concept: the year is 2034. i walk into work with coffee in hand. coworker is wearing cool shoelaces and i compliment them absentmindedly. they look me dead in the eye and say, “thanks, i stole them from the president.” scalding coffee leaks out of every one of my orifices and i hide in the bathroom convulsing for the rest of the day
it is physically painful to remember that people have continued to join tumblr since 2012 and that there are people–perhaps people reading this! right now!!!–who don’t have the foggiest memory of this fucking post. this post haunted me, do you understand, i saw and heard this code used in REAL FUCKING LIFE, I CANT FKJCLNG HANDLE THIS
imagine: magnus giving an Anime Protagonist Speech and the bad guy is like rolling their eyes bc yeah this seems like something he would do but in reality he’s buying time as merle and taako rob the dude blind and then knock them out from behind before the three of them bolt
“if you actually met 100% of the requirements they couldn’t afford you”
I really needed to hear this. I had never thought of it this way. This literally never occurred to me, I’ve just spent my whole adult life thinking I was underqualified for everything. Thinking I’m not good enough for anything because the “minimum requirements” are so high.
I need specifics. I wanna know what I can get away with. I wanna know what they really mean by “minimum.” I wanna know how much I’m actually worth.
As someone who worked in hr, this is true.
True to the point that if someone was extremely unqualified, but because of timing we were desperate, we’d bend rules to get them hired. And the only people taking advantage of this were guys.
I would pay top dollar for a comprehensive, source-supported explanation of how Superwholock vanished.
Like……..that was the core of tumblr in 2013. Its tainted life-blood. Its fetid royal palace. Destiel this and Johnlock that. Tardis-in-the-impala-at-221B URLS. Bendydoot Cucumberpatch and long analytical debates of which doctor is best doctor
What caused the end? What destroyed it? What series of events sunk this fortress? I’m so. So curious. This was so much of what tumblr was. So unavoidable. It’s cultural history. I want. to know.
So I’m not completely sure but I think you can pinpoint the disappearance to the month following Dashcon. Like, the entire year prior, things were going fucking insane; The DW 50th anniversary, Sherlock returned after a hiatus, Dean became a demon or something I don’t remember. Point is, the fans were worse than ever.
And then Dashcon happened: All those people got together for a nightmarish event in the ball pit (for anyone who doesn’t know what Dashcon was, look it up and read any of the news articles about it. I promise, you will not be disappointed).
Now, I wasn’t too active on tumblr at that point because of school reasons, but I remember finding out that the new season of Supernatural had aired on TV, and I saw NOTHING about it on tumblr. Not a single post on my dash. It was a miracle, but I was so confused. How had the whole fandom just vanished like that? I still don’t know for sure, but it was very shortly after the Dashcon incident.
Then Doctor Who returned. New doctor and a new companion. Same scenario. Nobody said anything online. I was still big into DW so that was kind of a bummer but it was still astounding.
I went back online more readily and started realizing that fandoms, as I had known them, were essentially dead after that summer. It was like everybody simultaneously realized how toxic those communities were after they all got together in person and proved themselves to be a disgusting bunch.
It was the fastest and most unsettling jump in internet culture I’d ever seen. Overnight it became an embarrassment to admit that you were in a popular fandom. All because of fucking
“Superwholock died as a result of Dashcon” is the most fascinating theory I’ve heard in a while amazing
(And you know, seasonal rot and kids getting older and all that but s t i l l)
My personal theory is it was because of hiatuses and competition!
– Hiatuses: Sherlock especially, but the long Doctor Who mid-season
breaks didn’t help. People wandered off. Some of them to very similar
shows, like Elementary, which fought initial fan scepticism to
become THE Sherlock alternative.
– Fans became more critical. All
three shows frequently come under fire for their treatment of women,
LGBTQIA people, etc., and without new content fans had no option but to
rewatch and reexamine the same episodes over and over again. Their flaws
became more obvious on repeat viewings, and the comparison to new arrivals like Elementary didn’t help. I imagine there were other
competitors too, but one would need to do more research to see how
relevant they are here – cartoons like Steven Universe and Gravity
Falls, maybe? WtNV? OUAT and OITNB? All of them are much more obviously
diverse, so Superwholock starts looking bland in comparison. There’s also the quality-comparison argument (Doctor Who is not as good at plotting as a lot of other things), but I reckon that goes without saying.
– Fandom backlash! You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. After events like the Mishapocalypse and the infamous FANDOMS GRAB YOUR WEAPONS post Superwholock became shorthand for the most obnoxious parts of Tumblr and fandom, so more people starting distancing themselves from it (see also: how Bronies killed the MLP fandom). And, yeah, it all came to a head with the Dashcon Clusterfuck 2k14.
– Fandom Backlash II: Your Fave is Problematic. Every popular figure from Joss Whedon to Taylor Swift is eventually the subject of text posts and screencaps dragging their name through the mud. Steven Moffat, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Jensen Ackles (I believe? It might have been Jared Padalecki. I don’t really follow Supernatural) have all had plenty of this.
IN CONCLUSION: there wasn’t enough new stuff being made. People found their own new stuff, which in many cases they found more appealling. People became less forgiving of the old stuff, its creators, and its fans. Eventually enough time passed that they gave up on the old stuff completely, so when it came back they weren’t interested.
