#idk it’s another ‘everything is pointless and I’m unhappy’ post

[whimsyprinx]

going to be sad again rq and say that I have gotten closer to giving up on believing that I am loved or like worthy of love

[anxtheroliveinthehouse]

Fanfic trope tier list

Here we freaking go. I’d like to hear your takes as well.

credit to @alittledizzy​ for linking this in their original post found here.

I’m gonna talk about the ones I like the most (S tier) and the ones I liked the least (D tier).

S Tier

Fix it fic: there’s always something that I dislike about the cannon so being able to have the freedom to change it is nice. I like to read fic that also spin their own version of what they would have liked to happen.

Historical AU: idk why but I’m such a softie for historical stuff and it’s probably because the authors put a lot of effort and work into researching their time period and it really shows.

Mutual pining: I like it when the pairing characters are dorks in love, what can I say?

Friends to lovers: it’s a classic and I like the already established relationship dynamic that’s not romantic whatsoever. It provides reasoning to how and why the characters fall in love and why they might not be able to confess. There’s a lot you can do with it.

 D Tier

Time loop: time loops are repetitious by nature and I hate repetition. It’s so frustrating to know what’s going to happen next in a story and time loops take it to a whole new level. I usually get bored with it or it drives me crazy. Sometimes it can be thrilling but most of the time it’s an excuse to cause drama where it wouldn’t be normally.

Love triangle: it’s annoying, and in fanfic is often unnecessary because you can tell who the character is going to end up with. Not to mention it just takes the characters’ maturity level down ten levels because there’s usually no communication, no willingness to do the “right” thing, or it’s purely selfish on some of the characters behalf. I don’t want to be stuck reading about a selfish character that I’m supposed to be rooting for and that’s that. All I got to say is why can’t we get rid of this notion that there can only be two people in a relationship. Like poly people exist???

Arranged marriage: I’m not here for the non-con aspects. There are stories in which it can turn into a good thing or provide a set up for an enemies to lovers deal. However, it’s usually problematic. My ‘fix it’ for this is when the characters end up as friends/decide to break free from the forces that pressured them to begin with.

Bang or die: the reasoning into why the characters must bang in order to survive can be ridiculous at times. Other times it’s just non-con in a different package and I really hate that. It’s perfectly fine if you like this but it’s just not for me. 

Body swap: are the characters horny for themselves? I can see how this can be funny and get the characters closer to one another (in more ways than one). However, it can get really weird if the relationship unfolds and becomes romantic while the characters are still swapped.

Miscommunication: I get frustrated really easily and when characters purposely say things that cause problems, I lose my interest in the fic very quickly. Not to mention that miscommunication is a hallmark of unhealthy relationships and often fics who use this trope for angst never resolve the tension. I don’t like loose ends or unresolved tension (in all ways) so this just isn’t for me.

Unhappy ending: again I don’t like loose ends or unresolved tension. I also don’t like purposely souring my mood and leaving it down in the dumps. I like angst but it can often be super hard to read when it seems futile or pointless to have the characters put time and effort into something only for everything to fall apart.

Major character death: same as number seven but like a thousand times worse. I don’t want to cry thank you very much.

Baby fic: *throws up in my mouth* babies? *chokes on vomit* jk babies and kids are alright but not my thing since personally I don’t find the idea of having a family like that appealing so I don’t read fic like that

Pregnancy fic: same as number nine. Though, I may have a fear of getting pregnant, like having something moving inside you like . . . ew is the character growing a xenomorph inside them? Yeah, no, I’d rather not read about it.

[coshayphinelove]

just some thinky thoughts after i wrote a tag essay that got way bigger than the tags.  feel free to read if you want, but forewarning... i have more questions after writing than before so..

so before i start anything i’d like to clarify that i love ob.  most of my issues with it are bc i got my hopes too high and held the creators to the standards i hold myself, which is not fair in art.  also, i’m only talking about the ob team and the characters, not the fans.  don’t get all in a twist, this is just me... thinkin.

so ep 5 was great.  2013 me would have loved it.  but 2017 me is like.. hard into communication and explicitly labelled representation.  and cophine is neither of those things.  like... i can understand that there’s not enough time to linger on stuff the way i would want to.  i get it.  but like... there was enough time to linger on alison.  for five seasons.  the first time she ever did anything main plot-moving was this season, she was always almost completely seperate.  she got flashbacks out the wazoo to explain her entire life story.  we met her mom.  her monitor is redeemed.  

i just am very unhappy with the doling of screen time.  like... it’s not even about shipping anymore.  it’s about plot holes and i am genuinely confused about the story at this point.  like delphine and donnie are easily comparable characters.  donnie monitored alison for close to a decade.  lied to her for a decade.  once he found out about the clones started doing things without alison’s knowledge or consent.  he is forgiven.  almost immediately.  for everything. 

