Like did you see Nick shredding that beautiful blue Les Paul in music class during 1x01?? I think Reggie would totally rock out to that. Now I’m imagining them completely jamming out together.

-They both have great styles that I think can sorta compliment each other in way. Like @alexs-fannypack mentioned, Nick’s fedoras are awesome and I can totally see Reggie being like the only one who brings them up and really loving them. Like Nick’s whole Fedora/old style look matched with Reggie’s 90′s rocker leather jacket/black tank/flannel shirt tied around the waist ensemble? Already iconic. *chef’s kiss*

-And last but certainly not least. Nick would totally play/sing Home Is Where My Horse Is with Reggie. Both out of support for him, but also bc he really loves the song.  

In conclusion: Both Nick and Reggie are precious supportive beans who deserve the world and love (just in case that wasn’t clear from all of the times I mentioned it). And I think they can give that to each other. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

[janiedean]

I feel bad for all the nice J*nsa shippers who like their ship for whatever reasons (tropes, pretty art, aesthetic appeal, whatever) and know it's not canon but get associated with the misogynistic Dany hating crowd who act like Jon being attracted to Ygritte is J*nsa foreshadowing because red hair (I guess Jon should fuck Edmure Tully too? Omg give me Dark!Jon getting revenge on Catelyn by seducing her brother!) Tell me something. I'm new to the fandom but was J*nsa popular before the show? And I've heard something about the OG J*nsa shippers being alienated by the new shippers who insisted it had to be canon and acted like the series is called, "A song of J*nsa #danysux." I don't find that hard to believe because I know people who are now ashamed of calling themselves J*nsa shippers. Like, at this point, it's not only rival shippers who hate it. Even Gendrya/Braime/Jon stans/etc have started disliking that ship. You know your fandom is a problem when people who have nothing to do with Jnsa have a problem with it.

me: reads this ask

me: iwastheregandalf.gif which I can't find now but

okay anon buckle up because I am sadly well-equipped to answer this ask but before I do lemme tell you dark jon seducing edmure to take revenge on cat is LITERALLY THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD but *clears throat* ALL RIGHT THEN.

disclaimer: as anon says I have no issue with like the shippers mentioned by anon in the beginning and ngl I agree, I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO FUCKING STAKES in the j*nsa vs j*nerys war and the only het jon ship I gaf about is jon/ygritte and we all know where that ended up I just... have been here since 2011/adwd was over and all the fic around was just for the books under secret lj communities and asoiaf qualified for yuletide and I have... seen... things.... and I actually have like uh had... beef... with some people in there and I know things bc ppl who hated those others told me stuff so anyway *sigh* buckle up anon I'mma tell you the story of jon shipwars through the years

in order, the old gods help me here, under the cut bc this is long as fuck

when I got into fandom also given what numbers were on ao3 one ship was popular and it was sansan. no like sansan was lit. the only asoiaf ship on ao3 with more than 200 fics. jb had twenty when i checked first. jc had like around 100-ish because of the show but sansan dwarfed anything. I posted the first jon/ygritte fic on the ao3 tag and the fourth throbb fic and like the others were all reposts from lj kinkmemes. nothing was popular before the show except for sansan when it comes to huge numbers bc grrm doesn't like fic and it was all hush hush until the show made it impossible to control and that ship was the one with a huge enough fanbase it actually had numbers, so like... j*nsa wasn't popular in the way nothing else was popular until it got screentime on the show

now, that stated, j*nsa had a... fair amount of fic for a rareship which was mostly book-based and from og shippers that were there from before the show and liked it for what it was but literally none of them thought it was gonna be canon, like it wasn't huge or anything but it had a small but dedicated fanbase who did their own thing and thought it was fun/liked the idea but that was it

that fandom had their own niche of hcs that they cultivated and shit except that like... at the end of S5/beginning of S6 there was a surge in shipping for... well obvious reasons bc it was obv sansa was getting to the wall and that would have been all nice and good but a) it was the time puritanical shipping was starting to take root and the 'shipping sansa with sandor or tyrion is hella problematic' rhetoric had started to circle coming from sans*ery shippers mostly but I'mma not open that fucking can of worms here, b) while the ending of S5 had more of a theon/sansa spike, the j*nsa stuff started getting big

now here we have to mention my villain origin story ie: j*nsa fandom had this one stan whose name I won't make because honestly it's been years and if she's still around I don't want her to remember I exist who was a bnf, wrote for... the website that created the whole larry/carol thing etc who was really fixed on this thing that j*nsa was actually canon and started writing extremely popular meta about it. now you're gonna ask how do you know, I know because this person once wrote a meta named 'why robb stark is a dick' and I told her that it was really fucking bad meta and she took it so badly she kept on trash talking me on her blog/her podcast (I was apparently the insane robb stark fangirl l m a o good lord) and like that was when some sane ppl who argued with her informed me in pvt that she was basically harping on the CANON thing when they'd have been okay with like... it being crackshipping and that she was basically cultivating a hoarde of followers who were harping on them/the ogs and basically ostracizing them;

I would like to add that this person - before her tumblr got 'accidentally deleted' and remade it therefore deleted most receipts for, er, her so-called meta which included stuff like ned and cat raised sansa as a sexual object and only wanted to sell her like cattle - had at some point started a round robin fic thing where... some of the characters mocked openly said stuff that some of the og fans had said specifically targeting them and people in that side basically went harassing anyone who didn't agree with that specific notion

now never mind that this person basically coined an entire term to describe ppl who liked white guys and excused all their wrongdoings out of my conversation re robb basically lying about everything I said as if I didn't have the receipts and tried to sell shirts with it and it didn't work and like then she got kicked out of her own website because she was telling her commenters disagreeing pretty shitty insults (considering I was called psychotic for disagreeing with her that time I don't doubt it) I think at some point she stepped back from fandom bc idk wtf she's up to these days and I don't want to, but basically at that point the dam was broken and there was a bunch of puritanical shippers harping on anyone who didn't agree with j*nsa is canon endgame stuff

this also includes an incident when those ppl were like... passing themselves as throbb shippers and ended up trying to tell t*hramsay shippers off the theon tag based on moral reasons and I ended up arguing with all of them (and they were all from that crowd) which in turn landed me in contact with other og j*nsa shippers who were like detached from that fandom bc those same people harassed them away as well ssooooo fun

anyway when S6 happened everyone was high on it and whatnot but I wasn't gonna begrudge them that I mean... you shipped it for years, canon is delivering you, good for you, but then j*nerys happened

god j*nerys happened

aaand basically...... I mean personally I was there like are y'all seriously arguing about the best incest jon ship out there but like basically the j*nsa endgame side was like AH JON IS PLAYING DANY SEE IF IT DOESN'T HAPPEN, the j*nerys obv got defensive af and both sides were sort of alternatively shitting on jon/ygritte anyway and depicting any other romantic rship jon could have as abusive™ and during S8 it just got worse and like I tried to stay out of it but basically from what I'm seeing now idk how the j*neryses are doing but on the j*nsa one it's ah jon's gonna play dany anyway and she's going to go insane like in the show so SHOW TRUTHING EVERY OTHER WAY and like again denying that sandor exists or that tyrion exists and like I barely touch my corner (sansan) but I ended up arguing with j*nsa/th*nsa people on twitter who were antis and is2g it was white-hair inducing and I know for sure the sansa/tyrion shippers were harassed to hell and back throughout so FUN

and even if the show didn't go there now since everyone there banked on the jnsa endgame thing and admitting you're wrong is like... not a thing, they still haven't let go of it and attach to that ship any shred of evidence which honestly is grasping at straws half of the time (like... the sansa/alysanne parallels like guys please no) and which is why every other ship is starting to get fed up, attaching canon proof of stuff from other ships onto theirs see that batb argument and jb is platonic but jonsa is not nvm taking all the sansan stuff and throwing it on j*nsa but then denying that sansan has canon evidence (like guys I had to read sansa touching his shoulder when saying gregor wasn't a true knight wasn't meaningful and we were seeing things please) and blah blah blah

this also goes hand in hand with the fixation on like... villanizing dany at all costs and like is2g I have zero investment in dany or her storyline I don't even remember it and I don't particularly care abt her either way and sure af I'm not for j*nerys endgame but like.... some stuff I read is completely excessive esp when fixing on how she's a completely mad tyrant who's gonna have to be put down and like... guys no

