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random-ln-stuff · 1 year ago

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Hello! Hi! I am deep diving hard in the little nightmares lore and I think I’ve scrolled though most of your blog now (lol). There are still a few things I’m confused about and can’t seem to find…

The north wind, What is it? What powers does it have? Why is it so strong?

The lords, who are they? Do they govern this wrapped world? Do they ever convene with one another?

The eye, is it one big eye? Or is it a realm beyond the no where? Does it control all the other eyes that we see in the games?

If this is too much feel free to ignore it! Sorry to ask so much stuff (I am genuinely trying to make sense of it all) ps. I absolutely adore everything you have in this blog!!

Reading this made me realize that there’s a couple things i just haven’t explained anywhere.

The following is a mix of headcanons and actual (vague) lore.

1: The North Wind.

The North Wind is a monster found in one of the two official Little Nightmares Comics.

In the story, the North Wind is a formless entity, being the wind itself, although he is shown to be capable of making himself a humanoid shaped body deep within the storm that he is, probably forming the shape of a person using dust and debris he’s picked up.

He’s shown making a wager with the Ferryman (which I now believe is “who can pull this child fully into the Nowhere first” or something similar) and given how he calls the Ferryman a Cheat, he’s probably done a similar thing with him many times before.

He’s also one of 3 entities that acknowledges the Ferryman’s existence, the other two being The Mall from the podcast, who recognizes the Ferryman and begs him not to take Noone, and the Lady, who the Ferryman works for.

Besides his ability to literally strip things to the bone with nothing but wind and his own control over it, the mere fact that the North Wind can both casually wager with the Ferryman and the fact the the Ferryman often needs to cheat to win against him shows that the North Wind is equally as powerful or at least very close in power to the Ferryman (and also the Lady).

As for WHY the North Wind is so powerful, I think it’s because of the same reason that the Ferryman is so powerful, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

2: Lords.

First off: All inhabited areas of Nowhere have some sort of Vice or Obsession related to it. A thing that most, if not all of the inhabitants are obsessed with. The Pale City had Escapism and TVs, wherever Guests come from (and by extension the Maw, which is a restaurant that serves these people, not their original home) has food and hunger, etc.

(The Nest is an exception. It doesn’t have any sort of Vice because it’s only inhabited by three people, not counting the Lady whenever she presumably stays there, and doesn’t have the population or resources or anything to sustain any kind of obsession. Sure the Pretender has her dolls, but that’s more of a “spoil this kid rotten” thing than an addiction)

A Lord is basically just my word for “Any creature that controls a given area or vice of the Nowhere”. Meaning The Lady, The Broadcaster (not the Thin Man, but a separate being. I got a whole theory post on that), and if you take the Podcast into account, The Chained Woman, Living Mall and Ventriloquist. Along with any other rulers of the Nowhere we haven’t seen yet or even will never see.

Also included in this list are The North Wind, Ferryman and Signal Tower Flesh Walls. They don’t truly control any real areas (unless you count the North Wind tearing his way through the wilderness) but their power and influence is too great to really ignore, especially since out of the three of them, two work directly together with other Lords in ways that other minions simply can’t. The Ferryman works for the Lady alongside dragging kids into Nowhere to begin with, bringing them to either the Maw or the Nest depending on what the Lady needs. The Flesh Walls aid the Broadcaster in his control over the Pale City, helping spread the Transmission by literally being the Transmission Tower. I’d even argue that for the Ferryman and Flesh Walls, helping the Lady and Broadcaster respectively is more of a beneficial partnership than working under them, especially for the Flesh Walls.

Lords are also the entities that can pull children into the Nowhere, although some do it far more than others and as such are more experienced. For example: The Ferryman, North Wind, Living Mall and Flesh Walls.

(Also while I’m on the topic, I fully believe that Noone’s dream in Ep 3 of the Podcast is essentially an unplanned, forced detour for Noone’s Nowhere Tour, with the Living Mall being the thing that pulls her in this time instead of the Ferryman, which is why the Ferryman ends up taking her away from the Mall at the end instead of just letting her do whatever until she wakes up again. This would explain not only why the Ferryman actually helped Noone during her escape from the Mall, pointing at her necklace and gesturing for her to take it off before offering Noone his hand to escape (which brings to mind the North Wind comic, where the Ferryman does the exact same gesture to the Refugee Boy to take him away from the North Wind), an action we never him do before or after episode 3 when Noone is in danger, but also why the Mall got incredibly distressed and angry at the Ferryman when he showed up. The Mall pulled Noone in themselves this time, and the Ferryman had to show up to make sure his target didn’t get caught by different Lord before he could take her.)

Lords are the most powerful creatures found in the Nowhere, often possessing incredible power and uniquely, more humanlike intelligence and qualities. Adults in the Nowhere are more often than not mindless child killers who simply do their job or keep up with their obsession or vice (the Teacher teaching, the Hunter hunting, Viewers being addicted to the Transmission, etc) and completely LOSE IT when they see a child, gunning straight for it with the intent to kill unless something even more important (usually Obsession related) happens to stop them. It’s shown that some non-Lords can resist these child-killing urges with some practice like the Thin Man refusing to actually harm Six when he grabs her (although he did still leave Six to be corrupted in the Tower) and the Butler being able to look after the Pretender, who is a child, but this seems to be the exception. Especially since in all cases of this happening, there’s a reason for it. The Thin Man can still recognize Six, The Butler doesn’t harm the Pretender because she’s the Lady’s daughter, who the Butler works for and fears for VERY good reason, the Hunter didn’t kill Six immediately because he wanted to either cook or taxidermy her at a later date, etc

Meanwhile Lords have been seen completely ignoring any sort of child killing urge or compulsion easily. The Lady looked after anywhere from 2 to 6 children and is the one that trained the Butler to not attack her children in the first place, the Living Mall is extremely possessive, but doesn’t appear to have any real intentions of harming Noone, just wanting to keep her happy so she won’t leave them to be alone again and even begs her not to go further into the Nowhere for her own safety and even the Ferryman, despite his constant kidnapping of children in and out of Nowhere, never resorts to outright harming them or chasing them down like a wild animal like some other adults.

The Ferryman especially is a good example of this. Instead of chasing and snatching up any child he sees or mindlessly chasing one no matter the cost or killing them immediately upon capture, the Ferryman usually manipulates kids into giving themselves up nonviolently and is extremely persistent in doing so, stalking targets for YEARS if he has to in order to manipulate them or to wait for them to get into a position to be manipulated. He does tie up Six when bringing her to the Maw, but even prior to that he doesn’t chase Six down or harm her in order to capture her. He simply finds Six and points at her, causing every adult nearby to also point and make noises at her (possibly showing that the Ferryman has some sort of control or commanding power over Adults, just like some other lords we see), which overwhelms Six to the extent that she just curls up and tries to block out the noise, and after that the Ferryman presumably just walked over and took her without resistance, avoiding any sort of chase or fight entirely.

This isn’t to say that Lords won’t attack children or will treat them with any sort of kindness, the Lady will kill any intruders she can find and the North Wind seems to seriously enjoy killing things, making a whole game out of it with the Ferryman, but what I’m saying is that they’re able to resist those natural child-killing instincts if they ever want or need to. If a Lord kills a child, it’s because they want to, not because they need to. And boy do they often want to.

They’re also noticeably more aware and intelligent than typical adults. For the best example of this, compare the Maw and Signal Tower to any other adult in complexity.

Every year at the same time, but never in the same place, the Maw shows up, brings guests aboard and lets them eat endless amounts of delicious food and meat, only to later kill all of the guests aboard to feed the Lady with their souls.

The Signal Tower keeps producing the Signal by using a time loop. The loop is initially set up when the Broadcaster finds Mono, a child with signal powers, and attacks the Pale City Orphanage that he’s living in. The two meet, something we don’t get to see happens and Mono ends up in the forest outside the city, most likely coming out of one of the TVs there. Then Mono meets Six and the two journey through the Pale City. The actual loop begins when Mono releases the Thin Man, who kidnaps Six (and removes her soul by doing so). Mono then kills the Thin Man, and enters the Tower, only for a soulless Six to leave him there. Mono is then used as a living battery to create the transmission until he’s too old to be useful, at which point Mono (now The Thin Man) is released from the tower by his past self and is then eventually killed by his past self, who goes on to become trapped in the tower and so on infinitely.

All of these things are not only complicated (Especially the Loop), but when compared to other adults, even adults with Jobs like the Teacher and Doctor, have something that other adults don’t: A Purpose and Ultimate Goal.

The Teacher endlessly teaches fake students that can’t grow, change, learn or ever leave the school. She will do that forever simply because she is a Teacher and Teachers teach. The Doctor endlessly preforms surgeries on patients that never leave, simply waiting in the hospital to go through it all again, once again, simply because the Doctor is a Doctor and that’s what doctors do. The Hunter hunts and taxidermies because he’s a hunter, end of story. These adults CAN do things other than their jobs if they want to, like the Teacher playing the Piano in her free time and even writing and editing her own piece, but in the end they’re stuck endlessly doing their jobs for no real reason, with no end goal, simply because that is what they do.

But the Lady and Broadcaster are different. For example: The Maw’s whole thing isn’t something the Lady does just because she’s The Owner or The Host of the Maw and that’s what she does, she does it to keep herself alive, maintaining the whole thing as a way to guarantee a steady supply of souls to keep herself going year after year. In fact: The Lady didn’t originally run the Maw. She forcibly took it over from the previous owner (The Granny). In other words: The Lady planned out everything with the Maw. She took over because she wanted to use it as a guest trap and continues to use it as so. There’s also the Lady’s connections to the Nest, showing that the Lady can just straight up stop the Maw stuff in its entirety for a while and do whatever the hell she wants at the Nest, not to mention her own collection of books and spells deeper in her personal quarters, further abandoning any semblance of “I run the Maw because I am it’s owner and therefore it is my purpose”. The Lady runs the Maw and keeps track of all her employees because she wants to (use it to become immortal), not because it’s her only true purpose in life.

Her name actually somewhat reflects this. Instead of a job title or something similar, her name is simply “The Lady”. “The Lady of the Maw” for long. It’s just a description of her. Not a job title. Because the Lady does what she wants and doesn’t have a preset job-related purpose. The Broadcaster can also technically be used here as well, because The Broadcaster isn’t actually his name. We don’t know his name. He’s simply a second Thin Man that you can find if you search through the Lore enough. I just call him the Broadcaster because that was the Thin Man’s original name when LN2 had just recently been announced.

(The Thin Man also has a non-job-related name and isn’t a lord, but that’s because he doesn’t actually have a job to define him with. He’s a living battery for the signal tower, nothing more and nothing less.)

Point is, Lords are way more intelligent than the typical adult, and are able to think in ways that regular adults simply can’t.

Also (and this one is a pure headcanon with little canon evidence): Lords have the unique ability to speak in a language that both Children and Adults understand, when normally Children and Adults simply can’t understand each other. The only other creatures that can do this are The Butler, a Non-Lord Adult who can speak Child thanks to the Lady, The Pretender, a child that can speak Adult also thanks to the Lady, and Children that are still in the process of being dragged into the Nowhere, like Noone being able to hear and understand an adult shopkeeper.

Lords can be aware of each other, interact and even work together, as seen with both the Lady and The Ferryman working together either with the Ferryman working underneath the Lady or both on an equal partnership (it’s hard to say given how powerful the Ferryman is and how we don’t know what he’s getting out of this partnership) and the Broadcaster and Flesh Walls working together to create the Transmission, the Loop and everything else that keeps the Pale City the way it is. It really just depends on how close their respective domains are.

In fact: we know two Lords who are either rivals or outright enemies: The Lady and The Broadcaster (once again, a separate entity from the Thin Man, although they look nearly identical).

In Little Nightmares 2, you can find an apartment that used to belong to the Lady, implying that she used to live in the Pale City.

It even has a picture of her (Masked, implying that she had her powers long before coming to the Maw, throwing a massive wrench into the Cycle Of Ladies theory) and one of her ceramic statues. The Glitching Remain found near it might even be the shadow-lifeforce-soul-stuff that the Lady stores inside those things, having leaked out and gotten ensnared by the Transmission.

Given the state of the Pale City and how the Lady now views the mainland as “Chaos”, it’s pretty clear that the Lady lived in the Pale City before the Broadcaster and Signal Tower showed up, and the Lady left once the Transmission started up.

Then in the Nest, we have the Lady locking up a TV in a heavy duty room while suspending it in the air (presumably so nothing can come through and if something does, the TV will fall and break, preventing them from escaping).

