#also maybe that at least to some extend all of them are tumblr fandoms | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

landofspaceandrainbows · 1 year

Text

Ok, this is the post where i'm going to get potentially stupid and sinful (for tumblr) and mix politics and fandom. and it might suck. Obviously we don't live in a world with this brand of supernatural shit, this is just a metaphor, an you're welcome to say 'this is a bad metaphor" and disregard it, or argue, or argue about any other aspect of it. And in a sense i think this works because The Magnus Archives is about fear and all that icky shit. So maybe it only works that far. So if you've listened to TMA...

this is also basically a response to this post https://landofspaceandrainbows.tumblr.com/post/716770248396800001/jambeast-captainjonnitkessler and this post https://jambeast.tumblr.com/post/716765867387617280/ok-i-think-i-figured-out-what-the-fuck-is-going on @jambeast 's blog and that whooole discussion.

but basically, this is an interesting discussion, but there's a lot of fraught bs going on, elsewhere in the chain - and a lot of it is basically ok, it's argument.

ok, this is kinda falling apart here, i'll try to put it back together. I'm seeing at least two threads here.

first part: somewhere along the reblog chain there's bringing up the idea that some people may just be seeing their culture as "default" and "less religious" and therefore "less scary" and other cultures as "less familar" "more religious" and "scary" which is - sort of a good point in many cases. there's a rather neat sounding line about "the call to prayer sounding unfamiliar, but the sound of church bells sounding as comforting background noise" cool, or semi-cool. and genuinely well said. but then it connects it to "being privileged which... ehhh. that's when things get dicy.

but i'll be coming back to that way later.

Ok, back to the magnus archives.

Thinking about Gerry Keay and Agnes Montague.

Thinking about Jared Hopworth and Mike Crew and Jon Sims.

Like the fire, the lighters, all that jazz. Like i think it can be easy to wonder why would anyone talk about leaving families, communities, books behind except as an act of coercion. "why would anyone burn a book?" "why would anyone burn a house?" "why would anyone leave a family or community unless it's some sort of forced plot?" but what if you grew up in Mary Keay's library? Or in Hilltop House? Would you walk in then? Would you find a volume to burn?

Likewise, i don't find the boneturner's tale and ex altiora frightening. I bet Jared hopworth doesn't mind the boneturner's tale too much I bet mike crew enjoys ex altiora. The statements, properly organized hepl people research, understand, and hunt down problems, and help keep Gertrude Robinson and Jon Sims going more viscerally.

But you might say, that's a fucked up implication because those are all monsters. and separately from being monsters, they all hurt people. Which, fair. But it's a metaphor, and maybe a bad one. And plus we all sort of like them. Jon, yes, gertrude, michael, helen, mike crew - maybe. And as above, Agnes? also a monster. and Gerry - hopped up on so much weird shit, just dripping with Eyes, so whatever. If we respect them, we might be able to extend that.

But basically all the above have reasons to team up when Fucked UP shit is about to go down, no one likes the Eternal Circus of The Extinction. We've seen it work.

Anyway, there's reasons not everyone is gonna like the web or the desolation or whatever, there's reasons why people don't like being infested with bad community and oppositely why people aren't gonnal like the idea of the stuff they like going away - and why they'd fear it's burning, even when it's not particularly likely to happen at that exact moment, because fear goes deep like that.

So in my ideal world, all the cosmopolitan atheists can go watch MAG 169: Fire Escape (which tbf, i almost couldn't watch straight through because it shows a deep connection and comfort that at this point I cannot have, except in little bits hedged about with nomadism and desolation. - but it's good!)

And all the people who have found a tradition they like can go listen to MAG 4: Page Turner and MAG 59: Recluse and MAG: 67 Burning Desire

And both could listen to Scrutiny, ig.

But anyway, like, even normies don't always like dumbshit hegemony. atheists and agnostics and freethinkers wouldn't benefit from more normative religiosity, and neither do members of minority religions. even normies and christians hate jacked up abortion bans, and even if they don't hate them they can still suffer under them.

In any case, i remember the messed up stuff i saw, and am getting away from. and it's mostly bad atheist shit. so sometimes atheists raise my hackles up, but i suspect now that's because i'm my own kind of "off". we probably don't want to hear from eachother all that much.

----

but anyway, back to the beginning. sometimes people fear cute little bugs because they aren't familiar. there's cute little bugs everywhere and they're mostly harmless, and they're even there being cute in horror movies. But if someone's afraid of fire, or someone's taking a flamethrower to cute little bugs, sometimes it's because they're "privileged" and never went camping or out of bug spray or had a cockroach in their house. But they could have seen fucking Jane Prentiss or have lived at Hilltop House. And assuming things can be ok in most circumstances until it gets really fucking weird.

And this is the fucking weird everybody's hurt website.

and none of this makes hurting bugs ok - but it does require A Different Response, JFC.

Most of the time, the people who have the most reason to hate and fear church bells are the ones who grew up hearing them. And the ones who fear the call to prayer may have grown up hearing it. And there's a separate issue of what it's ok or not ok to do about that.

----

Ok stepping down from the metaphor, holy hell the assumptions. And the republican agenda now sucks.

But basically when some hardcore "burn the past" type on here calls something "surface level fun" it's basically a compliment - though you may disagree or find the worldview twisted. because the "deeper than surface level stuff" in their experience is always UGLY. Likewise when someone speaks of "culture" and "underpinnings to everything" they can be talking about something that's been genuinely nice to them.

But it's gonna be hard to work together, if it's even worth it, because like, when you hear "of course people are going to leave their communities and families" if you have a nice place - there's a history of forced removal and so that's gonna bring up some very ugly questions about "WHY they would leave". But if you've been in a rough circumtance, "the second the door opens, people will walk out, and resources open that door" will make sense because you walked out. And people going "of course the Suffering is worth it for our stability and continuation." is gonna sound SUS as hell, because.... that's also what every sketchy relationship on the fucking earth is justified by. But sometimes it's more a matter of a minor suffering for something wanted. etc.

But there is a reason that if we ever do form an Atheist - Theist alliance (and given they're ok with dumb insular in-jokes) i'd like it to be called

Leitners & Lighters

or the Gerry Keay and Mike Crew society.

#politics #my posts #long post #ok strap in #time to be stupid #time for me to be stupid #tma

6 notes · View notes

jjurassicxslytherdor · 1 year

Text

hi there! this is gonna be my first tumblr story so I hope you enjoy it. I have other works on other apps but I will not be sharing that haha.

I’m gonna start with just some y/n drabble that I have muse for. I’m open to notes and for requests ;)

Title: After Life

Warnings: mentions of death

Tags: x reader, fantasy, stranger things, eddie munson

Fandom: stranger things

Characters: eddie munson x reader

An old phonebook. An old, dusty, water damaged phonebook sat at your fingertips. It had to be ancient- no one used these things anymore. The world had Google! Or yellowpages even! Although, that seemed a bit outdated as well. The year was 2023. You flipped through the old pages which made a crunching sound each time they were turned. You knew it was a shot in the dark, but you also couldn’t help but be curious as to what possible outcomes there could be from this experiment. Your finger traced down the words of the book until they landed on one name: Eddie Munson. The section was equipped with his phone number and address. There had been other words next to the name, possibly some numbers, but they had vanished with the time and with the weathering of the book. You jotted down the name and address and put the book back on the shelf.

You gave it some time before deciding to act. You had almost forgotten about your soon to be pen pal when you stumbled upon the note you had taken. You figured it was a sign. You grabbed a pen and some paper and began writing.

Eddie,

I know you don’t know who I am… I don’t even know who you are… but I was hoping to find a penpal. What better way to do so then randomly!

This was starting to feel strange… maybe it wasn't such a good idea… he could be an old man for all you knew! Something inside you urged to continue anyways…

Feel free to reply, but do not feel pressured to. My address will be attached as the return address. My name is Y/n L/n. I live in the US.

It's good to not be super specific in cases like this.

I figured this could be a judgment free zone. I had to get this out to someone, and there aren’t many people here who would take the time to listen to my problems. I don’t have any friends… at least not anymore. Not since I decided I liked my life better when I was being true to myself. My friends didn't end up liking the me I chose to be. Have you ever felt like an outcast?

Yours truly,

Is that too forward?

Your humble penpal, Y/n.

Within the next day or so, the letter was signed, sealed, and delivered so to speak. Days went by, you figured it had gotten lost or that the receiver simply tore it up. You had no idea of the journey this little envelope took.

The afterlife is a concept which not many people can fully agree upon. It has been portrayed many different ways throughout the years. In this case, the afterlife was a blue tinted village that lay underground. Tunnels connected thousands of villages and the blue light extended through them all. The light didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. It just washed over the village and its residence like a filter. Eddie sat at a bar, tended by an older man who loved nothing more than serving drinks. He poured a glass and handed it off to the curly haired man. Eddie still wore his green vest and a bandana around his head. It wasn’t because he had to. He had died in it after all. But he chose to keep it on. He feared he would be unrecognizable without it. Like if his friends ever joined him, not for a long while he hoped, they would be able to recognize him instantly. A buzzing sound was heard in Eddie's ear as a small creature appeared.

“Mail for the deceased.” It said in a gravelly but high pitched voice. He handed an envelope to Eddie and one to the bartender. The bartender gently laughed.

“She’s sent another one… she still thinks about me.” He said. It was from his wife who had outlived him. It had been nearly 10 years, but she never failed to write him love letters. The postal service was funny like that. Sometimes, mail is sent to the afterlife. If you’ve ever wondered where that Amazon package was lost… it may have ended up in the hands of the deceased. Boy do they love getting gifts like that.

Eddie had only ever gotten one letter. It was one written by his uncle as a final goodbye. Eddie read it and couldn’t bear going back to see him. He had the option- to haunt somewhere- but he knew he would be much happier moving on. He could see his friends in the afterlife eventually anyways. He didn’t recognize the name on the envelope. “Who is it from, boy? You've been dead for a while now…” He started, before he remembered that time worked differently there. Though Eddie had been dead for nearly 20 years, he’d only been in the afterlife for about 10.

“I don’t know…” He said. He looked into the other room where a stage was set up. He still played music in the afterlife. He had received a copy of his guitar and continued to play it. Sometimes, the afterlife reminded him of the Upside Down. But it was much calmer. No one was watching. He kept on his merry way. An eternity in a happy place.

He ripped open the envelope and read its contents. “It's just… someone who wants to be a penpal.” He said. He laughed softly. “Poor thing…” he read the words.

Have you ever felt like an outcast?

He shifted in his seat. Of course he had! He was boiling with advice he could give to this person! Advice he could give to you!

“But we can’t write back to them, can we?” He shrugged it off. The bartender was about to chuckle and agree with him. However instead he stopped in the middle of cleaning a glass and tilted his head.

“Well… I don’t believe I’ve ever tried.” He said. “By all means, boy! Write back! If you can communicate across planes… then I could talk to my wife! My Carol!” he said. He didn’t want to try the experiment out himself because… well… because what if it did work? It might do Carol more harm than good… but this new penpal of Eddie’s… they had no idea that he was dead. They would never suspect it. Eddie could give his advice and not have to cause a disruption between life and what comes next!

He bolted out of his bar stool and ran to a room he called his own. He pulled out paper and a pen and began writing.

To be continued

#x reader #eddie munson #fantasy #stranger things #au

8 notes · View notes

lonestardaily · 2 years

Photo

Each week Lone Star Daily looks to provide you with a decent (not comprehensive) list of the fanfics that have been posted for the week. The week runs from Friday - Thursday, as that way it does give us an opportunity to put the list together. There’s no requirement to tag us as we will check the tags #911 lone star fic and #911lsfic while also combing through ao3. We currently are only going to post new fics, not updates. You can check out this week’s fics below the cut.

Please feel free to give this post a boost to give our writers a chance to receive some love for the work they do for the fandom.

(if your fic is not tagged with a tumblr, it’s because we couldn’t find one - feel free to send us a message and we’ll be happy to add one)

TARLOS FICS

forever & always by @binancygillian

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | G | 7.1K)

He'd been right about only having so many moments with Carlos. He just didn't expect it to come to an end so soon after getting engaged to the love of his life. They'd wasted too many moments, those handful of months they were broken up taking up precious time. Now he has one more loss to add to his scarred past.

You were hurt, but I felt the pain by @sapphire11

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | M | 6.8K)

TK stumbles into a bad situation at home and Carlos races in to save him. Of course nothing is ever that easy with them and things quickly turn from bad to worse. \

(not afraid of) living on a fault line by @reyesstrand

↳ (TK x Carlos | Coda | T | 2.8K)

TK opens his eyes. A sliver a moonlight cuts delicately across Carlos' face and along the top of his shoulder, and it feels...holy, maybe, kind of like they're being reborn. He surges up to kiss him, feeling it finally sinking in that he really gets to have this—that they get to have this.

i am desperate if nothing else by @terramous

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | N/R | 3.9K)

TK was the first one into the stall, catching sight of the sweat-slicked black curls that made his heart leap to his throat. “Alright can I get some space with the patient please?”

