Not so long ago Russia invaded Ukraine and commits war crimes amongst constant lies. My country, Poland, shelters 3,5 mln refugees and directs help to Ukraine, while watching with horror history repeating itself: a dictatorial state attacking another country, desiring to erase identity of a whole nation, while the West does not help enough, even though Ukraine defends Europe against Russian totalitarianism. Has Europe - apart from its eastern and central countries - learnt nothing?... That's why this blog is no longer only fandom and history minded - it can't be.
Eu sem Você
(Janek x Grigorij)
I bought Clip Studio Paint EX and also wanted to try using post processing for shading... This fandom is totally dead but I do not care.
Hello. This past autumn I became quite obsessed with everything Batman and among many others, I read your fantastic Roleswap Robins AU, which I absolutely adore.
Just now I was reading through your asks and it made me interested in hearing more about your thoughts on other Batman/Batfam fics. What is it in the fandom that make you dislike Batfam fics in general and how did you go about when you wrote your Batfam fics (even though it was a few years ago)? Is it the usual sideline of the female characters/misogynistic tendencies within the fandom or something more/else?
I'm a massive Star Wars fan and I've been wanting to read your SW fics for a while but because of reasons (not being very into Star Wars at the moment + wanting to wait until it is finished to read through the entire work) I've not yet done so. What are your tips on what to expect?
Lastly, thank you for writing so high quality fic! Myself and many other couldn't be more grateful.
Considering how often I've vagued my hatred for Batfam, I can't believe this is the first time I've been called out on it. This is a tremendous question. It is the question of a lifetime. It is the Question Of All. (Regarding WOAT: uh, I hear it's very depressing and intense, but in my usual cathartic way? I've never had the reading experience)
As happens sometimes, there is literally so much to say here. The Fandomization of media. The inherent struggle of writing any comic book character coherently. Thankfully, I've already talked about that here and here, so I recommend reading that, because it's Part 1 and Part 2 of this conversation. TL;DR: there really is no such thing as 'one' consistent characterization of long-running serialized media with many creators and mediums'. Double TL;DR: It is especially difficult to lock down 'real' Batfam characterizations, due to how insanely long, sprawling, multi-media, divisive, and fandomized it is. And Adam West is there. So I cannot coherently say that 'Batfam fanfics are always writing the characters drastically OOC', because that is almost a inherently meaningless statement with amorphous and constantly-shifting boundaries.
That said.
I wish I was dead.
By the way, I try to keep posts like this completely academic and a thoughtful writing-based breakdown of my thoughts about something in order to foster an actual conversation instead of just a one-sided rant. And I did try.
But I got so mad.
Part 3 of the extremely piece-meal yet extensive breakdown of why good comic book fanfic is impossible to write, and yet you fuckers also do not try, rest under the cut.
Characters still have to mean things. There will always be at least three or something inherent aspects to a character, without which the character does not function, and perhaps it is just demented not to give him these characteristics, and one of them is that HE WOULD NEVER TELL A PLUCKY SIDEKICK THAT THEIR BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH WITHOUT LIKE FIVE ISSUES OF BUILD-UP AND DESPERATE CHILD YEARNING FOR APPROVAL, AND NEVER TO FUCKING STEPHANIE BROWN -
Cough. Anyway.
Getting This Out Of The Way: The Fundamental and Intrinsic Way Nobody Here Fucking Understands Batman Because They Are Not Actually Interested in Batman Which Is Kind of Nuts For People Writing Batman Fanfic
Bruce Wayne has to be: the kind of person who would cope with the childhood trauma of seeing his parents murdered via dressing up like a giant bat and engaging in an inventively insane series of suicide attempts every day of his misbegotten life, while being somewhat fanatic about never killing a human person.
Batman is not a good thing. It is something that Bruce has to do. It is not a healthy coping mechanism, any method of actually solving his personal problems, or remotely rewarding and celebrated. It is a compulsion, a drive, a mission, a crusade. Batman is how Bruce copes with a life so devoid of justice that he can hardly bear to live in it.
I know we all know this. Batman 2022 summed it up extremely succinctly, with a vein of that modern positivity. It was not subtle or difficult to understand. It was an easily watchable movie, even.
