Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

my #23point5 wip is finally finished!

I'LL ORBIT IN YOUR ATMOSPHERE
🌌 #ongsasun, 11.6k words total
🌏 ongsa confesses to being earth earlier
☀️ sun is confused about her feelings
☄️ also feat. a meteor shower, alpha being a good sister, & background aylinluna

archiveofourown.org/works/55132201

Header of a fic on Archive Of Our Own called "i'll orbit in your atmosphere", by fiercynn.

Summary:

“What if Earth...doesn’t show up?” Ongsa asks.

Sun looks thoughtful, and a little resigned. “I would be sad, I guess.” Then she brightens. “But I think he’s coming. He told me he would.”

Even now, Sun has so much trust in Earth. And Ongsa’s about to shatter that trust. But she can’t take the hopeful look in Sun’s eyes any longer.

“What if Earth…is already here?” she says.

Tags:

Rating: General Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F

Fandom: 23.5 องศาที่โลกเอียง | 23.5 (TV 2024)
Relationship: Ongsa/Sun
Characters: Ongsa, Sun, Aylin, Charoen, Tin, Vi, Dear, Kongkwan, Alpha, Luna

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, High School, Love Confessions, too gay to function ongsa/still working on breaking out of her heteronormativity sun, as many space metaphors as i can cram in, (but not nearly as many as the show lol), also unrelated to the fic but, FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸, From the river to the sea palestine will be free

Language: English

Stats:

Published: 2024-04-11
Completed: 2025-01-23
Words: 11,622
Chapters: 5/5
Comments: 79
Kudos: 350
Bookmarks: 30
Hits: 4,537

January 23, 2025 at 8:25 PM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

after many months (🤦🏽‍♀️) i've finally updated my #23point5 wip!

i'll orbit in your atmosphere (4/5)
☄️ #ongsasun
☄️ 2.8k words (total currently 9.3k)
☄️ time for the perseid meteor shower!
☄️ also time for ongsa to be very confused by sun

archiveofourown.org/works/551322...

final chapter out next week!

header and tags for the fic "i'll orbit in your atmosphere" by fiercynn on Archive Of Our Own.

chapter 4: a dream began, it grew uncontrollably

Summary:

"Ongsa takes her own turn at a telescope around midnight, and she’s still buzzing at the thrill of it as she makes her way back to her friends. But when she reaches their blanket, she stops short, because – Sun is sitting there, in the spot where Ongsa was.

'Sun?' says Ongsa in disbelief. 'What are you doing here?'”

Rating: General Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F

Fandom: 23.5 องศาที่โลกเอียง | 23.5 (TV 2024)
Relationship: Ongsa/Sun (23.5 TV)
Characters: Ongsa, Sun, Aylin, Charoen, Tin, Vi, Dear, Kongkwan, Alpha, Luna

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, High School, Love Confessions, too gay to function ongsa/still working on breaking out of her heteronormativity sun, as many space metaphors as i can cram in, (but not nearly as many as the show lol), also unrelated to the fic but, FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸, From the river to the sea palestine will be free

Language: English
Published: 2024-04-11
Updated: 2025-01-16
Words: 9,268
Chapters: 4/5
Comments: 67
Kudos: 322
Bookmarks: 28
Hits: 4,136

January 16, 2025 at 7:32 PM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

i have one more offering for nong nao's holiday countdown: a podfic of midnightfreeway's #badbuddy fic "seaside", which was also posted for the challenge!

archiveofourown.org/works/61775131

pairing is patpran, runtime is ~21 minutes. thanks to em for letting me record it & to the nnhc24 mods!

Podfic cover art with a screenshot from Bad Buddy where Pat and Pran are sitting on the beach next to each other, their backs to the camera, looking out at the sea. Superimposed is the text 'Seaside, written by midnightfreeway, read by fiercynn'

January 3, 2025 at 2:22 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

it's the first day of nong nao's holiday countdown & my fic is live!

pulled colors with a simple tune
🖋️ patpran, 5.5k words
🔀 canon-divergent au, high school
🧑🏽‍🎄 pran's parents don't interrupt the concert...
‼️ ...but some turmoil ensues anyway

archiveofourown.org/works/61506241

December 24, 2024 at 6:07 PM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

my friend tk & their partner, a black trans disabled couple, have been forced to crowdfund again after tk's partner was fired from her job 😔

we're hoping to raise $500 by the end of dec. but still have a ways to go - please help if you can & share!

cashapp & venmo: torkz428
paypal: torkz

$10/$500

Tumblr post by rinsedrice one day ago:

