#i feel like there might not be an intersection between these two fandoms at all but um. Let me have my fun ok

[odd-critter]

i dont know why i stayed up to draw this it was on impulse. But its here now

[technicallyverycowboy]

playboyy: no fags, no femmes

okay, so. playboyy meta. thanks to @lugarn, @chaos0pikachu, and @cryptidafter for talking all this out with me <3

i originally started this post with "not to be that guy," but honestly, i do want to be that guy. because so much of the critique and analysis of playboyy i'm seeing is a) grounded in a lack of knowledge about queer history and aesthetics and b) veers unintentionally but wildly into unexamined homophobia.

so, given i'm going to reference susan sontag's notes on camp several times, i've decided i might as well go full queer studies major about it and copy the list style she uses. (i would highly recommend reading notes on camp. it is academic and somewhat dense, but it's a tame 13 pages)

1. so many people are confidently asserting that playboyy is not camp, regardless of what the creatives behind the show think. to which i have to ask: how are you defining camp? what things are campy to y'all?

2. the personal definition of camp that i arrived at after writing a bunch of papers about it is two-fold: camp is exaggeration, treating things that are serious casually and treating things that are casual seriously. camp is about an aesthetic of inhabiting a role, where something is a little bit off or being something that it's not meant to be.

and to be clear, this is a wildly incomplete and simplified definition, because one of the points of camp is that it's a vibe, not something concrete. It’s also something that shifts over time the relationship between queerness and society changes.

2a. camp often intersects and overlaps with surrealism, like in rocky horror picture show. very often media that is campy exits the mundane world and enters a heightened world of exaggeration and stylization. 

3. so, is playboyy campy? i sure as hell think it is. i think lugarn and chaos0pikachu both made really good points about the campiness of playboyy and it being specifically sexwork camp. (both replies are at that link.)

4. a brief list of things that specifically resonated as campy to me: first throwing american dollars in the pool for soong to catch, zouey's fantasy of feeling up teena in art class, every single element of nant's room (especially the projected images), captain's sports plot that involved zero doing the sport and 100% fucking and fantasy, the softly romantic framing of nuth and phob's sex scenes, jump's pleather tank top & coverall combination, prom wearing assless chaps to a rooftop party at 2:30 in the afternoon, the entire concept of investigating a disappearance via a themed party... i could go on and on, but i said this was brief.

5. i think the actual problem a lot of people have with playboyy is that it doesn't care about straight people.

6. what i mean by that is that playboyy is not a universal story. you could not plug different characters with different sexualities into the plot and preserve the essence of the story. the gayness of the characters is integral to the plot. the sex work is integral to the plot. this is not a world where homophobia doesn't exist and being gay is just like being straight.

7. additionally, these characters are all performing gender in a specifically queer way. they are femmes and fags, they are obvious, they are clockable, they're visible. when nice gays talk about the people who are giving gays a bad reputation and making it harder for everyone (to assimilate into heteropatriarchy) they're talking about playboyy gays.

8. comparing playboyy to only friends is low hanging fruit at this point, but i would argue that the reason boston stood out in that cast and was so viciously punished by the ending is because he was a fag stuck in a nice gays narrative.

9. and this is where the fandom homophobia comes in. so, so many people describe these characters and chaotic and messy, watchable as incoherent and vaguely amusing from a distance, but without real substance. the resulting narrative is often that no one could take their characters or their stories seriously or resonate with them.

10. again, why? why was ray and sand's high and low, blow up fights, calling each other whores relatable but soong and first's miscommunications about what they mean to each other unbelievable chaos? why is white taking black's place an acceptable plot point, but nont pretending to be nant is absurd?

11. most bls do not deal with flamboyance except in limited capacities by comedic side characters. flamboyance is a baseline trait for most of the playboyy characters. so if they feel too much, too loud, too out there, consider asking yourself why they do.

12. to a large extent, i think a lot of the criticism of playboyy is rooted in a bad faith refusal to engage with the show beyond a surface level pearl clutching about the sexual content. the unspoken belief here being that sex scenes are inherently vulgar distractions. they can't be integral to characters or their relationships. they can't be vital pieces of a narrative.

to which i say, there are nine thousand other BLs out there where the kissing is chaste and sex scenes are ~tastefully abstracted shots of shoulder blades and hands. watch those instead.

13. if you decide you want to watch it anyway, take a couple minutes to examine what parts of the show make you uncomfortable and why. and to be clear, i think there’s a lot of value in watching things that make you uncomfortable; media is often one of the best ways to dip into interrogating your emotional responses from a safe distance. 

but don’t use discomfort to dismiss the possibility that there’s meaningful artistic and stylistic choices made to serve a meaningful narrative. take a second to sit with your reactions and ask yourself where it’s coming from. 

[coolspacequips]

I think it's so reductive to say Shuro only liked falin while disliking laios bc he wanted to "fuck her", kind of a bad faith read and needlessly crass like...

It's a good point that ppl react to autistic traits differently depending on how attractive they perceive a person, but I think what happened w shuro and laios is a larger conversation about how boy autism manifests and is treated vs girl autism, a conversation I've seen gaining traction re: the fact that ppl filter their Perception of autism thru a male white filter, and that girls have a drastically lower rate of being clocked early if at all, and that ppl struggle to even conceive of say a brown girl w autism (this of course being in the simplest language without getting into a more complex look at genders and other social dynamics and how that intersects w neurodivergence)

Also along those lines, I think it's a larger conversation on how men socialize vs women, stereotypically. Of course men feel deeper feelings than they are often given credit for, for patriarchal bullshit reasons. It's common for ppl to express that "men don't need/want to talk about their feelings", which they do and benefit from of course, but that doesn't remove the fact that they often are socialized not to, and don't always get the support they need to talk about them well. It's a common thing and used to be a common media trope that bad tension might simmer between two guys, then they get into a physical fight and the air is cleared and they are friends again, hell it happens it shonen all the time, and in text that's a version of what happened with Shuro and laios. They didn't know how to discuss it, things came to an emotional head in a charged moment, they threw hands for a bit, then that release cleared Shuro's head enough to reconsider his perceptions and the two have a much more level conversation.

This of course all without touching on how I and a lot of others read Shuro to be autistic as well, and how lots of fans are determined to read him in as bad as faith as possible and can once again only clock white boy autism, where laios gets a pass for any boundary pushing that he does, but Shuro is evil for not being able to express or understand some of his feelings until they come out at crit mass, or struggling social conventions

This also discredits his feelings for falin so much where I get everyone wants to hate him for being het or whatever, but I get the impression that he saw the things that were strange about falin and liked her because of those things, that she was someone who was kind to him without the same over the top energy that overstimulates him when it comes to laios, and having shown no romantic interest in anyone in the past, fell in love. He isn't creeping on her and trying to see her body and grope her for comedy beats or anything, we see him looking at her with eyes full of love as she plays w a bug she found on the ground, and we know she saved him from a nightmare in the past, which we saw involves waking someone from a dream about their greatest trauma and helping them cope with it. This stance that he's just trying to fuck her undermines these things, misinterprets what is overall a pretty chaste romance, and cheapens the fact that falin is THAT LOVABLE. He loved her because she's lovable, and despite having a horrible childhood where she was assigned no worth, the reality is that a group of people love her so deeply as to risk everything, which is something you often kind of wish for when you were an ostracized nd person like she was

IDK this whole post is a rambling unedited mess I just saw some post about this that pissed me off LMAO IDK why this fandom is so determined to deny shuro any personhood, I try to just brush this discourse off but it's hard when the topics of discourse can remind u how rampant fandom racism is constantly 😔

[lola-andheruniverse]

Hi Lola!