The Robins are, like, on top of that. They are the addition. And they're the important addition, which says: Batman can bring light and hope and meaning to Gotham and all of its inhabitants, and it doesn't have to be a self-destructive crusade. A desire for justice so powerful that something has to be done is in the spirit of more than one man - maybe it's in the spirit of Gotham - and through sharing that spirit Bruce can lose loneliness. If he chooses to accept that. Which he struggles with doing. Because he is kind of person who would cope with the childhood trauma of seeing his parents murdered via dressing up like a giant bat and engaging in an inventively insane series of suicide attempts every day of his misbegotten life.
Robin exists in context of Batman. Robin is a facet of the crusade of Batman. What Batman comics are fundamentally about is what Robin is also fundamentally about because Robin is a small child who dresses up in a leotard and fights crime which is the action of the kind of person who would cope with their childhood trauma via dressing up like a circus performer and voluntarily interacting with Bruce Wayne, the least sufferable person.
Okay.
Do you people know or care about writing coherent characters?
I know I said that OOC is hard to define, and that you can't really point to a characterization and go 'this is the real Dick Grayson'. But these characters are Robin (or Batgirl, etc), which means that they are the kind of people who dress up like a circus performer and fight crime, and you have to write them as people who would do that. They are normal-ass twelve year olds who fight crime. Only a specific kind of twelve year old would do that. They don't just do it because Bruce told them to. This is why I like Tim Drake, because he deeply inherently begs the question of 'why the fuck would anybody be like this or make these choices'. It's also what makes Damian both interesting and not interesting to me, because Robin is literally the only thing that makes sense in his context. You can say the same thing about Cass as well, but she makes a lot of personal choices.
Does anybody care about this. Does anybody care about why Dick Grayson would walk up to Bruce and go "hey, I know this concept doesn't really exist at all yet so I am entirely wholesale making up this idea, but what if I, a 9 or 12 year old, wore a circus outfit and punched people with you? I am 9 or 12." Everything Barbara did is just something that she decided made sense for her to do, which is does, but only in her overly responsible little mind. Everything Stephanie does is something that makes zero sense for literally anybody in her position to do. So Bruce does not come off as fucking insane, they also have to be the kind of children who physically cannot be stopped from doing this. Does anybody care about why Jason would decide to become A Heroic Drug Dealer besides 'yeah he's crazy and hates his dad I guess'. Lots of people are crazy and hate their dads and don't do that. You cannot separate this from these characters. If you do not at least consider these things, then you are not writing coherent characters. You are not writing Robins and Batgirls. You are not writing Dick or Jason or Tim or Barbara or Steph or Cass or Damian or Duke at all.
But you people don't care about that do you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OKAY NOW WE'RE GETTING INTO ACTUALLY A GREATER FANFIC PROBLEM
People say that they write fanfic because it's a love letter to the original work.
No you don't. No you fucking don't. You like watching the media, seeing a romantic relationship or what you can semi-reasonably, or completely unreasonably, interpret as a romantic relationship, and then obsessing over that romantic relationship. My aroace ass does not understand you. You say that you think the characters themselves are great, but then you get onto the topic of how hot you think the actors are, so I am beginning to doubt the sincerity of your claims. And none of the couples you write are interracial because I think a deep societal thread within almost everybody is subconsciously uncomfortable with interracial relationships.
I feel justified in saying this, because in The Magnus Archives Season 5 there was roughly 30 minutes of horror short story content, in the horror short story podcast, and about 5 minutes of two boyfriends having a conversation, and when I hopped on the tag after an episode the rest of those 30 minutes did not exist. Only the boyfriends remained. Except for when people coerced Jonny Sims into admitting his struggles with substance use, which I am still mad about. It was insanely obvious just listening to it that he knew exactly what he was talking about, but you guys are nerds who don't know what you're talking about. It was already deeply personal. Anyway. Wow I never get angry in posts this is so much fun no wonder people do it all the time.
You can do this. Okay? Okay. I don't care. I take fanfic way too seriously and not everybody has to do that. I'm insane and I know that. I'm sure everyone reading this is like 'well I don't do that', and I have a carefully cultivated mutual circle of asexuals with extremely good taste, so I'm sure you don't. I'm preaching to a choir here.