"hey everyone, my friend is a disabled Black trans person and their partner is a disabled Black trans fem who was just fired from her job a week before xmas 😔 they are now sorely in need of aid before december ends!! anything helps at all, we would like to raise at least $500 to help with food and bills by december 31st!

cashapp & venmo: torkz428
paypal: torkz
0/$500"

reblogged by rinsedrice 17 hours ago to update that $10 had been raised out of a goal of $500

December 23, 2024 at 5:15 PM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

so excited to be taking part in #badbuddy fandom's nong nao's holiday countdown! more about the challenge at nongnaoseventplanner.tumblr.com

my fic, a canon-divergent au where pran's parents didn't interrupt the concert, will be posted on dec. 24 at the ao3 collection. here's a little preview 🥰

Nong Nao's Holiday Countdown sneak peak graphic, with art of Nong Nao at one corner, a photo of Pat and Pran with Pran's hand over Pat's mouth in another corner, and cartoony snowflakes in the background. The preview, by fiercynn for fic coming on December 24th, reads:

"It wasn’t until today, on stage, when Pran turned to him in the middle of the song he’d written with Pat’s help, that his face completely lit up with happiness, no pretense to it at all. Pat didn’t even know how to respond, in the moment: his own return smile was tentative at first, edging on wary. But as they continued playing, Pat finally felt everything else slip away, all the barriers that have kept them from being friends all these years. He was almost laughing by the time they finished, his body suffused with adrenaline and joy.

Then Book and Mot had to go and fucking ruin it."

December 21, 2024 at 8:58 PM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

as pow briefly mentions, warner also read pow's tumblr post & proceeded to engage with her on twitter about it. pow does not link to or recreate this interaction, but she describes it much more positively than her encounters with bcb

[4.3] Using Tumblr's hashtags can be strategically and politically deployed, particularly if offering criticism. When a post is reblogged, the tags on the post are wiped clean so that the reblogger can add their own, which contextualizes a user's response to the original poster. At the time, I was thinking through modalities and insufficiencies of the representational rubric, which was a chief concern of the PhD dissertation I began in 2015. Warner's argument was simply representative of a larger problematic framework, and my tags were a response to arguments that fix Black femininity in familiar but limited tropes, the absence of which deems null the character's racial specificity. It is a flawed argument elegantly interrogated by Tara-Lynn Pixley (2015), whose work, coincidentally, appears alongside a different article of Warner's (2015a) in The Black Scholar Journal dedicated to Scandal earlier in 2015. Unbeknownst to me, Warner was following my blog and my Twitter account. She read my post and tags. On Twitter, she thanked me for spreading the word about her article and took my criticism, though she remained firm in her argument about the creator, Rhimes, having a history of colorblind approach to her work. We fundamentally disagreed on the degree of its insidiousness, but it was without rancor, and we went about our day.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

…while bcb’s similar points are described as “a castigation disguised as intersectional intellectualism”?

[4.1] In late October 2015, I logged into Tumblr. One of the first posts to appear on my dashboard was a (since deleted) subpost by a mutual Scandal follower. The subpost directly praised @babycakesbriauna (BCB hereafter) for how she excoriated ("dragged") an unnamed fandom member. Desperate curiosity and the desire to be entertained led me to BCB's Tumblr, wondering who her target had been and why. My heart rate increased tenfold when I came across her reblog of a post I had made earlier that evening, which had received significant engagement. I kept scrolling down to the response, my anxiety levels off the charts, hoping mine was not the targeted post. It was. Katrinapavela was the subject of BCB's dress-down (https://babycakesbriauna.tumblr.com/post/131668674331/katrinapavelababycakesbriauna). The ferocious precision of the response surprised and flummoxed me because my post had nothing to do with BCB directly nor made any circular reference to her. Yet her words went beyond disagreement into an intensely personal realm (repeated use of "you" and "your") in its publicness. A castigation disguised as intersectional intellectualism. Such a practice was not unfamiliar to Tumblr nor to the Scandal fandom there. However, I had never been the target. In some ways, BCB's public callout of my politics had much to do with the perception of me as a prominent fan in our niche world. BCB's missive blurred the lines between katrinapavela, the blogger, and Kadian Pow, the researcher, the consequences of which entailed psychic and emotional ripples extending well beyond that autumn evening in 2015.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

why is warner’s critique of how olivia pope is raced only a “flawed argument”…

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

(aside here: as a “how to get away with murder” fan, i was stunned to learn that annalise was not always conceived as a black character!)

9. Notes
1. Keating was not conceived as Black but became Black because Viola Davis's audition convinced the series creator Peter Nowalk that the character could be Black (Turchiano 2020). It should be noted that this beloved Black character is a result of colorblind casting practices.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

however, bcb’s tumblr response DOES bring up other characters who grew up wealthy, like mary jane paul from “being mary jane” and anika from “empire”. why are these not mentioned in pow’s article?

