#posts that make no sense outside the fandom

[thunderon]

did you know cows exhibit mourning behavior for other cows? dont forget to like and subscribe for more cow facts!

[clonehub]

The Clones, Kamino, and Relationships

I've long speculated on what the clones' values would be as a people regarding every type of relationship they could possibly have with others around them -- antagonistic, romantic/sexual, professional, platonic, familial, etc.

Often times when making headcanons along these lines, people tend to project their own social upbringings onto the clones with or without realizing; they rely heavily on a reality that doesn't exist for the clones and then try to justify it with the same reality. Their analyses and theories and hcs end up flawed (and, for me, really annoying to read).

I'm sure you've all heard the fanon/headcanons that clones don't have the necessary and nebulously-defined "life experiences" that are required to mark them as adults. People think the clones lack a certain amount of knowledge about themselves and their bodies, and then others' bodies and how those work. They think the clones have no social awareness; I even saw someone say that clones wouldn't have had rivals, frenemies, or any negative interaction with other clones.

This long form and hopefully structured rant is going to lay out everything I think about how the clones were raised, why they're raised that way, and what that means when they interact with one another and with non clones.

Antagonistic Relationships

The clones argue. They fight. They disagree. We see this repeatedly in The Clone Wars and all throughout the Bad Batch. They disagree with superiors, both Jedi and non Jedi.

Disagreement within a group helps foster social bonds, can strengthen critical thinking/reasoning, and has a few other benefits I don't feel like listing out right now. Regardless, managing disagreements in a group requires conflict resolution skills.

The General Relationship Structure on Kamino

The clones must be taught to be loyal, to be amicable, and how to resolve conflicts within squads and bigger and bigger groupings of clones. The clones are going to war. They're trained soldiers. They have to be able to work on a team. Team work isn't just following orders and it isn't just being friends. That also means swallowing pride, setting aside ego, and even speaking up.

They can get jealous, they can be envious, they can have a whole host of complex feelings and emotions that they need to work through. The Drill sergeants would thus be instructed to be aware of and teach the clones who to work through this (whether they choose pats on the head or a fist is up to them).

I'm saying this to say that fandom often takes clones' "guns n battle" education a little (waaayy) too literally. They're not just given a gun at 2 and told to start firing. They need to be told that you can't turn that gun on your brother just because he said something annoying or you think he's dumb.

The Galaxy Outside Kamino

The clones learn about the galaxy outside Kamino. They get a heavily censored and propagandized history of the galaxy that plays up the Republic and absolutely villainizes anyone else, but they definitely do learn about the galaxy in general. They learn about other species, where those species are located, etc.

I say this to say that people like to act like the clones are so sheltered that they basically gawk at the mere existence of anyone who isn't a clone (so like....racist via ignorance?) which....I don't understand, really. The Kaminoans want to deliver a functioning and high quality product. They can't do that if they don't tell the clones that there's people out there that look different frmo you and speak a different language. A lot of clones are bound to interact with civilians; what sense is there in not prepping them for it?

These history lessons wouldn't even take too long to learn or anything like that. Some people like to headcanon that the clones' education schedule is so tight that they can't learn about "unnecessary" things (i.e. anything that isn't about guns n battle). But the clones are also fast learners. I think they can handle like two days of lessons about the galaxy's species.

Learning about the galaxy also requires --

Social Awareness

I've often seen headcanons that the clones, in one way or another, lack social awareness. "Non clones are basically an alien species! They're bound to ask loud, rude, ignorant, offensive questions! They're not shy, so they'd totally just strip in public if they need to!" (yes, I saw someone say this)

This comes from people infantilizing the clones and refusing to write or see them as the adults that they are. This is also severely shortsighted; again, being aware of the fact that the Kaminoans want a product that can do its job, who is helped by the clones blundering through greater society and destroying the genpop's trust in and comfort with them?

The clones get taught the basics of social politeness. They wouldn't manage the intricacies of cross-cultural interaction from two like high level senators, but that's not their job. They're polite, they're professional, they're aware of what is and isn't rude. They're self aware. They're adults.

Personal and Bodily Awareness

Sorry to the people who are weirdly misogynistic, but the clones also get comprehensive sex ed. It's inevitable that some clones are going to sleep with a non-clone. It's bound to happen! Rather than pretend it never does, the clones are told in detail about two things:

The human reproductive system.

Basic contraceptives and STI prevention.

part of maintaining the health and safety of any given population is making sure that they don't get sick. STIs are a way of getting sick. Part of maintaining the health and safety of a given population is managing unwanted or unexepcted pregnancies. Condoms prevent that. I think the medics have them and distribute them as-needed when they go on leave planetside.

