#moving fan fiction to the 21st century

[hislittleraincloud]

*watching Enid from afar...from very afar*

[dwellordream]

"she's patriarchy-pilled" and why it doesn't apply to fictious pseudo-medieval women

a pretty common meta commentary leveled at certain female characters in ASOIAF is that you can divide the women of the setting into two groups.

the first group is full of strong feminist women who resist the patriarchy in all corners, and who refuse to submit to victimhood. the second group is full of placid, smug sheep, who enjoy being weak and condescended to by men.

reasons why this is bullshit:

comparisons between modern day 'trad wives' or 'red pilled women' who advocate for rejecting feminism and returning to lives of happy homemaking and female submission and fictional characters living in a pseudo medieval world just... don't work well.

Westeros has never had a feminist movement. there is no sense of 'getting back to tradition' because they are still living in a feudal patriarchy. while internalized misogyny can still be displayed in the books, and women certainly judge other women, these characters aren't actually 'rejecting their own freedom', because they quite literally have no choice in the matter.

for example, while a woman in 21st century America might willingly quit her job or drop out of school for a relationship with a man, a female character like Catelyn or Alicent or Cersei... isn't actually sacrificing hopes of a career or an education. they are being shunted down a path with little to no alternatives.

sometimes fans go "well, they could have run away! they could have joined the Faith?" how? with what money and resources? who is going to protect them on the road? how are they going to subvert the will of their fathers/brothers/etc?

don't get me wrong. there are absolutely unironic examples of internalized misogyny in ASOIAF. Cersei, for example, spends much of her time sneering at and degrading other women for being victims or weak-willed. HOWEVER, what many fans don't seem to grasp, is that being sexist towards other women doesn't magically make Cersei 'win' at the patriarchy. she herself is still abused, demeaned, and used as a political pawn, well into her tenure as Queen Regent.

in the endless battle of Sansa versus Arya stans, for example, Sansa stans will often claim that Arya is 'not a victim' and 'deserves less sympathy than Sansa', because Arya for a time is treated as a young boy and has training with a sword. yet this ignores the fact that Arya is still constantly threatened with or exposed to sexual violence, even while masquerading as a boy, and while she can defend herself in some instances, is far from this super-powered action chick on a 'fun road trip in the Riverlands'.

conversely, Arya stans will insinuate that Sansa 'deserves less sympathy than Arya' because 'being at court is what she always wanted' and 'the patriarchy favors her due to her self-serving, submissive ways'. yet this ignores the fact that while Sansa has more material privileges than Arya, being afforded regular meals, a soft place to sleep, and the veneer of civility, she is still regularly viciously abused by Joffrey and his Kingsguard, and ostracized and isolated from the rest of the court. Sansa's not winning any competition here.

to move on to Catelyn, many of Catelyn's proud 'antis' will claim that Catelyn is a woman who willingly and knowingly profits off the patriarchy while condemning women who do not fit that mold. yet while Catelyn and Arya's relationship is complex, we also see Catelyn treat Brienne and the Mormont women, all female warriors, with warmth and kindness, and there is an underlying current of resentment and anger in her chapters towards the men in her life, even though she is in many ways the 'ideal Westeros wife'.

finally, to dabble briefly in HOTD, Rhaenyra and Alicent's different reactions to the prospect of marriage and motherhood are often compared to triumph Rhaenyra's strong will and sense of rebellion. while Rhaenyra's determination to choose her own spouse and her disregard for the ridiculous notion of 'virginity' should be admired, she is also actively groomed by her uncle, a man thrice her age, and she ultimately does agree to an arranged marriage with Laenor.

meanwhile, Alicent is often derided by fans for 'allowing herself to be used as a pawn', yet this ignores the fact that Alicent is a 14/15 year old girl with no incomes or property of her own, who does not even have the threat of a dragon to demand respect. what was Alicent meant to do? kick and scream as she was dragged down the aisle? defy her father and the King, and be, best case scenario, permanently ostracized from court and her family for it? this sort of blatant victim-blaming dominates in the tumblr HOTD fandom.

in conclusion: to claim that women play no role in promulgating patriarchal and misogynistic views is silly.

women do play an active role in shaming and abusing other women, and this is often handed down from mothers to daughters. it allows patriarchs the veneer of genteel nature, in that the 'dirty work' of berating young girls for not conforming is passed off on mothers, sisters, and aunts.

however, in fandom discussions, the the woobification of male characters is so strong that we spend most of our time blaming women alone for patriarchal restrictions and values, as if it were something girls developed in their free time, purely for their own amusement.

to imply that a character in a fictional feudal patriarchy has the same range of choices and autonomy as modern day women do is absurd. the trad-wife movement is defined by its knowing, pseudo-intellectual rejection of second and third wave feminism. the entire point is to turn away from abortion, from birth control, from reproductive and LGBT rights, to leave behind women's suffrage, sex positivity, and criticism of gender roles.

but what do Westerosi women have to 'reject', exactly? they're not playing with the same full deck.

[nicklloydnow]

“Back in the 21st century, however, not everything was rosy. Indeed, the two-part "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode "Past Tense" (January 2 and 9, 1995) threw its main characters back in time — via a transporter accident — to the year 2024 when everything seemed to be at its worst. Earth in 2024 was overrun with poverty, and Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) had to explain to Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) that housing insecurity had reached epidemic proportions. Indeed, the population of unemployed and unhoused people in major cities had reached such high levels, that the American government had built special "Sanctuary Districts" where the unhoused were rounded up and imprisoned in a ghetto.

The mentally ill weren't treated, and the hungry were fed with a malfunctioning rationing system. It wouldn't be until an activist named Gabriel Bell rose up in protest and led a riot against the police that conditions would change. The Bell Riots were said to be a significant part of Trek's history.

Given the recent news that Governor Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order to sweep the state of unhoused encampments, "Past Tense" — set in 2024 — is beginning to feel weirdly prescient.

Housing insecurity and homelessness, it should be said, is a serious problem in California. Rents are high, and there is little effort made to provide low-cost housing or shelters for the state's many unhoused citizens. At last count, there were over 181,000 unhoused people in the state, 28% of the entire country's unhoused population. Many people live in tents, often set up under freeways or other sheltered areas, and form miniature encampments. There is little sanitation in such encampments, and the quality of life isn't great. Every so often, the police department is called in to sweep these encampments off the streets, forcing the people to move on to another neighborhood. However, they are not taken to shelters but merely told to go elsewhere. They then set up camps under another freeway and the cycle continues.

On July 25, Gavin Newsom signed an order that would only exacerbate the problem, an order stemming from a Supreme Court Decision that allowed states to ban public sleeping at their own discretion. While Newsom has pledged billions of dollars to build shelters, the measure to "sweep the streets" of encampments has been called a wonton and unhelpful measure by critics.

It's a strange coincidence that "Star Trek" should have written a story, back in 1995, about how 2024 will be the year the housing insecurity problem in the United States will boil over. Gavin Newsom has essentially signed a measure that opens the door for the cruel "Sanctuary Districts" seen in "Deep Space Nine." If Newsome is a "DS9" fan, he seems to have taken the wrong lessons from "Past Tense."

(…)

On the DVD commentary track for "Past Tense," the episode's writers — Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Ira Steven Behr, and René Echevarria — said they were inspired by a previous mayor's actions. The Republican Richard Riordan (who was mayor of Los Angeles from 1993 to 2001) suggested in the early 1990s that the city build what he called "havens" for the city's homeless, essentially herding them into tent cities. Riordan said he wanted to keep the streets clear because it was good for local businesses, but he never suggested how these fenced-off "havens" were meant to be run, or how the homeless insides of them were to be helped.

The writers of "Deep Space Nine" were trying to invent a fictional, near-future scenario where the world was too far gone to save. Outside their windows, politicians were merely suggesting it in real life.

While Newsom's new measure doesn't spell out the same kind of "havens" that Riordan suggested, it is uncanny that the new homelessness measures should come tumbling down the pipeline in 2024, when "Past Tense" takes place. We'll have to wait to see if Gabriel Bell is also real. It's starting to feel like it.“

[arendelle-archives]

The Archive is now officially open!

Hello everyone! Sorry it took a little longer than expected. I got myself distracted (like I usually do).

The concept for the Arendelle Archives came into fruition in 2021 when friends @saiten-gefroren and FrozenHeart began working on the Frozen timeline study “Annals of Frozen”. The project was released to the fandom in July, 2021 and quickly gained traction among other fans who were already invested in exploring and discussing the lore of the franchise.

Around the same time, @virtual-winter published his 3-part series “An Odyssey Through Frozen Geography" which explored the real-world inspirations behind the world of Frozen, which perfectly fits the theme of the "Archive".  Together with “Annals of Frozen”, these two projects acted as the catalyst works that would bring a group of fans together on a common platform under a common goal and banner, starting off as a Discord-server in April 2022 and now, finally, stepping into the world of Tumblr!

So, what is Arendelle Archives?

As for the concept itself, we imagine that the Arendelle Archives, aka the Royal Arendelle Archives, was a 19th century national institution of Arendelle tasked with the preservation and documentation of natural, historical and geographical records. Though founded by the royal family (by Agnarr and Iduna undoubtedly, not that Runeard guy), it was a neutral agency without affiliations with any political or commercial power.

Moving on to the 21st century, we have established ourselves as a group of ordinary but dedicated Frozen fans with varying backgrounds and areas of “expertise” who are on a mission to restore the records that were once under the supervision of the Royal Arendelle Archives, in line with the same values that defined the "native" institution.

As spiritual descendants of the original Arendelle Archives staff, we aim to collect as much information as possible centered around Arendelle and its neighboring lands with the help of official material like the movies, books, comics, etc. (the “facts” of the Frozenverse if you will), then compile and summarize these facts by studying the source material and by making logical deductions without the interference of personal preferences or prejudices — It is a “science” for our beloved fictional world, not a “fiction” with personal attachments riddled through the work.

What have we done so far?

For the past two years, our focus has been set on collecting and presenting the history, geography and lore of Arendelle and the rest of the Frozen world. Entering 2024, our work has resulted in nearly a dozen completed or ongoing “in-house” fan-projects as well as affiliated works by creators tied to the Archive:

Seek the truth – Unraveling Frozen II (1st and 2nd edition) by Yumeka (2020)

Annals of Frozen (1st and 2nd edition) by Saiten and FrozenHeart (2021-2022)

An Odyssey Through Frozen Geography by Virtual Winter (2021-2023)

The Frozenverse – Media, books, comics and more! by Virtual Winter

The Flora and Fauna of Frozen by Virtual Winter (2022)

Reproducing Iduna’s map from Frozen II by Virtual Winter (2023)

Every appearance of Hans’ ship by Virtual Winter (2023)

Frozen Canon Talk! (1st to 4th edition) by Great Queen Anna (2021-2023)

Anna and Elsa’s lost family members by Virtual Winter (2023)

(links to the individual works will be added later)

What's next?

