#fan meta

[idiosyncreant]

I'd only thought about it from Murderbot's perspective but just realized that MB's probably right--Gurathin probably does dislike it. For the exact same reasons MB is annoyed by him.

Previously, HE was the anti-social tech whiz kid on this team, thanks!

[fogsrollingin]

where is that post about embracing and normalizing Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death ending after 3 seasons, because otherwise the series may go on forever "Do you want another Supernatural???" YES actually I want another Supernatural. I had X-Files. I had Supernatural. I'm crying for another I'm crying

[ohwhataniight]

"Oh what a night" – The case of the BBC Sherlock transmasc aesthetics: Relating to problematic masculinities in search for identity

So I sat down and rewrote this silly essay I wrote one day after returning from my trip to the US. Flaneurism at its best (or at its worst, idk). Please bear with me but definitely send in your feedback if you read and feel like it, it means the world to me and it will definitely help me unpack some of my problematicness! Thank you <3

I take a deep drag of my American Spirit cigarette whilst the tail ofmy long black coat swishes behind me dramatically. Dusk-time Boston is lit up. The skyscrapers towering over my tiny figure are glittering against the dark through the blurry lens of my camera phone.

I am consciously imitating the aesthetic of the modern but also always Victorian BBC Sherlock, in the scene following John and Mary’s wedding, in which the world’s only consulting detective surrenders to his noble, quiet pining for his not-gay best friend.

What even is masculinity, anyway? What would I like it to be?

The creators of the series, Gatiss and Moffat, spent 10 years religiously denying the possibility of a romantic or sexual relationship between the two protagonists, while driving the hordes of fans into delirium every time that Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John (Martin Freeman) made love with their eyes or confessed their devotion to one another. Despite the queerbaiting, the homophobia and the sexism in the Moftis series, despite the 4th season fiasco, despite the actors denying the possibility of their characters ever running together into the sunset, Sherlock himself never denied being queer. Gay, asexual, demisexual, the interpretations are many, a breath of representation in the relative democracy of fandom. And as if that wasn’t enough, Sherlock and John end up canonically raising John’s daughter together at their 221B Baker Street apartment.

The modernized urban Victorian aesthetic, the provocatively coded dialogues, the deep homosociality, and the simple, pure bitterness towards the creators, renders the community of Johnlock fans more alive than ever almost 10 years after the series’ finale. In some hidden, bright corners of the internet, like fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.com, women and queers publish analyses and fanfiction in which they explore the endless galaxy of human genders, sexualities, and forms of kinship, writing the insufferably British male characters as women, non-binary, FTM, Alpha and Omega, pregnant, high, and always together - two human animals exploring bodies and experiences that belong to us in the shelter of Baker Street, with their landlady, Mrs. Hudson, being their most ardent shipper. We write entire full-length novels for free, with our sole motive being the exploration, the practice in writing, and the communication with other queers, other women, other people who feel like us and live in different sides of the earth which, despite Sherlock not remembering, keeps on orbiting the sun with the certainty born by a Johnlocker for their OTP being endgame.

Back to Boston now, which looks like Glasgow on steroids, with its red brick buildings and the glass towers that pierce the skies - it doesn’t feel as cozy and familiar to me as European cities, but it is big enough to swallow and hide me, safely, away from the suffocating and often murderous, homotransphobic gaze of my motherland, Greece. Boston feels big enough to make me feel free, invisible, and at the same time more visible than ever.

Here’s how I made it happen: in the name of an egotistical but seductive flaneurism, in the idea that here I can be non-binary and roaming the streets while smoking without thinking that, at any given moment, I might be spotted by the people from whom I’m hiding both facts, I end up romanticizing a stroll on stolen land, as well as the tar in my lungs. I feel the need to wander around, heavily perfumed, with a hanful of product in my hair, dressed androgynously in a way that my mother only accepts because she doesn’t understand the meaning of it, smoking as the soundtrack of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons’ December 1963 (Oh What a Night) blasts through my old headphones. As a queer person living in Greece, I never felt that the streets belonged to me. I’ve always felt like a pariah looking for somewhere to belong to, and the irony of going after that feeling in America as a white European tourist brings a certain sourness to my mouth. Is that how Columbus felt? Was he a sissy who didn’t feel accepted by his mum in their suffocating mediterranean society? No, fuck that thought. Fuck that circle, fuck everything I've been taught by the writers of history. I decide to leave these streets to their people, without it meaning that I’ve suddenly found the courage to reclaim my own back in motherland.

