#I'd say they make up a good like 40% of the total posts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

undying-love · 1 month

Note

Hi, I'm a fan of you, your posts here and how and what you write about McLennon. I'd like to know when you became a fan of the Beatles and how did you end up here. How and when did you become a shipper/truther. I am too, sh't I'm deep in. And ofcourse it'd be interesting to know your views on this messed up ship. I especially like that you, like me, see that it wasn't one sided. I'm totally crazy about them, The Beatles, solo/post Beatle and Well, I truly love all four of them, but because I'm really a Ringo fan girl, I adore him to this day, he's so handsome still and lovely, in his very Ringo way I understand why they ll got along with him so well but that's why I haven't noticed this I think, but now I'm obsessed and I can't unsee it even if I try. I'm still quite bit shy about it so that's why I write anonymously If you don't wanna answer I understand and it's ok. I'm still a fan!

Hello there <3! Thanks for your question! I actually became a Beatles fan back in 2022. After I got into their music, I also became obsessed with their history and began researching a lot about how the band started, how they developed, and how they ended. But the thing was that I never really understood their whole breaukup thing. I always felt like there had to be more to their story than they were telling us. I saw an interview where they asked Paul about this, and he replied, "We had to find women, which we all sort of did." And I was like, What the hell is he talking about? (He also seemed a bit uneasy when answering the question). Then I read that John got married a week after Paul did, and I found that very odd. Then I watched Get Back, and their chemistry onscreen was shocking. The way they would look at each other, the inside jokes, the flirting, and the, "it's like you and me are lovers" bit all made me think that there must have been something going on between these two. Then I read some excerpts from Philip Norman's book, John Lennon: The Life, which confirmed that John was indeed attracted to Paul, although it said that Paul did not reciprocate his feelings (he was supposedly an "inmmobable heterosexual"). So I thought that maybe the problem was that John wanted to have more than a friendship with Paul and that Paul rejected him. I held this view for quite some time, until I started reading a lot about Paul. The way he talks about John—as well as the way he always brings up him out of nowhere in interviews—made me realize that it's extremely unlikely that Paul didn't also have romantic feelings for John. I recently made a compilation of insane things Paul has said about John, and there is no way someone would say all of this unless they are in love. Besides, it's been more than 40 years since John's death, and Paul admitted that he still hasn't gotten over it. If this was a mere friendship, I don't think he would have been that emotionally attached to John throughout all these years. Also, if John had been in love with Paul all along, it's very unlikely that he would have waited in 1967 to make a move.

Finally, by total chance, I became acquainted with someone who has recently been in contact with a few people who were once close to the Beatles, and they all have said that they knew there was something going on between John and Paul based on many things they had seen. And the things they said all matched up perfectly with things I have read from other sources. So that pretty much confirmed it for me. However, I still don't know for sure why John and Paul broke up, but I have my theories. It's possible that John wanted something more open and serious, and Paul, who is very conscious of their public image, didn't want that. When John said, "It's a plus that your best friend can also hold you without…" and then he didn't complete the sentence, maybe he meant that it's good that his best friend and him could hold hands without the world creating a whole drama over it. Paul was always very worried about what the public might think, so that definitely caused tensions between him and John, who was much more bold. Paul wasn't ready for that. Also, Paul wanted a normal family life, which is something John said during an interview when he was asked about the differences between him and Paul that caused their relationship to sour. He said, “Paul always wanted a family life. Linda knows this and has given it to him. The complete family life”. This is an odd answer because why would Paul wanting a "complete family life" damage their relationship? It would only make sense because, obviously, with John, he couldn't have a traditional family life. All this is speculation, but it's what I have in mind so far, based on all the information I have compiled.

I apologize that this got too long, but I wanted to to give you a thorough answer. Thanks again for your question. I'm glad you are a fan of my posts. It means a lot to me <3

#mclennon

30 notes · View notes

carica-ficus · 2 months

Text

"Harrow the Ninth"

21/02/2024

Reading progress: 507/507 (100%)

Read through since last update: 157

Didn't think I'd cram the last part into one post, but here we are anyway. These last 150ish pages were... All over the place. In a good way!

Final notes:

Oh, there she is!!! Talk about a monster under the bed.

Ok, but how casual is that scene? I know something like that was coming (I've seen some fanart, but knew too little to know who it was about, just that Harrow and Ianthe would be peeking under the bed), but it's just so normal. I like it. Kinda eerie because it's not presented as scary.

Of course Ianthe didn't see it. Don't worry Harrow, I believe you.

Yeah, ok. It makes sense that Ortus was just fulfilling other to kill Harrow. His reasoning for it just wasn't strong enough. "You're a liability." Just like everyone else.

Oho! Here we go! Epiparodos! (Whatever that means.)

NUNLET??? 🥺🥺 That's such a cute word.

Ok, the lobotomy. Right. Also saw a fanart spoiler for it, totally forgot it was coming. I thought it was gonna happen later on? In any case. Ok. Yup. This happened.

Harrow NOVA. There we go. The other Harrow finally revealed by her full name. Though I applaud Muir, I haven't even noticed we never got her last name. Gorgeous and genius writing, through and through.

HAHAHAHAHAHA love how Harrow did the typical "I am small. Therefore, I will be a quick and murderous machine" but Muir decided to break up the cliché by saying she discovered that at the ripe age of 5. Man, I love this book. And I love Harrow as a character.

"What's that, you egg?"

Dying. 😂

Ok, gotta say, chapter 40 lost me.

I think... I got it? I might need to read the remaining pages for all of this to settle down, but this is much less complicated that I thought it would be.

What is the meaning of love if not sacrificing every single memory of a person in order to save them? 😭

Of course, it was not a dream. That would be too easy. The bubbles make perfect sense.

I know I said Ortus was annoying when quoting the Noniad, but I really like him as a character. And by that I mean how Muir has given him more depth and allowed him to grow. Which also made the scene where he hugs Harrow so impactful. 🖤

Ok, the Ortus thing was unexpected. And I'm excited to learn what it's all about.

But first. The Sleeper.

UGH! I love how considerate Gideon is with Harrow's body. Sure, she's a little awkward in it and puts out a dirty joke or two, but she's just trying to be respectful and useful. Also the way she's so worried over any and all her injuries, even though she knows they'll all heal? So fucking cute.

Protesilaus took Dulcinea in his care when she fell ill. That's so cute. 🥺

Oh, hell yes! Gideon stepped the fuck up. Time for Ianthe to meet her fucking match.

(I love how protective Gideon is ggghhhgghggh)

Man, I missed Gideon so much.

MATTHIAS NONIUS!!!!!!! :O

(Such a cool scene!!!!!)

You know what? After everything that happened, my reaction to finding out Gideon is God's daughter was just "Ok. Cool."

Cue John's corny dad joke. Love it.

Also I wouldn't have guessed they were related based on their eyes. Sure, John's eyes were mentioned multiple times, but they're silver and Gideon's are gold, so I wouldn't have put two and two together just by that. But! It fits. It's foreshadowed. It works. So yeah. Sure. Love it.

I knew it! I knew that he had a cavalier! I knew that he was a Lyctor! Hell yeah!

So much stuff happens at the end. I just kept on reading, without spending much time on commentating. I needed to know what happens and tbh, I have no idea what I just read. But that's okay! It was fun!

Ok, all in all, the book was spectacular. I liked it even more than I did Gideon. I liked how Muir handled Harrow's grief. I liked the reveals, the mysteries, the tension and the stakes. I liked the characters and I liked how Abigail got a lot more page time. I didn't even care about her in the first book, but now I really like her. I liked Ortus too!

Now, I'm still confused... About a few things. Primarily Harrow Nona. So I'll have to read an explanation or teo about it (or you can comment on the post if you'd like to help me out). Did... Harrow Nonangesimus kept watch and narrated over what Nona was doing? As in, she was dissociating from her body after the lobotomy and experiencing everything from a distance? Or was that all Gideon? Because I feel like it wasn't. Gideon's narration style is totally different and clearly comes out at the very end, but idk. I feel like I'm missing something here or that I'm not grasping something ridiculously simple.

