Fandom Trash

Just a bunch of fandom posts, ranging from Danny Phantom to Shugo Chara. I'm trash for good looking characters and interesting plot.

[powerviolence-princess]

all these retro style games that are like "NO tutorials NO handholding" apparently forgot about the little books that used to come with your game that detailed all the mechanics, controls, special moves, lore, maps, collectables, means of unlocking additional content, character bios, etc

[powerviolence-princess]

i remember there were a few games that would even include what was essentially a walkthrough/strategy guide for the first level or two, i dont get what these retro devs are on lmao

[powerviolence-princess]

hadnt actually considered that. much to think about

[valtharr]

Can I add something else, tangentially related?

I always find it funny when people rage against difficulty options and accessibility features and the like, with the argument that "older games didn't have those either!"

Because it's like... yeah, you're technically right, they didn't have those. Know what a lot of games did have though?

Cheat codes.

How many games in the 80s, 90s, and even the 00s had built-in codes for shit like level skips, unlimited ammo, invincibility (IDDQD, anyone?) and such? Not to mention all those games that used a password system to save the game. I remember back when me, my sister, and my mom were struggling with the original Rayman (a notoriously hard game, despite the cutesy artstyle), and then one day, my dad showed us a list of level passwords he had found online, including one that let you go directly to the end credits!

And how many of those codes became iconic memes in themselves? I already mentioned IDDQD, the code for Godmode in the original Doom, but what about "JUSTIN BAILEY"? What about "Rosebud" and "Motherlode"? Naming your file "ZELDA" in the original Legend of Zelda? What about the goddamn Konami Code?

But no, as soon as you stop hiding these things from players in the form of special codes and button combos, and simply slap them in the main menu to toggle on off as you please, you suddenly "go against the spirit of the game" or whatever.

[msbarrows]

Argh... so I've been reading in Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (SVSSS) fandom recently. And it's given me a new pet peeve about formatting and TTS. A bunch of the authors in that fandom are using black lens brackets to indicate the 'system' voice, 【like this】, because the original novels do, and, yeah... unfortunately that's not always compatible with TTS (definitely not with google's TTS engine, and testing with various other online TTS engines gives mixed results).

Guess how I know they're called black lens brackets.

…

Go on, guess.

…

YUP! They get read aloud! Every. Single. Time. They. Appear. Open black lens bracket like this close black lens bracket.

Please resist using the novel's formatting and just use regular square brackets instead! Which do not get read aloud unless there's a space in a bad position, [ like this ]. If you want to be fancy, maybe use <tt>...</tt> formatting or a monospaced font such as courier to make it stand out more as something mechanical.

[Like this]

Which reminds me, another bad formatting choice I've bumped into multiple times (and I can't remember if I've mentioned this one before) is where authors use something <like this> to indicate things like speaking mind-to-mind, or that someone is speaking a foreign language (despite the actual text still being in English). Cool. Neat. Also not TTS compatible, unless you like repeatedly hearing less than and greater than mixed into the text. But guess what - there are already perfectly serviceable ‹single› and «double» angled quotation marks that could be used instead - and since they're recognized as actual quotation marks, they don't get read aloud! Shocking, I know.

Those angled quotation marks could also be another decent option for indication of things like the system voice, obviously.

«Like this»

Thanks to everyone who is already using more TTS-compatible formatting, and to anyone who decides to make some changes to theirs after reading this :)

[aofikofi]

what if kdj can read WoS on any electrical device

[kiramarien]

If I got a nickel every time a cartoon I love

based on a book

based on mythology

about a teenage boy

who stumbles upon an ancient artifact that gives him powers

that's being sought by this cocky guy with daddy issues

who's right arm is mechanical some of the time

and his Dad is this massive guy with big horns (and sometimes glowy blue eye(s))

who's being manipulated by a powerful woman

that he freed from her centuries old prison

who may have had noble ambitions in the past, but now has been consumed by power

and the woman possesses a young girl in order to get what she wants

and sacrifices the lives of her minions in order to unleash her ultimate weapon ->

