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#it’s all fiction anyway and fandom is about having FUN! and that’ll look different for everyone
artsy-dreamer · 1 year
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…gonna answer that anon ask in the tags of this post
#because if I’m being honest… I don’t think I can bear to have the actual ask on my blog 😅#…but anyway 👍 just because brotps are important to me doesn’t mean I think#that romantic relationships aren’t important… I’m not saying everyone has to see#certain relationships in the same way I do- not at all! it’s fine if you don’t personally#agree with all my opinions- everyone is gonna see things differently and have#different likes and dislikes and all that… as long as we respect each other’s opinions#and don’t harass people for having different opinions or any of that nonsense#that being said I do like ships I just don’t post them on main- I have a sideblog for that#some of my mutuals aren’t really into shipping and I want them to be comfortable here and all that#some pairs I prefer platonically and some I prefer romantically and not everyone will agree#which is fine I just wanna be free to enjoy what I like… though one thing I can agree with#is that you don’t really have to care about canonicity if you don’t want to#you don’t have to ship something even if it’s canon- not everyone wants to have ships anyway#and if a ship isn’t canon- even if it has ZERO chance of being canon- you can still ship it if you want#it’s all fiction anyway and fandom is about having FUN! and that’ll look different for everyone#love canon? have fun with it! don’t love canon? throw it out and do what you want!#love ships? that’s cool! don’t love ships? that’s cool too! as long as everyone’s having fun#personally I just REALLY love platonic content and I’m a big advocate for it#cuz ships are cool and all but fandom is FLOODED with them and it’s hard to find#good platonic content when you want it a lot of the time… and not everyone is#comfortable with shipping- and non-shippers deserve to enjoy fandom too!#anyway uhhh… yeah 😅 I guess I had a lot to say about that one
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minaminokyoko · 4 years
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I know I’m screaming into the void here, but
Can we talk about the lack of HarriKarri content in Peace Talks?
Spoilers for Peace Talks below. Also, a very long rant.
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Disclaimer: Recently, the reading community has been having conversations about expectations related to professional authors backed by one of the Big Six or equivalent traditional publishing companies. The points I’m about to bring are not me being entitled. I understand that Jim Butcher is not obligated to give me everything I want. I will not demand that he do so. I just want to have a conversation about something I feel is oddly dissatisfying about the content in Peace Talks related to Harry and Murphy, which is my own opinion, and said opinion isn’t going to be slung at the author or anything distasteful like that.
Right, so, to give some context, I’m not a fan of Peace Talks. I read it once and then just sat on my couch for several hours after trying to figure out what to even do with myself because I waited six years for what I consider to be an underwhelming book that was mostly just set up for Battle Ground. I mention it because I admit that if we get Battle Ground in September and all the content in Harry and Murphy’s relationship that was missing in Peace Talks is in Battle Ground, fine, I’ll retract my statements. Some fans have already expressed that they can’t really review Peace Talks or give opinions on it because it feels so much like a companion piece that you can’t evaluate it until you’ve read Battle Ground, as the book seems to be nothing but the precursor to Battle Ground. It doesn’t stand on its own very well, at least not in my eyes, but let me get to the point.
The reason I’ve been feeling angry and betrayed by Peace Talks’ lack of HarriKarri content isn’t just because I’m the Queen of the Harry/Murphy trashpile. I’m not speaking strictly as a shipper this time. Y’all know me. I mean, look, I’ve written 185k words of Harry/Murphy fanfiction, most of which was written during the incredibly long wait between Skin Game and Peace Talks. Yes, I know, it’s hypocritical of me to say I’m not writing this post because I’m a big dumb shipper queen. I do mean it that I sincerely think it’s outright bizarre that we got so little insight into how these two best fire-forged friends and lovers are doing in a romantic relationship.
Let me make my case here. Okay, so the first thing is that romance is a huge element in this series. Harry’s love life is important not only to him as a character, but it actually plays directly into the plot, from Susan’s selfish stupidity to Elaine’s mistrust to Luccio’s mysterious manipulation to Lasciel’s Heel Face Turn. If someone wanted to argue the reason we didn’t see much of Harry and Murphy together as a couple is because romance isn’t the primary focus of the series, that’s not going to hold water. The connection between Harry and his paramours has always been a large element in each of these books in various ways. That’s probably the first thing that signaled that something was off about Peace Talks.