delphine lasted as a monitor about... a month?  she was so bad at lying that cosima caught her.  she immediately came clean.  then in the flashback begged cosima to believe that she would always protect her.  and yet?  the conflict surrounding delphine for the entire show is ~is she good or bad???~.  and at every turn she is keeping that promise while making and keeping other promises.  and everybody, including her love interest keeps throwing her mistakes in her face.

donnie gets side plots and new dynamics to explore.  delphine has to have all of her characterization as a subset of cosima’s screen time.  donnie gets a seat at the bubbles table, delphine does not.  she has to leave and get shot (a whole different rant of equal length).

on another note, alison and cosima are also easily comparable characters: side characters used to provide info for sarah to react to.  cosima’s safety is always at risk, she’s been boiled down to her love interest for several plots, and she doesn’t ever get to acknowledge her Very Obvious PTSD and abandonment issues.  alison has low stakes conflict (up until this season, but that’s already over), she is never boiled down to donnie’s wife, and we got to watch her parse through her issues in s2 in great detail.  

like even the flashbacks.  like alison got half her episode told in flashbacks and it was gorgeous.  i by no means wanted that when there’s so much going on but i thought we would get at least a little more.  

we met alison’s parent.  we hear about her in a natural and very not forced way.  cosima gets one very long line about her family very late in the game in a clunky and almost pointless way.  (like... why was it in there?  what purpose did it serve?)

i think the problem is subtext.  everybody is always talking about the subtext.  but the problem is there are several issues that the writer’s address almost explicitly.  like alison’s drinking problem.  we learned all about that and we cheered for her when she went to rehab and we we sad when she relapsed. with cosima it’s.... two instances of smash cuts of bad memories and her reacting to them.  ......*gestures with flailing arms* ISN’T THAT ALSO IMPORTANT???  

like.  i’m going to keep talking about delphine but.. that’s just where my head is rn..

but from s1 to s2 her arc was learning what her role would be in clone club and then how to do that.  and she made some big huge strides there.  and then she comes back for s3 and it’s gone.  she’s just.. not doing that anymore?  like they took the time to film her telling cosima immediately after she messed up that she had, in fact, messed up.  and then, what, a few days later she Can’t Tell Cosima Anything Anymore?  and don’t get on me about screen time here.  it could’ve been like.. 2 more lines.  “it’s not safe, they’ll hurt you.”  “b-but delphine??” “i’m sorry.”  LIKE?  they just wanted the drama of cosima not knowing.   which i can see wanting, but it didn’t end up working.  because then you had scenes showing delphine doing things for clone club.  so then... it was just.... confusing?  and imo drawn out for too long.  

but even to this day I, a delphine stan, am still kind of iffy.  she literally made an ultimatum (promise me, everyone.  you will never make an ultimatum in your romantic/sexual/platonic relationships.  that’s a manipulation tactic that a lot of abusers use.  slippery slope please don’t do it.)(i’m also not saying that delphine is an abuser or that you’re an abuser but just.. it’s a thing to be careful of.)  

“accept our toxic relationship as is or leave.”

IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT OKAY??? like i get the sentiment behind it.  like she was saying, ‘hey cosima i know i’ve been bad but like you don’t have to stay if you don’t want.  i’ll stop kissing you and everything.’  but then....  have her say that?  everything delphine ever says to cosima is wrapped in 3 levels of subtext.  or alternatively, cut the kissies in half and let them have a few lines about a new promise or something.  idk if that’s just her being extra or if that’s just.... the writers.

bc the creators... bless them.. they’re trying.  but when it comes down to it they were predominantly straight men.  and they did add tatiana as an executive producer which is like.. the head idea guy who tell the writers what to write.  which was awesome!  but like.. she’s straight (as far as we know).  so like.. i really don’t want to pull the sexuality card here.  but i think i am.  

bc it’s one thing if you don’t give romantic, mental health, or communication plot lines very much time.  it’s another if you give a straight couple plenty and a wlw couple scraps.  it’s one thing if the straight couple gets to delve into things multiple times and the wlw couple gets ten seconds before the plot needs to keep going.

i get that the cosima-centric ep was very plot heavy, stuff was happening, i get it.  but like... if you cared about giving good rep as much as you claim you do wouldn’t you... re-structure so that they have more than 10 seconds?  wouldn’t you sacrifice some of that oh so dearly beloved body horror to let them just... talk for a hot sec?  or let them be in the same room?

