Who among us can hear that opening music and not feel emotional? 🥹
Happy 7th anniversary to The Untamed, the drama that played such an important role in bringing us all together! 🥳
I think many of us are feeling especially sentimental about this anniversary because it's 2026, and this year every anniversary and every significant moment seems to hold more meaning and consequence than usual.
When I think about The Untamed, I think about the very rare and precious opportunity for GG and DD to work together as romantic leads, on a story that is so beautifully written and with a cast and crew that gave them space to be themselves.
They could have gone through their entire careers and never had an opportunity like that, with all of these factors coming together so perfectly.
And it launched their careers - that's completely undeniable. The Magnolia Awards program featured a bio about each nominee (reportedly provided by the staff for each nominee), and GG's opened with an acknowledgment of that:
Xiao Zhan is a mainland Chinese actor and singer. In 2019, he gained widespread attention for starring in the costume xianxia drama The Untamed.
Not only did The Untamed give them a precious opportunity to work together, with a supportive cast and crew, on a hit drama that launched their careers, but it also gave them all of us. Make no mistake about it, they value us and the special kind of support we bring them.
Today of all days, GG made a personal post with the kadian 13:00 (yizhan). DD recently clowned us about his racing tires. They know. They're watching, and they share a special connection with all of us.
In a world where they can't be open about their relationship or show support for each other in a shared way, we can do it for them. I know this brings them strength and joy at times (even at as it undoubtedly brings them moments of anxiety 😅).
This fandom has long been about so much more than a drama from 7 years ago, but it was the spark that brought all of this together. It will forever be loved by everyone it has touched. Including GG and DD. After all, no one has been as impacted as they have been.
More than anything, fandom is about people, and about coming together to share all of our excitement, clowning, worries, joys and pains. This fandom and GG and DD have gotten me through some of the most difficult times of my life. I know from talking to so many of you over the years, that it has done the same for you.
And I see this expressed on Weibo as well so often from C-turtles. We've all come through so much together, and no matter how near or how far, we are a little family.
Maybe not so little, given that there are so many millions of us! 😅
I have been overwhelmed by real life lately - in some good ways, and in some not so good ways. Life goes on and pulls us away from fandom for various reasons, but GG and DD, and this beautiful family, always pull us back.
No matter how much time or energy I have to bore you with my long-winded posts lately, you are always in my heart next to GG and DD 💚💛❤️.
Happy 627 everyone! I hope you are all thriving in your own ways and on your own terms. May these experiences as a turtle continue to enrich your life, make you smile, give you strength, connect you with your people and teach you things you never thought to study.
The Road is Long, and I feel so fortunate to be traveling it with all of you! 😘🥲
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I feel like I sometimes sound like a broken record, but I just want to point out that the "absolutely everything means something" approach to analysis does not accurately reflect how long-form TV production works. It's almost impossible for everyone to be on the same page about absolutely everything. While many background details and hints regarding major plot points can intentionally be put there for people to notice and analyse, the final product is at the mercy of so many different things: a shifting writers room, costume and set designers who have their own trademarks, the script landing differently in the hands of actors with their own quirks and inflections... the list goes on. Ideas go through so many levels before they hit the screen.
I was thinking about this after watching this great video essay about how Gravity Falls, which is my favourite show of all time, was written. Overall, it stands as an incredible example of how to plan and execute a long-con mystery with engaging hints and details -- but also a great example of how fandoms sometimes don't understand how TV production works and as a result can overly-mythologise the *power* of showrunners and details and how it all comes together. Even something like GF, which is upheld as like the golden standard of mystery shows, had its fair share of animation errors and stuff made up on the fly. IMO, the difference is that the GF production team -- unlike that of ST -- had a clear understanding of the scope of the show, and were also great at improvising and making sure they did something with the unplanned ideas they threw in there, but that's not the point of this post haha.
