Being a sex-positive personally-sex-repulsed ace is weird cuz like reading about sex? Awesome. Writing about sex? Not much more intolerable than writing about anything else. Sex is good. Sex is normal. Sex is only as important as you let/want it to be. Kinks are natural expressions of sexuality. Sexual purity is a scam. Bodies are nothing to be ashamed of. Sex work is no more exploitative than any other kind of labor. If you touch me I will throw up on you.
Reblogging for pride month
self care flow chart
Discussion about neurodivergence and self care at WisCon this year led to me finally writing up a post about my self care flow chart. You can find it here if you are interested: https://sophygurl.dreamwidth.org/2579580.html
In case you’ve never seen Once Upon A Time, these are all things that actually happened on the show:
Snow White and Dr. Frankenstein had a one night stand.
Grumpy the dwarf used to be named Dreamy, but changed his name after he had to break up with his nice fairy girlfriend.
There was an eighth dwarf named Stealthy. He’s dead.
Red Riding Hood is a werewolf. She ate her boyfriend.
Mulan is in love with Aurora.
Mulan is also one of Robin Hood’s merry men.
Elsa and Anna have an evil aunt named Ingrid, who also has ice powers, that the rock trolls cursed the kingdom into forgetting all about. (She runs an ice cream shop.)
Peter Pan is Rumplestiltskin’s father.
Rumplestiltskin’s wife left him to be with Captain Hook.
Captain Hook later falls in love with Rumplestiltskin’s grandson’s mother.
But it’s okay, Rumplestiltskin later fell in love with Belle. And they had a kid. Then she died at the end of a really weird Up-style montage.
The Evil Queen and the Wicked Witch of the West are half-sisters.
Robin Hood and the Evil Queen are in love.
The Wicked Witch pretended to be Maid Marian after a time travel adventure and got pregnant with Robin Hood’s kid.
The Wicked Witch and Hades are in love.
The Evil Queen split herself in two using Dr. Jekyll’s serum. (Yes, as in Jekyll and Hyde.)
Feel free to add more! This show is bonkers lmao
Off the top of my head:
Rumplestiltskin’s parents are Peter Pan and the Black Fairy
Rumpelstiltskin is the Beast in the Beauty and the Beast story.
The Evil Queen held Belle captive for 28 yrs to get revenge on Rumpelstiltskin.
Snow White’s daughter and the Evil Queen are mothers to the same kid.
Prince Charming was engaged to another girl before Snow White.
Tinkerbell helped the Evil Queen find her soulmate who is Robin Hood.
Snow White’s daughter banged both Rumpelstiltskin’s son and Captain Hook.
Grumpy who used to go by Dreamy, drank with Belle in a tavern.
Mulan and Belle saved Prince Philip from a curse.
Pinocchio and Snow White’s daughter went through a wardrobe to avoid a curse.
No less than 4 times that the characters forgot who they were.
Rumpelstiltskin saved Belle from a bear.
Ariel and Belle got tied up by Michael and John Darling.
In Season 3, Snow White, Prince Charming, their daughter Emma, the Evil Queen, Captain Hook and Rumpelstiltskin (aka the Beast) go to Neverland to save Henry who is the grandchild of Snow White, Prince Charming and Rumpelstiltskin and also son to the Evil Queen and eventually the stepson to Captain Hook.
And Emma, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming are all the same age.
The Queen of Hearts had a relationship with Rumpelstiltskin (aka the Beast).
The Queen of Hearts is the Evil Queen’s mom.
Mulan, Aurora, Snow White and her daughter went on an adventure that included fighting ogres and climbing beanstalks.
Prince Charming had a twin who banged Jack of Jack in the Beanstalk who was a girl.
Ursula, Cruella and Rumpelstiltskin (aka the Beast) hung out in New York..
Rumpelstiltskin was the Dark One, the Beast, the Crocodile, Carl from Up and Cinderella’s fairy godmother. He wore many hats.
In case you’ve never seen Once Upon A Time, these are all things that actually happened on the show:
Snow White and Dr. Frankenstein had a one night stand.
Grumpy the dwarf used to be named Dreamy, but changed his name after he had to break up with his nice fairy girlfriend.
There was an eighth dwarf named Stealthy. He’s dead.
Red Riding Hood is a werewolf. She ate her boyfriend.
