#basically at the end of 2017 i purged everything

[frogprlnce]

it’s a christmas eve tradition that, when i’m at home for the holidays, i desperately scrounge around all my old electronics trying to find some scrap of my former life i didn’t delete

[crochetwizardman]

I found a piece of paper that I had never seen before, was dated 2017, and had no business being in my end table drawer. It's really important to note that I've had virtually everything I owned purged several times since 2017, and the end table came from my neighbor. Also the paper was on top of everything in the bottom drawer.

If it's not paranormal, how would anybody know I'd actually find it soon enough to count? It was a junk drawer filled with fuck. I could have kept tossing shit in there basically indefinitely...

If it is paranormal, who's trying to contact me about services to help with holiday meals and stuff? From 2017? Trying really hard to remember what I was doing roughly November 2017.

Either case I'm not leaving this fucking apartment. Only people that can get in here are my neighbors unless someone slipped in when the door was open. I like to think the old broad squad would have stopped and questioned an invader. The only thing I can remember from November 2017 is living in an apartment across town with my mom maybe?

I literally have no one to talk about this with so I'm literally going to tell everybody that I can because Gill is Fucking Pissed

[spnfanficpond]

Hi! I have a question regarding feedback and writing that may be difficult to answer. If you don't have any advice it's totally okay to ignore! Basically my problem is I'm losing confidence in my writing. Logically I know I'm still a good writer but it hurts that confidence when I struggle for notes when I once got them with far less followers. I've tried the whole write for me thing and it helps but even so it's become a battle of I'm not going to write this well or even decent so why bother? I must be writing poorly if no one likes/interacts/etc. anymore is where my head jumps. This has been going on for months and months now. It got bad towards the end of SPN but it's only gotten worse. I've taken breaks, reduced the amount of content I put out, changed it, etc. But nothing changes. I can't even get myself to write for me anymore because I think it's not worth it. I know other writers struggle with this too but I'm starting to feel like it's impacting my enjoyment of writing. Do you have any advice for getting your writing confidence back?

Michelle here!

What you're talking about here is SO COMMON, lately. Seriously. I don't know a writer around here that hasn't expressed frustration about this at some point in the past few years. I chatted with Mel a bit, and I hope we've come up with something more than just "write for yourself" since you mentioned that's no longer working for you.

I'm going to attack this question like it's actually three questions.

Why is my audience dwindling?

How do I deal with the lack of feedback from my dwindling audience?

How do I rebuild my own confidence in my writing?

First, why is my audience dwindling?

The SPN Fan Fiction Audience is Shrinking

I put that in big, bold, red letters because I absolutely believe it's true. Especially here on Tumblr, the number of readers of specifically SPN fan fiction is shrinking. There are a few factors for this:

The "Best Stuff First" Tumblr Algorithm Disaster - This was the first time in my memory (I've only been here since 2015, so it's possible there might be earlier events I don't know about) that I started hearing about the number of notes on fics dropping dramatically. Everyone was urged to turn off the "Best Stuff First" option on their dashboard, but that didn't seem to help. Like all social media platforms, there are recommendations made when you're looking for something, and those recommendations are made up of posts that are already most popular. This leaves new posts by new writers in the dust to wither. (It didn't do anything great for even the most popular writers, either.) Only die-hard loyal fans and those the writer tagged could keep up with new content.

The Great Tumblr Porn Purge Suckfest - When the Purge happened, we lost a portion of readers who left Tumblr full stop. Whether they enjoyed the porn and missed it or got caught up in the mess of accounts that got deleted or shadowbanned or became nothing but pixels and couldn't deal with the fight for redemption, it doesn't matter. They left.

The Less Great Sucky Searching Snafu - Even before the porn ban, search functions just didn't work right on Tumblr as Staff tried to find quiet ways to keep porn from appearing on screens. The latest Apple App Apocalypse is just an extension of that. This means that even if you do everything right, your post still won't show up when someone searches for it for any number of reasons.

The Tumblr Tagging Malfunction Cluster - The fact that tagging people on Tumblr just doesn't work SO OFTEN just sucks balls. I don't know if anyone else is seeing this lately, but I've been getting a rash of notifications recently for posts from 2017! I obviously didn't get the notification at the time, so WTF Tumblr? FIVE YEARS??? It's terrible. Writers get tired of doing the work of tagging (though with the new post editor it's LOADS easier) and then readers still not seeing the posts. Library blogs and app push notifications have helped, but it's an adjustment.

The Show Ending Debacle - I think a lot of us knew that we would lose casual readers after the show ended, but we didn't expect the fandom-dividing ending that sucked a lot of loyal fans out of the fandom, too. (Personally, I'm not a fan of the last two episodes, but I love the other 325 --except maybe Bugs-- and the people behind the show, so I'm here for life.) I know of a few writers who lost the desire to write for SPN after the show ended, so I imagine the same is true for some readers. Even some of those that loved the ending may have left because it's just over. They're moving on to new shows and new fandoms and they just aren't interested in SPN stuff anymore.

The General Balls-Up Car Wreck That Is The World '20's Style - Some folks dove into fandom as an escape. Some folks didn't have that luxury. Life got hard, y'all. People dying everywhere can make fan fiction seem silly and inconsequential. We lost folks who suddenly didn't have time because they have kids who needed to be home schooled or grandparents who needed home care. Working from home on your laptop all day makes you really not want to spend more time on your laptop, even for fun stuff.

Did you notice what's NOT on this list? Your writing. Most likely, your loss of audience has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your writing. There is a huge list of things you could be doing to lose followers (yelling at them, being rude, and stuff like that, but if you were, you wouldn't have ever had a following), and at the very bottom of the list would be anything to do with your actual writing.

Putting the rest of this under a cut since this is getting pretty long.

B. How do I deal with the lack of feedback from my dwindling audience?

There are a couple of options for you here: Work to expand your audience and focus on only a small portion of your audience.

Expanding your audience on Tumblr is near to impossible, but not completely impossible. There are still a couple of things you can do. (Side note: We are working on a series of posts coming soon that will go into some of this in more detail.)

Interact positively with your audience - Say thank you when someone reblogs your work. Go to their blog and reblog some of their work. Take requests. Something I haven't seen in years is to do a blog takeover by a character. (You take asks on your blog as an SPN character for a certain period of time. RP, in a way.)

Submit your stories to blogs that reblog for you like we do, or @dirtysupernaturalimagines. (Know of any other blogs that reblog fics? Let us know and we'll add them here!)

Join bangs and writing challenges - The admins who run these things will reblog the stories involved on their blog and you will get more exposure that way.

If you've already done all of that, then consider expanding to other platforms. Get an AO3 account. Set up a handle on Twitter for just your writing and interact with readers there. Find an artist to team up with (you can do this easily by joining a bang) and have them hype you on their Instagram or Twitter in exchange for you doing the same for them.

While you're working hard to expand your audience you can also narrow your focus to just a handful of people. Instead of looking for quantity in your feedback, look for quality. Find people who will honestly tell you whether they like your writing and make them your alpha, beta, or omega readers. Focus on what this core group of people say and consider anyone else who gives you kudos as icing on the cake.

3. How do I rebuild my own confidence in my writing?

So far, everything mentioned has nothing to do with your writing. That's because the loss of notes and followers and feedback probably has nothing to do with your writing. I doubt even Robbie Thompson could get notes in this fandom's current climate.

Most importantly, I'm going to repeat what I said above. Instead of looking at quantity of feedback, look for quality. Find people you like and respect, whose work you admire, and focus on them. Instead of judging your writing on numbers, which can have little to no relation to your writing skills, judge your writing based on how a handful of honest reviewers feel about it.

Also, consider writing for a newer fandom or in any other way switching things up. The Tumblr SPN fan fiction audience is dwindling, so find an audience that's growing and write for them. Getting feedback from a whole new set of people might reenergize you and get you back to your keyboard again.

I hope this has helped you out! If anyone else has some tips or advice, please reblog or reply with your comments! Sharing is how we all learn!

[autisticandroids]

yknow those episodes where a character's whole personality gets split into 3-5 different distinct separate bodies? what bodies would cas have? I feel like it'd just be a mess tbh, imagine 5 different castiels all of them loving dean to a certain extent but showing it VASTLY differently. one cas would literally want to murder the others lmao

okay so i don’t actually think this trope would be an effective tool for analyzing cas? he’s not conflicted enough in himself. he’s too impulsive, too singleminded, too uninhibited. like, in the end, cas always ends up doing whatever he wants. there aren’t multiple discrete voices vying for control, really, or rather, if there are, one is always significantly stronger than the others. like in the end cas will always end up eating raw meat off the floor, you know? he’ll do what he wants. if i was going to do personality splitting i’d do it to someone intensely internally conflicted, like dean.

however, because i’m in an essay writing mood today, i’ll answer a question slightly to the left of the one you asked. cas may not be internally conflicted, but he is intensely changeable. these two things are related, actually; the same impulsivity and singlemindedness that mean he doesn’t have a ton of internal conflict at any given time mean that different ideas sound good to him at different times, because he isn’t really thinking about, say, what future-him will think of them. and he’s not really trying to maintain an image or identity. he’s just doing what feels right at the time, which is very different at different times and in different situations.

anyway, that in mind, i think a lot about ways to bring together many alternate versions of cas which sort of correspond to different times in the show.

i have a fic in my head about a bunch of cas-es pulled from alternate timelines by some kind of spell. so this would be set during the widower arc because the basic impulse here is to show dean a very bad time. just absolutely put him through hell. also, all the alternate timelines are different because different stuff happened, not because cas made different choices, because if we’re torturing dean it has to be like 5x04, the changes in cas can’t be cas’ fault. they have to be dean’s or just like, the universe’s (which makes them dean’s).

so dean is trying to bring cas back, and he finds some kind of spell that can bring someone “from another world.” and he tries it because hey. can’t hurt to try. anyway i’ve thought a long time about different versions of cas i would put in this and here is what i have. in order of when the timeline split off.

- a cas who never raised dean from hell. think 14x13 “lebanon.” this one i’m not too sure about, like, this could be fun, but i don’t know if it’s different enough from the next one. like this castiel would have lived through the averted apocalypse and subsequent general fuckery that happened as an angelic footsoldier, which would actually be pretty interesting now that i think about it, especially since all that stuff would have gone down soooooooo differently without cas specifically for your average angel footsoldier. like cas has PERSONALLY caused more upheaval in heaven in twelve years of spn than there seems to have been in millennia. so he would be the point of view of a normal footsoldier from a totally other world.

- a cas who died mid season four, and is pulled out of the empty in 2017 by this spell. i’m not sure when this cas died. my thoughts are (1) killed in on the head of a pin by alistair, (2) killed during his torture in the rapture, or (3) simply never resurrected after lucifer rising. (3) makes the most sense, but that cas has already thrown away everything for dean. i prefer the idea of a cas who loves dean, is already on the brink of disobedience for him, but has not yet taken the plunge. both on the head of a pin and the rapture are great places for this, and they both have strengths and weaknesses. if he died in the rapture, he was killed by heaven, which is fundamentally more fun, but he was also really very much over the edge already. if he died in on the head of a pin, he wasn’t killed by heaven, but he is perfectly teetering on the brink of falling for dean. regardless of when he died, the purpose of this cas is to be horrified at all the various and myriad ways he has destroyed and corrupted himself for dean in the other timelines.

