175 posts
I took a quick look without my glasses, and I thought I saw Johnny Cash.
@dastmalchian and @lklinger221 at the @noholibrary presentation of "Dracula's Guest" on Oct 27
MacGyver (2016) S03 E06 "Murdoc, Macgyver, Murdoc"
David Dastmalchian returns with Todd McFarlane for 'Knights vs. Samurai' | Talking Strange
David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man) Talks Count Crowley Comic - San Diego Comic-Con 2019 Interview
christopher lee being lovingly caressed might heal me
DAVID DASTMALCHIAN by MIKE RUIZ for L’OFFICIEL FASHION BOOK.
David Dastmalchian as Lester Billings in The Boogyman
this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.
good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.
sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.
so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.
one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.
And then we go apeshit.
12 Monkeys - Bodies of Water (2016) (2/2)
I'm here for all that sweaty neck and wild eyes.
12 Monkeys - Bodies of Water (2016) (1/2)
This man is so pretty it's unreal. And fresh.
So angelicly peculiarly pretty <333
The way Margot looks at him in the last GIF is totally me.
David Dastmalchian behind the scenes of The Suicide Squad (2021)
Since the writers are out with our begging bowls pleading for interaction again (hi!), to mangle what the dude said about planting trees: while the best time to add a minute or two to the time you spend consuming someone’s work to leave a comment—work that they’ve created in their spare time to appeal to your specific interests and have made freely available to you forever—was yesterday, there’s always today. We make and share stories and art and music because we’re participating in the fan culture just like you, and every single one of us is wishing and hoping and praying this time it turns out to be a two-way street.
In my experience, both personal and talking with/listening to other creators, nobody’s grubbing for compliments (even though everyone agrees compliments are very nice). Personally, it’s more like having a realization about how far the shift in how the writer-reader relationship works has pushed the dynamic of fandom and fanfiction in particular—collaborative and reciprocal to a place that’s much more reflective of starkly passive consumption, at least over the 25 years I’ve participated as a creator in fandom culture. And it’s not just my fandom, or your fandom. It’s systemic.
I’m sure people have their reasons and explanations and justifications for not letting creators know the ways their work has benefited or impacted them, but at the end of the day, I only know you value what I’ve added to our little shared universe if you tell me. I’m glad people are consistent readers, and the ones who reach out are the ones I’m writing for, but it’s hard to pretend the other 97% of you aren’t there too, lurking in the shadows, watching and forming silent opinions. It makes me second-guess myself, and my writing, and whether or not it’s a waste of my time like it is yours (this is what my self-criticism and imposter syndrome lick into my ears, not necessarily what those people who click on every chapter to the bitter end are thinking)(I hope). It makes me feel like a faceless content creator, and not a person who makes things and shares them freely out of love and excitement. It makes me feel like I’m not a welcome participant in my fandom, sometimes.
Anyway. I’m so deeply curious as to why there seems to be such a weird, insurmountable gulf between writers and readers; the readers are the only ones with the boats to get across it, and I really really really wish you would. Nobody’s going to be mad or icked that you let them know you like something they spent time on. We will develop gnawing neuroses and self-doubt and decide maybe it’s just not worth it any more after enough silence, though. Which is such a bummer, and it really, really, really doesn’t have to be.
Support the care and feeding of your fellow fans (and the health of your fandom overall): leave a comment on AO3 (or wherever your writers are found) today.
I'll be there shortly, I'm just decanting the vintage port.
Inflation is so fucking bad we're fantasizing about stalkers leaving groceries
Missed one, here you go:
Tw blood
.
.
.
.
An awesome bean found these out of context, probs for a photoshoot, pics of david here.