#i don't really have a 'tales of' tag for liveblogging

[coldsaturn]

hiii! i have a question i thought you might be able to answer: how did aftg originally get so popular? i know it was mostly word of mouth on tumblr (still is, i think) (who says this website is unmarketable!!) but what were the early days of the fandom like? personally i've "only" been here since 2016, and by then the series was already decently popular. i remember at that time that the fandom was really welcoming and kind in a way that felt really exceptional to me, and it definitely contributed to me picking up the books, which is the only explanation i can really think of for why it got a bigger following than some to other books which did receive a whole big-publisher marketing campaign aside from it just being well-written. do you have any theories for why it got so massive on here? and do you know how the first readers found it? i hope you don't mind me asking you this, but i remember your blog from wayyyy back when and thought that if anyone had the answer, it would probably be you :)

Hello! I always get so happy when I can talk about the early days of the fandom <3 Sit down here around the fire, let me tell you about this wondrous tale.

So, story time: it was spring 2013, I had just finished a thorough read of In The Company Of Shadows and I was starving for another black hole. It was automatic for me to look up the goodread lists ICoS was featured in, to see what other titles I could pick up, and ended up on the list called "Online M/M stories that deserve to be published". The Foxhole Court was right there (it's not anymore because it IS published <3), so I read it. That was the start of the end lmao

If I remember correctly I didn't wait too long before reading TRK, but TKM didn't come out until the end of the following year, so in the meantime I all but shelved it as something that had incredible potential but that was possibly doomed to never be completed. Fast forward I think the start of 2015 when I accidentally stumbled upon TKM and I couldn't believe I could finally know how the story ended. Nora had a blogspot where she talked about the books (including updates between TRK and TKM), and I remember trying to get as much info as I could on this series. And that was it. For a bit.

So, by the first half of 2015, the fandom was made by people commenting on her blogspot, on her livejournal, the book pages on goodreads, and Ao3 literally had 2 fics ( webarchive gives you what we saw - btw Don't Speak Against The Sun is FIRE and instantly became a new standard for f/f for me). You can still find all this content online. Tumblr had a handful of scattered posts about TFC, mostly Nora's mutuals/friends on tumblr, and a couple of readers screaming into the void with no one answering their call.

I was pretty active on here, especially in the bellarke fandom, and I engaged with mutuals and other blogs often enough that I knew if I talked about something, at least someone would reply. A mutual was reading The Raven Cycle and got me curious enough to liveblog it myself. Instant love, of course, and if you've read TRC you know how strong the found family vibe is. So at the end of my liveblog (we've reached July 2015) I threw out a comment where I recommended AFTG as another worthy title. With the first book being free while the other two were only a dollar each, it sounded a fairly easy commitment. One mutual decided to read it (if you're reading, hi!!!) and liveblog it, and that got the party started.

A party of 2, and I'm not kidding. While we chatted and made up headcanon after headcanon on the phone, the intention was to get others interested in this story. But they'd never do it if there wasn't enough content around to engage with and motivate them to blog themselves, so we started with quote posts, liveblog reactions, a few timid edits and poems. An important choice was figuring out which tag to use (at the time tumblr search only scrolled through tags, not post content): "all for the game" was an actual sports tag, "the raven king" was the title announced for the next TRC installment, "the king's men" was the last book of the trilogy and it wasn't even the free one, so we settled for "the foxhole court" which was an empty tag. Even now my blog content is organized around "tfc" because of it, even though we took over all the relevant tags. A couple other mutuals I had from bellarke fandom got curious as well, and now we could consider ourselves a proper group. We were so starved for fan content that whatever you put out would be automatically reblogged and enthusiastically engaged with. It was a happy little fandom bubble. Then Nora noticed us and started interacting with us, and you got the birth of what would become the extra content page as she replied to our questions.