Combine that with the Broadcaster’s failed attempt to enter the Maw through a TV in the Post-Credits of Secrets Of The Maw and one of the Pretender’s drawings depicting the Broadcaster, and it’s very possible that the Lady did this in response to the Broadcaster trying to enter the Nest through that specific TV. To prevent him from taking her daughter. It would certainly explain why that TV was rigged to be one way. If the Broadcaster were to come through, the TV would fall, preventing the Broadcaster from escaping with a kidnapped Pretender.

It’s not the only TV in the Nest, as the Pretender does have one of her own, but there’s also a possibility that this specific TV is special somehow. Maybe it’s the only one in the Nest that can access live TV and signals, with the Pretender’s TV only being able to play pre-recorded stuff.

Final point is, both the Lady and the Broadcaster seem to despise each other, with the Lady leaving the Pale City once he showed up and the Broadcaster making multiple attempts to enter the Maw and Nest, most likely with the intention of harming the Lady and/or the Pretender.

As for how Lords are made, I headcanon that there’s two ways. A Deal with The Eye or being Made By It.

For the second opinion you have The Ferryman, North Wind, Signal Tower and Living Mall. They were just straight up created by the Eye. They aren’t the only ones either, as other Lords like them still have the capability to exist out there in the Nowhere. These are just the Lords we’ve seen.

As for why I believe these guys were created by the Lord, just look at them and what they’re capable of.

The Ferryman is described as a otherworldly figure with a face resembling melting wax (fun fact: that exact description is used in the podcast and is a reference to the Cut Character The Wax Bellman, who was confirmed out of universe to be an older beta version of what would later become the Ferryman.), who can shapeshift, teleport, speaks entirely in riddles and is shown to have direct connections to EXTREMELY powerful creatures, not to mention that Otto identifies him as “The guardian at the threshold. A mythic entity who’s appeared in the stories of innumerable cultures.”

The North Wind is a formless entity that is the Wind, is on par with the Ferryman in power and out of universe, The North Wind is often a character in legends and stories of various cultures, just like how Otto describes the Ferryman.

The Signal Tower and Living Mall are so similar that I first they were the same character. They’re giant masses of flesh covered in eyes that can mimic entire buildings. The eyes alone should give these things off.

Coincidentally (or not), these four specific lords are the ones who are better at invading people’s dreams and accessing Our World, with the Ferryman in particular being so adept at it that Otto initially believes him to be The “guardian at the threshold” of the Nowhere. In reality, all Lords we see can access our world through dreams, and it turns out that Eye-Created Lords are just naturally better at it. The Ferryman isn’t THE guardian at the threshold that Otto is looking for, but A guardian at the threshold. A Lord. One of many.

For the others like The Lady, Broadcaster and most of the Podcast Lords, they started out as regular adults.

Now it’s important to note that Regular Adults, despite being bound to that singular purpose or job, can do things outside of it and have unrelated things on the side, like the Teacher playing and composing on the piano in her free time.

For many, this is where it starts, with an adult using that Free Time and stuff on the side in very specific ways. They start researching the world they inhabit and how it works, the Nowhere, Magic, The Eye, and it all eventually culminates in them somehow getting the attention of the Eye itself, and making a deal with it. Either that or the Adult comes into close contact with another Lord, who ends up bringing the Eye’s attention to the adult for them.

The deal is all the benefits that lords have over regular adults (plus whatever is unique to them, like the Lady’s shadow magic and the Broadcaster’s signal powers) in exchange for… something. We don’t know exactly what, but this something is generally assumed to be souls. Many souls. For example, the Viewers of the Pale City are eventually consumed by the Televisions they watch, leaving behind only their clothes. It’s assumed that their souls are claimed by the Eye through this, the Eye getting any and all souls that the transmission ensnares and drags into itself.

Speaking of which….

The All Seeing Eye:

To my understanding and theorizing, the Little Nightmares Universe looks like this:

You have Reality as we know it, The Threshold between Reality and Nowhere, Nowhere itself, an unknown space that most likely just contains another threshold, this time between the Nowhere and the Nightmare World and the Nightmare World itself, which I also call the Eye’s Domain.

The Eye is a cosmic horror-esque eldritch monstrosity. Simple as that. It is the ruler and sole inhabitant of its domain, the Nightmare World. The Eye’s Domain essentially stands opposite to ours in a cosmic sense, and the Nowhere is created where both of these very different worlds overlap ever so slightly.

Also in a very disturbing twist, the Nowhere is actually essentially the universe’s DEFAULT STATE, or at least is as close as to you can get to it, and at some point in the incomprehensibly distant past (most likely during or even before the literal Big Bang), it separated into the stable, orderly “reality” where we live and exist and the horrifying chaotic eldritch nightmare world where the Eye exists.

We know this thanks to the Ferryman’s words: “Two flows from one, and here, is whole again”. In other words, there used to be one world, but then they separated into two, and in the Nowhere, both worlds meet again.

This also means that the Eye most likely predates the entire universe as we know it. In fact, I’d compare it to this bit of Adventure Time Lore:

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The Eye’s Realm is literally just Eldritch madness the mortal mind can’t comprehend. Pure chaos with the Eye being omnipresent, all seeing and in full control of everything that happens in there. But the Nowhere is different. It’s not created by the Eye, at least not on purpose. The Nowhere is a space between spaces, where our reality meets the Eye’s nightmarish hellscape, and the end result is the Nowhere, where things make JUST enough sense to be comprehensible while also being filled with the Eye’s nightmares and corruption.

The Eye can see into the Nowhere and is almost always watching almost everywhere at once, but can’t truly interact with anything outside its domain like the Nowhere or Our World (thank god), but it can use other methods to influence things, like it’s various Lords. The massive amount of Eyes seen all over the franchise are less a thing the Eye looks through and more just a sign of Its Presence. It can’t show up physically, but the Eye symbols are a sign that it’s here and watching regardless.

However, despite the Eye being unable to physically appear in the Nowhere, we’ve seen it. In Episode 6 of the Podcast.

In episode 6, Noone is brought to the Threshold, the final barrier between the Real World and Nowhere, where crossing it will trap you forever. The Threshold (or at least Our side of it) is described as Extremely Dark, filled with black mist that makes it extremely hard to see, and contains a single wooden door simply described as “Ancient” with a symbol of the Eye on it. But after Noone crosses through the door and sees the Nowhere side of the Threshold, it’s different.

The Mist vanishes, and Noone sees countless stars that fill the sky with a red moon, but quickly realizes that those aren’t stars, they’re Eyes. Even the Red Moon is just a Massive, Red Eye. That is our description of the Eye itself.

The Eye can’t enter the Nowhere or Our World, but seems to be fully capable of existing within that border space between the realms, although it’s power is somewhat limited here compared to in its own domain.

Or maybe you can just see into the other realms from the Threshold. The Nowhere is compared to a one-way mirror at some point. Earth is on the mirrored side, and can’t look into the Nowhere, while the Nowhere can look at us. Presumably, the Nightmare Realm follows the same idea. From inside the Nightmare Realm, you can’t see the Nowhere either. You are on the mirrored side of a one way mirror. But from the Threshold, and more specifically the part of the Threshold that’s closer to the Nowhere? You are on the side of the mirror that lets you look straight through it, and with Noone being in-between Reality, The Nowhere AND the Nightmare World, she might have be able to look straight at the Eye in its domain, looking at it through the one-way mirror that is reality.

Anyways, That description of Countless Glowing Eyes matching the amount of stars in the sky with a single massive Red Eye surrounded by rings in the centre is the closest we can come to understanding what the Eye looks like. It’s the most complicated form it can take that we as human beings can still comprehend without going insane.

But there’s more. In episode 5, Otto attempts to use a machine to see into Noone’s dreams, but is stopped at the dark mist of the Threshold. He watches as a single eye appears from the darkness, and then it opens, staring at Otto with such intensity that he’s physically in pain from it, barely able to choke out words as he rambles that “it’s watching me” until the machine he’s using completely breaks down.

In other words, Otto tried to stare into the abyss that is Nowhere, but the Eye cut him off and stared right back.

Also also: Otto’s reaction to the Eye staring at him plus the sound it makes as it does so reminds me exactly of the Sentry Eyes used in the Maw and Nest that turn people caught in its gaze to stone. There’s also the unused TV Eyes from LN2 that do the same thing and it looks like the Mechanical Monster Baby in LN3 can do the same thing with it’s own eyes. This leads me to believe that many Lords directly draw upon the Eye for magical power, and Sentry Eyes (and the Eye Cameras in the Maw) use raw power taken straight from the Eye to power themselves.

Also as pure headcanon: In my headcanon post about some children being native to the Nowhere and some being from Earth, I mentioned two things:

Children that are visiting Nowhere as they sleep (like Noone) but haven’t been fully pulled in yet will disappear from Nowhere and go back to Earth if they die in the Nowhere, Fall Asleep in the Nowhere, or “go unobserved for too long”.

Children will naturally appear in the Nowhere (basically spawn in like Minecraft Mobs) in any area that is completely unobserved.

For both of these things, I’m not just talking about going unobserved by others, but also by the Eye.

The Eye, despite being present almost everywhere in the Nowhere and having a reputation as being all-seeing, is not perfect. Occasionally, a tiny gap will appear in its all-seeing sight, and when it can’t see a spot, Children, one of the only things immune to its corrupting, nightmarish presence, have a chance to appear in that unobserved spot.

#little nightmares #headcanons #theory #lore #asks #the eye #the North wind

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dashboarddiaries · 4 months ago

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Dashboard Diaries is a production of Atypical Artists, hosted by Lauren Shippen (@thelaurenshippen) and Cher McAnelly (@overchers). Our theme was composed by Lauren Shippen and mixed by Brandon Grugle. Art by Shae McMullin. Transcription by Laudable.

For bonus clips, ad-free episodes, and more, become a patron at atypicalartists.co/support.

Lauren: Hello, Dashers! Lauren Shippen here with a quick little comment about this episode before we jump into it. My computer had a complete and total meltdown in the course of recording ... or attempting to record ... this episode. I eventually got things working again but there will be times in this episode where my audio sounds truly terrible. I’m really sorry about that. But it shouldn’t affect the wonderful experience of listening to Gretchen McCulloch talk about Tumblr linguistics. It’s a really, really fun episode. A great interview with Gretchen. So, I hope you guys enjoy ... and sorry for the technical difficulties.

[intro music]

Lauren: Hello, Enthusiasts! I’m Lauren Shippen, professional writer, who absolutely has brought Tumblr-speak into her real spoken life.

Cher: And I’m Cher McAnelly, Head of Entertainment at Tumblr. And student at Tumblr University.

Lauren: And this is Dashboard Diaries, a podcast for you – the folks who are in this internet bunker with us. We talk about what’s going on in our favorite hell site, get into what we like to call “tumbl-lore,” do fandom deep dives, and share the times when we’ve gone feral over a new ship.

And we have a really, really fun guest for you all later. But first, let’s do some Dashboard Confessionals.

[guitar riff]

Cher, what do you have from the archives for us this month?

Cher: So, I have two posts, both of which I feel very much tie in with the topic of the episode today. So, I couldn’t decide between the two. Both of which I re-blogged in July 2015. So, the first one is from user: officalcrow. It’s a text post that says “To my doctor after getting laser eye surgery: So, how do I shoot them?”

Lauren: (laughs) That’s very good.

Cher: The next one is very, very relevant I think to this episode. It is a screenshot of a YouTube video that says, “New computer terms:” and then it lists out “Avatar #trolling and meme.” And it’s from user: literallysame. Which I think, yeah, ties in really well with the focus of our episode today. What do you have for us today, Lauren?

Lauren: So, I have a post from, let’s see, 2014 from user: digitaltits. The post is a little bit like ... the one that I’m going to re-blog the post formatting is a little bit messed up because it’s such an old post and the original poster has since deleted the post I think. So, anyway ... but it says, “Mood. *white kid from ‘90s TV show on bed throwing baseball up in the air and catching it while staring at the ceiling*” And that’s just such a specific mood. And I know exactly what this user is talking about. And I totally feel that mood often.

Cher: As do I. It really captures the essence of the moment. (laughs)

Lauren: It really does. It’s amazing what language can do.

Cher: We love language!

[game show trill]

Lauren: So, this month we have a very, very special guest with us. We have Gretchen McColloch who is the host of the Lingthusiasm Podcast and Internet Linguist, and author of, “Because Internet.” Which I think has to be my favorite book about the internet that I’ve ever read. Thank you so much for joining us, Gretchen!

Gretchen: Thank you so much for having me!