We are always “on the hunt” for like-minded fans with similar fan-projects in their portfolio. Just in time for Christmas of 2023, such an encounter resulted in the impressive video project “Frozen: The History of Arendelle”, a timeline study very much in tune with “Annals of Frozen”, created by Youtuber Geekritique in collaboration with us.

Just around the corner also lies the creation of a detailed Arendelle family tree based on the findings in “Anna and Elsa’s lost family members”.

After this? Only Ahtohallan knows… But with more Frozen content on the horizon, our work as archivists and record keepers will surely not be over any time soon and updates and refreshes of past works will definitely be coming in the near future!

Arendelle Archives on Tumblr

The decision to finally start this Tumblr came in November 2023. From now on, we will use this platform as the base of our operation and republish our previous entries, now finally unified under a common “Archives” banner. It will also be the main platform for future projects as well as reblogs of Frozen fan projects from other sources.

All things considered, we hope that through our work, we will contribute to the Frozen fandom as a whole and allow for regular fans, artists, analysts, and fanfiction writers alike to get a clearer picture of the lore, trivia and backstory of the Frozen-series!

Welcome!

Virtual Winter, Saiten and the rest of the Archive team

[antebunny]

as a huge fan of the original ACD canon, I desperately want to hear your elaboration about why you don't like BBC's Sherlock :D

hi OP I hope you're ready for a monster essay in response because that's what I ended up with!

For ease of reading I've divided up my answer into four sections: 1) explaining Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock with historical context, 2) analyzing BBC Sherlock/Moffat's Sherlock using a cross-section of Watsonian and Doylist techniques and sheer spite, 3) my thoughts on Johnlock, 4) comparing & contrasting Doyle's Sherlock with Moffat's Sherlock. Disclaimer: I'm not a historian, although I do I have some understanding of the history of detective fiction. Mostly I'm just an avid reader/fan.

Part I: Original Sherlock

To start with! I will talk about the characterization of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Here's something which people who have never read the stories don't seem to know: Sherlock is kind.

He's not particularly nice, I'll give you that. He tends to think he's the smartest person in the room, and you know what? He almost always is. He has plenty of dry and sarcastic comments for the London police, for clients who don't bring any evidence, etc. But he goes out of his way to be kind. My favorite example of this is the Boscombe Valley Mystery.

The Boscombe Valley Mystery is far from my favorite Sherlock story in terms of mystery-solving, but one of the best in terms of characterizing Sherlock. To summarize: two wealthy, widower landowners, John and Charles, are next-door neighbors with one kid each–John, a daughter named Alice and Charles, a son named James.

Sherlock gets called in when Charles is found murdered, and everyone suspects James of doing it. Of course, it's not that easy. It turns out that twenty years ago, John was a highway robber in Australia, and he robbed Charles but left him alive. John then left the life of crime, started a family and settled in England a wealthy man. Then Charles moved in next door, recognized John, and proceeded to blackmail him for money, land, etc. This escalated until eventually Charles demanded Alice's hand in marriage for his son James. John refuses, and eventually kills Charles to protect Alice and to free himself from Charles' blackmailing/tyranny.

(The problem is that James is actually a decent person, and he and Alice are secretly in love, but there's also a bar maid involved and it's complicated and not relevant. Anyways).

Of course, Sherlock being Sherlock, he figures out that John is the murderer. But here's the thing: he defends John. He doesn't turn John (or his signed confession) over to the authorities. In fact, Sherlock goes to court to protect James by arguing that there's not enough evidence to find him guilty. Sherlock catches a murderer, goes "you know what? He was kind of right tho" and looks away.

Do you understand how radical this is for Victorian England? This is the 1890s. People still believe in God over gravity. The idea that a criminal isn't a criminal for life? That a highway robber can turn over a new leaf? That a murderer can be in the right? [Now would be a good time for a source] Like this is so new, I can't think of a way to translate it to the 21st century.

And it's key to who Sherlock is. He puts his reputation on the line for this case. He says that he didn't manage to solve this case, even though he did. His professional pride and reputation is worth less to him than protecting John, a MURDERER, and James, his son who admittedly is a nice guy whose worst crime is making dumb decisions in college (see: the bar maid).

Because here's the thing about Sherlock's "professional pride:" it's not "I'm the smartest person" or "I'm always right." Sherlock genuinely believes in his deduction method, not as a superpower which he alone possesses, but as a tool which anyone can use if they apply themselves. Which brings me to my second example: Irene Adler.

If you (general audience) only know Irene Adler from BBC Sherlock, I'm gonna ask you to forget all of that right now. Arthur Conan Doyle's Irene Adler is an American opera singer who used to be in a relationship with the future King of Bohemia. The king asks for Sherlock's help retrieving an incriminating photograph that Irene Adler has threatened to send to the king's future wife (a Scandinavian princess) and her family. (Irene Adler is currently in England, getting married to some guy named Norton).

Sherlock promptly gets outsmarted by Irene Adler. She leaves for America with Norton and the photograph, though she promises not to use it against the King of Bohemia, and keeps her promise. Because here's the thing about Irene Adler: she's not a criminal. She's not a bad guy in any way. She doesn't blackmail the king. She had a fling with the King of Bohemia, eventually moved on with her life and married Norton. When Sherlock came sniffing around for her private property, which she was under no obligation to return/give up, she got the hell out of England.

Despite this, Irene Adler is often framed not only as a criminal but also as Sherlock's love interest in adaptations. (And I'm not even talking about BBC Sherlock, trust me, we'll get to that). I think this is due to a fundamental failure or refusal to understand the nature of Sherlock's interest in Irene Adler. He explicitly states that he is not romantically attracted to her. (And neither is she to him). He is impressed by her intellect. It is rare enough for Sherlock to be outsmarted; I think Irene Adler may be the only example in the original stories where the person/group who outsmarted Sherlock was not a career criminal or other type of evil-doer (such as the KKK, in The Five Orange Pips, yes that KKK).

For all intents and purposes, Irene Adler is an ordinary woman, trying to do an ordinary thing (get married to Some Guy), who just so happens to get one over Sherlock in a case where he is arguably in the wrong. That is what makes her so special. Sherlock believes that his deduction methods can be implemented by anybody, but here's somebody, actually implementing them! And she was trained as an opera singer, not as a detective or some such field! And she's not using it to systematically murder or blackmail or anything else, she just wants to live her best life away from this Bohemian nonsense!

Sherlock is excited when someone outsmarts him. And it is so rare for there to be no horrific crime taking away from that excitement.

In summary: Sherlock Holmes is a perfectly well-mannered English gentleman (the social class, not polite descriptor) with shockingly progressive morals for the 1890s, a need for brain puzzles and adventures, and a non-debilitating addiction to crack cocaine.

Some other notes about original Sherlock before I move on to the next section:

Sherlock indirectly caused someone's death in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, and does not feel at all broken up about it. Honestly? I respect that.

Doyle was not perfect. Irene Adler was smart "for her sex." All of the stories mentioned above contain examples of foreigners importing struggles to England. Violent Americans from Five Orange Pips, armed robberies from Australia in Boscombe Valley, loose(?) Bohemians(???) in A Scandal in Bohemia, a mercenary and violent "doctor" from Calcutta (though English by birth) in Speckled Band, etc. I could go on. And I am sure that he made some claims later proved to be scientifically inaccurate.

Aside from Doyle's biases, the Sherlock Holmes stories are also prone to the same real-world changes as any other famous series. Doyle famously killed off Sherlock only to bring him back due to the public outrage. The many, many short stories vary quite a bit in quality, and a little in consistency. Sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and go with the Doylist (heh) reading. We'll get back to this.

Sherlock would not be caught dead in Buckingham Palace wearing only a bedsheet. He often disguises himself in the short stories, as a grandfatherly figure, faking a Cockney accent, as all a manner of (typically older, and therefore less threatening) men. Part of his strength as a detective is his awareness of social circles and the workings of society. He uses it to his advantage, he doesn't provoke public scandal.

He's a private person. He didn't ask to be famous, or to be memorialized as a genius, and again, he doesn't go around looking for adoration or outrage.

Sherlock scorns romance, yes, but not in an internalized aphobia, "I'm suppressing my emotions/desire for the sake of The Case" kind of way, but in an "I'm the only reasonable person here, the rest of you are just weird" kind of way. We'll get back to that one.

Sherlock did have Moods. He also did drugs. But drugs didn't have the social context of drugs now.

Sherlock was superhumanly strong, for no particular reason? There's one story where someone threatens him (in his own flat, no less!) and he remains very polite and unflustered by it. Once the man leaves, he picks up the metal poker that the man bent and straightens it.

Honestly the disguises and the hand-to-hand combat made original Sherlock so OP. I'm not projecting modern values onto old characters, you are. Send Tweet.

Doyle was a spiritualist?!?!?! Like a committed believer in ghosts. Like so committed it ruined his friendship with Houdini. Yes, Harry Houdini. This is not relevant, I'm just impressed that an author so spiritual could write a character so famously and firmly rational.

Okay that's the important bits for original Sherlock. I could easily double the length of that section, but I hope it's clear enough now why I consider original Sherlock to be Very Cool and Interesting.

Part II: BBC Sherlock

Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy. Where to start with this one. Well, here's hbomberguy's 2-hour video essay on why BBC Sherlock is trash, to start. It's been a long time since I watched it but I recall it focusing more on its creator, Steven Moffat (and what that man did to Doctor Who as well, God sometimes I just lay awake thinking about every precious thing Moffat was allowed to put his slimy hands on). So I will attempt to focus on a few key things I don't remember hearing in that video essay.

First: The Trope of the Autistic Genius. I'm sure you (general audience) have seen this in some form of media: a socially awkward or unaware character, perhaps outright on the autism spectrum, perhaps just Weird™ who is a genius in a particular field. It's related to the Idiot Savant trope, thanks TV tropes, and portrayals range from a cute fictional romance with an autistic lawyer in Extraordinary Attorney Woo to the somewhat real-to-life story of John Nash, a real mathematician who made incredible contributions to the field of economics and also had incredibly difficult personal relationships due to his schizophrenia.

For some reason, Moffat decided to use this trope for Sherlock Holmes. I say "some reason" but it's pretty clear why: Sherlock is a genius. And there's a long tradition of "genius as a curse" characters where their intelligence comes at a cost: their ease of relationships with other people. Sometimes this is an explicit curse where the character traded power/intelligence/money etc. for the ability to feel (romantic) love (see: Howl's Moving Castle the movie). For the autistic genius, usually the price of their ability to grasp concepts (usually math or some type of science) beyond the understanding of Mere Mortals is their ability to understand people and social cues.