- possibly endverse cas, who would have died in 2014, but like s4 cas, would have been pulled from the afterlife by the spell. i’m not so sure on this one. we as a society love endverse cas but i dunno what purpose he would serve. maybe endverse cas didn’t die in 2014, and instead was imprisoned by lucifer, because, you know. he’s the only brother lucifer has left. so he is very excited to see dean alive and well, since his dean is dead, and, not being an angel, cas can’t bring him back. the purpose of this cas would be to horrify dean that cas loves him and needs him so much, and to disgust the other cas-es with his neediness.

- a cas who was in some way on better terms with dean during s6. maybe dean and cas ride off into the sunset together after swan song instead of dean going to live with lisa, maybe dean prayed to cas while he was with lisa because he missed him, who knows. either way, cas has dean’s help with the angel revolution in season six from the start, and never goes to crowley. the plan cas and dean come up with to beat raphael includes breaking into the cage and stealing the grace of michael and lucifer, freeing sam and adam in the process. incidentally, it also involves cas possessing dean, because if cas is gonna eat archangel grace to become more powerful, he’s going to need a stronger vessel. so cas and dean have a whole like. midam situation happening. they’re a double archangel together, and godstiel never happened so none of the other terrible apocalypses that stemmed from that happened, and everything is pretty cool where they’re from, and also they’re obviously uhhhhhh SOME kind of together. the purpose of this cas is to upset dean because this cas shows how much better everything could have been and how much better his and cas’ relationship could have been if dean had simply been more considerate of cas in s6, and also freak dean out with how uh. close. this dean and cas are.

- a godstiel who managed to swallow purgatory without swallowing the leviathans and remained god. he’s probably soooomewhat less scary and murdery than canonverse godstiel because no leviathans, so you know, not as many angel purges or massacres on earth. and he probably went and fixed sam’s wall within about three days because cas is prideful but he does NOT like it when dean is mad at him. so they did kiss and make up, and so this cas would have had dean to act as his morality chain. but he’s still very scary and godstiel. and also he refers to dean as “The Beloved” you know. his purpose is to freak everyone out, because he’s scary, but also, for the past cas-es, because he is a terrifying abomination that they could never imagine becoming, for the future cas-es, because he is a reminder of their worst selves, and for dean, because he is a reminder of how dangerous cas is, but also because he uh. obviously has some feelings about his dean. unclear if they are consummated or not.

- a cas who naomi never rescued from purgatory, and who stayed there. hasn't spoken to another being in half a decade, has not recovered from his emotionally destroyed state in purgatory in s8. believes at first that the spell is his dean rescuing him, and is crushed when he realizes he was wrong. like endverse cas, his purpose is to show dean how much cas needs him and depends on him emotionally, and how he (dean) is capable of destroying cas, as well as his guilt for leaving him in purgatory and how lucky he is that his cas got out. this is especially noteworthy since the guilt for leaving cas in purgatory is part of the reason dean is trying to get cas back.

- a cas who stayed human after season nine, and has built himself a small human life over the next four years. he has a job and an apartment and friends outside the winchesters and yes, he still goes hunting after work sometimes, and he's still in contact with dean, but he is also independent in a way no other version of cas has ever been. he exists to freak out dean because dean has never seen cas independent of him. he is also fairly bitter at dean since dean did kind of stop spending time with him when he was no longer useful, and our dean feels guilty for that.

- a cas who showed up twenty minutes later in 10x03, finding sam dead and dean gone, and had to chase down demon dean, and has now spent three years following demon dean around as his tragically adoring stalker, because he hasn't found a way to resurrect sam yet and he doesn't want to put dean through the demon cure until he can save sam because he doesn't want dean to experience that guilt, but he also adores dean and wants to keep an eye on him and keep him safe and also keep him from doing anything too heinous, so he just covertly follows him around the country and watches from a distance as he commits various murders and fucks his way through every local bar scene. and occasionally cas finds dean something to kill, when the mark gets hungry, and drops it in his path. his purpose is to freak dean out with the lengths cas would go for him, and the depths cas would sink to.

anyway. lebanon cas and season four cas are horrified and perhaps disgusted (lebanon cas more than s4 cas) by ALL of the later cas-es, and how far they’re fallen, all of it for dean. godstiel and archangel cas being abominations, endverse cas and s9 cas being fallen, even purgatory cas and demon dean’s cas for their total dependence on dean.

purgatory cas and endverse cas are just happy to see a dean, even if it’s not their dean. demon dean’s cas, too, in a way. he’s happy to see a dean who is still human, who he can still have as a friend.

human cas is pissed to see that he was right, that dean would have stuck by him if he’d still had his powers, that this version of dean is doing spells to try and bring his cas, who is still an angel, back, whereas he and his dean only see each other once every couple months.

everyone is terrified and disgusted by godstiel, as i said before.

they’re mostly kind of thrown by archangel cas. a lot of them are jealous. godstiel is furious because how dare anyone, even an alternate version of himself, take dean as a vessel (even if dean likes it). godstiel isn’t really there, though, he resisted the summoning and just sort of popped his head through to see what was going on, and he goes back to his own reality pretty fast without murdering anyone.

also to be clear dean has not at this point examined or acknowledged any feelings he may have about his cas besides “friendship,” nor has he wondered what feelings his cas may have for him. given how many of the cas-es were clearly in some kind of relationship with their dean (endverse cas, archangel cas) or just openly in love with their dean (godstiel, purgatory cas, demon dean’s cas), dean is forced to reevaluate the nature of his and cas’ relationship.

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

⚠️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[roseverdict]

SO UH. I DIDN'T THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN BUT I ACCIDENTALLY HAMMERED OUT UHHH A SIZABLE CHUNK OF BATIM FIC. I WAS LAST FIXATED IN 2017. IDK HOW THIS HAPPENED

i blame this little plot bunny, among others:

anyway here's a lil contextless ficlet because i've clearly lost all control of my life. basically it's part of the Big Final Showdown at the end of one of those "what if we TOOK THE HELL'S STUDIO AU GANG and we CROSSED THEM OVER WITH CANON for FIX-IT FIC REASONS" types of fics

(setup: everybody has come running down to what WOULD be the throne room in canon. it's still the throne room it's just that we've successfully gotten "bendy" to Not Want To Commit Violence so canon!joey is there instead, intent on putting his little time loop prison back into motion. he has a nice little villain monologue, exerting his power and influence as he does…)

"…and as for you interlopers," he hissed, "well…what are a few more Searchers in my world? Yes…you will all do quite-"

The monster of a man froze, one ink-covered ear perking up. "…what is that horrible racket?"

Henry glanced around warily, and around him, his counterpart and the rest of the expanded rescue team did the same. For a brief moment, he heard nothing but the dripping of ink and the creaking of far-off machinery.

Then Joey's voice, his Joey's voice, came echoing down from a higher floor.

At first, Henry thought he was screaming, but as the voice drew nearer, he realized Joey wasn't screaming.

He was cheering.

Laughter and even excited whoops grew louder and louder as a silvery glow began peeking out through a tunnel high above them all. The Joey from this world whirled around, pointed teeth exposed and lips drawn back in a snarl-!

-and with a drawn out "YAAAHOOOOOO!" his counterpart came shooting out into open air, the shimmering light that came with him solidifying into flailing limbs and a wildly-grinning face, mere moments before he slammed into the ink on the floor and tumbled to a stop.

"…what."

Henry's Joey didn't seem to hear his darker counterpart, instead shaking his head and patting himself over. "I…am…not dead!" He leapt to his feet with a grin, one hand on his hip and the other pointing to the ceiling. "That was rather exhilarating, actually! It took a bit longer than I’d intended to get in, since somebody shut the door after the ritual proper was completed, but what a rush! Honestly, was that what it felt like for-?"

Henry couldn't stop a small smile from growing on his face as his best friend prattled on and the residents of this studio gaped at him. Other-Joey may have been using his friend’s face, but the malevolence oozing from him was something that could never come from the man who’d fixed as many mistakes as he made.

Even so, Joey, for all that he had trouble reading the body language of others, eventually realized something was up. "…and…uh…why is everybody looking at me like that?"

Other-Joey burst into laughter, his voice warping and twisting as he cackled. "THIS IS MY COUNTERPART? THIS BUMBLING FOOL? AND YOU WOULD PRESUME TO DEFEAT ME ANYWAY?!"

An uncharacteristic (but, frankly, completely understandable, at least in Henry’s humble opinion) stony expression found its way onto Joey’s face, and he turned around to give his doppelganger a once-over. “And who are you supposed to be? Some kind of, I don’t know, power-hungry nutjob out to control the world or something?”

“Of course not!” Other-Joey scoffed. “I am everything you could have been! I am the best of you made better! The worst of you purged away!”

Joey took a step forward to start circling towards the rest of Other-Joey’s captives, and only Henry’s lifetime of experience let him realize how much of Joey’s bravery was a front. “I’d say that’s debatable. Maybe you got ‘best’ and ‘worst’ mixed up in some way at some point along the line.”

“Please. You’re a Joey Drew, I’m a Joey Drew...” Other-Joey drawled. He made a gesture that was probably meant to be grandiose, sweeping his arms down and out to either side, but with the ink clinging to him, it just made him look like a dripping shadow with Joey’s face. “Surely even you, babbling and uncoordinated as you are, have felt the calling of greater powers, the destiny you can create for yourself if you only reach for it?”

Instead of directly answering the question, Joey snapped the fingers of one hand as if in realization, coming to a stop directly between his doppelganger and the rest of the room. “Ohhh, that’s the difference between you and me! I get it now!”

“You really haven’t felt it?”

“What? No, of course I have!” Joey gasped offendedly, giving Henry a miniature heart attack. “I’m pretty sure there’s not a single Joey in the entire multiverse who hasn’t had to figure out what to do with those thoughts, the ones that weasel their way into our heads and promise more, more, more. No, no, I believe the difference between us is fairly simple.”

He smiled cheerfully, mirroring his counterpart’s gesture in a way that made him look like a good-hearted uncle asking for a hug, then clasping his hands together in front of his chest.

“I recognized those thoughts for what they were: intrusions!”

As if on cue, the ink began bubbling everywhere there was enough to bubble, including on Other-Joey. As his twisted, horrifying ‘armor’ began sliding off his body and dropping to the ground in sloppy chunks, he spluttered, “When did-? How did-?!”

“Well, you see, it’s quite amazing what you can pick up when you put dark thoughts out of your mind in favor of spending time with your friends,” Joey said mildly, walking forward once more. “I’m impulsive, and I’m aware of that- shocking, I know- but it’s a lot harder to give into impulses that have nothing to do with who and what I care for than, say, the impulse to breathe life into my beloved cartoons in a way no one thought possible. Even those friends of mine who provided me the supplies thought I was a madman- seeking to create life without stealing it away from somewhere else, honestly, now isn’t that a silly thought? But I did it anyway, because at the end of the day, I’m no god. I don’t have the right to say who deserves to die. I’m just a man.”

His smile grew, looking more and more like the impish smile Henry had based Bendy’s on, and he let his clasped hands drop and his head tilt the same way he would when facing one of Henry’s frustrated tirades. “And now, so are you.”

[jaynovz]

Fandom and Media-related Academic Papers Masterpost

Eyo. I mentioned awhile back that I wrote a bunch of stuff for my English MA that I never ended up publishing but I’d like it to be available anyway. I did the work, the research, imbued a lot of passion into these papers--so I want people besides me and my profs to have the chance to read them. Though they’re a few years old now, I feel a lot of it still holds up. :) 

(Please don’t repost or use without permission, though I’m aware I can’t really regulate that.)

