#and i know most of those types of creators mostly have younger followers who probably do very easily get sucked into
Note
What do proshippers generally believe about shipping real people? Stuff like creator x creator or celebrity x reader?
That it falls under the umbrella of "you should be allowed to write anything you want". Once again, it's not my personal thing. There's no real life pairing I read for, and the whole "blank x reader" is not appealing to me at all.
But I have no problem with people writing that stuff, or knowing it's out there. I saw someone a while back say that it's basically just writing about another character, and I agree with that. No matter how much a creator posts or how open a celebrity seems with their personal life, we're still only seeing a tiny snippet of their lives. We have no clue who they are when the cameras aren't recording because we just don't know them. And whatever someone chooses to write about is mostly stemming from that particular persona that they happen to put on for the world and that's it. It's completely separate from our reality because they're basically just writing about another made up character
The problem I have, and it's what I imagine most proshippers also take issue with, is when people start blurring the lines between fiction and reality. To me, there's a world of difference between posting something on ao3, and speculating on secret relationships in the comments of someone's youtube video. Or between talking about something on tumblr, and tagging the person directly on twitter.
I just don't understand people who condemn rpf and talk about how gross and invasive it is, but think it's funny to tag celebrities on twitter to bring up (what they think is) cringe-worthy fanfic tropes that people have written them into. Or people who print out fanworks to shove into an actor's face at a meet and greet and ask them what they think about it. That's where the lines get crossed, to me.
I think ao3 and tumblr still have an air of mysticism to them. A little secrecy, a little privacy. In the sense that someone in the public eye would have to put in a little work to find this stuff for themselves. They'd have to go to the site and search themselves up to find anything. As opposed to just about anyone in the world being able to force this content in their line of sight with a simple @ on a site like twitter.
So to me the problem isn't that this content exists. The problem is when people don't know how to keep fandom stuff private. Write all the rpf you want but remember at the end of the day these are real people, not your blorbos. You don't know them. It's inappropriate to say these things to them personally (which yes, also includes tagging them on twitter or in the comments of their videos). But it's also inappropriate to run up to them with other people's content just to say "look what these FREAKS wrote about you!!" And I think people either forget or just genuinely don't care about the latter.
#proship#proshippers#pro ship#proshippers please interact#proshipper#proshipping#rpf#real person fiction#asks#anonymous#sip rambles#i know its so much crazier in this day and age than when i was a kid#with social media and stupid stuff like tiktok basically being a requirement of the job it seems#and celebs posting constantly and having a quick way to interact with fans#or content creators whose entire brand exists on social media apps like tiktok#who seem to be posting 24/7 and broadcasting their whole lives#and i know most of those types of creators mostly have younger followers who probably do very easily get sucked into#feeling like they know that person like thats their friend#and i also dont think that type of creator really discourages those feelings bc... they want followers and $$$#but idk just write your fic and read it or dont do either and just leave celebs alone irl please please please
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HARRY ZHONG (MITCHELL-WHITE)
IG info/bio: @/heedful.harry | 15.6k followers| hi, I’m Harry and I’m a business major. No, You don’t have to hold your applause 🧐
21 years old
From York, England
Cancer sun + ARIES MOON energy
He and his younger brother, Archie were foster children in the Mitchell-white household
which consisted: Harrison Mitchell and his daughter from a previous marriage, Briony, Piers White and together they had a surrogate carry their child, which gave them their second daughter, Pippa
Later they came to the decision to adopt Harry and Archie Zhong, if only that’s what they wanted too
It took longer for Harry to warm up to the family since he was still waiting and wishing for his mom to come back for them
He was diagnosed with IED around 15 years old
Goes to therapy for it and meetings with others with similar issues...he dreads the meetings since it makes him feel like he has a problem or something, which HE DOES but it makes him feel like a...but he knows that’s a ignorant way to think
He’s currently a business major and loves telling people about it *yawn* (don’t drag me lmao)
He’s thinking he’ll be a Financial analyst or a Marketing manager
The type of person who’s done a lot in his short life that it’s often unbelievable ex.) telling the villa he’s driven one of the cars that was used in the fast and furious franchise & getting pissed when bill and everyone else didn’t believe him
Harrison is a train driver and is normally bubbly + wears bright preppy clothes
He also loves Broadway, much to Harry’s annoyance...if he hears one more Hamilton song he’s gonna slam his head thru a wall stg
Piers is a music producer and is more reserved or “stand-off-ish” until he gets warmed up to you + his aesthetic is a rocker, yeah he’s got the whole tattoos and boots thing going for him, after all he was in a rock band
Piers makes the most $ and is of high status, which brought him and his family perks but is not a snob about it...it’s whatever ya know?
Harry’s closer to piers, feels he understands him more & can be kinda rude to Harrison when he’s in one of his moods but tries to be better at responding to him since he made him cry once years ago — yes he felt like complete shit afterwards
Harry is anemic so he always finds himself cold, experiencing fatigue, irregular heartbeat, and if he gets up too fast or moves too fast? Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the—FLOOO000R! (I’m making this joke as a person with anemia)
Likes cold weather since everyone else can feel what he feels on the daily
Plus he loves dressing for winter season, trench coats, wool coats, turtle necks, thermal t-shirts, fleece pants, rolled up beanies that keeps his ears covered and his hair glued to his forehead...you name it!
On the regular? He’s a khaki’s kinda guy, dress shirts, and loves wearing suit and ties...he’s not the biggest fan of jeans. He loves dressing fancy unless the measurements are bloody awful
I’m going by the alternative design for Harry and...whew! Then he’s 6’1 if we’re talking about the one they gave us then we all know he has a baby face, so I’d say he’s about 5’8
He’s got long legs + arms and hates how majority of his pants barely fit around his ankles
has dry scalp too
I feel like he’s pretty intelligent and sometimes it can come off as a know it all, yet, he’s always down to help people & isn’t condescending while doing so
He knows how to make soaps and would sell them on his etsy account in highschool where plenty shat on him for it so for awhile he stopped the hobby until Harrison encouraged him to keep at this if it was what makes him happy
Harrison is the type of parent you go to for comfort and hugs even if it might feel like he’s smothering you
Piers is the one who lets you come to him when you’re ready to talk about it, no pressure
Harry went to a high school that focused on technology so he’s all into the latest gadgets
This is a secret but he only got a apple watch to feel like a true spy
His intelligence got him somewhere with a few ladies ;)
He’s a certified freak, 7 days a week and had a handful of hookups and about 4 gfs in his life so far
He’s kinky!!!
& has a f**t fetish
His past relationships were not long relationships, which sucked but Harry felt like...this might sound arrogant, but it’s either their lost — although there was never any bad blood with his breakups! or his person was still out there somewhere...
I haven’t fully played his route (AJ stole my ass since I couldn’t romance seb or Nicky sorry) but I’ve seen screen caps and he’s a total sweetie if he’s really committed to you, you might be his “true love”
He’s nervous opposed to his usual confidence when he’s chatting to other ladies with ease, with you it’s different, it’s magnetic, nerve-wrecking, butterflies, electric, and exciting all wrapped in one
I feel like he shows his love language with quality time but also enjoys physical touch from his partner
Picky eater
But he was worst as a child! Barely ate anything which led to him being lanky or it’s in his genes but mostly he wouldn’t eat a damn thing
These are a few of his favorite things: figs, green tea, and almond milk
makes the best spring rolls with the rice paper, those are superior than fried! “Fried food will kill u u know!” “Okay bill.” “Iona, don’t know if u had too much to drink but, erm I’m Harry.” “R/WHOOOOssssh! And you’re s’pposed to be the smart one, yeah right.”
outside of the villa he found himself continuing his friendship with bill—even tho he pisses him off sometimes since he’s always got some shit to say but they’re probably the closest, Iona she’s always honest and is always a good time to be around when they hang out, Then there’s Camilo and Miki that he hangs out with too
Is the first one sharing about his day in the group chat with all of the villa, he can feel half of them rolling their eyes at him since many feel he tends to exaggerate
if he’s not endgame with mc...he kinda feels a way that Genevieve found her happiness in seb instead of him, it’s not that he’s bitter—he genuinely liked her and felt like maybe they didn’t try hard enough but deep down knows relationships can’t be forced. It’s just his ego trying to control things that’s all! plus he was comfortable with vieve even if it felt more on a platonic side...oh well
once slid into jen from s1’s dms one dark stormy drunk night & admitted on live that erikah kinda gave him some tips before going on the show... & that he thought one of the new girls that entered the villa was a better fit than one of the originals from s2 which caused him to get blocked by said original OOP
Has a circle of close friends outside of the villa, they’re all brainiacs and have something going for themselves
Enjoys action films and biographical drama films like: James Bond, John Wick, and the social network
Isn’t ashamed to admit that he loves using sheet face masks but isn’t the greatest at following a consistent skincare routine
Has his own back massager that he spent a lot of $ on since it wouldn’t go on sale and then a week later...it went on sale
sends a lot of “🙃🙂” texts when you piss him off
probably worked at GameStop, the apple store, Godiva, and currently works at a electronic repair shop for a side of cash but is looking for a internship since he’ll be graduating next year
Always Keeps cough drops on him? 
is a huge cuddler & falls asleep easily
His brain is always active, experiences REM sleep often
fav video games are tekken & hitman
owns a drone now 😏
also loves strategic board games & riddles
Took quarantine life seriously, did his research before it completely broke globally and started buying shit excessively in person and online that he sent most to his family before the campus shut down
Is the friend that will check on his friends :)
Keeps his dorm and his room back home CLEAN af, is OCD about everything being in order/organized. Will know if you touched his shit, Archie felt his wrath many times before
Has a life goal board in his closet, & plans to be fully established by 25. More power to ya Harry!
Celeb crushes: Victoria justice, Jesy Nelson, Deepika Padukone, Brec Bassinger, jasmine tookes, and princess Mae
Who does he listen to? oceanfromtheblue, Galimatias, Ta-Ku, Aries, Tyler, the creator, rich Brian, NIKI, viji, & AJR
Anthem = DPR IAN, “So beautiful”
#litg#litg3#litg s3#litg harry#litg genevieve#litg bill#litg seb#litg mc#litg oc#litg moodboard#litg headcanon#litg headcanons#yes I’m still doing these and it’s kinda challenging but at the same time not?
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JWCC Sammy Gutierrez and body positivity
THIS IS VERY LONG! (I just have a lot of feelings!) Also, this is personal and doesn’t talk a lot about Sammy and is just one big rant.
Comment I wrote on the S2 preview
“Also, shout out to the creators for making Sammy heavy, but it not effecting or having anything to do with her character. OR have her be obsessed with food. I'm sure other 90s kids remember the fat kid trope. Not doing fat logic, but we've come so far from the old days! As a woman who had that kind of body type growing up (had skinny friends, developed early, etc. it all was uncomfortable for many reasons. Long story.), it's amazing to see this kind of...semi-body positivity that's quiet and unspoken in a show aimed at everyone, including girls. If I had seen this character at 13, my mind would've been blown. Kudos!!”
I’m reeeally tired and getting to that point where I get emotional about stupid stuff. However, this isn’t that stupid...maybe?
We’ve reached a milestone, a kind of apex in American society, where being fat is no longer a running gag and it’s celebrated to be thick and/or a healthy weight. (Not to say skinny isn’t cool and it’s sure as heck better than carry 90+ pounds if it can be helped, but, as I said on Youtube, lots of 90s fat tropes were had, were they not? Every body type has their problems, blessings, and issues.) But, health is also a big issue and losing weight is too. I’m all for losing weight, but I also know what it was like growing up a fat kid, then a fat teenager in the 90s and 2000s when we didn’t have representation and people like Tocorra Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Ashley Graham and Rebel Wilson around to promote different body shapes and/or being a little heavy or curvy while still being healthy. (Melissa and Rebel have lost weight and I applaud them full circle!)
Anyway, It is downright uplifting to see Sammy in JWCC like this! Being “thicker” than her two female friends doesn’t slow her down or hinder her in anyway. She is not obsessed with food. She is not constantly eating. Likewise, she has an actual personality and an interesting secret and backstory. The fans seem to love her. She is not dressed immodestly and she doesn’t seem to have ANY negative opinions of her body type, for now. Likewise, in a fast paced show like this, no one is talking behind her back about her weight or eating habits (again, for now. This could change in upcoming seasons, we don’t know.) Come to that, she’s fairly intelligent and isn’t dumb. Like, how many times have we seen a fat, dumb person in a show. (I’m looking at you Chris Griffin and Cleveland Jr!) This could’ve gone SO SIDEWAYS in her character creation any number of ways and I’m just amazed it didn’t. However, this maybe is attributed to the show being an action show and not a comedy? In any case, I’m so glad girls of this generation can see it. I wish I’d had it at their age. (It’s probably because her VA is heavy, but heavier than how Sammy is portrayed, to my knowledge. I’ve only seen her years ago on Disney channel. Who cares why? It happened and I’m glad.) Please be assured, I’m NOT trying promote fat acceptance, just inclusivity, relatability, and representation.
Like I say all the time, I’m not super heavy. I never was. As I said in the comment, I developed early and had mostly skinny friends growing up. I remember being about 11 and hosting my first sleepover and someone pointing to my arms at my stretch marks, asking what they were. I wasn’t traumatized and they didn’t tease me, but I was a little (a lot?) self-conscious. Like, can we please get the idea out of our head that ONLY pregnant women get stretch marks?? (Cocoa butter companies, hello?!) They can happen to girls that grow tall fast or, like me, you can have them all freaking over because the puberty button in your brain got stuck. (LOL?) And calling them cute things like skin lightning doesn’t really help. My limbs and body still look weird.
I don’t remember seeing many characters shaped like me in shows as a kid or teenager. Unless maybe Simpsons characters with their pudgy bellies who may be some of the most average, realistic bodies in all of fiction, really. We can’t all be supermodels and body builders. Sailor Moon girls were all thin and leggy. None of the Magic School Bus kids were pudgy, all average and healthy (which is probably a good thing in a way. IDK. Representation is great, but so is promoting healthy eating and healthy shapes. Everything has their place.) Disney characters were mostly animals at the time, and I didn’t see Recess until Highschool or something at 3 am, and even then, there was only Mikey. Mikey was progressive, but he wasn’t female. Closest I got was Ariel’s (Little Mermaid) sister, Adella ( https://littlemermaid.fandom.com/wiki/Adella) and even then, she had no belly and never animated the same outside of the series with not much character development or anything.
Cassie from Animorphs might’ve been a close second, but, though she was my favorite female character as a kid (not anymore), it was hard to say “OMG, she’s shaped like me!” as it was a book series with few visual aides outside of covers, posters and some toys.
I remember seeing the singing group Cherish for a few seconds on TV once. A bunch of thick, busty, heavy black girls and I was SO EXCITED because for those few seconds on TV, there were girls that looked like me! Then some years later I found out a few of them lost weight and I was like bleh. (I didn’t follow their music or anything, not even sure how I saw them again.) Not that disapprove, health is essential, and I encourage people to lose weight for themselves, but it was nice having some representation. Except health needs to come first. It’s a two-edged sword if I ever saw one.
Don’t get me started on the sheer amount of girls with small/flat chests on TV. (No offense! See above about body types. Again, it’s about representation and seeing someone that looks like you that was not common in the 90s and early 2000s) I’m picky though. I wanted to see more representation, but the minute I saw it, I was not impressed or annoyed. To my better judgement, I saw a few episodes of something I won’t name with a curvy lead. I found her times dressing up as a man unconvincing and confusing because of her body shape. Other times I was, for lack of a better word, slightly appalled at her own size, even though she somewhat looked like me. I know, it makes no sense. Other times, I was mad at Lizzy Mcguire or another show for having skinny characters with A-cups while I was, er, way past training bras and smaller bras by 14/15 when the show was new.
Swearz, I developed (pun not intended!) this weird conspiracy theory that Disney execs have to look at the Star’s mom and other women in their family before casting a girl to make sure she stays thin/average chested for the shows entire run. Outside of one show, all shows in that era had the same thin girl body type. (And not much representation for different races for Disney back then, but that’s another debate for someone to better handle, not me.)
All that said, my shape was attributed to four things: Diet, genetics, lack of exercise and my mom’s cooking. Not sure how much I subscribe to the “genetics effect body fat theory”, but the “genetics effect body shape” is definitely a thing! And hormones in chicken. My family said all I ever wanted when I was little was McDonald’s chicken nuggets all the time, so I think that had some play in how I turned out. It’s probably too much to get into here, and no one cares about my sob story, so let’s move on.
Sammy is awesome and I hope to see more characters like her from other studios in the future. Every body type needs representation, but every body also deserves to be healthy and nourished.
EDIT: WARNING: THE VIDEO AND THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS TALK ABOUT ED AND CALORIE RESTRICTION!!
OMAHGAWWWD! I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE INDUSTRY, Y’ALL!! (Okay, that’s obvious, but you don’t really give it thought in your day to day life.)
The video gives a summary of Jenette McCurdy’s time on iCarly and the horrors she’d been going through in her younger years, which included an eating disorder and restricting calories to an (alleged) 900. Dear lord, that is sickening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCE1x_chT34
Granted, I would take this with a small grain of salt as it’s from the internet, and undoubtedly, many actresses, probably more than we realize, have ED’s. If they would start encouraging them to be at healthy weights, things like this wouldn’t happen. Frick Nickelodeon and frick the acting industry!!
So, this was what I was trying to convey. Casting and producers need to find that middle ground. Don’t promote fact acceptance, but do not force your actors/actresses to be stick thin either. I could go on a huge tangent, but I don’t have the brain power right now. If you have an ED or know someone that does, I strongly encourage you to get help. I’ve been in tight spots like that (I knew of people or knew people), but getting REAL help from a doctor, professional, or someone with a good head on their shoulders is better than hiding it or keeping it secret. Ten years down the line, you’ll be thankful you did and not have regret. No one is perfect, but sometimes you have to fight harder to find a solution and someone that will actually listen to you and take your concerns to heart.
If I get negative comments, I’ll be deleting this and no one will be able to enjoy it. Think before you type and don’t be a jerk.
#health#rant#body#body type#growing up thick#curvy girl#curvy latina#JWCC#Jurassic World#Netflix#body rant#female#omgcheckplease#complaints#Disney#I have theories#representation#body representation#unfair#skinny#women#shapes#bras#eating#food
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Miraculous Kwami Swap
I’ve seen it done before where circumstances result in a different pair of heroes in Origins, but I’ve yet to see it fully expanded on just how wide-ranging the effects would be.
Imagine we have Alya and Nino get the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous.
For one, it would be better on principle because of the idea behind this change is that the perspective and focus would ultimately be more spread out among the characters rather than central on two. This is in part because neither Alya or Nino would have the direct tie to the central plot other than by being chosen as the heroes. This means no tie to the villain or to the guardian.
Furthermore, there would be much different dynamics—not only with each other, but with their families and civilian lives. Marinette and Adrien had it easy in a sense as each of them was an only child. Compare that with Nino, who has a younger brother and Alya, who has two younger sisters to watch out for as well as one older one who is rather dead-set on protecting her from the akumas she has to go out and fight.
On the plus side, this means Nino wouldn’t need Marinette’s help to beat Nora at arm wrestling. On the other plus side, Nora would strike me as the type to catch on to Alya’s secret and try to help her…through training her to fight.
Alya: I can never use my arms again!
On the same note, this means very different positions for Alya and Nino as the Ladybug and Black Cat.
Alya was shown to be very big on the idea of superheroes in Origins, so she would be pretty psyched about being one, in a manner rather similar to Adrien. She’d have to learn that the life of a superhero is actually much more difficult than expected with secrets and juggling responsibilities—something she may “know” about from comics, but not something she would understand until she actually has to live it—much like in Sapotis where she initially said she’d tell Marinette her identity at the start of the episode only to back out of doing so by the end.
She’s also pretty reckless in canon, meaning that any instances of Chat!Nino rescuing her would be more of a response to her not fully thinking things through than him needlessly jumping in the way. This would allow for more growth potential for Alya as she is forced to take a serious look at her actions and possible consequences.
There would also be more difficulty with the Lucky Charm. Alya isn’t shown to be one for thinking things through, and that is something the Ladybug position would require and force her to do. This ultimately forces Alya to slow down and consider things before acting—both in regards to jumping to conclusions, but also in leaping before she looks. There’s also the bonus that this would result in Chat!Nino being able to step in to help direct her at points and allow him more of a role and say in battles.
On the other end, Nino is shown to be laid back in canon, but he is shown to be pretty good at thinking on his feet and planning things out. Even as an akuma, it took quite a bit of planning and set up to arrange Adrien’s birthday party. There’s also the other party from Party Crasher where Nino plotted out everything from what excuses to give the girls to how to get into the mansion. Sure, it was a horrible plan for various reasons, but it was a well plotted out one. His level of planning actually seemed to be about on par with Marinette though without the universe as a whole working against him most of the time.
Nino would admittedly do well with the Ladybug Miraculous. He’s smart, he’s a quick thinker, and he’s good at planning. But he’s not quite so good with leadership. We saw during Horrificator how he was acting—changing the script without telling everyone or consulting Alya when it was HER script, being harsh on Mylene, replacing her too quickly without considering her feelings. These were things the show didn’t call him out for, but they were still issues that should have been noted and addressed.
Nino is noted to be more of a follower, perhaps even codependent to a degree. In two separate instances, he pretty much gave up once Alya was down even though he could have continued and helped the heroes turn things around. First during Zombizou when Alya was kissed by the zombies in the elevator, he chose to stay behind with her and let himself be kissed once she was converted. It was sweet, sure, but there was no real reason for that if he knew Ladybug could restore things and that he could help her do so and save Alya. The second time was during Heroes Day when Alya was hit by the hate arrow and akumatized, he was so dismayed by it that he let himself be taken down as well. Ignoring again that this wasn’t the end and there was something he could do. Furthermore, whatever decisions he made or sides he chose to take seemed mostly dependent on other people and what they wanted from him at the time rather than using his own judgement.
A cat should be able to stand and act alone when needed, and that’s something he could gain from the Black Cat miraculous. Not to mention that there’s also the matter of the kwamis and how these pairings would interact.
Of the possible options for human and kwami teams, the most gain and interesting interactions seems to be with Alya and Tikki and with Nino and Plagg. Tikki would be encouraging Alya’s better traits but also helping to rein her in when she jumps to conclusions or acts without thinking. She’d also push Alya to consider how other people feel. Plagg, on the other hand, is particularly ornery and would be the one encouraging Nino to act rather than sit back, even if the “acts” he’s encouraging would be less than particularly noble. I’d also see Plagg having less concerns about acting out and Nino having to act more as the responsible one and trying to keep Plagg in line. Since he doesn’t have to worry about Nino being locked up and isolated the way commonly threatened with Adrien, Plagg would have less reason to need to behave. And since Nino likely couldn’t afford massive amounts of Camembert, he’d have less incentive to behave either.
This would also change the dynamic of the love square. Alya would probably consider her partner as a love interest since they’re both heroes and partners and that’s generally how it goes in the comics. It’s not about putting him on a pedestal, it’s about falling into expectations and it would be another aspect of heroism that Alya would need a lesson on. Furthermore, Nino still starts out with the crush on Marinette.
So we’d have Alya and Nino juggling their hero duties, school, families, and friendships. But what about those friendships?
Adrien is still the son of the big bad, but he doesn’t know it. Furthermore, he knows nothing about the Miraculous either. Being Chat Noir had no real impact on a number of aspects of his civilian life, so he would still have the initial circumstances of his first day of school, would still be friends with Chloe, would still be accused of putting gum on Marinette’s seat, and would still end up making things right with her by the end of the day. So he’s still friends with Nino an is still the center of a lot of people’s affections: Marinette, Chloe, Lila, and Wayhem.
Without Chat Noir, Adrien wouldn’t have an outlet for all the energy and freedom-seeking, so we’d be seeing a more vocal and dare I say rebellious version of Adrien than the one we get in canon. So not only would we have more Adrien and Gabriel interaction and conflict, but that also means Adrien manages to have more free time to hang out with his friends.
Ultimately, when the main duo are allowed to start asking others for help, Adrien would be high on Nino’s list. Nino would give Adrien the fox because of the illusion that Adrien tends to maintain. He knows that Adrien hides himself behind a mask and so would give him a chance to show his true self. The fact that it would be later revealed that Adrien is the son of their arch enemy would hit them pretty hard. Especially if things happen that result in Adrien switching sides to help his father.
Also, since Adrien isn’t Chat, that means he never inspired or got a front row seat to Ladybug’s speech and never fell for her. So no love square. That means he’s able to explore possible feelings for any of the people interested in him. In particular, Marinette.
Now that she’s brought up, what role does Marinette play in this? Imagine if she gets drawn into the whole thing by accident?
Given Alya’s nature, she strikes me as a proactive hero—to the point where she would be trying to seek out Hawk Moth in her downtime. So she starts going over possible suspects, looking for clues to where the akuma are coming from, what all Hawk Moth would need for his lair, etc. And one of the people on the list is none other than Adrien Agreste.
Think about it! Monsters start attacking only after he first starts showing up. Their class have almost all been turned into akumas by this point. It’s like Hawk Moth is targeting them specifically. And Adrien is never around during an akuma fight (because he’s hiding like any sensible person)! And Adrien is one of the few people in class who hasn’t been akumatized! it can’t be coincidence!
So Alya pulls Marinette into her scheme to check out the Agreste mansion for clues. And they would find nothing since as it turns out, Adrien actually is innocent.
Except Nooroo in this version of events isn’t nearly as passive as his canon counterpart. The heroes are struggling and Gabriel is even more of an ass to his son and to Nooroo himself. Needless to say, he’s somewhat spiteful and feeling particularly passive aggressive.
So when a random school friend of Adrien’s just happens to visit (read: scope out the mansion for clues), Nooroo uses butterfly effect—which he IS the master and creator of thank you very much—to get the Peacock Miraculous into her bag in hopes that she can help in some way. Inform the heroes, get the Miraculous to Fu somehow, help Dusuu, just something more than the Peacock Miraculous staying trapped in the safe where Gabriel can use it.