Exhaustion, flight, cowardice? Survival.

Later I will learn that the American Spirits with the Native American on their turquoise box are anything but native-owned. What’s certain is that, in this trip, I found solace while smoking stolen land.

What does that make me? A citizen of the world?

After all, in the entire trip, I pretend I’m Sherlock, the whitest man to ever white man. It’s not as if I don’t have my own personality - at least I hope that I do. It is that through relating (to fictional characters, actors, role models who remind me of an aesthetic I had to build from scratch for my trans self, with the help of other queer people who created fanart or fanfiction, moulding new arhetypes) I find a vehicle for the exploration of my existence more easily, I see my reflection (or the one I’d like to have) in the mirror. In the fandom nobody tells you how to imagine your favourite characters and how not to. Nobody tells you how to write yourself, and nobody blames you for doing it. You create with self-indulgence, and you’re applauded for it. And that saved my life.

For years I related to a genderfluid Tonks, a trans Remus Lupin, a fanon Jean Prouvaire from Les Mis. Through all those experimentations and games, the changing of clothes in the dark, the opening and closing of the closet door, I found a name for myself: Sam. And Sam, like every other trans masculinity with the name Sam, Skye, Noah, and Eliott, contains multitudes. 

For the timebeing, my persona of choice is that of Sherlock, perhaps the most insufferable (and one of the most privileged) characters in the history of British TV (which says a lot). “What do you have in common with that emotionally constipated man?” you ask me because you know that my own sentiments are constantly dancing naked before me. I wonder why that is. Indeed, what do I have in common with that guy and end up projecting so much on him? Me, who hesitates to even cancel a doctor’s appointment in pursuit of constant politeness and people-pleasing (AFAB, you see).

When Sherlock’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson, disapproves of his manners and threatens him with a tete-a-tete with his mother, Sherlock gives her his blessing, saying: “You can if you like, she understands very little”.

Sherlock and his turbulent relationship to his parents. Sherlock who always observes everything while staying outside, because he doesn’t know how to get in. Sherlock, always so different that he’s used to people laughing at him, gaping at him with awe, or wanting to punch him in the face. Sherlock who always attracts attention simply because he functions the way he functions, constantly failing to be a normal human being. Neurodivergent Sherlock, camp Sherlock, forgotten-in-another-era, flaneur Sherlock, who even in the Gatiss series (especially in the Gatiss series) is desperate to love, but he never manages to get it right. And finally, Sherlock the logical, the detached, the cynic: masculine elements that I never managed - and was never allowed to - acquire, and which I desperately, problematically craved, because in society and inside me they have been coded as masc.

I am the opposite Sherlock, and that makes me even more of a Sherlock, I decide, and if that helps me sleep at night, then so be it, for now. 

As Hil Malatino writes in the chapter Fall Out Boy is Trans Culture of his essay Surviving Trans Antagonism: “The boy at the center of a [Fall Out Boy track, brackets mine] is [...] being eminently braggadocious and narcissistic [...]. He’s stationed directly at the center of a completely solipsistic universe. No matter how insufferable this kind of guy is in reality, I would have killed for a fraction of his swaggering self-confidence as a kid” (Malatino 2020, 17).

What even is masculinity, anyway? What would I like it to be?

“Do I look like Sherlock?” I ask you, hopeful and doe-eyed as I prance around in my black suit inside the house while packing for the trip. “Sherlock is gender, you know.”

“Do you really want to know how I see your gender? 100% honest-to-God?” you ask mischievously.

“Yes, I do,” I’m hanging from your lips.

“You are, deep inside your soul, in this tartan robe of yours, Bananas in Pyjamas.”

I think about it. Not exactly Sherlock. I smile though. I see my gender in your words. Goofy, boyish, vintage, loud, sleepy, badly dressed: Me. Headcanon accepted.

If headcanon and fanon - that is, reclaimed - Holmes played by (problematic) Cumberbatch teaches me how to be a boy or a man, then so be it, because I hope that my performance will be filtered, as much as possible, through my “girlish” (though still white) sensibilities. That, and the fact that there is a child inside me who never got to live as an openly, unashamedly neurodivergent, inquisitive little boy. Because there is a masculine side inside me that I must hide every day when I go to work. So I put together a playlist, I put on my scruffy headphones, and I tar my lungs, just a little more, a little longer until I’m able to finally leave my country for good and feel ready to love myself as I am. My coat swishes behind me as I dance alone on the street, invisible among the crowd, yet feeling more visible than ever before.

