#this so appeals to my very niche interests

[j-esbian]

i lost the post but i saw someone talking about how some of y’all act like being weird is a choice and like. YEAHHHHHHH.

that’s fine, it might be for you. but i just live like this and don’t know any other way. like yeah i’ve worked customer service, i can do innocuous small talk, but anything beyond that, i don’t understand what i’m missing. and it’s frustrating to see the tonal disconnect especially from people who are like “uwu embrace weirdness!!” where they’re like. dressing quirky and talking about bugs and listening to obscure music and eschewing small talk to ask Deep Questions on the first date and unlearning their tendency to not infodump. and generally have an idea of what Weirdness is supposed to look like. idk man some of us wake up and get out of bed and can’t figure out why the rest of their coworkers chitchat with each other but when they join the conversation it dies.

weirdness is value neutral. let’s stop trying to turn it into a badge because quite frankly, it’s not a choice for everyone. it’s fucking exhausting to never be on the same wavelength as other people and they’re going to react the way they do and label you the way they will without any conscious actions on your end. it’s difficult to talk about this without feeling like you’ll be dismissed as immature, a teenager whining “no one understands me” but the thing is. sometimes you don’t grow out of feeling alone and different, and there’s no good way to talk about it without feeling like people will think you’re just fishing for pity.

[markscherz]

Can I ask how you feel about your Tumblr fame?

I get the impression you just made this account for normal casual funsies reasons, but it kinda blew up by happenstance. If that's right, I'm curious if now you feel like it's kind of a more serious thing, where you have an opportunity to sorta act as a science communicator with a reach you otherwise might not?

Or maybe something else? You gonna see if you can somehow leverage your Tumblr fame to get research funding? Deputize us to harass polluters and developers destroying habitats? Crowdsource name ideas for new species?

It's a bit bizarre, in that it has very little real-world-ness to it. I showed my mother the ongoing tumblr celebrity poll, and she was like 'how many people could possibly be interested in frogs?', to which I replied 'well as of today about 46,000 and counting'.

I have always had an unhealthy relationship with fame. I spent most of my teen and young adult life fawning after it, as is I suppose very often the case.

More after the cut…

I always really wanted to be famous, but I was never really interested in changing who I was or what I represented in that pursuit. That is to say, I wanted to be known for what I was already doing, or for things that were already interesting for me, rather than things that might have much higher chances of success but require more effort or be less in line with the things that I am interested in.

I had my first brush with virality in 2012, when a poem I wrote went a little viral (largely thanks to StumbleUpon). I remember the rush of seeing how much attention it was getting, and staying up late to keep refreshing the page as the visitor numbers went up and up and up.

But not long after that, I had some closer encounters with fame and people becoming famous. That was extremely eye-opening. I witnessed first hand how strongly that can affect someone's life, for good and for bad. That experience also made me realise, quite jarringly, that famous people are still just people; that celebrity is something extrinsic to them; that they also wipe their own butts (if they are able); and that in many cases, it is a substantial inconvenience if not downright pain in the ass for them. I think this is why we see so many of the big celebrities having mental health crises or trying to live as much of their lives out of the public eye as possible.

That experience pretty much stifled my desire to achieve fame, and really changed my relationship with it. I should add that I could say much more on this topic, but nothing so coherent or insightful as John and Hank Green, who have given me so much clarity on this topic over the years through their thoughtful commentary on youtube and their podcasts.

Anyway, in spite of the fact that fame itself doesn't really appeal to me anymore, I do still have a problem wherein I quickly became addicted to the microdosing of euphoria associated with every reblog and like and follow. So I put huge efforts into social media in order to try to gain traction in the space that I felt I could really compete in—Very Niche SciComm™—and build up a following.

Tumblr was the first platform where I felt that really succeed; I managed to fight my way to a few thousand followers with a thick queue of regular posts about herpetology and other science. At that time, there was a great community building up in the rudimentary private messaging system—I am still friends with several other tumblr bloggers from that era (none of whom I have ever met in person). From that early time (2013), I think my most successful post was probably this one about germination of 32,000 year old seeds—a post that, as of today, has 836 notes, but at the time felt huge and exhilarating.

As I went through gradschool, I got more and more active on twitter, and less and less active on tumblr (by the time I wound down, I had about 8,000 followers on tumblr). This was partly because of the pornbot takeover on tumblr, which meant I basically could not go on the platform in public or at work, but also because the audience and interactions are just fundamentally different. Twitter had a different kind of vibe and energy than tumblr, and there were real SciComm experts there, who were doing it just completely differently. More importantly, I became more focussed on doing outreach aimed at colleagues, rather than non-experts.

Then, in 2017, I hit headlines for the first time. The description of Geckolepis megalepis made it big on social and traditional media, and I had my first experience with real media attention. I had a flurry of late-night phone-calls with journalists in the US. This was a different animal altogether than the few viral posts I had had until that point. It was extremely stressful, but exhilarating. Then in 2018, our chameleon fluorescence story made similar headlines, and in 2019 the Mini frogs, and in 2021 with gecko fluorescence and the smallest chameleon.

Seeing my name on the BBC News website and in the New York Times and National Geographic—those things have been the most surreal moments of near-fame I have experienced so far. The number of followers on social media is quite difficult to conceptualise, but seeing your own name in a media outlet that you consume regularly, or have grown up with, is more palpable.

In any case, I continued to run with twitter as my main platform for years, because I found the interaction with colleagues and other academics highly stimulating. In 2021, I even posted a twitter thread about a different species of frog from Madagascar every day for the full year. All this work was ultimately greeted with mediocre success; I just crested over 10,000 followers a few months before the Musth takeover. But then the platform became basically unusable. And in the fallout, I came back to tumblr, where, just by chance, I happened to find a post about the Mini frogs and reply to it and it went properly viral and now here we are. In the space of a year, I went from having 8000 followers to having >46,000.

How do I feel about that? It's bonkers. I think it is great that so many people are interested in hearing the Good News about frogs and other creatures. But I also feel like I am not really on the same playing field as most of the others in that poll mentioned above, in that I do not have any of the celebrity that several others have. And I know for a fact that there are fanblogs with far, far larger followings than I have. But perhaps that is the great thing about tumblr; that the playing field is somehow levelled…

What's the point of this ramble? Well, first I guess it is to outline that I have given fame a lot of thought over the years, and I have a long-standing and complicated relationship with it, and take it quite seriously. Second, to illustrate that I have been working on as a science communicator or person in outreach for many years—it has kind of been my social media brand since I started gradschool in 2013. And third, to kind of outline how we got here, because I often feel like you have to know where an arrow has come from in order to figure out which direction it will continue to fly.

You asked if I would somehow try to leverage my tumblr fame to get research funding—I already do that. In fact, my social media activity had a signfiicant role in landing me my current job, and will continue to help me achieve tenure. Outreach is an important part of my job, and funders like it too.

I would love to have the community-building power and tenacity of the brothers Green; Nerdfighteria has achieved some incredible things over the years, and the power of that community is now being seen at an unprecedented scale in their battle for equitable access for tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment. But I do not have that in me; this platform is the wrong one for community activation, and my community is still too small for that. Moreover, it is not organised or structured, in the way that I think effective deputisation would require.

