#and frankly i think that's valid of me. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xenoshadow13 · 2 months

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you really should take the matter over fictional content more seriously because one day you could actually really someone out there over what you think is just harmless fun

you might laugh right now but you won't find it so funny when you're dropped by a former friend over it :/

As I've once said to another anon, I rather not be pulled into this nonsense over fucking fiction. It's nothing but a very stupid shitstorm that should have NEVER gotten this bad in the first place.

And because I know there will be folks out there who will get on my case for this, no, just kindly fuck off and leave me alone. I refuse to be dragged into a shitstorm all because some folks out there want to throw a hissy fit at others enjoying ANY sort of fictional content that THEY find uncomfortable.

I said these before in another post and I shall say it again because I feel it's needed. Putting this under readmore tho cuz post getting rather long here.

It's okay to feel upset over certain fictional content & interests, but that does not mean it's okay for you to act as if those who enjoy said stuff are horrible people. You're allowed to feel however you want over certain content, but for fuck's sake please just use that block/mute/whatever and move on with your fucking life. No need to announce to the world how much this or that makes you uncomfortable okay.

It's YOUR job to curate your own internet experience, NOT US STRANGERS. Most of us will do our best to tag certain shit to make it easier for others to avoid content but the system here isn't perfect so stuff is bound to slip by regardless. But even then, it's still YOUR job to curate your own internet experience. Again, a lot of us fellow online folks will do our best to tag certain content to make this a little easier for you, but that doesn't mean it's our job to cater to you.

News flash people, everyone has trauma and everyone deals with it differently. You're allowed to feel however you want over with anything regarding your trauma but that does not give you the fucking right to act as if only YOUR experiences and how YOU deal with YOUR trauma is "right". What's that? Do you find how this or that person deals with their trauma to be really weird? Alright. That's okay. You think so-and-so doesn't count and that gives you the right to treat them however you want for it? Yeah no. You can fuck off with that mindset there.

Everyone is bound to unwittingly do something that will make you and others uncomfortable but that doesn't make them some horrible person. So please take a chill pill and not jump the gun so soon on others solely because of that. Not to say that you're not allowed to feel however you do but for fuck's sake 1) a lot of us are socially awkward folks who struggle with recognizing social cues and such and 2) it's not easy to read tone and such over text. :|

Alrighty. This is getting long enough as it is and uhm starting to get a bit tough to not go off completely here so just gonna stop.

But yeah. If you have a problem with any of this then go right ahead and hit that unfollow button there. You will not be missed. :)

#answered asks #anonymous #// long post #// slight rant #Sorry that this comes off as really nasty but I'm quite frankly just with this nonsense over fiction #I didn't come on here to be pulled into bullshit all because some folks have a problem over shit that makes them uncomfy #Not to say that folks aren't valid for how they feel over shit but for fuck's sake a lot of them seem to think that gives them -#- the right to treat others however they want simply because of how THEY feel over shit #Also just saying but Is2g I will get so annoyed if folks give me shit over this #Also btw anon sorry for what happened to you there. I meant to mention it in the post but it slipped my mind #All I will say here is that what happened to you there is wrong #The fact that former friend of yours was willing to drop you over fictional content however shows they're not a real friend #Everyone has differing opinions and tastes in such. A real friend would be more willing to respect that #... well okay not to say folks aren't allow to find certain things uncomfortable enough that they just CAN'T tolerate it #but even so to simply drop a friendship over some fictional interest of yours? Uhm yeah no.

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gayspock · 2 years

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i will say tho its weird sometimes when ppl talk abt idk... like, heartstopper, yah... & its not for me it is notttt i dont wanna watch it stop telling me its not 4 me.

BUT on tumblr - amongst this crowd -ive seen one or two ppl like "WEEEEEE dont need this" like ehh man cmon. i think a lot of younger kids do and i think its like... so counterproductive to try and push for, like, exactly "one type of show" for "THEcommunity" like. like say oh we dont need happy gay teen shows we need more for this, more of this- yadda, yadda like?

you know its not mutually exclusive, yah. like it isnt an actual factual "finite resource" - perhaps an imposed limitation that can be challenged, but even then in the most abstract of terms... like alice oseman's heartstopper isnt the reason the content u want doesnt exist, not really

