I would pay top dollar for a comprehensive, source-supported explanation of how Superwholock vanished.
Like……..that was the core of tumblr in 2013. Its tainted life-blood. Its fetid royal palace. Destiel this and Johnlock that. Tardis-in-the-impala-at-221B URLS. Bendydoot Cucumberpatch and long analytical debates of which doctor is best doctor
What caused the end? What destroyed it? What series of events sunk this fortress? I’m so. So curious. This was so much of what tumblr was. So unavoidable. It’s cultural history. I want. to know.
So I’m not completely sure but I think you can pinpoint the disappearance to the month following Dashcon. Like, the entire year prior, things were going fucking insane; The DW 50th anniversary, Sherlock returned after a hiatus, Dean became a demon or something I don’t remember. Point is, the fans were worse than ever.
And then Dashcon happened: All those people got together for a nightmarish event in the ball pit (for anyone who doesn’t know what Dashcon was, look it up and read any of the news articles about it. I promise, you will not be disappointed).
Now, I wasn’t too active on tumblr at that point because of school reasons, but I remember finding out that the new season of Supernatural had aired on TV, and I saw NOTHING about it on tumblr. Not a single post on my dash. It was a miracle, but I was so confused. How had the whole fandom just vanished like that? I still don’t know for sure, but it was very shortly after the Dashcon incident.
Then Doctor Who returned. New doctor and a new companion. Same scenario. Nobody said anything online. I was still big into DW so that was kind of a bummer but it was still astounding.
I went back online more readily and started realizing that fandoms, as I had known them, were essentially dead after that summer. It was like everybody simultaneously realized how toxic those communities were after they all got together in person and proved themselves to be a disgusting bunch.
It was the fastest and most unsettling jump in internet culture I’d ever seen. Overnight it became an embarrassment to admit that you were in a popular fandom. All because of fucking
“Superwholock died as a result of Dashcon” is the most fascinating theory I’ve heard in a while amazing
(And you know, seasonal rot and kids getting older and all that but s t i l l)
My personal theory is it was because of hiatuses and competition!
– Hiatuses: Sherlock especially, but the long Doctor Who mid-season
breaks didn’t help. People wandered off. Some of them to very similar
shows, like Elementary, which fought initial fan scepticism to
become THE Sherlock alternative.
– Fans became more critical. All
three shows frequently come under fire for their treatment of women,
LGBTQIA people, etc., and without new content fans had no option but to
rewatch and reexamine the same episodes over and over again. Their flaws
became more obvious on repeat viewings, and the comparison to new arrivals like Elementary didn’t help. I imagine there were other
competitors too, but one would need to do more research to see how
relevant they are here – cartoons like Steven Universe and Gravity
Falls, maybe? WtNV? OUAT and OITNB? All of them are much more obviously
diverse, so Superwholock starts looking bland in comparison. There’s also the quality-comparison argument (Doctor Who is not as good at plotting as a lot of other things), but I reckon that goes without saying.
– Fandom backlash! You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. After events like the Mishapocalypse and the infamous FANDOMS GRAB YOUR WEAPONS post Superwholock became shorthand for the most obnoxious parts of Tumblr and fandom, so more people starting distancing themselves from it (see also: how Bronies killed the MLP fandom). And, yeah, it all came to a head with the Dashcon Clusterfuck 2k14.
– Fandom Backlash II: Your Fave is Problematic. Every popular figure from Joss Whedon to Taylor Swift is eventually the subject of text posts and screencaps dragging their name through the mud. Steven Moffat, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Jensen Ackles (I believe? It might have been Jared Padalecki. I don’t really follow Supernatural) have all had plenty of this.
IN CONCLUSION: there wasn’t enough new stuff being made. People found their own new stuff, which in many cases they found more appealling. People became less forgiving of the old stuff, its creators, and its fans. Eventually enough time passed that they gave up on the old stuff completely, so when it came back they weren’t interested.
