"In The Name Of Food, I Shall Feed You!" Bishoujo SENSHI Sailor Moon

Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.

We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.

GNU Terry Pratchett

GNU Terry Prachett

GNU Terry Pratchett

My cosplay of Aziraphale is nearly finished.

Extremely dangerous how "grooming" in the context of child sexual abuse went from being a very specific pattern of isolation and trust-building with the aim of abusing someone to "telling children anything that contradicts their parents' ultra-conservative worldview is grooming" to "selling rainbow flags in a store is grooming" to "literally anyone I don't like is a groomer".

These days the word seems to most often be used by people who don't care about what it actually means and just want an easy "this person is irredeemably evil, kill them now" button.

Heaven-versus-hell type tabletop RPG where the lore is written in such away as to leave the reader almost, but not quite, certain that the author intended to use the word "seraphic" to describe the militarised forces of heaven, and that it's probably just a weirdly reliable autocorrect error that the actual text consistently says "sapphic".

"do it scared" ok but I would like to do something some other way occasionally. Like at least once. For a change.

What is a Rapier?

A Rapier is a one-handed, thrust-centric sword common to the Renaissance. The word first begins to be used in France in the late 15th century, referring to swords as an “Epée Rapiere,” and it continues to see common use into the mid 17th century, and even into the 18th century in countries such as Spain.

Common sub-types of Rapier include the swept hilt,

cup hilt,

pappenheimer,

and ring hilt (also called a seven ring, or some variation thereupon,)

and the rapier is likely the weapon which has the most manuals written on its use. Contrary to popular belief, Rapiers are not particularly light swords, sometimes weighing as much as longswords, up to 5 lbs/2.25 kg.

-mod Armet

In the graveyard, Book Omens, the oldest piece of media featuring a demon named Crowley, passed a dogend back to TV Omens, the younger and the more accomplished queerbaiter.

“I can see a light,” he said. “Here he comes now, the flash bastard.”

“What’s that he’s drivin’?” said TV Omens.

“It’s 1967 Chevy Impala,” explained Book Omens. “I expect it’s a newer black car than you were expecting.”

“Dunt see why you’d drive a big black car made after the Interwar Period,” said TV Omens.

“They’ve come on a bit since then, I reckon.”

“What’s this Supernatural like?” said TV Omens.

Book Omens spat. “He’s been on television too long,” he said. “Right from the Livejournal days. Gone native, if you ask me. Drives a car he didn’t have to miracle a tape deck into.”

TV Omens pondered this. Like most media containing demons named Crowley, he had a very limited grasp of how normal cars worked, and so he was just about to say something like, I bet it actually needs petrol and he calls it ‘gasoline,’ when the Impala rolled to a halt at the cemetery gate.

“And he wears denim,” sneered Hastur, “even when he dunt need to.” He raised his voice. “Fuck gay rights,” he said.

“Fuck gay rights” TV Omens echoed.

“Hi,” said Supernatural, giving them a little wave. “Sorry I’m late, but you know how it is trying to film during COVID, getting the cast all back to Vancouver and all that, and you can’t imagine the trouble I went to getting Jensen Ackles to make eye contact with other men and then—”

“Now we art all here,” said Book Omens meaningfully, “we must recount the Deeds of the Day.”

“Yeah. Deeds,” said Supernatural, with the slightly guilty look of one who is attending church for the first time in years and has forgotten which bits you stand up for.

Book Omens cleared his throat.

“I have queer coded an angel,” he said. “As he performed magic tricks at a birthday party, children shouted homophobic slurs at him. Then, to contradict this, I placed a line in the narration explicitly stating that as a sexless being he cannot be gay unless he really wants to make the effort, all while refusing to confirm whether he has made that effort. For thirty years both authors have openly expressed discomfort with seeing shipping content, and yet I remain a cult classic among bookish queer people.”

“Nice one,” said Supernatural, helpfully.

“I have created an uncanny valley of queerbait,” said TV Omens. “I had all sorts of dialogue and film language hinting at some sort of ‘love story,’ but the surviving author refuses to confirm what sort of ‘love story’ it is either in canon or via Word of God. Meanwhile, young people desperate for queer representation lavish him with praise for something he never did and the fandom is plagued with discourse.”

They both looked expectantly at Supernatural, who gave them a big smile.

“You’ll like this,” he said.

His smile became even wider and more conspiratorial.

“I let the gay angel tell Dean he loves him and immediately killed him and sent him to Super Hell,” he said.

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

“Yes?” said Book Omens. “And then what?”

“Look, it wasn’t easy,” said Supernatural.

“That’s all?” said TV Omens.

“Look, people—”

“And exactly what has that done to bait queer people into becoming invested in you?” said Book Omens. “You made half of the ship canonically queer and then buried him! They’ll never watch again!”

Supernatural pulled himself together. What could he tell them? That thousands of Tumblr blogs that hadn’t touched the show since 2013 went absolutely feral? That in the middle of one of the most contentious presidential elections in recent memory, exacerbated by a global pandemic and widespread unrest in the wake of economic collapse, “Destiel” trended on Twitter and dragged “Putin” up with it? It was the most social media engagement he’d gotten in years, and he’d hardly had to make Jensen act.

But you couldn’t tell that to media featuring demons named Crowley like Book Omens and TV Omens. Twentieth-century minds, the both of them. Spending years picking away at a bunch of people who still read, or months tossing out empty statements that look like straight allyship if you squint hard enough. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With seven billion people in the world you couldn’t pick away at people’s sanity that slowly; you had to be bold. But media containing demons named Crowley like Book Omens and TV Omens wouldn’t understand. They’d never have thought up fridging a lesbian in the same episode as you killed half of the most popular ship, for example. Or canonical nods to Wincest. Or demon deals being sealed with a kiss regardless of gender. He’d been particularly pleased with demon deals being sealed with a kiss regardless of gender.

lets hear it for transgenderism and faggotry. can I get a round of applause for transgenderism and faggotry