tuckerfuckingdidit
"i hate goodbyes."
this blog is now inactive. for how long? who knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ there was a HUGE unfollow spree so i can catch up as quickly as possible when i come back. please don't take it personally.
mutuals can send an ask for my discord and i'll eventually get back to you. all other mail will be responded to privately.
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Unpopular Opinion - Reflections on a culture of nice in ficdom
AO3 has ‘comments’ and ff.net has 'reviews’. They serve the same surface function but this distinction is powerful in its consequences, especially once bulk fandoms started posting more on ao3 and less on ff.net.
Everyone is terrified to give criticism on AO3 lest they be called a monster or a bully. And the reasons to discourage it are grounded in empathy and a culture of positivity that on the surface, seems like it can’t be argued with. Who can dispute the idea that “if you can’t say something nice to you shouldn’t say anything at all”? FWIW, I think this is part of a bigger system of fear-based cultural trends in fandom social platforms as a whole, but I’ll contain my opinion to AO3 for a moment.
Here’s the truth: getting negative feedback of any kind is hard. It stays with you. It sucks. Sometimes it’s not about your story at all, it’s just harassment about fandom drama. Or sometimes it is about your story and it’s just really mean. And if you’re an active fan or prolific writer, you’ll see more of the grossness bc people like to target someone who stands out. Sometimes it’s not huge or evil it’s just something that didn’t work for the reader and they’re letting you know.
Here’s another truth: when you develop a group culture where all critical/negative feedback is treated like an insult or attack, no matter how mild, you eventually eliminate the spaces for people to provide useful, informative, or sincere criticism. Instead of a space where it’s understood that this is a working community and everyone is here to grow and be better, it’s just about the author posting their art and closing their eyes to any type of response that isn’t reassuring.
In years past on ff.net, in fandoms like BtVs, anime, Harry Potter, AtLA… I would give detailed feedback on chapters, the things I loved, the things that confused me, the things I thought didn’t make sense, the typos they might have missed, where I thought it was true to characters or not. I also received a lot of reviews to this effect. These could be a page long. It was common. If I read a fic that had parts that didn’t sit well with me, I said so, very openly, in a review. I also got messages that did the same.
Because it wasn’t a comment, it was a review. And that difference is huge.
So what’s upshot? From the conversations I’ve had and read, many authors prefer the AO3 culture. They don’t want to be reviewed, they want only supportive comments. And emotionally, I get that. I really do. I’ve been writing since 2001 in over 20 fandoms and I’ve received pretty much any kind of good or bad response that one can get for a story.
But doing it this way, we have lost something. We’ve lost a community that fosters writing and, by extension, internet communication, in a way that teaches you to accept the slings and arrows of public discourse gracefully. We’ve lost a culture that trains you to realize that you can get a flaming horrendous response to art that you posted and it’s not the end of the world. You don’t have to quit fandom and you don’t have to cry for an hour over it. You learn to treat it like noise and you learn to pull the critical value from it that you can. Having a culture that fosters criticism doesn’t just make you hardened against petty bullshit, but it also means someone can feel comfortable saying “I didn’t dig this part of the story and here’s why” and they’ll know it’s not about you and you know it’s not about you, so it doesn’t feel like your heart is getting carved out. There’s a space for talking about the work as a work.
I know that I’m a pretty good writer. I’m not the most consistent or the most creative or the most impactful, and I definitely don’t have the artistic discipline to write a novel sized story. There’s things I need to learn and ways I can improve. But I’m pretty fair at putting a sentence together. While most of that is from practice, I think no small amount is that I learned to write at a point in online fandom culture where I got all forms of feedback, not just approval. I whined a lot at the time, but the criticisms (and my responses to them) shaped me as much as the approvals.
It made me a stronger writer, and even more importantly, it gave me the tools to know when to let something affect me and when to let it slide down my back. It taught me to draw a line between my emotional self and internet drama.
That is a line that is badly, badly needed in fandom right now. We need the ability to talk about things without giving and taking personal offense. We need to respect that there are things we don’t like out there but still cannot and should not change, because our right to exist freely depends on theirs.
By eliminating any small negativities of any kind from our fanfic writing experience (in the name of protection and politeness), writers are growing up weaker. Their writing is weaker, their ability to handle criticism is weaker, their ability to give criticism is basically non-existent, and the subsequent drive toward conformity means everything is a lot more vanilla. There’s less weirdness, less wildness, less original characters and less of anything that isn’t default pleasant or familiar.
I can’t change this, I know that. Many people don’t think these problems I’m describing are happening at all bc it doesn’t match their fandom experience. They wouldn’t change it at all, to them it’s progress. At different times in the past I’ve contributed to the same stuff I’m now calling a problem. It’s taken a while (years) to accept that the community has shifted and that I’m part of that. Because it seemed to make sense and there’s some very moving discussions about keeping things positive to protect the author’s delicate self.
