I might have mentioned this before, but developments I am genuinely glad of in fandom over the last couple of decades:
Way less bashing of canon female love interests in order to hook up two male characters – some of that is the advent of the OT3 as a solution to love triangles, but it’s just as common to have the canon couple break up amicably and realistically, or simply tweak things so that they were never a couple, but still like and respect one another as friends
The rise of the reader insert fic, which I’m convinced has taken the pressure off to create an OC for people who really just want to write self-insert fantasy, thereby letting them do what they actually want and (hopefully) helping to lessen the stigma around OCs for those who really want to create OCs
Linked to that, a decrease in the amount that the accusation “Mary Sue!” gets flung around, and intelligent criticism of how gendered the whole “Mary Sue” concept has ended up
Less pressure to “explain” how a character could end up with a character of the same gender in fic, when they’ve always been paired with other-gender characters in canon
A decline in the popularity of extensively mocking/dragging individual fics for bad or inexpert writing (such as through writing MSTs in response where the canon characters read and reacted to the fic), which, looking back, was a pretty shitty thing to do to writers just starting out
Much less likelihood of getting virulently homophobic comments on any given slashfic (”My poor [favourite character] isn’t GAY, how dare you!”)
And, of course, the shining glory that is AO3, an all-inclusive single archive that’s actually run and controlled by fans, meaning no hours spent paging through webrings to find one author who has four fics of that pairing you love and then reading them over and over for months, and no chance of waking up tomorrow to find all your fic purged because some internet company got a pissy letter
I mean, don’t get me wrong, fandom today is no picnic; it’s not like homophobia or sexism have gone away entirely (and to an extent they’ve gone underground, which complicates things), and of course we have the new puritanical backlash, which can sometimes be even more complex to challenge. But fandom back in the day was far from perfect, as well, and some of the ways things have changed are a real breath of fresh air.
i found out recently that the very first trees did not rot when they died because the microbes that decompose trees hadnt evolved yet…which makes sense but it’s weird to think about. this actually caused a huge change in the climate at the time and many of these trees turned into coal because of it…
like imagine a tree falling in the forest and the trunk just stays there for years and years with little change, and it only goes away when it is buried under dirt. that’s weird.
obviously they were still working on the worldbuilding back then
imagine all the lag from those trunks laying around. glad they patched those microbes in
So y’all talk about this like it’s a joke, but the exact same time is happening today with plastics, except today’s microbes are a bit quicker on the uptake. They’re still new at it, but Earth’s decomposers are hard at work learning how to eat polyester.
*ancient microbe voice* kids these days have it so easy. mutating to feed on new materials within a century? In my day it took us a millenium at minimum! we had to metabolize uphill in the snow both ways!
*even more ancient microbe voice* pfeh, typical oxygen-breather attitude. you think you had it rough but YOU have those fancy MITOCHONDRIA.
i mean. the real reason i made this post is to post all these photos of same-sex lion groups. they’re just gay look at them! so loving.
im not going to post a pic of the gay lions fucking but we all know there are many
they’re also just so naturally dramatic and comfortable like this guy? this man could dish on anyone at the watering hole and i’d believe him
meanwhile lionesses are like one vegan bakery short of a lesbian network to rival your average new england small city. look at them co-parenting and generally having a womanist community
they also are just very tender and are clearly liberated and more than happy to live a life without men.
also they’re all so butch i mean look at them. they all look like they know how to put up some drywall you know?? you know?
some of the butchest ones even grow little manes. look at her! queen of gender nonconformity.
Death By Catchphrase 