#Microcultures

[etirabys]

I don't have a near-age sibling but some social feedback seems ideally delivered via indelicate roasting by a near-age sibling when you are in your teens. It feels easier to take "you don't shower and that's why no one likes you" from a sibling than parent or friend. Easier to deliver as a sibling, too

your parent gently saying "you should shower more" – ignore it. what do they know about the realities of your existence...

your friend says it (also nicely) – mortifying and weird, much likelier you'll take it to heart but you'll visibly feel terrible about it for a long time, which they didn't want, and now they're even more reluctant to say things to you (or anyone really)

it doesn't get fixed so your future first partner has to say it – god. might as well die

your annoying sibling – "fuck off" + slink off to shower a few hours later

[mummer]

2025 we are bringing back the thematically sprawling and spangled wildly ambitious novel and getting rid of the navel gazing post ironic current cultural commentary novel #trust

[fryshrimp]

DON'T EVER FUCKING OPERATE TWO BROWSER WINDOWS AT ONCE I JUST LOST SEVERAL MONTHS WQORTH OF CAREFULLY CULTIVATED 'SAVED TABS

[followmysmoke]

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[bookanimeart]

This is my mom more than the rest of us, but if you've seen Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, you'll know what "OOoorrrrRRR," means. Any time it sounds like one of us ends a sentence with "or", Mom then says it just like they do in the movie.

We all love "Not with that attitude!" and "Challenge accepted," too.

Tell me about a joke that you and your family absolutely lose your shit over that other people would not get.

Tell me about the very unique way you pick on each other.

Or tell me about a pop culture reference your family will never let die and you’ve never heard any other family use it.

*chin on hands* I just love hearing these stories. (I’m obsessed with little loser microcultures like families and very niche fandoms) So lay it on me.

[bimboficationblues]

every few weeks a trans woman on Twitter is like “I think trans women should have more cis women friends!” and even as the local skeptic of t4t ouroboros-microcultures I find it extremely tedious

[bogleech]

These days almost each and every single person I ever find badmouthing me on social media is from the exact same internet microculture. Doesn't matter what they actually write their complaint about or why they SAY they hate me, if you dig one layer deeper into their account you're all but guaranteed to find some statement like this

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

perhaps a bit of an odd question: so, when I'm scrolling tumblr on mobile, I have a habit of downloading most images i come across, so that I can send them to people who don't use tumblr, especially memes and animal photos. however, i also have severe memory issues, and I may end up forgetting where i got certain images. i know for the photo repository one of the rules is to not repost the photos without any modification- which i might forget, or forget which images on my phone fall under that rule. and while i would guess that that rule doesn't apply to stuff like direct messages or texts, i might forget to tell the person I'm sending it to, who might repost it elsewhere without being aware, or months after downloading i will just forget and use one of the photos in a post I'm making because it felt relevant.

this is something i can pretty easily solve myself by just blocking the photo repository blog, or tags relating to it, but I'd rather not do that because i do really like seeing the photos and all the info and stuff. and i would assume it would be an insane amount of work for you to add something like a watermark to every single photo, so I'm not really sure how to go about this. i like seeing the photos, but i don't want to accidentally break the rules.

You clearly care deeply about doing the "right thing", so, what that tells me is that you're not actually the target audience for that rule. I appreciate all the thought you put into this message. Let's talk about it!

I've been reconsidering if requiring people to get permission for reposting images is the best policy to have and I'd like people to weigh in.

My original reasoning was this: the more I can ensure that reposts are affiliated with credit, the better I can control copyright on the images on the site, and therefore have more ground to challenge any scrapers/fake accounts/AR groups that yoink them for nefarious purposes. The easiest way to do that seemed to be to have people ping and ask, with the expectation of saying yes almost all the time.

But there's a couple problems with that, I think, in practice:

People don't like emailing strangers (I forget this! I have done it for work for so many years it isn't uncomfortable anymore).

This isn't how the internet works. (Tumblr has a specific microculture that encourages crediting creators and not stealing! Once this is shared more widely on other platforms, I don't expect it'll be the same ecosystem).

It actually undermines organic spread of content! (You're less likely to make an excited post about a cool photo if you have to send a maybe-scary email and wait for a response). And I do want there to be lots of eyeballs on the photos.

Realistically, @nexus-nebulae, with the policy right now? If you slipped up and reposted something without thinking, I'd just ask you to add credit to the post so it directs back to the site. The goal of this whole project is community access and engagement - I want to you to enjoy the photos, and send them to your friends! I'm just trying to also protect it from the awful that a lot of the internet has become.

