camilliar

[camilliar]

hey! this is a literal blast fromt he past but your comments on the dont call me son literally lit me up ina different way tyyyy while reading i lit would look for your comments first than anyone else have a great day

Love to hear this, ty, compelling evidence in the case of why it's good to leave long comments!

[camilliar]

I think I can add some context for one of these:

I thought it was weird that people would call Ngozi Ukazu “N” instead of typing out her name and I don’t think they would’ve done that if she had a European name 

So this actually strikes me as really typical behavior: fans looove to abbreviate just about everything. Before smush names became the dominant trend for pairings, just the first initial/first initial was pretty common, and canon names consistently become acronyms like this, too. Likely the only reason we don’t refer to Check, Please as "CP” is because that also stands for something you don’t want to get mixed up with in the tags -- but at various points OMGCP was a pretty common thing to call the comic, which is itself an acronym, just a slightly longer one riffing on the comic’s Tumblr URL.

Likewise, creators get initialed pretty often. I am not sure if this is still super common, but in many fandoms it wasn’t rare to refer to whoever had control over a property as “TPTB,” for “the powers that be.” But in other fandoms you get JKR or GRRM or JRRT, and in my other fandom we talk about M&T, that is, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, These are some of the whitest and not just most European, but most Anglophone names. And in the case of SP (that is, South Park), it’s leaving off the last name entirely.

So I’m not fully sure people did this to the creator of Check, Please just because her name wasn’t European -- I’m willing to guess that people would have wanted to first-initial her regardless of what her name was, or what her background was.

I’m also going to guess that there are a few reasons why fans abbreviate things so much. One is that, back when fandom was a little more clandestine, it helped keep fannish activity covert. Another is that when fandom was largely done through sending things, especially printed material, through the mail, not having to type out “Star Trek (the original series)” and just saying TOS probably helped things from getting too unwieldy. Once you get into the internet age, if you’re furiously typing comments anywhere from newsgroups to LJ comments to Tumblr replies to Discord, you can get more out and quicker if you abbreviate commonly understood terms. Likewise, using these signals understanding and therefore belonging: someone not into South Park might gloss over a post that’s just talking about M&T, so in much the way any slang helps define and moderate a subculture, this does, too.

Finally, any time there is a power structure, one of the responses to the people sitting at the time of it is to ... well, not always detrimentally, but, kind of like transgressively subvert it? Like they’re THE AUTHOR who makes the money on this in the real world, but here in transformative fandom, where we’re “laying hands upon the source and twisting it to [our] purposes,” they’re just First Initial to us. We’ve wrenched some control back in this equation -- that is, in some views, the primary point of this sort of fandom. It’s also affectionate, like a nickname. There’s no need for such formality here.

But the equation should probably be subjective: M&T, such as they are, probably have more than a billion dollars between them and an enduring grip on a culture they’ve helped shape, mostly not for the better, over 25 years. Also, again, they’re white (presumably) cishet bros from Colorado. Not taking them seriously enough to bother writing out their names might feel like a more necessary gesture of control than doing the name to Ngozi Ukazu, an author whose cultural identity has historically been obscured -- denied opportunities for authorship. So it makes sense that in this case, you might want to take the few extra seconds to write her full first name out. It’s four more letters.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s weird to abbreviate it, either. I think it’s pretty firmly not weird -- again, it’s like, routinely fannish. And I can also see it being argued from the other angle, that making a point to spell out “Ngozi” whereas you might be just M&Ting it over on your other blog is othering, that it’s treating a non-European name like it’s so incomprehensible you have to spell it out, whereas European names are so familiar they don’t need it.

It’s also worth noting, briefly, Ngozi has pretty regularly referred to herself reflexively as just “Ngozi,” including in the tags of this recent post (in July 2023), in the intro video on her Patreon, and via the signature on her art: usually just NGOZI! all caps, with exclamation point, as seen here (in August 2023).

So I think it’s like, pretty understandable that people would follow the basic trend of thinking of her as just “Ngozi” and then, in writing fervently about the canon, just shorten it to N.

Something I don’t have time to research right now (and may never) is a sense I have that there was a shift perhaps around 2016 or 2017 among people who had a lot more reverence for the comic to stop shortening Ngozi to “N” once it became the subject of discourse -- whereas I think some so-called OMGCP critical people just kept using N.

