#this is full on a 2012 tumblr blog now i am so sorry
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okay, so, I've collected a bunch of DP fandom stuff that I remember off the top of my head, specifically in chronological order & colour coded here in this post (fics/comics, tumblr posts, important imo) for no reason other than I saw a post asking for Phandom history & it triggered my biggest, most long-running hyperfixation & now I'm curious if anyone else remembers stuff.
this link is going to be the permanent version I will be updating, but I'm posting what I currently have (gonna go through my old laptop later for more) just to let people know. you can also find the link on my blog, but only on desktop. It isn't colour coded there, sorry.
please share more if you got anything else cuz I'm 100% sure I'm missing a lot of stuff & am too interested now. the biggest reason a lot of stuff isn't here is that I simply can't find it. second biggest reason is i forgor. things not included here aren't "unimportant," this is just the first stuff that comes to mind.
putting it under a cut 'cause it got kinda long
Mars by JadeRabbyt (2005)
Checkmate by pearl84 (2006)
Conversations of a Ghost Gabber by Cordria (2006)
The Foley Maneuver by bluemoonalto (2007)
One Thousand Years by Nylah (2008)
Lab Rat by AnneriaWings (2009)
Lost by Cordria (2010?) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Phantom of Truth by Haiju (2011)
Ghost Deaths (2012)
Through Coals and Rain by Kakawot (2012)
Shadow of a Doubt by Haiju (2013)
Pink Pants (2013?)
Wes (2014) [original] [1] [2] [3] [4]
this "I'm Inevitable" gif (2014)
Space AU (2014)
Treading Water by The Full Catastrophe (2014)
Danny, you dead IDIOT!! comic (2014)
wash away the darkest days by anthrop (2014)
Reverse Trio (2014)
Inverse Trio (2014-2016) ALT
Halfas are "feral children" (2015)
Burn the Streets, Burn the Cars by anthrop (2015)
It's Not Gay if He's Dead by phantomrose96 (2015)
You Smell Like Death by starfleetrambo (2015)
Ghost Bird AU by @rest-in-peachs (2016?)
Things I Can(not) Do In Amity Park by RedHeadsRock1010 (2016)
KEtTLE by Cordria (2016)
Deeper, Darker by Silvermoonphantom (2016)
Danny Phantom Punches Butch Hartman In The Face by MistressVintage (2017)
Dannypocalypse (2017)
Ghost Train (2017?)
Ghost Physics by jayrockin (2017)
Ghost Infographics (2018)
The Taxonomy of Ghost Cores: An Observational Study (2018) Communicating with Ghosts Professionally: A Study (2018)
Species in Danny Phantom (2018?)
Diddles Piddles by diddly-darn-ghost (2018)
Broken Ectoplasm by ghostanimal (2019)
Ghost of Heroes by Enigmaris & ScarletNightFury (2019-2020)
do not stand at my grave and cry (i am not there, i did not die) by blueh (2020)
Undercover Phantom by artistfingers (2021)
Corruption is a Two Way Street by datawyrms (2021)
Things That Bleed by artistfingers, kkachis, & Perfectly_Inconspicuous (2022)
10,000 works on AO3 (2022)
Ghost Speak:
Danny's handwriting (2015?)
Cordria (2015)
Fiver-Rivers [1] [2] [3] (2019)
Rubber Chicken Sounds (2019)
#Danny Phantom#Phandom History Archive#do you even understand how hard it was to find the original Wes post????????#i spent like 2 hours on that alone#Wes Weston why are you so hard to find#just realizing that a lot of shit happened in 2014#like. 2014/2015 ish#i joined somewhere between 2014 & 2016 so i guess i literally came here right at the peak of phandom activity#the height of tumblr's paranormal activity. you might say#i think i'm just biased though#should i put my own fics on here. Phantom is pretty important to me being my first DP fic#& also the thing that got me back into writing#it's not very good but by god if i dont love it. & anyways i put Bird AU on here lol i think i can put Phantom up at some point. as a treat#also if any links are broken tell me cuz i'm not checking them again. it's 4am#reminder: gotta find those Bird AU fics i read & put em here. there ARE actual Bird AU fics. i know there are. i did not hallucinate that#it just might be the hardest thing on earth to do since that was years ago & i have no idea what they were called#anyway gonna add a fuckton of fics & (hopefully) tumblr posts when i go through my old laptop. i got everything bookmarked on there#like. so many fics. i had them organized too based on what kind of fic it was. but they all have stupid names cuz i was like 15#me: i should do my stencil art today. just to be a bit productive & also maybe make money#my brain: what if you organized Danny Phantom fandom posts into a big archive for people to look at? for free. until 4am.#me: you know what that sounds so much better let's do that
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Hey uuuuh did you know... Ur big swaggy and hella stronger than ur demons? 😉👍 You've overcome them in the past to make it to today, you'll overcome today's with the lessons from the past, and the future doesn't know what it has coming to it 📣👏😁
Anon, this was so nice to wake up to. 😭 Thank you so much!!
I'm so sorry it took me all day to respond to this and I'm about to ramble so feel free to skim this, I'm gonna dump it under a read more. ( Do people even still use these in 2024? askdjhf )
I never directly attacked anyone in my time while pretending to be an anti. I was just completely silent on the matter, letting my morality complex and p.edophobia ocd wage war on my well-being.
It's ironic, I've been on this site since about 2010; and in 2012 when I started to be at my first most active point on tumblr and had a friend group on here, I would blog about Wincest (SPN) on main and no one said anything or thought anything of it, they just kept scrolling. That was the norm. People just SHIPPED whatever they wanted.
Flash ahead to like 2018 and suddenly everywhere I go there are now neon eyesore banners on posts, including fucking stimboards and whatnot with 'p.roship d.ni' and 'a.nti-a,ntis d.ni' ( I'm censoring that just so this post isn't blacklisted from proshippers because that is NOT my stance ) and I was like 'I don't even know what these terms MEAN?? where did these come from??' but I was too afraid to ask anyone so I just. Stayed silent and promised myself I'd only reblog "safe" content and that I was "happy" I'd "become a better person since then". ( spoiler: I was lying to myself. )
And over the years any time I made new friends who had never seen that content on my blog back then, I'd just say I didn't support Problematic Content(tm) and I'd only talk about and rp and reblog ships that were "normal", because I was now so afraid people would reject me at any time because it seemed like the anti crowd was so large and violent and nasty -- my mental health at that time would not have been able to handle that hatred.
-- in fact I had this SAME experience in the plural community with the a.nti-e.ndos for identifying as a median system. ( we know now that we are a bpdgenic osdd-1b system, but we still prefer most median terminology to describe ourselves. ) But the traumagenic DID systems who were pro-endo were so much more welcome to interacting with us than the exclusionists. And it's the same bullshit different flavor happening here with the proshippers.
How much overlap is there between a.nti-e.ndo and a.nti-p.roship rhetoric, I wonder? It's wild. I wish I had learned how to undo my black and white thinking so much sooner and listen to new points of view instead of just shying away from the unknown in fear.
But this is a new year, and this is a new me. This blog is going to be a source of love and positivity and learning about other people's experiences. Any discourse or negativity ( even the validating kind ) will remain on my sideblog. I don't have to like or even agree with everything I see online, but I am going to support people's right to say it, do it, make content of it, as long as all parties involved are consenting. ( Fictional characters, animated or live action, do not have the autonomy to consent or not consent so people can do anything they want with fiction that makes them feel happy and fulfilled, full stop. Yes, this includes RPF and selfshipping. As long as you keep your content in your safe space and no actors/musicians/etc involved in the creation of that character you're using are able to see it - I will support your right to make or consume any content as you see fit. )
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The cute @camb99-cbmi6 tagged me to do this! Thanks my dear 🌺
Name: Jules
Sign: (not really into astrology, sorry, but last i checked i was either Capricorn or Aquarius depending on who you ask 🙃)
Height: 174cm or around 5'8,5"
Time: (this post is queued but it's actually 8 am as i'm writing)
Birthday: January 20th
Favourite bands/artists: BJÖRK all the way, babyyyyy! Haha i'm so crazy about her work... and I feel like I'm on a sugar high right now since her next album is close to releasing!!! 🥰
Last movie: It was a movie the boyfriend (G) showed us: The Return of the Vampire (1943), with Bela Lugosi.
Last show: Actually, it was Drag Race France. I stopped watching DR a few seasons ago, but this version is really worth it! Other than that, I'm currently rewatching Please Like Me with the boyfriend (T).
When I created this blog: This one was on March 1st 2022. But I had an older blog before since 2012.
What I post: I like posting pics of myself... that's why i created this blog for! In some ways, I want to feel good in my skin and showing it in an artsy way makes me more confident about myself. Other than that, I reblog cute mutuals, art, and I sometimes post about music (mainly Björk haha).
Last thing I Googled: A complete definition of erotism (for a project I'm working on)
Other blogs: An old dead one (as I mentioned above). For the moment, I did not make an alt Tumblr account, but I'm considering making a Twitter account...
Do I get asks?: Not enough 🥲 When I post a "Send Ask" post, I might get some, but spontaneously I'm not sure I've ever received one... Don't hesitate guys 😚
Following: 392
Followers: 615
Average hours of sleep: Usually between 5-7 hours.
Instruments: Played Tried to learn the violin when I was a child. Other than that I always was keen to learn a bit of piano by myself and now I also play a (tiny) bit of organ thanks to my boyfriend (T) who is an organist!
What I'm wearing: Currently naked under the sheets 😏
Dream job: "J'aurais voulu être un artiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiste" to quote a song hahaha. But yeah, that's what I aspire to be (an artist).
Dream trip: I really don't wish to go that far, but going around Europe could be nice.
Nationality: French omelette de fromage (a mix of pride and shame, tbh)
Favourite songs: You really want me to go full Björk today hehe
Last book I read: Currently reading Pandora's Camera by Joan Fontcuberta.
Now I must tag other people, but participate only if you want to! @post-punk-post-twink @thefelineofaveb @neverthelessflo @maty-moon @handgrenadeshavings @thesewickedwonders @coastalacademicelite @falling-planet @cubeboy95 @debout-les-damnes-de-la-terre
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I posted 1,051 times in 2022
That's 459 more posts than 2021!
357 posts created (34%)
694 posts reblogged (66%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@thedoctornumber11
@theserpentsjester
@isitrecording
@phoebeweatherfieldcaufield
I tagged 1,050 of my posts in 2022
#a: billie piper - 430 posts
#billiepiperedit - 262 posts
#bw: munedits - 261 posts
#{im uploading icons here. sorry for the billie tsunami of long posts} - 247 posts
#ch: the vigilante - 193 posts
#bw: out of ethos - 175 posts
#tv: doctor who - 154 posts
#bw: wardrobe - 136 posts
#tv: i hate suzie - 113 posts
#v: tbd - 110 posts
Longest Tag: 136 characters
#{correction: sea devil rose 🤝 dr. martha jones 🤝 donna noble 🤝 thirteenth doctor 🤝 roasting ten being so thick he isnt worth the 🧂}
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Namuh ||
@theserpentsjester
It has been one year. No, it's been several years. That was what the faceless blonde in her dreams had said.
