#i would say 'maybe its the fandom spaces' but no the whole internet seems to be like that lol

[clanoffelidae]

thinkin bout stuff again

honestly i genuinely do prefer it when people make their stances clear from the beginning, like no seriously please don't try and ignore it until it blows up like be honest with me i'd really prefer it rather than get in too deep and then have it blow up when i didn't even know there was anything wrong

like if you don't like me please just??? say so??? instead of acting like it and then going off on me when you decide you can't take it anymore i guess???

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

https://www.tumblr.com/gardensofivy/760120697566707712/where-is-the-fluff-i-am-sick-of-the-smut-what

i feel like i remember you talking about posts like this before.

it kinda irritates me that everyone on that post are so harsh about how they REALLY WANT FLUFF and are SICK OF SMUT

all my dash has been lately is fluff and i’m not complaining, i like every genre. maybe it’s their dash.

fanfic writers are writing what they want and i’m sorry that you don’t like it, but again, it’s out there, you just have to look. maybe they should look harder. do they know that there are tagging systems on this app + ao3 where they can search for fluff specifically?

i know first hand that it’s hard to write fanfic but can’t they at least try it out for themselves if they are really wanting fluff instead of complaining about it and how writers won’t give them exactly what they crave?

sorry for bringing this to you i just have no one to talk about this with 😭

don't apologize for bringing stuff like this to me. my inbox is always open as a rant space

I went to look up the post and it said that it was deleted (I was very curious to see the comments, but rip lmao) - but even just from that blurb of the url, I can definitely get a sense of the aggression against smut in the post

as far as the 'I hate smut, I want fluff' crowd - it feels like people who don't know how to navigate fandom spaces, but also people who are sexually repressed.

BECAUSE

from all my experience, especially recent experiences - smut fics will always be more popular. if people actually wanted fluff fics, or fics without smut, then my non-smut fics would be more popular. every single time one of my fics has smut, it will always be more popular.

a lot of the time, I regret not putting a smut scene a fic (especially toward the end) because I know that people will read through the actually interesting well-thought out hard work 'plot' part of a fic that I wrote in order to get to a pointless smut scene that I never intended to have there in the first place (as of right now, one of my biggest regrets is not putting a smut scene in Heaven's Gate to get more eyes on it)

it is my opinion that people are lying when they say they don't want smut fics. just straight up fucking lying. (or very few people are telling the truth when they say it, and then they don't seek out the fics they truly want)

Heaven's Gate - which is clearly tagged as having fluff got 11 notes in its first 24 hours

Need - which is tagged as smut/pwp got over 100 notes in its first 24 hours of being posted

yes, there are other factors to take into account, like the length, the gender of the reader character (which, don't even get me started on the 'GN afab' reader character thing - which is so fucking transphobic and misogynistic and rigid to the fucking gender binary it makes me wanna die), and the fact that Heaven's Gate is also marked as Hurt/Comfort and a lot of people in fandom these days seem to hate basic conflict in stories??? - but they are for the same love interest and they are posted for the same fandom

so to me, this is solid, concrete proof that smut will always attract a larger audience. every single one of my smut fics that exists in the same genre as a fic without smut has a larger audience

(unless it's a wlw fic, but again - that's a whole different story. cause don't get me started on the whole 'we need more sapphic stories' crowd who never fucking read wlw fics when they are posted)

I feel like this is really a two pronged problem

one: the recent Catholic sexual repression in fandoms (and in queer spaces/the internet in general)

two: people who love to complain but make zero effort to change the things that they complain about in fandoms (hecklers, in a sense)

the first one is something me and @nctzenkane have talked about at large. it's the "sex scenes are so unnecessary in movies" thing and people directly relating the things you ship to your morals - the idea that the kind of fanfiction you write and read is directly in line with your moral fiber as a person. these are known as thought crimes. which is a highly Catholic sensation

in Catholicism, it's the idea that God can see all and knows all, and therefore, thinking bad things is on the same level of sin as performing a bad act - so thinking about sex too frequently or thinking about harming someone is on the same level as physically committing a murder, and both of these things equally make you a bad person. (and so you need to keep your mind 'pure' for God.)

in modern times, it's the idea that associating with certain topics of fanfiction makes you 'sus' and an untrustworthy person, and that you are more likely to follow through with the bad acts that you read about - like rape, pedophilia, unhealthy age gape relationships, violent crimes, ect. - if you read about those things frequently. (which is untrue, for the fucking record.)

and for the hecklers... god.

someone talked about the sensation of how the pandemic caused this huge shift in fandom, and yeah - I felt it happen in real time.

people who formerly were never in fandom or saw it as a 'nerdy' hobby (people whose hobbies were based around socialization - like drinking and going to bars, etc. or younger people who were allowed unsupervised internet access for the first time) all flooded fandom spaces with 0 sense of fandom etiquette. those are the 'writing fanfiction is too hard so I'm going to harass experienced fanfiction writers' people.

they love to complain about things they don't like in fandom without doing anything to change those things - even if it's something as simple as blocking and following the right people to curate their feed or curating their AO3 tags. the other day I saw dozens of people on tiktok saying that they don't know what the 4 symbols in the corner of the fics on AO3 mean. A lot of people assumed that they were there FOR NO REASON. it made me want to start chewing on glass, no lie

anyway. the landscape of fandom right now is so... (sigh.)

[thecoolerliauditore]

One small thing I think a lot of people seem to have trouble differenciating twink and fem, like they can overlap but they are not interchangeable and one of my biggest complaints about the anti-twink thing is that when most people say it they mena anti-fem. Which... I will not get into it but I will point out that throughout all of western history from greeks looking down on gay men who take on the "feminine" role of bottoming to the edwardians with their "feminine gay men are a third gender" ideas, to the late 20th centurys misguided respectability politics of "straight gay" and "manly gay" and the distane for overtly feminine or camp gay men as offensive that followed, any percieved femininity in men being bad is a time honoured tradition even among queer folk. You even see it within the minor acceptance of gnc aesthetics where femboys and fem androgyny get backlash while bearish men wearing makeup and pink are praised as being more gnc. Kaz Rowe has touched on this topic in their videos on occassion alongside other similar topics. People WILL find a way to rag on men for daring to be feminine even within spaces made for feminine men...

... but that's all getting way too deep into queer history and far away from mcyt fandom, but I think about that a lot whenever I see someone using twinkification to complain about the overtly or implicitely feminine features specifically rather than the boyish and youthful aesthetics of twinks as a whole. There's overlap as you said in being clean shaven and petit but I do not think a lot of people have actually sat down enough to break it down and think about why they dislike those particular features that are often sited. A common example: being short is in fact not a twinkish trait, its a fem trait. This is a general issue of unmasculine = feminine to most people and the lack of acknowledgment of androgyny or ungendered traits. Either youre manly or youre not and if youre not youre fem, and if youre fem and a man especially a gay man that's bad.

I don't think anyone is being overtly misogynistic I just think as the internet spaces are wont to do they've moralized their preferences or examined the social acceptability of them as much as they would like to believe. Its like complaining about dyed hair and pride flags being the default popular option, you are in the counterculture space where those things are finally acceptable and people are allowing themselves to express those traits. Please learn to separate preferences from morality.

.... sorry i went on a tangent I think I dont remember why im here talking about this...

Not much to add except that this is a good add on, and alot of this also acts as another reason I try to emphasize that I don't pass moral judgments based on how people draw characters -- I too have biases I could easily project onto others and what is moral in my worldview could be the opposite for someone else with a different mindset.

FYI I do agree on the young twinkish /=/ fem, using my own designs as examples again I do think my Grian and Scott you could argue are feminized compared to their respective CCs, but I wouldn't call them feminine on their own. I mean there's definitely wiggle room and something there about comparing designs inspired by anime tropes which stem from Japanese beauty standards and conceptualizations of masculinity to maybe some of the whitest men currently walking planet earth but. yeah in my opinion my Grian isn't fem he's just a twink which other people might see as "feminized" -- I just made the assumption anon was at least partially talking about designs like mine because I feel like he's pretty much the standard fanon grian design to me unless the entire grian tag started drawing him with eyelashes whilst I wasn't looking. Psychosexual game of telephone.

But anyway yessss good shout on the queer history, I was actually just on a derek guy thread mentioning the "manly gays" of the 80s who dressed in a way to combat the effeminate reputation gay men had (and thus alienated the gay men who Were feminine). He talked about how a lot of that style has now gone mainstream and been adopted by very homophobic men which is very funny and ironic but also interesting how that loops back into itself.

Also got interested in the videos you mentioned and this was the one I watched (cus I found it first)

LOTS of good points in here I think people should know because this made me realise despite how influential anime is on this fandom, most of the people here aren't necessarily weebs or aware of fujoshi history. Really liked the points about xenophobia and how western BL is held up as "progressive" whereas asian BL is "problematic" in peoples minds as well as the mentioning that a lot of the strongest anti-fujo sentiment comes from people who would very much be considered fujoshi by the men who coined the term. This comment sums it up better than I could, I think.