. & thats not absolving criticism of, like, other actual aspects of this content vis a vis diversity- im not talking abt that, bc yah fair enough when ppl vent their frustrations abt the more genuinely sanitised aspects like how white some of these shows are, etc. but like... wrt just disliking it bc its a "happy teen show and i dont want that im an adult" like idk what the point of getting grumpy at a younger audience watching sth for them will do in the long run & it feels like a very weird misdirected vitriol for 0 reason...

bc yah its not for me either its cooool & irritating when ppl push it onto you but . just getting mad unprompted. its like idk... especially in 2022 its like. absolutely an important aspect of the whole: its time to move past the whole "there's an lgbt person in this!!" as a category of media pleaseeeee bc its kinda weird the way that categorisation starts to cannibalise itself when its like help... that isnt the enemy here i dont think<3

#Egg.txt #also this wasnt @author's post ofc it just reminded me of others ive seen like it ^_^#bc its like i gettt the frustration bc im a littl e frustrated too when ppl insist i watch certain media just bc its gay etc etc but then #some people so counter intuitively get this idea that like??? the hell??? thats the thing thats an attack on the rest of the media #like naur its not babe dont worry about it...#idk ive just seen some ppl so MAD abt it and its like-#idk i dont want to be like ''ohhh ppl flip on a dimeee''' bc that isnt what happens at all & i hate that sentiment bc it never makes sense #blah blah blah- BUT what i mean is and i say this carefully is like #ive seen a lot of ppl say so much of gay media is sanitised and full of happy endings & is unrealistic #and so many other ppl say that its all cold and depressing and bury your gays #& i think both of those things exist at the same time absolutely and paradoxically #and theyre both valid frustrations but its also like the odd . staunch opposition to the other ''type'' of show when #its honestly otherwise kinda harmless when its like i dontknow i think frankly its like..#kinda odd . kinda weird

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stories-of-the-multiverse · 2 months

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((Still feeling salty so!

Gonna say this, if you hate Lilith for leaving Adam and Lucifer, guess what, you're misogynistic as fuck.

Oh how dare a woman refuse to stay with a man who has no respect for her body autonomy nor a man who grew to stand against everything she stands for!

Clearly she should have stayed to teach them better and do all the emotional labor for them, yet she valued herself more than she felt responsible for their emotional growth, the cunt!

Eat my god damn ass-))

#OOC #Morningstars #Eden #Vivziepop CW #Sexism CW #Misogyny CW #Mobile Post #I will fight god on this #I don't think I felt this heated since I ranted about the FNF Soft Mod #Don't get me wrong Adam and Lucifer have a right to feel hurt by Lilith leaving them that is valid #But frankly she did the healthy thing by leaving them instead of trying to fix them #Can you imagine setting a precedent that if you no longer jive with a partner that you should stay to fix their flaws #Otherwise you're a piece of shit abandoning said partner?#Fuuuuuuck you-

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planet4546b · 7 months

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practice starts tomorrowww and i’m dreading it super bad which is a bummer because i loved it so much this time last year. but ill be fine once i actually starts im sure im just not thrilled about it

#pers #i know it’s just bc of how last year ended. but frankly i think it’s valid for me to be freaked out because of that #it was a literal nightmare and almost none of it actually got resolved!!!#and also it just takes up so much time…this year i’ll leave at 9pm sharp thank you #ugh i’ll be fineeeee i’ll be fine it just sucks. UGHHHHH

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sea-of-ash · 1 year

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i think part of the reason i’m chill with getting flustered over characters as opposed to real people is that i internally know it’s impossible for me to ever be in an actual relationship with them? and that takes so much of the pressure and uncomfy anxiety away

#rambles #not that i don’t occasionally think “oh that person’s attractive” but it’s more in like a #“oh i like their aesthetic and wouldn’t mind staring at them for a while” kind of way #that sounds creepy but i really don’t mean for it to come across that way hhdfjhd #a long term romantic relationship sounds quite frankly awful to me tho like no offense but yikes #who has the energy #not that romantic relationships aren’t completely valid and wonderful ofc #kudos to all you lovely couples