Dr. Rosenbräig had to repeat this to herself.
The memories of her marriage were real, her having a whirlwind romance and then marriage: that was real. Her being a widower of a faceless man and then a vilomah of a mere toddler; that was also real.
Her meeting Antonio when she had went on vacation - was it a beach? Where was this beach? - was also real.
She knew that he once worked in the business sector but was also a soldier before that - though, the Vigilante left this vague on purpose when implanting memories for the human. He has a sister or a brother or both - again, vague. But, real.
And now they moved to the country with a shed with wireless lights. That was real.
And she was pregnant - that she knew was real. So, why was she having these--
See the full post
9 notes - Posted April 6, 2022
#4
me seeing millie being announced as the new companion for 15: either we're getting a new tardis team or 14 fucked up and got murdered by rose templenoble in vengence for robbing her mum's memories.
also me: why was yasmin's announcement as the new companion the same as freema's announcement as the new companion, rtd? and why was millie's announcement as the new companion the same as peter capaldi's twelfth doctor announcement, rtd? im screaming within the glass of your windows and banging against the interior of your prescription glasses' frames.
10 notes - Posted November 19, 2022
#3
+12 ||
@frexnds | @godsmuses | @bakcr | @13thx | @dirtylimerick | @riiisefromashes | @ofcreamcustards | @elveswithoutears | @queenofthewarehouse-archive | @its-capt-jackharkness | @katebaikiru | @saphirafoxgirlspost1 |
“Listen, I’m not who you think I am...”
12 notes - Posted March 2, 2022
#2
Can you really dance all your troubles away? Asking for a mate.
[Dreamworks' Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012) Track 13 Afro Circus/I Like To Move It playing the background]
23 notes - Posted September 30, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
See the full post
70 notes - Posted January 18, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
#tumblr2022#year in review#my 2022 tumblr year in review#your tumblr year in review#thebadtimewolf#{OH THEY CAN SEE YOU! THEY JUST CHOOSE NOT OKAY OKAY OKAY ALRIGHT ALRIGHT UH HUH UH HUH}
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Since making this post I can’t stop going insane over Morgana and Sam parallels, from the most literal, like their powers starting with prophetic nightmares, to the queer allegories of it all, and mostly how the people who were supposed to support them the most ended up driving them away
These bastards
The first to fail them, and who failed them the most, are of course the fathers. Obsessed with revenge for their late wives and filled with hate for anything that resembles magic/monsters. The line from Morgana that really gets me is he hates magic more than he cares for me, and considering John was ready to kill Sammy “if needed be”, I’d say it applies. Morgana and Sam were also the children willing to openly rebel when they disagreed with their fathers, as opposed to Arthur and Dean, the “good sons” and good soldiers.
(Of course, if we take powers as an allegory for queerness, that feeling that this is the limit where the supposed unconditionality of a parent’s love stops, feels very familiar)
The misguided attempts
I’m not sure if this is controversial but it shouldn’t be, Merlin and Dean, despite their intentions, also failed to provide the support Morgana and Sam needed. Merlin took her to the druids, he kept her secret, but ultimately chose self preservation, he could’ve put an end to her loneliness and fear by telling the truth, but didn’t. Dean couldn’t disguise how afraid Sam’s powers made him, and gave Sam plenty of reason to believe he couldn’t be trusted, that honesty would be punished (as it was, when Dean eventually found out about Ruby and the Demon blood).
The powerful
The angels and the dragons, powerful entities repeating the prophecy that Sam and Morgana were destined for evil, whispering it in Dean’s and Merlin’s ear
The (not so) wise men
Bobby and Gaius. that’s it.
“But they’re evil”
In comes Morgause and Ruby, the first people to accept them, all of them, powers included. The first ones to tell them powers shouldn’t be hidden or repressed, that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with them. “But they’re evil”, sure, but they when everyone else drove Morgana and Sam away, they were there. Honestly, how could it have gone any other way?
The narrative
Perhaps the most infuriating part of all of it is the narrative itself isn’t kind to either of them. Merlin tries to make the point that magic isn’t evil, it can be used for good or bad, it depends on people’s choices, but in order to highlight Merlin as the good they need to punish Morgana as the bad, how much choice did she really have though? Their circunstances were completely different, she didn’t have Gaius, she didn’t have a prophecy on her side.
And Supernatural, god only knows what the fuck they were trying to say, at points it seemed like they were trying to go with “monsters aren’t always bad”, but somehow they always had to be killed anyways. Sam didn’t choose having demon blood, he didn’t choose having his life manipulated by Lucifer from the start, but he did choose to try and do good with all of it, he learned how to use his powers so he could exorcise demons without hurting innocent people, and Ruby could show him how to do that. And still, to highlight Dean as the right one here, he is locked and blamed and punished, over and over.
In summary: I’m a lesbian and have a lot of thoughts.
#supernatural#bbc merlin#morgana pendragon#sam winchester#this is full on a 2012 tumblr blog now i am so sorry
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not a dream, common misconception about OTID
1) It's ran by a set of admins - nope, there's just one person behind this blog and it's always been just me.
2) It's been here since 2012 - nope, I made this blog in the summer of 2016. It took me close to a year to even start talking to you all, I just went through dreams and kept to myself, and it took me even longer to do a face reveal.
3) All the dreams posted are dreamt by the blog owner - nope, I rarely post my own dreams because I rarely dream. All the dreams posted were dreamt by people who've submitted them!
4) The submissions post on their own - nope, I go through them and post them manually. I also edit them, fix them up if there are any mistakes, clarify things that make no sense, look up the people mentioned when not provided context so I could give context to readers and occasionally edit the style a little so it'd be easier to read and understand.
5) It doesn't take long to post a large number of submissions - unfortunately untrue, it does take a lot and I also have to edit and vet the problematic ones. Tumblr has a daily post and queue limits, but it would be impossible to post 300 submissions per day without it. A lot of you don't provide context when sending in dreams about niche things and I have to dig for it myself because not everyone (most of us even, maybe) know about the same things as you do and I'd like for all of the post posted here to be understandable to the masses, so I always spend a lot of time checking for that.
6) I intentionally post the newer submissions first - completely false. Unfortunately, the submissions that were sent in earlier by Tumblr default end up at the bottom of the inbox and the scroll is broken. When you have thousands of submissions and try to go further and further down to post the older ones first, the scroll breaks, freezes, the editing is at 0.0001x speed, and so on. Everything is slow and blocky, therefore I have no choice but to go from the newer submissions down, and not vice versa.
7) I intentionally don't reply to donation posts that are submitted to OTID - UNTRUE AS frick. I've put my personal blog in the description and closed asks here so help posts would not be buried on this blog and I see them much sooner on @dreampai because I mostly use it for that purpose. When people submit their help posts on this blog, they unfortunately get buried by newer submissions and sometimes I don't see them for months. I've also closed anonymous messages on my personal blog because one person whose submission post I hadn't seen in time kept sending me hate and accused me of intentionally ignoring them. Don't submit your help posts on here, please send them as asks on my personal so you're guaranteed to be noticed. People who I've helped in the past can vouch that I do reply, respond and reshare their help posts on here.
8) I don't reply to messages - partially true and partially untrue. I get a lot of messages from you guys on all of my social media and it can get pretty overwhelming for me. Sometimes it takes me months to reply to everything, though I do try to talk to you as much as possible, but I'm a full time student on top of everything and my free time is limited, so if your message got buried, I'm sorry and please don't be discouraged. It's not that I don't care about you, it's likely that I didn't see it. Furthermore, people keep sending me their dreams on my personal platforms and that also helps to overwhelm me. @dreampai is my personal blog and I don't accept submission on there, but whenever I close submissions on here, there are people who ignore that and send them there.
9) The submission button isn't working - false. If you can't submit something, it means that the submissions are closed. Whenever the number of submission gets to an insane amount, like right now, I close it for some time so I can sort through them, edit and post them. It takes a while for me to do that. It's impossible to queue them all at once because of the way Tumblr works and the queue limit, and it takes some time for me to proofread and edit everything. Besides, I make sure to always edit the blog description when they are closed and close that option in the settings, people just don't check everything out. I get at least a few asks weekly on my personal of people telling me that the submission button isn't working. I know they're all well-intentioned.
10) OTID admin is a guy - false. I don't know how this rumor started but I always find it funny when people get surprised that I am a woman.
11) I don't look at posts that people tag me in - completely false. Sometimes they do get buried because, when you have a high level of activity blog with millions of notes per month, trying to find all the @s can be impossible and they won't load even if I do it through my activity panel because Tumblr is laggy like that. So if I miss something, tag me again please. Don't be afraid to send me an ask on my personal.
12) I don't like my mutuals, therefore I don't reply to them - untrue. If I follow you, for whichever reason, I probably like you or admire you or admire something that you've did, or you've managed to make me laugh. If I don't reply to your messages, it's because I'm overwhelmed or intimidated or nervous. I don't know why people keep imagining the worst, but I really wanted to clear this one up.
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Meet the mun!
(it's so cold today)
Name: Niko 🍓
Star sign: Goat mermaid! Capricorn! That's all I remember. I don't know all the rising and what not.
Gender: Non-binary! She/they! They/She! Whichever
Height: 5′ feet.....152 cm...truly unfair
Sexual orientation: Pansexual
Favorite color: Green! 💚
Time right now: 1:22 am (this will go in my queue so idk what time it'll be when this is perceived) edit: it is how 12:37 pm.
Current location: East Coast USA
Average hours of sleep: 5.5 - 7 on weekdays, 8-9 on weekends
Number of blankets I sleep under: One. And not a comforter, because I get hot easily. Occasionally I use two blankets.
Favorite fictional characters: I can't pick favorites of anything because I get anxious but honorable mentions are Riku and Roxas from Kingdom Hearts, Dazai from BSD, Barnaby from T&B, Sailor Neptune, Cloud Strife, Howl Pendragon, and Giorno Giovanna from jjba. I'm probably forgetting important ones because I'm so bad at doing this on the spot!
Favorite book: Ahhh uh um Lord of the Rings, Lore Olympus, uh uhhh suddenly. I've forgotten everything I've ever read! I can't remember! Howl's Moving Castle also!
Favorite artists/bands: I switch around depending on my mood from show tunes to metal to pop punk to kpop and jpop. I'm not a fan of country and most western rap.
