leoreturns:
I have been waiting all year to post this.
omg
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@aflockofravens
leoreturns:
I have been waiting all year to post this.
omg
My friend just sent this in the group chat, we got the new gay or European 2026 update
A rigorous diagnostic. 15 questions. One uncomfortable truth.
okay.
I got the reverse
I think fandom analysis on the whole would be a lot more fun and interesting if it took the sort of attitude a great many of my lit professors did, and the idea was to look at the text, see what you think it's saying, or even COULD be saying, and let's fuck around with that idea. I got four years of hearing insane takes on stuff and I was extremely fortunate to go a school with small enough class sizes and a dedicated enough faculty that in many respects, wild theorizing was encouraged.
One of my professors was straight up like "I don't want you reading papers about this book until we finish it!" and we had writing things for the first 20 minutes of every class because he wanted to know what WE thought, not what we had become convinced was THE thing to think.
When I was in my second year of college, I spiraled out into this whole "Jane Eyre is a lesbian!" thing, and my professor (not the same guy as above but delightfully insane in her own right) was like, "Wow, I've never heard this from anyone," and instead of being like, "um this is not what has been agreed upon by everyone else" went "Tell me more." Now, as a forty year old woman who has never stopped engaging with stories on both an enjoyment and academic level, the paper I would write with age and distance would be more "Homosociality, desire, and the domesticated male in Jane Eyre" or something like that, nineteen year old me was a little reductive and simple, but same vibes.
But my professor did not think I was right, she thought I was being INTERESTING, and so she encouraged me and championed me to write that paper and I actually presented it at the student division of a conference! The cool thing about that was, that when I was defending it, I was having to think about it, but it was in the spirit of collaboration, it felt like. No one was trying to 'win' the conversation.
Doc, what the fuck are you--I saw a really interesting thing this morning, someone talking about Shrek, of all things, and how they thought it was about how you cannot turn an ogre into a man, but he can make you become an ogre. And I immediately went, "Wow! Okay, interesting, not how I read that at all, TELL ME MORE." It was really jarring for me, then, to see pretty much every comment be like, 'uh you are wrong and also stupid." Sure, maybe that's not the intention of the work, but I don't for one goddamn motherfucking second think Charlie Bronte was sitting down going "I am going to write a woman so gay..." nor do I think the read of her as same sex-attracted is the end all be all of interpretations. It's mine, for sure! But like...talking about stories is supposed to be fun and it's supposed to be about possibility.
That one post got me thinking about how we are, in fandom often all looking at this same text, and there's immense pressure to have a 'right' interpretation--I was at the nexus of so many Sailor Moon fandom wars, and while I got into a few tussles, I was also stupid to do that. This characters are not real, and I was shutting down POSSIBILITY. And even after I was like, 'Wow, I don't think this is actually a very fun way to do stuff" it turns out you can't magically give everyone the same revelation you have simultaneously. Which is upsetting. And I see these same patterns repeat over and over and over again.
In my old age, I'm less interested in he "He would not say that" and more interested in "Cool, tell me why he would say that?"
Don't misunderstand me, there are points of view and ideas on different texts where I'm like, "Hm. I don't care to engage with that." Remember that the window we're looking out of is as important as what we're looking at, and will DOUBTLESS change the appearance. But the whole reason we have each other is to try and find other windows! It's not actually to find someone who is the next pane of glass in your same window. I miss that environment, where you could trust that everyone coming to the table was engaging with the same ground rules and that there was an expectation of, detachment doesn't quite get to the heart of what I'm talking about, but we were expected not to take the text or the analysis of it personally, even when it was hard. And sometimes it was. But I think it led to me having--for example it's crazy to me to have one 'right read' on any given text. I had a SUPER FUCKING ANIMATED conversation with a fellow lit nerd about whether or not GdT's Frankenstein was emotionally faithful to the text (which is not the same as being literally faithful nor the same as being good)and it was so fun, EVEN THOUGH we were coming at it completely opposed. But it was so fucking fun.
I wish I could do that with anime and cartoons, but you can't. People take Shrek personally. So I'll never have that same fun.