This is part of why the "media literacy yadayayda" stuff that constantly gets used as a "gotcha" argument in conspiracy shipping/analysis rubs me the wrong way. Media literacy isn't just about how far you can read into things. In the context of fandom discussion, it's about understanding that shows are works of fiction and thus are at the mercy of the environment it was produced in (both the product itself and what themes/meanings are communicated within it and how). You can't always analyse and make accurate predictions as if it were something completely independent of the production environment. You need to understand the context of the work and the associated limitations of said context. Obligatory 'yes we can still point out and criticise bad writing' note, but I also just want to acknowledge the nuance here and how fandom environments can also contribute to disappointment.
This got kind of rambly and might not be super concise or thought-out but it's something I've been thinking about as a kind of ex-bylr (??? or at least as someone who participated in this kind of flawed analysis when I was a younger teen. And I'm not necessarily just talking about ships here, but also about the overall show lore and how disappointing it is. It's frustrating, but also not a mystery about how it got to that point).
Unexpected little sidewinder snag...having an opportunity to reflect on the fandom that really constituted the biggest fandom plunge of my entire life, up until its point of plunging.
Also very jarring to realize one's consumption of a fandom is now the stuff of fandom lore. I still can't get over that.
So, I'll tell you what Knight Rider looked like for me in 2006-2007.
In 2006, YouTube was a fledgling, having been available to the public for only a few months. LiveLeak was cool, though. The idea of streaming? If you said that to someone, they'd look confused and ask why you're talking about a stream, like physically running water. Smartphones? An alien concept to the wider American public. We knew what Blackberries were, but only that business people had those. I had a Virgin Mobile Oyster Shell flip phone—unbreakable, removable battery, pay-by-the-minute for texting and talking.
We had satellite TV and broadcast TV, an over-the-air antenna, and on a good day, the antenna picked up the old Heroes and Icons channel...and that's where I first met Michael and Kitt, but not every day, not even every week.
There was no hopping on YT or the Internet Archive for full-length episodes. There was pirating, of course, but pirating via Pirate Bay as a concept was only three years old at that point, and only really shady people pirated. Getting KR on DVD? Not easily. Because the bulk of original series releases on DVD at that point were European and region-locked, meaning they didn't work in the States and were considered a waste of time.
I was hopeless. I needed KR. I didn't care how I got it. On the family desktop, I searched high and low. AOL Video...had season 1. Yes, there was a time AOL dabbled in archiving select old TV shows. (Adam-12! Whoo!)
But the bulk of my fandom plunge came from Knight Rider Online, the oldest KR fansite ever to fansite. The best part about KRO?
They had archived scripts from the original series. I read every single script.
Instead of watching it, I learned Michael and Kitt's mannerisms, their cadence, their partnership, and to love their relationship through the written source material that William Daniels read from and that the rest of the cast worked from. I have never done that with any other fandom. The ties run deep because of that connection.
To this day, I can't listen to Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon without getting an instant memory flashback: 5 am before school, winter, cold, my little first-gen MP3 player tucked in my pocket with my headphones on and that song blasting on repeat, huddled at the family computer praying I wouldn't get caught, eating my cereal and reading KR. That's how I spent the winter of 2006.
By September of 2007, when the KR 2008 pilot movie was announced, I'd since moved on to fanfiction. The old FanFiction.net. That hole in the wall pit, swamp, and...damn it, paradise. I read, in awe of the talent, the likes of knightshade, Dr. Cat, and SadArticle. And I wanted to write too; I was still very raw and green there. KR08's cancellation did it for me. I don't think what I wrote was particularly good; in fact, I know it wasn't, but at that point, the fandom kind of felt hopeless, like we'd had the one shot at redemption and it failed, so you had to keep writing, good or bad, because that was it.
But soon after, for me, life happened...and I drifted away from KR. Never on to totally forgetting, you don't forget a fandom love like that. KR became part of my fandom soul — I still gravitate towards brotherly love or deep partnerships in fandom because of Michael and Kitt.
I truly don't know if or when I'll ever write for it again. I am just glad to see it has survived long enough to find its resurgence and for a new generation to fall in love with the shadowy flight, and that I had a little piece of it way back in the good old days.
I've been thinking a lot about the state of the world, but also about the fandom spaces I've been part of in the past, and those I'm still in now. And while I've been lucky to have met some truly lovely people, I've also seen much that makes me sad.
I wish people would meet each other in good faith, with open minds and kindness. The world would be a much better place that way. It costs nothing to be kind, but it costs everything not to be.
