Oct 2017 Archive, part a

(Well, Cake Days, going by Thoth's comment.)

It's also Lore's birthday, Ypsi's brother's birthday, and Delta's birthday. YAY!

It's also 4chan's birthday. Many of us may have complicated feeling about that. I know I do!

You should already have my email address, but just in case, the link is available.

• Lotte being all concerned about Ix is cute
  - Shame about the hair
  - Nice of Charlotte to go get the brace. Shame that's about to get nurfed into the ground
  - re: thirst, Ix's gift for understatement again?
  - Extra comma in “Just so long as you promise to eat some, yourself,”?
  - I like the snuggling scene
  - That was a nice bit of tension, where Ix started going for the human blood
  - I like the description of the disguise shift, though I do want to know how Charlotte pronounced the exclamation mark in 'vampire!me'
  - "I always did tell you you were hot"... . That was a funny line
  - Ix has a lot of good points about the morph there
  - "You have a promising career as a chinrest." was also a funny line
  - "If you die out there, I'll kill you"
  - I like Ix's solution. It seems like the right response to this sort of thing.
  - inb4 the Flowers hassle them about postmortem charging
  - (agent!}Ix, you don't need to apologize for everything. (referring to Ix's reaction to Charlotte's reaction to the execution method)
  - "lept off the sofa like she'd been tasered" is good description
  - The ending is nice, in general
  
  Review, broadly:
  Was good. What I personally liked the best were the Charlotte/Ix relationship parts. The balance between that sort of thing and fic-missioning was reasonable.
  
  Sudden thought: will Charlotte go into an Andalite-style food craze post morph?
  
  - Tomash

It was a fun read, though some of it really made me think: what happens when Charlotte has to realize that she isn't going to be invincible as a human? What happens when she rushes in and gets torn apart and doesn't come back? Because she's got into some seriously bad habits when it comes to Suvian takedown tactics, and it's frankly worrying that Ix hasn't brought her up on it even once.

We know from "Ephemerals" that the current head of DCUP, the Sadistic Bladderwrack, was once head of the Department of Clichéd Humor. To directly quote Huinesoron's "Head of Department" entry for the DCH: "The Bladderwrack, who had not yet become Sadistic. After the department collapsed, it spent six miserable years doing odd jobs for the other Flowers in an effort to persuade them to give it another chance, before finally starting the DCUP."

So I basically see it fully as motivation on the Bladderwrack's part. Its previous department, where the agents constantly exemplified humor, was taken apart. It worked hard to finally become head of agent teams again, so this time, it made sure to make the agents behave oppositely, focusing on punishment rather than jokes.

So do the DCUP agents need to come up with ridiculous punishments? Not really; the Bladderwrack is the only one who cares. Heck, in the second DCUP mission ever published, the punchline at the end is that the agents give up on being creative and nuke the entire fic. It's not that they're actually trying to be different from other departments' teams; they're just giving their annoying boss what it thinks higher-ranking Flowers expect of his division.

—doctorlit, unusual but not cool

The Castellan /is not/ Rassilon; he's just pretending. He doesn't even have his power, like the Master does Omega's - that's why he needs to make the De-mat Gauntlet.

For the finale, our trio come face to face with the shades of the three Founders. Rassilon steals the Castellan's form, turning the lie into truth. Omega steals his own power back from the Master. And the Other simply whispers something in the Doctor's ear, and points towards the Omega Arsenal.

If Romana is still around to ask, the Doctor can tell her what he's doing: 'It's time to sieze the moment.'

hS

...On the other hand, fanfic does exist...

Hmm...

Rather than following one family, it follows several intertwining ones through WWI, WWII, and the Cold War/Civil Rights era. All European and American, but with some good attention paid to women, gay people, and black people. No heirlooms, unless a family tradition of being politically active counts as an heirloom.

~Neshomeh

Non-fiction, though--a sort of creative autobiography mixed with family history, IIRC. It's called The Hare With Amber Eyes (I've forgotten the author's name). It uses a particular type of Japanese figurine (the name of which I have also unfortunately forgotten) as a thread in a family story that stretches from Europe to Japan and I think America too? It does include Western Europe, IIRC, but it's really not the typical story, and it's not following a white family. It stretches across several centuries, at any rate, including both the author and his ancestors.

I don't remember being *that* caught by it--among other things, the print in my copy was really small--so I didn't finish it, but the story itself was interesting and I know my mom (who's much more into non-fiction and autobiographies than I am) read it and liked it. I think she said it picked up a bit after the beginning, though.

Anyway. Not straight historical fiction, but certainly interesting, and it does otherwise fit that subgenre you're talking about. At any rate, it was the first thing I thought of.

~Z

The closest thing I've seen is that thing creators do sometimes when they make one story's protagonist the descendant of another story's protagonist as kind of a fun detail or easter egg. (Yep. iD Software in my brain again.)

...You know what? You've got me motivated. I seriously want to try my hand at something like this genre - probably a fantasy counterpart, since I'm not really a historical fiction person. That would be pretty cool. Now to figure out a plot!