The thing is, the way Moffat does this with Sherlock makes no damn sense. He's a detective. His whole ass job is to understand social cues, human behavior, motivations and generally what makes people tick. There's probably a good way to make Sherlock autistic. However, the way Moffat does it creates this inherent contradiction, where Sherlock swings wildly from totally missing social cues to perfectly understanding people's desire and motivations. Make it make sense. Make up your mind. Is your Sherlock a tortured genius who cannot understand or relate to normal Molly Hooper, or is he a brilliant detective who Gets how people work? You (Moffat) can't have it both ways. It doesn't make any sense.

Second: the Reading People as Superpower thing. Moffat fully subscribes to the idea that you (general) can just look at somebody and deduce their whole backstory. This one pisses me off personally because it leaks to real life all the damn time. The phone charger is probably the most infamous example of why this doesn't work. (Fun fact, if the area around your phone charger is scratched from you repeatedly failing to plug it in, that doesn't mean you are an alcoholic!)

But it occurs both in BBC Sherlock and IRL. Usually IRL people are nice enough to only say out loud something that they think is positive. But here's the thing: they're almost never right. I've had nice little old ladies tell me "I can see that you are XYZ type of person" in the most well-meaning of ways and be completely off the mark. Not a single person who has guessed my race (out loud) has gotten it right. But I'm not just saying "don't make assumptions for the big things like race/sexuality/religion etc." I'm saying, we all make those assumptions when we first meet someone, whether we like it or not. But we have a choice whether to act on those assumptions. Reading people is not a fun thing smart people do in media, it's a common thing all of us do despite not having a higher chance of being correct than Moffat was with the phone charger thing.

The "you can read into anything because there's secret meanings behind everything" that BBC Sherlock encouraged led to one of the funniest and most pathetic phenomena in fandom: The Secret Good Sherlock finale. There's a good 1.5 hour video essay about it and how a portion of BBC Sherlock fans deluded themselves into thinking that the horrible, horrible ending of BBC Sherlock couldn't be real, and that there was a real finale coming if you just followed the clues where Johnlock was canon (more on that later). Because they just couldn't accept that this show which portrayed itself as so clever and Moffat as a 4D chess-master always fifteen steps ahead, was just Not Good.

(Side note: I missed all of the BBC Sherlock fandom experience despite watching the show, because I watched the show with my family. We all knew Doyle, you see; my father read those stories to my siblings and I as bedtime stories when I was little. I still remember his reading cadence and the character voices that he did. So when we heard about BBC Sherlock, we thought "hey, we know that guy!" and settled in to watch it as a family. I distinctly remember thinking that it was…fine? Like, just okay. But nothing about it was better than the original, and I would how much worse it was years later).

Third: Sherlock is just weirdly mean? All the time? In BBC Sherlock. I can only assume this is some sort of power trip fantasy, where the author self-insert (we'll come back to that) Sherlock is the most perfect boy who is always right and correct and so much smarter than everyone else that he just doesn't have to put up with their stupidity.

Like many of the gripes I have with BBC Sherlock, what I hate the most is how Moffat's portrayal seems to have influenced the general public's perception of who Sherlock is. Would this type of Victorian Sherlock exist without the type of arrogant monologuing that Moffat favored? I mean, maybe. I can't prove it. I just feel like they're related. (To be clear, I like Sherlock in that scene. I just think it's inconsistent with original Sherlock's interactions with the police, but to be fair, original Sherlock didn't have a little sister in jail for murder).

Fourth, IRENE ADLER MY BELOVED I WILL AVENGE YOU ONE DAY I SWEAR.

So Steven Moffat cannot for the life of him write a female character I'd feel bad for him if it wasn't so painful to watch in Doctor Who, Sherlock, and basically everything else he's ever done. Moffat, like many adaptors of Sherlock, was dead-set on making Irene Adler a femme fatale. She's not only a criminal, she's also sexy and very weirdly interested in Sherlock (again, the author self-insert strikes again. All the women must be interested in me I mean my most perfect boy!)

I am far from the only person who noticed this. Here's a Reddit post which calls Irene Adler out for basically sexually harassing BBC Sherlock throughout that episode. I don't disagree with the substance but I disagree with the reading. That post takes a Watsonian approach: Irene Adler repeatedly expresses sexual interest in Sherlock, who does not reciprocate. Despite this, the characters around him assume he reciprocates and at the end of the episode his brother Mycroft blames his nonexistent/unconfirmed interest in Irene Adler as the reason why she got one over him. When he does his dramatic "I am Sherlocked" reveal, he is saying 1) that he's really not interested, 2) that she didn't get one over him, and 3) that her emotional/sexual investment(?) in him is why she lost.

Here's the Doylist reading: Moffat's fantasy is the sexiest/coolest woman (Irene Adler) chasing after his author self-insert (Sherlock) who remains coolly aloof despite her advances, because he's cool. Everyone else's assertions that he's secretly interested stems from society's need to smash two dolls together and say "now kith" regardless of what the dolls in question are saying. At the end of the episode Sherlock makes the points that I made above, yes, but Moffat's also reaffirming that no one is allowed to outsmart his most special, most perfect boy (/self-insert), not even the character that CANONICALLY OUTSMARTED HIM. (Although to reiterate: original Irene Adler was not a criminal, did not blackmail anyone, and was not interested in Sherlock. Also she was American lmao).

There's one key scene (which I loathe with all my heart) that demonstrates how Moffat sees Irene Adler, and that's her introduction scene. Why? Because she walks in naked. Why? Because that way Sherlock cAn'T rEaD hEr. (Which brings us back to point #2, Reading People as Superpower).

This is mind-bogglingly, mind-bafflingly stupid. If Irene Adler really wanted Sherlock to """"not be able to read her"""" she should've just stolen the clothes of the first woman she saw that was her size. Or men's clothes, not her size, and not hers. That way any traces of character left on the clothes (i.e. coffee stains, hems worn down from constant worrying, cat fur, etc.) would've belonged to someone else, thus throwing Sherlock off even more.

And it's not like the body lacks marks unique to the person. Jesus Christ. Surgeries leave scars, as do accidents and injuries. Birthmarks, bite marks, stretch marks, scar marks, people drawing reminders or hearts on themselves with sharpies, tattoos, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. Bodies are not blank canvases.

There is no good Watsonian reading for why Irene Adler walks in naked. There is only a Doylist reading: Moffat thought it'd be hot for his femme fatale to meet his self-insert butt-ass naked. That is why I disagree with the Reddit post I linked which I assume you (general audience) read. Irene Adler's actions don't make sense when framed as "she's smart but obsessed with Sherlock despite never having met him before." I mean, it's possible? But it makes her far less intelligent from the very start than the show tells you she is. Her actions only make sense when framed as "Moffat thought it would be hot." (Dear Moffat: it's not).

Fifth, and finally: The Big Bad. This is not Moffat-specific: the need to have one main villain, to have everything in a series building to the big showdown with the Big Bad exists all over the place. Episodes are getting longer and longer while seasons get shorter and shorter. Sherlock, originally a series of short stories (with some long-form stories, my favorites <3 thrown in the mix), is perfect for the 30-45 minute 12-16 episode seasons. Instead it got…BBC Sherlock. With Moriarty as The Big Bad. Who Irene Adler is working for? For some reason? And has come back to life maybe? It's dumb. Bring back my case-of-the-week type stories :(

There are plenty more gripes I could list about BBC Sherlock, but those are the main ones. This is already getting much longer than I intended, so onto part three: my thoughts on Johnlock.

Part III: Do I ship Johnlock?

No.

Part IV: Just kidding!

Well, I don't not ship them. A friend asked me recently if I shipped them, and I thought about it for a minute and eventually said: "Honestly? I am so thoroughly neutral about them."

You could convince me of Johnlock. However, I remain unconvinced by the vast majority, if not all, of BBC Johnlock. It essentially feels like a derivative form of a derivative and vastly inferior form of the real Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Basically: the Johnlock that you (general BBC Johnlock shipper) are a fan of are just two people who happen to share names with the characters I know as the great detective Sherlock Holmes and the good doctor John Watson. But they're not actually Holmes and Watson, thus what you're shipping isn't even "real" Johnlock.

There are two parts of Johnlock's dynamic that I think are missing from the broader conversation (which is not to say that they're not talked about, just that they should be talked about more).

First, we're back to Watsonian vs Doylist readings, this time with the origin of the term in mind! (My literary analyst heart cackles in delight). You see, the Doylist reason for Watson's existence is to chronicle Sherlock's adventures. Genius characters are near-impossible to write from their perspective. The mystery and ingenuity vastly improves when explained by Sherlock to Watson after the fact. We, the audience, need John Watson to exist for the stories to be enjoyable. He is a plot device.

Now, I'm not saying that because John Watson exists for plot purposes, we can't consider the emotional connection between him and his flatmate. The Watsonian reading, according to Johnlock shippers, is that Sherlock and John live together because they are gayandinlove.

Which brings me to part two of their dynamic: the QPR-ness of it all. I think there's a lack of conversation about anything between "straight" and "gayandinlove" when there's so much gray area to discuss. Johnlock, in both the original and in my preferred version, strike me as a very comfortable queer-platonic relationship. It feels wrong for Sherlock to have a wife, husband, boyfriend, lover, etc. because it is so contradictory to who Sherlock is. I just can't picture him engaging in any modern or Victorian-era dating or courtship ritual. And not just because he explicitly derides and expresses his lack of interest in romance in the originals. After all, it's impossible to separate Sherlock's bachelorhood from the part where it was obviously impossible for him to marry a man in the 1890s; the institution of marriage simply didn't mean then what it does now. He certainly never and would never speak about sex, or his sexual preferences. I am sure they were assumed to be Good And Heterosexual. Which isn't to say that Victorian times were less queer than modern times. Doyle's contemporary, the Irish poet Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was very famously (/infamously) gay. The author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is also rumored to have cheated on his wife with her brother/his publisher.

No, I've always seen Sherlock as aroace just because…he comes across as very aroace? I don't know how to explain it other than "read it and tell me I'm wrong." And Johnlock always came across as very comfortable to me. Like there was a total lack of yearning. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand projecting into characters, so if you (general Johnlock shipper) add yearning to your Johnlock I'm not criticizing you. (And no, I'm not getting into Mary Morstan and her differing characterizations because then we'd really be here all day).

I also don't subscribe to the idea that Sherlock is aromantic because of his genius, his detective career, or his suppression of natural instincts in favor of the aforementioned reasons. It's aphobic and it's not how Sherlock works. The man is not judging himself for his lack of interest, he's judging you (aphobe) for thinking there's some deeper cause or something wrong with him for not being interested in romance.

And I can't fathom him engaging in sex except as an intellectual exercise. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I always thought BBC Sherlock was so weird about the concept of being gay. I mean, there were gay jokes galore but They Were Not Gay and Moriarty was gay-coded but John was definitely not into Sherlock and Sherlock was not gay but he wasn't into Irene Adler either, but that didn't make him asexual either, just…a genius?? Apparently??? Like he's straight but he's also too smart to be fooled by Irene Adler's wily wily feminine wiles. Like Straight 2.0 where they make you pay more for the same product with ads this time.

