Okay! Time for a new pinned post. The old one is here. I'll keep this brief â a couple of housekeeping notes, then a taglist under a read more.
I'm LeaJoyWrites on ao3, btw.
Please let me know if I miss something on any of the following. I may forget to tag, misinterpret a post I reblog, or fail to check my internal biases. I do want to be told, and I will make an effort to correct my mistake.
I try to tag warnings thoroughly.
This blog should be a safe space for sex-repulsed people.
I have no tolerance for bigotry, and exclusionism is bigotry.
I write, write about, and analyze texts containing sensitive topics. I try to approach this in a sensitive manner, and again, I try to tag accordingly.
I do not discuss real-world events in my blog much, but I'm not strict about it.
My approach to fandom moralism is "live and let live." I do actually have a complex moral philosophy, but its application in online spaces is just "if it's not intrinsically harmful to an actually existing person, there is no moral issue with it."
Related to the above, I am very much so against censorship.
Fandoms and taglist below the cut! Fair warning that I do not format it as just a list, and I do ramble.
one of my most-used tags is #hellyeahmeta, which I use for meta-analysis posts written or at least op'd by other people. I sometimes forget to use this tag, so some meta analysis posts are tagged as meta. I tag for specific character meta, specific fandom meta, etc..
some other tags I use for different kinds of (especially non-fandom) meta are #meta squared, #fandom meta, #fandom etiquette, #fandom things, and #meta meta. I'll (probably) come back and actually link these at some point, but rn you can copy+paste them into the search bar in my blog to the same end.
a couple of tags I use for a specific flavor of character are #beloved bereaved burdened burned and #beloved bereft bereaved. I mostly used these tags early on in my blog, and I used both for Jason Todd (second Robin, Red Hood) and the first one for Five Hargreaves. I think I specifically started using them because of web weaves, but I don't remember exactly.
tags like #funnies, #not fandom related, #relevant for life, and #cool things -> exactly what they say on the tin. #miscellaneous is more or less synonymous with not being fandom related, but it's a tag I use more often because I'll drop it onto a post when I don't have the bandwidth to properly tag it but don't want it fully untagged.
#tumblrisms -> self-explanatory if you've been here for a while. If you haven't, it's sort of like... there's a set of phrases, in-jokes, and classic viral posts that you learn on tumblr by a sort of weird osmosis, so it's basically just stuff related to that. I personally use it as a sort of anthropological archiving tag bc I wanna note whenever people do it.
Okay, this next part is actually a list; it's my blog-specific "[my username] [does this]" tags and then fic tags for when I talk about or post pieces of said fics, prompts, etc.. there are fandoms I've posted fanfic for that I don't talk about on tumblr, but that's beside the point.
#leajoyfics
#leajoyprompts
#leajoymemes
^I'll probably have more of these later, but I doubt I'll have many. Next part is fics/fic series with fandom and very brief synopsis specified in parentheses
#bury me in broken glass let me see the sky (no fandom; horror-tragedy flash fiction)
#it's too late and it's just getting later (Danny Phantom; existential horror + vivisection, hurt w/eventual comfort)
#rh and jl no good deed (dc fandom; pseudo trope-subversion + character study)
#Project: HOLLOW (The Hollow; govt. experimentation au)
#forgive but don't forget to hold a grudge (Wednesday [netflix] AU where Tyler gets to be saved, rather than blamed + character study of multiple characters)
Next part is a few AUs I came up with for Ben 10, which I don't want to write because I have too many projects going already, but which I also do want to write because [insert keyboard smash here]. Alphabetical order. (as of when I'm writing this, I only have one post that goes over all of these lmao)
#A.T.E.M. AU (AF s3e15 Time Heals doomed timeline is partially remembered by the trio)
#Ben10 G3 AU (Classic s1e11 A Small Problem Graymatter almost getting dismembered scene -> Graymatter does get dismembered but he comes back from the dead immediately and doesn't tell anyone)
#Redemption Arc Makes Things Worse In This One AU (UA s2e18 The Perfect Girlfriend is followed by the nanites being removed and Elena being cured, but Ben is terrified of her now because holy shit levels of stalking and violation of trust)
#Technopath Stalker AU (Ben's personal life is filmed for months and snippets released on the internet in a power trip/attempt at humiliation/grab for glory/etc.)