Do you have any advice for overcoming writers block? I've tried a few methods out myself. Can't seem to get myself out of this rut lol I really admire your dedication to promoting fanfic so I thought I'd pick your brain! :) I mainly dabble in Caryl but I've ventured out into other fandoms I like. Caryl is where I am stagnant right now. Thanks a lot for any words you can give me lol Caryl on!!! :)

Hi, anon! Thanks for sending this ask, I love to talk about all the things fanfiction and writer's block intersect with my real life job too so we can kill two birds with one stone. 😊 First, since you write for other fandoms, it might be interesting to try to understand why you're particularly stuck with Caryl. You might be very invested in writing for our ship and that can be triggering anxious responses that make it hard to concentrate in your task. Or you might being affected by the emotional roller coaster our fandom is currently experience. Switching between highs too high and lows too low is emotionally exhausting and affects our disposition to do everything, including things we love like writing. Taking a time away from the fandom can help with that. Re-watching caryl scenes or re-reading your favorite fics (and here you can definitely include your own work) can help to restart the joy. Second, there are practical things you can do to help with your block. I'll list a few that work for me: 1. Try to establish a writing routine that makes sense and works for you. You don't have to write everyday or for the same length of time every time, but you can do little stuff that signal to your brain 'hey, it is time to write'. For example, setting a timer so you can write uninterruptedly for short amount of times; listening to a special caryl playlist to get you in the mood or white noise if you get easily distracted with external noises; having a glass of water and a snack right from the start with you so you don't need to get up when you feel thirsty/hungry; creating a comfortable environment to write by sitting in a good chair and having adequate light; 2. Write those scenes that you are dying to write for first. You know those scenes that are the heart of your chapter/one-shot, that you keep daydreaming about? Write them first. Put what brings you joy about your story right on paper and, then, later, fill up with every other scene that leads to it or comes after it. This might be easier than trying to write in the right order, because opening scenes can be very difficult and the main scenes will help set the tone of the rest of the chapter/one-shot;

3. If you're having a hard time describing images or voicing your character's voices and feelings, write the dialogue first. It will help to establish rhythm later when you get back to it to fill the blanks. You can do something like this: [description of the cabin Carol and Daryl are, the sofa is still plush and of a faded pink and there's dust everywhere] " What about this room?" Daryl asks [need to indicate later that he's feeling frustrated but with another noun]. " It'll do for tonight." 4. If you can't put anything at all on paper, you can brainstorm with yourself (or a friend) and write key words that will help you later when you're feeling more inclined to write. Same example than before: evening - abandoned cabin - just a light little coming from outside - lux pink couch - daryl frustrated - carol feelings - small talk - elephant in the room about major plot point You can elaborate as much as you want, turning keywords into key phrases, writing a sentence or two and building on that. 5. Okay, not even key words are working? Get your phone and record what you are imagining on an app that translates audio to text. Come back and edit it later, turning it into workable prose.

I hope these tips help you out, anon. Thanks again for the ask. If you manage to finish writing your caryl fic, no matter who short it is, please let me know so I can read it? It will be a pleasure, I'm sure of it.

[concerningwolves]

Hi! I don't know if you do fandom related things or not, so idk how much you know about a series called The Owl House (if not, then I'm terribly sorry for wasting your time sending you this ask)

I'm writing a TOH oc who is a half-witch that's supposed to be autistic, have underdeveloped magic, as well as being able to perform two types of magic (one related to illusions and another based off of controlling anything related to animals)

Also, just to clarify, by "underdeveloped magic", I'm mainly thinking about that because my character is supposed to be half witch and half grimwalker, so I was thinking of possibly making her have an organ that witches have in the show where they produce magic from, but maybe having it produce weaker magic in comparison to other kids her grade (she's about 12 years old), but idk if all of this could relate to any real disabilities that exist

Are there things that I should look into to better understand what I can do to have this make more sense? If so, what exactly do you think would best fit for this character?

Hi! No need to apologise; it's always worth asking :]

All I know about TOH has been gleaned through Tumblr osmosis, so I can't really comment on anything specifically related to the series' storyworld/lore. Regarding the autistic representation, it sounds like you've got a plausible in-world reason for your character's magic to be weaker that isn't related to her being autistic, which is good.

In the case of a fantasy disability like this (and I think it's absolutely fair to call it a disability, even if there's no real-world parallel), it's always good to ask yourself questions like:

How does this affect my character's day to day life? – i.e., are there activities which require magic that she can't do as easily?

What sort of accommodations would those effects require? – in what ways can other people make things easier or more accessible for your character?

What kind of social awareness is there of the disability (and of disability in general)? – disabilities and disabled people don't exist in a vacuum, and there has always been awareness and varying levels of acceptance of disabilities within societies. Thinking about this will inform how your character is treated, and how they feel about their own disability.

(and on a similar note: Do institutional and systemic ableism exist? If not, why? How has your society gotten around that, and how do they embrace and support disabled existence?)

Is this character the only person with the disability? Are there other disabled characters at all? – There's a lot of solidarity between disabled communities and I always like to encourage authors to consider this in their worldbuilding. Where quick and global communication exists (like the internet or some fantasy/sci-fi equivalent, or some other magical means of communication), people like to connect with people like them. Even if someone irl has a rare condition which makes it difficult for them to find or access their community, there will still be value in more general support groups (either online or in person), because of the way some disabled experiences intersect and overlap.

How does your character feel about their disability? – it's important to think about this in relation to all the other factors above, instead of assuming that internalised ableism is the norm. How a person feels about their disability if often complex, and can fluctuate based on different situations – e.g., a character might feel proud of the things they've learned from having to work with their disability, but still struggle with feeling alienated because of their disability. (This is doubly true when you're multiply disabled, or have something like autism which can have positive, negative and neutral aspects).

Hopefully this will give you something to work with, even if I couldn't help with TOH-specific stuff.

[esther-dot]

"Gently, he spoke of Braavos, and met a wall of sullen courtesy as icy and unyielding as the Wall he had walked once in the north. It made him weary. Then and now."- Tyrion(ASOS VIII).

"I hate this Wall," she said in a low angry voice. "Can you feel how cold it is?"- Jon(ASOS IV)

"I almost fell," she said, with tears in her eyes. "Twice. Thrice. The Wall was trying t' shake me off, I could feel it." One of the tears broke free and trickled slowly down her cheek."- Jon(ASOS IV).

Tyrion and Ygritte feeling weary of the Wall and hating the Wall.

Oh, 👀👀 Years ago I wrote this:

We also have all those references to her courtesy being a wall (I’ve been collecting them to write about it sometime) and Tyrion wishing to get around it but he can’t. I’ve mentioned before how it’s fitting that Sansa, who bled for the North’s freedom as a prisoner in KL, would secure the North’s freedom, but I forget how Sansa’s refusal to have sex with Tyrion, her refusal to let him in, isn’t cruel, isn’t just about sex, it’s a decision that is protecting the North. I know the fandom likes to use Tyrion’s decision to not rape her as a sign of his virtue, but Sansa builds a wall to protect herself, and with it, Winterfell. A shame that’s not appreciated more. (link)

So I'm very interested in Sansa's wall and Jon's declarations of the Wall is mine which happen throughout ASOS and ADWD, especially as his struggle between his vow/the Wall and desire for Winterfell is decided in his declaration that Winterfell belongs to Sansa, a contrast to Tyrion who wishes to use Sansa to take Winterfell. Tyrion being pained and frustrated by his child bride (who was a prisoner of his family!) not opening up to him has got to be one of the most self-absorbed moments in the story. I’m just incredulous each time I read it but moving on

There are many intersections between the ASOS Jonsa chapters, and this one seems pertinent as it is another connection between Tyrion and Ygritte:

Jon is in a similar position with Ygritte (a captive being forced into a "marriage") as Sansa is with Tyrion. And, in addition to the general similarities, when they both are “married” (Sansa officially, Jon by giving in and having sex) there is this: "Two hearts that beat as one. Mance Rayder's mocking words rang bitter in his head. Jon had seldom felt so confused." (ASOS, Jon III) "'Here in the sight of gods and men,' he said, 'I do solemnly proclaim Tyrion of House Lannister and Sansa of House Stark to be man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them.'" (ASOS, Sansa III) Those lines in the chapters with similar considerations mimic each other as a mockery of Jon and Sansa’s romantic ideals, their dreams, what they would want a marriage to be. (link)

Sansa is greatful for what she deems Tyrion's kindess to her, her feelings never develop beyond that although he does respect her boundary on the wedding night and opts not to force her to have sex with him. Jon on the other hand develops deep feelings for Ygritte, so her lines about the Wall trying to throw her off are fascinating to me if we're reading it as more than her experience with the physical Wall. We could read it as references to Jon's attempts to prevent her from sleeping with him, his feelings immediately after she forces the issue or his mixed feelings later once he eagerly participates in the relationship. Once I wrote this:

Another way to look at this is the idea of what the characters represent. I’ve mentioned how Ygritte is representative of the FF for Jon, spending time with her is about learning the culture, coming to care for the people, realizing that they have some sympathetic grievances, but if Ygritte is the FF, we might look at Jon as the people of the North, as someone whose boundaries are disregarded, the things he attempts to use to protect himself circumnavigated, and his person violated. (link)

which is an interesting thought paired with how Ygritte views the Wall. Her anger at the Wall's existence makes me think of this passage where she wants to...well, kinda violently possess Jon:

Ygritte had looked so angry he thought she was about to strike him. "All of us," she said. "You too. You're no crow now, Jon Snow. I swore you weren't, so you better not be." She pushed him back against the trunk of a tree and kissed him, full on the lips right there in the midst of the ragged column. Jon heard Grigg the Goat urging her on. Someone else laughed. He kissed her back despite all that. When they finally broke apart, Ygritte was flushed. "You're mine," she whispered. (ASOS, Jon V)

[ar-guile]

Writer tag game!

