#per fandom or source material

[ndostairlyrium]

ah

I love the smell of fics about the mundanification of mafia in the morning <3

[brsb4hls]

I mean the first 3 seasons are the core of the show and built up the theme and the characters. And it's you know, three whole seasons, not a bunch of episodes.

They also were genuinly scary, dark and creative. Everything that made the show charming.

Sam and Dean were actually 'undercover' and not just in suits all of the time.

The whole arc with Sam's psychic powers and him being chosen by Azazel to possibly become Lucifer's vessel is in there. That's integral to everything.

The brother's relationship. Their relationship with their father and Bobby.

Dean's hell deal.

How do you even get anything, if you skip that?

If you did, I recommend you watch it. It's a completely different show than the newer seasons and you're missing out.

[piosplayhouse]

Been doing a lot of readings about media analysis and social interaction lately and I'm curious if anyone else thinks there's a difference between being a fan of something and being In the Fandom. To me, being in the fandom necessitates some sort of dissatisfaction with the work that leads to a desire for peer interaction and transformative content. And by sense of dissatisfaction, I don't mean that you don't like the work obviously. Dissatisfaction can be as minor as thinking what if this character was explored more, or I wonder what life on this planet is like, etc. It's just anything in the source material doesn't fully satisfy you that leads you to want to join the fandom. But if the source completely satisfies you and you don't feel any desire to transform it in any way, that just makes you a fan. so like in my opinion if all you want to do is talk canon, then you're a fan of the work but aren't really "in the fandom" per say

[aroaceleovaldez]

what do you mean by fandom infrastructure?

Oh goody I get to rant about this. Definitely gonna need a read more for this one. There's gonna be a lot of general fandom thoughts here so I'll put a big title for when I get to the actual list and pjo-specific stuff for if anybody wants to skip. Okay, my anthropological fandom thoughts:

"Fandom infrastructure" isn't official terminology by any means, but as someone who's been in a wide variety of fandoms for like 15+ years and in varying stages of participating within said fandoms, I generally use it to describe the sort of environment created by a fandom that supports and sustains the ecosystem within it (and may also extend to what kinds of attitudes are fostered within the community). This obviously looks different for every fandom (and different per platform), but I think it's really valuable to break down what systems exist in different fan spaces and how those impact the community that utilizes it, and take lessons from different spaces about what those systems do and how they're effective or not.

General forms of fandom infrastructures have shifted over time - a lot of more recent formats, at least in western fandom, tend to be very reliant on source material and you rarely see a lot of sort of classic archetypes of "old fandom" like concepts such as "big name fans" (I partially blame social media platform drifts for this - I'll touch back on that later*). A fandom with more consistent infrastructure over time (plus just a general favorite fandom case study of mine) and just a general good example of fandom infrastructure is the Furry fandom. It's a bit of an outlier to begin with as Furry fandom doesn't have an actual source material, which means it's an entirely self-perpetuating fandom, and as a result you get some really interesting community structure! (I highly recommend the documentary The Fandom for a dive into the history of the Furry fandom and even some adjacent fandoms!) One of the number one things I always like to note with the Furry fandom particularly compared to other fandoms is it's a very easy fandom to join/integrate yourself into and become a part of the community - it's one of the few fandoms that has generally agreed upon written etiquette/guidelines for behavior in the community that is very easy to find (early 2020s MCYT fandom had a little bit of this as well, but most guides were specific to individual MCYTs rather than the community as a whole and difficult to track down) and a ton of guides explaining what the community is and ways you can begin exploring it. Not to mention the absolute plethora of resources available in the community for just about anything you could think of, and tons of community-dedicated spaces where people can get involved in various ways. The furries are a very well-organized fandom in general! They're also an older and very well-established fandom, so there is much to learn from them.

I like to consider fandoms that have good infrastructure to be fandoms where the fandom is self-reliant or self-perpetuating (not fully dependent to a source material - so the fandom doesn't experience total dry spells when there's no new official media.) and one that's easy to join and integrate into.

Tangent: I have this whole personal concept about "entry-level fandoms" particularly when it comes to the cosplay community. A lot of those fandoms tend to be the ones labeled as "toxic" but when you break it down it's actually that the fandom is just very easily accessible and for a lot of folks that is their first fandom and they haven't learned general fandom etiquette yet. For cosplay, entry level fandoms tend to be relatively mainstream or otherwise easy to access the source material for and then also easy to cosplay while also offering ample room to grow (doubly easily accessible while also not limiting) - usually that the main cast of characters have very casual every-day outfits that can be easily made with a closet cosplay (cosplaying using clothes from your closet or otherwise "normal" clothes) (low barrier to entry) plus more elaborate and evolved outfits for when new fans get comfortable enough to begin exploring further (niches to grow into). Also bonus points if people are able to use their natural hair at all because that makes it even easier. Another aspect that tends to be helpful is how much one actually needs to get into the source material to begin interacting with the community - if you can get the general gist/premise of the franchise pretty quickly and not have to actually engage with the entirety of the source material, that's way more likely to be an entry-level fandom (like, One Piece for example is not likely to be an entry-level fandom, lol). Homestuck is (or more was) an easily accessible webcomic, and despite it's length for the majority of it's run it was actively updating so there was no expectation to be completely caught up, plus it was extremely common to just fully skip over entire segments. Cosplay progression: human characters in basic outfits > trolls > god tiers/etc. My Hero Academia is a mainstream readily accessible manga and anime, particularly to western audiences, and the general premise throughout the series remains relatively close to the pitch from the beginning, alongside not shifting core characters too much. Cosplay progression: civilian outfits > hero costumes and more complex characters. Percy Jackson actually very much fits the bill for this as well - its a VERY popular book franchise to the point where most people have probably had to read it for school at some point, but also it's generally not expected you'll read past Blood of Olympus or any of the side series, if you even read past the first series (and you won't be super lost if you even don't read far past the first book). Cosplay progression: camp t-shirts > adding armor, props, or maybe trying to make goat legs or etc. A more recent and very interesting newcomer to the entry-level fandoms scene is Genshin Impact because it somewhat breaks the format - it's still easily accessible (free to play game) but the character outfits are all incredibly complex. But as cosplay becomes more mainstream and just in general as manufacturing techniques improve, it's suddenly become very easy and affordable to just buy a decent looking cosplay, which is very appealing particularly for a fandom like Genshin. You can have a very nice and complex looking first cosplay with little effort, similar to the effectiveness of closet cosplays in the other examples. As varying techniques improve, the barrier to entry becomes lower in more communities, and there are more opportunities for a wider variety of entry-level fandoms. Okay tangent over -

There's a lot of ways fandoms can be self-perpetuating, but some of the most self-perpetuating fandoms I see are ones that either have a lot of room for original characters, concepts, and similar (see: TTRPG fandoms) and/or fandoms that are heavily divorced from the source material (often due to the source material being widely deemed "meh at best" but having compelling base concepts) (see: Miraculous Ladybug) which is where you often see a lot of AUs - Warrior Cats fandom is a good example of both! I have not kept up with Warrior Cats in ages, but I'm still in the fandom. I have no idea what book they're on. If Warriors stopped publishing books tomorrow I genuinely don't think the fandom would even notice. They've been doing their own thing for ages. There's a ton of room for creating your own characters, storylines, and etc within the worldbuilding of the franchise where it never stops being identifiable as Warrior Cats, which means the fandom can basically do their own thing eternally without ever cutting off newcomers to the community.

The majority of this stems just from being able to not rely on the source material to drive the fandom. If the community inspires itself, then it's able to continue to sustain itself without outside reliance. But to do so indefinitely it will eventually need new fans. And this brings me to the whole "easy to join/integrate into the community thing" -

*It's later - Tumblr used to be a huge fandom hub in general, but the content bans around 2018 led to a giant migration of communities to other platforms. That 2016-2018 era is when we see a shift in fandom in general, with fandom attitudes shifting from old-era concepts like ship-and-let-ship, YKINMKATO/Kinktomato, use of "squick," etc (in general a major loss of old fandom linguistics and terminology - nobody even says OTP anymore!). There's a couple of reasons for this sort of multi-fandom cultural drift, but in general it seemed to widely be the combo of a new generation of younger fans entering their first fandoms all at once while simultaneously being cut off from learning established pan-fandom culture. Newer fans never learn about the old community, how it functioned, or how to upkeep it, and now the fandom is fully reliant on the source material and fizzles out almost completely in the absence of new official media. (Also I think somewhat the lack of BNFs/Big Name Fans can also contribute to this, as they are often the people new fans will look up to and emulate the behavior of when learning how to interact with a fandom - this can be good or bad, depending on the BNF! - alongside being able to learn about the community's history through them, since they're almost always older and well-established members of the community. In the absence of BNFs, the community often turns more towards the source material/creators and it can get Bad™.)

Tumblr as a platform, due to being a blogging and sharing platform, is inherently structured for long-form discussion, long-form text, documentation, and sharing concepts and ideas in nuanced ways. Also preservation - there's no time limit for when posts disappear, and there's no algorithms restricting you to only the newest posts. Tumblr's features even make it really easy to go back and find old posts, even despite the semi-broken search features. Tumblr creates environments where these types of communities absolutely blossom. There's a reason why it was the go-to platform for fandom stuff. Instagram is image-focused, actively discourages text, has a mediocre search, and no proper means of sharing except awkward reposting most of the time. Tiktok is even worse, being short-form video-centric (so even more difficult to repost in absence of sharing features) but otherwise similar (and even less text-friendly and more difficult to search, especially for older posts). Twitter has strict text and image limitations, heavily limited sharing options, and any attempts at threads get messy extremely quickly, so nuance is dead there. Reddit has long form text capabilities but no real sharing features and next to zero longevity. Facebook and Discord are locked behind requiring an account to even view it (instagram as well, to a point). And Youtube is right out (generally it acts as supplementary to other social media). Theoretically you could try to use Ao3 for that, but it's an archive, not a discussion board or social media - at best you'd probably just be going back and forth like scientific journalists which will not be easy for most people to follow. As far as mainstream western social media goes, Tumblr is the best place for "classic fandom" so-to-speak. There's a reason a lot of very established fandoms have built their own dedicated spaces - forums, art sites, etc (usually in combination) - the more splintered your community is, the less of a community it is. It's very difficult to build a community when you never know where the majority of your community is going to be at any given point! In most cases you'll still have the source material, but how is a new fan supposed to know if everybody's on twitter or instagram or tiktok at any given time? That uncertainty immediately cuts off new fans. And you need new fans to perpetuate a fandom (or in general, new people to perpetuate a community). Not every community is capable of having dedicated hosted forum boards and such (though GOD i wish,,,, i miss forum boards,,,, forum boards are awesome,,). Maybe there's a Discord, but discords are difficult to find, easily overwhelming if large, and often intimidating for new folks to join. Not to mention difficult to moderate and if they're busy then it's basically guaranteed most people are just going to get drowned out.

