Opinion is not worth a rush

Embittered and escapist. At least, this is as close as I can get, though this is now grounds for fandom musings. I remember when Pit of Voles was new, I’m centuries old in fandom years. furius/motleypatches on Ao3

[motleystitches]

if you ever want to test the limits of Wikipedia and free AIs, try to write historical AU fanfics.....

AI WILL make assumptions about your questions and leave out answers when you try fact-finding about obscure themes

fact-finding of "so called" secondary source claims will lead you down to a rabbit hole to the local library...where they have physical books..or none, because the source is made up....

authenticity of primary sources is NOT a thing that neither Wikipedia NOR AIs concern themselves with

over-reliance on SINGLE secondary/tertiary source (sometimes biased) is also a problem a both....

While writing fanfics is usually not an exercise in academic history, it is always to an extent an exercise in historiography.........and over the years, I can *read* that the online sources have become more accessible, but also worse.....because "history" has become much more populist....

[transcrawler]

ship so good, a future where they’re safe and retired is called an au

[bramblepatch]

What is your Hogwarts house?

Actually I've already processed all five stages of grief in regards to a beloved author from my childhood very publicly making the jump from "milquetoast liberal with unexamined biases" to "actively dangerous bigot who will double down into perpetuity" and will no longer be basing any part of my identity on her intellectual property! Thanks for asking!

[motleystitches]

Sometimes you find a draft of a WIP that only needed two paragraphs to be complete.

And the WIP is 10 years old.

And it's finally done! But you no longer know if the intended recipient of the fic gift (second part of a Yuletide exchange) is still in the fandom.... Well, whereever you are, I wish you the best and I hope you still enjoy Julius Caesar/Mark Antony.

[motleystitches]

Warrior Emperor(Zhao KuangYin)/Captive Poet Prince(LiYu) circa late-10th century - welcome to Chinese history RPF

Tai-Ping-Nian (Aka From Swords to Plowshares aka The Year for Peace) due to clear bias against Southern Tang featured them having about 10 minutes of screentime together. However, their OTPness comes through shining like a strange and slashy beacon so I went digging through the canon (history) which described a 15 year long relationship (almost Liyu's entire adult life) with all plot elements of an unrequited tragic story romance.

The pairing:

Warrior Emperor (Zhao Kuangyin), known for being first Emperor of Song Dynasty (unified the Chinese parts) and martial prowess. He grew up in an era in the Central Plains where decency and rule of law had been abandoned in favor of brutality and violence (cannibalism was economic reality). Distinguished for having ambition with a mind toward a civilized legacy, he was the first emperor in a long line of emperors who did not indulge in massacres (though they still happened), but was probably killed by his favorite younger brother.

Poet Prince (Li Yu), known for his beautiful devastating verses which are required text in Chinese language textbooks (for comparison: this is essentially Beowulf in terms of timeline). He was a gentle artistic ruler of the Southern Tang (Lord of Jiangnan) who wrote of music, wine, and dancing prior to his captivity. He also secretly trained a navy and actually held out for a year against the Song armies before surrendering. When he was taken North to the Song capital, his people wept.

They were penpals for 14+ years (Poet Prince is about 10 years younger than Warrior Emperor and keep refusing invite to head north for an actual meetup); some of these letters have survived

Though the army's already heading south Emperor actually retreated briefly because Poet Prince wrote a sad letter comparing himself to a small bird needing pity

Otherwise extremely frugal and caring of laborers, Emperor ordered icebreaking a lake so Prince and his household can journey safely North as soon as possible (he also ordered not to harm anyone from the royal family in the war)

Emperor also went against tradition of a formal surrender where the Enemy Ruler would be kneeling in public while wearing equivalent of underwear/naked; every OTHER ruler Emperor conquered by had to do it, but not Liyu (they put it in the show because apparently showrunners want Southern Tang as ..villains?)

Built Poet Prince a manor next to the palace in the Southern Style for his captivity where he can meet whomever he likes, just not leave the capitol

Emperor blamed Prince's Southern Tang courtiers for ...everything(resisting him and refusing to meetup)....many were banished to remote offices. Poet Prince get titles and and incomes.

