Spoiler: that clarification Sorry if it was unclear. I meant to say that if a fic is tagged appropriately but is not elaborated on (so it's tagged rape, but there is no specification of what "kind" of rape) then the grey area is that a reader getting upset is nobody's fault and nobody deserved the upset. It's not the reader's fault they're upset, they have a right to be upset, and it's not the writer's fault the reader is upset. It is, however, at that point, the writer's responsibility as, well a fic writer and a decent human being, to then go back and edit the tags or the description to clarify what happens in that rape scene and after that rape scene, so that future upset at that subject is prevented. But no, I definitely don't mean to imply that a reader getting upset because of content that wasn't tagged as thoroughly as it could have been is what they deserve or in any way their fault. Neither party is to blame at that point. The only way a party is to blame is a) if it actually was tagged thoroughly and clearly or b) if the writer refuses to fix the communication issue. Prior to that, I said that if a fic is appropriately tagged as rape and a reader gets upset because there's rape in general in the fic, that's on the reader. The grey area only starts when the reader is upset about the specific details of the rape, not the fact that the fic contains rape.
see last year i would have agreed fully but in this, The Year Apple Lost Their Life To Giant Robots, i have fully embraced the practice of stream-crossing. grab a character from this continuity, a piece of lore from that one, a character dynamic from another, etc etc etc. why limit myself to one trash robot universe when fanfic authors thoughtfully mash four of them together?? in all seriousness, though, that only really works because most of the transformers universes tend to be light on the backstory/world building so it doesn't matter if you mash in the other continuities for funsies. also, everyone in the fandom collectively decided that knock out belongs in every universe, tyvm thank god tbh
Honestly I kind of like MCU/Comics crossovers, but mostly only if the author is self-aware about it. I want Deadpool and the X-Men in my MCU, alright? And I'm not getting that in canon, so I'll get it in fanfic. But that's just me. (And technically you can say that it's just fanfic of the lego game! hahahahahaah)
I really like mixing details from various sources of superheroes if only because I'm never content with any one version of the stories. Like I REALLY adore cartoon Starfire's personality a lot, but I really like at least the theme of her culture's views on sexuality. So when I do things with her or talk about ideas with her I often meld the bits and pieces I like the best to create a version of Kori that I myself want to see. And honestly the people making the comics, games, and movies do this themselves so why not me too?
tbh stream crossing is one of the appeals of comic book fandoms for me. I like that authors can just take the bits of each canon that appeal to them most and mash them together, because it usually results in a popular fanon universe that's better than any of the individual canon ones. That thing where a lot of people write MCU fics with comicverse!Clint, for example. That's good.
I was typing up a post then realized you said cinematic, @peripheral I, for one, am so down for Wade and Logan shenanigans, though. Gimme.
The problem for me is that the writer is not blending the different universes in a way that makes sense to me? And sometimes there's no warning "Hi, I'm adding elements from [other media source material]" so it's a surprise. (I am easily confused.) Basically I am a picky reader.
That's part of the reason I liked the first book of those much better than all the subsequent ones. Artemis is way more interesting as a villain protagonist who you both kind of want to see succeed and kind of want to see fail than as an unambiguous good guy.
I read all the books, but TBH, I never really liked [low-flying airplane noises] Colfer's writing style.
Yeah but even when he was a good guy he had some shit to deal with. TBH I loved the time travel book where Artemis had to go back and deal with... his eleven year old self. LMAO.
that is..... a huge guilty pleasure trope for me.... i love characters having to Deal With their young selves...... i love other characters meeting the Young Self, with the Real Self present.... i love weird time travel....
There's a lot of weird time travel in the later books. Also, I love Holly Short a lot and Opal Kobai is a great villain.
This is more a gripe about a specific fanfic I tried to read ages ago (I wound up hating it tbh, totally gave up on it), but in said fanfic...okay, it was a Humanstuck, right? And about half the trolls kept their canon names and the rest were given "human" names. And sometimes there were no similarities between the new names and the canon ones--Nepeta was Soo-Young or something, from what I recall. Honestly, I prefer when canon names are kept in Humanstuck AUs in general, but if you're going to change the names, at least be consistent about changing them. And also make them recognizable.
A gripe concerning the Voltron Legendary Defender Fandom: The tendency to make Pidge aroace. I feel this is being done to magically remove any chance of Pidge being shipped. (I think this is also being done to a certain extent in other fandoms, but I am noticing it a lot in VLD fandom and it's generally always Pidge who ends up being aroace.) You can have a relationship if you are asexual, it just won't involved boinking. (Unless maybe for science, if you are not sex-repulsed.) You can probably also have a relationship that involves sex if you are aromantic, though it might be more of a friends with benefits experience than a deep meaningful romantic connection thing. I am just really tempted to write asexual!Pidge in a pairing. Just because.
I'm not even much in the fandom but i see a bit of the aroace!Pidge crowd overlap with the "pidge is literally thirteen so shipping pidge with anyone is literally pedophilia" crowd and it's just. so extra
girls and their developing sexuality is gross, though, plus it's not really the done thing anymore to get the girl out of the way of the boy pairings by making her a huge bitch or dead. it's much better to make her a perfect sexless genderless aroace cinnamon bun, because then you're being really progressive with your representation, than to deal with the terrifying minefield of like basically everything to do with being a teenage girl.
i mean— ace and nonbinary representation is cool. those people exist. but designating whatever character you'd be personally uncomfortable with seeing as a sexual being as ace feels less like representation and more like repression. that it keeps being disproportionately applied to pidge and hunk is especially telling. i just really don't like that people won't say 'i just don't want to see those guys fucking' because now they can say 'my politics are really superior and you're a bad guy for disagreeing with me', and like, sincerely believe it, too.
I ran into a "this female character interferes with my m/m ship [even though canonically she doesn't at all] so I will write one member of that ship BRUTALLY MURDERING HER" fic, like, last week. I have not stopped shuddering. plus that female character is my favorite character and I ship her and the two guys as an ot3 because they're super cute and also that character would never do that and her death would fuck up the entire plot and and and
See also the background lesbians thing, where people pair off the extraneous girlfriends and have them cheerlead the m/m OTP from the sidelines but don't actually focus on them.