#not gay romance. just romance in general. but because gay romance is more common amongst queer circles queer allos start feeling attacked

[yoggybloggy]

why do allo people think it's homophobic for aspec people to complain about amatonormativity. answer quickly

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi sex witch! This isn’t exactly a sex Ed question but it is related to sex. I’m aro/ace, and I’ve noticed that a lot of other aro/aces say that allos see friendship as a stepping stone to sex or romance, and less important than romantic relationships. I guess it makes sense, but my best friend irl is a gay boy (im a girl) and he obviously isn’t interested in dating an aro/ace girl. I made a post saying this and people in the notes were saying that he’s either secretly bi and lying to make me feel safe, or I’m an egg. I don’t believe either of those things but it got me wondering, is it common for allos to use friendship as a way to get close to people for the purpose of dating or having sex with them? Personally I’ve never experienced that but enough aro/aces are saying it that I have to wonder

hi anon,

okay so we need to start with the part about your best friend, because it's really important to me that we take a minute to recognize anyone trying to convince you that a gay boy is only hanging out with you because he has secret romantic feelings is being a homophobe. I mean, listen, it's annoying and childish when people act like men and women can't be friends in general, okay? but in this case they're not just being heteronormative, they're being actively homophobic. block anyone who said that. jesus christ.

secondly: I don't know if you've ever, like, spent time with people, but yes, many folks find romantic partners amongst their circles of friends because that's who they spend a lot of time with and build meaningful connections with, which can develop into feelings of sexual or romantic attraction for people who experience those things. I'd say it's less often a a case of anyone "using" friendship as a means to an end and more often a case of people realizing that a friendship is taking an exciting new direction and deciding to pursue those feelings.

there's a long-lasting trope, especially prominent it sitcoms and romcoms, of someone (usually a sleezy man) acting friendly to get close to someone else (usually a woman) with the intent of seducing them, but a.) like most works of fiction, that's much less common in real life, and b.) there's a huge difference between lying to someone intentionally and just developing a crush on someone you already know and like, which I think is the MUCH more common scenario.

like, don't get me wrong here, it's absolutely true that we live in a society(TM) that pretty materially privileges romantic relationships - specifically monogamous, legally-binding relationships - over other types of relations, and that's a fucking doozy. that's a thing to work on, for sure. but it's also not weird or creepy that some people couple up with their buddies.

[leejihoonownsmyheart]

A Number of Oddities

It hurts to say Tik Tok got me to write this fic. And it hurts even more to say that I am now extremely gay for the singer in Halestorm.

Karaoke wasn’t really your thing, so when you had agreed to come with Jihoon to sing late one night- he had been admittedly surprised.

Too surprised to question the lack of hesitation when you had agreed?

No, absolutely not- but surprised none the less.

He had been a little bit more surprised too when you sat yourself down on the karaoke couch beside him and- insisting that you were just there to watch, began to drink a glass of Soju.

You were a lot of things. In fact, you had always been one of the more interesting people in Jihoon’s life. You were kind to just about everyone that you happened to come by, and you were more social then most. If need be you were always happy to say hi to someone or help a random stranger in need.

Amongst that, you were always glad to keep your friends' company, even if it meant doing something you were uncomfortable with.

It was common knowledge amongst all of you and Jihoon’s friends that you didn’t sing.

Why? Jihoon was unsure of really. Whenever the question was posed, you just shrugged it off and changed the topic so that no one could really be sure if you were just bad at singing, or too shy to do so in front of people.

You had had plenty of opportunities to sing with them as well. It wasn’t like anyone was pushing you on stage and insisting that you sing a solo up there under a single spotlight. You accompanied them to karaoke every now and then and watched as five or six people would ugly scream the lyrics together.

But never did you sing along. You just smiled as they sang in the car and laughed at Seungkwan while he sang lyrics alone on dark cold nights.

Jihoon had always found it to be your oddest characteristic. But none of the others really seemed to care much about it, saying it was probably just a personal thing of yours and not too look to into it. After all- it was probably nothing.

And so normally Jihoon just respected that distance with you.

But at two in the morning, when there was no one else awake to sing karaoke, and he couldn’t write another lyric without wanting to puke, he didn’t exactly have a lot of options.

And again, he really hadn’t expected you to say yes. But he found you in the kitchen, wide awake, flipping through your phone while you downed a bottle of beer that had somehow found it’s way into your hands, and all Jihoon could do was go ahead and ask if you would come.

Another oddity from you today, was definitely the drinking.... You weren’t a drinker. If anything, maybe you drank too much soda, but drinking too much alcohol? God, Jihoon couldn’t recall seeing you pick up a second glass of even a shot, much less, see you getting drunk.

You always stayed sober, and you always babied whoever you were with. So, seeing you so clearly set aside your general standards for the evening by drinking so much, worried Jihoon.

But-

“Hey... Are you okay?”

“Just thought I would have a good time too! I’m excited to hear you sing without the others around Jihoon! What are you going to sing first?”

Evasive as always.

So as Jihoon began his night of solo karaoke, he didn’t worry about why you were being so odd. And he just sort of decided to let you be you.

Jihoon wasn’t sure exactly what possessed him to play a rendition of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. Maybe it was because it wasn’t a version of the song that he was really familiar with, and he wanted to test himself with this particular song, but either way he ended up clicking a rock version of it.

The song started early, and when it did, Jihoon noticed your head perk up. He wasn’t going to comment on it, but before he could turn from you, you had jumped up excitedly.

“I know this song!” You exclaimed excitedly. The excitement threw Jihoon off- that was for sure. His eyebrows furrowed and he missed the first few lines of the song, but that just made you more excited. You nudged his side and grinned.

“Come on Jihoon! Sing!” You encouraged. Jihoon’s expression didn’t change, but he did pick up from where the song was. As the first verse went through, and Jihoon barely kept with the changing pitch of the song, you watched in pure excitement. Your eyes told him when he needed to drop his pitch and when to raise it.

But it was when the chorus started playing that you really started to itch. You practically bounced in your spot, your lips spreading out in excitement.

“Oh my god, I love this part,” You exclaimed.

“You and me we have a-”

You reached for Jihoon, grabbing the microphone out of his hand as the music rose. You stepped up on the karaoke table, stumbling a bit as you stood upright and then just as the drums started to go wild on the instrumental, you screwed your eyes shut and began to belt out one of the most beautiful high notes that Jihoon was pretty sure he had ever heard before in his life.

Considering he had never heard you sing before, the assumption that you were some no talent wasn’t really that far off. Everyone had always assumed that you simply didn’t know how to sing at all.

But hearing you hit that note- and hold it out for as long as you were- inebriated at that! Jihoon sucked in a sharp breath of surprise. You turned back at him once you had reached the end of the note, a lazy smile crossing your lips.

“I absolutely killed it- Didn't I?”

There was certainly something off about you tonight.

