RebelWriter99

They/Them. Friendly Fandom blog - lately All for the Game, Heated Rivalry & Star Wars but others will make appearances. Now with actual writing! (Same name on AO3)

[just-another-dream-about-yuu]

nathaniel doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut, so someone gotta do it for him

clean version!

[ellatholmes]

if you're a writer i wish u a very plot/story/character epiphany

[incandescent-creativity]

[writingdose]

writers, instead of asking ai for help, you can always use your childhood trauma and repressed issues to help you with that fic

[littlegirlinvisible]

ILYA ROZANOV WEEK: DAY FOUR FAVORITE TRAIT   ↪ HIS EMPATHY AND KINDESS 🥺💕

“When our childhood homes are chaotic and dangerous, we learn that the way to stay safe is to always be on alert — hypervigilant. Our nervous system never calms down because it’s constantly on the lookout for the next bomb that is going to explode [...] As the show goes on, we will learn that underneath Ilya’s extremely hard shell is the heart of a squishy teddy bear wrapped in a warm blanket, but it takes YEARS for Shane to see it. When we look at Ilya through the lens of what he learned as he grew up, it makes sense why he behaves the way he does. We can even have empathy for the level of hypervigilance and fear he lives with. I like to lay things out this way because it’s usually a hell of a lot harder to give ourselves that same grace. We have an idea of who we “should” be in our heads, and when we don’t live up to that we assume it’s because we’re a failure, a useless waste of space. None of that is true: we are behaving in ways that make complete sense when we understand how our nervous system was trained to respond to our environment.” — Reading Ilya Rozanov through the lens of trauma.

[prokopetz]

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

[veteratorianvillainy]

#friendly reminder that I once put my statistics degree to good use and did some calculations about ship ratios#and yes considering the gender ratios of characters#the prevalence of gay ships is completely predictable (via sarahtonin42)

[persephoneshadow-deactivated202]

I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.

[prokopetz]

Totally.

A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.

(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)

Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:

Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36

TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66

Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.

The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?

[observethewalrus]

YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!

[ainedubh]

Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.

[slitthelizardking]

I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.

[lierdumoa]

This doesn’t even account  for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well. 

But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.

[destinationtoast]

Yay, mathy arguments. :)

This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.

In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het).  (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.

[olderthannetfic]

All great points. Another thing I notice is that many shows are built around the idea that the team or the partner is the most important thing in the universe. Watch any buddy cop show, and half of the episodes have a character on a date that is inevitably interrupted because The Job comes first… except “The Job” actually means “My Partner”.

When it’s a male-female buddy show, all of the failed relationships are usually, canonically, because the leads belong together. (Look at early Bones: she dates that guy who is his old friend and clearly a stand-in for him. They break up because *coughcoughhandwave*. That stuff happens constantly.) Male-male buddy shows write the central relationship the exact same way except that they expect us to read it as platonic.

Long before it becomes canon, the potential ship of Mulder/Scully or Booth/Bones or whatever lead male/female couple consumes the fandom. It’s not about the genders involved. Rizzoli/Isles was like this too.

If canon tells us that no other relationship has ever measured up to this one, why should we keep them apart? Don’t like slash of your shows, prissy writers? Then stop writing all of your leads locked in epic One True Love romance novel relationships with their same-sex coworkers. Give them warm, funny, interesting love interests, not cardboard cutouts…

And then we will ship an OT3.

[kyraneko]

I’m going to bring up (invent?) the concept of subjectification.

As in, people gravitate to the characters given the most depth, complexity, and satisfying interactions for their shipping needs, because those characters are most human, and we want the realest characters to play with.

In a lot of media, the most depth gets handed to male characters.

And, oftentimes, even when the screentime and depth and interactions are granted equally well to female characters, there can be a level of, for lack of a better word, dis-authenticity to those female characters: they are pared down, washed out, or otherwise made slightly less themselves than they could be, in the interest of making them decorative, or likeable, or “good,” or keeping them from upstaging or emasculating their male companions, or just that the writer whose job it is to write them doesn’t know how to write women the way they write men.

And you get the characterization equivalent of that comparison chart where so many animated female characters have the same facial features because the animators and designers are so worried about not letting them be ugly.

When you have a group that’s allowed to be themselves, warts and all, and another group that has to be decorative at all costs, the impression given on some level is that the decorative quality is making up for a shortcoming. That they wouldn’t be enough in their own right.

And sometimes that cost is authenticity. The interesting, striking, awe-inspiring, bold and glorious unapologetic selfhood that draws the viewer most particularly to those characters who are unapologetic in their particular existence, standing clear of the generic and bland and unchallenging “safe” appearances.

It is authenticity, not beauty, which powers subjectification. The love for a character, not because they are perfect, but because they are them.

They can be pretty, sure. They can be sweet. But being pretty and sweet is not a replacement, and too many female characters have been written by writers who think it is, while the interest—in appearance, in personality, in interactions, in plot development—goes to the men.

And when that happens, well. Surprise, surprise, that’s where the shipping goes.

[whetstonefires]

Yeah I don’t really ship but I do write a fair amount of fanfic, and in most franchises working with the female characters is a chore.

You have to do so much of the work yourself, because the canon left them unfinished, with huge gaps or unexplored contradictions that you have to somehow resolve. Every female character you decide to integrate into your fanwork in some major role constitutes an undertaking in her own right as you patch together an understanding of her sufficient to model a consistent set of reactions and priorities &c.

