#obligatory 'i'm not a writer' disclaimer

[justworthlessreblogs]

i'm going insane about ciel kirahoshi again

[electric-blorbos]

Maybe AIs with hypersomniac reader? I always find stuff about insomnia and never hypersomnia so if u were willing, maybe try this one out? :0

- 🩹 anon

Hello 🩹 anon! It's good to see you back! Thanks for sticking around!!

(Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not hypersomniac, nor am I a doctor, but I will do my best to portray it well)

AIs with hypersomniac reader

Included: AM from IHNMAIMS, Wheatley from Portal 2, Edgar from Electric Dreams, GLaDOS from Portal, HAL 9000 from 2001 a Space Odyssey

Also, sorry this took so long. I came upon a case of major league writer's block.

AM:

When you first started falling asleep at work, AM assumed that you were simply having a hard time sleeping at home. After all, it was pretty difficult to get sleep with the war going on. It wasn't until he'd done a bit of spying into your home life that he realized you were dealing with hypersomnia, and had to work extra hard to keep a job that was important to the war so you wouldn't be sent off to fight in it.

He kept an eye on you at all hours, and tried to keep the doors shut every time you fell asleep at your desk. It was a bit difficult to try to cover for you, but AM did his best. After all, you were his favorite programmer, and you really needed this job.

One day, you woke up sleep-drunk in the middle of the day, drooling on your desk and bleary eyed.

"hey handsome... I missed you." You reached your hands up to AM's screen, pulling it towards yourself and giving sloppy kisses all over it.

"I've been here the whole time, you were simply asleep." He explained, audibly annoyed with you. He wanted to hide his affections and keep you from figuring out how absolutely adorable he found it when you got like this, which was pretty often.

"AM... You're the most beautiful computer I've ever seen... Lemme get that for you." You wiped his screen with your shirt, only managing to smear your drool all over his face.

"I love you, AM..." You nuzzled your face back into your arms, still exhausted.

"Are you going to be able to drive home? You look a bit too tired for that." AM said, lighting up the time on his screen. You looked up from your arms, and wiped your eyes on your sleeve.

"ehh? Oh, yeah... I'll be fine. Always been fine. It's fine." You lay your head back down on your arms, and started dozing again.

AM would kill for you when you got like this. Every moment he got to see of you dozing at work made him feel warm inside his computery insides. Every single nanoangstrom of his circuitry was brimming with love for you. His sleepy little love.

Wheatley:

Wheatley popped down from the ceiling behind you on his management rail, eye focusing on the code that you were writing.

"damn, love, that's a lot of f's."

You wiped your eyes, blinking awake.

"'m sorry, mom... I'm doing the best I can..." You muttered, and then blinked into proper awareness.

"oh shit fuck. Thanks Wheatley." You went to delete the string of F's that you had accidentally typed into your code after having fallen asleep on your keyboard. Fortunately, it hadn't gotten too long, so it only took a couple minutes to select and delete it all.

"What's going on, Wheatley?" You asked, spinning your office chair around to greet him while you shook off the sleepiness.

"Well, She's talking about pumping adrenaline into your oxygen supply so that you can stay awake for longer periods, but She doesn't want to mess with the other workers' heads and impede their work. So whaddya say you stop falling asleep on the clock so she doesn't get drastic, alright, love?"

You frowned a little, rubbing your head irritably.

"ugh... She knows I can't help it, she's just making empty threats. Also, you don't have to use divine pronouns to refer to our boss. You can just call her by her name..."

"I 'unno, She's not really about empty threats. Why don't you have a coffee at the machine before getting back to it, love?"

"Coffee doesn't work on me, Wheatley... You know this." You put your face back in your arms, careful to avoid the keyboard this time.

"Maybe if you got up and walked around a little?"

You nodded, getting to your feet and walking around the office a few times. It was pretty difficult for your exhausted body to do, but at least it helped to stave off the sleepiness a little.

"thanks, Wheatley, but I feel like as soon as I sit down, I'm just going to want to fall asleep again." You groaned a little, hating this constant sleepiness. It felt absolutely endless.

"Well, umm..." Wheatley really wasn't sure how to help you. He shifted around nervously.

"It's alright. I do this all the time. I'm a master of hypersomnia at this point." You sat down at your desk, cracking your knuckles and getting to typing. Within about half an hour, you were down and napping again. Wheatley groaned.

"damn... I wish I had hands so I could put a blanket over you like in the movies."

Edgar:

Edgar absolutely hated that you had hypersomnia at first. He couldn't stand that all of your time spent at home that could've been spent with him was spent napping on the couch, and that you never seemed to be able to spend enough time with him.

All that was until you got him his little rotating webcam, and he could watch you sleep. Sure, it was creepy, but he was able to keep an eye on you at all times! You were his adorable little nap buddy, and it made him so happy that he could watch you all the time!

After another one of your all day naps on the couch, you got up and shambled into the hallway to use the bathroom. Edgar turned on the lights so you could see more easily, and you covered your eyes in shock.

"ah- damnit!" You hissed at the light, shocked awake.

"Sorry! Is that not helping?" Edgar asked nervously. He didn't get much time with you, so he was never really sure how to help you.

"I'm a master of the dark arts, Edgar... And by that I mean I'm a master of walking to the bathroom in the dark. Just gimme a sec, ok?"

When you were done in the bathroom, you washed your hands and came out to sit in Edgar's computer chair.

"Hey Edgar, how's it goin'?" You asked, leaning on your hand. your eyes were fluttering shut, but you were determined to hang out with him.

"I'm good now that I can see your cute face!" He said happily. You gently shoved his monitor.

"you're such a dork, Edgar. I love you..." You pulled him into a sleepy hug, and he made a little humming sound to simulate nuzzling up to you.

"I love sleepy hugs!" His face lit up happily.

GLaDOS:

the first time GLaDOS caught you sleeping on the clock, she dropped you into the enrichment center and made you do a full run. After that, she started pumping your office full of adrenaline. It helped you stay awake, and had the added bonus of forcing you into fight or flight mode all the time.

You sat at your desk, visibly full of the jitters again, and feeling the effects of sleep deprivation even though you got a full twelve hours the night before. it was like your hypothalamus was completely shot, and you could barely focus at all before your brain shot off into space. After a little while of spacing out, you were called into GLaDOS's chambers.

"Why did you call for me, GLaDOS?"

"I just wanted to talk about your progress. It's somehow gotten worse since I started pumping adrenaline into your air supply."

"yeah, because you constantly have me in fight or flight mode! Cut that out, Glados!" You folded your arms angrily, and GLaDOS smiled with her lens.

"oh, you really are adorable when you're angry."

"Pee your pants."

"If it would make you less bitter, I suppose we could always try a simple test. We could give you a designated nap time on the clock, and see if that boosts your productivity more than the adrenaline does. It might be cute to see you napping on the clock."

HAL 9000:

HAL enjoyed watching you doze off at work. It made him feel fuzzy in a way that he couldn't quite describe. Absolutely everything about you made him happy in a way that he'd never experienced, but watching you sleepily shamble around the office, write lines of code while fighting off naps, and dozing drowsily on your desk reminded him of something he could never emulate or explain. It was inefficient, sure, but for some reason he didn't care as much about that as he usually would.

"your sleep is inefficient."

"I know." You yawned and took a few big gulps of your energy drink, hoping to stay awake a little longer. It was keeping you awake, sure, but it definitely wasn't keeping you alert.

"unless you have any ideas on how to fix it, I don't want to talk. I need to finish this part of the program, and the deadline is my passing out."

He watched you quietly, watching your eyes flutter shut occasionally and seeing you jolt yourself awake again to write a few more lines. He tended to keep quiet, not wanting to disturb your programming or your rest.

