#also when people DO try to make culturally accurate fics often times at least one or two people will pop in and say 'actually that's wrong' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny · 3 years

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I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

#just google it #better represent real life #if you tell a fic reader to ngl you're being pretty ableist and don't really have a good idea of how search engines work #also when people DO try to make culturally accurate fics often times at least one or two people will pop in and say 'actually that's wrong'#not to mention sometimes they might not even be right to begin with...#and okay once or twice it is what it is #but seriously if this keeps happening over and over most people are just going to stop writing or caring #fanfiction #fanfiction is literally free #fanfiction is free labor #adding layers upon layers of research and knowledge needed- on top of how difficult it can be to portray human emotion #it's not going to it's just going to make once starry eyed writers loss their ability to enjoy their work #and guess what #some ACTUALLY racist (or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic) writer is going to swoop in not giving two fucks #and they're going to go on and get their work published because they don't care about accuracy

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kasienda · 3 years

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Fanfiction Year In Review - 2020

The rest of 2020 was rough, but I sure wrote A LOT! And that feels good.

1 List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

Confessions to a Statue (Ladybug) - I’m lowkey shocked that this was finished in 2020. I feel like I wrote this one an eternity ago! It’s honestly not my favorite story, but I’m grateful to it for getting me writing in this fandom!

Stutters (Ladybug Reveal - Marichat)

An Open Secret (Ladybug for Gift Exchange)

Instagram (Ladybug Reveal - Ladrien)

Anything to Protect You (Sailor Moon for Gift Exchange)

Locked in a Closet (Ladybug Reveal - Sequel to MissNoodle’s wonderful work.)

New York (Ladybug Reveal - Ladynoir)

A Craving For Chocolate Milkshakes (Sailor Moon)

Eight fics in total! Four of them multi-chapters! Crazy!

2 Number of words written:

Written: 139k (as tracked by 750words.com)

Published: 105k (according to ff.net).

This is amazing! This is the first year (that I know of anyway - I’ve only been tracking for three years) that I broke 100k in one year!! I wrote every month, and I published at least one thing every month except August (I was moving in August).

I’m thrilled to see the written to published ratio as high as it is! It’s not something I’ve tracked before, but I always feel like I’m writing a ton and publishing very little, but it looks like that impression is fairly inaccurate. I’m publishing a lot more than I realized relative to how much I’m writing.

3 Your most popular fic:

My Miraculous Reveal Series has also gotten the most recognition of all my works this year, but it’s difficult to splice out which short is the most popular because I publish it as one series. Keeps my dashboard neater and gives the old ones a bit of attention whenever I post a new one.

4 Your personal fav:

I think I’m insanely proud of both An Open Secret and Anything to Protect You. As I published each chapter, I often had the thought “This is the best thing I’ve written!” And that feels good.

But right now, I am going to have to say an unfinished fic that I started this year - Restorative Justice - is my favorite. This is a fic that has pulled me out of my usual genre and gotten me closer to my life as a teacher. And it’s powerful and cathartic to turn these experiences into a story. I also really enjoyed exploring Chloé’s headspace. She’s just so angry, and like, this year that has been really easy to channel for some reason, and it all transferred to paper rather well. I’m kinda stuck in this fic at the moment though…

5 Your fav scene:

I literally cannot decide. I could maybe pick a favorite scene in each fic I finished, but just one?! Nope! I can’t do it. So here’s my favorite scene in the three works I’ve spent the most time on this year:

An Open Secret - the scene where Ladybug confesses to Chat Noir in the rain. The moment it all comes together for Adrien. I made myself cry.

Anything to Protect You - Honestly, this one is HARD to pick. I really like the UsaMamo kiss in the first chapter, but I also love the dates. Especially the moment where she tells him she’s Sailor Moon and he thinks she’s joking. And the cattery date.

Restorative Justice - Chapter 3 - Where Chloe and Marinette are screaming at each other. I found it so satisfying.

6 A fic or scene that challenged you:

Writing the festival scene in Anything to Protect you was an absolute slog! I was struggling so hard with trying to somewhat accurately capture a cultural event that I myself have never directly experienced (I did so much research - I read a lot, I listened to music, I watched videos), and at the same time not stall the pacing of the story or emotional anchor of the piece. It was so hard, but I was really happy with how it came out.

7 A line of writing you’re proud of:

From the most recent update of a Craving for Chocolate Milkshakes:

So she dove back into old habits and started drawing chibi-tuxedo masks all over her worksheet.

Go ahead. Do your worst.

He always had some playful or snide critique of her scribbles.

She waited a whole ten seconds before she realized the mental silence would not be filled. Because he wasn’t there. He couldn’t see her doodles.

She burst into tears.

8 A comment that touched you:

Honestly, this year it wasn’t so much what was in a comment, so much as it was when a comment arrived. Like when I was ready to tear my hair out arguing with the bank or insurance company, and then a review would pop up out of nowhere! Or when I was sitting next to my son at the hospital. Sadly, I don’t remember which comments were the ones that did this. But I think LitaKino had especially good timing more than once this year. And jennagrins as well! But there were so many others! I’m tell you all - comments are love!!

9 Something that inspired your writing:

There’s lots of the usual suspects - life, husband, children, students, etc.

But a lot of it this year has actually been reading other people’s stories and wanting them to keep going, or wanting them to have taken a different turn in the story arc. And then I have to open a doc a start a whole new fic! It’s kinda a problem honestly. I have thirteen active stories and another ten that I’m like - I would like to work on that, but it’s not happening at the moment.

10 Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

That I finished four multi-chapter fics! (Though two of them it was just the last chapter). I think I’m proving to myself that I can be somewhat disciplined about what I’m working on, so that the projects I want to finish, get finished!

And I’m also learning that you can write a lot with just chewing away at it bit by bit. It’s not about the 3k word days. It’s about it being a habit. If you can write 100 words every day that’s 36k words in a year! I wrote an average of 378 words per day! My goal is only ever 200 words, but I try to have an unbroken chain. I did not succeed this year in that due to weekly work deadlines, but I came a lot closer than I ever have before.

11. Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I read my goals from last year and laughed. (Apparently, I wanted to finish Chocolate Milkshakes by the end of January. Bwahahaha!) But that’s okay. I wrote a ton this year!! It just wasn’t where I expected it to be. So that’s what I want this year to be about. I want to focus on my own personal projects by not making commitments for exchanges or events.

I have three WIPs right now that are just far more personal than anything else I’m working on. And these three stories are the ones I want to focus on this year.

Invisible Wounds - (Ami/Zoi - Sailor Moon)

Restorative Justice - (Chloé POV - Ladybug)

Right Behind You (Unpublished Adrino story - Ladybug)

I imagine though that there will be one-shots that demand to be written in between, or one shots that will work me out of ruts, too. Or one shots that will explode into seven chapter outlines like jerks! Haha!

But overall, my main goal is to just try to write every day!

I tag the following people to tell us about your fic writing accomplishments this year because you’re amazing!! @tinacentury @floraone @starlingsinclair@mikauzoran @chronicallylatetotheparty @ladyofthenoodle @alexseanchai @galahadwilder And anyone else that wants to! And of course, if I tagged you and you don’t want to, there is NO pressure. I’ve just enjoyed doing this over the years, and wanted to share the joy!

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thegirlwholied · 3 years

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fic writer interview game

(though I go such long spans between updates 'fic writer' is a generous description... look, I may not have glorious purpose but I have glorious excuses)

& thanks @aurorawest for the tag 💕

name: Cara

(...not sure how many of you out there know this actually- except those of you who know me IRL! - as while I love my name I rarely reference it here & do enjoy that a certain corner of the internet knows me as lyin)

fandoms: I am a dabbler, a renaissance fan, a reader-of-all-trades (master of none!)- I'm all over the place; if I like something I check the Tumblr tag; if I reblog it I have probably at least stalked the AO3 page to see what folks are up to (I am in my own little fandom corner- but kitty-corner to many avenues!).

two-shots: the closest I've come to a two-shot I wound up putting up as a one-shot instead (or we could count my one fic that only has 2 chapters, but in my head it has more)

most popular multi-chapter fic: I had to check but my guess was right, it is Glass of Water, & you know, imho the one thing ol' fan fic dot net still has going for it over AO3 is its cool statistics - I don't know who you are, 50-100 people from all over the world reading till the last chapter every month on FF Dot Net even now, but much love!

actual worst part of writing: making myself sit down & get going. When I really get going - I forget to stop, I forget to eat, I don't hear people talking or music (when I toured the Louisa May Alcott house they described her writing like this and I related so much), I go for hours upon hours without meaning to and then I stop and - tend to stay stopped too long. I'm not good at the 'write everyday' process; I'm best at it when traveling, when I'd settle in at a coffee shop or location (or on a plane!), write some, & have to move on, but, uh, global pandemic put a cramp in that. I know it has to be on the page to count but I really, really do a lot of my writing in my head first. Most of my fics, if you've read one, are first drafts, straight up. They just got rewritten in my head & half-started notes & beginning scenes until I finally sat down and the whole thing came out at once feeling right. Or half comes out in one burst and the rest in another burst however much later. Typically I'd adjust a few typos & post. This is by no means writing advice! It'd be bad writing advice! But just how I operate. I've tried other ways but I've learned over years that my work's better when I accomodate/work around my natural creative process rather than trying to change it. (Also deadlines. I'm so good at delivering on hard deadlines; I am weak with soft deadlines.)

how you choose your titles: as this is a fic specific 'interview', how I title fics is very different than my og fiction. Most commonly: song lyric (...actually I did title my og fiction grad school thesis after a song lyric too; i may not hear/play much music while I write but I sure think about writing while listening to it), canon reference that is typically One Dramatic Word, poem/quote references with a heavy lean on Yeats.

do you outine?: not for fan fics, but I have a general shape in my head of 'this chapter where this happens' - if I have an unfinished fic with expected number of chapters, those are pretty accurately predictions; I have at least a big picture of what happens in each chapter. & probably some of the conversations, sometimes even already jotted-down dialogue. A written outline? Not so much (my original novel did have a list of chapters with notes to keep it straight but they looked like "Chapter Thirty-Seven: epilogueeeeeeee denoumenttttttttt job" - direct quote down to the # of t's, there)

Ideas you probably won't get around to, but wouldn't it be nice?: I still convince myself I will finish All the Things! but uh some have gone wayside yeah. One I really thought would be cool & know is blowing in the wind was this Buffy fic (yes, A Fic Not Appearing On My Actual Fic Profiles) which was a *whole* Big Concept thing even though I thought I could do it in 5 chapters. ...And then I didn't.

spicy tangential opinion: not that spicy but the fanon/canon gulf is often wide & deep for certain characters in particular &🎶I'm frightened by those who don't see it🎶. really, a character’s fanon version at times may be more fun (though more often it softens character's edges amd I like edges) but... with *certain characters in particular* it feels like that distinction’s been weirdly lost. Also, random, but probably because,my formative years were fan fic dot net, not livejournal, I always feel odd when my AO3 replies to comments (instead of reviews) are a) public and b) add to the comment count. AND I tend to wind up in a loop of 'wouldn't this person rather I spent this time working on an update' where I just... never reply which seems counter to the expected AO3-cultural norm these days, so I feel guilty? Despite the guilt I just reply to so many emails for a living (3 inboxes just for work, plus then my personal email & texts!)... so for the record my default approach is 'I appreciate all comments SO SO MUCH & do read them all but please message me on Tumblr instead if you want a response".

These opinions are 'pumpkin spice' levels of spice, not exactly cayenne here, but hey I think I achieved tangential

callouts @ me: I always think I will get there faster than I do - this is true when I am driving places too! My friends expect me to be late even though I don't expect me to be late!- so I have been known to, let's say, overpromise on update speed. (I meant to do my work today, goes a favorite poem that always applies @ me) (Time between 2011 and 2021 feels especially timey-wimey and oh no 🎶well, I guess this is growing up 🎶).

(also @ me: overly fond of parenthesis.)

& definitely some people-pleasing tendencies that spill over into, not so much my writing itself, but how I feel about it.

best writing traits: detail, dialogue, ...deaths? Lol but really. My favorite thing as a reader is when writing make you laugh & cry so those are my favorite compliments as a writer. Humor/angst: always my fic genre. Even my closest-to-fix-it fics are labeled 'somebody lives' not 'everybody lives'. ...and I need to update them (dammit)

tagging: ...this is way too long to tag, aka inflict directly upon, anyone else, except @aurorawest who asked for it 😂

#about me #tag games

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adhd-wifi · 4 years

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MDZS Modern AU Fic Tips (Festivals)

So I asked a while back if anyone was interested in some fic tips for writing Chinese modern AUs, and y’all seemed enthusiastic. But…when I tried putting it all in a single post it got…really…really long…

So I split them into a bunch of posts (Yes I copy-pasted this intro on all of them because I’m lazy)! Here are the links:

Names & Stuff

Modern Chinese Cultural Stuff

Superstitions & Beliefs

Festivals (You are here)

Living in China

Anyways, these are based on my experiences living in Singapore and China, and I hope these posts are helpful. On to it.

Content Warning: Magpie Bashing

Festivals (Warning: LONG. Good Luck.)

Note: I do not have personal experience with all of these. For those I have celebrated, I’ll indicate with a (*). Also I’ll only be talking about how we celebrate them (typically), because diving into the history and meanings of it all would take like 8 years (not literally but you know). Fee free to look them up, and ask your nearest Chinese human for any extra details. If they know it. You might want to look up what the lunar calendar is too. It’s basically the moon cycle calendar, but I am too bad at memorizing how it works so I just google the dates every single year.

Also, I’m restricting this post to ONLY Chinese & Singaporean versions of celebrations. Many other regional ethnic groups celebrate the same or similar festivals, but I don’t know enough about their versions of the festivities. Another thing is that my family is from Dalian & Harbin in the NorthEast, so there is more Northern bias in my post so I might have some info that is inaccurate to festivities in the South. I did try to search for some South-specific traditions, since Yunmeng/Hubei is in South China, but I’m not entirely sure how accurate those details are.

Chinese New Year (*) - Late Jan to Early Feb (15 days after CNY day)

Before CNY, often on the eve of the actual date, we decorate our homes with red (don’t you dare skip out on decking your home with RED) decorations such as lanterns, red and orange flowers, those vertical paper banners with auspicious calligraphy on them (what are they called in English???) and whatever these things are

As kids, my sister and I would make those loop paper chains out of red and yellow paper a lot. We never knew what to do with them when the festivities were over

Spring cleaning is extremely important, we usually do it (extensively) from about a month before the festivities (and get yelled at a lot by our Chinese mothers & grandmothers especially) up to CNY Eve

Please don’t do any cleaning, particularly sweeping or throwing the trash out, on the day itself. You’re throwing the new year luck away.

Other preparations include: buying new clothes, often with at least one red thing, visiting friends during the month prior so you don’t have to do so on the day itself and giving them little gifts and red packets, & burning new year offerings for ancestors

You will probably see lion dances on the streets and during new year parades a lot, sometimes accompanied by dragon dances, though the former is much more common. They also tend to give private performances at a discount during the CNY period, though lion dances aren’t restricted to only perform on CNY and in fact perform for special events in general, not just cultural festivities

On the night of CNY Eve, we have reunion dinners, in which we gather our entire extended family (when possible) and have a really loud, really energetic dinner party while watching the CNY Spring Gala on TV together. Or just eating if we don’t have access to a TV.

Include fish on the menu. At least one major fish main dish, not a side dish. It’s from a lucky saying: 年年有余 - nián nián yǒu yú, meaning something along the lines of “To have more prosperity this year”. The Chinese word for fish (鱼 - yú) sounds the same as 余, therefore we have fish every year. Yes it’s a pun, as many Chinese superstitions and beliefs are

Other menu items you could include: homemade dumplings (a FUCKton of them), uncut noodles, chicken or duck, pork, Chinese radish/carrot cake (side note: why the FUCK do Western articles ALWAYS translate this to “turnip cake” it’s made out of fucking RADISH or CARROT I swear to HELL), Chinese yam cakes, good alcohol and traditional sweets like tang yuan (this is basically the original version of mochi, filled with black or normal sesame filling and served in a clear, sweet soup)

There’s also one Cantonese dish known as (撈起 - Lo Hei) which is basically a salad of shredded carrot, radish, cucumber with strips of sashimi-style fish strips like salmon. You serve it to the table, pour crushed peanuts, fried dough crisps, and sweet sauce all over it, and your entire table reaches in with chopsticks and mixes everything together. It’s more common in Singapore and Malaysia than it actually is in Hong Kong and China, but I’ve had it in China before in the springtime. I fucking hate it.

By the way, a fun game to play is the coin dumpling game. Basically, when you make the dumplings, put clean coins into some of them, and whoever eats the dumpling with the coins inside are considered super lucky for the year. I wasn’t ever allowed to make them though, my 20 years of dumpling-folding have failed me I still suck at it so everyone knows which ones are mine.

Usually, relatives living overseas would go to China for the New Year if they can, and they would take turns hosting the dinner each year. You would traditionally only have a reunion dinner in a family home, mostly because everything outside is closed

During the celebrations, lighting firecrackers and sparklers is part of the fun. Keep a close eye on the kids.

