#not even kidding-this fanart is the reason i joined tumblr

[brooklynisher]

Here's a bunch of old sketchbook doodles I made y'all

Stick around bc this includes my first SPG drawings!! (Before I joined Tumblr)

Riveting start

I'll start off with little drawings I made of myself. And my god do you see what I'm doing with the anatomy? Do you see how tiny those joints are? That's horrific. Why did I build everyone like that? But Yugo is where I began to find my art style. Will love them forever for that. I've got to go back to simple-shaped heads one of these days and blush/eyelashes on everything

We've got some lovely Smile For Me-related doodles. First is a Flower Kid design. Second was not smile for me specifically, but Face Love (by the same devs). And the last two were my earlier attempts at making comics and scenes. Ft. lancer for some reason.

Here are a couple of abandoned OCs. Pretty boy (Basil) is supposed to be yellow. We've all had that OC whose only trait was being a hot person and that's what he was all about. Didn't develop him much in terms of character which is sad because I kinda like his design. He was created when I was doodling random designs in FireAlpaca. I'll have to show the other doodles in a different post (If you are interested).

THIS GUY I WOULD LIKE TO BRING BACK! Might be kinda basic in terms of like "Weird Core" designs but I still love him. His plot keeps changing though because his design is so strange yet so simple to the point where I could put him in just about any world I wanted to had I gotten bored of the old one. Which is silly bc he's just a depressed news anchor man.

Anyway bc of that, Basil used to be his bf, but isn't anymore. He got replaced with fat peppermint man who fun fact: was inspired by the song Brass Goggles BEFORE I even got into SPG and learned what it was about! How silly is that! Peppermint boy is technically my first SPG OC!

She was a fun one, but I abandoned her too. I think she was too influenced by Frye's character from Splatoon. She was a warrior of sorts. Sort of tribal I suppose. She spoke fast, and in her tribe's language, so many people struggled to understand her. She was very bouncy too. Jumping all over the place. If you know Frye, you'll probably notice that they're a bit too similar to each other. That's usually why I abandon my OCs. When they're too similar to another.

Critter I doodled. Not really an OC, but I still think she's cute

Don't ask me about the first guy. The girl was a mii that was born in Tomodachi Life! Her name is Lily. She is the child of Kris (Deltarune) and Hatsune Miku. She looks silly which is why I love her.

I'm Picasso. Kinda vibe with this ngl. Not sure if I could ever turn this into anything though

Here are some low-effort doodles. Enjoyed the design of the big lady more than I thought. I was practicing drawing bigger bodies at the time. Joints are still KILLING ME but it's not bad considering I had the worst anatomy method imaginable

Here are some higher-effort doodles. Aside from the abhorrent anatomy (WHY DOES THE PIG ZOMBIE HAVE TWO DIFFERENTLY SIZED SHOULDERSS????) I quite like these critters. That mermaid girl had lore too. She could control the dead of the sea. She was lowkey evil. Never turned her into anything though. Also, you can see by that guy at the bottom of the first one, that Bunny's art was starting to take an influence on me.

Lots of stuff going on over here but LOOK! MY VERY FIRST SPG FANART! IT'S OF VI POINTING AT AN APPLE AND YELLING AT IT

I was inspired by Bunny to make these monster-ish-looking people

More thingies! There's the goopy robot which I initially drew as a first attempt at drawing a robot, but then I made it black and goopy bc that's what it was giving. The star guy appears and disappears a few times. I think I wanted to keep them, but the design was very similar to LightLazer so I felt a bit weird about drawing them.

More robot shenanigans. First time drawing Rabbit and The Spine! Cannot believe that my first Spine drawing was in a dress oh my god.

More Bunny-inspired drawings and I'm REALLY kinda digging that weird tiny robot critter. Looking at it now, it's kinda like Spring in a few ways, but it's also completely different from Spring in so many other ways. The limbs are retractable. I kinda like this thing actually. I Oughtta do something with it.

These ones are more SPG-specific. You'll have to forgive me, most of these are from memory. Don't ask me why Rabbit looks like David Bowie in the first one.

And finally, some Rabbit and Spine doodles! Rabbit's doing the "Hey Andy Sweetie" meme. I could totally reattempt drawing that today actually.

Anyway, hope you had fun. I did. Ugh this is so sillyy

[codysworld27]

You mentioned in a post that you joined the eddsworld 5 years ago, how did you find about this hellhole?

Well, next month it'll be 6 years since I've joined the eddsworld fandom.

When I was oh but a young lad I basically was always the weird kid because I enjoyed to be online rather than to socialize with people around me because I couldn't comprehend relationships (turns out it was autism but okay. Also, I got diagnosed with autism like 4 months before joining the fandom but okayyy) so I actually had seen some eddsworld content before (mostly through Tomska because that man raised me) but like I never jumped into it simply because I didn't feel like it.

In 2018 I had to move schools due to bullying and segregation (getting an autism diagnosis while studying in a very conservative christian school ain't a good idea) so I was in a new school and wasn't doing very well and it was sixth grade and honestly I was miserable af. Due to that I spent most of my time at the school's nurse or counselor office to avoid the noise and beatings during recess.

Well, there I would meet three gals who would become my first ever friends, we bonded over all of us being weird in our own way (turns out the four of us have autism) and we became very close.

On the 23th of August 2018 I was with high fever, I had gotten really sick but had exams so I had to assist school anyways, I entered the counselor's office and there the three of them were huddled watching something. I asked what they were watching and they told me it was eddsworld and that I should watch it.

I decided yeah sure why not and those three bastards showed me the end part fucking 2 as the first eddisode.

Like dude I did not understand a SINGLE FUCKING THING BUT I LIKED IT, like, I liked the animation, the characters (specially Tom, the moment I saw those eyes my brain activated and all I thought was omg 2D from Gorillaz) and all, so after that I started watching the series on my own.

I created my first ever eddsworld drawing that same day! While sweating profusely and sneezing so much I couldn't breath at times.

I was so fucking proud of this badboi.

I really got obsessed over eddsworld, to the point of me learning fluent English so I could read fanfiction about it, it didn't help that right after my birthday (about 4 days after finding out about eddsworld) I got even sicker so I had to rest for two entire weeks because I had a pneumonia or smt IDR... So basically I was bedridden so I used up all of that time to watch eddsworld, read fanfics and browse fanart.

That's also when I found out about Tumblr.

Honestly I'm glad I found out about eddsworld when I did because before I did I was so depressed I actually was planning to unalive myself at Halloween cuz it was my favorite Holliday but eddsworld gave me a reason to continue and thrive so in a way I... Owe my life to this stupid show.

[oatmealmika]

attack on titan characters and random jobs (modern au) part 2

part 1 part 3

Erwin Smith :

• a military commander, but he doesn’t trust the government at all.

• i know how low hanging this fruit is, but it’s for a good reason!!

• when he’s at his family reunions, he’d be persuading people into joining the military.

• “listen, suzie, are you sure? why not give the military a chance? we allow you to sleep in until 6am!”

• his father was a military man, wanting to uncover the mysteries of the world. unfortunately, he died when on the battlefield. erwin joined the military later on to discover what his father never could.

• people feared him at first, but eventually they really lightened up to him and respect him greatly.

• one of the soldiers has a tiktok account and they post erwin and other soldiers doing weird things throughout the day.

• he watches all the shows/movies that his comrades recommend him!!

Hange Zoë :

• zookeeper or scientist. hell, why not both?!

• hange will talk to the lions like they’re their pets.

• “oh, albert, who’s a good boy? you are! yeah, you are!” “hange, you’re getting to close!!”

• moblit is tired of babysitting hange

• sings the animals songs from the 50s and does so in an accent, i just don’t know what accent it is, though. i don’t think it’d be an existing accent, just something hange made up!

• runs harmless experiments on the animals and is very dedicated.

• invites their friends to the zoo and introduces all of the animals to them.

• absolutely has named one of the animals after levi

• on the topic of levi-

• levi acts like he wasn’t listening to whatever hange was saying when they introduced him to the animals, but he actually was and he memorized all of the animals’ names <3

Levi Ackerman :

• i know he is a writer, also working as a janitor part time.

• he would write something like science fiction, mystery, or fantasy fiction. maybe even a mix of it all!!

• is known in the book community as the author that makes fans cry. he’s even cried while writing his books!

• idk why, but this ‘red swan’ cover gives off levi’s books vibe!

• his humor in his books don’t really land with others, but when hange read his books, they laughed so hard at the jokes.

• very sweet with fans, actually. unless if they take photos of him without his permission, he will turn the other way or stick his head into a book.

• at his janitor job, a student read his books and they eventually became friends. that student is armin :)

• he has a really hard time finding the right words to convey the emotions in his books, but he is determined to find a way to make it easier!!

• inspired characters off of hange and erwin! when they confronted him about it, he was like, “it’s a coincidence, asswipe”.

• has a tumblr he’s barely active on, but he does reblog fanart and the occasional rant.

• spends hours trying to find the perfect name for a character.

Moblit Berner :

• a zookeeper, standing beside hange.

• makes sure they don’t get their head bit off by a lion.

• probably also makes balloon animals for kids (and hange) and he is actually amazing at it!!

• for example :

• ^ hange’s usual order for a balloon animal

• once, hange’s glasses were off and they didn’t know. they saw one of moblit’s balloon animals and they ran experiments on them. they thought it was so groundbreaking about how their insides were only air. levi broke the news to them-

• if there is a tour bus at the zoo or something, hange would be the one usually talking. moblit would be making short remarks and be the “comedic, tired babysitter™️“.

Onyankopon :

• favorite season 4 aot character check <3

• he would travel the world with his closest friends!

• but he would also be an airplane pilot

• or he would be “that guy” who would have an uncanny amount of jobs. like, he has enough money to pay for what he needs and such, but it seems like he just gets jobs for fun?? like larry from the amazing world of gumball (that was the first thing that came to mind)

• he says he is a pilot, though

• once, he showed up in a new blockbuster movie that hange went to the theaters to watch

• often gets recognized by people in public for a job he didn’t even remember he did

• “oh yes, um… i was a voice actor, yes, yes”

• he was in some of the most popular movies of the year, but he will forget about that in a week.

• good thing it doesn’t go to his head, though. he will stay humble.

Yelena :

• something sneaky, like a spy

• a little too good at her job

• like, she’s secretive about everything. even stuff she really doesn’t need to be sneaky about.

• whenever she needs something like a disguise, she’ll go to onyankopon for it (because he also specializes in costume making).

• if you’re into pieck x yelena, here’s something : pieck (even tho i don’t think she’d have this job, too) and yelena, enemies, got teamed up together for a mission. your basic enemies to lovers trope.

• i don’t know much about spy work, if it isn’t obvious :’)

a/n : thanks for reading this, these take a while. i will most likely be making a part 3 to this, containing the warriors (pieck, porco, colt, zeke, maybe i am missing somebody).

anyways, byeee :)

[koolkat9]

Happy Hetalia day or the 16th anniversary at least everyone!

God damn I've been in the fandom for five long years. It feels a lot longer than that honestly.

I'm not sure what to do to celebrate so why not tell my fandom story.

So I got into it Hetalia at 13 after watching a top 10 Christmas episodes in Anime video. For awhile I thought this was from the channel Anime America, but I’ve recently discovered it was actually a WatchMojo video lol. Basically I got most of my anime recommendations from videos like that. A couple months later and I finally got around to watching Hetalia. I almost quit the series three episodes in because I watched the dub and some of the jokes made me...uncomfy... at times. But for one reason or another I returned to it a few days later and then it just...stuck with me. 

For awhile I just consumed content for the series in private. I watched AMVs, those ship videos with (often uncredited) fanart and a song fitting the ship in the background, read all the GerIta fics I could find, downloaded like all of the character songs. I even got Pinterest behind my parents’ back just to look at fanart xD (don’t lie to your parents kids. Don’t worry I stayed safe and just looked at fanart). 

Of course I read Auf Wiedersehen Sweet Heart. It was probably one of the first few Hetalia fanfics I read). I haven’t read it since I was 13 but I remember it being well written and it made me realize just how good fanfiction could be.