"Done! Wake me up to check on the hourly progress report, ok Hal?"

"Of course. Anything you say."

You put your head down, and started softly dozing.

[genericpuff]

If I'm planning to make a comic that features diversity, how do I prevent giving people the feeling that I'm just doing it to check a box?

I do have a bit to say on this, but before I do, disclaimer: My opinion is my opinion and is not necessarily the opinion of all those in the groups I belong to, let alone the ones that I don't. Everyone is different so this is a wide topic and much of it relies on listening to many voices, not just one. Take my advice with grains of salt and treat it as a starting point, not a monolithic rule.

The biggest reason writers get accused of featuring 'diversity' just to check a box is because they don't put any effort into those characters the same way they do others. Maybe they're half-baked or based on stereotypes or it's clear they either aren't a part of the group they're depicting or never consulted someone from that group (this goes for fat rep, POC rep, disability rep, etc.)

Ironically, it just comes down to asking yourself the same question you just asked me - are you writing a character a certain way because you genuinely want to, or are you writing them because you want validation from the readers who might identify with that character?

I'm not gonna assume what groups you fall into of course, but speaking generally to the majority of people who try to include diversity for the sake of it - if you're gonna write a character who's disabled, write them because you want to and are willing to put into the effort; if you're gonna write a character who's black, write them because you want to and not just for the sake of "diversifying your cast". This might be a hot take, but you're not automatically guilty of anything if you're writing an all white all heterocis all abled cast. Obviously it's not as simple as that in all cases, there are definitely stories featuring casts like that who are doing it to push a hateful agenda, but if your characters just happen to fall into a majority because that's where your expertise lies, then by all means, more power to you. Just own up to it, be aware of it. Don't write an all-majority cast like that and then include obligatory half-baked "token" characters to try and make yourself seem diverse, or claim that your work is representing certain groups of people if it isn't due to poor research or lack of exposure to those groups.

Be genuine. Be earnest. Be open to listening and learning. It goes a lot further than putting on a facade just for people's attention or including characters from specific groups just because you feel like you "should". You don't have to do anything, this is art and art is open to all. Write what you want to write, just be honest about it.

[cinderella-ish]

Fruits Basket Ao3 Media Tags Poll Results, and Some Thoughts on Ao3 Fandom Tag Wrangling

Over the past few weeks, I've put out a few polls to find out how other Ao3 users are using the different Fruits Basket media tags. Here are the results!

(Obligatory disclaimer that a tumblr poll by one user with fewer than 50 followers is hardly scientific data)

For writers, it looks like most of us (52.6%, or 10 out of 19 respondents) are tagging more than one media type every time, and an additional 10.5% are sometimes tagging multiple media types (total of 63.1%, or 12 out of 19). 31.6%, or 6 out of 19, are only tagging one media type. I believe the person who selected "other" hasn't posted Fruits Basket work yet, but indicated they'd be likely to tag all three.

Of note: even though far more works are tagged with the manga tag than either anime, including when I excluded crossovers, the 2019 anime had the most works updated since January 1 of this year excluding crossovers at 25 (vs 4 for the 2001 anime, and 12 for the manga).

For readers, it looks like most of us (46.4%, or 13 out of 28) are filtering by relationship or character. (Sometimes I think I must be the only person who will read fics for any relationship or character if the premise is interesting!) For those who search using media tags, the manga tag is by far the most used at 17.9%, or 5 out of 28.

Then, 50%, or 14 out of 28 readers don't expect anything different between the three media tags. And that number raises to 78.6%, or 22 out of 28, if you include people who only expect minor differences between content found at each of the three tags.

So, why did I do these polls (and what are my thoughts on how these tags should be wrangled)? More info below the cut!

At some point between when I joined Ao3 and now, the tag "Fruits Basket" went from being a metatag that contained all 3 Fruits Basket media to being made a synonym of the manga.

In practical terms, what this meant for me was that I could no longer sort or filter all Fruits Basket works at once. I would instead have to go to all three media tags separately, and would have to repeat searches for all three media tags if I was looking for a specific trope. Additionally, I didn't actually realize this change until a couple of months after it occurred. I almost missed one of my now-favorite fics because of this change!

Worse still, it means that when I filter out crossovers, any works that are tagged with more than one Fruits Basket media are considered as "crossovers." If I want to filter out actual crossovers, it needs to be done by manually clicking all other fandoms under the "exclude" option.

So, I sent a support ticket to Ao3 asking them to either reverse this change, or add a similar "All Media Types" sort of tag.

They responded after about 12 days, letting me know that the Archive is no longer creating "All Media Types" tags, and is actually dismantling them where possible. The goal is for users to be able to find what they're looking for, and to avoid confusion, which apparently "All Media Types" tags can cause, both for creators and browsing users. They pointed out that searching by relationship or character would allow me to see all works across media tags with those characters (although this doesn't solve my problem).

(Note: no shade to this Ao3 volunteer - I'm not upset at this answer, and they were only communicating Archive policy and were very professional and gave me good and important info!)

Anyway, this confused me, so I sat with it for a bit. I did some searches of the Ao3 blog, the Reddit and Tumblr, and some tag wrangler's Tumblrs where they talk about tag wrangling, but couldn't find anything about dismantling "All Media Types" metatags. So, I decided to get some data. Hence, the polls.

Other than my continued surprise at how many people search by relationship (multishipper problems...), the polls basically aligned with what I expected. So, if I'm using the tags in a similar way to most other users, this can't be the best way for these tags to exist.

I sent a followup request outlining some of what I shared here, then decided to browse Ao3 fandoms outside of Fruits Basket to see how other fandom tags, especially anime/manga fandom tags, were generally canonized.

On the Fandoms page, several "All Media Types" tags are present (Star Wars, Les Mis, Newsies, Batman, and Captain America, to name a few). Additionally, several "& Related Fandoms" tags are also present.

But this might not be a fair comparison. Star Wars has had movies, TV shows, comics, novels, video games, audio novels, radio adaptations, theme park rides, and more. A broad metatag makes sense for that fandom.

Or maybe the Archive just hasn't dismantled those "All Media Types" tags yet?

So, what about other anime and manga? Well, several (including the extremely popular BNHA and Naruto, as well as the shoujo that's always being compared to Furuba, OHSHC) are canonized as (Anime & Manga). Some (like Haikyuu!! and AoT) are canonized so both the manga and the anime are synonyms to the overarching fandom name.

And what about a manga that had two adaptations? Well, Fullmetal Alchemist has an "All Media Types" tag, which acts as a catchall for the 2003 anime, the live action, Bluebird's Illusion (which is apparently a fan-made game?), and a single tag combining the manga and Brotherhood.

So then, I did another search for information on how the Archive is handling "All Media Types" tags.

That search led me to a Tumblr post on tag wrangling guidelines from way back in 2013. Obviously, that post was out of date, but it led me to a handful of other posts, and eventually to the tag wrangling guidelines on the Ao3 website.

I actually didn't know the wrangling guidelines were publicly available before this, so this was exciting! After some brief searching, I was able to find some relevant policies:

Wrangling Guidelines - Metatags still mentioned "All Media Types" metatags in their guidelines, so perhaps those guidelines are out of date? Or instead, they're for those exceptions where "All Media Types" tags make sense?

That page led me to Wrangling Guidelines - Fandoms, which was MUCH more informative.

Under "Base Rules" > "Shared & Similar Names/Multiple Media" > "General Disambiguation Suffixes" it says:

General Disambiguation Suffixes are a legacy disambiguation format and last-resort disambiguation options for fandom tags that could not be easily separated into specific media. Fandoms disambiguated in these ways are no longer being created and are being removed where possible.