Wearing traditional clothing isn’t necessary, but encouraged

At midnight, the younger, unmarried family members will present their married elders with gifts (usually two oranges per person or a small handmade craft) while wishing them well for the year, and in turn the elders will return the wishes and gift the youngsters red packets with money.

The celebration period lasts for 15 days, but people typically go back to work a day or two after the actual CNY date

Personal note: I have only actually celebrated CNY once in China, back when I was tiny, so most of this is based on Singaporean experiences, what I know my in-China relatives, who live in Dalian, do, and what I’ve double checked online. But CNY is huge in China and many places celebrate it differently, so don’t get too worried about following this to the dot.

The Lantern Festival - Early to Mid Feb

In Singapore it’s actually illegal to celebrate the Lantern Festival traditionally on a large scale because of the potential fire hazards & pollution, so it’s somewhat merged with the Mid-Autumn festival here and thus I don’t know as much about this one in a “proper” Chinese context (I had to go to school in Singapore this time of year)

But anyways

The Lantern Festival comes immediately after CNY, on the 15th day of the first lunar month. It’s seen as a day of freedom for all, so everyone takes to the streets, lighting up the night with candles and lanterns

Lantern-walks are common, in which everyone holds a lantern - there are many kinds to choose from - and just walk up and down the streets together

These lantern-walks often take place alongside the official festival parades

The dragon dances mentioned earlier are more likely to appear during the lantern festival than CNY, and the lion dances of course come as well

It gets crowded a lot. Hold onto your kids.

Lantern riddles are fun games, in which they string up lanterns with papers hanging from them. Upon these papers are the riddles, and if you got them right you could win prizes. Or at least bragging rights amongst your family and friend groups

If you’re in a river town, you’ll likely have a chance to see water lanterns, which are also common during the Mid-Autumn Festival. They’re paper lanterns, sometimes made in lotus form, carrying wishes of prosperity. This can come in two forms, an official river lantern parade where they make HUGE lanterns for show, or smaller lanterns that just flow along. Sounds perfect for a Yunmeng Jiang family celebration, don’t you think?

Another one is the sky lanterns, which CQL watchers will recognize. People will gather together, usually on a hill, and release lanterns into the skies. Some will make them themselves, but most people will just buy pre-made ones. Like in CQL, you make a wish upon these lanterns, then sit down and eat tang yuan together.

They apparently eat a lot of tang yuan on this festival

A lot of romantic meet-ups happen on this festival (and the Mid-Autumn Festival) (y’all know what to do with this information)

This is considered the last chance of family time following on from CNY before you all return to your normal lives

The QingMing Festival (*) - Early Apr

AKA the Tomb-Sweeping Festival

To put it very basically, this is when we go to our deceased loved one’s graves and clean said graves

We go to the cemetery in the early morning, wipe down the gravestones, clear them of debris like leaves and such, then we make offerings of food. A lot of the times, we would basically lay out a feast before the grave(s), lighting incense and also decorating the graves with flowers and such

Please do not ever eat anything in those offerings. It’s not for the living. Therefore, please feel free to stab your chopsticks upright into that bowl of rice.

You can burn offerings like paper too, usually in a burning urn (??? is it an urn?), but in my experience we weren’t allowed to do that at my grandma’s grave since it was a crowded cemetery so I don’t know how it works exactly

In my personal experiences, we usually stayed in the cemetery for about an hour, praying to the deceased and sort of chatting with them, hoping they’re doing well in the afterlife and updating them on our lives

After that’s done, we go have a picnic somewhere down the mountain and fly kites while getting bullied by asshole magpies

They keep stealing my food because apparently even they know you shouldn’t eat the food left out for the dead

One stole my necklace once ;-;

Anyways the food offerings left out are typically cleared the next morning (latest) by us or you pay the cemetery caretakers to dispose of it, but the latter is looked down upon for good reason

It’s really just best to clean it up yourselves when you can. For everyone’s sake.

The Dragon Boat Festival (*) - Late Jun to Early Jul

You could probably make a sports anime about this festival, because the main even at the Dragon Boat Festival is the dragon boat racing (shocking)

Okay all joking aside, during this festival, which is a summer event, dragon boat racers compete with one another in long, narrow wooden canoes with a Chinese dragon head carved out in the front and painted scales on the side, often really brightly coloured

They row to the beat of loud drums, with a drummer sitting at the head of each boat, facing their boat’s rowers, beating the drum as their team rows

People watching the races can do so from the shore, where they’ll be eating glutinous rice with meat/nuts/beans wrapped in large, woven bamboo leaves into a triangle shape, called 粽子 - zòng zi. (The Malaysians & Indonesians have this too, but they use banana leaves instead)

In some places, you have viewers in viewing boats too, with the race course marked off with buoys. I fell into the water once from one of these. Luckily they make you all wear life-vests.

Also a limited occurrence but rarer, some places will have sort of official “cheerleading” boats, in which a bunch of colourfully dressed people will shout and cheer for the racers as a whole, often waving flags the same colours as their clothes. They’re often standing, but in the same kind of dragon boats. You have to be affiliated with the local dragon boat community / heritage board to be allowed to be one of these “cheerleaders” though

When the official races aren’t happening though, visitors are often taken around the river. You can technically do this at any time, but the Chinese believe that the time of the Dragon Boat Festival is the best time for traversing the great rivers

Other things people do during this festival include drinking realgar wine, making perfume packets for children, and hanging mosquito-repellent herbs on doors and windows, but I’ve never seen this in practice and couldn’t find much else on these

To be honest, this particular festival is seen as a thing of lingering cultural heritage or just something of a traditional ceremonial practice, but is overall kinda dying as a full-fledged festival, with only the racing surviving the passage of time (In fact, this has become more of a leisure event than a festival in Singapore in recent years)

The QiXi Festival - Mid to Late Aug???

Not gonna lie I didn’t know this one existed until I looked it up

I knew the legend surrounding it (The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl - Please look it up it’s a beautiful story even though it’s not realistic because the magpies aren’t assholes) but didn’t know it was an actual holiday at all

Basically it’s kind of the Chinese version of Valentine’s Day, but it takes place in like August

Traditionally, girls took this time to show off their skills in the “feminine arts” such as weaving, sewing, fruit carving (???), tea-making (?????) and poetry (?????????). I’m confused.

They also ate special pastries and children gave flower garlands to the sacred ox statues

Apparently it’s mostly only celebrated in more traditional/rural areas now because most modern Chinese people just celebrate the Western Valentine’s Day

The legend gets to stay though

The Hungry Ghost Festival (*) - Late Jul to Early Aug (Start) / Late Aug to Early Sept (End)

This one is not a festive festival at all. You shouldn’t be enjoying this festival as a living person. But this is probably the best festival for any fics set in the modern world revolving around dead spirits being active out of everything on this list

This festival lasts the entire 7th month of the lunar calendar, so the Chinese will literally just call it the “Seventh Month (七月 - qī yuè)” or the “Ghost Month (鬼月 - guǐ yuè)”

I’ve never even heard anyone refer to it by its full name in Chinese, which is apparently 中元节 - zhōng yuán jié or 盂兰盆节 - yú lán pén jié according to Wikipedia

Basically, the Gates of Hell the Afterlife have opened for the month to get the spirits of the deceased ease their suffering for a bit. So, the festival is actually NOT celebrated by the living, instead, it’s “celebrated” by the ghosts of the deceased

Living human practices during this festival include making various food offerings (the main point of the festival) for the spirits, usually much more seriously and/or extravagantly than typical offerings, burning offerings such as paper money, paper houses, paper cars, etc in large quantities because this is the best time for the spirits to receive them, putting on special “performances for the dead” in which performers will dance and sing to a room of empty chairs, and having special family prayer sessions in which we “speak” to the deceased directly (Luckily, they don’t usually answer us)

Nowadays, only the first two of those practices are really still practiced as seriously as they used to be, for individual families at least

Again, if you see food being left out on the side of the street, especially if there’s incense or something next to it, please don’t eat it or even touch it. Don’t be the ignorant guy in a horror movie

People who can see/hear/sense spirits and environmentalists hate this festival, because ghosts can be terrifying even when harmless, and all the burning contributes to climate change

I happen to be both of those. I am also sensitive to smoke. So...

Ironically I don’t actually hate this festival THAT much but...

Personal note: I’ve never been to China during the seventh month, and because they make it a point to not really talk about it, I only know the Singaporean experiences. Telling ghost stories is both encouraged and shunned during this month here. Malaysian-Chinese ghost stories are fucking horrifying. Give me more.

Mid-Autumn Festival (*) - Late Sept to Early Oct

My personal favourite festival on this list. I don’t like crowded places, but I make exceptions for this one when I can. I would call this the most fun and enjoyable festival out of all of them.

When speaking Chinese, most of the time we’d just shorten it to 秋节 - qiū jié from the full name of 中秋节 - zhōng qiū jié

When speaking English (in Singapore, but you can use these in English fics and people tend to understand it fine), we also call it the Mooncake Festival, the Autumn Moon Festival, or the Harvest Moon Festival (this one is quite an old name though)

In modern times, this is celebrated very similarly to the famous Natsu Matsuri (Summer Festival) in Japan, in which a huge festival site is fully decorated in colourful lanterns and filled with countless stalls of food, games, and festival products such as more lanterns, traditional dress rentals if you’re lucky, wooden toys, cloth products, “festival” tea & wine, and many more

You are encouraged to wear cheongsam/qipao to the festivities, but honestly most people don’t anymore, but they dress their kids in cultural clothing a lot (in Singapore you’ll also see kiddies running around in other traditional dress, such as yukata, summer hanbok, festive baju kurung, etc.)

In some places, special dragon or lion dances will be performing

Expect to find a FUCKTON of fresh fruit stalls, including pumpkins, melons, pomelos, persimmons, pomegranates, maybe starfruits, dragonfruits & guavas, and probably a heck lot of longans if you’re somewhere in South China. Also expect every individual large fruit to be decorated with red ribbons and colourful wrapping paper

Also out of every five stalls, at least one will be a mooncake stall

Mooncakes come in multiple varieties! The most common are the white lotus bean paste ones, the ones with salted egg yolks (single yolk and double yolk), snowskin ones which as much softer and sweeter, red bean paste cakes, etc.

They make some super cute shapes too!

There are even more savoury options with minced pork filling or prawn/fish filling (not a fan of the fish ones), but they’re made with a flakier pastry than the sweet ones (Note: sometimes we don’t call these mooncakes, but it depends)

Basically the sweet ones use a pastry that’s more like a typical sweet tart shell while the savoury ones use something that’s more like a non-sweetened croissant

Traditionally, people would make the mooncakes together at home, and offer them to the moon goddess during moon worship, but nowadays most people just buy them and eat them

This festival also shares a lot of the same customs as CNY & the Lantern Festival, such as:

Having another reunion dinner. Duck is a very common dish, along with seasonal crops. Lotus dishes are also popular around this time, depending on where you are.

Lanterns everywhere. Water and sky lanterns are also common. You’ll also see people playing with firecrackers and sparklers.

In much more rural areas, you might get to experience the Burning Pagoda tradition, in which they set up a seven-tier tower made up of wood and straw and burn it while dancing around it. This practice is similar to the Bon Odori even in Japan.

Fun fact: This is also basically the Lantern Festival of Singapore, because the actual Lantern Festival isn’t celebrated here

Bonus: I made a post about the most famous myth of this festival that relates to MDZS.

The ChongYang Festival - Mid to Late Oct

Also known as the Double Ninth Festival (in English) and the Senior Festival (slang)

This is basically the festival of paying respects to our elders, both living and dead

There are...going to be a fuckton of chrysanthemums everywhere. Chrysanthemum flowers decorating the place, chrysanthemum cakes (I don’t recommend googling it if you have severe trypophobia, some of the more traditional cakes have a lot of seeds and stuff on top which may be upsetting, but I would say it’s at least better than a hollow lotus pod), chrysanthemum wine, all of that

Common activities include going on easy hikes or mountain walks with the living elders, and maybe visiting the graves of those who have passed and paying respects

It’s dying in modern times, but still seen as at least a day of relaxing with your elderly family and friends

The DongZhi Festival - Late Dec (just before Christmas mostly)

The Winter Solstice Festival

Nothing much is done, we really mostly just have a special dinner together, eating dumplings, noodle soup, mutton, and hotpot. Alcohol is often present at such dinners, and you would toast to the solstice

You’d also pray and stuff like most of these festivals, but I think that’s a given by now lol

Modern Chinese people will often get together during this time and merge it with their Christmas dinners

Aside from that, we really just celebrate Christmas, though now you can add a line of cultural significance to those modern AU Christmas fics :3

Bonus Info: There is also a Summer Solstice festival called the Xia Zhi Festival that’s essentially the same as this, except you eat a lot of noodles and go swimming, but it’s not really significant anymore in modern times, the DongZhi festival only really surviving because of Christmas, so I didn’t include it in the list

Alright, that one took like 84 years. I’m tired LMAO.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #cql #chen qing ling #the untamed #chinese things #chinese fic tips #fic tips #modern au #my posts

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microsuedemouse · 3 years

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hhhhhhhhhhhhhwoof I hate fandom/ship drama

anyway I’ve been thinking about how. there is nothing, inherently wrong,, with being interested in exploring ships (or even non-romantic/non-sexual character dynamics!) that are unhealthy in-universe.

here’s something: there is value in recognising that a ship is unhealthy or toxic or abusive or whichever other descriptor you feel fits best. (I am going to be using ‘unhealthy’ as my umbrella word in this post; obviously it’s an understatement to call an abusive relationship ‘unhealthy’ but it’s still accurate and it encompasses the variety of things I’m talking about.) there is value in taking that as fact and acknowledging such in whatever exploratory work you may choose to create or engage in.

I wanna take a second here to clarify part of what I mean: it is not inherently wrong to enjoy an unhealthy ship, and you are not required to defend a ship as healthy/‘not abusive’ in order to justify your interest in it. this is a very weird result, imo, of purity culture and virtue signalling. when you have a healthy understanding of the difference between fiction and reality, and a recognition of what’s acceptable in reality and what’s compelling in fiction, it’s actually very worth exploring what interests and engages you about Fictional Bad Things.

you know that phenomenon where people love villains? a lot of discourse around purity culture naturally leads to the conclusion: “it is wrong to like villains.” most of us are capable of recognising that this... doesn’t make sense. because obviously, we aren’t - or at least, the great majority of us aren’t - claiming that we would like and support this person in reality, or that we would be entirely comfortable with the deeds they commit if those deeds took place in reality. we’re saying that the character appeals to and compels us for some reason, within fiction. that’s a different thing - and it’s usually a sign of good writing! it’s very worth exploring that experience: what about this villain makes you like them so much? what about them makes them relatable to you, or sympathetic to you, or perhaps even cathartic to you? these kinds of questions can offer both entertainment value and, possibly, some new insights into yourself as a person. those insights might turn out to be interesting and meaningless, or they might provide you with new ways to express yourself, or they might even offer you a new avenue for growth.

(moral purity often also extends to the conclusion ‘you shouldn’t enjoy stories in which the main character suffers, because it’s wrong to enjoy someone’s pain.’ we all know this makes no sense, because that includes most stories. a major reason human beings tell stories is to share in the emotional journey of a protagonist ultimately overcoming great obstacles. but anyway, this is a whole other issue, really.)

what I’m getting at is - the same can apply to ships. there are a few approaches to unhealthy ships, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say they stand on equal moral ground, but there are a variety of ways you might be able to explore them without it making you an inherently evil person, or whatever. it’s also worth noting that while, obviously, I’m expressing here what aligns with my moral position and encouraging you to think similarly - but, I also encourage you to think critically about your own moral positions. decide what is comfortable for you, and what feels right to engage with. it’s fine and it’s normal to draw your own lines in the sand and say, this is where the range of acceptable ends for me. I won’t support or engage with what’s on the other side.

to give a quick overview of some approaches I’m not as comfortable with: sometimes you’ll find a writer/artist/other fan who likes to depict a ship as totally healthy in a way that can only be described as out-of-character. sometimes this seems to be a denial of the actuality of the ship; I don’t like that so much because it’s often a refusal to acknowledge that their canonical behaviour/dynamic is bad. other times this is depicted as a sort of AU; this doesn’t bother me quite as much personally (often depending on what the writer’s overall attitudes seem to be) but it’s also often less interesting to me. in my experience, this is usually very self-indulgent work and has a lot more to do with the writer’s own experiences than with canon itself. which is fair, honestly. sometimes that’s cathartic for the writer and that’s enough - I don’t have to be into it personally to respect it.

another thing that crops up that’s kind of worrisome, imo, is when a writer/artist/etc. depicts the ship as in-character but denies that it’s unhealthy. now, in fairness, if you’re simply reading a fic or looking at a piece of fanart or something, you cannot always tell exactly how the creator thinks the ship actually operates. not everyone is always going to include a disclaimer that says ‘hey I don’t think this is actually Good.’ so try not to immediately ascribe intent to the writer/etc. unless you’ve seen them state outright somewhere: this isn’t abuse, it’s just cute! (or whatever it is they’re seeing.) at that point it is worth being concerned about what this person thinks constitutes a healthy relationship, and if you don’t feel good about supporting their work that’s entirely fair.