Lauren: What is an internet linguist and how on earth did you get into that as a profession?

Gretchen: So, I spend a lot of time on the internet. (laughs) And also I think like many linguists I can’t really turn that linguist part of my brain off. So, if I am at a party or just talking to someone I’m always sort of analyzing bits about how they talk. And by the end of this podcast I’m going to have a whole report for you.

Lauren: Oh no!

(laughter)

Gretchen: Nothing but good things, I promise. So, spending a lot of time online also means that I wanted to know more about how people were using language online. I also think of myself as an internet linguist as in a linguist FOR internet people. Because I started my blog, which is called All Things Linguistic on Tumblr back in 2012, during the first era of when Tumblr was cool. And I started it when I was in grad school for linguistics and I was feeling myself sort of inching further and further out of that ivory tower and also feeling like I wanted to retain that sense of connection that I’d felt with linguistics when I was discovering it as a high school student and reading pop linguistic books and feeling like this really had this very direct applicability to my everyday life.

So, doing pop linguistics or linguistics communication or internet linguistics is also a way for me of retaining that connection and being a linguist FOR the people of the internet or OF the people of the internet in addition to doing it on the language that’s found online.

Lauren: I love that. So, you started this blog on Tumblr. Was that the first time you sort of got on Tumblr was to make that blog? Or did you have some familiarity with the platform previously?

Gretchen: (laughs) You know what? No one has ever asked me that question and it’s such a good question!

Lauren: Oh my gosh!

Gretchen: It was NOT my first time on Tumblr. (laughs)

Cher: Ooh! What brought you to Tumblr?

Gretchen: So, do you remember the era of ... there was the “what should we call me” Tumblr era where it was ... a lot of it was very student-y. You know? “When I’m late for class ...” and then there’d be a gif. And then there would be all these sort of extra single serving Tumblrs that I think of like single topic Tumblrs that would be about a specific thing. And then there were all these different versions of those. And there were all of these advice animal Tumblrs that would be like a specific domain.

So, the first Tumblr that I was involved with was some other linguistics undergraduate students and I collaborated ... Philosoraptor was probably the best known but there was like Philosophy this and History major that or whatever. And so we decided that the mascot for linguistics needed to be the Lingcod.

Lauren: Oh my god! I remember this blog!

Gretchen: Wait!? You saw the Linguistics Lingcod back in the day? That was us!

Lauren: That’s amazing.

Cher: Oh my god.

Lauren: Oh my COD.

Gretchen: Oh my cod! Exactly. So, we found this truly horrendous picture of a fish. This is not a pretty fish. It’s got these big teeth and it’s got this sort of open jaw. (laughs) We found this truly horrendous picture of a lingcod. And we made some captions for it and we made this single serving Tumblr. I bet Linguistics Lingcod is probably still there. Someone has probably forgotten the login. I don’t know if I actually ...

Cher: I can get you back in.

Gretchen: (laughter)

Cher: I have that power.

Gretchen: Oh my god! (laughs) There were other linguist advice animal memes that were more popular than us.

Lauren: Oh my god. Really?

Gretchen: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. We were a bunch of Canadian undergrad students. And so Linguist Lioness was also around for a little bit. But the really popular was one Linguistics Llama.

Cher: Oh my gosh.

Lauren: I do remember Linguistics Llama, too, actually. YES.

Gretchen: Linguistics Llama. We’ve been in the same [inaudible 00:07:18] of the internet for a long time, Lauren. I just have that feeling.

Lauren: Obviously.

Cher: Oh my gosh.

Gretchen: And Linguistics Llama was not by me or my friends. And it had one of those backgrounds with the spiral colors and it had a scarf which was very classy of it. And I did ultimately ... I don’t know if IRL but I definitely exchanged Tumblr DM’s with the guy who ran the Linguistics Llama account who was an undergrad at NYU or somewhere like that. And so I had been aware of Tumblr for a couple of years before that from the meme perspective.

Lauren: That’s fantastic!

Cher: I love the concept of a single serving Tumblr. Or how each post is its own serving, snack, bite or whatever it is ... bite sized post.

Gretchen: And you still see these sort of themed Tumblrs, especially these days a lot of Tumblrs ... There’s the Tumblr that makes a calligraphy version of the post.

Lauren: Yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Gretchen: Or there’s the haiku bot Tumblr that re-blogs posts that have accidentally a haiku in them. These days a lot of those single serving Tumblrs are a bit more interactive. But you still see ones that are like, “I’m just posting things on one topic” and have this very narrowly constrained post type and they’ll pick a type of post. That was partly why I picked the name All Things Linguistic because I was like I want this to be very clear that this is a linguistics Tumblr. And that I’m going to post about not one specific area of linguistics, that’s what the word “all” means. (laughs)

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: (laughs) But that it’s sort of all around that. I didn’t really realize despite ... so, I knew about these single serving Tumblrs and the linguistic advice animals. But I didn’t really know that there were people who were hanging out in the linguistics tag on Tumblr until I got on there and I saw people re-blogging my post and them tagging it “linguistics” and seeing some of the other posts on there. So, then I was like, “Oh, there’s a whole community here that I could be a part of. It’s not just sort of randomly whatever is going on.” But yeah, I picked Tumblr because I knew how the interface worked from the back in the day Linguistics Lingcod.

Lauren: That’s amazing. I love that you’ve always been doing linguistics on Tumblr. That that’s sort of always been your relationship to it. And we like to think of Tumblr as this very niche unique place in terms of how we talk to each other and the memes that we have and sort of the internal language we have. In all of the online spaces that you’ve been in do you feel like Tumblr does have sort of a unique language unto itself?

Gretchen: I remember a couple of years ago on Twitter, maybe 2018, 2019, there were all of these Twitter memes that were coming up. And I was like, I saw these on Tumblr eight years ago! (laughter)

Cher: Yep.

Gretchen: There was that period where it was like, oh, okay, so the Twitter people have discovered Spiders George. That’s cool.

Cher: [crosstalk 00:10:17]

Gretchen: I was just about to make the same reference! “Do not cite the dark magic to me which I was there when it happened!”

(laughter)

Cher: Exactly.

Lauren: That shared language really is such a huge part of the Tumblr experience.

Gretchen: That’s the thing. You have this sort of shared vocabulary. A couple of things that I think are really interesting about Tumblr is that, one, is the half life of posts is so much incredibly longer.

Lauren: Yeah! Oh, interesting.

Gretchen: And the half life of a tweet – especially when I first joined Twitter which was actually also in 2012 but a little bit later in 2012. It was like six months later. Which felt like an eon because i was like, “I understand internet platforms now. I’m going to join all of them.” But the half life of tweets when I joined was maybe like an hour or two. And then Twitter started putting their thumb on the algorithm a little bit more and the half life of a tweet became more like six hours or twelve hours of if this tweet gets so legs it’s going to keep going and keep giving you notifications a day or two in. But the half life of a post on Tumblr. I mean, first of all, even a post that’s not very popular that’s only liked by a few of your friends or your mutual’s kind of thing is still like 12 hours. Because people catch up on their whole dash.

Cher: [crosstalk 00:11:28]

Gretchen: I was gonna say. Do you have stats on this?

Cher: I do! I have a fun metric. About 1/3 of engagement on Tumblr posts happens 30+ days after posting.

Gretchen: Yeah! Yeah!

Lauren: That’s wild.

Gretchen: I totally buy it. Especially if you just make a post that’s a little update for your mutual’s or something it’s probably not going to have a ton of engagement later but any sort of post that gets a re-blog or two – it just lasts so much longer. I’ve had posts that I made this post five years ago but it’s still going around.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Cher: It’s always funny to go by on your dashboard that you posted years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah!

Lauren: That happens to me sometimes on my ... I’ve got a public facing Tumblr and then my real Tumblr and every now and then on my real Tumblr dash I’ll see my own post from my public facing Tumblr from eight months ago kind of cross my dash. And that’s always such a strange moment. Especially since I think that Tumblr users are very good at digging up really old stuff somehow and then all of a sudden circulating a post a year after the fact. And I think that this can mean that certain things become sort of baffling popular. I kind of wanted to get your perspective on this, Gretchen – around why certain memes or ... I think the word “blorbo” especially is a great example of this ... why certain words catch on when others don’t. What makes something sort of become part of the permanent lexicon versus something that just gets passed around for a couple of months?

Gretchen: Yeah. I think there’s sort of two parts to that. One is this question of why do posts last so much longer? And the fact that posts last so much longer is a contributor to Tumblr having more of a culture because if you missed it the first time around you have so many more opportunities to see it. Whereas sometimes on a faster moving social network – I’m thinking of sort of the Twitter family of networks. So, Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, all of those ones that are sort of very short text post based. You can show up after six hours and Bean Dad has happened and you’re like, “What!? I’ve missed all of this!?” Whereas on Tumblr things don’t show up on your dash quite as quickly. But [crosstalk 00:13:45] a lot longer.

I think that’s partly related to the queue feature. The queue feature is really a driver of that. Because people put posts in their queues and then they resurface a week later, a month later, three months later, six months later and partly that person still looks like they’re active and maybe some of the posts they’re making are live. But also they can resurface their post that they saw six months ago and it shows up on your dash now and maybe you decide to re-blog it or you decide to put it in your queue and this extends the half life yet again.

Lauren: That makes a lot of sense.

Gretchen: Other platforms really don’t have that ... on something like Word Press ... Which Word Press is fine. I use Word Press for my professional website. And I can schedule posts there. But what I can’t do is automatically put them in this sort of system that’s going to doll them out without me having to think about it. I have to say, “This post goes up next Tuesday at 2PM.” I can’t say, “Just put it up at some point in the future, whenever you run out of other stuff to put up.”

Lauren: Yeah. I love and use the queue feature. I haven’t really thought about it in that way before.

Cher: And I love how Tumblr users will often tag their queued posts. And they have all these fun little puns. “This one’s for queue,” or whatever it is and they post those ... there’s a whole queue tag ... I don’t know ... subgenre.

Gretchen: Or like, “You’re a queue-tie” or something like that. Yeah.

Cher: Exactly!

Gretchen: The queue is a big factor for that. But also the scheduling thing. Because some posts get tied to specific days and times. So, Julius Caesar Ides of March stuff going up around the Ides of March or like the September song, 21st of September, do you remember? This type of stuff. Stuff that gets tied to a specific day, people see it the day after and they go, oh, damn, I missed the window to put it up. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to schedule this for this day next year.

Lauren: Yes!

Gretchen: Because I’ve done that!

Lauren: Me too!

Gretchen: I missed my window! Okay, I’ll just schedule it for next year with this idea that I’m still going to be here, people are still going to see it next year. Putting it into the future that way because it’s a way of participating in the culture. And also the idea of have I re-blogged this post a few years ago, yep, maybe sure, I don’t care, I’m re-blogging it again because I’m seeing it.

Cher: Yep. Neil banging out the tunes, April 13th.

Gretchen: Yes. Yeah.

Lauren: Right. All of these real holidays and all of these holidays that Tumblr has made up, or even days of the week memes! You know? Every fandom sort of has it. Whatever Wednesday. Yeah, that keeps a specific kind of culture alive.

Gretchen: That part keeps it sort of going. I think the tags on Tumblr also contribute sometimes to posts getting revived again after a longer period. Because when you’re browsing for tags ... let’s say you just got into a show for the first time and you’re like, “Oh, what have other people posted? I want to re-post some gifs.” So, you go into the tag for that show and you filter for gifs and you start re-blogging them. And some of those people may have put those gifs up years ago. Depending on when the show came out. But you’re re-blogging them now because you’re browsing via tags and looking for stuff to put on your blog. That’s a kind of behavior that you don’t see ... there are other platforms that have tags but Instagram has hash tags and people browse with them but they have a very impoverished post sharing ability. You can really only do it in your story and then it disappears after 24 hours and so you don’t get anything like a re-blog culture.

Twitter has a re-tweet culture and all the sort of Twitter family of networks. I’m on Blue Sky these days, baby. (laughs) And they have a re-tweet culture but they don’t have this “I’m gonna go find this and re-tweet all these tweets that are super old,” because they feature the timestamp very prominently on the tweet and so this idea of if you’re re-tweeting something that’s a week old it’s like, “Well, where were you?” Tumblr doesn’t feature timestamps very prominently anywhere on the posts. And so every post exists in this sort of eternal present.

Lauren: I hadn’t thought about the prominence of the timestamp being such a driving feature. But you’re totally right. I think that I’ll definitely get into a TV show from ten years ago and I’ll go and re-blog a bunch of gif sets from ten years ago because that’s when the fandom was most active. And I think that’s what Tumblr is for, right, is keeping those communities alive perpetually.

