Henri Biva (French, 1848-1928)
Pond in the mist, 1910
Oil on canvas
almost home
Sade Olutola

Kiana Khansmith
One Nice Bug Per Day
Peter Solarz
DEAR READER
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No title available
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Monterey Bay Aquarium

oozey mess
d e v o n
will byers stan first human second
wallacepolsom

Discoholic 🪩
NASA
Three Goblin Art

titsay
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

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@ladyofmood
Henri Biva (French, 1848-1928)
Pond in the mist, 1910
Oil on canvas
Please don’t let fandom ruin something you love. Walk away and unfollow the fans and enjoy the thing by yourself, or find a limited circle of people who ignore the discourse, or get your irl friends into the thing and collectively ignore the Internet community, or blacklist from here to the moon if you need to and only ever scroll through your rarepair ship’s tag on AO3. But don’t let fandom distort a show or a movie or a book or a comic you used to love so badly that you can’t enjoy the original anymore. Please. It isn’t worth it.
I'm loving the discussions about the role and purpose of fandom, as well and what activities are needed to keep fandoms alive and flourishing!
However... as a fandom creator (writer and artist), I sometimes feel like too much pressure is concentrated on creators. I don't know if this is a frustration others share? Not only should we keep making things, but somehow we also end up becoming these central fandom figures who can feel pressured into responding to comments (or else we're called arrogant or ungrateful), making friends (or else we're rude for ignoring well-meaning people who reach out), and being the drivers and pillars of that community (running events, responding to memes, etc. – and everything falls silent if we stop). It's a lot of work!! I don't always have the time and energy to make things for fun and then also engage in all the ways people might sometimes feel entitled to because they enjoy my works.
I really wish that more "non-creating" fans in the community would discover their fandom power!! and not just rely on the visible "producing" creators to be the only people worth engaging with. It takes nothing more than passion to write a meta-post about a character or a plot point, or to create an ask game, or to DM someone else who you see posting funny tags – not just the creator! Maybe your followers have other tips for evening out the balance a little more?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this, anon. This is an observation I've seen in many parts of life, not just fandom.
A lot of people feel as though they need permission or an invitation of some sort in order to contribute. That's why I always end my answers by asking people to share their thoughts. I want to make it explicitly clear that I want people to add things into the reblogs (which I can then share out for more people to see) and the replies (which people can at least read even if I can't reblog).
I have heard fans who are readers but don't write fic say that they think they can't get an AO3 account unless they plan to post something. This is incorrect, of course, but a lot of people make that assumption.
I think at least some people (I don't know what kind of percentage) assume that someone who is writing fic or posting art or making podfics and video edits etc. has some sort of expertise that "allows" them to post.
People with less confidence or with less practice etc. sometimes need an extra nudge before they realize that they're welcome to contribute too. If that's the case for you, please allow me to say:
You are welcome to post in your fandom, even if no one invites you to. Even if you think you're not good enough. Even if your idea isn't "popular."
Start a conversation. Share a thought. Talk to folks who reblog cool shit. Be a folk who reblogs cool shit. You don't have to do everything in order to do something.
As mentioned above, please do share your thoughts in the reblogs and replies to keep the conversation going.
Other things people can do:
make a rec list
make a "here's all the fics I've found in this fandom with this one trope/general vibe/very particular setup I just think is Neat" list
make a "welcome to the fandom, here's the fics that people will just assume you've read/know about to get you started" list
make a "if you liked [popular fic A] you might enjoy [less well known fics B through N]" list
More things you can do!
Create whumps lists
Create lists of shippy moments
Make screenshot collections
Record and post clips of your show to get more people into your fandom
Make incorrect quote memes
Make silly little TikTok-style edits of your favs
Make character playlists
Figure out the layout of buildings/cities
Recreate those building in the Sims or with an online floor planner or even just draw it out because holy hell writers will be so thankful for that
Make your blorbo in various video game character creations
Build a pokemon team for your blorbo
Make up silly headcanons! What does everyone do at the fair or the beach or during a fire drill?