What I’m wearing: pajamas! (when I wrote this), currently pants and a hoodie
When did you create your blog?: first blog was 2011, then this one was around 2012-2013
Do you have any other blogs?: they technically exist but I don't use them anymore
What made you decide to get a Tumblr?: All my friends had one and I wanted to leave forum rping because it was getting to be full of drama and drama makes me 🌟ANXIOUS🌟
Do you get asks on a daily basis?: Usually, yes. But I am a super slow potato I am so so sorry. But I appreciate every single one!
Why did you choose your URL?: I.....love strawberries. That's really all there is to that. Strawberries are in most of my other internet handles so I changed my url on Tumblr to match better. I was known first as dearlyxxbeloved because uh....yeah anyway, if something comes in a strawberry aesthetic I seek it out. Or eat it.
---------
I stole this! So steal it from me!
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twenty questions
tagged by @are-you-quite-finished-giovanna thank you babe!! 🥰
1. why did you choose your url?
simply put i adore louis and i like purple and it just rolled off the tongue lol, but i also had a list of possible urls i also liked and i had to snatch this one up while i could!
2. any side blogs?
yes i have four....i'm not one of those 'everything goes on main and you can deal with it' type people.... but i have an inspiration blog @prickelndauge (art insp, lots of fashion, cool photography), an art-only blog @swmpwxtch, one just for spooky/creepy content because i'm really into horror manga and scary movies and that kind of stuff but i keep it off of main because i know a lot of it can often be triggering to others! (i also don't post much there but @bonepickng) and one for art references, life tips, random resources, and more donation sharing @am-ref!
3. how long have you been on tumblr?
soooo long i thought i'd be gone by now tbh. i know i signed up in 2011 after just browsing the site through random blogs and tags for ages, but i didn't start actively using my own account until early 2012!
4. do you have a queue tag?
when i actually remember to tag things i have queued i'll use 'i'm sleep queue' because all my early morning posts everyday are queued....i am an insomniac rip
5. why did you start your blog in the first place?
keeping up with my interests better! i was like 15/16 at the time so it made sense. back in Ye Olde Days much like now—i really have come full circle lmao—it was mostly just for 1d and then some random tv shows/franchises i just to see content of semi-often, as well as finding cool art!
6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?
rn it's just a regular pic of louis! as much as i like using my collages or little edits as my icons, you can't see much of anything and it looks too busy sometimes (but also the photo i have rn....i am always thinking thoughts about it soooo)
7. why did you choose your header?
it's pretty! i wanted everything to follow a color scheme + i love embroidery and fancy gowns!
8. what's your post with the most notes?
ok i thought it was gonna be one of my old larry chibi doodles because i know a few of them hit 1k+ notes, but i deleted those in 2017 and apparently now it's this 6 year old like....funky photo study i did of dan howell from 2015 when i still watched him and amazingphil a lot?? i mean at least it's something i was once proud of lmao....there's a few art posts i have with semi decent notes that i pretend i Do Not See
9. how many mutuals do you have?
i think rn 40 something so not very many, although i unfollowed a lot of people i was moots with when i left my last fanbase so that's probably why 😬 i've been meaning to check out more HL/ot5 people though!! i love mutual interaction but i'm afraid of being annoying if i'm any degree of attentive
10. how many followers do you have?
overall i have almost 2.4k rn, but there's a decent amount that are totally inactive or at least don't interact with me so it feels like....a lot less lmao but since re-joining 1d i've already made up like all the people i lost when i left my other fanbase of almost three and more so thank you for actually liking my work and maybe me as well 🥺💗
11. how many ppl do you follow?
around 370 rn!
12. have you ever made a shitpost?
half of the stuff that comes out of my mouth is a shitpost fdngjkdf like my tags are bad enough lmao, no one needs to properly share the bs i have to say
13. how often do you use tumblr?
pretty regularly rn but there are times i'll go completely MIA depending on what i'm into/how busy i am!
14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog?
in the past i have had some....issues with other people i've met on here but never directly had confrontation with them? most of the time that's happened i figure it's been one-sided though because i can get irritated with certain behavior really quickly—like i always say my heart is big and open but my bullshit tolerance is dangerously low—but when that's the case i'll just unfollow or block without saying anything?
although back in the day there was one instance (and seriously if anyone remembers this you deserve a medal because this shit was Ridiculous) where i kinda but not really called out another 1d fanartist who posted untagged noncon fanart they'd done of at least two of the boys, and then acted like it was no big deal (like. 1. those are irl people my dude and 2. untagged noncon art?? in front of my salad??) and their friends kept defending them for it and tried to come for me claiming i was a proponent of Purity Culture when i'm not and literally all i said in my post on it was that in my own opinion it was kinda fucked up to draw noncon art of real life people—not characters played by actors! but actual real people as themselves—in the first place, but if you felt the need to post highly triggering content like that the least you could do was tag it accordingly
but i think that was the last time properly so i guess times within this fanbase are still chaotic as ever just in a different way?
15. how do you feel about "you need to rb this" posts?
Annoyed™️ like don't guilt trip me over a post lmao i do what i want !!
16. do you like tag games?
YES i love to talk about myself after years of trying not to show any personality online out of fear of judgement dfjkngdf
17. do you like ask games?
yes! i want to do them more but i'm always afraid of reblogging one and then getting nothing and looking like a Fool :'(
18. which one of your mutuals is tumblr famous?
i guess i have a few moots that are kinda well-known or at least get good interaction within the community we're a part of? also isn't that phrase kind of an oxymoron at this point adfjkdf
19. do you have a crush on a mutual?
not past platonic friendly affection lmao but honestly what is it like to have a realistic crush on an actual tangible person versus someone in the public eye who doesn't even know i exist.....it's been so long and i am so lonely please send help
20. tags?
@niallnailme @bolitodequeso @milkcurls @exzouis @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk @got-my-devotion @aliensyndrome uhhh anyone who'd like to please consider yourself tagged by me! literally if there was an 'all my moots' button i'd just pick that lmao and as always no pressure/sorry if you've already done this and i haven't seen!
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Get To Know Me!
@foxofninetales tagged me in this ask game and since I LOVE HER i will now be doing it (i mean i’d do it anyway but now it will be filled with love for FOX i am not accepting CRITICISM ON THIS POINT)
Part I
name: Brigid! I’m named after the Irish goddess of like, poetry, healing, smithcraft, and protection, or the Irish saint (they’re both pretty similar it’s just whether or not you’re talking about Celtic religion or Catholicism). She’s very cool, and I think it’s a very fitting name for who I turned out to be!
pronouns: she/her
star sign: i’m an insufferable theatre kid of course I’m a Leo
height: 5'8″ babeeeyyy (172 cm). I’m not short like, at all, but all of my family members are over six foot, so I’m like. tiny in comparison. they all make fun of me all the time for it :(
time: 8:49pm! A delightful time of evening!!!
birthday: July 31st, same day as Harry Potter lol.
nationality: american :P
fave bands/groups/solo artists: hnnnngggghhhh why would u ask me this I don’t KNOW jk i just have a lot uhhhhh all time faves would be Bastille and Mumford and Sons, but I’m SUPER into kpop right now, so my top groups are BTS, Stray Kids, and One OK Rock (who are technically jpop but I really like their stuff). I also am a Broadway BITCH (hello, theatre kid) so before this year all of my Spotify library was basically just show tunes.
song stuck in your head: Get Away by VeriVery. I think they’re a pretty new group? idk i saw them on one of those tumblr promotional things and checked out the music video which is like??? really interesting conceptually? so I’ve just been listening to the song for a while lol.
last movie you watched: Train to Busan! I’m gearing up to write a dmbj zombie apocalypse AU and so I was like “this is a popular zombie film! I’ll watch it for inspiration! :)” holy shit. holy shit i was so wrong. It’s one of the most viscerally affecting films I think I’ve ever seen, I was like. On the verge of an anxiety attack the entire time but in like the best possible way?? it’s a mastery of character introduction and action/horror and I cried for like the last ten minutes straight. SO affecting. I do NOT RECOMMEND IT if u are already made anxious by zombie apocalypse scenarios, blood, violence, and a Lot of Death.
last show you binged: hmmm uh like I’m currently watching Mystic Nine but at like a normal pace, so the last show I probably binge watched was maybeeee The Uncanny Counter on Netflix? HIGHLY recommend that one, I made @cross-d-a watch it and I’m living for her liveblog reactions lmao. Idk most of my free time has been spent writing the past few months which. After months of only having the energy to watch shows is kind of really invigorating? the things u can do when u fix ur health I’ll tell you what
when you created your blog: in 2012 asldighalsdkfjladskjga i came on here to like burdge’s pjo fanart :)
the last thing you googled: "is it bad not to have an air cap on your tire” ALSDIGHALKDFJLADFJA FUCK ME (i learned that it’s not necessarily bad but it can get dirt and stuff built up in there so I went to the store after work today and replaced it)
other blogs: everything is here bc i am too lazy to create a sideblog! so sorry to everyone who does not follow me for cdrama content bc this is all I am now.
why i chose my url: cause it’s my ao3 username and i wanted people to be able to find me more easily on tumblr! :) the long answer is because i love shakespeare and also i think that slut is a really funny word and concept for me especially because i am one of the most sexless people u will ever meet in ur life so slutspeare is like. an aggressively ace joke that only I think is funny.
how many people are you following: 588
how many followers do you have: ah just over 200?!??!!? which is like. a lot for me. I think it was like 75 up until like last year omg
average hours of sleep: my sleep app says I average around eight! which is very good for me! I do have to get enough sleep consistently or I will Have A Bad Time so my sleep schedule is pretty good and luckily I don’t have the Insomnia depression I have the Sleep Lots one which I am glad for bc idk what I’d do if I couldn’t Be Unconscious regularly. Die probably.
lucky numbers: I don’t think I have lucky numbers?? my favorite number is 21 for no reason other than the vibes alone.
instruments: i’ve played the piano for uhhhh.... eighteen years now? and I can play the ukulele and am surprisingly good with the recorder since I’ve had to play it in Multiple Theatre Performances. I was also an honor choir singer back in high school so I’ve done a lot of select ensemble stuff which was super fun!
what i'm currently wearing: a Life Is Good long-sleeved t-shirt that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” that I got in a military surplus store like a million years ago and red Adidas athletic shorts that I found at the thrift store a couple weeks back
dream job: playwright! I just wanna be a playwright! playwriting is like drugs i literally go nuts for it
dream trip: I don’t know??? I don’t really like traveling tbh aslidhalkfdj umm I do want to see the grand canyon sometime before I die tho so maybe a road trip down there? I definitely like traveling solo so I’d probably just hang out with myself and drive and go to whatever places I want and see dumb tourist attractions and sing loudly in the car
fave food: CURRY i know i said eggs the last time it asked me this but I miss my local Indian restaurant I want to eat literal Platefuls of tikka masala at 12pm at the Indian buffet after my physics class again :(
top three fictional universe you'd like to live in: hmmm i don’t know, actually! probably one where I have Powers and could do Cool Hand Motions and make Lights Appear. If I were anywhere with like. An Actual World-Dooming problem tho I would not be helpful at all. I would just die. Besides, I already live in fictional universes half the time, I’m a writer!