Because. Yeah. Thinking about that point I talked about awhile back where a lot of the people who I've seen hate on "anime twink grian" have very twinkish designs themselves. It also seems to be a sliding scale of what a "twink" even is, this is a non-fandom example but I was reading this manga with a friend and they called this character a "twink", which I think really emphasizes how a lot of peoples conception of "twink" is more of an amorphous concept than just the body type.

So what you end up with is people who draw very standard Grians and then hate on others for drawing more or less the same design but in a more explicitly anime-inspired style or like. slightly smaller/skinnier.

I'd be interested to hear what your disagreements are with the video cus personally I'm not so sure about the roundabout "But Bad Yaoi is still Bad" stuff which is essentially still the same Good Queer, Bad Queer attitude that haunts so much queer discourse but that's just me. Also not entirely sure about the women liking BL because they like men, nearly all of the fujos I know have very little interest in men irl, but I'm also very much surrounded by queer people so my data is also biased.

REALLY GOOD POINT ABOUT THE TERF/ANTI-FUJO OVERLAP TOO. Not much to add in that regard but it's been something I've noticed and I'm glad I'm not the only one. I remember seeing a lot very. Strange stuff coming from people with rainbow flags in their bio about the creator of the webtoon Boyfriends when I was paying more attenton to webtoons.

I think you mentioned the whole. pushback against twink designs being counter-counterculture awhile back and I think that sums it up really well. Let men be masculine, etc etc

And all of this really doesn't even? Mean much from me I think cus I'd like to think most of my designs although differing from the CCs ARE pretty recognizable as 30+ men with like. very minimal frills (long haired etho clawed out of me kicking and screaming I think). So I really do not have a horse in this race at all lmao I just don't like people trying to police fandom with nebulous assertions of morality, especially when it's like. That video of the hyper-woke dude and the trump fanboy who have different takes about topics but arrive at the same conclusions. Girl just draw your own shit if you don't like luminousslime it really is not that serious and sometimes a specific design just. leaves a deep impression on the fandom consciousness. What I said before about how I appreciate people who just make their own shit instead of complaining that they're not being catered to.

[spindrifters]

dude i really dont know how to tell you this in a comprehensible way but im just so in awe at you. i've been following your blog for maybe two months or smth bc of the constant wolfstar spam and really enjoy that.

but also i find it so so nice to see an adult in fandom that is comfortable with being an adult in fandom. i've seen lots of people turn away from fandom activity as they grow older (especially from harry potter related stuff. ig it becomes embarrassing for people) but i couldn't imagine that for myself as it is a big part of my own life. why would i stop engaging in a community that shares art and stories and beliefs?

(also as i'm a nonbinary teenager my heart just kind of jumps seeing an adult whos comfy presenting themselves like that on the internet. i'm finishing school soon and growing into the age where lots of people in my social circle seem to expect from me to grow out of this "phase". ALSO i make art myself and its just cool to see "real" writers in fandom. (i really hope me telling you this doesn't bother you.))

i just wanna tell you that your silly little posts always make me giggle and this blog feels like its own little safe space :) hope you're having a nice day <3

I want you to know that it really made my day to wake up to this.

I remember being a teenager and seeing my 30+ fandom friends and just sort of thinking well that's great for them, but there was an underlying assumption that I'd probably grow out of it by then. which made me really sad, but I assumed it was just a natural part of growing up. and then I didn't grow out of it. but more importantly, like you've said, I became really comfortable with it. if football fanboys can have their niche obsessive interests their whole life, then so can I. that's something that happens across the board, at least in my experience. I hit 27 or 28 I think and started embracing things I thought I'd have to put away as an adult, only now I had the freedom to do it in ways I didn't when I was younger. (I'm not just talking fandom. I'm talking dying my hair pink after 7 years of blonde because it made me happy and I stopped caring about it looking professional.)

and I do think part of this is because there's no actual way to 'be an adult.' part of that's because the markers and milestones boomers and much of gen x had don't really exist for us anymore. so you get older and it's a realization that, "I don't have to look and act like an adult. an adult looks and acts like me, because that's what I am." and then you start to meet other people who think similarly. the community of 30+ fans here on tumblr dot com are honestly some of the best people I know.

anyway, all this is to say, I so remember what those growing pains you're going through/can see on the horizon were like, especially relating to the interests I had that society messaged to me were shameful to have. I was a teenager during peak fangirl shaming of the 00s/10s. so I turned it into a fucking career instead.

I'm really, really glad that this feels like a safe space for you, it makes my lil gremlin heart very cozy and warm. xx

[bookshop]

no one cares about avatar unless there's an airbender attached

I wrote this absolutely unhinged comment in response to Adam Burnas's attempt to quantify Avatar's cultural impact on Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day newsletter, only to realize that I couldn't even post it after I was done, so I hope you all like some salty thoughts on fandom and geek culture and cartoon-inspired rap lyrics and my experience as an internet culture reporter leading me to conclude that truly no one gives a fuck about James Cameron's Avatar.

Hi, Adam, I apologize for the length of this comment and for being a bit negative here, but a) I had MANY THOUGHTS!!! and b) you shaded the beloved fandom I was actively in for nearly a decade, so I have to protest.

Inception's strong AO3 presence is far and away reflective not just of the fact that it happened to have two hot guys in it, but of the film's overall cultural staying power. Within the fanfiction community, Inception fic has a reputation for being very smart and complex and layered and really playing around with both the film's worldbuilding and its metanarratives. Seeing it written off as "hurh hurh handsome boys" felt super dismissive and unnecessary.

I also felt like your read on the rap lyrics you were searching was also somewhat perfunctory and dismissive. For example, Space Jam's cultural resonance within rap lyrics also aligns with that of MANY other animated works (I wrote a whole article once for ex on how popular Dragonball Z is with hip-hop artists), and I think there's likely a lot more going on there than just people dropping Nike references, especially given how objectively popular Space Jam is with 90s kids. You seemed exhausted by having to sort through a bunch of random Nike mentions, but I feel like there's probably something deeper in there to find.

Again, seeing all of this cultural saturation summed up as "cartoons and sexy boys" felt really dismissive, especially when you're also trying to get us to take seriously the argument that references to Avatar as primarily "something big and blue" make a case for it having cultural staying power as a film/world/artwork.

Why? To me, those references strongly suggest that the collective cultural understanding of Avatar that's being spread is of a big blue bloated empty film whose contents are negligible. Nothing to do with the film or its characters or its world, but as a collectively understood white elephant.

As for the data, you spent a lot of time telling us that Avatar *is* culturally relevant to some people, somewhere, while showing us data that consistently suggests the opposite. I kept waiting for you to look at the relevance of Avatar in your chosen categories *over time* to see both how it fared compared to your other films and how much it waned or rose in the cultural conversation as time went on. That you didn't do this seems like a huge gap in any attempt to quantify its cultural impact and staying power.

You also say at one point that Avatar is "exactly where it should be" which feels like a strange assumption. Why *should* it belong anywhere at all in the cultural mix, and what factors have granted it such a place? I would have enjoyed some interrogation of that idea.

You say that Avatar is a movie that isn't made to perform well as a GIF. Really? It's a dazzling visual feast, a CGI spectacle, the kind of thing GIFs would surely enhance. You don't really consider that maybe its failure to succeed in such a visual medium despite it being such a visual film is an especially telling failure.

And you don't make any attempt to find and qualitatively examine another avenue -- fanart is the obvious medium that comes to mind -- by which fans of the film could really respond to the film's visuals and world in a way that both reflects their appreciation for the movie and helps boost its cultural impact.

I'm also really surprised you didn't look for Avatar memes on KnowYourMeme etc? If Avatar has no real memes to speak of (other than people mocking its use of Papyrus font, which arguably counts!), isn't that another giant sign that its cultural impact is negligible?

For that matter, why not look on Reddit to see how many subreddits are dedicated to Avatar (the first film), and how active they were in the years prior to the second film's production?

As an internet culture reporter, if I were tasked with writing this article, this is how I would report this out. You repeatedly assert that Avatar must be meaningful to certain communities or platforms, but then never show us which/where those communities are. So I'm honestly less convinced that Avatar is a cultural icon now than I was before looking at all your data.

Also! "But it also begs the question, where are all the people saying no one ever talks about Gravity or Mr. & Mrs. Smith or Hancock?"

... Dude people DO talk about Mr. & Mrs. Smith constantly, that movie has had significant cultural staying power haha. But also none of these other films made a zillion box office dollars which is the main factor that you have to consider in comparing them to the one movie that did. For so many of them to have more quantifiable data in their favor than Avatar is astonishing.

