#i apparently need to make myself a shitpost tag because i KEEP DOING THIS!!! remember when i used to take /good/ screenshots? lol

[valentjin]

i regret (?) to inform you that. yurgir. is massively caked

[tundrainafrica]

Note: Instead of posting a meta or a fic today, allow me to take a quick break from that because I think I really need to appreciate some people here and the fandom overall.  

February 7, 2021. 

Today, I turned 24 and my boyfriend surprised me with a gift I think I’ll be taking to heart for a very long time. 

The story behind the gift was as precious (or even more precious) as the gift itself and I thought I’d share it since it turned out some content creators were involved in this gift and I very much want to express how much this gift has defined this day for me and will place my 24th birthday as one of those birthdays I don’t think I’ll ever forget. 

Apparently, I had casually dropped both my tumblr and my ao3 account during one of our conversations and somewhere around November he had started looking through my bookmarks, my posts on tumblr and some of my interactions with people in the fandom.

I should have seen it coming. It had started with my boyfriend suddenly asking about my hyperfixation with Levihan.

Sav? Shipping? Sav? Binge reading ships and meta posts? Sav? Gushing about a fictional ship?

And I remember gushing about this with my seemingly uninterested boyfriend a long night after explaining what was oddly the most out of character thing for someone like me. 

I was sharing with him my metas and hcs and maybe, I was dropping a few of my favorite quotes along the way and it turned out he was interested. Suddenly he was asking me about my favorite fics, my favorite scenes. Suddenly, he was rereading my favorite fics with me and a few times, he was quoting those same scenes. I did find out he was looking through my blog when I got a random message from a really sketchy tumblr telling me to open my facebook. 

I suspected a few times that he could be planning something. December passed with nothing and eventually he stopped asking so I clocked that as a fevered dream or unnecessary assuming on my end and didn’t think too much of it after. 

It turned out my boyfriend had messaged my favorite authors about their fics and he commissioned one of my favorite artists (if not my favorite) to draw a few photos and bound them into a Levihan Anthology 

And it feels fucking amazing to receive something like this. To get Levihan which helped me through the worst of 2020, bound forever as a book I can just open up and read anytime. And I guess tearing up at receiving such a gift had me thinking of a lot of things at once (which were always at the back of mind) but I thought of sharing now. 

The past year wasn’t easy. Actually. don’t think it’s an understatement to say this past year was dog shit. With the covid pandemic and all plans after that cancelled, I’m sure we can all agree we had our ups and downs. 

I had a lot of my own plans completely thrown out the window for numerous reasons. I had plans of going to law school part time while building a career. And, I got a job right after college to make these plans come true. In September the law school I got accepted to (after working so damn hard the past year to get accepted) denied my appeal for night classes. I decided to drop my enrollment to focus on my career. A week later, my job laid me off. 

And for once in my life, I wasn’t going anywhere. And I lived in a house where everyone was always doing something and as soon as I lost my job I was pressured to find another one. But as we all know, searching for a job during this pandemic isn’t easy. I was still reeling after having dropped my enrollment just to focus on my job only to lose that job the week after with no prior notice. Everyone around me was busy doing their own thing. I had no one to talk to and for a while, I was falling into this pit of depression. 

My days consisted of me hiding under the covers of my bed in between the few interviews I would take day to day. Around that time, I decided to binge watch Attack on Titan as well 

I was never one to get hyper fixated in ships. In fact, this was the first ship since Royai and Victuuri which I have been so passionate. And this is a whole new level of passion. I think this is the first time I’ve ever written so much in this small amount of time. It was slow going. Just like Levi and Hange’s relationship, my fixation with this ship was a slowburn. 

Those days alone, I was reading fanfiction by the bundle, I was scrolling through the Levihan tag like a simp, leaving kudos in ao3 on a throwaway account and just scrolling through random people’s tumblr accounts. 