As for the crowdsourcing of name ideas, that is currently off the table. I like to try to name things on my own or with my colleauges; it is a very good part of the process. And I have yet to hear a suggestion for a Mini species epithet that I had not already come up with myself, so I am not convinced that this would really augment the experience.

So for now, I hope that the main way I use the platform, and the power that comes with a few thousand followers, will be to spread the Good News about frogs and other wonderful animals, and the other kinds of science happening around us (and occasional other off-topic content). I hope that you are encouraged to explore the world around you, and to do your own reading to find out more about the subjects that interest you. And also I will continue to try to make meme-worthy content, because it does nice, if addictive, things in my brain when I get the clicks.

Thanks for asking, anon, and sorry for the Wall of Text.

[hybbart]

Hi! I absolutely adore your work, I was wondering if you have any advice on getting your ideas and au's out there? Sometimes it feels like no matter how much you post/try to connect with others it's impossible for any posts to break out of the little tumblr interaction bubble

Well, I'm not really the person to ask this, cause any popularity I have at any point is almost entirely dependant on my current hyperfixation, and I'm not one to care much about it.

Mostly I have a good enough appealing and safe art style and good enough sense of humour that's easy for people to like even if they don't especially care about the content, and draw often enough that I don't get forgotten.

My current stuff is fanworks, which have a built in audience, so you're always going to be seen as long as you tag it properly. Especially if you're actively participating in the fandom. I also have the benefit of being obsessed with a rather popular duo like ranchers.

Basically, the notes I get are very predictable and temporary, and not really based on any intentional work. I'm good enough for casual followers to pay attention to as long as it's stuff they recognize. I'd say like 80% of my notes are from casual engagement who aren't really going to do much besides a like and maybe reblog just because they were told they have to reblog artists or they're using the site wrong.

I guess what I mean to say is, having those notes is nice and appreciated but at the end of the day I also have a pretty small little bubble. There's just a wall of passers-by around it making it seem bigger than it actually is. It very quickly dissipates when I draw anything out of the ordinary that I can't put a bunch of popular tags on. So, I'm not really the person to ask about that sort of thing.

That said, I guess all that might sound a bit cynical to most people even though it isn't meant to be, so I guess some actual tips might be in order.

Skill. Art's about communication and expression, which like anything is better done with a larger toolkit and knowledge. And also especially casual engagement just enjoys things of higher quality. Raw ideas aren't usually enough to get people to understand or care unless they care about you. To be blunt, sometimes people just aren't good enough or are too niche for a general audience. That's nothing to be self-conscious or miserable about, it's just something you have to be self-aware about enough to accept that you're not gonna attract people who aren't invested in you. If that's something you want to change by becoming better then you have to intentionally do so, talent is a lie.

Passion. It's obvious when your heart isn't in it regardless of skill level because art is about communication. And passion's what drives us to do better, it's hard to develop and spend time on work you don't really want to do. If you're enthusiastic other people will be more likely to join you in your enthusiasm. If you don't care or are burnt out people will notice. If you're doing things just to get attention people will notice. You have to want to create what you're creating.

Good ideas. To be blunt a good idea that interests people is just going to be more popular than a bad one that doesn't. Sometimes something that interests you doesn't interest a lot of other people, that's why you gotta make peace with caring more about quality interaction over quantity, and being more self-aware.

Making friends. Finding people who are as enthusiastic as you about something is going to go a long way, and people who aren't as enthusiastic are more likely to become enthusiastic or support you if you're friends and you can annoy them in their DMs with 3 hour tangents about your favourite thing. Honestly once you have someone you can do this to you stop caring about the other stuff. Art's about communication, like I said. Participating in events is a great way to make friends, but so is just reaching out to people you like.

Being friendly. This one's pretty simple. If you're a dick people aren't going to take the time to get invested in your project even if it interests them.

Being accessible. This covers anything from literal accessibility to having clean directories and tags, to anchoring/themed extra engagement. 'Do you have any questions about [character]' is going to get more engagement than 'feel free to ask me anything about my au' even if there's less questions to ask because it's less broad and puts less of a burden on the asker to come up with a prompt. It's easier to be broader later on when you have already put out a lot of information and people are more invested.

Being concise: Basically very few people are going to read this goliath of a post compared to a short, information dense, clear post. When I post art I try to avoid too much text, because I want the art to be the focus of the post. When I post writing I put it under a cut so it doesn't consume someone's dash and write something clearer above. The reason writing is going to get less engagement is because it takes more time and effort to engage with than a picture. People who aren't already invested aren't going to sift through 10 paragraphs of loose info. This goes for art, too. One piece is going to catch the eye easier than 10 unrelated sketches or a long form comic. This doesn't mean don't make this content, but be smarter about how you present it to take into account how it engages people.

Tagging things. Don't abuse tags or put irrelevant tags, but finding out what tags are frequented that apply to your art helps. There is definitely still an inconsistent limit of tags that tumblr's search actually pays attention to, so put the most important ones first. I usually put warnings first and foremost and put personal categorization tags last. Being consistent with tags lets people find stuff on your blog easier and makes you show up in a search more frequently, so you're easier to find for people who use tumblr in different ways.

Time of day. This one's finicky to figure out and can change but if you post when there's more people online... well, more people are likely to see it. Apparently other people follow like hundreds or even thousands of blogs and don't even look at everything on their dash, so for those types of people posts might as well not exist unless it's at the top of their dash. This also helps when popping up in more popular tags' most recent when people are actually looking them up. This doesn't affect posts as much as people think but it does enough to be visible. I frequently post things at like 1 am when no one's on so it doesn't get notes until later on and through notifications.

anyways, i hope something in there helps. If not, well... crap.

[perseidlion]

Dead Boy Detectives friends, I totally respect and support those of you who feel like you want to fight. You want to make noise. You want to sign petitions and organize campaigns. I get that you don't want to give up on this wonderful show.

Normally I'd support campaigns, but in this case I think there are some very big things working against us:

The Neil Gaiman factor. I hate to say it, but the accusations against him were probably part of the reason for cancellation and why getting picked up elsewhere is a non-starter. The explicit ties to the Netflix Sandman with Death and Despair SHOULD have helped the show get renewed. But with the accusations against NG, that definitely hurt it. That's so deeply unfair because those of us who are fans of the show know that DBD is not a Gaiman show, and his contribution to the story is minimal. But Sandman is Gaiman's, and they made the connection to Sandman and thus Gaiman, explicit. When the news about NG came down, Sandman was already well into production and contracts were signed. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if S2 was Sandman's last season.

The collapse of streaming. Gone are the days when networks pick up each others' shows to try and court subscribers and steal an audience share. That barely happens anymore, and when it does it's under very unusual circumstances. Every network is cancelling well-reviewed shows with a following. Every network is cancelling queer shows more than others. Every network is greedy and looking for mega-hits only. There are no good guys in the streaming landscape.

The economy and the strikes. Don't get me wrong, the gains made by SAG-AFTRA, and the Writers and Directors' guilds were absolutely necessary and required for fairness. But it did increase production costs. Instead of adjusting their profit expectations, the streamers are trying desperately to keep the same profits from the pre-strike days. Which is why we have this mega-hit or bust model. Add to that the economic downturn and the price of everything going up, and the bar for "success" from a corporate standpoint is set impossibly high.

