#considering of how UNMARKETABLE it is

[cakesexuality]

"It was our first album, so it didn't have a theme, it was just a compilation of our best songs at the time"

Mental illness. The theme was mental illness. Hope this helps 💖

#maybe they were trying to avoid saying it outright bc of marketability idk #after all the did write a song with an entire verse about how joshs mental illnesses are considered unmarketable

[foursaints]

hi <3

first of all, i wanted to tell you i'm always stalking your blog (in a non creepy way) because i love everything about it. mostly i love how you use your big brain™️ to share some insanely detailed headcanons about some silly dead gay wizards (i mean that in the nicest way possible. i'm a little bit in love with you actually . anyway i'm digressing)

second of all, i wanted to know if you could share some of your thoughts about bartylily🤲🏻 because i'm fairly sure you're the main reason i'm hooked on them

much love <333

ANYTHING for bartylily... lately i've been attached to the idea of a college au where they're Rival Campus Radio Station Hosts.

barty is a spectacularly unmotivated senior who dropped out of a prestigious engineering degree to study practical SFX for horror movies instead. everyone has vague, peripheral knowledge of him after an incident where he was found passed out naked in the campus fountain. his apartment with the slytherins isn't technically a frat house but there's a structure in the kitchen affectionately referred to as the "Leaning Tower of Miller Lite" & barty has a nearly imperceptible crescent-shaped chip in his front tooth from a keg-standing mishap. he wears a lot of chains and has several john carpenter themed tattoos and he REEKS like cigarettes. so many pairs of mystery panties turn up in his laundry hamper that his housemates have started calling it the Lost And Found.

he has a deeply beloved & charmingly unpolished radio show in the primetime spot which mostly consists of him having his friends on, spotlighting terrible underground bands, and making drily ironical, beautifully mean jabs.

lily is an overzealous sophomore who's triple-majoring in three equally unmarketable degrees (it's, like, polisci & international affairs & communications) who's blessed with the gift of taking every single thing that happens on campus WAY too serious. she runs their Model UN like it's the navy. she's the RA who is always marching around her floor in a spaghetti-strap tanktop & bunny slippers with a scrunchie on her wrist, shaking her fist at people. there was a period following her breakup with james where she was literally reading Machiavelli for inspiration. she's right on the precipice of the cool-girl academic meltdown that will lead to Serious Character Growth, but she isn't quite there yet.

her well-made and well-researched radio show is relegated to the midnight timeslot, and even though all her friends listen to it she probably got into a spat with them for saying something along the lines of "obviously i dont care if its just YOU listening to it, remus!!!". she hate-listens to barty's show which she considers (lily voice) An Affront To Collegiate Journalism

they trade barbs at every function and absolutely nobody but the two of them takes their insane imaginary Radio Beef even remotely serious whatsoever. but it's dead serious TO THEM!!! lily is probably camping out in actual bushes with actual binoculars to sabotage his show, and the worst part is that it's actually working. she ISN'T obsessed with him (shut up!!!!!), and barty is mostly just aggravated on principle that the Uptight Lowerclassman Ruining His Life has such nice legs.

and they absolutely bone like crazy about it

#a #this anon made me emotional... warming my ice cold heart #im in love with you too. sorry for getting carried away... they inspire me. #bartylily #t #my lily is usually kind of burnt out & has a shoplifting problem so its nice to have an au where she can be dorkier. #barty is the same as always & i need to **** *** **** about it #one thing about my bcj is that he will always be the worst man on this earth and i'll still love him despite #still a better boyfriend to her than james. sorry #im posting this one a bit late but I always trust that bartylily will find its audience #+ nobody come at me for calling those degrees unmarketable! i am an English major so it's friendly fire !!!

[spritecranverry]

Now I'm admittedly very far from being a professional artist as far as technical skill goes, but can I say something? As just someone who's been online?

With the explosion of works like Spiderverse forcing people to suddenly figure out how to draw a much more diverse array of subjects, a lot of artists have gotten rightfully criticized (esp on twt) for not accurately depicting people with dark skin, body types other than rail-thin, and anyone that has a larger nose or any sort of wrinkle. And frankly I think it's a pattern that everyone either saw or should've seen coming.

