My last post on this blog was almost exactly two years ago and I doubt anyone cares much about this message but I thought I would give some final thoughts before bidding this blog adieu.
I started this blog in 2016 as a way to interact with other people in the OMGCP fandom and talk about a comic that meant a lot to me. In 2016 I was in ninth grade (freshman year of high school) and had extreme difficulty making friends at my new school. I was trying to balance high school, high level dance, and my struggles regarding my sexuality. I saw a lot of myself in Bitty and seeing representation in comics meant the world to me. Since I had no friends and was immersed in the toxic tumblr culture of the time, I thought that creating this blog would be a good idea.
I joined the OMGCP fandom near its peak. I had actually already started reading the comic in 2015 but I forgot about it pretty quickly, until I rejoined just a month or so before The Kiss™. After that, I fell hard into the community in one of the worst ways possible. I brought my fanatic SuperWhoLock mentality into a small community with all the confidence of a 14 year old girl who thinks that stan culture is healthy. Looking back on this blog I have a lot of regrets, but I was 14 and having this blog actually helped me a lot. I got to share my dumb headcanons and even managed to make friends through it (shout out to the Bittyholtz twitter group chat). I got to talk to like-minded people and have friendly debates with them. In 2017 I got to meet Ngozi at a comic festival. I probably made a fool out of myself, I can’t remember, but I got to meet an artist I admired and now I own an original Kent Parson pin so it can’t have been that bad.
By 2018 my interest in the fandom had plummeted and I stopped caring about the comic, the fandom, and this blog. This was in part due to the sporadic updates and lack of engaging fan content, but it was primarily due to the growing toxicity of the community and the way the updates felt…weird. All of year 3 was very touch and go for me. I would spend weeks elbow’s deep in the fandom and then a month doing the bare minimum to keep this blog alive. It felt as if the character development of Bitty and Jack up from the first two years had been scrapped, and in its place were caricatures and fluff. The rest of the cast had also lost their personalities. I still posted memes and joking headcanons, but I no longer felt connected with the characters or the story, with the exception of Kent Parson.
This community has always had an issue with Parse to the extent that people have received death threats for liking him. It was like that in 2016 and it’s like that now. I always liked Parse because he was flawed and relatable in a more realistic way than other characters in the comic. As I previously mentioned I found Bitty deeply relatable in 2016, but that changed when Year 3 came out. Year 1 & 2 Bitty was a flawed character with endearing traits, Year 3 Bitty was a selfish mother hen with an ego. He was no longer relatable, and the rest of the cast seemed to have been shoved to the side to focus more on Jack and Bitty’s relationship. The Tadpoles weren’t given enough attention when I was still reading the comic, with their personalities being dumbed down to “confused” and “stand-offish”. This left Kent Parson as one of the most dynamic characters in the series, despite his little screen time. Kent Parson was relatable too many people, myself included. He was Jacks foil and gave us a glimpse into Jacks life before Samwell and how that haunts him. The treatment of Parse during the LVA @ PVD updates was the tipping point in my abandonment of this blog.
I didn’t read Year 4 until Ngozi posted the final update schedule for Check Please on Instagram and I decided to catch up before reading the finale. I was reminded of why I fell in love with so many of these characters and this fandom. I started getting back into the fandom and re-reading old favourite fanfics. It made me realize that it was always the characters I loved, not the story. Seeing how people fill in plot holes or write redemption arcs for discarded characters is incredible. I especially love seeing peoples responses to the finale of the comic. Personally, I found the ending lacklustre, though I did get a little teary eyed over this comic ending after all my emotional investment in it. A lot of my critiques have already been said in the OMGCP Critical tag so I wont bore you with them.
Despite starting this post by saying I’ll be bidding Check Please “adieu”, I don’t think that’s true. I’ll continue reading fanfic from this fandom and I’ll likely browse some OMGCP tumblr tags on occasion, but it will likely not be reblogged to this account. I’m debating writing a Bittyparse fic that I’ve been thinking of, and if I write it I’ll post it here, but don’t get your hopes up. This fandom is bound to die in a couple years, some tags are already being abandoned and accounts are rebranding themselves away from OMGCP. The peak period of this blog was a time of growth for me and I thank everyone who read my silly headcanons and ridiculous AUs.