I possibly had a little bit too much time on my hands because I appointed myself as fandom archivist and tour guide. I reblogged every single post I saw in the tags, and I started a welcome page where I could keep track of everyone announcing they were reading the series. It was meant as a way to find mutuals to interact with since tumblr hadn't yet "canonized" all the tags, and it was entirely possible to lose each other in dashboard chains. I used to reply to everyone reading the series by "officially" welcoming them into the fandom, linking them the page where they could find mutuals, Nora's blog, and the extra content present up to that point. Oh and there was a fictional exy team where you could choose your position and then put it in your blog for fun or roleplay it. I also used smashword's gift system to buy the series for whoever said they couldn't pay for it, just to try and avoid pirating the book (good for word of mouth, bad for sales). This was on my side, but this fandom had so many people pouring their entire heart out I still get emotional thinking about it.

Everyone (before January 2016) made as much content as they could, be it meta, fanart, fanfics, headcanons, edits, wikia pages etc. We had fandom challenges where we pronounced the names of the characters and aftg keywords with our native accent, others where we said our favorite scene. Every headcanon was the first headcanon ever seen in the fandom. The fun thing was that at the time there was a strong etiquette toward "if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything" so fan content really went in all directions with basically no limits. We tagged for triggers and that was it, we had free reign. For those who were around at the time, the sin squad was a group of us fans churning out the saddest/filthiest/fluffiest/most problematic content we could think of.

Then we reached January 2016. We were around 300 in the fandom at that point (I know because I counted them, literally), it had been slow but constant growth where each new fan brought at least other two people with them, and we had around 20 posts per day in the main tag. Then someone bridged the gap between us and the TRC fandom. If you ask me how the fandom got really popular, that's it. The TRC fandom was stuck in hiatus waiting for The Raven King, and now you had 300 rabid foxes spamming aftg content on tumblr, using trk as tag, too. Popular fanartists that were active in that fandom helped making aftg known, and semi viral posts did the rest. We went from 300 to 700 people in a couple of months, and shortly after I had to stop adding people to the welcome page because the post broke. I didn't even know that could happen. It wasn't long after that we were featured in the tumblr end of year recap for book ships. We were so many it was suddenly possible to meet in real life! Cosplays, tattoos, merch. You name it, someone in the fandom did it.

But how did it feel when we were only 20 people and a cardboard dog cutout? It felt like the most chaotic book club ever, and every new fan was automatically a friend. Nostalgia is a lying bitch, but I really don't think I'm making shit up here. We had fun and made great memories.

By the way, if you want to see how things were in 2015, you can! Just go through my archive starting from July 2015 (I think 17th) and onward. You can also search my blog for the tags "fandom history" and "started from nothing and now we're here", whereas here you can find a list of aftg fandom tags I used.

Tl;dr We were starving for good content, we wanted to have fun together, and we were lucky enough to half-hijack a bigger fandom in hiatus. That was all the marketing AFTG needed on tumblr.

[bi-hop]

my thoughts on rgu ep 3

we're baaaack! my previous posts are all now under my rgu liveblog tag

lord, here we go with the extended recaps even though it's only episode 3-

it's interesting how memory is being played with here with Utena. such a formative moment is reduced to a strange fairy tale, a piece of gossip with faceless characters. the only proof of it is vague recollections paired with a single physical piece of evidence: the ring. but said ring is also associated with other elements of the world that she is still not fully privy to... just hm

the running gag of Utena being like "you need a friend" and Chu Chu being like "?" and Anthy being like "?" amuses me but also doesn't... can't put my finger on why though so I'm just gonna note it down and circle back to it

the Utena-sama stuff is funny. like, oh, okay, it's fine when girls are admiring you from a distance because you can write it off as a joke, but a girl insisting she's engaged to you and referring to you reverently is when you're finally like "actually I desire men, I totally want to date a boy, the masculinity has nothing to do with being gay, I want a NORMAL BOY" OADJODSJODS OKAY SURE UTENA

Girl, you claim to want to date a guy and then a guy flirts with you and you're immediately like "let's keep it platonic, dude". alright-

^ NOT AT ALL IMPLYING ATTRACTION TO DUDES MEANS YOU'RE RECEPTIVE TO ALL ADVANCES. just kinda funny immediately following a scene where she's like "erm actually I'm totally straight! I am a heterosexual!!!"