i know it’s hard work.  the longest original work i’ve ever finished is a 30 page script.  and even then it’s a lot of ‘is this dialogue working?’  ‘would that character say that?’ ‘that’s a plot hole’  ‘wait where is he going again?’  i get that there’s a lot to keep track of so like... knowing who cosima’s parents are wasn’t on a post-it note on the beat board.  but i just...  one of the questions i always ask myself is ‘is this healthy?’  so like... i always make sure that if the dynamic isn’t then i either address it somewhere else or change it so it is.

i don’t think they were asking themselves that.

bc straight guys are used to power balances in their relationships.  they’re used to ultimatums.  whether it’s in their life or in fiction, that’s what they see.  and they’re socialized to see that as normal.  so when they’re made aware that the media they’re making is feminist/progressive, these guys seemed like they did research and tried to make it more so.  but... they missed the mark.  bc straight men will never know what it’s like to be a wlw or a woman.  that’s just how it works.

and then.. like... they were so hyperaware of the fans and what they wanted.  and i think the thing they understood the best was that they wanted cophine kisses.  bc a lot of ppl wanted that and like...ppl who are cophine critical sometimes also want cophine kisses.  so that’s the loudest thing they heard/saw. and instead of doing the emotional work and the plot work they thought every scene had to have kisses.

and they also knew that they could always fill in the gaps at panels.  WHICH.  not canon if you say it at a panel y’all.  they knew the fans would spread their patches all over the place.  so instead of doing the work and explicitly taking a stand they just.. let people ask them questions so they knew what people were wondering about and then...... answered.

i don’t think they did any of this maliciously but like.. the whole drama surrounding sarah’s sexuality, the great debate of whether it was problematic or not.  like... knowing now that they didn’t intend it to come off as her lashing out and having a mental breakdown helps, but.... that’s still what it looked like at first glance.  and if i’m just a DVR viewer who doesn’t meticulously stalk everything ob online, i wouldn’t know that.  and they do that with delphine’s intentions a lot.  they do it with sexuality a lot.  they do it with gender a lot.  and it’s like.... it’s representation but... label-less to the masses.  like my dad was in the room when sarah was kissing a girl and he made some snide comment about it.  and it’s like... they were just too aware of fans that they gave them what they wanted (sarah kissing a girl/cophine kisses) without thinking about if was the healthy thing for the moment.  they didn’t think about the ramifications.

and it’s just so frustrating.  bc i love this show, i do.  there’s so much to talk about and so many themes and allegories and cool stuff.  but they just... do a lot of stuff that..... really grinds my gears.  like this isn’t even a comprehensive list.

[dreadhaus-literature]

{A/N} Back to Basics.

Somewhere along the way last year, I lost my ambition and desire to be an author.

Which is ironic, considering 2019 was the year that I aspired to write more and be more productive and as I covered in my end of 2019 posts, for a while I did that. But it fell apart, and rather than fight, as I have been for a few years now, to keep things moving, I gave up. I lost the will to fight to keep things and I just let it all go.

I can tell I’ve let things go because I don’t fantasize about things like I used to. I think that’s partly why things have been so hard for me to deal with lately. I’ve let FL go and I’m no longer losing myself in fantasy so it’s just reality all the time, now.

Some things I still have. I went back to fandoms and have just been using those to cope in small bursts, when things get really bad--or when my mind wanders and I’m daydreaming, because that’s kind of...all the time, for me. I’m by myself a lot, and I’m single, so I’ve got to supplement that with fictional people. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid, and it’s still serving me. I don’t think I’ll ever lose that, even if everything else around me were to happen to fall apart. That’s just who I am as a person and to be honest I wouldn’t want to change or lose that.

But some things are different. I’ve let go of some aspects of FL and the Family, and a lot of that wasn’t my conscious choice. Looking back, I just did it without thinking, because 2019 was a year of ups and downs and when things failed, again, I was too tired to pick them back up or try. I was really disappointed writing didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, and that was on me. I could have kept going and I didn’t.

I’m going to try and make 2020 different. I’m trying to make it better.

Something I didn’t anticipate fading with FL was my desire to be an author. I should have, but I didn’t realize that if I let go of imagining, fantasizing, playing pretend...that the voices would stop talking to me. That I would stop imagining wonderful places to escape to when reality got to be too loud, and by the time Halloween rolled around and I wanted to write, I found I couldn’t. The will to write, especially for Family-centric stuff, was replaced with the pessimistic question of “Why? What’s the point?”

And that question has haunted me ever since...if you’ll excuse the Halloween/horror pun, there.

It feels pointless to write. I didn’t anticipate that if 2019 failed to be the year writing came back, that FL came back, that I would give up. I was so optimistic at the beginning that I didn’t consider the let-down of another year passing by with more of the same and when it did fall apart, when writing stopped and FL ground to a halt again I just threw my hands up and said fuck it. There is no point, and I gave up.