Somewhere in that exploration of content beyond the anime, I found Kyokoon’s channel through Dreamtalia and discovered the world of hetagames. Honestly, at the time I found Dreamtalia, my obsession with Hetalia was waning. Like I still liked the series, but I almost completely stopped consuming fan content unless it came across my dash. I got into it at a good time when the game was pretty much complete save for some unfinished screenshots and I got to the point where I was watching it unfold weekly. I remember the day I was supposed to leave for my end of the year school trip (which would last a few days), I got up extra early to watch the new episode of the lp because it was close to the end and thus they were leaving it off at a bunch of cliff hangers and I had to find out what happened next. Eventually I joined Kyo’s discord server, introducing me to discord for the first time. In conclusion, Dreamtalia played a huge role in my early fandom experience and later on down the line it would play an even bigger role in my current experience. 

So, once again, I consumed all the fan content I could find, mainly being Gerita. Through Dreamtalia, I found other hetalia youtubers.  Hetafacts was probably  the other channel that I frequented the most as I loved their theories so much. I ended up making Kaitlyn (a secretary/self-insert oc) and I even made a fanfic of her. My art style started to become inspired by Hetalia. I got my first fictional crush on England, read my first reader x character fanfictions. Things were going great!

Then IT happened. Dreamtalia came back, finally complete with all screenshots and everything. I of course, loving the game watched the new lp. As I’ve explained before: hand-holding buddies happened and I got pulled into GerEng, the world of multishipping and rarepair hell. Not long after, I read the book “Fangirl” and have the strong urge to write fanfiction. Having just gotten into GerEng and loving Arthur I decided to start off writing for them. A year or so later I joined tumblr to share fanart and get in touch with other fans. I joined a bunch of discord servers and eventually made my own. I made my own ask blog after being inspired by asking-gereng and ask-aph-fruk (which I have scrolled through multiple times because I still love both blogs to death). 

Through Hetalia I was able to find my passion for writing (which I’m now hoping to pursue as career), my love of history and make many wonderful, talented online friends. Though the series itself and the fandom is controversial, I’ve been lucky and have had nothing but good experiences within the fandom and it’s changed my life for the better. It’s one of my greatest comforts and I can’t imagine a life without it. 

[25-traveller]

[ANIME]

Some recommendations for you all! But some of these are underrated. Hope you like it!

Golden Kamuy

Golden Kamuy, you've heard it before. I know that this anime is very popular in Japan but also outside Japan except Indonesia (The anime did a collab with Sanrio & Shiroi Koibito [Cookies I guess], any question?). This story is about Sugimoto,  a veteran of the early twentieth-century Russo-Japanese War, and his quest to find a huge fortune of gold of the Ainu people, helped by a young Ainu girl named Asirpa. 

"Why should I watch this?" Because you'll know everything about Ainu, indigenous people of Hokkaido! I guess Ainu is like ethnic group [We call it "suku" here], it is unfamiliar that I thought it wasn't real. You'll also learn about Russo-Japanese War, foods, Ainu foods, Ainu culture, etc.

About the fandom, I haven't seen some groups in every social media including Tumblr & Twitter. But I hope it has a green flag, cause I've seen that the fans are nice enough (They don't compare GK to other anime and a lot of them are Tsurumi's fans on Twits haha!). There is a blog about Golden Kamuy, where you can know gun types, references of real people, opium, funfact, etc. Just type it!

2. Bungou Stray Dogs

This is also popular outside Japan [and in Japan too ... Probably?]. This story follows Atsushi, a weretiger orphan, who joins others gifted with supernatural powers to accomplish different tasks including running a business, solving mysteries, and carrying out missions assigned by the agency.

Bungou Stray Dogs or BSD is worth it, you won't believe that it's a seinen (18-30/40 y.o for men) anime even if you read the genre. It's seinen, but less blood and full of humor at the first season. Same as GK, but "nicer" for teenagers. You can simp with Dazai, Ranpo, or even other bishounen characters oops- Well they have unique artstyle of course, love the eyes <3 You will also be introduced with real characters if you search them without BSD.

About the fandom, a lot of them are fujoshis (Girls who are fans of BL). I also think that the fandom is safe, but a bit weird because AtsuKyouka. However I ship these teenagers as siblings/best friends.

3. Popee The Performer

You probably know this anime. YES, Popee The Performer is an anime and a kid show, but I mean like what the earth is going on-

If you don't know Popee The Performer or I should say Popee Performer, you might say that I'm lying. Popee Performer is a 2001's anime and a kid show made by Ryuji Masuda, a CG animation. So, it does sounds like a 3D cartoon to you and you'll ask why I recommend this.

Come on, Dear, Popee Performer is alright for you ;) .... If you like bloody and 'weirdcore' animation with a story that no one can understand the reason or the moral from this "slice-of-life-or-not" anime, then this is your world. The story follows Popee, an apprentice clown, and his assistant, Kedamono, attempting various Circus acts and going about their daily lives as performers. 

The fandom? I hope it's a safe area although it's not a children show and the adults watch that, they make awesome fanarts and ... ship for PopKeda. I'm not hoping for PapPopee and you shouldn't, I beg you please. DON'T SEARCH IT ON AO3 EVEN IF YOU WANT TO

4. Gugure! Kokkuri-san

After watching heavy topics, we should start taking a snack and then stare at an enjoyable anime. Gugure! Kokkuri-san is a spectacular comedy and supernatural anime series that came out in 2014. The TV show features countless unexpected humorous and heartfelt moments, so it’s definitely worth watching, especially if you’re in the mood for something sweet and simple. The series revolves around the life of Kohina Ichimatsu, an elementary school girl who lives by herself and leads an unhealthy lifestyle. Once, while playing a game, Kohina accidentally summons Kokkuri-san, a fox spirit who later decides to take care of the little girl. The show then takes Kohina on a thrilling journey where she encounters several other spirits like her guardian.

I love the artstyle, especially Kokkuri-san. A beautiful, goofy fox with a long hair. The fandom is green flag for sure, I don't see lots of fans talking about this anime.

5. Sanrio Boys

Another enjoyable anime, sadly it's just for sponsoring Sanrio T_T WHYYYYYYYY

This is about boys who like dolls, including Kouta Hasegawa who has a problem because the society says it's girly if boys have dolls. However Kouta finds his friends who have the same interest.

This enjoyable, bromance anime ... It feels like Sanrio Danshi/Sanrio Boys is judging the society. I mean, we all hear that boys who play with dolls are girly and my ears are super itchy for listening to these stupid things. They have small fans, not popular but it's better! You will also see beautiful and handsome guys, gotta choose Mizuno before someone catches him.

There are underrated animes that I've watched, but I guess 5 is enough. Give me part 2 if you want. Sincerely, Blue Wolf

[snailsnfriends]

Dream SMP and the Effects of Grimdark Media: An Essay

Hello! For those who don’t me, I am snail, and I have been interested in the Dream SMP since October, but joined the Tumblr community not too long ago. As a writer and actor myself, the work of those on the Dream SMP has absolutely blown me away. However, I and others have noticed a trend in the writing of the Dream SMP: a good sum of it is very grimdark, and I began to notice people really feeling the effects of that, and I wanted to look more deeply into it, and how that can be altered. 

NOTE: I am completely aware that all of the writers on the Dream SMP are amateurs, and likely do not have any sort of “training” other than what they were taught in school. I would not be critiquing the writing of the Dream SMP if I did not believe that it could be “fixed.” Later in this essay, I offer suggestions to “fix” the problem that I’m bringing up. All references to factual information used in this essay will be linked at the end. 

Now, before we can talk about the Dream SMP and its writing, first we need to figure out what grimdark media is and how that affects those who watch it.

What is grimdark media?

According to the google the definition of grimdark is “(of fiction, especially fantasy fiction) characterized by disturbing, violent, or bleak subject matter and a dystopian setting.”

So now that we’ve established what grimdark is, how does depressing media, or any form of media for that matter, affect our emotions as the viewer?

As we are consuming any form of media, whether it’s a movie, a TV show, a book, a podcast, a live theatrical performance, or a Dream SMP lore stream, we as the viewers are completely aware that what we are watching is purely fictional, and that those who are performing are acting. None of the events are real, none of the characters are real, and none of the settings are real. 

So why do we react so heavily to certain moments? Why do we cry during heavy lore streams if we know that none of it is real? 

A lot of it has to do with the human capacity to feel empathy/sympathy. Empathy allows us to understand the experiences of others, even complete strangers. Sympathy, on the other hand, allows us to share the feelings and/or emotions of others. As we are consuming media, we are aware that all of it is fake, but we still feel empathy and/or sympathy for the characters. So much so that a physical response, such as crying, is a result. 

Even though the characters of the Dream SMP are not real, a lot of their characters’ responses to traumatic events ARE, so we as an audience sympathize with them heavily. For example, c!Tommy shows very clear signs of PTSD after being killed by Dream, such as extreme emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds the victim of the event (c!Tommy freaking out after taking fall damage), trying to avoid discussing the even or avoiding activities, people, and places that remind the victim of the event (c!Tommy refusing to go into depth about what happened to him), memory problems (does not really remember how long he was dead for), easily startled, always on guard, extremely irritable, angry outbursts or aggressive behavior, and difficulty keeping close relationships (his current relationship with c!Tubbo). 

Even though we as an audience know that c!Tommy and his experiences aren’t real, his reactions to these experiences are realistic, and can be relatable to a lot of viewers, those with PTSD and those without (which is why it is VERY important to be careful with your word choice when discussing these characters; this connects with the problem of villainizing characters with mental illnesses, but that’s another topic for another day). We as viewers empathize with c!Tommy because it is likely that we have reacted the same way to traumatic events, and we understand them fully. They may remind us of our past and/or current selves, so we react emotionally to them. 

We as people also mirror the reactions and emotions of others. If someone starts to cry, real or fictional, it’s likely that you will as well. If someone is angry, you will likely get angry as well. This is not odd, and is very normal for humans to do. Regardless, getting angry or crying are emotional responses, and will hurt you in some way. 

Another thing to note is that this fandom is made up of mostly minors, and some of the most traumatized characters on the Dream SMP are also minors. It can be hard to watch kids your own age go through so much, even fictional ones. As an adult, it can be just as hard to watch these young kids go through so much, especially when you try to compare those characters to who you were at their ages. 

Even those who have not gone through these events will likely sympathize with these characters heavily because what they have gone through is emotionally heavy. Because of all of this, watching heavy lore streams can have a negative effect on a viewer’s mental health. 

Okay, so why is the Dream SMP storyline at the moment so dark and angsty? Why do people keep engaging with it if it is negatively affecting their mental health?

This sort of “angst spiral” of sorts is usually something I notice in fanworks such as fanart or fanfiction. It is sometimes a lot more fun to write or draw heavy, emotional moments, and they garner more attention. 

It sort of goes like this: the plot has a normal amount of angst in it for the story, and at this point it is balanced with more happy or “fluffy” content, the angst gets more attention from fans, the writer (or in the case of the Dream SMP, writers) notice this and write more angst as a response but it is still bearable, the audience feeds off of this heavily and create more fanart/fanfiction/theories based on it, writer really notices this and (understandably) comes to the conclusion that angst/grimdark things are the best/easiest way to get the audience excited for the plot, the plot gets very very grimdark and is not balanced out with any upbeat moments, random angst plots are started with no real ending in sight despite that not being the original plan for the character/plot (feet are too small for the big shoes) and the rare upbeat moments are short/not given any attention, and at this point, it can be almost unbearable to watch because the plot has become too grimdark. Once we reach this point, or even a few before it, it can cause a big toll on the viewers’ mental health.

The reason why someone who has been negatively affected by the grimdark content of the Dream SMP may still watch it is because the Dream SMP has not always been this way, and the writers have proven that they can do upbeat/fluffy content, so they keep watching. A big example of this is the Disc War Finale. Although the first half of it was more angsty, the final parts where everyone came together to put c!Dream in jail and to protect c!Tommy and c!Tubbo was upbeat and even a bit cathartic to watch. C!Tommy and c!Tubbo sitting on the bench, listening to their discs together in the end was much needed for the audience. This can even be seen in smaller examples, like c!Tommy exclaiming, “I’m free!” while flying around with c!Dream’s trident, or c!Tubbo and c!Ranboo adopting Michael and getting married.