Hope y’all enjoy~

-

The Phenomenon of Coded Communiqués in Folklore: Abu-Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments and Tumblr Fandom: This is about fandom and tumblr specifically as a new form of folklore as compared to Bedouin oral poetry aka a “tried and true” form of folklore. Written December 2017, before the Tumblr purge, so the landscape I was writing about has changed, though I do think most of the points stand.

Rich and Rehabilitating Representations of the Queer and Disabled in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal (2013-15): This is basically what it says on the tin. Queer and disabled rep in the Hannibal tv show, how those identities intersect, and what representation means/why it’s so important. Ohhh lads, if only I’d known about/seen Black Sails while I was in this class -clenches fists- Anyway. This was one of my favorite papers to write. Written May 2018.

“I’ll see you again in 25 years:” The Surreal horror, Legacy and Cultural Implications of Twin Peaks (1990-2, 2017): This is a cultural studies paper about the original Twin Peaks and then its Return, horror, specifically surreal horror, why we need it, why we like it, why it’s important. My prof wanted us to write what’s called an “object analysis,” which is a little bit of different animal from lit analysis papers. Written May 2018.

The Wendigo, The Folkloresque, and Hannibal (2013): Yep, Jay writing more Hannibal papers. I wrote as many as I could get away with, lol. This one deals with the Wendigo, how its folklore developed and how it then is reinterpreted into pop culture, ending up in the tv show in various forms. Written December 2018.

Korrasami, Bechloe, and the Dearth of Femslash in Fandom: Okay this is kind of my pride and joy in a lot of ways. Also, a bunch of you fine folks helped by participating in a Google doc survey regarding femslash :D This paper asks why there’s so little wlw fan content comparatively and frankly this is still a big issue 3ish years later. Written December 2018.

Bonus:

Here’s the one undergrad paper I want to include which I wrote for my capstone class.

Adaptation Fidelity and Intertexuality : Pride and Prejudice (1995) and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: This was when little baby Jay realized she could write about pop culture! This one is not up to par with the grad work because of course it wouldn’t be. But I’m still pretty happy with what my fledgling cultural and media studies self made of this. This paper is all about what makes a “good” adaptation by comparing different versions of Pride and Prejudice as well as talking a lot about high art vs pop art and intertextuality. Written May 2013.

--

Blanket disclaimer that I’m just another scholar be-bopping around, I don’t know everything and I have my own privileges and blindspots. I’ve also learned a shit-ton in the intervening 3ish years (8ish years for the Austen paper), so these won’t necessarily reflect that new/current knowledge. So yeah, like, just please don’t be an asshole. 

Engage with it critically if you like, I would frankly love if someone wanted to discuss any of this with me, but argue in good faith.

[shadowdianne]

Alright, so @delirious-comfort tagged me in something about wips and SHAME. That's what I got. Sure there was something else thrown in there but bottom line: shame! xD She, brilliantly, went for WIPS in the sense of works that have never seen the light and who knows if they ever will -please, I want to know what half of them are about, you evil- Since that's basically impossible on my end of things I'm just gonna go for unfinished stories and call it a day since they are -technically- works in progress

Painted Voices -SQ- Oh boy, 2015. I don't even remember what I wanted to do with this one. It was at the time there were a bunch of stories with either one of them being blind or deaf and I tried to jump into that. I'm ashamed of it and certainly will delete this because I'm sure it sucks and I was an idiot about the whole thing.

The recognizable stranger -SQ- 2015 as well... I remember this one. I have mixed feelings about this but I will simply state that I don't remember what I wanted to do with this one. I was the: What if these two met prior to the events of S1 that existed back in the day.

Words unsaid -SQ- Technically I wouldn't count this as a wip but A03 is marking it as such so I'm going to stick with it xD FixitFic. I used to do a bunch of those with every new episode or so. Eventually, however, I stopped writing them in a single series. I remember having someone telling me that it bothered them that I did it like that and so I started posting them as separate one-shots and I guess I forgot to close the thread of this one.

The missing page -SQ- 2015 againnn, honestly, I don't remember what I wanted to do here. I believe it was about Regina going back into the book or in time and just seeing things from an outside perspective. It was also the time when writing Daniel and Emma as the same person -sometimes Emma having Daniel's soul within her some other times in a more convoluted way- was a thing. So if I remember correctly this was my take to that.

A forgotten promise -SQ- The witcher au before the witcher turned mainstream xD Ah, I'd have loved to finish this one. It required a lot of work and I was in the middle of my uni years and the feedback was... uh. Let's go with uh, so I started to have second thoughts, think it was rubbish and halted it altogether. [For context sake the small amount of ego I DO have tells me to point out I was churning 4 to 7 prompts per day at the same time] I would probably erase it entirely if I tried to do anything with it now so I'll just leave it there.

It feels like magic -SQ- Ohhh, remember when we all did magic realism? I loved that. On this one Regina was transformed into a cat because things and the story revolved around Emma buying her as her familiar. It has 13k posted but I think I wrote like 30k beyond what I ended up posting. Same story: I started to think it was shit; cornered myself into a panic attack and never finished it xD Tag yourself: Dianne doesn't end up their wips edition

Sateen memories -SQ- No fucking clue what that one was about

I'm not afraid of the dark -Princess Rover- It was going to be a rewrite of a bunch of lore back in the Shannara Chronicles all the while shitting on canon and the books but didn't happen.

What you want -SQ- Emma is the Dark One, Hypersexualization of the character. If you have heard me rant loud enough you know I prefer teasing. I got bored.

Nothing is true, everything's permitted.-SQ- The AC au! I also have mixed feelings about this one due to THINGS. It involved lots of studying because I wanted to make an accurate enough portrait of the historical momentum I was writing about. This was in 2017 so whilst I don't remember exactly I know I was working two jobs plus uni so yeah, nah, I didn't have the mind to write more than the prompts I was doing at the time xD

There is no hex or spell I could unlearn with you by my side -SQ- The HP AU. I basically stopped due to -points at JKR- and that it was a series of drabbles so it was linked to the amount of prompts. I remember it was the time Tumblr did an inbox purge, lots like half the prompts, most of them for ever so... it just sits there.

Of magic and prowess -SQ- Steampunk! It was supposed to be the second part of And the cogs are ticking if I'm remembering correctly. Very short and sweet, 5 chapters. I got 11 eleven kudos, 2 comments, about 15 asks stating that they rather wanted me to keep writing prompts than whatever I was doing with this and I said fuck it. Yeah, yeah, the vitriol I have inside is not lost to me.

Tiny nothings -SQ- Same thing as some fics above this one. I started doing lost moments but I ended up migrating it to single oneshots. This one is set in S6 so added to the previous explanation I would also add the: S6 was a pain, one.

Hidden truths -Rizzles- It was a prompt(?) but I was never too sure about my ability to write Maura and my brain shortcircuited.

Deipnon -SQ- Actually this one is co-written. Life happened. Nothing more. -I hope you are doing good Eva, love you lots-

Lost words -SQ- One word prompts. Same story than before really: I wrote them solely on tumblr, someone told me to re-post them on a03, I did, I then got anons telling me that it bothered them, stopped altogether.

The miller's daughter -SQ- Ohhh, I used to love this one. Rewriting of... something I guess xD Enchanted Forest based, total AU but trying to give a Grimm-esque perspective. 2016... who knows what I did xD Again, overworked is the answer.

But I know this night you will come -SQ- Well, actually this one was a trio if I'm remembering correctly... yeah, Regina, Red, Emma. Dunno, is this time to state that I've discovered I'm demi? lol. I'm not sex-repulsed but it bores me to tears writing about it. Give me teasing and I will write a full novella out of it. But sex is *yawn* for me when writing about it.

Ghost of you -SQ- Ohhh Emma!ParanormalInvestigator! I have a bunch of those. There was a mirror, a very angry Queen and far too much worldbuilding to fit into a tiny story. Yeah, I also see that pattern xD

Arcadia -SQ- The only fic I will ever be ashamed that I didn't finish to the point of self-destruction. I actually wrote it, I then lost the files, corrupted, gone, puff. But then I didn't rewrite it and then I felt self-conscious and then... shame.

Beyond -SQ- 2019 Probably one of the last de facto prompts I accepted. I wasn't feeling all that good about my writing. I think I was basically trying to jump start something that had died. I would have loved to finish it. Honestly.

Annnd, that's it! Tagging @rubikanon for this one <3

[jingers994]

Hey. So. I haven't ever actually made a real post on here like ever, even back in the day when I actually used Tumblr. That's just not what I used it for, I just followed artists & writers whose work I enjoyed. Lots of them have stopped posting since I left in 2016, but to anyone I'm still following who does still post stuff, that's probably because you're awesome and I love your work. <3 Shoutout to literally every person who actually sees this post, never stop being cool. I first joined in 2014, and I left around mid-2016. So in the years since making this account I've spent less time off Tumblr than on it, and enough of the accounts I used to interact with have left that I don't expect any response to this post. I guess I'm just venting. During the 2014-2017 period I was attending university full time. I graduated, so yay for me. I stopped following a lot of web comics and serials that I used to read around 2017, because I kind of just didn't have enough time in the day anymore, and playing video games was a more efficient and less mentally draining way to unwind. Even before that I was essentially just a ghost in those communities, I never really interacted with any of the artists or other fans, I just consumed what they were making and hoped that they kept making it. To this day, not making an effort to become involved in any of those small communities is maybe one of my biggest regrets. Many of them have either entered indefinite hiatus, just became very quiet, and some have finished or just stopped altogether for other reasons. The web culture I wanted to come back and interact with, in large part, doesn't really exist anymore; it was a product of its time, and time has made everyone move on. I can mostly still go back and grab archived copies of the stories and comics themselves, but the communities, the active fans waiting for new episodes and discussing old ones, are basically gone from public view. Many of the artists I used to follow haven't had active accounts that I can find since 2016, or 2015, or earlier, and even if I did want to just drop a heartfelt message thanking them for making something so treasured and nostalgic to me, they'll likely never read it. Maybe lack of such community feedback is why they stopped posting, and people like me are why those projects ended. After graduating, I just needed time to mentally recuperate from the draining final year, and I never really managed to recover all of the interests I used to have or pick up my old online haunts & habits again. They just fell by the wayside because my horribly depressed brain didn't want to spend energy thinking about them. I think I might be starting to ramble. Since graduating, I've pretty much put my personal life totally 'on ice' until I found a job, or went back into postgraduate study. I just didn't think it would take so long, and I was far too shy and embarrassed to continue answering questions about 'what I was doing now'. The years since graduating have very much not been kind to me, and making these decisions was a mistake. Culture isn't something that just 'exists' behind a screen, waiting for you to look at it; it's created by the interaction between artists and their fans, and producers and consumers, and people exchanging ideas. Refusing to engage in this because you just want to look at the final product, kills the culture. So, so many things I used to enjoy are no longer enjoyable to me, and that's my fault for engaging in extreme time-wasting, and spending no energy *trying* to enjoy them anymore. So many things I used to enjoy, are no longer being worked on for a number of reasons, and I guess you could say that's sort of my fault as well, or at least is maybe the fault of people like me. I've always been a bit of a data hoarder, and just recently I was backing up stuff on an old hard drive into a newer one in case it failed, and I came across copies of webcomics I haven't really thought about for close to 5 years. I also happened to be listening to a song that I used to listen to a lot back in the day but haven't for years, and the nostalgia rush literally made me cry. After backing up everything else I could find on that hard drive, I rushed to try and look for anything I could remember I was interested in that was still on the internet, which also lead me back here. Some of you, if anyone is reading this at all, might remember the Drowtales: Moonless Age webcomic. Or you might remember Girl Genius, or Exiern, or the Whateley Universe web stories. You might have gotten into the Fallen London universe, maybe via the Sunless Sea/Skies games. You might have looked at some CYOAs from way back when, or checked out the Jumpchain or Exalted threads on SpaceBattles or SufficientVelocity. You probably haven't, because even if 3 or 4 people actually do read this it's unlikely they have the same interests I used to, but that's okay. I used to quietly geek out about these things for hours on end, and my life has honestly been lesser since I stopped doing that. I've had a horrid, wistful lump inside my stomach since yesterday when I started looking for these things, and I've felt like I'm on the verge of crying ever since as well. After 2 and a bit years of grey, empty anhedonia this is a huge win, and I'm very glad that finding these things again has wrangled some emotion out of me. Many of these projects are still active, several communities actually are still around, and I've resolved to go and introduce myself, no matter whether it makes me anxious to do so or not. Not doing so back when they were more active is an enormous regret, and I don't want that to happen again. I'm hoping to extend this mindset out into the real world as well, and hopefully I'll be arranging some volunteering, part-time study and/or going back and trying to publish some of the work I did in my last year of university, finally. Everyone's been memeing about the 'curse of 2020' for a while now, but I think 2020 was just the culmination of some horrible stuff happening since as early as 2015, and it feels like the final verse of some grotesque voodoo curse on the entire planet. Hopefully it's going to get better from now on. I've never been what you'd call an optimist, or an extrovert, but I really do hope that reaching out to like-minded people can help life be better than it has been. No idea if I'll keep looking through Tumblr, since the buyout and all that, but I guess I'll probably check in from time to time now that I've had this revelation, haha. Anyone who actually took the time to read this; first of all what are you still doing on Tumblr after the porn purge, lmao. Secondly, You're great, and I really hope life has been treating you better than it has me. Have a good one!

