#and people that actually remember canon and don't take some fanfic version of him they have created during the hiatus
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It was actually rather hard to decide how to begin this meta post because there are essentially going to be two main parts: why Crowley does not actually avoid/run from his problems and why "going off" is not a bad thing regardless.
Then I wrote the first part and realised this is now 2.5k words long, so uhhhh I will grant part 2 its own post.
With that, welcome back to Alex's today-not-unhinged meta corner!
I am going to approach this topic from a psychological angle, which a lot of people have already done, but without explicitly mentioning it or going into depth. All my information comes from personal experience, research, my therapist, and my psychiatrist, just so you know I am not making shit up. I actually dug up some resources my therapist gave me a while ago.
Generally, there are four different fear/survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Most people have probably heard about fight and flight, since those two are usually the only ones that are mentioned/taught, so I will stick to explaining the other two.
"Fawning" refers to actively being submissive and subdued, both physically and emotionally. The goal is to appear non-threatening and to calm whoever is causing the fear response in the first place. It shows up as being overly agreeable, not having thoughts/opinions of your own and ignoring them if you do, your body language changing (e.g., making yourself smaller, taking up less space), and generally attempting to 'keep the peace' or reinstate it.
"Freezing" is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin—you freeze. It means slipping into a dissociative state, which disconnects you from your body, your emotions/mind, and/or the outside world. Usually, people stop being able to talk well or at all, they do not move, and if they do, it is on autopilot; you do not fight or flee, you simply exist until what is causing the fear response is over.
While dissociating, your brain is unable to form full memories—and depending on how heavily you are dissociating, it does not form any memories at all.
Freezing as a response happens when fight, flight, and fawn aren't possible anymore, e.g., a child who has no internal mechanisms to deal with large amounts of fear because it's a child, so the only way to escape the pain and aggressor is by fleeing into your mind and shutting down.
Why am I telling you all this? Because most people tend to have one or two survival responses that dominate/they usually fall back on, and the same goes for Aziraphale and Crowley.
When faced with an outside problem and a lot of stress, Aziraphale's first instinct is to fawn, to placate the person, to diffuse the situation, to make sure everyone is agreeing, or, at the very least, submitting to authority figures or aggressors. It is what heaven teaches them—stick to the rules, don't ask questions, do what you are told. If fawning involves lying, he will do so, here the need for safety is stronger than his desire to be truthful and stick to his morals.
Unfortunately, the fact that this is his primary fear response is also the reason behind his extreme cognitive dissonance. How can you stick to the rules when you do not know what the rules ARE? So he is stuck trying to figure out what is "good" and what is "bad" so he can be a good angel and avoid doing anything that might be seen as bad or disobedient.
His secondary response to stress or fear is to fight—once it's clear that fawning won't work, he can and will switch over to being more direct and aggressive/less submissive. We see that happening when he gets discorporated in season 1 and needs to get back to earth, at the airbase, or when the bookshop gets attacked.
If I were to ask you what you think Crowley's primary fear response is, how would you respond?
Well, if you said "flight"—you're wrong, and I will explain why.
Flight is his secondary fear response, it is what he falls back on in absolute emergencies when everything is doomed and there's nothing he can do anymore.
Before that, though, he fights.
Even as an angel, he was already questioning the system, he was ready to go and tell God she was doing a terrible job, that her ideas were bad, that he wants to keep his stars and the universe— six thousand years are nothing! If you actively oppose existing rules and defy people's authority over you, fighting is the only option you have unless you plan on giving up or the response becomes too much to deal with.
Fear itself happens when you or someone/something you love is being threatened (whether that threat is real or simply perceived as such doesn't matter), plus there are a large number of more irrational fears.
Crowley's creations were threatened -> He goes against the rules, he wants to fight for them.
On the walls of Eden, he questions God and talks to an angel, his hereditary enemy, once again defying the rules, questioning them.
Job and his children were threatened -> He goes against orders to try and save them.
There is good reason to believe he went against God by saving some of the children from the flood.
He showed Jesus the kingdoms of the world—do we really think that was based on orders? No, it was once again Crowley not playing by the rules.
Wessex? He proposes the Arrangement, which is one gigantic "fuck you" in his fight against celestial rules. Everything after that goes back to Crowley knowing that their jobs suck and that they can cheat, fight the system by working together. In 1827, it gets him pulled to hell and punished, and yet he does not stop; he keeps fighting.
Crowley is the one who immediately tries to stop the apocalypse. Aziraphale needs to be talked into it, needs to be convinced with selfish reasons and personal pleasure.
The reason why both heaven and hell absolutely loathe him is not because he is a runner; it's because he constantly and consistently defies them. He fights.
In season two, he immediately tries to deal with the Gabriel problem while Aziraphale is standing behind him and saying "I don't know" to all of his questions. Taking him somewhere so they can figure shit out in peace is not 'running'—it's smart. Sure, it's far from ideal, but we see what keeping him in the bookshop brought them, don't we? The hiding miracle is what tipped heaven and hell off in the first place.
Aziraphale goes to Edinburgh based on a hunch, but once again—did that help? Did his journalist roleplay trip actually provide vital information that solved a single puzzle piece of that mess? No. Finding out that Gabriel was at that pub with some mystery person was a nice fact to know, but that's it.
During the ball, Crowley is scared, vigilant, prowling around the shop, checking windows, telling Aziraphale to "stop this charade" so they can figure out what to do. Aziraphale, in that moment, was already convinced that sticking to the rules would save them—a heavenly embassy on a technicality, surely the group of fallen angels who got booted due to not following heaven's rules will respect that.
Crowley goes to heaven, which is once again him actively looking for a solution, while Aziraphale also falls back on fighting because fawning is not going to do shit.
There are three times during which Crowley suggests fleeing—which is his secondary fear response—but those are exceptions. Let's have a look at them.
The first one is at the bandstand, the evening before the Apocalypse, and since Aziraphale is lying to him, the situation seems hopeless to him. Yet he is still having his 'agents' look for him, is still fighting.
Do you know why he even suggests running? He is about to leave when Aziraphale calls him back with "there isn't anywhere to go," and now allow me to insert the following passage from the scriptbook.
Crowley looks back. He looks at Aziraphale. Above them, a beautiful starry sky. And Crowley softens.
"Big universe. Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo, we could go off together."
The sentence in the show is slightly different, but they have one thing in common: If.
IF the world ends, we can still leave and be together. IF.
Crowley is NOT saying "let's leave", he is presenting Aziraphale with a contingency plan in case stopping the Apocalypse does not work. He is NOT running, he isn't even SUGGESTING to run.
It's a "if the world ends, we can be together. We don't need to be with hell or heaven; we can be in the stars," because remember what the end of the world would mean?
Eternal torture for Crowley while Aziraphale bores himself to death in heaven.
The next time he suggests it again—when he stops Aziraphale on the street—several things have happened.
First, he did not leave. If he truly wanted to flee, he would have by now, but he didn't. He sits in a cinema waiting for the end: "Out of time. Out of hope," as Neil puts it. Then Hastur and Ligur show up on screen and tell him, 'You're dead meat, Crowley. You're bloody history. […] We're coming to collect you'.
We all know that means "eternal torture in hell," but if you're not convinced for some reason, have another snippet from the script book that did not make it into the show.
Dagon is speaking from the Bentley's radio while he drives towards the bookshop, saying that something has gone wrong and they're sure he has a 'perfectly reasonable explanation' for it. Once he gets out of the car, however, Dagon still keeps going and says the following:.
"Your explanation, and the circumstances that will accompany it, will provide a source of entertainment for all the damned of hell, Crowley. Because no matter what agonies the damned are suffering, Crowley, you will have it worse."
Crowley already knows that. He has been punished by them before, heard, seen, lived torture, there is no doubt as to what will happen should they catch him. So he does what any person with a single fucking brain cell would do—he tries to get his loved one and FLEE.
Flight is the best response in this situation, and if you need me to explain why, then honestly, I cannot help you anymore. I won't go into detail about Aziraphale's response, but, tl;dr, it was shitty and incredibly hurtful, go figure.
Now, let's get to situation number 3, which is his speech during the final fifteen. We do not have an official script for that, but someone did make transcriptions for all episodes; you can find them here. Additionally, I will copy some of what I already said in a different meta post.
Crowley, stuck in his trauma-induced hypervigilance and paranoia, suggests putting as much distance between them and the problem as possible. I think it is interesting that in ep1 he wants to get Gabriel away from them, while at the end of the season, he is ready to get them away from the problem.
So far, I have never seen anyone mention that change! And it’s important! The entire season, it is hammered into our heads how much they love being on earth. It is THEIR bookshop and THEIR car and THEIR life.
Crowley wants to protect that home, and Gabriel is a threat to it, a threat to both of them, their life, the bookshop—everything. He does not want to leave, he wants his peace and angel in one place.
Yet by allowing Gabriel to stay, Aziraphale destroyed the sense of comfort and safety Crowley had slowly developed over the last few decades. Heaven nipping down every now and then to check in with Aziraphale is very different from him sheltering the Supreme Archangel who is running from ‘something terrible’ without even asking if he’s alright with that.
Aziraphale calls it their bookshop, but he fundamentally still sees it as his space to govern and Crowley as a guest; he even calls it a 'heavenly embassy'.
After another horrible week and having his previously safe space violated by several different times and beings, Crowley is back to where he was before—without a home. That fragile existence broke apart, so he is standing in the heap of shards and telling Aziraphale 'I don’t feel safe here anymore, let’s leave’.
He lost his safe space, but he still has his safe person, his best and only friend, the person he loves. I doubt he cares where exactly they go as long as they’re together and it’s safe.
Returning to heaven—it is the one place Crowley cannot follow him to. It’s literally the worst option, he can’t go back, he won’t go back. So he invokes the bookshop again, if you don’t want to stay for me, stay for the bookshop, your books, your corner of existence that I thought we had carved out for ourselves.
There is a common error that people make regarding the timeline, which is assuming that during this conversation they are already aware of the impending apocalypse—but they aren't. Aziraphale himself has no clue, and while Crowley saw the conversation and trial, he does NOT know when it will happen. For all he knows, it could be tomorrow, could be in a thousand years, and, even if he had been given a date, I doubt they laid out all the details and how to stop it.
