#i really like this trope okay. very fascinating.

[enmi-land]

ʬʬʬ 𝓨OUTUBE.COM ▹ NOW PLAYiNG . . .

ⓘ THE M iN MiLA STANDS FOR MEME MATERiAL

(˶ˆᗜˆ˵) FANMADE. #2023. ꗃ PREViEW A compilation of Mila’s fairly recent funny moments.

CLIP 1, WEVERSE LIVE

“Hello everyone, welcome to my special Weverse live.” Mila stands in front of the camera, which is set up in the kitchen of what appears to be a hotel room, wearing a fuzzy hoodie with bear ears and matching shorts. “‘Mila you’re so cute’?” she reads out while squinting. She shakes her head and waves her finger. “No, no—I am not cute. Today, I am a chef.”

Mila takes a few steps back and holds her arms out. “That’s right, everyone. Today, I’m in the kitchen because I’m going to be learning to cook braised stew for my future husband.” She smiles and throws her hands up in a cheering motion. “Yay!”

As Mila prepares her ingredients and utensils while reading the recipe on her phone, she answers comments from viewers, which all seem fascinated with her sudden decision to cook stew.

“I’m training,” Mila answers, “So I can make my future hubby lots of yummy food and be a good daughter-in-law.”

But five minutes later, and she doesn’t seem to be doing so well.

“Everyone, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Mila says as she transfers the pot of (burning) food to the counter. “If my husband loves me, it won’t matter if I can’t cook, right guys?” She smiles as she holds two thumbs up. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Which, yeah, but also—good food would still be really nice to have too.

CLIP 2, YOUTUBE SHORT

Mila decides to prank Heeseung while he’s in the studio filming a Weverse live at the company building. She watches his live and approaches the room he’s in, before turning the lights off in the hallway. She then makes a loud banging noise on the door and, upon seeing Heeseung about to stand up through his live feed, immediately starts to sprint off, recording the whole thing on her phone.

She giggles quietly as she runs, her camera’s focus moving erratically. But halfway through her escape, Mila tropes and ends up falling to the floor with a loud “AeGH!”

Thankfully, it isn’t live since she would worry Engenes (or be mocked for it by her boyfriends), so Mila simply laughs and rolls over. But at that moment the lights turn on, and Heeseung appears, causing Mila to jump back screaming, “YOU SCARED ME!”

“What are you doing?” Heeseung asks, both confused and concerned.

To this, Mila immediately jumps off the floor and runs off, hiding her face as if Heeseung didn’t already recognise her.

“Milana,” he calls out down the hall as she flees, “where are you going?”

She doesn’t turn back and instead yells, “It’s not me!” in a voice that totally sounds very much not like her, at all. (It’s totally her.)

CLIP 3, WEVERSE LIVE

“I like ass-thetics too,” Mila says in response to the comment. But Kiara ends up choking on her drink as she registers her pronunciation of the word, turning to Mila with a surprised expression.

“Wait—say that again,” the older female says.

Mila blinks. “Ass-thetics?”

Kiara very visibly smothers a laugh as she turns to the camera, before turning back to Mila. “You mean ‘aes-thetics’?”

“That’s what I said,” Mila replies, looking confused. “Ass-thetics.” 

Kiara bursts out laughing, and has to lean her head on the table to hide her face from the camera. Mila, on the other hand, turns back to the camera and flips her hair over her shoulder with a judgemental expression. “Anyway, like I was saying…” 

Mila reads out another comment, this time, more confidently than before. “‘I like Mila’s ass-thetic’,” it reads, causing Mila to respond with, “Thank you. I have a very nice ass…thetic.”

The pause between the two syllables of the word, paired with her pronunciation, causes Kiara to almost fall off her chair with laughter. Her shoulders shake and she has to hold on to Mila’s arm to stop her from leaning back too far. All the while, Mila simply ignores the older female and nods sagely at the camera.

“It’s true,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. “I have a nice ass—”

CLIP 4, BEHIND THE SCENES SKETCH

“How do we know where the center is?” Kiara asks the choreographer when they’re told to practice without a marker for their Sweet Venom choreo, which starts slightly off-centre.

To this Mila replies confidently, “the center is wherever I am.”

And then she has a sassy expression as she ticks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m the center.”

Period.

CLIP 5, WEVERSE LIVE

Mila is talking to the camera when she receives a text. As she picks her phone up, she gasps and announces to Engenes that Sunghoon and Jake are on their way. After a while of deliberation, she decided, “Hold on, I’ll lock the door.”

She giggles to herself as she leaves the frame for a bit and comes back to sit down, before putting a hand to her lips. “They won’t be able to get in.”

Just as Mila is about to continue with her live, there’s a loud sound coming from the door. Mila looks over and her jaw practically unhinges, before she’s covering her mouth with her hand.

“H-how did you get in?” Sunghoon and Jake approach her and she moves back, using the rolling wheels of the chair that she’s seated on. “I locked the door…”

“Why did you lock the door?” Sunghoon asks, and uses his foot to stop her from moving away any further. His expression isn’t visible since he’s not facing the camera, but his hands are in his pockets and his eyes are looking down at Mila.

Jake throws an arm around Mila’s chair and brings her back to the center of the camera frame as if nothing’s wrong, a smug smirk on his face as she addresses the Engenes watching their live. Sunghoon’s hand is seen resting on the back of her chair, but Engenes notices that he subtly reaches up or grip the back of her neck, before leaning down towards the camera.

Through it all, Mila is staring at the camera, expressing a wide range of emotions from “did that just happen?” to “I’m so screwed.” Engenes don’t know what happens after, but they do know her unadulterated look of complete bafflement will forever be funny to them.

The woman is just too stunned to speak.

CLIP 6, WEVERSE LIVE

“Mila, there’s something behind you,” someone says in the comments. Mila clicks her tongue and gives the camera her best look of disgusted judgement.

“Gurl!” she says, holding up a finger and doing a ‘no-no’ motion, “You’re not fooling anybody.”

She then goes back to reading comments, not noticing that there is in fact something behind her. It may not be a person, but something nonetheless.

Mila looks to the side for a second, but probably catches movement in her peripheral vision, because she’s whipping around on her chair to face the spider that’s been dangling from the roof for the past five minutes.

Mila immediately lets out the most unholy screech she’s ever managed, and flies backward in her chair, followed by a loud bang as she (presumably) falls to the floor.

“Gah, get it out!” The fans don’t see anything except the sight of Mila throwing random things into the air, even long after the spider is gone. She eventually resurfaces in front of the camera, eyes wide with panic. “Everyone, is it gone?”

Like, yes girl, it’s gone—gone to the afterlife.

CLIP 7, WEVERSE LIVE

“We met an Engene today!” Mila says excitedly to the screen, as she narrates the events of her day to viewers. “We were walking down the street together, and she came us to us like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m a huge fan,’ and I was like, ‘Awww thanks!’ And we took a picture together.”

“Right,” Riki says, nodding along.

“She was really pretty, too,” Mila adds.

At this point, no one knows if Riki even heard anything Mila just said, because he’s still staring at the camera, licking his lips as he nods—though it seems more like out of habit than for any real meaning. To the viewers at least.

Mila clearly doesn’t think the same because all of a sudden, her head turns to him at the speed of lightning. Riki looks at her and makes eye contact, before asking, “What?” 

Mila opens her mouth to say something, but then decides against it and just turns to the screen. This time, it’s clear she’s in a bad mood, because she doesn’t have a hint of a smile on her face. Instead, she puckers her lip and gives Riki a harsh side-eye, and then turning to take a sip of her drink… very loudly.