And slowly, everything faded and I lost it all.

For me, personally, it was jarring to wake up a few months ago and not imagine someone with me, not wake up in a fantasy life. All the sudden I was waking up Ashley, alone in bed, going to a job I don’t particularly like, my head empty and just...shades of gray, where before I had sprinklings of FL. I used to imagine going to work and doing things in FL but when I gave up, that went with it, and so did everyone else.

But I don’t know who I am if I’m not that person. If I’m not Dot, if I’m not the daydreamer, the writer who is constantly making up scenarios in my head because I have an overactive imagination.

I have never felt so lost.

I’m admitting here, for the first time, that I gave up, so that I can now get back up. I tried it for a while, thought I’d just shrug and find something else to focus on since FL and writing was gone but there isn’t anything else. What, am I gonna stare at the TV and color for the rest of my life?

I am a writer. That is who I am.

And so now that I’ve let everything go, and I’m standing here with my hands empty, it’s time to start over. It’s time to get back to basics.

I’ve never really had a plan, I’ve just had a lot of feelings and ideas and I just ran around with them, like a kid painting on walls. So now that I’m starting over, that I’m trying to stand on my own and realize a dream, I’m over-whelmed and when that happens...I have a bad habit of giving up. But that’s what got me here in the first place and I’m unhappy here. So why should I stay here?

Best place to start is the beginning, right?

Writing is near impossible right now because my emotions are all over the place about it, so that’s not the solution, right now. I’m not ready to dive into writing, so I gotta go back even further and that brought me to character creation.

I’ve never been one of those authors who has a million OC’s. Anyone who has known me should know that, I’m a quantity type person. I had a smaller Harem, I play the Sims conservatively (family-wise), I tend to create solely what I need at that given time and I focus on that. My Sim playing is actually a super great indicator for how I create--I don’t create a million families, but the families I do create, I invest in long-term.

I only have a handful of OC’s, but they’re OC’s that have reappeared in my writing for decades.

But I genuinely feel like I’m starting over. I don’t know what to write about, I don’t know who to write about, and I can’t write about a what if I don’t have a who. So I’m going to be focusing on character creation for a while.

What does that mean? ...Your guess is almost as good as mine.

What it doesn’t mean is that I’m scrapping any of my current OC’s. My Family and the Triquetra are still here and around, they’re not going anywhere--but I don’t see a point in working on them, either. A few years ago I was all pumped to do so, but I don’t see a point in working on the Family anymore, it never seems to go anywhere or mean anything, it constantly starts and stops and I’m discovering part of the problem with my inspiration dying is that I feel like I’m breathing life into these bodies sitting dead in the water. If something changes there, awesome, I’d love to do something with them if the time ever comes.

But any new OC’s will of course be around and integrated into the Family, that’s just...how it goes. I know I don’t mention my OCs much, like the Dastardens or, haha, Gladwyn (who I am still incredibly proud of, tbh) but it just doesn’t seem...idk, pertinent? I’m not a very forceful person, not one of those “look at what I made/did” types. Unfortunately for Monica, she’s gonna have to openly admit to wanting to see any of them before I’ll believe she wants to. ( 〃．．) Otherwise I won’t believe there’s interest there and they’ll stay quiet.

MY NAME IS DOT AND I DO NOT BELIEVE IN MYSELF. (ง ˙o˙)ว

I just wanted to sort of...clear the air about some things, I guess. My head has been so full this past week or two, trying to make sense of how I feel about writing and what I want from life. Talking about this, I can still feel I’m excited about what I could still create, what I could offer, but I think I’ve just let myself get too tied up in FL and it’s constant start and stop. I don’t function well in that environment and since I rely on FL 24/7, I need to get it back to being that for me. I let it die but I shouldn’t have, and I need to get it back. Even if getting “it” back just means doing something else creative until life sorts itself out for me and Monica. I know where I’m coming from and what I want, but I’m only half of FL and the Family. I can only control myself and that’s what I’m doing, here.

I’m working on figuring out what sort of weekly writing schedule I want to do. I’m still going to keep up the weekly collection I started with Monica, I think that’s important, but I’m going to be doing some other stuff, too. I’m not sure what that’ll look like yet, but you’ll see that post going up hopefully by the end of the weekend. We’re already moving into the middle of January so time’s a-wastin’!

As I always say, anything I get up to, feel free to join in and participate, but regardless...I’m not giving up this year.

If there’s hope, optimism, a belief that anything is going to get better, I know part of that has to come from me making it that way. I spent my 20′s starting and stopping, giving up on myself and letting others influence that about me, too, but 30 has to be different, or this struggle has all been for nothing.

I gave up but I’m not ready to quit. Not yet.