fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2298 ]

[ SECRET POST #2298 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2298 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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There is a fandom trope that I can't understand at all. The whole "Sentinel and Guides" thing. I am assuming it comes from the show Sentinel, which doesn't seem to have any in-depth mention of the Sentinel and Guides (at least what I can find online).

So can anyone explain to me what this is about?

Also, does anyone have any fandom themes/tropes/whatever you just don't understand? Maybe we can help each other out.

I don't understand soulbonds. If it was something that was a product of a close relationship overtime that'd be cool, but it always seems to be something people have no choice in. And many times people choose to write enemies or people who don't get a long but are drawn together because of these bonds. Just seems like taking all the free will out of a relationship. *shrug*

Sorry. Can't help with the Sentinel and Guide thing. I don't get that one either.

Hmm. I think soulbonds are popular because they are just not in fiction. There have been stories since the beginning of time about soulmates. Obviously, these stories generally don't have the whole "no free will" aspect.

I think fandom enjoys that part because it means everyone has someone out there for them. Also, writers enjoy enemies and not so friendly people being forced to get along (and maybe loving each other).

But yes, it does have the problematic dub-con aspects (like omegaverse does).

I think soulmates and soulbonds are different things though? A soulmate is the One True Love, but a soulbond has more mystical magical bonding. From what I've read, at least. Bonds seem more with the forced relationship - once you're bonded your compelled to be with that person even if you don't really like them type of thing.

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

kaijinscendre - 2013-04-19 00:01 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-19 00:02 (UTC) - Expand

Agreed. Same with the whole omegaverse(?) thing and the AUs where everyone is either a dom or a sub by birth. Talk about taking creepy to a whole 'nother level

Yeah, at some point it occurred to me that when you look at some of the things I've seen attributed to "omegas" (pregnancy, assumed to always be submissive) we basically live in an omegaverse, we just use the terms "male" and "female" instead of "alpha" and "omega." Ugh.

I always wonder what would happen in an omegaverse if someone didn't like their role (like I don't want to be submissive in a relationship, but I'm not sure that many guys will be okay with that, or even believe me. But it would be worse in an omegaverse, where you are explicitly supposed to be submissive, not just assumed to be by society).

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-18 23:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-19 01:45 (UTC) - Expand

Yeahhhh, Omegaverse is my big 'I don't get it,' as well. :(

This so, so, so much.

a/b/o is definitely one of my kinks and one of the reasons I like it is that it takes the matter of free will entirely away from the characters... I like them needy, desperate, and helpless. So if that's not your thing I can understand why you don't like omegaverse.

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

(Anonymous) - 2013-04-19 05:12 (UTC) - Expand

IDK, when you get right down to it, you could argue that biology itself takes free will out of things. The chemical changes in your brain that happen when you're in love read eerily similar to brain changes that happen to people on certain recreational drugs, so when you're in love with somebody, whether you want to be or not, it doesn't really matter because your body is still craving that connection with that person. Sure, you've got the choice to be in a relationship or not, but when your body is going, "GIMME GIMME GIMME," it's a pretty damn painful choice. Free will only goes so far, even in real life. I don't see the soulbond thing to be all that different - I mean, it can be poorly written, sure, but so can non-soulbond romance. And in fiction, none of the characters have free will because you're the author and you're making them do whatever you want them to, so you could always just see it as a fourth-wall sort of thing where "soulbond" is shorthand for, "I like this ship so I'm shipping it no matter what." /shrug

IDK how soulbonding fic usually goes, but I was just writing one in which the bond manifests if they touch skin-to-skin, and then they get this telepathy thing. They do think it's creepy. The appeal is them understanding each other better and choosing sometimes to touch to share traumatic burdens even though it means opening up their minds. So in that case it's an intimacy kink.

I think it's generally an intimacy kink, the idea of being connected and raw.

Soulbonds for me are really useful in modern characters--the thing where love is an action as much as an emotion totally pushes my buttons; in an older canon you can use something like arranged marriage, but modern society is so quick to dispose of things that if you don't give the characters a good reason...like a soulbond...they're not going to stick it out and actually grow to love each other. So for me, that's why I like them. \o/

RPing. Just the practice in general :\

Think of it like acting or playing pretend. It's just fun to become someone else and be part of the story.

Or do you mean more practical how-it's-done?

As one of the resident comments-with-character-journals people on fs, I am happy to explain whatever I can about RPing!

D&D, DW/LJ/forum, video game...?

If you don't get DW RP, imagine it like a video game you make yourself. You are Sora and you get to hang out with characters from different worlds and have adventures.

it is just basically like writing fiction, except instead of one person writing all of it, you have a group of people who dedicate their time only to one person in the overall story.

