I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot
āIs the writing bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depotā
I feel like that should be the canned response to anyone who complains in your ficās AO3 comments about the [thing] when the [thing] is clearly tagged.
i feel like the youth should be reminded that the point of shipping is not for a ship to become canon. the point of shipping is to collect all the canon crumbs like starved mice, run away cackling and make some fun little scenarios with them just for the hell of it.
Anti-revenge narrative this, anti-revenge narrative that, I personally think that Inigo Montoya had the right idea when he stabbed Count Rugen in the gut and said "I want my father back, you son of a bitch"
A lot of revenge arcs end with the hero saying "there's nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so me seeking revenge is pointless." The Princess Bride's revenge arc ends with Inigo Montoya saying "there's nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so there's nothing that can save you."
And then it ends with him reasonably pondering options re: what to do with his life now that he's committed the incredibly fulfilling act of Revenge while riding off into the metaphorical sunset with his friends, which honestly seems pretty well-adjusted of him.
saw an elderly woman walking around with a tote bag whose design were the four AO3 fic category squares and she very excitedly asked if i was a reader or a writer bcs nobody else at the con had recognized it, and after telling her that i've been writing fic since fanfic.net, she solemnly nodded and explained that she'd been reading fic since "the days of personal websites" but that she only started writing fanfic when she was 47 and oh my god when i tell you that i genuinely teared up on the spot!!!!! like!!! HELL YEAH???? LITERALLY NEVER TOO OLD TO START WRITING. NEVER TOO OLD TO WRITE AND SHARE YOUR FIC.
her enthusiastic "i'm a very nice and bubbly person, i swear! but i love writing angst and major character death :)" nearly took me the fuck out.
icon. legend. diva. i wish her nothing but a kajillion million comments and kudos. i hope her fic updates crash AO3. i hope she knows i'm promoting her to my personal patron saint of AO3.
this came to me in a vision btw. the vision was of a little mouse bartender yelling, "cheese it! it's the cops!" and all the little mice flipping the bar and turning it into a fromagerie.
If there is one thing I wish I could impress upon fan youngāuns as an official Fandom Old, itās this:
Yāall will enjoy yourselves more when you care less about canon.
Far be it from me to try to prescribe how you should experience or participate in fandom, so this is just some hard-learned advice:
Fandom is for you. Fandom is transformative. Fandom is, by its very nature, completely unrelated to and independent from canon.
Will your ship ever be canon? Who cares! It doesnāt matter to fandom! Your ship is canon to you. And probably hundreds or even thousands of other people.
It doesnāt pay to pine after recognition from canon. Canon will never love you.
In light of several of the content creators involved mentioning negative comments on Wild Life, Secret Life, and Life Series videos in general, I want to suggest an event that encourages people to leave positive comments on life series videos as well!
The life series has some of the kindest and most supportive people I have ever encountered in fandom, and I think the creative minds behind the series deserve to get some of that love too. There is no starting or finishing day to this event, as the intention is for fans to leave kind comments highlighting what they love about Wild Life and the Life Series in general, over the course of the current season. I have devised a total of eight weekly comment prompts, making an educated guess as to how long the season will be based off previous season, intended to encourage you to leave a comment on at least one video per week.
There is no time limit or minimum word count for comments. Just be kind, be honest, and donāt tear other creators down in the process of trying to build others up (ā[X creator] is so overrated, people should be watching you insteadā, āyou deserved to win so much more than [Y creator]ā, etc.). Without further ado, The Life Series Comment-a-thon:
Week 1: comment on at least one video telling the creator that you liked the video!
Week 2: pick a team/alliance, then tell at least one person in that alliance that you are really enjoying the dynamic of their team/them collaborating with the other member(s) of the team.
Week 3: tell a new member or one who skipped one or more seasons (Gem who joined last season, Ren, Mumbo, Lizzie, Skizz, and Bdubs who all either missed or did not originally post their POVs of a season) that you are happy they are on the life series.
Week 4: Most of the creators involved in the life series are male, but we know that those who are not get a larger share of the negative comments. This week pick one of them (Lizzie, Pearl, Gem, and Cleo) and tell them that you enjoy their video/their content/etc!
Week 5: leave a comment on someoneās video mentioning at least one specific thing you enjoyed about their episode/their season.
Week 6: pick a person whose videos you have not yet commented on in this event and leave them a comment saying you look forward to their episodes every week/season.
