#fic meta

[mycroftrh]

Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

[pricegazagegap]

relevant to my fic research, but also to gaz and pricegaz in general: it says on gaz's wiki page that when "required to undergo resistance to interrogation (RTI) testing, Kyle was the only candidate in his class to escape the facility and evade capture."

the wikipedia elaborates: "The trainees undergo practices such as hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation and deprivation of warmth, water and food. Many of these techniques are against international law if used in interrogations."

back to gaz's wiki, on his mindset post RTI: "Kyle prides himself on high tolerance and tactical awareness."

we NEED to focus more on how insane and eager to be shaped into something better this young lad is. he wants to be sharpened like a knife so badly.

I bet he wants to be such a good knife, that price will never even think to use another knife again.

[screamlet]

you did that amazing meta about chris in jersey-verse. do you have any thoughts about jee in theseus verse?

(reference: this is the chris meta about the jersey-verse/layla and bailey verse)

beaaaaaaans i've been thinking about this since the moment you sent it. here are some thoughts. rambling thoughts mostly, but thoughts i guess. (this got long- about 1.6k) (and if you have no idea what we're talking about: this is meta in the ship of theseus verse.)

---

first up: i think buck is jee-yun's favorite person. she loves her mom, loves her dad, loves aunties hen and karen, worships mara, little starstruck by denny because he's old enough to be Cool but not Old, and the baby is The Baby.

(she is very protective of the baby. people worried she'd be jealous of the baby but she's actually like: IS ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION TO THE BABY?????????? THE BABY CRAWLED AWAY. I WILL BRING THE BABY BACK. THE BABY LOOKS BORED. I WILL GET TOYS TO ENTERTAIN THE BABY.)

she loves buck because he's fun and exuberant and he makes amazing desserts. he's an adult but he's not one of those adults who's always tired and not now sweetie. when he babysits her and the baby, he calls the baby "big guy" and "lil guy" and jee is ENCHANTED because buck is so cool and he makes it look so easy coming up with nicknames like that.

after the events of the fic, i think... not a lot changes, externally, when it comes to buck and jee-yun/the baby? behind the scenes, buck will no longer drop everything to babysit the kids at the last minute, but maddie and chimney actually schedule a night or two every month where he can take care of them so they can have some time together (and so they're not always burdening hen and karen with two extra kids). that's enough to make jee happy; buck is still around, they bake together, they do stuff together, the baby likes him and has giant stars in his eyes when they're with buck, and life is great.

when tommy comes back into buck's life and stays, they're elevated into my gay uncles (and when she's older: buck is BISEXUAL, ACTUALLY, it's a DIFFERENT FLAG, he has a sticker of one on his JEEP, i guess you don't KNOW any BISEXUAL PEOPLE). buck and tommy are still very much outside the buckley-han-wilson family unit except on special occasions (holidays/birthdays). sometimes buck and tommy host something at their place. those days, there's so many people she doesn't know while her family is in their corner hanging out with each other like they always do. buck takes her around and introduces her to people. she's shy but everyone's super friendly, and she's so excited to be someone that buck wants to introduce to people.

(when it comes to hen and karen: i think hen and chimney's bff bond is a really deep and important one, and i think that comes first. like hen and karen will mingle with buck's new friends and have a great time, but when they come back to where they left chim and maddie, there's a lot of "so what are they like" and "you're done having fun with these people?" it clearly comes from an anxious place. it's easier to stick closer to maddie and chimney than rock that boat and ruin the nice time for everyone. after all, they're closer than friends. they're family. why upset them? and it's just buck. it's not like these people mean anything to him. they're just his friends.)

ultimately, i do think jee plays a role very similar to christopher in the eddie/eddie's parents saga. she's a lens, like christopher is, of a buck that maddie can't see through her own distorted vision. christopher sees his supportive grandparents and eddie sees the people who crushed him into a box he still can't escape from; jee sees her uncle who is living a life so unlike her own and it's fascinating and exciting. maddie sees the brother she raised, who she built her life and happiness around for so long. now he's a fire captain, a queer man, a partner, comfortable in his own skin, and most enviously: he doesn't get bogged down by the reality of having kids. he gets to borrow a niece and nephew and then give them back; his life isn't real, not like theirs is. jee doesn't understand this as bitterness; it's just her tired mom who loves them but she can't appreciate a good time.

for jee, i think the shine dulls on buck and tommy when she gets into those angsty teen years. everything's hard, everything sucks, and these guys are just. fine. they're still her fun uncles, but she's not a fun little girl anymore. now they're her condescending try-hard uncles who keep trying to find things to make her as happy as she was when she was a kid and that's so fucking annoying. it takes a few years, but she comes around the stubborn teenager corner and buck is still buck. he's still a big goofy try-hard, but that's her buck.