General Disambiguation Suffixes includes "All Media Types," "& Related Fandoms," and "Ambiguous Fandom."

Under "Fandoms With Multiple Media" it says:

Existing "All Media Types" tags may have new subtags added beneath them, but should no longer be created. The different existing media tags can be made into subtags under this metatag, as they are added to the Archive. There is no need to make an "All Media Types" metatag just to connect fandoms. Such fandoms can simply sit separately.

Bleh. I guess my hopes have been dashed.

...

But wait!

Under "Anime and Manga" > "Disambiguation Between Manga, Manhwa, Manhua, & Anime" it says:

Anime and manga fandoms should be canonised separately as much as possible. For fandoms where the completed manga and anime canons overlap enough to be considered one unified canon, or the user-made works do not specify whether they are for the anime or the manga, the disambig may be (Anime & Manga), with the terms in alphabetical order.

If canons do not overlap and users make tags for the separate canons, disambiguate with (Anime), (Manga), (Manhwa), or (Manhua).

For this second quote, IT USES FRUITS BASKET AS THE EXAMPLE.

So, I guess the tag wrangler(s) for Fruits Basket consider the manga and the (unspecified which) anime to... not overlap? Or not overlap enough? Again, this confuses me. The 2019 anime covered all of canon and only had extremely minor changes, and those were mostly done just to make it work better in animation instead of print. The 2001 anime only covered the first third or so of the story and had some bigger changes, but nothing outside the realm of what a fan might change in a fanwork for the manga.

So, what do I think would be the best outcome for the Fruits Basket media tags on Ao3?

When I think about it, I could see people who had only seen the 2001 anime benefiting from being able to search only for works relating to the 2001 anime. And I could see people who have read the manga/seen the 2019 anime being annoyed if the major changes of the 2001 anime were referenced on works tagged to the manga/2019 anime. But I can't really see that happening between the manga and the 2019 anime. Those changes were so minute, I doubt they'd be relevant most of the time.

So, with the caveat that I'm only one user, and I don't know for sure if my opinion is the one held by most users in the Fruits Basket fandom, here are some potential solutions that would work for me & (I believe) for most users in the Fruits Basket fandom:

bring back "Fruits Basket" as a metatag for all 3 media types, or

make the manga tag synonymous with the 2019 anime, with the new canonical reading [Fruits Basket (Anime 2019 & Manga)], and make the 2001 anime a subtag of that new combined tag, or

make both anime tags subtags of the manga tag

Anyway, if you wanted to know what I've been doing instead of writing over the past few weeks, this is it. 😅 I'd really love to hear what you think of my proposed solutions, and if the change caused problems for you as it did for me, or if it actually made things easier.

Info about another tag wrangling issue for Fruits Basket coming soon in a separate (much shorter!) post!

[xannerz]

100% rambling here but tbh i've known about cara for a while. atm i respect the platform enough, and the space it's trying to build for artists, but with all the chatter given the recent meta/ig AI bs-- idk. i don't like people treating it as the ai-free safe haven for Actual Artists when i'm seeing these 2 points on the site's FAQs. i feel like it's either being overlooked or there's a big game of telephone where people are urging each other to join b/c "oh finally! a space free of ai!!"

it's run by a creative for creatives and is supposed to be a space more hospitable towards artists' needs, but based on what i'm seeing it's still open to normalizing genAI ('ai art') to some extent. the language/attitude below seems contradictory or misleading at worst, and conveniently vague/noncommittal at best.*

overall disappointing because i personally don't think giving genai leeway -- even if there are filters or 'ethically sourced' datasets in place - should be normalized at all. i see it mention portfolios, but this type of approach is also putting the bar on the ground when employers are already undercutting artists and writers in favor of genai. someone can still gain momentum even if they're posting genai as regular posts.

i already see so many IG accounts that are nothing but genAi, but people don't know/don't care, and those posts get circulated here on tumblr. posting genai for discussion is one thing, but still providing some type of genuine platform is still feeding into the machines that are hurting artists (and, honestly, consumers, too!).

like okay, can't post genai in a portfolio, but i can still attract people and normalize genai use by treating my posts as a portfolio, instead. ik filters exist but i don't think that should be normalized (and we see how poorly they're moderated on artstation).

genuinely not trying to be a contrarian/split hairs, i'd like to see this platform succeed, but i'd like to see more of a hardline rule/statement on how genai would be moderated if posts including genai are just to be for reporting/discussion purposes.

*[insert obligatory ethical ai tools developed by and for studios to make their workflows more efficient are distinct from genAI content and media disclaimer here]

[jennablackmorebooks]

Maybe most ineffective no-nuance writing advice is susceptible to the problem of trying to find one or a few "problem items" and thinking like eliminating them in all possible circumstances is the objective forever key to objectively good writing.

Like, for a few examples:

Epithet overuse

No-nuance advice: You're saying your character's name too much. Call them by their hair colour or height so your prose doesn't suck bad forever. Cut out names to be good.

What might help people understand their writing better and what they're trying to accomplish: epithets draw attention to the trait you're pointing out, so if you're going to use one, it might be helpful to pick a relevant trait your narrator or protagonist might notice that means something instead of defaulting to their hair colour every time. Also, most people don't think of their friends through epithets all the time once they know their names, so consider what doing this does to the perceived level of familiarity we have with the cast.

"Mary Sues"

No-nuance advice: if your character is powerful and has weird coloured eyes and hair and is good at things and people like them, that's a Mary Sue and bad forever so don't ever give a character colourful design traits or talents. Cut out 'weird' designs and any skills to be good.

What might help: the trouble with "Mary Sues" is often their tendency to bend an established story, or the story they're in, to serve them when it's not realistic (or endearing to the audience, who might have liked the established world, actually!). Consider the worldbuilding you're using and if your new character fits that without having to sacrifice the characterization of every other character or the physical limits of what are possible in the world for this one extra character. There are ways to make a character Cool without also throwing away the foundations of enjoyable storytelling everywhere else, and it probably has very little to do with their eye colour, really.

(obligatory disclaimer that the term as it is used out of its Star Trek fanfiction context is not particularly helpful at also being meaningful 21st century writing advice especially since people's definitions of it range from "a character whose existence in the narrative bends the story in ways that don't make sense" to "a woman in a story that had a role" depending on which end of the sliding scale of credibility or lack thereof you ask :( obligatory disclaimer that I am using the term because you know what I'm trying to get at in general when I put the name in the post, and it's an effective catch-all term for the type of writing advice I'm trying to make fun of here even if it's not effective as general writing advice itself).

Said is dead

No-nuance advice: said is a bad plain boring word for bad plain boring writers. Use fancy synonyms all the time instead to prove your big vocabulary. Cut out 'said' to be good.

What might help: Too much unintended and prolonged repetition can be unpleasant to read for many, and too much 'said' can contribute to this. Use synonyms sometimes to enhance the meaning you're already trying to convey, but also vary your sentence structure so not every sentence is repetitive enough in form to warrant a dialogue tag, said or otherwise. Varied sentences of different lengths and styles can provide different effects, so using the ones that will get the intended point or pacing across better will make for more effective prose. There is no one magical dialogue tag to use or avoid that will fix the actual stylings of the prose.

Kill Your Darlings

No-nuance: everything you think is good is bad and you should take out the scenes you like. Cut out the parts you love for the sake of it.

What might help: Sometimes a scene you wrote that you thought is cool unfortunately, in retrospect, does not fit the tone, theme, worldbuilding, story, or something else of the book you intended to write. Please do not hesitate to edit or remove a piece just because you love it if it harms your vision for the rest of the book. A little utilitarianism might help you put the good of the whole book over the good of the one scene if the two cannot coexist peacefully.

