I have almost no visual art training or education, and for most of my life I only rarely drew, so I don't have much experience, technique, or metis. With visual art, I just try to struggle though on raw talent alone, and that really does make me incredibly slow. Fortunately, I also dabble in fiction, worldbuilding, technical writing, music, drama, game design, and shitposting.
Yeah sure Tumblr is a hellsite but I know someone who wrote a fanfic in the 1990s that someone else didnât like, so when she was selling printed copies of the zine with the story in it out of her hotel room at a convention, this other woman STOOD IN FRONT OF HER DOOR TO REFUSE PEOPLE ACCESS. Because the story featured a ship she disliked. And I feel like somehow, 10,000 Tumblrs still canât compare to that level of Extra.
Iâve actually heard about this event [or a similar event, which I can believe] from someone who was trying to get into the room to either buy the zine, or visit with the writer, or just see what was going on [idr]. Apparently it was quite the talk of the bar that night, and resulted in several heated [re: drunken] debates over whether Door Stander was violating Writerâs free speech, or if removing Door Stander would have violated Door Standerâs free speech.
Me, at the time, a 19yo with very little understanding of the law: âI meanâŠwas it?â
Fandom Friend, who was a 40-something lawyer: âIâll tell you the same thing I told everyone in that bar. No one was violating anyoneâs free speech. Bitch was just being rude, and worse, obnoxious about it. You ever act like that in public, be aware youâre not changing anyoneâs opinion. Youâre just giving them a brand new opinion about you.â
It was a very formative conversation in my young adulthood.
Same person also told me to never mix coke and acid. Which was also pretty solid advice.
Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.
#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain
Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"
I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.
And that they're somehow better than everyone else for being aware of the scam.
One of the other daily walkers on the county road here has big eyes glued to the back of his jacket hood. He's been attacked twice by owls, years apart in different places, but apparently two was enough
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like âI mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it worksâ
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
Almost any time the setting of a story shifts to a ship or boat, when it's not the primary setting, they get the operation, the legal constraints, the terminology, what the crew actually does, painfully wrong. Sailing vessels are almost never rigged right or on any realistic point of sail. Incredible illustrators, animators, and art departments will unintentionally make a Dr. Seuss creation if you tell them to make a boat.
It's hard to post intentionally bad writing without commenters proclaiming "oh but I feel bad! I love this!" Perfectly bad art is as rare a feat as perfectly good art. Even the most anonymous mediocrity definitionally will have its fans.
Enjoying bad art is neither virtuous nor unvirtuous because enjoyment is passive. It is barely a choice. I do, however, think that incuriosity is shameful. Taste, as in the ability to understand, diagnose, and articulate, the artistic choices that make up a work, is the vehicle for understanding and producing art. Taste can only be cultivated by reflecting upon a broad field of art, peak to dogshit. Because of this, the cultivation of Taste is one of my favorite parts of being alive.
If you've only ever watched marvel movies, of course they are your favorite movies. Your love of marvel movies means little. However, if you have sampled everything the world of cinema has to offer, have watched every single movie dogshit to peak, and marvel movies are still your favorite, that is meaningful. You probably have some very interesting things to say about movies. Even though I will probably disagree with them.
Enjoy dogshit to your heart's content. But reflect articulate that enjoyment; because this cultivates Taste.
i genuinely don't think there's much, if anything, hotter than someone clearly having a blast doing something they're really good at. doesn't really matter what it is. the combo of competence and joy is absolutely lethal to me
âscientists donât want you knowâ is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know
I wonder how many parents in the Star Wars universe see their kid casually pick up something with their mind and go like oh fuck Martha weâre moving right now we cannot let the local Jedi priest hear about this
They donât have a good school, Martha. They teach the children to ignore their emotions and drag them around fighting stuff instead of teach them math. Sheâll never get into space Harvard if they find her.
Martha! Master Bleep Blorp is at the door! I told you he would be here! Hurry and get her in the van! No I donât care about your tea towels Martha, they wanna turn our daughter into a weird monk acrobat! Weâre going to your sisterâs house right now.
Am I The Waojat for kicking a clanless female out of the city park?
My clan had just finished a major contract in Antngvi City, ahead of schedule and under budget, and so to celebrate, I organized an all-clan trip to Tngshiar Park-Preserve for a picnic feast. We bought dumplings from our favorite dumpling shop, and frozen blood pudding, and everything else you'd imagine.
The park wasn't too crowded that day, so we were easily able to find a spot on the edge of the green, and my 12-year-old children and our two jngti were chasing each other around the green while we adults set up the picnic. But then I noticed, at the far edge of the green, a strange female sitting alone, calmly eating a couple skewers of rin. She was obviously clanless, and I did not like the idea of someone like that being right at the edge of the green where my kids were playing. She gave off a rather ominous and predatory aura, if you know what I mean.
I brought her to the attention of the other adults, who were likewise quite concerned, especially my entourage, and we were discussing what to do about her, when she finished her meal and came right across the green, walking boldly right up to us.
She accused us of "glaring" at her, "in the most hostile manner," and demanded to know why. I of course pointed out that we had not, in fact, been "glaring" at her in any manner, to which she replied, with a sneer, "In that case, don't let me stop you from minding your own business." Then she walked off, face held high, and after tossing her empty skewers in a trash bin, walked back across the green and settled herself exactly where she had been before.
So, naturally, I sent for the gamekeeper. It proved quite unnecessarily difficult to explain to this worker the threat this clanless individual posed to my family, but eventually, when I agreed to accompany them, along with three or four of my strongest female workers, they agreed to remove the threatening person from the park. She went quietly, if haughtily, condemning our "barbarism" all the way.
I did what was best to protect my family, but now that I've told some of my sister clans and other friendly matriarchs about this incident, some of them are insisting that I "overreacted," or that "that's not how things are done in Antngvi City." Even one of my own sireparents said what I did was "uncalled for"! But what was I supposed to do? Let her sit there and ogle my children from across the green? Waiting for her opportunity to strike? I'm sure all of you will agree with me that what I did was for the best. Please help me explain that to my sister-clan matriarchs.
i seriously need to drop the habit of being met with an egregiously bad faith reading of my own words and responding with âoh my god, finally, someone who understands! im so impressed that youâre the only one who managed to read between the lines and figure out what i was ACTUALLY saying in this post that doesnât indicate that whatsoever!â
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