"is the prince bi too. did he kiss all of the duelists orrrr..." - riveting commentary from the girlfriend. I have no stance on this, I just think he seems like a creep

communication? in MY anime? it's far less likely than you'd think. (Touga is annoying but what else is new)

the council finally clueing in to the fact that Utena is not in fact in contact with End of the World (whoever THAT is). Saionji is also hiding or something? good fucking riddance

Anyway, I think the use of a prince as the model Utena bases her appearance on and also simultaneously the vague object of her desire is compelling in a compulsory heterosexuality narrative because it's a perfect analogue to how some lesbians I know would simply invent an idealized guy to project feelings onto due to the insistence of heterosexuality as a regime that a girl MUST desire a man. the easiest man to desire is the one you only vaguely remember from your childhood and have no real chance of meeting-

can everyone just leave Anthy alone????

Nanami looks nice, but I've watched too many shows with blonde mean girls to trust that she really has Anthy's best interests at heart...

circling back to the girls and how they treat Anthy (which includes Wakaba of course because Wakaba is meant to be a window into what the other girls are thinking IMO), there's this continual theme of everyone viewing Anthy as like... this seductress almost who is ruining the lives of boys like Saionji over nothing. She's 'shameless', she's a 'creep', whole time she's being abused and treated as an object. the relatable brown woman of color experience, I fear

Touga: I don't care about Utena. I care about a feminized fantasy of her I have in my head, even though my attraction to her started with how she regularly dresses. This is because I can fix her aesthetic-

Anthy and her social anxiety... man... just let her sit in the dorm and play cards with Chu Chu

and sure enough, Nanami sabotages her out of misdirected jealousy. girl, you need to be freed of the idea that girls are competition for your brother's affection. also, you need to kill your brother. you will do this for me and become a feminist-

I'm not surprised that the retaliation against Anthy is called a prank that maaaybe went too far. I'm especially not surprised this commentary is directed towards a moment of sexual violence. ty to Utena for intervening

gay people be dancing on loop... that is all

fun episode! much to chew on! on to the next

[csthefirst]

Hey so about 10 years ago (literally give or take a week) I read a funny little visual novel called Umineko no naku koro ni. I have been irreversibly changed for the better and to this day I have never read anything that comes close to being as good as Umineko. Honestly, there's a part of me that believes I never will.

So, after ruminating about that, and noticing how eerily close we were to October 4, Umineko Day itself, I've decided to dive back and read the whole thing from start to finish with all the knowledge I've gained since then (both of the tale, and as a person). I've really enjoyed seeing some other people liveblog their thoughts about it (both for first time readers and re-readers), so I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring for that as well!

I've made a sideblog to throw the posts in (as not to annoy the dozens of followers here, who I'm already on thin ice with), and I'll be tagging all the posts with #umireread to keep them organised that way. Apparently no one has used that tag yet. Very surprising!

I'm a stickler for organisation, so the plan is to give each Chapter their own post, with scattered and formulated thoughts throughout. I'll probably have some end of Episode reflections as well to mark each milestone. Also, obviously, heavy spoilers ahoy. Don't touch that blog if you haven't finished reading it yet. I honestly think your first readthrough of Umineko is one of the most magical things you can do with your life, it'd break my heart to ruin that for anyone.

Anyway back to never posting anything and just reblogging things on main. Overly long analytical posts of my favourite piece of media ever on the side. Zip zap zoom

[tyrannuspitch]

thor meta directory

hello and welcome, i'm lucian and i've been analysing mcu thor in excruciating detail since march 2022. this directory is intended to help me and anyone else interested to navigate my backlog of thor posts, which were all initially grouped under one umbrella tag.

a few notes:

my main focus is on the asgardian royal family, and my favourite portrayals of them come from 2011-2013. i have a bit of a loki-centric bias, but i do my best to be self-aware. i think all members of the family are terrible people and i love them for it <3

older posts should be taken with a pinch of salt. my opinions have developed a lot since i first started posting, but i've left pretty much everything up for archival purposes.

