Return To The Ballpit: a Dashcon 2 Podcast

Available on podcasting platforms and YouTube! Visit our website: dashcon2podcast.com | Episode 4 coming soon! | Questions? Email [email protected] | Podcast by O Stecina (They/He)

[dashcon2podcast]

Episode 1! Meet The Ringmasters!

Dashcon 2 is happening this July in Toronto (where I happen to have lived for the past 4 years) and I saw this as an awesome opportunity to combine my interests of audio storytelling and Tumblr culture. A few very cool interviews and lots of research later, I am super excited to present the first episode of my podcast miniseries: Return To The Ballpit: A Dashcon 2 Podcast! If you're curious about the people who put on this do-over to end all do-overs, or want to stay in the loop with Dashcon news, give it a listen! I will also be AT Dashcon 2 with my silly little microphone! Come say hi to me and be a part of Tumblr history!

Return To The Ballpit is available Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio, and a video version with captioning is available on YouTube!

Visit our website for more info, or start talking with other fans on our discord!

[dashcon2podcast]

EPISODE 2 IS NOW UP! This one is all about the @dashcon-two-trials and features interviews with the folks behind the trials and all 3 finalists! It also has a fun little rap at the end that lists out everything on the con schedule :3

Listen on the website, watch the captioned version on YouTube, or stream from your favourite podcasting app!

Thanks again to @strange-aeons for the shoutout, stay tuned for an interview with Strange AND @the-muppet-joker in the next episode!

[dashcon2podcast]

AND JUST IN TIME, IT'S EPISODE 3!!

This Dashcon-Eve, enjoy some exclusive interviews with...

Dashcon 2's Accessibility Coordinator

The panelists for "Trial of a Timelord", "Bloody Heartss" @rat-kingster, and "Cancer, Transness, Neurodivergence, and You" @skaetlett

@strange-aeons who I got to meet in person (and I was only a LITTLE bit starstruck....)

AND THE MUPPET JOKER HIMSELF @the-muppet-joker

Visit the website, watch the captioned version on YouTube, or stream from your favourite podcasting app!

I will also BE at Dashcon tomorrow with a bunch of microphones (including "ASMR-jorie" the 3Dio microphone with the ears on it!) and my wonderful boyfriend Mika. Come and say hello!!

More episodes to come post-con, as well :3

[molly-ren]

hey what's up with the "!" in fandoms? i.e. "fat!" just curious thaxxx <3

I have asked this myself in the past and never gotten an answer.

Maybe today will be the day we are both finally enlightened.

[molly-ren]

woodsgotweird said: man i just jumped on the bandwagon because i am a sheep. i have no idea where it came from and i ask myself this question all the time

Maybe someone made a typo and it just got out of hand?

[stevita]

I kinda feel like panic!at the disco started the whole exclamation point thing and then it caught on around the internet, but maybe they got it from somewhere else, IDK.

The world may never know…

[molly-ren]

Maybe it’s something mathematical?

[michaelblume]

I’ve been in fandom since *about* when Panic! formed and the adjective!character thing was already going strong, pretty sure it predates them.

[hosekisama]

It’s a way of referring to particular variations of (usually) a character — dark!Will, junkie!Sherlock, et cetera. I have suspected for a while that it originated from some archive system that didn’t accommodate spaces in its tags, so to make common interpretations/versions of the characters searchable, people started jamming the words together with an infix.

(Lately I’ve seen people use the ! notation when the suffix isn’t the full name, but is actually the second part of a common fandom portmanteau. This bothers me a lot but it happens, so it’s worth being aware of.)

[nentuaby]

“Bang paths” (! is called a “bang"when not used for emphasis) were the first addressing scheme for email, before modern automatic routing was set up. If you wanted to write a mail to the Steve here in Engineering, you just wrote “Steve” in the to: field and the computer sent it to the local account named Steve. But if it was Steve over in the physics department you wrote it to phys!Steve; the computer sent it to the “phys” computer, which sent it in turn to the Steve account. To get Steve in the Art department over at NYU, you wrote NYU!art!Steve- your computer sends it to the NYU gateway computer sends it to the “art” computer sends it to the Steve account. Etc. (“Bang"s were just chosen because they were on the keyboard, not too visually noisy, and not used for a huge lot already).

It became pretty standard jargon, as I understand, to disambiguate when writing to other humans. First phys!Steve vs the Steve right next to you, just like you were taking to the machine, then getting looser (as jargon does) to reference, say, bearded!Steve vs bald!Steve.

So I’m guessing alternate character version tags probably came from that.

[raincityruckus]

100% born of bang paths. fandom has be floating around on the internet for six seconds longer than there has been an internet so early users just used the jargon associated with the medium and since it’s a handy shorthand, we keep it.

[sassafrassarah]

Absolutely from the bang paths–saw people using them in early online fandom back in 1993 for referring to things.