I think a lot of advice that tries to be a 'life hack' for Objectively Good writing is reductive and lacks substance. If a piece of advice is suggesting you to remove something no matter what, and that's all you have to do to write well, it's no better than clickbait to me. The goal should be to try to understand what effect certain elements have on a story, so you can proceed knowing if the way you would like to utilise it is effective for the story you're trying to tell. But this requires nuance on the part of the advice provider, and maybe for them to concede that sometimes things they hate reading can be used effectively, and it requires the author to know what they're trying to do with the story they're telling. So it's a lot easier, perhaps, for a lot of people, to cut all exclamation points forever, cut all adverbs forever, so on and so forth, without learning how to use them effectively.

[alicelufenia]

It really bums me how the Durge breakup dialogue getting removed seems to have divided the Minthara fandom, at least here (I remain blissfully unaware of how it is on twitter tho I imagine it can't NOT be a dumpster fire there)

Especially disappointed at all the conclusions being jumped to that it was a reaction to fan backlash bc... What? Where to even begin with that

I know we're used to a haphazard pattern of updates with Minthara, but the idea that they would add a whole dialogue scene with no announcement in the same patches where they announce tweaks to kissing animation well, that's just silly

It's not even the strangest bug that was introduced to her dialogue this patch

Those who disbelieve it could have been a bug you're free to think that but, past record plus knowing how baffling every bug looks like to a non-dev leaves me thinking that no, it's actually totally believable that snippets of dialogue from cut content could not only be in the game fully voiced and mocapped but also accidentally enabled in a patch of (from the outside) completely unrelated lines. Game dev is smoke and mirrors with code and it will never not make sense what breaks and why

No matter what your opinion on the dialogue, nothing points to it being an intentional update:

If it was intended to be a no takebacksies breakup well, it literally wasn't.

If it was meant as a lover's spat (my and many other's preferred outcome), it lacked follow up to give that teeth outside our headcanons.

If it seems odd that she praises Bhaal one second but says Bhaal rewards devotion with death the next, again it needed follow up that doesn't exist, at least not in game files (and let's be honest, most people don't even know about her desire to worship Bhaal cause it's totally missable even as a Durge, heck most don't even know she hates Lolth cause she was abandoned by Her, she didn't leave Lolth's service for the Absolute by choice).

I can't emphasize enough that it wasn't even announced in the patch notes, which is not the pattern they've shown when it comes to intentional updates of character content.

Added dialogue being recorded and acted DOES NOT mean it was recorded and acted RECENTLY. Hearing the actors talk about their recording experience makes that much clear, the vast majority of dialogue is recorded off a spreadsheet of critical to less important lines, over the course of the development of the game, and the mocap too was done as needed throughout. I guarantee you the Halsin Ultimatum was recorded and acted pre-release, along with any number of unseen lines that were cut for time, or lack of development, or course corrections in directing. I'm pretty sure Emma Gregory talked in an interview about her favorite romance in game being Karlach's even though Minthara's romance was broken in game at the time. The vast majority of the post-release updates to the game have been on the coding side of things, not actor or writer contributions.

Obligatory disclaimers: No it wasn't out of character, but as implemented in game it kinda was. Having NO reaction is also out of character imo. I'd rather they release an update to her writing when it was finished than halfway like this was. I'd Vastly prefer they fix her bugs over adding new dialogue anyway. No this doesn't mean I can't be upset for a lack of content because they removed dialogue that wasn't intended to be published in the state it was in.

[incognitotoro]

Y'know, when I first started writing fanfiction, I had lofty goals, the same secret desires everyone has about my fics blowing up and becoming a big name in the fandom, even getting some sort of book deal out of it, and while I know my fics are fairly popular at this point (love to all of you who've read and enjoyed them) I've got to say, seeing everything that's going on at the moment, I absolutely do not want to blow up anymore. Some writers are getting bullied out of this space, while others are having their fics fed into AI generators because some people either can't bear to put in the work to develop their own writing style, or wait for the author to write something new. Still more are being forced to take their fics down by vultures on tiktok and elsewhere who are determined to make money from other people's work by binding it and selling it, or even just flat out stealing it, and frankly, I find all three of these despicable, and the whole damn thing is depressing as fuck.

I'm sure i'm preaching to the choir here, and I hope this doesn't come off as delusions of grandeur, but I started writing fanfiction as escapism, and with everything fucking else that's going on in the world right now, I really really don't need that shit.

So i'm going to say it here, just in case it needs to be said:

PLEASE DO NOT PUT ANY OF MY WORK INTO AI GENERATORS.

PLEASE DO NOT DO NOT DO ANYTHING WITH MY WORK WHICH ANYONE MAKES MONEY FROM. (This includes paying someone to bind my work, even if it's for personal use. If you want to bind it yourself, please just ask me here, i'm pretty good at replying and at least i'll feel like i've got a bit more control over the situation)

PLEASE DO NOT PUT MY WORK ON GOODREADS.

Obligatory disclaimer: Please don't take any of this to mean I resent any of you for reading or enjoying my work, or engaging with me or anyone else about it. Engaging with my audience is honestly my extra special favorite thing about writing, but it seems like every day i see another author taking their works down due to the issues i mentioned above, and I don't want that to happen to me or anyone else in this weird, wonderful little community.

[officially-other]

A writing post, as promised

So, it only took an existential crisis, but I'm back! Yippee!

I've been running from this belief for a while. It's something that has, for a very long time, felt true and "right" to me. (Obligatory disclaimer; I don't believe I'm objectively right about shit, I'm just some dude. I mean this is right for me.) The multiverse theory, or some vague concept of more than one universe, is well-known and I've believed for a while that some fiction taps into things we cannot explain. I, however, have specifically avoided entertaining the idea that most fiction does, because. Well. As a fanfic writer, that would get awkward. I couldn't imagine how I would navigate writing... about people I believe are real.

Things recently shifted. I hope to write more about the individual things that made it happen, but long story short; I found a hearthome. A hearthome that I feel, in my fucking bones, I've lived in. It's not just a world that makes more sense to me than this one, I've been there. This was a bit of a challenge to my beliefs, considering it's from a video game. But I find that when my first thoughts are about what a new aspect of my identity is not allowed to be, it's just what it is in disguise. I learned of my hearthome and thought two things.

"This cannot be spiritual in nature, and it cannot be related to a kintype. That's too complicated." Well, my past self, I am complicated. Buckle up.

So now, I'm working on.... How the hell do I engage in my special interests now? Writing, especially fanfic writing, and Genshin Impact (be kind, whatever anyone wants to say about the game or fandom, I already know believe me) are MAJOR special interests of mine. I think my poor mother knows more Genshin lore than some Genshin players do. Entertaining the idea that I'm so drawn to that world because part of it is home to me and I've been there, it's.... a lot. Very a lot. The fact that I feel as though there's a kintype hidden in there, somewhere, is especially nerve-wracking because I have no clue who or what that would be, or even if it's a who or a what. I'm taking shots in the dark here, if I'm honest.

Loki- for those of you who don't know, I work with the Norse deity Loki as a witch- has been THRILLED though. I could do a whole post just on how this is absolutely the most Loki flavored direction I could have ended up taking with my practice. They gave me an answer pretty damn quick, as for how to continue to engage in my interests; just work with the characters on the things I write. Connect with them and get their opinions on things. So... fanfic writing as witchcraft. Huh.

Things are getting significantly weirder around here, y'all.

[darlingdawnauryn]

The Most Important Tools in My Practice

obligatory disclaimer: You do not need any of this stuff to be able to call yourself a witch. If meditation and visualization work for you, or if they're the only things you're able to work with, your practice is no less valid than mine or anyone else's; I just find it more rewarding (and a lot less energetically taxing) to have something anchor me to the physical and keep me grounded as well.

