What is it about fics then, where characters always, ALWAYS, have a spare toothbrush conveniently just hanging about in bathroom cupboards for that time someone is, usually unexpectedly, staying the night?
I have lived a few decades now, and I have never known anyone who keeps spare toothbrushes. Is it really common??
writing fanfiction is just. i’m being so creative and original. i’m plagiarizing everyone by accident. i’m a genius. i’m cringe. i’m too angsty. i’m too cheesy. this is not in character. it doesn’t matter that it’s not in character because these are my characters now. i love my hobby. this is the worst possible use of my time. i’m seeking validation. i’m projecting my own personal problems onto this story and i’m barely hiding it. i know so many words and i’m using all of them wrong. im on tumblr posting about it instead of writing it.
I’ve started to see people use AI to make ship art. If you’re a mutual of mine and you respect me, don’t reblog those. Even if it looks like really cool art of your ship. I WILL block you because I’m going to take it as a sign of disrespect. I work very hard on my art to give people in the fandoms I love some good content.
Every AI has been trained on the work of hardworking artists without their consent. Your ship is not more important than the exploitation of these artists.
WELL, Nick gets to come out when he’s ready, to who he wants when he wants, in the way he wants, and is generally treated respectfully and supportively.
Kit, on the other hand, was treated like absolute shit by a bunch of entitled assholes who erroneously claim to be fans of the show/comic, and he was forced to come out earlier than he wanted, in a manner he didn’t want to, and was generally treated with a horrific level of disrespect, entitlement, and left feeling wildly unsupported, hounded, and bullied by the very fandom who should have had his back.
And if you’re wondering, I’m still furious enough to stab people over the way he was treated, and I hope that the absolute assholes who had a hand in bullying him into coming out so much earlier than he wanted to feel ashamed of themselves until the day they die.
I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that’s true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.
J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He’s also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that’s better than presents you open–failing to see that there’s a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.
You’ve got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with “trilogies” that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.
You’ve got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.
On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.
Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they’re unwilling to form their own expectations of what’s coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what’s in front of them! The media they’ve been consuming has trained them well.
OoooOOOOOHHH one of my colleagues just got an email that looks sketchy as hell. It was awkwardly worded, vague on detail, and wanted our wire transfer information and tax ID so that he could make a donation in honor of a deceased family member. Colleague passed it on to one of my gift officers who passed it on to me like “Can you confirm this improbably named dead person existed?” and I could not confirm the existence of either the deceased or the supposed family member who contacted us.
You can’t actually do much scamming with a wire transfer number and tax ID (the latter is publicly posted on our website) so I sent him my research with a note that I thought this was a “refund scam”: the scammer acts as a legit donor but immediately after making a wire transfer, he contacts the nonprofit to say he entered the wrong amount and asks to be refunded the overage – crucially, to a different bank account. After sending the refund, the nonprofit discovers that the wire transfer was drawn on an empty bank account – basically a bounced check – but by then the scammer has also cleaned out the “refund” and bailed. (This is also pulled on individuals; never send the refund until the check has cleared, kids.)
I suggested we ignore him, but if we want to test him we could ask for something a scammer couldn’t or wouldn’t want to provide, like a legit working phone number. My gift officer replied, “Sounds good. Do you want to take point?”
I messaged back, “By take point do you mean talk to this guy as a fundraiser?”
“You could be his gift officer!” he responded, and it’s at this point that I need you guys to understand I really like my gift officer but he is also the driest human I’ve ever met and it’s hard to tell when he’s joking. He knows that I have good customer service chops but I’m also quite shy and nervous about dealing with donors directly, so I thought he might be messing with me a little.
But no! He continued, “If he’s a fraud you’ll catch it. If he’s legit, you know enough not to ruin a new donor relationship.”
I said, “Well, your faith in me is admirable,” and he’s not entirely wrong, so I accepted the challenge.
And now I get to write the potential scammer an email about how we’re thrilled with the offer of a donation, we just need a few small pieces of information first, like a phone number and if possible a link to the obituary. If he plays along the next step is to inform him that we place a two-week hold on wire transfer donations and see if he still bites.
I was just explaining how I saw “To Wong Fu,” in the theaters as a 17 year old with a bunch of highschool friends and absolutely nobody was scandalized. This drag panic is entirely orchestrated and much ado about nothing.
I mean, somebody’s going to mention Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or Flip Wilson as Geraldine, but way back in the fifties, Milton Berle was on Texaco Star Theater and your grandparents or great-grandparents loved it.
A reminder that drag is old. It’s so old it’s ridiculous. Drag has been done in theater since the beginning of theater. And sometimes those characters are supposed to be another gender [Peter Pan is usually played by a small adult woman, and Edna Turnblad from Hairspray is famously a woman’s role that’s supposed to be cast with a drag queen]. Sometimes it’s just a part of the show. [Some Like It Hot, where the two male characters are disguised as women to hide from the mob, and one ends the movie with a wealthy man] Drag queens as a trope have always been sassy, world-weary, and absolutely confident in themselves and their ability to attract men. Hell, sometimes the joke is that they’re [deliberately] making a straight male character uncomfortable and we’re supposed to be laughing at the straight male’s discomfort. Law & Order has shown drag queens for decades with asshole detectives referring to them as “ma'am” when they’re in drag even as they’re trying to avoid the sequins.
This rhetoric is frightening because of how quickly the neo-fascist movements in the US have managed to get it to take hold.
Oddly I don’t see a single occupation listed besides the last where they’ll murder you just because they’re having a bad day and automatically get away with it.
I have only love for the USPS.
reminder that cops have also been logging covid deaths (after refusing to comply with masking orders nationwide) as on-duty fatalities, as well as everything from heart attacks to car crashes to friendly fire. a really significant amount of cop deaths aren’t actually due to Criminal Violence, but it’s significant that the cops act as though *all* of them are.
Do you know what the consensus on pit bulls is? Some people say the negative stereotypes surrounding them are unfair, while others insist they’re inherently dangerous dogs that shouldn’t be kept as pets. Both views are biased to some degree, so I don’t know which to believe.
and same as german shepards, same as huskies, same as dalmations, they have specific breed requirements and aren’t right for every home! also like all dogs, they have to be trained to be a reliable and safe pet. but with their needs met and good training, they’re about the same as any other dog in their size range (with individual exceptions for personal history and trauma of course)
Except pit bulls have the ability to lock their jaws unlike other dog breeds. So even if pit bulls aren’t more likely to attack someone, an attack is likely to be much worse than an attack by any other breed.
common misconception! not actually true tho
they just have very strong jaws, but so do many other large breeds
The misinformation about pit bulls is so easily disproven but also bewildering.
They’re literally just a large and strong dog breed. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. They are not inherently more dangerous than any other large breed with a strong guard and/or prey drive.
They’re just dogs.
They aren’t alligators. They aren’t wolves. They aren’t bears or lions or tigers or hyenas or dingoes or boars. They’re just dogs.
And that’s all there is to them.
Friends of ours have a pit. Me, I have a husband eternally ready to play with a dog. “She’s gonna love you,” Friend predicted the first time he met her. But then we walked in, and the pit sniffed me hello, then took one look at him, and ran off. Not even a sniff! My husband was bereft! He is practically a Disney Princess and yet this dog ran away immediately? What was he doing wrong?
Five seconds later she returned with her best toy, dropped it proudly on his foot, and I swear to god she made heart eyes at him. “YOU will play with me! I can tell!”
Any pit is a LOT of dog. But a good pit is a lot of GOOD dog.
