I think my favorite thing about Epic’s creator and cast (and particularly about Jay) is that as the project grows, they’re embracing how fans of this media typically interact with that media. Choosing to do lyric videos, partnering with artists for official animatics (previously reserved for fandom spaces only), doing livestreams, embracing the parts that fans end up liking the most instead of rejecting them. It feels like Jay and all of the cast/creators truly understand their audience and how to promote this project in a way that speaks to that audience. Truly fantastic work.
I have such big feelings right now about how this fandom treats artists. This is the one hill I am willing to die on: all fandom artists deserve respect regardless of what ships they create art for.
Listen to me. Traditional fandom is dying. AI art is cropping up everywhere in fandom spaces, stealing work from real artists while getting twice as much recognition.
Meanwhile, the artists who are clawing and fighting to stay in these spaces are subject to constant criticism and harassment. They are taking hours to work on pieces that they share with us for free only to be bombarded with ungrateful comments. And on top of that, their work is constantly being stolen and reposted on other platforms without proper credit.
Fandom artists are fighting for their lives right now and the least that we can do is pay them the basic decency of shutting our mouths if we don't have anything nice to say.
If you are not paying the artist, then you are not entitled to art of your favorite ship.
If you are not paying the artist, then you are not entitled to art that fits into your specific interpretion of a ship.
If you want fandom artists to keep creating content that they share with us for free out of the kindness of their hearts, then you better learn to start supporting them.
Fandom artists are part of our community, and they SEE YOU making these negative comments. You may think that you're only putting down one specific artist, but they all see you. And they feel discouraged, and they feel angry, and they feel unwelcome, and many of them leave.
If you wonder why so many artists are putting their work behind patreon and withdrawing from fandom spaces, it's because of the way we treat them. Do better.
Based on the Evo finale for Pearl, Jimmy, and Netty. Ends of SMPs that just kinda slowly die out have such end of the world vibes and it makes me emotional
to see the process, here's the post (contains B&W version)
mask design credit goes to @noir-renard as usual, though I took some liberties on modifying the look to make it resemble the face of a Northern Cardinal >_< (also called redbird or just cardinal)
So in short, Danny's look is the mixture of these two:
(left: northern cardinal. right: yellow-billed cardinal, according to the author, this is what he'd look like with the Penguin Goon Suit & red-themed gear!)
i wish more people watched link click (shiguang daili ren) bc it’s genuinely so peak in every single way.
art style? beautiful, so many soft colors and pastels and the design is so nice.
animation? so clear and beautiful (it’s bilibili)
soundtrack? absolutely fire. i would listen to it in my free time even if it wasn’t an OST, its all lofi beats type and the theme songs are actually so beautiful and bangers
concept? so intriguing - deals with the ramifications of time travel, and the time travel world fits so nicely into our own.
plot? exquisite. i won’t say more.
strong female characters? ✅✅✅
well written? so well written that i cried multiple times.
fanservice or weird stuff? NONE
homoerotic friendship between the two protagonists that would do anything for each other and have a grumpy x sunshine dynamic? ✅✅✅(x10000) they may not have invented it, but lu guang and cheng xiaoshi have perfected it. (dynamic wise they remind me of high school satosugu)
i would give ANYTHING to watch this show for the first time again, and this is my manifesto as to why you NEED to watch link click if you haven’t yet, this show deserves all the love and more
Saw a post that said "y'all don't deserve trigger warnings for this one" in regards to the atrocities in Palestine right now and there is something that makes me so indescribably mad about that.
Most importantly it is so deeply, disgustingly dehumanizing to the people in front of the camera that you are claiming to care for. Using someone else's trauma. Someone else's suffering. Someone else's pain. To in turn traumatize others? To guilt them? To intentionally trigger them because "they don't deserve it"? That does nothing. That does absolutely nothing.
How does stripping someone of their personhood and turning them into shock value trauma porn for the sake of proving a point to other vulnerable people do anything constructive?
What good does that do for the person in pain besides turn their pain into a tool to inflict further damage?
How does that help anyone at all?
"But it's awareness!!"
No it's not. That's not advocacy. That's not "spreading awareness". That's intentionally going out of your way to degrade, demoralize, and guilt people by preying on their sense of morality and using the horrors of genocide as a fucking prop for it. And you are a sick bastard for that.
I AM NOW THE PROUD OWNER OF A 400-PAGE LONG BOOK OF ACADEMIC ANALYSIS ABOUT MDZS (both the novel and CQL, as well as the wider danmei sphere, internet authorship, fan reactions in both CN and non-CN spheres, and so many more interesting things – there are photos of the contents list below) >:DDDD
I only got it this afternoon so have only read the (quite long?) excerpt available online and pages I came across while flipping through, but everything I've read so far is really interesting and well-written. If you're interested, it's promoted on the blog of @pumpkinpaix, where there are also chapter spotlights with comments from authors of each paper/chapter about them and about MDZS in general (which is how I found out about it, one came up in tumblr's 'based on this tag you follow...' recommendation), as well as FAQs (including where to buy it, though I did link that at the start). Alternatively, all posts about it are in the tag #catching chen qing ling!
I really recommend it, especially if content about MDZS interests you! and I promise I haven't been told to advertise this it's just something so so cool... a collection of academic work about MY FAVOURITE BOOK... and I know people do follow me for meta/analysis so this might be the sort of thing people looking at this blog will be interested in..?
reposting content (especially art/creations) that isn't yours is theft. reposting content saying "not mine" without credit is still theft. saving content that isn't yours to your phone or computer or copy/pasting and making a post without credit is fucking theft. it isn't accidental. there were intentional steps involved. why is this difficult to comprehend. imagine how it would feel to have something you made (especially for free, often in the case of fandom) stolen and someone else taking credit for it or at the very least not giving you the credit you deserve for having made it in the first place