Stars of Shadow and Dust

JUST adding the ability to reblog from anywhere in the thread (thus saving us the trouble of going up a poster to remove a reblog we don't want/need, such as sometimes I go up a reblog to not carry on a ping someone did to me, as that doesn't need to follow the post everywhere)? Cool. We were already doing that kind of stuff. People have up-chained to remove additions since time immemorial on this hellsite. This would literally have just been a time-saver button.

JUST adding in a comment-adder getting notification ALSO if their addition was reblogged (and NOT removing the notification/notes from the original post), so that OP and the commenter get notified? Yeah okay. Nothing would have been taken away from anyone, and this would actually add a function that would allow commenters to respond to people who reply to them, even if the person didn't reblog directly from them. OP would also see, so they could also be in the conversation they started. No one gets cut out of the conversation if they've added to it. That would be neat.

But to cut OP out of the conversation if someone reblogged from them and commented?? what kind of hot garbage?? what kind of drug-induced hallucination created this community-killing change? Who on earth approved this? What was the goal of this move?? You could have done something good and useful with your time instead of pissing on your poor userbase and calling it rain.

Charlotte Baxter（Welsh),

Tan y Bwlch, Wood and Linocut, 65 x 53 cm.

And sometimes, you have a string of fandoms that are Actually Pretty Good. And the danger of this—the very great danger—is that when you have a string of Actually Pretty Good and even Actually Amazing obsessions, you start to believe that maybe you have taste. Perhaps you are now immune to the indignities of losing it over something mostly bad.

And frankly, it’s starting to really get on my nerves when people read “I think this thing is good. I wouldn’t change a thing about it and frankly I don’t even think there should be more canon added to it, but I am still going to write thousands of words of fic, make a cosplay, and draw fanart” and then completely misunderstand and respond with “yes I agree—I like things that are good too. But I never feel the transformative/creative fandom instinct for them because they are too good.”

compelling worldbuilding (invites interaction with the setting)

interesting gimmick (see: daemons, drift compatibility. subcategory of compelling worldbuilding)

shipping bait (duh)

original character bait (in-universe categories/factions and design elements that make it fun for people to create their own characters)

compelling narrative (invites interaction and tweaks to the storyline: AUs and fixits and so on)

basically anything that invites interaction and recombination. but fandom also has a sort of multiplying effect: the larger the interactive audience of fandom is, the more likely it is to generate ideas and works that draw in more participants. so:

fanfic that I like