[taraljc]

I had been doing it for a very, very long time but never actually knew the actual name for it. This is exciting! I like learning things.

[realmarysue]

I am very glad this has been going around so folks learn the Lore, but also let’s encourage it because then we get to say “bang paths” more often.

[canadianhottmess]

Hello, I'm Saph Ick if you were at Dashcon2 last year you might have seen me wanding around as the Diva dressed as Ash Williams. Well. I will be back again this year. Only this year. I am the one running the show! And I need to find my cast.

Click here if you are interested in being a silly lil guy for the entertainment of others.

@dashcon-two

[dashcon2podcast]

Car with its windows down blaring sweet child o mine and ripping down my street so fast the guitar Doppler Effects you may be a nuisance but you did make me laugh aloud so I really can't fault you for living your dreams

[centaurself]

in celebration of april 13, i present all four known photos of neil, who banged out the tunes 19 years ago today

source: theagilerat.com (click right to see all four photos!)

[starberry-cupcake]

[datadegroove-deactivated2026042]

[darkandstormyart]

just another monday

[the-muppet-joker]

Haven't been online much. Been going through some shit. Watched Season 10 of Love Is Blind (Ohio edition), as I was actually one of the contestants this year, and discovered that they cut out all the scenes that had me in them. Fucking fine. None of those other assholes even gave a shit about the muppets no matter how much I talked about them in the pods, and production didn't like that I wore Joker makeup every day. They made me leave filming early because I "wasn't connecting with any of the other singles" and I was "pretty much freaking everyone out." Whatever. I'm going to burn down the village to feel its warmth

[jvgsjeff]

[yahenni]

[doctor-wormm]

please reblog this i spent way too long on what was supposed to be a quick edit

[phantom-threaded]

Happy Ides of March for those who celebrate <3

[strange-aeons]

I'm throwing a birthday party for My Immortal on Friday night but the decorations stay up all week

[strange-aeons]

2006 WILL NEVER DIE

[dashcon2podcast]

Sang a Ninja Sex Party song at a queer Cabaret last night. Here's some pictures featuring my lovely assistant Feura

[dashcon2podcast]

If anyone was curious, the reason I haven't posted in ages is because I've been running my university's internet radio station and it's eating up a lot of my time, but I can absolutely guarantee that there will be more Dash-content coming to you before this year's convention. Especially once May rolls around I'll (in theory) have a lot more time and resources to work on the show and keep you all posted on the behind the scenes stuff. I love podcasting sm and I love the little audience this show has brought together so I definitely want to keep working on it!!!

Anyway I love y'all and if you wanna hear my voice more you can always hear it in the ads on the radio station lol

[westerlieswitch]

Is that why the other Dashcon 2 2025 episodes you mentioned in episode 3 haven't been posted yet? I just started listening to the podcast and I was confused why I couldn't find them.

[dashcon2podcast]

Yes! There are only 3 episodes in existence right now and they're all posted to all of the platforms. I script, record, interview for, and edit the show all by myself and putting out hour-long episodes that my perfectionist streak is happy with is a pretty time-intensive process.

I am determined to continue the show with new news for this year's convention, some of the stuff from last year that was recorded but not yet edited, and my panel!! aaaaa

I will post any new updates on here but you can also stay up to date by subscribing to the podcast on your platform of choice!

[dazzlingphoenix]

(found in the event live chat)

sorry simpli events tech team for the influx of tumblrites frantically clawing at your site for tickets

[lexiklecksi]

For the calligraphy requests may i ask for "You Are Loved"? I feel a lot of people need to hear that 💜

To everyone reading this:

Spread the love 💗

[noctuamagna]

You Are Loved

[next-of-kith]

[dr-lemurr]

[noctuamagna]

Yay we got another one!

summoning fellow calligraphers, anyone else feel like contributing to this?

@eagle-writes, @rararatigan, @capn-o-my-soul?

[capn-o-my-soul-deactivated20241]

i ran out of paper that doesn't bleed so here is one on paper that does bleed ;-; (it looks really bad and i am not proud of it at all i'm so sorry)

featuring a massively fucked up L and no drafting lines

also i forgot the little lines that go inside the Y dammit

[rararatigan]

I’ve been summoned

And you are loved

[lavender-in-the-field]

You are loved. Always and eternally.

[silvergryphonart]

It’s an inadvisable time of night for me to get up and

[anothersojourner]

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

[dashcon2podcast]

IT'S TICKET DAY!!! EVERYONE GET READY!

[dashcon2podcast]

T-minus 2 hours, here's the link if you need it!

[dashcon2podcast]

That might have been even faster than last year lmao

[dashcon2podcast]

IT'S TICKET DAY!!! EVERYONE GET READY!

[dashcon2podcast]

T-minus 2 hours, here's the link if you need it!