Part II
last song: Basquiat by Pentagon! The music video is like. Very whumpy. So if you’re into that... the song’s also a bop
last stream: i don't watch streams very often, I just watch clips from them, cause those usually just give the best parts lol
currently reading: mmmmmbbbaaaaahhhhh literally nothing? I’m trying to get caught up on the backlog of dmbj fic I haven’t gotten around to so Binding by @vishcount is next on that list! oh I guess I’m also reading Johnny Tremain with my kids (one of them SPOILED THE END and I forgot how it ended and now I’m big sad).
currently watching: Mystic Niiiiinnnneeeeee! love those gay history bitches. everyone in that show is so funny. I just finished the Fuba Side Plot tho and now we’re back to Politics so i’m like >:( someone give zhang baby rishan a hug (and then i write angst about him what is wrong with me)
what is antipoetry to you: antipoetry??? what the heck is antipoetry hold on... uhhhh that’s just poetry. who came up with this term. i guess like lyrical fiction would be the technical correct definition but idk I consider anything to be poetry! like that’s the whole point! poetry is poetry is poetry as long as it’s focused on intensity and emotions it’s poetry! a haiku? poetry. the random one-lined mess of words on my phone? poetry. a literal drawing of a cardinal with the word “bird” written next to it? poetry. idk I’ve been trying to teach my kids that there are no wrong ways to write creatively; if you’re expressing yourself and making emotions, then you’re writing! also like half of my work could be considered antipoetry lmao. I love emotionally supercharging the mundane.
currently craving: i have noooo ideaaaasssss i’m literally just vibing. uh. water? ok i took care of that one my water bottle was right next to me.
AH IF YOU READ THIS MUCH THANK YOU???? i love u
uhhhh no pressure tags for @xia-xueyi, @nope4ever, @bookjoyworm, @elletromil, and @gaiahenshin, as well as anyone else who would like to give the full-rundown on themselves! :D
#ask tag#about me#Brigid's Fox#asldighalsdkfj i thought cross' tag was very funny so i've decided that's my foxofninetales tag from now on#because i love her
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thesundowncrew those madlads
-cracks knuckles-
@thesundowncrew
This mun and her muses have been in my life for a ridiculous amount of time now. I knew Dee from back in my first go’round on tumblr, back when Rise of the Guardians came out, and that was... 2012? 2013?? I mean, I’m not SUPER sure when she started her blog, but it definitely wasn’t too long after that, I’ll tell you.
And hoooo man. It’s been worth it. Dee has some of the most intense creativity and flexibility when it comes to her characters that I’ve ever come across, hands down. She went from a fan-character for a movie/book series about guardians of holidays and concepts, to a completely original storyline (THAT!!! by the WAY!!! Is now a comic on Webtoons! Tales of Sundown!) that I am proud to say I’ve had the privilege of watching grow from the roots up!
The mun is a delight. We might go weeks or months without talking, but there’s such an ease in getting back into a conversation that it feels like we’ve been close forever.
And, of course, there’s the roleplaying aspect too. We might go half a year or more without roleplaying, but when we pick back up again, it feels like nothing was amiss! I gotta tell you: A partner like that is rare. It makes waiting feel like so much less time than it has been!
But outside of roleplaying, Dee has incredible talents in storytelling, worldbuilding, character development, and--of course!!--art. Her storytelling through art has always made me weak for her characters! And same face syndrome? Not here, kiddos! Whether your weak for the local Crow-bastard, his demon S/O, Samhain and his chipper shape-shifting partner, or any of the numberous side characters, you’re going to know who’s who. (and sorry-not-sorry, but you’re gonna get drawn into loving them!)
Absolutely follow thesundowncrew. Do it. Even if you’re not into the RotG fandom, even if you’re not into the idea of halloween; this blog is stuffed full of wonderful, magical, paranormal characters who belong in their own storybooks!
and PLEASE check out her comic. It’s worth it, I promise.
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tagged by @umibekafka; ty buddy I love you this was fun to do
1. Why did you choose your url?
To match all my gamer tag stuff across a lot of different sites. It actually came from a friend I played Dead by Daylight with and they were a killer and I was a survivor they had just downed. I think they said something along the lines of me being a slug in a puddle of reddish light and I thought it sounded cool so I took it. Now I use it everywhere I don't want my name attached and I use another name for people I know irl primarily.
2. Any sideblogs? If you have them name them and why you have them.
One blog that won't be named because it's my most popular blog full of angry venting stuff / poetry that resonates with similarly angry people that need to vent.
@lilred-fighting-hood for the Achievement Hunter fandom although I'm no longer part of, but I still reblog posts for the people that do follow that blog because I hope it brings them joy.
@lumos-nyx for my aesthetic blog. Lots of purple and space stuff, though recently it's been flowers.
@icecourt-crows for the Six of Crows fandom! Used to post my writing but I kinda fell out of SOC for now (just wait until I watch the Netflix series though.)
@snxwflakeheart for an old RP thing that I couldn't figure out because I am not good at RP lmao.
3. How long have you’ve been on tumblr?
2012/2013 I believe. Oh wow it's been nearly a decade (using decade puts things in perspective, huh).
4. Do you have a queue tag?
No; I'm sorry. I reblog everything when I am online and the only reprieve my followers get is when I am not online. I don't want to sully their dashboards when I'm not even there to watch.
5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?
I believe it was for H/etalia? Migrated from Quotev because I heard there was better fanart and fanfiction here.
6. Why did you choose your icon?
It's a Picrew I did for Halloween and it feeds into so many of my interests (tits out, hearts, heart eyes, dark red, how I see myself in my head or how I'd like to portray myself to others).
7. Why did you choose your header?
I don't have one and that's because I couldn't find one I liked.
8. What’s your post with the most notes?
I don't know how to check that and I am too lazy to find out; I'm sorry ask game :(
9. How many mutuals do you have?
"I don't know how to check that and I am too lazy to find out; I'm sorry ask game :(" PART 2
10. How many followers do you have?
613! Hello everyone that follows me (or followed me by mistake lmao).
11. How many people do you follow?
779 people! I pruned it recently so it's not as high as it was a month ago.
12. Have you ever made a shitpost?
I haven't because I rarely personal post on this blog (aside from tag games like this).
13. How often do you use tumblr each day?
Daily and sometimes I catch myself getting bored of Tumblr, so I open Tumblr in another tab without realizing it :|
14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?
Not on this blog, but I have like once or twice maybe? I "won" both times, but there is no "winning" in tumblr drama.
15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?
I really dislike them because of the guilt tripping, but if the information is important to me, then I would reblog it. It would probably be better practice to reblog it from the last most relevant RB to avoid the guilt tripping, but alas.
16. Do you like tag games?
Tag games are fun! Too bad I don't notice I get tagged until much later because I don't check the activity tag lmao.
17. Do you like ask games?
They're fun to do on occasion; I don't like doing them on this blog though because the reach isn't as wide as my more popular side blog. At times, I thrive off the attention. At other times, please do not acknowledge my existence. And also, if one of the people I follow does an ask game, I send them something because I hope it'll brighten their day!
18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?
A few of them! I know for sure that @vorpaldick is popular bc they did the JFK post and are generally witty, eloquent, and hot. Similarily, @exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear is also intelligent and well-spoken and has very in-depth knowledge on theater-related stuff!
19. Do I have a crush on a mutual?
Yeah and they know who they are; I even have a specific tag for them when I find posts that remind me of them.
20. Tags?
Anyone who wants to do it tbh! Just tag me if you're embarrassed abt wanting to do it unprompted :)
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Thank you so much for tagging me @connork1000 I love to do these <33 Also your blog is cool <33
Rules: Tag 10 other blogs you want to learn more about!
Name: ****** (I ain’t putting my full uncensored name on my horny blog LOL)
Nicknames: Brat (or whatever screen name I may have)
Starsign: Leo
Gender: Non-binary Transmasculine
Height: 5'8
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual/Pansexual
Fave Color: Orange!
Current time: almost 5pm (at the time I’m writing this)
Current Location: Canada, in my bed
Average hours of sleep: About 7 hours
Lucky Number: Don’t have one really... I have UNLUCKY OCD numbers, and those are 3 and 6 lmao
Last thing I Googled: “HTML link” (I wanted to know the coding to insert a link)
Number of blankets I sleep with: Two :)
Fave fictional characters: Because this is a DBH blog, I’m only going to list my favourite DBH characters, which are Connor, Hank, Markus, and Chloe.
Fave Musical Artists: I have favourite songs and genres moreso than favourite artists, but I will say I have been listening to a ton of Bring Me The Horizon recently. Genre-wise I am very into EDM, hyperpop, glitchcore, and many subgenres of electronica! I also love heavy metal and rock, and some hip hop.
Dream Job: Lawyer, famous fiction author, or fieldwork research scientist!
Random Fact: I’ve recently been spending tons of hours on Minecraft building a cute farm town with a new friend <3
Do you have any other blogs?: Yep. I have my main, my art blog, my fanfiction blog, my nature blog, and my Dark Souls blog.
When did your blog reach its peak?: Hopefully it still has yet to get there! I love all my horny frens <333
What made you decide to get Tumblr: My friends were on it way back in 2012 and I wanted to join them. Now I’m the only one who still uses it lmao
Do you get asks on a daily basis?: No but I WISH (my asks are always open for horny frens or anything to do with DBH and Connor!!)
Why did you choose your URL?: Bc my favourite NSFW headcanon is that Connor is a fuckin brat who needs punishment >:3c
I tag everyone following this blog ;w; If you see this and you follow me, you’re tagged! Tag me in your post to let me know you did it bc of me! <3 I’m sorry to not physically tag, I just don’t really know anyone who goes here yet ;_;
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Strange Nostalgia For The Future – or: Death By A Thousand Taylor Swifts – or: This Is Pop?
Holy shit, when did this article get to be over 8 pages? Sorry everyone, Tumblr isn’t letting me do a cut, so this is just going to clog your feed for a while.
This began as a long-form review of Dua Lipa’s album “Future Nostalgia” with comparisons to the styles of a variety of other pop artists, but has since turned into something much broader and more nebulous. Call it my (incredibly subjective) attempt at defining a current “state of pop music” as it stands in the year 2020.
I’ll admit, I have a bias here, so I’ll lay that on the table: I didn’t particularly care for Dua Lipa prior to the release of “Future Nostalgia”. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, she didn’t really register on my radar until the album’s release, and so I didn’t hear any of her earlier songs until I spent a few minutes on Youtube scrambling to remember who she was and why this release was supposed to be such a big deal. I came up relatively empty-handed, with “New Rules” having more interesting production than anything in the way of a vocal hook and “Be The One” sounding blandly forgettable.
