#i have like nothing for fandoms as of recent

[manikas-whims]

Before this issue gets drowned out like certain bootlickers do everytime..

Here's more on Papergames and Infold’s unreasonable money milking

via twitter fandom

• how it was worse and how certain things were slightly improved only after CN whales complained

• endless mistranslations aka issues with Lumiere's r2 solar pair bonus (Lumiere havers you might know) + the mistranslation and wrong flower still being mentioned on Xavier's Lightseeker Myth (it should be Forget-me-nots, not whatever that other flower is)

THE BUGS IN MASTER OF FATE ZAYNE 🫠 something my friend constantly keeps complaining about but no fix..

• JOURNEY

There used to be a feature where you used to get some extra rewards by completing certain actions per chapter of Main.

I started playing around end of May so i still experienced this. But this feature only lasted till 4 chapters??

And after the version 2.0 update, this feature was completely eradicated. Not even there for NEW players.

Now I can't believe i have to praise Genshin of all but they DO have chapter rewards as well..

Genshin has rewards for even leveling up characters and artifacts (similar to protocores) to a certain level.

• lack of events (genshin runs at least 3-7 events at the same time)

• a lot of content locked behind cards, and even then the amount charged far more compared to the meagre content in said cards

• Reruns (though i believe they might happen from next year onwards)

• Insane Difficulty in leveling up cards

this game just doesn't allow people to have spare materials! forget hoarding, you can barely save on the materials you acquire..

compared to this.. I can't believe i have to praise Genshin and Star Rail again..

Below are 2 characters I pulled recently in Genshin, and I've managed to upgrade both in like a few minutes because Genshin allows me to keep spare materials instead of charging insane amounts to get a card to just level 40

You can see my in-game currency, my upgrade materials compared to the bare amount of bottles we get from Heartbreaker (and we don't even get the golden bottles for free)

• Reduction in the amount of New Event Rewards

someone pointed out how the Diamond rewards are lesser (from 750 to 500) for the upcoming event, compared to the past ones

• Amount of Banners in a Month

Y'all can call me annoying but doing this many number of banners in a month is INSANE. It allows no room for breathing to any LIs fans.

“pick one guy & you won't have to spend” 🤪

I STILL BELIEVE A BANNER SHOULD RUN FOR AT LEAST 25~30 DAYS because rn running 3+ banners in a month seems like nothing but low quality cash grabs with pretty outfits..

Lastly, I do not mean to spoil anyone's mood for the upcoming quad banner but these are all issue that need to be given consideration, instead of brushing them off simply because sOme PeOpLe cAn pAY 🫠

[olderthannetfic]

Someone recently left a comment on one of my fics that they were disappointed I wasn't addressing any of the criticism or comments I got on Goodreads. After all, I reply to comments on the actual fic. Why am I ignoring the Goodreads commenters?

Well, 1. I didn't know there was a Goodreads page for my fanfic 2. I think if they wanted a reply they'd say it where I'm known to reply to every single comment without fail and 3. the kind of dumbass who treats 800k of free fanfics in a series like something they paid for is not the sort of person I want to engage with. If 800k of stories, with main stories, tie-ins, prequel asides, missing scenes, etc. for free wasn't to your liking, just... go read another? We have stories in this fandom whose whole series clock in at over a million words. We have stories where people have done fan songs and fanart and fancomics tying into their main work. We have stories with multiple timelines. You have so many options, all of them totally free and easy to access. If my stories, which I fully admit ares flawed and show some of my weaknesses as an author, don't do it for you, you have options. You have wonderful options.

If I had an editor and a publisher and my stories were actual books, I wouldn't have this reaction to this comment. But these stories have one person working on them total. I'm not making income off of this. This is what I write while working two jobs, for fun. As much as I do view writing fanfic as something that helps me learn the ins and outs of writing and put my all into it, it's going to be rougher than if I'd had help with it or had time to do more drafts than the three I normally do.