Streaming's metric for success is new subscribers, not how much existing subscribers enjoy the content. This is a big one. It used to be if an audience loved it and that audience was appealing to an advertiser, a show could keep going. Advertisers wanted the affinity for the show to spill over onto their product for supporting it. But with streaming, the streamers don't care how much you love something. They just care that you watch it, you stay subscribed, and that content gets new subscribers. A passionate watch is worth the same $$ wise to them as a hate watch or a half-interested watch. In that way, the loss of commercials is the reason for so many of the more niche shows getting cancelled.

The big reason I think we're sunk for either getting Netflix to reverse the decision or for it to get picked up elsewhere is honestly, because Yockey posted a pretty big S2 spoiler. The showrunner wouldn't do that if he thought there was any hope. My guess is the show is tied to Netflix because of the Sandman connection, and because they commissioned scripts for S2 that they own. There's probably some contractual reasons that make network hopping impossible.

I don't want to be a downer, and like I said if you want to campaign to let your heart heal or just to not let this happen quietly, I fully support that.

But in my heart, I think we have to lay our beloved Dead Boy Detectives to rest - at least as a show. They'll live on in our hearts and our fanworks.

[ewingstan]

If you had a chance to recommend (real-world) superhero comics to the Undersiders, which comics would you recommend and why?

Oh, good question. Its been a minute since I was really into comics (I gotta figure out how to reactivate my Marvel Unlimited account), but I think I have enough background to come up with some good picks.

Lotta good options for Taylor. My first thought is to give her Ewing's X-Men Red (aka "the main reason I need to catch up on Marvel comics"), since a superhero story that focuses a lot on gaining and maintaining societal power and the work of governing as a leader in a super-community seems like it would appeal to the Warlord of the Boardwalk. Plus a lot of it is "kill the previous leader in a way that ensures you have a popular mandate," which I'm sure she'd be a fan of.

If we're talking Taylor at the start of the story or younger—well, I don't know if it makes sense to give her runs of the character she's most a pastiche of, but maybe something that fits the Spider-Man niche could still be appealing for a young down-on-her-luck aspiring hero? I could see her getting something out of the Simone or Ahmed Ms. Marvel runs, for instance.

(While Watchmen might seem like the natural pick, I'm pretty sure she'd lose a lot of enjoyment just from picking out all the ways Veidt's plan was obviously gonna fail for x y z reasons. Also dark deconstructions of superhero worlds would probably seem too familiar to her world for her to enjoy it.)

If Taylor would be interested in comics statecraft, Lisa would probably be more interested in comics spycraft and intrigue. Ewing's S.W.O.R.D. would probably scratch the same itch for her that X-Men Red would for Taylor (and Storm dramatically blowing off Doom would probably satisfy her after all the ulcer-inducing negotiations with Accord.) I might also give her Ewings New Avengers and USAvengers runs (look this is gonna include a lot of Al Ewing recs, get used to it early) if only because I feel like she'd enjoy how Roberto gets characterized in those comics. Magnificent bastard solidarity.

If we're giving comics to Brian, we already need to work past his defensive avoidance of anything that seems too childish, so I don't think we're getting anything pre-dark ages. That said, he famously thinks "looking mature" means "sick-ass skulls and leather jackets," so his idea of maturity might skew a bit into McFarlane territory. Ultimately though I think he'd be most comfortable with something where he could plausibly say "this isn't just a comic, it's actually a well-respected piece of literature." I'd want that to mean Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, but it'd probably actually mean The Dark Knight Returns.

As a dark horse pick, I'd give Brian some early New Warriors or Ewing's Contest of Champions, if only because Night Thrasher feels so close to what he wants his vibe to be (dramatic black leather ensemble with a very 90's idea of cool, unflappable expert strategist who pulls his weight despite a powerset with limited applicability, died horribly and came back much later for weirdly impersonal reasons) while also being just ridiculous enough to make me want to see his reaction.

Given Iota's commentary on Alec's pizza habits, I'd think Alec would most be a fan of something intense and bombastic and not mind if its often repetitive. I'd almost say Berserk would be a good match for him, but parts of that that might actually be triggering for him. Maybe some other ultra-violent longrunning work; I haven't read Fist of the North Star but it seems like a safe recommendation; various X-Force runs could work if we're sticking with Western comics.

Rachel really doesn't seem like someone who'd have much appreciation for any aspect of comics. The best bet would be something visually spectacular in a way that could be appreciated on its own, and a plot that's interesting taking issues on their own and not just as part of ongoing runs. I could see Ewing's Immortal Hulk as fitting those criteria; her power gives her an artist's appreciation for Bennett's horrific depictions of the Hulk's transformations (even if praising Bennett for anything feels in poor taste).

Ewing's scripts for each issue of Hulk are clever in a way that I feel Rachel could find entertaining; they don't require an attention she couldn't keep up, but also aren't simple to the point of being condescending. Plus, the thematic focus on "what can and can't be solved through unspeakable acts of destruction" would feel familiar in a way that's less frustrating than normal comic tut-tutting about how obviously we can't attack these guys (plus the greater willingness to say "oh yeah unspeakable destruction definitely is the best way forwards here" would be pretty satisfying).

I feel like Aisha would have more patience for comic tropes than a lot of the other undersiders, (I could see her enjoying the original Fantastic Four run), but at the same time she'd probably enjoy something a bit more complicated and out-there. Ewing's Rocket might be appealing as heist-focused mini, and I feel like the mix of melancholy and absurdity would appeal to her. Rosenberg's Hawkeye: Freefall would work for similar reasons, though replace "melancholy" with "simmering rage."

Morrison's Doom Patrol and The Invisibles both have characters Aisha might relate to for the whole "society largely ignoring or wanting to go away" thing. Plus they both have big weird ideas she'd appreciate, Richard Case's art works well with her aesthetics, and they're both seen as "respectable" series to the point that she might like peppering in references to them in alongside Jules Verne jokes.

Huh, I just realized that Aisha and Brian both ended up chasing an appearance of being mature and somewhat surface-level and off-putting ways. Brian "trust me I'm a normal adult man" and Aisha "I've compiled spider-man quips for every work in the Western Canon and will get frustrated when you don't get them" Laborn, the "something ain't right about that kid" siblings.

(I will say that Morrison's Doom Patrol has some weird black stereotypes so if anyone wants to pitch me on a similar work without Morrison's occasional racism I'd be curious).

I'd give Rowell's run on Runaways to Sabah, if only because "somewhat antivillanous found family group of teens that mostly don't have to worry about anything besides relationship drama" sounds like a nice escape for her. Closer to what she wants the Undersiders to be like. Also, I feel she'd enjoy Kris Anka's focus on fashion in his art.

I don't have a lot to go off for Lily. I could see some of the more recent Captain Marvel runs appealing to her sense of true-blue militant heroism. Ayala's New Mutants or Ahmed's Black Bolt might help combat her whole "villains are ontologically evil" thing, at least to a certain extent.