(also there's some srs stannis hate in that corner which I honestly don't get why they even care abt stannis but I had to read stuff like ppl don't recognize that dany and stannis are the real villains in this saga and like........ idek)

I think most of the og shippers are gone or don't ship it openly bc they don't want to be attached to the drama but like I also think they're pissing off everyone else bc like... I mean a bunch of them also were down with sansa being paired with other ppl as long as it meant a good ending for her except those ppl were... like everyone but the ppl she has actual contact with in canon which meant that at some point sansa/gendry was a thing and like.... you can imagine why arya/gendry shippers & arya stans were fed up, and there's also this tendency to behave like sansa is the center of the entire saga which like these books is named a song of jon snow basically can we pls make peace with it and personally I've had it with both j*nsa and j*nerys people since they started with that dumbass JON/YGRITTE WAS AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP rhetoric but I'm also fed up with the total ignoring that sandor exists/depicting us as delusional and honestly I also was by proxy fed up from the harassing of the sansa/tyrion shippers soooooooooooo

there were also instances of 'well theon is an acceptable choice other than jon bc he can't threaten her' which... i mean we all know what that meant and I'm not even commenting it bc it's one AM and I have no force to but I don't have to explain why it's not a progressive take now do I

there were also metas about how cousin incest being legal in half of the world means that jondany is a worse incest and j*nsa doesn't count as such and I was basically there like guys please just fucking own up to it but honestly I chose to forgot where I read that and I couldn't find the link if I tried

tldr: no one wants to admit that it's not gonna be endgame which considering the amount of fic they have on ao3 is imvho useless bc they have more content than like.. anything I ship that's not jb or that's actually like canon *cries in joncon/rhaegar but I mean renly/loras is canon and has less fic than them* so idk what's the problem with enjoying that instead of insisting it's gonna be canon when not even the show validated it while show truthing anyway when the only show truthing that can be truthed is the small council made of minorities and possibly jon eventually fucking off with the wildlings but not like that but like most people who thought it wasn't gonna be endgame had left/were made to leave by the time S7 rolled by and at this point since wow isn't out yet everyone is fandom-grasping at straws to find stuff to discourse on and we're here beating dead horses *shrug*

so that's... how it is but I would again like to point out that I don't judge ppl on their shipping, I don't particularly care about this entire feud bc I only ship jon with ppl he's not related to in whichever way and I try to stay out of this mess bc I don't really care to argue with ppl who have already decided to bend canon to whatever they want and will have to realize that it's not what grrm wrote at some point but like I have a very good memory and the above rant is as objective as possible also bc again I don't literally have a stake in that race I just think romantic/endgame j*nsa is not a thing and that ppl should stay in their lane and not harping on other ppl who ship whatever in general but especially when their ship is the most popular thing in fandom in the first place /two cents

[thisstableground]

If you can remember, what was the first scene you really wanted to write for each character? The one that made you start writing about them/start including them in stories?

oooh this is such a good question. i’m assuming you mean trio, since they’re my main go-to.  this will be an absurdly long post, i apologise, but honestly if people don’t expect that of me by now then i don’t know what to tell you. really it’s kind of hard to explain for any of them, because most of my early writing wasn’t planned in advance and i didn’t know them that well, it was through writing them that i really started to understand them and also to develop my own specific versions of them.

so ruben was first, and i basically slammed out the entire lengthy first chapter of maps won’t show us where we’re going (aka, the What Happened In Jamaica thing) in one sleepless night. i hadn’t  intended on writing any ruben fic at all, but i’d only discovered the DNH supercut maybe a few weeks before that and had been drawing ruben a lot and making lots of anguished posts about him, and i got an ask that was something along the lines of “okay but imagine how Traumatised and Terrible things are if he did survive jamaica” that like, listed off a bunch of potential bad things and it was partially my heart just breaking over the idea of him struggling so much and a little bit of “actually i want him to HEAL AND GET BETTER” spite that fuelled me because tbh the ask hit a bit of a nerve. 

so i didn’t exactly have a single scene in mind well in advance, i just knew when i started i wanted it to reach a point where he wasn’t better but where there was hope that he could be one day. and there’s a lot in that first chapter that was very much just lifted from personal experience which really opened the pandora’s box on realising how cathartic writing post-DNH ruben could be, which i think is the appeal of ruben to a lot of people. plus i got a lot of messages in my inbox going “OH MY GOD, POOR RUBEN??? YOU HAVE BROKEN MY HEART” and i absolutely bloody love people giving me attention for the things i make and having big emotions about it, so that definitely encouraged me to write him more

there was a little not-90verse DNH/ITH crossover which was my first venture into usnavi writing! i’d had a some run of art prompts in my askbox for various combos of LMM characters meeting and then got into a conversation about how usnavi would be the Best person for post-jamaica ruben to meet because he’s just so goddamn nice? and then i wrote a couple of very short little potential fics about it one of how things would go if jason showed up at the bodega which i cant remember much of but i think sonny was in it too and they pretty much told him to get the fuck out, and one was about ian tracking ruben down to the barrio and mistaking usnavi for ruben. sadly the actual fics are lost to my old blog/dead laptop but i can remember the details on the ian one pretty clearly, which is funny because i’d entirely forgotten it existed till just this second. they probably weren’t all that well-written anyway.

i hadn’t even considered any kind of non-platonic ruben/usnavi interaction when i wrote those and then i got an ask in my inbox that was like “you’re making me ship usnavi and ruben now” and i was like “only if vanessa can come too” and the whole thing was a joke i had no intention of writing but then a few people were like ‘i’d genuinely read that tho’ and that’s how your body is a triangle was writ, which is when vanessa came into the picture!

i think the first scene i ever decided on with her was the one where she accidentally triggers ruben into a panic attack and then goes  round his place to try and make amends. i found vanessa so fucking difficult to write at first because she’s very, very different from me in terms of both personality and voice. but even though YBIAT was just gonna be a silly crackship one-shot (oops what happened) i think the best crackfics are the ones where the characters are still in character, and i’ve always loved vansnavi as a ship so i didn’t want it to be one of those OT3s where it’s really just a way of writing two guys making out and the girl may as well just be a potted plant in the corner. so giving her proper motivation and characterisation was really important (i actually put way less effort into exploring the usnavi/ruben aspect of it in that particular fic, you might notice).

