illuvium

this is in a similar vein to my magic au post, but i love considering worlds in which soulmates are a real concept. as a trope, it's got a lot of variety, but it essentially boils down to there being a tangible physical connection tying you to another person, whether it be feeling synced emotions or having the literal red string of fate or being able to write to one another using your skin. whatever the case, soulmates are basically horror to me.

there are really only two directions when you consider the logistics of a soulmate setting, neither of which are explored. firstly, there's the concept of soulmates being a government-assigned thing; you hit a certain age (or maybe you're even born knowing), and then you get assigned to someone and vice versa. secondly, it's legitimate fate and you are somehow born knowing you're going to be someone else's. both have a lot of appeal, personally.

looking at the first choice, this is pretty clearly dystopian. there's a couple of issues here, one of which is kind of inherent to soulmate aus. you're not going to be genetically suited for someone. that's a ridiculous notion and ignores the huge factor of nurture when considering someone's personality and their general predisposition to a variety of events. the second thing is that you must consider that this is a government-decided thing. in some idealized world, perhaps this could work (as it does in fanfiction, which is, of course, wish fulfillment). however, in reality, this would only be used to enforce heteronormativity. it's pretty easy to see how it devolves into a dystopia then, and i think this route could be a really great exploration of the costs of enforced social norms and the risks taken when being unconventional.

about the second choice: this is less dystopian by virtue of there literally being nothing to fight. fate is an intangible concept, and even if you don't like it, you'd have to submit to it anyway. to me, this is scarier than the first choice. there, at least there's some possible form of escape. realizing that the designated Person For You isn't actually for you would settle some things in your psyche and assure you of your sanity (probably). it's a lot worse when it's fate; even if you have the awareness required to realize that it's a scary concept to have your whole life, down to the person you're fated to be with, mapped out, and to know that you can't really do anything about it? it's terrrrrrrible. something i always love to toy with when i think of soulmate scenarios in my mind is a feeling of forced love (which i think mirrors the arranged marriage trope quite nicely; there, you're technically forced into a legal relationship but the trope often relies on a genuine affection grown, however tinged with caveats that is. here, you've got no legal binds technically, but if you've been fated to fall in love, is that really love on its own?). it's another one of those tropes that i don't really hate, but i think it has so much potential as a character study. i'd love for this to be enacted on a character who has never had the liberty of choice in their life especially given that the traditional norm is for romance to be some sort of freeing, changing thing.

been another long while, but today's subject is on how magic plays with the social hierarchies in fiction. it's a lot more difficult to generalize magic in fanfiction, because literally anything counts. if you stretch the definition enough, even something as based in technology as science fiction can be categorized as magical. having said that, the following aspects of magic that i'll be talking about are really rather limited as opposed to the conversation about a/b/o or even other tropes like enemies to lovers.

i think the main thing about magic aus that nobody really likes to think about is how society would actually be organized. if magic is widespread on a societal level, where everyone has some capacity for magic, then would the world not fall into chaos? i'm not even making an argument for inherent moral depravity in people here, but would police not have a far harder time trying to maintain order if people have access to a hypothetically unrestricted range of abilities? in that case, there would exist two major routes, the first being an outside suppression of the magic (which would have accompanying struggles of: how do you ensure that the restriction holds true? what would even suppress the magic? how is that procured, and would it have any effects on the user? how would this have changed history?), and the second being a fundamental change to the world building to prevent any "excess" abilities (which then has the commonplace question of, well, people finding ingenious ways to use even lame-sounding abilities. so what then?)

the above is my personal stance, which is to say that when i read any world that has magic as a sort of given, i prefer there to be a logical explanation as to why the world hasn't devolved into a state of anarchy yet. citing an example (not from fanfiction), i think that the system present in harry potter is really ridiculous. you have the unforgiveable curses, but you literally get taught what the key phrase to activate those curses are in school. i would suggest a safeguard placed into the wands themselves, but since wandless magic exists, there's no real barrier preventing anyone from using the curse. the thing about magic in world building and this untapped potential to easily murder someone without having actual barriers preventing them from using the curse is that it then undermines everything else. how can you ever feel safe? of course, consequences exist, and in real life, someone could hypothetically take an axe and smash one's skull in anyway, but the thing about the magical setting is that it's so unpredictable. yes, someone could take the axe, but you would've seen the axe. if someone is able to take their wand out, cast a spell they learned in school on you, and kill you instantly without any real repercussion aside from being thrown in wizard jail (which also: can they not just use all of their floo powder escape magic here?), how has society not absolutely crumbled?

