blake kathryn
d e v o n
Three Goblin Art
No title available
DEAR READER
Andulka
Stranger Things
we're not kids anymore.
if i look back, i am lost
tumblr dot com
KIROKAZE
i don't do bad sauce passes
No title available
pixel skylines
Mike Driver
One Nice Bug Per Day
Kiana Khansmith
No title available
taylor price
Origami Around
seen from United States
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@andruwu---minyard
Jonathan Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankinson.
Enough with using Breonna's name as a trend. Enough with a tiktok song that doesn't help.
Stop saying "arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor" and start saying "arrest JONATHAN MATTINGLY, MYLES COSGROVE, AND BRETT HANKINSON."
You need to do better for Black women. You need to do better for Black lives.
You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me and it’s just me pointing at my AFTG books
I gotta be honest I do think it would be very funny if after the Binghamton game Lola tried to call Neil to taunt him but it didn’t go through because he never charges his phone so it’s dead and just going straight to voicemail
Like the plan would still work, they didn’t need Neil to know ahead of time, they could still get him away unnoticed with a whole riot happening
But I do think it would have taken a bit of the wind out of their sails. Just a bunch of grown adults huddled around a ringing phone in this car trying to call a teenager to bully him but he won’t pick up. And they’re like ‘no it’s fine it’s whatever’ but clearly they’re a little upset about it
The thing about Andrew and Kevin is Andrew believes that Kevin can't really be this spineless, and Kevin believes Andrew can't really be this apathetic, and they both resolve to poke each other with a pointy stick until they're proven correct. And then Neil shows up and instead of going hey maybe poking each other with sticks isn't getting anywhere he says oh look it's stick time and starts poking them both even harder. And then it works.
The thing about Kevin and Neil is that they're both perfectly aware that they're bad at being normal people, and that their genuine attempts at masking it tend to fall short, but each of them doesn't care about that as much as they do about the fact that the other one is doing it wrong.
The thing about Neil and Andrew is their feelings of dissociation from their lives and skewed sense of consequences should have led them to some form of domestic terrorism, except then they got too invested in enabling Kevin to remember that they can just do pipe bombs about the whole Riko situation.
Nicky, drunk: sometimes I feel so disconnected and unloved that I fake sneeze just to hear someone say bless you
Nicky: anyways can I have another round of shots
Roland:
ok I need to settle an argument with my family: do Flaw and Floor sound the same?
yes, they are pronounced the same
no, they are pronounced differently
you're all mentally deranged i want you to know that
Flaw is pronounced like straw, and floor is pronounced like store
"floor" and "store" are entirely incomparable in the fact that store has a hard T and I don't believe in the existence of a hard L
shutup. you are all completely wrong
I am going to wreck precise and meticulous havoc on every organ you possess
i wrote an essay on aftg as a knowledge building community and it convinced my 40 year old man of a prof to read the books so here it is. also i had to learn how to cite tumblr posts in mla for this
An Analysis of All For The Game As a Knowledge Building Community
Neil Josten is the main character of a self-published trilogy by Nora Sakavic called “All for The Game” (AFTG). The series starts when Neil, after spending the last eight years on the run from his father, decides to join a college exy team (a fictional sport) a year after his mother died, where he finds love and belonging, and the Japanese mafia, with whom his father is associated, find him. The fandom, which almost entirely resides on Tumblr or Ao3, has extensive fanon (alternative canon which is decided and widely accepted by fans), stretching far beyond the books themselves with few limits as to what will be acceptable in fanfiction, as proven by the 105,156 word pirate alternate universe fanfic with 821 kudos (Coritkyo). A Tumblr post by @holyshitthatsilegal describing their frustration with how Neil Josten is sometimes presented in fanfiction, reduced to a helpless and soft character, as opposed to the independent and dangerous individual he is in canon, is an example of the enforcement of one of the few unwritten rules within the “All For The Game” fandom. They say “i hate, HATE it when people write a fic where Neil is a helpless stupid boy who needs someone to babysit him […] Neil josten isn’t in danger Neil josten IS THE DANGER” (Holyshitthatsilegal). This post received 1340 notes and nearly all of them were in complete agreement. Amy Bruckman, author of “How Does the Internet Change How We Think” describes knowledge-building discourse as “One person [contributing] a new idea, and others [critiquing] it. Over time, the group finds things they agree on, and this is new knowledge” (92). These fandom interactions further Bruckman’s theories of knowledge-building discourse in “How Does the Internet Change How We Think?” in that fans are not only sharing existing knowledge but formalizing entirely original ideas and rejecting aspects of a canon text. @holyshitthatsilegal’s post concerning Neil Josten’s treatment in fanfiction showcases the necessary role of legitimate peripheral participation in ensuring that All for The Game fans restrict their creativity to merely altering events, rather than personalities, but also raises questions as to how and why the fandom has developed in such a way. The process of legitimate peripheral participation combined with the unique source material have been essential in creating a close-knit community with ideas, practices, and rules entirely different from fandoms in the greater contemporary queer young adult genre. In having a small, dedicated community and through the use of knowledge building discourse, the AFTG fandom pushes the boundaries of how extensive fanon can be, whilst remaining coherent and unified.