ALL THIS TO SAY: For a true fandom community to exist, essentially, it needs to a.) not be entirely reliant on the source material (instead being driven by activity within the community), and b.) have a cycle of new fans that can come into the community and take up the mantle of upkeeping that infrastructure and continuing the activity within the community, usually with low barrier to entry. This is where that fandom infrastructure becomes important, because that's exactly what supports and encourages that activity in the first place.

To begin with, you must have a community acceptance for deviating from the canon/source material. This is normal and fine and okay. This is what fandom is known for. This is exactly why we have the terms "fanon" (concepts largely agreed upon by the fandom but not officially canon) and "headcanon" (the canon that exists in your head/is personal to you) and AU (alternate universe)! You have to help foster this - you don't have to actively engage with every canon deviation you see, but respect when it is other people's prerogative to deviate from canon and don't shut them down just inherently for "daring to disrespect the sacred canon" or whatever. Remember the ancient fandom proverbs: don't like-don't read, YKINMKATO/Kinktomato ("Your kink is not my kink and that's okay"), ship-and-let-ship, etc. Cringe culture is dead, engage in some whimsy, and remember that ultimately you always are the one to curate your own online experience. Etc etc.

The other major thing is you need to foster spaces where new fans can easily enter and begin engaging with the community. These spaces are extremely important in fandom communities because it's what allows fans who are completely new to fandom to comfortably begin partaking in fandom at a level appropriate for them and without pressure. It's in these spaces that those whose who wish to can begin fostering skills that then leads them to engage with the fandom in larger and more complex ways, growing into different niches within the community and thus allowing the fandom to continue. (I have a whole little essay about this topic [here] which is extremely relevant to my major points here.)

"Alright so where's the PJO-specific stuff and actual examples?"

I'm glad you asked, theoretical reader. So, to answer the beginning question - what is some fandom infrastructure I've seen in other communities (and/or Riordanverse fandom, back when we had that kind of stuff)? These are generally types of blog or other niches that prompt activity, discussion, and other forms of interaction within the community. I have comprised many examples though forgive me if my organization is messy because these are somewhat difficult to categorize concisely: (Also if you do know of examples in the riordanverse fandom of any of my examples, like specific blogs or etc, feel free to comment them!)

- General community hubs and community spaces. I have these as two slightly different but adjacent categories since I think these things generally fall into one of two categories - spaces meant for general chatting and interacting with other fans (community spaces) and spaces more meant to find specific topics (hubs).

Things like forums, discord servers, group chats, etc - these exist in the PJO community but are far and few between and difficult to find. If you run one I highly recommend putting a link in your tumblr sidebar (enable custom theme > edit theme > new page [bottom of sidebar on the left] > there should be a little dropdown menu where it says "standard layout" - select "link" and plug in a discord invite set to never expire. there ya go). A couple I know of include my own (one for general riordanverse and one for my askblog), the Titan Army discord, these two, Riordanverse artists server, Nicercy (Percico) events, Jasico challenges, and Above The Clouds (also jasico). There used to be a big general PJO server but it's mostly inactive now (I affectionately refer to it as functionally a knitting circle these days, cause that's most of what's discussed there now, lol). There also used to be a well-known TOA-specific one and a general Riordanverse cosplay discord but both had problems and I'm not sure either still exist. I've heard there may also be a Percabeth server floating around somewhere? But I've never seen it.

"Hubs" is what I label things like blogs surrounding specific designated topics, usually consolidating stuff like general fanworks, specific fanfiction, fanworks of specific characters/groupings/ships, etc. I believe there might be one or two general riordanverse fanart blogs floating around. I'm not sure about blogs for specific fanfiction. A lot of ship-specific blogs went inactive by like 2017 but a couple are still alive like @solangelo. (I'll get into some other examples in a similar vein to this later*) We don't have a designated blog for keeping tabs on whenever there's a Riordanverse fanzine or similar project but some fandoms do (I would love this btw and i am almost tempted to do it myself) - an old pan-fandom one was fanzinewatch. I run a blog dedicated just to reblogging fanart (and occasionally other fanwork) of Hazel and Nico - @deathsibs. I don't know of any individual character-specific blogs off the top of my head unfortunately. Etc etc.

In general the purpose of these things is to help connect the community and make it easier to find and promote things or meet people. These are good places to ask questions, particularly directions or recommendations. That brings me to another one-

- Ask/Tag games and memes. Back in ye olde tumblr days there used to be TONS of fandom-specific inbox and tag games, or people would do milestone promos or etc and do these massive blog recommendations or literally just list everyone they follow or similar. This was a really useful way for people to find more blogs for specific topics and engage with each other in general. Here's an old one I found as an example. My friend has a nice tag with a bunch of old ask memes as well, and Hermitcraft-ask-games is a great example of a blog categorizing fandom-specific ones (Hermitcraft/adjacent MCYT in this case). Tag games can refer to both posts where you respond to the prompt in the tags while reblogging or a game where you tag other people - the latter has mostly fallen out of favor cause it can get very spammy and posts can get very long with it. Less spammy versions tend to be something more akin to an ask game or a follow forever, where you are responding to a specific question or prompt by tagging blogs that fit that, usually as a recommendation. It's a little nicer and more favored because then you're promo'ing other folks and usually it's not a long chain of reblogs, plus the posts tend to have dedicated formats so they aren't super messy.

- In another similar vein, Art games/memes. PJO fandom doesn't have a lot of these! These are your "Draw 6 Characters," "Character color wheel," etc prompts. The fandom I see this the most in is MCYT fandom, particularly Hermitcraft/Trafficblr! There's a ton of little variant prompts I see all the time there (not just for fanart! also fanfic and etc!) - Characters in your style, Fanon species swap, color palette swap, etc etc. (I am totally going to try and make one of these for riordanverse, give me a bit, lol)

- Prompt weeks/months. Also similar - prompt weeks/months/etc are pretty self-explanatory. They're events that give you a set of prompts to create/post fanwork themed to over that time period. PJO fandom used to have plenty of these, though I only see a couple floating around these days. I know Jasico Week/Jasico Challenges and Solangelo Week are still alive, and TA week happened recently. Fun fact, in some smaller/largely inactive fandoms I've actually seen prompt weeks DM active people in the community to tell them the prompt week is happening which I actually really like. In circumstances like that where a fandom is so small, scattered and inactive, it's a good means to get the word out.

- Headcanon/ship/"Imagines" blogs *It's later (again)! Headcanon blogs used to be EXTREMELY common back in ye olde days of fandom. Some of the most popular iterations tended to be ship-specific headcanon blogs. PJO fandom had A TON of these (and many are still up! They just haven't posted since like 2017 at the lastest. Quite the trip down memory lane though). They were generally formatted by people submitting their headcanons/"imagines" anonymously, which would then be formatted into an image to match the blog's general format (sometimes themed to specific characters or subjects, depending on the submission itself) and posted. A good example from PJO fandom I stumbled across the other day while looking at old askblogs is Percicoheadcanons. Absolute classic format right there. Also bonus time capsule points - the most recent post is from before Blood of Olympus was published. That's just particularly amusing to me given the ship in question here.

- Shortform Headcanons / Short Memes & Shitposts Helyeahmangocheese reminded me of this one in my previous post - shortform headcanons are essentially any headcanon thrown out into the world in a short format. So you're "headcanon that [x]" or whatever with no elaboration. Just quick little snappy things off the top of your head that people can pick up and run with. Sometimes there would be blogs dedicated to these, with people submitting them in blog formats like the above, and then shortform headcanons to be posted in that format. Short memes & shitposts are the exact same type of thing - just short little silly textposts and similar cracking jokes that the fandom can take and run with. Both of these are more important to the fandom than you'd think - a.) they have a very low barrier to entry, which means they're a great way for new fans to begin engaging with the larger community. b.) they circulate new ideas for other fans to build off of, creating collaborative concepts. These collaborations help build the community with giving opportunities for people to chat/inspire each other's work and can create iconic fandom moments or community references/in-jokes. And old one from PJO fandom that floated around was somebody threw out the concept of Will Solace's weapon being a lasso/whip (because cowboys/he's Texan/etc) made of light, which then got illustrated and elaborated on by many other fans such as Cherryandsisters and was very popular fanon for a time.

- Confessions Blogs These ones can be decisive in fandoms, depending on how they're run. Confession blogs in general are blogs where people anonymously submit fandom thoughts, opinions, etc (formatted similarly to HC/imagines blogs like above). There's also usually a decent amount of funny confessions like initial misunderstandings or confusion about things. Most well-run ones of these will have rules against negativity towards other fans and similar. When done properly these blogs can be a nice way for the community to have discussions about topics that they may be afraid to broach publicly, and easily can generate community in-jokes.

