#maybe this is a little parasocial

[jetlagsblr]

I honestly don’t get why the off season episodes of the layover aren’t as popular, I’ve been re-listening to some of them and they’re so comforting to me, it feels like I’m hanging out with the guys

[emotoangel]

you know sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat remembering the phrase ‘more than just romantic’ and feeling like I’ve been knocked down a hill by the reminder that Dan and Phil are like ,, actually together. it’s not just a weird online shipping two twinks thing they’re actual soulmates, companions through life, 4000 year old tortoises, RANCH, like a piece of furniture, like a normal gay couple ,,, what the fuck

[sn0wp1anets]

anyway joel is literally impossible to predict for using stats because stats are just. averages. and joel is someone who has a pretty high skill ceiling and potential but also can just get really unlucky. statistically meltdown is one of his worst games but its also a game where he has come top 5 a few times (and 1st in mcc34!!) and when watching his pov you can see has a very high skill level (in hh he got the most freezes and in r2 got a double kill then triple kill then ace- which was also on the strongest pvp team- basically consecutively), but equally he has some games where he comes almost last (meltdown scoring is crazy unbalanced but we move)- and then this averages his placement out lower than in some games where he just does okay most of the time despite him obviously having a higher skill level in md. anyway i do think joel is super skilled and well rounded and genuinely a huge asset in a team but he is inconsistent due to mindset, team etc. (obv this affects everyone but i think sometimes just getting completely run down in pvp games at the start is really demoralizing and joel does the best when he's very confident and aggressive, so arguably it affects him skill-wise alot more than others)- so ultimately predicting him or trying to use stats to determine his skill level is virtually impossible! anyway the moral of the story here is joels stats are unrepresentative and if you judge him purely based on stats you Will underestimate him.

also joel if you see this theyve made the hard ending on pkw easier (inc salmon ladders) so if you figure those out you can probably get a few hard endings in the future/ i believe in you youve been topfragging pkw in all of your teams for a while. also dont hang back in battle box and meltdown have faith in yourself you're a pvp god.

[the0ther-side0f-dawn]

excuse my long preamble before i get to the point but idk if this was:

an accidental private info leak from Dan and a 'cover-up' by Phil. it is unclear if he is denying altogether, or moreso just saying "not in this case"

or if it was just Dan getting carried away with yapping and saying random things like that time when he described the preshow as being "a gender".

or maybe it's like an unconfirmed thing like Dan is speculating and he's definitely brought it up with Phil before but this is maybe something Phil doesn't want added to his Lore™ at this point in time. idk.

but in the Glasgow n1 preshow 03/02/2025 (timestamp around 13 minutes)

they're telling the story about how Phil got his license and how if he did drive again he would need lessons but probably shouldn't do it, and anyway:

Phil: But I think if I ever did get behind the wheel again I would need some lessons because it's not safe for me to-

Dan: You would need Jesus if you got behind the wheel again

Phil: Would you trust me on a motorway?

Dan: ♫ NooOoo

Phil: Imagine that.

Dan: ♫ I'd rather not.

Phil: Left! The other left! The other right!

Dan: (turns to look at Phil) Yeh, I guess the dyspraxia doesn't help when it comes to like...

Phil: It's not dyspraxia. I just don't know left and right. It's [like/not]* an actual thing.

Dan: alright.

*I can't make out what Phil actually said since they were talking over each other.

anyway, is this new information??

[sergle]

spill girl why they whining

Omg so. A lot of the recent HT launches have had pretty much the same colors repeated over and over, but Specifically the one that was released on saturday! Really just, as a majority, shades that are near exact dupes for polishes that have already been dropped very recently. And so fans of the brand are kind of taking a minute to complain abt the way that a collection will be hyped up, only to be completely identical to stuff already in the catalog. Me, complaining and talking about Colors are two of my favorite things, so I was gonna read all of it anyway, but I also totally agree. Also the last color story is kind of not a complimentary color palette, imo. Brown, aqua, neon pink/coral, yellowish taupe, and primary purple?

In particular, these two "new" shades are the ones making everyone lay on the ground dead, bc they are just. There's an ultra bright coral and an ultra bright aqua shade in like every release.

Brands obviously will make multiple polishes in a similar color family- especially once they have a large catalog. But HT has a ton of color families they haven't even touched yet, in favor of making mostly Purples, Blues, Aquas, and Corals. Ppl aren't loving these two either tbh:

The sorta Sandy color, I do think is different Enough, but the purple is very... tsk tsk... Because the brand also just dropped a purples-only release very recently. I think it's interesting to see! Because HT is a newer brand, only around for a few years- and, ultimately, an Influencer Brand. Since it's owned by one person, and the creator of this brand is designing the polishes herself, there's an element of just. Making a lot of polish in her personal fav colors! Which normally end up being very saturated, very cool toned, with a strong preference for purple.

[aroceu]

i'm making this post mostly to vent, but also to reflect.

being in mdzs fandom was the first time being in fandom felt like... "content," to me. like i was a creator who WAS obliged to the masses, who was seen as holding some social power because i was interested in creating works for people to enjoy, rather than enjoying them myself. even though i am both: i am someone who likes to read as much as i like to write. i like enjoying as much as i like creating things for people to enjoy. i don't believe in this dichotomy, and i sure as hell didn't come into fandom for parasocial attention.

one of the problems definitely was that i was on twitter more than i was writing, and i was thinking of ways to game the algorithm so i stayed on people's feeds, because of the way twitter began to work, because of my own anxiety, and because subconsciously i understood the landscape. i didn't like it but i knew it. and too much was going on in my life that i couldn't take a step back and realize how much it was negatively affecting me.

