#some are very fandom specific though

[fandombead]

Writing Prompt: Wish Refund

When you were a kid, you wished wholeheartedly that someone in your life would go away forever while you were upset/annoyed with them.

Now, years later, you’re actually quite fond of them and you’ve both grown closer. But on your 25th birthday, they disappear without a trace and only a note is left behind with a completion receipt for that wish you made as a kid. You barely even remember making this wish, though you remember having a rivalry back then.

The good news is that there is a way to undo it! However the refund policy is…not as simple as making the wish was.

[floralovebot]

i've kind of been thinking about the unwhitewashing edits i do on the winx source,, over the years, multiple people have outright said that they sometimes skip over posts where i fix their skin tone because they see the art style (s8, wow, etc) and immediately assume it's whitewashed then realize it's not after seeing it's the source blog or the caption and it's making me think,,, that's probably a big reason why so many people in the fandom constantly reblog/support whitewashed fanart. it's like they're not even seeing the skin tone, they're just seeing the art style and the character?

[figofswords]

yknow those artists who post exclusively original art and yet still have massive followings and consistently get good amounts of notes on all of it. yeah how do they manage that

[pointsfortrying]

I think the worst part ab getting back into old hyperfixations is - besides cringing at your past self - seeing all of the deactivated blogs or knowing things are missing

[notmoreflippingelves]

Why is it that my rare pair tendencies are not limited strictly to my hyperfixations of the moment but in like 99% of media that I consume? It's not fair. I just get a tiny little urge for like a day to read a fic or see an art for a specific pairing before returning to my main interest. Only to find that particular pairing that my stewpid brain had convinced itself "must be huge in this fandom because how could it NOT BE?" barely exists--if it even exists at all and I have clowned on myself yet again.

[goldensunset]

‘enjoyer’ to me has two meanings. it either means you’re a “fake fan” who hasn’t actually properly read/watched/played the media for yourself and you don’t know that much about it but you like it on a surface level and that’s enough for you, or it means you have done the above but you refuse to participate in fandom culture online for it lest discourse and negativity end up ruining you and so you just enjoy it peacefully by yourself. i think this is an excellent term btw

[syntiment]

Oh yeah I never posted this here on Tumblr, I forgot-

But hey, I don’t draw MCYT or more specifically DSMP art anymore and I very likely never will again. I strongly disagree and dislike Dream and a good handful of his immediate friends and his repeated shitty behavior on top of the community’s behavior in general, has turned me away from any remaining desire I had to participate in it’s content. I still like and support many of the CC’s involved, but I won’t draw anything from it anymore.

[grassbreads]

What the absolute FUCK

[icewindandboringhorror]

............ ultimate somng

[olympiansally]

Normal behavior in the house tonight: stalling to post a fic for the current fandom because it feels a bit like betraying the past one

[cala-aceattorney]

don't question this i just want apollo hong kong

[reliccipher]

It is sooo much easier to explain to people that you love a character for no reason than it is to explain that you hate a character for no reason, worse if that character is a villain

Yeah I know he's a terrible person in canon but that's not why I hate him, yeah it adds on to the hatred and it makes him a terrible person and no, I don't hate how he's written/designed or his role/importance to the plot, I hate him for Some Other Third Reason that can't be explained. Hope this helps <33

[serpentinegraphite]

in the same vein as having characters always sound like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy, a common thing in fanworks that gets on my nerves is like how in a fandom where realistically one might expect the characters to experience some trauma as a result of canon events (even though it's not shown in canon), there are only ever like the most extreme trauma responses. it's full on panic attack in the face of a trigger and brutal, unending nightmares, and like nothing else.

I just want to say for anyone out there who isn't aware, not every trauma response needs to be turned up to 11!some days a trigger might hit harder than others.

sometimes a character's trauma response should say something about them! a character who hates being vulnerable and seeks a constant control might react to a trigger with anger!

a character who is great at repressing might "This is fine!" themselves all the way through a triggering and unpleasant encounter rather than show any outward distress! dissociation is a real and common trauma response.

aside from the complete homogenization of trauma symptoms being boring as shit, it's often a weirdly consistent Moral Purity signifier. there's never a chance for a nuanced or complicated or shitty response to a trigger, it's always straight into the harshest panic response, thereby inviting only unconditional support from the audience. (nevermind what this kind of weirdly narrow anxiety rep does to people in the audience who actually have anxiety that doesn't fit the One Kind Of Anxiety characters are allowed to have)

[comas-are-for-sleeping]

wait also NOTE: i fucking LOVE that there is such a growing group of rep now, like u said podcasts (i.e. tma the beloved??? or at least the fandom idk??? where did the poc fanart come from like is that canon is it hcs) and like COMICS (like squire and the well etc!!!) and just. SO many things dude!!!! and los espookys as well!!!! it's just so cool that there are so many things now

Yes!!! Things are happening I am so excited for the future!!!

