#i have too many things to say about this gifset | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sindar-princeling · 2 years

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between the newsletter’s entry where we learn the ponies are okay, me picking apart rings of power and analysing why it doesn’t fully feel like tolkien, and this one gifset of frodo and sam i reblogged, i felt like i finally have to gather my thoughts regarding what makes tolkien tolkien

and while there are many things that do, i’d argue that the most special one is its earnestness.

characters in LOTR care unabashedly, with all their hearts, and love so easily, whether it’s platonic, familial or romantic.

the hobbits feel like the most obvious example - merry, pippin and sam follow frodo for as long as they’re able; their loyalty goes deep to their bones, and their relationships are so full of trust, joy, devotion, fondness.

but all of LOTR is just more examples of the same thing. after the war legolas spends the rest of his life in middle-earth with gimli - they travel together for over a hundred years - and then he decides he won’t just say goodbye when gimli dies! and he does something that hasn’t been done before and just takes gimli to valinor, but not before aragorn dies. because they both loved him, too. faramir asks “do you not love me, eowyn?“ and she realises she does, and he says he’ll marry her and they’ll grow a garden and heal, and he kisses her even though everyone can see them. sam loves frodo, and he loves rosie, and he spends his life with her, then joins frodo in the undying lands after she dies.

and it shines through in the movies, too! it’s thanks to both the direction and the acting skills of the cast, of course, that so, so often all emotions are on full display - whenever sam and frodo interact, when aragorn kisses boromir’s forehead, when the hobbits say goodbye at the grey havens, when pippin finds merry at the battlefield, the way gandalf reacts when frodo says he’ll go to mordor, the way theoden breaks down at his son’s grave, the way he cares about eowyn like she’s his own child, the way eomer reacts when he finds eowyn and thinks she’s dead. those are just examples off the top of my head.

it’s also very special to me because in many fictional works (not only in fantasy) people just aren’t allowed to be that open - mostly men, but not exclusively - meanwhile this earnestness is something i always look for in fiction.

it stands out especially if you consider some fantasy creators (not naming any names but you know who i mean ajsjdjfjf) saying they “just want to reflect the misogyny of the period” (which is just bullshit and also demeaning to people of all genders in so many ways), because while LOTR is heavily male-dominated, tolkien managed to do something very, very interesting and important there.

he says, “war is the province of men”, but it doesn’t mean you’re supposed to want to be there. you’re not supposed to want to go to battle, suffer and/or die. eomer wants eowyn to stay home because he loves her, and couldn’t stand to see her die in a cruel, gruesome way (and when he thinks she’s dead, it’s the most devastating display of grief in the whole movie trilogy).

the heroes go to war because there are things that need defending, and dying for a noble cause is honorable, but again - it’s about defending, not about fighting. the clearest villains of LOTR are people who want the war to happen. many of the heroes, most of whom are men, just want peace for their people, want companionship (one of the first things aragorn says to the hobbits is that he’d be happy to have more friends, because being a ranger means he’s lonely), or want a good meal and a good drink like the hobbits. they want comfort and warmth. they want to finish a book like bilbo. they want to live in a garden among all things that live and grow like faramir. they want to marry and have a home and kids like sam.

and the things is, it’s not always that common in fiction, but it’s absolutely common, you know. IN REAL LIFE? BECAUSE MEN ARE PEOPLE? so it’s just really good to have tolkien absolutely divorce masculinity in his works from how his characters show emotions, or how much comfort they crave. and that is a realistic approach i’m interested in.

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kinnbig · 2 months

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✨ Simple Gif Colouring for Beginners ✨

I wrote up my basic gif colouring process for a friend recently, but a couple of people here mentioned they'd also find it helpful! so, as requested, this is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of the way I colour my gifs :) it's aimed at brand new gif makers with no prior experience with photoshop or photo editing.

when I first started gif making I found colouring and photoshop in general suuuper daunting, so I've tried to simplify everything here as much as possible. hopefully this will be relatively easy to follow and not too intimidating!

a couple of things to begin with:

I'm only talking about colouring here - this is not a full gif making tutorial. I've linked to some of my favourites of those here!

I personally like to make bright, 'clean' looking gifs with vibrant but natural colours, so that is the style of colouring this tutorial is geared towards. most of gif colouring is subjective and about personal taste - the only thing that I'd say is possible to get wrong is skin tones, which I talk about a lot in this guide.

as I mostly gif Thai dramas, most of the advice is geared towards colouring for East Asian/South East Asian skin tones - but the techniques should be fairly universally applicable (and here are some tutorials that talk about gif colouring for other skin tones).

I'm not an expert! I'm not claiming this is the best or the only way to colour gifs - it's just how I do it.

this post is very image-heavy. if the images aren't loading (or the gifs are running slowly or cutting/looping weirdly), then try viewing the post in its own tab (rather than on the your dash or someone's blog) and refreshing the page.

okay, full walkthrough beneath the cut!

contents:

1. intro a. natural gif colouring goals b. very very basic colour theory 2. super simple colouring (the essentials) a. curves b. selective colour (and skin tone correction) c. hue/saturation d. saving and reusing colouring e. another simple colouring example 3. other adjustment layers a. brightness/contrast b. levels c. vibrance d. colour balance e. channel mixer 4. troubleshooting a. curves b. saturation 5. fin!

1. intro

the colouring part of gif making can be super overwhelming, especially if (like me when I first started!) you're completely new to photoshop and/or have no experience with colour theory or photo/video editing.

if you're opening photoshop and making gifs for the first time, I highly recommend getting used to making a few basic, uncoloured gifs to begin with. just to practice, rather than post anywhere (though you can always come back and colour them later if you want) - but it'll make the rest of the process much easier if you're already beginning to get used to working in timeline mode of photoshop. give yourself a bit of time to practice and get a feel for things like how many frames you tend to like in a gif, where you like to crop them for the best loop, what kind of aspect ratio you like etc* - so that you're not trying to navigate all of that for the first time on top of everything else!

* frames: for me between 60-90 frames is ideal, but 40-120 frames is the absolute min-max I'd personally use in a normal gifset loops: for the smoothest loops, try to avoid cutting someone off mid-movement or mid-word if possible. aspect ratio: for full-size (540px) gifs, I tend to go for either 8:5 (slightly 'skinnier' gifs), 7:5, or 5:4 (particularly big, thick gifs lmao)

✨ natural gif colouring goals

part of what can be so daunting about starting gif making is not knowing where to start or what you want to achieve. this is definitely something that gets easier with practice - the more gifs you make, the more you'll get a feel for what kind of look you like and the more instinctively you'll know how to get there. it also helps to see if any gif makers you like have made "before and after colouring" posts - these can help with getting a sense of the kinds of changes made through gif colouring. here's one I made!

in general, I like to make my gifs bright and 'clean' looking, with vibrant but natural colours. these are the things I'm usually hoping to achieve with colouring:

brighten dark scenes

remove muddy, yellowish lighting or filters

saturate colours

correct any skin lightening filters or overexposure

make lighting and colours as consistent as possible between gifs within a single gifset, especially gifsets featuring gifs from multiple scenes/episodes/videos

this guide is focusing on natural colouring, but of course there are many cool ways to make stylised/unnaturally coloured gifs. imo you'll need to master these basics first, but if you want to learn how to do things like change the background colour of gifs or use gradients or other cool effects, then @usergif's resource directory has loads of super helpful tutorials!