Given that the AFTG series is self-published and the author has done little promotion for it (McCartney), new fans often find the series through periphery fandoms, often within the contemporary young adult romance genre, which tend to each have a similar set of unwritten rules for fanworks as each other, but whose rules differ from the AFTG fandom’s in significant ways. The most important rule for AFTG is that one can interact with plot and intercharacter relationships however they see fit, but they must stay true to the personalities, trauma, and grit of the characters in canon. For most other young adult contemporary queer romances, such a rule would be unnecessary because most of the books that center the love story of two men within this genre have them fall within the same character dynamic, often colloquially referred to as the sunshine one and the brooding or shy one. However this is not the case for AFTG. Both Neil and Andrew keep to themselves and are often aggressive towards outsiders, each for their own reasons, but within fan fiction there is a tendency to put Neil into the position of the sunshine one in order to have them fit this dynamic. Tumblr user @bloody-wonder describes this phenomenon in more depth, saying “canon andrew’s already very masculine and grumpy so he’s fine and these sides of him don’t get erased, so [Neil] must necessarily be the blushing sunshine uwu boi”. As demonstrated by this post, @holyshitthatsilegal’s post, and many others, long-time fans of this series actively try to fight against the pervasiveness of this trend and the greater trend of simplifying characters down to base traits. Newer fans who are used to periphery fan cultures are less conscientious of how they treat these characters. The transition from one side of the argument to the other happens as new fans who are lurking in popular threads read more and more posts that encourage nuanced readings of these characters. The purpose of lurking according to Bruckman is “learn the rules and norms of the group, so that they can contribute appropriately when they are ready” (93-94). Bruckman’s theory that new members go from lurking, to small acts of engagement, to eventually being central in discussions, is bolstered by the evident effects of a lack of lurking in some AFTG fan works. Fans from peripheral communities who have read the books and create content but haven’t lurked enough to gauge the differences between this community and others online help to demonstrate the importance of lurking within the AFTG community.
The fervent defense of characters is not solely for Neil Josten, in fact there are near constant discussions within the fandom about the intricacies of each character within the books. @aftghasruinedme writes “it annoys me so much when Kevin is written as an extreme exy obsessed asshole…”, and @wiccan-fangirl says “Aaron is not homophobic. He just fucking hates Neil.” This demonstrates that this fandom does not simply have a need to protect the image of Neil Josten, but that the close analysis of each character is an intrinsic quality of this knowledge building group. Within the discussion surrounding @holyshitthatsilegal’s post, many of the comments discussed the upperclassmen and Andrew’s characters in relation to Neil’s, rather than having Neil exist in a vacuum.