But, I'm also wondering it it makes sense to swap the policy to say that it's fine to re-post images on socials as long as they're appropriately credited and/or linked back to the repository. This isn't the policy yet, but if you're reading this please tell me what you're thinking.

Non-edited image use (like putting them in a scientific paper, using them to build a curriculum unit, or putting them on board game cards - these are just random examples) would still need to be requested; but that's an entirely protective stance and if you ask, my goal is to always say yes.

So OP, please don't worry too much. Enjoy looking at the animals, do your best, and I'll be happy. :)

[tiktaalic]

At least once a week i am thinking about how if you dropped someone born and bred pnw in any other state they would die in like. 2 days. microculture of no hardship. ohhhh i wake up every day and see beautiful mountains or oceans or lakes i dont even see it anymore lol it's just background noise to me. i have never lived in a city that i s 300 square miles of concrete. i have never lived 3 months of triple digit summer. i dont know what a thunderstorm or tornado is. i only have one high way. speeding is bad i would never go 90 mph on a backroad. i think interchanges are scary. my salsa has maple syrup in it and no spices. i've never seen a bug in my life. GROW UP !

[scotianostra]

One of Scotland's' most iconic films, Local Hero was released on February 18th 1983.

In the days before mobile phones we used to use things called phone boxes when we were not at home, and the phone box in Local Hero has become as iconic as the film itself.

There aren’t many films that have a 100% Tomatometer , on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes, backed up by an impressive 87% audience score, it should be all you need to know when choosing a movie to watch, expecially if you haven’t seen it before. IMDb also rate it highly with 7.4 out of 10.

Bill Forsyth’s oil-refinery comedy isn’t billed as a weepy. It is, however, a love poem to Scotland, and that’s what brings the lump to my throat.

Quirky, wry, gentle are words most often used for this comedy on the movie database site, IMDb, the starting point for many of my posts about those Scots in the acting profession in my posts. They brief story line on the site does not hint at the emotional turbulence you might soon be experiencing. So maybe it’s just me being a big sissy. Wouldn’t be the first time I lost the plot. All it says is "An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected." The film is so much more than this and it stands the test of time much better than other Forsyth films like Comfort & Joy and Gregory's Girl, well in my opinion anyway!

Crackpot Texan oil magnate Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) gets the idea that a small Scottish fishing village would be a marvellous acquisition for his so-rich-it-makes-you-sick company, Knox Oil and Gas, so he sends an executive gopher named MacIntyre (because that sounds Scottish, yeah – played by Peter Riegert) to close the deal and get the pipeline pencilled in.

“Mac” is met by some local “dork” called Oldsen (a young Peter Capaldi), who attempts to steer him through a tartan microculture that includes a lawyer-cum-publican/hotelier (Denis Lawson) who tapdances while standing on a chair shouting “Stella” – the name of his ever-randy wife; there is a super-hard marine biologist played by Jenny Seagrove who, after delivering a short lecture on the North Atlantic drift, ends up helping Oldsen to find that pistol in his pocket; and then there is a scene in which a very whisky-sodden Mac calls Texas from a red phone box on the harbourside, a phone box that has featured in so many peoples snaps when visiting Pennan in Banffshire.

Other bits of business in the film involve a salty Russian seafarer and overflying warplanes. You can see how it got the comedy tag, and I haven’t even mentioned the thing with the rabbit. And you can see how Mac ends up smitten.

This is all top material from a very talented writer/director, with photography and music from Glasgow born Mark Knopfler matches the acting and direction perfectly. But on first viewing I found myself asking halfway through, “What is this film actually about?” After not very much thought, I came to the conclusion that it was not a How Things Never Go According to Plan story, but a love poem to Scotland and the Scots. A bit slushy, but never mind. It’s only a film.

The scene when Mac phones to describe the Northern Lights, to me is very special, but the scene that prompted the lump in my throat at the end of the movie is when, having failed in his mission to secure the Knox refinery deal and mutilate one of Planet Earth’s most beautiful locations, Mac returns to his frigid steel-and-glass Houston apartment. He stands at his kitchen counter wondering what to do next, the hushed march of oil capitalism buzzing gently outside. He pulls from his coat pocket a handful of pebbles and shells, smelling one of them poignantly remembering as he spreads them on the work surface.

