#as someone who has been on this site since 2010
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Fernando Alonso & His Relationship With Cards
I'm sure we're all familar with the cards on the back of Fernando's Vegas GP helmet by now, but did you know his relationship with cards goes a lot deeper?
I. Magic Tricks
You've probably seen or heard someone at least mention Fernando's propensity for card tricks. As far as I can tell he was doing them(publically) as far back as 2003 all the way to as recently as 2018. Even once performing a card trick, with a condom and a teddy bear(!??!?!??!!), in front of Valentino Rossi who said "How was that possible?"(x)
But how did this start? According to James Allen, "Fernando admits to having been heavily influenced by his grandfather, a mercurial figure, who taught him magic and card tricks, still one of his passions away from the race track."(x) And I'm not sure the validity of this one, because I couldn't find an actual source, but apparently he once said: "My parents are responsible for the two things I like doing most - driving and magic tricks. They bought me my first go-kart and a magician's kit."
In several interviews he described it as his hobby off track, and that he loved learning new tricks and surprising others in the garage with them! So clearly cards are pretty important to him both as a hobby but also to who he is as a person since they've been with him just as long as racing has.
II. Card Symbolism in His Helmets
This is the reason I originally made this post, but I thought I should also explain the origins of his card fascination first. As I said, we probably all remember the cards on the back of his helmet in Vegas, but did you know that wasn't the first time he had cards on the back of his helmet?
From 2008-2013, he used to have a pair of cards on the back of his helmets. The symbolisms of the cards themselves as well as the evolution of their design is really fascinating to me! Even more so with the recent development of the card choice in 2023.
Fernando said he wanted to reference his two titles in some way on the back of his helmet and after his friend sent him several ideas, he decided on having two cards(an ace of clubs and an ace of hearts, sometimes pictured with 05 and 06 on them as well), saying: "I picked the cloverleaf [the ace of clubs - Ed] to give me luck, but the only pity is that it doesn't have four leaves!"(X)
2008.
Here's the very first appearance of the cards! They're displayed flat, with the 05 and 06 clearly visible
2009.
Very similar to 2008, but with a slightly different design, and they're maybe a bit more straight with less shadow?
2010.
This is the first major change! I was sad they didn't have the years on them anymore, but then I realized they're sparkly to match with his signature lightning bolts on the top of the helmet!!
2011.
Honestly I'm still somewhat unsure if this is the actual 2011 helmet? It's pretty difficult to find clear photos of the back of helmets from older seasons. It's easiest to find them on replica sites or auction sites so I'm not 100%? But anyways, I like that this has the championship years on the underside of the cards
2012.
This is when I started getting weirdly emotional about the helmets. Do you see how they've progressed from being a centerpoint to being curled up and sad at the bottom of the helmet? Not listing the year anymore??
2013.
Same thoughts as 2012. And after this season, they cease to exist (just like his ferrari chair in the garage, WOAH CALLBACK), until cards make a reeappearance in his Vegas helmet, albeit in a different form
2013 Monaco(Honorable Mention):
For some reason 2013 helmets were easier to find proper pictures of, so I happened to witness this absolute beauty. The creativity of this helmet genuinely blows me away??? Wanting to keep the card motif, but making sure to incorporate it into the rest of the puzzle piece design?? Mwah! There was another special 2013 helmet but they didn't change the cards at all so I really applaud this one
2023 Las Vegas(The Return of The King):
The magnificent return! But look! The cards are different cards! Instead of being two aces, it's now an ace of hearts, a four of hearts(his driver number of course!) and, the, now iconic, representation of himself as a Joker. I literally could not believe my eyes when this helmet was released and I saw the Joker card, what a fucking silly old man....I really wonder if he felt nostalgic having cards on his helmet again or if he didn't think about it all and was just like, "ah cards because Vegas!!!"
III. Why Does This Matter?
*The rest of the post was factual, this is moreso my personal thoughts on the symbolism of the cards/designs
This post spawned from me recently watching the 2010 Bahrain gp and noticing "hey wait a minute...are those CARDS ON THE BACK OF HIS HELMET!?" It's a really tiny detail that's unfortunately covered up by the HANS device pretty much whenever he's wearing the helmet, so it's really difficult to spot! But I became fascinated with the fact that he had cards on his helmet before that recent helmet, and now here we are!
There's something to me about how the design of the cards evolves over the course of six seasons from the cards being front and center to being smaller, more folded up and closer to the bottom of the helmet. As I said, the 2012-2013 ones genuinely made me depressed because it feels, symbolically, like his hopes for getting another Ace are becoming more and more unlikely and falling away until they eventually fall falt and fade away entirely after 2013 and disappear for basically a decade.
But when they return? They're not the same cards! Instead of representing Fernando's championships, they now represent him as a person, displaying his driver number and his persona of being a Joker!! Though I do think it's interesting he happened to keep the Ace of Hearts, even though he talked more about the Ace of Clubs before. I'm not sure it's actually this deep in reality, but I like to think that it's him not letting his championships(and the lack thereof) define him, but rather letting who he is as a person shine and be the centerpoint instead! But on a sadder note, as @suzuki-ecstar said to me, maybe the Aces aren't there anymore because he's lost all hope for a chance at a third Ace entirely :(
#yes its finals week and im up to my eyes in coursework but instead decided to spend like 5 hours researching and writing this post#nah bcs i actually genuinely put more work into this then I think I have all semester dsfjdskjg#that thing about him using a condom and teddy bear in a magic trick genuinely had me crying with laugher. actual tears rolling down my face#<- HOW!?!? WHAT WAS THE TRICK?? its literally inconceivable to me what he did. oh if only there were pics UGH#anyways!! this post was a lot of fun to make!! i really really love the symbolism and design of helmets so this was a rly fun project#and i also went down a lot of rabbitholes while make this and saw many very weird articles from yore#i feel like i make an equal amnt of deranged posts abt seb and nando but i dont know why nando is gifted w all my well researched projects#<- i.e. chair post. that was the same level of research as this one but at least this one i could find actual sources about....#idk theres smth about the extremely long history of nando's history that evokes research posts like this KLAJSLSKDJ#theres just so much that i dont think I ever really see people discussing! so i must create.#haha what was that joke tag i wanted to make abt my researched posts? I think:#normal posts that catie normally makes in a normal fashion#<- one day ill go back and actually tag posts w that. bcs the amtn of research compared to my actual schoolwork is so unwell#fernando alonso#fa14#f1#formula 1#catie.rambling.txt#we do a little bit of f1
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Ok but I have seen you talk about this so many times, even referencing it in your old cartoons, so I gotta ask - when and how did you fall in love with neopets, like that?
Wait, is it that obscure now? I didn't know a single person from its inception to roughly 2010 who didn't have a neopets account. It was the single biggest gaming-esque name on the internet for years. Celebrities casually mentioned playing it, it got mainstream marketing tie-ins, it had plush toys people waited in line to buy up and a TCG made by the same company as Magic the Gathering. It's not that I especially "fell in love with neopets" like it's a niche thing but that there was a time it was almost outselling Pokemon, so it's just another huge cultural phenomenon that was a big part of everyone's lives during my teens to twenties, and hits my special interest in creature design since it has THOUSANDS (beyond the pets alone) ranging in quality from extremely creative to just plain heinous.
I personally only got invested in it when they introduced the mutant pets, though, because it started out having almost like a "rule" against making any pets that were "ugly." They'd joke about it as a prank for instance, and originally only featured the mutants as part of a storyline they never intended players to actually adopt. They even had a fake alternate version of the site with fake "adoptions coming soon" and somehow didn't anticipate the userbase genuinely wanting the slime creatures.
The Chia and Aisha were my favorites but mainly the chia because that kind of "scuzzy" creature was already my own design aesthetic, polar opposite of the site's established style and reminded me of if Jeff Goldblum got fused with a tardigrade instead of a fly:
Is that just me? I feel like the tardigrade similarity jumps right out but I think it was an accident and they were possibly actually thinking of the rotting giant from Nausicaa:
The fact that they intended its design to be unlovably ugly and were surprised anyone wanted it only made it more sympathetic. Eventually they made mutants available and I got fully invested into playing, at the time having to spend hours a day on their little flash games until I could afford a mutant after months of labor.