Anyway, I'll be reading a little more about it, but yeah. "Harrow" is done, so I'll have to get my hands on Nona! In the meantime I'll be writing out my review. 🖤

#harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #locked tomb #book #reading journal #dnevnik citanja #dnevnik čitanja

26 notes · View notes

theposhperyton · 2 months

Note

if you have the time could you tell me literally everything you know about isfd?

I found your blog through the one piece posts and now need to learn anything I can about this obscure fandom

An ISFD ask from someone who isn't already lost in the sauce? (<-Self call-out) O glorious day!

Gosh, there's so much, I don't really know where to start. I've been following this micro-fandom for YEARS now, and it's one of those things that just keeps on giving. The amount of lost/missing content and the frickin nuked forum (I'm a survivor, baebee!!) really does sometimes make it feel like the universe is trying to wipe us out, but hey. ISFD fans are basically cockroaches. Killable in theory, but surprisingly hearty in an actual life or death of a fandom scenario.

As for the actual content of ISFD that I engage in, I'm a rare(?) case where I kinda dabble in everything. I can confidently say I'm a member of the ** original ** gen of fans, so I've been around for the noteable eras, and have obsessed over every major character group at one time or another, as well as some niche characters (Cyan and his 2 other fans, rise up 🔥🔥)

I gotta say though, I am currently obsessed with the mafia portion of the universe (and, tbh, by extension, the Marama family. They are to me what the Kardashians are to some)

In particular, Phillip Varic has been my consistent blorbo since last September. It is not an exaggeration to say I've averaged about 40 drawings of him a month since then (my friends and I have counted. I should be on my strange addiction at this point, tbh. Or seeking other professional insight)

Here's some of the doodles in question! I am not terribly good at finishing art of him, I just sketch him loosely and rotate him rapidly in my head

I just think he's so neat. And I think his stupid, codependant, and mildly dysfunctional mafia found-family are so neat. And I think his husband (seraphine) and wife (abram) are so neat. And all his kids, both the legal kids and the ones whom he mostly just pays college tuition for, they're neat to. And the echos of Magnolia throughout his life and the larger narrative, even decades later. That's also very neat (my heart doesn't hurt at all!)

I realize I kinda derailed from answering your original ask because the mafia brainrot is debilitating and chronic, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about answering it anyway because there is just. So, so much world and lore to glean from ISFD, and none of it in any easy or direct way. Honestly though? The mafia might not be a bad place to start? If you want, I can tell you as much as I know about the cast and dynamics of the mafia, because I feel like a lot of the mafia character's lore and backgrounds act as a good segway to other noteable aspects of the larger ISFD narratives and the in-world political climate as a whole (Especially Mask and Howard. Not to single those poor souls out, but genuinely. How are they both gonna be so afflicted by the narrative like that)

If you're still interested after I practically talked your ear off, I could totally make a larger post about the whole mafia :3 They're my special blorbos ❤️ I would not feel safe around them IRL, but trapped within the confines of fiction, they're all free for me to babygirlify with almost no consequences

20 notes · View notes

coolgreatwebsite · 5 months

Text

Happy 1 Million Views to the Video That Broke Me

This is a repost of something I wrote over on my Cohost, but I figured a year later it should also probably live on the domain I pay money to have. Better late than never!

This is the most successful piece of content I have ever created. At one million views it is the thing I've made that people have seen the most. It is the thing that the most people have seen my name attached to. And it's total trash.

It's 2017 and we're a week or so out from the release of Sonic Mania, a game that I'm, at that point, pretty damn excited for. A kindly poster from the Something Awful forums (that I have known from many forums previous) poses a challenge: be the first to beat his short kaizo Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ROM hack and he'll gift you a copy of Sonic Mania on Steam when it comes out.

I was already getting the game on PS4 but I figured whatever, everyone else seems to be having trouble with it, I'm bored, I got nothing better to do, I'll give it a shot. I load up KEGA Fusion, start a low bitrate and resolution OBS recording because it'll probably take a few hours and who cares it's a forum contest verification video, and get to work. A hour and half-ish goes by and I'm finished with the hack. I upload the video to YouTube, post it in the thread, win my free copy of Sonic Mania, and that's the end of the story. Thanks for reading.

youtube

Except of course it's not the end of the story. A few months after I got done thoroughly enjoying Sonic Mania, I realized that I'd been getting a weird amount of new subscriber emails from YouTube. I decided to actually look at my metrics and noticed a uh, highly localized spike of activity. Give you one guess on which video (hint: it's the one this post is about). "The Algorithm" had suddenly taken it and was running away with it at lightning speed.

In the timespan between posting the video and this spike, YouTube had announced they were drastically raising the bar on the metrics you needed to hit to have your channel monetized. I was by no means a large YouTuber at the time, but I was meeting the old requirements for monetization just fine. I wasn't anywhere near meeting the new requirements until now and this video was blowing the hell up for whatever reason, so I decided to do what any good opportunist would do and made it an unwatchable experience.

I set the ad frequency on that thing to the maximum that it'd let me. I forget exactly how frequent that was but it was something absurd like an ad every 5 minutes. Maybe even more than that. I figured I'd either get rich or maybe it would make people stop watching and leaving the worst comments in the world. Seriously the comments on this thing are their own nightmare, a bizarre soup of people ascribing meaning to nothing, trying to suss out emotions where there are none, saying complete gibberish, I'd need an entire second post to unpack whatever the hell is going on there.

Well, I wouldn't quite say I got rich. The money you get off what most people would conventionally call a popular YouTube video is just not much in the grand scheme of things. But holy shit they didn't stop watching. If anything they were watching more. Why didn't they stop watching? This video was less than nothing. It was an ordeal to watch all the way through. Why were they doing this? Why was the algorithm showing this to everyone? Why this and not one of the things I put effort into or something that was at least meant to be entertaining at all? I didn't have the answers and I still don't.

Before this I personally wasn't lamenting the possibility of losing monetization on my channel as up until this point I had made around $40 total on YouTube in the decade or so I'd had a channel. But I had been spending a lot that time watching friends with channels around the size of mine who were actively hustling to, and unfortunately failing to, meet the new hurdle. They were putting out some really good shit. Way better than my stuff, frankly. And here I was getting launched to the finish line by... a throwaway, blurry, hour and a half long, commentary-free, save state abusing playthrough of a crummy Sonic ROM hack? That I had made as a means to a completely separate end?? That got promoted by a computer program for seemingly no reason???

It felt shitty. One of the friends I mentioned in that last paragraph was my longtime friend Fotts who was in the middle of getting their (sadly now dormant) series TAS Force off the ground. They were constantly tweeting about the ordeal of trying to meet the new monetization requirements and it was a damn shame because they were putting in a ton of effort and it was great. The kind of thing I'd watch even if I wasn't friends with anyone on it. It was a million times funnier than anything I was doing, and the complete opposite of my shitty contest video. If there was any justice in this world the views I was getting on this dumpster fire would be going to them. But as it turns out, there is no justice online.

I recalled a conversation I had with them a few years back while they, I, and a group of about 7 or so other friends were all wandering around an Orlando Wal-Mart wearing identical black t-shirts that read "MARVEL CAN SUCK MY COCK" in big block letters (long story). They had actually kind of gone through this sort of thing before. See, they're the uploader and one of the voices of this video you may or may not have seen with 6.5+ million views on it.

youtube

They lamented to me many of the laments I was currently lamenting. "This was just a stupid throwaway thing", "why is this so much more popular than the stuff I put effort into", "it's just me making PaRappa the Rapper say the word 'Chinese' over and over". Ok maybe that last one was a bit more specific to them. Anyway, I responded with (and I admit a lot of the reason I felt this way was because I thought and still think the video is funny) something along the lines of "you can't pick what hits for people, it might have been throwaway but at the end of the day you posted it because you thought it was at least a little bit funny, try and focus on the fact that you have a popular video at all rather than the fact it's not one of the videos you're particularly proud of".