Your eyes were a little redder than usual, and your cheeks matched the color. There was the fact that you had agreed to come to karaoke with him tonight, and the fact that you were drinking so much.

But there were other things too.

Like, how had Jihoon never noticed how beautiful your smile was?

Sure, he had noticed before. But had he really paid good enough attention to the way that your eyes wrinkled in the corner when you were really happy about something. Or how about the way that you would laugh so hard sometimes that your whole body moved with it. You would begin to tilt back your head and make your back arch as well. Soon enough you were laughing so hard you could barely keep your balance.

And most spectacularly- probably the way that you touched him.

The purposeful way that your fingers would brush against his and you would smile at him like you being so close was a connection that only the two of you really shared. Jihoon adored the way that you would pull Jihoon close to him- like a shield when you got overwhelmed by the amount of people around you two when you went to the mall and it was too crowded.

Jihoon blew air out of his mouth briskly and shook his head. He wasn’t sure what had gotten into you today. Or why you had decided that you could come clean about the secret you had kept from all your friends for years to Jihoon of all people. But in the end Jihoon knew one thing for sure.

You were born to sing.

You were made to be under a spotlight with a microphone in hand on centerstage. It was just where you belonged.

He smiled at you and offered you his hand. You took it without hesitation.

He was completely and utterly in love with you.

“You didn’t just kill it. You slaughtered it.”

And he was going to do anything to get your voice heard, because you were the muse, he had been desperate for his entire life.

[thecharizardfromhell]

My TotV AU: Changes and things kept

Note- Soneone took down the wiki so I may have to dig through archive sites to find my old CANON sources

What the hell is TotV : Tales of the Valkyr is an original story/fan fiction hybrid with a canon au (Scars) written by Canadian YouTuber Lily Orchard it also has ties to several fictional properties namely Family Guy, MLP:FIM, and WoW.

Why have an AU: I like some of the ideas just not how they were implemented

So if you're at least partially familiar with the source here are my biggest changes

-some characters have been cut from the plot. Namely Elethyn, Mags, Honey Crisp, Ellie, Ascentias's rapist, the cast of mlp, Megsalyn (basically meg from family guy) and Jehovah.

Elethyn-owner wants her to not be tied to the TotV plus I have much darker/more in line with character plans for the Ascentia romance plots. Mags- personal taste honestly I feel like an uwu babu sassy child whose colorful and quirky plot clashes with my themes. Plus I'm not a huge fan of writing this type of character . Honey Crisp-see Mags, Ellie-is it mean to say she's basically a pallette swapped Elethyn with less personality?, Ascentias's Rapist- a plot device that revolves around molestation yeah I'm going dark but I'm not the biggest fan of using that for shock value . The Cast of MLP-there will be unicorns but not these ones I replaced Twilight's being a war bride to Ascentia with a humanoid character however. Megsalyn- because she shouldn't be alone without her creek buddy no actually it's because its such a weird ass plot inclusion that clashes with my vision . Jehovah because that whole plot had super inconsistent holes and was overall a bit like a cringy reddit atheist screed (I say this as an atheist by the way lol )

-characters changes/kept ideas

Valkyr in general-theyre a authoritarian fascist totalitarian government not a monarchy (which they never showed traits of-Lily please fucking research politics ). They like many fascist cultures are obsessed with the idea of purity based on race something I didn't add it's in the original ) but there is a large resistance movement who distrusts Valithra and her ideas and policies . Forced military service is a facet of their society (including to altered prisioners of war), polygamy with war brides/husbands/partners is practiced amongst the "most pure" aka those closest to Valithra but is discouraged among the "commons". Marriage in general is discouraged and outright denied amongst the commons due to Valithra's eugenics mindset. Gay marriage is surprisingly legal but once again more encouraged to the "most pure". Religion is based on the idea of Valithra as a fallen goddess. You can executed on the whims of Valithra and to a lesser degree Ascentia. Most pures have the mysterious ability to regenerate and come back to life (along with bringing others back) Valithra claims it's due to genetic superiority but that seems oddly suspicious doesn't it? (not getting into spoilers), gender identity is only respected amonst the "most pure" sadly . Experimentation on prisoners of war and prisoners is commonplace. They are not Nomads and have several cities nations etc. The Capital of Auralvana (I changed the name) is the head and home of the mysterious ancient Citadel (forbidden to most). Killing and violence is taught in schools . Pro Valithra propaganda is common as Is media suppression. Economy is being worked out (I'll figure that out I swear but it's probably capitalist)

Valithra Ryder-im keeping her iteration as a cis woman to fit her new backstory. I actually brought back the dead wife plot too . I've also made her a bit less openly cruel when manipulating other nations and planets. She's also a bit more calculated instead of all brute to extend her threat level . She now also creates propaganda and has actual opposition amongst her people.

Ascentia-she is still highly treated like a prized baby by her upperclass "most pure" cohorts but fairly feared by the commons for her extremely violent blood lust nature even with violence being normalized . She is extremely beautiful and willingly models and acts for propaganda pieces . Her extreme love of violence was sadly groomed into her from childhood and war became a somewhat religion to her . Despite her brutal nature she's also intelligent and willingly helps Sunatu with her experimentation. She has the most war brides among her social class with a staggering 400. She is abusive towards some . She enjoys living the life of luxury and hates being challenged. She secretly fears the idea of one day being actually hurt by an enemy and thus losing her social status.

Sunatu- no longer Palestinian due to the racist implications of turning her into a demon (especially since she's the only real world POC) so she's just a spooky demon. An "honorary" Valkyr she lives in the squalor zone at the edge of the city but because of her willingness to go hard into the unethical human/humanoid experimentation sciences Valithra gives her a slightly nicer house and guards to kill any squalor dweller planning to off her. Her obsession with these inhumane sciences are what got her exiled from her demon home . Blind due to Valithra ripping her eyes out in rage (a horribly common punishment) but able to be meticulous in her work . Secretly fears Ascentia

Tolrah- defected from Valithra's military and faked her death in order to become a rebellion leader . I stripped her of her numerous bisexual stereotypes and killed the plot point about her neglecting to save Ascentia from her Rapist because of said stereotypes. I also decided that the Hebrew tattoo punishment idea was tasteless as fuck because how the hell did Lily not put two and two together and realize hmm this seems offensive because I reminiscent of the Holocaust . Which despite the Valkyr being race obsessed I won't allude to because actual people died and were tortured . Anyway she's brave intelligent and falls in love with the main character.

Edit: it's Xarlan

Phayaun- toned down her brutal nature. Tolrah's pupil who defects later on after seeing the true extent of Valithra's cruelty .was forced to give up her true love to be a bride for Ascentia (who killed her) so harbors resentment towards Ascentia.

OC shit

Main characters

Xarlan- a Valkyr soldier in training. Starts to question his loyalty towards Valithra after the Earth invasion and witnessing the numerous war crimes

Duskara- took Twilight's role. Former princess of a fairy kingdom sold to Ascentia as a war bride. Seeing her people massacred she formulated a plan to destroy the Valithra regime . Through manipulation and spying she discovers the secret that may even the odds against Valithra.