The Dream SMP also may be someone’s hyperfixation, so they are unable to simply stop watching. 

So now that we know all of this, what can the writers of the Dream SMP do to fix this, and what can we as viewers do to help ourselves out?

As I said in the note before this essay, I will be citing examples of a more balanced lore/angst plot that the writers have shown that they are capable of doing.

The writers: 

Make designated lore streams shorter

The best example of this is c!Tommy’s 25-30 minute prison streams. These streams were short, sweet, and to the point. We got all of the “lore” we needed quickly, and if you happened to miss it, it was easy to watch it back later. If the lore bits were too heavy to watch, then you would not be missing too much. 

I know that this is definitely not always possible, so this is most likely the best way to go:

Balance out lore and funny bits in streams

Cc!Tommy’s last lore stream, pretty much all of the Pogtopia streams, and most of cc!Tubbo’s streams are like this. They are a mix of lore and funny moments where the CCs are actually speaking and joking with each other. These are a lot easier to watch because it is not heavy the entire time. The joking moments provide a break in between the angst, and it can also be used as a good way to remind the audience that the Dream SMP is purely fictional. These streams are also better for those who do not really care for the lore and would rather just watch the CCs mess around with each other. 

For me, these funny moments are what caused me to fall in love with the Dream SMP and the creators behind it, and I know that the same applies to a lot of people in this fandom. I think this would probably be the best way for the Dream SMP to operate around lore. 

The viewers 

Try to take a break from lore streams if it becomes too much

As I stated before, the Dream SMP is not real, but the characters’ reactions to events can be very realistic and hard to watch. If things become too much for you, try to take a break from it. Stop watching the stream, don’t go on social media if you follow stan accounts or Dream SMP dedicated blogs, and go do something that calms you down. If you feel that you’re feeling good enough to go back to the stream, go ahead! If not, then that’s completely okay too!

Follow lore recap accounts/blogs to stay up to date on the lore

The fear of missing lore streams is centered largely around missing something crucial. There are plenty of accounts on Twitter and blogs on Tumblr that recap lore streams so you can stay up to date on the plot without having to watch the streams. 

The VODs will be there to watch later

If things are too much, remember that you do not have to watch the streams in real-time. You can always watch them later if you aren’t in the right headspace to watch them live. 

Conclusion

The Dream SMP’s writing and acting is very impressive. The amount of awesome fanart, fanfiction, analysis posts, and other work is absolutely amazing. It is so cool that so many people enjoy this Minecraft roleplay so much. The amount of people who love it is good proof that the writers are doing an amazing job, and the amount of people having an emotional response to it shows the same thing. However, the amount of angst can be hard to watch and can put the writers in a tough spot to get out of. 

I have a lot of faith in the writers of the Dream SMP, and I believe that it is possibly on the right track, with Tommy’s latest lore stream being an example of this. I really do think that the amount of grimdark content can be altered and streams can be easier and more fun to watch. Hopefully we’ll get a more mixed bag of lore and angst soon to make things more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Sources:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-moral-molecule/200902/why-we-cry-movies

https://www.vice.com/sv/article/exqgqm/why-do-we-cry-when-we-watch-films

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sympathy-empathy-difference

[unioncolours]

A 2nd Majsasaurus Year!

Today, 22nd of September 2021, it’s been two years since I officially joined the magical world of fandom. 22.9.2019 I uploaded the first chapter to my fic Shadows and Sand, and the rest is history.

I did a deep dive into my first year as a fic writer and active member of fandom last year, when it was my first anniversary. You can read it here!

In that meta discussion about my membership of fandom, I presented it as if walking on clouds. I was so, so happy and talked during all the discussion about my happiness in fandom.

Since that post was written, my life and also my perception of the fandom I am part of has changed. Change isn’t always bad, as I really had a honeymoon phase with fandom over a year ago, and the low after hit hard.

But let’s see what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been writing! The following year provided much change and fun things! Please keep reading 💜⬇

The first fic I wrote since 22.9.2020 was a Sakura x Ino fic. I had for a longer while been interested in writing a woman-loves-woman ship, which I had never done before, and as a wlw-person myself the urge to explore that part led to Promise me this is just a kiss. The pairing itself was chosen on rather random, it had to be two women and I like Ino, so I chose the most popular Ino-wlw ship for this for convenience.

I really liked writing the fic and it was well-received! It was the first time I had written a fic that was entirely centred around exploring feelings and having sex.

After this I jumped directly onto the next idea that had been boiling inside me for a longer while. Up to this point, all I had written, except the wlw-fic, had been set in the Naruto canonverse and I was itching to try to work with a multi-chaptered modern au! The pairing was of course my beloved Shikadai x Inojin.

It was during the creation of this fic I began to struggle. This was a new genre, as this was romance only and all my other works had been action and fantasy based, except the sex fic of course. I was maybe over critical and stressed, which resulted in me having a hard time writing it. But I made it. Was the sky always this beautiful? ended up being 35k long, and in hindsight, I freaking love, love, love how it turned out in the end and what it represented. I am very proud of this fic.

I “upgraded” as a fan by the end of October when I bought myself a digital drawing tablet. I began drawing fanart of Shikadai and Inojin and preferably them two together, haha! I still draw a few days a month and find it extremely fun as a side hobby beside the writing.

We are now in November 2020. By this time, I had completely finished my zine fic, Under the Scorching Sun, which I had written during September and October, for the Shikatema zine I was kindly accepted to. I was proud of what I had created and was eager for the rest of the contributors to wrap up theirs, so we’d have a wonderful zine for sale in 2021. It was lovely to write ShikaTema again. As the zine fic was about to be released in months from when I had at first finished it, I wanted of course to write something fans and friends could immediately take part of on the internet. I had hyped myself up to a state where I wanted to write a third and final story in my series To love and never let go, my epic series about Shikadai and Inojin.

Now, I should maybe have waited another month, but I was worried the readers would give up on me if I didn’t write it right away. In December, I began writing To find hope in the Universe, with my usual speed and love for the art.

What I by then didn’t realise or even recognise was that I was very slowly turning burned out. I ignored all the signs.

In December I wrote simultaneously as Hope in the Universe a fic that was part of the Shikatema server’s Secret Santa event. The fic’s name was The Ghost Stories of our Hearts, and it was ShikaTema, as the event’s name suggests. It was fun to write and despite the final big fic, Hope in the Universe, pressing down on me, I finished The Ghost Stories of our Hearts and was very happy with the result. Sadly, at this point the burnout began taking control over me, and I never managed to reply to the comments.

The 15th of January, I began uploading To find hope in the Universe. It was a lovely experience, even if it was tainted by negative feelings coming from my decreasing happiness and the fact that it didn’t do as well as To dance above the Stars, the second fic in the series. To deal with two very contradiction emotions, loving my work, the characters, how I have painted an entire world around the characters and how I knew some people honestly loved my hard work, and then the negative feelings coming from not feeling good enough and depressed, was a difficult thing to navigate and still is when I think back to that time. It didn’t help that during the process of uploading the fic I went through grief, and I chose distraction as my coping method. I kept writing and working, the only thing I ever knew.

Our pre-order of the Shikatema zine was in full motion by this time and it was a nerve-wracking time! Mostly because of excitement but also worry. I’m super happy for my friends who were part of the zine, with whom I could share all the excitement and nervousness with. The zine ended up making good sales, which made me happy among the uploading of the long fic.

To find hope in the Universe was completed 31st of March 2021. When I uploaded the final chapter, I felt nothing. It was so weird, so spooky, to have finished a long fic and a series on top of that and not feel anything. But deep down, beneath the layer of depression, I felt great pride.

That was the emotion that broke free once the burnout left me. Pride.

I had created this empire of Shikajin, a whole alternative timeline, an alternative canon from my own head and to this day, that is my internet legacy. I love Trial of the Heart, which I wrote in 2020, but if I have to choose between ToH and this series, I will choose To love and never let go in a heartbeat.

So, even if it felt depressing and hopeless in the moment, I look now back with pride and happiness. Never forget that. Never forget that I made that.

April was a curious time. I swore to not write anything, because I had by now recognised that I was burned out and needed to rest, yet managed to scrape together three smaller fics.

The first one was another wlw-smut fic, TemaSaku this time called Another Light. I wanted to explore that part once again. I wrote it in canonverse and honestly think the fic ended up extremely nice. Perfect amount of feels and sex. It didn’t feel hard to write at all, because the setting, characters and emotions were so different from the fics I had written the last five months.

Now more interesting things lay on the horizon! A new zine, the Ino-Shika-Cho zine called Beyond a Bond had an interest check during the spring, and later the contributor application. I urged in the interest check to please give us the next gen kids, Shikadai, Inojin and Chocho – my kids and babies, and when it turned out they were going to feature, I had to apply as a writer. For this application I wrote a one shot, called It’s just hair, and I loved this spunky little story featuring the best babies that I created.

I also edited one of my tumblr fics, And then I kissed him, into a longer, better version that I later in May uploaded onto AO3. It was once again a Shikajin, a sequel of Trial of the Heart, and it was a fun little project.

Now May came and I sent in the application for the zine early, which I now am relieved I did. I am happy that I did the work for the application in April instead of May, because in May I had a few breakdowns and another grieving period, which lead to complete creative paralysis. I didn’t write a single word during May, only uploaded the two one shots I had prepared in April.

What I did do in May was to read through the Shikatema zine I had contributed to! It arrived in the mail! I was so nervous; my whole body was shaking when I opened the package right outside the post office. The zine now resides on the parade place in my little zine shrine in the bookshelf. Thank you to the mods who made this a reality!

To my great happiness my zine adventures continued as I was accepted to the Ino-Shika-Cho zine as a writer and was assigned to write my favourite characters. I felt so relieved and overjoyed, mind blown by the sheer talent among the contributors.

On the other fandom front, June didn’t continue any brighter, with stress and mental pain still having a strong grip around me, despite the very happy news that I am still so grateful for. I wrote a Yamanaka family fic which to this day hasn’t seen the light of AO3, because of negative emotions surrounding it. I turned into a complete wreck compared to me in June 2020. In June 2020 I was flourishing, I loved what I did, I loved fandom and I loved the friends I had made through Discord servers. Now I could find myself crying my eyes out over a wip not going the way I wished it would. What had happened to Bex 2021?

I was so incredibly frustrated with myself, groaning in defeat when my hands just couldn’t write. I managed to push through 6k of what I called my “emo au” – more of that later – and finish the Yamanaka fic which is still buried, and on top of that I had the zine and another fandom event, The Naruto Photo Album, to create content for. Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I find happiness in something that once was my reason for happiness?

In the end, I managed to write 15k in June. My former monthly word count used to be 30k. One could think this would turn into the end of my fic writing career, or the beginning of a longer hiatus, but I am stubborn and want to meet the expectations of the people who love my content, so I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to try. I wanted to be whoever I was before.

Funnily enough, the healing came in the shape of the most self-indulgent fic I have ever, ever written, a fic I like possessed began writing July the 1st 2021. It was nothing less than a freaking fairy tale AU, namely a Shikadai x Inojin Peter Pan AU. I can hear you laugh at the silliness of it, but this whimsical AU gave me back my love for writing. I hyper-fixated on this story quite a bit and stopped writing on everything else, something I almost never do.

Only happy boys fly ended up being 21 000 words long! I knew it was a niched story, and true to my guesses, the story has to this day very low stats. Today, two months after it was published, it has just above 100 hits and 10 kudos, so for all I know, only ten people read and liked it. I try to not care too much, since I love the story and in some way, that story saved me from going batshit insane over my emotions about writing.

At this point I had begun writing my fic from the Ino-Shika-Cho zine, finding joy in silly scenes with my favourite characters and trying to heal. The writing process was frustratingly slow, but one word at a time I got forward and as of today, the draft is done. The pre-orders are in December. At the side of the zine fic I wrote a short fluffy Shikajin story, CLEAR, a story with almost no plot, because I knew how much self-indulgence could help me.