So Marinette gets home unknowingly carrying a magical item in her bag. Later on, she discovers she now has a strange broach. And an even stranger creature attached.
Marinette: AH! IT’S A GIANT BIRD! A MOUSE! A-A BIRD-MOUSE!
Marinette is still pretty smart. She would figure out at some point that Alya is the Ladybug hero and want to help. But the Miraculous is damage and using it would cause her harm. So Marinette tries to avoid using the Peacock Miraculous while also trying to either find the Guardian or figure out some way to fix the broken magical artifact…to…some limited success.
Ultimately, Marinette is trying to help in her own way, but with the volatile situation, she tries to avoid transforming unless the heroes really need her to. Unfortunately, given the difficulty Alya and Nino are having as the heroes, as well as the changes with Adrien that are forcing Gabriel to push matters more quickly, Marinette ends up having to transform and help out on several occasions. And as she does, she gets weaker as the damaged Miraculous is taking its toll on her.
So let’s review:
We have Ladybug!Alya. Quick to action and struggling with thinking things through, with a Miraculous and kwami that are pushing her to become more of a leader and plan things out.
Black Cat!Nino. A follower and possible codependent, with a Miraculous and kwami that are prone to trouble and pushing him to act.
Fox!Adrien. More rebellious and passive aggressive. With a super villain father and much less inclined to simply sit by and let people hang on him or infringe upon him.
Peacock!Marinette. More shy but less anxious or overwhelmed due to not having the responsibility of Ladybug. Still creative and intelligent, enough to know who at least one of the superheroes is, and by pure happenstance ends up with the Peacock Miraculous.
This can only go well!
#ml au#kwami swap#kwami swap au#ladybug alya#black cat nino#fox adrien#peacock marinette#how can this go wrong
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The Loud House review 4x29: Brave the Last Dance
In a months late review of a show I watch only on occcasion that i’m doing for some reason: Clyde gets the help of the rest of the Clincoln true to find out if his crush likes him or not: Hyjinks and my smouldring hatred of rusty insues.
With Ducktales only arriving once a week, me missing reviewing and having a lot of time on my hands i’ve decided to branch out a bit.. maybe not a ton, but ocasionally review other animated shows and seasons. If you have any suggetions or any paticular episode you’d like me to look into, let me know.
For now I decided to take a look at a show I mostly watch whenever the mood strikes; The Loud House. I do enjoy the series, but it’s a casual love... it also dosen’t help that I can’t go into the tags without finding reams of incest but I digress. I do still like the show and despite it’s ocasoinal terrible episodes and even worse creator, it’s still a solid series and deserves it’s spot as nick’s crown jewel.. I do wish nick would stop abusing everything ELSE in it’s lineup, but that’s a whole other story. The point is I like the show, but i’m not a super fan like I am for say Ducktales or Steven Universe where if there’s something new, i’ll go out and grabs it immediately. But I do like it.
And I do regret not knowing this episode existed for two months because 1) This is a holiday episode and I like to watch those around their holiday and 2) Because dance episodes are my shit. More often than not if i’ts a dance episode of a show, i’ts usually pretty good. Community, Big City Greens, Gravity Falls, She Ra, OK KO, Parks and Recreation.. I really COULD go on indefntiely, but I won’t. Dance episodes usually bring out the best in a creative team, have adorable romance moments, or huge dramatic attacks and everything in between that just makes them awesome to me. So naturally I watched this as soon as possible and my thoughts.. well as with anything they take some context.
You see this episode follows a character who has kind of a .. problematic history to say the least and thus has kinda gone up and down in my opinon. Early on, as most of you probably recall, the series was more focused on LIncoln, the middle child and only boy in the the titular loud house among 10 sisters. And given it focused mostly on lincoln and his shenanigans and schemes to deal with living iwth 10 other siblings. Now the show has evolved since then and for the better in my honest opinon: now all 11 siblings share the spotlight and whose in an episode depends on whose needed, and thus each of the siblings has their own supporting casts of varying depths and episodes, sometimes with NONE of the other family members playing a signifgiant role. But since the show was originally Lincoln centritc, it also picked up an extra main character outside of the 11 loud kids and their parents: Clyde.
Clyde is Lincoln’s best buddy, a glasses wearing awkward kid whose dad’s sometimes smother him but are still loving kind guys, and who often goes over to Lincoln’s to share in the feeling of having siblings outside of his surrogate brother Lincoln obviously. However early on Clyde, like most of the cast in the earlier days, had about three character traits: being an only child, being a dork and having a near pyschotic crush on LIncoln’s oldest sister Lori which gave him crippling nose bleeds.
This would’ve been fine, if a touch annoying, had it just been him fainting and nosebleeding.. but instead, it also causes Clyde to be kind of a dick. He perused her constantly despite her rejecting him for a number of obvious reasons, you know him being a decade younger, her being not intrested, him being more like a second kid brother to her, and of course the fact she has a boyfriend, Bobby. Bobby is the nicest guy around, was a great supporting character, and is probably the reason i’ll get around to watching the casagrandes on occasion. Clyde however treats him like garbage, tried to break them up, and in general was a dick to a guy whose only crime is being in a loving relationship with someone Clyde wants to be with but obviously can’t have. It was annoying with the only time it was tolerable was that episode where Bobby was mistaken for cheating and clyde spent an entire episode preparing to beat bobby up if it was accurate, then upon trying (It wasn’t it was just shenanigans), failed spectacuarlly. Bobby is nothing but nice to him by the way.
So yeah it was hard to root for Clyde for a while but eventually it stopped.. not because they had an episode of Clyde TRYING to get over it, they did it just didn’t resolve it, but it was just dropped.. likely because the writers realized it just wasn’t that funny and with bobby put on a bus to the spinoff, they had no real jokes for it and no one really liked the passing out gag. The fact that series creator Chris Savino got fired for sexually harassment is not lost on me and only makes the gag worse.
But thankfully the character did bounce back and by season 3, even before savino was thankfully fired, they put the joke to bed with Bobby’s exit, and it is thankfully buried deeper than the bunker where htey keep walt disney’s cryogneically perserved body... what you thought he just kept the head? Why woudl they? Disney was rich and belived in the future. He probably wanted his body merged with some sort of mechanical man. But with that gone Clyde thankfully became what he was in his better episodes: an adorable dork, with two loving fathers. Though now he’s not the only kid on the block with two gay dads.. he and Violet should get matching friendship t-shirts reading “Gay dad club”... and i’ll probably draw that at some point but I digress i’m several paragraphs in and I haven’t even gotten to the episode, and I STILL have one last bit of explostion for context that most of you may not need.
That last bit is that LIncoln’s episodes evolved a bit around season 3: instead of JUST being him and Clyde, though that can still happen, Lincoln soon got a circle of buddies, each of whom plays a role in the episode, for reasons i’ll get to in a bit, and part of my reason for reviewing it is to touch on my thoughts about them and my weird love of these episodes. So a breif overview since some of you may not know who they are.
Lincoln himself: The former lead and now one of 10, and a great character I enjoy following a lot even if I miss his Zack Morris-esque fourth wall breaks, minus the smug... no one can out smug or out sexually harass Zack Morris.
Liam: A country boy and the only one of the intial five besides Clincoln I actually like. He’s a kind hearted well meaning country boy and is always kind and friendly, and reminds me a lot of stinky peterson but with a tone down accent.
Zach:... I forget he exists, i’m not even sure this is his actual name. He’s just.. there for some reason and i’m not exactly sure why he’s been kept around now that Stella, who i’ll get to next, has been introduced. But he has goggles and wild hair and that’s.. it. Any of his lines could be said by the others without muchc hange.
Stella: My faviorite out of the group, a frieindly girl who was insitally introduced as Lincoln’s third love intrest.. before pivoting to have her not really WANT to be with any of the guys in an episode that’s really good and instead joining the group. She has more personality and energy than most of them, and thus I do tend to seek out an ep if she’s in it. I do also kinda lowkey ship her with lincoln, but only al ittle. her episodde was about hwo every girl who pays attention to you isn’t into you after all and it’s a lesson kids need. I wish I had it when I was that age honestly. Anyways... finally we have the bane of my existance.
Rusty: I hate this kid. I can’t stand his goofy face, and I love goofy goof so goofy faces are not a problem, obnovious wannabe ladies man smugness, or his basicaly being the useless asshole of the group. LIke Zach, I don’t get why he hasn’t been written out. Hell Zach I at least get as the generic guy they can slott in. Rusty is just terrible. it’s telling that his LITTLE BROTHER, who showed up in one episode as a love intrest for Lucy, is far more popular.. mostly because Rocky’s actually likeable and isn’t a dipstick. I just hate this kid and want this character written off already. He’s the weak link in the group and is SOMEHOW more obnoxious than Clyde during any episode bobby and him were in the same room. And tha’ts an acomplishment! Gah. I could rant about this little shit all day, but i’d prefer to move on.
The episode has a pretty basic setup: Clyde is on the dance comitte, and is a good chef which .. tracks. I do think h’es cooked before and his love of Dessert Storm, a in-series cooking show that the Loud’s love too, has been documented in one or two episodes and cooking does fit his personality: he’s a detail orinted kid, he has parents who have lots of money to spend and have been established to like coooking fancy themsevles, it makes sense he’d pick it up. But it’s the Valentine’s Dance and Clyde has a crush on Emma, one of the girls on the comittee. His friends pick up on this and stellas has an adorable “awww” type grin while the boys all have smug shit eating grins but are all willing to help. It’s part of why I like these eps: the 5 really seem to have a nice rapport and be genuine friends.. friends who all fought over a girl once, except Stella who was said girl, but friends nonetheless, who eventually put said friendship over that. Even if one of them’s a block of wood and the other the bane of my existance, you still get the sense their valued.
It’s from there the episode Segues into the standard loud house formula, which is one of the resaons I do only watch the show ocasionally: while the episodes can varry wildly, some just fall into a formula of “character or characters do various things in a row until they realize they were wrong or something”. Now the show HAS had good episodes out of this formula, L is for Love and Racing Hearts, and yes i’m a saluna shipper but the eps are good beyond that, but sometimes it can feel like padding. This is one of those times. Each of the squad tries something to help Clyde find out if Emma likes him or not, he’s too nervous to take it as a sign he should go for it, rinse and repeat 3 more times before the plot finally moves on. This is also why I went into detail on the Clinclon Crew: each one, except Zach because the boy is made of paper mache remember, gets a chance to try helping him out.
Rusty: As if you needed proof I wasn’t overreacting, Rusty SPIES ON EMMA WITH BINOCULARS for the plan.. he did not need them, and the joke dosen’t land like it should because Rusty sucks. And his plan is to drench Clyde with cologne and if she comments on it, she likes him. I do however like the joke about how clyde thinks Rusty’s cousin that gave him the plan, proving Dumbass is a genetic trait, had a girlfriend at a camp who probably dosen’t exist.
Liam: Liam’s plan is a bit funnier... not because of the plan which like the previous one not really that great but hey their 11 or 12 i’ll give all of them but rusty some slack, because he sucks. But the Clincoln Crew which i’m calling them now so there, head to the movies and Liam says ,d ue to a similar thing happening with his chickens, if a girl sits next to you, they like you back. It’s not entirelys ound but the chicken thing got a small chuckle out of me and LIam does have some odd charisma.
Lincoln: And Zach but i’m not convinced they didn’t just swap in a manquin with a tape recorder jammed inside for him for this or any scene. Lincoln uses one of lori’s magazines with some sounder, if flimsy but beliviebly for kids, logic: ask her for a pen: if it’s a regular one they have no intrest, it’s it’s fancy she likes you. like the other two it happens.. but in a resonable bit of writing like the last two Clyde isn’t sure due to a combinaton of insecurity and these plans being as flimsy as the paper they made Zach out of .
Stella: Whose grandma can read tea leaves and actually predicted her moving to royal woods, because stella is great. Stella is also damn good at it as she does predict Clyde at the dance, in a chef’s hat for reasons that i’ll get to in a moment. dancing with a girl. Tha’s lal he needs and this bit finally ends. As I said it’s the tedium. While what happens NEXT is intresting enough, you really didn’t need all of those or have enough jokes and were clearly padding guys, come on.
So Clyde, and crew, stages an elaborate frencha nd boat related danceposal.. that fails. As you probably figured. Emma is flattered, but shoots Clyde down gently. Clyde reacts as you’d expect: by fleeing the scnee as fast as possible, quitting the dance comitte off screen, and planning never to return, which while overracting, DOES feel realistic.
Clyde goes home for some mopey solo time and becomes a tad insufferable, ignoring his friend’’s texts and getting upset as his dad for watching the movie that clearly inpsiried his dance invite plan, depsite it being their valentine’s day he’s interrupting. It woudl’ve played better if he still got upset but iddn’t you know, run in front of their tv and call them out on something they coudln’t of known as he didn’t give them details.
Thankfully the mild annoyance is b roken when, after ignoring his friends texts, which granted for Rusty and Liam is probably normal as liam probably talks about drywall and Rusty uses the word dawg and unlike Lincoln dosen’t seem genuinely worried after Clyde, you know, got rejected in front of a large crowd.
He’s broken out of his mopey solo time by a call: the person he passed cake duty off to screwed up, and after some urging from Cheryl, the principal’s secretary who Clyde knows personally from past episodes and is head of the dance comitte and an utter delight this episode, Clyde does what any normal kid would do: dawn a flimsy disguise and sneak in there. We also get a cameo from Girl Jordan who hasn’t shown up in forever so that’s nice.
Clyde fixes the cake, and Cheryl compares his mustache to a dead caterpillar which was gold, and tries to sneak out only for Chole, another girl, to notice him and stop him. You can probably tell where this is going: She , rather than mock him finds what he did romantic, she also likes dessert storm, he asks her to dance, puts his chef hat back on because time loop,a nd the two dance and even have an adorable bit where they throw their hats to each other. Also Rusty is dressed like cupid and my eyes boil out of my head as the episode ends.
Overall it’s not a bad ep. Had a suprising amount to say about it, but overall it’s a decent, cute ep for valentine’s day with a nice amount of friendship and some nice character stuff for Clyde and plenty of gay dad’s and Cheryl. Overall not a bad way to spend 11 minutes in this ongoing apocalypse.
Coming Soon: I feel like quacking so I think Iw ill.. take a look at an episode of quack pack that’s donsy related.
Until next time courage.
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A/N I do not own any of the main plot line or characters of Marvel. Those rights are reserved for the creators. Thank you.
Peter x adult!reader
You were nervous to say the least. You looked at the clock on your wall again. It was probably only 15 minutes until they would arrive. You sighed. Mae and Peter are coming over for dinner. It's only been a few months since Tony's funeral and you can't say you were coping well. Natasha...Tony... Steve... all gone. Steve wasn't dead, but he seemed on the verge of it due to his old age now, but either way you weren't ready to let him go either. It felt like you were robbed of so much time you could have spent with him. He always was my most understanding fake uncle/dad/brother...or whatever you wanted to consider him. It didn't matter how you felt though, it's what makes him happy and you have to respect that... even if internally you weren't ready to bury another one of your family members. These people helped raise you and it broke your heart to see how your family got so much smaller.
Clint made more of an appearance in your life after the events, however. After Nat died you both found great comfort and grieving her death together. He became your new outlet to vent, which had previously belonged to Steve. Actually, this whole dinner was Clint's idea. It was something that was meant to clear the air between Peter and I.
"Are you okay?"
I turned to the voice and saw my fiancé of 8 months standing in the kitchen door with his hands in his pockets and looking at me with a concerned, but supportive smile.
"No..." I admit. "I've faced mass genocide, the largest war to human kind, and losing most of my family all at once... and yet... I've never been more nervous than I am right now."
"What do you think is going to happen?" (f/n) says.
"I don't know... I know it's really not that big of a deal compared to what we've all gone through before, but for some reason I can't bear to see Peter so upset with me. It...Just...It hurts my heart. I can't explain it." you say putting your face into your hands.
"I understand... and to be honest I think it is... a big deal." (f/n) says walking over and placing his hands on my arms gently. "So many families have been disrupted by the blip. Parents seeing their children all grown up all of a sudden, couples having larger age gaps and who have grieved and moved on, people who have blipped and realized that their loved ones that have remained here passed away in that what seemed to be moments they've been gone...in which it was actually years."
You looked up at him. He gave a small smile. "You are not the only one struggling to adjust in these weird times and grieving the lost time. I'm sure Peter is just as confused and nervous as you are. He was your boyfriend, your lover. You guys were very close and I'm sure when he came back from the blip he still thought you were the same as ever... only to realize that it wasn't the case."
"He saw me for the first time at Tony's funeral...and he wouldn't even talk to me. He just stared at me... almost like he was afraid of me." The sentence came out like it was a soft whisper, but ended with just pain and hurt in it.
"Is that a bad thing?" (f/n) asked. "Wouldn't you be? I know I would, especially if I was just a 16 year old kid."
"No no...No... You're right. I honestly should be thinking about him too. He's probably shell shocked and I'm just worried about myself." You take a deep breath and gave a slight bitter chuckle. "I'm the adult here. I've matured and learned to cope. I shouldn't be the one who's scared here."
"I think it's okay for you both to be scared. Don't worry, though. I'll be there and Mae will be there to help. Clint says he'll be standing by if you need help." It was at that moment, the doorbell rang making you jump. "You got this. I promise."
He gave you a kiss on the cheek before leaving to answer the door. You mulled over his words for a moment before sucking in a breath and following him. As you walked through your living room you reached up and began fixing your hair as you walked. You wanted to make sure you at least looked like you weren't a complete mess, but you were on the inside. A horrible, grieving, pitiful, shawarma and ice cream eating mess.
I wore black. It was my go to color. Not because I was sad or grieving, but because it is the most convenient color and showed so much class while also hiding your shame. There was very little the color black couldn't hide. You were grateful that when you joined SHIELD and the main uniform color was black. You cut your hair shorter and mostly wore it up in a tight seamless bun for work, but tonight it is in its full glory. Your fiancé wore basic white button up and black pants. He had on a tie before, but you supposed it was bothering him so he took it off. At least he put on the black blazer as well. You never liked the tie anyway. It was just something Steve had said one time that was necessary for important events. He taught (f/n) how to tie it and everything.
You stood beside (f/n) a little ways back as you were bit afraid. He opened the door and there stood Mae, Peter, and shockingly Happy smiling back. Peter actually wasn't smiling. He wasn't even looking at neither you nor (y/n). His gaze was to the side towards the floor. It was clear that he wasn't ready to face reality either. Your eyes moved back to the group as a whole. "Happy, what are you doing here?" You- asked stretching out a smile that may have seemed a little forced.
"Well, I was just popping over to the Parker residence from visiting Pepper and Morgan, and Mae invited me to come along, so I thought I haven't seen you in a while and there was no harm in dropping by as well. I wanted to see what you've been up to and what not." Happy nodded with a big smile. He leaned close and half whispered "Mae thought that you all could use as much help as you could get with this weird situation anyway."
"O-oh... okay... well um. Thanks for coming. I'm sure it's appreciated." You internally cursed. More people to witness the horror that will be this dinner. You turned your attention to Mae. "Hi, Mae." You smiled a bit and you could tell she already had tears pricking her eyes and she held out her arms for a big hug. She gave you tight motherly squeeze and rubbed your back. "Hi, Honey. Gosh, you've gotten so big. You just look absolutely beautiful."
"Yes. Thank you. It's been so long since I've seen you... Well I suppose not to you." You attempted a joke to lighten the mood. She and Happy laughed though that joke didn't seem to land well with Peter as he didn't laugh and only seemed to be made more uncomfortable.
Your eyes did fixate on Peter now and the silence of the group became thick and very tense. He wasn't saying anything and you bit your lip. "Hey...Peter." Your voice was softer and sounded week. He looked exactly the same. Young baby face with wispy brown hair that seemed to like to hang in his face depending how it fell. He did a pretty good job at keeping it combed back, however. His brown eyes finally looked back at you and widened just slightly. You looked so much different, yet, exactly the same. For starters, the makeup. That was so much more new. You never wore makeup. You were perfectly happy with the nude appearance of your face. Although you weren't wearing much makeup it was still prevalent that you had some on, but just enough to look clean and classy. Your hair wasn't as super long as you had it when you were younger. It was always down and long and it was a daily struggle for you to keep it maintained and out of paint or your food at lunch. You were always getting it caught in your mouth or finding random strands of it on your clothing or in your stuff. He remembered how sometimes when he kissed you your hair would get caught between their lips. It was embarrassing then, but now he missed it. Now it was cut much shorter and seemed more tamed. He wasn't sure if he liked that or not. It didn't matter, however, for some reason in Peter's mind it made you look all the much more mature and older. Everything about you seemed older and mature. Your body was different. Slightly wider hips and a bit larger breasts. He probably wouldn't have noticed either difference if it wasn't for the dress you were wearing... or for the matter that you were wearing a dress at all. Dresses and skirts weren't your forte last time he saw you. You said they restricted you from doing the things you wanted to do. No, leggings and jeans covered in paint, pen marks, sharpies was what you wore on a daily basis along with an oversized hoody of some sort. Peter looked down at the ground. He noticed you weren't wearing any shoes. He cracked a slight side smile. At least that was one thing that didn't changed about you. You always hated wearing shoes. It didn't matter where you were or the temperature outside. Shoes were never the priority for you. You always carried a pair and wore them when you had to, but if they bothered you too much or you just found them unnecessary you'd kick them off and immediately toss them in your backpack. So many times you'd walk down the school halls bare foot with some type of drawing that you drew on them from being bored in class. Peter always thought that little quirk was cute. He could actually see a little tattoo on the side of your foot, but couldn't make it out in that moment. In fact when he looked closer, he saw that both your feet looked slightly different from each other. He wasn't quite sure, but it seemed the foot with the tattoo seemed somewhat off. He just wasn't sure what was different.
His voice finally decided to make an appearance. "Hey... again..." It didn't come out as strong as he wanted it to, but it came out enough for her to hear.
"How are you?" You asked him.
"Uh..." He didn't have anything to say. He just gave an awkward nod and a generic 'ok'. He wasn't ready to talk. You backed off and looked at the group as a whole once more.
"Oh um... everyone. This is my fiancé, (f/n)" you said stepping back and introducing your now future husband. Peter's face immediately dropped. His eyes widened and he looked back and forth between you and your fiancé in an almost panicked state. He couldn't believe it. You had found someone else. You had left him.
"Hi, everyone." (f/n) smiled and waved and shook everyone's hand, except Peter who didn't even attempt to raise his hand. His face now stared wide eyed at your fiancé who waited patiently for his hand in return. Mae nudged Peter's arm and he blinked a couple of times in realization and took (f/n)'s hand to shake. "Oh yeah um sorry... it's nice to meet you." He says politely trying to cover up how frazzled he was for a moment.
"Well, everyone. Why don't you come inside?" You say and step to the side allowing everyone to filter into your home.
"Wow... fancy." Happy says looking around at stuff.
"Happy, you knew I lived here." You say unamused.
"I've never seen the inside, though." He commented back.
"So how long have you lived here?" Mae asks looking at the light fixtures.
"3 years or so now." You say watching them. "I know it's much different than that dingy apartment I was at before."
"Yeah um.... How did you get a place like this?" Peter asks quietly.
"Uh well... with my new job and the housing being cheaper from the blip and-"
"Tony bought it." Happy commented bluntly cutting you off.
You sighed. "Yes. Tony bought and designed it for me. My job at SHIELD lets me be able to pay for it."
"You work at SHIELD?" peter asks glancing back at you.
"Yes. Head of the entire global security and protection program. Also, I'm a public advocate for the international super powered and mutated community." You say with a bit of pride.
"Wow that sounds like a very high position." Mae says.
"It can be, I suppose." You shrug your shoulders.
"You've certainly come a long way since you were young." Mae says a little sad.
"I think everyone who was left here during the blip has. It just depends on if they came a long way for the better or worse. That depends on the person." You state glancing at Happy. "Right, Happy?"
"Yeah. There's been a lot of people who dropped over the edge since that, but also a lot of people who've thrived since then. We've seen it all." Happy says skeptically looking at one of the vases you had on your counter. You walked over and took the vase from Happy's hands. "Why don't we all sit down before you break something." You says putting the vase back down where it was.
"Where did you get that? It's hideous." Happy says moving towards the sofa.
"It came with the house." You stated.
"Why'd you keep it?" Happy says scrunching up his nose.
"Don't worry about it." You say ushering him to the couch.
"I happen to like it. I think it's... unique." Mae says admiring it from afar as she sat next to Happy and Peter on one of the sofas. You and (f/n) sat across from them on the other. He gave them each glasses of water in case they got thirsty. You hadn't seen him even go into the kitchen to get them.
"Oh yeah... I mean... if you look at it that way then I guess it's pretty nice." Happy says backtracking and taking a pert sip of the water he was just given. Your eyes furrow as you look between Happy and Mae. You glance at Peter who also seems confused at the interaction.
"Okay...so Happy. What were you doing at the Parker residence?" you ask Happy with a smirk.
"Oh you know. Just checking in. See how Peter is doing." Happy says not so casually.
"I see." You say as your eyes look back at Peter. "So, Peter."
"Huh?" he asks a little startled by my turn of attention to him. The water in his cup sloshing at the sudden movement. "How are you doing?"
"Oh um... okay, I guess." He responds nodding. That was it. The entire highlight of the conversation between us for the rest of the time. The rest of the time he and you both remained quiet and only spoke when spoken too. You were hurt. He was hurt. You could tell. Not only because you know him, but because teenagers tend to have less of a poker face when they're upset. No matter how hard they try to hide it, it usually slips through that they are emotional in that moment. You have learned to control that side of you a lot better. You are no longer that emotional and even if you were, you've learned to hide it a lot better. Your face remains impassive, but you sit there thinking that perhaps he doesn't need impassive. He needs something to know that you are feeling much of the same feelings he is feeling. You just don't know what to say.
