#I mostly talk to myself in the tags tbh

[digo3d]

here’s another ask! What is a tick/character aspect that Dobble secretly likes about each of the cats?

Hmm let's seeee

Naturally with T.C. he admires how much he cares for/all he does for the gang and how much that cat tries to make the best life for them despite their situation or their poverty. I think he simultaneously despises and admires how stubborn T.C. is as a person.

Benny is a very happy and funny little guy and he's almost always able to make Dibble laugh even just a little bit. He does wonder how an innocent lil lad like him got wrapped up with a character like Top Cat but does recognize just how important he is to him and how much he looks up to him.

Dib really likes how expressive and empathetic Chooch is and especially likes how his enthusiasm is contagious. If he's excited you also will be very soon. He's very transparent and wears his heart on his sleeve, he doesn't try and hide his feelings away like most people Dib knows. Also he's very fluffy. Foofy fella. Foofy woofy Choochie boy.

I like to think that Dibble secretly wishes he could have Spook's relaxed attitude so that he wouldn't be so stressed all the time. Spook has got sort of a calming aura to him and while he does beef with Spook the most (besides T.C. ofc), being near him is like a little mental break and he also offers some damn good wisdom and advice.

Fancy's self-confidence is only to be rivaled by the most popular of celebrities, yet he always managed to make room for the fellas in his life despite how many girlfriends he might have at the time. Fancy's boisterous enough to be incredibly charismatic yet he's also humble enough to recognize what he has and hold it near and dear to his heart. Dibble thinks more people can (and should) learn from him.

This is very much a self-indulgent headcanon but Brain is very much Dibble's favorite kitty. Aside from just being the cutest and silliest little scrunkly around, Brain is very kind, patient, doesn't believe in holding a grudge (most of the time) and is a very good listener. It baffles Dib how he didn't become a cold-hearted cynic with all he's been through. Brain's unwavering kindness is a shining light in Dibble's grim career, reminding him that the world doesn't have to be so evil.

That was very long winded and yappy but atp that's the standard for my Sleepy Middle-of-the-Night Posts

Also I meant to reply to this earlier my bee I took a 3 hour long nap and forgot i was alive when I woke up

[payaso-gomi]

Got venture bros charms on the mind,,,, ive done a couple of designs now but i dislike most of them now so im starting over again-

I do have finished sticker designs, I'd like to promo those and then put it em on the store but for the keychains i'd need to plan it out a lot nore

I plan on doing a little interest check! I'm a bit indecisive on which designs of venture bros to do because we kind of see the same designs in merch but maybe people like that? We'd do an interest check to see which designs would be preferred and then open a preorder! However we would only be able to do us shipping :( at least until we can fully figure out international shipping

[theroseeatsribs]

silly comic

[trans-axolotl]

so hot out. fainted twice already today! chugged a gatorade. trying to do things but i think the rest of the day will be for lying on the floor. trying not to get lost in my brain but this place is full of ghosts and i am haunted. just going to hold. until i leave tomorrow night.

[bishonenspit]

every time people fundamentally misunderstand the patalliro characters i lose years off my life

[violinfantasy]

well the last group sure did happen

[mildcicada]

[n7viper]

this year it seems the seasonal depression isn't so much depression as it is near-constant anxiety (that then does tack on some depression of course), so I'm gonna try to offset at least some of it with positivity where I can. publicly, at that, since I normally come on to tumblr and post some negative ass post or drop into server vent channels to do it

I finished my 4th ever GM and survived lake of shadows, which feels pretty important to me :3 I'd really like to get conqueror this season after putting it off last season, and I feel like it's finally possible. my friends already started thinking about the best way to knock out the last things I need for it

I also have pretty much been a hunter-only guy for the last year and rarely play anything else. so on a whim, I decided to try duo-ing warlord's ruin earlier to test secant filaments (unsure how I feel about them) since my warlock skills are weak. we made it to the final encounter and only quit because I realised how late it was and that I need to work tomorrow

so I'm doing it :) I'm surviving :) it's not even January and I'm fighting for my goddamned life, but I'm gonna do it

[goodplace-janet]

should i go to the first downtown walk of the year this evening OR should i get a bunch of tasks out of the way today so i'm not overwhelmed with tasks on my day off tomorrow and end up wearing myself out before the first run group of the year tomorrow evening

[icharchivist]

i have my grips with the anime but there’s really some scenes it completely nailed (like Itaru’s gamer reveal), and when i reach those specific scene in the VN i really can’t stop thinking about just how good the anime was for those scenes in particular.