[genericpuff]

From the standpoint of someone who doesn't even like LO that much. Reading through this gave me a strange sense of discomfort? I think. Something about the combination of the essays, and the digs at the author in a lot of posts, and making a community based on it, and the ranting. It made it feel a lot more group ragging on something than normal fandom re-writes. I can't help but want to say something on the subject (0/3)

Gonna respond to all your asks together if that's okay, from what I can glean there's a word limit on mobile (?) so it makes it very interesting to see who's able to put all their thoughts into one big ask vs. who has to cut them up into parts 😆

So I can understand that discomfort, it's actually one that I also initially felt towards the community when I discovered it. Though even more so because when I found out about antiLO being a thing, I was still a MASSIVE fan of LO and my thought was "wow, these people are losers" LOL but then a lot of what they were saying resonated with me more as I realized the story was going nowhere (it was around the trial arc when Eris was revealed to be the 'reason' for Persephone's wrath).

All that said, I don't think I was wrong to feel off back then even though I don't feel that way now. We have our own takes and ways of approaching certain subjects, and how we feel is how we feel.

I will say that I can't, in any way, take credit for 'creating' the community. AntiLO pre-existed me by years and I was simply welcomed in as my opinions of the comic changed. I was a lot more involved in UnpopularLoreOlympus when it was born around the S2 finale of the comic. So... don't give me any sort of credit in 'owning' this community or anything of that sort, I came in during a period when criticism of the comic was becoming more common practice. I'm just also someone who's very verbose and loud in their opinions which appeals to a lot of people in this community, so I get why people might see me as some kind of "pillar" within it or like I'm the loudest person in the room, but I promise you that doesn't mean I have any sort of ownership over this part of the fandom or that I feel my opinions carry any more weight than the people around me. It's just a community, after all, not a religion.

It's true that saying I'm not making money off Rekindled doesn't mean I'm not benefiting off it in other ways. But the 'benefits' are still kinda... nothing? in the grand scheme of things? like okay great I have loads of people reading my stuff every update but like, this is still just Tumblr lmao none of this is real and as soon as Rekindled is over, I might be lucky to bring some of the readers over into my next project, but I doubt whatever I do next will get as popular as Rekindled was. All the "benefits" I get are virtually the same as what people writing fanfiction get on AO3 get or what people doing redraw videos on Youtube get. It's fake Internet points for making fan creations.

And that's okay, because that's sorta just the nature of fandom in general, throughout any niche community. People will be naturally drawn to what's familiar and what I do here appeals to the people who are familiar with LO and the criticisms of it, often people who agree with those criticisms. The Zelda community has LinkedUniverse, Pokemon has Hanamusa, Attack on Titan has communities that are dedicated to loving the anime, hating the anime, and even dunking on people who don't 'get' the anime, Undertale has every single crazy rewrite and rewrites-of-rewrites that have been spawned from its fanbase. Did you know there's an entire community of people who discuss and argue over fire alarms? I didn't, but when I found out about it, it was after listening to a video on Youtube discussing all the interconnected drama of the fire alarm community. Like that's wild and seems so stupid and pointless... but it matters to the people who are in it, and my opinion of how they operate isn't going to change how it makes them feel to be a part of that space. That's kinda just human nature, we create our own little microcosms of things to bond over so for people within those microcosms, any amount of disagreement or discomfort will feel massive in proportion.

I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is that a lot of this stuff feels crazy loud but it's really only that loud because it's occupying a single room.

The reality is that Rekindled is still a very niche project dedicated to a niche webtoon that's a part of a niche medium. As loud as it is within here, it's still only because it's such a closed community. Anyone outside of the Webtoons community has zero clue what it is. The 'attention' that I'm getting is still from other niche people who occupy a very specific interest.

And that's not even exclusive to Rekindled, despite Webtoons attempts to sell LO as a 'worldwide phenomenon', a lot of people don't know it exists and couldn't care less. Does that mean my rantings about the comic and its creator matter any less to me or the people who are interested in them? Not really. Is it all pointless? Maybe, but not everything really needs to have some bigger point. We're all kinda just here spending time talking about something we both love and can't stand. What I say about LO and do with Rekindled is undoubtedly inconsequential and pointless to people who aren't in the room. That's fine. That's why I keep it all in my own house. There are definitely people who talk about it outside of the home but that's far from what I can control.

That said, I think LO also does fall into a very unique category where it's very easy to do rewrites and redraws of it simply because it, in and of itself, is a rewrite. Rekindled is far from being the first "fix it" fic, not only of LO but also of any piece of media in general, it's not really a new phenomenon (but again, when it's loud, it can be easy to go "well clearly YOU had to influence this"). People are drawn to retelling LO or 'fixing' it because LO is based on Greek myth. If it weren't for that, no, I don't think people would be as interested in doing so. It's because we literally have a solid foundation of reference material - the myths and original poems - that we can go "hey, why did LO do this? it should have / could have been xyz". You can't really do that as much with a purely original work besides wish fulfillment of "what if xyz happened" because whatever an original piece of work winds up being is clearly what it was meant to be. We have nothing to compare it against.

But with LO, we know what it could have been because we know what it was trying to be since day 1 - a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone. That's not to say we always knew exactly what Rachel was planning on doing with it, but it's not hard to be disappointed when we see certain mythical stories being established in LO - such as the tale of Eros and Psyche, the Titanomachy, etc. - only to see them get dropped or completely mishandled.

On the one hand I could use HADES and Stray Gods as examples of popular media that don't get 'rewritten' the same way LO does because while they have their own unique interpretations of the myths they're based on, they still feel like properly thought out stories that appreciate the source material. LO, by comparison, feels like it's written by someone who hates Greek myth.

But on the other hand, those rewrites may absolutely exist and I'm just not aware of them because I don't occupy those rooms! The world is only as big as we perceive it to be.

That said, it's always sort of ironic to me when people say Rekindled is "riding off the coattails of LO" because while I can understand their sentiment - because obviously it's a direct re-creation of LO - that opinion seems to operating from the assumption that LO was ever not riding off Greek myth's coattails to begin with.

And no, I don't think my criticizing of LO on an LO-focused blog should in any way be conflated with "media isn't allowed to be bad". I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm into loads of bad media. I'm also fully capable of enjoying a piece of media but also shit-talking it without actually feeling any sort of vitriol towards it. House M.D. is one of my favorite TV shows but goddamn some of the plots are just so dramatic and out-of-this-world that you can't help but laugh at them (and that's why we have spaces like /r/okaybuddyvicodin LOL). One of my favorite games growing up was Starfox Adventures because I had never played the original Starfox games but I had played loads of Zelda and Adventures was basically Zelda but with Starfox, and I know there are plenty of people who will go "but puff, that game is ass!" and I know! But I love it regardless.

With LO, it's not a matter of "bad media shouldn't exist!" it's a matter of observing what makes it so bad and why that's had a negative impact on both the audience it attracts (primarily teenagers and children) as well as the culture it's taking its ideas from. If LO was just some "so bad its good" webtoon that was easy to enjoy but also poke fun at, I would have zero issue. It's the fact that it's blatantly problematic in its writing and intentions but still hailed as the #1 webtoon on the platform (webtoons in and of themselves being a medium that I've lived in for over a decade so it's virtually impossible to get away from whatever is influencing the culture as a whole) while winning all these accolades for being "brilliantly written" and its creator is given a voice over Greek culture when she herself is not Greek or even well-read on Greek culture in any capacity - that's the issue and why I've spent so much time talking about LO. And if it wasn't me, it would be anyone else, because the problem has been around for ages and people have been trying to get the word out about it for years.