"If you don't mind me asking, how did you two meet?" Mae asks setting her glass on the coffee table in front of us. Peter's attention becomes more alert at the question. It was obvious he was wondering the same thing. Just when did this happen?
"Oh no. I don't mind. I suppose that is one of the big elephant questions in the room." You say a little nervously.
"We met in physical therapy. We had the same Therapist and she brought all her patients together for group stretching once a week. It was something that was set up through a volunteer group for people with superpowers and mutations. I can't exactly remember the name, but it was group that helped with the devastation after the snap. They helped clean up and got people out of crisis and arranged for a lot of the people with powers who were injured to receive medical attention and physical therapy from medical professionals that had mutations of some sort as to not expose us or risk exploitation. Do you remember the volunteer organization's name?" (f/n) asked looking at me.
"It wasn't an organization. It was a school, I believe. Dr. Xavier ran the school. He's quite the man. I talk to him every now and again, but I haven't heard from him quite a while. He's part of the reason I got my foot in the door for advocating for those with superpowers or mutants as they call them." You state.
"Interesting. What were you going to physical therapy for?" Mae asked. "Or what I mean is, what happened?"
"Well I was on a train in New York with my sister and mother when people starting dusting away. I suppose the conductor was one of those people because our train never stopped and crashed full force into one of the buildings and derailed us from the tracks over a bridge, it sent us crashing into the streets. My mother died on impact, but I was able to protect my sister with my body. I can turn my body into different materials, so I was able to keep most of the things away from her and she just had a couple of broken bones, but I didn't move fast enough because I got a metal rod straight through the chest. It broke right near my sternum. I had no clue why or how I was still alive. I thought I was going to die in there for sure until some of the students from that school showed up." (f/n) unbuttoned his shirt half way to show the large star like shaped scar right in the center of his chest.
"That's awesome..." Happy muttered looking in awe at his scar before getting nudged in the shoulder by Mae. "I mean terrible. Truly terrible. I'm sorry for your loss."
"Yes, that's awful. I'm sorry that happened to you." Mae says sympathetically.
(f/n) chuckled and buttoned his shirt back up. "No, don't worry about it. These types of things make us stronger right? And I do agree with Happy. I think my scar is pretty awesome." He patted his chest proudly. You smiled in amusement and gave slight chuckle.
"...and you?" Peter's soft voice piped up after a moment. Everyone looked at him. He was looking at you. You weren't really sure what he was trying to ask you. He glanced at everyone before licking his lips and trying again to clarify. "Uh um. What I mean is what happened to you... as well? Why were you in, you know, physical therapy?"
"Oh. I was actually in Africa fighting in battle." You sated simply.
"You were a part of the Battle of Wakanda?" Peter asks sitting up straighter now.
You smiled a bit and let out a breathy laugh. "Yeah. It was like pulling teeth to convince Steve to let me, but yeah. I was. It was a savage alien that bit and clawed into my leg and that started the problems, but it was a female servant of Thanos that actually took my leg. Cut it clean off with swords she had."
"Oh my god. That's horrible." Mae exclaimed and Peter's eyes traveled to your foot once more. That's why your foot looked so off. It was a prosthetic. Peter thought it looked too real to be a prosthetic, but too fake to be real. You were able to walk so seamlessly though. Like you never lost your leg at all.
"Not as horrible as for her. When Natasha found out she was absolutely pissed. She and one of the Wakanda guards kicked her ass." You laughed outwardly. Peter saw the old you come out all of a sudden and all at once. He smiled brightly. "And then what happened?" he asked.
"They sent her ass through her own giant alien sawblade that they tried to kill us with!" You were full blown laughing now. The memory had you almost in tears because of how convenient and karmic the whole thing was. If you remembered correctly you remember yourself laughing in that moment as well. Despite nearly being dead in a ditch and bleeding out uncontrollably, you were still verbally shouting out cheers of praise to Nat as she fought and when she came to quickly bandage you up to stop the bleeding. You remembered Nat replying to you "Shut up, kid or I'll leave you here instead. All that shouting is going to make you pass out anyway." Funny enough she wasn't too far off the target because it wasn't long after she told you that did you fall unconscious from blood loss and woke up with a sweet new robotic vibranium prosthetic leg in Wakanda's medical ward.
"So, if she cut your leg off what happened next." Peter asked now interested in the story.
"Nat bandaged me up, I passed out, and I woke up with a sweet new robotic leg in Wakanda's medical ward. After I was healed enough I was transferred to Xavier's school where I sharpened my powers and did physical therapy along with the others. Once I was healed, Tony came back from outer space. Once he was recovered he told us everything and eventually upgraded my leg. Now it looks almost like I never lost a leg. Well, sort of. It still looks a bit off and it glitches every now and again, but I'm not complaining. I can still walk so." You shrugged now crossing your leg over the other and folding your arms over your chest.
"Wow. That's really cool." Peter said breathlessly. He seemed to admire you so much more. You knew you were now Tony Stark, but it was nice to have those admiring eyes directed towards you for once. The type of eyes that didn't hold romantic feelings, but still held the belief that everything you did was cool and amazing.
"Thank you, Peter." You smiled.
"So when are you two getting married?" Happy asks randomly and taking a gulp of water.
*smash*
The glass in Peter's hand immediately smashes in his palm. Everyone makes a noise in surprise at the sudden sound and turn to Peter. "Oh! Uh... I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I'll... I'll clean it up." Peter says getting down on the floor to clean it up.
"Peter, your hand." You gasp setting your cup down. His hand started bleeding from all the glass shards that decided to embed themselves into his skin.
"Oh um..." Peter's face flushed a bright red. He couldn't help but feel intense embarrassment about the situation.
"Don't worry about the glass. I got it. You go with (y/n) and get your hand all patched up, okay?" (f/n) says already standing to go and get the broom.
"Yeah, come on, Peter. I have a first aid kit in the kitchen." You say standing up and helping him to his feet. You held his arm as he kept his hand underneath his injured one, hoping to catch the blood so it wouldn't get onto your carpet. You walked him to the kitchen. "Just put your hand over the sink and I'll be there in a moment."
"Okay." Peter says doing what you asked as you began to rummage around the medicine cabinet. Peter began to run his hand under a bit of water as you came back with the first aid kit. You first got some tweezers and a dish towel and dragged 2 chairs over so we could sit. You first sat down and put the dish towel across your lap. Peter then sat down and you gently grabbed his hand and set it in your lap while looking closely at it. "Nothing bad it looks like. Obviously nothing the Amazing Spiderman can't handle." You joke looking at him with a smile and he smiles back with an awkward laugh.
A silence falls over you both as you begin to focus on plucking the tiny shards from his hand. You didn't notice how the air got thicker and you certainly didn't notice how things got increasingly more difficult for Peter to stomach. He stared at you the entire time and the longer he did the more his heart broke. You didn't notice how his straight face slowly broke until you saw a few tear drops fall onto the surface of the hand you were working on and you heard a choked back sob. You looked up and saw his face as he turned away. You set the towel with glass pieces aside and held his hand. You knew he wasn't crying because of his hand or if there was a possibility you hurt him. He was much tougher than that. You also knew you couldn't physically hurt him even if you wanted to. His powers made it easier for him to handle a lot more than a regular human. No, his pain was internal. His kind soft heart was bursting with pain. "Peter..." you said softly with a frown.
"I... I miss you." He said finally with his head down and his chest heaved. "I miss you so much."
This is where your heart broke and you couldn't even keep your composure anymore. You hugged Peter and you hugged him tight. You hugged him like how you wanted to hug him the day you found out that he was one of the victims of the Snap. You hugged him like he would dust away again. You hugged him like he would leave you again, but this time not come back. And you cried. Oh, you cried like you should have when you first saw him again. You cried as you were finally getting the closure you wanted. It was five years, but you had him in your arms again and you couldn't be more grateful. "I miss you, too."
"First I lost Mr. Stark and now you..." he began crying harder now. He drops to his knees on the floor and his face goes to your lap.
"That's not true. I'm right here." I told him holding him tighter.
"But you're not mine anymore. You're his... and it only seems like just a few months ago you were at my house and we were playing video games and listening to music." Peter said getting his voice more.
"But it wasn't a few months ago. It's been years, Peter." You tell him stroking his hair.
"I know... but... it's just not fair!" he says gripping the fabric of your dress around your thighs tight in his balled fists.
"I know, I know it's not fair." You tell him as more tears fell from your eyes.
"If... if he wasn't there... If you weren't getting married, would you wait for me?" he asked quietly. You pressed your lips together. This was a very heavy question. It wouldn't change the outcome of how things were now no matter how you answered, but it could change the way Peter thought about things and how your relationship would be from here on out. You had to answer carefully. Either he could be angry with you and refuse to have contact with you, or he could have a false sense of hope and closure all depending on how you answered his question. You just hated to see him so upset and you wanted to give in, but you also could not lie to him either. If you ever loved him then you would not lie to him, even now.
"No, Peter." I told him gently petting his hair. His body tensed at the words. "Look at me."
He didn't move, so you shifted your body away slightly and lifted his chin up, so he would look at you. "Peter, I want you to listen to me. I want you to really hear what I am trying to tell you."
He looks at you with his tear stained face, but he does what you ask. "What happened to us is cruel and unfair, but it did happen. This whole situation is hard to swallow and seeing you like this kills me. Seeing your face for the first time when you came back and realizing you didn't grow up with me was one of the hardest things I had to come to terms with because I immediately realized that we couldn't work. I think it was even harder for me when I realized that when you came back, you had no idea what had happened and you thought we were still together like always. I found it difficult when I saw the reality hit you when you looked at me for the first time at Tony's funeral. I still care deeply for you, but you are still a child, Peter. You blipped. I didn't. I mourned and moved on. I know that when you become in your twenties it won't really be a big deal anymore with the age gap, but that's nearly 10 years of my life waiting for you. That's 10 years of my life halted and stagnant. That's also nearly 5 years of your life wasted waiting on me when you also need to move on. I'm sorry, but it won't be healthy if you wait for me."
He doesn't say anything for a long while. He just sets his head back down in your lap as he thinks over what you just told him. I don't mind, however. You said what you had to. You couldn't lie to him. It wasn't the adult or right thing to do. You had to just rip the band aid off. It seemed we sat there for a while. I knew the others were giving us our privacy. We all knew this dinner was really just to break the news to Peter that our relationship wouldn't work and hoping we could still be okay afterwards.
"Do you love him?" he asked quietly, his voice breaking a bit.
"Yes." You answered back.
"Did you love me?"
"Yes."
"Do you still love me?"
"Yes."
"But... not the same way..." he sighed.
"...No... not in the same way." You tell him gently.
"I... I suppose that's okay." He muttered, even if he didn't like his own answer.
"Thank you, Peter." You say with a smile looking down at him.
"For what?" he asks looking up at you.
"For understanding, for not being angry, for being a good person, for doing the right thing for yourself and I, ... and for just giving me some of the best moments of my life being with you." You tell him happily.
"O-oh. No problem." He says now getting back up off the floor and going to his feet.
You follow suit. His face was still tear stained, but he didn't have complete dread in his eyes anymore.
"It's going to take a while for me to get over you." He says looking at the ground.
"I know it will because it took me awhile. (f/n) was very patient with me." You tell him before thought came into her head. "Peter, I know this is too soon, but may I point you in a direction of people to consider giving a chance?"
"Um... okay?" He didn't seem too comfortable, but he was open to hear what she suggested.
"You know Michelle Jones that was in our class, right? I believe she just went by MJ."
"MJ?" Peter thought taking it into consideration.
#spiderman#peter parker#tom holland#xreader#infinity war#endgame#marvel#tony stark#black widow#steve rogers#hawkeye
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April 18th-April 24th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive
The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from April 18th, 2020 to April 24th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:
What are your personal rules of thumb for determining whether a certain page needs a maturity or trigger warning?
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
i have no rule of thumb and i'm really curious to read what other people think about this
Deo101 [Millennium]
I usually ask people if they think it needs one, and I only ask if it is significantly different than what I've been doing.
Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)
I guess it depends on the subject and the severity. There are the basic ones, like rape, excessive gore, suicide, graphic sex, common phobias, etc. Things that can very easily trigger a large group of people or are generally not allowed in PG-13 movies. But there are other times I don't know if putting a warning or labeling it as mature is necessary. For example, profanity, suggestive material, violence (that doesn't involve gore), and again typically things that can make it into a PG-13 movie. Once it starts to be graphic enough to move into the realm of rated R, that's when you should start putting warnings. My problem with warnings as a creator is that the warnings can kind of spoil the contents of the chapter, so I try not to use them unless what happens in the comic could potentially harm a large number of people by not warning them.
RebelVampire
As a reader I do want to chime in say I agree with that last part. Whenever I see warnings, they are very spoilery so there's no surprise when I get to the warning part of the chapter/episode/page. I expected it so it loses some of its emotional value for me. Or, on the flipside, is so minor it shouldn't have had a warning that its ultimately underwhelming and disappointing.
Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)
Yeah, that's exactly why I'm wary about it
I am very sparing with my warnings, because I don't want the readers to lose any of that emotional impact.
carcarchu
my target audience for my webcomic is middle schoolers so the content i produce is never something i feel i need to put trigger warnings for. personally i think you don't really need to tag things unless the content is significantly different from what is expected from the comic. like if it starts out a lighthearted romp and then suddenly there's beserk levels of violence that probably ought to have some warning
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
I would probably put a CW for blood, gore etc. Of any level just to be safe. Different people have different sensitivities, and as a sex-averse ace I know I often would like CW on sexual/sex-adjacent content that others might not think was enough to need one so. I just err on the side of caution
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I specifically never put warnings in anything I write. If something I write deeply upsets someone or makes them extremely uncomfortable, that's a good thing. It means I've done my job in expressing and conveying the emotional context I set out to accomplish in most circumstances.
My background is poetry and I've only ever read a single book that had any warnings attached, and that was at the beginning of the book, not for each poem. Even then, it was from an author who was particularly, er, well a bit off their rocker.
Like, if you open a collection of poetry and you're surprised to see heavy topics covered...that's your own fault at that point.
If I had opened one of my favourite collections, The Flame by Leonard Cohen, and saw content warnings, I would have probably said in my head "Why the fuck is this here?" and "Well, no shit that's in here, this is Leonard Cohen."(edited)
My job is to convey and express regardless of what the reader might think. It's never my job to guide or warn them, it's my job to present to them.
Fiction, outside of that catered to younger audiences, tends to contain a lot of stuff that can be deeply uncomfortable to the reader (yes, even comedy). I've read stuff that's really gotten to me emotionally, and that's OK, that's a good thing, the author presented what they intended to (G-d knows they did). If you don't want that, then really, you just have to be cognizant of the fiction you're reading and remember that stories about life often have all aspects of life in them.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I have read things (though mostly non-fiction) that have made me want to cry or so sick that I felt the need to vomit. The author didn't warn me of that. They presented what they had without pretext nor excuse. They did their job. Those are very much extremes, but the point is that I consensually opened those texts knowing that might happen. I mean, it's not hard to look at the subject matter or what the reviews say and think "Hm, OK, this book isn't all sugar and roses". Frankly, though, I just feel that the content warnings and all tarnish the authenticity of a text that stands on its own.
Sorry for the rambling, but admittedly, I do include a content warning for that in my username!
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
I don‘t do content warnings, but I try to make sure to be upfront about the type of story people can expect.
Seen the results of someone springing a graphic, surprise character-gets-raped-to-death into until then fluffy childfriendly story for „trolololOLOL, I made you have a FEEL, I am an ARTISTE.“
It‘s disrespectful to the reader at best, after all they need to be able to make an informed decision if they opt in or not.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Alright, that's plain bad writing, but dramatic tone shifts can and are used effectively.
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I thought about content warning because I have seen comics that was upsetting to me and readers, and there was no trigger warning. Just a side note in the first chapter that the author explain that 'their characters' weren't a representation of every trans experience. But still had backlash for it. So some content warning when it comes to sensitive stuff like trauma, gender disphoria should be stated somewhere? I wasn't Trans but effected, I assume it was worse for trans readers seeing uncomfortable scenes that remind them of bad experiences.(edited)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
When I was younger, I used to be into a lot of animated stuff, and there was this one anime (don't judge, I was like fourteen) called Steins;Gate that, for the first half, is relatively comedic and lighthearted, before a very dramatic tone-shift in one episode where most of the main cast die on-screen and it becomes a conspiracy/time-travel thriller. It was actually very, very good, and it's an incredibly popular show because of it.
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Yeah. I think this is what content warnings are coming from: trying to enable the reader to make an informed decision of they wanna opt in to a story or not. It‘s a matter of consent.
They‘re not perfect, but better than nothing.
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
I agree with @chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa] here on the point that it's about being able to knowingly consent to a potentially unpleasant experience
Deo101 [Millennium]
Honestly I'd rather have a small spoiler at the end of the page before Something happens than potentially hurt someone
Again, only if it's really tonally dissonant
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
There's plenty of things I don't mind if I'm aware of it beforehand so I can make sure I'm in a good headspace, but the same things could totally put me off a story/creator and give me issues for months if I wasn't expecting them
Source: personal experience
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Webcomics are probably very different, but I'd find it would put me off a lot in poetry (and it's also something you don't see in it; it's just not a part of the industry culture). But people having negative emotions from reading is very commonplace and par for the course.(edited)
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
But I also feel that content warning do give away bit of spoiler. I was taught the good way to protray an incoming dark topic is to give hints along the chapters, rather than 'spring it out of the blue'. I haven't written anything super dark/angst before though. It's uncomfortable for me and I haven't cross that threshold of feeling yet(edited)
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
Personally I feel like if your story or scene or whatever relies so heavily on the shock of specific content that it would be ruined by the "spoiler" potential of a content warning, it's bad writing
Deo101 [Millennium]
I feel like stories in general are not ruined by spoilers, though some people don't like them. But if we're in a scene and we're gonna see someone get cut in half and you say "hey this battle has extreme violence" that's hardly a spoiler
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Not always. Shock, if it's not in bad taste, can be used as a device to help set the emotional context for the rest of the passage. It's bad writing to use it bombastically and haphazardly, but in light touches, like a ghost pepper, it can help. On its own, though, yeah it's usually bad writing.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Since comics are visual there is more need for this kind of a thing because it can be more intense for readers
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Ah, yeah, that's true. My field doesn't have visuals.
I can imagine it may be different in that case.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Also, think like. Movies also have this, that's what the rating system is
A movie rated r for extreme violence isn't a spoiler
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Especially if it has Tom Cruise in it.
RebelVampire
Yes but imagine if the movie paused right before the worst parts to say "Hey this is gonna be a mature scene"
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Age ratings ARE content warnings.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Tv shows do it at the beginning of an episode
And, with comics you have natural pauses
Putting a small banner at the bottom of an update doesn't interrupt the flow the same way putting it at the top of one would, and it can prep people to know not to even open the next update kind of thing
I haven't done content warnings my content is only pg13 but I've thought a lot about it for future, more intense ideas
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
In Germany‘s there are no tv show content warnings, but certain stuff can only be aired after 20:30 or on dedicated channels.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I agree with @RebelVampire . In my favourite movie of all time by far which you 100% have to watch (IT'S REALLY GOOD!!!) On the Waterfront, there's one scene which really gut-punched me when I first watched it because it's, well, fairly disturbing, but if the movie stopped before it and some dude came up and said "B'ys, cover your children's eyes", that'd be ridiculous. Age warnings pre-screening are fine because it's an audiovisual form, but considering that text doesn't have that visual or audio component, I just don't see the need. I can understand why you would do it as a comic artist, though.
Deo101 [Millennium]
There are also, for movies and TV, sites like "does the dog die?" Which provide this kind of information for people with triggers. Comics don't have this kind of a site though so it's on the creator
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
That reminds me, I need to put Nyx+Nyssa‘s age rating note up. g
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
People with triggers are the sticking point for me. Even if most people would be okay, there's people who won't be and I don't want to act like they don't matter when I'm putting warnings on my content. I feel like it's my responsibility if I'm making that content.
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Yup. I know someone with cPTSD who cannot engage with media without content warnings; because disassociation is NOT fun and dangerous. „Does the dog die“ and similiar things mean she can engage with media without having to rope in others as betas.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yes, same here. Obviously you can't warn for everything, many people have obscure and specific triggers, but there are common ones that are generally sensitive subjects that I don't think it's bad to warn a bit about
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I don't think it is your responsibility, but rather those with triggers to be careful. I'm a trauma victim and I do have triggers, but you know, I can't expect everyone to know that (especially with how hilariously specific they are). If you're worried, do your research
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
There‘s a huge difference between being responsible of for someone and being mindful for someone.
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
As someone who has triggers as well - I'd prefer to be able to see at a glance. It's awful having to be on guard constantly and worried about what if you didn't do your research quite well enough
Deo101 [Millennium]
I personally only read comics on reccomendation because of mine
They're not common ones but I've never been annoyed by trigger warnings that aren't for me
It usually looks much different from the comic so you can just quick look and scroll past
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I really understand that and I can understand it in the context of your industry because it has that visual component, but in the context of mine it's not done because content warnings wouldn't really make much sense for my industry. What will annoy me is when trigger warnings are uploaded for every part of the webcomic. Like, that's a little extreme.
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
I understand it's very different context for poetry - but I'm talking about comics
Deo101 [Millennium]
I would agree that uploading for every page would be extreme, but I would think I'm that case it would be at the start of the comic or in the description
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
About pages! They exist for a reason.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
At the beginning of the entire comic, if you want to, that's fine. I think it does change the mindset of the reader and can be detrimental to the story in some cases, but if you know it's not, then that's fine! Of course, that problem can be solved just like @chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa] just suggested: put it on the About page.
Yeah, no, I could get behind that.
For webcomics, I think that would be a good solution.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Some sites don't offer about pages, though, and if it's not a major theme and only in a small part it's nice to put it in the comic itself too
Like my comic is generally very light-hearted but coming up I do have a scene that's significantly more violent than the rest of the comic has been, and I debated whether or not to warn my readers about it
I don't want to put a violence warning in my description though because it would draw the wrong audience
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I mean, it really depends. If it's suddenly looks like the notes of a medical student, then put a warning, but some light violence is probably fine.
Others could probably give a better opinion on that though.
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Yup. I liked how dumbing of age handled it‘s suicide warning - it was specific to that particular page because it dealt with specific details as opposed the more general discussion. So that page got a small note on top. Didn‘t remove the emotional impact, but allowed people to brace themselves or opt out.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Page the Poet refuses content warnings and enjoys their readers' suffering (/s).
All jokes aside, what do you mean about some sites not offering About pages? I'm not well-versed on hosting web-comics.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Well, for instance with webtoons you have a 500 (?) Character description, and that's it
Maybe it's 1500 or something idk it's been a while since I wrote mine. But it's not a seperate page like how I would have on my own site
On your own site it's awesome cause people can just, if they have triggers they can go there to see jf they're fine to read
But with webtoons, tapas, and other hosts you get one page and it's just your comic and description
So putting "violence warning" there is much different than on a seperate page
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I thought most web-comics had their own site?
Deo101 [Millennium]
I mean I do, but many don't
And most readers these days are on hosts I think
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Oh. Yeah, alright, I see the issue.
Deo101 [Millennium]
My description says pg13, LGBT, and slowburn and that's all it gets from me. I would be more descriptive in my about page which I do still need to code
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I'm curious, why specify the LGBT part?
Deo101 [Millennium]
But yeah so it's a very case by case basis depending on where you are and all that
Oh because I want lgbt people to know my comic has an LGBT cast and is catered to them
It's so my comic more likely finds my target audience
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
OH.
carcarchu
i think about stuff like school live and bokurano and consider that i'd be really upset if the sudden dramatic shift in tone was overtly warned beforehand because the shock factor was so important for those series in particular so i don't know how to handle warnings for stuff like that
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
That makes sense.
Please excuse my idiocy haha.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Not idiocy, it's a lot of potential to learn ;)
Carcarchu, it's really a personal choice of the author and what they want. If you don't wanna do it cause you think your story would suffer, that's totally fine. But personally and a lot of other creators agree, id rather potentially risk a slight decrease of my impact to protect some people.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
You see, in poetry, it works like this: you find a journal that suits your poetry, you submit it, you don't get published, and you cry yourself to sleep. Repeat twenty odd times until you get accepted somewhere. Then, you get published there and you tend not to worry about target audiences and stuff yourself. 'Tis a foreign world to me!
RebelVampire
Yeah I agree that I think at the end its a personal choice cause you'll never please everyone whether you do or don't use warnings
carcarchu
i'm thinking about my experience reading those two series and being blown away by the sudden tone shift and really liking one of those series because of it. but then i think about my experience with madoka where i actually started watching it BECAUSE i saw a spoiler about the twist and it piqued my interest. i still enjoyed madoka but i wonder how my experience with it would have been different if i went in blind
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
@carcarchu , I'm with you. It really depends on what you can do, I think. If it's available to those who need it without expressly being there for those who don't want spoilers (An optional CW of sorts), that could work.
carcarchu
i like the idea of optional cw
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I don't know if it's an idea that could work, though, as I'm not experienced with web-comics. @Deo101 [Millennium] , your thoughts?
Deo101 [Millennium]
On a personally coded site you could probably with a lot of effort make something like that work, but that's not really so much an option on hosts
Tapas has a mature toggle where that specific page says "this contains mature content" or something, but everyone sees it
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
If it's personally coded, it should be fairly easy with a small bit of javascript, right?
Deo101 [Millennium]
And for other sites it's not an option at all other than for the entire series as a before you enter sort of deal
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I personally would put warnings Because some chapters deal with traumatic subject matter and I’ve had friends see them and warn me about those However I wouldn’t just do content warnings for something like swearing
Deo101 [Millennium]
I don't think you could code it easily, at least not with the systems I'm using.