Mulan is in love with Aurora.
Mulan is also one of Robin Hood’s merry men.
Elsa and Anna have an evil aunt named Ingrid, who also has ice powers, that the rock trolls cursed the kingdom into forgetting all about. (She runs an ice cream shop.)
Peter Pan is Rumplestiltskin’s father.
Rumplestiltskin’s wife left him to be with Captain Hook.
Captain Hook later falls in love with Rumplestiltskin’s grandson’s mother.
But it’s okay, Rumplestiltskin later fell in love with Belle. And they had a kid. Then she died at the end of a really weird Up-style montage.
The Evil Queen and the Wicked Witch of the West are half-sisters.
Robin Hood and the Evil Queen are in love.
The Wicked Witch pretended to be Maid Marian after a time travel adventure and got pregnant with Robin Hood’s kid.
The Wicked Witch and Hades are in love.
The Evil Queen split herself in two using Dr. Jekyll’s serum. (Yes, as in Jekyll and Hyde.)
Feel free to add more! This show is bonkers lmao
Facts about this show that live in my head, rent free
Little Bo Peep is a goddamn crime boss
Cruella deVil was able to telepathically control animals
She also had her ability to kill anyone (human or animal) taken away and her entire goal was to just be able to kill people and/or animals again
Maleficent, as a dragon, had sex with Zorro, who is also able to turn into a dragon, and they had a baby
Maleficent literally did not know who the other dragon was, and Zorro himself never actually appears in the show. His identity was revealed in a throwaway line in the series finale
There is a massage parlor in Storybrooke called the Three Bears Day Spa, and a restaurant called Aesop’s Table
Tumblr, someone sent me the Veronica Mars fandom study post the other day and it made me miss you again.
No hardcore fandom has ever died so quickly and so completely as Veronica Mars. This is the story of its murder.
They should study Veronica Mars in Hollywood.I’m serious.
It’s an incredible story of how to go from “loud, passionate fanbase with its own fandom name that campaigns and advocates constantly for it” to “absolutely zero fucking interest” damn near OVERNIGHT with just ONE epically terri-bad decision.
If you weren’t there, you don’t understand: From 2007 to 2014, the fandom — the “Marshmallows,” as they called themselves — were everywhere in the Internet’s geek spaces, my friends. They routinely beat the drum about the series’ three seasons and its excellence, lamented its cancellation, pushed others to give the show a try, and always - ALWAYS - proudly and loudly called for the series to be revived.
FULL DISCLOSURE/CONFESSION: I’ve not even watched that much Veronica Mars, frankly… ? Yeah, I’m sorry! it does seem pretty good from like the four-or-five hours I’ve experienced firsthand. I just never took the time to sit down with it. Regardless, I find fandoms and their dynamics — both how they operate internally and how they display to others externally — deeply fascinating. And I honestly find them easier to study from the outside than the inside. Like, if I’m IN a fandom, I’m more likely to stay in my corner and ignore places that seem negative. But being on the outside lets me just… absorb what’s out there, looking into every forum without judgment. It’s like studying pop-culture sociology or something? And it helps that I’m very close to some serious(-ly burnt) Marshmallows. It makes it so much easier to find and absorb the gamut of the fandom.
Besides: There is NO fandom story I’ve ever seen that’s anything like what happened to Veronica Mars and the Marshmallows.
(Time to insert a brief explainer for the uninitiated: Veronica Mars was a TV series that aired from 2004-2007 on the now-deceased UPN network wherein Kristen Bell played the titular character, a high school girl whose single dad was a private detective in the fictional community of Neptune, California. She grew up working “unofficially” as his assistant, which meant that she herself was effectively a teenage private detective.
The three core elements of the series were: 1) Veronica investigating each week’s big mystery with plenty of quips and snark, 2) Watching Veronica’s various relationships develop and shift, with most of the focus given to a) her relationship to her father and b) Her romantic pursuits (which began as the Veronica/Duncan/Logan triangle before eventually becoming focused on the slow-burn, off-on Veronica/Logan love story), and 3) The gradual development of that season’s “mytharc” — the overarching BIG MYSTERY that doesn’t get resolved or wrapped until the season finale. So it went over the course of two seasons that took place in high school and the third, shorter season that was at the start of Veronica’s collegiate career.)