I think part of the overwhelming issue here aside from... Racism. Is that the internet and the animation/gaming/whatever-the-fuck-else industry has created a slew of artists that think that being able to draw a pretty white woman and a buff white man with slight variations counts as being an 'expert', and therefore enough to be considered a professional.

And right now it IS enough!

So many of the artists that have received the negative feedback in question either already work or have gotten opportunities to work in the industry for drawing nothing but instagram models because, for companies trying to make money, no one that looks 'unmarketable' is worth even trying to depict. And it's really fucking sad! Because now you can't even really tell these people that it's a fucking skill issue if you cannot draw anyone that isn't D.Va from Overwatch, or get nervous at the sight of the more saturated side of your color picker. But it is a skill issue??

As a professional-level artist, to me? If you understand the anatomy of the nose, variations on it should not trip you up because you should ideally know how noses work, or be using references to remind you. Darker skin or different body types should not trip you up because you should understand how light and color work, how body fat and muscles work, and have done enough real-world observation that isn't just Pinterest!! Jesus fucking christ

#rant #blabbering

[sybilius]

Old Internet Fridays #15: mr.d0x

BITB Attack // whoami

What’s this?

What’s this website?

An independently hosted website/blog for mr.d0x. He describes himself as a penetration tester and security researcher. On this site he posts short and informative explainers of security gaps or phishing techniques.

Okay, how did you find it?

Professional interest, let's say. I don't work in the digital infosec space, and certainly not in the "offensive security professional" space, but it's been on my mind. I ran across this one searching for an entirely separate system and its behaviours. Technically this page pushes the boundaries of "unmarketable", since mr.d0x runs a hacker academy that this page almost surely boosts his cred for. That said, I think it's worth the share just because I'd not seen anything quite like it before -- direct, easy to understand, very interesting.

How's it doing on Internet Archive?

Doing great! Lots of twitter traffic, I think, which makes it easier for the net crawl to find it.

By the way, it's that time of year, if you have some spare change to toss at Internet Archive, please consider it! They're up there with Wikipedia (and maybe more so) for free knowledge, entertainment, archival preservation.

What delighted you about it?

Very matter-of-fact! In particular I chose this BITB example as a way of showcasing how sophisticated some phishing schemes look, and how some of the flashier webapp tools can make us more vulnerable than the good old "the URL needs to be right" verification:

I also really really liked stealing access tokens for Windows Applications, but I feel like full appreciation of that article requires some knowledge of what an access token / REST API is to begin with :)

#old internet fridays #hacking

[valla-chan]

Something I can't stand:

The proliferation of grift culture and "venture capitalist" techbros using AI as a way to steal and resell other people's art has completely ruined the awe and appreciation we had of early AI experiments that didn't hurt anyone, and had inevitably kneecapped those type of projects' continued existence

What am I talking about..? Stuff like background removers, upscalers, vocal removers, frame interpolators, tools to make art seamlessly tile, fucked up nightmare distortion images, AI based vocaloids (made from paid and consenting voice actors), comedic deepfakes, singing faces (think Dame da ne)

The fun stuff, that is either too poor quality to pass for a human creation, or is merely a free tool designed to fill a very specific niche in one step of art creation, or doesn't function in the way we currently think of AI and is made by a closed group of people all being paid for their contributions (eg vocaloid, of which the AI voicebanks are created and used almost the exact same way as they always have, with manual tuning and songwriting, employed voice actors, and the AI part being used to blend phonemes rather than create something from scratch)

Unfortunately I think it was kinda inevitable that AI turned into what it is, because for a lot of high profile people, the grift never ends. We are finding out more and more that those fun, mostly harmless tools they gave us at the beginning as our introduction to AI are being swiftly deprecated and paywalled, because they always intended to fuck us over once it became viable to do so.

And I think, based on the conversations I've had, at first a lot of people didn't really have opinions towards their art going into the AI mush machine, because what it generated was silly and unmarketable. It was deformed rooms with dog faces and scrungly trees. It was a sloppy mess most people considered harmless. And that's how they eased their way into turning theft from artists into something profitable for them, to be sold back to people who want to be artists without the effort. Or maybe not even that. Some don't give a shit about art, and just know that other people like art enough to give the lowest seller lots of money, and use AI as a grifting tool to undercut artists for Lamborghini money.