And if I was known for ducking criticism, I would get having comments on another site. There are authors in my fandom who delete anything that's not praise. But I have had long conversations with my haters in which I take everything in good faith and explain my writing choices, word choices and ideas. I have my tumblr which is just about my fandom stuff listed in the AN of every chapter. DMs are open and anon is on. My Dreamwidth account, also under the same name, also has DMs open. I have publicly stated when I have made shit narrative choices and owned that yes, sometimes I have genuinely dropped the ball. This has influenced later chapters where things go off of the original outline in order for the shit choice to have consequences in a way that makes sense and feels true to the characters in the story.

So "why are you hiding from the Goodreads commenters?!" feels like the most baffling thing I've ever been asked. I tried to be nice about it, but all I could think was, "why didn't the Goodreads commenters who wanted a reply post their comments where they know I 100% would've responded to it?"

--

Madness!

(Also, lol, half the pro shit with a lot of comments on Goodreads is barely edited. Maybe they were bitching about content? But if it was whining about craft, the bar is in the floor and they have nothing to complain about.)

[purple-dreams9]

If Thea was Theo, a controversial opinion

I want to preface this post by stating that this is not meant to change anyone's mind or opinion. I am not here to tell you to like a character or to ship a certain ship. You are free to hate Thea, write her off your fics, ignore her existence, and ship Kevin with the milkman if you so desire. This is also not an essay. Instead, think of it as the thought dump of someone munching over it for days.

This all started with a conversation about Thea with a couple people on a Discord server. I've been mostly neutral about Thea, not understanding the overall hate but not knowing much about her either. It led me to read Nora's most recent post about Thea, the replies and the "Why do you not like Thea?" poll, and I've seen plenty of Tweets about her, too.

In general, I noticed one main element when people explain their stance: it is not because Thea is a woman and people want to ship Kevin with male characters. The real reason(s), branched in different directions: the age gap, the lack of building of her character, how little she shows up/how little we know about her/the feeling of her being shoo-ed in out of nowhere as Kevin's love interest, and her attitude (inc. her lack for communication with Kevin after he left the Nest, her comment to Jean in TSC, etc.)

I have been in many fandoms for over a decade, some with more prominent mlm ships, and to be honest, none of those reasons seemed to truly justify the dislike of Thea to the degree she is disliked in the fandom as a whole, especially as the romantic interest of a main character. It seemed to me that most of it is rooted in the desire for Kevin NOT to be straight, but to be gay and be with a guy (or bi, but I see more people using "gay" for Kevin. And some prefer Aro/Ace Kevin, but these fans are a bit more quiet and subdued with their headcanon.) See, even taking Thea out of the equation, there are no popular mlw ships for Kevin with characters from canon, and even in fanon ships the counterparts are mostly (if not all) men.

That got me thinking: "What if Thea was Theo? How would that change how fans interact with this character, even if her personality was the same? What about the relationship with Kevin? Would fans approach the ship differently if he had had Theo as a boyfriend instead of Thea as a girlfriend?"

Of course, it is all hypothetical. For one, a big part of her character is that she is a woman of color (note that I am not black, so I am in no position to talk about how her race plays out with her character) in a predominately male and white team (violent cult) that had to fight her way to the top. It wouldn't quite have the same weight or the same background if she was a male. For two, I am aware it would bring another discourse to the table, that of the "predatory gay men stereotype" (even though there was nothing predatory or "grooming" in their relationship, but that conversation is not for this post.) I am sure plenty of fans would still hate the Kevin/Theo ship, and Theo himself.

Still, I allowed myself to picture it. I read, once, that women used to ship male characters together because female characters were underdeveloped and were not interesting. I wondered if this applies to fandom as well, how certain fandoms prefer to develop and grow male characters.

Things like "lack of canon information about Theo" would not be an issue. Fans are very good at filling in the blanks and building a character from the few spare parts given by the source. This also applies to "there is almost no interaction with Kevin" because let's be honest here, guys, ships are sometimes made from nothing. Rarepairs exist, and even ships like pre-TSC Jerejean can explode in popularity.

With how big of a part Kevin plays in the books and how big his shipping fandom is, if Theo was a thing, I truly believe we would have seen him bloom in fanon spaces. He would have given space and opportunity to grow, change and develop both as a character and in his relationship with Kevin.