Which finally brings me to the last section: comparing original Sherlock and BBC Sherlock!

Part IV: We all know where this is going

Honestly most of this section has written itself already.

Original Sherlock Holmes was remarkably progressive for its times; BBC Sherlock was somehow less progressive despite being made centuries later. Its portrayal of women was somehow worse than the thing written in the 1890s. I'm a big believer in judging things with historical and social context in mind, which makes original Sherlock all the more astounding, and BBC Sherlock all the more regressive.

Original Sherlock Holmes was an excitable bloodhound who believed in his rational method and was genuinely delighted when he met his match. He was irritable and moody and indirectly killed a man with no remorse. BBC Sherlock is an arrogant, self-obsessed jerk who constantly belittled and mocked the intelligence and achievements of others. He, despite not understanding people, popularized the "you wear that sweater to remind you of your dead mother. You feel lost without her and are seeking a substitute in Macys Mother's Day line products" type of armchair psychoanalysis.

Original Sherlock loves a good case but sees his clients as human, at the end of the day. BBC Sherlock cannot stand to be wrong.

Original Sherlock and John are companions, comfortably; not normal/regular friends, though I would never say "more" than friends. Maybe, in a modern era, they'd be romantic partners of some sort, maybe not; I don't really care. BBC Sherlock and John are…friends but you gotta believe Moffat when he tells you that they are Definitely Not Gay. Like Not At All. Not Even A Little.

In conclusion: I loathe BBC Sherlock with all my heart. It is an insult to the legacy of Sherlock Holmes. A regression in the face of how radical Arthur Conan Doyle was. i genuinely feel sorry for all the people who have watched that show but never read the originals because they have no idea who Sherlock is, and original Sherlock is so damn cool.

[dietcokecryptid]

YK WHAT IM MAD ABOUT TODAY

the way vld takes 21st century science fiction and absolutely RAGS ON IT.

(read more for a very longwinded and messy critique/rant about klance, modern science fiction, and my takes on vld's ability to represent queerness)

from what i know and understand and see science fiction as, i'm just sad to know that the vld team had all the resources, popularity, and drive to really embrace the values of new age science fiction with their characters in particular, and failed horribly.

one thing in particular i wanna demonstrate is with klance. yk. queerbaiting. not space operas in particular, but modern science fiction has really become a place for queer/gender non conforming/neurodivergent people to express their worldviews and experiences through a speculative lens. lgbtq+ people have found sanctuary in science fictional spaces for good reason, as it can function to elaborate on experiences from marginalized groups.

anyway, the kind of salvage-esque, 80's futurism vibe we have going on with vld, there's a lot of opportunity for characters to go against the grain in meaningful ways (we had pidge do this, keith's whole character tries this [which is why he should've been gay]).

sf in our age has a very very lucky advantage, we see the legacy of racism, colonialism, toxic masculinity, and sexism in that media, and we have found ways to move the genre out of the hypermasculine fields and into a more diverse and, by all means, productive space.

this is all my personal opinion of course, but i just think that voltron burying some gays, queerbaiting for 8 seasons, and having a cast of cis straight characters is so disappointing to see, knowing how powerful and subversive science fiction can be to represent queer stories. i stand by that if me at age 18 wrote for voltron everything would've been ok.

but, then again, it is my take that if klance had been canon it'd have been really poorly executed (like shiro's arc duh) because they couldn't have written queer characters well if they tried. (them being a group of, i'm assuming, cis straight unskilled writers).

every time i try to be critical about voltron my neck loses all strength and my head lolls to the side because ITS A KIDS SHOW RAYE OH MY GOD BE SO FR but like??? i feel like Basic media literacy tells us that every piece of media says something. it takes a stance. university radicalized me, ok, but everything IS political. but honestly i've gotten to a place in my love for this show where i can understand that, almost every way you look at it, vld is a bad show. if you're not sitting there with daisies dancing over your cerebrum the entire time it's a hard watch past season 2. of course, VA work, art, and most of seasons 1/2 are excused from this, but it's just the WRITING!! it tears everything down with it and it's a really unfortunate fate for this show.

imo it should've ended with a conclusive season 2. maybe a side series where you see what shiro's up to. idk! i remain pissed about the direction the writing took post lion swap, the damage they did to lovable characters like hunk, and lance's whole season 8 fiasco. it's miserable to be a ride or die fan of this show but hey KICK!

[pjstafford]

30 Years of The X Files. Celebrate The Pilot / Find Some Love For The Revival

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of the first airing of The X Files pilot. I love seeing all the love and celebration. What I find annoying is every article says something like “despite the disappointing revival”. I actually think season 11 has some of the best episodes of the series. I have written about that in other blogs. So today I want to move away from the objective, critical question about the quality or story worthiness of season 10 and 11 and make the argument that, while the enthusiasm of the fandom was responsible for bringing back the series for two more seasons, the revival seasons were responsible for revitalizing the fandom. There are fans active in the fandom today who were not yet alive on September 10, 1993. There are folks who were alive and, for what ever reason, hadn’t watched the show before. In some cases fans first introduction to the series was the revival seasons and they liked it enough to go back and watch the first 200 episodes and two movies. There were forever fans, active in the day, who became reinvigorated and re-involved in the fandom. Then there were original fans of the show, like me, who had not been part of the FANDOM in the nineties and now, to greater or lesser degrees, are active. As we celebrate the thirtieth year since the pilot aired, let’s remember some love for the revival.

For me, since 2015, much like the original fandom members, I have made some of the closest friends of my life. I have tried my hand at fan fiction, wrote a disability focused blog on the X Files, ran a David Duchovny fan site for a while, was briefly “famous in the fandom”, was complemented by a star of my favorite series (who is now my favorite 21st Century author) about my own writing. I had an adventure that literally saved me during the most difficult time of my life. It’s not that my crazy life isn’t still crazy and sometimes f*cked up. It is. But I understand the importance of play in a way that I had forgotten for about twenty years. I started writing again. I give myself time daily to connect with my friends, to play silly games, to have long discussions about things that are “unnecessary”, to relax, to smile. I practice self care. I actually view life differently now.

In the year of 2020…. Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one who found some comfort that in the isolation, I had an online community still accessible to me.

Don’t tell me the revivals were disappointing. Without them, I might see an article about The 30th year and remember when. Now, because of the revival, The X Files is always part of my consciousness. So, while in in 1993 -at 32, The X Files was my favorite show, it didn’t shape me or form me like so many younger fans. In 2015, at 54, watching the series again in preparation for the revival and searching online for more information, being part of the fandom, helped me to reassess my values and reflect on how I want to age. Let’s start showing those seasons more love.

With love, I dedicate this blog to my original 😍4David Gals and all those who consider themselves 😍4 David today.

[justforbooks]

Best crime and thrillers of 2023

Given this year’s headlines, it’s unsurprising that our appetite for cosy crime continues unabated, with the latest title in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die (Viking), topping the bestseller lists. Janice Hallett’s novels The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, which also features a group of amateur crime-solvers, and The Christmas Appeal (both Viper) have proved phenomenally popular, too.

Hallett’s books, which are constructed as dossiers – transcripts, emails, WhatsApp messages and the like – are part of a growing trend of experimentation with form, ranging from Cara Hunter’s intricate Murder in the Family (HarperCollins), which is structured around the making of a cold case documentary, to Gareth Rubin’s tête-bêche The Turnglass (Simon & Schuster). Books that hark back to the golden age of crime, such as Tom Mead’s splendidly tricksy locked-room mystery Death and the Conjuror (Head of Zeus), are also on the rise. The late Christopher Fowler, author of the wonderful Bryant & May detective series, who often lamented the sacrifice of inventiveness and fun on the altar of realism, would surely have approved. Word Monkey (Doubleday), published posthumously, is his funny and moving memoir of a life spent writing popular fiction.

Notable debuts include Callum McSorley’s Glaswegian gangland thriller Squeaky Clean (Pushkin Vertigo); Jo Callaghan’s In the Blink of an Eye (Simon & Schuster), a police procedural with an AI detective; Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy (Pushkin Vertigo), featuring queer punk nun investigator Sister Holiday; and the caustically funny Thirty Days of Darkness (Orenda) by Jenny Lund Madsen (translated from the Danish by Megan E Turney).

There have been welcome additions to series, including a third book, Case Sensitive (Zaffre), for AK Turner’s forensic investigator Cassie Raven, and a second, The Wheel of Doll (Pushkin Vertigo), for Jonathan Ames’s LA private eye Happy Doll, who is shaping up to be the perfect hardboiled 21st-century hero.

Other must-reads for fans of American crime fiction include Ozark Dogs (Headline) by Eli Cranor, a powerful story of feuding Arkansas families; SA Cosby’s Virginia-set police procedural All the Sinners Bleed (Headline); Megan Abbott’s nightmarish Beware the Woman (Virago); and Rebecca Makkai’s foray into very dark academia, I Have Some Questions for You (Fleet). There are shades of James Ellroy in Jordan Harper’s Hollywood-set tour de force Everybody Knows (Faber), while Raymond Chandler’s hero Philip Marlowe gets a timely do-over from Scottish crime doyenne Denise Mina in The Second Murderer (Harvill Secker).

As Mick Herron observed in his Slow Horses origin novel, The Secret Hours (Baskerville), there’s a long list of spy novelists who have been pegged as the heir to John le Carré. Herron must be in pole position for principal legatee, but it’s been a good year for espionage generally: standout novels include Matthew Richardson’s The Scarlet Papers (Michael Joseph), John Lawton’s Moscow Exile (Grove Press) and Harriet Crawley’s The Translator (Bitter Lemon).

Historical crime has also been well served. Highlights include Emma Flint’s excellent Other Women (Picador), based on a real 1924 murder case; Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s story of a fortune teller’s quest for identity in Georgian high society, The Square of Sevens (Mantle); and SG MacLean’s tale of Restoration revenge and retribution, The Winter List (Quercus). There are echoes of Chester Himes in Viper’s Dream (No Exit) by Jake Lamar, which begins in 1930s Harlem, while Palace of Shadows (Mantle) by Ray Celestin, set in the late 19th century, takes the true story of American weapons heiress Sarah Winchester’s San Jose mansion and transports it to Yorkshire, with chillingly gothic results.

The latest novel in Vaseem Khan’s postcolonial India series, Death of a Lesser God (Hodder), is also well worth the read, as are Deepti Kapoor’s present-day organised crime saga Age of Vice (Fleet) and Parini Shroff’s darkly antic feminist revenge drama The Bandit Queens (Atlantic).

While psychological thrillers are thinner on the ground than in previous years, the quality remains high, with Liz Nugent’s complex and heartbreaking tale of abuse, Strange Sally Diamond (Penguin Sandycove), and Sarah Hilary’s disturbing portrait of a family in freefall, Black Thorn (Macmillan), being two of the best.