Crucially, the communities that you identify as ones that would be meaningful contributors to the film's lasting relevance are ones that gravitate towards the types of genres of which you seem dismissive. That certainly matters in terms of impact! Certainly on Tumblr, which is still one of the biggest fuelers of cultural conversations that travel far beyond Tumblr itself, Goncharov is already bigger and more significant to the community by orders of magnitude than Avatar ever was.

And I think it's hugely significant that the Goncharov memers chose Avatar, the big, blue, bloated, fully mainstream, pretty but essentially empty movie, to contrast Goncharov with. That says a huge amount about what type of stories and art and forms of creation people in those communities value and aspire to make more of.

That sense of transformativity may be difficult to quantify, but I think it's doable. I just think you probably won't get there searching Genius for lyrics mentioning "Jake Scully."

And honestly, I don't think you'll get there at all with Avatar. I just don't think, ultimately, there's anything there to find.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

I'm the anon asking if I'm tripping about Tae

The way you expressed yourself made me giggle

For the past 2-3 years..my personality has been being Army

The type of Army who was so butthurt at anyone criticising the guys

The type of Army who just went along with the hive mentality of Bangtan are perfect...not even human...so how dare you....then after dreamers...twitter became too toxic to the point I realized its affecting my mental health and I was like hold up...why is my whole life just about Bangtan when they can literally never do anything of "significance" for you...of course they offer me entertainment,comfort, support,positive emotions etc but like this experience was some type of...you are wasting your youth days by always being chronically online and not doing anything else....it was like a spell was lifted...I was like okay...so if I voice out my opinion on some of the things this fandom does...all they can do is just call me an anti and tell people to.block me...it's like being Army is being hired to always be working 24/7 ....ooooh...you can't claim you're Army if you don't love all 7 of them...it's like when strangers from the Internet tell you you aren't a real Army because you don't subscribe to our bullshit is suddenly the biggest mistake of your life and you cease to exist...the thing that makes me mad at Bangtan is that they are aware how this fandom has been catapulting to so much immaturity that makes them unapproachable if we are honest but they still cater to them and put up a front...

Reading your blogs made me start questioning things and the appeal of treating them like gods just started dissipating....Army loves to make it seem like Bangtan are the top of the top but if you look at it...esp these days(not at all including the solo work so far...I love JITB from start to finish and some songs on Indigo)...is they give us generic content and they know the fans themselves will bully other people to gobble it up...I'd really love to hear them being so deep about their creative processes...after all this enlightenment...the only person whom I can't seem to rid the divine aura is Jimin but he also has a negative side to him...but I think with him..I've come to experience what true unconditional love is...same as JK but JK I've learnt to humanize him in my mind

As for the other members...I love them...they are all so multidimensional....My soul just doesn't like Tae for so many reasons....and when you're from a mindset like mine...I used to feel really guilty for not liking him and I always exaggerated my affection for him on the timeline to somehow mask my dislike...but its been a journey learning how to detach from this toxic mindset and treat them like the human beings that they are....thank you for creating this space where you are so open minded and allow discourse with people who can see through the bs....

I just wonder when they will take responsibility of how their fandom is getting out of hand in a very high rate...Army's are one of the most vile people on twitter and I understand with some things it's needed but damn😭

Chapter two just made me realized I might be a solo stan and not as ot7 as I thought....but thank you for responding to me....I kinda needed that pov to stop making myself feel guilty....but then again...there is no one human being who is perfect....there might be so many grammatical mistakes..I'm sorry 😭💛

I will asssume you're probably aware how this sounds, right? You got out of a cult. Replace army and bts with whatever cult is out there and it would apply.

I know my post hit a nerve. And some others in the past. And I can see that in all the asks in my inbox. Which surprises me, although it shouldn't. Because I'm not the type of person that needs to hear it from others first in order to say something. Maybe it has to do with age, personality, the fact that this is the internet and I really don't give a shit because it's only a small fraction of my life? But others do, which is ultimately, a bit unfortunate. Because it shouldn't be like that. But the fandom at large is so close-minded that those who don't subscribe to the cult mentality or who figure out along the way how absurd it is, are pushed aside and worse. You cannot be part of it if you don't think the same way. It's authoritive and totalitarian and jesus christ, do we need that in a music fandom when the world is as fucked up as it is? Is it worth it? Is it worth it to be misogynistic, to become an informant snitching and gathering information so the small-time leaders of report accounts can do their cancel spread sheet? Is it worth it to doxx people for whatever the fuck reason? Why on earth would anyone want to be a part of that? And then you have the ignorant on purpose army who took to heart "see nothing, hear nothing" and made it their slogan. They don't like "speak nothing" cause they suddenly get a voice when it's time to all say in a choir "all shippers are the same". Spineless people.

Spineless people who the PR job for BTS for free and they love their free labor while they don't stop for one second before buying in massses every little thing the company puts out. A late stage capitalist nightmare.

And about that creative process as a group? Well it's certainly impossible to talk about something in the last few years when they only released subpar music. What would be so deep about Butter when RM managed to say it has fruit vibes? They can complain about feeling burned out and how it wasn't a fruitful period. But they did it and they got a lot of money from those songs. Time to treat them as adults and not just as "our boys".

[marxistluffy]

There's probably a lot of little things that played into this, but here are some of the major ones I've been around for and noticed:

Immediately before this period of dark nihilism, 2010-2014 fandom culture was starting to be considered "super cringe" so people were constantly taking away words and phrases you couldn't say anymore. "Oh you still use XD? Weird! You're probably really old (fandom ageism taking root) Get outta here!" People would cast you out as weird or cringe for even so much as thinking about using an old-fashioned, text emote (the silly old ones like :P, or :> or TwT). There was whole long discourses about which ones were still acceptable, and it seemed like only the simple smiley :) (passive aggressive) and the uwu survived, which spawned a whole new culture in itself. Young fans were really trying to claim the tumblr space, and tension got super high because of it.

Right after this weird aggressive period, Trump and this utter sense of apocalypse happened, so everyone's mood just... turned dark and sour. That, combined with this weird toxicity on internet spaces (especially tumblr, where fandoms became battlegrounds), made everything very toxic and broody, which was a stark contrast to the kinds of fandoms that were suddenly thriving (Steven Universe, Voltron, a lot of new, potentially diverse kids cartoons, where these kind of rising stars that reeked of toxicity.) Internet dadaism and majorrr nihilism became a thing in the midst of this weird angst train, and it decimated both perky show fandoms, and darker themed ones (GoT, SPN, etc). There was also, however, just this growing sense of unity in... despair and gloom in the growing state of worldly chaos. Covid was hitting EVERYONE, and it was, finally, something we could all talk about and more or less agree on, so long as you were on the same political side of the issue. This probably reached its peak, or maybe climax, when Destiel "becoming canon" happened around the same time we were all watching each state struggle to tally votes and commenting on it like the weirdest, most universal soccer match. The memes were unreal, and the cascade of real-world mixing with fandom events was unparalleled. Life truly felt incredibly surreal at that moment.

It was only after all this drama, weirdness, and STRESS hat things... finally started to calm down. Almost universally, people started to relax, and just... take the little things for granted. Even though worldly issues didn't exactly get better, they did get easier, especially since the vaccines came out, as that was a huge relief for everyone. Internet romanticism hit its peak yet again, except this time it wasn't excitement about being on the internet with quirky little abbreviations and emotes, but with being able to enjoy... outside life as well. After being trapped at home for basically two years or longer in many places, people really wanted to bridge that gap, even all the worst of the tragically depressed nerds. And yeah, that's when the whole real-life-romanticism hit. People are still incredibly addicted to the internet, but with the way we were all condensed onto it in such a toxic mess before, being able to appreciate that space to breathe was just.. a huge feeling everyone wanted to share.

Also the tumblr NSFW ban of 2018 drove a LOT of young people off tumblr, and onto twitter, and while you would probably assume that'd drive just the adults and artists to twitter (it partially did), it also drove most of the younger fandom members with it. Most of the ones that stuck around were older adults, 20s to 30s and beyond. You can see it in the kinds of hit posts that deal with mundane, very adult activities, like getting groceries or parking the car. It's literally settled down because the rampant energy has all moved.. to twitter. And having been on both the whole time, I can confirm that it is still much more of a chaotic mess there, where the youngest fandom-goers gather in bulk and continue to send death threats, share kys jokes, and bully each other <3 Some things never change.