Case in point right now: the moment they’re trying to give out flyers for RomeJuli in the street and no one is stopping, so Masumi ends up, unprompted, to act out one of the scene as to bring attention to it.

i’ve rewatched the anime so many times it actually surprised me how abrupt the transition from Flyers to “Masumi is acting” is, it’s nice but, man. 

The fact the anime really shows when it clicks for Masumi that it would work, then having him, in silence, give his flyers away so he can then focus on acting, and seeing Izumi and Sakuya look at him, perplexed, before he starts acting and they catch on on what he’s doing, makes it flow so much better

A3 is a VN that really utilize the VN format extremely well, so it’s not especially a tackle on the VN itself, and there’s really a few things i think the anime did considerably worse, but this scene? kind of justify the anime’s existence for a bit because just remembering it gives me chill. 

[littlejowo]

(Warning for my added tags: kinda got a little vent-y. Read at own discretion)

ykw. shout out to everyone who is both too disabled and not enough.

i wonder if i am disabled enough for cripplepunk, but at the end of the day, scrolling through the cripplepunk tag makes me feel better.

i am not quite disabled enough to be who a post for people who have been deemed scary or weird is for, but i do deal with those feelings. and i bite my arm because it makes me feel less like i’m dying and then i wonder if maybe they would think i am weird and scary.

i guess what this boils down to is: i feel like i am not disabled enough for disabled community. and if anyone else sees this who feels the same way, you deserve community. you deserve not to feel alone.

[chronic-escapist]

i just can't do twitter and all this keeping up with everything shit anymore lol. i need to like go outside, read a book, go like actually have a face to face conversation with people. i can't like constantly keep up with whatever's going on, but like fomo is a bitch and i am fomo's bitch.

but also i don't really have any friends. i don't have to think about that if im constantly looking at whatever's going on in the world, whatever's going on in fandoms. but it's also fucking exhausting, but i feel like if i switch off from that stuff then i really am alone. like the only people i regularly interact with outside of my family is people online, as fucking sad as that is lol.

idk i just got used to someone else being around. ive always been fucking lonely, and then i wasn't for a bit and now i am again and it's you know, idk ive never done very well when im left to my own devices. ive never been very good at making friends, i always felt kinda different. but i think maybe most people do. and that's kinda where my love of fandoms and online communities comes from, there i finally had people to talk to about things or people and music that i love.

i mean you can look into the loneliness epidemic, as a society we’re more connected than we ever have been and yet we’re the loneliest, that’s fucking sad. and everything these days is pretty fucking sad, idk how to have an optimistic view on that. but if you have any answers to any of this shit lmk. sometimes i kinda wish i was religious, but also if there is a god maybe that’s even sadder.

[kalashtars]

venting in the tags yippeee

[usertoxicyaoi]

also! a very good desi gl movie that hit the bollywood mainstream that i would reeeeally rec is ek ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga (2019) available on netflix!

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[dira333]

Behind the scenes of a Tumblr Writer - Tag Game

Hey there, I love behind the scenes and since this is something that's rarely talked about, let me start the chain... if you feel uncomfortable with a question, just skip it. You can add some if you want as well.

Started writing: I wrote my first Harry Potter fanfic at age 10. Started posting around 15,16 years old. I'm now 31, so...

Started blogging: I started on a German fanfiction site around 2010/11 I think. Might have been earlier too, but back then I was mostly reading, no posting. I really started when I got into One Direction (very late, tbh)

Followers: Currently at 961, which is wild to me. I don't even know that many people IRL. I convince myself that half of them are bots tbh, so I don't freak out all the time.

Communication: The people I talk to regularly are: a few writers who answered after I constantly reblogged and commented on their works and a few people who commented and reblogged my work. Writing and blogging on here can be pretty lonely, depending on your personality and the time you're active (I'm from Europe and a lot of my followers seem to be living in Northern America, so there's the Timezone thing) ... And I found that the best way to strike a conversation is to reblog, comment, and to not be shy. I do wish I got more asks, though....