regardless, moving on from the logistics of actually having prevalent usable magic in society, i feel like another underappreciated aspect of magic aus is inequality baked into the system. when you look at works that have magic & abilities baked into them, there's this immediate sense of inequality. i don't read much shounen, so i don't have specific citations for this, but i know it's a common trope in shounen manga to have a stratified class system for abilities, where a "good" ability gets you into an elite class, and a "bad" ability leaves you stranded. i think this is super underexplored and presents an excellent opportunity for commentary to be made on the advantages presented to someone at birth from things such as wealth and access to care. even the trope itself realizes this to some extent; the main character starts off as an underdog in a "lower" class (literally!), but it's never really explored to the extent that i would love it to be.

because i always love thinking about logistics, that ties right back into how magic is usable in society. assuming that the magic is truly unlimited in the regard of what domains of life it can affect, then things like democracy would be totally unstable. monarchies, too, for that matter, if it's not hereditary. and i do understand that people love to talk about a concept of inherent morality, but i find that difficult to truly hold up if something like magic were to be unregulated. my personal stance on a great deal of Situations is that they ultimately come back to being viable solely in dystopias and not much else. there it is, though!

while thinking about what i find interesting about aus, i inevitably have to go into what the difference between fanfic and published fiction is. i think a lot of people have complexes about published fiction being better than fanfic, and while i agree wholeheartedly at some levels (as in, published fiction has access to editors because it's being written for the sake of profit & things like that), i think the actual difference between the two can be summed up as this: fanfic is blatantly derivative, and published fiction is not (or, well, not to the same extent).

the reason fanfic works for me even as someone so critical of books is because i keep those two things in mind. fanfic to me has a higher floor, because if i'm reading fanfic, it's already established that i like the characters it focuses around. much of the struggle in writing published fiction is trying to create genuinely compelling characters, so the fact that you're working both with preestablished characters and an audience who already likes those characters as well gives fanfic a boost. i don't know if i would argue that published fiction (which i guess i'll refer to as pubfic for the sake of convenience) has a higher ceiling. i think that if you compared the type of fanfic to the same type of pubfic that they're kind of evenly matched.

that's to say that if you took the average romance fanfic, because fanfic tends to be romance (for a variety of reasons not limited just to queerbait), and slotted it up against the average romance pubfic, i don't actually know that there'd be a huge difference. i'll disregard the quality argument in hopes that the earlier preface that editors deal with improving published works serves as a blanket, but i guess i'm trying to argue that both of these things are equally affected by the circumstances the writer is in. this ties into the derivative line i wrote earlier; fanfic and pubfic writers will both be influenced by what's most common. if enemies to lovers is the most common trope, there's a higher chance they'll like it just from exposure, and things happen from there on out.

i think the biggest reason people are so quick to deride fanfic in favor of pubfic is because they're thinking of classic books used as an example of good writing, like lolita, or something along those lines. i don't necessarily fault them for thinking that, but i think the better comparison is to slot fanfic against its counterpart in contemporary fiction. in that case, i actually don't think there's so much of a difference. ultimately, fanfic is wish fulfillment. so is romantic pubfic. unless you look at quality only (which i mean, given the state of contemporary romance, i also find it hard to truly argue that it's much better), i truly don't think there's such a distinct difference between fanfic and pubfic aside from reception.

with regards to reception, i'll elaborate more on the derivative point. fanfic needs no explanation here. it's taken straight from a book or movie or game or something like that, and the connection is made obvious. pubfic is less clear, but it's still undeniable that it is derivative. just look at books being marketed as (adjective) (other, classic book/series). it's been happening a lot with the hunger games (and in fairness, that was sort of a defining work of the genre), where you'll see things being marketed as a spicy version of the hunger games or something along those lines. that's a derivative work! when you write something and absentmindedly use a phrase from a poster you saw three years ago, that's derivative, too! and i think the real reason people prefer to look down on fanfic is because it's the purest example of appreciation for something; i think that in a society whose members are increasingly tending to hide their interests and their effort that fanmade creations are so easy to write off as cringe. that's really all