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miradorjake · 2 years

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Are you still down to clown :(

yep bc that’s just who I am <3

#if I don’t live in a constant state of delusion than I would be really really sad 🧍🏻‍♀️#my only take is #let fans feel and respond in whichever ways they want bc they are more than warranted #but that goes for fans who are choosing to stay delusional (me) as well #do I think he just misspoke?? yeah I actually do #is that me being delusional?? there is a slight chance 🙂 but I don’t care #I feel like there’s more signs than none that point to new music this year #whether that’s just a single or two and not an album then that’s that #but I just believe it too much to think otherwise especially from a show where he was out partying ALL night the night before #I really do think he misspoke bc each leg before that he AND his team have implied he literally could be touring next year #however!!! louies have trauma with this especially 2018 :’) any response felt rn is valid and understandable #*sighs loud enough for the beings living in the andromeda galaxy to hear me* it is…..what it is #anon #also not to be the overly optimistic clown here #but I feel like there could be many context taken from that quote??#like if next tour he spends more time in the places he didn’t get around to this time #so he could’ve literally just meant argentina as a country to tour in and not all of latam #because next world tour he might spend more time in asian countries and whatnot do you know what I mean??#like I just feel it could mean a lot more!! than impending doom bc quite frankly we just don’t fucking deserve that again idfc

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softgrungeprophet · 2 years

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mixed feelings on the one-off joke about/existence of flash’s aunt eugenia

#this isn't new i was just thinking about it for whatever reason #it's not something i hate entirely and it's valid to not like your name because you're named after an aunt you don't like #BUT #it also bugs me #lmfao #also it's funny to me that lea thompson is listed as flash's aunt on his wiki page but eugenia is not #considering they have about the same amount of 'proof' which is: a single line that's essentially a joke.#but i guess the difference is we've never seen aunt eugenia vs lea being in howard the duck #frankly the fact that she is a howard the duck character to me counts as a strike against canonicity but lmao #nadia rambles #nadia reads comics #also i read a fic recently that i liked but flash was repeatedly called eugene in the context of intimacy and i found that really weird #cause no one calls him that and he's down on the record as not wanting to be called that to the point of arguing with his sister about it #but then again how many people can i expect to know a single scene from a 90s comic

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davidtennantpussytulpa · 2 years

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did taylor swift Do something or do u just find her annoying :o

taylor swift killed my whole family she poisoned my dog then spit on all their dead bodies and she called me slurs and she punched me in the face and she choked me out and she personally bullied every gay person ever and also every poc ever and also shes an actual demon and her fans should die too and i hope she explodes

#anyways if u dont think she ‘did anything’ girl unfollow me #im drunk rn but literally. are u stupid lol i dont wanna be mean but she fucking sucks and her fans suck too #shes used poc as props shes placed herself at the forefront of white feminism she takes any cvalid criticism of her actions as attacks again #st women qnd her fans too she hasnt denounced her white supremacist fanbase shes queerbaiyed for YEARS #she released that shitty calm down vid or whatever ysing gay people as props and comparing homophobia to her ~haters~#and her fans make me sick validating all yhis shit and trying to redstring her into some gay icon like her sexuality is being repressed #when shes just ysing that to her advantage while thinkign real gay people are ickyyyyy and there are other real wlw artists you can support #but they dont bc wahhhhh i want HER to be gay. anyway her fans should die she should die im not exaggerating choke and fucking die #ESPECIALLY if u are one of yhe ones delusional enough to think shes sending coded messages abt being gay or whatever ur a fucking idiot #also she hasnt released any good music since like 2010 so its frankly just embarrassing huh.#asks

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absentlyabbie · 10 months

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i'll tell you what converted me to being all-in on keeping cats indoors only:

living for a year and a half in a rural area with a sudden feral cat colony explosion on the property.

i moved in with my folks for a bit and at that time, one (1) stray cat mama had taken up residence on the property, but was too feral to let my mother anywhere near her. but especially after she brought three kittens around, mom fed her and the kittens in hopes they'd grow trusting enough she could catch for spay and neuter at the minimum. momcat stayed mean and hella wary, but the kittens would hang around a little nearer and play with my mom via long stick, but still wouldn't come close enough to touch or catch.

unfortunately, two of the three kittens were girls and started having kittens of their own before further progress was made, shortly after i moved in. and that was pretty much instant doom.

there were so many kittens. SO MANY. multiple litters. every time we turned around, more kittens.

