038. Merry Christmas, Happy Yuletide, etc etc (also December talking meme!)
This is very quick post, really. I am really behind on all the comments and I will get to them within the next few days. Atm, I am chilling out with pizza (I felt too lazy to cook, so I bothered some poor delivery man to bring me food and coke) and tomorrow I am going to attempt to cook ALL THE THINGS and bake ALL THE COOKIES and marathon some christmas movies with Heather. I didn't do Yuletide this year, but a cursory look at the archive reveals some exciting things (SNOWPIERCER FIC! ROSE RED FIC!) so at some point I wanna curl up with that fic as well.
However, since I am way behind on the December Talking Meme, here are three back to back entries for them xD I hope it's a semi-decent read:
December 20th: if the PTB gave you control over one* series/movie/book and let you rewrite one of the RITURZ' fatal flaws - what would you choose/change? for kwritten
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Welcome to the TVD bitterness hour (spoilers up to S5)
THERE IS LITERALLY SO MUCH I WISH I COULD CHANGE. Both out of bitterness and anger at the narrative and all the ways it could be better, and both just out of petty NO MY IDEA IS BETTER, THAN YOUR PERFECTLY GOOD IDEA TOO, YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE WITH MINE.
This is a weird question because DEPENDING on the types of changes. Like if I change S2, the stuff the bugs me about S3-5 go away and I wouldn’t need to change or alter that. Things I’d like to change: Season 3 has Anna and Vicki drive Jeremy Gilbert to madness or near madness, because how do you have the ghosts of Jeremy’s girlfriends and waste it on petty high school bullshit like cheating on your girlfriend. Damon and Elena go off to find Stefan on their own in the summer after S2. Matt finds out much earlier that Caroline’s a vampire and Tyler’s a werewolf and actually helps out with that, and Jeremy also helps Tyler with the transformation, like how he was on the verge of telling him about supernatural stuff before the show decided they never speak again. Bonnie spends s2 not dating Jeremy Gilbert, but looking into her ancestry and trying to understand her powers. Tyler does the same with the Lockwood diaries trying to understand his werewolf condition. The show continues to portray lycanthropy as painful, but something you get used to eventually, and can own on your own terms (idk I was always bitter the show fucked over werewolves so much). Jeremy/Katherine becomes creepy uncomfortable messed up canon.
(Katherine is still alive, of course. KATHERINE PIERCE WILL NEVER DIE)
But my biggest change would be like. Jeremy Gilbert stays dead. Elena switches off when Damon orders her to in Stand By Me but she never switches back on. Elena tries to kill all her friends like Caroline and Bonnie like she did in canon, as a way off just legit burning down every bridge she has, but it actually has long-lasting consequences instead of something everyone waves off as WELL YOU WEREN’T YOURSELF. Bonnie and Elena become enemies (and the show actually commits to showing the dissolution of Bonnie/Elena as bffs, a slow break up over the course of 4 seasons that culminates in Elena trying to kill her and Bonnie fighting her off).
Salvatores still think trying to torture Elena to turn her humanity back on is a good idea. Katherine still lets Elena out like setting free an animal in a cage, only this time Elena goes back and kills Salvatores for their stupid mistake. Then she blows her way out of town, taking poor hapless human Matt along the ride as a long-lasting snack, as part of some grotesque parody of Matt/Elena relationship as old childhood bffs, wanting to keep him around as one last fond human connection (that ultimately will not save anything). Whether Matt survives the trip or not, well it depends if I want him to die as a sacrificial lamb to show how far away we are from S1 Elena, or be horribly traumatized in the wake of Hurricane Elena Gilbert. Either works.
The series ends (at s4) with Elena riding off out of town, never to return again, her humanity still technically off (but does it matter? I firmly believe Elena would be capable of all this shit without a ~switch~ simply as a result of losing everything, all the death and trauma slowly numbing her over the course of the series. I feel the no humanity switch just gives Elena a nice excuse to finally just burn everything down, so to speak).
I am forever sad that Elena Gilbert was not the surprise villain protagonist of The Vampire Diaries, the teenage high school anti-hero we all deserved.
(I do think she’s a villain protagonist as of this point on the show-I haven’t been keeping up but she eats? Random people? In season six?-but that’s only because her actions are pointedly NOT THAT OF A GOOD PERSON; not because the writers really intend to her to be)
December 21st: Five stories you want to see written for FDTD for rosaxx50
WHAT I WANT TO SEE WRITTEN, which is a big distinction from “want to write” because I have a lot of I want to write that I ALSO want to see written, but I am going to try to list things I don’t see myself writing any time soon? Or things that feel difficult for me to write. HMM LET ME SEE.
- The Carlos/Santanico love story. All 500 years. From beginning to middle to terrible tragic end (terrible tragic end for ~now~ because I refuse to accept this is the end)
- I desperately want the AU where Kate is the one having weird visions of Santanico and she has to go to Mexico to ~set her free. Shit happens. Scott can come.
