Always treat others with respect, even if they don't. You never know what someone is going through. A single kind word can go a long way. INFP-T (Mediator)
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Transcript of TikTok by user tabbuddies, replying to the comment “bro I’m not tryna be a dick I’m sure you tried hard but make something useful”:
“If something looks worthless then it’s probably not for me. Alright, repeat after me, let’s say it again, If something looks worthless then it’s probably not for me. And, why do I say that? Well, I’ve had a lot of comments of people that don’t understand that not everyone is an able bodied adult. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to do daily tasks that other people find really simple like opening up their own canned drink. And there’s really so many people in the world who need a little assistance with things like that, and that’s what tab buddies are all about.
So who can benefit from adaptive devices like this? Let me list some off: first you have young children, that’s who we initially created these for. You also have anyone who has long nails like I do. People with hand injuries, stroke patients, people with arthritis, people with trigger finger, people with hand tremors. People with hypermobility or other joint problems, children with autism who have fine motor control struggles. Anyone who opens cans a whole lot as part of their profession, such as a cafeteria worker, or a server or bartender, a flight attendant. Someone with carpal tunnel. We also have customers who just really like using these as a way to identify whose can is whose at a party or get together. And lots of others that I’m sure I’m missing right now, but I think you get the point.
There’s unfortunately still a stigma attached to using assistive devices for some, and we’re really trying to end that by making these extra cute, and extra user friendly. So I’m really happy for you and others who don’t see a use for these, because that means you’re able to do these daily tasks without any trouble. But that doesn’t apply to the whole world. The thing is, if you see a product here on TikTok that other people are interested in, then there’s probably a reason for that, and even if you don’t know that reason or don’t understand or it doesn’t apply to you, maybe just take a step back and think about it for a minute before you say things like this. Because it is really hurtful unfortunately, to the people who do need a little help.”
Anonymous asked: Do you ever think you'll stop drawing fanart? No offense it just seems like the kind of thing you're supposed to grow out of. I'm just curious what your plans/goals are since it isn't exactly an art form that people take seriously.
Ah, fanart. Also known as the art that girls make.
Sad, immature girls no one takes seriously. Girls who are taught that it’s shameful to be excited or passionate about anything, that it’s pathetic to gush about what attracts them, that it’s wrong to be a geek, that they should feel embarrassed about having a crush, that they’re not allowed to gaze or stare or wish or desire. Girls who need to grow out of it.
That’s the art you mean, right?
Because in my experience, when grown men make it, nobody calls it fanart. They just call it art. And everyone takes it very seriously.
It’s interesting though — the culture of shame surrounding adult women and fandom. Even within fandom it’s heavily internalized: unsurprisingly, mind, given that fandom is largely comprised by young girls and, unfortunately, our culture runs on ensuring young girls internalize *all* messages no matter how toxic. But here’s another way of thinking about it.
Sports is a fandom. It requires zealous attention to “seasons,” knowledge of details considered obscure to those not involved in that fandom, unbelievable amounts of merchandise, and even “fanfic” in the form of fantasy teams. But this is a masculine-coded fandom. And as such, it’s encouraged - built into our economy! Have you *seen* Dish network’s “ultimate fan” advertisements, which literally base selling of a product around the normalization of all consuming (male) obsession? Or the very existence of sports bars, built around the link between fans and community enjoyment and analysis. Sport fandom is so ingrained in our culture that major events are treated like holidays (my gym closes for the Super Bowl) — and can you imagine being laughed at for admitting you didn’t know the difference between Supernatural and The X Files the way you might if you admit you don’t know the rules of football vs baseball, or basketball?
“Fandom” is not childish but we live in a culture that commodified women’s time in such away that their hobbies have to be “frivolous,” because “mature” women’s interests are supposed to be marriage, family, and overall care taking: things that allow others to continue their own special interests, while leaving women without a space of their own.
So think about what you’re actually saying when you call someone “too old” for fandom. Because you’re suggesting they are “too old” for a consuming hobby, and I challenge you to answer — what do you think they should be doing instead?
This whole modern approach is also seriously undermining just how important fanfiction is - from a historical standpoint.
The concept of fanfiction formed and forged the earliest stages of literature in Europe. Because the majority of authors in France, Germany and Great Britain looked at that funky little Celtic dude Arthur and thought “hey, he’s neat. I wanna write about him”.
The entire concept of a book outside of religious purposes was born out of fanfiction in my country.
There is no “first canon” for Arthur where he came as the prince of Camelot, with his sidekicks Lancelot and Merlin and his endgame love interest Gwen.
Arthur was some random hunter when he started out.
Someone’s fanfiction made him a prince.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him a round table.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Merlin at his side.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Morgana, gave him Gwen, gave him his swords.