This is not to say that the AFTG fandom is strict in terms of what is acceptable in fan works; in fact, this community has evolved well beyond the scope of what Bruckman proposes through her example of Company Command. One of the most widely accepted parts of this fanon, which not only builds well beyond the established canon, but actively contradicts it, is the relationship between Jeremy Knox and Jean Moreau, which has 818 works under their relationship tag on Ao3 (Works In Jeremy Know/Jean Moreau). A post by Tumblr user @play-exy-be-sexy is evidence of the relationship’s popularity, saying “the ship of jean moreau and jeremy knox is so perfect bc not only is it hilarious given they had zero scenes together. BUT every fic and head canon is INCREDIBLE. […] like we were able to take two people and create such a beautiful ship and story.” These are two very minor characters, each with a few pages of dialogue, but it is confirmed that Jean would be sent to play on Jeremy Knox’s team for the remainder of his college career at the end of the third book “The King’s Men”. This was enough for fan’s to ship them extensively and forget that Jean had a canon love interest to begin with. Framing Fan Fiction : Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities by Kristina Busse discusses the complicated relationship that fanfiction has with canon, stating “Fans passionately debate the exact boundaries of what constitutes canon” (102). This framing of fanfiction as a negotiation of canon helps AFTG’s place as an outlier to be understood because the sanctity of canon as an irrefutable truth has already been broken by Sakivic herself. Once the books started gaining popularity on Tumblr, Sakivic started answering questions about the series on her personal Tumblr, from mid 2015 to mid 2016 (Korakos). These posts, which are now referred to as simply the “extra content”, clarified aspects of the series, discussed post-canon events, fleshed-out pre-canon events, and allowed Sakavic to disclose events from previous drafts of the books. In doing so, the boundaries of what constitutes canon were broken entirely. While lurking, one may come across long-time members of the community who have no clue whether or not a certain aspect of fanon originated amongst fans or the extra content, and fans quite frankly don’t care. Sakavic encouraged fans throughout these posts not to disregard their own headcanons just because they contradicted something she said, thus fostering a community with malleable canon. Busse later says that “A canon before or without interpretation doesn’t really exist” (108), and when interpretation is encouraged and unfettered, interpretation becomes indistinguishable from canon when interacting with other fans.
With as much interpretation as there is, fans work hard to ensure that some things remain unchanged. In Abby Kirby’s Examining Collaborative Fanfiction: New Practices in Hyperdiegesis and Poaching, Kirby describes the phenomenon of collaborative fanfiction, which she defines as “having several stories, written by different authors, [which] combine into a larger narrative.” She uses the Gravity Falls: Transcendence AU, a collaboratively created spin off of the animated show Gravity Falls (2012), as an example. Both the Transcendence AU and AFTG are collaborative fanfiction; Transcendence AU is collaborative in its entirety, and AFTG is only in some aspects. In many ways, AFTG fans are fighting against a Transcendence-AU-like fate. Now that Sakavik’s blog has been archived and is much more difficult to find, instrumental backstories and character nuances have been blurred into fanon. @andrew-dramaqueen-minyard discusses this in a recent post, saying “I’ve noticed after coming back to AFTG after many years away […] that a lot of people don’t seem to realize that where we get these kind of recurring things in post canon talk and fics is from noras extra content.” This leaves far more room for what Kirby calls squishy canon, when some aspect of the narrative has too many overlapping ideas to be properly canonized. Squishy canon is a necessary side effect of collaborative fanfiction, but it can get difficult to handle very complex characters in such an informal manner. For example, the Minyard-Josten rivalry, the idea that once Andrew and Neil have both graduated and play on different teams a fake rivalry develops between them, is entirely from fanon, not the extra content. However, Neil and Andrew getting two cats named King Fluffkins and Sir Fat Cat McCatterson is from the extra content. Both are widely accepted aspects of squishy canon, but the latter example paints a far softer portrait of Neil and Andrew than the former. Without the greater context that Sakivik provides in the extra content, going to great lengths to describe how Andrew learns to balance the cats and his previous trauma, this softer image could be taken at face value and result in a split from canon resembling that of the Transcendence AU. In a knowledge building community that is neither strictly creative nor informative, a balance such as the one between plot freedom and faithfulness to character must be struck. This balance is found in creativity being left for plot, and analysis and information sharing being for characters.
