thepurplewombat

[thepurplewombat]

What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?

.. i’m palestinian

[thepurplewombat]

Remember children—this tactic is really annoying to the police, so YOU SHOULD NOT become floppy—it’s frustrating to them and makes them look bad and is a waste of resources and no one wants that…

[thepurplewombat]

Hello people who read physical books. There are photos below of some books from my shelf. No, they are not new. One of my friends saw RotK over my shoulder when we were on FT. She had a strong opinion. Nothing you say will change her mind but screw it: Time for a ludicrous poll.

the hardbacks are slightly better but not immune. the good reference art books are significantly worse. and plenty of books on my shelf are nearly mint. but these are the ones under discussion. Most of those options are things I've heard before

[thepurplewombat]

this sims 2 ad has like such deep gay energy to it. Like this feels like queer history to me

[thepurplewombat]

I feel less like I am going crazy after stumbling into a radfem doing out in the open organized spam reporting / callout campaigning, gloating and reporting "success stories." It was like a little refreshing reminder that feeling isolated and lost isn't some inexplicable breakdown of organization, but more like an ongoing campaign of shit-stirring from the same place it always comes from. Anyway had a little block party over it.

[thepurplewombat]

Unrelated, Best Boy Hank Green made a cute, no subscription, not invasive and full of malwares app.

It's a cute lil app that helps you step away from your phone and leave it alone for a time you set, to stay away from distraction. If you pick up the phone, the knitting lil bean loses all of his knitting... So if you say "I'm setting down my phone for half an hour so I can efficiently clean the table and bag up the trash" it helps resisting the call of the screen. Because you can't make the bean sad. The bean is too cute.

4th place in the downloads jfc. I think people are starved for simple and honest softwares with no evils schemes and data stealing

[thepurplewombat]

a funny thing about having a Problematic Blorbo is that you'll periodically come across a post along the lines of "um let's not forget that [Blorbo] is a bad person..." listing their various crimes, and if you have a modicum of intellectual honesty you find yourself nodding along and saying yeah it's true... but it's the greyness of their character that makes them so compelling... At the same time though you have a little Saul Goodman in your ear going "your honor in their defense: who cares like omfgggg who caresssssss like come onnnnnn"

[thepurplewombat]

"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die

[thepurplewombat]

starting a collection

[thepurplewombat]

reading nabokov is maddening because his writing is so playful and evocative and effortless and english isn't even his first language. he's doing things in a second language most people could spend their lives trying and failing to replicate in their first language. makes me feel like this

[thepurplewombat]

"They were a good person with good intentions and strong convictions and belief in doing the right thing. And because of that they deeply hurt people including people they were trying to protect" - is fantastic characterisation that too many people reduce to only one half of the equation

"They were a good person and people still died because they didn't put trust in anyone else" ← is so fucking good but people don't fucking appreciate it

"They were a good person and they failed. Over and over again. They failed." ← DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND HOW DELICIOUS THAT IS!?!?

I am on my hands and knees begging people to allow characters to be complex and flawed and not reduced down to "The Good Guy" and "The Bad Guy"

[thepurplewombat]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[thepurplewombat]

a feel like the new generation of fanfic readers NEED to understand that clicking on a fic (interaction) does nothing. ao3 has no algorithm. your private discord discussions of fic do not reach the authors. if you do not actively engage with writers they will stop posting. this isn’t social media this is community.

[thepurplewombat]

I still love this website so much because it feels like the last connection we have to an internet that doesn’t exist anymore like I can come on here and scroll through posts that are literally just funny or beautiful or interesting with no intention to sell me something or influence me we are all just here for a laugh. Nothing is just for laughs anymore EXCEPT tumblr dot com

[thepurplewombat]

A fun but admittedly petty thing I do is when I see a post on social media where someone is saying “God bless Trump!! Pray for Trump!!”and suchlike, I comment, “Amen! Psalm 109:8-17!” And depending on the platform I’ll get likes/hearts/prayer hands emojis etc. but I’ve been doing this for months and so far no one has actually read the verse, I don’t think. Lol.

[thepurplewombat]

older gentleman just gave me a lecture on how when I decide it’s time to find a wife I need to buy myself a pair of loud colorful socks and sit around with my legs crossed to show my ankles and women will flock to me