And then, I finally began writing for real on my emo au, A gang of fallen stars, which has the first few chapters up right now! I have for the first time in six months a longer fic (if we don’t count the Peter Pan story) and it feels… good. This fic is once again a modern au, but in darker tones than my other modern au from November 2020. I honestly like what I have so far, even if I during June and July almost planned to never finish it. I am so relieved I managed to begin the upload. In September the Photo Album was released and I could show my two fics I wrote for it.

It sounds like this year has been nothing but misery, and at times it felt like it. However, there are a few fandom friends who brought light to my life when I couldn’t see it. The first ones to mention are of course my partners in crime, @notquitejiraiya and @thespookymoth. Together we created a server dedicated to Ino-Shika-Cho during the spring and it has been tons of fun with the members there! Thank you two for listening to me and for being my friends during 2021.

I also have to mention Soverel, who carefully begun taking contact through comments and likes on my twitter, and later through direct messages, and it has been a fun ride ever since. We’ve had lovely discussions which are very dear to me and your support means a lot to me. Thank you for being you and for drawing so many wonderful artworks you’ve shared with me. Haha, and for making me play Genshin Impact, even though I do it like twice a month!

Another person who has made my days so much brighter is @sugarriene. Thank you for sending me that one dm that made us chat regularly, thank you for popping up and sharing panels and your wonderful drawings with me, and for vibing head canons with me. You are a lovely person, and you make me happy.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to @yoboseyokyu for listening to me when I had to yell into the void and for making me happy with your cute posts on both twitter and tumblr.

Since September 2020, I’ve written around 195 000 words and drawn close to 35 illustrations, most of them of Shikadai and Inojin. Almost 200 000 words of Majsasaurus. I’ve created a Discord server and I’ve been part of two zines as a writer, plus a free PDF-project.

It has been a wild year. A year filled with passion for my favourite characters and ship, with the excitement that came with being part of projects and hyping them. It was a year where I learned to draw digitally, and heck what fun it was.

This also a year where I learned people can be mean to me because of what I ship and that fandom friends won’t necessarily always stay to be your friend anymore and how much it can hurt. I also learned what my limits are, and what punishment I get if I don’t listen to my own mind and rest when I have to.

It was a year, guys.

Now, onto the third Majsasaurus Year. Cheers!

And those of you, who supported me when I needed it – thank you and I love you.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Circe Invidiosa

Circe Invidiosa has 11 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files stories at her website. Some of my favs I’ve recced here before, like Make It Worse and Slap a Goatee On Me and Call Me Evil. She also made a bunch of X-Files collage art, including some cover art for fics (hers and others), which you probably saw if you were reading fic back when authors posted fics on their own websites where art could be shared. Big thanks to Circe Invidiosa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Well, it would surprise me if people did read my fic. As it happens, I don't hear much feedback from my fic these days. Probably because the bulk of it is on Gossamer and my own site rather than AO3. Also, I was never a BNA. I worked a lot behind the scenes – hosting other authors' sites and making fanart and dustjackets. I think that's what I'd be remembered for, if anything.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience?

I miss the collective excitement and discussions we had as groups. When you got in with a group in the XF fandom, you felt like you knew everybody there. Now the fandom feels a little faceless except for the people I still follow from my old groups.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Most of my experience was on Yahoo Groups. I joined Scullyfic while it was still there and then E-muse when it became an e-mail list, which I'm still a part of. I was part of several Yahoo Groups (can't remember all of them now), where I'd post my fic, RealPlayer slideshows (remember those?!), and collages. I never really took part in discourse because I'm shy and don't think anyone cares about my opinions (still don't!). The e-mail address I used for those groups was purged a couple of years ago, so I've lost all those messages.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

My take away is that fanfic made me a better writer, thanks to having some great betas, and it made me a better professional writer for it (my real-life work is writing but not fun writing) because I learned to take criticism.

I also used to make a lot of fanart, collages and dustjackets for fic mostly. My big take away from that was that I really got into graphics and I got super proficient at Photoshop, which helped my own artistic endeavours and photography. I didn't realize how much skill I had developed until I've had to help someone with their graphics or photo editing.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

My mother was watching X-Files before I was and she was raving about it. I don't have a great relationship with my mom, but one thing she was usually right about was TV shows. It's where I got my love of Sci-Fi.

I think the first episode I watched was Ice, which definitely hooked me. As for when the shipping started, I remember we were watching Lazarus, and when Mulder was yelling at Lula (I had to look that up) about hurting the hostage Scully, my mom said, "Oh, he's so in love with her." And I was all, "What?! Pfff." But then I could not stop thinking about it. And then I thought about it way, way too much.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I was in my late 20s, and it was around the end of S7 and I kept thinking about what if these two dumb idiots actually talked one day. And I kept thinking about dialogue in my head about what they'd actually say. The internet was still in its infancy back then, but I'd seen fan sites here and there. So I decided to search around to see if other people were talking about it and thinking about it like I was. I was such a noob I'd never even heard of fanfic. Imagine my delight when I discovered it. I found a few stories and thought, 'Well, I can do that.' And I wrote up my first story, found a place to post it (wasn't Ephemeral the best?), got some kind feedback, found a really nice person (not sure she wants to be named since she used her real name in the fandom back in the day) who encouraged me a lot and directed me to all the e-mail lists and Yahoo Groups that I needed to be on, and then, Bob's your uncle, I wrote more and more.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Periphery. Most of my experience in any fandom is now on Tumblr because that's where my attention span is. Show me pretty pictures and funny stuff. I am old now and don't want to think hard.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Veronica Mars was my next fandom experience. A number of my XF friends got me hooked on VM. The VM fandom was a LOT younger compared to the XF fandom. When I joined the XF fandom, I was the kid compared to most of the other fans who were all goddesses and royalty in my eyes. But in the VM fandom, I was in my 30s and the rest of the fandom were all in their early 20s if not younger. It often showed, so I stayed out of discussions and just posted my fic once I started writing it. I took a new handle (invida) when I started writing VM fic. Just in case these kids felt like my writing sucked, I didn't want it getting back to the XF fandom that I’d branched out and failed spectacularly.

By then fandom experiences had moved over to LiveJournal. I never really got involved in the discourse or the fandom fights. I knew what people were saying and where the schisms were, but I was all about the fanfic and the pretty pictures. Most of my LJ friends just discussed the episodes and posted their fic and that was good with me.

What got me writing fic for VM was Anjou's brilliant VM fic Into the Blue. Seriously, if you love VM S1, read her fic. Just so beautiful.

VM was also where started writing a WIP, which was a wild trip. I wrote a much-loved WIP called Damn, Damn the Circumstance which people still ask me about finishing to this day. Someday…*wistful sighs*

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Scully. She was everything! Lapsed Catholic, degrees in science, skeptic, always trying to work within the rules but still not taking crap. Yeah, she was the best.

Veronica Mars was great until she wasn't. I have a lot of issues with her beyond S2. And don't even talk to me about S4. For me, S1 was the best, I enjoyed the movie, the books were okay, but nothing else happened after that. NOTHING.

And the first character I ever loved was Princess Leia. She was also everything to me growing up. I wanted to be her. I still do.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Now and then. Not as much as I used to. I sometimes have it on in the background when I'm doing other things. Back before the pandemic, my BFF and I would have get togethers where we would play Scrabble, eat a lot of candy, and binge several XF episodes. I miss doing that. Hopefully, we will get back to that soon.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I am not an active XF fanfic reader right now. I will read any stories my friends put out. Otherwise, I only occasionally read some I come across on Tumblr in my feed, but I am not seeking them out. I will beta for any XF author who asks me as well.

I am reading fic in other fandoms though – Endeavour, Broadchurch, Sherlock…huh, I'm just realizing that's a lot of British stuff. I have been really into British detective series for the last few years.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I used to run an XF fic recommendation site called How Will It End usually with at least one other person (I went through at least 4 partners on that project because I'm a control freak). We'd compile our recs and then I'd post them on my site. We'd also feature authors we really liked and interview them. Not unlike these interviews!

I'm terrible at giving feedback/comments. So I solved that problem by making a rec site. That way I could tell authors I loved their fics by recommending them. I didn't have to comment, I'd just say, 'I'd like to rec your fic'. And then they'd get promotion. Win-win. Back in those days, the fandom would absolutely roast you for promoting your own fic, so to get on a rec site was a big deal. Not that I had a popular rec site or anything. But I think authors really enjoyed being asked.

All that to say I've liked a lot of fics. I can pull up the archives of HWIE and show you all the faves I liked. :)

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Back in the day, E-muse would hold Improv Challenges, where other members would give you a prompt that you had to include in your fic. I was always really proud of the stories I created from those challenges (No Earthly Means and Elephant in the Room if you want to read them).

I enjoyed writing Dead to Rights which is an XF/Dead Like Me crossover because I loved the challenge of writing a crossover. It was the first crossover I ever tried writing even though I only recently published it.

Otherwise, I like re-reading In a Graveyard, Importuning Life for Life, and Some By Virtue Fall. Of my more recent fic, I like Slap a Goatee on Me and Call Me Evil because the premise was ridiculous and I think it's funny as all get out.

Probably my favourite of my VM fic was Stay Outta Riverdale. Because: 1. The title is a Simpsons reference who doesn't love a Simpsons reference? And 2. I think I was hilarious throughout it.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I'm always open to writing more fic (and, of course, I don't mean my WIPs…don't look at me like that). Lately, my only motivation has been from writing prompts on Tumblr. I haven't had anyone give me a prompt in over a year, so here we are. I have snippets of dialogue in journals and word documents that have never found their way into stories. I'd be happy to dust off any of those and shoehorn them into a new story.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

The last fanfic I wrote was a mini-fic over a year ago (with a prompt from Lilydale!). I've written a bit of original fiction but I haven't been able to finish it. Otherwise, I do have a number of real life hobbies which are where my creative outlets lie now.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Lately, challenges and prompts. It used to be from wanting to see more from a scene. I really had a thing for fill-in-the-blanks or scene continuations. And sometimes my motivation is just plain old spite. :)

What's the story behind your pen name?

Circe Invidiosa is the title of a painting by John William Waterhouse. Love the colours and the absolute malice on the face of the subject. It felt like a good pen name – the envious witch. That's me!

I chose it when I posted my first XF fic (which I cringe to read now, ugh so terrible) without knowing there was already a Circe in the fandom. Whoops. I tried to go by the full Circe Invidiosa or Invidiosa as much as possible after realizing that (invidiosa is my url and my username on a lot of sites, etc.). Now I think that I've been around long enough that it doesn't matter as much but I still like it.

As I said, I took the name Invida for the VM fandom which is just a shortening of Invidiosa.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My significant other knows and that was quite a reveal (oh how awkward). However, the SO has been very supportive and has read all my stories since the reveal and sometimes betas them. The SO also wants us to collaborate on writing some original fiction but we haven't found a project that works for both of us creatively or timewise.

My BFF knows because I dragged her into the online fandom. We've known each other since we were 14, but our love of XF really solidified our bond in our 20s. She wrote some short but sweet fics under the penname Helen Quilley which I bullied her into posting, and we wrote Of Ladies Most Deject and Wretched together. She is mostly embarrassed that she wrote fanfic now but we still fangirl together.

No one else really knows other than fandom folks I've met in real life. And some friends know I've written 'short stories' but I don't elaborate. I work in a stodgy, uptight industry where anything fun or actually having a life is frowned upon.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Over the first lockdown, I got my shit together and got my fic site, invidiosa.com, up and running again. My site houses fic by Rain (now @doctorhelena on Tumblr and AO3), Helen Quilley, ML (who I miss so much), Folieadeux, Shelba, TLynn, Oracle, Piper Sargasso, Diehard, and me. And I made all their dustjackets (except Folie's). The site got hacked a few years back and it was so much work to get running again that I put it off for years and years. I still feel terrible that I did not get the site back up before ML passed away, especially when ML had asked me about it a few months before she passed.

Anyway, all my XF fic is here: circe.invidiosa.com. I have 3 of my newer XF stories on AO3. And my fic-LJ also has some of my stories. Some of the newer stories are on Tumblr but the tagging is so erratic that I'd have to list several tags before you'd find them all. I don't know why I haven't moved everything over to AO3. Probably laziness.