The "forbidden relationship" trope and the possibility for angst would have fans foaming, fics working around Theo's past and how he had to fight his way to the top would be written, AUs where he leaves the beliefs of the cult behind and reunites with Kevin would also exist. We would see stories about how his and Kevin's love story played out before and after Kevin left the Nest (at least one primarily focused on the notes they used to pass each other in secret). His mean comments and bitchiness would be ignored, played down, understood, forgiven, or found charming (like Andrew's throughout the series, or even Abby's in TSC.) In a few words, he would be more present and less disliked.

AFTG is a predominately queer fandom, and there is nothing wrong with wanting representation, but I also think it's necessary to use the same scale for female and male characters that are romantically or sexually involved with more popular ones. It's fine not to like Thea, but also to sit and think: would I asses a male character in the same way? How would my view of them change regarding their gender? Just food for thought, I guess.

Again, this is not a call to action of any sort. It is just me, rambling and putting my thoughts down. I can't see different realities so this is basically all fiction. I wanted to take it out of my brain, hear what others think and that's it. Ship what makes you happy. Create what inspires you. Curate your experience. All that being said, Id love to hear your thoughts, but I wont debate anyone's opinion because that's truly, not what Im seeking.

This got longer than I intended so I'll end this here. If you made it, thanks! I hope you have a nice day.

[scarrletmoon]

Do you have any Ed and Stede fic you could recommend to me? I love your fics so I think I'd like your recommendations :)

i'm so flattered 😭i barely read anything to begin with for multiple reasons (nothing to do with quality -- i've been in a lot of fandoms and this one BY FAR consistently has the most incredible fic) but uuuuhhhh let's go through my most recent bookmarks!

in case you don't want to scroll through all the rambles (oh and feel free to tag anyone if they're on tumblr, i just linked their ao3 pages):

An Uncharted Level of Waves by Living_City (E)

politely menacing by daydreamcrash (E)

charted by darcylindbergh (E)

serial blusher by daydreamcrash (T)

CringeFail Mob Boss Stede (series) by Panda_Birds (T)

but that's none of my business by chaotic_neutral_knitter (T)

Telescope by Jimsnose (E)

Untitled by oatmilktruther (T)

An Uncharted Level of Waves by Living_City (E)

something about this trans ed fic just got me. something about ed talking about his body with someone he trusts? something about how you can tell how deeply stede adores ed even when it's not from his perspective? also uuummm this has coming untouched, so. i'm a simple man,

politely menacing by daydreamcrash (E)

i'm so stupidly picky when it comes to stede characterization, but i took a chance bc i saw "what if......stede in the cat collar" and you know what. it was fuckin great. i love when stede gets to be the brat. i love seeing ed and stede trust each other. i like when ed gets to dom on his own terms. i love them being disgustingly in love

charted by darcylindbergh (E)

i assume im like, the last person to read this but it's one of those fics that just pops into my head out of nowhere sometimes and i just 🫠 as i said before, im a simple man and i'm a sucker for play that involves one of them trying to distract the other. sexually. anyway it's hot AND shows off how intelligent and skilled ed is. win-win

serial blusher by daydreamcrash (T)

(see sometimes i read stuff that isn't filth!) this fic is SO FUCKIN FUNNY. i just love the fact that ed's spent so long trying to meet someone, but of course the guy he instantly falls head over heels for is the one archie never even considered. it's "stede? STEDE stede?" manifested into a hilarious 5k fic. i love it

CringeFail Mob Boss Stede by Panda_Birds (T)

just gonna rec this entire series bc it's so FUCKING funny. i haven't read Performance Review but i trust sowmz' humor so much that i'm going to rec it sight unseen. they just manage to capture stede's terrible but kind-hearted boss energy without going too far into clueless michael scott territory. also ed is completely smitten and everyone is confused by it. it's great

but that's none of my business by chaotic_neutral_knitter (T)

i've probably hyped this fic too many times but idc. it's 1.5k of lucius losing his mind bc he's CONVINCED ed and stede have something going on but NO ONE will believe him (except exactly who you'd expect)

Telescope by Jimsnose (E)

another one of my always-recs. pretty sure jimsnose has left the fandom at this point but that doesn't change the fact that Telescope is incredible and i hope one day i write something even half as good as this. one thing i love about their writing is how you don't so much read it as let it HAPPEN to you. and sometimes i remember parts of this fic like glimpses through that telescope and it's just so incredibly vivid. you can feel the tension so well between ed and stede here, how much they care for each other, how that breaks them, how it brings them together. and jimsnose so good at what they do that i happily read their Ted Lasso fic. i've never watched Ted Lasso. idk if i ever will. idk what i was doing over there, reading it. but the fics are fuckin banger

Untitled by oatmilktruther (T)

first of all, read anything abs writes on sight, like go sub to them right now if you haven't already (i'm biased but im RIGHT). im picking kind of a weird one but you try and get the image of leather and stede and tongue-tied ed out of your head. right. exactly.