And, to this day, we still write Arthurian fanfiction. Literally last year there was a movie adaptation that is, by all intends and purposes, fanfiction, because it wasn’t even close to a literal adaptation of the source material (The Kid Who Would Be King). Heck, BBC’s Merlin, itself an Arthurian fanfiction, remains one of the biggest fandoms that people today write for on AO3.
You were a joke in the middle ages if you tried to write your own stuff. Who’s interested in your stuff? You were only a respected author if you wrote fanfiction. The most famous medieval German authors are famous because they wrote fanfiction about some knightly OCs they created who served on Arthur’s court. That is the literary legacy of the middle ages. Arthurian fanfiction.
Yet somewhere along the way, this concept of “I find x story/element cool and want to elaborate on it more, shift the focus onto an aspect of this original source material” has gotten this “eh, it’s fanfiction” connotation and lost respect.
Even though this very concept is still being used - even outside of the actual medium of fanfiction - and it is still being used for the very same purpose it was used for in medieval times. Original movies often don’t get as much recognition as adaptations of existing source material that the audience is familiar with. People see a movie about a character they’re familiar with and seem more inclined to buy a ticket to see the 10th new interpretation of Batman or Superman or Snow White. How are these new interpretations of familiar source material that usually add to the lore, reinterpret characterizations and dynamics, any different from fanfiction?
But heaven forbid we call The Dark Knight Nolan’s Batman fanfiction. No, fanfiction is that silly thing that we can’t take seriously, but that new Joker movie, that however is high-end art.
SO IMPORTANT
This. Fanfiction is variations on an existing theme, simultaneously making use of and satisfying people’s existing love for a story that they’re happy to consume more of, and cultivating the synergy between an existing story/mythos and a new author who, in interacting with characters they’d never have created themselves, creates something that neither they nor any of the story’s previous tellers could have made all by themselves.
Fanfiction is the new whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and fanfiction is the story being made limitless, retelling by retelling, and it is wonderful.
It’s also worth noting that Batman himself only came into being because of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a series of books about an extravagantly rich foppish playboy by day, daring hero in disguise by night (I mean, loosely. He also fopped by night and heroed by day, but you get my drift). Written by a woman no less.
Batman is a transformative work with a modernised crime-fighting SP but also borrowing strongly from earlier comic books, and yet it is seen as definitive.
Coming back here to say that I think the derision for fanart also has some of its roots in our capitalist hellscape.
It’s the age old “If thing not make you money, why you care about thing?” that’s so prevalent in the system. Of course some people do make money with their fanart, but I think that is still part of the scorn.
It’s supposed to be something you do not just for fun, but for practice, people like this think. Once you’re good at it, you can drop it and make money by focusing on your OCs and original work!
**smashes reblog**
Couldn’t agree more. Fan art and fic are absolutely valid. We really need to stop putting an age limit on fun as well!
Funnily enough, my Mum sent me this just today. It was in the front of the Doctor Who book she’d just purchased. (My Mum’s in her 70btw… tell her she’s too old for fandom, I dare you…)
Fandom, fanart, and fanfiction is for everyone. No, it isn’t something you “have” to grow out of. If it brings you joy, then who cares?
No no you don’t understand! I want to watch this show/movie, read this book, listen to this podcast, etc.! But I must be in the right mindset and the exact head space to begin, or I just can’t!
I’m not ALLOWED to enjoy it yet, I’m not ALLOWED!!!
I can’t believe we have to keep doing this over and over again but in season 2 episode 1 of good omens there is a long scene (upwards of ten seconds, which to me is long for an extremely dangerous epilepsy trigger) of very bright white and red flashing lights. It’s the entire screen. Unfortunately for me I was already watching this with a migraine coming on and I’m immediately in agony. There was no warning whatsoever before this happened. It’s at almost the very end of the episode. Please reblog to save someone a migraine or seizure.
It’s from 42:41-43:14. There’s also an alarm going off at the same time, in case anyone reading this is sensitive to those sorts of sounds. Slight spoilers below the cut:
This is akin all those hot takes about the 2k bug being an hoax:
“Remember when they told us every computer was going to crash on 1/1/01 and there would be chaos and then nothing happened?”
Yeah, I remember. And I’m sure every programmer and sysadmin that contributed the billion person/hour global effort to prevent it also remembers.
No one talks about acid rain anymore, either. And that’s a very good thing.
see also START and START II, which significantly reduced nuclear stockpiles
International cooperation is actually so effective that most people don’t even notice it happening, and then erroneously believe it can’t solve anything.
Fixing issues before they develop into actual disasters is such an underappreciated thing it hurts at all levels.