so i was trying to figure out how and why her and ruben connect, and it was on the point of  them both being more closed off than usnavi and really struggling sometimes to express things, but underneath the defensiveness and the walls being really caring and trying very hard. if there’s anything that you could call a theme for 90verse it’s the idea of effort, and how important trying is even when you’re not good at something or when life is hard. vanessa struggles with emotional expression but she’s also very determined and uses that to push through her discomfort when it really matters, and that’s something i fell so in love with so quickly when i started writing her. this mixture of cool and dorky and awkward and poised and prickly and good-hearted, she’s so complicated and wonderful. i have a line from usnavi in be right-right where you step, that people don’t always see past what’s on the surface with her when there’s so much there if you’re just willing to put in the effort, which i think is very true of their relationship (and also a reflection on similarities between ruben and vanessa, which i think came up a lot in earlier stories in particular) but was also totally a meta-comment on how vanessa did not come nearly so easily to me as usnavi or ruben did (and i know some other writers found her difficult to figure out, too) but she has always been so worth the effort of figuring her out.

there’s a postscript to the usnavi writing - i loved writing him in YBIAT because he’s kind of just silly and goofy and sweet, and i still love writing that side of him because it’s so much fun, but like i said, that was supposed to be a oneshot. so i think for usnavi the real moment was when i wrote that lil fic about him and all the ways that coffee has been important in his life, and that’s the first time i addressed the whole Dead Parents thing and it was that fic that made me really realise that just like vanessa, he’s got way more layers as a character than i’d originally thought about and that’s what made me want to explore him as more than just the funny, sunshiney one (and now i keep accidentally writing things where he’s sad and stressed and i don’t know how that keeps happening, but he is also still a smiley goofy sunbeam, so i haven’t broken him entirely)

[fedonciadale]

what do you think are the common misconceptions about the jonsa fandom? and what misconceptions do you think some jonsas might have against the j0nery$ fandom?

Dear nonny,

where to start? I guess you talk about the Jonsas that want Jonsa to be canon? Because obviously if we would just ship Jonsa as a crackship nobody would have a problem with us - or so they tell us all the time…

I would say a crackship would be a couple who never interacts in canon like say… Ned/Missandei. But my definition can’t be right because…

WE ARE ALL DELULU…. I’ve read that we have about six braincells, are retarded, flat-earthers…. And there was even a ‘Jonsas are cockroaches’ troll. Take your pick! And these are things I read from general fandom as well, it’s not just Jon€rys shippers.

Caveat though: My following argument is about the Antis I have interacted with. I’m not saying that every Jon€rys shipper or general Anti-Jonsa does this, but the ones I have met did.

In general the logical deduction of Antis works like this:

Identifying Jonsa shippers - > Jonsa is a crackship and crackpot theory -> therefore there must be a reason why they are that way -> *insert some reason*

Here are some of the ‘reasons’ that come up at the end of that logical chain, and you can easily imagine more:

- We are all teenagers somewhere between 12 and 16, because no mature person would ever ship Jonsa. We are all virgins as well and that’s why we can’t see the awesome beauty and erotic allure of bo@tbang.

- Unless of course, we are soccer moms who have too much time at their hands, are frustrated housewives who self-insert into ASOIAF as Sansa and have no idea about good sex, because - you guessed it - we can’t see the awesome beauty and erotic allure of bo@tbang.

- Since we are teenage soccer moms we are also show-watchers only. No mature or sane person who read the books would ever come up with a crackpot idea like Jonsa. And because we are show-watchers only we analyse the show too much. Why look at the romantic subtext of a Forehead kiss when you can have the awesome beauty and erotic allure of bo@tbang.

- Sometimes we quote the books…. They realise that. But there is an easy solution to that as well. We only refer to the parts of the books that have been quoted over and over again, and we haven’t really read the books.

- When we write metas, it is just us talking gibberish. We quote the parts of the books we have come across and put them all together in such a wrong way. This can only be properly described as reaching. Because who needs long-ass metas when the clue to the end has always been the very title of the series: tHeY aRe iCE aND fIRe - and they had sex (you know bo@tbang of awesome beauty and erotic allure). Why would anyone dig that deep? It’s senseless.

- We are Sansa stans only…. No Jonsa ever has been a fan of Jon, because if we were we would see that Political Jon is character assasination and that Da€nerys is clearly set up as Jon’s love of his life (who he had sex with, amazing sex, did I mention that?)

- Fortunately there are only a few Jonsas. It is not a popular ship after all. There are only about two handfulls of us, who nevertheless manage to bully the entire GoT fandom by posting in the Jon Snow tag, writing fanfiction and pushing their secret Jonsa agenda - whatever this is supposed to be.

Thank God, there can’t be that many people who are teenages soccermoms show-watchers only, writers of long-ass reaching metas full of quotes of books they never read, bullies, and general pain-in-the asses. You could come to the conclusion that there aren’t any Jonsas at all. Which is good, because Jonsas should all have the same opinion. God forbid, that there are discussion within the Jonsa fandom. No, we all have a Jonsa president - el supremo - dictator who tells us what opinions we should have.

So that’s for the Jonsas. As for our misconceptions of Jon€rys, I try very hard not to generalize. I am sure that there are plenty out there I never met. And I tend to bitch about the ones I met in private places. I believe in the freedom of speech, but I don’t believe in insulting.

So I’m only willing to share two of my general ideas on Jon€rys shippers, judging from my own interaction. I’m not sure if you could call them ‘misconceptions’ though:

- One thing you can actually deduce from the things I wrote above. They are far too obsessed with the awesome beauty and erotic allure of bo@tbang. If in doubt bo@tbang is the argument they tend to use to ‘end the discussion’. They always think that bo@tbang triggers Jonsas… I can only speak for me, but interfemoral sex does not trigger me. I’m interested in a satisfying conclusion to the series and sex does not come into that.

- They tend to reduce the arguments of Jonsa, and then they argue against this reduced argument, but doing this they end up validating the original theory. They think Political Jon is about Jon doing everything because he lusts after Sansa. Then they go about to refute that and say many things that actually validate the real Political Jon theory like “He needs dragons, he wants an alliance” etc…. And I am like: “Yes, exactly….” I was alerted to a gifset that showed Jon’s obsession with the Night King side by side with Jon€rys scenes. Under the gifset was the comment that Jon was so easily distracted from his obsession by Da€nerys…. But of course if you put another comment under the gifset like “Jon Snow - consistent in his fight against the White Walkers since season 1″ it would become a perfect set for Political Jon.

So I end this with our new poster:

Thanks for the ask!

[ashmerra]

may i kindly ask you all the oc questions?

Yes, yes you may.

Quick note:  A few OCsI won’t mention by name and a few answers will be vague just as to not spoilanything.  I have an entire fanversegoing on here.

-50 OC Asks-

Quick reference:  Meri is the Hero of Kvatch.  Arrais a Breton mage in Skyrim.  Dreyns is a Dunmer assassin.  Vitiais the Dragonborn.  Sannit is an old, former Ashlander. Veabris is an Ayleid who’saround back before the First Era.  Jaka is the Nerevarine.  Estor isNot a Thalmor ™.  Stigr is a proud Nord boi.  La’Mihr is a smart kitty.  One-Who-Knowsis yearning for the suburban Skyrim dream.  

 1. “Your first OCever?”  

That would be proto Meri. She was really the first that grew into an actual character.  She was also supposed to star in an Oblivionrewrite/webcomic/fanfic thing I drew like one page of years ago.

