How Does it Feel to Read Classic Sci-Fi?
Orson Scott Card: Two of the most interesting books you’ll ever read if you’re willing to look past a handful of things. And then you find the planet of Chinese people who worship having debilitating OCD. And the Mormonism. And the fact that the author is wildly homophobic and ought to read his own books.
Robert Heinlein (or at least the Wikipedia Summaries): I guess that’s a neat concept—oh, it’s a sex thing. Um. Gotcha.
Ray Bradbury: Man, I gotta read this thing for class huh. Well here’s hoping it’s good! *three hours later* oh. that’s why he’s famous. this will stick with me forever and I will never look at the phrase ‘soft rain’ the same again. christ. And then repeat 3x.
Isaac Asimov: Wow, this is such an interesting concept! I wonder how the exploration of it will influence the plot! Wait, hey, are you going to add any characters? Any of em? No like, with character traits other than ‘robot psychologist’ and ‘autistic’ and ‘woman’? None of em? No, ‘detective’ isn’t a character trait. Those are all just facts. Aaaand now I’m bored.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Hah, get a load of this guy! He’s never heard of nonbinary people before. Lol, what a riot; how dumb do you have to be to comprehend that these people aren’t men *or* women actually? Oh, wait, what’s happening. Oh shit, it was about society and love and learning to understand each other? And now I’m crying? And perhaps a better human being for it??
Andy Weir: Alright, this guy’s a really good writer. Funny, creative, knows so much engineering stuff…ooh, a new book! …I guess he can’t write women. Well, he wouldn’t be the first sci-fi writer…ooh another new book! And it’s more engineering problem solving and—wow. It’s not just women he can’t write. Please stop letting your characters talk to each other.
Lois Lowry: Oh, I remember this being fun when I was a kid! Wouldn’t it be fucked up to not see color? …upon reread, it would be fucked up to have your humanity stripped away, replaced with a tepid, beige ‘happiness’ for all time. Yeah.
Tamsyn Muir (let me have this ok): Haha, “lesbian necromancers in space” sounds fun. Lemme read this. Oh wow, yeah, this is right up my alley. OH GOD WHAT. NO. FUCK. OH SHIT WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING AND WHY IS IT REFERENCING THE BOOK OF RUTH AND HOMESTUCK BACK TO BACK!!! AHHHHHHHHH!! Now give me more please.
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consider sanuso bodyswap where Sanji is of course "admiring" Usopp's body and Usopp is trying desperately to keep himself from getting worked up so that he doesn't light himself on fire.
Luffy and Chopper are not helping. They are in fact doing the opposite of helping. They've ramped up their pranks and are doing anything possible to get Usopp angry so that he combusts, freaks out, and then dives into the ocean to put himself out. They think it's hilarious.
Nami and Brook are Also not helping, since they're conspiring with Sanji to put on a fashion show with Usopp's body. Sanji called it "not wasting a precious opportunity to get him in something other than overalls". Usopp called it mutiny and he was gonna- dive into the ocean, holy fuck Sanji why is it so easy to catch fire?!
Best part about this is that Sanji assured him, several times, that his body doesn't get hurt by catching fire. Usopp still jumps into the ocean every time.
Robin pipes up at one point, asking if Sanji was immune to just his own flames or all flames. Sanji just kind of shrugs and said it depends. Franky, having just been leisurely watching all of this gets an idea. Would his Franky Fireball hurt Sanji's body or just give him more fire to work with?
He tries to coax Usopp into agreeing to test it out and, somehow, he manages it. Albeit, Usopp is all knocking knees and chattering teeth, a very odd sight from 'Sanji'. As part of the deal though, he can only shoot a fireball the size of his hand.
Usopp meant his small hand. The one Franky used for tinkering and fine detail work. He did not, however, clarify this.
So, when a fireball the size of Franky's big hand comes out, well. Usopp runs for his goddamn life.
It takes him a few moments- and the voices of his friends sounding distant and below him- to realize he hadn't, in fact, run to the men's quarters, but rather into the fucking sky.
And oooooh, boy he is gonna kill Sanji one of these days. Why was his body's first fucking instinct when running to go up, what the actual HELL-
Usopp lit himself on fire again.
He curses out Sanji as his Sky Walk fails in the same moment and he plummets towards the deck.
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Hey! I just recently found your Magneto fic and I am absolutely obsessed. Any updates coming in the future?
i’m super glad you enjoyed magneto! this ask has gotten me to finally put a discontinued in the description of magneto. it’s not at ALL because of you in particular, but i’ve realized by putting off adding it to the description i’ll keep giving people false hope. forgive me if i use this ask for a tediously long post describing why exactly i will never update magneto, so i can link it easily for anyone with similar questions in the future. 😭
so. short answer? no. magneto will probably never be updated. i’m really sorry for that. my interests have changed since graduating high school and i don’t really want to write bnha anymore.
long answer?
i started writing magneto pre-pandemic during my junior year of high school. i had seen there was only about a 100 self inserts for bnha at the time and thought “well, if i post something it’ll probably get a lot of attention, since the fandom is growing in popularity a lot and there’s a scarcity here!” 2019 was an interesting year for fanfic in bnha, since it didn't have enough content for the growing eyes looking for it.
i ended up being very correct. too correct. i actively updated magneto over the course of half a year, roughly, and in that time it rapidly climbed in attention. since 2020 ive only updated it about twice(?) and that hasn’t deterred the new readers it’s gotten. i get comments every other day asking about updates.
magneto is currently the most kudo-ed bnha si-oc on the entirety of ao3. which is fucking insane. i don’t think it deserves it, but popularity is rarely about deserving. usually it’s about being just good enough, just novel enough, and being posted at the right time.
but i digress: it doesn’t feel possible for me to update magneto for a variety of reasons.