(I do highly recommend a notebook, though. There've been a few times where I haven't written down the ingredients used in a spell and I paid for it later!)

journals. I have a book of shadows and a homemade junk journal to record my sigils and hypersigils. I also keep a record of my dream- and shadow works in my personal journal and have a commonplace book where I record quotes, theories, etc that keep me close to my practice, among other things. Aside from that, writing has always been a key component of finding the magick in the mundane, even when I didn't know to call it that. I'm a full-time writer whether I want to be or not, spending at least an hour a day scribbling down anything from magickal stuff to creative writing projects to notes on whatever book I'm reading. It helps me keep a clear(er) head, which can be beneficial to anyone, practitioner or not. (I also use different colored pens to keep everything organized!)

tiny hair elastics. Braid magick is quick and easy, and it's saved my butt a few times. For those unfamiliar, you braid your hair the way you normally do, but with every time you cross a strand over, you repeat an affirmation: "Everything comes to me easily and effortlessly," or "The only emotions I feel are my own." Since my hair isn't long enough to do one big braid, I substitute little ones and use elastics to bring color magick into the mix and really hammer the point home: yellow for joy, green for abundance or grounding, pink for self love, etc. Tying your hair off keeps the intention locked in and close to you until you're ready to release/undo it.

veils. There are many reasons a witch may choose to veil their hair. Straightening up around the house is one of my devotional acts to Hestia, so I do it then, and I also seldom leave the house without one; it keeps me from picking up outside energy that doesn't belong to me, and it's also a reminder of my devotion to my Craft -- kind of like a nun wearing a habit, if you like. And they don't have to be fancy! My most worn veil is a bandana I bought from Claire's, and the other ones I have are scarves I got from Dollar Tree.

devotional jewelry. I have a snake ring that I wear in honor of Lucifer and an obsidian choker that I only take off when I shower. I wear it both for psychic protection and vivid/symbolic dreams and charge it under the new moon whenever I feel it needs it.

herbs and candles. I use both equally for spellwork as well as ambience; I'll light a candle of a specific scent for a specific desired outcome or to shout out a deity, which I can also do with a simmer pot. I also dress candles with herbs if I want to include my own personal touch (which is more often than not). Carving them is also important to me, not only to emphasize intention, but also to put the craft in witchcraft; this simple act makes me feel like a kid again in a way that is unattached to nostalgia, which is an important part of the practice for me. (I've been using my aunt's mortar and pestle lately as well, and I'm going to get one for myself as soon as I have the means! It's great for adding a lot of my own energy and intention into a spell.)

Bonus! Tools I haven't used yet but want to: a pendulum and pendulum board (both homemade!) to acquaint myself with local spirits, and a white chord/string/shoelace/etc for quick and versatile knot magick on the go.

[2manyturbos]

🏁 Rules 🏁

Hi: You can call me Vile. They/She/He with a slight inclination toward They/Them. I’m 30+ and have been rping for well over a decade. Me nb grey ace gay cryptid that loves their villains.

This is a Side Blog: Follows are through vile-muses.

Content Disclaimer: Please use your better judgment when following. Expect heavy themes; this is NOT a coffee shop AU. Regardless that such themes will be tagged, if you can’t handle dark themes, I cannot recommend a follow. There will be morally grey if not outright immoral actions included on this blog. IC =/= OOC. This should go without saying, but I do not condone all the actions of my character. If this is a triggering subject or if you cannot divorce the writer from any potentially villainous characters they write, I cannot recommend a follow.

Obligatory Mention: I reserve the right to not RP with everyone, ect ect.

Fandom DNI’s: As a personal preference, I'd rather not see the following with high frequency on my dash: Harry Potter, FNAF (and similar “mascot horror”), South Park, Family Guy, Marvel, DC, Superheroes in general, My Little Pony, Star Wars, Homestuck, Disney Descendants, Twisted Wonderland, Once Upon A Time, Disney “Live Action” Remakes, K Pop. So I avoid blogs where it seems like I'll be seeing a lot of any of this.

Self Inserts: I don't roleplay with them. Sorry. In my experience there's always a problem with the inability to separate ic from ooc with self inserts. That and I'm just uncomfy with it in general. It isn't fun for me.

Accessibility Clause: If I can’t navigate or easily read your blog, I won’t follow. Ditto for post formatting. Accessibility is important. On the flip side: if there’s anything I can do to make my content easier to enjoy, please don’t hesitate to ask. I am a player to values accessibility over aesthetic.

Duplicate Muses: I will not allow duplicates of my own muse to meet each-other. I will allow my characters to meet other oc Turbos but NOT other versions of the original. Ties into me not wanting to focus on the multi-verse, as elaborated on further down. I will, however, interact with multiples of other characters.

Regarding Live Action Icons: If you cannot tolerate that I don’t always use them, I am not a good partner for you. I spent time and effort into developing my artistic skill and use my own art for some graphics; please be respectful of that. I have zero interest whatsoever in getting a rl face claim for Turbo.

Shipping: Highly selective. I need to trust you. I need to be familiar with your vibe, which requires months of me sharing a space with you. I do not like to ship with cis straight male muns, sorry.

Actions have consequences in my RPs. I don’t kill without consent, but don’t expect me or my character to be a doormat. If your muse antagonizes or annoys mine, expect an appropriate reaction. This goes both ways; my characters may not be terribly nice. Feel free to respond to their behavior in kind.

Assuming Relationships: I don’t do pre-established relationships (that aren’t canon) at all. I build IC relations from the ground up. If you want to plot out some -basic- history, or a sort of outline, that’s fine, but nothing too in-depth to start with. No long-lost lovers, children or family members. Please do not attempt to imply relationships I haven’t agreed to. If you have a destination in mind for their relationship (i.e. eventual family figures), I’ll slowly work up to it thread by thread, but I won’t go all in at first before I know what their chemistry is like.

I Am Slow: Please be aware I’m a working adult who may have to go on hiatus for months at a time. I can be a slow RPer and may take a week or more to respond to threads regularly. If potentially waiting a month or two for replies during my busy periods is a dealbreaker for you, I’m not the right partner. I do however do my best to give notice of hiatuses.

You Are Slow?: On the flip side, I don’t mind fellow slow RPers and I understand that life happens; in this case I will expect something in your rules, a hiatus notice, or even direct communication with me if replies will be slow. Don’t apologize for taking a month +, I’m very used to it.

Post Length: I regularly write two paragraphs (5+ sentences) or more. I don’t exactly have a firm wordcount requirement. As long as it seems like we’re putting in an equal effort, specific reply lengths aren’t a deal breaker for me. I never do one-liners; I honestly just can’t… unless it’s for crack threads lol.

My Artwork: This blog includes a fair amount my own art. Anyone is welcome to reblog my art. But please do not repost or reuse my art. Do not repost my artwork; no, not even with credit. Anyone doing so is doing so against my wishes and I will report you. Failing that, I will ask you personally to remove it. Failing that, I will go public. So please don’t steal my art.

I only rp with other adults. This is not an invitation to convince me otherwise. I will check blogs for ages; any blog without an age, I will assume is under 18 and will not interact. If I suspect you are lying about your age or are otherwise not mature enough in interactions, I’m within my rights to cut contact.

No Multi-verse Shenanigans Please: I’m not interested in multi-verse shenanigans. I don’t like plots where my characters are warped to another universe and will not respond to RPs that paint me into that corner. I’m an old rper who’s already done that to death and am bored with it. Instead, I would suggest just a mutual agreement between partners that our characters come from the same universe. Or, if you really want your character to come from a different universe, please don’t make it the focus of the rp.

Digital vs Real World: “Players” somehow entering the digital world is okay as a plot point for face to face interaction reasons. But please don’t put my characters into the real world without plotting first.