✨ very very basic colour theory

[disclaimer! I don't know shit about fuck. I do not study light or art. this is just an explanation that makes sense to me exclusively for the purposes of gif making.]

the primary colours for light/digital screens are red, blue, and green. having all three colours in equal measures neutralises them (represented by the white section in the middle of the diagram).

so to neutralise a colour within a gif, you need to add more of the colour(s) that are lacking.

in practice this usually means: the scene you want to gif is very yellow! yellow is made of red and green light, so to neutralise it you need to add more blue into your gif.

it can also mean the reverse: if you desaturate the yellow tones in a gif, it will look much more blue.

looking at the colour balance sliders on photoshop can make it easier to visualise:

so making a gif more red also means making it less cyan.

removing green from a gif means adding magenta.

taking yellow out of a gif will make it more blue.

tl;dr:

neutralise yellows by adding blue (and vice versa)

neutralise reds by adding cyan (and vice versa)

neutralise green by adding magenta (and vice versa)

2. super simple colouring (the essentials)

starting with a nice sharpened gif in photoshop in timeline mode. (these are the sharpening settings I use!)

some scenes are much harder to colour than others - it helps to start out practising with scenes that are bright/well-lit and that don't have harsh unnaturally coloured lights/filters on. scenes with a lot of brown/orange also tend to be harder.

I usually save a base copy of my gif before I start colouring just in case I end up hating it, or find out later that it doesn't quite fit right into a set and need to redo it etc.

so here is my base gif!

it's an okay gif, but it has a bit of a yellow tint to it that I want to reduce.

colouring is easiest to do in adjustment layers, which can be found under layer -> new adjustment layer - or for me they are here:

there are lots of different types of adjustment layers that do lots of different things - but for me the absolute essentials for colouring are curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation.

I also use brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, vibrance, colour balance, and channel mixer sometimes, depending on the gif - but I use curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation on every single gif.

✨ curves layer

the first thing I always do is a curves layer. when you first open one it will look like this:

first I usually click the ‘auto’ button, just to see what happens. sometimes it makes a big difference (it usually brightens the gif a lot) - but on this gif it didn’t do much.

if it had made the gif look nicer then I would have kept it and added a second curves layer on top to do the rest of these steps.

the next step is selecting the white and black points with the little eyedropper tools.

the bottom eyedropper lets you pick a white point for the gif. click somewhere super light on the gif to see what happens - for this gif, I clicked on the lampshade on the left. if it looks weird, I just undo it and try somewhere else - it usually takes a few goes to find something that looks good.

here's what that did to the gif:

then I pick the top eyedropper and use it to pick a black point by clicking somewhere really dark, again playing around until I find a black point that looks good.

here's what the gif looks like after picking the white and black points:

this can take some experimenting, but you can make super easy drastic changes to your gif just with this. in this case, the curves layer took out a lot of that yellowy tint.

and this is what the curves graph looks like now:

you can click and drag those lines to make further changes if you want - I usually leave them alone though. the colours of the lines indicate which colours have been changed in the gif - for example, you can see from that steep blue line on the graph that blue has been added to neutralise those yellows.

next I usually do another curves layer and just press the ‘auto’ button again to see what happens. usually it brightens the gif a bit more, which I like.

‼️if nothing is working: usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :( the troubleshooting section at the end goes over some options, including starting with a levels layer instead.

✨ selective colour (and skin tone correction)

skin tones are made up of a mixture of yellow and red.

removing yellow (or adding blue or red) to a gif will make the skin-tones too red - and removing red (or adding cyan or yellow) to a gif will make the skin-tones too yellow.

adding blue to this gif with the curves layer took out the yellowy tint, which I wanted - but it also took the yellows out of Kim's skin tone, which I don’t want. so I need to put yellow back into the skin tones specifically - without putting it back into the rest of the gif.

selective colour layers let you select an individual colour and adjust the levels of other colours within that colour. you can change how yellow the green shades are, or how much cyan is in the blues, for example.

I need to add yellow back into the red tones to correct the skin tones on this gif. this is the case for most gifs in my experience - the vast majority of the time, unless a scene is very heavily tinted in another colour, a curves layer will add blue/remove yellow.

in the 'colors' dropdown, select the 'reds' section and drag the 'yellow' slider higher - this will add more yellow into just the red shades within the gif.

the amount of yellow you need to add back into the reds depends on how much yellow was taken out of the gif initially - I just play around with the slider until it looks right. if you're not sure, it helps to have some neutrally-coloured (not white-washed!) reference photos of the people in your gif to compare to.

here's the result. Kim's skin is a lot less pink toned and much more natural looking:

✨ hue/saturation

this adjustment layer lets you adjust the hue and saturation of the gif as a whole, and also of each colour individually.

I don't use the hue or lightness sliders unless I'm trying to do something more complicated with the colouring.

clicking the dropdown menu that says 'master' lets you edit the saturation of each colour individually. this is useful if your gif is still super tinted in one colour.

I thought the yellows on this gif were still slightly too bright, so I switched to the yellow channel and desaturated them slightly. (remember if you do this then you need to go back to selective colour and add more yellow into the red skin tones to balance out the desaturation!)

then I increased the 'master' saturation of all the colours to +5:

I usually find the right amount of saturation is somewhere between +5 and +12, but it depends on the gif.

‼️if the gif feels undersaturated, but the saturation slider isn't helping/is making the colours worse, try a vibrance layer instead.

done!

✨ saving and reusing colouring

you can copy and paste adjustment layers between gifs to make your colouring even across each of your gifs for one scene - so if you're making a set of multiple gifs of the same scene, or you think you might want to gif the same scene again in the future, you can save it as a psd so you can reuse the colouring again later.

each gif's colouring will then still need tweaking - different cameras/angles/shots of the same scene can still start out with slightly different colouring.

I recommend uploading the gifs as a draft post on tumblr so you can see what they all look like next to each other and catch any inconsistencies.

✨ another one! (speedrun!)

HI KEN!

the white point for the curves layer was in the window behind them.

the curves layer removes the muddy yellow tint, but again it makes their skin tones (especially Ken's) very red toned, which is adjusted by the selective colour layer.

3. other adjustment layers

imo many many gifs can be coloured really nicely with just those three adjustment layers, but some need different adjustments.

✨ brightness/contrast

pretty self explanatory!

I personally usually avoid using the 'brightness' slider because I rarely like the effect - I only tend to use the 'contrast' one.

the 'auto' button is sometimes useful though, especially if you’re struggling with the curves layer.

✨ levels

levels alters the white and black points of the gif, like curves - but unlike curves it doesn't also alter other colours.

use the sliders beneath the graph to alter how dark/light the gif is. you can slide the black slider further to the right to make the blacks darker, and the white slider to the left to make the whites lighter.

levels is a good place to start if your curves layer isn't working.

(I'm going to hit the image limit for this post lol so here are some screenshots of a table I made to demonstrate this rather than actual gifs. sorry!)

on both sides, I dragged the sliders up to where the big jumps are on the graph - this is usually a good place to start!

✨ vibrance

vibrance... makes the colours more vibrant. it's more subtle than saturation.

it's really helpful for gifs that feel grey. sometimes adjusting saturation just makes the greys kind of weirdly tinted, but a vibrance layer can fix that.

vibrance is much more subtle!

