It's 2020 can people please stop pitting transformative fandom and curatorial fandom against each other and recognize that both have their strengths and weaknesses and are important in different ways to different people

it's 2020, and this is literally the first time i've read the term "curatorial fandom", so yeah. you might need to do some work to achieve the affect your desire.

I have no idea what that last sentence means.

please explain the terms:

and then:

like this is a completely new dialectict to me, and i sincerely do not get what you are trying to say.

Transformative fandom: fanfic writers and fan artists, people who generate new fiction and art from their fandom (stereotypically the way that women interact with fandom)

Curative fandom: people with encyclopedic knowledge of their fandom, they may ruin wikis or may trade trivia as a way of being fans (stereotypically the way men interact with fandom)

when they're pitted against each other you get 2015 era Tumblr discourse about how knowledge testing in fandom spaces is always gatekeeping and REAL fandom means knowing what a show is really ABOUT instead of just betting able to tell off a list of characters. Alternately, being pitted against each other can look like comic book guy turning his nose up at AU fanart and questioning why you'd even call yourself a fan of a series if you're going to ignore everything about it.

There have been lots of heated exchanges about it and there used to be one post that circulated Tumblr pretty regularly that was very sneery about curative fandom because it was 2015 and Tumblr was for transformative works and Reddit was for curating and that was that.

Except that made a lot of curative fans running wikis or learning every little bit of trivia feel bad and obviously knowledge testing people is a shitty thing but transformative fans do it too, that's not exclusively curative, it's just that transformative fans expect an essay response instead of multiple choice.

I actually did my oral BA exam about fandom and it's perception and depiction both by mainstream and other fans.

There are multiple studies that show the unfortunate fact that some groups of fans try to "other" different part of Fandom that they see as more divergent of the social norm, so they themselves will still be counted as normal and not socially ostracized.

This happens both in curative fandom towards transformative fandom and in transformative fandom towards curative fandom as well as towards other parts of transformative fandom itself.

One study found that the likelihood of a fan dismissing other fans as "the real crazies" actually has more to do with their socioeconomic status than what fandom they belong to. The higher the socioeconomic status, the more likely that person was to try and paint themselves as normal by throwing other fans under the bus.

Presumably because they had more to loose in terms of status and/or respect.

Persons of a lower socioeconomic status were more likely to defend other fans and more unashamed about their own involvement in fandom.

Of course mysoginy, racism and homophobia also play a role in the general perception of especially transformative fandom (underrepresented people tend to be more willing to reshape a canon that doesn't include them) but mostly it tends to be about saving face by tearing others down.

Perception is also influenced by depictions of fandom in media. Which tends to be unflattering for the simple reason that media conglomerates desperately want you to forget that the producer -> consumer dynamic of media (and thus culture) production is a relatively new one. Culture production used to be more like fandom. By the people, for the people. (e.g. King Arthur myths: there is no one canon because people just went with what they liked and wrote new parts) But that is something that threatens their very existence, so they paint everyone who engages with their products in any other way than passive consumption in a negative light, so as to make other people afraid of doing the same.

Which leads to people trying to distance themselves from it. Which leads to the aforementioned throwing other fans under the bus.

Some reading materials on the subject (most of them are available as PDFs somewhere)

- Textual Poachers: Television Fans and participatory culture by Henry Jenkins

- Geek hierarchies, boundary policing, and the gendering of the good fan by Kristina Busse

- ‘‘They’re Losers, but I Know Better’’: Intra-Fandom Stereotyping and the Normalization of the Fan Subject by Mel Stanfill

- Are You “Fan” Enough? The Role of Identity in Media Fandoms by Samantha L. Groene and Vanessa E. Hettinger

I love desire paths. There's something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it's location, a desire path can mean so many different things.

In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we're oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.

Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.

Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.

Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can't design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!

Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way...especially if you're superstitious.

In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there's something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)

And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.

And for something really crazy...a desire path used for centuries will create a 'holloway'

All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.

"Why does Batman need to be a billionaire?"

"He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program."

"But couldn't he do more good if he just invested-"

"The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny."