Just how big and how passionate were the Marshmallows? WELL! When series creator Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy) and star Kristen Bell announced the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie in March 2013, it achieved its heretofore-unprecedented goal of TWO MILLION GODDAMN DOLLARS within less than 12 hours. At that time, it was the biggest Kickstarter goal to ever succeed — and certainly the fastest to reach that kind of height. Fans fell OVER themselves to pay out for it. Hell, my own significant other was DEEP in the tank for VM at the time and invested enough to get multiple t-shirts as backer rewards as well as a disk copy of the movie when it eventually came home.
And AFTER the movie hit in 2014? It was thankfully beloved and embraced! The once-teenage characters were adults who were actually out living on their own and working for a living, but the fandom had grown up with them, so it wasn’t like they were begging for them to stay young students. They embraced Adult Veronica and her new adventure. The fandom rejoiced loudly and continued to be all over the geek side of the Internet… where they, of course, still wanted more. Sure, there were new novels in the aftermath (which were written by the creator of the series), but most of the Marshmallows were calling for more movies or a streaming revival.
And then, at long last… season four was actually announced. And there was much (premature) rejoicing yet again.
Yes, Veronica Mars returned for a fourth season on Hulu in 2019. It was just eight episodes, and it was heavily centered on one season-long mystery instead of sprinkling that amongst a bunch of smaller ones, but it would still feature the same ol’ Veronica. They promised a new, more “adult” mystery/investigation plus a strong focus on Veronica and Logan’s love story.
New Hulu purchased the rights to the first three seasons and hyped up its presence on the platform while marketing the return for the new run. The marketing team played up the most popular quips from the show’s history plus put out TONS of stuff centered on the Logan/Veronica ship to pump up the fans.
The season was dropped all at once using the classic Netflix “binge” model in July 2019. And then… afterwards?
There was a brief explosion of LOUD RAGE from the Marshmallows at what series creator Rob Thomas had to done to burn and spite the fandom and ruin his own goodwill.
SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4: See, at the end of the movie, Veronica and Logan finally entered into a long-term relationship. In season four, they’ve been dating for years, and Logan proposes marriage. But of course there has to be drama/obstacles: In this case, Veronica isn’t sure she’s ready to marry… or capable of being in a marriage. Ah, but of course she eventually realizes how much Logan means to her. The two are married, and, in the season finale… Logan is killed by a car bomb in the penultimate scene. The final scene is a flashfoward to a year later, where Veronica leaves Neptune alone.
For most fandoms, that’d be a memorable point of pain. A big ol’ speed bump that ultimately throws some people off the bus, leaving only the die-hards. But the fact that fans had been invested in this relationship for literally 15 years and that Hulu (and creator Rob Thomas) had heavily marketed the new season as being a big romantic event for the ship… it was too much. Unlike the aftermath of the Star Wars sequels, there was no lingering group of die-hard fans who were open to whatever was next — at least no significant one. I did some Googling and could only find TWO people who still wanted another season.
Funnily enough? Critics LOVED this. Vanity Fair infamously penned an editorial about how Veronica Mars had “finally grown up” with the finale. (The same editorial also featured the author openly hating on Veronica ever being in a relationship because it causes “arrested development” and declaring that the movie – which was acclaimed by both critics AND fans alike, I remind you – was a lame dud. So. The writer must be a reeeaaaal fun person.)
But a series doesn’t live based on critical acclaim, as it turns out. The fandom was murdered overnight. “Marshmallows” stopped appearing in geek spaces online entirely. No one expressed interest in seeing the next season or the next movie. The constant flow of fan AMVs on YouTube and fanfics on AO3 dried up to nothing.
Since 2019 ? Nothing. Chirping crickets. An intensely dedicated fandom of 12 years was just… vaporized.
I’ve never seen anything like it before OR since.
That’s why it’s so fucking fascinating.
So what went wrong?
Creator Rob Thomas was adamant about two things: ONE, the series was intended to be a noir show, which meant there couldn’t be any happiness for its protagonist. And TWO, the death of Logan was necessary to evolve and grow the series.