- Positivity blogs / Fandom voting Somewhat opposite to (at least, more negative) confession blogs, fandom positivity blogs are a very sweet way to spread compliments around the community. Sometimes they're anonymous, sometimes not. Generally though the format is people can submit compliments or kind notes to other people in the community and it'll get posted tagging the individual in question. Trafficblrpositivityproject is an MCYT example of this concept. Fandom Voting is a little bit more odd and varies a lot between communities. An old one PJO fandom used to do was PJO Prom, where people could nominate blogs for different categories, they would either accept or deny their nominations, and then folks would vote for their top favorite blogs of each category and winners would be announced (though the event also included more than just that - like blogs asking each other to prom and etc). In other fandoms I've also seen elections where various members of the community would jokingly campaign for election (including choosing other members of their campaign), people would vote for a winner, and then do it all over again. Fandom elections tend to be a lot more chaotic and silly, versus stuff like fandom prom voting is more geared towards just appreciation towards members of the community.

- Fandom Events / Community Projects Related to PJO Prom, (and prompt weeks/months) general fandom proms or valentine's events used to be pretty popular, especially amongst RP and askblogs. These weren't always strictly organized, but they generally involved asking other blogs to prom/to be valentines and then people would draw cute prom/holiday art or similar to celebrate. Some blogs would send out valentines to multiple blogs just as a nice cute lil treat in a similar vein to how some blogs still do trick-or-treating events. Trick-or-treating events have been a thing for awhile, generally following that same structure, but it's become significantly more popular in general now that tumblr has image embeds possible in asks rather than having to submit a post. Other fandom events can include fandom elections like mentioned before, or any number of things really, but the majority of regular ones will include gift/fanwork exchanges in some form. Secret Santa projects are very common (and PJO did have them! There isn't one singular PJO Secret Santa blog since it seems different folks did different years so I can't link it, but I participated in 2016 iirc. It looks like the most recent one was in 2021 - pjosecretsanta2021). I did find Rrversesummerbang as a recently active one as well. Zines and similarly collaborative projects are also common - PJO fandom does occasionally have zines but they aren't very frequent and generally don't get a ton of traction (which is very sad cause zines are very fun - most of it seems to be just the fandom doesn't have good ways of getting word out about events through the community). We've also had a couple of coloring book projects! I participated in the 2016 one and there was another in 2022. Some other fandom and pan-fandom examples of similar stuff is Mcytrecursive (Gift exchange for fic-of-fic, in this case MCYT-specific), Fic in a box, Mcytblraufest (AU fest), general holiday exchanges, etc. (A lot of my examples are MCYT cause man that fandom is active). There are a lot of pan-fandom ones of these, but usually involvement of specific fandoms is entirely dependent on sign-ups and it can be difficult to know or guarantee any specific communities participating. Fandom-specific ones are generally more well-known in their own communities for obvious reasons. In other projects, Riordanverse fandom even once had a Multi-Animator Project! These are more common in fandoms like Warrior Cats that are very artist and animator-centric, but the fact that we have at least one major one at all is pretty cool! Collaborate games in similar veins to big events/projects like this (see stuff like the art meme/games) can also be great ways to get the community active and engaged. Voting/poll stuff like character or ship brackets can be really interesting too and depending on how it goes down can become an EXTREMELY major event in the community (see: MCYT Tumblr Sexyman bracket). Very fun times.

- Incorrect Quotes / Text Post Memes / Chat Posts Rolling back to headcanon/imagines blogs, incorrect quotes for specific ships/character groupings used to be extremely common. And not even just dedicated blogs, but incorrect quotes/chat posts were pretty much the number one thing the average fan who didn't create fanart/fanfic/etc would post. I was actually quite surprised to see that Incorrectpercicoquotes is still alive. They post more than just incorrect quote/chat posts (not uncommon for blogs of those nature, especially back in the day), but still it feels like seeing a thought-to-be-extinct-species in the wild eating a bag of chips. Anyways, like shortform headcanons and memes/shitposts (of which these are somewhat a subcategory of), these are another low barrier to entry type of fandom engagement, which means they're great for new members of the community.

- Askblogs MY FAVORITE TOPIC. I have a list of PJO askblogs on my sidebar actually cause I'm very passionate about them and askblogs in general. For what an askblog is, my blog @askblog-index goes over that and also I answered some questions about askblogs recently, which you can find in my askblogs tag (also I'm always open to answering questions about askblogs please ask me about askblogs I love them so much). There's so many different varieties too - text, illustrated, cosplay, voice acting, combination, etc etc etc. Askblogs are a really fun means for collaborative storytelling in the community, especially with how much they tend to generate headcanons or put characters in silly little scenarios. Cherryandsister's Will Solace askblog is practically personally responsible for a solid 50% of all Will fanon. Photokinesis!Will was entirely popularized there. They're also a really great place for people in the community to build up their skills - yknow those jokes about "the best way to improve your art is to become obsessed with something and draw it one billion times?" yeah askblogs are that. My art improved so much by starting an askblog because it pushes you to draw things you might avoid normally or wouldn't expect to draw - or if it's not an art askblog, is just plain good practice for writing or voice acting or whatever. It's a regular outlet where you can build up your skills with not a lot of pressure but also outside encouragement and concepts to build off of. Character or fandom-specific daily art blogs and similar request art blogs are similarly also very useful to building up skills (and can be applied to other artforms like fic writing!) (Request blogs are not the same as askblogs though please dont send random art requests to askblogs just gotta put that disclaimer). I also personally consider them extremely vital to fandom ecosystems, though often overlooked - remember those old "ask the seven" posts that would be the terribly colored text in random fonts on a white or poorly-chosen-color background that'd just be random stuff and it'd get reposted absolutely everywhere? For a lot of people that's both some of the first stuff in a fandom that they might make, and also some of the first stuff people used to see in fandoms in general. With my whole silly theory of fandom ecological niches, those types of posts are your base of the pyramid, because it's where most fans are going to start out. It gives them a low-stakes place to begin engaging with the community and figure themselves out and begin exploring the characters and media on a deeper level. That's what fandom is all about! It's what separates fandom from just the general audience of any particular thing. Those types of posts were popular because they're just easy to make! All you need is mspaint, if even! They get across their concepts quickly and easily in an easily sharable format - that's exactly why they got reposted absolutely everywhere! The concept of those posts (and general character chat posts/incorrect quotes) still exist in other spaces in fandom communities, but in different formats - usually tiktoks, being spoken and acted out loud. The problem with that format though is it can't go anywhere - even in shortform video format there's no way to easily condense it down (and also they have a higher barrier to entry, as the format at it's simplest usually requires some aspect of showing your face/using your voice. This means you inherently have to sacrifice some amount of privacy to engage with the format, which isnt friendly to new/younger fans). Meanwhile these ask-the-seven posts are one jpeg that gets across the entire concept. And we've evolved! We have better technology! We can pick better colors and fonts and add image descriptions! We can bring the format back!

- Cosplay This one is pretty self-explanatory - just. Cosplays are a type of fanwork too! PJO cosplay used to be pretty common on tumblr actually! Particularly there used to be a decent number of cosplay askblogs (which are just askblogs where instead of responding to questions with text or a drawing, asks are answered with either a gif or image of the mun/mod in cosplay reacting in-character). Cosplay is cool! And in PJO fandom it's particularly easy!

- Roleplaying Spaces PJO fandom does have a pretty active tumblr RP scene as far as I've been able to tell, which is good! Also you can find people who want to RP pjo just about anywhere. It's just somewhat of a matter of giving them a space to do so. I talked about how to get into roleplaying recently on my blog as well. RP is also one of the forms of fandom infrastructure in this list that transfers well to other social media platforms, in large part due to social media RP making it a whole lot easier. The fandom is mostly just severely lacking in hubs to locate RPs and help people find ways to begin engaging with them.

- Public AUs / OCs Public AUs/OCs are a bit of a weird one to describe - they're basically any AU/OC that the creators (if there is a singular known creator of it) have given total free reign to people with. More often it's an AU that doesn't have a particular known creator but the fandom likes to run around with and do a lot with. In PJO fandom, the ye olde fandom OC was Peter Johnson, a son of Demeter. The AU generally was about how Peter Johnson was a new camper and Mr. D's favorite camper, and just generally a sweet lil guy while Mr. D proceeds to torment Percy because of the name jokes. A series of public AUs that's completely unique to PJO is Godswap aus - there's no one singular set godswap au, but the two most common swaps tended to be Demeter!Percy (in part due to Peter Johnson) and Aphrodite!Nico (admittedly this one was like 90% gay stereotypes/homophobic tropes and there's a reason why the fandom kind of dropped it. It was absolutely the most popular godswap for a time though, and some of the concepts from it have bled into general Nico fanon for better or worse). General pirate aus have also always been very popular in the fandom - there were some old ones back in the day, including local BNF (Big Name Fan) Saberghatz having at least one, maybe like two or three, including a cosplay. Pirate!Nico in particular was very popular. There was actually a slight resurgence of PJO pirate AUs on pjo cosplay tiktok in like 2020 or so I wanna say. Truly we came full-circle there. There's also just general popular AUs that fandoms like to run with. For awhile PJO fandom had a HTTYD au they really loved. The current fandom favorite AU seems to be Velinxi's Young Gods/Hades Game AU.

- Fangames This one might sound odd because Riordanverse fandom doesn't really have this, but fangames can be REALLY fun and cool. Fangames also often spark mini-fandoms in themselves and are just really awesome in general. There's a lot of different varieties of vastly varying complexities, but a lot of it is pretty much just "I made a game, it's about [fandom], here ya go." Some good examples from other communities off the top of my head are games like ClanGen or Untold Tales for Warrior Cats, or Featherbent from the Homestuck fandom which was a visual novel / AU fanfic. Btw, visual novels are actually not all that difficult to create. If you're interested in trying to make one I highly recommend checking out Ren'Py - it's basically a program to make visual novels with.