still, it felt weird and strange and wrong to have followers with bios that said things like "don't perceive me i'm just here to read." strangers who would reply to my posts with over-familiarity and rudeness and said they were justified because i had over 1000 followers on twitter, because that is apparently a marker of how you are "allowed" to treat another stranger online. throwing around the terms "bnf" and "popular" as if they mean something beyond being similar to how american high schools work. i saw people group me and my friends who also had a lot of followers as this exclusive class of people in the fandom because we liked making things for other people to enjoy and we had a lot of followers, and therefore they could treat and generalize us all in weird dehumanizing ways because of it. i saw people complain that if any of us said anything "problematic" or "wrong" then it was a moral failing on the rest of us if we didn't publicly call it out.

and like. fandom is not a content creation space. at least, not to me. while i do like attention and making a big number even bigger—like i'm not gonna lie, it does give me dopamine!—i didn't come here to generate a parasocial audience. i came here to make cool stuff and also make friends. and now with people who follow me because they like the things i make and less so me, something i now struggle with that i didn't used to in fandom is: do i follow people back? do these people see me as someone they want to admire and have a parasocial relationship with, or do they want to be friends? this post is a little bit of a PSA as well, i suppose: while i don't believe that everyone in fandom/who now follows me has this content creation mindset, i know there are people who do, and i don't know how to interact with strangers anymore. if you don't want me to interact with you and just want to admire me from afar, i want to respect that boundary. at the same time, i do like making friends. and i want to make friends with people who are just purely curious about me, not because i'm put on this parasocial pedestal.

i also don't think this is a problem with mdzs fandom specifically, or even necessarily just for fandom itself. i think a lot of spaces online have turned into this: where not only your social power but also your personhood, your identity starts and ends with how big the number next to your name is, and is an indicator to a stranger how humanizing you can treat them. make your private assumptions or judgments about me; i have no control over them so i don't care. but i am still a human behind the screen as much as you. i struggle with my day to day stuff as much as anyone else. and i want to make friends over that. i want to commiserate and bond with people; and while i won't pretend that i don't think there is a little more "influence" if the number next to your name is a bit bigger, i don't think it should detract from the reality that if someone has 30 followers or 3000, they are still human.

unless they're a bot.

but i'm also mostly making this post because let's face it: most of the friends i've made in any fandom, historically, have been either because i was a fan of their work, or they were a fan of mine. and that's what fandom is all about—an exchange, a conversation. why are we reinventing rigid hierarchies based on follower count? why should someone who likes my fics or someone whose fics i like be treated any differently, because of the role we play in this exchange? (and why should whose fanfic you enjoy say something about you as a person... but that's a different conversation lol) there are actual content creators i like, content creators who profit monetarily based purely on that, and the monetary profit is their primary motivator in having that label, that career in the first place. but that is not fandom, to me. fandom is not a job and i am not here to profit (all of my works and thoughts are free!), and in no way has money ever played a role in my existence in fandom. it is what it's always been: to make cool things and to meet cool people. and if nothing else, it's a bit disappointing to realize that not everyone feels the same.

anyway! tl;dr if you're interested in talking to me and being friends feel free to always reach out. i also know that my own response times can be spotty (another flaw of mine, alas) but i'm mostly making this post to say that i am not someone who thinks of myself as separate from my audience, and that my numbers/output mean very little to how willing i am to engage. i can get overwhelmed as much as anyone else, but in my heart if you're interested in a dialogue with me, then i am too. because that's what being in fandom is all about.

[charred-slime]

he is such a bug to me

[octochick]

man. if i ever have a irl picture of bagi and tubbo in front of my eyes i think ill die of happiness

[aintmyjewelry]

this guilt thing people are feeling about ttpd and the eras tour is very funny to me. taylor can "call" us out all she wants I'll never feel guilty for trashing her taste in men because at the end of the day we were right

[windfighter]

Am listening to a Tootie-vod and she started talking about falling asleep to other people's streams and how it's like hanging out with friends in a relaxed setting until you fall asleep, like a sleepover

and it was such a difference to every single hermit whose reaction when people fall asleep to them is to get sad/upset and go "oh so I'm boring?" and everytime I just want to grab them and shake them until they stop being overdramatic

No, it means you're safe. You're a friend (parasocial) and we're hanging out until we fall asleep. Like a sleepover, except you're on the other side of the world.

[fndmrt]

I listened to the ABG Podcast with Steven the other day and it’s so nice to hear from him about his work in both BuzzFeed and Watcher, how his upbringing shaped the path he took to become a creator, and how ingrained (and important!) he is within the AAPI community. I think people tend to forget that Steven had been in the industry for a long time and is a highly respected figure.

[sleaze4sleaze]

I miss every mutual who has deleted… sending love into the atmosphere. Hopefully, distantly, they’ll feel it

[actual-corpse]

Watching Avatar the Last Airbender...

Politely reminded of the time people wanted my head because I said that ATLA ruined storytelling because some people can't fucking think critically of media before trying to tell you what's so good about it.

I LOVE AtLA! Adore it! But like.... A majority of people watched Zuko switch sides and said, "Damn... What if we redeemed ALL the villains?" Without realizing Zuko wasn't a true villain in need of redemption.

But... The Redemption Game isn't truly JUST the fault of AtLA... There was a shift in the Moral of the Story. Idk how to explain it bc I'm half asleep, but like...

[dwtdog]

gn

[hippy-pants]

number of days since i opened Pinterest and the first post i saw was an edited image of Neil Cicierega or a personal image reposted from his personal social media with the caption "OMG IS THAT NAIL CIGARETTE? 😍😍😍" and people in the comments calling him a fictional character: 1 0

[queernarcissus]

bro they are literally visiting a fancy ass house that i have been to. this is UNFAIR.