Sentinels and Guides do come from The Sentinel, but it's very much a case of fanon running away with itself. The conceit of the original show was the idea of a person with senses well beyond the normal range - someone with all five senses heightened was called a Sentinel (that's canon). Protagonist 1, Jim, is a Sentinel, and Protagonist 2, Blair, is the anthropologist who teaches him why his senses are spiralling out of control, and helps him work with them. I can't remember off the top of my head if the term "Guide" is also canon, but if it is, it's certainly not one that was used much. It got a lot more use in fanon, and somehow became de rigueur.

Then there were a couple of episodes which strongly implied that there's a biological drive associated with being a Sentinel (Jim gets pretty taken with a female Sentinel who shows up, for no apparent reason) and fandom took that and ran with it. So we started getting more things ascribed to being a biological instinct, and then got similar instincts ascribed to the Guides, and then we finally wound up with a whole culture that was never actually mentioned in the canon.

And then the idea of the fanon culture got exported to other fandoms, which brings us to where you are now. =D

... As far as I know. I was never in the fandom; I just lurked in the periphery, so someone else might have more info than me, but I think that's the gist of it.

THANK YOU! That is why I couldn't find anything. Apparently 90% of it is fanon.

Just to add to this, the whole spiritual aspect of Sentinels and Guides did come from the show as well. Like, there's the episode where Jim's Guide from Peru when he was Sentinel of the Incacha died, and right before that he told Blair that Blair was Jim's new 'Guide'. Or Shaman? Maybe he was made Shaman of Cascade? Something like that. There is at least the idea that Jim is the Sentinel of Cascade in that it's his both spiritual and biological role.

Plus, Jim does have a panther as a spirit animal that frequently appears in dream sequences, and Blair has a wolf for his spirit animal, and there was that time when their spirit animals ~~had sex~~ jumped into each other on the astral plane and somehow brought Blair back to life.

And with the bio stuff, the canon does support the idea of Jim going slowly crazy without some kind of guide for his senses (the first few episodes). And maybe the idea that Alex, the other Sentinel, was a bit crazy because she didn't have a guide?

But that, and the vague bio stuff, is really about the sum total of the Sentinel/Guide mythos. Everything else is completely fanon, basically taking these elements and running with it to create, as the anon below says, the precursor to omegaverse. (The parallel is particularly apt when you consider a lot of 'sentinels/guides are known' fic tends to make one or the other the equivalent of omegas in a/b/o universes ie lower caste in some way.)

And yet for some reason super senses, spirit animals, shamans and soulbonding are a lot more palatable to me then knotting dicks and forced mpreg...

I just spent forty-five minutes tracking down this post with a detailed discussion of the Sentinel Dreaded Bonding AU: http://fanficrants.livejournal.com/10578085.html Unfortunately, while it does a good job of explaining what makes some Bonding AUs so surreal, it doesn't at all explain why other fandoms would decide to jump in.

Kinda the omegaverse of the late nineties, I guess?

Omegaverse with super powers.

But omegaverse is just sentinel guiding with dog penis.

For serious though, "it's just like omegaverse minus dog penis" is pretty much exactly how I quickly describe Sentinel Guide AUs to people new to them.

Re: Thread for fandom things you don't understand

agentcthulhu - 2013-04-20 03:27 (UTC) - Expand

Sentinel/Guide dynamic - Omegaverse - Soul bonding - Predestined whatev'thehecks - Same difference for me and I will probably never get either of them. The funny part is that Sentinel almost was my first fandom. I'm pretty convinced that the majority of the guys who write Sentinel!AUs right now haven't even watched a second from the original show.

Superwholock - Why these three? If we're talking about big British fandoms, what the hell does Supernatural doing here, and where's Harry Potter? If we're talking about trendy sci-fi/fantasy shows, then what's this with Sherlock, and where's Lost? Or Merlin? Or Harry Potter again? Or the new Star Trek movies? And if we're taking the "slashiest" (I seriously think this label is up for debate... maybe the shows with the biggest slash fandom?) shows from nowadays, then what does the Doctor doing here? And why not someone else? For example Glee? The closest I got to the answer is maybe these three shows have the most loud and rabid fanbase, but then where's Teen Wolf? And again: Glee?

I've got lot more, but of course, nothing comes to my mind right now. Typical.

I think Superwholock is less a direct relationship between the shows themselves and more the overlap in their fanbases. Lots of people in all three fandoms, so crossovers seemed like a good idea. Teen Wolf came in too late to hop on board, although there have been TW/SPN crossovers that I've seen.

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