Think about the previous books. Harry’s relationships are both a source of comfort and conflict for him, allowing him to learn and grow as a character, and none moreso than his relationship with Murphy. I have so many of their scenes vividly memorized by now because of how important both friendship and love are to Harry and to Murphy as well. There are milestones that they’ve reached starting from Storm Front onward. I would honestly argue it is the most developed relationship in the series, in terms of how much these two trust and respect and love one another and understand where they fit into the other person’s life. I remember reading that bit in White Night where Bob says they swapped souls through a hug and that left a huge impression on me because I think that’s what soulmates would look and sound like in real life (wouldn’t know, I am single af and going to die an old cat lady.) It’s to a point where, in my honest opinion, there is no Harry without Murphy. She is the other half of his soul. Where he is weak, she is strong, where she is weak, he is strong, and they move forward through every conflict knowing that about each other. And I think the reverse is true. We saw how Murphy took Harry’s disappearance and death—it fucking broke her. Her entire personality and beliefs came crashing down and while she was still able to function in his absence, she was just as much a ghost as he was.
So why the fuck wasn’t there anything in Peace Talks illustrating just how vital this relationship is?
I’m not keen on reading the book again, but from what I remember, we were given roughly three significant interactions between Harry and Murphy that had anything to do with their romance: Harry at the house while she’s recovering, the scene where she takes the casts off, and then her talking to him after Ebenezar almost kills him. And…that’s it. Do they still interact in the book? Yes. But it’s nothing memorable, aside from the threesome suggestion (in all fairness, that was hilarious, and it was even more hilarious to me that both Harry and Murphy didn’t outright say no).
Why is that weird? Because I can seriously name book by book how many significant conversations and scenes that Harry and Murphy have that develop their dynamic, sexy, fun, beautiful relationship…and yet the book where they’re actually together, after sixteen goddamn books, has almost nothing.
And it shouldn’t be like that at all.
I know my own bias. Really, I do. I’ve written so many Harry/Murphy fics that I was bound to be let down when we actually got the canon relationship, but the difference between me being let down and me feeling betrayed is that it feels like it’s for no reason. There are plenty of spots in the book considering it’s kind of short where Butcher could have given us insight into the way they hooked up for the first time. I know I don’t speak for the entire fandom, but I do know there are enough of you who like me wanted to know about their first “official” date or seeing how the people in his life reacted to them finally getting together after so many years. That’s not just shipper trash. That’s satisfying storytelling payoff. It is extremely important to us as readers and to the actual narrative itself that we see what it’s like for Harry and Murphy to be in a mature romantic relationship. Both of them have been longing and pining for each other for ages, and yet Butcher doesn’t give us the meaty bits we’re dying to chomp our teeth into. For God’s sake, Harry was hung up on the little things about Murphy, like her riding her motorcycle or her cute nose and ear lobes or the way she smiles or how she gives him the sass right back to his face. Yet we don’t get any indication of the momentous event of the first time he actually got to second base (or more) with her. We don’t see any of the things that we were clamoring for because these are two best friends giving in to serious feelings and that’s a huge deal since they’ve both pretty much been smitten since Storm Front.
It’s not a matter of appeasing shippers at this point. This relationship is a huge change that is important to both of them, and we didn’t get jackshit about the transition from friends to lovers. Hell’s bells, there’s an entire genre of fics in every work of fiction devoted to this trope and yet Butcher just skipped over it. I swear I’m not making mountains out of molehills. It doesn’t make sense that all the previous books with the exception of Dead Beat (since Murphy was out of town) have significant moments between Harry and Murphy that build on their friendship and partnership yet the moments in Peace Talks are way too short and aren’t anything groundbreaking or memorable. And this is them canonically together, heading for the iceberg, being with the person they love dearly. I want to know what that’s like because I care about them and it feels inorganic that it’s brushed off for plot or other things instead.
I don’t get it. I truly don’t. If Butcher is waiting to unleash the content I want in Battle Ground, I guess that’ll help, but after so much build up, why in God’s name wouldn’t you explore all the things we want to know about how their romance is going? Harry and Murphy have been through literal hell together, for God’s sake. They’re both cagey and in extremely stressful situations—especially poor Karrin—and yet it’s just brushed aside time and time again. It would keep us grounded to see how they handle it as it is one of the few nice things in their lives that they have left.
Those of you who know Butcher know that he’s one of the sadist authors. I know that too. He thinks it’s funny to make us angry and frustrate us and he may have already said it in an interview or a podcast why he chose not to go into detail about the romance (feel free to link me if he has) but for the first time in my life, I think that’s not good enough. It’s not a good enough excuse for Butcher to giggle and intentionally not give us the content we want just because he thinks it’s funny. Yes, as the author, you choose what you write, but this is a slap in the face to people who have been reading these books for so many years and rooting for Harry and Murphy to get their shit together and be happy. We know how the series is gonna end—fucking bloody as hell—so these precious moments are that much more important. If he’s said he didn’t include romantic elements in this book because “haha trollface,” then he can fuck off. We’ve invested time in this series. We care about the relationship and there are so many creative, fun things that could have come out of seeing them together after all this build up.