Emperor BURIED with a calligraphy collection (rare personal item) that LiYu collected/edited

After Warrior Emperor died after mysterious circumstances within a year of Prince surrendering, Poet Prince wrote his most famous verses about his own homeland and wanting to go home.. (then he died within a year, age 40)

The later literati of the Song Dynasty compared LiYu to a flower forcefully plucked by the Emperor.

However you interpret the relationship, Kuangyin had a special place in his heart for Liyu. As for LiYu, we know that was comfortable enough to ask for wine and that none of his most famous works, if any, about missing home survived from the period when Emperor was alive. There have been some dubious TV shows on them since the 1980s, some more..telling..than others.

In short, after a long hiatus on historical RPFs (alas my ancient Romans), I'm finally writing again, even if I will be the only English ficcer for this pairing.

[gizkasparadise]

[motleystitches]

While this all very true, I do think this show is an actual *satire* because while it has romantic elements, the structure of the plot and the character development within the setting of the story is DEVASTATINGLY IRONIC. The natural ending (not the AU ending) kind of cement this.

SPOILERS BELOW

It's a historical fantasy of course, but the UNCLE ruled the emperor (and the empire) because he has a LOYAL army. He set up his NEPHEW (male lead) as heir while desperately trying to hide a MISTAKE HE MADE FOR LOVE in the past.

At the end of the story:

A child!Emperor takes the throne, supported by Chang-yu and Xie-ZHENG. PEOPLE WITH A LOYAL ARMY.

The child!Emperor actually ONLY has claim to legitimacy BECAUSE of HIS MOTHER'S FRIENDS WITH THE PEOPLE WITH THE ARMY.

Considering that his BIOLOGICAL FATHER was imprisoned and killed for treason?!?! for allying with NATIONAL!ENEMY army in attempt to take back the throne,

In short, XIE-ZHENG and CHANG-YU starts ANOTHER cycle of Generals-Ruling-Empire while being in love each other.

In short, this is a satire about dynastic monarchies and the powerful ministers which could rule them.

[silima]

what a fucking relief to be the one kid in this family without a blue name

[motleystitches]

Musing on the Rome AU where Octavian never becomes Augustus and Caesarion Lives

The messenger from Fulvia insisted on his place in history. The message got delivered. Mark Antony came to his wife and his brother's aid during the Perusine War and defeated Octavian, ten years before the Battle of Actium.

Octavian fled. Antony became the de factor ruler of Rome. Secure in the knowledge that Egypt would remain an ally, Antony turned his eye to Parthia. And during one of engagements, Antony was killed.

The Antonine generals vied with the senators, but Antony had a brother and heirs, and they had Fulvia who still held influence over multiple collegiums, so however unstable things might be in the upper echelons, Rome went on. Antony's sons grew up. So did Caesarion in Egypt.

There would no more pretender to Caesar's inheritance. But Antony's not Octavian, so Caearion lived but was called "Alexander," an officially adopted son of Cleopatra and heir to Upper and Lower Egypt.

When Antony's heir, Antyllus, sailed to Egypt he met Caesarion in Alexandria and the two men bonded over their joint ambitions for a more stable empire and an indescribable liking to each other, resembling very much the trust Caesar had in Antony.

However, in Rome, Tiberius was rising through the ranks through a combination of his own merits and his mother's Livia's politicking. His father Claudius Nero was raising in prominence as well, eventually leading a party that rejected the "new men" that Fulvia was rising.

While Antyllus and Caesarion laid out grand ambitions of extending across the Arabian Peninsula and Spain, with Rome coexisting with their provinces, less centralized. Cispalpine Gaul was conquered under Tiberius. Eventually, Antyllus and Caesarion were killed together after an attack by pirates, led by a man named Agrippa.

Agrippa presented evidence of Antyllus and Caesarion's "treachery" to Rome. Reluctantly, persuaded by his parents, Tiberius took over Rome. And Agrippa rejoined Roman history.