2. “Do you have a personal favouriteamong your OCs?”

I like different ones for different reasons!  Arra’s dialogue and one-liners, Dreyns’swhole ark of getting old, Vitia’s philosophy, etc.  etc.

3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?

Nope.  And I’d neverconsider them mine.  I handcraft them andbake them one-of-a-kind each time.  Butmore seriously, the most I could take is an idea for a character, because Ialways like to twist things on their head and really make it my own.  I don’t enjoy writing NPCs for thisreason.  I can’t get in their head and myheadcanons get a bit much, so I’d rather just write for those I know.

4. “A character you rarely talk about?”

Tactus Gavros Sigilis!  An inspector/investigator for the Empirein Skyrim.

5. “If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be?”

I think that’s not really up to me.  I can’t decide who fans will latch onto.  I know who’s the most well-liked at thistime, but that’s no indicator of who would be well-loved by a much wideraudience.  I’ll leave this one to my fans!

6. “Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?”

I do my best to give everyone unique looks andclothing/color schemes, but!  There’sthree that got based on each other and aren’t the same but even I’m confusednow.  I’ll make a separate post to breakit down.

7. “Are your OCs part of any story or stories?”

None of them exist outside of the Elder Scrolls universe,and I have yet to write fanfiction.  

8. “Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here!”

Currently Arra, Sannit, and Veabris.  Though I think I’m game to RPing any of them,I already have a few more that I want to add to my RPing blog!  (btw, if you like the idea of RPing with me,all you have to do is ask.)

9. “Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?”

No.  Not give, nevergive.  But that doesn’t mean they can’tappear in your writing/meta/art, just that it’s a crossover, you don’t own themjust like I don’t own yours when I allude to them in RPs.  (Did I ever post that here?)

10. “Introduce an OC with a complicated design?”

All the ones I don’t draw, lol

Okay, more seriously…no, that’s pretty much why.

11. “Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a ‘sunshine’?”

100% Arra

12. “Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot”

Can I say all of them? My favorites are the ones who are woven into the lore and pre-existingcharacters, and ones that feel like real people and not just “ArgonainDragonborn #76”.  I like the ones whotake it as seriously as me, and as I see people do, I feel more confident totalk about and expand them.

13. “Do you have any troublemaker OCs?”

Actually, not really.  Dreyns, Jaka and Stigr can all be at times, though.

14. “Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory”

I want to legit change that to one without tragedy in theirbackstory because they’re all tragic…

15. “Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?”

Sometimes!  But I trynot to go overboard because I’m not sure if people like it.  

16. “Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)?”

My Daedric biologist, I would imagine.

17. “Any OC OTPs?”

I’m not much of a shipper, honestly.  And I really can’t think of any at themoment.  

18. “Any OC crackships?”

Read 17.

19. “Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)”

I’ll pass on this one only because my answer would start gettingtoo personal for this ask.

20. “Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details(headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?”

Veabris has a beautiful singing voice that would sound agood deal like Annie Lennox.  Actually,just listen to “Into the West” and you’re good to good.  But you’ll never hear it because Vea is superself-conscious and private about singing.

21. “Your most artistic OC?”

You know, I think I overlook making them artistic justbecause I am.  It would be too obvious.  But let’s say Stigr and La’Mihr are.

22. “Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how?”

In world or OOC? That’s a really important distinction! But Veabris’s intentions are usually misinterpreted.  

23. “Introduce an OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what thecharacter would be like?”

Most of them!  I workon them for a while until I feel they’re ready to be revealed.  24. “If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?”

Don’t do this to me!!!!  Ahhhh I don’t know I love them all! But Jaka would probably be the most fun to hang out with?  Then again, a day out with Sannit would begreat.

25. “The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, sharedlike/dislike for something etc?)”

Meri.

26. “Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about themagainst your will?”

Arra and yes, I’m still bitter about it.  I won’t get into it because I’d rather notmake posts like that, but if anyone would like to know feel free to message me.

27. “Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?”

Nah, they come about and the songs fit them after.

28. “Your most dangerous OC?”

Okay!  So we haveMankar Camoran’s kid, Molag Bal’s Undying Champion, a lesser Daedric Prince anda double-memoried Godkiller.  Have funwith that battle royal!

29. “Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at nightwithout telling anyone they’re going?”

Tactus Gavros Sigilis, it’s his literal job.  Wait it’s Estor’s too.  …And kinda Veabris’s.  Well!

30. “Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animalcollection?”

It’s Dreyns.  It’s soDreyns.

31. “Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like(what they reblog, layout, anything really)”

Sannit treats it like a regular website blog and only postsstories from his life or answers to asks. No reblogs and he doesn’t follow anyone.

Meri posts advanced DYI stuff and martial technique.

32. “Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonistand why?”

I don’t play horror games but I’m thinking Estor in creepy,culty fan theory version of Rorikstead. (Should I write this?)

33. “Your shyest OC?”

She’s so shy she won’t let me talk about her.

34. “Do you have any twin characters?”

Not yet!

35. “Any sibling characters?”

Yes but I won’t say just now.  Spoilers!

36. “Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else(siblings, lovers, friends etc)?”

Not currently, but I’m not against doing it.

37. “Introduce an OC who is not quite human”

The Argonian, One-Who-Knows! He’s saving up money to buy a new fancy hat right now.  Rock on, scaly bro!

38. “Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?”

I feel like it would be Vitia for some reason.

39. “Introduce any character you want!”

THESE QUESTIONS ARE TOO VAGUE AGHHHH!!

40. “Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share!”

Writing “Arra’s Story” (An RP post).  The power and emotion of it and the approvingly,emotionally shocked reactions of my fellow players made me realize I couldactually write good.

41. “Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or twohere (remember sources & permissions!)”

Here and here  😊

42. “Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods?”

Daedric biologist person would be!

43. “Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend tofavour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess!”

We already found out I like investigators, is that my type?

44. “Something you like about your OCs in general”

I like how they all have gotten their own personality andidentity.  It’s taken a lot of work, but Idon’t feel like personalities repeat anymore.

45. “A character you no longer use?”

I have a few in limbo. I’m not sure if they’re coming back or they’re

46. “Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?”

No.  Only because Ihaven’t told them about all the bad things I’ve done to them in the first place.

47. “Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child?”

Not yet, there’s still time.

48. “OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure?”

I think they call this a “hot take”, but in my opinion everyperson has flaws and depicting them otherwise is bad character writing.  Like sure, they can be nice and all, but theystill topple the board over when they’re losing Risk (or Axis & Allies).  Showing only one side of a character seriously,(not if it’s just for laughs) is boring to me. Where’s the growth?  They don’teven need to have “flaws” per se.  Whatif the “One True Hero to Save the World” is balled up on the floor crying tothemselves because they don’t think they’re strong enough?  Hot take over and it’s probably little kidDreyns.  (Which breaks hearts because hegrows up into something not pure.)

49. “Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes”

Arra would love meme songs like “SEAGULLS! (Stop ItNow)“He-man singing “What’s up?”, and “mmm whatcha say”.  And Jaka would love reaction gifs and objectlabeling memes.

50. “Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want”

I wanna talk about how long it took to fill this out and howmany characters I resurrected from the darkest depths of my mind to completeit.  You’re welcome.  ♥

[yodepalma]

Fanfic asks: 8, 9, 11, 23, 27, 36, and 44?