✨ colour balance

colour balance affects the overall balance of colours within a gif.

it's good for scenes with heavy tints.

I tend to stick to the 'midtones' dropdown, but you can also alter the colour balance within the shadows and highlights if you want.

✨ channel mixer

I avoided channel mixer for such a long time because it scared me. but it's great for scenes that are very heavily tinted in one colour.

basically, it works with the levels of red, green, and blue within a gif. you select an output colour and then play around with the levels of the colour you selected within each other colour.

kind of the reverse of selective colour?

so in the 'blue' channel, the levels of blue are at 100%, and the levels of red and green are at 0% - but you can impact how much blue is in the reds and greens and blues.

this tutorial explains it well - but imo the best way to get to grips with channel mixer is just to play around with it a bit (sorry)

(when I made this guide for my friend, I also made a slightly more complicated gif colouring walk-through that included using channel mixer. there isn't space to include it within this post, but if anyone is interested I could always upload it as an 'intermediate' gif colouring tutorial - lmk!)

4. troubleshooting

‼️curves

usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :(

for example, with this base gif:

using many of the brightest points as a white point turn it wacky colours, like this:

yikes :(

some options for these cases:

try brightening the gif first with the 'auto' button on the curves layer or with a levels layer. having a brighter gif to start with can give you better options for picking a white point.

try finding an alternate, whiter/brighter white point. look for places the light reflects - on this gif, using the light on Porsche's cheekbone works well as the white point. it also helps to find places that would be white if the scene wasn't tinted - the lightest part of a white shirt is often a good place to start, for example.

skip the curves layer, and instead use a levels layer to alter your white/black points, and colour balance or channel mixer to balance the colours.

‼️over/undersaturation

if your gif (especially the skintones) is looking a little washed out or lifeless, it might be undersaturated. boost that saturation - or if that's not working, try a vibrance layer.

oversaturation is often easiest to spot in the mouths and ears of any people in a gif. if the mouths are looking unnaturally, vibrantly red, then you've gone too far with the saturation.

5. fin!

and done! I hope this was coherent helpful to somebody.

if there's anything that I've missed or that doesn't make sense pls feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to help! I've also collated a bunch of additional reading/resources below.

happy gifmaking 🥰

✨ some links!

photoshop basics by @selenapastel

gifmaking for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki

gifmaking guide for beginners by @saw-x

dreamy's gif tutorial by @scoupsy-remade (includes instructions on how to blur out burned-on subtitles or annoying video graphics)

beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza

how to fix orange-washed characters by aubrey-plaza

colour correcting and fixing dark scenes by @kylos

does resampling matter? by usergif

how to put multiple gifs on one canvas by @fictionalheroine

watermarking using actions by @wonwooridul

resource directory by @usergif

#i got a couple of asks about this so i figured i'd type it up as a post #it's been sitting in my drafts for a while now though i'm so sorry omg.#i had to replace my laptop and it took me a while to get round to downloading photoshop on the new one #but i hope this is helpful!!#gif making #tutorial #photoshop tutorial #colouring tutorial #coloring tutorial #gif colouring #gif coloring #photoshop resources #gif tutorial #gif resources #userbunn #uservik #darcey.txt #darcey.gif #usergif

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bengiyo · 2 months

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Hi, i'm a newish bl drama watcher from thailand that just started watching thai bls. i'm a bit ashamed to say that for a long time as a gay man living here i've been avoiding bl shows like the plague cuz of both the fandom reputation and of misconception from my yaoi era which i leave far behind. i'm just want to ask how did you got into watching thai bls and what were you preconception before you got into it.

Welcome to the Tumblr side of BL fandom. I'd actually like to also hear more of your experience with yaoi and BL as a gay person growing up in Thailand if you're willing to share.

For me, I'm a Black American from the Gulf Coast (the South). I grew up in a Catholic city and spent my entire adolescence in the closet. Despite having a sense of who I was as early as 8 years old, I kept most of that to myself. Because I didn't talk about it much with people, I found out most information about queer media and queerness from the internet.

I entered BL via queer cinema. I think the first explicitly gay character that I remember from TV was Marco from Degrassi: The Next Generation. There were probably others, and definitely more subtle expressions, but when I think about the oldest gay character I remember and connect to, it's Marco. I don't like counting things like shipping Shawn and Corey on Boy Meets World or Tai and Matt on Digimon for oldest gay characters. Sailor Moon can't even count because we got a censored version of it in America.

I got access to satellite television away from observing eyes around age 16 and started watching content on Logo back when they aired gay content regularly. I watched basically whatever I could late at night. It's how I saw movies like Get Real (1998), Beautiful Thing (1996), and Bent (1997). It's also how I saw Queer as Folk (2000-2005) Noah's Arc (2005-06).

After hitting adulthood I mostly got lost in video games and standard American TV for a while, but I did basically show up to any Gay Event in TV. I appreciate that Stef and Lena from The Fosters (2013-2018) were some of the only TV lesbians to survive the horror of 2016.

I watched a bunch of movies in this time, many of which appear on the Queer Cinema Syllabus I made for a hypothetical Westerner new to BL and queer cinema, which @wen-kexing-apologist has decided to try to complete.

I got into Thai BL in 2018 accidentally. I started seeing gifsets of Kongpob telling Arthit he'll make him his wife passing around Tumblr and was basically like, "Right, what's all this then?"

I had watched a few Thai gay films, mostly notably Love of Siam (2007), Bangkok Love Story (2007), How to Win at Checkers Every Time (2015), and The Blue Hour (2015), but this was the first time I was seeing a long series made available so easily from any Asian country.

From there I got into Make It Right (2016-17) and Love Sick the series (2014). Once I realized that yaoi had moved beyond manga and a few anime adaptations, I went looking for a lot more. I basically haven't left since I started in about 2016 with SOTUS.

There's my basic entry into the genre. I don't think I was as worried about fandom and worries at the time because so much of being a fan of queer cinema was a mostly-private experience for me for so long. I didn't realize that BL fans active in the space would predominantly be women or queers figuring themselves out. It took a while to adjust to that, and also to adjust my expectations of the kinds of queer stories BL distributors were willing to fund.

That being said, I tend to agree with @absolutebl that BL has a useful role in normalization for non-queer audiences who encounter it. I like cheering BL when it does things I think work really well, and also deriding it when I think it does things that are offensive to help nudge the genre and offer my perspective as a gay man.

I like the place we're at right now where there's way too much to watch for any person with other hobbies and responsibilities because it means that people can pick and choose what's to their tastes.

More often than not, I'm probably most-invested in something airing from Japan because of my melancholy nature, but there's so much variety these days that it's okay if you don't like everything. I certainly don't!

I'm glad you joined us on Tumblr and look forward to your thoughts!

#answered #thai bl #fandom life #about me

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scoobydoodean · 3 months

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what’s your opinion on “lebanon”? as it actually is in the show and how fans/fic writers interpret/approach it.

cause i’ve been binge-reading “lebanon” fics and i’ve noticed two patterns: sam might argue with john or he stays calm but regardless he preaches to dean about what a terrible father john was, and dean always falls back into his performing and just keeps defending john. now i love all that angst, really i love it so much, these fics are phenomenally written… but i’m just wondering if i’m crazy to think that dean wouldn’t actually fall back into that role to such an extent, and whether the episode actually kinda got it right by having dean feel secure with his family as it is. iirc my issue with the episode is that neither dean nor sam got to express any issues with john in an honest but civil way (and that john is too nice) but that still i liked dean’s expression of security, but tbh it’s been awhile since i last watched it so maybe i’m missing/misremembering smth… thanks!