Week 7: write a short, positive comment (e.g āI loved this episodeā , āthis was greatā , ākeep up the good workā) and leave it on every POV you watch this week.
Week 8: leave a comment on someoneās video mentioning at least three specific thing you enjoyed about their episode/their season. Alternatively pick three videos to leave one specific compliment on.
Week 9+: repeat one of the previous week prompts, or better yet combine two or more! You can pick yourself, use an eight-sided die, or a random number generator to decide for you.
I know commenting can be scary and that it can be hard to find the words. At the end of the post, beneath the the read-more cut, I have a list of suggestions for what you can bring up in a comment. Just below this you will also find a list of things you can do to let the content creators know that you love their art that are not commenting!
Other things you can do:
Like ten comments on a liferās video
Like every video you watch
Watch a video from one of the less popular content creators (subscriber wise, or within the fandom) on the day it comes out
And most importantly:
Reblog this post and/or repost it to other social media platforms to spread the word of the comment-a-thon!
A list of questions to spark comment ideas:
Did a joke make you laugh?
Did you catch them making a reference to another season, SMP, or piece of media?
Did the creator interact with someone in a way you enjoyed?
What made the interaction stand out?
Did they build something you thought was pretty?
What part did you like best: the shape, the blocks they chose to use, how it ties into their season, or how it ties into the terrain around it?
If they have a new skin, what is your favourite part of it?
Did they use background music in a way you thought was especially fitting? In what way?
Did a change from one scene to the next feel very well-timed, smooth, or narratively fitting?
If you did not notice any scene changes or cuts, can you think of something the creator did to make you feel immersed in the story of the video instead of the video making itself?
What do you hope happens next? (be sure to tell them that whether it happens or not you still look forward to watching the rest of their season)
Did something surprise you?
Did the content creator say or do something that made you have a new idea?
Just be clear: you can make the 3 days that are left of the first week of the season your week one, or you can wait until session 2 episodes come out and make that your week one. It doesnāt really matter as long as you leave some positivity where the artists will see it!
The problem w writing fiction is that you'll be like tee-hee I'm going to write a story about a fucked up little scenario that's got nothing to do with anything in real life, just some pure messed up nonsense, and then you finish it and take a step back and go aw rats I made a metaphor again
The climactic scene of The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam reach the Cracks of Doom, is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature. So I was very interested a little while back when noted Tolkien scholar Stephen Colbert laid out a neat little analysis of the scene. Frodo seems to fail at his appointed task ā rather than throwing the ring into the fire, he claims it for himself, and the ring is only destroyed by the coincidental intervention of Gollum. Colbert then notes that Gandalf should have known that Frodo would fail. Back in the second chapter, Frodo demonstrated to Gandalf his inability to throw the ring into the much cooler fires of his own hearth, after having only possessed the ring for a few hours. Therefore, one may assume, Gandalf must have intended for one of the other members of the Fellowship to intervene and ensure the ringās destruction.
Colbertās analysis is clever, in the same way that the theory that Gandalf had intended all along to use the eagles to reach Mordor is clever. In its cleverness, though, I think such analyses risk treating LotR as a D&D campaign and thus losing sight of the real literary themes of the story.
One of Tolkienās key themes is the Augustinian view of evil. Most genre fiction takes a decidedly Manichean view of evil ā a view that holds that evil and good are two great opposing forces in the world, like the light and dark sides of The Force. In a Manichean view, good must triumph by opposing evil, either to eradicate it or to restore a balance to the universe.
Manichean views of evil lead to a very common type of climax to stories: the contest of wills. Our hero confronts the villain, and through superior courage, grit, love, or what-have-you, they overcome the villain and their evil power. Itās Harry going wand-to-wand with Voldemort, Thomas Covenant laughing at Lord Foul, Meg breaking ITās hold over Charles Wallace, Luke facing down Vader and Vader facing down the Emperor.
Any other writer could have given us a very typical Manichean Cracks of Doom scene. Frodo approaches the fire, and the ringās temptation overtakes him. He puts the ring on and begins to claim it. But a tiny voice somewhere deep inside him insists that this is wrong. Sam cries out, and thinking about Samās love and devotion rekindles a spark in Frodo. His Hobbitish desire for food and good cheer wells up, and he tears the ring off and throws it into the fire. A dramatic ending and a nice echo of the moral of The Hobbit.