I’m not delicate though. And spending my formative teen fanfic years in a world where feedback was open is one of the reasons why. It made me a better writer and a tougher writer. And I know, from personal conversations, that I’m not at all alone in citing this.
End of the day, this is just reflection. I too conform to the culture of stifling-nice on AO3 comments bc I know that if I did start leaving critical feedback (even wrapped in a nice compliment sandwich), many writers would not know how to react to it. To them, I’d be an interfering bullying jerk who didn’t stay in my lane of being a passive, blindly supportive consumer. And that… well that state of affairs is a real pity, I think. It’s also a pity because fear of saying the wrong thing or an insufficient thing is one of the most commonly cited reasons that people say they don’t leave comments. I’d rather have more comments and accept some critical ones in the mix than to be living in the feedback drought that that is so prevalent. So yeah, I’m sorry this has happened and I’m sorry I contributed to it. As much as I love AO3, and will continue to support it, champion it, part of me also resents that they led us to this.
I think in the dream of making things kinder, we’ve fundamentally made fandom weaker, inside and out. And that weakness leads to people who, when they are faced with challenges, act out of fear, not out of reflection or respect.
Good intentions, y'all. Good intentions. We treated each other like babies, and now we’re vulnerable like them.
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do you ever look at your url and go “hell yeah”
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There are three rules.
1. If you do not go after what you want, you will never have it.
2. If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.
3. If you do not step forward, you will remain in the same place.
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#hi i'm rly busy this weekend but i'm always available to slam dunk ross into the MCFUCKING TRASH#hilarity#tv
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Gym buddies
#JEAH#TEAM TEAL!!#i love everything about this#ty becky#artwork#the hurricane#lavernius tucker#not my fault. someone put a queue in my way.
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girls w low or raspy voices are hot don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
#just carolina things#i have literally stopped mid-ep to comment on how hot jen makes lina sound#not my fault. someone put a queue in my way.
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A casual Locus for @strangestquiet, who helped by donating to the Montana Community Foundation, even if it was using their goofy Canadian currency. ;P We got a lot of request for Sam and I can’t say I’m unhappy about any of it. ;D
#GOOFY CANADIAN CURRENCY SGIUHSGHISDUG#so rude#'request for sam'#pure#the broken#artwork#not my fault. someone put a queue in my way.
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A Quiet Place (2018)
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sorry for being white
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We’re The Flash.
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I’ll never forget the change in Gaara’s facial expression when Lee drops his weights, for the first time ever he looked like he feared for his life
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i work a desk job, and sitting on my ass for 8+ hours without stretching my legs more than a few times makes me feel like shit, because i tense up from the waist down and will hold that tension to the point of discomfort.
no one is going to convince me of this one lmfao
#this has been a post#again: willing to listen#but the sheer amount of hoops you'd have to start jumping turns it into my season 14 rant about tucker#and the moment you as an audience member have to start doing more work to establish something than a writer did#i'm out on principle#there's letting your audience connect dots#and then there's 'because i said so'#insert coffin emoji#ok gudnite#rvb critical
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okay, i’m just gonna say it: there’s no way wash and carolina could have been down in that basement for a week.
on sunday i stood on my feet for four hours. since then, i have not been able to wrap my head around how anyone who has ever worked retail bought the concept that the freelancers were on their feet FOR DAYS and could move afterwards. (let retail workers fucking sit.)
after four hours i had to sit down, because my feet were ON FIRE. was it scriptmedic who said that after anyone stood motionless for days without rest, their feet would be swollen beyond belief? the post is currently eluding me, but i remember it coming out during the summer after the season ended. if anybody knows of it, pls link me.
anyway, more physical stuff: have you ever held your arms up for several minutes straight? uncomfortable, right? have you ever done that for HOURS? can you imagine doing it for days? i understand that everyone on this show is a soldier, but jesus. (also, they were on vacation, and probably at least a little out of shape, considering that the whole point of said vacation was relaxing.)
if you think about it, the freelancers would have been fucked up just being left down there a few hours; they would have been SUPER ragged after 8-12. now again, soldiers, so my suspension of disbelief remains intact, and i can accept the idea of carolina trudging through pain to see things through after wash was shot.
but if it had been a week? they would have needed to be carried out on stretchers.
even if they had been able to move, a week of starvation and dehydration would already have them near death, which merits hospitalization for the both of them all on its own. but they also could not move, which puts additional strain on the body. after being immobilized ON THEIR FEET for a fucking week, moving would have been absolutely hellish.
to its credit, season 15 shows carolina collapsing after she’s freed...
...and then the premiere of season 16 forgets those injuries entirely.
i repeat:
no water (which, for the record, kills you in 3 days, so automatically they’re only not dead after a week because their suits were working some serious halo magic)
no food
STANDING
for over a week. yet carolina has to ask for a ride to the hospital, and only to see wash!! which leads me to believe that if wash hadn’t been shot, the freelancers would have just gone out with the reds and blues for pizza!
