#posting about being upset that your tweets from stan twitter end up on tumblr screen shotted

[the-physicality]

.

[isaacthedruid]

Please allow me to tell you about one of my favourite cartoons through this informal essay I did for school a couple of months back. 

Gravity Falls and How it Did The Unimaginable

**SPOILERS... KINDA**

The 2010s saw the creation of some of the most iconic animated tv shows ever made, the likes of Adventure Time (2010), Steven Universe (2013), Over the Garden Wall (2014) and The Legend of Korra (2012). To explain why this era’s shows are so admirable is honestly rather difficult. Yet, there are many factors that can be taken into consideration when looking for an answer.

The past decade was very successful in perfecting their craft and utilizing the animated format to their favour, creating some of the wackiest and fascinating cartoons ever made. With the advancements made in both 2D and 3D animation for film, this bled into the world of TV as well.

To mention that 2010s cartoons have stunning visuals would be an understatement. Everything about the animation was beautiful; the strong colour palettes, the clean and imaginative character designs, the colourful and immersive backgrounds and especially the mesmerizing worlds that can be found within episodes that are half an hour.

This era’s cartoons also led to a massive shift in storytelling, writing longer-running stories that spread out across seasons while also swapping out episodic adventures for serialization. This heavily aided in the popularization of these shows, due to the rise of internet fandoms and dropping the taboo that cartoons were only for kids. Many shows acknowledged their older viewers by leaving clues and even puzzles to be solved by the theorists who have a large appearance on social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr. As the shows progressed, their fandoms created many theories for what they believed might happen within their favourite series. The top three shows from this era all utilized these changes, being at the forefront of the shift and helping guide the creative vision of 2010s cartoons.

Often regarded as many people’s favourite cartoon, Gravity Falls presented one of the best mysteries of the decade with two seasons and only 40 episodes. Inspired by Twin Peaks and The X-Files, it’s considered as the kids’ version of these two iconic shows as this cartoon acts as many people’s first introduction to horror through bright colours and fun characters.

This series follows the adventures of Dipper and Mabel Pines, twins, who are sent to spend their summer with their great-uncle or Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon. This town is full of oddities like supernatural creatures, insane and eccentric inhabitants, and many puzzles. The Pines twins must adjust to the weirdness while uncovering the mysteries and protecting their new town.

While living in Gravity Falls, the twins are forced to work in the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap created by their Grunkle Stan that overcharges unlucky tourists, teaching about fake monsters despite there being real creatures all over town. On his first day in Oregon, Dipper accidentally came across a mysterious journal written by an unknown author that explains all the oddities to be found in this strange town. This book acts like an encyclopedic of the Weird for Dipper, an inquisitive 12-year-old kid who seeks answers.

Dipper is an extremely intelligent kid, his brain being far more developed than his body. He’s rather awkward and self-conscious as he often stumbles over his words or gets embarrassed trying to talk to girls. Despite this, the boy is an adventurer at heart who just wants to grow up and skip his upcoming teenage years.

While Mabel is quite the opposite in many ways, she is loud and has an in-your-face personality. Mabel is bouncy and fun, she is so excited to start high school. She is easily excitable and for the larger part of the series, she is in her boy-crazy phase. Mabel is a girly-girl as she likes all things; glitter, unicorns, rainbows, partying and crafting. Yet, she doesn’t often compare well with many of the other girls in town, they see her as weird and “too much”.

(In all fairness through, it is not too kind to either of the characters as their personalities are more complex than just awkward nerd and artsy girl-girly.)

Dipper and Mabel’s personalities are very different but somehow, they—along with their Gravity Falls family—manage to solve mysteries and save the town, multiple times.

Gravity Falls is an honestly genius series that completely changed the way cartoons were made. Originally when writing a series, you’d create a base of your story; characters, the universe and a basic plot. Yet, when creator, Alex Hirsch (who was in his early/mid-20)s and his small team first began constructing their show, they planned out everything they could possibly think of for the first season. Additionally, outlining some answers for their biggest mysteries that would be answered at the end of the series.