(granted this mostly comes under the seasonal rot and kids getting older points but I didn’t notice that until I’d typed this out, and it seems a waste to delete it now 😛 )
It’s like I’m reading the end-result of an assigned essay topic I handed out last night. I’ve forgotten so many things from the 2013 era you get an A+
Also, 2 of the 3 series changed drastically.
Doctor Who got a new showrunner (Moffat), whom many fans dislike for various reasons. I know that when Amelia Pond was introduced, I was very confused because it was such a different show. Some people stopped watching to protest Moffat; other people just stopped watching when the show stopped being about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and became puzzles for the doctor to solve. (See: the crack in Amelia’s wall; the doctor’s time-travelling-backwards wife; Clara saving the doctor repeatedly with no memory of it.) it also started relying more heavily on complicated, confusing plots that were hard to follow. (I still have no clue how River is Amy’s best friend, her daughter, and the doctor’s wife, or why she only traveled backwards, or why the name translation was important, or the regeneration thing [”Shut up, Mum, I’m concentrating on a dress size!”], or why they made Amelia have a mystical pregnancy, or what purpose that plot served except to flaunt how ‘clever’ Moffat is.) At the same time, Moffat-Who brought in new fans, who had seen Superwholock on Tumblr and been irritated by them, so they tried not to become them.
Meanwhile, Supernatural was going through showrunners like they were pre-owned toilet paper. They kept trying to raise the stakes and they kept falling short. Like, there are only so many times you can watch the same season about preventing-the-apocalypse before you start being able to call the play, you know? Nobody was surprised when Dean became a demon. A not-inconsiderable segment of fandom kept asking, “Where’s Sam? How does he feel/think about this?”, another not-inconsiderable segment was asking where Cas was and what HE felt/thought, and those people started leaving the fandom in droves. Demons and angels became so cliche as to be boring. Missed episodes, instead of being “NONONO WHAT HAPPENED?!”, became “Dean and Sam solved a case, the plot advanced just far enough that they can recap it in 10 seconds before the next episode, aaaand that gif just told me all I need to know about it.” The show got simultaneously boring and infuriating (like, they made Sam SHARE A HOUSE WITH THE ANGEL WHO RAPED AND TORTURED HIM FOR CENTURIES AND DIDN’T SPARE A SECOND TO SHOW HE HE FELT ABOUT IT, consent issues on the show are super fucking gross [Dean got into a former porn-star’s house and begged/’seduced’/[unconsciously?]threatened her into having sex with him, Sam was forced into being an “angel condom” without knowing about it, the fuckery goes on], Demon-Dean sang karaoke….) and that turned fans off like a blown fuse.
Sherlock was on hiatus for an astoundingly long time, and as mentioned by agriff11, people found new shows to watch and picked apart the problems in the existing episodes.
Also, I’d add that the users on this site have matured some, pushing the average age older, and so the sitewide shutdowns (Mishapocalypse, for example) just don’t happen anymore. Even memes – I can’t think of a meme this year that’s been literally everywhere and inescapable, like the “Hi I’m auditioning for X and I’ll be singing Y”, or “Surprise bitch”, or “gun”, or “Do you love the color of the sky?” The website also gotten gradually less user-friendly with popup ads, ads with sound that play automatically, messages being eaten, random deletions, frequent changes without telling us, etc. Some changes were good (putting reblog on the bottom of posts), some changes were bad (why tf did they put the edit and delete buttons under a clickdown menu?), and some were just there (the change from nested replies to listed replies, which is fantastic for long posts because now they aren’t just one letter/line).