I haven’t been on tumblr for quite as long as a lot of people but over several years I’ve noticed this interesting gradual sorta,, shift in the general culture? that it went from this mostly depressed, nihilistic outlook where people would regularly joke about hating themselves and being hopeless and depressed, to a wave of vehemence of “STOP hating everything actually the world is Good and you deserve love!!!” type posts, to now, where those aggressive ‘PSAs’ have faded away and instead I regularly see people romanticizing simple things like stars and hot tea and rainy mornings, and waxing poetic about their friends, and just trying to put love out there. and I don’t know exactly what that means (someone who knows more than me could probably say something smart about generational expression and trauma or popular perception of mental health and whatnot), but I do know that it makes my heart very full to see people learn to love the world and themselves by extension, and a whole userbase adopting healthier coping mechanisms, and therefore teaching the younger users to do so as well. I might just be following different people, but I really do think we’ve grown. everyone has grown. five years ago it wasn’t unusual for the next post on my dash to be a scathing commentary on why nothing matters or an anon ripping into someone they barely knew or someone complaining about how pathetic their interests are. now I have mutuals who get excited and spam reblog art of cows and friends I see tagging each other in pictures of frogs and strangers writing paragraphs about how much I matter. it makes me happy. idk. just an observation I wanted to make. I think people are good and everyone’s just trying their best at the end of the day

[theastromind]

ur cool to chat with!

I was thinking its such a recent issue among general internet spaces, I mean on one hand theres people fully deluded thatll maybe overdefend but on another hand theres people waiting for an idols downfall at the same exact time. I do think for instance yoongis dui was obvi a legit crime but ppl now using it to degrade all the things he has done for bts / kpop in general and asking him to leave the group despite being their main producer, then theres ppl that really do seem to only focus on either major flaws of idols like ones who overperform or underperform, what weight an idol is or isnt (changbin lately seems the main culprit as well as jeongyeon of twice) its like they cant win these days. I do blame beauty standards as well cause so much is abt the look of an idol than what they bring and it makes them seem like robots really.

visuals is a useless position for anyone in a kpop group cause it says ehh they aint got a particular talent or part in their group lets just say theyre the face of it then? like its so old fashioned / stuck up. I dont know if its only kpop but in general pop groups are treated like dolls or an object. I do think idols dont mind people doing readings on them cause its like an outlet away from those that are hard core stans but i dont think it has to always be abt whats on the outside of a person or who their fs could be.

I also think an aspect is that either its less about actually enjoying what idols do and release and more about who can be the next target of a witch hunt. its just got so childish over recent years and I try to separate the groups I love from the broken af system theyre in but to no avail its like another week another excessive piece of non issue drama is generated.

I always think balance is the key to a lot of things in life, and that includes being a fan of someone. people need to realise that idols can make mistakes, but thats all it is, a mistake. they don't need to tear his whole career down because he made one mistake. I also kind of hate how the kpop industry puts way too much pressure on visuals, and how it can sometimes seem to be more important than the work that they do. I do think they have a lot to learn from western culture in that regard with the entertainment industry.

I honestly try and distance myself away from as much kpop drama as possible. In 2020 I became a fan of nct as I really liked yuta, and I had a yuta twitter account with about 4k followers. almost every day there was always something new in the way of drama and it would usually be within the nct fandom, which I found was the most weird thing about it. everyone had a solo stan account (before I was a multi carat account, and I still love svt) so it was weird to see people having an account for only one person in the group. some fans of the other members would turn on other members of the group and say '___ doesn't deserve to be in nct' and I was like ???? they're in the same group and you're just hating on that member because they're not your favourite? it was just wild to me. I got so overwhelmed with how much drama there was and got such bad anxiety I had to close my account. I now just have a personal and follow a few kpop accounts that post mainly photos etc. I feel like a lot of people need to maybe do the same, bc my mental health really suffered that year

[kimbureh]

I posted 1,304 times in 2022

That's 728 more posts than 2021!

201 posts created (15%)

1,103 posts reblogged (85%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lierdumoa

@kimbureh

@icarus-suraki

@cpt-bagel

@skullchicken

I tagged 1,209 of my posts in 2022

Only 7% of my posts had no tags

#disco elysium - 390 posts

#lol - 197 posts

#tumblr - 88 posts

#art - 61 posts

#capitalism - 53 posts

#internet - 38 posts

#ofmd - 35 posts

#writing - 33 posts

#fandom - 32 posts

#disco elysium spoilers - 28 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#which is: people subconsciously seek out spaces like this to voice ill-fitting opinions cuz a subconscious part of them *wants* to be chall

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

th... there is crypto-fascist pie in Disco Elysium and you can make Kim drop it on the ground...?!???

this man is too powerful

243 notes - Posted January 12, 2022

#4

it just hit me that *of course* Harry has been in on the “pissing competition”. He rolls into Martinaise not just with his partner, but with the whole Major Crimes Unit in order to *annihilate* whoever Precinct 57 would send, to lay that rivalry to a rest once and for all. None of them, except Judit, in police uniform, mind you. They plan to play dirty, maybe even to play dirty on the 57er.

maybe that’s why Jean is treating Kim so deliberately respectful, almost bordering to being meek, when the whole posse meets at the end. This detective from Precinct 57 not just went through a whole week of Harry’s bullshit, he also solved the case with Harry and got a nice photo to boot. How do you look the guy in the eye who you set out to utterly crush with your savant police pixie partner only for him to not only surpass your expectations in every regard, but then *join* your fucking precinct.

just wow. those two will have a lot work off lol

302 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

#3

Disco Elysium’s world is doubted to be a planet, it seems fractured into geometric shapes from below low orbit. It’s difficult to picture something like that, Harry understandably struggles with that as well. You can have this conversation with Joyce:

Joyce Messier - "They say there is a rarefied envelope of matter surrounding the darkened disc of our planet. That is, if we are still living on a planet. Or, to speak more plainly, imagine vast swathes of land disrupted by nothingness."

Joyce Messier -  "I am sorry, detective," she looks around. "Philosophically speaking -- it must sound *quite terrifying*. Even scientific positivism isn't entirely convinced about what we're dealing with here..." 

Joyce Messier -  "But -- this is one of the great questions of our time. Maybe when they get the complete set together it will jolt us out of our rut -- bring us together. However naive it may sound." 

You -  "A fractured corona doesn't feel like it's gonna bring anyone *together*."

Joyce Messier -  "You have mis-imagined it. I don't have the power to convey to you the effect and geometry of the images that depict our world from below low orbit. It's..." 

Joyce Messier -  She looks up: "It's like the crowning of the world. It's insane. Very *disco*. You'd love it."

A darkened disk disrupted by nothingness, a fractured corona, geometry, very *disco*. That’s quite difficult to picture. Here are some ideas.

This is the Revolving House (1921) by Paul Klee. The Cubism style often aims to depict its subject from multiple angles at once, creating a confusing map of overlapping perspectives. This painting lacks the dark nothingness Joyce mentions, but it possesses the fractured and geometric properties. I was thinking about this painting when I painted this:

See the full post

410 notes - Posted March 7, 2022

#2

once saw an interview with one of the Disco Elysium writers, and the interviewer reacted with surprise when he learned none of ZA/UM were English native speakers. The interviewer hadn’t even considered the fact that people from Estonia don’t grow up speaking English.

As a non-native English speaker myself, the first thing that struck me about the development history of DE was that a group of Estonian writers did the tough work, acquired the needed language skills *and* effectively had to abandon their mother tongue in order for their creative work to be *seen*.

Changing the language changes the art, but if you don’t, you get overlooked. And that’s what it’s really about. Non-native speakers naturally are expected to make this barter, and English speakers aren’t even *aware*.

1,131 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

speaking of Ao3 not being a social medium:

it will always need money. It’s an archive. Even if they meet their yearly donation aim now without any problem doesn’t mean it will be like this in 5 years, in 10 years, in 80 years. Yeah you read that right. Ao3 is an Archive. It intends to be available forever. Like a library. Because Ao3 *is* a library. If you want to keep your library, you wouldn’t cut its budget just because it did well last year. Maintaining a library creates running expenses. The purpose of an archive is to preserve data indefinitely, and this costs money.

40,063 notes - Posted August 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[zenosanalytic]

Three Men and a Maybe

HHHHHCHOkay,

SO:

As I revealed in This Post, I have life-longedly loved GamesWorkshop’s(idk WHY my tag for them is separated; I should prob fix that |:T) settings, tho I wouldn’t say I’ve really been a *PART* of its fandom cuz I was at most a lurker in EVERY fandom before Homestuck, but An Idea occurred to me today about some VERY obscure parts of the Imperium’s backstory which would make ALLOT OF THREADS snap NEATLY INTO PLACE, and I’m going to write this theory down(with no idea how unviable their novelizations make it cuz No I Am Not Reading Those Things) even though it will probably be of zero interest to most of my Dear, Dear Sweet Readers u_u u_u

ANYWAY(and under a cut to Spare You All):

All Imperial history is DEEPLY falsified, OBSESSIVELY Censored and Redacted, propaganda; and pre-imperial human history -SPCL the bits from before the birth of Sla’anesh(Yes: I REFUSE to abandon the old spelling; i LIKE that glottal stop there and Im PRESERVING It unu unu unu) wrecked EVERYONE’S shit Thoroughly and Comprehensively- are All Of THAT applied to incomplete -NEVER intentionally preserved- archaeological data, but one thing that this ENTIRELY SUSPECT ~Record~ is clear on(mostly because it’s a central tenet of the Martian Steampunk Techfetishist Cult who builds and maintains, but never Innovates cuz that’d be HERESY!, their equipment) is that back in the Bad Old Days(read: Communist Space-Utopia) Humanity had three classes of “Abominable Intelligences”(AI, get it?) -the Men of Stone, the Men of Iron and the Men of Gold- upon whose labor that Communist Space-Utopia existed, until the Men of Iron rebelled.