But yeah damn turns out that advice is easier said than done when it happens to you, and it's even harder done when it happens to a factually not entertaining video. One you could have uploaded as unlisted and achieved your intended result with. The runaway success of this thing genuinely broke me on this whole "Internet" deal.

I should stress I mean this in a good way. I realized that it's not so much that you can't pick what hits for people, it's that you physically cannot pick what gets put in front of people. The people cannot pick what hits for them. A computer does. You can try and promote and affect what gets seen in your own small sphere of influence, but ultimately we are, on YouTube and on all of our social platforms, at the mercy of a black box of computer programs that I'm not even sure the people who created them understand anymore. I'd obviously known this on some level prior to this video existing, but bearing witness to it all happening firsthand to this video in particular was another thing entirely. Anything prior that I had achieved marginally similar success with (there were a couple that had broken 100k) was meant to be entertaining. It was meant for people to watch and go "I liked that", not for one guy on a forum to see and go "good work solving my maze Superman". I could classify the success as "neat, people liked that one" in my brain. This defied classification.

The only logical conclusion was that it truly didn't matter what I uploaded. It's all decided by a random machine picking things at random to serve random amounts of people, and the people click on it and watch it simply because it is there. You can poke at the machine, prod at the machine, try to guess what the machine likes, try to iterate on something the machine has previously demonstrated that it likes. It's all an effort to get the machine to put it in front of the people who will click it because it is there. That's what all the bigger capital-C Content Creators do. From the high level stuff of "what kind of things do I upload" to the low level minutia of "how many curse words can I say in the first minute", making it Big On Line in any capacity is about trying to appease an unknowable mechanical entity and nothing else. It's either that or you're "old money" in a sense, established before this all became the case.

And again, the bigger names do this. Entire companies do this. If I were "smart" I would have pivoted my entire YouTube channel to nothing but hour and a half long commentary-free bullshit hard ROM hack playthroughs. Maybe another one would hit like this did. But for the life of me I could not and cannot think of anything more soul crushing.

I wouldn't say I had aspirations to be a Big Time YouTube Man, but at that time I would have maybe liked to be a Moderate Size YouTube Man. Or a moderate size Twitch man. Someone who had people watching but was still able to have fun with it and do his own thing. This newfound realization that it was truly a random lottery, even beyond the random lottery that most of human life is, that becoming any size bigger than Small Time was literally decided by an actual factual random number generator, freed me from the desire to do anything that I didn't want to do. If actively chasing success on these modern, algorithmically-driven platforms, actively going after "Kaizo Sonic 2 Full Run" numbers, meant putting aside the things I like and reinventing myself and the things I do down to the minute details in order to appease a literal ghost beyond anyone's understanding or control that changes what it's looking for on a whim, then I did not want to do that. I did not want to keep a timer for when I could talk normal, I did not want to announce my streams on Twitter with the link in a separate reply one day, in an embedded image the next, and in my display name the next. If there is absolutely one thing I do not want to do in my life, it's dance for a robot.

But the most freeing thing about realizing this is that it also meant if I just kept doing stuff I liked, maybe, someday, I could get lucky enough to where the unknowable internet robot would push that in front of a million or so people. In the grand scheme of things it's about an equal chance of that happening on something I like and am proud of versus something I made in a desperate cloying attempt to placate an algorithm.

Anyway damn this got long and rambly sorry about that lol. This was initially meant to just be a little toast to the 5 year-ish anniversary of me fully becoming an Internet nihilist. Remember folks, it's meaningless to chase success in an algorithm dominated landscape. In the words of a certain extremely Normal-type man, "real life isn't all just being true to yourself", but I reject the notion that the Internet is not or should not be, in spite of the legion of ghouls and freaks at the top of the chain actively trying to make that the case every day.

Be true to yourself. Do what you love, make what you love, post what you love, and maybe if you're lucky a computer somewhere will decide it's your turn, because that's the single deciding factor in all of this. In the mean time, you'll end up slowly and naturally surrounding yourself with cool people who get you, if only a little bit. At least that's what's happened for me so far. I've been pretty alright with it.

#article

16 notes · View notes

ashen-crest · 1 year

Text

a stats report on the rk ashwick books (as of April 2023)

some folks responded positively to the idea of seeing data on how my books have done (for indie author research and benchmark purposes), so here you go!

I'll put everything under the cut:

📚 What do I write?

Cozy fantasy romance under the pen name R.K. Ashwick.

📚 Why do I write?

Because I love it. I have a full-time job that isn't related to writing, so I write in my spare time. I should also note that I do not have dependents, am not a caregiver, and I do have anxiety and ADHD. I am not certain that I want to be a full-time writer, given the financial instability and the joy it could take away from writing. However, I want my books to be and perform the best they can, so I try to be professional about my product and methods.

(To me, this is all important context to be up-front about. Finances, family size, and health all have a huge impact on an author's goals and strategies.)

📚 How many books do I have out?

The Stray Spirit: released August 2022. First in a planned trilogy.

A Rival Most Vial: released March 2023. First in a planned trilogy.

📚 Online Visibility

Here's what I have going on:

Paid:

Website (requires $ for hosting)

BookFunnel for newsletter promos, sales promos, and ARC distribution (site requires $ to join)

Unpaid:

Newsletter (currently managing on free version of Mailerlite, since I'm under 1000 followers)

Facebook page (not consistently maintained, mostly for SEO)

Instagram, posting 5x/wk

TikTok, posting 5k/wk

Tumblr- hi!

using things like LibraryThing, GoodReads forums, Reddit, and FB pages to find more ARC readers

I was doing Amazon ads, but recently nixed them, as I didn't feel they were really getting me anything. I'll likely return to them once I have more books out.

A Note on Follower Count: I have, like 10 FB followers, 400-ish Insta followers, 1500 TikTok folders, and almost 1600 Tumblr followers. I've been on Tumblr the longest and TikTok second longest. TikTok had the fastest growth, Insta the slowest. However, general advice is that engagement rate is more important than follower count. I'll be real, I'm not doing that hot on that front. I'll consistently get around 20 likes on Insta posts and TikTok often caps my video views at around 200 or 300. The videos that do the best on TT often aren't the ones related to my books. Fun times.

A Note on Newsletter Stats: I have a pretty consistent open rate of 25-30%, which I think is okay. I'd like for it to be closer to 40%. (It's also hard to actually track open rates, so that number isn't entirely reliable.)

A Note on ARC Reader Stats: I got 100 readers for TSS and almost 200 for ARMV. This resulted in a ballpark count of 20 reviews for TSS and 30 reviews for ARMV around release time.

📚 Other Marketing Strategies

What you see above under Visibility is my ongoing work. I also do more limited-run strategies, like:

occasional free book giveaways on social media

pre-order gifts for my book

I sent out around 20 pre-order gift envelopes for TSS and 45 for ARMV. I operate the pre-order gifts at a loss, but I really enjoy doing it, so I'm okay with it. I also have lots of leftover stickers and bookmarks that I can bundle with giveaways.

📚 Distribution

I distribute wide through:

Amazon: both ebook and paperback

IngramSpark: paperback only

Draft2Digital: ebook only

📚 Orders & Royalties

So, what did all this work and shennanery get me?

From July 2022-April 2023 (10 months):

Books Sold: 575

Total Royalties, paid and unpaid: $1543.49 ($2.68 per book)

📚 Is that good or bad?

I have no idea!! And I think in the end, it all depends on your goals.

If my goal was to make a living: welp, it's def not enough.