For the rest of the live, she continues to give telling side glances at Riki, as well as loudly sipping on her drink, which Engenes will never forget to edit using a “bombastic side-eye” audio in the background.

(Riki, please tell your girlfriend she’s pretty, too.) 

CLIP 8, EN-LOG

When Mila has to go through a haunted house with Kiara, she busies herself by dancing and signing random songs to hide just how scared she is.

“JUST WANT TEN MINUTES,” she sings loudly, before jumping when one of the actors jumps out before her. “OH LAWD—“ she hands her head down and scurries off, continuing to sing the lyrics of her song. “NAE GEOSO DONEUN SIGAN—!”

It gets to the point where she’s switching between songs and dancing free wrong choreography because all she wants to do is get out of this place. But of course, she ends up being scared so badly she screams and falls to the floor, before completely passing out.

Well, pretending to, anyway.

“Yah! Get up,” Kiara says, shaking her still body on the floor.

“Can’t I just stay here?” Mila asks. “I’m already dead anyway.”

Kiara almost says something like, “Think of your boyfriends!” But, fortunately for Mila, she doesn’t.

CLIP 9, PRESS VIDEO

Mila is working along the streets when a reporter approaches her, asking her to pose for some photos.

“Uh, I don’t know, I’m a bit busy,” Mila replies nonchalantly while wearing a pair of sunglasses. However, as soon as she says this, she’s striking a not-so-subtle model-like pose in the middle of the street. A second later, she’s walking again and confines talking: “I might not have time to take photos.”

Yet, she, immediately after saying this, spins and stands next to a bouquet of flowers on display in front of a florist shop on the side of the street, doing at least three different poses to show both it and the name of the florist off like the professional voluntary brand ambassador that she is.The photographer doesn’t say anything, though, and simply takes the photos with quick shutters of the camera.

“Like I said,” she says as she continues walking as if nothing happened, “these days are very busy.”

She nods to herself and struts off with an exaggerated catwalk, stopping every meter or so to strike a random and quite frankly ridiculous pose. But what can she say? It’s difficult multitasking.

CLIP 10, FANMEET

Mila is listening intently to a fan as she spills all the tea, before her expression turns into one of progressive disgust the longer the fan goes on about this particular subject. Mila promptly puts her hand on the fan’s face, before looking her deeply in the eyes.

“Unnie, listen to me,” she says, as the fan stutters on their words. “He’s just a man—a really trashy one, too. You can do better. Just leave him.”

CLIP 11, SEND-OFF EVENT

“Mila, can you sign my photocard?” Mila is happy to oblige the request, until she looks at the photocard in question. She is absolutely flabbergasted at the confession and stares at the Engene in front of her with absolute betrayal. The fan has the decency to feel bad, and starts to apologise. “I’m sorry! I just—hahahaha!”

Mila holds the photocard to the fan’s camera to show off the photo, which is of Mila when she was younger. A very unflattering photo of her, if you ask Mila, since her hair is a mess, her clothes are a mish-mash of colours that don’t go well together, and there’s drool on the corner of her mouth. 

“Seriously?” she asks the fan, her hand on her hip. “Of all the pictures—you know what, I’m just going to take this.”

The fan gasps. “NAURRRR!”

“Fine, fine, give it here,” and then Mila proceeds to pull a pen from her bra, an action which has the fan screaming her lungs out, causing Mila to once again look at her with the same look of disbelief from before. “Girl, are you okay?”

CLIP 12, WEVERSE LIVE

“‘Jay sounds like a father,’” Mila reads out the comment after Jay scolds some Engenes for staying up too late. “Right? He acts like one, too.” She turns to him and says. “Daddy.”

Mila doesn’t realise the weirdness of her statement until after she states it out loud, and burst out laughing when Jay turns his head at breakneck speed. Mila covers her mouth and leans against the desk to hide her expression, but her shoulders start to shake from her laughter.

When she looks up again, her face has both a look of embarrassment and amusement at the same time, as Jay continues to stare at her with a hard gaze. As soon as she locks eyes with him, though, her smile drops. She looks between the camera and him, and realising that he isn’t as amused, presses her lips into a thin line and awkwardly fiddles with her hands.

“Sorry,” she says. And when Jay finally looks away from her and changes the topic, her eyes look around the room awkwardly. “So, anyway—!”

CLIP 13, FANMEET

“Mila, why did you cut your hair?”

Mila gasps at the question, as if remembering something, and covers her mouth. “You won’t believe it!”

She leans closer to the Engene in front of her as she recounts her tale, which starts during a night out with her friends. “We were walking around somewhere, but I really don’t remember where because I was drunk—anyway! I got home and was knocked out as soon as I went to lie on my bed. But when I woke up in the morning and went to brush my hair, I noticed I couldn’t run my hand through my hair! A piece of gum got stuck there!”

The Engene gasps. “So what happened?”

“I tried to get it out myself by cutting it, but I didn’t realise how hard it would be to cut gum out of my hair, so I ended up just cutting all my hair off… I had to get it straightened out by a hairdresser and it ended up really short like it is now.” Mila nods solemnly, before cracking a smile. “My hairstylist cried, though—it was kind of funny.”

CLIP 14, EN-O’CLOCK

It’s during the episode when there playing billiards. Mila has to sit on the side of the pool table to get a clearer shot, and is aiming the cue stick when she suddenly flips her hair over her shoulder. She then leans down exaggeratedly, revealing the slope of her neck to the camera.

Jake does a low whistle of appreciation, and the others laugh.

“Ooh, sexy!” Kiara cheers, clapping her hands.

“What even?” Jungwon says with a smile. “Excuse me, this is a family-friendly show!”

“Oh, sorry sorry!” Mila sits straight again and takes her shot. But immediately after, she leans against the pool table and poses saucily for the camera again. “Paint me like one of your French girls.”

“What even?” Sunoo asks, covering his mouth as he watches Mila’s antics. “What is she doing?”

Nobody really knows anymore—not even Mila herself.

© ENMI-LAND, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT COPY, TRANSLATE, REPOST.

taglist⠀( OPEN ! ) ⦂ @em1ejiee @menichoi @dracoslovergirl @rosas-in-the-garden @blossominghunnie @lovelypham @cornenhapovs @nee-issaire @jwnstars @tommina @queenriki7 @onlyuyu

[suffarustuffaru]

Otto is literally so fucking crazy like you wouldn't expect it first when you first read about him

like

he's a silly lil smart fella that gets bullied but then arc 8 happens and he's fucking crazy

HAHA very very Very true. im too much of a fan of like. either the kind but Horribly Repressed characters or like. the ones that are like. unassuming but Scary AF. esp if theres crazed devotion involved... my choice of characters is far too predictable LMAO but no yeah i absolutely love otto for the reasons you stated yeah. it was wild bc i predicted a lot of the arc 8 stuff before it really blew up around ch24!! i was like dipping my toes into researching otto side content when arc 7 was still ongoing and then i kept noticing little details right? like "this man is mentally ill lmao and a little crazy about subaru but its not That bad rn..." and then i wrote a fic where otto goes feral with a pal of mine (you know who you are) in like 2022 i think? AND THEN ARC 8 CAME IN AND HALF THE SHIT WE WROTE IN THAT FIC CAME TRUE.. LMAO T^T i remember after arc 8 i had to like reevaulate my perception of otto for sure. it was like "OH SHIT IM NOT EVEN EXTREME E N O U G H WHEN I TRY TO WRITE HIM IN FIC. HES CRAZY" (impressed). i always like the unhinged characters </3

anyway yeah thats my impromptu backstory behind me brainwashing myself into becoming a huge otto fan which was then propelled by not much english content :<<<< i love how fucking crazy he is. what a guy. hes very very deceptively complicated. the dude that katy perry sings about in her hit song "hot n cold" is otto suwen. i know this bc she told me so.