CITATIONS: Malatino, H. (2020). Trans care, University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv17mrv14

[kordeliiius]

ive suggested prior that maybe the shadow mages running the maw got their operation model from soul tech. but what if soul tech is actually just downcycled shadow magic? it'd fit thematically, i think; it's a more streamlined alternative of a stolen magic practice that's gone thru enough retooling to allow workers with no second sight to do it themselves. it's up for debate if the scissor man has second sight/is the only person responsible for the production of metrognomes, but if not, then there's no one more precise at separating the human soul from the body than him. except, you know, the lady, whose ancestors' magic was appropriated by a foreign conglomerate (not sure how much it matters though, they're both awful). it might be why they feel kinda similar to me though

i think it'd be funny if the lady knew all along, but never once said anything, yet was secretly manifesting the corporation's demise. in fact the whole reason i made this connection is bc of the metrognome easter egg in roger's room (which he obv can't see), so assuming people's knowledge of metrognomes did die with the city, then roger only knows what he knows thru the lady talking smack LMAO

[vampiric-bruce-wayne]

we get assignments at school where we have to write as a certain character from a book that we're covering in class, occasionally, and tbh that's where fanfiction has helped me the most, but also.

looking back on my previous original work that i wrote a few years ago vs. now, or even just last year and my god. like my writing isn't all that great now, but back then? you can see a definite improvement.

because i hyperfixate on media, i often feel the need to express it, and that keeps me drawing and writing way more consistently. reading other people's fanfiction leads to me picking up writing quirks that i love and adore and might possibly steal.

more appreciation for fanfiction please

[superbeeny]

It’s remarkable how across iterations, Tenma never tried to get his spouse and lover back by making a robot double of Hoshie.  My first guess is that even at his worst and most abusive/villainous, he’d never resort to sex slavery.  My second guess is that Tenma respected his spouse as an autonomous human being with her own individuality to a much greater degree than he did his kid, and that difference between his attitudes towards them continued even after they died.  I’d also accept both being true at the same time.  

[dreadfutures]

For @thedasincolor​ Splash of Color Saturday, which is open to people from all backgrounds for headcanons and fanlore!

I don’t have a huge write up since work has been driving me into the ground the past two weeks, but basically, I wanted to bring the feathered serpents (x, and below) and feathered coyotes from Mexican folklore and Aztec religion to Thedas. While maintaining their status as deities, I imagine them as being elusive protectors of natural areas or civilizations within an area. They are likely spirits who took on corporeal bodies the way we’ve seen several spirits do, but in contrast to Avvar hold beasts who possess a local animal. However, these gods adopt brightly colored plumage in their otherwise natural forms.

I was toying with a few additional ideas:

Serpents are local god who look after societies that develop in one place. They would be communicated with across generations, storing wisdom and history for the peoples who grow in those areas.

Coyotes are wandering protectors who find travelers to accompany, in order to collect new knowledge and to impart their own. One might always have the sense that the feathered coyote is taking on this form as a favor to mortals, temporarily, to join them on a particular journey before wandering off to go make mischief of their own. It’s both curiosity and kindness that makes sure they see you reach your destination, but travelers should also know that if your journey isn’t interesting enough, these spirits might make it interesting for you.

The plumage either fits in to the local, probably an area with bright wildlife that we have not yet seen in Thedas, or they pay homage to a time long-passed when such displays were more commonplace, like in Elvhenan. They also make them quite visible, which helps with their self-given duties.

** I also read through a master’s thesis in anthropology, “Early representations of Mesoamerica’s feathered serpent: power, identity, and the spread of a cult,” by Garcia from CSU Fullerton.

[mstornadox]

Was not expecting to hear about AO3 and fanfiction on NPR today. Kai Ryssdal talked with Elizabeth Held about her recent article in Vulture.

The radio piece is simultaneously fluffy and awkward. The odd pauses when sounding out “fan fic” and the site called “archive of our own”. Kai, you can do better.

