Y’know, Sometimes You Don’t Write The Best Fics. They’re Never Going To Get Over 300 Kudos And

vampire appreciators have two modes:

it’s about the secret darkness inside you. it’s about not being able to tell if it controls you or you control it. it’s about the wrestle between who you want to be and who you need to be. the conversation between the gruesome and the uncontainable

sexy guy bite neck sexily. biting

Buffy the Vampire Slayer | 4x05 - Beer Bad

I've been thinking about this non-stop for a week while re-reading rote, and I agree, it's f-ing brilliant.

Even just from a character perspective, not looking at the commentary on the world as a whole, it immediately creates these unspoken dynamics between characters' personalities and virtues, the expectations placed on them, and the true meaning of these words they've been tied to.

Is Regal failing to live up to his name, or is regality on its own not a virtue rulers should aspire to? Is it a shallow, egoistic concept by nature?

The honest, true-hearted character that leads Verity to take on the most thankless tasks of ruling, causes those same, deceptive tasks to eat away at his mind, body, and self-image.

FitzChivalry spends the first trilogy haunted by the specter of his father, mimicking and yet failing to live up to him at every step. He's caring and empathetic, but too traumatized to show it completely. He fights to defend the people he loves, but without any outward appearance of "honor" (a beserker and an assassin, not a knight or soldier). He's a caring, morally righteous kid serving his family, but quietly, often through underhanded murder. He's more than a bastard, but not quite the image of chivalry either.

there's something so endlessly compelling to me about the naming system in rote. it really casts the whole thing into a metaphorical, mythological light. chivalry is dead. verity is gone,

and it's patience who rules in buck keep. it's patience...

Having your own personal blog is honestly quite a nice change of pace compared to Reddit. I could put a funny GIF of George Bush getting hit by a shoe on here and the worse case scenario is that no one even notices.

You put that on a big subreddit and you get your eyes gouged out and a heap of political discourse underneath your post.

trope i really like is self-loathing characters desperate for the catharsis of punishment for frankly rather selfish reasons who r also obsessed with repeatedly pressing others into hating them and hurting them as essentially a method of self harm. yes baby continue making it worse for urself and everybody around u instead of doing an actually productive and effective journey of improvement and redemption

Witcher S3 really said…

Promiscuous womanizer is pansexual (great characterization; absolutely not a stereotype)

Said womanizer has random, unnecessary romance with a genocidal maniac who would murder all his friends if given the chance

Most powerful sorceress on the continent commits suicide, sometimes a flower is just a flower, etc., bc Scorned Woman (TM)

Woman rebellion leader learns practicality way too late from Random Capable Man with no relation to the plot

Powerful sorceress abandons family to save other sorceresses only to be saved by murderous misogynist and the power of racism

…bc the books needed better representation. Ok.

Do you ever think about how Beloved made the whole white prophet gig waay harder than it needed to be?

White Prophet A: lives in a house, helping people and giving advice until they form a new society around her

White Prophet B: yells at a child about her fruit-eating habits until her stealthy fruit missions accidentally restore a grove during a famine

Beloved: sees a stubborn mf who almost dies every other week and decides "yeah, I'm keeping that bitch alive (barely) until I manage to resurrect this magical, extinct species the world's forgotten about, WHILE thwarting an institution of clairvoyant autocrats"

ohhhh i get it now. the little seed of loneliness i’ve carried with me since i was five will never go away

Some thoughts about writing, tropes, and writing “rules”:

There are a lot of “do’s” and “don’t’s” and “avoid these tropes” for various genres, and while, sure, it might be best practice to avoid certain sayings or plot points that are overdone, I don’t think it’s really the “overdone” part that’s the issue. In most of these tropes, the initial appeal was some deeper meaning the author was conveying, and I think that’s been somewhat lost over time.

The appeal of LOTR and Sauron wasn’t just “creepy dark lord conquering the world.” The evil of Sauron and the ring was so insidious, because it played on the evil that exists inside of every person, and reflected on the exhausting bravery it takes to do good in a world that feels so much bigger than you. It became a trope, bc future writers and publishers mistook that magic for a product of the surface level plot point.

Pride and Prejudice and Emma made Enemies to Lovers and Friends to Lovers popular, respectively, not just bc of the dynamics themselves, but bc they highlighted human weaknesses, and showed how relationships can better each person involved.

So I think the question is less “what or what not to write,” and more “why are you writing it.” Write what you want, just make sure it’s what your story and characters need.

Which makes total sense, because Buffy knows what it's like to be labeled unfairly.

She's constantly treated as a problem child who's bound to screw up and cause trouble, regardless of her reasons for acting out or how much she improves. We see that label weigh on her, and we see how she lights up the few times an authority figure is able to see through it (e.g. her conversation with the biology teacher in 1x04).

That's why it frustrates me when her willingness to treat Angel, Faith, and Spike as people capable of growth is viewed as naïve or emotionally compromised. Is it really so surprising to her friends that this girl, who barely passed her classes and got written off as a trouble maker for a destiny she didn't choose, might be sympathetic to the "irredeemable" characters who are also victims of circumstance?

I am once again thinking about how buffy summers handles forgiveness. the scoobies et al are very forgiving to the good guys, but it’s buffy who’s willing to let anyone interested in redemption try their hand at it. it’s buffy who allows faith and spike to try again.