But then a couple of years later they just abruptly decided they really didn't feel like having its design around anymore and "updated" it, which back then was automatic for all pets owned by all players with no going back:
It had unfortunately been fairly common that they'd just completely, totally redo a pet like this with no warning and no user poll to make sure it's what anyone wanted. You just had to pray they never did it to your favorites.
All the other mutants in that earlier image would also get completely changed or never released at all. They still kept some of the other "gross" mutants and would make even grosser, so that wasn't even part of the reasoning. Just the random whims of mad gods I guess.
I think what killed the game for a lot of people was actually when they did this to basically everyone at once, standardizing almost all the pet artwork so they could wear clothes in their new dressup system. It wasn't as drastic as replacing a sludge guy with some kind of hairy leaf guy but it did eliminate hundreds of technically unique designs from the site, and I found someone else's examples they put together so I thankfully don't have to do it myself:
If anyone's not familiar enough with neopets or didn't figure that out from the last paragraph, the ones on the right are just recolors of the same exact art as all members of their species with added accessories (now wearable items) Players used to work hard to get pets they wanted based on their unique poses and personality, but you could only keep the original art for a small number of these.
The customization feature kind of attracted a different new fandom, from what people say, but it never approached a fraction the site's peak, which is probably how the brand wound up getting sold to some NFT bros who aren't even involved in the site itself and supposedly never even spoken to its remaining staff outside some business emails?
This is unrelated to the brief period it was bought by scientologists and the siterunners had to fight back against their propaganda leaking into it.
I really didn't expect to turn this response into a mini article, I should really just make a thing on bogleech.com about it sometime.
Some of my tumblr mutuals to this day are people I met through the neopets fandom and probably have equally lengthy memories/complaints.
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Pokemon Legends Z-A: Starter Prediction (but it's actually about more than that)
Since the announcement of this surprisingly early return to Kalos, there's been a lot of speculation regarding the starters. Following the trend of Legends: Arceus, we're expecting the starters to be ones from other regions. Snivy and Piplup seem like really likely choices given their inspirations, with things more up in the air for the fire starter. However, I have a different Idea.
The starters for Legends: Z-A will be...
...Chespin, Fennekin and Froakie, the same starters pokemon X and Y had.
Why, you may ask? A couple reasons, or rather, one main one...
Mega Evolution will be making its grand return in ZA. When this feature was first introduced, it was a way to breathe new life into old designs, without having to commit to a new evolution-even accessiable to pokemon who already had a three-stage line. This idea for rejuvinating old pokemon has stuck around, but not in the same way.
Gen 7 decided to leave Megas as they were and brought along Regional Variants. Generation 8 cut megas entirely, but brought the variants back alongside new evolutions of those variants and Gigantamax Forms. Legends: Arceus continued the variant + evo angle, including the starters...
...and then, gen 9 only gave only two old pokemon variants, with Paradox Pokemon taking up the majority of the "revamp old designs" idea as well as the small amount of so-called "convergent" pokemon, or regional fakes. Quite a few old pokemon even got straight-up normal evolutions.
My point is, when Game Freak makes a new way to rejuvenate old designs, the old way is reduced or not used at all...could the same not be true when bringing back an old idea? To put it bluntly, The Kalos Starters will receive Mega Evolutions.
-Lack of Kalos Megas. Out of all the pokemon introduced in XY, only Diancie received a Mega Evolution. The reasoning apparently being to let these pokemon stand on their own first, but it's been long enough, hasn't it? Especially for these three.
A few reasons to back up why this could be the case:
-Limited Scope. Legends: ZA is stated to be taking place entirely within Lumiose City. and while we know little of the specifics, one big city as opposed to an entire region leaves a lot less room for possible regional variants. All the more likely the old gimmick will take most if not complete focus.
-Starter Saturation. Assuming Legends: ZA beings back all previous mega evolutions, both the kanto and hoenn sets of starters will be bouncing around Lumiose. With the Kalos starters included as well, that's three sets of starters for one game. Legends Arceus only had two, and as shown with that game's 240-ish amount of pokemon, Legends will likely have a more limited pokedex than the main series. Feels like too much to throw in a fourth set.
-Galarian Precedent. The Base game for Pokemon Sword and Shield did not give its starters Gigantamax forms, but the DLC for it did. It's likely the same idea, but for megas, was intended for whatever XY followup was scrapped back in the early 2010s.
-Once isn't a trend. Some might site Legend Arceus' use of other starters as a trope of the "Legends" series, but Legends Arceus was only one game. We have no idea how much or how little of that game's ideas will continue into this one.
And well...They're in one game! The complete set of Kalos starters only had one set of games to enjoy being those starters, while starters of previous and later generations had multiple sets, or at least DLC continuation, to be >your< first partner in. I think they need another shot while not competing with pokemon that have had more chances to be picked, like snivy or piplup.
And...yeah, as someone who loves regional variants, speculated on what variants of other starters could look like and even somewhat preferts variants to mega evolution as a concept...I might be a little bummed if this prediction comes true. But the more I thought about it, the more likely this seemed, and the true Kalos starters frankly deserve getting what the kanto and hoenn starters got. Besides...
look at him face :)
#pokemon legends z-a#pokemon legends za#pokemon z#kalos#plza#plz#plza starters#starter pokemon#pokemon predictions#mega evolution
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i can see people discussing cohost as a possible tumblr alternative in the event the current shitshow continues to escalate, and as someone who lurks on cohost (lotta good game writer/crit folks went over there instead of bluesky after twitter tanked!) and has kept a keen eye on it since it began, i just want to offer some brief thoughts. not as a value judgement, just so people have a decent idea of what cohost actually like... is, and what pros and cons it has.
cohost is a tumblr-like experience which uses a very similar microblogging-and-reblog/share set-up, though it's a lot more 'static' than current tumblr is without e.g endless scroll on everything and scripts everywhere. (reminds me a lot of how tumblr was in 2010, tbh.) it has some things tumblr lacks (notably, its comment feature is much better) and lacks some things tumblr has.
it is run by a very small number of people. this is currently fine in terms of things like moderation, because cohost has a small userbase and has not attracted a general audience, but rather, mostly chill people in certain niches. however, in the event it has any kind of scaling-up of its userbase, they would need to drastically increase their moderation footprint, because right now it is skeleton.
related to that, being an ad-free site that is not funded by venture capital, their financials are... not amazingly stable tbqh! they have been very transparent about this quarter to quarter. they were bleeding money profusely until very recently. now, it has juuust about stabilized, though it is not "profitable" per se. cohost is a site that runs on a similar idea to dreamwidth; it strives to be a decently-sized site where a good chunk of its adult userbase voluntarily pay for monthly subscriptions to keep the site going, more out of a desire to support an independent platform than due to large feature bonuses that come from doing so (though there are additional features. small ones.). it is not, in short, a site designed to be used for free by 99% of its userbase like most social media; if any large migration took place to cohost by fandom, this would realistically only work for cohost if a decent chunk of us decided we would like to send them money each month to keep it going. (this can work; dreamwidth does it, and its skewing-older userbase does so. generally not at huge scale though.)
cohost is anti-metrics to a point that it is simply not a good choice for some people who are looking to use it as a way to grow a professional platform, because you functionally have no 'platform'. (great for folks like me; bad for folks using it as a freelance portfolio kinda gig, really.) it's much more a personal blogging site than a 'here is my Profile i use to get work!' deal tbh. (this is, to be fair, also kind of a reason tumblr has never been that great for this, but it's just sort of something artists etc have been observing.)
cohost is an interesting ongoing experiment, but one reason i have not moved there is it's currently in a very tenuous position. as a platform for specific fandoms forming up there, i think it's really promising, which is why i've kept my eye on it, but i think it's important to know it's not just a 1:1 tumblr replacement. no non-shitty platform is. as i said on my other blog talking about cohost yesterday, if you want an ad-free, algorithm free, no data-selling, no venture capital platform... you want a platform that requires people pay in at least decent quantities, which means you likely have a platform that will never match the scale of big centralized socmedia platforms which do exist as ad platforms backed by millions of dollars of investment.
#cutting for length and nonrebloggable bc this is just me spitballing#i just think some context for people who heard of it literally yesterday might be helpful#i like where cohost is going! it's also very much an experiment and not able to scale rn and that's just the reality.