(through this she adores tommy in the wooooooorst way because he's ~edgy and makes bitchy comments under his breath that she laughs too loud at, and buck would be more sulking penguin.jpg about it except he just wants her to be happy.) (still, stop being funnier than him, tommy, god)

she becomes an adult and, living in the society we live in, even with queer uncles who have been openly queer her whole life, she can't help but see their life a lot like everyone in her family (and society at large) does: wow, how nice of them to opt-out of "real" life. yeah they're romantic, domestic partners who live together and have for years (they might be married by this stage, maybe not, i think they get officially married as very old men when they need to make sure they inherit each other's property), but they never had kids so their life is incomplete, right? it's full and busy, but it's not "real." hasn't buck been "borrowing" her and the baby their whole lives so he can feel "whole"? it's pretty sad he never got that on his own. he would have been a good dad. why didn't he ever do that?

she probably says something like this to buck, deeply hurtful and triggering but really off-hand because there are so few exceptions to the nuclear family in her life that they (buck and tommy) prove the rule; her uncles are so cool because they never "grew up" like all the "normal" people she knows. all it takes to break that misconception is watching buck crumble in front of her as a light in his eyes goes out. he excuses himself even as she's apologizing. tommy drives her home and she says she thinks she upset buck by saying [what she said].

and tommy says, "well, i hope you know now that's not true. and even if you think we're living some fairy tale life [real emphasis on fairy tale] you don't have to say it. we're going to keep living it, like we always have."

it's a hurtful moment in her and buck's relationship, but only because she didn't know what he had gone through, had been too young to process what went on during the theseus era. they did a good job shielding her from the gradual drifting apart so that it barely felt like they had drifted as she got older; this was her buck who she saw all the time in a separate realm from the rest of her family. she just didn't realize that "realm" was, like, the rest of the world. and it was weird that her mom did constantly talk about buck and tommy having this amazing life where they didn't have any responsibilities, they could do whatever they wanted, go anywhere at any time, they weren't "tied down" to anything because they never had to grow up.

(like, maybe? but also, buck has been there for her every time she's needed him her entire life. he hasn't been jetting off anywhere, not really- he always asks about school vacations and stuff before he and tommy plan their own trips somewhere. they work their captain jobs and they make time for her. tommy goes used car shopping with her and chimney, and of course he Knows a Guy who gets her an amazing deal. is that... not grown up? what's not "real" about that? isn't this family? aren't they her family, too?)

but she heard that in tommy's voice, too, when he was upset with her, and she realizes: oh. it's bitterness. tommy's bitterness that he has to explain to someone who he thought knew them that, actually, they're pretty fucking human and functional members of society, thank you. and it's maddie's bitterness that has colored how maddie talks about buck her whole life. because maddie's never come over to buck and tommy's house just as they were arguing about something and there's some digs at each other that are obvious even to jee; maddie's never heard them bitch about buck almost getting bit by one of their new neighbors' unleashed dogs and what if that had been "our lil guy" or jee?? maddie has no concept of life outside her four walls and she's so deeply uninterested in the life buck lives. it's off-putting and i think jee's so scared of her mom's fragile bitterness that she doesn't bring it up. it's probably for the best that her mom and buck live in two separate worlds; she'll travel between them the best she can.

[aylen-san]

The Silmarillion teaches us that immortality does not guarantee emotional maturity.

[nemoentwhistle]

Things I see over and over in ofmd fics that ring very true to me, because they just feel right, but I haven't analyzed why very closely, so I provide the basics here. They seem to feel very right to others, probably for reasons that would be obvious if I thought about it more, and if you read this list and say "duh, bitch" then I respect that.

1. Soft dom Stede Bonnet. Captain Voice, "stand down", "on ya feet!", "you were gonna burn my face off, remember?", "what'd you do with him?"

2. Modern AU Ed Teach loves Prince. It's in a number of fics. Probably because Prince was fucking amazing (what a loss) and talented and beautiful and masc and femme and told gender to fuck off way back to the 70s and never apologized for it and was still a sex symbol. Also, purple.

3. Bear with me ... Modern AU Izzy Hands is still a dick but less so, due to different societal trappings (and perhaps has more potential to realistically redeem himself without dying). The only way he can be the same level of dick in a modern AU is if they're running a criminal enterprise, something that comes parallel to the pirate thing. Otherwise, he's usually just an angry bureaucrat who's obsessed with Ed. Just without the pirate part.

4. Olu and Jim are in love in every universe, anchors for each other.

5. Modern AU Archie is either a new employee of Ed's or is one of his oldest friends. I like both. Because Archie is so funny and odd, but I think her chaotic personality works with Ed's love of whimsy. Side note, mostly unrelated... I noticed that people make up all kinds of shit about what Archie is short for... Madeleine Sami has Indian ancestry, and Archie is a common nickname for the Indian name Archana, so in my head, that's her full given name.

6. Stede is closer to Alma than to Louis. Makes sense. She's older, and she's sharp like Mary but maybe enough like Stede for him to feel that. She was hurt when he left. Louis was maybe too young to be.

7. Frenchie and Wee John are platonic partners. Like many, I read Frenchie as aroace. But I like them together. They have a similar level of disinterest that isn't really disinterest. They're room people now.

8. Lucius loves Fang. It's not really canon (?), but it makes perfect sense. He did draw him. Fang did develop affection for him. Lucius does like older men (Pete is old enough to be his father).