[sitp-recs]

hi! how are you?

so I read a fic some time ago that destroyed me…… like literally. I enjoyed it but at the same time I didn’t. but now I can’t stop thinking about it bc everything on it was so revolting and fucked. how to make a fic get out of our system? is it possible 😅 not to be dramatic but this fic almost made me lose interest in the whole ship lmao I just wanted to read something I enjoy again, you know? and nothing hits :( and when it does I’m almost finishing the fic and something horrible happens (that wasn’t really tagged) and I endure it until the end 💀 anyway if you have any fic that you read recently that is very romantic and monogamous or even if they are exes but they don’t date anyone else because they just can’t move on, pls share with us!! and it doesn’t have to be drarry, it can be anything. Im going through your lists and whole blog tbh looking for something that will save me lmaoooo I’ve read almost everything that interests me and you recced. (btw your break up make up list is amazing!) still I think the spark left me 🫠 ugh sorry for yapping

I’m sorry to hear that, anon :,( I think we’ve all been there at some point, god knows how many times I felt blocked, uninspired or just unable to connect to any fic. Personally, I find it helpful to take short breaks from fandom and focus on other hobbies for a while. Those fics will always be there when and if you’re ready to return! Also, imho you shouldn’t have to “endure” any fics that you find upsetting. I don’t typically have any triggers but I certainly have tropes/topics that don’t interest me much (or at all), and I have no qualms abandoning a fic when they show up unannounced 🤣

Now, it’s a bit hard to rec something randomly without knowing more about your fic tastes, but since you’re interested in romantic/monogamous stories, I thought I’d share some recs along those lines. This is a personal selection that might not work for you, but if it does I’ll be pleased to know that you’ve found that spark again :) Take care xo

Short fic:

Take the Moon by tackytiger (M, 15k)

Harry Potter has always wanted a family of his own, and when a deadly blood curse forces him into a marriage bond with his best friend Draco Malfoy, it looks like he might just have found one. It's just a shame they’d always planned to break up after a year…

Two Zinnias and the Scent of Lemon by @the-starryknight (M, 16k)

The Ministry didn’t turn bad overnight. Harry didn’t suddenly turn rogue either. Between covert Legilimency links and Polyjuice disguises and running and running and running, Draco has forgotten what it is like to have a safe harbor that isn’t a person. If there’s an art to fighting back, then they’ll find it hand in hand.

Us, in Lieu by Tepre (E, 29k)

Teddy needs help and Harry needs funding. Draco sits in the other room and plays the piano.

Long fic:

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them by nerakrose, dustmouth (T, 96k)

Malfoy is way too interested in coroner reports for somebody who's definitely not looking for ways to die, Harry wants to be friends with him, and Ginny wants to break up with Harry.

Who we are in the shadows by Quicksilvermaid (E, 100k)

What happens when you’re forced to become the very thing you despise? Ex-Auror Harry Potter, tossed out of the Ministry for something he had no control over, has been looking for a way back to his former life.

Far From The Tree by aideomai (E, 112k)

The arrival of Harry Potter’s children—snapped back in time, the children themselves guessed, twenty or so years—was the most interesting thing to happen at Hogwarts for years.

[distracted-and-diffused]

Hit my subscription renewal date - Thoughts Part 2

At this point, my subscription to Netflix is functionally a subscription to Dead Boy Detectives.

That's partly because I really, really love the show -- and I do! Partly because I've been rewatching the show as much as I reasonably can in hopes of supporting the fandom as we hope to change Netflix's mind about the cancellation. And partly because -- for a lack of time, to get a point across, out of stubbornness / spite -- I haven't been watching anything else on Netflix since the cancellation.