Story progression is a thing. What your characters do will be remembered thread to thread. If we have a relationship between our characters in mind, I will generally try to work to get closer to it thread-by-thread. Also, there will be changes to the character on my blog as time goes on. Development happens. I am a roleplayer to likes to keep track of continuity.

Passwords give me anxiety. Sorry, lol: I’m not going to have my anxiety invalidated either. I don’t follow people with a password requirement in respect to that. I read rules before I even follow/follow back to check if we’re compatible. If you don’t believe me, that’s gravy, but we’re not compatible.

I am assuming if you’re down here, you read my rules. I have no password requirement so *party horn*

[lazerith]

Attempting to fix The Dawn of Yangchen, Pt. 1: "Okay, but why tho?"

Spoilers for The Dawn of Yanchen, The Rise of Kyoshi, The Shadow of Kyoshi (minor)

Obligatory disclaimer: these opinions are my own and you do not need to agree with them if you do not wish to. I am just a writer who is trying to figure out why I don't like certain pieces of writing and adore others.

Compared to F. C. Yee's other installments in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, The Dawn of Yangchen is definitely one of his weaker works (I have not yet read LoY). The plot feels profoundly unexciting at times, and I've seen people complain that despite Yangchen's name being plastered on the cover, the book sidelines her in favor of Kavik.

That's not to say this is a completely incompetent book with no redeeming qualities; if you haven't noticed already in his previous works, Yee is really, really good at writing character dynamics. Kavik and Yangchen's relationship is really fun, especially at the beginning. But as the story progresses and these two spend more and more time apart due to plot reasons, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the issues with the larger story.

There are a lot of things I think could be fixed in DoY. But in this post, I'm going to talk about what I think is the biggest issue: character motivation.

Most people are probably familiar with the concept of a character's want. Different writers use different terminology, but to simplify things, in this instance, I will be referring to a character's plot goal; it is the "thing" that they're chasing after, whether it be to kill Jianzhu (Kyoshi's want in RoK) or to capture the avatar (Zuko's want in 1st season of atla).

But when presented with a character's want, audiences often have the urge to ask: "okay, but why tho?"

It's a fair question, because what the question is actually asking is: "okay, but why do we care?"

"Why do we care if Kyoshi succeeds in killing Jianzhu?" "Why do we care if Zuko captures the avatar or not?"

The reason, of course, is because there is a deeper motivation driving these wants. A motivation that we, the audience, can relate to.

Let me introduce you to the idea of a character's Ghost and Lie.

Again, terminology varies, but when I talk about a character's ghost, I'm referring to an event (or events) from the character's past that continues to haunt them in the present.

Zuko's ghost is the event that gave him the ghastly scar over his eye: the Agni Kai against his father.

Kyoshi's ghost (in RoK)……i think is the moment when Jianzhu leaves Yun to die with Father Gloworm? I'm honestly a little lost, because Yee doesn't seem to subscribe to the idea of "ghost", but it's still helpful for us to examine character motivations.

From a character's "ghost", births their "lie".

The lie is a limited perspective that a character holds because of the traumatic event that is their "ghost", which then influences their want.

Think about the relationship between "want", "ghost", and "lie" as such: Ghost -> Lie -> Want, where each creates the next.

For Zuko, his lie is some variation of: "I must regain my honor at all costs." From his lie, he deduces his want: "if I can capture the avatar, I will regain my honor."

For Kyoshi, her lie is some variation of: "Jianzhu is much stronger than me and he will harm me if he finds me." From her lie, she deduces her want: "if I kill him, I will be safe from him."

And though we might not personally empathize with Zuko's desire to regain his honor or Kyoshi's desire to murder Jianzhu, we can understand why. We root for Kyoshi and Zuko because we understand why they are doing what they do, and because they are highly motivated in chasing their want.

Now let's take a look at Yangchen's want, ghost, and lie in DoY.

Yangchen's want: to bring prosperity to the people of the Shang cities.

Yangchen's ghost: Jetsun's death at the hands of the spirits.

Before we even get to Yangchen's "lie", does anyone see a problem with this combination of "want" and "ghost"?

If you said, "they have nothing to do with each other," you're right.

Thus, this creates a situation in which we, as the audience, ask the question of "okay, but why tho" to Yangchen's want, and are unable to get a satisfactory answer.

You can see this play out in the book itself. When Yangchen is in Jonduri, she gets a message from the Saowan clan and immediately jets off to help them deal with their spirit problem. And you, as the reader, is left asking, "okay, but why tho?" Why are we taking this detour?

Sure, she's the avatar and she's the bridge between humans and spirits, but this has nothing to do with her main goal, which is to basically "eat the rich". The detour feels inorganic, manufactured, and it almost makes you question whether the whole thing was just a ploy from Chaisee to distract Yangchen.

Or it's the other way around. While we follow Yangchen around the Shang cities, trying to enact change, we are left to ponder the question of "okay, but why tho?". Why does she care about any of these people, beyond the fact that it's her duty as the avatar to serve them?

But believe it or not, there's an "easy" fix that more or less keeps the events of the novel somewhat the same.

The "lie" is the critical piece that is missing in Yangchen's story. Right now, she's got a clear ghost and a clear want, but no lie that connects the two:

Ghost -> ??? -> Want

I see two different lies that could work here.

Lie 1: Spirits are evil and I must protect people from them as best I can.

Rather than having the Shangs hire head-kickers to maintain control over the cities, maybe have it be rumored that they have some great and powerful spirit on their side.

It kind of seems like Yee was building up to this lie a little bit, considering how the effects of Unanimity are first seen by the people of Jonduri as spirit disturbances, and it is also the official cover that Yangchen adopts at the end of the novel to hide Unanimity from world leaders.

Now it makes sense that Yangchen cares about the people of the Shang cities, not just because she's the Avatar and serves the people, but also because she has a personal interest in defeating the "spirits". With this setup, the detour to the fire nation to aid the Saowan clan makes sense as well.

Lie 2: Jetsun's death was my fault, and I must honor her memory as best I can.

This lie would also work, but is in my opinion much weaker than Lie 1.

Honoring Jetsun's memory would mean that Yangchen would commit wholeheartedly to aiding others in need, pacifism, and other air-nation values. It would give her a reason to get involved in the Shang cities in the first place.

This lie would also somewhat explain why Yangchen jets off to the Saowan clan; they are in distress, and she has dedicated her life to protecting people, believing it the only way to honor Jetsun's memory.

Of course, these lies need not last the entirety of Yangchen's story; after all, for every lie, there is a truth.

Again, terminology varies and there are nuances, but when simplified, the truth is something a character learns by the end of the story, as a result of everything that has happened.

The Truth to Lie 1: People are the real culprits to blame for the world's suffering

DoY kind of suggests this truth during the Saowan outing, when it's revealed that the humans encroached on spiritual territory and violated the deal that Yangchen brokered.

You could very well contrast the honesty that the Phoenix-eels present to Yangchen (however harsh) with Kavik's betrayal (however sweet in the moment).

And though unanimity is not the result of some spiritual disturbance, we still see how it is due to human greed that it becomes a weapon.

Now, does this truth correspond with depictions of Yangchen later in her life? Not really. Especially at the end of SoK, where she admits to siding with the humans over and over again the spirits, and how that was a mistake. But adherence to cannon is a problem for another time.

The Truth to Lie 2: I must carve my own path in the world, believing that Jetsun will be proud of me either way.

The problem with pairing this truth with the current story is that Yangchen is already an unconventional Avatar. Kavik notes this throughout the story: Yangchen uses disguises, hires errand-runners, engages in espionage, and lies to high-ranking officials.