The dudes just get handed to you. Even the ones whose canon is a mess have properly developed character cores.

That you don’t have to unearth and piece together like some sort of volunteer archeologist coming up with theories way more complex than the available artifacts truly support.

[headspace-hotel]

Guys read this this is an amazing breakdown of it

[totallysilvergirl]

ALWAYS reblog.

[yun2liang]

Saw a tweet about Neil doodling fox paws and wanted to draw it

I reread that part in the book and remembered it was like right before the banquet where riko invites him to evermore 😭

Closeup

[soyaa19]

Three kittens

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[bluesbats]

person who loves orange multiple layer

[birthdaylobotomy]

maybe if we, as a society, spent more time in gardens things wouldn’t be like this

[megacarapa]

ok so this is another long shot but a few years ago there was a twitter post (in japanese i think?) that had measurememts for how to make this book stand thing out of cardboard that you could use to double up books and use up more space on shelves

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

if it comes down to it i can just take one apart and get the measurements from there but i would be very grateful if anyone happens to have the original post or something similar??

[megacarapa]

don't mind how long it's been since i made this post, anyway i realized that i don't even need to take one apart to get the measurements when i can literally just unfold it and refold it /FACEPALM

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

EVERYONE START GETTING MORE USE OUT OF YOUR SPACE NOW!!!!

[tswizzlesfan]

happy pride month to mr. be gay do crime and mr. be crime do gay 🌈

(ft andreil by @dshr-art aka actual perfection)

[porcupine-girl]

Please don’t use collections to track your reading on AO3!

Someone is going through all my zimbits fics and adding them to a collection called “completed stories I’ve read.” Well, they’re trying to, but I’m denying all their requests.

Yes, ao3 has fixed the thing that made it possible for collection owners to anonymize your fics without your permission, so why do I not want all my fics in these random collections?

Well, imagine if 10% of the people who read my fics tracked their reading via a collection like this. Unlike bookmarks, all the collections a fic is in are listed directly on the fic! The fic I just got a request for has 12000 hits and 1300 kudos. If even 10% of the people who left kudos added it to a collection, every person who reads it would have to scroll through a list of 130 collections to get to the fic!

Please track your reading using bookmarks, not collections!

Bookmarks just add to a number on the fic itself, but if you click that number you’ll see the many ways people use them to track their reading. Some people use tags like “to read,” “read,” “complete,” etc. Other people use bookmark collections, which unlike regular collections don’t get listed on the fic - plus, they don’t require the author’s permission, so you can actually have an accurate list instead of just a list of the fics that got approved!

Whoever you are (I know their ao3 name but since they have no works of their own I have no way to contact them), I am very flattered that you like my stuff enough to go through and read all of it, and I very much appreciate it. But please stop using collections just to track your reading.

[porcupine-girl]

Bringing this back because people seemed to stop doing this for a bit but I’ve gotten two more of these requests in the past week.

If nothing else, it’s not an accurate record of fics you’ve read if some of the authors are rejecting your requests! Authors can’t prevent you from bookmarking or making bookmark collections!

[bomberqueen17]

BOOKMARK COLLECTIONS ARE FREE AND EASY TO MAKE PLEASE USE THEM

[redlightofdawn]

There’s someone going around adding fics to a collection called something like “fics I haven’t read yet”

ffs people have some common sense

[porcupine-girl]

I only just now saw this reblog. People PLEASE if you have ANY temptation to do this let me introduce you to my best friend, THE MARK FOR LATER BUTTON.

AO3 has AN ENTIRE BUTTON just for this! It’s on every dang fic if you’re logged in! Right there at the top! Then you go to your history and hit another button and it filters it down to just stuff you’ve marked for later.

This makes even less sense than a collection for fic you’ve read, because there is literally a whole-ass button at the top of every fic just to do this for you! *headdesk*

[kuttenberg-gauntlets]

the 3 rules of enjoying Any fandom are 1. follow everyone who you find funny 2. block everyone who you find annoying 3. when you like someone's art tell them

[khael0]

[zombiecowboy65]

Happy pride month !!! thinking about all the bi pun shirts the floozies try to get Jean to wear to his first pride parade & how silly Jean finds it all, until he’s standing in the middle of a crowd of people just like him, overwhelmed w emotion and heart warmed 😭💖🥺

[zombiecowboy65]

Cat painting a lil bi flag on Jean’s cheek😭🩷💜💙

[tswizzlesfan]

this is a love letter to neil josten, a demisexual man who never put a label to it because he doesn't care about how he's being perceived, he only cares about the man he loves likes. to andrew minyard, nicky hemmick and jeremy knox, three gay men who are so different but all had to suffer through their own personal hell and came out of it battered and bruised but still so so human it confuses you sometimes. to jean moreau, our resident bisexual diva who suffered unimaginable horrors but is so good to the core and his healing journey is healing all of us. to catalina alvarez and laila dermott, our lesbian couple who are the loveliest humans and the best example of a healthy relationship. to non binary icon cody winter who is an absolute badass and an incredible friend. to xavier morgan who is trans and gorgeous and the best vice-captain with his strong personality and the way he cares so much about his teammates.

to nora sakavic for creating all those interesting and complex characters who have so much personality that coexists, compliments and is complimented by their queer identity. representation matters so much 🌈