The officers parted easily, leaving TK to kneel on the floor of the bathroom stall and sling his bag off of his shoulder, unzipping it quickly. Carlos was leaning heavily against the side, sweat dripping off of him by the bucket. From what he had gathered from the other officer’s story, there was no way Carlos wasn’t dehydrated by now.

start of something good by @stories-in-howls

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | T | 8.9K)

Carlos has to step in when someone is distracting a service dog from doing his work. He helps the owner and later can't get him out of his head.

the easy way out and the hardest part by @terramous

↳ (TK x Carlos, TK x Andrea | Hurt/Comfort | N/R | 1.7K)

He’d watched his father get caught in too many collapsing buildings to count, it was his thing, apparently. Hell he’d pulled his father out of multiple, after minutes or hours of waiting with baited breath, thinking that he’d wasted his last opportunity to see his dad alive. He’d watched his team scramble for any signs as to how they could get Judd out again. Heard about the collapsed gym that nearly took Paul’s life.

So clearly the universe had decided that it was his turn, after all, you can never have too many near death experiences. At least if you’re TK Strand and you might as well be medically declared to be immortal.

i’m yours to choose by @kiras-sunshine

↳ (TK x Carlos | Coda | T | 3.6K)

a series of short tarlos one shots based on a list of reassurance prompts

the water’s getting colder, let me in your ocean by @terramous

↳ (TK x Carlos | PWP | E | 3K)

“Yeah,” TK said, straightening his back and extending a hand like he usually did when he wanted Carlos to take it. “You.”

TK Strand was going to be the death of him.

“Can I shower first?” Carlos asked, not even surprised when he was met with TK shaking his head and dragging his bottom lip between his teeth.

“I need you, now.”

Carlos was a first responder after all, if someone needed him he was there to help.

we can carry allt his weight together by @terramous

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | N/R | 1.8K)

“I got an interesting call today,” he hummed, sweeping over to the other side of the kitchen, retrieving a pair of mugs.

Carlos perked up at that, what an odd way to start a conversation. “Yeah?”

“Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t reach you and also had my number on file.”

to tell the world by falloutmars

↳ (TK x Carlos | Fluff | G | 1.2K)

TK and Carlos go grocery shopping for their engagement party.

with every breath i take, a thousand times yes by westallenkiss

↳ (TK x Carlos, Carlos x Michelle | Fluff | T | 1.8K)

TK and Carlos wake up engaged, it really happened. Carlos needs to tell his best friend the news and TK over hears everything and becomes a sobbing mess.

engagment heat by Ruby_slippers

↳ (TK x Carlos | Fluff | E | 1.1K)

TK is hot for Carlos, has been from the minute that he met him. He didn't think that he could get any hotter for him. But that engagement ring on Carlos's finger is doing strange things to him...

"Do you want me to take it off, will that calm you down?"

Tears fill TK's eyes "NO! I never want you to take it off, ever. Please tell me you won't."

"I won't baby, just get control of yourself."

All my Nights with You by @ramblingdisaster73

↳ (TK x Carlos | 5+1 | T | 6.9K)

5 Times TK keeps/wakes Carlos up in the middle of the night

+ 1 Time Carlos keeps/wakes up TK

The Altar is My Hips by @iboatedhere

↳ (TK x Carlos | Marriage Smut | E | 1.6K)

Carlos presses TK back against the bathroom door and locks it.

It’s the first time Carlos has taken a hand off of him since….god, TK doesn’t know when.

The Ring-In by ifyoustay & LolaLand

↳ (TK x Carlos | Fluff/Mild Angst | M | 9K)

When TK receives a call from an old friend offering him a last minute invite to a wedding in Hawaii, he jumps at the chance to finally wrangle his fiancé into a vacation. Unfortunately, TK isn't the only old friend invited.

A Thousand Times Yes by @chaotictarlos

↳ (TK x Carlos | Fluff & Smut | E | 1.9K)

TK and Carlos celebrate their engagement.

My One and Only by @ravens-words

↳ (TK x Carlos, TK x Alex | Angst | T | 1.2K)

"No." Fueled by anger, he managed to wrench his hand out of Alex's and shoved him away. "I'm happy here. I have someone I love, someone I trust, waiting for me at home. I built a life for myself here, and there's no room for you in it. Leave, Alex," he said through gritted teeth, and shoved past him.

"Did you ask him to marry you?"

TK froze and turned around slowly. "I did."

"Where's your ring then?" he pressed. "Where's his?"

“Leave," he said, and with that, he walked away.

A Blast from The Past by @rangergurlgleek1211

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | N/R | 3K)

It's been three years and Tk and Carlos are happy, they have a routine and can't wait to spend every spare moment together. Tk thought his day was going to be wonderful, until an unexpected guest shows up and knocks him off his feet, literally.

I’d never ask for anything again by Road1985

↳ (TK x Carlos | Future Fic | G | 2.6K)

It's been five years since TK and Alex have seen each other.... not after what happened. Now a photo posted by TK to celebrate Tomas' second birthday makes Alex think it's time to make things right with him or at least talk to each other again and maybe... just maybe, apologize for what happened.

crash into my heart by @halsteadmarchs

↳ (TK x Carlos | Hurt/Comfort | T | 2K)

The pieces in the air were coming down from the broken roof and sprinkling around the broken structure. It was settling around him enough that he couldn’t see his hand more than two feet in front of him. The metal on his finger was feeling tighter and tighter as he felt a wave of pain go through his thigh as he saw a long piece of metal jabbing through it. All he could think about at this moment was that he would never be able to slide the matching ring onto his fiancé’s finger.

Why did this day have to go so wrong?

He was just meant to be buying some food for the party.

Their engagement party.

OTHER PAIRINGS/CHARCTER FICS

my future by @marwani-strickland

↳ (Carlos x Andrea x Gabriel | Coda | T | 1.2K)

carlos tells gabriel and andrea about his and tk's engagement.

#ls daily ff #911 lone star #911 lone star fic

35 notes · View notes

emi-writings · 8 months

Note

with all due respect, im not sure I follow your reasoning behind “CC!SBI doesn’t exist”. C!SBI I can understand and agree with, but SBI as a concept extends far beyond just ‘a joke one of them made while tired’?

the core of who is or isn’t “SBI” is pretty solely tied to MCC4, where they promised tommy that if they won he could be added to SBI. This shows, one, that it’s a label they at least use with one another (thus it isn’t just some ‘fandom’ invention with no basis), and two, established who was in SBI— Tommy had to be “formally” added, and since no one else was then the group remains “”exclusive””. Since then they’ve used the term to refer to that group of 4 many times (such as various 4/4 jokes, Techno’s gravity mod video being referred to as a ‘sleepy bois recording’ when being made, etc)

I definitely believe that SBI has multiplie associated CCs, such as Niki, Tubbo, Jack, etc— and I personally don’t care if ppl call them SBI as well! — but others may indeed be more shocked by that because SBI, the 4/4, in terms of the CCs, ….IS a pretty established thing?

I don’t want this message to come across as like. Aggressive or defensive, so I apologize if it has, but I’m just confused as to your own statement because it just seems Factually Incorrect to me— the roles they play may vary, but the people included are pretty clearly defined. Could you maybe clarify more?

So, I watch a lot of Philza streams, including the hardcore streams. And Phil has mentioned, multiple times, that the SBI term is unofficial. Yes, they acknowledge it and are aware of it, but Phil has repeated multiple times that it isn’t official. He’s said so before and after MCC4 (and honestly, do you really think they really would have banned Tommy from "exclusive SBI events" if they had lost?).

The whole SBI thing started out because Phil, Techno and Wilbur all thought that the idea of sending some random picture of a fish on twitter was funny, and Phil decided that maybe the fans should get at least some kind of context, so sent a message he thought was funny. But again, he has stated that it’s not an official term.

And a lot "SBI 4/4" things are made at the expense of fans (the Philza stream where they all kept leaving and joining, the Technoblade Twitch stream with a TommyInnit jumpscare at the end, etc).

It is a fan term. That doesn’t mean that it’s less valid. Especially since they do all care about their fans, so they do acknowledge it as something their fans want.

I feel like I have more to say about this, but I am also very eepy and capitalism is a hellscape. So.

My main point wasn’t even really about SBI, just about how on multiple websites (Tumblr, Ao3, Wattpad, Twitter), things are tagged as SBI and feature other CCs or Cs, but no one has made a fuss about them (like Ranboo, Tubbo, Fundy), but I add Niki in the mix and that’s were the line is.

#sbi #sleepy boys inc #sleepyboisinc #sleepy bois inc

2 notes · View notes

aotopmha · 1 year

Text

My blog turned 8 years old today!

My activity on Tumblr started as an anon on @momtaku 's blog somewhere during the Uprising arc of Attack on Titan.

I was inspired to start a blog because I've always loved talking about/criticising media, I really started to enjoy the insight of a number of the content creators for the series and along with this interest, the series itself showed up at the right time and right place for me, being about themes I care about and having flaws that I found interesting, too.

At that time AoT didn't have the issues I ended up having with it (despite of which I still have a soft spot for it), but it ended up being a very important, even a somewhat formative series for me although I technically wasn't at a formative age anymore because it served as a proxy for me to develop my voice as someone who likes criticism.

Despite my issues with the story, I think there were moments and points where it was very moving and powerful and none of the issues that showed up later removed that for me.

If it wasn't for AoT, I would've never sought out certain perspectives, never met certain people or sought out certain pieces of media.

I only recently, about 7-8 years after finding AoT found a story that I simply *care* about this much, even if I think some other series do what AoT does better.

Above all AoT made me care deeply to the point I wrote 1000s and 1000s of words about it across 8+ years.

And so here I am 8 years later.

The same yet older and wiser and different. I'd argue much more patient and much more open-minded. Maybe a better writer.

And probably not even 10% of that growth was because of AoT, but I certainly feel it at least played a part and that is very rare for a piece of media for me.

Very few pieces of media I've consumed in life have prepetuated change in me personally, but I will eternally remember them and I think even if my relationship with them may change or maybe some outside influence might change my perspective of them (it's entirely possible Hajime Isayama might end up being a complete asshole for whatever reason instead of just making a few jokes that cross some lines or having a 9-10 year old tweet or blog post saying dumb shit that contradicts his own series), the good in them will stay with me forever.

But the most important detail of all in this is that I mostly had fun. My current issues with fandom don't extend to specific series, but rather the general internet space.

The nature of a lot of recent discussion in fandom just isn't that interesting for me.

Tribalistic competition between communities of series, equating depiction to approval, removing feelings from media disscussion, fear of depicting loss or failure, criticising characters for acting human at all – all of these discussion trends remove why I like media in the first place and make it all pretty uninteresting to me.

People are complicated and not always right and the conflict arising from being a person is what keeps me coming back to media.

That's the art I look for because that's what makes me care and draws me in.

Hey, if you like that kind of discussion, more power to you! But I just don't find it engaging or substantial.

I consume media mainly to think about various topics I find interesting, to think about life and feelings.

Sometimes a simple series with simple ideas is nice to chill to once in a while, but I often lose interest in those kinds of series because they remain simple and thus become repetitive in a very specific way.

And during these 8 years, this perspective is also something that I slowly refined. My basic beliefs as a human being haven't changed for a long time, but the nuances and specifics have. These years simply helped me define them better – what I believe in and what I look for.

And here's to many more years of analysis and thank you to everyone who likes my stuff!

#Aotopmha talks #Thank you to my followers!

2 notes · View notes

mylittleredgirl · 2 years

Text

dear yuletide writer (2022!)

Happy Yuletide! Thank you so much for writing fic for me. I'm mylittleredgirl both on ao3 and tumblr.

I’m pretty easily delighted, so do your thing and I will love it! Please take my suggestions and prompts as random ideas in case you're drawing a blank, rather than specific requests, because I love to be surprised by things i didn't even consider.

This letter has some expanded general likes/dislikes and then just a compilation of what i put in the optional details boxes. Anonymous asks are open on this tumblr if you have questions!

General things I love:

happy or hopeful endings

episode-related fic

pining (especially no-i’m-definitely-NOT-jealous pining)

hurt/comfort (especially oh-my-god-you're-not-dead)

friendship & family fic

canon divergence

smut is great but not required

kinks enjoyed: soft dom/sub (bondage & praise yes, pain & shaming no); amtdi; overindulgence (food, drinks, whatevs); masturbation (mutual, pining, whatevs); i’ve never said no to a quality blow/hand job fic

Things not so enjoyed:

character death

hurt no comfort

crossovers except within the extended canon universe (like star trek, and i suppose... reality.... is an extended canon universe for an rpf fandom...)

historical or supernatural AUs (no pride-and-prejudice or zombies)

supernatural elements are actually fine (like telepathy, psychic powers, soulmate stuff, whatever) but i specifically want to avoid zombies & vampires

character-bashing: i usually like everyone in canon, including canon love interests that are not my preferred pairing

Fandoms requested:

Stargate Atlantis RPF (chars: Torri, Joe)

I’m really into the temptation ~Oh No We Mustn’t~ (or the corollary: ~Oh No Looks Like We Did~) nature of this pairing.

Anything from friendship/pining to endgame OTP works for me, but I would love them to yield to temptation at least once. ;)

Prompt idea: What if Torri's with someone else and now it's Joe's turn to be jealous?