Eddy-a survivor of the attack on Earth. Eddy and his boyfriend must figure out a way to rally the other survivors and protect what is left and to contact those who were taken

Nightmare/Cait- Former human twisted into the form of a winged unicorn through magical experimentation for one of Ascentia's twisted ideas . When she finds the secret from Duskara she decides to wage war as a new type of monster on the regime

All for now

[leilas-digital-scrapbook-blog]

Giving Love a Bad Name – Confessions of a Fanfiction Writer

I know we’re supposed to blog about our major projects this week and I promise I will get to that soon, but I’d like to go off book for a moment to address something that’s been bugging me since last Thursday’s class. As someone who’s always tried to engage with fandom in as creative a way as possible, I hoped a class on user generated content would offer a fresher perspective than the usual amount of prejudice and self-righteous superiority that sadly seem to accompany the subject of fanfiction even amongst people that make stories and their passion for it their bread and butter.

Guess I should have known better.

In the world of professional writers, fanfiction is still a filthy word. It sums up everything that’s wrong with the people you’re sharing your stories with: the obsessiveness, the entitlement, the disregard for boundaries, the penchant for making everything about sex. Worse, gay sex, as unspeakably dirty as it’s hilarious. Be warned, writers: if you make it big, your stories will inevitably become a free-for-all at the mercy of those people. A worse fate than even George R. R. Martin could wish on his own characters.

I’m used to seeing the world of fanfiction belittled and disparaged, of course, and I’m the first to admit that the community is often its own worst enemy. But for some reason it still hurt a little to sit in class and listen to people I’ve come to like and respect during these past few months buy into every bad stereotype associated with the form. Not because I felt called out (though yes, I do write fanfiction from time to time, and I happen to quite enjoy reading it too), but because of the underlying assumptions that 1. something that’s not 100% original cannot be art, it’s a violence in fact, especially if it twists someone else’s creation into something it was never meant to be (in this case, queer representation); and 2. there’s something wrong with creating exclusively out of love, without ever expecting to be paid for it. And I have Strong Opinions on that.

So let’s talk about fanfiction.

Actually, scratch that, let’s talk about my favorite subject – yours truly. As you may have gathered by now, I love fanfiction. A whole fangirly lot. My gateway drug into it was my obsession with Lost about 10 years ago and its pesky habit of offing every character I was foolish enough to get attached to. But lo! Someone was keeping them alive through their stories! I felt blessed. I got to spend more time in a world I loved, and I stopped flirting with the idea of giving up on the show every time another character I liked bit the dust. Everybody won.

Even more than as a fan, though, I appreciated the world of possibilities that fanfiction opened up to me as a non-native speaker. I come from a small town in the north of Italy; the access I had to foreign books in their original language was limited, and if I wanted to read something in English I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on one of the very few novels (usually chunky airport bookshop thrillers or housewife romances – not exactly my preferred genres) that shared a single shelf in the bookstore with German, French, Spanish titles. But fanfiction was free, accessible, and there was so much of it. If I didn’t like a story, all I needed to do was move on to the next. Suddenly there was an infinite library of engaging stories to help me make my English better. True, they didn’t all read like a published novel would – there’s a lot of unpolished, error-plagued, stream-of-consciousness-y material out there. But there are also so, so many beautifully written works, and believe me, even for a non-native speaker it’s very easy to spot the difference.

Fanfiction also gave me the chance and motivation to practice my English writing in a way school never could have done. I’ve been writing my own stories since I could hold a pen, but I didn’t dare write in English until I was a fanfiction-loving teenager. It was a marketing decision, really – my first foray into writing fanfiction was for a fandom so small that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’m the only Italian representative, so if I wanted any kind of feedback on my work I’d have to suck it up and try my hand at writing in a language that didn’t come natural to me. I would never argue that the feedback I got on my works made me a better writer – contrary to popular opinion, the fanfiction community is made up of the nicest, most supportive people, and alas, you’ll never get a comment on everything you did wrong with your structure or even just pointing out common grammar mistakes from them (though I was lucky enough to have someone explain to me how dialogue punctuation works differently in English than in Italian, so I guess something can be learned even from the Internet). It did motivate me to keep writing, though, and that made me a better writer. If you think I’m being too dramatic, dishing out this monster of a post nobody asked for just to declare my eternal devotion to fanfiction, it’s because it’s personal to me. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been told that I write in English as well as native speakers, and fanfiction is a big part of why that’s true. I doubt I would even be in this course if it wasn’t for it.

And then, of course, there’s the gay thing. I’m not going to argue about how heteronormativity sucks and representation matters because I’m sure everyone’s as sick of talking about it as I am, but please try to understand how it felt for a gay person like me, used to be depicted in media as a plot device or token secondary-character representation if at all, to be able to step into a world where queerness was the default for once. Where queer protagonists had meaningful queer love stories and queer friends and got to save the world from the Apocalypse too. Or to fight the Empire or go to Hogwarts or everything else fictional straight people have had a right to do since the dawn of storytelling in addition to romancing the hottie of their choice. I’m not asking you to feel as passionately about it, of course, but (especially if you’re straight) you might try and empathize the next time you think a fanart of two boys kissing is something deserving of your amused contempt.

I hope I’m not coming across as the person that screams “homophobe” at everyone who disagrees with her because I guarantee that’s not what I’m trying to do here, but I think the general distaste for slash says a lot about the way our society sees heterosexual relationships as love and homosexual relationships as sex. Yes, there’s a lot of gay porn in the world of fanfiction. But you know what you’re most likely to find? Romance. Not in the saucy literary sense of the word, but in its simpler, most literal acceptation. Fanfiction is just one more way for humans to express themselves, after all, and love has always been front and center in our art. Love, not sex – even if it’s gay. In fact, explicit material doesn’t even make up the majority of what you’ll find on a fanfiction website. Don’t worry, I don’t want anyone to taint their souls by visiting one of those dens of iniquity so I pulled some stats myself. Here’s the number of works for each rating in three of the most popular fandoms on Archive Of Our Own, the current go-to website for the fanfiction community (sorry Fanfiction.net) – Harry Potter, Supernatural and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of 9/3/2019:

Even counting both Mature and Explicit works as straight-up porn (which I don’t think is quite fair, but that’s a discussion for another day), they only make up less than 1/3 of the material. Kinda disappointing, for a medium that’s supposed to be all about filthy graphic gay sex. Imagine if only one in three musicals actually featured singing and dancing, or superheroes weren’t in the majority of superhero movies. They’re lucky fanfiction is shared for free, or I’d be screaming for my money back.

