#this post seems like satire but i don’t even know anymore

[isalisewrites]

A Deep Dive into JKR's Terrible, Amateur Writing - Reflective Interlude

Hello and welcome to my ballsy series where I will prove to you, dear reader, that J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and resident Twitter TERF, is actually a very, very poor writer.

And when I say ‘poor writer,’ I’m talking about her prose, her sentence structure, and her scenes in the Harry Potter series. I am not going to discuss anything about the HP world nor the overall plot of the books. 

This is all about the nitty gritty in the craft of writing itself.

Part One Link.

Part Two Link.

However…

Hiya! *waves* I’m Isa, the author of this… Actually, I dunno what to call this series anymore. Anyway, thus far, you’ve heard a very satirical tone from me in the previous two posts, but that’s not my normal tone. I’m a rather laid back kind of gal with a side of sarcasm and deluge of emoji usage.

I have used quite a confident, even bombastically obnoxious tone in the effort to be entertaining and engaging with these posts. It was meant to be playful and sarcastic. It’s the internet, so I’m aware everyone’s attention is… kind of like a commodity, unfortunately. Look at TikTok or YouTube. How long does a 30s video hold your attention before you’re scrolling to the next? It depends for me, I’ll admit. People don’t have the attention span for long style posts such as these and that’s fair. Sometimes, I don’t either.

Thus, I used repeated ‘catch phases’ to maintain a rhythm and a thematic style through the series with a controversial title meant to hook a reader. I repeat the opening, even in this post. I repeat ‘Class is in session’ to show the beginning of the major section of the post.

However, in this interlude, I’ve toned it all down because I wanted to give you a window into my heart, my purpose, and my intent in this series. It is a reflective post that ends with writing motivation to you, my dear reader, as well as links to writerly resources. 

I’ve had a lot to think about this week and I realized that many writers (and other creatives) have to battle against an enemy found within themselves. This enemy often torments many with cruel, destructive thoughts; they burrow their way into so many writers’ minds. It whispers: “Can you really do this? Are you really sure you’re any good? Aren’t you just fooling yourself? They’re going to find out you’re just a fraud. So… why bother?”

Whose voice is that?

Let’s talk about the destroyer of creation, Imposter Syndrome, why I refuse to let the bastard infect me anymore, and why my confident tone in previous posts has grated nerves.

Remember: take what resonates and leave what doesn’t.

(This means I write my posts with the honest acceptance and expectation that not everything will fit with your style, your vibes, or your personality. That’s okay.)

All right, let’s buckle up, my dear writing friends. Grab a snack. Hydrate. Let’s begin. And yes…

Class is in session on this little Tumblr post… should you wish to attend.

Having confidence or pride in one’s work seems to be taboo. Any brief moment in time where I tried to be proud about my writing or say, Hey, I’m a good writer, I was always told to be humble. “Don’t be prideful. Be humble.” It would often chip away at my self esteem. I could be a good writer, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel like a good writer.

But no more.

I have only given myself permission to be confident about my writing within the past month. This is why I started this series in the first place. I wanted to share knowledge and in an entertaining way. I make a bold claim that I’m a better writer than JKR; I analyze her writing to both improve my own understanding and to help others as well.

However, this does not mean I’ve ever been under the delusion I’m perfect. Absolutely not. God, that’s so fucking laughable! I am not perfect. I am not a perfect writer. I definitely don’t know everything. Someone once corrected me, informing me that snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Bless them, wasn’t aware of that. Immediately fixed that. One of the recent reblogs said geodes do not contain emeralds. God bless, I didn’t know that, though in the case of how it was used in TBG, I won’t be changing it since it’s within a character thought.

Sorry, Tom. I guess you need to take a geology class, too.

Ugh, and I have so many godforsaken typos. My soul withers when I catch a typo after I’ve posted a chapter. I miss things all the time. I repeat things because ‘that’s my thing’ and I don’t always catch them in my edits. I forget things all the time. Thank GOD for Dede, someone who loved TBG so much she spent countless hours archiving data from it, where she caught a number of inconsistencies and alerted me to them. I still haven’t been able to fix them yet, but I’m so grateful to her. I’ve noted them all down. Harry’s height often is incorrectly implied to be taller than it should be because my brain isn’t wired for imagery. My brain forgets TBG Harry is a short king at 5’4” while TBG Tom is 6’2” and I need to go back to fix all of those. 

I am not a perfect writer and I don’t claim to be.

My goals with this series are to study/learn for myself, teach/share knowledge with others, and learn some more from this experience. I love this kind of analysis. But there’s difference between my analysis of JKR’s writing and a number of those who have retaliated with an analysis of my writing. 

Instead of looking at my imperfections with the desire to learn from them, they were illuminated in the attempt to ‘take me down a notch.’ To those who put in the effort to make counterpoints, I do thank you for your contribution to this series. It is appreciated, even when given impolitely and with the intent to ‘put me in my place.’

Despite all of my errors and imperfections, I still stand by my statement: I am a better writer than J.K. Rowling.

Do you know who else is a better writer than her? I could list thousands of them. They’re fanfiction writers. They’re indie authors. They’re other traditional published authors. They are so many other writers that, yes, I do think are stronger writers than JKR. 

And you’re a better writer, too, so long as you wish it.

I sincerely want you to believe that.

Why? Because it’s clear within the Harry Potter series that JKR did not make attempts to grow as a writer. She just wrote. Perhaps she was under deadlines, but the lack of editing is pretty apparent to me. When you write a lot, you will inevitably get more skilled over time, but you have to actively be seeking improvement to see drastic change in your own skill. It is this lack of drive that I see within her work. She’s not making attempts to push the boundaries of her abilities and skills with each new book.

I’m not at the end of my journey of learning. I never will be. I love expanding my skills. I’m even learning during the process of writing these posts, too. I’m seeing more weaknesses in my own work and I’m now thinking on ways to strengthen my writing even further.

That’s the point of this series.

In the end, it’s not really about me. No, really, it’s not about me. I truly think it’s about the jealousy of seeing another writer be confident in their work. You see, I’m not supposed to be confident; I’m not supposed to act like I can help and teach others to write. How dare I. Posting anything about my work is an act of attention seeking. I’m supposed to be ‘humble.’ I’m supposed to be silent. I’m supposed to wave a shy, dismissive hand at compliments.

Why?

Why is being proud of one’s work and loving one’s own work such a controversial idea?

Imposter Syndrome often cripples creators. There’s already so much self doubt and anxiety in the world, but Imposter Syndrome can really wreck with a creator’s mind. It’s a poison. It stops you from creating what you love most. When you believe you aren’t good enough, then it becomes harder to try. Your belief becomes truth to you, whether or not it was true in reality in the first place. Perhaps, you sink into depression. You become anxious about sharing anything, for fear anyone might say even the slightest negative comment. The heart becomes fragile and brittle, and the muscle which builds skill atrophies over time. You see your work through a lens of self hate. You can only see flaws.

“I will never be good enough.”

When you’re in this state of mind, it’s hard to see the truth about your work.

But let me promise you something: your writing is far more beautiful than you realize.

In spirit, all creative writing is perfect to me with all of its typos and mistakes (yes, even all of the Harry Potter books!), but no single work is objectively perfect. There will always be room to improve your creation because you’re constantly growing. It’s why so many aspiring novelists fall into an endless cycle of editing their first few chapters. The more they write, the more they improve; thus, when they go back to their earlier chapters, they get stuck trying to update those chapters instead of pushing forward to the finish line.

Your work is valuable, no matter what. It’s beautiful. You’re allowed to love your work. You’re allowed to see the good in it and you’re allowed to have confidence in yourself. You’re allowed to say to yourself and to others, I’m a damn good writer.

You deserve to have love, for yourself and for your art.

I have often sincerely complimented other writers and, many times, after they respond with their thanks, it becomes clear to me they’re not confident in their work, yet they have still bravely shared it with us.

I’m so proud of them. Thank you for your bravery.

My heart breaks for them, too. They’re such good writers—such damn good writers. And I wish they knew and believed this.

I will always do everything in my power to encourage others.

How do you feel about your writing? Do you like your writing? You should. You really should because it is good. You created it, after all. There will always be space to grow and refine your craft, of course, but you are a good writer now. You’re going to be a better writer tomorrow and the next day, so long as you desire this growth in yourself. There’s no destination, though. There’s no magic level you have to reach before you’re allowed to have some confidence in yourself and your abilities. The only trap to avoid is remaining stagnant. Writing is a skill. Writing is a craft. This means it gets better through study and practice.

You can achieve that.

I know it’s hard, though. There are so many naysayers in life. There are so many people waiting to attack and bring others down, both on the internet and in our own families. How many precious fanfics have been lost because a writer received horrible, hateful comments? How many writers have disappeared from the internet because of this cruelty? We have lost many in all fandoms. That is unacceptable to me.

Uplift others. Spread love, not hate.

You’re allowed to be proud about your work, imperfect as it may be. Please, I beg you, don’t let the negative voices of others—including your own!—drag you down and steal the joy of creating. I know it’s so very, very hard to stand strong against such voices. Words have power, but you have more. Resist the naysayers.

What you have to offer the world is precious. Please lift your head and acknowledge that what you create is good. It’s great. It’s amazing. It’s fucking fantastic. You’re not an imposter nor a fraud. No one can offer what you can to the world. No one can write the stories you have in your head the way you can. Your style is unique to you. You’re allowed to love it as it is now and you’re allowed to love it whatever form it takes in the future.

Imposter Syndrome is a thief; toss it into jail and throw away the key.

My writing is not perfect and it never will be, but I’m a better writer today than I was ten years ago. I’m a seeker of my own growth. I’m often reading books on writing and watching YouTube videos on writing. I absorb it all because writing is my truest love and passion. My style has evolved from reading endless amount of novels and fanfics. I devour both. 

But I wasted a decade thinking I didn’t have what it takes.

And life is short. I can’t waste anymore time.

Don’t be like past Isa, please.

There’s a difference in refinement between an episodic fanfic posted over the course of years and a traditional novel published in whole, but I still stand by my work. I recognize my style will not be enjoyed by all those who read it. It’s okay if you don’t like my style. I’m eternally grateful for the many readers who do love my writing. I’m humbled and honored by the sheer volume of people who have commented, bookmarked, and have left kudos on my work. Thank you.

My style has evolved into what it is today due to a combination of two things.

I have ADHD. It’s why my style uses smaller paragraphs as a whole.

I have aphantasia. I lack a mind that can visualize pictures. I literally cannot see anything in my mind. When people say, “I can picture it in my mind,” that’s not me. I cannot at all. When there’s a lack of description in prose, it feels blank and empty to me. This is why I use vivid descriptions in the way I do because otherwise I feel nothing from my work.

It’s okay if this style doesn’t work for you. I love my style because it caters to what I need. I also love other styles that don’t use as much description; however, I can’t always follow what’s happening because of the wiring of my brain. I can get lost sometimes, but I still appreciate their style because I can’t effectively do what they can.

If you find no value in my style and what I offer in this series here, then that’s okay. I’m not offended. This series is for those who benefit from it. For you, there are so many other writers out there from whom you can learn and I’m more than happy to send you in the direction that benefits you the most.

Here’s a list of YouTubers you might find interesting.

ShaelinWrites has been working on many unpublished projects through the years and has lots of great discussion videos on writing.

Abbie Emmons is a self published author with solid writing advice in all of her videos. 

Alexa Donne is a traditionally published author with great insider information into the traditional publishing world. 

Ellen Brock is a professional editor. She knows her stuff.

I hesitantly suggest Jenna Moreci and her content on YouTube because I think she has some major weaknesses in her writing. Many others have seen this about her books. However, she is a successful indie author and her YouTube content has a lot of value.

Brandon Sanderson has an entire college course in a playlist on his channel. It’s a fabulous free resource if you vibe with his style of writing. Highly recommend. 

Here’s a list of writing books I recommend.