Tagged by @ramatetsu

When did you start writing?

It depends on what you mean by 'writing'. My roleplaying career began when I got my mom to sign a permission slip to mail to the Neopets HQ (a literal piece of paper, sent through the post office) to let me access the forums. Under-13s weren't allowed, you see.

Fun fact: I failed creative writing in high school and almost couldn't graduate! tbh I only started writing on my own when I was like 27

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I enjoy scifi and speculative fantasy, especially when the worldbuilding is allowed to affect the story and characters. Those finicky pedantic little details are where I live, but I tend to write on a smaller scale where that doesn't come into play so often.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I sit sideways in an armchair and write on my phone. Everyone wishes it didn't squeak when I rock. That's too bad. Squeaksqueaksqueaksqueak

Sometimes I think I'd enjoy a chaise lounge or a fainting couch (in a fantasy life where we have a real living room), but I know I'd miss the rocking too much.

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

It used to be music. Now that I'm old, I think of how their quirks intersect with regular life until something snags my brain to drag me outta my own head and into someone else's.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Declaration of autonomy in situations where the characters have limited control over their circumstances. Building a life in spite of the futility. Some know what they're facing from the beginning, some start out thinking they have it all under control and find out just how wrong they were. Tone varies from fluffy to grim, but I always gotta have some humor in there or I'll die

(I had to get help with this question... and then I got called out)

What is your reason for writing?

Part of me wants to say it's a propaganda campaign for whatever my brain is orbiting around, but for that to be true I'd need to actually share the stuff I write instead of letting it sit on my hard drive. I mostly just enjoy the process of getting a story out of my head and onto a page. Words are fun!

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I hope they look between two stories narrated by different characters and have trouble believing they're written by the same person. Voice is my strongest trait by miles and miles. My characterization isn't always what matches the common fandom interpretation, so while it might hit some people the wrong way, there's a chance it'll Open Their Eyes To Another Way.

(If not, hate is still a strong emotional reaction so I'll take it lmao)

How do you feel about your own writing?

I have a sliiiight superiority complex, but I really agonize over my writing so I figure that's for the best? Gotta feel good about the stuff I torture myself over

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

I would get bored if I were writing for other people more than myself. That gives it a unique flavor, too. If I do what makes my brain buzz instead of trying to be palatable, it's waaaay more likely to hit those notes for someone else.

I sound so full of myself with these questions and that's kind of hilarious. I'm actually way too shy to tag anyone so if you wanna fill it out you're absolutely welcome! Yes that includes you even if we've never exchanged a single word

[itsclydebitches]

Has it ever been mentioned if Tai and Summer we actually romantically involved? Maybe it's just me but the scene where they talk didnt feel like a married couples and more like really good friends. It would be interesting if Tai isnt actually ruby's father and him and summer decided to just co-parent ruby and yang to give them a normal family life. I just feel icky that tai ran to summer as soon as raven left.

Obviously it's entirely personal what does or does not feel "icky" to you, though it if helps, I frequently remind myself that RWBY has nonexistent timelines. Like, by the writers own admission none of this has been thought out. So if you get into the nitty-gritty and start asking questions like, "How long was Raven gone before Tai became romantically involved with Summer?" yeah, you might run into some timing snags that impact our overall view of the relationships. However, that's not because the writers wanted to engage with that kind of complicated dynamic, but simply because they throw out plot-points and ages without ever thinking through with how those two things intersect. I feel similarly regarding the "Yang raised Ruby" fanon (which is fanon and I find it frustrating that much of Volume 9's sisterly interactions, like Yang standing in front of Blake, have been squeezed through this largely unsupported lens of, "Well, Yang is basically Ruby's second mom so that's why this moment is wholesome and not a super weird animation choice) which doesn't hold up upon scrutiny, at least not without a lot of assumptions. If you start thinking about when Raven left, when Summer left, Ruby and Yang's ages, when they were both born, the adventure into the woods, them starting their training young enough to get into Signal, who was supposedly around when, what's a literal fact and what's just someone's emotional interpretation of events... any simple timeline falls apart. There are simply too many contradictions and vague claims to map out a coherent, canonical timeline. We can assume and headcanon many options, but they remain just that: assumptions and headcanons.

BUT that means there's plenty of space for your interpretation, anon. For me personally, I don't think RWBY is ever going to reveal that Tai isn't Ruby's dad and I read the not-very-romantic-y interaction between him and Summer as simply indicative of RWBY's overall approach to romance. After all, Blake and Yang have been in love for several Volumes now, but up until the big kiss all they did was hold hands. However, what RWBY puts on screen is what they've put on screen, which means it's perfectly valid to watch something that looks fairly platonic and extrapolate from there. One of the things the RWBY fandom needs to get better about is allowing the prevalence of fanon to produce outright anger over other ideas. Fans harass others for arguing that it's unlikely Yang actually raised Ruby, or theorizing that Qrow might be Ruby's dad, or writing fics where Blake and Yang are in different relationships. There's such a focus on maintaining the One True Fanon that it obliterates the very purpose of fanworks. We're meant to be transforming the canon in ways that please us and, if we're up to sharing it, pleasing an audience of like-minded folks too. Why would you want to adhere to just one standard telling? That's boring. That's just canon 2.0. You might as well watch RWBY, watch one other version of it (like Ice Queendom) and call it a day if you're not willing to allow a wide variety of creative content to exist. You don't have to engage with it, no one says it has to be your personal cup of tea, but leave fans who want to play with the fictional dolls their way alone. The internet is a big place and the block button doesn't have a limit.

[goshen-applecrumbledore]

this is the same person who sent you that embarrassingly long ask back in june(?), but i just wanted to say i read your most recent The Bear fic and (as always) was left falling in love with your writing once more.

i believe you've mentioned/alluded to this being the case in the fandom as a whole, but carmy and richie seem to be a difficult pair to write accurately, even in a platonic sense. you've managed to find this perfect, almost chaotically indulgent balance between the dialogue-dense vacuum of space they occupy and the fast-paced, warped world of carmy's mind.

what stood out to me the most in this fic was that even carmy's thoughts were written like he speaks- a jumble of fragmented fears littered with swears and memories of regret. it's truly a beautiful way to draw readers into the atmosphere you've crafted.

i really loved the ending as well! it's probably the most realistically happy ending of any of your works that i've read, although the true detective one comes close. this next part might be a reach, but seeing the fumbling affection they've formed from literal years of frustration and pure Want slowly bleed into the world of their real lives is touching. their minds are wired so differently, but they both have this aching need to have their own worth proven to them. even if they let this need shine through the cracks of their defensive shells in wildly different ways, there's still a place where they intersect.

as always, apologies for the long rant... i thank you with all my heart for your lovely work, and i'll childishly confess that reading your pieces always fills me with desire to write fics of my own one day, so thank you for that (unintentional) push as well <3

there are no embarrassing asks!!! there is only passion and kindness!!!! thank you for sharing yours!!!!

thank you very much for all this, it's very nice. re: Carmy's thoughts sounding like the way he speaks, that's one of my favourite things to try to do in stories. I always write in (I forget the word for this) the type of thing where it's third person but the 'narrator' is very much only one person and their POV, interpretations, thoughts, etc. I really really like that because it lets them be an unreliable narrator, like Carmy, even though it's kind of presented as an objective third-person. and that also makes it fun in fic especially to write different fics from different characters' POV to give you more to explore. I'm glad you felt it worked, he's very fun to write from. I spend a lot of time trying to not be like carmy.

AND thank you on the ending. the entire point of that fic was to write something with a happy ending because I realized my other 2 bear fics do not end happy on paper, only in the not-real-not-going-to-write epilogues I have in my head. same with the TD fic, it's so interesting to try to think of what happy would look like for two people who are chronically unhappy, and make it feel real.

you should absolutely write fics. everyone starts somewhere and it'll be great. godspeed pal

[silvermoon424]

Re: your post about ppl only caring about romantic ships (I was going to rely but I had too many words lol).

While I am on the ace spectrum (Demi-sexual), I don’t think this is just an aro/ace thing, I think a lot of our society focuses on love as only a romantic/sexual thing when platonic, familial, and other kinds of life can be/are just as fulfilling, valuable, and important! I’ve always felt that my friends are just as significant as my romantic/sexual partners, but in fandom spaces I feel like romantic/sexual relationships are by far the most focused on and considered the most important! When I was first introduced to fanfic when I was a young teen, my friend explained it to me by describing shipping. Like to her, that’s all fanfics were for, was shipping characters and reading about it. But there can be so many great ways to interact with a source material that don’t focus on romance/sex at all, and there are so many wonderful character relationships and dynamics which don’t get explored because people choose to focus on the romantic and sexual relationships between characters.