- Other project types / General Collaboration Related to community events, particularly Multi-Animator Projects (MAPs), AMVs/PMVs/Lyricstucks ("animated music videos" and "picture music videos" - lyricstucks are the same as the latter but usually in a scrolling tumblr post format with the song linked at the beginning rather than video format) are very cool and can be both individual or collaborative projects (in Riordanverse fandom most are probably very familiar with Viria's old lyricstucks - Nothing Left To Say and How Far We've Come). Some folks do dubs of fancomics (also used to be a thing in PJO fandom, particularly back when the PjoVoices group was active and the brief stint in the fandom when we had some Voice Acting askblogs) which can be a nice way to collaborate and engage with other fans in different mediums. "Aesthetics"/Moodboards (usually an arrangement of either 2x3 [former] or 3x3 [latter] grids of images) and the more recent "webweaves" also are a great low barrier to entry type of fanwork that has a lot of variety and versatility (just make sure to credit art/photos used) - especially if you make moodboards/webweaves inspired by people's AUs/fics/etc!

- Gifset Makers / Editors In Riordanverse fandom we don't see this often, because we're primarily a book fandom, but back in the days of the movies and more recently now with the show, editors and gifset makers are a very cool niche of fanwork creators. Gifset makers is pretty self-explanatory - they're people who make gifs. Editors can range from people who make edits of clips or put together clips of images or a whole bunch of very different things. Very wide range there. Edits (with credit to the original artists) can be a really fun alternative to AMVs/PMVs/etc if you don't draw but you have a concept (CREDIT THE ARTISTS - trust me, having your art used in an edit can feel super cool but ONLY IF IT'S CREDITED. IF IT'S NOT CREDITED IT'S NOT FUN. if you ask and credit people will probably be happy about it!). Edit blogs can also be very fun and are often a big hit in fandoms - "Where is [x]" and "[character] in places" are classics. Again just remember to credit artists appropriately and ask permission to use their work.

- Fanwork Promotion Blogs/Hubs PJO fandom does have a couple of these still floating around I think! I don't know them off the top of my head but I swear i've seen them recently. Regardless - these are any sorts of blogs that promote other fanworks. Maybe it's dedicated to just general fanart, general fanfic, stuff of a specific AU or concept. Going back to previous bullet points, character or ship-specific blogs are a form of these. They can range from elaborate and complex with how they promote or spotlight and recommend works, to just literally being random reblogs of stuff of a specific topic. These can actually also be a really nice if you're looking for a simple way to get more involved in the community, because chances are if you're on tumblr you know how to reblog things and that's about all it takes. These hubs can be really nice ways for more fans in the community to get spotlighted/recognition and become more well-known, and it also helps fans looking for specific types of fanwork. (The only caveat with these is if you are going to make a generalized hub blog, you have to actually make it generalized. You can't just exclude the things you personally don't like just because you don't like them - if you don't want to deal with that, make a more specialized hub blog for your more focused interests instead.) (Also personally I'd recommend if you're making one of these types of blogs that you're an adult, cause these blogs can require fandom tag-spelunking that may not be appropriate for all ages - ESPECIALLY if you run a fanfic hub.)

- General Resources This can look like a lot of things, particularly depending on what the fandom is about, but in general a lot of fandoms will have dedicated places to finding different types of information, and often important fandom terminology and sometimes fandom history. Fan Wikis may cover some of this, but not always (and depending on how the wiki(s) are run in a particular community, may not even have reliable information to begin with. I'm looking at you Riordanverse wiki). In furry fandom for example there's a ton of resources for how to get started in the community, commonly accepted community guidelines and general etiquette, fandom history and terminology, resources to find fursuit makers or other artists, various tutorials, etc etc etc. PJO fandom does not really have this! Like i mentioned in previous bullet points, while we have some hub/promotion or character/ship-specific blogs, they're relatively far and few between and commonly inactive, not to mention usually very specific in what niche they're focused on. The wiki only covers the source material (and is questionable quality at best most of the time) with there being next to no resources in the community in general for stuff like fandom history or terminology or etc. Did you know PJO fandom used to be part of the Superwholock of book fandoms (it was PJO, HP, Hunger Games, and Divergent. there was a whole symbol for it)? Did you know we used to have our own fandom lingo? Members of the fandom were usually called demigods or half-bloods, people would put their cabins in their bios (people would make little banners or other decorations to put on your blog themes to show your cabins or pjo stuff in general!), and we'd say stuff like "Spread this like greek fire" and "Amazhang" and etc. Those are actual things people said unironically very frequently. You're probably most likely to be familiar with "Persassy." We don't necessarily need to bring all of those things back, but point is we did use to have a community identity and sort of genuine subculture! And we lost that! There are so many community jokes and similar that most people have forgotten or at best kind of know of but don't remember the origins or contexts for. In other communities they have documentation for this kind of stuff - you should see some of the documentation that MCYT fandom does, particularly if the MCYT in question is a popular streamer or the SMP is primarily streamed content. Holy cow it's thorough. Resources and documentation are what help keep fandoms alive, because they give a means for new members of the community to learn the history of the community, learn established rules and etiquette, and just generally find their way around where they otherwise might be lost. It's really invaluable but often overlooked.

Okay, i think that's all the ones i can think of. This post has taken me over a full day of working on it, lol. Anyways i'm very passionate about fandom history and PJO fandom history/community in general so this was very fun for me to go on a deep-dive about. Also now i'm really tempted to put a lot of my old fandom knowledge and unnecessarily complicated lists/documentation to good use and try to help build up some of these bullet point concepts for riordanverse fandom myself because dammit somebody's gotta do it. But that's all i've got for now! As always feel free to ask me to elaborate on anything, or if you just wanna hear me babble on more about general fandom structures (i have another ramble about different types of fandoms relating to what fanworks they tend to exhibit the most!)/pjo fandom history/askblogs/RP community/whatever, I am always more than happy to talk!

[salmonsnakerune]

Commissions open- link in post

With a few extra expenses coming up this month, I'm finding myself a little short of cash- and with work no longer offering overtime, I'm putting this out to gauge interest in the possibility of fic commissions.

I'm a third year Psych major/Literature minor currently, with previous semesters in genre writing, classic literature, and poetry. I can write romance, horror, or general prose, depending on your needs. Poetry isn't ideal, but I can do it depending on the request. My older pieces are here for some brief, oneshot-style examples of my work. I also have original pieces available for view, originally from University assignments that have been submitted and graded at Distinction and High Distinction levels already from previous semesters.

My price is AUD $0.05 per word (industry standard) through a few choices of platforms- Ko-fi, PayPal, bank transfer (for Australians) or Revolut. Updates will be given periodically (no drafts sent), and the final piece will be uploaded after payment. As a rule of thumb, I take 2-3 business days for 500 words depending on fandom, and will give you a timeframe for when your piece will be completed after the form has been filled. The final piece will be sent to you as a raw Word file, and also uploaded to my AO3 account.

Here's the request form link, and fandoms I'll write for are under the cut. If you aren't interested in any of these or don't have anything to spare, please consider reblogging this post for more traction.

-Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss -Fire Emblem Awakening/Fire Emblem Fates -Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea/The Gray Garden -Pokemon (any gen, preferably games, anime/manga compliant will take longer) -Fear & Hunger/Fear & Hunger: Termina -Trauma Centre/Trauma Team (any game) -Undertale/Deltarune -Starbound (please include a detailed description of your character if not focused on the named main characters) -Splatoon (all 3 main games)

For anything not on this list, please reach out to me to talk about whether I can do it for you. I don't charge extra, but if I'm not familiar enough with the source material, I'd have to decline the request. The Danganronpa series isn't ideal, however I have written for it before and might be willing depending on your request- again, please reach out to me and I'll talk one-on-one with you about it.

[greenhorn-art]

All The King's Horses | As You Are Now, So Once Was I by @samwpmarleau (grumkinsnark)

All The King's Horses [LiveJournal ch1] [Fanfiction.net ch1]

As You Are Now, So Once Was I [LiveJournal ch1] [Fanfiction.net ch1]

Fandom: Supernatural, Criminal Minds

Rating: Teen | PG-13

Category: Gen

Words: ~36,192

All The King's Horses: Protect and Serve. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. To what lengths would you go to uphold those oaths? When it comes to a particularly brutal and unsolvable case, the BAU just may have to resort to some more unorthodox methods. SPN/Criminal Minds crossover.

As You Are Now, So Once Was I: Sequel to "All the King's Horses." When Dean catches J.J.'s press conference on the news about a current case and notices a few...inconsistencies, he realizes the BAU is definitely going to need his help. Again. ON HIATUS

About the Book

FORMAT: Letter quarto, flatback bradel binding, french link stitch, no tapes

FONTS: EB Garamond [via Google Fonts], Supernatural Knight [via DaFont], D-Din [via Font Squirrel], Daniel [via DaFont], Permanent Marker [via Google Fonts], Arial

IMAGES: Seal of the FBI [via Wikipedia], Dean's handprint scar [by greenhorn-art]

MATERIALS: 24lb Xerox Bold Digital paper (8.5"x11"), 80pt binder's board (~2mm), 30/3 size waxed linen thread, embroidery floss (DMC #721), 1.9mm cording, brown cardstock, black Cialux bookcloth, gold foil transfer sheet (came with We R Memory Keepers hot foil pen)

PROGRAMS USED: Fic exported with FicHub, word doc compiled in LibreOffice Writer, Typeset in Affinity Publisher, imposed with Bookbinder-JS, title pages designed in Affinity Designer/Photo

.

I first read these stories on LiveJournal back in 2013, some time after I first encountered Tumblr, Supernatural, and the wider world of online fandom. Once I discovered SPNxCriminal Minds crossovers I devoured so many of them. Something about POV Outsider on the Winchesters, the existing connections with investigating monster vs human-crazy cases, and run-ins with the FBI... it's just works so well.

Of all the SPNxCM fics I read and enjoyed, All The King's Horses is among those that bookmarked themselves in my brain. Since it's been living there all these years, I thought it deserved a place on my bookshelf too.

