Intelligently Awkward

Marissa - Ravenclaw - Pukwudgie - INFP - Proud Nerd - Wizard - Sometimes I pretend I can write - Masterlist - I follow from my personal @lookingformarissa

[wilwheaton]

[squeenixu]

sorry i cant let this just be in tags

[i-am-true-believer]

Hello again, sweet one, my late night scrollers, the early morning dreamers. I hope you're well, I hope today was better than yesterday.

I'm here to remind you that if there's an infinite number of universes, there's at least one where you are your comfort characters favorite person. They love and adore you for all your flaws and quirks and everything you hate about yourself, the same way you love all of their imperfections. There's a universe where they wait by the door for you every night, where they're your absolute best friend, where they take care of you and love you the way you should be loved.

You are so wonderful, did you know that? Every time you have a bad day, every time life tries to knock you down, you find the strength to get back up again. You keep going. Do you know how incredible that is? How proud your comfort character is of you for being able to do that? I'm so proud of you, I believe in you so much, and every day you make it through proves that I'm right to believe in you. We always knew you could do it, that you could make it to tomorrow.

I'll let you get back to your scrolling now, I bet you have so many stories just waiting for you, so many adventures and friendships to have. But before you go, I want to take a moment and remind you of something.

Anything that keeps you going, anything that makes the bad days better, anything that makes life even a little easier, is worth it. If fanfictions and comfort characters help you get through the day, then I hope you find the exact stories you need. Life is so hard and so scary, and sometimes it's easier to lose ourselves in the worlds of our comfort characters, and that's more than okay. Whatever keeps you going isn't anything to be ashamed of. Making it to tomorrow to read the next chapter of a fanfiction or a new edit of your comfort character is a valid reason to keep going.

I hope tomorrow is better than today, and that one day you won't need a reason to keep going, but for now, I'll give you this one. Your comfort character wants you to stay. They will always want you to stay. I want you to stay. I'm always here if anyone needs a friend.

Your comfort character believes in you, and so do I, the random girl on Tumblr who pops in every now and then to remind you that you are loved, you are enough, and you are worth it. You've got this sweet one, I know you do. Happy scrolling.

❤️💛True❤️💛

[atinylittlepain]

Babe, listen

Your fic isn’t a flop, it’s a cult classic. Only the coolest freaks like it, don’t worry about it, it’s great.

[vikingofficial-deactivated20241]

MORE

MORE

[napster-insomniac]

Tags via @bigfootismyonlyfriend

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

so i check quadball usa and

[thefact0rygirl]

We talk a lot about people who leave comment on fics, but I hope the people who only reblog know they are also appreciated.

Not everyone can (or wants to) leave comments for a multitude of reasons -- too shy, too nervous, too busy, too tired, or you simply don't want to -- but please know we as writers cherish you! We admire you so fucking much. We recognize your usernames in our notifications. We get these little bursts of happiness in our brains and think, "Ahhh yes, my beloved is pleased."

To the silent reblogs, I'm handing you a bouquet of flowers as a symbol of our adoration 🥀

[iloveyou-writers]

Remember to appreciate the silent sharers too. They're also putting your work in front of others who may choose to comment and who may grow to adore your work!

Thank you for this post, OP.

[conurecc]

the "gender criticals" have now clocked a pregnant cis woman

[cvrc11]

#its really inch resting how these feminists #see a man saying something they dislike #and INSTANTLY try to attack the women closest to him #hm curious hm! #if youre such a feminist why are you targeting 'his' woman instead of him? #almost like you might subconsciously think women are property or somethin huh #bc...no one is targetting HIM #the man who did what they dislike (supported trans ppl) 

This is like. One of the most blatant and obvious demonstrations of this I’ve seen, so even I was kind of amazed to see it in action. Like, we all SAY that TERFs are obviously just right-wing fascists, but it’s important to see this reminder that that doesn’t just mean that they use right-wing rhetoric against trans women, it means they very much do believe all the OTHER stuff that goes with that ideology, regarding Jewish people (see: Joanne’s antisemitism, the Soup TERF in Australia and New Zealand paling around with actual swastika-waving Nazis, etc.), regarding gay people (see: Linehan opposing the inclusion of a gay male drag queen in Doctor Who, the near-100% overlap between anti-trans rhetoric and anti-gay rhetoric when it comes to “grooming”), regarding non-white people, and yes, as we see above, inexplicably, even regarding women.