What happened during the one month? And when I was alone, sad, lonely and stagnant with no one to talk to, when everyone around me was living their own lives, all I had alone in the bedroom was Levi and Hange’s stories to keep me company between interviews. 

And the meta analyses and headcanons I had about their relationship were teaching me things. They were teaching me that life was never about how quickly you progress or how far you go. Maybe the real winners in life are the ones who can build good relationships, build relationships so mutually satisfying they keep each other growing and in those few moments reading, headcanoning ships, I did realize, maybe even as stagnant as I was at that moment, my life wasn’t dogshit. 

No one’s life is dogshit for a few small bumps along the way. Sometimes it just is part of the process of growing, learning to get past the worse, learning to manage relationships. And maybe it’s these relationships which make life worth living. Maybe it’s these struggles depicted in these stories and the bounce back. Maybe it’s the love, the life, the emotions so carefully described and depicted in every single story which makes life, life. 

With every single fic I read and every single fan art I scrolled through. Levihan was teaching my things about love, loss and life. 

Sometimes, these fandoms are the things which can catch people before they fall too low into something. These works and stories authors and artists shared so generously were what pulled me out of this state and are what inspired me to explore this relationship for all the potential its worth and maybe share my own stories and headcanons which people may learn a thing or two from or maybe just find some comfort and hope in.  

And these inspirations eventually evolved to writing. Writing 10,000 words in a day in between three interviews? I never was a writer but somehow, I found myself spending hours exploring the themes of love, loss and life with our favorite pairing 

I didn’t start writing out of nowhere. I didn’t start making metas out of nowhere. I needed the right inspiration, the right content to get me into this point where I could continue writing, reading, meta-ing, appreciating, headcanoning and everything in between.

And I just wanted to express my gratefulness to every single person in the fandom who had made it possible for me to pull out of that blackhole. Fandoms are underrated and I believe there are so many lessons which can be learned from the right content and from the right people. 

To the people who so willingly went along with my boyfriend’s little project: 

@faerielleart​ I saved A LOT of your art and they’re sitting in my google photos under a folder called Levihan and maybe I did share a few of your photos (the cheeks one and the beast titan one and the les miserables) ones to my boyfriend unsolicited just to show him how beautiful Levihan can be. Thank you so much for these beautiful drawings.

@lizaloveslevihan​ You were one of the first people I talked with in this fandom and dreams really was one of those stories that fucked me up a little bit, had me make a few misses on the commute on the way home one day but maybe it did have me explore the angst genre a little more, maybe it did have me explore Levi’s character a little more. 

@ariadneamare​ YELLOW. OH GOD. You know those letters? The ones which Hange left Levi at the end of the story? I ended up copying and pasting them and sending them to my boyfriend right after reading and I remember talking to him about this. We might be facing that same type of story in the future and I guess that ended up becoming a lot of foundation of our discussion and I guess, it’s just proof that there is so much to learn from fanfiction. There’s just so much to explore and fanfiction as a genre just does not get the credit it deserves.

@fanmoose12​​ I was exploring your works even before I started this tumblr up again. Maybe it was even your works which got me building my own headcanons from Levihan and writing from there. And I think I did leave a few anonymous messages telling you how I started exploring other genres because of your fics. Your works got my out of my dark place, it got me exploring a lot of other genres and for that I’m eternally grateful.

And somehow, my boyfriend picked that all up from late night discussions and one-on-one metas. Surprisingly, he wasn’t just playing along to humor his girlfriend. He was exploring the themes of love, life, loss and Levihan right along with me. (And got spoiled about Hange’s death along the way… Oops.) 

And I am eternally grateful for that and I made sure to shower him with a lot of kisses after he kept me in the loop with what has been going on these past few months with his sudden interest in Levihan.