[in-this-body-of-mine]

To The Bone (2017) - Analysis and Charting

Let’s go! I’m NOT excited because life is hard but what better way to distract myself than to do this kind of shit. No one cares, anyways.

Since this is the first one, let me tell you what we’re gonna do here. I’ll include the IMDB summary, a summary with spoilers, the placements in the chart, we’ll go over each item (also, spoilers abound) and finally my review and final thoughts. Yes, it’s gonna be long. Read at your own risk.

IMDB summary:  A young woman, dealing with anorexia, meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

Summary with spoilers: Lily Collins plays Ellen/Eli and from the start of the movie she is on the brink of her disease. She was just kicked out of a recovery center and she gets an appointment with a ~cool unconventional doctor~ played by Keanu Reeves. She goes into ANOTHER inpatient treatment home to be treated by him. Shit happens, she seems to be getting better somehow, but then she spirals down, runs away, and after a... near death experience (I wish this was an euphemism) she decides to try recovery again and goes back to the treatment home. That’s where the movie ends.

Chart placements!

Now for each item:

White: Ellen or Eli is played by Lily Collins, who once played Sandra Bullock’s daughter in that movie were she was a Karen. It doesn’t get whiter than that.

Female: She changes her name to Eli mid film (which is how I’ll be calling her here bc we respect chosen names in this household) but she still seems to identify as female and be referred to as such, so here we have it. We do have a guy in the treatment home, but we’ll come back to him later.

Teenager/Young adult: I’m pretty sure she is 19 but every review I see says she’s 20. Either way, she dropped out of college even though she just started it. The actress, however, was 28 at the time the movie was released.

Wealthy/seemingly well-off: Her family has the money to send her to inpatient a bunch of times, and they make a point to mention how they have connections so she didn’t have to wait in line to see this new doctor. Case closed.

Skinny actress from the start: As we know, Lily Collins is already thin and she did struggle with anorexia in the past. Why, however, did she lose weight for this movie? They said it was her decision “to make the character more authentic”. As if not being skin and bones wouldn’t be enough. As if eating disorders don’t come in every size. They shouldn’t let her. The need to shock people is a very dangerous sign to me.

No distinctive personality or hobbies/interests: I’m glad Eli has a thing she loves. It’s not super present, but it’s there, and it’s plot relevant. She loves art and in the story, she had a tumblr (look, it’s us!) where she shared drawings related to her ED and a girl liked her drawings so much that, when she killed herself, she mentioned Eli by name in a note. But that isn’t really explored too much and I kind of got disappointed by that.

Good student: We don’t really know about that... and I don’t think it matter, it’s ok.

Seemingly irrelevant love interest: Why? Just why do we need Luke? Luke is the only guy in the home, and we can SEE that he’s only there to be Eli’s love interest. He wasn’t needed. None of the important plot points have anything to do with him. Make her date a girl. Make her date NO ONE. This is about eating disorders. She could have closer friends in the house. Why was this necessary. Her whole speech about how love is a lie could come from a friendship but no. They had to shove pretty white boy there.

Daddy issues (sometimes coupled with mommy issues): I find this extremely funny but her dad isn’t in the movie. At all. He’s alive and well, but he makes a point to never come home when Eli is even awake. I don’t think they cast an actor for that. As for mothers, she has three, and it’s a trip. Her stepmom on her dad’s side is very out of touch but she wants what’s best for Eli, but she really hates Eli’s biological mom. Bio mom, in turn, is described as a “bipolar lesbian” and the stereotypes are just... ugh. Bio mom has a wife and she is a bit weird too. They sent Eli to live with her absent dad bc “they couldn’t deal with it anymore”. This brings us to a great scene where we can see Eli shrinking in her seat and when the psychiatrist asks her what she is feeling she says “I’m sorry I’m not a person anymore. I’m a problem.” And that’s great to see. But at the same time, I hate that her whole issue in this movie seems to come from her family and anorexia is just a thing that happened, with some vague references to control. 

*Triggering event*: We never see it and it’s okay - but I kind of wanted some more explorations of motives because we have ZERO.

Anorexia as diagnosis: As I always say, what is even the point of making a cool looking movie about EDs if your protagonist is not only anorexic, but also terminally anorexic? Ugh. That’s the only portrayal of anorexia that happens in media and I’m fucking tired.

Checklist of habits (manual for those looking for one): I mean, I mark this down but as I always say: everything is a manual if you’re looking for one. But if you’re doing more than not eating or purging or exercising I’ll judge it as a new tip. A lot of us already thought of/did most of them probably. But the marking remains.

Inpatient treatment (or extended hospital stay): As I said, she is kicked out of one treatment center and goes straight into another. What fucks me up is that the movie HAS other characters with other diagnosis, but we never see anything about them. We don’t see their journey. We only know Luke is a dancer bc he is the love interest. We only know Megan is pregnant and then she’s not bc this sends Eli in a spiral. We only know Kendra is not straight bc she makes a joke about it (and Doctor Beckham follows with a horrible joke about conversion therapy). Did you notice Ciara Bravo was in this movie? I didn’t on first viewing. She has like two lines. The whole movie is centered around Eli and every scene in the house feels like all the other patients only care about her too.

Emotional tipping point: Megan loses her baby and for some reason this affects Eli. Luke kisses Eli and for some reason she’s pissed. At that point, I was annoyed. She has a bad session with Doctor Beckham who basically tells her to grow a pair and stop complaining (which is insensitive as a doctor, but as a person I wanted to do the same) and she decides to quit and leave. She has to go to her mother’s home and I’m supposed to care. Stepmom is mad but doctor says she needs to hit rock bottom. She weights like 70 pounds dude. Rock bottom was about ten pounds ago, next stop is a coffin, mate.

Mom hugs: And here we have the emotional turn around of the movie and it’s just... make it make sense. She goes to her bio mom’s ranch. Her stepmom # 2 tells they’ll have therapy with horses (?). Eli goes sleep in a tent and bio mom cries and says she accepts if Eli wants to die. Very supportive I guess. They have this weird bonding moment where the mom feeds her a bottle like a baby and look, if you liked that, good for you, but I don’t get what I was supposed to feel about it (but that’s mom hug #1). She goes on a hike next morning and... dies? Either way she has an out of body experience where she talks to Luke and sees how she looks - which is weird to me. Didn’t we go over this in the beggining of the movie? Didn’t we establish that she does know what she looks like and doesn’t care? But still she seems shocked and they have a cryptical conversation and she wakes up. And just like that, she’s ok now. She meets up with the other stepmom (mom hug # 2) and goes back to the home.

Happy ending: In the last scene Eli is back to the home and we understand she’s going to try to recover for real this time. I’m okay with that specifically, I think it would be bad if they pretended she just got better with no relapses and everything is fine, but it’s a hopeful ending. Despite the fact that we have no idea if she won’t have a fit and leave in two days and that we never know anything about anyone else and Megan, who lost the baby, never comes back. It’s fine. At that point, I didn’t expect much.

Analysis: I was hesitant to be critical bc this movie was based on the real life experiences of the director and Lily Collins. But fuck it, this is my circus and I’ll clown as much as I want. While I do understand that, I have a lot of thoughts.

Mainly, I need to say that while I understand this is her story, this is a story that was told so many times. I’m tired.

The general public that wants to defend the movie says “well you can’t tell ALL stories”, and while I agree, these people probably only saw this movie about the subject. If you HAVE (or had) and eating disorder, you probably saw tons. And they ALL tell the same story. Which is why I started that chart in the first place.

This movie does have good moments. I do like the acting, I saw people complaining about Keanu Reeves performance - but I do know these were people who disliked the movie entirely. I think his performance was great, Lily Collins performance was great, and their chemistry was great. The best scenes in the movie happened between the two of them. The one thing that I LOVED was their first interaction when he calls her on her bullshit. “You’re not thin, you scare people, and I think you like that.” YES. I never heard anyone talk about that. And I guess I’ll never will, bc the movie itself never talk about this again either. Also when she justifies the tumblr where her art triggered a girl so much, she says that she was just drawing what she knows, he calmly tells her that she can draw, but she doesn’t have to share it online tho. I liked their interactions because often ED patients are treated with silk gloves (is that the expression?) and sometimes there is a need for some though love. I also love Liana Liberato who plays her sister and that’s about it.

The problem with the doctor ends up being: what’s his method? How are you going to cure her? The method makes no sense. I don’t see the reasoning. I don’t think anyone does. And somehow it works and she goes back there. 

I think my major problem with the movie is that it has the same issues every ED portrayal before it. It’s the same story again. I think it shines the most in the whole “it’s not about food, it’s about control!”. It IS about food though. For a lot of people, it is. Maybe not for this director or for Lily Collins, but for so many people it is about food. It’s about control as well, and it is possible that there is other factors related to it, but you can’t chalk it all up to a control issue and pretend it’s just whatever. If the food didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be an eating disorder.

Because of that, we have this heavy focus on her family issues and nothing to do with food. We have people trying to rationalize - maybe it’s bc your mom is a lesbian, maybe it’s bc i didn’t bond with you as a baby - and all that does is to make her lesbian bipolar mother seem like a crazy asshole and her dad seem like an absent asshole as if this is the only factor here. Give me SOMETHING. Any connection to food. Any sense. Nope. She just won’t eat bc her family is fucked up. Hoe, that’s all of us.