I'm @invidiosa on Tumblr. I'm still on E-muse. I'm still on LJ. I'm always reachable by e-mail (invidiosa at gmail).

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Thanks for reading, writing, and commenting. It is always appreciated.

(Posted by Lilydale on January 5, 2021)

[shirlleycoyle]

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon

Every fictional character you can think of has experienced 9/11 in fanfiction.

A Clone Wars veteran with two lightsabers is on United Airlines Flight 93 and prevents it from crashing. Ron and Hermione get caught up in the chaos as the towers fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends watch the attacks unfold on TV from Sunnydale. We have spent 20 years trying to process what happened on 9/11 and its fallout, and that messy process can be tracked through the countless, sad, disturbing, and sometimes very funny fanfiction left across the internet.

Many of the fanfics written in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks seemed to directly respond to the news as it happened, processing the tragedy in real-time through the eyes of characters they loved. In the absence of a canon episode where Daria Morgendorffer paid respects to those lost, writing fanfic about these characters also experiencing trauma helped fans cope.

One YuGiOh fanfic published on fanfiction.net in May 2002 could have been ripped exactly from what this writer experienced that Tuesday morning. “It started as a normal day,” user Gijinka Renamon wrote. Yugi and his friends were in school, where their teacher informed them of the attacks and sent everyone home from school.

“After reading people’s 9/11 fics, I decided to write my own, and put a certain character in it. And Yugi and his pals were my first choice,” the author's note reads, explaining the connection they felt to United flight 93 and the World Trade Center attacks. Given that they lived in Pennsylvania, and “it’s close to New York, I felt really sad about it.”

Stitch, a fandom journalist for Teen Vogue, told Motherboard that this reaction to 9/11 is not at all uncommon in fandom.

"Fandom has always been a place that positions nothing as 'off limits,'" she said. "Historical tragedies like the Titanic sinking and atrocities like… all of World War 2 show up regularly across the past 30 years of people creating stories and art about the characters they love. So, on some level, it makes sense that 9/11 and the following 20-year military installation in the Middle East has joined the ranks of things people in different fandoms turn into settings for their fan fiction."

Reactions depicted in a handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics published in the weeks after the attacks ring a little truer to the characters. “Tuesday, 11th September 2001,” written by Anna K, almost echoes the lyrics from “I’ve Got a Theory,” one of the songs in the musical episode that aired in November 2001. “We have seen the apocalypse. We have prevented it. Actually, we’ve prevented quite a few. So we know what they look like,” they write, before taking a darker turn. “They look a lot like…New York today.”

Killing demons and vampires doesn’t phase the Scooby Gang, but when preventable human death is brought into the picture, it’s gut wrenching.

“What am I supposed to do…When I can’t do anything to save the world?” Buffy cries  into Spike’s chest, watching the attacks unfold on TV in a fanfic the author described as being “about feeling numb and helpless.”

In “Blood Drive,” Kirayoshi writes about Buffy and her friends saving a van full of donated blood meant for victims of the attacks from a group of thirsty vampires. One Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic even takes a blindly patriotic turn, where noted lesbian witch Tara McClay helps Xander hang an American flag from the window of the magic shop to make Anya feel better.

Experiencing 9/11 as a young teenager was overwhelming not just because of the loss of life. Almost immediately after the event itself, it was as if the entirety of American culture re-oriented itself towards an overtly jingoistic stance. As we get distance from the attacks, seeing the tone of television and movies from the early 2000s is jarring, and some have gone viral on Twitter. In the world of pop music, mainstream musicians like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were blacklisted from the radio while Toby Keith sang about putting a boot up the ass of terrorists. On the Disney Channel, a young Shia Labeouf reading a poem he supposedly wrote about the events. The poem concludes with the line, "it's awesome to be an American citizen."

In a world so completely saturated with this messaging, it is not surprising that fanfic authors started including 9/11 in their work so soon after the event. Even The West Wing had a strange, out of continuity, fanfic-esque episode where the characters reacted to 9/11. In some cases, it made sense that the characters in the stories would be close to or a part of the events themselves.

"For characters like John Watson or Captain America, the idea works to an extent," Stitch told Motherboard. "In the original Sherlock Holmes works and the 2011 BBC series, Watson had just returned from Afghanistan. For Captain America and other Marvel heroes, 9/11 was something that was addressed in-universe in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #36. Technically, 9/11 is 'canon' to the Marvel universe."

In “Early Warning: Terrorism,” a fanfiction for the TV show Early Edition in which a man who mysteriously receives tomorrow's newspaper, predicting the future, avoids jingoism, but tries to precent 9/11 from happening. This fanfic remains unfinished; it’s unclear if the characters successfully prevent 9/11 in this retelling.

Largely in fanfic from the era just after 9/11, when many young authors were trying to emotionally grapple with it, the characters don't re-write or undo the events themselves. It's this emphasis on the reaction to tragedy that colors the fanfiction that features 9/11 going forward.

Although fanfiction authors have been writing about 9/11 consistently since soon after the event, whenever that fanfiction reaches outside of its intended audience, it looks bizarre.

A screenshot of a Naruto 9/11 fanfic on the Tumblr subreddit comes without any context, or even more than two lines and an author's note. It’s impossible to suss out if this falls into the category of sincere fanfic without the rest of the piece or a publication date, but modern-day commenters on the Reddit thread see it as classic Tumblr trash.

Screenshot from r/Tumblr

“Bin Laden/Dick Cheney, enemies to lovers, 10k words, slow burn,” one user joked in the replies, underscoring the weirdness of Naruto being in the Twin Towers by comparing it to a What If story about Cheney and Bin Laden slowly falling deeply in love.

It’s hard to tell how much of the 9/11 fanfic and fanart starting a few years after the attacks is sincere, and how much of it is ironic, and trying to make fun of the very concept of writing fanfiction about 9/11.

A 2007 anime music video (in which various clips, usually from anime, are cut together to music) that combines scenes from The Lion King with Linkin Park’s “Crawling” and clips from George Bush’s speeches immediately after the attacks feels like the perfect example of this. Even the commenters can’t seem to suss out if this person is a troll or not.

There’s no way that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic 9/11 fanart could be serious, right? Especially if the description pays tribute to “some of the nation's most memorable buildings,” and features five of the main characters as child versions of themselves. The comments again are split between users thanking the artist for a thoughtful remembrance post, and people making their own headcanon for why Twilight Sparkle is surreptitiously absent from the scene.

Screengrab via DeviantArt

There’s Phineas and Ferb fanfic that combines a 9/11 tribute concert with flashbacks to Ferb being rescued from the towers as a baby, written on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It jumps from introspection to lines like, “‘Quiet Perry the Platypus. I’m trying to listen to these kids singing a 9/11 tribute.’”

The author's notes make it more likely that they meant for this to be a tribute piece, but it doesn’t quite make sense until watching a YouTube dramatic reading of it from 2020, fully embracing the absurdity of it all.

“For me, 9/11 is synonymous with war. It completely changed the course of my life," Dreadnought, the author of a Captain America fanfic Baghdad Waltz that sees Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fall in love over the course of the war on terror, told Motherboard. "It’s the reason I joined the military, and I developed deep connections with people who would go on to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These very much felt like my generation’s wars, perhaps because people I graduated high school with were the youngest folks eligible to serve at the time.”

Dreadnought told Motherboard that although they didn't deploy, their career has kept 9/11 and the trauma from it in their mind. After seeing that people who fantasize about Steve and Bucky getting together seemed particularly interested in reading fanfiction that related to 9/11, they decided to try their hand at it.

"I had to do something with all of that emotionally, and I’m admittedly a bit emotionally avoidant. So I learned through fic that it’s easier for me to process those feelings and the knowledge of all the awful stuff that can happen in war if I can turn it into something creative," Dreadnought said. "Give the feelings to fake people and then have those fake people give the feelings to readers!"

To Dreadnought, who is a queer man, the experience of researching and writing this was more cathartic than they first expected, especially as a way to navigate feelings about masculinity, military culture, and queer identity. But they said the research they did, which included watching footage of first responders at ground zero, was what helped them finally process the event itself.

"It was like a delayed horror, and it was more powerful than I expected it would be." Dreadnought said. "When I was eighteen, I was pretty emotionally divorced from 9/11; I just knew I wanted to do something about it. So coming back to it in my 30s while writing this fic, it was a very different experience. Even the research for this story ended up being an extraordinarily valuable exercise in cognitively and emotionally processing 9/11 and all of its second and third order effects."

Fanfiction that features 9/11 provides an outlet for people who still grapple with the trauma from that day. But Stitch warns that the dynamics of fandom and how it relates to politics can also create fiction that's less respectful and more grotesque.

"With years of distance between the stories written and the original events of 9/11, there seems to be some sort of cushion for fans who choose to use those events as a catalyst for relationships—and Iraq and Afghanistan for settings," Stitch said. "The cushion allows them room to fictionalize real world events that changed the shape of the world as we know it, but it also insulates them from having to think about what they may be putting into the world."

The tendency of turning these events into settings or backgrounds for mostly white, male characters to fall in love has the unintended effect of displacing the effects that the war on terror has had on the world over. Steve and Bucky might fall in love during the war on terror, but they would also be acting as a part of the American military in a war that has been criticized since it started. Fanfic writers in other fandoms have come under fire for using real world tragedy as settings for fic before. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Supernatural fanfiction about the actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki going to the island to do aid became controversial within the fandom. There have also been fics where characters grapple with the death of George Floyd that is written in a way that displaces the event from the broader cultural context of race in America.

"A Captain America story where Steve Rogers is a 'regular' man who joins the US Army and 'fights for our freedom' post-9/11 is unlikely to deal with the war’s effect on locals who are subject to US military intervention," Stitch said. "It’s unlikely to sit with what Captain America has always meant and what a writer is doing by dropping Steve Rogers into a then-ongoing conflict in any capacity."

After enough time, “never forget” can even morph into “but what if it never happened?” A 19k+ word Star Wars alternate universe fanfic asks this question, wondering what would have unfolded if someone with two lightsabers was on United Flight 93. This fic, part of a larger fanfic series with its own Wikia, considers what would have happened if Earth was a military front in the Clone Wars.

In this version of events, a decorated general who served in the Clone Wars is able to take back control of Flight 93 before it crashes, landing safely and preventing even more tragedy from happening that day. In the end, all of the passengers who made harrowing last calls to their loved ones before perishing in a Pennsylvania field survive thanks to the power of the Force, and are awarded medals of honor by President Bush.

Twenty years after the attacks, it’s painful to think about what would have happened if people got to work 15 minutes later, or missed their trains that morning. There weren’t Jedi masters deployed to save people in real life, but for some of the fanfic writers working today, the world of Star Wars might feel just as removed as the world before September 11, 2001.

Fiction serves as a powerful playground for processing cultural events, especially generational trauma. The act isn't neutral though; a decade's worth of fanfiction that takes place on or around 9/11 shows how our own understanding of a traumatic event can shift with time.

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[kathyrealmstales]

Before we start off this post, Quick things to say.

1. This is about the DreamSMP and the characters from the story.

2. This is all Roleplay. All the actors are amazing and love their acting skills! Keep up the good work!

You have been warned.

-----------

Now to the actual reason of writing this.

I usually go onto Tumblr to see the DreamSMP fanart. (And once and a while looking at theories posts because those are great). But one of my friends pointed out there are a lot of posts on C!Technoblade (or c!Techno) being a bad character. Which of course made me mad so now Imma have to talk about it now.

Now usually I would stay out of this stuff, if not for the fact the people saying c!Techno is bad also start insulting the people defending him

So I take this as a challenge you fools.

This entire post is going to be about how I think his character is really like.

For starters I want to say I am NOT a c!Techno apologist. To be honest I think that Techno's character could do some things better. I might even point out those things in this post, but I'm mainly going to be going over his goals, his ideals, and his means of reason why.

To start this off we need to think about his reasoning of being who he is. Which is hard because of the fight with "is he family to Philza or not" which for this post I'm going to say he is not. Techno out of character said he is not Techno's son and they are friends, that's it.

