Fandom Asks Memes

3. Characters you would marry in an instant?

Expose me to the world, is this the idea? ;) This is what I get from accepting questions from friends who already Know Too Much. Roooooood! XD

[sighs heavily and opens up my list on my phone. pointedly ignores the people on the list who were real humans beings because HAHHHH!!! at least THOSE dudes aren’t “characters.” also not everyone on my list is a “marry”—some of ’em are just a “fuck”—so I can ignore those, too]

[coughs] for context.... years ago I cheekily created a list called my “Harem List,” a list of all characters who would make my resolute, sex-repulsed aroace brain go “YA KNOW WHAT! NEVERMIND!!!”

Alright. Characters I’d marry. Let’s go with........ [sigh] 

Riza Hawkeye (FMAB)

Fiddleford McGucket (GF)

Jasmine (Disney’s Aladdin)

Aladdin (Disney’s Aladdin)

Katie Holt (VLD)

Kiku Honda (.....you know.... Japan..... from Hetalia....)

Mako Mori (Pacific Rim)

Nyreen Kandros (Mass Effect)

Olivier Armstrong (FMAB)

Roy Mustang (FMAB)

Takashi Shirogane (VLD)

Touta Matsuda (Death Note)

Doflamingo. Hands down. He is a well written villain for how vitriolic my hatred for him is. My work used to sell this overly-flamboyant sequenced stuffed flamingo, and I could not look at it for very long without irrational seething rage.

His laugh crawls under your skin to eat you from the inside out. I do not need to pull it up on youtube to feel the terror that his laugh causes me. I wish to hit him with no repercussions to me, but EVERY POSSIBLE repercussion for him.

5. what is your favorite overused trope?

hm. I am a big fan of “marriage” of convenience (in which I put marriage in quotes because, honestly, legal marriage doesn’t have to be involved! partnerships of convenience! co-habitation of convenience! etc.!), like give it all to me. also friends-to-lovers AND enemies-to-lovers, bonus points for all of the above (enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, friends-to-enemies-to-lovers, and on and on and on). huddling for warmth and/or safety or whatever! which has the bonus of being more readily available in canon. oh and fake dating is always a winner in my book.

12. if you could change one ending to a book/show/game/etc, what would you change about it?

see this presumes I ever watch the end of a thing in which I’m emotionally invested. (have I watched the entirety of the final season of The West Wing? you bet I have not! I have seen selected excerpts and I’ve read about it but that is all!) 

so, okay, we’ll go with Star Wars (main trilogies version; this does not go into anything but the prequel/original/sequel trilogies okay). which is to say: do not give me the exciting new dude who leaves the stormtroopers and then, oh, decide he’s a background character and instead we’re going to focus on the bad guy who was the son of that couple you loved. (also the exciting female jedi, which is good! only, um, let’s make sure everyone is related to someone from the previous films because no one can be unrelated to the big families that way leads to something something, lightning fingers!) I mean the problem of course that to change things adequately you’d really have to go back and redo the entire sequel trilogy and also Rose should get to do things and maybe Leia goes out like Holdo (which, fine, is Carrie Fisher dying hindsight and now I’ve made myself sad) and, honestly, this is a thing I am bad at but also I’m not running a gazillion dollar film series so I can just say it: have a fucking plan for the entire storyline from the fucking beginning, holy shit, and if you use more than one writer/directer LET THEM ALL IN ON IT. 

p.s. have canon queer characters and no background characters don’t count if you’re gonna have people fall in love in your stories then some of those romances have to be actually canonically on-screen queer and not just hinted at or portrayed by the actors in a way the writers/creators need to try to erase (bi characters who fall in love with someone of another gender? great! awesome! characters who have been played as in love with someone of the same gender who then have other gender love interests thrust upon them in a way that is clearly trying to erase any hint of queerness instead of being part of it? not good! bad even!). 

ahem.

also, and this is again a thing I have not watched, but maybe Bernie and Serena needed to go off into the sunset together in the end because seriously that’s 100% what you fucking foreshadowed when they broke up okay.

18. characters you want to wrap in a blanket and tell them they’re going to be okay?

Serena Campbell, obvs. also Gillian Greenwood (also I’d provide booze). a young Kira Nerys. Michael Burnham forever needs to be wrapped in a blanket and told she’s going to be okay and that she’s enough and that she is loved and cared for and no seriously stay in the blanket for a minute or two. these are just a few examples, but honestly so many characters (whether or not they’d appreciate it, which is another question altogether).  

