Welcome to the Star Chamber

The fannish journal for Fabula Rasa on AO3. Do not follow if you are underage. This is about preserving safe fannish space for everyone, and I will block if you violate. I block freely and without remorse. If your blog is blank, I block. My avatar is the work of the phenomenal orientalld, whose art you should check out.

[fabula-unica]

I want to respond to a kind recent anon who was curious about what asks I answer and what ones I tend not to, and I think they’re right, I need to be explicit about those expectations instead of just hoping people get the hint. I am not going to respond to anons or messages that are overly and immediately personal. No, I don’t have to tell you why that is. It was a tough thing to learn, but my boundaries are in place for a reason, and they’re not going to change. Do not make me your therapist, or the object of your fixations, or the unwilling recipient of your complicated emotions, on anon or off of it.

I delight in responding to asks about my writing, about character analysis, and about story ideas. I also like to hear if my stories have been important to you, or helped you in some way, or shown you something about yourself or the world you hadn’t seen before. If those are sent to me on anon, I usually don’t respond to the latter category of messages out of a respect for your privacy, but they are deeply appreciated, and I am grateful. Sometimes I don’t respond just because I am overwhelmed — I have a demanding job and a busy and challenging personal life, and sometimes I just can’t get to fandom things, so I’m sorry if your ask has languished. A lot of times it’s because there’s just not the time I wish I had to devote to fun stuff.

I do have personal connections — some of them very close ones — that I have made through fandom, forged over the years. I like making fandom friends. If anyone wants to come off anon and be normal at me in my inbox, you’re welcome to do so. My personal connections have been forged slowly and over time, by careful mutual trust and respect, and I cherish those connections.

I’m being explicit about this because I think some expectations of fannish interaction have shifted in recent years. So I’m telling you mine now, and thanking you in advance for respecting them. Thank you for playing with me in this delightful sandbox of fandom, which has been and continues to be one of my life’s sweetest and deepest joys — as have all of you.

[batlantern-abyss]

I have lots of thoughts about batlantern but ultimately it boils down to "unstoppable ADHD (hal) vs immovable autism (bruce)". That and "Spooky" is the cutest nickname ever

[gothamcoast]

balcony talks

[concrete-tiddy]

​there’s no heterosexual explanation for Batman

[gffa]

Okay, I can see why people ship Bruce/Hal now.

[baihujun]

baihu can you tell me about your favorite batlnatern headcanons

Hmm well I don't know if I have any specific favorites, but I can list a few I've thought about that may have snuck into my drawings

Due to a series of events, Hal has a not-so-secret secret comfort mug on the Watchtower that he makes a point of using whenever he happens to be there. Yeah it's the Batman novelty mug

Hal attempts to princess-carry Batman as Green Lantern whenever the opportunity arises, for shits and giggles. Needless to say, Bruce hates it

Even after they're together as a couple they still argue and needle each other as much as they did before, only now with bonus weaponized flirting. The rest of the JL are used to it by now and are fairly certain bullying each other is their love language

When they're in private, they're surprisingly soft and tender, sneaking touches and taking care of each other in quiet, meaningful ways

Does Hal despise "well-intentioned" offers of charitable assistance and literally anything that might possibly be construed as a handout? Yes. Does Hal expect high roller Bruce Wayne to bust out all the bells and whistles and roll out the red carpet when taking him out for a night on the town? Also yes. Trying to figure out this fine line gives Bruce headaches on the regular

[inkonsistentsky]

strong believer that if you are a fan of icemav or top gun, your best pipeline will be to proceed into dc batlantern, hal jordan is a magnificent piece of ass (literal and metaphorical) also exploration of authority and its place in society!!!! survivor's guilt!!!! space!! it's worked out very well for me i promise i am still sane:D

[nlghtw1ng-deactivated20240311]

[legsdemandias]

I absolutely will die on this hill, access to fiction that makes your skin crawl and open discussion about it is the best way to keep that skin crawling fiction from happening in reality.