The actual number one take-away is this: Batfam fanfic is overwhelmingly composed of stock tropes, stock characters, stock plots and stock dynamics.
Issue in all fanfic. Yes. So insanely prevalent in Batfam fanfic that it is 90% of Batfam fanfic. Also yes. I'm not even going to get into how fucking boring all of that shit is. I won't touch how boring the stock AUs are! Do whatever, everybody!
Everything I said in the previous section matters to nobody. Common dynamics are very carefully cherry-picked from a few specific comics when they are not completely made-up wholesale. Comics are like the Bible, you can cherry-pick whatever you want to make the argument you want to make, and we can all decide that Batman is a caring loving father excellent well-adjusted person and - I can't even say this with a straight face. But you can say that. If you want. If you don't care about Batman.
Why do people make Bruce a good parent? Because they want that dynamic, and there is a fundamental disinterest in his portrayal as pretty much anything but that for about 80% of the past 80 years. Why do they create an entire group dynamic between the Batfam when Chuck Dixon was the one who even invented the concept in the 90s and up until very recently (when this Batfam obsession leaked into the actual comics) and some of the characters had never been in the same room as each other actually ever. Well, we want cute family group dynamics. Why is Dick Eldest Daughter Syndrome, Jason Tsundere, Tim etc etc. Why are the girls Women Gendered Naruto Style (iykyk)? There's not as many fanfic stock fun dynamics and stock characters with women. That's it, btw, that's a major reason why the girls are sidelined, they don't fit into The Fun Dynamics. Why is every single solitary fic with Tim insanely woobied? He looks like the easiest to H/C. Tim does not matter if he's not The Woobie. Tim is nothing if he's not The Woobie. And on and on and on and on.
This is what fanfic and fandom does. It fucking loves doing this. Fandom has not actually moved on beyond the seme/uke yaoi thing. We think we have, and we have not. We cast the seme, we cast the uke, we wash our hands of it. This is the found family, shake everybody 'til they fit in the slots like it's fucking pachinko, let's go. This is why fanfic tends to be kind of light on plot (beyond plotty fics being harder to write....) - people want to write stories about feelings, about dynamics, about 'X doing Y at Z', putting blorbos in terrarium and making blorbos do. Things. I guess. But this is kind of hard to do well if you're fundamentally disinterested in writing a fully fleshed out, three dimensional character who is more than 'the uke eldest daughter syndrome'. Actually, it kind of fucking sucks.
There has been a zeitgeist in...comics, at least, but in a lot more than that...of stories shifting from plot-focused to character-focused. Where Are The Columbos of Yesteryear. Sherlock Holmes BBC was about Sherlock, when the OG was about the cases. Early Batman fanfic (earlier...?) was basically, 'Batman comics are 90% plot but there is a SLIVER of fun character stuff and I want to expand on it'. Batman and Robin had like five panels of fun jokes and dynamic and we all wanted more of that shit, so we wrote character-focused work when the comics were doing plot shit (I guess, from this POV, I should forgive TMAS5 people? In my hypocrisies?). But I think there's been a general greater understanding of Obsessive Non-Cis Men Bring In The Dough, so more works are focused on what women like, so they're more character focused. If it seems like I'm generalizing, go look at r/StarWars and then the Tumblr Star Wars tag and get back to me. Curative vs Generative or whatever. That's how Wayne Family Adventures kicked off and ruined a very specific highly unimportant aspect of my life. And that's why Batman comics now are extremely Batfam focused. I saw a page from a Zdarsky of the Batfam just....standing around, talking...bantering...for ages....everyone, in the same room......had an aneurysm. I'm also noticing that a lot more comics pages seem designed to go big on Twitter. Also, like, comics are being written by fandom and twitter people now. Which.
That said. Comics are, uh, better than they used to be. Overall. So...not actually complaining about this one?
Look. I don't care if you're writing a fucking sitcom. You can write a sitcom with the actual characters. I don't care if you're writing an atmospheric character study. You can study the characters. But you can: a) write a plot-focused story with stock characters, or b) write a character-focused story with real characters. You cannot do both. Or you can. But then you're writing Batfam fanfic and I hate you.