Despite being rated TV-Y7, this series really pushed the boundaries of kids’ television. From the teeth being ripped out of a deer’s mouth by a demon, rearranging the functions of every hole on a man’s face to an aggressive pop-rock sock puppet show that ended in a dramatic slow-motion scene of the puppets burning. Gravity Falls wasn’t afraid to get a little weird or creepy. Or create some genuine nightmare fuel. 

From the beginning, Gravity Falls had built a mystery into its series, hiding secrets and clues all throughout the show. Most notably were the backwards-recorded message and cryptograms, using roughly nine different kinds, even creating two of their own.

The inclusion of cyphers and mysteries for fans to solve is possibly the reason why this series was so successful. As one of the first shows to do something like this, Gravity Falls used social media and internet fandoms to its advantage.

As mentioned earlier, cartoon fans have quite a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. They create theories and share fun ideas about their favourite shows. Viewers of Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe were all included in their share of theory fun.

Sometimes, fan theories end up being correct but when you’re Gravity Falls creator, Alex Hirsch, you don’t just watch from the sidelines as your viewers figure out the biggest mystery of your show. No, you create a hoax to get your viewers off your trail and that is what he did. Around 2013, only halfway through the first season of the show, viewers had started to follow the clues, theorizing who was the author is Dipper’s mysterious journal.

Unfortunately for the Gravity Falls production crew, the viewers were right— for the sake of readers who have never seen the show, I will not mention who the author was as it would be the biggest spoiler.

In 2013, a supposed leaked image of a tv showing a younger version of the show’s crazy old man character, Old Man McGucket, writing in the infamous journal was uploaded anonymously (by Alex Hirsch) to 4Chan.

Despite the image only being on up for a few hours, it spread like wildfire. Much to the team’s success, theorists stopped searching for the answer to “who is the author” and just accepted the image of McGucket as the truth.

To further push the fake-out, three words were posted to Alex’s Twitter, “fuming right now.”

The tweet was deleted a few minutes later and fans genuinely believed that someone from the Gravity Falls team had leaked the most important part of the story.

While doing research, I came across a Reddit post from April 10th, 2013, the day after ‘leak,’ Alex’s tweet was uploaded. In this post, user, TheoDW uploaded an image of Alex’s tweet with the caption, “It seems that Hirsch got mad at last night’s leak. He already deleted this tweet.”

Seeing the reactions of these Redditors in 2013 is kind of weird and crazy to look at. “He has every right to be upset. Someone internally released a plot revealing screen shot of series breaking spoiler information,” a deleted Reddit account commented.

“This is Alex Hirsch’s biggest success by far, he spent a huge amount of time carefully planning out the series, and then in a moment someone releases a major spoiler. It would make anyone upset,” the user, Time_Loop commented.

“Seriously, this is a nightmare for a storyteller, and shows a breach of trust. I feel so bad for him–honestly, I hope whoever did the leak gets caught and appropriate action is taken. You don’t f–k with someone’s story like this. It’s unprofessional.” the user, lonelybeloved angrily commented.

In 2014, this ‘leak’ was finally disproven when viewers were given an episode on McGucket’s backstory and an amazing tweet from Alex Hirsch. 

Alex had post an image of himself playfully pointing at a monitor with the supposed leaked picture with the caption, “1) Make hoax  2) Upload to 4Chan  3) Post angry tweet about "leak" 4) Delete tweet 5) Let internet do rest”

It is so interesting to look at these comments know that all of this was orchestrated by Alex.

I wish I had been old enough at the time to follow theories and fandom stuff like I do now with current cartoons but really looking at this from an outside perspective, this was insane!

The real author wasn’t revealed until 2015 and when viewers first got the answer to this biggest show on their screens, they must have freaked out!

Following the finale in 2016, a single frame of a stone version of Bill Cipher, the show’s villain, flashed in after the credits had finished.

Alex Hirsch and his team actually created a real-life statue of their villain for their viewers to find and on July 20th, 2016, the Cipher Hunt began.