It doesn't matter if it is ~positively~ or negatively portrayed. If you censor it, we don't talk about it, then we can't protect against it.

[legsdemandias]

If you are seriously against CSA, then you should absolutely read Lolita. Yeah, the book that set the western world on fire with weird sexual conversations. 

That book perfectly breaks down what a lot of very real sex abuse looks like. It details how predators look for victims (family members), it details what happens to the child who is enduring abuse (she acts out, she screams randomly, she does very poorly in school, etc, etc), and it shows who the most dangerous perpetrators are (intelligent, well liked, charismatic). 

That book will make your skin absolutely crawl! Once you get out of the head of HH long enough to look at the world Dolores was dumped into, you’ll cry your eyes out. But you know what it’ll do? It’ll open your eyes. 

That book has a lot of weird reactions. Some people turn on Lolita, some people turn on HH, some people turn on Nabokov, but it came out when Freud was still respected. That book came out in the middle of “little girls want to fuck older men and it’s their fault it happened and they’re crazy”. 

It turned the world around. Some of the discussions about the book are nasty!!! Even from Kubrick and Nabokov. Their discussion about Lolita makes my SKIN CRAWL!! They talk about it in a very POSITIVE and WEIRD way. But it opens your fucking eyes and that’s the POINT. 

Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality. 

[deanhugchester]

Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it's nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.

Emphasizing this last sentence because it's so well put. We have to engage with things that make us uncomfortable so we can learn to be better.

[fierceawakening]

Yes! I recall reading a quote from Nabokov about why he wrote it. What I remember him saying was “I read in the news about a man who was arrested for molesting girls, and I became curious. Why would a person do that? So I wrote from the perspective of someone who would.”

That’s… that’s not even weird, I don’t think. I wonder why people do horrible things all the time.

I don’t actually think Nabokov had everything about it right. It seems to me that many real molesters are much more aware of what they’re doing and sometimes even perving on the cruelty of what they’re doing. HH seems kind of quaintly Freudian in comparison.

But that’s what Nabokov would have seen around explaining it, so it makes sense.

And Nabokov really does seem aware, on my reading, that HH is doing harm, and that the idyllic love affair he’s dreaming of is in his head. What’s actually going on is just seedy and gross.

It’s hard to read, hard to understand, and messy.

But those things are what make it good, rather than just “hey look I picked a shocking topic have some torture porn.”

(I hate the term torture porn but it’s the best term I can think of rn)

[boldlygoingthefucktobed]

Nabokov gave extensive interviews and talked about Lolita often. He gets such a raw deal. I have compiled a bunch on my main blog here. i just hate nabokov misinformation so here are three for you:

Do you closely follow Lolita’s fate? I feel obliged to keep up with the destiny of Lolita. After all, people stop me on the street and ask me to comment on opinions. So I have to know what is being said about me. Lolita is an indictment of all the things it expresses. It is a pathetic book dealing with the plight of a child, a very ordinary little girl, caught up by a disgusting and cruel man….But of all my books, I like it the best. The last bone always tastes best.

Nabokov…predicted: “Those who keep looking for spicy bits will not find them. They will not be able to read the book through—they will get bored too soon. The only thing that might be attractive is the diary H.H. keeps. And then, who would be attracted by a 12-year-old girl?"

Vera Nabokov…refilled his glass. “Tell them about the child,” she said. “Oh, yes. I am rather bitter about this. I am in favor of childhood—in fact the very first book I ever did was a translation of Alice in Wonderland into Russian. Anyway, a few nights ago, on Goblin night, a little girl—she was 8 or 9 I think—came to the door for candy. And she was dressed up as Lolita, with a tennis racquet and a pony tail, and a sign reading l-o-l-i-t-a. I was shocked.”

By all accounts and backed up by extensive interviews, Nabokov wrote a psychological thriller and expected people to be shocked and compelled by it in the same way you can't look away from a train wreck. His worst crime was total naivete. He literally never expected that anyone would take it as a romance.