Hey, thanks, friend! ^.^

2. An older fandom?

So I’m a little new to fandom in the contemporary sense. My first, I guess, “online” fandom was the boyband fandom probably sometime circa 1998. As you know, that was hardcore back then lol. I was maybe 13/14 when I was in this part of my life, and I read and shared some fanfiction, mostly for the boybands *NSync and the Backstreet Boys. @whosafraidofthebigbaddreadwolf and I have bonded on this level many times lol. I then took nearly a twenty-year hiatus from fandom until Solas broke my motherfuckin heart sometime in the year of our lord 2016.

3. Tell me about your favorite rare pairs.

Eeeeeh. Well right now it’s Arthur and Mary Beth from RDR2. Mary Beth is a super minor character and she doesn’t even have a quest dedicated to her in the game. But I just like them together lol. They’re both huge writing and art dorks, like me. 

In Dragon Age, I not-so-secretly ship the hell out of Lace Harding and Professor Kenrick. I also like a couple Abevellan ships out there. I like Ameridan/Lavellan and if anyone else ships that but me please let me know lol. Oh and also Cassandra and Varric. I love them. I want them to be in love lol.

7. Favorite specialization? Why?

In general I like to be an archer who also makes traps and/or crafts explosives. I like subterfuge. In Dragon Age, Sene is an artificer who just sort of hangs back amidst a minefield of elemental bombs so no one can get close to her. She’ll scatter them all over the battle field to defend her mages, too. In HZD, I play Aloy in a similar manner. I tend to surround her with traps so nothing can even get close. That is how I killed the Thunderjaw in that final Cauldron. It’s like a cage match with a terrifying, massive, very aggressive and dangerous machine. You can’t range it to death with your arrows in a cage match. So I spend like ten minutes planting traps and trip wires all over the damn place before I set it free, and then I hide, and it steps in all the traps like a giant idiot and by the time it gets to Aloy, it’s weakened enough that she can take it down with a couple well-placed arrows. I do the same shit in Tomb Raider. Hide in the tree tops, use smoke grenades to confuse, take them all down while they’re coughing and freaking out like idiots. I also like mechanics where I can trick enemies into killing each other. You can do that in HZD and also Tomb Raider with fancy poisons and technologies. 

In RDR2, it’s kind of a straight up shooter. There’s not much role playing in terms of how you approach battle. But even still, my Arthur tends to favor explosives lol. He will dynamite everyone. Well-placed dynamite takes out several enemies at once and confuses the rest, which he can then sharpshoot when they’re not paying attention. I’m kind of a pyromaniac lol. I like explosions. I like fire. >:)

3. What’s the best fandom I’ve ever been involved in?

I love everyone in this bar. Seriously though, I am well aware that there are some seriously toxic parts of the Star Wars fandom, but I’ve done my best to avoid tgem. In the meantime,I’ve had some great interaction and made a few friends and my whole fandom experience here in Tumblr has been fun and satisfying. 

4. Do I regret getting involved in any fandoms? 

Nope! There are some shows which broke my heart of otherwise disappointed me, but the experience of being in fandom, reading/ writing fic, discussing Canon with likeminded fans, etc., Was always worth the price of admission. 

22. Is there anything I regret writing? 

6. Which yet-to-be-started fic is first on your list?

I tend to start things, or at least start writing notes for them, as soon as they occur to me. Otherwise I forget.

In terms of fics yet-to-be-posted, the two that I want to focus on are my sequel to The Next Guy, which is almost finished, and my CATFA/Wonder Woman crossover, which is still largely in the planning stages, with about 7K words written out of a predicted 30 or 40K.

5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?

First on my list to finish is Ain’t Love a Kick, AKA Amnesia Steve, which is about 3 more chapters away from being done. I have most of the main plot stuff roughed out, it just needs to be refined and a few more transition scenes added in.

Posting a snippet without spoiling anything is tricky! Here’s a teeny tiny bit that I don’t think gives too much away:

“Mrs. Rogers,” says Dr. Horlicks, for at least the tenth time, “ifyou continue to interrupt, you’re going to have to wait outside.”