By following clues, the Hunters found themselves all over the world; Russia, Japan and then travelling throughout the United States for the final 12 clues. When the hunt took them to Los Angeles, actor, Jason Ritter (voice of Dipper Pines, also a massive fan of the series) and Alex Hirsch’s twin sister, Ariel Hirsch (the inspiration for Mabel) joined in the fun helping the search.

Finally, the hunt ended on August 2nd when someone tweeted out an image of the found statue in Oregon, the same state in which the fictional town of Gravity Falls exists. The Cipher Hunt had ended but finding the statue wasn’t Alex’s goal for the scavenger hunt, it was about the journey and bringing together the viewers, more than having them actually find the statue.

Creating its own hoax, an international scavenger hunt and quite a bit of nightmare fuel, Gravity Falls was a show truly unlike any other.

The 2010s saw some of the strongest cartoons ever made, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe acting as the leaders for multiple different changes in the medium; storytelling, worldbuilding, interaction with viewers, utilizing social media, representation and further pushing music into the cartoon world. From what was created this past decade and what has already been released in 2020, I’m so excited to see what comes next.

I have another one of these which is on Steven Universe’s representation and music if you would like to see that too!! 

[kane-and-griffin]

Hey! So I know that you're the most famous person of the kabby fandom (and I love you btw) so there's something I need to tell you. I've seen a lot of people from the kabby fandom (which I am a part of it) getting mad whenever someone on twitter doesn't like Kane or Abby, saying that it's because they are ageist which I think is really annoying (like they start going off on them almost every time ) 1/2

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and if they don’t like a character it’s not necessarily bc they’re ageist. I think that this is the reason a lot of people don’t like us so (if you agree with me ofc) could you maybe pass the word? I love you btw you’re an amazing person and your ff are the best 😘 2/2             

Okay. ��So.  

There’s a lot to unpack here.

I have a lot of thoughts, some of which may notbe the thoughts you were hoping that I would have.  I do want to thank you for your very sweet words, but I also want to address a few things about this askI find extremely frustrating, not with the intent of making you feel bad butbecause I think there are some big conversations here worth having in a broadercontext.

First and foremost, and this is something most ofyou have heard me reiterate many times, I am a strong advocate of peopleaddressing their problems with each other directly.  If you saw someone on Twitter accuse someoneof being ageist and you disagree, that’s fair to say!  Social media is a free and open exchange ofideas.  Also, if you’re a member of theKabby fandom, and you witness another member of the Kabby fandom engaging inbad internet behavior, call them out!  It’salways better for communities to go collect their own people when they crossthe line rather than expecting others to do it. If your fellow fan tweets something mean, call it out.  We all need to do our part to shut that stuffdown and make the fandom a better place. But the right forum for that is to bring it up with the person whoactually said or did the thing you’re upset about, and not to bring it to acompletely unrelated party.

Which brings me to my second point: I’m extremelyuncomfortable being addressed as though I speak for the entirety of the Kabbyfandom.  I don’t.  No one person does.  Fandoms are communities made of individualpeople who have shared interests, but there’s no hierarchy. I don’t want to bethe Bad Fandom Behavior Police. This is especially frustrating when I getasks where one member of the fandom comes to Kabby Mom about something anothermember of the fandom did … especially when it’s something I wasn’t part ofand didn’t witness.  

And that, my dear Anon, is the big problem that I’mhaving with this request.  I don’t haveany idea what incident you’re referring to, what was said, by whom, to whom, orwhat the context was.  You’re asking meto agree with you that somebody was out of line, and that, quote, “that’s whypeople don’t like us.”  But I can’t grantthat premise without knowing what you’re talking about.  

(Also, by the way, I would urge you to let go ofspending too much time caring about whether other fandoms like us.  I can assure you, most of them honestly probablyaren’t thinking about us that much.)  