8. How did you getinvolved in your latest fandom?Uhh so last…November? I was in a chat with some friends during NaNoWriMo andsomebody’s husband was playing the game, so the rest of us were basicallymaking fun of it while she gave us a play-by-play or something. I don’tremember it too well. Somehow (mymemories are very vague here), the idea for the blogs was born even though atthis point none of us had so much as watched videos of any gameplay. And then @rhymeswithpistarted playing and making elaborateheadcanons and I wrote DroveThrough Ghosts to Get Here to make them happy, then eventually decided Ishould maybe play the game I waswriting fic for and, uh, I haven’t escaped since. (It took me until like Marchto play the game, btw. Drove ThroughGhosts was written in December.)

9. What are the bestthings about your current fandom?Oh man I don’t spend nearly as much time wallowing in the fandom as I shouldso I don’t really know tbh. This is like the only fandom I’ve ever been inwhere I spend more time creating than consuming? Not because there isn’tanything worth consuming—everything I take in is fantastic—but I’m super low on spoons these days and it takes a lotfor me to engage in both. I will say that the people who write meta have been killing me, though, because ya’ll aretoo smart ok. Just. cut it out gawd.…Oh but also I’m getting a kick out of how much people are…not hating my forays into crackship rarepair hell? Like. Thank you,everyone, for not trying to murder me for writing Cor/Dino, because even I’mstill going ????? over that shit.

11. Who is yourcurrent OTP?COR/DINO FOREVER *DIES*ok no but seriously I’m not entirely sure I havean OTP? The closest I probably come is Lunyx, because I don’t really shipeither of them with anyone else, but it’s a pretty lowkey OTP. An argumentcould be made for Promptio, I guess, because if I’m not shipping either of themwith anyone else, I just add it in because I like the two of them together. Butalso that OT4 guys. And Dino/Prompto. and tbh Dino/anyone. Fight me I just wantDino to be happy. (How did this happen. Why am I obsessed with an NPC. How do Iget out of Dino hell?? No, no, don’t help me. I like it down here.)

23. Name a fic you’vewritten that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.……………..*flops* I HATE THEM ALL DON’T READ ANYTHING I WRITEOkay, as a general rule I don’t really likemy stuff. Certainly not enough to be able to explain why I like it. ._. Soexcuse me while I waffle over this question FOREVER. Also, to make mattersworse, most of the stuff I’m fond-ish of is kind of, um. Ancient. XDOKAY I GOT THIS. So just to keep with the current fandom theme, the thing I’mfondest of from FFXV is honestly Adventures of the DaemonSlayer, because BAMF!Iris and troll!Cor give me life. And also it’s like90% crack. …And I wanted to choose something that wasn’t a neverending WiP.But in a sort of. fondest of ALL TIME thing, I’m going to go with The Forest, an old KingdomHearts fic (Axel/Roxas, with hints of Roxas/Namine). I did a lot of experimental sort of stuff? back inmy KH days, and this one was a fairy tale AU without any dialogue, and I thinkit turned out really well? idk it’s just a lot different than what I normallywrite, and it was an interesting experiment, and I think I’d like to playaround with something like it again at some point. Honestly, I wish I was asadventurous with writing now as I was in my KH days. ONE DAY. Maybe. When I havemore spoons.

27. What do you hatemore: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?Writing summaries. Oh my godsummaries can just go fucking die I just UUUUGGGHHHH. Listen I can just flub atitle by going “hey this song kind of sort of fits the story I’ll just stealthe title/some lyrics/a single word if I have to”. The summary I agonize over forever because if it sucksNOBODY WILL EVER READ MY STORY. And then I’ll die from lack of attention.Please remember I’m basically a cat, guys. My summaries are screams forattention. Pet me! Love me! Pay attention to me! But not too much attention orI’ll get overwhelmed and bite you. (just kidding, I don’t bite.)

36. What’s yourfavourite genre to write?SCHMOOP. And high fantasy AUs. And. AUs in general. Schmoopyhigh fantasy AUs. Sometimes scifi, also schmoopy. Basically I just like tosmear happiness and joy all over fandom and destroy everyone’s littleangstfests, so it makes me like 1000000x more amused every time I remember thatmy two closest friends in my current fandom are the angstiest angstpiles inangstdom. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯OH and crossovers. Love me a good crossover. But only between two fandoms so Ican smoosh them together hilariously. :DDD

44. What ship do youfeel needs more attention?Promptio :DDD “But it’s the fourth most popular ship in the fandom” you mayargue. Yeah, well. The heart wants what the heart wants. And it also wants more Dino/Prompto and forsomeone besides me to write Cor/Dino, but I feel like I’m more likely to get morePromptio SO~

[saltwaffle]

For this ship thing, Lapidot (because I like chaos)

(FOR THE BRUTAL HONESTY SHIP OPINIONS)

this...fuck. shit. don’t even. look, i used to love lapidot, okay? besides pearlmethyst, it was like the only thing to ship in early 2015. hell, i had it on the same tier as JASPIS, and if you knew how much i still love used to love jaspis, you’d understand how much that means.

part of me knew that it wouldn’t happen in canon because they barely knew each other, and after all, lapis and jasper had wayyy more background together (”background” being lapis drowning jasper in a hell fusion) but honestly canon has never been a huge deal for me. my first real, named OTP was obitine. i was TRAINED to expect disappointment when shipping. so i had my fun and i enjoyed my cute art and hell, i even drew lapidot fanart like forever ago.

believe it or not, when too far hit, i didn’t immediately convert to amedot. it took a couple days as the fan art spread and the theories started cropping up before i started to think, “hey, there’s a peridot ship that actually...might be canon. huh.” but it didn’t affect my views on lapidot yet.

i can’t really name a time when i started hating it. it was definitely after barn mates. when barn mates was leaked in early 2016, i reblogged a post with amedot screenshots next to lapidot screenshots with a caption that said something like “HEAVEN OR HELL?” and my tags were a mess of a ramble about how i liked both equally and could never decide. however, i remember actually WATCHING barn mates and hit the diamond and almost cringing whenever lapis did. like. anything.

sometime between then, it became too much. most likely, it was when people started saying “well forget amedot, our old crackship is canon!!” and i think it really bothered me because what the hell, it’s just a leak guys. shut up already. we had an entire episode about romantic tension between amethyst and peridot and you’re really ready to ship that abusive blue bitch after a fuckin leak? she better have apologized to jasper first.

my shift in opinions was very gradual. but even if it’s small, there’s something intrinsically fucked up when tumblr explodes over two skinny girls interacting for a 7-second clip, but there was only a couple weeks of fan reaction for an 11-minute episode centered on a WOC-coded, fat, mentally ill character.

not enough to call bigotry, maybe. but it just seems a little too coincidental.

everyone knows about the ship war. well, news flash for you: it wasn’t the amedots who started it. it DAMN well wasn’t. there were, like, 15 active amedot fans when it started, since a lot of them moved back to lapidot post-barn mates leak. and once one person sent a hate message, more people (primarily lapidot shippers) started thinking it was ok to send them too.

i’ll stop with the meta about shipping wars though. tl;dr, by barn mates, i was armed with spite and fuckin ready to hate it. and i did. it was painfully clear to me — someone who has been through prolonged emotional abuse that was never put to justice — that lapis never has to apologize for anything. hell, i’d even classify barn mates and too far as direct foils: in too far, peridot unintentionally hurts amethyst, saves her, apologizes and learns from her mistakes. in barn mates, lapis intentionally hurts peridot, saves her, and then FUCKIN WALKS AWAY. how the HELL could we have such a painful dichotomy and choose the one that hurts the characters more?