Steven Universe trailblazer? hmm

[asjjohnson]

I just had the thought of making a future fic updating schedule of 'once in a blue moon'. (Partly for the pun.) ...But then I looked up how often blue moons happen, and it's only about once every two years. So... that's probably not a good updating schedule. :(

(I have an existing fic with an update schedule of 'Friday 13ths and Halloween'. I like the semi-randomness. I would like to think of similar schedules. ...Though I'd missed the last two update dates.)

[fiercynn]

on ao3's current fundraiser

apparently it’s time for ao3’s biannual donation drive, which means it’s time for me to remind you all, that regardless of how much you love ao3, you shouldn’t donate to them because they HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY AND NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

we’ve known for years that ao3 – or, more specifically, the organization for transformative works (@transformativeworks on tumblr), or otw, who runs ao3 and other fandom projects – has a lot of money in their “reserves” that they had no plans for. but in 2023, @manogirl and i did some research on this, and now, after looking at their more recent financial statements, i’ve determined that at the beginning of 2024, they had almost $2.8 MILLION US DOLLARS IN SURPLUS.

our full post last year goes over the principles of how we determined this, even though the numbers are for 2023, but the key points still stand (with the updated numbers):

when we say “surplus”, we are not including money that they estimate they need to spend in 2024 for their regular expenses. just the extra that they have no plan for

yes, nonprofits do need to keep some money in reserves for emergencies; typically, nonprofits registered in the u.s. tend to keep enough to cover between six months and two years of their regular operating expenses (meaning, the rough amount they need each month to keep their services going). $2.8 million USD is enough to keep otw running for almost FIVE YEARS WITHOUT NEW DONATIONS

they always overshoot their fundraisers: as i’m posting this, they’ve already raised $104,751.62 USD from their current donation drive, which is over double what they’ve asked for! on day two of the fundraiser!!

no, we are not trying to claim they are embezzling this money or that it is a scam. we believe they are just super incompetent with their money. case in point: that surplus that they have? only earned them $146 USD in interest in 2022, because only about $10,000 USD of their money invested in an interest-bearing account. that’s the interest they earn off of MILLIONS. at the very least they should be using this extra money to generate new revenue – which would also help with their long-term financial security – but they can’t even do that

no, they do not need this money to use if they are sued. you can read more about this in the full post, but essentially, they get most of their legal services donated, and they have not, themselves, said this money is for that purpose

i'm not going to go through my process for determining the updated 2024 numbers because i want to get this post out quickly, and otw actually had not updated the sources i needed to get these numbers until the last couple days (seriously, i've been checking), but you can easily recreate the process that @manogirl and i outlined last year with these documents:

otw’s 2022 audited financial statement, to determine how much money they had at the end of 2022

otw’s 2024 budget spreadsheet, to determine their net income in 2023 and how much they transferred to and from reserves at the beginning of 2024

otw’s 2022 form 990 (also available on propublica), which is a tax document, and shows how much interest they earned in 2022 (search “interest” and you’ll find it in several places)  

also, otw has not been accountable to answering questions about their surplus. typically, they hold a public meeting with their finance committee every year in september or october so people can ask questions directly to their treasurer and other committee members; as you can imagine, after doing this deep dive last summer, i was looking forward to getting some answers at that meeting!

but they cancelled that meeting in 2023, and instead asked people to write to the finance committee through their contact us form online. fun fact: i wrote a one-line message to the finance committee on may 11, 2023 through that form, when @manogirl and i were doing this research, asking them for clarification on how much they have in their reserves. i have still not received a response.

so yeah. please spend your money on people who actually need it, like on mutual aid requests! anyone who wants to share their mutual aid requests, please do so in the replies and i’ll share them out – i didn’t want to link directly to individual requests without permission in case this leads to anyone getting harassed, but i would love to share your requests. to start with, here's operation olive branch and their ongoing spreadsheet sharing palestinian folks who need money to escape genocide.

oh, and if you want to write to otw and tell them why you are not donating, i'm not sure it’ll get any results, but it can’t hurt lol. here's their contact us form – just don’t expect a response! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