Again the best solution I've come up with is at the end of the previous update, so people can skip over it easier and it doesn't interrupt flow the same way
carcarchu
the easiest way to do it on smth like webtoons would just to put some text on ur page that says something like "optional content warning for the next page in description, read at your own risk" but again that would spoil a potential twist
Deo101 [Millennium]
Honestly like Doesn't the twist just happen at the warning then instead of at the panel
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I think the real solution is to just not write anything.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Like it's not spoiling it it's just moving it a few lines up
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Don't even write the webcomic. Best solution.
Deo101 [Millennium]
And content warnings don't say who or how
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Perfection.
carcarchu
i might be miffed if i read TWIST INCOMING and then had to wait a week to actually see it
Deo101 [Millennium]
Just a general, vague, "what"
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Say there's triggering content, but don't say where or what. Put it on the last page too.
carcarchu
but it could potentially drum up interest like WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT WEEK
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah that's what I mean
carcarchu
idk could go either way
Deo101 [Millennium]
Not like there's a twist!
Just hey things get intense
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I don't know, it could still be triggering. I think we should just write no webcomic at all.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmmmm I never thought of that
But what if people forget about the trigger and just jump right in
carcarchu
if they forget the trigger isn't that their fault and not the creator?
Deo101 [Millennium]
People who have the trigger will remember
carcarchu
they were given ample warning
Deo101 [Millennium]
And if they do not then I did what I could
Sorry but I have a specific trigger of people watching someone sleep, I've had two people warn me their comics include it, and I remember. And that was like a year ago
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
My stupid sense of humour aside, I do agree with Deo and Carcarchu. If you forget the trigger, that's your own fault. The author making that information available is one thing, but they aren't there to hold your hand.
carcarchu
oh man that's a super common trope deo that must be rough
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah but it's cool
Like I know it's a common trope and it's not really one you can see coming or anything :/ so it's cool
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I think warnings are helpful tho if u be general like it contains a thing but u dont kno what it is till u read it
Like doe me it was doki doki lit club i didn't took seriously till it hit me and im like O
carcarchu
with dokidoki i knew about there WAS a twist but i didn't know exactly what it is so i was still shocked by it when it happened
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah like "Graphic violence" isn't a spoiler especially if you're already like 3 pages into a fight scene
carcarchu
but again they warned about it pretty vigilantly in the beginning before u play dokidoki? i'm not really sure how you could miss it?
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Yeah.
In all seriousness, I like the About page option / optional CW, but I realize that might be impossible in a lot of scenarios.
Maybe put in the description of the first page "OPTIONAL CW BELOW" for example for those who want it?
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah, or the page before. Only concern is people not reading it, but then again that kind of falls under the "their responsibility" section
kayotics
I’ve put one warning in before, but I kept it to promo images (so like social media update images) and in the comic description a few pages before. My reasoning was: it was tonally different & darker from the rest of the comic, but I didn’t put the warning in the pages because of the reader is paying attention, the fact that its coming is pretty obvious. Who knows if I did the right thing it handled it correctly, but I really struggled with figuring out what to do
Deo101 [Millennium]
Another concern is that some comics will run for years, decades even, and so its sometimes impossible to know at the beginning what might need to be warned for.
I think that's good Kay.
It's unobtrusive and gives the people who need it what they need
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Optional warning on the page before, then?
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah that's what I said earlier I was kinda planning on doing if it ever became necessary
kayotics
That’s essentially what it was. I think I wrote a caveat that the warning was a spoiler
Deo101 [Millennium]
That makes sense
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmm if you’re doing it on the page before How specific should the warning be
kayotics
I know a lot of people don’t read page descriptions, especially when binging, so I’m banking on the context of the chapter being the biggest warning
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Like do you just say optional warning?
kayotics
What I did is I said something about the the content of the next page without getting into too much detail
Deo101 [Millennium]
I see things like "warning: graphic violence, sexual content, substance abuse," etc. Stuff like that
kayotics
Yeah. Mine was graphic violence or gore or something
Deo101 [Millennium]
Where it doesn't say who or how or anything, just a vague what
Which usually, the context of the scene is around that kind of a theme anyways where we can tell it's coming
So a content warning is more like "this does get turned up to an 8 here"
Though it can be a surprise where Something like what Kay did is really good
Like okay so spoilers but be warned
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
B'y, turn it up to at least eleven. Go big or go home.
Deo101 [Millennium]
I'm on a 1-8 scale
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
But what about the saying? Heresy!
kayotics
I think in the context of my comic it felt like, to me, that I was turning it up to 8 from a 1 or 2. It’s not the MOST GRAPHIC thing I’ve ever seen, but with the entirety of the rest of the work it’s tonally different, which is why I needed the warning
My comic, at its worst, usually just sees some curses and cartoon violence.
This was, like, full on blood and gore
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I jumped straight into 12 at one point for mine whoops
kayotics
So I think context of the work is important with a warning as well
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah, I'm usually around a 1-2 too. I've got pg-13 in my description and if I'm ever toeing the edge of it, I'm gonna warn about it
kayotics
If you have a violent or heavy comic already, warnings for each page is ridiculous. It’s when you turn it up that you should mention something
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah exactly
DanitheCarutor
Aaah you know, I don't put warnings on my pages, because practically half the comic would have CWs due to the focus on upsetting themes. There was one instance where I did put one up for a page containing a lot of queerphobic language presented in a way that was jarring, and potentially triggering for people who've experienced something like that. Although I've somewhat regretted singling out that one page since the comic from that point only gets worse, in hindsight that one instance isn't bad enough to warrant a warning. I'll probably take it down once I stop being lazy. In general I feel a page-by-page warning is best for comics that don't normally have heavy stuff, it makes sense to warning for violence if that's not a normal thing in your comic, it might shock readers too much otherwise. As far as content, everyone has different sensitivity levels (someone put a CW up once for a character being yelled at by his dad), personally I would only use CWs for excessive violence/abuse, blood, mental illness, suicide, rape, gore, slurs and/or substance abuse. I've gotten a lot of mixed reception on warnings, there are people who want them up, in detail, on every page with potentially upsetting content. People who want them chapter by chapter, some like detail, some want a general warning. Then there are people who don't want any warnings either due to them being too spoilery, or they feel it ruins the immersion. I went for a warning in a pop-up on my main site and leaving a list in my description on other sites, mostly for the non-spoiler crowd and because of what I said before about practically half my comic being potentially triggering.
There are two chapters coming up where I'll be putting up a general warning banner at the start of the chapter, with a hidden list of triggers in the author's notes and an option to read a safer summarized version at the end of each chapter, rather than forcing everyone to read the whole thing. Just because the content will be really difficult for some in presentation and/or subject matter, and I don't want to outright distress anyone... at least without them understanding what they're getting into.
Like, even compared to how my comic already is the next chapters will be really upsetting... for some people.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
It's not bad if people are upset or distressed. Like, full on disassociation from PTSD, obviously not, but I think these CWs are for them, not Alice Smith the average woman. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, I feel like, because of that, the general approach is best. Adding a CW for someone getting yelled at by their father is too spoiler-y/specific in my mind.
carcarchu
i really like dani's approach with the summary at the end for people who want to know what happened but can't stomach actually seeing the nitty gritty
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Here’s the problem tho...my series literally deals with trauma healing
So there’s going to be mentions of...going to therapy, friends talking about it
Not the actual trauma itself
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Yeah, I wouldn't bother with CWs there.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
But I’m really worried that if I have to put up trigger warnings every time...a lot of pages will have that warning
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
People know what they're getting in for.
If you're going to read a comic about healing from trauma...don't be surprised at content that's not very fun.(edited)
DanitheCarutor
Yeah, my warnings are specifically for the mentally ill, people who've been in abusive situations and such. I don't want to end up bring back certain experiences, at least without them knowing what they're getting into.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmm in that case I might have to put it in the summary itself then
That there’s trauma healing Of course it’s also about humor and slice of life, but I’ll add it in just in case
Would it help to get sensitivity readers to take a gander look?
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I mean, in my mind, a general synopsis of the basic plot is a good idea for a lot of stories so long as you aren't spoiling anything.
DanitheCarutor
Me? Nah, I mean, I should but it wouldn't change my decisions since my story is really tight and changing stuff would end up changing everything.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
In this case, trauma-healing seems to be a part of that plot.
So, you know, if it's mentioned, I think that's blaringly obvious at that point to people that "B'ys, there may be some triggering shit here", y' know?
DanitheCarutor
Oh, I totally misread the convo. Lol I mean, you could get a sensitivity reader if you want to be on the safe side, but if you're writing from experience and you've done research I don't see a problem with not having one.
carcarchu
having read the first few chapters of shadow's comic trauma healing was not an aspect that i picked up from it(edited)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Sensitivity reader?
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I agree, I get more light heart tone with Shadow's story, but I know stuff ahead of time(edited)
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Oh nooo
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
maybe the aspects will come up as the comic progresses shadow
:0
DanitheCarutor
My comic is also about trauma and healing, and while I haven't experienced all the things my characters have, I did do a ton of research and talked to people. Although my comic is a vent comic so most of it is based off my experiences.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I've just put general content warnings in the about page and appropriately rated my comic for its content. There will be things that are written thar i have no idea that could be triggering to people that exsist in a lot of media, it almost becomes impossible to sort through. And with the amount of content to sift through that would/wouldn't be sensitive to certain topics or just generally unaware, its tricky. If there is a reader with a potentially sensitive trigger, i would hope they could get a friend to do a read through if possible, but rarely have i seen comics go right into topics that would need such a hand to do so. Stories have descriptions and ratings for that reason, you're not going to find insane violence in Pokemon type stories, so the author has that responsibility of rating it correctly is what im getting at
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Sorry, what's a sensitivity reader?
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
A sensitivity reader is like, a beta reader who specifically checks whether your work is offensive/ insensitive (e.g. when you're wondering "is my portrayal of this ethnic group offensive/ignorant?")
carcarchu
i think a sensitivity reader is for when ur writing a story that includes a particular cultural or ethnic group that ur NOT part of and u want to avoid making your story culturally insensitive
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
Ooh Dani, is it Guide to Unhealthy Relationship? Your comic often stand out to me. I knew what I was getting into when I read it
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I was a sensitvity reader for someone who was writing a viet american and keii pretty much sums it up
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
That's a thing? Who does that? Ethnic Studies professors?
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
And it's not just for ethnic groups
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I gave suggestions to add and avoid if ya writing a character from a certain ethnic group or marginalized group
like LGBT+, persons with disabilities etc
carcarchu
ethnic groups is the first thing i thought of but yes
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
No, not ethnic studies professors.
Members of the marginalized group.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yep
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
So if you're writing a trans character, you probably want a sensitivity reader who is trans
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yep!
carcarchu
example the mangaka of golden kamuy has an ainu consultant who is ainu but i'm not sure if having a consultant is quite the same thing?(edited)
DanitheCarutor
@Joichi [Hybrid Dolls] Yeah, it is. I'm glad you were able to know! I try to make it obvious since CWs are pretty much the main themes of my comic. xD
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
i think so
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
A consultant can apply to sensitivity readers, yes, but goes beyond that
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like the mangaka saught to reprsent ainus too
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I know an MMA comic with an MMA consultant, for example
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
But couldn't two members of that group, say, Jews, say completely different things? How can you guess the information to be reliable based on their simply being a part of that group? Surely, there are things people look for when hiring these people?
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I have artist friends who are my sensitively reader and one friend who has had experience with abuse So they help me with what’s good and what’s not to write about
I have artist friends who are my sensitively reader and one friend who has had experience with abuse So they help me with what’s good and what’s not to write about
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
It's still gonna be WAY better than not getting any, Page.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I mean yeah but in that instance hearing from another perspective at least one person helps
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
At least you can be aware of possible....differences
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
And people who have experience as sensitivity readers know some common issues to look for, as well.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yeah
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Or cross reference
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yep
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
It could be worse if the information is unreliable. What sort of qualifications does one look for?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like for me, reping viet folks and telling that to those saught viet rep in their comics
I told them "don't you freaking dare add tropes about the vietnam war I'm gonna come over to your house"
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Friend of mine was a trauma survivor that I witnessed first hand
I suppose that qualifies!
But I think it helps to ask around
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
This stems from writers writing what they think an experience/ person group is without doing research and just being ignorant and offensive and a call for ppl to do better
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yeah like those stories should be left to the group experienced it instead
imo
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
TBH even when you do a ton of research on your own, a sensitivity reader can help you catch things that you never even thought of researching because you were unaware It Was A Thing
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like I still read some stories then they throw like the nam joke
and i'm like "I'm droppin this"
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Yea I don't get cis ppl writing about the trans experience. Its not ur story
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
agreed ya
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmm a lot of artists write from experience
Perhaps if you need a sensitivity reader for say...being bi for example
Maybe find an artist who themselves is bi(edited)
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like don't write how they got there, but write the experience they gonna deal with in the comic
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Because you get double: you get someone who’s bi and also someone who knows how to work the medium
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like i doubt cis persons have the nuance for trans folk, same goes for non-poc thinking is okay to do weird nuance things with poc
like lmao idk that's a pet peeve of mine if someone is writing an asian character and really just
"yea he's asian, idk what nationality but its there."
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Im not into someone who isn't a minority writing about a minority experience as a personal preference, but the sensitivity readers aren't exclusive to that. There was an example in story help in this server where someone asked about writing for a certain group of ppl and wanted feedback
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I...remember that krispy
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yeah
carcarchu
i get what you're saying Tuyetnhi but i don't want authors to NOT include any representation just because they're scared of doing it wrong
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Several people warned him Including me
DanitheCarutor
A good example of sensitivity readers is Moana. The directors were old white guys, but they got Hawaiians to look over the script to make sure it wasn't disrespectful to the culture, or totally out of left field, since the tribe in the movie is based on Hawaiian tribes. Even though I didn't have sensitivity readers I still sought out people who experienced certain mental illnesses, medical professionals and mental health professionals willing the share their experiences and knowledge on the subjects I'm tackling before starting the comic.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ye and I get that, I mean like if they trying to do extreme nuance takes
leave that for folks who experienced that
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Asscreed games used to do the same too
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I ain't againist that kind of rep, but I have a paricular idea how to go about it that's all lol
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Tho i don't know if they were successful
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
What's wrong with someone writing a character who is transgender if they're not transgender? There's a lot of good research done on transgender issues both medical and societal as well as a lot of written record. I also don't see the issue with writing an ethnic minority as a non-minority. "Far Beyond the Stars" was written by white men and it speaks about racial issues brilliantly. Consultants on the intricacies of culture, I 100% understand, though, for your narratives; that does make sense. Professors are hired by filmmakers and writers for just that IIRC.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Sensitivity readers would not be a thing if people were not allowed to write characters outside of their own identity. Nobody's advocating that
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ya
carcarchu
white people can write on poc's issues fine. but i have a problem when they act like they know more than the people who have experienced it first-hand
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
Yep that's what I mean cara
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
As long as you’re respectful about it
And open to changing ideas
RebelVampire
Ok Im gonna step in here now and say we need to take a step back perhaps cause I feel this convo might be becoming too heated.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Heated?
I think you're misreading. I don't believe anybody here is heated over anything. I didn't know there was an argument, honestly. Is there? Am I losing my mind here?
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Also these are instances that have been brought to light bc ppl want better rep from authours too. My last point on that!!
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I don't think anyone's angry, but this is an extremely sensitive/ heavy topic so we're all treading carefully!
carcarchu
i'm with page i thought it was all very civil
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Remarkably so, frankly.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
agreed
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Usually these things spawn a lot of arguments. It's refreshing to see people, well, not do that.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ye lol
RebelVampire
It is but this is the sort of topic where it can quickly hit the boiling point in a single message. And I've been seeing some warning signs in this convo. By all means if everyone can keep it civil, please continue. Consider this more a warning that right now, if you're getting angry, please step away from the convo cause I don't want to have to mute or ban anyway.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
aight
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Warning signs? I really am losing my mind.
DanitheCarutor
Let me know if I've said or will say something that might be insensitive. I try to be respectful, but I'm overly comfortable with uncomfortable topics and can be like a bull in a china shop sometimes.(edited)
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Its just a sensitive topic, page
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
same with me, but i'm also speaking from experience as sensitivity reader too.
so yea lol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Oh yeah, on most servers, when this comes up, you have those who take the opportunity to say white people should die, then the ones who say the same about people of colour. It all devolves.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
what the
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Oh, b'ys, Discord is a wild place.
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I agree with Keii, these are sensitive topics, I'm reading each one carefully without jumping into a fight
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I mean yeah, I been on discord since 2015 lol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Gosh, I've been on it for years too! Seems so long ago I first came here!
Time flies, eh?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
still like, I find it kinda ridiculous someone is willing to jump like that
but yeah er, the topic at hand lol
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
It doesn't need to go to that ridiculous extent to offend people, so I agree with Rebel on that we need to continue to be careful
Eilidh (Lady Changeling)
(going to step out now but good convo y'all)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Offer people a bit of the word "race" and soon it turns into Nuremberg.
Good talking to you, mate!
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Goodnight Eilidh!
Also I’m actually new on discord
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I think that its a good practice that writers today are more sensitive to the readers. Not in a hand holding way, but in a responsible way where their work is properly tagged and rated and the consistency of such content is a warning as well (like danis comic) It's important to want to improve the reading experience for many and keeping in mind that some topics need to be handled with some more care
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ye agreed!
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
In my field, I think it's a contest on how much emotion you can get out in one breath with gleeful abandon to how the reader feels.
carcarchu
but a problem with that is sometimes it feels like writers are held up to impossibly high standards and that they can't have ANY inkling whatsoever of any content that might possibly be construed as "problematique" by the purity police. the degree to which some authors are scrutinized is unreasonable and i think it often stems from having to be seen as a "pure" representation of whatever it is they are representing
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Sometimes it's not even that the standards are "too high"
DanitheCarutor
@FeatherNotes(Krispy) Lol if the word limit allows it, every self-promo of my comic is plastered with age and content warnings, dang it!
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
There will ALWAYS be those standards, they were always there. Ppl just didn't have that voice. I would not be worried about writing however, as i def see a problem with the purity thingie going around.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I think carcarchu is talking about something very specific, Feather?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
there will be some rep be messy and rip that's part of being human and making mistakes
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
There was an article talking about the direction of art and the consumers of such that covered this topic about the purity thing that i wanna findd
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like everyone can't be a saint
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
like when an ownvoices writer gets pitchforks and torches because their portrayal wasn't wholesome enough, and you are only allowed to write happy and wholesome stories about that group(edited)
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
like
keii omg
yeah i'll die in the torches that's ok
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Wait what
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Yeah it's a thing
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Thats a thing
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
What...????
carcarchu
yes that's what i'm talking about keii
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
What
carcarchu
i also have a video about it
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
They're more upset at the story direction then
Not a purity thing
carcarchu
no it's a purity thing
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I agree with Carcarchu on this one. I feel like some people would be up in arms if I wrote a story where a white guy is the protagonist and a black guy is the antagonist. Some people just see race.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I know several LGBTQ peeps who are afraid to post their dark LGBTQ fiction because it might draw the attention of "only wholesome content allowed!!!" people
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
WhgtttattTTT
nooo
DanitheCarutor
Oooh yeah, the puritans/sanitizers out there, they're a scary bunch. I've had a run in with a few people who've said my comic shouldn't be allowed to exist due to the content... and I've been called queerphobic... and that my comic is queerphobic torture porn... and other fun stuff. It happens.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
WHHHHHHAAAAAAAT
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
You'd be surprised how common this is.
RebelVampire
Yeah I have to say I've seen it a lot too
carcarchu
where have u been krispy that you haven't seen this?
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I have been in my silent cave apparently
I also haven't been in fandoms for years if that helps lol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
You living like Patrick the Starfish?
DanitheCarutor
Yeah, we're kind of starting to get back into the olden days of demand for sanitizing art, people who work on darker content or horror get a lot of crap.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
This is patrick
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
All kidding aside, TL;DR: shit's kind of fucked in some ways.
carcarchu
i've even had run-ins with such people irl... hasnt been the most pleasant. i was once friends (note once) who tried to convince me that i should turn my het romance story into a lesbian one? for no reason other than she preferred to read that kind of content?
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Ohhbsee thats where im confused
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Imagine if the sexuality were flipped. It would be outrageous.(edited)
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
rip I had a comment a year ago that the main love interest is "too gay to be straight"
and i'm like "excuse u?"
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
"Yeah, make it straight. I don't like gay stuff."
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
How is the relationship dynamic purity in that case?
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
That's not purity police talk anymore, I think
carcarchu
not purity in that specific example feather but it's the same kind of person
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I’ve also had people come up to me and ask why I don’t write a more lighthearted story
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
It's... a different issue
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
OB
MY GOSHHH
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Or “shadow, your shit is too dark why are you writing about this”
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
So ppl be telling u how to write ur chars now?
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
"Life can only be happy and stuff :(( art can literally only be happyyy"
carcarchu
yeah this same person was also PISSED that there was a gem in steven universe who was "black-coded" and portrayed as a villain even though there were black coded gems who were not portrayed as villains as well
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Sorry Krispy Life be like that
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Wthhhh
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Black coded?....what series have they been watching carcarchu lol
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ah dang
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
These ppl have 2 much time on their hands RIP They wanna rip apart media, go after something that deserves it (likethebig2incomicscough)
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
They’re gate keeping(edited)
DanitheCarutor
Ah not too long ago I stumbled across an artist who drew more problematic stuff as a way to cope with trauma, which I guess was something their therapist suggested. Their stuff is pretty messed up, but someone started one of those "call out" videos on them, leading to thousands of people flooding their work with some of the most awful comments along with people trying to shut down their Patreon and social media accounts.
carcarchu
i later found out this person was also a terf so i ended the friendship right there when i found out
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Dani that’s...what the fuck
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Oh nasty
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
searches up terf Oh...
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I remember reading one person talking about how presenting "bad ideals" and whatnot in fiction had to be demonstrated to be bad ideals and not work and stuff and so on so forth.
carcarchu
i've seen that too dani
sadly more times than i can count
we all remember what happened to cucumber quest right?
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
It is terrible out there
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
What’s cucumber quest
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
What is cucumber
Quest oop
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
"What is cucumber?": An essay in being Socrates.
carcarchu
long story short cucumber quest was a children's webcomic that was pretty popular but the author got bullied off tumblr for being "problematic"
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
oh no
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Tumblr has a lot of crazies.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I like her work
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Oh noooooooooo
I still go on tumblr but I carefully choose my blogs
Because I don’t want this shit
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
(All this being said, I wanna reiterate that just because those terrible pitchforks and torches people exist, doesn't mean all "I find this offensive" voices are invalid. Some things could genuinely be improved!)
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Also def wanna say that even tho there will be these wolves waiting to tear 'non perfect' media apart, please dont feel like u have to stop writing, ever. Dont be afraid bc of these stories, yall have good heads on ur shoulders and obvs want to share ur experiences and that is something ur allowed to do
carcarchu
fyi she didnt stop making her comic because of the bullying thing, it was a separate, unrelated issue much later(edited)
i hear you keii
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I find it hilarious of the idea That there are people out there who tell someone not to write stuff like abuse even tho they’ve never experienced it
And the writers themselves have
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Oh, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
There was someone who tried to boycott assassins creed 2 bc the main char reminder her of her ex bf
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
omfg
DanitheCarutor
It's really sad and a little terrifying if your work doesn't fit the sanitization standards... Sometimes I think of that "what if" chance just the right person finding my comic and launching a take down campaign on it. Which is why I'm totally fine with staying as a smalltime person in the shadows. Also people don't usually want to even read through my comic, so that's a plus.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
why lmaoo
oh dang dani that's one fear
but i'm also like "I wonder how folks react to me dealing with that like I ignore them"
would that be a power move or I'd be burning harder?
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Shit I never thought of a takedown campaign
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
It's a genuine fear for the creating community for sure, but ur voice is necessary. Ur story will resonate with ppl, and those who choose to use their time to tear it down obviously have nothing else better to do
DanitheCarutor
@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) Oh yeah, totally! People's feelings are super valid, and someone writing sensitive content should be open to listening to other people. I'm just talking about the extremists who think anything remotely uncomfortable shouldn't exist. Like, no.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Man, nowadays, people just throw shit and false accusations and all the rest at people because they don't like them and their stuff. They're truly pathetic.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I used to be so scared of a certain chapter in my comic bc its so violent at one point. It kept me up at night bc of these take down campaigns were a such a thing. But then i remember the content i enjoyed that inspired my own and im like Aint no one cancelling FMA for the niina part!
I mean unless its a topic that's super insensitive to a group or people/topic, which i know you're handling with sensitivity and grace, i wouldn't stop
carcarchu
this is a little bit sensitive so i'm going to put it in a spoiler there was another incident where an author received constant messages to kill themselves for writing gls when they did not at that time identify as a woman but then the author later did a whole comic about how how complicated her relationship with her own gender and sexuality was and that she de-transitioned and now once again considered herself to be both cis and lesbian and all those comments about her needing to kill herself for writing gl were so narrow-minded because you can never really know an author's situation if you aren't in their shoes
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
What's "gl"?
DanitheCarutor
Lol yeah, I do get worried a lot, especially about the upcoming chapters. Although that's not going to stop me from pushing forward, and telling the story how I want to tell it. If my online presence is murdered in the process, at least it will die for a good cause... at least good for me because I'll be venting everything out.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Whhhh!!! People just gettin into ppls business damn. That's horrible
carcarchu
girl's love
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
GIrl's love?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ye
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I def see ur story as a personal one with healing and building that will resonate with others Dani. And i think that's very important
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
What's that?
carcarchu
stories about girls loving girls
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
it's a genre that focuses on romantic relationships between girls ye
carcarchu
i really got chills reading that author's comic about her identity especially having seen those comments numerous times on her other comics
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
There was a similar incident except it was with an artist by the name of Zamii for supposedly drawing Steven Universe characters too thin (Yes, she did attempt suicide in the end, though she didn't succeed in her attempt).