Prompt idea: Maybe one or both of them don't actually remember what happened last night...

Jake 2.0 (chars: Jake, Diane)

This is the rarest fandom, so there is no way you're here to write this

If you ARE here to write this, you can literally write anything and I will love you for life

Anything at all

Prompt idea: Anything to do with their amnesia almost-romance

Prompt idea: Jake and Diane ending up in the field together, where suddenly Jake is the Spy Expert (except that’s not a high bar to clear in this scenario, so probably Kyle has to rescue them both)

Prompt idea: "Future-fic" from the show's point of view. How does the nanite premise work with our modern smart-everything technology? What mischief does Jake get up to? Alternately: how might it harm him?

Lost in Space (chars: Maureen, John)

The Robinsons are good for all moods and ratings!

I love family and parenting stories, so feel free to include any/all of their family/found family.

Angst is fine along the way, but happy endings only for the Robinsons please 💗

John and Maureen are Very Sexy in a consensual kink sort of way.

Prompt idea: How do they restore and reward each other after these acts of heroism and genius that take so much out of them?

Fandom-specific DNW beyond the general ones listed up top: incest; any age-inappropriate relationships for Will or Penny; not super into Don/Judy but I can live with it; I believe The Robot Does Not And Should Not Fuck.

Fandom-specific likes: the soft D/s I usually enjoy can go pretty hard for this pairing, but I prefer it limited to the bedroom rather than a 24-hour scene

Cheers (chars: Sam, Diane)

This couple is an absolute disaster, but I would have loved them to annoy each other til death do they part

Partly to protect the rest of the world from having to date either one of them tbh

Really anything at any part of their relationship would be wonderful

Prompt idea: What if we ignore canon and they actually stay in touch during / she actually comes back after her writing retreat like she promised 🥺

Prompt idea: Also can you imagine her co-owning the bar, like can you imagine.

Prompt idea: For an angstier mood, how do they support each other (well or very badly) in the ongoing mental health & addiction challenges that probably won't entirely go away?

Lower Decks (char: Mariner)

I love all everyone, literally, all of them so much, both the lower deckers and the bridge crew. Please use as many of them as you like!

Gen fic preferred for this fandom.

I don't ship Mariner & Boimler romantically, but they are platonic besties for life.

All the friendships on this show are legendary.

Prompt idea: One of those odd-couple characters-all-stuck-with-random-partners stories (like "Disaster" or "Starship Down," but not necessarily a disaster), especially if Mariner gets stuck with her mom.

Prompt idea: Mariner in the background of a DS9 episode, especially an episode with Shenanigans.

Fandom-specific notes: I usually DNW historical AUs, but time-travel and holodeck shenanigans are welcome!

Fandom-specific likes: gen-fic, shenanigans, crossovers with other Star Trek canon.

Twin Peaks (chars: Cooper, Harry, Audrey)

I prefer fic that primarily uses canon from the first two TV seasons, since I haven't seen "The Return" yet (but if you do use season three, spoilers are totally fine).

I listed Audrey, Cooper, and Harry because I love them all, but you don't need to include all three.

I ship Cooper with both Harry and Audrey, but with Audrey/Cooper I'd like it to recognize that Dale Cooper is an Upstanding Morally Responsible FBI Agent and he would have to wrestle with that.

Gen fic is fine too (Cooper/Twin Peaks otp?).

Canon divergent AUs are welcome.

Prompt idea: In a canon-divergent AU where Cooper doesn't end up in the lodge for 25 years, his evolving divided loyalties between his life in the FBI and his heart in Twin Peaks.

Prompt idea: Harry wants to rescue Cooper, but he's going to need help.

Prompt idea: Cooper needs Audrey's help with an undercover assignment.

Thank you again for being forced by the matching algorithm to write for me! Happy Yuletide!

💖 mylittleredgirl

#yuletide

4 notes · View notes

decayedhearts · 2 years

Text

Tagged by: @muraenide thank you :3

Tagging: any moot who hasn’t been tagged yet !

TEN Q’S:

1. When are you usually online?

I’m kinda online on discord most of the day, because I have it on my phone. I don’t always read messages or reply though. On tumblr I’m online on evenings, but not every day. I don’t have regular online times to be honest :)

2. What verses are you involved in outside of this page?

I have 3402384 verses in my head and not enough time to write any of them. I never counted, I don’t know :) Some are more developed, or plotted with other people, some are just extended headcanons or ideas I haven’t written down yet. I should probably do a verse page sometime, but I am not that organized~

3. What is your biggest RP pet peeve?

Character/ship policing and cancel culture. And on a less serious note, people whose thread RP replies are a summary of my initial post from their character’s perspective as exclusively internal monologue with no new actions for me to reply to in my next answer :)))) That makes me feel like I am writing a fanfiction on my own.

4. Are you drawn to specific types of muses?

Maybe? But I’ve always had quite a variety of muses in all my fandoms. I do tend to make everyone angsty and depressed headcanons though :D So maybe my type just is “secretly depressed”, and I like insane villain characters that I get cancelled for like Viserys, Ardyn, or Wen Ruohan. Oh also, male muses. I almost never write female muses.

5. Are there recurring themes in your writing that people might not notice?

Ehmm, not sure, actually. I tend to recycle tropes that I love every now and then, but those aren’t specific to me. I think with certain characters there are often themes of loneliness and accepting a bitter fate that I like to throw into my stories. But I also usually write happy endings. I always fall into the same h0rny tropes, too. Haha.

6. What are your favorite RP trends?

Meme sentences !! They’re perfect for people who are too busy for full-blown threads, they’re great ice breakers, they make good crack ship moments, they’re just awesome. Dashboard/tag games (like quizzes) are fun too! I actually also really like the icon trend. We used to RP with gigantic GIFs of various sizes haha, icons make everything look very neat.

7. What is your process for starting a new story with someone?

Usually one of us has an idea, in my case that’s often specific scenes that I then develop a setting out of, and then we yell at each other in excitement, or we plot like mature adults (lol). Lately I have been too busy for rp threads tho, so it’s mostly just been.. memes set in specific verses.

8. How do you feel about duplicates?

I don’t mind them, I’ve always had a least a few friends who wrote the same muses as me. Sometimes it makes me insecure about my own portrayal to see others who are super amazing good at writing them, or are very active while I am super slow, but that is 100% my issue and nobody else’s. I would never want to discourage someone from writing the same (canon) muse as me, and I don’t avoid them either.

9. How long have you been involved in roleplaying?

For almost 17 years now.

10. Is there a muse or verse you wish you could write in, but haven’t?

All my muses and verses, man. I have so little energy to write lately I’m not making any progress 😥 I have a lot of ideas and things discussed and ships in the pipeline but actual writing is not happening lately.

#( tag game. )#( out of wonderland. )

3 notes · View notes

anonofseasons · 9 months

Note

What do your characters look for in a partner romantically? Personality/looks if they have a specific type?

Thank you for the ask! This is a fun and interesting question. :)

I’m not entirely sure which characters you want to hear about most, so I’ll focus on the Liddell kids. I have trouble with tumblr refusing to post anything long (not an issue I had in the past on tumblr, since I’d post chapters of stories on here), so if anyone wants to hear about other characters, I’ll do them in separate posts/asks. ^^

For all of the kids, however, someone “not like Vivian” is important in a partner! ahahaha Answers below cut ;)

I’ll start with Sophie, since she’s actually had romantic partners. She’s been in several relationships, even if Brielle and Rhett are the only two times she’s ever been married. As far as personality, she seeks those who are kind and make her laugh. People she can relax around. Those who enjoy a bit of mystery and things that are whimsical, if only because she’s anxious that revealing she’s a spirit could total the relationship.

For looks, she tends to be one of those “fall in love with the person and start seeing all the beauty of their features even more” people, but she does like pretty eyes and a kind smile to attract her attention first. :)

I’ve mentioned Shannon is aroace before, in that he’s never experienced any sort of arousal or romantic attraction to people. This has nothing to do with his upbringing, although that does affect him having any partners. He might thrive in a queerplatonic polyship someday. For now, I’ll just be grateful he’s warming to his siblings and understanding that Phineas’s other kids are also his found family.

Shannon would require that partners not be anything like Vivian and Graham. That extends to more than personality. Maybe he needs a quiet dork of a partner who enjoys reading by the windows on rainy days, the curtains open wide to let in all the natural light despite the weather. :’)

Shannon will not date humans.

Howie finds “liking nature” attractive. (I feel like spirits in general will gravitate toward those who love nature, who knew? But I bet he dates a lot of people whose favorite season is autumn “coincidentally”.) He does have a preference for redheads. He loves having someone to compete with on racing or climbing, someone who’ll join him on hikes.

As he wants kids eventually, he will seek partners who feel the same about parenting as he does, given his traumatic background. It’s not a spoiler because this takes place well beyond the epilogue, but Howie does have a family and ends up being like… Best Dad Ever.

Howie will date humans, but for long-term partners, he’ll hold preference for fellow spirits.

Bee… has a partner in the epilogue, and saying too much about what he wants is a bit of a spoiler. I’ll just let that relationship speak for itself, and if anyone has further questions, feel free to ask them. I plan to keep asks open for a while after I finish the series, although I’m sure it’ll eventually taper off and just be around for reference to new readers, if I have any. xD

Okay, so El.

El… is attracted more to fictional characters. Particularly monsters. Scales and horns are sexually attractive. I answered another ask about sexualities and briefly mentioned this, but I was a bit self-conscious about going into it at the time. He’s probably aro, but he loves the idea of romance and courtship—at least to make it a significant part of his reading!

And while I’ve been too chickenshit to actually wonder this out loud before, I’ve honestly thought that based on how unhealthy El and Howie’s dynamic is, how many readers have ended up shipping them. No judgment here, obviously it crossed my mind. It has that taboo ripeness for the picking, that’s all? It’s not canon, but I also don’t mind people shipping characters. (I’m old, and some of my earliest fandoms included Clamp works and Spiral Suiri no Kizuna soooo…yeah.)

#“I'm old” yeah no kidding I'm out here using “cut” from my LJ days instead of “read more” xD

1 note · View note

sohoharlem · 2 years

Text

Join me a week from today!

This break is something I do every once in a while, a norm for me as someone who is aware of the toxicity of too much social media, and the reason is not subject to anything specific. This is an encouragement post for those who want to join, but also for those who have never considered doing this or feel it might be not for them. Reconsider it, if possible. My 2021-2022 social medial break will take place on the dates below. Anyone who wants to take one with me, feel free to participate. Posting this a week early to give those of you time to prepare and also maybe consider if it’s something you feel you should do. For anyone who’s never done it before, I recommend you to at least try it once to see how it feels. I’ve done a cleanse similar to this before in the past, except that it lasted 6 months instead of just 36 days. For first timers: It will be hard at first, but it is possible to do, and it will leave you feeling amazing. I promise you. You could become happier, healthier, and more productive. You might also find yourself becoming less emotionally driven in your fandom which will benefit you greatly in the long run.

Social Media break duration: Dec 13th - Jan 17th DUE TO POSITIVE PERSONAL RESULTS FROM MY BREAK WHICH I’VE DECIDED I’D LIKE TO MAINTAIN FOR A WHILE LONGER, THE BREAK HAS TEMPORARILY BEEN EXTENDED TO FEBRUARY.

Below I’ve included, for those of you who would like to participate, what exactly I’ll be doing for the next few weeks. I’ve also included some great YouTube videos and book recommendations on why sometimes a break or detox like this is important.

What my break will consist of:

• Logging out of Tumblr and not logging in for 36 days.

• Turning off notifications for a majority of my social apps, especially Instagram.

• I will only be going on Instagram twice a day for 1 minute each time for the first two weeks, then I will try to cut it out entirely. I will then delete the app and not go on until the 17th.

• I will not look at phone during work hours unless work or emergency related. I will keep it on a table or a distance away from me.

• If I feel like reading on my phone, I will read anything aside from fanfiction.

• I can use my phone for music.

• I will focus more on my mental, spiritual, and physical health. (Spiritual = Optional)

• I will try to lower my phone usage by 90%.

• Build a healthier daily routine that does not involve me holding onto my phone for/during social interaction or always looking down at my phone.

• Go to sleep every night at 9PM.

Tips for those of you who would like to participate with me but find that the above might be difficult for you:

If you have a hard time trying to stay off Tumblr, try taking control by minimizing your minutes you spend on it by day or amounts you open it per day until your usage gets lower and lower. You can also just log out of your account and visit your favorite blogs once or twice a day to see updates the first two weeks, but try to cut it down as much as you can. If you can cut it out entirely until the 17th, a win.

If you find trouble staying away from gossip sites or blogs because you feel the itch to know what is always happening, think about how it actually applies to your own life. Chances are, it doesn’t affect it. It’s also a cool tip to remind yourself that if you’re constantly looking to find out if something happened, chances are it’s not happening every two minutes. Try to check twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Chances are you did not miss much. Again, eventually try to cut it down so much you don’t look at all. It will be hard, but eventually will become easier. Think about things that actually apply to your life and think about how you could be using that time to do something for you.