Things I don't really like to see but are common:

1. Helpless Ed. Ed is sensitive and soft, but he's extremely competent and also resilient. I think that gets lost sometimes when people are trying to write his emotional journey.

2. Extremely low self esteem Stede. Stede is definitely hard on himself, but he's also a bit high on his own supply. There's a nuance there that creates a tough balance to strike. He's not cocky, but he's also not a quivering little mouse man. He fakes it till he makes it. He's also a wealthy white man in the 18th century. Even if he was bullied, he's still used to people doing what he says.

3. Calico Jack and the Badmintons as one-note villains. They're used as stand-ins, I think, when a villain is needed. Canonically, Jack is boorish and mean to Stede, but it's calculated. It's a fuckery, if you will. Nigel B was played as genuinely believing he and Stede were friends, as twisted as that may be. Chauncey B had lost his twin and gone a little mad. They had reasons for their behavior. Sometimes they're written as just being wankers because the plot needs wankers.

6. Izzy and Ed grew up together. Forgetting that they're ten years apart and from different parts of the world, their relationship reads very "we met at work" to me.

Why did I write this? I don't know.

[fecklesheckleshacklesschmeckles]

when you are a creator and you have a Special Interest*

*or kink, this post is about my relationship to my kink, i am trying very hard to internalise this perspective :')

[owepossum]

Rewatching Arcane and thinking sosososo much about Canon Silco and Devotions Silco and going a bit crazy. (/pos)

Canon Silco whos so ready to kill Vander and the four kids in exchange for Zaun in s1 a1 vs Devotions Silco already being Mami and putting Viktor above anything

AND ALSO! In canon Silco just. avoids every contact with Vander, developing shimmer and puppeteering the chembaroms from the shadows for YEARS and he only shows himself before both Vander and Benzo once he's sure he's gonna win (killing Benzo, kidnapping Vander (and the kids) to get rid of them). He's blindsided by his hatred for Piltover and his love to the cause, he doesn't care what or who he has to step over to get to the objective. (Again, enslaved children!). In Devotions, with Viktor in the middle, will he still develop shimmer for the cause? Take control of Zaun by making them addicts?

I feel like part of what motivates him in Devotions is wanting to give Viktor and Zaun a better life, so i am soooo curious to see if Devotions Silco will still become a drug lord even if it means sacrificing some of his newly acquired morals (courtesy of parenthood) or if he'll take a path more similar to s2 e7 arcane au Silco (yknow. Reconciling with Vander early, giving up shimmer and playing happy families) (boooo) (I hate that au sorry it's just Bad for Sil and the worst part is that it's CANON)

I think Devotions Silco is more similar to s1 a2-3 Silco when he has already been appointed Father of Jinx, but even then, there are a lot of differences between the two and ugh I'm just expecting to see what your Silco will do considering he's a parent from the beginning now.

Anyway!!! All this to say I'm super excited to see how Devotions will develop now that we are technically at the very beginning of the canon story and I 100% trust your vision bc your characters have been incredibly well written and coherent with their actions!!! Excited for ch 20!!!

Join me in character study purgatory omg, it soothes me from RL. Regarding canon Silco, I think Vander’s betrayal and the aftermath (being scape goated, being alone having lost his family and friends and confidant all in one go, being disfigured and in no doubt agonising pain) really shaped who canon Silco was.

I think his approach isn’t entirely deliberate (as much as he liked to frame it as a choice) — we saw how shimmer made jinx so much life volatile and paranoid. Early shimmer was probably different but we can make an educated guess that it wasn’t particularly great for a traumatised mind. It was probably even worse than the jinx variant tbh.

I think canon silco has a lot less qualms than devotions silco. Regarding the shimmer issue, it’s interesting how I haven’t really seen any meta discussions of the (American) writers, their privileged backgrounds, and the general war on drugs approach in USA history. Having a black character parrot that propaganda was especially vomit worthy for me — especially look at what horrific debacle “DARE” program was, where they sent cops into American classrooms to “teach drug prevention” but used a method proven to increase the likelihood of drug use. Because the real purpose was to get kids to inform on their parents (just like in a certain period of Germany).

All this is to say, the entire shimmer drug line (heavily narrated by a billionaire cop, no less) was illuminating re the writers themselves. The discussion around this illuminates the media literacy (or lack thereof) of the participants.

I can’t remember “child enslavement” being canonised on screen (Idek about interviews and retcons), it seems like kids generally were working in the undercity due to poverty. Not in favour of child exploitation, just not sure if I’ve missed something textual. The fact Renni’s son was there seems to imply they were being paid / were more like workers?

Re the AU - god the way it was positioned as a “utopia” made me so BLEH. The repetitive propaganda of “forgiveness and peace is the only true way to change”, “turn the other cheek to your billionaire oppressors”, “forgive and stay with your abuser and you too can achieve all your political goals and have a family”

Like. Yes. Ask your oppressors nicely. Violence is bad in any form!!!! Look if you had just asked NICELY everything would be sooo much better. —— as we all know, those who enriched themselves off exploiting the poor will of course stop doing that if you ask nicely. No need for protests or collective action.

Very obvious who the writers are. 🙄 the French artists were fighting for their lives omfg.