[calisources]

𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒.

All sentences on this memes are taken from different sources of literature, television and media about enemies to lovers trope and enemies and lovers trope with some angst thrown into the mix. Change pronouns, names and locations as you see fit.

Does it hurt? Loving someone who can’t love you back?

Break his crown, break his throne, rip his monarchy apart.

What are we doing?

You are capable of making my blood boil like no one else, and yet I feel a magnetic pull I cannot explain.

It’s not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand

Like whether you should kiss me or punch me.

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.

You make me feel things that shouldn’t exist. 

Whatever this is, we should stop. I have been. . .compromised.

There’s a fine line between love and hate, and maybe we crossed it a long time ago.

I never thought I could detest someone so much, until the day I realized I was falling in love with you.

We may fight like enemies, but deep down, we both know that our hearts beat for each other.

You infuriate me, challenge me, drive me crazy, but damn it, at the end of the day, I can’t resist you.

It’s that tension that makes this so irresistible.

You’re like an addiction I can’t break free from, even if I wanted to.

You’re the thorn in my side, the fire in my veins, and I can’t help but crave your presence in my life.

Loving you feels like a dangerous game.

You infuriate me, yet you’re the only one who truly understands me.

You scare me to my core.

There’s no denying the fire that burns between us.

If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.

I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other.

Tell me you don’t feel this between us. Look at me and don’t look away while saying it.

You claim me your enemy and yet, let me crawl into your bed every night.

You are the bane of my existence, and the object of all my desires.

Do you even know all the ways a lady can be seduced? The things I could teach you.

I did not asked for this. To be plagued by these feelings.

I tried to deny it for so long, but I don’t want to anymore.

Follow me around. Look at me as if you find me fascinating. Touch me, and say nice things to me. And then, you pull away as if you did nothing at all.

There’s no need for these games.

Well, you know that old saying, “Keep your friends close and make out with your enemies.

You read me wrong.  I wasn't trying to lead you on.

Is that all I am to you? A resource to be used in your scheme?

Stolas, don't act like what we have is anything more than you wanting me to fuck you, okay? You make that really clear all the time. But I just- I can't do it tonight, okay?

 You'll lay a man out for implying I'm a whore, but you keep calling me one to my face.

So, the only man that can have you is one who's already tried to kill you. That's logic.

It's like a little death. Several, in fact.

Oh Max, if you really hated Kyle you couldn't have slept with him.

So go on... kiss me... kill me... Do something.

I've often wondered what this moment would be like. Me... you tied up. 

Once this is over, we should really have angry sex.

Hate and love are not so very different things. Both are focused upon another. Both are intense. Both are passionate.

It just means you'd rather be with someone you hate... than be with me.

She's difficult and irritating, and she tries to hit me all the time.

We have a deal, what are you so afraid of?

Only I can hurt you this way. Only I can kiss you like this. 

You dragged me down and now I can’t quit you. 

This is the last time we do this.

Last night was also the last time. And yet, you keep coming back.

Better my mouth than my knife, right?

[elexuscal]

i think it's interesting which tropes and concepts catch on more in different fandoms.

like a big deciding factor is just the genre of the original story. a piece of historical fiction gets a bunch of fanfics based on historical fiction tropes. a superhero movie series gets a bunch of buck-wild superhero tropes.

as a clear example of this trend, the Murderbot Diaries is a pastiche, deconstruction, and reconstruction of a lot of science fiction across a lot of genres, but it's specifically a love letter to adventure-of-the-week style serials like Star Trek and Star Gate. so while there are plenty of more low key fanfics with POV swaps, missing scenes, realistic explorations of post-canon, etc, there's also a LOT of playing around with things like "body swaps", "mind control virus", "time travel", "mirror universes", etc. They're normal, they're mundane.

Meanwhile I bring a selection of those tropes to the Temeraire series, which aside from placing some dragons in the Napoleonic wars, is relatively grounded historical fiction, and they stick out like a sore thumb.

But okay. That's straightforward. Popular fanfic tropes mirror the genre of the original work.

But there are exceptions. it's the exceptions that fascinate me.

there's that corollary of 'fandom adds anything missing from the original work'. that's why you'll end up with deep explorations of incredibly shallow characters; of very sexually explicit works for PG cartoons; dark fic like Fallout: Equestria in MLP:Friendship is Magic.

you've also got the stock AUs. you know, the ones that show up in pretty much any fandom, regardless of the original genre. Coffeshop AU. Daemon AU. Magical School/Hogwarts AU. Vampire AU. Librarian AU. the fun of these is specifically that they are different from the text, so that makes sense.

but funnier than either of those, i think, is:

'One writer or group of writer friends wrote a particularly buck wild premise but they did it REALLY well and other people started doing their own takes on it so now this fandom inexplicably has an outsized number of fics with this incredibly specific premise'.

[nekropsii]

“Bad Representation” is actually a topic I’m really passionate about and interested in, I could talk about it for ages. The way people handle “Bad Representation” as a concept is genuinely fascinating, too, so this is both an analytical fascination and an anthropological one.

For clarity, I thoroughly do believe there is such thing as “Bad Representation”, especially when it comes to expressions of pure bigotry from the person doing the representing… But I personally think everyone’s bar for what counts as “Bad Representation” is set a little bit too strictly, has no real account for capitalistic and/or historical restrictions - For Example: Language and common understanding of queer identity being far different in the 1950’s than it is now, and Studio Meddling - and also, interestingly, tends to take no account for the opinion of those getting “represented”, or the idea of individual satisfaction.

There’s been many, many times where a character is objectively pretty bad representation by modern standards, but discussion surrounding it takes no account for the concept of Resonance. Sometimes a character is not “Good Representation” as an objective concept, but they are relatable, likable, and quite fun to watch. I’ve seen quite a few instances of people talking down to the mentally ill or disabled for enjoying a Slasher in part because of their disorder/disability, or queer people for enjoying Hays Code villains. Sometimes a character isn’t written kindly, or isn’t written well, but they really resonate with you… And that counts for something.

One of my favorite characters - one who has helped me come to terms with my cPTSD and OSDD - is a representation of PTSD + DID that is objectively not very good. He’s basically a Vietnam War veteran, who gets an Alter in the middle of the war that is basically a self defensive Murder Mode. It’s literally the PTSD from The War and Evil Alter cliche, but there’s just some aspects that really hit for me, like the fact that he’s considered the nicest, kindest person in the cast, and the alter is portrayed clearly as being in constant self defense mode, thinking he’s still in the middle of the war, and also being quite silly. There’s several details I view as being done pretty well, a whole arc about him grappling with his mental health in a way I find quite fascinating and visceral, and I enjoy him quite a lot! But many would agree that he’s “Bad Representation” because of the War PTSD and Evil Alter tropes. Even I agree that those things kinda suck, but that’s not stopping the fact that this character has meant a lot to me, and that I really would not be the same level of okay with myself if I hadn’t discovered this character.

I’ve caught flack for this. I’ve seen many other people latch onto a character who is not executed very well because they find them personally relatable, or are using them to figure some things out about themselves, and also catch flack for it because the character is not “Good Representation” for a group as a whole. No account for Resonance, no account for Individual Experience. It’s a fascinating lack of a sense of nuance.