Penguin Modern Classics has revived its crime series, complete with iconic green livery, with works by Georges Simenon, Dorothy B Hughes and Ross MacDonald. There have been reissues by other publishers, too – forgotten gems including Celia Fremlin’s 1959 holiday‑from-hell novel, Uncle Paul (Faber), and Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground (Vintage). Finished in 1942 but only now published in its entirety, the latter is an account of an innocent man who takes refuge from racist police officers in the sewers of Chicago – part allegorical, part brutally realistic and, unfortunately, wholly topical.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 Gwen & Art Are Not in Love Book Review 🦇

❓ #QOTD What classic story would you love to read a queer retelling of? ❓ 🦇 Gwendoline and Arthur have been betrothed to one another since birth. Too bad they absolutely hate each other. When forced to spend a summer in Camelot together, Gwen and Arthur discover tantalizing secrets about one another: Gwen witnesses Arthur kissing a boy, while Arthur learns that Gwen has a crush on the kingdom's lone lady knight, Lady Bridget Leclair. Stuck at a stalemate, they make a reluctant pact to cover for one another. While Gwen and Bridget finally connect, Arthur finds himself enamored by Gwen's brother. Can they navigate their messy feelings to find their own places in history?

[ Find my review below or on Goodreads | Storygraph | Literal ]

💜 Oh my goddess, the queer chaos in this is everything. Lex Croucher has spun Arthurian legends of old into a queer medieval YA rom-com that could easily alter history as we know it. Gwen is a bi baby, newly navigating her feelings for a badass lady knight, while Arthur is a gay, sassy messy shooting heart-eyes at Gwen's brother (the one-day king). The dialogue is EVERYTHING; sassy, quick-witted, and all too entertaining. There's somewhat sexy sword-fighting (come on, sword-fighting is always sexy, but when your queer crush is schooling you, it's all the better), fake dating (does it count as fake dating when you've been betrothed since childhood?), and heart-warming found family vibes. The queer panic and nervous humor were all too relatable, even though the story is set in medieval times. That's a true feat; you can connect with the queer chaos, even if you're shooting heart-eyes in the 21st century.

💜 That being said, let's talk about Gwen and her lady knight. I mean, get ready to absolutely SWOON alongside Gwen. Lady Bridget Lechlair is all fierce confidence (a necessity, when everyone has an unpopular opinion of you simply because you're a woman, regardless of your badass abilities), but she's also an enigma with a gooey interior. I loved seeing Gwen find her confidence through Bridget, discovering her voice and standing up for them both when necessary. Though Gwen is a royal, she's questioned her inner power and authority, as everyone around her has made it clear her only worth is in her marriage to Arthur as a political move. Spending time with Bridget gives Gwen the change to realize she's worth so much more. Though the story's quick wit and banter stands out, I think this character development is the story's real strength. Sometimes, you need someone who believes in your potential before you can see it yourself.

🦇 The only real hang-up for me was the pacing. The ending felt especially rushed, which was a disappointment after the queer chaos dragged a bit. I wonder if the writer paused for a moment, then returned to finish the latter half of the story. I also found the relationship between Arthur and Gabriel (Gwen's brother) a little underwhelming when it had so much potential at the start. Regardless, I appreciated all the queer hijinks and humor.

🦇 Recommended for fans of Heartstopper, Rainbow Rowell's Simon Snow trilogy, Red, White, & Royal Blue, and the TV show Merlin. Get ready for a swoon-worthy, medieval mess of pining and romance!

✨ The Vibes ✨ ⚔️ All the Queer Ships (w/ Serious Queer Panic) ⚔️ Fake Dating ⚔️ YA Debut ⚔️ Found Family ⚔️ Medieval/Historical Fiction/Rom-Com ⚔️ Enemies to Allies

🦇 Major thanks to the author @lexcanroar and publisher @stmartinspress / @wednesdaybooks for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #Netgalley #GwenandArtAreNotinLove

[grandapplewit]

As we’ve moved father into the post-modern era (about 1970 onwards), which is defined by the increased social emphasis on individualism, communal storytelling has become something… shunned. Past methods of communal storytelling (theatre, music, folktales) have been increasingly privatized since 1970. Because of this, we’ve seen the emergence of fanfiction (specifically slash fiction started by Star Trek fans in the 1970s) and TTRPGs (specifically Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder in the late 20th Century), which are both ostracized by the mainstream culture, but are also the only two sources of communal storytelling in the 21st century. TTRPGs are finding more footing in mainstream culture, but because they’ve found footing are becoming increasingly commodified. In this essay, I

[stevetickolo24]

A Historical Perspective on How Costumes Have Shaped Role Playing Games Over the Decades

The evolution of role-play costumes reflects changes in culture, fashion, entertainment, and individual expression over time. Here’s a breakdown of its transformation:

Historical Roots Medieval and Renaissance Eras: Costumes were used in theater, particularly for performances of Shakespearean plays and traditional folklore. These garments were often elaborate, hand-sewn, and based on the roles being portrayed (e.g., knights, royalty, or peasants). Masquerade Balls (15th–18th centuries): People donned ornate masks and costumes for elaborate social gatherings. These events were an early form of role play, allowing participants to embody personas outside their daily lives.

Victorian Era: The Birth of Themed Costuming Fancy Dress Balls: The 19th century saw the rise of themed parties where guests dressed as literary characters, historical figures, or allegorical ideas (e.g., "Spring" or "Night"). These events reflected societal fascination with history and mythology.

Early 20th Century: Role Play and Escapism Rise of Halloween Costumes: The commercialization of Halloween in the 1920s popularized dressing up, often as witches, ghosts, and other archetypal characters. World War I & II Influence: Military-inspired costumes became a trend as people celebrated patriotism and fantasized about strength during turbulent times.

Mid-20th Century: Pop Culture Takes Over Comic-Con Roots: By the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of science fiction and superhero fandoms (e.g., Star Trek, Star Wars) sparked the birth of cosplay. Fans recreated costumes from their favorite franchises, emphasizing accuracy and creativity. Halloween Boom: With more media franchises, costumes shifted from traditional spooky themes to pop culture icons.

Late 20th Century: Sexual Expression and Intimacy Lingerie-Inspired Role Play: The 1980s saw lingerie brands and adult stores introduce role-play costumes (e.g., naughty nurse, French maid) tailored to spice up romantic relationships. Fantasy Themes: These costumes incorporated playful and seductive designs inspired by common fantasies, catering to couples exploring intimacy.

21st Century: Modern Innovations Cosplay Renaissance: The internet and social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have elevated cosplay to an art form. Costumes have become hyper-detailed, using advanced materials like EVA foam, LED lights, and 3D printing. Inclusive Design: Modern role-play costumes cater to all body types, genders, and cultural backgrounds, reflecting society's push toward diversity and inclusivity. Fantasy Meets Technology: Tech-integrated costumes now include wearable devices, moving parts, and augmented reality features, offering interactive role-play experiences.

Current Trends Cultural Crossovers: Anime, gaming, and superhero costumes dominate conventions and personal role play. Historical and steampunk themes remain popular for creative interpretations. Eco-Friendly Costumes: Sustainable fabrics and upcycled materials are increasingly being used to create environmentally conscious outfits. Fusion of Comfort and Fantasy: Designers focus on combining practicality with fantasy to ensure wearers can move comfortably while embodying their character.

Key Cultural Drivers Entertainment Industry: Movies, TV shows, and video games have fueled demand for character-based costumes. Empowerment Through Role Play: Costumes allow individuals to express hidden aspects of their personalities, explore fantasies, or escape into alternate identities. Craftsmanship and Community: Today, costume creation has become a communal and creative process, with enthusiasts sharing tutorials, DIY techniques, and materials.

The evolution of role-play costumes showcases the blend of cultural influences, technological advancements, and personal expression, continuing to push the boundaries of creativity and fantasy.

[fitzpirations]

Sharing an interview on “The Ministry of Time” which I swallowed up in 2 days this Memorial Day weekend

Ever-intrigued with the idea of adaption on this blog, a look into time-travel, historical (fan)fiction, and creative liberties. Roll your eyes but despite it not being the typical style of novel I read (currently clicking along in a read of War & Peace) it is a banger of a read. Dare I say so informally!

[seewetter]

Hm. I agree with txttletale, just want to add another thought to this.

I don't think the damage is coming from bad writing to begin with.

Marginalization (and oppression, stigmatization, bigotry, discrimination) don't come from people reading bad fiction or literature. That would imply that marginalization is based mostly on misunderstandings and it isn't.

Zionism didn't start from reading bad fan fiction about Palestinians. The purity culture on TikTok didn't start with bad writing. Russia doesn't have that new law against queerness and queer advocacy because of the books they read and tv they watch.

This also applies to anon's examples:

"POCs being written as dumb criminals"

Slavery was a business. Colonialism was a business venture. These businesses needed to justify their terrible business practices: why are we not paying our workers and forcing them to work here? Because it's nobody you know, besides these people are different in nature and not intelligent enough to do anything beyond basic labour. Why should we be permitted to take all this land and all these natural resources? Why, it's because these people are like wild animals and we don't need to justify ourselves to people who aren't our equals, including intellectually.

Over time, when slavery and colonialism became more marginal and less publicly accepted, many descendants of the victims of slavery and colonialism still suffered from generational poverty. And conservatives generally are the kind of people who like to defend established institutions (like police, prisons) so they just kept insisting the continued victimization by these institutions made sense and thus the idea of the "dumb POC criminal", the "he was no angel" became prominent in right-wing rhetoric worldwide (it's not always directed at "POC criminals" but pretty much all countries have this form of conservative argumentation in their right-wing public rhetoric)

"gay and trans being promiscuous"

Homophobia and transphobia are weird. I don't think historians and archaeologists have figured out which culture was first to be homophobic, but we know that a bunch of religions that existed around 2,800 years ago seem to have been some of the first promoters of queerphobic ideas. And they pioneered the whole "gay and trans being promiscuous" thing, no fan fiction. For the ancient Zoroastrians, queer sex was a terrifying thing, equated with worship of the daevas. But it's worth understanding that Zoroastrianism was a social movement trying to topple religions that promoted a broadly even more conservative outlook. We don't know why Zoroaster didn't like queer people, but judging by some early Jewish and Christian writers (like Tertullian) we can speculate that "lust" was considered sinful because of its distraction from faith. We could say "well to me as a 21st century progressive secular person, faith is silly superstition" but then you have to realize that faith at the time meant commitment to the cause of the social movement. The entire worldview of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians and later Manicheans, Muslims, Sikhs bases itself around the world being in need of improvement (there is sin) and religious communities being asked to step up and try to help the needy. Prior to the Jewish faith, people would have had ethno-religions (religions based on their country or people, like Egyptian or Greek religion) but in those religions, the world is generally not moving in any particular direction and all changes are washed away eventually (which can be read as a pretty conservative idea and clearly was: "no matter what changes you introduce, it'll end up not mattering"). So queerphobia may very well be the side effect of people trying to focus religion away from justifying the status quo and towards building a better society. The reason it turned out so badly is because these religions where trying to change minds and perceived sexual feelings to be a distraction from the "pure" mind needed to improve the world. Sex was embarassing to people whose world improvement attempts caused them to have a high regard for their own ideas and their own public image. Sex could be justified for making the next generation but not much else...