If I understand the situation correctly, and ifwe’re referring to a real incident and not a hypothetical, you’re saying that PersonA tweeted something negative about Kabby and Person B said “that’s ageist.”  You, Anon, believe that Person A was not being ageist, that Person B overreacted,and that B is the one whose behavior is the problem.  And that’s certainly one possibility.  But the other possibility is that maybePerson A was being ageist but neither Person A nor you have recognizedit.

And I cannot make that determination for you,because you haven’t told me anything concrete, and I wasn’t there.

I am also a thirty-six-year-old woman in a fandomfull of teenagers and if you are not thirty-six then it is entirely possiblethat you and I are seeing the concept of ageism from two very different andincompatible points of view in the first place.

That being said, if you want my opinion, here is my opinion.

First, there really is no excuse for being a jerk onthe internet, no matter what you disagree about.  There will always be people who love thingsyou hate and hate things you love and ship things you find incomprehensible andreject headcanons you treat as gospel, because we all fandom in our ownways.  So if you’re asking me, shouldKabby shippers get a pass on being jerks to non-Kabby shippers just because I,personally, ship Kabby, my answer to that is, “of course not, that is insane.”  Disagreement and discussion are always okay;Twitter is a public forum, and if someone voices an opinion, you get to haveyour own opinion about it.  But being ajerk is never okay.  

In general, I am a strong proponent of stayingin your lane. I’m a pretty ruthless curator of my Twitter and Tumblr feeds, soI don’t follow anyone who talks shit about Kane or Abby (I have a one-strikeblock policy with this), and I recommend this approach to everyone.  Make your social media feed your happy place.

Now, there are lots of people in the fandom who don’tlike, or simply don’t care for, Kane and/or Abby.  There are probably plenty of reasons forthis, and not, not every single one of these reasons is inherently ageist. HOWEVER!The fact that you did not see the comment in question as being ageist does not actually mean it was not ageistor that the person who called them out was wrong for doing so.  

Ageism is hardwired into the very fabric of oursociety – like misogny and heterosexism and racism – and just like with thoseother -isms, most of the time when we serenely think that we are guiltless ofit, we are lying to ourselves. And that goes for internalized prejudices,too.  This stuff is ingrained in us from birth. In general, the sameway I am inherently suspicious of white people saying “I AM ZERO PERCENTRACIST” and men saying “I AM THE MOST FEMINIST MAN TO EVER MAN”, I tend to takewith a grain of salt the words of people much younger than me talking about ageism in this fandom because I actually see it a lot.

And fam, we need to talk about the differencebetween fandom discourse about Abby and fandom discourse about Kane.

Now, your mileage may vary, but I will say thatin my personal experience, when I stumble upon someone who does like Abby but doesn’t likeKane, I agree that it frequently has its roots in reasons which are notinherently, automatically ageist.  Ittends to be rooted rather clearly in plot. More often than not, they’re still tripping up over something he did in aprevious season that they can’t get past. (We should probably save the conversation about our fandom’s selectiveforgiveness problem for another time.)  Theycan’t get past the Culling, or arresting/shocklashing/attempting to float Abby,or being too hard on Bellamy, or losing the election to Pike by choosing toally with the Grounders, or floating Aurora or Jake, or just in general being amega-dick in the pilot.  And that’sfine!  I mean I feel like you’re missingout by giving his four-season character development arc short shrift andignoring the way all the terrible things he’s done in the past shaped him intoa better person once he confronted them, but whatever!  The point is that, you’re right, thatreasoning is not, in and of itself, inherently ageist.  That’s not to say that there aren’t any fanswho straight-up just don’t like him because they think old guys are boring, forthe most part, when I see people dislike Kane, it’s a reaction to something that he did.

But we actually do need to talk about ageism andAbby in this fandom.  Because it is a big fucking problem. 

The problem with ageism and Abby is that moreoften than not, from what I’ve seen, when people dislike Abby, it’s a reactionto who and what she is.  It is absolutely impossible to separate itfrom internalized misogyny and the way older women are systematically devaluedby our culture in ways that sometimes we can’t even see as ageist, because they’rejust hardwired into us. 