TLDR: the shows changed and the website changed, thus changing the fandoms.
i agree with a lot of this, but moffat-era dr.who as The End Of Dr.Who Fandom doesn’t work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that moffat-era was several years in by this point. dr.who was, however, going through the 50th anniversary, which gave us a mess of a plot including the return of gallifrey (in a form that didn’t match really any prior depictions), two new doctors (”the war doctor” and 12), a storyline with 8 which alienated half of the expanded universe fanbase, and what looked at the time to be yet another river song plot. couple that with a general fandom maturity level that knew enough to be critical of the media they were consuming but not quite enough to differentiate character POV from narrative POV and the rest of the stuff outlined here…
IMO, there’s also the factor that a lot of Whovians didn’t immediately jump ship when Moffat took over because it took him a while to burn through the goodwill the fandom already held for him. It seems odd now, but during Russell T. Davies’ time as showrunner, Moffat was a highly regarded DW writer! His RTD-era stories were well received – he wrote The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and Blink, and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. When he’s got proper editorial oversight and is working on the scale of one or two episodes, he can write some really great creepy stuff. It took a while for it to sink in that his strengths don’t extend to long-term plot arcs or characterization, and I think a lot of people were willing to stick around to see Amy and Rory’s arc through but didn’t care to deal with the 50th Anniversary stuff or try to figure out what was going on with Clara.
You three get A+’s also.
dear tudor england: please, please, please find more than four names each for girls and boys. please. please.
On second thought I’m not going to reblog the post I was going to respond to. This is snarky enough without me being a bitchy punch with a brick to the face. Unfortunately reassembling the first part to be less of a fuck you to someone you can’t see is too much a bother and I don’t want to pretend to not be aggravated.
THEREFORE:
Regarding having supposedly a No-Maj & no Native American named founders……
Congratulations on missing the point entirely with picking animals to represent the houses rather than themselves. In Hogwarts, the pride of the lineage was very strong, and indeed, the Houses were named after the founders, not their attributes, colors, or anything else. In Ilvermorny, they’re named after favorite magical creatures specifically to AVOID that pride.
Do you know how Native American names are earned/received/given? Not by lineage, but by CHOICE, DEED, actions, and personality.
Oh and they usually favor colors + animals. 😐 /cough cough points to own name: Silverwolf and paints a bright red circle around it./
Not to mention, the founder was following the footsteps of an Irish witch animagus who could turn into a crow. Meanwhile the animagus witches & wizards were more common among Natives, but various tribes sometimes had frauds (which is a real thing!) who discouraged any such thing out of jealousy (also real as hell).
Are you also aware of how distrustful many Native tribes are of snakes and those who idolize them? My tribe won’t even use them in art, and they’re not alone in that.
You’ve got the Great Horned Serpent or in Lakota: Uncegila, who 1) helped get wands for her adopted sons 2) true to mythology 3) is as NorthEast Atlantic Native mythos as you can GET. It was such a thing in NE Native tribes that it transferred over heavily to the settlers, especially since it was said to be hypnotic. NOW GRANTED, she made the horned serpent “friendly” (ish?) whereas, I always rooted for the Thunderbird and like I said, snakes were often associated as evil/vengeful. BUT SEE THAT LAST PART? REVENGE. You HAVE to give her credit for making that a key aspect to the story! And all monsters being “evil” is almost anti-Native in itself given the respect we have for wolves, and killer whales, and bears, and leopards, and alligators that could and still do, eat humans.
You’ve got the amazing mishmash of Irish + Native American brownies. LITERALLY NAMED PUKWUDGIES AFTER THE WAMPAONOG PUKWUDGIES!
Don’t even get me started on Thunderbirds and wampus. You cannot GET more Native American than Thunderbirds, and wampus?
They’re A REAL THING!
Aren’t they pretty :333
Look instead of smacktalking shit for not being “researched enough” do some god damn research yourselves.
You know another thing she kept in tact? The founder delivered twin girls. In the legend of the sky woman who fell from the sky, she had twins. But rather like a panda, could only care for one, so the strongest was sent to the West to try to survive on his own. The other she kept close, but as they grew up they found each other again and helped shape the world. The son from the West wanted harsh rocks and rigid cliffs and mountains, no rivers, and all food had to be fought very hard for. Whereas the boy from the East was used to a much easier life and wanted food everywhere easy to obtain, and twoway rivers so you never had to row, they would just carry you. They were able to always compromise and that helped create a world where you have to work hard, but will still be easily rewarded, and with help protected. Just as one daughter was a great witch, but the other was a squib, together they helped balance the world out.