Perhaps I'm naive to believe in this kind of utopia, but I genuinely think that we'd all be better off by putting aside our egos and giving each other some grace and space to grow, whether we are readers, writers, artists, or simply as people.
Sending you all a virtual ghost hug 👻
Finnish February (following prompts from @thepromptfoundry)
Like a lot of others, my first fandom was Harry Potter. Which really kind of sucks, to be honest. It was my consuming special interest for 6 years and gave me so much; it was my introduction to fanfiction, roleplay, and fan music, as well as fan studies in general. The marauders fandom was instrumental in defining myself as queer and podcasts like Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and Witch Please exposed me to religion and marginalized studies and overall had a huge impact on my life. After everything was revealed with JKR, I felt devastated; and then again when I found out about Ministry of Magic (the band); and then again when stuff got worse with JKR; I tried so hard to replace it, to get equally into HDM, Tolkien, Werewolves, Math, and I couldn’t force my Brian to move on. Eventually, over three years, I weaned myself off anything that gave JKR money, and then everything official, and then fanwork altogether. It was genuinely a mourning process and greatly impacted my wellbeing in terms of having a safe space and my moral OCD. Sorry that this is depressing: fandom is amazing. I just wish my first experience had reflected that, given that that is what I hope it should be like for everyone
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I've had this feeling for a while but I've never really tried to put it into words.
Have you ever felt like there's no way you could love someone any more but then they did something and you're like ''Oh...".
I have.
That person, for me, is WYB.
Time and again. Watching him in that documentary, reading his interviews and marvelling at his maturity, viewing pictures of that time when he dropped everything and went back to his hometown to volunteer during the floods, seeing him tear up when talking about his grandpa, witnessing his leadership skills during SDOC, watching his 廿 performance and feeling emotional over how much he has grown and matured as a person and artiste (the contrast is stark when I look at old CQL bts now), etc...
Now don't get me wrong. I love GG just as much but it's different. In my mind, GG is perfect. I meant perfect not in a literal sense (I'm not delusional) but more like a figure of speech. Everything GG does, to me it's like ''Yea, that's him''. The dorky XZ, the serious XZ, the artistic XZ, Singer XZ, the introspective XZ...Whereas for DD, he's more...unexpected but I'm more often touched by him. He has this pure heart which continues to amaze me and makes me love him more and more each day.
If I were to translate my love for them visually, I guess it would be like a glass of water that is constantly overflowing vs a magic glass that automatically gets a bit taller as soon as the water line inches towards the brim. Does that make sense? Haha..
I have previously likened both GG and DD to green tea, which I still stand by, but I now have a new perspective.
XZ is like a polished diamond. Sparkly, beautiful, brilliant, precious. Attracting all eyeballs wherever he goes. Not just in terms of aesthetics but his voice, personality, positivity, attitude. Before, he was like unmined, unpolished diamond, patiently waiting for his chance to shine brightly and get discovered, never fighting or competing. They may look complex but diamonds are just made of the single element, carbon. Pure, unadulterated - polished or not, just like GG who still retains his initial self and passion even after going through the shitstorm. Despite their appearance, diamonds are also one of the strongest materials in the world. Isn't that GG? Pretty on the outside but super strong and resilient on the inside.
WYB, on the other hand, is like a kaleidoscope. Depending on the design and individual interest, a kaleidoscope may not immediately grab eyeballs or be compelling enough to entice one to pick it up. The secret lies inside. Peer into it and you'll discover the beauty and complexity within. And that's not all. With every twist and turn, the patterns change and a new set of beauty presents itself. It's mysterious and dynamic and full of surprises. Like DD, you'll discover the gem within only if you are willing to give it a chance. DD might not be as easy to 'get', both in aesthetics and outward personality but with exploration and understanding, it's hard not to fall in love with him. He grows on you. And grows and grows and grows.
I'm looking forward to more great days ahead with our boys. More content and works to enjoy, pictures to admire, candies to devour, things to clown over, etc. And looking forward to more fun times and interactions with my fellow turtles here on tumblr.