(and then to have these SAME people who choose the abusive situation turn around and tell jaspis shippers that we’re fucked in the heads? what assholes.)

this is getting rly long and i need to finish writing the petri dish chapter but in conclusion

i used to think that lapidot was ok — when it had no background and a “shit happens” fanbase. but now, the fanbase is a toxic wasteland, their interactions are unhealthy, and it rings wayyy to close to personal issues of mine for me to enjoy.

NOTP. ruins my day if i see it.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 27: Thoughts on 4x09 DNR

[spoiler alert: I didn’t like it and most of what follows is me ripping it to shreds]

Okay, just finished watching 4x09 DNR. And I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I cannot be pleased by this show anymore. I’m sorry, but S4 had a good start that has now devolved into…I’m not going to say worse than or on the level of season 3 but basically into one big nonsense mess. That’s what this episode was, imo, a big old mess.

One thing—and I am being completely literal, this is the ONLY thing I liked in this episode—Miller/Jackson is going to happen and I am on board. I love Miller/Bryan and I always will, and in a way I’m bummed because I’m pretty sure this spells the end of Briller but I can’t be upset because I started writing a Miller/Jackson piece weeks ago and I thought it was a crackship and now I’m like well wow Jackson is definitely queer and he and Miller are gonna hook up it’s completely inevitable COMPLETELY. (If this were an m/f couple I’d say it was out of nowhere and random I admit that but the rules are different for minor character same-sex couples and anyway this was just the initial seed being planted, we’ll see how it goes but so far I’m all in.)

Now for how much I think everything else sucked:

Clarke and Polis

What to say besides I thought this was boring and stupid? First of all, war is boring. War has always been kinda boring but at least in season 1 it was new. But it’s been so fucking constant in every single season and I just cannot care. I have far surpassed the outer limits of fucks I give about martial story lines of any sort. I am not one of those people who has whole shelves of books about WWII in my library okay (and, frankly—are most of the people watching this show that sort of person? I would guess not but what do I know about the cw core audience?). And war story lines are even more dumb now when, much as I disagree with her a lot, you have Clarke there literally spelling it out in great big shiny colorful letters for everyone to see that the radiation is coming in less than a week dumbnuts, put aside the squabbling for like five seconds for the love of all things!!!!!!! I mean she’s not wrong. At one point I just thought, hey, how about everyone who thinks war is a good idea just goes out and fucking slaughters each other—try to get it done in like 2-3 days please, tops—and then everyone who’s smart enough to not want to slaughter each other can live in the bunker. Win-win.

Speaking of Clarke, though, I’ve said it before that I have a supremely complicated relationship with her character but she is at Peak Insufferable Levels when she gets all up her own ass about how she’s the only one to be able to solve everyone’s problems. This was something Lxa cultivated in her—not that I blame L entirely because I think we see the seeds in S1, I mean there was something to cultivate in the first place—and she’s gotten a bit better over S3-S4 but every now and then that side of her that once said “you’re the Chancellor but I’m in charge,” to her own mother, at the ripe old age of barely-18, rears its ugly face and this was one of those episodes. I get that smart-girl frustration of seeing everyone else being So Fucking Dumb and just wanting to knock some heads together until the sense floats up to the top but still the outstanding hubris of her wanting to become the Commander I mean !!!!!!!!!!!!! Which she like apparently off-screen convinced Gaia to go along with because it was only Roan that stopped the whole thing? Oh Roan. You’re often quite boring and your voice annoys me but every now and then you have your moments.

I will say, I did like the way Abby said “WITH SCIENCE!” though.

I wouldn’t say the fight to the death is the worst idea anyone’s ever had but four complaints:

1.      The radiation is coming in literally 6 days MUST WE WASTE TIME WITH THIS SHIT?

2.      Obviously there are counter-arguments to this and I’m necessarily biased but imo Arkadians researched the bunker (Jaha), found the bunker (Jaha et. al.), and figured out how to open the bunker (Monty) so, like—shouldn’t they automatically get some of the spots? They can’t possibly have many people left after the multiple massacres their original 2k population has taken over the last year or so--the clans can have their 12-way brawl for the rest of the space after Arkadia has taken what’s already theirs.

3.      Next episode is going to be so boring I already want to weep,

4.      Is this the fucking Hunger Games now? Just like I didn’t sing up to watch Game of Thrones, I didn’t sing up for the Hunger Games either. JFC

 Raven, Murphy, and Emori

I liked Murphy and Emori both in this episode. I thought Murphy had some good lines and there was a lot to like in his last scene with Raven. And I liked that Emori’s story in this ep was about learning to trust the Sky People. That was a nice little narrative flourish.

But the rest…I don’t know. I just don’t know. I liked how Raven’s story line was thematically consistent with the DNR kids’ story line, how she is, in fact, another person who is literally saying Do Not Resuscitate, except that her case is more…it’s closer to how these issues really play out in real life because she is, personally, because of something in her actual physical body, not outside of herself, going to die, and now she’s preparing to do it on her own terms. I mean it was a little on the nose but they earned that because they’ve been building this Raven story for a while.

I couldn’t really get into it, though. I can’t explain why I couldn’t. Maybe it’s that Becca’s lab has been so off-putting to me this entire season. Maybe it’s because I have such a deep hatred of all of this going into space bullshit even if I’m a little more open to the possibility of just blasting off the rocket the one time for a suicide mission. (It’s a little less totally-out-of-left-field-versus-previous-seasons utterly-batshit-implausible and more along the lines of within-suspendable-disbelief ranges.) Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part that it’s not resonating with me even though there’s nothing wrong with it. I want to like the concept of a fucked up code getting into someone’s brain and setting up a home there and messing with them, but something that I can’t pinpoint in the execution is just off for me, like a barrier between something I feel I would enjoy and my actual enjoyment.

 DNR

THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE CENTURY. Heavens me this was the MOST SHALLOW TREATMENT OF SOMETHING I’M INTERESTED IN THAT I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS. I demand my fucking money back. (IDK what money in particular...my internet bill I guess? My law school tuition? The monetary equivalent of all the time I’ve spent thinking about The 100 or at least this story line? Something.) I probably put more effort into my rambly Jasper meta than they writers did in writing this episode or possibly this entire arc. If I ever need evidence for my contention that this show is shallow af and the PTB don’t know how to write philosophical or even meaningful discussions lasting more than a dozen lines, I’m going to point to this episode.

First, it bothered me that no one thought to ask themselves or each other: hey, why do we want to take these people with us? Like hear me out because maybe it is or should be obvious, but I think this is the time to ask that question. Why do we want to force people to live? Because we do, we force people to live all the time. You can be very simple about it and just say “because all life is good and all death is bad and suicide in particular is bad and our moral obligation as people/the state’s moral obligation as the guardian of the people is to ensure that everyone stays alive even against their own will absolutely no matter what.” I mean that’s a legit position, even if I think it’s a bit simplistic.