Elements of Fiction Writing, a five book series. My TOP recommendation is Elements of Fiction Writing - Beginnings, Middles & Ends.

Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose

Let the Crazy Child Write!: Finding Your Creative Writing Voice

Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes

All right then.

Thank you for sticking around. I hope you accept this post in the good faith it was given and was always given in the previous posts. Next post, I’ll be returning to my playful satirical tone. Hehe~!

Please do the world the greatest of favors and write. Create. Share your fanfiction. Become best selling authors, traditional or indie. I promise you’re far more capable and skilled than you realize.

Until next time.

Isa

[callmecoal]

sometimes i think that maybe

just maybe

tumblr can be decent

and then i see shit like this

[hiccanna-tidbits]

HICCANNA MONTH WEEK 3, DAY 3 - STEAMPUNK AU

BEHOLD! I finally came up with a plot for the steampunk AU that’s been floating around in my head for a cool minute now!!! I always wanted to do something with this AU (because HELLO, Hiccup invents??? And the setting is just cool af???) but I could never figure out anything that seemed like a fresh or interesting take on it, and I could never figure out what I wanted Anna to do in a steampunk AU XD

THEN it suddenly came to me, and I was like “OMG??? Hospitality work???” Like it would be PERFECT for someone with her kinda friendly personality, especially in a world of flying hotels--big variety of tasks, lots of interesting people (even if many are snobs), good views, etc. Also my friend Dave and I were talking about a baker!Anna AU a while back...which somehow worked its way in here, of all places XD

Partly inspired by this post, since dragons of any sort (mechanical or not) would very definitely cause air traffic problems in any world with lots of aircrafts XD Also me??? Turning a ship month post into a scathing satire of hypercapitalistic societies??? More likely than you think!!!

As always, moodboard pic credits available upon request!

***

Anna, a young worker on an airship resort, hasn't quite found her life's direction yet. As is, she tries to do everything, jumping back and forth between copiloting, helping to decorate fancy cakes in the kitchens, cleaning rich peoples' cabins, and occasionally keeping the peace with her trusty zap gun--only as needed, of course. It's a good job, and it gets her up in the sky admiring some stellar views of the city, but she can't help but feel like she wants more.

Then she hears concerned whispers in the pilots' cabin, rumors of some young, up-and-coming inventor who's wreaking all kinds of air traffic havoc with his hand-crafted, enormous mechanical dragons, supposedly built entirely out of rusty gears and trashed parts. Although Anna knows great metal dragons interfering with the air hotel's pre-determined flight path is bad for business, she can't bring herself to feel the same disdain for the mysterious young man that her boss and coworkers do. The metal dragons can't even breathe fire, really, and they don't go around eating people with their huge metal maws, so that's something. As far as Anna can tell, the worst they do is get in the way.

And get in the way they do. One fateful day, the airship captain doesn't alter his flight path fast enough. The dragon in front of them, a rickety, ancient thing leaking steam from every crevice, moves out of their way about as quickly as an zeppelin whose back propellers are barely bothering. In the moments right before the explosion, Anna makes reluctant peace with the fact that the legacy she is leaving behind will be that of a stressed-out, directionless hotel worker.

She wakes up somewhere sunny. At first, she wonders if she's made it to an idyllic afterlife--somewhere with grass and meadows and butterflies and other things that just aren't very accessible anymore. That is, until she sees a wide glass dome above her head, and feels a cot underneath her.

When she sits up, she realizes she's on a platform above a vast, tiled room filled with all sorts of contraptions, dials, machines, clockwork gears, and glowing coils. As well as the workshop seems to be functioning, it doesn't look particularly polished or upkept. Weeds and tree sprouts seem to be poking up out of every crack, like whatever crew who would usually pull unwanted plants decided to take a permanent vacation.

Not that Anna minds. It's nice to see some green, after the sleek, polished whites, silvers, and creamy browns of the resort.

And then in walks a frazzled young man, fussing over some tiny doohickey with the gears out of place. He puts it down and lifts his goggles, and she gets a good look at the man who must've saved her--shrimpy, disheveled brown hair, green eyes, lots of freckles. A DIY clockwork leg in place of a real one, the original limb probably lost in some kind of factory accident. He introduces himself has Hiccup Haddock--a rather anticlimactic name for someone who's been stirring up so much trouble in the city, Anna thinks. He tells her the rest of the hotel staff and patrons are fine--the inventor arrived on a much faster dragon just in time to evacuate them all. (“Poor Old Gray--he was on his last leg. Figured it wouldn't be too long before he went up in smoke--er, steam, I guess.”) Most of the guests were out for the day, hitting tourist traps all over town, so luckily the amount of people on the airship wasn't enormous.

Anna wonders if Hiccup carried her out of the blast, and wonders why the thought is making her blush.

Hiccup, it turns out, runs an automaton rehabilitation of sorts. He makes broken machines run again, sometimes having to cobble together dozens of spare parts and practically start from scratch. The dragons were a side passion project of sorts, made out of everything that wouldn't fit anywhere else. Well...a side passion project that apparently got very out of hand. Anna wonders if he has some sort of dragon-cloner, or if these mechanical dragons are somehow able to reproduce.

He says his family was in the weapon business, but Hiccup never had much interest in fancy guns and laser shooters (Anna thanks her lucky stars that at least one of them is comfortable using a zap gun) and was more interested in society's rejects. Everything mocked, bullied, and dismissed, just as he had once been on the schoolyard and at his soulless first job designing blasters for his father. The blueprints never worked quite right--probably, Anna figured, because his heart didn't seem to be in it.

Eventually, he says, he did make a blaster design that worked. It would've been the proudest moment of his life--had he not seen his very blaster being used to mow down rows upon rows of rebelling servant automatons at a citywide protest. After that, he decided he'd rather use his knack for tech and designs to fix things rather than destroy them.

Over the next few days, the hotel patrons and staff leave Hiccup's workshop one by one. Back to their vacations, off to the resort headquarters to get stationed at a new airship hotel. (All grudgingly agree not to snitch about Hiccup's many unlicensed dragons, considering he did save their lives.) Not Anna, though.

It turns out Hiccup could use someone to fly his dragons around the city, collecting thrown-out metals and wires and defunct automatons. Just as good of views as she could get from any airship, Anna figures. Besides, he has a complicated-looking device that can somehow make much better coffee than Anna ever got in the resort staff's breakroom. It turns out a zap gun-slinger well-versed in both cake-decorating and the tourist elite, and with no less than 3/4 of an airship pilot's license, might be exactly what Hiccup needs.

And so their adventure begins, living up to Hiccup's reputation as the biggest nuisance in town and saving every downtrodden automaton they can get their hands on. But this new path for Anna is not without its dangers; Skyway Cloudside Resorts is searching for someone to sue for the massive property damage of one of their best locations exploding--and without anyone even inside to collect life insurance on! The fines Corporate has to pay for the lost hotel are no laughing matter, and the rumors that one of their ex-workers is now on the side of the geek responsible only makes them crankier.

It's a perilous cat-and-mouse game, but Hiccup and Anna are not a team to be trifled with. In the end, they can always outwit even the most cunning of Skyway's sleazy attorneys.

They find that together, they can do anything.

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Just saw this interview, which I remember watching years ago because it came up in my YouTube feed and I loved Last Week Tonight, and was interested in a story about its inner workings. It came up in my YouTube feed again today, and I watched it again, and I’m glad I did. I’ve seen a few interviews with John Oliver over the years, and this one covers the same ground that the rest of them cover, but also a fair bit of ground that other interviews I’ve seen haven’t covered.

One way in which it covers familiar ground is that it involves the fun and frequently played game of: “Interviewer uses much of their allotted time just trying to get John Oliver to take a fucking compliment, their efforts are met with pushback that ranges from dismissive derision to outright aggression.” That man is actively offended by even the insinuation that he has ever done anything good or useful in his entire life. He’s trapped in a perennial loop with interviewers of “A lot of people love how you keep them entertained and informed” versus “Fuck off, I do no such thing, and anyone who thinks I do that is an idiot” (that’s a light paraphrasing of an amalgamation of his common answers). 

As much as his self-depreciation can be a little over the top sometimes, I do respect John Oliver’s insistence that his name and his team’s work not be used to further dilute the definition of journalism. It seems a little pointless to me, since that definition has been diluted so far beyond him that the way people talk about LWT doesn’t even matter anymore. A lot of stuff that’s way less rigorous than what he does gets called “journalism” all the time, and what he does is much closer to journalism that lots of sources from which people get their news these days. But I respect John’s commitment to the principle. To the fact that once upon a time, “journalism” meant adhering to certain standards of research and accountability and objectivity and transparency and ethics and general integrity, and a comedy show by definition cannot meet those standards. Proper journalism has to be boring.

But people don’t like being bored, and they take journalism for granted, and someone invented Twitter, and now people can call anything “news” and seem just as reliable as an actual news source that’s accountable to journalistic standards, and I genuinely believe that that is one of the biggest factors in many of the biggest problems facing the world right now. It’s an important institution that holds power to account, and when we don’t protect that, every single facet of society gets worse.

...And that is why Anchorman 2 is a surprisingly good satire in addition to being almost as funny as the first one, even though it should have been just a shitty cash grab like all other sequels to great Blockbuster comedies. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I’m not trying to judge individual people who don’t constantly follow the news, because individual people shouldn’t have to do that all the time. Both I and the world would probably be just fine if I spent less time listening to CBC podcasts, and I might feel slightly less depressed. But I’m just saying, the world would probably be better if more people spent some time following real news. And in some ways, it can even be less depressing! Getting real facts from boring proper journalists can be easier on the mental health than scrolling through social media or looking at sensationalized sources. Seriously, for any Canadians who want to be informed and don’t know where to start, the CBC is far from perfect but is at least accountable to checks on its accuracy, rather than being primarily accountable to advertisers and other interests. Vassy Kapelos and Rosemary Barton are kind of holding the country together, and that’s a place to start.

Okay, I didn’t actually mean for this post to go that far down the road of pontificating about journalism. I actually meant to say that every interview with John Oliver ends up covering “Are you a journalist?” “No I’m fucking not and saying I am is both an insult to the institution of journalism and to journalists themselves” conversation, and I find it interesting that this one lasted long enough to go quite far beyond that.

They get into stuff about how LWT episodes get made, how they went from going one week at a time to making a bunch of stories in advance, how the team works together. It’s interesting background. How the show evolved from something closer to the established Daily Show style into what it is now, with the in-depth segments getting longer and longer, and the traditional interviews getting fewer and father between. How interesting it is that it was his vision of what a show like this could be, and a big risk for HBO to let him do it when it was not a tested format. How it was also a risk for all the writers and researchers who signed on to it, and how much pressure there is on John to be the one-person face of that whole team and do their work justice. I found it particularly interesting when he said Donald Trump started eating into the time they used to dedicate to stories from around the world. I have noticed LWT becoming a lot more American-centric since its first few seasons, and I think that’s not a great thing but it is an understandable thing (American show focuses on America, fair enough), and liked hearing John acknowledge that this has happened and explain it a bit.

And of course there were discussions about how the political environment affects a political comedy show. Some stuff about having a bit of an outsider’s perspective from being an immigrant while doing the work of a closely connected insider who learns the inner workings of America and then tells the rest of us about them.

Near they end, they covered a topic that I’ve heard a lot of comedians discuss, which is how utterly bullshit it is when people say Donald Trump is a comedian’s dream. I’ve been re-watching bits of The Thick of It in the last couple of days, and that has me thinking about how Armando Iannucci has said a show like that wouldn’t work in the Trump era, because there is no room for subtlety. There’s nothing to satirize.

I guess that’s almost related to what I said before, about how now we have Twitter instead of journalism. It feels like the Trump era created a lot of Twitter instead of political comedy. It’s very easy to make cheap, Twitter-sized jokes about Donald Trump, but it’s hard to do anything that goes deeper.