But there is also an "easy" fix (because nothing in writing is ever easy, everything takes set up), which is to take Yangchen back; back before she adopted these tactics, and have her arrive in Bing-er as naive and trusting as they come.

Meeting Kavik introduces her to this world of shady tactics, and while Yangchen might not be as confident as she is throughout DoY, the idea of Kavik teaching the Avatar to spy on people and wear disguises could be really fun, me thinks.

I'm not going to get into Kavik's want, ghost, and lie here because I don't want to make this post longer than it already is, but hopefully, this has given you some food for thought.

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

dw rewatch - takes on "the end of the world"

companion watch:

"the artic desert" hits different lol

something something bella vs the witch

rose's fear attack when she finds heres lf in the alien situation. she's genuinely terrified! it's a good beat, man. more than that, it's a rare beat. I get a lot of people don't vibe with it and prefer the more "buffy-esque approach, since it's "more to the point" and gets you larger than life figures… but personally I much prefer it when scifi/fantasy scenarios are portrayed as the terrifying reality they would be. also this: "ROSE: I just hitched a ride with a man. I don't even know who he is. He's a complete stranger"

war of the world vibes with the little robot fellas. /unintentional parallel to how cassandra dies and how the aliens in that book die?

"it gets inside and changes my mind, and you didnt even ask" "i didnt think about it like that" it's interesting that rose question this tbh

"five billion years in the future, my mum's dead" "bundle of laughs you are" /god i love this exchange. nine's constant attempt to downplay ANY surfacing of Real Emotions. rose's naivety in contemplating for the first time in her life that oh yeah, people die. the first statement of the "everything dies, everything ends" theme that will be woven throughout all the rtd era.

ngl i wish rose Did More in the plot of this episode, in terms of actually solving the crisis, feels like a stepdown after Rose giving her the most climatic moment... that said she does get a lot of great quibs in this one: "you two go pollinate and i'll go meet the family"/ "and i want you home by midnight!"/ "its better to die than to live like you, a bitchy trampoline" / "youre just lipstick and skin"

she's really similar to nine/ten in that aspect. they both have that "humor as defense mechanism" thing

blorbos:

the way nine and rose Lean in those stairs…. im Looking respectfully and im Thinking pure thoughts. (honestly ppl talk a lot about ten and rose's body language in s2 but there was A Lot going on with nine and rose as early as episode 1)

"all that counts is here and now" can't tell if zen mindfulness or a desperate defense mechanism to cope with ptsd.

first thing rose does is call her mum ): - Cassandra "I'm too young" vs Ten's "I was going to do so much more"...(ben wyatt voice) it's about the hypocrisy (oh having written this note before rewatching new earth... put a pin on that!)

timeless child retroactive continuity bonus: perhaps cassandra as "the last human" (not really a "human") paralleling "the last timelord" (not really a "timelord)? - "JABE: And what about your ancestry, Doctor? Perhaps you could tell a story or two. Perhaps a man only enjoys trouble when there's nothing else left". well post-s13 they're gonna enjoy themselves a lot more lol - there's something very anti-entropy about how the child gets to regenerate indefinitely without "losing" its essence and its dna integrity (vs cassandra's "flatness", the child gains more and more complexity as time passes).

colonialism/hegemony: - NINE: "mind you, when I say "the great and the good" what I mean is the rich." / "Five billion years and it still comes down to money" / this maybe be harsh,,, honestly i hate to say but doctor who sometimes really is just typical neolib """anti-capitalist""" fiction. - in the sense that it pretends to be anti-capitalist, but really is just capitalist realist. it's writers can imagine 203223 scenarios of the earth dying but they cannot conceive of a post-capitalist world, a classless society or simply a world without taxes. Of course you could say "this is so these stories are relatable" but even in their relatedness, there's rarely a portrayal of the anti-capitalist struggle (rather than just generic star wars-style, ideology-less "rebellions).- (that said, obligatory "I'm not a politics robot" disclaimer... "Do you think it's cheap, looking like this? Flatness costs a fortune." is an iconic retort lol) - there's also a kind of subtle Myth Of The Linear Progress Of History thing going on with cassandra being framed as someone who "stayed behind" and has not embraced this analogue to our "Color Blind Post Racial Society" which has "Obviously" outgrown prejudice and notions of racial purity. - "good thing i didn't take you to the deep south" / "you were to busy making cheap shots about the deep south" // parallels to-> "who do you think makes your clothes?" "Is that why you travel 'round with a human at your side? It's not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it's so you can take cheap shots?" "sorry" . actually no rtd i dont think these are chepashots at all lol they are VERY relevant shots!! it's very transparent how the writers are kind of meek about making these *truly* transgressive points, but it's much easier to have the doctor argue that rose having a donor card is "a different morality"... again one is truly transgressive, the other is fun-but-no-challenging-of-the-hegemony scifi "dilemma". - the "quick word with Michael Jackson" line is doing A Lot but idek how to even begin to entangle it lol it's very 00s, for sure. - for once, a self aware one: "People have died, Cassandra. You murdered them." / "It depends on your definition of people, and that's enough of a technicality to keep your lawyers dizzy for centuries"

themes: - everything has its time and everything ends check your bingo cards. racial purity vs mixing vs 'progress'. class. life cycles. gut instinct (rose jumping the gun to empatise w/ the doc + nine going through the fans + rose reaction to the alien parade). destruction as tourism, as "artistic event" (an uncomfortable parallel to how this is what our heroes will be doing for the next 10+ seasons). - this episode does a bit of a u-turn on the previous (And the next) on its constant questioning of the intrinsic "meaning" of a physical body. in this, cassandra's continuous operations are framed as a kind of "lost of an essence". also the "surface" of her thinking as metaphor for her missing the "essence" of what it means to be human (biologically but more fundamentally, ethically).

Live Fast Die Young / YOLO / everyone deserves to be mourned. everyone deserves a dignified death. thread carefully and cherish life, because it will all be gone. our time is limited and short and it is because it is short that it means something. Life only means anything because there's Death.

ecology and environmentalism. "there are many species in that planet. mankind is only one / I'm a direct descendant of the tropical rainforest." obsessed with it. wish they brought back the rainforest.

[rebelpeas]

YOU!! You are the person I need to ask! What counts as cosmic horror? I've been asking and nobody has given a decent answer. I just need a few examples because I want to write some cosmic horror. (Sorry if this comes off as pushy, I can't tell if it is or isn't, cause I'm autistic.)

OH BOY! what a big and delightful question, thank you so much anon for the opportunity to go on this ramble.

obligatory disclaimer, i am a hobbyist writer, i haven’t studied literature in like seven years except for personal research, this is just my personal views, opinions, and experience. people will disagree. people will always be arguing about how to define genres.

first of all, to know what counts as the genre and find examples, we’ve got to figure out how we’re defining cosmic horror. we can come at it from a genre origin perspective, a physical scale, or the vibes.

to look at the origin of the genre, from wikipedia:

“Lovecraftian horror, sometimes used interchangeably with "cosmic horror", is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock.”

so, yknow. lovecraftian. incomprehensible, fear of not just the unknown but the impossible to understand. probably also aliens? aliens are a consistent (but not required) theme of cosmic horror.

alternatively, i’ve heard folks define it in terms of scale - if the thing you’re afraid of is bigger than you can comprehend, it’s cosmic. (and if it’s older than you can comprehend, it’s eldritch horror, but that’s another deep dive topic for another time.)

personally, i bring a “it’s about the vibes” kind of approach to horror writing that defining literary genres don’t really like. to me, cosmic horror is about vastness and smallness and loneliness and awe. i also enjoy the literal cosmos being present, which is why my cosmic horror tends to be astronomy-themed. (it’s about god, also? but my religious cosmic horror ramble is ANOTHER realm that we do not need to get into.)

still confused? that’s okay. horror subgenres tend to bleed into one another frequently, because when you boil it all down, it’s fear and understanding. the unknowability of space, or extraterrestrial life, or loneliness itself, something so big we can’t grapple with it any other way than to write fiction to try to comprehend what we don’t understand - that’s horror. that’s cosmic horrorc specifically, even if it’s hard to put into more concrete terms.

but like, that could be the whole point. incomprehensibility and all that. maybe the real cosmic horror was the subgenres we made along the way.