And this huge thank you goes out to all content creators (authors, artists, gif creators, shitposters alike). Sometimes you never know who’s thinking about your work, who’s shoehorning your works and quoting them to their best friends. Sometimes, you never will find out but your work had pulled someone out of a blackhole which they’ve been stuck in and sometimes you never know that your work has been that seemingly small thing that had taught them a lesson in love, life or relationships. Sometimes, that one work turned out to be an inspiration which got them writing and sharing their own stories or making their own drawings

And I guess, the point is, keep writing. Keep drawing. Keep sharing pouring your love, passion and emotions into works of art because you never really know whose heart you touched or whose life you changed.

I have a job now. I decided to push law school a few years back and maybe take the time to work on myself now and maybe spend the next months or maybe years writing metas and fanfictions. I was pulled out of my hole. I was inspired. I have my own stories to tell and I don’t think I would have been here if I hadn’t spent the last few months reading fic after fic, meta after meta, appreciating art after art, 

So anyway, I just wanted to share some pics of my favortie fics, immortalized in one anthology, all organized by my boyfriend. And I think he made some great decisions with these.

(Bookbinding credits to @mayerwien)

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

account tag

why did you choose your url?

Lurking was the original goal and I like tautologisms. They’re very direct.

any side-blogs? If you have them, name them and why you have them

This IS my side blog. The other account is way more directly tied to me as a person.

how long have you been on tumblr?

On this account? Since April 2018. Overall? Since 2013.

do you have a queue tag?

Yup, when I can keep it stocked. Generally, anything that is not an original AO3 link or an ask reply is queued.

why did you start your blog in the first place?

I wanted to follow @audreycritter and @unpretty for Batfam content on AO3 and then realized I might post some of my own, so I used my AO3 handle over here.

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I chose an image from my computer at random. And now I’m worried I’ll throw people off if I change it, because it’s been the same from the beginning.

why did you choose your header?

I wanted to represent the entire Fam. This has also never changed.

what’s your post with the most notes?

Oh I looked this up one time, hold on.

Apparently this one about Alfred’s age. I’m not going viral, folks.

how many people do you follow?

136. Tumblr hates my computer so much that it’s really hit or miss what I actually see, though.

have you ever made a shitpost?

Isn’t that something more decided by consensus of the readers?

how often do you use tumblr?

Maybe every day, maybe a little less. Like I said, my computer hates it.

did you have a fight/argument with a blog once? who won?

I honestly don’t remember. I don’t think so? Like, I’m sure someone somewhere has disagreed with me at some point, but it didn’t make an impression.

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this post’?

Again, they don’t make an impression. Random strangers on the internet don’t tell me what to do.

do you like tag games?

I do, because I, like most humans, have a secret streak of narcissism. 😅 I don’t like talking about myself except when explicitly invited to do so. I do worry they’re boring to everyone else, though.

do you like ask games?

Same as above.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

@audreycritter and @misskirby, at least in my little corner. I’m also not totally sure who is a mutual?

do you have a crush on a mutual?

no (the aforementioned folks are adored platonically ❤️)

I was tagged by @excessively-english-jd. Audrey and Jers, pls consider yourselves tagged. Also @hollyhock13 and @dawnseternallight, if you’d like. And anyone else who is also shy but would like to talk about yourself, consider this an explicit invitation.

[fizzydrink698]

interview tag game

tagged by @lavenderbexlatte which made me so soft when I saw 🥺🥺

also buckle up, pals, this got a little long

Why did you choose your url?

OK, so I’m pretty sure ‘fizzydrink698’ has been my only url in my entire online experience. When I was like, 9 or 10, I was signing up to some kids website thing, and a classmate called Lauren put ‘lollipop’ in her url because the first part of the word sounded like the first part of her name. I shamelessly copied her, and the only sweet-related thing I could think of that had ‘Fi’ in it was fizzy drink – which I hated as a kid, but that’s by the by. I added ‘698’ because I needed numbers, and because I just liked the sound of the numbers together? They don’t correspond to any real-life information about me – which makes it the perfect online security choice, I guess.