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Is...is she okay now?
oh my god Page
I remembered that
The SU writers had to step in
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
oh rip sadly I remember that as well
carcarchu
i think she's doing ok! i'm not sure if that particular comic is still up but i can dm u it if u want shadow
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Yep! Not just the writers, even an executive producer.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Yes please carcarchu
And I think Rebecca sugar stepped in too? Not sure about that
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Hopefully this serves as a reminder for all of us to have each others backs in such situations wow
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Another incident was in the Undertale fandom I think. One person gave a cookie to an artist at a convention they didn't like because of the ships they were doing. They author was suspicious, so, they cracked open the cookie. It was filled with needles.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
WHHHHHHYYYYYYY
carcarchu
oh my god i remember that page, what a horror story
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
........what the FUCK
carcarchu
always be careful about accepting food from events like that
DanitheCarutor
Geez, the thing about the GL author is sad... yet not surprising, and it's sad that I'm not surprised. @FeatherNotes(Krispy) Thank you so much! I went into my comic expecting absolutely no one would like it, so if it resonates with even one person that would be the best surprise. TvT
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yee haw I love solidarity
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Yeah, never accept food/drinks from strangers, including "fans"
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
As someone who bakes and deals with food....that is horrifying
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
yeah rip that's horrifying
carcarchu
if it's packaged food like candy it should be safe, but still be careful if u have reason to be suspicious at all
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Remember, if you're suspicious, make them eat it too >:)
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
omgllol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
And lace it with cyanide.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Gosh authours need content warning from readers it seems yikes
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Better safe than sorry.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Still not safe to have them eat it too lol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I mean, hey, better second degree murder than dead.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I can think of some.... ways around that
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
"I'm alergic to needles"
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Give it to their friend
>:)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Give it to their spouse.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
And if it’s poison they’ll go down knowing they did it
Make a marvel villain
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
They're called "Widower".
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Page you and I have like minds
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Indeed we do.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I'm not comfortable with that -- like, what if their friend or spouse is being abused by them and is seeking to get out of that relationship
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
...This conversation is freaking amazing And I’ve never done individual page warnings for my comic - never felt it necessary. Maybe someday someone will yell at me about it, but... meh. The comic never goes into the really deep dark potentially-controversial stuff. So maybe it won’t be an issue. Back to catching up on all of this, WOW.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
oh god it would be a complicated meSS(edited)
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Oh god okay NO DONT GIVE IT TO THEIR SPOUSE
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
It doesn't matter. They must die for our agenda.
Morality? Pft.
If they're dead, they're no longer in the relationship.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I mean @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) your story is really riveting But I’m not sure if you need warnings? I mean your story deals with...death
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
You see? Widower solves everything.
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
@shadowhood (SunnyxRain) I’m not sure! Someone tagged it with ‘limb loss’ elsewhere, which is debatable, haha. It’s something I would almost want others to tag. Sometimes I can’t stretch my mind far enough to imagine a page needing a trigger warning.(edited)
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Wow...the more you learn, huh.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Yes- those specific type tags are always going to be elusive to keep track of- ur general rating is just what ur story needs
Def wanna point out too that TV ratings and warnings are what i go by and the most helpful to me as a reader and creator. Also video game warnings too are good to look at if people ever need examples of how to rate comics!
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
Yep, ratings are all I need too. In my ‘about’ page I described my comic as “no darker than the darkest stuff in Harry Potter,” but I’m sure someone would still find something extremely dark in that, so... SHRUG
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Does anyone know of any of the big name comics that put trigger warnings or whatnot in their work? I dont read marvel/dc/etc so ive never seen if they took to rating their comics with any type of warnings?
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
I do have kids reading so I want the parents to feel comfortable
DanitheCarutor
Is it weird that I rated my comic based on the level of nudity and lack of sex? Like, "Okay, these people are really naked but not in a sexy way, what is the rating for that?"
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I'm thinking about snot girl rn and idk if their creators do that tbh other than marketed towards adults
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
I read a couple of more-intense things from Image Comics and I’ve never seen any trigger warnings there either
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmm I’m not sure I remember reading Hellboy and not seeing any trigger warnings
carcarchu
krispy, the only time i can recall it is when i read Bradherley's Coach and that was actually put there by the translation team and not the author himself but i will say that the warning was extremely warranted with that one because i consider myself pretty desensitized to traumatic content but even this one really got me with each chapter being traumatic in it's own unique way
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Do they have ratings on the backs of the books like some manga?
Oh wow ty translation team
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Probably! I’m not sure if DarkHorse comics does it but they do have things like nudity and...portrayals of graphic death
carcarchu
if u read it on a website there is some degree of tagging for the content but i don't think that alone could have accurately prepared someone for what the comic explored
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
I think its clear that by these examples we're all already doing better at being responsible for the content we share and produce.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
I hope so I wonder if those big name comics received flak about not having trigger warnings
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I wonder about that too tbh
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Im sure to a degree? But no where near an indie creator would
Which is a whole other topic
carcarchu
i for one would love more tagging options for webcomics
makes it easier to find whatever niche content you're into!
genres alone just dont do it
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
That could work But there’s also a price to pay; less chance to get readers too
carcarchu
why is it less of a chance to get readers?
Nutty (Court of Roses)
I myself am looking at my Punisher comics, and there's no warnings anywhere, but i feel with an antihero like the Punisher, you go in expecting the gore and violence
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
Hmmmmm....I guess my fear is that it’s a double edged sword carcarchu On one hand you can attract the readers you want But on the other hand you can also...possibly drive away readers who are mildly curious Some people need time to get invested in a story
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
I guess some people will just avoid some tags no-questions-asked. Hopefully it’s the small minority that the trigger warning will actually help (in terms of anxiety) and not someone who’s writing off the trigger as problematic and will go on a tirade warning other readers about it. I know it goes both ways
carcarchu
oh i wasn't talking about trigger content tagging specifically
i was talking about stuff like being able to tag for example "witches" or "animals" or "music" whatever is a theme in your comic(edited)
guess it wasnt a logical throughline made sense in my head
eli [a winged tale]
I was looking for a universal way to show trigger warnings and came across this article. https://medium.com/@UntoNuggan/trigger-warnings-101-a-beginners-guide-e9fc90c6ba0a I guess for mine I’m thinking to add body horror and violence the more we go through the story... I do like the part about putting the informed consent power back to the reader’s hands
Nutty (Court of Roses)
I put both Fantasy Violence and Alcohol Use as general warnings for my comic. Alcohol is treated in a complex manner in CoR, both in a humorous light and as a way to cope, but I know there are a lot of folks that are triggered by the presence of alcohol.(edited)
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I will be putting trigger warning in my comic but Ive wanted to write about mental health allegories for a long time as a personal self reflection.
I started to feel braver after seeing other creators boldly write about mental health topics in their comics.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Whispers the webcomic library is an excellent source and tool to find/avoid tags in comics
Luma does an excellent job with archiving the stories there and i hope yall have applied to have ur comics there too!
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
Yes I watch Webcomic library on Twitter, Luma does such a good job curating comics(edited)
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
Same! Highly recommended
carcarchu
i think i follow it on twitter but i don't keep up with it
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
They did these tags for my comic(edited)
carcarchu
maybe i should change that
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Super dedicated and a very great resource for webcomics!!
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
I got these! I originally only put down 'limb loss - leg' but 'limb loss - arm' popped up too, and I'm like "You know... that's kinda true." It's a really good resource!
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
OOoh I should check it out
Webcomic library, right?
carcarchu
what's the difference between independent! and independent
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
...that's a good question and I don't know the answer, haha
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
“Eventual LGBTQ” yes
Nutty (Court of Roses)
I AGREE!! I'm on Webcomic Library too. Mine is tagged as Mobility Aids since Nocturne uses a cane to walk
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
hmmm how do you add your webcomic onto there?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I went thru the process like
you send an email to luma/webcomic libary with a submission form
and she'll add it for u with the tags that are relelated to your comic
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Luma always puts up submission posts too Check out their tumblr/twitter!
DanitheCarutor
I can't imagine how much time it takes Luma to go through all those webcomics! These are the tags they put for mine:(edited)
They've kept it up pretty well in spite of it not being their cup of tea. The only thing I was ever iffy on was the 'sexual nudity' tag since I didn't intend for that but for the nudity to be uncomfortable/awkward, and I don't like the idea of people going into my comic for sexual arousal, but on well. To each their own, also it may be a presentation mistake on my part.
It's funny because I didn't think about one of my MCs being disabled until seeing this, I had to think for a moment before realizing "Oh yeah, I guess ocular albinism is considered a disability."
Kind of an embarrassing realization on my part.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ooo that's a lot of tags
this from my comic
DanitheCarutor
@shadowhood (SunnyxRain) Here is the submission template if you're interested. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q48tZquhmNoGY_lcsE8FkByF614EISk_Pf3YoQKXYWA/edit?usp=sharing
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
probably not much is tagged since lmao it's 2 chapters in
DanitheCarutor
Haaaah yeah, my comic has a lot of... stuff. It'll probably get even bigger once the next two chapters are finished, if Luma is willing to go through them.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
ahhh thank you Time to submit
honestly I don't think there'll be a lot for my webcomic, since I just started lol
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
All a good resource regardless! And a good place to find comics to read!
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
fair enough! Also...uhh....
what's nsfw text?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
oh
snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)
like, not safe for work things being talked about in the text of the comic typically sex stuff i imagine
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
or swearing lmao
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
oh god
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
get ready for a rideeeee
snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)
since someone saying "violence and gore" in the text wouldn't really count as NSFW lol
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
on my sailor ship lolol
DanitheCarutor
Yeah, NSFW text is swearing, slurs, discussion of NSFW subjects, sexual language I'm guessing. In my case it's the former three, at least I assume as much.
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
..........ohhhh boy
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
mine is just my characters speaking without filter
lol
at least for the begining lolol
snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)
but yeah to me the limit for "what to warn people about" is generally dependent on the platform
those are my tags on archive binge
those are my tags on webcomic library (admittedly a bit out of date)
shadowhood (SunnyxRain)
lord almighty(edited)
snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)
on comic fury the only tag I have is high violence (with no nudity, sexual content, or swearing)
on tapas it's a page-by-page thing so I basically add the tag whenever there's blood on-screen
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Nsfw is not swearing like bitch, shit fuck Its more slurs i do believe
Also forgive me for swearing on main lol
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
lol
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
OH DANI SAID IT ALREADY
So yes, what dani said
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
Yeah I was wondering how deep into curse/slur territory it’d have to go
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Gjs has swearing in it but its sailor mouth stuff, not slurs
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
I’ve got fantasy slurs and I drop those RARELY because they still make me feel weird, haha
Dunno if I could ever commit to IRL ones in anything I do
DanitheCarutor
Yeah, I imagine if swears did count it would be how they're used, like if they were said in a derogatory statement and/or bullying.
But yeah, slurs, definitely. Haaaah
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
I don't think I could ever write about racial slurs either. The only touchy topics I will ever write are those I have experienced. Never experienced true racism so if I wrote about it I would feel like I'm faking knowledge of a huge and personal issue for other people
LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)
Same. I leave that to people who can write about it better. Any discrimination I have in my stories is manufactured by the fantasy world and its own unique circumstances. I have some influence from real-world discrimination, but it's its own thing.
DanitheCarutor
Ah but slurs aren't just race, there are also slurs for gender and sexuality. (The -cough- 'T' and 'F' word.)
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
yeah... racial slurs make me uncomfortable, but depends with the fantasy slurs, that could be creative if it's done to show the social issues of that world?(edited)
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I feel like even if you're only using fantasy slurs (speaking as someone whose comic has a use of a fantasy slur...), you need good understanding of what it's like to be on the receiving end of a slur IRL. This isn't to say "you need [this qualification] to be Allowed to use slurs in your fictional work!" but more like, how to make it resonate with the readers in the right ways, how to make it not gratuitous, etc.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ye
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I'm still learning myself. Like, I do have some experience dealing with racism toward me, but 1) it's nothing compared to the truly horrific stuff out there, and 2) even on comparable "levels" my experience could be very, very different from someone else's. All we can do is keep trying, keep learning.
Keep listening.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
I'd had a fair deal of racism and microagression being a native in the US for so long
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
exactly, like I experienced childhood racism about my cultural upbringing. But it's different for other people.(edited)
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
it's something that lmao won't go away but ye we have some different perspectives on how we can go about handling it
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
When I read a work or watch a film, I can tell if the creator has researched well, if it's racism similar to my experiences. It doesn't matter their background. But it'd be a nicer bonus if this came from a POC creator.(edited)
DanitheCarutor
Yeah, based on that I'm probably not the best person to have characters using slurs. While the slur present is gender based, I have a complicated relationship with... everything that isn't white/cis/het. I'm a mixed race (mom's side(very white passing): German Jewish, black Irish, Scottish, Native American. Dad's side: Native American, Spanish, Mexican.), my mom was raised in a church in a tiny town that was totally against non-white people and race mixing, according to her when I was born people would come to the hospital to gawk at me. I've never been called a slur maliciously, but casually and I never noticed it until I was older after everyone naturally stopped. Every experience and memory I have of slurs has been of the "yikes!", "Woah, you really said that." variety, so I kind of project that energy a little bit in my comic. But in the form of a very yikes casually transphobic character.
For clarity on the cis/het thing, my family was also extremely bigoted but would hide it under casual language, so it never sounded queerphobic until you process what they said.
Not related to me, but I understand needing to experience racism to write it, although I think it can still be accomplished well if the person is empathetic and does a ton of research. Kinda like anything else sensitive, you just need to be really educated on the subject.
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I agree with you Dani. Sadly some creators just don't have that empathy and want to write a fantasy token character. I had awkward story conversations before on race. "what do you think about this ambiguous Asian character? I'm thinking of a Japanese name, sounds Asian enough?" I always cringe inside(edited)
Deo101 [Millennium]
I usually bring in other people to write about those things I haven't experienced. Friends, generous volunteers, etc.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I think it's 100% OK to write about things you haven't experienced. I don't think J.K. Rowling experienced being an adolescent male chosen one in a magical college, but she still wrote about it...and made a Hell of a lot of money.
DanitheCarutor
Lol that's why I added in doing research, which I think brainstorming with experienced people counts, you're still educating yourself. I agree with everyone on experience being preferred, although I am on the anti-censorship side with art and storytelling, no matter how cringe it is.
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
ofc i think it's okay, but I personally don't feel comfortable doing it
i even feel a little weird writing male characters
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
If we can only write ourselves and our experiences, we're plain not good writers.
That's my view on the matter.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Again, I don't think any of us is advocating Necessary Qualifications To Even Attempt. This is a much more nuanced topic
I've never been a tall beefy dude, but that's what my MC is.
Never been a parent, but I write parents.
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
Yeah, "make the effort to write this well" is very different from "don't write this"
And there's plenty of people criticizing JKR for how she handles specific topics...
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
yeeeeah....
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Including me.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
JKR is probably not a good example to bring up as a positive example for this topic, simply because of the issues that can REALLY distract from why she's being used as an example.
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
I like writing male character more often since I'm less stressed about writing the opposite gender, I know it's my comfort zone. I based some of the boys on my guy friends and have fun with the story. Though I'm making a difference by insisting on adding women more and pushing for strength and vulnerability.(edited)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
J.K. turned out to be lacking a few brain-cells, but my point is that you can very easily write foreign experiences; every good writer does that all the time (as you all do yourselves!) and I think that extends to writing characters no matter the colour of their skin, sexuality, or gender identity.
DanitheCarutor
True, I haven't seen gatekeeping here, I'm just giving my thoughts on it. A while back on another server I read a conversation where some people were dissing the person who made Magical Boy on Tapas because they're not trans, even though they did a lot of research beforehand. I was kind of reflecting that, but I also empathize with people who feel uncomfortable with people who've never experienced a certain form of oppression writing about it.
Pff I've never been a janitor, but dang it! You can't stop me from having a janitor character!
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Janitors are the coolest guys, I'm telling ye.
Most chill people in the land.
B'ys, they can get along with anyone, I swear.
DanitheCarutor
They're like real life superheroes.
Deo101 [Millennium]
We're not saying not to write other skin tones, gender, etc. Just to be sensitive about it and aware that you can't extrapolate someone else's life experiences from your own, you have to ask
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
there's a difference between writing a janitor and writing a touchy topic like racism. Anyways, even if I was writing a janitor I'd do a ton of research on the job
Deo101 [Millennium]
Sorry I use a cane and I can tell when people didn't ask someone who uses a cane what it's like. It goes the same for a lot of things
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I'm not saying you are saying that! Simply addressing something I've encountered before.
I've used a cane before, though temporarily. It was...a pain in the ass, honestly.
Well, more like a pain in my leg. And my arm.
DanitheCarutor
@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Sorry, I was joking since Keii was talking about writing muscular guys and parents. It would be sad if I didn't know the difference between racism and an occupation. Lol
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
In any case, I don't think that writing somebody of an ethnic minority necessitates much on its own. Delving into racial issues, sure, yeah that requires a lot, but I wouldn't say that of writing the character itself.
I'd say the same of sexuality and gender identity if you're not delving into the respective issues thereof. If you know what you're doing, i don't think there's too much to it.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
@Page, Rambler Extraordinaire! Yeah, I think that's what a lot of us are saying. There is a difference between writing a character who's [this identity] vs writing a story that's all about exploring that identity.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
The latter requires a lot more research, agreed.
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
oh i know @DanitheCarutor , you write a lot of lgbt characters after all. just adding my thoughts, not diagreeing
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
"If you know what you're doing" is the tricky part though
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Well, that's not that difficult in most cases. There is a sea of available literature.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
There's.... the problem of marginalized folks pointing out concerns in a work, and non-marginalized people dismissing their concerns because they don't see the issue.
Deo101 [Millennium]
It's also really easy to ask a person for their real life experience
People are usually, in my experience, more than willing to take some time and answer a few questions.
DanitheCarutor
On the Magical Boy thing, like I said, it wasn't you all, it was people on a different server and I wanted to bring it up since it's related to the topic. To do a more serious comparison, I've never had psychosis or schizophrenia but I'm writing a character like that. I did a lot of research beforehand though, like, A LOT.
Deo101 [Millennium]
Like for disabilities it's very easily to find all kinds of Medical information, but almost no first hand experience is available. So what happens is people are very accurate medically, but then extrapolate what living like that is like and still end up with a disengenuous story
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Surely, there's available literature on the subject? I'm sure that I could find some.
Deo101 [Millennium]
And Dani, same with me and schizophrenia. It's for a future comic, but I've been researching it and interviewing people for years now to be sure I get a story that would at the very least not hurt them
I mean I would think a better resource would be YouTubers with those things, actually.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
For a lot of topics, it's easier to find a firsthand experiencer willing to talk to you than to find some existing literature on the exact thing you didn't know you needed
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yeah like My condition is very rare and the best you could find on it for firsthand experience is like. A forum that's super old and inactive
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
I still remember one review where the person said "I have a certain disability, and I'm sure this author doesn't have it -- but they know someone who does -- because they're describing the visible symptoms with uncanny accuracy, but are guessing all wrong about how it feels/how it affects your life in invisible ways."
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
That's a huge pitfall, I feel. There can be a big sensitive thing that you aren't even aware is a thing; therefore, you don't think to do any research on that facet.
Deo101 [Millennium]
It's really easy to make a post on social media like "hey can I interview people with ___ for a writing project?"
DanitheCarutor
Openness depends on the topic. It's really hard getting people's experiences with certain mental illnesses, also the small number of people suffering from it. I had a really hard time finding people willing to talk about certain things, especially professionals since they usually don't want to talk to you without paying money for it.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
^ That's also a good point.
Deo101 [Millennium]
That's true
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I think we're going back to the purity thing. You can't expect someone to truly represent the "invisible ways" it affects you very well considering they're...invisible.
Deo101 [Millennium]
You can ask
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
But I would definitely recommend trying to reach out to people with firsthand experience, and seeing if that's an option.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
I've been able to shoot emails off to professors before for questions. They're usually happy to answer a question or two.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
This is not at all like the purity thing IMO.
DanitheCarutor
A decent resource I found was a mental health forum, you have to get accepted to join, but it's basically everyone talking about their experiences with being mentally ill or being a volunteer for mental health care centers. Unfortunately there aren't any psychologists on the forum... Just nurses and caregivers on the non-ill side.
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
Again, there's a spectrum here...there's all kinds of possibilities between "how dare your extensive research have a single imperfection" and "wow, you didn't even try".
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Yeah, and it's not even a single lane spectrum! It's very complex and multifaceted/multilayered
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
And we're talking about this for marginalized people, but it can apply to any group/culture/situation you're not part of -- just look at any story where a European writer has an American character drive across the US in a couple hours
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
Lmaoooo
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Or americans write Germans getting lost in their woods.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Alright, multilayered? How so? It's a spectrum from "B'y, you're writing about a black man in the 1700s being exalted in America" to "Why am I reading this ethnic studies textbook?"
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
Naw mate, pick a direction and you‘ll find a street or at least marked trail in half an hour.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Okay, I can't answer that without draining my energy reserve for the next 20 weeks
DanitheCarutor
Lmao! As dumb as it sounds, something like that can also apply to animals. Like the thing Disney did with lemmings, and how Jaws portrayed sharks which caused this spike in shark hunting because everyone thought they were these monsters.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
Would it be possible to summarize?
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
We've talked about a bunch of different aspects already -- like, how well did you research the medical symptoms vs. how well did you represent the day-to-day experience
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
No (at least for me), precisely because it's so complex and multilayered.
RebelVampire
This is a good convo and I am happy everyone has remained civil. That being said, I kind of feel it's gone a bit off-topic for an extended time regarding this week's question
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
it's hard to know what's worth a mature tag or not when even the websites themselves are vague. I started off with a character having the trait of cursing a lot, but then dropped that as i became paranoid of wts content guidelines
but i've gotten a decent audience since then and wts hasn't deleted my pages or anything so(edited)
i have no idea what the line is
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Webtoons is extra mysterious
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
I host my own stuff, so I just put warnings up when a specific storyline is going to be more intense than the comic's average
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
because their comment system will auto censor words like "vague" (it becomes "***ue" or something like that) so you'd think they really don't want ANY cursing?
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
yes! that has happened to me
Deo101 [Millennium]
Su***ious
Is one I see a lot
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
someone commented "sperm" on my pages once so i know wt doesn't censor that at least
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
...is that why the kids these days are just saying "sus" now
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
******in's Creed
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
i don't understand what is the swear in suspicious?
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
lmao
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
It's a racial slur in some regions
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
ohhhh
i know what you mean
yeah rip
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
An auto-censor like that just makes a normal discussion forum seem 100x more scandalous/insulting than it actually is...
Deo101 [Millennium]
I got used to talking around then from mmo games ahahaha
Those chats that squelch you if you say one curse or something close to it by accident
But! On topic, I think asking whether something is too mature is a good idea, having a kind of beta audience or sensitivity reader kind of thing.
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
I think it's fine to make your own judgment calls as long as you're consistent, so readers know the same things will be reliably warned for
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
a beta reader wouldn't neccessarily know more about wt than me though
when it comes to blurry content guidelines that is
might help with mature or triggering content
because your tolerance might be different from other people's
Deo101 [Millennium]
Oh I mean like "hmmm I think this is a bit much. Do you think this is a bit much?"
And they go "na this seems like pg 13 to me." Or "hmmm I think it could probably freak someone out you might wanna lightly warn."
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
it's a blurry line because sometimes an arm getting ripped off stylishly is less triggering than a realistic depiction of like, a fingernail being ripped off
just gotta go by feeling, i suppose
Deo101 [Millennium]
Yep
Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)
I agree that this is a case where there's no reason to think a beta reader has better judgment than you have yourself
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
yeah my friends are all like me
DanitheCarutor
WTs is weird. I used to have my comic up there totally uncensored, they featured it on the front page for about a month, but when someone flagged the nudity they wouldn't put the pages back up. Like... you think they would have known already? The nude scene is within the first 20 pages.
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
and don't think much of gore and swearing and such
fuck dani don't say that you're making me paranoid again
RebelVampire
Classic it only takes one person to ruin something for everyone else
DanitheCarutor
@Eightfish (Puppeteer) From what I've seen of your nude scenes, I don't think anyone will really notice. I didn't even notice until you brought it up one time on here... or maybe it was in the Webcomic Updates server.
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
i hope so but as rebel said only takes one staff member
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Can i just chime in to say that the auto censoring with what y'all have said about WT really turns me off from that platform. Not into a site having that power, regardless of who uses it. It's like we said here, be responsible with your work with tags, but that extra hand in the pot makes me think of tumblr style censors and im not a fan.
Does tapas do that too?
Deo101 [Millennium]
Webtoon doesn't really have tags, it just has a toggle for a series being mature
They both do
So they don't get removed from app stores
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Ye i guessed as much
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Tapas has this feature that lets creators tag individual episodes as mature. BUT there is an additional layer -- if your comic is too mature even with the mature tag, they're forced to hide it from their iOS app, due to Fruit Company regulations.
DanitheCarutor
WT is trash, and the reader base is made up of children, don't go there! Tapas is pretty alright, they're fine with my comic being uncensored there, and they don't censor comments.
Yeah, there's what Keii said about the Apple app too.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
And it's up to Fruit Company to determine whether it's too mature or not. (Mine is too mature because of body hair, and I was told they'd put it back on the app if I erased the body hair in a specific episode)
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Still not a fan of that kind of censorship. And i agree with dani
Eightfish (Puppeteer)
ohh yeah i remember that body hair thing kei
DanitheCarutor
Oh crap, were we not supposed to name drop the app?