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"glaze or nightshade all your old posts" is a wild thing to say to people who have been here since 2010. There are 1,044 posts in the tag "my photo" that I use for original content on my blog, and I can't track which percentage of those posts are photosets but it's not insignificant.
of course I have everything saved. but I have yet to see someone provide a way to automate this process. I have no doubt someone somewhere could write a script but I do doubt it would be easy.
this isn't even getting into the issue of whether these programs even actually protect your work especially in the long run, the quality of what they generate and whether there's quality loss, and the fact that I've been posting photos publicly online since 2004 and it's, uh, probably already too late. if they've been scraping public sharing sites, likely something has ended up in their dataset.
this feels like a bandaid on a gaping wound. I don't think it's practical and I don't think it's fair to pretend it's a real solution.
I think there will be more & better solutions in time. I don't know what they are. right now, it's very hard to pretend I'm not angry and sad all the time at being taken advantage of, and on behalf of fellow artists losing so much more.
#adventures in text posts#only consolation is nothing I've done could have been used to train facial recognition#so upset on behalf of portrait photographers#what a punch to the gut
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Thess vs General Elections
So this hasn't quite hit the news sites yet, but breaking on former-Twitter is that Sunak is going to be having a private meeting with the 22 Committee. Which ... I mean ... I just cannot anymore. For the non-Brits, here is the skinny on what that could very well mean.
What's the 22 Committee? Okay. So. There are 22 backbench MPs whose main job is to take letters from other MPs in the party calling for a Vote of No Confidence in a sitting Prime Minister. That's the 22 Committee - or just The 22. If someone is going before The 22, it means that they're facing a buttload of in-party infighting and are looking at being unseated as PM.
Wait - didn't you guys just get a new PM? Well, a year and a half ago, but yeah, kinda. The Tories have had five PMs in the last fourteen years, three of which have been in the last two years or so. First there was Cameron in 2010 - voted in during the Conservative / Lib Dem coalition government where the Liberal Democrats basically faded into the wallpaper and let Cameron and the Tories do whatever the hell they wanted. Cameron resigned after the Brexit vote in 2016 and, without being given a vote, we got Theresa May. She got ousted in favour of Boris Johnson in time for the 2019 election. Johnson was forced to step down in 2022, mostly because of the absolute disregard he showed for Covid lockdown rules, but a few other scandals in there too, and was succeeded by Liz Truss. Truss lasted less than two months, during which time she absolutely destroyed the UK economy (amazing how fast that can happen), and they put Rishi Sunak, Johnson's former Chancellor of the Exchequer, into the PM-ship in October 2022.
Isn't that a lot of elections? You'd think, wouldn't you? But nope, that's not how it works here. We don't vote for the Prime Minister. We vote for the Member of Parliament in our constituency, and the first party that gets a certain number of seats gets their party leader becoming the PM. So it's the party that's in office, not the specific party leader. Party leaders are chosen by a vote, yes, but not from the public - from members of the party in question. Doesn't matter if the new PM has massively different ideas of how to run things, whole different manifestos, anything like that - if the party chooses a new leader, that leader becomes PM if the party won the last election. And the Conservative Party is the worst of a bad lot, since their membership is 160 old white men. Rich old white men. So the manifesto of the party in government has changed three times in the last two years on the say-so of 160 rich old white men ... and hell, the last time we didn't even have that, I don't think, since most of the people standing as party leader bowed out in favour of Sunak. Anyway, we've had five Prime Ministers and only one election - that in 2019.
You've been talking about there being an upcoming election... Yeah, that's the other thing. For all this wibbling around the place with changing PMs, we are still constitutionally obliged to have a general election once every five years. Johnson was elected in 2019. That means that there has to be a general election by the end of the year, no matter who's acting as Prime Minister.
So why would they be changing party leaders again? They want someone more electable, is why. Not that there is anybody, honestly - Johnson more or less destroyed the Conservative Party in the same way that Starmer has been destroying the Labour Party: by driving out most of the reasonable individuals in favour of elevating sycophants and yes-men. Hence why we've had increasing levels of bullshit from the PMs we've had the last few years. But the party's looking at Sunak and looking at the MP defections and going, "Yeah, know, if we want to stand a chance, we need someone new for them to vote for".
But you just said people didn't vote for-- I KNOW. Unfortunately, almost no one else in this country seems to. Even those of us who do know that we're voting for MP rather than PM kind of have to vote tactically in most cases, because if our constituency seat ends up being won by a MP from the party we don't like, that's a greater chance that the party we don't like get enough seats to have their leader be PM. Add to that the fact that our PMs campaign like US presidential candidates and you've got a recipe for completely fucking up an already fucked-up electoral system.
So how did Sunak fuck up? Well, sane people would say the question is "How hasn't Sunak fucked up?", but currently he's having some issues at least in part because of his insane clinging to the Rwanda Act. I've spoken about the Rwanda Act, where he wants to deport "illegal migrants" (read: refugees) to Rwanda if they turn up here despite the fact that doing so would violate several international laws; the House of Lords isn't playing ball when Sunak just wants to rush it through. Maybe it's so he can say he did something in government, or maybe he's got a lot of money riding on it somewhere along the line, but so far it's been a massive waste of time and tax money and even Rwanda doesn't want in on it anymore. Anyway, there's that and there's the whole thing where health care workers coming into this country on work visas are now no longer allowed to bring their spouses or children. So partly it's the xenophobic bullshit ... and the other part of it is his not being xenophobic enough, because a few Tory MPs are defecting to Reform UK.
What the fuck is Reform UK? It's our Ultra-Right Horrorshow Party. See, it used to be UKIP - the UK Independence Party, whose primary mandate was to get the UK out of the European Union. Which ... has now happened, so both UKIP and the Brexit Party are kind of obsolete. So anyone who wants to be a real fascist joins Reform UK. For example, Lee Anderson, who's insisting that "Islamists" are controlling London and that Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, is a puppet for "the Islamists" ... as is Labour Party leader Kier Starmer, according to Anderson. When he refused to apologise for his bullshit, the party withdrew the whip - which means they booted him out of the party, basically. So he joined Reform UK where he can be as much of a fascist as his little (possibly nonexistent) heart desires.
I've heard that name before, I'm sure: Lee Anderson? Sure. 30p Lee, they called him (and still do). He's the one who insisted that you can make meals for thirty pence per day. Not even per meal - per day. Hence his idea of withholding food parcels from food banks unless people took budgeting and cooking courses. Never mind that the 30p figure came from a batch cooking website and involved buying a lot of things in bulk, which doesn't help anyone who can't afford the initial outlay of bulk foods or, frankly, the time and effort it takes to cook that kind of thing. Anyway, we're getting off-topic.
So you guys are really looking like getting yet another new PM before the election later this year? Maybe. It could be that he's just calling the election early. I just kind of doubt it, since the last thing in the actual news has been that he's having a standoff with the House of Lords over that Rwanda thing. It's possible that he's bailing out so that he's not the one remembered for screwing that particular pooch - the way Cameron resigned after the badly-handled Brexit vote. But 'bailing out' could mean 'resigning as PM' or it could mean 'calling the election for May this year'. We don't know, and until it hits the actual news outlets, we aren't going to.
Fact is that it's going to suck no matter what we do. Both parties are focused on treating the economy like a household budget, and the Shadow Chancellor (the person who would be Chancellor of the Exchequer if the Labour party got into government) is celebrating Margaret Thatcher as an economic model to aspire to. This is the LABOUR PARTY - the one that was started by labour unions and is supposed to be for the fucking workers - and they're quoting Thatcher. Sunak and Starmer, for all they yell at each other across the Commons during Prime Minister's Questions, seem to stand for the same things:
kindness to corporations
cruelty to refugees, trans people, the disabled, and the poor
denial of climate change in favour of fossil fuels (see point 1)
curtailing of human rights
It's both of them. We can hope Starmer's lying to court what he sees as the popular vote, but ... I doubt it. And I'm very, very tired of living in a fucking dystopia.
But hey. Even if Sunak resigns tomorrow, at least he lasted longer than a head of lettuce.
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In the past few weeks I’ve seen lots of posts about people either complaining about or explaining to ‘younger’ fic writers about how their belief in an AO3 algorithm is incorrect and I wanted to put my perspective forward as someone who probably is counted age wise in this section of younger fic writers.
I’m 18 and have been writing fic since I was 11 and found Wattpad and started posting little self inserts of my friends and I in the animes and comics we loved, so about 7 years of writing and to be honest my perspective of ‘growing’ an audience in fic has been influenced in some way by social media, but not to the point of assuming there’s an algorithm.