As Knopflers music gently plays he goes to his balcony and looks out to the city......the scene fades to black, then reopens 4,500 miles away, where, on the harbour side of a small Scottish fishing village, we see the phone box, perhaps ringing and the credits begin as the horns of Going Home blast out.

Others in the film include Rikki Fulton, Alex Norton, Kenny Ireland, John Gordon Sinclair and of course Burt Lancaster.

I watched Local Hero last year, and the film has stood the test of time and in my opinion remains one of the finest films to come out of Scotland.

[doctor--lobster]

blaseball really did something that i haven't seen in any other video game, and i SO want more games to copy that structure the real-time simulated events that the players could all interact with and talk about, the perfect amount of vagueness about the world and characters to encourage headcanons, the simulation occasionally spitting out some ridiculous turn of events that the fandom then weaves into the mythos of that character it was such a perfect storm to create a weird little internet microculture, which is literally my Favorite Thing a game can have i guess what i'm saying is i want "blaseball-like" to become a genre

[theohshit-r-official]

Long-as-hell OOC post incoming

So, I feel I should probably clarify this, on account of shit going on in the zeitgeist re: Lancer RP on here, and because I and this blog am not an entrenched figure in the community here, so it pays to be as clear as possible what I am here for:

First, let me clarify: this is not about anyone in particular, and god knows I'm guilty of not doing some of the shit I'm going to recommend here. Second, this is, in addition to not being about any one person but instead the different microcultural elements I've noticed on here, mostly a post to explain what *I* am going for with this blog so that *YOU* can decide if or how you want to engage with it and me.

The primary purpose of this blog is as follows and as I will elaborate on here:

To serve as a place for people to dump their shitposts, serious opinions, and in-world takes they don't necessarily want to put out via an established character blog or their main in a more centralized place. This means I WILL publish most shit people send, even if some of the implications are not so great, though I won't publish some of the more egregious shit on account of it sucks. See this article [LINK HERE] for an example of something similar being done by a real world political figure (notably, a known inspiration for the Ungratefuls' Tyrannocleave) for a much better purpose than mine.

This ALSO means I will likely be publishing from people not immersed in the community or party to your established norms. I understand that online spaces largely run on reputation, but I, out of character as well as to some extent in, am an academic and I'm pretty well informed of both positive and negative consequences of this, and this is an intentional choice. DM me or send an ask labeled as OOC if you want to talk about this, I'm happy to discuss it, I'm just not likely to change my stance on it on account of "This is a heavily established, pretty well-researched concept in human social dynamics" so don't expect me to change what I'm doing from the jump. With that being said, let's lay out the motivation a bit:

Part of the appeal of LANCER that was explicitly intentionally designed by its creators is that there are both large structures of recalcitrant, sticky politics (see: Albatross hunts pirates, a group known to exist largely due to economic suffering, for a megacorp that sells weapons to pirates; the KTB is required to maintain an absurd level of extractive industry by Union, which favors their most abjectly fucking awful major house politically; etc) that serve as a shared bedrock for engagement and are pointedly shitty as hell *AND* large swathes of space where you can largely do pretty much whatever you want and have things be as good or as bad as you want so long as you avoid having them be run directly and heavy-handedly by the major players (as a brief sidebar, if you want an example of someone doing an excellent job of navigating the intersection of the larger players and the open, freer space and a damn good homebrew module, I highly recommend Vex Werewolf's In Golden Flame Act 1 [LINK HERE]). LANCER is a game where both the narrative impetus and mechanics are intrinsically tied to political context and dynamics, and the way LANCER allows for space from that for players and GMs is to have a lot of literal space unaccounted for.

The implication of this, of course, is that it is intended to be an equally valid mode of enjoyment to get really into the weeds of the established politics (hello, Siren Song, cannot WAIT to play an idiot in you and see how you break her) OR to not do that and avoid it entirely, but, and this is key, you cannot really feasibly do both at once reliably at scale without a lot of care and awareness, and I do not think that that is a reasonable expectation to have of total strangers on Tumblr. The official Discord community for this game has a rule to the effect of "Do not use your comfort to stifle political discussion unless ABSOLUTELY necessary" (very, very roughly paraphrased), and instead encourages disengaging from shit you do not want to deal with. To give an example of how that translates to practical domains, in the context of the game, if you didn't want to have to deal with Harrison culture, you wouldn't play a game on Ras Shamra, so why would you choose to pursue a conversation with someone playing a proud character from Ras Shamra on here if you don't want to hear what that character would say?

