Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

7 most unhinged canon drarry moments

Harry calling Draco his arch nemesis just a few months after Lord Voldemort tried to murder him for the second time but also immediately thinking that he kinda misses him

Harry getting hit in the head by a piece of luggage because he got so distracted by the sight of Draco changing that he didn’t notice someone swinging a large object at his face

Harry lying to the Order and Magical Law Enforcement to obfuscate Draco’s crimes at the end of sixth year

Voldemort immediately assuming Draco has gone looking for Harry when he goes missing during the Battle of Hogwarts…and being right

Narcissa assuming Harry will know where Draco is and if he’s still alive…and being right

Lucius getting mad at Draco in book 2 because he has spent the entire summer talking nonstop about Harry Potter

Harry forgetting about the time Voldemort possessed and nearly murdered Ginny but remembering every item he saw Draco look at in Borgin and Burkes 4 years previously

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

#friendly reminder that I once put my statistics degree to good use and did some calculations about ship ratios#and yes considering the gender ratios of characters#the prevalence of gay ships is completely predictable (via sarahtonin42)

I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.

Totally.

A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.

(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)

Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:

Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36

TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66

Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.

The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?

YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!

Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.

I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.

This doesn’t even account  for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well. 

But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.

Yay, mathy arguments. :)

This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.

In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het).  (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.

All great points. Another thing I notice is that many shows are built around the idea that the team or the partner is the most important thing in the universe. Watch any buddy cop show, and half of the episodes have a character on a date that is inevitably interrupted because The Job comes first… except “The Job” actually means “My Partner”.

When it’s a male-female buddy show, all of the failed relationships are usually, canonically, because the leads belong together. (Look at early Bones: she dates that guy who is his old friend and clearly a stand-in for him. They break up because *coughcoughhandwave*. That stuff happens constantly.) Male-male buddy shows write the central relationship the exact same way except that they expect us to read it as platonic.

Long before it becomes canon, the potential ship of Mulder/Scully or Booth/Bones or whatever lead male/female couple consumes the fandom. It’s not about the genders involved. Rizzoli/Isles was like this too.

If canon tells us that no other relationship has ever measured up to this one, why should we keep them apart? Don’t like slash of your shows, prissy writers? Then stop writing all of your leads locked in epic One True Love romance novel relationships with their same-sex coworkers. Give them warm, funny, interesting love interests, not cardboard cutouts…

And then we will ship an OT3.

I’m going to bring up (invent?) the concept of subjectification.

As in, people gravitate to the characters given the most depth, complexity, and satisfying interactions for their shipping needs, because those characters are most human, and we want the realest characters to play with.

In a lot of media, the most depth gets handed to male characters.

And, oftentimes, even when the screentime and depth and interactions are granted equally well to female characters, there can be a level of, for lack of a better word, dis-authenticity to those female characters: they are pared down, washed out, or otherwise made slightly less themselves than they could be, in the interest of making them decorative, or likeable, or “good,” or keeping them from upstaging or emasculating their male companions, or just that the writer whose job it is to write them doesn’t know how to write women the way they write men.

And you get the characterization equivalent of that comparison chart where so many animated female characters have the same facial features because the animators and designers are so worried about not letting them be ugly.

When you have a group that’s allowed to be themselves, warts and all, and another group that has to be decorative at all costs, the impression given on some level is that the decorative quality is making up for a shortcoming. That they wouldn’t be enough in their own right.

And sometimes that cost is authenticity. The interesting, striking, awe-inspiring, bold and glorious unapologetic selfhood that draws the viewer most particularly to those characters who are unapologetic in their particular existence, standing clear of the generic and bland and unchallenging “safe” appearances.

It is authenticity, not beauty, which powers subjectification. The love for a character, not because they are perfect, but because they are them.

They can be pretty, sure. They can be sweet. But being pretty and sweet is not a replacement, and too many female characters have been written by writers who think it is, while the interest—in appearance, in personality, in interactions, in plot development—goes to the men.

And when that happens, well. Surprise, surprise, that’s where the shipping goes.

My brain: You have so many tight deadlines. So many things on your weekly schedule. So many important jobs. You have to get important work done!!!

My hands:

This info needs to be out there, it turned the tide against cryptocurrency in the public eye it might fit so too

I recently started working in hospitality, and I’ll tell you guys right now, the trope of “there was only one bed” is not as rare as you’d think in real life. A few times a week, at least, I have guys come in who are working together on projects in town or passing through who have to literally book the last room I have available for the night and lo and behold — there is only one bed, and guess what, they give each other a side-eyed look and begrudgingly take it. So write it up, it happens all the time!!!

Never let your There Was Only One Bed dreams die. I was secretly in love with my best friend for over a year when she graduated and moved to Oklahoma (like 1000 miles away) for grad school. Between that travel restrictions, we were so scared we’d never see eachother again.

At the end of summer, when Covid numbers were at a lower point, I took the risk to visit her in her new apartment and I quickly realized that, unlike when I’d spent the night at her house before, the couch wasn’t made up like a bed. She explained that since her new couch was so fancy and pink, I couldn’t possibly sleep on it, and so I needed to sleep in the bed with her. You know, out of necessity. I woke up with her snuggled around me in the middle of the night.