With Fanfiction, there’s always going to be niche tropes and genres depending on the fandom and it’s common sense to assume that the more you ‘target’ a popular ‘trope’ or genre in fic the more (i hate to call it this but for the sake of the social media allegory I will) engagement you’ll get. The more clicks you’ll get, and theoretically the more comments, bookmarks/saves and likes/kudos you’ll get!
For instance, let’s take mid-2010′s Wattpad; self-insert/oc-ish inserts were still popular because it let the reader (commonly a pre-teen/teen girl involved in a fandom for the first time) act out fantasy scenarios with their fictional/unrealistic crush or let them become best friends or family with their favourite characters! People loved it, because it’s the most basic form of self-indulgence and of course self-insert always has and always will be popular in fic but from my personal experience it was BOOMING on Wattpad then; so if you wrote self-insert/ocish insert then you would get more people clicking and reading as was my experience.
However if you were to do a more ‘niche’ genre or trope... lets say a Mineta Minrou ship fic in the Boku No Hero Acadamia fandom (since Mineta is an almost universally disliked character in the fandom) you may get the occasional views from Mineta fans or from people who were looking for another tag and are just genuinely curious about what’s going on here but with a character/trope so unpopular within the fandom it doesn’t matter if your fic is the most beautiful gut-wrenching philosophy changing piece of literature to grace the internet people won’t read it. It’s the basics of ‘don’t like don’t read’.
To me, that’s my social media influenced perspective of fic sites.
The READERS in an essence are the algorithm, if you want ‘clicks’, hits, likes, bookmarks, kudos in the most efficient way then you have to do research into you fandom and find what people LIKE to read - are songfics really popular here? Is any ABO fic created under this fandom tag bullied into deletion? Does this fandom love coffee shop au’s?
But if you do that, then what’s the point of writing fic?
What’s the point of writing something that you might not even want to write, that you won’t be able to put your best into, that you will just sit there going ‘I hate this, this is stupid, useless and not something I want put to my name’ all in the interest of getting people to click on your fic so that you can feel you’ve gamed the system when the number goes up?
I know people who’s magnus opus of fics have gotten less than 500 clicks, and most of them regrettably will come from the same 20 or so people re-reading but they’re beautiful, fantastic fics that have all the right tags, that should be ‘palatable’ to a wide audience but they just never get picked up by a wide readership on A03 because as beautiful as it is, there’s hundred of fics being posted every day on AO3 and the tough reality is you aren’t special.
Fic writing isn’t a competition, it’s a fun hobby or side hustle and it’s something that people do for many reasons; to improve their writing, because they can’t let go of this one particular plot point or scene, to share their love or hate over a character and many other reasons as simple as ‘I wanted to write a story with these character’s in it. But why would you want to write a fic just so people might go ‘oh wow! you make really popular stuff’.
Will that really make you happy? I don’t think so, my first non-self insert fic did absolutely terribly when it came to people reading it because I was so used to writing a genre where people would flit from one of my fics to the other and tell me how much they loved it, but I nearly ended up deleting the fic and never straying from self-inserts because I must not be as good of a writer as I thought.
(I wasn’t, hand on heart I’ll admit that. I was 13 and had a very inflated sense of self)
But then I just kept writing because my friend told me that they liked it and it took a good long while to unlearn the idea that people interacting with your fic in large droves meant success but I did and my writing and confidence has improved.
And so...
To all the younger fic writers or even the older fic writers just getting started, looking at fic sites like a social media site will do nothing but hurt your creativity and harm your confidence.
When it comes to social media sites it’s easy to forget you’re engaging with real humans and not just creative outlets handed to you by the algorithm but they are real people, and the social media mindset is ‘appeal to what the machine wants and the people will follow’, but on sites like A03 everyone is a person and there is no machine to appease. If you soullessly pump out fics just to make some mystical computer program push it into peoples faces people will notice how little care there is in a fic.
A fic is supposed to be something you’ve created, and like with all art it’s in some part a reflection of *you* so if all you do is go ‘I don’t need to put as much effort into this I just need to put the right tags and let the magic happen’ people will know, if you pour your heart into it but then mistag the whole thing people will get pissed at you.
Nobody likes reading a whole wall of tags, it’s boring and unreadable and if you mistag your fic to get ‘more clicks’ people will just report you because you’re in breach of T & C. You’re not only turning people against you from the offset you’re potentially getting yourself booted off the platform with nobody but yourself to blame.
The best way to get ‘engagement’ on AO3 is just write what you want, do what you want and people who like the same things will come to you, people aren’t going to read something they don’t want.
An archive is just a collection that you look through yourself; hence the name Archive Of Our Own. It’s OUR archive of OUR things that we made.
If you try and dehumanise the system then you’re going to be on the losing side.
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despite one very minor annoyance, i'm finishing off 2023 in the rpc in a pretty good place i gotta say
things have drastically changed from the years when i first began writing here ( probably around 2010 and beyond ) but not all of it is bad change. sure, the website is in shambles and all the old functions i was so familiar with are gone. the ease and comfort of old tumblr can only be found in xkit now, but... aside from that, i feel as though the website has actually significantly mellowed out from all those years ago. i mean i could sit here and list you off the horror stories from back then.... being irl stalked, being plagiarized, every day there'd be some kind of new senseless callout drowning out the actual predators, etc
i dunno things just feel.... different, and in a good way. i think every place has it's bad and it's good, but coming from someone who's been using this website now for almost 14 years, i can say that the good here far, FAR outweighs the negative by a significant amount. and now that i'm older with much more life experience under my belt, there's a lot less that affects me and i'm a lot less tolerant of the bullshit than what i used to put up with back then.
god i remember getting ridden with anxiety over the smallest of things, and now i'm like. if you've got a problem with me and you're too much of a coward to talk to me about it, then it just isn't my problem and i think that's a mindset that would benefit a lot of people tbh. you have to remember; you're not a mindreader and you can't solve any problems if someone isn't willing to bring it to you. it sounds a bit harsh BUT you are only one person and you can only do so much. communication is a two way street, and if someone isn't willing to make that first step, then why should you worry about it? it's not your problem, it's THEIR'S and it's their responsibility, not your own.
you can't fix something you aren't even aware of. and if there's one thing i've learned in the many, many years i've been on the internet, it's that if you want to keep healthy, long term friendships & relationships, you have to be willing and comfortable to voice your feelings with someone else as much as you have to be willing and comfortable enough to acknowledge when you've fucked up. to apologize and rectify that behaviour, and accept the consequences.
'cause if you can't, you're going to be stuck in a stasis for the rest of your life, and it's something i saw VERY RAMPANT back in the early days of the rpc on this site. people unwilling to communicate, and when they did, the other party unwilling to apologize or fix their behaviour. changing names, pronouns, aliases... the works. i'm sure it still happens, but i haven't observed much at all since being back other than having a dash full of very wonderful people. :> so thank you for making my dashboard such a lovely place, and thank you for letting me end 2023 in such a great spot ♥
idk what the point of this whole post was i was just rambling to myself mostly LMAO imma write now, i got plenty of time to since it's another rest day for all of us on the vacation pfff
#« ooc tag. »#does a little boogie woogie woogie#basically all i'm saying is that i appreciate how positively the community has changed#and how it seems 90% of the nastiest souls that used to dwell in the rpc have finally moved on#and i'm not constantly looking over my shoulder taking careful steps to make sure i'm not following someone#who's changed their whole shtick to hide after a callout#which happened A LOT back then#it was crazy the way people would just rewrite themselves entirely to avoid the consequences of their actions#it was actually kinda freaky LMAO
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Nice Jewish Character Showdown 2023 -- Round One Eliminations
Well folks, the first round of the 2023 event has concluded, and 16 hopefuls have been taken out of the running for this year's crown. While we wait for the polls to go live for round two, let's take a second to debrief with those contenders, and break down what makes them such Nice Jewish Characters.
Match One Elimination: James Wilson, House MD
Apologies to the House MD fans who kept trying to push the vote in your guy's favor, I honestly did not expect 9 to have such a high turnout (I'll elaborate on his inclusion another time). I'm going to make my way around to watching this show eventually I promise, in the meantime all I can reference to validate his Judaism is the textual reference to his Judaism in dialogue, the enthusiasm from my Jewish mutuals, and his entry on Jew or Not Jew (which, although considerably dated, was a popular site for me and my Hebrew School peers to browse between classes).