If my goal was to break even: between website set up, DBA set up, cover cost, editing cost, illustrator cost: nah. I'd have to make about $4,000 more to safely say I've broken even.

If my goal was to get strangers, and not just family and friends, to read my books: oh hey, I did that!!

I hope this information helps you set a goal, so you're not mentally wandering around like I am.

📚 Other Notes

A big factor in having a financially successful indie book is fitting genre conventions in your chosen subgenre, or 'writing to market.' I will say that A Rival Most Vial is more written to market than The Stray Spirit is. The Stray Spirit sort of straddles cozy, historical, and academic fantasy without actually leaning in to any of those things, so it's a little harder to market.

I also spent a lot on cover, editing, and illustration. That makes it harder to be a financially viable business, but it's what I wanted to do to have a strong finished product. I am lucky in that my full-time job can cover these expenses.

I'm not very good at social media. I've never had anything go viral on any of the sites.

The most rewarding part of all this is seeing how people react to the book: reviews, videos where they're almost crying over the book, podcast invitations, and [something a bit bigger than I'll announce in the summer.] At the end of the day, if I have a small group of buyers who are vocal in engaging with my books, that's far more rewarding than a large group of buyers who don't engage.

📚 Parting Thoughts

I'm happy to talk about any and all aspects of my self-publishing experience. If you have more questions or want more details, feel free to reply, send an ask, or DM me!

#writeblr #writblr #indie authors #self publishing

50 notes · View notes

brucebracket · 6 months

Text

📊By the Numbers: October 30 to November 6

Last week we voted on Disc 2 Side B, matches 1 through 8:

Apologies for the false start on matches 5 and 7 last week. I'd like to assure you that it won't happen again, but your humble mod is one overworked ND doing this on their own, so… 🤷

This week's upset was 31 seed Thunder Road from Live 1975-85 (that lovely piano version from The Roxy) over 2 seed Prove It All Night (the song that made me Pay Attention to Bruce). Talk about your hard choices to make!

(click that thing to embiggen!)

Poll with the most votes: Match 1 took that honor with 87 total votes.

Closest match: Match 4, which was tied with one hour left to vote, was decided by just two votes. Thanks for keeping me from needed to decide what to do with a tie vote for another week!

Song with the most votes: We had an absolute blowout this week in Match 3 which pitted the beloved Backstreets with 76 votes against…

Song with the fewest votes: ...poor Buffalo Gals, which only received two votes. NGL kids, I was watching that one all day the day it was posted and I was nearly positive Buffalo Gals would come up with 0 because Backstreets. This is our new official fewest votes ever.

As we're now getting to the middle seed matches in this round (where you may not have a clear favorite) I want to encourage you to take a listen any song you're not immediately familiar with with fresh ears. Both my housemate and I are a couple of Olds who have loved Bruce for over 40 years, and every week we've come across at least one song - usually more - that makes us say, "Oh, I forgot about that one. It's so good!" That's why I found YouTube links to every nominated song and include them!

Welcome to our new followers this week! Campaigning via reblog is absolutely encouraged here - I love when you all get passionate about a song!

The full bracket is here

All of the results posts are here

#bruce bracket stats #mod post

9 notes · View notes

yukidragon · 1 year

Note

Okay so uh. I know I mentioned in the comments of a post of yours a couple days ago that I had an idea, except idk where to go with it other than I just have a "what if" thought. So I'm figuring I'd throw it back at ya to get your thoughts on it, because you are incredibly good at this, like holy carp, I am in awe.

The "what if" thought I had, was since we're pretty sure Jack some times hangs around the apt while MC is at work, what if MC had a computer at home and taught him how to use, say, more anonymous based forum sites as well as maybe more basic games like solitaire or point-n-click adventure games. Do you think he would actually feel compelled to use the tech at all, and if he did join a forum site, what would he do on it and how well do you think he'd do to keep his identity hidden? (He reinvented himself once and yet he still had an untimely demise- no need to make anyone think he survived somehow and put his Sunshine in any actual danger...)

Gosh, you really flatter me with such kind praise. Thank you! 💖

Given how quickly Jack managed to pick up how to behave as Sunny Day Jack despite his concerns towards doing the part justice, I think he is pretty good at adapting and learning new things. While the modern technology is going to be pretty shocking - practically the stuff of science fiction in his eyes - I’m sure he’ll start to get the hang of it, with his sunshine’s help at the start of course.

Once Jack starts getting used to learning the internet, I can see him using it as a tool to help him out. After all, he needs to understand the modern day society and technology in order to be of any use to MC and take care of them. It would be useful to look up all the references that MC might make that seem like moon speak to someone who hasn’t experienced pop culture for 40 years.

At first, Jack will no doubt be clumsy on the internet, not quite getting how dangerous it can be. MC is going to need to teach him about the importance of anonymity online, as well as the general climate of the online space. After that though, I’m sure he’ll catch on pretty quickly.

When MC is around, I can see Jack mostly looking up innocent things, like recipes, news articles, or cute animal videos. Totally wholesome things that don’t ruin his brand safe image as Sunny Day Jack.

When MC isn’t around... the more Jack learns, the more he’s going to snoop. I can imagine he’ll figure out how the search history works and look into MC’s search history for what they like looking up and what interests them. The more he knows about them, the better he can take care of them after all!

Then, Jack can advance to learning how to use private internet searches and erase traces of his activities if it’s something a bit... questionable. Not that he would have reason to do it that often of course. At least... as long as nothing is threatening him and his sunshine...

Given how clever Jack is, I can see him learning pretty fast how to hide his online presence. That’s not even going into the possibility that his ghost(?) powers might allow him to do things normal humans can. While he is an analog-based supernatural entity, his existence is attached to a piece of technology that affects video screens, and computers still require monitors to see what’s going on...

I think it’s possible Jack could make an online alias for himself and join a forum or social media, but I think it would be with some particular goal in mind. He didn’t grow up in the internet age, and he’s more physically active. Spending hours wandering around the internet would be a relatively new thing, and the dopamine hits he might get online would be nothing compared to the rush of love he feels from his sunshine... especially when he’s showing them his love~

Though if Jack does have plans of making a big public return as Sunny Day Jack, then perhaps the internet could be useful to that end...

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask

48 notes · View notes

nieves-de-sugui · 10 months

Note

Re: Tagame on the term bara, there's this bit from an interview with the man himself, published in Ishii, Kidd, and Kolbeins' Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It. Seattle: Fantagraphics 2015.

The title of Bara-Komi raises an important linguistic sticking point for Tagame: the widespread misuse of the term "bara." Literally "rose," bara is an antiquated slur for gay men. It took on a new layer of meaning in the 1960s as the title of the private circulation gay publication Bara, and the subsequent mass-market magazine Barazoku (Rose Tribe). "It was very shocking and sensational to publish something in the jargon of the hetero nomenclature for gays," says Tagame. "It's exactly like the word 'pansy' in English. Whereas gays probably don't call each other 'pansies,' since it's not necessarily a good thing, to reappropriate it was a big deal. But by the time I was getting bigger as an artist, that word was almost obsolete, and we no longer use it. It was important for us to call ourselves 'gays' and 'homosexual' rather than 'bara,' which is just what hetero people call us. "Gay" became the primary identity label for homosexual men as a more internationalized concept of LGBT identity gained political and social ground in Japan. "By the 1990s," Tagame remembers, bara "was totally obsolete, Barazoku magazine was becoming obsolete, and the whole nomenclature was about to completely expire. But in the early stages of the Internet, when people were on all these Internet boards, basically, the people running these forums were straight, so they called the gay board the 'bara' board. Of course, the Internet is how foreigners discovered our work. They saw that this whole section was called 'bara,' so that's how I believe foreigners started to use and appropriate that word. The word has come back to life, unfortunately, and I have to say personally, I'm sort of against it. I don't call my own work 'bara' and I don't like it being called 'bara' because it's a very negative word that comes with bad connotations. (Ishii et al 2015:40)

Lmk if you read Japanese? If you like, I can drum up more sources like this :)

This ask is related to my post on the yaoi debates.