Any side blogs?

Nope, my main blog is just a chaotic mess of my interests. A nice little digital scrapbook of what I’m into.

How long have you been on Tumblr?

I had to check my archive, and apparently I’ve been here since September 2012. I’m fairly sure I might have started a little earlier because I remember going through a cringe-induced deleting spree of my super old posts, but it was definitely 2012. So, 9 years?

Do you have a queue tag?

Nope, I don’t think I’ve ever actually scheduled a post in my life. I just post when I want.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

I was super into those dress-up games as a kid, and I used one to make myself and my friends as anime characters? Like a proto-picrew I guess. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s also been my icon for the past 9 years. I’ve been debating changing it, just because ‘anime icons’ have a certain connotation online. Eh, we’ll see.

Why did you choose your header?

It’s a hedge maze from a scene in my favourite movie, ‘Labyrinth’. I could honestly tell you the exact dialogue of the scene, the scenes directly before and after, at what point it takes place in the plot. I know that movie too well.

What's your post with the most notes?

Haha, so I was wondering when we’d get into this. Some of you may know that kpop fanfiction isn’t the first thing I’ve written for. Like I said, this blog has no theme, I follow my interest and I write what I like. Anyway, in 2017, I watched Descendants 2 with my little sister, it was like a tradition because we saw the first one together when it aired. And the concept of the series was super interesting, and one of the new characters was pretty hot, so I decided to write some fic. And it got way more popular than I was expecting – I still get asks and notes on it 4 years later. The post with the most notes is ‘reunions’. Enjoy my teenage self and her clumsy first attempts at Y/N.

As for kpop posts, I think the Instinct masterlist? I’m pretty happy with that, it has the first moodboard I ever created so that’s fun.

How many mutuals do you have?

Not that many? A handful? But, like, a big handful?

How many followers do you have?

OK, this number doesn’t sit right with me because a lot of it came from that wave of Descendants fans from 4 years ago, and I’m pretty certain most of the accounts have died out now, but my follower count technically stands at 994. But I’m fairly certain that the number of followers I’ve gotten since I first started posting kpop fic is closer to about 200?

How many people do you follow?

43, and a lot of those are fic writers I like and people I know IRL. I like to keep my dashboard light, makes the Tumblr experience feel more personal, I guess.

Have you ever made a shitpost?

Have I ever not made a shitpost?

How often do you use Tumblr each day?

Too much. At least every single day. I have developed a knee-jerk response of checking Tumblr when I’m bored, and I would estimate that I spend about 1-4 hours a day on it on average. But when I’m in the mood to read fic? Or chatting to people? Longer. Much longer.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

Honestly, I’m pretty liberal with my ‘Block’ button. If I see particular bad-faith criticism or just people who really strongly dislike my interests, I pre-emptively block because…why not? Life is short.

How do you feel about 'you need to compare this' posts?

I tried to Google what these are and literally found nothing. So, uh, pass?

Do you like tag games?

YES. YES I DO. People thinking of me enough to tag me is a love language all of its own and it makes my day.

Do you like ask games?

YESS. YESS I DO. LITERALLY ASK ME ANYTHING.

Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

I follow a few kpop fic writers who also follow me back, but I’m usually too nervous to actually interact with them. (to the point where I’m not gonna tag them here because embarrassed)

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I don’t think it’s a ‘crush’ crush because the dangers of parasocial relationships am I right? but I spent an ungodly amount of time interacting with a certain mutual pretty much every day over a period of like three months? The serotonin hit when they responded? Unmatched. Our time zones also did not match at all, so I’d be staying up until like 3am. The first time they complimented my writing, I literally messaged an IRL friend in all-caps about it, and she just laughed and said ‘sempai noticed you, huh?’ So, like…there’s that? I’m pretty sure that mutual knows who they are. Hi. I’m gonna go hide forever now.