I am sbooks! I post about book history and fanfiction in all their overlapping and distinct facets. I wrote my MA dissertation, which I recently made available to read via Google Drive, on why fanfiction is a key and understudied area of book history. The centralized locale for all of my lukewarm takes is my research masterpost.
I also reblog things related to libraries, library access, library history, and anti-racism and decolonization of heritage institutions.
I go through Tumblr ruts where I will reblog a lot of memes about fandom and fanfiction in general, especially memes that are about lavishing fic writers and fan products with praise, because
the memes are important and true,
fan producers and affirmation are the backbone of fandom culture, and
sometimes I struggle to come up with and write down my ideas.
basically: I’m a full-time MLS student and I have a part-time job, so the blog is buttressed by memes. Thanks for being patient as I put out original thoughts (though I would and have argued that nothing is really original and that’s a good thing...)
recently, for some reason, I’ve also reblogged some megamind content. I think megamind is an excellent case study of a lot of fic and media tropes, so it fits with the general vibes of the blog. I usually add commentary about how specific media serves as good case studies for fan & book history studies whenever I do reblog fandom-specific content. otherwise, the fandom here is fandom.
I’m going to do a year in review list of fics and answer tags on some of the memes floating around, but I’m waiting until January when a few anon fics in fests are revealed as I’d really like to include those in my ramblings. This is more a personal take on some reflections I’ve had on fandom - and my place and activity within it - over the course of this year.
On a personal level, real life work and fandom as a hobby have intersected this year for me like never before, and the combination of taking on multiple commitments to academic publishing, grappling with the demands of my thesis and moderating and participating in multiple fests has been a lot. I’ve had something of a rollercoaster year, but I’m ending 2018 feeling creatively inspired, happy, and energised for another active fandom year. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it and those friends new and old that have been instrumental to shaping my year and pulling me out of the funk I was in at the beginning of the year.
Some key lessons I’ve personally learned in 2018 below the cut to save your dash from my GIANT WALL OF TEXT.
All At Sea: I think of my relationship to fan spaces sometimes as a bit like being out at sea. It’s easy to get caught up in the current and drift along, but the tide is always turning and there are unexpected storms which make staying afloat more challenging at times. Sometimes it can be exhausting when you feel as though you’re swimming against a strong current and making no progress, but on other occasions you find a spot where you can swim, choose your own direction, do handstands in the water and it’s exhilarating. This year I learned it’s okay to get out of the sea sometimes, to push your toes in the sand, feel the sun on your face, and just enjoy watching the waves. Have a cocktail with friends at the beach bar, chill the fuck out, basically. From starting the year feeling in something of a fandom funk, I’ve got to a place at the end of this year where I feel very positive about fandom and grateful to share a space with so many brilliant, talented, supportive people.
Burnout and Information Overwhelm: This year, the burnout has been real and I’ve worked out that the platforms I’m operating on contribute a lot to that feeling of mental exhaustion. Using my mobile for fandom activity, having more time than ever at my personal laptop instead of an office computer which restricted me from accessing fan platforms and ramping up my use of Tumblr, Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord for fandom activity created a kind of information overwhelm that comes with high speed interactions and heightened the sense of needing to be present, or to offer opinions as part of fast-paced interactions requiring quick thinking, and sometimes knee-jerk responses. With this came the suspicion and bitter taste caused by anonymous messages cropping up in the inboxes of me and my friends, and it felt at times as though I was constantly logged on and in a state of hypersensitivity. I’ve learned that stepping back from things and learning to balance time spent online with time spent offline is an important part of self-care and it’s okay to be absent for a while. If conversations are draining, leave them. If you see opinions you don’t like, ignore them or try to understand them. They are just opinions - and I mean opinions on characters, canon, fandom and so on as opposed to political opinions that actively seek to harm people. Everyone has different perspectives on things. There really is room for everyone. Regarding anonymous messages, if the only way someone wants to interact with you is via crappy anonymous messages, I’ve learned they are not worth your time, effort or mental energy. Interacting only brings more attention to them. Delete, block, move on. Fuck ‘em. If you want to talk to me, do it off anon. If I’ve upset you with my actions, tell me. Let’s have a proper, adult conversation.