-Twistey

(Am I being shunned, or do I just need to learn how to make my Board posts better at adding something to the topic? Probably the latter. That'll take some time to learn, given how I was with my Scratch comments... }:P)

Wikipedia has a list of some popular works in the genre.

is the North and South trilogy by John Jakes. It presents the U.S. Civil War period through the eyes of two separate families from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, reaching from the decade of unrest that led to the war to the reconstruction period long after. The focal characters of each family are sons of roughly the same age, who meet while attending West Point and become friends, only to end up fighting against each other during the war.

It's not exactly a fee-good story, and for me, it had rather too much sex in it. The last book felt like it went a bit off the deep end compared to the earlier two, and some of the supporting characters dive a bit too far into the realm of strawmen as well, Overall, though, I think it gives a much better feel for the place and time than any history textbook I ever encountered could manage.

—doctorlit

...Because look at Foundation: It has a lot of aspects that you're discussing: an heirloom (The Seldon Plan and the videos) as a common thread, following a common line across a wide swath of history (but now the common line is a civilization). OTOH, this isn't historical at all, being entirely set in the future.

AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWW!

I love this!

Thank you for writing, and continuing this project. ^^

I mean, I create OCs who are in relationships with each other (I have nothing against canon-x-OCs that are done right, and indeed there are some fandoms such as Frozen where there are only one or two actually good ships that are canon-x-canon, but I don't really create OCs to ship with canons myself), but as for canon-x-canons, I don't really do much shipping. I do endorse canon ships, but you'll more likely find me tearing apart bad ships than creating good ones. (Again, most Frozen ships.) So yeah, that's my take on shipping.

-Twistey

I ship some characters, and others I will read at least sometimes. There does need to be a canon chemistry and for slash not an explicit abhorrence of same sex relationships. A lot of the potential ships in canons I follow are problematic because of inherent power differentials. If one character has the power to fire the other or reprimand the other in their work, then that is problematic.

For an old example: Stargate SG-1. Jack and Sam are the most obvious and popular pairing. They have intense chemistry and clearly have feelings for each other. The problem is that they are both military and he outranks her with her as his direct subordinate. In canon, Jack 100% respects that, and why wouldn't he? He's lifetime military. Sam seems more frustrated by it than Jack does, but she's younger and she does still clearly accept the reality. Getting them together, for me, has to involve getting one or both out of the military.

Then you have the other main ship of the fandom, Jack and Daniel Jackson. Daniel is not military. Jack is the leader of the team, but never really had full power over Daniel. The two of them wanting to be together, power wise, is only really hampered by DADT.

My personal favorite ship is Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos in Haven, with Duke/Nathan/Audrey as a close back up, depending on when during canon the story is set. That's a canon I love, but despise the way the last two seasons went, so often pretend they didn't happen with AU fics.

As for why those two? Duke and Nathan have a vaguely detailed past relationship that had ended incredibly badly in their late teens or early twenties and then been apart for at least a decade then were back in proximity again a couple years before the show started. I always believed you couldn't possibly be that angry at another person, but still willing to drop everything and be kind when that person is hurt if there wasn't love behind it. They behaved exactly like a couple that had had a messy break up, but still had feelings for each other. The actors were also constantly fanning those flames. One of them was even known to retweet slashy fanart with positive remarks.

Mostly I'm content to accept the canon ships or lack thereof. There are some that I've cheered on more than others (Roslin/Adama springs to mind), and some I haven't cared for (the whole love triangle in The Hunger Games, Buffy/pretty much any of her LIs), but it's not something I get really worked up about. Probably because it's not something I've ever been really worked up about in real life, either. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I had a total of three boyfriends and was only really interested in kissing (let alone doing anything else with) the last one, whom I went on to marry. So yeah. I'm hanging out somewhere on the lower lefthand side of that bell curve. {= )

I've never had strong enough feelings about a canon/canon ship that I wanted to write about it myself. I used to have some negative feelings about shipping in other people's fanfic, mostly to the tune of either "ew, they wouldn't do that!" or "ugh, can we please focus on something more interesting?", but nowadays I'll read other people's ships with characters I like, and as long as it's well-written and has a reasonable basis on the characters' personalities, I can get into it. Canon/canon, canon/OC, straight, gay, whatever.

As for shipping my own characters, I've typically had a bit of an aversion to it unless in an RP scenario, with someone else playing the other character in the relationship. Firstly I wasn't interested, secondly it felt like cheating, and thirdly it's just really satisfying to get someone else to like your character enough to imagine that their character would want to be with them. I still prefer hooking up my characters with other people's characters, but if you've been watching my writing lately, you may have noticed I'm sometimes willing to ship my characters with each other, too. {= ) Also, I'm writing an OC in a relationship with a canon character in my Skyrim fic, which I think works for me because it's something you can do as part of the game, so it feels legitimized in sort of the same way an RP ship does in that it came about organically during gameplay, not just because I up and decided it. Everything is better with consent!