- Freddie/Carlos/Santanico. THERE WAS A TERRIFYING MOMENT IN THE MIDDLE OF PANDEMONIUM WHERE FREDDIE WAS BITTEN AND I WAS D: Then my brain spiraled into thoughts of Freddie becoming a vampire to replace the men he killed that worked for Carlos and then I wanted terrible creepy things with Santanico and Carlos wanting to keep him or Freddie just being a very bitter culebra who ends up being legit eternal enemies with Carlos and always in combat (because being a culebra isn’t gonna make you automically side with them). Also my brain went to a terrible place when Santanico bit Freddie and I just wanted MORE interactions. Obviously this scenario can’t happen in canon because Freddie’s super special bloodline BUT WHAT IF THO. WHAT IF.
- I really REALLY want the AU where Scott does ultimately succeed in turning his family and what the terrible fallout of that is and how that works out. I don’t want it in canon but what is the point of fic if not to explore awful “what ifs?”
- She was supposed to cross with us, remember? I WANT THE AU WHERE VANESSA CROSSES WITH BOTH SETH AND RICHIE. AND HOW SHIT CHANGES. GIVE IT TO ME. I want all the Vanessa, all the time.
December 22nd: What do I miss about LJ culture? for lackadaisy
The first thing that comes to mind is that I miss COMMENTING ON FIC. I feel that both tumblr and AO3 have created a culture where people don’t really comment on fic anymore, they “like” things or “like and reblog” a fic on tumblr without saying much about it. Or they give it kudos on Ao3. I always see so much more kudos than actual comments on Ao3. Back when it was just LJ, if you wanted to show your appreciation, you NEEDED to leave a comment, and I miss that.
On some level, I do think kudos and likes are good! Because I know I used to be way too shy to leave a comment at certain points, and I feel like you’re more likely to get an idea of how many people are reading you’re work if you go by kudos count, because I imagine some of those people wouldn’t have left any kind of marker to let people know they liked what they read if there was no kudos option. I imagine for a lot of people, myself included, it’s hard to say WHAT you like about something, so leaving a kudo is a nice, stress free way of letting people know, and I do appreciate that. And I’m guilty of that too-it’s easier to leave a kudos, it’s easier to like and reblog a fic rather than say anything about it. I always feel compelled to leave long, drawn out feedback and consequently, that actually means I don’t leave as much feedback as I should, because I know it’s going to be tiring and time consuming to articulate, so…kudos instead. God bless the kudos button. I am trying to change that more and leave actual feedback and comment, because like, everyone should get a comment if you like their fic, even if it’s just, “I LIKE THIS, WRITE MORE,” I know I appreciate that a lot so I am trying. But I also know it’s something I could do better.
I also miss thriving LJ comms? And knowing where your fandom is and where the center or hub for it? Like From Dusk Till Dawn is a small fandom, fairly medium sized on tumblr but not so much during the hiatus (I need more graphics I need more fic for my actual interests), but it’s difficult to find people for that fandom and I wish I could find like…active comms for FDTD on LJ, or find more people who like this show and like the same things I like about it. When I first joined fandom, it was fairly easy to find active comms for SPN and TVD and I think one of my friends started one of the first comms for Teen Wolf. Now it’s a lot harder. There’s fic comms, but they’re not active or major, and it’s hard to know where your fandom is at. Tumblr is so scattered and all over the place. I can post a fic on Ao3, but depending on what fandom you’re in, it can easily get drowned out, or maybe chunks of the whole fandom won’t see it. I can post a fic on tumblr and put it in the tags, but maybe no one’s gonna check the tags any time soon or it’ll get buried under content. I don’t doubt like…big, BIG fandoms were like this on LJ, but I remember I got BNFs to read my SPN and Star Trek fic that I just posted on comms in LJ, so I feel like that’s just better for getting it on people’s radar. The fandom is all over the place now.
I also miss posting fic on LJ in general, not just for the feedback issues but I just LIKE LJ better for fic, I like the little different icons I can use to ~subtly suggest~ what type of story you’re going to read, or how I use the cut tags to add a little bit more décor to the fic posting. I even don't mind having to make multiple seperate posts that you have to backdate so it doesn't spam people if you write a long fic. I overthink it, obviously.
I also miss like…the LJ way of posting fanmix. Granted, I think this is less to do with the advent of tumblr and 8tracks and more to do with losing megaupload but, since then, I have made two fanmixes in the last few months, and posted them on 8tracks and tumblr. It did not OCCUR to me to even post them on LJ at all, because I didn’t think it’d have an audience and I’m also not even sure how I would post them on LJ? They’re 8track mixes, so there’s no download, which I think precludes me from the fanmix comm (IS THAT COMM EVEN STILL RUNNING TBH?), so the whole 8tracks mix seems to thrive on tumblr rather than LJ, thus it did not occur to me to even post here. But who knows, maybe I should have?
I miss fandom wank too tbh.