#about an essay post that was pretty good

[perhaps-relax]

ah yes, ethan broke the cycles of violence and abuse in re7 and 8 by *checks notes* killing everyone

[ryuubff]

when your first impression on the carpenter's hot son goes wrong just yell "plot twist!" and move on ✩

yeah no jia didn't really give seb a good impression upon first meeting eachother ... it took sebastian a good while to warm up to them because of this (ill draw it... evnetually)

this is based off my gameplay when first encountering sebastian 😭😭 i didnt know you need 2 hearts w a villager to enter ur room (he wasn't there atp) and when i tried to leave he was blocking the way so i just stood there... until he had the "..." speech bubble and ran past me it was SO EMBARRASSING

this is their current impressions of eachother! maybe when i post more comics i'll update it !!

close ups below the cut as always sorry for a super duper long post LOL

face cards......

this is so can we pretend airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars i could really use a wish right now wish right now wish right now

[aroaceleovaldez]

i mean it when i say we've gotta bring back askblogs. bring back making character chat posts with poor choice text colors over random backgrounds. bring back blogs dedicated to what outfits you think characters would wear.

fandom is an ecosystem, not a numbers game. these types of blogs/posts/etc still exist in concept, because people still want to make them and they're a great way to get your thoughts of an idea out in a simple format, but most people make them on like tiktok or instagram reels and that's where the problem lies. Those videos don't go anywhere. The format doesn't allow for the discussion to spread through the community and they're less likely to be engaged with in general. And to make them most people have to either show their face or figure out editing software, so the barrier to entry is higher (editing) and/or they have to forfeit an amount of privacy.

those types of posts/blogs are the first rung of the ecosystem. they're the perfect environment for younger members of the fandom to begin safely interacting with the larger community and putting their own thoughts and ideas out there. roleplay is the other major spot for that and those communities are diminishing as well, honestly (if you know of an rp forum board site, cherish it. and if you can make one, make one). they allow younger fans to begin engaging with the source material on a different/deeper level, but still at a very low barrier to entry, and begin conversations with other fans, which also helps them build skills which in turn may encourage them to pursue other avenues within the fandom (fic writing, other formats of askblog - which itself usually leads to art, cosplay, also fic writing, etc). Without those places to build those skills, they might feel discouraged from trying to begin when surrounded by curated people who have built their skills up for years.

And those conversations they foster also in turn help the community, by offering ideas to artists or fic writers to extrapolate on or building community jokes. And that text/blog format specifically is extremely beneficial, because it allows younger members of the fandom to remain anonymous and keep their privacy without concerning themselves with having any platform or having anything attached to them (very important for young fans figuring themselves out and navigating online community spaces for the first time, since they can remove themselves from spaces easily if they decide they don't like it and they're protected, rather than PUTTING THEIR FACE ON THE INTERNET). And those posts they make will spread a lot more into the community since they're in a significantly easier format to be reposted (few people are gonna be reposting tons of random short-form videos versus spamming their instagrams with reposts of 10 random fandom images yoinked from tumblr, or reposting to pinterest or something). Like, don't repost art, at the VERY least don't repost without credit, but also I am not ignorant to the fact that my art is not just the first google image result for "pjo pride" and related searches, but also the 4th, the 6th, the 9th, the 10th, the 11th, etc etc., and pops up in the search results before the official ReadRiordan does simply because people reposted my work more (most with credit, thankfully).

For fandom to be a community, it needs to perpetuate itself. There needs to be engagement with one another and conversation. If that bottom rung is cut off, then new fans won't be able to grow into the other niches of the fandom, and the fandom will be solely reliant on the source material and die out extremely quickly, and there won't be a community. There's no conversation! There's no reason to stay beyond the original material! But if you don't have points of entry for new fans, they won't have any way to build the skills needed to move into those niches, or engage with the community in a healthy way.

tl;dr: Bring back askblogs and character-based text post blogs. They are vital to fandom ecosystem.

[ebbpettier]

i don't believe in the fandom concept of problematic faves (all characters should have at least one Problem, i think, for flavor) but if i did, fiona pitch would have a permanent throne at the very top of my list. i just think she's neato-cheetos.

[yoihino]

Auuaghh undertale fandom video essays my beloathed. Is it really so much to ask for just one (1) of these to be made by an actual fan who was in the fandom? Like it is so clear they are talking about it from an outside perspective or that they got into it just fpr the video and uggh. Where is the love? The appreciation for the aus and their creators? For the history for the fandom? Honestly I just want like a text post of someone saying 'hey remember those times? They were wild and they may not have been perfect but we sure had a lot of fun'.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

it’s so funny ppl used to accuse c!primers of “not caring about the source material” when I literally look away from my discord for one day and my friends have literally started taking random clips from exile and putting them through intense analysis for fun.

[josouhenshin]

let's see if I can recount how we got here in an organized way, for posterity- there's a popular post that's circulated through these parts a few times which contains a twitter thread talking about a crossdressing themed dress-up-slash-dating game (?) called trans' ~boku to atashi no kyoukaisen, released by software developer catear in 2002. I didn't get the impression that the twitter poster played the game, but they did surmise from supplementary materials that it was generally good natured and well thought out. neat. they also mention of a sequel called trans'2, which is an inherently funny name for something to have. notably trans'1 sounds like came off as (maybe?) mostly clean and trans'2 is more straightforwardly an eroge.

friends of the blog nettle and fennel did some digging and found links to the official sites for both trans' games (trans', trans'2), which thankfully are still up and running. however, everyone's browser hated the trans' 1 site (I assume it's some kind of non-unicode character disagreement) so further fixation was mostly about the sequel.

well that clears it all up nicely!

anyway with some digging, I found a store listing for a hard copy of trans'2 that included a garter belt in one of 4 colors, joining the (dubiously factual, but) long tradition of anime adjacent promos that include underwear. as they say, it goes hard.

fennel also found a style guide quiz on their site that asks you some questions about clothing/romantic/lifestyle preferences and points you towards one of the 8 romanceable characters and gives examples of clothes they like. neat.