A lot of the conflict on here seems to stem from people being frustrated with people from one side of the aisle or the other interacting with them without establishing rules of engagement and/or where they stand on "I want to enjoy a sci-fi power fantasy without thinking too much about the implications" versus "I really want to dig in on the psyche of a proud Harrison soldier," both of which are equally valid ways to engage with the setting and the game. They come into conflict in no small part because many people in the prior category are expressly interested in using the mechanics of a mecha setting to tell a mostly feel-good story without the political meat and grit of the original setting materials, which, I'll especially note, is not something people coming from other mecha contexts are likely to expect. This means that you have a conflict between people interested in one mode of engagement (which, if I had to guess, comes more frequently from a general tabletop gaming background) and others interested in a very different mode of engagement coming from differing backgrounds, including but not limited to the broader world of mecha fans.

(NOTE: I am not saying that these groups are totally distinct or that this is the sole reason conflict happens, I'm just trying to give a more fleshed out example for people who are less familiar with the draw of the grit. I think the mecha community is a good example for this, as it is both something that a lot of people are peripheral to AND a cultural context a lot of people really don't understand from the outside)

Let me elaborate a little here on where the mecha side of things is coming from, for those of you less familiar. The arguable single most influential piece of mecha media in much of the world (Neon Genesis Evangelion) is in part an express exploration of the ethics of military recruitment and the use of child soldiers. The fact that this piece of media has recently been used to sell McDonald's does not change that weight in the culture of mecha media, nor does it change that, historically, mecha is a genre about war. The most prolific mecha series by far is Gundam, whose villains famously have a point and whose protagonists infamously tend to develop through deeply traumatic realizations that they may not be the unambiguous good guys they thought they were. Mecha media, on the whole, pointedly cultivates a strong sense of engagement in setting geopolitics, the ethics and process of war, and the role of individuals as vehicles of violence, and people coming from a heavy mecha background are likely to be invested in exploring these themes.

That being said, I totally respect wanting to engage with it from another angle, but you can see how people wanting a more free-form, canon-lite experience and people who are coming from a mecha background looking for the nitty gritty of the established, shared setting could come into conflict, particularly when it comes to making claims about established parts of the setting. Of course, in character conflict is fine and well and dandy if that's what you're going for, no shame in that, this is more to do with the out of character aspects, including how you respond to and handle in character conflict.

Here's the thing: this dichotomy of interest does not favor a single, fully connected network of people heavily interacting. It does not favor a community with a single set of hard norms. It favors a lot of individual level variation, it favors many smaller sets of norms between individuals, and it favors good communication about those differences. I am aligned with the creators of LANCER in that I think both approaches to engaging with the material have value, and I want there to be space for both here, and I agree with them that the two are not always compatible. To preserve space for both, we need to prioritize curating our own experience over policing others', which, I know, shocking that the person who linked Anarchists Welcome would make a statement about taking an anarchistic approach to maintaining a stable, healthy social context which allows for conflict.

This is one of the reasons that I, in running this blog, have consciously chosen to almost exclusively respond to other people's posts who I actually have spoken to out of character, despite Umommiest being an extremely vocal HORUS shitposter, because I often cannot tell from character blogs what their relationship to the shared text is and their interest in different modes of interaction. This is ALSO why I'm going to be fairly indiscriminate in publishing asks and submissions, and only have Umommiest respond to what gets sent in when either prompted directly by the material or when it is plainly a shitpost that allows for some play (see also: the 8 year old seeking liberation via artillery platform and soft target elimination frames). As is quite well known in the kink community, consent does not occur in character, and personal norms and interests should be established outside of them. If there is a character blog on here that you have concerns about or want to interact with but are unsure how to proceed, DM them and check in, the same way that you would talk to someone if you wanted to join a game of pickup basketball or something. This is a social activity, social activities have fairly well established means by which to initiate them in a more intentional manner, let's make a point to start using them more consistently.

With that being said, if there is a character blog that you do not want to see, block them. There will be characters that people choose to play that you personally A will not like and B may not wish to engage with. Use the curation tools you have rather than relying on norms all the time, as norms develop from consensus and require other people to change to work. You don't have to put it on others to tailor your experience. I will go somewhere else rather than deal with somebody I don't want to talk to at a bar, and this is a similar sort of interaction. Blocking is not a condemnation, it is a choice to not engage with someone or something you do not want to. On my end, I will be doing my best to consistently tag in-character posts, reblogs, etc with ohshitumommiest going forward so you can block the tag as described here [LINK HERE] if you want to see what people are submitting without any of Umommiest's commentary, responses, etc. I'm also thinking I'll move towards initially publishing even the shitpostier things without commentary and then following up with a reblog with the commentary (so if you want to see just what other people make and not her bullshit, that's cool, too).

