#it’s all commerce

[inartinguidance]

Just zoom in on above door placard

That was Washington

Pay Attention

@histime who did I

Encapsulate

I was talking Washington

That First

Better pay for a blaze

[yonpote]

i think every dnp project should be given art analysis and critique. dan's internet support group series is of course satire on advice columns and blogs that arent actually helpful, and also a reflection on the words dan himself needed to hear or wished he'd heard when he was younger. phil is not on fire is a love letter to queer joy, to perceived sexual deviance, to the way you felt when you were young, staying up really late with your closest friends and the most asinine shit making you giggle because you're so sleep deprived. dont even get me started on tatinof and ii i could be here all day

[greendayauthority]

Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO, 25 August 2021

[badgopher]

Friday(ish)

Whoever decided humans didn't need a nice lil winter hibernation really screwed that one up.

My new hobby is spite voting.

Live music is life.

They've almost got the botanical garden put back together.

The book's fine. Enjoyable enough.

[mara-and-its-the-same]

I know no one follows me for watcher things, obviously, but good god i just have to say that while i do think the whole streaming thing is absolutely ridiculous, acting like these are the rich we’re meant to eat is absolutely deranged. 3 men owning a company with a grand total of 25 employees is so far from the exploitative rich in question.

[lady-raziel]

'West Wing' creator spins scenario to save Democrats: Nominate Mitt Romney to stop 'dangerous imbecile' Trump (msn.com)

As much as this is not going to happen I absolutely love Aaron Sorkin's, the creator of one of the most successful political tv shows of all time, desire to write political fanfiction with reality. A man after my own heart

Love the idea of the classic narrative arc where the big bad from a previous season joins the other side in a redemption plotline to take down the BIG big bad but with Mitt Romney

please include this in the anime reboot of the west wing

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 26

someday if i can figure out how the hell people get these things made i would like to do some little destiny & malice acrylic charms. i think those are so fun. and while i mostly want them for Myself i figure that if i DID figure out the process, i should maybe open up the option to anyone else that might want them, soooo...

informal poll: if i figure out how all that works, would any of y'all be into that, and approximately how many of you?

[sjonni33]

killing etsy with my bare hands and ripping out their throat

[zhongrin]

doing some research before going back home rn and i'm so confused. wtf do they mean that they're gonna check my personal belongings in the airport, and those bought from overseas will be limited to a total of $500 while the rest of it is chargeable to tax?

[brick-van-dyke]

Only through the first couple of chapters of Six of Crows and I'm loving it already. Kaz is so much fun lmfao

[whumpshaped]

.

[greendayauthority]

Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, CO, 25 August 2021

[triflesandparsnips]

Ways fans go 'splah'

I keep noodling about this thing where fandom gets weird after it receives new canon. And in the middle of writing a different post, I started wondering if it comes down to... cognitive dissonance.

Because to be a Fan means you love a Show (or Movie, or Book, etc.)-- right? Maybe because you felt the Show spoke to you and your experiences in particular, and helped you, and understood you. It's important to you. You form an idea of what the Show is, and who you are in relation both to the Show and to other fans of the Show.

So... what does it mean if, as you interact with new canon, you... don't love what the Show has done?

Suddenly the status quo that you've built for yourself has been upset; now you have to deal with change. With questions. Like: If you Don't Like an element of the Show, does that mean that you're... not a Fan anymore?

Does that mean that when you thought the Show spoke to you, you misunderstood it? That you were wrong?

Does that mean you were a Fan of a Show that doesn't actually exist, and now you've identified yourself (and your social interactions, and your recent history, and your own creative efforts, and and and) with this Other Show, and you feel trapped in that association?

Listen: I absolutely agree that it can hurt to find out that you've tied yourself tightly to a Show that has changed into something you Don't Like. And when it happens... sometimes fans react in one (or more) of the following ways to help resolve the cognitive dissonance of this change... to varying levels of healthy/socially acceptable, creating a lot of the absolute weirdness we see in fandom:

1. They deal with it.

That seems kind of easy to say, but... uh. Well, I can't think of a better way of saying it. Art changes; the fan changes with the art, or they do something else. They learn to say goodbye-- or maybe they learn to ride the metaphorical mechanical bull. Fans who have successfully incorporated this reaction have often diversified their fannishness across multiple fandoms.

It's a safe way to interact with a Show but it can, perhaps, lead to less of the vibrant immersive fannish joy that can come from being really invested in a fandom -- and then downplay or not engage with the real feelings of more invested fans. (Is this one of mine? Oh, definitely. I'm working on it.)

2. They decide the Don't Like element is due to a creative choice rather than personal opinion.

By which I mean, fans who go this route decide that the reason they Don't Like an element is not because they, uh, don't like it, but rather because there is a secret reason (that they've made up) that the Don't Like element exists. With this idea in mind, it's not that there's an actual change to the Show-- it's just that the fan must either wait to see it resolve back into the familiar or, alternately, put in effort to "figure out" what the Don't Like element is "really doing".