I realize that this whole post may make me sound about 100 years old; maybe I’m wrong and we’ll find that newer ways of doing things are better. Anyway, here’s a quote from the end of the video that I found really interesting and well articulated.

Ali Velshi: Some people think as much as the world would be a better place under a different administration, it may hurt TV, or it may hurt cable, or it may hurt comedy. You don’t share that view?

John Oliver: It will not hurt comedy. You mean Trump not being president anymore? It will not hurt comedy. At all. Quite the reverse. It will make comedy much, much better.

Ali Velshi: Because?

John Oliver: It’s not good for comedy, this guy. Partly because, the really reductive way to say it is that it’s kind of self-satirizing. But it’s much more complicated than that, because when you’re trying to tell a joke about something, normally you’re trying to take something that means something, and then find something trivial to say. Often what he’s saying is, it’s not just that it doesn’t mean anything, it’s that there is something really meaningful inside the nothing that he’s saying. But you have to kind of inject protein into it to then show how it’s a problem. And that is just not a kind of, like, intellectual gastronomy that everyone should be engaging in. It’s too complicated. Or, you get really lazy comedy. And I think bad politicians for years have produced bad comedy.

It reminds me of the way people rarely read a whole article from something like Reductress or The Onion, because the headline is the joke (I’m not knocking them, I find both those websites hilarious, I don’t think they pretend that the humour is in more than the headlines, and that’s fine). Or how if people ask the audience for suggestions at an improv show, if the audience throws out a setting or scenario that’s profane in itself, the sketch won’t be as funny because the joke has already been made and there’s nowhere to go from there. When Trump already is the joke, you can either point out that obvious joke if you want lazy comedy, or if you want good comedy, you have to try to find something more to it, and that is not easy. I think. That is what I think as someone who is not a comedian and doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But I find it interesting.

[barbasbodaciousbeard]

Accidental Feminist Icon

Between my own headcanon Barba becomes a very niche viral celebrity for being a mix of feminist icon giving one liners on the news and handsome/well dressed and the DJ Khaled post, this happened. 

“Counsellor, are you listening?” Olivia asked as Rafael Barba looked at his phone again. It had been months now since he started trying Manhattan SVU’s cases, and she hadn’t seen him this distracted before. 

“I just- why do I have rapid fire Twitter notifications? Over one hundred and fifty?”

“You have Twitter?” He rolled his eyes, not proud of the admission. But he liked to follow politics and music and satire. His colleagues would have discourse on legal proceedings and theory. But when he opened his notifications, the sea of professional headshots making up the icons in his notifications window were replaced by cartoon avatars and selfies. Handles like @Bradley_GreedADA were replaced with @feministkilljxy. 

What was happening?

Why were there GIFs of him now?

“Rafael?” He was snapped back to attention by Olivia’s hand passing over his phone screen, and he shook his head, holding the screen out to her. “What am I looking at?”

“Why have a couple hundred- are these all teenagers?”

“Are they following you? Or tagging you?”

“Both?” He scrolled through the mentions.

“Both.” A questioning look.

“Have I gone viral?” he asked herr, eyes wide and his tone disgusted. Twitter was where he posted law books, nice dinners out, homemade dinners in, and the nicer scotch he drank. Sometimes even pictures of himself; some of his friends enjoyed fashion as well, and their twitters all had a heavy thread of their suspenders and ties. Suddenly, he was having photos he’d posted to flaunt his ability to mix patterns retweeted in appreciation of something more than the color scheme.

“I think you have. What have you said now?”

“The girl whose tweet I keep getting tagged in mentioned Jocelyn Paley and the Adam Caine case.”

“That was seven months ago.”

“I’m very aware. I have to get to the office. I’ll get you that warrant.”

He continued to scroll as he walked, alarmed by the number of followers he was gaining and going to open a direct message from a friend to see a wall of messages from names he didn’t know. Once he was able to find Bradley’s message, he saw it was series of tweets with videos and GIFs of him on the courthouse steps. They were all from the same case, he assumed the Adam Caine case. He clicked the video of he and Rita Calhoun.

All I can say, today's Grand Jury indictment is the first step towards achieving justice for Jocelyn Paley. 

The DA's office is desperately trying to distract from their recent scandal with a high-profile case. 

Don't give me that--whether you're a john in the South Bronx or a $3-million-a-year talk show host, no means no. 

 He could remember the exchange now, and it had apparently been retweeted thousands of times. Cameras always made him determined to distract, determined to drive home a point. And now, he was seeing some group of teenagers had clung on to his words, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about becoming recognized enough by that demographic to warrant this rapidly increasing follower count. 

“Carmen, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Mr. Barba. Need coffee?”

“No,” he said plainly, shaking his head and showing her his feed. “Is this normal?”

“They found you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Haven’t you seen the posts?”

“I don’t branch out on Twitter often.”

“I see it mostly, like, on Instagram with captions and people post clips of you on vine.”

“What’s vine?”

“A six second video app. Teenagers and young women post you. Vine is normally comedy. But people are obsessed with you. Niche, but sizable number. I think it’s mostly New York girls who see you on the news. But that means the vines went viral a couple months ago.”

“So now they’re all following me on Twitter?”

“You’re viral for being attractive, dressing well, and prosecuting rapists. Embrace it.”

“I can’t post my clothes anymore.”

“Just continue like usual. Don’t respond to DMs.”

He spent a few weeks terrified of this new following, but after three days, things calmed down. The number of followers he gained was weird and confusing to him, and he decided to listen to Carmen ultimately, keeping the profile the same and pretending nothing had happened. She did stop him one day, showing him that there had been people making fake accounts, yet another thing that was insane to him. She primarily told him because these accounts were attempting to take advantage of the fact young girls were the ones following him. He awkwardly slid the handles to Olivia, and Carmen filled out an application for Twitter verification that left him mortified. Even worse, it was approved. 

He was swept away in a case soon enough. Lindsay was assaulted by a whole fraternity at Hudson. They uncovered a previous victim in a hospital, a fraternity known for being a rape factory, and a dean helping create a culture that buried these attacks. It was becoming higher profile than he expected, and it wasn’t easy to try. He’d had to shut off his notifications on his phone during these cases. When Lindsay committed suicide, he accompanied Rollins when she went to arrest the dean. What he didn’t expect was for two of the women they saw to approach him, asking if they were here about Lindsay and thanking them when he said he couldn’t mention it. Then they asked for a selfie. Rafael was mortified but obliged. 

“We recognize you from Twitter.”

Well, now he knew he needn’t accompany the squad out anymore.

When he got tweets from the kind of scum that supported the fraternity, it took a concerted effort not to respond. That could jeopardized the case. He’d already had to tell the two girls they couldn’t post about him being there. He tweeted a disclaimer for if people saw him out, feeling like an asshole. Twitter was now becoming a liability, but he could balance it and refused to give up the feed. Slowly, the GIFs and stills of him on the news were collected, and he only got embarrassed again when mami’s students had discovered him and realized he was the guy in their principal’s pictures. Now Mami had a Twitter, and she followed people who praised him joyfully, though he’d managed to convince her not to interact in private messages or respond to people insulting him. 

The Jenna Miller case caused another leap in his follower count, and he had developed a little sense of pride instead of embarrassment when his followers jumped from people who mattered in New York to people who mattered elsewhere. A congresswoman from Ohio. Artists. Activists. He’d texted Olivia when Lady Gaga followed him. Plus that woman from True Blood. God, she was beautiful. Plus the hot boybander that had probably made him realize he was bisexual. It was weird, and he was unwilling to publicly acknowledge any of it. Unless they were on twitter, he certainly didn’t tell anyone he knew other than Olivia. Soon enough, someone had made a t-shirt on Etsy of the moment he’d turned on his heel. The media had called after Jenna, the olympian, and he’d told them no questions. Then the had the gall to bring up her sex work. He’d stopped on the steps, turning on his heel and announcing “Except for that one. Paid or not paid, no means no. Consent can be revoked at any time.” And now, Etsy users were profiting on it. This group was niche, but it ran deep. Luckily, he noticed the shop only had a few dozen sales.

Everything was fine until Rafael Barba lost his ability to maintain his composure. Up until now, he’d monitored his name, mentions, and a few hashtags people used with him. It was usually just the GIFs and stills and soundbites. He participated in some banter after the first couple of years, boundaries firm enough he felt he could. But he still didn’t bicker. Carmen said he got a following for being a good guy, and he thought it was gross openly condemning rape seemed to be all it took to be a good guy. But then through his lurking, Rafael Barba saw a tweet about DJ Khaled. He’d had to google who the hell that was, unsure who all of Twitter was piling onto, but he found the tweet objectionable enough to respond.

“Mr. Barba,” Carmen said, eyes sparkling with amusement as she came in to see her boss still scrolling through his phone. “You really decided this is the time to get involved on Twitter? You only ever respond to what people say to your stuff or your friends.”

He should’ve known she’d be on top of it. He’d given her access when notifications went through the roof the second time, and Carmen helped filter through DMs he didn’t want to see. But now, that meant her phone was vibrating like his in response to his first tweet in response to a stranger or someone who wasn’t in a thread under his own post.

“What? I’m supposed to endorse consent but not enjoyment?”

“You’re going to end up in a Buzzfeed article, sir.”

“If this is my legacy, so be it.”

“Your legacy? Taking it seriously now?”

“This is serious.”

Carmen’s phone buzzed in her hand, and she knew he’d sent another tweet. Her own account got notifications so she could monitor him. She sighed heavily, unlocking the phone and looking at it. 

“Mr. Barba, does your mom know you’re bi?”

“No, why?”

“She follows you, idiot.”

“Shit. Well, I suppose it’s time.”

“If you tweet Smash Mouth, I’m quitting. These kids are already thirst tweeting you. They must have tweet notifications on for you.”

“Who’s Smash Mouth?”

“How the hell are you culturally relevant?”

“According to Liv, I’m a feminist icon.”

“Don’t get arrogant sir. I help run this twitter.”

“I’ll change the password. I do all the posting.”

“I won’t tell you if Evan Rachel Wood slides in your DMs.”

“Why would I care?”

“I know why you watched True Blood.”

“Touche.” He paused. “Do you think she will?”

“Give me the phone. I’ll bring it when Liv calls.”

“Why would she call?”

“She made a Twitter, sir. Followed you last week.”

“Shit,” he said, eyes wide. “I posted pictures of my food. She saw me acting like a Twitter guy.”

“You are a Twitter guy.”

He rolled his eyes, ending with a retweet of his new favorite addition to the conversation. 

@mia-liz @chasingeverybreakingwave @thegirlwiththemaleficient-tattoo​ @teachingpanda​

[sunnysviolin]

Hi Liam! Hope you're doing well! This may seem off topic, but what do you think of the Kel-Hate blog on tumblr?

Huh well either you’re in Kenya’s server or you just have the uncanny ability to guess something that I’ve been talking about recently.

From what I garner the whole thing is trolling or just good ol satire, so I wouldn’t say they’re truly a hate blog, but personally I don’t see the appeal. I never really got the whole “hate something as a joke” thing probably because I’m a pretty literal person. What you see is what you get with me, if I say I don’t like something I don’t like it, and I try to be careful with my hatred. Now that’s just cup of tea stuff

The thing that I personally don’t agree with is adding tags or comments onto peoples posts that are negative or derogatory, even as a joke. Unless you know that creator and you know that they would find it funny, it’s not cool. It can demotivate young artists and writers or make them feel bad, and even if that wasn’t the intention, it is the result. I don’t have an attachment to what people think of my work anymore, but a lot of people do.

All that to say, different strokes for different folks. I’m sure a lot of people crack a smile or laugh at how silly it is to hate a character like Kel who is basically a golden retriever personified. I just don’t really like it myself. I wouldn’t stop the person who runs that blog from looking at my stuff, and I know they have. So if you see this dude, no hard feelings I promise! We just have different styles.

