Reblog And Put Your Results In The Tags: I Made Awhat Type Of Bender Are You Quiz(atla)except Its One

reblog and put your results in the tags: i made a “what type of bender are you” quiz (atla) except its one where a lot of effort and research was put into it so that the results could actually be accurate. enjoy!!! 

bring back squick

Any time you see a post talking about the fandom term ‘squick’ (which means to strongly dislike a thing, without moral judgement) there are a dozen or more responses to that post saying we need to bring back squick. I agree, but the problem with those statements is that no one talks about how. 

Before we do that, let’s think about why squick went away. 

It didn’t. Not completely. But it fell into disuse to such a degree that there are fans today who don’t know what the word means or that it ever existed. I don’t know for sure why squick fell into disuse, but my own theory is that fandom as a whole is really bad at explaining itself. There is a general assumption in fandom that “everyone knows” various things, but if no one actually teaches new fans about those things, then we’re relying on them to just pick them up on their own. Sometimes they do, but just as often they don’t. 

I learned squick from context, but that was back in the LJ days of the late 90s and early 2000s. All of the people I was talking to back then were English speakers from North America and so it was easy to glean a meaning based on how the term was being used. Fandom is a lot bigger now, and people are talking cross-culturally with fans who have different first languages and so defining our terms is more important than it used to be. It might feel unnecessary to you, but spelling out your acronyms or defining fandom terms in a post can make the difference between a new fan knowing what you’re talking about and not. 

Which brings me to my next point: how to bring squick back. 

The only way for a word to become popular is for people to use it. New words are constantly being coined and old words are constantly falling into disuse and it all comes down to whether or not those words are actually used by actual people in their actual lives. 

If you want squick to come back, use squick yourself. 

But like I said above, those of us who use these fandom-specific terms that aren’t in any dictionary are going to have to do the work of making the meaning clear. When you use squick, either explain what it means or make the context easy to understand. You can even link out to the Fanlore page on squick. Not everyone clicks on links, but the curious ones might.

The more people who use squick, the more it will come back in fandom. The same is true for any other terms or tropes or ‘rules’ that fandom used to follow. When new people join the fandom, it’s our responsibility as the people who are already here to welcome them in and let them know what’s what. Share the fandom knowledge. If we don’t, it will eventually die out. 

this is the only day u can reblog this

we seriously need to bring back the concept of “despite its flaws i still enjoy it” instead of ‘cancelling’ every fuckin thing in sight 

I am literally begging, BEGGING modern media to portray healthy relationships. enough cheating. enough infidelity. enough disrespect. show me people who love each other, proper communication, and a strong mental as well as physical connection. I want plots about people who are madly in love with each other and STAY madly in love with each other. please. I am losing my mind.

do you ever wish you could unread a book or unwatch a movie/tv show just so you could go back and experience it all again as if it were brand new