I personally have never experienced any backlash for sharing my views on certain ships (probably in part because I have a much smaller audience than you and am also less vocal in general), but I do sometimes feel less confident or ashamed of sharing when I feel like a popular ship would be better off as friends. For example, I’ve always seen Chibiusa and Hotaru’s dynamic of that of a powerful friendship, and while I also don’t ship Chibiusa and Helios, I sometimes feel like if I say I like Chibiusa and Hotaru better as friends people will be upset at me or think that I’m being homophobic when really I just think that their friendship is powerful and wonderful and beautiful as it is and that changing their relationships to be romantic or sexual doesn’t elevate the relationship to be stronger or better, it just changes the dynamic. Like both friendship and romance are both valid options which help explore different parts of their characters and the dynamic between them, but I don’t feel like because the two of them are such good friends there needs to be a romance to signify their closeness and the importance/value of their relationships, I love their relationship as it is.

I feel like the actual underlying problems at hand though are that there is still a lot of stigma and shame around exploring sexuality in our society (especially for women and queer people), and the dominance of the nuclear family as an ideal makes us want to prioritize romantic/sexual relationships above all else. People use art to explore their sexuality, and it’s a safe and healthy way to explore our own romantic and sexual feelings by exploring romantic and sexual relationships between characters, and unfortunately I think that many people do not feel they have many (even any) other outlets to safely talk or think about romance and sex. If there was less shame around sexuality in the first place, I think people might not feel the need to put it on such a pedestal and make romantic/sexual relationships the main focus of ships (and a lot of other things too).

I’ve also always interpreted western society’s focus on romantic/sexual love to be tied to upholding the idea of the nuclear family, and indirectly (or directly idk) upholding many sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and white supremacist notions about gender, sexuality, and power (from the Victorian era, maybe?).

Like, if we tell people the most important thing is their love life, then they’ll prioritize finding a romantic/sexual partner and spend less time establishing meaningful community connections, and thus will rely more on their spouse for emotional support, strengthening the bond of the family unit but also leaving them with fewer resources and more emotionally vulnerable if they try to leave the family. And since many romantic ideals intersect with gender roles (a man is attractive if he is strong and tough and can provide financially, he is chivalrous if he protects the women from any and all possible harm, etc), the emphasis on romantic and sexual relationships encourages people to conform to these gender norms, and thus establishes the traditional family archetype to be the most valuable and correct unit of social order. By reinforcing the idea that having a romantic/sexual partner is (arguably) the most important thing in our lives without giving us alternative structures for building these relationships aside from the nuclear family, it allows the nuclear family unit to continue to be the main way we organize our society and thus the socially correct option.

Wow, I really don't have much to add because you said everything so eloquently!! Great job, I agree with basically everything you said.

I do want to point out to anyone reading this that there actually is a term for society's prioritization of romantic relationships above all else: amatonormativity. And like anon said, it heavily ties back into the heteropatriarchy and the idea that everyone should be cis and in a heterosexual relationship (very preferably in a heterosexual marriage that produces children).

Amatonormativity hurts everyone, not just aro and ace people.

[ashleybenlove]

Okay so I’ve been struck with an idea I really want to share and you seemed like the type of person who might like it? It’s kind of a ramble so I’m sorry if this is bothersome

You personally really opened my mind to HTTYD polyships (love your OT6 works) and in the idealized universe in my head (everyone has one of those right? 😂) I’ve been constructing a polycule and just a few days ago while thinking really hard about this fic based on all those with Hiccup raised by dragons but with Dagur instead; rolling it around and exploring the idea of how that Dagur might interact with the other characters when I was hit by a sudden brainwave. What if he became smitten with Toothless? Like if he was raised by dragons it would make sense that he would be attracted to dragons first and foremost however his relationship with Hiccup might develop. And then it was only a small jump to apply this to a more canon-adjacent universe; where after some time in a relationship with Hiccup (who is separately dating Toothless amongst others) Dagur would sometimes hang out with Toothless separately maybe if Hiccup was doing something neither felt the need to tag along for(he is the only person other than Hiccup to call him by a nickname, T, after his redemption but that might just be a Dagur thing he calls a lot of people by nicknames but something about him calling Toothless T just struck me as awfully friendly of him). And as they spend time just hanging out maybe they both become fonder of eachother than they were expecting. And then they date too.

And this also like connects Toothless in the polycule more if that makes sense? Like if he was only dating Hiccup and was just committed to his Soulmate for the rest of his life that’s one thing but after THW (which of course has to have it’s bones picked for good parts that are few and far between) he also has the Lightfury who I guess he could just be seeing for family-rearing purposes if that’s a direction he wanted to take his life in but couldn’t before. But it does show him committing to a romantic relationship outside of Hiccup so the fact that he wasn’t dating anyone else almost seemed weird like he never had romantic feelings for anyone but his rider? No one was interested in him? IDK I guess it just seemed interesting to me to explore Toothless in a relationship with someone who wasn’t his soulmate or the drakina he had kids with

And I’m imagining after Toothless realizes he has feelings esp requited he decides to court in a human manner bc I headcanon Toothcup just kind of falling together easily. Like they have a conversation about love and romance, probably after GOTNF, actually now I’m trying to outline a separate fic at you I’m sorry but just know that I’m my head they skip straight from besties to almost literally married (as in, literally but in the dragons culture) in like, one conversation. So Toothless has never courted before so he does things like grabbing a mouthful of flowers ect. ect. And Dagur I’d like ‘Oh gods why is this happening again. I was terrible to him, I hunted him, WHY DO I NOW HAVE A CRUSH WHY DO I KEEP MAKING TERRIBLE IMPRESSIONS ON PEOPLE I WANT TO LIKE ME’ and is genuinely baffled but delighted that Toothless reciprocates. I’ve only been turning this over for a day or two so I’m not sure how he acts in the relationship but I’m so invested in the two of them slowly building up a relationship outside of their shared feeling for Hiccup. Like I’ve always liked them being genuine friends but this just hit me out of nowhere and I really wanted to share it.

And I guess I chose you because when I thought of the intersection of Dagcup, Toothcup, and general HTTYD polycule madness I thought of you. I love your work in this fandom and I love the way you build encompassing relationships between so many disparate people. I’d love to hear what you think about this little ship idea

Please accept this picture of my HTTYD studies cuddling as payment for reading my excessive ramble

Aww, thank you!!! That's very nice of you to say!!! 🥰

(Very cute picture!!!)

I like your idea! Dagur being raised by dragons (technically, a feral child) definitely works considering how feral he generally is.

As for Dagur and Toothless, I always point repeatedly at the fact that the number one thing that gave Hiccup pause, that made Hiccup want to trust Dagur is that Toothless let Dagur (who had previously been pretty hostile to him) ride him to save Hiccup. Toothless is a good judge of character. (He let Hiccup live, after all.)

And yeah, Hiccup and Toothless being practically married by the end of GOTNF is good. I mean, one could easily be like "oh the forehead touch in HTTYD2 is when they got married." Sure, but also: Hiccup and Toothless have been married for like, years by that point. That's like, them renewing their vows.

Also love this: "IDK I guess it just seemed interesting to me to explore Toothless in a relationship with someone who wasn’t his soulmate or the drakina he had kids with". Because like, yeah, that's the whole point of fanworks. Let's play in the sandbox a different way!!! Let Toothless have a separate relationship with Dagur (whether it's casual or serious!).

Anyways! Great stuff!!! I hope you have lots of fun with it!!!

[chacusha]

Snowflake Challenge #2

Challenge #2 - Write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom.