[mariaiscrafting]

Thoughts on Wilbur Soot? I want a full-blown essay at least 10k words/j. All jokes aside, this is an amazing blog, I come to it every day to see if you've posted something new :]. Keep going forward OP, you're truly amazing.

That is so sweet 😢 (/gen)

I was really  gonna write, “I dunno, I just think he’s a nice dude,” but then you asked for 10k words, so now Imma actually rant. Wilbur’s probably one of the first people who got me back into Minecraft, around 2019, and he was the first person I felt comfortable enough watching the Dream SMP vods from, back in November. 

First of all, the guy’s fricking gorgeous, like, ???? I never see any simping for him on my dash, and I’m just like ??? I’m not very good at simping over people’s appearances myself, so all I will say is that he’s fricking beautiful, jfc.

Second of all, I’m a music nerd, okay, and I really fucking like his singing. Back then, I listened to his music covers so much that I learned the lyrics from songs I’d never even heard of before I started watching Wilbur, by heart. Lol it helps quite a bit that a good chunk of my musical taste is made up of Life is Strange-esque, shitty indie songs that fit right into the covers he made back when he first started streaming. I’ve listened to YCGMA so many times that I have that same familiarity I have with songs I’ve listened to for literal years, knowing exactly what song comes next and when each measure ends and when the breaths are taken, etc., etc. He doesn’t have much finnesse when it comes to the technical qualities of his singing abilities, but he’s a damn good musician. His lyrical composition, chord progressions, little guitar riffs, emotion - ahhh, I just love Wilbur Soot’s music so much. I’m certain I’ll be listening to YCGMA in the middle of the night, when I need a good cry, for years to come lol. 

Third of all, I really, really appreciate his openness about his mental health just, so much. He talks about his anxiety and getting depressed so candidly, he so easily lets his audience know about what kinda mental state he was in during uni and as a teenager and while he wrote YCGMA, and it makes me feel so normal. As dumb and cliched as it is to need a public figure to validate my own lived experiences, I do, and for someone like Wilbur Soot to succeed and be so talented, encouraging, empathetic, and socially active, despite losing motivation and energy at times, gives me a little bit of hope for myself.

Fourth of all, I mean, the guy’s fucking hilarious, are we forgetting this? People always talk about his talents music-wise and writing-wise, or how nice he seems to be, but they always gloss over his genuine comedic ability, and I ??? It takes so much to keep my attention these days, and Wilbur Soot’s videos are still some of the only ones that can manage that feat. He has undeniable chemistry with practically any CC he meets, his editing style is just *chef’s kiss*, and his laugh somehow makes even the most mundane of jokes seem fucking hilarious, it’s just such a delight to watch or listen to him do bits, man.

I left the best for last, lol. The main reason I fricking love Wilbur Soot is his political consciousness and the fact that his political beliefs align pretty well with my own. I’ve dealt with cishet, mostly white guys, both on and off the Internet, for so many damn years, and it’s exhausting. I am so tired of deconstructing myself and suppressing myself for the sake of social interaction, community-building, preventing ostracization, and being able to consume content without feeling enraged or hopeless. It is an exhausting endeavor to want to like and love all the gamers I’ve watched since middle school, and having to just push down and numb the parts of me that want to flinch at offhanded jokes and comments and exclusion from online spaces. Wilbur Soot is a whole other breed of CC. Lol uhhh, I guess he’s what most of the people in the social media circles I used to frequent would call, “a feminist cuck” and “self-hating white guy.” Which all really just means that he goes just beyond human decency. Don’t get me wrong, I do not by any means let white, cishet guys dictate my self-worth anymore, or even let them educate me; that’s what all the wonderful female and POC and queer CCs that I’ve discovered over the years are for. But there’s still something deeply satisfying about listening to this person who fits all the demographic checkboxes of the kinda person who used to make me feel so Other and Wrong, instead rant about how teenage girls can’t express their interests without being denigrated for them out of deeply-entrenched misogyny, or about how society needs to stop villanizing poor people and realize that government aid and social services do a great service for community betterment and are not just used by people supposedly leeching off the taxpayer’s dime. That’s not even to mention the fucking beautiful satire of the E-Girl Trilogy. I always wanted to rant about this, but I don’t know how exactly to put it into the proper words... Basically, as someone who has spent years and years retconning, observing, and caught in the midst of incels, conservatives, and just extremely depressed cishet men of all races, I am deeply familiar with all the resentment, anxiety, misogyny, homophobia, gender essentialism, and self-hatred that goes into creating the average 20-something man’s view on women, society, romance, friendships, and sex. The E-Girl Trilogy is fucking brilliant because it so accurately captures this cocktail of emotions and ideologies, creating a fucking perfect caricature of the average man who looks and is just like Wilbur Soot. The persona is so well-crafted that most listeners who aren’t familiar with Wilbur as a person, or his political views, actually believe these songs are genuine and empathize with the narrators, can you imagine? And the fact that, in the process, Wilbur himself realizes that all of it is a fucking joke, that the narrator’s views on his love interest are weird and creepy and not at all normal or correct, is what makes it genuine satire. He embodies something so perfectly, only to mock it in the process of showing off how much he can embody it... I love satire, but I fucking suck at writing or accurately embodying it, so I’ve always been so fucking jealous of and beyond impressed by the E-Girl Trilogy’s use of satire. 

Lol this isn’t 10k words, but it was much longer than I fucking thought it’d be. Basically, I really like Wilbur Soot, and writing all of this made me realize just how much I missed watching his VODs and streams...

[jyndor]

You know, the conversation about sea shanties is just another chapter in what seems like the endless story of people of color, in particular black and indigenous people, telling us to learn the history of the things we like and white people hearing that it means we have to lock those things away forever and burn our books and stamp on our records. As if that isn’t what white people have done to black and indigenous stories, to black and indigenous cultures, to black and indigenous arts, wealth, etc for centuries. As if that is what the people of color who are educating us on the things we like are actually advocating for. News flash: part of the history of oppressors is fearing the tables turning, when that is never been the goal of civil rights and social justice movements. Ever.

So fun fact: I grew up loving good ol’ classic rock n’ roll. My first concert was the Allman Brothers Band, which is one of the most interesting rock bands of all time imo. I really love a good southern twangy jam, the way the guitars sing, the bluesy sunny vibe. Ramblin’ Man? Jessica? Simple Man? Carry On Wayward Son? Hotel California? Perfect fucking driving music if you ask me.

If you know anything about southern rock, you know the iconography - the Confederate Flag is everywhere, in the crowds, for many bands it’s in the album covers and the photoshoots, etc. You know what you get when you wade in the Southern rock water*.

The lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama have been parsed and interpreted in all kinds of ways -

In Birmingham they love the governor (boo-boo-boo) Now we all did what we could do Now Watergate does not bother me Does your conscience bother you?

And yeah, you could read this as ironic or satirical. In fact, that’s what guitarist and co-writer Gary Rossington says according to NPR -

"A lot of people believed in segregation and all that. We didn't. We put the 'boo, boo, boo' there saying, 'We don't like Wallace,' " Rossington said. But he also added that there were "a lot of different interpretations. I'm sure if you asked the other guys who are not with us anymore and are up in rock and roll heaven, they have their story of how it came about."

And yeah, maybe they didn’t like George Wallace or Nixon. Sure. Whatever. I could buy it, actually. Because this song actually is indicative of how many privileged people feel when they perceive being called out, even if the criticism isn’t about them. Call it wjhat you want - white fragility, white liberal sensitivity, etc. This song was written in response to Neil Young’s Southern Man, which goes:

Southern man, better keep your head Don't forget what your good book said Southern change gonna come at last Now your crosses are burning fast

Southern man I saw cotton and I saw black Tall white mansions and little shacks Southern man, when will you pay them back? I heard screamin' and bullwhips cracking How long? How long? How?

Yeah, writer Ronnie Van Zant was so bothered by Neil Young talking about l*nchings, abject sl*very and reparations in Southern Man, a song that isn’t even about them or Alabama in particular, that he wrote Sweet Home Alabama.

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her Well I heard ol' Neil put her down Well I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow

Sweet home Alabama Where the skies are so blue Sweet home Alabama Lord I'm comin' home to you 

So ironically, even though Neil Young was just talking to racists in the US South, someone who ostensibly didn’t agree with segregation took that song as a personal attack because he liked “southern culture” and his home state of Alabama, despite its flaws.

But Young never says that the South is irredeemable. He just says white southerners need to come to terms with their history (and yes make reparations). In fact, according to NPR he has some issues with his lyrics. “I didn't like my words when I wrote them. They are accusatory and condescending.” I don’t agree. It needs to be said.

So Van Zant and the Skynyrd guys heard a criticism of white Southern racism and at BEST thought, “well that’s an unfair portrayal of me, a southern white man.” Van Zant can’t answer this question for himself since he died in a plane crash with two other band members and their manager in 1977.

In my opinion, knowing how white people can be when confronted with the reality of racism, this feels a lot like every other time a well-meaning white person (myself included) has said, “but not all white people.”

Not all Southern whites supported segregation at the time, but most did - and all white people benefit from the legacy of sl*very. I might not be a descendant of people who enslaved others, my ancestors might have come here as refugees, but after they fled Ireland for New York, they threw black people under the bus for whiteness.

Rock is a genre that owes everything to Black musicians - to blues and spirituals and gospel and yes, Black work songs. Black history is in the DNA of rock music. That I grew up thinking it was white music is mortifying to be honest.

But I don’t really like Sweet Home Alabama and I never have. It’s kind of just meh to me. Not a big loss.

And that takes me to the Allman Brothers Band. As far as I am aware, ABB (through many, many iterations - this is another band plagued by tragedy) has never been cool with racism. According to Vulture:

The Allmans respected not just black art but black players; as kids, Gregg and Duane got lessons from an older black guitarist their mother once refused to allow into her home, and later, they caught hell having Jaimoe and bassist Lamar Williams in their ranks in their adopted home state of Georgia. “If a musician could play, we didn’t look at his skin color,” Gregg wrote in his 2012 memoir My Cross to Bear.

“Nobody around here had seen guys who looked like them,” soul food legend and friend of the band Mama Louise Hudson said in Alan Paul’s 2014 oral history One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. “A lot of the white folk around here did not approve of them long-haired boys, or of them always having a black guy with them.” Southern rock occupied a peculiar axis of Mason-Dixon pride and reverence to blues and soul veterans who were hampered and harangued by the politics of the South. Gregg always pushed back. He didn’t placate audiences’ blind patriotism and racism the way Charlie Daniels and Hank Williams Jr. have. Last year, he spoke out against North Carolina’s transphobic “bathroom bill,” and when asked about the confederate flag in 2015, he told Radio.com, “If people are gonna look at that flag and think of it as representing slavery, then I say burn every one of them.”

And that is great.

But.

Whipping Post. Written by white ally Gregg Allman, bluesy and wild and passionate on a level that is hard to imagine, this is... one of the greatest songs I have ever heard. And it also makes me wonder if it’s maybe belittling a part of slavery.

My friends tell me, that I've been such a fool But I had to stand by and take it baby, all for lovin' you I drown myself in sorrow as I look at what you've done But nothing seemed to change, the bad times stayed the same, And I can't run Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel Like I been tied to the whippin' post Tied to the whippin' post, tied to the whippin' post Good Lord, I feel like I'm dyin'.

Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve researched it, I’ve used google. There isn’t a lot the internet has to say about this song that isn’t “this song fucking slaps man!!!” Maybe part of it is the larger context - Allman was staunchly against racism and was taught by a Black guitarist and played with Black musicians and loved Black music. A white man comparing an emotionally abusive relationship with being whipped might feel different without that context.

(Whipping posts being used for people besides enslaved Black people does not mean Allman wasn’t referencing what Black American slaves experienced, so don’t even go there. I know. The Romans also had slaves. It’s different.)

But if some people of color on the internet critique this song someday, the appropriate response is not to act as if “hey here is where this comes from, please be mindful about historical context and get educated” means “never listen to that devil song again,” folks.