#my inbox is currently a graveyard of good asks i forgot to answer đ. im so scared to look in there #theres some really good ones in there too like WOW i wojld LOVE to answer this one. unforchies âïž. um. unforchies
not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like âi saw her at the devils sacrament!!!â girl... what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament đ
I want y'all to know I'm doing some ridiculous levels of character redesign for the four horsemen in part three. like we're getting into symbolism and a tripartite conception of violence, with unwilling perpetuation implied to be intrinsic to the nature of most suffering.
"On the other hand," War says, clearly indifferent to them losing their minds, "Plague and Conquest are two forms of a certain nature, which is determined to take. It spreads and destroys, be it by human violence or nature's poison. So the amalgamation before you is a carrier of infectious disease, his entire body claimed â conquered â by it, inevitably shedding viral particles into the air around him so that it conquers others. Another link in the chain of suffering."
Kai sends Adam an alarmed look. He's been in direct contact with this guy for the last five minutes.
"Oh, don't worry," War tells them. If he had intact eyes, Adam suspects he'd be rolling them. "We're just symbols. You're people. From us to you, nothing is contagious."
Huh?
also I'm almost to the part where they meet Death, and I already have roughly two thousand words, so this chapter might end up being around the same length as "The Labyrinth" was. we shall see
The one about the ship no one else cares about, or the deeply unpopular character, or the extremely unusual AU?
The fic that got no comments or kudos when you posted it?
Months or years from now, that fic might be exactly what someone is looking for in the sea of fics about all the popular characters, ships, and AUs.
Your fic might be the only fic out there that has what someone is looking for. The only fic that scratches the itch that it turns out you and that reader share.
btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here
Anonymous asked:
Someone should ship Azmuth with Ben thereâs so much juicy potential
I'm gonna go ahead and link my recent post about their character dynamic in general. Regarding shipping...
I'll be honest, that's not really how I see their relationship. I'd put it in the relationship ambiguity zone, though, definitely. They have a weird combination of mentor-mentee, frenemies, coworkers with personalities so wildly divergent people get whiplash from watching them interact, and that one textpost that's like "I fear only one person truly understands me and I fucking hate that guy."
in a shipping context, I think they'd have the dynamic of "soulmates using the red string of fate to try and strangle each other," tbh
Let me explain:
(I'll be disregarding the hardcore proship options, since I'm not interested in writing that)
Option One:
Their relationship progresses similarly to canon. It leans a little bit more into the "coworkers with wildly different personalities" option, and it stays that way until Ben is Ben 10K. They have a long history, but they're not really close. Azmuth begins to interact with him more, now that he's accomplished so much. Him becoming such a highly renowned hero was enough to get Azmuth out of his shell â seeing his creation being used for so much good is enough for him to bother interacting with the person using it that way, y'know?
Ben has a lot of confidence, and he's level-headed. He's been around the block by now. In a lot of ways, he's a completely different person than Azmuth met when he was younger.
(Humans have a very different conception of ages than Galvans do. Just based on the "Blukic and Driba go to Are 51" episode, I'd say it seems like Galvans change physically a ton and mentally barely at all, while of course we know that humans change physically quite a bit and mentally, also quite a bit. So it probably wouldn't occur to Azmuth that the difference in personality was due to age; he'd probably assume it was purely due to excessive combat experience.)
In any case, Ben is still a little shit, and he makes a point to annoy Azmuth as much as possible (see: Ultimate Ben 10K). Azmuth finds it irritating at first, but he eventually comes to appreciate the familiarity with which he's addressed, and frustration gives way to appreciation, which in turn gives way to a sense of closeness.
Ben, in this story, would have some pretty mixed up feelings about Azmuth. If there was any element of attraction, he'd be weirded out at first. But mostly, he likes the guy.
In this scenario, their respectively isolated/elevated social positions would put them in a position of not really being understood by anyone else. Ben may or may not have a partner, but polyshipping would actually make this better lol.
Basically, they'd have a weird little QPR, starting when Ben is nearing middle age, where they're life partners almost entirely on account of the omnitrix inextricably binding them together. It's part of Ben (see: genetic fusion), and it's part of Azmuth (see: his greatest work), so they're stuck with each other one way or another. It's just lucky that they get along, and eventually (about when Ben's human age catches up to Azmuth's Galvan one), they have a weird little romance.
It almost feels like an inevitable progression of their friendship. The closer they got in age, the closer they got to being an old married couple (coworker dynamic, then friends, then QPR, then romantic). Soon after they reach that point, Ben dies. Azmuth grieves him, of course, but there's a sense in which it just feels like part of that progression. Ben aged faster than him, so he was always going to die first.
