Sometimes there are fandom culture posts that are well written but miss the mark because they seemingly do not engage with the fandom itself

Just got a comment on a fic I wrote in 2002. 🙏🙏🙏

Not 2012. Not 2022. 2002.

Your fic's time will come. If you love your fic, don't worry if it isn't a hit right when you post it. It'll get to the people who will love it..

I was literally born that year 😭

Then I'm 16 years old than you 😭🤣😅

This is a daily Purr from my Purrtreon. Every morning, Monday to Friday, I write and share one of these gentle reminders. If you’d like daily access to this kind of content and other exclusive things, please join my Purrtreon. 🤍

worst part about getting angry is how much it makes you want to be mean

sorry i said something dickish. a few mildly frustrating things happened to me in succession and it turned me evil

𝔞𝔣𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔰

Let's make a queer medieval band together! 🏳️‍🌈⚔️🎶

We are designing three new pin collections and for the first one we thought it would be fun to have Pride Knights making music together and dancing! We need your feedback. Which designs do you like the most?

Thank you for voting! ⚔️🌈

i dont usually make pot roast, but that mushroom hotpot soup base tip sounds absolutely outstanding.

It feels unreal. It feels completely fucking unreal that Arcane is a real show that really exists. Number one show in the world in sixty countries, and two of the main characters are lesbians. One of them is butch, actual butch, butch on purpose, butch by design. Five of the main characters are women. Three of those women are women of color. And it’s just. It’s not a Woke Show. There’s no lessons about feminism. It’s not about lesbians finding themselves and coming out. There’s no commentary on racism or sexism or identity. There being this many women, queer people, poc, it’s just how it is. It’s a real show, it’s about the story, and it’s like any other show because it’s about the story first. And it’s one of the best written stories to come along in decades, and it’s about love and family and grief and loss and recovery and redemption and being lost and being found, and it’s transformative, and it is so narratively sound and artistically gorgeous, not a single frame or line by accident, everything so intentionally built and crafted and directed. And the lesbians kiss on-screen.

It’s insane to me that Dragon Age 2 is sandwiched in between two WAY HUGER and WAY MORE SUCCESSFUL games about more traditional fantasy protagonists facing off against world ending threats and winning and it’s this…weird, raw, personal tragedy about how no matter what you do, you can’t always stop crisis and disaster from occurring. Like The Hero or Ferelden, no matter who they were, wants to stop a Blight. The Inquisitor wants to repair the sky. And Hawke, like, wants to make some money, hang around their friends, and keep their family and their adoptive city safe. And they can’t even fucking do that, so unlike the heroes before and after them. You spend seven years in Kirkwall until the game says, “yeah, no matter what, the prejudices and traumas and hurts of this world are Too Much for one person to stop them. The world changes, wars roll over the land, you cannot stop history, Hawke. You tried. You failed.” And then you just sit there, sixteen years old, listening to “I’m Not Calling You A Liar” and you’re like….well, I guess I really wasn’t a hero. Damn. I love it.

On my last Witch Hat Atelier fanart, someone commented saying the swirling design reminded them of Van Gogh's Starry Night, so I thought, why not go all out for the look?

I spent some time updating my Paint Tool SAI to the latest version and created some new Impressionist brushes. I'm super happy with these new brushes and look forward to painting lots of landscapes and skies with them~

The full hours long video recording, PSD File, and HD image will be DMed on Patreon.com/Yuumei on Dec 5th!

One of the really insidious ways black people in media get treated is that despite our stereotypes expanding outside of "thug" "slave" and "prostitute", we are still very limited on *what* we can be portrayed as.

It is no shock to me that the two black women in Veilguard, for instance, are either medium toned like myself or a nonhuman skin color (introduced as a woman). It doesn't escape my attention that the only black woman in Baldur's Gate list of companions is also a nonhuman skin color. Dark skinned black women are still considered too unattractive to include as potential romanceable candidates, as it *also* does not escape my attention that the darkest we've had was Vivienne who was simultaneously regarded as an incredibly unlikeable character by huge swaths of the fandom and also unavailable for romance.

But moreover- why can't the bubbley nerdy cute mage be a black woman? Why can't the shy but resourceful archer be a black woman? Why does the black woman have to be someone with their guard up, walls as high as a skyscraper, cynical and callous? Why can't the black woman be the warm and loving Wynne, or the somewhat naive yet devout Leliana? The stalwart and just Aveline? I know plenty of Isabelas, and Viviennes, and Neves, and Taashs, but I also know plenty who are Merrill, or Bellara*, or Harding, or Cassandra, and I even lived with a Sera for a while. Why can't she be Bethany or Morrigan?

The closest we had was Josephine, who again is still fairly light skinned, but at least she has a bit more flexibility. And she isn't a companion, so her screen time is fairly minimal if you're not taking the time to romance her.

*And I don't begrudge Bellara too much, as A: I adore her and B: I'm pretty sure she's our first visibly Asian companion which is a milestone in itself. My point is more that Bellara could be black with virtually no story change because I know plenty of bubbly chirpy friendly black women who have a deep love of their hobbies and interests, who are bisexual and even prefer women, with deep trauma in their pasts, and yet the choice to *not* do that speaks to a problem the media has in their depiction of black women that is far bigger than Bioware.

And it doesn't escape my attention that the men have this problem as well- Wyll and Davrin* are both regarded as boring by their respective fandoms due to the choice to play it safe and stick with the extremely good and upright and just knight character instead of giving them something more messy- Astarion and Lucanis could be black with, as said, little-to-no change in their storyline because I know-even have dated- pansexual former sex worker black men with intensely complicated feelings about sex and intimacy, and I've had plenty of ex-con soft yet dangerous men holding themselves at a distance to prevent themselves from hurting anyone as my friends and even extended family.

I know plenty of intensely nerdy and probably autistic black guys who will infodump gladly about their special interest to the point of it consuming them. I know plenty of black guys with martyr complexes who think they have to tear the world- and themselves- apart just to fix what is broken in this world. I know plenty of black guys who, despite their own inability to get their shit together, are like a port in a storm every time you talk to them. I know plenty of black guys who are extremely educated and well respected within their field, with gentle yet commanding demeanor. Any of these characters *could* be black, and yet they aren't, and the choice to do so is again far bigger than Bioware and Larian.

*Davrin, like Vivienne, being the darkest and first blatantly black male companion instead of potentially able to be ambiguously "of color" like Zevran, Fenris, and Dorian. Even more damning that they'd considered, like Sera, making Solas blatantly black in his concept art and instead chose to make him a pale egg.

As someone desperate for representation, it becomes quickly obvious as I take inventory of what roles black people are given that we still aren't considered as complex and nuanced and interesting. We're allowed to be more than we were before, but we still have a long way to go.

trying to describe poirot to my friend at trivia night: "if youve seen a detective who looks like this, thats him"

a bi coworker was recently talking about his ex and about how awful their marriage was because when they watched movies or read books she’d talk about how sexy the characters were and how this was really hurtful to him and then turned to me expecting me to agree and I was at a loss for how to respond. sir in my culture if your wife says she thinks legolas is super sexy then it is customary to commission her an erotic digital painting of legolas with his dick out. I have no advice for you.