(Rambling below)

Sourcing the Fic

I used FicHub to download the fics off of Fanfiction.net as HTML. Then I pasted them into LibreOffice Writer and created rich text documents of each fic, so I could Place them into Affinity Publisher.

The stories were crossposted, first on LiveJournal and then Fanfiction. I included the metadata from both sites in the appendices.

(It's fascinating to see the differences in the same work between platforms. FFN requires genres, so if the author doesn't add them on LJ then by default there's more info on FFN. But FFN limits listed characters to 2, so authors have to pick and choose the most important. Then there's the author's amusing disclaimers and spoiler warnings for these fics, which are only included in the LJ version)

Shoutout to the author for how they linked/listed their accounts on other platforms! Thanks to that I was easily able to track down all the tags/metadata for the fics, and find them here to express my appreciation for their stories!

Typesetting

Fonts

EB Garamond is my new favourite body font, 11pt as per my usual.

The title page is entirely Arial: 1) it was the closest match I have to the case file prop I was copying, and 2) if it was a government doc they wouldn't be using anything but the most basic fonts.

Headings and the the bullets bracketing the page numbers are set it Supernatural Knight, a free font in the style of Supernatural's title.

The location segments are in D-DIN, the closest free match to the font Criminal Minds uses (which is probably DIN).

Daniel is used for Dean's 'rushed but legible' note.

Permanent Marker for the 'thick black Sharpie' case file labels.

Artwork

Title pages designed as FBI case files, copied from a prop found online (specifically Etsy's propfictionstudios', but it's all over the web so no idea who actually created it). I had fun plugging in all the fanfic/bookbinding meta!

The ID# above the author's name is the FFN story ID, and the date is the date originally posted on LJ.

The handprint used in the headings of ATKH is Dean's scar. I traced off of a screenshot from s4e01 Lazarus Rising. I chose to use the handprint instead of the anti-possession tattoo or a Devil's Trap as my SPN art element because 1) it's specific to Dean, and 2) indicates/reminds that the story is not set during the season 3 Agent Henriksen/FBI arc.

Grabbed the FBI seal off of Wikipedia.

Construction

Both fics typeset and printed separately, then sewn together into one book. Title page for the sequel was tipped in like an endpaper prior to sewing.

Endbands sewn with orange embroidery floss (DMC 721) around 1.9mm cording. I chose orange because Dean's being in jail brought to mind the orange prison jumpsuits Sam and Dean wore in s1e19 Folsom Prison Blues.

Black bookcloth for the cover, like the Winchesters' beloved black '67 Chevy Impala. (I'd wanted a Supernatural reference to balance out the Criminal Minds-ness of the FBI case files).

I'd originally planned to make lineart of the front of the car, and have it stretch across the bottom of the cover (maybe even wrap around to the back). Even found a useful reference to trace [from here], but it didn't look as good as I'd hoped. Instead I reused the FBI seal and swapped out its text with the titles.

(The effect of shiny foiled FBI symbol on small black book reminds me of one of those FBI badge wallets!)

The foiling process was an unnecessarily long and gruelling affair. My laptop served as a massive power bank for the hot foil pen as I spent 2hrs ever so slowly tracing the image, and then 15mins on the author name and touch-ups. Did it need to take so long? Moving slowly, pushing down hard, going over everything at least three times? I'm sure it didn't. BUT I did not want to chance peeling up the foil to check how I was doing and risk shifting it. It was worth it in my books (haha) ‒ I feel giddy and kick my feet like a schoolgirl whenever I see it!

New Things

Used 24lb paper for the first time, and I love it! It's a little thicker and heavier then regular 20lb printer paper, feels more substantial.

The page numbers & running/section headers are along the outer margin, instead of in the header/footer. This was my way around Affinity's buggy-ness regarding pinning things inline in master pages. (More about that below). If I had been thinking, I could have formatted them like the tabs on a file folder and cut the textblock to match. Oh well, the things you notice once it's printed 😔

This time I also started new chapters/sections using text flow & paragraph spacing settings, instead of using a master. As always, there are pros and cons.

Pro: much faster and less involved. (find chapter start, apply paragraph style VS working from the end cutting text, inserting a frame break, unlinking frames, inserting new pages with master, relinking, pasting, and adding chapter title to a different text box)

Con: images need to be added manually (whether by adding image directly, or by applying a master with the image). I forgot to do this for the second fic, so only ATKH have Dean's handprint scar.

Difficulties Encountered

Affinity Publisher is fighting me on pinning things inline on master pages. They like to disappear on regular pages I've applied the master to. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it only works on some of the pages. Idk what's up. (The bullet character only faces one way so I had use textboxes, flip/mirror one, and pin them inline to the page number).

So instead of having page numbers in the footer, bookended left and right by text boxes with Supernatural Knight's bullet, I put it vertically down the side.

Updated Publisher and all my paragraph styles' fonts changed/went funny. Something to do with the update's variable font support, I think. What was previously 'EB Garamond' regular, was now something along the lines of 'EBGaramond-Regular' which isn't a font. Issue seems to have ironed itself out in my original (near-complete) doc while I was busy remaking it. 😐

On the bright side, the update brought QR code generation to Affinity!

[fandombingo]

Fandom Bingo: The Martian

For July, we're heading into space with Martian Bingo! I read the The Martian and watched the movie several years ago and recently got hooked back into it. I still like it just as much, so I figured I might as well do something useful with my obsession while it's there. If you haven't read or watched it, I definitely recommend giving it a try.

But as per usual, this event is multifandom, so you don't need to know the source material, and you can sign up no matter what fandom you want to write for.

**Signups here! Open until August 5th.**

General Rules:

You can interpret the prompts any way you want. If you think it fits, then it fits. All prompts, including the quotes, can just be used as inspiration or a general fit, no need to actually include them word for word in the fanwork, and tenses and pronouns can be swapped accordingly.

You can combine multiple prompts in one fanwork.

Each submitted fanwork should be new and complete, but it can be a standalone, part of a series, or one chapter of a multi-chaptered fic.

This bingo is primarily geared towards fanfic, but any medium is fine if you feel you can do it.

For fanfic, the minimum is 100 words with no maximum.

You can use fanworks submitted for this event for other events as well, so long as it’s okay with the other side too.

While signups are only open for a month, there is no time limit for completing a card.

This round's bingo only offers 3x3 cards. Everyone can sign up for a maximum of FOUR cards (please send in one form per card).

After submitting a form, please give me up to a week to reply with your card.

All content and ratings are allowed but please tag everything appropriately, especially if there’s trigger-warning content.

Please be respectful of each other. If you see content tags you don’t like, just scroll past and move on.

All fanworks must be your own creation. No plagiarism. No AI-generated works.

To Finish a Card:

Get a bingo! This can be: 🪐 1 horizontal row 🪐 🪐 1 vertical column 🪐 🪐 1 diagonal line 🪐 🪐 2 diagonal lines 🪐 🪐 or a blackout 🪐

Fill out the completion form (1 form/card).

When Posting:

You can post your fanworks to this AO3 collection here.

If you make a Tumblr post for your fanwork, remember to ping @fandombingo and tag #MartianBingo so I can reblog it.

On your post, please clearly indicate the Fandom, Prompt(s), Rating, and Tag(s)/Content Warning(s).

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to send in an ask!

[zeroducks-2]

Honestly I love the fanon families in DC but I very much acknowledge that the vast majority of it is not canon consistent. I almost feel like they’re two different universes in the way that Earth Two is different from Earth one. To me the media that supports the family feel good stuff like Wayne family Adventures is an entirely different continuity like Else world stories. They’re the same characters just written and played with in a much different way.

Wayne Family Adventure is indeed an elseworld, like the Lego DC movies or the Arkham videogames or the White Knight saga.

"canon" when it comes to DC is not a single entity because DC means many many things. Jason having been tortured by Joker and then allying with Scarecrow is canon for the Arkhamverse, but surely it isn't for the comicverse. Eobard pretending to be a scientist named Harrison Wells is canon for the CW Flash TV show, but not for the comicverse. Selina Kyle being Carmine Falcone's daughter is canon for the Batman 2022 movie, but not for the comicverse. And same goes for whatever happens in Wayne Family Adventures - the stuff in there is canon for its own context, not for the main comics canon continuity.

Now when it comes to "fanon" that's a different thing. I've seen people act like DC fanon is some sort of monolith with specific rules but it very much is not, fanon means various takes that are so widespread that people start to act as if they were canon, even if they don't come from the source material and they were born directly from the fandom. An example is Tim Drake being a coffee addict or Stephanie Brown loving pancakes. This is stuff which is either very loosely based off of canon or with no bearings with canon whatsoever, but a good chunk of the fandom acts like they were canon facts. Some folks are aware that they're not, some aren't, most don't care.

Now, the concept of Bruce Wayne being a Tired Sitcom Dad™ with all his sidekicks living in Wayne Manor like some sort of big family is a fanon concept. A few years ago people started acting like this was canon, and new people coming in would see it and also assume it was canon (Wayne Family Adventure both comes from fanon concepts and served to fuel them, because at some point people started using WFA panels as "proof" that all that actually happened). There has been and still is a pushback of people saying no, this is non-canon, stop acting like this stuff happened in the main comics continuity, but they pretty much get drowned by the mass of people who instead scream that "good dad Bruce is the only real Bruce" and that every instance of abuse or toxic behavior you show them is out of character and should be disregarded. (It is worth noting that many of these folks have actually never read DC comics, and if you suggest they do they will call you ableist and a gatekeeper when you're lucky - when you're unlucky they'll tell you to go kill yourself)

I want to add as a footnote that there are many cases (probably most cases actually) in which fanon stuff is awesome, and makes fandom experiences more enjoyable. The whole multiverse dynamic of the Undertale fandom is a fanonical masterpiece just to name one. There is a specific issue with fanon in the DC fandom in particular, but it's absolutely not the case for all fandoms - the existence of fanon dynamics is not a bad thing per se and it's a natural consequence of big fandoms existing and evolving over time. The problem with the DC fandom is that the fanon material doesn't work WITH and ALONGSIDE the canonical elements of the story. It is rather in extreme direct contradiction with the established source material, and people flat out refuse to accept that their "sunshine and rainbows" version of things isn't the real deal.