alluded to in my last post, i've been thinking a lot about this lately. i understand the origins of the terms of yuri and yaoi as being very helpful in that girls & boys love are both things that stray from the heterosexual norm and as such will have different aspects by virtue of not sharing aspects of i guess straight culture. i still do think that such terms are more obsolete; the true value of those tags has really faded and does stories that get categorized as yuri or as yaoi a disservice. i feel like this is probably going to have some certain pushback just because that sort of overrides their status as like, pushing against societal norms, but i do feel like it's not ideally meant to be a genre. the relationship type tells you (mostly) nothing specifically. the most i can think of only really applies to yuri and would then involve the interplay between homophobia and misogyny (which i can also fathom an argument for even for m/m couples, but which is more clearly prevalent if they're both girls), but that's never a common subject matter for things in my experience. i think just grouping something as yuri or yaoi as opposed to actual genre tags like scifi and whatnot can be so limiting for legitimately good stories. this might be limited just to myself, but when i personally come across a recommendation post for something and the key point is that it's about two girls or two guys, i get slightly uninterested. tell me more about what the actual premise of the story is, for god's sake. this is seeping into a trope talk post more than anything, and i feel the same about the yuri/yaoi tags as i do about monikers like enemies to lovers and the one bed trope and whatever else, which is to really say that the tropes themselves can work and i don't hate them by themselves, but that more elaboration really has to be done aside from just the label. i don't think that everything needs to have some grand theme and message that must reach everyone in the audience, but i do think that if it's a story that's trying to take itself seriously (and it's totally fine not to, i think; it just shouldn't be everything that's out there in the literary sphere) that it should actually try to do something fresh with the tropes. anyway, pardon the discursive post (though most of my posts tend to end up this way). hope you've all been doing well!!

this kind of follows with my two posts on women here and here, but i think there's this image of queer representation being a positive portrayal of same sex relationships specifically. i'm not making the argument that all queer people in media should be villains. with historical portrayals of queer individuals as villains (as in silence of the lambs, where the killer is shown to be violent thanks to being trans), it's clearly not a good stance to take. i think that just limiting queer people to being good is pretty bad. i mentioned this before, but in the dream house does a pretty great job in one of its chapters (and really through the whole book, honestly) of dismantling this narrative, that lesbian relationships can't be abusive. of course, with same sex relationships with women, there's interplay with misogyny in its reception through the enforcement of purity culture on treatment of women. there's also another aspect here where people like to disregard a character's queerness (not even just characters; real people, too) if they're bi or pan and end up with someone of the opposite gender, but that's a whole other can of worms and might not be my can of worms to open, so i'm not really talking about that.

anyway, the point really is this: villainization of queer people in the way older films and medias sucks, but so does the more modern stance of bleaching queer relationships to be as palatable as possible. both ultimately end up stripping i guess dimensionality from queer people that's not at all beneficial given the current conditions of the world (though i mean arguably there's never been a time where queer people had it as good as cishet people). there's really not much i have to say about this beyond this; it just bugs me when i see people online (usually teenagers in all fairness) insistent on using only totally positive queer relationships as representation. with regards to the original villain point, i'm not by any means saying that queer people can't be villains. i just wish that the motives for being a villain are either disconnected from that queerness or well-done if it is connected. the transmisogyny present in silence of the lambs sucked even though i liked the movie as a whole. so yeah! i think that's really about it since the main point of this is literally to ask that queer people be treated as people and given real flaws and struggles.

i think the treatment of fanfiction is super interesting for multiple reasons. there's treatment of it from inside the fandom & perception of it from i guess not even people outside the fandom, but people who don't interact with fandoms at all online. even thinking about things like people generalizing the types of works based on the site it's posted on is pretty funny. you don't see this with fanartists when they post works on both twitter and instagram, but when you see conversations about fanfiction, there's this immediate sort of assumption that anything posted on ao3 is superior to something posted on wattpad. i feel like it's then surprising, given how common these kinds of takes are within literally every fandom ever, to see the real treatment of fanfiction in fandom circles. generally speaking, i find that it's rare to find fanfiction that's given proper time of day despite having the same effort put into it as fanartists put into their works. it's a strange sort of contrast; as far as i know, there's not really any sort of stereotype regarding fanart in the same way there are all these discussions about fanfiction to the point of having these generalizations widely understood by tons of people on the internet. despite that more marked presence within common ideas, fanfiction really doesn't seem to be valued so much. comparatively less attention is paid to it and i find that writers are typically treated as more mechanical than artists are in the sense that people are far more comfortable critiquing writing and telling the author to produce more content.