To piggyback off of the Annalise Keating/VD comparison is that what disappointed me the most in this thread was you all failing to to look outside of stereotypical views of blackness to the argument that OP read a race neutral. None of you thought to compare Olivia to Annalise Keating or MaryJane Paul (who had a privileged upbringing) or Anika (another privileged character) or Rainbow Johnson. No you all defaulted to the one character that represents a stereotypical American blackness. Saying “we want OP to read as black” isn’t saying “want what her to be hood or ghetto or ‘loud’.” Why is that? That comparison in and of itself feeds into the idea that there’s only type or two types of blackness. That type is thinking is problematic, just like SR . If we’d learnt anything from this publication it’s that people are paying attention to what you’re saying. Come on y’all do better. How are you gonna yell that blackness isn’t monolithic then default to the believed monolithic blackness, what kind of nonsense. That doesn’t help your argument; not when there are numerous other comparison to be made.

No one is saying Olivia should fit into a tiny neat box marked black and that be that. We are saying that she be a nuanced character all around that includes her gender, class, sexual orientation, and race (intersectionality folks). Olivia should be black on purpose without fans having to fill in the missing puzzle pieces the writers didn’t want to accept.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

and, pow misrepresents some of bcb’s arguments. for example, pow accuses bcb of leaving class "unaddressed" by only comparing pope’s portrayal of blackness with black women characters who grew up poor (which pope did not)

[4.10] BCB compares Pope's inauthentic blackness with other "Black on purpose" characters—Empire's (2015–20) Cookie and How to Get Away with Murder's (2014–20) Analise Keating (note 1)—for whom Pope and Scandal paved the way, but was subsequently judged to be lacking. BCB leaves unaddressed the difference that class and environmental upbringing have on these characters' blackness—all information given by those shows. Pope's lack of imagined limitations as a Black woman is not a flaw in characterization but Rhimes's deliberate attempt at having the character appropriate white male privilege for herself, not be a white male (which is farcical). It is a perspective Black writer Zahir McGhee writes into episode 5.4 "Dog Whistle Politics," which aired two weeks before this fantagonism. In the episode, a television program about Pope is aired, and the presenter notes, "He [Eli Pope] once told a colleague that he was on a quest to do the impossible…raise an African American girl who felt fully entitled to own the world as much as any white man." That entitlement to operate with one's full humanity in the world is not the same as wanting to embody a white man. Just as racial stereotypes about Black people allow others a false sense of knowing, familiar and unifying tropes of blackness provide a false notion of its fixity. Therefore, witnessing an attempt at appropriating white male privilege ("the impossible," as McGhee notes) can invoke racial insecurity or dissatisfaction in some viewers, allowing them to feel unmoored from blackness as they know it or expect it to look like. As someone who grew up with both African American and Jamaican forms of ethnic blackness, at no point did Olivia Pope feel (to me) like a "white man," as BCB notes, or anything other than the Black woman she is. That reading, though different from BCB's, should count for something.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

pow also, without any reason for it, brings up that bcb was 21yo at the time while pow herself was 36yo – which to me also reads as trying to deligitimize bcb's points & contribute to framing bcb as an antifan

You’ve been doing your reading, and you present a lot of information here that I have read and absorbed. I will not be doing a point-by-point rebuttal. Because what will result is an endless back and forth due to the fact that, as you say, we will never look at blackness in the same ways. (And your assumption is that neither will Kristen and I. Are you her publicist now?). At 21, you are convinced that this is true whilst, at 36, I think it remains to be seen. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, since you, too, are standing in your obstinacy, which you deem to be correct or superior.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

and yk, i myself have absolutely said things that were belittling to people i'm debating with in fandom!

but i question pow presenting her 2015 tumblr response so neutrally in a 2024 article where she states that she is critiquing herself as well

[3.3] This insider/outsider position results in a more complex standpoint on how ideations of Black femininity can be used to create textual dividing lines. Being a critically engaged ethnographer intentionally blurs the line between the objectivity and subjectivity of the researcher. For this reason, my own fan production and engagement with other fans on Tumblr, as katrinapavela, are offered for critical examination and reflection. As someone who was a member of Tumblr's Scandal fandom in 2012 before my return to academia in 2015, it seemed unethical to ignore my content production, relationships, and standing as a Big Name Fan (BNF) before formalizing my research. Therefore, my own motivations and attitudes are questioned.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

...and accuses bcb of trying to stifle debate, a claim that i can find no backing for in either of bcb's responses

For record, I am not asleep. I just happen to see more. I “still haven’t broadened or shifted [my] view of how OP’s is read, impact the show, and influences how folks relate to her” because my view is not like underwear. It doesn’t change by the day. Impact is not singular nor is it hegemonic. I am performing consistent, evidence-based analysis of the text. My reading of the show is one that is informed not just by information I have gathered, but by an intellectual framework that questions the one you are working from, and from the epistemological knowledge of my lived experience as a black woman. (How come Kristen’s 10 years of writing about Shondaland is evidence of her strong scholarship, but my consistency is evidence of failure?).
 