It's worth mentioning that when it comes to the Flash family we have a bit of a different situation. The abuse there is more subtle, it's less "Bruce punched Dick in the face" and more "these people are treating Barry's depression like an inconvenience". It's less "Bruce slit Jason's throat to save the life of Jason's murderer" and more "the moment Barry isn't the perfect picture of strength and happiness his family will act like he's doing it on purpose to spite them". It's way easier to dismiss because lots of people are unable to even pick up on it, and especially when it comes to Wally and Iris, 90% of the fandom does not allow them to be complex characters with dark impulses who are very capable of hurting the people they love and who love them. Wally because he's supposed to be a shining perfect hero, and Iris... well, Iris is a woman. Unfortunately most people refuse to even begin taking into consideration the idea that a woman can be a gray character, therefore women in fandom spaces are treated like either irredeemably unlikable bitches, or perfect angels who could never do anything wrong. Iris falls into the second category for nearly every single person in the Flash Fandom I've seen so far.

But anyway, I ranted enough. As I mentioned in the comments of my previous ask, I too have written fluffy "batfamily" dynamics or made Wally act sweet and protective towards Barry, but I am able to make a difference between what I like, what I'm using for my fanfiction and what actually is canon.

[wearesorcerer]

This could potentially be big. Screenshots from someone in a Facebook group providing his professionally-affected opinion:

Basically, if any of this is true, you could expect Paizo et al to sue WotC/Hasbro. I would love to see that happen, personally, but it all depends on how likely any of the above actually is to work. Like, if 5.5/6e turns out to be as crappy as 4e was, this will just be WotC shooting itself in the foot again (though probably not enough to kill it). So far, I've only heard good things mechanically and bad things for the playerbase, but they have all been vague suggestions with no concrete details.

A Concrete Example

The Hypertext d20 SRD was constructed under 3.5 as exactly what its name suggests: a self-interlinked reference document for everything in the system. Prior to its existence, the SRD was a collection of (possibly rich) text documents without page numbers or other means of easy reference. The Hypertext SRD included all OGL material from print sources it could find, so includes ~85% of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Epic Level Handbook, Arcana Unearthed, and some bits from Deities & Demigods. It has other useful tools, like an encounter calculator and spell search. For the longest time, it was the only thing like it. Other sites (DnD Tools, Forgotten Realms Helps) eventually sprang up with more content; DnD Tools has been taken down numerous times for violating the OGL, while Realms Helps has stayed under the radar for some reason.

At some point, the d20srd webmaster updated it to include Pathfinder (seemingly all, but arranged by book like how Paizo's PRD was, which is deeply unhelpful) and some 5e (limited entirely to the core three books). This was long after d20pfsrd launched; that site is modeled off of the 3.5 d20srd site in organization and is amazeballs.

Since this webmaster has published 5e material on this site and since the new OGL possibly interprets that as accepting its terms, if this new OGL were legal, he could be sued to take down his entire site (or at least the perennially helpful portions) because it is no longer valid. (Per the screenshots, this is only half hypothetical: I know WotC did do this when 4e came out to fanpages that had 3.5 and 4e material because they didn't want competition from their own product.) This would leave only unauthorized (DnD Tools) or status unclear (Forgotten Realms Helps) archives. We've already lost reams of 3.5 material because WotC deleted its 3rd ed. archives (they used to publish stuff online regularly).

[redwinterroses]

some of y'all seem to be unaware of exactly what constitutes a tumblr sexyman so please allow someone who has been around since before Nightvale aired attempt to clarify:

a tumblr sexyman is not sexy* by default/in canon. a tumblr sexyman is only sexy because they have been so delightfully misrepresented by fandom that they have come to be portrayed as sexy with no direct canon support.

(*"sexy" here meaning "conventionally attractive and/or cool." The population of this site has very wide and varied ideas about what sexy actually is. this is why we have tumblr sexymen.)

If in the source material they:

are a bit of a wet cat, a bit of a derp

if they do things like put their green-screened facecam on a bit of lime glass in the hotbar

or mute so they can panic without other people hearing and say things like "...ah ha. so." about twelve times per episode

or open their episodes with an "awwwwww yeeeaaaah" and a giggle because even they can't believe they're that derpy

or ramble on and on about tomatoes and their adorable two-year-old while being just the chillest Guy Ever

or literally call themselves a spoon on a regular basis -- fully justified in doing so

and yet all the fanart of them is "cool eldritch being in neon shades" or "mysterious ninja who can outsmart you every time," or "deep sea monster creature with godlike powers" or "scary and hot shirtless monster cyborg man" or "suave possible vampire" --

that is a character that has been sexymanified.

[rallamajoop]

The Baker Incident Report and the Resident Evil 7 Guidebook

While I’m talking obscure sources of RE7 lore, there's a couple more I’ve been poking through lately: the Baker Incident Report file (only available with the RE8 Trauma Pack DLC), and the BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil kaitaishinsho or RE7 guidebook (only available in Japanese, though some translations have made their way online).

I’m not the biggest fan of these kinds of ‘canon’ – fans shouldn’t have to go pouring through pages of DLC-exclusive-text-dumps or untranslated supplements to find out WTF was supposed to be going on – and both of these have other problems I’ll get into below. All that said, here's some of the more interesting new info they give us.

From the BIR, the Winters were moved to ‘Eastern Europe’, as witness protection from the Connections. That's still frustratingly unspecific, but more than we’re ever explicitly told in the game.

The lab that created Eveline is in Munich, Germany, per the BIR. This one does add up: close enough to Eastern Europe for Miranda to be involved, but not so close that it would necessarily ring alarm bells for Mia when the BSAA wanted to move them right to Miranda’s doorstep. Mia’s obviously been to the Munich lab, but presumably didn’t know exactly where the mould comes from (something redacted out even in their own reports). The guidebook also places the lab in Europe, but doesn't give a city. The BIR adds that the Connections are active in Eastern Europe, and we know they have facilities in Central America. Presumably there are offices in Texas too ‒ Mia can't be commuting cross continents to get to work every day.

Eveline was shipped to Central America due to an attempted raid by the BSAA, which is far more we learn from the "Orders" file from the game. The BIR goes so far as to imply that this botched operation was indirectly responsible for the whole Baker Incident, with Chris and his team leaving due to their frustration with the BSAA's attempts to cover the incident up. The guidebook, however, tells us Chris Redfield was actually the guy leading the team behind the failed raid. I assume we’re meant to take it that the mission failed because of an info leak, but I’m still amused by just how ineffectual this franchise keeps making Chris out to be.

Post RE7, Zoe is working as a reporter for a small paper in New Orleans. We don't know if she too went through witness protection but her name was listed among the dead at the Baker mansion.

Ethan is called a systems engineer in both the guide book and the BIR (this one does seem to have been spread around fandom more widely).

Eveline was created in the early 2000s, according to the guidebook. This one really doesn't add up for me: if the project started in 2000 and had already advanced through the A-E series by the early 2000s, why did it stagnate there for the next 10 years without further progress? Did Miranda leaving the project set it back so far? They can't have been waiting for Eveline to grow up, she can age 25x faster than usual, and is being deliberately maintained at the age of a 10yo girl. IDEK, I'd be inclined to ignore this one.

The guidebook states that Mia told people she worked for a "trading company," and was often away from home for work, something which had already strained the Winters’ marriage. I'd guess she told people she spent a lot of time accompanying shipments of goods when she was really smuggling materials or taking part in covert operations for the Connections.

The guidebook gives 2010 as the year she started working for the Connections (a year before her marriage to Ethan in 2011, though it doesn’t mention when they met, which may well have been 2010 or earlier). Mind you, this is also the one bit that randomly calls her "a researcher", so take it as you will (more on this below).

Of Mia's involvement with the project that created Eveline, it says only that the Connections' Special Agents Alan and Mia were assigned to transport Eveline to America. No real indication Mia was ever involved before then.

Of Mia's relationship to Eveline, it says that Mia "found Eveline creepy, but felt sympathy for her lonely situation." You and the rest of us, Mia.

Eveline forced Mia to lure Ethan to the Bakers' property in hope that adding Ethan to their family would make Mia more compliant, according to the guidebook. Eveline was especially fixated on Mia, having known her longer than the Bakers, and was frustrated with Mia's continued resistance to her control. Mia seems to have tried to keep Ethan's existence secret from Eveline to protect him, but somehow let it slip. All this is already implied in-game, of course, but it's nice to have it spelt out.

The Bakers feed people infected food because “oral and mucosal infections” are supposedly better for mould-powered mind-control. Ethan is obviously already infected AF well before their attempts to feed him 'dinner' (there's no way his severed hand would be usable otherwise), but IDK, maybe ingesting some extra mould would have made it easier for Eveline to control him? I'm sure a 10yo girl and a family of hillbillies do not have this down to an exact science, and I wouldn't even be surprised if feeding people mould was counter-productive somehow, given their success rate.

So why did none of those infected prisoners join Eveline's "family" alongside the Bakers? The guide book tells us simply that all were "deemed unfit" as family members, and were thus killed, and converted into molded instead.

We get official names for all the molded types we meet in the game (Moulded, Blade Moulded, Quick Moulded and Fat Moulded – pretty self-explanatory).

As a side-note, Ethan himself gets referred to as a ‘molded’ around this fandom a lot, which really isn’t correct. Ethan’s infected by the mold in the same manner as the Baker family, whereas ‘molded’ is a term coined to describe what amounts to mutamycete zombies (see above): the unintelligent, inhuman monsters that made up the generic enemy types of RE7, whose whole bodies are simply “superorganisms formed of countless mycelia.”

The guide book also implies that Jack’s final, mutated form reflects that he’s starting to become a moulded himself, which is a very interesting little detail.