This piece does get points for not explicitly shaming the fan fiction readers nor blame it on teen girls. However, the expert is both an “avid reader” at the same time as “in my teens read a lot of ‘Harry Potter’ fan fiction, but have kind of grown out of that recently”. <side eye>

Maybe there is more nuance and depth in the Vulture article. Hope its vibe is still positive.

[df-gallery]

Open To Submissions And Staff

There's still plenty of stuff in the queue as of posting this, but it'd be nice to have some help keeping it topped up!

If you want to join this sideblog or you want to submit something to show off, please send an ask or submission.

[orpiknight]

I just think that it'd be funny if, after all this speculation about how horrible Crowley's Fall was and his drunken rambling of "a million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulfur", it turned out he just had the longest most boring elevator ride ever down to basement Hell and then stepped in a very small puddle of warm sludge of questionable origin when the doors opened.

[artist-issues]

If you haven’t seen Wish yet and you love Disney, do not go see it. I am telling you now. It is ripping out the hearts of the Disney movies you love and then waving their corpses around as if celebrating those hearts.

I’ll explain why, again: the message of Wish? Awful. Anti-Disney.

But they've been doing this for a long time. Saying one thing with their movies, and saying another with their PR and Disney Parks Soundtracks.

I'll explain.

Main Idea of Disney's Wish (and the You Are the Magic theme park song and merch): "The power to make your wishes come true is in you."

≠

Most Disney Movies' Idea on How to Have Wishes: "Do what's right, (trust a higher power) and something even more wonderful than what you wished will happen."

Don't try to argue with me about this. You have to look underneath the slogans and the sweater designs and the song titles to what the stories actually support to acknowledge this.

Because you can’t say “do what’s right” has power unless you answer the question “who gets to decide ‘what’s right?’” (Which, coincidentally, is a question Wish brings up and then doesn’t answer.)

Audiences of Disney used to accept that wishing on a star was much like prayer; there’s something you long for, and it’s out of your hands, but you wish for it and you do what you know is right in the meantime. And you’re not crushed, you’re not downhearted, because somewhere in your mind you trust that the combo of those two things—wishing on a higher power and diligence to do what’s good—will be what makes your wish come true.

Trust in a higher power—COMBINED WITH:

—diligence to do what’s good.

The Blue Fairy (higher power) gave Geppetto his wish specifically because he had demonstrated commitment to do good, whether he got what he wanted or not. The Fairy Godmother (higher power) gave Cinderella her wish specifically because she kept on being kind and good to low creatures like mice and wicked stepsisters, whether she got what she wanted or not.

Do you know why that combo (higher power + diligence to do good) is impactful? Timeless? Important?

Because it’s selfless. You want something, but you’re not going to sacrifice doing the right thing to get it. You’re not going to focus so hard on making what you want a reality, on your own, that you miss out on things that could be more important than what you want. And, you’re not so self-focused as to believe that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Jeez, that’s the whole point of The Princess and the Frog!

Tiana wishes to have her own restaurant, and she believes that only her own hard work will grant that wish. She misunderstands her dad’s advice before he dies. She isn’t willing to trust a higher power combined with her own diligence to do good—she only trusts her own ability.

It’s not until she realizes that Ray, the character of faith, was right all along that she learns—what she wished for was too self-focused. It wasn’t complete without love. Something bigger than herself. And getting that was never going to happen just based on her own hard work.

But you know what? It was never going to happen just by a “higher-power” flavored shortcut, either. Because Facilier offers her her wish if she’ll just trust him, no hard work needed. But what does she say?

Trust in a higher power + diligence to do what’s right = selflessness, and getting more than you could have ever wished for. And if your wish is selfish, doing those two things will change your wish into something selfless.

More examples? Get ‘em while they’re hot, in case Wish made you forget, just like the current #NotMyDisney executives have forgotten, what real Disney wishes are for.

Belle wishes to have adventures in the great wide somewhere--but when she's imprisoned and that chance is taken from her it's not reversed because she worked hard to make her wish come true. It's granted because she gave up her wish for her father: she just did the right thing, regardless of her wish. And in the end, she does get what she wished for, which is adventure in an enchanted castle...and much more, because she gets true love, a throne, and a castle full of friends.

How about the One Who Started It All? The one Wish is failing to pay genuine tribute to?