Sure, every once in awhile you get an easy one,and someone whines on Twitter about “gross old person sex,” and then you canpoint to it very clearly, and nobody will dispute that we’re talking aboutageism here.  But it’s often so muchmurkier than that.  Ageism can look likea lot of different things, many of which you’ll believe are completelyunrelated.

Ageism can look like fans who show up in thecomments of the writers’ room Twitter and Instagram when they post pictures ofthe adults to say “nobody cares about them, post [whoever I personally stan themost] instead.”

Ageism can look like gifset after gifset featuring “leading ladies of The 100″ where they include Fox and Maya and Charlotte, but not Abby (who has second billing in the cast after Clarke).

Ageism can look like a blanket refusal, under inany situation where Clarke and Abby are at odds, to grant that Abby might havea point, even when the narrative is clearlytelling us that Clarke is the character at fault. The tendency within thisfandom for young girls who closely identify with Clarke to graft their own momfrustrations onto Abby is virtually never-ending, and it can be hard to sift throughthe the complex intersection of ageism and misogyny that makes it impossiblefor them not to see mothers as human beings who are interesting, who are wise,who are right, who know things their children do not, who are sexual, who areallowed to make mistakes, who deserve screen time and plot agency, who are justas vital to the story as the teenagers.

Ageism can look like giving Clarke sole creditfor establishing peace with the Grounders through Lexa, when in fact it wasKane who made the first contact with her and got her to offer the treaty in thefirst place, and it was Abby turning Lincoln from a Reaper back into himselfagain that cemented the alliance.

Ageism can look like shutting down Kabby shippersgleefully enjoying headcanons about bunker baby theory because Abby is “too oldto have a baby” – a misconception that has permeated so deeply into our culturethat we have all internalized the belief that no woman is supposed to have ababy over the age of 35 as though it is inarguable scientific fact, even thoughit may interest you to know thatis a myth.  (“What? How did I notknow that that was a myth?” BECAUSE OUR ENTIRE SOCIETY IS AGEIST TOWARDS WOMENAND THE STUDY THAT GAVE US 35 AS THE MAGIC STOP NUMBER IS FROM LIKE THE 1700’S,THAT’S HOW FEW FUCKS THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY GIVES ABOUT UP-TO-DATE RESEARCH ON THEHEALTH OF OLDER WOMEN)

Ageism can look like a fan who ships all thenon-canon ships … except Doctor Mechanic, because it’s “gross” and “Abby isbasically her mom.”  The inherentdesexualization of age-difference relationships is often rooted in ageism.  You don’t have to ship it!  But if you insist that no one should ship it, then there may be some ageism in the rootsof your ship-shaming.

My point here, dear Anon, is that if you arelooking for someone to tell you, “you’re right, Kabby shippers overreact aboutageism in this fandom,” you are barking up the wrong tree, because from where Istand, as a woman far closer to Abby’s age than Clarke’s, I’m going to venturethat we don’t talk about ageism enough.  And like many -isms in our society, if itdoesn’t appear to you to be that big a problem, that may be because it doesn’tapply to you.  (Yet.)

Now, to be clear – before someone sends me anangry rebuttal to this – not in a million years am I saying that it makes you inherently ageist if you don’t shipKabby.  Just like it doesn’t make you inherentlyhomophobic if you don’t like Lexa or inherently racist if you don’t like Bellamy or inherentlymisogynist if you don’t like Clarke.  Butall squares are rectangles, even if not all rectangles are squares.  By which I mean that, contained within thegroup of people who don’t ship Kabby, there is a lot of ageism, just as,contained within the group of people who hate Bellamy, there’s a lot ofproblematic racial shit, and it means we need to have a clearer understandingof where those lines are so that we recognize the ugly stuff when it shows upon our timeline and call it out when we see it.

