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Owlor
@Owlor@meow.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 hours ago

Learning about this unfiction side project makes me wish I watched Smiling Friends so I could properly appreciate it cus it is really neat.

It's basically like, this meditation on the way fans relate to their shows, how they try to insert themselves into that universe, but fail to get the emotional fulfillment they need from that alone cus the story isn't really built with a space for you in it, told through the medium of two youtube channels posing as clip uploaders.

One of them represents the more curatorial side of fandom, simply posting clip from the show and putting his own intrusive watermark on it, the other represents the more transformational side of fandom and she's the archetypical example of a Mary Sue, inserting her own tonally clashing character in the show to offer color commentary.

In both cases, the channels starts off simple enough to be mistaken for a fan project, then their characters start to interact with the show more and more and it's pretty clear that it must be an official side project.

I find Dolly Dimpley especially interesting as, like, a case study in how the Mary Sue archetype has evolved in the current era. Most of the elements of her character you can trace all the way back to the original Mary Sue from A Trekkie's Tale all the way back in the 70s, but she's also showing a pretty large analog horror influence, as she leans on those tropes as a way to try and get attention.

I don't really remember Horror Sues being a huge thing in fandom in the 00s, (the edgy analog horror sues would have been the edgy goth sues at the time) that seems like a distinctly post-Jeff the Killer development to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq91v_uJsjs

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Owlor
@Owlor@meow.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 hours ago

The analog horror elements in this project is presented in such a funny way cus like, for once this is not actually a horror-themed unfiction project, it is really more an extention of the dark comedy of the show, but Dollys videos briefly turn into a flawless parody of bad analog horror for a while anyway, basically because she as a character figured that's what she was supposed to do, cus her only frame of reference is the internet.

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BT Free is a non-profit organization founded by @ozoned@btfree.social . It's goal is for digital privacy rights, advocacy and consulting. This goal will be attained by hosting open platforms to allow others to seamlessly join the Fediverse on moderated instances or by helping others join the Fediverse.

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