I don't necessarily think every 'fix it fic' is built equally. I think it's a case by case thing. A lot of people are deadass just doing it for fun and to be a part of a community, and I think that's wonderful. There are also people who try to do this but ultimately disrespect whatever the creator was going for by somehow implying that their own original ideas were inferior just by existing, or using their fix-it fics as a way to deliberately harass the original creators (ex. whatever the fuck 'art lore' is on TikTok, based on what I've seen it seems purely made for bullying budding artists and talking shit which is... gross af, but I don't think it's anywhere near the same as readers of LO calling out its highly successful award-winning creator for having zero clue what she's doing with her comic lmao). I don't think a blanket statement of "fix it fics are bad" accomplishes anything because it depends on a variety of factors like the person's intentions and what they're trying to accomplish. Many fanfictions in general could be called 'fix it fics' even if the creator 100% loved the source material with zero issue - because they're still saying "what if xyz happened instead"?

Me, personally? I'm someone who loves Greek myth and who used to adore LO. I was very discouraged and upset when I saw it turned into what it became, and I wanted to try my own hand at creating something new out of the rubble that could give me closure. It's what I choose to do with my time and other people seem to enjoy it as well. I'm sure there's loads to criticize and speculate on regarding my 'intentions' in creating it, but at the end of the day I'm sorta just doing what I want to do with my time because I have a lot of thoughts and ideas I need to get out of my head and many of them are thoughts and ideas that other people like reading about.

If you feel uncomfortable by the amount I talk about it here and the way I talk about it, that's fine. Those are your feelings. There are loads of other antiLO-themed blogs to read that might not give you that same vibe. Even I have certain icks towards certain opinions within the antiLO community, I've seen some people be genuinely shitty and I'm sure that's ironic to hear considering you're describing your own discomfort towards my stuff, but we all have different tolerances towards different things at the end of the day.

I do my part to keep things in my own house of a neighborhood that's really small in the grand scheme of things. It just feels like a big neighborhood if you don't travel. There will inevitably come a day where I'll pack my boxes and move elsewhere, talk about new things and write essays about other topics. That's obviously not today but I definitely don't want this to just be like, my entire identity or the rest of my life LOL it's just something I've chosen to spend my free time doing and I'm content with that. Maybe a year from now I'll feel differently, who knows? At the very least I'm hoping to one day finish Rekindled because no, I don't want this to actually be my identity for the rest of my life, change is a good thing LOL but what that change will bring is, for now, a mystery. Here's hoping wherever I end up at least brings its own uniquely good times like I've had here :' )

Sorry, that was a very long response with a lot of sorta aimless muddling over the topic at hand, but thank you for the opportunity to discuss it regardless ! because I do think it's important to find that 'grounding point' when it comes to stuff like this. because as much as I get riled up over LO, yeah, at the end of the day, it's just a dumb webtoon and I don't wanna go soiling myself over it LOL but I'm also just like... running a Tumblr blog with my personal thoughts and ideas, no more or no less. Even the "attention" I get is still only 200-400 notes per new episode of Rekindled, which pales in comparison to any real metrics of "success" imo LMAO again, it just feels loud because this is a niche community made up of a lot of the same names and faces; step outside of it and no one gives a shit LOL

[steelestallion]

I’m sorry to ask you this if you’re just on here to mind your own business and be horny, but I have no idea where else to ask- I’m a cis woman who finds forcemasc really appealing, but I have mixed feelings about interacting with it because it seems to be a really T4T genre and I don’t want to disrespect anyone. Do you think it’s okay for cis women to be into it, or should I keep searching for a different similar label?

I find that masculinization kinks are really niche, so I’ve had trouble finding a label if you’re not a lesbian or are only interested in being hyper-masculine in the bedroom.

Howdy there,

I say anyone can to be into forcemasc. If cis men can be into sissification/forcefem stuff while not being trans, I think it’s only fair the opposite exist.

I think its mainly T4T stuff because trans dudes seem to be the epicenter of content and we like what we like. I would love for forcemasc to be as mainstream and popular as forcedfem, and think it would do really good to raise trans dudes and ftm content to the equal popularity of mtf and sissy content. This is just my opinion, but I think that any trans dude that says this kink only is only for a certain demographic is thinking backwards, so I say don’t worry.

What you mean by label I’m not sure, you can say you have a hypermasculinity kink. You can say you’re into forcemasc, it’s up to you to decide how far you take it. It doesn’t have to be a 24/7 fetish like a lot of content explores. It can be in the bedroom only and I think that’s a very interesting concept to explore in terms of loving masculinity and freeing it from the toxic societal cage it has.

You’re a cis woman and want to be the man in bed? Be the fucking man! You’re straight too? Make that guy your f****t! Make him call you daddy and say he loves your cock and enjoy how good it makes you feel. Or whatever Dominatrixes do that all the time just differently. And they’re still ladies outside of sex.

°˖⋆.°𓃗 .°˖⋆ °˖⋆.°˖⋆ *gallops away*

[drinkyourvillainjuice]

Secretary's DYVJ OC

Or, a study in character design by the secretary.

Hello my audience of fools and creatives, this is how me, the Secretary, designed past characters for Drink Your Villain Juice. I've designed a couple of the beloved gamers such as random one-off heroes (hello, Portrait, my beloved), and the one and only Wil (which some of you really love).

The background:

We have a free spot on the SCUM team, which is essentially a super-violent villain team doing very atrocious team for what appears to be no reason in particular. While this isn't entirely true since tragically people have motivations to hurt others (even if it's just fun!), SCUM attracts, well, scummy people and also people who may or may have no other choice than to choose these sorts of groups. They may be groomed into a role, forced to rely on violence to keep certain people at bay, or might just have been repeatedly failed by the systems than they were supposed to be protected by.

With this free spot in mind and the other characters already having fixed roles, we need a character to fit a specific niche.

The niche is secret for the audience, but essentially, we need a female character that counterbalances the other female characters within the team + illustrates a typical trope of villain characters. As you might have noticed, many of the characters within the story kinda play on tropes: Surpass is super(wo)man but a jerk, MC is a trope on the chosen hero being a villain, etc.

I'm pretty interested in making a character who might unironically have some sort of sex appeal going on. So let's brainstorm:

The base concept:

I think female characters within superhero fiction often have to rely on sex appeal to keep an audience engaged. It's rare to find a character like this within TV or comics or books that has any sort of depth to them - but the thing is, this is a one-off villain so how do I give the audiences the tool to discern the character's backstory. I have a couple of ideas:

Lack of armor and mask: This is a reckless character. She lacks foresight in protecting herself. Maybe she doesn't view herself in a good light, and maybe she doesn't even care if her face is shown to the world. Maybe she lost too much to care about her body being hurt and her face being plastered on every wall - or maybe that's exactly what she wants to punish herself.

Collected jewelry from her victims: A means to intimidate, really. If this is someone who has lost it all, gaining these small possessions mean that she holds controls over somebody. It might be tied to her power - or not! - but it is obviously tied to her psyche. Maybe she was riding the high life and it came crashing down, or maybe it's a physical manifestation of all the lives she had taken in the past as a physical mark on her body.