Maybe I’ve just been brainwashed by SJWs, though, and this has nothing to do with my being an immigrant or a lesbian. Maybe my inability to see what’s so bad about appropriating someone else’s intellectual property for your own amusement is a cultural thing. I apologize – as mentioned, I’m Italian, and we all know Ancient Roman culture was basically just a ripoff of everything those inventive Greeks came up with. It’s in our blood. Hell, our 2€ coin, the biggest, has the face of Dante Alighieri on it, a writer most famous for having written 14.000+ verses of self-insert real-person-fic in which the girl he fancied as a teenager, his favorite author, and God himself all fall over themselves to tell him how awesome he is and he gets to prophesy an eternity in Hell for his political enemies. Talk about wish-fulfilling entitlement. Not to mention all those creatively arid Renaissance “artists” celebrated for stealing characters from the Bible and Greek mythology (seriously, the fact that Greece hasn’t unleashed an army of lawyers on us yet is nothing short of a miracle) and putting them in their cheesy paintings. Other countries can rely on a much stronger moral backbone and endless imagination – I’m sure Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, those creative geniuses at Disney and countless others never had to resort to something as cheap and despicable as borrowing other people’s characters to tell the stories they wanted to tell.

Either way, I can’t help it – I see the prospect of creating something that will resonate with people so strongly that they’ll make it a part of themselves, that it’ll compel them to make more art, to reach out and connect with other fans, as something incredibly beautiful rather than scary. Maybe this is my usual naiveté speaking, and I will come to eat my words. It’s certainly disturbing that a bunch of entitled fans bullied the Mass Effect developers into changing the series’ ending, and sending actors explicit fanart of themselves is straight-up harassment, but is fanfiction really the problem here? Or is it social network culture, with its power to destroy all barriers and foster hive mind? To give resentment a platform to spread and be heard? I promise that the average fanfiction writer wouldn’t campaign to get an ending changed. They’d just roll up their sleeves and write a better one themselves.

[vintage1der]

What separates these works from the Harry Potter fanfiction you find online may come down to snobbery. There is an undercurrent of misogyny in mainstream criticism of fanfiction, which is widely accepted to be dominated by women; one census of 10,500 AO3 users found that 80% of the users identified as female, with more users identified as genderqueer (6%) than male (4%). Novik has spent a good deal of time fighting against fanfiction’s stigma because she feels it is “an attack on women’s writing, specifically an attack on young women’s writing and the kind of stories that young women like to tell”. Which is not to say that young women only want to write about romance: “I think,” Novik says, “that [the popularity of fanfiction amongst women is] not unconnected to the lack of young women protagonists who are not romantic interests.” Devotees of fanfiction will sometimes tell you that it’s one of the oldest writing forms in the world. Seen with this generous eye, the art of writing stories using other people’s creations hails from long before our awareness of Twilight-fanfic-turned-BDSM romance Fifty Shades of Grey: perhaps Virgil, when he picked up where Homer left off with the story of Aeneas, or Shakespeare’s retelling of Arthur Brookes’s 1562 The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. What most of us would recognise as fanfiction began in the 1960s, when Star Trek fans started creating zines about Spock and Captain Kirk’s adventures. Thirty years later, the internet arrived, which made sharing stories set in other people’s worlds – be they Harry Potter, Spider-Man, or anything and everything in between – easier. Fanfiction has always been out there, if you knew where to look. Now, it’s almost impossible to miss.

In the last few years, fanfiction has enjoyed something of a rebrand. Big-name authors such as EL James, author of the Fifty Shades books, and Cassandra Clare, who has always been open about writing Harry Potter fanfiction before her bestselling Mortal Instruments series, have helped bring it into the mainstream. These days, it’s fairly common knowledge that some people just really like writing about Captain America and Bucky Barnes falling in love, or Doctor Who fighting demons with Buffy. The general image of fanfiction has brightened somewhat: less creepy, more sweetly nerdy.

But the divide between fanfiction and original writing holds strong. It’s assumed that if people write fanfiction, it’s because they can’t produce their own. At best, it functions as training wheels, preparing a writer to commit to a real book. When they don’t – as in the famous case of Fifty Shades, which one plagiarism checker found had an 89% similarity rate with James’s original Twilight fanfiction – they are ridiculed. A real author, the logic goes, having moved on to writing their own books, doesn’t look back.

“Here’s the thing,” Naomi Novik explains over the phone from New York. She is the bestselling author of the Temeraire books, a fantasy series that adds dragons to the Napoleonic Wars, and Spinning Silver, which riffs on Rumpelstiltskin. “I don’t actually draw any line between my fanfiction work and my professional work – except that I only write the fanfiction stuff for love.”

In between writing her novels – or indeed during, as she admits that fanfiction is one of her favourite procrastination techniques – Novik is an active member of the fanfiction community. She is a co-founder of the Archive of Our Own (AO3), one of the most popular hosting websites, and a prolific writer in the universes of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Merlin and many more.

And she’s not the only professional at work. Rainbow Rowell, the bestselling author of Eleanor and Park and other novels, once told the Bookseller that between two novels, she wrote a 30,000-word Harry Potter fanfiction. “It’s Harry and Draco as a couple who have been married for many years, and they’re raising Harry’s kids,” she said. “It’s them dealing with attachment parenting and step-parents and all these middle-aged issues.”

The divide between a fanfiction writer and an original fiction writer can look very arbitrary when looking at authors such as Michael Chabon, who once described his own novel Moonglow as “a Gravity’s Rainbow fanfic”. Or Madeline Miller, whose Orange-prize winning The Song of Achilles detailed the romantic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, and whose latest novel Circe picks up on the witch who seduces Odysseus in the Odyssey. Miller said she was initially worried when one ex-boyfriend described her work as “Homeric fanfiction” but has since embraced her love of adapting and playing with Greek mythology. The tag could also be applied to classics such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, reworkings of Shakespeare by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Edward St Aubyn in the Hogarth series, and a spate of parodies: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Android Karenina.

What separates these works from the Harry Potter fanfiction you find online may come down to snobbery. There is an undercurrent of misogyny in mainstream criticism of fanfiction, which is widely accepted to be dominated by women; one census of 10,500 AO3 users found that 80% of the users identified as female, with more users identified as genderqueer (6%) than male (4%). Novik has spent a good deal of time fighting against fanfiction’s stigma because she feels it is “an attack on women’s writing, specifically an attack on young women’s writing and the kind of stories that young women like to tell”. Which is not to say that young women only want to write about romance: “I think,” Novik says, “that [the popularity of fanfiction amongst women is] not unconnected to the lack of young women protagonists who are not romantic interests.”

Others may find it odd that published authors would bother writing fanfiction alongside or between their professional work. But it’s all too simple to draw lines between two forms of writing that, in their separate ways, can be both productive and joyful. Neil Gaiman once wrote that the most important question an author can ask is: “What if?” Fanfiction takes this to the next level. What if King Arthur was gay? What if Voldemort won? What if Ned Stark escaped?