From what I’ve read in wikis and what minimal discussion I’ve seen in the fandom the general theories on this tend to be that the Men of Stone were maybe an older class of robots or laborbots, the Men of Iron militarybots, and there’s really no firm idea on who the Men of Gold were(the most popular theories seem to be they were either governmental machine intelligences or some sort of mechanical psyker), but here’s the thing: Why do we think they were all Mechanical?

The recent League of Votann material makes it clear that they’re a clone subspecies derived from genomes specifically engineered for mining work in harsh and non-atmosphere conditions. It also makes clear that ‘the Men of Iron’ were NOT exclusively military bots because the Leaguers STILL HAVE THEM AROUND. THEY DIDNT DESTROY THEM AND RECORD NO CONFLICT WITH THEM(which sort of undermines the whole ‘Oh our Robots went Beserk for No Reason and tried to Genocide all biological life!’ line). They’re citizens like everybody else; self-directed people who just happen to be built rather than decanted out of a clone-vat.

The Humans of what the Imperium calls “The Dark Age of Technology” had the technology to do whatever they liked with the human genome, as ‘abhumans’ like the Leaguers well attest. What if their idea of what constituted an “Artificial Intelligence” included biological constructs? ‘Artificial’ just means ‘Made; Product of Artifice’. What if the Leaguers(scifi takes on Dwarves I remind you) **ARE** the “Men of Stone”, pursuing their own fates independent of the long-dead Federation of “Real” humans which made them to be slaves, just like the Men of Iron living beside them?

But: I haven’t addressed the question of “The Men of Gold”. While it’s just one internet-snake’s fantheory I feel pretty confident about the above, but this next one’s a BIT of a stretch. However: I have what I THINK is a very eloquent way to illustrate it:

That’s The Emperor.

Well: before he was mortally wounded, bound to a giant soul-eating chair, and turned into a demiliche-cum-navigation-beacon by the genocidal fanatics he created to Kill All Nonhumans.

What he’s wearing is called Auric, technically auric-adamantium(auric means golden) armor, and it’s a technology from the ‘Bad Old Days’. He didn’t have much of it and he’d hand it out to his favorites among the Primarchs(those genocidal fanatics who turned him into a psychic lighthouse so they could keep going to breathtaking new places and killing exciting new people).

What if The Emperor is the last ‘Man of Gold’?

I’ve laid out my theory for the Leaguers being ‘The Men of Stone’, and what if something similar, but taken in a RADICALLY different direction, is going on here? What if ‘The Men of Gold’ were artificial biological constructs engineered to Govern the same way Leaguers are engineered to mine and survive? The “Solution” to politics humans have dreamed of for so long: beings incapable of pursuing anything less than the ‘Ultimate Utilitarian Good’(lots of wiggleroom there I’ll warn you!), perfectly logical, utterly dedicated to the survival of humanity(no matter the costs or crimes), peerless in strategy, faultless in rhetoric, infinitely charismatic, Impossible to kill, INCAPABLE of nepotism(or personal loyalty of any kind beyond the expedient, for that matter), and -oh!- also psychics who can know what you want -and how to convince you that their way will get it- before you do, AND project their awarenesses literally across the galaxy at-whim.

What if, taking a page from Voltaire, the humans of “The Dark Age of Technology” made the gods that didn’t exist, and made them In Their Image?

And then those gods, somehow, all died?

All but One.

[disneylanddilettante]

The Disney Renaissance Killed the Disneyland Star

This post has been brewing and stewing in my brain for some time.

We here in the Disney theme park fandom are prone to lament the modern attraction design philosophy that says everything must be based on a movie. Aside from spectacularly clueless comments about “a random mountain in India or whatever” and misuse of the term “barrier to entry,” the reason behind it seems to boil down to: That’s what guests want. On the one hand, this is very clearly an excuse to do what Marketing wants (because film IPs are proprietary in a way that broad concepts are not, and can be merchandised accordingly), but on the other hand…it seems to be…kind of…true? The vast majority of the public, in my experience, does think of Disneyland (which I am going to use as synecdoche for all Disney parks, because it’s the one I grew up with, it’s easy to say, and because I can) as a place where you see Disney characters walking around as if they were real, and go on rides based on Disney movies, and anything else there is just to, idk, fill space until they can think of a cool movie makeover for it.

I have spoken to people online who quite enjoy Disneyland, but also think the Enchanted Tiki Room should become a Moana attraction, Tom Sawyer Island should be something to do with The Princess and the Frog, and the Matterhorn should be turned into Frozen. When I challenged them as to why, they didn’t seem to understand the question—what did I mean, “why?” Isn’t it self-evident? A couple years ago, one of the Super Carlin Brothers (I don’t remember which one; anyway I couldn’t tell them apart if you put a gun to my head) made a video expressing bafflement over the use of Figment as a mascot in Epcot because “He’s not from anything.” As if a ride in that very parkwere nothing.

So there is something to the assertion that film IP tie-ins are what regular guests expect and want. But the question remains as to why they want that—after all, it didn’t used to be that way. Costumed characters and rides based on movies have always been part of Disneyland, of course, but in past decades, the most elaborate and promoted attractions were the ones based on unique concepts that had nothing to do with the movies. The reasons to love Disneyland were things like the Haunted Mansion and the Mark Twain and Space Mountain…not so much the chance to meet Mickey Mouse. So what gave the public the idea that it was all about movies and characters? I’m sure there are several reasons, but I’m going to focus on one that I don’t see brought up that often.

I’m going to blame the Disney Renaissance.

Let me give you some personal background. I’m a young Gen-Xer, born in 1977. I was a child of the 80s…and in the 80s, Disney wasn’t doing so hot. Feature Animation had dropped to a cinematic release about once every four years, the live-action division was even less productive, and the corporate raiders were pawing at the door. In those days, when I saw a Disney movie in theaters, probably four times out of five it was a re-release of an older classic. (Anyone else remember when that was a thing?) There wasn’t much new at Disneyland either. The biggest thing to happen in the first half of the decade was the remodel of Fantasyland, which added one new ride—based on Pinocchio, a 43-year-old film—and otherwise just rearranged and refined what had always been there. On the other hand, the big Imagineering projects of the 60s and 70s were mostly still going strong.

The upshot is that if you were a Disney fan in those days (there weren’t many of us, even in my age cohort), you were a fan of the older movies and/or the parks. And for all its genuine quality, that stuff was showing its age. It was made in decades past, and there was a corniness and a quaintness to much of it. Most of the kids my age considered Disney “baby stuff” and were eager to put it behind them. It seems to have been a widespread phenomenon, because I don’t remember the park being very crowded when I was a young kid. Queues for even the roller coasters tended to top out around 45 minutes and it was very rare that we didn’t have time to do everything we wanted on a given visit.

And then, the year I turned 12—the year my age bracket hit puberty and could definitively be said to have outgrown cartoons altogether (except for the weirdos like me)—The Little Mermaid hit theaters.

Two years later, we got Beauty and the Beast.

And the hits kept coming. Suddenly, Disney was the hottest thing in entertainment again. Not just kids—by this time the generation that would come to be known as Millennials—but their parents watched these movies and went wow, this is really good. Disney is better than I thought. Maybe we should rent some of those older movies that I remember from when I was a kid. Maybe we should go to Disneyland… Unlike in the past, when families went to Disneyland because it was advertised and known as a family destination, families went to Disneyland because the kids were going gaga over the new Disney movies and the parents wanted to make them happy.

So a whole new generation of fans flocked to the parks, most probably never having been before, or not recently. They didn’t know what to expect. They just knew they loved these new movies with their endearing lead characters (so much more full of personality than Snow White or Alice or Pinocchio) and their big bombastic Broadway-style musical numbers (so much more in line with current musical tastes than the Tin Pan Alley ditties from Cinderella or Peter Pan or The Jungle Book). That’s what they wanted from Disney, whether they were paying six bucks a head plus popcorn, or fifty bucks a head plus lodging.

And that would have been fine but for the fact that endearing characters and big bombastic musical numbers are really hard to build traditional dark rides around. What you can do, though, for people who want to meet their favorite characters, is build dedicated character meet-and-greet spots. What you can do for people who want to sing along with Academy Award-winning songs is create huge colorful parades and stage shows that feature those songs. Best of all, if you are certain people who shall go unnamed, these sorts of things are much cheaper to create and operate than rides. Corporate was more than happy to meet, rather than try to exceed, the expectations of this new wave of fans.