HOWEVER. there are also other approaches. two in particular stand out to me that I think are worth discussing. one is simply exploring the possibilities of an unhealthy relationship, with total acknowledgement of its flaws. one unhealthy dynamic that I admittedly find really engaging a lot of the time? ‘these two characters are Very obsessed with each other, and it sure ain’t healthy psychologically, but it’s definitely mutual.’ I love that shit. gimme a couple of unhinged, incredibly codependent pieces of shit, and you have my full attention. particularly if they’re on equal footing - if they’re damaging one another, it’s reciprocal, or at very least they’re both getting exactly what they want out of the relationship. obviously this would not be a dynamic I could support in real life! that’s terrible and I don’t want anyone to go through it! but in fictional characters it can be fascinating to explore. and if the content is going to upset or trigger certain fans: that’s why we use tags and warnings. AO3, where many of us go for a huge amount of our fan content, literally has a whole system in place for precisely this purpose: so we can let each other know what’s inside, and make informed choices about what we want to consume.

the other common approach is the redemption arc. it’s always gonna be up to you which characters you consider redeemable and which ones you don’t - that’s okay. again, it’s your choice what content to engage and what to pass over. but as people we’re traditionally very fond of the redemption arc story, and as fans we love to create the redemption arcs our favourite characters don’t get to live out in canon. because we love something about the character and want to explore them further. like I said earlier, that in itself is worth giving some thought to. sometimes we’ll even end up writing partial redemptions: this character goes from totally reprehensible to kind of appealingly awful. the ship goes from abusive to a much more regular level of fucked up. that can definitely be an interesting story in itself, and it’s okay if you want to explore it.

the main thing is that you always exercise your ability to think critically about what you’re consuming and why you like it - which, honestly, you should be trying to do all of the time, anyway. be clear about what you do and don’t endorse, about what your actual values are, about where you draw the line. (as both an example and a disclaimer, since I know I still have followers from A Certain Fandom where this cropped up a lot before I mostly dipped: one line that I personally draw, and always will, is at ships involving an adult and a literal child. I am not comfortable with exploring this even in the hypothetical space of fan content. it is too objectionable to be compelling.)

go forth. explore your unhealthy ships and shitty favourite characters. experiment and learn why they compel you. write properly-labelled fanfic about them hurting each other and loving it. just remember that everyone has different boundaries, and that fiction and reality are very separate spaces. acknowledge that what you’re enjoying is not inherently right or acceptable in real life just because you enjoy it in a story, and it doesn’t have to be. if you’re a content creator, consider portraying these things in such a way that your audience is well aware of your position on the matter, in order to help them also understand what is and isn’t healthy. be a ruthless writer and a kind person, and you’ll do just fine.

#this got SO long jesus christ #anyway there's a reason I no longer go into ship tags or engage heavily with meta fandom #I like just throwing my fic over the fence and then scuttling away #long post #fandom #shipping

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ladyloveandjustice · 5 years

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Summer 2019 Anime Overview: Carole and Tuesday (final episodes)

I ended up having a lot more to say about Carole and Tuesday’s second season than I thought I did! It delved into some pretty varied and complex issues, after all. I did an EXTREMELY brief review/reaction( to the first half/season of the show you can see here. This review continues from that but is much more involved.

Carole and Tuesday (second half/ episodes 13-24)

Carole and Tuesday’s second half really expands its scope and goes all-out into the zone of social commentary in a way that I didn’t expect. Dang. I’m definitely impressed. There were hints of this in the first part, with Carole being a refugee from Earth who had very limited means and opportunities, while Tuesday came from a privileged background but ran away to escape a mother who cared more about her political career and public approval than her children’s well-being.

The second half delves into this much more, and condemns the policies of deportation and general public attitudes towards refugees and undocumented immigrants. Since the part of Mars our protagonists live inhabit pretty clearly meant to be analogous to New York, the plotline definitely meant to be a criticism of what’s going on in American politics right now. Of course Japan also notoriously has a lot of problems accepting immigrants and I think Watanabe and the rest of the staff probably wanted to say something about that too.

Tuesday’s mom is able to climb the political ranks by calling for deportation of refugees on Mars- and in a chillingly accurate bit of commentary, she does this solely to gain popularity with the public, and an even richer white man who has a corporate monopoly easily flouts laws and ethics to push her campaign. Black people are shown to be the first ones targeted for deportation and the black men who speak out are “made an example of”. The show doesn’t go so far to have anyone be killed (which is for the best, it’s unnecessary to go that far to make the point), police brutality is depicted and condemned, one man is targeted and beaten a bit despite not physically resisting, and a pair of men simply walking on the street are manhandled and arrested for “obstructing officers” despite doing absolutely nothing illegal. These marginalized folks continue to bravely fight back, even releasing protest raps from jail. And it’s pointed out to Tuesday that her mom is targeting people who are like her best friend and maybe she should step up and do something about it.

All of that is really good, and the show is firmly on the side of the minorities fighting back, and is all about how art should be used to challenge and reject oppression. It encourages diversity, unity, and takes a stand against persecution of immigrants, forced deportation and censorship. And how the show does this witha multi-cultural cast and a lot of developed characters from different backgrounds is great- there’s a love for all different kinds of music and acknowledgement that music owes everything to people of color. I especially appreciated the show going out of it’s way to depict how rap is often a tool for resistance.

That said, while the show’s message is positive and I appreciate its optimism and good intentions, the ending felt a little too neat and overly simplistic.It might be reductive to say the show goes so far to say racism can be solved if you sing a song, it’s more like “yeah use music to resist!” but the way the police are SO EASILY talked out of violence when they come to shut things down, the neat and simple way the political situation is resolved, and ALL the prison guards being willing to help out minorities in jail with no argument- yeah, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t go that smoothly in real life. However, the show seems to sincerely trying to send a message of hope, even if the execution is a little simplistic and lacking.

The show is just sort of messy when it comes to its plot, themes and issues in general- I’d say it tries to do a little too much, so every arc is left feeling kind of underdeveloped and a lot of things are just...dropped. There are several examples of this.

Two mothers are both major characters in the show, and the show tries to make a connection there and say something about motherhood at the last second, but it’s muddled and contradictory. It’s stated that mothers can either chain you down or give you guidance and freedom, which is true, but we’re ONLY shown awful moms throughout the show, who have a large negative impact on their childrens’ life and hardly any positive impact, so celebrating motherhood at all feels bizarre.

And the idea that this one mom isn’t all bad and maybe can be reasoned with is jarring since there aren’t any examples in the show of her postively affecting her child or being a good mom in the past. It’s so muddled I don’t know if I can say the show crosses over into abuse apologism (it’s at least made clear that if that mom doesn’t take her one chance to start to make amends, the kids will step aside and let her be taken down) but it really edges on it, and this is definitely something the show should have developed more and executed better

Another really muddled plot element with a lot of weird implications was the whole “martian androgyny syndrome” thing. It didn’t tun out as badly as I feared it might, but it was really hard to say why it was even there or what the show was trying to do with it.

Basically, being on Mars can lead to some sort of vague condition where your sex changes I guess? And maybe it’s eventually fatal for some reason? And maybe the medication that treats it (by trying to stop the change? by addressing side effects? it’s not clear what it even does) causes uncontrollable anger??? That last part is especially uncertain because it’s only stated once by a person who might be trying to justify their abusive behavior BUT it’s also true that out of the three groups introduced in the show who have the syndrome, the people who (probably) take the meds have explosive tempers while the person who explicitly doesn’t is calm so????

Anyway, the syndrome isn’t presented as uniformly negative, the calm person who doesn’t take the meds is a good person who is okay with their condition and they identify as non-binary and make a nice speech about it. But they’re also, y’know, dying, so. Again, it’s really unclear why this is even a plot element since it goes nowhere and gets explored so little and what is actually even going on with the syndrome and the medication is SO VAGUE. It doesn’t help that 2/3 of the people afflicted look like stereotypical anime caricatures of trans women. The idea that being intersex/getting a sex change/whatever is supposed to be happening is a death sentence isn’t great either.

And that kind of extends to the character arcs, relationships and plot in general a bit- there were a lot of things that were underdeveloped and muddled, which made the characters a little hard to connect to. Even the sci-fi aesthetic felt a little half-baked- I guess it’s a alternate history because we’re in Mars but Instagram is still a thing and modern singers are being referenced, but exactly how this world works went pretty underexplored. At least the text at the encourages viewers to use their creativity and continue the story themselves, so even the show itself is telling ficcers to get on it and make sense of this mess, okay. (Seriously though, I always enjoy seeing pro writers inviting the viewers to continue their story. Let those fic flags fly!)

Carole and Tuesday is definitely not perfect, but it’s entertaining, warm, visually beautiful and bursting with a love and respect for music. It’s features awesome tunes and varied and intriguing characters. The pro-diversity message that extends support for the marginalized and especially immigrants and refugees is very needed in these troubled times, and it’s theme of unity is very sweet

It’s an thought-provoking show clearly made with a lot love and largely positive intentions, so if you can handle the mixed and concerning implications of some of the more muddled bits, I encourage checking it out.

#summer 2019 anime #carole and tuesday #carole & tuesday #shinichiro watanabe #watanabe shinichiro #anime overview #my reviews #reviews #review

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notthatiwilleverwriteit · 5 years

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Since I get mentioned in your asks a lot, lemme throw you a question as well. A couple of months ago I read a non-eng. fic that featured the idea that the death of his wife caused Mr He to lose his marbles, which made him prone to violent spells and emotional withdrawal. Do you believe that Mrs He's death has severely affected Mr He or served as a catalyst for his seeming alienation from his sons? Or do you hold his disappearance is more related to his business than to the pain of loss?

Excuse me for silently freaking out a little before getting to your question.

There, done.

Actually, when ch. 292 came out and we learned He Tian’s mother seems to have passed away, my mind played with those same kinds of ideas for a fic. So, this is a bit of a mix of both my ideas and what I believe happened.

“Do you believe that Mrs He’s death has severely affected Mr He or served as a catalyst for his seeming alienation from his sons?”

The more I thought about this, the more variables popped out. When did she die? How old HT was? How much does HT remember of her? What her relationship with the boys was like? How did she die? What kind of a husband Mr. He was to her?

Changing even one of those variables essentially affects all the others, too. And what makes it even trickier is that almost all we know about Mr. He is secondhand information. That phone conversation between HT and Mr. He in ch. 251 is so far the only time, we’ve heard his “voice”. I’m not saying other characters’ views on Mr. He can’t be valid, but what is told to us via them is always filtered through their lenses.

This answer will go off on a bit of a tangent at first because I think the key to open the mystery is to try and figure out what kind of a woman Mrs. He was. And to “see” her, we need to look at HT. What HT thinks of her might give us hints.

I might be reaching with this one but I’d like to think one of the memories HT has of his mother (and what makes him miss her more) is her cooking. It’d also enhance the heartache when you think about HT and home cooking. I’m sure HT was partly just trying to stick it to his father by talking about his new wife like that but maybe the different kind of cooking had also painfully reminded him of her mother.

Mothers have such a profound impact on us when it comes to food. We grow on our mothers’ take on dishes and tend to consider them the only right way to make them, the originals. And I feel like this is even more accurate when it comes to Asian cultures with such complex and hugely variated cuisines.

So, perhaps Mrs. He liked to cook even if they could’ve afforded to hire staff for that. Maybe she and little Tian bonded over cooking and food. Maybe little Tian often watched her cook. Maybe there were certain foods he wanted when he was sad, sick, upset, or happy.

A more direct hint of what their relationship might have been like was quite recently in ch. 291 when HT visited her grave.

His face is unreadable, but I think his actions speak louder. Obviously, the visit held some importance to him and he made a point of making it. He snuck off by himself early in the morning before his guests had woken up.

He didn’t tell Mo Guan Shan why he had been to the mountain first thing in the morning, either. In fact, he quickly moves on from MGS’s question by making fun of him and riling him up so the matter is dropped.

HT also appears quite gentle when he was by himself. The way he had picked up a flower even though she was already surrounded by a sea of them and placed it on the stone.

I think we can all agree HT isn’t one to waste these kinds of gestures on people he doesn’t care about and cherish. So, if HT can love someone like this, I think it’s safe to say she was a good mother to him and someone we would’ve liked.

Now, what was a woman like her doing with a man like Mr. He? Had their marriage been arranged or had there been love between them? More questions to add to the ones we already had.

In the context of “rich families and their need for succession” and “China”, I’d say it’s more likely the marriage had been arranged one way or another. So, probably not much love there, at least in the sense we Western people like to think of “love”.

In the light of all that - and to finally answer your question 😅 - do I think her death affected Mr. He and changed him for the worse?

I’m sure it made him feel some type of way. She was the mother of his children, after all, and I refuse to believe he didn’t have any affection for her. She seemed to have been a good mother to HT, so perhaps she wasn’t 100% unhappy with her life.

Was his reaction soul crippling grief, though? I doubt it. I have a feeling Mr. He was already pretty far gone emotions-wise and sucked so deep into the shady world at that point that her death would have had a profound impact on the direction of his character.

I do hope we will discover new sides to Mr. He via her but think it’s very unlikely to happen. 19 Days has certainly answered my desperate wishes when it has come to revealing different sides to apparent antagonists, but I’m not holding my breath for Mr. He. I’d very much like to know more about him from a different point of view, but it seems he’s been set out to be the root of all evil.

I mentioned my own ideas for a fic regarding this in the beginning, and those somewhat reflect my wishes for what kind of a marriage they had. In the fic, Mrs. He was seriously ill and basically shackled to the hospital bed they had gotten for her. She had her own room, and that was little Tian’s favorite place in the house. They were very close and he spent most of his time there, when he wasn’t ushered out to let her rest.

Mr. He wasn’t home a lot and he was already quite stern and distant with his sons. But he did visit her room whenever he came back from wherever he had been. He always went to see her alone, though, never with the kids.

The only time when they were all four (including HC) in her room was when she was in such a bad shape, it was obvious she didn’t have much time left. That’s also when HT saw his father doing something unlike him: he gave her a flower and her favorite book, brushed her cheek, and they looked at each other in a way that a child couldn’t understand. She gave him a little nod, and Mr. He told HC to take HT to play outside. That was the last time HT saw his mother alive.

When she had gotten sick, she had made Mr. He promise that he wouldn’t let her linger pointlessly. That’s not how she wanted to go and her children to remember her. She made him promise because she knew he could keep it. So, Mr. He had found a doctor who would be willing to go through the last steps of her treatment when the time came. He sat with her until she was gone.

I’d hope something like to happen in canon but I very much doubt it. But, please Old Xian, give me at least something other than “he was an asshole, there’s no other side to him”.

“Or do you hold his disappearance is more related to his business than to the pain of loss?”

The first part probably answered this already, but still. Even if her death had been painful for him and changed him in a bad way, I’d still say his absence is 100% due to his business. He might, every once in a while, remember her with some affection that’s been changed by the years she’s been gone, but I doubt there is some lingering emotional pain that would keep him away.

Thank you a lot for your question It made my day.

#19 days #he tian #mr. he #mrs. he #answered ask

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youknowmymethods · 5 years

Text

Content Creator Interview #1

In the very first of a series of interviews with authors and artists in the Sherlolly and Sherlock fandoms @theemptyquarto chatted to @hobbitsdoitbetter about dark Anglo-Irish humour, how she got started in the fandom, cultural influences, and so much more.

I hope you all enjoy reading what they have to say as much as I did.

Hello Tumblr!

Back before Christmas 2018 I sat down (metaphorically, in a shared google doc) with the lovely Hobbitsdoitbetter. Hobbits has been working in fanfic at least since 2006, but came onto the BBC Sherlock scene in 2013, oddly enough (or maybe not that oddly, if you have read her sensitive and universally female-positive fic) getting her start as an Adlock writer. She switched over to Sherlolly with the brilliant, “Be Near Me When My Light Is Low,” a graceful and touching story dealing with domestic partner abuse.

After that she was off to the races. Since then, she’s written many of the most beloved stories in Sherlolly fandom, including: “The Boyfriend Experience,” which yours truly got to beta-read, set in an AU where Sherlock is a high class escort; “Little Goldfish,”a deeply sexy story dealing with the healthy (and unhealthy) use of BDSM in relationships; “The Rudest Man In London,” a rollicking Victorian AU adventure; and others too numerous to list here. Currently she’s publishing “Bliss,” another sweet Victorian AU in which Sherlock and Molly have to find their way to one another as partners in a marriage blanc, and a joint fic with Mizjoely called “The Poison in the Honey, the Sting in the Sweet,” featuring crimelord Sherlock, MI5 agent Molly, and an early-1980s setting.

Before I get into our chat, I’m going to post two reader questions submitted by OhAine pre-interview, since the actual discussion spins off both of them.

So with thanks to Aine:

(1) You write a very strong Molly, never more so than in “What the blackbird sang.” Can you tell us a little about the process of writing that story, and how difficult was it to walk the line between such a harrowing backstory and the love story you were developing?

