Jimin has a song coming out this Friday. He's collaborating with an idol he admired in his youth, and he helped compose the song. It's kind of a big deal.
Now look, some folks are going to have legit reservations about supporting Taeyang considering past transgressions, and you should let them be true to their lived experience. Everyone has to answer to their own conscience here.
But some people are gonna be vile haters no matter what, and shit all over Jimin. You can expect a flood of posts attacking his lyrics, his voice, his looks, his sexuality, whatever.
Normally, I'd tell you to ignore it, block and report.
I'm not going to ask you to do JUST that, this time.
Instead, I'm going to ask you to start a new trend: co-opt their platform.
Use subversive kindness.
You see a post throwing major shade at Jimin? Don't fight. Donât clap back. Donât retweet to call them out. It just amplifies their message.
Take a page out of Jimin's book: be classy, but sassy.
Comment underneath hate posts is with Jimin-supporting hashtags.
"Thank you for the platform! With Jimin til the end! PJM1 is coming! #JIMIN #VIBEftJimin #parkjimin #jimin #bts  @bts_twt #withyou #pjm1 Be a good human! We love Park Jimin!"
Make them regret ever mentioning Jimin.
Spam the shit out of them with positive, joyful, celebratory, supportive message for our boy. Do NOT post anything bitchy or catty; nothing that would get reported or make Jimin feel ashamed if word got back to him.
Just take those hatersâ swords aimed at our artist and beat them into ploughshares.
Deplatform the haters.
Take their free real estate and turn it into fertile ground to trend for Jimin.
 THEN go ahead and report and block and move on.
DO NOT GIVE ASSHOLES THE ATTENTION THEY CRAVE! Instead, keep the focus on Jimin, by being kind and positive and productive.
Take a page out the citizens of Wunsiedel's book and make the bigots work for a good cause:
Inhabitants of Wunsiedel, Germany, came up with a clever way to thwart right-wing extremists.
Every single time an anti posts, it's an opportunity for ARMY to co-opt it for BTS. Any time a member is attacked. Any time a bond is belittled.
See a crazy cultist post misinfo or crap all over Jimin? Guess what? That's now an open invitation to cheerfully cleanse the timeline by commenting with tags you'd prefer to see.
If vile little antis are kind enough to create a post, we will happily take the space and change the message. We can even fundraise around it. One penny for every hate post toward album purchases or Jimtober next year.
MAKE THEM AFRAID TO MENTION HIM.
After all, the best revenge is a dish served HAPPY.
Our artist is coming back to us. Letâs make sure the whole world is very clear how happy we are about it. Be so loud, no one can hear the hate.
Please feel free to reblog this, and share this idea on twitter and other platforms. We have three days to the word out.
If you come for Jimin, youâll get more Jimin than you could ever handle.
And you'll get it politely, pleasantly, persistently... until you break.
harry/draco/luna goodness for @veelawings's fic Born as a Blackthorn Tree
this is a bit outside my usual vibe, clearly, but i woke up thinking about this fic, which features my favorite rarepair - and summary - of all time: "Hope was alive. And blonde, and blue-eyed, and tall. So very tall."
(Yes, this is a response to a post going around how maybe itâs okay if adults are in fandom as long as they understand that fandom is for ickle kiddie-boos and walk on eggshells. Um, no. Back in my day, we kicked yâall off our yahoogroups so we could post adult material, and rigorously didnât post adult material if the list allowed you.)
So, back in the day, several of the authors of an LJ community that posted NSFW fic met up and had a group photo, which they posted. Apparently, some of the 18 year olds said, âEwwwwwww! Theyâre all, like, oooooollllld!âÂ
Thereâs actually a good reason for that.Â
Writing is part being good with words and part being good at turning your life experiences into something that other people want to read. Remember my previous rant about how you canât assume a mystery writer is a homicidal maniac, and you canât assume that a reader who likes a character has the same personal flaws as that character? Thereâs a reason people assume these things about authors.Â
See, if youâve never fallen in love, you might think romance is when the other person brings you a dozen roses and a box of chocolates. And thatâs fine! Thatâs romantic, too! But if you have fallen in love, you might remember the time that you woke up and went to go to class and found a bunch of wildflowers and a plastic ring from a bubblegum machine tucked under your windshield wiper. And you might remember the half touched, half about to burst out laughing expression on your sweetieâs face when you showed up to class wearing that tacky plastic ring. You might think that love is thinking the other person is the best-looking person in the world, or that love is wanting to spend your life with someone else. Thatâs love, too! Well, at least the second one is (the first is probably just infatuation). But if youâve been in love before youâll know that love is also hurting all over because your sweetieâs abusive parent died and theyâre unexpectedly destroyed over it. The latter is worth a million flowery declarations.Â
Now, Iâm not saying that no one under 30 can write. Some young people have had very full lives. And some young people have a natural talent for extrapolating from their own feelings. Virgins can write convincingly about sex, even. But the more life experience you have, the easier it is to extrapolate, and the easier it is to come up with the specific details that make things feel real and true. Â
If you want to become a better writer, the best things you can do are write a lot, share what you write, and live a full life. And remember, before you say adults should be banished from fandom: your favorite author is probably over 30.Â
I canât decide if this is the Ragnarssons becoming the Peaky Blinders or just them meeting their counterparts and trying to stab them because the Ragnarssons are the new gang in Small Heath. I can see Ubbe immediately trying to help Arthur cope with his demons. Hvitserk and John would bump shoulders at first but would eventually bond and become best buddies. Theyâd go out for drinks, compete for all the girls, and call each other stupid but would constantly look after one another. As for Ivar and Tommy⌠theyâd be arch frienemies, of course. They would (love to) hate each other, trying to outsmart and supposedly kill the other with no success.
âA poemâŚbegins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.â
â Robert Frost in his letter to Louis Untermeyer, dated 1 January 1916
The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixateâneurochemical signaling (I hope Iâm using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)âŚpeople like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.Â
significantly:Â the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady âreturn on investmentââand this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we donât have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual âlow batteriesâ in that regard.
that doesnât mean these stories are âsimple,â or that they lack complexity or valueâonly that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low âupfront cost.â these stories are only âeasyâ to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readersâthey are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).
the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. thatâcombined with the shorter average length of ficsâmeans that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. thatâs not a bad thing! and maybe itâs something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.
Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. Iâm glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you loveâthe way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to storiesâthat is what matters.
some collected tips from people in the notes, for readers interested in getting back into traditional fiction:
try re-reading old favorites/books from childhood. your brain knows what to expect & already has positive associations, so thereâs a lower upfront cost
try a book series with recurring characters. again, itâs an emotional investment vs payoff thing. if you can power through the first book long enough to become familiar with the protagonist/world, youâve then got a huge amount of literature to choose from.
(fantasy, mystery, YA & childrenâs series are useful for this btw. bonus points if it doesnât have to be read in a particular order)
short story collections! these are great bc if you come across a story you donât vibe with, you can just skip to a new one
if you donât mind spoilers, consider reading a plot summary online to 1) introduce yourself to the characters 2) be able to skip ahead when the narration isnât as gripping 3) ease your anxiety about a satisfying endingÂ
similarly, reading the book after seeing the movie
My first Suburra fic everđĽ°
I am proud and happy about this little contribution for the Spadeliano Mini Big bang that @imaginary-wanderer set up. This fandom needed that and deserves way more love and attention!đ
Everyone who makes it over to AO3 and through my 2000 words will be rewarded with an outstanding piece of art from the lovely @saltlordofold. Thanks again for all your help and honoring my little fic with your art!!!