I am lazy so instead of doing this, I linked (on Dreamwidth, friendslocked) all the manifestos I’ve already written and also add some thoughts about how writing those manifestos made me wonder at my sometimes unpredictable/inconsistent taste in pairings, and how Quodo is simultaneously a very new/unusual kind of OTP for me to have and also kind of at the intersection of multiple dynamics I’ve been drawn to in the past. It’s simultaneously a bizarre OTP for me and a completely predictable OTP for me. The full discussion is over at my journal in a friends-locked post, but here is a part of it I’m fine sharing publicly:

In some ways my obsession with Quodo is simultaneously very weird/unprecedented for me (like, M/M pairing? aliens/xeno? sci-fi canon? rivals-to-lovers instead of friends-to-lovers? these are very weird/new aspects for me). But at the same time, I am also 100% convinced that my taste in pairings has led me straight to Quodo and it's 100% predictable that this pairing would have been catnip to me. Like, I guess one thing you might notice about my shipping patterns is that they seem to be pretty agnostic to the genders/ages/attractiveness of characters, but they strongly gravitate toward romance/pining/romcom type dynamics. Usually such pairings in fiction are het, hence the skew in my OTPs toward het, but in the case of Odo/Quark, they're like a romance pairing on steroids, with basically half a dozen romcom dynamics somehow packed into a single pair of characters. They're enemies-to-lovers; they're friends-to-lovers; they're the disreputable rake and the spirited virgin; they're the dour emotionally-repressed guy pining after the vibrant girl full of life; they're slap-slap-kissing except without the kissing part; they're detective/thief; they're corrupt cop and criminal boyfriend; they're tsundere; they're the guy with a crush on his best friend who has a crush on someone else; they're sharing a bed and stranded together and enemies forced to cooperate; they're running to the airport to confess their feelings; they're both shamelessly flirting with each other; one is shamelessly flirting and the other is oblivious; they're both oblivious; they're already married. They're like a supernormal stimulus, where the stimulus in this case is romcom plots.

I kind of came to this conclusion partly because I was thinking about what do some of my other recent OTPs share in common with Quodo and I came up with something like this:

Shared with Hawkeye/Riesz: One half of the pairing is a shameless flirt; the other half radiates intense never-been-kissed energy. Shared with Sansa/Sandor: Every interaction is a clash between opposing life philosophies. Shared with Alternis/Edea: One half of the pairing is a super repressed guy always hiding feelings. Shared with Mi-na/Yun-seong: Playful teasing friendship with sexual tension. What these dynamics all share is, well, Quodo, but also you might notice that they all create some kind of pining potential: With the shameless flirt + never-been-kissed character, you get plenty of opportunities for romantic/intimate moments initiated by the flirty character but rebuffed by the never-been-kissed character who doesn't quite know whether to take the flirty character's advances seriously at all. Ambiguous feelings! Intimacy while pining! Rejection! With the clash-between-philosophies dynamic, the opposing moral codes create tension and a feeling of incompatibility that keep two characters who are otherwise attracted to each other apart. Will-they-won't-they! Slow burn! A reason why neither character will end our misery and just Spit It Out! Repressed characters -- I mean, this is the bread and butter of pining. Works better the more ridiculously repressed a character is, and Odo is ridiculously repressed for various reasons of his upbringing. Yeah! Just the contrast between the strength of the felt feelings and how little the character expresses them -- that's the good stuff. Again, a good reason why characters attracted to each other just will not say anything or get together -- one guy is repressed and, while the other is expressive, they have no reason to believe repressed guy is interested in them at all. With various friends-to-lovers dynamics, you get all the fun of flirtation but then the mixed messaging where neither person is sure whether affection is platonic or romantic. Like, sometimes this kind of play, these games these friends who are attracted to each other engage in, feel like courtship, but I mean... they're just friends, right? The situation is just waiting for one of the two friends to develop a crush on or be wooed by a third party and then oh NO, the pining hits the fan. Once one character (or both) catches/realizes feelings, then it's Pining Time. Affection that used to feel good now feels painful; its pain is proportional to how good it feels, even! Guilt at having developed feelings! Jealousy while also wanting to be A Good/Supportive Friend!

So yeah, analyzing the connections between Quodo and my various OTPs has led me to conclude that Quodo is the usual pining dynamic I like in fiction... ON STEROIDS. Which maybe explains why it broke my brain while being very unlike the kind of pairing I usually get obsessed with/go for. Because in some sense it is the intersection of a whole bunch of my favorite dynamics in fiction somehow rolled into a bizarre package.

[surreality51]

Tagged by @zingaplanet. Thanks for the tag game! I LOOOOOOVE these things. I’m the kid who liked filling out forms, surveys, and scantron bubbles just for the fun of it.

 Sign: Aries. Not sure what that’s supposed to mean, since each website has a different list of traits. 

^I mean, I guess that’s me, if you took all those characteristics and squeezed them down to fit inside a mouse. I am a very quiet, nervous, and shy creature on the surface, so I’m like the opposite of Aries. But if you leave me alone and leave some cheese out for me, I might scurry out and do some of the above things when no one is looking. Just very quietly though. 

Height: I’m 5’4” in the US or 162 cm in the rest of the world

Last thing I googled: convert 5’4” to centimeters for the above question. Before that, it was “Rafael nadal not friends Federer.” I was trying to figure out where and when that quote came from.

Number of followers: 282. Honestly I’m surprised there are even that many, given how I go dormant for YEARS at a time, only to pop up in a completely different and unrelated fandom.

Amount of sleep: that I want or that I get? I need 5 hours to be functional and 9 hours to be happy. I usually get 5-6 hours because I’m a tired working parent. If you leave me alone, I will sleep for 13 hours straight, no problem.

Lucky #: don’t have one really

Wearing: the same clothes that I’ve worn for the last 2 days (see note above about being a tired working parent)

Dream job: realistically, I’m pretty happy with my current job as it sits at the intersection of what I’m interested in (education, social justice) and what my job skills are. It’s not a perfect job, but it suits me a lot and I find my work interesting, engaging, and meaningful. If we’re talking la la unicorn land, then when I was a kid I wanted to be the editor of Rolling Stone magazine. (This was back in the 90s when Rolling Stone was still relevant, ok?) Not because I was particularly into music--I didn’t discover the radio until I was 10 years old--but because I imagined that if you were the editor of such a famous magazine, you would probably have a killer corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking San Francisco Bay and I wanted that. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a model or a book editor, the former because I liked the idea of traveling and looking fabulous (despite me having no fashion sense at all), the latter because I thought I could get paid for reading books.

Movies/books that summarise me: I have no idea. Maybe Love Actually because I have been blessed with love and good fortune in many forms in my life, but underneath it all I’m a total dork who doesn’t understand how I got this lucky and yet I keep flailing about trying to keep it going and somehow it still works out.

Favourite song: too hard to pick just one, but there are many songs that have special meaning for me and that instantly carry me back to a particular time and place in my life:

“You and Me Song” by The Wannadies

I first heard this song while slow dancing with future-husband in his room after coming back from prom, just the two of us, right before we shared our first kiss. This song perfectly captures our early years together.

“Wake Up” by Arcade Fire

Sorry, heavy content ahead, feel free to skip: This song suddenly came on the radio in the car as we were driving home from the hospital after my husband’s oldest sister had just passed away from cancer. She was 14 years older than him and was like a second mom. She bought him his first pair of Air Jordans with the money she earned from her first real job. We were devastated and reeling. Just as this song came on, the skies opened up and rain started pouring down out of nowhere. We were on a long, winding highway between two counties, just the two of us and empty desert on either side at 2am. It felt like his sister was crying with us from the heavens, so we both sang/screamed/yelled this song at the top of our lungs while tears streamed down our faces. The moment the song was over, we lost the radio station and the rain stopped, as suddenly as it came. (For those of you who don’t know, this song is from the album Funeral.)

“Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

We made our entrance to our wedding reception to this song, skipping and holding hands and spinning each other until I got dizzy and he had to catch me. This song perfectly captures the deep intimacy, warm familiarity, and abiding love of our later years together. 

Fav instrument: Like any proper Asian child, I can play the piano, but I’ve always loved violin music too.

Aesthetic: that describes me or that I like? For my personal style, my sister always says I have no fashion sense. She s completely correct, in that I don’t fit into a specific aesthetic. And yet, I can never seem to find clothes I like. Go figure.

For my dream interior design, I like the simplicity of Scandinavian design. Think minimalist with wood and metal accents in a clean, open design.

As for my actual interior design, I currently live in an art gallery curated by a 3 year old and a 6 year old. There are a lot of rainbows and stick figures on the walls.

Fav author: don’t really have one, although I’m a sucker for modern fantasy, magical realism, and the like. Honestly I mostly read fanfic these days. In my scholarly days, I liked the poetry of John Donne and modern American poets like H.D., WH Auden, Marianne Moore, and Emily Dickinson.

Fav animal noise: birds singing. Little song birds, not the giant ravens or little green parrots that caw incessantly outside.

Random: 

Tagging: @bluskype, @roscoespaws, @a-swiss-and-a-spaniard​, @pearandalmondtart​, @janerurlife​

[onewomancitadel]

Trying to identify where 'everybody's interpretation of a text is valid' intersects and conflicts with personal fantasy and the existence of modern fandom and what I can only call 'parafandom' - the greater Internet fandoms that exist kind of separately from an original source with their own conventions and expectations of a text (this is everything from slash fandom to even my monster romance/enemies-to-lovers end of things - yes, even 'my people' can obscure texts).