Considering that his original plan was "get drunk at the Ritz and then have us time," I don't think he knew literally anything about how or when to stop it. So no, Crowley does NOT suggest running away from earth and leaving it to die.
All he wants is some bloody peace and quiet where no demons, angels, or power-hungry floating heads can interrupt them. A space that is safe and theirs. There are also zero mentions of where he wants them to go; he is not talking about the stars or the universe. He wants to get away from where they currently are because heaven and hell show up uninvited whenever they please.
If your boss and ex-boss constantly kicked down your front door and stated their wish to torture you, would you stay there or would you move? Yeah.
This post got very long, but it was long overdue.
I am tired of seeing people call Crowley a callous coward who always runs away from his problems when he is the literal opposite. You take three sentences said under exceptional circumstances and apply them to Crowley as a whole, when it is nothing but his last ditch effort to keep himself and Aziraphale safe.
One last thing: If you come onto my post and start aggressively arguing about this, I will block you. Genuine discussions and questions are always welcome, being a dick is not, and I also simply cannot handle some of the rhetoric people in this fandom perpetuate because it's very triggering.
Make your own post, don't do it on mine.
#alex talks good omens#good omens#ineffable husbands#good omens meta#crowley#aziraphale#good omens season 2#go2#aziracrow#crowley x aziraphale#ineffable divorce#the final fifteen#crowley meta#aziraphale meta#crowley deserves better treatment from this fandom#and people that actually remember canon and don't take some fanfic version of him they have created during the hiatus#so many straight up factually incorrect takes#i dont know if i will make it until season 3 guys
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Do you believe the theory that JKR wrote the Lupin/Tonks storyline to shut down the popularity of wolfstar? I can sort of see it but I also think authors understand their audience enough to know that giving a character a new canon relationship isn't going to immediately kill the ship. I also find it interesting that she tries to surprise the readers by hinting at Tonks being in love with Sirius - maybe she expected them to be a ship but I've never seen it explored in fandom.
I feel like I remember that being a theory about Remadora when HBP came out—I do remember people being pretty surprised by it and thinking it "came out of left field", but I also remember JKR on her old site talking about trolling some message boards and seeing posts after OOTP came out with people shipping them (multi-colored werewolf cubs!) and thinking they were clever for predicting it.
Here's a spice take: I don't buy that theory, because I think Tonks was created primarily to be Lupin's love interest. That is her major (really—only) narrative function. Lupin has always been one of Rowling's favorite characters, and even though she killed him off, she gave him something nobody else from Harry's parents' generation got—moving on from high school bullshit/first war Potter guilt (Sirius and Snape were not so lucky.) I honestly think she wanted Lupin to get a sliver of happiness in his short life and so she chose him to be the father of the "next gen" version of Harry.
I don't think JKR's the type to be terribly affected by the fandom's attitudes/preferences. She's always had a pretty healthy detachment from shipping/fanfic/etc., as far as I can tell. I really do take it at face value that she wrote Sirius and Lupin as straight characters in her mind (never mind that the majority of fanon w*lfst*r ignores their actual canon dynamic anyway) so she never even considered "shutting it down"—it just didn't occur to her that it would be a "thing."
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Unpopular Opinions game: ❤️💚💖
Ooooh let's see! As you probably know, my current brainrot is AoT, so I'm focusing on that for this dissertation 😆
❤: Which character do you think is the most egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom?
I'll admit that, while I'm open to various ships, probably over 90% of what I read is rivamika and so my picture is pretty cropped. Also, I'm not afraid of the back button. But there are versions of Levi I've read that make you go "who is this character and why's he named as my blorbo?" It's worse in the few self-ships I've read (make him look more babygirl than Momiji Sohma) but he tends to be portrayed way, waaay more sweet and articulate than he is in canon.
I can sort of forgive that up to some point, however, bc it's fanfic and it's self indulgent and we like to idealize our blorbos. I guess if my fave was Erwin, or Jean, or whoever, I'd tend to see their mischaracterizations more. However, the mischaracterization that stood out to me the most was in a rm fic where Mikasa acted the absolute opposite of herself. It was a modern AU, but it wasn't a case of different setting-different life-different traits (like, say, an articulate Levi in AUs where he had a good upbringing). She was downright vindictive, manipulative and conniving in that one. I recall I left a kudos after the first chapter because it had started well enough, but by the time I finished I couldn't bring myself to leave a comment. The story itself was interesting, but it was so far removed from her character that I just couldn't.
💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?
Age.
I've laid my case here. (and rb and linked ad nauseam)
And was very glad that an actual psychologist recently argued in a similar note.
💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?
This is a hard one as I don't go around making popularity contests. One might be Levi's age, as still most fics make him 15+ years older than the 104th.
But the one I think is the most unppopular is that Eren can't possibly know what percentage of humanity he destroys in the Rumbling. He can't, NO ONE can at that point, because the actual extent of the damage and body count can't be known until weeks, if not months, after the Rumbling stops (they don't have internet or satellite phones so data assessment and communication takes time), and because the titans are no more after his death, he cannot remember this info from the future Attack titan (it's a closed time loop, so they can't see things in paths from after the time loop). It's just a silly thing, if you ask me, it's just an oversight from Isayama, who has proven to be shit with numbers, and he could have just said he wiped out "most of humanity", with Armin confirming the number in the epilogue. But people won't hear any of it.
(on a side note, 80% of humanity does not mean 80% of territory, as people are distributed unevenly across the globe)
Thank you so much for your ask! And sorry it took me so long to answer. These questions are food for thought and I've been so busy I've had little time for that!
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act i behind the scenes
hi hello, welcome to a little bts for my voltron college au fanfic, looking out for you on ao3!
favorite scene:
the ending of chapter 5, actually! i remember i was typing as fast as i fucking could to try and get it done and sent to my beta (i was also holding my family up for dinner lmao). the last few paragraphs where keith reflects on how far he's come and lance catching him in his own head— that just kinda poured out of me and after going back and rereading it, i don't think there was ever a different way to end the chapter.
favorite character:
copout answer but i dont have a favorite character to write. i have a huge soft spot for canon lance and pidge but in the fic, i love the small moments where lance or keith are interacting one-on-one with each other or with other people. i feel like i can really dig into the characterization there. hunk and lance's dynamic has been really fun for me to write because i am so soft at the thought of childhood best friends who have seen each other in almost every version of themselves and know each other in and out. i think hunk and lance stabilize each other pretty well, and they just seem to exist as two sides of the same coin. i also really enjoy pidge's dynamic with lance because it reminds me of two of my friends who were essentially brother and sister and argued all the time and made fun of each other. but ultimately, they'd fight to the death for each other.
shiro and keith's dynamic is fun because i like being able to get in keith's head and write a shit ton of his inner monologue but then what comes out is like three sentences while shiro just patiently waits for him to spit it out. i also have been hinting (which ill be deepning later on) that even though keith and shiro love each other and are close, there's some distance between them that's built over time. i think it's natural, especially when keith still hasn't fully come to terms that someone he perceives to be a hero would ever take a chance on him. when shiro, the gay depressed bitch that he is, goes to college and experiences the sanctity of forming your own community and meeting people who really truly get you, ofc he's going to constantly want to go back. i think that yearning definitely scares keith and thus leads him to distancing himself as a means of self preservation. and ofc, shiro sees keith pulling away but isn't sure what to do because keith won't talk to him so there's gonna be some underlying tension. can't wait to unpack all of that! i love u space dad i love u space emo.
least favorite scene:
i fucking hate action oml. i don't mind reading it but i cannot stand writing it and that's mainly because i have such a rotten little brain that has a hard time processing shit and so the pacing is really difficult for me. (thank u to my beta for suffering through my constant questions). all the paintball scenes in act i weren't my favorite because i had to constantly map out where all 12 characters were on the field at all times and how they were moving and where they were moving.
that being said, i do think the paintball scenes were valuable because i got to explore how each individual member would act separately and then as a group. i am v happy that there will be no more paintball after this, tho. (i have never played paintball before in my life).
character's ethnic identities
yeah so i made a note around chapter 2? i think? that i wanted to incorporate the lived experiences of 1.5, second, and third generation immigrants because this is a fanfic but also i wanted to ground it in reality a little. as a person of color, going to college i had the freedom to explore my identity and also reconcile notions of home and tradition with an entirely new group of people. im a huge sucker for language and it was important to me to incorporate various degrees of bilingualness because that's how i saw other people from multicultural households talk.
i couldn't really include keith being half-galra in a college au but i did see potential to have him go through an identity crisis about being half-korean (asians being forever foreigners, aliens, immigrants). since krolia wasn't there to see him grow up and help him connect with his korean heritage, i think that definitely contributed to keith's anger and trauma of not having the one person who could understand what he was feeling. as someone who grew up not knowing their biological family, i can understand keith's reluctance to even attempt to dive into his heritage and so he's just stuck in this liminal space where he's half-korean living with two japanese people. i created a somewhat elaborate backstory for him and i have big plans for his identity exploration further on so im very excited to project write more.
this has been a short but sweet bts of looking out for you! get excited for act ii! there will be more klance(!!!) and relationship development among the other characters (keith & allura, lance & allura, lance & adam!)
#ao3 fanfic#klance#college au#voltron legendary defender#behind the scenes#lance mcclain#keith kogane#takashi shirogane#adam voltron#allura vld#hunk garrett#pidge holt
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Choose violence ask: 10, 12 and 25 for Galactik Football
k imma be honest this was really hard cuz like. Galactik football is a really small fandom so we don't really have a general "fanon" consensus or really a general Anything consensus so i had to think abt it real hard
10. worst part of fanon
ok so we don't really have a fanon (again) but something i saw in some fics (not bashing anybody btw) quite enough was making the other SK super unlikable to the point of OOC just to make another character seem better or more sympathetic (it's Micro-ice). Just. Complete assholery to a ridiculous level that would never happen in between the main cast(at least in the first 2 seasons) just to make u feel bad for the guy.
And i don't understand that. Because like. Micro-ice is already kind of mistreated in canon? he literally never got an apology for the way he was treated (which made him RUN AWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!!) and everyone just returned to being friendly with each other despite them never addressing Micro-ice's feelings in a proper way imo. So WHY would you feel the need to make the others OOC to a ridiculous degree to try and make people sympathize with Micro-ice??? He's ALREADY SYMPATHETIC!! Just adress his feelings !!!
Oh and this was also done mostly for shipping reasons because...of course.