we fed them. we hunted for and located the kittens every time anywhere on the property and would move them to a repurposed doghouse anytime a mama cat had them somewhere else, so that they could grow up human-socialized and we could spay/neuter them when they were old enough. (also it was a handy tactic to push the issue of the mamas getting more used to/trusting of us themselves. only really worked with one of them, though.)

and we watched them die.

we watched litter after litter of kittens never make it to the age they could be spayed or neutered. the moms stayed, for the longest time, too skittish to more than briefly touch, much less catch and crate for a vet visit.

it sounds like a silly joke to say i have kitten-related ptsd, but i absolutely do.

too many goddamn times i'd walk out of the garage and find the carport and gravel drive strewn with tiny bodies. others simply went missing, never to be found.

one in particular, i wish i hadn't found, and the visual literally haunts me still, almost a decade later.

i saw so many kittens die of snake bite, spider bite, wild dogs, birds of prey, hit by cars, respiratory illness, covered in fleas and eyes crusted with infection.

and we loved them all. scrimped for antibiotics if the vet could be convinced to give it to us despite our being unable to bring them in. bought flea collars and ointments. we cared for them and fed them and petted them and played with them, brushed their fur and cleaned up their little faces, put ice in their water in hot summer, rigged a heating lamp in their house in the winter.

and they died. horribly. that property is pocked with unmarked graves of kittens and cats.

all the best intentions, not enough resources, and it didn't matter anyways because the population went from three to almost twenty (at times, over thirty) in the blink of an eye.

they died and died and died. our hearts broke over and over again. the stress and anxiety wore us down like sandpaper. i think, by the end of it all, we managed to find less than 10 of them all homes, including batman the disabled kitten i found a home across the country through tumblr.

it was carnage and tragedy, frankly. and we were helpless.

it only ended because they started dying faster than they could be born, and because we finally caught the two remaining mom cats in traps and got them spayed.

the points about outdoor cats being invasive predators devastating to local wildlife populations is true and valid and important.

but i know cat people, and cat people who don't know better than to let cats outdoors. what matters to you is the cat itself, generally. the cat being happy and taken care of.

keeping cats outdoors, letting them outdoors, is not taking care of the cats. it's not protecting them. it's not giving them any happiness or invigoration that couldn't be provided to them as indoor-only pets with just a little research and effort.

they die. they get ill. they get hurt. they're at risk of predators, and cars, and disease, and carelessly cruel children and deliberately cruel adults. they're at risk of disappearing on you because someone else saw a cat outdoors and intervened to give it a better, safer life not in conflict with the local environment.

and if that offends and angers you that someone would just take a cat they saw roaming outdoors, even collared, and that it sounds like i'm endorsing that, i am, but not if you intervene and be that person yourself for your own cat.

if what matters to you is doing right by your cat because it's family and a living creature whose happiness and health and safety is important to you,

keep them indoors. not part time. always. exclusively.

edit: since apparently i need to clarify this, i'm saying cats should live inside, that they should not live outdoors, even part time. visiting the outdoors supervised on a leash or in an enclosed catio is not the same as even part-time living outside, and i am certainly not advocating against it.

#long post #cats #indoor cats #outdoor cats #keep your cats inside

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oranberrie · 1 year

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Sometimes, I’m like “man, I think I might have been looking too deep, I’m not sure if I’m autistic.” And then I nearly have a meltdown but then instead shut down after The Plan For Today that only I know goes awry and therefore messes up The Plan For Next Week, when had things been done The Right Way nothing would have gone wrong.

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spacelazarwolf · 6 months

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saw a post that gave me an eye twitch so i’m gonna break it down and analyze it bc i feel like it exemplifies a lot of what’s wrong with gentile discourse on i/p rn.

1. yeah, it is awful that zionist institutions and leadership use jewish trauma to justify why diaspora jews should unquestioningly support the current state of israel, regardless of the atrocities it commits against palestinians.

2. "israel is not your bube who survived the shoah" i don't know how to explain to you how fucking callous this sentence is.

3. for better or worse, israel did save jewish people. nearly a million jews from the swana region and 24,000 from ethiopia fled there after experiencing extreme violence and discrimination. you really think america or europe would have taken in a million black and brown jews? have you seen the current state of immigration?

4. "how do you argue with someone when their idea of israel is so rooted in their family trauma?" you don't. you validate their fears, make them feel heard, and then you offer them alternatives. the vast majority of diaspora support for israel is based in fear of persecution and eradication. if you offer real, legitimate solutions for the safety of diaspora jews, i guarantee you will be a thousand times more successful than just screaming at them and telling them "who fucking cares about your holocaust survivor bubbe????"