And yeah, I know, I can write another 185k words of fix it fics and missing scenes. I probably will anyway. I’m frustrated because this isn’t just some shallow checkmark romance in an urban fantasy series. These two are incredible characters and it’s a negative reflection on the work itself when Butcher spent all the time in previous books building up the sexual tension and the pining and the deeply felt affection only to just cut to curtains fluttering when they’re about to get to the hanky panky or just have a quick “I love you” in the tub or the brief talk about family at the end. There are so many conversations they could have had. There are so many scenarios with the potential for romance even with their chastity belts firmly in place due to Murphy’s injuries. This isn’t about sex. This is about fulfilling a precedent that Butcher purposely set up and then just seemed to wave it off for some reason. I’m not saying the book is bad because we didn’t get the content; I’m saying it would’ve been a lot goddamn better if we’d gotten that content. 
Butcher’s gonna Butcher. No one can change it. I can’t make demands. My fifteen bucks doesn’t mean I get to call the shots and tell the man what to write.
But I just want to note that I thought it was a pretty shitty choice to exclude it.
Sigh. See you guys in Battle Ground, I guess.
And also AO3.
I’m gonna write a fuckton of missing scenes and no one can stop me.
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nanigma · 6 years
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i'm honestly curious what you and a lot of others in the fandom are looking for in leo x takumi fanfiction? the uke/seme tropes, disregard them for a second. do you guys want au's, or post-fates like JoW or Senbonzakura (it's technically leosaku but it's probably the best leosaku fic on that site), and as a fanfiction writer myself, it's difficult to tell what people want sometimes. And it feels like whatever i write is already setting up for disappointment when I don't know.
I honestly don’t know what to tell you, anon. My taste in fiction (and leokumi fics) will never scale 1:1 with what other people like. Some of the fics I am most fond of have received very little attention. Overall I have enjoyed both au and post-fates stuff, so there are a lot more factors at work here.
I can’t give you the perfect recipe that’ll turn your fics into fandom juggernauts, because I am only one of many different readers with very different tastes. Popularity and success is usually not something you can force by following a few specific pointers.
I definitely sympathize with feeling disappointed over a project being mostly ignored, a lot of the translations I am posting here get less than 10 notes.  Now fanfic and translations are very different beasts, but the feeling of writing into a void is the same. Still, I keep on posting these translations, because it’s not just about attention for me, but it also helps me with my Japanese and it’s honestly just plain fun. So even if no one else read my translations, I’d still be getting something out of it.
Ultimately, I don’t see how writing for popularity or attention alone is going to feel rewarding in the long run. It’s nice to be appreciated, but even that high is going to wane of before long (and might bring it’s own problems), so I think it’s more important to write what you yourself want to see out of the pairing. Create content that puts a smile on your own face. And if other people like it? Great! But if not, you already had pay off anyway.
You don’t have to agree with this, but it’s honestly the only advice I feel qualified to give. I wish you all the best for your future projects!
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barbecuedphoenix · 7 years
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200 Followers: 11 Things About Me
So I was re-tagged a week ago by @eldarya-scenarios. (I had no idea I tagged you twice, dear. ^_^ Having two aliases is awfully sneaky.) 
If you’re a little curious on who your friendly fan blogger is behind the Leiftan icon and the barrage of text-winks, feel free to read on. Watch out though: it’s a long post like everything else I write... 
And if not, please continue to enjoy this blog’s smart-assery and the text-winks. ;)
1) Why did you name your blog the way you did? ...Because that’s the screen-name I use for my main Eldarya account. I’m not very creative with names. :( Not to mention that it’s probably very politically-incorrect to say ‘Barbecued Phoenix’ in the faery realm. Huang Hua would not be amused. And my blog is guaranteed to be politically-incorrect as far as folklore and faeries are concerned. ;) My screen-name is actually homage to a Neil Gaiman short-story called ‘Sunbird’, which is still one of my favorites from its double serving of dark humor and culinary catastrophes. And it sounds really funny when you say it out-loud (at least that’s my opinion).