Can't have a character have a healthy support system outside of the one person they're dating!! Nope!! We HAVE to isolate a person from their friends by making them uncharacteristically horrible just to make the only outside option look better!! Peak romance!! /S (literally it's just the family friendly version of that fanfic trope where writers kill off canon characters who 'get in the way' of their ship lol)
12.the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them
Ok so i know "unpopular" in this context means hated or unliked but... I think i agree with most of the fandoms opinions on this one lol. Just to check, The hated characters that come to my mind are Yuki(don't really hate her on her own, but her relationship with Micro ice makes me wanna throw myself off a cliff so as a side effect i dislike her), Mark(no strong opinions to give except "he's boring" which we've all heard a million times by now), p much everyone in s3...idk i can't really remember anyone else. I personally find duke Maddox annoying but that's not the point of the question
So I'll take this as LITERAL unpopularity. You may have noticed but a while back i was obsessed with The Shadows and giving them personalities since i was upset that as the rival team they never got screen time. I think i was the only one that cared about them lol so there's that. It's just...Sinedd was a semi-main character! And they made a big deal out of him leaving for the Shadows!! And then NEVER expanded on them as a team other than "they aggressive 😢" !!! They should have done something with them!!!! Also the other rival teams as well. We should have gotten more alien content in this sci fi series goddamit!! They all have lots of potential that was unfortunately unused imo
25.common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing
I agree with most common fandom complaints..but as this is a small fandom, so we probably think of different things (or I'm just forgetting something)
The most common complaints i hear are that the pirates subplot took up too much time, clothing design being wack and generally disliking season 3. i agree with those, personally.
Again you and i probably think of different things when we hear "common fandom complaint" so feel free to tell me which ones i may have missed because I'm probably forgetting a lot
#galactik football#milli's monologuing#choose violence ask game#the shadows#micro ice#Micro-ice#cuz they're mentioned
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Wanted to see the rest of twitter's opinion on cap's fic....That was a mistake, lol. (Half of the search result was on Roman & Chinese mythos, so it wasn't TOO bad). There is one tweet that caught my eye: "I didn't like Ingrid much before reading tEatG, but now she's my fav! I was worried that I was substituting the canon character for the fanfic version, but really, it just makes me see them in a different light." So for those who think that Cap's fic (and fanon like it) don't affect the fandom, there ya go. Also, saw a couple fanart of Ingrid in Imperial uniform, and red is NOT her color.
Like of all the fics you'd think would get the big ol' Stamp of Disapproval, it'd be the one with, uh, all of this in it. No joke, I've seen that Savior King fic that nonnies keep recommending me lmao be called racist because apparently something about the way Dimitri likes Claude is No Good (been a while so can't remember why lmao).
And like, there's the thing right. It's not that fanon works shouldn't ever influence anyone's opinions on anything - different interpretations of things exist, and some interpretations are going to be more or less like other interpretations.
Like, for an extremely low-stakes example: out of his three total disliked foods on the menu, two of Claude's are sweets - of which there are only really four options to choose from anyway. Some take that to mean he doesn't much like sweets, while others say he just doesn't happen to like those sweets, while other don't give a shit about the menu (most people), etc. etc.. And sometimes, reading someone's interpretation of this will sway an opinion to agree with them on this tiny detail. Expand that concept outwards, and you get the general idea.
Now, the problems start coming in when the interpretations doing the swaying are inherently incorrect - it's not a matter of opinion, but simple objective fact. It's not "I think Claude doesn't like sweets that much," and more "Claude actively hates all sweets" - or, going along with some of the more extreme examples of the fic, "Claude has an omega sweet tooth on par with Lysithea."
These are wrong - period, end sentence, post tweet. This isn't different interpretations, this is someone being wrong. Expand that concept outwards, and... well, you get TEatG as a whole, with Ingrid in particular being a startlingly and almost randomly potent example of that very thing happening. It's not "I think Ingrid's father is conflicted about her fighting even with him ultimately agreeing to let her do so," it's "Ingrid's father hates the idea of Ingrid doing anything remotely unfeminine and would never approve of her discarding her role as a wife." It's not "I think Ingrid could have felt a potential Only Girl In The Room feeling with her friends but was still ultimately extremely close with them," it's "Ingrid actually never felt close to any of her friends because they paired off with each other as BEST friends which meant she was left completely alone all the time even before Glenn's death." Things about her as an overall character - whether details surrounding her or Ingrid's character itself - are so often just completely incorrect.
And this isn't even mentioning that Ingrid has a very big, very noticeable flaw that is almost completely erased, that being her hatred of the people of Duscur. It's been nearly completely whitewashed out of her character, with her canonical depth only ever being expressed after she supposedly grew out of it and only ever as something she regretted harboring. That is to say, not once is it ever actually shown; the closest the fic gets is her being slightly uncomfortable around a single Duscur child, before she immediately gets over it two sentences later. Not even really exaggerating.
And erasing that gets rid of Ingrid having unflattering flaws, the kind that can't be cutesy'd up or woobified. That on top of any nuance surrounding her father also being turned into "Ingrid is completely in the right and her father is Objectively Evil" makes Ingrid an incredibly flat, uninteresting character with no real flaws for her to grow out of. She doesn't have any underlining, misplaced hatred that she needs to overcome: just have her play with a lil' kid, that'll fix 'er up in no time. She doesn't have to confront the possibility that she had a hand in her strained relationship with her father by never trusting him to hear her out: her dad is just Bad Man, and she is just a victim of Bad Man.
And this isn't even getting into arguably the most worrying thing about Ficgrid: her consistent tendency to beat up men who make her upset. It's not "Ingrid hit Sylvain - a childhood friend of hers - for making an extremely inappropriate joke during a serious time," it's "If any man makes Ingrid mad she will assault him, sometimes quite violently at that." A flaw that is not just never addressed as a flaw, but a flaw that is propped up as something good for her character to have. It's not a flaw, it's an asset. Again, completely inaccurate to her character.
Add all of these misinterpretations together - a completely wooden character whose only real notable character flaw is treated like a good thing - and you have an interpretation of the character that should not be the basis for other people's interpretations. This isn't an Ingrid made up of interpretations that are grounded by canon, this is the result of extremely warped misreadings - or sometimes even blatant inconsistencies - forming together to create a character that is only "Ingrid" in the most superficial and shallow ways possible. Take that and apply that to the overwhelming majority of the characters, and you have TEatG
#ask#anon#exqueuese me princess#o captain my captain#and like fanfiction as a whole can be like. wrong. it's transformative and sometimes it's done to be creative with a concept#because who cares it's fanfiction#it usually doesn't matter because it's. fanfiction. a lot of times when writers are wrong they like admit as much from the word go#because again it's a deliberate creative decision to get a concept rolling#it's when a fanfiction gets propped up as something MORE than just fanfiction that it ought to get a more critical eye#you know like regular meta posts do#hence it being WILD that this fic gets so much blatantly wrong and yet is considered something to take seriously
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I'm going to throw you a curve ball and say Sherly and that one guy whose name I don't remember who you ship him with (I think it's Soseki?)
idont know how to say this without unintentionally sounding mean but this is the second funniest ask ive ever gotten. (i was going to say funniest, but i cant lie even for comedic purposes- the funniest ask ive ever gotten was “shouldve KNOWN an AKESHU shipper would RIP MY THROAT OUT IN PUBLIC for mentioning shusumi”) i got curious and looked at all the relationship tags for dgs on ao3 until the site wouldnt let me anymore and i can almost conclusively say tht no one on this earth ships sherlock and souseki, which, to be honest, is kind of a surprise. on my journey i learned just how dire the state of the dgs ao3 relationship tags really are. i hadnt looked that hard, and i had thought, “oh, woe is me, only about 200 of these are homumiko” There are less than 30 with the susahao tag. theres like, a Small Handful of fics with kazuma interacting w iris or yuujin. This is. This is awful. Someone needs to fix this. What’s wrong with you people? You could have filled this website with one hundred Kazuma Asougi Gets Forcibly Absorbed Into The Greatest Family fics and you’re still asobaroing away? Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Anyway it’s completely understandable to mix up souseki and mikotoba when you havent seen a ton of them they do both . have mustaches. thank you for thr ask and also for always calling him Sherly bc its cute here we go
describe their canon relationship/dynamic
*putsmy head in my hands* they have like 2 hours of screentime interacting its hard to describe a dynamic beyond “God they are so mean to each other”. its ok though. Its ok. the concept is very clear honestly. World’s Most Hyperactive and Completely Insane Man & Completely Normal Guy Who Goes Along With It. Oh My God They Were Roommates. lets see. serious notes. they trust each other completely and implicitly (mikotoba has to find a good home for The Baby He Was GOING To Raise But CAN’T and asks sherlock and he IMMEDIATELY agrees On The Spot my god ……) look . what do u call devotion if not saying “our home” about a place youve been away from longer than u ever lived at and thought youd never even see again & acting like you were never separated in the first place. Unreal. unreal.
anyway the fact of the matter is theyre literally just another variation on the Holmes & Watson concept go read an acd sherlock holmes story and imagine if they were ace attorney characters and idk i think youd more or less have it
your ideal/headcanon version of it? how does it differ from how it is in canon & why is this your favorite version? any other alternate versions of it you enjoy?
*pulls out my giant conspiracy board and 90% of it is just screenshots of fanfic The Legendary Pair by Meowzy on AO3* IF YOU LOOK AT IT. THE NOT-REALLY-INDICATED-BY-CANON BUT MORE FUN AND COOL TO ME VERSION OF IT. it makes this A Necessary Relationship. sherlock is. smart in Some places. definitely observant. But has. 0 common sense. you would think hes never been to this planet before with his apparent complete lack of frame of reference for what is or is not plausible or likely. there is too much shit going on in his brain for him to figure out which ideas are Actually Likely without taking like 2 days to work it out. Give him someone who actually has common sense and can crossreference What Sherlock Has Actually Noticed And Figured Out with What Actual Human Beings Generally Would Do.