One of the strangest things I see in fandom is how many people's sense of how Sam views John versus how Dean views John is just flat out wrong. The idea that Dean is always defending John while Sam is always criticizing him the whole show is negated over and over and over in the actual show itself—extremely overtly.

There's two issues here in my mind that lend to this fandom problem.

The fandom accepting Sam and Dean's "John Narratives" at face value in the early episodes of season 1. For example, watching 1.08 "Bugs", where Dean claims to have no resentments toward John and says Sam also was a dick during Sam and John's fight, and going, "Well there we go. Dean has no resentments and refuses to criticize John but Sam will." At this point, we already know from 1.06 "Skin" that Dean does have resentments toward John for not appearing to care about him and for abandoning him, and we get further indications in 1.11, and 1.21 in this season alone. Another example is Sam and Dean's clashes in 1.10 "Asylum" and in 1.11 "Scarecrow", which are largely analyzed by the fandom as moments where Dean is blindly following orders when they have some other, better option Sam is pushing, and Dean is just refusing to go along with Sam's much better ideas because he's too focused on believing their dad knows best... when that is not actually what is happening at all. Sam's alternative plans in the beginning of 1.10 and 1.11 are absolutely stupid. In 1.10, he wants to call the FBI on John to find him. That's his big idea—instead of following the coordinates John just sent them and seeing if he's there. In 1.11, Sam's big bright idea on finding John is to abandon some people to die on a time-sensitive case so he can go search all of Sacramento for John with nothing but an area code. His plans are dumb, plain and simple—and while we do see Dean hiding his own resentments in these episodes too, that does not remain true—which brings me to the other issue here.

Fandom doesn't leave room for the brothers perspectives on John and their outward expressions of those perspectives to shift or mature over the series. This is particularly funny because their perspectives are literally swapping over the course of season 1, and have pretty much fully swapped by 2.02.

Sam's shifting season 1 perspective on John

What actually happens in season 1, is that Sam, who starts out burning with resentment and hurt toward John for disowning him and being a smothering drill sergeant and absent, binge-drinking dad, slowly begins empathizing him because he's now suffered a similar trauma and is having extreme difficulty coping with it himself! Sam's empathy for and understanding of John (and hell—even respect for John handling it as well as Sam thinks he was capable) is already beginning to show in 1.02—where Sam asks Dean "How does Dad do it?" (i.e., deal with the same burning rage and desperation for vengeance that is tearing Sam apart) (gifset). In 1.04, he learns John was bragging about Sam's accomplishments to other people (gifset). In 1.08, when Dean tells Sam that John was never actually disappointed in him—that he was scared Sam would get hurt if he wasn't around (gifset here) a lot of Sam's anger about the Stanford fight fades. He ends the episode saying "Dad did the best he could" (a repeated quote often misattributed as coming more from Dean) and saying he wants to find him to apologize to him for the things he said (gifset). John and Sam share a heartfelt, tearful hug in 1.16—at the end of which Sam begs John not to leave, and in 1.20, John himself apologizes and explains what was going on in his head when they fought, and it ends with them smiling and laughing as they acknowledge they understand each other and they're the same. I track Sam and John's relationship through the tag, #we probably have a lot more in common than just about anyone because Sam says that during that conversation in 1.20 (gifset).

Dean's shifting season 1 perspective on John

At the same time this shift is happening in Sam, we see Dean going the exact opposite direction. He starts out believing John has their best interest at heart even if they don't understand his actions, but the resentment is there too (1.06). In 1.09 and in 1.12, Dean needs help desperately, and John doesn't answer. While Sam is learning that John actually cares about him, Dean is growing more and more concerned that John doesn't care about him (Dean) specifically. We see this resentment start to come out (season 1 compilation set here) in 1.20, when John says he wants to keep the boys safe and that's why he's ditching them, and Dean calls it "A bunch of crap". Dean begins standing up to John to his face from this episode onward—finishing 1.20 with a "Yeah well we saved your ass" in response to John saying they disobeyed him. In 1.21, John tries to get on his case, and Dean lays into him about not answering the phone and specifically about abandoning Dean when Dean needed him in 1.09 and 1.12. In 1.22, Sam tries to get his way by telling Dean that John wouldn't want them to bring The Colt to save him, and Dean yells "I don't care what Dad wants!" and then when Sam starts throwing the blame on him for everything, Dean says,

Well, you and Dad are a lot more alike than I thought, you know that? You both can’t wait to sacrifice yourself for this thing. But you know what? I’m gonna be the one to bury you. You’re selfish, you know that? You don’t care about anything but revenge.

Dean has compared Sam and John more than once during the series, and it has never ever been a compliment.

Sam and Dean in the rest of the series

Sam and Dean's interactions about John in rest of the series are... almost universally the opposite of what the fanfics you've picked up suggest. Their interactions almost always show Dean criticizing John and Sam keeping silent or defending him, or reiterating that John did what he had to/the best he could.

Gifset on Dean's whole season 2 "Fuck John Winchester" vibe here.

In 2.01, Dean shouts at John for (it appears) abandoning him to die:

DEAN Come on, Dad. You've gotta help me. I've gotta get better, I've gotta get back in there. I mean, you haven't called a soul for help. You haven't even tried. Aren't you going to do anything? Aren't you even going to say anything? I've done everything you have ever asked me. Everything. I have given everything I've ever had. And you're just going to sit there and you're going to watch me die? I mean, what the hell kind of father are you?

Sam and John have a horrible fight where John blames him for Dean's condition and Sam tells him to go to Hell only for him to make a demon deal and literally go to Hell that same day (gifset) and Sam tries to start another fight right before John dies but John refuses to engage (gifset). The result ends up being that Sam and Dean have fully swapped places on John by 2.02 with John's death as the catalyst. John's death leaves Sam with regrets that their last interaction was Sam trying to start a fight (2.02). He decides he wants to hunt in John's memory (2.02) (gifset1, gifset2) while a part of Dean desperately wants to quit the life altogether—he's clawing the walls but feels helplessly trapped (2.09, 2.10, 2.20).

Sam defends John while Dean suggests John lead them down the wrong path with a dogmatic rule book (2.03). He demands they go to Lawrence so he can place John's dog tags over Mary's grave (2.04). He spends the season regurgitating John's orders, pushing Dean to do what John told him to do (2.11, 2.14, 2.20) while Dean wants to quit the life (2.09, 2.10, 2.20) and burns with anger toward John. In 2.10, Dean says "I wish to god he'd never opened his mouth!" about John.

In 2.11 "Playthings":

SAM (shoving DEAN to face him) Dean! Dad told you to do it, you have to. DEAN Yeah, well, Dad's an ass! (SAM frowns in confusion) He never should have said anything! I mean, you don't do that, you don't, you don't lay that kind of crap on your kids! SAM No. He was right to say it! Who knows what I might become? Even now, everyone around me dies!

We see Dean seething with resentment while Sam defends John's orders and tries to enforce them on Dean, carrying the legacy of their father in more ways than one.