He has, like, three charitable organizations he funds, named after his father, his mother, and Alfred.

Between both Bruce and Batman’s contributions, Gotham should be a better city than it is, and the only reason it isn’t is DC Editorial Mandate that basically says Gotham has to get worse and worse and worse or there’s no Batman stories they can tell (and, obviously, they have no other characters besides Batman).

There’s a reason Batman thinks the city is literally cursed.

I want to see Bruce Wayne go off

"Oh, oh, just charity my way out of dealing with the Penguin, a living, breathing 19th century Marxist's cartoon of the bourgeoisie? Just fund anti-Clayface measures? Crack down on corporations who put out shapeshifting cosmetics? What socio-economic pressures turn botonists into actual fucking dryads?! What inspires anti-animal terrorism? THAT'S NOT EVEN A REAL KIND OF ECO-FASCISM!"

For the record, Gotham is canonically curse, because it sits on some sort of evil swamp. I think.

There are like, half a dozen curses. The Lazarus Pits are leaching into the water, Slaughter Swamp is an unconnected body of water a few miles outside of the city that also ressurects people (see Solomon Grundy), the Bat-demon Barbatos and his followers (the Court of Owls) have been fucking up the city psychically and financially, the malevolent influence of the warlock Doctor Gotham's tomb in the center of the city, the madness hypersigil of Amadeus Arkham (in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), there were several outposts of subterraneans and aliens beneath the city during the Silver Age, constant chemical warfare that makes it the equivalent of a WWI trench managed by MK-ULTRA, it's in New Jersey, and I think God just hates it

underrated type of friendship is just sending each other things related to current fixations or special interests. hi we haven't talked a real convo in months but i love you here is a picture of a crab i know you love an image of a crab. hi we've never had a conversation but i see you posting a lot of new video game, and i dont go to new video game, but this seems like a funny shitpost and i love you. such specific things remind me of you and i am sharing it with you and i love you.

Oh fuck off

Anyway the best opening line to a book is still from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Another favorite is the opener from CS Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

"There was a boy named Eustice Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

May I present a strong contender as well:

JESUS CHRIST. Killer opening.

For those of you who are curios:

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

vegans will pretend not to hear when natives tell them their agave products are unsustainable because they have whimsical feelings about, and i cannot stress this enough, the freedom of hive insects

Honey is literally murder but go off

Prove it.

They literally puke their guts up to make your honey

I have not seen any evidence tonsugges they are harmed or die in the process of production. They do regurgitate the nectar as part of the process to concentrate it into honey (an interesting process) but they do not suffer any injury during this process. If they did, the cost to produce honey, which is done naturally as a measure to survive over winter and through times of lower availability, would outweigh the benefits. If you kill several bees to produce enough honey to make one more bee, It makes no sense. Any animal that did that would die, even with human intervention.

Do you have any sources which suggest otherwise? I’d be interested to hear of this (relatively publicly available) information was false or misunderstood.

Bee farmers use whats called a honey maker. It’s a crude devices. It similar to a meat grinder. They force the bees in and grind them up. What comes out is a paste. That paste is later filtered into what we know as honey

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read

@zoologicallyobsessed please show us pics of your bee grinder

they might be falsely thinking about a honey extractor machine. but all these do is you place the beehive frames inside and a motor rotates it at a speed that removes the honey, which is then tapped through a tap at the bottom. 

…do they think they put bees in that and spin them around until they vomit…?

bee carnival

bad and naughty bees get put into the b e e c e n t r i f u g e to extract their honey

Vegans coming after beekeepers is one of my major teeth grinding annoyances. For many reasons, because there’s so many lies. And to go one step further because it’s such a waste. You see, the strongest vegan argument is that they don’t want to exploit animals or take from them without their consent.

… but… Bees consent. NO. I’M NOT KIDDING.

How? Bee hives aren’t kept on leashes. They’re outside, the bees can travel miles every day. They follow their queen. Who is also outside, not on a leash, and can travel miles every day. If she doesn’t like the hive for any reason - for example: it got too hot, too cold, too messy, too filled with sugary stuff and they need more space… then the queen leaves. And with her the hive.

