vmccombs

[vmccombs]

*RARE* John Denver & Johnny Cash - Take Me Home Country Roads

Found this while going through my granddad’s VHS tapes and couldn’t find it anywhere online, so here it is.

#Tears #John Denver #Johnny Cash #I love this #Take me home country roads #West Virginia

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I cannot overstate this enough, but with the threat of trump and project 2025, there is GENUINELY a chance that this year's pride month could be the last...

I want y'all to really think about that, think about it when you hear or think "I'm not voting" or "both sides are the same

#us politics #project 2025 #or just read any of Trump's most recent interviews

[vmccombs]

I made printedsoot Calvin and Hobbes style Leverage OT3 fanart for Christmas. Tiny, grumpy, upside-down Eliot Spencer might be one of my favorite things I’ve drawn all year.

#reblogged comics #leverage #parker #eliot spencer #alec hardison #calvin and hobbes #this is adorable

[vmccombs]

“The stone corrupts all those who wield it, it is fueled by their ambitions and dreams. So we need someone with no ambitions, no dreams, someone who doesn’t care about what the future holds for themselves. That’s why we found you.”

#reblogged writings #the stone of possibility #always reblog #writeblr

[vmccombs]

as a child I wondered why adults were so stupid (doing things out of habit/routine/heuristics rather than reasoning explicitly about what to do based on their goals) and the answer is that adults are unimaginably fucking tired all the time

#mood #I'm so tired right now

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#vote! #us politics

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Based on this.

#reblogged comics

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Every year… Every damn year…

#ao3 #people are stupid #fanfiction #writeblr #reblogged writing comments

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Second hand embarrassment for this woman.

#my lord #my king #stephen king #this is awesome #reblogged humor

[vmccombs]

hey quick question!! how would someone be able to not read a fic with triggering shit in it without a warning without reading the shit that will trigger them? idk just a fucking though that it takes 0 fucking effort to warn for shit and you're so annoying for being like ummm it's not my responsibility actually! like grow the fuck up and give a shit about other fucking people.

hey quick question!! how would someone be able to not read a fic with triggering shit in it without a warning without reading the shit that will trigger them?

Simple. Don’t read fics that don’t have trigger warnings. Don’t watch movies that don’t have a “does the dog die” page. Don’t read books without a comprehensive list of trigger warnings someone else made.

idk just a fucking though that it takes 0 fucking effort to warn for shit

Not true, it actually takes a lot of effort to consider all the possible things in your fiction that someone else might want a warning for.

and you’re so annoying for being like ummm it’s not my responsibility actually!

It’s not my responsibility. Your feelings are not my responsibility. Your mental health is not my responsibility.

like grow the fuck up and give a shit about other fucking people.

How about you grow the fuck up and take responsibility and have some agency in your own care instead of expecting the rest of the world to cater to your comfort specifically?

how about you care about other people by not demanding that everyone cater to your preferences?

context link

#ao3 #fanfic #back in the day you were always poised to hit the back button #and you knew it #fandom #fandom history #old on tumblr

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#do your research #don't blindly believe anything #compare and contrast news sites #see how they present the same exact set of facts

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Tumblr Code.

#tumblr heritage #tumblr #old on tumblr

[vmccombs]

I have a friend who isn't anti-porn but it makes her sad that fanfic has a reputation for being porny and usually not very good. I'm fine with both those things and my views mostly align with that of AO3. I disagree with the idea that porn and badness are treated as equivalent, but for most people that's just how they think. But I was wondering if youve ever written something about this?

There is a lot of smut at AO3.

There is a lot of bad writing at AO3.

There's a lot of badly written smut at AO3.

...None of those are problems except for the people who think there is something wrong with those existing, or that there needs to be some external value that "balances" those that make those acceptable to exist as unwanted side-effects of "the good stuff."

The badly-written smut is also "the good stuff."

It's part of the reason AO3 exists. It's not intended to be an archive for "the high-quality fanfic that could be published if it weren't about characters that someone else wrote first"; it's an archive for "what fanfic writers want to write." That makes the terrible writing and the tacky porn and the badly-written tacky porn part of the reason the archive exists.

Tangent 1 (I'll connect these points later): Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud." He was more-or-less referring to the science fiction field in the 50s, but it definitely extended to politics, business, and writing outside of science fiction.

...He was talking about published books in the 50s. Turns out, a lot more than 90% of writing is crud when there aren't any gatekeepers between it and the readers. But also:

Tangent 2, from the book "Art and Fear":

[A] ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

You don't get to "quality writing" without going through a lot of crappy writing.

That doesn't mean the crappy writing is garbage to be thrown out. If you make 50 pots or bowls or vases, and only one of them is The Good One... most of the rest are okay. Maybe not sale-quality good, but your-kitchen-table quality good. Maybe some aren't that good and are kids-toy-in-the-sandbox level good.

Bad writing has a purpose for the writer: they can use it as practice to get better. It has a purpose for the reader: It can serve as inspiration ("I can do better than that") or grammatical instruction ("that...does not work; why doesn't that work?") or just as entertainment ("eh, so it's missing a few commas; I can still understand it").

Smut and porn writing works the same way. It's of some value to the writer, and some to the readers.

It's not of value to everyone. That's what tags and filters are for, and why there's a summary and list of stats (like word counts)--so you can figure out if you're one of the readers for whom this piece of writing is useful or interesting.

But AO3, like any library, is not there to take the top 5% of Excellent Writing and provide it a showcase. It is absolutely for all 50 lbs of pots.

If your friend wants to read the good stuff, there are rec lists and collections to help her find it.

If she already manages that, and is just annoyed at how much of the not-good stuff (however she defines that) exists... she's picked the wrong battle. She's arguing with the ocean that it has too many kinds of fish and some are poisonous a lot of them are ugly.

#writeblr #reblogged writing comments #ao3 #fanfiction

[vmccombs]

This is the second time in my voting history that I’ve participated in flipping a red seat in Alabama for Democrats (the previous time being my beloved Doug Jones) so it’s always funny to see people turn around and say voting doesn’t matter when I’ve seen it twice in the past ten years flip seats in what is supposed to be safe Republican country. Republicans are digging their own grave with their radicalization and it is making them lose (and with your help we can make them lose harder). Vote.

#vote! #if nothing else we can give Trump a Congress trying to work against him

[vmccombs]

#recipes #egg rolls #hungry now #reblogged videos

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Reblog if you think fanfiction is a legitimate form of creative writing.

#writeblr #reblogged writing comments #fanfiction

[vmccombs]

I don’t even care who fucking wins the presidency this year look at this

#vote! #us politics