I think people have forgotten - or perhaps do not realize - that criticizing a base concept, or base execution of a concept, is different from criticizing individual experience. It’s like the difference between criticizing the makeup industry vs. criticizing someone’s personal choice to wear makeup. It is good to point out when something is written or executed poorly, but you do not know the reason why that one individual disabled person enjoys a poorly written character who shares their disability. I would even say that they probably know more than you do that it’s written badly, because they have lived that character’s disability and you likely have not. I think you should maybe step off if a blind person really likes Terezi or something. You do not need to patronize them by telling them that she isn’t “Good Representation” because her quirk isn’t screenreader friendly, and that her blindness has a magical workaround. I think they already know that these are facts about her that are true. They like her for a reason, and that reason is Resonance.

[grison-in-space]

yeah all right I'm at s5e2 of this dumb firefighters show and look I'm sorry I haven't seen anything this intensely but unacknowledgedly gay without feeling the need to either no homo itself or engage with a very special episode subplot since, like... Due South. Or The Sentinel. It keeps using all the same tropes you see between the main love interests in an ensemble piece, just centered on two people who happen to be guys.

I'm weirdly convinced that this is a deliberate choice to probe the genre and play with the writing opportunities afforded by taking these really standard and familiar procedural tropes and storylines, and then mixing the genders willy nilly. After all, this show is... not subtle about making a habit of that throughout: it loooooooves to dig through familiar procedural subplots with gendered expectations and subversions. This is, in fact, the show that kicks its first arc off by exploring the possibilities for character decisions entailed by a loving, supportive marriage divorcing because one partner wants to come out as gay. It's a show that gives all its most traditionally masculine subplots to Athena, the most femme woman on the main cast! It really wouldn't be out of character for the show to move in that direction.

I'm not actually invested in canon Buck/Eddie per se— I've never needed that from my fandom time — but I'm fascinated by the storytelling opportunities afforded to it, and I'm keenly aware that writers rooms almost definitely include people in them now who have spent a significant time in fandom as participants, and who have thought deeply about the ways that gender can shape stories (particularly though the venue of always-a-gender! AUs). I'm also.... hm, how shall I put this...

That relationship is already textually queer. Wills have been modified involving custody and co-parenting agreements, okay, we are firmly in the territory of "immediate family" commitment levels. They could both be 1000% straight and cis and this would still be a relationship that queers normative expectations, particularly on men and especially on young men. I don't actually need it to do anything else to love it.

So I'm not coming from a place of wanting to see anything in particular in that respect, but I gotta say: it really feels to me that this show is playing with the ability to have its cake and eat it too in terms of the "will they/won't they" dynamic of the "main couple" in a television series: you can be as dramatic and iddy as you want, really dial up those emotional stakes, but at the same time your audience isn't huffing and whining that everything is so predictable because just by existing between two men you're subverting audience expectations.

It's really interesting. I'm enjoying myself a lot.

[swashbucklery]

Out of curiosity why do you ship sabine and shin ?

Okay anon so I am trying to figure out how to approach this ask because I know that this fandom has a real problem with bad-faith actors looking to troll Wolfwren shippers and I do not have the patience to deal with that, but also I do want to talk about them because they're lovely.

So. If you are asking because you're a troll, the answer is that I'm a big mean lesbian who likes ruining Star Wars and gets off on making innocent fanboys cry, #sorrynotsorry, it's part of my Terrible Queer Ruining Agenda and I am going to be doing it every second Tuesday until society as you know it has crumbled into gay dust.

If you're not a troll: because they hit this very particular combination of Trope Buttons that makes me ever so happy, anon!

Because it's about - like, there are ships that I love because they are a type of loving partnership that entrances me, where I see myself or see the type of love that speaks to my soul and want to enjoy the process of rolling around in it like a cat in nip. Then there are ships that I love because I'm attached to a particular character where like - this blorbo deserves the world and that includes a healing love, a warm love, a love that cultivates a space for them to rest after the harsh world around them has bruised them ever so.

THEN there are ships where - the dynamic fascinates me and I want to dig deeper into it. Where it's not about cultivating love as much as it is taking what's on screen to its gayest and most extreme possible endpoint, and that's where Sabine/Shin really gets me.

It's about the deep obsession of nemeses and the way that can feel inherently queer. It's about the ways that they are both mirrors and opposites. The way that Sabine carries so much anger and self-loathing and shame and guilt in her little heart and constantly pretends that she doesn't. The way that limits her throughout the series is riveting to me.

It's the idea of Shin, who in may ways is a more successful Jedi but in other ways is a sad, lonely little weirdo who has no community except for this weird old man and pretends that she's fine with it but can't be.

The way that they are both successes and failures in ways that mirror each other, the way that they orbit each other as nemeses and fight constantly but in their darkest moments have a weird little glimmer of - not love, but the beginnings of compassion.

And I have seen lots of writers and artists who look at that glimmer and see it as the beginning of a 200k slowburn story where they bicker and argue and slowly tenderize each other into being people who can be vulnerable, who learn to soften their prickly edges to fit around each other. And that's wonderful, and that's a beautiful way to ship Sabine & Shin.

For me, it's more about digging into that weird, fucked up little place of what if they didn't. What if they stayed fucked up and didn't soften but those orbits got closer and closer together. What if it wasn't toweringly romantic what if the orbit was the path of a comet colliding with a moon. What if that was somehow what each of them needed even though they both hated needing it. What does it feel like to confront the fact that sometimes our desires and what we want our desires to be don't align? What would it be like to envelop that in the complex ten-dimensional web of denial that both of them embody; desiring but pretending not to desire, indulging but pretending not to indulge. How far could that go before it hit a crisis point? What would that crisis point be?

There are so many stories there and that's fascinating and a thing that I find fun to explore in fiction, anon. If that's not for you, that's totally alright but there might be other dimensions that I described above where they ping with your interests more.

Or, they might just not be for you, and that's also okay.

[kiragecko]

How I Enjoy Fanfic:

The authour knows more canon than me - Is THAT what happened? Oh, cool! I feel like I should be taking notes. Yeah, you're writing them perfectly. Oh, I've missed getting to read about that detail. Hey, have those two interacted in canon? They ... they must have! You're too good to have made them do something that dumb! I'M SO HAPPY TO KNOW THAT!

The authour knows as much canon as me - YES! Nobody ever writes about that obscure thing but it is my FAVOURITE. You have them interacting Correctlyᵀᴹ, 1000 points to you! All the tension is leaving me, I feel so safe and at home. I must follow you immediately.

The authour knows a differently continuity than me - you have very interesting OCs! Lots of worldbuilding happe - HEY! I've seen that character name! This is [videogame/TV Show/cartoon/Alternate Universe Continuity], ISN'T IT. OK. This is okay. Let me remember everything I've picked up about that. Yeah, I'm ready. Now I get bonus Mystery Content as I try to figure out what's fanfic, what's canon to this continuity, and what's going to match the version I know!

The authour knows a lot of fanon - Oh oh oh! You're doing the trope I love! Comfort food time! Yes, play with THAT old favourite, I think your version will be fun! Huh, messing with the timeline like it's made of lego blocks? As long as everyone doesn't decide this is canon, now, I think it's fun! Neat, I like that little twist. Yeah, you're really digging into the emotion of this, aren't you? I approve!

The authour is new to the fandom - What ... I see how you would have gotten that impression from the wiki!!! Oh, that is FASCINATING. You're right, if those things had happened together the results would be explosive! I would ... not have written them that way, but you are spawning SO MANY PLOT IDEAS for me. Your creativity is blowing me away. I'm falling back in love with this franchise!

The authour is just passing through - nope, don't read cookie-cutter fi ... FINE. This is the one OOC plotline that grabs me every time, and yeah, I'm a little ashamed, and yeah, it could be ANYONE in these roles, but I still like it. Just ... phew, no phonetic accents.¹ Good, you're ignoring, instead of butchering the other characters. Now, does the 'asshole' to 'heart of gold' ratio match my taste? Yes? Okay, lets have some trashy fun!

