We Were Only Ever Children

BK, 25, she/her/hers pronouns, queer. A fandom blog (mostly) with a little bit of whatever I'm interested in at any particular time. Don't look for consistency here, folks.

[booksandchainmail]

The fun thing about the short story collection The King in Yellow (classic of horror/weird fiction that was an influence lovecraft) is that only the first 4/10 are about the titular cursed play. The next few are unrelated weird fiction, but then the last couple have absolutely no speculative elements. Just stories about young artists falling in love in Paris, but told in the same narrative voice as the horror stories, in a collection which has "Tales of Mystery and The Supernatural" on the cover, which produces roughly this effect:

[fullmoonguidance]

evil great lakes

lake inferior

lake normal

lake offtario

lake hurton

lake michigan

[travelingwanderers]

sometimes you send a post to a mutual and sit there grinning because you Know you're getting yelled at the second they open their messages and that you'll deserve it. and also that it'll be worth it.

[themoonandmyman]

I haven’t said anything interesting in a long while. this will continue

[fidelcostco]

the human brain is so cool, if you're tired and stressed enough, your brain will go, "don't worry, I got you" and shadows will start moving

[fidelcostco]

and what's the genital situation on the shadows

[fidelcostco]

oh this is my post

[unspeakablearchives]

[assiraphales]

I kind of miss the impulsivity that certain spaces used to allow. oh you want a hair cut today? hairdresser in the corner can fit you in before her 2 o’clock. tattoo of a cobra… sure leg or arm? even concerts, back when you could go to the box office thirty mins before any show. not saying these things don’t exist at all, but everything feels booked five months in advance and 10x more expensive

[transsexualgriffith]

i love sibling estrangement as horror. Only one person in the entire world has been through what youve been through and they deny it . Awesome

[fidelcostco]

can't believe the only options are 30 minutes early or 10 minutes late. if only there were some other way. but what can you do

[mushroom-soup-is-my-religion]

[tweetsongs]

i agree so much about making your blorbos pathetic but i do fear that many take this to mean 'make them more traditionally feminine/submissive' which genuinely hurts my soul. make your blorbos pathetic in interesting character-oriented ways. understand their neuroses and turn the dials up to eleven. juxtapose the parts of life they handle extremely well with the parts of their lives that make them eat shit. make them angry. make them cold. make them pave their own way to hell while building walls preventing them from seeing any other way. please i'm begging you no more pathetic as an euphemism for bottoming im gonna mclose it.

[beardedmrbean]

[were--ralph]

the problem with tumblr spells is all of you lil sluts are casting and not giving it time to charge so you're all casting cantrips and not 9th level death spells. everyone wants to be the one to take them down no one wants to be the one who assists

[were--ralph]

we're going to try again witha little but minimal casting

IT will happen in August of 2026. like to charge and reblog to cast but cast sparingly

[were--ralph]

Wait stop. everyone +like now and spread it a little but cast on the same day in August. lets try August 6th or something.

[were--ralph]

CAST NOW

[clytemnestraaa]

i'm going to say something insane. i think the overall pronounced fandom cultural slide away from complex plotty violent work and towards kidfic and coffee shops AUs and cozy domestic romcoms is a symptom of fascism.

[clytemnestraaa]

okay actually this is a great phrase for it

[thelibrarybat]

Reblogging this for the term "neopastoralism", because I think that's fantastic.

Coffee shop AUs are, like... fine. They're not my thing, but they're hardly going to end the world. We don't need to have a moral panic about people enjoying coffee shop AUs. I'm also not about to come for anyone seeking escapism in the current hellscape.

However, I do think it's interesting to examine the tendency within these AUs to project a sort of idyll onto the coffee shop: here is a whimsical place where you can spend time with your friends and potentially meet your true love; here is a world where the greatest dilemma you may face is choosing the right coffee syrup for a new beverage or sneaking your number onto that to-go cup without being obvious.

The fantasy of the coffee shop AU is divorced almost entirely from the reality of an actual coffee shop. There are no abusive, creepy customers or bosses; there is no mention of the barista's wages; we don't see the dishwasher sweating at their station, the cashiers' aching feet; the person whose job it is to clean the (customer-only?) toilets. These topics are Political and Depressing and Must Be Avoided, because Political and Depressing things are antithetical to this kind of escapism.

The coffee shop AU exists, not in a world without capitalism (because this is a setting where commerce is actively happening) but in a world where capitalism has no teeth: a world where capitalism somehow works. In order to be convinced and soothed by this fantasy, you must suspend your disbelief and avert your eyes. You must filter the coffee shop through a neopastoralist lens.

To me, there's something very uncanny about it.

[slunch]

tl;dr: all "algorithmically" pushed stuff on a newsfeed is mostly ads. nothing that's really surprising form this vulture article, but it is dismal and makes me grateful for one website where you only see things from people you follow WITHOUT horrible short-form video content

[bitchking-of-angmar]

The Feed Is Fake

What if every viral song, movie, meme, influencer, and celebrity drama in recent memory was the result of a stealth marketing campaign?

https://web.archive.org/web/20260515113210/https://www.vulture.com/article/social-media-feeds-chaotic-good-projects-clipping.html

Have a paywall free link to the source!

[enki2]

[birdplushie]

"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!

[magn-animously]

DIG

[14-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat]

DIG

[buriedunderyourmum]

DIG

[hannisconfused]

DIG

[kitsunesakii]

DIG

[yourlocalfandomfriendo]

DIG

[apple-notplural]

DIG

[vivitur-moritur]

DIG

[spacecat24-7]

DIG

[chub-froggy]

DIG

[thatghostthateatspeople]

DIG

[krowbreaker]

DIG

[spid-the-spider]

DIG

[annabelle--cane]

DIG

[yellow-faerie]

DIG

[vampiraptor]

[baygeethefirst]

I hollered

[woman-respecter]

it’s so hard for me to listen to heartbroken/angry breakup songs by straight men bc no matter how good the song is i’ll be like i’m not sure if i fully believe you. let’s hear her side of the story.