And I think the movie unintentionally DOES glamourize anorexia. Subtly, yes, but it does. Eli has SUCH an easy time refusing food. She doesn’t seem to think about food as much as she thinks about herself and her family and Luke and being annoying. She knows a bunch of calories and she overexercises. Idk.  Not to mention that moment when Kendra asks her about purging and she says “it’s not her thing”. I mean. It is no one’s thing. No one likes it. It’s a compulsion. And if you have anorexia that severe and you are not with a feeding tube, you do eat every now and then, and you do have purging mechanisms. If she had said she prefers overexercising as a purging mechanism than to throw up, I would believe her. But the movie acts as if she just never eats ever and somehow she’s still standing. Give her a feeding tube then. It would be more believable.

I know it sounds kind of ranty, but my point here is: this extremely anorexic girl, that looks like a sack of bones, and gets that by never eating and doing crunches all the time, it is the wet dream of a fatphobic society with a 71 billion weight loss industry. This is the dreamy and frugal idea of anorexia that people have when they are deep into the illness - not when they recovered as the people involved say they did. I get that this is a very personal project. But it’s flawed. It doesn’t do anyone any favors. It just tells the same story, for the millionth time, but since this time it was in a big platform, more people saw it, and it was better done, with a better budget and with a good enough resolution so I can see every bone in Lily Collins body.

Anyway, that’s it for today. If you read all of that, thanks. Since this is Netflix, I’m assuming everyone saw, but the other movies are out there and if you need liks, hit me up. Be back soon.

[miliantyna]

Song List 0469 - Turandot - Nessun Dorma; 0470 - Journey - Apotheosis (THE END)

“(...) All'alba vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!”

Hello there, Becomers!

It’s that time, oh you know it’s that time - today I’m finishing up the project of making this blog related to my Song List :)

Started on 2017.01.17, ended on 2021.02.22. 3⅓ years or 1 225 days. 2963 positions at the beginning, 1246 positions at the end. 483 posts. One post on average every 2,5 day.

The difference may seem huge, understandably so, but it didn’t fell like it as I was revising the list. Moreover, basically only the First Three Songs shall never be removed from the list, meaning everything else can (and did, if taken a closer look at some posts I’ve made).

Before disclosing some final thoughts that I would love to share (I will try to keep them brief to not hold you here for hours to an end :) I would also mention today’s date, which is very important too - do you remember that Excel project about timestamps? (SL0265) So in exactly 3 years I will live the same number of days like Truman did :)

The Truman Show (1998)

Returning to the subject, the idea behind starting this project in the first place wasn’t very serious - every once in a while I would just do a little purge, usually to a fraction of the Song List. At the end of 2017 the number of pieces grew to almost 3 thousand and while expanding the list is never a problem, I prefer to keep it in rather updated version. To have stronger connections to what I’m giving my attention to, not just piling it up.

It started out slowly, from posts with mondegreens and funny associations, and if it would stay that way, then the blog would had ended after a year or so, true to my initial thought. However I got a little too ambitious and in a meantime I also added four compilations (in chronological order: “La La La/Na Na Na”; “They Miss Me, They Need Me, They Want Me”; “Did I Stutter?” and “How to Spell that Again?”) plus the “Baby” counter later, meaning that some songs took insane amount of time to be prepared.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

I’m talking about countless hours of listening to the tracks. Deciding if they are worth to be on my final list (in the instance when they weren’t there yet or used to be), if they should stay on it or if they should be removed. Comparing them with each other. Counting the repeated words. Hunting for the “babies”.

Moving on, searching for the materials. Considering their quality. Spending another eternity on watching them and finding the good fragments to use them later. And finally creating the drafts for the posts - I usually had around 50 of them, so it was kind of weird to see the number of them drop during those two last months :)

But to be honest, it wasn’t even the worst thing - it's the Song List itself.

Dragon Tiger Gate (2006)

By definition it’s always changing, so I add someting there, remove something elsewhere, and would you look at it, it’s different every time. Going with that I could continue with the blog for many years to come. And I would be miserable by doing so.

Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed every aspect of the project, even if at times it was getting exasperating, but I don’t think I would like to keep on doing it as there is a possibility that someday my Song List might not contain any of the tracks I used here on this site at the beginning.

And no, I didn’t forget about my promise from that time - I fully intend to keep it as I finished the project with the desired effect I had in mind :)

So the Song List it’s avaliable to view or download under the following link:

GOOGLE DRIVE LINK

While scrolling through it some of the positions are marked in blue - unfortunately those ones aren’t avaliable in the quality and/or the version I'm accustomed to listen to, thus they didn’t make it to the final playlist, compiled under the next link:

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST

In most of those “blue” cases I managed to find some other sources, where they were avaliable, if you will be interested to give them a try. In the same folder you can also find the “Baby Chant” from SL0468 :)

To sum it up, it was definitely a great experience :) It was a tremendous challenge to keep it running and I managed to pull it off, of which I’m very proud. I will reminiscent about every minute I spent on it for many upcoming months, if not years, as I’m not done with my Song List, oh no - it’s just the end of this specific journey of sharing it with you here.

And maybe it will motivate some of you, my Becomers, to start something on your own as my blog is a proof that you can do anything if you put your mind into something and give it some time to grow :)

Journey (2012)

Thank you for stopping by, for every amount of time you spent here with me. It was really rewarding to discover why specific type of posts were visited by you, to have this little glimpse of interests, shared together, even if they’re not manifested in the same way. And if I could have one request - please put the names of the songs in the sources when using them - it surely helps a lot :)

I'm keeping my asks box open in case some of you will find any kind of mistakes in my posts, whenever that might be, or if having any questions. I might not answer right away, but nevertheless I will try to do this as soon as possible.

Powodzenia i do usłyszenia! :)

B.W.N.J. (Miliantyna)

INFORMATION POST MASTERLIST Song List 0268

[diegoalvesisgod]

5, 7, & 35

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?

I’m actually quite proud of some of my nearly forgotten pieces... I Am a Storm from Nowhere, for example. Or Hold My Hand When This Ends. Those I wrote for myself, the self-indulging fics. From the newer ones, don't take that sinner from me is one such fic.

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most?

Basically, putting it all together. I write in chunks, and then I stitch it all together. Sometimes I feel like I have everything important written, but I need to put it together so that it makes sense, and I just don’t enjoy that part.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

I’m probably not even in a rambling mood? But - I’m just gonna say... recently, I went to visit my old livejournal... that I’ve never deleted even though I haven’t logged in since... maybe 2017. And I clicked on my old rec list, and I just felt really sad when I saw all the deleted and purged accounts, and I knew exactly what fics they were and how amazing they were... And I mean, I’m not mad at the authors or anything. You can have tons of reasons to burn the bridges. I keep mine up because maybe someone would once want to find a fic there, although I’ve moved most of them to my AO3 anyway, but I just don’t see a reason to delete it... (I’m that kind of person, I never deleted any of my blogs, the platforms just eventually stopped existing, but if they didn’t, you could probably still read my entries from when I was 12.) And I just thought for a second that I should have downloaded and saved those fics while I had the chance, but then... I suddenly thought - no. They wouldn’t feel the same. They felt right on that person’s journal, in that moment. They belong to that point in time, to that environment. I have a very specific fic in mind now, and I just can’t imagine that I would read it again if I had a word document with it. But if it still existed on the journal... I would read it again. 

So, at the end of the day, my attachment to places probably also extends to online places. And just so that you all know, my livejournal is going to be there until livejournal ceases to exist... just in case you want to experience a vintage fic in its shitty formatted form.

[olderthannetfic]

Let’s take a break from specific fandoms to talk about:

Platform Wars

In 2020, we’re all asking what’s next after Tumblr. This is nothing new. “Is thing X killing thing Y?” is a question fandom has been asking since long before Escapade. But these panels offer comfort and insight into our current fear of change.

They’re also fucking hilarious.

So, without further ado, here are some past Escapade panels on the subject of Change Is Scary:

1997 - Effects of the Internet on Fandom & Slash (On the upside: more fans, more conventions, more excitement and a 24-hour party. On the downside: are the connections more shallow? Are the changes made to "fandom as we knew it" change what we enjoy? Do print fans have something to fear? Or is this simple another wave?)

2000 - Less is More: Gluttony & the Decline of Quality in Fanfic

2004 - Amusing Ourselves to Death (Fannish Discourse in the the Age of the Internet By sheer quantity, has the quality of our conversation declined to predominantly static?)

2004 - LiveJournal, Boon or Bane? (Has the advent of LiveJournal brought about the demise of mailing lists? Has it splintered the venue for discussion to the point where it's impossible to have meaningful conversation? Is the LJ phenomenon just one big egotrip? Come join us to discuss these and other questions.)

2007 - Is F’locked the New Black (Is the flocked post the future of fan communication? Are we returning to the dark ages of closed lists, zines under the table, and "have to know someone"? More and more LJ posts are locked, communities are closed, and groups are invitation only. Is there a way to protect our RL selves (and our fannish selves), yet share our fannish commentary and fic? How does this all look to a newbie? Where is our new comfort zone? And how do we keep track of all of this?)

2008 - The Organization for Transformative Works (The Best Thing Since Ever, or the End Of Days? The OTW is an incorporated nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans in multiple ways, including by providing open-source archive software (and an archive), legal assistance, and various efforts to preserve the history of fanworks and fan culture.)

2011 - Delicious - Rumors of Death Greatly Exaggerated? (Delicious, fandom's favorite bookmarking site may be getting shut down (or at least sold out) by The Man. What to do?)

2016 - Fandom Is Fic: from BNF to TL;DR. (From paper through Usenet to Livejournal, text was king. On Tumblr, long text is an imposition—isn’t it? Has fic been dethroned from its place at the top of the heap and fic-writing BNFs along with it? Discuss the dirty little social dynamics of the shifting patterns of fannish value and how we define 'fandom' itself. And what of zines and zine eds?)

2017 - The Kids Are Not the Problem (In recent years, media fandom has grown enormously. It has also scattered, spreading out to new platforms and meeting spaces. You often hear talk about "the kids" vs. "the olds," Tumblr vs. LiveJournal, or the problem of recruiting and retaining new fans. In this panel, let’s try flipping that script. If kids are not the problem, how can we change and grow? What awesome things are other fans doing/trying that people at Escapade should know about? Most importantly, what strategies can we use to leave our fannish bubbles and more fully experience fandom in 2017?)

2019 - The fall of tumblr (Fans have always looked for a good place to build communities on line. Recent events with Tumblr and other platforms like Facebook are restricting our gathering places and even blocking and purging our self-made content. How are people dealing with this? Fandom will survive, but where? Come discuss the problems and options out there.)

And below the cut, a whole bunch more panels on platforms and change:

1991 - Quality Control in Zine Publication/Economics of Fandom (Who is making money in fandom? Should they be? How accountable are fans? Editors? Artists? Have you ever written an LOC?)

1993 -  Supply and Demand in Fandom (Can we have too much of a good thing? How many cons or zine is too many? Are we glutting the market?)

1994 - Changing Nature of Fannish Communication (E-mail, and virtual zines, computer video editing and morphing -- all the new toys at our disposal...)

1996 - Internet—Will it eat your brain? Or take you to the poorhouse? (Nearly everyone has or can get access to a computer and thereby the Internet and the World Wide Web. What's out there for fans? What should you look for? What might you want to watch out for? How can you protect your pocketbook at the same time?)

1997 - Net Fiction & Print Fiction (Is the very existence of net fic changing the characteristics or reducing the quantity of print fic? Are there really stylistic and/or content differences? What makes some shows predominantly produce netfic, while others happily generate both? How do the barriers of access to each affect the fan community?)

