I've written ... a couple things actually

[olivermoss]

I started second Ao3 account because I was stressed about posting and it was interfering with my writing. Pretty much as soon as I got back into Leverage I saw aggro shipping wars that just made me want to hide. I mean, I've see worse but also ... it's been a year. My threshold for what stressed me out was really low at the time. Basically, me posting under a second hidden account was more me being stressed out than anything ... logical.

Leverage:

* Hot Chocolate - Short Hardison/Eliot fluff

* The Guildies - Gen trio fic about Eliot and Parker getting a chance to talk to Hardison's online friends.

DC:

* King Shark Is A Shark - Short King Shark / John Constantine fic. What if the Nanaue version of King Shark was in Flarrowverse?

So far, all short and all teen or under in rating. I am 4k into a mile high club Leverage fic that should come out to about 5k. Also have other John Constantine fic in the works, but am focusing on Leverage in hopes I get a few things out before the new season.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I loved both the Leverage fics! I absolutely get the desire to write under a different account, especially to avoid fandom drama crap. Ship wars have been shit forever, but the current incarnations seem to be *extra* aggro and vitriolic when I see them.

(I've definitely considered getting a completely different account as opposed to a pseud, in the event I ever post anything more explicit than I have so far, just to cushion myself from any potential shit from the worst parts of fandom.)

[olivermoss]

Thank you so much!

Literally my first experience in re-entering Leverage fandom was being accused of polyphobia for having Hardison/Eliot as my main ship. Then I heard Pardison shippers being called homophobic and I just ... couldn't deal. I've blocked everyone on tumblr who keeps calling shipping the OT3 racist or thinks Aleyse is too light skinned to be Hardison's foster sister. At this point I want the OT3 to become textually canon just to piss certain people off.

I also had fics for another fandom on that account, but I've unrevealed them for a while. I may put them back, I might not. Being able to unreveal fics is amazing.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh. I've seen... hints of the ship wars around the edges of the Leverage accounts I follow on tumblr. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I'm very strongly an OT3 shipper, in part because that's my favorite ship dynamic in general. But part of that, to me at least, is loving all the pairings the OT3 makes up, because all of them have interesting dynamics that I think are fun to explore.

The idea that shipping two of the three is inherently polyphobic is... ridiculous. (COULD it be? Yeah, maybe, if you make a point in-fic about how polyamory is awful and terrible and never works. But that's about the point made in the fic, not the ship.)

A post that mentions the OT3 as being somehow racist to ship showed up in my tracked tags, and it just sort of broke my brain a little. Again, maybe an individual fic could be, but claiming the ship is somehow *inherently* bad? WTF?

I know that ship wars have always been garbage, but the newer-ish trend of trying to justify ship-hate with shallow social-justice-y crap is EXTRA garbage. "If you don't ship my ship, you're clearly racist!" "Well, if you don't ship MY ship, you're homophobic!" "Well if you even THINK about shipping this character, you're tokenizing them."

[olivermoss]

Yeah, these days there is a lot of trying to hide ship wars as other types of discourse. It's obvious and it's stupid, but it's also really tricky to push back against.

I adore Parker, but it's the Eliot/Hardison relationship I am most interested in. I ship OT3 a little, but yeah right now I want it to be textual canon just to annoy certain people I have blocked. I agree though, all the individual relationships are very interesting. Eliot and Parker have their own vibe going on that's really interesting.

I mean, as the fandom picks up as the new episodes get closer the current fandom wanks are going to get buried by all the returning people going 'where's Nate and why are people so salty?' and stuff like that. The current dramas are pretty tiny I just ... couldn't take it.

[mistressofmuses]

That's a good way of putting it - it is just trying to hide it or disguise it as something else. And agreed that it's frustratingly hard to push back on, despite how transparent it is.