“I believe that all art, if it’s any good, is in dialogue with other art,” Novik says. “Fanfiction feels to me like a more intimate conversation. It’s a conversation where you need the reader to really have a lot of detail at their fingertips.”

For writers still wobbling on training wheels, fanfiction offers benefits: the immediate gratification of sharing writing without navigating publishers; passionate readers who are already interested in the characters, and a collegial stream of feedback from fellow writers.

“There was an audience of people who wanted to read my writing,” says young adult author Sarah Rees Brennan, who wrote Harry Potter fanfiction in her teens and twenties before she published her own novels, the latest of which, In Other Lands, was a Hugo award finalist. “Here were all these people online who wanted stories about familiar characters. Audiences were pre-invested and waiting.”

For writers, whether already published or on the path to being published, this instantaneous readership functions as a writer’s workshop: Novik calls it a “community of your peers”. Spending hours thrashing out the details of Draco Malfoy’s inner life can’t help but function as a crash course in character motivation. And the limits and constraints of working within a pre-existing world, with its own characters and settings, is a unique challenge.

“Fanfiction is a great incubator for writers,” Novik says. “The more constraints you have on you at the beginning, the better. It’s why people do writing exercises, or play scales. That kind of constraint forces you to practice certain skills, and then at a certain point you have the control to bring out the whole toolbox.”

Once some writers get those tools, they never look back. Rees Brennan no longer writes fanfiction. “I had a friend say it’s like the difference between babysitting kids and having children of your own,” she says. “With a world you built yourself, and characters you built, there’s this sense of deep, overwhelming love.”

But Rees Brennan is still a fan of collaborative writing and shared universes, as in the short stories she writes with Cassandra Clare about characters from Clare’s Mortal Instruments universe. “It’s amazing to gather around a kitchen table and yell at each other excitedly about what’s going to happen to mutually beloved characters,” she says. “I want that for every creative person – a chance to find their imaginative family, wherever it may be.”

Novik scorns the idea that published authors should turn their back on fanfiction. She recalls being on a panel where one member said he couldn’t understand why someone would waste their time writing it over an original work: “I said, ‘Have you ever played an instrument?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I play piano’. I said, ‘So, do you compose all your own music?’”

“When I was first published, I deliberately went to my editors and said, ‘Yes, I’ve been writing fanfiction for 10 years. I love it.’ It was non-negotiable for me. As soon as you do that, by the way, it turns out that like half of the publishing industry has read or been involved in fanfiction,” she laughs. “Shockingly! It’s amazing how all these women who like storytelling have some connection to the community.”

For Novik and many other writers, fanfiction is a fundamental a way of expressing oneself, of teasing out new ideas and finding a joyous way to engage with writing again after the hard slog of editing a novel. The journey to become a published writer isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral, as we grow older and continue to explore the characters and tropes we love. There’s so many stories waiting to be told – perhaps one or two of them could involve getting Captain America laid. God knows he needs it.

[toomanyfeelings5]

@ everyone who says that la la land deserves all of its oscar nominations, that people who are anxious/disappointed/angry/etc about moonlight’s comparably smaller amount of award nominations “have an agenda,” and that la la land was a “risk” to make:

1. you are, of course, entirely allowed to think that la la land deserves all of its nominations and that it’s a great movie, your favorite movie of this year, your favorite movie of all time, etc. 

2. in terms of its genre (movie musical) then yes, it can be considered a “risk.” after all, there hasn’t been a movie musical made in a while, let alone one that references “singin’ in the rain” etc etc.

3. that being said: la la land is a movie that stars two white, straight, cis, well-known leads, it takes place in LA, it pays tribute to Hollywood’s Golden Age of film and musicals, it features a moving romance, and it’s in part about the magic and power of art and film-making. of COURSE it was going to garner praise and attention from Hollywood and notable critics.

4. la la land reaffirms Hollywood’s belief in its mythic past of its Great Tradition of Great Films, and musicals are included within this Great Tradition; it lovingly pays homage to a variety of musicals, and clearly celebrates the Golden Age’s films with nary a critical eye in sight. again: is it really so surprising that such a film would become so well-liked and popular amongst the very people who live their lives in a similar state of admiration of Hollywood’s quality and greatness, or who otherwise stake their living on the value of art and film?

5. la la land isn’t gathering awards and nominations solely because it is a well-made, well-acted movie; it’s getting so much attention from the Oscars, the Golden Globes, big-name critics, etc, because it feeds off of nostalgia, praises the history of Hollywood through homages, references, and tributes, and reaffirms the validity of Hollywood’s past, Hollywood’s present, and Hollywood’s future, and all those who work within or alongside the film industry.

6. “but genre!” yes, yes, movie musicals are relatively rare, and aren’t often given Academy Awards. and yet, here are the 10 (ten) movie musicals that have won Best Picture:

The Broadway Melody (1928/29)

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Going My Way (1944)

An American in Paris (1951)

Gigi (1958)  

West Side Story (1961)

My Fair Lady (1964)

The Sound of Music (1965)

Oliver! (1968)

Chicago (2002)

here it is also important to note that the following musicals received other Oscar nominations and/or awards:

Fiddler on the Roof, Moulin Rogue, Les Miserables, Cabaret, Hello Dolly, Funny Girl, Mary Poppins, The Music Man, The King and I, and 42nd Street

(source)

7. clearly, musicals and movie musicals have a lasting, if not mega-popular, foothold in the industry and in the Academy specifically. there is a history here. there is a legacy. there is a continued interest in making musicals.

8. not a single one of these musicals have starred a black person, let alone had their protagonist be a poor, gay black man. la la land continues the Great Tradition’s overwhelming whiteness and heterosexuality, both as a function of its tribute-paying and as a function of Hollywood’s past-and-present-day lack of diversity.

9. “what does this even have to do with moonlight? it’s impossible to really compare moonlight and la la land anyway, they’re entirely difference genres!”

yes. you’re right, they are different genres. and yet what both Oscar-nominated musicals and Oscar-nominated LGBT films have in common is that between the two genres, none of them have had a a gay black man as their protagonist. (source)

IN FACT, not one Oscar-nominated film, in its 89-year history, regardless of genre, has a gay black male protagonist. until now.

10. la la land is one of multiple musicals and movie musicals to be nominated for Oscars. moonlight is the first of its kind. la la land reinforces Hollywood’s white, straight, cis, middle-and upper-class status quo. moonlight’s VERY EXISTENCE rejects the mainstream stories/tropes Hollywood often fawns over.

11. with this history in mind, one cannot argue that la la land was as risky or just as much of a risk as moonlight to make. to do so would be to willfully ignore the facts of the Academy, of Hollywood, and the history of film in general. simply put: if you say that the risk of making la la land is equal to or greater than moonlight’s, then your agenda is showing.  

