saiditallbefore

[saiditallbefore]

my top 5 harrow moments

“then perish”

calling a recipe book an ‘instruction manual’

saying the teens had underdeveloped brains at her wise age of seventeen

soupgate

telling ortus he looks like a potato even though she’s never seen one

#tlt

[saiditallbefore]

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

[saiditallbefore]

[saiditallbefore]

free my girl. she did all that but so did a male character and nobody cared

[saiditallbefore]

Hallo! My name is Inigo Montoya.

You killed my father.

Prepare to die!

A little portrait of Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride I did back in 2014

Done on 6x6 inch Aquabord with Winsor & Newton Gouache Paints

Sending Big Hugs from the Hobbit Hole. ♥♥♥

Scott

#inigo montoya #the princess bride

[saiditallbefore]

“You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me” Carmilla, 1872.

#carmilla

[saiditallbefore]

No in between. Reblog if you vote pleas

#warm #people will start wearing shorts #I'm from the pacific northwest

[saiditallbefore]

In terms of 'people haven't read comics' I actually think there's a nuanced position people sort of instinctively understand and don't spell out:-

A lot of people enter comics fandom via an adaption medium (be that movies, video games, tv shows, cartoons)

That means they come in with a level of background understanding of various characters existing and some knowledge of them via osmosis, either from adapted stories or reading fic

General fandom discussion tends to coalesce around a small subset of characters and story runs

Because getting into comics is expensive, people preference what's easily available and/or what's most highly recommended in an attempt to maximise a story they will like

This is where all the panicking about 'where to start' comes in - it's overwhelmingly huge to look at and people are scared of 'getting it wrong'

They then read a run of a comic. Given all of the above for DC it's probably going to be a Bat comic, and there's a good chance it's UTRH, Red Robin 1-12, Batgirl 2000, Robin: Son of Batman, or The Court of Owls. They want the best storyline after all and that's what people tell them are favourites

They have also from being peripheral to the fandom noticed discourse about how certain stories/writers 'don't get' or 'ruin' characters and then avoid reading those stories

Because people are likely to only have read this small subset of stories, the discussion then focuses further on that subset

Echo chamber, the narrative that there's no such thing as a consistent canon in comics causes people to continue to avoid reading further, because they've been told Not To Read certain writers, and what they read doesn't really match how the fandom describes it

Because they're enjoying the fandom, they lean into the fanon and just...never read more comics. Sometimes pride themselves on not doing so

You end up with people who have 'read comics' but they mean about 3 famous runs totalling well under 100 issues, and very little comfort with even DC teams or families outside of the Bats

The current situation compounds because people aren’t comfortable with reading characters written by different writers and how that changes the story, even though that’s a huge part of comics

#im a huge huge huge believer in just picking up whatever looks interesting and going from there #(& whatever is available) #because this is how i started #literally no one would rec green arrow/black canary as someones second comic ever but it was mine #(it was v flawed but not irredeemably bad imo) #i think it's also valuable to learn to make up your own mind about whether you like something #just because “everyone” thinks a run is THE definitive run for a character doesn't mean you have to agree #and just because “everyone” thinks a run is bad it doesn't mean you cant find things to enjoy in it #i think people would have a lot more fun getting into comics if they stopped worrying about whether they were doing it right or wrong

[saiditallbefore]

“This horror book is problematic” “horror movie has a problematic scene” this cannot be how we talk about horror I refuse to let people have this be how horror is talked about

Ask yourself some questions: Is the scene/relationship/theme supposed to be horrifying? Where does the horror come from in the story? Who’s point of view is the story from? Is the thing you are vaguely calling “problematic” part of the horror or is it genuinely something that should be critiqued? Why are you personally picking up this horror story? Can you personally handle it if every story isn’t a morality play?

[saiditallbefore]

Brian David Gilbert getting himself adopted by Dropout is one of the best trades of the century

[saiditallbefore]

A lot of people have talked about Benoit Blanc’s accent. Was he always going to sound like that, was that in the original script?

[saiditallbefore]

#palestine #israel #us politics

[saiditallbefore]

[saiditallbefore]

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

[saiditallbefore]

Well, I was willing to forgive one stupid politics post from the person I followed for fun comics stuff but this is the second one 😩 and this one wasn't a reblog

Unfollowed.

#why can't anyone in this fandom be a normal unwanky person #personal

[saiditallbefore]

[saiditallbefore]

The other day I went through my ao3 comments and screencapped the best ones and compiled them all into one document.

And... wow, I seriously recommend this. It takes a while (probably much longer if you're a more popular writer than me!) but I'd forgotten a lot of these and seeing them all together... it legitimately made me cry.

I'm not someone who writes for comments. If people don't want to comment then they dont have to; fanfic is a gift, not a transaction. I put my stories out there and figure they'll find their audience eventually, even if that audience is only one other person ten years from now. Mainly I write because there are stories I want to tell. And I like my own writing, but it's also way too easy for me to see the flaws in it and to compare it to the kind of stories I wish I could write. But this was a good reminder that other people aren't seeing that.

And those people: The sheer amount of people telling me they liked what I'd written, that it made them laugh or cry or that it was hot or that they liked a particular phrase. Some names I saw over and over again for years-- some of them my fandom friends, some of them complete strangers. The people who commented just to say they reread this story all the time. The person who said they were going to share the Yuletide gift I'd written with all their friends. The person who said my story inspired them to write their own.

It was a really nice shift of my perspective. And now I have a lot of those all in one easy place to look at next time I feel discouraged about my writing 💞

#fanfic things