I absolutely would love for the OT3 to be on-screen canon beyond word-of-god on twitter. (Both because it's my ship, and because there aren't a lot of canon poly ships out there, and because I am also a petty bitch and I would LOVE for it to piss off all the right people. :) ) And as much as that would delight my heart, there would STILL be nothing wrong with anyone preferring to ship any given pair, or focus on any given pair in fic.

This is true, lol. I'm sure there will be plenty of exciting NEW drama to take over.

I just really quickly run out of patience for petty fandom wankery.

[olivermoss]

+1 to all of that.

Thankfully, there are fandom spaces that aren't Tumblr.

Also, right now is still the generally happy time where people are looking forward to new canon. Having a show where people have let their ideas of what a new season would be like run wild for almost a decade come back is pretty much a recipe for wank. The old canon and what a new season would be like got super idealized when there was expectation that it would be reality.

[mistressofmuses]

Oof, absolutely true. Everyone has had *plenty* of time to settle on their idealized version of what a new season will look like... I really hope that most people can keep their chill (HA. AS IF.) and judge the new season on its own merits, rather than comparing it to the perfect hypothetical version they've been imagining.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, and tumblr also has some odd idea about what is and isn't canon.

tl:dr I need to be on tumblr less. Tumbl less, write more.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, yeah. I feel like that's a fandom thing in general, but the way that things proliferate on tumblr makes it even more apparent. One person can share a headcanon, or some bit of meta, and hundreds of reblogs lacking context later, people start taking it as Definitely True Unassailable Truth.

To be fair, that's probably always a reasonable aim, lmao: Less tumblr, more writing.

[olivermoss]

It's been a meme for a while to say things are canon that aren't, but most people don't get the 'joke'. I totally getting seeing something, thinking it's real, and be so emotionally invested you don't want to let go.

But fandom's gunna fandom and my energy needs to go someplace better.

[mistressofmuses]

Fandom is fun in small doses, but it so very easily tips over into toxic, or at a minimum, exhausting. I can't stay super engaged with it for long, in my experience.

[olivermoss]

I have trouble finding other social spaces that are chill about gender and LGBTQ+ stuff, even here in Portland which so many people assume is some sort of queer utopia. So, I tend to be in fandom spaces a lot when possible. I'd prefer a better balance with fandom, but well ... but hey I was at a bar this afternoon and like talked with people in person! So that was good :)

[mistressofmuses]

I feel that lots.

Denver has a pretty extensive queer community, but in my experience it's difficult to really make any connections in it. There are gay clubs and bars, and there are pride events this month and all, but there's not a ton of *social* stuff, or at least not that I've ever had any success finding. Lots of groups seem pretty insular.
Even within the adjacent subculture stuff like the goth scene, where there are far more queer people, there are also a lot of people who AREN'T at all chill about it.

Fandom IS one of the places where it's least likely to be an issue, so I think that is part of why I gravitate toward them so much.

But hey, I'm glad (and slightly jealous) that you got to be in a bar and talk with actual in-person people! That's awesome!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I think all the people who move here for community means that the community spaces get extremely insular, or highly dysfunctional in other ways.

How chill fandom is about queer stuff makes me have very low tolerance for BS in other spaces.

It was my first face-face social experience since this all started. It wasn't anyone I knew, just chatted with people there and killed a cider. It was good to get out.

[mistressofmuses]

That's not surprising, and is probably part of what's to blame here, too. I *get* groups becoming insular, but sometimes it definitely reaches an unhealthy point. And yeah, can be super prone to dysfunction of various kinds, too.

And amen! Fandom is one of the only broader spaces I've found where queer-UNfriendly is the weird exception, and the thing that the majority shuns. Also a space where there feels like a base understanding of queer stuff, even from people who aren't some stripe of queer themselves. (Not that everyone is SUPER knowledgeable about everything, necessarily, but that there's at least SOME general understanding beyond the average rando on the street.) It's absolutely given me a bit of culture shock when I do encounter serious BS elsewhere.

That's great! I'm glad you got to actually chat with some people. (And tasty cider doesn't hurt.)