But that does not stop the idea he did grow up near Philza and his Son(s) (We are also not sure if Tommy is Wilbur's brother or not). At least, He knew of them. Meaning he has some type of bond to Phil, and usally, Friends also respect their friends family. Meaning Wilbur and Techno might of also been quite close if Phil and Techno were best friends.

So why this important? Well I will get to that soon. For now we also need to think of his other reasonings for being who he is.

He hates Government.

We are not sure why but he does. Don't question. We might find out later.

And for the final reason, The voices.

This one I feel like is the most important.

Now with us having all these three reasonings of why his character is his character, how does this make him good?

Well it gives us the reason why he acts the way he does in the story. Why he is very violent and thinks the only way to talk to others is by fighting. He has a reason.

Now I will say that does not make him a good guy, but it does make it from his perspective, from his mind set, as good.

Let's take a step through memory lane but as Techno, when he just joined the story.

-

Let's say we are Techno, we are living life peacefully, and suddenly you get a message from your Friend's family asking for help. You agree and see that a Government just kicked them out even after they made the place they live in. Does not help there are voices in your head asking and pleading for BLOOD!

So of course you are going to help them. They look weak and scared, the voices say they are fools, you agree but because they are family to your friend, you help them. That's what friends are for right?

Time goes on and the festival is coming up. You want the Government gone since they hurt your friend's family. They plan to blow the place up and you agree to help. That is until your put on the spot and told to kill a kid who is friends with your allies.

All eyes are on you and you don't know what to do. The voices get louder and louder, fighting with one another, all with one goal. To get blood.

So you kill Everything in sight. Friend, enemy, even just people being there for fun.

You get back to the base and they are yelling at you, your friend. So you defend yourself, no way to say the voices told you to do it since you only tell your close friends about them.

Now let's move a bit father in time, You fight with your allies, your friends, you gave them good gear and they were safe. That is until you realized they betrayed you.

They said the government hurt them. Why are they trying to be the government? They tricked you. Used you. They only wanted you because your powerful. Then throw you away.

Suddenly you see it all blow up. That's good. That's from your friend's son. He is still your friend. But then suddenly your Friend's son is stabbed. Killed by his own father. That hurts but the voices are so loud you can't think straight. You think the government did it.

The government did this.

-

In the end. C!Techno might be seen as bad. But he does have a reason for the way he acts. Just like everyone else in the story.

I love the DreamSMP story for the fact of this. The fact no one is innocent. Even characters like Puffy, Sam, and Tubbo who are seen as the most innocent do have Blood on their hands, have stolen from others, and even tricked others for their own gain.

No one in the story is innocent. But if you take the time to see from their perspective, you can see the reason for their actions.

This is also love the origin stories for villains since they are always good, having something bad happen to make them act that way. And C!Techno is no exception.

Even if he is not a villian. He did have bad things happen to him. Made him angry, sad, feel betrayed.

Now will say that does not give him a right to blow up stuff and kill people.

But like I said a while ago. Those Voices are the most important. Because it's us.

We tell him when to be murderous. When to kill or when to be innocent. We can get louder, quiet, crazy for blood, or sweet for found family.

So for everyone saying c!Techno is bad because he is murderous. I would like you to check to make sure you understand.

He was peer pressured to do it.

-

Alright I hope you have a amazing day/night!

See ya next time when I either have art or another story!

[theshopislocal]

So I joined tumblr in December after seething about 15.20 for a little while. Before that I’d been an AO3 lurker and occasional writer in several fandoms, and before that I was (proudly!) kicked off of LJ for my disgusting and offensive PG-13 Harry/Draco drabbles that apparently squicked (a term I’ve recently learned no one uses any more :/) the random Christians who were inexplicably trolling LJ.

I knew very little about the spn fandom - specifically their demographics - when I first came here. I’d sort of been enjoying the show (usually? Eh, like 70/30) in my own little bubble - the same with fanfic and fanart.

To be frank, I was startled to discover the sheer number of younger folks and LGBT+ who are fans. Of course, reading all of your discourse and meta and musings, it makes perfect sense that spn and its characters would speak to young members of the LGBT+ community; I’d just been a little too ‘in my own head’ to put that together.

I’m a cisgender woman, and I’m generally fine with being called straight, though it’s not 100% accurate (what ever is, really?). That said, I wasn’t sexually or romantically attracted to anyone until I was in my early twenties, and my interests didn’t really align with those of other girls when I was in school. So, around seventh or eighth grade when most of the other girls started to go a little boy crazy, a few of them (my friends, actually) decided I was a lesbian. Their 12-year-old, early 2000s reasoning was “well, if you don’t like boys, and you keep your hair short, you’re probably a lesbian.” And I sort of just said “yeah, okay.”

So, when I was around 13 or so (and a newly minted “lesbian”), I started to get interested in media with gay themes. I started with shows like Queer As Folk and The L Word, and oddly enough, even though I didn’t relate to the romantic or sexual stuff because I didn’t feel things like that at the time, I did relate to the characters’ struggles. Feeling like no one knows you, like people can’t accept you, want to change you, feeling alone and different and outcast. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t very pretty, maybe because I was one of the only black girls in my grade, maybe because I was an only child and a latchkey kid; whatever the reason, these gay characters spoke to me. I felt like I knew them, and they knew me.

In true millennial style, I blew through pretty much all the gay stuff my mom would let me watch (she actually got suuuuper into The L Word, we watched like seven episodes in a row on Christmas Eve once), and then started scouring the internet for more content. That’s when I came across sites like Ink-Stained Fingers (a Harry Potter slash archive that might still exist? Idk) and Library of Moria (same thing but for LotR). And suddenly - anyone could be gay! And even though I wasn’t actually a lesbian (though at the time I was rather convinced I was), it still felt fantastic that I could actually relate to these characters, some of whom I’d only vaguely liked in reading their original canons.

I very quickly became a fanfic connoisseur - and it even went beyond slash pairings or any pairings at all. I just liked seeing characters in a new light. I liked seeing people and relationship dynamics that were different, taboo, subversive - because it made me feel better about being me.

I went off to college. Screwed around with some boys, some girls, some people who didn’t call themselves either. Became pretty sure I wasn’t a lesbian, but still didn’t really know what I was; this was over ten years ago, and all the various terminology was still pretty new. Eventually, I met a boy who made me smile and turned me on - both of which were entirely new and singular experiences for me - and I married him.

Cut to: my husband and I watching 15.20, and both of us - cisgender and predominately straight - looking at each other like “wtf is this bro-y bullshit?”

So I thought “fuck this, I need to vent,” hopped on tumblr, and - low and behold - here you all are! It took me a minute to wrap my head around it, to get past the initial excitement of just look at all the people the different people the real people the people who are so very unapologetically themselves!

I don’t think any of you could possibly know how happy I was (am) to see you all, how very beautiful it is that you’re all here.

Anyway. To all the LGBT+ shippers reading this, I just want you to know (re: the deancas wedding, but also just... everything): if even my dumb, straight, weird, who-even-am-I ass can see it, it’s real. You’re not crazy, you’re not delusional, your opinions are not invalid. You’re not just “projecting,” and even if you were, there’s no damn law that says only straight people get to project. Please don’t let shitty people (who are literally too stupid to even capitalize on your interest for their own gain) ruin anything for you.

To any straight shippers: if you’re anything like me, you’re not fetishizing or objectifying gay relationships - you’re relating to characters that you adore in the best way you know how. You’re celebrating the qualities in people that make the world diverse and colorful and beautiful.

To any young shippers: it gets better. You’ll get out. You’ll find better answers. You’ll learn better questions. You’ll figure it all out, or (slightly more likely) you’ll figure out that not everything needs to be figured out. People do hear you, and people do care about you and what you have to say. Your voice matters.

To everyone: there’s nothing wrong with you. And I’m so damn sorry that anyone has ever made you believe that there is. Honestly. I’m sorry.

[akizumy]

Duty (DK AU)

I know I’m late to the party, but hey, this one is getting a bit old and I thought why not share it ! Based on @finnoky ‘s wonderful Dark Kingdom AU, and its angsty fanarts ! This is my first tumblr post (how does this website even work ahah) and I’m proud to say it is an angsty One shot. I hope you’ll enjoy it and that it’s okay !

-----

 Varian took a shaky breath, the air cold in his lungs, as cold as the black rocks, as cold as the electric blue eyes watching him.  What happened ?  Under his feet, Varian could feel the black rocks pulsing with energy, one that had always been there, and would always be; they were filled with a different energy now, but it was one nonetheless.  Why did he do that ?  Across from the bridge, where the Moonstone once rested, was Eugene; or someone resembling him instead.  Eugene didn't have blue hair.  Eugene didn't have blue eyes.  Above all, Eugene didn't look at Varian without joy or care. Before, there used to always be something warm in his smiles or words, something that was odd for the teen supposed to protect him.  When he was first given the duty to look after Eugene, Varian had tried to stay neutral, to remain by Eugene's side because it was just that- his duty as a member of the Brotherhood. He was expected to keep the Prince safe, and that was all : it was actually his first task given after joining the Brotherhood, so he was determined to do it right.  But day after day, year after year, him and Eugene had grown closer. There was just something about the older man's personality, his humor and adventurous side that Varian couldn't help but enjoy. Varian knew it was his fault : he was just a kid, and having to protect the Prince himself resulting in said Prince starting to give him attention, well... Of course he soon craved for his friendship and to get to know him better.  That's not what happened, though. More than friends, they quickly became brothers, despite not being from the same family. Eugene was caring for Varian and protected him -which the teen was always kind of ashamed of, because wasn't he supposed to be the one protecting the Prince ?-, taking the blame when one of their pranks went wrong- because yes, Eugene initiated the young teen to pranks. Varian wasn't sure when it started or why, but he was glad it happened nonetheless.  The truth was that when Eugene first saw this kid with his back straightened and serious expression, he felt a pang in his chest. He didn't want someone protecting him -especially a kid, like come on he was so small-, and he didn't want... that. As the Prince of the Dark Kingdom, he wasn't really allowed to see other people, and he was craving to get human interactions; but that kid ? He was lacking any personnality, any... humanity.  He knew he wasn't going to be able to get rid of him -"The Brotherhood is really important and have sworn loyalty blablabla"-, but he might be able to at least make him more... I don't know, alive ?  It was pretty difficult at first, because man the kid was "loyal" and "devoted to his duty"; but with enough time, Varian -because yes, he had a name- started to loosen up a little. It was then that Eugene made discoveries, like the kid was actually extremely clever, curious or pretty chatty; it was also then that Eugene came to see of him as a little brother. He finally had someone to spare him from his dull life, and something told him the feeling was mutual.  Maybe that's why it hurt that much for things to come to this.  Eugene had planned everything before taking the Moonstone. Everything, even what this would imply for Varian. I can't fail now, he thought as he reached out to the Mind Trap. In front of him, he saw Varian's eyes go wide, because of course he recognized the Talisman : to his eyes, it could be the end of him, after all. Varian didn't say a word, only staring at Eugene, and the latter ignored the sorrow and pain he could see there. He had to do this, and this was not the end of their friendship- their family. Once he used the Mind Trap, then-  An arrow hit the talisman, sending it flying away; luckily, it didn't fall off of the bridge. Varian took another one of his arrows and pointed his bow at Eugene this time. Now that there wasn't the threat of the Mind trap, he only needed one shot to pull his target down. He had to, it was his duty as member of the Brotherhood to keep the Moonstone safe, to keep others safe.  Eugene moved to reach the talisman, and Varian followed him with his bow, ready to shoot.  Memories flooded his mind. Eugene and him stealing in the royal kitchens. Eugene and him playing hide and seek. Eugene and him going out of the royal palace to see the town and its inhabitants.  He had to shoot now because once Eugene would get the Mind Trap back, then he was done for.  Eugene actually celebrating the alchemist’s birthday, offering him a special gift he went to buy in town just for the occasion. Them both reading the tales of Flynnigan Rider. Their games, their pranks, their silly nickname- "Team Awesome".  Eugene outstretched his hand.  The day he realized both that he cared too much about Eugene and that this would be his doom.  That day was today.  Eugene snatched the talisman, slightly damaged by the arrow, and felt anger rising in him. The Dark Prince had no choice but to do that, and he wanted Varian to be by his side, together like they always have been ! But Varian- he had nearly destroyed their last chance at happiness. Turning to the younger man, Eugene grabbed the Mind Trap with both of his hands, focusing his power in it to activate it. "That's enough, Varian." Why would Varian fight him ?  The symbol on it immediatly glowed a bright blue, the same blue as Eugene's hair and eyes. The Moonstone wielder heard the sound of Varian's bow hitting the ground and saw him fall to his knees.  The same blue as both of their eyes.  Eugene walked to Varian, his emotions a mix of concern and relief. He did it. He used the Mind Trap on him. Putting the talisman away, the dark prince gently helped Varian up and the boy limply went along. This was good. This was what had to be done. Patting the younger's head, Eugene smiled. "See kid ? I knew you'd come around eventually." Of course, Varian didn't answer, not even looking at him with his glowing, lifeless eyes. Eugene winced, as if finally realizing what all of this implied- what he had done to another human being- what he had done to Varian, his brother-  He shook his head and walked away, the alchemist following him. It was too late for regrets anyway.  Varian's mind was blank. There was nothing, no thoughts, no feelings; but that nothingness was sometimes troubled by flashes of memories that something deep down within was fighting to make resurface.  A warm smile.  Books.  A birthday celebration.  Gentle brown eyes.  But that was stupid. The only eyes he knew were not brown, they were electric blue, blue like the Moonstone. And since he swore loyalty to it, then these blue eyes were all that he had to care about; not the books, not the celebrations, and not the brown eyes as well. So he buried these flashes of memories as soon as they resurfaced, because they didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was protecting the man with blue eyes.  And he would protect him, for the sole reason that it was his duty.