But music journalists were spinning this narrative that “Future Nostalgia” was Dua Lipa’s big moment, her “disco” album, her album full of “bangers” (yes, I know, that’s an archaism at this point, but what am I going to do, call them “vibes”?). We’ve seen hype like this before (at least I have), so we should always take some time when an album arrives with this much fanfare to ask that crucial question: is it justified? Does it live up to expectations?
I’m going to answer that question, but before I do, I want to take a step back and place that music journalism narrative within a broader music journalism meta-narrative that has been slowly gaining traction over the last decade. About 7 years ago (so around 2013), I wrote a guest article for the (what I assume is now defunct) blog Hitsville UK on another meta-narrative called “rockism”, by which older listeners and journalists tended to use to justify their dismissal modern pop music through the glorification of (and comparison to) the canon of rock music. This was not a unique article – many music journalists were writing about this same phenomenon that year; it will likely mark some sort of watershed moment in music journalism. Frequently contrasted with the meta-narrative of “rockism” (not so much in my own article, but definitely in others’) was a countering meta-narrative named as “poptimism”. It’s basically what it sounds like: an optimism that current pop music could be just as good as music of the past, or even better. This was, of course, already known in a lot of mainstream music journalism circles, but it did cause a bit of a stir in independent music journalism, especially since it seemed awfully hard to deny; then-recent examples of indie stars like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean* aspiring to make genuinely great pop music seemed like they were making a pretty good case for the poptimist outlook. Plus, as a new generation of music journalists raised on hip-hop began to cover the genre more seriously, it soon became clear that, given the crossover-laden history of rap, they would have to take pop music seriously too.
Needless to say, poptimism gained a lot of traction as a new paradigm, until it became the default outlook of music journalism by the middle of the decade. It has, as far as I can see, yet to relinquish its grip, and that’s not such a bad thing; arguably, a lot more women, queer people and people of colour have had their music taken more seriously since the shift. Before we get back to “Future Nostalgia”, however, there’s one more piece of this puzzle I want to put in place: coinciding with those early years of poptimism, pop itself hit a bit of a turning point in the year 2014. This was, of course, the release of Taylor Swift’s album “1989”.
What was so special about “1989”? It’s still a bit hard to answer that completely coherently, but it clearly changed the pop music landscape in meaningful ways. For one, it demonstrated that the overcoding of global pop music made at the hands of big-name producers was not just an approach reserved for the “born pop star” figures of Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. Taylor Swift, formerly a country singer with pop leanings, now went headlong into Max Martin-penned chart-topping smashes, and just like that, she had become deterritorialized. It was a huge success, and, interestingly, one of the first albums that got a lot of independent music journalists (and me) to take her seriously despite being her most overtly commercially-driven. I think this speaks to the power of poptimism in 2014 from two angles: for the journalists, the lesson seemed to be that if someone is already doing something near-enough to mainstream pop and then breaks through with a mass-appeal hit, why not see this as a kind of fulfillment of artistic intent? And for Swift, if you’re already doing something near-enough to what’s playing on pop radio, why not go all the way with it and sacrifice your country “credibility” for the ability to have hits beyond the genre-specific? “1989” marked a turning point at which pop music, formerly seen as something people “sell out” to make, became something you “sell into”, erasing a specific, localized identity that could be exposed as a construction anyway and replacing it with the ambition to conquer the ears of the masses.
I should clarify here, however: there are two possible conclusions one can draw from poptimism. The one I just documented, that pop music as a global/commercial phenomenon can be great and should taken seriously by music journalism, is the more frequently-taken interpretation, but it’s not my preferred one. I would rather the alternative view, which is that most music that people have tended to hear the last several decades, whether marked by the seal of “pop” or not, has been pop music. Rock is a form of pop. So is country, so is hip-hop, so is jazz, folk, metal, etc. We can distinguish between, say, the commercial radio pop – which I’ll from this point on designate as “Pop” with a capital “P” – and the pop tradition, but everything descends from pop tradition in the end, and Pop is just one more subgenre among many, albeit by definition the most popular at its given moment. Seeing that this is pretty indisputably true (and if you don’t believe me, you a) haven’t been reading my blog for long enough and b) have some serious research to do), we might as well take Pop as seriously as any other form of pop and subject it to the same criticisms, while simultaneously adjusting our criticisms of other pop subgenres in relation to our new appreciation of Pop. Who created the texture of this Pop song? Does this metal song have a hook? Is the phrasing in this hip-hop song conducive to its overall rhythmic feel? And so on, and so on.
I prefer this approach because it doesn’t necessarily assume a supremacy of one genre so much as level the playing field to allow for a more robust and less prejudiced criticism. It also doesn’t let listeners off the hook, as many (non-critics/journalists, most likely), given the opportunity raised by the previously-detailed interpretation of poptimism, would lazily slip back into listening to Top 40 radio without attempting to seek things beyond the charts; this alternative interpretation challenges us to try and hear the similarities between Led Zeppelin, Rihanna, Young Thug and The Clash while recognizing what each do uniquely. Unfortunately, it seems like the former interpretation has won out, at least for most audiences, and we now have a listener-base that, instead of keeping their ears peeled for next-big-thing indie groups like Arcade Fire as they might have circa 2008-2012, is content to wait for an already-famous star to drop the next “1989” crossover smash**.
This brings us back to “Future Nostalgia”, the latest in a line of Pop albums that seem primed to vy for that coveted position. There is, however, a bit of a gulf between “1989” and “Future Nostalgia”, and it’s not just because the moment of “1989” and poptimism has already happened. It’s also not because Dua Lipa isn’t “crossing over” from any outsider genre like Swift did with her move away from country – if anything, Dua Lipa is doubling down on her Pop ambitions here by putting them up-front and trying to make this album as blockbuster-signalling as possible. The biggest gulf is the musical one: compared to “1989” (and, I should add, a slew of other blockbuster Pop albums from the last decade, which I’ll get to discussing soon enough), “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are oddly lackluster.
Let’s start with the good, though. On my first listen to the album, I wasn’t completely baffled that critics were hearing something momentous in it. There are absolutely (again, sorry) bangers on this. Ironically, the two that stood out to me immediately were two that I later learned weren’t even released as singles, which might speak to the marketing team’s inability to judge the quality of the music they were handling here. “Cool”, easily the best thing on “Future Nostalgia”, rides a sort of bouncy warping of the riff from Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” as Dua Lipa gushes about how she just can’t control herself in front of her lover; it’s sweet, both lyrically and musically. “Love Again” (no relation to the Run The Jewels song) is perhaps the album’s most explicitly “disco” song with swelling strings and everything, and expresses a similar sentiment to “Cool”, though perhaps from a more reluctant angle: “God damn,” Dua Lipa sighs in the chorus, sounding simultaneously annoyed and amused, “you got me in love again”.
The songwriting on “Cool” and “Love Again” also happens to be some of the most basic on “Future Nostalgia”; the beat loops, albeit with some nice flourishes and rhythmic quirks, and Dua Lipa cycles through a few simple melodies, the catchiest always winding up in the chorus. “Love Again” is practically a blues song with its AAAB-repeat phrasing. I highlight the virtues of this simplicity because it throws much of the rest of the album into a stark contrast and exposes its greatest weakness: many of the other songs on “Future Nostalgia” feel fussed-over and patched together out of pieces that don’t always fit, as if the several writers*** involved in these songs weren’t in the same room when the track was finally put together. The album seems to be a case study in throwing everything at the wall and not bothering to consider whether it will stick. And yet it seems to have a small army of critics defending it, even going so far as to call it the pop (or at least Pop) “album of the year” – which has me wondering exactly what all the hype is about.
“1989” has something that a lot of other blockbuster Pop albums since its release do not: a personal touch. Taylor Swift worked hard prior to that album at building her brand as a confessional singer-songwriter, and even with the big-name productions and radio-primed hits, she maintains that image: one of her biggest “1989” hits, “Blank Space”, explicitly addresses her (supposed) romantic history and relationship to the media. Elsewhere, she does some fantasizing about classic movie archetypes and the impulse to drop everything and run away from it all, strongly reminiscent of her past work. It’s not as easy as it might sound to pull off this kind of thing, and I think Swift deserves credit not just for the excellent musicality of the songs she put her voice to, but the consistency of the strong personality she built across her career (with misstep “Reputation” sticking out as the glaring crack in the portrait).
So I won’t compare “Future Nostalgia” to “1989” beyond the initial poptimism narrative it bolsters. No, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t particularly personal – its mode seems to be more in line with what Robyn was already doing a few years before Swift, anticipating a poptimism that would effectively result in her deification over the course of the 2010s. Similar to Robyn in her “Body Talk” series, Dua Lipa seems to approach “Future Nostalgia” with a kind of assumed confidence as a dancefloor queen – more celebratory than confessional.
The celebration, however, proves to be pre-emptive; “Future Nostalgia” lacks two crucial things that “Body Talk” had in spades. The first is a general willingness to experiment. Robyn’s albums were packed with silly throwaways, but some of them stuck, and the best are featured on the collected version of the album, from the Snoop Dogg collaboration “You Should Know Better” to the cybernetic-pop-anticipating “Fembots” to the sassy “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”. The title track of Dua Lipa’s album demonstrates a little bit of adventurousness, but it unfortunately flops, arriving in the form of awkward half-rapped verses that aren’t fun enough to leave a lasting impression. The only other potential outliers are the aforementioned “Cool” (which just happens to sound less disco than the rest but is otherwise a fairly standard, if well-written, pop song) and the album’s absolute nadirs, “Good In Bed” and the closing ballad “Boys Will Be Boys” (we’ll get to that in a bit). Otherwise, the album carries its aesthetic pretty consistently between tracks, giving little impression of any desire to experiment.
The second missing element is the consistency of the songs themselves. When Robyn’s songwriters toss her, say, a pseudo-dancehall song, they commit to it, making sure there are no weird melodic/harmonic/rhythmic hiccups and that the pieces fit together. And unfortunately, the majority of “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are full of exactly those kinds of hiccups and disjointed structural assemblages that leave me scratching my head. A lot of it’s subtle to the point that I can almost understand other critics missing these details, but I pick up on this stuff fast, and once I hear it, I can’t unhear it.
A lot of it’s in the phrasing; too often, Dua Lipa will go for a quick succession of staccato notes in a chorus when a simpler, slower phrase, or maybe just silence would have worked better (see “Break My Heart”, or the post-chorus of “Future Nostalgia”, in which she sings the 100% non-credible line “I know you ain’t used to a female alpha” – side note, has she even listened to top 40 radio in the last decade?). “Physical” is almost fun until you realize that the phrasing, melody and harmonic structure of the chorus would fit perfectly into any godawful Nickelback song.