• If you are having trouble staying off on Instagram and do not think you can cut it out entirely, try this: Turn off your notifications and try using it just 10 minutes a day. Then, 5 minutes a day. Cut it to twice a day, 2 minutes each. Try to then delete it entirely. It’s a common and normal occurrence for people who do this to find themselves deleting and reinstalling the app a few times a day. Eventually, you won’t find the need or itch to keep installing it anymore if this does happen to you. Try to not go on for at least the last two weeks of your break.

• Distract yourself from your phone by focusing on work, on errands (what you need to get done), your friends, and your family. Remember that texting and phone calls/FaceTime are allowed. You aren’t isolating yourself.

• If you find yourself needing something to do and you don’t remember what you did before social media during down time, try watching your favorite movies or tv shows. Binging is always a nice distraction. Don’t let your fingers itch for your phone. That’s what it wants.

• If you are having trouble setting up a healthy sleeping schedule because you can’t fall asleep, try leaving your phone on your nightstand or anywhere far from you before bed. Set up on your phone so that it changes from blue light to orange at a certain part of the day. Blue light affects your sleep cycle.

• (cont.) Try not to feed into things on your phone that might keep you up longer than you plan - book, YouTube videos, a news article, a late night text from your boyfriend, etc. Take appropriate melatonin gummies 30 minutes before, if you can, and are not allergic etc. Try not to look at your phone first thing in the morning when you wake up. Instead, make your bed, brush your teeth, and continue with your normal routine.

This is optional, but I found some great videos on YouTube for you guys to remind you while a social media break/detox might be something you might need. I’ve organized them by category. I would definitely recommend you giving them a watch if you are considering taking this break with me. They might even motivate you if you weren’t considering it.

Reminder on how Social Media affects us:

https://youtu.be/e2Tq2gvGt80

Things on Social Media are often fake and an illusion:

https://youtu.be/0EFHbruKEmw

Is Social Media taking control of your life?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdVPLj_pIk&feature=youtu.be

Results of taking a Social Media break/detox in your life:

https://youtu.be/yceVW-0uLsg

How to quit/distance from Social Media:

https://youtu.be/ACCtKj2uz1g

How quitting boosts our productivity in life (getting more done, using time more wisely, etc):

https://youtu.be/bV_NdUZEmnE

Fandom related - Dangers of Parasocial Relationships (Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence. Parasocial relationships are most common with celebrities, organizations (such as sports teams) or television stars. - Google definition)

https://youtu.be/22yoaiLYb7M

https://youtu.be/Q4qBgi4l5Ss (this one is more of a podcast)

Is it too far?

https://youtu.be/LsD9NBVtdmU

Reminders that things on social media should not take a hold of you and take away your focus from what actually affects you and matters to you in your life

Practice self love

https://youtu.be/ZsTKyYOuK84

What is Anxiety and how to stop it

https://youtu.be/wvsAaZwzr6

How to stop overthinking/anxiety

https://youtu.be/Gz29PF-3SAA

Good books/audiobooks for feeling better about yourself and also more on anxiety and how to stop overthinking (two of my faves that I’ve read or listened to):

Hardcore self help: F- - -k anxiety by Robert Duff

Bitch don’t kill my vibe by Reese Owen

Something that I truly recommend everyone to watch is The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

Good alternatives for fanficiton instead of Tumblr/AO3/FF.net:

https://www.goodreads.com

https://likewise.com/books

I can’t wait to take this much needed break and I’m looking forward to some of you taking it with me!

My inbox will remain OPEN during that time.

- SH

#social media #Social media detox #self love #self care #fandom #fandoms

131 notes · View notes

mittensmorgul · 3 years

Text

For anyone interested in long-term residence in the supernatural fandom, please have some observations I’ve made over the decade I’ve been here. Take it or leave it as you will, but I’ve found all of this info useful over the years I’ve been here.

I wrote this yesterday, and it achieved its mission of identifying the sort of folks who would react negatively to it (i.e. a lot of block lists have been updated), so now that it’s been edited for content, it’s going under a cut (because that is how we do things on tumblr in general, unless we have a deliberate purpose for annoying readers with excessively long text posts) for the sake of people who actually do care about the fandom and its history. If that’s not you or your reason for being here, then keep on keeping on with your own thing, I guess. For those who are interested, there’s a lot of fandom resources some of us have been building for years that you might enjoy knowing about.

First off, I’ve been informed by a few friends who’ve read through this for coherency’s sake that it sort of reads like a *shakes cane from porch* fandom grandma complaint, but honestly... I earned this rocking chair and goshdangit imma rock now. So apologies for any “back in my day” vibes or faint aroma of tiger balm this post might give off. Then again, it’s loosely based on a similar post from 2012 so like... time is a flat circle anyway I guess.

1. There is no such thing as “tumblr famous,” unless you’re referring to the hilarious and delightful fic of the same name (please go read it, you will cackle). Posting Hot Takes for imaginary Clout™ on this site is kind of pointless in the long run. Sure you can post solely for the sake of stirring shit and getting notes, but the majority of the folks who do aren’t long term residents of the fandom. They’re just tourists moving through our little beach town for spring break. If you’re actually intent on moving to this corner of the fandom for an extended stay, please bother to really feel out the permanent residents and understand the culture and general mood of the neighborhood. It bears no resemblance to whatever’s going on across town where all the bars and beach parities are happening, and those loud, drunken revelers are, again, gonna disappear back to their regular lives or on to the next party eventually. That doesn’t mean the fandom is dying, it’s just evolving.

(funny how I had several comments implying that I’m just trying to keep the fandom from evolving with this post, because I sincerely do want the fandom to continue on for years to come, and that is impossible without evolution. We can evolve without self-immolating, though. mostly i included point 1 for an excuse to push ancient but hilarious fanfic on you.)

2. Once you post something here, it’s been unleashed to the fandom winds. You never know where it will end up, or who will comment on it or add to it. Remember that time Misha tweeted the link to the Epic Cockles Love Story post? No? It was wild. That was 2012. They all know we’re here, and how to find us if they want to. Please don’t take it to their doorsteps.

Obviously if someone is being a dick on your posts, please feel free to block them, but the whole entire point of this site is to engage people with your posts. Being big mad that someone reblogged your post with comments or supporting evidence, or happy headcanons or “HECK THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE (insert personal story about their experience or whatever else made them Feel Things about your post)” is frankly ridiculous. If your goal is to avoid any sort of engagement with your posts, then maybe try instagram instead. From what I understand, there is a SPN fandom presence there, and nobody can tarnish your original posts with unwanted commentary. But the ability to reblog with additional commentary is a FEATURE of tumblr that builds community through conversation. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves in a vacuum, and that’s what actually kills fandoms.

(and for the folks who just want to blog how they want to blog and don’t want people to engage on their posts at all, please feel free to block anyone you want, as well... nobody wants to step on your toes, but most of us also don’t want to walk on eggshells wondering if this post is one of the “do not add comments for any reason” sorts of posts, either. This is a huge fandom and most people can’t even begin to keep track of every creator and their url du jour, and what their personal rules might be regarding interaction with their content. Including a “please don’t add comments” note at the bottom of your posts-- and not in your tags that won’t even show up on reblogs, but in the actual body of the post-- would sincerely help avoid any awkward or unwanted interactions, too. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own fandom experience and the block button exists.

For the record, I block zero fandom blogs (which is why I posted this, I wanted it to reach a wide scope... refer to the opening paragraphs as to why).

3. Since this post was partly inspired by a tag I left on that post going around about how “previous tags” mean fuckall on this site (which you can read here), just a reminder that if you like someone’s tags or feel they add value to the post, part of the Peer Review structure of tumblr encourages you to PASTE THEM INTO A REBLOG. If you do this, then at least credit the person who actually wrote the tags! Don’t just copy someone else’s tags into your tags on your reblog of the post without credit either. They were not YOUR tags. (I have had this happen to tag rambles I wrote and someone else got credited with them on a subsequent reblog and it is FRUSTRATING). Just... don’t even bother to write “previous tags” because WHAT PREVIOUS TAGS?! Nobody is gonna bother to chase back the chain of reblogs trying to find where the mystery tags came from, friendos. That way lies madness.

(for the record, since some folks seemed to focus on this point solely, writing “previous tags” on a post isn’t inherently a BAD thing, but for anyone who actually is here for more than one-off shitposting, then it’s sort of a pointless thing in the long run. This wasn’t intended to suggest people who ARE here for one-off shitposting are bad or “doing it wrong,” but for people who might actually want to preserve that hilarious joke or insightful comment. People delete posts and entire blogs all the time around here. Links break. I get that the upcoming generation just shrugs at that and moves on with their lives, but heck... you don’t have to accept that all entertainment is disposable if you don’t want to. There’s a bizarre sort of nihilism plaguing us all about the impermanence of pretty much everything that feels like something we should be fighting against rather than buying into wholesale, even in our escapist entertainment. I’m just exhausted by the complete loss of joy in community.

*shouts from the peanut gallery* IT AIN’T THAT DEEP, JUST GET SOME FRESH AIR AND LOOK AT A PUPPY OR SOMETHING

Yes... yes it isn’t really that deep, but bigger picture in the state of reality we’re all entirely disillusioned with, are we supposed to just give up on everything, including the things we cling to because they bring us a tiny spark of hope that we’re not all just trapped in this dystopian nightmare and things might actually be worth living for?

*peanut gallery clinging to burnt husks of peanuts in a barren peanut field* but this is how we have chosen to cope

Okay... you do you... I feel bad for you but if that’s the case then this post is NOT FOR YOU. AND THAT’S FINE. I honestly do not care if you don’t care! I mean, I’m sorry anyone has to live in a world that drives them to that mindset, but I understand. This post is for anyone who might look at their lives and their choices and think “no wait, I unironically enjoy this and want more from the experience of that enjoyment than I’m currently feeling.” Everyone else can continue with their lives as usual.)

4. CONTENT THEFT IS NEVER OKAY. PERIOD. Things like “credit to the artist” or tagging gifs or images you found on pinterest as “not mine” isn’t actually credit. If you can’t source an image or gif set, DO NOT POST IT! We don’t REPOST (i.e. save an image and then create a new post with it as if it was our own creation). We REBLOG (click the little square arrows and reblog from the actual creator). That goes for gif sets, fanvids, screencaps, meta, fic... everything.

(hopefully everyone here already understands this one, but I felt compelled to include some “these are stupidly obvious” reminders anyway, since this is ostensibly some sort of advice column. This is the equivalent of the warning label on your toaster reminding you not to use it in the bath. Like... duh...)

5. Close kin of item 4 is SOURCE YOUR SHIT.

(for 100% disclosure purposes, I specifically discussed this one in this specific way because of an influx of anon ask messages I received in the wake of the finale. Literally the inciting incident for creating this entire post was what I can only assume was a joking ask about a comment Misha made at a con years ago. Someone actually bothered to take the time to type out those sentences to me. I have no idea what they were expecting in reply, or what could possibly motivate them to send this comment about something so entirely random from, again, several years ago. Just a joke? No idea, but whatever... it got me thinking that there might actually be people who are new to the fandom who MIGHT actually care about the fandom history, and maybe they just don’t know where to go for that info, or how to even begin searching through 16 years of history for things they might actually find enjoyment in, rather than just hauling random out of context garbage out on main and pointing and laughing about it now. People are actually allowed to care about things. It’s not cringeworthy to actually care about things, and you are not alone in actually caring, and there’s this whole big room over here full of people who are thrilled to share in that with you. This post is intended FOR THOSE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY, so if that is not you, please just continue walking by.)

Yes, I know lots of y’all are new around here right now, but dredging up stuff from years ago that fandom has completely debunked and presenting it as TRU FAX again is just exhausting. We’re not trying to be party poopers, but seriously, we have seen it all and are mostly done with extinguishing bags of flaming dog poop on our front porches for the umpteenth year in a row. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have the same tone as “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil” or “I heard kylo ren has an eight pack” and just... the information is there for anyone who cares enough to find it.

This goes double for “why is nobody talking about this thing I just discovered while watching the show for the first time?!” And, oh hon, we have talked it all into the ground over the last fifteen years. We’re happy you’re discovering it again, but I promise we talked about it plenty when the episodes originally aired. We have such a rich meta history that lots of us have worked really hard to preserve. I encourage you to seek it out, if nothing else than as historical artifacts. The way we have discussed the show has been a 16-year evolution. People have written literal doctoral dissertations on this show. Your shitposts are fun! We love reliving our own experience through fresh eyes, and seeing your wonder at experiencing it all again for the first time! But y’all didn’t invent this fandom in the last six months, either.