2) What was your last meal? *checks bowl next to laptop* Eh… a fruit salad I scraped together from some Rainier cherries and leftover cantaloupe slices. It’s summer here, and I enjoy my fruits. :)
3) Jeans or skirts? …I must have at least nine different pairs of jeans in my closet, half of which I don’t even wear most days. And just one pencil skirt. Because at least once in my life, I’ll need to go to a court room. So there’s your answer. :)  
4) What’s your favourite letter of the alphabet? In the English alphabet, ‘L’ is my favorite. It just rollllls off the tongue so nicely. :) 
5) Favourite fandom/shipping? I’m a mercenary crack-ship writer. Anything goes so long as characters are in-character. ;) *cough* Truthfully, I haven’t shipped anything in a fandom since I was eleven or twelve, and that was waaaay back when the cartoon series Avatar the Last Airbender premiered. I think that experience has inoculated me to serious shipping. So now, while I enjoy seeing a well-developed, well-paced canon romance (because it means the creators have really thought the story through), it’s never a huge concern for me who’s paired up with whom. Romance isn’t actually the selling point for me for a lot of stories; it’s individual character development and plot direction that counts.   And anyway… fan shipping is really a fabrication. With a bit of imagination, effort, and tactical writing, functional relationships can be spun between anything and anyone, and unraveled in the same way. Even when keeping all parties in character. So why blow a gasket over shipping? To each their own dirty little fancies. ;)
As for my fandoms… they’re a patchwork quilt of games, books, movies, TV shows, anime from a lot of different sources, and it changes every year. For the sake of time, I’ll give a rundown of just the fantasy/supernatural genres I’ve been following for a while (translating some of the titles to English when possible):  
Games: the Dragon Age series, Folklore (also called FolksSoul), Uncharted, the Persona series 
Books: Discworld, His Dark Materials, the Dr. Siri Paiboun series, the Temeraire series, The Tiger’s Wife, Brisingamen, pretty much anything done by Neil Gaiman… the list goes on. With a few rare exceptions, I’ve shifted from being a high fantasy lover (those tropes get old after a while) to an acolyte of more low-key genres like magical-realism, fantasy-historical-fiction, and satirical-fantasy.  
TV Shows: Supernatural  
Anime & Cartoons: the Fate series (even though my fanfiction ends up making fun of it 95% of the time, it’s still a really intricate universe), the Avatar series  
Movies: Practically anything done by Studio Ghibli and Tomm Moore, ‘Coraline’, ‘Corpse Bride’, ‘Therapy for a Vampire’, ‘Let the Right One In’, ‘Groundhog Day’, the very first installation of ‘The Hobbit’   
6) What’s your favourite sport? (You don’t necessarily have to play it) Favorite sport I can’t do, but love to watch: Surfing. Forget berserk football matches; give me a crazy Australian riding a tunnel wave any day. :D  Favorite sport I can do: Bicycling. I’m no Tour de France candidate, but my bike regularly takes its share of unreasonable hills and descents in the city where I live. Personally, It’s a great way to get around. ^_^
7) What’s your idea of a perfect day? Getting everything on my list done with minimal coffee and hair-pulling.  -_- Sorry… I’m still listening to the robot half of my brain. Switching over.  Start the day by making a difference and sharing a good time with both the students I see where I work, and the odd friends and colleagues I do have. Attend a really good lecture. Then take a quiet bus ride to the beach or an aquarium, where I can watch all the wildlife shenanigans I want. Tourists included. Cook something awesome for lunch or dinner, and eat it to discover that it’s still more awesome. End the day with a good book, an avalanche of blankets, and a conveniently-rainy night. And maybe a quick Skype/phone call with my dad.  ;( Oh there I go, listening to the sappy half of my brain. Switching over.  
8) What animal do you hate with all your soul? The logical part of my brain tells me I have no cause to loathe any animal for existing. But the cave-woman part of my brain still gets creeped out by a few of them…. Geckos especially. Because the house where I grew up was infested with them (like a typical equatorial house, actually). The geckos could be found on absolutely any flat surface, even the underside of the table and on the ceiling, so we always had to check right before sitting down that something cold, bug-eyed, and squirmy wasn’t going to drop on us in the middle of dinner. And they also liked to appear in other surprising places: like in your shoes (as my father found out one day while rushing to work), inside drawers, inside trash cans, crushed between door hinges, trapped in the kitchen sink, and inside the refrigerator a couple of times (worst idea ever, for a lizard).      One of the best things that happened to me on moving to this corner of the United States: no geckos anywhere. I can clean my apartment with an easy heart. \o/    
9) Can you dance? Besides some lingering muscle memory from my early days doing classical ballet... no. :(  I’d really like to take up Spanish Flamenco though. Generally, I do better with choreographed dances rather than impromptu club-dancing. As all my friends have told me. I’ve given them so many priceless memories on the dance-floor… 
10) What’s the name and age of your favourite character? (OC or otherwise) I can’t decide on a ‘favorite’ character in media; there’s too many of them. So how about a favorite OC instead? ^_^   Right now among the Eldarya OC cast, my favorite would have to be Zephania ‘Zee’ Tantiango because she’s a magnet for trouble as a protagonist very dynamic heroine to work with. (She’s 23, in case you’re interested.) Zee is actually the latest incarnation of the ‘funny-but-unlucky action heroine’ archetype I’ve spent years working on, and I’m happy with how she’s turning out so far. On one hand, she’s the typical small-town heroine who’s sharp, plucky, energetic, and more than a little kooky herself; the story never stops moving once she starts improvising in a tight situation. :) But there’s a strong undercurrent of tragedy in the way she continues to isolate herself through her pride and her decisions, especially because she’s allergic to either admitting that she’s in real trouble, or cutting herself some slack for her mistakes. There’s a lot of sadness behind that finger-snap smile. I’m still debating on whether to give her a good ending, or a bitter one. :(  No, that was not a spoiler for the fan-fiction that’ll one day hit this blog.