Actually, “almost fun” is one of the phrases that I feel best describes so many songs on this album. Too many of the tracks set up something great only to follow through with some baffling songwriting choices. The second track in, “Don’t Start Now”, disrupts an excellently-phrased verse and infectious bassline with a chorus awkwardly parachuted in from what sounds like a 90s house song. The more in-character post-chorus that follows can’t help the song recover once you realize that it’s nowhere near as endearing as the original verse melody. That half-assed rapping makes a re-appearance in the bridge of “Levitating”, which is otherwise perfectly acceptable. If not for that moment, “Levitating” would come close to being the third pick of my favourite songs here, although you can’t fool me, Dua Lipa: I know that chorus is just a sped-up re-hash of the Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie”. “Pretty Please” is also fine, funky and subtle, displaying some restraint on part of the songwriters and producers for once – though there’s also nothing about it that jumps out and grabs me. Besides the two standouts, is that the best I can hope for on this album, a song where nothing goes horribly wrong? At any rate, it’s better than the bland, shameless Lily Allen rip “Good In Bed”, which also features an utterly confounding “pop” sound effect in the chorus replacing one of the mind-numbingly repeated words.
There are some exceptions with regard to singers that can make use of this kind of disjointedness. Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” walks a thin line, but it often pays off. See, Grande is a singer’s singer, at least by Pop standards; she’s known for crooning, for belting, for singing her lungs out. But she also wants to be a Pop icon to young people right now, and that means staying up-to-date in her production and songwriting. The trouble is, one of the most popular genres with the kids these days happens to be trap, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to Grande’s showboating vocals, favouring short, choppy phrasings and half-mumbled half-singing mixed almost low enough to blend with the music. So she compromises: some of the songs on “Sweetener”, such as the title track, have verses and choruses that feel as though they’re pulling in opposite directions, with Grande getting an opportunity to flaunt the long high notes in a percussionless section before dropping into those staccato bursts that suit the heavy 808s of trap. Despite it being more drum’n’bass/R&B throwback than trap, a similar dynamic is at play in Grande’s biggest hit from that album, “No Tears Left To Cry”. Unlike Dua Lipa’s lurching song structures, Grande’s feel intentional and thematic; the songs aren’t always bulletproof, but I feel like I learn something about her by hearing the tension of styles she’s struggling to stretch herself between. All I feel like I learn about Dua Lipa from the messiness of her songs is that either her, her songwriting team, or both are very confused about what goes into an effective pop song.
Of course, Ariana Grande is also operating in a slightly different mode than Dua Lipa in the first place: whereas Dua Lipa is engaging Pop radio in the recent tradition of satisfying formulaic hits like those of “1989”, Grande has one foot (or maybe even one and a half?) in the parallel tradition of R&B. While the two traditions frequently mix and crossover on the radio, they represent very different approaches to music whose distinction might provide some insight into why some of what Dua Lipa is trying to do isn’t working.
To put it simply, the basic unit of what we’ll call traditional pop is the song, and the performer of the song is meant to convey the essence of that song as a relatively unwavering whole – the performer is effectively the conduit for the song, which reaches the listener through the medium of the performer. The singer has some room to “interpret”, but once a given interpretation is found to be effective in its “hook” potential, it’s typically kept as part of the formalized song, written in stone, more or less.
R&B, true to its roots in “rhythm and blues” and, before that, jazz, essentially reverses this. Songs are present in R&B and not necessarily unimportant, but they typically become conduits for the performer’s own expressiveness. In this setting, the performer’s “interpretation” is actually the most important ingredient, as the performer’s style is effectively the product, the listener’s focus. This places greater emphasis on experimentation with phrasing, melody and other aspects of a song, as well as the potential differences between multiple recordings and performances of that song.
These two paradigms have consequential implications for singers of songs operating in a given mode. A traditional pop singer, for example, is going to be more likely to defer to the song as-written in their performance of it for a recording. An R&B singer, by contrast, is more likely to improvise, often delving into explorations of how to make their voice a more expressive instrument – in many cases, actually, it can be a matter of making their voice more like an instrument, full stop. The notes aren’t sung to express words so much as they are sung to express pure sound. Vocals can vary wildly in rhythm, giving off phrasings that might normally be considered unnatural, but, if placed artfully enough, can re-shape our expectations of pop music in the first place. These aren’t ironclad rules, by the way – the genres cross over frequently and the lines are often ambiguous. But I think defining the differences here can at least help us understand the split in the approaches of, say, Taylor Swift vs. Janet Jackson.
Arguably, the biggest R&B star in the world at the time of writing this remains Beyonce, and with fairly good reason: her powerful voice brings a lot to what are often already well-written songs. Take note here: something like “Formation” (which I have previously written about in my article on hip-hop’s inheritance of the post-punk legacy) or even “Drunk In Love” probably wouldn’t fly in the realm of Pop. Tracks like these are mainly embellished not necessarily with flashy songwriting or production flourishes (although they can have those too), but with Beyonce’s vocal interpretations of them, sometimes approaching something more like rapping than singing****. Note also: vocalizations in this context are given a certain freedom, a license to be weird within a certain range of acceptability. Need I remind you of “surfboard, surfboard, / Grainin’ on that wood”?
My point here is that R&B singers are playing by different rules than Dua Lipa. This isn’t just me arbitrarily deciding that what she’s doing isn’t “R&B enough” – you can here it in her approach. My criticism of her awkward phrasing is based largely on the fact that it doesn’t sound like she’s doing it to “experiment” with the songs she’s given. She repeats these phrases exactly the same way each time, as in the chorus of “Break My Heart”, just so you know it’s intentional. If she is, in fact, improvising, the songs aren’t very suited to it and her attempts are mostly unsuccessful; they become hooks that highlight their own weaknesses rather than bold forays into new rhythmic territory.
The most interesting part of “Future Nostalgia” is, by far, the backing music. Even when Dua Lipa’s singing and hooks fail, the production shines through (even here, though, there’s a caveat with regard to the last two tracks). Consider the sublimely gauzy vocal(?) loop at the beginning of “Levitating”; the sweeping disco violins of “Love Again”; the finger-popping funk bassline of “Don’t Start Now”; even the Justice-lite bass synths in the chorus of the otherwise by-the-numbers “Hallucinate”. “Physical”’s best aspect is, in fact, a small countermelody running in the background of the obnoxiously bland chorus.
This is where I can most understand what got music critics hyped up on this album in the first place: superficially, at least, it sounds pretty damn good. But I suspect the willingness to overlook its other obvious faults stems from a tendency among “poptimistic” critics to treat singers as interchangeable in a system they perceive to be dominated more by “sounds” than by music proper. In fact, the singer is a real make-or-break point in much of modern pop music (Pop or otherwise), likely due to the focal point they occupy; a great singer can occasionally salvage a terrible song, while a bad (or even just mediocre) singer can easily bring down the most well-constructed powerhouse hit.
A case against valuing “Future Nostalgia” solely on the basis of its production: the last Pop album I remember listening to where the production outshined the songwriting was Billie Eilish’s “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?” Eilish’s songs aren’t bad, and are frequently even good – but I was surprised at how conventional, or even “traditional”, most of them were. “Bad Guy” and “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” are basically jazz songs. “Xanny” and “Wish You Were Gay” (the most lyrically immature, it must be acknowledged) are pretty standard singer-songwriter fare. Others tend to play to a type: either sleepy ballads (“When The Party’s Over”) or, the most interesting songs on the album, the hip-hop influenced minimalist pieces (“Bury A Friend”, “You Should See Me In A Crown”).
But of course almost all of these songs are transformed in part by some rather astonishing production. No one who’s heard “Bad Guy”’s synth-squiggle chorus would mistake it for jazz, and the chorus of “Xanny” squirms in a shroud of distorted bass that pull back when you least expect it – hardly typical sonic territory for most singer-songwriters. Even the already-powerful “Bury A Friend” hits harder than it might have without the surging crunches it’s afforded in the production.
My point, however, is not that the production is what makes this album – it doesn’t, at least not entirely. The production is roughly half of what’s interesting here. The other half is comprised by two things: the fact that most of the songs are fairly strong already (though I think Eilish could lose a few of the ballads and come out better from it), and the fact that Billie Eilish also happens to have a very distinct vocal style. Actually, that last part alone is probably the selling point for most people: Eilish’s eerie half-whispered delivery plays more of a role in constructing her album’s overall dark mood than the production. It has its limitations, and I wonder what her future will bring in terms of her ability to move beyond the role she’s effectively typecast herself in, but it has something on Dua Lipa: it has personality.
So vocal style is important, but that’s not all: as I mentioned, Eilish’s songs are also consistently stronger than Dua Lipa’s, even when both are at their lyrical worst. Sure, “Wish You Were Gay”’s self-absorbed whining about unrequited love and sexuality sounds exactly like what you’d expect to come from a undeveloped teenage singer. But the lyrics are the only thing wrong with that song; take those away, and the melodies and instrumentation sound pretty damn great. The same cannot be said for the overblown dollar-store balladry of Dua Lipa’s execrable “Boys Will Be Boys”, which, despite projecting an ostensibly more “progressive” outlook than “Wish You Were Gay”, falls flat on its face anyway. And I’ll take an Eilish ballad over “Good In Bed”, which sports an obnoxiously repetitive chorus – static, plastic, it sounds like a strained smile looks, desperately trying to convince you that this is fun, right?
“But wait,” you might say, “pop music is supposed to be fun! And isn’t that what most of ‘Future Nostalgia’ aspires to? Shouldn’t we forgive Dua Lipa for some of her mediocre songwriting if her goal in making us dance is at least a defensible one?”
And the answer is no, because Pop is already full of music more fun than this. The way I see it, there are several ways in which one could make music more fun than “Future Nostalgia” (better songwriting being one I’ve already discussed to death here), but I’ll wager that a fairly reliable method is that frequently employed by Lady Gaga: do something musically outlandish and downright weird.
“Bad Romance” is the obvious lodestar here, but Gaga’s career is full of the absurd: just take pretty much any song off of “Born This Way”. Even the “normal” songs like “Yoü and I” (at least pre-“Joanne”) come across as weird by virtue of being placed next to something like “Electric Chapel”. And all this is done in the service not only of raising eyebrows, but in the name of fun. Even some of Gaga’s weaker efforts like “Venus” (or many others on “Artpop”) have a winking slyness to them that lets you laugh along with her. It rarely feels like she’s “serious” when she’s singing about love, sex, or dancing all night, but she gets you dancing anyway.
“Future Nostalgia”, by contrast, has few attempts at any kind of weirdness, and those it does have fall flat. I’ve already mentioned the cringe-y pseudo-rapping, but the spoken-sung pre-chorus of “Physical” is just as embarrassing, bringing the song’s momentum (its second-greatest virtue) to a screeching halt with an awkward phrase that feels totally unnecessary. And then there’s that sound effect on “Good In Bed”. These moments detract from the album because they feel half-assed, like Dua Lipa never bothered to commit to the bit she tacked on. And aside from this, “Future Nostalgia” remains pretty conventional Pop – she’s not exactly reinventing disco here, just emulating it for a new generation with mixed results. If only she could pull a “Heartbeat” or “Love Hangover” out of her bag, but the album is so radio-oriented that the songs rarely reach the 4-minute mark even when they find a groove worth hanging on to. It’s as if she mistook the law M.I.A. ironically lays down at the end of her biggest hit for sage advice: “Remember: no funny business!”