I heard SO MUCH shit about how she didn’t research enough I was prepared for the worst and instead I got an A+ example of how I’d like to see others try to emulate if they wish to use Native American mythology. RESEARCH. Before you DARE say anyone else didn’t do enough? You better do fifty times what they did because if you end up wrong, you REALLY look asinine as fuck.
And the first students enrolled were 3 Wampanoag other than her adopted sons. AN ADDITIONAL NOTE? Native American tribes in the region commonly adopted outsiders into their tribes in order to keep the lineage as strong as possible, you couldn’t GET more of a fuck you to Gormalaith. It literally takes the idea that in-breeding = purity, and flips it completely inside out. And J.K. Rowling actually NAILED that. Something I’ve yet to see any mainstream American functionally DO. On top of which, Irish, Wampanoag, Iroquois, and quite a few other tribes were matriarchal, as was the founder’s family because of her magic.
Go pretend to get Brownie points for spouting nonsense somewhere else WITHOUT dismissing my people’s heritage and mythologies alongside it, okay? We’re fighting tooth and nail to keep these stories alive, and you want them erased or going unknown all the faster for what? Please, go research. Just. Seriously. Make your own stories, but don’t you DARE presume to tell someone how to represent something you clearly don’t even CARE to look up.
Okay, I’m going to tell you upfront that I have no idea what this is going to turn into. This is gonna be stream-of-conscious petals style because we stayed up way too late last night but then i woke up at 7 and thought about this ask and–
I think the first thing to realize is that Bad Bob Zimmermann is the most extroverted extrovert to ever extrovert on this mortal plane. Bad Bob probably got into hockey because his parents had no idea what to do with his boundless energy and the fact that he literally never stopped talking ever and hockey (at 4 years old) seemed like a good way to try to work some of that energy out. Failing that, it at least made lil Bobby someone else’s problem for three hours a week (which then became an hour a day, and, look by the time he is like 8, they just let him hang out at the ice rinks the moment school is out because he knows all the staff by name and there is an endless cycle of other kids for him to play with and it’s a good system! sometimes he even sleeps!).
And while Jack loves hockey for the game and, largely, to prove himself as an individual (until samwell and bitty), Bad Bob loves hockey for the people. Bad Bob took to being on a team like a fish to water and in peewee hockey, Bad Bob got so many penalties because he kept skating onto the rink to participate in cellys even when he was on the bench. (or in the penalty box! Dear, god, bob, you cannot– yup, he’s on the ice again. dammit.). Bad Bob just loves the feeling of being on a team and the connections you make with your teammates and the connections you make with the other team’s players and– look, part of the reason Bad Bob worked so hard at hockey is because leaving that team environment would kill him. (seriously, i bet bad bob has the worst time adjusting to life after the nhl. alicia is probably so worried.)
Anyway, all this to say, that twitter is made for retired Bad Bob Zimmermann. Suddenly, he can talk to people all day long even if he is alone in his house or even if he is stuck at one of Alicia’s formal events and has to listen to speeches. You know how introverts sneak off at parties to read books on their phone in the bathroom (no? that’s just me?) – well Bad Bob sneaks off to reply to tweets (and text in his Groupme with all his old teammates).
Of course, Bad Bob is still pretty freakin’ famous and his constant activity causes a stir and you know how carrie fisher is like the freakin’ twitter queen of the modern day? That’s Bad Bob Zimmermann. He is the Dad of twitter. He retweets funny things about himself and memes and, contrary to popular belief, he is not angling for a commentator or sports analyst job on Sports Illustrated so his filter is literally zero. BBZ is un-ironically the coolest dad ever.