11) What got you into your favourite activity?(i.e how did you start?) Favorite activity? Like… a hobby?  Well the longest-running hobby I’ve ever had is writing (no guesses there). And it was more-or-less self-taught. As a kid, nobody could take me anywhere without a book in my hand, or some other adventure happening inside my own head (which made it awfully inconvenient to get my attention in a mall… but hey, I never wandered off). And writing short stories was always the most entertaining school assignment for me.  But it wasn’t until I started home-schooling at thirteen that I found the time and need to write something for myself, putting to paper those increasingly-complex sagas and fan-fictions that lived in my head (because my short-term recall just couldn’t keep track of all the dialogue and plot twists anymore; I needed to start recording my stories to make sense of them.)   And I haven’t stopped since. :)
Uh-oh. Here come… my questions. For @mentacomchocolate, @areyntheheartseeker, and @the-irish-hoor​. 
Why did you name your blogs the way you did? ;)
What would your honest personal reaction be if you accidentally stepped into a fairy ring, landed in a strange place, and got threatened by a fox-lady wielding fireballs?  
What’s your dream job in this life?  
Is there anyone you have a crush on that you’re still really embarrassed to admit? Would you like to mention them anyway? ;)  
If there’s only one book genre you could spend the rest of your life reading, what will it be?  
What are the top 5 things you geek out over? (Today, at least. ;) )
If you’ve been given a 24-hour advance warning that the world is definitely going to end (i.e. via Death Star), what will you do?
And if you’ve been given an exclusive two-person escape pod during above scenario, what/who would you bring with you to escape the planet? Would you want to?
If your friends can agree on one thing about you, what would it be? Do you agree with them? 
What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you this past week?  
What do you remember as your most incredible feat of endurance to date? Physical, mental, and/or social?
*looks up* ...All right, those are some weird questions. I won’t blame you at all if you ignore them. 
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Okay. Having time away from tumblr yesterday really gave me a chance to sort of...be okay about stuff for a bit. I mean, I’m not, but I got some ~clarity about things that I need to talk about.
It was good to be away from Robron and I only came on tumblr to reply to birthday messages (thank you again everyone!) but I didn’t look at my dash or anything. I had a Robron-free day, which was what I needed. 
When I got home last night I did come on tumblr and look at my dash a little, and just like....seeing all the Robron gifsets and stuff, I didn’t really feel anything. Like before all this crap, I’d always feel joy when I looked at them. The past few days I have only felt sadness. Last night I didn’t really feel anything.
In some weird and twisted way, I feel like I have been “cured”. I know I was (am?) in too deep with Robron and I probably was from day one, but over the past year especially I have really relied on them in a way that is unhealthy. I have spoken about this a few times, my reasons for it and what-not, so I won’t go into that again (you can probably find the posts in my #personal tag if you need me to elaborate) but while the good times can leave me with an incredible high, the bad times can really....fuck me up. And that’s not normal. I literally laid awake most of Thursday night, unable to sleep, tossing and turning, and any sleep I did get was plagued with dreams about what happened Thursday (despite the fact I didn’t even watch the episodes) and I was left feeling genuinely sick to my stomach. That isn’t normal. That isn’t healthy. That isn’t fun.
I’m not deluded and I never have been; I know how soaps work and I know couples more or less never get a happy ending unless they leave the show together. I’m not a mug; I’ve watched soaps for more than 20 years, since I was a literal child, so I know the drill. It doesn’t mean I can’t be affected or hurt by what I see, or that I can’t think that the way this has been written, or the timing of this is absolutely awful. Because it is. I’m pretty certain that’s not even a matter of opinion; I think that’s probably a fact. 