[stumblhometomycats]

I am not a fan of social media, but I am still a fan of Taylor Swift

Let’s face it. It’s the 21st century, and millenials are thriving off of all of the technological advancements that have come about during our lifetimes. I am 22 years old and have watched the internet grow, the advent of the smartphone, and the rise of social media. Nowadays, it’s hard to find anyone under the age of thirty without their cell phone glued to their hand. 

We millenials have become the generation that has defined social media. How many times have you heard the phrase (usually said half sarcastically, half completely seriously), “Do it for the vine?” or “If I don’t snapchat this, did it really happen?” We’ve taken to posting every small detail about our lives to social media; we need to prove to others who know us well or who we’ve seen once or twice in the hallway, or to others we’ve never met at all, that we have certain interests and a certain lifestyle and a life that is always interesting and picture perfect. 

For someone outgoing and extroverted, this is a lifestyle that was MADE for them, and that they are completely comfortable falling into. For others, like me for instance, we are a little more reserved and laid back about what we post on the internet. Yes, I have a life. I have friends, I have interests and hobbies, but I don’t have the feeling that I want to post all of it on the internet. 

I see this every day in fan culture. There are people who run separate social media accounts just to “tweet” or “blog” about their favorite celebrity, and then another to talk about their personal life. The two often mesh, but each account is set to serve a distinct purpose. This is where I have a problem. I will either tweet for times in a hour, or four times in a month, and there is no in between. And more often than not, I’m on the “four times a month” cycle. 

I feel like an outsider when it comes to this fandom, and I am absolutely NOT judging people who are out here living their best Taylor Swift-influenced lives, and have the time, energy, and confidence to post about it all the time. I, however, am not a person who uses social media frequently in my personal life. I have tried running separate twitter and tumblr accounts to gush about my love for Taylor Swift, but to me, it was just exhausting to be someone who was always posting on social media because that was not the real me. 

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I can’t go more than five minutes without talking about Taylor Swift, and looking through my social media accounts a large percentage are about her, but that percentage is out of a very small number of posts. 

This is the era where Taylor is thriving and living her best life, and I could not be more proud of her. She is trying more than ever to meet and interact with fans, and I love seeing her reply to people’s posts and like their pictures on instagram, and I could not be happier for those people. Seriously. But because I am someone who is not a natural at social media, it makes me feel like my chances of ever meeting her are out the window forever now. 

Obviously Taylor is going to notice the fans who post all of the time, and I’m so genuinely happy for them. But posting all the time just doesn’t feel natural to me. I feel like I’m being fake when I spend hours gushing over a tumblr post, I would much rather just say the words out loud to my friends in person than make a post on social media. 

My friends and family all know how I would literally die for Taylor, but Taylor herself is never going to know that. I don’t feel like it’s right for me to try to change who I am though either to get her to notice me. I genuinely wish I was someone who felt more comfortable on social media and was able to potentially have friends and followers that I met through social media, but I can’t. And now I’m terrified that because of this, I’m never going to get to tell Taylor what she means to me. 

I am not a fan of social media. I never was. I tried to have a large presence but it all felt like a fake version of me who was trying so desperately to post enough to feel like I was a “worthy” fan. But then I realized how much of a fan you are will never be measured by the number of posts you make or how many followers you have. How much of a fan you are is in no way at all determined by internet presence, but by your actions. And whether you take those actions by buying a CD for yourself, and then another for your mom and one for your sister because you genuinely want them to enjoy reputation as much as you do, or it’s from your friends rolling their eyes because you literally haven’t stopped talking about Taylor Swift in ten years, or it’s by posting on social media, we’re all fans of Taylor Swift just the same. 

Does it make me upset knowing that I’m never going to get that reblog from Taylor? Sure, of course it does. But let’s be realistic, I only make original posts on here like once a month, so it’s not like I’m going to get my hopes up. I just wish I didn’t feel like less of a fan because I’m not one of those people posting all the time and in return getting recognition from Taylor herself. 

I will stan Taylor until the end of time, but not through social media. I will always love and support Taylor through the actions I take in my life, which 95% of the time, are outside of the small screen on my iPhone.