I've seen this hit dietary stuff like arfid badly, especially if you grew up with safe foods that were expensive by default. It sucks!

Eyyyy obelisk hit 3.5k kudos nice nice

More Tiffany Lamps! Oh I wish I had a tiny Rose in my pocket...

Red States Thought They Could Stop Abortions. They Ended Up Stopping Only the Lifesaving Ones. Abortion bans are failing.

Abortion rates in red states have not decreased, aside from medically necessary ones. Pregnancy has become much more dangerous. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Additional product photos for Banpresto MAXIMATICPLUS Sanji.

🇯🇵: September 2026

#OnePiece

I've been kicking it in ds9 fandom for a bit and I set a goal there to get better at meme-ifying characters. I had mild success, although nothing astounding. But when I say that distillation and simplifying is a skill, I mean it. Because boy are there times I wish I it came naturally lol.

and for reference, I suck ass at making memes. I have witnessed a consistent feedback in my works, ala "the first chapter didn't really grab me, but then I kept reading and I couldn't stop". I'm not an upfront distillation kind of person. I have other skills that compensate for it.

"why do my fics seem to do well numbers wise but they don't --feel-- popular" and "why do my headcanon posts gain so much traction but no one cares about my fics" and "why do people like my fics who read it but I'm not getting clicks" and all the million variations in between. Different skill sets.

But I think not only can it be frustrating to encounter and know something is off + not know why, but I think it can also be confusing to aspiring writers who are hitting their head against a wall wondering why they aren't getting the kind of reaction they want.

Now, I am serious when I say I see memeifying as a skill. I think to be good at it is not something Anyone can do, even if devalued. This is why I treat a lot of headcanon posts on socmed with a similar respect I try to treat fanart of fanfic. It's a fandom creation, even if it's a bitesized one.

But it also means that you get that... thing a lot of people in fandom hate. The "tfw your blorbo is boiled down to a single trait he exhibited once in canon" complaints. The "people take interesting dynamics and turn it into Generic Archetype" the "people care more about memes than canon" etc.

Being able to simplify an idea into a single punchy sentence helps people buy in to what you want to tell. Being able to condense a characters internal monologue into something simpler helps with pacing/flow. Being able to make something more memorable helps with readers remembering what you made

But there is an obvious downside: It simplifies thing. It defaults to the common societal narratives that are pre-established (which can lead to stereotypes, reliance on similar archetypes in fiction, an uphill battle if you want to do something more unique etc), and often relies on punchlines.

Now, having the skill to distill something is VERY useful for storytelling/writing. You don't NEED it per se, but it will certainly help many situations that a writer might come across.

distilling a character to something bite-size, funny, and distinctly memorable is a skill. It is a skill that is greatly useful in the socmed age and when engaging in Banter (tm). It is great marketing, for pitching aus/headcanons, for inviting conversation. It is not inherently good writing.

Understanding that making effective character memes is a different skillset from good story telling, and that often the people who gain popularity in fandom have BOTH of these skills in some varying ratio can be helpful in navigating fandom I feel.

壁に挟まる🕒くん☝️😄

If you find people who are a few steps removed from fandom and are interested in writing as a craft specifically, that can help a lot, even if you end up disagreeing with their crit, it can give new angles to approach. Fandom-based crit can be good, but the love is already pre-established.

genuine question have you been in writing feedback groups before

In the grand scheme of things it's often small potatoes, but even small potatoes are worth figuring out the ethics of, esp if you ever end up in conflict, and who is inclined to take your side regardless etc

Anyway I just woke up ramble over.

The jump from "no one talks to me unless I give them a reason to" to "oh people will want to be my friend while I'm just existing" can be subtle, but it does grease wheels. And the people who approach you with bad faith cuz of it suck. But many people will also approach you w/ default good faith

I understand the "fanfic writers are not celebrities, stop expecting us to act with trained pr" dealio and agree, but also I do think if you do get even a lil popular (and for the low self esteemers, start counting at any one "I liked your fic!" Comment), you gotta ponder the good will you get.

The original fiction bug has bitten me once again which feels weird cuz my AO3 looks kinda dead for the first time in several years

NYT cooking page has basically no meat on it

"Dumplings With Peas"
"Broccoli Cheddar Beans"

And they like it in opla because it had traits they do like.

But it really does get me back to that ur-fandom complaint I have where folks see traits and go "it's bad when people interpret a character as X" and... no, what you dislike is the _execution_.

Now, there's a very obvious answer here. "Dumb" is a bad, umbrella term for all sorts of different traits and concepts, some of which are seen as Positive and some are seen as Negative. When people disliked it in fandom, it was because it involved traits/depictions they disliked.

One thing that fascinates me about opla is that it brought back a certain kind of "hell yeah! Dumb Zoro my beloved!" attitude, like the problem w/ current zoro is people made him too competent/badass. But when I first joined fandom the big issue was people being mad at fandom for making zoro dumb.

ilyra repin, watercolor painting, the 1899 pistol duel between Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky that takes part in Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse, by Alexander Pushkin

just found out this is watercolor and spent like a good five minutes pissed off

zoro

Sometimes I make a mental note of the innocuous, kind-hearted things people do that could make a too-sensitive artist type want to die. I don't even mean that judgmentally, just from the pov of "when you create art you are sometimes making yourself VERY vulnerable and shit gets weird."