ANYWAY SORRY I AM DRINKING COFFEE AND MY DAUGHTER ISN'T HERE I HAVE TOO MUCH FREE TIME.
Yes!! Also want to highlight this great exchange between @beloved-child-of-the-house and op from the notes:
Phrases I think are delightful and useful:
if fandom makes you feel like you swallowed a beehive with the bees still alive then you aren't actually having fun!
something that has Unzipped you
acting like God Emperor of X
tumblr minesweeper
💣🧨💣 🧨 💣
💣 🧨 💣 🧨 💣
💣 🧨 💣 🧨 💣
💣 🧨 💣 🧨 💣
💣 🧨 💣 🧨 💣
least picked at the time of voting = safe
did you explode?
The thing that really boils my potatoes about AI in general is that I have been a creative professional for over a decade now and the devil has ALWAYS been in the details. Big and small, I've had single-person businesses rip me to shreds over how their colors turned out on newsprint, and have worked with huge companies with THICK brand guidelines with every detail of their brand identity laid out and enforced with an iron fist.
But I guess all of that stuff doesn't matter anymore? Who gives a fuck if this AI generated baby has six fingers, that mom-and-pop shop is still going to use it. That rug from Temu says Happy Thanksgivirg? Oh well haha it's just a silly funny thing now (nevermind that you never would have given a B-grade item from a craft show the same consideration). I don't actually care that the AI Coca-cola ad has a truck that changes size every scene, but I can't help but think about how, if it had been some poor underpaid artist, they would have been laughed out of the building.
I don't really know how to put it in a succint way but it just feels all the more obvious how much more grace and flexibility has always been possible but never offered.
shoutout to AO3 authors who write 100k fics for free while juggling mental illness, academic burnout, 3 jobs, and a deep-rooted need to fix fictional people.
Art References in Jujutsu Kaisen s3 opening: The Kiss - Gustav Klimt // The Scream - Edvard Munch // Ophelia - John Everett Millais // Dead mother l - Egon Schiele // Two Sleeping Children - Peter Paul Rubens // Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden in Argenteuil - Claude Monet // The Three Judges - Honoré Victorin Daumier
I absolutely love the casting for the AOS movies because yeah Chris Pine kinda looks like a yassified Jim Kirk, and Zachary Quinto does look like a younger Spock. But then they looked at big, tall, broad shouldered, muscular action man Karl Urban and went. Yeah, I think he can play scrawny bean pole shrimp postured, looks like a light gust of wind would blow him away, Leonard McCoy. And by god, were they correct because it was like the spirit of Deforest Kelley himself possessed him to play Bones.
Urbanization contributed to Deforestation.
tarot reader: draws the tower me: thats bad isnt it tarot reader: draws the tower again me: uh oh tarot reader: draws boeing 767
POV of a person who has intentionally ascended to a leadership position
[doing a daily affirmation into the dressing room mirror]: I applied to be the ringmaster of this circus. I am responsible for writing the incident reports for any damages caused by or that happen to these monkeys.
When BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) said "you can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it ok. you need to be better" and "all we have are the connections we make" and "I really should've thought about the view from halfway down" and "sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own happiness" and "you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, you turn yourself around, THAT'S what it's all about" and "things have to get worse before they can get better" and "in real life, the big gesture isn't enough, you need to be consistent" and "if we hadn't met each other until now, we wouldn't be the people we are now" and, my personal favourite, "every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day, that's the hard part, but it does get easier".
this is a Christmas post for you to like and unlike over and over to see the little snowy animation they have rn
''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments
Some of my likes are getting a little Northern Lights effect and I think it's delightful
having to use your own art as reference cause you forgot how to draw
having to go back to reread previous chapters of your own story as a reference because you forgot how to write
Being a better Robin Hood because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, you can speak with an English accent.
My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.
Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?
What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?
Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.
I don't remember where I saw this piece of advice so I can't credit it, unfortunately
But it was along the lines of "instead of asking whether something is out of character, ask 'what would it take for this character to do this'"
Which I think fits really nicely with this advice of making the actual action itself also feel in character
#dirty minds worldwide