(Dozens of Gum Gums) (Spider Queen, Huntsman, Syntax, Goliath, Not- Mayor) You know what I'm talking about :(

and she's got this indentured servant *cough "Slave" cough* (with pretty gold eyes 😘)

who she refers to as "Her Champion"

who travels using shadows (I could not find a single picture of Angor Rot using his shadow staff)

who was really sweet and kind in his past but then... well... stuff happened

and has lost his right eye

and he's been killed before

but the big bad restores him back to life so she can use him

and he gets a redemption arc at the end of season three

and the main character doesn't have a bio Dad, but he attracts plenty of father figures throughout the course of the show

and he gains a non-human form that makes him even more powerful

and him and the others gain an armor upgrade at the same time

and the girl of the team has short black hair with dyed stripes

and you know the guy with daddy issues who wanted to steal his artifact in the beginning? He becomes one of the protagonist's closest friends

and there's this gentle giant character

who becomes one of my most beloved characters of all time 💕💕💕

and he has a history of violence and trauma

and has now vowed to be a devote pacifist

but breaks his vow in order to protect the people he loves (with angry glowy eyes to boot)

and has a deep love for cats (yes, I did just do that)

...then I would have two nickels.

Which isn't very much, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

(That last drawing was made by @jezfez81. Thank you for letting me use it!)

What the heck happened?!?! This was just supposed to be a comparison between Sandy and AAARRRGGHH!!! Where did all these comparisons come from?!?!?!?!?! WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?!?!?!?!?!?

(this took way too long to make, please give it some love :3 )

[egberts]

"stardew valley is a relaxing game" genuinely we are not having the same experience

[sinfulpepsi]

I think about this post every day

[icryink]

WELCOME TO CRINGETOBER!

I wanted to post the prompt list a month in advance so people have time to work on it :)

There are no hard rules; it's just a fun art exercise to draw things that are considered "cringe" by popular culture. Don't stress if you miss a day!!

Even if you don't participate, it would mean the world to me if you just shared the prompt list because it took me a while to make it lol.

I hope you have fun with it!!!

[skipppppy]

I want to thank everyone so much for the support on my timeskip bachelorette art!!! Glad you were all excited to see the boys. Hopefully I didn’t keep you all waiting too long and hopefully I did them justice! Here they are! (and Krobus)

(Also. If you like these and want me to draw your farmer smooching their spouse, I can! My commission info is here)

[skipppppy]

As much as I love the Stardew Valley spouses it always kinda bugs me that they stay stagnant after you marry them. Like even after having kids and passing a decade in game they look and act the exact same? Anyway what if

(Also don’t worry I will be doing the bachelors. I’m drawing dilf Elliott even if it kills me)

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

The thing with amateur local theater is it is almost always bad BUT keeping it alive is the most important thing

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

The joys of artistic expression cannot be limited to talented people everybody needs it to survive

[nirruti]

This is such a hilarious take we should give untalented people who make bad art money you know just because guys

[powerbottombrucespringsteen]

Exactly. Glad you understand 💗

[a-spectacular-pigeon]

I feel like some people have fundamentally misunderstood the point of funding the arts. It's not about receiving quality art products, it's about giving people an opportunity to engage in the act of creation. Because, you know, we're human beings and art is fundamental to us.

It's a) extremely classist an b) detrimental to art and society as a whole to try and confine it to people who are already good at it. Let people do things they're bad at. Let people engage with art in a way they find fun and fulfilling, even if you don't like what they make. Give people a safe space to be artists. And yeah, let folks put on crummy theatre. You don't have to buy a ticket, but you should absolutely respect their right to sell them.

[deliciousdietdrpepper]

I mean I had theories about bigtop burger, sure, but an alien clown getting banished from his homeworld because he got stage fright during a ritual production of the musical cats, (by getting shot out of a cannon,) and slingshotting into the path of earth and killing the dinosaurs on his way to the core of the planet, was not on my radar for some reason

[i-might-be-a-simp]

I need your opinion, do you think Ron knew that Cale was no longer the same person?

I was stalking the fandom (as usual) and I saw a comment, by who I assume to be a new reader, wondering how Ron would react finding out Cale was actually KRS, that the child he watched grow wasn't actually the man he believes and it made me think a bit.

When I read tcf the first time, one of the things I was most curious about was all the odd looks Cale got in the first few chapters, and my biggest question was, surely a very sharp and experienced assassin who knew the know-hows of blending into different crowds would have immediately noticed that "Young master" was no longer the same person.

I'm sure you caught this too when reading, but there were many moments when Ron's expression turned odd after Cale did or said something.

Ron the whole first chapter:

It starts by something he dismisses, such as Cale waking up immediately after Ron calls out to him, on the very first attempt. But as the chapter progresses, Ron gets more and more intrigued.

He notices how Cale says thanks after he receives water and when servants dress him. Along with his other odd actions, asking the date, repeating his own name, asking to go to the study, not breaking things etc.