~Neshomeh

Or failing that, ships where the subtext is heavy enough you can't help but consider them as canon, even when no confirmation is given by WoG or anything (Subaru and Teana in Nanoha, Sayaka and Kyoko in Madoka, Sunset Shimmer and Sci-Twi in Equestria Girls, Lyra and Bon Bon in Friendship is Magic... You get the idea).

In fanfic, I don't mind shipping making sense relatively to the characters' personnality and development and their orientation when it's stated by the canon authors (no suddenly gay/straight/bi character when we already know their orientation).

...I don't actively ship anything usually, with the exception of canon ships. I'll read basically any ship in fics and stuff (with the exceptions of incest/pedophilia/abuse/etc) but I don't think I've ever written any shippy stuff apart from for friends and things like that.

I devour it because I'm way more interested in how the characters interact than in the fic's inherent minutiae-friendliness. Fanfic of any kind asks questions about the media from which it derives, and shipfic in particular can ask some really fascinating ones about the characters they're shipping, and also about the ones they're not. Not all of them do, obviously - we wouldn't have DBS agents if they did - but it's still not something that should be discarded out of hand. At least, that's my view. =]

I got OTPS, NOTPS, crackships and some very curious ones.

If they aren't canonically interested in that gender or lack thereof, I don't ship it.

If it isn't canonically stated outright their sexuality, well... Who doesn't swing even just a little bi?

If they are canonically in a relationship then I do not ship them with anyone else. If they already have a love interest I SHIP IT

So I am basically the opposite of Thoth. I ship largely based on hypotheticals (which I guess could be called crackshipping?) and unless explicitly stated otherwise, I generally assume every character to be at the very least open to exploration, if not outright bi/pan.

My current favorite ships are CD-RW, Ultra Magnus/Megatron and Nautica/Brainstorm from IDW's Transformers comics, and Liliana/Chandra from Magic the Gathering (which is entirely based on the art of a single card from Kaladesh block)

Rockall, Malin, Hebrides. Southwest gale 8 to storm 10, veering west. ~The Shipping Forecast

I am not, by and large, much of a shipper (except in my PPC characters, who I ship so much with each other that I ended up with family trees), but I do on occasion. I go for things that are compatible with canon, even if they're not canon themselves - I have a Susan Pevensie/Maglor story out there, which exemplifies this.

More recently, I've had my eye on femslash, for philosophical reasons: there isn't much out there, and that lack of representation bugs me. Turns out the reason is that it's hard to find two women who can be shipped in a canon-friendly manner - there's nothing viable in the Star Wars films, for instance (Leia/Mothma? But Leia is pretty straight, and this would just smack of 'they don't actively hate each other, so they must be in luuurve'). (Jyn/Rey could work if you could get around them being 30 years apart. But th'ain't no time travel in Star Wars.)

I have an in-process Luthien/Galadriel story, which does justify its existence alongside their canonical romances, but in general Tolkien's lack of women - especially unmarried women - and their lack of character development when they do exist throws things off. I could write steamy Diamond of Long Cleeve/Estella Bolger erotica, but I'd have to make their personalities up from whole cloth, so it wouldn't really count.

(Dropping back to the other kinds of ships, I tend to stick with canon in Middle-earth, and I've never seen a slash pairing that convinced me, though I have written both a gay elf and a lesbian dwarf.)

Other canons are more viable, mostly because when you have a large enough cast you can write anything. Sticking with the big-name canons, I can't pass up this opportunity to unveil my new fic: a femslash (as mentioned) tale from the USS Voyager, starring one of those minor characters who nevertheless is developed enough to write:

The Ill-Fated Love Life of Tal Celes, a romance in 11 chapters (rolling out over the next couple of weeks).

In summary? I will generally respect the canon (except when the canon is WRONG [/Team Jacob]), am not particularly attached to any specific ships, and will mostly write femslash if anything for philosophical reasons.

hS

I really go against canon. And I will *only* ship if there is canon support. Period.

That also means no arbitrary orientation-changing: If canon says the characters are straight, then they are straight, unless you can give me a VERY compelling reason for them not to be. Which means I will very rarely write slash... at least for common pairings.

Well, okay, I never write slash (shut up, that doesn't count), but if I DID...

OTOH, if you write a really good slashfic or shipfic that DOESN'T follow these rules, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll hate it. It just has to be very well written. I think The Shoebox Project might be an example of that, but I haven't gotten to the slash part yet, so I dunno.

There is at least one exception, which is that I might ship something - in an AU, obviously. Shipfics are kind of implied AU to an extent - if it is A) adorable, and B) fits canon reasonably well. Namely, I am a strong proponent of shipping Primarch Vulkan and A relatively (emphasis on relatively) normal Nocturnian girl who has, somehow, caught his attention. I dunno. Maybe she's really good at blacksmithing. Not as good as he is, obviously, but... good for a mortal.

I don't trust myself to write this, so I haven't worked out the details, but... trust me, it would be adorable!

The style works surprisingly well--or perhaps unsurprisingly, since it's an epic storyline. Anyway, it's...really thrilling to read. :D I like it a lot.

~Z