It’s about learning our histories so we can do better in the future. Not canceling entire genres of music. Some things are best left in the past but mostly it’s just about understanding what the things we love mean. And these things are more than their aesthetics.

*I also really, really love African American work songs. Always have.

[angeloncewas]

dont wanna make this ask long bc i am tired and dont have the energy to be a well spoken (?) person rn but it probably will be long anyways, so sorry!! but like. as somebody who has hyperfixated on both idubbbz and schlatt (along with a plethora of other problematic content creators, i really know how to fuckn pick em!!) they absolutely foster a dogshit community, at least outside of platforms like tumblr, where like. you cant really avoid fandom culture like you can on twitter or ig, if that makes sense. on here, if you wanna post about your favorite youtuber, whether you tag it or not, other fans will likely see and if you say some bad shit, you will likely get called on it, whereas on ig basically only your followers will see it even if you use a hashtag and on twitter its like if you arent in a subtwt/fandom then you basically dont interact with any subtwt at all unless its an accident, ya know?

so like. i think what im trying to say here is that while ive met a lot of fans of both these creators, especially schlatt, who are great people as far as i can tell, i am also specifically on the fandom side of things and as soon as i step out of that space i realize that a lot of people who watch them are not actually minorities like me and my mutuals who can catch on to satire or who watch their more behind the scenes stuff where you can see them act like a decent person or even call out people for the things they usually joke about which just. fucking sucks. it sucks that, as much as i do believe schlatt is actually a good person (and sort of idubbbz, although i dont really watch him much anymore for a plethora of reasons, mostly related to the fact that i cant stand his jokes anymore even if he is playing a character as he's said before), he also keeps doing terrible fucking things and im really glad his actual friends have been calling him on it recently, especially after that jackbox video (which is a whole other thing on its own bc it literally seemed like nobody wanted to be there basically the entire video?? like as somebody who watched all the jackbox videos before that one, it was really fucking off in that call and the jokes were next level fucking upsetting), but sometimes it's just kinda like. exhausting. bc his community is already fucking bad now, you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that, which would be stupid to do at this point in his career. not really sure where i was going with this tbh, but i thought i would chime in on this discussion as a viewer of mainly schlatt, but also a past idubbbz viewer who is basically a seasoned fucking vet at dealing with shitty fanbases because of him and many other dumb youtube white boys

(also, note on that anisa thing: ian's main fanbase was definitely pissed just bc she does sex work and a lot of them are too fucking young or just too fucking dense i guess to clock the fact that he's putting on an act bc, like i said before, they either dont watch his behind the scenes content, or they do and they kinda just miss those moments between still trying to entertain where he gets genuine. that being said, a lot of people outside of his fanbase were also pissy bc anisa is a less than spectacular lady if you really do your research on her, kind of a bad person but it's not something a lot of people know about, especially since one of the few videos made on it was by fucking creepshow art)

sorry for the rant again, i feel like i do this every other week now and i apologize, you just seem to have the best discourse and i enjoy partaking <3 hope you have a good rest of your day/night/whatever time you're reading this!

—🦷

Thank you for the input (don't mind the rant !) and I hope you have a good rest of your day too <3 For post length, I'll answer under the cut :)

Yeah, I get what you mean (I think ahdsufsd). Fandom as a concept is pretty... I don't even know how to describe it, but it's the kind of thing that I feel like white male Redditors would think of as pussy shit, y'know? Like the Ricegum gang isn't a fucking "fandom" they're a... well, a fandom, but they're not gonna admit to that. So when you step outside of a community like Tumblr (the queerest place on the internet TM) you come into contact with the faces of the fandom you're dealing with and oftentimes they're a lot less like you than you might've thought from the similar interest. It's like going to a Weezer concert and realizing you're surrounded by incels (this is a JOKE).

Satire's a rough topic because some people don't think it should exist at all. Like any words that can be directly interpreted as bigoted or problematic should not be uttered. I disagree with that, I think it's one of the most interesting forms of both social commentary and comedy, but I do see the problem. There are people who watched Filthy Frank (to take an example from that other anon) and didn't know or care what the point of his actions were (I don't know what they were tbh - I never watched him, but it sounds like he's a pretty decent dude) and instead read his jokes as-is. There are thousands upon thousands of people who aren't gonna get satire and that's a problem because if they're already bigoted they're gonna see people like Schlatt and iDubbz and whoever else as truly validating.

(Largely unrelated but yo, is iDubbz still going? Are the views alright? Is the adsense popping? Has he just kept going with Content Cops? I haven't heard about him since the girlfriend thing dropped.)

"you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that"

I think this is what's pertinent when it comes to discussing Schlatt. After the Jackbox video (for me at least, he might've been there before) he put himself at a crossroads. If he'd apologized, said "sorry, I took it too far, that was a mistake" - yeah, plenty of people wouldn't have forgiven him and plenty of bigoted fans of his would've said that the apology was just to placate the snowflakes on Twitter, but to the sort of in-between people it would've shown that he's able to recognize and reconcile his mistakes. He could've transitioned into content that's A) actually good (when I say that the video was bad I don't just mean in terms of racism, I mean it straight up was not entertaining) and B) less "edgy" for the sake of. I wouldn't expect him to go uwu squeaky clean, but he's already reeled in the bad people, so if he really wanted to foster a good, progressive audience, he has to do something significant to show that.

But he didn't.

Maybe for the sake of his career, maybe because he likes those bigoted fans, maybe because he just doesn't get it - I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know. I spoke earlier about doing what is right over what is easy and in the case of Schlatt it just feels like he really did take the easy way out. Whoever he is in his personal life doesn't change how he's perceived online and the kinds of people that are idolizing him for it.

(And yeah I saw the video on Anisa when I Googled her to check if they were still dating, but then I saw who it was made by and I was like oh well whatever avhfdfkj)

[intruality-overlord]

Why Are We (Best) Friends?

Warnings: Excessive swearing, alcoholism, mentions of drugs, drug use, suggestive humor, implied sexual content (no smut), some gore descriptions. Generally, Remus stuff.

Taglist: @blogging-time @veraisnotfine @littlestr @jessibbb @ibroken-butterflyi @hi-its-tutty @idkanameatall

(For these first couple chapters I have tagged people I thought might be interested in reading this. Please let me know if you want to be added or removed from the tag list!)

The next chapters I will be posting every week on Thursday/Wednesday because this is a prewritten fic (look at me being responsible—)

Chapter Two: Fuck This

The Present.

“That fucker drives me fucking insane!” Patton’s shouting bounced off the walls. “Virgil keeps getting fucking mad at me and I don’t even know what I’m doing fucking wrong at this point, but he won’t fucking tell me what the fuck it is either!” He ranted. Remus nodded along, sat across from him. His legs were crossed with his pointy elbows resting on top, and his spine bent awkwardly so he could settle his head in his palm. Thoroughly entertained, Remus hummed every now and then in agreement like a sham therapist.

“And Roman! He... he... You know why he’s a bitch,” Patton lamented. A cackle shattered Remus’s short-lived, feigned seriousness.

“The last time we saw you was fucking Christmas,” Patton mocked. “Maybe because you didn’t fucking invite me, idiot. Of course Logan wouldn’t, though, all high and mighty smartass. And my puppet idea was a fucking good idea goddamnit. Bullshit. Bullshit!— ugh,” Patton sighed out his remaining traces of frustration. He crossed his arms over his chest and sunk into the green bean bag. Some of the styrofoam beads spilled out a small tear on the poor, battered, ever shrinking bean bag.

Grinning wildly, Remus said, “While that was a marvellous performance, I must say it could do with a little more variety in your profanity.” Patton gave an amused, breathy snort.

“Why are we friends, Remus? You’re such a bad influence on me,” Patton said teasingly. Remus rolled his eyes as Patton plucked another Pepsi can (which contents had most definitely not been poured down the drain and refilled with a concoction of cocktails) from his mini fridge. Remus let Patton hide his alcohol stockpile in his room since his dear friend was so paranoid of the other sides discovering it. “Encouraging me to curse, letting me have access to vodka…”

“Oh, shut up. You’ve become an alcoholic all on your own,” Remus said dismissively.

“...True,” Patton conceded. “You were always more the type for cookie mix,” Patton added as an afterthought. Remus doubled over into a laughing fit. Cookie mix most certainly had nothing to do with cocaine. He couldn’t help but laugh at the smug knowing look Patton sent him as him floundered.

“You— you can’t— I’ve been clean for a few months now!” Remus said defiantly, sinking further into his beanbag with his arms crossed. (Quickly, Remus double checked, pulling his hair over his eyes only to find clear brown, no white in sight. Phew.) Patton hummed sceptically. “But you did have shrooms recently,” he teased.

Remus huffed. “No I haven’t— …Wait—” Remus paused, “Have I?”

“I don’t know,” Patton smiled, “Have you?” Remus let his eyes wander the room. “I can’t remember…”

Patton rolled his eyes fondly.

“You know as long as you’re not over doing it, and you’re being as safe as possible, it’s fine with me. I don’t have any right to judge,” Patton said reassuringly. Yes, Patton knew it was inherently wrong to not at least try and steer his friend onto a less self-destructive path. Remus, to him, was like a hairless Chinese Crested puppy. Very weirdly adorable in the nasty kind of way. (That sounds bad, but he truly means it in the best way possible. What he lacked in hair as a metaphorical dog, he made up for in personality and a good heart muddle somewhere in there). Which meant he struggled to ever say no to him.

Patton also knew that the last thing he wanted to be was a hypocrite. Maybe once he got himself on the right track, then he’d intervene more.

“Seriously, how did we ever become friends?” Patton said genuinely. “I still thought babies were delivered by stalks when we first became friends.”

“I dunno… we just did,” was all Remus could come up with. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. When he couldn’t quite get comfy, he resorted to sitting upside down on the couch instead. Much better.

Silence settled over the two for a minute. Patton stared into space, deep in thought. Taking sips of his drink, he felt the alcohol lethargically burning down his throat. Remus resorted to picking at his nails again in the stillness, wondering if it’s possible to have a tattoo underneath your nails.

“I don’t regret it,” Patton said thoughtfully. Remus cocked his head to the side, neck cracking when his body slipped down the sofa a bit. “Becoming friends with you,” Patton clarified. “You’re the best friend I could ask for, really. You don’t baby and shelter me like the others. You let me just… be,” Patton said sincerely. “Which always seems too much to ask of the others,” Patton tacted on bitterly. He took a generous swig as if to emphasize his point. Remus scoffed, the tiny movement making him slide the rest of the way down onto the carpet. “Aww I’m flattered, honey.” His tone was excessively teasing, yet his expression was anything but.

Midst lazily reaching for another can, Remus swatted Patton’s hands away. “I think that’s enough. You’re already starting to monologue. If you keep going you’ll have a hangover so bad, it’ll feel like you actually hanged yourself,” Remus tutted. While Patton was no light weight (his words hadn’t even begun to slur yet), from the way Patton was chugging it down, Remus knew his body just hadn’t caught up yet.

Meekly lolling his head back to face skywards, Patton whined but didn’t protest. Sinking lower into the cushy bean bag, his eyes traced imagery patterns on the ceiling.

God, Remus knew that look.

“I just don’t know anymore, ReRe,” Patton said defeatedly, “Every time I think I’m over it, they keep giving me false hope. Everything I say and feel is ignored, and whenever I’m right, they always think it’s a stupid flook. They never listen. I don’t think they ever will at this rate. I don’t even know if I want to be friends with them anymore or I’m just really fucking lonely and my brain’s just hard wired to associate, I don’t know, being happy? With them?” His eyes were vacant, dull. “Why can’t it be like when we were little?”

While the whole point of their little get together was for Patton to vent with free will to cuss as needed, this more sappy, philosophical stuff… Remus didn’t like. You can’t blame him for not liking to see his best friend this miserable. Still, he knew it was best to let Patton keep going.

