Sunshine Challenge 2023 #3: Bluebells and Discarded Shells, And Pretty People All In A Row

Prompt 3: Bluebell
In the language of flowers, the bluebell is a symbol of humility, constancy, gratitude and everlasting love. It is said that if you turn a bluebell flower inside-out without tearing it, you will win the one you love, and if you wear a wreath of bluebells, you will only be able to speak the truth.

Bonus prompt: Lavender Rose

Perhaps it is my jaded outlook on the world, but looking at those virtues alone makes me think "that's a recipe for abuse by itself." I mean, it's also supposed to be something like the societal romantic ideal, where you have one true love that you make up with when you fight, who you always are with in the end, who you appreciate for all the things they do (eventually), and who you ride off into the sunset with for your happily ever after. It's a very specific mindset, still mostly performed by cisgender heterosexual monogamous people, and reflected in a lot of published fiction with cisgender heterosexual monogamous characters.

That virtues that seem ripe for putting someone in an abusive situation if their humility, constancy, gratitude, and love aren't reciprocated are seen as great for love, regardless of whether they are reciprocated, probably says a lot about cultural conceptions of love and how they are still fairly firmly rooted in systems that are more concerned with property rights, social standing, and gendered role expectations in a society saturated with patriarchy and obsessed with power.

( On virtues and fannish implementations of the same )

Fandom is pushing the envelope on what kind of stories can get told, both officially and unofficially. And, at least to me, it's big enough that it can accommodate everyone's niche. There's people who can write sprawling epics for works that have finished their canons years ago, or drabbles that manage to compress a great amount of meaning into careful word choices to deliver an impact in a hundred words. There's also space for people who are putting out their first piece, full of heart and hope that they can find a community (and also, likely some rough edges or unexamined assumptions.) There's space for the people who are working out issues by putting their blorbos through the same situations and writing out the endings they want for themselves, or who tell about things that are too painful to discuss directly by using characters for the necessary distance. There's people who put together stories that are meant to make others happy. There's creators who draw so many beautiful things, and vidders who splice things together and set a soundtrack to show the things they love, and the podficcers who give voice to stories. There's the meta folks, the manifestos, the analysts and the organizers. All of this output to try and expand the space for discussion and experience and eventually even manage to get those kinds of stories told both in the canon and in the fandom. The fans become creators, and eventually the creators of things that will generate their own fans, expanding the possible stories being told even further outward. And even though we get the occasional person who seems into it for their own ego, for the most part, it seems like fandom has humility, constancy, gratitude and love to their creators and their own fans. Even when the expression of those virtues comes out in a full-throated demand for creators and gatekeepers to do better than what they are doing now.