That the AFTG fandom is able to have (relatively) civil discussions on sensitive topics, like the treatment of Kevin’s trauma in the books, with no formal moderation is another example of how this fandom has grown beyond the limits Bruckman writes about. She says “[Peer-produced information] can be highly reliable if (and only if ) significant peer review takes place” (93) but Tumblr as a platform changes what exactly peer-review constitutes. Tumblr’s algorithm is, to put it bluntly, bad. Though it has improved in the last year, when this fandom was being established users still relied on hashtags to find new content, rather than having similar content automatically recommended for them. What content is not found through tags is found through the reblogs (reposting of another user’s content, with or without extra comments) of users one already follows. In McCracken’s “A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures” a roundtable discussion highlights how Tumblr’s near inability to foster bureaucratic systems allows for members to become popular through interacting with others in a fandom, rather than merely gaining the most followers. Rukmini Pande says in the discussion that Tumblr structure “has allowed for a greater proliferation of content within and between fandoms. […] In this way Tumblr is certainly more dialogic than previous platforms, and that has enabled more visibility for critiques of both popular cultural media texts and fandom practices.” In a small group, collective values get adopted quickly, much like how a large friend group may have disagreements but generally share the same values, which decreases the risk of discussions being held on false or differing premises. Bruckman stresses the importance of solid premises, saying “If you start from false premises, the things you conclude using that as a base will be unreliable.” (103) which is why Tumblr fosters small communities so well. This form of informal peer review works in such a way that if a user begins posting with false premises, like Neil being unable to take care of himself, the user will either be ignored or called out by anyone, regardless of followers or popularity, and then the only way they can continue to participate in the community would be to correct their premise. No moderation is needed when a small fandom can regulate participation by regular social means.
What makes AFTG a unique expansion on Bruckman’s ideas is the fandom’s ability to consistently engage without the regulation of moderators or a stable canon to work from. It is a study of exactly how far a community can evolve with only a group of dedicated fans who facilitate the lurking and thus education of new members. The books are strange, implausible, and needlessly dark, which is exactly what makes this work. The lore is flimsy enough that discussions of canon fall apart within minutes, and ship wars never develop enough to cause significant rifts in the fandom, so the characters, with all of their flaws, traumas, and criminal records are all that is left. In a time where some of the most popular fandoms (My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, Supernatural) are known more for their problematic discourse than anything else, it is refreshing to see what exactly fans are capable of, beyond what even Bruckman proposed. AFTG proves that modern fandom culture continues to evolve, and with it so too should the framework used to analyze it. Which is all to say that due to AFTG’s effective methods of online fan education through lurking, even Tumblr user @carothehotmess who commented “I just realized I know literally nothing about this book series. I legit thought it was about gay hockey players or something,” on @holyshitthatsilegal’s post can figure out what these books are about.
does anyone else remember the foxhole court bc that was so insane. for awhile the biggest thing on tumblr was a self published book series that no one outside of this website has ever heard of and that was never even published in physical form about a guy who fakes his name, age (by one year) and identity to join a sports team for a fake sport that the author invented for the series despite the fact that it was literally just lacrosse, after being on the run and changing his name hundreds of times because his mobster dad tried to sell him to a rival sports team that was actually owned by the japanese mafia. or something like that. and then every single subsequent thing that happened was somehow more batshit soap opera plotlines. this was literally the most popular book series on tumblr and was put on book rec lists alongside like, the great gatsby and donna tartt books. if I didn’t remember it so clearly I would assume I hallucinated this
oh and to be clear this series was not set in japan, the japanese mafia just owned an american college sports team and was super invested in it for some reason
getting some wildly varied feedback on this post
Someone I follow just reblogged this and as an active member of said fandom I find it hilarious
we r besties
[ID: picture of Kermit and animal from the muppets hugging. Kermit is captioned with “me” and animal is captioned with “the beloved piece of media I would never ever recommend to anyone under any circumstances” end ID]
No one is fucking talking about it but another black man was killed by the same police department that killed George Floyd they killed him 9 seconds after entering his apartment. No knock warrants are fucking bullshit. He was wrapped in his blanket he was innocent they had the wrong address there is body can cottage you cannot fucking deny this bullshit.
This is being hushed up and covered up and I cannot believe it took me until TODAY, SIX DAYS AFTER IT HAPPENED to find out about it.
Everyone should be talking about this shit.
All the BLM protests and here we are again. We cannot let a single one of these slide because that's how nothing changes and that's how innocent people are being killed at the hands of assholes who are happy to pull the trigger without hesitation. I'm so fucking upset right now and so should you be.