It’s interesting to talk about “What The Blackbird Sang,” and the fic which preceded it, “Be Near Me When My Light Is Low.” It was the first Sherlolly piece I actually wrote, and I was still finding the characters’ voices. Getting John’s voice, in particular, proved a trial; it wasn’t until I wrote him telling someone off that I felt I had him. (I also wouldn’t make Mycroft so heartless if I wrote it today.) I was feeling my way through the Sherlockverse, and when I read the fic now, that’s really the only thing I can see, lol.

I was very aware of the morality of discussing something which affects people in real life, and of the ways in which some behaviors are presented to young women as welcome or romantic in popular culture when they’re actually creepy and controlling. Domestic violence is often presented in fanfic as an excuse for a character to be saved by another (male) character, or as an excuse for whump, angst or hurt/comfort, and I didn’t want to write anything like that. I wanted it to be realistic, and to be respectful of the experiences of people who have suffered from it. (I do know a couple of people who have survived DV, and I know their kids). I also wanted to show some of the things which younger readers should look out for as red flags, and give accurate information on what resources were available to them if they were in a situation which was dangerous. In short, I wanted the story to be useful as well as entertaining.

In order to do that, I looked a lot at real life cases of DV; almost everything which Molly’s ex does to her in the story is based on something from real life, including leaving the little bloody dolls on her doorstep. I also looked at the ways in which people with PTSD deal with panic attacks and flashbacks; I wanted to be honest and respectful, as I said, and I wanted to make sure that nothing I wrote glamourised or romanticized the abuse or the trauma. I suffer from anxiety and depression, and I know how difficult it can be to try and manage someone else’s reaction to your illness, as well as your own: that’s why I chose to give Sherlock prior experience with dealing with panic attacks. Writing the story itself wasn’t difficult; because I had given myself an obligation to be realistic, I had an in-built set of brakes. I couldn’t put in anything too fantastical, and that certainly helped. As for writing the romance, well... I think one of the things I like about Sherlock is that he’s not led around by his libido. I figured that if anyone would be willing to give Molly a chance to heal before things become physical, it would be him. I also felt that, given how bewildered he is by interpersonal relationships sometimes, he would be able to sympathize with someone who was also feeling emotionally vulnerable. And dealing with the physical abuse helped Sherlock grow up a bit, because he couldn’t just charge in on a white horse and then disappear off: if he wanted to help, he had to stick around and do some things which he felt uncomfortable with, like being emotionally open. It meant that he had a through-line in the story which wasn’t just about being strong or powerful. He had to change and grow, and I felt that was important. It also meant that he had something to do besides be in love with Molly, and I do think that helped keep the story from becoming too saccharine or concerned with romance.

(2) I often think when I’m reading your Victorian stories that there’s a very certain quality that Molly shares with Irish women, that there’s a quietness and dignity to her strength that I saw in women of my mother’s generation: rather than being given it, they took power where they could find it. How much of your characterisation of Molly has been influenced by the women in your own history?

It’s interesting that you mention the women of our mother’s generation as regards Victorian Molly, because I do think there’s an element, not so much of quietness (I come from a long, LOUD line of Northside Dublin matriarchs) but I do think there’s an element of, as you say, taking what power you can rather than waiting to be given it. (Because if you’re waiting to be given anything in life, you’ll be waiting a long time, and it can always be taken back). Maybe it’s the feminist in me; I am painfully aware that surviving as a woman in the past was not easy. It was a great deal more than pretty dresses and dashing men in carriages. Poverty had dire consequences, and you had to be tough if you were to survive, particularly when you had no legal rights. So I do think that I bring that attitude to writing about the past: I’m a bit cynical about it.

I also don’t like writing passive characters: one of the things I like about Molly is that while she may be quiet, or shy, or sweet, or clumsy, she isn’t passive. (I suspect that’s the influence of Lou Brealey on the way she’s written, but that’s just a personal opinion.) Molly does things, actively: she decides to help Sherlock, she orders him to say ILY first. She’s not waiting to be saved, or to be loved; she accepts life and gets on with it. She has a sort of sweet stoicity that I like. And again, that stoicity may relate back to the women of our mothers’ and grandmothers’ generations, and that get on with it mentality that they had.

And with these tantalizing tidbits, I sat down with hobbitsdoitbetter for our chat.

Quarto: Hi Hobbits! Thanks for joining me!

Hobbits: I am here whenever you’re ready!

Quarto: Awesome. So, let’s get started with a spinoff of one of the questions OhAine submitted and that you’ve already answered. You started writing Sherlolly with “Be Near Me When My Light Is Low,” which deals with domestic violence and in which the love story is really more of a side subject. Can you talk about how you got the inspiration for this fic? What in the show led you to create the material?

Hobbits: It’s an odd one, that, because I don’t really remember deciding to write it. I do remember reading a piece of fic online by a very young writer, who was still learning her craft. She was doing that thing we all do at the start, which is ramping every reaction up to 11! But because she was talking about Molly feeling unhappy with how Sherlock spoke to her, she didn’t seem to realize how it came across. It came across, I remember thinking, as if Sherlock were being verbally abusive. A lot of it was in the reactions written on Molly’s behalf; one person’s sarcastic banter is another’s hurtful barb, and there didn’t seem to be a recognition of the difference. I messaged her privately and asked her about it, and she didn’t seem to see the difference (again, starting out and making a common mistake we all make). But there was a lot of stuff about Molly putting up with shite from Sherlock that I just didn’t see her putting up with, and which seemed to me to be quite… Let’s say unhelpful.

Quarto: I think it can be difficult to balance that sort of stuff in fic, particularly when you’re writing for a show like “Sherlock” where the wit is so pointed and exaggerated for dramatic effect. In the context of the show it’s funny but then when we try to capture it in fic it comes off like it would IRL, as “Wow, these people are massive assholes.”

Hobbits: Well, some of that is, I think, cultural differences. British and Irish people will say stuff to one another messing that the rest of the world is horrified by. We have a dark sense of humor as a matter of course. BUT the big thing is how the person you say it to reacts; Mycroft and Sherlock don’t get upset at how they speak to one another and they can be sarcastic little bitches. But if, for example, you say something to someone (as Sherlock does to Molly in the SIB Christmas scene) which hurts them, the appropriate response is to apologize and not do it again. I think that’s why we stick with Sherlock through so much, because you can tell that he just blurts stuff out, or gets so wound up in his own cleverness that he doesn’t stop to think about how it sounds. But if you’re portraying someone as upset, and that that’s a normal or desirable reaction to a character because they’re Just That Awesome, then I look at it a bit askance. In fairness to that writer from long ago, I don’t think it had occurred to her how it sounded; that’s something that comes later in writing, I think, when you no longer have the massive panic attack that is trying to finish something and put it out there, which is the first, scariest and bravest step.

Quarto: I’ll want to get back to the experience of authorship in a minute but before I do I’d like to talk a little bit about culture and how its influenced you as a writer, which also ties in with one of the reader-submitted questions. I wish I still had that email chain we did when you were writing “The Boyfriend Experience” but in one exchange we had that I recall, you disagreed with me (an American) that the story was dark. And you attributed your perception of it as not dark to your Irishness. And I kinda… have to stand by my original opinion of your writing, which is that you definitely operate a bit more on the grim end of the spectrum (with obvious exceptions). Do you think that your heritage and your culture are really determining or influencing the things you choose to write?

Hobbits: I remember that! I was terribly worried I had offended you :-( But I do think that the cultural assumptions that come from being working class and Irish determine your world-view, and what you think of as dark. (Infamously, Irish writers and playwrights are always writing dark plays and I have spent the last ten years working in a theatre, lol). But also, the reason I didn’t feel “The Boyfriend Experience,” was dark was because I didn’t necessarily feel prostitution or working through trauma were dark, they’re just facts of life. I do have stories I feel are dark, because they’re about hopelessness: Be Near Me… is one, as is Little Goldfish. I would say they’re dark because they take place primarily in very dark places where there’s no light coming in. Molly is being abused, Sherlock can’t move past his own hang ups and traumas. Those seem to me to be dark. But other things, where there’s a bad experience but people are managing to survive, or thrive, those I always find really life affirming. The other thing is that, as someone who deals with depression and anxiety, putting a label on something as dark has always seemed to me a way of making it seem more frightening and debilitating. But if you write about bad stuff that happens, but people survive it then I find that much more life affirming, particularly if you, The Reader, are dealing with some of those things yourself. It’s my way of saying, hey, this doesn’t define you. You aren’t helpless, you can get through this. Not “you must, because if you don’t then you’re weak,” but more, “even if you don’t entirely beat this, there are things you can do. You are more than a label.” Sorry, I’m not sure if I’m getting my meaning across there :-(

Quarto: Nah, you’re doing fine:) And at the point I made the original comment I don’t believe I knew how you were going to end the story… which you did with “recovery,” basically, rendering what comes before it a necessary process rather than “Oh fuck that’s a downer.” When you’ve tried to write horror, though, I will say that you do very well with it, possibly because of that attitude. The “Eurus thing” ficlet you wrote in “Bumping Back” is one of the creepiest short pieces I can recall reading in this or any fandom, and the bleakness of it is definitely part of that.

Hobbits: Well, one of the things about writing horror is it’s the only genre I give myself permission in to go to town with the darkness, lol. Every other genre, I always try to have some light at the end, but with horror it’s like, nah, bring it on. I also love writing horror to do with children, because it’s immediately making the adults uncomfortable- Nobody wants to imagine a child in that position. And of course the scariest things for most of us have roots in childhood; Pan’s Labyrinth scared the Bejayzus out of me, Crimson Peak not so much. And it’s because the things which imprint on us in childhood carry that same massive emotional weight throughout our lives. So if you tap into that with a reader, you tap into the child that reader was, not the fully grown up and confident person they’ve become. You can really up the ante emotionally in that way. I’m glad you liked the Eurus Thing btw, though my favorite of that series is probably The Other Tenant, just because I loved the idea of Mrs. Hudson having her own life which is every bit as interesting as her boys’. That’s how I like writing side characters, and I learned that in the XMen fandom: write everyone as if they have something just as interesting going on just off camera/page… Mwah ha ha!

Quarto: It’s a crime that there’s not WAY more Huddersfic. She’s had a fascinating life and there’s almost infinite room to give her adventures. Can we talk about how your life in the theater influences your writing a bit? You work as far as I can tell exclusively in the present tense… is that a reason why?

Hobbits: Mmm, that never occurred to me, but you may be right :-) I suppose I got used to writing in the present tense when I first started writing fanfic, because my earlier attempts at writing stories or novels (I emphasize attempts) were all in the past tense, so when I started in fanfic I wanted to experiment, and that was one of the experiments that worked for me. I loved how immediate it made everything. It’s funny, now, twelve years later, that I write so much more fanfic than I do regular prose (I mainly write plays now). I mean, I started in fanfic as a way to experiment with voice, since I had trouble with it when I was younger. I had a tendency, even then, to just write dialogue and nothing else, so I started writing characters I knew well, but who weren’t like the talkative characters I created. That’s one of the reasons I loved writing Logan in X-Men, for example: He’s so bloody gruff and uncommunicative. And then what started as a writing experiment became not only a place to learn my trade, but also a place to experiment with form, to make friends, and to write the sort of things I wanted to write without having to please anyone except myself. It was incredibly liberating, and really important in helping me find my voice and my confidence. I can genuinely say that I wouldn’t have had the confidence to have written my plays, or put them on, without the support of the fanfic community.

Quarto: You do have a very distinctive authorial voice. As someone who has been mistaken for MizJoely, Gettingovergreta, and Sunken_Standard on multiple occasions, I am slightly envious of this. Do you have any authors, fan or professional, who you think have influenced your style?

Hobbits: Well, in terms of style I can definitely cite Miabicicletta and OhAine as influences, in terms of the way they write and the subject matter they choose. Out here in meatspace, I love writers like Jim Butcher, Ben Aaronovitch and Leigh Bardugo, because they’re experimenting with genre and making it their own. I also love playwrights like Marina Carr and Mark O’Rowe, who again have that authorial voice down pat. As soon as you hear a speech by Marina Carr, you know it’s her. Same with Mark O’Rowe, a man whom even I think writes some dark stuff.

Quarto: I’m not familiar with him, but I’ll check him out. And now that you say it, the gritty modern-day fairytale vibe of the Dresden Files does definitely have some hobbitsy nature to it:)

Hobbits: God bless Harry Dresden, saving the world one random act of destruction at a time!

Quarto: Let’s talk shipping a bit. You started off with Adlock, and one of the things that I have liked about your fic is that you have preserved the importance of that relationship to Sherlock even though you’re obviously writing Sherlolly. What made you switch? And when did you start?

Hobbits: Well, I was asked to write an Adlock fic, which is how I got into the fandom. I had just finished a Darcy/Steve Rogers fic which was about them experimenting with D/s and Wicked Wanton got in touch with me on ff.net and asked me to write about Sherlock and Irene’s first time, specifically because I had written domme!Darcy. Once I wrote that, I started reading stuff around Sherlock and basically stumbled across Sherlolly, which I then fell in love with as a ship. I also felt that Irene, as much as I loved her, wasn’t the sort of person who would have a traditional HEA with Sherlock; my feeling about them was that they would kill one another, long term. Irene is nobody’s love interest, and I couldn’t really make stories which featured her in such a role fly with me. She seemed far too big a character to fulfill a role like that. Whereas with Molly she could have that sort of relationship with him, and not feel constricted. It wouldn’t be out of character for her, which I felt it would be for Irene. But I like Irene as a character, and for that reason I like having her in stories, and I treat her and SHerlock’s past together with respect. It’s entirely possible to love someone and know you can’t live with them. It doesn’t mean Sherlock loves Molly any less, or that he’s settling, they’re just a better match.

Quarto: Sort of going along with what you were saying earlier about wanting to fill in the stories of the supporting players more than the principals?

Hobbits: Yeah. I also found Molly more relatable in some ways, because she is the girl next door in a way that Irene isn’t. Molly is extraordinary, and a very specific type of female character who tends to get piled on by certain elements of fandom, so I like writing her. It’s partly wanting to give the side players more space and partly the fact that I loves me an underdog. And the reaction to her character was also soooo tied in with some of the issues fandom has had with misogyny (in the same vein that people reacted to Mary) that I wanted to write something which was pro-woman and pro-ordinary woman. We treat female characters as if we need an excuse to pay attention to them: either they’re naked or suffering or sexy. If they’re not fitting into any of those very specific niches then they get treated like they don’t deserve our attention or respect.

Quarto: It can indeed be difficult to relate to Irene “Stupidly beautiful, ten steps ahead of everybody, wearing $10,000 outfits” Adler sometimes. So let’s talk about your Molly a bit… you relate to her being the most “ordinary” woman in the show. Martin Freeman talked about how John is the “ordinary” man, but is in fact quite accomplished and has had a very interesting and adventurous life. Do you think something similar applies to Molly?

Hobbits: Yeah, absolutely. I think that when we talk about “ordinary characters,” in the Sherlock universe, it can be helpful to think about them, not in terms of who they are but what they want. John, Molly and Greg are all normal people who are very good at their jobs/have an amazing skill set, but they want relatively normal things. Happy home lives, a comfortable living. Their version of happiness would look a lot like us viewers�� version. Whereas Sherlock, Mycroft, Mary (to a certain extent), Eurus and Irene all want extraordinary things, as well as being extraordinary themselves. Sherlock wants to be able to tell the truth of someone just by looking at them; Mycroft and Eurus both want to be able to fit this massive, messy world into a box of order which they can understand. Irene wants to see just how far she can push everything, (something she has in common with Sherlock). John, Molly and Greg are ok with having lives more like us other poor schlubs, so long as they’re happy. (Of course, there’s a whole can of worms to be gone through whether John actually wants that, or thinks he wants that and deep down doesn’t). But I do think Greg and Molly are certainly happy to be Extraordinary Ambitions Adjacent, rather than having those ambitions themselves. They’re not quite so… grandiose, lol.

Quarto: I can’t believe I’m actually going to type these words, but… I’d argue that Molly is a John mirror (ughhh, m-theory) in some regards. Because Molly had the opportunity for “normal happiness” with Poor Tom Who Did His Best, and for somewhat ambiguous reasons ended it. Much like John thought he wanted a normal domestic life and accidentally married a superagent?

Hobbits: I so sometimes hate how much of what should be straight-forward fandom theory has been co-opted. I don’t know if I see her as a mirror for John, because I think if anything she’s a mirror for Sherlock. She’s who Sherlock might have become, had be had a different, more normal set of circumstances. (IE not being the sibling of The British Government and The Greatest Criminal MInd of The Millennium.) Whereas for John, I do think he doesn’t realize that he’s a weirdo like the Holmeses, until it’s staring him in the face. Molly isn’t an image of who he is, so much as who he thought he was, and in that way so are Greg and Stamford. A true mirror might be Sherlock himself, in his addicted-to-danger guise. Hmm, not sure that makes sense… :-/

Quarto: No, it makes sense, but it’s not a point of view I’ve seen many people espousing, even in Sherlolly fandom. When you’re writing them do you use the idea that Sherlock and Molly are recognizing some sort of internal similarity to themselves as part of their attraction/interest in one another?