[muffin-n-waffle]

I posted 1,604 times in 2021

97 posts created (6%)

1507 posts reblogged (94%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 15.5 posts.

I added 496 tags in 2021

#fashion - 89 posts

#fanart - 70 posts

#sherlock - 61 posts

#sherlolly - 57 posts

#fruits basket - 46 posts

#anime - 39 posts

#channy liveblogs - 39 posts

#art - 38 posts

#bridgerton - 29 posts

#kyoru - 28 posts

Longest Tag: 119 characters

#i hope one day to accept the fact that maybe ill never have those feelings in the usual sense and that will be okay too

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

when bo burnham said “well well look who’s inside again, went out to look for a reason to hide again”

52 notes • Posted 2021-06-12 17:47:07 GMT

#4

Sherlolly Discord

Hello friends, it's come to my attention that the chat room function on this hellsite (affectionate) is coming to an end. For those of you looking for other ways to chat, I made a discord back when tumblr banned NSFW content, and we were all worried the site might come to an end. Thankfully that didn't happen, but I'm still grateful I made the discord. It's been a lot of fun discussing headcanons, not just for our favorite ship (though that certainly is one of the main themes of the discord), but any fandoms that tickle our fancy. Sometimes we even do games, like cards against humanity, although it's been awhile and we should get back into it.

We have channels for writing, tropes, and all sorts of things. Also if you're worried about nsfw content, we have a separate channel for that too, so you don't even have to interact with it if it's not your thing.

If you're interested in joining, shoot me, or any of these amazing mods, @stlgeekgirl, @vermofftiss, @sincerelydayyy, a message, and we'll send you a link!

53 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 14:23:18 GMT

#3

for sure one of my favorite things they added to bridgerton is lady danbury throwing absolute ragers with all the married ladies of the ton

63 notes • Posted 2021-01-07 00:50:07 GMT

#2

I really think Fruits Baskets fans might like Horimiya. There’s no animal shape shifting to be had, or even super abusive/dramatic family elements, but it’s just a story about a large group of kids in high school which follows their relationships, whether they just be friends or love interests, and their own insecurities. I’d probably label it as a slice of life romcom, and it’s definitely helped tide me over until the final Fruits Basket season gets here!

122 notes • Posted 2021-02-28 02:00:40 GMT

#1

when bo burnham said “you say the ocean’s rising like I give a shit. you say the whole world’s ending, honey it already did”

145 notes • Posted 2021-06-13 17:01:02 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[jadethest0ne]

35! Go for it! ✨

Oh right, for this ask game! I had nearly forgotten about it XD

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! 

If there was one fic-related thing I’d want to ramble about it’d be specifically being a comic artist, and the different things I experienced going from the Pokemon fandom to the RotTMNT fandom as a comic artist.

I spent 5 years creating a Pokemon comic called “Liberty”, based on a nuzlocke playthrough of Pokemon Soul Silver (basically pokemon on hard-mode with permadeath involved for those of you who don’t know what a nuzlocke is). Meanwhile, it’s been just over a year since my first foray into creating comics for the Rise fandom.

The Similarities

The Disparity between Fanart and Fanfiction

Being a comic artist is odd sometimes because I basically do both fanart and fanficiton at the same time. I can understand and vibe with what a lot of both fanartists and fanfiction writers go through and deal with. This is why I feel like I can answer a lot of these fanfiction questions despite a good chunk of my story-telling being visual.

I am also aware of the disparity between fanart often getting a lot more eyes and attention than fanfiction. Deciding to write a piece of fanfiction instead of draw it out in comic format is often a calculated choice on my part, because writing prose takes more energy from me and often gets less rewards via views and interaction from readers. But despite it taking more energy, it takes less overall time for me to write something out than draw the same story, so I often factor that in when deciding which medium to create a story in.

I feel bad that a lot of fanfiction writers don’t get the attention that they deserve because of this disparity, so may I remind readers to please please PLEASE support your fanfiction creators and interact with their work! It seriously means a lot to them! Even a little message or a reblog will do! The main similarity between these two fandoms is this disparity, and I think it’d be awesome if we could get the number of interactions between fanart/fancomics and fanfiction to be more equal.

The Differences

I’m more popular as a Rise artist?

So, as I said, I spent 5 years making a Pokemon comic and 1 year creating a bunch of Rise comics. And yet I think I got more (or at least the same number of) viewers on my Rise comics in that one year than on my Pokemon comics in 5 years. I certainly got a similar number of followers, despite the differences in time. One of the main reasons for this is likely due to the social media platforms I posted on. I posted “Liberty” on deviantart and on the Pokemon Nuzlocke forums, the latter being particularly niche. As for my Rise comics and artwork, I branched out to other sites including here on Tumblr, Instagram, AO3, and Twitter (though insta got fewer comics due to the image size restrictions). The number and popularity of the sites I posted Rise artwork to are more than deviantart and that is likely a big reason. The other reasons for my increase in popularity may be for some of the other differences...

There aren’t that many comic artists in the TMNT fandom

I could probably name only a handful of consistent comic creators in, not only the Rise fandom, but in the TMNT fandom. And I mean the long-running, over-arching story type of comic creators. There aren’t that many of us. There are tons of artists and fanfic writers out there, yes, but very few that combine the two.

Meanwhile the Pokemon community has TONS. Especially the nuzlocke community. Heck, the Pokemon nuzlocke community started and was named because of a popular comic detailing the events of the creator’s nuzlocke challenge playthrough of Pokemon Emerald. You get a little bit more lost in the crowd amongst so many other comic artists in the Pokemon community, but at the same time have more people to learn from and relate to in that way.

My involvement with the Fandoms has been different

There’s been a lot of collaboration and working together among creators within each respective fandom. I feel like personally, a lot of my collabs with Rise creators has been a lot more direct and more personal than the kind of things I did in the Pokemon fandom.

For example, in the Pokemon comic fandom, it was really common to cameo each others’ characters in your comic, or include each others’ comics or characters in memes. This wasn’t always a planned thing, though we would ask each other for permission. I joined a Pokemon comic discord, but most of my interactions there and on other platforms involved brainstorming help. Not only that, but sometimes the community was a bit more competitive as well. For instance the Nuzlocke Forums would hold an “extravaganza” every year where folks voted on various categories to vote for the best nuzlocke (I won “Best Pokemon” and “Most improved” in 2018 :3 ).

Meanwhile with the Rise fandom, I did more things like art trades, collaborative art pieces, and zine work. These were a lot more direct and planned out and involved a bit more trust and interaction with other artists. I also became close friends with the folks in the discords that I joined as part of a Rise server, beyond just “fellow creator”.

As a result, I found myself doing a lot more serious artwork and even created other fics for the Rise fandom beyond just my comics, while when it came to Pokemon I stuck mainly to my “Liberty” art/comics.

More eyes, less interaction and visa versa

Again, this could be mainly a differences in what social media I’m using, but a big difference I found between readers of my work is that I got A LOT more people commenting on my Pokemon comic than on my Rise comics. I may be getting more views on my TMNT comics, but boy did I get more interaction with my Pokemon comics. I would get at least 5 people leaving these in-depth analysis or guesses of what would happen on each page for my Pokemon comic, not to mention the dozens of other reactions I would get in the comments. And despite that comic being on hiatus for a year, I still get some comments on it!

So, unless I know the commenter personally, I feel a little less involved with my readership with my Rise comics than my Pokemon one. Which is a little sad. I do appreciate you all who appreciate my work, but I feel like I appreciate you from afar and can only go “awww” at the things y’all leave in the notes or on the anonymous asks I get, instead of being able to thank you more directly.

Rise readers are a bit less patient

I get lots more people asking me “when the next page is coming” on my Rise comics and fics much more often than on my Pokemon comic. This virtually never happened with my Pokemon comic. Granted, I was way more consistent with “Liberty” and it had a set schedule, whereas my Rise comics/fanfics never have. But still.

I really DO NOT like those kinds of asks/comments. Please do not ask me when the next one is coming out. It makes me feel stressed and ashamed and pressured, which can create negative feelings around my work and make me less likely to finish them. I get that you’re excited, and that’s cool. But literally no one likes those kinds of comments.

For perspective, “Liberty”, my Pokemon comic, has been on hiatus for nearly a year and I’ve gotten maybe two comments to that effect, and they were newer readers who weren’t around at the time that I announced my hiatus and the reasons thereof. My “Liberty” readers have been so patient with me (bless them), and I feel a real loyalty to that kind of readership. I don’t know when, yet, but I really want to get back to “Liberty” someday, not just for myself or that story that I lovingly crafted, but also for them.

Pokemon was a hobby, Rise is a passion

Likely due to the fact that I have made a lot of close friends within the Rise community, and the fact that it has helped me immensely through this really tough year, I feel so much closer with the Rise creator community. Pokemon was a thing that I did for fun as a side hobby. My TMNT related comics and art have pushed me so much further in my art, gotten me involved in various projects, gotten me into creating animations, holy heck was I sucked into this fandom in such a short amount of time, and I love it so much.

I have been a fan of Pokemon since I was a kid, and I never thought I’d find a piece of media that would capture my attention and adoration as much. I think at a point when I was shifting from the Pokemon to the Rise fandom I said something along the lines of “I feel like I’m cheating on Pokemon with Rise”/j but it’s kinda true, haha!

In the end, both fandoms and the people in them mean a lot to me, and I’ve grown a lot from them as an artist and a person. I will be forever grateful to the other creators, readers, artists, writers, friends, collaborators, etc in both.

Thank you all very much!

[the-gay-trashmouth]

If you had to pick one name/alias/moniker to go by, fandom-wide, what would it be?

Where, besides Tumblr, can people find you doing fannish things? (Obviously only mention sites and usernames you actually want to be found at. Don’t expose your secret identities on my account.)

What other names have you gone by on these platforms, including Tumblr, if any?

When did you join the IT (and ST) fandom(s)? And what got you into fandom, to begin with?

What are your favorite ships, or characters, if any, and why? What do they mean to you?

In what ways do you participate in fandom? (ex. Posting memes, reblogging/commenting on content, writing fanfic, making fanart, creating fanmixes, etc.)

Do you have any in-fandom inspirations? Other members of the community that drive you? (And if you have the time/energy, in what ways do they inspire you?)

Name and link some of your favorite works (by others,) please!

Do you have any works of your own that you feel particularly proud of, or wish more people would’ve consumed? Please provide links if possible.

Have you ever participated in a fannish event (ie. IT Week, a fic Big Bang) or applied to be a part of a fanzine? If so, which ones, and can you please link them?