My Basic subscription was recently dropped, and before the cancellation news, I was actually telling myself that the forced move to new plan would have an upside, because this show is one of the very few things that have made me wish I had that higher resolution subscription.

I want to see all the details, and it feels rewarding to notice little things in the show, like the plaque on the moose bobblehead in Episode 2, or the wording on the label on the black salt, or the different ways that Esther accessorizes with the evil eye necklace that she wears constantly. I've paused the show so many times to get a better look at things, and it's almost always been rewarded.

And also, before the cancellation news, I thought that I would give "with Ads" a try for at least a couple of weeks, to see if I could live with it, since I couldn't keep my Basic plan.

But I can't imagine, now that rewatching the show is part of my routine, having ads pop on in between scenes. (It would very much be a "flames on the sides of my face" situation if they messed with the timing and transitions of the show at this point. I don't feel like this is a show that is written to have ad breaks.)

And that's not even counting the whole targeted ad situation I talked about in my previous post.

Because of this show and this fandom, I'm watching more Netflix right now than ever. (I'd previously have bursts of watching, at most, a few 22-minute episodes a day while I cooked, followed by weeks of nothing as I watched shows on another service. Now I'm averaging at least 14 hours a week, while I do other things.)

Now, I'm renewing so I can keep up the rewatches (round 12 right now!), and in hopes that Netflix, too, might choose to renew (hint, hint).

But frankly, I'm considering my options, in the event that they don't.

If there's ever an official DVD/BluRay release, I'm going for it. (Very much hoping that Warner Brothers will put one out; what can I say, we're a passionate fanbase, and at the very least I hope they'd see that it would be worth it for them to do so.)

And if there's no hope of further seasons, I can't see myself keeping up a subscription full time. I'm sure I'd want to come back and visit the shows that I already like that have ended, but I don't think I'd have any motivation to try to keep up with anything new that's exclusive to Netflix as it comes out. What would be the point?

(Since the cancellation, I've learned about multiple Netflix shows I've never heard of before that sound interesting to me. I've heard about them specifically because they have also been cancelled -- and because Netflix's recommender thinks I'd be interested in them since I like Dead Boy Detectives. The fact that they have multiple recently cancelled but well-received shows in that segment seems somewhat damning.)

If I do drop back to part-time, I don't think I'd be coming back for enough time to make up the revenue they'd lose compared to the last price point, so that, too, seems like a loss for Netflix. (For the cost of a year's subscription at the last price point for Basic, I can manage almost 8 months of Standard. But I'm not sure I'd be coming back for 8 months at a time, if I knew I wasn't planning to stick around.)

Maybe I'm not the customer that Netflix is thinking of. Maybe I'm not the demographic that they want, or I'm not motivated by the same things that they think I should be.

But for a service that wants steady revenue and is concerned about cancellation/subscription churn, Netflix has been making some odd choices lately, as far as I'm concerned.

[1ncend1ary]

this is all i have to post....... im sorry......

[valc0]

Rogue is Jack

Rogue is the Master

Rogue is a pre-Hartnell doctor

[jontaro-kun]

That one time a pose study (looking at art of pretty women and telling myself I was being productive) turned into Portia

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[shokveyv]

shut up

[reel-fear]

Genuinely so curious who Mike thinks is gonna be buying The Cage or the new DCTL GN bc with the way he tweets as far as he's concerned, it's not gonna be:

The queer people he has actively admitted he will never show any representation of in the games.

2. The POC he has actively fought against representing in his franchise. [Who he also mocked for thinking they would be represented in his franchise]

3. The Bendy fandom which has always been concerned with topics of diversity esp in the sense of queer people since its creation. Who he has responded to really poorly esp in regards to the GN.

4. The fans who critique him. [He blocked me for doing so lol]

5. His fans in general who he tweets about like this currently. [He's being vague about why people were mad at him or sent him 'nasty messages' because if you actually looked into why you'd see he was in the wrong. Either way, a very hateful way to speak abt ur own fanbase.]