Hobbits: I do think there’s an element of that, because a lot of what I write has Sherlock being a bit bewildered by emotion, particularly things like tenderness or attraction. Like, the purpose of the whole in-show thing with Irene was that The Woman was dangerous and not to be trusted, which is the message that Mycroft has always seemed to give Sherlock about feelings. So for me Molly represents for him a gradual realisation that feelings aren’t always big and terrifying; they can be sweet, and welcome, and kind, and they can add to your life. They can be safe. The concept of safety gets a bum rap in modern culture, but I think it’s a fundamental part of loving someone, and being able to be with them. Sure, it’s exciting to wonder whether your partner is going to put a knife in your back, but it’s a lot more pleasant (not to mention workable) to be with someone you trust.

Quarto: Mind if I ask a follow-on question about some of your sexy writing?

Hobbits: Sure, shoot :-)

Quarto: You’ve written several BDSM-themed fics with this pairing, I think exclusively with domme!Molly… does that go along with your ideas of “safety” as a critical component to their relationship?

Hobbits: Yes, in so far as I don’t think BDSM is necessary to feel safe in a relationship, but I do think that the attraction of BDSM in relationships can be that it’s rooted in safety. The submissive gives their control to the dominant, and trusts that the dominant will not take advantage, and will give them pleasure. (One of the reasons I ship Sherlolly more than Adlock is that I don’t think Irene could be trusted, at this point in her life, to do this for Sherlock). If you take that as a given, then the BDSM relationship is very up-front in its terms, and there’s very little grey area. You don’t have to interpret, you’ve already discussed what’s wanted, and where the lines are. There is also a procedure to follow if you need to pull back or change tack. I do think that all couples have elements of submission and dominance (or maybe trust and hand-over is a better way to phrase it), it’s just that D/s couples are more forthright about it. And as someone who sometimes has trouble reading social cues, both I (and, in my writing, Sherlock) appreciate the lack of ambiguity.

Quarto: You know you bring up a very interesting point and one that I never really thought of. Your Sherlock, consistently, needs to have trust and safety in his relationship with Molly. BDSM-fics or otherwise. And you wrote a lot of them before we knew that he was recovering from such horrific trauma that he suppressed and rewrote the memories of huge segments of his childhood. What did you see in the character that made you almost prescient about that?

Hobbits: Hmm… I think it’s because he was, from the beginning, presented to us as someone who was running from something. When you’re ok with where your thoughts are at, you don’t crave distraction in the way Sherlock does. He also didn’t seem to be able to handle his feelings, and that seemed to be tied into the way Mycroft had raised him to think of them: When there isn’t anything dark in the background of a character’s story, they learn to handle their emotions like a normal person, which neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had. It became even more pronounced when we met their lovely, slightly batty but seemingly emotionally healthy parents.

To be honest though, even if Sherlock hadn’t had the experiences we found out about in S4, I would have thought that the way he’d been raised had traumatized him a bit. Like, Mycroft probably thought he was doing a good thing, but telling a child that their emotions- which they cannot be without, and which act as an early-warning system for abuse and trouble- are not to be trusted is going to mess a kid up. And then there was all that stuff about “do not forget me…” in TAB, and that constant visual about Sherlock being submerged in water… The visuals of the show seemed to be hinting at something even before they came out with it. I am pleased that I called Eurus’ gender before S4, but that’s about the only thing I thought was just me being clever. The rest seemed common sense- If you’ve spent any time around traumatized people, which I have.

Quarto: You mentioned in your response to the reader questions that you now wouldn’t write Mycroft as being as heartless as you did in, “What The Blackbird Sang.” Is that just your perception changing or the addition of new material about him to the canon? Because that is the opposite of how I’ve felt about him:)

Hobbits: Partly, it’s because I think Mycroft has changed a bit from how we see him in S1, so that by S4 he’s more of a tragic figure. He’s that bloke who thought he was so much cleverer than everyone else, and then you realize that it’s just a cover because he has been asked to deal with things he has no idea how to deal with. And his sticking with keeping Eurus on Sherrinford, and not telling his parents, shows that. (In my HC, Rudy was her initial jailor, since Mycroft couldn’t have been old enough to make it happen). Mycroft reacted like a little kid who has done something wrong: hide it, contain it, don’t tell anyone about it. Make sure, as far as possible, that Eurus is ok, but that’s all. He puts all this pressure on himself, because he doesn’t know what else to do. One of the things which I loved about TFP is when Mummy tells Sherlock, “everyone knows you’re the sensible one!” Because yes, Mycroft is the elder and seems so much more put together, but in that family Sherlock is actually the emotionally healthy one. He’s grown and learned over the years, which Mycroft hasn’t. And that’s a real shame, because it damages Mycroft, and Eurus, and his parents.

(At this point in the interview Quarto ran a word count, realized this was getting lengthy, and decided to do some more rapid-fire Q&A.)

Quarto: So where do you see your future fics going, at two years into the long (and possibly unending) hiatus? Any things you’re wanting to write that we haven’t seen yet?

Hobbits: Well, I suppose I’ll stop writing when I stop having ideas for fics. I mean, that’s the thing about fandom, it’s a self-replenishing medium, so even if a new piece of canon doesn’t inspire you, a new fic or piece of fan art might. I do have a couple of pieces I wish I had gone back to (The Copperbeech Identity, Red Door Black and No Capes! Are the ones which spring immediately to mind.) Obviously, I want to finish Bliss and The Sting in The Honey… And I do have an idea for a Sherlolly AU which is set in a theatre during the production of a new show. (Seriously, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen in the last week before curtain-up, lol). At some point I’ll get to it, hopefully. For the time being though, I’m happy where I am. The only way I’d move on or step away is if I find something which grabs my attention more, and at the moment that’s not happening. So I am here for the time being, and I’m hoping that, even if I stop posting fic or fan art (something I’m dipping my toe into) then I will still be able to keep in touch with all the friends I’ve made in the fandom.

Quarto: I’d love it if you finished “Red Door Black.” I reread that one while prepping for this and had forgotten how much I loved it. And I’m here for your theater AU. Any fics you wish you’d written differently, or things you’d change?

Hobbits: I would have written Mycroft differently in Be Near Me… as I said. I might have written some of Rudest Man... differently, because I felt it ended up being very finicky as a plot. I had so many balls in the air, I’m not entirely sure I kept them all in motion in the best way. But that’s what happens when you give yourself 4 main pairings, two villains and permission to bring in any universe elements you want, including Torchwood and Tarzan, lol. Also, Sally and Henry Knight’s day will come, I tell you!

Quarto: Lol, I’d forgotten the little Lord Greystoke cameo in that one. What’s the best thing you’ve written?

Hobbits: Ah jaysus, you can’t ask an author that! I have some stories which I love, but which haven’t gotten much attention: Sense and Sensitivity, for example, in which Eurus runs away with the Guardians of the Galaxy, for example. Occasionally I just write weird stuff which makes me laugh. I think And A Garden… and What the Blackbird Sang are probably the two best structured stories. There’s nothing superfluous in them, nobody is out of character. I love the emotion of The Coffin-Maker’s Lullaby, because it was kind of like my thank you to the show; I had assumed that after S4 there was no chance it was coming back, at all, EVER, so that was my goodbye in a way. (Although, of course, then the fandom just kept going, and we found out there might be more, eventually. So it ended up being less a swan-song and more a high five)

Quarto: The original version of that question, FWIW, was “what’s the worst thing you’ve written” but I’m being positive today:) Any tips for fic writers just in general, or for people writing Sherlolly, or Molly specifically?

Hobbits: I have to admit, if I think something is bad then I’ll pull it. So anything I have up, I feel fairly happy with, even if I can see little niggling things I might change, not be happy with.

I think in writing, the thing I always say is do the first draft. Do the first draft and be happy that it’s shite, that’s the first draft’s job. You only get better if you write that first draft, and then improve on it. You only learn if you do that, and it’s trial and error. There’s a Miles Davis quote I love: “It sure does take a long time to sound like yourself.” And it’s true, it does. So give yourself the time. Don’t be worried about not sounding like anyone else: you only have to sound like you. If you’re writing in fandom, don’t stay in a fandom which is nasty to you or negative; you want to be in a place which is supportive. The Clois, Rogan and Sherlolly fandoms were all supportive and kind to me, and I couldn’t have developed as I have without them. I also couldn’t have continued to write the fic I write, which is feminine-positive, in a nasty or anti-feminist place. My one rule for my fic is that one of the female characters, somewhere, must be either getting what she wants, or on the way to getting it. That should absolutely be a thing in writing, and never be embarrassed or sorry about wanting that.

As for Molly, I think the writers have done an amazing job with her over the last few years. She went from being a walk over to an interesting, multi-faceted character in her own right. And she did it without having to become something she’s not: Molly will never be a Strong Female Character, and thank god for that! She’s more human and more interesting than that tag would ever make her.

Quarto: Words of wisdom. Hobbits, thank you for talking with me today!

Hobbits: It was my pleasure. If you need anything else, just let me know… And merry Christmas from Dublin :-)

So much thanks to Quarto and Hobbits for giving their time and energy to this project.

Next week:

Our next interview, featuring @lilsherlockian1975 and @mrsmcrieff, will be posted on Friday 22 February.

#content creator interviews #theemptyquarto #hobbitsdoitbetter #sherlolly #sherlock #TW: mentions of domestic violence

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rabbitindisguise · 5 years

Text

oooo my phone died, killing the possibility of me doing my Daily Assigned Task (I only have one because aside from staying afloat with food and stuff that’s all my brain can cognitively handle. Yes, I also do this doing the school year. Yes, I know that sounds absolutely bonkers) right this moment so while I have my boredom captive in this textpost, let’s ruminate over the nature of humanity some more ignore me I’m talking to myself

it is also very extremely weird and by “very” I mean “not at all” and “extremely” I mean “minimally, if anything, actually not super weird in any of the senses of the word” and weird still just means weird because otherwise the previous things I just said would no longer be accurate BUT

let’s just say it’s totally expected

that people find These Weird Things That I Do generally, absolutely fascinating in fiction. Like, my original works for example are steeped in weirdness. Rolling with abnormalities. Boiling with oddity. And so on. And I don’t pull this out of my ass! Oh no. This is all like . . . gosh, inspired stuff. From things I saw and liked and felt reflected my very soul in fiction.

But they’re totally hated in meatspace

I wonder

Anyway, it’s also really strange to see posts about this Weird Things That People Do on tumblr and to read people complimenting them and to feel a warm glow of pleasant optimism about the state of humanity, and hear the very same audience of tumblr people absolutely go nuts over the strangest bullshit I have ever seen or heard or conceived of in my entire life. Like I get weirdly tense and fraught subjects. I get really tense and pissy if someone headcanons a character as binary trans when I headcanon them as non-binary when I’m a nb trans it literally doesn’t matter aside from my emotional attachment to the concept. I’m not proud of it! But I get it, is my point. I understand. It makes sense to me.

But what just doesn’t quite click, doesn’t snap into the convoluted logic of my brain meats, is HOW exactly SO MANY people have the same weird gripes of this obscure stuff that should be totally okay if people are accepting the activist principles of ableism as nonsense and weirdness not being bad. Many others who are probably smart have said it is simply, nay, merely hypocrisy and I’ve met a human or two in my time alive, I can see the potential for that sort of thing to happen. However, considering that Herd Mentality is what it is, I don’t think it’s possible that the plague is actually “being widely inconsistent in the execution of your beliefs to fit in to society” when that’s so stigmatized but actually that being angry about the same things is good for some reason.

This is important! It’s important because Reasons. Because if you say “hypocrite!” when there’s a fire, I don’t think anyone will understand or listen to the concern. If the answer is anything but hypocrisy, talking about it generally pisses people off and makes them yell at you- a near identical response of an actual hypocrite, confusing everyone further. So I don’t think it’s unfair to talk about hypocrisy, of course not, there is nothing I enjoy more than finding logical inconsistencies because it means the world can be improved etc etc that’s not the problem. The problem is most definitely that if the problem isn’t even hypocrisy than the solution isn’t the solution to hypocrisy.

If my theory is right, or semi-right, or at least not wrong, then approaching a bunch of people yelling about a thing to encourage others to yell in tandem is not going to be won by yelling something opposing to that, especially if it makes them angrier and also makes them feel wronged. Instead, calmly being like “nah, dude, I don’t feel the same way, but it’s chill” is way better. Not only because it makes them look ridiculous for having an out of proportion reaction to someone being weird in public (the horror, whatever shall we do about ~being weird~ and doing it ~in public~) but there’s no defensive position to get on. There is no “debate tactics” to use. There’s absolutely not a disagreement about ableism or politics or intersectionality. Rather, it uplifts a contrary option that is confident and secure and this is exactly the same rhetorical device that Centrists or whatever they’re called, use all the damn time. People have talked At Length about jeez, idk, it being exhausting to constantly talk to a person that’s not as invested and doesn’t see it as the Serious Issue It Is- but from the perspective of when they’re actually talking about serious issues, rather than complaining that someone referenced a tumblr meme in public or plays mc and oh, no, how cringey

This is of course blatant emotional manipulation but as the fairness complaint generally goes, they did it first. Multiple people weighing in on a topic with angry voices telling someone not to do something doesn’t work because they have secret actual good reasons and that shines through, it’s because there’s a number of angry people and they’re trying to subdue someone’s Weird with force. Emotional force, but there’s nothing about consent involved in this exchange. No personal boundaries. Shame is a mode of control. Power, even. Which is why I hate those second hand embarrassment fics and avoid them like the plague because it’s icky to me and makes me feel gross and I guess one of my personal triggers is someone feeling bad for doing something Shameful in public

Which brings me to Weird Humanity Musings part II (III? I can’t do math) that have taken a weird non-activist and highly personal turn for the worst:

I don’t think people notice how often emotional manipulation plays a part in subtle power plays that go on in human interactions every day. Humanity made dominance ffs. Humans are the ones that get upset and feel challenged with eye contact- not dogs. Dogs use sustained eye contact all the time for a bunch of reasons. Humans too. But it’s humans that recontextualized that behavior as exclusively dominance, a wholly human concept, and, whatever I’m not going to spend too much time on this because I don’t actually particularly care about it. But the point is actually just that humans went out of their way to create this thing, and it plays a part in social interactions. Mothers and daughters and siblings and friends all have scripts of code that basically go for the emotional center of the other person to get them to obey. Most people can’t recognize it because society has that whole “if everyone does it THIS must be the baseline of normal” be as well All Know, normal doesn’t even exist so that reaction is bullshit before it’s even analyzed in any meaningful sense.

Example time because I highly doubt I can just say that off the cuff and actually get people to follow that train of thought to completion (unfortunately, I’d rather not have to write this post at all because it means one less problem in the world and that’s a good thing).

Anytime someone says “I’m your mother!” it’s to reinforce the authority of the child that this person probably have financial, social, physical (such a medical) and emotional control over for almost two decades of their life, or however much it actually was. This is often used to make the child of the mother Do Something, like maybe they’re questioning her judgement or smth I don’t know I get this one a lot and it’s lost all meaning to me by now

Whenever someone says “thank you” it generally plays into the social script where they do the whole dance of “I got this service from you, I say thanks, you say you’re welcome.” This works as a subtle manipulation (not necessarily negative! these examples aren’t Get Mad and Force Conformity examples, just How It Works examples) when someone doesn’t feel like they’ve done something for someone else, so saying “thanks” shows appreciation for the effort and can force an acknowledgement of that effort by expecting a “your welcome” or “no problem” from the other person. This gets shitty and creepy when someone doesn’t take silence aka “I’m not doing the dance because I don’t agree” to a degree where they’re like “oh? are you not going to say you’re welcome?” aka are you gonna be a conceited shithead that thinks they’re better than saying “you’re welcome” the most common social nicety that supposedly always costs nothing? Which does nothing to make the person to feel better and everything to leverage the situation and make them preform social interaction for the other person’s amusement.

“Good morning” is another example. It doesn’t actually matter if the morning is good or not, but it establishes rapport and focuses on the positives- one of those things called “small talk.” (Never heard of her.) This is something someone can actually observe better at the cultural level- someone says “good morning” in english, in another language they say something else. Both show ideological underlying beliefs of the culture Because That’s How Culture And Language Work because it’s a sneaky not-liar that can’t hide its true feelings about things.

I’m not actually all that good with the line between “what is acceptable emotional manipulation in a social context when the fundamentals of the english language rely on subtle power exchange to function [and holy shit would some people hate knowing That] and the unacceptable abusive emotional manipulation” and I generally err on the side of stuff that people seem to be explicitly asking for and prompting but I don’t always succeed and I don’t know that I’m doing the best method but that’s the most chaotic good thing I could come up with

But it still remains that calling things emotional manipulation is both true and a misnomer because in some ways, they’re necessary to exist in society without being considered a jackass (as a self proclaimed “I was called a jackass using many different words that all basically mean jackass” that mostly doesn’t participate in these social nicety dances because I don’t like my brain yelling at me that I’m doing the same bullshit I hated as a Youth and I don’t like disappointing myself) and in others, they’re totally unneeded and artlessly cruel. I mean, heck, going through this internal debate every time someone says “good morning?” Who does that? (I do. This is why people think I’m a dumbass lmao. Jokes on them unfortunately,)

Regardless of what people actually DO about it though, these things are the underlying mechanics of how emotional manipulation works. It’s a concoction of societal expectations, situational contexts, personal histories, selective pressures, and a bunch of other things in smaller amounts. Most of the time it’s “normal” social stuff but with a ton of exaggerated features (I almost used my own handle from a different Social Media and that my friends is having a lot of issues and self hatred due to abuse! and also anxieties over becoming abusive ofc but who doesn’t have those these days). Which is why I think it’s so important that it’s expansively defined so much because otherwise people are really thickheaded about emotional abuse specifically. They think it’s impossible to do in some cases and in others, think it’s exclusively the realm of insults and humiliation.