Let’s swing to Jack for a second. And I’m afraid I am going to be HELLA cheesey and talk about those 5 Love Languages. I think perhaps the primary miscommunication between Jack and BBZ is that they are not speaking the same love language at all. Bad Bob Zimmermann is literally all about verbal words of praise. With a side of physical touch. That is how Bad Bob gives love. He is alright with however people what to give love to him (to him, Alicia’s laughter at his bad jokes is love and when Jack takes the time to call him, he glows for days afterwards).
However, the conflict is that that is not how Jack Zimmermann gives or recieves love. Jack Zimmermann works that Quality Time lifestyle. He wants someone to barge in his room and sit on his bed (Shitty), he wants someone to study with him for hours even if they are working on different projects (Bitty), he wants someone to sit with him for hours even if they say practically nothing the whole time (Lardo). When Jack Zimmermann tries to give love, gift-giving comes into play, but his natural state is Quality Time.
And, unfortunately, that is the one thing that Bad Bob can’t give him. When Jack was growing up, Bad Bob was still away playing for huge chunks of time and then by the time he is retired and home, Jack is playing hockey for hours a day and then on the Q and then before either of them know it, Jack is off to Samwell.
Never stops making me smile. I want someone like this in my life. 💜
Okay so the best thing,the best thing about Sirs Patrick & Ian being best friends is that they met because of the X-Men movie.
I saw Sir Patrick speak a year or so ago and someone asked him about their friendship. He told this story about how I think they’d once or twice worked on the same production but had had very little interaction, and that when he’d been a kid, he’d utterly looked up to Sir Ian, who had had an established theater career at a very young age.
People assume that they’ve been friends since they were young, which makes sense given the sort of work they’ve done and their career trajectories, but no. Sir Patrick basically had a giant hero-crush-from-a-distance on Sir Ian for most of his life AND THEN on the set of X-Men, their trailers were put next to each other and they were significantly older than anyone else on the set, so they started spending their downtime together.
And became inseparable. And this is amazing.
So everyone who wants a friend like this, you have time. ❤
there is nothing better than the smell of a summer thunderstorm
There’s a new “horror” movie coming out, and the premise is that a female diver gets stuck sitting on a rock 200 yards from shore in what looks like maaaaaybe 30 foot deep water, with a great white “circling” nearby.
It is very stupid looking.
I could make all kinds of arguments about how there are only a few documented cases ever of sharks intentionally going after humans, about how we’re already trying to hunt them to extinction because people are terrified of them for no logical reason, about how the creator of Jaws regretted the shark phobia his work inspired for the rest of his life and became an extremely staunch defender of sharks as important ocean wildlife. I could say how pissed I am that yet again someone is making a “horror” movie whose premise is animals are evil and malicious and go after humans for no reason, nature and man are inherently at odds.
But instead I’m going to leave these pictures here and make the case that this is going to be a very inconsistent, confused film about a big angry fish who apparently changes size off camera.
Here we see the shark doing a Sea World style backflip in order to eat a guy right off his surfboard. (It then chases down guy number two, gets his legs in its mouth, and then… swims backwards? to dramatically pull him away from the rock?)
Aaand here we have a perfectly circular bite in the main character’s leg where the shark apparently shrunk way down, bit in deeply enough to leave a perfect circle of ouch in her flesh, and then let go. Either that, or she’s a giantess and her thigh is as big as a man’s entire torso.
Sharks, even great white sharks, really don’t give a fuck about humans. We are not food for them. They attack divers because they have relatively poor eyesight, and from below, a human paddling out into the water on a surfboard looks like a very fat, slow, awkward seal floundering on the surface. Sharks who do attack humans generally attack only once before realizing that this is not what they expected. That’s why there are shark attack survivors; the shark doesn’t try to eat the rest of the person they just bit. Great white sharks and tiger sharks can be dangerous, but so can any large animal. More Americans alone are killed by chairs, cows, deer, dogs, and vending machines (each, not added together) than are killed worldwide by sharks even on a very unlucky year.
