Harry Potter Rec Fest Day 21 - Thought-provoking
@hprecfest - this prompt was itself very thought-provoking, it made me go back and think about the fics that made me close my Kindle and stare at a wall for a while. The fics I love best make me re-examine canon and rethink the things I knew about characters and situations, or even my own life.
The Audacity of Lavender Brown by @malpal132
Pairing: Lavender x Charlie
Word count: 6,457
Rating: E
Canon did Lavender Brown dirty. I'm not sure who did her dirtier - JKR or the movies - but I really think she's unfortunately a one-dimensional plot device in a series of books already bereft of strong, admirable female characters. @malpal132 sets out to change this. This fic not only made me rethink Lavender in and out of canon, but female characters in general. Come for the feminism, stay for the sexy smut with Charlie Weasley.
Pop Up Pals by bambimoss
Pairing: Draco x Harry
Word count: 62,447
Rating: E
I love down-and-out Draco. I think it's a good impetus for a redemption arc and humanizes him for Harry and others who spent years villainizing him. This fic takes it to another level. I got literal stomach aches feeling so sorry and sad for Draco in this fic. As an introvert who doesn't love leaving the house but still experiences loneliness like all humans, I related to his "imaginary friends" and the embarrassment of having your lackluster (as judged by others) personal life outed. I don't want to spoil too much, because this fic is so small and heartbreaking and wonderful. You all need to experience it for yourselves.
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And finally, a couple of little self-recs ...
Keep Your Eyes on Me by @ahhhnorealnamesallowed - a Podfic (Spotify)
Pairing: Draco x Harry
Word count: 2,786
Length: 17:55
Rating: T
How Harry became a tattoo artist. The descriptions of art in this fic are so beautiful; I can picture them clearly. The writing is efficient and minimalist but evokes so much emotion. I love this alternate journey for Harry - a way for him to work through some of his trauma.
A Gift of True Esteem by @teledild0nix - a Podfic (Spotify)
Pairing: Draco x Harry
Word count: 53,965
Length: 5:37:00
Rating: E
This is a personal one. I recorded this for the wonderful @teledild0nix at the request of their partner for an anniversary gift. Of course, I said yes! It's a sweet and thought-provoking fic: Hogwarts professors Drarry, educational reform, werewolves, actual queer representation, adorable magical pets. For me, the educational reform was the thought-provoking part, and Liddy does a great job laying out some of the problems with Hogwarts curriculum and then trying to fix it. I so enjoyed recording it, and even moreso the thought of @teledild0nix listening to it.
Mini-soapbox rant to hopefully make my post meta-thought-provoking: Liddy's partner asked me, when recording this, if they could compensate me for my work. I do some paid audiobook work in my free time, but this is fanfic, and I would have done this for free just because it's such a sweet thing for someone to do for a loved one.
(Shouting into the void and very much not at @teledild0nix's lovely partner:) But also don't try to monetize fandom!!! We do this out of love for the fandom and to increase accessibility for those who might not always be able to read. It's fun, it brings people together, and no one should be making money off it! Let's just all scream on the internet about how great and fun it is, okay?
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Fionna and Cake makes me realize just how much we all lost growing up. Fionna is literally us now. And it hurts so much. But feels so validating at the same time. We all went from kids with huge hopes and dreams, enchanted by the wonderful and weird world of Adventure Time, to gradually losing our childhoods and childlike view of what the world could be year by year…Until finally resigning ourselves to what the world we live in is actually like. A world without magic and the freedom to adventure whenever you want.
I feel like there’s something deeper I want to express but I can’t find the words yet…but we all feel like we’ve been short changed. We all know deep down life was supposed to offer us more. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. Working just to be able to eat cheap food, one paycheck away from having our “treehouse” foreclosed. Hating every job we have and not knowing why.
It’s because the magic is missing. Or. It’s there but we just can’t or don’t know how to access it anymore.
It was our birthright, and it was taken from us. And we’re angry about it. We were written and created for lives more colorful and exciting than what our current universe can offer anyone besides the ultra-rich.
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Hello! I just got an unexpected bill and my bank is about to be overdraft as soon as it goes through. 🥲 I’m opening up a limited time emergancy commissions with sales prices.
Colored sketches $10 - full color $20 - full color 2 people/background $30
Just send me a message!
I take payments though PayPal (
[email protected]) , Venmo (batwynn), or Kofi (ko-fi.com/batwynn)
but I can also do Stripe/through the tumblr tip jar in a pinch. 👍
Please signal boost this if you can, I’m kind of desperate to avoid the overdraft fee at least. Thank you! 🥲
*Note: patreons, I will still be working on your requests I’ll just be bouncing back and forth a bit so no worries!
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TW: 200th rant about the stupid "HP fans are all complicit in antisemitism and transphobia" discourse, brought to you by my OCD-induced suicidality.
I've by now become so wary of trans people and enbies on social media, especially Jewish ones. I'm like "this person is GOING to be on their Harry Potter bullshit and trigger the hell out of my OCD" and my hackles go up automatically. Then my OCD goes "haha you hate them because they're Jewish and/or trans, you're an antisemitic transphobe so they're clearly right about people who defend HP! SUFFER bitch!" Cue hell loop until my brain is flayed over anything nobody actually even said or did.