And now that we know that the people who made our background removers, our image upscalers, our wacky gray goo karl-marx-getting-slimed-at-the-kids-choice-awards generators, our funny singing face tech, etc have taken those data sets that many initially didn't even think twice about, and turned them on us for profit with other tools, there is no way in hell anyone will ever trust a movement like this again.

They played us, and are now crying and wiping their eyes with money about how we feel betrayed and stolen from. Capitalism and grift culture has ensured that the only way that AI could go is towards a point of automating out the emotion, work, quality, and ownership of art itself.

Have you noticed that while these techbro AI image generators have surged in quality, background removers and upscalers have stagnated in quality upgrades? Silly tools like making faces sing have been abandoned in the dust. The actual TOOLS that can be justified— those made from controlled datasets of a specific variety that are designed to help actual artists— have fallen completely out of favor in exchange for a focus on a low effort, generalized art-replacement that can be sold to anyone lazy or conniving enough to buy into it. And maybe the worst part is they're being made by the same companies, sometimes even using the same datasets they hid in the initially harmless tools that we once trusted to remain as such.

It's been so sad seeing the future of hyperspecific tools to help artists turn into this ratrace towards art replacement. I watched many of our opinions shift over time as the culture and tech did. I wrote this because I had a brief recall of "the fun early days" and how people were generally okay with things like that, and how a fair amount of people still are with low-level machine learning tools that aid specific processes rather than replacing them. I don't really have a point to make here. We were once again fucked over by the people who promised to make our work and lives easier, and then raged at for hating them for using that sentiment to abandon those projects in favor of stealing from us on a wide scale.

#ai art is art theft #ai thoughts #ai tools vs ai art

[paragonrobits]

great things about Bruce Banner being in more of a spotlight following Avengers 2012: hooray my favorite marvel hero (that isn’t an X-Man) is actually getting the recognition he deserves! He has ACTUAL FRIENDS and a relatively consistent group of companions rather than him constantly being alone or his canonical friend groups ignored or forgotten, without the implications that this keeps happening because of his own self-destructive tendencies to self isolate! He is now consistently considered a founding member of the Avengers rather than the founding member who immediately left because everyone else ostracized him and was too quick to assume he was the villain!

bad things about bruce banner being in more of a spotlight following Avengers 2012: oh no the fandom is mainly ignoring the unique aspects of his character and details about the comics in favor of shipping him or makign him a background character who does Smart Things

very bad things about the above: OH NO people are consistently ignoring the Hulk’s actual characterization present in the movies in favor of dismissing him as a mindless rage monster despite his habitual showing of mercy and restraint even when in a completely feral rage.

really very bad things about the above: OH SHIT now Disney owns Marvel and as a big name character they are inflicting Mickey Mouse syndrome on him and that means refusing to adapt any elements of his character that would make him less marketable! And the most interesting depictions of him tend to be extremely unstable or self destructive men whose powers are a defense against explicit child abuse and deeply psychological questions, the most interesting aspects of his character is a mountain of unmarketable horror stories!!

extremely bad things about the above in the wake of the MCU being widely disliked and people still taking superficial surface level analyses as fact: OH GODDAMIT NOW YOU HAVE PEOPLE CONSTANTLY COMMENTING ON VIDEOS OF THAT ONE ULTIMATE AVENGERS ANIMATED MOVIE THAT THE MINDLESSLY RAGING HULK IN THAT MOVIE IS HOW HULK SHOULD BE. NO, FUCK THAT. NO, YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS CHARACTER AT ALL, ULTIMATE HULK IS A BAD HULK AND MARK MILLAR IS FUCKING WEIRD ABOUT HIM, HE IS NOT A GOOD BASELINE FOR HULK CHARACTERIZATION, BITING YOU BITING YOU BITING YOU

#marvel #hulk #bruce banner #the MCU has its ups and downs #and unfortunately when your fave is a walkign talking horror story both psycholoically and #whatever you might classify Immortal Hulk as #a marketability focused mega corp is a very bad influence #i mean it invariably is but especially here

[b-a-pigeon]

I've seen some recent discourse on here (some highly outraged!) about how queer books are marketed & discussed on social media and here's my decontexualized two cents because I don't actually want to debate anyone:

Most of the books I've personally seen marketed like "gay! + (list of tropes)" are romances; they're marketed like this bc romances generally are very formulaic and readers generally know what plot beats to expect and are searching for certain specific character archetypes/dynamics. It's effective marketing for the target audience; you and I might just not be in that audience. I have some beef w/mainstream romance but it's not relevant here; my point is that you should know what you're criticizing, at least!