Reminder while Mike is trash talking his fans he has always treated them rather poorly. The fans who won the fanart contest for Chapter 5 never got their posters actually in game due to it being rushed. Not only was chapter 5 a big slap to the face story wise, but it was literally so rushed he couldn't be bothered to add in the art his fans gave him for his game FOR FREE. [Meatly blames this on a crazy timeline, reminder him and Mike are the literal ceos of this company. The proposal of future updates here is also pretty cruel considering Mike nowadays happily admits he corrupted Chapter 5's source code and therefore literally can't update it At All currently. Because he is a moron]

At least they got to be in Boris and the dark survival, and by that I mean that was the Only game they got to be in so far, isn't that just treating your fans like you love them? Shoving their hard work into a spin off game almost nobody has played or addresses much. [Hell, who knows if with the Lone Wolf rebrand they'll even stay there. In which case they'll be in None of the games, only in the credits of BATIM]

6. The Bendy fans who just generally disagree with him on stuff. Like the new ink demon design where there is literally a public poll showing people generally prefer the old one.

7. The Bendy fans who can see he is actively lying to them. To their fucking faces.

He says this has always been the case, but screenshots and links to tweets regarding the books being canon prove it was not. Does he really think bendy fans are stupid or something? [Unless he's admitting here he lied to Kress when he told her the books were canon which sounds worse!]

8. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of giving money to a guy who laid off tons of employees then afterwards thought it was a great idea to express his anti-union views! Also brag about how good of an employer he was, according to his employees, he was not!

So in summary; Mike is an awful person who has not learned anything from the awful things he did. I will not be purchasing The Cage because, combined with this and his absolute refusal to take any kind of critique or see any differing interpretation of his franchise, I have no reason to think my problems with the franchise will ever be addressed or fixed. I probably will pirate The Cage along with any future Bendy Products [Including the movie] and will do my best to avoid giving it any kind of monetary support. Unless this changes any time soon, I can't see myself making anymore positive Bendy posts soon.

Mike has just managed to make it so hard to speak positively or optimistically of this franchise when he's so willing to broadcast how little he cares about it or its fans. I'm at the point where I refuse to pull any of my punches with my problems with it. What's the point of trying to play nice with my critique when either way the people creating it don't care?

So with this post, I want to invite anyone who feels similarly about the franchise to tell me, make a post or send an ask talking about how all of this makes you feel. It may not change how things are, but genuinely seeing other people share my feelings of anger makes me feel better. It feels nice to see when other people share our same concerns and worries. I'd also love to know if anyone else thinks they'll be avoiding purchasing Bendy products over this.

I'm not forcing anyone to participate in it nor trying to say anyone who doesn't supports mike but genuinely maybe if we can collectively decide to boycott things like the movie, graphic novel and The Cage... It might at least make the bendy devs acknowledge how much they have destroyed their own fandom's faith and trust in them.

The way Mike tweets about his actions like he had no control over why people were mad at him at least proves to me he takes NONE of it back nor regrets it. If you didn't know about his actions and only went off his tweets, you would be led to believe Mike has been needlessly picked apart by fans over things he couldn't control [or in his own words, had his words twisted and taken out of context]. That is not how you speak about your actions if you have actually learned better from them.

anyway, that has been my bendy dev callout post. This is an open invitation to anyone feeling similarly upset about the way the franchise is going to talk about it. It's genuinely nice to see how people feel about this and the more we talk about the more it's likely the bendy devs are forced to address our concerns. I don't think they will but hey, that's why I'm not gonna support them with my money anymore nor am I gonna be nice to them in any content I make critiquing Bendy. I mean I'm also basically making this post just in case anyone asks me Why I feel this way towards to bendy devs/as a way to respond to anyone who thinks I am too harsh in my critique in the future.

As always, it seems the best part of Bendy isn't actually anything about canon but about what the fan's are creating with the ideas Bendy failed to do anything interesting with.

Also the books, the books slap.