So they get consent training (they'd have to, in order to learn how to interact with anyone ever in a normal and healthy way). The contours of consent would interact with their lifestyles in a contradictory way because they're also rather explicitly told they don't have the right to give/revoke consent over their own bodies, but they're at least told about other's bodies.

But here's the thing. The clones rarely. RARELY. Do end up having sex or a relationship because of two reasons:

They rarely interact with non-clones who are viable for sexual or romantic relationships (as in, most of the non-clones they're in contact with are COs and Jedi)

They themselves do not value sex and relationships to the extent that we do in our society.

for the first point: they're in battle a lot, and when they go on leave they face a society that does not like clones. There are anti-clone protests, 79s is one of the few bars that allows clones in, and when they're at battle they're notably not interacting with civilians for obvious reasons. The average jedi and non clone CO is not going to seek a sexual or romantic relationship with a clone.

This also presumes that clones don't sleep with other clones. I'm not giving ground on this. It's clear within canon that the clones view each other as true family. "Brothers" is not just "brother in arms", but quite literally a familial term for them. Fives' "same heart, same blood" speech in season 3 is evidence. Sister being called/naming herself Sister is another (her being transfem alone isn't enough; if they didn't view their familial relationships as fundamental to who they are, they would have given her a regular name, not Sister). They also refer to one another primarily as brothers, even when there's bad blood -- like Slick insisting that he did loves his brothers. Not comrades or friends or squad mates. Brothers. The entire 501st.

Frankly, the "they're bound to do it" view that many people seem to have is very bizarre to me. Who cares about proximity? What are their values as a people? What have they been taught? What do they believe? Why assume that any given clone would do that? Plenty of people spend a lifetime around their families without ever developing a desire to sleep with them. Who you grow up with can absolutely influence who you're attracted to, but not to this degree.

The assumption that clones MUST sleep with one another relies on a rather wide series of assumptions that just do the thing I complained about in the opener, which is rely on our own culture's values to write the clones. Which ties into point #2 up above:

The clones don't value sex or relationships as something they need to seek out. Yeah, they'd get horny. They're adults. It happens! Part of life. But what's socially considered an appropriate release of those feelings would be different from what we see in today's world. The drill sergeants wouldn't impress upon them the importance of having a partner, because how does that help them? How does it benefit the Republic, the civilians, the clones?

The clones are soldiers who were bred for war and are focused, first and foremost, on fighting and fulfilling their duty. Their most important social values are fighting, duty, and loyalty. Hierarchy, warfare, survival, etc. Can a clone seek out sex? Yeah! Is that even like, remotely common given the points I made above? No! Does the average clone chase civilians or even dream about relationships, sex, etc etc etc? Nope. They weren't taught to value it.

(This isn't to say that wanting these things makes a clone bad at their job, or that having sex means they're breaking a rule somewhere. They're not. it's just like how the majority of college students go for the most common majors because they're taught that those are valuable and desirable things to learn in school. You'll get one or two who have a concentration in something you've never heard of. They're not wrong for that, but they're definitely outliers)

So the average clone is a virgin that doesn't even think about it because it doesn't matter to them. They know about both male and female reproduction, and they know how to interact with civilians.

They're definitely sheltered. I highly doubt that any clone is given the skills necessary to manage like, romantic relationship problems, especially the really gritty ones. They're not told about their rights as beings, their ability to say no to most situations that involve a military CO. But they know about saying please and thank you, solving interpersonal conflicts, and about pads and tampons. They know about boundaries, appropriate behavior in public, and how to use a condom. They know about girlfriends and boyfriends and partners, they just don't generally care about them. They're rare -- not socially shunned, just rare. like the niche college concentrations.

A really good meta to read that I personally love is written by @canichangemyblogname and linked in his pinned. @saga-ordsmed also has a few interesting metas floating somewhere on her blog. theyre not about this topic in particular, but she's got interesting insights into the Republic.

I hope this was coherent enough. I wrote this mostly because I saw a contradictory post that pissed me off and I was yelling about it with friends in discord lol. Basically, the clones are adults, but don't presume that they have the same values that we do, or that the poeple in charge of their care and upbringing share our values either.

[bellshazes]

i knwo im sleep deprived as hell because i just had a sudden conviction to invent a distinction between smps-in-videos and smps-as-played-by-real-people a la c! and cc! distinction. i think if we are going to keep using c! and cc! we should also do the same to our entire concept of "the server"

[dykedvonte]

why do you hate Joshua Graham or Honest Hearts so much?