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Excuse me body hair
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Webtoons on the other hand will straight up remove any too mature episodes across all of their platform...s (site, iOS, android) if Google says "this is too mature"
Deo101 [Millennium]
I don't think it's censorship, it's more not allowing certain things on your platform
They're not saying you can't make it just that you can't post it there
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
It is censorship U cant post ur piece in its intended form
Like....body hair Wtf
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I think that depends on how you define censorship
In any case, it's definitely not ideal.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
That is so .... Like Way to show what standards they want
DanitheCarutor
Gah the body hair thing. Thinking about it, I never got contacted by Tapas about my comic's mature content, but they probably knew trying to censor it would be a lost cause. Lol They probably just threw straight off the app.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
That's horrible Dani
DanitheCarutor
Naah, I don't mind. It's still allowed on the desktop site, and that's the only version I use so it's like nothing ever happened.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Still a gross move on their part. Not enthused with the passion to appease app stores with removing content that isn't 'suitable', but that is a diff convo.
DanitheCarutor
As one last derailing bit, if you're ever looking for a hosting site, Comicfury is the best for mature and adult work. They don't censor ANYTHING! Except hate-speech.
FeatherNotes(Krispy)
Oh i keep seeing more and more talk about that! Can i ask u more about it in shop talk?
DanitheCarutor
Sure, go ahead! I'll answer to the best of my abilities.
Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)
Wow
Just caught up
Back to the warnings thing...(edited)
In my experience, there are certain reasonable leaps in seriousness in comics, and other times when it appears jarring and out of nowhere, but in that case, I think it's simply bad writing, unless of course, it's a genre like horror.
But I think an author deciding to put content warnings should be up to the author on a case by case basis.
There are simply too many variables to come up with specific ground rules
As an example, I have a scene later on in my comic where a child dies. I don't show how it happens, but I was planning on showing the body afterwards. Nothing too gruesome, but definitely some broken bones. And I have been told completely opposite things, that it should be okay because I'm not showing the actual death, and on the other side, that showing the body at all is terrible, and I shouldn't do it. My concern is... If I don't show the body, how will the readers know that the child is dead? And how will I show the reactions of the other characters? It's just too complicated and specific of an issue to rely on general guidelines.
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
B'ys, the real answer is to stop writing webcomics altogether! I'm telling ye! no webcomic, no problem!
I mean, sure, we'll be bereft of artistic output and dreams will be crushed...but hey, less stuff to do. Silver lining.
Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)
what you mean most of us has made somewhat a living doing comics lol(edited)
Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)
Lol, I want to make comics so uhhhhh???
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
Aw...That sounds sad but depends how the body is presented? I mean I've seen mystery games with afew dead characters? Not a child yet.(edited)
Sometimes I've seen Anime do a light censorship by showing a bloodied child's shoe or gloves, or an arm but it can be disturbing(edited)
Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)
It's just that... dead children is a sensitive topic
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Yeah, a limp arm is what I often see
DanitheCarutor
I think it's because showing dead children is considered taboo? Like some games where you can kill other characters won't give you the ability to kill children, as well as movies that show character deaths won't show a child's death. It might be too insensitive for some people because children are innocent, and many people have had/are having kids, so showing them might be extra upsetting? At least that's what I assume is the reason behind someone saying not to show the child's death.
Ah, didn't notice Cronaj already said it in much fewer words.
snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)
Ah yes, that reminds me that there are places where I put up different warnings than what the comic has - my side stories. Since my side stories are often ways for me to explore different styles of storytelling than the comic proper, they can often have different themes. Off the top of my head - one side story I wrote had a warning for cussing, one had a warning for descriptions of violence against a child, and one had a warning for getting in a bit deep into a character's PTSD. (oddly enough, both of those latter warnings were in reference to the same character, just with a time gap of a few years. though the PTSD in the one story involved a completely different event than the violence depicted in the other story. pejiba's had it rough)
Page, Rambler Extraordinaire!
@Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!) , @Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) , I was making a joke. :p
sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)
I think the worst thing I'm going to show visually is a dead body and the whole story is about there being a dead body so I don't feel the need for any additional internal content warnings. I think my rule of thumb is just not to show anything that would be more shocking or upsetting than the premise of the comic would have you expect, and to have all warnings at the outset.
I agree with snuffysam's approach to separating darker and scarier content into side stories with their own content warnings or at least I would take a similar approach myself. It's okay to make stories that depict difficult topics but I think it's better not to disrupt the flow of a more lighthearted story if it can be avoided. Exploring difficult topics outside of the main story is a good solution to that
sagaholmgaard
I put a content warning the first time there was some violence and blood in my comic, since the previous pages had been mostly cute so I figured it was warranted. I'm coming up to the second time something potentially triggering happens- a guy gets killed 'on screen', but I don't think it's rendered in a worse way than the first time so I'm considering whether it's good to warn every time a scene like this comes up or if the first warning is enough to readers to have opted out if they dont want that sort of content
chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]
I had a read-up on age ratings and found out Nyx+Nyssa would fall under PEGI-16 due to realistic violence towards human characters, and will simply stick a 16+ sign into the corner of my page, which links to a conscience explanation why.
Desnik
So recently I've joined a writer's group and they ask people to stick warnings upfront so that readers can opt out of reading something that will upset them. I've found that it's helpful to warn for things that cause certain phobias, religious criticism, and minority experiences depicted w/o a sensitivity reader's guidance. I would also warn for drugs/alcohol usage since reading about that kind of experience can be a trigger for addictions.
I don't tend to write about anything super visceral but when reading I know I appreciate warnings about certain types of gore or violence
I think it's beneficial to be extremely specific with tags because for some reason YA-rated stuff can be very violent (so that makes age-based ratings completely nonsensical). Also not every story is going to treat serious issues with the same gravity so I think it's helpful to mention if some aspect is being treated in a melodramatic/unrealistic manner on purpose.(edited)
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
Like a standard comic might take say... 10 pages or more. Webtoon tends to shorten this roughly by half. Or by the 3rd or 4th episode, that major plot point happens.(edited)
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
I feel "have a natural flow" is easier said than done, and also can mean very different things for different stories, and even different readers responding to one story.
(Maybe we should move this to shop talk as it's not relevant to this week's topic?)
Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]
oh this is in shop talk? ok, I thought creator babble was relevant to this.
keii’ii (Heart of Keol)
Nah, creator babble, if I understand it correctly, is specifically for weekly questions. This week's question is about content warnings
AntiBunny
My story is heavily inspired by film noir, so I think the occasional burst of violence should be expected.
#ctparchive#comics#webcomics#indie comics#comic chat#comic discussion#creator interview#comic creator interview#creator babble#comic tea party#ctp
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(part 1) this is random but something im curious about is do you think the next few years will see a radical shift in more lead lgbt couples in shows? i feel like when supernatural started it was all about subtext/queerbating between characters we would never see canon (maybe), the last few years have seen an update in more side lgbt characters/couples and while not a lot, more main lgbt characters then we had before. I don't know if tumblr/twitter fandom translates to general audience...
Yeah, I mean, the only way is up. I feel lucky that I managed to encounter a fair amount of queer content in my formative years, whether targeted programming on TV, or taking the route of not really differentiating the perceived cultural value of independent media like webcomics and webnovels etc from the mass media as I was young enough to naturally grow up on the internet as the internet itself was growing up and web 2.0 was pretty much taking off alongside my use of the internet. And that I had liberal parents who didn’t regulate our internet, and lived in a community where culturally I didn’t really fear being discovered casually accessing all this like in particularly this terrifying seeming evangelical christian community in America.
Which really makes me feel like A: everyone should feel that comfortable in themselves via the media as I did as a mass accessible thing or B: that the world at large should be soaked in as much representation and more that I encountered as a curious teen because at the very least it did me no harm and at best helped handhold me through an awful lot.
And then brings us to the problem that the world isn’t actually like that and for a lot of people their media is restricted one way or another, from everything such as the era of social media weirdly making us much LESS broadly travelled on the internet as I was back in the day (SO many bookmarks - I had like 100 that I would check either daily or on their weekly update schedule, with enough habit that I had pretty much memorised it all without using an RSS feed or just following everyone’s twitter and waiting for update announcements, never mind the vast pit of things which I occasionally checked to see if their sporadic but very worth it updates had occurred somewhere in the last month/year) to the vastly overwhelming amount of media accessible to us. It seems almost to flood the market and creates this panic about watching the worthiest shows and campaigning for them and raising awareness and the FOMO and how things slip by and zomg you have to watch this that and the other, when even just making this list on Netflix now contains more hours of TV than a human lifetime and also one liable to disappear from the service at some point or another without warning.
And then on top of that you have the absolute cultural monoliths that if you’re not going to have a cohesive culture - which now includes the entire population of the world because of our connectivity on the internet and mass-joining of services - based around smaller shows and stuff, then at the very least everyone is going to watch anything under the main Disney umbrella, other superhero flicks, animated things, and all the really big studio franchises and remakes, as well as a few TV monoliths which manage to get enough people talking to make it seem like “everyone” (again - these days it seems like that’s presumed to be the entire western world plus everywhere else these things air) are watching, like Game of Thrones or whatever… THESE properties are the inescapable ones and on that basis they’re the things we have to lean on the most for representation and then again barely get any, when it comes to gender and sexuality, due to them shooting for such worldwide markets that they can’t imply gay people exist to censors in places such as China. And it exposes the cultural awfulness inherent just in getting a white female character in the lead role of some things, or the absolute garbage fire lurking underneath that if you dare have a black stormtrooper or make one of your female ghostbusters black when you’re already ruining the childhoods of so many how dare…
In those respects, having side characters who aren’t even major well-known superheroes or jedis or ghostbusters or whatever also be gay (because even well-known lesbian Kate McKinnon didn’t manage to get her ghostbuster to be canonically gay even if we All Knew) would be absolutely groundbreaking, even if it was, like, a role that could be snipped out for the Chinese market or something. And that’s probably exactly what would happen, and cue ensuing riot from whichever fandom, along with everyone rightly pointing out that even for us who got to watch it it was still a tiny side character… I mean Disney is still at the stage of what they did with Beauty and the Beast’s ~canonical gay character~
So yeah… that’s thrown back to TV and smaller movies to lead the way and because the generations showing most likely the real global percentages but actually just the young western world stats on queerness in any form (like… 25% instead of 1% or whatever and that’s STILL probably too low) are still teens to young adults. The previous gayest generation above them are still just arriving in power and settling in, and the excellent changes we already have from the generation before that is what we are seeing now... But given THEIR cultural context, even their best can still seem to younger eyes, moderate and not generally placing queer characters in lead roles except in niche or indie or otherwise “acceptable” places to take those risks. I think change is always coming and culturally each generation being more open and accepting that the last is really making changes and so on, hopefully things WILL change rapidly and what was the common state of affairs in the sort of indie media I consumed as a teen will be the mainstream soon because a lot of those creators 10 years later are kicking off…
All that said, TV in the mainstream is still controlled by Mark Pedowitz types exercising their power over the Bobos who have their Wayward Sisters pitches with the clearly labelled main character for the main teen demographic being queer. The culture is very much that we’re now pretty open and can happily have queer characters, but the main characters are still largely held separate. A good example is Riverdale, which is on the CW, a newer show with writers such as Britta Lundin, who is young, queer, and wrote a novel blatantly based on being a Destiel shipper and fan interacting with the cast and crew in fandom spaces, and whose first solo episode of Riverdale featured a looooot of the gay stuff (yay).
But while she’s a story editor and writer for the show and can use it as a platform for writing stories for its audience using a whole range of canonically queer characters, the show still keeps all 4 of its mains at a strict remove from this. Cheryl can come out as a lesbian in the second season after a lil ho yay in the first but no clearly marked storyline about her identity, but even though Betty and Veronica kissed in the first episode it was blatant fan service (for Cheryl in-story, lol) and mostly just set the tone that they are the sort of seemingly straight girls kissing for attention while having strong romantic or physical attraction to guys. In the second season the kiss comes up again in joking that Jughead and Archie are the only ones of the main 4 who haven’t kissed, Archie gets one planted on him by a dude as a “judas kiss” moment of betrayal in season 3 and he and Jug are teased that they were expected to get together because they were close but in the same sort of homophobic undercurrent tones as early Destiel snarking from side characters, seemingly less about their relationship and more to unsettle them with implications… I mean it was a complicated moment but in the long run it didn’t seem entirely pleasant to me, especially given the overall emotional state they were in and later plot etc etc. (My mum is 1000% invested in Riverdale now as a former Archie Comics reader as a kid so this is now my life too as I was in the room when my brother callously exposed her to it, hi :P)
Anyway that’s just one case study but aside from SPN it’s probably the most mainstream teen demographic thing I watch… Other examples would be things like B99 which had Rosa come out as bi and that’s awesome, and made us all cry a lot, but Jake, the clear main character even in a very strong and well-treated ensemble, has a great deal of bi subtext, there’s no way given Andy Samberg’s apparent habit of ad-libbing MORE progressive jokes that he’d ever be intentionally harming people if that’s how his brain works (you know, like other people quick-fire offensive stuff from their mouth working faster than brain sense of humour :P). But at the same time for all Jake’s quipping about crushes and such and the fact the show clearly knows how to be sensitive to bisexuality with Stephanie Beatriz being a strong advocate, just because Jake’s the main character and adorably married to Amy. In NO WAY can that be threatened because they’re SO GOOD, so there’s STILL uncertainty that this will pay off in the same special episode “I love my wife but I am bi” kinda way that seems obvious that could just be said. We all carry on without it affecting anything because obviously Jake’s found his soulmate so we don’t mess with that but they should know it’s important to clarify it… Even with B99′s track record, I’m nervous solely because Jake’s the main character and main characters tend not to get self-exploratory arcs about latent queerness and ESPECIALLY not if they’re happily married. If ANY show was going to do it right and trailblaze in this exact era it would be them, but… gyah :P
Anyway I guess the conclusion right now is that the more mainstream you are the more uncertain it feels, but we are right at that cliff edge, especially with shows putting in SOME of the work. If B99 doesn’t get us there (or the Good Place where they’ll happily confirm Eleanor is bi in interviews but I believe she hasn’t said it outright on the show despite clearly showing attraction to female characters, again, the denials we know so well in SPN fandom reflect a wider audience view of dismissing this stuff as jokes and not reflective of character feeling and identification without a Special Episode dedicated to confirming it >.>) then we’re very clearly on the cusp of SOME mainstream or massively well-known show doing it at least once in a meaningful way that has an Ellen-style cultural impact on TV writing.
Let’s make it a goal for 2019 or 2020, and hope that a NEW show with a canonically queer main from the start is pitched and becomes a mainstream hit in the next 5… Still got a ways to go before Disney level mainstream but again there IS work going pushing the envelope, especially if we get a movie of a franchise such as idk Further Legends of Korra, or Steven Universe or something else that’s massively pushed the envelope with sexuality or gender for their main character on the small screen in the experimental petri dish they’ve had there for children’s TV. Something that would force Disney to blink about a lesbian princess or Star Wars to let Finn and Poe kiss or Marvel to let Steve and Bucky hold hands or something in order to remain relevant.
Once the Big Cultural Monoliths get in on it, I expect culture as a whole to first of all react quickly on the small screen, but honestly I’ve been waiting for them to snap pretty much my whole life since adolescence and they’re taking such wee tiny baby steps, and some factors are enormous geopolitical awfulness, that the story as a whole is unpredictable and we can only really hope that things don’t slow down.
(Where this affects SPN is just impossible to say right now, given its almost unique position in this mess due to longevity vs fandom vs almost entirely new generation of writers’ room)
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SILENT ERA CINEMA
Silent Era Cinema is the instrumental studio project of Ottawa songwriter and composer Kris Ward (KW), who has been active in the past in bands like By The Lights and Right By Midnight. We caught up with Kris, who is hot off the heels of releasing EP-02, and discussed his influences, scoring a film, and his plans for the future.
VITALS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silenteracinema/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/silenteracinema
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJBedLq4VB7R5oBb3NGsNrQ
Latest Release: EP-02 (EP, September 2018)
Upcoming shows:
Stay tuned!
SA: How did Silent Era Cinema come to be?
KW: Believe it or not, this project came to be as a result of my day job. Ha! How very anti-rock and roll isn’t it? But it’s the truth. I was fairly active in music for nearly two decades, but recent years have found me in said full time job, a house, kids etc. Domesticated. That left me with a bit of a void creatively. Music has always been a big part of my life, especially the creation of music. I can be having a bad day, or week even, but if I can write a song or idea my whole outlook can shift. So there I was at my day job wondering where I was headed musically. I decided one day to search for some instrumental music to listen to while I worked and up popped Tycho’s album Dive. And that was it! I was hooked. I ended up buying his entire catalog within a few days and was just completely into instrumental music. Ended up watching some live videos of his and was blown away by the idea that all of these sounds I was hearing was, and could be, created by a full band (well his later stuff anyway) and thought to myself, “I think I can do this!” That’s how it all started. I started writing guitar and keyboard parts in my little home-studio I have and built it up from there. By early 2018, I had released my first 4-song EP and now here we are fall 2018, releasing a follow-up 2 song EP, complete with a vocalist on one of the tracks. I’ve found my way to be creative at my own pace and have that outlet, while also having a project I really enjoy doing.
SA: What bands, musicians or artists would you cite as the biggest influences on your sound?
KW: Without a doubt my biggest influence has been Tycho, not only because he was the first artist of this genre I discovered, but just because of how in-depth he gets into his songs. I follow him on social media and love watching his stories and videos on how he creates his sounds and builds up his songs. I’m also really into Bonobo and Jon Hopkins. Hopkins in particular is a bit more electronic than I would like to be, but his music is great. His album Opalescent has been on repeat in my headphones quite a bit. I also just downloaded some Aphex Twin that I’m currently listening to. I’ve always been a fan of instrumental rock music (post-rock?) as well. Mogwai is amazing. One of those bands that I find keep getting better and better. I thought Every Country’s Son was an absolutely fantastic record. So there’s a lot of stuff I listen to that really helps influence what I’m doing with my own project. I actually just decided to randomly pick up a Caribou record Our Love a few weeks back, it’s awesome!
SA: Thus far in the project’s lifetime, what has been your biggest success?
KW: I think the fact that this is even at a point where I have two releases under my belt is a huge success. When I decided to start writing this kind of music, I sat down with absolutely no idea how to do it. In the 20 years I’ve been playing and writing music I’ve always been a guitar in hand with pen and paper verse-chorus kind of songwriter. This completely changed everything. I had to up my creative levels, I had to write a bunch of different parts and pieces, I had to up my production knowledge, learn new studio and micing techniques and learn how to mix my own songs. It’s been challenging but so rewarding at the same time. With this second EP, I remember listening back to the masters and thinking, “You know what? This sounds great!” I’m happy with my own work and enjoying listening to my own compositions, so I’d say that’s a pretty big success.
SA: On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have faced, and how have you dealt with it?
KW: I don’t look at things as a big challenge anymore. More like some small obstacles to overcome. And I just try and tackle them one at a time as they come along. Obviously being on your own, working out of your own home studio, it’s a challenge to stay on track. Sometimes it’s a challenge to force myself to go into the studio and start writing. But I try not to be too hard on myself. I used to be really hard on myself, force things, but not anymore. If I need a night, or even week off, I take it. I think the music that’s created is all the better for it. I knew for this second release I wanted some vocals on one of the songs, but that idea of bringing in other people and their schedules starts getting daunting. But I reached out to Krystal, gave her the song, arranged a time in the following month to record it, and it just came together really well with absolutely no pressure at all. For the next EP, I’d love to incorporate a drummer into the mix, but not sure that will happen. I’m also tossing around the idea of taking this live, not sure how I will do that either yet. It will definitely be a challenge for sure, but I figure I will tackle it one thing at a time.
SA: How do you approach the song-writing process?
KW: I don’t really have a set approach on how I write the music, all I do know is I try to avoid your typical format (intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, end). It’s just not really of interest to me anymore. It’s not to say I can’t appreciate a good song, but as a writer I’ve really enjoyed pushing my own boundaries a lot. It’s been a lot of fun and I think that’s what I try and do for the most part, just keep it fun. For a lot of the songs on the first EP, I actually started with just one riff, be it a beat, keys or guitar riff etc. and then just picked a random time length for the song and wrote a song using that riff in the amount of time I gave myself. For this latest release, I wanted to have a song that had some vocals on it, and I wanted the songs to be a bit darker in tone too. So it’s really just a matter of throwing ideas at the recording program and listening back and seeing what sticks. I’ve started coming up with ideas for my next EP I’m hoping to have out either end of 2018 or start of 2019, and I know I want it to be more guitar focused, but we’ll see what happens.
SA: What are your thoughts on the Ottawa music scene, in particular surrounding the instrumental style of music of this project?
KW: I’m actually so new to this genre and type of music I don’t know too many other artists that are of this style. I really need to go out I guess. I’m sure they exist and it would be nice to network and meet musicians that are creating in the same spirit I am. I also want to reach out to other types of artists and creators and collaborate on some stuff together, maybe score a video for them, or come up with some visuals for a live show I hope to put together in the future. It’s funny you know, I’ve been making music in this city for 20 years, but this is one of the first times I’ve been in a project where I’m not at all concerned with what’s going on around me. I think when you’re in a really active band (especially when you’re younger) you have a bit of a competitive edge to you and you want to get where everyone else is, but the thing is you don’t take into account that there are a TON of external factors that result in someone’s success that have nothing to do with work ethic and talent. The music industry is mostly about being the right place at the right time with the right people to hook you up. I used to get hung up on that, but now that I’m older I just really couldn’t care about any of that stuff anymore. I figure I’ll put some music out, see if I can play some shows and if people like it great, and if they don’t that’s ok too. The scene itself, at least from what I can tell, looks like it’s doing great! Lots of cool new venues popping up, some cool shows coming to town. New local bands getting chances to play festivals and open for more established acts, it’s great. I’m happy for those bands, end up checking them out and find some local bands I really enjoy! Like No Mistakes In Space, their latest EP is awesome! So to me as somewhat an outsider, or at least not as involved as a I used to be, it seems like it’s really thriving and there’s some top quality music coming out!
SA: For someone who hasn’t heard your music before, what is the ideal situation in which to listen to your music?
KW: Hmmmmm, tough one. I’m not sure to be honest. Some people have mentioned that my music is a bit more chill electronic, so maybe when you’re relaxing at home with a drink in hand and just listening to tunes? I think some of it is cool for that nighttime drive as well, when you’re heading out on the town on a Saturday night. It’s maybe not the music you listen to at the club when you’re dancing, but maybe when you’re driving to your destination under the city lights?
SA: If you could score any film, historically or to be released, which would it be and why?
KW: Another tough one! I don’t know to be honest. I really like soundtracks or scores to Ryan Gosling movies for some reason. Whatever I may think of him as an actor, the music and scores in some of his films are great. Loved Drive, both movie and soundtrack. Wasn’t a big fan of Blade Runner 2049 as a movie, but really cool score. I also REALLY liked the score for the Superman movie Man Of Steel. But for arguments sake, although I know there’s a ton of movies out there, let’s go with Drive with Ryan Gosling. But if you asked me again in 20 minutes, that would probably change.
SA: You have the chance to sit down for a meal with three musicians, dead or alive. Who are they, and why?
KW: Man, three tough questions in a row! Wow. Each tougher than the last. Well first up, I’d definitely love to sit down with Scott Hansen from Tycho just because of the impact his music has had on me in the last few years. He’s just so knowledgeable and seems like a really nice guy. It’d be great to “shop talk” with him on music, guitar effects, keys, recording, creating beats, writing music etc. Moving into the rock realm that I grew up in/with, I’d say Richard Ashcroft. I am a MASSIVE fan of The Verve (more so their early stuff pre-Bittersweet Symphony) and I think it would be great to have a pint and hear some stories of the band. He definitely has that rockstar persona but I think one on one you could probably have some really great conversations with him. I think the last guy, sticking with the brit-pop I grew up with, would be Liam Gallagher. He just seems like he’d be a riot. Plus he loves popping into pubs and having some pints with people. Can’t go wrong with that. He always came across as stand-offish, but I feel like if you saw him in the street and offered to buy him a pint he’d take you up on it. PLUS THE STORIES he has… I can’t even imagine. Again though that’s my answer right now, I feel like if you asked me this question again in an hour I might have 2-3 different people. I think a younger me would have answered with the “advice on how to make it” reply, but that’s so far away from my goals now.
SA: What comes next for Silent Era Cinema in 2018, and beyond? We wish you all the best, and good luck!
KW: I’d like to just keep making and putting out music. The third EP is entering the beginning stages. I’d like to collaborate with other artists maybe making videos or YouTube content and eventually I’d like to take this project live with the help of some other musicians. So we’ll see! Just taking everything one small step at a time.
#silenteracinema#tycho#mogwai#ottawa#interview#gatineau#newmusic#livemusic#aphextwin#bonobo#liam gallagher#richard ashcroft#nomistakesinspace
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the magnificent @sabraeal got me, :3 :3
1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?
It’s from an unfinished short story I wrote back in 2014: It was awful business working in the Lion’s Hoarde Inn. I think I just enjoyed the sound of it, (:
2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/favorites, follows/subscriptions, visitor hits, kudos)
Some Nights, my first Teen Wolf fic. People really love pack mom!Stiles, apparently lol.
3. What is your FFnNet/AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?
O PUREST ONE. It’s from a fanart I’m still chipping away at. Because: it made @superhappybubbleslove go WAAAAHHHHHH MY HEAAARRRRTT and I enjoy making wonderful people suffer! :D
4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?
Things are about to get real lengthy, so...
@sabraeal, of course, is a dream come true, and is currently back at it with her long reviews, and BE STILL MY HEART. @superhappybubbleslove kicks ass every Saturday with her amazingness (and often is the only, or one of the only ones, to comment on a very particular thing that i really loved about a story or art, and i always fist pump whenever she does that hahaha) @claudeng80 has given me some of my favorite comments, EVER, and I often have to take a day or more to process my emotions before I can actually respond coherently haha, I GET VERY EXCITED, OKAY. @hidetheremote is one of my most faithful and kind and generous commenters, I am always thrilled to receive them and she’s been showering me with encouragement since the beginning, so she has a VERY special place in my heart! I have a few commenters on my ot3 things that are incredibly kind, or people who have bookmarked/kudo’d almost all of them, and while I do not believe I know their tumblr handles, but I would sell my first born for you. :| special shout out to @vfordii and @stuffaeamade and @raediation who are always SO supportive of my obizenyuki feels hahaha! @youseimanami is a one woman cheer squad and AMAZING, so kind and so so sweet, and her comments always feel SO genuine, they just make my heart get all swelled up and fuzzy and warm, I love her! I know I’m forgetting people, but I LOVE YOU ALL, YOU ARE ALL MY FAVORITES D;
5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?