as for the other thing i mentioned, of fanfiction's perception from outsiders, i think that's even funnier. it's like the treatment of fanfiction vs fanart inside the fandom but augmented exponentially. fanart's usually not seen is probably one of the reasons why, and the other reason why is what i've mentioned above of it not having any connotations (usually; there are always some exceptions and i've seen examples where youtubers or other content creators have brought fanart into videos to show some sort of disparity between the fanart & the actual content of the series). fanfiction's got something of a reputation, i think, for being more dirty in some regard? i don't really understand it, but there is more of a negative social meaning to saying you read fanfiction than there is for saying you like fanart that i'm really curious about. anyway, there's not really a meaning to this, and it's not a very ironed out line of thinking. i'll get back to this at some point if i'm up to it

i think it's pretty clear that i'm passionate about the impact of ai in society and in my life at the present, but i've more to say (shocker). i obviously care when others use chatgpt for the aforementioned impacts on the environment with each search, but even thinking more selfishly, i hate ai as a concept. i've never and will never use chatgpt or any of that other generative ai trash to do any of my work, but since i'm well aware that others are, it's making me more paranoid as a result. everything i write is my own and is created from all the influences of the writers i've read and whatever other interesting quotes i've picked up along the way like a raven with its treasures. with ai around, it's gotten more convoluted. i've had to be concerned about coming across as ai, especially when writing applications to things. it's just genuinely disappointing that i even have to consider this and that i have to worry that i don't come across as authentically human enough, which is honestly crazy when you think about it. kind of dystopian too; i, a real person, have to convince someone else that it's really me and not an ai generating my paragraphs. god.

what this reveals to me is perhaps more worrying, though. apparent trademarks of ai usage are more "advanced" synonyms of common words, but i really do think that these synonyms aren't advanced in the slightest. come on, delve as a red flag for ai usage? you learn that word in elementary school when you're being taught about penguins. all of this is just proving to me that there's such a decrease in literacy today, especially in the united states, that's just incredulously concerning. relying on ai is only going to augment that issue, too. elementary schoolers i know have used chatgpt. elementary schoolers! in the fourth grade! every year you're in school from elementary up until high school is crucial, but i feel like elementary is especially so. aside from the soft skills (which also are seeing, at least in my experience, a dramatic fall off), elementary school is fundamentally a time to be building your basic skills in things like reading and writing. if you have to rely on ai already to be writing basic essays, lord knows how much you'll struggle reaching high school and writing essays there. that aforementioned decrease in literacy ties into my opinions regarding booktok and the general condition of readers today, but that's also a post for another time.

all of this is to say that i'm positive ai will have excruciatingly averse effects on the current generation and the future ones, too. generative ai like this isn't something you can roll back so easily, which is a real shame since it's truly one of those things that i don't believe provide any benefit to the world. earlier today, i was watching people i used to respect or at the very least like go on chatgpt for the simplest matters. when i say that witnessing people go on chatgpt and rely on it in any manner like this drops my respect for them greatly, i mean it. in all honesty, i feel like i'm going crazy sometimes. i see online that people share similar thoughts to me, but in real life, i've not yet found someone agreeing with me. i see instead people spending their lunch breaks typing away at chatgpt and wasting all that energy.

i've mentioned in my pinned post and other places that i'm in fandoms as well. going back to ai and fandoms, it's doubly bad with things like character ai. regardless of the situation with c.ai and the suicide of a young boy, i have a hatred for the website. there's no point to it, which is what i say with every generative ai program ever, but it's doubly apparent here, with character ai. if you're truly so desperate to be able to talk to your favorite character, roleplay is right there. roleplay has existed for as long as fandom has existed. it's literally been part of fanculture forever. hell, i roleplayed in elementary school when the rage was warrior cats. ignoring all of that in favor of a lifeless chat robot is just ludicrous to me. you can make the case that the internet isn't safe. i'd be inclined to agree with that, but i just can't see how the alternative is to go to that soulless thing.

relating to fandom and also to my first post regarding generative ai, ai-generated fanfiction is ridiculous to me. reiterating: when i write fanfiction, it's with my own interpretations of the characters. it's a study of how i view them, what i think they would say, what situations i'd like them to be in and so on so forth. ai is not capable of the kind of analysis i am and that i do when i sit down to write. ai steals writers' works and plays pretend, acts like it can truly understand the characters and the manner in which you write. it can't do that. it doesn't have memory, it can't develop. you tell an ai to say that something objectively true is wrong and it'll say that. you ask it to confirm what it says right after, and it'll say that what it said was wrong not even two minutes ago is true. it's not based on logic. it's based on what it scrapes from the internet. it can never be capable of the sort of analysis real writers do when they think about what they're writing. even subconsciously, with tags like "out of character", you understand that your version of them isn't consistent. ai could never do that, because ai can't form its own analysis of anything. what makes me the angriest about ai-generated fic is that the person prompting the ai has the idea on their own. they have the ideas, they have that creative drive, and they can think, but they just refuse to, and that's the most grating part. i could never be satisfied with an ai-generated fanfiction. taking my ideas and absolutely butchering them? i'm a picky reader and a total grammar police, but i would prefer a poorly formatted and poorly written out of character fanfic made by a real person to ai-generated slop any day of the year