Q: you're really a guy, right? I'm a guy... there's no doubt that I'm a girl! it's a secret ☆

...this is where we hit a snag, though. my japanese is not all that good, so I can kind of understand the gist of things, some of the time, but I can't really offer especially reliable or complete translations of anything. sorry. I do intend to include links wherever possible so if you do have more knowledge of these things you can probably get more out of this by skipping my bit. hopefully I can avoid saying anything especially misleading.

anyway, while poking around on the site I got the impression that two of said characters are kindred spirits (the full spread seems to be two girlies, two guys, and four cis girls), which really piqued my interest. as one may have noticed, there's kind of a dearth of t4t romance out there, and more generally romance by and for the TSTV girls instead of like, featuring us as the object of someone else's fantasy. this group sounded like they ought to be generally poised to deliver something pretty incredible.

well, there's only one way to find out, right?

Index next post

[risingsunresistance]

want to speak my mind on some random discourse that happened my way but i am a brave boy i will not breathe a word it will stay on priv 🙏

[gotta-bail-my-quails]

im not sure if it is meta or deeply ironic that a person would use AI for an assignment in a Critical AI course...

[herbofgraceandpeace]

—

[baddhistory]

What Is This, Anyway?

A youtube channel! Well, specifically, it's the blog of a youtube channel that I'm creating for the specific purpose of putting some good, engaging, actually-fucking-cited history video essays out there.

See, it occurred to me a while ago that maybe, just maybe, all the American zoomers and millennials going around saying things like "I feel like my history education was severely lacking, because in 2020, all the sudden all these protests were referencing historical events that I'd never even heard of, and I really want to know more about history," might actually want to know more about history. And that maybe, just maybe, the reason people weren't engaging with history had less to do with the idea we've somehow been sold that it's Inherently Boring and more to do with lack of access.

The problem is, when I looked around the internet at accessible "history" on platforms like podcasts, TikTok, and Youtube (and, frankly, Tumblr), there were ~4 categories:

Well-researched, accurate history, but boring as fuck*

Pretty well-researched, but lacking citations, context, and/or using outdated, incorrect analysis**

One-off videos, which then become part of the discourse because they sound plausible - sometimes true, usually partly true, partly hyperbole or incorrect extrapolation.

Complete Lies, Now With A Grain Of Truth! - hot takes on history by people who are either conspiracy theorists, propagandists, lying grifters, or all three***

But I am a historian. I work with a lot of brilliant, entertaining, thoughtful, ethical, careful historians who have a lot of interesting things to say, and whose work, I think, would land incredibly well with people who are looking online for history they never got taught in school. It's just that our discipline doesn't value digital projects, for some reason, and that a lot of historians are too busy, and that a lot of us are not great with technology.

And but so anyway, I'm good at public speaking****, know my way around modern technology pretty well, care a lot about history and particularly the way we teach and learn it, and get really irritated both by historians who shrug and say "Well, guess people don't care about history anymore," instead of "How can we reach out to people who want to learn history," and by, well, the bad history I see masquerading as good history across the web.

Because people who want to learn deserve better!

[it has only just occurred to me that putting footnotes in the tags means they will not show up in reblogs. future footnotes will be behind a readmore cut.]

[szappan]

my mum will literally drop everything if she thinks theres some research she can help me with i told her i didn't know what i should write my essay about and two hours later there we were establishing a new branch of burnsology

[busaikuknee]

kota ibushi for the chara bingo

i just think kota ibushi should do literally whatever he wants

[dadvidtism]

cc tier list.. putting it here to rant a little in a ‘not into a wall’ way.. for personal needs.. 😇

[bsaka7]

19 and 10 :)

19. most disliked popular books?

coming for the haterisms right off the bat! okay this is recency bias but i finished gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir like three days ago and i absolutely hated it. tbh i have had moderate to good luck reading things based off the taste of my mutuals but this one... easily the book i hated the most this year so far, but i probably should have known that just going in lol. i disliked the goldfinch by Donna tartt (though this one gets two bonuses: 1) introducing me to the drama of Bennington college and 2) i vaguely remember what happened despite how little I enjoyed it). idk if it's that popular but i didn't like this side of paradise by scott fitzgerald. (these r all books I've ranked at or below a 2/5...but tbh most things are like a 2.5-3.5 for me).

10. do you have a guilty fav?

yeah. and unforch i talk about him all the time on here: i like brandon sanderson. i think i was stockholm-syndromed into it because my friend had me read the mistborn trilogy which i didn't particularly like but I'd finish each one and go oh shit now i have to read the next. and then i read the stormlight archives which i genuinely did like and can't wait for the fifth book!!! I think my friend was right that I had to read mistborn first. I hate wax&wayne tho for the record. i don't think he's a great writer but man am i invested now. and guilty about it!!!!

[vamptastic]

danganronpa is whispering its siren song to me but alas nobody shares my big brain million iq opinions (drv3 hater) (korekiyo defender) (ishimaru understander) (celeste and hifumi apologist) (kaito hater) (protagonist love triangle poly advocate) (post sdr2 anime enjoyer) (fucking hates the writing bar the first half of sdr1 and ending of sdr2) (never even finished v3 because it was so dogshit terrible and also i genuinely can barely get through the minigames) (problematic psychological horror fan)