OHGOD MAYBE I CAN TRY TO ELABORATE IN A MORE SERIOUS TONE ON MY FUCKING “YUUJIN MIKOTOBA SILLY ARC” POST. GOD. what im attempting to drive at is thinking abt . the idea proposed of 16-years-ago sherlock being more of a prickly little bitch and, Much More Importantly, mikotoba going to britain to try and escape the Grief Of Losing His Wife & subsequent Depression That Made Him Unfit To Take Care Of His Baby . and then theyre . again, worlds most hyperactive and completely insane man, and, again, GUY WHO TAP DANCES DURINVG INVESTIGATIONS ?!!!!?!???????????
basically fuck you *gives you by chance a fundamentally life altering friendship right when you need it*
Anyway i dont think theyre that different in my head than in canon but its hard to say.
what do you like about their relationship, why is it interesting or enjoyable to you?
i like it because i think they are neat. i like it bc i love families and fuck dude they sure do have one. i like it bc i am a dgs sherlock holmes kinnie and this drives my behavior,
what about the individual characters involved? what does this relationship mean to them, what makes it unique among their relationships?
*SCREAMS* BESTIES. anyway,
sorry for once again saying serious concepts in the dumbest fucking ways possible but Pov u are yuujin mikotoba age 26 leaving ur home to try and run away from the deepest pain of ur life & deciding not to stick with ur very close friends uve known for quite a while as you do so? For some reason? AND IT WORKS ???????????? in some part bc of this weirdo freak u moved in with impulsively who keeps almost blowing the fucking house up?
This is basically something i already said in this post earlier and i STILL . cant think of an actual good way to say it. I guess just . as many people on this blog may have noticed. me wh. me when stories involve the way positive connections with others help people <3
Also basically the only 2 reactions sherlock seems to invoke in people are “this guys insufferable” and “this guys insufferable but i also admire him” - god the trajectory of this train of thought just changed drastically im laughing so hard Bear with me . mikotoba is of course in th second camp bc thats where all sherlocks Positive relationships are. this is known to us. see: thr dialogue where hes like “Well your methods are unusual but ive always been willing to try them :)” (and then sherlock yells at him for being stupid.) anyway thats wonderful and its also Wonderful. mikotoba shortly after meeting sherlock watching this man rip up a handful of grass an d just eat it and then solve an entire mystery and mikotoba has to work out if this guys a genius or insane. He quickly realizes it is both. Anyway i guess to yuujin mikotoba sherlock holmes is his dear friend and partner & also the guy who cursed him to occasionally think “i DO wonder what that grass tastes like” at inopportune times
I don’t know WHAT the fuck i just rambled about for like ten minutes. So anyhow. sherlock describes mikotoba as “the only person i could truly call a friend” so shoutout to this friendless man i guess . no but literally hes a little weirdo freak and people dont tend to. like him. societal perceptions of ND people are not conducive to sherlock holmes having close friends . (Also he might not be. or might at some point not have been. particularly social in the first place - But this is my extrapolation based on acd canon and nothing in dgs at all so it cant be counted as anything other than my female hysteria.) and like. epic win for him finding someone who can Tolerate Him Enough To Live With Him and not just that but like . Actually Likes Him. Actually Likes Being Around Him And Would Like To Be His Friend. Congrats! also a win 4 him having like, a normal human being around. who can keep track of him and yknow. Help him remember important things. make sure he actually sleeps and eats instead of spending 42 hours straight trying to make The Sequel To Toasters (It’s Also A Juicer!)
favorite interaction they have in canon
oh,my god you know the thing is theres not a Lot of them but what there is is Really Good Actually.
on one hand we have the shit from the legendary pair scene like “:/ only JAPANESE mice go Chu. make a RUSSIAN mouse noise” or “YOUR BIRTHDAY? THATS FUNNY BC AS OF TODAY YOURE DEAD TO ME :D” “measured as always.” On the other hand we have the part from the scene after the last trial where sherlock thanks mikotoba for leaving iris in his care.
Basically i dont know how to decide. im going to say the Other part of the scene after the last trial where sherlock is excitedly telling mikotoba a story about something he did. With mikotoba. like a day before. and mikotoba lets him get through thr whole fucking thing before going Yeah i was. i was there.
favorite interaction they have in your head/a situation you want to put them in
OH GOD I DONT KNOW ACTUALLY. what is there to say beyond the Default List Of Every Homumiko Fans Shared Interests. its all been done. “Remember That Time They Raised A Baby Together For A Month”; “Have You Heard Of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? Great Here’s My Adaptation-“; “Put That Beast (Sherlock) In Japan LOL”. i will say that like. i dont remember where but theres some tiny bit of optional dialogue where iris says that sherlock playing the violin was a detail she wrote into the stories for fun and then after that he felt obligated to actually learn. i think a lot of people dont know this or dont use this. which is fine its a tiny random one off line i wouldnt even be able to track down. and a lot of people have the order of events go sherlock has violin -> mikotoba learns to tap dance, Look another musical thing matchy matchy :) . which again is FINE. BUT. isnt the other order of events - the order that it’s only reasonable to assume is canon - more fun ? Sherlock goes HEY GUESS WHAT I LEARNED VIOLIN NOW WE CAN MAKE MUSIC TOGETHER. He has not seen mikotoba in person in 9 years
thats the end of the post thank you i like the dads
#OH GOD 8M SO FUCKING SORRY !!!!!!!#THIS POST TOOK OVER AN HOUR TO WRITE#I REALLY. I THOUGHT IT WOULDNT GET LONG#AND THEN IT GOT LONG.#AND ITS PROBABLY COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FUCKING INCOMPREHENSIBLE TOO.#HIIIIIII#basilask#dgs from my brain
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ok. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Well dang :V
1: What was the first episode you’ve seen?
Episode 1 because I intentionally looked for the show to watch it after seeing clips of it online.
2: What’s your favorite episode?
Episode 1. It's one of my favorite first episodes of a show ever and I really like how well it introduces everything. I love other episodes of the show of course I just think the first episode did a great job and should get more praise for that!
3: Favorite Irken?
I like the main character a lot but if I had to choose a second favorite uhhh the Tallests as 1 entity I can't choose one over the other
4: Favorite Human?
I like the other main character a lot also but as a second Professor Membrane bc he's funny and I had a mental image of him before watching the show
5: Favorite Other Race?
There aren't really a lot of those to pick from :V
6: Any fan characters?
Yesssss a few but this particular one I made several comics about
7: Favorite fanfiction?
It's NSFW and I haven't actually finished the full series because it's long and I suck at reading! I might consider linking it at another point :V Favorite bc I took some inspiration from it for Est and I enjoy NSFW fics lol.
8: Favorite fanart?
I've got a few really inspirational ones on my computer! I recently made a long comment on the Irken propoganda poster fanart (and made my own fanart based off of it), I like the Corrupted Data 99% one (and made my own fanart based off of it), I like this sketch dump of Tallest Zims bc it's cool and bc of the comment "all I do is lie to myself" which I quote all the time now, this FnF song video that I keep trying to do a full version of because the OP said I could but haven't gotten around to it yet, and a bunch more I don't feel like tracking down lol.
9: Do you write for the fandom?
Well I make comics but for fanfiction I've made one, short ZaDr fic but in character somehow
10: Do you draw for the fandom?
Yes, here's my art tag for this blog and here's my askblog
11: Would you be scared if Jhonen found your art/fanfics/blog?
I've watched his Twitch streams (he might still be doing that every Monday?) and sometimes when he searches stuff up he ends up scrolling past fanart and doesn't acknowledge it lol. So not really, he's not as mean a guy as the fandom seems to demonize him wrongly as. I actually think meeting him would be pretty cool!
12: Do you like pairings? If so, which?
I mean aside from ZaDr I like RaPr and basically am open to any if ppl write it in a way I like. Those two I just enjoy in particular.
13: Do you believe there are any canon pairings?
Like, intended by the writers? I don't remember any prominent characters dating canonically no lol.
14: OTP?
ZaDr. I watched episode 1 and shipped it immedietely after their first interaction XD If that's not a "One True Pairing" I'm not sure what is.
15: Favorite enemies? (Tak and Zim or Zim and Dib… etc)
Does enemies to lovers count? Idk I am more of a HELPLESS ROMANTIC type I am only into enemies if it's charged in some way XD Otherwise it sticks out to me less so nothing really comes to mind that easily.
16: Favorite Tallest of the four?
I can't choose Red or Purple it changes every day! I like Miyuki and Spork but come on they don't have that much screentime and Red and Purple have far more changes to be funny lol
17: Favorite thing about Invader Zim?
ADHD and artstyle
18: Least favorite thing about Invader Zim?
that's hard. Even when the show disturbs me I take it as a positive. Uhhh. when ppl in the fandom are judgemental about other people's headcanons in a mean way lol
19: Do you have any blocked tags, relating to the fandom?
probably but finding out would mean I'd have to look through my blocked tags! I frequently block people though.
20: Do you ever do crossovers?
I had some Gravity Falls crossover sketches back in 2021, and I've done a few crossovers between characters in my own discord servers sometimes, but nothing large/prominent.
...Unless crossovers between zim askblogs count.
21: Any parts of show that actually scare you?
Probably not scare but definitely disturb me. I'd need to rewatch it to remember.
22: Any parts of the fandom that actually scare you?
I'm very sensitive as a person and have anxiety so people scare me easily!
23: Part that made you laugh the hardest…
I'd need to go clip hunting for that! Good news though I recorded myself watching IZ with a friend in 2021 and am slowly editing the clips so I'll find out eventually.
24: Part that you could relate to…
Zim very ADHD
25: Least favorite episode?
I like all the episodes and I see grossing me out as a bonus bc rarely do things disturb me and it means that it succeeded but uhhhhhh I mean least likely to rewatch probably rise of the zitboy lol
26: Least favorite scene?
Sometimes there's fatphobia in the show and that sucks :V
27: Do you like G.I.R.?
YES I don't draw him as often as other characters but if you look around my askblog he makes it into tons of the posts lol
28: If you could be anyone from the show, you would choose…..
Trying to send me to hell??? Rude.
29: Are the Tallest intelligent or not?
Yeah they just don't care lol
30: What do you think an Irkens blood color is?
I like it when it's either pink or matches their eye color. I want a rainbow blood smear of irkens after war. imagine it.
31: If you could write an episode, what would happen?
I've thought of several fake episode scripts, like where Dib gets suspended for pushing Zim at school and goes to a better nicer school, then ends up back at normal school at the end of the episode because the world is built to hurt Dib, or an episode where Zim gets stuck in his elevator and can't get out bc his PAK legs are too long and his rockets are useless and GIR is useless.