I think some of them (like Posie Parker) have probably been far-right all along, and were just pretending at “feminism”, but I do think a lot of them started out being genuine about their (at least in their minds) “feminist” commitment and motivations for their transphobia, and some (like Joanne and Linehan) are just egotistical idiots whose brains were broken by public attention and who base their politics on who is nice to them personally, but none of these distinctions matter in the end - fascism is not a series of discrete ideological positions you can pick and choose from. It’s all one fundamental idea, the hatred and fear of the Other, and it’s all tied together with a bunch of interconnected conspiracy theories, and once you buy into any one part of it it’s only a matter of time before you buy into all of it. Becoming a TERF sets off an invisible countdown, and by the end of it you have either realized the error of your ways and stopped being a transphobe, or you’re a swastika-waving Nazi, a white supremacist, a homophobe, and yes, a violent misogynist. There is no other outcome than those two.

Choose wisely. Time’s running out.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[psychictoastmaker]

People in the comments being all bitter. As if the arts aren’t out here giving you a reprieve from all the shit y'all go through. As if the arts aren’t out here making sure you live a little bit instead of just surviving.

[miranova23]

[fullofmultitudesfullofshit]

OH TRUE

[space-feminist]

it's always so fucking funny to me when terfs are like "how can you say trans women and women are the same thing! being born as a man makes you different!" because like. yes. trans women and cis women are different. so are black women and white women. and straight women and queer woman. and women from different countries and different socioeconomic statuses. there's diversity in the experience of womanhood? what a wild concept

[space-feminist]

incidentally, this why terfs tend to be white women. from the combahee river collective statement, 1977:

...we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. 

(emphasis mine)

[dentes-mentis]

"To argue that transsexual women should not enter [women-exclusive spaces] because their experiences are different would have to assume that all other women's experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption. The argument that transsexual women have experienced some degree of male privilege should not bar them from our communities once we realize that not all women are equally privileged or oppressed."

(from "Whose feminism is it, anyway?" by Emi Koyama)

[stele3]

This. This is the core of it. This is why trans-exclusionary radical feminism is rooted in racism, colonialism, and imperialism. It excludes the idea that there can be any other type of “woman” except one very (white, colonialist, imperialist) definition.

[epitome-of-an-openbook]

I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but more people should read incomplete/unfinished/in-progress fanfics.

I've noticed this huge trend where creators on tiktok and tumblr who will be explaining how to use Archive Of Our Own to new users and they always say "and make sure to scroll down and click completed only" or how people will go out of their way to mention they only read completed fics 'because they were traumatized when they forgot to check the dates and didn't realize this fic hadn't been updated since 2012'.

The thing is - I think by not engaging with and/or actively avoiding writer's WIPs readers are potentially adding to the aggregate of abandoned works. Now this obviously isn't the case for all abandoned fics, anything from major life events, to loss of interest, to getting busy can be a reason for a fic getting abandoned - but at least on some level I just know that writers are quitting while they're ahead when they aren't garnering any response or feedback because reading WIPs has become unpopular. If you're worried about reading something that hasn't been updated since 2012 then you can use the date updated function to sort out old fics.

Anyways, support your favorite fanfic writers by engaging with their WIPs.

[mrsmungus]

Legit, getting a subscription on a fic I'd abandoned 10 years earlier spurred me into action to finish it (and write a sequel!)

[epitome-of-an-openbook]

#The journey of reading a fic while it's updating is part of the fun!

Yes exactly this! I love subscribing to fics forgetting about them a bit and then being pleasantly surprised when they update again and they show up in my inbox. It makes me feel like I'm a Charles Dickens fan living in 1830s London waiting patiently for his new chapter to be released via the daily paper.

[ginniewheezie]