Over time, that judgment has been re-invented over and over again. But if you see fan fiction where queer people are promiscuous, then that's not going to do much to change things for better or worse.

"amputees being given shiny new arms that don't work in real life"

I'm sorry, we're blaming fan fiction for expectations set by the actual prosthetics industry? They falsely advertise that shiny new arms will work forever or can be replaced easily! They tell their customers falsehoods. It's not that people read fan fic about a wonder drug and that's why snake oil salesmen are convincing. The snake oil salesmen are just good at their jobs, unfortunately.

"sexual abuse being romanticized"

To be fair, victims of sexual abuse sometimes don't receive sex education in schools and then lack the words to describe what was done to them. I also met a person once (a university student in her 30s!) who did not understand that roofies are bad and that it would be harmful if a stranger did things to an unconscious body (including...I asked, because it shocked me...her own). I think this is a pretty rare attitude and I don't think it comes from fan fiction.

But I think all you need to fix the author's responsibility in that case is maybe a quick disclaimer at the beginning.

So what if that disclaimer isn't there? Well then that's morally not ideal...but there are plenty of people who could just write in the comments section of the fan fic "Here are some resources to learn about sexual abuse" and suddenly any reader of that story would be well informed if the resources were well chosen.

People know that romanticized stories aren't reality. Well...not all people. There are neurodivergent people for example who might make honest mistakes. But again...this seems like something that can be fixed through education and helpful reader comments or, if the author is up for it, a disclaimer at the beginning.

There is zero reason to think writing causes marginalization.

Sometimes people point out that Spielberg's movie "Jaws" caused Shark killings. Or that Sinatra's song "My Way" caused bar fights and deaths. But "My Way" only had that effect in the Philippines and "Jaws" is the only shark movie to ever do that. When people watch Jaws today, it doesn't cause this effect. I have watched Jaws and I have killed zero (0) sharks in my life. They are outliers, created by geniuses and probably the violence directed at people in bars or against sharks would have happened anyway, only directed at a different person or animal. Maybe Spielberg saved human lives by directing bigots towards Sharks for a few weeks. Who knows?!

Bad writing is sad, at times. It can make people feel excluded. We should encourage stories we want to see and politely ignore the ones we don't like. Bad writing is fine. You'll live. :)

I don't think you can deny the damage bad writing has done to marginalized populations? POCs being written as dumb criminals, gay and trans being promiscuous, amputees being given shiny new arms that don't work in real life, sexual abuse being romanticized. Like, I don't think we should tell white guys to have at it

after tamsyn muir and becky albertalli and isabel Fucking fall i just have no patience left for this kind of thinking. your position is fundamentally hostile to art and literature the only actionable change it can lead to is mass harassment campaigns against marginalized people.

[archive-of-fan-owned]

On The Hunt For Fanfiction: Library Challenge

For the next step in this blog project, I have been tasked to do more research on my topic in a more formal context, namely, using the Kutztown University library resources. There were several different ways we could choose to do this assignment and for mine I chose to look for a documentary, an e-book, and a print book.

In order to look for these sources I used the library website where I searched for keywords pertaining to my topic. The book and e-book categories yielded plenty of relevant results. The print book that I chose was Fan Culture: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century and the e-book that I chose was Framing Fan fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. Not only am I very excited to use these sources in my blog, but over my school's spring break I plan on reading them just for my own pleasure because of how interesting both of them are. Needless to say, the university's book databases are an absolute treasure trove to me.

The documentary portion of this assignment was the one I had the most trouble with. The first keyword that I used was 'fanfiction' and when that returned no results I moved to 'online communities', 'cyber communities', and then 'social media'. I felt like I really had to stretch my topic in order to find a useful documentary. When I looked up 'cyber communities,' in hopes of finding something pertaining to communities of people on the internet, instead I just got a bunch of documentaries about online terrorism and cyber attacks. I finally settled on a video about how social media was affecting the youth, which I might be able to use.

Throughout this whole process, I learned that there are multiples ways to look for information on a topic, some more successful than others. I learned how to be more familiar with my school's library and other resources and also how to look for books within the library itself. Even though not all of my searches bore fruit, it showed me where I can get the most relevant information to fanfiction and what I can do to go look for it. Overall, I really enjoyed my library scavenger hunt and am super excited to continue exploring deeper and deeper into the world of fanfiction!

[thatonecurlygirl]

When Realities Blur [Ch 1]

Fandom: Stranger Things

Pairing: TBD

Word Count: ~2k

Summary: Y/N, is a typical young adult in the 21st century, doing typical 21st century things such as obsessing over Stranger Things like half of the people she follows on TikTok are also doing right now. Little does she know that if everything aligns perfectly, realities can blur and you may end up somewhere else entirely. After falling asleep on her third round of binging Stranger Things, she awake in Hawkins, Indiana itself with a batch of friends she never thought she’d meet in her wildest dreams and a mission to save her friends from the fates she witnessed in her reality.

Masterlist

“How are you not sick of this show?” Samantha, your older sister scoffs as she peeks in your bedroom.

“It is a masterpiece! And these guys, these guys are so very hot.” You fan yourself dramatically.

“Look, I am home from college for two weeks, I really don’t want to hear you masterbating over that stupid show the whole time?” She suggests.

“Yeah, yeah, tomorrow!” You wave her off as the next episode begins to play.

You loved the previous seasons of Stranger Things, but something about the fourth season really draws you in. You wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but it’s almost like it has a supernatural hold on you and it won’t let go. Every waking moment you thought about the characters, funny moments, made references to the show and it had secretly become an obsession. You wouldn’t dare tell your family how much you are obsessing over the show as they would not understand, they never do.

“Yo! Turn down that damn television, Y/n!” Sam yells from down the hall.

“I’m a grown-ass adult, you can’t tell me what to do!” You shout back.

“I’m older than you so yes, I fucking can!” You hear her slam her door.

Samantha is twenty-two, just two short years older than you, but she likes to hold it over your head as if she were ten years older. You and Samantha never really have gotten along, she moved out with your narcissistic mother when your parents divorced and you stayed with your father who pretty much married his work after the divorce. Samantha takes after your mother a lot and is quick to remind you that she was supposed to be an only child and wishes that you were never born. Long story short, Sam is a certified bitch.

“Blah blah blah.” You mock her quietly as you turn down the television and tuck yourself under the covers. “What I wouldn’t do for everything to be different.”

*** *** ***

“Y/N! Why aren’t you dressed yet?” You are shaken awake by an oddly familiar voice, one that shouldn’t be in your bedroom right now, pulling you from your sleep. “Y/n, you’re going to make us late.” The voice Amy’s in a gentle sing-song voice.

“You have five minutes to get ready or I’m leaving without you,” Another voice joins in, bringing you all the way out of your slumber and you shoot straight up in the bed.

“What the fuck is going on!” You exclaim, looking between the two wildly confused people standing in your room.

“I am not sure?” Robin says slowly as she back away from your bed.

“Are you feeling okay? Do you have a fever?” Steve quickly makes his way across the room, placing the back of his hand against your forehead. “No fever, you have four minutes now. Come on Robin.”

Steve grabs Robin by the wrist and pulls her out of your bedroom, closing the door behind them. You spring from your bed, which is a entirely unfamiliar bed as you pull on the clothes that at on an unoccupied chair in the corner, not paying much attention to what you were putting on or the fact that you were making your way through a house you’ve never seen before like you’d lived there your whole life.

When you closed your eyes, you were in your bedroom, immediately after arguing with your sister. Now, here you are in a fictitious world, with fictional characters, in the past. What in the actual hell is going on.

“I’m ready.” You say quietly, sliding into the back seat of Steve car, behind Robin.

Steve begins blabbering about girls and whatnot, you aren’t paying much attention as you grab the fatty part of the skin on your thigh and pinch so hard your eyes begin to water and you wince from the pain. Pain, you felt real pain. Not the imagined pain, the dull nothingness of an injury in a dream. This was real, biting pain. You have no idea what going on, but something is not right. Have you completely lost it? You have to be locked away in some psyche ward under some heavy sedation, because THIS IS NOT REAL!

“I like boobies, you like boobies… Vickie likes boobies. Definitely!” Steve says adamantly.

“There’s no doubt, Vickie likes boobies.” You say before you even realize you said anything.

“Thank you, Y/N!” Steve exclaims.

“And don’t stress too much over it Steve, you’re hot and definitely boyfriend material, girls here just suck and don’t realize what a catch you are.” You are now fully invested in the conversation.

“You think I’m hot?” Steve smirks at you in the rear view mirror. “Robin, Y/n thinks I’m hot.”

“Shut up and drive, Steve.” You laugh before turning back to Robin. “Seriously though, Vickie totally likes boobies. You stand by her during the pep rally, right?”

“Yes.” Robin blushes.

“You should talk to her. Me and hot stuff here will find a spot as close as possible, so if you get nervous just look at us.” You smile at her. “You’re call though, Robby.”

“Thanks, Y/n, you’re better at giving advice than Steve is.” She grimaces.

“Hence why he is still single.”

“Ohhhh” Robin giggles.

“Low blow, Y/L/N, low blow.” Steve pouts.

“It’s all in love, Steve.” You laugh.

“It’s all in love, Steve.” He mocks, pulling into a parking spot at the high school.

“Wait, I’m back in high school again?” You groan, running your hands down your face in frustration.

“No,” Steve shakes his head, confusion painted across his face once again. “Y/N, we graduated last year?”

“Right, right! God, I feel like I’m somewhere else today.” You laugh a humorless laugh

“Keep an eye on her, Steve.” Robin slides out of the front seat and runs to join the other band nerds.

You keep quiet for a while, really taking in your surroundings, occasionally pinching yourself to ensure that somehow you are in fact, not dreaming. You mindlessly follow Steve around and clap for the band and cheerleader, but in truth you are so lost. Confused as to why all of this seems more familiar than just watching it on tv. You’re wondering why and how you’ve somehow become a part of your favorite tv series. How you remember nothing of your “life in Hawkins” leading up to waking up this morning, but somehow are familiar enough to know you are due at work in an hour and the name of the girl standing beside you, though they never mentioned her name on the show. What is happening?

“…What did they die for?” Jason’s voice booms through the speaker. “For-”

“Not for you to win some stupid fucking basketball game, you idiot!” The words leave your mouth before you are able to stop them, though you are not apologetic for saying them.