-

¹ Only the X-Men are allowed phonetic accents. No one else is stupid enough about them.

[solradguy]

has there ever been anything from daisuke on why bridget was amab/an otokonoko to begin with? i feel like i remember reading that he thought it would be a fun trope (interesting, since bridget basically spawned the crossdressing boy trope) but i don’t know if anything else has been said on why he chose that trope.

(btw, this isn’t me disrespecting bridget’s transness! i fully see her as a girl, i’m just curious about this specific issue.)

Funnily enough, the Artworks of GGX 2004 interview I recently found talks about this. Translation by fairymisao:

(27)---The character Bridget, introduced in Guilty Gear XX, looks like a girl but is actually a boy, right? What was your intention in deciding on creating this kind of character? Ishiwatari: The creation of Bridget as a boy happened at the very last second; during development I was drawing him as purely a girl. It's just that when there is a need to give a worldly backbone (to the game), in order for me to try to not forget each character, and in order to revive the character, I give them my very heart. As a result, the creation of Bridget as actually a boy instead of a girl was because I thought he could become my alter ego. Well, if there was a need for the reverse—a girl that looks like a boy—that would be okay too, but it doesn't look pretty game-wise. It's also somewhat calculated (laughs).

I don't have the original text for that second to last line so I don't know what Daisuke actually said/was trying to say about a female character that looks like a male character. It sounds like he swapped Bridget's assigned gender right at the end because he wanted to project his personality through her though haha Daisuke's personal relationship with gender fascinates me. I hope some day he does an interview where he talks about it more in depth. There's also that one comment he made about Testament's gender:

Back then [1998-2002], Guilty Gear creator Daisuke Ishiwatari told fans in a newsletter interview [from 2002] that Testament wasn't really male or female. "They're androgynous," he said. "In fact, they've transcended human existence. Just like me." - via The Gamer

What did he mean... The Gamer sourced the original interview and the word Daisuke used for "androgynous" there was actually 両性具有 (ryouseiguyuu; androgynous), not 無性 (musei; agender), which is the word used to describe Testament's gender in Japanese now.

IIRC there's a comment he said about Bridget's design starting because he wanted to make a cute character to balance out all the gruff battle veterans that made up a hefty chunk of the cast at the time but I cannot for the life of me remember where I read that at. It must've been in one of the interviews; I couldn't find it in documents I translated/edited.

I said before that a lot of the older comments from Daisuke about Bridget and Testament's identities felt like he was trying his best to describe "new" genders that he may have been a little familiar with through media he liked but that he just didn't know the right terminology yet. He always seems very genuine and sincere about wanting to explore gender even though some of it hasn't aged the best in hindsight...

[ad-hawkeye]

tot is definitely trying harder because they have more competition in the mobile cn otome scene (esp deepspace lol)but i will not complain it as long as they don’t force us to relive the artem midfest

about the high school au card general thoughts from weibo are holy shit artem why are you making everyone hard pity or almost hard pity smh. the card is good and it does a good job at giving you a cute innocent school romance/crush some posts giving praise to both artem and rosa’s lines + writer/writing team as well

joining the war on love and deepspace on the side of love and deepspace solely to ensure that tot feels pressured to actually write a decent story and to also care about character consistency again

it's interesting from a market perspective. love and deepspace has a really strong grip on those who like "spicy" content, especially because of its 3d models. that's what it's marketed as, and that's what it really excels at. i know of several other cn otome games with better borderline nsfw content too, ones that lean into it fully and a lot more openly than tot. i also know of several other cn otome games that are completely outdoing tot in terms of writing and art - lovebrush chronicles for example.

tot is fascinating bc it originally found a niche as a whodunit mystery game with otome elements and interesting characters. it also had a boost being a mihoyo made game.

but then they noticed people liked the steamier content, so they abandoned their original niche to chase after fanservice at the expense of their storytelling and characters. and now that other games out there are doing the whole borderline nsfw thing much better than they are (because let's be real, tot sacrificed their writing in the name of extremely mediocre softcore porn foreplay and tropes that other games do better), it feels like they're trying to bring back the original writing and are trying to think outside of the box in terms of art and new official art styles.

i wonder where tot will go from here, or if this will work?

god okay, additional side rant incoming. but before i do - that's fantastic news about the high school au cards.. thank you!!

did you know lovebrush had the mls have their first kisses with mc at different times? ayn's happened on white day, cael's happened in an ssr card story following white day, and the remaining boys had theirs happen during their azure island routes. and you know what? it made sense for their characters!

ayn is very blunt and straight forward. cael had several other card stories dedicated to building up their relationship. alkaid is too afraid of upsetting mc and would not make the first move. clarence is still getting used to being in a romantic relationship. lars is a hopeless romantic who seems preoccupied with waiting for the "right moment".

and it just. keeps reminding me of tot's second anniversary. where the writers planned to have luke propose to rosa because of his whole "i'm dying in three years" thing which... makes sense! that makes sense! but why on earth would you make the other three guys propose when it doesn't make sense for them?? i just. ugh.

sometimes i wonder if it's too late for tot to fix their writing.

and the funny thing! lbc has a wedding event in the cn server! but you want to know something even funnier?? it's not an actual wedding! it's a photoshoot event! none of them are engaged!

tot could have gone so many routes and they took the ones with the worst writing and it's mind boggling. you CAN do fanservice with good writing!

[kreideroses]

albedo hcs

i don't normally post on tumblr but it's his birthday and i love him sm 😭 this is just how i perceive him and maybe i'm biased because i'm a simp LOL

🕯️tags: gn!reader, established relationship (reader and albedo are dating), implied thoughts of parenthood on albedo's part, this is really self indulgent, a fuck ton of fluff LOL

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

- albedo is a busy man, so it's a real privelege whenever he makes time in his hectic schedule for the both of you.

- albedo likes listening to your heartbeat when cuddling. he's not human so things like being able to hear your heartbeats, feeling the rising of your chest as you breathe fascinates him

- speaking of cuddling, he gets clingy and very touchy but only to people he trusts.

- albedo loves to hold your hand when he's writing paperwork. he links his arm with yours when you guys walk around mondstadt. very clingy especially around you

- draws you A LOT. this is a common trope in fics of him but i love it okay. he loves studying every detail about you. he works hard to make sure that his depictions of you capture your likeness.

- he's also very open about the drawing thing. like, you saw him sketching you out in his sketchbook one time and when he saw you were flattered he just went "i have entire sketchbooks filled with drawings of you, you know?" and didn't elaborate further until you pressed him on about it. absolutely shameless smh

- he's not really a petnames guy, his reasoning being he loves saying your name, it just rolls of the tongue perfectly for him, he doesn't really see a need for petnames. he does however make an exception for the petname "dear"

- when he holds your hand, sometimes he squeezes it three times out of nowhere. it's his way of saying "i love you" quietly. ever since you learned of this habit from him, he always waits expectantly for you to return those three hand squeezes

- he's the embodiment of "actions speak louder than words". he's still quite shy with saying he loves you, so he tries to make up for it by doing small things such as remembering something you like and getting you something related to your interest, clearing his schedule to spend time with you, or constantly holding or touching you.