(granted this mostly comes under the seasonal rot and kids getting older points but I didn’t notice that until I’d typed this out, and it seems a waste to delete it now 😛 )
It’s like I’m reading the end-result of an assigned essay topic I handed out last night. I’ve forgotten so many things from the 2013 era you get an A+
Can we just stop and talk about this for a minute?
Thresh doesn’t make an alliance. Thresh doesn’t waste time liking her. Thresh knows that either he must kill her or she must kill him for one of them to win.
But this is the only way he can repay her for protecting Rue when he couldn’t. It’s the only way he can repay her for honoring Rue when he couldn’t. He honors her by sparing her friend, the girl who would have died for her.
The revolution really doesn’t start with Katniss.
It starts with Rue.
SOMEBODY FINALLY SAID IT
This is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make for years. Okay, so the revolution gets it’s kindling with Katniss. She volunteers, well that’s new, she rebels in the display of talents by shooting the apple. This triggers her perfect score, okay. These aren’t really “Revolutionary” though.
It’s not even revolutionary when Peeta professes his love, because, let’s face it, the rules of the game haven’t changed. They’re still just two kids who would have to KILL each other to win. Without a doubt, it would bring some interest to the games, so the Capitol makes propaganda about it. The “Star Crossed Lovers” in a game of life and death.
But what changes the game is Rue. Right away from her introduction in the books we know Rue is going to be somewhat of a big deal. She was compared to the most important character to Katniss, Prim, so that’s a huge indicator. She’s small, young, she’s what Prim would have been.
So Katniss instantly feels a subconscious pull toward her.
When they meet in the trees, Katniss could have killed Rue easily, and Rue probably could have pulled a sneak attack or alerted the Careers of Katniss’s presence. Instead, Rue points out the Tracker Jacker nest.
Then it escalates, Rue and Katniss become an odd team, they’re an alliance, which is never new in the Hunger Games, as forming teams and then betraying them at the end seems to be a common, but there’s is different. It’s close, it’s sisterly, protective.
And then Rue get’s impaled. Katniss kills her first tribute with ease after that. Comparing it to hunting game. Katniss holds Rue, she cries, and then she sings. She sings for Rue a song of promised safety and warmth, something completely absent in the arena.
And this is where the metaphorical canon fires. Katniss could have left Rue, the hovercraft would have been along to pick her up, but she can’t. She’s morally obligated to love this girl as much as possible. And this is where the revolution starts.
She honors the dead. She honors a dead tribute from a district she’d never seen, a person she’d known for only a short period of time. But she throws away Hunger Games norms. She rejects them completely.
In the Hunger Games you’re supposed to kill mercilessly and leave the victims for the plain box they’re shipped home in.
Katniss gives Rue a funeral in the Games, she decorates the body, she makes it look like Rue is sleeping. Like no harm had come. Katniss just ignited the coals that Rue had placed.
Rue’s District sends a parachute. Homemade bread.
Then Thresh kills Clove and distracts Cato by taking his bag.
The fire is going now, and the actions in Catching Fire are even more obvious.
The Speech for Rue. Peeta’s painting. Everything eludes back to this one little girl who became Katniss’s family.
So the revolution never started with Katniss, she was just the tinder for Rue’s ignition.
Rue was the real Mockingjay.
Also, who’s four note whistle is constantly attached to the trailers?
Rue’s whistle.
Rue is omnipresent in the books and movies, and I absolutely love it.
The rebellion was started because the innocence of a black girl was defiled.
That is a powerful statement that a lot of people gloss over for this book
@anghraine tagged me in the “post-a-bit-of-something-you’re-working-on” meme, so for your previewing pleasure, here’s the opening scene of the Devil Went Down to Georgia (And Then Went Down On Johnny) fic:
He does try the play the goddamn thing once or twice.
But a fiddle of gold is heavy as shit, and the sound’s all wrong—loveless, and cold as Hell, with vicious strings that split Johnny’s fingers when he plays. (There’s never any blood when he looks, and Johnny wonders if it’s drinking him up, dry; leaving scars at his fingertips and an ache in his hand that won’t quite ease. Then again, it’s the Devil’s instrument; it can probably do any evil thing it likes.)
In the end, he loosens the bow-hair and puts the thing away in a battered, borrowed case, goes back to playing his box maple. Wood is living, it breathes and breaks; swells like your best girl’s clit under your tongue, shivers like a warm wind through leaves. Wood remembers the sun, wants to sing about it.
There’s nothing gold wants to sing about, except being dead.
Johnny’s playing the maple that night at the Bellows Club—well, used to be ‘Club’ until the owner’s second wife decided they were destined for better things, had it rechristened ‘Café’. The Tuesday-night regulars are the same, though, and they whistle or lazily applaud when he finishes his set, greet him by name after he’s put the fiddle away and come down off that high-as-Heaven stage. Johnny wades out among them to make a little small talk, then wanders his way to the bar.
The Devil is waiting for him there.
“Do you not like my gift, Johnny?” the Devil asks, smiling. He’s handsomer than Johnny remembers, but then Johnny supposes every man is better-looking on his own turf. (His grandmother always said that since Babel, the Devil claimed every spit of land taller than two stories. And here, among the old cigarette butts and sin, it’s likely to be true.)
The Devil smells of mint gum, something rotten underneath.
“Your gift?” Johnny laughs. “The way I remember, you lost it to me.”
“Fair and square,” the Devil says, still smiling.
tagging…………..everyone who’s working on shit they wish they could just finish already. I feel u guys.
just moving along like everyone else 