Gretchen: Tumblr is also unique as far as internet platforms go because in the early days of the internet this was a very normal thing to do – to try and meet people online based around a common interest. But this is much less common in the present day internet and really since the internet became mainstream. And sort of when only a few people were online you had to figure out a way to try to get to know people online. Because your friends and your neighbors and your family aren’t going to be online so you have to figure out how you’re going to meet people. And that was often very interest based, like Use Net is all based on interest groups.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: But then when the internet became more mainstream you have things like Facebook which are all based on your contacts that you know IRL. Maybe you get to know people through a Facebook group or something but by and large Facebook is designed to connect you with people you already know. That’s this very sort of mainstream style of internet behavior. Twitter has sort of got this combination of things where in some cases people you already know but in many cases it’s people who are like part of maybe a professional community or an interest type of community – but in a very loose sense. Right? So, it will be people who are romance authors are a big group on Twitter or people in tech in various ways are a big group on Twitter. Or like Linguist Twitter was a corner of Twitter that’s somewhat decimated now, which had overlap with other academic areas and this type of thing.

So, you sort of had a nebulous interest group but it was hard to find them because people weren’t necessarily using a tag to organize that. You just had to sort of start with some people and then go through their follower list and following list. Tumblr also doesn’t surface who you follow or who follows you automatically. You can do it optionally. I’ve always turned it off. And you can’t see how many followers someone has. And so you can’t follow a social graph to find people to follow. You have to look at tags or who people are re-blogging. Those are sort of your only options to find other people on Tumblr.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, in terms of how that drives language and shifts and how people are speaking online, I think in my head I’m imagining if I am on Facebook and I’m mostly interacting with the people from my real life or I’m on Twitter and I’m mostly interacting with podcasters or writers, then I am mostly engaging with people who are quite similar to me whereas on Tumblr I’m engaging with all kinds of people. And does that drive language faster or more differently if you are sort of engaging with a bunch of different types of people versus the people sort of more insularly in your circle?

Gretchen: I am so delighted you asked. There have been studies on this! (laughs)

Lauren: Ooh!

Gretchen: A lot of the work on this has happened through Twitter because Twitter has an API that’s really good for downloading this type of data. There have been a few masters thesises about Tumblr linguistics which are very cool. And their authors are people who just use Tumblr and collect some data. But if you want to study Tumblr you have to do a sort of participant ethnography. You can’t just download a fire hose of a whole bunch of posts because that capacity doesn’t exist on a technical level. You could use the API to download one person’s Tumblr blog but what would be the point of that?

Lauren: Right.

(laughter)

Gretchen: Whereas on Twitter, back before they killed this, but you could hook up to the whole fire hose and you could make a whole social network graph of who is following who and so you could get a sense of approximately who was seeing what. So, a lot of the internet language research has been done on Twitter not because everyone is on Twitter because very much everyone is not. But because it’s this very convenient sample that has this very convenient way of analyzing it.

So, this particular study that I’m thinking of finds that the way we adopt new words is this balance between strong ties and weak ties. Social theory – strong ties are people where you have a lot of acquaintances in common, friends and acquaintances in common. You know a lot of people in common very densely imbedded in your social network. And in many cases people spend more time with their strong ties because that’s how they get introduced to your other friends, right? So, a lot of people’s partner is a strong tie, or their best friend is a strong tie, because that person also knows a bunch of your friends because you probably introduce them to each other or you met as part of a friend group. And so you have all these friends in common.

And then your weak ties are people that you don’t have any or very many friends in common with. And so you’re maybe likely to see them less often but not necessarily. So, let’s say a barista at your favorite coffee shop who maybe you go there twice a week and you see them regularly, more often than some of your friends maybe, but you don’t actually have any friends in common with that barista.

So, weak ties are a really important source of new information to a social network. Studies have shown that you are more likely to get a job through a weak tie.

Lauren: Interesting!

Gretchen: Because your friends already know everything you know. Basically. Whereas your weak ties, especially a weak tie who is sometimes a friend of a friend – your friends may not have a job that they could give you but they might know someone who has a job they could give you or like your acquaintance may know someone. And you have a much larger circle of acquaintances than you do close friends just because that’s how time works. (laughs)

So, there’s a very interesting study that I cited because internet, I can’t remember the author but if anyone wants to go look up the citation you can do that, that did a sort of network model analysis of what if you had a social network that was all strong ties? So, this is your sort of classic sitcom style social network where everybody is friends with everybody else. Or you have a really tiny town and everybody in the town knows everybody. There’s 100 people on this island and they all have known each other for their entire lives.

And in this situation, the language situation rapidly becomes very stable. There isn’t a lot of change in the language situation because where is that change coming from? We’ve all been talking to each other our entire lives. Someone would have to invent a new form spontaneously which is less likely than someone just picking something up from somewhere else and transmitting it.

Conversely, a network that’s all weak ties ... so you can think of something like an airport where nobody really knows each other. You’re just chatting with the person next to you in line and you never really become friends after that. Nothing ever becomes predominant in a community because there’s no reinforcement mechanism for anything. Everyone is just talking differently from each other but there’s no way for really anything to really spread.

What they’ve found is that most social networks have a mix of strong and weak ties. And a weak tie is more likely to introduce a new linguistic form you haven’t encountered yet. Because they have a different social network to you. Largely. But you’re more likely to start using and picking up a form if someone who is one of your strong ties uses it.

Cher: Have you noticed any difference in kind of communication, like the linguistic use or slang use or whatever it might be, on Tumblr within different communities that you might be a part of on Tumblr?

Gretchen: One of the things that I think about from this is that like Facebook has sort of more strong ties than weak ties. And I feel like it is less linguistically innovative than Twitter is, or than Twitter used to be back in its heyday. Because Twitter had a lot more sources of new information, people you didn’t already know IRL. And so there were way more sources of new stuff.

For Tumblr, I’m trying to think about ... I feel like there’s less of an ability to get a gestalt of the entire site because your own personal network experience is so specific. Sometimes I see ... there was a past that went around a little while ago that was this, “I cannot stand these parodies of modern major [inaudible 00:26:42] original.” And this post was getting like 10K notes in its first 24 hours. Three different people who are on my dash who I’m pretty sure didn’t know each other had all re-blogged it separately from different people. And I then went and checked the timestamp and I was like, oh, this post is 24 hours old and it’s just spreading everywhere.

I think people don’t have necessarily the same hesitation around, “I’m going to re-share this even though it’s already been in my feed,” because then the person that I re-blogged it from will just treat that as a compliment and not treat it as, “well, that’s kind of boring.” On Twitter I tend to not re-tweet a tweet if it’s too popular because then I’m like, “Yeah, that’s boring, that’s yesterday’s news.” That’s been done, everyone has seen this already.

Whereas on Tumblr a post has 100K notes and I’m like, yeah, sure I’m still re-blogging it, this was quality.

Cher: And you can re-blog as many things, I mean, up to our post limit, as you want and still your followers would be excited to have you re-blogging or re-posting 250 things in a day. Versus being like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a lot.”

Gretchen: Yeah. So, there’s a couple interesting mechanisms around re-blogging. It’s very common to re-blog without commentary or re-blog with just a few bits in the tags on Tumblr. And then if your tags are witty enough or incisive enough someone else might promote them and you passed peer review.

Cher: Yes.

Lauren: Yep!

Gretchen: And so this is a mechanism of saying which things ... fewer posts get circulated more on Tumblr. They get circulated more and for longer. So, this is another side of the Tumblr has a more cohesive culture because you’re more likely to have seen the same post as other people because they circulate so much. And I remember when I first joined Twitter it was very rare to see a tweet that had more than 100 re-tweets. Now they’ve been putting their thumb on the algorithm more, you do see these very popular tweets. But at the time it was already very common to see Tumblr posts with five digits or six digits of notes. That’s always been a part of Tumblr culture I think.

Cher: Why do you think the Tumblr community gravitates towards captioning or talking in the tags versus in the caption section? It’s one of my favorite things about the platform and the way users engage but it’s always interested me how that sort of came about.

Gretchen: The commentary that I’ve seen and I sort of agree with this is that because ... Tumblr’s re-blog culture preserves the entire chain. So, if you say something in the tags then if somebody wants to re-blog the post from you they can just say their own things in the tags and they don’t have to preserve what you’ve said. If you say something in the comment field then if someone wants to re-blog the post from you they’ve got to preserve your comments. And sometimes I’ve seen a post that has three really interesting comments and then someone said something kind of boring and I will go back up that chain and re-blog the version without their boring addition, even if their boring addition was my friend.

Lauren: Same!

Cher: Yep.

Gretchen: So, if you’re worried that someone is going to be like, oh, I’ll have to go back up the re-blog chain and re-blog this post without your boring addition, you’re like, I’m just going to put this in the tags, that’s polite. That’s sort of discreet. And tags are also a way of talking primarily to your followers because if someone re-blogs that post from you they’re not going to see it. Their followers aren’t going to see it. So, it’s a way of having a sort of private, or not quite private, but like a more intimate level of conversation at the same time as you’re participating in this sort of almost site-wide culture of these bigger posts that have lots of stuff on them – you can sort of do that in the replies.

I also think that an underrated technological affordance of these tags is that Tumblr tags support spaces. Because Tumblr has a tags field and if you tag a post on Twitter or Instagram you have to write your hash tags without spaces. I’m saying hash tags on this platform but on Tumblr they’re tags. You have to write them without spaces. So, this puts a natural limit on how many tags and how long of tags you can write because no one wants to read this seven words all smooshed together with no spaces. That’s kind of obnoxious. Whereas with Tumblr tags you’ve got spaces in it so you can just read it like a normal thing. And also that tags on re-blogs aren’t searchable except for like if you’re indexing a post on your own blog. So, you can tag something that has your queue tag and then you can find your own queue tag. But otherwise they don’t become searchable and so the tags ... they’re sort of useless on a practical level which means you can write commentary in them because they’re not actually trying to do something practical.

And it’s kind of obnoxious SEO behavior to put too many tags in your post on Twitter or Instagram where they are readily searchable. Because you can’t actually search tags on Tumblr, at least not in a re-blog very well, it’s like, well yeah, this is a space for commentary instead. There’s also a fannish culture because Tumblr is very fannish of using tags for commentary on archive of our own on AO3.

Lauren: That’s such a good point!

Gretchen: AO3 tags have this mixture of commentary tag and functional tag that Tumblr tags also have. And so I would wager that most people on Tumblr know what archive of our own is. Whereas on sites like Twitter or Instagram some people do, depending on your subculture, but it’s less of a direct influence probably.

Lauren: Do you think that’s something that AO3 took from Tumblr, because a lot of those users overlap, that that’s why that happened on AO3?

Gretchen: I think a lot of them overlap but I think the directionality may be in the other direction.

Lauren: Interesting!

Gretchen: Because ... so, archive of our own was founded in I wanna say 2005.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. It definitely was sort of as fanfic.net was ... they sort of crossed paths a little bit.

Gretchen: Yeah, ‘cause an analogy that I really like making is that AO3 is actually very similar in size to the English Wikipedia ... in terms of like how long its existed and how many bytes of words are on both. They are very similar in size.

Lauren: That’s nuts! (laughs)

Gretchen: And in terms of this sort of skewed long tail ratio of how many people write on them versus how many people read on them, I think also quite similar.

Lauren: Yeah! Right, a small percentage of people are contributing of the people who are reading. Yeah.

Gretchen: I actually wrote an article for Wired a number of years ago when AO3 was winning the Hugo about how we should be ... because a lot of tech ink has been spilled about here’s how great Wikipedia is and here’s what we all could be learning about it. And not nearly as much has been spilled about here’s how great AO3 is and here’s what we could be learning about it. Even though they have very similar sorts of pedigrees. And I wrote a piece for wired that was like, “Here’s why AO3 is so neat,” and interviewed a couple of the tag wranglers to talk about AO3’s tagging system and how it works in the backend with a lot of volunteer labor to make it useable for users.

Yeah, I just think that AO3’s tagging system and it had this sort of tag wrangling open field you can do your commentary tags and you can also do your sorting tags in the same field. This was influenced by fannish practice on earlier social platforms. I wasn’t really on Live Journal but a lot of people were on Live Journal. If somebody knows more about Live Journal’s tagging practice I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an influence there. Also on other fan fic sites for sure.