***au where Sirius raises Harry and sends him howlers when anything remotely interesting happens to him*** … 
Sirius: “YOUNGEST SEEKER IN A CENTURY? BY GOLLY! WHO IS THE FIRST MATCH? YOU BEAT THE EVERLOVING STUFFING OUT OF THOSE SLYTHERIN NO GOOD ROTTEN BLOODY…”
 Remus in background: “SIRIUS! I will not have you..” 
*howler burns itself out* . . . Sirius: “YOU LET THAT LAVENDER LACED PRAT TRY TO MEND YOUR ARM? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? I’M COMING UP THERE TO MEET WITH THIS SOGGY SHAMPOO ADVERTISEMENT OF A ‘WIZARD’ AND I SWEAR ON MERLIN’S HAIRY WRINKLED OLD- ”
 Remus in background: “SIRIUS! Now, that’s in bad taste and I will not have…” 
*howler combusts* . . . Sirius: “YOUR HEAD WAS SEEN FLOATING IN HOGSMEADE?! BRILLIANT! OH IF I’D SEEN THE LOOK ON SNIVELLY’S FACE..HOW DID YOU DO IT? DID YOU HAVE YOUR DAD’S-” 
Remus in background: “STOP! Now, Sirius. You know better than to mention-” 
*howler fizzles and dies* . . . Sirius: “HELL YEAH! OUTFLYING A BLOODY DRAGON?! GENIUS! YOUR FATHER WOULD’VE BEEN SO PROUD! YOU STICK IT TO THAT KRUM LOSER! YOU TELL HIM I SAID HIS WAND ARM CAN-”
 Remus in background: “Now, Sirius. Perhaps you should think before y-” 
*howler turns to ash* . . . Sirius: “HIGH INQUISITOR?????!! YOU WAIT TIL I GET MY HANDS ON THAT JUMPED UP, PINK SMEARED, YELLOW-BELLIED TOAD! I SWEAR ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE THAT OLD BAT BETTER HAVE A CLEAN PAIR OF KNICKERS HANDY BECAUSE WHEN I-” 
Remus in background: “While I agree with you, Sirius, perhaps we’d better tone it d-” 
*howler burns a hole in the table* . . . Sirius: “HARRY! ARE YOU ALRIGHT? Stay with him. Remus and I are on the way.” 
*howler turns black, disintegrates*

[jhholtzmann-deactivated20190111]

so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing

and the results were:

it’s all fanfiction

which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic

idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick

i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool

[hannahrhen-deactivated20181219]

Ha! Love it!

One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. <3

To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.

[simplydalektable]

I think different fic communities develop different phrases too! You can (usually) date a mid 00s lj fic (or someone who came of age in that style) by the way questions are posed and answered in the narration, e.g. “And Patrick? Is not okay with this.” and by the way sex scenes are peppered with “and, yeah.” I remember one Frerard fic that did this so much that it became grating, but overall I loved the lj style because it sounded so much like how real people talk. Another classic phrase: wondering how far down the _ goes. I’ve seen it mostly with freckles, but also with scars, tattoos, and on one memorable occasion, body glitter at a club. Often paired with the realization during sexy times that “yeah, the __ went all they way down.” I’ve seen this SO much in fic and never anywhere else

[jhholtzmann-deactivated20190111]

whoa, i remember reading lj fics with all of those phrases! i also remember a similar thing in teen wolf fics in particular - they often say “and derek was covered in dirt, which. fantastic.” like using “which” as a sentence-ender or at least like sprinkling it throughout the story in ways published books just don’t.

LINGUISTICS!!!! COMMUNITIES CREATING PHRASES AND SLANG AND SHAPING LANGUAGE IN NEW WAYS!!!!!!!

[reliand]

I love this. Though I don’t think of myself as fantastic writer, by any means, I know the way I write was shaped more by fanfiction and than actual novels. 

I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.

The coherency isn’t lost, it just marries itself to the reader in a different way. A way that shapes that reader/writer and I find that so beautiful. 

[kinneas]

FASCINATING

and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?

we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?

QUESTIONS!

[a-deadletter]

@wasureneba @allthingslinguistic

[allthingslinguistic]

I’m sure someone could start researching this even now, with writers like Rainbow Rowell and Naomi Novik who have roots in fandom. (If anyone does this project please tell me!) It would be interesting to compare, say, a corpus of a writer’s fanfic with their published fiction (and maybe with a body of their nonfiction, such as their tweets or emails), using the types of author-identification techniques that were used to determine that J.K. Rowling was Robert Galbraith.

One thing that we do know is that written English has gotten less formal over the past few centuries, and in particular that the word “the” has gotten much less frequent over time.

In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone! 

See also: the gay fanfiction pronoun problem, ship names, and the rest of my fanguistics tag.

[xo-queenievee-xo]

This is super cool ngl

[thesaltofcarthage]

“Fanguistics” my English major heart just exploded

[vaspider]

It’s fascinating to me the way that some of these phrases entered my speech and writing, not from fanfic, but from being in text RP communities for 30 years. (Yes, I’ve been RPing online since 1992. Hush.)

[ewatson]

@hogwartsonline​​ | Favourite Characters From Your House

Luna Lovegood

[cunninglinguist-69]

the best thing about x reader fics is that you and your comfort character can fall in love a million times in millions of different universes and I think that's beautiful

[halcydn-deactivated20151101]

Reblog if you write fan fiction

Doesn’t matter if you write in a frequent basis, or once in a blue moon, just how many of us are there?

[potterscar]

i solemnly swear that i am up to no good. HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (2004) dir. alfonso cuarón

[potterscar]

“Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban.”

[5ummit]

PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.