Without any form of bashing or lashing out, what is something you feel this fandom is missing?

I know ive let this sit forever but executive dysfunction got me out of it.

1) i go by Stari/Stars or even Jo Jo if you want. I dont really mind.

2) im on A03 @ Starinights and on insta @ stari_arts

3) for a while i went my allthenewsiesaregay_bitch or something of that sort but that was before i was in the it fandom :)

4) ive sorta been lurking since i was like... 12 because i saw the og movia with my dad and said "oh this is amazing i love it" but didn't really start creating until quarantine last year

5) my favorite characters are 100 percent tie between Richie (because hi yes i am ADHD and i relate), Beverly (I am gay and in love with her) and Mike (country boy i love youuu).as for ships i love reddie, mike/stan, mike/stan/bill, and really poly loser in general. Benverly is one of the only m/f ships with full rights on my blog lmao.

6) i draw and write fanfic (though ive been dealing with a lot of writers block so thats a thing) and i reblog a bunch of content from other it fans.

7) BOY DO I! @tiredluidraws22 and @fuji09 are two really awesome people who i adore.

8) hhhhhhhh links.. Difficult. Check out the above blocks for skme Good Content tho.

9) i wrote a Deer in the Deadlights, and fic that was basically just what if Rich got taken instead of Bev and its the only fic ive felt comfy enough to put out there for this fandom. It didn't end up getting a lot of attention but im still really proud of it and i reread it a lot for myself lmao.

10) i did losertober last year but Never Posted Any Images lmao. Ill prolly do it this year instead of inktober because for some reason inktober stresses me out.

11) i👏want👏more👏mike👏content👏👏👏

I want a day in the life of him working on the farm and being soft on animals. I want stories about him staying behind to protect a town that never treated him right and watch as his friends forgot him, i want mike/stan, mike/bill, mike/ANYBODY. I want him to be LOVED DAMMIT

That and neilbolt kids aus. I love those a lot lmao.

Anywho, thanks for the thing i had fun and maybe this can help me find more It fandom friends :)))

[theant755]

Unikitty Lost Episode: RagTag Alternative Episode

THE STORY: Do you remember Unikitty used to have her TV show on Cartoon Network? Well, it ran from October 2017 thru August 2020, almost 3 years. I never cared about the show back then before I saw clips of it before the cancellation and it got me to like the show since I remember The Lego Movie back then. The show was canceled due to Lego moving to Universal from Warner, causing Season 3 to end with 24 episodes. I think if Lego stayed with Warner, they might have made more episodes on Season 3 and maybe Season 4 if the show wasn't mixed by critics. Since then I have made some fanart of the show like with Richard, Hawkodile, Unikitty and other characters. And I posted them on Deviantart, Tumblr, and Unikitty Animo and I got some attention from the community, especially this strange user, who was named "Ashley". She told me that she like the drawings and wanted me to talk privately on Discord, she gave her Discord number briefly, I manage to copy and paste her number before she deleted it afterward, we talk about the show, the characters, and the reason why the show was canceled, which I explained it earlier by the way. But then, the conversation got very interesting and pretty disturbing. Ashley told me that she worked on Unikitty at Cartoon Network before she got fired by the time Season 3 was going to be picked up. I told her why she got fired from Cartoon Network. She said that in Season 2 she got the idea of an episode: "Ragtag" to teach a lesson about sportsmanship and they completed the episode, which includes the animation, the voice acting, and the storyboards. However, Cartoon Network thought that the episode was "too controversial and violent for kids", and they scrapped the original episode and the crew redoes the episode to what is now. I was pretty surprised how the episode was "too violent" to begin with, I'm thinking that the episode includes some blood and possibly some trash talk by the Doom Lords but I don't know yet. She said that Cartoon Network warned her about the original episode, they warned that if she leaked the episode to the public, she'll get fired, of course, she did that. She leaked the original episode on some Russian website that has full episodes of Cartoon Network & Adult Swim, and some Russian users posted screenshots of the episode on Twitter. Cartoon Network was pretty furious about this and they of course, fired Ashley, they shut down the Russian website and even took down photos of the controversial episodes, so even finding proof of the episode was hard. Ashley said that she still has the lost episode on her hard drive and she hasn't leaked it since most likely worried that Warner might sue and have criminal charges against her if she leaked it. And then, I made an agreement. Ashley sends the link to the episode on a very private storage website called "Locked4Ever", I believe that she can't seem to upload the file to Mediafire, Dropbox, or even Google Drive. Worrying that it will be taken down by Warner, the company who owns Cartoon Network. She wanted me to watch it and download it later, so I told her I'll think about it. Later, I decided that I'll do it for her and clicked on the link. THE PLOT: Now before I explain the episode that I watched, what was RagTag? The kingdom runs out of inspiration, Unikitty takes it on herself to re-inspire the citizens with a riveting game of kickball where she and the gang form a ragtag team of underdogs, who are supposed to win a miraculous, unexpected victory against Master Frown, Brock & The Doom Lords. But when the Doom Lords end up losing at kickball, and the people are uninspired by the good guys' easy victory, Unikitty switches things up and joins the real ragtag team, The Doom Lords, to help lead them to a victory that finally inspires the kingdom. So Unikitty really wants the citizens to inspire again, even by losing to her kingdom that she ruled to the Doom Lords and she's not even worried that they lost not only the kickball game but her leadership? I don't know, this episode was weird. However, when I watch the episode, I feel like I'm watching the original episode; the kingdom was uninspired and rather bored, and Unikitty was planning a kickball game to try to respire the citizens. Until they started to play kickball when I was starting to notice the differences of this episode. The Doom Lords started first this time instead of the Uniteam, Master Doom was first to step up to the plate, when the ball goes to her, she kicked it pretty hard and the ball soars up the sky and over the fence of the field as the Doom Lords scored first, it was 1-0 by the way, the citizens were shocked at first, but cheered anyway since the real underdogs were winning. Unikitty was happy that the citizens were inspiring, that is until Master Hazard kicked another Home Run, Master Fear kicked a Triple, Master Plague kicked an RBI Double, which was 2-0 and Master Pain kicked another Home Run that hit Richard in the face. Wow, I was stunned that Doom Lords got the lead so far, which was 4-0 anyway. Then after 3 outs, it was the Uniteam's turn and Herbert Sherbert was first with bees in his face, of course, only this time he was struck out, Unikitty and her friends were shocked about this. It turns out that Master Plague learned to pitch by tutorials from baseball to kickball and let me tell you, he pitched like a pro, as Hawkodile and Dr. Fox with her machine were struck out. Unikitty was even more shocked by Master Plague becoming a no-hitter in this game. Richard was surprised by this as the citizens just cheered on. And then the episode became a montage of the Doom Lords dominating against the Uniteam; the Doom Lords scored 16 unanswered points by Home Runs and RBIs, Master Plague struck out every single member of the Uniteam, they never even got a chance to kick the ball because how fast Master Plague pitch that ball, Unikitty and her friends were tired and honestly fed up of this game being too hard. Brock was just sitting in the dugout, bored as usual, and Master Frown was pretty upset, likely because he didn't get the chance to play at all because like with the original episode; he and Brock were alternates and the citizens were on cheering and cheering to the Doom Lords for winning in a dominating fashion. The score was 20-0. In the bottom of the 9th inning, Richard announces it's Uniteam's turn to hit now, however, the Uniteam, except for Unikitty refused to play and started to give up at this point. Unikitty saw this and told her friends don't give up and they still have a chance to win, even saying this kickball game is honestly a bad idea to begin with. Hawkodile said that he and the rest of the team weren't going to put up with this and decided to just forfeit the game. That is until Unikitty ends up snapping at Hawkodile saying that she was going to lose this kingdom to the Doom Lords and her citizens have possibly betrayed her, and she even threatens them to not be friends anymore if they lose this game. I guess Unikitty finally realizes that they have to do something to save this kingdom. At the plate, Hawkodile was first to kick. Master Plague pitches a strike where Hawkodile misses, then the 2nd pitch; another strike. Unikitty transformed to her angry form as a threat to Hawkodile if he was struck out. And when Master Plague pitched the 3rd time; Hawkodile finally kicked the ball and this time the ball went over the fence as the Uniteam finally scored for the first time. Then, the Uniteam scored 19 unanswered points by just scoring Solo Home Runs for each teammate. The Doom Lords were shocked and Master Plague was sweating bullets at this point, Master Doom was pissed about this and moved Master Plague out of the way so she could pitch, which she did. It was all tied up by 20 points, no bases were loaded, and 2 outs of course. It was Unikitty's turn this time and she was not going to let the Doom Lords win this time. Master Doom pitched a strike which angered Unikitty, then another strike which Master Doom began to laugh evilly, and Unikitty was about to transform to her angry form. Until the last pitch from Master Doom, in which an angry Unikitty kicked the ball with brutal force caught it to go up in flames as the ball shoots up to the sky in supersonic speed, it even managed to up in space incredibly. Unikitty and her friends of course with Richard announcing that the Uniteam won by a walk-off. The Doom Lords were disappointed and some even upset that they choked a 20-0 lead in the last inning. The citizens were shocked at how crazy this game went. Now, normally this would end in a light-hearted fashion because I didn't think it was that bad, other than Unikitty getting angry over a kickball game but this was just a smooth episode. Unfortunately, that's where the "too controversial and violent" part kicks in. One of the citizens was angry and shouted that Unikitty and her team always win and it was not fair that the whole game went. As the crowd began to become rowdy and starting to boo, Richard was pretty concerned about this and told the citizens that "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose" or "it's just a game". However, that did not work, as the crowd booed the Uniteam and some of them even threw some garbage at them as Hawkodile tried to shield his friends from getting hit by trash. The Doom Lords laugh at them as usual. Unikitty tries to tell the citizens what they're doing was wrong and admits that she made the deal that if the Doom Lords win, they'll own the Unikingdom and that they have no choice but to win the game. And that's why this episode got violent, to begin with. The citizens end up wrecking the whole field, knocking down the scoreboard which Richard moved out the way before he got hurt, and then they target the kingdom. They smash windows of houses, cars, and stores, turning over the cars and setting fires to various places, and yes they even try to burn Unikitty's home, that's how bad this riot went. The gang was shocked and stared at the scene of the riot and Unikitty started to cry as citizens continued the carnage of her kingdom. As for the Doom Lords, they saw the citizens what they'd doing and even were stunned about this, as they disappeared rather quickly out of the kingdom like that. Richard started calling the police to stop the riot as the police arrived with riot gear of course as they shot warning shots at the rioters as they fled from the police. Fortunately, the rioting had stopped but the damage was done, the kingdom was destroyed and burned badly. Unikitty hung her head in shame, possibly feeling guilty, and said these words that quite disturbed me; "This is all my fault..... I should have the Doom Lords win, and now my kingdom is destroyed." The rest of the gang hugs her as a way to cheer up the whole situation. As the episode faded to black with the end credits. MY THOUGHTS: Wow, that was something. Like I can't believe these people have the nerves to start a riot over a kickball game, I understand that Ashley wanted to show the public that rioting is wrong and teaching about good sportsmanship, but does it have to be that dark and crazy? And what about Master Frown & Brock, they didn't even get the chance to play at all, I feel that they were just there to just be bench guys, and unlike the actual episode; Master Frown was a walk-off hero. This episode went from being average to messed up pretty quickly and I don't think Unikitty wouldn't want her kingdom to end up like Cloud Cuckoo Land. THE AFTERMATH: After I saw the episode, I told Ashley about my opinion on it and she fully understood it. She admits that the episode was a bad idea and pretty messed up for a kids' show. She told me never leaked the episode to the public. Me and Ashley became friends afterward which was pretty odd but why not. I'm just hoping that she just stays out of trouble this time. THE QUESTION: I still think about RagTag to this day and wonder how the Unikitty fandom would have reacted to this alternative episode. Will they hate it or even like it? You guys choose which is better; The Doom Lords owning the Unikingdom or having the Unikingdom burned and destroyed. NOTE: I wanting to make a Lost Episode Creepypasta for awhile after I saw The Shadow Reader's videos. He's cool.