Trashy expensive clothes: To really solidifies the concept of someone who has lost it, maybe anchor the physical manifestation of the character by trashed wealth. Clothes that are too expensive or reserved for special occasions are being torn apart. They are mish-mashed because the character is holding down to past wealth despite the lack of coordination. What if she is also taking the clothes of the female victims? Could she be green with envy that someone is living the life she wanted to life or had lived?

With these three characters point, let's move to appearance.

The physical manifestation of her psyche, and what it means to be her:

She is an attractive woman down on her luck. She fits the specific standard of beauty within the region. She wears clothes and jewelry that are expensive, but obviously aren't hers by the way they don't fit. Her clothes are poorly mended clothes, showing that she tries to put forward a tidy image, with blood that doesn't seem to wash out, implying not everybody gave their clothes willingly. She also has too many necklaces, bracelets, and rings, especially wedding rings. If someone shone a light on her, people would be blinded by the dazzling. She wears too much makeup, caking her features, and it hides her real emotions from the cracks and drip of sweat that she is obviously exerting. Her lack of armour reveals a body that isn't honed for combat or physical exertion, implying that whatever makes her able to keep going is more psychological than physical. She may be a tad overweight, and "letting herself go" would most likely be what she would say about herself, but someone with a keen eye might be able to grasp that she is comfortable in this new life. She carries herself with a lack of confidence that makes herself appear as arrogant. She doesn't flinch, she doesn't get scared, she doesn't run - but she is clearly despondent at whatever her fate might be.

It would take a miracle to fix her, but by that point, she might have killed too much to go back.

Tying it all together with a knot:

I opted for the name Spring Breaker. Spring Break is a time for young people to go out somewhere sunny and get tanned - or at least, that's what I've learned from Jersey Shore. I think this character might be a past college student, having ignited during her spring break, and losing what was making herself. Her power should also be based on water. It would make sense with the theme of womanhood being a failed state for her since water is often seen as a feminine and passive element. But she isn't passive, she only has an image of it to probably protect what she holds on to - which is her appearance. Maybe, her power could involve drowning people which a lot of sirens, which one could say that she is, are known to do to take the riches of sailors.

So what about a young woman who was on spring break and was involved in someone's death by drowning. She might have pushed them into the ocean, or maybe have forced them underwater, due to her envy for their wealth. She ignited with the ability to constantly relive that trauma that ruined her life. In a way to punish herself, she names herself Spring Breaker, lacks a real civilian or mask identity, and puts herself in situations where she finds herself forced to drown people. She also wants to go back to before, when she was able to buy expensive clothes and have the jewelry she liked, but every time she grabs someone's chain and puts it on her neck, she finds herself back in the pool causing her downfall.

Her place as a villain:

Spring Breaker is an infiltrator in SCUM. She is what one could be best described as an assassin, taking out targets in the surroundings of the fight, and slowing going toward the fight. She takes out people from the back and makes her way forward. Her power is simple: she coats anything she touches in a thin film of water, dry drowning those with the misfortune to be grappled by her. Her ignition gave her the compulsion to steal valuables - or maybe she had it all along but now has a very good excuse - which enables her ability to rob people. Her costume changes based on what happened last time. She might wear a two-piece swimsuit with a feathered boa one time, or a see-through babydoll dress with lace underwear, or maybe a full-length gown with three bullet holes she couldn't mend around the abdomen. In every case, she leaves behind her drowned and drowning bodies, stripped of valuables.

She is obviously a bad person, but it's hard not to pity her by the way she sulks around. Some may say she should be put down for her own good, but others think she should taken out for the bodies left in her wake. Spring Breaker thinks it's a bit of column A and column B.

Final notes:

i think i can fix her

[oscconfessions]

Hey, so, can we stop treating people like idiots for liking or disliking something?

I totally get if someone is like "Grr, I don't like Firey and Leafy's arc cause it made no sense" my brother in Christ it literally could not have been more clear?? But if people are like "I liked that arc cause it was cute" or "I disliked it because it was rushed and shoved in" that's not idiocy, thats opinions. People are allowed to have those. And 90% of object show opinions are actually not hurting anyone.

I feel like this is more a issue on other apps but I get talked down to because I like bfdia and tpot but not bfb. I'll admit that dealing with the bullshit writing of Warrior Cats has made me very easy to please and I'm not very good at detecting bad writing on a first watch but I think people maybe people don't consider that maybe, POSSIBLY, I enjoy bfdia and tpot cause I find them fun? They're silly? They appeal to my humour, interests and desperate need for angst material.

Maybe, just maybe, both of those shows have elements that pry into my niche and embarrassing comfort interest. Maybe you don't know the whole fucking picture?? Maybe actually try to understand peoples opinions before jumping right to 'you're an idiot with no media literacy'

There are elements of bfb I like, elements of bfdia and tpot that I don't like. I'm easy to please and have self confidence in my opinions with the strength of mashed potatoes (aka, I can be swayed very easily) but I'm not a brainrotted child because of my object show opinions

.

[drdemonprince]

This is prompted by your most recent substack about fame, because my point is extremely tangential, I'm putting it here.

It's interesting to have seen the internet go through many stages. From the newsgroups/BBS era, to internet forums, to blogs, to social media, and how the respective environments shaped things.

In the early days, it's very much a group thing, some people became Big Name posters, pseudonymous, but still a group thing. The blog era was more personal, but still something made by someone who's just a person, even if not literally pseudonymous. Also, still text based, a lot of it even often. Social media changed that, with it's focus on follower counts on one hand and to snippets of text (twitter) or images (insta), and even though it's social media-ness is debatable, video (insta, youtube). The semi-anonymous nature however, was completely lost by now.

The doing it because you enjoyed it, or whatever, also recedes into the background because this is where monetization really takes off. The deleterious effects of the interaction between monetization and follower counts (notability) need no introduction, but painting with broad strokes, make something appeal as broad as possible deepens the flattening effect a medium like video already has, the visual aspects often being more important than the messages. It also has a much higher barrier to entry. Spinning up your own blog is cheap, text takes only a tiny amount data. Video is not. It's expensive to make (especially if you want slick videos), expensive to serve, so it's predisposed to big, single platforms that can leverage economies of scale.

The natural result is that you have a few people with big audiences, instead of many people with small audiences. If audiences is even the right word for that. If I'm talking about say, some TV show on my blog, and someone responds, it's a fairly equal conversation. More between peers, of sorts, just two people talking about something they share. As opposed to a Youtuber who makes a video about it with 100,000s of viewers. Because there are so many fewer voices, you lose the breadth of conversation too, narrowing to a small range of popular topics, and the distinction between You, and You as Your Brand gets eroded.

It's kinda notable in the autism sphere. Blogs where people talk about their experiences, how they dealt or didn't deal with things, have fallen off. Twitter came and went, and now there's Youtube and insta, where everything gets simplified down to a few slides or a 10 minute video about only the most basic aspects. Which is just... sad. I wouldn't have known that autistic burnout is a Thing many people struggle with if not for a blog post a friend came across and shared one day.