More on Tagame and Japanese terminology! Thank you so much for sharing, I really appreciate it.

I'd love to read more on this! I do read Japanese but with some difficulty (I'm not super familiar with 硬 japanese). I would still like to give it a try :)

#bl fandom #bl history #learning more is fun #but there's a lot I do not know #that yaoi ronso post was the last one I going to make but Im happy Im getting to know things I didn't know thanks to that #gengoroh tagame

14 notes · View notes

cassiaratheslytherpuff · 7 months

Text

20 questions for fic writers!

Thank you so much for tagging me @orange-peony, these things are always so fun to do!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 40 works right now.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

624,677, which is more than I thought I had (probably due to the fact 1/6th of them were posted during the past 5 months or so)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I only really write for Harry Potter, though I do like to play in next-gen, marauder and golden-trio era so there's a little variation there.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Blue Roses and Other Impossible Things Drarry, 40k, E To Be Out of Your Own (and consumed by another) Drarry, 18k, E Though My Mind Could Think (I still was a mad man) Drarry, 87k, E Things Unknown but Longed for Still Drarry, 30k, E Use My Last Breath (to say I love you), Harry/Charlie, 6k, E

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do. I love talking about fics in general, but especially the ones I write. I love reading theories or thoughts people had while reading, and responding to those. And also, comments make me so happy and I want to show that to the person who commented because I know it can take a lot of energy and mental work to comment at all.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I actually think I have to list more than one, because I have three that all end kind of terribly.

A Long Line of Fine Rarry 2k There is a First Time for Dying Scorbus, 1.5K Give Me a Memory Drarry, 2.5k

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably all the rest of them.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yeah, sometimes.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah, I think like 35 of the 40 fics are rated E for smut. I like to write all kinds tbh. Like, super angsty, kinky, romantic, longing etc. I think it's the feelings and emotions that makes it fun for me, but they don't really have to be all positive.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I tried once years and years ago to write a supernatural and Hunger Games crossover, but I never finished it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I had one reposted on Instagram once, but nothing else that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah, a couple.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I don't think I'd be any good at it tbh, I can never stick to an outline.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

I think maybe Drarry, but that might be because there are SO many great fics written for it. But I also adore rarry and prongsfoot, and I think I love them just as much – I just read them less because there are fewer fics.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There are a lot tbh, but the one I'm always angry about not being able to finish is a fic I started a loong about Muggles finding out about magic and inventing technology to supress it, and Draco and Harry working to get Teddy out of England.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think (or at least hope) it's putting words to feelings and emotions. I tend to struggle to name or describe my own feelings so I usually explore that a fair bit in fics.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm pretty sure I'm ace so I struggle a lot with writing my characters as feeling physical attraction. I think I can do the emotions and physical bits, but yeah, the whole attraction thing is difficult. And also describing actions. I'll have a character stand up to do something and then completely forget I did it, so they'll be sitting down in the next line. Or they'll just be talking with zero description of what they're doing.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I'm not sure I have any. I never have myself, but I'm not really opposed as much as I've never had a need.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter. I think it was a hinny fic sometime between the fifth and sixth book came out. At the time I had no idea what fanfiction or shipping was at all, and it never left the notebook I wrote it in.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

I think my favourites changes every time I try to pick one, but right now it's these:

Like a Dream I Can Reach (but not quite hold) queerplatonic darry, 19.5k

Though My Mind Could Think (I still was a mad man) Drarry, 87k

Four Gallons of Oblivious Rarry, 18k

I'll tag @stargazing-enby, @drarryruinedme7, @acnelli @maesterchill @pineau-noir and @shealwaysreads if you want to do it (and haven't already). And anyone else who'd like to do this!

#tag game #fanfic writers

12 notes · View notes

mooifyourecows · 7 months

Note

moo i feel crazy like maybe i was just REALLY tired and happened to open tumblr in a sleepy haze last night but istg half your recent posts THAT ARE LIKED??? i have not read 🤔🤔 like maybe i accidentally opened a notification and was like omg i’m gonna read these and i just don’t remember 🤷‍♀️

also i just saw your respond to a question about commissions and i’m always so shocked at your pricing because at first i’m like omg that’s so much and then i think about it and it’s actually not?? like you posted about $300 for gmb right?? and just using my research paper i just wrote as an example, i took about 8ish hours to write it and get evidence and stuff, so let’s say with the amount of words you tend to write per chapter double that to 16, PLUS you’re creatively writing which takes more time so let’s double it again to 32, and then i included researching as about half the time originally but let’s say another 8 to go back and reread and fact check and all that to make sure it’s consistent since you haven’t touched it for a while and that ads up to 40 hours plus editing outside of fact checking so probably like a good 45 hours

i have no real reference on your creative process so i might be way way off BUT if you get paid $300 for one chapter and you work even just 30 hours, that’s only $10/hour, but if it’s closer to 40 or 45, that’s $7.5 or $6.7/hour respectively

so actually it’s a total steal?? unless you were to like push them out in two hours but at that point you deserve $150/hour if you can write a good chapter in two hours🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

a more realistic shorter time though would be like 20 hours so even with that, it’s $15/hour which is like barely minimum wage depending on where you live (i’m assuming you live in illinois since you post about it a lot and for over 18 it’s $13/hour)

when i got into fan fiction writing when i was like 8 i think i took like ten hours to write like two pages and i gave up after staring at my screen forever and have not attempted since.

Yeeeahhhh, honestly I wish I could charge more but I'm pretty sure nobody would commission me if I did

Conversely, I'd love to charge LESS because I'd get more engagement but then I'd be working way too much for too little pay off

That's why I offer to let multiple people pitch in for a single commission, since my writing is something that multiple people benefit off of anyway. Nobody has gathered to do that yet though so lol oh well 🤷‍♂️

It's rough out there

6 notes · View notes

purplekoop · 6 months

Text

I was gonna make a big, long, overly depressing for my standards ramble post about my thoughts on the state of Overwatch right now, but after one big hit of backspace I think it'd be more efficient to say:

I'm happy.

It's just fun and exciting getting to see so much stuff to look forward to. I know some people are a bit bummed to know what the next year's worth of characters are so far in advance, but like... think about it. For one, the rate of new character's isn't increased. I know it definitely at least we're close to the game actively having too many characters for its own good. I saw one person complain about how "they can't even balance the characters we do have", but I feel like the current balance dilemmas are due to the lingering ramifications of the 5v5 change, and not strictly roster size. I've seen arguments over the years for the opposite, that more characters means that it's less likely for any one individual hero to be overpowered and uncounterable just by the sheer probability of another option beating them out being more likely with more heroes. I don't think I wholeheartedly agree with this take either, but either way I think that the current cadence of hero releases is sustainable. Especially considering that, even before OW2 and the direct financial incentive to release them, new heroes are by far the biggest "event" the game can get. It's just exciting to have new guys to keep the game fresh, so I really don't blame new heroes being such a constant priority. For some numbers though, starting with Hero 43 the game's roster will have officially doubled in size since the initial 2016 release. All things considered, that's... way tamer than it could be. For one reference, League of Legends came out in 2009 with a roster of 40 characters, and has now gone up to 162 (all of these numbers are just going off google anyways, I'm pathetic but I'm at least not a League player). Maybe once we hit 50 total characters I'd like to see them slow down to 2 a year, but even then, at this rate we're not reaching 50 characters until partway into 2027, four years from now, so I'm not too worried yet.

The other sentiment I've seen, or at least anticipate seeing, about how many reveals there were this weekend is that these reveals were too soon and took away surprises for later. I understand this one more, but I still disagree with it.