This DLC and character represents a bigger issue with fandom spaces I have but particularly fallout fandom in general.

Fallout tends to tackle a lot of topics controversial and not. The first two games it’s heavy cause they are the most satirical and direct with how anti-war, nationalism and etc… they are. 3 loses this as it’s very clear once you play or learn about all the games that Todd and a bunch of guys at Bethesda just liked the 50s post apocalyptic aesthetic and refuse to actually critique the ideals of the time period like the earlier titles.

New Vegas is the game that really gets back into it a degree it almost seems like it’s taking too much on. There are things done exceedingly well while other things are done horribly wrong . I’ve made posts about it before and plan to make a big series of posts (it’s a lot of writing) but my biggest gripe is with Honest Hearts and all the gross and white savior esque depictions it has of indigenous peoples. The entirety if FNV does not do the injustices faced by indigenous people correctly on any count. My two biggest complaints are with the Khans and the tribes in Zion but I’ll talk about the former on a different post.

Both characters of Daniel and Joshua are the most accurate depiction of white saviors I’ve seen and I hate how the DLC tries to justify and defend them. The DLC treats Joshua like this man who has repented for his past actions when he is just retracing his steps after his cruelty bit him in the ass. He was one of the worst parts of the Legion and it is all but explicitly stated that if you don’t force him to be non-violent he will turn the tribes of Zion into the legion 2.0. The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are horribly infantilized by both Daniel and Joshua who both use them for self serving purposes guised by religious duty. The White Legs are the horrible stereotype of violent and savage indigenous and I personally think a lot of their interlinking with Ulysses, his hair and Ulysses character in general are distasteful and very telling of how BIPOC or POC where involved.

But outside of the game it’s the weird obsession people have with these characters ideologies and trying to make them seem more interesting/philosophical than they are. Tumblr is an echo chamber and many fans of Fallout are not the people on this site. Many people are not educated in the issues these characters convey and how poorly they do or used these characters as a poor introduction for their takes. Contrary to what a lot of people believe in, fallout has a prediomeny white cis male fanbase. More importantly a large portion of the fanbase is white.

You can joke how FNV made you trans or see the numbers on post/fics or diverse headcanons but these are kiddy numbers compared to the millions that consume the franchise and aren’t in those more aware spaces or don’t engage in the spaces the same way someone like me does/has to. Their views shape a lot more than people realize and it’s exhausting to be in a space where people don’t correct the more subtle yet toxic aspects of it but also adopt them into some weird quirky view point on the characters or issues. Some people don’t realize and some people don’t care.

My main issue is just the idolizing of these sort of thing in this fandom space and people try to acts like a game like fallout whose tagline is “War never changes” and has never had a game not revolve around political or militaristic factions issues isn’t that deep or doesn’t relate to real issues. I think it’s mainly caused by how over powered you can become and how you can strong arm your way past these learning moments as majority of people who play this game do play it as a power fantasy where they can do so as they please (which of course, go ahead it’s fun) but never take in parallels or lessons in the story as if it was just another first person shooter.

Also like another personal gripe is Cazadores spawn like hell whenever I’m there and I have not found a mod that works to mod them out so I have to play Indigenous Racism the DLC while getting jumped by giant wasps WHILE helping Mormons. Like I cannot catch a break.

[sammygender]

im new here- is dean abusive?

imo yeah. smarter people than me have written dissections of the way he treats sam & others (he’s also Awful to his psuedo-son jack, but i haven’t gotten to that season yet), i’ve probably reblogged a bunch of them.

he certainly doesn’t mean to be & i don’t say it to condemn him as a person or as a character & i’m still very attached to him & he loves sam very much (not that that makes a difference in whether u abuse someone or not) - but the way he treats sam a lot/some of the time is emotionally abusive and sam is clearly badly impacted. s4 and s8 come to mind as his worst moments also ofc moc era - after that there’s less interpersonal conflict (up to where i am at least) but that’s because sam mostly stops disagreeing with dean not because dean actually gets much better <3 spn is cycles of abuse show after all. family is hell. dean’s learnt pretty much everything about how to behave from his abusive father and as a result. well. cycle continues

[swati-art]

tboy swag sonic Vs tgirl swag metal

[the-gayest-sky-kid]

i think the problem with being a dazai fan is people either love him like a pta mom or think hes The Devil from The Bible. im not saying this in a "everyone needs to see him the same way i do" way but i do think to have like. a proper appreciation for him you do have to hate him a bit. and not in the like "stinky cat" or "pushing him down the stairs" way but in the like "i genuinely wonder whats wrong with you" way. people tend to be in these really extreme camps where they either excuse his actions because he was also a victim or decide he just pretends to be good and he's never put the work in. and it makes it really hard to have a nuanced conversation about dazais time in the mafia or his actions currently, because people are either IN one of the mentioned camps, or they think YOU are. so it gets hard when it comes time to point out even something like him being both a Shitty teenager and a shitty Teenager. does that make sense

[whiskeyswifty]

.