[witchbabywigg]

nabokov wrote "don't create the torment nexus" and then children showed up at his door dressed as the torment nexus and people forever will be like "you wrote about the torment nexus, which is the same thing as being in support of the torment nexus".

[fabula-unica]

just wanted to say i was already a batlantern enjoyer in theory but then i read ONE of ur fics and im now terminal over them actually. youve singlehandedly converted me i dont know how ill ever read anyone elses batlantern fics but you did it. you won. the batlantern fic-er ever in my eyes

I’m dying to know what you read that so convinced you :)

Also given the pathological amount of stuff I’ve written, you can probably do nothing but read my Batlantern for a good long time.

[nitewrighter]

A big thing for Clark is, once he gets a better grasp on his super-hearing, he makes a point of kind of consciously keeping his super-hearing away from Lois's apartment because "I trust her and respect her privacy" but at the same time he is absolutely attuned to when Lois's voice reaches a certain pitch/volume (much in the same way he is attuned to people screaming/calling for help or saying "put the gun down" all over the city). So pretty much every morning Clark just fucking perks up like "Lois? Trouble???? Oh wait she's just singing in the shower. Wow, she is really bad at it. I love her. :)"

And that's also how she gets terrible songs stuck in his head all day.

[nitewrighter]

"Does Superman know if I'm jacking it" the greatest thread in the history of Metropolis forums, locked after 12,239 pages of heated debate and like 22 responses from someone under the username "SmallvilleCrow1938" repeatedly asserting that "guys Superman has bigger things to worry about than you jacking it. He's got a lot going on."

[nitewrighter]

flamebird-theorist-official:

Of course he knows if you're jacking it. He's tallying it, too. It's one of the data points his species is using to determine how ready our species is for interstellar travel.

theBibbonator:

so if we want 2 go 2 space do we jack pff more or less

SmallvilleCrow1938:

HE IS NOT TALLYING IT. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT HE'S DOING. HE'S BASICALLY LIKE A FIREMAN.

Alexius-INTJ:

Sure, that's what he wants us to think. What does his species want with our genetic material?

SmallvilleCrow1938:

NOTHING! WHY ARE YOU ALL SO FIXATED ON THIS??

Tough-Little-Trouper

Mod here. Crow, if you don't calm down, I'm going to hit you with another temporary ban.

theBibbonator:

d9 we jack off mpre or less???????

[writing-prompt-s]

You’re the town’s superhero. Your greatest enemy is the town’s supervillian. However, secretly, your both brothers. This isn’t anything tragic, as your whole destructive rivalry is actually just a massive prank on your third brother, the mayor.

[loserfreakweirdo]

finally, a realistic sibling relationship in the media

[manicpixiehorsegirl]

The superhero and villain are twins and switch places when they get bored. The mayor brother acts grumpy about the situation but actually doesn’t mind because it brings in tourists because people love street theater and the city’s economy is booming. They all have an older sister who is the DA and the really big brained one. She ends up manipulating the twins in such a way that the city is safer because criminals don’t want to draw the notice of either person with super powers, so they just end up clearing out while they can.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The villain routinely kidnaps the mayor because it’s the only way to get him to attend family functions

[ravenaissance]

the jim lee trinity triptych is finally complete! the new wonder woman cover looks great :)

[gffa]

Brb, gonna go throw myself into the sun for how much Bruce loves Jason and is determined not to lose him again, how he's not just a chess piece on the board, that's his kid that he loves and is terrified that is going to die on him again. BRUCE LOVES THAT KID SO MUCH THAT IT'S SENDING HIM OFF THE DEEP END.