Yay thanks for the prompts! :D I’ll do all of ’em. The more of these I do, the less I have to pay attention to my job tonight. ;) ;) ;)

Fandom Asks Memes

1. If you could hit any character without repercussions, who would it be?

For starters? Shou Tucker. 

2. What fandoms were a part of that you aren’t any longer?

This is an interesting one. Prior to joining tumblr in 2014, my interactions with fiction were always cyclical. I’d go in and out of interest, dancing around to whatever caught my attention at the time. When I joined tumblr, my enthusiasm in HTTYD led me to being a HTTYD fandom analysis blog. This kept me much longer and deeper into HTTYD than I would naturally have been in otherwise.

Emotionally, I still think of myself as a go-here-and-go-there person. I’ll always love everything; my attention will just focus on different things at different times. I’ve gone through periods of enthusiasm for Star Wars, Star Trek, MCU, How to Train Your Dragon, Undertale, Mass Effect, Voltron: Legendary Defender (and the broader Voltron franchise), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (and the broader FMA franchise), Deponia, Gravity Falls, and more. Currently, most of those don’t trip my emotional trigger, but they may be back later.

At the moment, I’m more likely to respond with interest to conversation about Gravity Falls or maybe Deponia or Mass Effect, but the others I’ll be like, “Eh,” for now. I’m very “eh” about HTTYD, MCU, and SW. Well, the thing I’m *ACTUALLY* into now is first generation bluegrass, buuuuuuuuuut... that’s not exactly a normal tumblr topic, so to try to save you guys from any unwanted banjo enthusiasm, I’ve moved my interest to a sideblog. But if you’re interested in me talking about country music in depth or in weird ways (no prior experience in country music necessary), feel free to check it out, send me a message or ask or topic to talk about, or whatnot! I’m only just getting started on the blog so there’s much I’ll be doing and haven’t done yet, but I’d enjoy being interactive with others if you actually were interested in my admittedly fucktastically niche interest. And I’ll be rather happy to interact with someone else about my latest passion. XD

20. Name a song that reminds you heavily of a specific fandom or character.

Touch-Tone Telephone by Lemon Demon. Perfect description of Gravity Falls Journal #3 times. I could analyze, line-by-line, in DEEEEPTH, how this song sounds to me like it captures Ford Pines and his relationship with his two “research partners,” Bill Cipher and Fiddleford McGucket, and how Ford gets drawn into his obsession of paranormal research and finding a portal to another dimension where he can make contact with a whole new civilization of weirdness.

“I've been working on a unified theory. If I make it through tonight everybody's gonna hear me out, 'cause I'm the right one. . .  I'm an expert, I'm the one--the one who was right all along. Better to be laughed at than wrong. I'm an expert in my field UFOlogy, yes, it's all real. Ancient aliens, it's all true; I'm an expert just like you. And like you, I'm a genius before my time. Disbelieving, that's the real crime.”

Thanks for the prompts! :)

Fandom Asks Memes

6. Do you read fanfiction? If so, do you have any favorite authors or fics?

I don’t read fanfiction. The only time I read fanfiction is when I have a good friend who’s written a story, and then I want to read the fic to support my friend and talk with my friend. Outside of that, I don’t look at anything. I’ve only read one entire fanfic start to finish, and that was Flowey Is Not a Good Life Coach, which got me sucked in and finishing the story at the wee hours of the morning. I’ve read some parts of Elfpen’s writings and enjoyed them.

8. Do you prefer happy, bittersweet, or sad endings?

I believe all stories have their place and importance. But the stories that tend to resonate with me most are the bittersweet stories. The stories I write, too, almost always end up bittersweet, as well.

12. If you could change one ending to a book/show/game/etc, what would you change about it?

Goodness, there’s multiple answers I could give here. Let’s give just one, and if people send me the prompt again, I’ll give another. I had fun with VLD start to end, and I was someone trying to promote positive dialogue when VLD ended. But I also didn’t personally connect with Season 8 so much. I would change VLD so that S8 would fall much more in line with S7. The stakes would still be connected to the Paladins protecting Earth. Not that we can’t also care about the universe, but I wouldn’t delve so hard into the magic stuff. Would take out the Allurance (I don’t dislike Allurance, but I don’t think it had a strong place in VLD canon based on how they’d written the rest of VLD, especially since they had the guts to change the romance that’s been in every prior piece of Voltron canon). Would change a lot there. So yeah. S8 VLD.

17. Are there any tropes you wished were used less often?