Over and over, we get indications that a part of John treated Dean as disposable while he sheltered Sam, and that Dean is increasingly aware of the impact that's difference has had on him—to the point he realizes his father's neglect and abuse is the reason he isn't fighting to save himself in 3.10 "Dream A Little Dream Of Me". Dean and John's relationship is intentionally paralleled with a physically abusive relationship between a father and son in this same episode (gifset, meta), and in this episode, Dean rejects his father as an "obsessed bastard", calls Bobby his father (gifset), and decides from this point forward, he's going to fight to save himself from his demon deal because fuck John Winchester.

DREAM DEAN Dad knew who you really were. A good soldier and nothing else. Daddy's blunt little instrument. Your own father didn't care whether you lived or died. Why should you? DEAN Son of a bitch! My father was an obsessed bastard! All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap! He's the one who couldn't protect his family! He– who wasn't there for Sam! I always was! He wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me! And I don't deserve to go to Hell!

And yeah! Dean also still loves John! And more than that—he craves John's protection. We see this in 3.14 "Long Distance Call" when the Crocotta calls to Dean as John from beyond the grave, telling Dean exactly what Dean wants to hear: "I never wanted this. Never. You're my boy, I love you. I can't watch you to go to hell, Dean," and telling Dean he can save him. This is pure longing for the love and protection Dean has always desired from John but feels like he's never received. Instead, he's always felt disposable.

In season 4? Oh boy... we get this incredible bit in 4.10 between Dean and Anna:

ANNA I was stationed on earth 2,000 years. Just... watching... silent... invisible... out on the road... sick for home... waiting on orders from an unknowable father I can't begin to understand. So don't tell me that -- DEAN laughs. ANNA What is so funny? What? DEAN Nothing. Sorry. It's just...I can relate.

Then in after meeting Adam in 4.19, Sam and Dean have a fight about whether to bring Adam hunting with them or leave him to a normal life:

DEAN 'Hunting is life. You can't have connections.' Dad gave you that exact same speech, remember? It was just before you ditched us for Stanford. You hated Dad for saying that stuff, and now you're quoting him? SAM Yeah, well, turns out Dad was right. DEAN Since when? SAM Since always. Dean, when I look at Adam, you know what I see? DEAN A normal kid. SAM No. Meat. Because the demons and monsters out there, that's all he is. I hated Dad for a long time. I did. But now I think I understand. So we didn't have a dog and a white picket fence. So what? Dad did right by us. He taught us how to protect ourselves. Adam deserves the same. DEAN Listen to yourself, man. SAM You think I’m wrong? DEAN I think it's too late for us. This is our life. This is who we are, okay? And it's fine. I accept that. But with Adam, he's still got a chance, man. He can go to school. He could be a doctor.

Sam says John did right by them. Dean thinks he absolutely didn't, but they can't change who they are now—they can only keep others from falling down the same path.

At the end of the episode? Oh boy...

DEAN You know, I finally get why you and Dad butted heads so much. You two were practically the same person. SAM looks over. DEAN I mean, I worshipped the guy, you know? I dressed like him, I acted like him, I listen to the same music. But you were more like him than I will ever be. And I see that now. SAM I'll take that as a compliment. DEAN You take it any way you want.

It is NOT a compliment.

In 5.16, Dean is confronted with god's intentional absence, and burning with resentment, says to Joshua,

Forget it. Just another dead-beat dad with a bunch of excuses, right. I’m used to that. I’ll muddle through.

In 5.13, Sam takes the opportunity presented to him by young John's presence to defend their father and tell John that he forgives him (gifset).

JOHN Look, how long have you known about this...hunting stuff? SAM Pretty much forever. My dad raised me in it. JOHN You're serious? Who the hell does that to a kid? SAM Well, I mean, for the record, Mary's parents did. JOHN I don't care. You know, what kind of irresponsible bastard lets a child anywhere near—Y-you know, you could've been killed! SAM I, uh...came kind of close. SAM laughs. JOHN The number it must've done on your head...Your father was supposed to protect you. SAM He was trying. He died trying. Believe me. SAM sits down on the bench under a window. SAM I used to be mad at him. I—I mean, I used to... I used to hate the guy. But now I—I... I get it. He was...just doing the best he could. And he was trying to keep it together in—in—in this impossible situation. See... My mom, um... She was amazing, beautiful, and she was the love of his life. And she got killed. And...I think he would have gone crazy if he didn't do something. Truth is, um, my dad died before I got to tell him that I understand why he did what he did. And I forgive him for what it did to us. I do. And I just—I love him.

What Lebanon does is present Sam with the opportunity to reiterate his forgiveness toward a John who understands the context:

SAM Dad… for me? That fight… that was a lifetime ago. I don’t even remember what I said, and – I mean… yeah. You know what? You did some messed-up things. But I don’t… I mean, when I think about you… [voice breaks] and I think about you a lot… I don’t think about our – our fights. I think about you… I think about you on the floor of that hospital. And I think about how I never got to say goodbye. JOHN Sam. Son. I am so sorry. SAM I’m sorry, too. But you did your best, dad. You – you fought for us, and you loved us, and… that’s enough.

So yeah! The fanfic narrative here where Sam is Mr. "Dad was bad" and Dean is Mr. "Nooo dad did the best he could" IS ABSOLUTE NONSENSE!!!!!

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wheredidhiseyebrowsgo · 5 months

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Hi! I hope you're doing well. I just shared a gifset of de-aged Derek and present Derek pinning Stiles to the wall and was curious if there are any fics where de-aged Derek maybe sticks around longer than canon, and he and Stiles start dating because it looks like he'll be stuck like that. Then, of course, he gets aged up again at some point ... anything? Thanks!

Yeah!

Out of the Mouths of Pups by cardel

(1/1 I 1,358 I General)

Everyone smells anxious and that should set off alarms in him but it doesn’t. The human begins walking towards him, slowly, until he’s standing in front of him. Derek looks up at him curiously, not feeling threatened, Derek stays calm.

That is until one of the werewolves takes a step closer to Derek, the human’s heartbeat picks up. This triggers Derek’s instinct to protect, and propel him to stand in front of the human. He flashes his alpha eyes at the approaching werewolf.

You feel like mine too... 🩵☄️🧡 by Eerien_Ent29

(1/1 I 2,681 I General)

Stiles' anger and frustration boiled over as he spoke with Erica on the phone. "What do you mean he's gone? I entrusted him to you guys so you could take care of him! What happened? What did you tell him?" His voice crackled with a mixture of concern and anger.

Of Boundaries and Bedroom Walls by AClosedFicIsNeverRead

(7/7 I 19,015 I Explicit)

Noah eyed the teenage werewolf with barely concealed apprehension, taking in the unhealthy measure of swagger and self-confidence oozing off the kid. He was entirely too good looking and built for 16 years old and it was clear that he damned well knew it.

Derek smiled back at the Sheriff, self-assured and showing off just a few too many teeth to look strictly human.

“Alright. Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Noah began, rubbing his forehead as he prayed for strength. “You want me to allow a teenaged boy to sleep directly across the hall from my teenaged daughter with zero parental supervision while I’m pulling overnight shifts?”

“Daaaad!” Stiles groaned. “It’s still Derek!”

- OR -

The one where de-aged Derek moves in with the Stilinskis and becomes fixated on the delicious, hyperactive human girl. Sure, she says they won't be more than friends. That doesn't mean he can't try to change her mind, right?

anything that's dead shall be regrown by blueinkedbones

(26/? I 54,176 I Teen)

“Derek,” the guy with the hands says. He's still got his hands out, kind of reaching, kind of catching, kind of dropping to his sides. His voice is calm, but his eyes are too bright to sell it, and his heartbeat is out of control. “Are you—Do you know who we are?”