But at its origin I don’t think this was a weird thing to do at all -- it feels like what would happen in a lot of fandoms. Maybe not all? But nor does this seem like a very unusual gesture.

my hot takes about that era of the fandom: 

I thought it was annoying when people would write Bitty in the most out of character way that they possibly could so they could justify Jack getting with Kent later on in their fic

Relatedly, I thought it was really fucking annoying to see people actively hate Bitty, the main character of Check Please, and talk about how he shouldn’t be as prominent in Check Please, the story about Eric Bittle. I think some of that was also people having issues with Bitty having more feminine interests but I don’t want to enter that minefield tonight

I thought it was frustrating how there was so much Kent fic compared to fic featuring characters of color who were way more prominent and developed as characters in the actual comic. Ditto art. 

I thought that it was bullshit of people to claim they didn’t see a problem in their art when they were coloring Ransom like half a shade darker than the white characters, and to then act like it’s impossible to draw Black people

I thought that it was bullshit how many people infantilized Chowder in their writing, and in general there was a widespread unwillingness to write him as a fully fleshed-out character

I thought it was weird that people would call Ngozi Ukazu “N” instead of typing out her name and I don’t think they would’ve done that if she had a European name

I think some people got to a real uncomfortable level of parasociality for a while and I don’t blame her at all for stepping way back from engaging 

I think in general the fandom has gotten to a way healthier place in recent years

[camilliar]

yeah long time no anything BUT I’ve been thinking about it, here’s my Jack and Bitty interior designcanons:

everything is from Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams

smoked glass, mostly pewter; some amber; just a pop of forest green

leather everywhere, and not just the couches: sidetables, headboards, one entire wall in the ground floor power room; that one’s mottled

mostly brown leather, some black accents

the only patterns we have in this house are stripe

maybe a little houndstooth or tartan, as an embellishment, like a throw pillow

the tan leather living room couch is cuvred slightly

we love brass in this house: drawer pulls, wall hooks, lighting fixtures, it’s all burnished gray-gold in here

also, the outlets and switchplates? brass

nobody who lives here knows how to make a drink but yes there is a fully stocked wet bar and yes there is a full complement of VERY heavy and VERY blocky and very deeply-cut glassware

sports memorabilia? primarily relegated to the finished basement

a lot of things in this house are lacquer, mostly black lacquer

this home is aggressively, aggressively structured

two words: outdoor kitchen

nine words: the outdoor wood-burning pizza oven was imported from ~Napoli~

Eric Bittle will be the last person on this scorched Earth to give up on his lawn, thank you very much, this is a society

[camilliar]

bitty accidentally on purpose starts an mlm

No accident about it, he simply just would.

[camilliar]

@passiveaggressivegummybear​

i appreciate the woman in your icon i just also don’t like her, so

FWIW I don’t think you should appreciate her -- just the fact that the snitty shitpost thing I did in 2016 to point out that, holy shit, people in Check Please are so shallow -- has in fact come around again.

I hope everyone appreciates that the woman in the icon I put on my Check Please fandom journal in 2016 to mock the trend of people having Tumblr handles about random side characters is about to be crowned queen of England

[camilliar]

I hope everyone appreciates that the woman in the icon I put on my Check Please fandom journal in 2016 to mock the trend of people having Tumblr handles about random side characters is about to be crowned queen of England

[camilliar]

have you ever read "they're going to love you" by meg howery? the minute i finished it, it dawned that it absolutely reminded me of "portrait of a julio-claudian man" - love your writing, LOVE the podcast, and absolutely love your all of your meta. there's a truly ~delicious~ story underneath the chipper veneer of check please and i love the way y'all have dug into it (and the story that's actually on the page)

no, but I looked it up, and this does seem like a book I would be into -- thank you for the rec.

also thank you for the nice words, VERY pleased there are other people who GET IT and enjoy my personal pleasuresport, the crime of thinking about Check Please slightly more than we're supposed to.

[camilliar]

Hi! I'm a big fan of your work in the omgcp fandom and I have to tell you I looooove your writing so much. I was rereading your fic portrait of a julio-claudian man (probably for the fifth time?) and it got me wondering if there is still a chance you might post the other stories you were working on in that universe (please do!).