[hearteyes-wheeler]

Rest in peace ❌ Rest in pieces ✅

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

I like the implication that Caesar gets re-murdered each time

[valtsv]

traditionalist: the knight saves the princess and slays the dragon

feminist: the princess saves herself and slays the dragon, who is a metaphor for toxic masculinity

del toroist: the princess and the dragon fall in love and slay the knight, who is a metaphor for war, bigotry and/or toxic masculinity

[motleystitches]

the fanfic: the dragon elopes with the knight and the princess becomes queen after the knight and the dragon kills rival for her

[prokopetz]

The author's poorly disguised fetish

The author's proudly displayed fetish

The author's fetish you're pretty sure they don't realise they have

The author's fetish which they're firmly convinced everyone has and is just pretending otherwise

The author's non-sexual special interest which just sounds like a fetish because of their habitually unfortunate phrasing

The fetish the author is making a well-meaning effort to cater to in spite of clearly not understanding it themselves

The author's fetish that never quite makes it into the text because they keep getting sidetracked by the requisite worldbuilding

The author's utterly pedestrian sexual preference which the text treats like a bizarre fetish because they've got shit to work through

The author's seemingly innocuous recurring trope they're going to have a personal revelation about ten years down the road

The author's fetish you missed on a first reading because it's so far out of pocket, it never occurred to you that you could sexualise that

[motleystitches]

I resisted Hockey AUs for over two decades.

And then, I still end up watching Heated Rivalry. (Yes, when Ao3 was down).

Not as much hockey in there as I thought XD

Does anyone have fic recs?

[femaleshits]

[arcanewinter]

X-Men: First Class at 15 - 15 years of fanworks to celebrate!

I saw X-Men: First Class in the theatre in 2011. It, and the movies that followed it, became my only fandom for the next 15 years (and counting). That's a lot of fandom history--a lot of love and creative labor that developed in stages after each subsequent movie added more canon elements to the starter. Every era seemed to have a distinct flavor--new themes, updated relationships, fresh grievances and obsessions for the fandom to elaborate on. Looking back, especially for anyone just arriving in the post-FOX-movie era, it's all pretty compressed, collapsed into a pile where only the works that are extremely popular, or extremely new, are immediately apparent.

So, having been here a while (and having never done much formal reccing), I'm excited to say that @x-populuxe and I are starting a rec series that highlights the history and breadth of the FOX X-Men movie fandom starting with 2011's X-Men: First Class using the tag 'XMFC at 15'. Feel free to add your own recs in that tag, and do not think these works are too old to comment on or give kudos to. Fandom is a community, and these works were (and are) gifts meant to foster conversation and connection. So let's keep it going!

[x-populuxe]

I feel like I've been in this fandom forever (somehow it's been 8 years???) but it's very funny that arc has been in it TWICE AS LONG. We'd been chatting about wanting to do some kind of proper rec thing for a while, so I'm really excited to kick this off!

Our personal approaches are going to vary a bit here, and hopefully that encourages other folks to join in and take their own approaches, too. I'm not a huge fan of DOFP (and extremely not a fan of the latter two films lol) so a lot of my faves are either First Class-adjacent or AUs. Arc and I do feel similarly about the kind of stuff we often see recced today: it either needs to have been published like three seconds ago, or be one of same handful of super-popular stories that get circulated over and over again. That's not to say I won't be reccing some popular stuff! But some of the stories I'm rereading are things I never see on rec lists; it's really nice to revisit them and I'm excited to share them with folks.

More to come... 💕💕💕

[oldshrewsburyian]

So I'm reading Lord of the Rings again, and this time, a thing I'm particularly noticing is how time is insistently layered from the beginning. Once, Elves walked in these forests (they still do.) These are the histories hobbits remember. These are the new songs we invent to old tunes. This is how the past helps us prepare for the future.

[maremote]

ib: crepuscularqueens

[maremote]

this is what queer infighting leads to

[cisarovna]

[archaeo-geek]

I’ve read that Agatha said she loved being married to an archaeologist because the older she got, the more interesting he found her. And I think that is one of the best quotes about love that I have ever heard.

[dirtyriver]

[explorerrowan]