The fall breeze slips through the open window, rustles the curtain, and nips at his cheeks and nose. It wouldn’t be difficult for Echo to reach over and shut it from where he lays shivering in the hammock, but his hands are tucked tightly into his armpits seeking the little warmth found there.

On one hand, the chill reminds him he’s alive and breathing. His light hasn’t quite burned out despite how the galaxy has desperately tried to extinguish it. On the mechanical other, he might as well be frozen in containment on Skako Minor again.

More Here

Standing, Ar'alani's lips quirk for a moment as she looks at him. “One more question.” Rising, Thrawn pushes in his chair. “Yes?” “Has she tried to eat your brains?”

Alternatively: Thrawn doesn't believe in ghosts, but one is haunting him. And the ghost just wants to find a home.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts from content creators expressing frustration over the lack of attention their works are getting here on Tumblr (and over on AO3).

I empathize with those creators as I’m one of those creators. I used to post my content here but got tired of posting to The Void.

To be clear, my goal was never to amass thousands of notes or followers.

Did I want notes and followers?

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. However, my ultimate goal was simply to create content that people like. That they comment on, recommend to others even, talk to me about.

It’s never really happened (thought I found a place once but got ejected from the fandom for refusing to speak Hive).

Now, I will say that I have managed to find myself a niche and do get decent hits on AO3. These here:

…

Are my numbers on my two open works.

Not bad, I admit.

Nowhere near the 10,000 hits, 1000 kudos, 500 comments I have seen on other stories in the same fandoms.

On Tumblr, however, those stories got:

No reblogs, no comments, barely a handful of likes.

This is what I mean by under-appreciated.

A story I helped beta for this years Star Wars Big Bang has these numbers on AO3:

And this many notes on here:

Of those 9, four are from me reblogging and liking it.

I have stories that have gotten zero notes. Art, gifs, wallpapers, same. Others are blogging about experiencing the same thing.

This is the content that people are begging for.

Begging

However, these posts all have fallen into The Void.

Why?

Largely, it’s the algorithm here on Tumblr. It sucks balls. The new blaze function also doesn’t help as it’s a cheap ass way for Tumblr to exploit content creators desperate to reach an audience.

It’s also the elites on here who control the fandoms by deciding who gets accepted and who doesn’t. They don’t want to share the space. They cultivated a circle of worshippers and don’t want to give it up. Look at how many either don’t reblog anyone but themselves or their inner circle.

This is what’s driving content creators away.

This is why fandoms (even huge ones) are dying.

Writers, artists, gif makers, they’re leaving Tumblr and A03/FFN because they’re tired of posting in The Void. We feel unwelcome, unwanted, and under-appreciated.

Fandoms are a community. A community thrives on participation. Hence my Sixty Followers Lost Celebration. It’s designed to show under-appreciated creators some love. Give them a boost of encouragement. Inspire them to keep creating. To continue sharing.

Otherwise, this site?

It’s gonna become a garbage heap of old posts.

People are getting tired of seeing the same posts over and over (I know I am).

Many will eventually leave from boredom.

What will people do then?

I'd just like to add on to this and say I've seen a lot of people agreeing with posts like this, but then they'll turn around and be upset their posts only get hundreds of likes instead of thousands.

Fantastic writers are leaving in droves because there is no community. It is a thing of the past and people are pretending otherwise. If you're upset that YOU'RE not getting your thousand post hits, ask yourself, how can I promote someone else so I can gain that community back?

Because maybe the person that supported you, got tired of your complaining when their post didn't even get 10 notes.

Instead of gatekeeping and complaining, maybe it's time to think about someone outside of you and your circle. Maybe it's time you started giving back to the community that's been praising and supporting you.

Maybe it's time to stop thinking about you.

Start thinking about the community again who spent so long being kind to you.

Also, check out the creator of this post.

Or pay it forward here

Here

or Here

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For the @swbigbang event 2022

I made a helpful infographic to explain

I am dead. Because this is true

Not fully colored because I was trying to get this out for day 31: Remembrance/Rescue. Just playing around with a few things.

@clonetober

Ohs!

Rex decides to set up a fall harvest for the town then loses a child—his child—during it.

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The dark circles, thick and heavy, ringing Rex’s eyes give him the appearance of a specter in some ways leaving Cody uncertain as to if his little brother will disappear. It’s not the first time Cody’s thought his brothers were around when only silence surrounded him.

Joe Russo when Tony Stark said “billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” in the first avengers

so far, I have quotes from the russos on how they think Cap is old fashioned and needed to go, how black widow was damaged and needed to “complete herself” how tony “needs to go.” they clearly don’t care for thor or ant man, thinking them idiots. They don’t seem to respect Falcon or War machine (I wonder why) so who DO they like?