“Even if they did actually care about me, I’m sure they’d stop the moment they knew we’re like… a thing. Logan would think I’m crazy— Virgil and Roman too… I know what they’d think of us and it’s so— so—” Patton made a nondescript noise of frustration. “They’d say you corrupted me or some shit. I… I’m not embarrassed of you. I should stop acting like I am. I hate this stupid dumb angel reputation I have anyway. I’m just… I have to admit the only real reason I haven’t really said anything at this point is it’s kinda funny seeing their reactions whenever I accidentally say something that sounds wrong.”

Remus chuckled. “I don’t know how they haven’t caught on yet, honestly. Your half of our brain cell is just as sick as mine. They must be in denial.”

“Yeah…”

…

“I should be going to bed,” Patton tried to stand up. As soon as he stood however, his knees buckled. Remus dashed to his side and caught him. “You goof…” Remus positioned him upright. Steadying hands on his hips, Patton tried to stand up straight. A task easier said that done when you’re a gay panic. Inevitably, Patton limply collapsed on top of Remus.

“I don’t think I can make it to my room…” Patton’s cheeks flushed and the red ran down his neck.

“You wet noodle.”

“You… blue cheese lover.”

(“Is that supposed to be an insult?”)

(“Who the fuck likes blue cheese?”)

Arm slung over his shoulder, Remus hauled Patton into the hallway and onwards. He would have carried Patton if he hadn’t been so surprisingly stubborn. All well, anything to make him happy. They returned to their earlier, lighter bantering. The alcohol started to really catch up with Patton, his quips came slower. No less witty, though (by their standards).

Everything would’ve gone like normal if it wasn’t for a certain nerd who had decided on a coffee before bed. Most counterproductive. As soon as Logan had started out his room, he spotted them. His eyes settled into a potent, yet subtle glare. Like a droplet of poison spilt on an unassuming biscuit.

“What the…”

“Logyyy!” Patton perked up at the sound of his voice, lifting himself from Remus’s side that he’d been slumped on. The sudden movement made him lose balance. Scrambling to catch himself, Remus found himself with two arms wrapped around his shoulders now.

“Is… is he— are you drunk?” Logan sputtered. Disbelief shaped his words like they felt alien on his tongue. “I’m not thaaaat drunk!” Patton retaliated. Logan ignored him, cold, tired eyes set on Remus. “What did you do to him?” Logan said as aggressively as a guinea pig could manage. Confusion still mostly coloured his stare. “Me an’ Re er havin’ bestie time, duh!” Patton answered. He sounded giddy, but his voice had a touch of satire only drunken Patton could manage. Even in his drunken state, Patton subconsciously was trying to maintain his image.

Remus frowned. This learnt behaviour was ingrained into Patton.

“He shouldn’t be around someone like you in such a vulnerable state,” Logan said, already trying to pry Patton from his arms. “No—” Remus began, looping his arms securely on Patton's waist, “I’ll take care of him.”

“Noooo,” Patton recoiled, trying to melt into Remus’s side. “It's bestiee tiiiimme wi’ Emu.” Patton's arms slid up Remus’s shoulders around his neck as he squirmed. “You’re drunk, Patton,” Logan dismissed.

Seething, Remus shoved Logan off. “You heard him,” he said, sternly. “Back off before I carve out your tongue, blend it, and force feed it to you,” he threatened. Arms crossed, Logan huffed like an exhausted parent. “You’re all bark, no bite,” he dismissed.

“Oh honey, you ha’ no idea how mu’ he bi’es.”

Schooling his face into glares and scrunched eyebrows, Remus sighed out the giggles brewing in his lungs. Nonetheless, Patton was proud of the brief smug smile he provoked. Pretending he didn’t hear that, Logan insisted, “You’re a bad influence on someone like Patton. People like you shouldn’t be around him, especially when he’s inebriated.”

“Better under the supervision of a friend. He’d drink himself to death otherwise.”

“Yes, but preferably, that should be Virgil or Roman or I, most certainly not you.”

“It’s not my fault he doesn’t feel comfortable enough around anyone else, tin can.”

“Re,” Patton interrupted, whining, “I’m bored le’s gooo.” He tugged on him.

“—He’s drunk he doesn’t know what he’s saying— you know what— Okay, Patton, you choose. Me,” Logan pointed to himself, “or him?” He said overly pronouncing his words.

…

“…‘M drunk not a fuckin’ kid,” was Patton’s response. “We go now,” and he was stumbling down the hallway dragging Remus with him.

Both missed the shell shocked expression on Logan, not daring to believe his ears. Patton cursing? An intoxicated Patton, no less? No. Nope. Absolutely not. He needed coffee desperately.

When they finally got to Patton’s room, Remus carefully directed him, even lowering him onto his bed. Patton had the tendency to unceremoniously flop face first onto his bed like a starfish.

“I swear I’m gonna strangle Logan,” Remus muttered as he made sure Patton was comfortable, tucking in his blankets.

“I don’ think he into bdsm,” Patton said as an offhanded thought.

“You never know. He could be partial to a spider gag…”

“You really just want to try that thing out don’t you? I swear to god— oof.” Remus snatched his pillow from beneath his head to fluff it. Pretending to not pretend he was punching a sheep’s limp corpse, he fluffed it extremely thoroughly.

“You gotsa stop relying on me to keep you in check, ya know,” Patton pouted, arms crossed. “Your— you’re fuckin’ innsaaane!”

“I only ask you sometimes…” Remus said (the worst part about that sentence was that it was utterly true).

Blank stare piercing Remus, Patton paused a moment for his brain to function before deadpanning, “I’d like to talk to you about Jesus Christ—”

Remus shoved Patton’s pillow back, and he promptly forgot everything in favour of burrowing down into his bed. Touch light as moonlight, Remus herded Patton’s wild locks from his forehead. “What am I gonna do with you…”

“You’re na’ gon change my mind… kinky b-hole,” Patton mumbled, caught between the conscious world and sleep. Remus’s eyes smiled. Crouching down, he hovered over Patton. Hovered over his forehead, wondering. Pondering, debating, convincing himself. His breath stirred Patton’s brown locks. They scattered like a spooked flock. Running. Patton shivered.

He shouldn’t. Backing away, Remus was ready to switch the lights off and evacuate, yet was stopped.

“Reeemuuuuuss,” Patton called. Suddenly, he was wide awake again.

Huh?— his breath hitched. His hand caught on the doorway.

“Staaaaayyy! Preddy please?” He made grabby hands.

But— they don’t—

Did he deserve…? Right now? His nails dug into the doorframe.

…

“Okay! I’m coming, I’m coming,” Remus assured, relenting. Lazy giggles from Patton rewarded him. Flicking off the light, Remus strode back over. Laying together in silence, Remus picked the paint and splinters out from underneath his nails and waited. When Patton didn’t budge, Remus took his arms and used them like a seat belt. Simultaneously, Patton glued himself to his back like a limpet. A warm wall of heat.

“Remouse?” He mumbled into his shoulder.

“Hmm?”

“You’re really sweet. like… like tomato sauce.”

…

Welp okay then.

Next Chapter:

[sixth-light]

False Value overall review

Non-spoilery: this was pretty much exactly what the series (and PETER) needed post-Lies Sleeping. Maybe a bit self-contained/framed as a series entry point to be my favourite of the series to date (I’m a sucker for arc material, OK) but still a really fantastic entry. 

Spoilery:

Coming back to writing this post a couple of weeks later (job offer and associated stuff kept me very busy), what strikes me so much about this book is how simplified it is compared to...well, almost every other entry in the series. Peter is only ever dealing with one mystery at a time; the Serious Cybernetics Company and what it’s up to. Stephen and Mrs Chin are there as foils, but they’re after the same thing. Side-leads circle back to it. The only other main book that does this is Foxglove Summer, and even then there’s the lingering thread of Peter’s trauma over Lesley - the main reason he’s been packed off to Herefordshire - and that gut-punch phone call at the end. This book feels more akin to The Furthest Station in its limited cast and tight focus. 

As I said above the cut, I am an absolute sucker for arc material and the epic tragedy of the Peter-Lesley Thing (watching the Doctor Who finale helped remind me of that) so it can’t be my favourite of the series, but I really admire how it manages to be a relatively fresh on-boarding point for potential new readers while still dropping enough asides about the beloved extended cast - and it is SUCH an extended cast now - to keep old fans happy. I also really loved the extended Peter/Beverley scenes, including the material which was touched on in the comics but is now fully embedded in canon (i.e. Maksim as an acolyte and how this twinges Peter’s ethical and class sensibilities). I felt like the book was doing the work to make their relationship live, in a way fandom has been doing the hard yards on for a few years now. Beverley is clearly coming into her own as a goddess and establishing how her rituals and courts are going to work, and Peter is just going to have to deal with that, and it’s all great. and TWINS! I can’t wait for the twins. 

The satire of working in High Tech was only mildly satirical - it really is Like That and the people really are Like That - and I’m impressed at the nailing of the milieu. I felt a bit disgruntled that the cliffhanger about Peter losing his job was resolved in the second chapter because I’d been steeling myself for that, given personal circumstances, and then oh no everything was fine after all. It felt less like a twist and more like a slightly lazy gotcha. That said, I did very much enjoy Peter confronting his original bogeyman of undercover work and being both very good at it because he likes people and they like him, and very bad at it for the same reasons - or at least very vulnerable to it. @philomytha commented that Nightingale seems to be pining a bit in this book and he kinda is - I think it’s not just about Peter being undercover, it’s that Peter is having babies and moving away, and at the same time Molly has got her sister back and the Folly is undergoing massive renovations and all the comfortable certainties of his seventy-year depression are completely turned upside down. And on top of that, Peter is playing a game which is fundamentally about trust and betrayal, and I really do think Nightingale respects Peter’s ethics and is worried in this book about what it’s doing to him to do that work. I really enjoyed the maturing of their relationship here, Peter bringing Nightingale in when it’s useful, and I l o v e d Nightingale confronting an American master wizard who has absolutely no clue who he is. And he loved it too, it was a great chance to step outside the restriction of being The Nightingale. (Also: BEVERLEY CALLS HIM THOMAS, IT’S PROPER CANON NOW, NOBODY CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME.) 

Speaking of the international magic aspects - one way the slimmed-down focus of the book DID leave me wondering is that it didn’t really call back to what we previously had been told about American practitioners at ALL, so, like, why were the Virginians after the Mary Engine and how did it then end up on the West Coast? What about the Pennsylvania dudes Nightingale remembers? How do they relate to the Librarians in New York? I have so many questions! But I also expect that future books are going to answer some of them, especially with two novellas being set in the States (the Reynolds one and the Nightingale one in Harlem). 

Also, unless we go full Xeno’s Paradox and/or Robert Jordan on the series and each book starts covering a shorter and shorter length of time, it’s February 2016 in book time, the Brexit referendum is Coming, I hate it for Peter & co but I also want to see what happens next with that. The cuts to the Met were used really cleverly in this book to put Peter and Nightingale back in the position they were in earlier books, to some extent - they now have many more contacts and good relationships, but their institutional reach is much more limited and the Folly’s financial resources are run down. Which means they’re going to have to lean on those relationships to keep things working, which...frankly, in this Darkest Timeline, is the best thing they could do because the British establishment is only going to get worse. 

Finally, the AI-as-ghosts/magic plot was very neat and made the book feel present in the Now in a way the series hasn’t for a while, but Peter’s acceptance of the Turing Test pass surprised me because that’s not difficult and isn’t considered anything like definitive as an AI test anymore; it turns out Really Big Spreadsheets can be surprisingly human-like (not to mention the evergreen potential for A Human, Somewhere Else - although of course this was A Human, Somewhere Else, just a ghostly one.) Peter is usually well-informed enough that it was a shock to go, oh, I as a reader know WAY more about this than he does! 