This was fun! Tagging: @formidxble @healinghyunjin @the7thcrow (and @herelittlefish 😈😈)

[haljathefangirlcat]

still thinking about that “we Have To Talk about how quips are ruining fandom by destroying meta and turning all fic into shitposts” post @ms-demeanor wrote a great rebuttal to, and about the other posts she wrote about it and about the You’re Doing Fandom Wrong attitude in it, and about the notes on those posts. not gonna reblog or reply to any of those because my thoughts are admittedly kind of random and jumping from place to place and probably OT to the point of the discussion, but you know. still thinking.

so, uh. not trying to start wank or anything but enjoy the ranting that got way out of hand under the cut.

so, like... that one “we can’t just block everyone who quips and shitposts because some of these people also write actual meta but then they unfortunately go back to Not Engaging With Canon by writing quippy shitpost-y stuff” line, or however it was actually phrased? besides the blatant entitlement with the “you have to fandom ONLY in ways I like, I can’t just engage with the part of the content you create that I’m interested in and scroll past the rest” thing (which kinda reminds me of the whole “you can’t CNTW on some of your fics, I should be able to read ALL of your fics” thing, in a way) and the ”I refuse to curate my fandom experience and I’ll make it some stranger’s problem” thing (which... reminds me of a few other things, but tbf it has probably been around since the very first days of fandom), what if someone doesn’t even see meta and quips/shitposts as fundamentally different and mutually exclusive approaches to fandom? what if they see them as just two ways to be interested in a specific fandom and interact with it, and maybe even closely linked together, so going from one to another is actually very, very easy for them? hell, what if they (gasp!) even mix quips and meta together sometimes?

I have a few posts about what I think Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese might have been doing with mythological references and themes in Dark, and about what I got from the series finale. some are meme-like, phrased in a joking tone, probably even shitpost-y? another one is literally just a gifset plus me having intense Feels in the tags, and the last one is an edit of the kind I’ve seen people complain about as “those cringey unoriginal tumblr aesthetics that all look the same” in at least a couple of occasions. does that automatically mean I only wanted to “win” at fandom (with my hard-earned prize being... a handful of notes in a fandom that’s not even that big compared to others) and that I haven’t actually spent probably way too much time thinking about the significance of Martha’s Ariadne play as a commentary on character interactions/plot/narrative themes (and honestly still do from time to time), or that I don’t occasionally read the captions under other people’s gifsets and suddenly feel very much enlightened about why the Ariadne play mentions the myth of the Flood of all things? that I didn’t start reading posts and comments and reviews and theories about the series finale as soon as I finished watching it? that, just because I didn’t write 10K+ words of Perfectly Serious Seriousness about all that stuff, I simply refused to Engage With The Text? 

... and if I said that I feel a little irrationally self-conscious at the idea of writing down all of my (often rambling, sometimes jumbled) thoughts about a series that to me actually does feel very deep and complex, so adding memes and humor to that or finding different means to put my ideas out there makes me feel more comfortable expressing myself while also taking off the (admittedly made-up) pressure of having to write a whole coherent essay where I have to find a clear and explicit way to explain where every single thought comes from and how it leads to the next like I’m gonna get graded on it? or that a lot of those thoughts stem from memories of spending five years of high school translating and analysing ancient Greek poetry and reading and watching and discussing every available interpretation and reinterpretation of it from Nietzsche to Vernant to Dürrenmatt to Christa Wolf to Pasolini to a lot of others and from certain things in Dark violently hurtling me back to those times without even asking for permission, so a part of my self-consciousness is actually “I probably don’t actually know/remember enough about this to base a whole in-depth analysis on it even though I do think there’s something there” and another part is “shit I’m too lazy to dig through all of my old textbooks and homework and additional readings to hunt for the thing I feel the desperate need to reference or figure out who might have said it, so no extended explanation here either”? I guess in the end it would all boil down to “there’s an amount of effort and physical and mental energy I’m willing to put into fandom but I also have limits to stop something that makes me feel happy from becoming a chore”, which. considering the whole “you have to put all your resources into constantly pouring out 100% serious meta and nothing else because that’s what I like, no deviations allowed” thing? yeah, I can see saying stuff like that would still make me a blight upon fandom. and/or Not Engaging.