Lauren: Yeah. The tagging on AO3 is so interesting too because you’ve got your functional tags like Tumblr has, too, where you’re putting it to the people find it in a particular search or to categorize your own profile or whatever. And then there’s the commentary tags and then AO3 has this weird in-between space that I don’t see on Tumblr as much which is fandom specific tags that sort of begin as commentary and then become actual sortable tags. Like “such and such character is an idiot,” or whatever. These things that sort of become fanon and therefore sort of get adopted sort of by the tag wranglers.

Gretchen: Like “dead dove do not eat” kind of thing.

Lauren: Right. Exactly! Yeah. Which is something I first encountered on Tumblr in the way it was used. Which is interesting ...

Gretchen: I think there’s some extent to which people do this on their personal Tumblrs. I’m thinking of all these sort of fun creative queue tags which may have started out as like, “Oh, I’m just doing this sort of joke,” and then sometimes they carry on. My tag for internet language on All Things Linguistic is still “Language on the interwebs,” because I tagged a post that in 2012 and then I was like, I guess this is what I’m using for this tag now. I have to go back and check because it’s like did I spell interwebs with an “s” or a zed? I have to check every time. Because I was just joking! But I’m still doing this!?

(laughter)

Lauren: That’s awesome.

Gretchen: There’s over 100 posts in that tag because there’s so many things.

Lauren: Is it an “s” or a “z?”

Gretchen: Look, I don’t know. I’d have to check! I think it’s an “s.” But I have actually tagged several ... some posts I’ve tagged with both because I couldn’t remember. So, if you click on one and you’re like, “there’s not any posts in here,” just click on the other one and see if you’ll get more.

Lauren: I totally have ... my playlist tag I always just tag “playlist” and “playlists,” because I can never remember which one it is that I used.

Cher: Sometimes I’ll be typing what I think is an original sentence as a tag and it will auto complete for me as ... someone has also typed out this similarly chaotic or unhinged sentence at some point.

Lauren: The great Tumblr hive mind.

Gretchen: I’ve always wanted to do a study of Tumblr tags. Cher, if there’s way you can hook us up with this data maybe this is a possibility, because it’s so hard to do data on anything in Tumblr. But also maybe Tumblr users would find this creepy so maybe we should just never do this. There was a meme that was going around ... I haven’t seen it in the last five years or so but there was this style of post that was going around for a while that would list five words and it would be “type these words into your tag field and fill in your tag that auto completes from them.”

Lauren: Yes!

Gretchen: So, it would be a list of colors or something ... when you tag something green what was that tag?

Lauren: Yes, I love those posts because it always brings up stuff that you completely forgot about, about your own blog. You know?

Gretchen: And I always thought that if there was a way of scraping all the tags from a post, a post like that would be a really interesting one to do this weird cross section of tags on Tumblr. It would be a biased sample but it would be biased in a very different way compared to using the tags that are searchable tags.

Cher: And we can absolutely hook you up with that data, Gretchen. So, just let me know what info you want, what data you want, and we can [crosstalk 00:37:38].

Gretchen: Where were you when I was writing!? Because [crosstalk 00:37:43]

Lauren: You need to make another book!

Cher: Yeah, I’m here for the sequel, Gretchen. I’ve got you. [crosstalk 00:37:53]

Gretchen: I was joking for a while that my next book would be called “Despite Internet,” which is how I wrote a book despite all the distractions online.

Cher: Oh my gosh. YES.

Lauren: I love that. What a great idea!

Gretchen: If I ever write a memoir ... (laughs)

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. I know that we are coming to the end of our time here. So, as a final fun question – do you have a favorite Tumblr linguistic quirk or meme or something that just has brought you a lot of joy on Tumblr as a linguist?

Gretchen: Oh man, how do I choose? They’re all my children! (laughs)

Cher: You can pick a few.

Lauren: Yes. Top three.

Gretchen: I’ve got this whole book that I wrote! (laughs) So, I’m going to pick a classic. I relaly like the style of what I have called stylized verbal incoherence mirroring emotional incoherence.

Lauren: Ooh!

Cher: Beatifully put.

Gretchen: (laughs)

Cher: Put very coherently.

Gretchen: And the point is that it’s stylized and so you are actually doing it on purpose, it’s not just sort of random key smash type things. But the Tumblr minimalist style, which as far as I can tell was initially most popular on Tumblr of lowercasing things, not using a lot of punctuation, using maybe line breaks only or periods as a way of breaking things up but not using a whole bunch of other punctuation. There’s this classic Tumblr post that’s like, “Tumblr, language is so smooth, it’s like a jungle river, with no periods, nothing stops here.” I’m not memorizing it that well and I haven’t seen it go around my dash that much in recent years. But there was a while when I was seeing it every week.

Lauren: I know exactly what post you’re talking about.

Cher: Yeah.

Gretchen: We can dig this up and re-blog it, right?

Lauren: For sure.

Gretchen: What I loved about it was the meta commentary on the reflection about a style that already existed that other people were doing that was also doing this self referentially and that people were spreading it. One of the reasons why Tumblr becomes this source of linguistic innovation is that Tumblr users love commenting about their own linguistic innovation. And then spreading those posts that comment on it. So, you see all these posts that will be like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing this.” And this swift like a jungle river post got posted, re-blogged so many times. And so even if you weren’t seeing that style initially, you would see the post that was commenting about it and go maybe this is something that I might want to do. This is something that other people seem to recognize and I think that the re-blog culture and the number of notes gives these observations a sense of sort of authenticity or gravitas or just this sense that they’ve passed peer review.

Other Tumblr users also think that this is the case because they’ve re-posted it. Because they re-blogged it. And if someone was making an observation about Tumblr culture or Tumblr language that wasn’t especially trenchant it just sort of sinks and vanishes without a trace. It’s these ones that get tens and hundreds of thousands of notes where people are like, yeah, I agree with this, I cosign this, I believe this. And I think that’s why stuff spreads because Tumblr users like that meta commentary and the ones that feel real keep getting passed around.

Lauren: Absolutely. I think that’s a perfect bow to put on the whole conversation. Gretchen, thank you so much for coming to talk to us about this. If people want to follow you online and learn more about this stuff – where can they find you?

Gretchen: Thank you so much for having me. I am at GretchenMcCulloch.com – my podcast is Lingthusiasm. It’s also @lingthusiasm on Tumblr. My Tumblr is @allthingslinguistic and my book about internet language is called “Because Internet.”

[gentle music]

Cher: What has you in your feels this week, Lauren?

Lauren: So, I have two quick in my feels things. The first is My Lady Jane on Amazon Prime, which is a new TV show. And without saying too much about it, because I sort of went in not really knowing anything and was really delighted, it just reminds me of the peak CW shows from the late 2000s when it was still the WB into sort of the mid 20-teens. Just everything about it feels like a CW show from 2013 and I really have been missing that on my television. So, that’s been bringing me lots of joy.

And then my daily podcast that I’ve been doing for the past year, Breaker Whiskey, is coming to a close tomorrow as of this recording, by the time this episode comes out it will have been ... the first year will have been over for a week. There’s been some really fun posts on Tumblr about it. About people getting excited for the finale. About people reacting to teh things that are happening. And it’s a very small group of people but it’s just always amazing when there is any Tumblr fandom at all for anything I make. And so that has been making me very, very happy this last week.

What about you, Cher? What’s got you in your feels?

Cher: I am having a lot of emotions, Lauren, about House of the Dragon. Do you watch?

Lauren: I don’t.

Cher: In my opinion, everyone especially the dragons should live forever. And that’s just what I’m going to say about it.

Lauren: Okay. Got you. [inaudible 00:43:12]

Cher: That is very much not the topic of the show. (laughs) The show is about how the dragons went extinct and they’re starting to show us and as it turns out I don’t want to know, Lauren!

Lauren: Oh no!

Cher: The dragons are all baby girls. They’re all poor little meow-meows. And they should be protected at all costs.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Shippen, and you can find me at TheLaurenShippen.Tumblr.com.

Cher: And I’m Cher McAnelly and you can find me at OverChers.Tumblr.com.

Cher: This has been Dashboard Diaries. And ...

[outtro music]

Lauren: May your anons always be loving.

Cher: Your dash always refreshed.

Lauren: Your gifs always be loading.

Cher: And your ships always canon.

Lauren: May the fics you’re reading always be finished.

Cher: And the answers you seek always in the re-blogs.

Lauren: Thanks for scrolling with us!

Every Tumblr user knows that we Tumblrinas use language a little differently. We're not like other social media users. We're weird. We're weirdos. And this month, we have actual linguist Gretchen McCulloch (@allthingslinguistic) on to talk about it!! Plus: House of the Dragon dragon-related feelings and throwing a ball in the air as you lay on your bed like a 90s teen character.

Credits and transcript in our reblog. You can find transcripts for this, and every other episode, here.

Find the posts discussed in this episode in this tag!

#DD 40 #transcript

310 notes · View notes

wittyno · 2 years ago

Text

I fully agree with OP and I’m here to help. You want recs? I’ve got recs!

First, things first, you are going to need to learn to love other systems than DnD. It’s not that you can’t play horror with 5e but 5e is not built for horror.

I recommend:

Call Of Cthulhu (the classic)

Love Becca Scott? Good Time Society’s Calyx Anthology is a favorite.

the lovelycraftians - amazing group of people. first campaign is set in 1920s Chicago. It might be too funny for you, though.

The Call - Horror / sanity-based games usually have a shorter run time, because of all the death and madness but these guys have been running for a long time and it’s really good. The group cohesion is lovely and they are doing cool things with sanity.

I’ve started and so far liked The Great Dane Society and The Old Ways Podcast.

Vampire the masquerade.

The lore on this is real deep and that can get real confusing. Luckily, LA by Night (featuring among others Erika Ishii) and its currently running follow up NY By Night are lots of fun. Just be ready to google a bit.

Delta Green, is the X-Files role playing game.

I’m currently listening to the Redacted Reports and it is fantastic. There is a scene (in season 2) where two Agents (that’s what players are called in Delta Green) beat up a Nazi which is peak podcasting.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about Pretending to be People and Stories and Lies is the newest one I found but haven’t had a chance to listen.

All three of these have active and kind subreddits with a ton of more recommendations. So if you don’t like any of these try those subreddits.

honestly if the jokes in neverafter are bothering you then I would suggest finding an actual play show thats not entirely played and written by improv comedians on a comedy platform. there are several.

#dnd #d20 #d20 neverafter #neverafter #can you tell 5e is not my system #if I could just find someone to play with #call of cthulhu #delta green #vampire the masquerade #horror ttrpg #tw: horror pods

592 notes · View notes

dashboarddiaries · 5 months ago

Text

For bonus clips, ad-free episodes, and more, become a patron at atypicalartists.co/support.

Lauren: ... like some kind of Tumblr stock exchange where you’re betting on the movements and I-

Cher: Like, with the fandom, oh my god-

Lauren: With the fan list!

Cher: Yeah, like you can bet who is going to go up and down every week.

Lauren: You get extra points if you say I think this is going to go up by this number of points because you always have the plus number, minus number.

Cher: Yes.

Lauren: Obviously we could not do this for money because that is illegal I’m pretty sure! (laughs)

Cher: But for some ...

Lauren: There’s something here.

Cher: There really is something here. I am very excited about this.

[intro music]

The only problem is it does require numbers ...

[intro music continues]

Cher: Hello, Fandom Investors! I’m Cher McAnelly, Head of Entertainment at Tumblr. And multi series, multi season, multi fandom member ... or multi fandom investor?

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Shippen, Professional Writer, who is still seeing massive returns from fandom’s that I invested in 20 years ago.

Cher: Great one.

Lauren: Thank you!

Cher: And this is Dashboard Diaries, a podcast for you – the folks who are in this internet bunker [stock market] with us.

Lauren: Ohhhhhh! I love it!

Cher: Ohhh! ... We talk about what’s going on in our favorite hell site, get into what we like to call “tumbl-lore,” do fandom deep dives [metrics!], and share the times when we’ve gone feral over a new ship [stock].

Lauren: I love it. The theme is coalescing.

Cher: Yeah. With that, what has your last month on Tumblr been like? What have you really been investing in this month? What trends are you seeing?

Lauren: Yeah. You know? I sort of put my time and finances into a couple of new fandom’s. Some of which are a little bit older. So, I think I maybe mentioned this last month but I did start watching Black Sails. And it just grew richer and richer as the show went on and I finished it. And then went on a huge Tumblr tag dive and re-blogged a bunch of stuff and just ... I love how active the fandom still is and that’s something we’re going to talk about a little later. And then I am currently beating the drum of a little known show in sort of the Tumblr eco system – something that not a lot of people have invested in but that I love – which is Evil the CBS/Paramount+ show ... that I think people are really sleeping on.