If I could write an episode though it'd probably end up being gay shit tho ngl
32: If all the voice actors and artists were different, would you still want Invader Zim to come back?
Well if the writers are the same... hmm, though a lot of what was good about IZ was the synnergy between all the writers, artists, and VAs, like Rikki who voiced GIR also being a background artist, and somehow a bunch of these ppl are still friends 20 years later.
I think it'd be fun to see it even if they totally and completely fuck it up though because then the fandom would tear it apart and it'd be funny
33: Do you consider any of the characters your ‘babies’?
Depends on the day but I do love random navigator drone from Florpus. Baby bc Evv is totally based off of them XD Adopted!
34: Do you have any fancharacters that are the result of two canon characters getting together?
Fankids? I'd say Wur, even though it's not Dib's biological kid he's still its dad XD
35: If you could meet any of the characters, who would it be and what would you say?
Dib's insufferable but I think he just wants someone to listen to him lol
36: If you could meet any of the voice actors, who would it be and what would you say?
Probably Richard bc I've seen lots of interviews with him and he just seems really friendly and nice to talk to!
37: Other than Zim, who is your favorite Irken Invader?
Damn :V Well we don't really get to meet the other invaders much, do we? Like it's either Skoodge or you just REALLY like a background character lol
38: Professor Membrane: a good daddy or a neglectful cold father?
I'd like him to be good but yk all the times he's good it could just be argued it's because his kids are science experiments XD When I write him he's neglectful and cold but more on accident than intentional abuse. He wants the best for his kids but he's just not equipped to deal with their emotions.
39: Favorite quote?
I'd need to rewatch the show there's too many good ones lol
40: Zim’s taken over the planet… Now what?
Calls the Tallests to tell them about it and they're like..... We're not flying over there!!! Uh... we told you to watch it not take it over!!! uhhhh whatever, good job [disconnects].
Zim would have his fun being king for a day then things get back to normal by the end of the episode lol
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I remember, although now not if the freshness of when I actually started in the fandom, but I still remember the dissonance I felt as I had just finished the book and dived into the fanfic and found so much hate and misunderstanding over characters I found so easy to understand their motivations.
I can't say some of my views were later tainted by fandom, the longer I dived into fanfic before I found myself into a Discord group where I could find people that knew more than I did about Danmei and Xianxia. MDZS wasn't my first experience with both, considering I have watched some movies and other dramas before, and my first MXTX book was TGCF, but I hardly knew enough. So entering the Discord group was like a breath of fresh air in terms of knowledge and learning more about a culture and small details we miss as an outsider audience.
I even re-examined what I knew about the characters, and learned more about others I didn't care as much I still have some I don't care even after, but I did learn more about them and found some respect for them, and I guess that my dissonance with fandom at large grew even more. But then I remember my experience in another fandom - Teen Wolf - that it's just as full as its own complicated relationship between fandom and canon, and something someone I met in it said stuck with me, "People have limited empathy to give characters, and they bestow it onto their favorite characters" or something in similar words, and this couldn't be any less true.
People are more inclined to analyze, or overanalyze, a character they care more, they give that character more leniency or more reasons for the way they act if they identify with the character more. However, the problem starts when the analysis becomes something personal instead of steaming from the character written in the text, and the fact MDZS has so many versions that bring with them their varied canons makes it even more complex.
Because we have the novel with flawed, but three-dimensional characters that have a variation of reasons and motivations for the actions they did, and even in it some are afforded more slack than others. We have a TV Drama that had to pass through a censorship in both content and ideals, they couldn't have a hero that lost control or wasn't as pure as some wished him to be - and taking WWX blame of the ones he was guilty of took a lot of him as a character - and threw all the guilt on another one took a lot of the narrative that the world isn't as simple or black and white. We have the donghua that added some little more flair to certain circumstances and gave a more villainous plot for something that was a good change in the novel, and completely butchered another character. Not only that, but we also have an Audio Book version and a Manhua, but since I haven't either heard one or read the other, I can't say much about them.
All these different canons end up leading to different interpretations, but also leads to misunderstandings and people talking in different "languages", since The Untamed and the Donghua have crucial differences in relation to the Novel. Another thing that adds into the dissonance I have with fandom at large, it's also the whole problem I see of the interpretations that disregard cultural and historical differences. Yes, MDZS happens in a fantasy ancient China, but they still have a different set of morals and beliefs that differ from what we consider as the norm today.
I've seen too much fics of characters raising a fuss about things they never did and would never do in the context they lived and because of who they were and believed in, because they weren't considered amoral or wrong in context. Although, MDZS discussion shouldn't be about morality at all or who has the higher ground to claim it. Or who is right and who is wrong, because that's not the story, that's not what we should have taken of it, because the beauty of MDZS it's because it tells a story of very much human characters, with human motivations, human fails and human emotions.
It feels frustrating to muddle through fics and metas that you read, and your first reaction is: no, that's not it, that's not 'character x'. It feels disheartening that if you try to disagree with something or have something to say about a character or that the majority of fandom have a specific opinion you're either said to be an anti or an apologist. It's rare to find spaces and places where you can have good discussions without someone attacking you for one reason or another. So working that dissonance becomes an even more difficult task when you feel you can't speak because of fear of being targeted.
But I guess that I got tired, and just wanted my frustrations to get out and about on the outside world, so here I am. I'm putting my face out there, I might get burned, but I think I needed to try.
-The Sole Nie out.
#MDZS#The Untamed#Just some thoughts#Not a Meta#Just letting out my frustrations about Fandom#You're free to disagree or agree#I'm not gonna fight anyone#so keep your flames and hate to yourself#however#if you want to have an interesting discussion with different opinions#then we can talk#I like to confront my opinions and different ideas
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Meet the author I guess?
Thanks to @severusobserver for tagging me, I'm not going to continue the thread, because frankly these things confuse me and I usually forget what everyone has said, but it was cool to see some stuff you're into, so here's a window into my brain too:
Three ships:
Severella/ Crowprince
This is Severus x my oc Petronella Blishwick. Of course it has to be my top one, because I love her. I generally don't like other people's snapexocs and often find the ofc's to be a bit... lame (sorry no hate just my personal taste). Petra is a self proclaimed weirdo, a bit grumpy like Snape himself, loves her punk and metal music, has elemental powers that sometimes get out of hand, and is neurodivergent. Their relationship is so full of trust and understanding of each other's quirks. It's the relationship I wish I could have irl basically. Head over to @princeandcrow for more.
Snupin/ Wolfprince
I love love love this ship. If it weren't for the above they would be my otp. I have three (I think) published fics for my boys now, with a couple more I'm working on. It's enemies to lovers, it's unrequited pining, it's angst and fear of rejection, it's opposites attract finding they actually have a lot in common, and so much more. And I cannot deny that the smut is 🥵😈💀🖤
Snack/ Starprince
I have not fully got into this yet, partly because I just don't have space if that makes sense? I feel like it's a more extreme version of Snupin in a way. The angst is heightened, the enemies to lovers, hate sex, potential for hurt etc. But in so many ways Severus and Sirius are like a mirror or two sides of the same coin. They were both abused, they both take their issues out on others, they even have similar looks (sometimes in fanart it's guessing game of is this snape or sirius?!) I have read a few fics which I loved and have two of my own in the works, but I don't know when they'll come to fruition.
First Ship:
Severitus. Not technically a ship I guess, but I'm following your lead with the platonic ships. This was what got me into fanfics. I don't know if it was what the author intended, but I think Snape and Harry have such father/son vibes in canon. Snape's like a very traditional strict parent in a lot of ways (not saying it's good or healthy but?). I like reading angsty Severitus where Snape is very prickly, but when it comes to writing I always end up making him kinda soft.
Last song:
Lost Myself by Longpigs, because I used it in the fic I just published! It also resonates with me a lot and my feelings towards relationships. But generally at the moment it's Slipknot and Tool on repeat. Particularly Disasterpieces which literally saved my mental health from a difficult situation recently.
Last Movie:
Suicide Squad with my daughter. She simps over the Joker, but hates Snape. Idk 🤷🏻♀️. I love Harley Quinn and Katana though. Can't remember the last film I watched for myself, but I got 5 Centimetres Per Second for my bday, so hopefully watch that soon.
Currently Reading:
Working my way through the back catalogue of snupin on Ao3. Part way through a history book about the lost library of Matthias Corvinus (still). Top of my pile to read next is Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami.
Currently Watching:
About half way through Midnight Mass and loving it big time. Only problem is I'm usually so tired at the end of the evening, or if not trying to write, and I need to be awake and focused because it's so good. Totally simping on the Sheriff.
Currently Drinking:
Just finished my morning coffee. Lots of herbal tea because it is very cold. Opened a bottle of Voignier last night which is 😋
Currently Craving:
Time alone. If I could just pause the rest of the world for a few weeks/months and spend all day every day writing, that'd be grand. Oh, did you mean food? I love food but as I pretty much always have to cook for myself it gets tiring and is such a chore. Maybe a meal out. Without any other people. But also actual sex with a real life person. Too much information? 😅
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Hey, remember that Clone Wars thing I was doing? Let's get back to that. THE BOX
Still really funny that THIS is where I stopped, mid-Obi-Wan arc
Narrator!Yularen, once again, is saying Rah-ko where Eval says Ray-ko
>Obi-Wan copying Bane's butch shoulder-shove past Eval
lol
I actually like Obi-Wan's chest armor here, the fur lining and all. Cute look, very low-level D&D armor. I've seen some people argue that this is a Mando outfit but he's really lacking the distinct T-visor; he just has a horizontal visor
(once again, it is so fucking funny that Mandalorians are literally wearing range targets)
Anakin is actually...quite calm, confronting Yoda about all this? He's clearly unhappy, but his first concern is Obi-Wan's safety. Wtf, fanfic led me to believe he was berserk through all this
...anyone else ever have that moment where you realize that you don't dislike a character, you just hate the fanon version of that character? Sometimes I wonder if even some supposed fans actually like Anakin Skywalker, given as they write him like a whiny brat instead of a complicated adult
--was that a salarian doing a handstand? (Twazzi?)
Bane: I require P E R F E C T H A T
Heyyy, it's Embo!
Dooku says something about a bounty hunter's standing "last season"--wait, hold on, there are seasons?