1) my disinterest in the setting would make any future update disingenuous.
i haven’t been actively into the bnha fandom in about four years now. i don’t really read bnha fic aside from the very occasional si-oc, nor have i kept up with the manga or anime. the only fic i’ve ever written for the fandom is magneto, and it’ll probably always be my only fic for the fandom. (watch me say that and be wrong in the next few years LMAO)
it would be really rude of me to stomp into a space i don’t even like anymore and post something lackluster and lacking in passion. especially with the express intention of gaining more engagement from readers. like it or not, magneto IS the most popular si for bnha, and i think i drive attention away from better books by updating and inadvertently preserving that position in the ranking.
I can't believe no one has written any "self-insert as Bakugou" fanfics yet what a bunch of cowards by the_incidental_author and i have jostled back and forth for that #1 kudo-ed spot for the past five years. which i admit has been fun, but i would very much like for them to overtake me. it’s clear (to me, at least) that they actually enjoy writing bnha more than me and update more often to boot.
i fully welcome ANY fic to take magneto's position at this point, if only so that less people comment how poorly written it is. which leads me into my next point.
2) my writing style has SIGNIFICANTLY changed over the past five years.
when i do my yearly reread of magneto i actively cringe and have to resist the urge to rewrite every chapter in a separate google doc. in any hypothetical world where i do add to magneto, i do a complete rewrite. in no particular order, the things i would change are:
kenzo being defined by three character traits and nothing else. her exhaustion, her mild spite for her father, and her aimless wandering through the plot
better grammar. dear god the grammar errors. dear god the SPELLING ERRORS
the pov characters being more developed and feeling more like Individual People with their own personal motivations and histories that are not defined by what the plot needs from them (cough, reacting to how cool kenzo is)
not just recapping each anime episode and stating what kenzo would do in that situation
placing greater focus on the way quirk society discriminates against those with undesirable quirks and backgrounds. what does it really mean to be the child of a criminal in a world where people assume that sort of thing is hereditary?
kenzo's classmates should've been more classist in general, especially in relation to quirk discrimination. UA is a school only the most wealthy and powerful get into, there's no way there wouldn't be social disconnects that create tension between a dead eyed daughter of a villain and more than a few nepo babies.
if you have any interest in naruto, skyrim, asoiaf or dragon age you've probably read my more recent fics. fluffy clouds and a tinge of wonder, the fic i have updated the most this year, is a really good example of how significantly my writing has evolved since starting magneto in 2019. my technical skill and style have changed enough that it just would be tonally jarring for me to update magneto without outright rewriting everything.
like. im being so fr with you right now, i didn't learn how to start outlining until about a YEAR AGO. magneto was written on a chapter by chapter basis with little idea of where exactly it was going. i implied that there would be a future confrontation between kenzo and her father, but i didn't have any idea of HOW that would occur or even what the consequences of it would be.
adding to magneto as it is would be like trying to add a sleeve to a shirt that's missing it's entire back panel and most of it's front. i'd be playing catch up with the plot and end up having to rewrite previous chapters anyways.
3) bnha commentors have been kind of really mean to me compared to other fandoms i've written for LMAO
ok. please don't draw and quarter me for this. MOST commentors have been extremely complimentary, and kind. besides the occasional bomb of like seven comments in my inbox of ten hearts from one user (which, sweet, but please don't do that) the bnha fandom has been totally fine.
but a very small minority have been really pushy about making me update a fic i have clearly not touched in two years, and realistically haven't actively updated in four. from comments just saying "wow this is great. update soon." to DETAILED reviews of how bad my fic is and how they can't believe how garbage like magneto is so popular.
which like. i don't feel personally attacked by? i fully agree that magneto is bad for the previously stated reasons. i wouldn't read magneto if i were a casual reader and hadn't written it. usually the second kind of comment really annoys me because of it's presumption of importance and for how soul crushing it would have been for sixteen-year-old me to read.
bnha as a fandom, especially in recent years, has felt more and more like they treat fic like something that is created in a vacuum. souless content that exists for readers to consume. the comments don't go to an inbox, they go to a void, so really it doesn't matter if i say something really belligerent to an author i don't know about a Self Insert Fanfic They Wrote In Between Rehearsals For Their High School Play.
but whatever. if it had just been me experiencing that i would've written it off as like just my fic, but a close friend and frequent cowriter of mine Reavv has dealt with this a lot more than me.
they wrote It's a like a time travel comedy, without the comedy, another very popular bnha fic, and had to private it because people were going to their other UNRELATED fics and badgering them to update it. people still go into their comments insisting they unprivate it, oblivious to the fact that every time they ask it adds another year to reavv's internal timer for when they will.
a combination of my own experiences and reavv's have completely put me off of writing bnha i'll be fr. even if i was still in the fandom, the majority of my fics will always be about fucking dragon age and skyrim. i do not want random bnha fans coming into my dragon age fics and, AFTER NOT READING THE FIC, saying that since im active i should clearly update my bnha fics. that's a nightmare scenario for me.
in conclusion
i am so glad that people like magneto, i'm glad that i wrote magneto. the initial jump in readers i got from magneto gave me the confidence to write other fics, and the alternating pov format is a staple of most of my writing now. some of the comments i got for that magneto when i was a teenager were the only things that kept my ass going.
but magneto is never being updated. i don't even think it's gonna be rewritten. i really am sorry about that, but it is what it is. thank you for reading it, thank you for loving it, thank you for feeling ambivalent about it. good talk.
btw to the original asker, again. this is NOT a rant directed at you, you just inspired some Thoughts in me and i had to let them loose.
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