It is A) genuinely scary and I feel like there are a lot of horror fans on Tumblr who would enjoy Evil. But then also it just got this great trio at the center. It’s really clever and funny. And emotional. The main character, Kristen, is a truly unhinged, insane, wonderful woman. I love her so much. She is simultaneously the Scully – skeptical and very grounded and also completely bat shit bonkers. And I love her for that.

I was very happy to see, not only are there some people making gif sets, which I was very appreciative of, but somebody ships my little ship ... which is Kristen and Ben, who are sort of best friends in the show and there’s definitely nothing romantic between them but I think they should be together – and there’s at least one other Tumblr user who thinks that they should be together. I feel very taking into the warm embrace of that person’s gif set tags.

Yeah, that’s kind of been my main thing over the last month. And then of course the finale of 911, a little bit of Furiosa here but it’s mainly been Black Sails and Evil. How about you, Cher? What has been rising in your estimate over the last month?

Cher: Well, the last month has seen just a huge ... it’s been a really, really big month on the ‘ton market, the Bridgerton market that is, on ‘Ton’blr as they’re saying. (laughter) And I’ve also been investing a lot of time both on Tumblr and just in general on Bridgerton because we had the Bridgerton Answer Time. Which we recorded I think a few days after we recorded our last episode. I don’t know if we’ve talked about it yet but it was so much fun. I got to interview Nicola Coughlan. And I also got to interview Jessica Madsen and Hannah Dodd and it was ... they were lovely and just incredible and I lost my mind. I actually opened the interview with Nicola by saying, “Hi, I’m so excited to talk about season three of Derry Girls.

(laughter)

So, started off really strong there! But it was-

Lauren: I’m sure she loved that. Derry Girls is such a great show.

Cher: Yeah, I agree. I also love the crossovers. I don’t know if you’ve seen the crossovers of Nicola doing the, “I really burn fer you Collin. I burn fer ya.” (laughter)

Lauren: It’s so good.

Cher: It’s incredible. An icon, a legend, it was the best experience ever and I also have so many thoughts and feelings about the new season. Definitely I’m assuming we’ll talk about it during this episode and maybe even ... I don’t know how long it will take for the stock to go down but I think the stock is relay just continually rising at the moment in my opinion. And then in addition to that, just a couple of other things.

Young the Giant, which is a band I’ve really liked for a long time, they launched a tour diary on Tumblr which is super exciting. So, their tour just started and they’re touring with Cage the Elephant. And then I can’t remember, I think I mentioned in a previous episode when we did the interview with the cast of Dead Boy Detectives the Caitlin Riley and Max Jenkins spontaneously read some Goncharov fan fic, speck script, or a scene from Goncharov written by a community member. Just happened because we were doing a segment at the end where we just showed them Tumblr posts and had the cast kind of reenact them. Some were about the show and some weren’t. So, I showed the Goncharov poster and I was like, “What is this movie about?” And it ended up ... I think it was Caitlin Riley who said, “Should we read a scene?” And so they read a scene from it and we posted it on Tumblr. But we posted the scene without context and that was a mistake.

Lauren: Oh no. Why?

Cher: So, there were a ton of community replies being like ... “They couldn’t even learn the lines. They didn’t cast this as they should have. Obviously everyone knows this scene is between two men.” It was between Audrey and Goncharov.

Lauren: Got you.

Cher: I was like so distraught because I was so excited about this but then because I didn’t do the opening where they were like, “Hey, should we just do a scene from it?” It was just random. People thought that Netflix was making a Goncharov movie. It was ... oh my god.

Lauren: Oh my god! (laughs)

Cher: It was ... Context is SO key.

Lauren: SO key.

Cher: So, that was ... I feel so bad because I feel like ... you know when you’re like, “I wish I could explain this?” But you can’t. So, anyway, I posted the context video but it was too late, Lauren. But anyway ...

Lauren: I’m so sorry.

Cher: I just want to set the record straight.

Lauren: Yeah, clear the air.

Cher: So, anyway, yeah, just want to clear the air about the Gonch. I just want to comment on the Goncharov controversy, on the Gonch Contr and say that it was a spontaneous interview moment. It definitely wasn’t planned. There is no Goncharov movie being made. It was a bit. And so sorry for any confusion. I have learned that context is so key and I will be keeping that in mind for the future.

Lauren: Yeah. Oh man, you never know what out of context people are going to run away with, right? Posting on the internet is so risky.

Cher: It’s SO risky. And it’s totally understandable. If I saw this thing come across my feed, posted on the ... I’d be like, oh, maybe they are making a Goncharov movie. You don’t know. So, I’ve learned about the importance of including context not only in the caption but also in the video itself.

Lauren: There you go.

Cher: The more you know. Today I learned. This month I learned.

And then finally, one other thing that I kind of have discovered on Tumblr ... I feel like it’s been a thing for a while but I’ve really been enjoying it and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of people really following the tag – is Dashboard Simulators. Have you seen these?

Lauren: YES. I didn’t realize that there’s a whole tag for it but I am obsessed with this genre of posts.

Cher: Oh my god. I am having so much fun with this.

Lauren: For our audience, explain what it is.

Cher: So, Dashboard Simulators are essentially using the ability to include up to 32 images in a Tumblr post so due to this fun feature people are essentially putting together a bunch of screenshots of kind of fake ... creating fake posts essentially in world for things like Lord of the Rings or Cobra Kai, or even I saw Cat Dashboard Simulator. And it’s essentially as you’re scrolling through this post it should feel like the experience of scrolling through the dashboard in the world of this fandom or in the world of cats. And they are so funny and so much fun. And so intricate.

Just the time and effort involved – I am obsessed. Definitely one of my new favorite Tumblr trends, post types. It kind of comes out of web weaving in a way but more like light meme-y kind of vibes. But yeah, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Dashboard Simulators. And I’m pretty sure completely coincidentally ... I submitted the pitch for Bridgerton ages ago. We essentially did a Dashboard Simulator for Bridgerton with Nicola Coughlin – we did a segment called “Scrolling Ton’blr” and essentially I just curated a bunch of community Tumblr posts, set it up to screen record, and then Nicola scrolled through and talked about each post as she went through.

So, I love how perfectly that just ended up aligning! Yeah, it was super fun.

So, anyway ...

Lauren: Yeah. The thing I really love about it is there was this post, god, I don’t know, ten years ago or something. I remember seeing it back when the old re-blog format was the way it was where if there were too many re-blogs you could barely read the initial post or whatever. And it was about, man, discourse in a world in which magical creatures were real would be so insufferable. And then it was everybody sort of role playing along and re-blogging about [selky 00:11:11] rights and vampire discrimination, sort of this parody of really sort of extreme tone policing but in a world in which fairies were real. Right?

The Dashboard Simulator trend is so much in that spirit to me. It’s the ultimate yes/and but it’s like just that extra bit of creativity of like I’m going to go and sort of come up with fake Tumblr names. I don’t know how people are building these images, right?

Cher: Oh my gosh. Are they creating all of these accounts and drafting all these posts and posting them privately and screen-shotting them? And adding them all together?

Lauren: I hadn’t thought about that. ‘Cause I think when I first saw this trend appear maybe a year ago I do think it’s kicked up a lot more but it was sort of simmering for a while. People initially started in a text format, right? And sort of people coming up just with fake names and sort of putting emojis for the avatars and things like that. And it’s sort of evolved into this, yes, screen shot thing. Which is so ...

Cher: I haven’t even seen those initial posts. I want to see some of those OG ...

Lauren: I’ll have to go and dig some up. There was one ... this may have been in a screen shot format but there was one that was ... Ugh, I’m going to mis-remember what it was, but it was Dashboard Simulator of everything that’s inside my fridge. (laughs) Or no, it wasn’t that! It was utensils. It was sort of like utensil discourse. I love that, right!?

Cher: Incredible.

Lauren: That’s just so-

Cher: I really want to see what the utensil discourse is.

Lauren: Right!?

Cher: That sounds amazing!

Lauren: Yeah, I’m going to have to dig that up in my archive.

[guitar riff]

Cher: And with that, our next segment is Dashboard Confessionals. So, what post from your archives do you have this week?

Lauren: I did bring two. They’re from more recent years actually. I went back to sort of 2014, 2015 in June and in June of every year I was just sort of re-blogging Hannibal posts and that’s just ... Oh, that’s something I forgot to mention – my month on Tumblr was the ten year anniversary of Mizumono the Season Two finale which is one of the greatest episodes of television of all time. But yeah. So, June is a very Hannibal month for me so there wasn’t a lot of interesting stuff from earlier years.

I brought something from 2019, which is just a gif set of Pikachu dancing from Detective Pikachu. It’s like this little ‘80s workout video. And I just ... (laughs) ... I want to cry just looking at it now. I have debilitating cute aggression for this little animated Pikachu.

Cher: He’s just a little guy!

Lauren: He’s just a little guy. I already have pretty severe cute aggression when it comes to animals. But there is something about the way that the artist built this little creature. We went to go see Detective Pikachu because I’m not a Pokémon person but my partner is. And the whole time I was like, “I am in PAIN.”

Cher: I am overwhelmed.

Lauren: There’s something about this little creature that is hooking into the back of my brain and I’m tearing up literally right now just looking at this little ... his little face and his little hands! So, I just want to share that because it brings me a lot of joy and also anguish.

(laughter)

Cher: As all the best things should.

Lauren: Exactly!

Cher: We’ll definitely circle back to that with your feels corner because I feel like that ties in very well. And I also completely agree with you. There’s something viscerally adorable about it.

Lauren: He’s SO cute.

Cher: Right!? It’s like from, what was it? Not Minions. Uh ...

Lauren: Despicable Me.

Cher: Despicable Me.

Lauren/Cher: “It’s so fluffy I’m going to die!”

Cher: Exactly that. I’m losing my entire mind right now. Yeah. Totally get that. Definitely ... great posted bookmark for a serotonin boost or dopamine boost. I never know what the difference is.

Lauren: Whatever the good one is.

Cher: Whatever the good one is. Yeah. Whatever the one we want is. Stay tuned for our science podcast or psychology podcast coming soon in addition to our stock podcast.

Lauren: So, the second post I brought was from 2020. This post is actually from 2016 but I re-blogged it in 2020. It’s just a great text post from user: gendzl (I don’t know how to pronounce your blog name. I’m so sorry!) But they write, “Tumblr is such a bizarre kind of social interaction. Like, the rules are so different here. I once unfollowed someone because they said prime numbers were ugly.” (laughs) That just really makes me laugh! “Because they said prime numbers were ugly and that was simply the last straw for me. Imagine hanging out with a friend and getting up from the table and never talking to them again because they told you they hated prime numbers? That’s what I did.”

(laughter)

The way that this is written is so funny. The fact that it’s for the reason of prime numbers is so funny. And also like, yeah, this is true. This is the beauty of the eco system of Tumblr, right? And the fact that despite it being a front facing social media where people can follow you and stuff unless you make your Tumblr private, it is sort of a more private space than a lot of other social media that you can just unfollow someone because they said that prime numbers were ugly. And what beautiful freedom that is!

Cher: Absolutely. You shouldn’t have that negativity on your dashboard if you don’t want it.

Lauren: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Cher: Also, is that a Tumblr as real life simulator of if someone said that in real life and you’re like, “unfollow.”

Lauren: Yes! Exactly.

Cher: Blocked and unfollowed. (laughs)

Lauren: How about you, Cher? What do you have from your archives?

Cher: I have two posts that I re-blogged in the same month within about eight days of each other in 2018. The first one is a gif set from Parks and Rec, another great multi season fandom show. It is from the episode where they do the model UN or something. And it’s a four gif set. The first one is Adam Scott saying, “It’s a white flag and you may as well start waving it right now, Leslie.” And then Leslie Knope saying, “The only thing I will be waving is your decapitated head on a stick in front of your weeping mother!”

(laughter)

And then a gif that cuts to Chris Pratt with a kind of shocked face and then cuts to Ben and says, “Good lord.” Just a really classic ... makes me want to re-watch the show ... love Parks and Rec. I apparently love it so much ... even though this is pretty intense gif set of all rather pleasant moments in the show, I love it so much that I apparently just go on over to the second re-blog from eight days later, from a different account by the way ... same exact gif set. (laughs)

Lauren: Incredible. That is SO good. I love that. I mean, it’s a great moment in the show. A great gif set. And clearly it was speaking to you in June of 2018 for some deep reason.

Cher: It resonated. Yeah.

Lauren: That’s amazing.