I spoke on Friday about how I’m not a positive person and me being positive about Robron isn’t actually like me, yet my faith in ED and my love for Robron somehow carried me through. I had real trust and faith in their storytelling, in their writing (for the most part), and in the words of encouragement they gave us on twitter and in interviews and what not. I believed it all, and I was wrong to, because here we are.
So let’s talk about where we are; it’s shit and lazy. The cheating crap has been done to death, I know it’s a soap but for a soap that has been on form over the past year or so, you’d think it’d try to break the mould and do something a little....different. But nope. I always, deep down, figured something like this would happen one day, but I always hoped it wouldn’t be for at least another year or so. But it has happened, and even though I haven’t watched the episodes, from what I have heard it wasn’t even well written. Which is....a shame. If they’re going to fuck up, at least fuck up right. Although I do sort of like....appreciate that this probably happened in the “best” way. I’d rather it be under the circumstances it was under than have Robert just getting bored and randomly shagging someone one day. I’d rather this than how things went when Paddy randomly started cheating on Rhona even though their marriage was pretty solid at the time. I appreciate that this is probably the “best” way it could’ve happened, even though the timing is crap and it shouldn’t have happened at all. But whatever.
Last night I was almost feeling positive in the sense that “well, at least that’s over and done with now.” - like the worst has happened, it’s happened early, so maybe once it’s happened it won’t ever happen again? Cheating is the one thing I struggle with, the one thing I find hard to forgive, but at the same time I don’t see things as black and white, and regarding the circumstances of Robert’s actions, and the fact he was drunk (no excuse, but he wasn’t of sound mind to give proper consent) it makes it a little more bearable, I guess. I can forgive him, depending on how he deals with it. (Whether I can forgive the writers is another thing.)
But whether I forgive Robert or not, Robron have been tainted. I - and others - can still ship them and love them, but it doesn’t mean it’ll be the same. Their relationship was messed up and unhealthy in many ways, but in another way it was “pure” from cheating. I loved that with Aaron, it was different for Robert. He was meant to be the one that was different from the others. And I still believe that, definitely, but at the end of the day Robert has still been unfaithful, and that can never ever be erased. We can forgive, and maybe sometimes we can forget, but it’ll still be there in their history.
And now we have the fact that Rebecca will probably end up pregnant. Spoilers are saying there’s a pregnancy, and while it hasn’t been confirmed that it’s Bex, I’d literally bet my last quid on it. And when I read those spoilers earlier, I didn’t even feel anything. I didn’t feel sick or want to cry. I just felt...disappointed. I almost laughed. It is the most predictable thing in the world, it has been done approx. 288442848942 times and yet here we are. 
Maybe Emmerdale will surprise us. Maybe there will be a massive twist. I read something on twitter, apparently someone on DS said that a “source” said that Bex and Robert didn’t actually have sex, that Robert can’t remember and Bex is lying or something??? I mean LOL that would be amazing if that was the case, but it’s blatantly....not. At this stage, I don’t have faith in ED to be that clever about it, and even if that was the case, they still put us through all this stress for like......nothing. And after this week, I really don’t believe anything “sources” say. 90% of them clearly don’t know all the facts, all the details, and the rest of them seem to completely make things up. So I wouldn’t believe a single word of that.
Do I think Robron will get through this? Eventually, yeah. But it’ll drag on and on and be boring as fuck, and one thing Robron have never been is boring. We now know that Robert still hasn’t told Aaron by the time he’s released from prison, on the 6th of April. So that’s another few weeks of secrets and shifty behaviour and lies. Awesome. And then who knows when Aaron will find out once he’s home? God forbid ED actually have Robert own up and be honest about it, making a change from all the other cheating crap. So then we have to wait....and then we’ll have the pregnancy stuff (which is no doubt Bex), adding more ~drama and making the eventual reveal even more explosive. YAWN.
So we have - at the very least - another month of crap, it seems. I’d like to think ED will throw in some surprises, will surprise us in a good way, but I can’t see any light at the end of this anymore.
And in a way, I feel like I’ve been cured. I used to try to plan my life around Robron, like I’d try to avoid making plans on nights when I knew they would be on screen (or at least their major eps anyway) and even if I did go out when I knew they were on I’d be thinking about them and feel like I was missing out, even though I’d always watch the episode as soon as I got in.
Not anymore. That’s going to change. I don’t want to be ruled by them. I don’t want my moods to be influenced by them. I don’t want to only feel really ridiculously happy because of them and I don’t want to feel sick and miserable because of them. It’s not right and it’s not healthy and I feel like this whole thing has just, in a way, killed it for me. Not completely, but enough for me to sort of....love them a normal amount, maybe. I mean the spark has gone and I don’t know if or when it’ll come back. 