The newer guests got used to seeing more-or-less verbatim (condensed) film content in the form of these shows and parades. The classic dark rides began to look decidedly odd to them—why are the movie events out of order? Why doesn’t the main character show up more? Why don’t we get to hear all the songs? And no one was there to explain it to them, because the older generations of fans had largely drifted away and the internet wasn’t quite a household staple yet. Rides that weren’t even based on a movie seemed even odder—what does a Wild West roller coaster have to do with Disney? What does a submarine ride have to do with Disney? I thought this park was supposed to be for kids, but my kids don’t recognize this stuff! They should build a Lion King ride! They should build a Toy Story ride! That Snow White ride isn’t suitable for kids; they should do something about that! I didn’t pay all this money to stand in line for an hour and a half and go on a ride that my kids don’t get!

The pattern was set. IP tie-ins were what the people wanted, and they closer they hewed to their source material, the more guest approval they got, simply because people didn’t know any different. And it has snowballed from there. The Disney Renaissance was amazing for the art of animation, but I think it was a net negative for the art of theme parks.

Tl;dr The Disney Renaissance changed guest expectations for Disney entertainment products in ways that were incompatible with classic Imagineering principles.

[c-is-for-circinate]

So here’s the thing:  I really, honestly do not get the appeal in Widojest.  I don’t entirely see the appeal in Caleb Widogast.  And I’m okay with that; I have other faves who I pay more attention to; I get to do that, because my show is 3-5 hours long every goddamn week that it airs and there is plenty of time for literally everyone.  And I do not have to be a Caleb stan to understand at a really fundamental level that, hey, even if he isn’t important to me?  He is very clearly very important to a lot of actual real-live people.

There will always, always be stories that aren’t for you.  Maybe they just don’t speak to you at all.  Maybe they hit buttons in your brain that remind you of real hurts.  It’s always going to happen.  In a perfect world, with perfect representation where there are stories for you everywhere, there will still be stories that aren’t.

And it hurts, I know it does, when you feel like the story you want for you doesn’t exist anywhere, but here’s one more story that isn’t it.  It hurts when there’s a story that you thought was for you and then it turns out not to care about you at all.  There should be more stories for all of us, especially the stories that feel like they’re not getting told.

That is a real, valid pain.  We all clear on that?

Good.  Because this next part is also absolutely true:

The story that is not for you is very important to someone else.  And particularly in fandom spaces, there is a very good chance that the someone else in question has experienced marginalization on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, disability, mental illness, or general trauma.

The story that is not for you has worth.

People who find worth in stories that are not for you--even if your story is underrepresented and their story really has been told one hundred billion times before, even then--ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD PEOPLE for finding worth in those stories.

There’s this extra dimension to this particular ship war, where I think a lot of Beaujester shippers are so angry not because of what’s actually happened, but because of what years of pattern recognition has taught them (taught us?) must inevitably be coming next.  When a leading man in a fantasy series, on an arc of learning to better himself and maybe even value or forgive himself, repeatedly expresses unrequited love for a girl who he believes is too good for him, the narrative will give her to him in the end.  This is a pattern and it’s real and its existence hurts, outside of Widojest, just in general in the world.

And on one hand: that has not happened yet with Widojest, and there is a very good chance, for a million reasons, that it won’t!  And on the other hand: even if it did happen, that would not be an excuse for violent or abusive behavior, or to dismiss the worth that story might have to other people!  And on the third hand: yes, I totally see why it feels like that’s the trope being invoked here, and why that is scary, and why it hurts!

We know about Caleb’s feelings in this one specific way and we don’t know about Jester’s.  In theory that means that Jester’s feelings could be ANYTHING, and this could go ANYWHERE, and of course Caleb and Liam would respect Jester and Laura’s ‘no’, and there is plenty of agency all around and that’s great.  In practice, it can feel like another reminder of that old trope, where the male lead character’s emotions are given to the audience like something important, and the female lead character’s feelings are generally passed off as vague platonic affection until the final romantic reveal, and we have to extrapolate what was going through her head the whole time.

We know that Critical Role cares about representation and queer visibility, and without a network to fight, they get to make the show as gay as they want.  In theory this means that we can trust them to give us the rep we’re craving.  In practice, we worry, because in an ad-libbed show where you don’t have to plan ahead or deliberately fight for representation, it’s easy to accidentally slip into old familiar patterns and biases without even noticing they’re there.

We know that Laura’s agency and Jester’s agency matter here, that of course it’s not just about Caleb, and in theory that should make ANY romantic ending better and good and right and fine, but in practice--well, what does it mean, when you’ve got agency over a story, and use it to choose to tell what feels like the same old story all over again?

And right, let me say it again: none of this has happened yet.  QUITE LIKELY NONE OF IT EVER WILL.  We don’t know!!!  Not even the players know!!!

Which, maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.  When I’m watching a scripted show, I usually know what to expect out of the formula.  I know when a show is going to be queerbaity and then quit gay chicken at the last second.  I expect it.  I can feel out how trustworthy the showrunners are in a few episodes, and while sometimes there’s a long slow decline or a short sharp surprise, after 20-30 years of media engagement, I know what I’m going to get.

I suspect that CR feels like it should be more “trustworthy,” to many Beaujester shippers, in terms of providing the kind of story they’re craving--but it’s so hard to know for sure.  It’s so hard to know whether to brace for disappointment, or be resigned, or ragequit and be done with it, or most terrifyingly at all, to be hopeful.

It’s hard.  I do get that it’s hard.

And it’s really easy, isn’t it, to go on twitter and tumblr and into the comments sections on critrole.com and fuck knows where else, I’m assuming there’s a Discord somewhere that I’m not cool enough to know about, and be furious.  To be mean.  To blame the fear of not getting the story that will mean something to me, again, on anyone else.  To make fucking death threats, I don’t even know why that seems acceptable or easy to anyone, but it’s just words typed on a keyboard, so yeah, I guess it’s easy.

Do not fucking do that!  Don’t do it!  Whether you identify with everything I’ve said here or you have a completely different reason to be full of rage and fury, don’t do the furious threats thing!  Just don’t!  That, also, is easy!!!  And doing absolutely nothing is at least as effective as being violently angry at strangers on the internet, so it has that going for it as well.

There are a lot of feelings to be had here, and I’m sure not going to sum them all up or solve the problem of representation in fiction in one tumblr post, but maybe we can change this discussion a little.  Maybe we can redirect.

I started this post by saying that I’m not the world’s biggest Caleb fan.  I don’t mind him, but his story doesn’t particularly speak to me.  I don’t love the amount of space he takes up in the ongoing fandom discussion.  I particularly don’t love that every single time he comes up, the volume of discussion doubles because of people vociferously objecting to every single thing about him.

So I find the parts of the story that are for me.  I let the people who want to have Caleb discussions have their Caleb discussions, because they are enjoying a thing they like and I’m glad for him, and then I host a discussion about Beau or Fjord or Caduceus or whoever, because I WANT TO HAVE FUN TOO.  I am watching this show because it is full to the brim with things I like and have thoughts about.  There is SO MUCH OF THAT TO GO AROUND.

[isitovernowfromthevault]

ur tags.....if u ever want to share these thots abt the sw*ftie fandom, I promise I will reblog and scream your post on the rooftops. it’s the best tea there is

My thoughts are kind of a mess and they change as we see more and more internet creators speak out about the fucked up nature of parasocial relationships.

It basically goes like this: ever since her MySpace days, but particularly around the Secret Sessions and tumblr interactions, Taylor herself has basically functioned as a BNF (big name fan) within the fandom. For the longest time, BNF’s have been kind of a replacement creator inside the fandom. For example, you could never have an actual conversation with JKR (ew) and actually change her mind about what she was going to do with Harry Potter, but maybe you could get Cassandra Claire to become your friend and listen to you for suggestions on fanfiction. Or at least laugh at your jokes. And so fandom became an insular activity somewhat separated form the creator.

This barrier did not exist in swiftdom, because back when she was a teenager, Taylor realized that she was basically sharing her diary with her fans and she wanted to actually meet these people. And then swifties realized that, if they got lucky, they could get the actual creator to laugh at their jokes and even invite them to her house. So swiftdom never really developed outside the ever present Taylor, and, likewise, Taylor never really stopped trying to meet as many fans as possible. Neither side took the traditional role.

