#mod emma

let's get hype for monday!!! it's the last weekend to go before royai week begins!!

check out out individual posts for each day here:

day 1 | day 2 | day 3 | day 4 | day 5

Good morning, friends!

We're posting the first round of reveals today, and we just wanted to share a bit about our goals with this event.

May is Mental Health Awareness month, so we put together this mini exchange in hopes of spreading a bit of positivity. All the fics in the collection have an uplifting or healing theme and a happy ending guaranteed.

We invite anyone in need of respite, hope, comfort, or even just a little distraction from the day to day slog to follow along this week as works are revealed. Please reblog the posts, share the fics with your friends, do your own promo, try to guess the authors in the notes, and comment/bookmark/kudos to your hearts content.

Thank you to everyone who participated - our writers, artists, betas, pinch hitters, and cheerleaders. You guys make it all worthwhile.

Mod Emma here, thank you to everyone for participating in the tournament! It was super fun, from beginning to end; I learned so much in researching and writing for this tournament, and had a lot of fun trying to predict how matchups would go and reading y'alls comments and tags.

And thus, the tournament will not end here! I hope to run it again next year, this time with a whopping 128 more albums added to the mix! And I'd like it to be even better the next time around.

You can help in that way by filling out this exit survey! It's mostly questions on how we can improve the tournament for next year, and if there's any obvious misses you think should be included next time!

And if you wondered at all how this tournament was set up, there's a little explanation below the cut on how it was seeded.

The ‘downfall’ of Courtney is always talked about but you can’t talk about how Courtney going from to someone Type-A and all about the competition and who’s biggest flaw is being a stick in the mud and a know it all to bargaining with her cast mates’ lives and trashing a hotel room like a ravenous beast without talking about the racism in Courtney’s character imo. ‘Why did they make Courtney super mean and emotionally/physically abusive to Duncan-‘ racism (and tagging on behavior she did BEFORE they were dating because they were lazy). ‘Why did they favor Gwuncan over Duncney besides the scenes and pivot to them-‘ racism since they were the only prominent interracial canon relationship in the show (Aleheather hadn’t been conceived yet and Lesharold was never treated the same as Gwen or Gidgette lbr). ‘Why did she make the list-‘ La toxica stereotype!!! A real trope that if you look up the definition shows how Courtney acted to a T in Action. They played it completely straight with Courtney in Action and no one talks about it and she deserves so much better!

(Side note but I have no issue with Gwen and she’s actually my fave so when I say ‘people shipped Gwuncan because they saw they were similar’, it wasn’t just their brief banters in Island and horror movies and pranking in common but also their race. Not bashing her but bashing white fans who hate interracial relationships with their white crush.)

To premise my ask, I am finding difficulty making my two male characters go from friends to dating subtly. Like in a way that makes the reader go ‘OH’ when it comes out. I'm mostly struggling because these are teenage boys who make gay jokes(nonoffensive, just basic stuff I see people do all the time like “that was a little fruity bro” or “if you like me like that just say it” also if that is offense let me know, I'm straight and struggling a bit😭) in friendly banter.

If that was hard to read let me attempt to summarize:

How to write two non main characters subtly start dating?

Idk. Im also new to romance so anything is helpful!

Thank you for reading my nonsense ramblings!!!!

Hey there! Disclaimer: this blog is fairly inactive now, sorry-- most of the mods got busy and and I lost the energy to run it.

However, this is primarily a writing question, and I like talking about writing, so I'll give my advice:

There are 2 questions here: 1 is if their gay jokes are okay, 2 is how to have a background romance.

1: The problem I see here is, if these characters are not out as queer to the reader (like if the reader knows they're queer but not that they're dating), this could definitely read offensive. I don't like hearing about straight people making jokes about us-- the reason gay people might call each other fruity or other terms is mainly ironic or to reclaim those terms. If I'm in a room of straight people making those jokes it makes me uncomfortable bc they're punching OUT, while amongst other queer people, the jokes are made funny because everyone there knows the others ARE queer. Context is important.

That said, there's definitely times where things like that seem to set up a ship (that we have a history of thinking will never be true, but is more and more common). For this I think the joking flirting is perfect. So I think joking flirting is fine.

"Fruity" and other terms, even queerr and gay-- or jokingly homophobic jokes (like, I say to my partner all the time, "that was gay, we don't do that here" and it's completely a joke), may come off wrong. Some things I just do not want to see as a joke period, no matter who says them, how out they are, even if the speaker is queer. Some things I find fine to joke about irl but don't think should be in books because it does reach a wider audience (there's nuance there, no hard and fast rules, but there definitely are things I wouldn't mind jokes about but wouldn't want repeated in books). And then there's plenty of lighthearted stuff that is perfectly fine for queer characters to joke about just like people do irl. I think "Fruity" as yourr example is probably okay when it's from queeer characters but might cause some discomfort if I think the people saying it are straight. (That said, fruity is usually used for gay men, I am not one, and will ultimately differ to those who have more experience with the term).

That said, I think your best move is: let it slip to the reader, or make it kind of obvious, that ONE of them might be into the others, or is queer. Some comment nearly in, some special focus on that character, flattering descriptions of men, or jokes about themselves being queer (or if you're up to it, they come right out and say it).

2. How to write a romance behind the scenes:

My advice? Write it.

I've seen a lot of advice that writeers first needed a warm-up. Before you geet into writing your main story, spend like 15 minutes writing the two of them interact. Have them flirt, have them confess, have them cuddle or do things for each other. Look up fluff and ship prompts, even AUs.

Then, or at the same time if it jives with you, plot out their romance alongside your regular plot. A few points to decide when they happened: when they each started to like each other, when they admitted it, when they went on a first date, when they had sex for the first time (or if, this is optional), other points in the world relationship-- using your fluff scenes as inspiration.

Then you know where they stand. You can add little moments into the main story now. You can have them have an inside joke that they reference because you actually know what happened! (Though, tell us later, after revealing it, even if it's quick). You can have them spending time together that the MC doesn't think that much of.

This romance will not be in the main story, so you don't have to be good at romance. It can be dumb and cringe, or lack real chemistry, bc no one will see it.

The way I describe this sounds like a lot, but my advice with sketching the beats out and writing small scenes can apply to any sub/background plot you have. Really you may only spend like 4-6 sessions doing a warm up with them, then switch to different characters or background scenes or just rewriting smth from a different character's POV, and then plot out the beats once before moving on to another background thing.

If anyone else has any ideas about writing a suble/background romance, feel free to chime in!

To the bit: Bird and Emma

To eachother: Jay and Mina

Hope to see some of y’all there!