Interpreting like, cis MM romance novels as cynically trying to pander to the gays is a misstep to begin with, imo. The target audience for most of these is straight women. (Before you @ me consider the words "target" and "most!")

Queer books, outside of certain demographics within the romance genre—and YA, maybe? less sure of this one—are still largely considered very niche and unmarketable

Defining a target audience works both ways; cis het people are famously not very chill about being "tricked" into experiencing queer stories. "This book has trans characters" is also transphobe repellent.

On this website and only on this website I've had people scolding me on multiple occasions for mentioning in promotional materials for my books (which, yes, otherwise address the plot, genre, themes, etc.) that there are queer people in them. Like, I've gotten homophobic comments before, but only on tumblr dot com have people been pro-gay-content but anti-acknowledgement-of-gay-content-in-summary. Baffling!

People like to say "I don't care if the books are queer, I care if they're good!" but unfortunately, even though my books are good, saying this is not generally considered an effective marketing technique

This isn't a "you must uncritically support all queer art" post; more of a "perhaps unplug from the discourse before you start tilting at windmills" post :)

#that was more than two cents. but oh well #i'm not an authority on the subject but i know enough to find it annoying when #ppl who don't know what they're talking about get all self righteous over nothing lol

[literaticat]

Is it true that agents will auto-reject a story with a 15-year-old YA protag? I keep hearing that 17 is the 'sweet spot' for YA protags and that 16 is pushing it. And that 15 yo protags are considered completely unmarketable, so agents won't even look at those queries. How true is this? To be honest, most protags in YA these days seem to be seniors in high school.

I can't speak for any other agent, but I can't really imagine "auto-rejecting" a book based solely on the age of the protagonist. And I personally happen to like books about early-teens. So... I'm going to say NOT true.

It IS true that YA nowadays tends to skew older -- a problem, in my opinion -- so a book with 14-15 year olds MIGHT be considered an Upper MG rather than a "true YA", depending on the content and such. But if I love the premise and the writing is great and I want to rep it -- we'd figure that out together.

[knownbyanothername]

there really is like..... an epidemic of older 'qerky' white women abusing younger afabs and telling them it's part of feminism to let them be abused

(putting this under a read more bc of abuse mentions and some slightly more... i guess it turned into a vent? but more in the sense that i started thinking about things. tell me if more warnings r needed)

and to clarify (I'm gonna put that I'm also white and afab so everyone knows where i stand) I'm also well aware that people like this also tend to be horribly transphobic towards transfemmes. and the reason why i say white women is because it's....usually 'cis white woman who thinks by pure virtue as a woman they can like do anything and get away w it because they refuse to acknowledge their own privilege'

but the reason i bring that all up is bc i just remember this... weird as fuck writing professor i had that was basically 'quirky white woman' and was just on purpose extremely bizzare and abrasive because when asked she was 'being the professor she wishes she had' when in reality from my end it made it difficult to go to class and at worst made me absolutely terrified of her

i think of both publishing professors i had who acted as if all writers were dumb babies who needed ~o great publishers~ to make sure they didn't publish anything STUPID or UNMARKETABLE

i think of the business 101 professor i had who put all of us under extraneous circumstances and then justified it with 'well i had to meet my group at 3am so you can too' and acted as if she did some great job of shaping me up when in reality that single class burnt me out so bad it affected my whole college career and just taught me 'no matter how hard you work or how much you cry or beg for help, no one will care or see it so don't try that hard it's not worth it'

i think of the fact that even in college the worst isolation I've felt is from other women

i think about the women's space i emailed asking for an interview for a class project who couldn't even be assed to get my (essentially now deadname) correct when responding to me and talked down to me implying i was wasting their time. i never entered that 'women's space' once during my entire college career, both mortified and realizing i wasn't welcome

no one took the abuse i had suffered seriously because it was from a 'poor old lady' who i was expected to just support like a martyr until she died or i did something to myself. i was taught not to exist.