So of course this leads to a unique kind of insanity. On one hand, swiftdom has a very unique hierarchy defined by Taylor herself: secret sessioneers. Its undeniable that she approves of these fans AND they have access to special content, so they’re at the top. At the same time, these people suddenly have a huge amount of responsibility, they have to not spill the beans for starters, but they also end up with a huge audience, and now “policing” the fandom is kind of up to them as well. If you think its inappropriate to speculate on her romantic relationships, you may just yell at people and log off, or ignore the drama. But if you think its inappropriate AND Taylor follows you AND invited you to her house, then the least you can do is make sure tumblr is a safe place for her, so now you have to be very careful about how you talk about it. Fandom becomes a spectacle. Its all very fucked up, because of course she doesnt actually see everything thats going on, and its not really her duty to police everything everyone says in her name, but the fandom acts like it is.

Her solution as of this year seems to be to distance herself from fandom, which, while on the surface is the most sensible solution, does leave an entire fandom without the leader it used to have. (who also never functioned as a traditional leader but thats besides the point). Now you have the same homophobia and bigotry except without the classic “Taylor liked” that would put a stop to it, so thats a mess. I think its also important to remember that whatever Taylor liked or reblogged was interpreted by the fans. She was kind of an oracle that came in to say “oh I like that” and then everyone would be left scrambling to figure out what exactly she liked. Im still not sure how I feel about her leaving, or what exactly I think her responsibility to and inside the fandom is.

The whole ask blogs thing is a separate but somewhat related discussion: there are always going to be BNF’s thats just... human nature to create leaders I guess. It also leads to a lot of trouble. You have people trusting other people with their problems and life stories, because they want to be seen. But now you have blogs that receive dozens or hundreds of asks a day that are also forming parasocial relationships with their followers. Once again you have someone who cannot possibly be expected to deal with so many people on a personal level (and cant even if they wanted to-these are anons we’re talking about). And then you get, yet again, a hierarchy.

I think to condemn any sort of structure besides purely horizontal is to say you cannot have a fandom bigger than a dozen people and I dont think thats the solution. I think its ok to have gif makers, people that interpret lyrics, make masterposts, gossip, or even blogs that give advice. Its fine to have some BNF’s, and fandom really isnt fandom without them, but its also important to acknowledge that they can sour the entire experience because they have too much on them. Anyone can have a bad day and get snappy, and I think everyone needs to realize that you cannot depend on one big blog (or several) for your entire fandom experience. If a big blog, or even Taylor, has a bad day and yells at people (or calls them freaks) its not their fault if the entire fandom then goes down the gutter.

I dont really know, and my thoughts on the matter change every day. For example, I love Taylors Easter Eggs, and i dont think she should stop doing them, I think they can be a very healthy way of interacting with hardcore fans: its saying “this one is just for you guys”. But spend five minutes on Kaylor, or Haylor tumblr and you can see how these are spun wildly out of control to people looking for clues to a truth only they know. (not unlike QAnon).

I dont know, and if you have any thoughts on this please share them. Ive spent most of my life in one fandom or another and I do think Swiftdom has a uniqueness to it that comes from Taylors close interaction with it. Also, shes a mega popstar of truly gigantic proportions so maybe the fandom is just bigger than usual and gives more space for wild things.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

Hi Em✨

I absolutely love your writing and your posts and I’ve been following you for a while now💕

I’m not sure about you but I feel quite uneasy/conflicted with the current rhetoric on book tok. I understand people not liking certain books but it’s been hard to see people slander books and the people that like those books/characters/stories,etc. I get that criticism is needed for certain themes or values that appear in books but reading is loosing some of its escapism for me:(

Reading in context (fictionally and in the real world) is always needed but sometimes I just like a book because of the characters or it’s story and not necessarily that it checks all the boxes for being perfect.

Tbh, as much as I love certain books, some of them have become tainted for me and I genuinely wish I didn’t I read other people’s opinions on them.

Book tok is great for reccs but I can’t even filter it out of my feed at this point. I kinda wish toxic fandoms also looked inwardly because as much fun it is to engage with fans and people that are apart of that fandom, some people take it way too far such as sending hateful anons to creators (such as you🥺) or calling books trash when they’ve been super influential or important to people.

I guess my little rant is over but I was wondering if you had any opinions on this or have any sort of guidance. Is there a place I could get reccs or how can avoid all of this rhetoric that can affect my view of a book.”?

Stay safe and have a good day✨💐

hi there, nonnie! thank you so much for the kind words, i really appreciate you 🥺❤️❤️

first off, i want to say that i 100% understand this. i never really got into booktok specifically because i had a feeling it was basically going to be book twitter 2.0 where everyone is just ripping into each other constantly. i don't like being influenced by other people's opinions either, and the drama that seems to be obligatory baggage for most fandoms these days (with the exception of TFOTA, cos for some reason we are extraordinarily chill) just isn't for me.

it is, of course, essential that we continue to think critically when it comes to media. it's the only way we can affect change in a positive direction. but this also must be balanced with a willingness to be humble with our opinions, understand that they are just opinions, and accept that everyone consumes media for different reasons.

this also means we'll all hold different boundaries about what we're willing to consume, and where we draw the line for things we won't consume. granted, books might be the mirror through which we see life reflected, but they are not reality itself. to a certain extent, fiction is fiction. and different boundaries does not a bad person make.

speaking of drawing lines, i'm going to direct you to this post by @bookofmirth , which is mainly about ACOTAR/SJM/Palestine but some of what they have to say there is very applicable to this topic, and eloquently put:

"Some people can separate art from artist. Some can't. It's up to all of us as individuals to draw that line where we are comfortable."

i agree with this statement wholeheartedly. it is not up to randomgal4549 on tiktok/twitter to decide what eye should or should not read. the unmitigated gall of anyone to think their opinion should dictate other people's choices is highly presumptuous and quite frankly exhausting.

apart from maybe the bible/other religious texts, what a person reads is not a reflection of who they are or what beliefs they hold. we need to learn not to conflate the two, and start regarding each other once more as humans with complex thoughts and feelings, capable of introspection and growth, instead of little icons on our phone screens with immovable and absolute beliefs.

so that's my opinion on that. my main advice to you would be KEEP THINGS ORGANISED. what i mean by that is this:

curate your social media experience! it is YOUR responsibility as an owner of any social media account (including tumblr) to customise your space to fit YOUR needs. if you don't like someone's opinion/content? unfollow. if someone is rude/you don't like their vibe? block. if you find the things someone shares to their socials offensive? unfriend. this is setting boundaries, and the people who take any of these things as a personal offence are the exact people you want to keep a healthy distance away from. you decide who you follow and what you see on your dash. be protective of your space and who you allow to have access to your energy.

keep personal feelings separate from the public! i honestly can't stress this point enough. if you feel the need to rant about something that irks you about a specific book/author/person's opinion, keep these discussions in the DMs with a trusted circle of friends. it is psychologically proven that when someone feels attacked, they will double down on their og opinion, no matter if they realise they're wrong. thus, projecting high-strung emotions into public spaces such as twitter, while understandable in some cases, will only serve to further polarise people and hurt the very movement you're likely trying to bolster. blow off steam with people you can entrust with your emotions. NOT strangers on the internet.

designate time to learning about issues that are important to you! i strongly advise against turning to any fictional medium for moral lessons or life advice. if you can dedicate some time outside of your escapism to inform yourself about important subjects through educational resources that are specifically designed to Teach/Impart Knowledge, instead of giving an ounce of thought to Intrinsically Biased Information Received Second Hand, i promise you you'll feel a whole lot less obligated to other people's opinions.

if you're unsure about a particular book/author, consider borrowing from your local library, purchasing the book second hand, or finding an ePub copy.

for recs, consider booktube. i know it's probably seen as a bit old school by now, but the great thing about youtube is that you're not randomly/unexpectedly subjected to other people's shit opinions like on other social platforms. you have to click a link to watch the video, which gives you more autonomy in regards to what opinions you consume. my personal favourite youtuber is Khadija Mbowe. she's not a booktuber, per se, but her content focuses on in-depth critical analysis of media/society through the lense of WOC (specifically Black women), and i find her channel compelling as well as informative.

goodreads is also a great place to find book recs without the constant influx of opinions. if you can find yourself a circle of trusted friends to follow on there, you can't go wrong. my goodreads is linked in my bio under "connect" and you're welcome to follow me there. or not! it's your choice.

–Em 🖤🗡

[dystopiandilfs]

I am never been so close to anti-stan then I am right now. Dreams Twitter fanbase started the biggest hate train on him because they themselves:

1. Took his inital tweet with the drugs comment as a race issue, like it was obvious that was not the intent or even the focus.

2. Got mad at his completely rational reply to a toxic Stan that used both white and adhd as an isult - the toxic Stan was saying his fanbase will dogpile them, well if you didn’t phrase your concerns in a toxic way in a public place maybe you wouldn’t be concerned about it. Like he empasised he had no intent to relate it to rap - and they see him say rap and fucking ran with it.

3. Got mad at him for disagreeing with someone generalizing his 23 million fans as anti-black, like even his stance on stans is entirely anti-generalizing, he literally denounced any that are in the same comment.

