Renfield's Home from Home

i am nothing special, nothing pure. i am mud and flame.

[josilverdragon]

Saved this because it is so true.

[agoodflyting]

I have so many things to say about this trend. No, seriously. Look.

The thing younger fans need to understand is that 'content creator' and 'consumer' are social media marketing terms that did not exist as labels in fandom spaces until the past decade.

As a side effect of a lot of fan interaction happening on social media, you started reshaping what a fandom IS in order to fit within what a social media platform wants you to be.

See, social media platforms exist to advertise to you. That's it. That is how they make money. It's their reason for existing. You -- your attention, your time -- are the product they sell to advertisers for profit.

Social media companies divide their users into 'content creators' and 'content consumers'. That's where those terms come from. They're technical terms that originated in the Twitter corporate offices.

'Content creator' is the term for people who make things -- videos, funny posts, thoughtful comments, art, etc -- that other people want to look at. 'Consumers' are the people who use the platform because they want to look at that thing, and end up looking at a lot of ads in the process.

I loathe, loathe, LOATHE how we have taken to applying the terms 'content' and 'consumer' to ourselves outside of their business model. You do not exist to make money for a social media company. A drawing someone made is not 'content' for you to 'consume'.

A fandom is an informal social group. That's all. It's you and a bunch of other people who all like the same thing, and sometimes you enjoy the thing together. You don't have to create anything. You don't 'consume content'. You are hanging out with other people.

Stop forcing yourself into their boxes.

My very first online fandom experience was on message boards and email lists. You know what you did on those? You just chatted. You asked each other questions. Maybe someone drew or wrote something, but the vast majority of us just talked about our fandom thing. You didn't have to create anything to be there because that's not what a fandom is.

[damndorothea]

i saw this somewhere else but reply / tag what you did today so everyone can see that we all did something different today

[kateammann]

Happy Pride Month to all of my fellow aces!! 🖤🩶🤍💜

[natalieironside]

I love it when ppl who listen to a lot of country do the whole "rap music is bad because of Crime and Drug" thing cuz listen Brantleigh not 5 minutes ago you and me was joyously singing along to Steve Earle talking about defending his weed farm from the cops by blowing them up with improvised explosive devices so I think u might just be racist

[bat-in-the-machine]

Okay look you're right and also this is a very good example but now I have Copperhead Road stuck in my head. :/

[natalieironside]

That's like saying it's great to go outside in the late afternoon "but" you "have to" see the sunset

[natalieironside]

For the uninitiated:

[kropotkindersurprise]

Defending your weed farm from the cops is an emotion that bridges all musical genres

[sistertaxon]

having used tumblr as a teenager is a vaccination against using tiktok today

[neurotypical-karen]

i realize you’re probably half-joking but legitimately having this level of control over what i see on my dash and not having the popularity of my posts determined by The Algorithm makes using tiktok feel like my body is fighting a Disease

[yesterdaysprint]

Hartford Courant, Connecticut, March 9, 1906

[stanarrators]

‘unreliable narrator’ but it’s ’narrator is deeply in love with the person they are narrating’

[riverssongs13-deactivated202606]

Can't find the post but, someone on here headcanonned that Murderbot is a pirate (the torrenting kind), the way it speaks of Sanctuary Moon. It switches from Episode Number to Season Number fluidly, because it downloads bootleg torrent files which means no standardised Episode Numbering System.

These examples aren't pulled from the books but essentially, when Murderbot says "...from Epsiode 678 of Sanctuary Moon", and in another incident, "...from Season 16 of Sanctuary Moon" (or even the other shows it's watched). That's like sourcing parts of a show from EZTV and the other from YTS. But enough about that.

I posit that Pirate!Murderbot actually IS canon, and can be found in text.

Remember those "advertisements" SecUnit gets perpetually annoyed with? Those 'step on it and it blasts noisy, flashing adverts on your face' kind that it always complains about. Iirc it complained about them on Exit Strategy, during the rescue mission; and while in the PresAux space station, it was glad there weren't many of said adverts.

A rogue bot construct that's essentially a supercomputer with the capacity to hack into complex computer systems in a heartbeat, doing everything in its power to circumvent official lines and Avoid Ads At All Costs, piggybacking on existing communication networks just to get access to security, surveillance, AND restricted, paywalled media...

You cannot tell me it ever pays for a Netflix/Hulu/Prime/etc subscription in its entire existence. Absolutely no way its giving corpos any credits for access to the entertainment feed. That murder machine sails the high seas, 100%. And if it were alive in our time, it's definitely best of friends and cohorts with Fitgirl, QxR, FLUX et al. Heck I'd even argue Murderbot is probably just TGXGoodies irl.

Oh, and without a shadow of a doubt, Murderbot is one of the mods of r/piracy.

[inber]

hate it when you see something in media that has great kink potential so you skedoodle post-haste to ao3 only to discover there's none fic left beef and then you have to sit there going oh I see I'M the pervert weirdo I'M the problem with society and everyone else in the world is going to heaven with a hundred innocence dollars preloaded onto their ole fashioned wholesome funtimes themepark fast pass card like fuckin oath man

[edwardashley]

#particularly when its something you're not even actually into but its just so Obvious how could it Not be on ao3#but then it isnt. do you have a duty to place the fic in its rightful ecological niche just because you have the vision?#do you have to track down a perv of the appropriate disposition and gift it to them?#do you leave well enough alone even though you can See the absence like a wound in the side of Truth?