Why were they given control over a movie franchise where they hate all the characters?

Completely agree. Here are the quotes they’re referencing btw

This really freaking annoys me. If you’re in charge of a movie franchise then it is your job to embrace every character, to help them grow and overcome their differences. But no, NO! These asshats kill off every single character that they hate and are acting like complete babies just because they don’t like them. If you don’t like them so much then fuck off! Go and work on something else! Just stop ruining the MCU!!!

They both literally just hated everyone. Here is another quote I haven’t heard a lot of people mention either

Loki: h-

Joe Russo:

this is so funny tho

Oh they hated everyone that explains why the movies are like that

No wonder the mcu feels like a slightly better Michael bay franchise

On the bright side, knowing the directors actively hated half the characters they were working with leaves me feeling 0% hesitant to ignore every single bullshit character move they made! 😜

I don’t know why people do this… for example they did it with Star Trek and jj abrams…

Look, I have my differences with the LOTR movies, but you can see in every frame the sheer overwhelming love for the story that went into those movies. On genuinely every level. Every person involved with the production of those movies loved what they were doing and were working passionately, and it shows. 

The disregard that leaks through parts of the MCU, two of the new Star Trek movies, and the new Star Wars trilogy really is baffling to me. So many people love these franchises and would have lovingly poured their heart and soul into them. And filmmakers who just didn’t care were handed these films?? Imagine what we could have gotten if actual fans had been allowed to make these movies. 

Oh wait, I don’t have to imagine. People who love these franchises and these characters put their tiny amounts of free time and overwhelming effort into producing fanfiction and fanart for these characters every day. I could go on AO3 right now and in half a dozen clicks get sweeping, beautiful, poetic treatises on the human condition written through these ‘Verses. Vast arrays of adventures starring these characters, and the characters themselves would be lovingly adored by their writers. I could enjoy content made by people who care. 

These directors and producers don’t deserve to be handed these franchises and they don’t deserve the paychecks they receive for half-assing their way through them. Not when fans produce outstanding content every day for free, just out of passion alone. This is ridiculous, can Hollywood please start putting people who actually care about the characters in charge of the movies? Please? I promise I’ll go back to buying movie tickets if I think the characters will be treated fairly by their narratives. 

That explains why, despite my incredible geekiness, I’ve been meh about seeing these movies. The contempt showed.

I’m not even a fan of the mcu but I’m fucking livid right now

“white men are gross, I hate white men”

-anthony russo, a white-as-wonderbread man with nothing unique to contribute to anything.

At least he got rid of the characters instead of changing who they fundamentally are. That seems to be in vogue thing to do these days in fictional media.

Sooo….are we ready to talk about “omEga is a SwEEt cHilD LeaVe Her aLoNE”…

She’s probably older than all of the Batch and probably most clones…where’s their child protection????

It’s interesting though — the culture of shame surrounding adult women and fandom. Even within fandom it’s heavily internalized: unsurprisingly, mind, given that fandom is largely comprised by young girls and, unfortunately, our culture runs on ensuring young girls internalize *all* messages no matter how toxic. But here’s another way of thinking about it.

Sports is a fandom. It requires zealous attention to “seasons,” knowledge of details considered obscure to those not involved in that fandom, unbelievable amounts of merchandise, and even “fanfic” in the form of fantasy teams. But this is a masculine-coded fandom. And as such, it’s encouraged - built into our economy! Have you *seen* Dish network’s “ultimate fan” advertisements, which literally base selling of a product around the normalization of all consuming (male) obsession? Or the very existence of sports bars, built around the link between fans and community enjoyment and analysis. Sport fandom is so ingrained in our culture that major events are treated like holidays (my gym closes for the Super Bowl) — and can you imagine being laughed at for admitting you didn’t know the difference between Supernatural and The X Files the way you might if you admit you don’t know the rules of football vs baseball, or basketball?

“Fandom” is not childish but we live in a culture that commodified women’s time in such away that their hobbies have to be “frivolous,” because “mature” women’s interests are supposed to be marriage, family, and overall care taking: things that allow others to continue their own special interests, while leaving women without a space of their own.

So think about what you’re actually saying when you call someone “too old” for fandom. Because you’re suggesting they are “too old” for a consuming hobby, and I challenge you to answer — what do you think they should be doing instead?

#I love the fact I’m ‘weird’ for writing fic but some guy painting a team logo on his beer belly is normal

[x] [x]

This whole modern approach is also seriously undermining just how important fanfiction is - from a historical standpoint.

The concept of fanfiction formed and forged the earliest stages of literature in Europe. Because the majority of authors in France, Germany and Great Britain looked at that funky little Celtic dude Arthur and thought “hey, he’s neat. I wanna write about him”.