Hardeen is introduced as 'the marksman of Concord Dawn,' which I guess is where the Mando assumptions come from, but with the other bounty hunters a lot of their titles seem to come from jobs, not origins (ie pink dude being the butcher of whereever)
Is this the first canon appearance of a Selkath outside KOTOR?
Weeqay lady also hot
I have to ask why an assassin filter is testing them without their weapons
Dooku says Rah-ko
I like how Bane has gone from slapping away Obi-Wan's hand to "go!" within the space of two minutes
Looks like there's 8 now, lost 3 in the lightsaber room
I really have to ask who tf would take this job? "I'm gonna murder you at the end" was the conditions for 42% of the applicants. Why would the best bounty hunters in the galaxy take a job that has a 42% chance of killing them by sheer luck when they could take literally any other job that doesn't do that? I know, I know, money/arrogance/plot, but still
Obi-Wan speaks Parwan and whatever language Embo speaks in here
Down to 6
Idk why Dooku thinks the Box ain't doing its job. It's down to 6, and he expected it to be down to 5
Obi-Wan being able to hit those targets--alright, that looks like maybe 25 yards? 35? So the impressive part here is in how quickly he acquires his target picture; he's not shooting at an exceptional distance (especially since he's not using iron sights), but he is taking very little time to aim
There's still recoil on laser sniper rifles, which is very unfortunate (...also a sniper rifle with a scope is pretty excessive for such close range). I can't imagine dealing with that without a cheek well--it'd just be smashing into the helmet every time and you'd lose your stance. Horrible
...god I ship this so goddamn hard. I mean, I already did just from hearing about this ep, but goddamn. I need to reread the Idiot's Array now
...but seriously why is Eval even so salty, this is literally what the Box was designed to do--cut the team down to five dudes
Ok that wallrun was pretty sick
What do the other bounty hunters even think about this whole situation. "So like...am I good? Did I win?" What's it like when you're not a main character
Dooku: -tells Obi-Wan to kill Eval-
Dooku's next line: Eval is the one who knows the plan
Good succeeds because evil is fucking stupid
I intended to make one post per arc, but I actually hit the text limit here so the next ep is another post.
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Fanfic Ask Game 💖 👨👧👧 🌈 (Sleepless) 🤔🌝💻💭
Thanks so much for the ask @petiteboheme!
💖 What do you like most about your own writing?
Right, I hope this doesn't come across as pretentious or self-aggrandising (my new word of the day! lol) but I like that my writing is a good mix of humour and realism (this is what I am aiming for, anyway, and based on the feedback I've received, I seem to be hitting the mark!)
👨👧👧 Do you tell people in real life that you write fic?
Hell no! 😅 People I know in real life do not need to know I write smutty fanfic!
That said, there are people in my life who know that I write, like my husband (bit hard to hide from him the fact that I spend several hours per week slaving away in front of my laptop; plus, I keep asking him random questions for things I need for particular chapters, so he knows what I'm up to), and I've told my sister (because she used to write as well, and we actually collaborated together a few times in the past).
🌈 What inspired you to write Sleepless in New York?
I don't remember what inspired me, exactly... But at some point last year, I started toying around with an idea of Drake meeting Harper by himself while the guys were in New York for Chris' bachelor party and then lo and behold! @aussiegurl1234 publishes a (then) one-shot called The Sparrow exploring exactly this situation (which later turned into Golden Boy)😅 So she kinda beat me to the punch lol.
But, my HC remained, and after marinating it for a good few months (I actually came up with the basic outline of the dive bar chapter first - I knew Harper would get into some kind of kerfuffle with some drunken pervs and Drake would step in to save her), I finally started writing. And everything else (the arrival, the subway, the karaoke) came on the fly.
And even the dive bar chapter ended up turning out rather different than I had imagined it originally - I had originally thought that Drake would take the guy(s) 'round the back and beat them up, but when I actually wrote it out, it didn't feel right, so he just sent them packing verbally - but his quip about having "to make it seem like I wasn't actually here for her. Otherwise, we'd be going 'round the back, and taking on four guys by the dumpster was definitely not on my list of things to do tonight" is a nod to this original iteration 😇
🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?
The writing part 🤣
Don't get me wrong - I love writing! But the more I move away from canon, the more new ideas I have, but actually getting the ideas organised into a coherent form on paper is sometimes quite hard (because I don't have the safety-net / framework of canon to guide me).
For instance, it happens a lot that I get a random hit of inspo about a part of a conversation (a few lines usually) that I then need to figure out how to work into the rest of the conversation; not to mention how to arrive and then wrap up that whole conversation!
🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?
Freya.
Your request to explore her a bit more got me mega intrigued, so on my list in the near future is a one-shot written from Freya's perspective that will explore in more detail the day she met Drake.
And, I have finally found an FC for her, so I'll be able to put together the moodboard for the chapter that I had in my head 🤗 (which was actually one of the things that's been delaying the writing 😅)
💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?
Oh yah! I research all the time! 🤓 See here and here.
But the deepest dive I've done to date is researching Italian for the conversation that Drake has with the pervy Italian-Americans in the dive bar in Sleepless. Because not only did I have to write the conversation in Italian - but three different versions of Italian (Italian-American, 'standard' Italian, and Corsican vernacular - because I like to make my own life difficult 😅)!
Because - unbenownst to me when I started - this scene required several hours of research on YouTube (listening to native Italians explain the differences between the different Italian regional dialects), looking at online slang dictionaries for Italian-American (and comparing to 'standard' Italian vocab/slang) and then coming up with Drake's own vernacular (combination or 'standard' Italian and Corsican pronounciation).
And bear in mind that I do not speak Italian...at all! Nor can I seem to be able to wrap my head around it because even though I speak French, I find Italian to be so different in terms of spelling and grammar that I have a really hard time making heads or tails of it!
💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?
I don't think I say this specifically anywhere, but I HC that the story takes place in 2021 (because that is when I started writing the story - I actually wrote Chapter 1 of (Un)Common Attraction in Nov/Dec of 2020, but then I left it for a while and picked it back up in Jan/Feb of 2021).
Obviously an alternative 2021 (because there is no Covid) 😅 but whenever I mention dates (in conversation or in phone screen shots) I am using dates from 2021.
If anyone has any other burning questions they'd like to ask, the full list of questions is available here.
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Author's note, personal head canons, memes, and general thought processes that occurred to me while writing this Christmas story. You don't need to necessarily read them to understand the fic. The author's note was just getting too long on archiveofourown, and I don't actually like leaving a lot of notes. So, I just decided to make a private, unlisted post dump about it if anyone was curious.
Some of these head canons, I've already written out before because I tried writing Ben 10 fics in the past but always deleted them. Never really liked the directions they were going in, or I just lost the plot completely sometimes and forgot where I was going with the ideas. So, if you've already read these, then my bad. I figured I'd just dump them here anyway. I'm not arguing that any of these are true to canon, they're just daydreamed half-thought out scribbles. Don't take any of them seriously.
Author's Notes and Headcanons:
Title comes from lyrics by The Killers.
This was me restraining myself from naming it Piel Canela:
Fic is set in an alternate universe, where Ben and Kevin are career criminals. Instead of getting the Omnitrix like in canon, Ben can manipulate mana like Gwen and has a color scheme more similar to his mom's than his dad's: purple and blonde instead of green and brunette.
That thing about Carl and Sandra Tennyson being hippies:
In Alien Force, Eon was retconned into being an Alternate version of Future Ben instead of a Chronian, which kind of sucks.
Even Eon thinks being an alternate Ben really sucks; that's why he spends so much time trying to destroy all the alternate versions of Ben Tennyson. When Eon was displaced from time, he became aware of just how many versions of his universe there were. It gave him an existential crisis. He doesn't even consider himself to be an alternate "Ben" anymore but Something Else™ entirely. There is nothing else like him. He's just Eon and that's that on that.
My interpretation of him is that it's like how Luigi was originally just a recolored Mario but later became his own character.
Identity crisis aside, I'm fond of the idea that he retained anodite characteristics because in his universe, he didn't have an Omnitrix either, inheriting grandma Verdona's abilities instead. His powers are just less refined than Gwen's. While her shields are smooth and controlled, his are unstable and untamed like lightning.
Because of Eon's lack of finesse with mana manipulation, and the fact that his brain is scrambled by time shenanigans, he's always burning through his human form. Unlike Verdona, who can hold onto her human appearance for an extended period, Eon's form is always fluctuating because he can't even remember what his face looks like after centuries. That's why he sometimes looks normal human man, while other times he resembles a rotting corpse.
Paradox smelling like "burned ozone." According to this post, in the Warhammer 40K books, the description of ozone is used "to describe the smell of something coming out of the warp. For instance, a terminator teleporting in." So, that's what I used as inspiration for his scent. It's a pale blue gas that people describe as smelling like chlorine.
HC Eon smelling like space comes from this, which I guess smells like alcohol and raspberries. Not sure if I 100% believe that, but I tried to describe it as best I could.
Vacuity Village doesn't have a description in canon, so I tried to think of the most confusing stuff about it. All I know is that it's Paradox's house and it doesn't have to make sense. From the Wiki:
"Vacuity Village, also referred to as The Depository, is a place in the Null Void where those who no longer fit into any timeline go to live in peace."
Paradox wants Eon to move in with him there but he refuses 😔.
Some things I took from other fandoms, such as Vutalamine crystal. That's a Starwars property, not Ben 10, but idfc since it's fanfic. It's not even a crystal, the image of Eon sucking on one like a cigar was just funny to me. From the wiki:
"Vutalamine had other effects which made it lucrative to individuals from many different walks of life, including a calming influence which allowed the user to process information clearly and make better decisions, slowing of breathing and circulation, and reducing tremors and steadying limbs."
I figured Eon could use something to calm his head down enough any time he needs to sit down and focus.
I am not a math person at all, so don't come for me if I'm getting this wrong, but the equation thing is supposed to be Paradox mathematically calling Eon special to him. I found the equation "∃=1" which is supposedly a representation of "The Uniqueness Quantification," or "the property of being the one and only object satisfying a certain condition." I thought that was pretty cute for Eon and Paradox somehow. This is how I imagine Eon's new helmet to look like on either side of the chin. if it's too ugly, feel free to reimagine it in your head as way cooler, with hotrod flames and sexy anime ladies with large breasts:
my cringe paradeon mixtape
Miscellaneous Memes
Anyway, I hope you like my story. This concludes my effort posting.