[cakesandfail]

I wish more fantasy settings had the stuff discworld does. I don't mean the big themes, although I do wish more books had those too. I mean fantasy settings where there are newspapers, birth control, pizza, vibrators, crisps, unions, dog biscuits, fan clubs... just normal stuff that turns up when you have a lot of people in one place. A lot of fantasy seems to take the view that you won't have any of this stuff if you've got magic, but why wouldn't you? Some fantasy settings don't even have pencils. And what about toilet paper? Food that isn't enormous, elaborate feasts? Literacy rates? Pop culture? It feels like Ankh-Morpork in particular is just ticking over as usual when we're not looking and that it really does have a million people in it. And yet sometimes other fantasy just... doesn't bother with any of this stuff at all.

[ignescent]

Yes, this! Ancient Rome had take out. Ancient Sumerians had complaint letters about folks who shorted them on substandard copper. People wrote stupid graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. There were children who doodled dogs in the edges of their books as far back as children had books. The monks illuminated manuscripts had cat paw prints where they got into the ink. People have been people for all of history and sure, there are grand sweeping empires, but inside the empires are little stories about the actor who messed up his line in Orestes.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[fidgetyhands]

This kind of detail does so much to help a world feel real and large.

In real-world cities, there are fifty people on the bus with you. You pass hundreds of people on the sidewalk. You blow your nose, buy batteries, step around puddles, are late for work, check the mailbox, wiggle your door key a little to the left on humid days, decide whether today is cold enough for your winter coat, and so on. Real life has lots of people and lots of mundanity in it even when you are doing big important things. Even when you are living in big important times! And while stubbed toes aren't always part of interesting stories, a world that isn't large and real enough to hold stubbed toes is less interesting.

[charl0ttan]

watching a fictional character stop being the same age as you is fucked up

[darchildre]

So, someone in my vicinity owns a rooster. They can't live too terribly close, because it's not too terribly loud, but I do hear it every morning.

However. It doesn't make what we think of as 'classic rooster noises' - y'know, the whole cock-a-doodle-doo thing. No. This rooster sounds almost exactly like someone passing through and then slowly shutting an extremely rusty iron gate.

Repeatedly. For at least an hour. Every morning.

It's far enough away that it's not exactly annoying, but it is weird.

[ashlgcostumes]

The problem with sewing is that you quickly realise you have dumped lots of skill points into control thread and furthermore, there’s a lot of other hobbies that require control thread so you decide to pick up knitting, or crochet, or weaving, and then spinning happens to you, or rug making, or cord weaving, and then you turn the wrong corner on the internet and find out control thread also specs into basket weaving, and book binding, and then you’re thinking things like “I wonder if this also applies to lead climbing” and now you have A Problem

[ms-demeanor]

How do you feel about driving?

I can drive, I am good at driving, I enjoy driving.

I can drive, I am good at driving, I do not enjoy driving.

I can drive, I am bad at driving, I enjoy driving.

I can drive, I am bad at driving, I do not enjoy driving.

I haven't learned to drive, I think I would enjoy driving.

I haven't learned to drive, I do not think I would enjoy driving.

I can't drive anymore, I was good at it, I enjoyed driving.

I can't drive anymore, I was good at it, I didn't enjoy it.

I can't drive anymore, I was bad at it, I enjoyed it.

I can't drive anymore, I was bad at it, I didn't enjoy it.

Remaining time: 18 hours 31 minutes

[theblogginggoth]

By Czeck writer Karel Čapek, inventor of the term ‘robot’ as well!

[nadiacreek]

This is one of my husband’s favorite short stories. He quotes it from memory. I’m pretty sure he can recite the entire thing from memory.

[elodieunderglass]

This is a tremendously impactful short story and every time I see it, it serves as an excellent reboot button for my state of mind.

[jessaerys]

how do i say "horror novels these days are too woke" without sounding like a right winger. what i mean is: this one is about a woman serial killer who kills Bad Men, that one is about ~anticapitalist activists~, this one is ~queer~, that one is about *spins wheel* someone dealing with the ghosts of their immigrant roots, all of them are about intergenerational traumaaaaa. okay. cool. but is it good though. is it fucking scary

[jessaerys]

something something, losing the ability to convey horror through abstraction, through metaphor, through symbolism, through allegory, through raw unexamined un-psychiatrized feeling. if the real horror is.... dun dun dun! the patriarchy then i just feel preached to. don't use fiction as a vehicle for Saying Something About Society. write with total vulnerability and then see what it says. it will be probably be far more interesting and horrifying than what if the monster was uhh my mom's abuse or whatever. this brand of new horror writers are all so terrified of actually disclosing anything about themselves. it's like if an instagram infographic performance was a mediocre contemporary novel

[some-stars]

YOU ARE MAKING THE TEXT DO THE WORK OF ANALYSIS!!!!!!!

[sartorialadventure]

Viking dresses by Savelyeva Ekaterina

[petermorwood]

Another visual demonstration that historical clothing wasn’t dingy and monochrome.

All of these colours can be obtained from vegetable dyes, producing different shades depending on what mordant (colour fixative - alum, different metal filings, different vinegars) was used. See here and here for examples.

[willowofthehearth]

BRING THIS FASHION BACK.

[thevagueambition]

Not clothes, but this was a palette developed by the National Museum of Denmark based on paint residue from archaeological finds for the purpose of painting a reconstructed hall.

Apparently, they can tell from the chemical composition that the colours wouldn’t be mixed with black or white to mute them, but be used in their brightest form. Bright yellow and red was achieved with expensive dyes (orpiment and cinnabar) and was thus fashionable. (Source in Danish)

[kalessinsdaughter]

@athingofvikings

[cicadianrhythm]

What is a man? An ecstatic little pile of pigments.

[sartorialadventure]

^reblogging for that comment

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Forever reminder that the ancient world was colorful everywhere, and every attempt to brownwash it in modern fiction is sheer laziness.