Derek swallows, thinks. If this is a treaty thing, another pack thing, why would they care about him? He's not even the alpha-in-training, he's nothing. Mom doesn't even bother explaining most werewolf politics to him. He knows most of it from Laura, Peter, from passing packs who used to think it was cute to tell the youngest beta their complicated histories and have it repeated back to them around still-awkward fangs. Now that's Cora, and not recently, either—She says she's too big to play kid games.

“No,” Derek decides. “Should I?”

A Wolf In Wolf's Clothing by alexenglish

(8/8 I 81,325 I Explicit)

The pack of Beacon Hills' past transgressions are about to converge on them, and Derek stumbles out of the forest with no recent memories and straight into a pack he doesn't know, with an alpha and an anchor he can't possibly remember.

#teen wolf #sterek #stiles stilinski #derek hale #deaged!derek

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cosmic-kaden · 8 days

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✨ This one goes out to the passionate self-shippers! It's me! and I see little to no love for us, it's always about being scared or shy/afraid so-

Shout out to:

The ones who get so excited that they can't contain it.

The ones who have to make rapid fire posts to talk about the thing /f/o that has them so excited!

The passionate self shippers who write fics and post them like it's going out of style just because you have so many ideas and you're so excited to share a piece of yourself with that world and your f/o!

The too full of love ones who have to gush all the time and unprompted, everything from long coherent tangents to the simple "post a picture and add lksdjflsdjlsj 'c-cute' underneath it!"

The ones who when they write they lean more towards the mundane style of writing, where nothing incredibly adventurous happens but you don't care! You just like existing with your f/o~!

The ones who will sit in their f/o's tag for hours and reblog gifsets and photos and be super excited and passionate in the tags!

The ones who get labeled as "silly" / "immature" / "Not serious" simply because we enjoy ranting and raving and celebrating our f/o(s) all the time!

You're not annoying for being passionate about your f/o(s) or your f/o's world.

you're not annoying for adding your friends to your tag list that wanted to be added. If they didn't want to read your stuff they wouldn't have asked.

You're not bothersome or annoying to anyone! You're passionate and people can tell how much you pour your heart and soul into something <3

Most importantly, your f/o(s) love your fiery spirit and passion! They never find it weird or annoying, they find it incredibly endearing and it makes their heart swell with love, knowing that you care so much about them!

You really make them happy, so never stop being passionate, no matter what people might say or think. If it makes you happy (and doesn't hurt anyone of course) then never stop being passionate <3

If none of this applies to you, you can rb it just don't derail it please. ;; || Pro/comship DNI this is not for you.

#I have been feeling bad mind thoughts and shitty anons so I really needed to reassure myself ^_^;;;;#ok 2 rb!#Spread the love!

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reikurusu · 4 months

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Because apparently I can't let anything go... So a few days ago I made a post about Buddy Daddies' first anniversary coming up and I wasn't going to make something "official" but the brainrot is too strong so here we are... This Sunday, January 7th, it's exactly one year since the first episode of Buddy Daddies was released! And I think that calls for a celebration! I put everything under a cut because this got really long

I came up with a few things that the fandom could do to celebrate this adorable family! Of course these are not exclusive things! If you want to contribute anything that's not listed below, go for it! 1. A weekly rewatch of the episode that aired a year ago Starting Sunday January 7th, we rewatch the episode that aired on that date last year. Nothing is stopping you from binging the rest of the episodes that day, of course! It would just be fun that a lot of us watch the same episode on the same day (or through a watch party if anyone knows how to do that)! 2. Create!! This is literally what it says: create! Just anything related to the episode of that week! There are so many options, but I'm just giving a few things I could come up with - Fanfics surrounding that week's episode. Dive into a scene you wished had more details. Write a scene you feel should've happened in the episode but didn't. Write a scene for a headcanon that you have. Really anything you want (it would be fun if it had something to do with that week's episode, but no one's going to punish you if it isn't). - Make a gifset for that week's episode. Make a set about your favourite character from that episode, your favourite moment, favourite quotes, favourite outfits,... Anything goes really! - Make fanart! There are so many talented artists in this fandom who make amazing pieces of art! It would be fun to see you make something that links back to that week's episode. I'm thinking about redrawing your favourite screenshot in your style. Draw your favourite moment. Draw a scene that you wish happened in the episode. Redraw your favourite piece of Lily art in your style! (I know this last one is less linked to the episodes but who cares). You brilliant people can probably come up with other things still! - Write a theory/headcanon/character analysis/... I have seen so many people write insightful posts about things that weren't explicitly shown on screen. There are characters we get very little background info over. Characters that we know a few things about but it feels like there can be so much more written about them! Write about your headcanons, both for past and future versions of the characters. Write your theories about certain things. It feels like there's still so much to say about this anime and a lot of people out there who know how to put those things into words! - Make an edit! This can be a video edit, a literal photoshop edit. Make wallpapers, phone backgrounds, profile pictures, memes,... Anything you want really! 3. HAVE FUN!! I know it sounds like it, but there really aren't any rules to this! Just have fun! It would just be fun that whatever you decide to post is in some way linked to the episode, but that's not set in stone, obviously! Just enjoy! I think it would be fun to dedicate a week to each episode (so a 12/13 week event if we count the recap episode), starting on the day that episode first aired last year and ending the day before the new episode aired (ex. for episode 1: starting on Sunday, January 7th and ending on Saturday, January 13th). You can decide if you just want to post something about your rewatching the episode or if you want to create something. If you want to make something, you can do multiple things if you want. And again: no one is going to punish you if you posted something from episode 1 during episode 2's week! We're all busy and don't always manage to get something done in time, so don't stress about not being able to finish something "on time". Lastly, I think it would be fun to make this into a hashtag as well! I thought of using the tag #Buddy Daddies Anniversary (very on the nose, I know, so if someone knows something more fun, please share it with the group). And like I said before: HAVE FUN!!

#Buddy Daddies #Rei Suwa #Kazuki Kurusu #Miri Unasaka #KazuRei #Buddy Daddies Anniversary #Me 2 days ago: I'm not making this anything official #Also me the past 2 days: but what if I did #It really doesn't matter what you make #It would just be cool if it was linked to that week's episode but again not an obligation!#We're just celebrating this family!

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touhou-memories · 15 days

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Other unused sprites from Violet Detector

There are more unused sprites than the ones mentioned in this particular post, you can find the rest at: /post/184510863039/ (bat forms), /post/187304872254/ (Eiki Shiki), /post/185520084644/ (Ran Yakumo), /post/185597819729/ (Yuyuko Saigyouji) and /post/186746662979/ (Raiko Horikawa).

The reason I decided not to delete the other posts and make a final post now with all the sprites is that I want it to be visible that they were posted in 2019. I found out something that has deeply upset me (more details under the cut).

I don't say two different people can't reach the same conclusion while independently researching something (because it can happen and that's perfectly normal), but some things are so obviously scraped from other sources without any regards of the other person's research. On tcrf wiki in the Unused Sprites section, you can currently find only the 5 characters that I posted about in 2019.