11. “but moonlight is an Important Film, the kind of movie that the Academy loves! it’s Oscar bait, and because it’s the first of its kind, it’ll totally win!”

 if moonlight is so beloved by the Academy and prime for sweeping up awards, then why is it the first and therefore only movie that features a black gay protagonist to be nominated for any Oscar? one would think that were this movie Oscar bait, there would be plenty others like it being nominated left and right. there aren’t.

if you’re going to argue that moonlight will win solely because of its diversity, then you need to step back, think for a minute, and stop criticizing people who say that they don’t like la la land because it’s straight, cis, and white, because you clearly aren’t as objective as you think you are, and identity politics impact everyone.

if you’re honestly going to say that moonlight’s subject matter alone is what will cause it to win Oscars, then you’re implying that story DOES matter when it comes to Best Picture and other award categories, and that something besides technical/directorial/acting/etc skill is what makes a film Oscar-worthy.

you’re implicitly saying that la la land’s STORY (characters, plotline, themes, etc) matters along with everything else, and that should it win Best Picture, it does so because of its storyline along with its other factors.

a valid critique can in fact be made, then, that part of the reason la la land’s racked up so many nominations is because of its generic, white-centric, hetero-centric story. if moonlight’s story matters, then so does la la land’s. similarly, if la la la land’s technical achievements matter, so do moonlight’s. films contain multiple elements. to argue that moonlight will win solely for Diversity Points is not only racist and homophobic: it does the film a disservice, and indeed does all films a disservice.  

12. CONCLUSION: la la land is super white, cis, and straight, and it pays homage to other musicals and films that are super white, cis, and straight, thus upholding Hollywood’s past and present white, cis, straight, upper-class agenda, which is part of the reason why it’s gotten so many nominations and so much attention. 

la la land is also not nearly as much of a risk as moonlight was to make: while musicals and movie musicals are relatively uncommon and aren’t awarded as often as other genres are, they have still won Best Picture and other nominations and awards throughout the Oscars’ 89-year history, and they are still very much a part of Hollywood’s Great Tradition of its Great Film Canon. 

moonlight, by contrast, is the very first movie to be nominated for an Oscar to feature a poor, black, gay protagonist. there is no other film like it within both the Great Tradition and within the Academy itself. thus, by virtue of its subject matter, Hollywood’s entrenched racism, classism, and homophobia, and by its much more limited budget, moonlight was the riskier film to make. 

the story a film tells matters along with the way it is told. la la land’s story fits neatly into hollywood’s white, straight, cis, upper-class agenda. to argue otherwise is to be a part of that agenda. you can still like la la land. but every film is made with an agenda/viewpoint/etc, and that should be recognized, even when that agenda is implicitly racist, homophobic, etc. la la land and moonlight are not on an equal playing field. 

13. tl;dr: moonlight was more of a risk to make, la la land ultimately upholds the racist, homophobic, and classist Hollywood status quo, and what determines which film gets nominated for which category or win which award is partially determined by their stories, the people who judge them, and the history of the Academy and film. both moonlight and la la land are good films for various reasons. one can’t, however, dismiss the fact that la la land is in many ways a comfortable, easy piece of escapism for a select, privileged few, while moonlight offers respite, validation, and healing to people who were previously erased, ignored, and dismissed entirely from the Hollywood that la la land adores.  

[thehandmaidtale]

Sections VI, VII

Hey nerds!

Throughout these sections, we get to witness the world’s weirdest threesome and learn a bit more about Gilead’s political structure and history. There’s also a slight chance at a romantic interest for the protagonist. Well, there would be if romance wasn’t dead in Gilead.

Let’s get right into it!

Summary

VI- Household (Chapters 14-17)

Present: A ceremony is held within the house, where the Marthas, the Guard, the Wife and the Handmaid all gather within the sitting room to hear the Commander read from the Bible. Before the Commander arrives, Serena puts on television where stories of war are discussed while the Guard tries to touch Offred’s feet with his. When he arrives, the Commander reads the story of Rachel and Leah, which Offred recalls was drilled into her head in the Red Centre. The story follows Rachel who was barren of children, urging her maid to have a child with her husband in order to keep the blood line going.

After the ceremony, Offred, the Commander and his Wife all head to the couple’s room. The Commander has sex with Offred impersonally, who lays in the lap of the Wife as they hold hands. Once the Commander is finished, he leaves the women.

When Offred is in her room, she takes the stolen piece of butter she has hid in her shoe and applies it as moisturizer all over her body as an attempt at self-care. When she is unable to fall asleep, she decides she will steal something from the sitting room. There, she realizes someone has caught her stealing, and turns around to find the Guard, Nick. The two of them kiss, and although Offred desires sex she knows it is too risky. Nick tells Offred that the Commander would like to see her in his office tomorrow.

Past: During the ceremony, Offred thinks of two past events. The first is of her and Luke, who are taking their daughter across the border in order to escape Gilead. The second is of Moira, who had planned to run away from the Red Centre by faking illness and then asking one of the Angels for a ways out in exchange of sex. Moira gets caught and is sent back to the Centre, her feet in shards from being burnt.

VII- Night (Chapter 18)

Past: Back in her room, Offred remembers being intimate with Luke while she was pregnant. She thinks of three possible scenarios that could have happened to Luke: him being dead, being in prison, and him being free as he looks to find her.

Analysis

Character:

Offred’s character builds dimension as we see her using the butter as a means to take care of herself. Perhaps that means, despite her not believing so, that she sees value in herself beyond her uterus. Offred is also very interested in the news when Serena Joy turns on the television. It’s about the tensions along the border and various religious content. Offred knows it’s likely the news is fake, but still looks for some slice of truth amongst it. This shows that she’s desperate for answers and isn’t just settling with the amount of information she already has. Maybe she is simply looking for hope. That means she hasn’t given into the conditioning of this new life fully.

We also get to learn more about Moira’s character. Moira was, as far as we know, the only person who attempted to leave that specific Red Centre. She’s determined and symbolizes the active resistance to the oppression of rights. It’s also important to note that she’s a minority, which tells us that those willing to risk their life for a cause they feel passionate about are small in numbers. Perhaps that little light of resistance also exists in Offred; the two are best friends after all. On a side note, I know that gaydar isn’t a legitimate thing but mine is going off with Moira. She has some stereotypical lesbian qualities: badass, good with tools, assertive. That could also explain why she wasn’t buying the whole “you’re duty is to bear the children of men” ideology presented to her at the Red Centre.

Plot:

In terms of progression, the main points we learn in these sections are that a) before this current government came into power, the citizens were aware something was wrong and b)  those affected by the government faced sudden change. A) is probably why Luke and Offred tried to escape across the border with their daughter. Somehow, though, they were intercepted. That means government surveillance was at a high, and that could have been one of the reasons they tried to leave in the first place. B) is evident because of how little Offred knows about Luke’s whereabouts. When the family was intercepted at the border, we learn that the daughter was taken away and later relocated to what may be a new family/mother. It’s unlikely that the daughter is dead. Something must have happened to Luke before Offred and her daughter began running away, making his status uncertain.  All of these sudden changes point to a drastic change in government. Perhaps the government was overthrown by a reactionary group, and that is what caused Luke and Offred to try and flee with their daughter.