I think there's a really fascinating nugget of study there, from a perspective of folkloric studies (how traditions adjacent to a text develop) and also of course from the Internet (e.g. homogeneity of opinion), with a certain degree of emotional distance.

With the emotional distance removed it's just you having an argument with another person whose idea of 'the text' is the thing they invented in their head, forever.

Now you might say, 'Let people have their fun' but it does have serious repercussions, from the perspective of what sort of stories get made, how creators are treated, how fandom spaces grow and how people in fandom spaces treat each other, and yes, from the perspective of harrassment that people feel entitled to engaging in (because it's 'small fry', but not really) because of diverging interpretations, it can get pretty serious, and it really does vary fandom to fandom! There are some fandoms that are better than others, not because of size (as I traditionally thought) but there are genuinely differences in decorum based on the sorts of opinions and beliefs accepted by the community. I don't mean this as a disguised anti/pro bipartisan issue, I think that whole deal is actually representative of broader power plays about correct/incorrect textual interpretation and (psychoanalysing and repeating myself here) the reality that a lot of sexual politics are out of our control (e.g. sexual violence) but it is also a position you can leverage others.

It's a topic I mull over every now and then because I have experienced a pretty potent version of text vs. fandom with R/WBY and one or two other fandoms (and with Reylo in particular the divide between fandom online and the General Audience was a pretty big gulf). More broadly you really see that problem of people having an issue with you engaging with the text experimentally or diverging from reading things through an exclusive 'this character is universally good/bad' and one might put that down to media criticism problemz striking once again or stanning (puke) culture.

I think it's annoying, but it's interesting, and I don't think I really have all the answers. The thing I'd really like to read more about is parafandom.

I do wonder how much that sense of personal danger comes into it too; I've witnessed my fair share (and engaged with) stages of coping about an unwanted thing happening in narrative and if you see people talking about things you don't want to happen, the easiest way to assert yourself over that is, I suppose, to discredit them in any way (and it's not really about you, but about them). One of the most telling stages of cope is when people have to work backwards from new information/bad portents in order to make their old theories fit. Anyway, that's kind of an aside, but a sense of emotional protection with is worth considering, because that's more emotional and simplistic than just talking about fandom mores, and now the scope of this post is too large.

[blackstarising]

ok i promised myself up and down i wouldn’t make posts like this anymore for my own mental health but i’ve been seeing a lot of, uh, takes in regards to the potential of sarah and bucky dating and a lot of confusion to why these takes are racist, insulting and hurtful, especially to black people. and for me? well, i won't lie, it's personal.

what non-black people need to understand is that positive portrayals of interracial romantic relationships between dark-skinned black women (yes, dark skinned) and non-black men are extremely uncommon in media. for example, can you think about any recent fictional portrayals of relationships of this kind? maybe rick and michonne from the walking dead? or abbie and ichabod from sleepy hollow? great, because those are the only two that i can think of off the top of my head.

okay, now how many of those relationships ended happily?

right.

as a next point, why do i highlight ‘dark-skinned’? because of colorism. you’ve probably seen that word thrown around a lot more in the past year. colorism is the discrimination within ethnic groups between those with lighter colored skin (and more eurocentric features and hair texture, i’m folding in featurism and texturism for ease) and those with darker skin.

the way this plays out in visual media is that it’s much more common to see lighter skinned black women in roles than darker skinned black women. when i was growing up, this was evident in both white-produced AND black-produced media. that’s so raven. sister sister. my wife and kids. the proud family, even. and to make it worse, it wasn’t uncommon for dark skinned black women in shows like these to be portrayed as unattractive, uncultured, or straight up bullies.

this isn’t me saying that we shouldn’t see light skinned or biracial black women in media. i want to emphasize that their life experiences and the pressures they have are different from mine. but i know that, because of colorism, i grew up thinking that the absence of Eurocentric features and a non Eurocentric body meant i was not beautiful and not worthy to be seen. and these truths can coexist. this is not an uncommon wound of colorism.

i say all this to say that for bucky barnes, a white man, to flirt with sarah wilson, a dark skinned black woman, is not the same as ‘just another het ship’. it is positive representation in its own right.

now, i’ve been in fandom for years. i’ve encountered this before. and i’ve encountered this enough to know that truthfully, these kind of ships make people truly uncomfortable and sometimes these people do a bad job of hiding it. what reason, i can’t say. if you ask me, i suspect part of the discomfort comes non-black people realizing they can’t project onto the black person in the ship in the same way they’re used to. i could be wrong. but i’ve been around enough to see a lot of pretzeling and back bending to discredit these sorts of relationships that don’t seem to come up for similar pairings if that same black woman was now white. and i’m seeing it again here, so i wanted to break down the most common takes i’ve either seen or i suspect i’ll see soon and break them down to explain why exactly you’ve been getting irritated replies and why they’re hurtful.

“bucky’s flirting with sarah to make sam jealous.” without thinking about it, this is actually a funny trope. sibling rivalry and all that. and you’re right, bucky doesn’t have to be attracted to sarah, and maybe you ship sambucky instead. but what if he can still find her attractive? this take subtly discredits the idea that bucky could find sarah attractive in her own right - there has to be some ulterior motive in order to explain it, yeah?

“bucky repeated sarah’s name like that because sarah was steve’s mom’s name.” we do know bucky knows steve’s mom’s name! but again, this feels like a lot of reaching to again, rework bucky’s potential attraction to sarah in a different context so it’s not actually genuine. in this case, he doesn’t like her, she just makes him think of his dead best friend’s mom, right?

“sarah’s so strong and badass, she doesn’t need a man! she deserves better.” okay. what does ‘deserving better’ actually mean? why can’t a potentially fulfilling relationship for sarah, a hardworking widow with two children, be deserving better? this also plays into the Strong Black Woman myth, in which black women are just So Strong and Self Sufficient and Powerful they don’t need anything! not even social aid! or protection! or love! or mental health support! let me be clear, this trope is not fun for us, it’s not a positive, it’s a burden that allows society to justify not protecting black women.

“this seems kind of forced/crowbarred in to me.” maybe, but also, in the episode, they really just said 'hi' to one another. now if sam had caught them making out on the boat two seconds after they met, that would have raised my eyebrows, but they just said 'hi'. some people are interpreting that as flirtatious - i'm one of them. but again, using words like 'crowbar' and 'force' or 'shove' make it seem like bucky's attraction to sarah is irrational.

now, here’s what i’m not saying. i’m not threatening you to ship bucky and sarah Or Else. you don't have to. i do. i think it’s fun! but that’s my choice. you don’t have to make that choice. you could be shipping someone else with either sarah or bucky and you don't want something to get in the way of that, i get it. i'm also not saying that sarah needs bucky's validation to be considered beautiful, far from it. what i’m saying is it’s worth it to evaluate the ways that implicit racism is affecting and influencing your responses to interracial relationships with black people, and especially black women in the media. because even if you might not see it, there are those of us who can. why can't the prospect of a white man flirting with a dark skinned black women be taken at face value? maybe sit with that.

sources for further reading the roots of colorism, or skin tone discrimination the walking dead's new power couple: 'richonne' and fandom racism fanlore breakdown of 'what shipping richonne taught me about racism' black women and the thin line between strong and angry post on black womanhood and feminism what is featurism? black hair and mental health: a tale of texturism fandom and the intersection of feminism and race "weak black women" by robin thede (for giggles) the take's 'the strong black woman, explained' (yet to watch but the take hasn't failed me yet)

[katiesharms]

if you let me down, let me down slow - ch. 1

fandom: top gun maverick, pairing: phoenix/hangman

summary: She still doesn’t know what to make of Hangman, after all this time, all these years. They’re not friends, really, not even in the loose way she and Rooster are friends and certainly not in the way she and her friends back home are. But they’re far more than acquaintances, than colleagues. In some ways, they’re closer than she is with some of her family. In others, they might as well be strangers.

read on ao3!

a/n: hi everyone who follows me for bridgerton, i promise it's coming! tgm has just...gripped me. i'm cross-posting this with my ao3, where chap 2 is already also posted. feel free to send me asks/prompts/questions/comments! title from 'what's it gonna be' by shura, a great song for this dynamic

Phoenix has a recurring dream that the brakes on her car don’t work. 

She’s not sure, exactly, when they started. She assumes it was sometime between getting her license at 16 and leaving for the Academy, but she can’t remember, can’t pin it down to a specific date. But the dream is always the same. She’s driving through a familiar section of her hometown, on the highway from the pizza place to her house. And she’s speeding, because she always speeds, but the light is red all of a sudden. So she slams on the brakes, as hard as she can, and it works, at first. The car slows down, drastically. But it doesn’t stop. She’s pressing on the brakes with all her strength and she can feel it, can feel the way they clench underneath her, can hear the screech of them against her tires. But it’s not enough. The car slows down, but it never stops, inching forward past the red light and into the intersection. 