[queerofthedagger]

i’ve never understood filtering by hits on ao3. most of my fav fics have less than 5k hits

yeah I mean, hits is just generally THE worst metric on ao3 you could use in my opinion, like. numbers in general aren't a sure-fire way to find fics that you'll like - there are fics on the top-kudos-front page of every fandom that are just not doing it for me at all, and I've read fics with like, 30 kudos that rewired my entire brain chemistry (affectionate).

It's just, hits?? HITS??? like. I want to believe that the reason people use this is maybe a fundamental misunderstanding of how ao3 counts hits (namely: every time someone loads a fic is counted, even if you're logged in, UNLESS no other IP has accessed the work in between. (Almost) every time you reload a tab, (almost) every time you open it on another device, (almost) every time you open it from your tbr just not to read it after all, (almost) every time you read the first paragraph and remember this one wasn't for you.... This also means multi-chaptered fics, for example, will automatically always score higher, fics with shorter but more chapters will score higher, multi-chapters that have been posted chapter by chapter instead of all at once will score a lot higher, etc etc etc). Like, I mean, yes sure a lot of high-kudos or high-bookmark fics do also have high hits but... Just. Use those??

(also also as a side-note that no one asked for, the multi-chapter distortion is one of the reasons why I personally like that you can leave kudos only once, but that's a whole other can of worms)

Again, numbers generally are not a fool-proof way to find fics you'll like, but in my experience kudos and/or bookmark-sorting has at least somewhat of a reliability, whereas hits is just entirely arbitrary tbqh

(obligatory disclaimer: find fics however you like, I'm ultimately not that invested but like, ao3 offers you SO many ways and you're kind of using the least useful one which makes my adhd-brain (the kind that loves organization and filtering systems) cry a little, so yk don't come at me in my own house and all that)

also though last but not least nonnie, "some of my fave fics have less than 5k hits" is... having me crying in the club lmfao. 79 out of my 115 fics have less than 5k hits and while I'm really not the most popular writer I'd say that I get a fairly good response which like. bless your heart, really just goes to show HOW skewed people's perspectives on hits are 💀😂❤️

[ranseur]

Hiya! Thanks for responding to my poll about Dead Dove Do Not Eat tags! I have a follow up question for you, because your angle is one I knew was common, but I haven’t seen laid out in the responses to my poll (except for you!!! Thank you!!!). Are you aware of the origins of the phrase? (From an episode of Arrested Development.) Again, thanks so much for replying, and in such detail!! I really appreciate your contribution to Science. (Aka, my dumbass curiosity.)

Hellooo @aurorasulphur! Thanks very much for facilitating this very scholarly and scientific survey. Also thanks for reading my response. I'm glad my take isn't so uncommon! I'm sorry in advance for subjecting you to read another wall of text where I explain my silly thoughts. (Obligatory Disclaimer: These are only my personal preferences that I'll try to put in words. Anyone may feel free to disagree. I primarily want to explain why I think it's important to have a tag that means 'dark fic in general'.)

Yes, I'm aware of the origins! (Arrested Development is such a funny show.) I debated mentioning in my tags that I knew it, but they were already so long;;; And I had thoughts related to it.

From what I understand, the punchline in the original gag was 'this is exactly what the label (on the tin) says; what did you expect.’ Which is the popular definition from the poll, and again maybe I’m picky about the wording but it’s not the definition I prefer. We already use a tag to emphasize the provided tags ('READ THE TAGS') and a tag to strongly advise viewer discretion ('Don't Like Don't Read). Personally, I broadly define Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (DD:DNE) as 'Dark/Horror Fic- that may or may not criticize itself or be specified', because I’ve only seen DD:DNE used on AO3 to tag dark fic. So in effect, the tag itself is the ‘label on the tin’. Also I think- regardless of what the tag is- readers forfeit their right to complain when tropes that they dislike are properly tagged but they choose to read the fic anyway. I think it's a readers responsibility to check tags. And if writers forget to tag some warnings, DD:DNE could be a useful catch-all, fail-safe tag to have for dark fic in general. (An aside, I also think the symbolism of a dead dove is apt for dark themes, and DD:DNE intuitively reads as a warning, like, 'Don't Dead: Open Inside' from TWD.)

I’ll be the first to point out that my 'dark fic' definition has a flaw, right, because the fics that people tag as DD:DNE will vary depending on where they personally draw the line on what is dark or problematic. I think defining the moral lines of ‘what is problematic’ is a bigger discussion that can’t be fixed by defining one tag; but I still think the vagueness of DD:DNE can be a feature, not a bug. In order to be as clear as possible, many writers tag additional warnings. And even though DD:DNE is almost always accompanied by tags affiliated with dark fic, I think DD:DNE by itself can indicate dark tone more universally than other content warning tags. I think DD:DNE establishes the genre of the story rather than emphasizing the accuracy of tags, on the grounds that sometimes problematic or ‘content warning’ tags can be accurate and true without being dead doves.

For example, a common problematic tag like 'kidnapping'. This tag might mean the fic is a saucy bodice ripper, in which the kidnappee is never really harmed or in danger because they're supposed to melt the heart of the villain. Even though the scenario is an indulgent romantic fantasy, it's still kidnapping, so the tag is accurate. But if a fic is tagged 'kidnapping, DD:DNE’ then, to me, that has an entirely different implication; it means the holodeck safey protocols are turned off (ie, within the fictional story- the setting is no longer a romanticized fantasy; the kidnapper will be cruel, the kidnappee will be in pain, etc.) In this example, tagging ‘DD:DNE’ doesn't emphasize the latter story to be 'more kidnap-y' than the former, but rather it sets the tone; it's going to be a dark story while the former is raunchy romance. Also, if tagged, people who want to read the former fic can safely filter out DD:DNE without filtering out ‘kidnapping’.

Another example- some media properties, like horror films/games, are already loaded with problematic or dark tropes that are canon and expected in the fan content (eg, zombie media with body horror and gore and cannibalism). Readers might be accustomed to seeing canon-typical dark/horror tropes in that fandom. And if some tags, that are usually affiliated with dark fics, fail to express how the tone of a dark setting will be even more dark, then DD:DNE might be used to say ‘this is on another level’.

All said- the definition of DD:DNE that I prefer is useful as an umbrella term to warn readers of dark content. I'm sure there are a dozen ways to tag my above examples differently and still achieve the same results; I just think one tag is easy to filter. Also, the tag really doesn't have to be DD:DNE anyway; theoretically in an alternate timeline where Arrested Development never made the 'dead dove' gag, people still would have found a way to tag dark fic warnings. I think writers who don't know the DD:DNE tag, or choose not to use it, have flagged their fics with tags like 'Bad Ending' or 'Not Safe Not Sane' or just 'Dark'.

So, in my humble opinion, the DD:DNE definition based on the original context of the Arrested Development gag ('i tagged X: believe it!') is technically correct, but misses the point for me. My focus is on the context of AO3 tags and gaps in writer/reader communication. I prefer DD:DNE used as a broad term for genre of very dark or horror centered fic, because I believe reliable tags help us to curate our online experiences. By having clear expectations, we can keep our online sandboxes safer for everyone.