Neither blackness nor academia require that we agree on the reading of this text. Do you even know what academia is? It is a space filled with people who look at the same set of data, the things that have been analyzed about said data and draw varying conclusions, some of which will be in opposition to each other. Of the two of us, it seems that you are the only one trying to stifle debate based on your intellectual conversion.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

if you go and read the original tumblr thread, pow’s response is far from as neutral as she portrays it in the article. she continuously belittles bcb's understanding of academia...

While stating your present belief that we will never be on the same page on this matter, you simultaneously try to convert me to your point of view in your screed. You attempted to invalidate my views whilst also paying lip service to the debates that need to happen in these spaces as well as in academia. (In case you don’t know this, there is no shortage of these racial debates in academia. It’s just that the majority of them sound like the view that you’re espousing.).

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

but other than naming that her ego was hurt, pow characterizes her own response to bcb simply as “i wrote a response a day later, conceding some points, presenting my own evidence, and pointing out bcb's inconsistent arguments”

[5.1] As a veteran of Scandal's Tumblr fandom, I knew a lack of response to BCB would be interpreted as a moral and intellectual win for her. A lack of response typically means one has been sufficiently embarrassed into silence by the shade thrown at them. In other words, I had not sent for BCB, but she came for me publicly. Through the overwhelming anxiety and sleeplessness that night, accusations and would-be responses infesting my mind like bedbugs, I knew I would have to respond. My ego was hurt, and as katrinapavela, I had a reputation to protect. This interaction was public, and I had been dragged into an arena where I was expected to give my own performance as part of the entertainment. Moreover, I just disagreed with BCB on several points and wanted it known. I wrote a response a day later, conceding some points, presenting my own evidence, and pointing out BCB's inconsistent arguments (https://katrinapavela.tumblr.com/post/131616245704/babycakesbriauna katrinapavela). She wrote back (https://babycakesbriauna.tumblr.com/post/131668674331/katrinapavelababycakesbriauna), but I did not respond. I could not reconcile BCB's insistence that "the conversation [about Black femininity] needs to happen" with the attitude of the response, the latter indicating that the conversation was open only to one perspective on the lived experience of Black femininity (hers). Understanding and disagreement coexist. Unlike BCB, who had soured on the show and stopped watching full episodes, my fan production did not center upon disaffection for Pope's Black femininity. My original post and the back and forth with BCB received replies well into 2016. The thread fell into a fruitful discourse that did not require or entice my participation. My complaints about the show lay elsewhere and I would only discuss those with fans who knew how to hold in dynamic tension their delight as well as their dejection.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

bcb’s interactions with pow are also framed as hostile, going “into an intensely personal realm”. i definitely sympathize with the emotion & anxiety that pow describes feeling – i've felt it myself during fandom debates, particularly about race

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

to give credit to pow, she does critique her own motivations as well. for example, she is clear about the fact that her reasons for responding to bcb were partially bruised ego and desire to protect her reputation

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

…which positions bcb as an antifan who engages in disparaging the show to form social bonds with other antifans (which pow relates, again, to virtue signaling)

[7.1] John Fiske (1989) notes that fans use media to explicitly interpret the world around them, reproducing parts they like the most. This deeply affective process applies even to the antifan, who does the opposite: reproduce parts of the world they dislike the most (Johnson 2017). This further complicates the idea of fantagonism predicated on intersectionality. The disparagement of Scandal's politics around Black womanhood may be the point. As I see it, the antifans' love language is expressed most authentically through biting criticism and denigration, be it of clothing, characters, or storylines. The virtue signaling taking place is for disaffected fans who either never liked the show or had since fallen out with the show due to severed expectations. Affective bonds begin to form on a foundation of hypercriticality, which, if breached, would sever those bonds. Performing hypercritical discourse of the show is the stickiness that reinforces both a sense of communalism and an authentication of "true" Black womanhood.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

5) bcb is no longer a fan of scandal, and as such, bcb’s scandal fan production is now centered upon “disaffection for pope’s black femininity”…