Meta Sources and Minerals provided by our friendly neighborhood fandom archivist, @lets-steal-an-archive

Academic books and articles about SPN

A collection of Meta Essays going back to s1 and organized by topic (all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again)

SPN Heavy Meta Archive (s1-3)

Mel’s Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-12)

Oranges8hands Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-15, with many similar entries to Mel’s... though ymmv on viewpoint in a lot of these too)

Anyone remember Fandom Wank? Not the concept but the actual LJ... No? Okay have a link to SPN topics that ended up there. Through 2013. We have seen so much... including several fandom containment breaches.

for all your art sourcing needs, please see @theroadsofararchive, the repository for so much fandom art.

need to find a gif of something? canonspngifs is a vast repository of gifsets of the entire series. If the gif you want to use in your post happens to be the first gif in the gifset, in the tumblr gif finder thingy just paste the permalink to that post from canonspngifs (which is easily searchable by episode, character, location, situation, quotes, and sometimes even color and clothing items the actors are wearing... it’s really well organized, especially for tumblr >.>) and the first gif will be automatically linked with credit to the gif creator attached. It makes life easy that way. It’s also convenient when trying to remember something specific but can’t remember what episode it’s from. I’ve used the site to jog my memory before going to the superwiki armed with more specific search results to find episode quotes and references. Or sometimes I just scroll through all the nice gifs for fun, too.

Need a screencap of something and know exactly which episode it’s from? Try Home of the Nutty. You might not find the exact screencap you’re looking for, but they have a complete set of caps of every episode, and it’s an incredibly useful resource for quick reference checks and the like. Just give pages a chance to fully load before clicking on the next one. The site is easily overloaded, but it’s still free to use (and again, with credit... Pretty much every screencap on my entire blog is from HotN unless otherwise credited).

As you can see, this is a fandom built on preserving our history. You absolutely are not required to engage with any of this if that’s not of interest to you, but I can only assume that there are people who would be interested in it if only they knew it existed and how to find it. Well, now they do.

6. A few more notes on tags, and how they work on tumblr. The first 20 tags on your ORIGINAL posts are searchable sitewide, so if you want to be able to find something again, tag that thing first before going on general tag rambles. The only place tags on reblogs are searchable is on your own blog. So you don’t have to put 50 tags trying to get a post seen if it’s a reblog. You’re just spitting into the wind at that point. If you have a filing system for finding things again, then by all means add those tags (again, in the first 20, so they’re searchable), but you don’t need to tag a reblog “destiel” and “deancas” and “dean” and “cas” and “dean x cas” or whatever. Pick one for your personal blog’s filing system, that’s all you need.

(this was only added because tagging and searching on this site is so very broken... I get that a lot of folks don’t care about ever searching their own blogs again for anything, so this one only really applies if you do often find yourself trying to find old posts. If not, then it’s not really relevant. It took me years to work out a decent tagging system, and at the beginning of my time here I never thought I’d end up camping out here for a decade and falling this deep into the fandom, and I regretted my lack of consistent tags only years later when I realized I actually wanted to be able to go back and find specific old posts again. So... for anyone who wants to err on the side of caution, working out a sensible tagging system really helps if you’re here for the long term. I personally tag content by episode, because some of my other general tags are so large as to be practically useless as a search term. But whatever system you choose to file stuff on your own blog, it really only has to make sense to you. And again, if this is pointless advice for someone who has no intention of settling here for the long term. Please feel free to ignore it. I just wish someone had explained it this way to me ten years ago and saved me the hassle of retroactively tagging something like 30k posts... especially now that using the mass tag replacer is the fastest way to get your entire blog deleted... oops? so yeah, don’t use the mass tag replacer either >.>)

7. Tags on Tumblr DO NOT WORK LIKE TAGS ON TWITTER. If you @ someone in the body of the post, it will show up in their notifications (if they’re the sort of person who even checks their notifications... not all of us do. For the record, I generally don’t...), but putting actor or ship names in the tags on a tumblr post does absolutely nothing. It’s not the same as tagging the actor’s twitter account in a tweet. Nobody’s getting notifications about you tagging a post about Jensen here as “Jensen Ackles.” There is a difference. Please learn it. (and don’t take headcanons and ESPECIALLY RPF or otherwise explicit art or fic from tumblr to twitter and tag the actors in it. That’s just... not okay.)

(I have seen the pearl clutchers getting all in a huff about the mere existence of RPF or even explicit content of fictional characters if it doesn’t meet their purity standards, but tagging those things allows people who don’t want to see it to actively avoid that content here. Nobody has a right to tell people their fictional content shouldn’t exist at all, or that creators of that fictional content somehow deserve harassment or threats for having dared to create such “immoral” content, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children... and no... you do not do that here. Don’t be the problematic behavior you wish to ban from the world. Learn to use tags to protect yourself from, as i have attempted to emphasize here, fictional content you are personally upset by. That’s a you problem, not a problem for the creators of potentially upsetting content that they tag appropriately for.)

8. General formatting stuff: If you’re writing long text posts, visually break them up so people aren’t faced with one long wall of text. The enter key is your friend. Also, if you put long text posts under a Read More break and send people to your blog to finish reading, please ensure that your blog is actually visually accessible (tiny text, or light grey text on a dark grey background, or a visually busy background might be aesthetically pleasing to you but nobody can actually read it. Loads of folks won’t even try. Which is great if you don’t actually care whether people are able to appreciate your content or not, but something to at least consider if you *do* actively want to encourage engagement with your work. Confirm how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop and make sure it’s actually functional in both, too).

And since I mentioned that most of my experience on fandom tumblr has been in the SPN fandom, here’s a bit of a reminder for folks who are new around here. With the reminder that I have been here more than a decade and still feel like a newbie myself sometimes...

This is an OLD FANDOM. There are many, many people who have been at this longer than some of you have been alive. The average age for creators in this fandom is older than you think (I think of my friends in their 30′s as young’ins okay? okay). With that understood, you are responsible for the content you consume and are exposed to. Curate your experience. Ship and let ship. YKINMKATOK. Don’t deliberately expose yourself to content you find upsetting for whatever reason. Tags and warnings are your friends, not targets for you to attack in some sort of purity war. People will ship things you do not like (or in specific ways you do not like), will say things you do not agree with, and will find their happiness in things you abhor. That is not your concern. Find what you do like, and support and engage with it, and ignore (or block, or unfollow) the rest. Tumblr has a feature that lets you blacklist tags so the content you’re trying to avoid won’t appear on your dash.

Remember the paradox of tolerance.

It is not your job in fandom to police how other people enjoy the fandom. It’s not *my* job to police how *you* enjoy the fandom, UNLESS your enjoyment is in actively harming other real human beings in the fandom. If you don’t like their take on the character or the show or the plotlines or their ships or anything else, you don’t need to engage with their posts at all! The necessary corollary to this is that clarifying misunderstandings or correcting factual misinformation is not “policing.”

(this is where the peanut gallery reminds me it ain’t that deep, and I plead with them to put down the social media and find just one (1) thing to actually believe in in this godforsaken life, find something other than disdain and cynicism and spite to live for. If those things motivate you to find a larger cause for yourself, then great, use them to your advantage, but use them to find something that makes you a better person or brings you a modicum of joy and connection to your fellow human beings despite living in a dystopian hellscape of a world)

I have seen a lot of posts lately that are founded on the sort of authority that comes with “I watched through tumblr for a few months and then watched the last three episodes of the series” and as such are just... missing the larger context of the entire show, and are unfounded entirely in canon. I 100% appreciate the new enthusiasm for the fandom that we’ve been living in here for years, and it’s wonderful to see new people enjoying the thing we love. Your headcanons are valid, you are valid, but recognize that your headcanons aren’t canon. All of us finale denialists have accepted this in some measure, so we feel you. We truly, truly feel you. But regarding actual canon, we have a resource for that: the Superwiki. Learn it, live it, love it, as Metatron would say.

(which you could discover he said in 10.17 Inside Man, thanks to the superwiki! accept no substitutes!)

(and again, there have been people who have been involved in fandom for years who haven’t engaged with canon in years, either! You can play in this universe however you choose, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT CANON AT ALL, WHICH I AM AGAIN POINTEDLY SAYING MIGHT NOT BE YOU, READER, AND I’M NOT SUGGESTING YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE WITH CANON, but if you DO want to engage with canon, please have some useful resources. Why do people feel personally attacked by being presented a list of helpful resources? Absolutely baffling.)

(also: words have definitions. “Canon” is a specific thing, meaning in this case “the finished media product that aired on television.” Anything beyond those limits is secondary canon (think: john’s journal, which is not canon but canon adjacent at best...), word of god (i.e stuff said by the writers and showrunners), or headcanon (which includes actor commentary-- they may have helped create the show with their acting choices and whatever, but they are not in control of the story overall). If there’s something you dislike about actual canon, you can reject it and supplement it with your own theories or preferred outcomes-- that’s basically what fanfic is-- but that doesn’t make your theories canon (much to all our dismay, that’s just not how any of this works. This is not to invalidate how anyone engages with the show or the fandom, just trying to clarify what seems to have been a source of unintentional misunderstandings. Your theories do not have to be “canon” to be legitimate interpretations.)

***I am setting this section apart, and did make a separate post of just this following information, because this is where we go from being relatively chill about different parts of fandom choosing to interact in different ways and you do you and blog however you want, to “hey can everybody please understand that the way you are interacting with this specific material might be harmful for specific legal reasons, and stating that you do not care about the consequences of your actions does actively make you the asshole here...” Okay, now that we have that understood:

The spnscripthunt collective has been steadily acquiring new scripts (which are posted in full on the superwiki for everyone to enjoy, for free). The language around how some folks are talking about these scripts is... concerning. For very real legal reasons, actually, and not because we’re feeling precious about the collection and don’t wike it when meanies use them in shitposts.

-First off, these scripts are not “leaks.” They are all verified and legally purchased (or gifted, in some cases, but still acquired entirely above board. we didn’t whack anyone over the head in a back alley for these scripts, or swipe them out of someone’s trailer on set).

(in case anyone was unaware, these scripts are the copywritten protected property of Warner Brothers. So yes, how we use them and share them with the fandom could have legal repercussions. We present them as a collected resource of fandom history which SHOULD fall under Fair Use doctrine, but this is untested legal water. Insinuating that the scripts are somehow not entirely legally obtained, or that posting them for public access involved less than 100% transparent and entirely legal transactions is incredibly concerning.

Once again for the peanut gallery, if you don’t care about any of that and are just having a good time with it, at least be mindful of the work and expense a large group of people have gone through to acquire and present the content you’re all too eager to exploit for cheap thrills. Some of us do actually care and are not exactly comfortable with the fact that others don’t seem to care about burning it all to the ground. We can’t force you to listen or behave as we’d hope you might, but at least be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. All we’re asking is for you to not be the douchebag who sets the whole neighborhood on fire with your illegal fireworks display. Is that too much to ask for? more on that in a second, first... a psa)

-If you see a script for sale and are unsure if it’s legit (or believe it might already be freely available in our collection), please feel free to ask us for advice. Our goal is to make as much of our fandom history available to the entire fandom, and we absolutely do not want anyone shelling out money for stuff you can already find for free.

(seriously, we’ve seen a bunch of resellers cropping up selling printed versions of the scripts we bought and uploaded for everyone to enjoy free of charge, or scripts that are otherwise of dubious origin. We’ve been at this for years now and know what’s actually out there. We don’t want anyone to fall for a scam if we can help it)

-Also, the usual reminder that the scripts we acquire ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL SHOOTING DRAFTS. In fact, the majority of scripts in our collection are NOT. Changes are made daily to scripts, even during filming. Comparing a Production Draft (white pages, effectively the first “final draft” of what usually becomes a series of drafts before filming wraps) to a much later revision (say... green or goldenrod revisions, several of which we DO have in our collection for comparison) and how those earlier drafts often differ wildly from the aired version versus how similar a much later green draft is to the aired version, for example, can teach you a lot about the television writing process. The link above to the superwiki scripts page has a nice little explainer about how this process works.

Differences between our posted scripts (many of which are white drafts, aka FIRST complete drafts, which will likely go through multiple rounds of revisions before filming even begins) and the aired version of the show are not all “acting choices” or a director or editor just cutting whole scenes on a whim. It’s insulting to everyone involved in production to suggest that’s the case.

(and yeah, fine... whatever, make any sort of posts you like regarding how those changes came about, but at the very least understand that it’s not actually the truth about how any of this works. Don’t care that that’s not the truth and want to make the posts anyway because shitposting is fun and that’s the extent of your sense of humor? FINE! You’re entitled to do that! But at least you DO know the truth now, and hopefully so do the people who engage with your posts. Deliberate ignorance isn’t cute, smooth lions notwithstanding)

There’s probably a whole other post to be made on fandom tagging etiquette, but again I don’t really use the tags enough to know what’s going on with that whole situation. I’ve also probably left a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add things I’ve overlooked.

Thanks also to @trisscar368 and @thayerkerbasy for help compiling this, too. They were kind enough to escort me through the park to feed these pigeons. Now I need to take them out for ice cream. :’D

So I guess welcome to the neighborhood. Make yourself at home, but like... try not to trash the place while you’re here. Some of us live here by choice, lol.