Themes/ Messages:

 The church and the state: Once again, we see Gilead using religious text in order to fuel its own twisted ideologies. Since reactionaries are primarily conservative, and conservatism tries to conserve the previous status quo, Gilead’s government is attempting to restore a state of religious orthodoxy that used to dictate people’s lives when religion was more mainstream than it is now. Of course, that means the government believes that past ordeals are better than current ones.

You might even interpret it as saying the government wants to make the country great again. Make America Great Again.

 I swear, Trump used The Handmaid’s Tale as a script to run his campaign off of. It worked in the book and it worked in real life. Maybe Margret Atwood is just the next Karl Marx, except better because the political structure actually works.

 The reconstruction of sex: Boy, do I have a lot to say about this topic. I’m going to boil it down to three points only though, just because you might already be asleep. These points are framed from the perspective of Gilead’s government, and how they might have gone about breaking modern day sex as we know it.

 1. Make her lose her sex appeal

Take away her freedoms. Cover her from head to toe in a bright colour so that she is noticeable, and noticeably ugly at that. This is not to say that covered up women are ugly. No, it’s to say that covered up women lose their touch with their sexuality when not given the freedom to dress otherwise. Don’t even give her lotion, actually. Her skin can feel like sandpaper and it might drive her insane, but the less she likes her own physical appearance, the easier it is for her to see her body as something separate from herself.

2. Treat her as a sex object

When her mind and body are no longer in sync, that’s the perfect moment to reconstruct her ideologies. Teach her that her body actually isn’t hers, that it’s sole purpose is to serve men.

In Gilead, this is done through the most awkward threesome in all of history. Allow the man of power to screw a maiden in front of his Wife, while his Wife holds the maiden’s hands with anger. Let the maiden know that she is hated, but also that she has no purpose other than to be a hole in which the man inserts himself. No kissing or caressing allowed. Don’t let the woman think, even for a second, that she is loved.

 3. Don’t let her forget that she’s a sex object

Even though the woman’s body and mind are out of sync, sometimes they’ll align enough that she’ll form sexual desire for other men. Offred does this when she kisses Nick and flirts with the Guard. If it turns out the man wants her too, as did Nick when they kissed, then make it impossible for them to screw each other without getting in trouble.

It must be imprinted in the girl’s mind that if she is to have sex with a man out of choice, horrible things will happen. Reinforce this idea that her purpose is to help other’s reproduce, not to use her body for her own satisfaction.

I’m seeing a few similarities between Gilead and Saudi Arabia again. Maybe that’s why domestic violence is common there: if you render a woman powerless, then it’s all the more incentive for someone to overpower her. Maybe I’m just generalizing, though. I do despise Saudi Arabia.

I wonder what the world’s most awkward threesome have in store for us in the next sections. Will Offred start having feelings for the Commander? Will Serena Joy finally go insane? Will Moira prove to be gay and turn out to be my soulmate?

Stay tuned!

[aion-rsa]

X-POSITION – ResurrXion Revealed With the X-Editors: Part 2

The X-Line is getting a major overhaul this spring with the launch of a whole new line of comics. The initiative, titled ResurrXion, will see the arrival of new flagship series like “X-Men Gold” and “X-Men Blue” as well as team books like “Generation X” and “Weapon X.” Additionally, a trio of characters will get their own ongoings: “Iceman,” “Jean Grey” and “Cable.” On top of all that, “All-New Wolverine” and “Old Man Logan” will continue slashing their way through villains with new stories.

RELATED: X-POSITION – ResurrXion Revealed With the X-Editors: Part 1

This week in the concluding half of our two-part X-POSITION interview, X-Men editors Mark Paniccia, Daniel Ketchum, Christina Harrington, Mark Basso and Chris Robinson answer your questions about “X-Men Blue,” “Cable,” “Iceman” and “All-New Wolverine”!

CBR News: Welcome back for part two of this X-POSITION, X-Editors! First up this week, we have a question from Factor.

Are there plans to bring more diversity to the two main X-Men books? In the two teams, Storm is the only character of color and there isn’t any confirmed LGBT representation [aside from Iceman], which seems a stark contrast to Marvel’s recent diversity push and the X-Men’s own history of being one of the most inclusive teams in comics.

Daniel Ketchum: When we were brewing “X-Men Blue” and “X-Men Gold,” we were purposefully modeling the teams after the original five X-Men and the All-New, All-Different X-Men. We definitely struggled with the fact that those rosters aren’t representative of Marvel today, so one of the aims was to make sure that we placed extra emphasis on diversity amongst the other team books, as well as finding (also, making) opportunities to fill out the supporting casts of the main titles with diverse characters.

Also, can we talk about how there are maybe more gay characters in the main casts of X-Men titles than ever before? Iceman, Iceman (I count them separately because we are presenting very different gay narratives with each of them), Benjamin Deeds, Bling and a character that we have not yet discussed…

EXCLUSIVE: “X-Men Gold” #1 interior art by Ardian Syaf, Jay Leisten and Frank Martin

Next up, MarvelMaster616 wants to know if there’s romance in store for the mutants.

Since the end of “Avengers vs. X-Men” and “Death of Wolverine,” there has been a distinct lack of romantic subplots throughout the X-books. Pretty much every iconic X-Men romance has been destroyed, shelved, or otherwise cast aside. Will the current state of romance in the X-Men comics, or lack thereof, change at all in ResurrXion?

Christina Harrington: I love a good love triangle…I think you’ll definitely be seeing more of them in the future.

Ketchum: Yes. Perhaps the most important question I asked each of the incoming writers was, “Who’s kissing who?”

Mark Paniccia: In “X-Men Blue” you will see a familiar geometric shape taking form amongst a familiar trio of characters. Been a while since we’ve watched this kind of rivalry evolve.

“X-Men Gold” #1 interior art by Ardian Syaf, Jay Leisten and Frank Martin

Here’s a more big picture question from blinkingblah.

Do a lot of writers ask for a lot of info when approaching a book that has a lot of history like X-Men, or do some feel confident enough that they just wing it? I personally wouldn’t feel right without doing my due diligence to whatever comic I was about to be placed on. I’m sure it varies.

Harrington: In my experience, writers want to know the background and history of the characters they’re writing — for any character they’re writing… but I think that history carries a bit more weight with the X-Men. Since I assist on titles, I’m usually hunting down comics from the ’90s or much earlier — the entire “Uncanny” run from the ’60s is digitized for the sake of reference, for example — to send to writers and artists. Though, honestly, one of the best resources for this sort of thing is usually Daniel Ketchum… I’ll ask him when a certain event happened and he’ll give me the issue number off the top of his head. Dude knows his stuff.

Ketchum: Haha. You’re too kind, Christina!