Match Two Elimination: Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5
While I haven't watched Babylon 5, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how Jewish this Trek-adjacent show is, at least, in terms of canonicity. The second in command of the titular ship, Ivanova is textually Ashkenazi, Russian specifically. I can't speak on specifics since I, again, haven't watched the show, but it sounds like her relationship with her ancestry is tied significantly into her personal plot arc, as she reconnects with it over the seasons.
Match Three Elimination: Avigdor, Yentl
Oh, Mandy Patinkin, the communal zeyde of the Jewish internet. While Avigdor may not be the Nicest of Jewish Characters, we gotta remember dramatic context! And yes, the absolute Gender of Yentl is no small factor in his popularity. I don't regret the picture I used, but I'm sure he would have had a bit of a swing vote if I used the picture of him wet and shirtless. Ah, well. Not like this is the first time Yentl's been snubbed for awards season.
Match Four Elimination: Samwise Gamgee, Lord of the Rings
Yes, the books have the unfortunate way they've reflected on antisemitic stereotypes with the portrayal of the dwarves. But when you look at the hobbits, don't they feel like citizens of a shtetl? Aren't you filled with the warmth of shabbos when you think about a hobbit hole? And when thinking about Samwise's unending hope for good, even in the darkest parts of the journey, are you not reminded of something?
Match Five Elimination: George Costanza, Seinfeld
Yeah I knew this one was going to infuriate some people. George Costanza, you textually Jewish in every way but literal prince, you are the perfect example of the transitive property of Jewish media (Jason Alexander has been quoted as saying that Costanza is Jewish because he's being played by a Jewish actor). Doing readings on invisible Jewish representation through the lens of Seinfeld (and the associated eras of television) is FASCINATING, btw.
Match Six Elimination: Schmidt, New Girl
A very Jewish cast and crew brought this 2010's icon to our screens, and while the humor might not have always been the kindest to his Jewish identity, it's no surprise that he has such a continuing popularity within the former viewing audience. Someone get him a cookie, please?
Match Seven Elimination: Cher Horowitz, Clueless
Written by a Jew, directed by a Jew, played by a Jew, Cher Horowitz is a great example of the transitive property of Jewish media. Plus, with a last name like Horowitz and a lawyer father, there are plenty of reasons to interpret the 90's darling as such. This Kveller article is full of fun facts about the Jewish background of the production!
Match Eight Elimination: Barbara Millicent Roberts, Barbie
Watch Tiny Shoulders if you don't think Barbie belonged in this showdown. Barbara Millicent Roberts, you've been so popularized and Americanized that we've forgotten your roots, my darling! Ruth Handler, Barbie's creator, comes from a distinctly Jewish background, and her family's Ellis Island history is a good way of looking at the way Barbie's been assimilated. Sure she's got her Christmas-y ties, but most Christmas media comes from us anyways, so I think she can get a pass.
Match Nine Elimination: The Baudelaires, A Series of Unfortunate Events
Okay, I'll admit it, I never read ASOUE. It freaked me out too much as a kid, and I've never circled back to it. But it's been on the back of my mind for a while, and now that I'm aware of just how Jewish the source material is, I'm this close to looking up the audiobooks on Libby. This is a step above the transitive property of Jewish media, this is textual. I guess it's characteristic for the Baudelaires to lose, but they can be comforted in how close the vote was.
Match Ten Elimination: Tommy Pickles, Rugrats
So I grew up with public access television, and when I finally got cable it felt a bit like I'd missed the boat on Rugrats, age-group wise. But seeing the VHS cases on the library shelves of my synagogue, I always knew that show was a good case of Jewish representation. The Rugrats was revolutionary in their central Judaism in children's media: not just giving it to a side character for special episodes, but giving it to the main character and spending ample time discussing it. Consider putting the Passover or Hannukah specials into your holiday circulation.
Match Eleven Elimination: The Strilondes, Homestuck
Somewhat surprising to me, but not really since they lost round one last time, the Strilondes have been taken out of the running. What makes Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde Jewish? Siblings through manipulation of genetic cloning, we witness a Very Jewish Wedding in the Snapchat Credits Sequence to Homestuck, where Rose and her wife, Kanaya, are in the center of a horah dance, lifted above the crowd in chairs (here's the timestamp). Besides that, Homestuck can be interpreted through a very Jewish lens (at least to me, someone who has a John Egbert statuette on their bookshelf). Plus, Homestuck has an answer to the Great Frog Debate (their answer is the biggest frog possible).
Match Twelve Elimination: Frankenstein('s Monster), Frankenstein
Sorry Adam, I know losing twice in a row is hard, but to be fair you DID go up against werewolves last time. Why is Adam Frankenstein('s Monster) Jewish? He has a complicated relationship with the concept of a higher power (and in his case, a complicated familial relationship with his own creator). Plus, when I look at him, I see the most famous golem in pop culture. Jewish Frankenstein supremacy <3 (Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, a general plug for the book version of Monster High, published in 2010, which has a VERY Jew-coded interpretation of the titular monsters, imo.)
Match Thirteen Elimination: The Baker, Into The Woods
Musical theater is inherently Jewish, so is it any surprise that a Sondheim character made it to the showdown? Into the Woods is a masterpiece, and when you look at it through a Jewish lens it gets even more so -- especially in the second act. The Baker is one of several characters in the show that really become aware of the constraints of their fairy tale lives, and choose to circumvent them. I'm going to restrain myself from discussing it more since the entire original cast recording is available to watch here, and it's one of my favorite musicals ever so I'd just get incoherent in further analysis if you haven't seen the source material.
Match Fourteen Elimination: Will Byers, Stranger Things
I knew this was going to happen on the #CecilSweep website, but it still hurts a little bit to see Will Byers lose with such a sweep. Maybe it's the fact the Byers house has readily available Christmas lights. Why was he a contestant? Well, observing the transitive property of Jewish media (as discussed earlier), Noah Schnapp AND Winona Ryder's Judaism is more than enough to validate a Jewish reading of the Byers family -- in my mind, they're a mixed household, and kept celebrating Xmas after Lonnie left because the kids grew up with it (plus, they're in Indiana in the 80's, so...)
Match Fifteen Elimination: The Lorax, The Lorax
Did you go to Hebrew School in the United States if you didn't watch or read The Lorax for Tu B'ishvat? I mentioned the VHS library at my synagogue earlier, and this tape was a standard on the wheelie box tv set-up, often used to distract the younger kids who would get bored at the High Holy Days services. He's just a lil' man who loves the trees, that's a mensch to me.
Match Sixteen Elimination: Worf, Star Trek: The Next Generation
I feel like I have to apologize for putting the two Trek characters against each other up front. It's another place where my textual knowledge slips a bit, so when I found out just how Jewish Worf is I was pleasantly surprised. Trek has a very odd relationship with just how Jewish it has been since conception (thank you, Nimoy!) , so for Worf's parents to be all but declared to be Jewish is like. You could have just made them Jewish. Why didn't you make them Jewish (we know why).
#post round analysis#nice jewish character showdown round one#nice jewish character showdown 2023#nice jewish character showdown
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They lierally weren't in a relationship. It's implied by the ganon awakening memory and her own diary and other dislogue she never actually proposed by chickened out. Why would she gasp seeing Link staring at Zelda if he was actually engaged to mipha? Media literacy dead
I just want to say congratulations to the Gravity Falls fandom. After nearly twelve years on tumblr and a truly staggering amount of blocked fans and admittedly incendiary posts on my part not a single one of you verifiably went on anon to get around a block and into my ask box. Not even that time I opened up about my personal family issues and got attacked for it by dozens of people. Everyone who got blocked stayed blocked. In fact, no one from any of the circles I post in has ever done this, hence why I'm even dignifying this ask from a pathetic individual who ships like they're an adult Harry Potter fan with a response: to commemorate the occasion.
In this time of mass exodus due to racism and transphobia from staff as well as our user data being sold to an ai model which will immediately die the moment it tries to train itself with it, it's wonderful to know that there are still parts of the true tumblr experience that I too can take part in, and that despite tumblr's waning growth and popularity, despite my own waning time on this site, when I do eventually log off for the final time I'll be able to rest easy, knowing that I truly was a part of this community... And knowing that the part of the community I primarily interacted with during the bulk of my time here, despite a brief period filled with completely untagged old man incest porn in the main character tags, never pulled this shit, and never got to the point where every third post in a given ship tag was a complaint, about random bullshit that doesn't matter and isn't actually something anyone was mad at in the first place.