The entire concept of a book outside of religious purposes was born out of fanfiction in my country.

There is no “first canon” for Arthur where he came as the prince of Camelot, with his sidekicks Lancelot and Merlin and his endgame love interest Gwen.

Arthur was some random hunter when he started out.

Someone’s fanfiction made him a prince.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him a round table.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Merlin at his side.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Morgana, gave him Gwen, gave him his swords.

And, to this day, we still write Arthurian fanfiction. Literally last year there was a movie adaptation that is, by all intends and purposes, fanfiction, because it wasn’t even close to a literal adaptation of the source material (The Kid Who Would Be King). Heck, BBC’s Merlin, itself an Arthurian fanfiction, remains one of the biggest fandoms that people today write for on AO3.

You were a joke in the middle ages if you tried to write your own stuff. Who’s interested in your stuff? You were only a respected author if you wrote fanfiction. The most famous medieval German authors are famous because they wrote fanfiction about some knightly OCs they created who served on Arthur’s court. That is the literary legacy of the middle ages. Arthurian fanfiction.

Yet somewhere along the way, this concept of “I find x story/element cool and want to elaborate on it more, shift the focus onto an aspect of this original source material” has gotten this “eh, it’s fanfiction” connotation and lost respect.

Even though this very concept is still being used - even outside of the actual medium of fanfiction - and it is still being used for the very same purpose it was used for in medieval times. Original movies often don’t get as much recognition as adaptations of existing source material that the audience is familiar with. People see a movie about a character they’re familiar with and seem more inclined to buy a ticket to see the 10th new interpretation of Batman or Superman or Snow White. How are these new interpretations of familiar source material that usually add to the lore, reinterpret characterizations and dynamics, any different from fanfiction?

But heaven forbid we call The Dark Knight Nolan’s Batman fanfiction. No, fanfiction is that silly thing that we can’t take seriously, but that new Joker movie, that however is high-end art.

SO IMPORTANT

This. Fanfiction is variations on an existing theme, simultaneously making use of and satisfying people’s existing love for a story that they’re happy to consume more of, and cultivating the synergy between an existing story/mythos and a new author who, in interacting with characters they’d never have created themselves, creates something that neither they nor any of the story’s previous tellers could have made all by themselves.

Fanfiction is the new whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and fanfiction is the story being made limitless, retelling by retelling, and it is wonderful.

It’s also worth noting that Batman himself only came into being because of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a series of books about an extravagantly rich foppish playboy by day, daring hero in disguise by night (I mean, loosely. He also fopped by night and heroed by day, but you get my drift). Written by a woman no less.

Batman is a transformative work with a modernised crime-fighting SP but also borrowing strongly from earlier comic books, and yet it is seen as definitive.

This is an open letter to the Content Creators who garner hundreds of likes and reblogs but repeatedly post about not getting any likes or reblogs on their works from a Content Creator who receives next to no likes or reblogs on her own work.

Look, I get it.

I do.

You put hours into ripping videos and making gifs.

Days into writing that one-shot, two-shot or chapter for a multi-chapter story.

Weeks into creating that digital painting, physical drawing or photoset.

You’re proud of your work. Excited to share it.

And it doesn’t get all that much attention.

It’s demoralizing and makes you think you suck. You start struggling to create content. Ask yourself why you should bother since nobody is going to comment or reblog your work so others can see it.

I get it, I do.

We all want people to love our work as much as we love it.

Tumblr has an algorithm that is dependent on reblogs. You don’t trend unless you are being reblogged.

So, yeah, I get it.

You want reblogs to trend.

You want likes to show your work is loved.

You want comments flooding your inbox telling you how awesome your work is.

The thing is, many of you are getting those reblogs, likes, and anon messages gushing over your work.

You just want more.

Hey, that’s cool. It’s totally human to want that validation.

Some of us, though, don’t get any sort of validation.

And we continue creating.

We continue sharing our work despite knowing we likely will get less than five likes, no reblogs and zero anon messages gushing over our work.

This is a glass half full or empty situation. You can either look at your glass as half empty because you aren’t getting the interaction you crave or look at it as half full because you are getting more than a lot of other Content Creators.

Choice is yours in how you want to look at things.

Personally, I look at every one like as my glass being half full.

It means one person saw what I created and appreciated it.

So I continue to create and share.

For me and that one person.

I needed a laugh and this is for all us writers out there: no matter which kind you are, you ARE a muse and an artist in your own right. Celebrate, babes!

FUCK YEAH!!!!

I needed this too, thank you @thisisartbylexie!

Same goes for fan fiction. There are tons more writers on here but we are lost in the algorithm and don’t get the chance to shine like the popular blogs do. Like, reblog, it helps the community and fandoms grow 🥰