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DBDA BigBang 2025

Half in the Grave by GhostintheLibrary

Charles is tidying up the bookshelves when the door opens again. “Welcome to Tragic Mick’s!” he calls without looking up. “Be right with you.”

“Is Mick in?” a posh voice asks.

Oh, bloody hell, Charles knows that posh voice.

Charles straightens up to see Edwin Payne standing in the doorway, looking around as if Mick might be hiding on one of the shelves. As usual, he looks like he just stepped out of a time capsule in his old-fashioned woolen coat, his slightly askew bow tie, and his perfectly pomaded hair. It shouldn’t work, but Charles supposes you can get away with wearing a bow tie when you look like a model.

“Morning, mate.” Charles makes his way over to the counter, taking his time.

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The second kiss is always better.

And the third.. and the fourth...

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Quick sketch of @petesdragon 's Fae shepard Monty au, a delicious Montwin fic✨🥛🐑

✨🥛🐑

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63789331

✨🥛🐑

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Laboobie...🐰

First summer Niko...👙🐚⛱️

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The super quick Montwin x Warm Bodies photobashes i did for my au yap sesh 🧟‍♂️🫀

Monty as R 🧠and Edwin as Julie 🔪

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Been doodling a lot w my finger in the mobile skbp app recently.... Faunty...

Why his ass look like I should put a cutie mark on thar... Crow feather or astrology cutie mark....

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💐Prismatic Soul💐

Not quite Josh... Not quite Monty, a bit of both in one.

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Ten minute sketch of my muse...

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Art for @dbdakindy's dtiys featuring Thomas- I just had to 🐾🧸

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Tiny boy for @dbdakindy dtiys (even though this isn't my usual style but I just had a vision for making him small and crunchy and children's book-like but whatever), happy birthday month to Thomas!!

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Mitski, Strawberry Blonde || Monty and Edwin Payne, Dead Boy Detectives (2024)

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tender catwin based on @perseidlion's AU continuity, The Ballad of Edwin and Cat

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fuck it, Labubus the Cat King

(png version for funsies)

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inside you there are two cats

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sorry not sorry

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Art for @dbdakindy's dtiys featuring Thomas- I just had to 🐾🧸

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Entitled white women I swear to God

People have been doing book clubs since forever. They do not put George RR Martin on the phone so he can join the chat.

Oh, thank you, kindly court jester jingling into my life under the brave banner of anonymity, for illustrating the exact problem of current fandom.

(This ask is about this post about private fanfiction "book clubs," for those of you who are not following my jester's ire.)

The bedrock of the problem entrenched fandom is having with the newer "TikTok fandom" element is that we have a fundamental disagreement about what fandom is, and what is the social relationship between the people who write fanfiction, make fanart, etc, and the people who read that fanfiction and enjoy that fanart.

(I am not going to use the term "content creator." Because that term is not applicable to fandom, fanfiction authors, or fan artist. Kill the capitalist in your brain. Content is hummingbird nectar made with artificial sweeteners. It resembles the real thing at a distance, but it is devoid of nutrients. It will fill you up so you're not hungry while starving you. Generative AI can produce content because it's empty; it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't even want to engage with you. The sole purpose of content is to get you to sit still long enough for the people who own the platform to squeeze whatever it is they want from you out of you and then abandon your malnourished husk until the next time they can get something from you.)

George RR Martin is not a member of fandom, and the relationship he has with his readers is fundamentally different, because his relationship as an author is explicitly a professional one. When George RR Martin sells a book—not to his readers, but to a publisher who acts as intermediary—he is given a lengthy contract outlining the terms of the sale. How much he will be paid, what can be done with his work by who, etc. George RR Martin is not your peer.

Fanfiction authors are your peers. They're your next door neighbors. They write fanfiction to connect to other fans in celebration of a canon everyone involved loves. Nobody makes a single red cent from writing or sharing their fanfiction. George RR Martin has sold 90 million copies of his books, and he gets money for every one. Because TikTok has trained you that people who are putting their creations out there are monetizing the experience of you reading or watching their art, the "TikTok fandom" element has you sorting your peer posting fanfiction on AO3 into the same category as George RR Martin. But your relationship with George RR Martin is a professional one, and the expectation from fanfiction authors and artists is a social relationship.

When you have a private book club reading and discussing fanfiction without ever telling the author or, God forbid, leaving a comment about how much you enjoyed the story—which is the expectation entrenched fandom authors and artists who view fandom as a social relationship—you think you're reading a mass produced novel from someone who has already been paid for it several times over, but this isn't even Walmart vs. local mom and pop. What are you actually doing is going to your neighborhood block party, picking up the cake someone made and brought to share, and taking it back to your house to eat with friends.

We are your peers. We are your neighbors. We are doing this for free because we want to talk to you about our common interest. No, it's not "payment." We offer our work for free, and you have the option of treating us like vending machines or ChatGPT or Walmart. This is a social relationship; you have this option just as you have the option of leaving your shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot instead of walking it to the cart return. You have that option just as you have the option to stick your chewed gum on a park bench or park your car across three handicap spaces or take a shit on the floor of a public bathroom. How you treat your peers and neighbors, how you treat the people in your community, is up to you.

You can keep stealing cakes from block parties. But don't be surprised when people get fed up with it and stop having block parties. Then you'll be stuck buying cake from Walmart or consuming artificially sweetened hummingbird nectar from ChatGPT while vultures raid your corpse for data.

Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk, court jester. Now get the fuck off my lawn.