Truly it would cheapen the experience, to complain about a bunch of unrelated topics, characters, and ships you don't like, in the tags of a ship that you do actually like, to the point where someone going into that tag looking for shipping content of the ship they like has to deal with a bunch of annoying crap that isn't shipping content and is rude to other people for no fucking reason.
The humble vagueblog has existed as a vital part of your fandom's existence since the beginning, dear Gravity Falls fandom, and you have used and honed the practice well. Your tags have not been infested with pages of unrelated crap from a new set of people very week who think the rest of us enjoy them spamtagging their complaints, and our tags have not been infected with people who don't like what's being posted in that tag posting in the tag anyways about how much they dislike the content of the tag they're posting in. All the porn is now tagged properly and no one is freaking out about people who don't ship their ship, not even when that ship consists of two characters who are at the same developmental stage for their respective species, and are not related to each other. As the fandom of a children's show from 2010s era tumblr you have truly exceeded all expectations. Gaze upon this ask, on this shadow of a shark beneath our little rowboat and know that I thank you, and that if and when I do eventually leave this site I will leave satisfied. Know that if there ever comes a time where I begin posting zelink content full time, I will be in hell trying to block annoying assholes all over again, because every third post in the zelink tag is made by someone like this who clearly has nothing better to do with their time than complain about a naked fish lady who is dead and does not interfere with the ships they actually like because she's not real and you don't have to include her in your fic or engage with the people who like her if you don't want to.
Because obviously the zelink ship tag is the only place one can complain about a fictional teenage dolphin with boobs being in a relationship with a fictional teenage human, and obviously a fictional dolphin with boobs is the biggest problem this fandom has so someone has to say something, it'd be rude not to tag this Voltron fandom level bullshit as zelink.
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apparently my thing is internet culture now sooo fuck it heres some more of my thoughts
emoticons vs the 2020s... complete lack of emoticons
emoticons are an extremely vital part of internet culture, ever since computers were even a thing! the first substantiated instance of an emoticon was used on a forum back in 1982, featuring the :-) face
now its not that theyre completely phased out, thatd be very hard to do as everyone almost universally uses :), :D or :-) to communicate happiness; but the use of them and their variations were much more heavily used until the 2020s. nowadays its pretty rare to see someone use XD, O-O or the accursed owo; but why is that? if we’ve used these emoticons for so long then why in the world did most people stop using them?
well, i have a personal theory. there is no pure evidence other than trends ive noticed as the internet has progressed, so take this with a grain of salt.
i think its because of cringe culture. emoticons were heavily associated with geeks and, in particular, scene culture and during the mid-late 2010s seeing cringe compilations of kids who participated in nerd culture was a gateway to cyberbullying and as the internet grew, it switched from being an escape for geeks & nerds to every day life where they are bullied for their interests and hobbies. on top of that, when 2020 hit everyone was in a deep depression and many parts of the internet were and are just people yelling or fighting eachother.
its a bit hard to notice over here on tumblr but if you just check out whats happening on other sites, its all constant infighting and cyberbullying people who dont fit the “status quo” which has resulted in many people dropping emoticons as a whole because emoticons are meant to be silly & fun and are heavily associated with geek culture which doesnt fit at all with the kind of mentality most people online have anymore.
i remember reading some type of article or retrospective about how different the mentalities of the 2000s-2010s vs the 2020s were and this is a pretty good example: back in the early 2010s, the buzzwords were YOLO, epic, awesome and swag, all words pertaining to fun and joy, whereas the current buzzwords of 2022 are gaslighting, infodumping (it isnt negative in itself but a lot of people use it as a synonym for venting nowadays) and grooming. stark difference isnt it? and emoticons like @-@ really dont fit the grim tone the 2020s seem to be stuck in for the time being.
now, luckily, emoticons seem to be receiving a revival via the scene revival (which makes sense since emoticons are vital to scene) and, in a weird way i think the revival of emoticons shows an improvement of the internet’s outlook. emoticons are meant to show your emotions, and a lot of people have been stuck feeling emotionally stunted due to how depressing this decade has started so seeing people use them once again is a good thing. it means that people are learning how to have fun again and a very good way to help improve moral and making you happy might just be a funny little face on a computer screen
maybe im overanalyzing it but hey, try out using some emoticons, it might just make you feel a little happier about yourself ^-^
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”Insects All Around Us” by Digital Edital Editor Kit O'Connell, originally published in the January/February 2024 issue of Texas Observer magazine:
Photography and additional reporting by Fall 2023 Reporting Fellow Paula Levihn-Coon.
The prey is already dying when the hunters arrive.
The sky is dark gray, the air thick with the threat of rain. But that hasn’t stopped over a dozen from gathering. They’re mostly, but not exclusively, older folks—frequently retirees with the ability to take a weekday morning off—and they’re armed with Digital SLR cameras and macro lenses.
Valerie Bugh crouches down over the squirming spots on the stone of the shady courtyard entrance to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, prodding at the poisoned insects. Bugh, a gray-haired local naturalist, isn’t responsible for the state of these southern yellowjackets (Vespula squamosa), but she’ll take advantage of it for a photo opportunity. Someone on staff at the center discovered their nest and sprayed them just before the bug hunters arrived, and the entire hive is trickling out from their hidden home in a low rock wall. Bugh warns me to keep my distance from the females, who have fatter-looking bodies with stingers compared to the longer, thinner males, which normally only leave the nest for mating purposes. As I take a step back, she fearlessly kneels by their wriggling bodies, picking the males up and focusing her camera on each in turn.
“I’m trying to find one that doesn’t look dead,” she said. Soon, she’d even manage to document the hive’s queen as it haplessly tried to flee the toxins—a rare catch, though a grim beginning for a weekly ritual that largely focuses on the living.
Katherine Daniels and David Cook, volunteers, take insect photos.
Bugh is the author of 10 short fold-out pamphlets with color photos, with titles like Spiders of Texas: A Guide to Common and Notable Species and Unusual Insects of Texas: Caddisflies, Mantides, Lacewings, Walking Sticks, & More. That’s just one of her jobs: She’s also second clarinet in the Austin Opera. She’s modest about these accomplishments when asked—Bugh is too busy searching for bugs to brag about herself.
Every Thursday morning from February through mid-December, Bugh and her team of volunteers in the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Fauna Project explore a winding path, gradually aiming to cover the entire grounds over the course of a year, in order to inspect more than 650 species of native plants in the gardens and the 50-plus species of oaks in the Texas Arboretum for their occupants.
With this diversity of native plants comes a diversity in insect population too. Allowing for a few pandemic-imposed breaks and schedule changes, Bugh has otherwise been doing this consistently since 2010, during which time she’s identified almost 3,000 species of insect including over 50 bees, 345 flies, and over 500 different beetles. It’s not unusual to find a new species to add to the garden’s known tiny inhabitant list every week.
As Bugh gets moving, other bug hunters follow her in a pack. One by one and in pairs they break off from documenting spiders and beetles found clinging to the brick walls around the entrance and offices of the center. A few volunteer birders are also on-site, but for the most part, they work independently and seem invisible compared to the cheerful, chattering bug hunters. The group also documents signs of larger animals, from mammals to amphibians, but their main focus is on these tiny crawling creatures, since bugs are the most plentiful fauna present both in this garden and worldwide.
Every Thursday from 2010 to the present, Valerie Bugh leads the Fauna Project at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
The bug hunters move in a little cluster, calling out when they find something new for Bugh to examine. The salt marsh moth (Estigmene acrea) caterpillars are everywhere.
“If it’s a salt marsh, I don’t want to know about it,” declares Bugh dismissively, though with good humor. Their hairy bodies remind me of an asp, the caterpillar with a nasty sting. But they’re actually harmless to the touch. Bugh is just frustrated because there are too many of them. Unlike other caterpillars, the salt marsh moths will eat almost any plant, building its hairy cocoons all over.
“Every single plant is their host,” Bugh said.
By contrast, the Gulf fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), another caterpillar present in the day’s fauna count, subsists almost entirely on passion flower vines.