[mybrainproblems]

hello, i'm finales georg...

i don't want to further clutter up the notes on this post while responding to the tags below but the persistence of the "finale is short/scenes are missing/extra ad break” conspiracies drives me absolutely bananas when i've watched the finale ten times and have posted about this A LOT trying to clear things up. (disclaimer that yes, i'm a goddamn destiel shipper but i care about Facts above all.)

ok but this is weird because i'd swear the episode was shorter (11 missing scenes!) but okay. maybe we all mandela effected ourselves into #beleving that. because it felt shorter. but i will die on the hill that it had another ad break. i understand this person has the thing #recorded with ads so i am thinking maybe different ad breaks in different idk time zones??? #because the finale did air an hour earlier in canada so maybe idk i am reaching here but maybe different states or whatever had different #ad breaks??? as for the last minute changes - wasn't the cover band asked for permission to use their version of carry on like a week before #the thing aired??? so even if the episode was 42 minutes and had no additional ad break - which i am side eying but lets say all was normal #i will always say they were changing thing until the absolute last minute (carry on my wayward son X 2 #the crew on the bridge which is not only giant 4th wall breaking but also wow they really got all those people in one place in times of #covid???) #anyway. tinfoil hat stays on sorry guys :/ (via @officialmisha)

short and snarky: there are plenty of real and sourced examples of network homophobia and scripted/directed destiel scenes being cut to point to. we don’t need to make this stuff up just bc the finale wasn’t what we wanted. so it’s not the mandela effect — it’s ppl repeating a conspiracy/rumor bc it supports their narrative and it’s easier and more fun to repeat something that supports a narrative they already believe (misha or something destiel was cut) vs the boring act of fact checking.

longer circumspect answer with links bc like many ppl i am in my debunking era and i rewatched "roblox_oof" last night.

like i said. i've watched the finale ten times. i’ve gone over the episode with a fine toothed comb and posted a detailed breakdown of timing marks on my blog. it’s actually extremely obvious where the ad breaks are once you know roughly where to look for them (they have a longer fade to black instead of a quick cut scene change). there’s no room for extra ad breaks and i think this conspiracy/rumor persists in part bc the episode feels so sparse in terms of cast and the fact that the episode’s momentum hits a barn post (and rebar) less than 20min into an hour-long programming block.

also i’m begging ppl to actually look at that timing mark post. it’s very straightforward and i spent a lot of time on it. i don’t care if ppl plagiarize it at this point if it means this conspiracy stops. i've got almost every second accounted for.

the "eleven missing scenes" that you're thinking of are probably from the finale script of questionable authenticity that @spnscripthunt acquired back in 2021 which can be found here. it's dated as the “final draft” from 11 sep 2020 and filming on 15x20 wrapped on 10 sep 2020. as noted at the bottom of this superwiki page "[the] script came from someone claiming to have been the person who did the closed captions for the show in Russia. There are some indications that it possibly may not be authentic, but this has not been confirmed."

if we go with the possibility that this was a transcript meant for subtitles, the "omitted" scenes were probably written but never filmed since it's the "final draft" and not a color revision (blue, green, yellow, etc). unfortunately, i’ve lost track of where i read it and a preliminary duckduckgo search isn’t bringing it up bc there's a program for script writing called final draft, but iirc the “final draft” version of a script is a transcript of what was filmed (e.g. there are parts of that 15x20 script that ended up being deleted scenes on the DVD). spnscripthunt also has an example of a confirmed final draft for 09x02 (funnily enough, also a dabb-penned ep). if anyone can confirm with a source that i have the purpose of the “final draft” version designation wrong, please let me know! i love being proven wrong with Facts.

i do want to acknowledge that the two “final drafts” do look different from each other and the 15x20 one doesn't look like a “real” final draft script since it lacks the revision/versioning dates that a script would normally have on the cover page. it could be that it was intended for subtitles; there's the chance it's been re-typed to anonymize it if there was anything indicating who the "owner" was, tho that seems a wee bit cloak and dagger to me. and again: it's considered of questionable authenticity. there are some things that don't quite line up but oh dear god i don't want to get even further out into the weeds than i already am.

i won't disagree that it's weird as hell that neoni only got asked about using their cover seven days prior to the episode airing (tiktok here). my personal theory is that they were hoping to get a more expensive song (maybe a zepp song, idk) and didn't manage to secure the rights in the end. again: this is pure conjecture on my part! but i could absolutely see someone working on the show hearing neoni’s cover and liking it and then maybe they were using it as a placeholder until it got down to the wire and they had to make a call/send the ep to networks. because yes, it is baffling they played a song and then a cover of it with only a 40 second break between. (i do actually really like the neoni cover! the placement is just weird and i think it could have worked if they had the kansas version at the beginning and closed with neoni's full cover.)