To explain what I mean, remember how excited people were about Junker Queen finally being revealed? We knew she was coming, her first-person viewmodel was "accidentally" shown in some beta footage, but it was the vindication of finally getting to see that highly anticipated character make it into the game in that made the wait worth it and the payoff so satisfying. We saw that same energy this weekend with Mauga, who was foreshadowed and even somewhat leaked to hell and back, but I was still just grinning ear-to-ear the entire time to see the mad lad in action at long last. Farther back, remember how insane Doomfist's reveal was?? I didn't even think he was gonna actually be more than a one-off cool name, but the fact he was realized and put in as the biggest canonical badass was hype out of this world, who cares if he's sucked for most of his in-game existence? And if you want surprise factor, it's not like those reveals didn't have that too. I wouldn't've guessed in a billion years that Junker Queen was gonna be a buff 7 ft+ badass and not just some edgy punk otherwise just as dainty as the other female characters Overwatch gets so much flak for. While not every "surprise" is a hit, I agree that some of the design changes between Mauga's initial short story art and his final in-game appearance are a little. eyebrow raise emoji, there was still more to learn about his character that made the reveal more than just being able to finally play with the toy that's been sitting sealed away on the shelf for years.

Now think about. The pathetic wet fart that was Lifeweaver's release. A completely new character that just kinda. Showed up. Revealed in a twitter post a day before the seasonal trailer dropped, where he wasn't even focused on barely at all. His pitiful in-game usefulness and Blizzard having its weekly controversy at the same time didn't help things, but it was just so... unceremonious. Not because it was a bad reveal, but because it was so unsatisfying of one. The attachment to him was flimsy at best to start with, and while like his balance, it did get better over time, there just wasn't that same established excitement as there was with characters like Mauga, Doomfist, and Junker Queen. Same goes for other "surprise" reveals too, like Illari, who got foreshadowed in what'll probably be the messiest point in Overwatch history, and Moira, who was the relatively boring side reveal after Reinhardt got his cinematic. OW1 hit a decent balance with heroes that weren't teased in the lore previously. We used to get teasers for new heroes at least a couple days before their proper reveal, building up their lore and hinting at what their kit might be like. That hasn't been the case in OW2 (though Sojourn, JQ, Kiriko, and Ramattra already had teasers established beforehand), and also wasn't the case for Moira and Ashe (who at least got starring role in a cinematic the same day as her reveal as a hero to build her up at least a bit).

The reveals for the next 3 heroes are sort of a backwards approach to this: we know what they look like (or what they might look like for the latter two, Venture seems pretty close to finalized), and we know varying amounts of how they play, but we don't know their names, much of their personalities, or their lore outside of random vague tidbits. I mean with 42 we still know next to nothing anyways, with Sigma's leak we at least had a blurry face and a name. But either way, the effect is the same: we have something to go off of, and from there we can build that preemptive attachment to these characters. I've already seen some great fanart of the two fresh faces from yesterday, and I'm extremely excited for someone to make a better interpretation of 42 than my rush job today. They already feel like part of the gang, but we still know they get to have their special time later. I'll say making Mauga actually playable (even just temporarily) immediately alongside the other reveals was definitely the right call to not overshadow him and make it feel like this is his time, and the other folks can have their time later too when it's more appropriate.

My favorite thing about how the reveals were handled though is how. Unprofessional it was. In the best of ways.

I've mentioned before how I think it's a pitfall for small creatives like myself to feel the need to fit the "professional standard" of holding your cards close to your chest until you can actually put out a "finished product". Like, they don't show beta footage of the next Smash Bros character with an unfinished model and a meme in place of their character select icon, right? No, they wait until a few months max before the character is ready to release. I mean, this is for a few reasons, mostly hype management and promotional reasons, things which have very clearly burned OW's ass before. But this is different, this isn't a forced showing of unfinished work for the sake of pleasing investors and making moronic execs feel good, this was because the devs had cool stuff they were excited about and know fans would be excited about. Somebody says outright at the start of today's panel that they know marketing will be mad at them or something in a tongue-in-cheek way, and like, I get the reasons to be secretive, but it just feels nice to let the pressure off and have fun with it even if it's a little messy, as long as they're transparent about it. It's an always appreciated reminder that there are people behind this game that love their characters the same way that smaller creatives like me love our characters. They got their they/them silly little meow meow with a drill and so do I, but the multi-million dollar company with stock shares or whatever to lose was more willing to share early than me, the one person who doesn't even have a bank account yet. Frankly, it's more a reminder I should finally get to sharing my ideas sooner before I have to say "dude trust me I had this idea for this ability without knowing they had it too" again.

I dunno. Maybe it's silly. but I think it's nice. It's reassuring. This feels like the most candid Overwatch's team has felt in a while. They're excited, they want us to be excited, and personally I'm taking the bait.

Welcome to the team, you three weirdos, excited to meet you later.

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #blizzcon #blizzcon 2023

5 notes · View notes

duchi-nesten · 9 months

Note

...ship meme? oh well, you know.... you know who I'd ask for...

ah yes the vlads and the jacks. the vlad and jacks i jusr realized i dont ....what is the ship name for them???

Vlad was tired.

He was out in the Ghost Zone for the last 3 days, searching for some ancient ghostly artefact or whatever it is a lonely old man in his 40s does in the world of the undead.

This thing he was looking for was definetly an important one.

For sure.

That's why he took 3 days off of mayor work just for this. (not like anyone would notice him gone. he didn't really do much mayor stuff tbh)

Unfortunetly, his trip was for naught. He didn't find the thing. He spent 3 fucking days in this green tinted fuckery of a world and found nothing (embarrassing)

SO YEAH. He was TIRED.

At last he finally reached the portal to his lab. Stepping inside he barely spared a glance towars the mess of papers he found about the artifact laying all around his lab. Every single one of them a reminder of his unsuccsesful endeavour.

He sighed loudly to himself and phased thru the ceiling up to his library. There was an even bigger mess there. Even more papers about the artifact.

He rubbed his temples annoyed as he transformed back. And fucking good thing he did, because the moment those post-transformation black rings disappeared Jack McFucking Fenton blasted his fucking library wall down.

"DON'T WORRY VLADDY. I GOT YOU COVERED!" he yelled shooting some Fenton GooTM everywhere.

"JACK." Vlad could barely contain his anger. He was too tired to deal with this right now.

"Where's the ghost?" Jack asked looking around and totally ignoring the fuming little guy in front of him.

"What. ghost.?" How the fuck did that idiot even get in here?

"The ghost! From the readings!" Jack pulled out a big screen from one of his pockets. That pocket was definetly too small to store that screen btw. "There was a ghost here just a second ago, that's why I drove over!"

"What is that?" Vlad asked pointing to the screen thing.

"Oh! It's just the Fenton Ghost DetectorTM! I noticed you were gone for a few days, so I broke into your mansion and installed the detection scanners everywhere to make sure no ghost messes with your stuff or tries to set up a trap while your gone!"

That was... certainly something Jack Fenton would do. Breaking and entering that is. A little warmth crawled into Vlad's insides at the realization that his college buddy actually noticed his short absence and cared about his sorry ass.

He punched himself in the gut to stop the warmth from spreading.

"Uh, you're good there V-man? You're not possessed, are you?"

Vlad took a deep breath before stretching a fake smile across his face. "No, I am quite fine. Just... had a little stomach ache."

"Ah! And you deal with it by making it hurt more! Just like in college!"

"Yes... Exactly like in college..." Vlad was not ready for the powerful shoulder slap he recieved in that moment (he should've been ready, he's known this man and his shoulder slappng tendencies for years). Straighting out his back after Jack almost snapped it in half, he cleared his throat. "Well as you can see, I am now back. So you can take all the scanners off."

"What? No way! I'd rather know of any ghostly threats in your house!"

Vlad was ready to argue, but before he could say anything Jack grabbed him by the shoulder he slapped half a minute ago and brought him into a half hug, placing a very soft kiss on his forehead.