Likes: I actually filter them out. I have 793 original posts up at the moment. It doesn't give me anything to know how many likes a fic has other than to tell me which characters are liked more than others or maybe that one fic does especially well. My activity only shows me comments, asks, reblogs with tags, and answers to my own asks. I live for the tags and the comments.

Requests: I love talking to people about ideas. That's how I started the plotbunny game because I have so many ideas and so little time. And sometimes an idea just doesn't want to be written out fully. Requests are fun because YAY, I get some mail... but then I freak out because I don't really know how to write this NOW and then I freak out because it's been a week already, two weeks, wait, two months? I'd rather have suggestions where people tell me vague things like "I'd love to read something about this side character" or "Have you ever considered this character with a soulmate trope"? because then I don't have the feeling of failing the request when I write it a little bit differently.

Writing: I am a fast writer. I know that's one of my talents. I can churn out a oneshot of 1k words in less than an hour. People read slower than I write. That can suck sometimes because you've just posted this and you want to know what people are thinking but they're not as fast as you are. I do have a lot of ideas. I want to write constantly but my brain doesn't always want to. I am trying to respect that.

There are also certain things that I just feel wrong writing. I cannot write anything suggestive (I also don't like reading it) and everything past that gives me panic attacks. I can hardly write mean characters and jealousy feels so wrong to me that I cannot write it. I've also overdone it with the soulmark trope and now I feel like everything I write about it feels lifeless.

I write best in the mornings before going to work, but I don't have much time there. I don't need special music (but it helps), but I need to have at least some energy left and at best, no distractions. But I have been writing for over 20 years, so I will say experience helps a lot.

Tagging: @revasserium @shoulmate @lemurzsquad @screamin-abt-haikyuu @toomanygoldfish @satorisoup @emmyrosee @reverie-starlight @alienaiver and @writingsofanomnivore and everyone else who wants to join

[gayabeilles]

idk I would definitely agree that the precedent is there for hell to already have established radio stations by the time Al died—as you’ve mentioned, even with a bit of a lag in hellish technology, the timeline is still very accommodating. for a little more context, the oldest stations (it’s a matter of some debate which is actually The Oldest lol) began regular broadcasting in the mid 1910s; one of those, 9XM (based out of my current institution!), started broadcasting weather reports in morse code in 1915 as a public service. during ww1 all civilian radio use was banned, only lifted in october of 1919; 9XM resumed their weather reports but it took until 1921 to start doing audio broadcasts since they were making their own radio tubes, glassblowing them and everything. at that point, they added music (live and recorded) to their schedule, soon followed by educational programs (e.g. School/College of the Air and Chapter A Day) and reports on university sports and news. so, even by the early to mid 20s, there’s quite a bit of variety already very well established.

also touching on the titanic thing—there is a popular (and almost certainly false) story that on the mainland the first person who happened to pick up the distress call was none other than one young David Sarnoff, who went on to become the president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). this is thought to be highly embellished by Sarnoff himself, though, who told the tale some eleven years after the event. however, he did help to coordinate rescue efforts from the Wanamaker station shortly after, and his team released the names of the survivors. regardless of the veracity of the story, though, he was an early proponent of radio as a medium of entertainment rather than communication, and was one of the early giants of the field.

speaking of Sarnoff, actually, he’s the reason for the delay in frequency modulation really being available to the public until the 40s—the notorious rivalry with Armstrong really developed as Sarnoff started getting interested in more lucrative ventures (television) since at their hearts the former was an inventor seeking to improve the existing medium and the latter was an entrepreneur. funnily enough, Armstrong invented his FM circuit in 1933, which drastically reduced the static that plagues AM. Sarnoff was by then already pursuing commercializing early television sets, and engaged Armstrong in a fierce and drawn-out legal battle because he was worried his own AM-based empire at RCA would be swept out from under him (plus he used the FCC to effectively steal FM from Armstrong for his own use). this is some years beyond what y’all are talking about, but my point here is just to add that Al would (at minimum for the first decade or so) be exclusively broadcasting in AM, though he might’ve made the transition to FM later on as it did have a remarkable improvement in reception (although to my knowledge AM remained dominant until the 70s). hope there weren’t any storms down in wrath during his shows lol or else even screams could just be drowned out by static.

how long do we think it took for alastor to come clean about being the radio demon. months? years? how long was this man terrorizing everyone anonymously before he finally caved to the desire to be recognized for his hard work