i think about the fact that every women who i confided in about my abuse in my hometown excused it in some way or another

i think about the fact that it's been mostly other women who essentially defined me as a 'failed girl', even my own parent, and bared me from traditional feminine things that i now finally feel like i can enjoy. it's a miracle i even got an autism diagnosis considering the (female) person i spoke to advised i 'likely don't have adhd' because of the fact i masked and had so many systems, essentially. i was ignored because i wasn't fun quirky, i was 'we're going to act as if you're a failure of an adult but no one will reach out to show you how to do anything'. the response i got from every group i interacted with, implicitly, (of women) was just 'get away from me you fucking freak' without saying that.

all the worst abuse I've suffered, in one way or another, has been from another afab. repeatedly, a circle of time that contorted me to other people.

i think about the fact that i fucking hate most lesbian circles because of how violatile they are, desperate to find the 'imposter' among them, that they make being an asshole their main personality trait.

so when i look at colleen i look at someone i know that at one point my college could have defended. i see one of my many FEMALE professors who decided 'quirky' equated to 'funny emotional abuse'. older women who I've seen repeatedly decide 'i can scold you for not being an adult to my standards but as the matriach I've earned the right to act like a child'

it's a miracle i graduated. well i did, but at the cost of any personhood of mine.

#pichu barks #vent #abuse #abuse mentions #<- for tag filters

[elizmanderson]

tagging @amarajlynn since I'm answering their question from the WIP title game!

The Secret of Celadon Park aka the artist formerly known as The Book Man

contemporary fantasy but also portal fantasy

multi-POV

tall, anxious bi-ace disasterman MC who loves books above all things

sentient garden statue LI

magical circus, magical gardens, magical park

actually the secondary world through the portal had some baller worldbuilding if I do say so myself

sympathetic antagonist(s)

star-crossed secondary characters with tragic romance

temporarily (?) shelved because the plot needs an overhaul, not least because it's a contemporary fantasy for like 2/3 of the book but then becomes a portal fantasy and even considering how ~unmarketable~ my stories generally are, that's probably asking a lot of publishing lmao

#answered #e's writing #title game

[acertainmoshke]

Hello, your w.i.p.s all sound interesting! Hope you don't mind questions! I love worldbuilding and To Die Among the Stars has really caught my attention. It sounds like a sci fi/found family type of story. Do you know why the first FTL test was a disaster? I'm hoping they tested it remotely/without humans before testing it with humans. Judging by your use of “mental wellness centers” I'm guessing this isn't a particularly nice future for some people. So probably not. Was the new crew briefed on why the first one failed, to try and avoid the same mistakes? Have they tested FTL on sentient androids yet or are they like Data from Star Trek, rare and highly experimental? Why did they choose to combine cat and human DNA to get Peppermint? (Not judging, I'd love to read something with a catgirl in space!) Have they tried merging other species with humans before? Oh noo, have they tried bringing back dinosaurs and mammoths? XD Has Space Jurassic Park happened? Sorry for all of the questions, your story blurb there just really intrigued me! I couldn't help myself.

Please please please don’t be sorry!! I love questions and talking about worldbuilding. So, in order:

1. The first test was a decade before the story and it was a huge disaster in the news because it was manned. It wasn’t technically the first test, though. They knew the technology worked and had run small scale tests around the solar system in tiny unmanned crafts. However, putting it together into a system that would work long-distance was too expensive at the time to plan for very many tests. They tested each part but not everything working together. Several trained astronauts and scientists were killed. It has been a while, so things are less expensive now and have been improved. However, this one is manned so they have the data on how people physically and psychologically react to FTL. I don’t want to be too spoilery but…it’s still not perfect.

2. The new crew did have a few weeks of training, much of it on the reports they’re expected to prepare, but also some cursory knowledge of ship upkeep and planetary life should they get that far—for liability reasons, mostly.

