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miscellaneous

@sarahastro84 / sarahastro84.tumblr.com

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lyrslair

TNG: “How do we define a person? How to we define a life? Can a person’s autonomy be subverted if it is for the greater good?”

Also TNG: “So the ship is pregnant and needs us to get to an energy source so it can have its baby.”

DS9: How do we move forward in the wake of catastrophe? Where do we draw the line between justice and revenge? When do we stand up and take responsibility for our society?

Also DS9: The senior staff are trapped in a board game to teach the bartender a lesson.

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i’m constantly baffled by how averse tumblr is to conflict as a means to drive narrative. like. people in fandom seem to legitimately wants stories to adhere to 90s-sitcom-levels of “nothing significantly affects the initial status quo” regardless of whether this fits the narrative or not, and then get PERSONALLY offended when this (inevitably) ends up never happening.

like characters fighting and disagreeing and even straight up disliking each other is not bad writing. messy personal conflicts where no part is really 100% right are not bad writing. like… yeah in the realm of fanfiction there’s nothing cooler than reading 4773736478382 stories about the characters watching movies or playing board games and being nice and sweet with each other, but in actual media stuff neeeds to switch it up every now and then. stories aren’t meant to be static.

also: just because the way a narrative develops is upsetting/frustrating to YOU, doesn’t means it’s bad writing. sometimes being upsetting/frustrating is precisely the point.

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reblogged

I can’t understand why anyone would ever want to live in the Star Wars universe

I really can’t

your life is uprooted every 20 years in galactic-scale wars caused by a neverending blood feud between two tribes of space wizards

choose your preferred form of government:

a) laughably ineffectual and corrupt bureaucracy b) fascist dictatorship controlled by space warlocks c) exploitation by evil crime gangster who is probably also a slug

there are no other choices, sorry

“Hey have you heard from Gary? He hasn’t answered my emails for weeks”

“Oh yeah, his whole planet got blown up by the genocidal cyborg sorcerer who controls our entire military”

“But Samuel, what if I am one of the space wizards???” Let’s examine your options:

  1. abducted as a baby and raised by monks, then die a 35-year-old virgin at the hands of a goddamn robot with tuberculosis
  2. hunted down and shot to death by grunts in stupid helmets because space wizards are illegal right now (again)
  3. go through a goth phase, then your eyes get all yucky and one of the monks finds you and cuts your head off
  4. end up in a cult led by some evil wrinkled assface in a bathrobe who shoots lightning at you when he’s mad
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gnatsattack

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.

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berlynn-wohl

I saw this post about an hour after I saw a post that said, essentially, “There should be a word for that thing where [exactly describes ‘squeeing’].”

I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:

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vergess

Squee: The noise you make when something is so good that all you can really do is squeak or squeal. A high pitched sound of delight, often accomanied by hugging yourself or others.

Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.

YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments

Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.

AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.

Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins

BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.

DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.

Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition. 

Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements

Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements

Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets

WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”

Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.

Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.

Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words. 

Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”

Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.

 Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.

Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.

Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.

Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.

Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.

Bashing: When a writer purposefully writes a specific character as a horrible, horrible person so that they can throw them out of the storyline, usually to allow their OTP to get together without trouble. Distinct from fridging in that it doesn’t require the character to die, but rather to be such a screaming harpy that they get rightfully removed from the main characters’ lives for being an abusive hell beast. Generally, a type of character hate. Be wary of people who bash women, queer people, and POC with consistency: they are not safe to be around.

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ryttu3k

‘Squick’ also has an alternate horrible meaning for Harry Potter fans who were in fandom a while back. Dear god.

Drabble: A fic that is EXACTLY 100 words. Often used as a creative exercise in telling a story in a very small constraint.

Ficlet: Fic that clocks in somewhere between 100 to 2.5K words.

Crossover: A piece of media in which two or more source materials are treated as the same universe. Characters from Fandom A can meet characters from Fandom B. (The Doctor Goes To Hogwarts And Meet Harry Potter!)

Fusion: A fusion takes the characters of one source material and *surplants* them into another universe entirely. Characters from Fandom A cannot meet characters from Fandom B. (Dave Strider is part of an Inception team!)

TPTB: The Powers That Be. Almost always redundantly referred to as “the TPTB.” A collective term for showrunners, actors, producers, writers, et al, anyone who is part of the team that creates the source material.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. A shorthand way of saying “this is how I see it/have experienced it though I realize others might have a different perspective.”

Tinhatting: Often used in RPF fandoms, the situation where some fans are convinced two celebrities are in a relationship but its being kept a secret.

I’m…I’m home

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souper-doup

Useful beyond all reason. I’ve learnt so much!!

I did not realize how many of these had fallen out of use o.O

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zivitz

So basically I’ve been speaking fannish Middle English all this time and no one told me? I use 99% of these and never stopped.

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deanplease

Some of these haven’t fallen out of use for most people, but we could all use a refresher.

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IDK sometimes this website makes me feel like “death of the author” is soon to be followed by “death of the text”, where subjective interpretation and wish fulfillment is all that matters, and readings with the right political capital gain acceptance on that merit alone, even totally unsupported by the work itself.

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shock

in college there are only two moods:

1. i can do this! after outlining everything i need to do, it doesn’t seem so bad. in fact it’s very methodical and easy to follow and i can do it.

2. oh my god its happening. its the end for me. i might as well be dead. everything is due now. i was put on this earth to suffer. i have two essays due in 45 seconds and all ive eaten today is half a goldfish cracker. i can only feel pain

also these moods go back and forth every hour 

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sarahastro84

fyi your professors feel this way too

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poseidont

a concept: future jake and amy having a kid BUT amy goes into labour on halloween and jake has to figure out if amy is cheating him out of the heist or if he’s actually about to have a kid

bold of you to assume she didnt plan to get pregnant exactly 9 months before halloween so that its actually both

bold of you to assume it wasnt jake who planned to get her pregnant exactly 9 months before so she’d be thrown off by contractions

bold of all of us to assume Holt didn’t pick an exact date to compliment them both so they’d have validation horniness so that jake AND amy were in disadvantage during the heist

Holt: your heteronormative lifestyle choices will bring about your demise

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reblogged
The Chosen Ones
Sequel to Skye the Vampire Slayer. Skye and Melinda are hoping to have a quiet summer after saving the world. But when an old friend of Melinda’s returns to Sunnydale with warnings about impending doom, they have to work together to save the world. Again.

Now complete on AO3.

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reblogged
Chapter 10. Jiaying goes to extreme lengths to get back the Diviner, while Melinda, Skye, and Phil race to stop her. 
Chapter 11. The team races to help Natasha, and Jemma and Fitz’s research on the Diviner pays off in an unexpected way.

Well, after a long hiatus, we’re back and ready to finish The Chosen Ones. Chapters 10 and 11 are up now.

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I honestly can’t decide if I identify with Crowley or Aziraphale more because.  On one hand I too am a neurotic mess that raises houseplants and worries too much about being cool and constantly fucks up but wants people to love me.  And on the other hand, I too am testy and wish humans would leave me alone so I could read and love food so much I would be willing to try and stop the apocalypse so I could continue eating.

Okay here’s the thing - having never read Good Omens I honestly cannot tell which of these is the demon and which of these is the angel

that’s honestly so incredible like that’s kind of the point of good omens tbh

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