#can this fandom be normal for one second

[cryingbathroom]

okay so youre telling me i went on a couple day break and missed someone SENDING DEATH THREATS to cast members ??? and then they went inactive because of backlash because THEY SENT DEATH THREATS TO CAST MEMBERS and then went to their old blog to post videos of them crying about the situation ??? wtf can someone spill the full story why and how did this happen

[beerose12]

*scurries up to you and drops the harry potter meme redraws at your feet*

*scurries back into the art void until who knows when*

[troubldteenz]

crackship thursday

[stupidhany]

Posting this cause tbh this needs to be posted in here

I'm thinking of scanning these some time soon

[hilacopter]

probably a very very hot take on this website but I kind of hate the fandom culture of taking two characters (not always but usually same sex) with a very deep or strong bond and going "omg they're so queercoded" "they're literally canon" when like 90% of the time the things they do yes, show a deep devotion to one another, but could just very much be read as platonic love. it's very amatonormative imo and paints romance as the ultimate and deepest form of love rather than just another type of it that can be equally as strong as platonicity.

[softredrobin]

not plot related (well.........) but here's lumen in her nice (first date!) outfit. i wonder who said date is with..................... (rambles in the tags as always!)

[thrileikur]

i dont think you could get it just by looking at my posts but pb is my favorite character in the show. which makes it all the more infuriating that all discussion about her ideals on one specific side of the matter come off more as pr that helps her than a genuine understanding of her personality. everyone fixates on the end results of her development so much that its gotten hard to find discussion about her while she was going through the ropes that doesnt devolve into general name calling. like i dont think its horrible to disagree with her actions because you dont feel easy watching her do them. whats bad is never making it come to mind outside of discourse and only bringing up superficial traits of her on your own accord. hate to say this where ive already been scrutinized at large but this goes both ways

just, as a stan, dont get up in arms whenever people dont outwardly care for the lengths shes gone to protect herself and her environment. whatever bad thing shes done is not a full mirrored reflection of real life. i dont think people should vouch for her like she exists

[hopecomesbacktolife]

thinking of rereading the entirety of HoME again. for my health

[alex-just-vibing]

sunburn got me unwell at the function (comfy cozy in bed)

[ladysqueakinpip]

ok and another thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is how ppl in the rise fandom will act like they're saints bc they wouldn't DARE ship april one of the turtles then they go and draw sexually-charged art of the boys, draw them in revealing outfits, make sexual comments about them, make sexual playlists about them etc. and act like it's no big deal

[gold-wolf-soldier13]

honestly genuinely think a lot of writers here on tumblr have lost the plot more than a little. like if your writing for external validation, ie begging for comments and reblogs or saying kudos/likes mean less, i really believe you need to take a step back and reexamine your relationship with your writing. of course we all love to hear how much someone likes our work- we’re human- but the incessant posting and polling about comments and how “no one comments anymore” is starting to give entitlement. you aren’t owed engagement. just because you’re choosing to put the your work out to the public sphere, whether it’s here on tumblr or ao3 or wattpad or literally anywhere, for free and explicitly for others entertainment doesn’t mean they- the strangers on the internet- owe you anything. they don’t owe you a like, a comment, a reblog, a favorite, a bookmark- they don’t have any obligation to you. if you’re posting and immediately concerned about engagement metrics you’re no better than any tiktok or instagram content creator.

[peggycatrerr]

today on the train home the guy next to me was on his phone and at one point i saw him go on tumblr and he just had like. a normie dash. like it was all photography. of nature and architecture. he was using tumblr the way a heterosexual landscaper for rich people might use instagram. i actually had to watch his screen for a few seconds to be sure it really was tumblr because i was so taken aback by the content he was viewing. this is why algorithmless websites are so beautiful btw because i genuinely didn't know that this side of tumblr even existed. he didn't even so much as scroll past any text posts.

EDIT: look i'm not going to turn off reblogs but i cannot stress enough that THIS WASN'T A HIPSTER BLOG DASH IT WASN'T AN AESTHETIC BLOG DASH IT WAS THE MOST WILDLY GENERIC COLLECTION OF IMAGES YOU HAVE EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING OR BEING A QUIRKY FANDOM TUMBLRINA WHEN I SAY "NORMIE" I GENUINELY MEAN "SO NORMAL THAT IT CIRCLES AROUND TO WEIRD". CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? HELLO?

[marniethelordwizard]

There's a world of difference between criticizing someone's work in a good faith conversation and going on an unhinged rant about them being evil and pro-slavery because *check notes* you dislike how a video game character was written.

Something that's always struck me as peculiar about the Dragon Age fandom is that they're so deeply caring about the fictional suffering of fictional characters while being so quick to dehumanize and dismiss the real life suffering of the people behind those characters. It's genuinely astounding! Especially when it's caused by actual abuse and mistreatment of employees within the video game industry.

Solas isn't real. I understand getting attached to the characters you love, but when you feel the need to harass the people behind those characters because you dislike certain decisions they've made, it's time to seek help.