[gffa]

H E L P Dick Grayson weaponizing that he was the cutest little kid and how MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT HOW CUTE I WAS WHEN I KNEW NOTHING AND WAS TRYING SO HARD TO BE INTERESTING TO GROWN-UPS LIKE YOU AND BRUCE, REMEMBER HOW MUCH WE ALL CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER, THINK ABOUT THAT SO YOU'LL STOP FIGHTING BECAUSE THIS IS ALL EXTREMELY SILLY is the kind of characterization I come to comics for. Dick thinks this whole Gotham War plot is stupid: CONFIRMED CANON

[fabula-unica]

Piggybacking off of that ask about Hal integrating (or being introduced to) Bruce's world, I kind of think it would be fun to see the same scenario in reverse. like, there's not a single instance that I can think of in which Bruce Wayne would ever be around Hal while he's with a bunch of his peers and flight bros, but I feel like it would be interesting. Especially in the sense of, like, by this time Hal already knows how Bruce works when he's in socialite mode. But I think seeing Hal in social interaction mode with his own peers would be revealing in a way, like, all the different ways they both put on airs to protect who they are inside, even if they do it differently/in different social settings. I feel like Bruce would expect the very classic Comfortably Heterosexual and Hypermasculine Dude Bro persona from him only to be surprised that the version of Hal with his peers/friends is shades different than any version he's seen around the League or even/especially in their home/their bedroom. You know?? IDK but it's fun to think about !

I have actually never thought a lot about this, but you’re right, what a fun imaginative exercise!

In my head I’m imagining a situation where Bruce and Hal meet regularly for recreational casual sex, and maybe one afternoon Bruce meets him at the hangar, and Hal says yeah sure but I promised my buddies I’d have one round with them because it’s (Rando Pilot)’s birthday, so come join us and then we’ll head out, and Bruce sighs aggrievedly but fine, whatever, the sex is mind-blowing so he’s not going to do anything that might jeopardize the most spectacular blowie of his life later on.

And then at the bar he is just a silent observer of Hal in action, and it’s not really what he had thought — turns out another friend is going through some shit, and Hal is gentle and supportive, and an excellent listener, and he realizes that Hal is the center of the group and the one they defer to not because he is the loudest dudebro in the room but because he is the quietest — the one who gently but firmly steers conversation in the other direction when it brushes up against misogyny or homophobia, the one who knows what’s going on with everybody and checks in with them, the one who drinks the least and listens the most, the one who holds this brash group together. And Bruce sips his beer and watches, fascinated. It’s almost as though when Hal is with the League he is performing a caricature of pilot culture as a kind of protective shell, but when he’s actually immersed in pilot culture he is — more truly himself? It’s a puzzle that Bruce toys with while he nurses his beer.

Anyway, that’s the first night Bruce ends up sleeping over, and the next day he finds himself putting off going back to Gotham for reasons he doesn’t really understand.

[fabula-unica]

Hi Fab!

So my exams are coming up. And I think my work ethic needs some work because I keep getting sidetracked into the recreational reading of your fics because of the stress (😒) of exams. So it's a merry little cycle.

I just had a question. I've been reading a lot about fanfic writers being tormented by AI. Have you experienced any such trouble? Are there any AIs out there who are copying your work? Please ignore this question if it's too intrusive! I'm only asking because as a burgeoning writer on AO3 I want to know if I should take precautions too. Should I put my works behind AO3's registration wall?

I love your recent work and you interact so much with your fans, it's delicious the amount of questions you've answered. It's making me think about the stuff you've written, and made me go back and read your older works! Thank you so much for your presence online 😊 and your contribution to fandom.

I have literally not given a single thought to AI — is this seriously something fanfic writers are worried about? The idea being someone is going to generate a Fabula Rasa story? This is hilarious to me. It would be so easy to do, because my works follow such a predictable pattern. Angst, injury, smooching — there you go, done and done.

As for the registration wall: yes, I would recommend it. If you have any sort of life where you would prefer an employer/client/acquaintance not to be one Google away from reading your fic, then yes, registered users only. You might think that your pseudonym is secure, but it’s rarely as secure as you think, and you don’t want to be one mistake away from a disastrous situation. If you’re a student now and you think you don’t have to care, believe me that there will come a time when you do care, so I would advise everyone to restrict their fic to registered users only.

Glad to contribute to the stress relief and temporary distraction! But only in the service of eventually getting the studying done. Back to the books with you ;)