PIZZA IS NOT AN IV DRIP.
so, based on the fact that carolina is shown walking as well as fighting after she’s freed, and that she’s not admitted to the hospital, there’s NO WAY that the freelancers were down there for days. (and before anyone says carolina could just still be carrying the healing unit, wash can also walk after only a very short rest period. explain that.)
further evidence? wash and carolina’s conversation when we finally cut back to them in 15x17 is about his nose itching and her frozen stance being uncomfortable. ymmv, but to me this screams “we just got stuck” more than “we’ve been down here for days”. why? because they didn’t talk about ANYTHING IMPORTANT. and if they did talk about anything more interesting, it’s truly a novice writer who skips points of interest in favor of focusing on the more mundane.
so because we don’t see it, we can assume it didn’t exist, and therefore that the freelancers aren’t desperate, just severely uncomfortable.
if 16x02 features carolina being seen by a doctor, i will relent in my grudge against this completely nonsensical time frame a little. but on the whole?
twelve hours. that’s the most my imagination will really allow. now that we have seen the immediate aftermath of season 15′s events, i’m done pretending that scenario isn’t ridiculous. i’m not going to pretend in my own fic certain things make sense just because the director said so.
what does that mean for travel times and location distances in the 15th season? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s a topic for another day.
#rvb16 spoilers#red watches 16#red watches 15#I HAVE WANTED TO SAY THIS FOR FIVE MONTHS OH MY GOD#rvb critical#at l e a s t five months#i did not think i would be given an opportunity to come out and say Yeah This Was Fucking Wrong#season 15 is trying so hard to be cool and dramatic that it overburdens itself#killing me instantly every time#long post#if you are reading this and you can think of a way this functions that takes ACTUAL PHYSIOLOGY into account#i am totally willing to listen#but it needs to actually make sense.#but like i said i have come back to this again and again for a while#it doesn't even have Rule of Funny governing it#it's just a very bad application of Word of God#if a person just watches the season NO ONE would fucking say they were down there a week lmfao#he just wanted to say they almost reached the record#which is based on a reference that didn't even have a satisfying payoff.#anyway have me hacking my way through the roadblock that kept me from finishing what i was writing without basically going au#i have two hands and they're full of freelancers
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Commissions for @tuckerfuckingdidit , who wanted some cuddly post-s15 washlina cuddles! Thank you so much for commissioning me, I had an absolute blast working with you and making these!
Want a commission? you can check out my comms list here!
#c8#PLEASE COMMISSION JUSTINE SHE IS AN ABSOLUTE ANGEL???#i seriously cannot recommend her enough#she is amazing and you will love her#xo#artwork#faves#not pictured: carolina's armor stacked in a corner#also not pictured: me fucking crying over the image of her just pulling said armor off#and climbing into his bed#D E A T H#the afterword#another april another washlina commission!!!#thank u so much again justine <3 <3
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anybody else find it weird that carolina has to go hitch a ride to visit wash...
instead of, you know, actually being admitted to the fucking hospital?
season 15 goes out of its way to establish she’s fucked up (GOOD), but the moment 16 starts it’s like “WELL THAT’S OVER!!” (BAD). apparently check-ups are only for people who have been shot. dehydrated, starved, and muscles trashed from having to stand for DAYS? no1curr sry, we only have a bed for bathtub man.
#rvb16#rvb16 spoilers#red watches 16#there is a post sitting in my drafts about how the timeline for how long the freelancers were in the basement#officially makes no sense#but i am supposed to be writing a drabble#the hurricane#rvb critical
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All right pals, this is a thing I’m doing.
I will be transcribing the new episodes as soon as I’m able after they drop for FIRST members. I’ll post links each week when I have the transcript done. It might take me a couple of days to get it done, depending on my schedule, but I’ll do my level best!
I want to make these available to the fandom both as a searchable reference for fic writers and the like, and as an accessibility aid for viewers. The latter is especially important in light of the recently-announced delay in uploading the new episodes to YouTube. Since the RT site doesn’t currently offer captions, new viewers won’t be able to watch this season with captions (even bad captions) until an unspecified future date.
If you’d give this a reblog for that purpose, it would be much appreciated.
#i love my wife#reblogging again because i am actually USING THIS#this saved me from having to pull up the episode#NICE#i love anne#rvb resources
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TEXT FROM soup dakota AT 15:23 : hahaaa north that’s what happens when you go to get froyo w/o ur sis
what do you mean they’re all dead?? no they’re not?? they’re getting froyo
#tag urself im maine#lmao popular tag#artwork#the menagerie#so who else is hollering @ lina making her msg less formal#cuz i am#YOLK#THESE NAMES THO#faves#not my fault. someone put a queue in my way.
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