She always wakes up before anything happens. Before she’s hit or hits something. 

This recurring dream is why she currently can’t sleep. It woke her up, shocking her with adrenaline. She awoke panting, clammy from sweat, momentarily confused. That’s dangerous, she knows. To be a loud waker, in her line of work. So she took a few calming breaths and surveyed her surroundings. Determined that she was in her temp housing the Navy put them in during this recall, that Halo was still snoring quietly below her. 

Natasha knew she should just try to go back to sleep, an early start the next day, but she couldn’t. Her body is full of momentum, of unrealized motion from her dream. So she roused herself as quietly as possible and made her way out of her room. 

It’s well past midnight, and leaving the base at this time draws more scrutiny than it’s worth, which is how she’s found herself in the common room, dismantling the old radio there. She’d always loved machines, and the technical aspect of flying has always come easier to her than to most others. When Mav threw the manual in the trash on their first day, she has to stop herself from physically wincing. It’s why she joined the Academy, at first. A cheap way to get an engineering degree. She just hadn’t expected to fall in love with flying. 

It’s nearing two in the morning, and with everyone expected at the 0800 lecture the next morning, Natasha’s expecting to spend the next hour or so in peace. The universe seems to have other plans. 

“Is there a reason you’re playing Inspector Gadget at 2 am?” 

She looks up and finds the last person she expected to see: Jake Seresin. She’d figured that he either spends his nights with a different girl every time or deep in his beauty sleep. She certainly didn’t think he’d be here, watching her fiddle with the ancient tech, an unreadable look on his face. 

“I think I can boost the signal.” It’s not an answer but he wasn’t really asking a question. Phoenix doesn’t think she has the bandwidth to deal with Hangman at the moment, and she’s quietly hoping that, if she doesn’t engage him like she usually does, he’ll just leave. 

Instead, he walks further into the room, dropping onto the couch across the table from her. He picks up one of the wires that she hasn’t reconnected yet and starts playing with it. She resists the urge to slap it out of his hand like he’s a kid. 

She still doesn’t know what to make of Hangman, after all this time, all these years. They’re not friends, really, not even in the loose way she and Rooster are friends and certainly not in the way she and her friends back home are. But they’re far more than acquaintances, than colleagues. In some ways, they’re closer than she is with some of her family. In others, they might as well be strangers. 

She’s known him for over ten years now. He’s maybe the person she’s known the longest, that she’s not related to. He was a year ahead of her on the Academy, and then was in flight training at the same time as her. And when she got to TOPGUN, he’d been the top pilot from the previous class and was there to help instruct. Then, they flew together, intermittently over the years. She’s actually seen him more often than she’s seen Rooster. 

She’d hated him, mostly. He was arrogant and dangerous, the worst combination. But over the years, their relationship has thawed more, became more understanding. When you’re in the top 1% of all aviators, there’s very few people who understand your life. And when you’re called back for a top-secret suicide mission, that number shrinks to something impossibly small. 

It’s also hard to hate him, surprisingly. As much of a dickhead as he is, he also cares, deep down. Once, in flight training, she did one too many barrel rolls trying to show off (sometimes she can admit that she’s just a little arrogant, too) and almost lost control of her plane. She stabilized quickly, but afterward, she had to rush to the bathroom to puke. He found her there and didn’t say anything, didn’t brag or lord it over her. Instead, he offered her a Gatorade (almost impossible to find on base) and some gum and told her that he was impressed. When they were stationed together in Japan, he was the only other person willing to go with her to the hole-in-the-wall food places, to try some stuff that might’ve still been living. When his date for his brother's wedding canceled last minute, Phoenix went with him, met the whole Seresin clan. 

He’d been different there, more reserved. She thinks she left that weekend understanding him better. No one in his family even called him Hangman, and sometimes, it’s like they forgot he was there. His family is so big, Hangman himself the youngest of 5, and she could see it. How he grew up fighting for space, finding a way to stand out. 

She doesn’t like to think about what he could’ve learned about her the one time he met the Traces, when they visited her for her 30th birthday at Lemoore. Like Jake, like everyone, she’s a bit different around the people who’ve known her for her whole life. 

So yeah, they’re close. But Hangman still sets her teeth on edge sometimes, especially after days like today, when he had to go and tell the whole class about Bradley’s dad. Like that’s any of their business. He seems to live to push other people's buttons, like he’s constantly chasing the high of flying while on the ground. 

“What, you don’t need tools?” His voice draws her attention back to him and she resists the urge to glare. 

“Nah, nimble fingers.” She doesn’t mention the small flathead screwdriver she found in one of the drawers, which, without it, would make the whole task impossible. On a base where everyone’s a least partly a mechanic, you can’t walk three feet without hitting a tool. 

“I’m sure.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and Phoenix rolls her eyes. There’s no heat in it, though. 

“Really, though, Trace,” he continues, “what are you doing awake?”

She shrugs, remaining focused on the task in front of her. When she holds out a hand, palm facing up, he understands implicitly what she’s asking and places the wire he was playing with into her outstretched hand. 

“Couldn’t sleep, weird dream. What are you doing up, missing important beauty sleep?”

Hangman’s silent for a bit too long and she can feel his eyes on her. 

“Also couldn't sleep,” he answers eventually, but she can tell he’s holding something back. Maybe that’s what he heard in her voice, too. 

“Anything, in particular, keeping you up?” he asks, and she really wishes he’d just leave her alone. 

“You mean besides the near-impossible mission that we’re all here training for and the fact that it’s basically a suicide mission?” The radio is almost done, so she decides to twist the knife, just for something to do. “I mean, for anyone lucky enough to be paired with you, it’s a certain suicide mission.”

“Ah, Phe, cmon. You know I'd never leave you behind. You’re the only one of those fuckers who can actually keep up with me.”

“Right, which is why you left me for dead against Maverick.” The radio’s done now, and she fiddles with the knobs experimentally. It lands on a classic country station and she lets the quiet sounds of Johnny Cash wash over the room. It sounds much better than before, all the static pretty much gone. 

“You still mad about that? Or is this cold shoulder treatment because I riled up your little boyfriend?”

She doesn’t even bother to correct him about Rooster, knowing it’s more a harmless joke than anything. Instead, she takes him in, truly. 

He looks tired, more tired than she would’ve expected based on his energy. The dark circles under his eyes are noticeable, and his skin looks a little ragged. There’s stubble along his jaw that she knows he'll shave tomorrow before class and he’s wearing pajamas, a white t-shirt, and some striped pants. She’s beginning to wonder, for the first time since he came in, why he’s really awake. 

“What you did was supremely shitty and you know it. Bringing up someone’s father when you don’t know the whole story is an asshole move, even by Bagman standards.”

His jaw clenched and she thinks she’s got him. She knows why he can’t sleep: guilt. 

“You know what I think?” He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I think you’re just upset Chicken Little didn’t tell you himself. That you had to find out with the rest of us.”

She sucks a breath in through her nose and tries to not react too strongly to that. Truthfully, Natasha is hurt that Rooster didn’t tell her about his dad earlier. That she didn’t know about Maverick and all this shit until a day into training. But she knows that Hangman is only bringing this up to deflect, to get under her skin. 

“He didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to know. He didn’t want any of us to know. I know that empathy’s a foreign concept in your world, but maybe spend a couple minutes thinking about how your actions affect other people.”

She’s ready to leave it at that, getting up and walking toward the door. But Hangman reaches out as she passes him, his hand closing around her forearm. It’s gentle enough that she could pull out of it if she really wanted to, but something about the look in his eyes gives her pause. She turns her body towards him, allowing him to keep his hand wrapped loosely right above her wrist. 

“I didn’t know that he and Maverick actually hate each other.” It’s not an admission of wrong, but it’s the closest she knows she’ll get out of Hangman. She can tell that he feels bad, even if he’ll never say so out loud. It’s a bit too late for her to act as his emotional interpreter, though. Or maybe it’s too early. 

“Jake,” she starts and she doesn’t miss the way his face softens at that, “this whole mission is about flying out of our minds, but it’s also about being a team. As hard as it is to believe, I know you’re not being a dick on purpose. Maybe work on trying not to be one on accident.”

She leaves at that, pulling away from him gently. As she walks back to her room, she realizes she never told him about her dream. 

Their 0800 meeting ends up being Maverick telling them to take the morning off and meet him at the beach for “special training” at 1300. She’s more than a little pissed that she could be in bed instead, and catches Hangman’s eyes across the aisle and sees he’s equally annoyed. 