For the record, I *am* personally interested in the politics of the setting and Umommiest is a character that is heavily written based on the canon. She is also, frankly, a HORUS shitposter of the highest and worst degree, if you can't tell from her demeanor, and will engage with people who comment in character on posts here as would reflect a highly informed, terminally online political agitator with no formal affiliation to anyone who sees all of her speech as largely without personal consequence. Part of the purpose of the ohshitumommiest tag is to allow you to engage with the submitted material without having to see if and how she replies to you if you are not interested in that. If you are, hey! Looking forward to having some fun together with this horrible girl I've made!

Frankly, I don't care where you fall on the spectrum/split of hard text engagement versus loose text as inspiration, but I do care that everyone has an outlet for shitposts and other art/thought pieces on the setting that they think are gold or at least fun but don't have a place for personally. I think Lancer fucking rules, and people have a lot of cool, funny, and beautiful thoughts and ideas on it regardless of affiliation on these grounds, and I want to make this a place to share them without too much worry of how they fit a given blog.

If that nondiscriminatory approach to publishing is unacceptable to you, cool, I don't care, block this blog. Maybe read the linked article first and see if that helps you see a different perspective a little, but, please, use the basic curation tools available to you on this site to help maintain a diverse community that reflects the varied appeal of LANCER's setting.

With that said, play ball, and I'm looking forward to continuing to see the awesome, wild, wonky, and frankly unhinged shit this community continues to create!

PS: if you want to anonymously publish something with a link or an image via this blog, please DM me and I will effectively spoof a submission so your blog does not have to be attached. You run the risk of me knowing that you sent it, but it doesn't get broadcast to the world.

PPS I know that there are some other folks on here who engage with other LANCER online communities (e.g., the official Discord) who share much of the opinions I expressed here, particularly the "Hey there are different, conflicting way to enjoy the setting, and having some understanding around that is healthy for the community" stance, so feel free to share this around as you like.

[txttletale]

me, logging onto my giant pollution device that raises earth's temperature 0.01 degree in exchange for making a picture of trump wearing giant shoes that looks photorealistically soggy on all surfaces, so that i can avoid the "cringe" of using MS Paint for the price of two emergency flashlight cranks: "this is good, because it makes people who are the wrong subtype microculture of communist mad at my better one"

do you play video games

[phregnancy]

i can’t think about it too long or i start to spiral but i always think it’s crazy when regular people blow up for being themselves. two of the most normal guys ever decided to put themselves out there for the public to see and through stories and jokes and creative projects and just being themselves they cultivated an audience so great it became its own microculture. more than that, the microculture bled into the mainstream and they were practically household names through their associations with a listers like taylor swift, ariana grande, snoop dogg, charli xcx, etc. normal people shooting into a lifestyle i cannot even fathom simply because they made a choice one day to do something they wanted to do.

[donnerpartyofone]

I think a lot of relationships fit a certain template that is comprehensible for the public. There are couples who share a specific culture, like religion or some specific professional area, or the two people are just extremely similar in the superficial broad strokes. And then there are "opposites attract" couples and, adjacently, couples who basically hate each other because they're always working out their darkest unresolved psychodramas through intimate partnerships. And I think few people understand my marriage because we don't quite fit any of the main templates. And also part of what makes us so bonded is something that's hard to communicate to others, which is that we have had so many new experiences together. Even though we met when we were 30 we've done so many things for the first time together. We're both pretty different from when we first met 13 years ago but we're even closer because we're evolving in parallel through this joint adventure and discovery process. This eliminates any anxiety about the other person changing, and it also makes it so you share this whole list of first-time experiences, which is something that can bring people together whether they're classmates or coworkers or whatever. It makes it so you share part of your consciousness, part of a little microculture. Our relationship is unusually strong and intimate because of this, I think.

[nallchange]

We call it Foxing Day because in late prehistory, about 7000 years ago, our ancestors spiced their drinking water to create the first foxkin. They experimented on themselves to make us.

Why? Our best guess is that a microculture did this, although we don't know exactly why; there are theories.

Was it right? That's a big question. The ethics of their actions are beyond the scope of this course, but if you do stay on another year, we'll talk all about it. 🦊