There was a comment from someone, a while ago, about how they used to have ASMR videos on, until they were able to get out into nature, and their desire for those videos completely disappeared. We're all very deprived. Of social contact, foremost. The pandemic poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire I feel. Latching onto someone 'famous' in a surrogate of social contact & context, like that person with their ASMR videos, feels like an understandable (though not good) outcome of that, which brings with it very regrettable excesses.

I think this is all pretty much a correct analysis, thank you! Though I would qualify that we have shifted away from the period of the Youtube mega content creator a social media ecosystem of intimate-seeming connections with smaller influencers, these days. Think of your Twitch streamers with a dedicated base of like 50-200 viewers per stream (and a Discord and a Patreon that supports them), the fitness Instagrams that sell meal plans online, the tarot witches and activist influencers offering one on one sessions, etc. Those communities can be more niche, but they still offer the illusion of a connection -- and if anything, that illusion is more strong because the creator is a "micro" famous person, and can take time to interact closely with fans here and there. We might already be heading out of that period of social media, though, especially with the disintegration of Twitter and the slow death of Meta's apps, too. I don't know what comes next but I hope we are due for a reappraisal of all of this, and the norms surrounding it.

[crazysodomite]

Do you have any advice for bad artists that don't make fanart and never get notes? I feel so embarrassed and sad posting my original ms paint drawings and pencil doodles on here and tagging them with every relevant thing I can think of ';( how do people who dont tag anything grow the number of people who like their art?

I don't believe there is such a thing as bad artists.

I think getting noticed online has a lot of factors. The most important one is probably appeal. If you create art that appeals to the most amount of people, you get the most attention. If you create art that appeals to a niche, you get attention from that niche of people. Appeal =/= Quality. For example, I probably create art that mostly appeals to furries. People who are repelled by the mere concept of furries aren't going to interact with my art even if I was extremely skilled.

A lot also depends on algorithms. My art was getting 1 like and 1 retweet (that was me retweeting my own art lol) because I didn't know how to satisfy the twitter algorithm. The quality of my art didn't matter whatsoever.

At the end of the day you need to stop paying attention to numbers because you will never be satisfied. You could say this is easy for me to say because I Do get notes now or whatever but people used to not give a fuck about anything I did for years. Now I just draw because I like it and I draw what I enjoy and some people are interested in that and some are not. If you are yourself interested in your own work people will start also paying attention and if they don't it doesn't really matter because you're doing what you enjoy. Some people go unnoticed just because they create something most people don't understand.

A lot of people don't interact with anything they don't find appealing or that doesn't fit the theme of their blog or whatever. People rarely interact with art just for the sake of it unfortunately. And that's not a reflection of yourself or your art. It's just how it is.

Going out of your way and interacting with other people and their art is also important. If you just post into the void and don't interact with other artists or try to build community it will be very difficult for other people to find you. When you interact with others they notice you though obviously don't just talk to people to get them to look at your art. Share stuff you like and uplift others just because. Even if they don't end up doing the same. There is a very prevalent attitude of people not wanting anything to do with artists they see as 'below' their skill level or whatever. It's tough out there for people with art that isn't seen as 'high quality' (whatever that even means). But thats unfortunately just how it is. Other peoples opinion of you isn't a reflection of your worth.

Also I think adding a lot of tags might be a problem and get your posts shadowbanned but I'm not sure...

[ducktracy]

I'm curious, do you have a favorite classic Disney short? 👉👈

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD Hockey Homicide gets the crowning achievement for that! i've found all my favorite Disney shorts are the ones most (successfully) derivative of Warner cartoons. Clown of the Jungle fits the same niche... i also watched Little Toot for the first time recently and as a lifelong fan of the Andrews Sisters i LOVED IT. THE MUSICCCCC IS STUPIDLY GOOD and i could get lost in its spectacle.

i will say i just watched Duck Pimples for the first time the other day and LOVED IT. genuinely a little burned up it took me so long to see it. it's like... Who Killed Who meets Rooty Toot Toot meets The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. i never expected to see this sort of abstraction in a Disney short. Donald is unsurprisingly my favorite of the characters (well, technically the Aracuan bird is but he barely exists </3) and so i'm excited to see more of his filmography. i tend to prefer '30s Donald but this was very fun

I'M VERY HYPOCRITICAL WITH MY DISNEY TASTES.. i'm averse to the shorts because something about it feels very manufactured goody two-shoes wholesome, and yet i absolutely love the earlier Silly Symphonies, Dumbo and Snow White are my favorite Disney films and i've cried over both multiple times, etc... i really need to do more Disney research because it's been such a blindspot for me. i think i react most strongly to the spectacle and lushness of the art and just the historical magnitude of the studio, and all of that is mainly concentrated in the '30s. when they begin to shed that for their short films and instead try to imitate other studios or do their own attempts at comedy, i'm thinking "well, i could just be watching the Warner or MGM alternative of this instead". IUNNO. i'm at a very odd limbo with Disney. i articulated it a bit more concisely elsewhere (this is what i get for confining all my ramblings and essays on Discord..)

COMPLETELY RAMBLING. BUT YEAH! Hockey Homicide is probably my favorite as of right now, but i enjoy a lot of the '30s Silly Symphonies i've seen as well. i like Donald and want to see more of him--my uncle told me i'd probably like Uncle Scrooge and so i would definitely like to commit to reading Carl Barks' comics because my only real exposure to Barks is a LOONEY TUNES story he did for Dell with Porky and Bugs that is a bit... his ducks are more appealing. but there's some fun grandiosity in the staging you wouldn't get elsewhere. i'm not a huge adventure fan but i'm very curious to see what he has up his sleeves.

nevertheless, i've been liking more Disney the more i've been exposed to it and react most strongly to the '30s stuff. i think i'm more interested in its historical significance than the actual meat of the shorts themselves, which is why i should probably do my research about them. the most well known and easy to research animation studio is the one i know the least about (this is hyperbole but it is particularly egregious to me!)

[wisteria-lodge]

As an older hp fan who hasn't been in the fandom for a while, it's so cool to see someone writing thoughtful fic still! I love tpotp! It always makes my week!

I've read a ton of old snupin fic but nothing recent. Do you have any recs for long snupin fic (wip is okay) that was published in the last year or so? I trust your taste and think your fic is proof that new content can shine just as bright as the classics!

Thank you for the lovely note!

Unfortunately, I don't really have any recent long Snupin recs (although I'll definitely add on to this post, if I find something good.)

Snape/Lupin... it's kinda a retro ship, and the fic I was looking for didn't seem to exist, and so now we have Prison of the Phoenix and I'm honestly glad other people like it too. One of the early comments was "Checking for Snupin updates like it’s 2005," and like, fair. Sirius/Lupin is SO ubiquitous, and has been for so long, it kind of is *the* Harry Potter ship, and Snape has had such a weird and interesting journey as a character in terms of canon, fanon, and canon ret-cons.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this project is that my co-writer @niche-pastiche and I had very different opinions on Snape, back in the day. They were kinda a snape girlie and I very much was not, so it was really interesting to unpack those old responses, reconcile them, and come up with something that's hopefully interesting. I love that you used the word "thoughtful" - that's exactly what I'm going for.