The queen stays in the hive because the hive is the best place to live. Period. Done. End of. If the hive is staying with the beekeeper it’s because the keeper is doing their job correctly and keeping them happy because the bees can, and do, leave bad beekeepers.

Of all the animals we have domesticated as livestock, bees are the ones you can most easily argue are consenting participants in their keeping.

Here it is. The bee post is back

Bee content!!!

I’m Romanian and I didn’t even know that’s what drujba meant, oh my god, this is hilarious.

*Revs chainsaw* THIS IS SHAPED LIKE A FRIEND

I just realized this makes solving things with the power of friendship much more interesting

YEAHHHHHHH

god apparently Walgreens has a policy where employees can refuse to complete a transaction if it goes against their moral or religious beliefs…like lets get this straight a pharmacist can refuse to give a customer their prescribed medication because they disagree with it. and technically theyre supposed to hand it off to another employee. but this doesnt always happen. literally leaving people without condoms or contraceptives or HRT or any number of things because the employee simply didn’t want to. Incredibly ghoulish policy that has no right to exist. I’m sorry if you work in a pharmacy and can’t do your literal job because its too “morally challenging” for you, you should not have that job!

ppl always wanna be like "but freedom!!!!!!" like ya freedom to get a new fucking job that doesn't require u to do things that are "against ur morals." go work at hobby lobby dipshit.

yeah this happens a lot more than people think and it’s not just walgreens. when i was first prescribed testosterone i couldn’t pick it up at any cvs in brooklyn or manhattan because the first pharmacist i saw (who was usually really nice to me prior to testosterone) suddenly changed her tone and deleted the medication from my profile in the system somehow. for weeks every pharmacy only gave me the needles. nowhere i went would fill my testosterone. in new york city. planned parenthood ended up giving me what they had in stock instead of going through a pharmacy because even the doctors calling all 6 pharmacies wouldn’t help.

i know trans people who couldn’t get refills on hormones and went without ANY hormones in their body. that is fucking dangerous and would not happen to cis people. everyone should have access to their own prescribed medications.

tbh hatewatching is such an alien concept to me, i can barely be bothered to watch the things i do want to watch why would i bother looking at something i know i won't like

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore & Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis

I gotta say, one of the greatest achievements of my 20s was that I learned (mostly) to differentiate between:

"I truly do not want to go" and

"I'm just feeling the Demand Avoidance, and I will like it once I get there."

Well, goodness, this one resonated much more than I was expecting. I mean, I get it. My mind was also blown wide open when I found out "demand avoidance" was a thing that existed, and that I'm not the only weirdo in the world who suddenly wishes it wasn't her birthday after anxiously waiting for her birthday for days.

Loads of people in the tags are asking how I do it? I feel this won't be groundbreaking advice, but here is what I have learned:

#that little bat has no clue that it is embodying halloween right now #because it does not understand what holidays are #it does however #understand what pumpkins are #as it can eat those #it cannot eat halloween #bats

I needed your tags I’m sorry.

Bruh your cat is getting ratatouille'd

— Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

thwack

thwack

thwack

thwack

*brief thinking pause*

….

thwack

The headline made me do a double take because it can be read two ways. But the complete subheading (which is cut of in the preview) reads:

Ksenia Coffman’s fellow editors have called her a vandal and a McCarthyist. She just wants them to stop glorifying fascists—and start citing better sources.

Be honest, did you react like Erika did watching this?

Watch the full episode here

This is hilarious but it is also great modeling of both good DM and good Dom behavior bc the Dom DM says the safe word.

Neither a good Dom or a good DM should want to hurt you in ways that aren’t fun for everyone, and both Doms and DMs should get to bail on scenes that aren’t fun for them.

The DM is just the player who agreed to play The World, and safety tools are for them, too!

THE LORD OF THE RINGS costumes appreciation: ― Eowyn’s green dress (costume design by Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor)

The dress looks even more gorgeous with the color enhanced!