a brain on fire at the centre of things

“ attending to the persistence of something internal to reason that reason refuses ” ... carrd / ao3

[gerhardtz]

📍 WEN ⚣ HE/HIM 🦊 ADULT 🌪️ KERNEWEK

fic writer, fan artist & gif maker perpetually consumed by fargo brain worms & really normal about rabbi milligan. tumblr's resident rye gerhardt enjoyer.

also interested in: classic cars, black doves, flight rising, sekiro: shadows die twice, line of duty, doctor who, lie to me, severance, warrior cats & my ocs.

RECENT FICS:

made minnows into sharks and whales - Oneshot; 7.4k words

Summertime brings back memories of another life. OR Sunflowers are Josto's favourite flower.

In the Words of the Saints - Oneshot; 12.9k words

Calamita doesn’t scream. He doesn’t make a sound at all. The ground eclipses him silently as the moon. The water swallows Rabbi whole and it’s the coldest thing he’s ever felt. (Dreams with meaning; falling, drowning, and falling again.)

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: » Moments of Death » Goldilocks′ Mirror - Chapter 6

→ LINKS: ao3: gerhardtz art blog: @wenmistry flight rising blog: @argall-fr dagger dividers

→ TAGS: #meposting — personal posts #fargoposting — everything fargo #oc talk — my characters #gerhardtz fics — my writing #myedit — gifs, fanvids, web weaves

[sacred-portal]

[gerhardtz]

my favourite thing ever actually is to share my work with friends and be ignored its one of my dearest hobbies and dare i say one of my talents

[archivedeathdrive]

Jan Tschichold’s logo for Penguin Books, 1949

[senatortedcruz]

This is what it’s all about. Saturday night. At home. Switching between the same 4 apps on my phone. Getting scared.

[salemwitchtrials-deactivated202]

[ID: an excerpt from ‘Poem for a Birthday: Who,’ a poem by Sylvia Plath 

“Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.”]

[wcdonaldo]

slamming the big red button on my desk labeled "bweh" over and over again to no discernible effect

[adayinthelesbianlife-deactivate]

[lierdumoa]

Every time an author reassures readers that the smut is skippable I sigh a disappointed sigh. This is not a reassurance. Why would anybody who likes smut want to read smut that was only included as an afterthought and has no impact on the narrative? Insulting. Just don't write it at all if you're not going to make it matter.

[the-hounds-daughter]

Wait for me mutual . You are not far

[the-hounds-daughter]

very pleased to see that everyone loves their mutuals

[song-for-an-unborn-sun]

[just-in-cays]

thank you to all the beautiful women who follow me even though i'm doomed

[eddysonline]

The original flag, by Gilbert Baker, June 25, 1978.

[everythingfox]

Tofu

[deepinourengines]

mutual just posted "ok i'm normal now". objective: survive their reverse-chronological dashboard breakdown (wave 1 of 30)

[shisasan]

June 1, 1912 The Diaries Of Franz Kafka 1910-1913

[ID: June 1. Wrote nothing. END ID]

[chimaerakitten]

So we all talk about being in fandoms for things that are charmingly bad, and being able to acknowledge that they’re charmingly bad. But of course some people are in fandoms for things that are Actually Amazing. There are people out there who write fanfiction for The Best Science Fiction Novel Of The Twentieth Century. Or who draw fanart exclusively of The Best Movie of All Time. And there are even more people who are in fandoms for things that are Actually Pretty Good, which is not quite amazing but is closer to it than to Charmingly Bad.

And sometimes, you have a string of fandoms that are Actually Pretty Good. And the danger of this—the very great danger—is that when you have a string of Actually Pretty Good and even Actually Amazing obsessions, you start to believe that maybe you have taste. Perhaps you are now immune to the indignities of losing it over something mostly bad.

And then it is shattering to discover that no, bad things can still stick a fork in your brain. 😔

[chimaerakitten]

So I understand why the “transformative fandom gathers around things that are not good because there being a problem makes people desire to fix it” model is popular. I even agree that it’s accurate in many if not most cases. However it is not what this post is about. Plenty of people do transformative and creative fandom activities for things that are very, very good. Simplified models do not encompass everything.

And frankly, it’s starting to really get on my nerves when people read “I think this thing is good. I wouldn’t change a thing about it and frankly I don’t even think there should be more canon added to it, but I am still going to write thousands of words of fic, make a cosplay, and draw fanart” and then completely misunderstand and respond with “yes I agree—I like things that are good too. But I never feel the transformative/creative fandom instinct for them because they are too good.”

Some people do not feel it. Other people do. Stop misreading me to avoid having to adjust your mental model of how fandom works.

[blessphemy]

one of the ways a Canon work can be fandom bait is by missing something that fans want to fix, i.e. "it's bad", but i think this is only one way out of multiple that something can be fandom bait.

compelling worldbuilding (invites interaction with the setting)

interesting gimmick (see: daemons, drift compatibility. subcategory of compelling worldbuilding)

shipping bait (duh)

original character bait (in-universe categories/factions and design elements that make it fun for people to create their own characters)

compelling narrative (invites interaction and tweaks to the storyline: AUs and fixits and so on)

basically anything that invites interaction and recombination. but fandom also has a sort of multiplying effect: the larger the interactive audience of fandom is, the more likely it is to generate ideas and works that draw in more participants. so:

network effect (the larger the established fandom, the more likely it has subfandoms and infrastructure that appeals to niche audiences)

[chimaerakitten]

Yes this exactly, thank you bless.

Things that have space to play in are fandom bait, but space to play in does not equal holes.