Notes attached to concept art suggest that most moulded are created from dead bodies, covered by mould in bathtubs to convert them. Eveline is also seen spontaneously converting people to shapeless mould though, and clearly converted much of the ship’s crew into moulded-creatures in a very short time after her escape. It’s not super-consistent, but it is all horror-logic at its best (read: the rules are whatever will make this scene scarier).

There’s a bunch of additional stuff in the BIR naming the Connections’ founder as Brandon Bailey, someone who naturally has ties to Umbrella, blah, blah, blah ‒ I’m sure it all means more to fans of some of the older games. I can't pretend to have much interest in this part myself.

So with all that interesting info, what's my big problem with these sources? Well, for one thing, you don’t have to look far into the guidebook to find info that contradicts what we already know – and sometimes even itself. One page clearly describes Mia as a special agent working for the Connections ‒ a description that matches the wording used in the Orders document, and everything we see Mia doing in the game. But then another page randomly tells us Mia was hired as "a researcher" ‒ a description that matches nothing else we know about her (though it's an irritatingly common misconception, and this book may be the reason why). No-one's checking any of this stuff for consistency.

The guidebook also features such other gems as telling us Ethan currently lives and works in Los Angeles, when both Mia’s driver’s license and all geographical logic tell us they’re from Texas. Then there's that weird bit about Eveline being created in the early 2000s... and realistically, I can only assume a lot of what made it into the book may have come from earlier concept notes that were never updated as the story developed ‒ and if you read anything else on the production of this game, you'd know that concepts changed massively as development went on.

But more frustrating is everything the book doesn’t tell us. There isn’t a word said about the oh-so-mysterious "imprinting protocol" that Mia references in the game. How does it work? Is it, as the ending text spiel seems to imply, merely something that can be implemented in a hurry when Eveline needs to be transported across the globe? Can she be imprinted on more than one person at once? Has she ever been imprinted on anyone else? That seems likely, given that the lab’s in Munich while Mia lives in Texas (and if she's really been around since the early 2000s and Mia joined the company only in 2010, she logically must have been), but we don’t find out. Does Eveline get similarly obsessed with everyone she’s imprinted on, or is Mia special? Not a clue.

Since the guidebook was released in March 2017, long before the Not a Hero and End of Zoe DLCs, neither expansion is mentioned in the text. And since we don’t even learn the name ‘The Connections’ until the Not A Hero DLC, the group that created Eveline is referred to simply as the “mysterious organisation” (with quotes) whenever it comes up.

Nothing is said in the guidebook about the new incarnation of Umbrella which was so prominently involved at the end of RE7 either. Possibly, this too was to avoid spoilers for Not A Hero, which does at least give us some info on them – but then, the Baker Incident Report doesn’t mention the new Umbrella at all either, and it doesn’t have that excuse. That omission is all the stranger, considering that Zoe’s whole purpose in writing it is supposedly to expose the cover-up after the Baker Incident – doesn’t Umbrella factor into that at all? It’s like their whole role in RE7 has just wiped clean.

It's also obvious there was so much more lore written for this game that the guide book doesn’t share. Early versions of collectable documents that can still be found in the game files give the D-series head and arm some fascinating backstory, but there’s nothing about them in the guide book, which is a real shame.

Mia especially stands out as a character who must have so much backstory we never hear anything about. How did she get involved with a company as evil as the Connections? How did she justify it to herself for so long – what excuses did she make to herself? Did she genuinely believe they were finding ways to win wars without losing soldiers? Was she gathering evidence against them, was she scared they’d kill her if she left? Not one single word in either the guidebook or the BIR to explain.

Even more annoying to me, though, is just what a wasted opportunity the Baker Incident Report is to add more to Zoe’s story, when she’s one of my favourite RE characters. Included in the text is a letter she received from Mia, giving what should have been the perfect opportunity to flesh out the relationship Zoe and Mia must have built in the three years they spent trapped in the Baker property, the only two (semi-)sane people present – and what does the letter do? Imply they hardly knew each other at all. It’s the most boring possible answer, it contradicts hints from the actual game (Marguerite outright tells us they've been working together, even!), and GDI, you do not get to tell me that my girls didn’t know each other! ;_;

Ethan and Mia similarly get the short shrift. Throughout RE7 their every interaction is building to a big scene that never actually happens where Ethan finds out the truth – Ethan knows Mia’s been keeping secrets, he never stops asking questions about it, and Mia says outright that she wants to come clean. So what does the BIR tell us? Well, post RE7, Mia mentions in an interview that she doesn’t want anyone telling Ethan. Not a word about what changed her mind. Not a word about why Ethan would just stop asking. Total cop-out.

And there’s so much more it could have covered too. There's nothing about Ethan’s ‘military training’. Nothing about the Winters' relationship with Chris. Mia’s conversation with him in RE8 suggests he was personally involved in relocating them to Eastern Europe, but the BIR doesn’t mention that either. The BIR at large is basically just an extended lore dump, and it doesn’t even sound like Zoe’s voice.

So this is about where I finish up with both of these sources: frustrating, inaccessible, inconsistent, and more missed opportunities than real material. There’s a lot in both I’ll happily go on ignoring. But I’ll still pour through them for every last interesting detail, because I am that obsessed with this canon right now, and they’re what we’ve got.

[thebluester2020]

"Welcome To The Slime Den!"

"Howdy person reading this, welcome to my 18+ writing/drawing page!"

Call me Blue or Bluester! || She/Her || 20 || Requests: Open || Art Comm(s) are CLOSED! [Ko-Fi] || Feel free to talk to me in DMs! I'm pretty friendly if not a bit of a yapper ngl

. . .

Multi-Fandom [I'm decently consistent in these following places, however—]

|| Stardew Valley || I. Recommended By Yours Truly :: [SDV] "Sins of the Guilty" Most Popular Work :: SDV Bachelors x Farmer Who Squirts

|| Twisted Wonderland || I. Recommended By Yours Truly :: [TWST] "Free" Lodging At SavannaClaw Most Popular Work :: Kinktober Day 13 - "Masturbation" [Leona Fic]

| | Genshin Impact | | I.

Recommended By Yours Truly :: [💧] Kinktober Day 10 - "Exhibitionism" [GI Fic]

Most Popular Work :: [💧] Kinktober Day 3 - "Sharing" [GI Fic]

|| Zenless Zone Zero || I.

Recommended By Yours Truly :: "How To Recieve An A+ In Housekeeping!" Most Popular Work :: "How To Recieve An A+ In Housekeeping!"

| | Cult of the Lamb | | I.

Recommended By Yours Truly :: "Heket v. Dionysus Artwork"

Most Popular Work :: "Heket v. Dionysus Artwork"

|| OC Stuff || I. OC Rant(s) + World-Building Rant(s) :: Masterlist

. . .

Extra Information

♡ - Lol I know I put my pronouns at the beginning of this masterlist but I really don't care + won't get offended if you address me a different way. It's the internet. ♡ - I write afab and/or gender-neutral readers (I will, however, write male-centered readers when explicitly asked to) ♡ - I don't take nsfw writing requests involving minor characters from any form of media. ♡ - I love drawing for people! But please make sure to be specific as to what you want if it involves your character with a canon character [If not specified. I may ignore the request entirely. I'll also only take three characters max per request and nothing more!] ^ to add to the drawing bit... here are my do(s) and don't(s) for doodle/art requests.

Do(s)

I will draw NSFW / Suggestive material (NSFW material will be censored per the guidelines and trying to make sure I don't get shadowbanned and/or smited from Tumblr.)

I will draw OCs

I will draw canon x canon characters

I will draw angst (nothing involving gore though)

Don't(s):

I won't draw anything homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist etc.

I won't draw any NSFW material involving minors (I'll only draw SFW material when asked to draw a minor character)

I won't draw any hardcore kinky stuff (Scat, piss etc. are a big no for me)

Do not request for me to design a character for you, please!

[I reserve the right to add onto this should the need arise]

⚠️ I don't believe that it is my job as a smut writer/artist to be a beacon of safe or realistic sex. Everything I write is rooted in fantasy and unrealisim ⚠️

"See ya later person who stumbled upon this cave of mine! While you're at it, search up these fellows of mine and follow 'em. They're the bomb.com!"

. . .

["They're super sweet and have an amazingly cute art style! They're my main source of inspiration when it comes to anything I draw + write!"]

@cowfii

Comm(s): Open! https://ko-fi.com/cowfii

["I'll always boost up my fellow degens + they're a fellow writer who has a great sense of humor! They have a work-in-progress book with a juicy story plot so far!"]

@keter-kan

. . .

If you have the funds and are looking for another way to spend them—

Please donate to @mahmoudayyad go-fundme campaign! []

I don't have to explain, everyone already knows that this genocide is the most recorded but denied massacre in human history. No person in Gaza deserves to go through this so please, if you have something extra to give. Please donate it to this family! They need $100,000 to leave and are only sitting at 53 donations!

. . .

Ongoing Event(s):

[breadvidence]

Please mind the #wineposting tag. Regardless: are you asking, "Should I watch this adaptation of Les Misérables?" I'll give you advice, though I suspect if you are reading this blog post you have watched all of these anyway (and quite possibly a few more, besides!).

'25 (Fescourt): Probably! If you are a Brick fan none of the adaptation choices will startle you, but having visuals to go with key scenes is a treat. This is a loyal piece. Toulout as Javert, Gabrio as Valjean, Milovanoff as Fantine, and Nivette as Éponine all give excellent performances. Be prepared for a lukewarm Cosette. You might struggle with silent film conventions, length, and French intertitles.

'34 (Bernard): Probably! This is a fairly loyal adaptation of the Brick that makes internally consistent choices where it deviates from its source (sometimes it has goofy continuity errors—politely ignore). Baur as Valjean and Gaël as Cosette give fabulous performances. Moments of silliness do not detract from the quality. Another long haul.

