#Please understand that when I'm ripping into the series I'm being so harsh because it's bestselling corporate media | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bonefall · 5 months

Note

post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do

Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.

Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.

Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.

And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.

In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.

She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.

So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"

But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;

Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?

And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.

If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.

It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.

Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.

Or this shit,

If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.

Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.

Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.

(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)

#I wish I had more succinct and practical advice to give you besides the woman beam trick #Honestly I just kinda feel it out because I like telling stories about girls #I made it fun for myself by clapping and cheering and whooping and hollering whenever a girl does something #because it's not fun to write like a monk in a monastery #With the spectre of Brother Smockbimble looming over your shoulder telling you to Write Perfectly Every Time #Characters aren't real people. You can just fix it if you happen to fuck up or do better next time with what you learned.#Making mistakes is just part of acquiring skill #and writing is an art just like painting or drawing.#So don't make a fun OC project into homework! You should be enjoying making your own art! Express yourself!#Please understand that when I'm ripping into the series I'm being so harsh because it's bestselling corporate media #Read by HUNDREDS of thousands of kids worldwide #Raking in millions of dollars a year. Written by a TEAM of professionals.#So I have higher expectations of it than of a fandom rando on the internet. Or even a self-published author who's just One Guy.#Hence why I'm infinitely more charitable to Ratha than I am to Battle Cats #bones gives advice

114 notes · View notes

loopy777 · 2 years

Note

star trek in modern times, is even worse than disney star wars. And thats completely disregarding the actually good parts like the rebels final season and mandalorian. Its miles worse than Rise of Skywalker. Like i genuinely got sick reading an interview of the making of picard, and the writer basically saying that the title character, who wanted to save billions of innocent lives, was the same as a colonialist supremacist, because he(A white man) tried to save an entire setient race from planetary destruction because... Well basically because he was a white man trying to play the role of a "savior", and so deserved scorn and mockery for believing they needed his help(And they did, the vast majority of them fucking died with their planet, when his higher ups essentially told him and his humanitarian efforts to go fuck themselves). Basically he was the one guy who stuck to his principles and the ideals of basic human decency and wanted to actually try and help, and the writers thought he was a colonialist for even trying to do so. And thats just ONE of the many, many, MANY terrible bits of writing from modern star trek.

GENERAL WARNING: I AM ABOUT TO SPEND THIS ENTIRE POST UNFAIRLY AND UNRELENTINGLY DUNKING ON ALL THINGS STAR TREK. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SCROLL PAST AND ENJOY YOUR DAY IF THAT WOULD UPSET YOU.

I dunno, that sounds exactly like Star Trek Next Gen to me. A lot of those episodes try to be all Metaphor about some social issue, aim for Center-Left in their politics, and somehow only end up hitting "no one should ever use transporters for anything."

Keep in mind, this is my list of all the good (non-reboot, non-Paramaount+) Star Trek stuff:

"The Trouble with Tribbles"

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Yes, this is the entire list. But I admit I haven't seen everything, just all the classic movies and random samplings from the various series. Yes, that includes "The Wrath of Kahn" and "The Best of Both Worlds" Neither really grabbed me.

But I'll give Star Trek this: "The Trouble with Tribbles" lived up to all the hype and was spectacular. The DS9 follow-up, sadly, seems to have been made after everyone involved in the franchise forgot what comedy is; I could see that episode striving to make a joke, but it could never quite get its hands on the right ingredients.

Anyway, @thekingofwinterblog continued with:

Like the stupid animated goofy spin off that is pretty much a rip off of rick and morty is unironically the best that modern Star Trek has tonoffer, and thats… Pretty sad.

But I hear that a lot of people like Rick & Morty, and I've even heard that it contains some actual real scifi concepts. (I've not seen it myself, and my understanding is that the fans are insufferable.) So it make sense that ripping R&M off would make the best Star Trek. I mean, there's a reason Star Trek started on a major television network, shrank down to a more obscure network, and then eventually died. Maybe it should have chased trends and/or tried to be real scifi earlier. It's why I'm so confused why anyone thought that Star Trek could be a draw for Paramount+, beyond getting the die-hard Starfleet-uniform-owning super-fans as a guaranteed audience.

But even if they're making weird extremist arguments for what they're doing with all the new Trek (and I admit I'll a little doubtful that your summary is capturing the full message), at least there's an attempt to put some kind of perspective into the story. Junk like 'The Rise of Skywalker' is terrible partially because the only meaning to be derived from it is what's there by accident. There's no coherent voice to it. It's pure derivative mush, poisoned by panicked attempts to please the worst kind of fans.