And then finally, Ron gives him the ultimate test, the lemon tea. I think this was his way of confirming that Cale had changed. It proved to me Ron was definitely onto something.

Now this is where I need your opinion. From my interpretation of Ron's character, yes he "loved" ogCale or held at least a bit of affection for him. Let me pull up some receipts:

^(sorry for light mode)

Although Ron treated him like his grandson he did not think Cale had a soft spot for him nor that he treated him like a person and never really took much interest in him aside from his duties.

And while I was doing a deep-dive I went on the wiki and saw this.

So Ron saw ogCale, his situation and therefore pitied him, yet he thought of him as a helpless impertinent puppy, which is why he did not have much issue with following Beacrox who wished to leave with Choi Han in BOAH. But only after Cale changed is when he begin to be interested.

Now the question is, was the lemon tea experiment he did, just to test whether Cale had become aware of Ron's true identity, or was it to confirm Cale was a changed person entirely???

Personally I think it was both, and that Ron was aware from the very beginning. However this is where I am conflicted, because the idea of Ron watching that small boy become so big and smart is so satisfying to me, because the author wanted to paint this as a "cale finally stopped pretending to be a dumb oblivious trash and started to take matters into his hand" like it was all a plan cale had to hide his powers and get stronger in secret while acting unsuspecting. This is what the public believes and it sounds very cool but... hmm I wish we got a chapter focusing more on Ron's feelings.

Like I am aware he loves Cale very much and especially after getting the new arm he started to feel a sense of loyalty for Cale he didn't have before but the fact that he was one of the few people og Cale was very close with since he was very young, the fact that a whole new person was in the body is kind of not addressed in its full concept, this transition from no interest to loyalty was also a transition from og cale to krs cale so I wish we got more on it.

Thanks for reading my ramble. I love them.

[nacrelysis]

hi here's pumpkin man dancing to the entire scumbag/scum villain's self-saving system op (忘言歌)

[magnetohazard]

THE BOYS(AND TSUBAKI) ARE BACK IN TOWN

Time to celebrate. After many months, we finally have the three-chapter gap in translations of Nii Satoru's Wind Breaker FILLED on mangareader.

This series is great, y'all. If you like media with delinquents and fighting, this is the series to read.

Also, if you like good transgender representation in your manga, this series is a must-read.

This is Takusu Tsubakino. Despite what the official translations for scenes involving her may lead you to believe, she is indeed transgender and when the only site I could find this on had fan scans with really bad formatting, she was a standout character to me as a newly-trans woman myself. She gets her own arc explaining who she is as a person and let me tell you, that shit brought me to tears with how seen I felt reading it.

BUT FIRST A LITTLE BACKGROUND

I got recommended this manga in a really small Facebook group that was dedicated to sharing art(fan and official) of trans characters in manga and anime and I didn't know just how good this character would be going into it. The series' writing, at first, was somewhat standard, but I sensed that there was more to the story even without the trans rep. And there was. It confronts a lot of issues that I faced growing up like having trouble fitting, trying to prove yourself in all the wrong ways, and getting rid of a fractured image of what it means to be fulfilled.(excuse the following picture's quality, it was from my old phone which did this weird thing where the screen brightness also determined the brightness of the screen capture)

Now I was really sucked in to the story already and they showed Tsubakino in an earlier panel in one of the chapters following the first major fight in the series because she's one of the 5 strongest people at the school the characters go to, which is full of kind-hearted delinquents doing community service and being the pride of the town because of it.

Unfortunately, Tsubaki didn't get her own chapter until almost the end of where the English fan translations stopped at the time but I will reiterate: I fucking cried when I got to her backstory.

Now when she finally gets a chance to speak out loud in chapter 62, we get the good news of the main character, Sakura, not being transphobic after being corrected once(in the fan translations, I took a break in the middle of writing this because I needed to re-read her arc to put my thoughts in order and they got updated with the official translations that still use he/him). Honestly? Huge win because Sakura is a whole other post himself that I may or may not make later.

But the real meat comes from the chapter after this. Tsubaki asks Sakura on a date, which is just her way of saying: "Come help me with a personal project." That project is to visit an older man that she met as a child and keep him company because he and his now-deceased wife were the ones who helped her realize that she is trans and the way they tell the story in chapters 64 and 65 are absolutely tearjerking so I'm not going to really get into it here. Please go read those chapters to really feel it for yourself!(pt2 in reblogs)

[monsoon-of-art]

[thevagabondbard]

MORE PHOTS IN MUH REBLOG

Psst. Don't tell the jolkein rolkein rolkein estate, but this is amazing. DO consider buying a print from the extraordinary artist responsible:

https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/leiaham/

Original Twitter thread with the artist's thoughts and commentary:

[thevagabondbard]

[olderthannetfic]

*cackling*

If OTW weren’t around, this wouldn’t be “scaremongering”: It would be the inescapable status quo.