#this blue hellsite (affectionate)#fandom problems #kinda wish i'd made this post six months ago but here we are i guess lol #long post #now edited for the people who are actually personally invested in the fandom #thanks for participating in this little experiment and I hope this version is actually informative to those who are interested #meaning there's a lot more links to stuff and explainers and whatnot...#and one last reminder that for folks just swinging through for laughs absolutely none of this applies to you #if you are legit interested in fandom history and preservation as we move to the post-canon world then hopefully this is useful to you

381 notes · View notes

castiel-left-his-mark-on-me · 3 years

Note

Hi, Ary, very inactive ex-mutual(i think???) here. Good to see you thriving! ♥ It's been a while since I've dipped my head into cockles stuff. Could I perchance maybe ask uuuuum tf is going on??? lol I see Mish apparently confirmed he used to stay over at Jensen's in Van, and heard newbs were apparently freaking out about it and getting a bit messy, which I get that, business as usual. But I'm also seeing shit about spin-offs? And Jared getting in a twitter fight with Jensen, causing/resulting in stans to going feral and sending hate?? I know you're not as big a fan of Jar, but that's part of why I figured I'd ask you, you usually have a really level head about this kinda stuff. If you don't wanna answer publically, or at all, that's totally chill!

Hey, Rhi! We're still mutuals! Of course we're still mutuals! When I saw the notification of your ask, I was like "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!" and my husband was like "???" and I said "Tumblr" and he said "Oh."

It was a wild time haha.

In any case, welcome back to the dumpster fire! We are obviously still a mess. So to catch you up, I guess I will start by summarizing both before and after the finale (not sure where you left off so this might be redundant for you) ... basically, it became obvious as the end of the show neared that Jensen was not on board with the plan for the finale; although Jared never stopped singing its praises.

We got confirmation of this during a zoom interview where Jensen said that he actually went into the writers room as well as called Kripke to basically voice how he didn't agree with the direction the final season was going, but he was shot down on all fronts. In another interview, he was asked "What would you tell your younger self going into this career?" And Jensen responded with: "I would tell myself to just keep your head down and do the work" meaning, "Don't try to change things because you can't." I also think that this whole situation is what he wrote "Let Me Be" about for his first Radio Company album, but that is just my own speculation. All of his reluctance, even though he always followed it up with "But I eventually saw the value in the script" or "I came around in the end" (which never sounded sincere, and I don't think he was really trying to sound sincere) made us all very nervous about what was to come for 15x20; and of course, when the last two episodes aired, we saw just how badly they fucked it up.

After the awful finale, the entire fandom became aware of the CW's heavy handed role in the thing, basically squeezing all the life out of SPN to shape it into a ramp from which Walker could launch itself. They not only erased all the love and joy and representation that Cas's love confession gave us, they also tore apart the things that made sense about the bond between Sam and Dean, making it really just about Sam-- and therefore Jared, which of course, Jared seemed to be fine with ... even though no one else was. Misha barely said anything during the finale, and a few of the other actors talked about the show ending in various posts, but Jared tweeted up a storm ... and Jensen? Jensen just sat in sexy-silent resentment of the whole thing. He didn't tweet, he didn't post, he didn't say a word once he no longer had to, and I think that's because he was already going full-steam-ahead on his plans for redemption.

Which brings us to Chaos Machine-- Jensen and Danneel's new production company that is being run by a queer creative director and has a mantra of inclusivity and representation woven throughout it's fabric; and apparently, the first story that Jensen wanted to tell through this new platform is the origin story of Sam and Dean's parents; so last week (?) he announced the upcoming production of "The Winchesters" -- the untold love story of John and Mary. Obviously, John is not the most likable character from the show, so the idea was met with a lot of resentment when it was first announced, but Jensen has gone on to say that he is excited to take on the task of telling the "true" story behind these characters-- the one that makes sense with the pre-established canon and doesn't reject it. So, given that, the idea is being mulled over with a bit more optimism from the fandom.

Who isn't being optimistic though?

Jared Padalecki.

When Jensen made this announcement on Twitter, many of his friends and coworkers congratulated him, but not Jared. Jared responded with a passive aggressive: "I'm happy for you, man, but I wish I didn't hear about it through Twitter." This of course, sent all the die-hard Jared fans into a tizzy and they immediately began asking him if he was serious (hoping it was just a joke-- we all hoped it was because there would be fallout no matter what one's opinion on Jared is). Instead of leaving it there though or just deleting that tweet, Jared went on to tweet some more, saying that he was being serious that he didn't know about the plans for the prequel, and that he was "gutted" that Sam apparenlty wouldn't be included (mind you, this a prequel to SPN... meaning BEFORE Sam and Dean were even born, so how could Sam be included? But Dean is apparently narrating this story so maybe Jared thought Sam should be helping to narrate it? I don't know). But Jared being Jared couldn't just leave that there, he then went on to tweet at Robbie Thompson who was announced as a writer for "The Winchesters" so then Jared went off on him too, calling him "Brutus" and a "coward" acting like Robbie betrayed him (speculation is-- Robbie refused to write for Walker, so Jared is pissed that he essentially chose Jensen over him). He did fairly quickly, remove that tweet attacking Robbie, but of course the damage was done at that point. And it truly only took his first tweet calling out Jensen for some people to be like "Jared-- that sucks if you didn't know but why are you saying any of this publicly?"

As you might know, Jared has had issues in the past with posting hurtful things on social media, and has even used it as a tool for attack before-- calling out customer service agents and public workers that he felt have wronged him, which is bad enough ... but for him to then do the same thing to his best friend of well over a decade? Many people who had once liked him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt (I used to ...) stopped after this latest twitter tantrum.

However, some people have suspected for some time that J2 had a falling out either shortly before the finale or just after. Their public/social media interactions have seemed awkward, stilted or even non-existent in moments that they normally wouldn't be. In the past year, when Walker premiered, Jensen didn't say much about his friend's new venture other than a "Congrats. buddy" here and there. Later, we learned that Jensen refused to work on the show ... Jared said he make him do it, drag Jensen to the set "kicking and screaming" which made many fans quirk up an eyebrow because, why would Jensen put up a fight unless the two weren't as close as they used to be? And then Jensen moved his family to Colorado (either permanently or for an extended period at least) which is notable considering how he moved to Texas seemingly to be closer to Jared, even buying a house that was near his. All this was just speculation though; but it wasn't until Jared's tweet complaining about not knowing about the prequel that the theories behind them falling out, became less theory and more fact.

The day after his twitter tantrum, Jared tweeted again-- not retracting his statements or apologizing, but instead saying that he and Jensen "talked" and were "all good". Jensen then tweeted too, parroting this statement to some degree, which only made the whole thing even more sour in the mouths of the fans. The fact that Jared didn't apologize for his outburst and throwing his friend under the bus, and also the fact that Jensen-- Mr. Sexy Silence, Mr. Never Tweets, Mr. Tech-Ignorant-and-Proud, actually had to POST SOMETHING saying that he and Jared made up, it just screamed OPTICS. It was obviously the work of agents and PR firms and lots of people going "Look, if you two keep beefing, that will mean the death of both of your projects. Even more people will stop watching Walker, and this SPN prequel will never get picked up due to the scandal." So, the two "made nice" publicly to quell the chaos, but in my opinion, it's all too little too late. Jared started a storm that he can't contain now with a little tweet, and it seems like he knows that too because before he talked about him and Jensen making up, he asked that people "not send threats". He could have just as easily said that he shouldn't have made this a public issue and that he's sorry, but instead, he continued to play the victim and stoke the flames by alerting us all to the damage he's done.

Now, like I said before-- I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's an awful human or that he deserves to be attacked or anything, but he is an adult man with very poor judgment and an obvious selfish-streak a mile wide. He should know better, and he should have more respect for his so-called "friends" and "brothers" than to make them targets to public ridicule. I have a hard time believing that Jensen still sees Jared the way he used to, and I wouldn't blame him a bit for wanting to pull away-- especially when he's moving on to so many new and exciting things. Jared certainly deserves happiness just as much as anyone else, but he went on twitter and basically asked for a scandal, and he got one.

The question is now-- was there a motive behind it? Was just looking for a reason to bring his and Jensen's falling out to light-- while making himself looking like the victim in the process? Or did he genuinely not know about the prequel and just decided to go about "not knowing" in the most toxic and hurtful way he could manage?

In any case, that is the drama ... that is the J2 insanity in a rather lengthy nutshell ... that is the tea ... and I hope it all makes sense.

But the good news out of all of this is, Cockles is thriving-- they are happy and in love and Jensen calls Misha "Babe" and Misha misses waking up to see Jensen in the morning, and they are just as cute and wonderful as can be.

So, I will end that there. I am so glad to see you back, and I hope I answered all your questions in a way that made sense ... I tried anyway!

💖💖💖

#omg #I don't even know if this makes sense #this took way too long to write #j2 #cockles #long post #spn family #so glad you see you back again my dear #welcome to hell #it's hotter now

170 notes · View notes

bigasswritingmagnet · 3 years

Text

Seek a Little Strange and Unusual

Fandom: Psychonauts Pairing: None Characters: Caligosto Loboto, Chloe Barge Summary: One day at the grocery store, Loboto overhears two parents discussing their...problem child. It's a very familiar sounding conversation. He may not understand why, but he won't let history repeat itself. Chloe isn't particularly fond of her human caretakers. The dentist who smuggled her out of the store is strange...but so is she. And he, at least, understands the importance of space helmets on alien planets.

[don’t make tumblr funnyposts about headcanons guys because you WILL become attached to them]

Cucumbers, lighter fluid, toothpaste, apple sauce, quick rise yeast, mineral oil...

Almost everything! All that was left was condiments. Except...had he written ketchup, or catsup? Did it matter? Of course it mattered, they were totally different things! Weren't they? Well, they had different names.

Lobot stared between the bottle of catsup and the scribbled list, trying to read his own handwriting.

"No, no! Put it down--Chloe put that down right now."

Ooooh, drama! He loved drama. Loboto poked his head around the corner of the aisle in time to see a small child standing on their tiptoes, arms outstretched to the cereal boxes on the upper shelf. A brightly colored box of sugar pretending to be a nutritious breakfast was wrapped in a purple glow and descending, slowly.

A woman materialized next to the girl. Her face was tight with anger and she snatched the box out of the air. Shoving it back on the shelf she hissed "What did I tell you? How many times do I have to say it, Chloe! Don't do that! Especially not in public! And I told you take that stupid helmet off when we're in the store!"

The child's response was unintelligible, muffled by the space helmet they were indeed wearing. He wondered what the big deal was. It wasn't the 1940's; nobody cared if you wore a hat in public anymore. Just look at him! He was wearing his showercap and no one had said a word! They just left the aisle as soon as they saw him.

“Take it off, now!”

A man appeared and grabbed the woman's arm.

"Keep your voice down, people are going to come see what the fuss is."

The woman rounded on him, her expression one of frantic desperation.

"I can't do this anymore."

I just don’t care anymore.

"I can't deal with this, the helmet and the moving things around--!"

He’s a monster!

"I know, I know--"

Soon we’ll be free of this devil child.

"I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this! If I have to deal with one more dismantled radio, one more time trying to get her to take it off for company, one more bent spoon--"

Every! Spoon! Bent!

"I've been asking around, and Johnson knows someone who can do a procedure that’ll fix her--"

They all agree on the diagnosis and what must be done.

He felt strange. Cold and hot and angry and...sad. The child didn't seem to notice the conversation. She was trying to float the cereal box back down again. She probably didn't understand what it all meant. She was young. Very young.

Younger than he had been.

He hadn't understood either, until it was too late.

The humans were arguing again. They were always arguing these days. Arguing about such petty problems, when they could be focusing on the whole galaxy around them. She ignored them. It wasn't like they listened to her anyway. How many times had she explained to the woman why she needed to wear the helmet whenever she left the hermetic seal of her room? It never mattered.

The box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs landed gently in her hands. Excellent. She would slide it into the cart under the frozen peas. By the time they got to the cash register, the woman would be bound by social convention to make the purchase, or risk making a scene in front of the cashier.

Chloe still hadn't figured out what making a scene meant. The term was definitely in regards to public behavior, but was applied to anything from yelling in public to silent refusal to remove her helmet. Human rules were so strange and arbitrary.

The boxes in front of her rustled. Chloe tilted her head to one side. Odd. Sometimes things around her moved on their own, but usually she got that strange tingle in the back of her head when they did. She wasn't feeling it now.

The boxes of cereal parted, excess tumbling off the ends of the shelves. Two small lights gleamed in the newly made gap. One red, one green.

A metal claw shot out, grabbed Chloe by the shirt, and hauled her through.

She had half been expecting to be pulled into another dimension, but instead she was just in the next aisle. There was no time to feel disappointed before she was dumped unceremoniously in a grocery cart. Someone loomed over her, but Chloe only got the impression of blue skin and flowers before the stranger scooped up half a shelf's worth of bags of macaroni and dumped them on top of her.

It didn't hurt. She could breathe fine with her helmet protecting her face--see, she wanted to say, I told you I needed it--but she couldn't move very much. The cart rattled and bumped, one wheel squeaking obnoxiously. They paused briefly, and Chloe considered shouting for help, but didn't. She wanted to see where this was going.

So she stayed quiet and still, holding the box of cereal to her chest as a cheerful voice cried "No need to do your beeping scans! I know what I bought! Keep the change!"

Then they were off again. The sounds around her changed as they left the store and rattle bumped their way through the parking lot. She heard a trunk open up, and decided now was a good time to figure out what was going on. She had no interest in riding with the groceries.

Chloe made the purple glow around her hands and pushed until the groceries around her lifted enough for her to move. She popped out from beneath the macaroni like a beach ball being released underwater.