Finally: Peter doing “let’s pretend we were making out” with a hot male double-agent and then delivering an edict to him and his boss that London is Peter’s city and they shouldn’t mess with it: GREAT, YES, MUCH MORE OF THIS. I don’t feel like we’re necessarily going to see a lot more of Stephen and Mrs Chin (BRING BACK CAROLINE FIRST PLZ) but they were lots of fun as antagonists and I certainly wouldn’t mind if they came back for round two - or if Peter went to New York. Can you IMAGINE. Mind you...he needs to get out of England first! 

[theworldbrewery]

First-Time DMing: an Order of Operations

because starting is hard

I know they tell you don’t homebrew a world and campaign on your first try. but some folks are gonna try anyway. This one’s for you <3

step one: figure out a Tagline(tm)

you know those movie trailers?

yeah, those. the first step i take when i’m making a world is to come up with my Tagline. my “IN A WORLD WHERE” summary of the story. i started prepping my current campaign with “in a world where the environment and climate have been ravaged by war between the gods, and three thousand years later mortals still struggle to survive the elements”

step two: take your Tagline(tm) to its logical conclusions

depending on how serious your game is, you can take this to a reasonable level or to whatever level of satire and absurdity will appeal to you and your players. in a world where the surface of the world is covered in volcanic activity, people probably live underground or on like, floating cities or something. maybe they don’t do animal agriculture anymore because their floating cities don’t have room for miles of grazing lands. or maybe they hunt or farm giant creatures that can withstand the scalding heat. or maybe they live underground and farm tunneling creatures instead. 

if you get stuck just start asking yourself questions about your Tagline like “what do the people do when ____?

step three: start forming locations.

you don’t have to go bigger than one major political territory for now. If this is a medievalish world but with robots, just make one kingdom at most to start off. hopefully you’re talking to your players about their plans, so once you know a little about your premise, tell them about that and let them do some character creation. for each player, prep their ‘home base’ location (at least by name). depending on backstory, they might have several locations. just figure out the one that’s the most important right now; you can do the rest later. after that, you should figure out where your campaign Begins.

step four: prepping your First Adventure

now you know where the game is happening, and hopefully you know stuff about your Player Characters. when you’re making a first adventure, I’ll say this: let your PCs already know each other. in most out-of-the-box campaigns, the PCs have known each other. This can make your life so much easier because you have a pretext for the PCs sticking together.

In my campaign I let them meet each other at the start, but that made things harder on me. because I’m an idiot. basically, if the PCs don’t already know each other, your first adventure isn’t just a plot hook; it’s also meant to be the way of uniting these characters. and that can be hard, because PCs are wayward at first and don’t always get along. so seriously. let them be traveling on the same ship, or work for the same organization, or team up to help a mutual friend. learn from my mistakes

step five: learning the rules

I’m planning a bigger post about this, but here’s the lowdown:

rule 1: you make the rules

rule 2: you should still read the rules though. Like most things, you’ll have an easier time breaking the rules if you know which ones are really important. I often fudge the rules for grappling because they’re long and complicated and ultimately my player who grapples wants to do sweet combo moves where the grapple isn’t even the point. so it seems silly to me to step on their fun to be nitpicky about how grappling is an action and you can’t throw someone into the wall as a bonus action.

in all seriousness, you’ll learn what rules you need memorized the more you play, but the key ones are the Combat Rules and rules on how class mechanics work. But because you’re the DM, you can decide when you want to throw that stuff out the window. Sometimes your players will ask for a modification to better fit their character concept, or you’ll decide to give a wizard the ability to wear armor because you want him to be a more powerful enemy, or it turns out you don’t actually care if the party is over their cart’s carrying capacity. 

If you find you’re tripping over the rules instead of using them to make the game fun, just ditch or modify the rule so it is more fun.

[countdown-to-destruction]

Inuyasha Sequel: a rant

Put this up this earlier on a post I re-blogged, tried to edit a part or two where I didn’t like the way I had phrased it, and ended up messing up the whole format I wrote this in. Luckily I wrote this as a draft earlier anyways! So I did a some fixing and now I’m just copy-pasting it again and making it a text post instead. This will be very long and a little nit-picky but I wanted to make a post ever since I heard about the upcoming sequel to Inuyasha, Hanyō no Yashahime. I did put a TLDR at the end for those who don’t want to read everything. Not sure how many people in the fandom still follow me and will see this, as it's been a long time since I was actually active in the fandom, but it's hands-down both my favorite manga and anime of all time and I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately so I had to post something. Before reading this be sure to read all of the translated character bios for Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha so that this makes sense.

When I first heard that Inuyasha would be getting a sequel I was excited! But after reading up on it, to be completely honest I'm not feeling this sequel anymore. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but hear me out. Firstly, it seems like Rumiko is mostly involved in the character design aspect and the writing is up to Katsuyuki Sumisawa. The music will be produced by Kaoru Wada which is great! And from what I’ve seen and read online a number of others who worked on the original series will reunite so hopefully the story will go well. However, knowing Rumiko isn't personally writing and not knowing how much input she has or will give makes me unsure about watching. The original Inuyasha anime followed and was based off of the events in the manga, and there was no manga prior to this for it to be based on. Depending on what happens this could be an alright sequel or a total miss. Unfortunately sequels in general are known to be disappointing in some way. 

Secondly, if I hear anything about Rin being the mother of Sesshomaru's twin daughters I'm out. This part will be a SUPER long and in depth explanation on why I think this way, feel free to skip if you're not interested. Please don't come for me on this, I'm here to explain my thoughts and feelings on the sequel and the theories around it so far, not start an argument. I'm more than aware that there's plenty of controversy out there on this pairing and personally I do not support it. I never saw their relationship as more than a friendship, or something akin to child and guardian as Sesshomaru and Jaken are basically Rin's caretakers up until she goes to live in the village with Kaede. He definitely cares for her deeply but I can't see it in a romantic way, being that Sesshomaru isn't even a character focused on romance to begin with. He learns compassion through Rin's second death but that doesn't mean he loves her romantically. As a reminder his main goal is to seek power and be powerful, and it's stated that he needed to learn compassion and grief in order to mature. It's what helped him learn to wield the Tenseiga at its full potential. In addition, she was really young when they first met and still was when she went to live with Kaede. The idea of Sesshomaru (an adult) having romantic feelings for a kid under ten years old (around eleven at the end of the series, and still a literal child in all ways) and waiting for her to age with the intention of marrying her sits totally wrong with me. Age wise I realize that Inuyasha is decades older than Kagome and that his father was much older than his mother, Izayoi, as well. The difference here is that Kagome was a teen when she met Inuyasha (who not just physically, but more importantly mentally was also a teen) and clearly Izayoi was old enough to conceive Inuyasha and give birth. As far as the audio dramas (more specifically "Asatte") go they're generally considered as an outtake reel and are essentially parodies, or a form of satire. Some will debate on this but realistically there’s plenty of reasons this is true, and those who take the time to properly check them out understand that. For me I've always had a headcanon that at some point in her teen years Rin would inevitably develop a one-sided crush on Sesshomaru and that he would ultimately set boundaries and reject her, seeing her as more of a close companion than a love interest and wanting her to live with someone she can grow old with. He gave her the choice to follow him and it's most likely that she would, but I think that once she began aging he would want her to have somewhere to settle, given that he enjoys roaming and seeking out other powerful beings to battle. It's strange to me that they decided to give Sesshomaru hanyō/half-demon children in general but based on the artwork we've seen it's fair to guess that they might have made Sesshomaru and Rin a pairing in this sequel.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to clarify that if you ship them together I'm not writing this here because I want to hate on your ship for no reason, or in order to create an argument on if the pairing makes sense, these are my thoughts and opinions on the matter and I’m voicing them because it’s what I believe. I already know that somebody won’t like this and will take it personally. People usually say that once Rin is an adult the pairing is acceptable but I disagree. I find it quite creepy that someone would think it would be alright for an adult to wait around for a kid to grow up with the intention to marry and/or sleep with them. Watching from a distance is the same exact thing, after making an impression on the child... let’s not normalize this. In this situation it would be grooming. We all have our own opinions when it comes to our ships and fandoms and I try to respect that but I can’t get behind this one.

Next we have the apparent lack of parental figures for the heroines. Where are the original Inuyasha characters at? Moroha's character bio says she barely knows her parents (Inuyasha and Kagome, our former main protagonists) and has been alone since she was young! It makes me think either something has happened to them or some kind of bizarre event separated them. And sorry, not related, but why does she transform by PUTTING LIPSTICK ON?? That part threw me for a loop.

When it comes to Setsuna and Towa their parents are absent too. I find it difficult to believe that Sesshomaru wouldn't keep track of his children given how he treats Rin and reacts to her going missing in any capacity. Especially if he happened to be fond of whoever their mother is. One daughter works as a taijiya/demon slayer for Kohaku and the other mysteriously transports to Kagome's era and is raised by Sota (I thought we had finished with the time jumps when the well closed but apparently not. When the Bone Eater's Well closed after Kagome's return it gave a sense of finality and closure to the story, and showed that Kagome had chosen where she was most happy and felt she belonged. I think that bringing the theme of time travel back into the sequel makes it feel repetitive, like something right out of a predictable fanfic. Props to Sota for taking in and raising a child who showed up out of nowhere though).

Another thing that came to mind when I read these character bios was why Inuyasha and Kagome's daughter and Sesshomaru's daughters are the exact same age. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. It only struck me as odd because suddenly everyone is having kids at the same time. And so far there's no mention of other characters like Sango, Miroku, Shippo, Jaken, Kaede, or Miroku or Sango's three children or where they are. One might expect that a story focused on the children of some of the original Inuyasha's main characters would feature appearances from those who had important roles in the previous series and their children. Which brings me around to wondering what made twin daughters a trend? Two sets of twin girls is a unique choice (Sango and Miroku's twin daughters. For such a small group of parental characters, what are the odds of two sets of twin girls? Where is the creativity and again why the repetition?).

Lastly, Sesshomaru's daughters lack some of the common yōkai/demon characteristics we see on Inuyasha and other characters. Their ears are human, and they have no markings or otherwise (that I noticed) with the exception of Setsuna's mokomoko/fur which is similar to Sesshomaru's. So perhaps they take more after their human mother? Given that Inuyasha seemed to inherit strong genes from his father it's interesting that they did not. Their ages also interest me as they appear to age the same way as humans do. Yōkai/demons are known to have a longer lifespan than humans and appear to slow down or almost stop aging at some point. Perhaps this confirms that the slowdown in aging occurs once they reach the equivalent of a human teen? 

Overall Inuyasha was a fantastic manga and great anime on its own, and I never got the feeling that it needed a sequel. As a stand-alone it was everything it needed to be. I thoroughly enjoyed both formats of the original, though I do have a tendency to disregard certain parts of the anime. I always preferred the manga more when the anime dragged out certain scenes (Shichinintai/Band of Seven arc for example) or straight-up excluded, changed, and added others. Taking that into consideration the sequel might end up being the same for me in that way, but rather than one scene that plays out for too long or an excluded, altered, or unnecessary added scene, if it’s not any good I’ll simply disregard it altogether. When the anime comes out I certainly plan to try watching it out of loyalty to the fandom, and due to the fact that it's "technically" canon (without Rumiko being the writer I don't necessarily consider it canon, much like how some folks do or do not consider the movies canon) but I get the feeling that I'll wind up giving up on it in disappointment.

TLDR; Overall I'm left questioning if the sequel is worth watching (for me) given what I've read and heard so far, but nonetheless I will give it an optimistic try! I'm currently wondering how much we'll see of the original Inuyasha characters, if we get to find out what happened to them, if the number one pairing I'm not fond of will make an appearance (and cause me to drop the whole thing), and questioning parts of the character backstories and designs (why is there a repetitive and recurring theme of time travel and does it end up hindering or ruining the story, why do the protagonists all lack parents, and why do the hanyō/half-demon characters lack common yōkai/demon traits and does it make them more human than demon?).

[thedeaditeslayer]

Exclusive interview: Bruce Campbell is having a renaissance.