Option Two:
AU where Ben and Azmuth don't meet until Ben is well into adulthood. They have a weird, tense relationship. Ben has been fused to this device for over twenty years, he's made an intergalactic name for himself, and he's even saved the planet in which its creator was born, but its creator hasn't bothered to even introduce himself, let alone help with any of the technical problems over the years.
He gave up on meeting the Omnitrix's maker a long time ago, so when he finally does, he doesn't really give a shit what he thinks. Azmuth, though, is torn between lingering resentment about the Omnitrix being used as a weapon in the first place... and a sense of immense pride and gratitude, considering how much good Ben has done with it. He went through the process of "wow. fuck. the universe can die actually" -> "okay, maybe it doesn't all have to go" -> "this wielder of the Omnitrix... has actually convinced me this universe is worth saving" without anyone witnessing it, and without ever directly seeing/meeting Ben, so he has the sense of Ben saved him by being Ben, but not the rapport that he has with Ben in canon.
But then they both get hung up on the fact that they understand each other, despite only just having met, in a way no one else can. They've been inextricably entwined for decades, and they've only spoken three times, and their senses of identity and fates are interdependent, and Azmuth's creation is part of Ben's body. And they don't really like each other that much. And they irritate each other on purpose, which doesn't help.
By the time they get to the point of not wanting to punt each other across the nearest solar system, they're weirdly codependent and obsessed with each other, and they have a weird-ass rivalry-style friendship for like fifteen years before one Ben goes "oh shit am I having xenophilic thoughts?" and Gwen's eye twitches because fucking obviously, Ben, did you think your arguments about control of the omnitrix weren't kinky banter???
And then when he tells Azmuth this, Azmuth freezes for like three minutes and then is like "well we don't have to worry about getting married, since we're already bound, body and soul, by that device on your wrist. it could probably be shifted to look like a ring, even" and Ben has to resist the urge to throttle him.
...okay, not gonna lie, in an alternate universe where they don't meet until Ben is thirty-something, they would have a hilarious frenemies-to-lovers arc. thank you so much for the ask
whatâs your hc of azmuths and bens relationship and a slight darker take with azmuth technically owning ben because the omnitrix is Azmuths and the omnitrix bonded to bens DNA so wouldnât that make ben azmuths too đ
okay so this is another one where I could've sworn I had a draft response, but I can't find it. anyway. I remember some of my main points, and I also remember that it was a heck of a ramble. I can't really recreate my rambles, so I'll try to summarize what I remember instead
Azmuth and Ben have a really interesting dynamic wrt power, reputation, respect, trust, etc..
Power: Ben has physical power, but Azmuth has the means to take it away. Azmuth has social power, but he doesn't use it. Azmuth has the means to give himself physical power, but when it comes to natural physical power, Ben outdoes him easily.
Note: Ben has had to save Azmuth several times in canon because of that difference in physical power and capacity/willingness to wield it.
Reputation/respect/trust: Reputation is sort of the same thing as social power, at least to some degree. It also has something to do with trust. But there's a really interesting "trust triangle" going on with Azmuth, Ben, and the wider universe. It goes something like:
- Azmuth respects Ben because he recognizes that Ben is a genuinely good person with good intentions, is creatively intelligent, and is capable of understanding nuanced ethical situations and handling them accordingly. Because of this, he trusts Ben. In fact, he trusts Ben with power more than he trusts himself with power. And isn't that interesting?
- Azmuth does not respect most people. In fact, he thinks pretty much everyone in the universe sucks, since so many are obsessed with power and prestige.
- Ben does respect most people. He's willing and able to be an asshole and a little shit, of course, but he very fundamentally cares about people as people.
- Ben does respect Azmuth in the same way he respects most people â that is, he respects him as a person and considers him worthy of care and kindness and saving â but he doesn't respect him in the way everyone else does. He doesn't see him as an authority, at least not usually. To Ben, Azmuth is just another person who happens to be in his life. Sometimes Ben calls Azmuth out on his shit, and sometimes Azmuth calls Ben out on his shit.
^Notably, all of this can be pretty thoroughly accredited to their first meeting.