I could not reconcile BCB's insistence that "the conversation [about Black femininity] needs to happen" with the attitude of the response, the latter indicating that the conversation was open only to one perspective on the lived experience of Black femininity (hers). Understanding and disagreement coexist. Unlike BCB, who had soured on the show and stopped watching full episodes, my fan production did not center upon disaffection for Pope's Black femininity. My original post and the back and forth with BCB received replies well into 2016. The thread fell into a fruitful discourse that did not require or entice my participation. My complaints about the show lay elsewhere and I would only discuss those with fans who knew how to hold in dynamic tension their delight as well as their dejection.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

4) bcb could gain “online social currency and clout” from challenging a big name fan like pow

[6.2] A BNF is a fan who has gained a considerable amount of recognition within a fan community (Hills 2002). The BNF's standing has usually been achieved through "hierarchies of knowledge, fandom level/quality [of content produced], access, leaders, venue" (Jones 2018, 258). Important to note is that BNFs are not self-designated but fan-designated. That designation is not static and can change based on any number of factors. Though I did not interact with the cast or producers, some eventually viewed me as having power in the fandom. Sometimes, fans would invoke me to settle tensions, recruit me to a side of a disagreement, or speak up about an injustice in the fandom. In some ways, BCB's public callout of my politics had much to do with the perception of me as a BNF. There was online social currency and clout at stake in positioning herself as a Black intellectual challenge to katrinapavela. Indeed, my ego wanted to defend the standing I had gained in the fandom (though that standing was not always positively charged).

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

for one, pow presents bcb’s motivations as markedly negative. pow assumes that bcb had five reasons for responding to pow's original post:

1) bcb is personal friends with warner & wanted to defend her
2) bcb sees pow as a stand-in for shonda rhimes
3) bcb is virtue-signaling to other fans

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

pow discusses this not only in her own positionality as an acafan, but in relation to how warner is perceived by other fans in the thread as a “sell-out” and possibly as an outsider to scandal fandom

[4.6] These comments reflect the wider context of research in Black fandoms, questioning who is allowed to do it and how they are allowed to characterize the fans. Notable here is that these reactions are based on the combination of the excerpt of Warner's argument discussing shipping real-life actors and the context of Black women's fandoms. It is not based on a reading of Warner's actual piece. This defensiveness is fair, as fan studies has, in the past, had a wave of pathologizing analysis about fan relationships with their love object. While far from Warner's humanizing argument, these women had their defensive hackles raised based on partial information and (understandable) insecurity. The reactions above demonstrate the ways in which Warner (perhaps, ironically, because of her nonethnic name) is presumed to be a white (or race-neutral) researcher, thus solidifying the belief that her argument sees Black women fans as anthropological curiosities. Because I had not explicitly noted Warner's race as Black in my post, she was assumed to be white and thus suspicious. When the assumption about Warner's race was corrected as Black, thus making her "like us," baronessvondengler reaffirms her position about the researcher by casting Warner as a race traitor who gains white acceptance through pathologizing her "own" people. For that fan, no number of qualifiers about Warner as a Black woman researcher could correct an impression she had already confirmed. Perhaps this logic psychically protects baronessvondengler's fan production from judgment.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

deepa ):)

@fiercynn.bsky.social

she illustrates this with an example of a time when she embraced fantagonism & formed social bonds with other black women in scandal fandom through a “community of hate” against the character jake ballard

[7.2] One of the tacit rules in some Tumblr fandoms is being mindful of tagging one's hate or anti opinions. The presumption is that default fan production should reflect an affinity for the fan object, even in jest. Content that is specifically antagonistic or hypercritical is encouraged to be tagged with suffixes like "hate," "trash," or similarly derisive terms. I did not always do this, especially regarding Jake Ballard on Scandal. I was part of a community of hate with other Black women, but I did not see it that way. Our performative antifandom for Jake Ballard, an interloper in the central ship of Olivia and Fitz, was also a way of expressing love for the couple. The more we hated Ballard, the more we loved Olitz and reinforced our bonds with each other (figure 1). This social performance of hate, as Bethan Jones (2018) notes, serves a social function that coheres like-minded antifans in addition to reifying their imagined superiority of taste. I saw myself as righteous, insightful, and funny. Because Ballard is a TV character, this allowed me to see my subposts and direct posts as victimless entertainment. The Jake Ballard fandom felt very differently.

December 19, 2024 at 12:04 AM

Add to Home Screen

Light up
your news

Add to Home Screen

Light upyour news

Sign in to Lightnews

Sign up to start reading

Connect Bluesky

Connect with Bluesky

Light up
your news