So being bad for reasons besides being boring garbage is actually doing fairly well for Star Trek. I applaud the new writers. XD

Sorry. If it sounds like I'm being really harsh to Star Trek, it's because I am. ;) I've never understood the appeal, beyond finding that the original Kirk/Spock/Bones dynamic could be enjoyable to watch if it wasn't buried in super-boring hour-long trudges. My brother loves to watch reruns of the various series, but it's never done anything for me when it isn't being a full-on comedy and/or ripping off Star Wars.

1 note · View note

goldenlaquer · 4 years

Note

Hey, can I ask for some headcanons, please? For Gin, Toshi, Sougo and Kamui. About how they were in a fight, separated from their so and something happened like an exposion or whatever, anyway the main point is that they thought that their so have died but later they see her alive and relatively unharmed. So the headcanons of them when they thought they lost their so and when they see that she is ok. Sorry, this is so specific and long, I'm just a slut for some angst and I love your writings

Thank you for the support and sorry for the wait! I don’t know if I’m that much good at conveying angst but let’s bring on the feels!

Gintama Headcanons:

Hijikata Toushirou:

Hijikata stands on top of a pile of rubble, and surveys the destruction around him.

His hands don’t shake. His feet are firm against the ground. His shoulders are straight and rigid against the fleeting wind. Smoke escapes him in steady stream, and when he inhales in, the dust and fire of the air sticks to the walls of his lungs like sludge.

To the men who stop to look at their vice-commander with their ugly concerns plastered on their ugly mugs: He’s fine.

To the Gorilla who can’t stop asking him the question every ten minutes and that, he really should take a break or else at this rate, he’ll collapse: He’s fine.

To the brat who stubbornly stays by his side like spit-up gum on the sole of his shoe: He’s fine, damn it, so go do your job and leave him alone.

For once, Sougo doesn’t have anything clever to quip back at him. He doesn’t need to-- the silence between them speaks better than words. And Hijikata hates what it says, so he turns back to the grey landscape, eyes darting and sifting through the mangled and charred parts to see something, anything that is you.

Nothing.

He reaches for a cigarette, pulls it out of his pocket like second nature. The lighter is the trickier to work. The blasted thing refuses to flicker on. Oh, the cigarette falls down. Hijikata bends to pick it up. He tries again. The cigarette falls down. He stares at it. His shoe crushes it. He’s stomping down hard. Sougo is still silent, watching. Hijikata doesn’t care.

The facade of normalcy is gone. Here he is: Taking his frustrations out on a sad little cig, like it’s the cause of all his fucking problems, like it’s going to bring you back. Harsh pants come out of his mouth, and in another series, they’d sound like something akin to sobs, but his face is dry.

“Hijikata.” He ignores Sougo. The cigarette is reduced to paper and dry leaves scuffed against concrete. “Hijikata.” He doesn’t answer.

Okita, with an eye-roll, kicks Hijikata square in the back and knocks him off the pile.

Sougo, what the fuck? He. Is. Mourning. Hijikata has always known Sougo to be insensitive, but this is blatantly crossing several lines and he clearly doesn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with.

But if it’s a fight that bastard wants, Hijikata will give it to him. He leaps up from the ground, ready to hand Sougo an express ticket to hell, misty eyes narrowing in anger as he looks up

and the breath is knocked out of him in a way that years of chain-smoking had miraculously failed to do

Standing before him, white particles clinging to your clothes, hair, and eyebrows, is the damn most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. The feet move faster than he can process, and by the time his arms are around you and he’s breathing in the scent he thought he’d lost forever

“Fuck.” Because that’s the only appropriate response he can say without his voice cracking. “Don’t do that again.”

Kamui:

Loss is not a new thing. It was in the labored rise and fall of his mother’s chest, the pallidness of her white skin. The feel of his sister’s small hands, fisting in his clothes and pleadingly tugging back, her blue eyes wide and wet. It was in the looming shape of his father’s retreating back.

But there were other, worthier things to focus on. The pain in his knuckles slamming against bone and muscle. The taut stretch of his lips as he licks his wounds, tasting metal and victory. The title of ‘Universe’s Strongest’ nearly within his grasp. He didn’t have time for the weak. Didn’t have time to be weak.

Loss is not new, and yet there is something about this loss. Now, Loss is a sentient being, latching to his throat and squeezing as he grapples through the mud.

