#you-are-unique

[quotelr]

You are the architect of your life.

Lailah Gifty Akita

[just-french-me-up]

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

[viola-sororia]

first class news paleontologists never disappoint

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Finally caught up with Apothecary Diaries. I can't believe they gave Maomao a gun.

[shortmexicangirl]

'can i copy your homework?'

'yeah just don't make it obvious'

[novelconcepts]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[autonomyss]

Pirate Cleooooooo

[arcane-gold]

mister yaoi hands can’t keep his paws off that dude

[chamerionwrites]

Honestly this gets at my chiefest complaint/frustration/discomfort with fandom as a whole. Which is: in their rush to defend the artistic merit of fanworks I think a ton of people have really valorized transformation and remixing and reinterpretation in and of themselves, when imo those are all quite neutral actions. When done well, they can expand and build upon and subvert meaning in really powerful and thought-provoking (and fun!) ways. When done poorly, they are just as likely to flatten and oversimplify and decontextualize and completely erase meaning. The simple act of changing something does not imbue the choice to do so with creative validity. It is entirely possible for a cover song to be bad (or just boring!). To exactly the same degree that it is possible to transform a pretty shallow and straightforward work into something deeper and more nuanced and subversive, is possible to transform a work into a vastly shallower and less interesting shadow of itself. As with nearly everything in art, it's all about the execution!

But the second you voice this position (which should honestly be a pretty uncontroversial one imo), you get people shrieking at you about being gatekeep-y and pretentious and betraying the sacred fandom etiquette of Don't-Like-Don't-Read.

And like...listen. I was not raised in a barn. I am 150% capable of quietly back-buttoning out of a fanfic I think is bad or boring - which is exactly what I do when I encounter them - and I am obviously not advocating for stupid ships wars or any kind of harassment or leaving hatemail in people's AO3 inboxes. (Which some people will also accuse you of the second you say anything less than lavishly positive about fandom, in true piss-on-the-poor fashion.) Literally all I am saying is that you can't have your cake and eat it too - that if fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) have artistic merit then fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) are fair game for artistic critique. Which means, in practice, that I can go on my own blog and make a post exactly like this one - critiquing broad trends, or stating that some interpretations are bad actually, or pointing out that subverting or talking back to or reading against the grain of canon is very different from simply ignoring it, or saying "fandom's culture of collage/remix/fuck-canon-I-do-what-I-want can lend itself to to really creative and interesting art but also to a lot of really bland homogenized cut-n-paste art, not to mention some pretty troubling decontextualization." And that if you feel this rains on your personal parade, you are then free to DLDR by back-buttoning out of my blog and/or blocking me so you never have to see my hot takes again, rather than clamoring in my notes about how I should let people enjoy things.

[pokimoko]

I can't keep being fundamentally changed as a person by animated movies, it's just not sustainable.

[sketchydoof]

Astrid time

[otaku553]

Cooking up something reaaaalllyyy silly right now

Uhhhh cookie run kingdom tgcf au with pure vanilla as xie lian and shadow milk as jun wu. Do you see the vision

[e-turn]

links to some translations under the cut

и заодно выложу пару любопытным образом перекликающихся переводов потрясающих фанфиков!

тьма нынче обретает жизнь великолепного автора @/goodlucktai

и еще одна покорившая меня зарисовка rem - а тени пусть уходят