The entire gymnasium of students turn, all eyes on you and you can hear Steve mumble curses under his breath, eyes wide as he too looks at you. Your eyes never leave Jason though as he bores a hateful stare into your soul.

“What was that Y/L/N?” Jason scoffs.

“They died in some freak accident. Don’t be an insensitive prick and use their deaths as a pawn to get us excited about a basketball game. It’s stupid and disrespectful.” You fold your arms across your chest, glaring hatefully back down at Jason.

A chorus of “oooohhh’s” echo through the gym as Jason stands there speechless.

“Go on, I’m finished.” You wave him on with your hand and with a hateful laugh and scoff he jumps right back in, skipping over the disrespectful bits and pretending the whole interaction didn’t happen.

“Are you sure you’re okay? That was definitely unlike you.” Steve asks, serious concern on his face now “And we should probably leave before we get in trouble for being here.”

Steve ushers you down the bleachers and out of the school all together before anyone can send school administration after the two of you. The last thing you need is for them to call the cops on you, Hopper is no longer around, he can’t help get you and Steve out of a trespassing situation.

As soon as you and Steve make it back to his car and safely inside, you turn to him eye wide and a throbbing headache, “Something is not right, Steve.”

“Are you okay?”

“Steve, I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m not supposed to be here.” You pinch yourself again, you skin bruising from the repeated abuse from you.

“Right, we graduated last year. We snuck in today. I thought you said you were okay with doing that?”

“I’m not talking about that Steve, I mean here in Hawkins, now. I am supposed to be back home, in my bed, watching you on Netflix.”

“What the hell is Netflix?” He asks.

“Steve, I’m from the future, from a different rea— Steve,” You pause, “I’m from a different reality.” Realization hit you as you admit through the searing pain of the migraine that causes you to see stars. “I have to get back, before everything goes hell.”

“What are you talking about, Y/n?” Steve raises his voice in panic.

“Steve, we’re in trouble. Hawkins is in trouble and I have to get back home.”

“Okay, I will take you home” Steve quickly starts up the car and pulls out of the high school parking lot.

“You don’t understand Steve, I have to get back home with my dad and stupid Samantha before—”

“I think you need to go back to sleep.” Steve says with his eyebrows knit together.

“Yes! You’re right, I need to go back to sleep!”

You blabber to yourself the whole way back to your house and Steve makes sure you get inside and lay down in bed before he leaves you there alone to go back to sleep. Steve obviously doesn’t get what’s going on, why would he? You barely understand what’s going on, but maybe you can find your way back home before shit gets real.

You open your eyes and find yourself suspended in an odd darkness, one similar to what El experiences when she goes into her mind. You, yourself have never experienced this before though. Hell, this whole day is unlike anything you’ve experienced before. You find yourself walking up to a mirror reflecting your image, but not as a mirror image. This you in the mirror has her hands tightly covering her mouth, tears welling in her eyes and the only thing that echoes in your mind is “Speak no evil. Speak no evil.” As it replays on an endless loop.

“I don’t understand!” You yell into the void.

“You’re going to lose yourself in here, Y/n. Speak no evil.” The mirrored you drops her hands, placing a singular finger to her lips. “No spoilers… or everyone expires. The butterflies have no mercy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll figure it out, but the only way home is through the storm… as long as you don’t lose yourself.”

When you open your eyes you are still in your Hawkins bed and a small note placed on the edge of your bed.

‘Sweetie, I had to make sure you were still alive, you slept all day yesterday. If you still don’t feel well, please stop by the hospital. I will be home late, again. Dad.’

You smile down at the note, your dad here in this reality seems just like your dad back in your reality which makes you feel a little more comfortable. You read the note a couple more times, trying to gain the courage to face the rest of the day and figure out what is going on and how you even got here in the first place.

“Wait!” You read over the note one last time, “‘…slept all day yesterday?’ Eddie!”

————————————————

If you want to be added or removed from tag list, please let me know!

Taglist: @xicarcalii @asheseiler @loulouloueh @lacunaanonymoused @fujiihime @dingusfreakhxrrington @tarkalean-trekkie @ally-holmes @distinguishedmakerpandapatrol @griffienn

[thecurioustale]

Thank you!! This is super appreciated. As someone who has no networks and no following, getting feedback of any kind is actually even harder than raising money (!). It's absolutely bewildering to do stuff in a public-facing way for years and years and hear almost nothing but crickets. The feedback I do get is rare enough that individual instances of it visibly move the needle.

So! First things first; I'm delighted to hear you enjoyed the Prelude to After The Hero!

Mainly, however, I wanted to use a few of your points as springboards to raise some issues that I didn't touch on in my original post.

I think it's pretty natural for you as an author to engage with Tumblr primarily through longform text, but it is countervalent to the local culture.

This is something I thought about prior to my return to Tumblr. Most online spaces, just like most real-life ones, have a prevailing etiquette that one declines to comply with at one's own risk. And I explicitly thought about the fact that a lot of the posts I see on here are very short. In this and other respects, I was aware that I might very well return here and come across like a carpetbagger who knows nothing of Tumblr's ways. For all I know, some people did take away that impression.

I didn't act on my concern because, really, what can you do? Be passive for a long time and learn the ropes? All you really end up doing is letting other people live your life for you. As someone who's had a lifetime of not being accepted, I've gotten pretty good by now at just being myself. I figured the basics of good manners would get me by: Put a "keep reading" on super-long posts; provide hyperlinks where beneficial; don't go making trouble for no reason.

But, yeah, one of the impressions I've taken away from my six weeks here is that multiple long-form (or what we call "long-form" nowadays) posts per week is probably more than I need to be doing, and could actively be putting off people who want to read my posts but don't have five minutes a day to do it. (Though that's just speculation because, again, very little feedback!)

However, as a counterpoint to that:

another part is that terrible thing that happened to all our attention spans in the 21st century.

I am one of the few people to whom this didn't happen, and I've decided over the years to more or less be a bastion for others who don't consider a couple of full-figured paragraphs to be "a novel." Though I use the word "essay" casually nowadays, in my heart of hearts I think the only true essay I've written since returning here is the 7,000+ word essay on fat liberation; everything else has really just been casual light reading. My fiction likewise is very much a monument to the long attention span, with its indulgently slow developments. It's not written to be long on purpose, but rather I've consciously chosen to refrain from heeding most of the customs and conventions that would make it shorter, so as to be truer to myself in writing it.

So who knows; maybe it's just as well that I post longer stuff on here. One thing's for sure: In lieu of more data, I don't know!

A Homestuck fan can and will read Ulysses if it's mixed in with a brightly colored collage of jpegs!

This I fully agree with! I'm a writer myself (as in for work) and it's a basic truism that if you want audiences to read your content you should include pictures. I haven't really done any of that here on my return to Tumblr (and I rarely do it in general) because if I'm honest I have a hard time going through the rigmarole of it. But your feedback is a reminder that I really should be doing this.

The biggest problem with Tumblr, as I mentioned earlier, is that trying to get money out of it is absolutely squeezing blood from a stone. The userbase is aging, but it's still dramatically skewed towards people that don't have a lot of disposable income or social prestige

Yeah, for sure. Thankfully, my goal here isn't to get money, because as you say I would expect nothing at all to come from virtually any amount of effort toward that end. My purpose here is just to build my audience. (That's one of the principal reasons I haven't hawked more of my crap here, lol!) I would love to get to a point where I'd be able to reliably get feedback on anything I care to. I would then hope that, from there, the money would eventually take care of itself on the strength of my content here and elsewhere.

Anyway, thank you again very much for the feedback. At the risk of sounding trite, but for the sake of being earnest, "it means more than you know."

My 6-Week Tumblr Return Trial Period Is Up

Happy Autumn! Today is the Autumnal Equinox. (That is, if you're in the Pacific Daylight Time zone or earlier; it's actually tomorrow, the 23rd. The moment of equinox is 11:49 pm PDT this year.)

I came back to Tumblr six weeks ago (actually a little shy of seven weeks but six is the highest whole number) and said that I was going to give it consistent effort till the Equinox to see how I felt about it. Well, that day is today!

I've decided to significantly reduce my Tumblr presence, but not go back to zero like before. I still plan to post at least once or twice a week, and more whenever the fancy catches me. I don't want to slow-roll you, so there's the bottom line.

For those interested, I thought I would talk about my experience since returning.

Why I Came Back

A few years ago on my birthday I set myself a challenge of posting in my journal every day for a year—which I more or less did, and then promptly stopped because it had been a laborious thing for me with limited rewards.

This year on my birthday I decided to try that challenge again, except this time "soft": no formal public announcement, and no penalty if I missed a day. Good thing, too, because I missed a day right away! 😅 But I definitely was doing more and better writing on my journal than I had been, and I liked that. Maybe there was a sweet spot between the strict artifice of one journal entry every day and the sad default of no entries for weeks.

Then, a few days into the challenge, I got the idea of diverting this energy away from my journal and into social media, to try and begin the long process of building an audience for my creative works. I recognize with some dread that when I eventually do finish my next novel, no one is going to read it—because no one is going to know it exists. But that's not set in stone; this is something platforms can help with! And you can't just build a platform overnight. You have to start well in advance. In this post-mainstream-publishing era where independent artists' only hope is to create their own following, I knew that I would have to at least try, if I wanted people to actually read my work.

Building a platform is something I had done years ago, around the time the Prelude to After The Hero was coming out, and I was hugely successful at that time in creating lots of content and lots of channels—i.e. the platform part. But I didn't actually get anywhere in building an audience. Then my life fell apart from multiple catastrophes in a short period, and for many years I had no ability to pursue "platform growth" at all.

But I have that ability again, at least temporarily, and maybe this time I could do better.

Marketing and being social are very hard for me. They don't come naturally to me and I am not good at them. But what I can do is write about my creative work, my life, my take on the world, and anything else that comes to mind. With any luck, that would attract some eyeballs. It's the same thing I was doing eight years ago in my platform-building work, but I could be smarter about it this time, and learn from my past mistakes, which involved a lot of wasted effort that no one ever saw. This time I could try going specifically where the people are: social media! Social media was a part of my original platform-building push eight years ago, but only on the periphery. This time I could put all my platform-building into it, and not all the different channels at once, but just in one single place. Concentrate all my effort on a single point!

So I chose Tumblr: the only social media platform that still seems to reward long-form, thoughtful content. (Not counting YouTube video content.) Facebook is definitely on the way out as a relevant social media network, Twitter was unusually toxic even before the idiot took over, and TikTok to put it politely is not my jam. But Tumblr...I still use Tumblr! I still read several people's pages, and have done so for many years.

I was never actually active on Tumblr as a creator myself. As far as posting my own content goes, my social media home has always been on Facebook (and, for a while, Google+). My "return" to Tumblr this summer wasn't really anything of the sort. Even though my account is many years old, this summer was my first time making a big effort here.