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guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.
For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell
fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one
i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft
that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you
tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again
as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams
jason: don't you dare put on weird shit
tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)
hear me out hear me out,
red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans
t h i g h s
holy shit yes.
SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe
superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'
does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom
it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.
I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?
as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)
somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.
and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!
babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence
babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to
JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT
again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song
The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian
oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag
soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"
i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage
Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?
don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)
What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk
stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.
This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it
This is canon now @nctxrejects
lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out
idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family
bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another
I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.
yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.
Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings
smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn
Duke was adopted by Bruce?
not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?
True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live
true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?
apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome
ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.
ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut
lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash
oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man
while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.
dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie
magnum hot take
hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth
thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)
why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???
what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones
oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no
I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked
yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends
"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years
i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.
BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them
lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.
I am in love with your posts your honour thank you
omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?
The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST:
1) clark
2) lois
3) oliver
4) dinah
5) john
Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian
yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.
tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.
and what about it?
when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST
oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat
Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes
lmao i do too
I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it
he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.
you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank
babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)
ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something
that's a very good vocabulary upgrade
somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”
steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.
Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you.
Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious
babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks
In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97
lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)
You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.
bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers
How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?
horrible, next question.
I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid
yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'
I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.
superman: so what do you do in your free time?
batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time
bruce and oliver be like
boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)
lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)
Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje
he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'
I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??
i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way
SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed
'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'
i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam
fair enough
#this is only like half of it#but at least you can get like a few answers#yanno fuck it#bataranswers#ask#asks#anon
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(Some of) My Favorite Zutara fics
Warning, looong post ahead!
Zutara Fanworks Appreciation Week snuck up on me, so sadly I haven’t had time to properly contribute anything. I’d love to participate next year or maybe even before then (I play by my own rules, folks!)
Still, though. I wanted to at the very least pay tribute to some of my all-time favorite Zutara fanfics that I’ve enjoyed and have inspired me over the years.
(Click here for my post on Self-Love Saturday, where I shamelessly promote my series The Phoenix and the Dragon and share a bit of backstory behind how it came to be in the first place.)
I’ve shipped Zutara ever since Fall 2006, and I have been fortunate to read so many excellent fanfics since then.
Some have made me laugh, others made me sob, others straight up made my heart burn like it was shot full of lightning:
So in honor of @zkfanworkweek, below are 13 of my favorite Zutara fanfics, in no particular order:
~*~*~
Rated G(eneral)/T(een)
Engulfed by Luaburachid
Zuko finds himself engulfed by love.
A sweet one-shot of our favorite firebender discovering how deep his feelings are for a certain waterbender. It’s just pure fluff and always brings a smile to my face.
we hold our hearts in silence by psychedelic_aya
Seventy years later, Korra tries to figure out Zuko and Katara.
Oh, this one is so bittersweet but oh so good. It alternates between flashbacks and Korra’s POV watching an older Zuko and Katara interact. Just… ugh. My heart.
Day 6: Found by SooperSara
When Sokka comes up with an idea to get rid of Joo Dee, Katara finds herself in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se with a tea server she did not expect to meet.
I love a good Jasmine Dragon AU where Katara / the Gaang actually interacts with Zuko while he’s undercover as Lee from the tea shop instead of what happened in “The Guru.” This is so much fun to read, and my only complaint is that it’s not longer.
Celestial by SooperSara
An unexpected dip into the koi pond at the North Pole brings Zuko in contact with the spirits and grants him insight to his destiny. A destiny he isn’t sure he wants.
Another by the talented SooperSara! Actually, you should check out all of her stuff. It’s all so good, and I absolutely adore this one. It’s pretty canon-compliant and the ending… oh, the ending makes me tearbend. Ma’am, I’m still weepy.
this little fuse we lit made something in you by SecondStarOnTheLeft
There's a secret door in the wall of Katara's room. Things go a little further than planned, once she opens it.
What happens when Katara discovers a secret tunnel (secret, secret, secret tunnel, yeah!) that leads directly to the Fire Lord’s bedroom? Reading this fic is like settling down to drink a hot cup of Iroh’s tea – it’s soothing, sweet, and thoroughly warms the soul.
Dancing in the Dark by damagectrl
Post-Season 2 AU: While in Ba Sing Se, Katara and Toph hear a rumor about two tea servers in the lower tiers of Ba Sing Se and sneak away go to investigate only to have their suspicions confirmed. On her personal time, Katara tries to teach herself to dance and fails so badly, a masked man takes pity on her to try to help.
This is one most OGs will probably remember. It’s also one of the first ZK fics I ever read, back when I was a wee lil bb Zutarian! It was originally posted in Oct. 2006 and takes place between “Appa’s Lost Days” and “Lake Laogai.” One of my all-time favorite Bluetara AND Jasmine Dragon AUs. Heck, all of damagectrl’s works are fantastic reads, for that matter. I highly recommend checking them out, especially this classic.
such selfish prayers by andromeda3116
Katara's ambition, so long set aside for the good of others, breaks free and sets fire to her soul. Or, Katara has a vision of her canon future, casts it aside, and becomes a world-changing politician instead.
There’s a reason why this fic is one of the highest rated on AO3, if not THE highest. It does right by Katara and gives her the ending she deserves. 10/10 would recommend.
better than things dreamed of in the forest by catie_writes_things (SERIES)
As a child, Bumi knew: his mother was a waterbender, his father was an airbender, and he was a firebender. Something about these facts did not add up, but it would take him a long time to understand.
Hands down, one of the most heartbreaking fics / series I’ve ever read. The author describes this as the adultery fic for people who hate adultery fics, and it certainly packs an emotional punch in the gut. Personally, I’m not one for the “Zuko and Katara have an affair while she’s with Aang” fics in general, but this one examines the fallout caused by a single night of passion and all of the consequences that stem from it, especially how the ripple effect of their choices impacts everyone. Even though it breaks my heart all over again every time I reread it, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
~*~*~
(More fics, several with high ratings, are listed below the cut)
Rated M(ature)/E(xplicit)
Moonlight and Sunshadow by GrapefruitTwostep
The dragon offered Katara a deal: protection for her family and tribe if she lived with it for a year and a day. And she said yes. Because what other way was there to save her people? But there was more to the dragon than Katara bargained for. An "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" retelling.
A fairy tale AU in which Zuko is cursed to live as a dragon and Katara is certainly no damsel in distress. You’ve probably heard some version of the original fairy tale before that this fic is inspired by, and it’s such a delight to read.
The Blackfish and the Dragon by ama
Katara grew up in the Southern Water Tribe under the tutelage of Hama, the only waterbender ever to have escaped Fire Nation captivity. When Zuko arrives at the South Pole, seeking the Avatar, they are more than ready to defend him. Then one day, the Southern Water Tribe receives a petition for peace, and a proposal of marriage.
One of the best arranged marriage AUs I’ve come across. Iroh is crowned Fire Lord after defeating Ozai, and Katara must find some way to peacefully coexist with her hotheaded new husband as she also finds a place for herself in the Fire Nation.
Confused by thispieceofwork
Zuko stood. "You told Aang you were confused. Are you confused because of me?" Katara was silent, arms crossed in front of her. "Don't make me answer that."
Starts during “The Ember Island Players” where Zuko overhears Aang and Katara’s private conversation on the balcony. This is another fic that will shatter your heart into a million pieces but it’s oh so worth it in the end.
A Heated Exchange by Smediterranea (SERIES)
Katara had not considered herself to be someone who would have earth-shattering sex with a guy whose name she didn’t even know. But here she was, certain that she had never made a better decision in her life.
An AU two-part series of Katara getting familiar with a certain handsome guy who lives down the hall in her college dorm. It’s funny, cute, and cuddling while watching Planet Earth has never been hotter.
Bonus day: Tea Shop by cincilin
"Hello and welcome to the Jasmine Dragon. Today's special is—" he cut himself of with a sharp intake of breath, at the same moment that Katara placed the voice and looked up.
'He has hair.' was her first thought. Then the rest of her brain caught up with her and she started to get up, sending Momo scrambling to hide under the table. Season 2 AU, during "The Guru."
I told y’all, I *LOVE* a good Jasmine Dragon AU fic, and this one-shot checks all the boxes: heart-to-heart conversations? Witty dialogue and banter? Bending match that turns into a makeout and something steamier? It’s got it all.
~*~*~
This was only going to be a list of maybe 5-7fic recs, but well… oops. I also kept the above list to completed works only, just because this post is already long enough.
Several of my other favorites that get honorable mention include:
Thinking Out Loud (WIP)
The Summit (WIP)
Sparrowkeet (Series)
Purr
The Nature of the Blue Spirit
Rhythm of the Rain
Fault Lines
Clarity
Seriously, there are just SO MANY good Zutara fics out there. I had to cut myself off from adding even more, because I could go on and on and on. Much like Admiral Zhao, I have no. self. control.
I love you all, my fellow Zutarians ❤️💙💜 Mwah! Happy ZFAW!
#Zutara Fanworks Appreciation Week#zkfanworkweek#zutara#zuko x katara#zuko#katara#zfaw2020#also i apologize if the formatting is being weird on mobile#it looks fine on desktop but that's tumblr for ya
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Thanks for answering my questions! I know it was a lot lmao but I Am Have Questions and very few people informed enough to discuss them with xD
I suppose it is possible they Oniwaka and Co. were being rent from their exceptions and not to Tokyo itself, but I thought the way it worked was that MC rent their connection to Tokyo itself and overwrote it with their own! I hadn't considered your angle before; something to think about haha
If I remember right though, Sitri's wings, and with them his powers, only grew in recently right? Like, a little while before the first Valentine's Event? That's why he had so much trouble controlling them if I recall correctly! But sustaining himself on that energy is one thing that can be explained (though! It's possible that part of Sitri's deep desire for chocolate in general, but valentine's chocolate especially, is the love that gets put into them? Not to say he sustains himself solely on it or anything, but it might explain the strength of his desires ahaha)
Wait. Do those character quests mean that collisions can literally send people into the pasts of other worlds?? Like fr?? And also, does that mean collisions are like, direct overlaps with other worlds and not just illusory versions?