Abuto’s face is too blank and too careful. His voice is low and calm and reasoning, and he is saying things, but Kamui doesn’t listen. The words ‘she’ and ‘gone’ don’t mix, they don’t make any sense, so why should he listen? He digs and digs and digs, not hearing, he can’t, his ears and eyes are filled with the same muddy brown that must also be filling yours. Kamui works even faster, his nails splintering against the rocks embedded in the wet ground.

Hair released from its braid, trussed and caked in dirt. Pupils dilated, black swallowing blue. His face abnormally slack as he claws in frenzy, in desperation at the ground like a wild animal.

There are few things in this world Kamui can’t fight. No matter his strength, one cannot simply beat Mother Nature into submission. But there is no excuse. If he cannot save one woman from something as stupid as dirt, then what is the point? What use is his strength? He didn’t leave that tiny, rainy planet, ignoring all the things left behind with it, to become this weakling who couldn’t even manage to keep you by his side like he promised.

He’s a young brat again, helplessness coloring every pore. A damsel in distress. Someone who can’t save, but needs saving. He is no different than the baldy. Unable to keep promises. Unable to protect. Unable to do anything. Was he always this fragile? Pathetic.

Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic. The word is a punishing mantra in his mind.

Something crashes into him. It’s not near enough to make him pause in his digging, but the something is tugging on his clothes. Incoherent, muffled shouting in his ears. He doesn’t pay it any mind because mud keeps slipping back in place despite all his useless strength and you’re still trapped, waiting for him--

“KAMUI!”

He blinks in surprise, snapping from the heavy cloud covering his mind. He’s flat on the ground, staring up at you. How he got there, he doesn’t know, but you are here in front of him, covered head-to-toe in mud and crying.

He is silent, watching as you blubber concerns and curses. A curious hand reaches out to your face in wonder, carefully tracing the path that a salty tear had made down your cheek. The familiarity of your soft skin warms his numb body and a small smile emerges from his lips.

As you sit on top of him, crying not because you are scared but because he’s such a stupid idiot, he realizes that that he isn’t all alone just yet, that there’s one thing that refuses to leave him.

Okita Sougo:

It’s happening again. And it honestly makes him want to laugh.

He doesn’t believe in it, karma, but when you think that you’ve gotten used to the pain of losing someone you love, his rotten, black heart has to go and get ripped out for the second time as if he forgot, as if he needed reminding that there’s no way someone like him deserves something as good as happiness. There’s no other explanation to this shit luck other than that, for the accumulation of every filthy deed he’s done with his filthy hands and every fucking sin he has committed once and twice and will most definitely commit thrice, someone has to pay for it.

And because Karma is two bitches and a half, that someone wasn’t him.

There it is. The laughter finally comes out as he looks at the torn fabric in his clenched fist. It comes out harsh and hollow and, if you listened hard enough, choked, but who’s checking? Not him. Not Mitsuba. And certainly not you.

He reported it to the vice-commander himself, voice robotic, telling how he was walking front of you when it happened, how the enemy somehow managed to predict your movements and ambushed the both of you on a bridge, how he had been unable to react in time to stop the silver flash of a knife and how the world tilted, too fast and too slow, and that there was a piece of hanging rope that he managed to snag on to with one hand and when he blindly flashed out the other to grasp at you, reaching through free air and snatching at cloth, it ripped from his fingers, and you fell to the chasm below. Deep enough, Okita said as he looked straight into Hijikata’s eyes, that death would be quick and painless.

If nothing else could go right for him, then at least for this, he hoped, even fucking prayed, that it was painless.

Hijikata doesn’t react to the report with anything unnecessary, just a stiff upper lip and an “okay” before he walks off to stand somewhere far enough, yet close enough. For all their differences, Hijikata knows. He understands losing youthful love, and that the pity that comes with it is nothing more than steaming trash. In this way and other ways that he’d sooner eat shit than to admit aloud, Okita is grateful for him.

He stops mid mirthless chuckle to shove the hand holding what’s left of you up to his eyes, slanting his head downwards so his bangs cover what he doesn’t want the world to know what he’s somehow still capable of. Hijikata is tactfully looking away. Over the distance, Kondo is bellowing orders to his men who keep a wide berth from the spot where their 1st Division Captain stands. This is the only opportunity he can afford to be an eighteen year old again. Sougo swallows thickly, feeling the roughness of fabric dampen against his eyelids.