- you, albedo, and klee have occassional "playdates" (which is mostly just you two trying to make sure klee doesnt blow up the knights' headquarters)

- during one of your "playdates" with klee, she asked to play house with the both of you and assigned you two to be her parents. albedo could Not meet your eyes for the rest of the day after your roles had been given

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

sorry if this is messy i never post T-T

if this is ooc i apologize to my king albedo it's been a while since i've done my daily albedo wiki page reading :(

[shesmore-shoebill]

maybe this is a CRAZY disaster!amanda fic but what if she knows angela likes her like amanda can so clearly tell that angela feels more for her than others in the way she treats amanda. so amanda is soooooo careful as to not break angela’s heart because the last thing she wants to do is hurt angela. if you look at the merch promo clip, angela’s sooooo attached to amanda’s, but amanda’s eyes are open like she’s worried or thinking about something. so amanda’s mind is going “fuck i don’t wanna hurt angela” but doesn’t realize that she already deep down has fallen for angela. and that’s why she doesn’t wanna see angela hurt and cares about angela specifically soooo much. amanda just hasn’t realized the last part of her also being in love with angela.

if that made any sense…

oh now THAT'S a thought.

as always, eternal disclaimer that I am treating this all as an exercise in fiction. This is about RPF imaginings and not meant to reflect onto the actual people in any way, but playing around in a fictional universe, with fictional characters. Even with photo/video sources, they're being treated as inspiration only. This is not in any way intended as speculation on the actual scenarios or the people involved.

Okay, that said, the specific rpf interpretation of Amanda worrying/caring so deeply about Angela that it actively impedes her ability to recognize/realize/process her own feelings is VERY fun. Delicious. Its like an extended twist on the "prioritizing the wellbeing of someone else above your own" trope, but without the undercurrent of "because you dont value yourself enough" trope that i can find hit or miss depending on how it's executed. I love it as like, Amanda's concern and care for Angela is just so overpowering that it sets up kind of a blindspot, and nestled right in the center of that blindspot? Amanda's own feelings towards Angela.

this just sets up such fun characterization possibility for Amanda!!! aah. Maybe there IS an element of, Amanda flinching away from the strength of her feelings and redirecting it into "worrying about Angela". But mostly it is genuine care and concern for Angela, that underlines everything else.

And like Amanda gets Angela smiling at her like she hung the sun and Amanda gets Angela hugging her like she could disappear, and the swell of emotion and affection is matched and maybe outpaced by that gut dropping thought of. oh god what if i lose this. what if i break this. what if i fuck this up. Looking at Angela as something so wonderful, and caring so deeply about her that the joy is outweighed by the worry of losing it or not protecting it sufficiently. Of failing Angela.

Fascinating to think about a characterization of Amanda really feeling the peak of that love and affection and emotion and her instinctive reaction to be "oh god, how could i lose this, how could i go wrong." Enough to have that overtake her whole brain in a way that even blots out her own realization of her own feelings. Really putting the Disaster in disaster Amanda huh.

Hmmm. I think I could see this if there were something specific that triggered the strength of that protective/worried response- maybe a recent bad breakup or something. And so Amanda's gut reaction is worry, is concern, is- i need to make sure Angela's wellbring is top priority, and it skews her judgement away from even her own feelings. (Maybe even loops back around to being detrimental to Angela, because of how much her judgement gets skewed...)

Oh, and this doesn't even get into the fun around what Angela's feelings throughout this are. Is this Angela aware of her own feelings? Is she trying to test the waters and actually being hurt by Amanda's reluctance? Is this Angela oblivious to her own feelings? Is this Angela aware of both her own AND Amands's feelings? So much possibility....

Id need to contemplate on this a little further but- fascinating. Fascinating. Def can run the risk of being a little more OOC depending on how it might be executed, but I think there's a way to pull it off. And as always, this is RPF, technically everything is ooc 😎 but i think there's a way to pull off the characterization so its internally consistent and rewarding.... delicious concept, ty.

[detectiveneve]

I think there’s a definite problem though with the amount of art and fics being HEAVILY Astarion with cis women. That reeks of his queerness being erased. There should be a healthy balance of Astarion with different partners, but the “default” in the fandom is always him with a woman. As a gay man it’s very frustrating.

Okay so. in however much any of this matters. 1. Shoving this under a cut for people who are tired of seeing the discourse (I am too, I tend to scroll really really fast past it.) 2. I know the fandom discourse machine looooves super firm and snarky opinion jabs summed up in 169 words or less but I am literally incapable of not elaborating so. sorry YOU asked. since it’s also probably relevant, Im coming at this with the Mega Dyke with the fuck around and find out perspective irt my life experiences and queerness. I don’t generally care about niche queer internet discourse and I don’t generally care about fandom discourse, so you can tell how bored I am at work rn that I’m deep diving into this. tldr yeah you’re not wrong I agree that astarion’s queerness is erased in certain spaces but that has nothing to do with being attracted to women. my funny hot take is once again that astarion is a he/him evil femme to me so. let’s MOVE.

I received the second one within the first few minutes of the first, and I’m goingggg to proceed on good faith and with the idea that I think we’re all in agreement for the most part, because I think we are. But I’m going to address the most obvious thing that. I don’t really…. think is necessarily the point in this. first of all, I empathize that it suuuucks to not see as many works made for your main pairing of choice (there’s generally a deficit for literally everyone BUT astarion to boot too.) however ultimately fanworks are exactly that: fanworks, and they’re made For Free and posted by a Fan Author who has done this As A Hobby, “a problem nobody is addressing” in this context is……. you are one google doc and keyboard away from writing what you want to see in the world. or, I don’t know. encourage + comment + follow up on fic authors that write what you enjoy. fic is not paid content and the fic authors in bg3 are writing for themselves and what they put out, that they wrote for FREE, is up to them. I once again empathize with not seeing as much of a specific thing as you would like, and I definitely empathize with seeing a popularization of specific characterization that makes you want to scream, cry, throw up, etc. which brings me to what I can actually comment on and critique here. (general note: if you proceed to misread me on the basis of “people can do what they want!!” I assure you. you can do whatever you want forever. I do not care. I am not mad. I am minding my business 90% of the time. do I like domstarion? no. but it is NOT my concern nor my judgement.)

“That reeks of his queerness being erased. There should be a healthy balance of Astarion with different partners, but the “default” in the fandom is always him with a woman.” <- so! now that we have “it’s all for free man idk what you want me to say here” out of the way. we CAN critique something real in this that I do agree with. the sort of…. honestly kind of fascinating (derogatory) trends of what I’ll call Straightifying astarion for lack of a better word.

this brings me to the point I kind of offhandedly made in the previous post, about how there IS nuance to be said on astarion’s queerness getting erased. I do actually agree with you that in some spheres of the bg3 fandom, his queerness has been heavily sanitized and he’s become something of a placeholder for Sexy Vampire Boyfriend romance tropes. he’s mostly there to be a stand-in for a sexy dom vampire man; MANY of his complex character traits that have literally Nothing to do with romance have been basically entirely removed to serve a specific idealized idea of him that suit the scene. it’s frustrating! I find it frustrating. I also agree that within this specific Brand of Mischaracterized Astarion, he’s been so……….. reduced down to this that his more overt queerness is basically entirely removed. however, the issue is not that he’s with a woman in this? the issue is that the writer is not incorporating a sort of.. overarching queer lens, for lack of a better term, to the characterization they’ve got going on. you can write whatever you want forever, but it’s not written in a vacuum, I agree.