1997 - History of Fan Socialization (Was fandom really different in the "old days"? Was there a feeling of community that we're missing now? Or is that just nostalgia clouding our memories? In today's net-connected fandom, what is (or should be) different? And what elements of the past should we try and retain?)

1998 - Professionals: Is the Circuit Dead? (Or has it just moved on-line? Is Pros fandom split on the subject of the internet? Many old circuit writers don't want anything to do with the new on-line library. They have objected to having their stories retyped an sent out, even on private e-mail. Has the paper circuit given way to the on-line library?)

1998 - Netfic Formatting A: How to Print It Prettily (An instructional panel, covering the basics of formatting, macros, and other time-saving tips to get the results you want.)

1998 - Privacy and Community: Pseudonyms, Screen Names and Face-to-Face Meetings (As more and more fandom is found online, how are we adapting to the anonymity that comes with it?)

1998  - Netfic Formatting B: From Word to Web, Making Shapely Net Slash (This panel is for everyone who wants to venture into the world of online slash, but gets nervous when faced with the myriad technical difficulties. Relax, it's easier than you think. We look at stylistic conventions, how to make your work newsgroup and e-mail friendly, and the dreaded subject header alphabet soup. We'll also cover some basic info on how to make a www archive site user friendly.)

1998 - Crossing the Line (An instructional panel on how to get what you want (more stories) in a world that may be unfamiliar to you (the web for print fans, and the insular world of zines for net fans).)

1999 - Does Print Fandom Have a Future? (In the age of instant, free net fic, is print fandom a dinosaur on its way to extinction, or a promise of reasonable quality in a sea of mediocrity? What are the key differences between zines and netfic, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Can the two coexist happily? )

2000 - Promoting Critique on Mailing Lists (How to promote critical discussion and attention to the mechanics of writing on email lists?)

2000 - Changing Power Dynamics in Fandom (With the decline of zine editors and growth of the Net, what's changed, and how does it affect us and our fanfic?)

2001 - Website Workshop 2 by the lady of shalott (Setting up and maintaining a fanfic archive, and in particular how to set up the Automated Archive software used by 852 Prospect and the Due South archives.) [NB: Yes, she went through a bunch of name versions before ‘astolat’.]

2002 - How to run a Fiction Archive (and Maintain Your Sanity)

2002 - Nobody Here But Us Sockpuppets (How multiple personality disorder takes on a whole new meaning in the world of mailing lists.)

2003 - Getting slash onto your PalmPilot for computer free reading

2003 - Recs Databases! Creation and Commiseration (Do you run a recs database and want to commiserate? Do you currently have a recs page and want to become database-driven? Want to talk about the relative merits of using PHP, MySQL, or Access to organize smut?)

2003 - How to Set Up and Maintain Fanfiction Archives (If you're thinking of running an archive, or already do and need some help, this is the panel for you. We'll cover everything from choosing a method of archiving, handling fandom growth, dealing with troublemakers, and just how much time, webspace and money are we talking, anyway? Come pick the archivists' brains.)

2003 - Has Escapade Run Its Course (Scuttlebut says: It's not like it used to be. My old friends don't come any more. My new friends can't get in. It's too big. It's too small. Oxnard, for god's sake? I'm getting sick and tired of the same shit year after year. Is Escapade old and tired? Does it need to be retired?)

2004 - HTML and Website Introduction (if you don't have a website and want to create one. where doyoustart'This will cover creating basic HTML pages and common webhosting options, as well as things to think about as you set iin vour first website.)

2005 - Where Have All The Good Conversations Gone? Rise & Fall of the Escapade Panel (Are people still interested in talking about the characters, plots, and themes of their shows? Has in-depth analysis of our fandoms been abandoned in favor of meta and fannish introspection? The forums for analytical discussion are disappearing as self-censorship and over-moderation increase. Can we change this? Do we want to?)

2005 - The Fannish Wiki (So we have the directorium, the directory of All Things Fannish. We visit it and it's just so cool, and we look for our fandom to see what it says... and it's not there! How to add it? What sort of info belongs there? How does a wiki work?)

2005 - I Was So Much Older Then, I'm Younger Than That Now (We've all heard about or lived through the tumultuous era when fandom moved online. But how has slash fandom, particularly slash fandom, changed since then? Are the changes the result of online fandom, or simply of a change in culture?)

2005 - Fanfic Archives (Setting up and administering fanfic archives: concepts, considerations, techniques.)

2006 - Putting your fic on the web (Basic skills for putting your fic on the web, including building your own very basic website, using LJ as a fic-site building tool, various options for labeling adult content, and using the standard upload interfaces for popular self-submit story archive software.)

2006 - Nifty Technology and the Future of Fandom (Fandom is quick to adapt to change and continues to bring fen together and to create fannish product. Fans have thrived regardless of how they communicate; via the post office, mailing lists, message boards, and Livejournal; they've pushed the frontiers of video and audio technology; and have managed to survive changes in copyright, pornography, and other laws. What are the upcoming trends and shiny new technologies on the horizon and how will fen use them to enhance fandom?)

2006 - Intermediate Webmastering (Designing your website for usability, options for restricting access to your website, making your stories easily accessed by mobile devices, and things to consider so fans can easily locale your site.)

2007 - Free Webtools and How to Take Fandom Advantage (Lots of free tools are available on the web to help the needy fan! Tools to edit pictures, make icons, write stories, share recommendations, share stories, and be fannish are becoming more available and more user friendly. Come chat about tools like del.icio.us, google docs, pxn8 audacity, itunes, the gimp, bittorrent, imeem, youtube and lll other things that you come and tell us about!)

2008 - E-book Readers (Sony PRS-505 or Amazon Kindle what's all the fuss about? Introduction to E-Ink and other mobile devices. What are the pros and cons of various devices? Where do you find e- books and fan fiction, and most importantly how do you get fan fiction formatted so you can read it on your ebook reader?)

2008 - If You Build It, Will They Come? (Roundtable on meta fannish infrastructure building strategies. bethbethbeth can talk about some of the specific challenges OTW is facing in its brave new fan territory, while oulangi can talk about why metafandom has flourished while very similar projects have failed, while we'll both discuss some of the challenges of the established meta/fannish structure of new communities, new fans, new technologies—and most of all, how do you keep the meta-fan conversation moving forward?)

2008 - Livejournal: Should Fans Take Their Business Elsewhere? (A discussion of the pros and cons of fannish communication on the various blogging entities.)

2008 - How to Find and Use Free Stuff on the Web (All kinds of free webapps are available for fic, art, icons, communication, and all sort of other fannish stuff. Come share favorite sites—we can bookmark everything we talk about on del.icio.us in real time!)

2009 - The Organization for Transformative Works (Off the ground and starting to soar! Come here about the latest developments in the OTW's projects and discuss where you'd like to see it go next.)

2010 - Is Somebody Taking Notes On This?: A Discussion of the Role of Fannish History (In honor of Escapade's 20th anniversary, let's talk about recording fannish history. What are the challenges? Is it worth doing? Can it be done in a fair way? What are we afraid of happening if we try? Is Fanlore the right vehicle for the project?)

2010 - The OTW in Its Third Year led by Elke Tanzer and Shoshanna (Okay, sure, the Organization for Transformative Works bought its own goddamn servers and hosted an archive (that hosted Yuletide) and published a journal (with a special issue on Supernatural) and saved a bunch of Geocities sites and testified at the DMCA hearings (supporting the FFF's proposed exemptions for vidders and other remix artists) and made a bunch of lolcats—but what have they done for us lately? [5] What do you want them to do?)

2010 - We Are All Naked (On The Internet Now) led by treewishes (Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are conspiring with Google and your ISP to out your slash pseudonym to your RL friends, and to tell all your slash buddies your real name. Is there any way to stop the wave of facial recognition software or your oh-so-helpful friends who type your birthday into the cloud? Or is all this an inevitable consequence of evolving technology? Come on in and let's talk conspiracy theories!)

2011 - Fanlore: Are BNFs Writing Our History?, led by Sandy H (Fanlore has an official policy of 'plural points of view', but is that really happening? Have you ever looked up a kerfluffle you were involved in, and seen how your side of the battle was portrayed.' And on the other side, are we afraid of conflict, to the point that Fanlore is bland and safe?)

2011 - OTW/AO3 Wish List Conversation, led by Sandy H (Do you feel like you don't know how to get your A03 or OTW wishlist through the bureaucracy? A03 is getting better all the time, but there's a ways to go. Let's brainstorm and turn a list over at the end of the panel.)

2011 - The Reccing Crew (Recommending a fanwork is deeply woven into our culture. Are there new social mores at work when we make public recs? How has the move from letters to mailing lists to Livejournal and Delicious affected reccing? Delicious was conceived as a bookmarking site, but often operates as a recs and comments site. If it goes away, what would replace it?)

2012 - Tumblr, Twitter, and Pinboard, Oh My (and GetGlue, too!) (In the past year, the ongoing fannish diaspora has picked up speed, as more fannish activity has moved away from LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, and onto sites like Tumblr and Twitter. And then there was the Delicious implosion. Now there's GetGlue, a social network specifically for entertainment. Let's talk about navigating these sites—their strengths and weaknesses, and how to use them.)

2012 - The Kids These Days (Ever wanted to tell someone to get offa your lawn? Strangle the next person who said that? Revive a dead fandom? Joined a fandom you were 20 years "too old" (or young!) for? Did you go from Usenet to mailing lists? From zines to livejournal? Are you eyeing Tumblr and Twitter with alarm? Let's talk about weathering changes in fandom with grace—or at least a little humor.)

2013 - Privacy, Secrecy, and the Fourth Wall (The fourth wall between fans and The Powers That Be is shrinking day by day. Are the technologies we're using changing fannish etiquette {from invite-only mailing lists, to friends-locked journals, to all public all the time tumblr)? Should we run for the hills or embrace the change? Discuss!)

2013 - The What With the Where Now?! (Every time you turn around fandom is playing on a new site that has new functionality, new ways of interacting and new lingo. Join us in surveying places like tumblr, twitter and getglue.)

2014 - Tumblr: Missing Missing E (So you've just gotten the hang of Livejournal when all of a sudden fandom has jumped shipped to this new "microblogging" platform called Tumblr. What is "microblogging" anyway, and where do you even start? Join us in this tutorial/discussion on creating an account, deciphering the culture, finding fandom, and making Tumblr work for you.)

2014 - Out Of Step With the World (You have no current fandom. You can't even get Tumblr to load. What do you do when you're feeling disconnected and alienated, but you don't want to leave fandom for good? If this sounds like you, come join us to figure out some strategies for rekindling the love, making new friends, and finding your place.)

2014 - Real Fannish Community (Has AO3 ended the era of real fannish community or has it ushered in a new era of increased connectedness? Is Tumblr better or worse than the old days (and were the old days livejournal? yahoo groups? APA snail mail zine groups?)? I'm hoping for equal parts 'get off my lawn' and 'the future's so bright I gotta wear shades' debate here.)

2015 - Tumblr 102: Into Darkness. You’re here, now what? Here we talk about etiquette and xkit and making the most of your fannish tumblr experience.

2017 - Home on the Web (LJ's Russian overlords have removed HTTPS support and are moving the server activity to Russia; some say a shutdown of US services is on the horizon. Yahoo fails to make money with Tumblr. Dreamwidth is slow, and doesn't have media hosting. Email lists are a hassle. Imzy, a startup, places branding aesthetics over design usability. Where's the next place for fandom, or should we reclaim one or more of the platforms from the past?)