Look for the Rainbow: Fandom spaces are communities which form around peoples passions. They are places of brilliant creativity but the things we love have a tendency to give rise to extreme emotional responses. I’ve veered from extreme highs to extreme lows and this year I have learned the importance of finding a balance that works. I think a relentlessly positive, non-critical approach can be just as stifling as a culture of intense negativity and constant division, but having said that when I’m having my storm cloudy moments I’m trying to focus on the rainbow. Wallowing in bad feeling tends to nurture and cultivate that sense of dissatisfaction until it becomes suffocating. There’s a tremendous amount of good in fandom space. Good people, good ideas, tireless effort, incredible organisation, passion, creativity and vibrancy. There’s a huge amount to feel positively about and whilst I would never advocate for a laissez faire, entirely non-critical approach, I also think everyone has their own capacity for critical thinking and the way those thoughts can permeate and shape our whole experience of fandom and - by extension - influence our creative abilities. I’ve learned to focus more on the things I get out of fandom that make me happy, to retain a critical eye on things as I always will given the nature of my research, but not to allow the critical to obscure the many positive things about fandom.
Evaluating Self-Worth: I’ve really tried in the latter part of this year not to measure myself or my worth by external metrics of success. The kudos, the hits, the number of followers, the amount of positive interaction over anonymous messages, the posts I’m tagged in, the hype, the rec lists I’m on or not on, and so on. Comparing yourself to other people can lead to resentment and frustration or to an inflated sense of self-importance. It says a little something about how I started the year that I thought I want to grow my tumblr and write a really successful fic, and thought I would know if I had accomplished that by feedback and response. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that because I think it makes me look like a dick, and I’m super pleased with the support my fics get in any event, but I wanted to share it because I think it’s important in terms of this lesson I’ve learned this year. I went from a place of being very focused on external measures of success to ending this year realising that my most successful stories have been the ones I’m proudest of and they are not the ones with the most hits or kudos. Those are the stories that I enjoyed creating the most, and the ones that left me feeling incredibly positive and proud at the end of this year, looking forward to the next year in fandom and planning projects that I already know won’t be the most popular, but they are the ones I’m creatively excited about and inspired by, so those are the ones I should be focusing on. Despite its resistance to corporate structures, there’s something very capitalist about the way we can sometimes be lured into evaluating self-worth in fandom, and those structures are embedded within fandom itself. They won’t go away, but focusing on them doesn’t half make me unhappy.
Support Other Creators: It’s easy to let negative feelings overwhelm the way we interact with one another in fandom. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned this year is that you get back what you put in. Through supporting other creators you build friendships formed around shared creative passions and interests. You feel pride in your friends accomplishments. You improve your own work by reading widely, cheerleading, editing, beta reading, alpha reading, brit picking. Writing can be a lonely endeavour but it doesn’t have to be that way when you’re part of a community that uplifts others.
Treat People With Kindness: Not everybody has the same levels of confidence or the same energy for rigorous debate. We all have days where we feel like we could crack into pieces, where we feel lonely, invisible, anxious, excluded, unhappy or fragile. It’s easy to be brave behind a computer screen, but ultimately people on the other end are going through stuff in the same way we all are. I’m making a concerted effort in 2019 to engage patiently and respectfully with opinions I disagree with and to be open to anyone who wants to chat or talk through things. I want to work on building new friendships (yeah, I’m going to slide into your DMs, like hiiiii :D) and maintaining old ones, ensuring I give back the same energy and support I get from friends so they know how appreciated they are. I started this year thinking Tumblr required a level of saltiness and a dgaf attitude that’s never been me, honestly. The lesson I’ve learned this year is to resist going along with the pile and to stop and think before engaging. For some people that might seem like an annoying attempt to sit on the fence and please everyone which is never going to happen, but to be honest I think it’s all about finding what works for you in that regard. I’m here for the hot takes and the salt at times, but tbh it’s pretty much just not me. Even when I’ve responded heatedly to an anonymous message that thoroughly deserved it, it’s felt performative and weird and I’m just not going to do that anymore.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you ever want to chat fandom thoughts then I’m always open to that and hope everyone has a very happy 2019!