Cher: Oh my gosh. Great show. And so speaking of shows and fandom’s, our main segment for the week: long seasons, long series, long fandom’s –

[game show trill]

I’m so excited to talk about all of the shows on Tumblr that have sustaining fandom’s which as we know and as we have talked about are so many, I don’t even know how we’re going to fit it in, but we’re going to.

Lauren: So yeah. I don’t know how much of our initial pre intro conversation that I’ll end up including in the edit, so some of the stock jokes maybe haven’t landed but Cher and I were talking sort of about fandom stocks and betting on rising and falling fandom’s which we might do a thing about in a future episode. But then it did sort of turn into this idea of like fandom’s are this thing that you invest it. And fandom’s thrive the most when you are actively investing in them over a long period of time and when you see more of a return the more you invest, right? I don’t understand how stocks work, but ...

Cher: It sounds like you do based on what you’re saying right now. Tell me who do invest in, because I ... that sounds very accurate. (laughs)

Lauren: But one of the things that we were talking about because we were texting about Bridgerton and this is something that I’ve seen a lot sort of in fandom discussions over the last several years and something I think about a lot, which is these shorter seasons and shorter season orders and also seasons sort of taking place a year, 18 months apart has really changed the fandom landscape in certain ways. And then we see the way that certain fandom’s really flourish and thrive and to me there’s something so interesting about the fact that the trending fandom’s, or the fandom’s that end up on the fandom metrics list are things like Bridgerton, which obviously is a great show but also sort of has the comfort of investing in it because it is a Shondaland show. And her shows run for a very, very long time. So, there’s a certain amount of promise there.

Also, it’s based on a book series and the book series has a lot of books. And so there’s the sense of safety and investing in Bridgerton because it is going to have longevity. And then of course we also ... and I’ve talked a lot about this show on here – 911, right? It has been renewed for its eighth season. Most of the seasons with the exception of the COVID season and this most recent season because it changed networks, and also the strike, too, I think actually was probably a much bigger influence – all the other seasons are 18 episodes. Right? Which we don’t see a lot of anymore.

So, I was just really intrigued by this idea of ... I think that emotionally we all have this sense of wanting just more of the things that we love. That’s a very easy thing to want. If you love a show you want it to be 22 episodes a season, you want the seasons to have two month hiatuses and that’s it. But I also do think that there’s something to be said for it being a good business decision for networks and studios to invest in lots of seasons or longer seasons or faster seasons or whatever it is. And yeah. So, that’s kind of ... as we were talking about Bridgerton and pitching to Cher sort of talking about this larger thing because it seems like Bridgerton has sort of taken over Tumblr over the last ...

Cher: Yeah.

Lauren: And it was the same as part one. When part one came out two months ago or whatever. And it’s also taken over Netflix’s homepage. So, I guess I’m curious from your perspective, what do you think are the things that are making Bridgerton successful and do you agree that longer seasons ... more season longevity because obviously the seasons themselves are sort of short is contributing to that at all.

That was a very long rambling thing. (laughs)

Cher: No, no. I think that perfectly encapsulates kind of the topic of the episode and why shows that you can kind of have that trust in that they will be consistent. The NASDAQ’s and things of the fandom market I guess. Even though I think NASDAQ is a stock ... it’s a thing comprised of multiple stocks. I don’t know. Anyway ... doing our best! (laughter) But no, I absolutely agree and I think that there’s kind of a give and take. I know that having longer seasons means often lower quality seasons because writers can only come up with so many ideas, especially when they’re trying to churn things out really quickly it can end up in season inflation where perhaps you get a lot of episodes but there’s not really a lot of substance or impact or maybe ...

But I also kind of don’t mind a filler episode every so often. I like getting those in-depth background stories and I think Tumblr is very much the same. I mean, obviously to the extent that Tumblr creates entire universes and new story lines out of the shows and titles and characters and fandom’s that they’re the most invested in with fan art and fan fic and beyond. I think that there’s really something to be said about both the shows where every single scene is super important and pivotal to the plot, I feel like maybe Succession is a good example of that or even maybe the Game of Thrones, until that final season which we pretend doesn’t exist. Again, that it was so ... I’m trying to remember how long Game of Thrones seasons were. The final season was seven episodes I think ... or six?

Lauren: I didn’t watch Game of Thrones, so ...

Cher: There were a lot of seasons, the episodes were long but not many episodes per season, which I think is pretty consistent with HBO shows. But really jam packed with things. But I also, yeah, definitely think there’s something to be said about ... every episode and every story line doesn’t need to be kind of pushing the story forward in some kind of big impactful way. And I think that’s why procedurals do so well. And you can have so much fun and kind of play around with so many different plots. Like 911. Like Supernatural. And like Gray’s Anatomy, which is a show that I ... it has a pretty small fandom on Tumblr. There’s like 43K followers on the tag. I don’t even follow along on Gray’s Anatomy on Tumblr. I kind of separate, I don’t know, that show from I guess my fandom engagement, even though I have been watching it since I was a teenager and refuse to stop. Because I’ve invested 20 seasons at this point. I am not going to stop watching now. I will see this show out into the end because I put all this time in.

But anyway, sorry ... I feel like I’ve gone beyond the point there. The question that you asked is what about Bridgerton is it that you think ... wow, I went so far off the [crosstalk 00:24:54] into Gray’s Anatomy. I think that the fact that Bridgerton has a lot of books and that we kind of know A) the Shondaland aspect, B) the fact that I’m pretty sure the contract we know is signed for at least two to three more seasons – you have that safety and security in investing the time and the effort into becoming a part of and talking about the fandom because, yeah, you know that the show is going to continue – whereas a lot of the time ... and as we’ve seen, oftentimes with a lot of shows that are cancelled after one and two seasons and people get really excited and dedicated to this fandom only for it to just completely drop sometimes on a cliffhanger. And that I feel like people definitely get burned before, they lose their investment and they’re like, “What communities can I invest in? What shows can I invest in that have a better ROI?” That’s Return On Investment for any non-stock experts out there. (laughter)

Yeah, I think having that safety and security definitely means that you’re a little more likely I think to see a dedicated fandom around something. I think that may also be why we see dedicated fandom’s around shows that are no longer on the air but have a lot of content because there’s so much to talk about and continue discovering. Supernatural has never dropped out of fandom rankings. Merlin started becoming popular after it was no longer on the air. But there’s five seasons of Merlin. So, there’s just so much subject matter to dive into for the community. I feel like there’s always new opportunities for discourse and I think that is one of the biggest kind of motivators in getting involved in a fandom. I don’t know where I was going with the rest of that.

Lauren: I think you’re absolutely right. I think, too, that yeah what you were saying about sometimes you do get seasons that are a little bit too long. And actually this is something that I remember really feeling when Netflix was first starting to make its own original content. Where all of a sudden all of these writers who were usually trapped with 22 minute episodes or 44 minute episodes because ... for those of you who maybe are ... I mean, god, you could be like in your late teens and not have really grown up with network television, which is insane. But it’s like there were very strict rules for how long an episode of television can be. I think that when some of those people were given freedom the episodes ended up being kind of bloated and badly paced and I think it took everybody a little while to figure it out. But of course also to your point, HBO has always been doing that. AMC was always doing that. And their episodes were like 52 minutes or whatever.

Obviously so much of this is around what is right for the story. You mentioned Succession. I think that’s a great example. Thinking about The Bear, too, right? I know that they filmed season two and three at the same time and they think that maybe they’re probably just going to do one more season after that. And that will be it. And I think having a plan like that and going into it and having a very tight story that you’re telling in a very specific way is amazing. I think those things can still foster immense amount of fandom interaction and cultural zeitgeist-I-ness and all that kind of stuff.

I do think that we are losing something in having sort of everything be these eight episode, one season shows. And in things being cancelled before they can really thrive. A show that I think about ... every three weeks ... is Willow. And just the further that I get from having watched that show the more mad I am that it was cancelled. There was so much in there that to me the Tumblr fandom was never given a chance to really dig their teeth into. And even worse than it not being renewed is the fact that it just doesn’t exist ... you can’t watch it on Disney+ anymore!

Cher: Yeah, and that’s such a loss!

Lauren: Yeah! And so there’s no way to then bring in new fans from that whereas even when I was a teenager there were things from earlier that were one season shows that had sort of cult followings like Freaks and Geeks. Right? Which launched the career of Jason Segall and Busy Phillips and all these amazing people and it was 12 episodes or something. And then Wonder Falls – Brian Fuller’s second show. There’s a young Lee Pace in Wonder Falls and he’s so ...

And I’m really straying from the point. And I guess I don’t necessarily have a wider point than just sort of complaining about the state of media. But I do feel like the fact that we look around and the things that are sort of most talked about, have the most excitement and activity around them are things like Bridgerton, which had an existing fandom, right? Things like Star Wars, Marvel, Dr. Who, Star Trek – stuff that’s been around for decades. And of course there are exceptions to this. I think that Sherlock is a very short show that had a really outsized impact. I think Hannibal II was only three seasons of 12 episodes each – still has a very active fandom. So, there certainly are exceptions. But Good Omens also! Very short seasons, very far apart, but huge impact.

Cher: Oh my gosh. Enormous. To the extent that they’re the biggest topic of the year. Despite again having so much less subject matter to dive into. I guess beyond of course the source material, which I think again ties into the established fandom and the impact of the established fandom. Yes, Good Omens, there’s only those two seasons so far but you can dive into other aspects of the Gaiman-verse and you also know that there’s a lot of crossovers within the Gaiman-verse. So, you can even lean into that in your exploration.

Yes, it’s just two seasons of Good Omens but like is there anything in other ... like in the Sandman, how Dead Boy Detectives was a spinoff of characters from the Sandman series. Things like that. Are there other things that you can kind of dig into? Or even like know you’ll like and have that kind of opportunity for crossover. And also the entire time you were talking I was just sitting there thinking about how Flea Bag is one of my favorite shows of all time and there is so little of it. And Phoebe Waller Bridge has said, “Maybe I’ll make another season when I’m in my fifties, when Flea Bag is 50.” Which I hope she does. That would be amazing.

But also the amount of times I have re-watched Flea Bag and just know that it makes me ... it’s an incredible show but I feel like I watch it like a movie.

Lauren: Right. And Flea Bag is also doing such a different thing, right? Because we all became such huge fan of Phoebe Waller Bridge and obviously hot priest and Andrew Scott and got another sort of boost in his career from that and now is having an incredible career. But I don’t know that I’ve ever engaged with the Flea Bag fandom, right?

Not everything needs to have a really active fandom, right? I think that some of the greatest art and stuff sort of exists as it exists. It’s like I’m a huge musical theater girl. I was watching the Tony’s last night and musical theater ... Stephen Sondheim has had an impact on my life and I consider myself in the Stephen Sondheim fandom. But each of his shows, it’s like three hours max. Actually I don’t even know that he personally had a three hour show. But that’s sort of the outside length of a musical. And not to say ... obviously there are musicals that have massive, massive fandom’s.

But yeah, I think that the sort of opportunity for people to discover something that in its first season maybe is unknown un-established – fresh and maybe still finding its footing. Right? I think that’s so big, too.

Cher: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Lauren: If you watch the first season of 911, I mean, there’s a lot of really fantastic stuff in the first season of 911 but just by the nature of Connie Britton only doing the first season, structurally the show is just very different in the first season than what it became. And the characters become so much richer and Kenneth Choi’s character, Chimney, is one of my favorite characters. Who he is in the first season is so different from who he becomes and it’s like you don’t get that chance if you don’t allow a show to sort of find its footing and work with the actors to also figure out what the actors are bringing to a role and how that can affect the characters. And I don’t really have a solution to this other than to just beg studios to give more chances to more things. And maybe spend less money on the first season so they can have a second season and all of that kind of stuff.

But I do think it’s interesting that in the top fandom’s we are seeing these things that are lengthy seasons or based off of source material or fandom’s that began almost 20 years ago, right? Like Supernatural began in 2005! We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of Supernatural. That’s crazy‼

Cher: That is wild to think about. I want to unpack that later.

Lauren: We will never be free of it. It will always be a major fandom on Tumblr because you can’t ... there’s over 300 episodes. So few shows have crossed that threshold that of course ... Kirk and Spock fandom. I still see a Star Trek post on my dash once a week of the original series. And I don’t follow any Star Trek blogs. But the hold that that show, which also ran for like 100 seasons has on people is incredible.