The stranger was. Strange. Very tall. The lights Chloe had seen were his eyes--or rather, small tubes where his eyes should be. They twitched and turned independently of each other. He was smiling at her, and his smile seemed to stretch much, much further than most human smiles.

He was wearing a labcoat and a shower cap.

"Hello!" he said. "I'm going to kidnap you and raise you as my own so your parents can't stick an icepick in your brain to take away your psychic powers!" He tapped his chin, brow furrowing. One of his arms was made of metal, and ended in three claws. "Although I already did that first part, so...I have kidnapped you and am going to raise you as my own so that your parents can't stick an icepick in your brain to take away your psychic powers!"

Chloe considered this with some alarm. She didn't know what an icepick was, but she was sure she didn't want anything stuck in her brain. Psychic powers? Ah. That would explain the purple glow. Her caretakers had been very frustrated by it. But could she believe that they would stick things in her brain just so they could be less frustrated?

Yes. She could believe.

Her chest hurt. The macaroni was heavier than she first thought.

"Will you let me wear my helmet?" she asked.

"Of course!" He patted his showercap. "Headwear is a very important personal choice!

Chloe thought some more.

"This is acceptable," she said, and lifted her arms. The stranger stared at her. Neither of them moved for several seconds.

"What are you doing."

"You need to lift me up."

The stranger stuck his hands under her armpits and did so, holding his arms fully extended out in front of him. She dangled in the air, up, up, so high up, higher than she'd ever managed on a swing, and without the heavy weight of rope and swing seat to remind her she was pinned to this mudball planet. She felt weightless, floating, a dizzyingly wonderful feeling.

They stayed like that for several moments.

"Is this what parenting is?" the stranger asked. "It's a lot easier than they made it sound."

Chloe was so high up, her vision extended over the sea of cars, and she spotted her caretakers--former caretakers--rushing out of the grocery store, looking around wildly.

"Put me down," she said. She would have liked to stay up there for longer. For hours. Maybe she could get him to do it again later. The man used to do it all the time, before the arguing started. The stranger set her feet on the pavement, and began to toss the cart's contents into the trunk without any care for fragility. He did not seem particularly rushed or concerned, for all that he said he was kidnapping her. And wasn't kidnapping illegal?

The car was nothing like the sleek blue sedan her parents drove. The man washed it obsessively, and acted as if you had removed an organ if you so much as borrowed a single sparkplug, even if the project was important.

Not only did this car look as if it hadn't been washed, ever, it also looked like it might dissolve if you tried. It was mostly rust held together by duct tape. The car was decorated in strange patterns picked out by objects hot glued to the sides: rubber ducks, dice, plastic flowers, and many, many teeth. From the looks of it, mostly Odocoileus virginianus and Procyon lotor, although she had to wonder about some of the molars.

"Chloe!" someone shouted. "Chloe, where are you!"

Chloe opened the door of the car and climbed inside. There was a moldy grey blanket on the car seat. She unfolded it and draped it over herself. It smelled like seaweed and toothpaste. She tried to look as much like a non-child lump as she could.

The trunk closed. Through the thin blanket she saw the shadow of the stranger--her new caretaker--lean over her. He wound all three seatbelts across her, pinning her to the seat.

"Safety first!" he said.

The car's engine whined and groaned and the calls got closer. They wouldn't be able to see her under the blanket. She was hidden. It was safe.

All the same, she felt a rush of relief when the engine finally growled to life. The car shot backwards and then came to an abrupt halt with a crash and the tinkle of glass. The seatbelts held her so fast Chloe didn't even move.

"Whoopsie!" the man said. The car lurched forwards and came to another abrupt halt with another crash. "Sorry!" Forward. Smash. "Oopsie daisy!" Back. Crash. "Almost got it!"

This time when the car sped forward, it did not stop, although Chloe did hear a scream and a bump as they turned a sharp corner.

"There we go!"

Chloe waited a few more minutes before working her arms free and pulling the blanket down from over her helmet. The car was zipping down the road, swerving violently between the other cars. In the space of three minutes they shot through two red lights. Her new caretaker was humming an offkey ditty to himself, as if he was taking a casual stroll through the park.

"Who are you?" Chloe asked.

"I am Dr Calligosto Loboto! The greatest dentist in the world!" He threw out an arm dramatically and his claws punctured the roof of the car. She could see many similar holes clustered in the same area.

"My name is Chloe. I hail from the planet Cygnus A."

"Ooooh, you're an alien! That explains the helmet! You better keep that thing on, I don't want you suffocating in our atmosphere!"

Chloe couldn't name the feeling in her chest, except that it was a good one.

"That's what I kept telling them! Just because I can breathe your air doesn't mean it doesn't have a detrimental effect on my lungs!"

"Of course!" the doctor said, genuinely annoyed. "That's Alien 101! Boy, your parents are weird."

"They aren't my parents," Chloe said, firmly. "They're my human caretakers. They were looking after me while I'm on the planet. Someday my real parents will return for me, and take me back to the home planet."

"Makes sense to me! I wonder if that makes this less of a felony."

#caligosto loboto #psychonauts #chloe barge #i have...no excuse #i can't decide if i want to make like a whole thing out of it so here you go for now #pre-canon fic

114 notes · View notes

galadhremmin · 3 years

Note

We have derived Caranthir liking the Dwarves (and vice versa) because apparently, Finrod succeeds in every field Caranthir fails, and at this point it's clear this derives from the in-universe writer of the Silm and his own biases. Think about it: "Dark Finwë" , a grumpy, prejudiced lordling, and "Hair Champion", most handsome, noble king, have met with the same people!! Yet the king of the first secret kingdom is everyone's friend, but the prince that trades with them regularly is not... seems sus.

Hence, Caranthir is friends with the Dwarves. (But that is just an interpretation, so you're free to think what you wish, I just have several opinions on in-universe prejudice and the almighty narrative.)

I think that 'we' might actually have been Dawn Felagund years ago. Maybe this reading existed even before that, but I doubt that-- she's been very influential in silm fandom and was long before tumblr was much of a thing. https://dawnfelagund.com/caranthir-the-slandered

I wouldn't say it's 'clear' that what amounts to Caranthir's entire documented personality derives from the bias of the in-universe narrator, though as you can see from Dawn's writing it's a reading you can argue for. There are a number of different approaches you can take to the Silm and its biases anyway. One of the few times when it's absolutely clear the text isn't telling the entire story is when it talks about the Easterlings. I've posted about this before but the recorded names are, uhh.... the ones to betray the elves are unlikely to actually have been named things like 'ugly lord' and 'ugly beard.' 'Dark Finwe' on the other hand is a documented reference to his haircolour being dark like Finwe's own; hardly a negative judgement!

I personally think Caranthir can be exactly as ill-tempered and prejudiced as the Silm paints him without becoming an unsympathetic character. If a writer cannot make a moody, deeply prejudiced man an interesting character that is a failure as a writer; there are after all enough books who manage exactly that. That is not to say choosing not to write him that way is a failure (obviously not), but it's not necessary in order to make a reader feel for him at all.

Just going by the text, I think it actually might make for a more interesting narrative to explore in fic to me. Because he does change his mind about something, and at a very specific moment; when he meets the Haladin. That is much less dramatic if he secretly been as nice and popular as Finrod, and got along with everyone all the time already. He's been raised by Fëanor, who said things like 'No other race shall oust us!' and rallied the Noldor not motivated enough by vengeance for Finwë alone by playing on their deep-seated fear of being replaced by the Secondborn. Very unlikely that had no impact. At best it has made him uninterested in humans in his area (while they're not much of a threat to ruling instead of the elves anyway). The text says they paid them no heed.

And yet! Caranthir sees how brave Haleth and her people are. He 'does her great honour.' He changes his mind and offers them lands. His tragedy to me is not that of a slandered figure, but of this deeply, deeply prejudiced person raised to distrust the motivations of human beings -- who overcomes those beliefs, offers friendship, is rejected! then extends that same trust to the Easterlings anyway... and it's those specific Easterlings, not the ones who ally with his brothers-- who betray them all. And cause the disastrous ending of the Nirnaeth. It's the 'to evil end shall all things turn that they begin well' part of the curse hitting him in the least fair way possible. Someone finally changes for the better, and the outcome is treason and destruction.

That is a very good character arc to me, actually. His aesthetics-based scorn for the Dwarves is reprehensible but strikes me as deeply Elvish, and part of his prejudices. Naugrim is too unflattering a name for them for it not to be common. His temper-- well why can't he have one? Sure there's only one recorded instance -- but that's imo because there are hardly any conversations in the Silm! Anyway I like some people with tempers well enough. Personally I think people are missing out on opiniated grouches.

Obviously the biased anti-Feanorian Pengolodh reading is a nice one, and I have enjoyed a lot of stories written based it. But it's not at all a reading that is necessary for me to read Caranthir as a flawed but sympathetic character. He can have serious faults and still, ultimately, be someone I feel for.

What I was asking though was if I overlooked any canon evidence of Caranthir being particularly, personally fond of the Dwarves; and it seems I did not. Also; there is room for Caranthir growing to like the Dwarves over centuries without an anti-Feanorian bias reading this strong, there is simply no evidence for friendship in the rather barebones narrative (I'm not interested atm because it's wildly overdone to me & I like variety).

That said, in my opinion making Caranthir the hidden, slandered Feanorian Finrod equivalent with a dash of Curufin's Dwarf affection is not as enjoyable as simply working with what little canon character is actually there. Because there is one (and it's not the greedy tax collector of some fanon depictions either imo)

1. To start with, wrt Caranthir as the anti-Finrod, I don't think it works that well. Sure sure dark/light, open/prejudiced, repressed/shouty, but different motivations, different locations, plus they meet very different peoples even if both are Edain-- besides, Caranthir's own older brothers do successfully ally with the Easterlings without betrayal, while Curufin (much more so than Finrod! no Khuzdul for Finrod!) is the Dwarves' Friend(tm). Also, a flawed Finrod already exists. That's just the regular edition. He has his own faults and (very different) tragic arc.

If Finrod never seems to have strong prejudices to overcome, and if he's not confrontational (which... look he's a diplomat. Make of that what you will. Pretty awkward there in Doriath, buddy!) he does have trouble facing his own complicity (he wanted to sail those ships despite the murders) until Sauron beats him to death with it. He leaves Valinor with the idea of ruling but he has to give up the crown. He's ambitious, he seems emotionally repressed, he's.. possibly paying the greater Dwarves to drive the Petty Dwarves out of their ancestral home to build a city? Oops. Depending on the version you go with in that case, of course; there's also ones where he's free of the blame of that one. Not of wanting to sail those ships and being uneasy with the guilt wrt wanting to do so despite their being stolen and murdered for though. No he doesn't kill; but he wants to use the result of it anyway, and to make it worse he is actually half Telerin.

There's also (to be fair, only for sure after the disaster of the Sudden Flame because that's the recorded instance) his guards killing random innocent trespassers to keep his kingdom hidden -- yes, that's right there in Silm, yes he's still King at the time. Beren has to wave that ring. People just seem to miss that he'd be killed without it somehow.

I think it's just too easy to reduce him to the golden perfect opposite of Caranthir. Yes he's described more positively; he's also just mentioned more because unlike Caranthir he rules an actual kingdom, the greatest and richest in Beleriand in fact; and does things that have a lot of very longterm effects, like helping B&L steal a Silmaril. They don't 'meet the same people' anyway -- the Haladin have a different culture from the Beorians which contributes to their reaction to Caranthir (and iirc their later fate).

Sidenote: Dawn's essay attributes the Green Elves helping the Feanorians at Amon Ereb to Caranthir's diplomatic skills; but why not to those of Amras or Amrod? This is the quote; 'Caranthir fled and joined the remnant of his people to the scattered folk of the hunters, Amrod and Amras, and they retreated and passed Ramdal in the south. Upon Amon Ereb they maintained a watch and some strength of war, and they had aid of the Green-elves' -- nothing here indicates it was Caranthir who got them that aid. In fact A&A are the hunters, i.e. more likely to have roamed in various forests where they would have encountered Green Elves, imo.

There's also the very desperate times to consider in which this aid takes place. This is just post Sudden Flame, and even if the Green Elves didn't like Caranthir they probably liked him better than Morgoth. Also, speaking of cosmopolitans, Maedhros allies with, yes, Dwarves (Azaghal), Grey elves, Easterlings (and you might say: Fingolfinians); even part of the remaining people of Dorthonion rally to Himring post sudden flame (that means Edain and Arafinwean followers in Himring, at least for a time), and he manages to be friendly with Felagund despite calling him a badger. ;)

Finrod is not the only other leader to forge diverse alliances, and though B&L ends happily his people mostly do not. Caranthir's not much like Finrod in any way. Not in motivations, temperament, tragic arc. That's fine. No hidden kingdom for a dragon to eat either. Finrod could probably do with being a little less like Finrod sometimes, though he's well-intentioned and likable. Caranthir loves to shout and isn't sneaky. Good for him.

