Unhinged Duck Fanatic

34, Voidgender/Voidboy, Railway stuff (real and model), LGBTQ fandom stuff. Once called an "unhinged duck fanatic" in a major national newspaper

[koukorndog-deactivated20260108]

ml wombat core ^-^

[dhap53]

where do i find these things in the world

[zvaigzdelasas]

[guerrillatech]

[angelsaxis]

I haven't seen this version anywhere so I made one!

[angelsaxis]

This flag is pissing off TERFs of course but i am seeing so much colorful JOY from trans lesbians and other lesbians in the notes like I've never seen a set of tags so happy before omg

[butchcockweilder-deactivated202]

everyone should reblog the bipoc transbian flag. It should be law.

[unprettyextra]

Meet Lochlan O'Neil, the creator of DashCon

"So the whole ball pit was my idea. I wanted a ball pit."

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

God, this part...

But I feel like an asteroid. I feel like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. I was very, very guilty for years. I had to go to extensive therapy because I was like, “oh my god, I, Lochlan O'Neil, single-handedly destroyed fandom culture?”

She didn't she didn't she didn't. That wasn't it. She wasn't an asteroid.

She was the first skater that fell through the ice of Web 2.0.

I was also a teenager who found an amazing world, and My People, and friends I'd still talk to every day, on the internet. I spent years getting my mother to let me go to conventions and meet friends in distant cities. I started ambitious internet communities I didn't have the experience or skills to bring to fruition. I don't think there was a lot of difference between us, in a lot of ways. It's not that I was somehow smart or skilled or suave and she wasn't. She didn't have some awful planet-killing stink or velocity that she brought to the show.

The difference was this:

In 1994, when the Endless September began and the Internet felt perpetually full of stupid newbies, there were 20 million people online.

In 2001, when I got my first LiveJournal account, there were 500 million.

In 2012, when she joined Tumblr, there were 2.43 billion.

When I started out, and you joined a new messageboard or chatroom or mailing list, you had to introduce yourself to the community. Except in the biggest of websites, people expected to log onto the internet, read through all the new things that had been posted to their local bit of it, and then log off again. Older members took it upon themselves to greet the newbies and answer any questions they might have, directing them to the relevant community FAQs. People would say things like, "Oh yes, I remember you. This is only your second Thursday with us, right? I hope you have fun!"

I joined an Internet full of adults who got online through their jobs or their universities, one of the first wave of kids allowed to roam free. And the proportion of adults to kids kept steadily changing, but until DashCon, I don't think people understood how much. I remember a discussion that happened in early 2000s slash fandom, where the very true observation was made that in particular artistic ways, we had all agreed to suspend shame, which created a unique kind of space. As a community we could all admit that we were there to be embarrassingly enthusiastic in unusual ways about absolute nerd shit, and we understood that it wasn't life or death, it wasn't rocket surgery, but it also wasn't going to get broadcast onto the clouds and our bosses didn't know who we were. Everyone was (willing to act like) an adult, and we could hold the circle and create safety there.

That felt like a lot of geek spaces, then. Anime conventions, science fiction conventions, furry conventions, videogame stores, D&D meetups. Images were bulky and pixelated, video incredibly hard to move. When you got to a con, it was like a brief oasis of Weird that sheltered you and screened you from view, and you ended up volunteering because the weary, cynical, intelligent, kind people in the con ops office looked like you were throwing yourself in front of a bullet just for offering to run a clipboard down to the other end of the hotel for them.

The ice was thick enough to skate on. The circle was strong enough to let you be brave and funny and silly and free, and you could buckle down with some friends and clean all the trash out of the ballroom by 11am on Sunday, and you'd see everyone next year.

The bubble was going to burst, but nobody seemed to worry about it.

Things were changing fast for fans, all kinds of fans, in the early 2010s. Conventions that used to get news coverage like "Local Freaks Weird Out Hotel Employees: This Weekend Only" to "#Cosplay: The Hottest New Trend" and from Geocities sites that shut down if you exceeded your page visits for the month to AO3 getting 10 million pageviews a week.

It was great. We could conquer the world together. We could stay safe and together and the circle would hold.

And then the ice broke open and Lochlan fell through. Right through the bottom of that goddamn ballpit into freezing arctic sea. Right into years of people sorting through the churned ice of the wreck, taking years to come to the realization that there really had not been ANY goddamn adults in the room making sure things were okay. The community had not actually failed so much as never been formed in the first place.

Because as it turns out, group-bonding techniques that work for 100 or 1000 people do not work for 10,000. Or 100,000. Or one million. Or one billion.

That line about agreement to suspend shame sticks with me all these years after because the defining feature of post-Dashcon Tumblr has been shame. And scorn, contempt, derision, and hatred. Cringe, in short, and kys. Exactly the kind of bullshit I saw every day in junior high school, and ran to the Internet and fan conventions to get away from.