I don't even LIKE HP that much anymore, why is wanting to stop having PTSD episodes about stupid shit the thing that also dropkicks me down seven circles of hell??? It's made all the so-called "leftist" enclaves of the internet a minefield. Why are people with OCD everyone's favourite collateral when it comes to stuff shitty rich assholes do? Is it so fucking hard to stop making up thought crimes to attack people over??
It's an extra layer of horrible when the same people have no problems applying "no ethical consumption under capitalism" to stuff like Coca Cola and Nestlé products. Y'all can't possibly live without child slavery chocolate or making brown people drink Nestlé's toxic filth or anything that's subjecting Indigenous communities and people in entire Global South continents to long, lingering, horrible deaths, but this one franchise whose author royalties are funding the UK transphobic lobby is the one line that matters. Fuck all the trans people in those places I guess. Every single Global North consumer moral policing is western leftists's dehumanization of our people writ large. Fuck all of you.
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Me: okay fiiiiine it’s free I’ll play overwatch
Overwatch: would you like to pay $80 for all features?
Me: fuck no just give me junkrat and I’ll be fine.
Overwatch; huh. No :)! You have to play 12 matches (online cause against ai doesn’t count) before you can play him :)
Me: fiiiiine I’ll play 76 I guess
Me: oh this is kinda fun!
Me: yay I unlocked Junkrat!
Me: yay Symatra is really fun to play!
Me: omg I’m loving this game actually!
Me: I wonder what the fandom is like!
The fandom: oh yeah this game is shit people are leaving it in boatloads for tf2 and there’s a sexual harassment lawsuit and it’s not even playable if you don’t pay the $80+ so get fucked I guess
Fandom: also here’s some memes too
Me: sobbing
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This is my googled 30 min research so i'm just guessing for fun.
Looks like either you need to be a hip place that attracts so many new users (makes a splash in numbers for investors?) and get good press as THE place to be in order to attract advertiser dollars OR
Make your core usability lock behind a paywall like spotify, which is cashflow positive, but can't tell if this worked out for medium (probably not)- (and looks like Substack isn't doing too well) This focuses less on advertisers and more on users.
Alternatives? Monetizing content + ads on selected produced articles? That's a niche that isn't filled.
You know there's this whole style of paying for webnovels in China or something, like if they didn't ruin the concept of wattpad by viewing users... like that, instead of treating them like content creators a la Youtube. Which looks like it's going strong.
In lieu of nonprofit, I guess you'd have to get a community of people producing good content that the site made a no brainer to use- and a kind of distributive ad process like uh... tiktok.... hm..... untargeted is that big of a deal? But it'd take advantage of the tumblr social pathways- the ability to monetize a post if you chose. Can't remember much about post+ but that came out of nowhere... I don't remember having any idea how to use it. I hope it was something like- you can choose to monetize certain posts behind a paywall? That's the only way you could do it, right?
Fanfic concerns: nobody on youtube worries about this when making videos about established properties tbh. I guess don't write fanfic specifically and put that behind a paywall (or do and see where this leads us) but fanart is free game? How confusing. Home of fandom could be like.... reviewers.... taste makers..... god tumblr actually IS good at stealth word of mouth marketing for a lot of properties. Very funny.
But if I was thinking informational- or like "how to recognize chords", or news feed that would be an idea I didn't even think of when post+ in it's unclear use state came out.
Okay, maybe that wouldn't work- we come here to shitpost. Maybe you could have the option of making a goodpost blog (original posts only) behind a paywall. But a general fee, like spotify charges $5 for access to all songs, instead for monthly access to paywalled content? The response would be a little different now, I'd imagine.
Both options, as well as an option to see blogs more automatically as the constructed sites and not just on the dash like squarespace? that's doing well, though I've seen random complaints about the nature of the not-html style site constructions. Complexity was mentioned as part of the issue retaining users along with lack of immediate interaction/reason to stay, but showing off various blogs as their own sites and then letting you follow the author of the blogs on the dash seem like it'd work out..........
It retains the free functionality but the alternative would be presented as a sidegig.
Chaotic patreon.....Patreon and Reddit are private, with Reddit maybe having an IPO by the end of 2023, so I'll assume they aren't doing super great. Tumblr up for IPO soon?
Best case scenario for site survival: it's sold to huge company that can eat the cost of operations until the site is made hip to advertisers, or shrug.
But there really isnt a good microblogging site- that allows all the ability to make a searchable blog..... (I see maybe they were thinking they could just use the social part of tumblr and somehow get wordpress to show up on the rss feeds) but yeah there's not really any social capacity baked into to wordpress, on lj I would go over to see what people were doing for that day and read their comments. That site does live on in spirit in dreamwidth
Bluesky and mastodon have that character limit and you can't format anything, but if they get successful they can rake in ad money. I don't know about this. Can't even remember what pillowfort is like but I remember there was some weirdness with the founders that scared me off, I didn't think it was going to last well.
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