For Azmuth, he'd completely lost his faith in... well, everyone. He was at one of the lowest points of his life, completely suicidal and fully convinced that not one single thing in the universe was worth saving. Ben was the person who literally broke into his life, called him a selfish coward, and demanded he make himself useful. It was Ben's lack of respect for Azmuth, his refusal to bow to cold (apathetic) intellect as the ultimate authority, that Azmuth respected him for.
But for Ben, he was also at one of the lowest points of his life. He'd lost his cousin, who was also his best friend, and he was combatively almost completely helpless while literal lightyears away from home. Also, there was a universal-scale nuke strapped to his wrist, quite literally ticking down the hours until it went off. And he was ten.
And with all of that happening, he pushed on and fought to get to the one person who could stop the end of the universe from happening. And when he finally, finally got to that person, got to Azmuth, his response was that the universe wasn't worth saving.
And for Ben, that was well and truly the moment he realized there were no adults in the room. He didn't have wiser, stronger, better backup. The people who cared couldn't save him, and the one person who could save him didn't care enough to try. Any last bit of that childish trust in adults he used to have? It was completely shattered.
So their first meeting has a lot of significance. Ben restored Azmuth's faith in everyone, his desire to do good, and his ability to give a shit about the universe. Azmuth ended Ben's trust in any kind of authority, and he was the reason Ben had to contend with the idea that absolutely no one was coming to save him.
Of course, Azmuth did pull through in the end, but even then, it was clear that his actions were due to Ben convincing him to reconsider.
So basically, I think there's a really interesting balancing act going on re: the ways the two of them exist in an objective context and in relation to everyone else vs. the way the two of them interact with/perceive each other.
Back to the other stuff though:
Re: the way everyone else in the universe sees Ben and Azmuth, Azmuth is deified, and Ben is idolized.
That is, they're both put on a pedestal, and they're also both dehumanized, just in wildly different ways.
Azmuth is an ideal. He's the perfect Galvan. He's an unfathomable genius. He's a benevolent inventor hidden away from everyone else. Everyone says, "oh, I couldn't possibly understand The First Thinker of Galvan Prime. He's beyond me. He's above me. He's a god compared to me."
(and that's why his relationship with Ben is so important. Ben saw him at his worst. Ben saw him at his worst and said, "get it together, asshole. the universe needs you." he saw him at his worst and said, "it's worth saving. all of this, it's worth saving. why are you hiding away?" he didn't say "oh, reclusive genius, you must be meditating on the very nature of truth." he said, "hey, reclusive genius, stop hiding already. start helping." and that's so so so important)
Ben, on the other hand, is a star. He's a famous person. He's just some guy. He has so much power but somehow never seems like a threat. (It's because he's kind. It's because he's good. But some people can't really understand that, so to them, he must be weak.) Everyone says, "oh, I know exactly who this guy is. look at him being so prideful. anyone could do what he does if they had the omnitrix. look, he screwed up. see? he's not so special."
(but Azmuth? Azmuth will always understand that he's someone Ben Tennyson saved. not with the omnitrix. not with fighting. Ben saved Azmuth as Ben. he saved him by saying, no, you don't get to give up. you don't get to say that the universe is a lost cause when there are so many people in it and you're just one of them. so Azmuth doesn't see someone who happens to have the omnitrix, and as such, can do amazing things â he sees someone who does amazing things because that's who he is, and because of that, Azmuth wants him to have the omnitrix. and that is also so so so important)
Azmuth isn't allowed to make a mistake -> if Azmuth does make a mistake, people refuse to see it.
Ben isn't allowed to make a mistake -> if Ben does make a mistake, people don't let it go.
But their relationship, outside of the way everyone else interacts with them, gets rid of this completely. Azmuth is a guy who screws up, as far as Ben's concerned. Ben is a guy doing his best, as far as Azmuth is concerned.
So, all that to say, while I can definitely appreciate the power dynamics of the omnitrix becoming part of Ben's body and Azmuth having made it, I think those power dynamics are pretty thoroughly complicated by the relationship they have as people.
that said...
They have a weird sort of trust-fall thing going on, since Azmuth could manipulate the omnitrix in a way that seriously hurts Ben, and Ben could use the omnitrix to seriously hurt Azmuth, and neither one of them really knows which one would be able to act faster. So it's like, halfway between a pact of mutually ensured destruction and the knowledge that there... really isn't any sense in worrying about it, since they do trust each other enough to leave that power be.
Ben's sense of self-worth, and even his sense of self, is often tied to the omnitrix, so he probably feels like Azmuth made him sometimes.