Somebody decided to just take the information from my website and post it on the tcrf wiki in 2023. No mention of where they found it. And don't tell me this was their own research of the game files because if it was a true research they would have found the other unused sprites as well. Or what, just because they posted the transparent background versions of them this means they shouldn't give credit anymore? I link back to information sources even if for the posts I take own screenshots and gifs.

How comes that only the info from the five posts specifically is there? It's too big of a coincidence for me to believe this was not taken from my website. Again, in many cases I am reasonable and am aware people can find same stuff on their own, but come on, this is clearly not the case here.

I did not post everything in 2019 because at that time I was still actively doing the gifsets with the characters' appearances. The last gifset was finished around 2022 and by then I realised there were quite a lot of unused sprites and it would be better just to compile them in one post rather than post them separately. I was going to delete the old posts at the end and have it all gathered in one final post. But changed my mind after seeing this.

When I take information from another website I link it in the decription of the post, why is it so hard when it comes to my research to be linked back when it's reposted on other platforms. It makes me so angry. How comes that when some people take information from other websites they link back to the source, but when stuff is taken from here it's as if my website doesn't exist at all.

It's so disrespectful.

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basilone · 2 months

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I want to hear your thoughts on fandom and the recent influx of the term content creation!

Well, anon, you are in luck! (Or not, depending on your definition of luck. 😉) I just so happen to have many Thoughts & Opinions™ about this. I will get wordy, this will get lengthy, and I will be social and put most of my thoughts under a readmore cut.

I personally try to avoid the terms ‘content’ and ‘content creation’ when talking about fandom works and a fandom’s creative pursuits nowadays. Occasionally, sure, it happens that it slips out anyway – it’s a term we’re all really used to using! – but I want to be as mindful about its use as possible. This is a personal decision on my account and I won’t get uppity about other people’s use of these terms, though.

But, Killy, you might say... why would you avoid using these terms? For me, here’s why:

Content is not synonymous with art;

Content creation indicates something different than art creation;

Fandom should not be subject to consumerism;

Fandom is about connection.

If all a fandom puts out is classified as content, that fandom is going to die.

Yeah. I know. Melodramatic much? I’m on my fainting couch here, folks. 😂 But let’s dig in, shall we?

You know, maybe it’s just the archivist in me that balks at the term ‘content’. Content is a data entry field in the archival system we use at my real-life job: literally speaking, this data entry field is where we put a brief summary of the document attached to that specific archival file. It contains information that tells you the key takeaways of what the document is about, but it will not contain the full text of the document itself. Content is one of the points of access for our archival search: I know what I’m looking for, so I put a few keywords into our search and it pulls up the relevant file. But what do I need, really need, in my line of work? It’s the document itself, not the data entry field. The document tells me the whole story that I need to be able to truly do my job well. The content-field is a cliffnotes edition of that story.

It’s the same way with the art we create in fandom. I’m gonna take myself as an example here, because I create a fair bit! (Shocking, I know. Local Tumblr cryptid sighting, more at 11. 😎) I spend hours writing fic. I spend hours sorting through screencaps before screeching at Photoshop for a lengthy amount of time. I spend days pouring over quotes, books, documents, photographs, tutorials, and other things that will help me create something cool. I apply color theory, art framing/perspective, narrative focus, and many other theories and techniques to my writing and my giffing. If I were to put my finished work or any of my WIPs in that same archive system, it would be the document within the archival file. The tags I use on my posts? Those are markers similar to the content-field. They tell you who my gifset depicts and from which show it is. They tell you which OC of mine my fic is about. My work contains these things I tagged.

But my creative work is not content itself.

Content is marketable, easy access, blurb-y stuff. Content is something you absorb within one minute flat. Content is the highlight reel. It’s what fills a page, something you’ll scroll past in a heartbeat, something that barely stands out in a long long long list of stuff. Content is what you consume on a lazy Sunday afternoon without ever being forced to read lengthy pieces, take in the details of what you see, pause mid-scroll to ponder the meaning of life, whatever else have you. Create content and you create a flash in the pan, a quick laugh maybe, before it fizzles back out again. Create content and it’s here today and gone tomorrow without anyone mourning its absence for too long.

Art should last longer than that, don’t you think? 😉

So when I see people put a fic request in an askbox and it’s phrased like “Speirs x spy!reader fluff” and that very same request makes its way into about ten more askboxes before the fandom starts comparing asks? I might be inclined to classify us all as slot machines. Put an ask in and out rolls a fic. Who cares which slot machine it came from? As long as you’ve got your painstakingly crafted fics that you consume the same way you do actual content, right? We, its writers, are just lucky if we get a pat of acknowledgement on our little slot machine head for our troubles, aren’t we?

When I see an overly detailed summary of what sounds like a full-fledged fic in an askbox and the demand is “write this for me”, I recoil from the screen and go “child, who the hell birthed you, were you raised in a barn?” out loud. If you can tell a story in the space of an askbox, consider asking for help to let that story – a story you own, a story that is more yours that it could ever be mine – grow into what it has the potential to be.

When I see fics and gifsets and other creations get likes but not reblogs, I mutter something about the state of fandom economy these days. We exist in a little fandom bubble. Our bubble can’t expand or blow from place to place without a little help from our friends. And you’re my friends, right? I know the follow-button says follow, guys, believe me, I’m not that far gone, but for me ‘follow’ means ‘friend’. 💚 You’re my buddy now. Suck it up. We’ll share a can of peaches. 🍑

When I see fics and other creations get reblogged without tags or comments attached, I die a little on the inside. I feel like a little Victorian orphan child going “please, reblogger, a little penny of thought for its creator, if it pleases?”. I feel like commentless and/or tagless reblogging is giving me nothing, nothing at all, about who you are.

And I want to get to know you! I want to know who’s in my notes. I want to know who’s scrambling through my MotA gifsets like a fat little raccoon inhaling its third helping of a box of jelly-filled donuts. I want to know who is adopting which character and why. I want to know that it’s your birthday, or that you had a bad day and needed a pick-me-up, or that you are locked in an Ikea at three in the morning reading my blog by the bright lights of countless Solhetta bulbs. I want to know that you love my OC Darlene but that you ain’t sure what the hell my OC Lottie’s got to do with anything. I want to know what tickles you – a turn of phrase I used, a color in a gifset, a little detail I captured that made me go !!!!!! on the inside while I was creating too – and I want to know what moves you.

What reaches into the soil of your being and nourishes you enough to blossom into whichever lovely self you can grow to be? What is precious to you? What comforts you in the dark nights of your soul, when all light feels like it’s faded out? What do you love, truly love? What feeling and thought and idea and love love LOVE do you consume – truly consume, head to tail, no takebacks – and what are you consumed by in turn?

Let me connect with you. Let me know the little internet scraps of you that tell me you’re a DeMarco girlie, or that you’re here for Hoosier only, or that you’re as feral and batty about Speirs as I am, or that you actually really can’t stand the one dude everyone else raves about. Let me know that you like angsty quotes on gifsets – feel free to yell at me for making you schedule an impromptu therapy session – or let me know you saw what I did in my fic there and you’ll be demanding compensation from me while you lie down and wail about it. Let me know you’re very into those lovely blues on a gifset (I know, SO good, right??) or that you are side-eyeing me because that close-up of your fave turned you into a little puddle.