Acutely, he hears the sound of footsteps. It is slow and steady and he thinks that they belong Kondo at first but the weight of them is too light for a gorilla. Before he can process this information further, the steps halt for several long seconds before starting again, this time faster and more urgent, lurching in his direction. Hijikata mutters an astounded “shit” but for whatever reason doesn’t move to intercept. Okita really isn’t in the mood to deal with dumbasses but the sword by his side is already unsheathed and he’s aiming his red eyes to glare at whoever the fuck--

Arms wrap around his waist. A face burrows into his chest. His knees almost give out, but his name is Okita Sougo and he has already maxed out his whiny bitch points for the next decade. Instead, he drops his sword to cup the back of your very-much-alive head, caressing the wet silk of it before threading his trembling fingers through the strands to

sharply tug you from his chest and grasp your cheeks with one hand, squeezing your expression to that of a startled fish.

“Now,” Okita murmers, the smirk on his lips at odds with how fucking great it feels to see you again. “What should I do with you?”

Sakata Gintoki:

Before they say anything, he knows.

He has seen that type of expression too many times to ever forget the set jaw, the horrible attempt at stilling a trembling bottom lip, the unshed tears of eyes that can’t seem to stop roving, unable to face the recipient of bad news for more than half a second, and the pallidness of knuckles straining against skin, holding onto their clothes like a lifeline.

He knows this expression so well he can gaze down at Shinpachi and Kagura with well-placed apathy, perfectly appearing as if his lungs aren’t threatening to collapse on itself when he notices who is not there with them, and tell them in his same old way to stop sucking on their teeth and finish what they can’t seem to get out because he has an appointment at the pachinko parlor at four and if they don’t finish up this job by three-thirty he is going to dock their nonexistent pay by 80%. It hides the rising nausea and stone weight of the stomach well.

This time, however, his casual rudeness doesn’t make them react the way he wants them to, it only makes them fold into themselves even further.

The thing is, no matter how many times you see it and know better than to entertain it, there’s always this one glimmer of hope, so ridiculously strong that you’d gladly pray to anyone and everyone, even if you don’t really believe, because if anything is possible then it better be possible that this isn’t bad news, or that even if it is bad news then the worst of the pinched expression is just a by-product of eating food gone bad or the pain of an ingrown toenail, that it isn’t about someone dying or dead.

But life rarely goes like that, and Gintoki lives in an extra-shittier life compared to most people.

When you stumble across them, hair singed and smelling of gunpowder and smoke, there is something so thick and so wrong with the air, something that makes you stop from crying out in elation at seeing the people you love most. Shinpachi is fastidiously rubbing his eyes and Kagura has her face buried against Sadaharu’s fur and Gintoki

Gintoki looks alone. And you don’t think you have ever seen him look like that, so withdrawn into himself that even if he is surrounded by people, there’s nothing that can come close to him, nothing that can ease the dull bleakness of his eyes and the defeated hunch of his shoulders. He looks like a single thread worn too thin, on the verge of snapping. He looks like nothing matters anymore. Nothing.

You dislike it. You hate it. You hate it so much, to see this man turn into something so unfamiliar and terrifying and gut out. You don’t know this Gintoki. You want the other one back, the one who wouldn’t hesitate to smear dog shit and boogers on the back of your jacket and the one who doesn’t really mind it when you take a sip of his spoiled strawberry milk.

So when you shout out loudly, so loud that vibrates the space, that you’re here and alive and that you didn’t, couldn’t die because how could such a measly explosion off you when there were idiots waiting back home for you, to see Kagura and Shinpachi fly to you, screaming and whooping as they open their arms wide for your hug, snot running down their noses, and Gintoki snap his head up, disbelieving at first, yet searching your form with a speck of hope that brings life back to his dead eyes, and when he finds whatever he was searching for, he goes to you on steady feet, folding his arms around the group, gaze still drinking your form up as he leans across Shinpachi’s and Kagura’s heads to bump his forehead against yours, his breath sighing out something like relief-- it almost makes you cry, or maybe it does because you can feel something wet trailing down your face.

Gintoki is silent for the most part, because Kagura and Shinpachi are doing most of the talking for him, but when he does speak, it is to say:

“Damn, there goes the life insurance money.”

#gintama #gintama headcanons #gintama x reader #gintama imagine #sakata gintoki #kamui yato #hijikata toushirou #okita sougo #answered ask #asks closed

244 notes · View notes