There are plenty of characters I like/love from Emmerdale, and I enjoy their stories the appropriate amount. I can be affected by stories in good ways and bad ways without it having any major impact on my life. Maybe Robron will get to be like that now too. Maybe I can watch a bad episode for them and not lay awake at night feeling sick and upset about it. Maybe.
I don’t know. I think I’m going to be up and down about this. I’m no longer optimistic about their future but I hope that’ll change. I’ll never be as positive again, that’s for sure. I’m sort of torn between feeling like “okay, the world is shit. there’s bigger things to worry about than a fictional couple.” and “yeah, the world is shit, my life isn’t great, and that’s why I need them to focus on and to be a light in my life.” - I feel like I’ll go back and forth between the two.
I’m still upset and angry and disappointed. I hope that will change, even if a miracle happens and somehow this manages to be okay and Emmerdale somehow manage to fix this. At this point it’s hard to see how it realistically can be fixed, but whereas once upon a time I had faith that they would fix it (like in November), now I’m not so sure they can fix it in a way that is satisfying for me and for everyone else too.
I just hate how things have so dramatically changed not just for me but for everyone. I admire the people still trying to find the light and I understand why even some of the positive people are having to take a step back from the fandom as things are really negative and dark right now. I understand it all and I respect everyone’s views and opinions on this, I honestly do. I just hate that we’re all - not just me, but everyone - having to deal with this in the first place when just three weeks ago we were so so happy and almost excited about the direction we thought things were going in.
This post is a mess but I needed to get my feelings out. I don’t know if anyone will feel the same; I think everyone is feeling a bit confused and messed up at the moment. I just feel like we’re going to have to sort of accept this new era of Robron, accept that things are crap and will be for some time, and we’re either going to have to somehow deal with it and move on, or move on to something else all together, or just learn to live with loving Robron in a different way.
It’s going to be rocky. I think most of us will be very back and forth about it all. But I just want you all to know that I’m still here, and even if I need to take a step back at any time, I’m not planning on leaving the fandom. You guys are the only shining light right now and even if we feel like we might lose Robron (or at least the joy and “purity” of Robron), I don’t even want anyone to feel like we’re going to lose each other.
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shadowsong26fic · 3 years
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Coming Attractions
Yes, I know it’s technically not the first Monday of the month, but the first Monday is the seventh and that just feels weirdly late to do this, haha.
So, a few more general announcements, if you don’t want to go through my rambly notes beneath the cut!
First, as always, my writing discord is open--it’s a pretty quiet place, and more or less designed to be a slightly-more-interactive extension of this blog.
Second, I’ll be around for another Open Question Night tonight because why not! Anything I’ve posted about here or on AO3 is open for questioning--fic projects, original fiction, general writing, whatever’s on your mind!
Third, I’ve been promising a Precipice announcement for a while, and here it is!
The current plan is to post one Preludes segment (i.e., seven short stories that will take place during the timeskip between Precipice and Protectors) every month for the remainder of the year. So, the first one, featuring Kallus, Lavinia, and Mara Jade and set just before Kallus gets reassigned to the Lothal system, will be out sometime this month!
As for the main body of Protectors, my plan is to get at least the first chapter out this month as well, ideally before or around the same time as the first Preludes story, and then post between one and three chapters a month. I haven’t yet finalized an official posting date or schedule, but I will make an Official Announcement post in the next couple of weeks.
Okay! That all out of the way, keep on reading behind the cut if you’re interested in a more detailed ramble/updates on other projects!
SWBB
I was right down to the wire but I did manage to finish posting by the deadline, go me! Even if the update schedule Did Not Happen. Part of that was because the first chapter that was due to go up was Bo-Katan III, aka her duel with Viszla, which I think I rewrote a bunch of times, even through the weeks when I was delaying posting it. It was. Difficult.
It’s not quite what I wanted to be--I think the last section feels a little bit rushed, and there was more detail about the different backstories/etc. For example, what went down with Shmi. I wanted to get out, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end. I might return to this AU at some point to flesh some of those bits out.
One thing that surprised me, though, was that it ended up being mostly about Padme and Bo-Katan, and how they relate to one another? I was expecting Anakin to be a bit more of a focus, in part because he has the most interesting and complicated relationship to being a dragon, and in part because by the time I figured out what the Actual Story was going to be, I knew it was going to end with the confrontation with Palpatine. Instead, Anakin was basically there to push the plot forward and uncover the necessary information, and the real meat of the story was Bo and Padme learning about each other and coming to an understanding/becoming friends; and Bo in particular softening a little bit. Which was kind of cool, if not what I expected.