When they’re dismissed, most of the group heads back to their rooms for some nap time, and a few others decide to get some gym time in. Phoenix is, despite everything, too awake to head back to sleep so she turns to Bob to see if he wants to hit the gym or something. 

“I was actually thinking of heading into town for breakfast, if you want.”

She’s never been a huge breakfast fan but she can spot Hangman walking towards them out of the corner of her eye, so she agrees easily and starts ushering them out. 

They end up at a breakfast burrito place that Bob found his first time at TOPGUN. When she bites into hers, she thanks her lucky stars for Southern California. 

“So, Bob,” she says around a bit of chorizo, “how did you get your callsign?” She’s been wondering since he told them, and she knows it’s not some shit like Baby on Board that Hangman was trying. 

“Oh, uh,” and her WSO flushes a deep red. Phoenix is immediately intrigued, widening her eyes in interest. “In flight school, I would take showers super early in the morning, so I was always alone. I would, uh, blast music and sing along, since there was no one around. 

“One morning, I thought I was alone but a few guys came in that I didn’t notice. And they heard me rap the entire of Bombs Over Baghdad by Outkast.”

“No fucking way.” Phoenix's jaw is practically on the ground, burrito abounded in front of her. 

“Yeah, and ya know, it fits with the whole bombs part and me being a WSO. And, well, my name being Robert. So it stuck. I don’t like telling people, though, because they always ask me to do it.”

Phoenix clamps her mouth shut; she was DEFINITELY going to ask him. As if he can read the expression on her face, Bob speaks again. 

“If you get us home in one piece, I’ll do it.”

“Oh, Bob, that’s a guarantee.” She’s positively gleeful now. 

“What about you?” He asks and then takes a sip of his Sprite. 

“Can I rap a seminal 90s anthem? No.” Well, she has a few bars of Gin and Juice under her belt, but she’s not admitting that now. 

“No, how’d you get your callsign?”

“Ah,” she tilts her head like she’s about to let him in on a big secret. “One night, we were all out getting drunk off our asses at some tiki bar.” Bob's eyes widen like he can tell where this is going. 

“Anyway, I was completely out of it, many, many, tequila shots in, and I may have…knocked over one of the lamps. Why they would use real fire at this bar, I don’t know, but it toppled over onto our table and lit the tablecloth on fire. Everyone was fine, and a staffer extinguished it pretty quickly. But the next morning, I was the first one to class, not a sign of a hangover. So, she who rises from the ashes was born.”

“That’s…impressive.” He looks like he means it, too, a real expression of awe on his face. 

Phoenix shrugs. She’s proud of it but likes to keep an air of humility around her about it. She’s also leaving out the key detail that it all almost went to shit. When the torch first hit the table and the fire caught, she’d been frozen in fear, watching the flames engulf the table. It was as if it was happening to someone else, a scene she was watching from outside her body. She didn’t back away, even as the heat of the flames began to lick up her face, down her arms. 

Then, suddenly, she was a few feet away, the cold night air washing over her body. When she looked up, it was Hangman, still just Jake then, who’d pulled her away, his arm still wrapped around her middle. He wasn’t looking at her, though, instead talking to the employee who’d come out with the fire extinguisher. When he walked into class the next morning, neither of them brought it up, just acknowledging each other with a look of mutual respect. That’s really when their relationship started to shift.

She and Bob finish their breakfast quickly after that, chatting idly about their families and the mission. After, she makes her way back to base and collapses for a few hours, the burrito making her sleepy enough for a nap. When she wakes up, Halo is back, spraying sunscreen on her arms and dressed in workout clothes. 

Base is a few miles from the beach, so they all have to split rides between the couple of them who have cars. Rooster takes his Bronco, but Payback claims the passenger seat, citing his height. So Phoenix crams into the back with Fanboy, Bob, and Halo. The rest of them are split between Jake’s pickup and Yale’s sedan. 

Dogfight football turns out to be the most fun Phoenix has had in months. It feels good to use her body for something silly, to use her strength to hurl a football down the beach or tackle Coyote to the ground rather than to just withstand G-force. The rest of the pilots feel it too, the elation of physical activity that’s just fun and not work, and soon, no one’s keeping score. Or, at least that’s what they say, but she can tell from the calculating look in his eyes that Hangman is still keeping track. She is too, but she’ll never admit it.

After they wind down, Maverick long gone, somewhere with the pretty barkeep from the Hard Deck, people start branching off. A bunch of them cram into Rooster’s Bronco to head off to some bar now that the Hard Deck is closed, so there goes Phoneix’s ride. A few more take Yale’s sedan back to base, and even if there was room, Phoenix isn’t in the mood to head back yet.

As cliche as it is, she loves the sea. It’s part of what keeps her coming back, re-upping her service, the lure of the ocean. Being locked on a carrier for months on end is most people’s least favorite part of the Navy but she doesn’t mind it. She finds it calming, looking out and seeing nothing but the water. So she lays down, closing her eyes and resting her head on the sand and listening to the waves lap the shore.

She feels the body settle next to her rather than hear it. Like all of them, training has made Hangman stealthy, quiet when he wants to be. She doesn’t say anything but she leans her body towards him slightly, an unspoken welcome.

“So who won?” she asks, even though she knows the answer.

“Thought we weren’t supposed to be keeping score. It was about team building.”

She snorts. “You and I both know that friendly competitions are still competitions.”

“Then I think you know the answer,” he says begrudgingly, and Phonenix almost beams at the quiet admission that it was, in fact, her team that won. Pretty handidly, too. 

She and Hangman have been competing for a while, everything from darts to career milestones. He was a year ahead of her in the Academy, but they got to flight training at the same time. Then he made TOPGUN before her, if only by a couple of months. She led her first mission a year before Hangman, but he got his first kill while she’s still waiting on hers.

It’s a quiet, private competition, different from the dick-measuring contest he has with Rooster. But it’s a competition all the same, born from years of forced proximity and often being the two most competent people in the room. When you want to be the best, you need to find the next best to push you. She and Hangman have been switching off as one and two for the better part of a decade.

“How are you getting home?” he asks from beside her and she can feel his breath on the side of her face, evidence of both his proximity and how he’s turned his head towards her. “Chickadee already left.”

“I was gonna take a cab or something. Maybe walk; it’s only a few miles.” She honestly hadn’t thought about it yet.

“That’s stupid; I’ll drive you.” His southern accent is starting to shine through, and the whole thing reminds her of chivalry.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll probably hang out here for a while more and I don’t want to hold you up.”

“I’ll wait.” 

There’s something in his tone that makes her turn towards him, and when she does, he’s looking away, shifting in the sand like he just admitted something he wishes he hadn’t. She narrows his eyes. Maybe he did.

“How long have you been waiting?” she asks carefully, and the tips of his ears turn pink. It’s silly enough that she wants to giggle.

“I was ready to go home the minute they all piled into that stupid Bronco to go get drinks. But I figured if he was your ride back, you might be stranded.”

“Trying to outrun your callsign, Hangman?” she teases, too thrown to do anything else.

“Hey, we’re on solid ground right now. Let’s check back in when we’re in the air.” She decides to leave it that, and shifts to sit up to watch the sun start to lower over the Pacific, hugging her arms around her legs. Hangman follows suit, leaning his shoulder against hers as he leans back.

As the silence stretches between the two of them, Phoenix thinks about her friendship with the two men. Her’s with Rooster is more obvious, more public. He’s kind to her outright, empathetic to her problems. But she doesn't hear from him for months at a time, he ditches her on the beach, he only told her about Maverick, the most important man in his life that’s still alive, because he was forced to.

And Jake annoys her on a good day and makes her feel murderous on a bad one. But he’s sitting here, watching the sunset, because he wants to make sure she gets home okay. He texted her on her birthday and on the anniversary of her father’s death. Is this what friendship is? Can they both be friendship, even if they look wildly different, and none of them look like her relationship with Halo or Payback or even Bob?

It’s all confusing, more so than it's ever been. The last time the three of them were in the same place for an extended period of time was at the tail-end of Bradley’s stint at Lemoore, when Jake was just starting. Natasha had stuck closely to Rooster during those couple of months, the animosity he felt towards Hangman sometimes a physical presence. She figured that if she had to pick a side, Rooster’s would always be the one she chose. He, as a baseline, was at least nice to her. Now, though, it’s all mixed up. And it's really not the time to be thinking about it.

“C’mon,” she says as she stands up and brushes the sand off the backs of her legs. The sun is halfway down, the sky a brilliant mix of pink and orange. “Let’s head back. If you stop at In-N-Out, your burger’s on me.”

“Don’t you want to wait for the sun to fully set?” Hangman asks, but he’s standing too, searching his pockets for his keys.

“Nah,” she turns towards where he parked. “Always leave on a high note, right?”