And this is a great question, blinkingblah. I was actually just talking about this very topic on the phone yesterday with “Generation X” writer Christina Strain.

I think every writer is slightly different when it comes to the amount of research they do when picking up a character or story that already has established continuity, an established voice…and also different in how beholden they feel to it all. So, depending on the writer, they might ask for a lot of info and back issues, or they might just fly right into a pitch. It does indeed vary.

I will say that in this particular batch of writers, we have lots of longtime X-Men fans who have not only grown up living with these characters, but have also done their homework, so there are lots of fun nods to continuity sprinkled throughout their scripts. Longtime readers and newcomers alike are in for a real treat!

Let’s get into a few questions about one of the flagship books, “X-Men Blue.” Here’s one from txgohan.

The original five have been in the present timeline for a good minute now. Will we ever find out what will happen if/when they go back to their proper time? Can they even go home since the original 616 universe was destroyed in “Secret Wars”?

Paniccia: That’s a good question and there are many theories out there about how and if they can return. It’s become one of the great mysteries in modern comics. This is something [writer] Cullen [Bunn] wants to explore and the answer he’s got in mind, if we let him do it, is pretty mind-boggling.

Harrington: I think if we answered this question we wouldn’t need to make comics any more. So, uh, read on, True Believer, and find out?

Ketchum: Ummmm check out “All-New X-Men” #19 for the beginning of the answer to this question. DUN DUN DUN!

That issue arrives later this month, X-Fans! Next up, we have an ask from MarvelMaster616 about Cyclops.

Now that Teen Cyclops knows the truth about what happened to his older self in “Death of X,” what will that mean for him moving forward? How will that affect him, his teammates, and the way the rest of the world sees him?

Paniccia: One thing I want to stress is that these guys are a family and they have all seen a possible path for themselves. This goes beyond Scott. His alternate’s fate is something that deeply disturbs him but he’s in good company as all the members are cast in the shadows of some frightening possibilities. This is something that makes their journey together so fascinating in regards to the team’s current dynamics and what kind of collision course they’re all headed for, be it supportive or adversarial.

Harrington: Cyclops, like the rest of his time-tossed teammates, is going to have to figure out who he really is. And just because he knows the truth about older Scott’s fate doesn’t mean there won’t still be doubts about who he might become. I think we all worry about the person we might become in the indeterminate future…though not all of us can say we’ve met our future selves and hated them. It’s going to be a long road for Cyke, but I think he’ll be okay. Scott Summers is a hero…isn’t he?

Ketchum: Over the course of “All-New X-Men,” Young Cyclops was really dogged by the legacy his older self had left for him. And now that he’s out from under that, he can move forward and forge his own path…

We now have some questions about the upcoming solo books, like this “Iceman” question from cc008.

How do you think the upcoming “Iceman” solo ongoing will stack up against Marvel’s top, heavy-hitting solo books? I’m really hoping for a nice, long run for the book that shows how important Bobby really is to the X-Men.

Paniccia: This is a book I’m really excited to see happen and so glad it’s part of our publishing plan. I have high hopes for it and Daniel put together an amazing creative team. Please add this book to your pull list.

Chris Robinson: Out of the newest wave of X-titles, “Iceman” is going to have the most personal stakes and repercussions for the title character.

Ketchum: Chris really hits the nail on the head. Iceman is pretty comfortable in his own skin when it comes to being a super hero… whereas when it comes to knowing himself as a person, he’s really lacking. This book will have a lot of heart, where the super hero conflicts will illuminate Bobby’s interior life and inform his own journey of self-discovery. And I think many of Marvel’s top, heavy-hitting solo books have that in common.

Also, punching bad guys in the face. “Iceman” and the other solo series all have that in common, too.

We have a few questions about the upcoming “Cable” book, starting with this one from Benji.

Where is Hope Summers? She went from HUGE deal to “Where did she go?” Please tell me she’ll appear in “Cable.” It makes no sense for her not to — he’s her dad!

Paniccia: There are plans for Hope but I’ll let another editor speak for that. But I can’t say that her and pops won’t bump into each other down the line…if “time” permits.

Mark Basso: Just because Cable’s her dad doesn’t mean Hope wants to hang around her old man all the time, does it? When we open the new series, Cable is on a very dangerous solo mission, hunting down a very dangerous criminal through the time stream… not exactly a trip you bring the family along for!

Ketchum: We’ll be answering the, “Where is Hope Summers?” question in “Jean Grey” #2! Because writer Dennis Hopeless and I have both missed her as much as you!

And here’s another “Cable” Q, this time from Psimitar.

How tightly-woven will Cable’s new solo book be into the fabric of other X-Books and the Marvel Universe in general? … It’s been almost 3 years and Cable has yet to even interact with the O5 X-Men and it seems like he of all people would have something to say about his parent(s) being displaced in time as it could jeopardize his very existence.

Basso: That’s very true — no one knows the risks of time-travel and the butterfly effect more than the Askani’son. In fact, that’s exactly what sets him off on his first mission in the new series. Conquest, the mysterious new villain Cable is hunting, is looking to piece together a weapon that, if successful, will have dire consequences on the Marvel Universe. So, in respect to the order of urgency, his time-displaced parents will have to wait. But what will happen when Cable meets his even younger parents, though? Hmmm…

Paniccia: Cable meeting the O5 versions of his parents is a story that’s rich with possibilities both on personal and quantum levels. It’s something worth exploring for sure.

And we close out this week with a question from Coen about a character that’s now a major movie star, the “All-New Wolverine.”

Can you please tell me if the all-new Wolverine will be joining any X-Men teams in ResurrXion?

Paniccia: You may see her guest star but she’ll be involved in a pretty cool and (inter)stellar story that will take her off the table to join a roster right now… but, never say never in comics. And some stuff that’s been brewing amongst the X-writers might bubble to the surface and scratch that itch many of you have to see her operating with allies.

Harrington: I don’t know if you’ve been reading “All-New Wolverine” lately, but Laura’s been going through some stuff. Plus, she has a sister now — a sister who desperately needs some super hero training. So, she’s doing what Wolverine does best — no, not killing stop saying that I can’t hear you — taking a young girl under her wing and turning her into a total badass. But I also don’t think you can keep Laura away from the larger Marvel Universe for long and I really pity the person who stands between her and her friends, so I don’t think this journey of self-discovery is going to take forever. Just sit back, relax, and watch our girl be the hero she is.

Ketchum: Also, please send us letters! We’re hoping to resurrect the tradition of letters pages along with our classic titles and classic line-ups. Mark them “OKAY TO PRINT” and send them to officex@marvel.com!

Special thanks to Mark Paniccia, Daniel Ketchum, Christina Harrington, Mark Basso and Chris Robinson for taking on this week’s questions! Stay tuned to CBR for info on the next X-POSITION.

The post X-POSITION – ResurrXion Revealed With the X-Editors: Part 2 appeared first on CBR.com.

http://ift.tt/2n2Pn0g