Anyway, I hope you are doing good!

Wow, this is a late reply, I'm sorry. I'm fine? I hope you're okay, too.

There is certainly still a chance, espcially since this ask made me go back and reread the fics I do have partly drafted and plotted out in this series, and they're like, good? Now, what I should do is make a series on AO3 so people can find them all together. Let's see:

Cool.

I mean, I have more to say about this timeline. If I ever truly give up I'll scrap everything and put it in this series.

[camilliar]

Slam-dunk production by Tomato for our vaunted return to podcasting -- wait, what sport is this comic about? IDK, listen to find out.

In all honesty I loved listening to every moment of this episode, and I’m so excited to dive back in. I promise this was worth the wait.

[camilliar]

Wow here’s a link to the podcast

Nobody knows how much I want a TV show of this

god…you would think after seven years my Check Please obsession would abate. and for a while, it felt like it did, a little - but now that I can breathe again and my brain has oxygen in it, the obsession has WOKEN BACK UP. I want everyone I know to read this stupid comic and listen to me talk about it for eight thousand years!!!!!!

[camilliar]

bitty is trade

[camilliar]

Tomato said she couldn’t make out 100 percent of the lyrics so I took a stab at transcribing:

I guess you deserve an apology I made everything about me I’m sorry for everything I said I can’t get you out of my head I’m just a tragdy for your backstory A healing heart gets all the glory I’ll probably show up halfway through To fuck everything up like I always do And I’d always thought I’d be your partner in crime The one you end up with to show that everything’s fine I’m your villain now, please don’t forgive me Cause I hurt you more You deserve someone happy [inaudible backround vocal track] I lie in bed wishing I’d taken your way But on your way to happy Would you show me how I thought I was the one I did what I was supposed to And I hate that it’s all turning out for you My show isn’t up like yours almost is Cause I’m stil stuck not moving on from this I’m sure someday I’ll get my happy ending too But I’ve still got a lot of growing from you to do

I've been working on this song for a while now, and am finally ready to post it! Let me know what you think!

(cw: some suicidal ideation)

[camilliar]

I really like this little song. It’s got a lovely, bittersweet feel. Trying to decide if it’s wrong to call it like a deconstruction of the narrative role of the antagonist in like a literary critique way, but I think it’s clever how it hides its position. I don’t enjoy a lot of filk per se but I’m glad I listened to this.

I've been working on this song for a while now, and am finally ready to post it! Let me know what you think!

(cw: some suicidal ideation)

[camilliar]

I am in a medically odd state that has caused me to be awake one hour too early, and so what can you but make some weirdo post that’s relevant to basically nothing. Whatever is the opposite of timely.

When the Las Vegas and then Seattle NHL teams were announced, I do remember these posts that were like, wow, Ngozi predicted it, magic, some kind of wizard. Especially the second time I wanted to say this, and I don’t know why I didn’t: there are not that many major metro area media markets (or MMAMMs, as I don’t call them) left in the US that don’t have an NHL team. In terms of where to pick a fake expansion, the fact that half of the places she settled on ended up gaining a team isn’t some weird like, wow, Check Please willed it into existence situation. Houston is 8; Seattle 13; Vegas 39 but growing exponentially and typically flush with entertainment tourists, and Providence 56 but in the hockey-happy Northeast and, also, where she basically needed to put a team to make her plot work. (Jack was originally going to play for Boston before copyright became an impediment to that.)  Everything else in the top 15 media markets either already has a hockey team or lost one recentish, in the case of Atlanta. I realize people are somewhat joking, but, what’s actually interesting about it is, at the core of the story is real-world logic, in this case about where in the US it would be profitable to have a major-league hockey team that doesn’t already have one.

Okay, that’s what I came here to say? Yes thanks. Time to go back to sleep for ... wow, 37 minutes?

[camilliar]

VALHALLA

the website still needs tweaking, but it is fully functional, navigable, and has a light/dark reading mode! enjoy! 

p.s. we made this from scratch and it is thus very customizable, so please let tomato know if you have any accessibility requests! 

[camilliar]

I just saw a fan art that I immediately thought was Jack and Bitty, then I scrolled down to the tags and it was Lt. Cdr. Data/Tasha Yar.

[camilliar]