We’re dating now, and I genuinely think I’m going to marry her. Just the other day, though, I mentioned that if she hadn’t been weird about her fancy couch, I probably never would have like confessed my feelings. AND THEN she stood up, took the cushions off the fancy couch, UNFOLDED IT INTO A HIDE-A-BED, and said “I KNOW.”

THIS GIRL. ORCHESTRATED. BED SCARCITY. JUST SO SHE COULD MAKE THE “ONLY ONE BED” EXCUSE. Y’all when I said I just about lost my goddamn mind, I just about lost my goddamn mind. I love this sneaky bitch so much and the moral of this story is BE THE ONE BED YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

Fanfic imitates life, and life imitates fanfic. It’s full circle really.

oh my god 

there was only one bed

but it was STAGED

I love this so much

New Fanfic Trope Unlocked!!!!!

AU:There was only one bed - by design👀

Fake dating or only one bed?

Fake only one bed

THE TROPE HAS LEVELED UP

“orchestrated bed scarcity” is my new favorite phrase

Above all, boop thy enemy

dark heir was a gay comedy

i genuinely hope that boop day inspires everyone to interact more with other tumblr users. because it’s clearly way more fun this way!! even once the boop button is gone, there’s still asks, tag and ask games, comments, dms, fuck it let’s bring back blog rates i don’t care. part of the reason that tumblr is dying is that its way less social than it used to be. let’s fix that!!

The entire tech sector's business model for the last 20 years has been "market to billionaires and get them to give you money to make a company and drive everyone else out of business". You're not really the customer, and even advertisers weren't really the customers, "investors" were.

Now that interest rates are no longer near zero, and borrowing endless cash is getting expensive, all of these companies, from social media to video streaming to rideshare are all suddenly without investors willing to give them huge piles of cash to burn.

...unless they're in AI, in which case investors are still throwing money at that, hoping to own the next tool used to control how human society is run. If you're wondering why AI is getting shoehorned into everything, that's why. All these tech companies only plan was "keep sucking rich people off so they keep giving you money", and right now that means add AI to your thing, regardless of whether that even makes sense.

Draco deciding on a new owl for Harry. His name is Cashew.

In honour of Transgender Day of Visibility here are a few of my fave fics with trans characters. I've limited myself to one work per creator, but I strongly recommend checking out their profiles for all their other incredible works.

The world is crazy and scary, but we have always been here and always will be. Our love will always be stronger than their hate.

A Study in Opposites by @cavendishbutterfly - E, 11k, Hermione/Harry, Drarry. Trans female Harry, gender nonconforming Draco

A Foundation On Which to Build by @beyondtheclose - T, 20k, drarry, trans Harry, genderfluid Draco, trans Lily Evans

Of Magical Beings Being - Magic by @rockingrobin69 - E, 30k, drarry, trans Harry

About This Place by @academicdisasterfic - E, 10k, drarry, trans Harry, gender nonconforming Draco

Into the Fire by @aneiria-writes - M, 4k, Draco/Charlie, trans Draco

Cherry Lips and Black Curls by @fvckyouimaprophet - E, 1.6k, Jegulus, trans male Regulus, trans female James

Love is a Dress you Wear by @deliciousblizzardshark - E, 17k, drarry, draco/harry/Severus Snape, trans female Severus, nonbinary Teddy Lupin

Intervention by Bendersalt - T, 12k, Harry/Tonks, trans female Harry

The Treehouse Near Primrose Downs by @softlystarstruck - M, 14k, drarry, trans Harry, trans Draco

They by @vdoshu - G, 1k, nonbinary Percy Weasley

The Scars You Choose by @lqtraintracks - E, 927, drarry, trans Harry, trans Draco

Umbrella Relief by @piarelei - G, 666, drarry, nonbinary Harry

The Pirate and His Gentleman by @babooshkart - G, art, drarry, trans Harry, trans Draco

The Island Assignment by @makeitp1nk - E, 10k, drarry, trans female Draco

When You're A Man by iamisaac - T, 2.4k, Jeddy, genderfluid James

From The Same Cloth by @corvuscrowned - T, 8k, drarry, trans male Draco, trans female Harry

My philosophy for queer labels goes like this

1. Anyone who in good faith uses a label is fine to use it for themselves

2. There is no way to always tell who is using it in good faith

3. Act like everyone is using it in good faith.

4. …including assholes clearly IDing to be an ass. Treating them like they mean it is a quick way to make an asshole get yuckied out and knock it off. If they seem to be committed to the bit, maybe they really mean it

I did that to a guy. He wanted to be a wolverine, clearly being an asshole to try and play a "gotcha!" game. I called him Wolverine in place of any pronoun at all. He looked angry after a while, so I stopped. When he left, he mumbled "not what I fucking meant" and sounded like he might do some thinking.

So uh…I know that today is Trans Day of Visibility and this website’s mods are pretty horrible to trans women but…

Over on Insta and TikTok, Mercury Stardust (also known as The Trans Handy Ma’am) has been trying to raise money for trans kids. Her account has been flagged by trolls and banned 11 times. Shes not giving up, but she could use some support. Please please go check out her accounts and consider donating to the 501c charity she’s supporting. Our trans siblings need us right now.

Link to her insta, since her tiktok is currently banned again: https://www.instagram.com/mercurystardusttopz?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

She does all types of helpful DIY videos for home repair and helps answer questions for renters. Please give her a follow. Send her a nice message. Please let our trans community members know we see them and love them—today and everyday.