"Gotta make sure all the people I love are safe!"

And that made Vlad.exe stop working. The warmth in his intestines came back tenfold and he was pretty sure he was blushing.

He hated this man so fucking much how DARE he make him feel LIKE THIS.

As he was standing there unrespodning for a few seconds, Jack took a look at the papers laying on the ground. He pointed at a picture of the artifact Vlad was looking after for the past 3 days.

"Oh hey it's that weird paper weight i found and stole from Danno's room!"

That was enough to bring Vlad back to earth.

He promptly punched himself in the gut again.

"Vladdy!"

#:)#also its 3:30 am i nEED TO SLEEP LMAO last one for tonight :)#kad answers #schnuffel-danny #ask game

8 notes · View notes

waheelawhisperer · 2 years

Note

I've found the best RWBY fans to interact with are the ones who like the show but still acknowledge its flaws.

Like, so much of the FNDM seems to have this "All or Nothing" mentality where you either unconditionally love and praise everything Rooster Teeth does or base your entire personality around hating everything Rooster Teeth has so much as breathed on, and honestly both extremes are horribly unhealthy.

I mostly agree with this, though I feel like it's worth pointing out that a lot of the "unconditional love" fans are really just fed up with the years' worth of negativity on the part of people who make hating the show their entire identity. I think it stems from the YouTubers, to be honest. For a lot of them, producing content is an actual job. While I don't personally care for that content and have no interest in watching any RWBY YouTuber, I can't dunk on any of them too hard because they actually get paid to do this and I'm well aware that there's a certain price for which my personal integrity is for sale: if it meant I would never have to sacrifice my physical and mental health working 40-60 hours a week ever again, if it meant I'd have time for myself and the people I care about, if it meant I could devote myself to the things I love or use my hypothetical wealth to make the world around me better... yeah, I'd absolutely base my brand around hating a show and appealing to shitheads, as long as I'm not expected to start shoving people down the alt-right pipeline. I like to think there's somewhere I'd draw the line, that there are things I wouldn't do for money, but the thought of not being fucking miserable and in physical pain at almost all times is really tempting.

Anyway, the point is that for at least some of these people, hating on RWBY is an actual job, as stupid as it sounds. It puts food on the table, which means they have a vested interest in building their brand, which means promoting their content and getting it exposure, which in turn means that avoiding negativity can take actual effort and isn't always as simple as just blocking people you don't like if you want to participate in fandom spaces that aren't total echo chambers. I don't know how blocking works on reddit because I mostly use my reddit account to look at pictures of breasts, but what I do know is that even going to the main RWBY subreddit to do something like read the reaction thread to a new Ice Queendom episode runs a not-insignificant risk of at least passively exposing me to the newest stupid take to escape quarantine in r/rwbycritics. As a result, there's a subset of the audience that feeds itself by whipping up negativity, by targeting emotional responses, that can be pretty hard to escape. I don't blame people who just don't want to deal with it anymore for responding defensively, though I'll concede that it can make having nuanced discussion... difficult.

This is not to say that everyone who is critical of RWBY is exactly the same. What most people think of when they talk about the critical side of the community contains people with anything from the relatively uncontroversial belief that the Battle of Haven was poorly choreographed or that some of the early voice acting wasn't very good to people with spicy hot takes like "Team RWBY are the real villains" and "Blake abused Adam and ruined his life". I guess I'm technically a critic, given that I post about things I like about RWBY, things I dislike, things I think worked well and things I think didn't, and then try to support and explain my views, but I don't really like thinking of myself that way because I don't want to be lumped in with the more extreme elements of either RWDE or rwbycritics. It's why I use the "analysis" tag instead of "rwde" (well, that and I think using "rwde" inherently sets a more hostile tone than I'm going for in a lot of cases).

I do think it's funny that RWDE and rwbycritics frequently come at the show from completely opposite directions (think "I'm worried that Rooster Teeth is using Bumbleby to string queer viewers along with the promise of representation without ever delivering on it" vs. "Rooster Teeth defiled Monty's memory* by making his action show political (read: gay)" and think the possibility for friendly fire between the two is hilarious. My solution is simple:

So yeah, the critics ("critics") definitely annoy me more than the people who are just relentlessly positive (though this may be because I've never personally experienced the harassment that each group supposedly directs at the other) given that most of the people who like the show at least engage with the text in good faith, while certain critics... do not. There are definitely a couple RWDE blogs that I think are reasonable, and even r/rwbycritics will inadvertently generate something resembling a coherent thought every once in a while, but I don't particularly care to engage with that community beyond browsing it once in a while out of curiosity because the good isn't worth wading through the garbage. RWDE is better in the sense that content is associated with specific blogs rather than threads posted to a subreddit, meaning that if someone posts nothing but stupid takes you don't want to interact with, you can just block them.

As for Rooster Teeth the company, I'm not an expert on its history by any means, but I know they've had issues with crunch in the past, I'm aware of the drama after Monty's death, and I know their brand was built on dudebro humor, so like... I'm sure there's been plenty to criticize in the past and is still plenty to criticize now, but I don't really care about Rooster Teeth beyond the fact that it produces RWBY and don't watch any of the studio's non-RWBY-related content. There's really not much I can give anyone here. Other people are a lot more invested in the company one way or another than I am.

*I really hate the "Monty's vision" argument. Nothing proves a point like dragging a dead man's name into your argument so you can pretend you knew what he wanted better than the people who actually knew and worked with him. Just utterly classless.

#rwby #analysis

46 notes · View notes

prnanxiety · 5 months

Text

11/29/23

I was in the cafeteria today, eating a chicken pita or something, when I saw a nurse I recognized sitting maybe 40 feet away. Staring at her phone, texting, etc. I stared at her for a while trying to remember where I'd seen her before. After about 5 minutes of mentally placing her in different situations in my head, it clicked; She was a travel nurse back at my first job as a nurse, during the pandemic.

I remember that job bitterly. The pandemic erupted in the middle of my last year of nursing school, interrupting valuable (and expensive) clinical rotations and replacing them with paperwork. Missing half my clinicals for that reason, then suddenly graduating into the middle of the storm, with all the older nurses quitting from the stress and leaving units dangerously understaffed, and only by new nurses who had no clue what the fuck they were doing. And then the pandemic ends, and suddenly everyone is pissed off that you don't know how to do your job unless the house is on fire, like we all as a nation didn't just collectively limp out of a pandemic together.

Since she was a traveler, she probably expected to do what every other travel nurse was expecting to do in those years; Collect a fuckall fat paycheck and not worry about the house burning down. So if I go up to someone like her and ask her for help, or did I do that right? To someone like her, its a hassle at best. At worst, it's a sign that I'm a bad nurse who doesn't need to be in this field.

Nursing is a whole field that teaches students "Actually everything you learn in school is just the 20% you need to know to make sure you don't kill someone on your first day. You learn everything else on the job." We graduated into a clusterfuck the likes of which the field had never seen before. All of medicine was in "Fuck it, figure it out mode." I actually can't even get into it all right now, not in one post. I've thought about writing a book, actually, but that's neither here nor there.

I just kinda sat there, wondering if I should go talk to her. "Hey, uh, did you work on that unit back then? Yeah? What was your name again? I knew I recognized you!" And then, how does the conversation go from there? "Oh yeah you were really curt with me when I'd try to help you, and you wouldn't talk with me about what I did wrong, you'd scold me for 'stepping on your toes' and then not help me understand. I really wanted to understand, you know. Why didn't you do that?" Or what does she say to me? Is it gonna be "Oh its good to see you!" Or is it gonna be "Oh, you're that moron who should never have been made charge nurse."

I ended up getting up and leaving without saying anything. I don't know how to confront it. It's this prevailing attitude, this curse on the field of nursing that so many people secretly accept, and maybe embrace for reasons I'll never understand. "Being a dick to new nurses is totally acceptable and we should all do it, especially when they're unconfident and nervous and things are going wrong."