3. Both Void and Peppermint are dubiously legal experiments. Void is arguably the first provably sentient android and was kept quiet because they were unable to repeat their success. Also, important to note, unlike Data it doesn’t look human at all. It was like the 30th test and they were running short on funds, so it’s housed in a clunky metal body and honestly is a bit goofy looking.

4. Peppermint is…ok, meta explanation is I wanted an excuse to have a catgirl in space. But this type of genetic experimentation is banned because of eugenics (cruel, futuristic society still has some standards). So January, the scientist who designed both of them, had to keep them quiet too. Nominally, the point was to create a human enhanced with animal abilities, and they tried a bunch of different types. Peppermint was the only one to survive past infancy, and while they are basically a person with cat traits, there are downsides that make it currently unmarketable, either for military or private sector uses. January doesn’t care, she is kind of a mad scientist who does things to see if she can. Technically Void and Peppermint belong to her, so she brought them along to space. They’re the only ones who didn’t actually volunteer.

5. Ok space Jurassic Park has definitely happened NOW. I honestly didn’t consider a lot of the worldbuilding for this story outside of technology and living conditions (I did the least planning for it yet somehow I’m a third of the way through and have barely started the others). But yes this is a world where the justice system is like now but worse, same with healthcare and other factors of life for regular people. But if billionaires in real life can fund random space travel, rich people in my story have definitely funded extinct genetic experiments (which are legal because they aren’t on people). There have definitely been incidents, both with exotic extinct pets and with extinction zoo experiences, but on a less centralized scale than in Jurassic Park.

Thank you so much for this ask and feel free to send more if you have thoughts or questions! I love being made to actually think about the logic of my world!

#moshke writes #answering questions #is a tag I have now! #writeblr #to die among the stars

[sybilius]

Old Internet Fridays #7: Senior Cat Wellness.com

Senior Cat Wellness.com // How to Tell if Your Cat Missed You

What’s this?

-

What’s this website?

A Wordpress-style website of articles about cat behavior and cat care, mainly focused on care of older cats. The site is maintained by one guy, Richard Parker, who is a freelance writer/journalist and an owner of 5 adult cats.

The article linked "How to Tell if Your Cat Missed You" describes a group of behavioral cues that indicate your cat has been missing you while you're away. It also focuses on which are stress indicators for the cat.

Okay, how did you find it?

I wanted a light-hearted topic this week and settled on "cat toe beans" as a topic. I scrolled deep into DuckDuckGo to get past a myriad of links trying to sell me pet products. Mild shoutout to this funnyweird little site crossword-solver.io that I considered taking a pivot and sharing. But it skirts the line of "unmarketable"-- I think the owner of crossword-solver.io fancies if they can get enough internet traffic they can sell adspace on there. The Senior Cat Wellness blogsite really just seems like one guy who loves cats.

How’s it doing on Internet Archive?

GOT THAT SWEET FIRST SAVE ON THE ARTICLE I LIKED :) It was an Aug 30 blog entry so I'm not surprised it hasn't hit the crawl yet.

What delighted you the most?

The post in question cites a study! It shows that this guy is a journalist and is passionate about good cat research. The articles are informative, clear, joyous enough to be clear that they come from a cat owner and not a vet, but humble about their knowledge (in that article he forwards people to a vet if certain behaviours of concern come up). As a cat owner who loves my silly little Hugo Bugo so much -- this was just a fun site to come across :)

#old internet fridays #cats

[legendofcora]

I really, really, really detest how much space is taken up on this site with this obsessive preoccupation with the state of tumblr itself

Im really not exaggerating when I say that every third post is one of the following:

(“I remember tumblr”) (“stop talking about us like we’re dead”) (“sometimes I can still hear its voice”)

PSA FOR NEW USERS 📢

Omg tumblr isn’t tiktok stop doing _____

This is why tumblr is better than Twitter

You can only get content like this on hellblr.com

<<<unreadably long wall of text reciting the financial history of tumblr irt the nature content ban and unban and re-ban>>>

Rebagel and put in the tags how long you’ve been here

Hahahaha we’re unmarketable, this site doesn’t function, the app is held together with rubber cement and scrap yarn

I’m so fucking sick of it. Can y’all please for the love of Christ stop making the same four fucking posts. I do not get on here to talk about tumblr. I’m here to use it. Can we talk about literally anything else please. I’m begging at this point. I am considering pulling out my credit card to blaze this post because that is how badly I need y’all to shut the fuck up about tumblr.