Anyways. Thanks for everything, Check Please fandom.
Hey lol is anyone else noticing that all the racists are coming out of the woodwork now that people are seeing that the Amazon LotR cast isn’t 100% white…?
(And ironically the cast listings were available long before now, but it’s only now some are acting surprised)
Tbh it’s so frustrating seeing top comments on LotR posts being about how terrible the “woke” casting is? And it’s not like these comments are pushed to the bottom because of unpopularity. People agree. I don’t know what’s happening :(
Anyone else kind of scared/anticipatory/excited to see what the LotR Prime show is gonna do to the fandom? It’ll be a revival, but I do hope it’s a good revival.
I don’t know how I feel about the modernization (is that the right word?) of LotR. Tolkien’s values clash with a lot of priorities of the current day, so I’m wondering how these issues will be navigated. Of course, there’s going to be the unavoidable irreverence that comes with modern live action media that I definitely won’t enjoy (e.g. objectifying buzzfeed articles about the hottest characters; or news with erroneous misconceptions about the world, etc, the latter of which already has been happening). Also, I don’t like Bezos.
I’m too young for this, haha. I don’t want to be gatekeep-y but at the same time I don’t like immature fans. It’s a toss-up. I have a feeling there’s going to be some discourse very soon about the sudden influx of second/third-gen fans suddenly entering what is definitely a first-generation world. LotR has a very long and important fandom legacy, and it’s arguably shaped many aspects of the subculture of fandom-hood, from fic tropes to Figwit. I wasn’t there for most of it, partially because I’m not old enough to have participated, but I think I do know a little sliver of its history – just enough to feel like it should be viewed with respect.
This is just a ramble. Not really any point to it other than an enthusiastic and tense reaction to the images released on the Instagram account. Penny for your thoughts??
y’all it’s a different kind of hurt when you catch feelings for someone for the first time in a long time and then you realize they’re into you because they have yellow fever
Requests are open! I have a huge problem with wanting to draw but not knowing WHAT to draw, so requests are always appreciated! I would prefer something along my interests but there’s nothing wrong with asking for whatever you want!
being from the united states is embarrassing if you truly valued yourself you’d be born somewhere else
I’m indigenous speak for yourself - if you are embarrassed by being born here methinks that might be your problem. I also want to say before anyone goes around twisting tights - no problem with op or this post rather wanting to shed light on the fact this is Indigenous American erasure whether meant or not - Turtle Island is an rare and wonderful place to be born and live. If there’s unrest with that idea you may not be aligned to the land.
Something similar happened to me with a weird crustacean I posted and I was dancing on the wind for weeks
OP can we see said caterpillar?
Imagine seeing an insect - it happens all the time, not a rare or wondrous occasion by any general sense, yet… Between 15,000 and 18,000 new species are identified each year, half of those discoveries being insects.
That spider in your home, could be unidentified, new. The flies on your windshields, fresh creations.
Years ago I found a huge grub in a friends garden. Took it home in a jar speared with a fork for breathing holes. Put it in a bowl of dirt - Moth larvae will bury underground to metamorphosize - I carefully dug into the dirt when the leaves were falling. A beautiful umber leathery cocoon sat, quietly greeting me. All winter I kept it inside, warm. Carefully moved from one room to another. Come spring, I thought they would not come out. Come summer, I was left with a casing I thought empty. One night, one breathtaking night, a moth larger than my partner’s hand, or mine appeared. The Pandora Sphinx Moth was free, and she spread her wings and took to the night sky. I never knew a moth like her could exist in Colorado.
At any given moment, it’s estimated there are 10 quintillion individual insects alive. Be curious! Who knows what we will discover next. There in your backyard, local park, leaflitter in the city, some new, wonderous thing lives.
I will forever remember the time I realized my friend was the mom friend when I didn’t bring/have a lunch at school and I asked her if I could have some of her noodles and she said “okay but you have to eat some of my vegetables too” and i- okay mom
to the people that have sent writing requests to me: I am working on it and I’ll get to posting them eventually. I’m just currently lacking some motivation and wanting to take a break for school/mental health reasons. thank you for your patience!
true sibling love is my brother cutting a chocolate in half for us to share and as I go to grab the smaller piece, he goes “you can have the bigger one if you want”