2018 - How to Tumblr (Like it or not (often, mostly not), tumblr is where fandom is most active right now. How do you find anything? How do you have conversations? How do you archive the bits you like best? The good news: the answers are not, "you don't; you don't; you don't." Bad news: Those aren't actually good questions for being fannish on tumblr.)

2019 - Social Network of Our Own (SNO3?) (Between FOSTA/SESTA, Article 13, Facebook's new "don't mention that sex exists" policy, and the Tumblrpocalypse, is it time for our own fannish social site? Or are Dreamwidth and Pillowfort enough?)

[findingmypeace]

1/31/2020

So many posts from me lately! I’ll shut up soon, I promise. Another night I can’t sleep. It’s almost 3am. This time it isn’t racing thoughts about my attempt that are keeping me up. No, this time it’s about something I haven’t thought about in a long time: both the end of my frienship with R and the last time I was in a HLOC for my ED. The two are tied together because it was the eating disorder that initially ruined things between me and R and the beginning of the end started when I was in residential treatment. I’m not going to write about the end of my friendship with R, although it still hurts a lot, because it’s the middle of the night and I don’t have the emotional energy to explain everything. But I do want to write about something that is connected to it because I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve been in a HLOC five times. The first four times insurance cut me off prematurely every time and at every level of care, sometimes not even covering a step-down. The forth time this happened I almost sued the insurance company because it was so ridiculous. Anyway, my last time in treatment I went to a place that was excellent at utilization review (getting insurance coverage) and for the first time ever I was able to stay at every level of care for the recommended length of time. I started out in PHP, went to residential, then PHP again, and finally did IOP. The whole process took about 9 months. I ‘graduated’ at the end of March 2018.

I am so mad at myself for what I did after treatment. Within two weeks of graduating I relapsed. I despised my body and weight and couldn’t stand it so pretty much as soon as I got the chance I relapsed to lose weight. I regret it so much. For the first time ever I got to stay in treatment for the appropriate amount of time and when I graduated I had gone the longest in decades without purging. I was essentially doing the best I had ever done in recovery. And then I ruined it all just because I couldn’t stand the number on the scale. So stupid. Oh and the worst part about it, it’s almost two years later and, in my relapse, I have lost weight but then gained it all back and then some. I’m now at a higher weight then when I finished treatment.

And the awful thing is I don’t think I’ll ever be in recovery again. I could probably do it if I had the motivation and the desire. I have the knowledge and the skills to be in recovery. I just can’t let go of losing weight. I had hope when I was in treatment last. I thought recovery could happen for me. But now that it’s been a total of six major attempts at recovery (I tried to do it outpatient once) and each one ending with a relapse I just don’t have hope that I’ll ever make it work.

I have ECT in a few hours (so I should try to get some sleep) and I might talk to my ECT psychiatrist about my frustration with recovery. I initially met my ECT psychiatrist at my last residential stay because he is also the psychiatrist for that treatment center. My first round of ECT (in Nov/Dec 2017) was when I was in PHP at that facility. I don’t expect him to be able to help in any way because I have no intentions of going back to treatment but at least I know he gets it. I’m just angry with myself because I had a real chance at recovery and I basically threw it away and now I have no motivation or energy to change things.

[imadeandfoundthisstuff]

Sweeney Todd Blood Razor

This is the blood squirting razor I made for the Ephrata Performing Arts Center production of Sweeney Todd back in October of 2017. It seems like theaters often will kinda go the safe route with this show, and just mime the blood, or stylize it and use red ribbons or something like in that episode of The Office, which I completely get- blood on stage is an absolute mess to deal with. It gets everywhere, it creates a slipping hazard, etc. But it can also be super fun, so when the director of Sweeney made it a point to say he wanted LOTS of blood, I was happy to oblige. 

What I ended up doing was getting a weed sprayer from the hardware store, and then I cut down the rod to be about the same length as the blade on the metal stage-safe razors that they were using in other, non-specific to throats getting cut scenes.

I then drilled 4 holes in the shortened rod using the largest size drill bit that I could use to get the largest holes that I could. After the holes were drilled, I cleaned the holes with a metal file to smooth them out, and then I used an air compressor to blow out all the plastic chunks and dust in the rod, before reattaching it to the handle/trigger. I then plugged the end of the rod with a small screw and JB Weld, obviously NOT the end that was getting screwed back onto the handle/trigger. 

Next, I traced the shape of the blade from the metal stage-safe razor onto some soft foam and cut that out, then hot glued it to the other side of the rod (the side without the holes) and spray painted everything silver to match the metal razor. NOTE- If you’re trying this project, just make sure to tape or plug the holes before painting! I also wrote TOP and BOTTOM on the “razor” because the on-stage gag relied on a slight of hand trick by the actor in which he’d put down the metal razor he had been holding and singing to and then every so swiftly pick up the squirter one with his other hand. The holes needed to be pointing down and slightly out for the effect to look the best, and this visual cue helped him pull that off. To get the Gravity & Momentum (truly the finest stage blood in the world!) blood to flow through the tubing and out of the “razor” without clogging I had to thin it out with water AND heat it up before each performance. But once everything was ready, it worked pretty well-

The next step was mounting it on the barber chair. I found a metal trash can at Walmart that was just big enough to hide the reservoir in, and then I got extra tubing and extensions from the hardware store so that the length of tubing from the “razor” to the reservoir would be the perfect length that I needed. I then mounted a shower caddy on the back of the chair to store the “razor” and the stage-safe razor that the actor would swap out in the scene. I also mounted some of those spring loaded clip things to hold the tubing in place so that it was secure but not permanent, as I’d have to be removing, purging, flushing, and cleaning the rig after each performance. 

Here it is in action, all credits for the photo go to Ephrata Performing Arts Center-

God this was a messy show- there was basically a janitorial list to complete after each performance. But all the blood and Jello “meat” and more blood (all of which I’ll cover in several other posts) really added an amazing visceral element, and it was completely worth it! 

[darkspellmaster]

Update and Edit and Master Post to the Fokker Conspiracy: A Guide to this whole mess.

Firstly a special thanks to several people that have helped me with this. I couldn’t have done this without more than my eyes.

Secondly: To those that are determined to believe these leaks, I’m going to say this right now. I am not going to judge you, I’m not here to be spiteful and say you’re wrong, I have no horse in this race. So if you want to believe in the leaks, then do so, I’m not going to harass or bug you about it or tell you you’re wrong.

Third: This post is designed to be informative as possible, and if anyone needs to correct something, please shoot it in the notes below so that I can go in and correct them. I want people to have enough info to make their own call on this, and all I’m doing is laying out the facts.

So without further ado, all details and information is below the cut here.

Adding in updates and edits as I go...Edit: 2.0.2

Edit: (I’m going to be polite as I got a note from tumblr in regard to BTI Studio, which makes me think that it’s the name and they are doing blanket purges as their name is being used by this. I am trying to find a way to contact the person that copyrighted me, a Mr. Rachel, who works as part of the IT Manger at BTI Studios. Which makes me think that this is more on the use of the name than the pictures themselves. 

Anyone know if he’s on Twitter? I got this on the 24th, it is now the 29th and I did not receive any further notices. As I’m not on linked in and don’t have access to email him directly.  This makes me think it’s the name as if it was all of NBC Universal all other forms of these images including VSI would be asked to be taken down. As was the Pidge and Lance image that was made to be a fake to show how easy it is to make one. This doesn’t mean that the leaks are real, only that the name, like all company names, should not be used without the consent of the copyright holder.) 

Edit: According to Anon, the Plance photo which was a fake used to show how anyone can make this sort of thing was also copyright struck. Meaning that regardless of just fan art, or not, real or fake, you could be hit by a notice to remove the work. This is what is considered a kind of blanket purge meant to just clean everything up, even if it’s not even a leak. As long as there’s some bit of what is considered Intellectual property connected to the peice (character, name of studio, logo, even something as simple as “Property of X” it can be copyright struck.) 

So let’s start with the Real Leaks that happened from both France and the US and Mir.

So let’s go with Kimiko’s leaks. For those that don’t know, these are real leaks from the Voice actress of Ezor, who was working in New York at the time for Broadway and was dubbing over lines that they either changed or didn’t get a strong enough take for her.

This photo was taken way back on April 18th 2017, since the date on the image dates the day of the photo taken.

So Several things you need to note about these picture.

1.       The photo has the timer on the top and the side showing the take, we have a transparent property of DreamWorks, and the full locked and updated note with date and time on the bottom to denote that voice recording was locked in and updated at that point in time. There are also codes that give editors information.

2.       The name of the studio is real, and they have their water mark in a way that doesn’t distract from the actors recording as well as it being transparent enough for them to do the recording as the water mark is put over as another layer on the screen for various legal reasons. Hyperbolic Audio is a dub studio in New York that works with several clients.

3.       This photo was taken down within a few hours of it being put up by DreamWorks and basically the studio put out an announcement that requested the leak be taken down, as did the actors and other people working for the company. Word got out really fast and this image was removed and did later show up in the show.

Then there was the leak from Stuido Mir. This one I don’t have pictures of since most were taken down or deleted.

1.       Confirmation of the photos were made by Mir itself.

2.       The original poster of the pictures took them down and then requested that others take down the leaked images.

3.       Someone tried to blackmail the studio holding the artwork, which lead to them being basically forced to take down the images.

4.       This all within a few hours and days of the leaks coming to light.

Now this one is important because this one plays a role in everything that we’re going to discuss below.

So from my understanding the French actor of Keith Lionel (hope I’m spelling that right) took a photo of himself and others in the recording studio during the earlier seasons.

(This was removed more recently by him because people found it.)

So several important things to note here.

1.       The photo again was taken by someone directly connected to the show and within hours of it coming out it came down. As dated by the discord server, this was done way back in 2017.

2.       As you can see the program is very unique and that’s because it is a one of a kind program that was built for the dubbing studio.

3.       As you can see here, the picture spreads over the screen and stops short of where the table is on the left.

4.       You can see the text on screen is far smaller and transparent so you can see the words.

4 a. According to Anon, this may be the work of DreamWorks themselves. As the water marks would have to be done by them directly. Again I have never seen this sort of water marking on anything before, and no other studio has done this, and they have never done this to any of their other shows as far as I’ve seen. We’ll have to wait and see if they do this with She-ra as it’s another 2D show vs. 3D which is harder to do a lot of edits for. 

5.       The setup shows the words below, etc.

6.       The words do not go over into the dark area of the screen and never cross over the table on the right side of the screen.

7.       The photo was taken down within a few hours of it being put up and the studios were fast to take it down and tell the actors to tell their fans to make sure it’s not distribute the image. Same as with Kimiko’s leak.

With all this in mind. Let’s take a look at the latest leaks and try to clear this all up.

Recent leak with the French Dub team.

So let’s go over this piece by piece.

1.       The fact is that this is a real photo of the cast of Voltron from France, that is not the issue. The issue is the screen behind them.

2.       The bottom screen where the words are…

Okay so I did some digging on this studio. You can find information regarding them in the links below.

So Chinkel S.A. has a very unique program for dubbing created by Cappella systems. This was built just for them and there is no other studio that owns this sort of set up. This is really important to note because all of the leaks have had an altered version of their watermarks.

The important things here…

1.       The words would not stretch across the whole screen like this. As the cut of the projected image would be set directly before the text boxes as you see in the studio image.

2.       The words are too big, and are not opaque, and are too few. As the original real leak shows the “Do not copy” has 8 lines, the fake one here only has 5.

