#I'm in this post and I don't like it

[musicalhell]

“I’m dealing with Phantom closing on Broadway just fine,” I say, as I download my fifth bootleg this week and dive headlong into writing E/C/R fic

[cynicalclassicist]

My mental health is battered a bit by the world.

Ohhh [fictional character with worse mental health than me] save meeeee from this cruel world.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

that article going around abt firefox's new ad program is annoying bc it's phrased as though "mozilla has finally TURNED on its people and is SELLING YOU OUT for cold hard cash!!" when. that's not what's happening. it is specifically being implemented to discourage tracking behavior, and literally all the data they are giving to advertisers is aggregate and anonymized, which is like, the opposite of what that post wants you to worry about, lol

[taffywabbit]

they should invent a new type of "staying in bed for 2-3 hours after you wake up repeatedly opening and closing apps on your phone" where it makes you feel awesome and energized and emotionally fulfilled

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)

[cynicalclassicist]

Welcome to my life!

[tossawary]

This is petty fandom salt, BUT... I've been chewing on this phenomenon that I've been calling "Fandom's Darling". It is related to things like "Author's Darling" and "Mary Sue / Gary Stu" and "Protagonist Halo" and all that jazz, where one character gains a peculiar narrative weight in a story.

"Author's Darling" is when a writer has a favorite character, and the world and all other characters sort of get... warped to put the Darling in the spotlight. It's most noticeable in TV shows with multiple writers, when a character you personally like suddenly has their previous characterization destroyed to make another character look good somehow. Every other character might become weirdly incompetent. The Darling's feelings are treated as The Most Important Feelings in any given situation. The logic of the fictional world seems broken past suspension of disbelief in order to validate this one character's beliefs or skillset or some other fantasy. And so on.

"Fandom's Darling" is what I've been calling the pattern where a fandom essentially crowns a New Protagonist for their fanfiction stories (it's often a side character rather than the original protagonist, but it can also happen to protagonists). This character becomes the self-insert for all sorts of indulgent fantasies, gaining special powers or backstories, and/or becoming the focus of extreme whump, and/or hooking up with all the various hotties, starring in all sorts of tropey AUs, and so on. They're not always an obvious Mary Sue version of themselves, but the character's original personality and interpersonal relationships tend to get warped or dropped completely, and other characters tend to become a little flat around them. I call it "Fandom's Darling" because it's not just one self-indulgent fantasy fic (you do you! Have fun!) with characterization choices that I don't vibe with (I have neither the time nor the desire nor the authority to police anything, I am just venting), but rather a prolific mini-fandom of sorts revolving around this empty doll / fanon version of the chosen vessel character, so it becomes a little unavoidable.

I am salty about this (mildly frustrated) (imagine a soft sigh of disappointment before I just go do something else) because you are FUCKED if you actually liked the canonical version of this character and their interpersonal relationships. It's almost worse than liking an obscure character that no one cares about. There's about a thousand fics starring your fave, but maybe only about a dozen of them are actually rooted in any kind of recognisable canon.

[sardonicdoll]

wanted to do my photo project this semester on the notion of mobility aids being extensions of our bodies, the yarn was done by a friend

edit: the shibari comments are one thing but if you put these non-sexual photos of me in my wheelchair on your porn blog i'm blocking you 👍🏻

[talaricula]

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[aimasup]

"And by god, did he want to feel special."

Ford's corrected plenty of teachers who wrote the question on the board wrong before, but Ford didn't expect the Muse of Knowledge to even be capable of that, much less to catch it...

Okay now let's be real, besides the chess games, I feel like Bill would've, on rare enough occasions to be special, dangle other wins in front of Ford to really make sure that portal gets completed. Only the best carrots on a stick for his hardworking puppet <3 let's make him feel like an equal to a god for fun

And Bill intended for his home dimension's last atom to be just another carrot, but what happened was Ford brought out a side of him without even trying when no one else in a trillion+ years could

Like he definitely looked back at that moment (when he got so comfortable mid-convo that on a whim, he whipped out his past and gave answers less cryptic than usual) and said 'i planned that! I said all those things to make him more attached to me!'

maybe he's right, who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

also don't bother googling those math terms i made them the fuck up

[cynicalclassicist]

Welcome to my life!

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[hamsternamedmarinette]

Don't ask how it got into his room

[cj-the-random-artist]

Ok hear me out: Narilamb but they're both aroace and in a qpr.

I've been rolling around in my head for like a long long time this idea that Narinder and Lambert could both be aroace and (after like. A couple of centuries or so) end up in this like very comfortable very close relationship that neither of them define as anything specific other than calling it a "companionship". But on the other hand most of the cult thinks that they're dating in secret or something despite the fact that both of them have said they don't take lovers, because they are clearly very tight but maybe not super openly so, so maybe the cultists thing they're being secretive and hiding something or something like that. Idk but my aroace brain loves thinking about extremely close (mostly) platonic relationships and for some reason my brain decided hmm. I'm going to take this and throw it at Narilamb and see how I like it.

So then I decided to make a ridiculous joke comic about Narinder asking Lambert's hand in marriage specifically because he wants to get out of paying taxes. Because like, I know that spouse followers do actually still have to pay taxes in the actual game but. Hey Narinder and Lambert have presumably never married so they probably don't know that...? Honestly the only reason I made this was because the concept tickled me and I spent too much time on this for no one to see it, so. This comic and all it's absolute ridiculousness be upon ye.

While there's a tiny part of me that's been thinking about making this into an AU (which I'd probably call something like the "Strictly Platonic AU" or something), I know for a fact that I would blatantly not do anything legitimate with it so. It's an unofficial AU I guess?? But. Anyways. I thought this would be funny. Enjoy my ramblings and I hope you enjoy this thing that I spent. Actual time on. Lol

[tonyspep]

@fallinallincurls @lovelymary we've been called out

You’ve heard of one shots, now get ready for none shots! It’s when you think of an idea for a fic and then don’t write it