Bugh’s disdain for the salt marsh moth doesn’t stop her from plucking one from the greenery and posing for a photo with it. She’s happy to show off and talk about her fauna friends, even the overly common ones. As she moves around, her tone becomes more of a graduate lecture in entomology, no doubt similar to the insect walks she sometimes leads around Austin. Her volunteers are here to hone their skills at macro photography, to learn from a preeminent local expert, and to expand their naturalist knowledge. Many are members of the Texas Master Naturalist program.
Valerie Bugh holds a salt marsh moth caterpillar (Estigmene acrea) in her hand.
But it’s a social occasion as much as anything, and the bug hunters talk among themselves around me, catching up on their lives. Two have just returned from African vacations and are excited to dish about all the great wildlife photos they got there, documenting large predatory wild beasts. But they seem just as eager to capture the living world’s small inhabitants in their lenses, too.
“It’s an insect safari,” said volunteer Katherine Baker, who told me she relished the challenge of macro photography after over a decade of experience in more general nature photography. She’s been helping count the fauna for about four years now, and always feels among kindred spirits here. But they all orbit around Valerie, returning to her for advice or an ID after wandering off.
Every Thursday for 13 years, naturalist and author Valerie Bugh, far left, has led volunteers in counting and photographing animals at the
wildflower center.
“Her knowledge surpasses everyone … she’s just amazing,” Baker said of Bugh.
The gray morning clouds are starting to burn off. As it warms up, the butterflies and others will begin to emerge from the foliage where they’re resting during the rainy, humid part of the day.
“Aha, here’s where the bumblebees are,” Bugh declares with delight as some are pointed out to her. “These are workers and look how docile they are, they’re barely moving.”
Even before the sun appears, I become aware of how the plants around us are full of life, more than first appears to the untuned eye. As I start looking at one insect, like the predatory leafhopper assassin bug (Zelus renardii), a leggy, long-bodied, hungry thing with a venomous proboscis, I spot another, smaller bug crawling along the same bit of wild grass. We allow ourselves to forget in our day-to-day lives, but insects are all over, constantly surrounding and outnumbering us.
Valerie Bugh shines a small LED light on an insect.
On the day we visited, the team spotted seven different kinds of grasshoppers, two types of katydids and one cricket. Hunters often spot the American bumblebee, Bombus pensylvanicus, which is thriving in Central Texas even as its numbers dwindle elsewhere. But lately, its Sonoran cousin (Bombus sonorus) has been showing up more and more in the bug counts.
“That doesn’t bode well for desertification,” Bugh told me. “We’ve had a lot of Western species moving in, birds too, which means the habitat is great for them and a little drier than we’re used to for everyone else.”
The naturalist bug hunters are strongly aware of the harm climate change has brought on our region, and there’s a bittersweet feeling to parts of the morning, a subtle sense that someday soon could be the last day one of these fauna appear in a count.
“The ecosystems are moving east, including tornado alley. It’s not great for the people in the way, and not great for us on the edge of deserts. Think of Austin without any trees. I really like trees,” Bugh says wistfully.
But most insects still spark joy when she spots them. As sure as falling leaves, the appearance of the scorpion flies (which are neither scorpions nor flies) represents the start of true Texas autumn, and they were just putting in their first appearances that Thursday in November.
Bugh can identify a great number of creatures on sight, but sometimes enlists help from collaborative internet forums and apps, or even, in one case, a book of Central American insects published in 1900.
Later, when I come home from the center, I pore over her very detailed homepage, which features a searchable spreadsheet of every creature identified by her team since 2010. I email Bugh to ask what changes she’s noticed over time.
“It is very hard to compare the past to the present since it is short term in geological time but very long term for humans,” she writes back. “Who can say what they’ve learned in over a decade? I bet it is a lot.”
#Austin#Texas#wildflowers#native plants#lady bird johnson#bugs#insects#photography#macro photography#wildlife#wildlife photography#fauna#science#entymology
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didn’t want to lump this into OP’s post unasked, but the topic of “it’s okay if you just so happen to dislike somebody while still being civil about them if you have to engage with them, you don’t have to go digging for the flimsiest possible justification of your dislike” is something I think about a lot when it comes to tumblr’s relationship with media over the years, honestly.
like, it would be ahistorical and downright dishonest to say that some of tumblr’s reputation for being “a blog site with pvp enabled” doesn’t come from the fact that there are and always have been users on here who felt like they had to justify their dislike or disinterest in a really popular thing at one point. it’s just plain factual that said dislike motivated them to go digging into a creator or actor’s past to try and find something sufficiently negative that they could use it as justification for publicly dumping on something. I know this because I’ve had people say it to me, seen people say it, and I’ll admit to even having thought it myself a couple times over the years (in my defense, I’ve been on tumblr since like 2010, I was much younger then).
“I can finally make a post about how awful this show is and then I’ll never have to see people talk about it again because my mutuals will feel like they can’t reblog things from it” may not have been the exact words that anybody said, sure. but in a time before we had resources for blocking tags and posts we didn’t want to see, the extremely nebulous claim that something was “problematic” (scare quotes intentional, the term as tumblr uses it has ALWAYS been too vague and unspecific to have any real place in actual discourse or critique imo) was often enough to get mutuals and sometimes even tumblr celebrities to boost your post decrying it. and that attitude definitely extended toward people whose posts or typing quirk or overall vibe just… didn’t do it for you.
is that an okay way to act? no. is it the ONLY reason people might feel like they have to find concrete ‘proof’ their dislike of somebody is justified? definitely not. is it the only time anybody feels that way? of course not. sometimes bad people DO have bad vibes, or a show’s writing or an actor’s behavior are subtle red flags that subconsciously warn us not to get too invested in something. but the very specific “once I have the perfect reason for disliking this crafted, I can bring it up whenever I need to or keep it in mind if anybody asks why I’m so rude to this guy or get so mad when I see gifs from this show” mindset is one that’s sadly had a lot of cultivation and fuel devoted to it over the site’s various eras of discourse. unlearning the idea that you have to have a reason to dislike someone and internalizing “I can be civil to this person or neutral about this thing other people like, and avoid them/block the tag for whatever reason I want”, is one of the healthiest things for a person to do.
#daphne.txt#please be normal about this if you add onto this post#I have so fucking many blocked tags and it isn’t out of hatred or resentment or something#or about judging my friends for posting what they want to post#because it’s not like people don’t block tags *I* use either#you can block whatever tags of mine you want that’s WHY I tag things so thoroughly#that and personal organization/archive purposes of course#like you don’t need a crusade or documented evidence to justify disliking something. just don’t be an ass about it to somebody’s face
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I low key despise being in a fandom and someone treats me like absolute garbage… especially those who are newer fans who act like they own the series…
Like listen, sit down…
I been around this since the earlier years of it,
Hetalia has been around since 2006 and it got really popular in the west around about I’d say 2010-2011… it really started hitting its peek.
I personally was in the fandom (me and my best friend) back around 2011-2012… we had Facebook roleplaying accounts of our Hetalia plushies, and we had accounts on a site called Enjin where we would talk about hetalia together and carefully cruise deviantart for pictures we liked of our characters.
We also did some Hetalia stuff on Gaia. (if you guys remember this site, total props to you. I tilt my hat to you.)
We also watched the show on the iPad and sometimes through tv we’d have to find whatever videos we could at the time that were so shit quality…
But anyways…
I don’t like people policing others on the fandom, I think it’s dumb and really fucked way to restrict creative expression,
There is a difference in differentiating fictional from fact…
It is also A-okay to not know every single bit of history each nation/country has on it..
Hence why we all should discuss and talk about historical events in a calm manner and if someone doesn’t know everything about said country/nation, then educate. And don’t be a doucheball about it. (Not everyone’s a walking historian with all knowing knowledge.)
It is okay to only like certain ships and characters.
It is okay to self ship!
It is okay to make AUs/Headcanons of what you like.
And it’s okay to write sensitive/controversial topics, provided you be tasteful about it and don’t act like a horse’s ass about it.
What’s NOT OKAY:
Being racist, sexist, antisemitic by any means towards another fan or character through via the user/artist. (And what I mean by this is, if you roleplay/write as a character you know that’s gonna be in any of these categories of no-nos and you’re trying to stay in character, be mindful about it and make sure to tell beforehand, remember… DDDNE. Use your tags, set warnings. Make sure to be mindful.)
Condone inappropriate topics or glorifying them. (Self explanatory, there’s a difference in writing about ww2 than actually going out and trying to relive it, duh.) (same for terrorism, if you’re writing about terrorism, then don’t actually go out and do it! Like this is a given.)
