#over mode

[nickpeppermint]

Bro forgot he's in Kamen Rider

[madeleinefjall]

Forever by your side

[foxyfexyll]

[xpurplepiex]

neoliberal temptress

[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.

[plagueislost]

i love being late to trends. my new years resolution is to be late to every trend ever. and you know im serious because im even late to new years.

(theres an inverse version of this by @chamiryokuroi , you should go check it out! i started making this before i saw theirs, but i think its cool that now theres both versions)

[criticalamityz]

you were still budding

[lazylittledragon]

dadkarios doods sponsored by my stress migraine

[pangur-and-grim]

a clowder of (art history) cats! these are available as enamel pins at greerstothers.shop

I'm happy because everyone loves me - Louis Wain

Le Chat Noir - Theophile Steinlen

Le Chat Blanc - Pierre Bonnard

[8ball-wizard]

ugh, i hate this, i'm gonna- *remembers that, even if i'm personally not affected by suicide jokes, i'm not the only one online and seeing them can be distressing for a number of reasons* send someone to the Infinite Spiders Dimension

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or

[emmavakarian-theirin]

🐦‍⬛

[infamous-if]

i wish i could tell you guys what im struggling with but i cant because it'd be super spoilery but lets just say writing a story with a large cast is fun until they start acting like a large cast (aka too many characters to keep track of)

in other news im nearly done with chapter 4 and it will be in your hands soon (if i dont rip my hair out first /lh)

[juniperquills]

Heyyyyyy Minecraft Story Mode fandom

[fyrnacx]

and they were RIVALS

more concept stuff for my no witherstorm au! trying to decide whether to call it the "no witherstorm" or the "nothing happened" au, so if you see either term it's referring to the same thing!

"Jesse and his friends have been competing in building competitions against the Ocelots (most notably their ringleader, Lukas) for years now, and they've never won one. However, this year, Jesse swears that the Order of the Pig will triumph over the Ocelots at the Endercon building competition, once and for all."

[whathehonestfuk]

Steve gets very well acquainted with hawkins general while Eddie is healing as he's wondering around when Eddie's busy (surgeries, physical therapy ect) and finds out there are babies that need to be held because they don't have anyone and nurses and doctors can't spend the necessary time to do it so he starts volunteering

Eddie is working on his mobility and was told to walk as much as he could but there's only so much walking up and down one hallway a man can take so he goes off to find Steve in the mythical land of babies (he'd heard about Steve's adventures because Steve came to hang out with spit up on his shirt once and robin complaining that it wasn't fair that all the cute nurses were obsessed with him just because he held a few newborns)

Eddie finds him swaying and cooing at the baby in his arms and man if he wasn't gone of Steve already he'd be absolutely done for