lakeeriesaltmine

[lakeeriesaltmine]

One last thing to my fellow BuckTommy shippers, if you need something to cheer you up tonight, I recommend watching Kitboga videos on YouTube. He’s a scambaiter who spreads awareness about various scams that people are vulnerable to, and he’s hilarious. It’s like watching comedy improv. My favorite character of his is his grandma characters which he based off his own grandparents.

He’s not racist and actively shuts down any race related talks or slurs of any kind. Seriously, he has rules about it too and enforces them.

It’s been a really rough week for us, and I need some laughter in my life after the election and today’s episode.

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Sitting in a waiting room yesterday, the receptionist told me I could sell these socks. She said she'd be willing to pay as much as $12 for them.

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they were playing running up the hill yesterday at the bar and I realized that when kate bush says she is "running up that building" she is probably using the stairs. and not running up the side of the building. like naruto

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i just realized that i haven't watched a show as it was airing for years now, not till 911, and now i remember why

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garden variety conservative transphobia is going to get worse but radical feminism is also going to get worse. if youre a cis women terfs are going to try to recruit you and make you believe that the reason your rights are at stake is because of trans people. they're going to tell you that all men are your violent oppressors and they're going to include trans women in that category. they're gonna tell you about women who are gender traitors and joined the enemy and they're going to point to trans men. don't believe them. trans people are not your enemy, we have no power over you, and we desperately need your support and your solidarity.

be aware of radfem pipelines and dog whistles too. be skeptical of anyone that talks about the divine feminine or correlates birthing, menstruating, or female reproductive organs with womanhood. be especially skeptical of people who use those biological things as reasons to why women are more spiritual, or more in tune with nature, or just that they're better than men (read: anyone they decide is a man)

radical feminism is an expected reactionary outcome from cis women who are being oppressed by conservatives, especially when all they practice is ciscentric, liberal, white feminism. they feel the need to be radicalized but don't have the experience and information to pinpoint the true source of their suffering. trans people are not your enemy, AMAB people are not your enemy, anyone who identifies as a man is not your enemy. we're all being crushed under the same stone

[lakeeriesaltmine]

Many moons ago, when (I think it was) the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was airing on TV, I decided it might be fun to join some mailing lists dedicated to the show, so I'd have more people to talk about the show with. (Mailing lists were pre-social media vehicles for fandom, somewhere between USENET and MySpace; imagine a chain of comments on a Tumblr post, but it's sent to you in email.) It definitely let me talk to more people about a show that I loved, but it also taught me that online fandom can take just as easily as it gives. [SPOILERS if you're just starting to watch the show, i think it might be having a minor resurgence atm.]

It wasn't a terribly negative experience. I didn't get bullied or even have my ideas shit on. That season had the show's typical mystery of what's the deal with this season's Big Bad and how are Buffy and the Scoobies going to defeat them, but it also had the mystery of Buffy's previously unseen sister, Dawn. Where did she come from? Howcome all the characters act like she's been there all along when she totally hasn't been? Et cetera, et cetera, et wtf.

There had been cryptic hints dropped in the previous season (Little Miss Muffet, counting down from 7-3-0), but they were very cryptic. Babylon 5 had concluded not too long ago, and HBO's mainstreaming of the "tv show as novel" concept had not quite kicked into gear yet, so nerdy fannish brains were hungry for a well-planned-out tv narrative to sink their teeth into. This mailing list was full of speculation, sometimes based on those aforementioned hints, sometimes based on the bits of Latin and German text seen in the opening credits (the show is full of mystical tomes), to all those sorts of background details and clever quips that supposedly have hidden meanings. You know how it can get.

Of course I had my own theories, which I do not remember. That's suspiciously convenient, because I do remember that they were wrong. (Good job, super ego. You saved me from an embarrassing memory for once. That doesn't mean we're okay about all the other stuff.) Whatever my wrong predictions were, it really bugged me when they turned out to be wrong. And before they were proved to be wrong, it also bugged me when I would watch the show and someone else's theory, usually one I didn't like so much, would pop into my head. Oh, that one character did that thing that supposedly proves that such-and-such will happen. There was a mention of that so-called clue that means Dawn will turn out to be whatever annoying thing that one poster said that I didn't like. My pet theory being wrong was just the stink on top of the turd pie.

So at the end of that season, I thought, this deeper involvement in fandom has made the show less fun to watch. And that sucked, because I really liked that show. I'd found it at the beginning, and my enjoyment of it had grown from a very simplistic "hey, there's an attractive lady kicking vampires" to a real appreciation of all the character growth and the good acting and the smart metaphors and the playing with tropes, all the stuff that makes a tv show good. And one of my best friends had recently gotten into the show, though they were still catching up via my obsessive video taping (a lost art, folks). All that enjoyment was diminished, if only a bit, by my participation is a particular aspect of fandom. I unsubbed from the mailing lists and decided I wouldn't go down that path again.

Obviously, I didn't completely give up on online fandom, because here I am. But I have tried to be much more careful in how I engage with that fandom. Speculation isn't for me. It might be for you. Digging into behind-the-scenes details, and examining statements that creators have made about a story is not for me. It might be for you. What is for me is finding those stories--whatever medium they may be told in--that appeal to me, taking them in, letting myself get lost in the details that catch my attention, talking about those things with friends, and occasionally posting something here. Similar vibes seem to attract each other here. Most of the interaction is just a like, which I can interpret as appreciation for the thing that I enjoy or maybe my rambling about it, and that's nice. When folks do reply with more than a like, it's almost always thoughtful and written in a chill, conversational way.

I reckon the moral is, it's worthwhile to notice how your interaction with fandom affects your enjoyment of the art that brought you there in the first place, and it can be helpful to tailor that interaction so that you get the most positive and the least negative out of it.

[lakeeriesaltmine]

This is one of the funniest things I've found on tumblr and I've seen some shit

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NOvember. ive had enough

[lakeeriesaltmine]

If any one of my posts is to break containment, make it this one.

Before January 2025, download your favorite fics, especially those with smut or queer content.

If Project 2025 goes into effect (which it very likely will now that we have three red branches of government in the US), they may attempt to restrict the use/sharing of media on sites like ao3.

This particularly applies to fics with smut or any type of queer content, because the official Project 2025 document states, "Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance... has no claim to First Amendment protection... Pornography should be outlawed."

Now, I don't expect ao3 to disappear or go anywhere without a fight, but it's best to be on the safe side these days.

To download your favorite fics:

Go to archiveofourown.org and open the fic you want to download.

At the top right corner, to the right of the 'subscribe' button, is a button that says 'download'. Click it.

A drop-down menu will give you the option to choose the format of your download. Choose your preferred format (.epub and .pdf are my personal favorites -- .epub lets you open a fic in the apple books app and .pdf is compatible with like every device and program out there).

When you click the button for your preferred format, a pop-up window appears confirming your choices. The title of the document will default to the title of the fic, so be aware of that and consider changing conspicuous titles to something ignorable, especially if you share the computer.

You're done! Now do this with all your favorite fics!

Stay safe out there, your favorite characters are rooting for you <3

[lakeeriesaltmine]

hi, lou ferrigno jr got me in the 9-1-1 divorce and therefor i shall no longer be watching 9-1-1.

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i, personally, love to straddle that fine line between “fandom blog” and “record of complete psychological breakdown”

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Would anyone like to see my goofy looking persian cat, in these trying times?

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I always say how glad I am that I'm a multishipper because I win either way. Turns out I also lose either way.

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I fear those 43 research center monkeys will never be captured and will cause an invasive primate problem in South Carolina.