So is a tumblr revival a thing? Twitter sucks, facebook moreso, and engagement was always better on tumblr anyway. I might just spend sometime re-branding myself and make my tumblr look more like 2023 me than 2013 me
People don’t like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn’t be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they’re basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.
Like it’s just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like “we’re using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can” and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.
Actually, I realized my real point here: we all need to make our art weirder. Please make weird art. I want more stuff like Prequel Adventure and 17776 and MyHouse.wad and I want it now. Capitalism thrives on conformity. We must be weird at all costs.
not to throw myself into discourse or anything but fandom went downhill the moment fans began holding up fandom content to mainstream content standards
Elaborate pls.
Shipping is no longer about “hey I think these characters have an interesting dynamic and I want to explore what they would be like together”, it’s “but it needs to be canon, it needs to be healthy, it needs to be representation”
Headcanons are no longer personal opinions but “you are wrong and always have been wrong”, “you are DIRECTLY going against canon with this and here’s a list of reasons why this is so!”
Do I even need to bring up the “fiction = reality” argument here that’s currently so prevalent in fandom circles that, sure, definitely has some truth in it when you’re considering a piece of mainstream media which is going to reach millions of people, but not so much when you’re applying it to a fanfiction with 100 views tops
There are certain things fans want to see in their mainstream content, and that’s okay! I do that too! Diversity is a necessity in media and it’s wonderful that the mainstream media is finally taking steps to rectify that, no matter how small. Fans can now openly communicate with content creators on social media and get them to confirm all manner of headcanons, and that’s good too!
Except some fans have run with this and started using it against fandom, and suddenly you’ve ended up with fans terrified to put forth their own content because it doesn’t fit into the requirements they’re requesting from the mainstream.
One of the best examples to illustrate this recent shift that I can think of is (oh god here we go I’m not even in this fandom) Reylo. If it were to become canon in the films? Sure, feel free to criticise the creators behind the decision all you want! However, exploring the potential such a relationship could have in a fanfiction no-one’s going to read exceptother people interested in the same idea doesn’t open it up to this same criticism.
tl;dr: through wanting to transform the canon, fans are forgetting how to transform the canon for themselves into their own fanworks and this is leading to fans criticising each other on the same level with which they criticise mainstream media without considering the history & small nature of fandom and the intention of fans in their production of content
I agree with what you’re saying, but I do want to point out that sometimes those fanfics with only 100 views end up getting more views and becoming mainstream media (namely, 50 shades of grey).
I agree with everything else you said - I don’t think that what’s mainstream should dictate what’s in fandom, but when stories get big (and just before becoming mainstream), should they still be excluded from criticism?
This is a good point, but allow me to use 50 Shades of Grey as an example since you’ve brought it up:
50 Shades of Grey, in its original form as Twilight fanfiction, was fanfiction written for fandom consumption and published in a fandom space.
EL James, in deciding to publish it, took that fanfiction out of the fandom space and opened it up to full public consumption.
And in turning that fanfic into a published novel, in removing it from its fandom space and placing it in a literature space, EL James should have done her research, or at least sought out critical opinions which influenced the novel’s transition from a fanfic written entirely to amuse herself to a published work.
Does this mean we should be criticising fanfictions which gain popularity in fandom in case the authors decide to do as EL James did and publish it as an original work??
In my opinion, no.
Fanfictions published in fandom spaces are written freely, given freely. We have no way of judging why an author felt the need to write their fanfics and fanfiction authors do not need to justify themselves even if they do (to use 50 Shades again) write fucked up dynamics in a romantic way, or haven’t done any research on a topic central to their work such as BDSM, etc. If, however, you choose to edit your fanfiction into an original work, it no longer exists in a fandom space and you should be aware of that.
Those popular fanfictions? Remain excluded from criticism because they still exist in a fandom space. If you find aspects of a popular fanfiction to be harmful or worthy of criticism in some way, there’s the back button, or even better, a blank word page to begin writing your own fanfic.
watching supernanny is so surreal because it’s like my cat from hell where 99.9% of the time it’s always the parents fucking up and never the kids as they’re just abiding by how they’ve been raised
parents: my children are spawns of satan, every day i wake up to them screaming and running around the home where they’re always knocking shit over and causing a mess. they are so rude and they never calm down and we’re on our last legs because we want a divorce because of them
supernanny: do they have any toys?
parents: do they have any what
parents: my kids disrespect me all the time and don’t listen to a single thing I say and I’ve tried everything to fix it but none of it has worked, you’re our last hope supernanny
supernanny: do you ever spend time with them, listen to them, talk to them or show interest in their lives at all?
parents: no why would I do that
I once whatched an episode of supernanny (we had a Brazilian version) and the dad was PISSED at supernanny for saying he couldn’t hit his kids because “I was raised like that and turned out just fine” and she dead ass looked him in the eye and asked “do you resent your parents? Do you love and trust them? Did you always tell them the truth and counted on them, or did you hide things from them in fear of their response?” and when he was like”… well, that’s just how parents and kids go” she was like “no, it isn’t. Do you really want your children to live like that? Do you want your kids to respect you or do you want them to trust you?” and that guy B R O K E
I got 1 task done today. I emptied the big trash can in my bedroom. That’s one less fork to deal with.
I have severe executive dysfunction. I’ve been dealing with it by having myself do one small task a day. So far it’s helped a lot. By doing it this way my brain doesn’t freak out trying to tackle everything at once.
I got my inspiration for it from this Donald Duck comic:
Oh my God this is so fucking wholesome
“I saw the sunrise for the first time in years” moves me way more than it has any right to
“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ‘70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”
i learned that Binghamton University researchers have been working on a self-healing concrete that uses a specific type of fungi as a healing agent. When the fungus is mixed with concrete, it lies dormant until cracks appear, when spores germinate, grow and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks (x)
What could possibly be more cursed than mushrooms growing bones to heal the chasms in the road
What could possibly be more blessed than mushrooms growing bones to heal the chasms in the road
any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic
Any technology which can be distinguished from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Every girl has had the experience where a creepy guy asks for our number and we don’t want to give it to him, but we also don’t want to get gutted in a back alley. “Give him a fake number!” I hear you call, okay and then he says “okay let me call you real quick!” Because they are learning. “Give them your number and then block them!” Okay and then they can plug it into something like Spokeo, pay $10 and know everything about you. So what do you do?
First pick a fake name, I use Jessica, then download the Google Voice app, hook it up to your email, pick a number, and set up a fake greeting with your fake name. You can set it to ring your actual phone like a normal call or text but they don’t have real info on you.
Aaaaaaa I just found out that someone wrote a fix that was (apparently) inspired by one I wrote! If anyone knows it, please help. I’ve never read it!
The fic was called mirror mirror by the former user thedramaticmurderer but the name they reference having moved to is just a bunch of bullshit tumblr bitcoin posts. Sadly it’s not hosted on Ao3 which sucks! I don’t even know what it was about! But my own fix was a DualPsii about them living in separate dimensions and their mirror linked them together. Help please?