Part of me wants to think I'm part of the problem for not reaching out to her, but damn! There was all that time during her contract when I was desperately reaching out to her, and to everyone! If I was a less than optimal nurse back then it was not for lack of effort or care!

It's like she represents this larger problem to me, that if I leave my current unit to go work somewhere else, looking for more skills to add to my repertoire, that I could just as easily land on a unit of people who sees me trying to learn and asking questions as a waste of their time. Maybe I can work with the house on fire, but how can anyone work through this?

Maybe she saw me too, maybe she didn't. Maybe that's why she didn't say anything to me either, actually.

Oh but before I end this entry I want to include something funny about work though actually. A patient at work is delusional and manic and has delusions of grandeur. My man is convinced, absolutely convinced that I am a rockstar, whom he's seen perform, who's just laying low and chilling and not really touring anymore. He was asking me about a video game appearance I made, and how was touring europe? Did you stop shredding? No matter how many times I politely told him he was mistaken, he wouldn't take no for an answer. "Riiiiiight..."

Towards the end of my shift, he asked me to get him some nicotine gum, and I apologized because he asked me for some an hour ago, and I said I'd go get some right away, and got completely side tracked. My bad. So observed, while I was scanning it all for him, "You look like you've had something on your mind this shift." I sighed. He was right, I'd been arguing with a friend on my phone. And I told him "yeah, you know, etc." He said "Look. Listen, when you get home, I want you to sit down, relax, taking a deep breath... And play your guitar." I just had to hand him the gum and walk away.

Hey, this journal is my guitar, maybe.

#dear diary #diary entry #nursing #psych #psychiatry #psychosis #nurse #schizophrenia #bipolar #delusional #pandemic #covid19

3 notes · View notes

television-overload · 8 months

Note

Get to know your fic writer (no pressure):

1, 4, 13, 16, 22, 25 (add link if you want), 40, 54, 56

Ooh yay! Thanks for the ask! I think I copied these all over correctly. I was bored so I went in-depth 😂 Here we go:

1. Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

I've been sitting here for like 5 minutes trying to figure out which I prefer 😂. I find myself coming up with multi-chapter ideas more often I think, really grand plots that I definitely don't have time to devote attention to. I also run into the problem of not knowing how to fill in between the parts that I do I have ideas for, so true multi-chapter fics are a rarity. I've had a few times where a one-shot turned into a multi chap, and THOSE tend to work better and are way more cohesive. One of my favorites is one I wrote for Star Wars (wrong blog, oops 😅) but both chapters were a lot stronger than my usual stuff, and it performed way better on AO3 which was really gratifying.

I've always wanted to write a true masterpiece where readers are anxiously awaiting the next chapter, like so many I've read, but I don't know if I've ever gotten there yet. Maybe a few when I used to write NCIS stuff on fanfiction.net.

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Songs, a lot of times. They hit me in the feels. Sometimes a line in a fic I'm reading will spark an idea, something I haven't thought about, a new interpretation of an existing scene from the source material. Gifsets, Tumblr meta analysis, movies I'm watching. So many places. I feel like half of them come to me when I'm at work, which is very inconvenient. The aforementioned Star Wars two-shot was half written on the bus ride home from work in the notes app on my phone. I've written several in the aftermath of particularly good or bad episodes/movies. Fix-it fanfic is always great, I feel like I need to write more of it.

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

I haven't done this for very long, but lately in my adulthood (as opposed to my teenage fics *shudders*) I've actually been pretty good about writing out an outline and going back to edit later. I used to just spew everything in a word doc and barely go through it before posting, but now I reread it to death, mostly to make sure it flows well. My outlines are, shall we say, extensive. The Star Wars fic I'm working on now had 20 chapters outlined and it totaled over 20,000 words. I've basically storyboarded the whole thing and then I go through and convert that to actual scenes. Important dialogue moments I want to hit are included, cause I know I'll forget them if I don't write them as they come to me. It helps me to be able to see the big picture, so that I don't give up on the project halfway through. But for spur of the moment fics or most one-shots, I still mostly write as I go. Occasionally if I have a thought that I want to make sure to include in a later scene, I'll just tack it on at the bottom of the doc and delete it once I get to that point and I put it in writing.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them.

They're scattered all over the place so that's a good question that God probably only knows the answer to. Some are barely even ideas but take up a line or two in my notes app on my phone. Some probably live only in my brain, forgotten until something triggers me to remember that I was thinking of writing it 😅.

I'd love to do something with @irish-trish 's prompt to fill in the scene from NCIS "She mentioned you at the funeral, I could see what she felt." It sounds right up my alley, but there's a Star Wars fic week coming up in September that I want to actually do on time this year, so I can't allow myself to shift focus to NCIS quite yet 😭

Other than that, I want to write a second chapter to my X-Files fic "Field of Dreams" where Mulder gets to play catch with his son. I really loved writing that fic.

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

Nothing spicy. I don't think I'd ever write in first person unless it was in the form of a letter. Other than that, I think I'd do pretty much whatever. It's just a matter of what I have the skills for I think 😂

Not a fan of AUs, except canon divergence, obviously. To me, the way the characters meet is so integral to who they are that it can't be changed much or it just doesn't feel like them. I've read maybe one fic that changed how characters met (Mulder and Scully) but that was the result of time travel and all sorts of things that warmed me up to the idea, plus the characters as we know them were still there. Alternate universe in the truest sense. I got distracted, what were we talking about?

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

The two fics I think of as my comfort fics, ones I found really peaceful and natural to write, would have been nice to see get more attention. I've been writing on and off for like a decade now (😳) and I've only ever really had one fic truly pop off in terms of kudos and comments. Which are literally my life blood 😂. But a lot of my older stuff I look back on and I'm like, yeah, that wasn't that great.

My Star Wars (Obi-Wan and Satine) one shot "this could be such a dream" I found really emotional and relaxing to write. I was kind of surprised it didn't go very far, but it was part of a weekly challenge thing so I suppose it makes sense in a way.

To get back to the TV shows I write for, though (since that's the focus or THIS blog), I really really loved my X-Files fic "Field of Dreams", in large part because I love that movie which inspired it, and I love a domestic, peaceful and content-if-not-happy happily ever after for Mulder and Scully. The movie itself makes me cry and feel so many feels, and I thought the connection to Fox Mulder was a really good one.

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

I would welcome anythinggggg, that is my dream!! I haven't really written anything I'm super proud of yet in the NCIS fandom that I feel would warrant art, but maybe someday! I'm working on a Star Wars "Sound of Music" type looooong fic rn and boy, the amount of work I've put in, I would die if someone were engaged enough to be inspired by it.

54. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Honestly, I get so excited to post it. I hope people will enjoy what I've written. I've read so much great fanfic, that I just want to contribute my 2 cents to the fandoms. Getting comments (as rare as it often is) literally makes my day and makes it all worthwhile to me. Any form of engagement, interaction here on Tumblr, that's what I strive for. But I also write for me. Exploring ideas I've never seen done before, filling in gaps in the fandom, I love it. Those comfort fics I was talking about, I love to just go back and read. It doesn't really matter, in the end, if they touched other people like they do me. I like them and that's what matters. The fics I'm not so proud of? I've been transferring them over from Tumblr and fanfiction.net anyway because some of them have received really lovely comments and people might enjoy them despite how I feel.

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I hope I'm improving on descriptive language. I want to bring out emotions in my writing, and I think there's been definite improvement since I started. I'm also thankful that I have a grasp on grammar and spelling and all the typical writing conventions. That can be a turn off to a lot of readers if it's a complete mess, so luckily I was always a pretty harsh editor throughout my schooling 😅

Get to know your fic writer

#asks #askbox #get to know your fic writer #get to know me #fanfic writing #my fanfic #fanfiction

2 notes · View notes