4. Bullied him into unprivating his account because they can’t share screenshots apparently.

5. Got mad a him for tweeting a fucking heart.

Then they turn around and blame the entire thing on the antis, like no. You blew it out of proportion and reacted like shit to everything he did. You are the problem. All the responses to his last tweet are “educate yourself and reflect” and “come back with a better apology” like no. He apologized when he shouldn’t have and you cyber bullied him. They are bloody proud of theirselves for “holding him accountable“ for something they misconstrued.

He needs to delete that stan video because they aren’t worth it.

First thing i want to say is that this post is going to be joint answered as evangeline is white so this is going to be answered by her and me as im half african half american. Normally evanageline would be voicing her opinions and adding ours in if we had any but as its a racism issue she didnt feel comfortable to voice only her opinions. However shes the one writing the post apart from this bit to keep up the consistentcy of the blog page. -Trinity (Basically Trin gave her thoughts using a voice note and I slightly edited it so the sentences were a bit more coherent and added both mine and the other admins opinions as Trin doesn't really use twitter unless it's through my priv account - Evangeline)

I will say that a lot of the fan drama that you see are a smaller group that is known to attack and harass Dream and anyone who disagrees with anything. Eventhough they are a small group they mass reply to everything and make themselves look bigger than they are. Not only that but the only thing they end up doing is overshadowing the original issue at hand which is fans harassing and being racist to eachother. So a lot of what I'm about to say is mainly what this group is doing and isn't at all a reflection of a lot of fans but it is something that needs to be talked about especially since a bunch of this groups members are either white or white passing but get mad on black people's behalf and is basically setting them up.

I don't mean to be rude or dismissive but a lot of people used this as an opportunity to trauma dump. Like I know going into horrible details about what you have to deal with is the only way to get the point across sometimes however harassing Dream and spamming him with stuff like "I was harassed because I'm gay" "I was doxxed because I was Asian" is lowkey weird. Like why are you telling this random guy on the internet that you were doxxed? What is he going to be able to do about it? Also not to defend Dream but how are you going to sit there and break one of his few boundaries whilst trying to educate him.

On top of that the issue was originally how racist some of the fandom are to black people but then other minority groups started talking about how they were also being stereotyped and attacked but all this is doing is talking over other minorities. For example a large group of fans started off talking about how they were being attacked by other stans because of their skin colour but then immediately started to harass and threaten others. Like some were clearly not being serious but dming people and update accounts to retweet and spread awareness isn't the move you think it is. Obviously a lot of them were genuinely trying to spread awareness and were trying to get the respect and treatment they deserve but all of that was being overshadowed by the few that were attacking and harassing creators and fans. Then a lot of it turned into minorites fighting each other over who was more oppressed which just makes the whole thing seem like petty drama.

I will say a lot of them were lovely. I am pretty uneducated on race based issues and how certain things effect people and can be racist so I was asking a lot of questions and most of them were nice. However I also got a lot of snarky ones like "google it" to questions that weren't general like "Is it mocking to call white people crackers and token white boy if you are a white person" or "is ______ considered micro aggressions"

However as usual it went from trying to educate your creators to who is the most oppressed and who can bring up more past drama that has already been addressed multiple times. I'm not being funny but the fact that some well known Dream antis were defending Dream and shitting on stans should really tell you how non productive this is. It went from "Hey Dream this comment is a bit weird can you delete it please" to "Dream you should stop being friends with this person and you should follow this person otherwise your racist" Like that's not helping anyone. The only thing that it's doing is breaking Dreams boundaries, setting Dream up and making stans look bad.

Like people were @ing Sapnap and George telling them to "collect the racist friend" like how is that spreading awareness. The whole thing went from being a good chance to educate to a big fucking joke that just made a lot of people upset and anxious.

Honestly the whole thing was pretty fucking hypocritical like you can't talk about being harassed whilst harassing people into hearing you out. A lot of the issues seemed really gatekeepy to me as well. One that I saw constantly get brought up was that the only people allowed to say dy*e were black lesbians as they created the word. Like a big topic was a misuse of aave but not a single person actual explained what it was or gave examples all I saw was "mcyttwt needs to stop using aave language it's offensive" like you can't claim to be educating people if you don't explain. Not everyone can access websites and caards that get linked because of regions or web rescrictions so they're not helpful either.

HOWEVER I will agree that a lot of their points were completely valid like the whole thing of "Feral Feb" over shadowing BHM and whenever Dream listens to rap people complain and call it bad music are two really good examples. I listened to a few twitter spaces to learn a bit more and things that were said in there was all good info that would be genuinely helpful to know and it really did help edcuate me however not a single tweet said any of it and that's why people don't understand what they're doing is wrong because nobody explains it.

A lot of the issues that people had with Dream were so weird as well like a lot of them were self oppression and turning normal things into racism. A lot of the issues had the same energy as the 404twt fans who were genuinely mad at Dream for having a colour that George couldn't see and they were harassing him and claiming that he was purposely excluding diasbilities.

Usually we would add more but Trinity got a bit upset and stressed so she had to stop answering various asks and the other admins are all white or white passing and don't feel like it's our place to put our own opinions. We will try to answer other asks with similar thoughts later - Evangeline

[shinyflareon]

Dude I so agree with you about fandom culture. I think now days, people are too worried about purity culture and being so overly critical, that they forgot to just have fun and maybe explore a little bit of themselves while theyre at it. Looking back, there certainly were problems and discourses but at least we all had fun and just put our content out there without worrying that we'd be called this or that terrible term or sent death threats for god forbid exploring sth nuanced in fiction

For sure! By and large, we were all just dumb kids having a good time, coming into our own independence alongside an internet in its infancy and reveling in the anonymity that our newfound freedom provided. Like, there was some pretty awful stuff that got passed around fandom culture back then! But stuff like Pedobear was regarded as a harmless, if occasionally annoying, meme. Can you imagine if something like that were to emerge today?

But with all those problematic elements - the crass memes and the weebing and the yaoi fangirl-ing (to the point of hating female characters for "getting in the way of teh yaoiz!", sometimes to the point of killing them off! horribly!) - came a revelry and joy in fandom that I can't say I've ever really observed since. Fandom in general became such a cultural touchstone because we were all, collectively, in some way participating in it. It didn't really matter what a person's specific fandom was, because everyone was part of a fandom, and with that came an explosion of art, writing, cosplay, and just general creativity, and the bonding that happened online spilled over into physical spaces like conventions where people who otherwise would never have met could not only do so, but do so happily.

We all knew that our shows, games, whatever, they weren't perfect. That was half the reason we started creating fan works in the first place - to "fix" the "problems" (usually the aforementioned lack of teh yaoiz) that we had with the canon. But we still took joy in them, in the worlds and characters that they gave us, and so we went forth and created.

Now, since we've grown up and new generations have taken up the mantles that we passed down to them, things have gotten a lot more hostile. Creativity has become competition - if you're not good enough, then what's the point? You'll never get noticed, and it doesn't matter anyway. They know more about each other than we ever did, but are more divided than we ever were. Our camaraderie became their battlefield. They've forgotten that there were trolls under those bridges we built, and have instead decided that instead of just not being fed, they should go on righteous, chivalrous quests to slay the evil trolls for good. But the thing is, no one wants to return from a quest empty-handed. So you start finding evil everywhere you look, until that "evil" is just someone who says "I don't headcanon [character x] as [having trait y]."

In that vein, "headcanon" itself seems to have become a dirty word! It's not "my interpretation of the story," it's "the only valid interpretation of the story and if yours doesn't align perfectly with mine then obviously you're a horrible, terrible person, because mine is objectively correct!" I noticed this a lot when I first became aware of "kins" - people got so attached to a character and their headcanons about them that they stopped calling them headcanons and just claimed that they were that character but in "their reality" their headcanons were actual canon, and got incredibly defensive of people from "other realities."

And since it's so easy for everyone to find each other now, people drunk on righteous fury and hungry to - as we would've put it - "win the internet" actively hunt each other down, seemingly for sport, and can find each other's real identities and info with horrifying ease. Fandom is legit terrifying now! Some kid with a keyboard who knows way more about computers than you ever will can blast your private info for everyone to see over the barest slight, all to crow about how terrible you are and preen about how good they are by comparison for exposing you. And the bigger their target, the bigger the victory, which I suspect is partially why some people have gotten bold enough to go after the actual people who make the thing that they're claiming to be a fan of.

There are probably a lot of people who can and have say this all way more eloquently than I could ever hope to, and there's probably a whole hell of a lot I'm either glossing over or straight up missing. I'm sure I could get accused of just wearing rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. But the differences between early fandom culture and modern fandom culture are pretty distressing, even from the outside. I don't really know what to do with this distress but to remember the wise words I was once taught: don't feed the trolls, never give out personal information, don't like, don't read.