Do you actually care? Does anybody here actually fucking care?!
I think what I just actually hate is when we write fanfic that casts characters in stock dynamics/roles. When we write fanfic with characters that can be swapped for almost any or other character. This isn't you loving the source material. This isn't even you being interested in the source material. And I know it's not, because a shocking amount of Batfam writers profess to having never read a Batman comic in their lives. And if you're tagging all of your work as 'I have killed canon and buried it in the backyard and I don't give a shit about it', then why are you here. Why are any of us here. If your work doesn't have the canon and characters I like then there's no reason to read it, because it probably isn't objectively good. You're allowed to stop giving a shit about canon when your fic is good. Get back to me.
People talk up fanfic as its own valid art form, but they don't treat it like it is. People say fanfic is just as valid as original fiction, but they don't even try to do what non-horrendously bad original fiction has to do. People laud the importance of fandom, of non-Cis Men enjoying things, of a very specific feminine and/or queer way of enjoying things, of retroactively creating some sort of weight or meaning to something just because it consumes so much of your brain space (This is why people pretend that being in fandom is somehow social justice, by the way). You're making a joke of it. Don't call it art, don't produce art and be an artist, if you are not interested in doing what art and especially writing is fundamentally meant to do, which is to say and/or do something. It will always say something anyway, which is 'I have not dismantled the seme/uke framework in my brain'.
I don't take fandom seriously. Uh, at all. It's a way I spend my time and connect with my friends. But I take writing really seriously. Even for the stupid stuff, even for the low art forms, and even for what's basically a punchline in the greater society. You have to apply yourself fully in whatever you choose to do, in everything you choose to do, because otherwise you are not living fully within this world. And if art is how you choose to dive into this world, to experience it and be experienced in turn, then you have to say what only you can say.
I'm also a comic books fan and in that you inherently have to get so insanely fucking heated over Batman that's just part of it okay it comes free with the comic book they pass it out for free comic book day.
TL;DR: It's not that I hate Batfam, except I do, it's just that I have a fundamental disrespect for lazy and uninteresting art.
On impulse, he leaned forward and lightly clasped Obi-wan’s shoulder. The boy’s eyes turned wide as saucers.
“Adults are bad,” Neyo said severely.
Another one for @yellowocaballero , this time with Drunk!Neyo and Obi-wan from the latest chapter of The Way of All Traitors (which is still incredible!!!)
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you're certain your posture doesn't suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
I need y'all to understand that he wrote this famous passage in the middle of her brief remission -
'Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.' 'Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel.' 'Don’t spend too much on a house you may be turned out of.' There is no man alive who responds more naturally than I to such canny maxims.
I am a safety-first creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering”.
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry
Another one for Inuit artists is Piqsiq! Two sisters who’ve been doing traditional throat singing since they were kids. They make some really gorgeous, eerie, atmospheric stuff. Highly recommend watching this video of them performing live a cappella using a looping machine, because they might be the coolest people on the planet actually
For anyone into North Asian and Central Asian folk music, there's this incredible Siberian folk-pop band called Otyken! The group is mostly women and they're from multiple indigenous groups in Siberia, with songs being sung in their range of different languages. They're so much fun and their music videos are amazing!
i'll go ahead and recommend The Halluci Nation (formerly known as A Tribe Called Red), an EDM group from First Nations Ontario that do really cool fusions of First Nations music with dubstep, moombahton, and hip hop.
I really really really appreciate people who share videos on posts like these, because almost without a doubt every time I love the music but I’ve never got the spoons to click on links and look through a bunch of music or worse google the artist I always end up too overwhelmed to start and I hate that
Haven't seen Belle Sisoski here yet so here we go: she's the current Artist of Year for BURO impact Awards. She's from Malaysia and knows how to play an insane amount of ethnic instruments and mixes them with her own voice. She does covers and her own songs, mixes ethnic instruments with Techno and shows the process. And she's also a live DJ at 19!
And one of her own:
Oh and of course there's also the HU and Bloodywood for people who like more rock and metal mixed in:
kianamaiart
2087
annaxmalina
prguitarman
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