as to the 4th wall break COVID stuff: robert singer talked with variety magazine about filming the last two episodes and the logistics of filming during a pandemic. whether they should have been filming during a pandemic is a separate discussion but their use of office vs set pods, strict quarantining and daily testing meant that they had zero positive tests in the month they were filming (18 aug to 10 sep). so given all that, i personally don’t think it’s totally out of pocket to have everyone standing outdoors on a bridge for maybe an hour to get a drone shot of them together. (i won’t get into incubation periods and viral load, but if everyone tested negative that day and every day for a month prior, it was a fairly low risk scene to film outdoors and for all we know everyone was masked until the last possible second. there were plenty of outdoor masked protests in 2020 that weren't superspreader events.)

and before anyone brings up “but misha was in vancouver!” i know someone who looked into it and they said no dice, nothing matched up between the backgrounds in those pics and places in vancouver. his statements about “us” going back to set over the summer were pretty generic in hindsight and “we”/"us" could be him or the spn crew generally. unfortunately i’m not able to find those tweets but the use of “we” was likely so as not to give away he wouldn’t be returning to set. (bc we were absolutely casbaited!) and bc it comes up a lot: the "onion field pic" was from when they were filming 15x17 and was not taken while filming 15x19 and 15x20.

besides, it would be ridiculous to go through the financial and logistical headaches of bringing someone into the country to film during a pandemic, only to cut their scenes in the end! honestly, the script is pretty tight when the scenes are given so much breathing room! the only thing i could see being further cut down is The Monologue and even then, i don’t think there was any intent to cut it down given it was filmed in fairly long takes.

i’ve said it many times before, but i believe the finale was fucked long before they returned to set. walker got the green light in sep 2019 and it was being marketed heavily as a “follow on” show to spn given jared’s involvement. the demo they were courting for walker has little to no overlap with the demo for destiel fans — why would they want a finale that catered to a demo they weren't interested in courting? we just went through a historic double strike that exposed so much of the rot of business interests overriding creative vision. this isn't completely unfounded conjecture.

i will not apologize for the length of this bc i wanted to be thorough, but i do want to give context that i think the reason these conspiracies and rumors grind my gears so much is because anyone can fact check all of this. the truth is out there and absolutely none of it is that hard to find. the most time consuming/difficult part of this was finding someone who had a DVR’d copy of the finale from when it aired live and they actually found me themselves after i’d been low key asking around for a year!

and like. i get it. conspiracies are fun. but there are so many sourced instances of network homophobia and destiel being cut that it's like. why is this something folks are hanging onto? the cw is notorious for having upper level meddling with finales bc there's a follow-on show they want to shuffle fans along to and spn is no exception.

[dailydegurechaff]

Out of curiosity ever consider writing a Viktanya fanfic?

This might be a disappointing answer, but probably not.

It’s not that I dislike Viktanya or anything, it’s just that I really don’t have any ideas for them. Writing is hard and if I’m not extremely obsessed with something I just can’t get myself to write about it.

Also, there’s lots of Viktanya stuff out there, so I don’t think I have anything to contribute. Since there’s already lots of stuff I’m comfortable sticking with my niche pair lol.

[bookwyrminspiration]

routine there's another account reposting kotlc fanart on pintrest post, including several artists and recent pieces from tumblr and ig. some of the art has credit in the descriptions, but several have "credit to the artist."

there are at least a couple accounts reposted despite no repost policies (e.g. @crescentpaws @tw-5), and there may be more; i don't have everyone's policies memorized.

don't be mean, people make mistakes and I doubt KeeperS is doing it maliciously, but fanartists you may want to double check for your work if that matters to you

[transmasc-rose]

RULES: make a poll with 5 of your all-time favorite characters and then tag 5 people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favorite! (tagged by @seaweedstarshine)

Tagging (don't worry if you don't want to/have done it already!): @transgenderdoctorwhomst @27-27-gruff-triplets @quietwingsinthesky @lost-tardis-room @a-shard-of-quartz-lol