3.       Yellow words are wrong and should be a way lighter color. As the color is yellow in the fake leaks and the real ones are transparent and name Chinkel S.A. not VSI which is wrong.

4.       The image that is being used is that of a cropped shot of the previous leak as they cut off the other mouse, which you would not do as we see in the original real leak shows that the image stretches across the screen.

4a. Edit: Thank you anon for pointing out the mouse. My mistake here as the image I saw on my home computer makes the image look far more blurred then on the bigger one at work. You are right that it does have the mouse there, and the non studio shot that I have with the BTIStudio logo on it doesn’t have Pidges shoulder in it. I mixed those two up.  I do personally though find it odd that the mouse is in the same position as the first shot. 

5.       The bottom line of the text doesn’t bend properly.

As shown by @huntypastellance post, the bending of the light of the projector is way off on the bottom of the shot.

Normally a projector would be bending and curving around the actors’ body and in this case they are not fully being wrapped around. Which is, as @aquaburst07 and @ladynoctern told me, as both are graphic designers, not at all how this is supposed to work in a legit picture.

Also something of importance that I must call to mind. The words on the bottom of the screen. They are not on the bodies of the actors. If this is a real projection then the light and worlds should be bending and shaping around the actors and this is not behaving in the way that it should. Also the word would not be cut off like that, even if you pause the scene, and you would never pause in a scene like this to take a photo.

Ask any VA, they would tell you that you would not waste time in this way. You’re costing time that you need to record. So if you take photos like this, it’s done before or after the recording session starts.

Additionally the light is off in regard to how a dubbing room would be used.

There is also the very blunt issue of the table on the right being way wrong, as you would not have a scene in there and have it read carton. As you see with the studio image it would have a list of the different recording aspects in there.

In the photo that was leaked there is none of that. And also there is no red lines near the end to be used to mark for audio recording purposes.

In another photo from the Chinkel S.A. website through the VSI website when translated they show their font on screen. It’s not very hard using Adobe products to create fonts and part of Graphic design is learning to do that.  There is no words over the actors like there should be since this “scene” comes before the “wedding scene”.

Another small factor that’s been bugging me about the order of these scenes, the art story makes no sense. As a narration due to the time it reads like this. 

First you have the older picture scene of them as a group, since the timer reads 22:09, then you have Keith’s scene at 22:30, and then you have the wedding, at 22:42. Here’s the reason this is bothering me. In normal structure you would have the picture of the younger group, then the moment of Keith, then the older group, and then end it on the wedding. 

So if you notice that the show is doing the Final Fantasy XV way of making a character look older by giving them scruff on their chin. If Shiro’s wedding happens before the picture, where is his husband? If the wedding is taking place after the second group photo where is the scruff on their chins. 

Also if you’re doing a sort of nostalgic moment you end on the group shot, you don’t star on it, that’s doing things in a backwards style and no storyboard writers group would do that. You want your story to flow. 

Example: A- First shot with the statue in the back. 

B -Keith shot

C -Wedding

D- Time skip shot with the group in color. 

As I said in my large anon asks, the point of sepia is to make the tone of the scene feel nostalgic or memory like. 

(I’m simplifying a lot of this because there’s so much here from a graphic design angle that a lot of people will be confused here)

6.       The water mark on the screen is off, and the wrong type. Chinkel uses it’s name as the water mark and not the studios owner VSI.

7.       Also the fact that the picture is too clean and sharp vs all the other aspects of the photo which are pixelated and blurred.

So onto the others. Let’s start with the Wedding and move our way down…

(Using Cinderella III because the stance is similar to the leaked image) 

(For those wondering why I keep calling the character Roy, it makes it easier for me than calling him “That one dude that looks like a famous character from Macross that is supposed to be a homage to him, and clearly isn’t him.” ) 

8.       This image was cropped at the top.

8 a.  As Anon pointed out to me in inbox, the characters in the back are static and not moving. This would not be normal and, as I said in my post that got deleted, the characters were probably redrawn from either a posed picture, or some sort of promotional art and then traced over. Newtype magazine does a lot of illustrations that have moments that are not in the shows and weddings are sometimes used for their articles when they want to push a couple. 

9.       It’s been layered. The fact is that only Chinkel has the software to do this, so this was created by duplicating the layers and then taking and cutting and stamping and a lot of things in photo shop.

10.   As per the Chinkel real leak, the property of DreamWorks on the bottom is not in stroke.

11.   We have the fact that this guy looks way to much like Roy Fokker to be legally allowed. If this is supposed to be Adam then there’s something way off with him.

12.   As I detailed before you can’t use images or look a likes of Roy Fokker due to Studio Nue and Harmony gold and Tatsunoko’s huge legal fight, and he wouldn’t be accessible until after 2021. So no…no Roy would be allowed even if he is Adam or just meant to be a look alike.

12 a. As @rsasai points out in this post using Roy would cause massive issues in Japan alone. http://rsasai.tumblr.com/post/179513598638/reminder

13.   Also pidge’s eyebrows are off slightly and in the kiss scene you can see that Roy’s hand and arm vanishes

13a. Cleaner image shows that the arm is there, it’s just very hard to see, which again is why normally you don’t use the sepia tones there. 

Link to image here

Since the Image has the BTIstudios name on it, and seems to be the reasons for the take downs, I’m linking it. 

The interesting thing though is, again, I’m talking here from the perspective of framing a scene. 

Closest one that I could find with the same or similar arm movements. 

As you can see the more natural grip would be on the upper arm, it might be that Shiro’s arm can’t do that anymore? It seems like an odd place to put his arm. 

Similarly here’s a shot that is a lot like the leaked one. Again the arms placement would naturally fall on the chest or arm of the other person as they are being pulled into the kiss, so you’d rest your arm where it feels natural. 

13 b. Anon also pointed out that Shiro’s hand is resting on a location that would be more suited for a shorter character in place of Roy. Also his line of sight in the other pictures doesn’t match up, as he is looking down possibly at someone shorter than him, and also the art could allow for rotation on the head, as it’s easier to do that in profile than in person. 

14.   As per Malaysian posters, the wording on this is wrong and would not read that.

15.   NBCU would not have it’s name on this period. You don’t have a stroke around a water mark.

16.   BTI studios doesn’t have this program and would not just go by BTI studios.

17.   Water marks do not work like that. You wouldn’t have a pause thing either.

18.   And there is a lot of issues of where the words are being put because you can’t and shouldn’t have it hard for the voice actors to see the lip flaps.

19.   Pause would not look like this and not be placing like this at all. Also the image of the kiss may be modeled on artwork from Macross do you remember love. 

So with the second set of leaks we see changes.

20.   Lance and Allura are possibly a redraw of Allura and Lotor.

21.   Again BTISudios do not have the same type of equipment as Chinkel so this text over the screen should not be in there.

22.   Allura’s crying is in the wrong spot. As I showed with the superman reign shot

23.   One thing that I need to point out is the extra strand of hair for Allura, which she should not have.

24.   Again this has been cropped and you wouldn’t have it in this tone as Voltron for past memories has shown it uses a white filter.

See with how Romelle and Bandor’s memory scene is framed in a light white edge to it, so show that it’s in the past. If the scene with these two are happening in the past then both should be in a white light not a sepia tone.

Jumping ahead to Keith’s leak.

25.   Again wrong colors, we know that BTI Studios do not have this type of software.

26.   Keith would still be with Voltron, and why is Zethrid wearing a BOM uniform while Ezor has a patch over her eyes. This is all very wrong.

27.   Keith’s scar is not quiet right either.

The last one has a lot wrong with the group shot and more to the point the one on the top is far worse.

28.   Pidge’s eyebrows are cut wrong, her hair is based more on Lotor’s bangs then her own.

29.   Pidge’s nose was half cut off by the altered glasses placed on her.

30.   Keith’s fingers look weird and his hand is off, and if it’s lance’s it still a bit weird. 

31.   You wouldn’t have the image cut like that, and have the “Do not copy” would not flow off the screen in the way it does.

32.   Coran hasn’t changed at all, and his ears are off.

33.   Shiro looks more like an older version of Yu Narukami than himself.

33 a. Edit: As per @leavesandroses “Studio Mir also does statues in 3D, not drawn animation” And they are right.  If you look at artwork from Legend of Korra and at Aang’s statue because that’s some of the best shots, you can see how it’s done via CG rather than via traditional hand drawn.

Even Lotor’s statue is similar in design and uses the same type of rendering only with a filter over it as it’s a memory. 

Allura’s statue doesn’t have this same affect where you can tell it’s CG as you should in the shot. 

Thanks to  @rsasai , who did some testing, you can see the art work doesn’t over lap right.

As you can see if these are all the same product they should line up…they don’t. No matter what way you try to overlap the screens will not match up.

Then there’s the added fact of the weird words that would not be on screen in this way.

34.   Screens are all fucked up, you wouldn’t have the water marks cutting into the Property of DreamWorks

34 a. You would also not have the “One year later” on top like that. 

35.   Also no studio would do it in this way. No one would be this dumb. This is way too close to how they would do some weird stuff in the 1990s, which would never be done here in the states now.

36.   There’s also the bad translation which would not be allowed.

On top of all of this and several other things that others have pointed out over and over again, you would not have three leaks of this magnitude and not have this pulled fast off the net. As I said with the original real leaks both were removed very fast by DreamWorks.

All three studios would have been pulled from the Netflix list and most definitely in the case of VSI and Chinkel SA they would have their preferred vendor award taken away. "Netflix Preferred Vendor of the Year - Timed Text (High Volume) for 2018.”

Not only would the actors from the shows be blacklisted for their willingness to participate in what would be seen as a very big Legal copyright issue, but also Netflix, WEP, DreamWorks and NBCUniversal would probably, along with other companies, never want to work with them again.

Then there’s the fact that romelle-against-the-antis got a confession from the first leaker saying that they faked the leaks.

With all this being said…and I’m sure others can add onto this with their own information, you can make your own call if this is fake or real. I’m not going to tell anyone what to believe, but for me there’s enough proof that make me believe that this whole thing is an elaborate hoax set up to drive the fans into extreme case of worry.

So please guys…. Forget about this, just wait till the season comes out and let the chips fall where they may. Go outside, find another show to watch for the time, enjoy the fact that Halloween is only a few days away, get ready to go shopping for the holidays, make something! I just hope the Voltron Fandom will relax.

Links here to all the stuff:

https://huntypastellance.tumblr.com/post/179486029100/leaks-discourse-update

https://www.vsi-paris.tv/nos-services/voice-over

https://www.vsi-paris.tv/en/dubbing

https://www.vsi.tv/news/netflix-preferred-vendor-year

https://www.vsi.tv/facilities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSI_Group

http://romelle-against-antis.tumblr.com/day/2018/10/23/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Gold_USA#Legal_issues_regarding_Macross_copyright

 Thank you’s go here.

@aquaburst07

@rsasai

@springofviolets

@ladynoctern

@romelle-against-antis against antis

@huntypastellance

And a whole lot of Anons. With this being said, this will be my last update until something major comes out. 

Side note So this..

is a actual photo from the screening of the actual end of the show with JDM and LM. It’s from JDS’s twitter account. Actors and crew and whoever came to see it signed an NDA and I expect that anyone claming to be leaking from this would be taken down and probably fired or fined for leaking anything from that screening. 

Honestly with the clues here I”m betting that Matt and his girlfriend will be the ones having the wedding, or someone there previous screening that they already decorated and left that stuff up there from that event.  Either way, everyone take a deep breath and relax until December...then you can freak out.