(Also, the last Padme POV chapter before the Coda was subtitled ‘But Brutus Is An Honorable Man’ XD Which may or may not mean much to anyone, but I amuse myself.)
Anyway, I’ve already started thinking through what I might want to do for next year--hopefully, if I start early enough, I won’t end up in quite as much Crunch Time and will actually be able to keep to some kind of update schedule once I start. One option is to use our faces like a mirror; there are a couple miscellaneous AU prompts I have floating around in my head, such as a Bail time-travel AU, a couple of crossovers, one where ROTS happens with Anakin presumed dead (though I haven’t quite ironed out where that one would go, and it’s kind of similar to my project from last year...) We’ll see. I’ve got some time to sort through it, but that’s in the back of my head already lol.
AtLA Fics:
Later this summer (though I don’t have a specific date yet), I’ll start posting the still-untitled Avatar Zuko AU fic. I’m still working on how I want to structure it, and exactly how much of the first two years of the altered timeline I want to show directly (the first year is basically him and my OC Kirana hanging out at the Western Air Temple while he tries to figure out how the hell airbending works from. Like. Mosaics and stuff. And on the one hand, that’s important world- and character-building stuff, and while he starts that year sort of intending to come back with the comet and Prove Himself to his father/etc., he’s definitely less sure of that after spending a year in the temple. And then the second year, the two of them go up to the North Pole and he starts on waterbending, which also involves a lot of OCs since he doesn’t learn directly from Pakku. But, on the other hand, more worldbuilding/character stuff, so...who knows. ...the third year, they’re hanging out with Toph).
I’m also sort of...poking in my brain how to handle the endgame in terms of the Fire Nation throne. Zuko can’t be both Avatar and Fire Lord, obviously; Iroh might work, but there are some other issues with that; Azula taking it immediately post-war has its own set of problems, depending on exactly where she ends up going over the course of the story. So, I need to turn elsewhere.
I’ve got a couple options I’m thinking through? The first few involve resurrecting/rebuilding some old OCs of mine--one of Azulon’s bastards or if Ozai had a bastard child; the third one involves completely ignoring The Search, and giving Zuko and Azula a full sister (Ursa was pregnant when she left but not yet aware. ...funnily enough, this OC was named Izumi XD).
The other option would be for Iroh to step in as regent for Zuko or Azula’s future children, or Azula herself, or some kind of weird setup like that. Most other alternate heirs I have floating around in the back of my head involve much more significant changes to the timeline, and/or are the subject of another unrelated fic.
...anyway, the point is, once I figure out some of those questionable bits, that story should debut sometime this summer! I’ll make an official announcement when I have more details.
(The other main fic I have planned is...may more back-burnered, lol. Lu Ten and an Earth Kingdom Princess who snuck out of the palace; canon-compliant; fun times with Long Feng and figuring out what kind of man he is; Iroh has an unknown granddaughter; etc. I do plan to write it at some point, but who knows when that’ll actually happen XD)
Other Fanfic Projects:
I do have a BSG/SG-1 crossover outline in the works. I’ve written...all of the BSG backstory and the first chunk of the first connection between the two worlds/cultures. But I have a lot more to go before I can post it. I might actually end up doing it in two or three chunks, since there’s a couple natural arcs (the initial connection and dealing with the ~2k people left behind on New Caprica when the Fleet and the Cylons leave; reconnecting on the algae planet and figuring out how the Fleet and Earth and the Haven settlement are going to relate to one another; and then sneaking onto a Resurrection ship because the Cylons have encountered at least one goa’uld and it. Did Not Go Well. side note i really should figure out if i’m supposed to capitalize that or not XD
Anyway, goals is to post at least the first chunk of that this month, and maybe more.
I don’t have anything else specific planned at the moment, but I might drift into more BSG content, because that’s one of my forever fandoms (a couple possible crossovers with SW are in fact among my potential plots for next year’s SWBB...but we’ll see how it goes.)
Original Projects:
I didn’t get anything done last month/in May, but I’m hoping to write at least one short story this month. Maybe return to my Regency/Bridgerton AU, because that was a lot of fun. But we’ll see.
I also want/plan to do some work on non-RF stuff. Even if it’s just plunging into the bonkersness that is Arthuriana so I can start actively working on the Lady Mordred story that wants to be written?
Also a couple of old stories I’d like to return to, and a culture I’ve done most of the worldbuilding for that has yet to find a storyline to exist in it. Anyway, I’m hoping/planning to get at least a little bit of non-fanfic writing done this month. And/or research/pre-writing/etc.
...I think that about covers it, for the next month! We’ll see how much I actually accomplish. But I’m looking forward to trying!
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