in your own head will make you start seeing the broader capitalist framework for art as IP as natural, when that framework makes art into a commodity instead of a means of human self-expression, which is often learned from other people

i think a lot of online artists have a sort of temporarily embarrassed millionaire mindset where they think that other individual people copying them/taking inspiration from their work is what's keeping them from greater exposure, and i gently think that is not the case, and being too litigious--

this is why i don't like driving!! you can be following traffic laws and get hit by a dump truck!!!

i'll be real, i do only care about fandom for shipping bc i think that's one of the only things fandom is Good At, but i don't really care about shipping in media that is either doing other things or already has internally satisfying relationships, which is how i feel abt most horror

and the shift to fandom as a corporatized entity happened in my (29 years old) childhood, emblemized by the popularity of marvel movies, so when people around my age express nostalgia for a "glory days" of fandom as an out-group, i'm like what the fuck are you TALKING about, you didn't live that

just look at fucking stranger things-- companies love to invoke 80s nostalgia and go "this is You, and buying d&d products makes you part of the counterculture of this show" & we have to kill our impulse that Buying Product is a reflection of our identities or something The Man doesn't want us to do

i don't think it's Cute for older nerds to refuse to adapt their mindsets with the times, and to continue to hold onto "nerd" as a type of marginalized cultural group from the 80s-90s, because that mindset helps corporations spread capitalist propaganda in the guise of liberal identity politics