And here's what I learned.

What Worked and What Didn't

I went in with very low expectations. In other words, I didn't actually expect anyone to see my work. I expected to put in my six weeks, toil away in obscurity the whole time, and leave.

But a couple people did notice my return, and reblogged my early posts, and between them they had enough followers that their reblogs got me a small influx of followers. (Hi!) So there were eyeballs, at least. I wasn't talking to the wall. It was a good bet that anything I wrote would at least have a chance of being seen by multiple other people.

A good start!

I set about trying to learn about the Tumblr algorithm and people's usage patterns. I learned that there is a very strong signal to set apart the content that people enjoy seeing and the content they don't. On the scale of Zero to Fire, a lot of what I wrote was either hard Zero or pretty decently Fire.

In the Zero category: My short-form humor was dead on arrival. So was my Tolkienian vocabulary series. My fat liberation essay—by far the biggest effortpost I made during my six weeks here—attracted a single troll and no legitimate engagement whatsoever. At 7700 words I doubt many people even read it. Cool art reblogs were also pretty much a Zero. The people in my tiny audience don't want to see any of this stuff, at least not from me.

In the Fire category: People liked my hot takes on copyright law, left-handedness, rationalist-adjacent topics and framings, some personal anecdotes (but not others), and—most promisingly—some of my discussion about the mechanics of authoring and writing, including topics such as redemption arcs, body diversity representation, losing interest in one's own stories, and long sentences. To the extent I am going to attempt to build a larger Tumblr following over time, this "mechanics of authoring" area is probably where I will focus my primary aim.

Not everything was Zero or Fire. There were also some posts in the middle. My posts actually discussing my own work, The Curious Tale and Galaxy Federal, landed in this space. They mostly fell flat for my general audience, but did noticeably better than the hard Zero stuff due to the consistent engagement of a tiny handful of fans. (Thank you, especially you Fip!)

In terms of financial support, six weeks of content creation on Tumblr yielded no book sales and no new patrons on my Patreon fund, though I did get one pledge increase from an existing patron! This isn't a big surprise, since I didn't make any push to attract new patrons and have made no attempt to hide that my book is also available for free. Still, zero is a noticeable number.

What Tumblr Feels Like

I'll be honest with you: I don't really "do" social media. I never have. I don't like social media. I am a creature of individual websites, web journals / blogs, and message forums. Facebook is the social network I use most (if you don't count YouTube), and my Facebook is set up more like a walled garden than a social network node—i.e., it is almost completely restricted to the people on my deliberately-short friends' list. I use it to look at cool pictures of clouds and landscapes, learn about things going on in my city, and keep in touch with friends. I've never really been one to use social media the way it is intended these days.

Nevertheless: Of all the social networks, I've always had a comparatively positive view of Tumblr. Tumblr is where freaks and weirdos come to be freaky and weird, and I love it. (Sometimes in principle more than practice, but still.) There used to be a tumblr called "Fuck Yeah Fat Upper Arms," and that was what I would point to whenever I had to explain to someone why I love Tumblr.

I also know there are notorious amounts of drama and pettiness on Tumblr, but in my experience it isn't so hard to just sidestep it most of the time. Also, I don't follow all that many people, so I probably just don't see much of this stuff in the first place.

When I returned to Tumblr I am pleased to say that it was basically what I hoped for: lots of wonderful niche and countercultural stuff; really thoughtful discussions that get a lot more depth here than almost anyplace else I've seen; and amazing art and fanart. There were lots of takes I didn't like, of course. Lots of stuff that rubbed me wrong. And the drama is definitely alive and well. But that's just life, right? As amplified by social media in all its unnuanced might. On the whole, I have enjoyed my time spent browsing Tumblr these past six weeks.

One thing actually did bring down my spirits about this place, though, and it has nothing to do with drama or takes I don't like: Tumblr feels kind of addictive. Like a giant industrial vat full of churning slurry, and if you fall in there's no getting out. I have an addictive personality, not to booze or drugs (as far as I know) but to content sources, specifically "content-firehose" websites that always have new things to read. I was stuck on GameFAQs for years back in the day, long after it had become a net-negative for me. Right now my big content addiction is Reddit, and it's definitely a net negative in my life for all the time it wastes for so little in return. And there have been many other content addictions in the years between. It's very hard for me to leave a content-firehose website once I've gotten sucked into it. And I really, really don't want to get sucked into Tumblr.

Like, this place is genuinely cool, but it doesn't "do it" for me like it did the last time I paid close attention to it. Fuck Yeah Fat Upper Arms is gone, and with it the innocence of my youth. Social media just isn't my scene, and returning to Tumblr has definitely given me the impression that I've "outgrown" it altogether. (I wrote a few days ago about one of the reasons why I think this.) I don't particularly want to spend a lot of time here. I don't have that content addiction to Tumblr yet, and I can feel myself actively straining to avoid developing it every time I'm on here. That's why I've only been reading my dashboard a few times a week.

I'm not saying social media is something juvenile that everyone is supposed to outgrow; I'm just talking about my own preferences and issues. My ideal use case for Tumble is to check in with Tumblr periodically and see new Samus Aran fanart and hot takes on cool things I've never heard about or thought deeply enough about. But, in practice, reading my Tumblr dashboard feels like dipping my feet in that vat of slurry I mentioned: It's very time-consuming and a lot of the stuff I see I don't really "need" in my life.

This six-week experiment has actually helped me to realize that, going forward, I should be looking to use social media less in my life, not more. It isn't just all-consuming and energy-draining; it has become kind of evil over the years. Tumblr isn't nearly as bad as some of the worst offenders, but on the whole we're slowly being pushed to use these services in very particular ways, ways which degrade us, and it's nefarious. Not just the abuse of our personal information and privacy, but the way we spend our time and think about the world. Social media seems to be making society actively worse on the whole, and that's down to the profit motives of the people who make the rules about how these services operate. It's probably not a coincidence that Tumblr, as one of the least-problematic major social networks, is also not particularly profitable.

I have lamented for years that I wish we would go back to individual people's websites and enthusiast–owned-and-operated message forums. I really think that this viewpoint is not just my nostalgia glasses talking; I think the individual websites paradigm was a better way of experiencing the Internet and interacting with each other. But while I can't do much to change society's patterns in general, I can at least be deliberate about how I engage with social media myself. And I think I'm going to be doing less of that as time goes on.

My actual public face is my Live Journal, even though it has languished for years. Either it or some successor blog is likely to be an ongoing constant for the rest of my life. I hope people will gradually find me there.

The Long Game

You're not gonna build an audience in six weeks. I know that. Also, in my time here, I've only done one of the two things that one needs to do to build an audience on social media: I've created content. I think my content has been more or less decent. (You can tell me if you think otherwise.)

What I haven't done is heavily engage with other content creators. I haven't done many reblogs; I've done zero asks; and I don't follow other tumblrs in a businesslike mindset of network—I only follow the ones I think I might like to read.

If I were to continue, the next step in my trial period would be a 3-month experiment. I've had enough success here in the past six weeks to justify dedicating another three months of my life to daily Tumblr posts if I want.

In that time I would need to focus more on the "networking" side of social networking. On the content side, I would continue trying to figure out what people like to see and what they don't. But it's the networking stuff that would be next in line for my full attention.

I'm also aware that all of my data are biased by the small size of my audience and the nonrandom composition of it. There is a danger in optimizing for that, from a long-term scalability and optimization standpoint. My social networking efforts would have to be geared toward diversifying my audience as much as growing it, because the truth of the matter is that I don't know yet who "my" audience truly is. Most of the people here now are people who are here because they like other creators and respected those people's recommendations—not because they necessarily like my art. The poor showing of my posts discussing my art kind of speak to that point.

So the question is, do I have a 3-month trial period in me? Or even just another 6-week period?

And that's a really tough question. I need to be writing my books, and I need to be paying my rent, and when I'm here on Tumblr I'm not doing either of those things. The best-case scenario is that by being here I'm setting myself up to pay future rents and have more available time for future creative writing. But in the meantime there are rents coming due in the immediate future, and my mental bandwidth is sickly and limited.

Is Tumblr even the place to build my audience? It might not be! It might be YouTube. It probably is YouTube. But Tumblr isn't nothing, and writing short essays is a hell of a lot faster than producing videos. A few loyal Tumblr followers might be just the pop I would need to get a future YouTube effort off to a running start.

One of my flaws as an entrepreneur is that I hate thinking like one when it comes to this whole sales / engagement / audience-building / marketing stuff. I like thinking about people as people, not as economic partners whose tastes and needs I must carefully accommodate to in order to hopefully earn a living from this someday. And I don't like thinking about my own content here as "content." I hate that word. But I am under no illusions about why I am here. I am not here for fun. I've done my Live Journal "for fun" for twenty years (as of last month!) and I have no audience to show for it. Growing an audience is not about having fun. Bonus points if you can manage to have fun along the way, but what it's really about is giving people an experience that they enjoy and want more of.

Social media is a hungry beast, a dehumanizing force (in my view), and an algorithmic rat race. I would much rather create content on my own terms, rather than try to play the social media game. This is one of the many reasons why I am so bad at the whole marketing side of building a business. Successful entrepreneurs dive right into it and give the people what they want. Like that "emotional damage" mate on YouTube: He gave an interview talking about how he just tried different schticks, not even comedy per se, until he found something that worked on people.

In an ideal world, when my next book is finished I could just press a button and everyone in the world know about its existence, and everyone who is interested could buy it and read it. But in the real world, you have to peck and scrape your way to attention, and I'm just so bad at this that it discourages me from even making the attempt.

So, adding it all up, what I come up with is that it would be wasteful for me to just abruptly give up on Tumblr as suddenly as I returned to it. I've started a ball rolling here, and I can build on that beginning if I want. But I also don't think that people need to hear from me on a daily basis. I'm probably not doing myself any favors by posting effortful content every day, not just in terms of my own sustainability but in terms of the algorithms of Tumblr and the mental bandwidth of my readers.

So I've come to the conclusion that Tumblr is probably not where my audience is going to be built, if indeed I ever manage to build one. But there is some potential here, and, more importantly, this is where the vast majority of my current fans are.

Ergo, going forward I will be reducing my posting frequency to a target of once or twice per week, plus whatever extras I see fit to add. I will continue to test out different types of content to see what catches interest. And I will start playing that social networking game that I dread so much, and try to engage more with others and hawk myself far and wide without looking like I'm trying to hawk myself, because for all that we claim to live in an age of sincerity we absolutely don't, and we will see where things go.

I will revisit this at Halloween, and see how I feel about it.

In the meantime, I will try to take some of this bandwidth I am freeing up and allocate it to other audience-building work. More on that as I have it for you!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and for giving me some of your time. Please please please do give me some feedback if there's anything you want to know or want to see me discuss.