sometimes my opinions are strong, but they're never personal, even when i express them in hyperbolic ways. i promise i don't really hate you because of a marvel movie :3

to prevent clutter, source, character, relationship and theme tags are only applied to posts that also qualify for a meta or concrit tag.

some of the theme tags overlap a lot, but i'm doing my best.

most of the theme tags don't have an immediately obvious "thesis" post, but hopefully you'll get a sense of them by scrolling through. i'm also happy to answer any questions on this!

at the point when i organised this archive, it contained 1600 posts, so please excuse any tagging mistakes or typos, and let me know so i can fix them :D

finally: my inbox is open and i love talking about thor! comments, questions, suggestions, discussion, and lighthearted/friendly debate are all very welcome :D also, if you send me music associations or fanart, i'll love you forever - i probably haven't seen it, since i hardly follow anyone in this fandom. (just please no th-rki - i'm firmly in the familial relationship camp.)

okay that's all. have fun! 💚💙💜

main tag (textposts, almost all of them original, ranging from liveblogs and off-the-cuff jokes to meta. 2000+ posts)

asgardian art (umbrella tag for visual fanworks: art, gifs, graphics, etc. almost all reblogs. 1000+ posts)

by post type:

meta (800+ posts) - meta highlights (100+ posts) - concrit/negativity - text reblogs - fanart - gifs - stills - jokes and silly posts

by source:

thor 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - avengers 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - loki tv - other mcu - comics - thor: tales of asgard (cartoon) - other marvel - myth + history - fandom - other

by character:

thor - loki - odin - frigga - laufey - hela - malekith - thanos - the other - sif - warriors three - heimdall - valkyrie - jane - erik - sylvie - mobius - kang - avengers - fury

note: tumblr has a link limit! i've had to remove the links to supporting characters' tags to stay within it, but the format is: /tagged/ch:%20laufey, /tagged/ch:%20hela, etc.

by relationship:

thor: frigga - loki - odin - sif - w3 - jane - erik - avengers - fury

loki: frigga - odin - laufey - sif - w3 - thanos - the other - sylvie -mobius - kang - erik - jane - avengers

odin: frigga - laufey - hela - kang - fury - bor

house of odin (for when it's really the entire family at once - not an umbrella tag)

by theme/topic:

abuse + empire - fate + hierarchy - suicide + sacrifice - imprisonment + exile - devotion + treachery - honour + villainy - cycles + scapegoats - manipulation + mind control - order + chaos - war + apocalypse - undeath + afterlife - the threefold death - trickster loki - jester loki - servant prince

childhood + immortality - gender + sexuality - ergi - sorcery - prophecy - disability - ethnicity - godhood - monsterhood - playing the monster - mirrors + masks - eye motif

expressions of love - love as horror - neck/throat motif - grief - codependence - odinsons as twins - redemption - mjolnir - saint thor - thor's sinister side

worldbuilding - modern psychiatry - etymology - mimesis

and finally, my ao3 is here. i'm not as active as i'd like to be, but i'm working on it!

[autopotion]

tales of arise demo was very underwhelming. they really decided to showcase the most boring part of any given tales game, AKA the early part of the game where you're not allowed into the big city and have to go slay some random monster before they'll let you in. i got absolutely no sense of the plot or the stakes. none of the companions stuck out to me, but tbh that could be because all their skits were about explaining their abilities and didn't do a very good job of illustrating the dynamics between party members (or maybe the dynamics are just kind of cold and uninteresting, which is the worst case scenario).

the world was pretty but static and non-interactable (in typical tales fashion), where bushes just glow if you can harvest something from them. there's no physics when you walk into a bush or a fern either, which, for as pretty as a game this is, really took me out of it. also the new skit format of like... idk what to call it, animated comic strips? looks like mid-aughts machinima. it's really weird, i'm not sure if i like it.

