“[...]but there's this appeal to seeing characters that the audience has already formed a parasocial bond with in synthesized scenarios and novel circumstances. This isn't even all that odd *outside* the realm of fan fiction. DC Comics over the years has imagined Batman as a vampire, as a pirate, as a medieval knight, and as an 18th century detective chasing Jack the Ripper - just to name a few of the literally dozens of alternate universe Batmen that are out there...

At a certain point, characters cease to require their context to be whole, and in fact become their own context, and subsequently the fun comes from taking them and moving them around; playing with them in a variety of different styles and scenarios...

In this way, fan fiction is the literary evolution of childhood play: taking disparate toys and bringing them together; an almost instinctive exercise in creative synthesis. It is not a mystery that fanfiction appeals to so many, because it is naturally what stories pursue: the meeting point between the familiar and the unexpected.”

Credit to Dan from the brilliant channel Folding Ideas. Here is the full essay:

Okay, I bring this vid by the marvelous Dan Olson up because of an argument I got in over the Samurai Jack ending, where Ashi fucking dies when they get to the past because time paradox to make Jack sad in a textbook Stuffed in the Fridge moment.

No I will not fucking spoiler tag that, because that does not deserve a fucking spoiler tag, fuck you Genndy Tartakofsky, let us broadcast your shame, you should have fucking known better.

And someone was arguing on a synch about why it was justified because “Oh according to the rules of time travel.” And when I tried to argue with them about it, that the actual garbage symbolism made it super shitty, they pushed the “I’M JUST ARGUING LOGIC” button on the time-travel thing in a textbook example of the phenomenon deconstructed in the video above.

It was like arguing with a fucking brick wall.

“Foldable Gothic”

Finally finished this parody of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting, American Gothic, featuring Dan Olson, Laura, and Foldy from Folding Ideas.

If you would like to order a custom digital painting in this style, I am currently open for commissions!

More info at wings-and-strings.tumblr.com/commissions