whywhywhymoney

[whywhywhymoney]

personal,

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AHHHHHUUUUUUU<HHHHHHH WAAAHHHHH IM SO UPSET I WANTWD THIS JOB SO BADLY I KNOW I DESERVE IT I KNOW I WOULD BE SO SPECTACULAR AT IT I SWEAR I SWEAR I PROMISE I WOULD BE SO GOOD HOW COULD THEY REJECT ME LIKE THAT IVE TRIED SO DAMN HARD URGHHHHHHHH CRYYYYYYYYY WAAAHHH

Okay time to tough it out and figure out how to keep forcing them to hire me. Bismillah

[whywhywhymoney]

With all due respect, I can’t help but find it funny that people are so taken aback by ML’s cancellation. I feel bad for everyone who was hyped but like, you guys should not be as shocked as you are lol. I know everyone hates to admit that kh3 was a ball of shit because this fandom is a copium hotbox but you have to take into account that it was the nail in the coffin for a lot of fans. These games don’t sell the same way, the landscape it’s competing in has changed, Kingdom Hearts is no longer a household name; this series is flopping like a dead fish and Squeenix’s money situation isn’t helping. They had the budget to do all the side games in the 2000s/early 2010s cause they were coasting off the hype and revenue from kh2. Kh3 killed most people’s faith in this series; you can whine “nostalgia” all you want but there’s a reason why there’s like 50 video essays on how bad that game is. Probably didn’t help that the next game they made was a rhythm game- something that doesn’t really align with most of the original player base’s tastes. You guys keep sucking them off for bad decisions that didn’t cater to anyone except a very specific part of the fanbase and got surprised when they couldn’t pay the bill anymore. It does suck that ML was cancelled; I feel bad for Nomura, I feel bad for the devs, I feel bad for fellow KH fans who poured hours into theories and fanart and fanfic, I was even excited for it. But you can’t clap every time a tiger jumps through a flaming hoop and get surprised when it finally catches fire

~~~

[whywhywhymoney]

if you want me to give you my frank observations: catwoman fans like to post art and rt stuff on social media but i barely see any meaningful discussions about her. you guys are so scared to be passionate in the correct ways. talk about her character. have something to say other than blatant engagement farming. do what fans of other characters do and demand better treatment. talk about the ways that dc fails selina outside of “not letting her marry bruce” you can do this 😭

[whywhywhymoney]

While it's still legal:

I 100% support Palestine Action.

I fully support the acts of protest taken by Palestine Action.

I stand with Palestine Action as they disrupt the UK's complicity in genocide and other war crimes.

Proscribing a protest group is undemocratic, fascist, and entirely unacceptable, especially from a political party that grew from unions and strike action.

Shame on the UK government. Shame on Starmer, someone with a background in fucking Human Rights law.

Email your MPs - annoy the hell out of them, make their hearts sink every time they see your name in the "from" line.

[whywhywhymoney]

so it looks like the WIP is winning

me and the WIP that's been kicking my ass for the last 3 years

[whywhywhymoney]

me and the WIP that's been kicking my ass for the last 3 years

[whywhywhymoney]

The Academy X kids cus it's been too damn long without them being a thing

[whywhywhymoney]

If a regional war breaks out between Iran and Israel, Gaza will be forgotten. We will continue to suffer this suffering and will not be mentioned in anything. We will be forgotten forever.

[whywhywhymoney]

FRIIIIICCCKKKKKKKKKK MY LIIIIFEEEEEEEE

[whywhywhymoney]

Hate it when a post by a mutual/mutual in law ticks you off so bad but if you made a post addressing it it would be very obvious what it's in response to

[whywhywhymoney]

kamala khan your aura is too strong, you’re too universally beloved, they are going to kill you and assassinate your character

[whywhywhymoney]

If you could pick an academic field to study out of sheer interest and not the bludgeoning despair of trying to survive capitalism, what would it be? I’d definitely definitely!! do astrophysics.

[whywhywhymoney]

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.

[whywhywhymoney]

And here I think, is the perfect benefit of Earth-2 Helena Wayne. And why she should pretty much always be an Earth-2 character. Having her crossover into main continuity as a fully realised character means it bypasses most of the reasons why a main continuity batcat kid couldn't work organically. They've got to just be thrown in the narrative tbh

why do so many catwoman fans want helena wayne in main continuity they want her to be a soccer mom or what

while this may be the case for some catwoman fans, the problem with most catwoman fans from what i've seen is not that they want her to be a soccer mom. i've seen this argument also used against fans who want batcat to be married, and honestly it's less that some of her fans hyperfixate on marriage and kids because they want her to be a stay at home housewife and more that they don't understand the limitations of the character and the fact that selina cannot do it all. they want selina to have the greatest range of stories and more deserved interactions than just a passing ships-in-the-night dynamic with bruce and that's something i understand but selina cannot have her solo and be a secondary character in the batman comics at the same time. they are also not going to get rid of all the other batman pairings to exclusively work with selina.

[whywhywhymoney]

You know how cooked comics are? At a time when they could tell stories that are really powerful and resonate with people strongly due to the current worldwide political climate, one of the big 2 has a war criminal handling one of their biggest titles, and the other one is owned by a company that we should be boycotting due to its support for an ongoing genocide.

And the worst part is so many of you guys just don't CARE. Because individual writers will slap a lil something something, normally some sort of queerbait, and you'll EAT it up not once stopping to think just how subversive it was for LGBT people to even exist and how they fought and are still fighting. And how this all relates to a joint class struggle! They'll give some lipservice about diversity and you'll go, "Wow! So authentic" but do people in real life even talk that way? And you won't even blink over the creeping imperialist propaganda spreading through those books.

Everything is a deliberate choice - you have to start thinking that way and not handwave questionable decisions. Everything is deliberate - so deliberate on why things are the way they are.