Acting like a conceited, jealous, rude individual.(this is self explanatory, at the end of the day… you do not OWN the characters. I treat them like they are people that exist among us, even if fictional. So you don’t go and try and claim someone like some unhinged person. That’s disrespectful. Oh and, not everyone will like your OTP, so don’t shove it down people’s throats.)
Recognize and take safety precautions when engaging in sensitive/controversial subjects, and if you don’t agree with another fan and it gets you worked up or triggered, disengage and block!
That.
Is what you should be doing when you’re in a fandom like Hetalia.
History isn’t pretty, history isn’t kind. But what parts there are, make use of it. And most importantly enjoy what you like!
You guys are essentially fangirl/boying over countries for gods sake, so understand there’s historical events that were less than favorable…
And if someone is oppressed and they are writing such topics that you 🫵 want to police, do NOT do it!
I’m Ashkenazi Jewish and if I decide to write about Ludwig (Germany)and his internal conflict about ww2 and his now girlfriend Brigitte/Malka (Israel) and their tragedies they went through it, then I will do so. I have that right! That’s highly inappropriate to shush me of how I portray my pain through fictional works, or anyone of that matter.
My grandmother said to me,
“The way to be able to confront your demons is by dissecting your pain.”
We as humans, have used artistic and creative expression to use as an outlet for emotional turmoil and pain since the very beginning days of humanity.
You should be able to do this, without being lost in fixation in between caving to taboo subjects and reality, distorting of the mind and lack of self control.
Use your art as a tool as means to cope. Use your art as an escape to a better place, use your art to destroy pain, use art as means to convey a message.
Use art as how you feel.
Just don’t let history repeat itself.
That’s it.
#Israel Chan#Hetalia#hetalia explanation#hetalia fandom#selfship problems#hetalia ships#hetalia shipping#anything that has to do with hetalia#Hetalia fans#don’t be hateful#the hetalia fandom needs to stop being so rude#hetalia self ship#hetalia oc#israelhetalia#self shipping#words of advice
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I love the way you draw cats! How did you adopt a style like that? Who/What were your inspirations?
Thank you!!! I'm so glad people have been liking them!!
I'd say I get a lot of style elements from popular cartoons, like pokemon, but I also take a lot of care in my references, and learned to breakdown their shapes over years of trial and error. I'd say a majority of the inspo I got was from random warrior cats speed paints on youtube- I'd pause the frames and pay attention to all the different steps they did! I don't think any one youtuber stood out to me as someone I got my style from, but It's def an amalgamation of a bunch of creators from the early 2010's! I'd love to post something, or even a video one day, of how I do each of the steps I do to get where I get!
[Below is a retelling of my art journey if anyone is interested!]
I'd like to think I've got two styles of drawing: art for ocs, and canonized fan art. For both I use a great deal of references, either chosen from stock/free use image sites or from pictures of my three irl cats (who are very photogenic <3)! I am self taught, which means I've gone through a LOT of trial and error over the good decade I've been into the WC fandom. About a year or two ago, my laptop (that I've had since childhood) crashed so hard it deleted everything from my hard drive, losing YEARS of progress/artwork that I hadn't posted anywhere. Foolishly, months before that, I'd deleted my DeviantArt where all my cringe emo ocs were posted, something I was embarrassed of at the time, and now deeply regret doing (fr keep and date ALL of your art it is so important for your growth). I wish more than anything that I could post some of it here to show how my style has grown and changed, but sadly, I'll just have to describe it to ya.
[^^^ Above: the only bit of art I have saved from that time!]
I started drawing wc art in the 4th grade with some friends at my school- a very close friend of mine had started doing it, and I had never really drawn before, so I just followed along with what she did; the meme-y 'firestar doesn't like waffles/derp' fad of the time had be in a VICE GRIP and a lot of my work looked like that. I drew almost exclusively on paper, until my parents let me use the trackpad/mouse on the family computer in mspaint, where my passion for it really started to take off.
From there I got into deviantart, and started out like a lot of young kids did- thick, uniform lineart, coloring in the flats manually, tons of airbrushes and clip images of sparkles, the GOOD STUFF. I would hold paper up to the computer screen and trace the emo mspaint scourge pmvs frame by frame, I was obsessed. Then, for my 13th birthday, my uncle gifted me my very first wacom tablet; a tiny, 6x6 plastic plate that came with a pen and a too short chord. I drew constantly, watching speed paints and reading riverspirit comics until my eyes melted out of my skull, rp'd and posted little comics about my day to day. This went on and I very slowly started improving the more naturally drawing came to me; I held my pen different, downloaded a pirated version of firealpaca, learned about lineweight, obtained LAYERS.
Almost seven years ago now, that friend I started drawing with passed away while she was very young. I couldn't stomach drawing warrior cats art for a long time after that; and, my parents had been urging me to give it up for a while too (in their opinions, if I was going to waste my time drawing, it should be something I could do to make money. If only they could see my commission having ass now!!). I still made art, but I did it formally; still life, paintings, figure sketches. When I got to highschool, I went to a specialized program for gifted students (burnout king right here) and took a TON of formal art classes, studying it as my main field. I learned about shapes and color and the natural flow of a piece; but I never really get over my love of cartoons, or my love of warrior cats art. There was just something so special about it, so unique to any fandom I've ever been in, that eventually, I was called back to it. My life was very difficult during that time, when I decided to redraw some of my old digital art for a class warmup. I hadn't touched a laptop in years, and it was ROUGH, but I reconnected with it instantly, and it was the first bit of serotonin I'd had in a WHILE.
I got back into roleplays, got back into tumblr, got back into all the old stuff that made me happy.
I graduated highschool in 2020 and started drawing a lot of warrior cats content in between shifts- which leads to where I am now! I was deeply insecure about it and would hide the fact I did it from people I knew irl because I was afraid they'd think im cringe (I am cringe and I love that about myself now, thank u therapy)- and now, I pay for our internet bill off warrior cats commission money, which felt like a pretty big leap!! I still like doing 'formal traditional art', and it has influenced my art and it's shapes a ton- but I still cling to the anime eyes I loved to draw as the kid who wanted to make cartoons for all the world to see.
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Pick a song for each letter of your URL, and then tag that many people! Thank you so much @italimix for the tag!! I'm so sorry this is so late, work has been killing me lately asldkfjs.
Shrike- Hozier Hozier is my top favorite artist of all time. I discovered him when Take me to Church released, and I've been listening to his whole discography nonstop since!
Killer Queen- Queen I have such a huge taste for classic rock (just anything rock, metal, etc) but Queen will always be a top artist because my mom was OBSESSED with them, so I heard them a lot as a kid.
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid- The Offspring Can't go wrong with pop punk.
La Vie Boheme- Cast of the Motion Picture Rent I'm a musical kid at heart. It's unfortunate for everyone except me.
Impeach God- Dethklok Funnily enough, the first time I watched Metalocalypse all the way through, my headphones broke and I didn't get to hear this song specifically for some reason. It's one of my favorite Dethklok songs now though
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy- Queen
Here's A Health To The Company- The Longest Johns Between the Hobbit and Baldur's Gate 3 thoughts, this song is constantly on my repeats.
The Bidding- Chonny Jash This song gives me massive feels about my OCs, but this cover SPECIFICALLY
Dance Macabre- Ghost I LOVE GHOST
I Left the Wolves Behind- The Tiger & Me My girlfriend showed me this song and it also gives me massive OC feels
Sweating Bullets- Megadeth IDK shit about megadeth as a band, but this song slaps
Through Me (The Flood)- Hozier Unreal Unearth has destroyed me in the best way possible
Real- Years & Years I think I discovered this on a playlist back in the early 2010's, but I love the synthpop vibe
Aortic Desecration- Dethklok My favorite Dethalbum 4 song!!
Closing Time- Semisonic YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO HOME BUT YOU CAN'T STAY HEREEE
Tubthumping- Chumbawumba Because who doesn't love a positive party song
I Tamper With the Evidence at Odin's Murder Site- Dethklok
Once in a Lifetime- Talking Heads
Never There- CAKE Who doesn't love CAKE, c'mon
OOH THAT WAS LONG! I don't know enough people to tag someone for every letter of my URL, so I'm just gonna tag @gogomeaty, @serenitybun, and anyone else who would like to participate!
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