On the flipside, Azmuth's sense of self-worth is in what he creates, and so is his sense of self sometimes, so in a way, he feels like Ben is the embodiment of his impact on the universe.
Basically a sort of "I am your creation" + "you are my legacy" dynamic, except the "creation" feels like he doesn't live up to expectations, and the "creator" feels like he can't actually take credit for his "legacy's" greatness.
...
uh. I think you were probably hoping for, like, unbalanced power dynamics in the headcanons here, so... sorry? I think their relationship could become unbalanced very easily, given the right push (see: the "primus" episode, iirc), but what makes them so interesting is the unexpected steadiness of the balancing act itself in most situations.
tl;dr their dynamic would have Azmuth be in a position of power over Ben, if not for the fact that their relationship was built from a moment where Ben saved Azmuth from himself, resulting in a dynamic where Azmuth respects/trusts Ben where others don't, and Ben is willing to be honest/genuine/disrespectful with Azmuth where other's aren't. their relationship acts as a perfect counterbalance to their different levels of social power in the wider universe.
I wonder what if Tumblr " humans are space orcs" memes would apply to Ben doing mundane things?
okay so I SWEAR I had a response to this in my drafts but either it's way far back or I don't, so I'll start from scratch.
I need you to know that I am obsessed with "humans are space orcs," and I think about it wrt Ben very frequently. I don't think it would apply to him doing mundane things, necessarily, but it would apply to some things he does.
Example: Ben has canonically pulled several consecutive all-nighters, interspersed with extremely short naps, which means he's gone upwards of seventy-two hours with less than three hours of sleep. This is on the upper end of what humans can endure without having an extremely severe impact on their functioning, but it's heavily implied that he and Gwen (and probably Kevin) are desensitized to sleeplessness.
Now, do I think there are alien species that can go a long time without sleep, or maybe even ones that don't sleep, in the Omniverse? Definitely! But there's a big difference between someone who doesn't sleep much because of their biology and someone who doesn't sleep much despite their biology.
"My kind doesn't need to sleep much. I've been awake for a week and could go a few more days still."
"Oh, cool. Humans are supposed to sleep for eight out of every twenty-four hours, but I didn't have time to sleep last night, and the night before that, I only got about four hours. I should be fine as long as I get a nap in before tomorrow, though."
"...W H A T ???"
Another thing that I think is really relevant? Human stamina.
Like yeah, sure, all these alien species have super-speed or super-strength or flight or what-have-you, but what's always made humans weird is our stamina. Hello, persistence predators.
So I have this concept for a scene. Basically, it would be a story where Ben gets taken over by some sort of mind-controlling alien parasite. The parasite isn't fully sapient, but it has the drive to do something â feed or mate or whatever. It doesn't have its own consciousness, but it overtakes Ben's consciousness, so basically, everything Ben does under the parasite's control is entirely from his own mind, just laser-focused on a goal Ben himself doesn't have.
And of course, him not being in control of himself, he wouldn't be as inclined to lie or mislead as usual.
But Ben doesn't know if the parasite could survive an Omnitrix transformation, and the parasite doesn't want to die, so he's stuck in human form. And Rook, of course, is confident that he can take his human partner in a fight.
Right?
Wrong! Rook's biology is optimized for speed, strength, and agility, which means every last motion takes a hell of a lot of energy. Ben's biology is optimized for stamina and has a decent amount of those other things, which means he can, if only just, hold his own against Rook... but he can do it for a long frickin' time.
They're isolated in some way (because of Ben plotting, probably), so Ben has all the time in the world to wear down his partner. And of course, without his usual filter, he'll tell Rook exactly what he's doing.
"You know, a human can last three days without water before their body starts giving out. How long can you last, partner?"
"I can go seventy hours without sleep. You're basically a space cat, so I'd be willing to bet you need a nap soon."
"Did you know humans evolved to tire their prey out? My distant ancestors hunted lions over the course of miles, never letting them sleep, until they couldn't keep going. Gwen told me that."
"I don't blame you for thinking you could handle me. I wanted you to underestimate me. That's what I want everyone to do. No matter how much I trust you, there's always a part of me preparing for you to betray me. It's nothing personal â just a hazard of the stupid watch. Being hunted for years makes you wary, y'know?"
and so on.
...anyway.
Yeah, so, those are my thoughts on "humans are space orcs" + Ben. I'm guessing you were hoping for a more, uh... lighthearted answer, but I hope you enjoyed the angst concept, too!