(This is where meta about "writing bad on purpose" and such may be familiar to some.)

By deciding that the Don't Like element is an intentional artistic choice that will eventually resolve back into the familiar Show, there's no reason to fear or question what the change means for the Show or the fan's sense of self. And like-- tbh, some of the best crack meta can come from visiting that mindset for a hot minute. But living there can lead to... significantly greater hurt later, particularly as more canon drops and the likelihood of the Show resolving back to its "original" form grows ever slimmer.

3. They decide that the element they Don't Like doesn't exist.

As in, didn't happen. Or did happen, but only by removing other elements to flip it from Don't Like to the more acceptable/palatable "creative choice" vibe from option 2. The cognitive dissonance is resolved by simply removing the element that would cause the fan to stop loving the Show.

And like-- I've certainly done this. There are episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I've decided just didn't happen. Also the first season of Parks and Rec. And pretty much any Marvel movie that doesn't allow for the 2012 Avengers tower fanon to somehow magically exist.

I even think that fanfiction and other remediating fanworks are an important extension of this behavior-- fix-it fics are a thing, and I love them. But I think it's crucial that those of us who do this kind of canon excision don't make our choices anyone else's problem. I don't stop other fans from engaging with the things I've elected to ignore; I also don't harass the creators/actors, because jesus fucking christ why would I.

4. They decide the Show they love is not, in fact, the Show they love.

So let's say the fan acknowledges that the Show has changed. They might even acknowledge that the Show was never what they thought it was. And with those two things in mind, some fans choose option 1... but some land here, in option 4.

Because! They think the Show they're a fan of does exist-- just not... on the screen. They love a Platonic Ideal of the Show-- what it should have been. What, somewhere, it is, except that outside forces changed it from the Ideal to the Imperfect.

What kind of forces? The usual suspects: Capitalism. Racism. Heteronormativity. Hollywood bullshit. Actors/writers/creative teams leaving the Show for whatever reason. Hubris. Fallibility. Ad nauseum.

But the Ideal Show (that maybe exists only in the fan's own head... but sometimes appears to be shared and envisioned by other fans too)-- that Ideal Show isn't subject to outside forces. It's completely divorced from the context that the Imperfect Show is being created in. The fan doesn't experience cognitive dissonance because they have, as with option 3, decided something doesn't exist-- but that nonexistent thing is the Show itself. The fan instead exchanges the Imperfect Show for the Ideal Show, which does not have and will never have a Don't Like element.

And like-- sure! Entire careers have been built on the back of believing that an Ideal should exist and replace the Imperfect-- Ed Brubaker is right there. Reimaginings of source material can fall squarely into this as well, particularly when they hit the public domain. Like every other option, this is a thing fandom does that, in some of its forms, shows why fandom is super neat.

But... but the thing is, there's no such thing as art divorced from context. Even if the vision of an Ideal Show seems to be shared identically across oodles of fans, it's still subject to the personal context of every single one of those fans. Like, it goes riiiight back to why you become a Fan of the Show in the first place-- it spoke to you. It validated your experiences.

So there is no Ideal Show. There can't be. There's just the Show that we have-- or the Show that we create, in the real world (and then becomes subject again to all those pesky outside forces), to try and capture what our personal Ideal is.

Fans who go splah with the option 4 route mistake, I think, their Ideal Show for everyone's Ideal Show-- and then every criticism, every meta, every engagement with the Imperfect Show and its fans falls into piles of logical fallacies: that everyone is working from the same Ideal; that those who ignore the Ideal are doing so on purpose; that all Don't Like elements with the Show can be attributed to its failure to meet the Ideal rather than the fan's own preferences; that the Ideal is quantifiable, qualifiable, infallible and incontrovertible...

Maybe, at the end, option 4 is the one that really gets all of us. Because yeah-- I have an Ideal Show in my head. I bet you have one in yours, too. And it can be disappointing when the Ideal and the Imperfect don't align-- it can, in fact, create that cognitive dissonance I've been harping on this whole time.

But how we choose to deal with that disappointment... that's where the weirdness can come from. To both the benefit and ooooh yes, very much the detriment of a fandom that has survived long enough to start experiencing the cognitive dissonance of the Show fans imagine versus the Show fans have.

[maryellencarter]

you know, the preamble to the (us) constitution is by far the shortest piece of english writing i've ever failed to memorize

[bright-and-burning]

ok was doing more deep diving on adam norris (sorry i just genuinely find his ventures FASCINATINGGGG) and then finally connected the dots on smthn @cuthechicane said abt somerset boys bc i was linkedin stalking a frequent co-founder of adam norris' and realized like all of their ventures were out of somerset and THEN i was like hang on a minute... and googled jenson's hometown and THEN. the dots connected

[cerealmonster15]

i only ever make the same one joke Forever, but,,,