Also, the "money from your purse" doesn't go to Patrick Weekes or John Epler or any of the writers. It goes to the fucking CEOs, who will give themselves a bonus regardless of whether a game does well.

I would encourage you all to look up the origins of "Bioware magic" to give you a glimpse of the abuse Bioware staff have faced over the years, but then, I don't really think y'all genuinely care about the mistreatment of workers unless they are fictional elves.

based shit alreadyjaded.bsky.social.

it's funny how epler calls these comments "unhinged garbage", yet all the post was doing is criticizing his (un)professional behavior and asked questions about the narrative and the story HE created.

That's it!

and the questions are very spot on, actually. because the DA universe is build on coding and real-life parallels. so regardless if epler is just ignorant or actually believes in... all what we see in the VG. it's still his mistake and he should still learn to take accountability as a big boy he is

i chose to spend a decade of my life getting the game out there because it mattered to me that we finished telling the story we started in DAI.

do you??? is this why you abandoned literally EVERY set-up created in previous games? solas's agents, well of sorrows, mage-templar war resolution, divine victoria, fate of inquisition (because veilguard just changes 3 lines of dialogue for it)? and many more??

the idea that i 'hate Solas' and chose to sabotage him is brain rot to a level i cannot imagine.

ah but you can't really disprove of this, can't you? because all the behind the scene info just proves the opposite. you two are the Lead Writer and a Creative Director, who else are fans supposed to held accountable for all the bullshit in the story?

also a 40-something y.o. unironically says brain rot lol

i will be dealing with the burnout i developed for years.

pfft cry me a river you get more money and fame than you deserve

Congrats, dipsticks. (a way to treat your followers btw) You came in with enough spun-up-in-fandom-until-toxic takes to alienate the guy who sacrificed his mental and physical health fighting to have past Dragon Age respected as much as it was and give people who cared about Solas's arc a respectful ending. Great work, no notes.

and the "respectful ending" is basically gaslighting a former slave into believing he needs his master's """forgiveness""" to heal and lock himself into a eternal solitary confinement (unless of course you decide to punch him into solitary confinement first)

also grow some spines, you two. criticizing your behavior and your work (that you're paid for from our purses mind you) is not a personal attack

[echosbento]

Me working on my normal writing: put word on page so story get told

Me working on one specific really dark trauma dump fic that will probably never see the light of day: If I put a really obvious case of foreshadowing and have it directly called out in the beginning it'll prime the reader to look out for forshadowing throughout the rest of the fic and make it more likely for people to pick up on the subtle implications of things

[prokopetz]

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

proposing what I'm going to call Gaylor's Razor, which is: never explain normal shit as being part of a secret message that can only be decoded by over-analysis.

"These Taylor Swift lyrics are actually coded messages saying that she's a lesbian and is forced to stay in the closet! Any lyrics that are clearly about being attracted to a man are just to throw us off the scent!" Sometimes people, like Taylor Swift, are straight and write about being straight, because they are straight.

"The fourth series of Sherlock was deliberately bad because it was actually a coded message to us fans that there is a secret fourth episode that will make Johnlock canon and will actually be good!" Sometimes writers (even experienced writers who are normally good at their jobs) will write something that's not good, because no one is perfect. They're not going to waste everyone's time and money and energy creating something terrible on purpose as part of a grand master plan.

"Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Canadian Olympic ice dancers, are secretly married (with kids)! Their public relationships with people who are not each other and them repeatedly saying 'we dated as kids and now we're just friends' are just to hide the truth! Which they need to hide for some reason! Their relationship is obvious just from their physical chemistry when competing! JUST LOOK AT THIS TWO SECOND CLIP OF HIM BLINKING AT HER!" It seems counterproductive to put all that thought into hiding a relationship that doesn't need to be hidden but then also telegraph that same relationship in front of millions of people through planned choreography.

"But BB, what about times that people really are speaking in code or hiding something due to outside influences?"

If it requires huge leaps in logic, like adding all the letters in a sentence together and dividing by seventeen and that number matches the binary sequence for the color yellow so YELLOW MUST BE SIGNIFICANT, it's not a secret code.

If it requires focusing on teeny tiny details but discards huge ones, like analyzing someone's micro-expressions but handwaving away what the person is actually saying out loud with their mouth, or focusing on one specific line instead of the entire scene or song or whatever, it's not a secret code.

If both supporting and contradictory evidence are used to come to the same conclusion (ex: when Taylor says something that I interpret as gay, that means she's gay, and when she says something that I interpret as straight, that still means she's gay and just hiding it), it's not a secret code.

Trying to apply fandom meta analysis techniques to real life is a really good way of fall into conspiratorial thinking that can be easily exploited. You can totally try to predict what's going to happen in a story or choose to interpret a scene in a specific way; you can't do that in real life with real people. That way lies the kind of nonsense that leads to shit like "this image of pizza on a children's toy is actually subliminal messaging by The Cabal™ that proves that Pizzagate is real."