Since these are all popular straight romance tropes, he falls directly into the pit of Sexy Man (straight) very quickly, and his attraction toward others (let alone, good god, his complex relationship to sex, sexuality, desire? good fucking luck finding something thoughtful in there about that) tends to fall by the wayside as a result. It is what you would expect but it’s not without room for critique in what I think we’re aligned on; which is seeing astarion’s queerness erased is maddeninggg. And it is EXTREMELY frustrating to see if you’re someone like me, or possibly yourself, who’s into 1. really analyzing characterization and 2. really into exploring queer dynamics in writing + lit + media many different formats. THIS—the sanitization, the removal of astarion’s queerness—this is what is irksome as a queer reader.

however. the issue I’m seeing is that ^^^^^ this brand of mischaracterization is 1. being conflated with simply that he’s with women, and 2. the frustration of having less content (understandable) is turning into a very WEIRD dialogue in which the extreme of “well actually he wouldn’t even want to fuck women!!” is the stance to take (very weird) (kind of misogynistic) (kind of also reeks of continuing to talk about women as sex objects that astarion would not or would want to fuck) (astarion himself doesn’t even want to fuck for about 90% of his romance so maybe we should talk about that too) — rather than that it would be nice if his queerness would be addressed more openly and with more nuance and clarity than it currently is in That Particular Sphere Of Astarion Characterization. and, of course, the idea that it would be nice if he was portrayed with other kinds of partners! which I agree with and equally appreciate.

but there is no default. literally, there’s no default. what you’re seeing is what people are making of their own tavs, and maybe you would like to see more of another kind, but it doesn’t hold up as an actual fandom critique. what holds up is when we dive into how people write him; how do they write his personality, what traits are being exaggerated and what traits are being ignored; IS his queerness remembered within the text at all? and beyond that, how is that queerness treated when it is written? because I’ve seen the other extreme in which it’s The Homophobic Gay Stereotypes That Maybe We All Agreed At One Point Were Equally Offensive To Exaggerate To The Point Of Horror. half the discussion I see AROUND his queerness amounts to “omg he’s such a slutty flamboyant little fag” but in a quirky haha internet way. very “fruity is a nice alternative to saying queer!” “calling a gay guy fruity in the real world will get you punched out.” vibes in here sometimes and it is EQUALLY weird.

anyways. Astarion’s a multifaceted character which means the first thing everyone did was pick one or two traits to exaggerate and cling to and these color the entire reading of his character rather than taking in the whole. i agree that means his queerness got put to the wayside in some formats of him, and that’s deeply unfortunate + very frustrating. but fanfic is free, so I’m not with you that there’s a Problem That Needs Addressing so much as that’s what people are creating, and you should add to what you want to see in the world.

I’m not going to go on a tangent about how “oh let m/f be a thing!!” because I ALSO agree literally no one needs to be told “m/f is okay to do ❤️” we live in the real world here. and it’s really mindboggling how in some iterations he’s been turned into Straightstarion rather than his CANON QUEERNESS being applicable in every format of every relationship dynamic he could ever possibly be in. However. However. the answer to that is not? acting like the baseline attraction to women is the problem. if the way you’re talking about attraction to women feels rooted in upset about not relating to it and feeling like you’re forced to either relate to it or simply not engage, I do Get It, but at the risk of opening up an entirely different can of worms that needs an entirely different essay to address, gay men are not immune to misogyny and if the language used while talking about women is also objectifying or belittling women to some extent or acting as though attraction to women makes his queerness lesser. newsflash. that is still misogyny (and biphobia). it is not about defending straightness here, it’s entirely that reducing women down to sex objects even in the conversations about not seeing women sexually is alive and well (and repulsive), and that’s what I mean when I say I can hear the “lol I don’t fuck WOMEN that’s DISGUSTING” behind some of the other side of the conversation here. also this is an entirely separate essay but queerness will almost never exist in an easily consumable binary and trying to type him by his character traits is also. kind of weird. just as a thing.

[destinationtoast]

Toastystats: F/F, F/M, and M/M on AO3

I'm starting to post my deep dive stats that started out as me looking into "F/F vs. M/M on AO3" -- it has turned out to be really useful and interesting to include F/M in most of these analyses (I'd like to also look more at other categories eventually; see further discussion about nonbinary characters). Here are some of the topics I'll be covering: Length, Ratings & Smut, Dark content, Tags & tropes, Growth rate, and Case studies of parallel-ish ships of different genders.

You can read the intro & fanwork length chapter now, and more will be posted soon! You can also listen to me discuss a bunch of the data on the latest @fansplaining episode, Femstats February.

Below are some excerpts of the fanwork length chapter -- but please click through to AO3 for elaboration/clarification/corrections, as well as for descriptions of the images.

---

(Terminology: "F/F-focused" means I filtered out every other relationship category else except "Gen," so as to remove ambiguity, and similar for F/M- and M/M-focused.)

A few observations:

These breakdowns are a lot more similar than I’d expected. There are differences, but they’re not overwhelming. It’s not like F/F is mostly just drabbles.

F/F does have the highest proportion of short fic, followed by F/M, and then M/M...

But the long fic end of the scale isn’t what I expected at all! M/M is the least likely to have works over 50K words (this graph doesn't actually show the decimal points due to lack of space, but M/M only has 2.0% of its works above 50K words, while F/F has 2.4% over 50K). And F/M is the most likely to have [works over 50K words]!

....Next, I wanted to look at reader response to long fic.... First, let's look at the word count breakdown for the works with the most kudos...:

We can see that, probably unsurprisingly, many of the works that receive the most kudos are long -- but I was surprised how strong that bias is. Nearly half of these popular works in the F/F and F/M categories are over 50K+ words (I -- or someone else -- should follow up by further subdividing the "over 50K" category, but I haven't done so yet; for now I only used the same word count buckets that I used previously.). Surprising to me is that M/M has a lot more shorter works that get a lot of kudos; only around 1/3 of the M/M works with the most kudos have over 50K words. I'd be curious to hear any theories about why this is.

....Okay, so lots of popular fic is long -- not too surprising. But now let's flip things around. instead of looking at how long popular fic is, let's look at how much reader feedback long fic gets, and see if any category clearly gets the most or least feedback.

For this, I took a very specific slide of [long fic]: works 100K words to 101K words long. I did that because I wanted to compare long fic of the same length across the different categories. But these specific numbers are therefore not accurate for most definitions of "long fic," and should not be taken too seriously -- hence the asterisks on the following slides (Edit to clarify: I did also look at a couple other long slices to check that these general patterns seem to hold... but I haven't confirmed it for all long fic). I did this just to try to get a rough sense of the ranking or the categories. Let's take a look:

Wow! I was surprised to see that F/F averages the most kudos! And that F/M gets the least of all these types of feedback by quite a lot!

Is this because readers don't seek out F/M as much as the other works? Or is it because F/M readers don't tend to leave as much feedback after they read something? To answer this, we need to look at the number of hits (views) that each category gets:

Fascinating! F/F long fic gets the largest number of hits on average. (Maybe this is because F/F works are the rarest, so more people seeking out long F/F fic view each fanwork, on average, as compared to the other categories?) And we can see that F/M long fic gets the fewest hits per fanwork. (Again, maybe this is because there are a lot of long F/M fics out there, so there's less scarcity, and fewer people view each one?)

Okay, so to follow up on the question of whether F/M readers are less likely to leave feedback after viewing a work -- we can compare rates of feedback. For each work I calculated kudos/hits (I actually looked at kudos per 1000 hits to make the numbers easier to think about), and then I took the median of all those numbers to find average feedback rate. I did the same for comments and bookmarks:

The main takeaway here is that the reader feedback rates are remarkably similar. (Again, this is based on one narrow slice of long fic, so I wouldn't take the small differences here seriously.) More people view F/F long fic on average, and fewer people view F/M long fic -- but the rate at which they leave feedback appears to be roughly the same across all categories.

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Read more on AO3 (including analyses of drabbles and one shots)

[incorrect-koh-posts]

You said "which is a tragedy in its own right as far as my tastes are concerned, but I digress", but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. I hope it's okay to ask, but what kind of fics/pairings would you like/prefer to see emerge from the fandom?