Snow White wishes for someone to love her, and he does--but when they're separated, she does not exercise power to make The Prince come back to her. Instead, she loves who she can where she’s at—the Dwarfs. In the meantime, she has faith that he will keep his promise, and that pure trust in a higher power outside of her control is a big contributing factor to why the Dwarfs come to love her, and learn from her...and in the end, even more than she could've wished happens. He does take her to his castle, but she also has seven new friends who also love her, and the Queen is dead. And she didn’t need to use “the power in her” to work harder and get it done. She just needed to not focus so much on herself at all.

How about a male main character? One who’s wish starts out selfish, but after learning to wish on a higher power and be diligent to do the right thing, gets more than he could wish for?

Aladdin wishes to be somebody different (somebody he believes Jasmine could love, somebody who lives in a palace and is respected and “never has any troubles at all.”)—but doing everything in his own power for that wish proves that it was selfish all along; so he switches to doing the right thing, regardless of if his wish comes true, and he gets even more than he could’ve wished. He gets real love with Jasmine, he gets his friend Genie, and he gets to be free from feeling “trapped” because he doesn’t have to hide who he is anymore.

Or Simba?

Simba wishes to get to do whatever he wants as King—but when Mufasa dies and he’s convinced it’s his fault, it isn’t for that wish that he goes back to Pride Rock to confront his past and his Uncle. It’s because he had an encounter with a higher power—his father—that helped him to realize his wish was selfish all along. He gives up the selfish wish, and he goes back to take his place as king, not so he can do whatever he wants, but so that he can take self-sacrificial responsibility that comes with ruling. And because he just does the right thing, finally, he gets more than what he wished for.

How about something more recent? Zootopia.

Judy wishes to make the world a better place by proving she can be what she wants to be and catching bad guys—but when she tries to make her wish happen on her own, in her own abilities, she fails and is forced to realize that she should’ve been looking for help by understanding “bad guys,” like Nick. It’s only after she humbled herself, admits she’s wrong, and changes her wish from “proving I can be what I want and catching bad guys” to “proving that understanding each other makes the world a better place” (much less self-focused) that her wish comes true—and so much more. She does make the world a better place, and she does get to catch bad guys, but she also gets to befriend one who was a good guy all along, and become all-around more effective at her dream job.

This is how Disney always has been. Because it’s at the heart of good storytelling, and even life (not to get too dramatic.)

The power is not in you. Because it’s not about you. Self-sacrifice, faith, and doing the next right thing regardless of if you get your heart’s fondest desire is what makes more than just your wishes come true. And there has to be belief in a higher power to make that message powerful.

But Wish?

Not only is it bad at showing instead of telling. Not only is it lazy and soulless.

But it’s characters rip the Star out of the sky and say “don’t wish on this. Wish on yourself, to get what you wish for. You don’t need a higher power. You don’t even need to sacrifice to do what’s good—whatever you do is good, because you are the one doing it.”

That is wrong. That is not true, and it is not powerful. There’s no sacrifice in focusing on or placing your trust totally in yourself, and it undoes every good thing Disney has done up until now.

And it undoes it on the 100th anniversary, and it flaunts Easter eggs of the very things it’s undoing.

[beescake]

back in the day we had pantskat

now we have sagg sollux

[prahacat]

when the horrors catch up and you take an evening off to batch-process

[vampiric-bruce-wayne]

i can't help but get a little moony-eyed over my hyperfixations, they've always been and always be my heroes -- from when i was obsessed with mcr to my present hyperfixations. geralt, jaskier, anakin, gerardmikeyfrankray, dick grayson/nightwing --

like the concept of a hero -- someone who saves you. that's significant i think. save, saves, saved - it feels important

like it's not a concidence that not long ago there was a trend of people imagining their comfort characters talking to each other asking how the person [whose comfort character they are] are doing now that they've moved on -- it feels like they play important roles in giving us hope.

[vvulcanprince]

hannibal shooting locations in florence with screencaps from the show part 2 :3

if you want to repost, please CREDIT!

and responding to a reblog on the first part, i infact made my friend wander the locations with me and compare them with the scenes from the show haha

[insanesonofabitch]

Kind of funny. SPN was supposed to end in s5, with Sam in Hell, Cas in Heaven, and Dean on Earth, living with a wife and a son. But it ends after ten more season later with Cas in superhell, Dean in Heaven, and Sam on Earth, living with a wife and a son. Like some fucked up game of musical chairs. Except the chairs are never taken, the song remains the same, and they’re just going in circles. Anyways, Happy November 19th.