But thatās not what happens. Frodoās goodness ā even the innocent goodness of a little old Hobbit ā canāt go toe-to-toe with Sauronās evil. Indeed, Isildur proved it. He defeated Sauron by opposing him with the force of good, and defeated him. But Isildur couldnāt destroy the ring, and within the year it had destroyed him.
Tolkien holds instead to an Augustinian view of evil. Evil, according to St. Augustine, is not a force of its own, but rather is the absence or corruption of good. We see this most explicitly in the idea that Morgoth and Sauron canāt create anything of their own, but only corrupt and warp what has been created by others. We also see it when Gandalf and Galadriel describe what would happen if they took the ring ā it would warp their own desire to do good until they became evil.
An Augustinian climax canāt involve a contest of wills between good and evil. In an Augustinian world, evil can only exist by leeching off of good. So evil must be given an opportunity to destroy itself, much like the self-defeating band of thieves described by Plato (on whose philosophy Augustine drew heavily). Good wins by renouncing evil, not by overcoming it.
And thatās exactly what happens at the Cracks of Doom. The ring isnāt destroyed because Frodoās force of good overcame the ringās evil. Nor is Gollumās intervention a coincidence or deus ex machina (like the series of disarmings that happened to make Harry the master of the Elder Wand). Rather, the ringās evil collapsed in on itself by drawing Gollum. The very corruption of Gollum that enabled the ring to escape the river drove him to wrestle desperately with Frodo for it and ultimately fall to his doom, ring in hand.
An Augustinian view of evil has definite moral implications, which are also shown throughout The Lord of the Rings. A Manichean world is a consequentialist world. To defeat the forces of evil, we need to think strategically. Sometimes we may even need to indulge in a little short-term evil in order to be able to achieve the greater good. But an Augustinian world canāt allow that kind of pragmatic approach. In an Augustinian world, any compromise with evil can only strengthen it, giving it an infusion of good that delays its self-destruction. An Augustinian world demands a deontological ethic, doing the right thing regardless of the outcome.
Again and again in The Lord of the Rings, we see that strategically pursuing the greater good fails, while remaining true to moral principles succeeds even when it looked foolish. On the cautionary side, we have Saruman and Denethor. Though they may point to the palantir as an excuse, they each ultimately made a thoroughly reasonable choice in the face of Sauronās overwhelming advantage ā to ally with him while playing the long game, or to give in to despair. Our heroes, on the other hand, repeatedly make foolish decisions based on hope. Aragorn is a good example ā he decides to pursue Merry and Pippin because he owes them protection even though Frodo is the one who holds the fate of the world in his hands. Later, he decides to make a suicide attack on the Morannon rather than hunkering down in Minas Tirith, in the hopes of Frodoās quest succeeding.
But the most important instance of doing the right thing despite the consequences comes from Frodo himself: he refuses to kill Gollum. Killing Gollum would have been an eminently reasonable idea ā heās a slinker and a stinker, and we know that he never redeemed himself or turned over a new leaf. Indeed, his main accomplishments were to lead Frodo and Sam into a death trap, then to try to kill them with his own hands at the Cracks of Doom. Both Sam and Faramir were right when they said that killing Gollum would have been a good idea!
But Frodo showed Gollum pity and spared his life because it was the right thing to do. And just like Gandalf could see Frodoās unwillingness to destroy the ring back in Bag End, he also addressed this very issue. He instructed Frodo:
Frodo: Itās a pity Bilbo didnāt kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilboās hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.
And in the end, that pity was what saved the world. Frodoās pity made it possible for Gollum to be there at the Cracks of Doom to take the ring. Frodo refused to give in to the small, reasonable evil of killing Gollum, and so he left the great evil of the ring exposed to destroy itself. That was Gandalfās backup plan, not Aragornās strength to take the ring and destroy it. And so Frodo didnāt really fail. He succeeded at his quest back when he saved Gollumās life, when he did the right thing even though it seemed foolish.
AU where, after Eddie dies, Wayne joins the fight. Not because he has to, but because these things killed his boy, who gave his life to stop them, and save his friends.
Because there are other kids, doing this, to save others, to stop the evil.
Because he sees what Steve Harrington is doing, sees him taking all the hits, and he'll be damned if he sees this boy - or any of those kids - give his life like Eddie did.
Because they're kids, they're all kids, and they shouldn't have to fight.
So he will.
He'll make sure none of them have to give their lives like Eddie did.
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