#I’m gonna make a meme about it #don’t test me #melonblogging #I’ve thought about leaving this site a lot the last few days. I’ve been on it for over a decade so I probably won’t #but like #Jesus mary and cuck ass joseph.

[puellafuriadarkmagica]

There is, I think, this notion in the landscape of the pop-culture plutocracy under which we live that a person's tastes straying from the mainstream is pretentious, somehow, on an ontological level. I honestly could not disagree more, although I like to wear the label with some sarcastic pride (which is why PFDM is narrated by such a condescending, egotistical caricature of myself). But I think I have some idea of what this nonsense is all about.

I think the idea in the heads of the mainstream crowd is twofold: First, that the image of the gatekeeping hipster circa 2013 still exists in the public consciousness, and anyone bearing a modicum of zealotry for something niche that they enjoy is moments away from living up to this image at any moment. Second is some kind of myth of common knowledge, that something's importance must correlate directly to its popularity, or else why would it be popular?

I think both of these are perfectly reasonable beliefs to have, if you're the type to discuss your relationship with the creative pursuits using words like "influencer", "content", "consuming", "media", &c. on the regular. I think possibly even in PFDM's initial months of gestation in my head, even I did, although I tried to tell myself I didn't. More on that in a second.

The fact is that, behind the façade of irony and pretentiousness I put forth, I wouldn't consider myself a hipster or even a contrarian. I just think I can't stand 99% of what is mainstream because it means nothing. Because it's had all its corners rounded off to be as dull, unchallenging, inoffensive and (gasp!!) marketable as possible. It's insincere. Almost all top 40s hits or blockbuster films or streaming service original series or whatever feel so insincere, it's like I'd be paying $9.99 a month to be lied to, to my face.

And this is an important difference I hadn't thought to watch for until some time into writing PFDM. If I might set an upper bound on the amount of honesty about myself I care to show off on this blog, perhaps I had this assumption in my head that if I constructed a grand enough epic, no matter what, it would come to be celebrated in the same breath as the big-leagues PMMM fics I spent a great effort ripping off just a couple of chapters ago.

But in failing at that spectacularly, not least of all because of the undeniable irrelevance of PMMM itself, I found something far more satisfying:

You.

Yes, you specifically.

How many people read PFDM a month? A few hundred. How many people are, to my knowledge, fans of it? Like six or seven. And this is only natural for something so multifaceted, demanding... unmarketable. You either adore it or you don't care at all. And given how my prior works before this had garnered dozens of casual fans who certainly enjoyed but would never really “get it”, I definitely, without a doubt, prefer it PFDM's way. And I'm sure to maybe a couple of you this is exactly why it's worth reading at all.

So what's the takeaway of all this? I don't know. This is just something I've been sitting on in response to being repeatedly told "this should have so many more likes/views!" I'm certainly flattered by the idea that what I'm doing is so good, it's worth other people's time, but I'm not sure what response is being asked of me. Really, if you want more people to get into PFDM, you're going to have to tell them yourself. Neither of us can make a horse drink, but I'm only providing the water. You have to lead it here.

[dragontatoes]

I know you’re having fun with identities that are considered slightly offensive by liberals, thinking that they’re too “unmarketable” for companies to put on a target t shirt, and I’m not going to try to stop anyone, in fact I’m also having fun with the faggot jokes. But “trans” was NOT marketable fifteen years ago. Not even “lesbian”. We take it for granted that they will never try to sell the word “faggot” back to you, but, I’m beginning to believe we are about 8 years away from a good luck charlie reboot where teddy’s tween gen alpha kid Breighneley has a gender neutral friend that spends a whole special episode explaining how they identify as a transvestite or “tranny” for a short cute nickname, and nobody learns anything, and transphobes take it as an opportunity to begin using it pejoratively until it’s a slur again. And so the chicken lays the egg and the egg hatches as a chicken etc

#uncensored slurs