2. Curufin also already exists. His love for Dwarves is one of his defining and redeeming characteristics and boy does he need them. He's daddy's favourite, a sneaky overambitious bitchy bastard who is also a talented smith and linguist, and truly considered a Dwarf friend, which is apparently exceptional. He's quite flawed; tries to help Celegorm force a political marriage, laughs with a bruised mouth, seeming to lose his mind while attempting and failing murder after first losing his own stronghold and then the city he tried to take from his cousin. He's just... a personality. Mostly a bad one! You can feel for him though, because he seems like an utter mess. Many 'i would love to study you' feelings on my part. Would hate for him to be real but also I'd pay to be his therapist.

3. And then finally there's Canon Caranthir. A difficult, prejudiced person who despite that (which doesn't at all have to mean there is no despite, the despite is what makes it juicy)

- seems to be responsible for re-establishing (large scale?) trade with the Dwarves, whatever he might think of them (and they of him) to their mutual benefit. I don't think he's greedy either. It seems like a mutually profitable situation. Access to Dwarvish goods seems pretty vital to Beleriand, and facilitating trade is a real service.

As someone pointed out in the replies, the Silm does mention Dwarvish companies travelling east to Nan Elmoth and menegroth various times, but quote wrt Caranthir says 'Caranthir’s people came upon the Dwarves, who after the onslaught of Morgoth and the coming of the Noldor had ceased their traffic into Beleriand' and 'when the Dwarves began again to journey into Beleriand.'

They stopped at some point and Caranthir's people made it happen again.

- which means he's practical. He seems like he's good at organising, and setting his own feelings aside if necessary despite his prejudice and temper (which is an achievement it wouldn't be without his, hm, everything). Also he and his people as well as the Dwarves work together well because ''either people loved skill and were eager to learn,' despite their (initial?) mutual dislike. Those aren't bad characteristics; seems like it was an exchange of skill as well as goods and possibly providing safe travel opportunities.

I don't like the 'greedy Caranthir' fanon and don't think it is even that easy support entirely with canon. 'They had of it great profit,' the text says-- both Caranthir and the Dwarves. They exchanged skills and knowledge and Caranthir seems to have helped them start trading in Beleriand again. That's hardly Scrooge Mcduck.

- Another thing we can say about canonthir (lol) is that he apparently attaches a lot of value to aesthetics (was he a visual artist? is a he a sculptor like Nerdanel? WORSE: AN ART CRITIC?! Feanorian art critic is truly nightmare fuel) and that's why he dislikes Dwarves (of all things...). Either way points to 'aesthetics' as something apparently important to Caranthir. Which makes sense given who his parents are. What is interesting to me is that this apparently DOESN'T matter to Curufin, who is a lot like Feanor in most things. That's interesting!

I've never, never seen this but I think it would be very funny to attribute his aesthetic prejudices to Nerdanel. I love her; but why should her opinions be perfect? I know she wasn't considered beautiful herself, but she's an artist. She's got to have had some strong opinions on aesthetics anyway. I doubt it's the beards; Mahtan had one as well. And 'stunted'...at least some of this comes down to the Elvish obsession with height yet again. Hm.

- eventually Caranthir overcomes what have to be some very deeply held beliefs about human beings and their place in the world, and offers what for all intents and purposes looks like real friendship, not the ruling over Men Feanor seems to have had in mind at best. He's capable of real change!

Anyway his character works just fine to me from canon, and what he achieves and the ways in which he fails are more interesting that way rather-- neither slandered Feanorian Finrod 2.0 nor Curufin 'Dwarf Fan' Feanorion without the sneakiness and murder attempts pack the same punch as a stupidly prejudiced grouchy man doing his best anyway for centuries in this stupid ugly cursed land, eventually changing for the better, opening up-- and being brutally punished for it by the Doom.

Dammit. I hope there's therapy in the Everlasting Darkness.

hm a bit long but that's what I get for trying to gather my thoughts wrt why after considering it a bit transferring Curufin's love for Dwarves to Caranthir is a bit boring to me personally. Though there are still stories that still do it very well.

#no one asked including me but there you go anyway #that's what you get when i wake up at nearly 3 in the morning and thnk. FUCK i can't sleep #caranthir

95 notes · View notes

luckgods · 3 years

Text

Why all the white guys in whump?

I got Inspired by a post asking that question, and here we are. Warning: long post ahead.

I think it’s due to a combination of factors, as things frequently are.

The preference for / prevalence of white male characters in fandom is well-known and has been examined pretty thoroughly by people already.

What’s worth noting for discussing this tendency in whump in particular is that the ‘whump fandom’ itself is not a ‘fandom’ in the traditional sense of being made of fans of one single source narrative (or source setting, like a particular comics fandom, or the Star Wars extended universe) with pre-existing characters. Although subsets of traditional fandoms certainly exist within the larger whump fandom, a lot of whump is based on original, ‘fan’-created characters.

So, given the tendency of ‘traditional’ fandoms to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters due to the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc), if we say hypothetically that the whump fandom is split say 50/50 between ‘traditional’ fandom works and original whump works, you’d expect to see a higher number of works focused on white men than the demographics of the ‘traditional’ fandom’s source work would predict, but not as extreme of a divergence between the source material & the fanworks as the one you’d see if whump fandom were 100% based on popular media.

However, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. Whump stories and art remain focused on overwhelmingly male and frequently white characters, which means that the tendency of the fandom to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters cannot be ONLY explained by the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc).

And, having established the fact that whump writers & artists presumably have MORE control over the design of their characters than writers & artists in ‘traditional’ fandoms, we have to wonder why the proportions remain biased towards men, & white men in particular.

—

The race thing is pretty simple in my opinion. Mostly, it’s just another extension of the fanbase’s tendency to reflect the (predominantly US-American, on tumblr) culture it exists in, which means that, in a white-centric culture, people make artworks featuring white people.

There’s also the issue of artists being hesitant to write works that dwell heavily on violence towards people of color due to the (US-American) history of people of color being violently mistreated. I’ve actually seen a couple of posts arguing that white people SHOULDN’T write whump of nonwhite characters (particularly Black characters) because of the history of actual violence against Black bodies being used as entertainment, which means that fictional violence against Black people, written by white people, for a (presumed) white audience, still feels exploitative and demeaning.

I'm not going to get into all my thoughts on this discussion here but suffice to say that there's probably an impact on the demographics of whump works from authors of color who simply... don't want to see violence against people of color, even non-explicitly-racialized violence, and then another impact from white authors who choose not to write non-white characters either due to the reasons stated above, or simply due to their personal discomfort with how to go about writing non-white characters in a genre that is heavily focused on interpersonal violence.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a decent proportion of Japanese manga & anime being used as source material for whump, and manga-styled original works being created. The particular relationship between US-American and Japanese pop culture could take up a whole essay just by itself so I’ll just say, there’s a long history of US-Japanese cultural exchange which means that this tendency is also not all that surprising.

—

GENDER though. If someone had the time and the energy they could make a fucking CAREER out of examining gender in whump, gender dynamics in whump, and why there seems to be a fandom-wide preference for male whumpees that cannot be fully explained by the emphasis on male characters in the source text.

I have several different theories about factors which impact gender preference in whump, and anyone who has other theories (or disagrees with mine) is free to jump in and add on.

THEORY 1: AUTHOR GENDER AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.  Fandom in general is predominantly female, although these days it might be more accurate to say that fandom is predominantly composed of cis women and trans people of all genders. However, pretty much everyone who isn't a cis man has had to contend with the specter of gendered violence in their real personal life. Thus, if we posit whump (and fandom more generally) as a sort of escapist setup, it's not hard to see why whump authors & artists might willfully eschew writing female whumpees (especially in the case of inflicted whump), because (as in the discussion of people of color in whump above), even violence towards women that is explicitly non-gender-based may still hit too close to home for people whose lives have been saturated with the awareness of gender-based violence.

THEORY 2: SICK OF SEXY SUFFERING.  Something of an addendum to theory 1, it's worth noting that depictions of female suffering in popular media are extremely gendered (in that they specifically reflect real-life gender-based violence, and that said real-life violence is almost exclusively referenced in relation to female characters) and frequently sexualized as well. There's only so many times you can see female characters having their clothes Strategically Ripped while they're held captive, being sexually menaced (overtly or implicitly) to demonstrate How Evil the villain is, or just getting outright sexually assaulted for the Drama of it all before it gets exhausting, especially when the narratives typically either brush any consequences under the rug, or dwell on them in a way that feels more voyeuristic and gratuitous than realistic and meaningful. All this may result in authors who, given the chance to write their own depictions of suffering, may decide simply to remove the possibility of gendered violence by removing the female gender.

THEORY 3: AUTHOR ATTRACTION.  I'll admit that this one is more a matter of conjecture, as I haven't seen any good demographic breakdowns of attraction in general fandom or whump fandom. That said, my own experience talking to fellow whump fans does indicate that attraction to the characters (whether whumpers, or whumpees) is part of the draw of whump for some people. This one partially ties into theory 1 as well, in that people who are attracted to multiple genders may not derive the same enjoyment out of seeing a female character in a whumpy situation as they might seeing a male character in that situation, simply because of the experience of gendered violence in their lives.

THEORY 4: ACCEPTABLE TARGETS.  The female history of fandom means that there's been a lot more discussion of the impacts of depicting pain & suffering (especially female suffering) for personal amusement. Thus, in some ways, you could say that there is a mild taboo on putting female characters through suffering if you can't "justify" it as meaningful to the narrative, not just titillating, which whump fandom rarely tries or requires anyone to do. This fan-cultural 'rule' may impact whump writers' and artists' decisions in choosing the gender of their characters.

THEORY 5: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MAINSTREAM MASCULINITY.  Whump fandom may like whumping men because by and large, mainstream/pop culture doesn't let men be vulnerable, doesn't let them cry, doesn't let them have long-term health issues due to constantly getting beat up even when they really SHOULD, doesn't let them have mental health issues period. Female characters, as discussed in theory 2, get to ("get to") go through suffering and be affected by it (however poorly written those effects are), but typically, male characters' suffering is treated as a temporary problem, minimized, and sublimated into anger if at all possible. (For an example, see: every scene in a movie where something terrible happens and the male lead character screams instead of crying). So, as nature abhors a vacuum, whump fandom "over-produces" whump of men so as to fill in that gap in content.

THEORY 6: AMPLIFIED BIAS.  While it's true that whump fandom doesn't have a source text, it's also true that whump fans frequently find their way into the fandom via other 'traditional' fandoms, and continue participating in 'traditional' fandoms as part of their whump fandom activity. Bias begets bias; fandom as a whole has a massive problem with focusing on white male characters, and fans who are used to the bias towards certain types of characters in derivative works absolutely reproduce that bias in their own original whump works.

—

I honestly think that there is greater bias in the whump fandom than anyone would like to admit. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems as though whump fans avoid introspection and discussion of the issue by bringing up the points I talked about in my previous theories, particularly discomfort with depictions of female suffering for amusement.

However, I think that, as artists, we owe it to ourselves and one another to engage in at least a small amount of self-interrogation over our preferences, and see what unconscious or unacknowledged biases we possess. It's a little absurd to argue that depictions of women as whumpees are universally too distressing to even discuss when a male character in the exact same position would be fine and even gratifying to the person making that argument; while obviously, people have a right to their own boundaries, those boundaries should not be used to shut down discussion of any topics, even sensitive ones.

Furthermore, engaging in personal reflection allows artists to make more deliberate (and meaningful) art. For people whose goal is simply to have fun, that may not seem all that appealing, but having greater understanding of one's own preferences can be very helpful towards deciding what works to create, what to focus on when creating, and what works to seek out.

—

GENDER ADDENDUM: NONBINARY CHARACTERS, NONBINARY AUTHORS.  Of course, this whole discussion so far has been exclusively based on a male-female binary, which is reductive. (I will note, though, that many binary people do effectively sort all nonbinary people they know of into 'female-aligned' and 'male-aligned' categories and then proceed to treat the nonbinary people and characters they have categorized a 'female-aligned' the same way as they treat people & characters who are actually female, and ditto for 'male-aligned'. That tendency is very frustrating for me, as a nonbinary person whose gender has NOTHING to do with any part of the binary, and reveals that even 'progressive' fandom culture has quite a ways to go in its understanding of gender.)

Anyways, nonbinary characters in whump are still VERY rare and typically written by nonbinary authors. (I have no clue whether nonbinary whump fans have, as a demographic group, different gender preferences than binary fans, but I'd be interested in seeing that data.)

As noted above with female characters, it's similarly difficult to have a discussion about representation and treatment of nonbinary characters in whump fandom, and frankly in fandom in general. Frequently, people regard attempts to open discussions on difficult topics as a call for conflict. This defensive stance once again reveals the distaste for requests of meaningful self-examination that is so frequent in fandom spaces, and online more generally.

—

TL;DR: Whump is not immune to the same gender & racial biases that are prevalent in fandom and (US-American) culture. If you enjoy whump: ask yourself why you dislike the things you dislike— the answer may surprise you. If you create whump: ask yourself whose stories you tell, and what stories you refuse to tell— then ask yourself why.

#eposting #whumpinions #whump #whumpblr #whump community #essay #i wrote this so yall all have to read it lol #but seriously the next person who implies that a nonbinary person is just 'woman-lite' or 'man-lite' is going to Die By My Fucking Sword #mine

232 notes · View notes