You could say that you want them to live because it’s all hands on deck to keep humanity itself alive—which is the argument Jaha hints at initially in his conversation with Jasper, and exactly the type of argument the DNR group could most easily and most fairly reject. I’m always 10000000% on board for discussion of the Ark or comparisons of the current situation to the Ark but we get only a tiny itty bitty hint at this, instead of a long discussion. (TALKING’S BORING RIGHT WHERE ARE THE SWORDS.) (I’m sorry to anyone who actually reads this; I just can’t contain my bitterness.)

You could say that a desire to kill oneself is generally a symptom, not a disease, and a general, moral, human compassion obligates us to interrogate that suicidal urge when we see it in others, and would especially so obligate us if we saw that urge in a large group of people such as the DNR group. Which is pretty much my position but if that’s the position anyone on the outside of the door were taking they’d probably not want to solve the problem by blowing up the door and taking everyone prisoner so.

That Jasper is literally using the phrase DNR—which generally applies when the person in question can only be saved by some kind of extreme and immediate measure—should have prompted some sort of discussion. Another term for DNR is “allow natural death.” To use that phrase is, first, to say that the bunker is a life-saving measure akin to CPR, something that you do at the last moment to stave off what would otherwise be your (natural) time to die; second, it is to say that Jasper and his followers view the bunker as, in some sense, unnatural (not a way to live, as Jasper puts it); and third, it is to say that they consider themselves right on the verge of death--as in, this is an emergency situation. I just…I’m so frustrated that they used that phrase, they made it the title of the episode, they put it forefront in the trailer, and then it’s like…never dealt with!!!!! There’s so much material there!!!! Whoops sorry guess we gotta budget in about ½ the running time for fight scenes and talk of war lol. Wherever are my priorities???

All we really got was a knee-jerk “life is good, survival is good, you kids are bad” from Jaha and friends.

Second—it only gets worse from there because then, as soon as Bellamy says, “Hey, um, maybe it’s kinda understandable what they’re doing??” everyone just throws up their hands and goes “Hey, you’re right. I guess we’ll just let them die.” Like what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There aren’t enough exclamation marks in the fucking universe. I’m sorry but that’s literally just straight up immoral. THESE CHILDREN ARE SUICIDAL. Does that not fucking bother you, any of you??? I’m disgusted. I’m even more disgusted that the narrative seemed to stand with the death squad, like it allowed only the rational arguments to stand without interrogating at all the bitter pain beneath them.

Third, and this is a smaller point but… Bellamy’s the male lead, and he was definitely flirting with Jasper’s philosophy a mere episode ago. Now he’s all back on the survival train. Just like that. I know we don’t have time to go deep into everyone’s head here but Bellamy’s in such an interesting place—I think he’s one of the few people who is really, honestly torn between Team Survival and Team Fuck It—and not only is he a character with a unique vantage point but there is literally only one character even arguably more important than him so if we’re going to give a few extra minutes to ANYONE shouldn’t it be him? Does he not deserve that? He got like 2 lines and 3 minutes of screen time this week and that was pathetic.

Also—not be shallow—but—I’m gonna indulge in a bit of supremely bitter ranting here. As I’ve said repeatedly, I hate (TRULY TRULY HATE) Monty/Harper. So the fact that 80% of Monty’s story was about Harper and maybe 20% if I’m super generous, was about Jasper pisses me off. Monty being all “Harper you’re the only thing more beautiful than the hydroponic farms” made me want to vomit. Monty’s “I love you” made me literally scream NO YOU DON’T YOU CHILD at the screen. Look, I’ve started a relationship with a random hook up in real life, and it’s a sham, I can speak from deeply personal experience, this relationship is a sham. And that Monty’s emotion is all being shoved into this Random Het Nonsense with the minorest of minor delinquents who has pretty much no personality and has only had the screen time she’s had this season because she had the good luck to be shoved into a ““““““romance”””””” with a main while actual main character since the fucking pilot Jasper has been shafted at LITERALLY EVERY TURN is just SO MADDENING I MIGHT LITERALLY SCREAM. (Yes I consider Harper and Jasper to be zero sum. It’s one or the other for screen time and Monty’s heart and I know where my allegiances lie.)

I don’t feel much of anything about Monty staying behind. Like… I probably should, but by that point in the story I was just exhausted with disappointment and counting down the minutes until it was over. On the one hand, what other choice did he really have, narratively? Like he wasn’t going to leave the most important people in his life behind. But then on the other hand, I can’t help but think it was sort of dumb of him. This is just about as high stakes as it gets. And he’s going to die for what, like, to make a point? To be nice? Hmmmm, suspicious. Further, and to go along with my rant above, I was pretty pissed off that all of his emotion in his last scene was reserved for Harper and he and Jasper just got a bro moment LIKE WHAT THE FUCK. I guess on the upside, if Miller/Bryan is any indication, we’re probably supposed to take from that that they’re in love (get it? Because Miller and Bryan bro-hugged in S3? I’m still not over that btw).

Finally, and more seriously… I don’t believe that Monty has really engaged with his friends’ arguments. Am I supposed to think he somehow did off screen and that’s why he’s there? I think not, first because Monty is SO HARDCORE on Team Survival that that would be a massive mental undertaking and one we should really see at least part of on screen, and second, and more importantly, because he literally says he’s just there to help them out when they change their minds, lol. He’s loyal but he hasn’t learned anything.

I did like the Bellamy/Jasper hug. I was waiting for it, I was literally saying “hug him, hug him, Jasper loves hugs, he’ll love this so much” the entire time they were talking. And then they did hug and Jasper DID obviously love it so much and it was sweet. Unrequited Bellamy/Jasper hero-worship-crush (head) canon (further) confirmed.

A few other little things I did like: the call back to Mt. Weather (especially because it came in the form of Monty pointing out that Jasper’s good at this barricading himself in shit, but also because it invited the viewer to remember the Mt. Weather situation and maybe do what I’m not doing right now and dig deeper into the comparison); the shot of Wells in the door that Jaha sees. Both of these things were examples of this show’s occasional ability to be Deep but tbh these moments of depth are always just moments and the general shallowness of everything surrounding them almost makes me think they just luck into these gems.

 Octavia

Oh yeah and Octavia was in this too. Almost forgot. I still don’t buy her and Ilian for a hot second. I did have a literal second of thinking Ilian COULD have been interesting, but heavy emphasis on could: if he’d been introduced as a farmer and we got some good farm-society world-building, it would have been nice as something actually different in Grounder society for once. But…first Ilian was too boring at the beginning and between that, and the completely unforgivable burning of Arkadia, I’m never going to like him. And second, he’s apparently a warrior too, quelle surprise, so I guess that “oh look something different” thing I was talking about is actually a no-go.

Similarly, I’d like to see Octavia try out a farmer identity. But for more than two scenes lol. She could have been interesting. She could have had an interesting arc. But it’s all just too little too late for me at this point. They clearly don’t know what to do with her. TBH if we’re going to continue insisting that main/important characters need to die to give the story weight (lol this story’s problems are way bigger than “not enough deaths” I mean…. That’s so ludicrous I can’t even find the words)…maybe it’s her time to go. Just a suggestion.

[nyxelestia]

You didn’t read the links, did you? / I most certainly DID read the links, which is why I sent you the ask in the first place. In fact, I read all of them and was frankly astounded by the bias in them. Sterek was referred to as a crackship, Sterek shippers were accused of being racists, misogynists, pedophiles etc. The "receipts" weren't really good examples of why the Sterek fandom as a whole is as vile as you say. All in all, it didn't really support your assertion of Stereks being disgusting.