Thomas thought that having Veronica in a relationship would be holding her back, and that a marriage would absolutely kill the series and leave her stagnant. It never even occurred to him that marriage isn’t the end of a character’s life and growth. It never occurred to him that plenty of drama can be had AFTER someone is married, or that development/growth could be that the characters mature enough to be capable of maintaining a committed relationship. Thomas’ view of his own universe was so myopic that he couldn’t conceive of any possible way that Veronica could still be a private detective involved in life-threatening investigations AND be married at the same time. Futhermore, he felt that fans just wanted Veronica to become a pregnant housewife, which is about as far from what Marshmallows were after as you can get without straight-up killing Veronica and/or Logan. He managed to do the only thing wronger than what he wrongly thought was their insistence.
On top of the above, Rob Thomas only viewed “noir” as a vehicle for total fatalism… despite the fact that many of the most famous noir stories are cynical and full of moral ambiguity, but they still feature a positive outcome. The Big Sleep still has the protagonist get the girl. The Set-Up arguably ends with the happiest possible ending in spite of the beating the hero receives.
Perhaps most importantly? Despite Thomas own insistence that Veronica Mars was always “noir,” the majority of both TV critics and fans did not think that designation ever truly applied. I suspect that’s the reason why Thomas decided to go as dark and fatalistic as possible: He wanted to be noir, and he was being told that he wasn’t. So he went so far into noir that he killed his own most popular property.
He was adamant that it was the only way for the series to grow. But as it turns out, it was instead the only way for the series to permanently end. Without that season four finale, a passionate group of fans would still be begging for more. With it? It’s over. Nobody fucking cares now.
in case anyone is looking through the notes trying to find the original artist it’s will mcphail !! feel free to check out his site but also here are some other things he made too !!
OOOHHH CLICK ON THAT LINK THIS GUY IS FUCKING GREAT
HOLY SHIT
this guy GETS IT
Conversation won’t end itself and get in bed to keep scrolling got me 😂😆😊
people seriously pretending EEAAO is overrated suddenly bc it swept awards? it swept awards largely because it is very very very good. I cried like someone who’s just had a religious revelation BOTH times I watched it bc it touched something raw and real and beautiful but it was also just very, very funny. everyone’s performance kills and the concept is creative and interesting and doesn’t distract from the emotional core. you guys are just contrarian.
oh my god I just saw like 20 people solemnly agreeing that it “looked nice but was written for children” because it. because it. has. immature jokes about hot dog fingers and butt plugs and because the ultimate message is “be kind”.
written for children
as if it isn’t extremely written for adults dealing with adult problems that are keeping them from finding space in their life for joy and whimsy and silliness.
it is about a woman doing her taxes!!!!! it’s about being weighed down by age and responsibility and the sense of the turns you missed in your life and being so exhausted from Being A Grown-up that you burn all the most important relationships in your life!!! it’s about being a mother and a wife and a businesswoman and a human person!!!!! it’s about trying and failing to hold it together in the face of your own well worn traumas and cycles of abuse for decades! it’s incredibly specific to an adult audience!
the message of the film isn’t even “be kind” as much as it’s “be silly. fuck around. laugh it off. find joy in being ridiculous. fuck cynicism.”
like I just. the amount of contrarianism you have to be huffing to fuck up your sense of media literacy this bad. there is a lot of childish humour and absurdity and silliness in the film because the thesis statement of the film is that silliness is profound and important. the message isn’t “be kind” it’s “find joy.” literally it’s so on the nose the character Evelyn is reaching for is Literally Called Joy.
like how do you watch a film where the triumph over nothingness is symbolised by sticking googly eyes on everything and think “oh, the reason this film is full of absurdities that seem immature is clearly an unconscious failure of the film to be mature or deep” rather than “oh the way this film is constructed is Specifically About This Explicit Theme that the whole film has been repeatedly reifying, that both stoic responsibility and chaotic nihilism are paths to self destruction and the real hard important work is allowing yourself to be earnestly naive, vulnerable and silly.”
I do not understand. how multiple people seem to have decided the theme of the film was “be kind to one another” and not “engage authentically with the absurdity and joy of the world because nothing matters except what you make matter!!!!” Simone de Beauvoir did not die for this!!!!!!! kill both the sensible man and the nihilist and revel in the absurd!!!!!!!!!!
Today I learned that this is the 100th anniversary of Dracula being adapted for the stage, but they can’t remount the original production in the original theater because it has since been turned into an adult themed mini golf course. (via the no such thing as a fish podcast)
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