[lanninglurksnomore]

The people who believe this crap are the anti-vaxxers of fandom.

[olderthannetfic]

Oh god. They kind of are, aren’t they?

[athingofvikings]

I’d go bigger and just say that they’re the conservatives/reactionaries of fandom–or, to frame it differently, this is how conservative and authoritarian ideologies express themselves in the context of Fandom.

[kimberlyeab]

my opinion on AO3 is that it’s an important asset but i still find it scummy that they’ll ask for money but when their users try to ask for money they slam them with their non-monetization rules. Like Anne Rice is dead and this isn’t the 90s anymore, people are making money from fandom please catch up with the times.

[olderthannetfic]

I think you’ve misunderstood:

AO3 was built by a bunch of us with our free donated labor for the purpose of being a space free from commercial spam.

It’s not a public service. It was built by us to house the type of fandom culture we liked.

People who want to do fandom differently, including making money, are welcome to go build their own site with their own money or their own donated labor.

[elfwreck]

AO3 does not forbid commercial links because they think fans making money from fanworks is immoral but them making money (to run the damn site) is fine.

AO3 forbids commercial links because they are making a very specific claim about the legality of fanworks, and that claim is about noncommercial fanworks.

They’re not saying that commercialized fanworks are against the law. They’re just not prepared to host them–nor defend them in court.

In case people missed it: The OTW will not honor DMCA takedown orders that are basically, “I own X work and that’s a fanfic of it, and that’s copyright infringement so make it go away.”

The OTW says, lolnope, we don’t think that’s copyright infringement. If you disagree, sue us.

The OTW says: Disney - we will not remove explicit Mandalorian fanfic. Rowling, Warner Bros - we will not remove trans Harry Potter fanfic. Gabaldon - we are not removing Outlander fanfic no matter how much you think it’s illegal or a personal violation. Yarbro, if someone puts “The Adventure of the Gentleman in Black” on AO3, you will need to actually take it to trial to (try to) get it removed; none of this C&D order followed by fans caving because they can’t afford a lawyer.

…So far, nobody has sued them. (This is, in my mind, the strongest proof we have that fanfic is not copyright infringement. In 13 years, not a single person or company has scrounged up a lawyer and filed a lawsuit against AO3/the OTW for hosting fanworks.)

But they’re not willing to put themselves on the line for commercial works. Those get considered differently in copyright law. They’re not always infringing - there’s a whole history of parody books & songs to prove that - but the OTW is not dealing with them.

The OTW does not care if fans are making money. The OTW cares if fans making money interfere with its legal defense of its archive.

If you are not a copyright lawyer, your opinion about the situation is not going to be considered.

[thebibliosphere]

Also, it wasn’t just Anne Rice coming after fandom in the 90s as though this is some relic holdover terror from ancient history.

Events like Strikethrough and Boldthrough happened in the early to mid-2000s. It felt like you’d wake up every day in 2007 and find another fandom group on LJ gone. (And not just fandom groups either, important community groups for education and trauma survival were also wiped out in those purges as well.)

And while not exactly the same, Yahoo Groups–and yes Yahoo Groups was a major online fandom hub at one point–were deleted as late as 2019 with very little warning, leaving a lot of older fandom groups scrambling to back up decades worth of content.

I might be projecting, but Fanfic.net seems to be wobbling too. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they go under in the next few years despite performing similar purges of adult content in 2012 and allowing for obnoxious ads, which made the site unusable on mobile unless you wanted to see an ad what felt like every couple of paragraphs. (It might be better now, I haven’t checked in a while.)

It has only been in very recent memory that fandom has gained any sort of foothold that isn’t poised directly over a precarious faultline that could at any moment open up and swallow entire communities whole, and a huge part of that is the volunteers at Ao3 who decided to play chicken with the likes of Anne Rice and won.

Ao3 at its core was and is built by fandom. Some people don’t like it and that’s fine, but to even suggest that the volunteers are lounging around eating peeled grapes and lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills making bank through fraud while fanfic authors are left out in the cold is beyond the scope of laughable.

[scififantasystuff]

They ask for all of that money for two reasons, one being larger than the other.