Then it’s awfully convenient I’ve never made that assertion in the first place, isn't it?

First and foremost, I don't refer to people by the ship or use the ship name as a noun. Referring to people as "Stereks" and "Stydias" and "Sciles" is reductive and dehumanizing - not to mention personally confusing, since I'm all of those and more.

(Also, I'm not a big fan of the word "reciepts" in this context, but that's a separate issue for another day.)

But more importantly, you missed the entire point of my most - Sterek as experienced by people in the fandom =/= Sterek as experienced by people outside of the fandom. The side of Sterek we see being in the fandom is not the side of Sterek that was making itself known to the cast and crew of the show - and everyone else in the process.

For my meta in a more general sense - I talk about Sterek fandom the most because I'm in it the most. Sterek is the most common pairing in the Teen Wolf fanfic I read and write. Sterek is the most common pairing in the Teen Wolf content on my dash. So I talk about Sterek the most - includings its problems. There isn't a single fandom in existence that isn't problematic in some capacity, that's just human nature. It's just that where modern parlance is to sweep it under the rug (due in large part to the fact Tumblr, as a website/platform, encourages bullying and extremism and discourages community and compromise), I'm the old school kinda fan who prefers to drag a fandom's bullshit out into the open and shine a spotlight on it.

"These problems are disturbingly pervasive in this fandom and here's why" =/= "this fandom is disgusting".

[janiedean]

gwenspiration self-recs

I was tagged by @jaimebrienneonline​ for this thank you!

sooo, the challenge was:

Taking the idea from the amazing Gwendoline Christie, we should be promoting ourselves and not acting like our creative endeavors are worthless. In that vein, I challenge everyone to blog their favorite of their own works, art, fic, meta, manip, doll story, whatever it may be.

aaand okay so I’m usually really bad at self-reccing so I’ll just go ahead and do a top five fics and a few meta links - this is not necessarily my most read stuff or whatever but if I have to choose in between my own children I will ;) also sticking to asoiaf/jb-centric stuff or it turns into a problem lmao [also I’m not putting some flowers bloom dead on this because I don’t wanna rec stuff I haven’t finished]

in the darkness on the edge of town: (jb, hooker au, explicit content) okay I don’t even know how to put this without sounding ridiculous but I honestly think it’s some of the best writing I put out period and I ended up putting an amount of blood sweat and tears I hadn’t anticipated into it but I loved doing it overall (because I also went and put in it everything I like writing about ngl and yes I have a thing for hooker au and I apparently succeeded in making it feel like a springsteen song so I’m proud of myself thank you) and I’m really happy with how it turned out. also, I gave myself confirmation that if springsteen’s involved my productivity arises.

I'm not a pretty girl, that's not what I do: (jb, brienne-centric with focus on her issues with her looks and femininity) long story short, I didn’t say it in the a/n when I posted this for the spitefic series because I wanted to check the reactions to it but now that it’s been months I can say it: this is the most personal thing I’ve ever put to fic in my entire life including specifically recycling my own childhood experiences into brienne’s and tackling directly 80% of the issues me and her have in common. and I think it came out pretty damn good and I also was flattered with the response I got to it because a lot of people commented about how relatable those issues were and just, this damned fic means a lot to me so have it ;)

conventions and inconveniences of the stage series (theon/robb, jaime/brienne, jonc/brynden tully for now, opera singers au series): okay this is a series so I’m cheating BUT I’m just really attached to all of the fics in it because a) I love opera and I was delighted that people actually read them and liked it regardless of the obscure subjects, b) they gave me the chance to branch out a lot, c) for now I had fics for two ships I dearly love (throbb and jb) and that have meant a lot to me in this fandom AND then the crackship I cultivated with a lot of love and care to which I gave one of my favorite operas in existence and I loved writing each single one of these fics and I think I’ve done a pretty good job with them and sorry but I picked the perfect operas for all of them and I’m dying on that hill. don carlo is 100% the throbb opera and fidelio is 10000% the jb opera you won’t take that from me. ;)

all knights are gallant and all maids are beautiful (jb, side-jc, genderbend): admittedly I wrote this thing out of spite because I hate that people refuse to see that jc is, in fact, a darned abusive dynamic but they wouldn’t say that if the genders were reversed so I went and genderbent all three of them just to prove the damned point of it and other than being very satisfied at how it turned out it was a fairly cathartic exercise to write it because that issue is really sitting badly on my stomach and has been for ages. so yeah I’ll put this one on the list also because ngl I liked writing male!brienne way more than I thought I would and overall I did have a pretty interesting time figuring out how to keep them IC while switching genders and it was in general a very good writing exercise for a lot of things and I think it came out pretty well.

and give all the love that you have in your soul (jb, jonc/omc, jonc/rhaegar, time travel): I thought about reccing something less widely read for the last spot but fuck it I’m going to put this one fic for a lot of reasons as in: a) I actually brewed on it for two years before writing it is2g it was a labor of love, b) I’m extremely proud of myself for having written time travel without losing my shit over the technicalities (I hate writing time travel) and the planning and the likes and I also think it didn’t have plot holes so score for me, c) this is where I admit that I 100% purposefully put jon connington as co-protagonist in here because I love him and I don’t think he gets enough fandom exposure and while I write him more than about anyone else I think until this fic I hadn’t managed to find a large audience for fic where he was a lead, so yes I totally did it because I knew a fic with a jb main pairing would mean more exposure and I was delighted to see that at the end of it people cared about his half of the storyline as much as they cared about the jb half of it. also I think brienne and jonc would be absolutely good potential friends if they met so I really was excited to explore that dynamic and yeah tldr this damned thing was a bitch to write but I loved doing it and I loved the feedback it had so that’s going to be this one.

there, that’s the fic. as far as the meta goes, a lot more quickly (of the meta I have on ao3 because I’m still on dash only) :

Brienne of Tarth and her importance as a literary character & Brienne and Jaime’s relationship: a textual analysis of their journey: I put together these two darned novels of analysis in a single piece that I gave to gwendoline christie at a con once because I felt like I should go there with something that would make clear how much brienne means to me as a character and then I threw in the jb stuff as well because I could. the first piece isn’t as in-depth but again as brienne is the only character I related to as much as I do for those reasons I really felt strongly about that meta subject. the second piece is basically me going through 90% of the relevant moments of jb history in the books and analyzing the shit out of it and not to brag but I like to think it was pretty good text analysis so here you go.

Why a Jaime/Brienne Endgame in the Books Makes More Sense Than One Might Think, Based on Previous Works of GRRM's: one of the things that irks me more about nihilistic/fatalistic readings of these two/of asoiaf is that most people who write them and dismiss jb as not important or not important enough to have overall plot relevance have not actually read grrm’s other books. since I happen to have read most of them and to have seen that he has patterns that are not nihilistic at all, I took the liberty to rant about it.

An Analysis of Jaime's Dream in ASOS: this was when I dissected jaime’s asos dream line by line and while I don’t think it’s particularly groundbreaking information it’s pretty much encompassing 90% of the arguments I use while theorizing about these two/jaime’s issues specifically and I think I worded it well enough, so here we go, that’s the third.

... wow, selling yourself is hard. thanks jbo for the tag!!

aaand as I should tag other people, idk who’s done it already buut I’m gonna tag also not-jb peeps and go for @lordhellebore, @trulilyy @randomingoftherandomness and @lodessa if they want to :)