5. "how do you possibly tell them that the holocaust isn't relevant?" you don't, because it is. nearly 500,000 holocaust survivors moved to or were sent to israel after the shoah. some did not have a choice of where they were sent, some tried to go back to where they were living before but had no money and gentiles had taken their houses and belongings so they had nowhere to go, many faced violence upon trying to return to their hometowns in the form of pogroms, several countries turned them away. you cannot say the holocaust is not relevant to the current israeli population because gentiles in the diaspora are the reason they're there.

6. "i'm so tired of centering jewish identity in discussions over a nation state." are you stupid? genuinely, are you stupid? do you really not see how jewish identity and the history of the jewish people factor into a state with a fucking star of david on the flag that was founded after a genocide of 6 million jews that the rest of the world didn't want to deal with? seriously? no, jews in the diaspora are not responsible for the actions of the israeli government. we aren't more loyal to israel than we are to wherever we're living. but to say that israel has nothing to do with the jewish people is frankly laughable.

7. "how do you say that without sounding invalidating? like that just sounds horrible and antisemitic." that's because it is. you are being horrible and antisemitic.

edited to add: NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER?????????????????????????????? HELLO??????????????????????????

so please for the love of fuck educate yourself on the history of the jewish people and the history of the state of israel before making stupid ass posts like this. israel didn't manifest out of nowhere, it didn't come from "jewish supremacy" it came from hundreds of thousands of jews who were at their wit's fucking end with antisemitism in the diaspora, and from britain's colonization and imperialism paired with it's complete and total disregard for anyone who wasn't racially and culturally white. the monster that is modern day political zionism is a creation of the world's own making. people have been posting a lot about hamas being a response to 70+ years of israeli occupation, violence, and apartheid, but don't seem to understand that israel is a response to 3000+ years of persecution, expulsion, and genocide. the massacres and terror committed by hamas don't take into account the wellbeing of palestinians, and the oppression and violence perpetuated by the israeli government don't take into account the wellbeing of jews in israel or in the diaspora.

nothing will change if gentiles in the diaspora do not take responsibility for the rest of the world's role in the creation of israel. research your country, learn about how they treated their jews (not just during the holocaust but from the moment there were jews in your country), talk to your local jewish population, ask how you and organizations you are part of can help keep the diaspora safe for jews. because as an american jew, i don't want to move to israel. the government is borderline fascist, non ashki non orthodox jews are often seen as second class citizens, i don't speak the language, and my life is here. a lot of diaspora jews feel this way. but every time i see another group of nazis at a rally or get another bomb threat at my synagogue and look to see which country would be safest to move to as a trans person and as a jew, the only answer is israel, which is exactly what zionist institutions and leadership are counting on. if you want that to change, you and your community have to change it.

#ip

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marshmellowtea · 2 years

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this is another note entirely but god do i hate posts that demand you be angry for Activism Reasons like i get where they’re coming from but speaking as someone who’s A) had really bad anger issues for most of my life and B) seen the way overemphasis on people’s personal feelings has completely poisoned so much of internet discussion, i just think maybe it’s not always the fucking way to go about it. you know. i think perhaps we should put less stock into an emotion that can famously make you think irrationally and put more stock into, y’know, destroying the system because you care about other people. i think that would be more helpful.

#not saying anger isn’t a valid emotion nor am i saying people haven’t gotten shit done but like.#this is how we’ve gotten takes where people put more effort into shitting on bigots rather than uplifting the people they’re targeting #so many people use online activism as an outlet for their anger and that makes them so so vulnerable to being manipulated by assholes who’ll #redirect their anger onto the wrong people or things #idk maybe i’m overthinking it it’s just. kind of a sensitive topic for me lol #i really hate the person i am when i get angry and frankly i’m really tired of constantly feeling angry #i think the world could use a little less rage actually #marshy speaks

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eloise-t-g · 3 days

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i think for me, the watcher situation comes down to this:

it's absolutely respectable that the watcher team wants to grow and produce better quality content. it's respectable that they don't want to stagnate and end up pushing the same content out over and over again. that's not satisfying for them creatively, i get that.

however, if higher quality, more heavily produced content is not what your fans are asking for, then you can't ask them to fund it.

this all-or-nothing method they've gone for is frankly bizarre. it feels like they leap-frogged all other alternatives to improving their finances and ended up here, alienating and frustrating the majority of their fanbase (the fanbase they thanked for getting them to where they are).

i think this could have gone a lot better if they:

Hadn't hyped up this video for a week.