Of course it's okay to ask, dear anon!

Personally? I'd love to see more variety. One of the chief reasons why I enjoy reading fan fiction is finding new things I like - perhaps some pairing I hadn't considered before, some batshit premise or crossover that turns out to be actually brilliant, or maybe a cool genfic that explores previously unseen sides of a character or character dynamic that people don't write about very often. I'm not really the kind of person who seeks out fic based on specific tropes. Once I've read a story with a certain trope in a fandom, it's pretty unlikely that I'll go and read another one with a very similar premise, unless I really enjoy the author's writing.

So what I'd be excited about seeing in the AO3 tag would honestly just be: something new. For instance, a sapphic Sibylla/OC fic would be such a fascinating read (as would be anything at all that explores Sibylla's character a bit more). Or a Saladin-centric fic - sign me the hell up. I'd adore finding something for Godfrey or Imad, and we all know a new Tiberias fic would have me foaming at the mouth. I'd also love an interesting and/or wacky AU (and I'd write one myself if I had the time). Make it Jane Austen and let Baldwin have a gentleman suitor, while Sibylla elopes Lydia-Bennett style with Guy, and Godfrey and Raymond grump about in the Navy. Write a daemon AU (as in His Dark Materials) in the canonical universe. Or throw them all into the 21st century and let Reynald send Saladin threatening messages via fax.

I know the KoH fandom is much too small to engender the sort of variety I'd ideally like to see, and it's only reasonable for writers to sort of double down upon the fic premises and tropes that have done well in terms of hits and comments in the past and write more of the stuff the majority enjoys. As far as taste goes, I'm aware I'm the complete outlier here, and I really don't mean to antagonise anybody with this post or insult their writing or reading preferences. I'm glad your fics are doing well, folks, I truly am - it's only that I'm very likely not the target audience for them. Sometimes I just wish I weren't the only freak in the circus, lol.

(The post anon is referring to is this one btw.)

[cellarspider]

1/30: Descending into the depths of madness, and also Prometheus

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We begin with the dissection of a movie destined to be picked over by eagles for all eternity, Prometheus.

I want to preface this by saying that this is not intended as a general critique of the movie. I’m going to be explaining how this movie became a font of madness for me specifically, in a way that friends of mine have found amusing. More below the fold.

I sat down in a theater in 2012, having seen all of the main Alien movies, having vague-to-specific awareness of the ancillary stuff–comics, games, et cetera–and a fascination with H.R. Giger’s work, and the way others had adapted his style to fit the series. I had seen the first trailer for Prometheus, and the “David 8” promotional video. 

It’s worth giving a moment for these videos, actually, because whoever cut it did a phenomenal job. Trailers are there to sell a movie, sure, but they’re also setting expectations, and this one set them high.

It is a fantastic trailer, for a movie that does not entirely happen. I saw this and it said to me “this might have a similar tone to Alien”. Which is the message it is intending to send: Alien opens with a title card revealed in a very similar manner, and features howling klaxons at its climax, and panicked screaming at unresponsive technology. The trailer is deliberately invoking these scenes:

Flashing light warning for the following video, though the sounds themselves are effective enough:

Combine with the further context that Ridley Scott directed Alien and was back to direct Prometheus? This was a must-see, as far as I was concerned. I like slow, measured horror films that work on atmosphere, building something darkly beautiful in the process: My top three at the time were Hellraiser, Sunshine, and Alien. Annihilation has since joined that list, and at the time, Prometheus looked like it might as well.

Particularly with the video that introduced David.

I’ve always loved android characters, and this series already included some excellent ones. Ian Holm’s plays the perfect merciless corporate man as Ash, and his reveal as an android is deeply unnerving. Lance Henriksen’s performance as Bishop in Aliens is iconic for a reason. In this fake advert, Michael Fassbender nails a combination of corporate blandness, carefully tuned non-threatening behavior, and absolutely dead-eyed emotional insincerity. At the same time, he’s presented as a new being, a fully capable individual with no personal history or chance to define himself. That can be really interesting when played properly. I wanted to see more of David.

That was where I was at, when the movie started.

The first scenes in a movie are important for setting audience expectations. A viewer could have never seen anything about the movie before sitting down to watch it. For those who do already know some things–the publicity around a movie, its place in a broader series, or broader things like genre tropes–these people also have to be led to an understanding of what the movie is going to be.

The first scenes are also vital for establishing suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief isn’t turning off your brain, it’s allowing yourself to entertain certain ideas as fact, and then following those preconditions through the logic presented in the movie. If scene-setting fails–or the audience goes in unwilling to follow in the first place–then you’re in trouble.

And I was very willing to follow this movie at the start. I’m a geneticist. I love science fiction, even though I know how wrong most works in the genre are about biology. If a work says “this thing is possible”, I’m usually able to say “okay, I’ll allow it”. This first scene successfully managed to do that for me.

This is in part thanks to the fact that Iceland is a gorgeous place.

(Source)

Sweeping shots of nothing but landscape so stark that much of it looks like abstract art. I would, and have, watched movies entirely composed of this. Yes, I am the sort of person who enjoys Koyaanisqatsi.

Despite the contemplative subject matter, cuts in Prometheus feel off, and in a deliberate way. In the clip of Koyaanisqatsi above, the film follows the music. In Prometheus, they’re consistently off, coming at moments that feel like they’re halfway through a breath. Usually we speak of dissonance in music, but in this case, we have dissonance in motion. I didn’t notice this in the theater at the time. It’s subtle, but there. 

The opening shows us a humanoid alien engage in what appears to be a deliberate, religiously-tinged self-sacrifice, drinking a black substance that causes them to disintegrate. More dissonance in motion, going from deliberate action and the slow departure of a ship, to sudden and seemingly agonizing death. The view zooms in to the microscopic, where DNA is shown disintegrating and then reforming into new strands. We see what appears to be embryonic division: the beginning of new life.

(Sources: https://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/Prometheus/, https://www.cap-that.com/prometheus/ ) 

The movie has asked for you to believe this much: humanoid aliens exist, they are technologically advanced, and they have a substance that can break down and remake biological material.

This also provided the first minor hurdle for me, as a then geneticist-in-training.

I’m very used to abstracted illustrations of DNA. All most people need to know is that it’s a double-helix (two spring shapes) held together by connecting bits made of four different, paired “bases”. Like A and B in the figure below, you usually don’t need all the information in C:

(Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-mcc-microbiology/chapter/structure-and-function-of-dna/) 

And in some ways, the movie gives a very decent illustration! They preserved much of the geometry, evident in the “major groove” and “minor groove” shapes noted in Figure A: the usual configuration of DNA in our cells is a slightly wonky spiral, which they appear to almost nail here. They also appear to have tried to render this DNA in a visual style coherent with H. R. Giger’s work.

They have done so by turning it into a pale bacon ladder, or possibly some very strange pasta.

This was slightly humorous to me, but it’s hard to render molecular-level stuff in a way that’s intelligible to an audience, so I was willing to go with it. This also gave an extra bit of information: this alien species has DNA.

Now, this is a given for multicellular life on Earth, but it’s not a given in the speculative world of astrobiology. Life requires some sort of way to encode instructions for how to build its component parts, but DNA is not the only way that could be done.

Overall, I like this scene. It, and one that comes relatively soon after, are stand-out scenes in terms of setting mood, matching the expectations from the trailer.

Unfortunately, they set the mood for a different movie than what actually follows.

And we meet the first stumbling blocks in the next scene, and have our first brush with some of the movie’s blunt-force approach to themes and exposition.

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