I got the kind of community and mentorship and support that have made fandom a refuge and a resource my whole life. Lochlan O'Neill didn't. Not because there was anything worse or dumber or less experienced about her.

Because a system built in the 1990s was incapable of bearing the stress of a load fifty times bigger than what was already "way too full."

Just because I'm from one generation, and she's from another.

It was not her fault.

[unhingedduckfanatic]

So, I am in my mid-30s. I am currently involved in the community buy-out of a beloved local queer pub. In my professional life, I am a highly regarded professional who led a genuinely best-in-the-country team; I am a highly regarded trade union activist who can both sway conference with the power of my rhetoric *and* weaponise Union procedure almost unstoppably to get my own way. I say this not to brag in specific terms but to underline the fact that I am a person who can Get Shit Done™️ in more or less any context.

The other six members on the committee are all of similar levels of talent and experience - and with one exception, they are all actually older than me.

We blew through the first deadline for completing the purchase at the start of this year. We still haven't managed it. At every turn, more bullshit has ambushed us.

Internally, we have had some... personality clashes (details withheld to protect the innocent) that seemed at times liable to sink the whole project.

If this is how difficult the process for taking over an existing (moderately successful) pub is... I cannot imagine how hard it is to organise a Con. Poor Lachlan; this whole thing seems like a massive safeguarding failure from those who ought to have known better.

[r2x2]

The Amnesty International report that JK Rowling is trying to censor through legal threats.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

[cbarc]

Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.

[assindeto-deactivated20140621]

take me to art museums and make out with me

[cornputer]

But they said to not touch the masterpieces

[etherialism]

Well somebody’s gotta pin the artwork to the wall

[loremerchant]

This is Johnson, those idiots are fucking in the east wing again.

[i-found-a-mushroom]

I’VE ONLY EVER SEEN THIS LEGENDARY POST IN SCREENSHOTS

[tumblebagel]

Reblogging for the legendary Johnson, the security guard we didn’t deserve

[whimsykinz]

Building a Webkinz sleepover movie room in my bookshelf because why not?🍿💕

[unhingedduckfanatic]

Still no duck detected!

[regal-rabbits]

[lovely-v]

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

[busket]

at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said

Sean: .....yes. absolutely

Elijah: 100 percent.

Sean: dont tell rosie

[explorerrowan]

Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"

[arcaniumagi2]

[ms-katonic-of-tamriel]

Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.

And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.

[roach-works]

what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’

[elodieunderglass]

Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.

The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.

What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.

Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)

Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..

In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.

When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.

Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.

No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.

[dancingspirals]

are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders

[elodieunderglass]

Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)

In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)

Gandalf never explained.

* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire

[chaosaccountant]

@elodieunderglass wouldn't that make pippin both denethor's pledge-son-in-law, and (as pledge-brother to the king) probably outrank him?

[elodieunderglass]

Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippin’s familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromir’s death, as Denethor hadn’t been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethor’s pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (don’t ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromir’s social status and marital prospects in the Shire.

Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits don’t recognise kingship so it would’ve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippin’s vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .

Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained

[elodieunderglass]

[tkingfisher]

I will buy that for a dollar, yup.

[deafmangoes]

It crossed my dash again! The Hobbit Polyamory Post!

[puppygirllaika]

[puppygirllaika]

[unhingedduckfanatic]

It is, I fear, a Canadian collective national crush on Bluenose...

[virtualgirladvance]

[drakensberg-blog]

The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.

[poupon]

how dare you say we piss on the poor

[feluka]

i hate the way fat antagonists have their weight moralized and used as a metaphor for greed and corruption and i hate the way it's overcorrected into fat people being "soft squishy friend-shaped cupcakes who look like they give incredible hugs" and i long for the day we have nuanced, interesting, and complicated fat characters and most of all i long for the day people are normal about fatness

[unhingedduckfanatic]

Jack Aubrey, he of the "Master and Commander" books by Patrick O'Brien, is explicitly a fairly fat man... who can climb the ratlines as fast as his best sailors, is a terror in combat, and is generally a bit of a (successful) womaniser - to his detriment...

[sunflower-chai]

was arguing about this with some friends earlier this week so i need to know:

what day is the first day of the week?

monday

sunday

a different day?? somehow??

Voting ended onMay 27

[unhingedduckfanatic]

Depends on which Duck Fanatic you are asking -

Professional Duck Fanatic: Saturday.

Profeasional Duck Fanatic in eir Former Profession: Sunday

Private Duck Fanatic: Monday

[re-cuna]

I made a stylish outfit for my teddy bear 🧸

I still love taking plushie photos and making tiny clothes for them.

[mlarayoukai-archive]

having your own money is fucking dangerous because the only person stopping me from buying whatever I want is myself. and myself has bad judgment sometimes