[femboypussy420]

the enduring question: is that community you're not a part of really as cringe as you think it is, or is it just that the only time you've seen posts/videos etc from it are when someone goes viral for being cringe and they do not represent the majority of the community whatsoever

[kennys-parka-jacket]

.

[not-athing]

Has anyone ever written a Deadpool fanfiction where the words he speaks are written in Canadian English, but everyone else is in American?

Like maybe he's talking to Wolverine, and he says something and it's written in American English (maybe "we need to get to the center of this") and Deadpool corrects him ("you're Canadian. Say 'centre'"). But it's comic relief.

Or maybe he's talking to someone else who's Canadian, but they something so American. And Deadpool says something about it. (The only example I can think of at the top of my head is mac and cheese instead of KD (or kraft dinner)

[gloopdimension]

a mewts post getting popular is so funny.Like I cannot imagine getting a reply from a pregnancy kink blog that says "sex isnt normal, kid"

[brionysea]

mbb being the only m*lven shipper on the cast and also a st*ncy shipper is so funny to meeeee. girlie's buying into it all which is why she's perfect for playing el

[sharkneto]

How do you become of the “big” writers in a fandom like TUA? It doesn’t seem like writing a lot gets me anywhere even if I do enjoy it

Luck. It's dumb luck.

My first advice is to not chase trying to be a "big writer". It genuinely is dumb luck. Focus on enjoying writing, enjoying/building the community around your fics/fandom, and try to not let yourself focus too much on those interaction stats. I know this is hard - we are all so addicted to that rush of dopamine and validation kudos and reblogs and comments give. We are all chasing it, it's part of why we share anything. But if you let that become your focus it sucks all the joy out of writing and then you have to take a break until you can get your head in a healthier spot about it and enjoy it again.

So, that disclaimer said, there are some things I think... help push luck in your favor, things I did to try and push community that translated to engagement. It's also about getting the right eyes on your fic, getting that one person to see and share it that starts a domino effect of more people seeing it (and maybe sharing it).

First is technical stuff. Get good at titles and summaries, summaries especially. You need people to want to click on your fic and to see what its about. I don't think I've talked about summaries before, and I'm not going to do it here outside of saying 1) Yes, I know they suck to write they're the worst and 2) that the goal of a summary is to let the reader know what to expect and to to pique their interest. It's the blurb on the back of the book when you're browsing, it's your shot to get someone to open it and give your story a try. Next, it's good you enjoy the writing process (that is the whole point!) because being technically good also helps keep people reading once they've opened your fic. People will read things they aren't necessarily interested in if it's well-written, and they will bail on things they like if it's too hard to read. But keep in mind that just being good isn't going to make you blow up in a fandom - some of the best fics I've read have had but a handful of kudos and comments on them.

The second is the social stuff. You have to find your crowd, your corner of the fandom, the people who will enjoy your fics. If you write Five but only Klaus stans are seeing your works, you're not going to go very far. Get good at tagging - on AO3 and when promo-ing on Tumblr. DO NOT take this as "put as many tags as possible so more people see it!". That's spam. Everyone hates spam. Don't be that person. Accurately tag your stuff so people know what your fic is. If it's what they want to read, they'll click on it - those are the people you are targeting, not every person in the fandom. Get comfortable self-reblogging posts when you post/update fics. If you're up for it, curate a community responding to comments on fics and encouraging asks on Tumblr (be careful with that and be ready to shut the inbox if people start being fucking weird - your mental health comes first).

After saying all that, my biggest point is to repeat that that "hitting it big" is dumb luck and fandom is fickle. TUA is in a lull between seasons right now and we all know the current struggle of artists and writers getting people to reblog things/interact further than a like/kudo. You're going to burn yourself out and stop having fun if your focus is on finding "fame" within the fandom, especially right now. I think the above stuff helped things take off for me, but I've been building my community for two years now and it was still luck at the end of the day. As you practice your writing skills, add to your library of fics, build your own community, things will get bigger organically.

[mitsukuri]

apparently the mayday and over kurodate special forces CoC had 10 parts before the author deleted it from nicovideo?? i've only seen up to part 5 since that's all that was reuploaded to youtube what do you mean there was more