1. Employee expenses. Someone has to renew the page license, update firewalls, improve the webpage, and add beneficial features that the users are explicitly asking for. They also keep good copyright lawyers on retainer, who stay up-to-date on potential law suits and draw up legal responses to those Cease and Desist letter. That is not a nothing-expense. People deserve to be properly compensated for their labor.

2. This is the big one: Servers. I don’t know if y’all know this, but internet web pages do not have endless and infinite storage capacity. Since AO3 is ad free, it needs to come up with the money to buy and maintain servers from elsewhere, aka DONATIONS, which are willingly given.

It’s not a subscription service. Authors don’t have to pay to submit stories. There’s nothing predatory about it. If you don’t want to give, don’t give. But also don’t try and smear their name when you don’t understand a single thing about what they do for fandom and fanworks.

[olderthannetfic]

People do deserve to be properly compensated, but that’s not how AO3 runs. Almost all of the labor is donated, including those expensive tech skills and legal skills.

My biggest beef with the “I deserve a $5 coffee for my fic” thing is that the vital work of making the site exist at all is largely uncompensated. A given fic writer wouldn’t just be monetizing their own labor but that of a lot of other people who did not consent.

[cesperanza]

Yeah, I don’t think people realize–or can comprehend (!!)–that nobody gets paid–it’s all volunteer from the board on down, and even the lawyers work pro-bono. Server costs, machines, hosting for webpages for related activities, communications software, those things cost money, but the OTW is an all-volunteer nonprofit corporation. We did (I believe) once or twice hired limited-term contractors to help wit specific technical debt stuff (things about gems and stuff underlying the software, updating Rails), but the thing is mostly a giant labor of love. Because it turns out that not everyone creates awesome things  for money. As you might think an entire archive of awesome, custom-written fanfiction might prove. :D  Or to put it another way–the whole of OTW and AO3 is A FANWORK, YOU GUYS. 

[bowditch]

there’s lots of great info here but i just want to add, for anyone who missed it or isn’t thinking about it, that it’s incredible that ao3 doesn’t have ads.

they aren’t even requiring that anyone pay to use the site. it’s optional. you don’t want to donate, don’t donate, it’s fine. you’re probably capable of ignoring the donation request banner on other sites (wiki??) just fine.

it’s true that running and maintaining servers and also holding a fund for legal expenses costs actual money– you can request their actual budget and expenses explanation iirc but i’m not going to leave tumblr mobile to hunt for it.

but also? do you realize how incredible no ads is? like, really? almost every single other non-commercial website (and even some of those now) depend on ads to survive. that means they’re selling your data to pitch their target demographics and traffic to advertisers. so not only is ao3 letting you read fic without annoying banner ads, but they aren’t selling your info to justify the advertising expense to potential advertisers/investors. imagine how horribly THAT info could be used if it was being sold or leaked as a commodity.

like bruh i’m sorry if it sucks that you think you should get to make money off someone else’s IP– depending on the IP in question you might be entirely justified in wanting to! but you’re welcome to go use patreon or ko-fi. you could take commissions somewhere. i could go off and write original fiction. yeah, it’s unfair that fanart is a loophole left alone more than writing, or that people feel like they shouldn’t have to pay as much for words. that all sucks. and none of that is ao3’s problem or a problem ao3 was created (by us, by fandom) to solve.

not only have we watched FFN go down the advertising and yielding to legal pressure drain, but if you’ve always had ao3, you don’t know what it was like to have fanworks hosted on little private hubs or groups on sites not entirely intended for it. one of my fandoms was a privately managed server and when the host moved on, they waited a few years, and then stopped paying to maintain it. it’s all just gone– any work i didn’t back up from when i was a teen, any stories i didn’t think to save for when i wanted to revisit them two decades later. i posted my first ao3 story seven years ago and even THAT is a wild amount of time to still be like “oh yeah i’m not at all worried about the site vanishing” to me.

they aren’t making money off us, nobody is vacationing on ao3 donations, but even if someone was for a site that doesn’t sell my data to advertisers, doesn’t require a fee to use, and lets me register pretty much anonymously, i would probably think an optional occasional donation was worth it. maybe i’d have criticisms but that’s still a whole fucking lot that thousands of fandoms are being offered for FREE.

and if it still really bothers you, then instead of complaining about your conspiracy theories every donation season, maybe just go donate to your local rescue or food pantry and do some good with the money you weren’t going to give anyway, instead of trying to trash a site’s reputation based on misunderstandings and rumors. some of us are really grateful for ao3 and don’t want it ruined.