Outline a fic idea you have — maybe you don’t have the time or energy or you just don’t feel confident enough to create it, but share it anyway!
Create outfits based on your blorbo’s design or outfits they would wear
There are so many ways you can engage with fandom that aren’t making fanart or writing fanfics. Fandom is community - Please don’t be afraid to join in!
(I've been on tumblr for 15 years, far longer than I was ever on twitter, but I've never engaged much beyond reblogging so please pardon how many times I reference fandom activities I witnessed on twitter)
Collect interviews with the author, producer, director, mangaka etc
Similarly, translate interviews
I remember someone in the haikyuu!! fandom kept a twt thread of every time two characters were in the same panel. Not sure what the tumblr equivalent would be. I guess just a regular old post with lots of additions? (Send help; i'm not sure why my brain is struggling so badly to translate twitter threads to tumblr posts)
Run a quote bot account: I'm not sure of the status of quote bots in a post twitter era, but those were quite fun. Again an example from the hq!! fandom, there was the hq!! bastille bot which would spit out a bastille lyric + a ship. The siken bot would spit out a line of poetry + a ship name. On tumblr maybe the equivalent would be a gimmick blog?
Run a ship/character week. I think these are probably the easiest kind of fandom event to run. it doesn't take more than one person, a blog, and rudimentary graphics skills.
Are socmed AUs still a thing?
Make gifs
Try to figure out the layers to a character's outfit and share your studies with the world. (I'm looking directly at you, Hoyoverse and all you're what-even-is-that how-do-they-even-put-that-on character design. beautiful, but confusing)
Update fandom wikis
Log fandom history on fanlore.org (another project run by the Organization for Transformative Works, aka the parent of ao3)
Volunteer for the Organization for Transformative Works/ao3
Fandom wikis!! One thousand blessings upon everyone who maintains fandom wikis, oh my god.
Some suggestions:
Transcribe episodes for film/audio canons
Podfic! We can always use more podfic, and most people's phones have a voice recorder.
Create bingo sheets (e.g. make a fanwork with five or more of these tropes for a bingo; read/reblog fanworks in five or more of these categories for a bingo)
Be a Your Blorbo expert consultant! If I'm writing about a character I don't have strong feelings about, but I know one of my friends is constantly reblogging and posting about them, even if it's all silly memes and "character <3"-type posting, I'll sometimes reach out to them for advice on if I'm getting Their Blorbo right. It's absolutely invaluable and I appreciate these people so much.
We are all just enthusiastic nerds on the internet. You have as much right to share your enthusiasm as anyone. One of the things I love about tumblr as a platform is that you can just start saying whatever about something you like, and you will find other people who like it too.
Be the person with The List™ Be the person who has a collection of links who can jump in and answer someone's question with a "Hey! You may want to check this out!" This list can include everything from tutorials to userscripts to transcript sites to generators to communities and so much more
Other things you can do:
Describe art or (make fandom accessible!)
Offer to beta read or be a fic continuity adviser
Create memes
And I'm gonna reiterate the creating lists of fan fics
NEW TUMBLR SCAM
So some asshole has thought up a new Tumblr scam: it's a post on a Tumblr account that's named something to make it look official-ish.
Variations include:
account-help
account-sync
account-update
account-updating
These posts show up on your dashboard, telling you that because they think you've monetized your Tumblr account, they're putting you in the penalty box sending you to the cornfield setting you to "Lurker Mode" where you can post but no one will see your posts. And, naturally, all you have to do is click on the helpful link to give tumblrsupport your account data to get it fixed.
Friends, this is a big fat lie.
The official location of Tumblr Support is https://www.tumblr.com/support or https://support.tumblr.com. And guess what? They'll already have your account information.
Tumblr has no such thing as Lurker Mode.
If you right-click on their link, you'll see it's a munged/shortened link. You can go to a site like https://www.expandurl.net to expand that link and see where it takes you: it's not Tumblr Support.
@staff, please be aware this is happening.
Be aware. Be careful. Don't give your account info to anyone. Be safe, and happy blogging!
"You don’t have to figure everything out today. You don’t have to solve your whole life tonight. And you don’t have to tackle everything at once. You just have to show up and try. You just have to focus on the most immediate thing in front of you. And you just have to trust that you’ll figure out the rest along the way." - Daniel Koepke
tumblr needs a hug button. sometimes you wanna just give a mutual a hug
Reblog this to hug prev
Photo by Marcijus Tomislav
smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud
this is gonna make me sound very Old Man Yells At Cloud but i just hate how many things in my life assume i will always have access to a quick, reliable internet connection and almost cease to function without it. Obviously certain things Have To Have An Internet Connection, but i want to be able to listen to music if my service is bad. i want to still watch movies if Netflix is down. i want to have a working map when i can’t get a cell signal. nearly every tech product these days bears the fingerprint of the extremely internet-rich places they are developed, high rent offices in Seattle, San Francisco, etc.. I think often the idea of the internet not being available is so remote to them it doesn’t even factor in to development. i remember when the Xbox One was debuted and Microsoft was almost mockingly like “if you don’t have reliable fast internet, then don’t bother buying this”, and there was such backlash they completely went back on so much of that. But now that attitude is just the tech norm.
Kinda crazy how my first cellphone didn't have a camera or internet and 17 years later this thing knows more about me than I do and gives people brand new mental ilnesses.
my parents: "We bought you a cellphone so you can contact us if your bike gets a flat tire on your way to school!"
Cursed Artifact (common item) has been added to your inventory
pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc
against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"
actually the fact that odysseus knew he'd be gone for 20 years makes the gears in my brain turn. You kiss your son goodbye knowing you will miss every milestone of his. He will be a grown man and will not remember you. You will be a father only by title. Your wife will lay alone in your wedding bed, she will wake and see the side you've slept on is empty. You won't hold each other for a long, long time. Your parents may not even be there to welcome you back. You know you will return, but the war stretches on and on. Your comrades fall. Your ships are on fire. Your best warriors are nothing but ashes in an urn. But it's eventually over, you can go home. But still, there's more time left. First it's a storm. It's winding up in strange lands. It's hunger. It's temptation. Your men grow weary. You have twelve ships and then you have one and then it's only you on a single timber. You know you will return, but everything has gone so horribly wrong that you can't help but wonder if the fates fooled you. Everyone you know is either dead or are living again. You are the only one stuck in between. Neither dead or alive. You sit on a beach staring out to the sea from the moments the birds sing til the sun dips over the horizon. Every day is the same - you sit on the stones and weep, you trek the shores, during the night you're in her bed. Your skin is cracked and sunburnt, your beard long and tangled, your hair etched with more and more silver hairs. Your eyes are dull, sunken. Your bones ache when you walk, your breath is shorter. The sun rises and sets. The waves wash away your footprints. You are growing old but the island is the same. You are left behind. Your home will change and you won't change with it. In fact, everyone will change, but you will not recognize what's different. Some of the lines under your eyes will be the hauntings of war, while your wife's will be from the sleepless nights of buying you time. You flinch when you see each other. You expected to see someone else, and she expected to see no one at all. You could once hold your boy in your arms, but now it feels like he's the one holding you. The trees in your orchard have grown taller. Some of the houses in your kingdom are empty. The children that sat on your knees now have their own children on their own knees - or they lie dead, by your own hand. Who are you? Who is your son, your wife? You will get to know each other, you will change together eventually. But there will still be something off, like a brick not fitting quite right in the foundation. Off like a living man among the dead, someone who wasn't fated to die, but was supposed to die a long time ago. A dead man among the living. You will not belong, even though you are the father of your son, the husband of your wife, the son of your father, the king of your land. There will always be something missing, something aching.
And you are willing to let it all happen when you lift your baby son from the field, away from the plow.
This is basically what my physical therapist had me do for my back problems last year and it helped with the pain so much! Also walk for at least thirty minutes a day, even if it's just in small chunks throughout the day.
if you’re happy for literally any reason no matter how “small” or “stupid” you’re winning in this world as far as I can tell
caring for little plants? old video game? a cat you love? a silly tv show? Isn’t it great when people know what causes them joy and they embrace it?
Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later
Eight and Half Candles - Valentin Popov , 2019.
Ukrainian, b. 1956 -
Oil on canvas , 26 x 28 in.