I cycle through over time. There are a lot of older, long fics in other fandoms that I occasionally go back to when I need a pick-me up lol. Currently, there is I KID YOU NOT a south park kenny/kyle fic that I’m in love with and have read 2-3 times in the last couple months since I first read it and I WILL PROBABLY INDULGE AGAIN, SOON. (gold digger, IT IS AMAZING, OKAY)
6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?
I actually never figured out how to subscribe! 8D I have 86 bookmarks, but it should be more. I went through a year long period I think where I never signed into ao3 lol.
7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?
MAGIC. In some form or another lol.
8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)
163 user subscriptions, and 2604 bookmarks. (some nights has 1912 bookmarks all on its own, okay, teen wolf is a v v large ocean of a fandom haha)
9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)
N O P E, i have no shame filter 8D .....ok, wait, the a/b/o one because it’s omega!obi and i’ve been a tad leery of the response i may receive for how very, uh, not your usual obiyuki dynamic in bed i want to make it. >_>
10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.
Hn, yes and yes and yes and yes. My big thing is: I want to learn how to finish lengthier things. I got into fandom to try and do that, and it’s my goal for this year, especially.
11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?
Rarepairs, I think! Even when I write popular ships I usually write them in the less popular fashion haha. But mostly, I just write whatever I want, which is often a myriad of different pairings!
12. How many stories have you posted on FFNet/AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?
13 stories on ffnet, and a few of those were also on my livejournal. I don’t have an exact number for livejournal, but it’s over 100. I’ve started moving some of those fics from my livejournal to ao3, now, so I’m up to 40. Only 23 of my ao3 stories aren’t also on livejournal at this moment lol. And there are a couple of things on tumblr I haven’t moved onto ao3 yet.
13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?
I am unwilling to go down that dark and dangerous path. :|
14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?
I try and write down whatever jumps in my head, because I WILL forget things, otherwise. But I’ll spend days mulling over an idea, sometimes, before I am able to sit down and write it.
15. Have you ever co-authored a story?
Back in eljay days I wrote stories with other people on occasion. Sometimes it was just writing comment fic back and forth at each other. Or writing different scenes in the same universe that went together. Nothing big.
16. How did you discover FFNet/AO3?
I know I stumbled on ffnet myself, but I don’t remember for ao3. O: Pretty certain someone told me about it, but when I had livejournal I didn’t really use anything else.
17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on FFNet/AO3?
Hm, I’ve never been a widely popular anything, though I was lucky enough to have some excellent fans on eljay, who would jump fandoms with me just because they wanted to read my stuff. And folk who were incredibly kind and generous with their praise no matter how many random things I churned out haha. I’ve always been thrilled if there’s just ONE person who enjoyed a story I put out! I’m pretty easy to please!
18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?
My darlings!
19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?
Anyone who writes is an inspiration to me. I see people putting up fic and publishing novels, and I go I WANT TO DO THAT, UGH. Because I’ve always been a writer, ever since I was teeny, and have never stopped wanting to do it. I’ve always been in love with words, and stories. (As I’m sure many others can relate: I used to get in trouble in elementary school because I would read as I walked, and it was EARLY elementary school, where you had to walk in lines with your class because they were afraid they were gonna lose you, and I could read while I walked because I would just follow whoever was in front of me to wherever we were going haha)
20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?
It’s 100% okay if you write something, and you’re really proud of it, and you go back later -- a week, a day, a month, two years, whatever -- and think: THIS IS THE WORST. That doesn’t ever really go away, because as creators we are constantly evolving and looking to improve, and often times something that is actually quite solid and gives many readers joy will be a thing that you facepalm over, later. Use that to keep writing, and try to remember that you are most definitely your own worst critic. At the end of the day, keep doing this thing because you love it. Your work IS worthy, even when you think it should be set on fire and scattered across the deepest ocean never to be seen again!
21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?
A combo! Sometimes, especially for shorter things, I just get an idea, and sometimes I just think about it for a little while, and then I open a doc and I just go to town until it’s finished. Other times I start off by writing out the thoughts and building off of that, and sometimes I slip into actually writing it and then back to outlining. USUALLY I start writing a thing because I have a tiny spark of an idea, or a situation/concept I find interesting, and I have no idea where it’s going, and I just write to see what happens, and THEN I start plotting things out as I go, which can be one of the MOST frustrating ways to write a story. Anything big I’ve ever written (and I’ve written several drafts of several novels) starts out like this, where I have a random idea and I sit down and I write out whatever scenes crop up in my head, and then I start filling in the blanks, later. A lot of my longer fandom things also are like this. heading for a small disaster was me just sort of sitting around and thinking about an entirely different story, and then I had like, a half-formed idea for a single scene in my head, so I sat down and started writing chapter 1 to GET to that scene, coming up with stuff as I needed it, and by the time I hit the end of ch1 I was no where near my original idea, and had a bunch of other ideas, and THEN I started plotting things out.
22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?
I’m sure I have! Though I haven’t posted fandom anything for a long time, so I don’t really remember. One comment I do recall was not a BAD comment, it was a comment about a bad thing I had done in neglecting to tag something, and then I got all defensive because I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, and I was an asshole, which I regret. ):
23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)
Action! Also, stationary scenes with multiple people that DOESN’T have action! Okay, ANY scene that has more than one person is tricky, though two people at least helps in pacing because it’s easier to intersperse dialogue, but you add one more person into a scene and I’m laying my head on my desk and CRYING. Transition scenes are also my bane, I have the hardest time figuring out how to move from point a to b. Basically: EVERYTHING IS DIFFICULT. That’s half the fun of writing something, though.
24. What story(s) are you working on now?
Too many, but I’m trying to focus on finishing up some longer things this year. Of course, despite that having been my resolution before the year even began, I have somehow found myself with two new longer fics than WHEN THE YEAR STARTED, ugh. disaster, magic!cowboy au, lyrias center, unicorn au, soulmate tattoo au, a second part to we can make our own way, the full version of back alley complete with smut and EMOTIONS, fight club au, ot3 modern day neighbors au, and all the christmas prompts I haven’t done yet, and I have like, two more chapters of picture perfect planned out that I just haven’t written yet, I AM HAVING A DIFFICULT TIME THINNING THE HERD, I 100% come up with more ideas than ever get written, as I’m sure most writers do haha.
25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?
HAHAHA
26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?
Nah, I almost never succeed at stuff like that, and I get pissy if I fail, so I’ve learned not to put myself into that position if I can, because it just hurts my writing. I just write when I want, or when I have time even if I don’t want.
27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?
Hopefully! Though posting old stuff to ao3 has made me aware that my vocabulary has actually suffered over time, and I’m hoping to fix that!
28. What is your favorite story(s) that you’ve written?
I don’t entirely love anything that I’ve written. There are aspects of many things that I love dearly, though none of it really wins out against another. I’ll say: three of my orig novels are probably closest to being no 1.
29. What is your least favorite story(s) that you’ve written?
There was this one HP fic I wrote when I was like, 14?? I don’t know, but apparently I was VERY ANGRY, and wrote some really messed up stuff, and I wouldn’t mind being able to bury that shit haha. But truthfully -- I probably grew a lot from it, as embarrassing as it is to me, now. ...okay, there was a LOT of HP fic wherein I was in my DARK AND ANGSTY years, that, whew! I’m glad I’m not that person anymore haha.
30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?
Still writing, hopefully. :3
31. What is the easiest thing about writing?
CRYING. Crying is very easy, and so is laying my head on my desk and despairing that I will ever figure out how to make things work.
32. What is the hardest thing about writing?
WORKING THROUGH THE TEARS. It is very easy to give up, and mope, much more difficult to grit your teeth and wrangle a story into submission.
33. Why do you write?
Because I love the power of words. It’s magic. A written story is essentially an illusion spell. You put the right words on the page in the correct order, and behold! An entire world, with living characters, is born within the mind of a reader. And a single, minute change to any one of those words may shift the whole thing. It’s a constantly evolving formula, and full of surprises, and if you are particularly lucky and diligent you might even be able to spin an entire tale that grips people, shakes them up and makes them believe in something impossible, something that YOU created, from nearly nothing. That kind of power is pretty damned addictive.
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By Michael Lanza
Some 200 feet above the shore of Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park, on the face of a granite cliff with a name that sets high expectations—Stately Pleasure Dome—I crouch and contort my torso and limbs to squeeze into a slender passageway barely wider than my body. Inside this claustrophobic “chimney,” as this type of formation is known in rock-climbing parlance, I start grunting and panting loudly enough for the sounds of suffering to reach my 17-year-old son, Nate, who’s belaying me at the other end of our rope, below the chimney.
“How’s it look in there?” he calls to me from the relative comfort of his spacious ledge in the warm sunshine.
“Pretty snug,” I call back with feigned calm, beads of sweat streaming off my helmeted head as I scrape, push, and claw my way upward, inch by hard-earned inch, centimeter by blood-letting centimeter.
I’m crawling up through the identifying feature of a climbing route named Hermaphrodite Flake, which literally begins a few steps from where our car sits parked beside Tioga Road, on the narrow strip of flat ground separating Stately Pleasure Dome from Tenaya Lake. Nate and I drove into Yosemite this morning, saw no other climbers on this hugely popular cliff, and decided in that instant to make Hermaphrodite Flake our first route on a planned four-day climbing trip in the park’s Tuolumne Meadows area.
My son, Nate, on Stately Pleasure Dome in Yosemite National Park.
I slither up the chimney behind the giant flake for about 40 feet to reach its exit hole, also just wide enough to push myself through the cramped opening—a scene that must look, to someone watching from the ground far below, like the cliff birthing a fully formed adult human. I then ascend more easily up the edge of the flake to a pair of bolts drilled into the cliff, where I can anchor myself and belay Nate up—getting my turn at listening to him grunt and pant.
“That’s the weirdest pitch I’ve ever climbed,” Nate says as he scrambles up next to me on a foot ledge. He describes how the chimney amplified my grunts and struggles—no doubt bringing stately pleasure to other climbers on the dome.
We linger for a few minutes at our little aerie high above Tenaya Lake’s waters, rippling amid colossal but immobile waves of rock domes and peaks. It’s one of the most breathtaking spots in Yosemite, and on another day, we’d find it difficult to leave this perch. But Nate and I arrived in the park just as this summer’s Ferguson wildfire, outside the park’s eastern boundary, blew up into a sufficiently large conflagration to send smoke billowing across the park. Our view consists of a ghost-like, gray landscape. We rappel to the ground.
I’ve brought Nate to a historical nexus of rock climbing in America to introduce him to multi-pitch, alpine rock climbing and help him expand his nascent lead-climbing skills.
Before the next few days are over, though, I will find myself at a point that every active parent with active, growing kids inevitably faces. And, perhaps just as inevitably for a parent reaching this crossroads in life, its arrival catches me by surprise.
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Nate leading the fourth pitch on Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park.
Climbing Cathedral Peak
Early on our second morning in Yosemite, Nate and I stand at the base of the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak, looking up at a daunting wall of gleaming, gray and cream-colored granite riddled with cracks and stacked flakes. It rises about 900 feet to the mountain’s arrowhead of a summit at nearly 11,000 feet above sea level. Vague memories pop into my head from the first time I climbed it, with a friend, when my son was almost two years old. I don’t recall it occurring to me way back then that I might return someday to climb it with him.
Two climbers in their twenties stroll over and say hi. They ask us where we intend to start climbing the Southeast Buttress; they want to avoid bottlenecking with us.
Nate below the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak in Yosemite.
One of them looks at Nate and asks, “How old are you?” Nate responds, “Seventeen,” and the other climber simply says, “Awesome.” But I know what he’s thinking: Here’s this kid about to make one of the most-coveted rock climbs in the country, years younger than most climbers had even conceived that they would one day scale cliffs.
Ascending a wall of rock nearly a thousand feet tall is, I would imagine, a bit like eating an entire cow: You attack it in manageable bites.
We alternate leading pitches, with me starting, and both of us going about as far as our 70-meter rope allows before anchoring to the cliff and belaying the other up. With each pitch, we rise some 200 feet, give or take, watching the Yosemite wilderness slowly expand around us and the horizons creep farther into the distance. More distant mountains, more spires and serrated ridgelines come into view.
A multi-hour climb like this one reveals its magic not in how it challenges you to push yourself to harder levels of difficulty—for both of us, the climbing feels relatively easy, almost casual—but in the uniqueness of finding yourself on a soaring wall in the midst of a wilderness so stirring that it literally ignited an environmental movement.
The summit of Cathedral Peak feels like standing on a cloud.
I’ve had the good fortune of more alpine rock climbs like this one than I can probably remember. But Cathedral Peak is Nate’s first. Reliving the experience through his eyes and words, as he talks about each pitch and points out other cliffs and peaks and dreams aloud of future climbs, kind of feels like stepping back about 30 years.
I lead the last pitch to the top. Fittingly, Cathedral’s Southeast Buttress route culminates not in a bland, broad summit, but a thrilling block of stone maybe the size of a king bed, with sheer drop-offs on all sides. It feels like standing on a cloud. I wait for the moment about 20 minutes later—and six hours after we started climbing—when Nate reaches a spot just below me where we can see each other and he first spies the airy perch of Cathedral’s summit. His facial reaction gifts me with one of the visuals I’ll remember most from this trip.
Nate on the summit of Cathedral Peak, with Eichorn Pinnacle below right.
Two other parties that had reached the top ahead of me have now descended off it, so for a few minutes, Nate and I have the diminutive summit of Cathedral Peak to ourselves. The smoke from the Ferguson Fire, which has moved into the Tuolumne area and retreated almost with the regularity of an ocean tide over the past few days, now mostly hovers southwest of us, choking and obscuring Yosemite Valley but only making our panorama a bit hazy. We turn to scan every horizon, looking out over the other jagged peaks of the Cathedral Range.
Then Nate suggests we have one more item of business to complete today.
Eichorn Pinnacle raises a slender, sheer stone finger about a hundred feet straight up into the air, like a freakish growth on a shoulder of Cathedral Peak. We scramble to the base of it, minutes from Cathedral’s summit. Although evening is approaching, the weather remains perfect and we have plenty of daylight remaining. Nate leads the steep and thrillingly exposed pitch to the tiny apex of Eichorn. He beams when I join him up there and tell him that, in almost 30 years of rock climbing all over the country, that was one of the best easy pitches I’ve ever climbed.
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Nate, two summers ago, on the Lost Arrow Spire at Idaho’s City of Rocks.
Watching a Child Become an Adult
At his age, Nate really knows only the excitement of climbing—the sense of achievement in controlling and channeling one’s natural fears into a focus unlike anything we normally experience. I know that feeling well: It’s like erasing everything from your mind, and it’s powerfully rejuvenating.
At my age, I know all of what he gushes about and more, including climbing’s dark side.
But in Nate, I’ve witnessed a steady trajectory that gives me as much reassurance as is probably possible for a parent whose child dives into activities like rock climbing and whitewater kayaking—where the harsh truth is that not all risk factors lie within our control, and accidents can be catastrophic. In our numerous days of climbing together, especially over the past couple of years, he has plied me for all the information I can offer from almost 30 years of rock climbing. He has read instructional articles and learned all he can from the coaches of his indoor climbing team.
As with any beginner, at first, some of his gear placements were a little shaky. But he focused on improving his skills and has been receptive to my critiques. Most importantly, he’s embraced an ethic of safe, conservative decision-making.
Nate (youngest) and friends climbing six years ago at the City of Rocks.
What astonishes me has been the speed of his progress. Just two to three summers ago, he made his first lead climbs on single-pitch sport routes—clipping bolts, the safest form of lead climbing. Only last summer, he made his first traditional lead climbs, placing his own gear on crack routes of beginner difficulty. Just this past spring, he and I spent several days climbing together at Idaho’s City of Rocks, where he upped his game, leading trad routes of solidly intermediate difficulty.
Maybe that’s one of those common threads linking the parenting experience: We watch them grow physically and emotionally. We try to instill in them the lessons we believe they must absorb by the time they leave home as young adults. And during their teenage years, they achieve a rate of acceleration too fast for us to track—what you might call adolescence escape velocity.
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In some aspects of development, they suddenly rocket past us—they get better than us at something. It’s both a symbolic and a real and quantifiable advance, a representation of a kid’s leap from childhood to adulthood.
And as much as we know it’s not true—and that young person still has much to learn—it can feel like it happened overnight.
Nate and me on the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak in Yosemite.
Climbing Daff Dome’s West Crack
Two pitches up a route named West Crack on Daff Dome, another backcountry cliff in Yosemite’s Tuolumne area, Nate and I stand on painfully tiny footholds of pointy rock where he built a belay anchor after leading the second pitch of this final rock climb of our Yosemite visit. I look up at the third pitch, feeling a bit uneasy in my gut.
Nate had volunteered to lead the first pitch, which he protected well with frequent gear up a long, diagonal crack—a pitch that, to me, felt harder than its guidebook rating when I followed him. At the top, he had said to me, “I was totally in the zone on that entire pitch. Nothing else in my head besides climbing it. I got to the top and looked around and remembered where we are.”
My 17-year-old rookie alpine rock climber had then led the second pitch after I failed at my attempt to lead through the steep and strenuous roof at its start. Nate solved the riddle of the roof partly by finding a critical, somewhat hidden handhold that I’d overlooked. And, again, when I followed, it felt harder to me than I’d expected.
Nate atop Eichorn Pinnacle in Yosemite.
Now, looking up at the third pitch’s thin crack splitting a nearly vertical, smooth face, I’m quietly questioning whether I have the stuff to lead it today.
That’s when the shift occurs in my mind.
There come times on the psychological and emotional journey of parenting when how we see a child takes a hairpin turn. I’m guessing it often happens when the child assumes an adult role, crossing a threshold that signals a 180-degree change in direction in the fundamental terms of the parent-child relationship.
In the dozen or so years since I first tied Nate into a climbing rope, I have been the arbiter of what was safe and appropriate for him (as well as for his sister, two years younger and also an avid climber). I have made the decisions. I have led the harder pitches, all to keep him safe.
Today, I’ve come to realize that old order in our little world has shifted. With a challenging pitch looming above us, an understanding washes over me that I no longer have to shield him. He’s the better person to lead this pitch—today, anyway.
“Do you want to lead this pitch?” I ask Nate. “Because I think you’re on your game today and I’m not.”
I can almost see the eagerness erupt from him as he says: “That’s exactly the kind of pitch I’ve been hoping to lead on this trip.”
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Nate, two years ago, climbing the Mountaineers Route on Mount Whitney.
So he takes the rack of gear and I watch him steadily make his way up the crack, sewing it up with gear. He takes a few rests on the rope, but never falls or looks shaky. When I reach him at the top of it, I blurt out, “Oh my god! I think we just got introduced to a Tuolumne sandbag!”—a term meaning a route that seems significantly harder than its rating. He laughs and says, “Yea, they call that ‘sustained 5.7 fingers?!’”
Then I add, “I knew the day would come when you’d surpass me as a climber. I just didn’t expect that to come this week.”
Humbling? Oh, yea, it is. Recognizing symptoms of my own gradual physical decline naturally breeds a little melancholy. It feels like a sort of Rip Van Winkle experience of falling asleep at age thirty and waking up to find you’re over fifty.
But my strongest reaction is pride—and an understanding that, like so much of raising a kid, moments like this are rare and special, and the period of time we get to enjoy them is fleeting. He’s a year from departing for college and an increasingly busier life. There’s no predicting how many years I’ll continue rock climbing. Always in the back of my mind lurks a sense of time rapidly accelerating. I cling tightly to days like this.
On the vast crown of Daff Dome, which looks like it could fit a couple of football fields, Nate and I search for a fixed rappel anchor to descend. Billowing wildfire smoke rolls in, obscuring even the closest domes. We laughingly trade war stories about the surprising difficulty of West Crack.
I know dangerous. Read “Why I Endanger My Kids in the Wilderness (Even Though It Scares the Sh!t Out of Me).”
A young Nate (rear) and his sister, Alex, rock climbing at Idaho’s City of Rocks.
Nate still has much to learn about climbing to continue practicing it safely, well beyond hard skills like placing gear. There are skills one can only acquire through experience—as the saying goes, we gain good experience through bad experiences. He will encounter pitches so difficult to protect that they scare him and force him to stay calm and make smart judgments. He will have bad days and discover that his progress does not follow a reliably upward trajectory—there are many potholes and frost heaves along that bumpy road. He will experience the temptation to push limits beyond what’s reasonable and prudent for him and his climbing partner; and I can only hope that, when that happens, he does the right thing.
In other words, as in every aspect of his life, as a climber, he will have to continue to mature.
I’m not sure I would have predicted this reaction two decades ago, but there’s nothing bad about seeing your kid get better than you. Besides, he still can’t hike nearly as far as I can in a day, or keep up with me on a bike, or ski bumps with me. I still have that edge—for now (and my slim advantage skiing bumps may disappear by this winter with both of my kids).
But whenever my kids do surpass me physically in all of those activities, it will make me feel nothing more and nothing less than proud and pleased beyond words to see them do that.
Tell me what you think.
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Wind and flame, 2 - Rooting
Rating: this chapter is rated G for general audiences & gardening, but the full work is rated Explicit
Dragon Age: Inquisition - Cullen x Female Lavellan
Link to AO3 - thanks for reading!
Summary: Inquisitor Finn Lavellan takes some time to herself in the courtyard garden, reflecting on her attraction to a certain human military commander, and all the reasons why—despite what her mind and body want to tell her—it just isn't a good idea. Solas enjoys the garden, too, as well as some weighty discussion with Finn.
**
Late day sun slanted into the courtyard garden and the surrounding stone walls seemed to echo the light, casting a dusky glow in one corner, a sharp, glaring beam in another. The garden had good light for much of the day, unlike the Skyhold thoroughfares, dim even at midday, with muddy, puddled ground which never seemed to dry. Finn had made time today to look over the garden, even scheduled it with Josephine, who insisted that Adan and Elan were more than capable of anything garden-related, and wouldn't it be preferable to instead prepare for her dinner with the new Arlessa of Edgehall? Finn politely requested some time alone now, so she might be prevented from screaming for it later. Josephine relented.
And here, though the courtyard was a popular spot, she was mostly left alone. She could crawl around in the beds, plucking ripe berries here or a green shoot there, tasting, sniffing, hands in the dirt. She wasn't sure what it said about her that she felt most like herself truffling behind a bush like a wild nug.
Though it was probably not the image of the Inquisitor that made it into the recruiting pamphlets, no one here seemed to make much of her on hands and knees, digging, planting, scraping out seeds, sampling leaves. She was sure most chalked it up to her being Dalish. Gardening is a typical enough hobby, but her style was not the gloved, tool-laden, decorative sort. This was a working garden, and though it was beautiful, it was meant to produce, to be used. It was also her goal to keep it as wild as possible. No elegantly pruned bushes or neat little beds of flowers that fit just so. Leggy wildflowers leaned into the narrow dirt paths, fruit-laden vines worked their way into and around and through the stone walls, and the whole courtyard buzzed with life.
She relished being able to see the progression of the plants, day to day, or week to week, if she could stay at Skyhold that long. In the past, she'd left her gardens behind, only an occasional visitor. Clans traveled by nature, and by necessity, but many had their set routes. Clan Lavellan typically followed a path which, if mapped, would look like a lumpy figure eight, circling the rural settlements of the east Free Marches, sometimes dipping into the shoreline cities. They had marked valleys and stone-wrapped glens which were good places to settle for a few months, usually empty, with clean water and large enough to house them for a while. Finn had her own map, marking their herb stores along the route, where wild fruit and herbs were best foraged and encouraged, and the gardens they planted, then left. Later, the clan would harvest from an earlier planting, at another point on the route. That the crop bounty could be taken by anyone who found it, beast or human—well, that was part of the point. They took with them what they needed and the rest was free. They didn't count on needing what they couldn't carry. When they returned, they used what was still there and planted again.
So with just one garden, Finn was making the most of it. She'd considered taking advantage of the light on the stairways and battlements—no obstructions there, just full sun, and even if the wind was chilly there were plenty of herbs that could take it—but she thought they'd better remain unobstructed. For military purposes. Certainly the Commander would probably prefer they remain clear of overflowing herb pots.
The thought of him stopped her midway through knocking clumps of reddish clay from a tangled root ball. Outside their war room discussions, she hadn't spoken with Commander Cullen in a few weeks. Not since she'd visited him that night with herbs, and wine, to suss out what was the reason for his headaches. And other intentions slightly beyond her role as a healer.
Once she found him there, tired and harried, no end in sight to his long day, she'd thought to stay longer, to share the wine with him. To perhaps see his pale cheeks flush, maybe get a genuine, hearty laugh out of him. Maybe more.
But as they talked, she grew nervous, hesitant. More than once since this whole thing began, she'd wanted to make her feelings... more obvious. She'd been intrigued with him since the first time he smiled at her in that dusty chantry back room in Haven. Put plainly, she wanted him, in a way she'd never wanted anyone before. She genuinely hoped she wasn't as expressive as she feared, because every time she had a chance to just look at him, it stirred something in her. Something fiery, without reason, that she feared she couldn't control.
Frustrated, she slapped her hand hard against the root ball she held. Dusty soil freed itself from the roots in a cloud, making her cough.
Thenel had stressed to her, in the early days of her apprenticeship, that to be a healer, you had to look at people with detachment. Finn had been a healer now for almost fifteen years, totaling up her apprenticeship under Thenel, the clan healer, and working alongside him now. He was the age her father might have been. He was handsome and strong, and dedicated. And in those early days, she found herself distracted by him, in ways that had nothing to do with her education.