Hadn't announced the worth it successor just beforehand.

Hadn't put out a wishy-washy, "boo hoo we're so sad about this", over-produced video.

Hadn't made it $6/month (more in a lot of countries given exchange rates).

Had considered that this means fans in specific countries literally cannot pay for the subscription due to geo/region-locking.

my ideas for improving their funds, aka things they could have tried before blowing their brand up: create their own website with two options - a free version with ads and a paid version without ads, OR make better use of their patreon/make their website extra content, not all their content, for example:

Put the ghost file debriefs on there.

Put shows like survival mode on there (or even shift that show from pre-recorded video to live-stream - live stream access to patrons and VOD access to everyone, maybe).

Put episode commentaries there.

Do reaction videos to their old buzzfeed content, talk about memories and BTS, and put that there.

Put one/two episodes of each show, per season on there (and ONLY there).

Put the episodes up there a few days early.

Make specific, website only content (that's not your main and most popular series aka ghost files and puppet history).

Record the live, in-person shows and put those VODs up there.

EDIT (thought of something else lmao): put extended or even uncut versions of ghost files on there. Paranormal Detour on Detune's twitch channel has shown that people will willingly sit through 6+ hours of a ghost investigation.

EDIT: idk, do livestreams once a week where you watch scary movies with fans on discord or twitch.

(side note: the fact that they're not taking down their patreon and instead shifting all of their podcast content on there, something the patreons who have been loyally giving them money for years didn't ask for, is ridiculous and greedy. add to this the fact that they don't even get a free sub to the new website, instead get 40% off - a measly 10% more than anyone else who subs before the official launch).

the thing for me is that they're claiming they want to make "television" and "television-grade content". that's completely fine. what's not completely fine is acting like your four episodes a month is equal to netflix's entire catalogue.

this really felt like it should have been something they told us they were progressing towards, not something they revealed to be on the imminent horizon. idk, it just feels out of nowhere. no, they don't owe us all of the info about their company. but something had to be better than this.

final thought - it's okay and valid to be upset at the team for this. for a lot of people, it's a complete betrayal (especially the comment that $6 a month is something "anyone and everyone can afford", i mean yikes). i do think some people's anger got the best of them, and some of the comments i've seen across youtube, twitter, and tumblr are plain bullying, racism, and harassment. until we have the whole story, we can't decide that one founder (aka steven in a lot of people's minds) is solely responsible. i know a lot of these awful things are only coming from a small minority of the fandom, but they still get seen.

at the end of the day, all three of them got up in front of a camera and made this video, together. that can only lead us to the conclusion that they made this decision together. acting like these men in their 30s couldn't stand up against it if they truly wanted to, is so strange and parasocial lmao.

tl;dr there were much better ways of going about this announcement, if it even needed to be made at all. however, that doesn't excuse the hateful shit being spewed at the team. for now, all we know is the three founders decided they were done with youtube, and done with their loyal youtube audience.

(i have so many more thoughts on this but i need to stop lmao. however i do wonder how different things could have been if 1. they had hired someone with actual business experience as their CEO from the jump, and 2. this video was more of a "hey we're broke! this is a last-ditch effort to save our company!". guess those questions will remain ... well ... you know ...).

#watcher #ryan bergara #steven lim #shane madej #buzzfeed unsolved #unsolved #worth it

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cybernaght · 9 months

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The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe.

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”.

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours.

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we?

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals.

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation.

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth.

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space.

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality.

Part two. Microanalysis

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling.

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season.

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal.

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal.

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works.

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time.

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever.

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding.

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs.

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain.

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To.

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another.

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership.

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another.

Three, Intentionality

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed.

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media.

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic.

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way.

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness.

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here.

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all.

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo?

I do.

#fandom thoughts #fanon #good omens #good omens 2 #bbc sherlock #merlin bbc #think piece #it's been years and I still have no idea how to tag #conspiracy theories #fandom content #all fandoms

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