Here’s a highly recommended interview which discusses what Bruce Campbell has in store for fans in the future.

Bruce Campbell is experiencing a creative renaissance, of sorts. In a recent chat with the actor, he discussed a return to his horror roots, cutting a comedy album with Ted Raimi and so much more.

Bruce Campbell hasn’t been idle during his time in self-isolation. The actor has been experiencing a creative renaissance of sorts. So, we figured now would be a perfect time to reach out and get some of our burning questions answered.

With so much uncertainty in the entertainment industry at present, rumors are running rampant. We gave Campbell a chance to clear the air so to speak and address some of the myriad of questions that fans have regarding Mortal Kombat 11, the latest Evil Dead incarnation, Ripley’s and whether or not he will work with Sam Raimi in front of the camera again.

The actor also surprised us with some monumental news. He will be returning to his horror roots with the sequel to My Name Is Bruce as well as several other projects that he has on his docket including a comedy album with one of his closest friends.

Get comfy, grab your favorite beverage and let’s catch up with Bruce Campbell.

Mortal Kombat 11, Ripley’s and the State of the Industry

1428 Elm: Thanks for speaking with us, Bruce. It’s always a pleasure. We have so many things to discuss. Recently, a site came out and said that you were definitely going to be Ash in Mortal Kombat 11. It seemed like a done deal the way it was reported. Can you comment on that?

Bruce Campbell: I probably shouldn’t emphasize yes or no because I don’t know. I have not been told. If it is not through my agent or proper channels than it usually means its wishful thinking.

1428 Elm: Apparently, an email from Warner Brothers Interactive was sent to a well-known entertainment site and Ash as well as Army of Darkness was mentioned in it with the trademark from MGM.

BC: The reason why it may not happen, just so you and the readers can know this, a lot of time for legal purposes, that character cannot appear in other things because of the license. If you can’t make a deal, that character is not going to show up. So, we may have been talked to about it.

But I do know with MGM that handles the Army of Darkness licensing that they’re hasn’t been a discussion with them about it. They’re pretty touchy. We have to be careful of ownership.

I honestly don’t know. I think I would have heard something. It’s not like my agent books me without consulting with me.

Even if Mortal Kombat came to me and said they want to put me in it, you still have to make a deal. If my agent says, “Bruce Campbell wants a hundred billion dollars,” and then they say no, the deal is dead.

The answer is we don’t know. No point in beating around about that.

1428 Elm: You might not be able to discuss this but what’s going on with Ripley’s Believe It or Not!? Will there be a Season 2?

BC: We’re one and done. It’s not your father’s Travel Channel anymore. If I wanted to host a ghost hunting show, I’d be on the air right now.

Ripley’s was made for the older school Travel Channel like Drive-Ins and Dive Bars where you go to wacky places around the country. There is a big push for paranormal, mystery and science-fiction, Discovery type stuff. I think we just “out aged” ourselves.

1428 Elm: It would have been nice if the Science Channel would have picked it up.

BC: It’s all good. I remain philosophical about all shows that come and go. There are so many factors involved. You change executives and things change, companies get bought and sold and things change, ratings aren’t what you expected…

After this virus, we’re going to see what shape the motion picture industry is in. It’s going to be a wounded beast. Projects are going to go away.

You’re going to have fewer tentpole movies too. I am hopeful we’ll have a return to low budget filmmaking.

That’s what I hope comes out of it. Each studio will start a low budget division and spend the money wisely.

Number One on the Charts with a Bullet

BC (Cont.): In the meantime, what is nice, I’m finishing up a couple of projects. I’m hoping by the end of the year to put a book of essays out and a comedy album with Ted Raimi.

1428 Elm: A comedy album?

BC: Yeah, we finished it. I’m in post-production on it. I’m putting all the sound effects in now.

1428 Elm: That sounds great!

BC: Who knows? We’ve never done one before so we’re going to find out.

1428 Elm: So, you guys are harkening back to the 1960’s when comedians like Bob Newhart had hit albums?

BC: It’s our version of that. I used to listen to the top comedy albums during the 60’s and 70’s. I wouldn’t dare compare myself to any of the masters like Mel Brooks and the 2,000-Year-Old Man with Carl Reiner. We gave it a shot. I love audio and I like radio plays.

Bruce Campbell vs the Classic Monsters

1428 Elm: So, tell us what is going on with your political satire, House Divided. Are you still working on pitching that once everything gets back to business as usual?

BC: It will be on the sales block. It’s a harder sell. There’s no blood. It’s not a horror movie, it’s a political satire. Associating Bruce Campbell with political satire isn’t the first thing investors whip out their checkbooks for.

To combat that, I just finished writing a sequel to My Name Is Bruce. The idea is we want to take Bruce and have him go through each of the classic film monsters. The sequel is Bruce vs Frankenstein.

We’re done. I finished my draft and sent it to Mike Richardson, my partner at Dark Horse Comics. We’re actively looking for money on that one. It is the Expendables of Horror. I fully intend to load the cast with so many familiar horror faces. It should be a lot of fun.

It would be a cavalcade of genre stars, old, young, on TV now. We really want to cover the bases. A lot of people will be getting killed. Guest star kills. Basically, Bruce bumbles his way into being a hero.

1428 Elm: Will you have to go through Universal to get permission to use the classic monsters?

BC: Some stuff is public domain. I’m not a lawyer but we would figure out a way to do this.

I think the bolts on Frankenstein’s neck are trademarked, as well as certain looks. But you can make a Frankenstein. That story is under public domain.

It’s also a parody of a Frankenstein movie and that gives a lot of leeway legally as well. I don’t think you can say, “Wolfman,” but I think you can say Bruce vs the Werewolf. This is my version of the Bob Hope road movies.

Ted has two parts; I have two parts for Robert Englund and I have a couple of parts for Kane Hodder. If they’re a name, I am going to put them in it.

After we come out of the zombie apocalypse that we’re in and everyone gets back to work, that is what I will be actively pitching. There’s plenty going on. So, I have been self-isolating in a constructive way.

It’s an Evil Dead World

1428 Elm: We’re curious about the 1970’s period piece that you were working on when we talked to you last year. What happened with that?

BC: It’s currently on my action board. I will eventually get to it. I am going to finish my book of essays first and then I am going to get to that one.

The story is set in 1979. The idea behind it is what would have happened if us raising money for Evil Dead went horribly, horribly wrong. It becomes a horror movie in and of itself.

1428 Elm: How did this idea come to fruition?

BC: I was going through projects in my computer. People who have a lot of downtime do spring cleaning. Clean out your woodshed, toolshed when you have extra time. In this case, I went to the head of my projects folder.

This one popped up and it was just an outline that I had written 15 years ago. I thought, wait a minute, this is pretty well thought out.

In the 70’s, filmmaking was real, you didn’t have a lot of options. You had to get cameras from a certain place, you had to have insurance. There were a lot of steps that you had to take that made the process really difficult.

I remember making calls for money from payphones in blizzards and s*** like that. You had to leave messages, you’re getting busy signals, you’re not texting anyone. There are no computers, there’s no email, its old school. You sent things in the mail.

Today, filmmaking is not difficult. I can go to a store and buy a 4K camera. I can make a movie with $5,000 worth of equipment. Probably less.

1428 Elm: Well, you can do it on your phone too. Sam Raimi is on Quibi now with 50 States of Fright, which is entertainment tailored to your device. If his series continues once everything settles, do you think there’s a chance you might appear on the show?

BC: Never say never, that’s all verbally at this point. They have to succeed; they have to survive. Any new format, any new platform, I’m game and if Sam’s involved all the more reason.

1428 Elm: Have you ever thought of doing anything like Quibi?

BC: Not yet. I’m used to writing 90-page screenplays with a three-act format. I can adapt anything too.

I was thinking the other day, I have a few screenplays that might be tough sells but maybe I might convert them to a fricking novel and put them out as books. There’s lots to do. I’ve got plenty going on.

1428 Elm: Has the current situation affected the new Evil Dead? We remember that you talked about possibly going into production at the end of this year. Is that pushed back like everything else?

BC: No, not really. It was so early in the stages that we can keep going. I just read the first official draft today. So, then we’ll give notes and additional writing will take place.

Then you have to budget the thing so you know how much money you need to raise and then you have to get the money. Nothing will stop any of that.

You can make calls for money, you can send the script to people, you can do budgets. The only thing that will be affected will be the actual start date. Which we didn’t know anyway. We may end up not being delayed at all.

Many thanks to Bruce Campbell for chatting with us.

[pixylate-archive2020]

What are your hot takes? Inquiring minds wish to know

Ooooh anon, you might have just opened the floodgates here. But that’s alright. My opinions don’t necessarily... “align” with the overall narrative this topic has, so I’m probably going to lose even more followers for this, but it’s w/e. Sometimes people don’t like hearing opinions that don’t match their own, and that’s fine.

So my first hot take, is that...you can have a terrible OC. Your OC can be terrible. And by “terrible”, I mean “poorly written”.

Just like how there are a bunch of poorly written canon characters in their source material (e.g. I’m sure a lot of animes & mangas & etc out there have them, from various opinions I’ve heard), your OC can be the same way. It’s not like your OC being your creation completely makes you immune to...putting effort into making an engaging and likable character. 

You can love your OC all you want, do whatever you want with them, but from an outsider’s perspective of them: if your OC just seems bad...people are most likely gonna think they’re bad. Doesn’t really matter what you say.

My second hot take, is that Mary Sues & Gary Stus DO exist (edit after posting: I wasn’t aware the person who originally coined “Mary Sue” doesn’t want the term being used anymore. My bad; I’ll keep this in mind from now on, and for Gary Stus too). The definition of them seems to vary among people, so I’ll give you my definition of them.

To me, a Mary Sue & Gary Stu are characters that are either incredibly strong, or virtually perfect / succeed in any type of trial, yet they don’t really have anything to show for it. To explain it. There are types of Mary Sues & Gary Stus; they aren’t just one variant all the time. 

For example, let’s say a Pokemon OC has a team full of strong legendaries that all listen to their commands.

Unless that OC has a super engaging backstory explaining why they have those legendaries, why the legends listen to them, and the writer continues to develop/flesh out said OC in their writing...they’re a Mary Sue/Gary Stu to me. They don’t have anything that proves they deserve what they have. So why should I care for or like them? Unless the writer is going for a “satire” kind of thing and people thinking of their character like that is intended...that’s bad.

The other most common type of Mary Sue & Gary Stu, are ones who’re just....super mega attractive and, no matter what they do, even if they’ve never done it before, they’ll always succeed at it and with flying colors. So many people just LOVE them because they’re so flawless n’ good. Funnily enough, this type is more commonly seen in fanfiction imo. The RPC more so has the first type of Mary Sue & Gary Stu I listed above. But either way, they exist. And they’re about as likable as a cardboard box is. That’s how much life they don’t have. 

And, these same types of characters can also be canon, and be this same type of way in their source material. This isn’t an OC-specific thing.

My third and last hot take (that comes to mind rn anyway), is that someone criticizing your OC doesn’t automatically make them an “OC hater”. People who hate OCs just because do exist, of course, but I’m not talking about them here.

Someone giving genuine criticisms of your OC isn’t them attacking your OC, or you. They’re giving their opinions, on how THEY perceive your OC. Naturally, they aren’t you. They aren’t going to know and enjoy your OC the way YOU (the OC’s writer) will. And that’s completely understandable, valid, and should be expected. Ain’t nobody a mind reader.

Your duty, as the OC’s writer, is to take those opinions into consideration. You can always improve, when it comes to something creative like writing and story-telling. Two things where...how other people perceive your work matters. If someone has criticisms, don’t immediately write them off and say they don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re a “hater”. What type of mindset is that??

Someone can find flaws in or not like your OC. They can think your OC is a shit character. They most likely aren’t an OC hater; your OC is just...a shit character to them and you could improve upon your OC. That’s all. Sometimes it’s really not that deep.