There is one more aspect of the poptimism that helped propel this album in the eyes of critics I have yet to discuss: the paradigm’s coinciding with the recent wave (is it the fourth? I’ve lost count) of popular feminism. This was significant for Taylor Swift at the moment of “1989” because it allowed for interpretations of songs such as “Blank Space” to reach beyond a simple commentary on her stardom and discomfort with media coverage, branching out into a more expansive reading of the song as representative of the ways in which women in general are demonized for their past relationships. Feminism, as a cultural framing device, was crucial in shaping listener perceptions not just of “Blank Space”, but of many other songs on the album. It also helped to launch a whole wave of emerging and returning Pop artists’ albums and singles that traded in similar (vaguely) politically-charged lyrics.***** In the years that followed, a veritable opening of the floodgates would happen with regard to public feminist consciousness-raising, culminating in specific incidents such as the #metoo movement.
For the record, I think this was largely good. I’m under no illusion that “1989” is in any way a politically radical album, but I think the return of pop feminism has generally had a net positive influence in getting pop artists of all kinds of re-think their music’s relationship to gender politics. That being said, there are two things I resent about its lasting impact. The first is the kind of forced extrapolation of songs that bring up gender in any way into “feminist” anthems when they’re largely about relations that have little to do with the matter. One case in point might be Dua Lipa’s pre-”Future Nostalgia” hit “New Rules”; inexplicably, I often see fans trying to make the song’s lyrics out to be some kind of political diatribe about the cruelty of men to women or something like that, when in fact it sounds more like a typical “bad relationship” song, the kind that have been on the charts for decades by now.
But the other thing I’ve come to dread from pop-feminist Pop is the inevitable half-assed “message songs” that seem designed to cash in on using feminism as a signifier that an otherwise apolitical artist is still hip and knows what’s up. Whether through “New Rules” fan encouragement or her own hubris, Dua Lipa has regrettably chosen to end “Future Nostalgia” with such a song: “Boys Will Be Boys” (no relation to the significantly better-written song of the same name by Stella Donnelly). I don’t really want to write a lot about this song because part of the problem with it is that it’s bad in a lot of boring ways, but I do think it’s significant that it was singled out by several other critics (even those who liked the album) as the album’s worst song by miles. I’m hoping this shows a change in perspective here, as critics get harsher about flops like this one, and hopefully the eventual end result from this pushback is that Pop stars will stop trying to convince us they’re “real feminists” with empty songs like “Boys Will Be Boys” that are tacked on to the end of their “bangers” album as a kind of placating afterthought.
So a number of critics have indeed placed too much stock in this album: contrary to the feeling you may have gotten from my relentless criticisms here, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t call it “good” either. It sits in a mid-tier of Pop albums over-enthusiastically pushed out during this era of high poptimism. It’s not the next “1989”, or “Lemonade”, or “Body Talk”, or “WHEN WE ALL ETC.” It’s just a mediocre album with a few great songs that were somehow never released as singles.
Is the inflation of “Future Nostalgia”’s reputation a sign of poptimism’s imminent bust? Are we entering a period of critical groupthink and gradual decay? These questions are too big to answer here, or perhaps at all for now (likely we’ll know the answer for sure in another decade). But I want to end this on a positive note by singling out a singer I haven’t mentioned yet as perhaps the greatest Pop artist of the last 20 years: in all these comparisons, I never got around to bringing up Rihanna.
On one hand, much of the poptimist revolution in criticism has involved taking the studio albums of Pop artists as seriously as their counterparts in other genres. On the other, Pop has never really stopped being a singles genre, and few have demonstrated this better than Rihanna. This is not to deny that she’s released some totally listenable, or even great, albums in her own right: “Talk That Talk” and especially “ANTI” stand as excellent records that came along relatively late in her career. But, well, raise your hand if you’ve actually listened to, say, “Good Girl Gone Bad”. Now raise your hand if you know “Shut Up And Drive”, “Don’t Stop The Music”, “Disturbia”, and, of course, “Umbrella”. See what I mean?
Perhaps I could blame “1989” again in part for this shift in focus from Pop singles to Pop albums. It’s pretty remarkable, after all, that the album is as consistent as it is, and I think that might have caught a lot of critics who were expecting otherwise off-guard. I think another problem, however, resides in the dominant mindset among critics in the first place, the idea that albums are the more valuable art form, the standard by which greatness is measured. Even I find myself incapable of breaking free of that format of evaluation – I’m much less likely to seek out more of an artist’s stuff based on a few great singles of theirs compared to if I hear an entire album from them that I like.
This might be slightly unfair of us critics, but there are workarounds to help correct this bias. One of those workarounds is the compilation. If an artist can make an album’s worth of great songs, but they happen to be spread across a number of their otherwise-mediocre albums, they can still win favour by collecting all (or most) of those gems in the same place, a “greatest hits” collection being the most common******. This seems like a pretty reasonable way of enjoying singles-oriented artists for those of us who are still stuck on the old album format.
But compilations have also never been as popular to review among critics as studio albums (I don’t know, maybe many feel like it’s cheating to collect the best stuff in one place?) and, as stated, it seems like poptimism’s paradigm shift has only reified the bias towards albums by putting more weight on Pop artists’ studio albums than before. Further, as compilations have started to die out (since anyone in the streaming age can assemble their own “greatest hits” playlist that will have all their own personal favourites on it), recent Pop artists often aren’t even given the chance to be evaluated at their best in a compilation format. I wonder if this is also a contributing factor in the hype surrounding “Future Nostalgia”; though it would probably be better remembered for its singles which could be collected on a later “Best Of Dua Lipa”, the fact that such a collection is unlikely to materialize pushes critics towards trying to sell listeners (and themselves) on this being Dua Lipa’s “definitive statement” and reason to take her seriously as an artist simply because it’s the most consistent thing she’s released so far.
Regardless, Rihanna is a model artist in terms of being a singles-oriented Pop singer deserving of a great compilation. If someone were to put it together, I’m fairly certain it could rival Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection”, the former (basically archetypal) gold standard for a Pop artist’s greatest hits. Imagine hearing “Umbrella”, “Work”, and “We Found Love” all in the same place, uninterrupted by the inevitable string of lesser artists’ hits you’d inevitably hear if that place was the radio or some poorly algorithmically-generated playlist. My concern is that with the death of the compilation and shift in the expectation for the Pop artist’s studio albums to be their defining moments, such an album will only ever exist in an unofficial capacity. Which is fine, I guess – if you hate pop canon. But I don’t, so I patiently await the return of a collective memory for singles that extends beyond the radio and the playlist.
*Interesting to see how these examples have aged.
**Don’t get me wrong, I like “1989”! But its potentially negative influence will be detailed further as I continue.
***This isn’t a criticism of songwriting teams in general – certainly great songs have come out of the modern collaborative approach to pop songwriting, and I’ll get to those soon.
****And of course there’s a whole other conversation to be had about the ways in which hip-hop and R&B, formerly more separate genres, have been in the process of merging for the last two decades as performers in each have realized how much their interpretive approaches have in common.
*****It should be noted that this trend started several years earlier in “underground” and “indie” scenes and only just made its way into the Pop mainstream around 2014, but that’s a discussion for another article.
******Actually, even if an artist has only one great song, multi-artist compilations can step in to help. But since I’m focusing mainly on the respective cults of personality of specific Pop artists here, I won’t get into those. I should also add that Pop is by no means the only genre in which this happens: there are definitely so-called “classic rock” artists who I wouldn’t bother listening to outside of a compilation of their best stuff (Queen, for example).
#Music#Music criticism#Pop music#Dua Lipa#Future Nostalgia#Rihanna#Billie Eilish#Beyonce#Taylor Swift#Robyn#Lady Gaga#Ariana Grande
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i’ve been on tumblr since 2013 and even though i didn’t make a taylor account until 2017 and i see a lot of people talk about how the fandom has become a terrible place since around then, i’m grateful for the people i do follow (like you) because i’ve really enjoyed being able to get excited about taylor’s music with a group of people who seem so kind, funny, and just like enjoyable all around? even though i’m awkward and i have few followers, it’s been so fun being on here. i like the people i follow and i hope the people on here who do take part (again like you) know that they’ve continued to make the community a place i want to be a part of
first of all i’m so happy i’m contributing in making your fandom experience better so thank you anon 💜 i’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and i joined the taylor fandom on tumblr around 2013-2014 and i can tell you that yeah, it was much better. it was a place of discussion and contents, like any tumblr fandom should be. but i think that ironically taylor coming on tumblr has been a blessing and at the same time a curse for the fandom. because the fandom turned itself into this place full of people who were desperate for her attention and her notice. it wasn’t a place of discussion and content anymore. just a place of self rebloggers and people who embarassed themselves for the sake of being noticed. plus there was this awful elitist difference between popular blogs and small blogs - so people who got noticed a lot of times and/or met taylor and people who didn’t. honestly it wasn’t so enjoyable anymore. at least not for me and people like me who are here purely for sharing a passion and reblogging content. even though i DO miss taylor a lot and i AM grateful for the relationship we built with her during these years - because her being on tumblr has had A LOT of positive aspects to it too - from a certain point of view maybe it’s for the best that she’s not here anymore. idk i have these opposite feelings about it. now the fandom is back to being a place of discussion and contents - much more of discussion than contents actually - and that’s ok i guess. the problem now is that there are lots of people who enjoy criticizing her, like they love to harshly criticize everything she does and doesn’t do. and that’s becoming frustrating. at the end of the day we go from one extreme to another so if you like being on tumblr i think you have to protect yourself at some point and just be here for the things you like being here for. just enjoy the things you love to enjoy with the people you get along with. i guess this was the point of your ask! omg i’m so sorry for the loooong reply hahah i got a little carried away :’) i’m glad you’re having a good tumblr experience, i love that for you!! xx
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Hi Ben! I see you’re still enjoying the absolute insanity that has gripped tumblr the last couple of days XD . As someone who’s been a tumblr lurker for a number of years, this is hysterical enough from my side. I can’t imagine the sheer ridiculousness of seeing it firsthand. Virtually every blog I check, no matter if they’ve ever seen a SPN episode or not, has been posting about it. It is WILD.
I feel like I’m at least a little lucky that I always skewed more ‘lock’ than anything (mainly because my 'who’ took a hard dive into Torchwood and never really recovered), so there’s less emotional flashbacks/richochets/rollercoastering/etc. (Yes, I did in fact see the news about Sherlock season 5, but I never saw season 4 because of some of the feedback I heard before I got the chance to watch it, so it’ll take something truly impressive to draw me back now.) Although in a roundabout way Sherlock is what eventually led me to Teen Wolf because of multi-focus blogs, so I guess I can thank it for that.