Those exaggerate features are even harder to spot if someone doesn’t even recognize the interpersonal dynamics of language in the first place. It all just becomes nonsensical and no one can tell what came from where or what this particular question is abusive and not this other one. The logic gets poked with holes easier and abuse survivors get dismissed.

Of course, expanding that definition to reshape thinking might just go along the same direction as representation, where even alluding to the truly abusive mechanics of actual, you know, emotional abuse, is seen as abusive. Everything, literally, would become problematic. There could be callout posts about any human interaction in any context with anyone ever. I’m confident in holding myself to a higher standard than the rest of society but I Cannot overstate that being bullshit to the nth degree that I couldn’t even put up with myself telling myself to keep to it as a standard. It just doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. That way lies the nonsense form of madness as in the non-nd kind. That, along with purity culture and censorship and doxxing and death threats and so on: I don’t fully want to release this theory out into the world in practice because I’m afraid society will just use it as fodder to be cruel to people but I’m also equally afraid that not saying anything will just cause people to, I don’t know, keep accidentally causing suffering to others. So I’ll stuff it under a read more and hope that keeps the impact minimal but not non-existent.

But yeah this whole post is a demonstration that just because someone’s behaving weirdly doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad people. Even if they do something that seems downright mean. I read a post that was basically “there’s no such thing as asshole disorder” but there really is, and it’s whatever I have. I get so compelled to Do the right thing by my ethics and morals that I go through above *gestures* and take longer than neurotypicals do to respond to “good morning” and I don’t mean anything by it so I assume that people can tell because I assume the best in others, and others are free to assume the worst in me so they do.

I’m not upset by it but I also wish that there were a better system to screen assholes than assuming that non-compliance with normality is a sign of evil, because that’s the system we seem to have. It might have a high reward in the brain via confirmation biases and whatnot, but that doesn’t seem worth the risk of basically knocking down any and every mental illness symptom that’s unpalatable. Because they’re all unpalatable to someone, somewhere. That’s what makes them symptoms. We don’t have any “glowing green hair” as symptoms because that’s just sick as fuck and I want some. People who have working with their symptoms and turned them into something beneficial have largely challenged societal ideas about what is “good” and “natural” to get there, and that type of work isn’t someone everyone is cut out for.

Many physically disabled people are all medical model, all the way because they’ve been largely neurotypical their whole lives, and I’ve read their grieving posts like people recommend that I read and I just don’t see how I can help them empathize with me as a person that doesn’t give a shit if my clicking pen annoys people if it helps me focus. That’s an Asshole move if any has ever be determined by society, but at the same time, a common fundamental symptom of many disorders, and as such, I don’t feel bad about it and I don’t know that I could, ever, be made to feel guilty for existing. I’ve never seen myself as a drain on society. I’ve never felt like a freeloader. And I’ll never feel bad for being disable or neurodivergent. Does that make me the bad guy? Or the weird cool antihero from fiction? My impulse is to say “yes” to both ‘cause what people like in fiction is not always what they tolerate in real life

It’s kinda weird and paradoxical that I can feel bad about not feeling bad but not feel bad about being disabled at the same time but w/e I’m an abuse survivor we, collectively, excel at stuff and things that most people may not understand so I guess that’s all the explanation I need

#abuse #I'm laughing this is so long #I have this many thoughts in like actual conversations #my hands can't type fast enough and I end up deleting half the things I say because the time has passed #from which it would made sense to say them #anyway the long and short of this is: a complex analysis of why I agree largely with the criticisms I recieve #but not with their reasons #usually people mistake my mental illness as me being a bad person #and me being a bad person as me being a good person #do you see #the existential crisis #when I do things I know are unethical I get praise and approval for being neurotypical #because it's expected as normal behavior #while when I don't do it as the most neurotypical thing ever #which is like caring about other people and vying for their approval like the needy bastard that I am #then I'm weird!!#also I don't think I'm an asshole because that need some measure of conscious effort and thought #abuse doesn't need to be intentional #the only mean things I've ever done are generally in a self defense context #and vastly underwhelm in comparison to the other stuff that incited it #on purpose any way #the less on purpose stuff happens all the time and I hate it and I just want five minutes of #I don't know rewind and replay #so I can stop myself from saying and doing things #instead I have to move through life as a snails pace triple thinking things over and forgetting what I was thinking of and remembering #and starting over #jeez I'm tired just thinking of it #I got all burnt out last semester and I kept saying and doing rookie ass mistakes and getting overstimulated in public #which is probably the nail in the coffin and why I'm going to be filing for ssi #I've come to the decision with a mix of perpetual anxiety and hope that maybe

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pilferingapples · 5 years

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I really like Bahorel as a character but haven't quite gotten a feel for how to write him accurately - what do you like to see in a Bahorel fic?

Augh geez this is so old, Lizard, I’m sorry! ah let’s see this is…such a big topic standard This Is Just Me disclaimer and all,but here goes; this is gonna be So Long:

- Bahorel is really smart? specifically in a perceptive way; I don’t think he spends a lot of time analyzing and philosophizing the way Combeferre or Enjolras do, but he’s canonically got a “ penetrating” intelligence (and also a filthy mind, he would definitely make All The Comments about that line, but I digress) ; he’s good at getting at the core of things.

- particularly, good at social intelligence; he has a pretty good handle on what makes people tick, and how to talk to people to get the results he wants (which…I’m not saying he’s diplomatic, it’s Bahorel, it’s probably pretty often that the Result he wants is a Big Fight, but when he gets one it’s mostly on purpose.) He’s there with Courfeyrac in instinctive emotional intelligence* and importantly that goes for HIS OWN feelings too; he knows who he is and how he works and isn’t in the least embarrassed about it. This is pretty well spelled out in his admittedly limited scenes! Nothing will make me close out a fic quite like it trying to make Bahorel of all people into an emotionally-clueless self-ignorant musclehead.

-related to the above: Likes being Noticed, and is good at Being Noticed. Good enough to stand out as the Most Noticeable Person in a full-scale riot. This ties in with the first point; he understands Perception and knows how to send the messages he’s trying to send.

- which is where his constant interest in fashion comes in– seriously, he mentions it in like half of his scenes! In a fairly prominent way! And notably in a way that is directly about Clothes As Social Signal ! I don’t need every Bahorel fic to mention clothing but I make Very Distressed Noises if he’s a Manly Bro Manly Man Grrr who doesn’t have Time for Silly Things Like Clothing, he very much has time for clothing, it is one of his most constant areas of interest

- which makes sense because he’s also a flaneur and being able to Read people is a massive part of that

- on that note, Bahorel isn’t Paris (Gavroche is Paris if anyone is) but as a flaneur he’s sort of her Pythia (at least in the hands of a writer who treats flaneuring positively, which Hugo does); he’s the connection to others, the narrative takes time to have him be the only person to recognize specific allies along the march to the barricade, and I’m always delighted when this is acknowledged

-also he’s a nerd - HE’S A FRIGGING FANDOM NERD - if Bahorel isn’t a Pop Cultured Badass for whatever era he’s in then what is he even doing - NOT SCHOOL that’s for sure; he is not Built for actual Institutional ….anything , which I mention because his total lack of being built to Do That is actually a major character aspect IMO ; this is actually a big deal to me because, as I mentioned above, he IS specifically really intelligent and perceptive but school is not a measure of intelligence, it’s about a specific kind of interest and learning, and the idea that Smart People Get Degrees is. Bad. for a lot of reasons. (Obviously in canon he’s a student but he is as near to not being a student as he can be, in a context where he’s taking the easiest degree available; it’s not actually any kind of Ultimate Goal)

-HE LIKES HIS FAMILY, HE GETS ALONG WITH HIS FAMILY, he is the only one of the Amis to have that strongly emphasized positive connection with his living family and family background; heck, I think he may be the only person in the book who gets to know and have the respect of his living biological parents?? Anyway, it stands out, it’s important

-he’s funny! he’s specifically funny! his sense of humor is his most powerful way of arguing! I realize Funny is REALLY REALLY hard to write but I’m always delighted when it’s there

- Romantic (or an equivalent artistic counterculture) Shenanigannery , especially with Prouvaire along, are always a Plus

-hmm on that note, a certain dark streak? not like morbid gloom or melancholia dark, that’s Prouvaire’s side of the Romantic street, but Bahorel’s exuberant violence ties into Dark Romanticism very much ; it’s not just that he likes to Tear It Up, he’s GLEEFUL about Tearing it All Up, and it’s a renewing thing; the necessary apocalyptic aspect of a new beginning (I freely grant this is a very Culturally Contextually Informed thing and I don’t expect it! but I always love it when it does show up in a story, that he’s not just violent because Whee Smash, but with some poetic DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE REBIRTH flare)

- if it’s an AU or post-barricade story, I look for his friendship with Gavroche, which is the Best and Purest Thing to happen in Les Mis since Valjean adopted Cosette but I am disappointed 99.99999 percent of the time, so I have learned to live with that

I don’t expect all of this to be evident in every fic! but it’s all stuff I look for and love to see when it does turn up :D

* someone’s probably going to say “ and Prouvaire!” but I actually don’t think Prouvaire has the most natural emotional intelligence, not in the way Courfeyrac or Bahorel do; he’s kind and compassionate, and he always thinks about others’ feelings, but I think his way of seeing people is, for lack of a better word, more spiritual than Bahorel’s street-level emotional sense. Bahorel is the one who knows how to holler HEY, RIOT!!! and make a whole crowd erupt; Prouvaire is the one who can, after listening for an hour, say a single sentence that someone won’t remember until two years later when it will suddenly pull them out of their inner turmoil. It’s a different thing.

** EDITED TO ADD: and I like it when he’s a werewolf, for Historical Reasons XD

#Bahorel #Bahorel talk #not so much headcanons as just talk #longwinded as advertised #Long Post #sorry Mobile Users #but you did ask #I have been awake for 24 hours I hope this is coherent #lizardrosen #answereds

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silkspectred · 6 years

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Fic question meme

tagged by the lovely @cptxrogers

What is your total word count on AO3?

273,077 but there are a couple of translations that are, i suppose, technically not my words. so 168,084 is more accurate.

How often do you write?

i’m sort of always in a “i should write” mode, but sometimes i’m too tired to do it or i’m not in an ideal condition for it (i’m kinda demanding when it comes to writing, i need to be alone, in complete silence, with the right light, no headache, etc). i’d say i get to write (as in, stay in front of my computer and just write for at least an hour) more or less three or four times a week.

Do you have a routine for writing?

not really. i prefer to do it either in the mornings or late at night (when the aforementioned conditions are more easily met). i usually just write. i reread a lot while writing, and i do a lot of fixing even before i’m finished with a fic and i can do the final edits.

if i write something long-ish i sometimes take a notebook and put down a few ideas, usually relating to where the characters are at the beginning of the fic and where i want them to be at the end. but i don’t do it for every fic so i guess it doesn’t count as routine, idk.

What’s your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?

kinks: i love power-play and pain-play and i absolutely adore realistic sex with soft dicks (lmao). i like age difference but in the “one is 30 and the other at least 50 years old” sort of way + height difference (thank you mcu for feeding me well). i tend to love oral sex and rimming a lot, and i have a weird thing for somnophilia. also i’m really into a/b/o.

tropes: identity porn (which i’ve never written but maybe some day lol), forced bed-sharing, fake/pretend relationship, snowed-in or any variation of “oh no we are stuck in this small space together what are we gonna DO” especially if it starts with a rocky relationship. i love soulmate stuff or any soulbond or telepathic/empathic bond type of thing. i prefer canon fics to au’s but that’s more true of some pairings than others. also adore giving kids to these mentally ill and generally pretty messed up super heroes.

pairings: i only write stevetony these days, but i tried something with deancas and johnlock in the past. it’s small and unbeta’ed stuff from when my english still was a bit wonky. or at least, more than it is these days. i love spock/kirk but i never felt up to the challenge of writing it, same with (dceu) superbat.

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

it’s a bit like asking me to choose between my children so i’d say no, but i remember loving writing love the sin, love the sinner a lot. it was my first stevetony fic and i felt zero pressure to write it. there were no expectations, at all, from anyone. it was nice.

another fic i loved writing is the slowest runner in all the world. i’m ridiculously proud of it, for no other reason that it was really the ultimate case of “write what you want to read”

Your fic with the most kudos?

almeno tu nell’universo, unsurprisingly i guess because posting it chapter by chapter gave more attention to it.

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

i wish i could write better banter, and that i could make the internal voices of the characters more specific. i try to personalize dialogue, but i feel like for the rest i’m still limited by english not being my native language (granted, a lot of readers disagree with my assessment). also i wish i could make my american characters sound more american in the way they think/see stuff, with more references to pop culture or objects, brands, sports, etc.

Now something you do like?

half the time i swear i have no idea how i pull it off, but a lot of people tell me how real the emotions the characters are going through feel to them as readers. that’s something that makes me incredibly happy, because it’s what i find most rewarding when i read, way more than a well-conceived plot or whatever else. it’s tiring, sometimes, because i’m a very empathetic person, and i end up feeling a lot of the emotions i make my characters feel, which is kinda exhausting. but as i said, very rewarding.

i really don’t know who to tag so whoever sees this and feels like doing it, you’re more than welcome!

#meme #writing musings

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marsnmango · 6 years

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Things that take me out of fanfiction (as a fanfiction writer)

Aside from the obvious (poor grammar, formatting errors, etc.) these are a few of the things that make me pause and reconsider whether or not I really want to continue reading the thing that I am reading.

Mis-characterizations; it’s impossible to know with 100% certainty how a character is going to react in all scenarios, but some things are tough to overlook. Characters that are incredibly strong struggling with a weak enemy, for example- that sort of thing can be done, but you’d better set up the context correctly. Or it can throw (me) your reader off. If there’s a reason why your character’s behavior is diverging from what is canonically accurate, explain it! Don’t be afraid to just straight up say it. People (including myself) like to know what they’re in for when they start a fic.

Inaccuracy. Now it is fiction, so lots of liberties can be taken with this, but if you cannot adequately describe something that your character should know how to do... it’s going to stand out. For example, if your character is a working adult, but you are not, and you do not know how to go to the bank and get cash out of it... Maybe avoid writing that specific scenario. Write around it. Describe it vaguely.

Politics. You can tackle real issues through writing, if you know how to do it and can do it well. But please, please do not have one character mention [Real world (usually American) political figure] and have everyone else in the scene unanimously agree and rip on that political figure. Unless it’s something completely in-character and reasonable for everyone involved... Even if I agree with everything being said, it’s just annoying.

Poor/Unrealistic Dialogue. Colloquialism is something that is naturally ingrained in every culture, but please try to keep in mind the differences in a conversation between 2 thirty year olds and 2 teenagers. When I read a story featuring a supposed adult, who speaks as if he is a freshman in high school giving a power point presentation for the first time... it’s. weird

Memes. That’s right, I said memes. I love memelords just as much as the next guy, but unless it’s a story that is very clearly focused on something that would involve that subject matter, I don’t want memes. First of all, fanfiction becomes outdated, fast. A Damn Daniel meme is going to 1. date your story and 2. completely throw me for a loop in your story that is based in Ancient Egypt. The 2 second chuckle from a handful of readers is not worth it.

Non-existent/Unrealistic Consequences. Problems do not magically go away overnight. In order to avoid leaving any loose ends, list off the primary list of problems that your protagonists are going through. Then when you write the conclusion, double check that it eliminates or addresses each of these problems; whether or not they’re going to persist after the story ends or whatever else the deal might be. If a character struggles with addiction (for example)--make sure the conclusion mentions something about how the character is going to handle (or has handled) this problem.

Handling tough subject matter lazily. This is tricky for anyone, but if you have never experienced a traumatic situation, but your intention is to portray this situation as realistically as possible... do some research. If it’s a little outside of the realm of reality (parents murdered by shark wolves), research the stages of grief. How people within your protagonist’s age group cope with it and how they don’t, and whether or not your Granted, not all fanfiction strives to be as accurate as possible when it comes to trauma. Some people just genuinely love to torment the hell out of characters they like, and that’s fine- just preface it in the tags or summary. Trigger warnings help as well, that way people know to avoid reading about things that may draw overwhelming or unpleasant feelings. Or a past trauma, worst case scenario.

Inconsistency. Your dragon-queen alpha wizard raven way had the regeneration ability 3 chapters ago, but now that she lost her hand it’s suddenly the end of the world? If this is the case, there needs to be a reason why it is true this time but wasn’t every other time. You can bend the rules, but make sure there’s a reason (even a ham-fisted one) why they’re being bent.