EDIT: THE ORIGINAL POST SAID NINE MINUTES I MEANT TO SAY NINE SECONDS
Amir Locke was murdered on February 3rd of 2022, 7 DAYS AGO. He was 22 years old. The police did not have a warrant, and his name wasn't on their search list.
What was his crime? Sleeping in his cousin’s house.
He was a licensed gun owner, and when the Minneapolis police stormed the house, he grabbed his gun in reaction to protect himself. The police immediately started firing, shooting three times and murdering Amir Locke.
“His crime” was fucking SLEEPING.
Reblog this shit. Tell your friends and family. Say his fucking name. It’s been two years since the murder of George Floyd, and the same fucking police department has killed another innocent Black man.
link to vote: https://t.co/XuTnY4fJ9t
for context JK Rowling was being voted a lot so boobers got to work💪
We can't split the vote everyone vote Ranboo
Even if you don’t like MCYT, you have to admit: an 18 yr old who literally broke records raising more than $100,000 for the Trevor Project in honor of his trans cousin who passed winning person of the year would be a VERY funny “fuck you” to JKR.
And if that’s not enough for you, take a scroll through to see all the replies vouching for JKR. Fuck TERFs, and if anything, vote just to spite JKR tbh.
is the aftg not infinitely funnier if it were to involve kevin day in a parent trap situation???? with kevin living with kayleigh in ireland, more lowkey and not at all famous, and kevin meets his twin at a professional team's exy camp and then takes said twin's place in north carolina all the while introducing himself into neil's mob war accidentally??
twin's name has to start with a D, natch. andrew is perplexed because he comes back for his sophmore year and suddenly dylan is hot?? a lil more pissy than normal--but none the less a smoke show???
imagine you leave the country and have a Team Mate Primer for your twin discussing all the dysfunction, and during a late night facetime session he tries to gently break it to you that the kid listed under "horrible gremlin #1" is now hitting on him. how do you respond to that
AFTG is a slow burn BUT not the first time you read it only the next ones. The first time you read it it’s simply a sport fiction with found family and then BANG ‘doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you’ and you are as surprised as Neil is
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(Source)
ALWAYS REBLOG WHEN YOU SEE SOMETHING LIKE THIS PLEASE; ITS SO MUCH MORE THAN IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE. IT MEANS EVERYTHING TO SOMEBODY AND EVEN THOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT SEE THIS IN THE SAME LIGHT, SOMEONE MIGHT. INFACT YOU REBLOGGING THIS COULD STOP SOMEONE TAKING THEIR LIFE TONIGHT.
I noticed there isn’t one here for Ireland, so
Irish free suicide helpline: 01-116 123
last time i reblogged this, i got this ask:
so please, please reblog. this could actually save a life.
Check the notes, some people have added hotlines that aren’t listed here.
These numbers are important to know! They have saved my life more times than I want to admit. And if you don’t want to call these hotlines, message me! I will help you any way that I can. Or talk to someone that you can trust.
SOMEONE WILL BE THERE FOR YOU 💗
trans suicide prevention hotline: 877-565-8860
canada: 833-456-4566
israel has been bombing residential towers, refugee camps, media offices and now there are reports that it plans to bomb two UN run schools in palestine. reminder that many ppl who have been rendered homeless by these bombings have found shelter in these schools. palestine's hospitals are overflowing, their top doctors are being killed in these bombings, and the pandemic is still raging while israel is blocking humanitarian aid as well. these are war crimes. this is a genocide.
PLEASE do not stop talking about Palestine and spreading information, especially from Palestinians, whether it's here or on other social medias you use more often. Palestinians themselves have said over and over again that spreading this on social media helps, I've seen some people say that it feels different this time now that the world is starting to hear their voices. and please donate if you are able to
Pride month reminder: Making fun of the Shatnez laws (the Jewish biblical prohibition of mixing wool and linen in the same garment) and using them as an example of why biblical homophobia is stupid is antisemitic. Many Jews still practice this and it's not a "crazy weird thing!" It's something Jews actually practice in real life and your ignorance is actively harmful when you're punching down on Jewish practice lol please fuck off
I would encourage LGBT gentiles to reblog this
