Often the people doing “art/craft supply haul unbo

culture, everything is ads

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Yeah that’s– another level of the Everything Is Ads, Influencer Culture thing. Sometimes there’s an account I follow that I’d been sort of like…. I mean, parasocial relationships right, but I’d sort of mentally labeling them as a kind of peer/mentor, right? like not that we’re close but that this is someone kinda on my level, but who knows a few more things, so i can take pointers from what they do, and share my results, and have a kind of like, peer-ish kind of relationship, though I’m usually aware that’s aspirational on my part as I do my crafts so sparsely and seldom, so much of my free time being taken up in writing and like you know losing huge swathes of time to being ADHD or whatever–

and then they rock up with a paid promotion, or something, and I’m like oh neverminnnnd.

(Often it’s like. A whole post about a project they did, and it looks so good! and wow! it was cheap! and then they’re like Obligatory Disclosure! I was given these materials for free in exchange for my crafting a very labor-intensive thing out of them that I could then show off or ahem I mean my honest review! here’s a coupon code to get your own!)

Can’t Relate, guys. It’s not like I’ll unfollow or whatever necessarily…. but it’s really. Well, it’s hard. And I mean I’m usually glad for them, to have some kind of support or whatever, but boy it is always about the hustle isn’t it.

But really what I’m objecting to is just this– normalization of constant consumption. It’s so hard, when you struggle with impulsivity especially I think but I also really feel like Whomst Among Us Does Not– you’re like no, it’s not normal to constantly want new things, and you’re disciplined with yourself, and try to really only buy things you’ll use or that you’ll really get enjoyment from, and then…. these social media personalities that you’ve got these parasocial relationships with and think of yourself as a peer with are just constantly acquiring

it makes it nearly impossible to establish an actual meaningful baseline of normal “how much stuff do I actually want/need” in your life!!! (Your picture was not posted)

A love letter to the co-conspiritors

witcher stuff than previous fandoms, there's a small handful of reasons actually, and they know who they are

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pepperf http://pepperf.tumblr.com/post/693318269350952960:

They have many names—beta reader, friend, Oh Fuck You—but you know who they are: they’re the person who is as rabid as you about a ship or a character, the one you DM with your most twisted headcanons, the one who agrees that YES, he SHOULD be tied to a chair and slapped in the face—that she SHOULD be allowed a little tragic backstory, as a treat—that they SHOULD be roommates who are secretly pining for one another…the one who hashes out with you, at past midnight, how soon is reasonable for people with superpowers to have sex after one of them has been shot in the leg.

They’re the person who reads your fic before you send it to anyone else, and raves with you about that plot point that you COULDN’T WAIT for them to reach, or points out where you’ve forgotten that they were at the bar, not the library, so you need to remove the reference to book stacks, or pokes you to finish the goddamn next chapter because they want to read it, okay?

Fandom would not exist without them. They enable and encourage. Some of them are also fic writers, and you get to enable them right back. Some of them create fan art, or meta, or text post edits, or run prompt fests, or edit wikis…some of them are simply just as in love with the same thing that you are and want to feed the squee.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone like this in your life, you’ll know how much impact they have. It’s different to getting comments and kudos (wonderful though those are!), because they come in before the fic is finished, sometimes even before it’s started, and say ‘yes, do it!’. The fact that I’ve written so much for Community and The Umbrella Academy is completely down to bethanyactually https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/bethanyactually and wheresmytowel https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/wheresmytowel respectively, and I count myself incredibly lucky to have them both in my life (and not just for all this, but also because they’re both incredibly lovely and smart and fun).

It was Fanfic Writer Appreciation Day yesterday (Aug 21st), and it made me think that we should also give a shoutout to the co-conspiritors, because without them, an awful lot more fic writers would be stress-scrolling through tumblr instead of working on their WIP, and there’d be so much less fic in the world. (Your picture was not posted)