We don’t talk about acid rain because there isn’t any more acid rain because when acid rain started happening and we learned that the cause was mainly sulphur oxide and carbon monooxide from car exhausts, countries all over the world made it a law that car companies had to produce cars that produced less exhaust with better effectivenes (burning the fuel all the way to CO2 instead of the halfassed CO) and oil rafineries to remove the sulphur from the gasoline in the first place.
We don’t talk about computers crashing because of the turn of the century, because thousands of programmers worked very hard to write updates and patches for Every Single Program humanity as a whole used back in 1999 and then somehow managed to failtest, distribute, and update every single device and system, be it an online or offline one before the midnight of the 1st january of 2000.
On a much smaller scale, no one ever commenta or notices cleaners and housekeepers doing their job - be it at home or at whole buildings - because they always make sure that there’s nothing to notice. But don’t be fooled - at any point of your life you are one week of them not doing away from swimming in trash and filth with nothing to eat and nothing clean to wear. Only then you would notice.
Now it’s time to do that thing again and make sure that we don’t kill our whole planetary ecosystem within the next century.
If you ever think america is a clean country, go without garbage men for a week.
Weirdly anti-millennial articles have scraped the bottom of the barrel so hard that they are now two feet down into the topsoil
its so wild like “this generation with no fucking money is learning to prioritize essentials” and all these chucklefucks can write is advertisements for these companies
at least our jeans won’t tear at the seams after two washes
FUCK FABRIC SOFTENER IT’S UTTERLY POINTLESS
AND FUCK DRYER SHEETS LITERALLY NOBODY EVER HAS ENOUGH OF A PROBLEM WITH STATIC TO WARRANT PAYING OUT THE ASS FOR THAT SHIT
DO YOU WANT CLEAN CLOTHES? YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO BUY FUCKING DETERGENT JUST MAKE YOUR OWN* IT’S SO GODDAMN EASY AND 80X CHEAPER
FUCK THE ENTIRE LAUNDRY INDUSTRY
*Fuck The Entire Laundry Industry Recipe
1 cup Washing Soda (not Baking Soda. Different things.)
1 cup Borax (not Boric Acid. Also a different thing.)
½ cup - 1 cup grated bar soap (you can use literally anything. I often use Ivory because it’s easy to get and I find it works well, a lot of people like Fels-Naptha, which is an actual laundry bar. Some people use Dr. Bronner’s. Really does not fucking matter.)
After grating your soap, combine all ingredients. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Use maybe a ¼ cup per load.
^^^ I’ve done this for years now and it works as well as any store bought detergent
WHAT Thank you, tumblr user awfullydull! Your URL does no justice to the good advice you give!
Also you can MAKE your own washing soda very VERY cheaply.
Step one: acquire $5 bag of baking soda from Costco.
Step two: lay that motherfucking baking soda out on a baking tray.
Step three: bake the baking soda on a tray in an oven at 400° for 1 hour (to make the moisture evaporate, leaving washing soda)
Step four: revel in how easy and cheap it is to make your own washing soda, and maybe take a moment to be angry that the industry upcharges the fuck out of something that is so easy to make.
I see some of y'all complaining about static and/or wanting nice smelling laundry. Go to a craft store, find 100% wool yarn balls. If it doesn’t come in a ball, ask an employee to make it into a tight ball for you. Wash in the washing machine to make it felted. Remove from washer, add a few drops of essential oil to the ball, allow to seep in. Dry with clothing. Doesn’t need to be rewashed ever, and if it stops smelling, add few more drops of essential oil. Bam, reusable dryer sheets.
I love this post so much it’s filled with helpful advice, hatred, saving money, and fucking the system all in one
Kudos to all of this, but don’t ask a craft store employee at a chain craft store to make your wool yarn into a tight ball for you. I worked at JoAnn Fabrics for a year and a half. We literally have no resources or ability to do something like that. You could do a better job yourself at home. The chain craft store employee can’t look up a youtube tutorial for making yarn laundry balls on the clock, you can.
If someone had walked up to me while I was working at JoAnn and asked me to take a half hour or more out of my shift to try and fail in making some kind of tight yarn laundry contraption I probably would have burst into tears. And if my manager had come out and found me trying and failing to wind yarn when I was supposed to be running go backs I would have gotten a talking to. Craft store employees aren’t allowed, able, or willing to do your crafts for you. That’s why it’s a craft store.
Don’t hurt retail workers in your quest for overriding the capitalist system. For the love of everything beautiful please just look it up.
These are all great ways to reduce waste we produce from constantly buying detergent, softener, and dryer sheets.
The above examples have been provided with the authors’ permission to demonstrate what these look like.
Basic rundown:
They are all 3 sentences long
Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation
Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever
No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story
The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post
Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly
There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate
I had to make it where only registered users could comment on my fics last year because I was getting so many porn bots commenting on mine.