Poor/Lazy Characterization. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with inconsistency. If a character is an asshole, who is proudly an asshole and nothing but an asshole... he’s not going to tip his waitress? He’s not going to internally monologue about how the servers work hard and deserve to be paid well, unless he is genuinely a decent person on the inside. Even if the author does this in an attempt to allude to the fact that he is going to become a better person later on, there are better ways to go about it. Your asshole-character would likely be more subtle in his approach, or use misdirection. Throwing a crumpled up $1 bill at a waitress is far more likely and expected of bratty/asshole behavior... “But at least they left a tip?” Not-so-Slow Burns. If you sign up for a slow burn, it might be helpful to focus on the slice-of-life behavior and how the characters gradually get closer throughout. If you rush straight into the romance, it’s not a very slow burn. They don’t generally start feeling doki-doki true love by the third total encounter they’ve ever had in their entire lives. Sometimes, maybe. But handle with care, and keep in mind that people need time to change. If they’re refraining from a relationship or whatever because MC 1 is anti-humanity, your MC isn’t going to become a people-loving pope overnight. A timeskip might help you out there, but it’s risky if it’s unexpected or random. I AM NOT THE FUN POLICE. In the end, even if you borrow the characters- your story is your story. I’ve done almost every single thing on this list, some things more frequently than others depending on the nature of my story. You are allowed to do whatever you want and have as much fun as you want. I’m offering this list mostly to the people who want to receive feedback, because I’ve been there. You’ve finally got your grammar down. You’re working on your vocabulary and formatting and yet..... you still don’t feel any growth or significant change in your audience. It can be frustrating. Making a note of these things and how often you do them will help you to gain a more enthusiastic audience about your work. People like to read fanfiction that feels as though it could stand on its own. This is especially helpful for those fanfiction authors who want to publish their own novels someday. Also, not all of this falls on the responsibility of the author. If an author consistently updates their tags/summary/notes, etc, then there’s no reason that a reader should walk into a Slow-Burn and expect hasty passionate smut in chapter 2. Or read a story titled “THE GORE OF WAR” and complain about...y’know, gore. Most readers tend to have a pretty good grasp on what the atmosphere of a story is going to by the first paragraph. And the atmosphere may change over time, which is fine! Just keep your readers in mind before your lollipops & sunshine rom-com becomes a last minute zombie apocalypse. Maybe make a note of that in the notes; give people a chance to bail, and trust me, you want them to bail. 1 more hit on your work isn’t worth the 3-paged flame you’re about to receive. Above all, just have fun and keep writing. The more you write and the more willing you are to constantly adapt to feedback/growth, the better your work is going to become! Nobody starts off writing like R.R. Martin. He probably started off with really shitty star trek slash.

#Btw tag that shit #Also I rarely ever actually duck out of a story #I like to suffer through it #writers are masochists #I stand by this #fanfiction #writing tips

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punkascas · 7 years

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Fic Author Interview

tagged by: the wonderfully talented and incredibly sweet @amirosebooks ❤

tagging: @iggyw @tenoko1 @casolantern @schmerzerling @amazinmango @serricoj @rainbofiction @coffeeandcas @topaz-eyes @angelofthemoor @culumacilinte @coplins

im going to do this from the slightly broader perspective of creative writing in general (since i write fic but i also write scripts and things for my job). also this is v long. sorry.

What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.) so generally my inspiration is (in order): (a) my own life experiences, (b) some kind of commentary i want to make about the source material or about fiction or fandom in general, and (c) the characters themselves and the aspects i love in them, especially trying to find ways to play with the duality of their personalities, the good aspects and the negative ones. i’ve known for a long time that what drives me to create is that i want to make other people feel less alone. you know those times to read something or there’s a line someone says, and you’re like, yes, yes, that’s me; no one’s ever gotten that before or at least never put it so perfectly into words, whatever that experience/feeling might be. i want to give people that moment with anything i create. there’s also a lot of things that i’ve experienced in my life that come up relatively often in fiction, or at least in fic, and a lot of it usually is off-putting to me. it never resonates. it’s melodramatic or simply inaccurate, and i think is often written by someone who doesn’t have the lived experience to pull from. so i always want to add my voice to the pile and benefit from my own experiences to make those kinds of tropes and situations more realistic and relatable -- to me, but hopefully also to others. like generally every character backstory or character arc i write in fic is something pulled from my own life. like it’s probably twisted or adapted somewhat, because i’m not into being autobiographical. but as an example, in faith healer, this bit: Memory degrades with time. Maybe as a child he knew that somehow. He knew that there would be a second, slower death across time, as she became more of idea than person, and so he clung onto specific moments as a talisman for Mom: I had a mom once; this was my mommy. He remembers her hands best. The way her skin was thin and dry, but her fingers strong, and the way they'd close around his hands. The way she would press in love and good luck and humility when he misbehaved with a squeeze to his chubby, too small hands. Second best he remembers her laugh, the way her mouth moved around a smile, the warmth in it, tinged with embarrassment whenever someone startled it out from her. The rest of the memories are vague, more like facts he can read out of a mental police blotter than lived experience. She used to wear some kind of fleece robe in the winter, thick and pilled, creating a soft cushion between her breasts for his head to rest when he sat in her lap for a story. He thinks the robe was red. She used to bake things from scratch and used to let him pretend to help. On Sundays she did laundry, down in the basement. He followed her once, asking when Dad would come back, and she paused on the landing, basket of clothes cocked on her hip, and wouldn't go any further until he went back upstairs. The basement, she said, was too dangerous for him, dark and damp. She wanted him to be safe. She always cut the crust off his sandwiches. that is my experience of my grandmother’s death. when she died i knew i would forget over time the specific details of her, so i picked a couple to remind myself of daily so i’d never forget them. and that was her hands and her laugh. and i do have that memory of her doing the laundry and standing on the landing to the basement asking her where my dad was and when he’d be back (he was on an 18 month voyage to africa - my dad is a sailor). and she did always cut the crusts off my sandwiches for me. (and btw i can’t ever re-read that passage with crying.)

What is your favorite fandom to write for? i mean, usually whatever my main fandom is at the time? which right now is spn. i did also enjoy writing potc fic and RDJ films sherlock holmes. i like writing characters who have a very strong but also very biased or unusual perspective on the world. they make for good unreliable narrators, which is something i love doing.

Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person) always, always, always third-person limited is my go-to. i only write in first-person if the original source material is written that way (like ACD Sherlock Holmes) and i want to do a pastiche of that style.

Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs? no. full stop. (okay, one caveat: i do like kidfic, but i am also SUPER PICKY about reading it bc im always looking for some accurate representations of parenthood and what it’s like to have a child. like kids are hard??? they’re hard and they make you worry and they drive you crazy and they have their own, weird, stubborn, fascinating views on life and the world. they’re not perfect angel children who exist only to be cute or ridiculously amazing mary sue geniuses. so yeah a well done kidfic where the kid is an OC i will read.)

Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots? given that every single WIP i have right now are fucking, horrible, lengthy novels,i want to say i prefer writing one-shots. i want TO BE ABLE to write one-shots. i used to do???? but yeah, i guess i really do enjoy plotting and world-building, which lends itself to creating monster plot bunnies instead of short stories or quick scenes.

Do you take requests? i do! do i ever actually get around to writing those requests is another question. but absolutely. send me prompts. ask for timestamps. if it speaks to me, and especially if it’s something i think i can write in less than 1000 words, i’ll most likely give it a go.

Do you enjoy getting random Asks? yes! always! i try to respond at least with in 72 hours. but yes please COME TALK TO ME ANYTIME.

What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix? so with fic, i never really write OCs, or if i do, they’re p much a red shirt or like extra #243 or smth and therefore don’t have names. if a character has spoken dialogue or no on-screen dialogue but some impact on the plot, i’ll try to “cast” that part with a character from the source material. for example, in the family business (which i realise isn’t posted yet), there’s some issues with a rival gang that need resolving. i cast the head of the rival gang as a well-known character from spn that has generally served a rival or an enemy to the boys on the show. i like doing that bc i like the parallels it draws, especially when working with an AU, and the ability to explore characters and dynamics from a slightly (or not slightly at all but in fact completely divergent) angle. i follow the philosophy that part of the real cathartic nature of AUs and part of why we write them is the ability to offer commentary on the source material. that a good AU should offer commentary on the source material. they're both metatexts and paratexts simultaneously. the one caveat to this, again, is kidfic, because i like and i do write it (i’ve just never finished any of those fics enough to publish them). and then i try to name kids in the way i think their parents would name them. i try to put myself in the character’s headspace and try to figure out what name(s) would appeal to them. and if we talk about work, and the scripts i write, i mean all of that is basically OCs. so far every script i’ve written while employed by my current firm, i always stick in at least one instance of one of my dogs’ names. i also will make subtle film or tv references. like the script i just wrote, there were three characters, and the first character had already been named harold by our content lead. so i named the other two perry and harmony as a reference to kiss kiss bang bang. i’ve done all the clones from orphan black as OC names. i’ve done members of radiohead. if one of the scripts im writing already has a theme built into it for a specific pop culture reference (like yesterday one of the scripts i wrote was using yoda speech and star wars analogies as part of its marketing and engagement strategies) so i’ll name characters in line with that pop culture motif (so the star wars themed script has luke and ben and daisy and carrie as characters).

If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who? as mentioned above, i rarely include OCs and if i do, they’re unimportant stand-ins. so i never give much thought to how they look. offspring in kidfic i do think about how they look. if the actors who play the main characters have children, i’ll start there. like for dean and cas, i always look at jj and west and maison and try to figure out what a kid with some of those combined physical features might look like. i’ll also look at photos of the actors from when they were kids or teenagers and try to decide if these two people had a kid, what features would that kid inherit. for work, casting people depends on client expectations and design direction and budget, so it’s a different ballgame.

How long have you been writing fanfiction? i think the first fic i published was in 2002 or 2003. so 15 years i guess??? how has it been 15 years dude.

#tag games #kat talks #writing stuff #i heart fandom

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bitsandshits · 7 years

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I was tagged by @yoursummerfrost, thank you! <3

“Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers (◠‿◠✿)” 1: Happy to Help ~ Zimbits, Rated T, 6004 words

Bitty honestly just wants to sleep when he finds a man having a mental breakdown outside his apartment door. But Bitty could never just leave this poor soul and his companion to fend for themselves.

This fic was actually based on a dream I had and it was so much fun to write? I liked how I had some pretty harsh themes in there, but it wasn’t the plot of the story. It was so much fun writing fluff, writing out a mildly awkward first date, and I love the idea of Bitty in a helping profession. And I feel like it’s one of my best written pieces.

2. Hold On ~ No pairing, Rated T, 1407 words

Bitty is used to feeling like this, at least once a year. Usually people don't really notice he's any different. He never let himself realize just how much support would help.

Okay so this isn’t anywhere close to my longest or most viewed, but it personally means a lot to me. There’s a lot with the acute symptoms of PTSD, the nightmares and panic attacks and flashbacks. But I don’t see a lot with the lower-level symptoms that pop up if you experience annual episodes at the time of the event. As a sufferer of PTSD it was interesting exploring that through Bitty’s similar but very different experience, using a different style o writing to try and demonstrate a different headspace. It was my most stylistic piece and served a purpose at the same time.

3. Make it Last Forever ~ Bitty/Jack/Kent, Rated T, 1026

Kent loves his boyfriends, and loves how easy their life together has become.

This is another short one, a part of a series. It’s so cute though and so sweet and just pure domestic fluff. I made myself happy with how sweet it is. I just really love it.

4. Hard and Fast ~ Zimbits, Rated T, 6652

Bitty enjoyed making friends in his classes, it was something he did often. He'd never expected to get more than a simple friendship out of it, but he certainly wasn't complaining.

I loooove trans Bitty and I love writing trans characters in general, so this fic was really great to write. Overall it had a lot of representation which I felt was important, and I got a lot of help with to do properly. I like this one a lot, there’s just some editing I should probably do on it and I felt like it was a bit clumsy at parts. But it’s still really cute and fluffy and was sooo much fun to write.

5. Friends with Tax Benefits ~ Shitty/Lardo (kinda?), Rated T, 4277 words

Shitty's grandparents threaten to put his inheritance in the wrong hands if he doesn't agree to one simple stipulation: he needs to be married within the next five years. For aromantic asexual Shitty, this sounds like a nightmare. Unless he can convince his equally aromantic best friend to marry him, completely platonically of course.

Not gonna lie, the only reason this is at the bottom is because it’s a WIP that I don’t exactly know when I’ll finish. It’s absolutely not abandoned! It just requirees a lot of research and word that I can’t dedicate to it right now with school and everything. That being said, I loved writing ace/aro representation, Lardo and Shitty are both hilarious to write, and this is the single best marriage of convenience scenario in existence if I do say so myself. I’m doing my best to represent Lardo’s culture, which I feel is super important, and overall I just adore this fic.

Honorable mention cause I had a heavy hand in this but didn’t technically write on my own:

Que Je Suis, Mon Amour ~ Bitty/Jack/Kent, Rated M, 27570 words

When Falconers Captain, Jack Zimmermann, and his boyfriend Kent Parson are asked to billet the new NHL Rookie, Eric Bittle, they can't possibly anticipate the change the small blonde is going to bring about.

So this fic is massively important to me. I teamed up with my best friend/adopted mom to write this because we desperately wanted some good representation given the relatively common headcannon that Kent has borderline personality disorder. Angryspaceravenclaw likely could’ve written it on her own, she’s known me for long enough and through the most difficult of my treatment to understand the behavior patterns. But she asked me to cowrite, and I put my own two cents in and explained the kinds of thought processes that go on behind the behavior, and I can say with the utmost certainty that this is a very accurate portrayal that also gives the boys a happy ending. It’s also the first in the series Make it Last Forever belongs to.

I feel like I’m not really friends with other writers much aside from @severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet (if you decide to do it you can tag my main saying I tagged you) so if anyone writes and wants to show off please say I tagged you, I’ll even add you to this post!

#omgcp #zimbits #pimmbits #pb&j #fic rec #my fics #im so happy i got tagged in this i love showing off

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tornrose24 · 7 years

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Only a voice, part 2 (A Moana AU fan fic inspired by the Little Mermaid)

Note that this fan fic can also be found on fan fiction.net under my other name (HolyMaiden24). See notes for more details.

Note that in this AU, everyone is out voyaging. The heart of Te Fiti was never stolen, but there are still dangers in the ocean. However there are still reasons as to why Chief Tui doesn’t want Moana out on the ocean, as you will learn pretty soon. Now I, like so many others, am not super familiar with the Polynesian cultures, but I will do my best (and thankfully I own a copy of ‘The Art of Moana’ to help me somewhat). If I ever write something that goes against the culture or is not accurate, please let me know. Something important to keep note of: fale- a type of house. They vary in apperance and some can be used fro ceremonial or religious purposes (from what I understand). tapa- this was a type of ‘cloth’ made from a certain tree. Those tapestries in the beginning of the film were made with these (again, from what I do understand). Hoani- a Maori name. If it is not accurate I will use a different name.

Quite a few years had passed since Moana had been kidnapped by the kakamora, but that itself was a minor occurence compared to what else was occuring around the southern seas of the world. On an island somewhere close to Motonui (and yet not quite) a certain catastrophe was about to occur as the sun was setting as a large bird crashed through the roof of the Chief’s fale. A number of the villagers and the chief himself immediately responded to the occurance and when they made it into the fale, there was one huge hole in the roof of the fale, but it was nothing compared to who was inside the building. “I didn’t think something as precious as this could get in the hands of humans, but I guess you guys find your ways.” A muscular man who almost seemed to be as large as a mountain with a series of tattoos on what seemed to be every inch of his body commented as he held up a necklace in one hand while the other held a large fish hook over his shoulder. If it wasn’t the tattoos that showed his accomplishments, then it was the fish hook that gave away his true identity. “What is it supposed to be for, a wedding present or is this a ceremonial trinket?” He asked as he held the necklace up. It was a beautiful necklace with carefully woven fibers holding together pecies of shells, bones, and a very lovely red stone that would clearly shine under the right lighting. “That is a gift for the family of the Chief of Motonui!” The chief snarled as he took a few steps closer to the man. “I did not promise that to you as payment for protecting us from those monsters!” “Yeah, true.” The man nonchalantly began. “Except I don’t recall you giving me the supplies I asked for as payment. That was all I asked for, and yet you decided that even something as simple as that wasn’t worth giving away. So unless this is a big deal to you guys–which it isn’t–then I’ll take it from you guys as a reminder not to cheat someone out of a deal ever again.” He looked up at the roof. “Plus you now have some much needed lighting in this place, so it wasn’t that bad of a trade off, right?” The chief yelled out in fury as he took a spear from one of his men and charged at the large man. He sighed as he lowered his hand, swung his hook out, and the markings upon it glowed with a blue light. Within moments his form shifted to that of a large brown hawk that not only knocked the chief to the ground as he turned around, but he charged through to the ceiling, dodged quite a few spears that were sent up at him, and made a second large hole in the ceiling when he made his get away. It was quite a nice addition to the archetiecture, he thought to himself. “GET BACK HERE, MAUI!” The Chief yelled at the hawk as his men tried to help him up. “I WILL TELL THE OTHERS WHAT YOU HAVE, DONE, YOU HEAR ME?! YOU CAN’T TAKE WHAT WASN’T PROMISED TO YOU!” The hawk let out a laugh as he flapped his wings and got away from the island as fast as he could. “It’s always the ones who talk big that I don’t have to worry about!” He spoke to himself. The bird flew to a boat that was hidding behind a large rock and it was there that the bird changed into a man who dropped onto the boat and quickly undid its binds to one of the smaller rocks. There was still a smirk on the man’s face as the wind blew into his wild mane of dark hair, yet his brown eyes had already lost their mischeviousness that he was sometimes more known for over his heroic feats. “Heh,” He paused long enough to look at the necklace, which held no true value for him other then serving as a reminder that those people didn’t really appreciate all that he had done for them. How often did that even happen anymore? He had helped humanity for so long that they were taking his services for granted. “Even their ‘thank yous’ are getting hallower than an empty coconut.” He mused as he was able to let the sails of his boat go and the wind quickly took him away from the island. When was the last time he could remember a ‘thank you’ being so sincere and full of appreciation? Unknown to him, someone had been watching everything that had happened from start to finish. From Maui’s success with driving the monsters away to the instant he had escaped, as well as the moment he was denied a reward. Honestly, the stupid look of offense and shock he had on his face when that happened would make a good memory to laugh at for many decades to come. With a deep chuckle, he sank down into the depths of the ocean as he began to see that there might be something that could work to his advantage. And finally get the revenge he so rightfully desired.

