one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts

new tigers!!!!!

Midnight Milk by Dale Gaberson

A classic case of witnessing horrors beyond your comprehension.

Venice, the Entrance to St. Mark's Basilica, Antonietta Brandeis (1848-1926)

murk

Artist: Naughtie_Nine

Do you block people in the same fandom as you just because you don't like their takes?

oh apparently OP on that funny gun post meant it negatively and they're pissed people draw guns badly or just don't care enough for them so

if you draw guns like this i'm kissing you in the mouth personally. i am giving y'all a free pass to draw them as simple or as badly as you'd like.

also please make your guns weirder whenever someone complains about them, just make them out of meat. make them have 3 triggers. make them stupid and glowy and give them a heart shaped barrel. make your critics grovel in pain as you create horrors beyond their comprehension. let gods tremble as you corrupt the divine art of creation for your nefarious whims. its funny

Anyone got that quote about how modern authors deserve so much credit for writing anything when there's a world of distractions available and older authors who had nothing more entertaining to do except eat mutton deserve comparatively little credit

I think about that quote every time I sit down to write

Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia), male, HE SCREMMM!!!, family Parulidae, order Passeriformes, New Jersey, USA

Photograph by James M. Falletti

Chants of ‘Boycott Israel!’ resonated throughout the street of Shibuya in Tokyo today

@furusawayusuke_ has been protesting everyday, alone, for 7 months. Stand for the the truth even if you stand alone ✊

Video: @alarabiya

House / Shibuya Tokyo

photo: Martin Dittus