combat was just okay. it's definitely part of the berseria genre of all free running and no rhythm, but at least there's a dedicated normal attack button instead of every attack being an arte. people were mocking it as "tales but dark souls" and at first i was like lol? it's a party-based game with all the typical tales artes and combo attacks, i'm not sure about that... but in the boss battle i had to do a lot of expertly-timed dodging and had to strike it when it was facing away from me, which felt a little soulsborne-y, so i could see it.

i don't know if you would strictly call that a "soulsborne" thing though, since modern rpgs have drifted away from slow, tactical combat and into fast-paced action based on reflexes. final fantasy's turn-based system, dragon age's tactical mode, elder scrolls' RNG combat, and tales's own rhythmic fighting game style have all evolved into much faster and flashier action, and while i think dark souls was part of that shift, every single genre has done it, in part 'cause tech can handle that kind of energy now i think. games with slower-paced combat are now niche, indie, or deliberately retro.

also there's a campfire mechanic, sure, but its utilization reminds me less of dark souls than of grandia ii, since it also includes little cinematics of everyone hanging out around the fire (grandia ii has little inn scenes if you stay the night in an inn and have dinner, which i've always adored and wished more games would do).

anyway. i'm not sure why they couldn't have compiled a demo with a tangible story hook. absolutely nothing about the classic "go slay the monster" story endeared me to any of the characters or made me desire more from the world. i had nothing to latch onto that would make me care about the characters and whatever their plights are.

i played the project triangle strategy demo recently, and while that game is undeniably not going to be very good, the demo was very solid insofar as introducing you to both the mechanics & the storyline. you had to figure out if you were going to sacrifice your friend or not. a king got beheaded. it threw you right into the story immediately, and was much more effective at keeping my interest.

meanwhile, if i hadn't read any of the game synopses, i would have no fucking clue what tales of arise was about. i understand that you get a different movie at the end based on the character you primarily played as, which might give me more hints as to their stories and dynamics, but i played through the demo once and felt like you know what that's enough for me. i don't think i'm gonna do this again actually. and that means your demo... wasn't very good lol.

[luo-yiguo]

Tag Game

I was tagged by @susuwatari-kompeito! Your blog tagline is a pile of knives and I love it! <3

Three Relationships:

1) Fu Shen x Yan Xiaohan (黄金台 / Golden Stage):

Where to even start?? Enemies-to-lovers power couple + arranged political marriage + heaps of flirting and romance. So. Great.

2) Xu Xilin x Dou Xun (过门 / Guomen):

I am a sucker for character growth and development, and these two don't disappoint on that front. This book made me ugly cry like nothing else, and I am still not over it. Also, they have THE most hilarious child (ok, fine, it's a parrot)!

3) Cui Buqu x Feng Xiao (无双 / Wushuang / Peerless):

These two are 🤡x🤡 24/7. They are SO funny and ridiculous. Nothing says, "I love you" like kidnapping, poisoning, and constantly plotting your lover's rival's downfall. Petty, scheming, might-die-at-any-moment, prickly control freak (with secret marshmallow center) whose favorite hobby is digging metaphorical pits for others vs. the most shameless, narcissistic mysophobe who secretly enjoys falling into said pits. E.g. FengCui, 100% head-over-heels:

Last Song

Ottorino Respighi - Pini di Roma P 141

Last Movie

I...haven't watched movie in so long, I honestly can't remember.

Currently Watching

Oh god, I am in the middle of so many things right now....Here's some highlights:

Link Click (donghua) - This is really good. Highly recommended.

Ugly Beauty (cdrama) - This one randomly popped up in one of my feeds randomly, and I decided to give it a go. It's actually pretty good so far. Really funny, good pacing, and the lead actress is excellent.

Ever Night (cdrama) - an epic tale of adventure, intrigue and revenge, featuring guest star Chen Feiyu's Eyebrow.

Mr. Queen (kdrama) - This show is really funny so far, and is starting to get into some good court intrigue stuff. The lead actress is a hilarious physical comedy genius.

Currently Reading

The Langya List - Finally getting around to reading this, and doing a bit of liveblogging along the way!