I read a lot of Wolfstar back in the day, and I *was* a Sirius fan (unlike Niche.) So he's been another interesting aspect here. He keeps showing up, and definitely not as any kind of straightforward /villain/ mostly because I think it can be kind of boring and reductive when fics treat exes that way. This project absolutely made the Severus appeal click for me, and it made the Sirius appeal click for Niche.

A lot of the popular recent stuff with these characters is also Marauders Era, and for this one at least, the fun is engaging with and putting a different (critical) lens on the books-as-is. And you don't get as much Marauders Snupin, although do I think it would be fun. My pitch for a long Snupin Marauders era fic would probably be... Severus invents the Wolfsbane potion early. Like maybe he spent sixth year just feverishly working on it as a trauma response. And then you go into how that would shift the existing dynamic in year seven, when Severus is still Severus, but now he has this skill that Sirius, James, and Remus REALLY value.

[biscuitdragonwithastick]

Parasite Kink, A Poorly Written Essay

I'm not sure how interested y'all are in an introspective essay of my parasite kink, but it's 12 AM and I got class tomorrow. I might as well.

Monsterfucker, as far as the word goes, is an umbrella term for sexual interest in non-human entities. In my opinion, the spectrum of Monterfuckery goes from nonhumanoids (tentacles, plants, insects, cosmic horrors, etc), (humanoids (werewolves, vampires, demons, robots, etc) and the very-humanoids (catboys, hucows, etc). All one needs to be a Monsterfucker is to have an interest in something distinctly nonhuman, whether that be through clear visual means or subtle mental and physical.

To that extent, parasites are a beloved monster of us fuckers, but rarely get the love they so deserve. Why is that? Well, across all monsters, parasites hold their own tropes that get covered just as well by others:

Want to be unknowingly corrupted against your will by a powerful foe that has no interest in your wellbeing? Demons, Cosmic horrors, Aliens, etc. got you covered.

Want to become a host to a growing population of critters within your womb? Any and all monsters can cover that front.

But what about carrying a disease that can be spread onto others, through sexual means with sexual side effects? Parasites are the only monsters that cover this within the Monsterfucker niche. (Though if you're willing to spread the Monsterfucker umbrella a little further, you got your Mad Scientist. But we're not talking about them here.) Regardless of prelude, you can have your Demons infect infect others with demonic STD's, an outbreak of tentacle monsters that can only survive within the innards of unsuspecting individuals, or even a lycanthropy parasite.

Though, that brings up the divide of the parasitism kink. On its own, it's a bit of an umbrella term as well. I personally count sex disease and parasites under the same niche (corruption and spread being the forefront of the appeal). Along with further division: its purpose.

Does it originate from a specific monster/place? A divine being looking to create worshipers regardless of consent? An asteroid some hapless individual happened to stumble upon? An insect species that only needs you for your body to grow its population?

Does it exist as a disease to take over the mind and body? Turn individuals into mooing cows that'll fuck themselves on the phallic object? Is it a demonic infestation to turn humans into proper cum factories?

Is the parasite mainly for spreading or corrupting? Is the victim unaware of their parasite? Do they care at all? Do they fight its corruption? Can they do it successfully?

Does the parasite want? Or is it as mindless as any virus in the real world?

All these questions. Because parasites are a rather vague monster. They can take on any origin and lore you could ever want. Though all monsters can have those similar qualities. However, monsters on their own don't take on the parasitism quality by default. But that's what makes monsters so lovely anyways. The ability to adapt them to your specific desires is what makes writing about them so fun. Why writing smut is so fun.

All this to say my enjoyment of parasites comes from my love of corruption of the self mixed with the corruption of others. A permanent change made against ones will by something using you for its own means while also focusing on changing others.

[autumnmobile12]

When people say, 'You can't ship that! Those characters have never met!'

Those characters have never met.

...and???

...

I found a tiktok the other day where a bunch of people in the comments were going on about how stupid it was that people were shipping X with Y because those characters never met in canon or only shared one interaction in canon and how '...the fandom is unfortunately like that.'

So here's the thing:

My sister and I used to play a game where we would come up with ships based on names pulled from a hat and judging what random pairings came out of it. Didn't matter the fandom, didn't matter the characters. (Except age gaps that were too wide for comfort and underage-adult ships.) The crazier the better, and we came up with some pretty weird but wholesome ones. My sister also has an entire fic of one-shots featuring Soul Eater rare-pairs that are so rare, they are unicorns in that fandom.

Crossover ships (platonic or romantic or otherwise) are my jam.

One of my favorite ships is a crossover ship. Shizuo Heiwajima (Durarara!!) and Adult!Mai Taniyama (Ghost Hunt) sure as hell have never met, I’m pretty certain I’m the only one here, but I didn't let that stop me.

I've shipped Seras (Hellsing) and Lenore (Castlevania Netflix). No particular reason, I just like it.

The cast of D. Gray Man is so diverse and insane that you can put any two characters together and you'll get either an interesting ship, an interesting conversation, or at the very least, a very entertaining argument.

The My Hero Academia fandom likes to write fanfiction where Mirko and Hawks are besties. Those characters never talk in canon. They share maybe one or two scenes together and they don't directly interact. It's just vibes.

And 'just vibes' is pretty much the entire essence behind some ships.

The Castlevania Netflix fandom loves Trephacard so much that I once saw a post here on Tumblr where someone admitted they legitimately forgot it wasn't a canon ship. Alucard and Trevor interact quite a bit, sure, but the point still stands. It's fanon, people love it, deal with it.

The Harry Potter Drapple ship was a thing. (Or maybe it's still a thing, I don't know, I'm not in the Harry Potter fandom.) So don't tell me I can't ship X with Y because they've never met in canon when there is a literal person x inanimate object ship floating around the internet.

I. Don't. Care that X and Y never met. Maybe they have some niche thing in common was worth exploring. Maybe they have similar personalities. Maybe they're total opposites and that was the appeal. Maybe I just woke up and felt like it. The whole point of fanfiction is that does not have to be canon-compliant. Did you expect a word for word document of the source material?

X and Y have certainly never met. But what if they did? Is that not what fanfiction is for?

We're here to have fun, express ourselves, and maybe work through personal issues we got going on in private.

Personally, after coming from some smaller fandoms that primarily work with only one or two ships and nobody mixes it up, I like the variety of a multi-ship fandom. Or no ships at all. It’s nice to also avoid the drama when you don't feel like reading the shipping material.

At the end of the day, don't go shaming/harassing people for shipping what they like, whether it's a mainstream ship or a rare-pair that's so rare it's got an audience of one. If it's a ship you don't like or find problematic, just don't read it. Go find something you do like. (Trust me, there's a part of the Black Butler fandom I stay far away from.)

Let people like what they like, let people be weird, let people build their ships from scratch if they want.

Tag everything properly.

Have fun.

Or Reepicheep will pay you a visit.

And to anyone who says, 'You can't ship that, those characters have never met.'

[seirindono]

Taking a more specific stab at it: Bleach or Trigun?

If I had to choose, I'd say Trigun? It's the one that appeals to me most visually and universe wise but that's a casual interest.

One of my friends is really into Vash, so she'd probably love it if I drew him though lol

If we're talking big mainstream shonens, I have 2 in mind that are still very popular, and a few others a bit more niche (80s or older)?

She/They, it's on my bio!