#fandom 5

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[renaissanceousia]

one of the most intimate scenes i've ever read i'm so serious

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I think I made some of you guys a little sad with my last post, so you can have some happy aftermath twins before part 2, as a treat ❤️

[actualaster]

Everybody always talks about "oops the fic was longer than it was meant to be"

But shoutout to my fellow "can't/can rarely write a multichap/anything longer than 5k or so max, often way less" writers who just can't seen to stop their fic from being shorter than intended.

Anyway longform and shortform writing are different skillsets and while fandom often only cares about, appreciates, and praises the former, I always love you, fellow shorter fic writers. A drabble is a challenge, and not every story needs to be 30k+. Shorter fics are amazing.

[artepti]

Here for the Shadowpeach Bio Parents AU Takeover by @kyri45 :]

If you're not reading it, you're missing out! Start it here! :D

[helpallthenamesaretaken]

medusa in the tv show asking for someone to come help her in the kitchen KNOWING that percy would be lured in because he has a single mom and helping in the kitchen would be instinctive and it actually working is genius writing fr.

[paperlignes]

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2019-) SEASON 5, EPISODE 6: URGENT CARE

crazy bitch, horny bitch, boring bitch, queen bitch.

[velvet4510]

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Sharon would’ve died completely alone, never again having a taste of sisterhood or adventure.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Jen would never have unbound herself or regained her power.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Alice would never have known what her mother did for her or broken the curse, achieving what her ancestors could not.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Lilia would never have achieved closure within herself or understood her own purpose in life.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Agatha would never have learned to love a child again or realized that she could still be more than just a killer.

Every member of the coven, whether they physically survived in the end or not, was given something immeasurably valuable by Billy through his Hex of the Road.

He may have “killed” some of them.

But in truth, in one way or another, he saved all of them.

[deanlenzart]

a home youve outgrown, the fear that you havent changed at all. decided to overpaint the original piece from 2021 and add juno to the scene. felt only right, now that he has returned home

[asharaks]

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

[startrekuniverse]

[moonlit-typewriter]

“So do we have a deal or am I killing all 3 of you so I. Can eat. In peace?!”

Walker is the absolute king of micro-expressions.

This is how Percy reacts to Ares’ threat. Up to this point, he’d actually been giving the god some pushback (in typical Percy fashion). But the second Ares’ tone changed, the second that he gets angry, leaning forward, forceful and red-faced, Percy’s demeanor changes. His eyes widen, eyebrows draw together, his mouth falls open before he intentionally presses it closed, and he looks away.

He’s completely avoiding eye contact.

When he does look back at Ares, he has this slightly disdainful look in his face. The way that one side of his face is kind of scrunched up.

You wanna know what Percy still doesn’t do? He doesn’t hold eye contact. He looks at Ares, sure, but for less than a second at a time. When he finally says they’ll do it, he’s looking away and his eyes very quickly move to Ares’ face before looking away so quickly that it’s easily missed, almost like he’s trying to see how Ares reacts to his “surrender.”

And what does Ares do? He backs off. Sits back in his chair and smiles like he didn’t just coerce a kid. And while he’s talking, after that, we see Percy briefly again and he’s the only one of the 3 not looking at Ares.

The sudden fear in Percy’s eyes at Ares’ tone and inflection? Lowering his gaze? Giving in despite clearly not wanting to and the moment of processing after the interaction is over?

Just because we didn’t see Gabe being overtly abusive onscreen, doesn’t mean the abuse isn’t still there in subtle ways.

[wyervan]

hello👋 I really love your art😍 I must admit you are amazing. but can I make a request? Like drawing the sun and the moon with a hoodie. I would really love to see them in another outfit, especially with your amazing art style. 💖💖

friend u have activated one of my artistic trap cards: baggy clothing.

o to be swallowed whole by a dca-sized hoodie

[fanartsandstuff]

I just love ao3 authors

We live in a beautiful era of people not giving a single fuck

[hiveswap]

Going into any fandom maintag:

Random stranger 1: I NEED his cock [most unfuckable character you've ever seen]

Random stranger 2: hehe cringe doodle [art that belongs in the louvre]

Random stranger 3: dark!divorced!fae!brown eyed!mainguy/reader au where y/n is a horse

Random stranger 4: [explicitly mentally ill character] is so evil. I just don't like him sorry.

Pornbot: pussy wet

Random stranger 5: i need them to cuddle through a cold desert night i need him to break down in tears and i want to be h,

Random stranger 6: i hate shipping [main dude] with [female lead] Obviously the m/m ship is better 😑 btw she is so cool she's the braincell <3 we love a smart queen

Random stranger 7: she's soooo girlie!!! My sweet baby daughter!! [picture of the grown dude protagonist]

Pornbot: literacy rate declining . Fuck my nose

Random stranger 8: [explicitly mentally ill character] is a dog in my au btw :D

[paperlignes]

guillermo and nandor what we do in the shadows season 5, episode 3: pride parade