Once she had journeyed with him to another clan, for a healer's trade, to share herbs and salves. Their trip wasn't very long—a few days' trek south to a valley where Clan Sabrae was camped. The second night grew suddenly cold, and they huddled together around their fire.
As he held her near, she had a sudden fit of nerves, and her face reddened. "Are you so cold, da'len?" he asked gruffly. He could obviously feel her shaking.
She looked up at him, his face so close. "No, I'm all right," she said, looking into his eyes, hoping for something to shift between them.
He studied her for a moment, seemed to map her face. Then his eyes hardened with amusement. "You look as if you want me to kiss you," he said, laughing. The blood drained from her face, and he closed his eyes and shook his head.
"I helped deliver you, you know," he said, warmly, "back when I was the apprentice. Just after, you got this terrible rash on your bottom. Your mother had to salve it every day, and I had to examine you. Thoroughly."
She sat stone silent, wishing she could fall asleep and pretend this conversation never happened. But Thenel had pressed on. "This is actually a valuable lesson for you, Little Finn. As a healer, you deal with people differently. You can't always choose the type of relationship you have with them," he said. "Once you've studied the way bodies work and how to mend them, you see things with a different eye. It's not always pleasant. For example, when I see you, sometimes I can only think about your puffy, red baby backside."
"Oh, creators," she had sighed, and covered her face with her hands.
But he was right. He was always right. And she made great strides in her detachment. Though it may have been detrimental to her personal life, she knew she'd made the right choice to walk Vir Atish'an. To help those who needed it. She didn't yet know what was ailing Cullen, but she knew he needed her help more than her desire.
Of course, there was also the matter of him being human.
Lavellan was a large clan, near a hundred elves traveling together. That made them an unmissable target if you were looking for one, which forced the clan to contend with humans on a more regular basis than most of the other Dalish. They traded with them, offered their services and sometimes worked in settlements and even cities, if it struck them as beneficial.
There had been some flirtations among the younger, unbound ones and the human merchants. They'd been snuffed out. Not forcefully, but firmly. A Bad Idea. The old saws repeated themselves. They don't respect us. They'll just use you. The children won't even look elvhen. Finn accepted this without much question. Her dealings with humans had been absolutely neutral. After the Conclave, when she really had no choice but to stay and deal with this... thing, and this strange power inside her, the humans she got to know were friendly. Moral. Good. Sincere. She liked them. But no human had ever made her feel the way Cullen did.
Talking with him, those long distracting, conversations they'd had crunching through the hard snow at Haven, she'd wanted to dig into his mind, his past, find the thing she knew she would find, get him to say the thing she knew he would say, that would make her dislike him. Something about elves, something about his religion, or hers, something just so utterly, obliviously human that she could say to herself, There you go, Finn, now move on and stop thinking about the pretty human. It never happened.
She asked and asked, more personal—more intrusive, really—than she'd been with anyone else in this Inquisition. There wasn't much he wouldn't answer, he opened himself to nearly anything she asked. But when her questions turned to the Blight, he closed up and pulled away, grew small, as though the mere idea was like an animal who'd bitten him, and he was wary. She didn't press, but whatever it was made her want to comfort him like a hurt child. Then she would see him leading a drill, sweat beading on his brow and near that scar on his lip, and she wanted other things.
Finn had always been thankful for her coolness, her ability to stay detached. That she'd reached 33 years without a serious attachment was, undoubtedly, a consequence of that. But Cullen was testing it. She wanted to be icy around him, but instead she was dry kindling to his fire. She had to admit, he'd done nothing to stoke that flame. Nothing but be himself. Unfortunately, that was all it took.
What he had done is be gentle. She had more than an inkling that he shared at least some of her thoughts about the two of them. Thank the creators, he’d never acted on them. He wasn't cool or detached, his feelings were often plain to see, but he could control himself. Seeing him react to her, and then pull back, close up, made her want to do the same. For both their sakes. She just wasn't sure how long she could match his composure.
A shadow settled above her, shading her work. "Lethallan," a soft voice said.
Turning on her knees, she found Solas standing in her light. She blinked up at him. "Lethallin," she replied. She clapped the dirt from her hands and, removing the scarf from her neck, wiped the sweat from her forehead. Shaking thoughts of the Commander from her mind, she smiled up at him. "And what are you up to this afternoon?"
Solas held his hands behind his back, observing the surroundings, eyes narrowed in the bright sun, his pale skin shining. He smiled back. "Enjoying the garden, like everyone else." He brought his hands up to shade his eyes and moved toward a bench near the bed where Finn was digging. "The work you and the apothecaries have done here is marvelous." He sat, lowering himself into the shade.
"Thank you." The constant visitors made it obvious that this was a well-loved part of their odd mountain fortress, but it was still nice to hear.
"What is this plant you're engrossed in?" he asked.
"Mountain heaven." She plucked a ruffled purple flower from the shrub and handed it to him. "The leaves make a lovely sweet tea. Would you like some?"
He shook his head, grimacing. "No, thank you, I do not care for tea."
She gave him a disgusted frown, a look she'd picked up from Cassandra.
He sighed, bringing the flower to his nose and closing his eyes as he sniffed. "May I enjoy simply being around these plants, and forego ingesting them?"
"I suppose," she said, turning back to her plant, brushing loose dirt from a shallow root.
He sat quietly, stroking the soft leaves of a low patch of wild grass, seemingly content to stay despite her judgment. She liked Solas, though they butted heads on almost every issue, from something as innocuous as tea to what he thought of her Dalish culture. She sensed he liked her as well. She was often the only person willing to entertain his stories of the Fade, something that genuinely interested her, having no magical abilities herself. And she was intrigued that he, an apostate, and an elf, was so comfortable around humans. She could only imagine that in his shoes she'd have crawled into the nearest hole to hide. But he volunteered himself, had become invaluable. She considered him very brave.
Finn carefully picked at the dirt surrounding the roots and began easing them up from the ground, readying to cut them for propagation. She glanced at Solas, sitting quietly in an easy meditation. "I have an odd question for you, Solas," she said.
"From you, those are my favorite kind," he said warmly.
"When you meet spirits in the Fade," she began, "the ones you get to know, I mean... are they human?"
"They are spirits," he answered, slightly confused.
"I mean, do they appear to you as human? Like Cole? Or as an elf, perhaps, because you're an elf?"
He looked into the distance. "They have various guises. Some are completely formless, only something I can sense, while others are very much a recognizable shape. Many appear as human or elf. I'm not positive they take my form into consideration when they choose theirs." He turned to her. "But it's an interesting idea."
"Which do you prefer?"
He narrowed his eyes, trying to head off her train of thought. He did that, often moving far ahead of anywhere she intended to go. "I have no preference."
She thought for a moment, trying herself to understand what she was asking, why she was asking it. She turned back to her shrub roots. "I know you don't see yourself as elvhen, so to speak, though I can't really see why, I must admit," she trailed off, almost talking to herself. Her fingers wrapped under a tightly bound root, snapping little shoots away from the ground. "Do you have any issue with humans?"
She didn't look up but heard him laugh softly to himself. "Not really. I know the Dalish seem to resent them, as some reminder of what was stolen from them, their ancient heritage," he said in a mock-serious tone. Despite herself she had to admit that sounded a bit like her Keeper. "But--" he began, and stopped his thought from finishing aloud. "But that can't be the whole truth. So to answer what you didn't ask, I see the Dalish fears about humans as silly propaganda."
Glancing toward him, she saw him spinning the flower in his hand while he looked at her, his eyes challenging her to argue. She accepted. "What about elves in the alienages? Do you think they're silly to fear humans?" Under the bush she snapped more rootlings from the ground, ripping up a long dark string. "You know we Dalish do deal with humans regularly. We don't just sit in the woods weaving baskets or whatever people seem to think."
"I think there's reason to fear anyone who threatens you, or has harmed you. But there's even better reason to find a path which breaks the hold that fear has placed on you."
"What do you mean, break the hold? An elf uprising?" she asked, grinning. "That doesn't sound like you."
He shook his head, looking past her at the garden. "I cannot say. Only that I, like anyone else, see the problem, but not yet the solution." He turned to her. "Perhaps Andraste's Herald could help to alleviate some of these tensions," he said with a mischievous smirk.
She gave him what she hoped was a withering look. "Surely you, of all the people here, aren't going to make me a prophetess for a god I don't even follow?"
"And what god do you follow?" He leaned back, arms crossed.
"None," she shrugged.
"Ah. But is that not the mark of Sylaise upon you?"
She wiped her hands on her breeches. "I can't speak for any other Dalish, as much as you want me to," she said, and he smiled at that. "But I've never been religious about the creators. It's cultural. I don't worship them. I don't pray to them. I don't know that they exist or ever did. They're a pretty metaphor to explain how we choose to live." She felt her heart beat a bit faster, realizing she'd never quite said this aloud to anyone.
Solas nodded. "An intriguing answer. You've surprised me."
She rolled her eyes, not sure if he ever knew how condescending he sounded. But she wasn't offended, just a good-natured annoyance. It felt... familial. It reminded her of home, of her clan. "Since you seem to know everything," she teased, "I'll take that as a compliment."
He laughed. "Well, I do know this. You are most drawn to what you can feel, and smell, and hold in your hands. What you directly experience. But there is more out there, if you are willing to look."
Finn was quiet, conceding his point on both counts.
He stood up into the sunlight, holding the flower, reaching for the bush. "Do you mind if I take another?" he asked. "This color is fascinating. I'd like to try to replicate it in paint."
"Of course not, as long as you show me your results."
"Naturally," he said.
She sat back on her feet. "What about you?" she asked, looking up at him. The low sun glinted off his head and shined through the tips of his ears, glowing them red. "Has your Fade walking made you too jaded to believe in gods?"
He squinted into the sun. "Perhaps? I'm not much interested in gods."
"You not interested in something? Now you've surprised me."
He shook his head, laughing. "I am like you," he said. "I am interested in what I experience, though my experiences are quite different. And if I meet a god, you will be the first to know."
She sighed. He was impossible.
"I meant it earlier, about Andraste's Herald," he said. "It could be a very good thing."
She blinked, her mind reeling a bit at hearing that again. "Commander Cullen told me the exact same thing," she said.
His eyebrows raised. "And that is also intriguing," he said, smiling slowly, clearly thinking. "He is a man of great faith. Perhaps he can see the larger hand in this."
Now she really was surprised. "You mean the Maker?"
"I'm always open to new ideas. So should you be." He sniffed his flowers and just slightly bowed to her, smiling. "Good afternoon, Inquisitor."
When he left, she found herself alone with her thoughts again. Thoughts of the Commander, as had been her thoughts when Solas arrived. She was annoyed at her own mind for circling back around to a distraction, as opposed to the league of Thedas-shattering problems before her. Perhaps time alone was not what she needed, after all. She left the garden and headed for her room, to clean up and find Josephine, to prepare for that Arlessa. To get back to work.
Chapter 3: Curling up ➳
#cullen x lavellan#cullen rutherford#commander cullen#my fanfiction#fanfic#dragon age inquisition#solas#my inquisitor#dalish elves#dalish#dragon age religion#thank you for reading!
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Really Long Character Survey
Rules: Repost, don’t reblog. Tag 10! Good luck!
Tagged by @themisfitmouse
Tagging: @genius-vondrake, @amadeus-aerinstat, @alphagearloose, @unclescrooge, @askflintheartglomgold, @thesmallestarchitect, @tempest-loupnoir, @the-queen-needs-us ...I can’t really think of two more people to tag who haven’t already been tagged by somebody else.
((Hoooo boy there's gonna be so many headcanons in this.))
BASICS.
FULL NAME : Gyro Percival Gearloose
NICKNAME : Gyro, G
AGE : 28
BIRTHDAY : September 18th
ETHNIC GROUP : Uh... chicken? I guess I kinda headcanon that he's got some Italian in him, but other than that, idek man.
NATIONALITY : American
LANGUAGE / S : English (possibly others, but that's woefully all the mun is fluent in)
SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Bi
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Also bi
RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Single
CLASS : Uh... upper-middle, I guess? I mean, he's gotta afford all those parts somehow.
HOME TOWN / AREA : Duckburg, Calisota
CURRENT HOME : A workshop/barn on the south side of Duckburg, near the river
PROFESSION : Inventor/Repairman
PHYSICAL.
HAIR : It has never been consistent. Like... in DuckTales and the related comics, it's orange. In some of the old comics, it's light brown. In the Italian comics, it's bright blonde. I just... I have no idea, my dudes. Gyro's addicted to hair dye or something.
EYES : Blue
NOSE : He's a bird. He has a beak.
FACE : Uh... round? Covered in feathers?
LIPS : Again, he is a bird.
COMPLEXION : Pristine white feathers.
BLEMISHES : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SCARS : He's got a good few nicks on his hands, and probably a couple of other random scars from miscellaneous lab accidents, but nothing major. Plus, it's not as if you could see most of them anyway.
TATTOOS : None.
HEIGHT : 5'5"
WEIGHT : Uh... I dunno, probably around 130-140? Gotta take into account that his bones are probably hollow.
BUILD : It varies. In some comics he's kind of plump, and in others, he's like a scarecrow. I'm gonna tentatively put him at athletic, with a little bit of a paunch?
FEATURES : Big blue eyes, (usually) bright orange hair, slightly curved beak, glasses.
ALLERGIES : Blueberries, but he doesn't bring it up unless he has to.
USUAL HAIR STYLE : He basically just rolls out of bed and runs his fingers through it a couple times.
USUAL FACE LOOK : Lost in thought
USUAL CLOTHING : Hat (with chin strap), button up shirt (usually pink, red, blue, or yellow), open black vest, jeans or khakis, work boots.
PSYCHOLOGY.
FEAR / S : Failure, mostly.
ASPIRATION / S : He wants to discover as much as he can, for discovery's sake. To do things before believed to be impossible just to say he did.
POSITIVE TRAITS : Generally cheerful, independent thinker, kind, clever, creative
NEGATIVE TRAITS : Easily frustrated, bottles his feelings until he explodes, tends to run from his problems, occasionally forgets to take care of himself
MBTI : ENFP, but only just barely (x)
ZODIAC : Virgo
TEMPERAMENT : Sanguine (x)
SOUL TYPE / S : Creator (no surprise there), followed closely by Educator and Helper (x)
ANIMALS : Apparently he's a Zebra (x), which is not necessarily something I would have chosen but I guess it fits? (x)
VICE HABIT / S : Can be kind of lazy sometimes, major sweet tooth
FAITH : "The Powers that Be"
GHOSTS ? : Skeptical, but willing to be convinced
AFTERLIFE ? : Who knows?
REINCARNATION ? : He wouldn't discredit it.
ALIENS ? : YEs
POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : He doesn't really bother himself with politics.
ECONOMIC PREFERENCE : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION : Everyone deserves to be treated with basic decency. Beyond that, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EDUCATION LEVEL : I'm gonna go ahead and say he's got a Master's in engineering, and then a bunch of random courses he thought would be interesting but don't actually add up to any kind of extra degree.
FAMILY.
FATHER : Fulton Gearloose
MOTHER : ??? Gearloose (Until I find a canon name, I've called her Tallulah)
SIBLINGS : It's implied he has at least one sibling, since he's got a nephew in some of the comics, but I don't think they've ever actually been seen
EXTENDED FAMILY : Ratchet Gearloose (Grandfather), Copernicus Gearloose (Great-grandfather), Descartes Gearloose (Great-uncle), Newton Gearloose (Nephew)
NAME MEANING / S : Gyro, as in gyroscope or gyrosphere. Gearloose, as in a literal loose gear.
HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : His great-grandfather assisted a gentleman thief in the 1920s. Long standing family ties to Scrooge McDuck. Gyro himself is a knight of the kingdom of Quackalot thanks to time travel shenanigans.
FAVOURITES.
BOOK : Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
MOVIE : Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
5 SONGS :
Why Does the Sun Shine? by They Might Be Giants
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles
Poison by Alice Cooper (kind of a guilty pleasure)
Don't Stop Me Now by Queen
DEITY : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
HOLIDAY : New Years
MONTH : I don't think he really has a favorite month.
SEASON : Spring
PLACE : His workshop
WEATHER : Partly cloudy, 68F, low humidity, light breeze
SOUND : Clocks ticking, birds singing, keyboard clatter, that wobbly sound that laminated paper makes
SCENT / S : Freshly cut grass, sunscreen, baked goods
TASTE / S : Fresh fruit, anything sweet
FEEL / S : The weight of a wrench or a hammer, the texture of blueprint paper, working outdoors in the sunshine (or by a window), laying in a hammock
ANIMAL / S : Dogs, bees, butterflies, songbirds
NUMBER : 42
COLOUR : Orange
EXTRA.
TALENTS : Not sure if you'd really call it a talent, but he's canonically ambidextrous.
BAD AT : Cooking, singing
TURN ONS : Not getting into that here.
TURN OFFS : Not getting into this either.
HOBBIES : Baseball, soccer, fishing, bug catching
TROPES : Cloudcuckoolander, Gadgeteer Genius, Mr. Fixit, Identical Grandson, and probably a whole lot more that I can't be bothered to keep looking for.
AESTHETIC TAGS : Tools, metalworking, robotics, clockwork, spring and summer landscapes, baseball, soccer, orange, circuitry, beaches, Arthurian legends, medieval weaponry, castles, old sci-fi, space, cyberpunk, steampunk, science labs, dragons
GPOY QUOTES : ??
FC INFO.
MAIN FC / S : Rick Moranis
ALT FC / S : Don't have one
OLDER FC / S : ...Older Rick Moranis?
YOUNGER FC / S : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
VOICE CLAIM / S : Well, his last voice actor was Chris Edgerly in the remastered game, but I don't think it's been confirmed yet who his new VA will be.
GENDERBENT FC / S : Don't have one
MUN QUESTIONS.
Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie , what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ?
A1 : I have no idea. It would probably be a campy, 80's style sci-fi though, like Honey I Shrunk The Kids or Weird Science.
Q2 : What would their soundtrack / score sound like ?
A2 : Lighthearted, but with a sense of wonder. It would make occasional use of odd instruments.
Q3 : Why did you start writing this character ?
A3 : I had just rediscovered DuckTales and Tumblr RP blogs were starting to become this big thing that everyone did so I just sort of jumped on the bandwagon.
Q4 : What first attracted you to this character ?
A4 : I've always loved nerdy, quirky characters. Being a ginger doesn't hurt either.
Q5 : Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.
A5 : He is usually portrayed as having human-like feet, which makes no gotdang sense. The ducks have duck feet. Cats and dogs have paws. Other chickens have chicken feet. BUT LET'S MAKE GYRO A WEIRD MUTANT, MWAHAHAHAHAHA! ...How about no? I'm just... completely disregarding that as canon unless there's an explanation for it. I'll even take a one off, throwaway comment. Otherwise, y'all can fight me.
Q6 : What do you have in common with your muse ?
A6 : A tendency to get way too invested in a project and forget to do things like sleeping or eating a reasonable meal.
Q7 : How does your muse feel about you ?
A7 : He doesn't know I'm there, and I intend to keep it that way for now.
Q8 : What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ?
A8 : He has had some truly memorable relationships and interactions with other muses throughout my time playing him, and I don't think I could adequately cover all of them in just a little survey post.
Q9 : What gives you inspiration to write your muse ?
A9 : I've got a playlist of songs that remind me of him that I listen to sometimes. Other than that, I find inspiration for Gyro in some of the weirdest places, like my history textbook the other day, or a particularly scientifically inaccurate episode of Danger Mouse I watched the other day.
Q10 : How long did this take you to complete ?
A10 : About two hours.
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some stuff about youtube fandoms
(Some rambling about fandom culture. This is not meant to be taken seriously or reblogged or anything like that, it’s just.....something that i randomly decided to do. Because it’s chinese new year and I’ve been watching dnp all day. Text under the readmore.)
Youtube, condensed as one large mega-fandom, is arguably the worst collection of people on the internet ON AVERAGE (i know some wonderful people from youtube fandoms, but there are a heckload of pretty awful ones......) because it's so accessible to both fans and creators; at some point people kind of got this odd misconception that being a Youtuber is a- not surefire, per se, but an "easier" way to get a large following, probably because of the examples we have case-in-point (most popular ones just talk about stuff and play games which is a gross oversimplification of their job, but anyways. that's how people see it), as well as the common mindset that "just filming videos all day at home must be great, if it's what you love".
So on one hand you have people, amateurs who believe they can be the next Pewdiepie or Zoella or something, and I'm not discrediting any of their (the amateurs') work- but you have to acknowledge that it takes not only skill and hard work but also a great deal of luck and also, ahem, a little bit of the thing we call the 'genetic lottery' - there's a reason why there are so many popular youtubers who are attractive white dudes.
You have these mostly-unsuccessful amateurs, trying to cater to an already-formed audience (many current popular Youtubers have been around since the early days, 2006 - 2008, essentially, and it’s definitely worth noting that being around for the beginnings of the site has resulted in shaping the development of Youtube fandom in and out) and you know what these amateurs also are?
They're fans.
And the fanbase is so widespread and diverse, because it's one of the only truly globally accessible modern media fanbases, because everyone watches Youtube videos, uses Youtube- watching music videos, tutorials, memes, reviews, EVERYTHING, so there's a high chance that everyone you talk to will have at least watched one Youtube video in their life, because a member of family wanted to show them something funny, or they needed to know how to do something, etc.
And as shown with TV, the visual medium of Youtube; that is to say, the video, combined with the average Youtuber's vlog length or whatever- between 2-3 minutes and like 15 minutes maximum, makes it the perfect global form of consumable media that caters to the widest audience possible. Short, easier to take in than, say, a book or an episode of anime, due to the general lack of continued storyline, and tailored perfectly to fit the demands of the every-growing consumer market. It's also a lot easier for international fans to try to follow along and understand someone who's talking and using body language and making use of a visual medium than it is to read a book or play a dialogue-driven video game.
And since the Youtube community is so easy to access, for EVERYONE, that means a great deal of aspiring kids are willing to go on and give it a go, or at least make accounts and become those annoying "LMAO!!! XDDDD" comments in the dregs of every youtube video comment section.
The thing is also that a great deal of Youtube fans haven't been exposed to "non-cringey" forms of entertainment, and even still some haven't gotten out of their 2010 phases, so they still make crappy rape jokes and say things like "damn you len!!!" on every video. Because Youtube is so accessible and older videos are just as easy to find as newer ones, so people easily pick up vernacular and various slang trends from 5 years ago.
You can compare this to any other type of fandom: we have the east asia pop culture side; ie. anime and K-pop. Both of which are harder to get to because of the cultural and language gaps, and the fact that they're still a lot less common to run across these days than say, a comedy sketch on the front page of Youtube that your friend showed you, rather than the esoteric niche interests of quirky teenagers who like rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion in their spare time.
Another example is TV shows, the most prominent being the Supernatural / Doctor Who / BBC Sherlock fandom, which, i must admit, has died down a little at least in recent years. These fandoms come close to Youtube mainly because of the target audience (12-16 year olds consume it best, but there are a lot of older and sometimes younger fans who enjoy it too) and the fact that being popular and broadcast on widespread TV channels in a lot of countries does make it so that 11 year olds try to join tumblr and make up a fake age using a year of birth a few decades before they were born so that they can access that sweet, sweet Destiel content. Or something. I don't know anything about Supernatural.
So, to condense my entire 1000+ word ramble on why Youtube is the most generally unpleasant fandom on the Internet, it comes down to this: As a largely easy-to-consume, widespread media form, it does its job exceedingly well, which allows for a wide variety of people to join Youtube as opposed to consuming content for other, more niche interests. Not that mainstream TV is niche or anything, but Youtube is according to your own time, and TV is not scheduled at the most convenient time for everyone.
This level of accessibility makes it so that it's a lot easier, through the medium and interface of Youtube, with the convenience of the comments and replies section, the likes and dislikes buttons, playlists, recommendations, subscriptions and the like, for anyone to express their opinions, without filtering out the large demographic of younger and perhaps not quite as well worded members of the Internet. The fact that pretty much all of it is completely, totally unmoderated probably doesn't help, either.
Youtube is good, great even, but the fandoms held within are essentially like that feeling you get when you're on a plane and you want to throw up- cold sweats, waves of nausea, generally trying to control your breathing so as to not act upon the sudden desire to expel everything you've eaten for the past 24 hours, wishing it'd all be over already- yeah, that. Oh, but also the euphoria you get when the sickness passes. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.
Edit: I forgot to address another part of why Youtube fandoms are notorious: the ridiculous prevalence of shipping and the unbelievable scope for discourse.
The thing is, that whilst there are a great deal of fans who have evaluated their choices properly regarding various topics, there are plenty of people who haven’t thought about the way their own fan-created content affects the rest of the Internet and, indeed, the original creators, the Youtubers who are at the centre of the fandom. For Dan and Phil, this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem- Dan has expressly endorsed the creation of phan content, in the interest of allowing people to nurture their own creative vices.
I don’t have a particularly strong stance in this particular discourse, but there are many, many people who are largely against shipping Youtubers, out of all real-life people fandoms, because Youtubers are the most connected to their fanbase- a lot of source material comes from the fans, and indeed the content of the creators is very much shaped by the nature of the fandom, and vice verse, of course. Youtubers are pretty much guaranteed to have a strong notion as to the general sway of the fandom - whether it be the astonishing prevalence of people that ship you with your best friend / roommate, or not.
Fictional characters are mostly harmless; people don’t have much of a problem with shipping them for fear of hurting real people’s feelings (excluding the widespread homophobia debate, but that’s something for another time.) However, when real-life people come into play, it’s probably quite natural for people to take a few moments and look at fandoms, Youtube fandoms, which focus on real life people, and step back to say, “Hey, is it really on the same level as the people who ship fictional characters?”
And thus is the nature of people’s perspectives regarding the Youtube RPFs.
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