“Alright, that was wonderful!” A sixteen year old Moana clapped her hands together after finishing the dancing lesson with her young students. “You all are going to be amazing!” “But none of us dance as wonderfully as you do, Moana!” A little girl exclaimed. “When the Chief and his people from the other island come to visit, you will be the best dancer of us all!” “And you will look so pretty in your ceremonial attire!” Another girl beamed. “You’ll be the most beautiful of all the ladies!” Moana let out a laugh as Pua came to brush against her legs. “I wouldn’t make claims like that, but I appreciate it!” She picked Pua up and waved to the children. “Bye!” She then gently grabbed one of Pua’s front feet and playfully waved it at the children. “‘Bye-bye!’” She pretended to say on Pua’s behalf. “Bye!” “Bye, Moana!” Moana smiled as she walked away. “You’d think that for once we would get to go to the islands and perform for them instead.” She told Pua as she turned to the ocean and let out a sigh of longingness. “If only father would stop being afraid and let me go.” She had only one time out on the ocean and she never forgot it. Yet she wanted to trully experience the ocean and feel the wood of a canoe under her feet and the wind blowing through her hair. Getting kidnapped, fighting for her life, and getting blinded was not the same as that. “You remember when we got to be out on the ocean, don’t you Pua?” Pua let out an uncomfortable grunt. “Yeah, those things did want to make you their dinner.” Moana agreed. “Ever since I was found that night, father became very adamant that I wouldn’t go near the shore without someone by my side, let alone anywhere near a canoe.” Moana reflected as she continued to walk towards her grandma’s fale. “I told the story and he didn’t believe anything other than that I was out at sea.” She frowned. “I know it has been many years since his friend drowned in the ocean, and I know he forbade me and mother to leave with him since he fears that history will repeat itself. But I wish he could trust me enough to at least let me learn under someone! How can I be the future Chief if I am not allowed to go to the other islands, Pua?!” When she briefly turned away, she could see that Heihei the rooster was trying to peck at a bush for reasons that could only make sense to him. “Any day now, he’ll walk right to a cook and serve himself as our next meal.” She chuckled. She had done everything to save Heihei, but with each attempt to speak on his behalf, it seemed the dumb bird gave the cook a new reason to prep him for dinner. She almost wanted to know what went on through Heihei’s head but she doubted it would be anything enlightening for her own benefit. She glanced back to the ocean as she continued her walk. She thanked the gods that her blindness only lasted for a short time and that she could enjoy the sight of the ocean in all of its beauty. She couldn’t explain it, but... “I feel like each time I look at the ocean, it keeps calling to me. It wants to appologize for what almost happened to me.” She mused. She had tried to double her efforts to respect the ocean since then and sometimes she talked to the water when no one was looking. She prayed that it would guide her father on safe voyages and that one day it would do the same for her when her time would come. “Perhaps I am going to be the next village crazy lady.” Moana laughed. “Maybe I should learn a thing or two about that from Grandma Tala. She would glady welcome a successor.” Grandma Tala was in her fale when Moana found her and the eldery woman was once again recounting tales of monsters and gods to a group of young children. Moana set Pua outside and walked right in as Grandma Tala finished up another story. “And that is why our days are long and productive.” Grandma Tala was obviously recounting a tale about Maui slowing down the sun. “With the aid of his magical fish hook, Maui helped us grow our crops and give us time to enjoy the rest of the day.” “And without his help, we would surely be lost in darkness and grow hungry.” Moana chimmed in, causing the children to turn around to face her and the old woman to smile at her granddaughter. “Maui has faced many monsters and many dangers that most wouldn’t dare try to face.” Moana smiled at the tapa that depicted the demi-god and the animals that he shape shifted into. Some of his stories were among her favorite tales that Tala herself told to her. “All he has done has been on our behalf because he is very fond of mortals. It would be good fortune if one were to ever meet him, and yet because he takes on different forms we could go through our whole lives not knowing that we have seen him. No matter how many versions of his tales are told, he will always be remembered as a hero to all. I know that I myself would love to have his daring and cunningness in the most difficult of times.” Moana admitted with a chuckle. “But Maui isn’t always nice.” A boy told Moana and all the children looked at him. “My dad said that he likes to trick people to get what he wants and sometimes he’ll try to do impossible things to boast about just because he can.” “Yeah, didn’t he rip off a monster’s leg one time for no reason?” Another boy asked as he pointed to a certain tapa. Moana turned around to see that the particular tapa depicted a giant monster crab. The crab’s face looked a little comical, and yet there was a sinisterness about him that made it clear that he was not to be taken so lightly. “Tamatoa?” Moana approached the tapa and placed a hand on the crab. “Well, he is one of the most dangerous creatures in all of Lalotai. Some actually think he was once a great warrior or a lost member of a royal family who was either cursed or came back as a crab. He loves treaure more than anything in the world and he will decorate himself with them like they’re jewellry–” A few children laughed at this. A crab who loves to wear treasures? What a silly thought! “–but he also uses it to attract his prey.” Moana recounted as she turned to the children with a big grin. “The shinier something is, the more he’ll want it, so you better make sure you don’t have anything like that on you!” She pretended to snatch at them with her hand as if it were a claw, causing a few children to recoil away from her. “He might think ‘Oh, what a nice looking bracelet’! Perhaps I shall take it off that cute child’s tiny wrist!’” She spoke in a deep voice when she pretended to be Tamatoa and she did the motion again to the nearest little girl who let out a giggle and playfully patted Moana’s hand away. “‘Tamatoa must have every shiny, sparkly thing that he sees!’” Moana growled in delight. “He was also once a good friend of Maui’s.” Grandma Tala added. “Both were equally prideful and loved to boast about their accomplishments until one day they had an arguement and Maui tore one of Tamatoa’s legs off. No one knows what the arguement was, but even to this day, Tamatoa has not regained that leg. It is said that he is waiting for the chance to have his revenge on Maui for his loss.” One of the boys scoffed. “So? He’s just a dumb crab!” “A big crab!” Another boy reminded him. “But be warned children.” Grandma Tala added as her voice took on a sinister tone. “For they say that Tamatoa had become so obsessed with making himself beautiful with his treasures to compensate for his ugliness, that he is not as sane as he once was. He even started to develop a taste for humans just to keep gaining more trinkets. There is no telling just how much further he would go to accomplish his goals. Remember my children– outer appearances and great accomplishments are fine and all, but they mean nothing without what is important on the inside.” She looked directly at Moana when she said those last words, as if she was trying to tell her something. “And appearances can be very deceving.” “So we won’t go near any shiny things.” A girl decided. “We’ll be safe.” “Except there is one final trap to be mindful of.” Moana couldn’t help but add. “He loves to use his voice to attract his prey if the treasures doesn’t cut it. They say his singing is as beautiful and hypnotic as he is ugly and selfish, so should he ever sing to you, it might already be too late!” She pretended to be Tamatoa again as she creeped towards the childen, her hands curled to resemble claws, and just when she was about to strike– “For Te Fiti’s sake, I would think that you would make a better story teller than a chief!” “Ah!” A startled Moana broke her act and she turned around to face Chief Tui. “Father!” “Son!” Grandma Tala chuckled before turning to the children. “That is all for today, but I hope you remember that story for the sake of the future. Farewell for now.” The children got up off the floor and waved to the Chief and his family before they hurried off to go out to play. “If not a storyteller, then perhaps a crab.” Tui mused before turning to Moana with a smile. “I hear that you’re dancing is coming along well; keep up the good work, but remember that there is still so much that needs preparation before Chief Hoani comes.” He told her before walking away from the fale as Pua scrambled to get inside. Moana frowned as she walked up to Grandma Tala and the tapa of Maui. “I could do so much more for Motonui besides dancing for the other Chiefs and talking with them. If only he would let go of that fear of losing me.” Moana spoke as she placed a hand over Maui’s fish hook. If only she could have it, so that she could turn into one of his creatures and get away from here for at least one day. She envied the demi-god more than she ever had in her life. “He’ll learn eventually that you must go out into the world to learn as much as you can.” Grandma Tala told Moana. “I want to be there for my people, but sometimes wish I could be as free as Maui.” Moana said as she looked at the demi-god, who seemed so fierce in this depiction on the tapa and yet so much like the trickster they said he was. “I sometimes wish I never went back to Motonui when I had been taken away.” She closed her eyes. “I know what they all expect of me, but I would give anything to be on the sea and live out more stories. I want to have both land and sea be part of my life without losing sight of who I am.” Tala understood her granddaughter’s frusterations perfectly. She had prayed to the gods that fortune could favor her family and she wished that Moana could find her happiness like Tui did with his people and with his family. She decided to change tactics and asked Moana “So you still haven’t learned who your rescuer was then?” “All I know is that the man seemed so smug about what he had done, and yet there was a strange lonliness about him.” Moana admitted. “I still remember that voice and how full of life it seemed. Everything is is vague but that if I ever heard that voice again, I would know it was him, no question about it.” “Sounds like a man with his head at least partly attatched to his shoulders.” Grandma Tala chuckled. “But don’t worry, Moana,” She placed a reasuring arm around the girl. “If the sea knows how much you love it, I am sure it will one day take you back. Maybe one day I’ll see if there can be a way to get you off this island again if all doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to be. I want to see you live out a happy life, even if it is not the same as the life you dreamt of.” Moana smiled back. “Thanks Grandma.” The two walked out of the fale, but they didn’t notice that Pua was staring at them in frusteration. The pig then turned to the tapa of Maui and let out an annoyed grunt. It took him awhile to figure out who Moana’s rescuer was until he had sat through some of the tales of Maui and took a long look at the fish hook and the bird on the tapa. He knew that both the demi-god and the man who had saved him and Moana from those–ugh–pests, were one and the same. He wished deep down that there was a way for Moana to know that it was Maui who had saved her and who she had hugged that night. She didn’t notice any of his previous attempts to let her know, and she laughed them off if he wasn’t chased away by someone. Pua knew she would have liked it if she knew the truth.

Somewhere on a lone island in the dead of night, Maui stared at the useless necklace as he reflected on his accomplishments and tried to remember how long it took for the people to appreciate all he had done. It was a rare sight to see the normally upbeat demi-god seem withdrawn or a little depressed and he wanted to have his privacy for that exact reason. Yes, he had done many a great thing for the mortals. He pulled up islands, slowed down the sun, fought many monsters, and all of these feats were shown to the world in the form of his many tattoos. He was infused with this ocean and its myths as much as the gods were and he was a part of the world of humans in all but their lifespan. It was a never ending cyle. They would love him for all that he did for a few years, and then it would be like he never did anything at all to begin with. Then something would come up and then he would have to help them again, then they’d praise him, yada, yada, yada. It was really tiring to go through this. Every, single, generation, of humans. What else could he do to earn their love and adoration? He hated being stuck in-between two worlds sometimes. He knew for a fact that he didn’t want to be a god, due to the responsibilities (he knew for a fact that he would probably be the last person considered for such a position and it would not have been so fun if he couldn’t get to do whatever he liked anymore). Sometimes he wanted to retire and go back to being a human, even if a short lifespan scared the heck out of him. He felt something whacking against the left side of his chest and he looked down to see a smaller tattooed version of himself trying to get his attention. “What?” he demanded bitterly. The tattoo of himself–or Mini Maui as he refered that tattoo– pointed to something and he watched as a scene of a previous rescue played out on the left side of his chest. It showed the little girl and the pig he saved from the kakamora some time ago and it showed her reaching out to him, despite being unable to see at the time. He almost felt sorry for her back then, but her joy at her adventure was enough to quit the pitying. Mini Maui smiled at the girl and hugged her in a big embrace for a second before she was absorbed into him and the rest of the scene vanished. “Yeah, I remember the kid.” Maui said. “But she didn’t know it was me who saved her. I wouldn’t be suprised if she already died by now.” Another reason why it was not so fun being immortal. Almost everyone died before him, including too many children that he had met in his life. He sighed as he set the necklace aside and gazed upon the moon. “Don’t know if she would have wanted me around if she knew what she was getting herself into.” There was that one final problem- he was a danger to mortals as there was no telling what danger he would bring to them. Maui then realized that someone or something was right behind him while he had been distracted. He mentally cursed himself as he made to grab for his hook when that person spoke. “What’s a matter, little Maui? Not having fun saving those mortals you so adore?” Oh. Heck. No. He knew who it was. If it wasn’t the accent, then it was the tone of the voice–condescending, scheming, sinister when the owner so desired, and dangerous if used to lure a certain kind of prey–that gave him away. “I saw what happened on that island. Pretty ungreatful of them if you ask me. I would have done more then scare them and steal them blind if it were me, but why bother, right?” He laughed. “What do you want?” Maui demanded in a careful tone as his hand inched towards the hook. “Oh, I just want to know what is going on through your head right now, Maui man. Are you ready to give it all up and stop helping them? You can’t fight in every battle and save every one of those simple, fragile humans. Why should you if they turned your back on you once before?” Maui grabbed the hook and he heard the voice take a sharp intake of air. He probably remembered what happened the last time he saw that hook. Slowly the demi-god turned around and came face to face with a creature who almost shone in the moonlight thanks to the amount of treasures that somehow stuck to his shell. His eyes would have been considered a lovely shade of blue to anyone else, but one pupil was dialated and both eyes squinted at Maui with a careful gaurdedness that almost matched the smug smile on his face. Maui could also see out of the corner of his eye that the giant crab was still missing one of the legs on the left side of his body. “So what do you want to get off your chest, mon ami?” The crab grinned wide enough to reveal crooked teeth covered in barncales (much like his ‘chin’ if that was what it could be called). It never ceased to amaze Maui as to why such a voice as that could belong to something so... unappealing in apperance (and that was putting it kindly). “I mean that figuratively, of course, I don’t know if I want to see your tattoos come off your body. That would be a weird sight to see, but I digress. Ol’ Tamatoa is all... well I suppose I don’t have actual ears,” Tamatoa let out an unpleasant chuckle. “But I’ll still give it a listen.”

And now his Crabuloussness... err... the reason that some of you probably wanted to read this... ehh... Ok, yeah I’m fond of Tamatoa and he finally showed up. I’m a sucker for characters like him (you might already know that if you read my Zelda AUs) but... man is his song AWESOME! I wish he was in the film longer! Disney, please let him show up in a Moana short! You did shorts for Frozen and Tangled and they both featured antagonists from those films! Or at least give us a Moana musical instead of a Frozen musical, I’d give you my money for that! Poor Moana has no idea what she’s going to get trapped in the feud between Maui and Tamatoa *laughs*. My favorite part of the whole chapter to write out was the story-telling. I read from one particular article that the name Tamatoa is a name that came from a warrior and was also used within a certain Royal Family.... and that one reviwer in the article was very offended that Disney used that name for one of the antagonists in the film. As much as I like that name now, I can understand why that would seem offensive. That’s why I was inspired to add that one odd bit in the myth behind the character in this AU. Anyway, for those of you who are already making parallels, Pua IS meant to be like Max from the Little Mermaid, since he was the only one close to Eric who knew who Ariel was. Ok, I’ll shut up now. Let’s see where this goes and I don’t know if I can make a Tamatoa version of the song ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ but I can try to write out something that feels similar to that if its not a song.

#disney's moana #moana fan fic #little mermaid au #little mermaid inspired au #moana #maui #tamatoa #tamatoa as ursula #you're welcome for that one #grandma tala #pua #story telling #oh yeah #heihei makes a brief cameo #platonic relationship #keep reading to see how this will work

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