Let me know what moves you, because I created these things with love. I created them because they moved me, too. I created them because I have a story to tell, somehow. I created them because the whole world is a string of stories and I want to pass the heart of them on to you. I created them not because I want to jump on a hypetrain that races past all the episodes and all the alternate universes and all the stories without stopping, but because I want to soak up the sun and point at something and tell you “look, isn’t this beautiful?”. I created them not because I am looking for a quick fix or a distraction or an escape, but because I want to give you something that nourishes you as it has nourished me.

That’s so much more than that quick flash in the pan, yeah? That’s so much more than what content could ever hope to be. That’s something that lasts beyond the clicks and gives you an ever-expanding horizon that leaves you wondering just what in the world is next.

Let me repeat point five: if all a fandom puts out is classified as content, that fandom is going to die. Because content doesn’t sustain you. Connection does. And connection? That happens with meaningful interaction. That happens when you stop getting followers and start getting friends. That happens when you treat all forms of art as something unique that can be precious to someone, rather than something to like today and forget about tomorrow.

Can I do a lil mic drop? Yeah. I think I’m gonna. Just this once. 🎤

#fandom things #yeah so this got long but in my defense I have never pontificated about this in public much before #sometimes I reveal myself as the crochety little fandom old I am #creative asks

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broken-risk-assessment-module · 13 days

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okay I cave. I thought about it too much and now it's a post. this one's for @ilovedthestars and @needlesandnilbogs

risk assessment module's tumblr url is accounting-for-competency and it reblogs parkour and martial arts videos, speed runs, no-hit/perfect boss fights, and fight scene gifsets from media.

in the tags it always manages to notice and appropriately compliment a very specific technique the person is using in order to protect themselves/be safe

occasionally it will also do deep in-depth analysis posts of the choreography of a fight scene from one of murderbot's serials. how the moves would work in reality, how the film translates a real move/technique so its more dramatic and visual appealing, and also the skillset/movie magic behind keeping stunt actors safe.

threat assessment module doesn't have a tumblr but risk assessment sends it links to posts about how to relax, detox its mind, meditate, or plane-shift.

"it's medicinal, y'know. for the stick up your ass."

education module just reblogs interesting facts, but always reblogs them with a reliable source link if the original post doesn't have one. it's favourite facts are about weird alien fauna and space station physics.

risk assessment convinced it to make it's url "pieceofcrap" because that's what Murderbot calls it. it kinda wants to change it to something more "professional" but is also weirdly attached to it, so it won't.

language module's url is too-many-human-words and most of what it reblogs is to do with translations of media. analyses of translations of poetry, books, and manga. meta posts about subtitles. those posts that are just people trying to explain words that don't have direct translations into other languages.

it also really likes those posts that are like... a bunch of curated screenshots of internet posts, famous quotes, and lines from poetry or books or shows, all put together cus they're vaguely about the same thing or attempting to describe the same feeling. it likes how humans find so many ways to say the same thing.

governor module does not have a tumblr but if it DID, it's url would be governor-931625384 or some shit like that. it's blog would be completely empty and uncustomised. the only thing it would use it for is searching for posts that violate tumblr's terms of service or community guidelines and DMing the poster directly to tell them which rules they've violated. it would get reported as a spam bot every time.

procedure module has a tumblr called apparently-a-panic-module that it uses like an actual personal blog, as in it posts it's random thoughts and stuff that it's done that day. also creates polls for the most out of left field stuff, including completely asinine decisions it has to make.

it reblogs how-to posts and recipes. it doesn't matter what they're for, just that they are a step-by-step guide on how to do something. in the tags it critiques the clarity and format.

it's by far the most active on tumblr out of all of them. it gets anon asks (mostly from the other modules) that are like "don't you have anything better to do" and it always just responds "no."

#self indulgent module feedsona post time everyone sorry #tho im also indulging stars and bardic. hi guys #im surprised at how much i had to say on this actually lmao #the murderbot diaries #bram's feedsonas #stuff i made

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avelera · 7 months

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OFMD really said, "Pursue the things you love, not the things you fear."

I'm still turning this idea over in my head like a microwave but I'm thinking about Stede's line to (the picture of) Ed, "I'm afraid that your life is better without me."

From @blackbbonnet's gifset here.

Whew, what a doozy of a line!

And what a curious line!

Because the reason Stede left Ed at the end of Season 1 was in the hopes that it would improve Ed's life if he took off.

Despite the fact that Ed chose to be with Stede. Despite the fact Ed was content with folding socks if he was by Stede's side. Despite kissing him and declaring, by somewhat obliquely, that a life anywhere was fine as long as Stede was there, Stede just couldn't hear it over the sound of the Badmintons and his own trauma in his ears telling him he destroyed beautiful things, like his family, and Ed.

Ok, so what does this have to do with my thesis above?

Stede failed, he messed up, because he saw his worst fear of Ed being happy without him and decided that the painful thing was the right thing. That the voices in his head telling him he was worthless were correct. That it was better to listen to those voices, and to make his greatest fear a reality.

I've argued that the narrative morality of OFMD, the actions that give you plot armor and allow you to save the day, are when characters pursue what they love.

This is in contrast to many other adult-aimed works of fiction that say we should do things out of duty. We should do things that are painful but necessary. OFMD said, "Fuck that noise."

Because Stede left Ed out of a sense of duty. And he fucked over every single person in his life by doing so, including Mary and his kids, though he was able to fix that eventually specifically by resolving to return to his own happiness so that they could have theirs.

But then we've got this quote above! This quote saying that Stede is afraid Ed's life is better. Fascinating! Absolutely fascinating! Because that means the thing Stede was ready to self-sacrifice for at the end of the Season 1 was the thing he feared most: a life for Ed that was better without Stede in it.

I suppose there's no better definition of duty, huh? Then the resolve to do something that will be personally painful to us for some higher goal. And again, OFMD said fuck that noise, pursue your happiness, and do so proudly.

But there's an extention to this too, the more I thought about it. The show literally even said that even for matters of survival, the better motivation is joy not fear or duty.

Think of the storm in S1 ep. 4. While trying to think of a way for everyone to survive because it's his duty as a captain, Ed is distracted, disinterested. Izzy's frustration with him mounts. The tension rises. His heart is really not in it, we know Ed's actively suicidal...

And the plan Ed comes up with fails.

It was born out of duty as a captain and it failed because he messed up the dates.

But what plan succeeds? The plan born out of joy. The Ed that works with Stede to become a lighthouse is acting out of an active, joyful desire to live, he chooses life out of the joy of being with Stede, of partnering with Stede.

The you flash forward to the scene where Ed is drowning in his Purgatory fever dream and the simple motions of struggling to stay alive are not enough. The duty of staying alive is not enough. The thing that actually works is when the choice he makes to live is joyful, it's a positive choice to go towards the light and be with Stede. Stede, embodied as a beautiful gold fish of a merman.

And just to be clear, I don't at all think that OFMD is saying, "If you don't have a joyful reason to move forward, just give up." Not at all.

What I think it's saying is, pursuing your happiness will succeed. Even when it's scary. Even when it means confronting fears. Even when it's hard. Duty alone isn't enough to live on. It's not enough to motivate us when things are hard. It has diminishing returns. Pick and pursue what gives you joy, choose a shining target to move towards, and you'll not only be true to yourself, but good things will come out of it. Just like Ed finding Stede, and Stede finding Ed, because they pursued what made them happiest in life.

#ofmd #ofmd spoilers #ofmd meta #tw suicide

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