which, I realize, it’s a thing I keep coming back to. but that’s because I really, really, really hate it? seriously, what even counts as Engaging With The Text correctly? not shitposts, and not quips either, apparently. Regardless of the fact that humor and crack have existed in fandom since forever and that it’s actually not uncommon AT ALL for them to be born out of looking at canon from different angles, pointing out whatever the fan in question finds surreal/strange/implausible/convoluted/awkward/just kinda funny about it. 

also, not canon divergence/what if fics motivated not by a desire to “fix” something that made us feel bad when it happened in canon but by a desire to actually fix what we felt was objectively a poor writing choice from the author, because we shouldn’t Engage by analysing the text to criticize it or to think over how and why certain aspects of it don’t work for us or how we think the structure of the text itself could be modified or even improved, we should Engage by... writing meta and/or writing canon-compliant fics with perhaps a little allowance for slightly-to-the-left-of-canon-compliant missing moments fics, I guess? 

from what I’ve gathered from reading other fandom discussion some time ago, AUs are also out, especially Modern/No Powers AUs, because those are always just an excuse to slap your fave’s name on your OC/disguise your original fiction as fanfic to get comments/ignore all that’s interesting about canon to write yet another dumb syrupy high school or coffee shop AU, even if I’m honestly not sure what kind of AUs people are even reading to never get to the “there’s no supernatural threat so let’s focus entirely on the fucked-up family dynamics and blatant mental issues in a world where you can’t just ignore them by marrying off your daughter or sending your son to be someone’s squire” AUs or the “this is pretty much what happens in canon but adding new dimensions and different outlooks on the themes by moving everything to a new context” AUs. seriously, I could rec you a pretty great “this guy would be a horrible father and treat his children horribly in any world, it’s not just the feudal society around him, it’s him as a person” AU and that’s literally just the first thing that came to my mind. but, hey, maybe Engaging is only engaging with the canon plot and setting and nothing else, what do I know.

... fuck, thinking about it, I’m not even sure if by “not shitpost and not quips” I should even mean humor/crack? because it’s not like the OP was clear about it in any way? maybe it’s just all that’s weird and tropey and not-canon-compliant? I can see the “everybody gathers in the main character’s stuff to smoke weed and weird shit happens” fic I got a chuckle out of some time ago being one of the dreaded tumblr-born shitpost fics that are supposedly ruining fandom by ensuring that fans stop thinking (?), but what about the “everything is the same but this one character is a catboy, not for any particular reason but just because” fic I’m currently following and loving? people have been joking and shitposting about catboys a lot on tumblr lately (I distinctly remember that the last catboy joke to pop up on my dash was the “I’m your catboy gf and I’m stuck in a wall” one...) and finding an always-a-catboy!AU initially got an amused smile out of me, so is the mere premise enough to make the fic just a joke/just taking a trope and running off with it/just part of a shallow trend? even when the author literally goes “oh shit just realized this is all a metaphor for neuodivergence and masking” in the story notes? unless writing a character who’s never explicitly stated to be neurodivergent in canon as a being literally or metaphorically neurodivergent in your fic is always shallow projecting or posturing issuefic... instead of, y’know, looking closely at the text and Engaging with it by interpreting it that way....

I feel all this ranting/venting might end up plunging into Why We Slash discussion territory now, so I better stop here.

anyway, in short, good to know I’ve been in fandom for years yet I’ve always been just a Fake Fan who Can’t Think and is constantly Doing It Wrong (by Not Being Transformative Enough, possibly). gonna do my best to stay exactly like that in the future <3