Part of why I'm trying to sort this all out is because I want to write a TAS fic, but I needed a better understanding of how, exactly, the system works, and was basically about to throw my hands in the air and say that actually nobody goes home at all until they've fulfilled their contracts ever and that's that xD I've finished all the story content btw! Including chapter 11 and most of the translated events, except for the Canaan one (gotta get on that, pray I get myself a Dagon 5★)
Does that mean that we contracts are *unfulfillable*? Like MC's connection with Agyo was basically like "I want friend lmao" and then they got their friend, but does that mean that Agyo is trapped in Tokyo until MC decides that they don't want to be friends with him anymore?
Also, do you think that if a Stray Transient does eventually run out of energy to sustain themselves in Tokyo, they get booted back to their world permanently, or do you think they just recover their strength in their home world and then get pulled back over?
Thanks again for answering my questions! I hope that this is proving as interesting to explore to you as it is to me hahaha
I don't mind that it's a lot at all! Lol it was just a surprise. I'm honored to be approached about this kind of thing, and I find it very interesting, yeah! 'u' I love worldbuilding and characterization so thinking about/sharing my thoughts on it for things I like is always a pleasure.
I mean it's possible they're rending their connection to Tokyo, but I feel like that wouldn't take the exception away? Because it came from an interaction they had, not Tokyo itself. I figured they were torn from the exception and the exception and fighting robbed them of all their energy in the proccess of making them a. . .screaming, mindless fighting machine lmao. Like rending a familiar from someone? But that familiar is inside them? If that makes sense? I don't remember if this was explained to begin with let alone how lol I should reread it lol
Sitri's wings did come in pretty recently, and they're implied to be a puberty thing. The problem is that he says they came in "the other day"--which doesn't necessarily mean "two days ago" as convenient as that'd be. The Japanese is even more vague, just saying "When I was taking a bath" without giving a timeframe. But I kinda figured that, until the wings popped in, love from his family was enough to sustain him. Because Bathym doesn't have a family here, really, he has his fans and the guild. But also since his family knew about the wings, saying they were a sign he was growing up, maybe they have a similar power that pops in during puberty and thus were able to feed him others' feelings. But yeah they were new which is why he couldn't control them.
As for the pasts in other worlds. . .time doesn't flow in other worlds the same as it does in Tokyo necessarily. El Dorado isn't even around anymore, time in Shangri-La flows slower than in Tokyo, etc--but these places still participate in the Game despite that. So worlds and timelines aren't entirely stable--after all time's been reset over and over. Also, we have time travelers from Utopia(which is the future???) so if they were forced to conform to a single space-time path that'd be kind of difficult? So, yeah, time and space and memories aren't necessarily stable in collisions. I mean, if a world collided based on memories, who's to say those places are still exactly as remembered? It works for the jungle in Shangri-La because it's a jungle and how much will that change--but the collided oceans are connected to towns in other worlds? Dagon connected islands from various worlds into one, too--those can't all be his own memories or from the same timeframe. Collisions are pretty unstable by definition so it doesn't surprise me that time can get screwed up along the way.
But yeah collisions seem to be actual overlaps of some sort--since Macan remembered that he heard MC's voice that happened in the collision, Xolotl met and saw himself in the collision, etc. And those things had effects that brought them to Tokyo to begin with.
Oh, there's also Nomad's character story where MC was invisible to everyone but Nomad--Nomad could feel them too--because the worlds were unstable under Ikebukuro Coliseum and they reminded Nomad of the prison he was in, causing the Collision.
MC could travel the collision/memory without Nomad around and get accurate information about its layout to help him escape.
If the collision doesn't alter the actual past then there's no way they'd know without Nomad physically with them. . .and there's no way Nomad would know where to go to escape the prison if MC weren't able to get actual information.
Then MC breaks the lights--only Nomad can see them, but they can affect reality/the past in a way that influenced everyone in it. And they're able to escape thanks to information MC gathered about and influence MC had on the world that Nomad would have no means whatsoever of getting/doing on his own.
Then they saw present Nomad who said MC was his, MC tried to reassure past!Nomad that it was okay, they were the same person, and past!Nomad felt betrayed.
Past Nomad sees MC through the transient light and chases after them, bringing him to Tokyo in continued pursuit of revenge.
. . .and present Nomad, now home with Mc and having had resolved the collision, remembered that he'd been chasing MC through the transient light but had travelled to Tokyo to find them--but had not travelled to them. He'd likely forgotten who he was looking for because he was kind of out of his mind at the time and thought he was chasing after his own hallucination to begin with.
Now that he remembers he wanted to kill MC for leaving him but also knows that he's the one who MC left him for, he deems them half a traitor for only betraying the him of the past not the him of the present and lets them off the hook for now.
(nice kabedon--DAMN THE TEN IMAGE LIMIT.)
MC was the one he wanted venegence against when he left Utopia, although he still has to get revenge against the people who turned him into a tiger. But he went to Tokyo to get revenege against MC and made a contract with them without remembering they were the target. He says he won't kill them for now but someday, when his other revenge is done, he'll come after them for betraying him. Until then they're his assistant and they'll be helping him get revenge. If they betray him again--betray him "one and a half times"--they'll become the new priority and he'll kill them first.
But even he said that he thinks that he's crazed for revenge is stupid so MC figured out that he wants them to keep him in check. (He calls them 'traitor' fondly(? He smiles while doing it, I think it's pretty fond) and I wish he kept doing that but it'd probably reveal more to people than Nomad is comfortable revealing lol so he calls you by name instead.)
Also, canonness note, he declares them his detective assistant when he declares them his accomplice--and in the Beach House Andvari he reiterates that's your relationship too. Which means that his character quest is canon across events. And if events are canon--whether through your choices or not(at one point in the story you know Gyobu but you only met him in events until that point???) that means Mc making pacts with everyone could be canon too.
. . .but yeah collisions are just time and space freaking out. Maybe they're past resets of sorts.
And oooh fanfics are exciting 'u' I'll give it a read if you link it! And congrats on reading everything! *U* I've gotta do that myself lol and good luck getting 5★Dagon!! I wanted 5★Tangaroa(someone I have added has him and. . .holy shit he heals himself, he heals allies around him, he's practically invincible) but I ran out of transient stones and I'm poor irl 8'D The Canaan event is fun and also chaotic and will probably give you even MORE questions about how the fuck timelines and collisions work. Because it kinda introduces a new mechanic into the mix. So uh brace yourself?
The problem with "nobody goes home until they've fulfilled their contracts" is that some people just don't have contracts. And their own desires only seem to cause gates to open and take them, not actually bind them--someone from Tokyo(or in Tokyo in MC's case) needs to be their binding agent if they're not like. A World Rep or someone similarly powerful enough to stay on their own(this is a guess--they're probably sustained by being the System and thus stand on the faith of all their people from their world. Alternatively they're bound to Tokyo via MC as the trophy.) Otherwise they wouldn't note that transients disappear eventually if unbound by a contract.
Gullinbursti isn't attached to MC by contract anymore not because MC said "I don't want us to be friends" or anything but because MC refused to make a proper contract with him because he'd misinterpret it. But he's still hanging out, so. It's not immediate. But, yeah, there are probably unfulfillable contracts that can only be broken by death or declaration. Agyo is stuck with MC until MC says he can go lol--I mean they're friends now but it'd defeat the purpose of the pact if they went away as soon as that happened. Because MC wants more and more companions they'll never truly have their desire to have friends fulfilled probably. So anyone summoned that way gets to stay in Tokyo until MC is no longer in it or maybe until MC decides "I don't want people around me anymore/I don't want to see anyone ever again" and truly means it--which will declare their contracts fulfilled and send them home, if they have a home/life to return to.
As for if Stray Transients go back permanently, yes and no. I think they go back and recuperate their energy and they stay home if they don't have an outstanding pact(whether they're aware or not)--however if they were just there because they went into the light and had nothing binding them to the land but that energy/will that brought them, they'd go home without bwing sent back unless they really wanted it again. Thus they can be resummoned, intentionally or otherwise. If MC one day dismisses everyone, regrets it, and says they want their friends back, everyone would come back. But if they didn't ask for everyone to return they'd stay home(disregarding that they'd probably all go NO WE WANNA GO BACK TAKE US TO MC and the transient light would bring them back to Tokyo again lmao.)
So. Yeah, they'll stay home until summoned again, even after they get their energy back, I think. If they don't have a home to go back to maybe they float in the void for a while, kinda like how MC just kinda existed as the Exiles without a home or like how Robinson says they can't stay anywhere forever because they're Wanderers.
(Somewhat related, Shiro mentions in the Apprentice Santa event that it must be hard to import turkey to Tokyo. . .import it from where? Tokyo is closed off on all sides INCLUDING THE OCEAN. That means someone's bringing turkey from other worlds into Tokyo--a business-like summoning contract lol. "Come to Tokyo, bring goods from other worlds, and you can go back until I need more" basically. Using another world like a manufacturing plant lol. . .little things like that make me consider that you can go and come back at the will of a summoner, assuming you donct have an artifact or ability that allows you to traverse worlds as you please.)
Another thing for you to consider if you wanna be a bit more puzzled: remember how much belief plays a part in how things work in Tokyo. Consider. . .if someone claims they're not a stray transient when they actually are and everyone around them believes that they have a contract or guild or something keeping them there even though it's not true. . .are they bound to Tokyo by that belief as long as they're around more people who think they're bound to somebody? Will they disappear if people stop believing them or they're around people who believe they're a stray? Consiquentially if people believe a stray will disappear sooner than later does their timer run out faster? If Ose somehow ran around telling people that transients won't disappear with his ability to make people believe everything he says, do they stop disappearing because no one thinks they will? I suppose he can't lie to nature, but can those beliefs sustain people? I mean belief can cause Oni to be hurt by beans, can cause Behemoth to regain his sense of taste, can cause people from worlds that've been destroyed to become demons because the Angels invading will it to be so. So where does belief's power end and the power of the System kick in? Does the game end if MC puts on Ose's crown and tells the Representaives it's over and they all lost? Or would the alternation of belief on a mass scale cause an Exception by clashing with something more powerful than it? What, since they so value Systems and the Faith that sustains them, to the point that losing Faith in your System causes a full on collapse of the world it holds together(see:Canaan), is more powerful in this game than the power of belief?
#danie yells with anons#danie yells answers#danie yells at tokyo afterschool summoners#long post#tokyo afterschool summoners
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