Work was one of those super fun days where the manager leaving not long after I got there was all “Yeah, it’s been really calm, and both deliveries so far have been small and should be easy to deal with." So of course, about an hour after he leaves, four more pallets full of stuff show up, so I spent pretty much my whole shift trying to get everything checked in. On the one hand, yay, less customers, on the other, hauling that shit around in a mask gets hot.
That dish sounds delicious, and definitely better than my sad lunch/dinner at work. Ngl, I’m extremely jealous.
And omg, the last line post now has me nervous again because there are multiple options of who is saying whatever it is to whom, and all of them hurt. XD Also very here for the idea of a pack of three year-olds trying to pull a Parent Trap on their respective dads. Is there a treehouse or playhouse they can lock them into to talk? A moment of Jax and Stiles pointing out that they both agree on this, so they should know that it’s serious? Trying to make them draw or write down why they’re sad, or whatever similar coping skills the dad usually has the kid use? Trying to take away a treat of some sort/ground them from doing something/etc until they agree to talk to each other? So many possibilities.
I cackled at that coffee shop guy post, because the sheer obliviousness demonstrated by the op throughout the story is almost the exact energy being displayed by Peter in my fake dating fic and seeing a story of it happening in RL about took me out. XD
Also, I’m super curious what kinds of rituals you’re planning for the fic. Good, bad, druidic, wolfy, pack, wedding, birth, sexy, friendship, binding, warding, ??? Inquiring minds want to know (whenever you are ready to share of course. Inquiring minds can also be patient. ;D )
Oh, a funny moment at work! I was picking up one of the pallets after I’d emptied it, and there was a knot in one of the boards that I almost knocked out as I grabbed it, and my brain’s immediate thought was "Whoops, almost just popped the knot on that wood”, immediately followed by the thought “Oh god, no, jesus christ, PHRASING, tonight of all nights, no." (I am super sad that there is no one I work with that I could scream about this with.)
Anyway, I should wrap up because I need to leave for work soon. Enjoy the continuing thrill ride that is this site, and best of vibes for any writing attempts today! Take care! *Hugs!*
Okay I’m gonna add the preview to your fic from your last message to this one so I have it all in one message here. Because after writing over 3K yesterday my brain is just really tired and I keep wanting to nap today. Haven’t done much and replying to two messages is a bit much.
On the flip side, I did update Final Masquerade today and that chapter is almost 7K long. So yay!
Also, my fucking feelings while writing that. Jesus christ on a pogo stick.
And in the spirit of “Oh, did you say enemies-to-lovers? Sorry, I heard idiots-to-lovers”, here is another preview from the fake dating fic, because I love this part, and it features the first appearance of Fashion Consultant Peter:
“Peter, what the hell are you doing in my closet?” Noah’s voice sounded like it was thankfully more bemused than annoyed, but Peter knew that it could be a fine line to walk.
“Trying not to cry in despair, for the most part. Why is everything you own at least a size too big and some shade of brown?” Peter called back over his shoulder, still staring at the somewhat neatly organized rainbow of dull, listless neutrals in growing dismay.
“I’m wearing a green shirt right now, asshole, and not all of us are interested in looking like we got squeezed into our clothing by force. Some of us actually acknowledge our age, and try to dress somewhat appropriately. Some of us also understand the value of blending in.”
“Okay, firstly, age, as they say, is just a number. Secondly, there’s trying not to stand out, and there’s just giving up. Though frankly, I’ve never quite put much stock in either.”
“Color me shocked to hear that from someone I’ve seen wear a cardigan like it was an actual shirt on more than one occasion.”
Peter shrugged as he continued to rifle through hangers and peek into storage containers, though he wasn’t certain that Noah could even see him from within the depths of the walk-in. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” The sigh that answered him held a level of long-suffering, begrudging patience that Peter was far more used to hearing directed at Stiles than himself.
—–
Why yes, there is indeed a trip suit shopping in the story. Basically, I am cramming in every random obnoxiously trope-y thing I can remember from the few rom coms I’ve seen. Also, there is so much food in this story. Like, it’s ridiculous how often there someone ends up eating something. I’m not even sure where it came from.
I’ve been reading this multiple times in the last few days, it’s just so cute!
He’s in the closet huh? Is he gonna come out?
Sorry, sorry, I’ll can it XD
And honestly, I think Tumblr’s 2012 insanity streak is the only thing keeping me sane right now. Because holy shit what a week.
I never really got into Sherlock myself or Doctor Who. I think I saw one episode of Dr. who (with David Tennant I think) and three episodes of Sherlock because my mom used to watch it.
I saw 12 seasons of Supernatural though, I definitely had an obsession with Destiel and particularly Dean Winchester. Fun fact; Cosplaying Dean made me comfortable enough to come out to my friends as transgender. Because I realized that I couldn't hide my gender even if I tried so hard for over 23 years.
And it was Supernatural that eventually led me to Teen Wolf. Well, that and Grimm, which was also a really fun show and really interesting.
Oh boy, yeah whenever a manager told me that I knew I was gonna be in for a very interesting night. For sure, sucks that you had to do that in a mask though. But on the other hand, no customer interaction does sound like it was a nice break in a way. And OMG I snorted!
It’s a good thing we don’t work together, I feel like the jokes wouldn’t have ended. My god I’m still snickering.
And omg, the last line post now has me nervous again because there are multiple options of who is saying whatever it is to whom, and all of them hurt. XD Also very here for the idea of a pack of three year-olds trying to pull a Parent Trap on their respective dads. Is there a treehouse or playhouse they can lock them into to talk? A moment of Jax and Stiles pointing out that they both agree on this, so they should know that it’s serious? Trying to make them draw or write down why they’re sad, or whatever similar coping skills the dad usually has the kid use? Trying to take away a treat of some sort/ground them from doing something/etc until they agree to talk to each other? So many possibilities.
I do have a bit of an idea to have them go to the cinema with the kids and make them watch the parent trap, which of course leads to all sorts of shenanigans back at home where Allison and Malia are constantly trying to lock the dads in a room together, aided by Derek and Laura because Malia can’t reach the door handles just yet. Meanwhile Stiles and Jackson are coming up with increasingly elaborate schemes for two three-year-olds that involve their dads being locked in tree houses, sheds, and other places. Not to mention, the kindergarten pact.
And I like to think at some point the wives and Melissa start helping the kids as well. I mean I’d really like to build one giant polyamorous family for this fic.
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Sorry for the long wait, everyone! I had to ask my friend for a help with translation (/she actually helped me with everything ♥/).
Let the salt pour!
@vicholas, here we go again. I’m saying one thing, while you switch the topic and try to portray my opinion being as silly as the ‘He is not the leader anymore and I don’t like it!!!’ phrase. But I wasn’t talking about that. Do I really have to write a huge essay on why Ant’s opinion is problematic? I mean, I even highlighted the quote I had issues with and you still don’t get it. Ant specifically said that Leo’s fans love him only because he IS the leader and nothing more. It’s wrong and stupid. It’s as if Donnie’s fans love him because he is genius, Mikey’s fans love him because he is funny and Raph’s fans love him because he is a hothead. Of course, there are people with this sort of view, but it’s not exactly Leo’s or any other character’s fault and I’m sure if you go around and ask people why they love a certain character they will definitely describe more than one trait for you.
Oh, and one more thing: rotTMNT does make me cry… from laughing at their low ratings and let’s not forget about how their toys are badly sold, because that’s a whole comedy tour.
Nothing personal.
@ankle-beez, ‘many old fans’ and who would that be exactly? You mean those old fans who help keep the show’s rating as low as it was during the airing of the fifth season of 2012 TMNT? Do you really think that the people of tumblr and twitter represent the fanbase as a whole? Spoiler: not really.
‘Not making Leo the leader this time is one of the best changes rise made’? Yeah, right, only because you didn’t like the old versions of Leo lmao. But you know, if I was one of those fans of the new show, whose reply to any criticism and ‘I don’t really like this and that’ would be ‘FUCK YOU YOU’RE JUST A HATER’, I would say something silly too.
‘Wait nvm you like tcest your opinion sucks even more now’ – yet you decided to write the post anyway. As if you didn’t know what else to say, so you decided to simply insult me. Not really clever, but childish for sure. Good job lmao.
If only you have noticed the theme of my blog before writing to me, riiiight?
And again, you, like vicholas, have changed the topic, so thank u next.
@cretinodemilus, I’m sorry, but you didn’t get my point. Please stop telling me to ‘give it a chance’. Why did you assume I didn’t? Is it because I don’t like the show? Yes, I don’t like it and, as you said, it IS my right. I have watched tmnt2012 two times because I wanted understand for what exact reasons I disliked it.
Sadly, it’s okay to criticize old versions of Leo, but once we open our mouths about rotTMNT Leo we have a lynch party.
I hope that after reading my replies you will finally understand my point.
@madigeezie, oh, I’m sorry, I don’t have any legal documents stating that my opinion is ‘invalid’, maybe you could find them for me, because I really need that guidance. Thank you.
@bluetheanxiousdork, oh you know, it’s just that SOME people love Leo not only because he’s the leader. Pure and simple.
@thekrabbykrust , go ahead and trash me as much as you want. I won’t be the second zamii ;)
@kc-anathema, THANK YOU. You are the only person who understood the problem of the statement and didn’t start the ‘rotTMNT is great you are just a hater give it a chance pls’ nonsense.
BTW that paragraph about Raph is really good. I have seen similar opinions here, but since it’s dangerous to criticize rotTMNT here, the discussion usually didn’t go as far as it could. And while I strongly think that making Raph the leader was done simply for the sake of attention, it’s going to be really sad watching him lose his characterization just so it could be given to Leo.
And if you think about it, seeing how quickly the creators of rotTMNT said ‘don’t worry guys! Raph won’t lead for too long! Leo is going to take the lead!’ after the backlash makes me think that they… didn’t respect their own ideas or something? And on top of that this whole ‘Leo is going to be the leader later’ looks really insincere, because they were clearly forced to do it. It might sound weird, I won’t deny it, but that’s just how I feel.
@cesarin , yeah… no. Ant said what he said. Period.
They have said it before, so stop acting as if they meant something else.
"...out of the window is not OK." – nah, it’s fine. I wasn’t talking about the show itself, yet its fans thought that I did? Can’t relate. I have a full right to throw them out of the window, because they don’t even understand what I am talking about.
@j-penny, oh wow. He is the least explored character? Wow. I thought that ankle-beez’s reply was funny, but yours is hysterical.
I would love to prove you wrong just by analyzing 2003 cartoon… actually, this is exactly what I’m going to do. Don’t worry, I will make sure you won’t miss it.
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