Cher: I agree that it has so much to do with just the amount of source material and the fact that you feel like you can always rediscover things. I mean, the joy of re-watching a show or even starting a show that has so much source material already and knowing what you have to dive into, which reminds me, I need to get back into my watch through of Supernatural. So, we’ll add that to the next episode. But yeah, as you were talking I was thinking about how Parks and Rec for example ... season one was pretty rough. Even to the extent I didn’t watch the first season and people ... I think I started watching Parks and Rec around season three.

Lauren: Same.

Cher: I tried it, I tried to get into it, I love 30 Rock and other shows by SNL alum, I was hoping ... and someone said to me, if you really can’t get into it, try starting with the second season. And then go back and watch the first. And that’s what I did. I immediately fell in love with the show and all the characters.

Lauren: Same.

Cher: Yeah, I think you have to, as you said, give shows that space to find their footing and discover themselves. Especially when it’s brand new subject matter that isn’t based on anything, that doesn’t have all that source material to work off of and they’re literally creating the story out of thin air and kind of discovering it as they go along.

Lauren: Exactly. Yeah, Black Sails obviously has some source material, right, it is technically a prequel to Treasure Island. And involves also real historical figures as characters and a lot of what happens to the historical figures is based on facts and everything. But just in terms of, I mean, Parks and Rec is such a great example. I still have not seen the first season of Parks and Rec. I just never watched it. And that’s one of my most re-watched sitcoms and I’ve just never watched the first season because I think I tried a couple of episodes and I was like, this is not for me. But Black Sails, the first season, especially the pilot and even just the first few episodes is like very, “oh boy, this is a Starz show that has Michael Bay as the producer.” (laughs)

That is what’s happening here.

Cher: Buckle up. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah, lots of gratuitous nudity and not to say there shouldn’t be nudity in shows. I actually have a whole rant about nudity and sex scenes and the discourse around that and how I’m such an advocate for sex positivity, all that kind of stuff, and I love the discourse around that. But also I think the thing that gets lost sometimes is the fact that there are real people on set who are doing this. And how safe is the set? And what are unions doing to protect people? And the answer as somebody who is a part of that union is – NOTHING ... until very, very recently.

That’s something I’m always thinking about when I’m watching something like the first season of Black Sails where it’s like a lot of, there’s lots of sex scenes where the women are naked and the men kind of ... you’re not seeing as much from them, or there’s sexual assault, whatever it is. And what’s crazy is that by the end of season four of Black Sails it’s become this exceptional story of love and power and identity and struggle that is genuinely like an incredibly effortlessly diverse cast of people. And what’s also crazy is when you watch the second season and the sort of reveal of the main character’s back story is revealed that is something that they thought about revealing in season one and then they just kept it for season two. And it changes everything. It changes everything that you think about the character, that you think you know about the world, and to think if they hadn’t gotten a season two, and they had decided to hold off writing it into season one because they’re like, it doesn’t fit in, and it wouldn’t have fit in. It would have been very jarring. But how great that they then had the opportunity to do it. Again, that’s a fandom that despite only having four seasons of ten episodes each, really has survived and has continued to thrive and I think now that it’s on Netflix will only get more and more fans. It’s a very long ... and I went on a huge tangent about on-set sex scenes ... (laughs) but ...

Cher: No, but I also agree with you and have ... I’m shocked ... Are intimacy coordinators now required in all sex scenes? Because I feel like that’s just an option, right and not?

Lauren: Yeah. So, can I go on a very ... I’ll try to keep this-

Cher: Please.

Lauren: Okay. There has been very interesting discourse over the last several years on Tumblr specifically about sex scenes in film and television. I think that a lot of the discourse is really healthy. It sort of came from a place of people being like, “There’s never a reason that you should have a sex scene in a movie.” Which if you don’t like that stuff, then don’t watch it, that’s fine. And then other people kind of coming and taking the other side of the argument which is the side of the argument that I agree with, which is like, no, if that’s an expression of the story ... there’s lots of reasons, even if it is just to titillate people. That’s also valid. It’s valid to feel titillated, right?

Cher: Yeah.

Lauren: I agree 1000% with all of that. If it’s something that the storyteller wants to do and all the actors are on board – great. However, I have voted “no” on the past two SAG contracts as a SAG actor because back in, oh god, 2019/2020 I want to say was our last TV contract that went up ... it did not require intimacy coordinators. And then on this contract obviously there were a lot of things with the AI and all of that kind of stuff. But I ultimately ended up voting “no” because once again SAG is not requiring intimacy coordinators. It is strongly encouraged.

The language around it was stronger but there should ... you have to have a stunt coordinator on set to do a stunt. There is safety. There’s OSHA laws. There’s union laws. There’s insurance stuff. And the fact that we don’t have that for ... and I say this as somebody who has done on stage nudity. I was [inaudible 00:40:42] Spring Awakening. I’ve done the on stage sex scene thing. I understand the environment around it and everything. And just until that is required, to me, I don’t ... I cannot watch a sex scene in any film or television show and not be thinking about that. Just because we know of the rampant abuse that occurs on sets.

Something that they have now required is closed sets, which is good because that means that not anybody can show up on filming on those days, right? Also, closed set frankly means fewer witnesses as well. You know? And it’s like I just ... there’s so much around it that, yeah, if a woman wants to get naked on screen – Nicola Coughlin talked about this with Bridgerton, right? And sort of really wanting to show a type of body that’s not seen in that context a lot. And absolutely. Love her for that. And I’m sure Bridgerton, given its content, has an intimacy coordinator. (laughs) I have no doubt.

And I think that a lot of those scenes really do add to the narrative but I am always thinking about what’s the environment and who is there? Especially if it’s an actor that’s not as established. Are they feeling pressured into it as a requirement of the role? Was this mentioned as a requirement of the role? Yeah. That is my little soap box. (laughs) And I will not vote “yes” for a SAG TV of Film contract until that’s required.

Cher: I mean, I couldn’t agree more. It’s absolutely shocking that with the amount of money that is put into all of these shows and all of these titles, that there is not a requirement for an intimacy coordinator. It can obviously be fit into the budget. It is not ... the fact that the language was changed to “strongly suggests” but not required is also, okay, you’re going to change the language but not go all the way? What’s even the point?

Lauren: What pushback are you getting and from where and why are you letting that pushback take place?

Cher: Because the pushback sounds pretty frigging nefarious to me.

Lauren: Exactly.

Cher: What would ever justify pushback on an intimacy coordinator?

Lauren: Yeah.

Cher: When all an intimacy coordinator does is make sure that the set is safe and consensual. Which is the key. Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of opinions. I feel like I really like the show Outlander and I have to skip the ... constant it feels sexual assault scenes. Those are not, that’s not what I ... I think that ... I don’t know. I have some opinions on whether that’s ever relevant to actually show or if it’s more traumatizing versus implied.

But yeah. Having an intimacy coordinator for consensual sex scenes is extremely important. I mean, it’s important tenfold for a non consensual sex scene.

Lauren: Yes. Yeah.

Cher: Because that can be so traumatic.

Lauren: Yeah, and I think the excuse for a little while was around the fact that there were just so few people who actually were trained for this job, right? I think that’s not quite the case anymore. But not only is it a way to make things safe and consensual and give somebody a person to go to if they feel unsafe who is not the director, right? But also the literal blocking of those things. Right? This is another reason why I can never sort of step outside of myself and watch sex scenes for what they are because I’m always just like, what was the blocking?

Cher: This is unrealistic ...

Lauren: Yeah. (laughter) Actually, there’s a funny anecdote about American Gods and then re-shooting an entire scene because Brian Fuller wasn’t on set the day that they did the Gin sex scene between the two men. And he watched the playback and was like, this is not how you have gay sex and they had to re-shoot the whole thing.

And yeah, there’s a whole queer aspect to this as well that needs to be talked about. But yeah, if the director is literally blocking a sex scene are they trained to do that? Most directors are not creating fight coordination for stunts, right? They’re not the ones literally choreographing those fights. They have people for that. So, it’s like why would they be then qualified to do a different kind of physicality? I could talk about this forever. I need to shut up!

Cher: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Noted. No, but I mean I think it’s so important to talk about it, to talk about it openly because I think one thing that ... because sex and intimacy can be an awkward topic or a hard topic to talk about whether it’s in film or just in general I think yeah it can contribute to people having trouble talking about it on set, people having trouble talking about the importance of this issue off set because people get kind of like uncomfortable and think is this appropriate or whatever it is. But no, as you said, there is an expert for every other aspect. They bring in cartographers and language experts and all of these different experts. There was a ... I did an interview recently where there was a snake wrangler on the set.

Lauren: Incredible. Yeah.

Cher: If they can have a snake wrangler, you can have a friggin intimacy coordinator. I feel like. Which one feels more important? Actually, the snake wrangler was to get the venomous snakes off their set so I think that would be very important. (laughter) Yeah. Super important. For different reasons. But anyway ...

(laughter)

Lauren: A perfect conclusion to this discussion.

Cher: I could not agree more.

[gentle music]

And to close, Lauren, what has you in your feels this week?

Lauren: Well, obviously union contracts – always.

Cher: Yes.

Lauren: I mean, yeah, I am in my feels once again about Merrily We Roll Along which I feel like I’ve mentioned several times on this show. But the Tony’s, as we’re recording this on June 17th, the Tony’s were last night. And yeah I watched them live. They’re basically the only award show that I watch anymore. And not only did Daniel Radcliffe get a Tony for his role in Merrily We Roll Along, which is a show that I have seen twice and sobbed at both times profusely, and I just love him, his speech was so sweet. I also saw him in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ten years ago and he was fantastic in that as well. It’s been amazing to watch him grow.

But also Jonathan Groth got his first Tony. And when I said to my partner, “Oh my god, I’m so glad he finally got it.” My partner was like, “This is his first one!?” I’m like, “I KNOW.” It’s Jonathan Groth.

Cher: That is shocking. I had no idea.

Lauren: He has been nominated for everything he’s ever been in. Spring Awakening, Hamilton, etc. But he’s never actually won it. And his speech was just – it’s so clear that he’s had this thing written out since he was like 19 years old. And I also saw him in the previews of Spring Awakening back in 2005/2006 – I don’t remember exactly what year it was – and I just remember being so blown away. He was 20 years old or whatever. So blown away by the clarity of his voice. His gravitas even then. And granted I was 14 and so I was also like, oh my god, you’re so pretty. (laughs)

But I don’t know, there will always be a part of me ... it’s like I don’t necessarily have any fantasies about like giving an Oscar speech or an Emmy speech or anything like that. But anytime I watch the Tony’s there’s always going to be a little part of me that’s like, oh man, that’s the career path that I diverged from. I was originally on that path and then I decided not to sort of pursue it. And I don’t know, just seeing these wonderful people succeed is just ... I just got very emotional about it. So, that is what has me in my feels.

What about you, Cher?

Cher: Well, I honestly for kind of a similar reason but for a fictional character.

Lauren: Love it.

Cher: I am in my feels for Hacks.

Lauren: Oh yes!

Cher: And just ... I cried throughout this season. I love Hacks so much. I know we’ve talked about it multiple times and we’ve brought it up as ... I think I’ve brought it up for my Feels Corner every month for the last two months it’s been on the air. But the ending of this season and just the fact that Jean Smart – spoilers ahead – Jean Smart’s character ... God, Deborah Vance, how the fact that Deborah finally, finally got late night, finally got this thing that she’s been working towards and wanted her whole life. It just was so beautiful and it warmed my heart and I love this show. I also loved the drama at the end. I’m messy, I loved it. I actually think I said out loud, “Yes” when Ava kind of finally stood up for herself with Deborah. And even beyond stood up for herself. Kind of like gave Deborah a taste of her own medicine. I loved it. It was fantastic. I’m really, really excited for the next season. I love this show. And it makes me really happy.

Lauren: Same. Absolutely same.

Cher: And with that, I’m Cher McAnelly and you can find me at OverChers.Tumblr.com.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Shippen, and you can find me at TheLaurenShippen.Tumblr.com.

Cher: This has been Dashboard Diaries. And ...

[outtro music]

Lauren: May your anons always be loving.

Cher: Your dash always refreshed.

Lauren: Your gifs always be loading.

Cher: And your ships always canon.

Lauren: May the fics you’re reading always be finished.

Cher: And the answers you seek always in the re-blogs.Lauren: Thanks for scrolling with us!

How do we build long lasting fandoms with short lasting TV seasons? How do you know when to invest in a story when it might be canceled the next day? Cher and Lauren discuss that and much more, including: the real problem with on-scree sex scenes, the Ton-blr, and the importance of snake wranglers.

Credits and transcript in our reblog. You can find transcripts for this, and every other episode, here.

Find the posts discussed in this episode in this tag!

#DD 39 #transcript

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