'35 (Boleslawski): Probably not. As an adaptation of Les Misérables this film is bad. That being said, Charles Laughton is a lauded actor, and you can't say he didn't put his whole laughussy into his performance. Because it is accessible and prominent, a lot of LM fans will have seen this film, and you might benefit from shared context if you're in fandom. Speaking personally, I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure you will be.

'52 (Milestone): No. Most likely based on '35 rather than on the book, this film is also a bad adaptation of Les Misérables. There are no notable performances. Because it is accessible, this is another adaptation many fans are familiar with, but understanding jokes about Valjean's boyfriend Robert and Javert's sentient hat probably don't justify sitting through the movie.

'58 (Le Chanois): No. Not the English dub, at least. "Bland" is the word of the day. Contemporary French audiences wildly disagree with me per Wikipedia.

'72 (Bluwal): Strong maybe. If you are an intense fan of the Brick, yes. Its use of a narrator to draw from the novel directly and its focus on the Amis makes this adaptation unique on this list. You might not end up liking it but you will have had an experience. If you have zero investment in Les Misérables but are still reading this post for some reason: no, do not watch this.

'78 (Jordan): At some point I will talk about this film and not make a gay joke but today is not that day. If you are not queer, get off my blog, you cis straight, begone. Everyone else: yes, watch this movie, c'mon. Perkins. That performance. At some point I need to make a serious post about queerness and '78 but right now all I've got is Javert's literal on-screen boner. Jesus Christ. Not a great adaptation of the novel but a virtuoso example of unintentional homoeroticism.

'82 (Hossein): No. This is an odd little adaptation without the charisma of a '35 or '78, somehow not as bad as either of those but not as good either. The GIF of the Amis walking in heavy wind is the best this film has to offer.

'98 (August): No—but I stared into my wine glass for a long, long time before typing those two letters. If we are judging adaptations by how they handle the source material, this is a disaster. As a film? I'm sure entertained. I call it bitchslap Les Mis. I should note here I am also a huge fan of Uma Thurman. Possibly I should recuse myself. I don't know, pal. IDK.

2012 (Hooper): I dwell bitterly on the fact that this is our film version of the musical. Brick fans are restless, musical fans are restless. People who first encountered Les Mis via this version are making feral noises. I'm afraid. I'm moving on.

2018 (Davies): It's really unfortunate that I am at my most drunk while commenting on this adaptation. Sure, watch it, it's one of those BBC series that has watchability sheerly because of production value and proximity to contemporary narrative/film expectations/standards. Personally I hate it. My partner is so tired of the tone in which I utter the syllables "Oyelowo".

The Musical: yes c'mon. Bootleg that good bitch.

[chrismerle]

Elsa's Writing Commissions

Hey, hi, hello! I'm Elsa and my usual freelancing contracts are (still) being flaky assholes, so I'm extending branches in other directions!

I’ve been informed that I’m a fairly good writer, and I’ve done writing commissions in the past, so I figure I may as well see if it helps! You can check my writeblr tag, my (very tiny) ghostwriting portfolio, or my AO3 account for examples of my writing.

PRICING:

$0.03 per word.

So, 500 words would be $15.

You give me a ballpark of the length you want. So, if you’re willing to spend between $20 and $25, the story will be between 666 and 833 words.

I’ll round down to the nearest $0.10. So if the finished product is 526 words, I’ll report it as being $15.70, rather than $15.78.

I take payments through Paypal or Venmo.

GUIDELINES:

500-word minimum

You don’t need to supply a full outline, but you do need to have some idea of what you want to happen in the story. The longer the story, the more detail I’ll need. If you just want, like, 500 words, then 'X and Y cuddling’ will suffice, but if you want 5,000 words, I’ll need more to go off of than that.

I will write about your OCs, as long as you can provide info on them.

I will write fanfic, as long as I know the source material well enough (list provided below).

I will write smut, just double-check any kinks you want first. (I won’t write any involving bodily fluids, poop, vore, or feet, sorry.)

If I’m super uncomfy with the subject matter, I’ll turn down the commission, if only because it would be a really badly written end product.

Sorry, but I won't write self-insert or reader-insert fic.

FANDOM LIST (below the cut):

Kingdom Hearts (not Back Cover or Union)

Final Fantasy VII (original Compilation or Remake)

Final Fantasy XV

Persona 5, vanilla or Royal

Persona 4, vanilla only

Dragon Age (games only)

Mass Effect

Hazbin Hotel

Helluva Boss

Avatar: The Last Airbender (original series only)

Good Omens (book or show)

Five Nights at Freddy’s (games only)

Who Killed Markiplier? and related series

The Legend of Zelda (OoT, MM, TP, SS, or BotW only)

Star Wars (movies only)

Power Rangers, Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder

Yuri! On Ice

Fullmetal Alchemist, original anime or Brotherhood

Black Butler, anime or manga

Transformers, cartoons, anime, and live action movies

Critical Role campaign 2

Subnautica

The Sandman (Netflix series only)

Sonic the Hedgehog (recent movies only)

Howl’s Moving Castle (Ghibli movie only)

[tozierlvr]

per the last thing i reblogged, i just needed to sit down and write a full response because i'm very used to seeing homophobia and transphobia in this fandom, but never in such a pointed and frankly, aggressive way. so let's get started, may we?

first, to talk about the eddie thing:

the way people have feminized eddie is criticized because eddie, as a character, is not feminine or flamboyant, he's just small. and on this topic- he's also feminized and headcanoned as "the bottom" as you so kindly put it because of the biker shorts he wears in it chapter one. that has always rubbed me the wrong way, because he's not feminine or "slutty" for that, he's fucking thirteen. the costumer dressed him like a thirteen year old boy. but people sexualize it like crazy.

then, saying that people make eddie the "macho top" to avoid that stereotype is wild. i, for one, have never seen eddie portrayed as "macho" and i have scoured tumblr and ao3 for portrayals like this, and i haven't found anything like this. i also don't know why you had to bring up their sexual positions in this argument. why are you fucking mad about this? sounds like someone doesn't understand gay sex dynamics!

now, i just want to know why you think "the worst possible way" for someone to be feminized is by making them bottom and by hc-ing them as a transgender woman?

this comes off as transphobic and homophobic to be honest, and i just don't understand why you felt the need to say this.

also, i thought the headcanons stemmed from people trying not to feed into the feminine eddie headcanons- so how would they stem from richie crying in it chapter two? you're right that this is the proper response to someone you love dying, but i have never, ever seen somebody cite just this as an example of richie being overly emotional. i've actually never seen somebody say that period. but if we're comparing him to eddie, when you look at like, you know, the BOOK, richie probably is the more emotional one.

but none of this matters anyway, because these headcanons don't stem from either of those things. sometimes, people just like headcanoning a character as a certain thing because they either see coding that way or maybe they just see it for some reason. a lot of people point to the werewolf imagery and plotline as an allegory for richie maybe being transgender. and to me, that makes a lot of sense. but you don't have to think that, and it's okay if you don't. but saying that the headcanon is being forced upon the fandom? that's just weird.

moving on:

there is not bisexual evidence for richie tozier in the novel, or even really gay coding. :)

i also know that you haven't read the book, so i don't know what source material you're referring to.

the only canon sexuality we have for richie tozier is straight (book) and gay (movies). obviously, you can headcanon him as bi. there's nothing wrong with that. but interpreting the character richie tozier from specifically it chapter two as bisexual IS gay erasure. because he is not bi. he is gay. in that adaptation.

also, you sound so weird saying "ignoring the complexity of his character" in regards to people hc-ing him as gay. being a gay kid raised in the 50s/80s (depending on version) is incredibly fucking complex. i don't know what you're talking about here. this argument is stupid.

i hope you do some more delving into queer identity before you come back to tumblr, dude. maybe a break will do you good.

[fandombingo]

Fandom Bingo: Neverwhere

August is Neverwhere Bingo! I think most people prefer one of Neil Gaiman's other books, but Neverwhere was the first one I read way back when, and it's still a favourite now, largely because of the worldbuilding and in no small part because of the Marquis ;) Anyway, I was cleaning my room and found my copy of Neverwhere so I thought I'd do that this month.

As always, this bingo is multifandom so you don't need to know the source material to participate.

**Signups here! Open until September 5th.**

General Rules:

You can interpret the prompts any way you want. If you think it fits, then it fits. All prompts, including the quotes, can just be used as inspiration or a general fit, no need to actually include them word for word in the fanwork, and tenses and pronouns can be swapped accordingly.

You can write for any fandom you want, including crossovers and original works.

You can combine multiple prompts in one fanwork.

Each submitted fanwork should be new and complete, but it can be a standalone, part of a series, or one chapter of a multi-chaptered fic.

This bingo is primarily geared towards fanfic, but any medium is fine if you feel you can do it.

For fanfic, the minimum is 100 words with no maximum.

You can use fanworks submitted for this event for other events as well, so long as it’s okay with the other side too.

While signups are only open for a month, there is no time limit for completing a card.

This round's bingo only offers 3x3 cards. Everyone can sign up for a maximum of FOUR cards (please send in one form per card).

After submitting a form, please give me up to a week to reply with your card.

All content and ratings are allowed but please tag everything appropriately, especially if there’s trigger-warning content.

Please be respectful of each other. If you see content tags you don’t like, just scroll past and move on.

All works must be your own creation. No plagiarism. No AI-generated works.

To Finish a Card:

Get a bingo! This can be: 🪽 1 horizontal row 🪽 🪽 1 vertical column 🪽 🪽 1 diagonal line 🪽 🪽 2 diagonal lines 🪽 🪽 or a blackout 🪽

Fill out the completion form (1 form/card).

When Posting:

You can post your fanworks to this AO3 collection here.

If you make a Tumblr post for your fanwork, remember to ping @fandombingo and tag #NeverwhereBingo so I can reblog it.

On your post, please clearly indicate the Fandom, Prompt(s), Rating, and Tag(s)/Content Warning(s).

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to send in an ask!